Louis Midgley Spencer • 6 days ago
If anyone doubts that there are people who will stubbornly misunderstand what others write, one only has to have tried to follow the now long and disgusting, as well as boring, exchange I have been having with the one who posts as Dr. VehloBurrinho, which means Little Old Donkey.
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Dr. VelhoBurrinho Louis Midgley • 5 days ago
With your Maori series I enjoyed the historical aspect of both Maori culture and history. And the early church history missions to the Maori. That part was very well written. That I feel is your greatest contribution to the LDS-Maori narrative that will be a reference point for future researchers historians and scholars.
Your later review of Mormon and Maori was problematic, you showed a gross misunderstanding about the book. And felt that it was a personal attack on you and your work. It wasn’t it was just trying to tell a complex story of a people in a complex situation between two worlds.
I am about halfway through. The book thank you for bringing it to my attention.
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Louis Midgley Dr. VelhoBurrinho • 4 days ago • edited
Dear Dr. VelhoBurrinho: On October 2019, Professor Peterson posted the following item on his is blog: "Professor Louis C. Midgley and the Maori." He made accessible 9 essays I have published directly, and in one instance, indirectly, on the faith of Maori Latter-day Saints, in which I have . I have been succeeded in defending the Maori Latter-day Saint narrative from criticism, in one instance, by Marjorie Newton, about how and why Maori became Latter-day Saints beginning in1882.
Previously Dr. VelhoBurrinho (hereafter VB) indicated that he had glanced at those essay during a break while he was doing his hospital rounds. He then announced that, as "a white man," what I did in those essays was try to force on the Maori Saints to abandon their own understanding of their past, and adopt my false opinions, which I strive to project on them. In addition, he insisted that I have what he called a latent racial bigotry toward Maori Latter-day Saints. This has led to perhaps fifty really contentious and increasingly ugly exchanges between the two of us.
Yesterday (on 25 January 2020) he claims that he has now read what I have written about the Maori. I urge VB to do some major revision of what he posted yesterday. Notice that his last line reads as follows: "I am about halfway through. The book thank you for bringing it to my attention."
What follows will by my response to what posted thirteen hours ago:
VB: "With your Maori series I enjoyed the historical aspect of both Maori culture and history. And the early church history missions to the Maori. That part was very well written. That I feel is your greatest contribution to the LDS-Maori narrative that will be a reference point for future researchers historians and scholars."
LM: I have no idea what role I might play in "future researchers historians scholars." Instead, God willing, I will continue to call attention to what Maori Latter-day Saints are now doing to recover and make available concerning the truly remarkable events and individuals in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
LM: Yesterday, after almost four months of increasingly hostile comments directly at me, VB seems to have decided to reshape his controversy with me by praising what I have written about the Maori, and begin defending the effort of Marjorie Newton, a truly remarkable Australian Latter-day Saint, who began attending Sydney University when she was 34, and ended up finishing her PhD thesis entitled "Mormonism in New Zealand" in 1998, two years after I had retired from teaching at Brigham Young University. Then, sixteen years later, Newton published Mormon and Maori, which was the core of her earlier thesis.
LM: I have assembled and assessed all 28 items published by Marjorie Newton during her truly remarkable career. Newton is an excellent writer and has published some fine essays. When she had completed her PhD thesis, she submitted to a publisher, who had me assess it. It is simply awful. I strongly urged this publisher to force her to write a narrative history of the Church of Jesus Christ from 1854 until the dedication of the Temple in Hamilton in 1958, which she eventually did. Since you cannot tell that story without it being faith-affirming, I favorably reviewed her Tiki and Temple three times, as did half a dozen other reviewers. In 2014, two years after publishing her excellent Tiki and Temple, Newton published the substance of her PhD thesis under the title Mormon and Maori. With this in mind, please notice that VB adds the following remark aimed at me:
VB: "Your later review of Mormon and Maori was problematic, you showed a gross misunderstanding about the book. And felt that it was a personal attack on you and your work. It wasn’t it was just trying to tell a complex story of a people in a complex situation between two worlds."
LM: I urge, or actually beg, those with any desire to get to the bottom of all of this, and to see I if have what Dr. VelhoBurrinho calls a "gross misunderstanding" about Marjorie Newton's Mormon and Maori to read my essay, entitled "Marjorie Newton's Account of the Faith of Mormon Saints: A Critical Appraisal," Interpreter 30 (2018): 179-205. This essay is easily available online. And then see if there is anything problematic about what I wrote. Please have a look at my review essay and compare and contrast it with the the bald assertions of Dr. VelhoBurrinho.
Dr. VelhoBurrinho is way past the point where he should have apologized for opining about matters about which he knows exactly nothing.
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Dr. VelhoBurrinho Louis Midgley • 3 days ago
I’m still reading the Newton book. It is very interesting. At least from the sociological and cultural perspective of things. I see many parallels with my own experiences.
This book paints an accurate view of the struggles of the Maori in the face of colonization. Both in the past and currently. And the effects of the LDS church upon the Maori. Both positive and negative.
But that is where the problem with this book for you isn’t it? There isn’t room for the Maori to have a negative experience, in your narrative, and according to your agenda and is there?
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Louis Midgley Dr. VelhoBurrinho • 3 days ago
My agenda in writing about the Maori, as anyone who actually knows me, and who has read what I have published on the faith of Maori Latter-day Saints, will know is as follows:
(1) To set out as well as possible my own faith-affirming encounters with Maori.
(2) To draw attention to recent Maori efforts recover the stories of famous Maori Saints,
(3) To respond to those who mock, criticize, ridicule or misrepresent the way Maori became faithful Latter-day Saints.
(4) To respond to those, whether Latter-day Saint or not, who make demonstrably false claims about how what the Dr. VelhoBurrinho calls "the LDS church," has trashed authentic Maori culture.
I can assure Dr. VelhoBurrinho that Maori Latter-day Saint scholars who are familiar with Marjorie Newton's 1998 PhD thesis, and her 2014 Mormon and Maori agree with my assessment of both. They are, however, restrained by their own Maori cultural norms not to respond directly to a woman, and especially to an older woman, and not to an elderly Australian white woman. I am not, however, bound by their own self-restraints.
I had initially prepared a two-part review Mormon and Maori that would have been more than twice longer than what I eventually published. I did not draw attention to some of the more serious flaws in Mormon and Maori.
Marjorie Newton said little or nothing about the impact of colonization in Mormon and Maori except when she quoted portions of the introductory paragraph of Dr. Robert Joseph's essay that indirectly but emphatically refutes her own badly muddled assertions found in the first few pages of Mormon and Maori. Dr. Joseph's essay demonstrates that she was dead wrong in dismissing as mythical the solid evidence that Maori Seers opened the way for our missionaries and their message.
Margerie Newton has not identified negative impacts that the Church of Jesus Christ has had on the Maori. Instead, her complaints are the product of her own hostility to what she sees as American cultural imperialism, which she insists drove "American Mormons" to trash Australian culture, whatever that is, and hence also to trash Maori culture. All of his is also framed by her indoctrination in the secular religious studies program at Sydney University.
In no way did Latter-day Saint missionary activities damage the authentic elements of Maori culture. We did not steal their land, nor did we demand that they supply us with fancy European style homes and food. We did not see their sacred traditions as pagan rubbish. We never made any effort at all to stamp out the remnants of their traditional social order, as sectarian Christians were passionate doing.
As I have demonstrated, we valued and respected their most sacred beliefs and traditions. I have shown that she has no idea what those were. We struggled as well as we could against the soul destroying vices that Europeans introduced. With essentially no real resources, we did the very best we could to both educate and encourage education.
Everyone should keep in mind that Marjorie Newton is a truly remarkable human being, and in her way a devout Latter-day Saint. She began her own university education late in life and finally was able to get a PhD two years after I retired from teaching at BYU. She is also a fine writer who has published some excellent essays. But her own hostility to America and Americans, and her deep dive into secular religious studies, and the fact that she never once got to know Maori directly, is evident in her PhD thesis and in her Mormon and Maori.
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Louis Midgley Louis Midgley 2 hours ago
I urge you to explain why you suddenly turned up almost four months ago manifesting something like hatred for me. This happened when Professor Peterson posted that list of items I have published about the actual faith of Maori Latte-day Saints. You have finally had to back-down on the absurd, nasty things you posted about me.
But you are, however, still trying, but failing miserably, to find some flaw in something I have published about the faith of Maori Latter-day Saints. What I specifically have in mind is my response to Marjorie Newton's 1998 PhD thesis, and Mormon and Maori, the 2014 published version of that thesis.
You have neglected to say a single word about her excellent, and highly praised Tiki and Temple. I have demonstrated I was the one who had a publisher to whom she had sought to have her thesis published, fashion a narrative history based on the actual textual materials and not what she had written for the head of the Religious Studies school Sydney University. Newton explains that she wrote Tiki and Temple for faithful Latter-day Saints, and her PhD thesis and Mormon and Maori for the more objective (and entirely secular) Religious Studies community.
Dear Dr. VelhoBurrinho: I am confident that you launched your personal attack on me some four months ago because you know someone still employed by the Maxwell regime that does not agree at all with what Elder Holland set out in his Maxwell Lecture. The one I have in mind has made it clear to me (and also to Professor Peterson) that no one should ever respond to criticisms/attacks on the faith of the Saints even or especially by someone who is only a nominal Latter-day Saint.
You were kind enough to indicate that in your opinion the Brethren ought to reconsider defending the faith because, as you put it, because doing so is "counterproductive." This was a nice way of making the some point as Dan and I heard from one who was right at the center of the purge.
I am confident that your utterly absurd earlier remarks about me have been influenced by one who was deeply involved in the meltdown and purge at the Maxwell Institute who insists that there should be no negative response to anything published by even a nominal Latter-day Saint.
This also seems to explain why you are now reduced to targeting my review of Marjorie Newton's dreadful Mormon and Maori, while having to admit that the other eight essays/reviews I have published setting out and defending the Maori Latter-day Saint historical narrative are excellent.
And all of this came after you wrongly claimed I had invented and projected on the Maori my own opinions, as those you called "white men" have always done. Please keep in mind that and similar remarks led others to see you as a racial bigotry is not limited to those you call "white people."
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 4775933554
