How about now? Can you see the star? All I have done is emphasize a few important dots, and now all I have to do is connect the dots.
With the dots now connected the star is easy to see. Sure the dots aren't perfectly aligned with the star but that's only because I didn't take the time fully flesh out the star. With a little more work the misalignment could be fixed and the minor discrepancies could be smoothed over. Only those who are extremely nitpicky will complain about the misalignment, and that only distracts from my point that there is a red star in there.
So why am I talking about a manufactured star and connecting the dots? As historians approach history, by definition, they do not have all the facts, nor were they impartial observers of the totality of events. It is the job of a historian to take as much information as possible and attempt to build a coherent image of the past, or at least a single person or event, based on as much information as possible. Historian effectively play an extremely complicated game of connect the dots.
Their work is very similar to mine, I cannot go directly and observe stars and galaxies close up, nor can I see how they behave over millions and billions of years, so I am reduced to playing a very complicated game of connect the dots.
But in these games there are certain rules. It is easy to connect the dots of history into just about any natural progression of events after the fact. But in doing so we have to be careful not to ignore those things that undermine the point we are trying to make.
For example, I could use the Declaration of Independence, Shays' Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Civil War, and the modern Tea Party to make the case that the founding principle of the United States is rebellion and distrust of government. I could probably write a fairly convincing argument, backed up with quotes from Thomas Jefferson, centered on the idea that to be American is to rebel.
But in order to make this argument I would have to ignore many other important founding principles of American society, such as representative democracy, constitutional government, separation of powers, personal liberties, and English common law. A similar argument regarding many other aspects of American society showing a coherent progression of history culminating in the latest manifestation of that defining characteristic. In fact most modern political positions attempt to do just that by tying current debates to what are assumed to be foundational principles.
Whenever we do this we run the risk of taking a few minor points of history and trying to superimpose a particular overall shape or interpretation to it. This is even more tempting when a few of the points are not just minor, but seemingly dominate the historical map (just like in the second image above). If I were to make the case that rebellion runs deep in American society I could make that argument quite persuasively using well known events such as the Revolutionary War, but to say that the United States is founded on rebellion ignores the fact that the United States was not organized from rebellion, but under a constitution formed out of democratic compromise. And it ignores the fact that the vast majority of American history did not involve rebellion, but democratic debate and the application of constitutional law.
So when I recently read an article by Grant Shreve entitled How Mormons Have Made Religion Out of Doubt, I thought about how he was connecting the dots. In his article Shreve makes the case that "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded on the idea of an evolving scriptural canon." While this is certainly true because it is a large and important point in LDS thought, he connects this central idea to other contemporary and historical events in such a way that he is effectively playing connect the dots by blatantly ignoring other large and just as important parts of LDS thought.
Shreve uses the story of James Colin Brewster to try to show that "If the church seems to have lost its way, a new revelation may be just around the bend." and that "The legacy of James Colin Brewster and numerous other Mormon dissidents lives on in the Remnant, a diffuse international movement of disaffected Mormons." This Remnant organization that Shreve sees as a natural product of LDS though, "answers the doubts many Mormons harbor by offering more revelations and additional scriptures."
Thus Shreve takes the idea of an open canon and makes the case that these historical and contemporary dissident movements are simply a natural extension of LDS thought. But in making this argument Shreve ignores other important points just as integral to LDS thought. Points such as priesthood authority and keys, and church hierarchy. He does briefly acknowledge these things, but they are not mentioned as foundational and fundamental to LDS thought.
While Shreve uses the concept of the open canon to make his point he completely ignores the actual content of that new canon. Just as someone might argue that the United States was founded on rebellion, they would have to ignore the fact that the United States is actually founded on constitutional democracy. They would have to ignore the bulk of US history and law.
The concepts of priesthood authority and church hierarchy are acknowledged by Shreve, but he views these not as foundational but later additions where Joseph Smith sought to "consolidated revelatory power in himself and a select cadre of elites." Furthermore, the structure of the church is only described in negative terms such as "elaborate", "complex" and made of "byzantine bureaucracies" which "disrupted the mystical and communal experiences of Mormonism’s salad days."
Thus the point that Shreve is trying to make is that the impulse to have new mystical revelations is the natural state of Mormonism, with new prophets popping up "if the church seems to have lost its way" to provide new books of revelation. Thus, based on this reasoning, the Remnant movement is truly following the principle started by Joseph Smith, and the elaborate, complex and byzantine bureaucracies of the modern LDS church only serve to stifle the true expression of Mormonism.
Unfortunately this game of connecting the dots blatantly ignores much of the rest of the content of Mormonism. The "consolidation of revelatory power" was not a late development imposed by Joseph Smith, but rather was an early and foundational principle. If we ignore this fact, we fail to see the whole picture of Mormonism.
4 comments:
I would be curious to hear your reaction to the big LIGO/VIRGO news today. Does it impact your work much?
Actually, the only claim I intended to make in the piece was about how Mormonism's dual commitments to continuing revelation and an open scriptural canon--even if those are sometimes in tension with other commitments and doctrines--creates a milieu in which religious doubt can find expression in forms other than simple unbelief. I was not making a sweeping claim about the essence of Mormonism, just isolating a strain of its history to think beyond the belief-unbelief dyad that normally structures how mainstream culture talks about apostasy, which is almost exclusively in terms of loss.
But also, Mormonism does feel unique in how sectarian separation manifests.
Hi Grant, thanks for stopping by.
I did think that your main idea was interesting. Certainly there is an assumption in our society that if there is doubt in or about religion then that doubt will result in a loss of faith, but as you pointed out that is not always the case.
There are two ideas at work with what you wrote. The first is your basic thesis, which you pointed out in your comment, the second is the specific cases of how the concept of an open LDS canon inspire the actions of dissenters. Your basic thesis is certainly important and needs to be explored further.
But, when it comes to the specific question of connecting James Colin Brewster and Denver Snuffer to the concept of an open LDS canon, that is where I think the justification and connection becomes suspect. Part of what prompted my thoughts was I was coincidentally reviewing David Hackett Fisher's book and was reading in in chapter 5 where he talks about fallacies of narration. Personally I think Fisher is a little harsh in that chapter, but he does have a point.
So while each historical point does have a common thread, a clean connection between them can only be drawn by subtracting off the milieu in which those events occurred. There are essentially two questions at work here. Is the story of James Colin Brewster really similar to that of Denver Snuffer? I would contend that other than a surface similarity of receiving revelation that was not accepted by the church there is no concordance between the two. The conditions, motivations, and content of their work for both of them are very different.
The second question is whether or not these revelations and the actions of those involved were and are theologically justified. Since this is not a historical question but a theological question the standard for judging is slightly different. I would strongly contend that neither of their revelations were theologically justified by the LDS concept of an open canon, because in both cases they would have to ignore the content of the expanded canon. The content of the canon provides no basis for authoritative revelations received in that way. But that is not strictly a historical question.
I'll admit that I'm not particularly concerned with whether or not these apocryphal revelations are theologically justified. Both Snuffer and Brewster (and many other splinter revelators) see/saw their revelations as extensions of the foundational experiences that gave birth to the church. That is, these revelations exist--in their minds at least--in continuity with the previous revelations. Joseph Smith's brief career certainly established a model of revisionary theology (which I do not mean as a pejorative; it's one of the things that most fascinates me about him), and the church obviously has spiritual mechanisms to revise or extend doctrines over time. (I'm not LDS, so my language here may be less than precise.)
Maybe a more elaborate version of my thesis, then, would be this: Joseph Smith's career, whether he wished it to or not, established--in the eyes of some--an approach to theology that was protean and revisionary. Whatever subsequent doctrines and hierarchies have been erected over the church's history can't fully shake this archetype. It democratizes revelatory experience at the same time that it enables to ground their own experiences within the basic narrative and historical frameworks of the church.
What has interested me is how many disaffected Mormons have tapped into this revelatory model and established splinter sects that continue to remain, nominally, Mormon. Obviously, Brewster and Snuffer are different people living in different eras with different motives. I don't deny that. And a more sustained analysis would account for these differences and discuss them. That being said, I don't think its wrong to want to draw some tenuous lines between the two, because some basic points of comparison definitely exist.
I'd actually be really interested in why you don't think they're comparable figures. That would definitely be instructive for me.
Finally, at the risk of undercutting everything I've said up to this point, the Brewster example in the paper was also a stylistic decision. I needed a good hook, and it's hard to find a better one than the story of a nineteenth-century child prophet.
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