19 February 2008¶ Mormon Studies
Today’s Boston Globe has an article on Harvard’s new class on Mormon history and theology which is an interesting read. It has the requisite quotes from Bushman to demonstrate that there actually are well-spoken, scholarly Mormons in existence. It’s a good article.
There’s an interesting gaffe in the fourth paragraph. Actually, in standard journalistic style, the gaffe is the fourth paragraph. For your reading pleasure, enjoy this:
There are more presses publishing academic works about Mormonism, more academic conferences on the religion, and more non-Mormon scholars studying the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as Mormonism is formally known.
You see the issue, I’m sure. “There are more…” but there’s no than. Though I’m pretty sure the writer meant “more than ever before” that’s not the only possible way to complete that thought. Perhaps it was intended to be “more [presses, conferences, scholars] than there are for Catholicism” though that’s unlikely. Than for Evangelical Protestantism? Than for other religions founded in the United States (most assuredly true), or than for religions against whom it is still acceptable to express bigotry (undoubtedly true, though unlikely that this article would head that direction), or than for other non-strictly-Biblical Christ-centric religions (again, true)?
I look forward to the day when I can walk across any campus in this country and know that I am considered a cultist by many, and an object of study by many others. Since today I’m just a cultist, it’ll be a dramatic improvement.