Mormon Studies Issues
Contents
1. Website goals
2. How to use this
website
3. Mormonism Isn't What
It Used to Be: What Does the Term "Mormon Studies" Mean at Your
Institution?
4. A Practical Prophet:
The LDS Church and O'Sullivan's Law
Website goals
I have hopes that my
research work will become valuable to many different groups of people with many
different agendas:
To the apologists for
the church, I hope to show them the topics to carefully stay away from, since
telling the full Scriptural truth would amount to an indictment of the current
church organization they wish to defend, or at least could sow confusion among
the ranks because of the inherent conflicts.
To the church's
competitors in the world of religion, this should demonstrate some of the great
weaknesses which the LDS Church has made itself subject to, and which they have
made themselves subject to by adopting without question the 2000 year old
Christian history that came to us through the Roman Catholic Church and the
various Protestant groups which broke off from it. If they wish, these non-LDS groups might be
able to do a better job of establishing the truth than the LDS Church itself.
To the disgruntled
and disaffected LDS Church members or past members, this could provide
explanations for their negative feelings about the church as it stands today,
and if their feelings are strong enough, they might become a force for
reform. As it is, many people seem to
think that the only two choices they have is to stay inside a church which
makes them uncomfortable on many different points, versus simply leaving the church,
either virtually or actually. Armed with the right information, a third
alternative might come to mind which is instead of joining all the leftist
forces which continue to pull the church towards the world and Satan's
ideologies and practices, they can become a force for encouraging a
retrenchment of the church and its teachings and policies back to where it was
about 120 years ago. Pushing that huge reset
button just might be enough to get the church back on track and keep it there
for the next 200 years.
How to use this website
I am using this
website to present my research efforts and thoughts on the large questions of
what might be wrong with the church these days and what could be done to fix
it. At the bottom of the last entry in
this series of entries is a link to a book-length work which is stored online
on Dropbox. This site is used as a place
to add introductions to that book and to add additional material as it comes to
mind. Eventually, the goal is to present
in one well-edited book all the information which is on this website or is
linked to from this website. But that
could be a years-long process, and in these days of electronic publishing,
there is no particular reason to keep the interim forms of the material out of
sight until the grand finale when the finished and polished book is published.
I can't imagine that
I could ever receive a substantial amount of money through selling such a
future book, so there is no obvious reason to keep its contents secret while
seeking out a publisher. I assume that
the only value to anyone in the world will be in making known the religious
problems I see and describing some of the potential solutions. The potential
value to the world in getting this right could be measured in tens or hundreds
of trillions of dollars, but it is hard to imagine how any of that money might
flow to me. It is far more likely that
this will end up costing me a ridiculous amount of time and money and effort,
and that significant grief will be my main reward. Nonetheless, somebody needs to do this
thankless job. I hope to get some feedback from other people who examine these
materials which will allow me to improve it and extend it.
Mormonism Isn't What It Used to Be: What Does the Term
"Mormon Studies" Mean at Your Institution?
I am hoping that some
of the many Mormon studies programs, typically at universities, or
organizations associated with universities, would be interested in the research
I have done on "Mormonism Isn't What It Used to Be."
As a church member
myself, my personal goal is to find a way to repair a badly damaged Mormonism,
but in order to do that, one needs to point out all the major problems so that
solutions can be found.
There might be a few
organizations who study Mormonism from an insider's view point, but even of that
number I know of none of them who are trying to reset the doctrinal and policy
trip meter back to where it was 120 years ago.
Like a car that needs
some major maintenance at the 100,000 mile mark, I see the LDS Church as being
in need of some major maintenance at its 200-year mark. The last two restorations, done by Christ
himself, once in Jerusalem and once in the New World, both disintegrated after
about 200 years, and there is every reason to expect that Mormonism will do the
same thing in our own time, unless something very significant is done to arrest
its deterioration. Its enemies might rejoice, but its friends will not be
happy. I prefer to see it stay around
intact.
Here are a few of the
possible goals of any particular Mormon Studies program:
A Mormonism repair
effort -- I know of no group or organization with this goal other than myself.
Apologetics -- These
are the people that defend the church as an organization, regardless of whether
it happens to be right or wrong on the Scriptures. Their theme is "my church, right or
wrong." Finding conflicts between the scriptures and the current church
position could prove embarrassing.
Opposition research
-- I assume there are several academic or religious organizations who study the
church to point out its flaws and shortcomings so that their own members or any
innocent bystanders will not be drawn to it in any way.
A social studies
emphasis -- the various migrations and transformations of LDS Church members
over the past 200 years probably offer some more general insights that might be
applicable to other groups. But the effects of the changing content of theology on
those social movements would likely be greatly downplayed.
A comparative
theology emphasis -- the Mormons have discussed some interesting theological
positions and insights over the last two centuries. One careful researcher has asked the question
"Are Christians Mormon?" and offers some evidence that other churches
have gradually adopted some Mormon theological positions. One person who is
alleged to have met that fate is Richard Mouw, past president of Fuller
Theological Seminary. (See
"Richard Mouw Gets Mauled by Mormonism" http://www.christianpost.com/news/richard-mouw-gets-mauled-by-mormonism-161977/)
A Practical Prophet: The LDS Church and O'Sullivan's Law
It is unfortunate and
strange that an astute human philosopher with the highest personal integrity
should be a better prophet on at least one very important topic with a crucial
effect on true religion than are the fully authorized living prophets. John Sullivan is a British journalist and
political columnist and adviser who proposed a law of society and politics
concerning the changing of ideologies over extended time periods.
The statement of his
law which is likely to be closest to the original comes from Wikipedia:
"All
organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become
left-wing."
As slightly restated at
UrbanDictionary.com the law becomes:
"Any
organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become
left-wing over time."
Paraphrasing that
slightly for my purposes, I will adjust the law to read as:
"Any politically
conservative organization will eventually become controlled by liberal ideology
unless it always has an active program to avoid that very result."
The full entry from
UrbanDictionary.com reads as follows:
O’Sullivan’s
Law
O’Sullivan’s Law states that any organization
or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.
The law is named after British journalist John O’Sullivan.
Television shows are the best examples of
this [:] 24, House. Charitable foundations are worse but harder to see. [The TV show "24," meaning 24-hours, usually
deals with tense terrorist situations. The TV show "House" deals
situations in hospitals that can often be quite tense and exciting. Presumably they are
good indicators of shifts in ideologies simply because they have weekly
episodes, and the lifespans of the episodes and series are measured in months
or years, not decades or centuries.]
One of the reasons for this is leftist
intolerance versus right-wing tolerance. Right wingers are willing to hire
openly left-wing employees in the interest of fairness. Left-wingers, utterly
intolerant, will not allow a non-Liberal near them, and will harass them at
every opportunity. The result over time is that conservative enterprises are
infiltrated by leftists but leftist enterprises remain the same or get worse.
Also, leftism is in and of itself a form of
decay. It’s what happens not just to television shows but to nations, churches
and universities as the energy given off by the big bang of their inception
slowly ebbs away. Rather than expend vitality in originality and creation they
become obsessed with introspection, popularity and lethargy. Leftism is entropy
of the spirit and intellect.
Another reason is that the parasitic nature
of Liberals/Leftists attracts them to existing money.
An enterprise can stave off O'Sullivan's Law
if their creators keep it in mind and remain vigilant and truthful.
O'Sullivan's
Law hit 24 when they finally had a Muslim villain then started running
disclaimers that Muslims aren't all terrorists.
The
Annenberg Foundation was started by a Republican but it didn't take long before
O'Sullivan's Law had them handing a [out?] domestic terrorist money for
educating kids.
The
ACLU, the Ford Foundation and the Episcopal Church all fell to O’Sullivan’s
Law.
The law likely expects
that a series of leaders and members will be active over a period of at least
decades, and perhaps centuries, who pick up where the organization is at any
particular time of a personnel change, and each has the opportunity to continue
the gradual downhill trend through a series of small evolutionary steps, so it
may be that none of them feel they need to accept full blame for the continual
slide, although all are in fact responsible for the accumulated changes.
I am suggesting that
this process might be a little bit like a boat on a very large ocean where
there is no land in sight and the very curvature of the Earth means that no one
on the boat can see any other boats or any land, either to the rear, or
straight ahead, or to the sides. All one
can see as water, and there are no fixed reference points, and without the sun
in the daytime and the stars and the moon at night, there would be no reference
points whatever to keep a boat on a straight course. Tiny deviations in the use of the rudder or
changes in the wind might have the boat veering off to the left or to the right
or even going in circles.
Calculation: The curvature of the Earth is
about 8 inches per mile. So, for
example, to a man whose eyes were about 6 feet above the water, a 30 foot high
boat would be invisible, below the horizon, at a distance of just 22.5
miles. A pirate ship could be only an
hour or two's distance from its prey, and the prey would be unaware of its
danger. Land might be easier to find where a 1000 foot mountain would just
begin to be visible at a distance of 750 miles.
In the case of very
general principles such as the concept of individual freedom and the
application of the Golden rule, sincere men could disagree enough so that the
"old ship Zion" might follow quite an erratic path over a long time
period, and almost no one would have the awareness or the ability to keep it on
a rigidly straight path.
This is Satan's
world. It should be no surprise that his
constant negative pressure will have strong effects over time, regardless of
the good intentions of good men, especially if they tend to rely on their own
wisdom more than on the wisdom of heaven. Instead of imagining ourselves to be clever
enough to be able to strike out on our own with confidence in matters of
doctrine and policy, we should realize that Satan is has far more knowledge than
all of us put together and will exploit every chink in our armor or logic.
I don't sense
nearly enough humility, or fear and trembling, emanating from Salt Lake City.
The Scriptures and
the church have much to say in very general terms about the turmoil of the last
days, the millennium, and other such apocalyptic matters, so it is strange to
see that there is no apparent system for keeping the gospel strictly on course,
and no detailed warnings about the problems that will arise if it is not kept
strictly on course, complete with suggested preventive procedures. This seems like such an obvious oversight
that one might wonder if that very warning or procedure is the first thing to
be deleted from the Scriptures and from the minds of the self-interested
governing bodies that tend to quickly arise.
Prophecies about the behavior of prophets ought to be at the top of the
list of Scriptural content. But,
apparently it does not, and so we continually suffer the logical consequences.
The process of
"correlation" seems to be an effort to simplify and standardize and
homogenize the truth, rather than acting aggressively to keep it from changing
in any way. The correlation process
itself will almost certainly introduce doctrinal and practical errors, simply
because it is explicitly trying to make the gospel more compatible with the
world and to meet the administrative convenience of the church's governing
bodies. Simply the process of trying to stay on good terms with every other
political or economic governing body on the planet has to mean that the gospel
is gradually and continually moved closer to the places where Satan has more
nearly complete control.
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