Shaping History: Joseph Fielding Smith Milks a Cow

I have a collection of draft posts in various phases of completion, most of which will probably never see the light of day. I was browsing through them and discovered that I had two involving--of all things--Joseph Fielding Smith and milk. Why let an odd combination like that go to waste? So with that as an introduction, I'll post the first one below, and the second in a following post.

The historicity of the scriptures is a never-ending topic of discussion (and sometimes contention). Some argue that ancient writers shaped their stories to theological ends. This gives me an excuse to share a small but concrete example of history-shaping in the life of Joseph Fielding Smith that I discovered a couple of years ago.

I happened to teach a Primary lesson (Lesson 39: I Can Follow Jesus Christ by Serving Others) that contains the following story about Joseph Fielding Smith.

“It was so dark that the sleepy seven-year-old boy could hardly find his way down the path to the barn. He had planned for days how he could get out of bed, dress, creep quietly down the stairs, take the milking bucket from the pantry shelf, and leave the house without waking anyone.

“… [Joseph] had seen his sister, Mary, milk the cow many times. He found it wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be. … Before long his fingers and wrists ached. He had to stop often to rest them. …

“The boy was so intent on milking that he did not realize how long it had taken, and was surprised to find that daylight had come … when he finally left the barn and started for the house. As he entered the kitchen, Mother looked up from the stove where she was preparing breakfast, and asked, ‘Why, Joseph, what have you been doing so early in the morning?’

“He held up the filled milk bucket in answer, and felt a warm rush of joy at his mother’s smile of approval. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘since it seems you are big enough, milking each morning will be your job.’ She paused and then questioned, ‘But why is it you were so anxious to milk that cow?’

“Joseph lifted an earnest face to his mother as he answered, ‘I just want to help while Father is on his mission. And you see, [Mary] has so many other things to do, I thought if I could take care of the morning milking, she wouldn’t have to worry about that!’

“… His mother put her arms around him and held him close as she said, ‘How pleased your father will be when I write and tell him that he has a fine young man to take care of milking the cow while he is away!’” (Lucile C. Reading, “The Morning Chore,” Children’s Friend, Apr. 1970, p. 23).

Later in the year I recognized this same episode in the Priesthood/Relief Society manual (Chapter 23: Individual Responsibility of the Teachings).

Joseph Fielding Smith learned to work when he was a young boy. His father was often away from home, so “he spent much of his childhood doing the work of an adult.” In fact, he was such a diligent worker that he “unwittingly inherited one job earlier than he need have, when in boyish pride he secretly milked one of the family cows to prove he was capable of doing it, and thus was assigned the job permanently.”

In the first story we have a boy selflessly serving his sister and taking on an extra duty. In the second, it's a boy trying to prove his ability and unwittingly getting stuck with the job. Which one best represents the truth?

The two stories are not incompatible per se, but it seems clear that the writers of each manual had a different purpose in mind with slightly different character traits that they wanted to highlight. It's a simple example of history being shaped to make a point.

For what it's worth, in the contest of 'boyish pride' versus 'help my sister', my money is on 'boyish pride'.

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Glenn Beck is Sorry for Paving the Way for Trump

In case you missed it, after years of stoking the paranoia of the right about Barack Obama and fanning the flames of the Tea Party, apparently Glenn Beck thinks he made a mistake.

From The New Yorker: Glenn Beck Tries Out Decency:

Decency is a fresh palette for Beck, who, at Fox, used to scribble on a chalkboard while launching into conspiratorial rants about looming Weimar-esque hyperinflation, Barack Obama’s ties to radicals with population-cleansing schemes, and a Marxist-Islamist cabal itching to take over America. He once described Clinton as “a stereotypical bitch” and accused Obama of being a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

That was the old Beck, he insists: “I did a lot of freaking out about Barack Obama.” But, he said, “Obama made me a better man.” He regrets calling the President a racist and counts himself a Black Lives Matter supporter.

“We’ve made everything into a game show,” he said, “and now we’re reaping the consequences of it.” Some of this may be Beck’s own doing. Trump’s conspiracy-peddling and doomsaying? That’s vintage Beck, who said that the Fourth of July used to move him to tears. But now, he said, our politicians and bankers have become crooks, our wars meaningless, and our values lost. “I’m at a Dadaist time in my life,” he said. “So much of what I used to believe was either always a sham or has been made into a sham. There’s nothing deep.”

From The Atlantic: Glenn Beck’s Regrets

This is the irony underlying Beck’s current stance: The same doomsday sensibility that helps him appreciate the menace posed by Trump led him to massively exaggerate the menace posed by Obama—and thus to breed the hateful paranoia on which Trump now feeds. Beck, in fact, pioneered some of Trump’s most disturbing themes. At the beginning of Obama’s first term, Beck repeatedly called the president antiwhite.

The day after Trump’s victory, I checked in with Beck again. He said he saw “the seeds of what happened in Germany in 1933.” The question was whether the American people would “water them” with “hatred and division.” Did he feel partly responsible? “I’ll not only take my share of blame, I’ll take extra,” he answered. “If you want to blame me for him, that’s fine; I don’t believe it’s true, but it’s fine with me. Please just listen to the warnings now so we don’t continue to do this.”

Well, there's always repentance.

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My Post-Election Takeaway

Like just over half of Americans, I am quite distressed and disturbed by the election of Donald Trump, and I don't believe that it's just a case of sore looser-ism. But rather than post what I originally wrote, I'll just share my catharsis, which is good for a laugh. (You can skip the first minute.)

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The Church Has No Official Position on Evolution - New Era

The Church's October 2016 issue of the New Era magazine says the following about evolution:

The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution, or changes to species’ inherited traits over time, is a matter for scientific study. Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution. Though the details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve, including how their bodies were created, have not been revealed, our teachings regarding man’s origin are clear and come from revelation.

Before we were born on earth, we were spirit children of heavenly parents, with bodies in their image. God directed the creation of Adam and Eve and placed their spirits in their bodies. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve, our first parents, who were created in God’s image. There were no spirit children of Heavenly Father on the earth before Adam and Eve were created. In addition, “for a time they lived alone in a paradisiacal setting where there was neither human death nor future family.” They fell from that state, and this Fall was an essential part of Heavenly Father’s plan for us to become like Him.

This statement is historic. Although David O. McKay privately indicated that the Church had no position on evolution, I don't recall an explicit 'no position' statement ever appearing in official Church publications. The statement also references the Evolution entry of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which contains the following counsel given by Heber J. Grant in 1931:

Upon the fundamental doctrines of the Church we are all agreed. Our mission is to bear the message of the restored gospel to the world. Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church….

The New Era statement seems to have adopted Grant's approach.

In case you are worried that the statement will settle arguments about the Church and evolution, be at peace. There will still be plenty to bicker and argue about. Some will see the second paragraph as a negation of the first. Others will argue about how both paragraphs can be true at the same time. And so forth.

Nevertheless, from my point of view this is a step forward and I am pleased to add it to the historical record.

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Joseph Fielding Smith: Time Will Level All Things

In the October 1952 General Conference, Joseph Fielding Smith, then President of the Council of the Twelve, closed his address by saying the following [1]:

I am going to read to you a statement that I made sometime ago which I think is true, and which is a guide to me and I hope may be to you.

So far as the philosophy and wisdom of the world are concerned, they mean nothing unless they conform to the revealed word of God. Any doctrine, whether it comes in the name of religion, science, philosophy, or whatever it may be, if it is in conflict with the revealed word of the Lord, will fail. It may appear plausible. It may be put before you in language that appeals and which you may not be able to answer. It may appear to be established by evidence that you cannot controvert, but all you need to do is to abide your time. Time will level all things. You will find that every doctrine, every principle, no matter how universally believed, if it is not in accord with the divine word of the Lord to his servants, will perish. Nor is it necessary for us to try to stretch the word of the Lord in a vain attempt to make it conform to these theories and teachings. The word of the Lord shall not pass away unfulfilled, but these false doctrines and theories will all fail. Truth, and only truth, will remain when all else has perished. The Lord has said, "And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come."

In his book, Man, His Origin and Destiny, published less than two years later, President Smith referenced his 1952 talk and quoted the above passage (beginning with, "So far as the philosophy..."). Later that year he wrote a letter to Henry Eyring in response to Eyring's critical review of the book. That letter again referred to the 1952 talk and quoted the same passage, except for the last sentence. More recently, last year's manual Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Fielding Smith included the same passage in Chapter 10, with citation to the 1952 General Conference.

However, as President Smith indicated in introducing the passage, he had used the passage on an unspecified previous occasion. By accident I came upon what may be the origin of the passage, and there is a certain irony about it.

Twenty-two years earlier, Joseph Fielding Smith gave a speech that was published in the October issue of Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine titled, "Faith Leads to a Fulness of Truth and Righteousness." In the speech, he categorically denounced the idea of pre-Adamites and any death on earth before the fall of Adam. He also said,

If members of the Church would place more confidence in the word of the Lord and less confidence in the theories of men, they would be better off. I will give you a key for your guidance. Any doctrine, whether it comes in the name of religion, science, philosophy, or whatever it may be, that is in conflict with the revelations of the Lord that have been accepted by the Church as coming from the Lord, will fail. It may appear to be very plausible: it may be put before you in such a way that you cannot answer it, it may appear to be established by evidence that cannot be controverted, but all you need do is to bide your time. Time will level all things. You will find that every doctrine, theory, principle, no matter how great it may appear; no matter how universally it may be believed, if it is not in accord with the word of the Lord, it will perish. Nor is it necessary for us to try to stretch the word of the Lord to make it conform to these theories and teachings. The word of the Lord shall not pass away unfulfilled. [italics in original]

It was this speech, which was a response to B.H. Roberts and his embargoed book manuscript, The Way, the Truth, the Life, that led President Heber J. Grant in 1931 to declare to the General Authorities that the Church had no doctrine on pre-Adamites (for or against), and enjoined them to cease discussion of the matter. Except...President Grant did authorize Elder James E. Talmage to give (and publish) a speech of his own titled, "The Earth and Man," which was intended as a balance to Smith's speech [2].

President Smith's advice is fine as far as it goes. The irony is that it appears to have been first advanced in a speech that precipitated a controversy among his fellow leaders about what the word of the Lord actually meant.


Notes:

1. Conference Report, Oct. 1952, 60

2. The story of this controversy is told here and here.

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Make America Better by Leaving - A Potent Image

My family and I visited the Statue of Liberty in the fall of 2011. The presidential race was in full swing, and of course we now know that Mitt Romney would ultimately win the Republican nomination but lose to Barack Obama in the general election. As I toured the museum in the base of the statue, I was struck by the following display (click to enlarge):

Given the prominence of immigration in political debate at the time, I immediately thought it came from an earlier era of anti-immigrant sentiment and was displayed because of its renewed relevance. However, as I looked closer I saw that it was an advertisement for the Peace Corps. The ad suggested that the things people would learn and perspective they would gain while serving abroad in the Peace Corp would make them better people, and therefore make America better. Amused by the potency of the image and my misunderstanding of it, I took a picture.

I had no idea that in five years this image could serve as a blunt political cartoon capturing with uncanny accuracy the campaign slogan and policy proposals of the next presidential nominee of the Republican party.

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Book of Mormon Genetics: Good News and Bad News

As scientists have uncovered the genetic heritage of Native Americans, they've consistently found that heritage is rooted in ancient East Asia. Since this conflicts with expectations based on traditional interpretation of the Book of Mormon, a number of arguments have been put forward to explain why a Middle-Eastern genetic signal has not been found [1]. These arguments are summarized in the Church's Gospel Topics essay that treats this issue.

One of those arguments is that a genetic bottleneck may have removed the genetic markers of Book of Mormon peoples so that they cannot be found among living descendants. As the essay puts it:

In addition to the catastrophic war at the end of the Book of Mormon, the European conquest of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries touched off just such a cataclysmic chain of events. As a result of war and the spread of disease, many Native American groups experienced devastating population losses. One molecular anthropologist observed that the conquest “squeezed the entire Amerindian population through a genetic bottleneck.” He concluded, “This population reduction has forever altered the genetics of the surviving groups, thus complicating any attempts at reconstructing the pre-Columbian genetic structure of most New World groups.”

A recent study [2] adds support to this argument. The scientists sequenced the whole mitochondrial genome obtained from 92 pre-Columbian South American skeletons that range in age from 500 years ago to 8.6 thousand years ago. As the abstract puts it:

All of the ancient mitochondrial lineages detected in this study were absent from modern data sets, suggesting a high extinction rate.

This result directly supports the argument that many genetic lineages have been lost. That's the good news.

The bad news is that all of those lost lineages fall within the standard family of mtDNA haplogroups one would expect to find based on the ancient East Asian origin of Native Americans. In other words, although those lineages apparently went extinct, they are still within the family of lineages that were brought by the original Asian colonizers of the Americas.

If you look at the map from the supplementary materials, you'll see that the samples came from areas not generally considered Book of Mormon lands. Further, only two of the samples are dated from within the time frame of the main Book of Mormon narrative [3]. The rest of the samples are either prior to 600 BC, or after 400 AD (though still pre-Columbian). So it's not like this is some kind of slam dunk against the Book of Mormon. However, it does help to establish the perimeter of genetic plausibility.

It will be interesting to see what data emerges as the spaciotemporal resolution of such studies increases.




Notes:
1. X2a doesn't appear to fit the bill because even if it originated in the Middle East, it entered the Americas at least 8-9,000 years ago--too early for accepted Book of Mormon chronology.

2. Llamas B, Fehren-Schmitz L, Valverde G, et al. Ancient mitochondrial DNA provides high-resolution time scale of the peopling of the Americas. Sci Adv. 2016 Apr 1;2(4):e1501385. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1501385

3. Maybe. The range of uncertainty in dating those two samples (325-440 AD; 100-650 AD) is such that they might fall just outside of Moroni's lifetime.

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Creationist Smackdown: Pterosaur Edition

While browsing The Guardian today, I came across a fun creationist smackdown. An article from the Institute for Creation Research (one of the larger, well-known creationist organizations) suggested that evolutionary presuppositions led to the initial incorrect judgment that pterosaurs could not fly. Paleontologist Dave Hone, who studies pterosaurs, would have none of that and effectively shows not only that the article is wrong on historic grounds (i.e. the history of science), but that it was actually creationists of the time who originally thought pterosaurs couldn't fly. Speaking to creationists and referring to current knowledge, the last sentence sums it up nicely:

It is scientific researchers who got us here, not you; those outmoded ideas you are sneering at as having come from incorrect preconceptions came from your philosophical ancestors, not ours.

I have a long-standing rule of thumb that creationists simply cannot be trusted, and it is because of things like this. That's not to say that everything mainstream scientists write is 100% accurate (scientifically or historically), but I find that it's best never to accept a creationist argument at face value. The moment you think that a creationist has a good point is the moment you should be very cautious.

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