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I don't see a clear explanation that everyone agrees this claim is true. How does it critique "Western society"? How does it condemn "immorality", "social inequality", "ethnic injustice", and "nationalism" (and how does it define these)? Where is "atheism" mentioned in the Book of Mormon? In short, this sentence is just a Mormon POV. A reading of the book does not lead to these conclusions unless you're in the cult, I suspect. jps (talk) 14:45, 25 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strike your last sentence, which violates the BLP policy in the way it describes Nathan O. Hatch, Jonathan Sudholt, Charles L. Cohen, and Richard Bushman—the scholars whose work to which that content, summarized in the lead, is cited to in the body—and all living persons.
If you read the article, you will notice that that sentence of the lead summarizes Book_of_Mormon#Critique_of_the_United_States, cited to content published in journals (including The American Historical ReviewThe Journal of American History), a university press book (from Yale University Press), and a book published by a respected mainstream publisher (Alfred A. Knopf). Only Bushman is a Latter-day Saint, and he's also Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, and unless you have evidence he (along with Hatch, Sudholt, and Cohen) has hoodwinked Columbia University, Alfred A. Knopf, and The American Historical ReviewThe Journal of American History, saying that these readings are impossible for someone who isn't a 'cultist' constitutes unsourced contentious material about living persons.
You should also revert your last edit to Book of Mormon, as you are violating WP:NPOV by substituting your personal interpretation of the topic over and against academic sources.
Stop being silly: Policy recommends telling letting another editor know how their edit made you feel, so I will let you know that your decision to diminish my concerns about policy and guideline breaches, and to accuse me of being the one personalizing things when you have called my contribution "unintelligble", makes me feel hurt and diminished. I invite you to be more civil.I also invite you to consider that your personal interpretation of the Book of Mormon may well vary from the way religious studies scholars, historians, and other trained academics in the humanities assess it and its context. Calling the Book of Mormon fan fiction is a popular joke about it, but Wikipedia favors the WP:BESTSOURCES for topics, particularly academic sources. When historian Nathan O. Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity (called by Gordon S. Wood "the best book on religion in the early Republic that has ever been written"), calls the Book of Mormon "a document of profound social protest" (116) against American society, that is a much more reliable and consensus assessment than descriptions of the topic circulated in Reddit threads and social media posts. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:38, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have; see the paragraph starting I also invite you to consider, which addresses the substance of your complaint by pointing out that the sentence you call weird summarizes assessments from academic sources. Meanwhile, you haven't responded to my concerns about incivility and contentious content about living persons in comments you have posted other than dismissing them as silly. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:36, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How do we get from a social protest against American society (what is apparently in the source) to a critique of Western society (what was written in the article)? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:38, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's helpful to point out. The expansion from American society to Western society may have been prompted by "What's New in Mormon History" (cited in Book of Mormon), an article from The Journal of American History (vol. 94, no. 2, September 2007), which states the Book of Mormon was thundering no to the state of the world in Joseph Smith's time and that it condemned social inequalities, moral abominations, rejection of revelations and miracles, disrespect for Israel (including the Jews), subjection of the Indians, and the abuse of the continent by interloping European migrants . However, while this may imply "Western society", it's probably simpler, more focused on the topic's immediate context, and more consensus (matching Nathan O. Hatch's assessment of the book as well) to summarize it as having been at the time of publication a critique of simply American society. Thanks for pointing this out, Horse Eye's Back. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 17:49, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given the context of that particular article it should likely be attributed to Bushman, the full name is "What's New in Mormon History: A Response to Jan Shipps" and is a response to a review of his book Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling in that same journal by Shipps[1]. I don't have access to that source on this device, can you pull larger quotes for some more context? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:03, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the idea that the Book of Mormon is "critiquing" anything is all that important a point. Others don't seem too taken with such points. Why are we letting our own article become so obsessed with this kind of inside baseball minutiae? jps (talk) 18:06, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm referring to sources that discuss the ontology of the Book of Mormon. Few seem to categorize it as a "critique" of anything. Most classify it either as a religious treatise or a "forgery" in a more old-fashioned sense of the term. jps (talk) 18:15, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to imply these genres are somehow mutually exclusive. A religious treatise that depicts an invented history of Indigenous America can also criticize the society in which it's published. Several academic sources call the book a critique:
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989): The Book of Mormon is a document of profound social protest, an impassioned manifesto by a hostile outsider against the smug complacency of those in power and the reality of social distinctions based on wealth, class, and education. In attempting to define his alienation from the world around him, Smith attempted resorted to a biblical frame of reference (page 116)
Richard Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling: Joseph Smith (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005): The book sacralized the land but condemned the people. The Indians were the chosen ones, not the European interlopers. The Book of Mormon was the seminal text, not the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The gathering of lost Israel, not the establishment of liberty, was the great work. In the Book of Mormon, the biblical overwhelms the national. Taken as a whole, the Book of Mormon can be read as a "document of profound social protest" against the dominant culture of Joseph Smith's time.
Richard Bushman, "What's New in Mormon History? A Response to Jan Shipps", Journal of American History 94, no. 2 (September 2007): the Book of Mormon appears as a deep critique of American culture, including its religious culture (page 520)
Jared Hickman, "The Book of Mormon as Amerindian Apocalypse", American Literature 86, no. 3 (2014): A vicious circle developed: antebellum American readers predisposed by their sociocultural location to racism were authorized under the reigning hermeneutic to read that racism into a text that had been elevated to the status of literal word of God [the Bible] , thereby making their racism appear to originate from a source not only other but higher than themselves. White domination acquired the sheen of incontestable divine decree. The Book of Mormon severs this vicious circle by simultaneously negating the authority deposited by literalist hermeneuts in "the Bible alone" and diametrically opposing another vision of racial apocalypse.
Jonathan Sudholt, "Unreadability is the Reader’s Problem: The Book of Mormon’s Critique of the Antebellum US Public Sphere", Radical Americas 2 (2017): the text’s cultural critique, a critique that is so intense that The Book of Mormon stages the annihilation of America not once, but twice, before its fury is used up. and The Book of Mormon, published in a nation that prided itself on a guarantee of free speech that would allow dissent, presents a nation that absolutely refuses to entertain the slightest dissent. It gives the impression that what this allowance for dissent is all about is to deny people any grounds on which they might dissent, for what country could be less deserving of criticism than that in which one is allowed to point out its failures, its hypocrisies, and its contradictions? Thus, it is designed not so much to be the land of freedom and equality it says it is, as to preempt the very criticism it claims to embrace. So, at least, Smith suggests.
To the extent you think I missed your point, you may be missing mine. The article doesn't categorize the topic's genre in, say, an infobox as 'critique'; it uses the religious text infobox. The aspects of the topic that are a critique are summarized in a subsection of the historical context section (and previously summarized fairly far down in the lead, which is meant to summarize the article), as the book's interaction with the culture around it is part of how relevant scholarship historically contextualizes the topic. My point is that the topic's main genre being a religious treatise doesn't mean it can't also be historical contextualized as expressing a critique of the society in which it's published. (For instance, as Hatch expresses, the criticism of the United States is core to the book's religious message.) Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 15:27, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hatch does not say that criticism of the United States is core to the book's religious message. This is the problem with your approach. You are impugning importance to simple observation. The Book of Mormon is not at its core a protest. jps (talk) 15:44, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We somehow have pretty different impressions of Hatch (1989). The monograph seems clear about how important the theme is to the topic of the Book of Mormon. In addition to the quotation cited further up in the thread:
This "Gospel" was a radically reconstituted history of the New World, a drama indicting America's churches as lifeless shells, blind and deaf to the real meaning of their own history and to the divine intent for the latter days (115)
The single most striking theme of the Book of Mormon is that it is the rich, the proud, and the learned who find themselves in the hands of an angry God (117)
The interlocking themes of pride, wealth, learning, fine clothing, and oppression of the poor reappear throughout the Book of Mormon (119)
The vision of Joseph Smith [as expressed in the Book of Mormon, as is clear in the context of this paragraph coming on the heels of four pages about the book and the rest of the page continuing in that vein] is intensely populist in its rejection of the religious conventions of his day and in its hostility to the orthodox clergy (120)
@Horse Eye's Back:: Here is a longer quotation from "What's New in Mormon History":
Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling was slated for publication by Alfred A. Knopf. I was much more aware of writing for a general audience, so the intramural debates between apologists and critics of Mormonism seemed less relevant. General readers, I thought, would want to get a taste of these controversies but not to become mired in them. They would be more interested, I presumed, in what the Book of Mormon meant to Joseph Smith and to his readers than in the apologists’ attempts to defend the book. My aim was to situate the book in its American environment—not to identify its sources, but to explain its interaction with American culture. In this more recent version, the Book of Mormon appears as a deep critique of American culture, including its religious culture. (520) Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:30, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think these instances identify the genre of the Book of Mormon as one of "critique". To be sure, I am confident that there is a reading of almost any popular text you care to name that identifies it as critiquing something or other, but our job as an encyclopedia should not be to identify every popular text as a critique which would be the logical conclusion of the practice we are talking about here. jps (talk) 19:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our job as an encyclopedia is to summarize what reliable secondary sources (with WP:SCHOLARSHIP being the gold standard) say about a text. If relevant scholarship identifies a text's critical aspects as meaningful and relevant, then that's part of the findings we summarize. If relevant secondary sources don't do that, then we don't summarize it. In this case, they do. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You have not demonstrated that a primary means of identifying the Book of Mormon is as a critique or in that kind of genre. Novel readings by prominent scholars can be discussed, but it should not be forced into Wikipedia's voice per WP:ASSERT. jps (talk) 15:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that this is merely a Novel reading; it's a reading that's been affirmed and reaffirmed by relevant scholarship for more than three decades. And I disagree that its relevance for describing the topic in its historical context hasn't been demonstrated. Multiple high-quality sources, including two monographs considered authoritative, have been cited. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:30, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since there are no reviews of the literature that I have seen which deal with the question, it is a matter of original research to declare whether the view has been systematically "affirmed and reaffirmed" or not. As it is, I see almost nothing to indicate that this is a major lens by which the book is studied. It seems a view that is held by a small group. jps (talk) 19:16, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm struggling to see that reading. "What's New" is not saying that Rough Stone Rolling is a critique of the United States, but that the Book of Mormon is. It does also address that that's the assessment of Bushman settled on when he wrote Rough Stone Rolling, but I don't think that makes it so nothing in the claim is about the Book of Mormon itself. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:47, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, I get it. There is this approach going around in the Book of Mormon obsessed world that tries to read a lot of context into the work. That's cool and interesting, but we aren't here to go out on limbs. So I removed a paragraph that is cited almost entirely to one interesting but parochial source (and the text is not properly attributed to the authors though it should have been). [2]
Predictably, it was reinserted for... less than edifying reasons, AFAIC.
I'm not too thrilled with the walled garden nature of those citations (and, let's be honest, none of the first 20 references to the book was talking about the content of this paragraph). Impact factor is pretty low from what I'm seeing. Doesn't look like it deserves this kind of emphasis. jps (talk) 18:21, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add that Jan Shipps's review in The Journal of American History (September 2007) called Rough Stone Rolling's treatment of the topic a brilliant explication of the Book of Mormon, which challenges Terryl Givens' study of the Mormon scripture as the best currently in print.
Are there sources about and assessments of the topic with superior impact factors that establish your interpretations, stated on this page, as academically consensus? When I searched "Book of Mormon" AND "fanfiction", the first hit was a Reddit thread. On GoogleScholar, the hits were studies of fanfiction about conventional media written by Mormons. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:36, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean there seems to be strong citogenesis to these ideas among a small group. Some of that is inevitable when dealing with a niche field, but it can cause weird obsessions in the literature to form that do not necessarily reflect a "general understanding". And there isn't a strong case being made here this paragraph represents a fair appraisal of what the general understanding of BoM is supposed to be. jps (talk) 19:41, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My impression is that Wikipedia by design is biased in favor of academic understandings of topics. We want to summarize a general understanding of the topic in the relevant scholarship, which isn't necessarily the same as what the hypothetical average opinion across humanity would be. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:53, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia by design is WP:NPOV which sometimes is academic understanding, but unless there is a clear exposition of what that "academic understanding" is, we are not equipped to declare what it is. In the case of literary investigations of sacred texts, Wikipedia is not supposed to adopt, uncritically, every novel argument found in the academic literature. jps (talk) 15:38, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Considering this merely one among many novel argument[s] in literature about the topic seems to disregard that it's an assessment that's been affirmed and reaffirmed in relevant scholarship for more than three decades. You use the term citogenesis—a phrase I'm more accustomed to seeing used when Wikipedia circularly cites itself via another source—but what's going on seems more like WP:USEBYOTHERS.As for understanding what an academic understanding is, guidelines indicate that academic understandings of a topic are found in academic secondary sources: works written by professional historians with university postings, and/or published by university presses and peer-reviewed journals. These are the kinds of sources to which the content is cited. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:30, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What you are describing as secondary sources are actually primary sources inasmuch as they are offering novel arguments. Find a source which talks about the ubiquity or lack thereof. Then you'll have a secondary source for our purposes. jps (talk) 19:17, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be invoking an understanding of primary sources that applies to hard sciences, in which academic journals publish raw data generated by experimentation. Such articles report on and primary experimental data and so they're primary sources, so for topics in hard sciences—especially those that fall under WP:MEDRS—review essays are appropriately expected.
In humanities disciplines like history and religious studies, however, primary sources are the corpus of texts that provide data: archival collections, historical newspapers, diaries and journals, etc. Secondary sources which interpret those primary sources are published as monographs but also as journal articles, as these fields' journals don't generally publish experimental data (experimentation being not really a thing history can do—the past is past).
If you think my take on what a primary source versus a secondary source is problematic, maybe you should open a query at WP:RSN or start a WP:RfC. I am pretty sure I'm not out on a limb here. jps (talk) 02:17, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that we have an overreliance on Bushman... And the walled garden in general as it were. But I think we should be looking more broadly at the sourcing, for example we probably shouldn't be using BYU Studies Quarterly in this context and I'm not sure what use Sudholt is to us either as it seems to be pretty out there in the opposite direction from the walled garden "This article reads The Book of Mormon as an attack on the incoherence of American nationalism – as, specifically, a book about the inevitability of its own irrelevance." and is unless I'm missing something more thought expiriment than historical exercise. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:53, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've revised the Historical context section such that it no longer cites the BYUSQ source, though I'm struggling to see what was so at issue with it. It wasn't even written by a Latter-day Saint. Was there something unacceptable about the claim it was cited for, that the rapidly growing number of religious denominations and sects in the young nation seemed to offer too many religious choices, leaving some Americans with the impression that no legitimate path to salvation existed at all? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:21, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
BYU Studies Quarterly is only marginally reliable, editorially they take an apologist line (they are after all "Scholarship Aligned with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.") As for the text itself I don't think its actually an excellent summary of the souce... But thats not really my bag with it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:31, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is this approach going around in the Book of Mormon obsessed world that tries to read a lot of context into the work.: By way of clarity, OP writes "Book of Mormon obsessed world". From what I can tell, the claims to which he objects are ones cited to sources published by journals or presses in the secular academic fields of religious studies, history, and the humanities. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:24, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just as a statistic on the overeliance... From their back and forth we can see that Bushman considers Shipps to be as good or better than he is as a historian of the Mormon tradition, Shipps appears to think more or less the same of Bushman. One is the "historian for the house" and one is the outside expert so to speak (Shipps is not LDS). This suggests that in a properly weighted article we would cite Bushman and Shipps about the same amount... But we don't appear to cite Shipps once and we cite Bushman ~25 times. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:52, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia's policy is to represent a point of view that is as neutral as possible. Part of this means Wikipedia avoids stating as facts claims that are extremely contested. The belief that there is a lot of strong evidence for the Book of Mormon having ancient historical origins is very contested. As an idea, it's primarily believed in by Latter-day Saints and some other denominations in the Latter Day Saint movement; in total, they represent a few million people in the world, out of many billions. More pertinently for Wikipedia, it's an idea that is not asserted by the balance of reliable sources. Wikipedia's policy on having a neutral point of view directs us to focus on what is reported and analyzed and expressed in reliable sources. Rather than try to have Wikipedia express our own personal conclusions about the world or community-specific points of view about the world (such as a specific religion's beliefs), we aim to summarize what scientists, historians, journalists, and other professional researchers say about the world.