"To Be Learned is Good"
Essays on Faith and Scholarship in Honor of Richard Lyman Bushman
What does the future hold for Mormonism in the academy? How does personal faith impact one’s scholarship? How might scholarly women and men speak of faith in secular places and times? This volume contains vibrant exchanges on these and other questions from the memorable scholars’ colloquium held in honor of historian and Latter-day Saint Richard Lyman Bushman.
“I think we all feel some tension between our religious convictions and the secular times in which we live. In one way or another, modernism invades and unsettles our thinking, perhaps our thinking about our fields, perhaps our personal beliefs. What I hope we all realize is that this tension is not to be suppressed or regretted. Unanswerable as some questions are, we need not lament the discomfort they bring. The strain of believing in unbelieving times, is not a handicap or a burden. It is a stimulus and a prod. It is precisely out of such strains that creative work issues forth. And we can take satisfaction in knowing that we are in this together.” —Richard Lyman Bushman
Videos of each presentation from the scholars’ colloquium are available here.
About the Author & Editor
Spencer Fluhman
J. Spencer Fluhman is executive director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and associate professor of history at Brigham Young University. He is author of “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) and editor-in-chief of the Mormon Studies Review.
Table of Contents
Editors’ Preface
SECTION 1: HISTORIANS ARE NEVER INNOCENTS
Introduction: What Constrains Our Understanding of the Past?
“We Gain Knowledge No Faster Than We Are Saved”: The Epistemic Dimension of Character
The Poetics of Prejudice
Truth, Community, and Prophetic Authority
SECTION 2: ANXIETY AND OBLIGATION IN SCHOLARSHIP
Introduction: Anxiety and Obligation in the Practice of History
Prophetic Biography: The Universal, the Particular, and the Almost-Amazing Grace of Context
Above, Beyond, and in Between: A Teacher’s Role
Saving History: The Perquisites and Perils
SECTION 3: REENVISIONING MORMONISM
Introduction: Reenvisioning Mormonism: Looking Forward and Looking Back
Christo-Fiction, Mormon Philosophy, and the Virtual Body of Christ
Becoming Equal Partners: Latter-day Saint Women as Theologians
The Perverse Core of Mormonism: The Book of Mormon, Genetic Secularity, and Messianic Decoloniality
SECTION 4: CAN HISTORIANS QUEST AFTER RELIGIOUS TRUTH?
Introduction: Mormonism in the Academy: Scholarship, Teaching, and Faith
Richard Bushman and the Future of Mormon Teaching
The Role of the Church History Department in Mormon Scholarship: A Reflection on the Leonard J. Arrington Era and the Present
The Second Vatican Council and Mormon Correlation from the Pulpit and the Pew
SECTION 5: SCHOLARSHIP IN ITS PUREST AND BEST FORM?
Introduction: Mormonism in the Academy and in the Secular Study of Religion
On Being Epistemically Vulnerable: Mormonism and the Secular Study of Religion
“Mormonism in the Academy”: Reflections on Its Meaning
A Modern Religion
SECTION 6: IT IS MUCH BETTER TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF GENEROSITY
Introduction: Smooth Stones Rolling: Reflections on Critical Belief in Scholarship
The Personal and the Historical
Acts of Faith … and Reason
My Life among the Scholars
BENEDICTIONS
Blessing of—and for—the Academic Life
Finding the Right Words: Speaking Faith in Secular Times
Appendix
The Academic Achievements and Publications of Richard Lyman Bushman
Contributors
Index
Publication Information
ISBN 13: 978-0-8425-3022-4
Page Count: 349
Price: $ 24.95