Speaking announcements and also, why LDS unwittingly think like Protestants

First, as many wonder, I have successfully defended my dissertation. When and in what forms it will be available to the public, I can’t say yet, but I’m already in talks with academic presses to turn it into a book. The final title was “The Scientist is Wrong”: Joseph Fielding Smith, George McCready Price, and the Ascent of Creationist Thought among Latter-day Saints in the Twentieth Century. 

Some other announcements of interest:

1. FAIR is putting on a streaming-only Church History conference on Oct 11, but mostly the 12th. There’s no registration (AFAIK), and the program is now listed here! I, however, am speaking Saturday morning on “Scripture, Science, and History-writing:  Elder Ballard’s Subtle— but Radical —Reformation.” I’ve presented this at a few firesides with overwhelmingly positive response; people feel this really explains some of our history.  Given my time limits, this will be a refined and shortened version.
2. Tuesday October 15 at 6:30, I’m giving a casual talk to BYU undergrads who are interested in Church history, biblical studies, and my work.  This will not be recorded or broadcast, but it will be advertised on campus.
3. March 29, 2025 I will speak in upstate New York on my research.  This is a new group that, like the Miller-Eccles group in LA and Texas.  I hope to expand this to some other east coast areas since we’ll already be out there.
4. I was recently interviewed by a new Saints Unscripted subchannel called  Keystone, where I expanded on something I wrote for missionaries, but applies to any Latter-day Saint with Protestant friends or family. We Latter-day Saints  tend to adopt Protestant assumptions, and in doing so, cede the most central and differentiating aspects of the Restoration. (IOW, we are not sola scriptura Protestants, and we shouldn’t act like it.)Missionaries, especially those who have grown up in LDS-dominated areas, rarely grasp the fundamental differences between us and Protestants, and that affects our effectiveness in teaching in Protestant-dominated areas. (I’m not just talking about the Bible belt. Protestantism dominates American thought so much that Islam and Hindusim take on Protestant shades in America.)
   
   Protestants expect Latter-day Saints to be able to demonstrate why LDS doctrines are actually better and more accurate interpretations of the Bible than Protestant doctrines, because that’s how “doctrine” is made in the sola scriptura Protestant system.
   
   So they think we’re like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Seventh-day Adventists, and our ideas just stem from a weird interpretation of the Bible, amplified by Joseph Smith.
   When we respond by trying to demonstrate unique LDS doctrines or practices from the Bible, we’re simply playing onto their sola scriptura ground and ceding our strongest and most unique card, i.e. living prophets. In other words, as one BYUI prof said, “we are not based on the Bible; we are based on what the Bible itself is based on: revelation to prophets.”So don’t get drawn in. Be very clear; whether it is not drinking alcohol or three degrees of glory or whatever, “we don’t claim the Bible teaches X. We believe it or do it, because just as in Biblical times, God has again called prophets and spoken to them, and they have taught this.”
   
   Although missionaries will end up talking about specific passages or doctrines, conversion involves a change in religious worldview and epistemology, i.e. how you know something. You’re not asking someone merely to accept the Book of Mormon or to adopt a new interpretation of the Bible; you’re asking them to stop with their sola scriptura views, and accept living prophets. So don’t try to prove things from the Bible, because that cedes the field to Protestant paradigms. Point instead to living prophets, and that this is the way biblical religion worked; When Peter has the revelation on opening the Gospel to the Gentiles and withdrawing the kosher requirements, it’s not something he derives from a closed Old Testament canon, but something he gets NEW revelation on. 
   
   There’s one Protestant scholar who really gets this. In fact, I think he expresses it better than any LDS scholars I’ve read.
   

   It is important to underscore here the way in which the Mormon restoration of these ancient offices and practices resulted in a very significant departure from the classical Protestant understanding of religious authority. The subtlety of the issues at stake here is often missed by us Evangelicals, with the result that we typically get sidetracked in our efforts to understand our basic disagreements with Mormon thought. We often proceed as if the central authority issue to debate with Mormons has to do with the question of which authoritative texts ought to guide us in understanding the basic issues of life. We Evangelicals accept the Bible alone as our infallible guide while, we point out, the Latter-day Saints add another set of writings, those that comprise the Book of Mormon, along with the records of additional Church teachings to the canon- we classic Protestants are people of the Book while Mormons are people of the Books.This way of getting at the nature of our differences really does not take us very far into exploring some of our basic disagreements. What we also need to see is that in restoring some features of Old Testament Israel, **Mormonism has also restored the kinds of authority patterns that guided the life of Israel. The old Testament people of God were not a people of the Book as such- mainly because for most of their history, there was no completed Book.** Ancient Israel was guided by an open canon [of scripture] and the leadership of the prophets. And it is precisely this pattern of communal authority that Mormonism restored. Evangelicals may insist that Mormonism has too many books. But the proper Mormon response is that even these Books are not enough to give authoritative guidance to the present-day community of the faithful.The books themselves are products of a prophetic office, an office that has been reinstituted in these latter days. People fail to discern the full will of God if they do not live their lives in the anticipation that they will receive new revealed teachings under the authority of the living prophets.”

   – Richard Mouw, “What does God think about America?” BYU Studies, 43:4 (2004): 10-11.
   
   Cf. The Jewish Study Bible, which recognizes that

   We must first understand that biblical religion is not, strictly speaking, “biblical” because, unlike Judaism and Christianity, it is not a religion based on the Bible—i.e., the canonized record of past divine revelation—but on that revelation itself.

   So, give it a listen.

5. I’ve added it to my Media page. I have another one coming up with Keystone, so keep your eyes peeled.

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