Part 1: The L-Skinny is Far, Far Greater....

[_Mister Scratch]

The first item of interest from the Archives of Agent S. involves one of the key players---indeed the chief operator---of the Mopologetic "gang" list known as "l-skinny." In 1993, FARMS Review published a review of George D. Smith's Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History, published by Signature Books. This book brought together a series of essays devoted to exploring just what, exactly, it means to present a "faithful" history. The review, on the other hand, was devoted to the usual smear tactics and ad hominem attack that one has come to expect from FARMS:

essays of marginal importance by Paul M. Edwards, C. Robert Mesle, Melvin T. Smith, Kent E. Robson, and Edward H. Ashment were included.

And:

One of the strangest aspects of Quinn's essay is the autobiographical material. Instead of telling his story in the first person, Quinn uses the third person. This allows him the luxury of referring to himself as "this faltering young historian," "this young historian" (p. 74) and "the young man" (p. 73). While this adds a sense of melodrama that might not otherwise be possible, it hardly seems necessary.

Indeed, a good chunk of the essay is devoted to attacking D. Michael Quinn.

Other portions of the essay are devoted to self-indulgent whining:

In May 1986, I delivered a paper at the meetings of the Mormon History Association titled "The Function of Naturalistic Terms in Environmental Explanations of the Book of Mormon." After the session, Lavina Fielding Anderson, then associate editor for Dialogue, requested that I submit the paper for publication, which I did. To make a long story short, for the next two years, Dialogue stalled and delayed publication. The most interesting comments came from the "blind referees." Although the paper had been delivered to them without an author's name, one came back with my name pencilled in at the top. One of the comment sheets referred to me by name. After the two years without a commitment to publish, I finally gave up on publishing the essay in Dialogue.

But that is not what interests me here. You may be curious as to who the author of this malign piece of reviewing was. His name? Gary F. Novak, author of the now-infamous "Worst of the Anti-Mormon Web" feature at SHIELDS. His FARMS article may be accessed here:

http://farms.BYU.edu/publications/revie ... m=1&id=125

What is of chief interest to me in all of this is Novak's faulting of the book for apparently being "unbalanced." He essentially attacks the portions of the book that do not fall into strict alliance with the orders given by Elder Boyd K. Packer in his "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect." He notes, for example, that he believes that one of the best essays in the book is a piece by Louis Midgley. This stark division of "good guy / bad guy" history doesn't speak well to Novak's objectivity.

But, it get's even better:

Although editor George D. Smith deserves credit for publishing essays previously difficult of access like D. Michael Quinn's "On Being a Mormon Historian," the most noticeable thing about the volume is what was not included. Any discussion of "faithful history" remains incomplete without consideration of important essays by Thomas G. Alexander, M. Gerald Bradford, James Clayton, Marvin Hill, and Peter Novick.1 One can only speculate as to the reasons these essays were excluded while essays of marginal importance by Paul M. Edwards, C. Robert Mesle, Melvin T. Smith, Kent E. Robson, and Edward H. Ashment were included.2

(emphasis added)

You will notice that there are two endnotes in the above-cited text. Endnote one refers the reader to articles by all of the authors, including "James L. Clayton, "Does History Undermine Faith?" Sunstone 7 (March/April 1982): 33-40. I can only wonder just what Mr. Novak was thinking when he included James Clayton's superb, heartfelt essay in this list of essays on "faithful history." Did he bother to read the essay at all, I wonder? Or was he simply relying on the possibility that it was likely difficult to access? In any event, this article (heretofore unavailable on the Web, as far as I know) is now available for your viewing pleasure, courtesy of Bond...James Bond's blog:

http://zackc.wordpress.com/documents/

(It should be up shortly, if it isn't already. Also note that this version was delivered to the B.H. Roberts Society.)

As to whether Mr. Novak is correctly citing this as being an article dealing with "faithful history," well, I think the reader ought to be the judge. But here are a few choice quotations for your consideration:

Deliberately taking a one-sided approach to history violates, in my judgment, the very essence of the historical craft, which emphasizes honesty, objectivity, and a willingness to tell the truth.

(pg. 3)

Deliberately taking a one-sided, short-term, faith-promoting approach to history is as indefensible as deliberately taking a one-sided, faith-destroying approach to history.

(pg. 4)

Many of us find our faith strengthened more by having all of the relevant facts than just the 'smiling aspects of life' set before us.

(pg. 4)

Perhaps DCP, who has resolved to never discuss Adam-God publicly, should take Clayton's advice:

Selecting only those topics and historians that are comfortable in order to lead the membership more easily into the promised land is, to put it bluntly, intellectually and morally irresponsible from the historians' point of view.

(pg. 4)

Being deliberately one-sides undermines our credibility with nonbelievers, tarnishes the good name of those who engage in such practices, invites counter attacks, and diminishes the possibility of fruitful dialogue with other Christians facing similar problems.

(pg. 5)

And finally:

Whenever preserving testimonies takes precedence over advancing the truth both the mind and the soul are diminished. The mind because access to the archives becomes limited and key documents are locked up in safes9; the soul because packaging the message takes on greater importance than the message itself.

(6-7) (And by the way: that endnote states, "One of several key documents now locked up is the journal of George Q. Cannon which even the Church's own historians cannot see."---emphasis added)

So, what to make of this? Did Mr. Novak really believe that this sort of material ought to have been included in support of his idea of "faithful history"? I suppose we should give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was simply too lazy to read the piece. The only alternative is the view him as being deliberately dishonest, and we wouldn't want to do that, now would we?

As an addendum, the Clayton piece was re-visited in a FARMS hit-piece co-authored by Novak and Louis Midgley:

http://farms.BYU.edu/publications/revie ... m=2&id=658

Luckily, this time around, the author(s) appear to actually have read the Clayton essay. And, indeed, they rip into it:

History cannot really harm faith, James Clayton claims, because it and "fundamental religious beliefs . . . seldom meet." It is, however, evident that prophetic faith necessarily involves links between faith and history. For example, statements about the revelation of the Torah to Moses or that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ involve faith in history. Clayton simply ignores such considerations. He holds, instead, that the "historian cannot prove historically that any of these beliefs are true and certainly cannot apply these beliefs to his or her scholarly research because there is no historically acceptable evidence of God, divine intervention, or life after death. Historians have no way to discern the hand of God or to measure the validity of inspiration," and so on.47 He would, of course, be correct if he had in mind a historian whose explanatory framework rested on positivist assumptions. Such a historian could not discern the hand of God in history, and such an explanatory framework might provide an excuse for not applying even the historian's own deepest faith to history.

In the end, one can only wonder why it took them so long to get to it.....



In any case, more from the Archives of Agent S to come later....

[_LifeOnaPlate]

I expected something better. And the link still doesn't work.


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Please use the links or the search feature in the sidebar to find your way back to the real content! Thank you!

[_Gadianton]

This is really fascinating, Scratch. Let's face it, Hugh Nibley started it all, he was sort of the "paradigm" that other apologists looked to as a model. Certainly, "footnote padding" and the desire to present one's self as a great intellectual generalist who has read it all and knows just about anything of everything will be forced against certain truths such as the fact that one is a grad student and really doesn't know that much.

If there ever were a key tactic of apologetics, it would be to laugh at the scant reading and incomplete knowledge of the critics while demonstrating one's own vast learning. "Oh, you merely culled your idea from there? Well, what about here, here, and yonder? These are all great examples of sources you missed that I'm intimately familiar with given my vastly greater learning than yours, that I can just, drop at will."

It's equally funny to trace from this "sock in footnote crotch" ploy by Novak here and move onto another lame duck, the "you guys are all positivists" argument in his later article.

[_Mister Scratch]

It's equally funny to trace from this "sock in footnote crotch" ploy by Novak here and move onto another lame duck, the "you guys are all positivists" argument in his later article.

You know, Gad, after looking through the second article, I come away with the feeling that Novak's involvement was minimal, at best. It seems to me that Capo Regime Midgley was, in all likelihood, the sole author of the 2nd piece. It may have been that they felt Novak's embarrassing initial article needed some "bolstering," or something along those lines, hence the purported "dual authorship". (I mean, honestly: Why did FARMS's peer reviewers allow G. Novak's grovelling over his Dialogue denial into the finished publication?)

[_Mister Scratch]

I expected something better. And the link still doesn't work.


Error 404 - Not Found

Please use the links or the search feature in the sidebar to find your way back to the real content! Thank you!

Dear LoaP:

I'm confident that Mr. Bond will have the material available quite soon. And don't worry: there will be several more "Agent S"-related dispatches. In other words, this was only the first in a series.

[_Gadianton]

That's a good question. I would think because, given the mention of his name, that it supposidly makes Dialogue look biased. But you have to appreciate just how badly embarrassed FARMS is about this episode when you consider that after a careful look, the essay is substantially lacking in quality and that Dialogue, it turns out, was justified in its hesitation to accept it. And to add insult to injury, the fact that the next installment was a coauthorship, apparently to ensure that the easily detectable work of an amateur would not tarnish the already stained reputation of the FROB further, shows us again that Dialogue was justified in its reservations.

[_Mister Scratch]

That's a good question. I would think because, given the mention of his name, that it supposidly makes Dialogue look biased. But you have to appreciate just how badly embarrassed FARMS is about this episode when you consider that after a careful look, the essay is substantially lacking in quality and that Dialogue, it turns out, was justified in its hesitation to accept it. And to add insult to injury, the fact that the next installment was a coauthorship, apparently to ensure that the easily detectable work of an amateur would not tarnish the already stained reputation of the FROB further, shows us again that Dialogue was justified in its reservations.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. Sadly for the apologists, this cache of materials which I have received from "Agent S" paints them in one bad light after the next. This bit from Novak is only the tip of the iceberg.

[_Ray A]

Clayton's essay "Does History Undermine Faith?", is, and has been available available online for a while: https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/issues/032.pdf (This is a pdf and may take a while to download.)

Another good essay in this one is Sterling Mc Murrin's "Religion and the Denial of History".


Dialogue had a greater range of debates (in the early 1980s) about what was then called the "New Mormon History".

[_Ray A]

For a critique of the New Mormon History, including Clayton's approach, see David E. Bohn, No Higher Ground.

Criticisms weren't only offered by FARMS.

[_Bond James Bond]

Dear LoaP:

I'm confident that Mr. Bond will have the material available quite soon. And don't worry: there will be several more "Agent S"-related dispatches. In other words, this was only the first in a series.

http://zackc.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/documents1/

[Although this is apparently online already...]