MsJack and the future of FARMS

[_MrStakhanovite]

I saw this in another thread and thought it deserved it's own spot:

It does not matter in the long term whether or not Dan, William, Bill Hamblin, Midgley, et al manage to convince the administration at BYU or the authorities of the LDS church to revive FARMS. It matters in the short term, because if they accomplished that, they could get back to running the FARMS journal and producing material there for the rest of their careers. But it won't matter in the long run, and here's why: it isn't administrators and authorities who need to be convinced. Rather, it's the rising generation of young LDS scholars completing graduate work in biblical studies, history, and other relevant fields, who need convincing.

Without heirs and proteges, the days of the FARMS crowd are numbered. And almost the entire generation of younger Mormon studies scholars (people in their 20s and 30s) has rejected the FARMS approach. Even those who were originally inspired by and drawn to FARMS in their youth have since become disillusioned with their former mentors, and the few who remain nominally interested in apologetics are forging a dramatically kinder and gentler path. A new generation of Hamblins and Midgleys and Peterson's and Gees is not on the rise.

So yeah, keep on rolling sock puppets and baiting people on with whispers of clandestine meetings where the antics of key FARMS apologists are being discussed and the criticisms of them found wanting. There will always be enough people on this forum to care enough about something as transparently stupid as that to drag it on for 15 pages. The real score can be seen by examining the number of young people who have valued the FARMS approach enough to model their lives after it. If you're not a fan of the FARMS approach, then what a glorious future it is.

What do you guys think? Agree or disagree? Have the hen house antics left the Mopologist a barren field, despite being plowed so many times?

[_Doctor Scratch]

Yes, I totally agree. For a time, it seemed like LifeOnaPlate might have followed in the footsteps of the Old Guard, but once he got out there and began doing his work on his Masters, he seemed to have realized how problematic the "classic-FARMS" approach really was. Bokovoy is uninterested; Mike Reed and Chris Smith are also not interested (and how!). Who does that leave? There is Maklelan, who is certainly hostile enough to fit in with that crowd, but I think that he realizes that it's probably not worth it. So, again: who's left? Steve Smoot? The main supporters of these guys (at least publicly) are the people on MDD: Wade Englund and people like that. Not exactly "young," and not exactly what you'd like to see in a "rising generation."

I would say that the one wild card in this equation is the fact of funding. Obviously, this was Dan Peterson's main weapon of retaliation in response to Bradford's email. The Vanguard *say* that they don't want to do apologetics of the DCP/Midgley/Gee variety, but could they be convinced to do it if the price was high enough? As a very wise and cunning man once said: "You can buy anything in this world with money."

So while I agree totally with MsJack's assessment, I think that we have to be careful about overlooking the high-stakes funding that has, historically, been poured into "classic-FARMS" Mopologetics.

[_Kishkumen]

Looks like they have Greg Smith and Will.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Looks like they have Greg Smith and Will.

BOOM! Roasted.

[Guest]

I agree that the future depends on future scholars and that the prospects for future scholars doing FARMS type work is dim at best, probably non-existent. But, I think that FARMS actually has very little to do with this. Though, I have seen it blamed for this and I expect it to continue to receive blame for this.

FARMS type scholarship really needs people who are trained in biblical and meso-american studies. For this comment, I'm going to focus mostly on the biblical studies aspect of doing FARMS type work.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: Mormons who do graduate level work in biblical studies almost invariably leave the LDS church. And, the few who stay almost always maintain their faith only by clinging to a very robust fideism, there really isn't that much of a connection between their scholarly work and their faith. But the bottom line is that neither of these groups will be doing apologetics for the LDS church based on some scholarly engagement with scripture.

The root of the problem is that modern biblical studies can really eat at one's belief in and trust of the Bible. Source criticism, redaction criticism, form criticism, textual criticism, etc. can really eat at one's beliefs, especially if you come from a fundamentalist background (and yes, Mormonism is functionally fundamentalist). But the real kicker is that all of those critical techniques work at least 10x better in killing faith in Mormon scripture than they do in the Bible. Pretty much every trained LDS scholar I think ends up realizing that there really isn't a way to defend or engage Mormon scripture from a critical standpoint. So, they either decide they aren't going to put their doubts on the self and leave, or they put their doubts on the shelf and cling to fideism (this is the "Mormonism works for me" crowd).

The end result is clear, no one is left to defend Mormon scripture, which was the primary purpose of FARMS. This is something I have constantly been driving home, FARMS apologetics sucks because it's the best defense you can make of Mormon scripture from a psuedo-scholarly standpoint. Or to put it another way, and I'm going to yell to make my point here.

CRAPPY FARMS MOPOLOGETICS IS NOT THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM, IT IS MERELY THE SYMPTOM OF THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM.

And the underlying problem is that people-in-the-know know they can't honestly engage Mormon scripture in a scholarly way, at least not with the techniques and tools they spend years honing in graduate school.

[_Aristotle Smith]

One more thing, this is why FARMS has almost always been populated with people who have been trained in related fields, but never in biblical studies. Nibley was a classicist and an Arabist. DCP is an Arabist/Islamist. Midgely did political science. Lots of people with degrees in American history. Also, for some reason lots of lawyers. All fine things to study, but not really the specific training needed to defend Mormon scripture.

Look what has happened to the two people who did have the correct training. David P. Wright had great potential to do apologetics and even started writing some stuff for FARMS in the early days. But, he was honest in analyzing Mormon scripture and was rewarded with excommunication. David Bokovoy wasn't even let in the door, BYU slammed it in his face before he arrived. I think he realizes the problems with doing apologetics in a Mormon context as a biblical scholar and has pretty much sworn off the whole enterprise.

The one wild card is Maklelan. He's not fully trained up yet, but my guess is that BYU will take even less kindly to his ideas than they do to Bokovoy's.

[_Bob Loblaw]

CRAPPY FARMS MOPOLOGETICS IS NOT THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM, IT IS MERELY THE SYMPTOM OF THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM.

This.

If there were decent apologetic answers to the clear problems in Mormonism we would have heard them by now. You can't polish a turd.

[_bcspace]

What do you guys think? Agree or disagree?

I disagree on at least one point. The "tone" of apologetics will ultimately remain the same because the scriptures and the doctrine won't be going away any time soon. Also, there is, and will remain, no new ground directly related to apologetics for "up and coming" scholars to deal with. It'll all be rehash and repackaging because anti Mormon arguments themselves are just rehash.

[_Bob Loblaw]

I disagree on at least one point. The "tone" of apologetics will ultimately remain the same because the scriptures and the doctrine won't be going away any time soon. Also, there is, and will remain, no new ground directly related to apologetics for "up and coming" scholars to deal with. It'll all be rehash and repackaging because anti Mormon arguments themselves are just rehash.

Truth is truth, rehashed or not. You guys are the ones making up desperate ad hoc theories that convince only yourselves.

[_Kishkumen]

My hope is that the next generation of Mormon Studies scholars will help non-LDS people understand Mormonism better, such that it will be less vulnerable to ignorant prejudice.

Hey, I can always dream.