Elder Holland Allegedly Responds to Ex-StkPres (updated)

[_Themis]

I agree, but you wouldn't expect a lack of knowledge on Church History, where the Lamanites came from etc to be one of his...

I think you have to assume that he accepts the standard apologetic responses to these problems as decent ones. You should also assume that most people who are already inclined to believe something are more easily convinced by even shaky defenses of those things.

I certainly don't think he is stupid or necessarily to be faulted for believing what he is predisposed to believe.

Holland is a member of the 12. At this point one is so vested in the church that he would be far more inclined then your average member whose family is all active members. I would say he and DCP are in the same boat here as DCP is also very vested in the church and depends on it for religious, social and economic reasons. He knows more of the issues then Holland and yet I think he believes as well. Smart people can believe stupid things, and I think this is one of the main reasons we do. If people would try to understand these things I wonder if they might be a little less critical of them as Kish is.

[_Kishkumen]

That said, I did find anointed one to be a bit of a bore, and his tone was unnecessarily bellicose. I don't think there was anything that he could have said that would have extracted a more substantive response from Elder Holland, but the whole exchange might have had a more congenial tone had he been a bit more diplomatic about raising his concerns. I realize that it was a partial response to Holland's 2009 conference talk, which was itself on the inflammatory side towards struggling members and ex-members, but still.

There's really nothing about Holland's response that surprises me. Even if he had tried to engage anointed one's concerns substantively, it would not have been any different than what can be found on LDS apologetics Web sites. So what exactly was he expecting? Did he just want to prove that Mormon apostles have no answers to these issues?

I could have told you that without ever having to write a letter to one.

BINGO! Thanks, Jack. You put it so much better than I did.

[_Chap]

....
I do want to register my disgust that private communications were made public, this is bad form no matter how good one's intentions are. All this does is make GA's more insulated and less likely to communicate in the future. It provides a good "Gotcha!" moment, but in the end probably hurts the cause of those seeking more openness in LDS culture. The GA's really need to rethink their unwillingness to engage the rank and file church member in an open way. While this incident is not justifiable on those grounds, it is a symptom of the underlying problem.
....

Did you miss this? Holland was specifically told that his reply would be published. Presumably he gave it his best shot, and a shot he was happy to see made public:

According to the original letter sent to Elder Holland (which can be found here), Mr. Phillips stated that he would post Elder Hollands response on two or more bulletin boards. Here is the exact quote:

"As your declarations on the Book of Mormon and derision of those, such as myself, have been made so public (General Conference broadcast throughout the world, Ensign magazine and ‘youtube’) I will be publishing this letter on two or more bulletin boards. I will also publish your reply to this letter so that all sides of the issues may be fairly represented."

Holland may believe strange things, but that is not inconsistent with his being intelligent - he did manage to grind out a PhD thesis after all, so we can probably assume he is not a mouth breather. So on the basis that he knew what he was doing, I would like to raise an issue that has not, I think, been mentioned so far:

1. If, as some posters have suggested, a GA like Holland cannot be expected to know the most effective answers to scholarly and scientific objections to their religion and its sacred texts, he must presumably be aware of his lack of expertise. So why did he not consult the Maxwell Institute and its group of skilled apologists before drafting his reply - or at least mention them?

2. Could it be that he did not enter into apologist-style rebuttals because he was not in fact addressing 'Anointed One' in his reply, but another audience altogether? If, well aware of the fact that his message was to be published, he was thinking of the wider audience of TBMs who might waver a little on seeing a Stake President with the Second Anointing going apostate, then maybe it was them he was really addressing. That might explain why he refuses to argue about horses. metallurgy and so on (dangerous territory) and instead sticks to spiritual experiences, the church makes you better, your family will be devastated if you leave - in fact he presses all the buttons he can to get people to stop going that way, and make an emotional commitment to keep their testimonies at all costs. He knows Anointed One is out for good - once the thinking has been done, you'll rarely if ever get them back -and has gone into damage limitation mode for the members who remain.

Could I be right?

[_Kishkumen]

Here is where I part company. At some point participation in a culture becomes one's own responsibility, and I think Holland, and all of the other GA's have reached that point. When John Q. Mormon says something unintelligent and misinformed, I can let it slide and think nothing of it. It's the same with something like racism. The reflexive racism of the Appalachian hillbilly is one thing, Bull Connor is another; at some point one becomes not merely a passive participant in the culture, one starts making the culture.

I think you are correct about the responsibility that attaches to shaping a culture that one has such a privileged position in, but Holland is, for all of his virtues, woefully unequipped for the task of dealing with people like Anointed One. You need a D. Michael Quinn, Samuel Morris Brown, George Miller, or Joe Steve Swick III to deal with such criticisms. Unfortunately, these fellows are so far outside of the culture of LDS leadership that they would NEVER be called upon to provide the leadership and pedagogy necessary to address these problems. The current leaders press on in the model they have and know how to use. It is a fundamentally flawed intellectual model that is incapable of addressing such challenges usefully.

Look at David Bokovoy's attempt to find a teaching position at BYU if you want a sense of how ready the LDS Church is to embrace a more productive model for dealing with these challenges.

[_Kishkumen]

2. Could it be that he did not enter into apologist-style rebuttals because he was not in fact addressing 'Anointed One' in his reply, but another audience altogether? If, well aware of the fact that his message was to be published, he was thinking of the wider audience of TBMs who might waver a little on seeing a Stake President with the Second Anointing going apostate, then maybe it was them he was really addressing. That might explain why he refuses to argue about horses. metallurgy and so on (dangerous territory) and instead sticks to spiritual experiences, the church makes you better, your family will be devastated if you leave - in fact he presses all the buttons he can to get people to stop going that way, and make an emotional commitment to keep their testimonies at all costs. He knows Anointed One is out for good - once the thinking has been done, you'll rarely if ever get them back -and has gone into damage limitation mode for the members who remain.

Could I be right?

I think you hit the nail on the head.

[_Aristotle Smith]

I generally feel the same way about private communications being made public. However, in this case, at least anointed one gave ample warning that he intended to make the communications public. If someone warns you that they intend to make the correspondence public, then you have implicitly consented to such by responding.

Did you miss this? Holland was specifically told that his reply would be published. Presumably he gave it his best shot, and a shot he was happy to see made public:

Yes I did miss this. It was not included in the original link at Postmormon. I confess I don't really have much of an interest in following this story beyond the original link.

While sending a reply does count as implicit approval to reveal, I would have preferred some sort of explicit permission. Seeking implicit permission is always more vague and in many circumstances beyond the bounds of propriety. For example, I can't claim implicit permission to burn your house down if you go to the supermarket on Monday, just because you went to the supermarket on Monday.

[_Chap]

...
Could I be right?

I think you hit the nail on the head.

Gosh ...

But of course the proper use of the question "who is the intended audience for this text?" does get taught in a lot of grad school courses with a textual-historical orientation ...

[_Chap]

I generally feel the same way about private communications being made public. However, in this case, at least anointed one gave ample warning that he intended to make the communications public. If someone warns you that they intend to make the correspondence public, then you have implicitly consented to such by responding.

Did you miss this? Holland was specifically told that his reply would be published. Presumably he gave it his best shot, and a shot he was happy to see made public:

Yes I did miss this. It was not included in the original link at Postmormon. I confess I don't really have much of an interest in following this story beyond the original link.

While sending a reply does count as implicit approval to reveal, I would have preferred some sort of explicit permission. Seeking implicit permission is always more vague and in many circumstances beyond the bounds of propriety. For example, I can't claim implicit permission to burn your house down if you go to the supermarket on Monday, just because you went to the supermarket on Monday.

Your last comparison does not seem very germane to me. Maybe others will think differently.

Anointed One says: "I shall be publishing this message, and your reply". He gets a reply. He publishes it. I would be astonished if Holland felt aggrieved as a result of that, or felt entitled to claim that Anointed One had committed any impropriety.

In fact, as I have suggested above, I think Holland may have actually welcomed the opportunity to get his reply out on places where wavering TBMs might read it, since it looks as if it was specifically designed for them, and not for Anointed One at all.

[_Aristotle Smith]

Your last comparison does not seem very germane to me. Maybe others will think differently.

It was merely meant as an illustration of why implicit permission sometimes doesn't work. It was an attempt to illustrate the point, not provide an exact comparison.

In any case, had explicit permission been given, there would be no need to make guesses about what Holland was doing when he gave his implicit permission and why he worded the response they way he did. Explicit permission would have established that Holland thought his reply was appropriate for public consumption.

[_Buffalo]

Here is my single photographic comment on nuance and subtlety in Mormonism:



Is that subtle enough for ya?