When I chose recently, in articles posted at Meridian Magazine (part 1, part 2), to engage critically what I called “Mormonism Lite,” I knew I was likely to stir up considerable heat, but I was hoping the light might be worth it. To judge from all the anger I have provoked at numerous LDS or quasi-LDS blogs, it would seem heat is a clear winner at this point. Herewith another attempt at light.

I am neither surprised nor offended to have elicited disagreement — in fact, I’m sorry there wasn’t more actual, substantive, disagreement, as opposed to indignant complaints about my tone, my manner, my masculinity, my employer, etc. Here I propose to restate the main stakes of my argument without reference to any persons, and so clearly that those who pretend to be open to rational discussion will have no possible excuse for avoiding the questions I’m raising.

In particular, I frankly challenge faithful LDS bloggers at what I had taken on the whole to be faithful LDS blogs (Times & Seasons, By Common Consent, Wheat & Tares, for example) to distinguish themselves — if they wish, that is — from voices on their sites that seem to reject out of hand any attempt (such as mine) to limit the absorption of LDS belief into what I will call “lifestyle liberalism” or “extreme tolerance.” I have to say I had hoped for more substantive discussion from such sites; but my recent experience suggests that, although surely not all principals on these blogs are fully committed lifestyle liberals, they are not at all inclined (or equipped?) to risk the wrath of the “hard left” among their associates and readers. I am reminded of the slogan of the French Popular Front of the 1930s: “Pas d’ennemi à gauche” — that is, no enemy on the left. The effective rule seems to be: we intellectuals of the Mormon Blogosphere will speak no evil of anyone advocating more “tolerance,” more inclusiveness, more concessions to secular culture and politics, more criticism of “orthodoxy” — in fact, we will not even presume to contradict their arguments. But anyone perceived to be more “conservative” is fair game for the harshest and most personal attacks. (It is not surprising then, that people who agree with me, sometimes enthusiastically, find it necessary to communicate privately, choosing not to brave the bullying of the “open-minded” blogs.) I am looking for evidence to contradict this characterization of the LDS Blogs; so far I haven’t found much. But I’m willing to keep looking: hence this invitation.

I thank the appreciative readers who have posted at Meridian and particularly the brave readers who dared share a bit of my infamy by posting comments favorable or at least respectful of my arguments at the more, shall we say intellectually ambitious sites such as Times and Seasons or By Common Consent, as well as those women and men who have communicated to me privately their thanks for saying things they felt were important to say. And I also wish to thank and compliment those few writers unfavorable to my views who actually carefully read and directly engaged my arguments in some way.

A particularly notable attempt to address my arguments was by Lynette at Zelophehad’s Daughters (reposted at Feminist Mormon Housewives). I have attempted to address Lynette’s main points in the general response below, but let me say in advance that the main thrust of her vigorous objection to my review is that I dare to take exception to Brooks’ positions — in a word, that I dare to argue that Brooks is wrong or misguided about certain things, which in itself makes me “authoritarian” or “condescending,” and which is apparently particularly unseemly because Brooks is a woman and I am not. It is hard to know how to respond to such an objection, except to say that I do not honor the sexist principle that a woman cannot make an argument that a man is allowed to answer, and to point out that anyone who makes an argument generally makes it because he (or she) is proposing the possibility that he is right and thus that whoever disagrees with him is wrong on the point in question. I am not an exception to this rule, but then neither is Lynette or Joanna: they think they are right, and they too, I must say, address the world with some confidence. Like many who prosper in the Mormon blogosphere these days, my respondents are simply not accustomed to having someone contradict their fundamental assumptions. It adds to my sin, I suppose, that I do so rather straightforwardly, which I think is as much for the sake of clarity as it is a sign of confidence. In any case, it would be more useful to respond to my arguments by answering them rather than by complaining that I think I am right.

It would be quixotic in the extreme to undertake to address any significant sample of the objections, not to say spirited attacks, that have been leveled against my essay, and in fact against me as a thinker, a teacher, a person. It is clear in fact that both sides in this “conversation” find it easy to feel viscerally that they or their friends are victims of the most unjust personal attacks. Here I think President Uchtdorf’s recent observation is very acute and very important:

But when it comes to our own prejudices and grievances, we too often justify our anger as righteous and our judgment as reliable and only appropriate. Though we cannot look into another’s heart, we assume that we know a bad motive or even a bad person when we see one. We make exceptions when it comes to our own bitterness because we feel that, in our case, we have all the information we need to hold someone else in contempt.

If, then, we find it impossible to imagine ourselves into the shoes of those with whom we disagree, I think it just best to suspend the question of motives and to attend to arguments with as much serenity as possible, ready to forget and even to forgive offenses.

Overlooking or forgiving offenses is one thing, but judging ideas and arguments and intellectual-political projects is another matter, though, isn’t it? Can this responsibility for intellectual judgment be avoided — without, that is, abandoning the good we find and the greater good we hope for in dialectical exchange about the theory and practice of our faith? To savor spiritual goods “in the tangle of our minds” requires that we reason together, and this in turn requires that we judge as best we can of what is true and false, well-reasoned and not. And how can faithful and responsible reasoning in this area avoid the effort (however hazardous) of taking account of and critiquing ideological paradigms that may well seep into our religious opinions? That, you will have noticed, is what I see myself doing, and one key area where I think I can make a contribution to our reasoning together about our faith.

Now, of course, an obvious objection arises here:  but you, Hancock, have your own ideology (“conservative,” I suppose the objector would say), and you are just responding to those you disagree with from that point of view! To be sure this risk is always present. All we can do is beware of the risk, and muster both the virtue and the insight necessary to suspend our ideological inclinations and think around them and through them. The alternative is clearly unacceptable: to accept the relativist premise that our reasoning faculty is enslaved to ideologies or interests from the outset, and so that we are locked in a conflict with no issue, in fact no conceivable issue. This would be a closed world, a cave of all heated conflict and darkness, and I cannot accept that.

So judge we must, trying our best to sort ideology from the possibility of Truth, and I do my best with the powers and knowledge I have. And here I might begin to respond to questions that were frequently raised regarding my competence, given my academic discipline, to address a personal memoire such as. I’m not sure the question of credentials is really very important, since the quality of a piece of writing should speak for itself, and the critique of professional credentials is a distraction, and hardly normative in the blogosphere. So I’ll just say this: Political Philosophy, my line of work, is a way of doing philosophy and of thinking about the task of thinking in relation to moral, political and religious claims. The intersection of religion and political ideology is very much a part of this task. And I see no reason for abstaining from critique when this intersection is addressed in the form of a personal memoire, especially when it fairly leaps to the eye that this memoire is no less informed by a public purpose than were Rousseau’s famous Confessions — indeed, more obviously, militantly so. I would have been happy if others, especially women, had stepped in to raise the kinds of questions I thought needed to be raised, but I did not see this happening. I have to rest content with the gratitude and endorsement a number have confided in me privately.

I take Rousseau as a kind of founding master of the personal memoire as political strategy. Rousseau aims to weaken traditional moral and religious restraints by exposing his life in all its lurid vicissitudes in order to argue, or to convey the sentiment, that, underneath all the foibles and the miscues, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his heart of hearts is as innocent as can be. In doing this he proposes himself as an exemplar of the natural goodness of human beings, in opposition to the traditional doctrine of the Fall of Man and to the restrictions and commandments and punishments associated with this doctrine. The implicit lesson is that it is not obedience to divine commands or some traditional conception of virtue but rather authenticity, that is, simply and sincerely being who one is, that is the key to a fully human existence. Similarly (not identically, of course), the Mormon memoire in question bravely exposes a woman’s personal struggles, weakness and foibles (nowhere near as lurid as Jean-Jacques, it should be noted) in order to present her own authentic, sincere personal existence as an alternative to an old-fashioned regard for commandments and for the authority (in her view often hypocritical and even cruel) of those who teach and, in certain cases, verify conformity to these commandments. As in Rousseau’s case, the personal life is advanced as a public lesson, a standard of personal authenticity proposed as a model for other brave souls.

As I pointed out at the beginning of my Part Two, feminists often stake their claims by making the personal political. Apparently many believe that this strategy should make an author immune from criticism, but this would be implicitly to accept the reduction of the religious life to the cultivation of personal authenticity. I have no interest in engaging a discussion of anyone’s personal life (or of their Church membership status), but I do not see why I should shrink from a discussion that has more general religious and political stakes.

Thus I do not in fact accept the imperative to allow an author “ to be authoritative on her own experience.” We are not — certainly not automatically and always — the supreme authorities on the meaning of our own experience. That is what religious authority is for – to help us get ourselves right and to let us know when we are wrong, even or especially wrong about ourselves. I do not presume to exercise religious authority; I am simply using rational argument defend a certain view of the meaning of religious authority and therefore, necessarily, to criticize the view that personal “authenticity” is the be-all and end-all of human meaning.

It is not true, then, that I presumed to “excommunicate” Joanna Brooks. I have made it as clear as can be that I hope she will remain in the Church. I was quoted by Jamie Reno in the Daily Beast as saying that “Joanna’s position on gay marriage is irreconcilable with the church.” This statement of mine, quoted (I have to trust) from a good hour’s wandering discussion with the reporter, was taken by some to mean that I believed Joanna should be excommunicated because she disagreed with me on the political question of the definition of marriage. This is not my position, and I take some responsibility for not being clearer in this sentence in distinguishing between the political and the theological question. I did go on immediately to say that I find it “hard to conceive of calling anything Mormon that relinquishes the importance of sexual difference and procreation in the big, eternal scheme of things.” My primary concern is not with the political question of the civil definition of marriage (though this is an important disagreement I have with Brooks), but with the properly religious question of the place of sexuality in eternity. I believe, following the Church’s Proclamation to the World on the Family, in heterosexuality as an eternal reality and thus an eternal norm. (And thus I think our country is better off reflecting the goodness of the man-woman union in law and policy.) I understand Brooks’ interpretation of the principle that “all are alike unto God” to imply that homosexuality should enjoy all the rights of heterosexuality in this life and in the next — or, perhaps that sexual difference is irrelevant in the next life. In any case, the tendency of her political rhetoric has certainly been to undermine the normativity of heterosexuality, and this is what I oppose, and find incompatible with Church teaching. I have no interest in raising the question of excommunication, but, just as she has a right to argue for a certain understanding of Mormonism, I have a right, and, I think, a duty to point out where I think she is wrong.

My problem, then, with liberalism and feminism as a frame of LDS belief does not finally concern specifically political questions. What concerns me is a strong tendency for liberalism to migrate from politics and to penetrate and reshape religious understandings. Thus I argued, based upon evidence from her book, that Joanna Brooks tends very much to make a liberal principle of toleration or non-discrimination (which she hears in the scriptural teaching “all are alike unto God”) into the most fundamental touchstone of religious truth. This accords at a deep level with the tendency of her personal confession and of her defenders’ pleas to make every person, and in particular every woman, the best, most authentic judge of her own experience. On this view, to be truly religious is to be compassionate, and to be compassionate is to acknowledge the legitimacy of each individual’s view of her own good, that is, with moral relativism or an ethic that gives final authority to personal self-expression. For example, since all are alike, then, on this lifestyle-liberal view, not only does God love homosexuals as much as heterosexuals, but he loves homosexuality as much as heterosexuality. Thus “all are alike unto God” is understood to mean that every individual has a sovereign right to define his own good.

This formulation of equality of lifestyles under God will no doubt strike some liberal readers as unproblematic, even as obviously sound. And that is exactly my point. Over the last generation liberalism has broadened and absolutized its claims, making equality of worldviews and lifestyles and thus absolute Toleration the only truth, and many political liberals have begun to interpret their religion according to this extreme liberalism, especially where sexual and familial norms are concerned. It seems a large number, even a preponderant number on the more “intellectual” blogs, have convinced themselves that this liberalism is the underlying, latent truth of Mormonism. Such a view is seductive in many ways, including the fact that it seems to justify one’s own or one’s loved one’s behavior, and also that it removes of a vexing obstacle to full membership in the prestigious liberal intelligentsia. And here I come along saying, no, I think not. I state candidly and plainly my view, a view I am confident is shared by the great majority of faithful LDS who are aware of such questions, that there are fundamental differences at the level of basic and essential beliefs between LDS teaching and this boundless late-liberal “toleration.” I confess this seems rather obvious to me, and so I state it straightforwardly, and with some confidence. I have to ask whether you liberal intellectual bloggers really believe, for example, that any of the General Authorities you presumably sustain a few times a year would disagree with this proposition. Understandably, many who have constructed for themselves a different , more “open” view of Mormonism are offended, and find me arrogant, bullying, condescending, etc. I am not sure there would have been any way to raise the questions I’m raising without offending those who are committed to the new, liberal Mormonism.

The problem we confront today, and that Joanna Brooks represents in an increasingly popular form, was clearly in evidence in a conversation a friend reported he had had with several liberal Mormon intellectual acquaintances. This person had dared openly to doubt whether Mormonism could survive full acceptance of gay marriages. They attacked him for questioning one of their articles of faith. Their attitude toward matters of gender does not only include an acceptance of continuing revelation and of the possibility that the Church could someday give women the priesthood and perform same-sex temple marriages; instead, they are convinced that the Church WILL do those things, and this has become part of their testimony. Given this state of affairs, anyone contradicting such liberalized testimony, even in a most moderate and reasonable tone, can only be perceived by the liberal blogosphere as threatening, and thus as arrogant, condescending, and, of course, inevitably,“snarky.”

This tendency of a late-liberal conception of justice, and the corresponding virtues of toleration and compassion, to become theologically foundational for a significant number of Mormon believers, especially among those who consider themselves intellectually accomplished, goes far towards explaining a profound imbalance or asymmetry that one finds in the LDS blogosphere. It is remarkable how rare and mild are any objections, even among the more moderate bloggers, to more radical claims to personal freedom and to borderless definitions of Mormonism. In such cases, an ethic of sympathetic understanding and inclusiveness reigns supreme. On the other hand, as I have found by hard experience, anyone who dares affirm a more … what shall I call it? “traditional” or “conservative” understanding of the faith, especially where feminism and sexuality are concerned, is likely immediately to be classified as offensive, uncaring, beyond the pale, especially if this person happens to bear the burden of a Y chromosome. This is the structural asymmetry I referred to above that results effectively in the “pas d’ennemi à gauche” policy. This is the “openness” that seems for the most part to characterize even what I had not long ago taken to be the more faithful, moderate and responsible Bloggernacle. To be sure, this attitude may be applied in perfect sincerity, since openness to a diversity of views and practices does not operate as a formal principle of deliberation — a way of considering questions —but as a substantive principle, as the answer we know in advance. However sincere, though, such a frame of discussion can only lead more and more bloggers and their readers further away from the distinctive, substantive commitments of the Church.

It has been objected, reasonably, to my critique of Brooks that I use the term “feminism” rather loosely and attribute to her positions that she nowhere articulates. Fair enough. The problem is that, for all her insistence on her feminism, Brooks herself gives us precious little help in defining what the term means. In any case, this, I find, is a common problem in engaging feminists: they tend to use the term broadly and vaguely to be as inclusive as possible (“Mormon women matter”), and when one objects to some application or implication, they deny that it applies to their understanding of feminism.

Despite almost infinite variations in the precise meaning of “feminism,” there is clearly a strong tendency towards the ideal (explicit or implicit) of a gender-neutral society – that is, a society in which family roles, careers and positions and in principle all desirable social outcomes are equally available to men and women, and thus in which men and women are equally represented in all careers and public positions. This may appear unobjectionable on its face, but it begs the question who will devote most time to the direct care of children. To the chagrin, apparently, of many “progressive” LDS bloggers, The Family Proclamation does not shrink from taking a position on this controversial topic:

By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.

Here is a marvelously clear and concise statement of sex roles that are equally esteemed, but also clearly differentiated. Church leaders wisely allow for families’ adaptation to particular circumstance, but they also consistently warn women against putting careers above their distinctive role in the nurturing of children. (Notably, a recent General Conference address counseled members against judging women who work outside the home.) But the Proclamation’s unmistakable endorsement of motherhood is vital counsel, I think, at a time when many full-time mothers and home-makers feel disdained by society in general and by more visibly “successful” women in particular. Now, there is no doubt that motherhood is very important to Joanna Brooks, but I wonder whether she and her feminist defenders fully embrace the role differentiation and emphasis on children that are clearly reflected in the Proclamation?

Whatever, exactly, is meant by feminism, according to its various versions, a common theme is certainly the objection to certain possibilities being open to men that are not open, or less open, to women. Is it not a universal feature of feminism to claim for women certain privileges or opportunities or positions that have been reserved or mostly reserved to men, and to measure progress by the standard of equal (at least) statistical representation of women? Does this not imply a vision of a gender-neutral society, and tend practically in that direction? Please, feminists, take this as an honest question, and show me where my assumptions or my logic is mistaken. In any case, it is clear that Joanna Brooks felt slighted as a girl by differences in the way boys and girls were treated – most notably in respect to the Priesthood – and that she continues to chafe at such differences. In my review, I indulged some anthropological speculations about male and female acculturation, only to illustrate the rather obvious possibility that there are good reasons to raise boys (and thus to motivate them by honoring and rewarding them) in different ways from girls. In fact, the differentiation of boys from girls may be essential, it seems to me (and not only to me), to the formation of a productive and responsible male identity. But the argument was necessarily merely illustrative and incomplete. I stand only on the main point that there is no compelling reason, apart from feminist ideology, to assume that boys and girls should be treated the same in every respect.

In any case, Joanna Brooks, like so many other Mormon feminists, is very much preoccupied, not only with social inequities in this world, but also or especially with what she regards as eternal inequalities that, in Mormon teaching, limit women’s possibilities and show favoritism towards men: that men hold the Priesthood, and that women bear children. She is worried, notably, about the eternal burden that pregnancy and child-bearing, essential natural characteristics of femininity, seem to put upon God’s female children, and seems to feel slighted that our Mother in Heaven does not get as much public recognition as our Father.

Here we are at the heart, I think, of the liberal feminists’ discomfort with basic Mormon teaching. This discomfort arises from what they perceive as an eternal inequity regarding women that is grounded in the conventional or mainstream understanding of the role of sexual difference in the eternities. It is hard to see how this feeling of inequity, this implicit claim to equality as gender neutrality, might be assuaged without sacrificing something essential in the LDS understanding of the corporeality of divinity and the centrality of fecundity to eternal lives.

Is this understanding “fair” to women? Can any understanding satisfy modern claims of fairness as long as it differentiates between male and female roles, either in this world or the next? Here, when speculating about the eternities, it is particularly appropriate to acknowledge the extreme limitations of our knowledge. I certainly do not know the meaning of all things: I do not claim to understand the eternal operation of the priesthood in relation to manhood and fatherhood on the one hand and womanhood and motherhood on the other; I am taught that exalted beings are embodied, but I do not know how parenthood works in celestial spheres — whether or how often, for example, a celestial mother’s belly swells with new life as my mother’s did with mine. Nor do I know in what way an Eternal Queen might defer to her King, or in what way she might yet rule his heart.

I do not know just how the mysterious and life-giving equality in difference that obtains between the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve is lived and understood by those exalted to celestial spheres. I do not know just how it is that, through the power of the Atonement, “everlasting dominion” can be exercised “without compulsory means,” or just how this dominion can be articulated into male and female spheres without diminishing either dominion. But I trust it is so, would strive to prove worthy, in partnership with my wife, to enjoy the fruits of such righteous and non-compulsory dominion.

I do know that when we claim a certain status as a “right” — not as part of a covenant the terms of which are set by God, but on our own terms, and thus by envious comparison with the “rights” we see others as enjoying — I know that such claims can never bring us goods that transcend our worldly demands, goods that surprise us, that delight us, that enrich us with eternal lives. And I am confident and grateful that, when we see as we are seen, we will be truly equal in the only way that matters, and therefore in no way concerned with equality as measured by the competitive vanity of this world. And I worry that, if we do not learn to subordinate our notions of political and social equality to the promise of the distinct eternal blessings of manhood and womanhood, if we spend this time of probation envying the perceived privileges of the other sex, then the earth, as far as we are concerned, will be “utterly wasted at His coming.”

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