I recently graduated from Utah State University (woo!) with bachelors in both political science and sociology. For my sociology capstone course, I had to complete a thesis paper. As the title of this post suggests, I chose to write about Mormonism (surprise, surprise). The paper’s abstract should give you a better idea of my research questions and findings:
This paper explores what Mormons believe about the Book of Mormon and its historicity, and the implications those beliefs have—primarily for Latin and Native American members of the LDS Church. I conducted a 10-question survey of 115 Mormons. My survey yielded several findings, including the following: most Mormons understand the Book of Mormon to be an actual history of and by ancient American peoples; racial beliefs about Book of Mormon peoples and their supposed descendants remain pervasive among some Mormons; and Hispanic members are more sensitive to issues of racism within the LDS Church.
I have been meaning to publish my research, but it isn’t easy distilling an entire thesis paper into a blog post. So I have instead just uploaded the paper as a .doc file on here.
If you’d prefer not to read a 29-page paper, you can download this PowerPoint presentation.
Any feedback is appreciated, but please be forgiving in your assessment. Despite having all semester to work on my thesis, I—in typical Jon fashion—procrastinated and the quality of the paper and presentation suffered for it. Still, I hope you find my research interesting.
Overall, it was an interesting read, though I would have liked to see a larger sample size, particularly one that included older members of the LDS faith. I felt that you did a fair job of avoiding the potential pitfall of equating racism with Mormons, or Mormon thought of the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was much more widespread. I really would have liked to see how age, gender and born in church/convert status went when it came to the racial statements. While I know there is a fair amount of disconnect between what was taught at church in the 1970′s versus the past decade, there is still the parent-child teaching going on to perpetuate those teaching and the prevalence of them among members born into the Mormon church would be interesting to see.
The historicity statistics were particularly interesting and reminded me of a conversation I had with my very devout Mormon mother last week. Going into my MA for History, I’ve focused my study on 19th century Mexico. My mother mentioned the possibility of a family vacation on a church history tour through Palmyra, Harmony and Navoo. I indicated that while I had little interest, I knew my husband wouldn’t take the time off. She tried to get me to go without him, and I again declined. After that, she said “Well, if you’re studying Mexico there’s a lot of church history there!” Confused, I asked her what she meant. Her response indicated that she believed Chichen Itza and Tulum (she’s been to both sites and knows their age – far too late for the BoM timeline) and discussed church “history” tours through Mexico and Central America. It was the first time I’d really thought about the reality that mother does, in fact, believe that Native Americans are descendents of a small family group of Hebrews. It was a little mind-boggling
Thanks Jon, I look forward to reading this!
Pingback: Sunday in Outer Blogness: Faith and Art Edition! | Main Street Plaza
Hi Jon!
I am a faithful member of the church and I found your article (which I skimmed, but did not read thoroughly) quite interesting.
In the context of my experience with the church’s detractors:
http://www.slyman.org/m_values_scriptures_apologetic.php
- I would suggest that you are a sincere doubter, although it appears you have been substantially influenced by anti-Mormon sources. I should like to see a more balanced approach, that treats the uncertainties on BOTH sides with equal enthusiasm/ scepticism. For an example of the kind of impartiality I appreciate, take a peek at this:
http://www.stanford.edu/~jsdaniel/BoM_Meso.html
-This article was written by a church member, but when I read it, I couldn’t immediately tell without doing further research, whether or not its author was a church member, or which [kind of] sources he had been reading from. I think that’s a key mark of impartiality.
Really, your article would be better if, rather than polling the opinions of the Church’s comparatively naive footsoldiers, you quoted church leaders from reliable sources. There are plenty of sources as far as I am aware. If you can use the same resources as the church’s faithful, as a common canon if you like, but come to different conclusions; that might be a lot more persuasive.
I gather (not sure about references) from church member sources on the web that Joseph Smith declared _certain_ of the Mesoamerican ruins to be Book of Mormon cities. Now some of the more naive members might not discriminate between pre-classic and classic Mayan sites. But this misses the point to some (large) degree…
Using the National Geographic articles on the Maya as a source, I find it remarkable how closely the Mesoamerican periods match the rough chronology and cultural descriptions in the Book of Mormon. Other church members have noted how the Jaredites of the BoM are basically the Olmec people of archeology, and it is hard not to notice the similarities between the pre-classic Mayan civilisations and the Book of Mormon peoples.
Check out this YouTube video in which Professor Nikolai Grube (a German, and I do not know of him having any direct connections with the church) the very man who decoded the Mayan script within the last ten years, discusses various Mayan glyphs, including one they habitually placed at the beginning of their stone totems, which apparently means “…and it came to pass…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSw-TES7dgs
A portion of the pre-classic Mayan civilisation adopted a reformed version of the Olmec characters into their language and culture. Does anybody fail to notice how this perfectly matches the explanation of historical events given in Mosiah chapter eight?
Just one point before I go – could make many others. The classic (and perhaps pre-classic) Mayan micro-civilisations had a bizarre superstitious habit of totally destroying EVERYTHING that belonged to any people they conquered… (Which goes some way toward explaining why many things that existed in their times might not have widespread extant or archaeological evidence today, which would be easy enough for us to find…) Does anyone fail to notice how this practise parallels the God of the Old Testament’s command to the Israelites to destroy various Canaanitish peoples, along with EVERYTHING they owned? Rather peculiar isn’t it? No other peoples in the history of the world have had this peculiar practise – more often, greed and lust take over and the conquerors spoil and loot the goods of their victims. But not these two peoples. It seems they have a few things in common.
Sometimes it seems to me that we just can’t see the wood for the trees. We’re so close to those societies that we overlook the obvious.
Thanks for your comments, Matthew. To be sure, this paper was not meant to be an objective overview about the Book of Mormon’s historicity. Indeed, my paper hardly even addresses the issue. The purpose of my paper was to ascertain what lay Mormons believe about the BoM’s historicity. Nowhere in my paper did I claim that the BoM is/is not a historical document.
You also write that I have been “substantially influenced by anti-Mormon sources.” First, I would disagree with your characterization of sites critical of Mormonism as “anti-Mormon.” Second, could you point to specific examples of where I’ve been unfair to the LDS Church?
Thanks again for visiting the site.
Jon,
Perhaps I misunderstood you – after all I just scanned your article. Perhaps my impression of your work was formed partly by the vocabulary used – e.g., “folklore”; and the use of punctuation, e.g. speech marks around “Lamanite Identity”. You give the impression near the beginning of your article that there is a consensus of academic opinion decided against BoM historicity – when one should hardly find this the least bit surprising (even presuming the book to be a true record), since few members of other faiths would venture to consider it a true record, and few academics would risk/ stake their professional reputation on a “historical record” that carried so much religious baggage and [therefore] political implications (I write from their perspective.) Yes, I have seen this attitude first-hand from trained theologians during my undergraduate degree at Cambridge University. You appear in some parts of your article to slightly favour the non-LDS position in various debates (e.g. w.r.t. paid “professional” clergy) – but having looked at these things in a little more detail, I have a better idea of where you are coming from.
I might have a closer look later if I can find the time.
I like how you pointed out that little research has been done on what LDS members believe. Overall I find it a well written and neutral paper. Thanks for taking the time to explore and share your findings.