A curious comment from David Hocking

 
Editor’s note: On June 20, 2021, David Hocking left a comment clarifying his statement that I critiqued in this post. In fairness to him, please be sure to read his response.

As of right now (April 16, 2020), Jonathan Neville’s flagship site, Moroni’s America, is down for some unknown reason. Before it went dark, David Hocking left a comment on Neville’s blog post that argues the Church’s missionary effort should be retooled to be center on Heartlander dogma.

(The post was here. A copy of it is still up at Neville’s Book of Mormon Consensus blog.)

David Hocking’s professional background is in sales and marketing in the biotechnology industry. He recently founded BeaconLight Books, which has published two books that Hocking himself has edited: The Heartland Annotated Edition of the Book of Mormon and an edition of the Book of Jasher, a sixteenth-century Hebrew midrash written in Italy or Spain that some Latter-day Saints (including Hocking) mistakenly believe is an ancient document.

Anyway, here’s the comment Hocking left on Meldrum’s blog post about missionary work and declining convert baptisms as a percentage of total worldwide members:

Hocking’s comment is curious—and perhaps revealing—for several reasons:

First, it demonstrates there are Heartlanders who believe—contrary to Neville’s persistent claim—that non-belief in the New York Cumorah is not the only supposed obstacle to convert baptisms. (In fact, Hocking comes much closer to identifying actual obstacles to conversion than Neville ever has.)

But notice that Hocking also seems to be arguing that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should never have practiced polygamy or made the Word of Wisdom a requirement for baptism and full fellowship. His statement implies that generations of Church leaders, including the current ones, were and are wrong about these doctrines.

So, if I’m reading Hocking right (and I think I am), the Church hasn’t just gone astray by not affirming the New York Cumorah and teaching that Joseph Smith used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon—it’s also off the rails because of D&C 132 and elevating D&C 89 to a commandment.

Heartlanders naturally lean toward what Cassandra Hedelius called “Mormon gnosticism.” More specifically, polygamy and the-Word-of-Wisdom-as-commandment are two major criticisms of the Church made by ex-Latter-day Saint apostate cult leader Denver Snuffer.

Based on his comment, above, Hocking worryingly sounds like a nascent Snufferite. As I’ve written before, the Heartland hoax is a “gateway drug” into apostate cults like Snuffer’s.

So it seems that Heartlanderism has taken one more small step toward declaring the Church to be in apostasy and to becoming its own offshoot group.

—Peter Pan

Many people are not asking (in case you were asking)

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. Unlike Jonathan Neville, however, I’m not going to disengenuously claim that “many people ask why” because, honestly, no one has asked me why.

Even though no one has asked, I’ll tell you the reason anyway: I’ve been taking a bit of a break and enjoying life without giving much thought to the Heartland hoax. I’ll be back when I feel good and rested.

In the meantime, here are three items of note:

1. Jonathan Neville has continued to push his conspiracy theory about the supposed coverup of the “true” identity of the angel who appeared to Mary Whitmer. Neville still refuses to grapple with the giant problem of Elder Garrit W. Gong’s October 2020 General Conference talk in which he affirmed that the angel was, indeed, Moroni and not Nephi. (Perhaps Elder Gong is part of the conspiracy?)
    
2. Contrary to what you may have heard, I’m not Daniel Peterson, so I haven’t had the opportunity to see the new film Witnesses yet. I’ve been told by several friends who have seen it that it’s very good, so I hope to catch it this coming weekend.
    
3. My network of informants has recently shared a juicy rumor with me that two individuals who are prominent in the Heartland community already believe in polygamy and are now “shopping around” for the right fundamentalist Mormon offshoot group to join. If true, this is quite significant and demonstrates my contention that the Heartland hoax is a “gateway drug” into apostate fundamentalist cults. I’ll share more information if and when this rumor is confirmed.

—Peter Pan
 

What “censorship” is not

Jonathan Neville is deeply confused about many things, but perhaps his greatest area of misunderstanding is definition of censorship.

In his May 25, 2019, blog post, “M2C citation cartel vs free speech,” he writes:

Some time ago, I asked Book of Mormon Central why they don’t invite me to speak at their conferences. (They host a mediocre conference with a handful of M2C* proponents and just a couple of hundred attendees. If you ever get a chance to attend, you ought to just to see it for yourselves.)

The answer I got: “We don’t agree with you.”

That’s precisely the approach taken by leftists on college campuses everywhere.

This occurred about the time when Book of Mormon Central censored my Letter VII book from their archive.

So much to unpack here. Where to begin?

First, if Book of Mormon Central’s conference is so “mediocre,” why is he upset that he hasn’t been invited to speak at it? His snide comment betrays a stunning childishness. (“Oh, you’re not going to invite me? Fine; your conference stinks anyway!”)

Second, no private organization has any obligation to give a platform to views with which it disagrees. For example, the Republican Party is not required to turn over the microphone at their nominating convention to the chairman of the Democratic Party (or vice versa). The same applies to Rodney Meldrum’s FIRM Foundation EXPO, where Jonathan Neville and other “Heartlanders” disseminate their views—Meldrum does not have any duty to offer his platform to, say, Brant Gardner or John L. Sorenson; he is free to include or exclude whomever he chooses. And, in doing so, Meldrum would not be stifling free speech—those who disagree with the Heartland theory are free to organize their own conferences and invite their own speakers.

Third, not inviting speakers one disagrees with isn’t just the “approach taken by leftists on college campuses”; conservative college organizations also tend to not invite speakers they don’t agree with. You’re not likely to see the College Republicans invite, say, Noam Chomsky to keynote their annual meeting. What we do see college leftists doing is trying to shut down speakers and events they disagree with, something Book of Mormon Central has never attempted to do to any Heartlander conference.

Fourth, it is not “censorship” to refuse to publish, disseminate, or make available works by authors with whom one disagrees. Heartlanders are under no obligation to sell John L. Sorenson’s books or to host content from the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum on their web sites. Censorship is the act of a government official suppressing books, films, and other media because he deems them objectionable. In a marketplace of ideas, a private organization cannot and does not “censor” opposing views; it competes with them.

Finally, I don’t work for Book of Mormon Central, but I am aware that they had some of Jonathan Neville’s writings on their site at one point and then eventually removed them. I can probably guess what happened: They charitably hosted some of his materials, but then he began unleashing childish and offensive criticisms of those who disagree with his views, and so they quietly removed his content. I don’t have any personal knowledge that was the case, but I would be surprised if my conjecture is incorrect.

One of the fundamental principles of M2C is that they already have the answers and they don’t want to learn new things that corroborate the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah.

Quite the contrary, Brother Neville—Heartlanders like yourself are the ones who claim to “have all the answers” and who accuse those who don’t agree with them of “rejecting the prophets” and trying to undermine the leaders of the Church. You are the one who refuses to accept that your views may be flawed. You are the one who “doesn’t want to learn new things”—you already have all the answers, and anyone who disagree with you is, in your view, being disloyal to the prophets.

At BYU, they teach M2C exclusively by teaching students that the prophet [sic] are wrong about the New York Cumorah. They handle potential scrutiny and criticism by simply censoring alternative views, especially including the teachings of the prophets.

Setting aside his false narrative that BYU teaches “the prophets are wrong,” what Neville fails to grasp is that not all theories are equally valid and worthy of serious consideration. For example:

• Should BYU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy be required to teach the flat-earth theory alongside the belief that the earth is a sphere?
• Should BYU’s Department of History be required to teach the theory that NASA faked the moon landings alongside the belief that the Apollo missions actually landed on the moon?
• Should BYU’s Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages be required to teach the theory that ancient aliens built the pyramids alongside other theories?
• Should BYU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry be required to teach alchemy alongside other theories of chemical science?

To be brutally honest, the theories behind the “Heartland” Book of Mormon geography are akin to the flat-earth theory and other pseudoscientific claims. BYU’s Department of Ancient Scripture is not beholden to use the fraudulent artifacts and amateur archaeological claims of Heartlanders; neither are they required to teach that there has been prophetic revelation on the location of the hill Cumorah when no such revelation exists.

Neville concludes his post with this disturbing statement:

BTW, when people ask me what I think of BYU, I explain that if they still believe the scriptures (including the Bible) and the prophets, they should probably not send their children to BYU. I think it’s far more damaging to faith to be taught that the prophets are wrong at a university sponsored by the Church than to be taught that at a secular university.

I’ve long contended that the Heartland hoax is a “gateway drug” into apostate fundamentalist cults. Those who believe that they know the truth and that the Church is “out of the way” are one step from making their exit from the Lord’s Church and finding an alternative that’s more compatible with their eccentric views.

I’m sincerely hoping that Brother Neville doesn’t follow that path, but his statement deeply troubles me. If he’s willing to openly criticize the religious instruction at BYU—a university whose board of trustees is presided over by the president of the Church—how far can Neville be from openly criticizing the president of the Church for not teaching what he believes about the location of the hill Cumorah?

—Peter Pan

* “M2C” is Jonathan Neville’s acronym for the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica and that the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is not the same hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon.