Episode 23 // The Role of Institutions in Promoting Peace with Grant Madsen

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In this episode of the Proclaim Peace Podcast, hosts Jennifer Thomas and Patrick Mason are joined by professor Grant Madsen to discuss what we learn from the Book of Mormon about how institutions promote peace and foster positive society. Together, they explore how modern politics, growing distrust of institutions, and society’s evolution shape their understanding of peace and the importance of having faith in our best institutions as a path to becoming better peacemakers. Tune in for a thoughtful discussion on the lessons learned from history and a bigger perspective!

Timestamps

[00:01:16] Cultural perspectives on peace.

[00:05:14] Government systems and peace cycles.

[00:08:49] Systems promoting peace in society.

[00:12:11] Popularity of American Heritage class.

[00:15:11] Human nature and institutions.

[00:19:54] Religion and human nature.

[00:23:14] Book of Mormon's view on governance.

[00:27:31] Conflict as productive force.

[00:28:57] Factions and their implications.

[00:34:13] Distrust in American institutions.

[00:36:35] Presidential power and government structure.

[00:40:06] Politics and personal responsibility.

[00:46:06] Leadership and citizenship in institutions.

[00:46:49] Democracy and its habits.

[00:52:40] Spiritual commitment and societal peace.

[00:55:11] The importance of hope.

[01:01:04] Democracy and personal reflection.

[01:02:30] Peace and conflict resolution.

Transcript

(00:03-00:06) Jennifer Thomas: Welcome to the Proclaim Peace Podcast. I'm Jennifer Thomas.
(00:06-00:16) Patrick Mason: And I'm Patrick Mason. And this is the podcast where we apply principles of the gospel and read the Book of Mormon to become better peacemakers. Jen, how are you doing?

(00:16-00:23) Jennifer Thomas: I'm doing great, Patrick. You are just coming back from a family vacation, so I'm assuming that you are just feeling great today.

(00:23-00:55) Patrick Mason: Is that true? Yes and no. Well, it was a family vacation where I was also working, I will have you know. I was actually giving a series of talks about peace and peace building. It was lovely with some great people in Southern California, but we did take the family. And as anybody listening knows, anytime you go on a family vacation, When you get home, you feel like you need a vacation. So that's exactly where I am right now. And you're not one to talk sitting there in jolly old England, sitting there in London.

(00:55-02:40) Jennifer Thomas: Yes, I am in London. I am also not on a vacation. I'm also also working, but still life is good. And one of the things that has come to mind as we prepared for this podcast, specifically because I have been away from home, is that as soon as you get, I think you probably all experienced this, as soon as you get sort of outside of your culture and your comfort zone, suddenly you start to see the world differently. And all of the things that support my life at home have become pretty much invisible to me. Everything from how I cross the street to how I buy my groceries to, you know, just even solving problems. I had a medical issue this week and I had to figure out how to solve that. When you're in a different place, suddenly all the systems that are invisible at home kind of come to the surface. and you have to figure out they're made visible to you and you have to figure out how to navigate them and understand sometimes the thinking behind them and how to make them work. And one of the things that's been really important to me on this trip that I've been very happy about has been the opportunity to sort of look through all of these systems that I'm suddenly seeing through a lens of peace and looking about, looking kind of marveling all the ways that particularly the culture that I'm visiting right now, and I'm doing a lot of historical work and seeing how things were in the past and how they are now, and seeing over time how this country has created systems to bring order out of chaos and in the process has become progressively less violent and cruel. So it's been a real treat for me to be traveling, and thank you to you, Patrick, for providing this lens for me, to start to look through the world so much more through the lens of peacemaking, and particularly systems that promote peacemaking.

(02:40-02:51) Patrick Mason: Yeah, where I am going to draw the line, Jen, is when you come back and propose an episode of, like, all the ways that Henry VIII facilitated peace. I'm just going to, like, draw the line right there.

(02:51-02:55) Jennifer Thomas: They're doing better. This is my whole point. It was super violent, and then they figured out ways to be less violent.

(02:56-03:48) Patrick Mason: All right, okay, good. So yeah, maybe this will devolve into a British history podcast. We'll see if we can forestall that. But yeah. That will be our next season. I think we have spent a lot of time over the past many episodes talking about the different aspects of peace, the different ways that it works. It oftentimes works in our own lives, in our interpersonal relationships, those kinds of things. And this is where peace, this is why we always ask our guests to define it. It's because it means so many different things like love or democracy or liberal or all these kind of big words that that actually have lots of different definitions. And so really what we want to zero in today on is what you were just talking about and what you're experiencing being a different culture of the different societal systems or institutions that can facilitate peace.

(03:48-05:03) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, I think one of the things that I've been struck as I've been reading the Book of Mormon through the lens of peacemaking is that it, I mean, I think I just sort of overlooked this to some degree in my previous readings, that the Book of Mormon spends a lot of time describing government and sometimes the economic systems of the people that are at the heart of what is a really spiritual story. And I think some of those elements to me in previous readings have just been sort of like the Isaiah chapters. I just sort of gloss over this to get to where I'm really going, the sermon about Christ-like love or change of heart. And what I've realized this time is that this is a little bit counterintuitive. Why, if you had very limited precious space, and it was really hard to transcribe records, would you use so much space and time describing systems if really what you were just trying to do was come to testify of eternal truth? And so as I started thinking about that, one of the questions that I've asked myself is why this might be the case. Why, if the Book of Mormon is written for our day, would they have spent time describing systems in the way people moved through systems, reacted to them, how they broke down, how they got reconstructed, and what I can glean from this as sort of bonus material, particularly insofar as it relates to peace.

(05:04-06:44) Patrick Mason: Yeah, I think we see this cycle in the Book of Mormon. I think one of the maybe kind of subtexts in the Book of Mormon is that these eternal truths don't exist in a vacuum. Because as human beings, we don't exist in a vacuum. We live in societies, we live in families, we live And so actually this is where those eternal truths play out. They're not just abstract ideals. And so we see this, and maybe this is, I mean, you know, this is somewhat speculation, but I think this might be why Mormon does give so much time to governmental systems and processes, because he helps us recognize that over and over and over again, that when the people are in a good place, when they've come to a point of sufficient peace and sufficient righteousness, then they set up healthy government systems. They sometimes look a little bit differently. They kind of tweak the form of those systems, but these are good systems that create more peace, cooperation, economic prosperity, and even righteousness. There's a kind of virtuous cycle. But then, of course, because they're human beings, they do what human beings do, and they sin. And they throw a wrench into some of those systems and actually they even deconstruct some of those systems that had been serving them quite well. So the peace starts to break down. They actively destroy the systems of government. This exacerbates the conflict and destruction. So now we're in a vicious cycle. And so the Book of Mormon shows us both the virtuous cycle of what it looks like to create good systems and institutions and the vicious cycle that happens when you create either bad institutions or maybe tear down the good institutions that you had once created.

(06:45-08:38) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, I think that this is so critical when we are thinking about big picture peace. So we're not talking about internal peace or peace in families or kind of small cultural peace. We're talking about what kind of systems and social order creates peace throughout sort of an entire civilization or entire community. And I think we want to try to make sense today a little bit about what some of the messages that Mormon might have been sharing with us as he edited down those plates. I think, in the interest of time, I just think I want to not read a ton of the scriptures that came to my mind as I was preparing this episode, but I do think there are really clear examples, if our listeners want to go and follow up on them, in 3rd Nephi, in chapters 6 and 7, as we watch a civilization deconstruct actively the systems that have helped them promote peace and exist peacefully with one another. And I think there are lessons there for us to learn. And I think the big lesson is that the Book of Mormon is putting its thumb heavily on the scale in terms of helping us see that anarchy, chaos, people who manipulate systems for their own personal power are not the way towards either. people living happily or constructively together, or most importantly, not the way to creating a civilization and a society that is going to help people align their lives with Christ and be able to share the gospel most effectively. So while I don't really love those passages and they kind of make me sad because I'm, I think, by nature, a builder, I think it's really important for us to read them and understand exactly what can happen to us if we deconstruct our systems and our institutions and the effect that that might have on peace.

(08:38-08:56) Patrick Mason: Yeah, I mean, President Ezra Taft Benson always talked about the Book of Mormon as both a witness and a warning, right? It witnesses as to positive things, ways to orient our lives, but then there are also these warnings in it in terms of lessons that we can learn on how to do better. So we can read the book productively in both ways.

(08:56-09:48) Jennifer Thomas: Perfect. And that's what we're going to do today. So as always, we're going to welcome a guest into this conversation. Today we have with us Grant Madsen, who is an old friend. I have known him since about seventh grade and is also a professor at Brigham Young University. He's a historian of U.S. political, intellectual and economic history. And his research focuses specifically on American political institutions, both inside and outside the United States. He's the author of Sovereign Soldiers, How the U.S. Military Transformed the Global Economy After World War II, along with a number of academic journals and newspapers. Like I said, he is a beloved professor at BYU, where he teaches the American Heritage class and helps students make sense of their government and how they're going to, as future citizens, interact with it. And so we're so happy to have him with us. Welcome, Grant.

(09:49-09:53) Patrick Mason: Well, Grant, well, it's great to have you on Proclaimed Peace. Thanks for joining us today.

(09:53-09:56) Grant Madsen: Well, you're very kind to invite me. I'm glad to be here.

(09:56-10:13) Patrick Mason: Well, thanks. Well, we always start with a deceptively simple yet naughty question. Not naughty as in like naughty and nice, like Christmas, but K-N-O-T-T-Y. The question is, how would you define peace?

(10:13-11:46) Grant Madsen: Yeah. So I think this is a really interesting question. Obviously, you've devoted a whole podcast to it. And I've listened to a little bit of past podcasts and I get why you start with this question because it sounds like everybody's had a little bit of a different answer to this kind of a question. I guess in my mind, I draw a distinction between social peace and individual peace. And maybe that's what other people have done. But I think most of us understand individual peace to be something like, there is no internal conflict. I am, you know, some people might call it flow or different sorts of similar kinds of terms to capture this idea that I'm in alignment, all of my emotions, my goals, my mind, we're all kind of headed in the same direction. Socially speaking, and especially in the realm of political philosophy, peace is really simply defined as the absence of war, right? So when there's no violent conflict, then you have achieved peace. And you want to draw that distinction in political philosophy because there is a difference between having no conflict and having no peace, right? So a lot of the Anglo-American political tradition is all about figuring ways to allow for maybe a maximum amount of conflict while nevertheless preserving as much peace as possible. So anyway, I think that's why it's important to kind of draw the distinction between maybe if we're talking about social peace or individual peace.

(11:48-11:59) Jennifer Thomas: So let's talk really quickly. We want to get a sense of you. You are a professor of American history and are a fairly popular teacher of the core American heritage class at BYU.

(11:59-12:27) Grant Madsen: So popular is a very kind way to say it, right? So BYU, the alumni magazine did a survey of alums at BYU and asked, what was your favorite class? And I was very happy to see number three on the most, you know, had the best classes, the most popular class, American Heritage was on that list. It was number three. But then they asked, what was your most hated class at BYU? And American Heritage made that list as well.

(12:27-12:28) Jennifer Thomas: That's OK.

(12:28-12:39) Grant Madsen: That shows you're challenging. No. So when you say popular, let's say memorable. But let's leave it kind of open-ended as to whether that was a good or a bad memory.

(12:39-12:44) Jennifer Thomas: It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. I actually think that lines up pretty well with peace. Yeah, exactly.

(12:44-12:47) Grant Madsen: Yeah, Dickens captures American heritage perfectly, right.

(12:47-13:23) Jennifer Thomas: So I think what that tells us is that you understand how government systems and public institutions work, right? And also, just basically, you've, through this introduction, you've shared a little bit about how in the Anglo, again, American tradition, robust institutions can sometimes be productive of peace, right? So we did talk in a little bit in our intro about how sometimes institutions are, are invisible to us. And so we wanted to start by having you share some of your perspective on what they do for us as citizens that we might not always see. How do they create peace?

(13:24-18:18) Grant Madsen: Okay, so this is also a really thorny or what do you say? Naughty question, right? You know, shame, shame, naughty. So because institutions, I mean, though you can't see behind me, maybe, but there are a bunch of books up on that shelf. They're all about how we understand institutions and institutions. I mean, the sort of first thing to say is they are invisible to us because they answer the question we never really want to think about, which is How am I supposed to do this. So whatever this is. So institutions have that function. So it's everything you know. Some people define institutions very broadly to be things like the economy like writ large like capitalism as an institution. So capitalism answers all these questions like well where do I go to find stuff that I need to survive. You know how do I get a house. How do I get a car. How do I get all of those things. Or some people define them much more narrowly as in like what we would call formal institutions. you know, when I go down to the DMV, what line do I stand in? And how do I end up with the driver's? So institutions, and when and institutions are a little bit like referees in sports, right? They're functioning best when they are invisible, when we're not thinking about, you know, what am I supposed to do here? I don't know, because the institution has done its job of telling you already, it explains, this is what you do, this is how you perform, and so on. So let me go back. OK, so this is one thing I do want to talk about, and I hope we don't derail things here. But I want to go back to what I said about the Anglo-American tradition and conflict, because and this you'll see. Bear with me. Apologies in advance. We'll eventually get around to the part of this. But but so there is an assumption in most social institutions about human nature. and what it means to be human in some kind of fundamental way, especially if it's a really big institution like the economy or like government. And in the Anglo-American tradition, the assumption is people are deep down a bit loathsome. The idea that we can all come together and be unified and agree about stuff and get along is pretty illusory. And so the job of the institution is to start from the premise that we will have conflict pretty much always, and try to figure out ways to get that conflict to be ideally productive. But if not productive, at least not destructive. Right? Now, there's a different tradition, at least within Western history. And we call it continental and, and continental just refers to the part of Europe that is a continent. So in other words, everything except England, I guess Iceland, but no, no offense, Iceland, we really don't think of you as Europe. Okay, so England is not continental. And so you have the continent that's Germany and France with a little Italy and maybe Denmark or Holland, whatever. So, OK. And that tradition starts actually from the opposite premise and says, actually, people get along really well. It's the institutions that cause the conflict. So there the idea is if we can just get the institution right so that it isn't creating conflict with people, then you'll have essentially a utopia. you know, think everybody will get along and so on. So, so the U.S. Constitution, capitalism, they're all the Anglo-American tradition. And capitalism is like the classic example, Adam Smith's invisible hand. He says just outright, like, look, you think you're a better person if you're altruistic. You're not. Be selfish. Go ahead and pursue your own selfish ends. And the invisible hand will take care of everything and actually will do a better job than if you planned the society. Right. Whereas the tradition that gave us Karl Marx and socialism generally and so on tends to be more continental. And it says, how can you have a system of competition lead to something utopian, right? We have to get rid of something like capitalism. And once you get rid of that, then you have the utopia. Once you get rid of that bad institution or that bad thing, then you have peace. And that was your question, right? So what's the relationship between institutions and peace? Well, The answer is it depends on if you were born in France or London, you know, and if you were born in Paris and you're a radical, your answer is, well, you got to get rid of the bad institutions because that's what's causing all the conflict. So so you're constantly thinking of how to jettison, you know, whatever the existing institutions are, because they're to blame, you know. But alternatively, if you're in this Anglo-American tradition, you know, it's just people are loathsome. And what can you do? Right. So let's do the best. Let's meander the best we can through whatever we have. And let's hope that what we end up with is productive, but at least not violent. If we can keep it from being violent, then that's good. And so those are the two big answers to your question.

(18:18-19:00) Jennifer Thomas: So what's really interesting to me hearing you talk is that I think I approached this whole episode from a very distinct perspective that institutions are good. Right. Like for and maybe that's just because I'm super Anglo-American. I am American. I am sitting in London as we speak. So I'm playing to type, but when I think about institutions, I tend to think about them as, again, like you said, sort of a mitigating system, a system that allows people to live together in harmony and figure out ways to resolve their problems that allow them certainly a maximum amount of freedom, but allow them that also keep them from sort of pushing that freedom onto and destroying other people. Right. So that's sort of how I tend to think about it. So it's really interesting to hear both.

(19:01-20:39) Grant Madsen: No, it's true. I mean, it's kind of hard to wrap your head around the other way. But let me say this, just as an aside. Almost all religions are continental, right? That the idea and this is kind of in our own faith tradition, right? Like, the millennium comes. Why? Because Satan is bound. So you get rid of this really key component of the institution called Earth life. And you change it in this fundamental way so that we are no longer tempted. And once that's gone, you just have a utopia that emerges almost naturally. All of the, in fact, you know, almost all social institutions then disappear because we all just kind of spontaneously behave righteously. And I think that's, you know, I know you want to talk Book of Mormon stuff. I mean, that seems to be, roughly speaking, fourth Nephi in a nutshell. It's like if you have a big enough event that sort of fundamentally changes everything, then you don't really need any other institutions or you don't have to have anything mitigating conflict because everybody just gets along, right? And so religion tends to, I mean, it's a weird thing we talk about a lot in class and the students, right? We have an Anglo-American tradition that has a very different concept of human nature than our religious tradition, where, you know, in the Anglo-American tradition, there's no, you know, James Madison said in the Federalist Papers really nicely, if men were angels, we wouldn't bother with all of this stuff. Right, but, but in religion, yeah, but the real goal in religion is to say, but you could be right. So let's figure out how you can be an angel, and then everything will be fine, you know, and anyway, so there's this way in which religion tends to fit that continental approach more than it does this Anglo American approach.

(20:40-22:18) Patrick Mason: Yeah, this is so interesting to me. And it really matters where you start from, right? And what your beginning assumptions are. This conversation makes me think about a kind of classic article from the early 1970s. It's old. It's by an Israeli scholar called Charles Lieben. It's called Extremism as a Religious Norm. And he argues, actually it sounds very much in the kind of Anglo-American tradition, he says that actually the default for every religious tradition is extremism. Why? Because religion calls on everything. It calls on your total commitment. It calls on everything from you. So he says it makes sense then why religious people end up being violent extremists and other things like that. So he says actually the key, what religious institutions do is they restrain the extremist impulse within themselves. They provide the kind of guardrails that prevent and moderate even some of their own most extreme impulses or the impulses that can be taken to an extreme. So it's an interesting argument. So I wanted to ask you, Grant, and you already started to touch on this, where do you think the Book of Mormon falls on this? On the one hand, You've got fourth Nephi, which you mentioned. On the other hand, the Book of Mormon, especially certain parts like Abinadi, have a fairly dim view of human nature. And so where does the Book of Mormon tend to go? Or maybe the answer is it goes, it pulls in both directions at once. I don't know.

(22:19-22:21) Grant Madsen: That's another naughty question.

(22:21-22:22) Jennifer Thomas: We specialize in that.

(22:22-24:20) Grant Madsen: So I don't know. I mean, like, you know, I mean, I can speculate a lot and it really depends. But here's OK. Here's what strikes me. And I say this more as a so I do a special kind of special. It's I make that sound the wrong way. I do it. I usually ignored kind of history. Is that the right way to say that? So there's this subfield called intellectual history. So I'm very I'm fascinated the way ideas work and in over time and in history and stuff. And so and particularly political ideas. So let me answer that question first as like a political philosopher or an intellectual historian of political thought. The big difference between the Book of Mormon and the American founding is that the Book of Mormon already knows the correct answer, and the correct answer is follow God, right? So the tension in the And again, if I'm treating it like literature, which is not how I feel, yeah, religiously, whatever, but just just the text itself. Yeah, right. So the plot is is fundamentally driven by will the people pay attention to the right answer? Right. The founding worked from the opposite direction. We don't know what this is going to turn out to be. We don't understand, you know, I mean, at that point, will this be a continental nation or will it even survive? Right. Like, but and is it possible to unleash these typically destructive passions of the human heart? the desire for wealth, the desire for power, the desire for equality. Can you have a society that isn't fundamentally structured by hierarchy? These are like open-ended questions. And what they're trying to think through is we don't know how this is going to work out. So what's the framework that will allow this to work out in some direction that might succeed?

(24:21-24:33) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, I think to some degree, keep the peace and keep structural integrity underlying the experiment, right? So you've got to have a framework, yeah, that allows everything to hang together while you experiment.

(24:33-27:30) Grant Madsen: And knowing already what some of the questions are going to be, right? So, you know, I have the good fortune of working with Patrick, Patrick's brother, Matt, who is one of the best scholars in the country, I think, when it comes to the question of slavery. in the early American Republic. So they already knew, the founders knew, this is going to be one of those thorny things that we have to work out. And we don't have the answer. They intentionally punted it to the future to try to figure out, for subsequent generations, to try to resolve what they could already see was going to destroy the structural integrity of the nation. So they don't have that answer. And they don't know how things like slavery are gonna work out. Will the whole nation become a slave nation or will slavery disappear? And there's disagreement on that question. So the government question is already different from the get-go. So in the Book of Mormon, the way you solve political incohesion is the word, you preach. Right? And the prophet shows up and says in kind of the standard Hebrew tradition, the nation will fail unless we return to our God. But the founders, they may have thought that, but they were open to the possibility that they weren't sure who's God they needed to return to. Right? You know, so there's a little more flexibility as to what the right answer would be. And so we kind of paper over that in some ways today where we say, well, they all believed in God, right? but that minimizes the religious differences felt between a Jefferson and an Adams, you know, or a Jefferson and basically anybody. He had his own very unique take on religion, right? And we just say, well, you know, but they were willing to say, essentially, we are not sure, you know, who knows what this is going to be. And this goes back to the way we talked about institutions before, which is they had a, And I think America, I mean, this is what we don't even see about ourselves, is they had a notion of conflict as potentially productive, right? And this is, I think this is probably, and I could be wrong, but I think this is where you guys are headed in the podcast and this question of peace, right? You want peace, but you don't want a culture or a civic culture, I guess I should say, that is just dormant because you can get peace through death. Right. But you don't want that. You want a vibrant political culture. And to be a vibrant political culture is to really, you know, get this square peg through this round hole. Right. Which is how how do you have conflict that doesn't result in violence? Because conflict can actually be productive. in a political arena and economic arena and other kinds in an intellectual arena, so on. So anyway, that's the main thing, right. So the founders, I think, had this notion that conflict could be productive.

(27:31-28:57) Jennifer Thomas: Well, and we talk about this a lot, like you said, because I think we both believe that conflict is productive and is necessary. It's sort of one of the big reasons that we're here, actually, I would argue. The other thing, you talked about society being dormant. I also think you can have a society where there's an absence of conflict. So there's an absence of violence. There's sort of social peace, but there's still an enormous amount of oppression. There's an enormous amount of injustice. There are whole swaths of people that aren't able to kind of exercise their full range of agency. And so definitely, I think the pathway that we're looking for is a pathway towards peace that is robust, that is just, and that allows for people to kind of thrive and flourish. And so I guess one of my questions is, seeing that the Book of Mormon system is different, and I really like you pointing out that they sort of knew the end from the beginning and they knew the answer. and that that answer cannot be true for us because that's Christian nationalism, right? We don't, right? That doesn't work for us. But what are some of, I mean, are there elements of governance in the Book of Mormon and the systems that they set up that you think we can take from this book as harbingers of what we should try to strive for and adhere to within the confines of our system? which is not religious, right?

(28:57-31:51) Grant Madsen: Yeah, right. Well, I mean, look, the obvious answer is secret combinations, which, you know, again, in the in James Madison's framework, early Republic, they would just call that a faction, right? It's a it's a group of people who have come together to promote their own interests over and against the general good, you know, the common good. And the Book of Mormon is an obvious, I mean, just the whole last third is a giant, here are the red flags with faction. This is what it looks like. This is how it functions. Now, again, I would say, you know, we don't really know how government worked. You know, we know it was kind of a popular sovereignty at times and And we know that there, you know, there's some kind of overlap between what we call the judicial function and the executive function, maybe even the legislative function, that kind of stuff. And there seems to be something like federalism in that people can just go to a new town and set it up however they want, but it's not clear what that relationship is and stuff. I mean, I will say that. So I would say it this way. I would say the warning about faction is really good. But then I think that the counter warning that comes from the founders is also good, which is, you know, just because it looks like a faction to you doesn't mean you don't look like a faction to them. Right. You know, so again, like one of the challenges in the Book of Mormon, it's clear who the factions are. It's anybody that Mormon says, well, these are bad guys. Right. And so you're like, OK, they're bad guys. But there is this possibility even for religious communities. This goes back to, I think, what Patrick was talking about before in the article that, you know, from the early 70s. Right. So because I've thought about this a lot, you know, anyway, the point of the story is in the United States, at least, where you have religious freedom and religious pluralism, it works about like how Madison would say. which is no one religion can ever get enough of an upper hand so that it forces the in the institutional leaders of the institution to moderate their own extremist ends in order to survive within the nation. Right. And we can see that I think Patrick could know this way better than me. Right. But my sense is there at least is one historical take that that the story of you know the LDS story the LDS history is a story of learning how to moderate in order to fit within the United States, right? I'm speaking to your expertise, but this kind of modernization thesis where the church realized we won't survive in this country unless we moderate some of our bigger claims. I'm sorry, I'm putting questions back to you, but have I mischaracterized your field?

(31:52-33:39) Patrick Mason: No, not at all. I think that's a pretty good description of it. So let me shift gears just a little bit and to think about, so as countries grow, obviously their institutions have to become more complex in order to accommodate that. We've seen that in the history of the United States, right? The system that they set up in the late 18th century has grown enormously in order to accommodate growth of population and land and complexity, all these kinds of things, where we're at in the 21st century. And of course, there's debates of how much growing is too much growing, all those kinds of things. We don't need to get into that. But the question I want to get at, though, is that sometimes when systems get so big and so complex, People have either the experience or at least the perception that those institutions are no longer serving them very well, that they're remote, that they're distant, they're out of touch, they're sclerotic, whatever they might be. And I think we're seeing that a lot with younger people. Certainly, I hear this. from some of the college students that I teach, maybe you hear it as well, just a kind of, and this has been borne out in lots of studies over the past several decades, a loss of faith in institutions that we feel like are not in touch with us. So somebody who understands these principles, both from a religious perspective and also from a kind of constitutional perspective, What do you tell your students? What do you tell, or maybe middle-aged people or older people, right? What do you tell anybody who expresses a loss of faith in the institutions and who say that they aren't really effective in preserving peace?

(33:39-33:44) Grant Madsen: Okay, so yeah, all of your questions are naughty.

(33:44-33:46) Patrick Mason: That's just the theme of this episode.

(33:47-34:01) Grant Madsen: So look, OK, so I'll give you what I think is the historian's answer, although I will say most historians I know disagree with me. So can I say this historian's answer? I don't know. That's so I tend to be more Pollyanna about these conflict is good.

(34:01-34:02) Jennifer Thomas: That's right.

(34:02-38:38) Grant Madsen: They should thank me for disagreeing. Thank you for thinking differently than they do. So I would say, okay, so the first group of people to articulate the notion that our institutions are too remote and that they don't serve us were the anti-federalists in arguing against the Constitution. So in other words, the argument against institutions has existed literally longer than the institutions themselves. Right. And so in some ways, I would say to my students, lovingly, patiently, you guys are kind of cliches, right? But it's a good cliche. It's a rite of passage. To not have felt like institutions are ignoring you is to not be American, right? It's it is part of it's as much a part of our tradition as anything else. And this leads to so I said historians disagree with me. So there are a handful of historians that do agree with me. And we would say collectively something like the anomaly is not distrust. The anomaly is trust. So so we we have overemphasized this sort of unique period post World War Two till Ronald Reagan in which there was a surprisingly high level of trust in in government institutions. Certainly you'd have to look at 1860 as a moment of high distrust in the federal government when 11 states or whatever you know the Confederacy decided it was going to succeed. Right. So so there's there there is this kind of and you'd have to also say eras of of tremendous reform, like the end of the 19th century, early 20th century, we call the progressive era, also had very little faith in in institutions. And so revise them from bottom up, you know, and so and so. Anyway, so that would be my first answer. I would say if we were to be a little bit more complicated, I always You know, and again, I would try to say this lovingly, but, um, I would say to my students, your issues, you have, you have daddy issues. And, uh, and this comes from a scholar whose name I forgotten, but he teaches at Columbia. And if I remember it, I'll say it. But, um, anyway, so the point of the story is we vastly overemphasize the value and importance of the president. The president is not the most powerful figure in the Constitution, even though we say, you know, the most powerful man on earth, hopefully someday the most powerful woman on earth, right? Whatever. But the Constitution wasn't designed to empower the president. You know, the founders spent however many months in that hot summer in Philadelphia in 1787 debating the Constitution. They spent like a day on the executive. They spent even less time on the judiciary. They spent all of the time talking about the legislature. And the reason is they knew that the constitution they were designing put all power in the legislative branch. And so the question was, how do you create checks and balances when you give so much power to one body? And anyway, and then they, on top of it, created what Madison called a compound republic. In other words, we have states that also have purviews. And then within the states, we have local governments. And I always say to my students, look around you and point to the thing that the president has done. What part of government do you deal with that the president is responsible for? Does he tell you anything about your schools? Well, maybe a little. Does he work out your loans that you're getting, you know, your Stafford or your Pell Grants or whatever else? Well, kind of, but really that was legislation. Are the police or the fire department, are those the responsibility of the president? So what thing does the president do that impacts your life daily? And when they can't answer that question very effectively, I'm like, look, if you want to feel the reason you don't feel connected to your institutions is you're looking at the institution that isn't connected to you. Right. Go go down to your city, you know, whatever city council meeting and and talk about garbage collection, if that's what bothers you. But the problem is that the president has this symbolic weight that somehow whoever is president says something about the country. And I get that. Right. And there is a way he is the chief executive. He is the symbol. He represents the nation when we negotiate with other nations and so on. That's I don't mean to minimize that. But the way the system was designed was precisely for you to hate the person in charge and still feel like your government is responsive. Right. Your institutions are responsive.

(38:38-39:45) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, so I was just going to say, so what would you, what would you suggest to these students? Like, if they are feeling like their society is not peaceful, is not productive of their flourishing, and they have been trained to sort of point all of their attention at the big shiny object with the big microphone or the bully pulpit, whatever. What would you tell them? How would you tell them to go about trying to achieve institutional change without burning it all down? Because what I sort of see emerging a little bit, this generational thing, is if I'm going to range myself against an immovable object, which we'll say this is this executive, then the only way I can fight that is just to explode it or to overwhelm it or whatever. And you're arguing for a very different pathway, like that there's a different pathway for them to engage and be participatory. So what are the pathways for institutional change that you think could be effective and also are going to be productive of peace? And again, I don't want to say an absence of conflict, but I do mean an absence, say, of violence or oppression.

(39:45-43:22) Grant Madsen: Well, I would start with the premise. Why do we need to change? What is so wrong? You know, I mean, like, look at my students and look, I know I sound like Fox News when I say this, but like, why are you so alienated? Like, what is bad with your life? You're at a great school. You know, you're healthy. You're you actually, statistically speaking, your life is safer than it has been in this country ever. Right. Like, what is the real problem we're trying to solve? And the answer always ends up being something like, well, I just don't want that person in charge. I'm like, really? You're going to burn it all down because you just don't like that person who has no effect on your daily life? I mean, so I would say I offer up a version of what I think is called the serenity prayer and Alcoholics Anonymous, which I'm going to get wrong, but it's something like give me the power to change those things I can change. to not try to change the things I have no control over, and the wisdom to know the difference, right? And the question is something like, okay, what are the things you can change and why would you bother changing them? What is the thing that you're so upset about in your life? I'll be like, look out the window and tell me what's so terrible. What are you seeing that you're so upset about? Now look, that is not to minimize that there are people who are in dire straits, I think have really great claims to wanna change some things, and that's fine. But start with that question. What is so terrible? Let me say this. This is a big point I try to make with my students. And I, you know, hopefully I can do this well, because I don't think the students ever hear me. So I think Patrick understands what I'm saying. Like, you know, you can say whatever you want to students. It's an open ended question what they hear. But, you know, but anyway. Yeah. But politics, The main reason people don't like politics is fundamentally politics is presumptuous. I presume to know how you should live your life better than you know. Right. So because politics is always about what you said Jen you're exactly right. It's about change. Either we're doing something I think we should stop doing or we're not doing something I think we should start doing. So somebody else has to change in order for this to be the fact. So it's fundamentally presumptuous. I am telling everybody else how they need to change in order to accommodate my vision of what is right for the country. And so look if you start if you recognize that then then it is really important to start with this question. Well what is so terrible. Because I'm actually asking people to do something for me. Right. I don't like what they're doing. They got to change for me. So why is it so terrible? What what is the thing that I think is so terrible? And if my answer is I just don't like that person who's in charge or I just don't like that party. I don't like those guys. I want them to go away. Well, that it's a big ask to say, hey, I just don't want you to exist. Right. I don't want you to ever be around. Right. That's you know. And if someone asks you to just go away and not I mean, how would you respond? Right. So anyway, that's what I try to come back to a lot is like, remember, You think that just by virtue of telling yourself you're right, that everybody's just going to bow down and be like, oh yeah, you got it, you're right. But to this point, there's conflict, there's disagreement. And it's a big ask to tell somebody they have to change because you think they have to change. And I think if you frame it that way, sometimes students are like, oh yeah, okay, maybe a little bit more humility would be a good approach. And maybe a recognition of things are actually pretty good. I don't need to burn this down, you know? Because if nothing else, it was good enough to produce me, right? They could still have an ego because it generated them, you know?

(43:22-44:04) Jennifer Thomas: And this isn't a question per se. To me, I feel like one of the things I worry about burning down the institutions is that the institutions are the ways that we have used to mitigate that tension. You know, if Patrick and I are in direct opposition about what we want to see happen, an institution and whether it's the economy, whether it's the academy, whether it's, you know, the justice system, whatever it is, there's a mechanism for Patrick and I to go head to head and say, how are we going to resolve this conflict peacefully and according to set rules that we've agreed on going in? And so that, you know, because of that, I am to some degree kind of a strong institutionalist, because I think institutions are the ways that we can manage conflict and hopefully have it come out productively.

(44:04-44:33) Grant Madsen: Yeah, right. So I totally agree. Right. So, yeah, I mean, so I'm just saying the same thing you said in different words, but it's you can't replace something with nothing. Right. It's one thing to say this institution doesn't work, but but but burning it down means, OK, now, right. And and then you have to really be like how we started. You have to be some kind of a continental thinker in which you say, well, once we just get rid of the institutions, things will spontaneously emerge that will be peaceful and so on.

(44:33-44:36) Jennifer Thomas: But I'm so not a continental thinker.

(44:36-44:45) Grant Madsen: Don't believe that. We have we have some kind of sad experiences with how that turns out. Right. Starting with the French Revolution and ending in the collapse of communism. Right.

(44:45-44:50) Jennifer Thomas: So, yeah, I don't really think it works. Stop buying into it, Grant.

(44:50-45:04) Grant Madsen: I'm not trying to advocate, you know, I just gotta say, the burn it down approach tends to end with something like the French Revolution, right? With blood running in the streets and everybody guillotined and so on.

(45:04-46:06) Patrick Mason: So as we talk about institutions, I'm sitting here thinking, okay, institutions are real, but they're also made up of people. And maybe now that they take on a life of their own, maybe we can think about the way that they have their own kind of autonomy. But they are fundamentally made up of people. And I want you to think through or help us understand, Grant, especially coming back to the Book of Mormon, what lessons can we learn? Again, recognizing that the societies that it describes are different in many ways than our societies. But what principles can we lean? And I'm interested both about leadership and citizenship. And you've talked about, hey, don't just focus just on one person, right, out of a nation of 300, however many million people we have in this country. Don't just focus on one. So I want to think about the way that leadership and citizenship work within institutions. What can we learn from the Book of Mormon about this?

(46:06-48:09) Grant Madsen: Well, okay, so the Book of Mormon wants to tell us that institutions are only as good and promoting of peace and righteousness as the leaders. And this is a very, and I think it was Hugh Nibley that said, if you want to understand the Book of Mormon, you don't think of it as a New Testament book, you think of it as an Old Testament book. And again, I'm treading on your territory, Patrick, but I think what he's trying to say is when they talk about the Nephites being good or wicked or whatever else in the same way Israel was good or wicked. A lot had to do with what was the king doing, you know, and if the king was a righteous king, then the people tended to follow in righteousness and the king was wicked than the people, you know, so you can kind of summarize the whole nation by looking at the royal family, you know, and, um, you know, the transition that happens, you know, when Mosiah passes away and, and creates judges, I think that there, I would love to switch back to being more of a political theorist and say, um, So your point, Patrick, the way you started is exactly right, which is institutions are real, but they're people. And so what what I think people that that work sociologically and historically with institutions would say is the habit forming principle that underlies institutions, right? And so again, institutions answer the question, how do I behave in this situation, how to behave in that situation, and those become habits. But But habits are, as we all know, persistent, right? Why we call them habits, right? And so one of the challenges that the Book of Mormon, the political leaders in the Book of Mormon didn't quite figure out is you can give a people democracy or some form of democracy, but it doesn't mean that the habits of democracy are just there ready to kick in. And so what we see by the end of Alma, but all throughout, is this tendency, even though there is a popular sovereignty, there's this desire to go back to kings, and particularly by people who want to be king, right?

(48:10-48:28) Jennifer Thomas: So again, this is people who want to have someone else tell them what to do. I mean, there's sort of again, there's this combined factions of people who want to over kind of oversee everyone and people who are like, yeah, that works for me because because that person will help me. Right.

(48:28-51:25) Grant Madsen: Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. Or, you know, we can achieve peace through order and hierarchy. Right. So, you know, very I can impose peace. Yeah, right. So You know, and maybe it's a piece, maybe it's not, I don't feel it is tyrannical. I, because, because my particular version of peace is the king is wiping all those people out, right? Not me, right? So anyway, so, but the point of the story is this, that in the, again, it's a very standard trope in American history, but, but, but the key is the citizenship side of it. It's not just the leadership side. And here, you know, for those who've done a lot of American history, you'll know the name Alexis de Tocqueville, but Tocqueville's this French aristocrat who in the 1830s came to the United States to figure out how it's working. You know, how is democracy working? Is there a democracy in America? And one of his key insights is that he, you know, and it's a great insight. He was like, look, democracy and the whole principle behind democracy pervades everything in this country. It's not just a system for choosing the leader of the nation. This is how people resolve everything. And it makes me think of like, you know, it was a very privileged position to be in charge of when we got to go to lunch when I was in first grade. So that the lunch monitor was a really coveted position. And so how did we resolve who got to be lunch monitor in first grade? We voted. And the point is that that instills very early the habits of democracy. So out of this comes a whole lot of stuff from one of your neighbors in Boston, Jen, a guy named Robert Putnam. And it's this idea of social capital, but this idea that democracy functions best when there are things like MWEG or other sorts of, we call them civic associations, where the habits of democracy are practiced. so that when it comes time to an election, even though my preferred candidate lost, the legitimacy of the election itself still feels right. And so a big answer to this question or this institutional question is you want democracy practiced at all levels. And this is where when I look at the Book of Mormon, I mean, who knows, right? We don't know a lot of what's going on behind the scenes, but part of, Again, a political philosopher would show up and say, well, here's why you keep having recurring people trying to seize the throne and be king and to break into factions and so on, because because the spirit of democracy hasn't pervaded everything. You know, it's there's still a very hierarchical way of looking at the world that just because you choose the ultimate ruler this way doesn't create a culture of elections is legitimate.

(51:25-51:26) Patrick Mason: That's fantastic. Thank you.

(51:27-52:55) Jennifer Thomas: So I'm also going to argue that there's a spiritual component to this in the sense that I really do believe that people who, and I don't necessarily confine this to Christianity because I do a lot of interfaith work and I see this with people across faiths, who tend to be deeply and genuinely committed to their faith in sincere ways, not in ways that like seek to control or kind of coerce other people. they tend to also be committed to processes that don't dehumanize, processes that care for their neighbor, processes that elevate the value of an individual. So I guess what I'm saying is I think that I really appreciate you acknowledging that there's this civic group component to it, because I completely agree with that. But I also think the Book of Mormon is telling us that good people tend to take care of each other better. Good people tend to be more resistant to a desire to course control and harm others in order to achieve power. And that might sound very simplistic, but it's a hill I'm gonna die on. And I think it's something that the Book of Mormon does actually tell us over and over again, that- Let's hope it doesn't come to you dying on a hill. That when people are really spiritually refined and committed, peace flows from that, both in their society and kind of in their personal lives.

(52:56-53:11) Grant Madsen: Uh, so I, okay, maybe, uh, and I think it goes right back to what Patrick talked about before. Um, what, how do we want to define that commitment? Are you an extremist in your faith in your religion?

(53:11-53:14) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, you're right. I'm not arguing for extremism.

(53:14-53:25) Grant Madsen: Yeah, so look this is again, so this is this is the kind of thing though if you try to turn what you said into a historical argument about Christianity generally, it gets really thorny really fast.

(53:25-53:28) Jennifer Thomas: No, I'm thinking definitely in the context of pluralism.

(53:28-54:45) Grant Madsen: No, no, I tend to agree with you that it seems to me this is a tension within Christianity from the get-go. The command to love your enemy. Like what does that mean? and what and so and it seems to be easier if your enemy is an occupying pagan Roman than it is if it's a fellow Christian who just thinks you're not doing the sacrament correctly right like there's there's some you know so this this seems to be one of those things where you know but look you can make the claim and and this and here no historian agrees with me but that's not true I've heard one but so there's two of us But there is an idea, you could kind of say, we're still catching up to the New Testament. We're still trying to figure out what that manned to, and that Western history is sort of a story of catching up to what Jesus was trying to tell us what to do. And I think that's, for me, but I'm a person of faith, that's a fair argument, right? But I know that if I had said that in my graduate seminars, Yeah, they wouldn't have given me a degree. So hopefully none of my dissertation committee is going to see this. And if they do, it's too late. I got it. It's on my wall over here. They can't take it back.

(54:45-55:08) Jennifer Thomas: I think Patrick and I would agree that to some degree you have just articulated the premise of this entire podcast is us trying to figure out how we can actually live more fully in alignment with basically Christ's teachings and particularly the Sermon on the Mount, right? Like we just are not there yet. We want to pretend like we are, but we're not quite so.

(55:08-55:11) Grant Madsen: Yeah, I'm glad you have my back on the interpretation committee.

(55:11-56:31) Patrick Mason: Yeah, we do. And this is what prophetic texts and leaders and scriptures and in our religious tradition and other people's religious traditions, they lift our eyes to a different kind of reality. They envision something that might be, that they might tell a story about the way it once was and then we fell from it and we're trying to get back to it. But I actually think those visions really matter. It's important for us to try to be chasing Zion. It's important for us to envision what it might look like, even if all the details aren't fleshed out. And it's important for the Book of Mormon to have fourth Nephi, even though it only lasts for like 20 verses or something like that, the good stuff. It's important for us to have that, because I think one of the habits of democracy, Grant, one that I might add would be hope. Martin Luther King talked about this all the time, right? If we don't have hope, hope in one another, hope that there is a better future that we can achieve, then we do lapse into something like despair. So hope doesn't only come from, you can have a secular kind of hope. But I do think that's one of the functions of these prophetic texts like the Book of Mormon.

(56:33-01:01:41) Grant Madsen: Yeah. And you know what? That was the better answer to the question of what we should say to our students. Right. Like because the burn it down approach is is essentially an approach of despair. Yes. And and and fundamentally despair in the capacity for my fellow citizens to ever be as smart and capable as I am. Right. Like that, you know, because, again, politics is presumptuous and and Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that I think to have some hope, which I think is really good, you know, every other article I read about Generation Z mentions how anxious they are. And, and I think hope is the antidote to anxiety in a lot of ways, right? Like, they don't, they don't need to assume that the world is only going to be dark and getting darker, you know, that there is a place for them. And I think with students and young people, especially, But I would say that to all of the people who the day after the election investigated what it takes to immigrate to Canada, right? Like, have some faith in the institutions. Be, you know, at the risk of telling a story that has no relevance to anything. I, this is a class of American Harris, so I have a thousand students usually. I start with 1,200. I convince about 200 to drop. So I get about a thousand students. And one of the nice things about the technology in the classroom is there's an app on their phone, and so I can put a question up on this giant, so I'm in this big auditorium, and I can put a question up on my PowerPoint, and then they can use the app, and they can answer the question in real time. So I can say, what do you guys think about this? And then they all get out their phones, and they answer it, and then I have percentages. So 70% of you picked option A, 4% B. Okay, so with that in mind, After I teach the Constitution, you know, so we talk for a week and a half, two weeks about the founding and how we build the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all that kind of stuff, I will conclude that by saying how many of you think that on the whole and in general democracy is a good system of government? And the answer is usually like 96% say good system of government and 4% just accidentally fat-fingered the wrong answer, right? I'm pretty sure it's 100% think it's good. Okay. So then I say, think back to the last time you personally or your preferred candidate lost. Which of the following is the story you told yourself in order to make sense of this loss? So option A, actually the people were right and I was wrong. Either I or my preferred candidate was the inferior candidate in some important way. Okay, that's A. B, the press misled people into voting for the wrong person. Option C, the person who won cheated or rigged the system in some way. Option D, people are stupid and will vote for anything. All right, so now let's look. There are probably other options, whatever else, but these are the ones I give them. So now I get the results. And again, it's like two or 3% say the correct person actually won, you know, the better candidate actually won. And the other 97% are all in these other things. And so then I say to them, look, you said in your first answer, democracy is a good system. And in your second answer, you said things that were they to be true, it is fundamentally a disaster, right? People are easily manipulated. The system is easily rigged or people are so stupid they will vote for anything. How do you resolve this? You know, and I think that resolving that is the question that's probably underneath a lot of what you're talking about on this podcast, which is we want to have faith in the institutions. And yet we are so angry when they don't do what we want them to do, you know, and and And so our first anger is at our fellow citizens. How could you have done this to me? And then when it turns out they're actually okay with having done it to me, then I'm angry at an institution that would have allowed them to do it to me. And so one of the key questions that Patrick's asking about citizenship is how do you say, how do you actually get to the point where you can answer A, actually I was wrong, the people spoke, and there's a lesson in that for me. And that's what you hope elections do. You know, like you hope that they don't just inspire resentment and anger. You hope that if you're on the losing side of an election, it actually causes a moment of reflection to say, OK, the citizens have told me something about myself and now I have to decide whether I want to listen or not. You know, and I think that's a really hard lesson, but one of the core lessons of democracy.

(01:01:41-01:01:42) Patrick Mason: I love that. Thank you.

(01:01:43-01:02:09) Jennifer Thomas: Well, thank you, Grant. Yeah, we are so it has been so great to have you with us. We really appreciated your insights and wisdom. We close this podcast out every time with a corollary. The question is a corollary to the one we open with, which is asking you and your where you go to find peace. Your first answer was definitely more about how societies find peace. But I'd love to hear how you personally find peace yourself.

(01:02:09-01:03:36) Grant Madsen: Well, Uh, no, you're gonna make, I mean, it's, I'm gonna give an answer. It's such a cliched answer. That's okay. Cliche is great. This is the role of faith in my life, right? This is where the peace comes, you know, and like the serenity prayer says, right? Like, the one thing I can control is, to some extent, my own heart, right? And whether I choose to live in a place of resentment and anger, or whether I choose to live in a place where it's not easy, right? Like, Peace is incredibly hard to achieve, at least for me, on a personal level or a social level, whatever else. And I believe even on the personal level, conflict can be productive, right? But, you know, well, I'll say it this way. I know a guy who would say to me all the time, when I pray, I am in truth, all else is dogma. And I think there is something in the when you pray or when you search for connection to God, you can find peace, you know, and then and then once you and then when you try to go about living your life, you get stuck in all this dogma, all these institutional practices that, you know, you're like, is that good? Is that bad? I don't know. It doesn't feel very good, but I guess I got to do it, you know, and all that kind of stuff. No one agrees with me. Why won't they just listen to me and all that kind of stuff? So maybe, so I guess prayer would be the, I don't know. I'm sorry. I feel like it's such a cliched answer. I don't mean to be that way.

(01:03:36-01:03:37) Jennifer Thomas: Prayer's a good answer.

(01:03:37-01:03:45) Patrick Mason: That was great. Like genuinely, I learned a lot from listening and I love the way that you framed a lot of this stuff. So thank you.

(01:03:45-01:03:48) Grant Madsen: Yeah, it's really great. My pleasure. It's a lot of fun.

(01:03:51-01:04:10) Patrick Mason: Thanks everybody for listening today. We really appreciate it. We just want to invite you to subscribe to the podcast and also to rate and review it. We love hearing feedback from listeners, so please email us at podcast at mweg.org. We also want to invite you to think about ways that you can make peace in your life this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

(01:04:15-01:04:30) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you for listening to Proclaim Peace, a proud member of the Faith Matters Podcast Network. Faith Matters holds expansive conversations about the restored gospel to accompany individuals on their journey of faith. You can learn more about Faith Matters and check out our other shows at faithmatters.org.