![\"\"](\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ebee453a-1937-415c-b83b-8d96d99abc6f-800x457.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chat-GPT’s rendition of a very strict, orthodox Mormon, right next to a liberal, heterodox Mormon, because even heterodox Mormons still wear buttoned-up, tucked-in shirts evidently.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s law, one of those cute Internet \u201claws,\u201d states that \u201cany organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.\u201d Like most Internet laws, it kind of holds up, even though exceptions can be found. <\/span><\/p>\n There’s something to it in regards to Church-related institutions if you replace left-wing and right-wing with edgy and\/or heterodox. For example, o<\/span>ne of the early, founding members of Dialogue was Dallin H. Oaks, whereas a simple perusal of the Table of Contents of issues through the years shows a clear veer towards critical studies issues in the Dialogue journal and, presumably, community. I\u2019m not, in this post, making an argument for whether that is a good or bad thing, but the directionality of the drift is clear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And then of course the classic case is the Maxwell Institute. Not that it was ever “edgy,” just that it clearly shifted from being what could be described as being on the Molly Mormon side of the continuum with its apologetics focus to speaking to a smaller, more academic niche. Again, I have no desire to rehash the old fights over the \u201ccoup,\u201d although for the most part I will admit that I think, after the dust has settled, I like the division of labor, and think there\u2019s a healthy amount of variety and distinctiveness among allied groups like Scripture Central, the Religious Studies Center, the Interpreter Foundation, the BH Roberts Foundation, and the Maxwell Institute, each with their own niche and specialties. Still, it is indisputable that that the \u201ccoup\u201d was a clear co-opting of the MI to turn it into something else that it had not been before (again, whether that was a good or bad thing is another question). I don\u2019t claim any insider knowledge, but I suspect there were a lot of donors that were confused about what was going on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My vibes, for what this is worth, is that Sunstone and, possibly, FMH, kind of fit into this category. I might be wrong, but I suspect that in its early days there was a space for a sort of nuanced temple recommend-holding, active believer (e.g. Peggy Fletcher-Stack in her early Sunstone days) or maybe even the occasional social conservative in those organizations, but you\u2019d be hard pressed to find anybody in that category in there now in any meaningful numbers (fun story, I was invited to give a presentation at Sunstone, so my sweet, sweet, born-and-raised Latter-day Saint grandmother wanted to come and see her grandson talk, and there was a bit of a culture shock at Sunstone Salt Lake as she sat in the middle of a very, very, anti\/ex-Mormon crowd).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As I\u2019ve noted before, the orthodox are either the fuel or the foil for many of the more heterodox organizations (on the left and the right, now that we have right-heterodox orgs such as the polygamy deniers and Snufferites). The heterodox organizations get a certain energy from responding to or critiquing the orthodox, and in the case of the left-heterodox their membership largely stems from the formerly orthodox, but like faiths\u2019 relationship with the outside world there has to be an optimal tension with the parent organization. At some point you\u2019ve left so much that you\u2019ve picked up other things to spend your time with, but the sweet spot seems to be the somewhat believing person wrestling with hard questions and making it work, but oftentimes the institutions that are geared towards such a demographic drift, iceberg like, into the more explicitly post-Mormon or cultural-Mormon territory, at which point new organizations arise to fill in that gap.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chat-GPT’s rendition of a very strict, orthodox Mormon, right next to a liberal, heterodox Mormon, because even heterodox Mormons still wear buttoned-up, tucked-in shirts evidently.\u00a0 O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s law, one of those cute Internet \u201claws,\u201d states that \u201cany organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.\u201d Like most Internet laws, it kind of holds up, even though exceptions can be found. There’s something to it in regards to Church-related institutions if you replace left-wing and right-wing with edgy and\/or heterodox. For example, one of the early, founding members of Dialogue was Dallin H. Oaks, whereas a simple perusal of the Table of Contents of issues through the years shows a clear veer towards critical studies issues in the Dialogue journal and, presumably, community. I\u2019m not, in this post, making an argument for whether that is a good or bad thing, but the directionality of the drift is clear.\u00a0 And then of course the classic case is the Maxwell Institute. Not that it was ever “edgy,” just that it clearly shifted from being what could be described as being on the Molly Mormon side of the continuum with its apologetics focus to speaking to a smaller, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":47696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ebee453a-1937-415c-b83b-8d96d99abc6f.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47695"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47725,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47695\/revisions\/47725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}