13AR18-29

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Apologia Report 18:29 (1,165)

July 31, 2013

Subject: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

In this issue:

HOMOSEXUALITY - great words from a book full of great words

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES - has Wikipedia become the default stop for fringe movements hoping to gain a fair hearing online?

MORMONISM - how to deal with problematic claims for the source and translation of the Book of Mormon? Never mind.

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HOMOSEXUALITY

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith, by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield [1] -- the story of a tenured lesbian PhD at Syracuse University who completely sold out to Christ, leaving all behind her. She writes without any of the acrimony that sometimes follows people who have rejected one group for another. We don't know any book that gives a better example of how homosexuals and evangelicals can interact constructively.

Here's something that Butterfield writes which will be of particular interest to readers of Apologia Report: "Hermeneutics is an old Greek word that refers to how we interpret life, text, and event. That is, hermeneutics is the study of how we make meaning out of text. Another word that often interchanges with hermeneutics is worldview. Hermeneutics focuses on the details; worldview takes the point of view of the frame. These two terms need to be understood in relationship. A stained glass window relies on the right relationship between the details that make up each frame and the big picture that emerges when you lift your eyes off the minute detail. It is exceedingly dangerous to build a Christian life on one or the other. You must hold both in tension and balance. Taken together, hermeneutics and worldview make up a critical perspective.

"As a feminist scholar, this concept - worldview - was the most important concept in my intellectual arsenal." And what was Butterfield's academic background? Among other things, she taught Women's Studies. She explains that her "primary field was Critical Theory - also known as postmodernism. My specialty was Queer Theory (a postmodern form of gay and lesbian studies)." She "was the faculty advisor to all of the gay and lesbian and feminist groups on campus." In sum, "For a decade of my life, I lived as a lesbian and was a spokesperson for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues on the local and national front."

Butterfield explains that "The secular academic world is bold in its protection of worldview. And, I and all of my feminist colleagues ... comprised an interpretive community. An interpretive community consciously and intentionally protects its way of thinking. This is how important worldview is to education. ... And this is how important interpretive community is to worldview. We do not make meaning in isolation. ...

"What are the elements of a Christian critical experience?[B]ecause different denominations rank [their practices and traditions] differently, there really is no such thing as 'a' Christian worldview. [H]ow do we ... assemble our worldview?" (Overall, I was thrilled with this book. - RP)

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JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

"The 10 Most Controversial Topics on Wikipedia" is a Mashable.com summary (<www.ow.ly/nnG0r>, Jul 17 '13) of a study being published next year by Scarecrow Press as a chapter in the book Global Wikipedia: International and Cross-Cultural Issues in Online Collaboration, Yasseri T., Spoerri A., Graham M., and Kertész J., eds. It's currently featured as "The Most Controversial Topics in Wikipedia: A Multilingual and Geographical Analysis" (also by Yasseri, Spoerri, Graham, and Kertész) in The Physics arXiv Blog for MIT Technology Review, May 23 '13, <www.ow.ly/nnIcX>. (Note: This links to a pdf that was saved in error with a view setting of extreme magnification. To read it, change the view setting to something closer to 100%.)

The authors seek to "present, visualize and analyse the similarities and differences between the controversial topics related to 'edit wars' identified in 10 different language versions of Wikipedia. After a brief review of the related work we describe the methods developed to locate, measure, and categorize the controversial topics in the different languages. Visualizations of the degree of overlap between the top 100 lists of most controversial articles in different languages and the content related to geographical locations will be presented. We discuss what the presented analysis and visualizations can tell us about the multicultural aspects of Wikipedia and practices of peer-production. Our results indicate that Wikipedia is more than just an encyclopaedia; it is also a window into convergent and divergent social-spatial priorities, interests and preferences."

Not surprisingly, the study shows that religion is a prominent subject of contention on Wikipedia: only politics and places are more controversial than religious topics (including antisemitism). In contrast, another chart suggests that about half of the most contested Wikipedia pages across the language sets considered are related to religion. If these statements seem contradictory, we agree. The complex presentation is often not as clear as one might wish, but many important questions arise from reading it.

The study notes: "Major religions and religious figures as well as articles related to Anti-Semitism and Israel are highly contested in multiple languages and cultures. [M]ost of the contested and controversial topics are language dependent.

"The English Wikipedia ... language's status as a lingua franca, means that the English Wikipedia ends up being edited by a broad community beyond simply [those] that have the language as a mother tongue. As a result, it is expected that globally disputed themes are often represented in this Wikipedia." It was also interesting to note that a map of conflict in the Spanish edition of Wikipedia showed larger concentrations in Asia than one might anticipate.

We noticed on the concentric circles chart that Jehovah's Witnesses really stand out, though no one suggests why this is so. However, the study indicates that most conflict surrounding this group occurs in France.

A cluster view chart is used to "visualize the overlap between the most contested [Wikipedia] pages in English, German, French, and Spanish.... The Homeopathy and Jesus pages are contested in all four languages and ... they are on average highly contested in all four languages. ... [T]he Jesus page is one of the top 10 contested pages for English, German and French [but only] the 42nd most contested page for Spanish. For the pages that are contested in three of the four languages, the Jehovah's Witnesses page is relatively highly contested in English, French and Spanish...." This leads us to wonder if Jehovah's Witnesses are more busily engaged on Wikipedia than other online environments.

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MORMONISM

"The Spectacles, the Stone, the Hat, and the Book: A Twenty-first Century Believer’s View of the Book of Mormon Translation" by Roger Nicholson -- the abstract explains: "This essay seeks to examine the Book of Mormon translation method from the perspective of a regular, nonscholarly, believing member in the twenty-first century, by taking into account both what is learned in Church and what can be learned from historical records that are now easily available. ... This essay focuses primarily on the methods and instruments used in the translation process and how a faithful Latter-day Saint might view these as further evidence of truthfulness of the restored Gospel."

After lengthy historical review and evaluation, Nicholson concludes with classic dismissal: the "apparently conflicting accounts of the translation process" are irrelevant. Joseph Smith "spiritually outgrew the need to use the Nephite interpreters [i.e., Urim and Thummim] or the seer stone, thereby setting the pattern by which every person has the promise of receiving personal revelation."

In his opening use of historical sources, Nicholson makes reference to what has long been an embarrassment to the LDS: "The process of translating the 'reformed Egyptian' plates." His essay, after laboring over the process, never addresses the reformed Egyptian source problem itself.

Nicholson's bio notes that he earned "a master’s in computer engineering from Santa Clara University in 1993. After spending several years editing LDS-related Wikipedia articles, he is currently an editor and administrator of the FAIR Wiki <www.ow.ly/ntSKl>, sponsored by the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research <www.fairlds.org>." Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, #5 - 2013, pp121-190. <www.ow.ly/nnTsk>

(For more on "reformed Egyptian," see <www.ow.ly/ntSQR> and <www.ow.ly/ntSXM)

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith, by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield (Crown & Covenant, 2012, paperback, 153 pages) <www.ow.ly/nnKxP>

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