Hi Jeremy,

I heard yesterday evening about your letter to a CES director and finished reading it before going to bed. It was a dazzling read, and in writing this email I hope to further increase dialogue between all parties.

Not to pull any punches, I am writing as an active member of the Church. I live in Salt Lake and I work part-time as a research assistant for the Maxwell Institute. One of my favorite aspects of your letter is your upfrontness: you explain who you are and what you stand for—ironic as that may sound.

First, would it be misplaced to refer to your letter as “anti-Mormon literature”? I ask because while there are anti-Mormon claims in your letter, the majority of it rather seems to be a long list of honest, fair inquiries. To my mind, inquiries are not “pro” or “anti”: they’re investigatory. I also ask because I wish to compliment your piece in a genuine way: your letter is the best piece of anti-Mormon literature I’ve ever encountered. If, however, you think a description other than “anti” is appropriate here, I would like to know because I anticipate sharing this compliment, or something like it, with others.

Second, I want to thank you for bringing all this information together. I haven’t read FAIR’s response or your response to FAIR (though I’m especially excited about this part of the exchange), but from what I’ve read so far, I can already tell what tremendous work you put into the project. I wanted to thank you for gathering in one place the major historical, philosophical, and ethical concerns that have been swirling and collecting throughout “the scary internet” for years. Every ten years or so, a document like yours needs to be written up: you’ve summarized a huge number of issues in a way both clear and succinct, providing clear references to good source information. In short, you’re cutting to the heart of these issues, minimizing comments that would simply lead to confusion. That said, I was surprised to see the omission of some topics, including the Danites, Mountain Meadows, Swedenborg’s vision of glories, William Blake’s visions of deification and the glory of the body, the ERA and other feminist issues, homosexuality (excluding Elder Packer’s quote on page 79), sexuality more generally, and the Church’s involvement with politics and the BSA.

Third, since I work for the Maxwell Institute, and since I’m familiar with its developments over the past few years, I shuddered whenever you lumped the Institute together with FAIR and ‘other unofficial apologist groups.’ There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what the Institute does, and our public communications specialist, Blair Hodges, has encouraged us to help clarify this point when the opportunity arises. Since my email is already long and about to get longer, I’ll give you the short version as to what the Maxwell Institute does, and if you have further questions, I’ll happily send along the long version. In short, the Maxwell Institute focuses on scholarly pursuits, and scholarship is antithetical to apologetics. Only one apologetic force remains at the Institute (John Gee), but he remains apart as his position is that of an endowed chair—i.e., John is an institution unto himself though under the auspices of the Maxwell Institute. While apologists such as Dan Peterson and Bill Hamblin have published through FARMS and sometimes under the Maxwell Institute imprint in the past, I can assure you that apologetics is currently far from the concerns of those at the Institute and it has been that way for years now. Again, if you’d like to know more about this, I would be delighted to share.

Fourth, I look forward to reading the other materials in the “letter to a CES director” series. You’ve given me reason to return to several issues, since I personally would benefit from better understanding the facts involved—e.g., reading all the First Vision accounts, which I’ve never done; learning more thoroughly the facts surrounding Joseph Smith’s polygamy; studying the translation process better; reading about the Kinderhook plates, which I had never heard of before and I thank you for introducing me to such an uncanny narrative; understanding better the development of the endowment presentation; and looking into SCMC, something else I hadn’t heard of and for which I owe another thank you. You addressed several other topics that piqued my interest as well, but these items are the most interesting to me at the moment. I’m also excited to better understand debates concerning Book of Mormon geography and textuality in the context of other 19c texts. After I read more and consider further, I would like to meet you sometime. Sounds like you’re quite the internet sensation lately, so I don’t know how busy you are but if you have public appearances or something like that, I’d be interested to learn the details.

Fifth, I wanted to thank you for a new term I wasn’t before familiar with; I don’t know if you coined the term “Chapel Mormonism,” but I hadn’t known it before reading your letter and it is a felicitous description of major aspect of the LDS religious experience.

And finally, I recognize that your letter primarily addresses the claims of the LDS Church but I can’t help but wonder about the number and force of claims which address larger religious issues not specific to the LDS Church. Questions more directly about the nature of God, the authority of the Bible, how history conditions religio-epistemological systems, the purposes and implementations of priesthoods and ecclesiastical structure, broader questions concerning the underpinnings of moral and ethical systems, and suspicions about how translations and intertextuality function—or should function. I’m not suggesting you change any of your letter (except the association of the Maxwell Institute with unofficial apologist groups); I’m pointing out rather that your concerns rest almost exclusively on historical, scientific, and rational “common sense” arguments—concerns, by the way, which Christians generally have been grappling with for over a hundred years. My point is, historical, scientific, and rational “common sense” arguments as I’ve called them are totally legitimate in their own sphere but they have their limits—i.e., there are no “smoking guns” when it comes to religious conviction. I’ve implied a lot in this last paragraph without saying much of anything, but if we do have the chance to correspond, I look forward to further conversations on what I’ve alluded to.

Again, thank you, thank you, thank you for what you’ve articulated in “Letter to a CES Director.” I feel it’s high time we Mormons confront the baggage that attends our religion and learn to appreciate the power of reading and thinking. I believe your letter will goad many Mormons into such an appreciation.

Sincerely,

Bert Fuller