An Approach to Religious History

I am going to discuss Jan Shipps' essay "Remembering, Recovering, and Inventing What Being a People of God Means: Reflections on Method in the Scholarly Writing of Religious History," chapter 8 in her Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons (U of Illinois, 2000). While there are scattered comments relating to LDS history in the essay, it treats the writing and framing of religious history in more general terms. Although it is not hard to apply it to LDS history, I'll save most of the "Mo app" for a second post. Here, I'll just summarize two or three of the concepts Shipps develops in the essay. Sorry, couldn't find an online version of the essay. Someday everything will be online, but for now you'll just have to find the book to read the essay in full.

How Better History Made Believers Unhappy
Shipps starts by pointing out there are two audiences for religious history: one is "the members of communities of believers" and the other is the general public as generally represented by the academy. But prior to WWII, historians writing for both groups shared a view of civic and religious history that focused on the clergy and on religious institutions, with mainstream Protestantism dominating the narrative and non-Protestants pushed to the margins along with women and ethnic minorities.

But in the early '70s, the secular or critical approach to history started to apply the developing tools of social history to tell a much different sort of religious history. "It would be an overstatement to say that church historians suddenly discovered power, money, and social class" where before they contrasted lay versus clergy, piety with apathy, and church participation to inactivity. But social class, ethnicity, and the place of women in the story suddenly received serious coverage in religious historical narrative. It is worth observing that the "New Mormon History," which moved LDS history in similar directions, was thus largely a reflection of developments in religious history as a broad category rather than a development within just the field of Mormon history.

Two results of this fairly recent development were (1) a shift away from denominational identity as the organizing principle (or at least as the only organizing principle) of religious historical narrative, and (2) a focus on cultural themes that, combined with social facts, even moved the focus of academic religious history away from what Shipps calls "the fundamental question of religion." While the academic audience applauded these developments, the faith communities were rather unhappy with the new approach. Citing the reaction of senior LDS leaders to the New Mormon History as an example of how faith communities responded to the new approach, she noted that

the change in the way professional historians were beginning to write religious/denominational history proved much less satisfactory to the faith communities whose histories were being written than to the scholarly community ....

Stuck in the Middle
With that as a setup, you can guess where this leaves scholars who want to write denominational or religious history that keeps "the fundamental question of religion" at the center of the narrative. It becomes very difficult for a historian to write for faith communities (who demand that religious questions be given serious coverage as religious questions rather than as social or cultural ones) in a way that is deemed acceptable or "scholarly" by their academic peers (the folks who grant tenure, approve promotions, award grants and prizes, etc.). Hence an outpouring of methodological reflection designed to salvage an updated form of traditional denominational history.

This isn't just a problem for scholars, it is also a problem for us, you and me. The problems that are presented to scholars of denominational history also face most readers of denominational history (a genre which includes all the LDS history books that line the shelves at your favorite LDS bookstore). What if you no longer find Essentials in Church History (1922) and A Marvelous Work and a Wonder (1966) to be credible historical narrative, but at the same time you aren't quite ready to swallow whole the critical perspective of O'Dea, Leone, or Vogel? Is there a middle way or narrow path for history that retains the traditional faith perspective but does so using legitimate scholarly rigor and objectivity? Remember, this is not a problem facing only LDS historians and readers. Believers in all denominations have had to deal with a similar problem, although I believe the central role of history in grounding Mormon faith claims makes the problem more pressing in the LDS case.

The Narrow Path
The balance of the essay gives Shipps' suggestions for how religious historians can apply her version of faithful history and walk that narrow path. Summarizing mercilessly:

• Refer with specificity to myth (as embodied in scripture and in stories), institutional structure, doctrine, ritual, and social and experiential factors; use this descriptive specificity to build categories that speak to both the academic audience and the faith community.
• Use those categories to examine scripture, history, and faith, recognizing that early histories of the faith by or about the founders are not held to be ordinary histories, they often acquire something like scriptural status.
• This process of canonizing history in the faith community is a fruitful subject for denominational historians to examine.
• The canonizing process is easier to observe in faith communities like the LDS Church that have well-defined boundaries and can illuminate parallel but less observable processes in faith communities with weak boundaries.
• Consider the role of ascribed versus achieved status in faith communities. So if you're BIC, your Mormon-ness is ascribed and can't be easily set aside, whereas a convert achieves her Mormon-ness by voluntary choice, making her Mormon identity somewhat more malleable. (My apologies to any sociologists who are reading this post.)
• Churches with tight boundaries are "particularly vulnerable to apostate accounts [of history] and exposé"; leaders often respond by "countering negative renditions of their history by issuing histories that are subsequently recognized by the communities as their offical (that is, canonized) histories." Often such canonized histories are reissued in more accessible formats.
• Become (or adopt the perspective of) an inside-outsider or an outside-insider.

Conclusion
I don't know how well I summarized, but two points really jumped out as insightful. One is the claim that early historical narratives by or about founders aren't really histories. That is, they are not really open to amendment by the faith community when better facts or perspectives emerge. This relates to Shipps' discussion of canonization. The other point is the distinction between ascribed and achieved membership (which may be overlapping) in faith communities with tight boundaries. Not all Mormons are equal; some are more Mormon than others.

[Note: You can read one of the more interesting paragraphs from the essay as the epigraph to this FARMS book review. However, I'm not sure I agree with the author's application of that paragraph to Grant Palmer.]

Comments

[Michael]

Dave,

I am sorry but I did not find Vogel's work to be any near a scholarly critical perspective. After spending a whopping $45.00 for his biography of the Prophet, I was extremely disappointed by its whining, it overreaching assumptions (many of which defy common reasoning), and its attempts to find connections among the most preposterous interpretations.

RSR is, by far, much more of a scholarly work without the depressing display of cynicism found in Vogel's book.

If you accept the fact that scholars need to distance themselves from entirely embracing "faith-promoting" history only, how do you make sure they do not go to the opposite extreme?

I find it disingenuous when people like Vogel posit that the Prophet was in it for the personal glory and self-promotion when at the same time, Vogel's approach to scholarship so blatantly follows the same path to bring himself the praise of the world.

I am not an historian but I am wise enough and experienced enough to know that a person's motives are easily discerned by observing their actions and judging their works. Why do "scholars" seem so intent on finding hidden motivations other than those so visible to the naked eye? Given enough time, it becomes readily apparent what motivates an individual to pursue a particular path. Perpetual cynics cannot believe that people do anything without hidden motivations. It just gets tiring to hear them moan on.

[Dave]

Michael, I'd agree that Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling is a fine effort to write history from the middle ground sketched out by Shipps. (She didn't use the term "middle ground," that was my description.) My link on the term "faithful history" goes to a post that discusses Bushman's essay "Faithful History," his own attempt to define roughly the same approach.

[Mark Butler]

I agree that "agnostic" history is a far sight better than "cynical" history. However, ultimately I think that if one wants to write the best religious history, one needs the gift of prophecy, to understand or at least have a good idea of what was going on spiritually along with whatever was going on temporally.

Such an account will never meet the standards of secular scholarship, even if all the temporal facts are right. However, I cannot help but recall the following scripture:

And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments. (D&C 59:21)

How shall we know how God works in history, turning good for evil, and preparing the way to fulfil all of his purposes, unless we have the gift of prophecy?

[Dave]

Mark, there is no shortage of LDS candidates for having the gift of prophecy ... do you know of any who have used it to write history? I don't see why such an approach couldn't also meet the standards of scholarly history.

I can't imagine that the purpose of using the gift of prophecy would be to write bad history. Who needs divine assistance to write bad history? Anyone can do that.

[Mark Butler]

Dave,

What I am saying is that certain conclusions of a religious history are typical entailed by the union of documented historical facts and spiritual, often scriptural precepts that are only known to be true by faith or revelation.

So for example, writing to an audience of believers one might take the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ to be an established fact well known to all by the witness of the Holy Spirit, and use that as a premise of further arguments, generating conclusions that secularists would not accept.

The same applies to scriptural exegesis and historical exegesis in general. How can one know for example that a certain biblical prophecy has a latter day application except by the spirit of revelation? According to many secularist scholars, there is no such thing as prophecy, no gifts of the spirit, etc., and any argument that assumes such things is considered foolishness in their eyes.

A typical example might be that certain aspects of our doctrine resemble that of the Methodists. That might be a smoking gun, except who is to say that the Lord did not inspire John Wesley in those respects, or his predecessors? I think tracing the history of ideas is worthwhile, but assuming that they are solely of mortal derivation is contrary to the gospel.

Religious writers traditionally see the hand of God everywhere; secular writers typically refuse to see it anywhere.

[Dave]

Mark, I think Shipps' version of "faithful history" (written by what are essentially "faithful historians") would fall between what you, in your last paragraph, called traditional religious writers and what you called secular writers.

I think the whole issue is actually covered better in my Faithful History post than in this one.

[Darren]

...except who is to say that the Lord did not inspire John Wesley in those respects, or his predecessors?

I guess God told Joseph just that when he described the other denominations as abominations.

[Mark Butler]

Darren,

According to the testimony of Joseph Smith, God did not describe those other denominations as "abominations" he described their creeds as abominations. There is a big difference.

A creed, is a detailed, generally theologically based list of things that every member of a denomination must believe exactly as outlined, according to the derivations of theological analysis. The problem with a creed is it shuts of the channels of revelation as to the deeper meaning of the scriptures, the mysteries of God which require the spirit of prophecy and revelation to understand in full.

An excellent example of a denominational creed, one that should properly be considered an abomination in the Lord's eyes is the Westminster Confession.

The Westminster Confession is probably the most succinct expression of scholastic Calvinism ever written. Unfortunately, among other things it teaches the doctrine of predestination, denies free will, personal responsibility, states that everything that happens is according to God's eternal decree, and so on. Excellent reading, and yet so sadly in error.

[Clark Goble]

While I agree with the basic sentiments I'd just point out that no one ends up adopting a single perspective. Everyone tries to account for the facts as best they can. For believers that means spiritual facts. Even non-believers sometimes have to account for those. So it's not like we have only two choices or even three choices (the so-called middle ground). Rather there is a unique historical view for each person. And most wise people will read and try to reconcile writings from both strong believers and unbelievers. So, for instance, while I may read very critically what I take to be somewhat naive works like A Marvelous Work and a Glory or Essentials in Church History there are also great truths in them. (One failing of many histories, even by believing Saints, is that they lack that search for the grand hand of God in history)

Put more simply, there shouldn't be a single view. Even we, as readers, ought invoke multiple views as we seek to understand. Our goal shouldn't be a static 2D picture but a multifaceted statue. Many perspectives are needed and each perspective both unveils the truth but also veils it and, as well, introduces some falsehood. Expecting that there is a single narrative that can show the Truth is itself a grave falsehood.

[Dave]

Clark, I don't think the "middle ground" requires a single narrative, but it can be identified, I think, as rejecting the methodological presuppositions of the two positions at the endpoints of the spectrum.

It rejects confessional history's practice of privileging favored accounts and declining to apply historical tools and techniques to such accounts. At the same time, it rejects the naturalistic stance that, as a methodological tenet, simply rules out any possibility of supernatural events (i.e., foundational religious events) actually occuring.

But that doesn't mean everyone "in the middle" takes the same approach. I think both Bushman and Quinn, for example, take a middle ground approach to LDS history.

[Clark Goble]

I think I'm more saying that the two extreme sides never really existed. That is everyone is railing against a false dichotomy that was never there. (I made a similar point way back in my blog during the whole Vogel - Ostler debate)

[Darren]

Mark, don't you think that is somewhat of a legalistic defense? Does it really pass the sniff test, or does it create some wiggle room? I don't think God would choose his words so carefuly then put it next to such a forceful word as 'abomination'. I would hope that God would be more of a straight shooter, so to speak. Particularly with His supposed vested interest in his conversation at hand.

[Mark Butler]

Darren: No, I do not. Some distinctions are absolutely critical. An error in what appears to be a minor point is enough to influence a whole civilization for the worse.

The Salem Witch Trials are a good example. None of the accused were even witches. They took the testimony of some idle young women on faith, and put the accused to death according to the law of Moses. I have an ancestor who was one of the victims:

Susanna North Martin
http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/sm.html

As Whittier said:

Let Goody Martin rest in peace, I never
knew her harm a fly,
And witch or not - God knows - not I?
I know who swore her life away;
And as God lives, I'd not condemn
An Indian dog on word of them.

There are much more subtle examples of course.