Hat tip to Danial Peterson for linking to this article by Ralph Hancock on what I call the neo-Hellenization of LDS apologetics and the Church underway amongst a small but influential body of LDS intellectuals within the Church (I use the term, not to mean literal Hellenism, of course, but in the sense that Hellenic culture and intellectual/political categories and assumptions were the coin of the intellectual realm as the Great Apostasy was taking shape, just as a contemporary secular humanism/naturalism, in various forms and in various degrees of interpenetration with other contemporary intellectual trends (often of the politically correct variety) exerts a sometimes tremendous and underestimated influence over the minds and value-systems of some LDS within the academic world). Theres nothing wrong in principle with studying Mormonism from an academic frame of references, of course. The problem, and a very critical one at that, comes when the intellectuals become disoriented and forget which way they face, to quote Elder Robbins from Octorbers General Conference. (Note: Terryl Givens, who is mentioned in passing at the beginning of the article, and of whom (and his wife) I have read very little at this juncture, is all but a hero to many NOM and exmo critics of the church, including some of the more relentless and visceral, in a number of venues (including the ever-beguiling Trailerpark), the reasons for which, given his primary concentration of dialogue with those who have suffered shaken faith and are under the influence of doubt may not be overtly apparent but which will doubtless bear some scrutiny in the future). ldsmag/to-whom-shall-we-go-from-apologetics-to-mormon-studies/
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 22:20:11 +0000
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