My "Short Form" Response to Adam Gopnik

Perusal of the online edition of the latest issue of The New Yorker indicates that the editors decided not to print any part of my letter responding to Adam Gopnik's recent article on Mormonism. The text of my submission to The New Yorker follows:

            Adam Gopnik has written an eloquent hatchet job of a profile of the Latter-day Saint faith.

             Gopnik’s inaccuracies about the Mormons’ signature scripture, the Book of Mormon, are so numerous that it is clear he has not read with any care the book on which he expostulates. For example, despite what Gopnik states, the book is not at all about “lost tribes of Israel” (a common misconception, often repeated in anti-Mormon literature). Contra Gopnik, Jesus’s appearance in the New World—the centerpiece of the Book of Mormon—is indeed foreshadowed in the New Testament (see John 10:16; in the Book of Mormon, see 3 Nephi 15:21). Most bizarrely, Gopnik states that the Book of Mormon claims that Jesus appeared to ancient Americans in Missouri, which is utterly untrue; the source of this claim may be Andrew Sullivan’s column in The Daily Beast of October 25, 2011, but this is hardly an authoritative source about Mormonism. One could go on. None of Gopnik’s inaccuracies appear in Paul C. Gutjahr’s The Book of Mormon: A Biography, which Gopnik references, so one can only conclude that Gopnik got his mistaken “facts” from poorly written secondary sources, or even trashy anti-Mormon literature, that he does not reference. This is just sloppy research practice for a writer.

             Gopnik’s position is that the Latter-day Saints “venerate” the Book of Mormon rather than either focusing on its actual teachings, or using it to lead to the conversion of the people who read it. Gopnik could not possibly be more wrong, as even superficial investigation would have revealed to him.

            The very day before my issue of The New Yorker with Gopnik’s essay arrived, I taught a session of the adult Sunday School class that most observant Mormons attend in LDS congregations around the world, held in this case at the Lincoln Center LDS meetinghouse in Manhattan. Unfortunately for Gopnik’s position, the focus of the entire 2012 adult curricular year worldwide is the Book of Mormon. On this particular Sunday, we spent the better part of an hour focusing on but three chapters of the scripture (Alma 40-42), occupying ourselves with what the Book of Mormon says in these chapters about the atonement of Jesus Christ, the spirit world after death, the future physical resurrection, and the nature of the final judgment—concerning which, the distinctively LDS teachings would have gotten us all burnt at the stake in medieval Europe. This same week, my son, Elder Viktor Koltko, serving as an LDS missionary in Latvia, taught missionaries in two Baltic countries how non-Mormons can use the teachings of the Book of Mormon to learn directly from God that this book’s teachings, and the LDS Church’s claims to possess living prophets, are true; as I type these words, he is teaching missionaries in yet a third country the same message. Despite Gopnik’s claims, the Book of Mormon is no mere “venerated” object to the Latter-day Saints, and specifically Mormon beliefs matter greatly to contemporary Mormons.

          So Gopnik finds the Book of Mormon boring; that’s his privilege. But each year thousands of non-Mormons worldwide find the book so interesting that they devour its message and are baptized Latter-day Saints. I’ve known people to take personal or vacation days off from work to read it; I myself took a personal retreat during my summer vacation to do so. Why? The attraction of the book for us is not its “Americanness,” as Gopnik has it; rather, the book has startlingly clear, important, distinctive things to say about many issues that are rather vaguely treated in other Christian churches’ teachings, such as the topics I addressed in my Sunday School class; many Saints find that the teachings of the Book of Mormon simply help them become better people. Readers of The New Yorker may obtain a copy and decide for themselves what value its teachings may have in their lives, whether or not they ever decide to become Latter-day Saints themselves. (Free hard copies of the Book of Mormon may be requested at mormon.org, or one may read it for free online.)

             Gopnik states that “mainstream Protestants couldn’t embrace [Mormonism], and couldn’t understand it.” That was not true in the 19^th century, nor is it true today, when 50% of those converting to Mormonism in the United States are Protestant, according to the Pew Research Center’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation (2008, calculated from data on p. 29).

           Gopnik states that Mormonism “has become a denomination within the bigger creed of commerce” (a further stereotype repeated recently by Bloomberg BusinessWeek). The day before my Sunday School lesson, I and some other Saints each donated a couple of hours of labor, distributing food to the poor at the Manhattan Bishop’s Storehouse, a place that serves both Mormons and non-Mormons. Each year, the LDS Church donates millions of dollars in goods, and millions of hours of labor, in domestic and international disaster relief and other charitable work, almost entirely to help non-Mormons. For example, 130,000 LDS volunteers in Brazil recently spent time over the course of five months to store 500 tons of food to help people in over 150 cities. Gopnik dismisses Mormonism as a “cult” and a “strange faith,” but this type of Christian service is far more important to the Saints, and far more central to their faith, than any of the trivial commercial interests that Gopnik mentions. For centuries, Jews have been stereotyped as being a people whose religion and culture focus on commerce; this stereotyping is contemptible, and it is equally contemptible when applied to Mormons.

            Gopnik implies that Brigham Young, the LDS Church’s second president, was somehow responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, stating that “Young was in power at the time.” By that logic, one could infer that U.S. President and military Commander-in-Chief Obama was somehow responsible for the recent shootings of Sikhs in Wisconsin by a U.S. military veteran—a claim which plainly would be madness. John G. Turner, whose book, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, Gopnik references, recently stated in a podcast on the Harvard University Press website that the evidence exonerates Young—a fact that Gopnik declines to mention. Gopnik’s implication is deeply unfair, both to Young’s legacy and to the Mormon people generally.

            Gopnik began his essay, perversely, by speaking of stereotypes as “sanctuaries as much as [jail] cells.” His essay does much to make various aspects of the popular culture’s distorted stereotype of Mormonism seem true. As an adjunct professor of psychology at various colleges, I have taught the dangers of stereotyping; as a Mormon, I very much feel myself put into a cultural cell or ghetto by the stereotypes that Gopnik perpetuates.

—Mark Koltko-Rivera, Ph.D.

The author writes the blog “The Manhattan Mormon™.” In 2006 he was given the Margaret Gorman Early Career Award in the Psychology of Religion from a division of the American Psychological Association. His newest book, The Rise of the Mormons, is forthcoming in late August.

Church Newsroom Responds to Gopnik Article in The New Yorker

I shall be continuing with my own series on this blog concerning Adam Gopnik's hatchet job of an article on the Church. In the meantime, however, I thought readers would be interested in reading the Church's response to Gopnik's article on its Newsroom site.

The Church has a Newsroom blog, "Mormonism in the News | Getting it Right," updated pretty much every business day; it's worth checking daily, as the blog reviews recent publications in print and online. In the "Getting It Wrong" section of the post for August 10th, we read the following:

Getting It Wrong

The New Yorker: Exclusively secular lens fails to understand faith traditions and Mormonism on its own terms

Adam Gopnik’s 5,200-word essay on Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon assumes a secular world view that largely fails to consider religion, let alone Mormonism, on its own terms. In spite of the potential to explore the history, doctrine, or social and cultural settings behind The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a balanced way, this article emerges as another politicized and overly simplistic treatment of religion. This bias, readily manifest in comments like labeling Mormonism a “strange faith,” calling the Book of Mormon and sacred texts “[so] boring [that they] could have been inspired only by the breath of God” and with blanket assertions about Latter-day Saints’ lack of “critical intelligence,” among other glib quips, prevents Gopnik from offering a more thoughtful analysis of what Mormonism is about and why it persists today.

Perhaps measured and balanced analysis, however, is not the intent of this style of essay; but readers would benefit from considering the Church’s own position on such themes as revelation or doctrine or fiscal self-sufficiency. The totalizing statements and reductive summaries of faith traditions in general, shortchange what could’ve been a good platform for furthering the dialogue and understanding of the Mormon faith.

(End of quote)

Well put, in my opinion. I'll have more to say about Gopnik's article in forthcoming posts.

The Place of the Book of Mormon in Today’s LDS Faith (Response to Adam Gopnik’s “I, Nephi,” Part 2

[Note: One may find the table of contents for this series in this earlier post.]

In his recent New Yorker article on Mormonism, Adam Gopnik has a lot to say about the Book of Mormon. However, what he has to say about this LDS scripture is deeply flawed. Gopnik repeats several timeworn fallacies about the Book of Mormon, and introduces one or two that even I had never heard of before; I plan to address several of these fallacies in future posts in this series.

However, in this post, I wish to address a broader issue: Gopnik’s sense of the place of the Book of Mormon in today’s LDS faith. Gopnik makes some claims about how both early and modern Mormonism have viewed the Book of Mormon, claims that sound learned and insightful—and that are yet wildly off-base. Gopnik’s facts are often inaccurate, and his analysis, being on a very shaky foundation, winds up producing as false a thesis as one could possibly produce, regarding the place that the Book of Mormon has in the LDS faith.

Misperceptions about the Book of Mormon are important to correct, for a couple of reasons. The doctrinal teachings of the Book of Mormon are central to the LDS faith; not for nothing did the first LDS prophet, Joseph Smith, call the Book of Mormon “the keystone of our religion.” Beyond that, the Book of Mormon is often involved in the conversion journeys of individual converts (as it certainly was in mine); if people do not understand how the LDS faith really looks at the Book of Mormon, it is possible that this could interfere with people’s acceptance of the LDS faith.

Gopnik takes the position that the Saints look upon the Book of Mormon as some kind of revered, almost totemic object, rather than as a source of teaching. Writing of the early Mormon converts, Gopnik claims this:

The powers that possession of the Book of Mormon conferred mattered more than the doctrines that it contained. “Rarely did missionaries draw on the verses and stories of the Book of Mormon in sermons,” [Matthew] Bowman explains [in his recent book, The Mormon People]. “Rather, they brandished the book as tangible proof of Joseph Smith’s divine calling.” Some holy texts, the Gospels, for instance, are evangelical instruments meant to convert people who read them; others are sacred objects meant to be venerated. The Book of Mormon is a book of the second sort. As the French religious historian Jean-Christophe Attias points out, in traditional Judaism the physical presence of the Scripture is at least as important as its content: when the Torah is unrolled during the service, it’s meant to be admired, not apprehended. That the Mormons had a book of their own counted for almost as much as what the Book of Mormon said.  (p. 80)

Gopnik makes similar claims elsewhere in his article, regarding the supposed degree to which Mormon teachings are simply not what make the Mormon people. Early in his article, comparing the LDS minions of the late Howard Hughes to the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors, Gopnik claims that “the details of their religious viewws had nothing to do with the social role they played” (p. 78). Of the autobiography of Joanna Brooks, titled The Book of Mormon Girl, Gopnik writes:

Yet how much do specifically Mormon beliefs matter to contemporary Mormons? Brooks’s story, give or take a Nephite or two, could unfold in any fundamentalist community that provides comfort and meaning if you’re prepared to park your critical intelligence in the lot outside the church door. She writes, often quite movingly, of the persistent ambivalence of her feelings about her natal faith, but any strayed member of a tight community of believers feels this way about it. Nephi, the Lamanites, the approaching apocalypse in Missouri—these things hardly come up [i.e., in Brooks’ narrative--MEKR]. What resonates for her is the Mormon elder who said that heavy-metal music had secret satanic codes—the same preacher you find in any fundamentalist camp. These stories of attachment and repulsion are being played out in or around Hasidic communities in Brooklyn every day, and surely, for that matter, among Sikhs and Jains in Queens, too. This is the story of faith, not of Joseph Smith’s faith. The allegiance is to the community that nurtured you, and it is bolstered by the community’s history of persecution, which makes you understandably inclined to defend its good name against all comers. It isn’t the truth of the Book, or the legends of Nephi, that undergird Mormon solidarity even among lapsed or wavering believers; it’s the memories of what other people were prepared to do in order to prevent your parents from believing. A critique of the creed, even a rational one, feels like an assault on the community. (pp. 84-85)

There is much to be said about these passages (including Gopnik’s gratuitous swipe at the Mormon intellect, his confusion regarding what ‘fundamentalism’ means, and his inability to distinguish folk religious beliefs from ‘real’ religion), but for now let us concern ourselves with this question of Gopnik’s: “How much do specifically Mormon beliefs matter to contemporary Mormons?” In particular, how much do specific beliefs from the Book of Mormon matter to contemporary Mormons?

Gopnik quotes Matthew Bowman correctly. However, Gopnik misunderstands the meaning of these words. Bowman’s words regarding Mormon missionary work in the 1830s are as follows:

Indeed, rarely did missionaries draw on the verses and stories of the Book of Mormon in sermons: it was not to them a source of doctrine. Rather, they brandished the book as tangible proof of Joseph Smith’s divine calling, the reopening of the heavens, and the inauguration of the dispensation in the fullness of time. (Bowman, 2012, p. 40)

Bowman’s point is that missionaries preaching to potential converts did not use specific verses in the Book of Mormon to convince people of the truth of the Mormon faith; Mormon missionaries did not use Book of Mormon verses to establish doctrine to potential converts.

Indeed, a moment’s thought shows that it would have been monumentally stupid for Mormon missionaries to attempt to preach most Book of Mormon teachings for the sake of facilitating conversion: for most potential converts, the Book of Mormon was hardly common ground between the two parties to this discourse—the missionaries, on the one hand, and the potential convert, on the other—which is a prerequisite for any kind of discourse. Rather, the Mormon missionaries of this era, who were basically preaching to other Christians, appealed to the Bible to establish the truth of Mormonism’s doctrines, because the Bible is a scripture that Mormonism holds in common with other forms of Christianity.

Early missionaries, like LDS missionaries today, used the Book of Mormon as evidence that God speaks to prophets in modern times, specifically to Joseph Smith; the missionaries then challenged their potential converts to follow the procedure set out in the promise of Moroni in the Book of Mormon (Moroni 10:3-5) to gain personal revelation from God that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. So much is demonstrated by the historical research of such scholars as Steven C. Harper (2000, pp. 104-106), whom Bowman references in his book. Harper notes the following about some of the earliest Mormon converts (omitting all his footnotes):

The Murdocks and other converts relied heavily on scriptural precedent [i.e., precedent from the Christian Bible] as proof. Those who became Mormons were almost always first contemplative Bible believers who were skeptical of false prophets. They considered it reasonable that signs would follow true believers, and they held out for empirical confirmation. Dozens of primary accounts of early Mormon conversions emphasize this pattern. (Harper, 2000, p. 104)

…

The missionaries taught potential converts that God's everlasting covenant had been taught by God to Adam and handed down via the prophets throughout the Old Testament until its terms were fulfilled through the atonement of Christ. It had been taught in purity among the first Christians but lost in centuries of apostasy that followed. It appeared both reasonable and biblical that God would restore the ancient order of things by sending new scripture, calling new prophets, and sending new signs to believers. It was from within this intellectual framework that John Greene wrote from his missionary assignment in Canada:

I... showed the gospel as it was in the beginning: also in the days of the apostles, and in the present day: being careful to compare the Jews’ religion with the apostles’, and also the religion of the many sects of this day with the [ancient] Corinthian and Ephesian churches; and then giving them the testimony of the New and Everlasting Covenant, as established in these last days: being confirmed by many infallible proofs, both human and divine— the Lord himself speaking from the heavens unto men who were now living!

This blend of infallible proofs, both human and divine, that Greene thought should convert Canadians, included, as we have seen, appeals to the rational coupled with accounts of miracles and gifts received by Mormons as in the ancient church. This argument satisfied the revelatory and empirical longings of converts at once, convincing them that Joseph Smith and his followers possessed the same attributes as the first Christians by a deductive process that was simultaneously analytical and faithful.

Harper continues, regarding the role of the Book of Mormon in this process:

The greatest aid in this effort, and the component that most distinguished Joseph Smith from the many other would-be prophets of his day, was the Book of Mormon, which Smith offered to the world as evidence that the primitive Christian gospel had been authoritatively restored and that he was the instrument of its reestablishment. Klaus Hansen has written of early convert Brigham Young “and all those who were not converted by the personal magnetism of Joseph, it was the Book of Mormon, more than any other vehicle, that convinced him of the truthfulness of Smith’s claims.” (Harper, 2000, pp. 105-106)

            For people who have become members of the LDS Church, the Book of Mormon then takes on an added significance, as a source of doctrinal teaching. The evidence of this is found in hundreds of sermons emerging from the early years of Mormonism, and it certainly is true today. (See, for example, President Henry B. Eyring’s First Presidency Message in the September 2010 issue of the Ensign magazine: “The Book of Mormon as a Personal Guide.”)

            By odd coincidence, the day before I received my copy of The New Yorker with Gopnik’s article, I taught a session of the Gospel Doctrine class in my ward’s Sunday School (as a substitute for the regular teacher). As many readers of this post will know, the Gospel Doctrine class is the class that most observant adult members of the LDS Church attend weekly, in LDS congregations around the world; in addition, many readers will know that the focus of the 2012 curricular year worldwide happens to be—surprise!—the Book of Mormon. So it was that I led a discussion last Sunday at the Manhattan First Ward regarding, within the Book of Mormon, the Book of Alma, chapters 40-42. We considered Book of Mormon teachings on the atonement of Jesus Christ, the spirit world to which we shall go after death, the nature of the future resurrection, the basis of the final judgment, and our subsequent assignments to different types of reward.

            These same topics were discussed in LDS adult Gospel Doctrine Sunday School classes in thousands upon thousands of LDS congregations across the face of the Earth. (Just a reminder: next week we all discuss Alma, chapters 43-52.) If evidence like this, Elder Eyring’s message, and sermons in each semi-annual LDS General Conference, do not demonstrate that specifically Mormon teachings—and, specifically Book of Mormon teachings—are important to today’s Saints, I don’t know what could.

            But wait—there’s more. The adult Gospel Doctrine Sunday School curriculum proceeds on a four-year cycle. During the first year, the Saints study the Old Testament—but enhanced by material revealed through Joseph Smith and found in the scriptural book, the Pearl of Great Price. During the second year, the Saints study the New Testament—again, enhanced by material found in the Pearl of Great Price and the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. During the third year (2012, this time around), the Saints study the Book of Mormon. During the fourth year, the Saints study modern revelation in the Doctrine & Covenants. Thus, in each year, at least some specifically Mormon content is studied by the adults of the Church, and during two years, specifically Mormon content is the major focus of study.

            In sum, as I have demonstrated, Gopnik is simply wrong on this subject. Specifically Mormon beliefs are very important to today’s Saints, including in particular such beliefs as they are found in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is not merely some sort of totemic object of reverence among the Saints; Mormons look to it for meaty doctrine, as well. (Pace vegetarians.)

REFERENCES

Bowman, Matthew. (2012). The Mormon people: The making of an American faith. New York, NY: Random House.

Eyring Henry B. (2010, September). The Book of Mormon as a personal guide. Ensign, pp. 4-5. Online at http://www.lds.org/ensign/2010/09/the-book-of-mormon-as-a-personal-guide

Gopnik, Adam. (2012, August 13 & 20). I, Nephi: Mormonism and its meanings. The New Yorker, pp. 78-86. Online at http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/08/13/120813crat_atlarge_gopnik

Harper, Steven C. (2000, Winter). Infallible proofs, both human and divine: The persuasiveness of Mormonism for early converts. Religion and American Culture, 10, 99-118.

[Readers of this blog are invited to become official “followers” through the box above and to the side.]

Copyright © 2012 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

[The image of the Book of Mormon was retrieved from Wikipedia. It is reputedly in the public domain.]

Response to Adam Gopnik's "I, Nephi": Introduction to the Series

The August 13 & 20, 2012, issue of The New Yorker magazine (cover pictured) features an article by a leading cultural critic, Adam Gopnik, titled “I, Nephi: Mormonism and Its Meanings.” The New Yorker has long been renowned for the thoughtfulness and depth of its analysis of social and cultural issues. Having heard in advance that the magazine was soon to feature a piece on Mormonism by staff writer Gopnik, I was eager to open my issue of the magazine, which arrived in my mailbox on Monday, August 6^th.

I could not have been more disappointed. Gopnik calls the LDS Church a “cult” and a “strange faith,” without ever defining his terms. His article is full of inaccuracies about the Book of Mormon and its place within today’s LDS faith. Gopnik seems to have bought into the ‘it’s-all-about-the-money’ approach to Mormonism promoted by a recent article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and he furthers that approach as a way to interpret the inner meanings of Mormonism. Just to list everything inaccurate and objectionable about Gopnik’s article would take up a long blog post. The magazine’s online audio podcast of Gopnik discussing his article with two other New Yorker staffers (Avi Steinberg and Sasha Weiss) did nothing to improve Gopnik’s accuracy or the depth of his analysis.

I have composed a response to Gopnik’s article in the form of a letter to the editor, a response which already has been submitted to the magazine. (If it is not published, I shall make it available as part of this blog series.) However, the size limitations on letters to the editor are quite constricting. Gopnik’s article, because of the stature of The New Yorker (and its one-million-plus paid circulation), and because of Gopnik’s stature as a writer and cultural critic, will carry a lot of weight with educated opinion makers throughout the United States; consequently, the many inaccuracies of fact and miscarriages of interpretation contained in Gopnik’s article will be widely spread throughout American culture, and should be addressed in detail.

For these reasons, I will be running a series of posts in response to Gopnik’s article on this blog, over the next few weeks. For convenience, I will treat this post as an anchor and a sort of table of contents for the entire series; below, you will find links to the various posts in this series. I invite you, the reader, to be a part of this conversation, through the Comment feature on each post.

Posts in this Series: Response to Adam Gopnik’s “I, Nephi”

Part 1: Introduction to the Series (this post)

Part 2: The Place of the Book of Mormon in Today’s LDS Faith

[Readers of this blog are invited to become official “followers” through the box above and to the side.]

Copyright © 2012 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.

[The image of the cover of The New Yorker issue of August 13 & 20, 2012, was obtained from the website of the magazine.]