I’ve written a lot about Mormonism, and often from a more academic and detached perspective. You won’t often find those writings here at this blog, but I figure I’d include this one. This paper concerns the role of postmodernism in Mormon apologetics. It should be of interest to some SHAFTers, as postmodernism and Mormonism are cultural competitors against secular humanism.

Over the past twenty-five years, there has been a dramatic rise in the volume and sophistication of Mormon apologetics. This rise has been especially pronounced in just the last decade or so. The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), the foremost Mormon apologetic outfit, became an official entity of Brigham Young University and now enjoys church funding. Websites like FAIRLDS, SHIELDS, Mormon Fortress, and others have also helped to popularize and make accessible LDS apologetics.

John-Charles Duffy, a young religious studies scholar at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, argues in a recent Dialogue article that postmodernism has been incredibly influential in Mormon apologetics and helps account for its ascendancy. To see why, one must know the history of Mormon scholarship.

Duffy identifies two dominant schools of thought in Mormon scholarship today: the “new Mormon history” and “faithful history.” The new Mormon history began in the late 1960s, and purports to be a more objective, less sectarian reporting of the LDS Church’s history. This new approach to church history broke with the traditional approaches in that it neither shied away from sensitive topics nor suppressed controversial conclusions.

The second school of thought in Mormon scholarship is “faithful history.” This “faithful history” was a response to and rejection of “the new Mormon history.” Scholars in this camp are orthodox Mormons, who believe all histories of Mormonism should be sympathetic and faith-promoting. In other words, Mormons should be engaged in apologetics, not academically rigorous histories.

The tensions between postmodern and modern thought exist in many religions. In Christianity, there is a debate between Protestant fundamentalists and liberals over Biblical inerrancy. Protestant fundamentalists are often considered anti-science, but where it concerns the Bible, they are wedded to the modern concepts of “objective knowledge” and “truth.” Liberal Protestants, however, have a more postmodern, metaphorical reading of the Bible. Mormonism is having a similar dialogue about the Book of Mormon historicity and other issues, but the roles are reversed. As Duffy notes, it’s the conservative, orthodox scholars that advance postmodernism against the more liberal scholars of the new Mormon history, who want a dispassionate approach to the LDS Church.

The success of the faithful history came with the demise of the new Mormon history during the 1980s and ‘90s. Louis Midgley and David E. Bohn, retired BYU political science professors and contributors to FARMS, were among the earliest and most dogged detractors of the New Mormon history. Midgley and Bohn employed a postmodern critique against the approach. In particular, they argued that any attempt at an objective Mormon history is futile, because all claims originate in an ideology and are “inescapably mediated by language and culture.” And since there is no objective or a priori means by which determine the truth or falsity of an ideology, all perspectives are valid. This philosophy resembles Nietzsche’s perspectivism, which says that we can only know things from our individual perspectives. Midgley and Bohn therefore urged all Mormon scholars to study from their religious perspectives and give up their pretenses of neutrality.

Bohn accused reputable Mormon scholars like Leonard Arrington and Lawrence Foster of excluding “non-scientific testimony of the role of God” in Mormon history. Midgley was less diplomatic and boldly indicted such historians of treason against the faith for not actively affirming Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims. These attacks proved devastating to the new Mormon history.

So-called “faithful historians” like Midgley and Bohn gained an audience with LDS church leaders. Church leaders were concerned that the new Mormon history scholars were flirting with apostasy by publishing what was at times unflattering research about Mormonism. Apostle Boyd K. Packer conveyed these concerns to BYU educators in an address he gave in 1981 titled “The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect.” “There is a temptation,” Packer said, “for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful.” He also warned that some scholars’ “posture of detachment” was “giving equal time to the adversary.”

Later, in 1991, the First Presidency released an official statement cautioning members from reading histories or attending research symposia that were not approved by the LDS Church. And throughout the ‘90s, the church was quick to discipline scholars who challenged the traditional LDS narrative. These actions had a chilling effect on all research into Mormonism that wasn’t expressly apologetic. Mormon scholarship is only now beginning to rebound.

So postmodernism was the bludgeon with which Mormon apologists beat down the new Mormon history. And apologists continue to use postmodern perspectivism to deflect criticisms of the LDS Church.

There is another way that Mormon apologists employ postmodernism. Duffy writes that apologists use perspectivist language “as the primary rhetorical resource for those who hope to win credibility for faithful scholarship within the academic mainstream.” They play on academia’s postmodern sympathies in order that their faithful perspective will get offered at or respected by universities other than, say, Brigham Young University. Again, their argument is that all perspectives are valid given postmodernism, so on what grounds can a faithful LDS perspective be excluded? LDS literary critic Michael Austin wants to see Mormonism counted among other minority histories. Austin believes that Mormons are hyphenated Americans, like African-Americans or Italian-Americans. He even coined the term “Mormo-American.”

Such appeals to academia’s tolerance of differing perspectives haven’t been successful. And noted Mormon historian Richard Bushman is somewhat relieved that they haven’t. “Wouldn’t we prefer,” Bushman asked, “to be taken seriously enough to be directly opposed rather than condescended to?”

Postmodernism is a double-edged sword for Mormon apologetics. Many professors at the very conservative BYU do not want to see their school become a bastion of postmodern thought. English professor Richard Cracroft fears that postmodernism will invariably bring with it “the creeds of secularism,” which include “immoralism, atheism, nihilism, negativism, perversity, rebelliousness, doubt, disbelief, and disorder.”

What’s more, it seems that orthodox Mormon apologists have yet to internalize the very postmodern philosophies that they use against their critics. On the one hand, the Mormon apologist dismisses truth as a fiction as per postmodernism. But on the other, they affirm that the LDS Church is “the one and only true Church.” These two sentiments cannot easily be reconciled. If the apologists were to fully adopt the philosophies they exploit, then postmodern Mormon apologetics would be a self-cannibalizing project. The orthodox scholars would have to surrender their claims to knowledge and objective, religious truth.

It will be interesting to see, then, whether postmodernism will keep its privileged role among Mormon intellectuals for much longer. I suspect it won’t. Postmodernism was not a philosophical commitment for apologists, but a novel convenience.

Already, Mormon scholarship seems to be trending back toward a new “new Mormon history.” In Duffy’s words: “…faithful scholars must capitulate to secular ground rules more than they might prefer as the price for participating in the academic mainstream, postmodern challenges to the Enlightenment notwithstanding.”