Given Greg's comment on the other thread about my failure to take proper steps in advance of posting interviews to ensure that the interviewee is satisfied with my report, I am temporarily removing this until I can check with Mike.
Ilya Somin on the fall of the Berlin Wall
5 hours ago
10 comments:
Interesting comments; it's unfortunate Mr. Stahura blatantly misrepresents the beliefs of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I would be happy to clarify many of Mr. Stahura's erroneous comments.
BPeay,
I agree with you that at least one comment Mike made appears to be downright false: namely, that the LDS plan of salvation doesn't mention Jesus or the cross. In Mike's defense, this was an oral interview and he didn't know the questions ahead of time, so he had no time to prepare his remarks or think ahead about what he was going to say. I seriously doubt this was a deliberate or premeditated misrepresentation on his part.
I believe that Mike is sincere in his statements. He believes that his interpretation of the Bible is straightforward and self-evident, so if you do not share his interpretation then it is not a rejection of him but of the Bible itself. Similarly, Jesus and the cross have a very specific meaning for Mike, and so Mike takes Mormonism's revision of that meaning as tantamount to a denial of Christ himself. Now, you and I can agree that Mike's epistemology is naïve and misguided, but hopefully we can also agree that he is a sincere person with strong convictions who deserves to be taken seriously and may actually have some valid things to say.
Thanks,
-Chris
Chris that seems really generous to believe that a man who was a member of the church and has taught multiple classes on the church should be excused in his statements just because he didn't have a chance to prepare them. Say he had gotten a date or name wrong, fine we can excuse that to lack of preparation. His comments were on the fundamental issues of a religion that he portrays himself as an expert it. Sorry but his statements have to be taken seriously and at face value.
Perhaps I am being too generous, ldspsygenius. Obviously Mike is wrong, you'll get no argument from me on that count. But he truly, genuinely did not strike me as the type to knowing tell a lie about the LDS Church in an interview. So is he perhaps less knowledgeable than he presents himself as being? Is he perhaps less sympathetic than he pretends? I can buy those possibilities. But I sincerely do not believe he was being deliberately dishonest.
That's just my impression, but hopefully it will carry at least some weight with you.
Chris, thanks for the three posts about your interviews. They have been fascinating to read.
One quick question that jumped to mind as I read this post:
Is Mike the only ex-Mormon of the three? I believe so, based on the posts. If so, his statements fit perfectly into what I have seen from many who leave the Church and participate in or lead anti-Mormon ministries (and I use that term simply to mean "ministries that attack Mormonism"). There is a level of biterness and anger that simply isn't there with your first two interviewees - which would explain their different approaches to a great degree, imo.
I hear so many people like Mike say things like, "Jesus and the cross is nowhere in the Mormon Plan of Salvation," that I have to believe it is a corporate line, if you will, in that circle - and he probably believed it after hearing it enough.
Having said that (and trying to be charitable), if he is equating "Jesus and the cross" with the theology that encompasses "Jesus and the cross" in Mormonism and in evangelicalism, he has a limited point. His phraseology is HORRIBLE and wrong, but if he's just saying that the way HE views Jesus and the cross are not represented in Mormonism, I'm not going to argue with him.
Ray
Hi Ray,
It's true that ex-anythings tend to be more radically opposed to the thing they've left behind than those who have never had any commitment to it. Generally it takes an awful lot to cause someone to undergo a complete change in worldview. You don't make a change like that without investing a lot of thought and energy and passion in the question. So I suppose it's fairly natural that the people who leave the church would be the ones who feel very strongly. Certainly in some cases this takes the form of anger and bitterness, but I don't think it is always or necessarily that way.
I didn't get an "angry" vibe from Mike. I got an "I really want to dissociate myself from wishy-washy folks like Ravi Zacharias" vibe. The strong language was almost a way of proving his own conviction to an evangelical community that might be inclined to doubt it on account of his participation in interfaith dialogue.
Interestingly enough, if you read my interview with Greg Johnson you'll see him doing the same thing (albeit to a lesser degree). Left to his own devices, I don't think Greg would go out of his way to say that Mormonism is outside historic Christianity. But he has taken criticism from other evangelicals for being too wishy-washy, and so I think he feels compelled to make strong statements like this so as to avoid the appearance of compromising his values.
I probably did Mike a disservice by reporting this interview out of sequence. The first paragraph, where he distances himself from Zacharias, was actually the last thing we talked about. Mike talked about dialogue and relationship evangelism during the first part of our conversation, which suggests these are the things he deeply cares about. Only after I made the comparison to Zacharias did he jump in with the really strong critical language in order to distance himself from Zacharias's approach.
That's not to say that this language doesn't really represent Mike's own view. But it is to say that I think we need to be sensitive to the broad range of motives that might be involved, and not simply assume that Mike is motivated by rage or vendetta.
Best,
-Chris
It is morally inexcusable for anyone, let alone someone in a position of influence and authority, to teach things that are demonstrably false or unfounded, no matter how sincere they are.
Mark,
I sympathize with your principle, but I also think that by that standard we're all damning ourselves the moment we deign to teach others anything. One can hardly expect to be right all the time, even if one is as brilliant as you and I. ;) If I stayed away from teaching for the rest of my life for fear that I might commit the heinous sin of teaching an untruth, I might have to pay my 100k-dollar school debt by working at McDonald's!
Peace,
-Chris
"It's true that ex-anythings tend to be more radically opposed to the thing they've left behind than those who have never had any commitment to it."
Well, I knew a former Baptist Minister in Georgia who joing the LDS Church, and had nothing bad to say about the Baptists afterward. Louie Novack was a Lutheran Minister who joined with the LDS, and he had nothing bad to say about the Lutherans later on, either.
I was just speaking of a general trend, not laying down the law of how it has to be.
I also think that converting from Protestantism to Mormonism is a little different from converting from Mormonism to Protestantism, since the former involves adding additional beliefs on top of the ones already held, whereas the latter involves rejecting these additional beliefs. In other words, the first is clearly conversion whereas the second is arguably more like deconversion.
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