Bill Hamblin on the Maxwell Institute and on Book of Mormon studies at BYU

Last updated on: September 8, 2015 at 10:38 am by Dan Peterson

Bill Hamblin on the Maxwell Institute and on Book of Mormon studies at BYU 2015-09-08T10:38:11-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Elder Neal A. Maxwell, ca. 1975

My longtime friend and colleague Dr. William Hamblin — who recently took relatively early retirement from BYU, in part over his frustration with the University’s apparent recent course — has just posted two provocative pieces on his blog:

“How BYU destroyed ancient Book of Mormon studies”

“Goodbye to all that”

I don’t agree with everything he says. (I think, for example, that it would likely be a disservice to BYU students to offer a graduate program in Book of Mormon studies, or a major, or even perhaps a minor or a large number of courses, because — given their probable membership in a church without divinity schools or professional clergy, there simply, realistically, isn’t a job market for people with such specific training.)

And I’m slightly more hopeful about the current search committee than Professor Hamblin is — particularly given the recent addition to it of Elder Bruce C. Hafen (biographer of Neal A. Maxwell, former member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, former dean of BYU’s law school, former provost of BYU, former president of BYU-Idaho, former president of the St. George Temple, and a very bright and thoughtful man).

Though, truth be told, I don’t really know what I hope for, anymore. And I expect no miracles.

Great damage has been done, and, while others whom I respect assure me that everything will be rectified, I’m not sure that it can be undone.

I certainly harbor no ambitions to be appointed director of the Maxwell Institute myself. I think that extraordinarily improbable, and I’m frankly not sure that I would accept the appointment even in the very unlikely event that it were offered to me. (I’m not applying, though some have urged me to do so.) I’m on to other things these days, and I’m at that point in my life — I’ve been at that point for a long time, actually — where I would much prefer to concentrate on writing. I’m wanting to get to projects that, in several cases, I deferred because of the administrative burdens involved with leadership in the Maxwell Institute over many years, and with advocating it and representing it in countless firesides and with raising funds for its work. (Had I known then how things would turn out, I might have chosen to spend those years very differently.)

But I’m deeply sympathetic to Dr. Hamblin’s concerns and regrets, particularly as expressed in the first of the two articles above.

I suppose that my dream for the Maxwell Institute would be for somebody to be appointed to head the organization up who, while supportive of secular “Mormon studies” for an academic audience (as I’ve always expressly been), would also recognize the value of the overtly LDS work that FARMS and the Maxwell Institute were established and built to do, and that they actually did for more than three decades, and who would support and sustain such work again. Somebody, too, who would be willing to try to heal the ugly breach that was created by the purge of 2012.

We shall see.

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