Having joined the LDS Church in the mid-70′s, having left it in 1982 and then having returened in 1994, I was STUNNED at the transformation of LDS Theology! Scholars call the new LDS doctrine (based on “The Book of Mormon” and New Testament. while largely ignorning the doctrinal innovation of the D&C, Pearl of Great Price and Joseph Smith’s King Follet Discourse)–they call it, “Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy.” Indeed, currernt LDS theology has more in common with Calvinism (the theological foundation of modern American Evangelical Christianity) than it does with the Mormonism of the Nauvoo Period and the Pioneer Utah period. In this sense, LDS-ism no longer seems particularly Mormon.

I see the 1980′s re-emphasis on “The Book of Mormon” theology as a major step backwards. The LDS Church-and LDS doctrine–has essentially collapsed back into the Evangelical Calvinism from which Jospeh Smith during the 1830′s and 1840′s sought to distance himself.

In 2003 I left the LDS Church and in 2004 joined the Reform Mromonism movement. Reform Mormonism is to LDSism what Reform Judaism is to Orthodox Judaism. Reform Mormon theology is built upon what we call “The Mormon Paradigm”–the new religion that Mormonism, by the 1840′s, had evolved into.
If anyone here is interested in the Reform Mormon approach to faith, visit http://www.reformmormonism.org–and click on to the other Reform Mormon websites featured at the site’s homepage.

I am indebted to President Boyd K. Packer, who made us aware of the fact that the term free agency appears nowhere in holy writ. Instead, the scriptures generally speak of agency or free will, but when agency is modified, it is referred to as “moral agency” (D&C 101:78; emphasis added). Because the term free agency has been used by various modern prophets, I use the terms free agency and moral agency interchangeably, aware that the latter term is more correct.

In short, “free agency” is used less these days by Church leaders because it is not in the scriptures. Although it is indeed descriptive of the concept of agency and free will that are found in the scriptures, Church leaders have chosen to use the term “moral agency”, which is scriptural, to refer to the concept.

It’s not much of a scandal, really, and certainly not a retreat from key aspects of LDS belief.

Who are you refering to when you say “were both looked at.” I mean who looked at it and why? I’m curious.

Just to make my point clear, I’m not saying there isn’t intention, as per my point in #30. But it’s one thing to decide you are going to focus in on something and move towards it as per President Benson and his talk and quite another to “[Define] the words spoken in the past mean you control both the past and the future.”

These are very different types of intention. Focusing on a doctrine you feel was always there (i.e. let’s emphasize the Book of Mormon) is not the same as deciding to slowly over decades decide to intentionally control the past via use of words.

In your post #51 you are now talking about intentions that are well within the realm of believability, i.e. “Likewise the popularity of anti-evolutionary belief in the church is a result of a few leaders exerting their honest beliefs.” I would have to agree with you on that. There is no conspiracy here and no intent to do away with an uncomfortable doctrine in favor of a new one (as I thought you were implying previously.) It’s just an emphasis on something a few leader honestly believed and in fact had (what they felt) was good reasons to believe.

I don’t find your characterization of ‘conspriacy’ disconcerting. I see a number of factors that would show the majority of the church’s activities are closely controlled:

1. The church is a centralized hierarchy;

2. The hierarchy commands detailed adherance to the words of the current leader;

3. There are strong social motivators to follow the leadership;

4. The church employs many persons and agencies to plan and deliver this message.

Are there inefficiencies? Absolutely. Is there direction and extensive planning on what direction the church takes? Absolutely. Are all members uniform in their approach to doctrinal teaching and church policy? Absolutely not, but to claim that the president of the church would not be calculating with respect to establishing the kind of teaching he believes is spectacularly deficient.

I believe that what you are saying is because there are divergent views of the leadership at various times and places we must rely on some other factor vis a vis the intention and the impact. That being said, could one look at Nauvoo and question whether the church really had plans to practice polygamy: The leadership was divided in their beliefs, the scriptures in the Doctrine and Covenants specifically denounced it, and the Book of Mormon seems also to denounce it. However, the influence (due to personality, organization or position) of Joseph Smith ensured that polygamy was set out as doctrine – according to scripture (just different scriptures than mentioned in the D&C). There is no conspriacy. Likewise the popularity of anti-evolutionary belief in the church is a result of a few leaders exerting their honest beliefs.

People will advance their beliefs with careful thought. Words become important. When a person is transformed from a prisoner of war to an ‘enemy combattant’ the change is deliberate, but sometimes it is just a result from a person wanting to emphasize what they want to hear. If a person was comfortable with a concept of God that resonates with a traditional view of the Godhead, they will be more likely to emphasize texts that do just that – like the Book of Mormon. They will not be likely to emphasis other historically diverse beliefs in the nature and character of God (whether it is found in the early visions, the lectures on faith or the sermons of Brigham Young).

When making my claim that the emphasis on the Book of Mormon was meant to change the way people would think, talk and believe in God, I don’t think we are that far off; however, understanding intention is the only means to understand a person’s message. If intention didn’t matter, there would be no need for close centralization of the leadership.

I originally had John’s ideas in mind when I made my first post. The John Birch influence on Ezra Taft Benson’s thought was Christian v. Conspiracy (read: protestant v. communism) and is totally in line with a traditional vision of Christianity.

In my reference to the use of the terms “Free Agency” and “Obedience,” I should note that the use of the terms “Free Agency” and the term “Agency” were both looked at, both as declined to the point of non-use. That being said, I think that example was more of a distraction from what I was trying to say. I probably shouldn’t post during the week as I am too distracted by work.

Of the 105 languages in which it is currently translated, over half are spoken by immigrants in major US cities.

The opportunity to flood-the-earth with the Book of Mormon, and to fulfill the scriptural prophecy of delivering the words of the brass plates and of the Nephite prophets (1 Ne. 13:40; 2 Ne. 30:7) to all “nations, kindreds, tongues and people” is here (even in the US, to and through many immigrants) and now.

I just realized we have another good example of “non-intention” right here at post #24. John says “I got the impression that the reason for President Benson’s emphasis on the Book of Mormon was to combat “false ideas” like evolution, socialism, communism, atheism, etc.”

To John, the point of the “Cleansing the Inner Vessel” talk was that President Benson was trying to advance his (somewhat famous) pet doctrines of anti-communism, anti-Evolution, etc.

What if John’s right? He may well be! It seems really unlikely that President Benson knew before hand what affect a re-emphasis of the Book of Mormon would have on the Church decades later. (Don’t get me wrong, I believe God knew.)

So here we are decades later and the Church is probably less anti-Communist than it was in President Benson’s day (due in no small part to communism collapsing world wide so no one is worried about it any more), more pro-evolution (or at least less anti-evolution), etc.

And yet, that talk still had a profound change on the Church, if an unexpected one to everyone at the time President Benson started it. You just can’t plan stuff like this!

I have to be honest: since I’m very closely related to the person in charge of all media for the church, I’m afraid I’m rather unsympathetic to your view that the Church is — over the course of decades — carefully controling use of words using “correlation” for the sake of intentionally and knowingly changing our understanding of doctrines.

Such shifts happen on their own and your added conspiracy is strange to me because it makes it so less believable. And, as I said, I’m afraid I have first hand info on this one that your conspiracy doesn’t exist.

I think this is a mistake I see people make a lot: mistaking a phenonmenon as being “intentional” when in fact it’s “unintentional.” This is how Dr. Stephen Jones at BYU (a former professor of mine) got in trouble. Once he saw a conspiracy, he couldn’t let it go no matter how bad his evidence was. That’s the problem with conspiracy theories — they can be used to explain absolutely anything. We should start with the null hypothesis that they don’t exist as that’s almost always the simpler and better explanation.

And all conspiracy theories overlook how utterly competent and wide ranging these conspirators would have to be. I’m a project manager by trade, but I can’t even comprehend the expense and difficulty involved with a decades long intentional use of correlation to change an understanding of a doctrine. It’s WAY beyond the LDS Church’s capabilities and competency level.

Take a look at my previous post to John Nilsson at #48. I used the example of John Dehlin telling me that the Church is just publishing about “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” as a proof that the LDS Church was Protestantizing. And yet, John, on the link I left, say the exact opposite: “if Jesus did the things that we say He did in the garden, then even the most important prophet of all time, on his 1000th anniversary, shouldn’t get more than 10% of the mentions relative to Christ Himself.”

Now let’s muddy the waters a bit further. We also have John Dehlin’s testimony right here that he doesn’t actually believe Jesus is the literal Son of God, at least not in the orthodox sense. So why is he so worried about whether or not we emphasis Joseph Smith too much?

So I have three facts that seem to contradict:
1. John Dehlin thinks we emphasis Jesus too much and are becoming too Protestant
2. John Dehlin thinks we emphasis Jesus too little compared to Joseph Smith because Jesus is the Son of God and Joseph is the messenger.
3. John Dehlin thinks Jesus is just a child of God just like anyone else.

Now if I were a dissaffect “anti-John Dehlin”, I would (because I’m looking for the worst possible interpretation of the facts) quickly invent “intention” here. I’d say John is saying whatever he needs to to make a point and that he is lying and deceiving and not being candid about his beliefs, etc.

Inconsistencies like this are really just typical of being human. People can only think of a few things at a time and everything else is forgotten for that moment. We *all* do this. (We just don’t all have a large group of anti-Mormons/DAMUs/.NOMs scrubbing everything we’ve ever said for the sake of pointing these inconsistencies out and turning them into intentional conspiracies for the sake of making us look bad. Thank goodness. With apologies to John Dehlin for using his words as an example here. To make it up to him, I will now defend his words vigorously!)

And the truth is, I understood *exactly* the underlying intent John had in each of these cases. If I dig down to what John *means* rather than focusing on his *words*, I quickly find that he isn’t contradictory at all:

1. His “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” statement was just an off the cuff example of the LDS Church experiencing change that did in fact make us somewhat closer to Protestant Churches in that we were emphasising Jesus more. (The very point Oaks make in my link to his article in my post, so it would seem John is correct about this.)
2. John’s belief that Mormons mention Joseph too much was just an example of how he felt that sometimes the LDS Church is inconsistent with its own beliefs.
3. His actual belief that Jesus isn’t literally the Son of God in the orthodox sense is not a contradiction because he was comparing orthodox LDS belief to orthodox LDS belief, not his beliefs.

Using inconsistent examples to make a valid point is, well, it’s just normal. It’s usually not “intentional” at all and coming up with an explanation that involves John Dehlin having pre-thought out how to deceive people with his words will ultimately turn out to be the single least likely explantion.

We really have to avoid reading in “intentions” to natural phenonmenon like this. People do their best to express themselves and it’s a sloppy process. Let’s give each other a break on this and practice some forgiveness.

In other words, I believe you are getting stuck on the words to the exclusion of the underlying message in the examples you are using.

Yes, the LDS church has stopped downplaying “free agency” as the prefered term to describe “agency.” There is no secret about this, as per Packer’s talk. This directly coincides with the LDS Church’s push towards getting into the scriptures more that started with the President Benson “Cleasing the Inner Vessel” talk. “Moral agency” is how God terms it. That’s what we call it now.

Apparently, if your facts are correct, the LDS Church is now emphasizing the word “obedience” more rather than words like “performance.” Again, that strikes me as a change based on a move to more scriptural language, to be honest, rather than a correlated attempt to change doctrine. And the change may not even be intentional or done conciously.

Will the change in wording result in a new and different understanding of the same basic doctrine? Of course it will. If there is one thing I’m certain about, it’s that the teachings of the LDS Church change over time, as do the teachings of all religions.

But that doesn’t mean there is an intentional “defining the words spoken in the past [to] control both the past and the future.”

Take a look at what John Nilsson is say in #24 and #38 and compare it to Ricercar’s comments at #40 and #30. John is struggling to see much of a change at all in the LDS Church. Ricercar sees a huge change controled by a single authoritarian governmental organization. Can they both be right?

John,

It’s interesting that my introduction to Mormon Matters/Mormon Stories was a call to John Dehlin where he, with a raised voice (but not yelling), told me that all he sees coming out of the LDS Church nowadays are books that talk about “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” and that he fears the LDS Church is moving away from it’s unique roots that the pioneers crossed the plains for and they were just becoming another Protestant denomination. (On the other hand, see http://mormonstories.org/?p=57#comment-652)

John, you may not agree with John Dehlin, but John Dehlin is not alone in his assessment. In fact, I found it interesting that Owens and MOsser, two Evangelical scholars that are quite hostile (though very tolerant) to the LDS Church admitted that they saw a trend in Mormonism towards what they viewed as the “correct” view of salvation through the grace of Christ. (“We are encouraged by what we read if Robinson’s views are in fact representative of the direction in which Latter-day Saint theology is headed” – see footnote at http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=review&id=318#Anchor-26888: “It does look as though Robinson’s views may well reflect the direction of Latter-day Saint thought. Some Evangelicals have doubted that the views expressed in his essay are reflective of a larger trend within the church, but a reading of the current literature shows that Robinson is not alone”) So even to outsiders, there are some very obvious changes in the Church that date right to the time frame of President Benson’s talk and the Church re-emphasis of the Book of Mormon.

“I think there is more ‘protestant mainstreaming’ to President Benson than just a return to the 1830 – 1835 Mormon theology. The fact that ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ is in the hymnbook at his adamant insistence (with the cross of Jesus, et cetera) shows he was comfortable with protestant language – language that would likely cause the majority of members from Brigham Young to Bruce R. McConkie to denounce it a tool of the anti-Christ.”

Since I don’t usually participate in discussions with Ricercar, I can’t say how fluid your “facts” normally are, but actually, Onward Christian Soldiers has been in the LDS hymnbook at least since 1950, “cross of Jesus” and all. I don’t have access to information on the other versions of the hymnbook (1889, 1909, 1927, 1948) that were published after “Onward, Christian, Soldiers” was written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1864 but they may have been in any of those, too.

Happy Conference, everyone!

http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2008/01/rethinking-repentance.html

Here’s one more link to something about perfection and repentance. I haven’t developed it further since I wrote it (in any official form), but I have been working on a way to make it into a sacrament meeting talk that won’t cause misunderstanding. It’s a tricky concept to teach correctly. If anyone has any input, I would appreciate it on my own blog.

Anyhow, one thing that motivates me is learning how to articulate theology so people come unto Christ and are changed. Do we want to get hung up on making sure those coming unto Christ aren’t finding “easy excuses to sin”? When a sinner, from those greatly separated from Christ, to those who just feel distanced from Him, allow the hope that Grace brings into their hearts miracles happen. Hearts change, and people do begin to do “all they can do”. And not because they are trying to merit salvation but because the love of God is manifest in them. I was reading last night from John Eldredge’s “Wild at Heart” and it was speaking about (paraphrased) that once someone is transformed in Christ, every day’s battle does not always become one to stay away from great sin. Sometimes it is just the battle to keep one’s eye single to Him, to keep one’s pride and aversion to trusting and relying in Him in check. Yet whatever every day’s battle is for each Christian, it is a battle. Christ’s love and hope, His Grace, is a rallying standard that calls men and women to transformation and service in Him.

So, my perspective is when Mormons emphasize the “…after all we can do” part to such a degree that it separates us from Hope, then it has ceased to be productive at getting results, even if that is not the intent. It’s one thing to say that “obedience and repentance are the doorway” to a Cornelius-like believer (Acts 10), who has already come unto God through their acts of goodness, even if they’ve stopped short of accepting and being transformed by Grace. They are already prepared to see that Christ is already at their door. It’s another thing for the person depressed and separated from God who thinks they just haven’t done well enough for long enough for Christ to even consider knocking on their door. Must we let our human mistrust of God’s ability to change hearts be so strict, to emphasize obedience to such a degree that it clouds out hope and grace?

This is why, in my opinion, some LDS preaching emphasis needs to move away from an aversion to terms like “free agency” and “unconditional love of God”–and “grace”. In the intent to clarify fine matters of doctrinal interpretation such often camouflages the hope-filled, accessible life in Christ that each person can have, that needs not be mediated by a church to be obtained. I spoke boldly in an LDS Sacrament Meeting back in 2003 about the unconditional love of God. I was seeking to counter instruction like Elder Nelson’s who in the intent to be precise, omitted the “weightier matters” of the gospel. I did not take his Feb 03 Ensign talk “Divine Love” to task by outright criticizing him, but I did argue that Hope for every sinner (and aren’t we all?) in Christ must never be clouded by nit-picking fine matters of scripture. Nelson may have had a point that divine love is often like trust, and God trusts more to those who are His. But is there any benefit, really, to preaching how God’s love is _conditional_? It just furthers the divide between pulpit Mormonism and practiced Mormonism, where most LDS believers act and believe with a commitment to Christ and an acceptance of His Grace that should bring them fellowship with any Christian.

Here is what it means to me. From D&C 19:16

16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

We obey God as much as we can, and we repent, as much as we can, from our sins. Then, Christ’s Atonement satisfies Justice and we are cleansed and can return to God. That is, obedience and repentance are the doorway for the Atonement to enter our lives. Forgiveness and cleansing come through the Atonement not through our obedience and repentance.

I’m sorry, but I can’t respond to your well thought out comments right now. I will respond this weekend.

GB Smith,

I don’t think it’s uncommon to misunderstand what God’s graciousness (that’s what Grace means) really is. It does seem that people continually fall into one of two heresies: trying to earn salvation or “cheap grace” so-called (which is really antinomianism: pretending sin doesn’t matter because God will forgive you.)

It would be tempting to say that Mormons err on the side of trying to earn salvation and other Christians err on the side of antinomianism, but after many years of interacting with people from both sides I no longer believe this. Mormons sometimes believe in cheap grace and other Christians sometimes act like they have to earn salvation. I think this is a somewhat profound concept and it’s impossible for us to really understand it without experience with it. In other words, it’s not an intellectual concept, it’s a skill.

GB smith, I was planning a post on this subject. Would you be interested in me contacting you and running it past you first and getting feedback from your experience as a Mormon from another generation?

I think that you are right – Agency is still doctrine. I also think that the doctrine of Free Agency taught as late as the 70s was much more expansive than it is now, more along the line of not being commanded in all things. I draw your attention to this to illustrate a larger point about the use of the Book of Mormon.

There has been a disconnect between the language in the Book of Mormon and the doctrines in Nauvoo and early Utah. A return to an emphasis on the message in the Book of Mormon, although it does not disavow those later teachings, it does qualify them and redefines them. I am not talking about an equivocation between different terms about God, but redefining the concept of God. The emphasis on a personal relationship with deity is a result of this focus, I think this is a given.

Yes, I do marvel that the wonderous organization of correlation, maybe that is difference between you and me. You could also term this as a conspiracy theory, but I prefer to characterize it as the influence exercised by those in authority.

Granted, one could argue that these changes are ‘more in conformity to scripture’ however, scriptural meaning and the talks of General Authorities over the last 150 years means the being ‘in conformity with scripture’ is, to me, a humpty dumpty affair.

Elder Oaks’s talk was very interesting. I don’t consider him one of the “more traditional” General Authorities. He has always been willing to entertain new ideas. It makes him seem much younger than his years.

More traditional General Authorities would be folks like Elders Russell Nelson, Russell Ballard, and Boyd Packer. They emphasize topics like performance, God’s especial favor to the obedient, and legalistic models of the Atonement.

As far as objective measures, I continue to attend testimony meetings and sacrament meetings where the only time the name Jesus Christ is used is preceding the word, “Amen.” People might intersperse their talks and testimonies with other references to Deity, but I suppose I am too young to notice a significant increase in Christ-centeredness resulting from emphasis on the Book of Mormon.

I agree with you that President Benson was not trying to align us with Protestantism at least. I just see less of an impact perhaps. Maybe we need a renewed focus on Christ. Perhaps President Monson can guide us in that direction.

(The irony of your comment following one that is held up right now in moderation due to posting links to my writing about this topic doesn’t escape me, btw. That truly is funny.)

GB Smith, I am in the process of a long series of posts focused on my New Year’s Resolution that came about specifically because of my pondering on grace and the pursuit of perfection. Frankly, how we view grace is influenced greatly by how we view perfection, and I think too many of us simply butcher the original, New Testament definition of perfection – which distorts our view of grace. So, to add even more irony to Bruce’s last comment (*huge grin*), here is one more link:

http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2007/12/problem-with-popular-perceptions-of.html