08AR13-37

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Apologia Report 13:37

October 22, 2008

Subject: Mormonism's "uneasy intellectuals"

In this issue:

MORMONISM - difficulties for its early academics

SOKA GAKKAI (NICHIREN SHOSHU) - helpful background info/summary

WICCA - an analysis of teenagers' attraction to witchcraft

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MORMONISM

"Finding Oneself Among the Saints: Thomas F. O'Dea, Mormon Intellectuals, and the Future of Mormon Orthodoxy" by Howard M. Bahr, Professor of Sociology at Brigham Young University -- begins: "It is now a half-century since Thomas F. O'Dea highlighted the plight of the Mormon intellectual in his [1957] classic The Mormons [1]. The book's final substantive chapter, 'Sources of Strain and Conflict,' treats internal tensions built into the institutional structure of Mormonism, identifying stress points where there is an uneasy balance between potentially conflicting elements. O'Dea calls these instances of countervailing internal pressures 'dilemmas.' The chapter is organized around 10 such dilemmas, one of which, 'Mormonism's encounter with modern secular thought,' dominates the chapter, accounting for half of its text. O'Dea justified its primacy on the ground that the encounter with secular thought was arguably 'Mormonism's greatest and most significant problem.'"

Bahr describes O'Dea as "a modernist Catholic sociologist" and notes that "A review of [O'Dea's] field notes suggests that key informants who 'hosted' much of O'Dea's research activity were liberal Mormon academics who defined the church's traditional theology as a problem." Bahr also reports that "A retrospective evaluation of [O'Dea's] writings on Mormonism praised him as 'the first non-Mormon intellectual to examine sensitively sources of strain and conflict within the movement. Reviewers extended O'Dea's conclusions about intellectuals to educated Mormons generally, averring that 'well-educated Mormons are disturbed by the conflict between "revealed" Mormon scriptures and the implications of new knowledge.'

"Some of O'Dea's best turns of phrase had to do with the losing battle he envisaged between the faith of the traditional Mormon and the power of higher education to dissolve that faith. The church's emphasis on education, he said, 'encouraged contact between Mormon youth and those very elements in modern thought that were bound to act as a solvent on certain aspects of Mormon beliefs.' As a result 'the college undergraduate curriculum becomes the first line of danger to Mormonism in its encounter with modern learning.'"

Bahr's discussion of the context behind O'Dea's writing includes such interesting topics as "the liberal-orthodox divide." In conclusion, Bahr observes that "O'Dea's view of the future of Mormon orthodoxy ... was that a liberalization of the theology in the direction of secular modernism was inevitable. Mormon young people would continue to seek higher education, and their belief in literal angels, golden plates, and visions of God would decline. Such a shift to liberal modernist theology would not necessarily mean the collapse of the church, especially if liberal Mormon intellectuals were permitted to ease the transition, perhaps in the manner of Catholic theologians having identified a critical 'core' of beliefs, or a shift toward liberal Protestant thinking. ...

"[T]here is remarkably little cross-sectional, let alone trend, data on belief in those aspects of theology that are unique to Mormonism. There are, however, clues, indications from substantial studies mostly devoted to other purposes. These indications from scattered studies suggest that the 'subtle secularization within the ranks' anticipated by O'Dea, and by secularization theory generally, has yet to materialize. ...

"Mormonism, like all religious traditions, still has its uneasy intellectuals. It is not clear whether they are more numerous now, proportionally, than they were in 1950." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47:3 - 2008, pp463-484.

(Unsurprisingly, Bahr's inference that no intellectual will adhere to orthodox belief, regardless of the religion being considered, is not addressed. - RP)

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SOKA GAKKAI (NICHIREN SHOSHU)

Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism, by Richard Hughes Seager [2] -- a wealth of background information flows from this review by Ian Reader, Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester. He begins: "Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist movement from the Nichiren tradition, is the largest new religion to have emerged in Japan and most successful Japanese new religion overseas. It is also one of Japan's most feared and controversial religious movements largely because of its militant orientations, manifest especially in aggressive conversion campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. Its association with politics led to fears that it sought to establish religious control of the Japanese state. Daisaku Ikeda, its leader since 1958, has been central to Soka Gakkai's controversial activities, as well as to its high-profile public disputes. One noteworthy dispute took place between Soka Gakkai and the priesthood of its former parent Buddhist organization, the Nichiren Shoshu, with which it vituperatively parted ways in 1991 over a dispute that owed much to personal conflicts between Ikeda and Nikken, the head priest of Nichiren Shoshu at the time. As Richard Hughes Seager notes in this book, while Ikeda may be deeply loved by Soka Gakkai members (and testimonies he cites from people in the movement show this clearly), he is also deeply feared and viewed as dangerous by many in Japan."

Reader finds serious flaws in Seager's work. For example, "Seager's lack of specialist knowledge of Japanese religions ... leads to errors and overstatements.... This shortcoming also results in the text's failures to contextualize Soka Gakkai clearly within its milieu as a Japanese new religion...." Consequently, Seager tends to "discuss aspects of Soka Gakkai's activity without seemingly being aware of how common these might be among new religions in general."

Worse, Reader finds that Seager has been influenced by his personal relationships with Ikeda "and with senior American Soka Gakkai officials who helped his research, which clearly helped gain him access to the movement, but also appear to have made it more difficult for him to be wholly objective about it.

"As a result of this personal engagement with this object of study, Seager skates over contentious aspects of Soka Gakkai's past. ... Critics of the movement, and there are many, are at times dismissed harshly. ...

"Elsewhere, too, Seager fails to show adequate objectivity in discussing the early 1990s split between Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shoshu and the personal acrimony between Ikeda and Nichiren Shoshu's head priest Nikken. Much remains unclear about the affair, but it is evident that there are at least two sides to the story. Seager, however, only pays attention to the Soka Gakkai version that casts aspersions and speculative attributions of motive on Nikken, most of which are unreferenced and unpleasant. ...

"Although Seager concludes by suggesting that it is time to 'cease being overly intrigued by the Soka Gakkai history of controversy,' I fear he is being a little hopeful here; a history of controversy itself is central to the Soka Gakkai story, and not until it is thoroughly studied and analyzed [implying that this has not yet been done by anyone - RP] will the movement itself be understood adequately in its historical and present contexts." History of Religions, 48:1 - 2008, pp74-77.

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WICCA

Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self, by Helen A. Berger and Douglas Ezzy [3] -- reviewer Sarah M. Pike explains that "The convergence in the 1990s of onscreen teen Witches and their real-life religious counterparts is no accident, argue sociologists Douglas Ezzy and Helen A. Berger, but rather a logical outcome given the context of late modernity, most importantly the globalization of media and community. Drawing on qualitative research methods, including long interviews with 90 British, Australian, and American Witches between the ages of 17 and 23 (all of whom became Witches as younger teens), Exxy and Berger discover that teen Witchcraft is characterized by 'a belief in the supernatural, a connection with nature, and an appreciation of the importance of the feminine.' By interspersing the stories of eight teen Witches with scholarly commentary, the authors teach us much about the day-to-day religious lives of teen Witches."

Pike describes the "common profile" that emerges. "As teen Witches tell it, one of the most valuable resources provided by their religion is healing, especially from emotional distress, low self-esteem, and depression. ...

"Teenagers rarely seek out covens or other established groups of adult Witches, but rather find community online or construct their own traditions alone in their bedrooms or in the outdoors."

It is interesting to read that "Berger and Ezzy argue that 'traditional religions' have declined in centrality to Western culture at the same time that new religious movements have grown more significant. This is certainly not so clear cut in the United states where Protestant evangelicalism has been growing in popularity among young people since at least the 1990s, around the same time that this study locates the rise in teen Witchcraft." Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 76:3 - 2008, pp703-705.

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Sources, Monographs:

1 - The Mormons, by Thomas F. O'Dea (Univ of Chicago Prs, 1978, paperback, 312 pages)

<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226617440/apologiareport>

2 - Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism, by Richard Hughes Seager (Univ of Calif Prs, 2006, paperback, 268 pages)

<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520245776/apologiareport>

3 - Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self by Helen A. Berger and Douglas Ezzy (Rutgers, 2007, paperback, 278 pages)

<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813540216/apologiareport>

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