Sanctorian wrote: It's all very confusing in New Mormonism. I think that's the point. Make it as confusing as possible so Mormonism is no longer identified by any of it's unique (weird by societies standards) identifiers.
Mak certainly hasn't told us what model he's using or given us a brief description or example of the model, that's for sure. He's offered bits and pieces and that's all. I have no problem believing his model is considered the best model for describing religious groups. I have a major problem believing his instructors would agree with him that his model has any relevance to this discussion board, in the respect of dismissing critical arguments.
I'm going to try another way of explaining this. I mentioned that a few years back a religion student in grad school pulled the same stunt of blasting critics for their obsession with the enlightenment and dropped some of the same kind of lingo, but this person's interest wasn't sociology. In particular, this person would obsessively ask critics what their definition of a prophet was. Critics would blast Joseph Smith for not being a prophet for this or that reason, but the ace up this person's sleeve was graduate training that gave a
descriptive definition of prophets. It doesn't matter what that definition was, let's say it was having a following of 500 people and enacting 5 social changes. If Joseph Smith had a following of 500 people and enacted 5 social changes then by golly he was a prophet. Believers and critics, however, primarily argue over
normative accounts of prophets, which contain value judgments -- their concern is over what a prophet should be. That's out of scope for most of academics. The Book of Mormon could be shown to be a word-for-word copy of Manuscript Found, but a serious source critic would be overstepping boundaries to conclude the Book of Mormon was a fraud. However, just because scholarship is ill-suited to determine which prophets are true prophets and which are false prophets in the same way a psychiatrist can't tell you if a schizophrenic is a good person or a bad person, that doesn't mean it's not an important concern and that no one should discuss it.
What a social theory says about Mormon beliefs descriptively and what a true foundational Mormon belief really is, or whether there is such a thing or isn't, are different subjects. And I think Mak is right in some ways with what he's saying, but I think he's either wrong, or not forthcoming in clarifying the situation enough to where reasonable people could see his point. Abuse of the social theory of Mormonism follows the prophet example I gave, however, I think it's a little more complicated, which is why I offered the prophet example as a starting point, and later tonight or tomorrow I'll flesh out why I think Mak is right or wrong about critics, depending on what he means.