Joseph Smith's Seeker Uncle

One of the lesser-known aspects of Joseph Smith's family history is that his uncle, Jason Mack, anticipated many of the themes that would become important to the Mormon movement. According to Lucy Mack Smith (cf. also the "preliminary manuscript" of Lucy's book in EMD v. 1), Jason was "a studious and manly boy" who became a "Seeker" by the age of sixteen. Among other things, he held that "there was no church in existence which held to the pure principles of the gospel." At age 20 he became a minister.

Jason apparently had a particular conviction that the gifts and signs and wonders of the New Testament were still available, and preached "incessantly to convert others to the same faith." In an 1835 letter to Solomon Mack, Jason reported that twelve years prior the Lord had "bestowed upon me the gift of healing by the prayer of faith." He apparently knew some basic field medicine as well, perhaps learned in the Revolutionary War. But his "chief reliance" was on "him who organized us at the first, and can restore at pleasure that which is disorganized." (The use of the term "organized" rather than "created" raises the interesting question of whether Jason rejected creatio ex nihilo.)

Jason's gift of healing brought a torrent of sick people to his door, but also provoked bitter persecution. But "it pleased God to take the weak to confound the wisdom of the wise." It pleased Jason, too. He particularly relished those times when, after an "infidel" doctor had pronounced a patient doomed, the patient was restored to health under Jason's care. That there may have been an apocalyptic streak undergirding his hostility to skepticism is implied by his report that his mind had been entirely "taken up with the deplorable situation of the earth, the darkness in which it lies." He felt such urgency to reach the darkened society that he held meetings and preached the gospel "day and night, from place to place."

One of the more interesting aspects of Jason's career is that he set up a sort of socialist, utopian commune. Jason's concern for the poor was such that he tended to give away most of his money and goods. His philanthropy seems to have inspired him to gather thirty impoverished families onto a tract of land he owned in New Brunswick, where he directed their labor and worked alongside them, and then set out by himself on a schooner to take their goods all the way to Liverpool for sale. This was an astonishing and dangerous journey for one man to take alone, and in fact he almost died en route. (Jason's philanthropy also inspired him to adopt an orphan boy named William Smith, who stayed with Joseph Sr. and Lucy for six months sometime around 1805. Perhaps this was the namesake of Joseph and Lucy's son William.)

The similarities between Jason Mack and Joseph Smith, Jr. are quite remarkable. Both were known for being studious and manly. Both developed an interest in religion at around the same age, and became convinced that there was no true church on earth. Both believed in signs and wonders and spiritual gifts. Both seem to have been hostile toward doctors and skeptics as well as toward institutional religion. Both were moved by an apocalyptic concern for a "darkened" society. Both were concerned for the poor and founded communitarian societies. And if Jason Mack did in fact reject creatio ex nihilo as one of his statements seems to imply, then he had that in common with Joseph as well.

Joseph and Jason seem not to have ever met. Jason visited the Smiths twice in Vermont just prior to Joseph's birth, and then seems to have been largely (though perhaps not entirely) out of touch with them until 1835. Yet even if Joseph never met his uncle, it seems likely that he heard stories from his mother. Jason's religious outlook may well have shaped Lucy's and, through her, Joseph Jr.'s. Or perhaps Lucy and her brother were simply beneficiaries of the same family culture. Whatever the case, it seems that radical, apocalyptic, communitarian religious ministry was in Joseph Jr.'s blood.

On the "Evils" of Judicial Activism

Some excellent points from Diane Wilson:

The 15th amendment, the one that finally wrote slavery out of the Constitution, was added in 1870. By 1954, the year of Brown v. Board of Education, the United States had made virtually no progress towards integration. In place of slavery, there were poll taxes, segregation, poverty, ghettos, and illiteracy to keep black men and women "in their place." It took integration, first ordered by the courts years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for white people to begin to learn to live side by side with black people. As my friend reminded us, even today, "separate but equal" is still a part of the uneasy feelings between races in America. It is still with us because court orders overrode social prejudice, because the courts did not wait for the legislatures of America to do the right thing. Without judicial activism, what would be the state of race relations in the United States? We can't know, but we can look at history and see how much progress was made from legal equality, granted in 1870, until the courts took action 84 years later with Brown v. Board of Education.

This has direct bearing on the issue of marriage rights. Once again, we are being told that the courts should stay out of it, that we should wait for social opinion and state legislatures to "come around." Judicial activism is just as unpopular today as it was at the height of the civil rights movement, but we so easily forget just how much of the success of the civil rights movement was won in the courtrooms of America, on constitutional issues. [...]

The courts must have a place in this war, because the war is fundamentally about the role of law in the United States, and the meaning of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law. It is about not just the meaning, but the value of having a Declaration of Independence that promises inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [...]

"Judicial activism" has not been about courts overstepping their boundaries. It has been about courts acting exactly within their constitutionally-defined role as check and balance on legislative and administrative power.

If the truly conservative position is to defend the role of the constitution as our guarantor of liberty, then it is also time for conservatives to come to terms with the role of the courts in defending our liberty and defending the constitution. That is not, and never was, the the sole responsibility of either the Congress or the President, precisely because of what we see today, that the Congress and the President are too easily influenced by social prejudice.

See also Vincent Bonventre's discussion of how some of the most hallowed court decisions in our history were highly "activist" and were lampooned as legislation from the bench.

Is America Getting More Secular?

A while ago I posted about the recent American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) results that seemed to show America getting more secular. Some of my recent reading leads me to be more cautious about that finding.

The main problem with ARIS is how to interpret the large "No Religion" and "Don't Know/Refused" categories. ARIS shows that the "No Religion" category includes 15% of the population, an increase of 6.8% since 1990. The "Don't Know/Refused" category apparently includes 5.2% of the respondents, an increase of 2.9% since 1990. In my earlier post I summarized these findings as showing "irreligion on the rise": an almost 9% increase in non-affiliation in the last two decades. But the reality may be more complicated.

The increase in the "Don't Know/Refused category," for example, may be a result of immigration and the decline of denominationalism. Immigrants and post-denominational Christians may not be familiar with the taxonomies on which these polls are based. The Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which had a smaller number of "Don't Know" responses, showed slightly higher percentages of Christians and practitioners of other religions. Thus, refusing to answer the question may not be a sign that one is irreligious or ambivalent toward religion.

ARIS's "No Religion" numbers, meanwhile, are substantially out of keeping with the results of other recent surveys, like the Pew poll. Pew found 16.1% of Americans to be unaffiliated. Of those, 5.8% are identified as "religious unaffiliated", 6.3% are "secular unaffiliated", and only 4% are atheist or agnostic. Thus, according to Pew, only 10.3% could be said to be truly non-religious. Compare this to the 15% "No Religion" figure cited from ARIS above.

So how do we account for the roughly 5% discrepancy between Pew's non-religious category and ARIS's? The ARIS report probably gives us our answer when it says the "No Religion" category "includes anti-clerical theists". In other words, those 5.8% who told Pew they were "religious unaffiliated" are telling ARIS-- which has no such category-- that they have "no religion". This category probably includes some me-and-Jesus evangelicals, as well as some confused but spiritual seekers like myself. Thus the ARIS survey may reflect an increase in nominal or anticlerical religion as much as a rise in irreligion.

Even correcting ARIS by cross-checking it against Pew may not give us a completely accurate picture. The Pew survey significantly underestimated the number of Latino Catholics and overestimated the number of unaffiliated Latinos. This is partly due to the not-truly-bilingual nature of the survey. Catholics are more common among Spanish-speaking Latinos than among English-speaking ones. It is also partly due to the Anglo-centric bias of the survey's classification scheme, which does not include major Latino denominations. As an example of the kind of difference these factors can make, the Pew survey showed that 84% of Latinos are Christian, whereas the more methodologically rigorous HCAPL survey (Hispanic Churches in American Public Life) put that number at 93% (Cf. Ch. 3 of the Pew report and Ch. 1 of the book Rethinking Latino(a) Religion and Identity). Moreover, Latinos are less likely than other groups to respond to surveys, and less likely than other groups to have land-line telephones. They are therefore probably underrepresented in the Pew and ARIS samples.

All of this is to say that despite the seemingly scientific nature of the ARIS findings, they must be taken with a grain of salt and very carefully interpreted. They may indeed reflect an increase in irreligion, but this increase is probably quite a bit less dramatic than it might superficially appear.

Sgoffing at Positivism

One of my pet peeves is when conservative religious apologists use epistemology as a stick with which to beat those with whom they disagree. Among evangelicals, the guilty parties that spring most immediately to mind are John Milbank and Alister McGrath. (When I read the latter's critique of John Hick, it was so stupid I wanted to throw the book across the room. My recent JRRT article was partly a response to those comments by McGrath.)

One of the more annoying Mormon examples of this is Alan Goff's sustained campaign against Dan Vogel in the FARMS Review. I intend comment briefly here on a few of Goff's remarks from his review of Dan's Joseph Smith biography, Making of a Prophet. Before getting around to the content of Dan's biography, Goff spends a significant chunk of his 80 pages (yes, an eighty-page book review) labeling Dan Vogel a "positivist". This is basically an ad hominem strategy designed to discredit Dan by dumping him into a "discredited" epistemological category.

The problem is that Goff's definition of positivism just isn't all that precise. Goff basically treats positivism as a synonym for naturalism. Although some other scholars use the terms with equal sloppiness, their meanings are not identical. Positivism refers to the view that something must be proven before we can accept it-- that is, verificationism. Karl Popper countered this with his falsificationist epistemology-- that is, that we accept hypotheses and then try to disprove them. Critics of positivism have pointed out that falsificationism can and sometimes does mask a kind of positivism. And they're right about that, though in failing to specify precisely when and how this occurs they leave their readers to make more of this caveat than is warranted.

There's a difference between, on the one hand, a naturalist who has arrived at that position because he feels that most of the claims we call "supernatural" have been falsified and, on the other hand, a naturalist who has arrived at that position because he has arbitrarily excluded the possibility that there could exist anything beyond what he can see, touch, or observe. The latter is positivism. The former is not. The truth is that we are all guilty of positivism to a certain extent, since there are claims and possibilities that we all arbitrarily exclude on the grounds that they are not part of our experiences. But for someone to decide that he does not believe in a particular god or sacred text because he feels that he has tested the claims of the god or text and found them to be untrue-- as I think Vogel believes he has-- is not positivism.

In my experience, even those who make positivistic claims-- that is, who explicitly deny that there can exist anything beyond what we can see, touch, and observe-- do not follow this principle all the time and do not use this as their sole justification for rejecting specific supernatural claims. They may even have adopted this as a methodological shortcut only after testing a variety of supernatural claims and finding them wanting. So even an explicit positivist cannot be entirely dismissed on account of his positivism, because positivism does not exhaust his character or reasoning. But so far as I know, Dan does not make positivistic claims.

Another component of Goff's critique appears to be that positivists assume they are without bias, and so since Vogel is a positivist (according to Goff) he must assume he is without bias. Despite admitting that Dan "makes a generic acknowledgment that all biographers have biases [... and] makes no attempt to conceal his ideological presuppositions," Goff concludes that Vogel is a positivist because his "acknowledgment of biases is too generic to be helpful."

This obscures the fact that Vogel goes into significantly more detail about his naturalistic presuppositions than a mere "generic" acknowledgment. Pages xii-xvii in Dan's book explain in detail his presuppositions and his reasons for them. Dan writes, "I do not claim that the supernatural does not exist, for it is impossible to prove a negative. I maintain only that the evidence upon which such claims rest is unconvincing to me." He goes on to describe how his exposure to the use of deception and trickery in magic caused him gradually to doubt allegedly "real" forms of magic, and how his historical studies led him to doubt many strains of magic and religion. He also says that since supernaturalism is not part of his everyday experience he feels justified in approaching it skeptically. I think one might certainly be justified in disagreeing with Dan's conclusions, but to lump him in with people who exhibit a "deliberate refusal to scrutinize the metaphysical and ideological interests that inform their readings" as Goff does is downright unfair.

Goff also writes,

Vogel claims that he is not a positivist, just a naturalist. 'A rejection of the supernatural does not automatically make one a positivist. It only means that one is a naturalist. The two positions are philosophically distinct.' Let's be more accurate about this assertion because the two positions are not at all distinct and the positivism common among historians has been broadly discredited for more than thirty years: while naturalism and positivism can be theoretically distinguished, in the real world they tend to overlap and are often used synonymously.

It's interesting how Goff contradicts himself here. He claims that naturalism and positivism are "not at all distinct" but then admits not only that there is a theoretical distinction but also that the real-world overlap is merely a tendency and something that something that often appears in the literature. This sort of self-contradiction recurs repeatedly throughout the essay. Goff quotes more precise definitions of positivism but in practice reverts to polemical, umbrella definitions that better accommodate his negative view of Vogel.

Believe it or not, I have disagreements with Vogel. I think in some respects his interpretations go beyond his evidence, and in others he goes too far in excluding the supernatural. If Goff limited himself to dealing with the content of Vogel's work he could have made a real contribution. Instead, he went and ticked me off with a bunch of really badly-done epistemological polemic. Why??? Not only is it obnoxious, it's wrong.

Racism: A Short History by George M. Fredrickson

George M. Fredrickson's book Racism: A Short History (Princeton University Press, 2002) is an extraordinarily accessible introduction to the history and historiography of racism in the West. Fredrickson writes at a level that the layperson can understand, yet without sacrificing the scholarly credibility of the work. In under 200 pages he manages to survey a vast cross-section of modern history across three continents.

Too often studies of racism define the term very narrowly, so that it refers exclusively to prejudice that is justified on scientific or biological grounds. So I was glad to find Fredrickson arguing in this book for a more inclusive definition that recognizes that constructions of race have often included cultural or spiritual factors. His definition included two components: 1) a mindset that considers differences between groups to be fixed, unbridgeable, and hereditary, and 2) the use of this mindset as a rationale to dominate, exclude, or discriminate against the Other.

This definition includes some things that other historians of racism do not. Take, for example, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century beliefs that Jews and Native Americans were inherently evil or incapable of assimilation to "civilized" values. Fredrickson considers such beliefs to be racist even though these beliefs were predicated more on a spiritual concept of heredity than a biological one. However, the definition also excludes some things that occasionally get labeled racist, such as situations of ethnic prejudice in which conversion or assimilation is a real option that will remove the prejudice.

Although Fredrickson alludes to the possibility that there might be some non-Western or pre-modern cases that fit his definition, he unfortunately does not pursue it. He focuses exclusively on the West, and locates the beginning of Western racism in early modern European attitudes toward Jews. Although prejudices against Jews were largely religion-based, religious differences were often reified to the point where people of Jewish heritage were considered to be irredeemable children of the devil. The result was murderous pogroms, discriminatory laws, and in some cases mass-expulsion. Typically, however, Fredrickson argues that racist ideologies existed only at the popular level and were not institutionalized. The Church at least theoretically considered conversion a real possibility that would eliminate substantive differences between the Jew and Christians.

One thing I found very interesting in Fredrickson's treatment of early modern racism was his observation that Christians in Europe generally were not prejudiced against blacks, and even portrayed blacks as sanctified in religious artwork. Enslavement of blacks was something the Spanish and Portuguese learned from the Moors (that is, Muslims) of southern Iberia. And when the Portuguese arrived in West Africa, there was already a thriving slave trade. They did not generally hunt for slaves on their own, but rather merely purchased captives of war from the local natives. They began to do this just as enslavement of whites in Europe was in decline due to the completion of Christianization. Thus the view of blacks as natural slaves emerged almost as a historical accident, because that is the color that slaves in Europe tended to be, and there were few non-enslaved blacks there during this period.

Fredrickson continues his study of racism into the modern period, with special focus on the three overtly racist regimes of the twentieth century: the Jim Crow American south, Nazi Germany, and South African apartheid. He draws all kinds of interesting comparisons between the three regimes, and also highlights some fascinating differences. For example, racism in Germany tended to racialize Germans as the superior Aryans, and to exclude all others. Racism in the United States tended to racialize all others and to view whites as simply human. This illustrates the different functions that racism served in the two contexts. In Germany race was a tool to create national unity in a sharply divided region. In the US racism was largely economically motivated, first exploiting blacks as slaves and later preventing their competition with poor white laborers.

One of the most interesting points Fredrickson makes is that an ideology of human equality was a prerequisite for the development of racist ideologies. In societies with traditional hereditary hierarchies, one remained in the class into which one is born. There was thus no special justification needed for continuing to degrade and exploit the lower classes of whatever color. But in egalitarian societies where all people were considered equal, it became necessary for entrenched systems of human exploitation to justify themselves by dehumanizing the exploited peoples. For example, black slaves could be treated inequally even though "all men are created equal" for the simple reason that they were subhuman. Thus extreme racist ideologies first emerged to counter the early modern period's emerging liberal Christian egalitarianism.

The end of Jim Crow Fredrickson attributes to the "moral revulsion" the world felt after the Holocaust, as well as to the new geopolitical pressures of decolonization and the Cold War. Since Soviet ideology was officially colorblind, the Soviets made significant headway in Third World nations by pointing to American racism as a sign of the evils of capitalism. And now that there were independent black African nations with which the United States had dealings, racism became diplomatically untenable. Eventually these pressures resulted in the end of Jim Crow. In South Africa decolonization had the opposite effect, as the ruling minority retrenched itself with stringently racist measures. South Africa's racist regime managed to survive until the end of the Cold War by presenting itself as a bastion of anti-Communism and thereby winning American support. But the end of the Cold War meant the end of American backing, and eventually embarrassment and economic sanctions ended the racist regime there, as well.

Fredrickson ends his book by pointing out that racism is not dead, though it is discredited. But there are new kinds of bigotries, like religious prejudices, that can be as bad or worse in terms of the human suffering they cause. Frederickson concludes that many of the same modern pressures and anxieties that made people turn to white supremacy for a sense of security and identity are now causing them to turn to fundamentalist religions for the same reasons. So in many respects religious bigotry is the same old evil under a different name.

The Immigration Threat

Infernal Memo, HellCorp. Int'l
Top Secret Combination! - Evil Eyes Only

From: Rocky_N_Rawls_RM@HellCorpAmerica.org
To: Shea_Tan_CEO@HellCorpHQ.org
CC: Bill_Z_Abib_CFO@HellCorpHQ.org, Andy_Kreiz_COO@HellCorpHQ.org

Dear Dark Lord of Oblivion,

As you know, we recently celebrated the excellent news that the numbers of non-religious and unaffiliated persons in America are rising. HellCorpAmerica's year-end figures are looking to be better than ever. However, I am writing to inform you of an unforeseen obstacle to our continued success that has appeared on the horizon.

That obstacle is immigration. Immigration is a dire threat to the cause of Evil™ in this country. You see, the numbers are showing that most of the immigrants self-identify as Christians (I shudder to even write the name). 75% of Korean-Americans, for example, serve the Enemy. We are getting disproportionate numbers of His mindless servants from India, Africa, and even the Middle East. The reports that there are now more Muslims here than Presbyterians are unfortunately false, due to a counting error. (Those responsible have been sacked and fed to the Hounds of Hell.) We have only 3 million Muslims, and around 11 million Presbyterians. The devastating fact of the matter is that two-thirds of all immigrants to America belong to the Competition, and many more defect to his cause after they arrive here. Even as we undermine His cause among the whites, the browns are occupying their abandoned churches and attempting to re-evangelize the lapsed native population. I shudder with fury to think that these outsiders might yet save American -----ianity from our diabolical devices. (I censor my language for the sake of propriety, even though this is a serious danger from which we ought not to shy.)

There is some good news, however. Those foolish tools of the enemy who call themselves the Right have unwittingly allied themselves with our cause. They have convinced themselves that the influx of strangers-- oh, xenophobia is one of your most delightful inventions, I must say!-- that the influx of strangers actually poses a threat to the Enemy's stranglehold on this region. They seem to think that the newcomers are all your holy jihadists, here to crusade for the cause! If only it were so! In their hysteria, these poor devils (pardon my blasphemy) are actually attempting to build fences and to pass legislation to keep the Enemy's poor, tired, and huddled masses out of the promised land. It's almost too good to be true. I recommend we act to bolster their efforts immediately, before they come to their senses!

I wish I could take credit for this development. I would take credit, if I thought you would believe it. But alas, you know as well as I do how little influence the Enemy allows us over his besottedly robotic slaves. No, they are doing this to themselves-- which makes the irony all the more delicious, if you ask me! And here I thought I'd done a number on Hollywood. These Rightists are beating me at my own game! I'd be embarrassed, if it weren't all so gloriously advantageous for HellCorp.

In any case, the threat remains real, and we must act immediately to stave it off. Please inform that dimwit Iblis over in the Middle Eastern division to stop hogging all the Islamists for himself, and start sending some our way. He has so many, surely he can spare a few. I know that Greed is one of the virtues, but when it comes to allotment of internal resources, I'm afraid it's bad for business.

Insincerely,

Rocky N. Rawls, Regional Machinator