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Apologia Report 17:14 (1,106)
April 18, 2012
Subject: Why is the LDS Church denying past doctrine?
In this issue:
ISLAM - a review of how Muslim apostasy and blasphemy codes are "choking freedom worldwide"
MORALITY - do "conservatives possess 'a broader set of moral tastes' and 'tap a richer moral lexicon?'"
MORMONISM - the Salt Lake Tribune asks: "Why is the LDS Church denying past doctrine?"
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ISLAM
Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide, by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea [1] -- this lengthy review for the Atlantic Monthly (April 5 issue) by Paul Berman begins: "In spite of its slightly agitated title, this book is mostly a cool and even-tempered human rights report, and its findings go a long way toward explaining one of the mysteries of our time, namely, the ever-expanding success of political movements with overtly Islamic doctrines and radical programs."
"Marshall and Shea have been toiling for many years at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom [www.crf.hudson.org] in Washington, and the dossier they have assembled on religion and human rights shows that, in the Muslim world and beyond, the proponents of a radical and politicized Islam have set one great goal for themselves, which is not at all dreamy or utopian. The goal is to narrow the limits of what everybody else is allowed to think. The way to achieve this goal is to invoke sacred taboos against apostasy and blasphemy, together with a series of other taboos—'insulting Islam,' 'corruption on earth,' 'fighting against God,' 'witchcraft,' and so forth." Many examples follow.
"Marshall and Shea’s book is not always easy to read, mostly because the topic is painful, but also because the presentation is repetitive and sometimes a little chaotic. ... The Obama administration has reason to grumble about going unappreciated by Marshall and Shea on various matters, and the veterans of the Bush administration have equal reason to mumble their appreciation for going undiscussed. An uncontroversial report on the human-rights challenge of our present moment will never be written.
"But everyone ought to be able to agree that, in composing their book, Marshall and Shea have accomplished something large and admirable." They conclude that "if you have been keeping up with the election results from North Africa and the civil wars in different parts of the Arab world, you may have already intuited that the worldwide campaign to suppress criticism of the Islamist movement, as documented by Marshall and Shea, is about to make a gigantic and intimidating lurch forward, beyond anything we have so far seen." <www.bit.ly/zX9UvL>
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MORALITY
The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt [2] -- writing for the Wall Street Journal (Mar 19 '12, pA15), Gary Rosen reports: "The work of Jonathan Haidt often infuriates his fellow liberals. A professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, he has focused in recent years on trying to understand the range and variety of our moral intuitions, especially as they relate to the most polarizing issues of the day. What he sees across the dividing line of American politics is a battle of unequals: Republicans who 'understand moral psychology' arrayed against Democrats who 'don't.'" Haidt finds that "conservatives possess 'a broader set of moral tastes' and are able, in appealing to the public, to tap a richer moral lexicon.
"But don't mistake 'The Righteous Mind' for yet another guide to how liberals can revive their rhetoric and electoral appeal. Mr. Haidt is not a partisan with an agenda. He is a social scientist who appreciates America's tribalism, our 'groupishness.' He worries, though, that our divisions are hardening into mutual incomprehension and dysfunction. His practical aim is modest: not to bridge the divide between left and right, atheist and believer, cosmopolite and patriot, but to make Americans, in all their diversity, more intelligible to one another.
"Mr. Haidt describes at length the fascinating research that he and his colleagues have carried out through a website called www.YourMorals.org. ...
"More than 130,000 subjects (as of 2011) have provided answers, which have been categorized [as] 'moral foundations....' These moral foundations fall under six broad headings: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. "Mr. Haidt's research points to sharp divisions only with the last three moral foundations: loyalty, authority and sanctity. ...
"Mr. Haidt does not mean to suggest that American conservatives have gotten it right in their particular (and sometimes contradictory) mix of the six moral foundations. But he insists that liberals will never win the confidence of a broad cross section of Americans if they cannot develop their own vocabulary of loyalty, authority and sanctity. ...
"He recognizes that his 'functionalist' account of morality and religion will leave many people cold. It does not get us very far in figuring out how, precisely, we should live. But it does provide a way to accept and understand the moral pluralism in the world around us - and to do so without surrendering to simple relativism.
"Mr. Haidt's approach has the added virtue of encouraging a degree of humility in righteous, partisan minds of every stripe. Even as our rival moralities 'bind' us together, he concludes, we should be aware that they 'blind' us too." <www.tinyurl.com/7r45fww> (Also see the New York Times review: <www.tinyurl.com/8yqlgzw>)
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MORMONISM
On March 10 the Salt Lake Tribune ran the story "Why is the LDS Church denying past doctrine?" by Matthew L. Harris, associate professor and director of graduate studies in history at Colorado State University-Pueblo. The piece opens: "Brigham Young University religion professor Randy Bott had a bad day last week. His church rebuked him for teaching false doctrine, his colleagues scorned him, and dozens of pious Mormon bloggers called for his resignation.
"In an interview with The Washington Post [www.tinyurl.com/86cw9j4], Bott expressed some views about Mormons and blacks that made his church leaders cringe. Bott said that blacks couldn’t hold the LDS priesthood until 1978 because they were considered descendants of Cain, the biblical counterfigure who murdered his brother. 'God has always been discriminatory,' Bott explained, and, as descendants of Cain, blacks were cursed by God and [consequently] black males were denied the priesthood. ...
"Just hours after the story broke, the church’s public affairs department issued a statement [www.bit.ly/zbdlWh] condemning Bott’s views, saying they 'absolutely do not represent the teachings and doctrines' of the church. ...
"But did Bott teach false doctrine? Were his views incompatible with Mormon theology? If so, how did a man who gets paid to teach students at an LDS university about Mormon theology not understand this crucial theological point? ...
"Today’s church leaders say 'we do not know why God denied blacks the priesthood,' but earlier leaders never made that claim. In fact, they made it very clear why blacks couldn’t hold the priesthood: God cursed them with the mark of Cain because they lacked moral purity in a pre-Earth life.
"If such words make us wince, they didn’t have that effect on early church leaders. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the church was thoroughly awash in such teachings.
"First Presidency statements [www.bit.ly/HRar2i], authoritative books (Doctrines of Salvation [3]; Mormon Doctrine [4]) and church magazines (Improvement Era), general conference addresses, manuals - all taught that blacks descended from Cain.
"Church officials now deny that they ever taught the divine-curse doctrine. ...
"And yet, the new official line cannot be reconciled with the hundreds, maybe thousands, of authoritative statements the church has made on the subject throughout its 182-year history. Nor can it be squared with its own policies for establishing official doctrinal positions. ...
"LDS leaders would be well-served to acknowledge this doctrine, apologize for it and move on. Until they have the courage to do that, more people like Bott will get their knuckles rapped, and more people will ask why the church sweeps its racial history under a rug." <www.bit.ly/wY55F8>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide, by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea (Oxford Univ Prs, 2011, paperback, 480 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/89khvgl>
2 - The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt (Pantheon, 2012, hardcover, 448 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/7kjfrhh>
3 - Doctrines of Salvation, by Joseph Fielding Smith <www.tinyurl.com/7vrzp95>
4 - Mormon Doctrine, by Bruce R. McConkie <www.tinyurl.com/8ya9ufh>
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