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That’s a shame Cwald, there is some good stuff on there and I believe that if the church is to progress (eternally?), discussion is one way to open things up a bit. Many years ago, I used to frequent an ex-Mormon board that’s quite well known. My biggest problem with it was that the atheist types had tried to take it over. They really laid into people who were considering going into other religions, including Catholicism, Islam and the RLDS (as it was then). Now I’ve been agnostic, but not a head banging atheist. I tend to find “free thought” means “think like me” to these types rather than “plow your own furrow”. It was off putting. The RLDS guy was actually really nice, and many of his ideas were closer to how the COJCLDS should be, not that there are any COC churches out in this neck of the woods.
I digress. I have mixed feelings about this. Maybe we need something like “Mormon Doctrine”, but with some of the more dubious bits removed.
Thank Ray, for listening. Apologies, if sincere, really help build relationships. My nephew served a mission to Nauvoo Ill. While there, he baptized an older woman who has become a very close family friend. She comes to Salt Lake to spend Christmas with us and we have become just like family. Ironically, my ancestors were driven from Nauvoo and her ancestors where some of the power players in the explosion of the Saints. I’m glad we met her.
Two Christmases ago, my sister hosted two young, German, foreign exchange students in her home. We all sat down to celebrate the birth of Christ, our sister from Nauvoo, our German friends and our family. The past connects us in many ways. We form relationships, sometimes even through war, but when we apologize and are forgiven, a relationship is forged. We become bonded in a deep sense of understanding ourselves and others. We build a future for our children. We never can change the past, but we have full control over the future. We can write our own script. Apostle Paul, formerly Saul of Taurus ultimately built the very church he set out destroy. That is what the gospel is about.
I agree with all of that, MWallace – and it is beautifully expressed. Old-Timer wrote:Again, MWallace (and cwald), I really do understand the feeling behind your concern – and I really don’t want to appear to be dismissing it. I’m not being flippant. I mean that. Even though I disagree, I do recognize the validity of your feeling about it. …I’m not trying to convince you of my viewpoint here, I’m just saying I can’t agree in this particular case that an apology is in order.
I can live with that.
Euhemerus wrote:All I can say is that it should have happened long long ago, and I think it’s rather unfortunate that the book is as popular as it is. It only serves as fuel to the fundamentalist fire (no offense to Bruce in Montana). It’s like speculation gone wild!
I’m actually sad about Mormon Doctrine going out of print. I started re-reading a copy from our church library just before I heard the news (on a BRM kick lately), and I have to say that although I disagree with practically everything he says, and the “debate-is-over” mentality in which he says it, there is something to be said for his certainty, clarity of thought, and conviction.
Mormon Doctrine captures the beliefs and ideas that are held by a good chunk of the LDS population, and in that sense it’s a valuable and telling text – much like the Journal of Discourses, which has also now become a rare find, captured an era of Mormon thought. It seems tragic to lose it to history. Try telling a TBM about a view espoused by a general authority in the JD and you’re likely to get blank looks. I’d hate to see that happen with Mormon Doctrine.
But perhaps in order for the organization to evolve it is necessary to take some of these old era-defining texts out of the limelight and replace them with new ones? That said, there’s something Fahrenheit 451-ish that I don’t like about these old texts vanishing. We need to move on from some of our older ways of thinking, but we should never forget our history. Much like how I want to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” or (a more extreme example) “Mein Kampf” remain available for years to come, even if some of the themes expressed are now considered archaic and wrong. Thank goodness more and more texts are becoming available in e-book format!
So if Mormon Doctrine is on the no read list now just where are Mormons to get info on deep doctrine. The Sunday School manuals are mostly fluff. The Ensign and Conference Talks are mostly feel good stories. YOu can say what you want about McConkie but he did throw some juicy stuff at you. To bad it came along with such a dogmatic attitude and biased social perspectives. At any rate I wonder who if anyone is going to pick up the mantel of scholar in the church. No leader seems to be much more willing than to warn us about sexual transgressions, obey the prophet, pay your tithing, and feel good stuff. Maybe that is better it will not offend anyone, but it is boring. Yeah, they can’t win for losing, can they? Damned if they do; damned if they don’t. 
I think the apostles now tend to focus much more on their roles as witnesses of Christ and leave the doctrinal dissertations to the church scholars. Personally, I really like that – and it fits the latter half of the small plates of Nephi model. (“I know of no doctrine that hasn’t been recorded already, so I will stick to the basics and talk about how they applied in my lifetime.”)
I would love to know more about many things, but I’m not expecting revelation or pronouncements about them from the apostles. I’d much prefer they keep to their testimonies of spiritual things and let me work out how I view the details. The more they articulate orthodoxy, the less my heterodoxy will fit – so I am totally fine with the more recent shift I’ve observed and anything that de-canonizes books like Mormon Doctrine.
Old-Timer wrote:I think the apostles now tend to focus much more on their roles as witnesses of Christ and leave the doctrinal dissertations to the church scholars. Personally, I really like that – and it fits the latter half of the small plates of Nephi model. (“I know of no doctrine that hasn’t been recorded already, so I will stick to the basics and talk about how they applied in my lifetime.”)
I would love to know more about many things, but I’m not expecting revelation or pronouncements about them from the apostles. I’d much prefer they keep to their testimonies of spiritual things and let me work out how I view the details. The more they articulate orthodoxy, the less my heterodoxy will fit – so I am totally fine with the more recent shift I’ve observed and anything that de-canonizes books like Mormon Doctrine.
I guess that works. It seems to be the path the church is taking. It is the least controversial. I guess I am still stuck on the fact that they are suppose to be prophets and have something new and exciting to say, at lest by my definition. Being a witness of Jesus Christ is great but can’t anyone do that? Does it really require being called as an apostle. Without Bruce R types I see a long future of milk toast sermons and fluff. Basically what I can get at any other Christian denomination. When I was more TBM I really loved trying to sort out the nature of God and I still do, but there seems little left to sort. We are told to just be obedient and everything will be explained in the next life.
Boring I say. Not that I agreed with Bruce R but it sure made for interesting conversation. Quote:Not that I agreed with Bruce R but it sure made for interesting conversation.
I agree, but it also caused all kinds of people to struggle with the idea of disagreeing with an apostle – even though he wasn’t an apostle when he wrote MD. In that light, it tends to restrict the average member’s willingness to go out on a limb doctrinally and try to figure stuff out on his/her own.
Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to hear someone say, “Thus saith the Lord” in a General Conference address – but I’m not sure it would make any difference to indivudal members who would accept, question or reject it regardless, and I certainly don’t want it to be said in a way that contradicts what I personally believe.
Dash mentioned this article on the “Official Doctrine” thread, but I think it needs to go here — for those who are interested in another perspective of BRM Mormon Doctrine. Quote:By Robert Kirby
Tribune Columnist
Updated: 05/27/2010 04:33:25 PM MDT
When Deseret Book announced it would not reprint Mormon Doctrine , I immediately thought of my Uncle Ed. The book was his spiritual guide, his religious hammer.
Uncle Ed swore by Mormon Doctrine . In fact, I once heard him say that if he were ever elected to anything, he would insist on repeating the oath of office with his hand on a copy.
When I left on my mission, he gave me an original “hardliner” edition of Mormon Doctrine , the one with all the doctrinal truths that were later quietly dropped, stuff about papists, blacks, communists and aliens.
I packed the book around South America for six months without reading it. I hung onto it because it was one of fewer than a dozen publications missionaries were permitted to read.
One day, stuck in a ratty apartment and running a 103 degree temperature, there wasn’t much else to do, so I picked it up.
I got through the first 10 pages, then skipped around. Finally, I put it down. Rather than making me feel better about the gospel I represented, it made me feel worse. It was heavy and ominous and not for me.
I’m far too independent when it comes to overly legalistic treatments of stuff I love. Faith for me is more art than bureaucracy, and Mormon Doctrine read like a history of rock ‘n’ roll penned by Joseph Stalin.
The book apparently worked out well for other Mormons, providing source material for millions of sacrament meeting talks, Sunday school lessons, and who knows how many angry debates.
Detractors of Mormon Doctrine decry various social injuries caused by it. Most often cited is the claim — in the hardliner edition — that the Catholic Church was the church of the devil.
I didn’t believe this then, and don’t now. That part was eventually taken out. Today, most Mormons understand that the church of the devil is really the Internal Revenue Service.
Note: Even the latest edition of Mormon Doctrine doesn’t say this. I thought it up and it sounded good. You’d be surprised how often that happens when people start writing about salvation.
Most religions have/had books like this, attempts to bureaucratize salvation. We could start with the Bible, especially the Old Testament, which seems to insist that God is something of a cosmic loan shark.
If you agree with everything you read in a church book or hear in a church meeting, you aren’t thinking hard enough. The human element — opinion — is present far too often for any book (or even doctrine) to be a theological guarantee.
The important thing to remember when reading anything is that the Lord gave you a brain and assumes that you’ll occasionally use it. If you find yourself reading something you don’t like (including this column), do what I do — read something else.
Cadence wrote:So if Mormon Doctrine is on the no read list now just where are Mormons to get info on deep doctrine. The Sunday School manuals are mostly fluff. The Ensign and Conference Talks are mostly feel good stories.
I think the church is trying to produce some stuff on the website with topics and materials for talks and references to articles.I think you may be right, that in trying to be less offensive there are fewer doctrines being spelled out in black and white what exactly we believe.
Doesn’t that tell you something about the religion? People who just want to be given the answer are disappointed…those who seek it for themselves are given that license…as it should be, IMHO.
I found a lot of good things the the MD book…things I hadn’t known or thought of before…but the things that were wrong just discredited any of the rest of it that I found I couldn’t quote from it any longer. I think that is why is is no longer published.
Cadence wrote:So if Mormon Doctrine is on the no read list now just where are Mormons to get info on deep doctrine. The Sunday School manuals are mostly fluff. The Ensign and Conference Talks are mostly feel good stories. YOu can say what you want about McConkie but he did throw some juicy stuff at you. To bad it came along with such a dogmatic attitude and biased social perspectives. At any rate I wonder who if anyone is going to pick up the mantel of scholar in the church. No leader seems to be much more willing than to warn us about sexual transgressions, obey the prophet, pay your tithing, and feel good stuff. Maybe that is better it will not offend anyone, but it is boring.
Agreed. I can’t get much meat out of them. Sometimes I want a bit more than friend of a friend stories where the protagonists are rarely named, or a bunch of stuff we get asked questions on and have to give set answers. Not good enough really.
McConkie may have been wrong, but we need something like it.
Quote:McConkie may have been wrong, but we need something like it.
And that, my friend, is the heart of the issue, is it not?
cwald wrote:Dash mentioned this article on the “Official Doctrine” thread, but I think it needs to go here — for those who are interested in another perspective of BRM Mormon Doctrine.
Quote:By Robert Kirby
Tribune Columnist
Updated: 05/27/2010 04:33:25 PM MDT
I have a tee-shirt that I sometimes wear around the area here in Utah that reads:
Kirby for Prophet!It gets some good laughs.
😆 Sorry I’ve been notably absent for a while – enough to miss this topic, although as some of you noted we had quite a go ’round on it at MM. I won’t rehash that, but I think the core issue with MoDoc is its authoritative tone & title, as well as the specific interpretation of the gospel it outlines. It’s funny that our basic religious premise is built on a young boy being confused and praying about which church is true, God the Father telling him that “creeds” are an abomination, and then we spend the next 150 years trying to come up with our own creed. That’s what I call it when we (as a church) ceaselessly lament the subjectivity of personal spiritual experience and would like answers to everything clearly explained in writing. I think we need more personal reflection, more praying in groves and less (or no) reliance on so-called authoritative books.
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