Organizing parties for 100 plus people (the non-LDS people I know are always astounded when I mention that I am cooking for 100 this weekend)

Writing skits and roadshows

Baking bread and all kinds of specialized cooking skills I have been taught in homemaking, everything from deboning a chicken while leaving it whole to making sushi rolls to making cream puffs

Cooking with food storage supplies

Dave, you should emend the post to include a list at the bottom of everything mentioned.

It’s a great story, but it’s important to know that the story is wrong, Pulitzer Prize aside. Its depiction of the Middle Ages and book culture has been thoroughly dismantled by medievalists and modernists alike. I don’t know if I can post links here, but if you google it, it’s easy to find a good review essay in the LA Review of Books, the academic blog In the Middle, and a modernist’s take on it in n+1.

(I’m sure that I can draw some sort of meta-conclusion about this, related to the real topic of the post, but I will just say that it’s interesting how The Swerve reinforces Greenblatt’s view of the Middle Ages, driven by his hatred of religion, and the Mormon view of the Middle Ages, driven by our own religious narrative.)

The back of the envelope numbers though which don’t even include under 65 or non-Americans doing work makes me think that in a few decades we’ll be done. But even if it’s a decade or two more, that’ll be a significant shift. As I mentioned I think the shift regarding people’s own families for most American Mormons is starting to happen already. I know lots and lots of people who’ve gone back as far as they can and now are going forward from their far back ancestors. (My dad is doing that) Or else even doing other people’s work within reasons.

The church for good reason has limits on what people can do they aren’t directly related to — although I confess I did the temple work for a ton of scientists and philosophers before the new rules became enforced. In particular Gauss was one I really felt a strong spiritual connection to. (He’d tried to gain what we’d call a testimony most of his life but despite seeking God and being a fairly religious person never achieved it. Unlike many scientists who weren’t exactly sociable or necessarily good people, he really was an amazing guy and did a lot of work to get women into science at a time it was unheard of.)

Regarding numbers at 1,500 per year it’d take 30,000 people only 22 years to do a billion records. I’m not sure how many retired members there are in western areas with extensive internet. Pew puts it for the US at 15% which given Pew’s self-identification numbers is around 4 million in the US. That’s 600,000 although you have to assume many in that group are unwilling or unable to do significant amount of genealogy. Let’s be safe and say half won’t/can’t. Likewise lets assume many can’t get close to as fast as you and put an average rate at around 700 (since these individuals will get better with time) So 300,000,000 people doing 700 families per year for around 30 years (although US Mormon population is growing, so there’d actually be many more over time) That gives us 6.3 billion names just by Americans over 30 years.

If you assume that over that period more of the world will gain internet and that the Church has modest growth (we’ll ignore Europe which I suspect will have negative growth) then 10 billion seems pretty achievable. That’s without assuming any technical innovations that would increase efficiency.

I suspect most revelations don’t have a text. I bet if we’re talking about personal individual inspiration it’s very rarely textual like but is a prompting or vague idea. Even a lot of Joseph’s major ideas don’t have clear textual revelations. Typically we have at best presentations to the inner circle with fragmentary notes (some of which get expanded to sections in the D&C obscuring that the really is no revelatory text behind them). Put an other way I think it’s far more common to the have things like Joseph’s King Follet Discourse or Sermon in the Grove than to have things like D&C 88 or 76. Now of course there are elements of the KFD the church largely rejects, such as the nature of the resurrection of children. But there are elements that it largely accepts. Then there is the blurry middle ground.

I’d also question the distinction between policy and revelation. Surely temporary policy changes can be revealed. The category of policy vs. doctrine just seems deeply problematic. (When Moses went back to the Lord after he saw the Golden Calf was that a policy change or doctrine?)

With regards to D&C 132 or the John Taylor 1886 it seems to me the key question is whether established sealings are valid. Either they are or aren’t. Ditto for sealings since (including remarriages). I think the answer has to be that they are. (I recognize this is not something people who think there’s no multiple valid marriages in the hereafter accept – but I think that’s a pretty difficult position to defend theologically) The main point of difference between the Church and the various breakoffs after Woodruff is whether it’s required to be polygamist here and now in the flesh with living people. However again given Jacob 2 and the fact lots of people died without being such makes it difficult theologically to argue that it is. The John Taylor 1886 revelation definitely doesn’t establish that (or even addresses it).

An interesting but rarely discussed issue is also how literally dictated textual revelations, like many Taylor produced, actually is. That is how much is a “close enough” textual position with various expansions or errors by the receiver. (As opposed to say how Muslims perceive the Koran to be dictated by God typically)

I think that we tend to privilege text far more than is justified, perhaps due to influence by the non-mainline protestant figures that largely became Evangelicalism in the postwar era. I think it undeniable it shaped a lot of early Mormon apologetics and theology (especially in the era from the 1920’s through the 1980’s). I’m just not sure that privileging of textuality is warranted even with clear scripture let alone over Prophets making changes and claiming revelation. (We should note there’s no text for the 1978 revelation on priesthood either)