It’s all so tiresome

When I started this blog, I legitimately hoped that, by pointing out the errors in Jonathan Neville’s arguments and methods, he would come to understand how misguided and offensive his manner is and perhaps moderate his approach.

Three-and-a-half years later, I am not so sanguine. He continues to misrepresent the arguments and the motivations those who disagree with him. He continues to call for mutual respect and to tolerate different points of view while simultaneously presuming the worst about his opponents.

One example of this is the terms that he uses to describe those on the other side. One of these is the acronym SITH, which stands for “stone in the hat,” referring to the (overwhelming) historical evidence that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by using a seer stone that he placed into a hat. The term “Sith” comes from the fictional Star Wars universe; it describes “an ancient order of Force-wielders devoted to the dark side [who] practice hate, deception, and greed…[and] look to amass power at all costs.”

This is not an innocent coincidence. Jonathan Neville knows the connection the word Sith has to great evil: In one of his earliest blog posts in which he used the term, he included photos of Star Wars-related media and used the phrase “the revenge of the SITH,” a reference to the title of the 2005 Star Wars movie. He’s deliberately using this acronym to describe those who disagree with him because it implies they are evil.

And yet Neville still protests his innocence and claims that all of this is just for convenience: “Some people don’t like these acronyms,” he writes, “and I’m happy to consider alternatives, but for now…SITH = stone-in-the-hat theory.” This is a lie. He is not going to “consider alternatives.” He knows exactly what he’s doing, and the evidence clearly shows that he’s doing it deliberately.

Amidst all of this, Neville continually—and hypocritically—pleads for disagreements to be “handled charitably.” That was the focus of two recent blog posts (here and here) in which he called for “respect [for] other perspectives, interpretations, beliefs, etc.,” while in the very same post calling the BYU Virtual Scriptures conceptual Book of Mormon map a “fantasy map,” claiming his opponents’ beliefs are “based on the premise that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were ignorant, naive, or deceitful,” and asserting that “the citation cartel”—(another derogatory term he uses frequently)—“obscures and censors sources so that people cannot make informed decisions.”

It requires either a massive amount of chutzpah or a total lack of self-awareness to plead for respect and charity while simultaneously resorting to name-calling and misrepresenting one’s ideological opponents.

The evidence sadly suggests that Jonathan Neville is not going to stop doing these things or even tone down his rhetoric. If anything, Neville’s recent appearance on Steven Pynakker’s Mormon Book Reviews YouTube channel shows that he’s doubling down on his approach in the wake of Spencer Kraus’s incisive reviews of his recent books.

My interpretation of all of this is that Jonathan Neville is allowing himself to become more and more convinced that Church leaders are going to come crawling to him, telling him that he’s been right about everything and pleading with him to come cast out the evil historians and save us all with his brilliance. But the phone keeps not ringing, so he has to keep ramping up the hyperbole to show the world how sincere and right he is. (See, for example, his recent blog post “Yet another SITH video!” in which he accuses the Church of the “suppression” of “what Joseph and Oliver taught.”) Neville’s latest interview with Pynakker doesn’t help, because Pynakker just feeds Neville’s sense of self-importance by telling him there is a time coming for him to shine, calling this approaching moment “the hour of Jonathan.” “the Jonathan Neville moment.”*

If my reading of these tea leaves is correct, then Jonathan Neville is following a well-trodden path that many would-be ark-steadiers` have walked before him. This road never leads to good ends.

—Peter Pan
 
* I inadvertantly misquoted Pynakker when I posted this blog. Pynakker pointed this out recently, and I’ve corrected the error. (Although, to be honest, I don’t see a qualitative difference between “the hour of Jonathan” and “the Jonathan Neville moment.”) —November 11, 2022.