Review
Title: Reapproaching Zion: New Essays on Mormon Social Thought
Editors: Nathan B. Oman and Samuel D. Brunson
Publisher: By Common Consent Press
Genre: Nonfiction, Mormon Studies
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 245
Binding: Soft Cover
ISBN13: 978-1-948218-21-4
Price: $12.95
Reviewed by Ian Davidson for the Association for Mormon Letters
Reapproaching Zion: New Essays on Mormon Social Thought, edited by Nathan B. Oman and Samuel D. Brunson, is the first installment in By Common Consent Press’s Essays in Mormon Studies series. As you might assume from the name, Reapproaching Zion is a reexamination of some of the themes in the late BYU professor Hugh Nibley’s seminal collection Approaching Zion, though you would be forgiven if you second-guessed that assumption after reading the volume’s introduction. In fact, it takes seven pages of the ten-page introduction before the name Hugh Nibley is even mentioned. The introduction fails at its main role of introducing the reader to the collection, which is unfortunate because a book like this that reintroduces and reexamines Hugh Nibley’s views on Zion is sorely needed for Latter-day Saints in the 21st century.
As David Gore notes in his essay “The Rhetoric of Eternal Rest,” the essays in Hugh Nibley’s Approaching Zion “were originally composed and delivered as talks or lectures before various audiences between 1971 and 1988. The oral quality of these works lends them immediacy and a shoot-from-the-hip style of discourse that takes no prisoners” (p.92). On that front, Reapproaching Zion cannot equal the original. While Reapproaching is clearly in conversation with Approaching, the latter has much more life in it than the former. If you are looking for an encore to Nibley’s work, you will be disappointed. That is not to say that there is no value in Reapproaching Zion, but if you are a Nibley fan, you should know going in that this book is not a sequel. Reapproaching Zion loses the prophetic tone of Nibley’s essays–a style Rosalynde Welch appropriately notes “begins with scripture but ends with a scolding” (p. 206). While the volume lacks Nibley’s tone, it takes seriously the mission of Zion espoused by Nibley. For example, the first essay of the collection, “Where Zion Cannot Flee Babylon” by Samuel D. Brunson, considers the tax implications of a Zion society in a US context. Tax law may not be the most exciting subject, but Brunson sets the stakes clearly enough that someone like me, whose most significant interactions with taxes is my annual use of Turbo Tax, had their interest piqued. As Brunson points out, Nibley’s vision of Zion lacks currency or money of any kind, and since Nibley’s Zion cannot mix with Babylon (otherwise it ceases to be Zion) the tax implications of a community in the jurisdiction of the US government poses an interesting challenge to would-be founders of Zion.
While Brunson’s essay uses the present realities of US tax law to poke holes in the utopian vision of Nibley’s Zion, Russel Arben Fox’s essay defends what he calls the “normative idealism” of Nibley’s theory of Zion. Fox skillfully uses Nibley’s own words to make a point often missed by readers of Approaching Zion: Nibley was clear-eyed and even practical in the development of his vision of Zion. For Nibley, Zion requires our eyes single to the glory of God as the first and most important step in the development of Zion. Adopting nautical imagery, “Keep first your eye on the star, then on all other considerations of your ship. You will have all sorts of problems on the ship, but unless you steer by the star, forget the ship. Sink it. You won’t go anywhere” (Approaching Zion, “Three Degrees of Righteousness,” p. 336 | Reapproaching Zion, p. 86). As Fox concludes, “a vital belief in a utopian ideal may be necessary to motivate people to set off on the journey from the status quo in the first place, even though the likely actual destination may fall short of the utopian ideal” (p. 87).
Nathan B. Oman’s essay “Doux Commerce in the City of God” considers the role of commerce and poverty in Zion. Oman expertly identifies deficiencies in Nibley’s estimation in Zion by separating the act of commerce from other deleterious side effects of societies that engage in commerce. Trade, as Oman succinctly declares, “requires trust” (p.149) and “has historically been one of the main mechanisms by which people interact with strangers” (p. 153). The role of poverty is grappled with by Oman as well. As Oman notes, unlike many other Christian traditions, “there is no Mormon tradition of seeking poverty as a means of achieving greater spirituality. Poverty confers no special spiritual merit in Mormon theology.” The opposite is also not true, wealth, like poverty, is not a sign of spiritual favor. “Whatever the merits of Nibley’s criticism of conspicuous consumption, his monastic attitude toward material goods–poverty and study as a higher way–breaks with the teachings of Brigham Young and other latter-day prophets.”
More than thirty years have passed since Approaching Zion was published, so a reexamination is overdue, and BCC Press should be applauded for the effort. Unfortunately, this physical book is not an ideal vehicle for this kind of effort. Perhaps I alone received a defective copy, but I was tasked with reviewing the book, and that was not limited to the words on the page. All of the pages of my copy of the book were not actually bound together. I discovered that every fifth page or so was a loose-leaf as I turned the page. I’m sure there is some kind of metaphor that a better reviewer would leverage to make a comment about the book, but for my purposes, it degraded the reading experience. Similarly, page 11 of the book is followed by an unexplained blank page with the sentence continue onto page 13 after the inexplicable blank, yet numbered, page.*
In summary, if you are a fan of Nibley’s Approaching Zion for the content, not just the delivery, you will likely enjoy this 21st-century reexamination.
*Note: The Copy in the possession of the AML Book Review Editor also has a blank page 12.