So here is a little supposal:

Think of a presidential candidate that you do not support.  Now put the candidate’s name into the appropriate places in the following passage:

And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should support [a specific candidate] for President; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I supported a [candidate of that ideology/party/record]. And I shrunk and would that I might not support [her/him].

And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold it is the Lord’s desire that [that candidate] be President of the United States…

We spend a lot of time debating and defending our political beliefs, and comparing political candidates to our ideals. But what if, regardless of political party, or ideology, or record, or aptitude, or personality, or anything else we might use to judge our candidates, the Lord for His own reasons wants you to support a candidate different than the one you would choose?

It seems likely that most of the time He will leave it up to our best judgement. But we should also be open to the possibility that He will prompt us contrary to our reasoning. We should make sure that we consult with the Lord in prayer about who we should support in our political decisions and not rely solely on our own understanding and political philosophies.

So, continuing with the supposal:

Once the Lord has communicated his desire, how do you go about supporting the candidate? You can’t say that you honestly agree with the candidate’s positions.

You could say that he is the best person for the job, but since you don’t know the reason why the Lord wants him in office, you don’t know that for sure. Maybe she is not the best person, but the Lord wants her in office for some other reason.  All you know is that for some unknown reason, God has told you to support the election of this person.

You do not have the authority or stewardship to tell others that they should vote for the candidate because you have received a revelation that the Lord wants that candidate to be president.

And you’ve spent the last few years establishing your bonafides in a political position contrary to that of the candidate.  Now you will look like a flip-flopper, or even worse, incoherent.

So what do you do?

Before 1972, the auxiliary organizations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including the Relief Society, the Primary, Sunday School, and the Young Men and Young Women Organizations were largely directed at the stake or ward level, and the curriculum could vary from ward to ward.  A Correlation Committee had existed since 1908, but the First Presidency of the Church under the direction of President Harold B. Lee placed all organizations, curricula, and periodicals under the direction of the priesthood and established departments to  standardize and correlate the programs of the church.

As recently as the April 2010 General Conference, President Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles referred to this change in his talk “The Power of the Priesthood“, asserting that it is an inspired program, and quoting President Monson, who was an Apostle at the time:

Years ago we began correlation under the direction of President Harold B. Lee. At that time President Thomas S. Monson said: “Today, we are encamped against the greatest array of sin, vice, and evil ever assembled before our eyes. … The battle plan whereby we fight to save the souls of men is not our own. It [came through] the inspiration and revelation of the Lord.”

During those years of correlation, the whole operating face of the Church was changed. The entire curriculum was restructured. The objectives and relationships of the organizations one to another were redefined. The key word during those years of correlation and restructuring was priesthood.

For more information on Correlation, see these entries in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism: Correlation of the Church Administration, Curriculum .

With that background, I want to draw your attention to an interesting article posted recently on the On the Square Blog of the religious periodical First Things:

A New Translation and an Old Fight

The author, professor Geoffrey M. Vaughan, talks about a practice common among Catholics which he calls “Church Shopping” in which church members shop around for a parish which matches not only their aesthetic tastes, but their ideological views. He refers to parishes where the language and order of mass has been altered to conform to liberal cultural attitudes, such as omitting gender-specific language.

In contrast, the LDS Church’s approach of not letting members “ward shop” and instead assigning congregations by geographic location prevents, for the most part, the aggregation of members with non-mainstream views into like-minded wards. So while the Catholic Church has whole parishes where they omit gender-specific references to God, or introduce their own variations on Mass, such modifications in any LDS ward would be considered a clear case of apostasy.

However, according to the article, the Catholic Church, under Pope Benedict XVI is about to impose its own form of “Correlation”.

The Vatican has produced a new English translation of Mass and they want all parishes to discontinue their current presentation and use the new official translation and implementation instead. The new translation officially goes into effect on November 27th, the First Sunday of Advent.

This will be a test of the hierarchical priesthood authority construct of Catholicism on the parish level. The liberal parishes that have assiduously removed gender-specific language from their presentation of mass, or made other changes, will have to choose whether to submit to or flout the authority of Rome. Also at play is the fact that the members in general have not been well prepared for the impending change. Many are unaware that it is coming. So if the selection of their particular parish when “church shopping” was dependent on certain variations in the liturgy, they will be surprised if their parish submits to the new official liturgy.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the Catholic Church.

Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like to carp and murmur about Correlation, but it really does seem to be a very effective way, along with geographically assigned wards, to prevent the kind of fragmentation and apostasy that could arise otherwise.  Of course, that is probably why some of them hate it so much. As President Monson testified, and was reaffirmed last year by President Packer, Correlation came through inspiration and revelation from the Lord and was implemented by those holding the Priesthood Keys for the direction of His church.  It protects the church from sin, vice, and apostasy.

Though I am not a prolific poet, the poetry I write is usually infused with gospel concepts and imagery. But I had never thought of poetry so directly inspired by scriptural narratives before.

As is usual for me, the time between when the idea for a poem occurs to me and when I actually write it is substantial. It has been well over a year, and I am now approaching the one year anniversary of my trip to Israel for Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles.

This last Sunday, I sat down and wrote a draft of the first poem, and then honed it during the next day and a half. Hope you enjoy it.

____________________________

By the Hand of Uriah
( 2 Samuel 11 : 14 – 15 )

Just open it! one roared a goading taunt,
and then the rest in chorus joined the dare.
We face the foe alone, the king doth not,
so open up the letter that you bear.

For not a moment tempted was his eye.
Oh faithless fools! he shouted as he stood.
Though least among his mighty men am I,
with Israel’s king I stand; his word is good.

My honor tried by query of the king,
though sore I yearned to know my wife once more,
while cov’nant’s ark in tent doth dwell, such thing
I would not do and slept outside the door.

To my hand commends the king what he did write.
In vain his trust is not, as God’s my light!

____________________________

Read more of my original poetry.

The new LDS manual for Mormon Women is now available in PDF format.

The official website for the book is:

http://lds.org/relief-society/daughters-in-my-kingdom

The book is unique among the church’s modern manuals in that it is the work of a single author, Sister Susan Tanner, and not written by a committee.

Even though it’s been a while, he recently rediscovered this video he shot of a couple of Mormon missionaries from West Africa singing the LDS missionary anthem, “Called to Serve” and he just put it up on YouTube.

With all of the potential pop-cultural misperceptions of Mormon missionaries resulting from the “Book of Mormon” Musical, I thought it would be useful to share a taste of real LDS missionaries in Africa.  Enjoy!

A week ago I took my kids over to BYU campus for a short while to kill some time while my wife was at the doctor. Even though we have lived in Utah Country for as long as we’ve been married, we rarely make it over to BYU campus anymore.  Our kids know some parts of campus better than others.

Last week I took them to the Joseph Smith Building. We have a special connection to the Joseph Smith Building, and I wanted my kids to experience it.

The construction of the Joseph Smith Building was completed in 1991. At that time, my family lived across the street from brother Franz Johansen, who had been a BYU professor of fine art. He was a wonderful neighbor, and a very talented artist.

Many members of the church have seen Brother Johansen’s work without knowing his name.  He created the  large relief sculpture on the outside of the Church History Museum on West Temple in Salt Lake City. The doors of the Seattle and Washington D.C. Temples are his work. His sculptures have been seen in the Museum of Art Garden at BYU.  And he created the bas relief stone panels for the Harold B. Lee Library.

I remember one time when the bishopric of our ward had him give a presentation to all of the young men about art. We all went down to campus where he showed us a slide show of all kinds of artwork, and discussed why artists study anatomy. But that’s a different story.

Brother Johansen shared his talent with our family. I remember visiting the studio in his home on various occasions where he would tell us about what he was working on. Sometimes he would invite members of my family to model for him.

Which brings us back to the Joseph Smith Building. On the north-facing exterior of the Joseph Smith Building there is another of Brother Johansen’s works. And immortalized in that relief sculpture is my sister, who modeled for Brother Johansen when he was creating it.

We stopped outside of the Joseph Smith Building last week. “Why are we here?!” whined my second daughter, who was tired of walking in the hot August sun. “I want to show you something,” I explained. “Come look at this.”

I pointed to the relief artwork on the building. “That’s your aunt Becca,” I told them. We talked about Brother Johansen and how my sister had been the model. I snapped the picture included above, and we headed back to the car.

Innumerable people pass by the Joseph Smith Building. Most hardly notice. But I always stop to look.  It looks like my sister, preserved in carbonite like Han Solo from Star Wars, and hung on the wall.

You can read more about Brother Franz Johansen and look at a few of his works of art at the website of the Springville Art Museum.

In this post, however, I want to introduce a new approach to thinking about personal apostasy by drawing what I think are compelling comparisons between apostasy and conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories appeal to some very fundamental aspects of human nature and can wield a great deal of influence over people. I believe that a closer look at the appeal and mechanics of conspiracy theories can help illuminate some important aspects of personal apostasy from the church.

My hope is that by exposing these aspects of apostasy I can help not only those members of the church who are dealing with family or friends who have apostatized, but also give pause to those who find themselves being drawn down the path of apostasy, and raise doubts among those who are already a far distance down that path.

Ultimately this is a warning about the limits of reason and logic and the potential dangers of the rational mind.

The concept of conspiracy is deeply ingrained into our entertainment, our political discourse, and even our religion. Conspiracy theories exist among the atheistic as well as religious. They propagate among liberals as well as conservatives, and among the educated as well as the ignorant.

The Logic of Insanity

To understand conspiracy theories better, and by extension apostasy, we must first look at insanity. G.K. Chesterton’s keen observations concerning madness provide an excellent foundation upon which I hope to build. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton makes the following observations which, with a plea for patience from the reader, I quote at length:

“Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

“The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.”

“Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.”
…
“Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner.”

Now, while my own experience generally validates Chesterton’s insight, I would add that insanity is not an all-consuming binary state; a person is often neither completely mad nor completely sane. Madness comes in degrees and compartments, and an otherwise sane person can succumb to this kind of insane thinking in only some aspects of his or her life, while retaining a great deal of apparent sanity in other respects. All of us experience degrees of insane thinking in one or more aspect of our lives. It’s part of being human.

Aspects of Conspiracy Theories

Let me mention briefly that there are real conspiracies. I have seen the acts of conspiring men and women myself. Both the Book of Mormon and modern prophets have affirmed the reality of secret combinations.

That said, we can recognize Chesterton’s description of insanity in the logic of conspiracy theories. There is the same “logical completeness,” the same “unanswerable” reasoning, the same “horrible clarity of detail”, the same “connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze.”

Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories are not fools. On the contrary they are commonly very intelligent, logical, “successful reasoners.” As Chesterton would say, it’s not that their theories don’t make logical sense, it’s that the conspiracy theory “explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.” I call this aspect of conspiracy theories “logical completeness”.

Human reason is very good at finding logical patterns and connecting mathematical dots. Conspiracy theories have power because they provide a sense of logical completeness and rational satisfaction; a sense of order from chaos. Those who subscribe to the conspiracy theory often take this logical completeness and the fact that their logic is at least unanswerable as evidence of the truthfulness of the theory. On the contrary, it could just as easily be the hallmark of insanity.

The second aspect of conspiracy theories that gives them power over us is what I call “gossip appeal”. Gossip carries a great deal of explanatory power and provides a narrative framework in which the actions of another can be interpreted. And because human nature often finds pleasure in discovering the dirty secrets, misdeeds, or misfortunes of others (even when the dirt is perceived more than real) gossip spreads quickly. And because gossip appears to agree with the observable facts, and often exhibits a great deal of logical completeness itself, it is very damaging and difficult to correct; the messy unintentionality of reality is often less logically satisfying than the scuttlebutt.

Conspiracy theories appeal to the same base human pleasure in sordid news as gossip does. The adherent feels compelled by the logical, explanatory power of the theory and the gossip-like discovery of the dirty secret.

Which brings us to the third aspect of conspiracy theories that give them power, which I call “perceived superiority”. Adopting a conspiracy theory has the effect of placing the believer in what they perceive to be a small group of intellectually superior people who, unlike the “sheeple” who believe the official story, have figured out “what is really going on.” It’s like qualifying for an elite club. This perception is reinforced by a like-minded community as well as the logical completeness of the theory and the gossip appeal previously discussed. It is natural for everyone to believe that they are more astute and more informed than their peers, and conspiracy theories confirm that natural bias.

These three aspects– logical completeness, gossip appeal, and perceived superiority — contribute to the power of conspiracy theories over the human mind.

The Tragedy of Bobby Fischer

I’m sure that you have already noticed at least a few similarities to apostasy. But before fleshing them out, I want to provide a couple of more concrete examples and experiences.

First, I would like to look at the sad example of Bobby Fischer.

Some of you probably became aware of chess prodigy Bobby Fischer through the 1993 film, Searching for Bobby Fischer. Fischer, who passed away in 2008, was considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. He didn’t just play chess, he had such a huge influence that he permanently changed the way other people play chess.

His genius and ability for logical thought are unquestionable. And yet, he is a perfect example of the kind of logical insanity that Chesterton described. Fischer descended into paranoia and embraced increasingly strident conspiracy theories. In last decade of his life, he was so steeped in anti-Jewish and anti-United States conspiracy theories that he denied the Jewish Holocaust, admired Hitler, actually wrote Osama Bin Laden a letter of solidarity, and regularly denounced both the Jewish people and the United States in the most vile, crude terms.

Now, Fischer’s paranoia was not completely baseless. He ended up a fugitive from the U.S. government over tax evasion and for playing a 1992 competition chess game in Yugoslavia in defiance to an embargo by executive order of President George H .W. Bush. He felt personally wronged by the U.S. and, to avoid an arrest warrant, never returned to the country.

It is a distressing and tragic story, but in order to avoid distracting from my primary theme I won’t pursue the details any more here. If you are interested, there is a lot of good information on the Wikipedia entry, as well as an excellent article in The Atlantic Monthly from December 2002.

Rather than allow him to see through the conspiracy theories, Bobby Fischer’s amazingly analytical, logical mind conspired against him to build an elaborate map of logical connections that reinforced his paranoia. When he passed away, Fischer, mostly devoid of humor, and charity, and dignity, had lost everything BUT his reason, just as Chesterton had described almost exactly 100 years beforehand.

My First Hand Experience with Conspiracy Theory

The tragedy of Bobby Fischer is an extreme example. Let me share a couple of my own experiences with the lure of conspiracy theories, paranoia, and the limits of reason.

It’s hard to explain my own experience with conspiracy theories without getting mired in the details of the conspiracy theory itself and also without offending anyone who might subscribe to it.

Many years ago, as I became more interested in politics, I was introduced to what is called the Straussian conspiracy theory. Leo Strauss was a very influential political philosopher. His students have been quite influential in conservative political thought, though their influence is often not widely noticed (which contributes to the conspiracy idea). Strauss wrote a book called Persecution and the Art of Writing in which he argued that historically philosophers have hidden their true beliefs because of fear of persecution, and that hidden behind the seemingly obvious meaning of their writing is an “esoteric text” that communicates their true thoughts to those willing to really study it. The conspiracy theory alleges that Strauss himself wrote in the same fashion and that all of his contributions to conservative thought are really a Machiavellian “noble lie” which he believed was necessary for the good of society and to maintain the power of a secret elite to which he belonged, and that his students have followed this same esoteric objective.

At first I found this theory preposterous, and argued with its advocates extensively. But just to make sure, I eventually bought a copy of Persecution and the Art of Writing and began to read it.

I still remember how it felt as the conspiracy theory took ahold of me while I read. The conspiracy was true! It carried all the exhilaration of making a terrible discovery. It all made sense! All the logical puzzle pieces fit! It took my breath away.  It was mind blowing! It was an incredibly powerful feeling, terrifying and yet empowering at the same time. I was one of only a few who had found out what was going on. I paced the room as my mind churned through the logical circle over and over again. I couldn’t find any way out of the maze of connected ideas.

Fortunately for me, I was saved by my Mormon faith. Despite the seemingly inescapable logic, as a Mormon I had been taught to test the spirits; to verify through personal revelation and not just through reason, and that I could know the truth of all things through the power of the Holy Spirit. So I prayed and asked my Heavenly Father if what I had discovered was true. And the Holy Spirit answered me and freed my mind from the logical trap, which had indeed seemed to possess my mind like an evil spirit. It did so not by refuting the logic, but by enlarging my understanding and vision and exposing the humor in the rapture to which I had momentarily been subject.

My Experience with the Lure of Apostasy

A couple of years later, I had another experience. I am familiar with many of the anti-Mormon attacks on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, but one day I came across a post in an Internet forum where the author explained that he finally realized that the Book of Mormon was a sham when he saw irrefutable proof that Joseph Smith had made it up. He gave a link to the proof. So I clicked through to it, confident that it would be weak and easily refutable. It was an argument that I had never seen before and I will readily admit that it appeared very, very damning. As I read it a feeling gripped me that was amazingly powerful: The church was false! Joseph Smith made it all up! I had stumbled upon this terrifying, mind-blowing secret! Here was the proof and all the logical puzzle pieces fit! And I was one of only a few who had found it out. It was terrifying and intoxicating.

And it was at that moment that I recognized where I had felt those feelings and followed those thought patterns before: it was exactly the same as my experience with the Straussian conspiracy theory. The seductive logical completeness, the gossip appeal, and the lure of the perceived superiority over the blind followers who still believed in the official story were all there. And it was the recognition of that similarity, and a remembrance of Chesterton’s words concerning insanity, that pulled me out of it.

Once I was free of the spell, it was only a matter of minutes before the error of the argument became obvious to me. Had I succumbed to that spirit of apostasy that had attempted to possess my mind, I could easily see how I could have fallen into a self-reinforcing mental trap that could have been very difficult to escape, and would have made it increasingly unlikely that I would have recognized the error.

Confronting the Limitations of My Mind

More recently, these experiences, along with the help of the Holy Spirit, have help me escape additional logical traps that were damaging to my family relationships. Without going into detail, these logical maps held such sway over my mind that I could not see any way in which they could not be true. And yet, the map maze of interconnected proofs, while seemingly irrefutable, was completely false. And one day, not long ago, that logical map was shattered, not by logical refutation, but through an epiphany granted by the Holy Spirit. And that spiritual gift changed everything.

Apostasy as Conspiracy Theory

So, having established this foundation I return to what is my primary point: Apostasy is dangerously similar to being seduced by a conspiracy theory.

There are a lot of reasons why people leave the church. Some leave because they do not want to, or have been convinced that they cannot, abide by the church’s strict code of conduct. Others leave because of perceived interpersonal grievances or solidarity with others who feel wronged. But I am talking about those who apostatize for intellectual reasons. They feel that what they know or have experienced compels them to abandon their belief.

Many of those who apostatize from the church for this reason have established their own genre of writing or oral presentation which I call Apostasy Literature. The purpose of apostasy literature is to help friends, family, and others who still believe, understand why the individual no longer believes; to demonstrate that their apostasy is reasonable and logical and not in pursuit of sinful lusts or to escape responsibilities. And they are often disappointed when their well-crafted narratives and essays fail to convince others of what is so obvious to them.

In apostasy narratives they recount the process by which they came to believe that the church is not true and attempt to bring the reader along on the author’s journey of discovery. Apostasy essays are more of a laundry list of “did you know” bullet points of what the author believes are facts that disprove the truth of the church, followed sometimes by a logical explanation.

Apostasy literature often includes a brief recounting of past callings and active participation in the church which the writer believes will establish his or her authenticity as a previously active, devout, believing member: they have served as a relief society president, a bishop, stake president, a missionary, a seminary teacher; they had 100% home or visiting teaching; married in the temple; &c. This list of callings and achievements is a way of establishing a kind of credentials that they think should lend credibility to their journey.

Apostasy literature also often includes genuine sorrow at having lost their belief, and expressions of the wish that they could reclaim that belief, but they don’t see any alternative considering what they have uncovered. It is an expression of a very sincerely felt loss of innocence. They feel forced out of Eden for having partaken of the fruit of knowledge.

Conspiracy theorists produce a very similar kind of literature and with a very similar objective. The purpose of conspiracy theory literature is to help others understand why the conspiracy theorists view is reasonable and logical instead of crazy. The conspiracy theorist is also often disappointed that his or her well-crafted arguments fail to convince others when it seems so obvious. Conspiracy theory literature also employs credential citation and lamentation of a loss of innocence.

Both groups feel that they have stumbled upon a terrible secret and feel the need to raise a warning to others. The gossip appeal affords even greater power to the apostate views over their minds.

When confronted with the fact that others do not find their arguments convincing, both conspiracy theorists and apostates question the intelligence of those who continue to accept the official story. They are so enthralled to the logical completeness of their view that they can hardly comprehend how someone else could reject it without rejecting reason itself.

In Internet forums of the like-minded, conspiracy theorists and apostates employ strikingly similar language to refer to those who are not convinced by their arguments or who aren’t astute enough to see through the supposed smoke screen on their own: sheep, sheeple, robots, dupes, rubes, and other expressions that imply intellectual inferiority or mindless submission. This perceived superiority lends power to the apostate views over their minds as well.

I have little hope of refuting the logic of apostasy through reasoned argument. Apostates, like conspiracy theorists, are not fools. They are often exceptional thinkers. Like the conspiracy theorist, the logical completeness of their map of connected data points, the gossip appeal of having discovered a terrible secret, and the perceived superiority of their views make it very difficult to convince the apostate of their errors. It is likely that they will mistake the fact that their arguments are not easily answerable as proof that they are true.

I hope to introduce a seed of doubt into the minds of those plagued by apostate thoughts and those who wish they could still believe, but feel that they are forced to stop believing by what they have learned. Ask yourself:

“So what if my logic is unanswerable and logically complete? So is the logic of a madman. So what if I can recite a litany of historical facts and connect them together in a sordid logical map? So can a Truther, a Birther, and a Bircher. Reason can betray me as much as emotion. How do I know that it has not?”

Not to be misconstrued, I am not advocating that reason be abandoned. But reason is limited by the frailties of the mind. A madman is as convinced of the soundness his logic as you are of your own. Reason untempered and unchecked by humor, charity, or common sense can be a liability as much as it can be an asset.

To those who are friends or family of someone seduced by apostate ideas, I hope to help you see that you will not have much success in trying to reason them out of their views, just as you are not likely to succeed in convincing a conspiracy theorist to abandon their conspiracy through logical argument.

If Thy Head Offend Thee…

From my own experiences, I believe that reason, emotion, and spirit are not as easily compartmentalized as we often believe. The logic of conspiracy and apostasy are not divorce-able from the frailty of the mind or of humanity. The temptations of gossip appeal, of uncovering a deception, of perceived superiority, and the preference for logical completeness over the unexplained or unknown lend emotional power to reason. Ideas can possess your mind like an evil spirit.

This is one of the dangers of “Mormon Intellectualism.” An over-emphasis on reason can leave people open to a combination of “logical completeness and spiritual contraction.” A blindness to the spiritual and emotional dimensions of ideas can leave people open to spiritual deception. This is also why reading faithless and anti-Mormon literature can be dangerous. It can subtly subject the reader to the spirit and emotions that accompany it, which can amplify the feeling of and appearance of logical compulsion. The appeal of logical completeness is emotional.

Chesterton explicitly compared the logic of insanity to the kind of thinking in academia in which he observed the same “combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense.”

Take for instance modern Biblical studies or Mormon Studies. Scholars construct hypothetical explanatory narratives based on observable facts and historical records, and then confusing logical completeness with truth, talk about them as if they were proven. And the next thing you know they are telling you the “real” motivations of the author of the Gospel of Mark or that Joseph Smith was a philanderer with as much confidence as if it were unassailable fact. They presume to read the minds and hearts of men and women long dead when they cannot so much as read the mind or heart of the living person standing next to them.

Reality is messy. People do unexpected and illogical things. Beware the theory that explains too much, connects every dot, or attributes motivations to every action. Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.

Of course, I recognize that many of these same criticisms and comparisons to conspiracy thinking can be turned around and pointed back at the believer. Fair enough. As I said earlier, all of us experience degrees of insane thinking. And just because ideas exhibit many of the qualities of a conspiracy theory does not automatically mean that they are false. My comparison of apostasy to conspiracy theory is intended less as an weapon than as a tool for self-checking introspection and a source of empathy toward those stuck in the kind of logical ruts to which we are all susceptible.

My point is that reason and logic are not a trump card. Those who do not find apostate logic as convincing as its preachers are not necessarily mindless followers, sheeple, or the “morg.” Spiritual and emotional dimensions to reason are as much a part of the apostate’s argument as the believer’s.

Let me end with this passage from Chesterton:

“A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle… Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil….

“If thy HEAD offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell…”

“And behold, I swear unto you, if ye will do this, with an oath, ye shall not be destroyed; but if ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath, that on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you, and they shall not stay their hand and shall spare not, but shall slay you, and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct.”

It was a few years ago that the peculiarity of Giddianhi’s ultimatum really stood out to me for the first time.

As an English major with a particular interest in literature written before the 20th century, I had read a variety of texts from the Old English, Middle English, Renaissance, Early Modern,18th and 19th Century periods. At the time I had been reading a great deal of early American writing, often in the original spelling and grammar, which had been written between 1500 and 1860. I had just finished a handful of books published around the time when Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon and the phrase “…on the morrow month…” in Giddianhi’s letter really stuck out as an unusual construction.

I wondered if “on the morrow month” was in common usage in the 19th century, when Joseph was translating the Nephite record, but had since fallen out of use. Or maybe it was a construction adapted from the Jacobean language of the King James Bible. I had never run into it in any of my other reading, so I started to investigate.

Now, I’m not a scholar, and this is a blog post not a thesis, so I’ll leave it to the professionals to look into it more rigorously if they desire, but here is what I found:

The word morrow derives from the Old English word morgen meaning “morning” (which Dutch and German speakers will recognize as a cognate). In Middle English the word became morwen. Eventually the ‘-en’ was dropped, in the same way that it was dropped in the word maiden to give us the word maid, and morw became morrow through the natural process of pronunciation.

Even though they were sometimes combined as early as 1500, the word tomorrow was usually written as separate words “to morrow” until the 1750s, and started to be used to mean “the next day” as early as 1275.

So morrow and tomorrow refer to the morning and by extension the next day. Month, on the other hand is derived from the cycle of the phases of the moon. The Oxford English dictionary doesn’t have any examples of either morrow or tomorrow becoming divorced from their relationship to “morning” and used as generic terms to indicate the next period of any time measurement, like a month. So Joseph Smith’s translation of Giddianhi’s ultimatum seems to be far outside the standard English usage of morrow.

Of course, just because it’s not in the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t mean that it has never been used this way, so I thought I do a little more digging. I started Google searches to try to find examples of the phrase “morrow month” unrelated to the Book of Mormon. I found a few instances worth noting.

The least obscure appearance of the words “morrow month” is in a lesser known poem by the famous Robert Browning called Time’s Revenges which he published in 1845, fifteen years after the Book of Mormon.  Here is the pertinent excerpt with added emphasis:

He does himself though,—and if some vein
Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just turn quietly,
Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand
Till I found him, come from his foreign land
To be my nurse in this poor place,
And make my broth and wash my face
And light my fire and, all the while,
Bear with his old good-humoured smile

The earliest use I found was in volume 8 of the Journals of the House Of Commons published in 1803, but recorded from legislative records originating in the 1660s, where it is used twice:

“Ordered, That the Committee of Privileges and Elections do, on To-morrow Month, being the Twelfth of May next, proceed to hear and determine the Cause touching the Election for the Town of Newport in Cornwall between Mr Ford and Mr Edgcombe.“

“Resolved, &c. That the House be Called over again on To morrow Month, being the Six-and-twentieth Day of April next .”

One thing to notice is that these early occurrences in the Journal of the House of Commons refer to specific dates. The first one is recorded on the Julian calendar date Lunae 13 Aprilis 1663 and the second one on Lunae 28 Martii 1664. (Britian didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752)

“To-morrow Month” here seems to mean specifically the same day as tomorrow but in four weeks. So in the first case, recorded on Monday April 13th, the “to-morrow” would be Tuesday April 14th, plus a month would be Tuesday May 12th.

Here are is the Julian calendar for April and May 1663 with the dates colored to illustrate (blue = today, green = to-morrow, red = to-morrow month)

April 1663
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
       1  2  3  4  5
 6  7  8  9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30

May 1663
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
             1  2  3
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

The same meaning is obvious in the second instance, in which “to morrow” refers to Tuesday March 29th, 1664 and the corresponding day in the next month is April 26th, just as the text states.

Looking back at Browning’s poem, he seems to be using it in this same way, although for poetic effect rather than to specify a particular date.

Another obscure use is in a 1911 book by Stephen Graham called A Vagabond in the Caucasus:

“Sleeping in the copse, even in more abundance than yesterday, are next month’s flowers: time and the sun are softly wooing them. A few mallow and lily and rose will have faded away and given place to new revellers, new festivities. The morning sun, warmer every moment, promises for to-morrow, to-morrow week, to-morrow month, the blooming of the poppy and the ripening of the vine.”

Like Browning, Graham appears to be drawing upon the obscure usage we see in the previous legalistic Journals for poetic effect, with the addition of a progression from tomorrow, to the same day next week, and then to the corresponding day next month. And like Browning, it post-dates the publication of The Book of Mormon.

Another interesting example is from Sweated industry and the minimum wage, published by Clementia Black in 1907:

“In many shops that meal is neither good nor sufficient; and even if good the food is monotonous. Each day of the week has generally its appointed bill of fare. In many houses the assistants know what the dinner will be to-morrow, to-morrow week, to-morrow month, to-morrow year. I have an Islington shop in my mind where the menu for years past has been this:– Sunday: Pork. Monday: Beef, hot. Tuesday: Beef, cold. Wednesday: Mutton, hot. Thursday: Mutton, cold. Friday: Beef, hot. Saturday: Beef, cold, and resurrection pie.”

All of these examples are consistent with the etymology of to-morrow because they are referring specifically to the next morning or next day of the week, and then referencing that same day of the week in the subsequent week, month, or year.

There are a handful of other examples of this “to-morrow month” construction in works previous to, contemporary with, and after Joseph Smith’s publication of The Book of Mormon.

But the Book of Mormon text doesn’t use “on to-morrow month”.  It says “on the morrow month”.  If we add the definite article to the search and exclude Book of Mormon citations, we come up with some false positives because Google does not differentiate between punctuation, so that “the morrow month” is treated the same as “the morrow. Month” and “the morrow, month” by the search. Once the false positives are excluded, we find that there isn’t a single literary instance of “the morrow month” outside of citations of the Book of Mormon itself.

This suggests a few possibilities:

1. Invention

Joseph Smith came up with a completely unique use of the word morrow when translating the Book of Mormon which changes its meaning to “next” or “proximate” instead of “morning.” The word occurs 41 times in the text of the Book of Mormon, and in all other cases follows the standard usage. Nobody else before or after him has used the word in this idiosyncratic way.

2. Transcription Error

The original translation of 3rd Nephi chapter 3 might have read “…I swear unto you with an oath, that on to morrow month I will command that my armies…” and it might have been subsequently changed accidentally to the when being copied for printing. In this case, Giddianhi would have been naming a specific date on which he would command the attack, and not just a fuzzy “next month”. However, my copy of Royal Skousen’s The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text does not show that he has identified any changes to 3rd Nephi Chapter 3 Verse 8. In the image of the 1828 printer’s manuscript below, it says “on the morrow month” though that doesn’t mean that it didn’t say “on to morrow month” in the original dictation. It is interesting, however, that the word month appears to have been crossed out and then replaced again for some reason in the printer’s manuscript. This may indicate that someone recognized the unusual construction and started to change it by removing month, but then decided for some reason that it should stay, though that is pure speculation.

3. Hebraism

Maybe “morrow month” is somehow related to the the Jewish Machar Chodesh which means literally “Tomorrow Month” or “Tomorrow New Moon”. When the Sabbath falls on the New Moon it is customary to read 1st Samuel 20:18 in which, in the KJV translation, Jonathan says to David, “To morrow is the new moon: and thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty.” From what I understand, the Jewish people refer to these New-Moon Sabbaths with the words of Jonathan taken from this text. We could speculate that the words Machar Chodesh evolved in the Nephite language into a name for the next new moon, or the next sabbath on a new moon. Additionally, though machar is translated as “morrow” in the KJV, it is also translated in more vague terms as “in time to come” (see for instance Joshua 4:6). So it is possible that “morrow month” is an awkward English representation of what is a more natural construction in the Nephite language that evolved from Hebrew.

4. Insufficient Information

Perhaps I have missed something that shows that “on the morrow month” is in fact used elsewhere in English, and that it would have been familiar to Joseph Smith and his 19th century audience.

Perhaps some people with more knowledge and experience in these subjects than I have can investigate these or other possibilities further. Whatever the case, this peculiar little phrase appears to be unique to the Book of Mormon, and demonstrates that the text is more complicated and original than a cursory reading suggests.

Please feel free to share any additional insights or ideas.

Chapter 3 of the book of 3rd Nephi in the Book of Mormon is interesting in that it is one of the few sections of the text which purports to give us a glimpse of how the Gadianton Robbers viewed themselves, rather than how they were viewed by Mormon and his Nephite protagonists. Verses 2 through 10 are the record of an epistle written to the governor of the Nephites, Lachoneus, from the leader of the Gadianton Robbers, Giddianhi:

“2. Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write this epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty; yea, ye do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god, in the defence of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so.

“3. And it seemeth a pity unto me, most noble Lachoneus, that ye should be so foolish and vain as to suppose that ye can stand against so many brave men who are at my command, who do now at this time stand in their arms, and do await with great anxiety for the word—Go down upon the Nephites and destroy them.

“4. And I, knowing of their unconquerable spirit, having proved them in the field of battle, and knowing of their everlasting hatred towards you because of the many wrongs which ye have done unto them, therefore if they should come down against you they would visit you with utter destruction.

“5. Therefore I have written this epistle, sealing it with mine own hand, feeling for your welfare, because of your firmness in that which ye believe to be right, and your noble spirit in the field of battle.

“6. Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you.

“7. Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us—not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance.

“8. And behold, I swear unto you, if ye will do this, with an oath, ye shall not be destroyed; but if ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath, that on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you, and they shall not stay their hand and shall spare not, but shall slay you, and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct.

“9. And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this the secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us.

“10. And I write this epistle unto you, Lachoneus, and I hope that ye will deliver up your lands and your possessions, without the shedding of blood, that this my people may recover their rights and government, who have dissented away from you because of your wickedness in retaining from them their rights of government, and except ye do this, I will avenge their wrongs. I am Giddianhi.”

I hadn’t noticed this until recently, but it is remarkable how much Giddianhi sounds like a Marxist Revolutionary:

The works of the Gadiantons are “good.” They have been alienated by the wickedness of the Nephites who have withheld from them their rights, their rights of government, and done many wrongs to them. Significantly, in order to recover those rights they demand that the Nephites relinquish all their properties (“cities”, “lands”, “possessions”). They invite the Nephites to join them and become partners in all of their collective substance. If they refuse, they will be violently destroyed, with the implication that their possessions will be taken into the collective by force anyway, but that they will be killed instead of being able to enjoy them collectively.

Over the last few years there has been an effort among some liberal Mormons to legitimize the view that Socialism is compatible with the Restored Gospel. They sometimes cite Book of Mormon and other scriptural descriptions of an ideal, Zion society in which the people have “all things in common” and “no poor among them” as well as injunctions to care for the poor and needy, and condemnations of the “love of money” and those who “covet their own property.”

When the ancient scriptures describe Zion societies, with all things in common and no poor, they are curiously silent about the specifics. They describe the ends, but do not explain the means other than that it has to do with the righteousness of the people.

But Giddianhi’s epistle illustrates that not every society in which the participants are equal partners and have all property in common is a Zion Society, even if they do use the rhetoric of rights and justice. Sometimes those who propose to share all substance in common really are just robbers, even if in their own minds they think they are justified by the wickedness of others.

Some LDS advocates for Socialism cite the ends as if that alone were sufficient argument for the political means they propose to achieve them. And when someone disagrees, rather than defend the means they propose, they insinuate that those who disagree do so because they are opposed to the ends. But it is the means by which Socialists propose to create such a society that are the sticky point.

Are the means moral and compatible with the principles of the Restored Gospel?

Are the means capable of really accomplishing the ends they claim?

Do the means have unintended consequences that undermine their ends?

Do the means achieve the spiritual and moral objectives associated with the ends or just a superficial physical, material equality?

Do they create a Zion in the hearts of the people which then flows outward into society or do they create an artificial outward appearance of Zion, externally imposed on still covetous, wicked hearts?

Does it create a society of “shared substance” like the Gadianton Robbers or a Zion society of “all things in common”?

In recent years, a number of Mormon intellectuals have been spreading the meme that what matters in the church is not correct belief (orthodoxy) but correct practice (orthopraxy). In other words, like the Catholic contact I met years ago, they believe that it doesn’t really matter if you believe in the principles and doctrines that the leaders of the church teach. So long as you conform to the practices that the church can easily measure, such as paying tithes, obeying the dietary restrictions of the Word of Wisdom, attending church meetings, and holding regular family night, then you are a good, faithful Mormon and beyond reproach, even if you spend your time on the internet, and elsewhere, trying to convince others to adopt unorthodox beliefs that are clearly contrary to church teachings and leaders.

Let’s call this “Orthopraxy” meme what it is: Pharisaism. Those who practice Mormonism after this fashion are modern Mormon Pharisees.

Despite the fact that it is the conservative members of the church who are more often labelled “Pharisees” for their perceived rigid insistence on conformity to church teachings, it is this liberal cafeteria mode of Mormonism that matches more closely to the doctrine of the Pharisees.

Contrary to popular modern assumptions, in many respects the Pharisees were not the conservative, entrenched church hierarchy we often envision. It was the conservative Sadducees who were the wealthy, aristocratic, and priestly class that clung stubbornly to scriptural literalism. Politically the Pharisees were by comparison the more liberal populists, receiving more support from the common people and having a more democratic sentiment. The Pharisees were the intellectuals and scholars. Unlike the Sadducees, they believed in a continuously expanding understanding of the scriptures based on ongoing intellectual debate between rabbis and continual analysis and arguments, as well as “oral Torah” traditions and the precedents of previous debates. The Talmud’s Pharisaical declaration that “”A learned mamzer takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest” is echoed by their modern intellectual heirs who insist, contrary to President Packer, that the intellect is far, far greater than the mantle.

Where there righteous Pharisees?  Yes, of course.  Jesus condemned the Pharisees of his time notfor being intellectuals but for being hypocrites. The word hypocrisy comes from Greek roots related to “stage acting”. Hypocrisy is about putting on a show; it is “feigned belief.” The Pharisees were not condemned for their rigid insistence on conformity to church teachings, as common modern accusations against faithful Mormons would imply. All of the competing contemporary groups of the time were also legalistic and rigid regarding following the law, including the followers of John the Baptist who earned Jesus’ approbation. It was the fact that the Pharisees insisted on conforming rigidly to the open, visible religious practices while in secret rejecting the Lawgiver himself and conspiring to have him unjustly put to death that made them truly hypocritical.

In practice they had a form of godliness (orthopraxy) but they didn’t actually believe in the power thereof (orthodoxy).

We all fall into the kind of hypocrisy where our private actions conflict with our public statements. This is often a hypocrisy of weakness, where our actions do not always conform to our verbal statements of belief; not because our belief is not sincere, but because in our imperfection we fall short of that sincere belief. The Pharisees were clearly guilty of this kind of hypocrisy, and in that sense we are all Pharisaical.

But those who advocate “orthopraxy” as a mask for unbelief are endorsing a systematic hypocrisy in which they knowingly go through the motions of belief before men, to give the appearance of belief, when they do not in fact believe. That is truly Pharisaical in a way that true believers can never achieve.

And like their ancient spiritual progenitors, modern Pharisees often try to justify themselves using legalistic technicalities: technically, they believe the Book of Mormon is “inspired” because “inspired” means something more nuanced than what most believers mean…; technically they believe Joseph Smith is a prophet, because a prophet is something more broad than most believers understand; technically they believe the church is “true” in the sense that….

Even in their “orthopraxy” they use technicalities to claim belief: they gave about 10% directly to a charity of their choosing instead of the church, so technically they are a “full tithe payer”; since the Word of Wisdom says people should eat meat sparingly, and people who eat a lot of meat answer the temple recommend question about obeying the Word of Wisdom in the affirmative even though they clearly don’t obey all of what it says, they also technically can say they obey the Word of Wisdom, even though they regularly drink coffee or alcohol; technically, Faith is the same thing as Doubt because Faith means that you don’t know for sure, and not knowing is technically doubting….

This is the same technicality-game played by bright children and rebellious teens with their parents in which they conveniently vacillate between ambiguity and an absurd degree of literalness to achieve a technical win: “You said I couldn’t GO play with my friends, you didn’t say that THEY couldn’t COME HERE to play with me!” “I didn’t bite her, I pinched her with my teeth!”

They aren’t really fooling anyone. Getting off on a technicality isn’t the same as being innocent, and they know it.

To make these kinds of pettifogging justifications, they employ a Reductionist approach in which they try to break Faith down into oversimplified, singular, analyzable steps and definitions; linear hoops through which they can jump, the sum of which supposedly amount to “Faith.” But Faith is more than the sum of its apparent parts. It is not reducible. This is the exact error that the Pharisees made. They tried to reduce Faith into orthopraxy; a multitude of strict hoops through which they jumped as an alternative to real Faith. And just as faith without works is dead, works without faith are dead. Modern revelation makes this concept of “dead works” explicit. If you show me your faith by your works when you don’t actually have faith, then you are being Pharisaical.

Where does this leave those who do not yet believe, but are trying to get a testimony through action? Clearly even Jesus taught that if you want to know if the doctrine is of God, you have to do it to find out. And Alma taught that you plant the seed in order to see if it grows. In fact, all our beliefs almost always come about through action. The confirmation comes through action. What if a person does not believe in God and so they attempt to pray to find out if God exists? Isn’t this also “orthopraxy” without “orthodoxy”? Why isn’t this also hypocritical?

The difference lies in the fact that the Pharisee is going through the motions in order to maintain an appearance of belief to other people, or at least certain other people. The Pharisee’s goal isn’t to increase his belief, but to legitimize and maintain his unbelief while reaping some kind of benefit associated with belief.

The searcher, on the other hand, does not claim to believe, but is honestly seeking belief through action. It’s the difference between dishonestly pretending to be what you are not and honestly attempting to become more than you are. The seeker isn’t going to feign belief or quibble about technical belief in order to get a calling, or receive a temple recommend, or keep family peace. The seeker isn’t looking to influence the Church into changing to match her views, she is attempting to change her views to match those of the church by putting into practice what the church teaches.

In his interview with PBS, Elder Holland made it clear that we aren’t going to kick people out of the church just because they do not believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. But he also warned that if they try to convert others to that view then they have crossed a line. Even then, he says, the church tries to be patient, but that patience is an act of charity, not acceptance. It’s still apostasy. And the church is exhibiting patience with apostasy motivated by love, not tolerance for a different kind of acceptable faithfulness.

“But, they have fervent testimonies of the Atonement of Jesus!” I hear some remonstrate. “They are good people.” These things are equally true of many Catholics and Protestants I know and it doesn’t make them Mormons. I have no problem with my Catholic and Protestant friends who want to hang with us Mormons, come to church, participate in activities, and basically participate to the full extent any non-member can. They may even come to hold Joseph Smith in a favorable light, and consider the Book of Mormon to be inspired after a fashion. But that doesn’t make them Mormons either.

So let’s resist this new Mormon Pharisaism and aspire to real faith; to be real, believing Latter-day Saints and not Mormons in Practice Only. And to those who do not yet believe: aspire to believe; yearn to receive a personal witness and act upon that yearning with integrity.

Let us strive to have not only the form of godliness but also the power thereof.

UPDATE: Please see my comments in the conversation below where I address some of the immediate criticisms of this post, as well as some of the more common criticisms I have seen elsewhere.  My comments are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

However, other projects and responsibilities soon pushed the New Testament work to the back-burner.

With the adult Sunday school curriculum in the LDS church shifting to study the New Testament during 2011, I made an extra effort to get something finished by the end of 2010.

While the update to add the New Testament to the Scripturelog plugin for WordPress might not be available for another week or two,  the outline of the New Testament is available for download immediately in PDF format so it can be used and printed by anyone:

An Outline of the New Testament

As with the other outlines, I spent a great deal of time reading commentaries and articles about the New Testament, about the individual books in it, and prayerfully going through the text itself chapter by chapter, and page by page, to try to identify ways to organize the parts.

Rather than attempt a comprehensive outline, I aimed to produce an outline that would help illuminate some of the traditional divisions and relationships in the text, as well as changes in theme, narrative, or focus, by placing structural sign posts to help readers orient themselves as they study.

As with my other efforts to outline scriptures, I came away from this project with a renewed love, and improved understanding of the New Testament, which made the whole endeavor well worth it.

I hope it can also be helpful to others as they prepare for the upcoming 2011 curriculum.

There also have been some minor revisions to my outlines for the Old Testament and The Book of Mormon, including the addition of some PDF bookmarks to make navigating the PDF documents much easier.  You can find links to download the newest revisions of any of the outlines on the ScriptureLog Website.

Happy New Year!

While the sample size only represents 4% of books ever published, and the approach is often limited by the complexity of language usage, the project offers a fascinating (not to mention fun!) look not just into language, but into comparative cultural trends, historical events, fads, celebrity, and influence.

And best of all, Google has provided a free web-based interface so that anyone can play around with Ngram searches.

For instance, the Ngram Viewer can be used to compare the usage of the terms Mormon vs LDS:

When I first became aware of the tool on Friday, one of the first things I thought of was what the angel Moroni said about the prophet Joseph Smith’s name when he first appeared to the prophet:

“He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.”

I also remembered the first verse of the revelation contained in section 122 of the book of Doctrine and Covenants where the Lord declares of Joseph Smith:

“The ends of the earth shall inquire after thy name, and fools shall have thee in derision, and hell shall rage against thee;”

Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805; 205 years go this week. I thought it would be interesting to see what the Ngram Viewer could show concerning these prophecies about the prophet’s name compared to some other comparable religious and spiritual figures, as well as a few other influential or famous thinkers and historical characters.

After playing around with various names, I settled on the following names to compare to Joseph Smith:

• Abraham Lincoln – The 16th President of the United States
• Charles Darwin – the father of the Theory of Evolution
• Karl Marx – considered the Father of Communism
• Sigmund Freud – the father of modern Psychotherapy
• Ann Lee –  the founder of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, also called the Shaking Quakers or Shakers, in the U. S. in the 1770s.  Doctrine & Covenants Section 49 is directed at the Shakers.
• Emanuel Swedenborg – a well known Christian mystic in the late 1700s whose visions and theology have sometimes been compared to Joseph Smith.  His disciples included the father of Henry and William James. He also influenced Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Butler Yeats, Johnny Appleseed, Carl Jung, Helen Keller, and other well known figures.
• Mary Baker Eddy – the founder of Christian Science in the late 1800s
• Ellen White – visionary founder of the Seventh Day Adventists in the late 1800s
• Charles Russell –  the founder of the Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society in the late 1800s, which later became the Jehovah’s Witnesses
• Adolf Hitler – Infamous leader of the  National Socialist German Workers Party
• Emily Dickinson – the reclusive American poet

Here are the combined results for the search:

According to this measure, Abraham Lincoln clearly has produced the greatest and longest lasting discussion among this selection.  After many years of decline, he was briefly surpassed by Karl Marx after the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and a decade or so later Freud, who had been steadily increasing, was also comparable to Lincoln.  Thankfully, Lincoln began to regain ground in the 1980s and has continued to do so, while Marx simultaneously declined at about the same rate as Lincoln’s resurgence, and Freud has been in decline since about the mid-1990s.

(As an aside, it is interesting that the references to Karl Marx began a steady decline about a decade before the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the end of the cold war. I wonder what kinds of predictions we might try based on current trends?)

How does Joseph Smith fare by this measure?  Interestingly, he is most comparable to Charles Darwin, Emily Dickinson, and Adolf Hitler (after the 1950s).   If you are talking about names that  are “had for good and evil among all nations ” and names after which “the ends of the earth shall inquire,” being in the company of the names like Darwin, Dickinson, and Hitler is quite impressive. Especially contrasted with the other religious founders in this group.

Here are individual charts for Joseph Smith and each other individual:

Joseph Smith vs Abraham Lincoln

Joseph Smith vs Charles Darwin

Joseph Smith vs Karl Marx

Joseph Smith vs Sigmund Freud

Joseph Smith vs Ann Lee

Joseph Smith vs Emanuel Swedenborg

Joseph Smith vs Mary Baker Eddy

Joseph Smith vs Ellen White

Joseph Smith vs Charles Russell

Joseph Smith vs Adolf Hitler

Joseph Smith vs Emily Dickinson

In some ways it is hard to compare these names.  For instance, I am sure that there are numerous references to the prophet as “Joe Smith” or just “Smith” that are not found by searching for “Joseph Smith”.  There are also likely some Joseph Smiths that refer to individuals other than the prophet, but while a search for Joseph Smith Jr. would help exclude these, it would be too specific and miss all of the references to just Joseph Smith.  So I stuck with Joseph Smith.

I then applied a similar approach to the other names.  For instance, a search for “Hitler” or “Marx” would yield far more references than “Adolf Hitler” or “Karl Marx,” but because I can’t search for just “Smith” for Joseph Smith, I decided to only search for the highest yielding version of  each individual’s full name.  In some cases, like Charles Russell and Ellen White, that meant excluding middle names for the same reason that I excluded the Jr. for Joseph Smith, even though they may accidentally include others with the same name.  In the case of Mary Baker Eddy, however, including the middle name produced higher results than without, so I used that name.

This is hardly a comprehensive study.  It’s just a blog post based on my own messing around with the Ngram Viewer during a few hours.  The viewer has numerous options. You can select different collections of books and languages, and change the way it averages the data.  I ran all of my comparisons using the default English corpus and a smoothing of 3. Switching the smoothing option to 0, for instance, results in a chart of the raw data:

You can learn more about how the Ngram Viewer works and what its different options do here.  There are still innumerable applications to this topic as well as many, many others.

Go play with it.  Then share what kinds of cool things you have tried.

UPDATE 12/19/2010

My friend Brian Duffin pointed out another interesting thing. If you search the Ngrams for “Jesus” there is a huge spike in the frequency of references to Jesus that starts just before 1800 and climbs rapidly to its highest points between 1810 and 1815, and while it fluctuates, it remains high until around 1842, after which it declines quickly, resurges briefly during the Civil War, and then steadily declines until nearly 1980. Since then it has been rapidly climbing, though not quite as fast as it did in the first decade of 1800.

Jesus

Interestingly, the highest spike corresponds to the years just before Joseph Smith’s birth in 1805 until he was about 10 or 11 years old. This lends support to the prophet’s declaration that in about 1817 “there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion.”  Apparently there was an unusual excitement, not just in the region where he lived, but in the English Language in general. The frontier folk may have been behind the trend by a few years.

Also interesting, the excitement remains relatively high throughout the prophet’s life, getting nearly has high toward the end of his life as the beginning, and then begins its rapid decline almost exactly when Joseph Smith is murdered in 1844.

Thanks Brian!

My father said that he believed that the white and yellow stuffs were frankincense and myrrh that some friends had brought them back from the Middle East.   The coin I vaguely remembered from a family vacation we had taken many years before.  It was a road trip from Utah to New York and Washington D. C. and back, stopping along the way to visit sites from U. S. and LDS Church history.

The city of Nauvoo, Illinois, was founded by the prophet Joseph Smith and the Mormons in 1839 after they had been driven out of the state of Missouri.  Between 1839 and 1846 when it was finally abandoned by most of the Latter-day Saints, it had grown to be the second largest city in the state next to Chicago.

While we were visiting Nauvoo those many years ago, we had gone over to edge of the town to the banks of the Mississippi river.  I remembered that my father had spotted a coin half-buried in the mud of the river bank.  He picked it up and washed it off.  It looked old, and he wondered if might be old enough to have been from the time the Saints lived there.

Somehow, after the road trip and many years, the coin had been mostly forgotten until I found it in the little metal box.

Though the coin is very worn, especially on the obverse side, after doing a little research we are fairly certain that it is a Large One Cent Liberty coin, featuring the Coronet Head Braided Hair design that was minted in the United States from 1839 to 1857, right during the Nauvoo period until about 10 years after the Mormons left for what would eventually become Utah.

This particular coin is probably too worn to be worth very much compared to others of the same type and date.  Who knows if it had actually been used by someone in Nauvoo or if it had been carried by the water from elsewhere upriver.  But the fact that it was found by my own father on the banks of the Mississippi in Nauvoo and dates to the very era when Joseph Smith and the LDS Church were there, makes it a valuable treasure for us that connects us to our history and heritage.

Looking at the coin I can imagine the prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum crouching in the darkness in the mud of that very river bank, before climbing into a small boat with Porter Rockwell who would row them to the opposite side so they could escape to the west, only to return the next day at the insistence of family and friends and be murdered days later by a mob of conspiring, wicked men.

You never know what you’ll find in your parents’ stuff, or in the mud!

She describes young women who are choosing to leave the church rather than “shrink themselves down and become less” to fit into the role prescribed by the Church for women because the “vision we give them of their future is not a future they want.”  To confront this issue, she and others have created “Women Advocating for Voice and Equality” (WAVE).  Their objective is to change the church.

I empathize a lot with these women.  I have watched over the last 6 years, mostly from the sidelines, as these Internet communities of Mormon feminists have grown.  They often have heartbreaking stories of abuse and pain, often caused by men who wickedly point to church doctrines in order to justify their unrighteousness.

But this new wave of Mormon Feminism will fail.

Sister Edmunds explains their method for effecting the changes she would like to see in the church this way:

“If we look for a model of effective change for women in the church, we can look to the issues of birth control and working women. For decades, leaders preached about the evils of birth control, until women flat out rejected the counsel. They preached about the dangers of women working outside of the home, but women continued to do it in greater numbers until leaders have had to accept it. Strict essentialist gender roles often bear so little resemblance to our actual lives, we just have to keep living in the manner best for our family, and things will catch up.”

So, according to sister Edmunds, the way to effect change in the Church is through actively rejecting the counsel of the prophets with which we disagree until they are forced to accept and change; disobey and disregard until the rules are changed.  If I am misunderstanding then I apologize in advance.

Do these women understand what they are advocating? When has a people or an individual ever been blessed because they rejected the words of the prophets?

Even if we withhold judgment about whether the changes they seek are good or not, and even disregarding whether their approach achieves its ends or not, the means by which they intend to accomplish those changes are not of God.

The fact that women rejected the prophet’s counsel regarding working outside the home until the practice became so widespread that many women, regardless of their personal preference, were forced to enter the workforce in order to support their families as two-income homes became the economic baseline for meeting normal family financial needs does not mean that the counsel was not inspired and correct.

Even though the Lord had told him ‘no’ multiple times, Martin Harris persisted in asking the prophet Joseph for permission to take the manuscript of the Book of Mormon home to show his dubious wife, until finally the Lord gave him what he wanted.  The results were disastrous.

Despite prophets’ contrary counsel, the Israelites wanted a king, and finally the Lord gave them one.  The second book of Chronicles relates the long term tragic results.

Be careful what you ask for because if you persist, eventually the Lord may just give it to you even when he knows that you are wrong and has said so previously.

It’s possible, I suppose, that the new Mormon feminists will ignore, disobey, and agitate until they get what they want.  But if they do, in the long run it will be to their condemnation and sorrow.

Many of these women think that the church should change to allow women to be ordained to and serve in offices in the Priesthood.  I have no idea whether that change will ever happen or not.  God can decide to give His priesthood to whomever will best accomplish his purposes, and I cannot say that he wont decide to extend priesthood offices to His daughters one day. But I can say that the method by which the Mormon feminists aim to achieve this and their other aims is completely contrary to the Priesthood itself.

Section 84 of the book of Doctrine and Covenants of the church explains:

“And also all they who receive this priesthood receive me, saith the Lord; For he that receiveth my servants receiveth me; And he that receiveth me receiveth my Father; And he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him. And this is according to the oath and covenant which belongeth to the priesthood. ”

Trying to receive the priesthood by rejecting the guidance of the Lord’s authorized servants is a contradiction because the oath and covenant of the priesthood itself requires that we receive his authorized servants.

That doesn’t mean that women have no recourse to bring about changes in the church. There is a proper model: Obedience, submission, and supplication, instead of disobedience, defiance, and evangelism.  God actively guides His Church.  If there are changes that need to be made, then they should be addressed with Him directly.  If women and men will humbly submit to the counsel of the Lord’s authorized servants, and raise their voices in continual, faithful supplication to God concerning their sorrows and griefs, He will see their humility, obedience, sacrifice, and righteousness and He will hear their pleas.  And because of their obedience and faith He will bless them, and if necessary intercede according to his superior wisdom and love.

I am not advocating submitting to an abusive husband or to unrighteous dominion by priesthood leaders.  But I am advocating submission to the counsel and teachings of the prophets and apostles, even if you disagree, and keeping your disagreements generally private, trusting that the Lord hears your prayers, and relying on the Lord to correct his servants if they should be corrected, and trusting Him if he does not.

This approach requires that you believe that the Lord is real and guides His church, that the priesthood is real, that the prophets and apostles of the church are in fact His servants, that he hears and answers your prayers, and above all that he loves you.

Isaiah warns us in chapter 50:

“Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.”

If they seek to illuminate their way with the sparks and fire of feminism, instead of obeying the voice of the Lord’s authorized servants and trusting in God, then the new Mormon feminists will fail. The path of disobedience can only end in apostasy and sorrow.

However, contrary to my usual interests, last month I picked up a newly released book by David J. West entitled Heroes of the Fallen.  I had run across West’s blog a few months earlier, and I had been following his posts.  I knew that he was an aspiring LDS author, but I hadn’t followed his blog closely enough to realize that he had a book about to be published.  When he announced it’s release, I was intrigued by what I had already gathered from his blog.  So I headed over to the local bookstore where he was doing a book signing and purchased an author-signed copy. I finished Heroes of the Fallen in about a week.

The book is set in the ancient America of the Book of Mormon, around 320 or so years A.D.  This setting is both a benefit and a challenge for the author.  West benefits from a pre-existing setting, complete with unusual names and places, a history, language, political system, and religious beliefs.  My favorite fantasy writers, like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Lloyd Alexander, drew upon the histories, myths, and legends of the ancient civilizations with which they were familiar, borrowing names, plots, archetypes, and themes in order to lend weight and coherence to their works.  In some ways, Heroes of the Fallen benefits similarly from the Book of Mormon.  By adapting and extrapolating from the Book of Mormon, West is able to concentrate on filling in the details and bringing to life a fully-realized, exotic, ancient civilization without having to invent it whole-cloth.

But this benefit is also a liability too.  Unlike the Icelandic Volsungasaga, the Norse Eddas, or the Germanic Nibelungenlied from which Tolkien derived some of his work, all of which are completely unfamiliar to most modern readers,  as a book of scripture, The Book of Mormon is much more familiar to LDS readers of Heroes of the Fallen, which are its natural audience.  I found it difficult to evaluate West’s book on its own merits because in my mind I kept comparing what he was describing to my own understanding and experience with the Book of Mormon.

This comparison problem is complicated by the fact that the book has been billed in some reviews as historical fiction and not fantasy.  Tolkien was not trying to retell the Saga of the Volsungs, he was deriving a new faerie story by including elements from the Icelandic saga.  West, on the other hand, has clearly done an immense deal of research in order to present a believable setting that is both consistent with the Book of Mormon and ancient America, and the plot is situated firmly in events from the Book of Mormon.  So his texts invites a comparison that Tolkien’s does not.  I wonder if a non-LDS reader might enjoy the book more because he or she could approach it as a Fantasy novel, enjoying the detail and cohesiveness facilitated by its Book of Mormon origin, without the distraction of comparison.  On the other hand, perhaps without the familiarity with the Book of Mormon, a non-LDS reader would find many of the references to earlier events and characters a nonsensical distraction instead of an enhancement.  So the Book of Mormon setting is both a boon and a demerit.

Despite West’s expansive research and detail, the ancient America he paints includes a great deal of speculation, exaggeration, and imagination and his novel is better because of it.  He doesn’t let what we supposedly know or what we don’t know stand in the way of crafting an interesting story.  It is a story of ancient warfare, political and religious intrigue, and courageous but often flawed heroes.  The characters often read like super-heroes– seven and eight foot tall warriors, rippling with Arnold-Frieberg-style muscles who can leave fist marks in solid wood beams that they punch in frustration.  Some of his main characters are derived not from the Book of Mormon text itself, but from somewhat obscure LDS historical trivia, like Zelph the White Lamanite, and the Prophet-Judge Onandagus.  In fact, the only character from the Book of Mormon itself to appear as a substantial main character in Heroes of the Fallen is Mormon himself, and most of the events of the plot are not recounted in the scriptures.  This leaves West a lot of room to develop his story and characters independent of specifics from the Book of Mormon by filling in the gaps with his own story.  So in addition to Zelph and Onandagus, there are lots of fun references for Mormon doctrine, history, and culture buffs, including Seer Stones, an appearance by one of the Three Nephites, Book of Mormon Archaeology, and testing Evil Spirits.

I dislike writing that tries too hard to be poetic or tries to come across as literary by over-employing descriptive devices.  At first I was worried that West’s writing was going to be like that.  His prologue was a little that way. Frankly, I think you could probably skip the prologue and then maybe come back to it at the end.  But I found that, on the whole, West did an admirable job of using striking and sometimes startling descriptions without distracting me or detracting from the story.

I do have a few complaints about the book, however.

First,  I wish the book had indicated that it was only part one of a long story.  I started the novel expecting it to reach a central climax where the building political, religious, and personal tensions and subplots come together.  But no, this is just part one in which everything is set up.  Sure there where sequences of action, but the plot only continues to thicken without ever coming to a conclusion, which I presume will come in the next book, or maybe a third.  It would have been better had the book been called Heroes of the Fallen – Book One or something like that.  It was kind of like watching The Empire Strikes Back and expecting it to reach some kind of resolution by the end.  Better managed expectations would have avoided my disappointment.

My second complaint was not the fault of the author.  I attribute it to poor editing.  “To nock an arrow” is a nice phrase.  “Zelph nocked an arrow” does read well.  But when everyone is “nocking” arrows every couple of pages it starts to feel tiresome.  How about some variation like “prepared” an arrow, or “placed” an arrow, or “set” an arrow, or “notched” and arrow, or even “readied his bow.”  This isn’t a serious error, all writers do it unconsciously, but I think it is something that an editor should have caught.  I probably would have noticed less if the first occurrence of “nocked” hadn’t been misspelled “knocked,”  which is even more the fault of the editor.  But that was the only misspelling I noticed.

My third complaint was that the book was very gory.  Perhaps this was unavoidable given both the human sacrificing elements drawn from ancient American archeology and history and the wars of degenerate, secret-society controlled nations drawn from the Book of Mormon.  But I did find the increasing amounts of spurting blood off-putting.  I have family members who would probably have enjoyed this book, but I have a hard time recommending it to them because I know that they will find the gore disturbing.

My last complaint is that there were a few distracting anachronisms.  The phrase “trade their freedom for security” for instance is used a couple of times in the novel.  I appreciate how the book tried to explore issues of freedom and security, but I wished that it had avoided this modern, cliché phraseology and found a way to say the same thing in different words that fit better with the ancient setting.  Another anachronism that stuck out to me was an apparent “Word of Wisdom” style prohibition on alcohol, coffee drinking, and smoking.  I suppose that falls under speculation, but it did stand out to me.  Other than that, however, West does a great job of bringing to life a degenerating ancient society without employing modern phrases that might pull us out of the story.

In fact, one thing that I really liked about Heroes of the Fallen, was that the Book of Mormon society that it paints is not very similar to the kind of American democratic, constitutional government society we have today.  The Nephite government in Heroes of the Fallen is, in my opinion, a much more accurate depiction than I’ve typically seen.  The Judges who reign over the Nephites may be elected to the judgment seat by a democractic voice of the people, but they are much more like the judges of ancient Israel than modern politicians, and even the good ones are more like Warlords than Senators.

Heroes of the Fallen is well done and other than the fact that I was not prepared to wait for the sequel for a resolution, I enjoyed it a great deal.  I recommend you purchase a copy from amazon.com and check it out.