John Charles Duffy has written an excellent article discussing the phenomena of church scholarship and apologetics. It is quite lengthy, but is a key article in looking at the role of apologetic scholarship in the church.
http://www.sunstoneonline.com/magazine/issues/132/Defending_the_Kingdom.pdf
Two quotes from his article seem to illustrate your point:
The Book of Mormon shows so many striking similarities
to the Mesoamerican setting that it seems to me impossible
for rational people willing to examine the data to maintain
any longer that the book is a mere romance. . . .
—JOHN SORENSON
Not a single person, place, or event that is unique to the
Book of Mormon has ever been proven to exist. Outside
the fanum of true believers, these tales cannot help but
appear to be the product of fantasy and fabrication.
—FR. RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS
On 8/27/07, Derek Larsen wrote:
I understand scholars to mean people who are actively researching and writing in peer reviewed material.... this movie is a promo piece... scholarly? How scholarly is something that gets no peer review by others in the fields covered in the movie.... I know there are scholars at byu.... however those who get their bs, ma and phd at byu are hardly scholars….. I would love to see something that farms does get published in a non mormon periodical that represents real scholarship…. All the other stuff is fodder for those inside the belief system….
Cheers, Derek
A much smaller version of his article is here (a Sunstone presentation). And for those who only want to spend a couple of minutes looking at this, check out the handout on the last two pages.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.unc.edu/~jcduffy/faithfulscholarship.pdf