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Apologia Report 18:35 (1,171)
September 18, 2013
Subject: Growing LDS defections noticed by New York Times
In this issue:
MORMONISM - "a fresh direction in Mormon-evangelical relations?"
+ "grappling with a wave of doubt and disillusionment among members" on a global scale
NEOPAGANISM - Philip Jenkins considers Wiccan pop-history
ORIGINS - respect and criticism for Stephen Meyer and Darwin's Doubt
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MORMONISM
Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way Out of the Mormon Church, by Lynn K. Wilder [1] -- "Wilder's memoir belongs to a new breed of ex-Mormon exposé. It's not salacious. It's not full of wild revelations. It's not even particularly angry, though the former BYU professor and stake relief society president does express regret for the decades she spent as a Mormon. Now an evangelical Christian, she explains that her family's decision to leave 'the Mormon Lord' and embrace a 'bigger God' was spurred by the unexpected defection of her most spiritually attuned son. While the tone of the book may represent a fresh direction in Mormon-evangelical relations, as memoirs go this account feels workmanlike, even plodding. It's overly detailed, about 80 pages too long, and riddled with a surprising lack of narrative tension. The same elements are present in the author's life at the Mormon beginning and the evangelical end - happy and close family, various miraculous experiences, stable lives, etc. - with the only differences being a move from Utah to Florida and an involvement in music and ministry to persuade the 'dear Mormon people' of the truth of the biblical Jesus." Publishers Weekly, Jul '13 #2.
"Some Mormons Search the Web and Find Doubt" by Laurie Goodstein -- the New York Times notes major tremors in the LDS world as it describes the public dissension of Hans Mattsson, Mormon general authority and former head of LDS affairs for Europe. "He asked his superiors for help ... and when they seemed to only sidestep the questions, Mr. Mattsson began his own investigation. ...
"But when he discovered credible evidence [contradicting his church] he felt that the foundation on which he had built his life began to crumble.
"Around the world ... the Mormon Church is grappling with a wave of doubt and disillusionment among members who encountered information on the Internet that sabotaged what they were taught about their faith, according to interviews with dozens of Mormons and those who study the church. ...
"Greg Prince, a Mormon historian and businessman in Washington who has held local leadership positions in the church, shares Mr. Mattsson's doubts. 'Consider a Catholic cardinal suddenly going to the media and saying about his own church, 'I don't buy a lot of this stuff,' Mr. Prince said. 'That's the level we're talking about here.'
"He said of Mr. Mattsson, 'He is, as far as I know, the highest-ranking church official who has gone public with deep concerns....'
"Mr. Mattsson and others say the disillusionment is infecting the church's best and brightest. A survey of more than 3,300 Mormon disbelievers, released last year, found that more than half of the men and four in 10 of the women had served in leadership positions in the church." New York Times, Jul 21 '13, pA1. <www.ow.ly/oVd1V>
A revealing transcript of the tense "emergency fireside” meeting between Mattson and his Swedish LDS colleagues and emissaries from Church headquarters is here <www.ow.ly/oY4KV>.
Also see: <www.ow.ly/oVduv>, <www.ow.ly/oVe40> and <www.ow.ly/oVepN>
POSTSCRIPT (Feb 12 '16). Also see: <www.goo.gl/r8I6aO>
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NEOPAGANISM
"Farewell, Old Pagan World" by Philip Jenkins -- begins: "I have a long-standing interest in the process by which societies both ancient and modern convert to Christianity, and how they handle the older underlying pagan or primal traditions. In recent times, people have been quite cynical about these early conversions, imagining that missionaries simply cast a light Christian cloak over older pagan ways, which continued more or less unaffected. In that case, it should be fairly easy to scrape off the Christian veneer to reconstruct those older pagan ways. That process is at the heart of the modern neo-pagan revival, and of movements like Wicca.
"But it's not that easy. In Europe at least, our immersion in Christianity is so long-standing and so total as to make it very difficult indeed to determine what is authentically ancient or pagan. Often, what looks very primal and ancient is in fact a recent concoction."
Referring to "illustrations in books on ancient British and Celtic paganism," Jenkins uses the example: "A particular favorite was the Cerne Abbas giant....
"Scholar Ronald Hutton points out that the figure is not even referred to before the late 17th century, unlike other authentic monuments like Stonehenge....
"Across Northern and Western Europe, many extant epics and tales seem to depict a pre-Christian barbarian world, an age of gods, monsters and magic. ...
"Just look, for instance, at the primitive savagery of an epic like Beowulf. ...
"Whoever composed Beowulf drew heavily on the Hebrew Bible, and more specifically, on an influential apocryphal text called the Book of Enoch. ...
"So we have Ramiel, Danel, Asael... How natural then for a medieval writer to invent Grendel. ...
"The only conclusion, then, is that this whole poem was written by someone who had read Enoch, and in the context of the time, that must have been a Christian cleric. Once that is established, you begin to see the Christian and Biblical themes that run through the whole work.
...
"Never underestimate just how thoroughly and totally the Christian church penetrated the European mind.
"Sorry, pagans." RealClearReligion, Jun 8 '13, <www.ow.ly/oV33C>
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ORIGINS
Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, by Stephen Meyer [2] -- Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Gareth Cook wastes little time in disclosing his contempt: "Darwin's Doubt, by Stephen Meyer, which will début at No. 7 on the New York Times best-seller list this weekend, argues that scientists have found no way to account for the Cambrian explosion. Life-forms appeared with no obvious precursors, it says, too quickly for a random process of mutation and survival of the fittest to explain it. The only alternative explanation, Meyer writes, is the involvement of an intelligent designer (read: God) who rushed along the story of life on Earth. ...
"The problem for Meyer is that what has come to be called the Cambrian explosion was not, in fact, an explosion. It took place over tens of millions of years—far more time than, for example, it took humans and chimpanzees to go their separate ways. ...
"Meyer goes on to build a grander, more bizarre argument that draws from the intelligent-design well. The genetic machinery of life, he writes, is incapable of grand leaps forward, meaning that any dramatic biological innovation must be the work of the intelligent designer. Yet scientific literature contains many well-documented counterexamples to Meyer's argument, and the mechanisms by which life's machinery can change quickly are well known. ...
"But do not underestimate "Darwin's Doubt": it is a masterwork of pseudoscience. Meyer is a reasonably fluid writer who weaves anecdote and patient explanation. He skillfully deploys the trappings of science—the journals, the conferences, the Latinate terminology. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the philosophy of science. He appears serious and, above all, reasonable. The Cambrian argument has been a part of creationism and its inheritors for many years, but Meyer's project is to canonize it, a task he completes with great skill. Those who feel a hunger for material evidence of God or who sense that science is a conspiracy against spiritual meaning will find the book a thrilling read. Which is to say, Meyer will find a large audience: he aims to start a conversation, or to at least keep one going, and he seems likely to succeed." New Yorker, Jul 2 '13, <www.ow.ly/oTdfN>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way Out of the Mormon Church, by Lynn K. Wilder (Zondervan, 2013, paperback, 368 pages) <www.ow.ly/oT5KH>
2 - Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, by Stephen Meyer (HarperOne, 2013, hardcover, 512 pages) <www.ow.ly/oTd1Q>
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