Mormonism's radically and richly unique point of view on central doctrinal issues has generally been overlooked by outside scholarship, with Latter-day Saints figuring in most histories of American religion or of Christianity as little more than a mildly interesting footnote to the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century. It is reasonable to hope, however, that this might change.
The author of the above quote went on to emphasize the pluralistic and diverse nature of the conference and its participants:
Most of the respondents to the presentations - including philosophers Stephen Davis and Nicho-las Wolterstorff, historian Ann Taves, and British theologian and social scientist Douglas Davies - were not Latter-day Saints. They represented diverse disciplines such as philosophy, theology, American religious history, and biblical studies and were drawn from a variety of institutions. Exchanges between presenters and respondents were uniformly respect-ful, even friendly, although respect did not neces-sarily guarantee agreement. Conversations contin-ued, among both participants and members of the audience, during lunches and dinners throughout the course of the program.
All in all, on the surface of things, it would seem that this Yale conference was a resounding success, and that it fully represented the full range and spectrum of views on Mormonism. It would seem that way, anyhow, until one realized that the author of the above comments is Prof. Daniel C. Peterson.
http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?table=insights&id=347
It needs to be repeated that one of the key elements of the conference is "history." And, it needs to be stated that D. Michael Quinn, one of the most crucial figures among all LDS historians, was "demoted" from presenting a paper at this conference. Instead, he was allowed only to introduce another speaker. On a now-infamous 2006 FAIR thread, this issue was examined in some depth. Here is Dr. Peterson explaining what happened:
DCP wrote:I was a participant in both the Yale Conference itself and, to an extent, in its planning. There was no "vendetta" against Michael Quinn. But there was a genuine and justified concern that Mike Quinn might use the platform of the Yale Conference to mount yet another direct or indirect attack on the institutional Church. And, since BYU and FARMS were co-sponsoring and helping to fund the event at Yale, we thought that we should have some say about whether or not the conference should be used for such attacks.
This seems very important. On a different thread, DCP revealed the earth-shattering bit of news that the LDS Church provides FARMS with a professional "fundraiser" whose job is to wring tidy sums of cash out of wealthy Latter-day Saints. That in and of itself is interesting, but what is perhaps even more interesting, when viewed through the prism of the Yale conference, is what FARMS does with this money. In this case, it seems that the money was used as a bartering tool in order to bully Yale into censoring Mike Quinn. FARMS is willing to shell out beaucoup dollars in order to put on a Mormon-related conference, but, evidently, FARMS also insists on tightly controlling what goes on at the conference. In other words, the "diversity of viewpoints" which DCP praised in his FARMS piece aren't exactly that.
Anyways, he continues thusly:
Daniel Peterson wrote:Besides, the focus of the conference was theology, not history. Mike Quinn is a historian, not a theologian. The speakers at the conference included philosophers and theologians like Marilyn McCord Adams (of Yale), yours truly (on social trinitarianism), David Paulsen, Steve Davis (a Protestant philosopher based at Claremont), Jim Faulconer, Blake Ostler, Truman Madsen, Douglas Davies (an Anglican anthropologist, priest, and theologian now at the University of Durham, in England), and the like. Mike Quinn was far from an obvious candidate for participation in such a conference. In other words, we judged the potential negatives to be higher than the potential positives, and said so.
I think it is important to note the last sentence here: "We said so." Said so to whom? Presumably, he is referring to people on Yale's end of things. So, while Yale was willing to cover a significant portion of the expenses for this conference, they were bullied into catering to the Mopologists.
Another question: With whom did the Yale conference originate?
Answer:
The conference, hosted by the Divinity School of Yale University, was organized by Kenneth West, a Latter-day Saint graduate student there. The Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts was one of the conference sponsors.
So, it seems that the conference had been planned as a well-funded apologetic coup from the get-go. This is staggering, and quite clever. The Mopologists, via this Kenneth West, managed to secure a prestigious venue such as Yale in order to help legitimize their efforts. (There can be no doubt that having Yale as the conference site lent a good deal of gravitas to the whole affair; certainly, it would have been far more difficult to label it a "breakthrough" had it occurred at BYU.) What is more troubling, though, is the way that Mopologists' threw their weight around and worked at manipulating things behind the scenes. It would be great for Mormon studies to find a greater degree of legitimacy within the academy. But should this come at the cost of censoring key Mormon scholars?
In any event, when peeling back the layers of apologetic finances, it is clear that FARMS is armed with a great deal of monetary firepower---enough, in fact, to get an Ivy League university to do its bidding. After all, it seems apparent that someone on Yale's end of things wanted Quinn to present a paper. And yet, when FARMS threatened to withdraw its funding, Yale did an about-face and agreed to the apologists' demands for prior restraint. Thus, FARMS's financial power is such that it can get and Ivy League university to squelch academic freedom. It is quite frightening to think that apologists can wield this much power. It is one thing for Mormon Studies-related academic freedom to be limited at BYU and other LDS schools, but when it begins to spread to other scholarly institutions, one has to wonder how much the truth will suffer.