Last night Terryl Givens spoke at the Harvard Divinity School. He was chosen to speak by the HDS Latter-day Saint Society because of his reputation as a good scholar and the respect he has from faithful Latter-day Saints. This balance isn’t so easy to find. There are many successful Mormon scholars who are well respected within their field. But when they have something to say about Mormonism, they speak only to other Mormons. Much of the Mormon intelligentsia who does engage the outside world about Mormonism is either explicitly involved in apologetics, or harbors some hostility to the Church and its teachings. This division tends to perpetuate itself by leaving little room in between. At some point many LDS intellectuals find that there is a parting of the ways, and they must choose sides to defend their faith from malicious attackers who represent the outside world or expose its soft underbelly for destruction in order to gain respect and acceptance in the outside world.

There have been a few to have successfully navigated these waters when they speak about Mormonism, who have been able to achieve success and respect in both the world of Mormonism and world outside of Mormonism. Of course, no one will be universally liked, and extremists at either end will tend to dislike anyone who is not firmly within their own camp. Despite this, I think Terryl Givens, among others has achieved this kind of success. But no one has quite mastered it yet.

The Yale Conference on Mormonism demonstrated this to me. Many of the non-LDS respondents challenged what they understood to be claims of Mormon exceptionalism, wanting to show that Mormonism wasn’t as unique as it was being claimed to be by the LDS presenters. However, to my ear this claim wasn’t being made and if it weren’t for the persistence of this episode in nearly every one of the sessions, I wouldn’t have begun to see the problem. It seems that when Mormons speak of LDS doctrine or theology, the tone is often seen as “apologetic” by outsiders.

Last night was no exception. A close non-LDS friend of mine characterized Givens’ talk as “apologetic.” Perhaps it was. It celebrated in how Mormonism had closed the “sacred distance” that “other Christian religions” had seen as central to their religious experience. It was enthusiastic, and perhaps even triumphalistic. As a Mormon, I loved it. I tend to agree with most of what Givens says about Mormon metaphysics (though I think I disagree with him about the room left for myth and mystery…I will blog on this later). Maybe my friend was sensing in Givens’ talk was that he had delivered a theological discourse, not a theoretical treatise on the nature of Mormon heresy.

So why does this happen, even to LDS scholars who are most attentive to this very problem? Does the blame lie squarely on us? When faithful Mormons speak about Mormonism, are they inevitably involved in a theological defense of faith? Or is it that non-Mormons’ perceptions of Mormons are so strong that they lead them to interpret any positive (or at least not critical) evaluation of Mormonism as “apologetic”? I do not know the answer to this question, but I see it as a major hurdle to the success of a viable field Mormon Studies that engages academics regardless of belief.