The University of Utah is offering a fellowship in Mormon Studies.

“It’s a matter of academic justice,” said Bob Goldberg, the center’s director. “There would not be a question if we were in New York City and wanted to establish a course in Jewish studies, or in Chicago, Baltimore or Boston and wanted to start a course in Catholic studies. This is a perfect place to do research on Mormonism. To me, it’s a no-brainer.”

The U.’s is the first such fellowship in the nation, but joins a growing list of colleges that offer some coursework in Mormon studies, including Claremont College in southern California, Utah State University, Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina, to name a few.

Sounds interesting, but what’s even more interesting is that you can’t do a degree in Mormon Studies in the one place you’d think you could: BYU.

Why not? Well, perhaps a few ideas. There’s a certain distrust of learning in the LDS Church, unless it’s specifically dedicated to meeting the needs of the organisation instead of, you know, facts. This suspicion was written into the Book of Mormon, and it’s worked its way into General Conference. Dallin Oaks, an LDS apostle, famously warned of the dangers of ‘symposia’ (meaning those clever Sunstone rascals). Here’s the money quote.

I have seen some persons attempt to understand or undertake to criticize the gospel or the Church by the method of reason alone, unaccompanied by the use or recognition of revelation. When reason is adopted as the only—or even the principal—method of judging the gospel, the outcome is predetermined.

He doesn’t say what the ‘outcome’ is, but it can’t be good. So Oaks is implying that trying to understand the Church using reason instead of — what? whisperings of a spirit being? some guy telling you? — will cause you to reject religious doctrine. An interesting admission, and a huge warning sign that you’re dealing with an enemy of reason.

Church leaders have periodically slagged off Mormons who research into the church’s history. One leader, Neal Maxwell, trivialised the scholarly efforts of thinking Latter-day Saints as “intellectual bungee jumping“. (A prominent Mormon apologetics institute was subsequently renamed in his honour.)

So it’s not likely that the LDS Church (via its official university) will make a place for scholarly Mormon research anytime soon. They don’t seem to think their faith can stand scrutiny, and with that I fully agree.

John Morley said it well:

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.