Rough Stone Rolling

I loved this quote and had to share it. This is John Durham Peters, a renowned communication theorist and Mormon, in a recent interview in Dialogue:

“I basically suspect intellectuals. I distrust our motives. I don’t think intellectuals always know what’s good, and we like to think we know what’s good. To use the Book of Mormon phrase, we often do things because it sustains our craft. Intellectuals want to make sure that people keep arguing and keep reading and keep writing. And that isn’t necessarily the best or at least only good way to live. Anyone who’s spent any time around universities will know that smart people can say the dumbest things. Some Mormon intellectuals have recreated a simple language— free speech and reason versus authority and the Church— when in fact I’d rather see that what the Church has is something wonderful. I mean, the Church gives an alternative to modernity and to modern liberalism and its empire, which is oozing everywhere, so why call for more of it?

I dislike censorship as much as the next guy, but I dislike even more the moral bonus gained by those who denounce censorship. The toxic bi-product of free speech is smugness; and if you claim censorship by the other guy, then you are automatically in the right and you have amoral monopoly and there are a lot of people that will flock to you because you’re fighting the big evil church. That’s a well-established narrative that goes back to Enlightenment. The brave publisher faces down the Inquisition by force of quill pen alone, and you have this self-serving, heroic rhetoric. Historically, the attack on religious faith has never been far from the call for free speech.

If what Mormon intellectuals asked of us required something harder to do, rather than easier to do, then I might be convinced that they— that we— were really looking for truth. It’s easy for an intellectual to call for more inquiry. But reason, like child care, reverence, music, service, or gardening is only one of many human goods. I sustain a prophet as someone who can say something that is difficult and upsetting and shakes you up a little. I mean, what’s the point of having a religion that doesn’t require really hard stuff?”

Amen.