authentic because uh such a woman is clearly accepting a
narrative that is inherited from the past or that seems to acknowledge a power higher than the
self. So the only really authentic uh feminist is one who uh who uh who goes
against all previous social constructions and who is actively
involved in in reconstructing in the creation of meaning in create in creation of a of a
new role. So authentic womanhood uh cannot really be uh I mean feminists may
more or less uh uh uh tolerate the obviously necessary existence of some
wives and mothers. But the ideal of feminism in so far as it is based on
pure the pure theory of modern liberalism which it tends to be uh has
to be creative uh constructive
uh it has to uh replace one social engineering with
another. you might say it has to restlessly uh move on to some u new
invention of of the self or of the idea of womanhood or new manipulation of the of
the uh idea of gender. Now, Patterson in his article here goes
through a response to your articles about Roush, and we've discussed this before, but he
he brings up uh he makes a statement here saying that Hancock's critique of Roush
seems to be that Roush's olive branch is really a poisoned apple. Okay. What do
you What does he mean by that? He's exactly right. That's what I think. That's what I think. Yeah, it is a
poisoned apple. So, how is Roush? Right, let's just briefly talk about him for a second here. Rous is a uh uh he's with
the Brookings Institute. He's a journalist uh highly regarded um and an atheist and he has reached out
to the church in in some regard in including in his book talking about the church and how the church acts very
differently from a lot of the balance of Christianity, right? is ter in terms of
how they engage politics and and and to some degree I agree with that. To some
degree I agree with that. We we take a much more neutral stance on some things than you would get in other churches,
especially some Protestant evangelical churches. And that's probably actually going to expand. That disparity is going
to expand with the new IRS rulings where churches are now able to actually fullon
procilitize from the pulpit their politics. Mhm. But um but at the same time, Roush
in my mind seems to I believe it's also a poisoned apple. Not that he's willing
to create a bridge, but that that bridge is qualified
uh by his his idea of compromise.
And he speaks of this all the time in his speech at BYU and in in the ter in compromise which is basically I see it
as I need to compromise on my principles
and and that's what he's excited about. Yeah. So that you you need to compromise on your principles so you can be part of
the quite new status quo that I Jonathan
Roush think is basically okay and not a bad place to land at least for now
while we try to prepare for more progress further in some direction uh no doubt but look the the whole point is to
see and uh I'm not sure why my colleague uh professor Patterson has trouble
seeing this I suppose He's read the whole book that I've studied with care.
But some things are unmistakable. And it is simply the case that Jonathan Roush's viewpoint is not is not neutral. He he's
not sort of saying I'm not I'm going to bracket all my beliefs so I can listen to you. I ask you to do the same so you
can listen to me and we can talk about a good society or a a sound and a workable
definition of our rights and duties and so forth. No, that's not what he's doing. He's saying um a certain
uh stage of liberal society has emerged
post Obergfell especially and I think that's good and I see signs that Latter-day Saints are ready to
compromise with it and I want to keep encouraging that and uh encouraging you
not to fall back into your um your your habits of uh prejudice and uh
oppression. and superstition. Look, read the book. This is what the way he talks
about traditional religion. If you think he's just inviting us to a neutral negotiation, no. But but this bears on
the question of engagement that we started with. Maybe are is it good to engage liberalism? You
and I are doing it right now. How can we not think it's good? But we want to engage it
knowingly uh astutely and yes uh
courageously. But courage does not exist does not consist in denying the real uh
downsides and and pitfalls. Um Jonathan Roush has a worldview. It is
decidedly secular, atheistic
and I would say scientific in a narrowly a sense I would regard as narrowly
reductionist. He has that worldview but somehow it
dawned on him that this worldview did not produce all the motives for
good citizenship that would be needed in a liberal
society. So why not uh look for versions of Christianity that can supply the
necessary motives for virtue? He's basic shopping about for
religious supports for a view of liberalism that he shows no readiness to
negotiate upon at any uh deep level at all. So he's really asking Latter-day
Saints and asking us to be a model for other Christians in lending our moral
support you using our belief in u in God and no doubt in um
heaven and hell for example using our beliefs to form moral behaviors and
character character traits that are needed in a liberal society. even though
he does not believe in the he explicitly rejects the theological foundation of
those religious beliefs. And it's at this point that uh uh Professor
Patterson um I must say he goes so far as to surprise
me a bit by asking uh why cannot uh an atheist
be a worthy conversation partner
in thinking about how to be Christlike. Why would we need actual beliefs about
Christ's divinity or the plan of salvation or let's say the uh the moral
purpose uh God's moral purpose in the universe? Why would we need uh
uh any of that uh to support our deepest uh moral beliefs? And why could we not
expect a a committed determined atheist to tell
us how to be a good Christian? I for me the the question is really kind of
preposterous on its face. Do we not believe that our vision of
of God, of ultimate reality, of the plan of salvation, of who we are as children of God matters in shaping
the way we live our lives and the character traits we hold to be most important.
If it if by engaging with liberalism
uh Jonathan Roush or Kelly Patterson mean engaging in liberalism as liberals or
setting aside all your attachments to
supra liberal beliefs and assumptions in order to enga engage
on a liberal terrain then I'm saying no I invite I invite you
to come over to my terrain. Is that fearful? I think it's sober and and brave. It's a
recognition of reality. It's a recognition that uh life is not just a
an e a a a conversation or an exploration of possibilities. Reality
matters. None of us sees it perfectly. We don't have any complete theory or theology of reality. Certainly not one
that we would impose on fellow citizens. But if we are to engage liberalism, we
must not do it by like completely bracketing or
uh stripping away from ourselves our most uh fundamental convictions.
So as you went through the article, what were a few of the points that you you saw that did did you think that he I
mean you talk about the poison apple here. You say that's right on. He got that right. That's how I felt. Were there was there anything in there that
you felt that you did not agree with the way that he interpreted your your
articles? Um,
yeah. In a there are in in a way what's most significant is that u he
understands what I'm saying and he disagrees with it. He he sees the world more like Jonathan Roush than he does
like me, a fed fellow Latter-day Saint. Is that my fault? Is that his fault? Is that Rash's fault? But that's a fact to
begin with in a certain way. Uh with the help of Charles Taylor and
other more or less postmodern philosophers or um or late liberal philosophers.
Charles Taylor is the Canadian Canadian author of u a secular age and
sources of the self. I I can go into that. That's the business I'm in is sort of uh discussing such philosophers as
Charles Taylor. But I was going to say um Professor Patterson is willing to
adopt that worldview of there are no u
fixed points which we should bring to a discussion but everything is up for negotiation because we now live in a
secular age Charles Taylor's reference in which u all options are open and
nobody really believes as they used to believe as if it's simply true. But we
all believe we know that there are different options and possibilities. In a word, a kind of uh relativism
is part of the very air that we breathe in a modern society.
And uh professor Patterson's viewpoint seems to be let's live within that uh
relativized uh society and explore and negotiate uh
within it and uh not be uh dogmatic in
holding to any fixed viewpoints and so forth. And I just think that's a
distortion of our situation. Do we know nothing? Even if we're willing to to listen and let's say to momentarily to
bracket a as we engage uh secular liberals and others, we Latter-day
Saints uh sure for purposes of conversation and learning, we need to be willing to listen, to respect other
viewpoints. Uh even momentarily to bracket and say, "What if what I think is true is not uh quite as uh clear and
certain as I might have thought it was." That's all part of the uh intellectual
life. But the fact is
uh Jonathan Rous and I could add Charles Taylor to this. There's there's certain
things they don't question. This is very clear in the case of Jonathan Roush.
Look, you you brought up marriage already. So let's let's this is a
why why do we avoid a concrete question like this? Jonathan Roush celebrates
the I would say the complete transformation of marriage if
not the abolition of of traditional marriage by redefining marriage. you
know, unilaterally using I was going to say legislative power or the power of the uh Supreme Court to redefine
marriage completely severing it from what was the core of its meaning, what
was the anthropological basis of its meaning through notable variations in
the contours of marriage throughout history. Like it's a man woman making a baby thing that is at the that's that's
why we have marriage. It's not just uh so we can uh have sweet thoughts about
uh about one form of companionship or another between uh adult human beings.
It had to do with a man, woman, child thing that has been abolished.
Um and Jonathan Roush celebrates it or he makes
it clear we are not going back on that. He makes it clear. You want to talk
about respecting others views? He is sure he has absolutely no respect
for anyone who thinks that homosexuality is a sin or let's back off from that.
Who thinks that it's a mistake for for the stability and health of society to
radically transform the def definition of marriage that he he has no respect for that. See there. So he's not
neutral. He's asking us to engage him on his terrain. And Professor Patterson is
saying I'm not afraid to engage him on his terrain. And I'm saying maybe you should be a little bit afraid, maybe a
little bit wary of engaging him on his terrain. Well, this is something that I had noticed in the article that that I I
thought though as he uses the term respect or respecting others opinions. I'm talking about Patterson here. Um
there he doesn't parse this out very well. He you I respect your right to
believe what you want, right? That is the common ground that we should all have. I you have a right to
believe what you want to believe in and and that should be the ground that we s
sit on and say, "Okay, we can discuss this together." But I may not respect your actual
beliefs. I may not respect your opinions. That that is very different.
Yeah. I I you you you need to think that what you need you have a freedom of religion. You you you adopt your
worldview. You decide what you want to do. I will I will not only support that.
I would fight for that even if I disagree and don't respect your opinions
at all. But that respecting your ability, your right to to have your own
beliefs, your own worldview, your own religion does not mean that that comes with me respecting what you believe.
That doesn't make any sense to me. If I respected what you believed, Yeah. I would believe what you believe.
Yeah. Well, uh, Professor Patterson is he does us a great service here. This I
think is in a way his uh his strongest point and uh really the point where he
helps us advance the argument the most because he calls attention to this u
idea of respect and therefore I think requires us to recognize no doubt more
more clearly than I have done so far in my work on Jonathan Rous but he calls on
us to recognize the the rhetorical
um ambiguity, you could even say the slipperiness uh within the term respect. Now, uh,
Professor Patterson, uh, actually his article relies a lot upon an argument
from authority and he does well to call upon the authority of President Oaks and
especially a speech he gave at the University of Virginia in which respect
for others and for the opinions of others plays a central role. Um, but I
think Kelly's own argument uh makes it clear that we have to think more
carefully about the meaning of respect because in a in a familiar practical
rhetorical way, we talk about respecting others and their beliefs. But I agree
with what you just pointed out. To be clear, uh I respect you as uh you I mean let
you be Jonathan Roush. I I respect you Jonathan uh as a child of God and a
person with much good and eternal potential and with many admira admirable
qualities uh uh intelligence and a civic disposition. All kinds of things I can attribute to you. I respect you.
You hold the belief that uh the redefinition of marriage, severing it
completely from it, the role of reproduction and responsible parenthood
is is a good thing. I'm convinced
that's not true. Are you are you Jonathan willing to respect my viewpoint
and take it seriously? nothing in your book or in any of your your your writings suggests that you do. I will
say I respect you. I can I even because I respect you as a person, I'm willing to try to walk a mile in your shoes and
to see how you would have come to this viewpoint and the arguments that exist for it. But finally, no, I cannot
um I cannot say in full lucidity that I respect your viewpoint. I mean
it's a practically speaking it's a uh a decent
and amical way of dealing with people to respect them and their beliefs. But what
we mean is we respect them. Now let's talk about your beliefs. I respect the fact that you have beliefs. I can see I
can I can with a little work I can see how you come to such beliefs. But really the language of respect is of
little use here because I I I think you're wrong. And and that's what's most important. Uh
and does that mean I am acting on fear? It means yeah I I believe
uh look let me lay down another mark here. I believe that the Oberfell decision and the new regime of
abolishing the traditional idea of marriage is a disaster.
So can I deal with it? I'm am I afraid of it? I'm I'm dealing with it. I'm living in this world. Uh and uh is the
culture war over? We're to the language of the culture wars now. Is the c on that point? Uh you could argue that the
culture war has been settled. Well, we have to live with it. Maybe we have to negotiate the new terrain that exists.
uh given that uh that political reality, I'll bracket the question whether such a
thing might be reversible in in some uh future
um developments in American politics and society. But just let's just assume it's
not reversible. I think it's important to say uh it's a fact there was a
culture war on this point we lost and it's a disaster.
You know, in my articles on the Rous subject in alive and intelligent, I uh
quoted uh uh President Oaks on the priority of truth to tolerance, which
would kind of give us the right perspective from which to understand what he means by respect,
I think. But I also quoted u uh professor Kristofferson in general
conference on sustainable uh societies and um
Elder Christopherson. Elder Christopherson um and I may have that uh quotation
here. When secularization separates personal
and civic virtue from a sense of accountability to God, that's Rous's whole project. And Professor Patterson
says, "Now, why would that be a problem? I don't see why why cannot ethical ideas be detached from the laws of nature and
nature's God. I don't see what the connection is." Professor Patterson is saying, "When secularization separates
personal and civic virtue from a sense of accountability to God, it cuts the plant from its roots."
That's my whole difference from Professor Patterson. He thinks that we can have civic virtues of negotiation
and niceness without any roots. He thinks we can be pure liberals without
uh the conservative uh foundation or the conservative roots.
Continuing Elder Christopherson, reliance on culture and tradition alone will not be sufficient to sustain virtue
in society. So our status quo is not just a status quo. It requires belief in
some transcendent reality. When one has no higher god than himself,
that's the late modern radicalized liberal ethic of the self, authenticity that we've been talking about. When one
has no higher god than himself and seeks no greater good than satisfying his own
appetites and preferences or you might say you I would add self definition
self-expression the effects will be manifest in due course. It will matter
to society. It's it's not a conversation. It's not an exploration of possibilities
untethered from reality. It's a discussion about the human
condition and its limits and therefore the conditions of a of a stable society.
One last line from from Elder Christopherson. A society, for example, in which individual consent is the only
constraint on sexual activity is a society in decay. It's not just a
society that we disapprove of because we happen to hold some opinions and other people's other people have different
opinions. If Elder Christopherson is right, it's a society in decay. That is
not sustainable. That will not work. Am I afraid of the prospect of an
unsustainable society? Yes. I say be afraid. Be be very afraid. Don't lose
your faith. Don't lose your confidence in goodwill. Don't lose your capacity to look people you disagree with in the eye
and to listen to them and even to bracket while listening your convictions in order to see where they're coming
from. But don't lose your tethering to the realities of a sustainable society.
Want to finish on this here. Um so in the article uh Patterson says the
following. What is the alternative to Roush that Hancock is proposing?
Ultimately, Hancock's view of politics seems to be a pessimistic one. His
formulation of the problem does not require much in the way of, and this is interesting that the verbiage here is of
does not seem to require much in the way of new efforts. It's interesting, new
efforts from Latter-day Saints. Indeed, it seems to parrot the approach of those elements of modern Christianity who
fervently embrace fear. Okay. So just just coming back to this fear and I I
just again if I'm walking away from those core principles
yes there towards some new approach. Right. Yeah. Some new efforts that is are not I
mean the only thing he could he could substantiate here as far as being new efforts that he's talking about is actually the compromise with Roush.
Yeah. Um it's I I you know for example I think of the family proclamation and you
go in you get this outlining of order and tethering to certain principles and
then the bottom two paragraphs tell you be afraid if we don't do this because
this is what is going to happen. Be afraid be very afraid. Uh and it's a proclamation to the world and as you say
the last lines which I should have memorized but I don't basically say watch out if you ignore these
principles. Yeah. And that's not fear-mongering, you know. I mean, if if you if I read the scriptures, if the way
that he's describing this, then all the entirety of the scriptures is fear-mongering.
Yeah. Well, I I I think rhetorically we have at least have to consider the
legitimacy of turning this accusation of fear-mongering around because really
the fear at work here. And this is the uh Kelly accuses me of resorting to a uh
a psychological argument here. And maybe I'll just plead guilty on this one. I
plead guilty on many points here. Why not add one more conviction here? I plead guilty
to resorting to a psychological or I would say more broadly a socio-csychological argument because I'm
trying to find a way to explain what seems very puzzling. Not to say
baffling, not to say outrageous. Why are all these smart Latter-day Saints buying
into this um potion, [Music]
this uh that that is clearly flimsy philosophically.
I mean, I I I'm quite straightforward in saying um Jonathan Roush is no political
philosopher. And Kelly says, "Well, he's not and that doesn't matter because, you know, we don't have many. We're not
expecting political philosophy." Well, I'm saying something like the reasoning that you and I have been engaged in here
that gets to the foundations of the meaning of liberalism and sees through the pretensions of liberal neutrality,
something like political philosophy is necessary to see through these uh
delusions and and this rhetoric. Uh but getting back to turning the tables
uh on fear, yeah, I I am I do resort to a social psych psych social
psychological argument to say that it must be I I I welcome some other
explanation. I see this massive social phenomenon. Yes. Uh among Latter-day Saint
I'm I'm going to use uh fighting words here. What? Elites, intellectuals.
Say that. Yes. Uh well because I I we all need elites. Elites can be a liberal
society needs elites. Uh we need the best, the most educated, but our elites
tend to be pure and pure liberals. And alas, Latter-day Saints are no
exception. And it would it's hard to be an exception. I'm I'm old. I'm
marginalized. It cost me little to be an exception.
But for many to stand apart from the liberal elite more and more defined by a
pure commitment to uh human freedom and equality
without anthropological limits and without a higher reference point in God
and nature. For many elites or would be elites, this
is uh an absolute condition of their membership in the group in being I'm I'm
not speaking of a some explicit nefarious conspiracy. I'm just saying
that what it means to be educated and what it means to be well progressive,
what it means to be enlightened in our world is increasingly defined by beliefs
like Jonathan Rousesh. Mhm. And many
I hypothesize I offer this possible explanation. Many Latter-day Saints
are lose their hold on our core beliefs because
they crave membership in the educated and enlightened and yes and successful
class. I don't think uh I mean I I quote from um a book by Joseph Botm in which
he describes the movement of white Protestant elites
towards this progressive worldview and uh forgive me if it seems a reductionist
argument but I'm looking for the best explanation I can. I see among Latter-day Saints this same tendency to
interpret our very religion in terms that will not uh will not disqualify us
from being among the enlightened progressive elites. Yeah. So the apple there is an apple.
The apple there is that acceptance to a degree, right? That that but but
that doesn't mean it's not poisoned. Doesn't mean it's it's not poison. So I agree with that. Ralph, thanks so much for your
time. really appreciate it. Very articulate. I love discussing these types of things, parsing them out. And
uh if this is not something that you as a in the audience have have
experienced yet, you will, right? Because these things are coming to a head. We are, as we discussed before we
started recording, at a crossroads, I think, on these things. So Ralph, thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Greg.
