We are no longer an agrarian society, no longer tied so closely to the land that we feel immediately the effects of our stewardship, for good or bad. Part of that may be because we own such tiny little pieces of land instead of family farms, grazing ranges, and ranches. Even if I do everything I can to improve on my own .21-acre lot in downtown Provo, even if in that small realm, I am the perfect steward, I will have a negligible impact on the larger environment of which I am a part.

For that reason, much as I hate to admit it, stewardship cannot be a completely private enterprise. I own little land myself, but I am a citizen of a country that owns vast tracks of land, much of it in my own state, administered by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the  National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. And although my vote, my voice may be just as insignificant in shaping the policies that govern the use of that public land as my .21 acres is relative to the 1900 million acres of the contiguous United States, I still have a obligation to speak up, because that is a real exercise of stewardship in our country today. The fact that we don’t personally own the land neither excuses us when we fail to speak against environmentally destructive policies nor protects us from the ill effects of such use. We must come together collectively as stewards or suffer collectively the loss and damage allowed by our disagreement and apathy.

I don’t know what the best policies are concerning public land use, preservation, and development. I suspect that they would best be decided locally by people who balance immediate gains with long term needs. I do know that unless we have the discussion, and weigh our interests against our obligations, we cannot claim to be good stewards.

Elder Snow did not explicitly advocate political action in his essay. He did, however, talk about stewardship in relationship to our roles as citizens.

“I believe the Lord expects up to act as good stewards. We have many stewardships, not only in our family, church, and citizenship responsibilities but also in temporal things. That principle is clear in LDS scripture:

I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine…

Behold, all these properties are mine,…And if the properties are mine, then ye are stewards; otherwise ye are no stewards. (D&C 104:14, 55-56)

…it is required of the Lord, at the hand of every steward, to render an account of his stewardship, both in time and in eternity. For he who is faithful and wise in time is accounted worthy to inherit the mansions prepared for him of my Father. (D&C 72:3-4)

As Mormons we tend to focus on our ecclesiastical and family stewardships, which is well and good. But I believe we will also be held accountable for how we treat one another, the community in which we live, the land that surrounds us, even the earth itself (244).

The impetus for the “Sewing and Penny Society” wasn’t relief, but the calls of the Twelve for donations to the construction of the Temple from outside Nauvoo. As a result, the sisters in Boston created a local women’s organization, as the following item from The Prophet (New York City) of 3 August 1844 explains:

Boston, July 25, 1844.

Mr. Editor.—I send you the minutes of a society lately formed in this place, by which you will perceive the ladies of the Boston branch are determined not to be behind hand in assisting the rolling on of the cause of Christ.

A society of the sisters was formed on the 16th inst., called the “Boston Latter day Saint’s Sewing and penny Society.” The object of which is to lend their aid in the purchase of glass, nails &c, for the Temple of God, now being erected in Nauvoo.

The meeting was called to order and opened with prayer by Miss. Elvira Bassford, and the following officers chosen, viz—

• Mrs. Mary McAllester, president.
• Mrs. Clarissa B. Sperry,  Vice Pres’t.
• Miss. Elvira Bassford, Vice Pres’t .
• Mrs. Margaret E. Wallace, secretary.
• Mrs. Isaac Hardy, treasurer.
• Mrs. Isabella Jones,
• Mrs. Caroline Welch,
• Mrs. Margaret Clementson,
• Mrs. Almira Hicks,
• Miss. Mary Murray,
• Miss. Mary Brown, as Committee of Arrangement.

The society meet once a month, and devote a day to sewing for the benefit of the society; and also to pay in the sum of one penny per week or more, each. It is expected that the brethren and friends will supply them with work. Every exertion of this kind is commendable, and it is to be hoped that they will succeed in their praiseworthy efforts, even beyond their most sanguine expectations. Yours, &c.

A. Mc. A.

Likely, given the society’s formation on July 16th, the news of the martyrdom was very fresh when the society was formed, although the news may have been discounted initially because it was from non-Mormon sources (like the reporting in the Prophet which only acknowledged the martyrdom after it received news from Mormons in Nauvoo).

I haven’t yet found any additional references to this organization, so I can’t even suggest that it made it to its second meeting. But I suspect that the organization didn’t survive the turmoil of the next few years. Boston and New York, in particular, suffered a lot of turmoil in the years after the martyrdom as schismatic groups attempted to gain followers there (often successfully) and rumors of polygamy (or affairs, for those who hadn’t heard of polygamy) spread along with attempts by some local leaders in the East to practice polygamy without authorization. However, some of the names of these women—McAllester, Sperry, Hicks, Welch and even Murray—appear in subsequent LDS history, so it may be that their descendants survived the turmoil and stayed with the Church.

Still, you have to like the initiative that these women took. I would find it encouraging to see such initiative today.

That said, Dr. Bloom is right that the Church has changed a lot between 1844 and 2011.[fn1] Change is inevitable and, as Ecclesiastes tells us, is to be expected. And, frankly, there have been a number of changes that, even if they risk our Protestantization, I’m really happy about.

And I’m not talking Official Declaration 1 or 2 stuff—I’m going to assume that most of us are grateful that polygamy is no longer the sine qua non of the faithful member, and that all of us are grateful that we don’t live in the world of a racially-based Priesthood ban. And I’m also not talking about our wishlist of things we want changed. I assume most of us have one or two, even if they’re just wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if kinds of things.

No, I’m talking about less-prominent practices that the Church once had that have left. And there are two that leap to my mind:

Missionary Finances

I’m actually not talking about the standardization of mission expenses, even though that’s pretty nice, too. I’m actually talking about going on missions with purse and/or scrip. See, throughout the 19th century, and even through the first half of the 20th, missionaries would travel without purse or scrip. And that practice undoubtedly helped connect modern missionaries to early Christian missionaries, making the latter-day and the ancient churches that much more connected. But really, I liked having reais in my wallet as I went preaching in Brazil.[fn2]

Come to Zion

I’m also glad that the meaning of Zion has shifted from a literal physical gathering to a broader sense of Zion as being where the Church is organized. Why? Because I liked growing up in California, living in New York, Virginia, and Chicago. Moreover, I like that we’re full participants[fn3] in the world, rather than being cloistered and physically set apart from it. I realize that physical gathering has its power and its place. But I’m glad it’s gone.

—

[fn1] Between 1992 and 2011, on the other hand, not so much. This is beside the point, but I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what happened between 1992, when Bloom was gung-ho on Mormonism, and today, when we’re, in his words, on the path to “just one more Protestant sect.” The only major changes the Church has instituted during those two decades that I can think of are (1) the introduction of the mini-temple, (2) the changed logo, and (3) the Perpetual Education Fund. But none of these support the Protestantization of Mormonism. As James points out, the temple is a distinctly un-Protestant institution, and the mini-temples have made temples significantly more pervasive in the Mormon world. The emphasis of Jesus in the logo is mostly cosmetic; it may reflect a renewed emphasis on Jesus, but that’s far from un-Mormon. And the Perpetual Education Fund, while it looks a lot like microcredit (which, as far as I know, isn’t a particularly Protestant institution), also looks a lot like the Perpetual Emigration Fund, which is a particularly and historically Mormon institution.

Or maybe he’s thinking about the How Wide the Divide crowd; while that project seems to have a lot of BYU support, it hasn’t crept into my Church experience in any material way.

That’s not to say that the Church hasn’t changed, and changed significantly, since Joseph Smith’s days. But I can’t think of any material shift between 1992 and today. But again, this is all tangential to the point of the post.

[fn2] Okay, just one more: I’m glad we initiate the mission process, rather than being called during conferences. And that missions don’t last much more than 2 years. And that I won’t be asked to leave my wife and children to go on a mission. I do like a lot about our current mission procedures, especially in light of the way it used to be.

[fn3] I actually probably don’t mean full participants, but I do think that our rhetorical opposition to “the World” is overblown. Sure, there’s bad that we need to avoid (or, better yet, fix). Still, but for the World, we wouldn’t have jazz or iPhones or the Doughnut Vault or a ton of other things that I appreciate on a regular basis. And I’m glad I can both be a faithful and believing member of the Church and eat simply amazing doughnuts in Chicago while listening to jazz on my iPhone, or whatever.

Now Available

Charles Harrel,“This Is My Doctrine”: The Development of Mormon Theology (Kofford Books) “In this first-of-its-kind comprehensive treatment of the development of Mormon theology, Charles Harrell traces the history of Latter-day Saint doctrines from the times of the Old Testament to the present.” I have my doubts that someone who does not equally control original Biblical sources and LDS history, as well as the vast amounts of secondary literature on historiography, exegesis, etc. can give LDS doctrine a truly comprehensive diachronic treatment, and compress it into 597 pages. Nevertheless, I’m grateful to Harrel, an engineering professor, for making the attempt and I look forward to reading it. Too many LDS labor under the assumption that the status quo sprang fully formed from Joseph Smith. I don’t recall which of my friends said, but it’s in my Evernote file, “If there’s one thing Mormons excel at, it’s enshrining the status quo and assuming that if we do anything, there must be a good reason for it, and if there’s a good reason, it must have been revealed as the only way to do it, and if so, then it must have always been that way in all dispensations. And a lot of people’s faith can be shaken when it turns out not to always have been that way, which unravels that chain of reasoning back from that point until you doubt the premise, i.e., that any of it was revealed at all.”

Brant Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Kofford Books) Many questions about the Book of Mormon end up centering on the nature of the translation, and many papers make tacit assumptions about it. Brant’s is the deepest treatment addressing those assumptions.His FAIR Conference presentation this year appears to have been based on his book. Gift and Power has already been reviewed elsewhere, so I’ll pass by without further commentary except to say that Brant’s previous volumes on the Book of Mormon have been fresh and thoughtful, and I expect no less from this.

Harold Bloom, The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible (Yale University Press) This is one of a string of books to appear about the KJV this year, but Bloom and the literary approach mark this one apart. Preview available. I’m particularly interested because the literary argument comes up repeatedly in LDS contexts. Of historical note, though, is that the KJV was not meant to be literary, and no one thought it was so until at least a century had passed. Chapter 1, “Language within language: the King James Steamroller” of Hamlin, The King James Bible After Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (Cambridge) appears to address this. (I only had a few minutes to browse it.) Another recent volumes of note is The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today by David Norton, the author of the authoritative, technical and expensive Textual History of the King James Bible.

Coming in September

John Walton’s Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Eisenbrauns) This is the expanded version of Walton’s arguments found in The Lost World of Genesis 1 (Eerdmans), but Lost World was for a lay audience and Ancient Cosmology a more academic audience. Walton places Genesis 1 in its ancient Near Eastern context and argues convincingly that Israelites read it as a description of functional, not material creation, and furthermore, Genesis 1 is a temple text. You can get the gist of his thesis from the audio here. Jared at LDS Science Review has addressed Walton several times (here and here), and the comments include an enthusiastic endorsement by SteveP, BYU biologist and BCC blogger.

Coming in October

N.T. Wright, The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation (Harper One) N.T. Wright is a prolific paradigm-shattering New Testament scholar, who is nevertheless very accessible to laypeople. Among others, he’s authored commentaries on Romans and a New Testament commentary series “For Everyone” as well as books on Paul, and Heaven. He’s criticized various Bible translations in the past, so I’m glad to hear he’ll have his own. Ben Witherington interviews him about it here.

Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford Press) I’m familiar with both of the editors, Marc Brettler from his How to Read the Bible (not to be confused with books of the same title from James Kugel or Steven McKenzie) and Amy-Jill Levine from her lectures with the Teaching Company. Oxford’s Jewish Study Bible has an excellent set of notes, essays and other aids. The Jewish Annotated New Testament aims to do the same thing for the New Testament, from a Jewish Perspective. “For non-Jewish readers interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity and for Jewish readers who want a New Testament that neither proselytizes for Christianity nor denigrates Judaism, The Jewish Annotated New Testament is an essential volume that places these writings in a context that will enlighten students, professionals, and general readers.” Among other notable features, the JANT, is the “first New Testament annotated by Jewish scholars (barring those who have converted to Christianity), brings out Jewish background of early Christianity, New Testament writers, explains Jewish concepts (e.g., food laws, rabbinic argumentation) for non-Jews & Christian concepts (e.g., Eucharist) for Jews, and will be helpful for non-Jewish readers interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity.”

Coming in January

Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Brazos Press)

Enns says, “The book is divided into two parts. Part one focuses on Genesis, and my general point is that the creation stories are part of Israel’s literature of national and religious self-definition. In other words, they are not prepared to give the type of (historical and scientific) information we ask for today when speaking of “human origins.” To seek such information is to misread Genesis, and so attempts to align science and Genesis get us off on the foot altogether by not taking the biblical text on its own terms.Part two focuses on Paul’s use of the Adam story in Romans 5. Paul’s reading of the Adam story, despite superficial appearances, is hardly straightforward, and appreciating the theological subtly and depth of Paul’s words requires much more of us than simply opening an English Bible, reading a few verses, and drawing conclusions. I go on and on about this for a lot of pages, because this is a far more pressing problem for most Christian readers than Genesis.

The audience for the commentary is seminarians, pastors, and scholars. For The Evolution of Adam, the intended audience is similar to that of Inspiration and Incarnation: lay readers looking for different approaches to old problems. In fact, The Evolution of Adam applies the approach of Inspiration and Incarnation to a specific and pressing issue: in view of evolution, what does it mean to read the Bible well? So think of EOA as I&I part two.” I was a big fan of I&I, as well as the lectures of his I’ve heard online and in person. (Some posts of mine about Enns’ ideas here and here)

Happy reading.

One significant transition that I think amounts to a change of regime is the change in leadership that occurred beteen 1844 and 1847. It started with the succession crisis that occurred upon the death of Joseph Smith and the dissolution of the First Presidency in June 1844; it lasted through three difficult years for the Saints, during which time the Church was directed by the Quorum of the Twelve and by Brigham Young as president of that quorum; and it culminated in the reestablishment of the First Presidency in late 1847, with Brigham Young as President of the Church and with two apostles drawn from the Quorum of the Twelve, Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, as his counselors.

As I read the history, the First Presidency reconstituted in late 1847 was not the same First Presidency as existed before June 1844. The reconstituted First Presidency is essentially an executive committee of the Quorum of the Twelve, composed of three apostles drawn from that quorum. While it is theoretically possible for one who is not an apostle to be called as a counselor, in practice this is almost never done. In contrast, members of the original First Presidency were not apostles and were not called from the Quorum of the Twelve. The original First Presidency represented a separate and distinct quorum. The authority of those in the First Presidency was not in any way a function of their being an apostle. A separate First Presidency quorum might hold different views on issues of interest to the senior leadership of the Church than did the apostles and the Quorum of the Twelve. After 1847, however, the First Presidency was simply an extension of the Quorum of the Twelve, composed of men who spent many years in the Quorum of the Twelve before moving to the First Presidency. (The decline of the Seventies as a separate senior leadership quorum proceeded more slowly, but by the mid-20th century that quorum, too, was simply a committee that was selected and controlled by the Quorum of the Twelve.)

So I would describe the 1844-47 transition as a regime change: the Church really was contituted and run differently after 1847 than it was during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. That is a description, not a criticism — I don’t think the Church could possibly have continued to be run as it was between 1830 and 1844 because Joseph occupied a unique position of authority that simply could not be duplicated. Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve were wise to wait three years before reconstituting a modified First Presidency. The successful management of an ever-growing Church from 1847-2011, including surviving several serious confrontations with the US government in the 19th and early 20th centuries, is evidence of the effectiveness and stability of the new regime. And while there was a succession crisis following the death of Joseph in 1844, there have not been any after 1847.

An open question is whether any event or development has occurred between 1847 and 2011 that might also amount to a regime change or a significant break with how the Church is constituted. Perhaps some readers have a candidate event to propose.

As I heard it at the time, John 14:27 began:

Peace I live with you, my peace I give unto you…

Christ makes this statement as part of the sermon he gives the Apostles at the last supper—so he says “leave” because he knows that he is about to leave them. When he comes to stay, surely he will say something that implies that he will live in peace with us instead.

For us, I think, the difference between “leave” and “live” is crucial. As good as it is to “leave” peace with others, how much more important is it to “live” peace with them? While “leave” implies a single act—something that happens just once, “live” implies an ongoing process. Where we can “leave” in peace by simply agreeing to disagree, “live” requires learning how to create peace through resolving and working through differences. Leaving with problems and disputes resolved is vital, but more important still is living with others in a way that doesn’t cause disputes in the first place and in a way that resolves differences when they are still discussions and not yet arguments. Perhaps when stated this way it seems obvious, yet still somehow this idea is lost among most people—even among faithful Latter-day Saints.

“His peace I live with you” isn’t just about the quality of “peace.” It is also about who it is we mean when we say “you” and what it means to “live” with others. It is relatively easy to live in peace if we limit who we live with. A hermit may easily live a life void of conflict, but he can never learn the true meaning of His peace. Working excessively may eliminate conflict with a spouse or friend, but it can never allow you to learn to live in peace. Living in a neighborhood where everyone is like we are may eliminate conflict or give a feeling of security, but this is clearly not true peace. Restricting immigration to protect your culture may make it easier to reach consensus in a country, but is that really His peace? Doesn’t His peace even require that we do everything we safely can to discover how to live in peace with those we now label as terrorists?

For too many of us, peace means hiding from conflict instead of resolving it. It means avoiding news we consider “negative” and books that are “troubling” because they don’t give us peace. Those who do so forget that Christ calmly and courteously confronted even those who were determined to take his life.

Others of us, when faced with conflict, are determined to win at all cost, entering into arguments that become vicious and vile. When the debate becomes more about winning than persuading, we forget that we should disagree without being disagreeable.

In all of this real peace, His peace, comes not from avoiding others or excluding those who are different than we are, or who disagree with us, but from welcoming others and learning the hard lessons about how to live, really live, in peace with them.

First, let’s clarify the term “Church History.” In the LDS world, the term means Mormon history, but to anyone else it means the institutional history of the Christian church. But producing Mormon history raises some of the same problems as writing Christian history, so this is certainly a discussion of interest to most readers. Discussing problems with doing general Christian history offers the advantage that there are a lot more people doing it and the field has had two thousand instead of two hundred years to mull over the problems.

Here are comments included in the discussion of Eusebius, the first real historian of Christianity.

Being a Christian meant accepting that certain events actually took place in the past, a historical element inherited from Christianity’s parent faith, Judaism. Just as Jews looked to their “historical” covenant with God, so did Christians look to their “historical” incarnation of God. But Christianity went further, because it also invested itself in ensuring the proper interpretation of those events. This was new, and it means that Christianity trespassed into history’s turf in a way that Judaism did not. (p. 45.)

If the practice of history is studying source documents and other reliable evidence to determine what did or did not happen in the past (and how it all hangs together), it seems problematic to approach history with the conviction or required assumption that “certain events actually took place in the past.” That difficulty seems as true for the writing of Mormon history as for the writing of Christian history. In fairness, it might be true for writing any history, secular as well as religious, but the problem does seem more acute for religious history.

Then there is the narrower problem of Protestant bias. The book has a short discussion of the Magdeburg Centuries, whose editor, Matthias Flacius

hoped to endow Lutheranism, whose greatest vulnerability was its novelty, with a shield of historical legitimacy, and he based the whole argument on Germany’s divine destiny. Flacius’s authors … raked over the entire history of Christian doctrine in minute detail, century by century, seeking to prove that everything good and true in it was really Lutheran and everything bad and false was really Catholic. (p. 135.)

There are two problems here. One is the common but invalid practice of cherry-picking the historical record for items that favor your agenda, nation, or church, while ignoring (or, even better, deploying against opponents) contrary evidence. A second problem is the reflexive anti-Catholic bias that was an integral part of Protestant scholarship until relatively recently. That bias certainly seems to have carried over to early Mormon scholarship, in particular the assumption that “the great apostasy” needed no more support than an allusion or two to early Roman Catholicism.

I’m sure you are all aware that this is not a new topic. There are plenty of published articles that grapple with the problems of writing religious history, whether Christian or Mormon. I have two collections on my shelf: Faithful History (Signature, 1992) and Richard Bushman’s Believing History (Columbia Univ. Press, 2004). But the short quotations above do touch on some central problems: assumptions controlling facts; cherry-picking the historical record; and sectarian bias. Professional historians, of course, receive training in graduate school that conditions them to avoid these errors. Alas, not all Mormon history is written by professional historians.

photo credit: Paul

In debates over controversial religious issues, one often encounters a certain kind of argument from history, a sort of “once upon a time” argument. Once upon a time, it’s argued, the Church considered a given practice or belief, from witchcraft to usury to the heliocentric cosmos, to be immoral, unbiblical or otherwise forbidden.  The particular practice or belief in question varies, but the structure of the argument and its implication are nearly always the same: the Church once considered such-and-such to be evil, but now it doesn’t; thus by means of a progressive trope of enlightenment, the argument proceeds, the Church should also de-stigmatize and embrace the controversial topic at hand. (Often, it should be noted, these arguments are made with a great deal of care and nuance and insight.)

In one sense, I’m sympathetic to this argument. I share the view that knowledge of and from God is a profoundly historical and historicized knowledge—and it that sense, it is a profoundly christological knowledge as well, as Christ is God embedded in human history.  And I agree with the suggestion that any human understanding of the cosmic order, including our own, is biased and provisional. Doctrines, even doctrines that seem to be central, can change, have changed, will change.

But the argument from history can’t do much more conceptual work than that. And it raises its own questions about the relationship of the Church (speaking broadly, as Christianity, or narrowly, as Mormonism) to society at large. In particular, one wonders why, if the Church is God’s instrument of enlightenment on the earth, it is so often a follower, not a leader, in human history. After all, in each of the examples above, science or economics or politics “got there first”—that is, staked out what was to ultimately become the generally accepted moral wisdom. The Church eventually got on board, but not without some delay and resistance. Is the Church merely a retrograde cultural parasite on a fundamental moral relativism?

I don’t think it is.  It may be that the Church stands in a particular position relative to broader society, functioning not as the driver of history but instead as its interpreter. Thus as society at large moves in response to technological and economic shifts, the Church will also move in relation to those social trends but will continue to do the same important—eternal, godly— interpretive work: this is a kind of moral relativism, yes, but one that fixes the Church in relation to human experience and in that sense is not merely drifting along the tide of history.

One way we might understand the Church’s interpretive role is to provide myths and practices, suited to the current social structure, that establish the greatest possible degree of relatedness, obligation and shared welfare among individuals. This is certainly the case in our own communal- and kinship-focused religious tradition, and it’s fundamental to the broad swath of Christian traditions, as well. Under this principle, the Church will not be a leader in social change, as structural change is nearly always socially wrenching and, at least in the short term, destructive of the established social fabric of institutions and trust relationships. But once society reaches a kind of tipping point, in which the new order has incorporated a majority of the populace, it then becomes the Church’s work to provide a new set of practices, meanings, and motivations that will establish new ways of relating, new kinds of obligation, and new ways of entwining individuals’ welfare.

But there are limits to the flexibility of the Church’s myth and practice. The Church not only works to bring individuals into relationships of trusting obligation in the present, but it must also negotiate the present’s relationship and obligation to the past.  Thus a successful innovation in myth or practice will build a bridge of continuity with the past, preserving key narratives and saving interpretations of key texts. This work takes time, and it requires generational collaboration. But this patient, incremental work brings the Church intact through the turbulence of social and global change, prepared to continue its role for and in history.

What the Jews Lost

First let’s consider how Judaism managed to endure despite losing the temple, which had been the focus of its ritual worship for almost a millennium. Simon Goldhill’s The Temple of Jerusalem (HUP, 2005) recounts the challenge Judaism faced.

When the Temple was destroyed, it was quite unclear what form Jewish religion should or would take. Without the central institution of sacrifice, the pilgrim festivals and the roles of the priesthood and Levites, the social and religious structure of worship was crushed. Synagogues had existed for many centuries as places of gathering for Jews, especially in the Jewish communities outside Palestine, where, along with a range of other social and intellectual activities, prayer took place …. By the time that the Talmud was written down in its edited form [between about 400 and 700 AD], the synagogue had become the prime focus of religious life. But what parts of Temple worship could take place in the synagogue? … [C]ould sacrifice take place anwhere but on the altar [of the Temple]? Could pilgrim festivals be observed away from Jerusalem and, if so, how? (p. 86-87.)

Judaism refocused religious culture and worship on prayer and study conducted in synagogues led by rabbis, but that change was not a simple process.

The answers to such questions took many years and much debate …. Sacrifice was not again performed: that means of communication between man and God was silenced. But the pilgrim festivals did continue in a changed form. … Passover no longer had the paschal sacrifice, but continued to hold the ritual meal of the Seder-night feast. But for neither, of course, did people leave their villages to travel to Jerusalem. The complex system of sin and guilt offerings was stopped, and how people thought about the relation between action and punishment had to alter radically as a consequence. (p. 87-88.)

What the Mormons Lost

First, let’s compare the Mormon experience with what the Jews lost, temple, king, and land. The Mormons did lose some political power: In January 1845, the Nauvoo Charter was repealed. That partial loss of autonomy reduced the ability of Mormons in Nauvoo to protect themselves from their adversaries in adjoining communities. In 1846, when the bulk of the Mormon community left Nauvoo for good, they left behind their land (the latest place of gathering) and the partially completed Nauvoo temple. But I don’t think these parallel Mormon losses were felt as deeply as the Jewish losses. These did not change the course of Mormonism. Utah became a new place of gathering, with some political autonomy regained (if only because of the remote location). New temples were built in Utah. Relocating Mormons felt ill-treated by their government, but their identity was not lost: most still regarded themselves as loyal Americans.

One thing that was irrevocably lost in 1844 was Joseph Smith and his burst of revelation, imagination, and innovation. While a successor was eventually installed as President of the Church and that office has continued, no successor in office has regularly exercised the variety of prophetic and revelatory gifts displayed by Joseph. Yes, Brigham Young and Orson Pratt discussed several novel and interesting doctrinal ideas in the next few decades, but those ideas were never canonized and are largely forgotten. For the most part, religious innovation died with Joseph.

Related to the loss of Joseph was the loss of the First Presidency as an independent quorum. In the crisis that followed Joseph’s death, Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve emerged as the leadership of the Church. When the First Presidency was reorganized several years later, it was essentially as an executive committee of the Twelve, filled by apostles. It was no longer an independent quorum as it had been under Joseph. With the loss of the First Presidency, the scope of potential disagreement within the senior leadership of the Church was signifcantly reduced.

The final loss was polygamy. Ironically, what was initially lost in 1844 was the option to reverse course and abandon the practice. Only Joseph had the institutional power and credibility to end polygamy at that time. After his death, its continuation became something like a test of faith for the Church and for individual leaders. After the death of Joseph and the emergence of the Twelve to lead the Church, we were stuck with polygamy for the short term.

In 1890, the other shoe dropped. Faced with mounting pressure from the United States government, Wilford Woodruff announced (more or less) that the Church would abandon the practcie of polygamy. It was that or lose control of and title to LDS temples. Good choice. In hindsight, it’s safe to say that temples have done us a lot more good than polygamy. In fact, it’s hard to even describe the loss of polygamy as a loss. In the wake of the abandonment of polygamy, Utah gained statehood, national politics came to Utah, and the LDS Church gradually entered the social and cultural mainstream. This permitted the sustained growth of the Church, first within North America and later on other continents, over the course of the 20th century.

Any other ideas on what we lost or gained as we moved from the struggle and conflict of the 19th century to the acceptability of the 20th and 21st centuries?

According to Orson Pratt, who presumably talked with Joseph about it, the Prophet did not receive revelations word for word.  Rather, he received impressions and ideas which he then clothed with words.  Even this model, I think, is too simple.  It still assumes a simple linear process where God implants an idea in Joseph’s mind and Joseph then writes it down.  I think that the process of composition was quite a bit messier and heterogenous than that.  Consider a couple of revealing incidents.  In 1829, for example, as Joseph and Oliver made their plans for the founding of a new church Oliver produced a text that was to serve as a kind of constitution for the church.  In the end, the text was not used, the forerunner of section 20 taking its place.  The text is written in the first person with the Lord speaking.  On the other hand, large portions of the text are copied from the ecclesialogical materials in Moroni in the Book of Mormon.  I think that the best way of seeing this revelation is as a text that Oliver composed in the first person in the Lord’s voice using previous scriptural texts.  The text was never used, but there isn’t evidence that Joseph objected to the way it was produced or regarded Oliver as doing something different than what he was doing.

Another revealing incident involves the compiling of the revelations for the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.  A committee was formed to review the revelations and decide which were to be included and which were not.  Although I can’t cite particulars because my books are in my office, the committee seems to have been passing on whether or not the revelation texts produced by Joseph Smith were in fact inspired.  Interestingly, this was not seen as an all or nothing proposition.  Some were, some less so.  During this process one of the Twelve — William McLellin, if memory serves — insisted that he could write better revelations.  Joseph challenged him to do so, and everyone agreed that he failed.  What is interesting about the event is that the competition between McLellin and Joseph seems to have been in part a literary pissing match, McLellin objecting to some of the awkwardness of the language.  Joseph’s reaction suggests, I think, that he felt his literary acumen as much as his prophetic gifts were being challenged.  In other words, he saw himself as in some way the author of the revelations and saw McLellin’s challenge a s personal sleight.  The presence of the committee, sifting and judging the texts that Joseph produced, suggests that they also understood the revelations as in some sense being authored by Joseph, with their purpose being to judge by the spirit which of these texts was sufficiently inspired to acquire authoritative status.

In terms of genre the Doctrine and Covenants is extremely heterogenous.  Sometimes we have texts where God speaks in the first person.  Sometimes we have texts in which Joseph speaks in the first person describing some theophany or other event.  Sometimes we have snippets of Joseph’s sermons.  Sometimes we have press releases.  There is even variation in how the texts where God speaks in the first person were produced.

For example, section 121, 122, and 123 are all taken from a much longer letter written by Joseph in Liberty Jail to the saints scatter across Missouri and Illinois.  Section 122 is entirely in the first person with the Lord speaking.  Section 123 is entirely in the first person with Joseph and his associates speaking to the church.  Section 121 consists of a dialogue between Joseph and the Lord, with verses 1-6 being Joseph’s question to the Lord and the remainder of the section being Joseph’s answer.  When the original letter is read in its entirety, it is far from clear that Joseph is presenting its contents as a revelation — a “commandment” in the terminology of early Mormonism.  That is, he is not saying, “Here is the text of a new revelation.”  Rather it is a public letter.  The dialogue between Joseph and the Lord in section 121 (and continued in section 122) can be read, I think, as a literary conceit.  That is, Joseph is apostrophizing the Lord in his letter and then recording what he thinks would be the Lord’s answer.  After the fact, this literary aria is then recast as revelation and scripture.

I don’t think that there is anything wrong with any of this.  I don’t think that it undermines the Doctrine and Covenants’ claim to be scripture.  It does, I think, raise a couple of issues.  First, I think that it narrows the gap between both personal revelation and prophetic revelation as well as between inspired literary composition and revelatory composition.  Mind you, I don’t think that it collapses these distinctions.  It just narrows them.  As a historical matter, the it seems that at best only some of the texts in the Doctrine and Covenants acquired their scriptural status based on some unique “revelatory” means of production.  Others seem to have been judged after the fact as sufficiently inspired or inspiring to be included in the canon.

Second, it potentially raises questions about how to read the texts.  I am partial to extremely close reading of scriptural texts.  I like to puzzle through the significance of word order, phrases, sentence structure, and the like.  I think, however, that a dictation model of revelation cannot ultimately be defended.  This means that the justification for such close readings must rest on something other than a kind of Qua’ranic awe before the unmediated word of God.

Finally, it raises questions of authority.  This cuts in two directions.  On one hand, this may be troubling for some, as the strong presence of a Joseph as author within the texts seems to make them less divine and less trustworthy.  On the other hand, for those who are genuinely troubled by certain passages of the Doctrine and Covenants, being able to distance God from the troubling texts may be a relief.  Trying to figure out how to negotiate the authority of the text without falling into disappointed fundamentalism on one hand, and on the other a kind of facile religious liberalism that re-interprets the texts into nothing more than a recapitulation of contemporary mores is tricky to say the least.