Yes, the happiest time of year is upon us once again, and hearts are aglow with joy for the season. Here at Cassius University, things are winding down nicely, and the Dean has already put up the glorious campus Christmas tree, resplendent with lights, ornaments, and tinsel which, magically, never seems to blow away, even though the tree is outside. A Christmas miracle, if you will! That is one of the great things about the holiday season: it's rich with tradition.
Speaking of which, if you know anything about Cassius University, you know that no Christmastime is complete without a screening, up in the Reverend Kishkumen's rectory, of that all-time Christmas classic--A Charlie Brown Christmas.
If you haven't seen this, shame on you! And if you *have* seen it, then surely you remember all the key moments. The plot, of course, centers on Mr. Brown, the persistently unlucky, round-headed, and prematurely balding protagonist who is tapped to serve as Director for the school's annual Christmas play. Rather like Daniel Peterson's film endeavors, though, things don't go well--Brown's directing chops aren't up to snuff, and the cast is out of control. So, seeking to bring a greater sense of gravitas to the rehearsals, Brown decides to go and get a Christmas tree--it'll help to spruce up the mood. He and Linus head out the Christmas tree lot, and Charlie Brown being Charlie Brown, he naturally picks the most pathetic tree--barely a sapling, really--with sparse branches and already shedding copious amounts of needles. When he brings the tree back to the rehearsal, he's reprimanded for his choice, and he's called a "blockhead." Frustrated, Brown asks the cast if any of them know what Christmas is "really" about, and Linus steps up and recites the "annunciation to the shepherds," thus reminding everyone that Christmas is supposed to be about the birth of Christ, and not about crude commercialism.
Already suffering from seasonal depression, Charlie Brown sulks away, and gets something of a gut-punch when he sees that Snoopy--the dog!--has managed to win a local award for having the best Christmas lights display. He hangs an ornament on his pathetic tree and it bends over from the weight, and Charlie Brown cries out, "Oh, no! I've killed it!" and with a slouched, defeated posture, he heads off.
Meanwhile, the rest of the gang shows up and decided that, in actuality, the tree *is* pretty good. Linus wraps his blanket around it and the gang begin flailing their arms around wildly and PRESTO! The tree has been revived, and, in fact, it looks great! They all start to sing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," and Charlie Brown hears them and returns and they greet him with a rousing, "MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHARLIE BROWN!" And snowflakes gently begin to fall.
The whole thing is lovely, and I'm sure you can see the many parallels that this classic animated holiday special shares with Mopologetics. There is the dejected, bald, round-headed protagonist for one thing, and I have already noted the similarities between the struggle to mount the play versus the struggle to create a Mopologist cinema. There is also the insult, "blockhead," which has all sorts of applicability to Mopologetics. And there is even a token mention of Jesus! And when the tree is brought back to life? It might even remind you of the way that Mormon Interpreter arose from the ashes of classic FARMS! Just like in A Charlie Brown Christmas, a lot of flailing arms were involved.
Bearing all this in mind, I invite you dear readers, to join me as I, the B.H. Roberts Chair of Mopologetics Studies at Cassius University, once again offer up this list of the Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2023.
10. "Mormon Scholars Testify" is Defunct
Once upon a time, the Mopologists had a dream: they would prove to the whole, wide world that Mormonism is believable because, hey: look how many people with PhDs believe in it! Never mind that one can find PhDs who believe in everything from Bigfoot to Scientology--the Mopologists would not be deterred. Thus was born "Mormon Scholars Testify," which was originally a Daniel Peterson project, but once he got bored with it, it was handed over to FAIR, where it proceeded to wither away and die. The last entry was apparently in 2021, with no new names added at all of 2022 or 2023. Rather than standing as a testament to all the brainpower that assents to the claims of Mormonism, then, MST actually shows that the project ran out of steam and, really, that there are only a finite number of people who were willing to sign on to this silly project in the first place.
9. Midgley Authors an Essay About John Gee
Back in June, Louis Midgley announced in the "Comments" of "Sic et Non" that he had completed an essay on his "friend, John Gee," and that this essay would lay out "silly and disgusting things that the current BYU Administration allowed or facilitated when they unpublished Professor Gee's wonderful book." Readers waited eagerly for the bomb to drop, but instead, it arrived nearly a month later--more of a "Plop!" than a "Boom!" Indeed, the review may rank as one of the worst entries that the Interpreter blog has ever posted. The poster Tom--who often works as a copyeditor for Interpreter on a purely voluntary basis--went so far to describe Midgley's piece as "insipid," which is probably an understatement.
8. DCP Dodges a Senior Mission in Favor of Mopologetics
Those who follow along with the things that the Brethren say at General Conference surely took note of the fact that Elder Rasband's call for senior couples to sign up for a mission (or two or three or four). Indeed, Rasband's remarks seemingly caught the attention of the Proprietor of "Sic et Non," who said that he'd considered doing so, but, ultimately, decided that he was too busy with Mopologetics:
This once again raises a number of questions about the ecclesiastical endorsement of Interpreter and other Mopologetic ventures. One is left to wonder if DCP would say "No" to one of the Brethren if he was directly asked to serve a senior mission.Right now, our conviction (which, I realize full well, will be mocked and derided by the usual suspects) is that, through our daily involvement in the work of the Interpreter Foundation, we are serving a mission. And we’re pedaling about as fast as we can.
7. Scott Gordon Attacks Tyler Livingston
The Mopologists have managed to drive off quite a number of people over the years: Kevin Graham, Kerry Shirts, and Bryce Haymond and three of the most noteworthy defectors. But yet another emerged this past year in the person of Tyler Livingston. Formerly a prominent FAIR volunteer (or employee?), Livingston went from having once directed an apologetic video on the Book of Abraham, to fully endorsing the CES Letter as a good reason to leave the LDS Church. This did not sit well with FAIR Mormon's leadership, and led the normally low-key Scott Gordon to erupt on a Facebook exchange:
While Gordon did not bother show what, exactly, is "inaccurate" about the CES Letter--I guess there is a massive FAIR site devoted to doing this?--he did once again demonstrate how anger is behind so much of what the Mopologists do.Scott Gordon wrote:Really Tyler? There are reasons that people might want to leave the church, but I would hope that the CES letter is not one of them. There's a little problem with being factually inaccurate. If 1 of my students wrote that they would get an F for their research. It's like claiming a Dan Brown novel is actually true.
6. Anachronisms in Six Days in August
Movie-making seems to be the latest obsession for the "Kingpin" of Mopologetics. Rather like a mafia don trying to go "legit," Daniel Peterson has shifted his primary efforts away from pseudo-scholarly apologetic publishing and into the realm of filmmaking. With Mormon Interpreter serving as the "production company," Peterson served as Executive Producer of the propaganda film, Witnesses, which was a box office failure. Would a sophomore effort fair any better, one wonders?
Based on what we've seen so far, the answer would appear to be "No." Less The Empire Strikes Back and more Heaven's Gate, it would seem, and indeed, savvy viewers have so far spotted a whole host of anachronisms littered through out the film. From modern day plastic spoons, to asphalt roofing shingles and LED landscape spotlights, to green lawns that have clearly benefitted from modern-day landscaping technology, it would seem that the filmmakers have completely given up on trying to maintain period accuracy. Well, at least they don't have a wireless microphone clipped to the back of an actor's pants this time!
5. Book of Mormon Central Has a Payroll of Over $1 Million
The Mopologists have always been extraordinarily touchy when it comes to the question of funding, with Dr. Peterson blustering with blind rage anytime someone points out that he was paid more than $20,000 to serves as Chair of FARMS in the late 1990s. The Mopologists have frequently tried to portray their activities as something of a shoestring operation--run completely off of the labor of volunteers, and even turning down a measly $500 honorarium for their service--which, they claim, is substantial (see item 8 above, for example). But money is clearly exchanging hands. The funding for Interpreter's two motion picture projects has been kept tightly under wraps for reasons no one seems to understand.
Meanwhile, an examination of Book of Mormon Central's 990 tax forms revealed a shocking piece of information: namely, that the amount for their "Other wages and salaries" exceeds $1 million. Who on earth is getting paid to do this Mopologetic work? John Welch works closely with the organization, and a number of noteworthy Mopologists have contributed to the project over the years. Were they all paid? Hypocritically, the Mopologists have frequently targeted "Mom and Pop" evangelical critics for being in it strictly "for the money"--Midgley's "old cash nexus," as it were. And in the "Comments" section at SeN, Midgley once let it slip that the Church was clandestinely diverting money to help fund various Mopologetic organizations--including Interpreter and FAIR--which means that tithing dollars are being spent on smear piece and the ongoing war with the Heartlanders.
4. Interpreter's Colonialist Activities in the DRC
As if making two feature films was not enough, Mormon Interpreter has also been financing several projects--including a filmmaking project--in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Some people associate the DRC with Joseph Conrad's classic short novel, Heart of Darkness, which is a colonialist tale about the mad Mr. Kurtz who utilizes "unsound" methods to control the local population and to exploit the region for profit. Interpreter, meanwhile, sent its filmmaking crew down to the DRC to fool around with drones and snap pictures of themselves beaming and posed in front of the locals. What is the purpose of all this, you might wonder? As Dr. Peterson put it:
Including Dr. Peterson, apparently, who, despite being the President of the Interpreter Foundation, has seemingly found lots of excuses to avoid going down to experience the "challenging conditions" for himself. At heart, it would appear that Interpreter is doing something similar in this case to their two feature films: i.e., they are manufacturing propaganda, swooping into the DRC in order to make documentary films that can then be used to drum up donations, "promote faith," and so forth. But the project also struck some people as exploitative: well-off Mopologists using poor Africans to further their own agenda. The project is still on-going, though, so it remains to be seen how it will turn out.As you may have noticed, this post features photographs from the Interpreter Foundation’s ongoing film project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Conditions there are challenging, but our team appears to be having a very good experience. And the films that will eventually result should be of interest, I think, to more than a few Latter-day Saints who will never themselves go anywhere near the Congo.
3. Allen Wyatt's Revelations
Allen Wyatt--known affectionately in some circles as "The Slug"--has been something of a "whipping boy" for the Senior Mopologists for a long time running now. He was publicly ridiculed by Daniel Peterson on a radio broadcast, with Peterson imitating Wyatt's voice in a high-pitched, effeminate, mocking way, and Wyatt admitted, in the same radio show, that he once gorged on a humongous amount of M&Ms, making himself very sick in the process. Meanwhile, Wyatt was apparently "demoted" from his role as the primary editor for Interpreter after a series of gaffes, with Jeff Lindsey being appointed as a co-editor.
But it turns out that Wyatt is far from finished in terms of making an impact on Mopologetics. In a November blog posting on Interpreter, Wyatt dropped a series of bombshells as he recounted the time that he was sued by the Tanners for engaging in "cybersquatting" some twenty-odd years ago. Perhaps most interesting was Wyatt's admission that his Mopologetic mission is fueled by resentment:
Observers have long noted that Mopologetics is fundamentally vindictive and fueled by anger, and Wyatt's "confession" only adds to the ever-growing pile of evidence.Wyatt wrote:I could add my own personal witness to these anecdotes, as I joined the Church in 1968 as a pre-teen in my parents’ family. Shortly after our family joined, my father discovered the writings of the Tanners. From that point onward he would fight against the Church, using arguments that had their genesis in the Tanners’s material. My father is now into his 90s, and he still argues against the Church using the same material. His actions — rooted in what the Tanners published — have caused no end of strife and contention within our family for over half a century.
2. F. Michael Watson Says the Second Watson Letter Was Bogus
One of the most damning incidents in the history of Mopologetics was the so-called "2nd Watson Letter." One can rather easily find old threads that give the whole story, but the "Cliff's Notes" version is simply this: the apologists--notably Bill Hamblin and Daniel Peterson--fabricated a totally bogus second "letter" which they claimed was written by F. Michael Watson and which refuted the "1st Watson Letter." Watson's original letter, sent to an inquiring Bishop Brooks in the midwest, was written on First Presidency letterhead and was signed by Watson himself, and most damning, it said that the Church leaders believed that the Book of Mormon narrative took place in North America--not in Latin America as the Mopologists insist.
Critics asked the Mopologists repeatedly to produce a scan of the "2nd Watson Letter," but they claimed it had been lost in Bill Hamblin's "messy office." And when critics began to suggest that the Mopologists were perhaps lying, Daniel Peterson dared them to contact Church Headquarters. "If we've completely invented an official Church document, we'll be in a lot of hot water!" he said.
It turns out that they *did* completely invent a Church document: the text that Hamblin cited in his FARMS article (and which he claimed was the "2nd Watson Letter") was actually a fax from a person named Carla Ogden, and it merely reiterated an entry from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. The whole incident stands as a testament to the shameful dishonesty that is one of the hallmarks of Mopologetic behavior. And yet, despite all the evidence, Mopolgists like DCP continue to insist that the 2nd Watson Letter fiasco is no big deal.
This year, though, F. Michael Watson himself put yet another nail in the coffin as he said, point blank, in an interview, that "They [FARMS] wanted me to revoke or revise the letter. Of course I wouldn't do that." He also said, of the 1st Letter, that "Each member of the First Presidency approved of the letter or I would not have sent it." Among other things, this represents a massive victory for the Heartlanders.
But the Reverend Kishkumen summed up the episode very well:
Kishkumen wrote:This issue has always puzzled me. Why die on this hill? Why make up or embellish things to prop up the Mesoamerican geography with its second Cumorah? The LDS apologetic effort has seen its credibility harmed by this whole thing.
And that brings us to the Number 1 Top Happening in Mopologetics--something which should be a no-brainer for anyone who was followed Mopologetics this past year...
1. The Richard Nygren Incident
Inventing a bogus document that was supposedly sent by the Secretary to the First Presidency is pretty darned bad. But what about inventing a phony African American apologist from Alabama as a smokescreen to cover up your obsessive attacks on the Heartlanders? It sounds like it couldn't possibly be true, and yet, this was--by far--the biggest and most important event in Mopologetics in 2023.
For years, readers had watched as "Peter Pan" launched endless personal attacks on Jonathan Neville via his "Neville-Nevill Land" blog, with Daniel Peterson egging him on the entire time. I myself mistakenly presumed that Pan was Stephen Smoot, but it was later discovered, thanks to an eagle-eyed sleuth, that "Peter Pan" was actually long-time Mopologist Mike Parker. This revelation by itself would have been interesting and potentially Top Ten-worthy, but the plot gets a whole lot thicker.
Prior to this, the notorious and dyspeptic blogger Robert Boylan recorded a YouTube podcast with young Mopologist Spencer Krauss, and during the podcast he announced that "Neville-Neville Land" was actually helmed by a Black apologists from Alabama named "Richard Nygren." There was much mirth over this on "Sic et Non," and Parker, posting as "Peter Pan," seemed to confirm that he was indeed a Black man named Richard Nygren--noting that Boylan revealed "more about [his] identity" than he would have liked.
Meanwhile, critics applied pressure on DCP about his connection to Nygren, as Peterson had announced on "SeN" that he knew the real identity of "Peter Pan." So when Pan showed up in the comments on "SeN," there were questions about whether or not Peterson was actually being helped out by "Richard Nygren," African American apologist from Alabama, which ultimately led to him publicly denying that he knew anything about Nygren:
The trouble is that he *had* heard of "Richard Nygren" previously, and was yukking it up about it with Stephen Smoot. He had the opportunity to clear the air, and didn't.Daniel Peterson wrote:I had never heard of any “Richard Nygren” until this allegation was leveled, and I still know nothing about any such person. Until this blog entry, I have never mentioned the name on this blog nor, to the best of my recollection, uttered it anywhere else. If such a person exists, I know nothing about him except that he is definitely not the author or proprietor of Neville-Neville Land. (His Scandinavian name, Richard Nygren, sounds about as likely to me for a black man in Alabama as Nordberg, the name that, presumably for slight comic effect, was given to O. J. Simpson in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!)
In any case: the entire incident came to a head when podcaster and YouTuber Bill Reel put together a special episode of Mormon Discussion entitled, "The Expose on LDS Apologists and the Invention and Coverup of Richard Nygren," in which he and Stephen Pynakker covered the whole sordid affair. In the lead up to this, Mike Parker went ballistic, threatening legal action and marching into Reel's place of business in order to harangue him. Parker and Boylan even wound up posting a response YouTube video of their own in which they attempted to downplay their behavior, but the damage had been done.
A few more volleys were exchanged, with Jonathan Neville--Parker's long-time target--weighing in, and Parker later claiming that Neville was attempting to "blackmail" him. Bill Reel attempted (unsuccessfully) to get DCP's candid take on the whole thing, and Mike Parker's lobbed yet another grenade before announcing that he would be "stepping back" from his blogging efforts. Clearly, this was something of a firestorm. But things eventually calmed down and the posting at "Neville-Neville Land" has ground to a complete halt.
But the Nygren Incident will certainly go down as one of the most significant and despicable incidents in the history of Mopologetics--an act of racist dishonesty that may very well compete with the 2nd Watson Letter for the worst and most indicative thing that the Mopologists have ever done.
* * * * * *
Are there any Honorable Mentions this year? Indeed there are!
--Spencer Fluhman Steps Down as Director of the Maxwell Institute Also here.
--DCP Peddles a Faith-Promoting Rumor About Getting His Speeding Ticket Dismissed.
--Controversy Swirls Around the Cody, WY Temple. Also includes DCP posting personal information of critics, and DCP comparing the protesters to Nazis.
--DCP Unwittingly Encourages Readers to Donate to Evil "Operation Underground"
--DCP Trashes Thomas Ford and Thomas Sharp.
--The Adventures of Robert Boylan. Also here and here.
* * * * * *
Whew! That was a lot. I may need to step outside to join the convivial and playful snowball fight that's underway right now out in the quad: the cold December air would no doubt do me good. Afterwards, we can look forward to joining the Dean for the usual hot toddys and rum-spiked Milo, because some habits die hard, I suppose. In any case, Happy Holidays, friends and colleagues! May the season bring you good tidings, and may 2024 be as interesting in the world of Mopologetics as 2023 was.
