Mormon Studies Issues

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.