Re: some of the specifics from Hamblins "rant"/article.... This is just bizarre. Why attack both Religious Studies and Mormon Studies as disciplines? What's the point of that? How is this going to rescue Mopologetics from the ghetto of LDS publication respectability? If Mormon Studies writ-large is something to be highly skeptical about--if it's something that Hamblin can be "neither optimistic nor enthusiastic about," then why on earth *is* he optimistic/enthusiastic about Mopologetics?
I think the part of his entry that is most problematic is this passage. I'll break it up for readability and commentary:
Another thing to note is that, despite numerous claims to the contrary, apologetics is not what’s wrong with Mormon studies. There has never been anything preventing anyone from doing any type of Mormon studies in any way they want. The fact that some Mormon scholars happen to think apologetics is an important and legitimate field of scholarship in no way prevents other scholars from doing non-apologetic Mormon studies.
One problem is that Mopologetics is/was hardly ever "scholarship," despite what these guys claim. Very few professional academics would claim that book reviews are legitimate "scholarship." You could call them "scholarly book reviews," I guess, but that would be mincing words, if not outright equivocation.
Second, while it may be true that the presence of an apologetics-heavy Maxwell Institute didn't "prevent" anyone from doing Mormon Studies in the sense of actual coercion, the fact remains that it *was* legitimately oppressive in certain ways. As people have already pointed out, the FARMS publications ultimately carried the imprimatur of BYU and thus of the Church itself. Thus, it seemed more "official," and departure from the views of FARMS authors could be seen as a kind of heresy, and as grounds for lengthy, heavily annotated attacks and/or character assassinations. Just ask Rodney Meldrum. Hamblin notes later in his post that there's no such thing as "objectivity," and that accounts of faith in religious scholarship should be "recognizable" to individual believers. Well, Meldrum is an example of someone who disagreed, and he was attacked in quite a public way--again, with the implicit stamp of approval from the Church and BYU.
Finally, the very fact that FARMS developed a reputation for snarkiness and bellicosity was, I'm sure, something of a deterrent for certain kinds of Mormon Studies writings. I'm sure that there were some authors who had second thoughts about publishing their work, simply on account of the fact that they might have to deal with a FARMS smear campaign. The conflicts with Signature Books; the stuff involving Grant Palmer; the lawsuit with Kurt Van Gorden (sp?)--how, I have to ask, was this "good for business"? Yes: Hamblin is technically right that "no one was being stopped" from doing Mormon Studies, but the Mopologists' antics can't be seen as helping the endeavor, I don't think. And I do think it's more accurate to describe them as discouraging a full and wide-randing approach to the field. Or even to say that they were engaged in a kind of intimidation of other writers and scholars.
There seems to be a delusion among some that, since Dan Peterson’s oppressive influence has at last been removed from the Maxwell Institute, Mormon studies can now finally flourish in the way that it always should have but has been prevented by Dan’s ominous specter. This is sheer nonsense. Apologetics has never prevented Mormon studies from flourishing. If Mormon studies has not flourished it is more likely because few people cared, and few did it well.
Well, okay. Another way of putting this is to say that the field is rather small. But, again: if this is true, it has to be pointed out that the major clearinghouse--the best-funded, most powerful, most "prestigious," and best organized source for Mormon Studies works was the MI. This is what people pointed to (generally) when they were talking about Mormon Studies, and for a significant number of folks, this was an embarrassment due to the way that a lot of the key figures behaved. So, if you are a rising scholar in Mormon Studies, you probably have to ask yourself: Will the wider academic community think the same of me, due to guilt by association?
In this regard it perplexes me why some people object to scholars who do apologetics. If they don’t like apologetics, they don’t have to do it. They don’t even have to read it. They can, in fact, completely ignore it. I, for example, consistently ignore the latest insights in pediatric medicine. But it would be absurd for me to argue that we must stop pediatric medical research in order to allow brain surgery to flourish. I say, let a thousand flowers bloom! If some want to do Mormon studies, let them.
If "few people care"--meaning, also, that few people are willing to endow scholarships, subscribe to journals, and/or just generally fund this work--there is going to be competition for those funds. Should they go towards legit Mormon Studies scholarship that actually stands a chance of holding up in the long run, and--heaven forbid!--actually attracting the interests of outside scholars/and or donors? Or should this go to yet more hit pieces and character assassinations?
I think that Hamblin probably sees the writing on the wall: which is that Mopologetics is going to wind up getting marginalized in the academic arena, and this scares the crap out of him. The young up-and-comers like LoaP rightly realize that there is a lot of value--that there is a genuine future--in doing scholarship that is both faithful and in accordance with the standards and etiquette of religious studies as a discipline. No one in the academy is going to wind up thinking that textual dung heaps like "Text and Context" or Greg Smith's piece on Meldrum have any actual scholarly value, beyond being a kind of sociological insight into this Mormon subculture. It's not as if these articles tell us anything new, or that they provide us with better insight into Mormonism. I'm sure that Hamblin realizes this, and it must be killing him.
"[I]f, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
