In a bold move, Midgley begins by telling us what might be called an "Origin Story." He explains where his desire to debate and combat Church critics comes from:
My first skirmish with one who might now be described as a "debating evangelical" took place in 1951 while I was a missionary in New Zealand. The pastor of a small Baptist church in Point Chevalier, a suburb some six kilometers west of the center of Auckland, had been surveying my missionary companion and me as we went about our activities, including our travel on the tram then connecting Point Chevalier, where we lived, with Queen Street in the center of Auckland. Eventually he introduced himself and invited us to his home so that he could, he explained, learn more about our faith. I was, of course, delighted.
Notice the way that Midgley, now an aging, seasoned Mopologist, delights in painting himself as a naïve, young missionary, who is excited to be doing the Lord's work. Notice also that young Elder Midgley was apparently aware (though he does not explain how or why) that this minister was "surveying" him. In the end, as per this narrative, it doesn't matter, since it's a missionary opportunity! Things quickly take a darker turn:
But his invitation was a subterfuge. I anticipated a civil conversation. I was mistaken. As soon as I began describing the recovery of the Book of Mormon, this fellow launched into a blistering attack on me and my faith. I faced someone barely civil and fully confrontational. I was discombobulated, stunned, and on the ropes, and this preacher knew it. He showed no mercy; he pounded away, even boasting that, unlike him, I had not been properly trained for the ministry. He was not interested in learning a thing about the faith of Latter-day Saints. He was, instead, eager to bash our beliefs, which he was confident he already understood.
As I read this, I could not help but snicker. Any poor sap who has naïvely stumbled onto MAD, hoping for a civil discussion of, say, Blacks and the priesthood, has surely had much the same experience as poor Elder Midgley. Probably, if things got heated enough, the apologists would pull out their Trump card, announcing that they have far more education and training than the said sap critic (cf. Gee, and the new review of the Turley et al. MMM book). A further interesting twist is the fact that this narrative is set in New Zealand---home to Rusty "Pahoran" McG.
You have probably already correctly guessed that Elder Midgley did not take this abuse sitting down. Sure, he was "discombobulated" at first, but almost immediately, he was thirsting for a counter-attack.
Savoring his triumph, he invited us back for a second bout. Since I suspected that he had been bluffing and wrong on some of what he had claimed, I accepted his invitation.
Next, the young apologist-in-training preps for his re-match in quasi-Rocky (or Harry Potter?) fashion:
Though I had earlier, as a student at the University of Utah, encountered secular critics of the faith of the Saints, this was my initial introduction to sectarian anti-Mormonism. In an effort to prepare for the second round in this debate, I visited a large Christian bookstore then located on Queen Street, where I purchased some leaflets and a pamphlet attacking the Church of Jesus Christ. This was my first encounter with sectarian anti-Mormon literature. Since I was already in the habit of looking for information in books, I also visited the little library in Point Chevalier, which is still there, as well as the much larger Auckland Public Library.
Presumably, Midgley was using P-day to do this. I have not heard of any missionaries who were allowed to go on rogue Mopologetic missions such as this. But, indeed, young Midgley's Mopologetic zeal was passionate indeed! It makes sense that this was the young man who would one day grow up to verbally assault Sandra Tanner in her place of business; it makes sense that he would scream profanities at the Lynn Whitesides vigil.
In any event, you are probably wondering how Round 2 turned out:
Elder Midgley wrote:I discovered that our host had made assertions that were flatly wrong. At our second match, I was ready to respond to this preacher, who seemed to have relied on muddled anti-Mormon literature. The debate ended in a draw, and the preacher knew it.
With what I had discovered in those libraries, I was able to expose some bluffing and mistakes on several key issues.
[Sidenote: Did the preacher announce that he "knew" it was a draw? Or is this Midgley's attempt at mind-reading?]
Oddly, Midgley's story sounds remarkably similar to many of the "exit stories" of ex-Mormons: they stumble upon literature which reveals that certain aspects of the Church were "flatly wrong," and they proceed on out of the Church. It makes one wonder: What does Professor Midgley think about the Church's extremely paranoid and protective attitude towards its own extensive collections and libraries?
Midgley wraps up the narrative a few more final digs:
I testified to the truth of Joseph Smith's prophetic truth claims and to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I came away from that exchange with no information about the grounds or content of that preacher's faith. There was something odd about his mode of "witnessing." I have never lost interest in the literature sectarian critics produce, distribute, or rely upon. I have discovered that some Protestant preachers, especially those involved in or influenced by the countercult movement, have a proclivity for denigrating the faith of the Saints; they operate in a confrontational, attack mode.
This is a jumbled and confused paragraph. Midgley says that he "won" the debate by bearing his testimony, and then he immediately goes on to complain that he failed to learn anything from the preacher (except, of course, how to "fight back"), and that he developed a bizarre taste for reading anti-Mormon lit.
This narrative is fascinating in the way it describes the gestation and birth of a career Mopologist. Midgley seems to have found his calling in the role of the savagely vicious, revenge-fueled apologist. And, as he discovered, there is always a fail-safe escape hatch: the bearing of the testimony---something which is often used as a last-ditch tactic by Mopologists.
Later on, Midgley writes:
My first encounter with sectarian anti-Mormonism was an indication of the proclivity I would later encounter from some Protestant preachers, and also, unfortunately, a harbinger of many later wearisome conversations with sectarian critics of the Church of Jesus Christ. It is clear that debating with our sectarian critics, though amusing or perhaps exhilarating, may turn out to be a mistake. Debating evangelicals may not be a useful way of witnessing either in word or deed to our own faith in the Holy One of Israel and the redemption from both sin and death that he has made possible. And yet I am confident that we must defend the faith.
Again, we see the deep conflict in the heart of the Mopologist. Midgley knows that the desire to exact revenge on the "mean" critics is un-Christlike, but he finds it "exhilarating," and thus, he has "confidence" that he's doing the right thing. Elder Midgley's experience in New Zealand caused him to develop a very new sort of testimony---not of the Church, but of Mopologetics.
In yet another stunning, revelatory paragraph, Midgley continues:
And when our opinions are challenged, we fight back and may even desire revenge or succumb to the urge to counterattack. We can easily be induced into seeing the Other as a Diabolical Monster and ourselves as a Holy Knight fighting the good fight against evil and error. We also may find it useful to rationalize our words and deeds. Likewise, when we confront those with different opinions, we may end up in verbal or written strife, competition, or combat over our opinions. We may also make the mistake of not really desiring to understand the opinions of the Other. One reason for this is that debates take place before real or imagined audiences and hence in a kind of theater in which points are scored or awarded. The "winner" in a debate often succeeds by the crafty use of rhetoric. The goal easily becomes winning or appearing to win a contest. Clever, quick, confident responses are at a premium in such exchanges. And often biased, poorly informed audiences serve as the judge and presumably determine a winner.
This is exactly what I have been saying in several threads, and yet DCP (among others) continues to deny that this is the case. The call for "humble" apologetics has reappeared again here, in the form of L. Midgley's words, but these words seem remarkably hollow. The apologists seem unwilling or unable to let go of their apparently intense, deeply ingrained need for revenge.
Just who might Midgley be talking about here?
he desire to thrash an opponent in a debate, especially while drawing on an arsenal of rhetorical or other tricks, could be an indication of the absence of an appropriate and necessary moral discipline. Put another way, until or unless we manifest an appropriate moderation, we do not represent well the faith we seek to proclaim. It is a mistake to fall into anything like the pattern commonly found among our critics who often insist on an essentially abrasive, confrontational mode of discourse. Currently the absence of moderation can be seen on blogs, lists, and boards. In some of these venues, diseases of the soul are nourished and spread, rather than assistance being provided to aid in the recovery of sometimes severely spoiled souls.
The essay continues, with Midgley admonishing the apologists for their harsher tactics, and then, shockingly, he lets loose with this disquieting admission:
It is possible for Latter-day Saints to have productive conversations with those not of our faith. If this were not so, few would have become Latter-day Saints.
I could be wrong, but it seems that Midgley is saying that the only kind of "productive" conversation that LDS can have with other faiths is a conversation which leads those Others to abandon their faith(s) in favor of Mormonism. Thus, we can observe a subtly diabolical method of destroying other faiths. Midgley's chutzpah is extraordinary.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Midgley goes on to ignore much of what he just said. The 2nd half of the essay is devoted to nitpicking and attacking critics of the Church. Consider this gleeful tidbit on Ron Huggins:
Huggins seems to have imagined that, if he could only find some feature of Nibley's writings about which he could complain, the chief foundation of the Latter-day Saint effort to defend their faith would crumble and the entire edifice would begin to collapse. But Huggins met an obstacle: Dialogue declined to publish this essay. He turned to the Tanner tabloid. His attack on Nibley might be an indication of what he considers "a real dialogue" with Latter-day Saints. Shirley Ricks, in a delightful essay, has demolished the Huggins effort.
Is this Midgley's idea of "humble" exchange? Whereas earlier he had seemed to be calling for moderation in the debate, he concludes the essay by placing all of the blame on his opponents:
The anarchy of contemporary Protestantism is such that debates with our more polished and respectable evangelical "friends" have not reduced the calumny directed at the Saints and their faith. Evangelicals eager to debate theology with us have neither the will nor the ability to tame the countercult beast that operates with little or no supervision or discipline on the margins of the larger evangelical movement.
Thus, he shrugs his shoulders and gives permission to Mopologists to continue with their revenge-fueled, "exhilarating" assaults on critics (and on Chapel Mormons!).
All in all, I enjoyed this essay. I hope that Midgley will write more nakedly revelatory essays just like this one. I believe I have offered up an honest critique of this piece, and I would urge everyone to read it in the original, so that you can see that I haven't distorted it in the least:
http://farms.BYU.edu/publications/revie ... m=2&id=718