In the ongoing pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding, with the objective of "no more contention" (Mosiah 1:1), I recently co-hosted a podcast about the history of FAIR, which you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH22p-pX1DY
Steve and I interviewed Kerry Shirts (the Backyard Professor) who was the original Director of Research for FAIR. He had fond memories of FAIR and the people he worked with there. He explains the editorial decisions that led him to leave, but that was not the focus of the interview.
The interview expanded on the brief history found on the FAIR website:
FAIR was formed in late 1997 by a group of LDS defenders of the faith who frequented the America Online Mormonism message boards. There, they defended the Church against detractors. This small group realized that they had no way of sharing their information with each other, much less the rest of the Church. As a result of this, FAIR was born. FAIR incorporated as a non-profit organization in the state of New York on December 19, 1997, as The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. The fledgling organization put up its first website in March 1998. In 2013, the group became known as FairMormon. In 2021 the name was changed back to FAIR, which now stands for Faithful Answers, Informed Response.
Whenever people get together voluntarily to pursue laudable objectives, good things can happen.
An interesting aspect of the interview is how FAIR evolved into a tool to promote the personal beliefs and theories of its management instead of offering resources to enable Latter-day Saints and other interested people to answer questions with all the relevant information.
I hope this interview and related commentary (such as this post) will prompt FAIR to apply the FAITH model of analysis by first laying out all the facts, then specifically identifying the various assumptions, inferences and theories about those facts in an organized, accurate comparison of different faithful approaches to Church history and doctrine.
That would enable Latter-day Saints to make fully informed decisions, which would greatly strengthen faith in the Restoration and thus in Jesus Christ.
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FAIR (https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/) claims it has "the world’s largest database of faithful answers to critical questions."
Much of the content at FAIR is excellent. I've used it many times because the site is well organized and contains lots of useful links to original sources. I recommend it for many topics.
However, as we'll see below, on some topics FAIR is unreliable and even misleading.
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Scott Gordon has been President for many years. He and his team are all awesome, faithful Latter-day Saints, with the best of intentions. Plus, they're nice people. And they claim they want to use faithful scholarship in their work.
FAIR's content is mostly anonymous (like the Gospel Topics Essays), but it parallels the content at Scripture Central and the Interpreter Foundation. The organizations have considerable overlap.
Thus FAIR, like the others, is inexplicably dedicated to impugning the integrity, credibility and reliability of Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith regarding the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon.
People are free to disagree about the reliability and credibility of Joseph and Oliver regarding the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon. Many disagreements arise because people are simply uninformed about all the relevant facts. Or they are confused because the management of FAIR, Scripture Central, and the Interpreter Foundation conflate their respective assumptions, inferences and interpretations with the facts, to the detriment of all truth seekers.
That editorial position leads FAIR, like Scripture Central and the Interpreter Foundation, to some strange rhetorical machinations. It's a real shame that such a potentially valuable and productive resource is being manipulated by FAIR management to mislead Latter-day Saints and other interested people.
Let's look at three examples.
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FAIR is an adamant promoter of SITH (stone-in-the-hat theory of Book of Mormon translation). They have a webpage dedicated to persuade readers that:
Joseph Smith used the same "rock in hat" seer stone for translating that he used for "money digging"
The page is a series of assumptions, inferences and theories, misleadingly stated as facts. It's impossible to have a rational, credible analysis and discussion when we don't start with the facts and then clearly state our assumptions, inferences and theories that lead to our overall hypotheses (FAITH model).
Look at this series of assumptions, inferences and theories, all stated as facts:
After the loss of the 116 pages, contemporary accounts are very clear that Joseph continued the translation using his seer stone. In later years, the term "Urim and Thummim" was retroactively applied to both the Nephite interpreters and to Joseph's seer stone. Thus the use of "Urim and Thummim" tends to obscure the fact that two different instruments were employed.
When FAIR refers to "contemporary accounts" here, they (i) completely omit what Joseph, Oliver and Lucy Mack Smith said and (ii) emphasize statements from critics, detractors, and decades-later accounts from David Whitmer and (allegedly) Martin Harris and Emma Smith.
But they don't spell that out.
They don't give us all the relevant facts.
Instead, the entire page omits what Joseph, Oliver and Lucy Mack Smith said about the translation because they know those three explicitly and repeatedly said Joseph translated the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.
This is significant because Joseph and Oliver were responding to critics (such as the 1834 Mormonism Unvailed) who were making exactly the same claims that FAIR is making today.
Look specifically at FAIR's claim that "In later years, the term 'Urim and Thummim' was retroactively applied to both the Nephite interpreters and to Joseph's seer stone." What FAIR doesn't tell you is that Mormonism Unvailed (Oct 1834) clearly distinguished between the "peep stone" and the "Urim and Thummim" as two separate, competing accounts of the translation. This confusion generated by critics explains why both Joseph and Oliver specifically taught that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim (aka the Nephite interpreters, aka the spectacles) that came with the plates.
But FAIR and other SITH sayers try to confuse Latter-day Saints with this modern theory of "retroactive" application of terms.
FAIR also doesn't tell you that in the summer of 1832, missionaries were publicly teaching that Joseph translated the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim.
There are lots of other problems with FAIR's approach to SITH, but no legitimate, faithful academic resource would purport to discuss the translation of the Book of Mormon without at least including what Joseph and Oliver taught about the translation.
It's fine that FAIR wants to persuade Latter-day Saints to agree with Royal Skousen:
"Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading."
This ongoing, determined effort to undermine the credibility and reliability of what Joseph and Oliver taught is all-too pervasive among modern LDS scholars. Obviously, that effort is unappealing to most Latter-day Saints.
And that probably explains why FAIR refuses to explicitly state their position by informing us of what Joseph, Oliver, and Lucy Mack Smith said, and then explaining clearly why they disagree.
But that editorial approach is a disservice to all Latter-day Saints, not to mention the disservice they are giving to Joseph and Oliver.
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FAIR is also an adamant promoter of M2C, again just like Scripture Central and the Interpreter Foundation.
M2C (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory) is based on the assumption that Oliver Cowdery lied when he explicitly taught it is a fact that the hill Cumorah/Ramah is the same hill in New York where Joseph found the plates.
See http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/90
Readers of this blog are familiar with all the historical and extrinsic evidence that supports and corroborates what Oliver and Joseph said about the hill Cumorah.
But readers of FAIR are not so well informed.
FAIR purports to offer "Faithful Answers, Informed Response."
Instead, FAIR offers up pages of distraction, obfuscation, misinformation and disinformation on this topic. Just look at the entries on this page, for example:
https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/The_Hill_Cumorah
If FAIR actually sought to inform Latter-day Saints to help them make informed decisions instead of seeking to persuade them to accept M2C, FAIR would implement the FAITH model of analysis.
FAIR would start by providing all the facts from Church history.
Then FAIR would spell out the different assumptions, inferences and theories about those facts that lead people to the various hypotheses, the two major being Heartland and M2C. This would include interpretations of the text, the teachings of the prophets, and extrinsic evidence.
The clarity of such a comparison would enlighten Latter-day Saints.
Then people would be able to make informed decisions.
But FAIR continues to refuse to do this, which makes their website on this topic unreliable and misleading and, ultimately, unusable.
It's a shame that this potentially awesome resource is employed in such a disreputable manner.
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The third example is more specific.
FAIR has a page that discusses the 1990 letter about Cumorah from the Office of the First Presidency.
Because confusion about that letter persists, Elder Watson issued a public statement in 2022 about the context. That letter was sent to FAIR, but FAIR has refused to post it on their website.
FAIR's refusal is a fundamental violation of basic ethics of journalism and scholarship.
But it is consistent with FAIR's editorial approach to other topics, such as the two we discussed above, where FAIR's management (i) omits relevant facts and (ii) promotes their theories as facts.
Very strange.
Anyone interested can read Elder Watson's statement here:
https://www.mobom.org/1990-letter-on-cumorah
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BTW, the Museum of the Book of Mormon (MOBOM.org) offers original sources along with diverse assumptions, inferences, etc. to enable readers to make informed decisions.
Ideally, FAIR and Scripture Central would do likewise and all Latter-day Saints would find "unity in diversity."
But that apparently won't happen until and unless current management of those organizations (Scott Gordon for FAIR and Jack Welch for Scripture Central) trust their readers enough to provide all the relevant facts, along with a comparison of the various assumptions, inferences and theories.
Instead, their divisive, dogmatic editorial approach of enforcing their personal opinions through the guise of "scholarship" continues to plague Latter-day Saints everywhere.