The Prophetic Book of Ether

Terryl Givens.  By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.  ISBN: 0195168887.

This book came to me as a gift from a dear Mormon friend, who heard about my faith crisis and wanted to help.  I found it more enjoyable than many apologetic works, and can recommend it (along with these interviews) to anyone interested in a faithful approach to Mormonism that does not eschew thinking (or truth, even the uncomfortable truth that people like Boyd K. Packer find useless).

Over the past ten years, I have done a lot of thinking (about life, including Mormonism).  One of the insights that has come to me can be illustrated well by a story in the Book of Mormon.  I offer my reading of that story here, as an homage to Givens, and a witness to the kind of Mormon that I am (inactive in the Corporation of the President, but firmly committed to certain principles of the gospel).

As a kid, I read the Book of Mormon many, many times.  (By the time I went on my mission, I had lost count of the number of times I had read it.)  To me, the culmination of the book was not the coming of Christ to the Americas (which always struck me as boring: he just repeats sections of the New Testament almost verbatim and performs a lot of perfunctory ordinances), but the Book of Ether.  In my mind, Ether was like a summary of the whole volume, with the brother of Jared playing the role of Lehi, the Jaredite kings fighting and converting like the early Nephite and Lamanite rulers, and Ether taking the prophetic mantle assumed elsewhere by Abinadi, Mormon, and Moroni.  Ether is simultaneously John the Baptist (a social outcast, eking out a lonely existence in a wilderness cave while he prophesies the end of civilization) and the Anglo-Saxon Wanderer (the last survivor of a lost tribe destroyed in battle, a role that Coriantumr also gets to play at the end of the Book of Ether, when the prophet Ether disappears: where does he go?).  As a social outcast within LDS Mormonism (and American society at large), I am drawn to Ether's character.  As someone who frequently feels like the world is falling apart around him, I identify with Ether.  I look into the world, and everywhere I see what Ether saw: Coriantumr and Shiz fight for total domination, dividing the whole civilized world between them, and eventually everybody loses (with Coriantumr as the lone survivor of what was once a great civilization: after everyone else perishes in battle, he wanders about all by himself, gets picked up by a group of new Jewish immigrants, and dies; Ether pulls an Enoch and just disappears from the narrative abruptly).  Maybe a crude chart can illustrate what I am getting at:

                                  CORIANTUMR vs. SHIZ

                                              Catholics vs. Protestants

                                      Martin Luther vs. Thomas Muentzer                         

                             Cavaliers (royalists) vs. Roundheads (parliamentarians)

                                                Puritans vs. Quakers

                                        conservatives vs. liberals

                                                    Tories vs. Whigs

                                  Thomas Jefferson vs. Alexander Hamilton

                       Missourians / Illinoisans vs. Mormons

                                         Confederacy vs. Union

                                         white people vs. black people

                                           bourgeoisie vs. proletariat

                                         management vs. unions

                              Axis Powers (Nazis) vs. Allies (Soviet-enablers)

                                                  fascists vs. communists

                                  Ezra Taft Benson vs. Hugh B. Brown

                                                       USA vs. USSR

                                 al-Qaeda / Taliban vs. USA

                                          family farms vs. Monsanto

                             straights (Mormons) vs. gays

Throughout history, people line up in partisan groups: us versus them.  The list above could get longer (much longer), but there is one thing you would never find on it: good versus evil.  Looking closely at both sides of the list reveals that even where one side enjoyed a preponderance of goodness (in comparison with its opponents), it was not utterly, purely good.  The political union forged to defeat the Nazis (a good enterprise!) came at the cost of enabling the Soviets (a bad enterprise).  The Confederacy supported slavery (a bad thing): they also supported states' rights (a good thing, since smaller systems function more intelligently, saving information that would otherwise be destroyed).  Alexander Hamilton was a staunch advocate for fiscal responsibility (a good thing): he also laid the foundation for the Fed (which comes with some seriously bad consequences that we are still living with).

In the character of Ether, I look at these conflicts, and I see human capital being wasted.  People on one side ignore all the good on the other side.  Worse, they ignore the bad on their side.  They identify their side as God's side, and brand their enemies as the stooges of Satan.  Mistaking Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for reality, they see themselves as sainted heroes and the enemy as vile orcs, forgetting that we are all just people: we are all at once bad and good.  There are no exceptions.  Every human organization hurts at least as many people as it helps: the question is what kind of harm that is.  If it is slight, then we might be willing to suffer it, especially if the alternative (e.g. being ruled by the Nazis) is utterly unbearable.  But we should never pretend that it isn't there.  We should never tell people to put absolute faith in any human coalition, encouraging them to ignore and deny the reality of human imperfection as an omnipresent element adulterating everything it touches.  Blind allegiance is dangerous -- to the individual (whom it leaves exposed to abuse by the group), and to society (which needs constructive criticism and dissent in order to grow and prosper).

This insight is not original to me.  I first encountered it in the work of Hugh Nibley:

"Patriotism shows itself in times of crisis: 'These are the times that try men's souls!' is the refrain of the earliest purely patriotic odes—those of the Greek lyric poets, who describe the true patriot as one who stands shoulder to shoulder with his fellow citizens facing any odds. In this atmosphere of crisis, an attitude of defense and defiance naturally associates patriotism with the panoply of war. The classic trappings of patriotism have been inherited by the Western World along with the pageantry of chivalry from the ceaselessly warring tribes of the steppes of Asia. The flag is the bright rallying point that can be seen for miles by the mounted hordes on the open plains, where the trumpet's message and the arrow's flight carry unhindered for great distances. In jungle and forest it is another story, but the formal symbols of European patriotism belong to 'the World of the Jaredites,' the polarized world of host against host on the darkling plain, of Shiz versus Coriantumr. But does the true patriot destroy his people in his own interests as that previous pair did? Under chivalry the essence of patriotism was to support one's liege lord, who enriched one with a share of his ceaseless looting. There are no more touching stories of loyalty than are found in the literature of the Heroic Ages. Yet Roland, Beowolf, Blondel, etc., stand out precisely because they were those rare souls who remained true while others ran for cover.

There is something wrong with this patriotism, which is based on conflict. As Froissart tells us forcibly, under chivalry the only way to prove one's nobility was by fighting somebody. The tradition survives, and to this day there are many whose patriotism is not a widening but a contracting circle, recalling the defensive-aggressive posture of the Roman trux et minax (dour and threatening), the walled towns and castles of the Middle Ages, the family shelter of the Jaredites in which "every man did cleave unto that which was his own; . . . and every man kept the hilt of his sword in his right hand, in the defence of his property and his own life and of his wives and children" (Ether 14:2), and finally, the narrowest circle of all, with every man "walk[ing] in his own way," seeking his own interests amid the rich offerings of Babylon (see D&C 1:16). The passion for security ends in total insecurity, with the would-be patriot fancying himself as a lone frontiersman, facing the world with his long rifle, his keen eyes searching the horizon for enemies and finding them everywhere; until one day as he draws his circle even smaller, we find him coolly keeping his next-door neighbor and fellow countrymen in the sights of his trusty .22, lest the latter make a suspicious move in the direction of his two-years' supply" (from "The Uses and Abuses of Patriotism" in Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints).

I still resonate with this kind of thinking today.  Unfortunately, it seems increasingly unwelcome in many of the places I grew up frequenting (including the LDS church, which does not welcome people who take its call for absolute loyalty with a rational grain of salt).  I have turned into a something of a social pariah -- a scruffy prophet crying out in the wilderness of the Internet, begging people to be honest with themselves and with others, even when honesty hurts.  I am another Ether -- one of many Mormons (and former Mormons) calling on the LDS church (especially) to remember its roots and come clean.  Who cares what the consequences are?  God can take care of the church, of people's testimonies, of the spin rival denominations may lay on anything we say.  Our place is to tell the truth and let the cards fall.  No more lies.  No more unthinking loyalty.  No more slandering the other side as mudslingers while we pretend to be spotless.  Following the advice attributed to Jesus in the Beatitudes, we need to forget about others' motes and concentrate on our own beams.  This will not be easy, but it is the right thing to do, and Mormons who really believe in righteousness will do it (to the best of their ability: no one can ask more than that).  Otherwise, we're just as guilty as anyone else.  In Ether's story, Coriantumr is no better than Shiz (and vice versa: at the end of the day, they are both guilty, both ruined, and both dead).

Canary in the Mine

Boyd J. Petersen.  Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life.  Kofford, 2002.  ISBN: 1589580206.

Martha Beck.  Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith.  Crown, 2005.  ISBN: 0307335992.

Hugh Nibley.  "The Roman Games as the Survival of an Archaic Year Cult." PhD dissertation.  University of California at Berkeley, 1938.

I first encountered Hugh Nibley when I was about sixteen years old.  Making my way through my parents' library looking for something substantial to devour, I came upon An Approach to the Book of Mormon, and was immediately fascinated.  Like many of the groupies I encountered later at BYU, I too succumbed to the spell of exotic historical narratives, numerous foreign languages, and professorial tone, buttressed with crowds of dense footnotes.  My worship reached its zenith when I read Approaching Zion and Temple and Cosmos, which I still regard as some of Nibley's best work (even if it is not perfect, by any means).

The hardest thing for me to give up as a missionary was my addiction to printed matter, an addiction which Nibley fed (not just with his own material: he also pointed me towards other sources of information about the ancient world).  I missed his wide perspective in the mission field, especially when those around me (leaders and fellow missionaries) seemed much more narrowly focused, reducing the gospel to cheap kitsch that could be marketed door to door in easy soundbytes.  I knew they meant well, but it seemed to me even then that we were prostituting the kingdom of God, selling it with the same kind of tactics (and sales meetings) that other people use to sell vacuum cleaners or sleazy magazines.  One of many pleasures that came with the end of my mission was the freedom to look at the gospel from a non-sales perspective.  Eternal salvation is not something decided by how fast two young men walk, how diligently they brush their teeth or shine their shoes, or how widely they smile when you come to the door to tell them, for the umpteenth time, that you really aren't interested in another chat about baptism.  Fed up with being told that the life and death of other people depended on my personal hygiene (and their knee-jerk reaction thereto), I rushed happily back to BYU, and picked up with Nibley where I had left off (somewhere in The World and the Prophets).

Ironically, it was at BYU that the first cracks in my idol started to appear.  I encountered several professors whom I respected very much, and learned that not all of them were ardent Nibley fans.  That gave me pause.  Another wrench in the works was that I began learning more about his personal life, which I was actively assimilating as a guide for my own.  I took pride in spending no time (or hardly any) socializing, preferring to remain holed up in the library working.  I did not date (until my last year as an undergraduate).  I did not have a job.  I studied, ate, worked out, and slept.  This worked pretty well for me: I got excellent marks in all my classes, and avoided the pitfalls of dating in Provo (like having to consider marrying a girl after you have taken her out twice).  I also avoided spending money that I didn't have (and wasn't likely to get, given that my idol spent most of his life as poor as a churchmouse).  Then, as so often happens, life intervened and busted up my dream of Mormon scholarly perfection.  Things started innocently enough, with Nibley's funeral in the old Provo Tabernacle (before it burned down).  Naturally, I attended (and sat up very high in the gallery: I love those old pioneer churches in Utah; they have much more character than the modern LDS buildings).  In the midst of all the passionate eulogies, which were generally full of praise and admiration (as I would expect), there was some mention made of Nibley's wayward daughter, Martha, who was not welcome in the family.  Having read Petersen's book (above), I knew a little about her: she had accused her father of sexually molesting her, an accusation that none of her family members supported.  Of course I thought she was nuts.  Her accusation rested on memory recovery techniques that I knew to be shady (I had done my research!), and, besides, no one as perfect as Hugh Nibley would give up something as wonderful as the gospel to waste time torturing a little girl, his own little girl.  It was ridiculous.

Fast forward a little.  I am working closely with a Nibley acolyte in the BYU faculty, trying to piece together a commentary on the New Testament that will be at once an academic tour-de-force and a solid bit of Mormon apologetics.  As often happens, my mentor's discourse turns to reminiscences of the Great Man (Nibley), whose daughter went crazy at Harvard and came back with all these incomprehensible allegations.  In passing, my mentor mentions that he and other groupies used to hang out regularly at the Nibleys' little house in downtown Provo.  I have seen the house.  It is pretty tiny.  I picture it full of people, coming and going all the time, and books stacked floor to ceiling (as it has been described by witnesses like Petersen).  I think about Petersen's account of the lack of amenities in the house, how the Nibleys moved in without any furniture (literally), and how the Great Man would sometimes throw a tent in his car, pile in the kids, and go camping impromptu in the nearby canyons.  In Petersen's account, this life seemed idyllic and perfect, just the kind of thing I would do with my eight kids when I was living in a tiny house in Provo, playing the role of the Lord's Apologist.  But what if it wasn't all fun and games for everyone involved?  What if having a father who worked all the time, except when he was stuffing your tiny house full of books and strangers or taking you off into the howling wilderness, wasn't as much fun as I thought?

Petersen's book contained the seeds of my questions, pointing out the extremely awkward relationship between Hugh and his mother, for example, and the fact that Hugh never related well to his children once they ceased being babies.  Hugh was a loner, like I was shaping up to be, a workaholic, a war veteran who suffered from PTSD, an awkward lover (who married his much younger wife almost on a dare, according to the family legend preserved by Petersen, after his first love refused him), and basically kind of crazy.  None of this cancelled his brilliance, or made me admire his work less, but it did give me pause, especially when I accidentally found myself courting a young woman and contemplating marriage.  What if she didn't want to live in a dump with eight kids while I worked all the time, or wandered off into the wilderness?  Was it really fair of me to ask this kind of commitment?  In patterning my own life after that of the Great Man, what was I really signing on for?  I admit that I did not really know.  But I began to wonder.

Fast forward some more, to graduate school.  Here, the intellectual doubts my professors had expressed about Nibley came to a head, when I read his PhD thesis myself (listed above) in search of some ideas for what paths I might pursue.  While there was no denying that Nibley was incredibly well-read, there was also no getting around the fact that my professors' most telling criticisms stuck.  Stripped of all its baggage (fancy foreign words and dense footnotes), Nibley's thesis was pretty dodgy: there are records of many ancient peoples holding ceremonies to usher in the new year; the Romans may have had one too (though their earliest religious calendars extant don't attest a single ritual occasion with all of the events that Nibley finds characteristic of year ceremonies); all these ancient year ceremonies (the imaginary Roman one too) may descend from the earliest, most ancient year ceremony of them all.  I realized that I could use this kind of logic to write a thesis about Orlando, Florida, as the center of an ancient pilgrimage ritual (showing features similar to other pilgrimage centers like Santiago de Compostela, Mecca, or Jerusalem).  At what point do historical parallels (or imaginary historical parallels) become meaningful?  Do rituals really descend consciously from one another?  Does the same kind of behavior never spontaneously crop up in two or more different places, just because people are people?  The Nibley spell was broken.

Losing my idol was part of the faith crisis that hit me full force in graduate school (though it had really been building ever since I became academically interested in religion: you cannot bring critical thinking to something that does not bear scrutiny without asking for trouble).  Recently, I happened across Martha's book in a local library and decided to give it a read.  Having heard both sides of the story now--Martha's (as told by herself) and her family's (as told by Boyd Petersen)--I have some thoughts to offer.

First, I do not know what exactly to conclude about the allegations of sexual abuse.  In Nibley's defense, no one else in the family accuses him (though Martha claims that her mother was initially willing to admit his guilt).  In Martha's defense, I do not think that her memories are entirely false.  I have some personal experience with victims of sexual abuse, and the story she tells rings true enough that I cannot dismiss it as pure fabrication.  (There is the vaginal scarring to consider, as well.)  I tend to suspect that her family may be right in putting the blame for the actual assault off onto someone else, perhaps another man in the family circle (which Nibley's apologetic work extended to include a lot of interlopers).  Nibley's awkwardness as a father, and his failure to defend Martha, might then account for her "remembering" him later as the perpetrator.  Or not.  I do not presume to know either way.

Second, the Nibley family was really dysfunctional.  The idyllic picture painted by Boyd Petersen omits a lot of crap: the dirty diapers littering the floor, the mother abandoned to her fate--lying in bed and crying all day while her husband plays with Latin, Greek, and ancient Egyptian.  Martha says her mother admitted being a victim of sexual abuse, and believes that Hugh's mother abused him.  I lack the facts to come down firmly on either side, but it does seem hard not to conclude that all has not been well with the Nibleys.  This is nothing for them to be ashamed of, really.  It is just the way the cookie crumbles, sometimes.  My life hasn't been all teddy bears and rainbows, either, and others have suffered worse than I or the Nibleys.

Finally, Nibley's position as LDS Apologist in Chief drove him crazier than he otherwise would have been.  The guy had an overbearing mom (who might have abused him).  He fought in a war before we knew what PTSD was, and never received any therapy.  On top of all this, chance put him in charge of defending the historicity of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham.  As a result of his heroic efforts in this impossible war of words, a war that cannot be won, he was constantly harried by fanboys (like I would have been had the situation presented itself), and suffered at least one nervous breakdown (speaking with Louis Midgely before an audience of BYU students).  A lot of his apologetic work puts the cart before the horse, assuming a theory to be true (e.g. the Mormon gospel is really ancient) and then finding evidence to back this assumption up (ancient records contain things that vaguely resemble the Mormon gospel!).  He was not always careful to allow for the fact that he might be wrong.  (Consider, for example, his overly hasty dismissal of the evidence that Joseph Smith was convicted of glass-looking in 1826.)

Today, I still enjoy reading Hugh Nibley.  His satire is great, and I think the idea he had of Mormonism is better than many (including the one I ended up serving for the greater part of my mission).  But I do not aim any more to be the person he was.  I am not an apologist.  I am not a defender of the faith.  Any faith worth trusting can look after itself.  It doesn't need me to drive myself and those around me crazy in order to preserve it.