As with a number of previous Signature publications, New Approaches to the Book of Mormon received a hearty welcome from fundamentalist Protestant anti-Mormons. The Whittier, California, chapter of Concerned Christians and Former Mormons, for instance, devoted its August 1993 evening meeting to the theme "Mormon Scholars Question the Book of Mormon," and its newsletter hailed New Approaches in an article entitled "The Book of Mormon Continues Loosing [sic] Credibility." And, in a subsequent newsletter, they not only "highly recommend" the book, but announce that they have it for sale.1 Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Utah Lighthouse Ministry likewise carries the book.2 (Stan Larson's critique of 3 Nephi 12-14 had already received favorable attention from the Tanners long before it was incorporated into New Approaches.)3 J. Edward Decker's organization, Saints Alive in Jesus, which co-produces the "God Makers" movies, announced New Approaches in a "Special Update Report" for July 1993 (incorrectly claiming, along the way, that "every one of the contributors [to the Metcalfe volume] began the project believing that the Book of Mormon was a genuine ancient document"). New Approaches was the subject of the cover story in the Fall 1993 issue of "Mormonism Researched," the newsletter of Bill McKeever's California-based Mormonism Research Ministry. "Interesting," wrote Mr. McKeever, "is the fact that much of the rationale presented by these scholars is strikingly similar to the polemics which Christians [sic] have been raising for years."4
In 1992, I offered a fairly comprehensive portrait of what seems to me (and to others) a characteristic and unmistakable ideological tendency in many of Signature's productions.5 There is no need to repeat that exercise here. Nonetheless, emboldened by Signature director Gary James Bergera's recent allowance, in the Salt Lake Tribune, that "Mr. Peterson and his associates are free to give vent to every expression they may experience [sic], however immature and tasteless,"6 I should like to offer a few general remarks on the context from which New Approaches has emerged. It seems to me that the dispute between defenders of the Book of Mormon and the traditional truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, on the one hand, and those who would revise or redefine those truth claims, on the other, is as much a clash of opposing world views as a quibble over this or that piece of evidence. I shall also point to a crucial issue that the book raises but avoids. I cautiously hope that such remarks will be well received, along with the comments of the other contributors to this Review, since, according to a news report recently broadcast on Salt Lake City's KTVX-TV, "the editor of New Approaches welcomes criticism from LDS scholars and leaders."7
and contains this savorous section.
In the brilliant third chapter of Degenerate Moderns, entitled "Homosexual as Subversive," E. Michael Jones demonstrates the crucial and explanatory role of personal lifestyle not only in the traitorous career of Sir Anthony Blunt, but in the theories of John Maynard Keynes, the biographical writings of Lytton Strachey, and the novels of E. M. Forster. "Modernity was the exoteric version of Bloomsbury biography; it was a radically homosexual vision of the world and therefore of its very nature subversive; treason was its logical outcome. . . . The Bloomsberries' public writings—Keynes' economic theories, Strachey's best-selling Eminent Victorians, etc.—were the sodomitical vision for public consumption."55 Reflecting upon the development of the characters in Forster's long-suppressed book, Maurice, Jones notes that, "In the world of this novel it's hard to tell whether declining religious faith fosters homosexuality or whether homosexuality kills faith. At any rate Forster sees a connection. . . . As their involvement in sodomy increases, so also does their opposition to Christianity."56 That denial of the truths one can know about God should lead to sodomy is in some sense a mystery," concludes Jones. "However, it is a mystery that can be fairly well documented, from Paul's epistle to the Romans to any objective view of modern British history."57 In any event, it seems clear that immorality (not merely of the homosexual variety) and intellectual apostasy are, and always have been, frequent (though not invariable) companions. (Joseph Smith's famous announcement of a link between adultery and sign-seeking is apropos here.)58 Sodom and Cumorah are apparently not compatible.
The illustrious early twelfth-century Muslim philosophical theologian al-Ghazali noted the same linkage in his day:
Now, I have observed that there is a class of men who believe in their superiority to others because of their greater intelligence and insight. They have abandoned all the religious duties Islam imposes on its followers. They laugh at the positive commandments of religion which enjoin the performance of acts of devotion, and the abstinence from forbidden things. They defy the injunctions of the Sacred Law. Not only do they overstep the limits prescribed by it, but they have renounced the Faith altogether.59
It is certainly not irrelevant to this theme that Abu 'Ubayd al-Juzjani, the admiring disciple and biographer of one of those of whom al-Ghazali spoke, the famous eleventh-century Perso-Arab philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina), thought that "the Master's" relatively early death occurred because of his overindulgence in sexual pleasures.60
Well, as Bergera remarked (see above) DCP is free to say what he wants about his opponents "however immature and tasteless" it may be.