Incidentally, I see the Cannon/Edmunds relationship as very similar to today’s Hatch/Kennedy association. I don’t see either as an example of double-mindedness. I can enjoy association with co-workers of different faiths and at the same time disagree on some doctrines while agreeing on some. That’s not double-mindedness.

In terms of a positive institutional feature, I think that Mauss tries to make out a case in his angle and the beehive book that in order for the church to thrive it must maintain an optimal level of tension with surrounding society, not too much but also not none at all. Mauss, however, thinks that while this is ultimately healthy for the community it will always lead to a certain amount of personal pain and frustration for some because there will always be those who gravitate to either pole and regard the Church as an institution as either selling out or engaged in closed minded xenophobia. There is also an economic literature that suggests that what you want to do is create costly signalling mechanisms to avoid free riding, but not set the signalling costs so high that you deter any entrants at all. I am thinking here of work by folks like Rodney Stark and Laurence R. Iannaccone. Of course, the religious studies types don’t like this sort of theorizing, in part because the modeling necessarily flattens out one’s descriptions of religious communities. (I also think that the vast majority of the religious studies types may just be pinkos who reflexively and unreflectively dismiss economics as per se evil and reactionary [note to the humor challenged: this last statment is a joke])

Certainly Givens offers up a kind of agonistic view of Mormon thought as a struggle between competing impulses and obviously I am sympathetic to that. His approach suggests that the tension is not simply institutionally useful, but also culturally productive.

Thanks, Nate, for pointing out the essential nature of Mormonism as one that is focused on inviting the world to “come and see” the restored gospel in action, bringing themselves and their talents and cultures into the Church. To accomplish that mission means a willingness to embrace the prople of the world where they are, to love them as they are, while offering them more. Some critics of the Church think that our missionaries are going out to condemn the world, but that is not a productive means of gaining converts. The criticism that Mormons are insular and even racist is belied by the Church’s constant outreach to many nations and ethnicities, from its earliest years. One should not forget that, in the wake of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Britain was not universally admired among Americans or regarded with the warm relations the two nations have enjoyed since World War I. Britain was a real foreign nation in those days. Church missions to Polynesia starting in 1844 and to Japan in 1901 reflected the Mormon belief in the worthiness of those other cultures to hear the gospel, a belief not widely shared by all Americans, as demonstrated by the 1923 passage of a law barring new Japanese immigration, which provoked the Japanese so much that the LDS misison had to be closed in 1924.

In this context, the policy denying priesthood ordination to persons of African descent was an anomaly, and the ending of that policy has led to another surge of missionary outreach to those on the outside of Mormon culture.

When we believe that every human is a literal child of God, who once knew the truth of the plan of salvation as well as any Mormon, and understand that Christ loves them as much as any one of us, we realize that even those who are our literal enemies now were once our brothers and may become so again in the fulness of time. We are not fulfilling our assignment as the Father’s true church on earth if we are not reaching out to all our family.