I realize that this may be a shocking charge. Please bear with me as I lay out the evidence.
In the mid-1990s, SHIELDS was the up-and-coming online Mopologetic organization. As I explored (and as the evidence showed), SHIELDS was formed on the basis of revenge---they even admitted, quite freely, that their primary interest was in "polemics," which, for the uninformed, is a very aggressive form of rhetorical confrontation.
From roughly 1995-2000, SHIELDS enjoyed a sort of Halcyon era, with unethically obtained correspondence pouring in from DCP, Lou Midgley, Bill Hamblin, and other BYU apologists. This, coupled with the Nauvoo and SLC conferences, helped to bolster SHIELDS status. On the other hand, a lot of these activities were extraordinarily ugly. The apologists stooped to some pretty extraordinary lows, and what's worse, all of this was on public display. In a couple of postings to the SHIELDS guest book, some apparent members, including one Lehi Cranston, complained quite vigorously about the tactics the apologists were employing:
Lehi Cranston wrote:aturday 02/21/2004 2:22:08am
Name: Lehi Cranston
E-Mail: lhcranston@sbcglobal.net
Homepage Title:
Homepage URL:
Referred By: Just Surfed In
Your Location: Chico, California
Comments: You people at "SHIELDS" should be absolutely ashamed of your actions.
I've read some of your "reviews" and some of your "correspondence" with critics of the Church. I am a life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I am absolutely embarassed that your brand of dialog about the Church is published on the internet, let alone in print. Your entire defense of my faith appears to consist largely of making childish personal attacks and snide comments (see in particular remarks by Daniel Peterson and Louis Midgely....who ARE these misguided brethern?) about critics of the Church.
Here's a hint: be bigger than those who criticize you, and maybe someone will take you more seriously than they will the critic. Be bigger, kinder, and more in control of the facts and your own argument than those who criticize you, and maybe you'll give the Church a good name. As it is, your tactics are an embarassment to the Church.
Please stop what you are doing. You will drive more people from the Church of Jesus Christ than you will ever help. Thank you.
But, complaints such as Cranston's were brushed aside. In a post here on MDB, Prof. Peterson even suggested that Lehi Cranston was a completely bogus alias, concocted solely for the purpose of "bashing" the apologists. And thus, the hardcore, aggressive polemics carried on. In fact, to get a sense of what SHIELDS was up to during this time period, I suggest visiting this link:
http://www.shields-research.org/Authors/AUTHORS.html
Of special interest are the sections from the BYU authors, especially DCP, Hamblin, Tvedtnes, and Midgley, all of whom rather gleefully posted their correspondences with Church critics. When looking through the correspondence, be sure to pay close attention to the dates. You'll notice that virtually all of them took place prior to 1999-2000. A brief sampling:
DCP & James White: 1998
DCP & Adam Scott: 1998
DCP & Mike Burns: 1999
Lou Midgley's visit to and assault on the Tanners: 1997
Midgley's inquiries into James White's degree: 1998
Hamblin's correspondence with James White: 1998 (and compare this with his later, much more formal engagement with White in 2004. I think you'll notice that the latter interaction is much, much calmer.)
Thus, what we can observe is that some of the very worst, absolutely most aggressive and hostile rhetoric ever produced by the BYU apologists was collected and archives on SHIELDS during a relatively short period between 1997-1999.
What else was happening in Mopologetics during this time? As one of my informants usefully pointed out, DCP published his now-infamous "In the Land of the Lotus Eaters" in FARMS Review in 1998:
http://farms.BYU.edu/publications/revie ... m=1&id=275
Here is what appears to be a crucial excerpt:
DCP wrote:Some of us—not FARMS officially, I hasten to add—are considering the establishment of an award for "America's Funniest Anti-Mormons," although we certainly welcome international contributions, as well. (If there are enough submissions, perhaps we can open up a new category, like the annual "Foreign Film" Oscar at the Academy Awards.) We have settled on at least two prizes, to be known respectively as the "Korihor" and either the "Philastus" or the "Hurlbut." The latter titles come from the name of one of the very earliest anti-Mormons, "Doctor Philastus Hurlbut" who, in an eerily prescient move that has since been emulated by several countercult luminaries, carried the name of "Doctor" without ever earning a degree.
What are these "Korihor" and "Hurlbut" awards he's referring to? See here:
http://www.shields-research.org/Critics ... awards.htm
Perhaps it seems odd to us now to imaging that FARMS and SHIELDS were once such close bosom buddies, but....well...there you have it. DCP would have been serving at the Chair of FARMS during the period, and thus, his linking of FARMS and SHIELDS in this issue of the Review seems especially striking, as if he was announcing to all interested parties that this was the direction in which he hoped to steer FARMS, and, arguably, apologetics writ-large. (Recall also that this was the same editorial in which DCP gave a "shout out" to Gary Novak's astonishingly hostile "Worst of the anti-Mormon Web.") But, this was not meant to be.
Things are always clearer in retrospect, as the old saying goes. We know that SHIELDS did not prosper, and that it was, in effect, replaced by the far tamer and better-organized FAIR (which, interestingly enough, was established in....1997). But, in 1998, it seemed clear that the Chair of FARMS---the de facto leader of Mopologetics---was poised to anoint SHIELDS with the title of "Most Important Website in Online Mopologetics," hence his gleeful reference to it in the pages of the FARMS Review.
So what happened? It has been suggested elsewhere that the BYU apologists (i.e., those apologists representing FARMS) opted to side with FAIR because the lack of Ph.D.s among the operators of SHIELDS. Indeed, SHIELDS does seem to be a kind of sad repository for failed Ph.D.s, but is FAIR really all that much better? Are there loads of doctorate-holding apologists on the board of FAIR? Was the shift from SHIELDS to FAIR really a function of number of degrees? Today, FAIR is clearly the better organized and better funded of the two Mopologetic organizations, but did it really have to be that way?
Or, instead, were the BYU apologists ordered to cease their hostile antics? Bear in mind that another series of momentous events was taking place parallel to the nastiness on SHIELDS. Some here will recall my thread entitled, "Building the FARMS Ziggurat":
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8820&hilit=farms+ziggurat
In that thread, I laid out the rather mysterious process by which FARMS was formally incorporated into BYU. If you read over the thread, you'll notice that this process coincided exactly with the flurry of hostile polemics on SHIELDS. Also, in an interview with Peggy Fletcher Stack, DCP voiced his concern that:
DCP wrote:``FARMS has often had a polemical edge and we are curious to see how or whether that will be accommodated,'' he said. ``The minute I write something offensive, we'll see if I get a call.''
He also said that the FARMS Review had been mentioned in some kind of worrisome "quip." One cannot help but wonder: Was SHIELDS mentioned, too? Finally, we need to remember that DCP felt that his writing and research had taken a major-league "hit" during the whole FARMS-joining-BYU process (which was just wrapping up in 1999):
I didn't mind a bit that I was given some extra compensation for the hours and hours and hours that I spent working on the merger agreement for FARMS with BYU, which came on top of my editing and teaching duties and which almost destroyed my personal research and writing for several years.
Following this incorporation, I believe that we can observe a noticeable "tapering off" of FARMS apologists' hostility and polemics. I do not believe that it is any coincidence that DCP & Co. have "mellowed" since the incorporation. Bear in mind that the flurry of activity on ZLMB began around 2001. Does anyone recall DCP---or any of the other key FARMS apologists---acting anywhere near as aggressively as he clearly does in his SHIELDS exchanges? Remember, too, that Profs. P. and Hamblin both found it necessary to use pseudonyms (i.e., "Logic Chopper," "Free Thinker," MorgbotX," "Christodoulos," etc.) over the course of their careers on Z. And, as we all know, it was around mid-decade that the apologists fled to the safe confines of FAIR. By this time, of course, SHIELDS had become something of a dim memory.
Again I have to ask: What happened? Why does there seem to have been a tapering off of hostility following the incorporation of FARMS into BYU? Lest people still remain unconvinced that such a "tapering off" actually occurred, here are some other things to bear in mind:
---DCP published Offenders for a Word prior to the merger (1998, If I recall correctly)
---Bill Hamblin's "Metcalfe is Butthead" occurred prior to to the merger
---Lou Midgley's assault on S. Tanner occurred prior to the merger
---Most of DCP's most openly hostile editorials: prior to the merger
---The battle between FARMS and Signature Books: prior to the merger
---Gary Novak was a fairly regular FROB contributor until 2000, with 5 articles published. After that: only one, and it was co-authored with L. Midgley.
In the final analysis, I believe the evidence is overwhelming that the BYU apologists were ordered to clean up their act. Scarcely anywhere in any of their post-merger writings can one find the open hostility and nakedly bellicose polemics that one finds in their SHIELDS stuff. (One exception: Bill Hamblin's RfM tirade, which happened in 2003. He may have hoped that it would have disappeared into the ether, along with the bulk of RfM's posts.) While there have undeniably been moments of blunt anger and hostility among the BYU apologists, I think, too, that we can detect a lessening of their swagger. Rather than openly testosterone-fueled polemics, they exhibit a certain anxiety and anxiousness over their apologetic writings, as if they fear punishment from the powers-that-be (think, e.g., of J. Gee's threats to sue anyone who questioned his Book of Abraham work; this was interpreted as hubris on his part, but couldn't it just as equally be interpreted as a sign of fear among LDS apologists?).
In the end, I am left wondering if there are any alternative explanations for this "caesura" in Mopologetic aggression (at least among the "top guns" of BYU's apologetic cadre). It's possible that they came to a kind of personal consensus that they would "cease and desist," but this seems unlikely given their relish at fighting with critics, and also the fact that they would have left their SHIELDS pals flapping in the breeze. We also need to remember that the BYU Mopologists, as a group, tend to be very proud of their accomplishments, and that they tend not to kowtow to anyone. So, to wield Occam's Razor, I think we have to conclude that they were told to "tone it down." Somebody, somewhere along the Chair of Command, seems to have issued an order some time around the year 2000.
DCP or one of the other apologists can turn up to try and clarify, but to me the evidence speaks for itself.