"Nom" Mormonism And The Ides Of Modernity

[ShawFanX]

This is a superb example of just why faithful LDS, and more acutely so, LDS within the apologetics community, either across the Internet or as a community of professional scholars working to answer criticisms of the Church within an organized, scholarly venue (the now defunct Neal A. Maxwell Institute) have long been - and should very much continue to be - deeply skeptical of the New Order Mormon (NOM), Reform Mormon, or Neo-Orthodox movement within LDS intellectual circles, academia, and the Internet sphere:

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Dialogue_V44N04_110.pdf

[bluebell]

That was one heck of a long run on sentence!

As to the link-who is Taylor G. Petrey?

[Damien the Leper]

I confess ignorance. I don't know who or what the purpose of 'New Order Mormonism", "Reform Mormonism" and "Neo-Orthodox Mormonism" is. Could you or someone else explain?

[Damien the Leper]

That was one heck of a long run on sentence!

As to the link-who is Taylor G. Petrey?

Seriously, Yo!

[Calm]

TAYLOR G. PETREY {tpetrey@gmail.com} is assistant professor of religion at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He holds a doctorate of theology and a master’s of theological studies from Har- vard Divinity School in New Testament and early Christianity.

http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/premium/Dialogue_V44N04_251.pdf

[Damien the Leper]

Someone posted on this article a short while back...I think it was dismissed by the majority of the board.

[Damien the Leper]

http://www.dialoguej..._V44N04_251.pdf

Is he LDS? Is he of the Restoration movement?

[Calm]

Is he LDS? Is he of the Restoration movement?

Don't have a clue.

https://twitter.com/TaylorPetrey

The way he phrases a comment in one of his blogs, I would say not.

http://www.patheos.c...ism-ridiculous/

Rather than focus solely on these more problematic and controversial aspects, we might practice an attentiveness toward Mormonism as a paradigm for thinking about religion more broadly, to articulate Mormonism as offering a persuasive evaluation (for some) of human situations. The questions that we should be asking, and Mormons should be answering

Looks like he is UU:

My sermon title today! pic.twitter.com/Tp6ZybUm

— Taylor G. Petrey (@TaylorPetrey)

March 25, 2012

Edited July 18, 2012 by calmoriah

[Damien the Leper]

Don't have a clue.

https://twitter.com/TaylorPetrey

The way he phrases a comment in one of his blogs, I would say not.

http://www.patheos.c...ism-ridiculous/

Looks like he is UU:

My sermon title today! pic.twitter.com/Tp6ZybUm

— Taylor G. Petrey (@TaylorPetrey)

March 25, 2012

Hmmm...interesting.

[ERayR]

http://www.dialoguej..._V44N04_251.pdf

That should be pronounced Haaavad.

[Damien the Leper]

I did like this line quoted from Stephen Colbert:

“Mormons believe Joseph Smith received golden plates from an angel on a hill, when everybody knows that Moses got stone tablets from a burning bush on a mountain!”

Made me laugh.

[Damien the Leper]

That should be pronounced Haaavad.

Now you're making Bostonians sound weird...

[ShawFanX]

He does not appear to be LDS himself, but this is hardly relevant, in my view, as the audience to whom he is writing is clearly the "New Order" or "Neo-Orthodox" sub-culture within LDS intellectual circles and the LDS blogosphere. Dialogue, is, after all, a "Journal of Mormon Thought," and is aimed at a Mormon, albeit "liberal" LDS sub-group within and on the periphery of the Church.

Edited July 18, 2012 by ShawFanX

[ShawFanX]

This is quite long, admittedly, and those interested can read it at their leisure, but I think it provides an excellent example of both the core audience to whom Taylor is speaking, as well as the general philosophical tendencies and orientations of that audience.

http://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2011/12/11/some-thoughts-sparked-by-taylor-petrey%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cpost-heterosexual-mormon-theology%E2%80%9D/

At a conference earlier this year, I presented a brief (and admittedly self-serving) paper suggesting some of the reasons why Mormons need theology. I listed several areas where I saw a need for theological work, and I noted that one of the most pressing of these was our lack of queer theology. After my presentation, several people enthusiastically asked me exactly how one might go about doing queer theology, and I had to admit that I was only pointing to the need for it; I was still working out how one might actually do it. For this reason, and others, I was excited to see Taylor Petrey’s recent Dialogue article—a thoughtful approach to a topic about which most discussion produces more heat than light. I am still thinking this through, but I would like to play with some of the ideas that Taylor brings up.

Taylor points out that we have competing narratives about our premortal origins—one which describes a spirit birth which is comparable to the kind of birth we have in mortality, and one which emphasizes eternal intelligences. The first, he argues, is problematic, both in its assumptions about the continuities between mortal and spiritual reproduction (are we seriously positing a Heavenly Mother who has a menstrual cycle?), and in the problem of glorified bodies which for some strange reason give birth to spirit bodies. Taylor proposes that we can instead imagine models in which “biological reproduction is not needed to explain celestial parentage,” noting, for example, that resurrection, which might also described as a kind of birth, does not get described in terms of biological reproduction.

I wonder whether this might be connected to Taylor’s later discussion of kinship—which, he argues, trumps biology. Could this paradigm also apply to our relation to God? I am thinking of the King Follett God who “finds himself in the midst of spirits and glory,” and then, “because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself.” God, in other words, establishes a particular kind of relationship with us—one which might make more sense in a kinship model than one of literal mortal-style procreation. In any case, I agree with Taylor that we have little evidence that sexual reproduction as we know it here is necessary to create life in the eternities, which calls into question one of the common assumptions about why heterosexual relationships are privileged.

Taylor also proposes that we cannot reduce relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual, to sexuality, as this is “inconsistent with our own understanding of the salvific character of relationships per se.” I would like to think more about this point. In LDS theology, what exactly is it about relationships that is salvific? And if heterosexual relationships are deemed salvific while homosexual ones are not, what is the soteriological difference between them? Taylor describes three reasons why LDS raise concerns: the issue of celestial reproduction (as just discussed), the practice of sealing, and the issue of eternal gender. He notes that “gender” in LDS discourse refers to at least three aspects of human existence: “the morphological bodies of males and females,” “an ‘identity’ that males and females are supposed to possess,” and “differing ‘roles,’ purposes, and responsibilities.”

I would add to this another issue, which is perhaps already implicit in a discussion of differing gender roles—that of complementarity. The church document “The Divine Institution of Marriage” quotes sociologist David Popenoe:

. . . The complementarity of male and female parenting styles is striking and of enormous importance to a child’s overall development. It is sometimes said that fathers express more concern for the child’s longer-term development, while mothers focus on the child’s immediate well-being (which, of course, in its own way has everything to do with a child’s long-term well-being). What is clear is that children have dual needs that must be met: one for independence and the other for relatedness, one for challenge and the other for support.

Setting aside the credibility of this particular argument (“it is sometimes said”?), I think this is an important element of LDS resistance to homosexual relationships: the belief that there is a complementarity which exists exclusively in heterosexual relationships. Taylor observes that one of the objections to same-sex marriage is that it means that one partner is not fulfilling their correct gender role. In contemporary church discourse about gender differences and gender roles, it can be ridiculously difficult to pin down exactly what those differences and roles are. Men “preside,” but no one knows quite what that means, and notably women can preside in the absence of a man (see Dallin Oaks’ story about how his mother presided after the death of his father), which means it cannot be tied to some exclusively masculine trait. Women “nurture,” but again, the meaning of this is less than clear—and the whole thing is complicated by the language of equal partners. While heterosexual couples must figure out how to pull an “equal partners” rabbit out of a “preside” hat, Taylor notes that homosexual partners have the reverse problem: “in homosexual relationships, the question of who presides is much more important than the fact that there is an equal partnership.”

In trying to sort out this topic, I have wondered whether it might be useful to bring in relational theology. One of the most prominent shifts of theological thinking in the last half-century is the move from a substance ontology to a relational one, meaning that the self does not first exist as an autonomous entity which then enters into relationships, but is inherently relational from the beginning. In traditional Christian theology, this has been closely tied to the trinitarian nature of God. If God is constitutively relational, goes the argument, then humans, as imago dei, are also constitutively relational. The image of God, in other words, is not found in an autonomous will or intellect, but in the relational orientation of human beings. This is an important background, I think, to any discussion of sexuality. For Mormons, a key question is this: in talking about eternal heterosexual marriage, do we see eternal gender, or eternal relationality, as primary? In other words, is the relationship something secondary which is constructed by two eternally opposite-gendered beings—or is it something primary which happens to get expressed in sexually differentiated beings? If the former is true, one cannot talk coherently about an eternal same-sex marriage, because a marital relationship is contingent on the gender of those involved; but if the latter, there is no clear reason why inherent relationality could not be expressed in same-sex pairings.

Theologian Stanley Grenz makes an argument that Mormons might find particularly interesting. He looks at possible connections between two elements of the Genesis creation narratives: first, humans as created in the image of God, and second, humans created as “sexually differentiated and hence relational creatures.”¹ But while Mormons cite this as evidence of a sexually differentiated God, Grenz goes in a different direction: This does not imply some kind of divine sexuality, he says—rather, “in the creation of humans as sexually differentiated we see the character of human existence as something which “entails a fundamental incompleteness or, stated positively, an innate yearning for completeness.”² This produces a drive for bonding, and it is on this basic dynamic of bonding that community is based. Salvation, then, has to do with completeness—a completeness we cannot achieve on our own. It is something we attain through relationships of difference.

The question at stake in this particular discussion is whether such completeness can only be found in heterosexual relationships. The gender complementarians would likely argue yes, that male and female complement each other in a way that two persons of the same sex cannot do. There is perhaps an appealing tidiness about this model. But in the messiness of everyday life, it is a difficult claim to verify. There is enough variety within the sexes that it is not difficult to see how two men or two women might also bring very different strengths to a relationship.³ Any relationship, be it same-sex or opposite-sex, is going to pose the challenge of negotiating similarity and difference. The only way I can see to make the case that opposite-sex couples are somehow qualitatively different from same-sex ones is to propose that men and women are qualitatively different—an assertion which causes far more problems than it solves.⁴ And appeals to innate gender differences are dicey, given that such differences frequently turn out to be so mysterious and ineffable that no one can articulate what they are. (I am not arguing that such differences might not exist; I am simply questioning whether an appeal to their existence is in itself sufficient rationale for privileging opposite-sex relationships.) In the Garden of Eden, one might argue that the important point is not the sexual differentiation of Adam and Eve, but the statement that it is not good for [a human being] to be alone. Even perhaps (!) a gay human being.

I also wonder about our relationships to each other in different phases of existence. I am struck by their fluidity. In the premortal life, as the children of God (however you interpret that), we are all in some sense spirit siblings. But here on earth those relationships get re-formed—we who used to be siblings now become spouses and parents and children, and we do not seem overly perturbed that our relationships have rearranged themselves in this way. I think this lends weight to the idea that relationality itself is more crucial than the particular form it takes in any given sphere of existence.

In re-reading various church statements on the topic of same-sex marriage, I have been interested to see how much of it is along the lines of, “but what about the children?” But in LDS teachings, while procreation and child-rearing are crucial, relationships themselves are seen as salvific—intriguingly, having children is not a requirement for exaltation. And even if it were, Taylor has made a strong case that procreation in the eternities may well be very different from mortal procreation, and that the obligation to raise children in a righteous way is not contingent on procreative ability. In addition, I would note, same-sex couples can decide to assign roles as a way to divide labor (much as opposite-sex couples do), usually consist of two people with a clear gender identity, and will inevitably require those in them to grapple with difference. What, then, is it that heterosexual couples have, theologically speaking, that homosexual ones lack? I am still having a hard time articulating an answer, at least in part because I am still trying to pin down precisely what aspects of relationships are salvific, and whether this is tied to gender.

On a somewhat tangential note, I am also interested in the sources upon which church leaders draw in discussing this subject. Notably, unlike in many other Christian settings, scriptures from Leviticus and Paul rarely come into play. This does not surprise me, given that Mormons do not seem to feel particularly bound to either source. Instead, from what I can see, church leaders cite the creation of Adam and Eve, the historical tradition of heterosexual marriage, the Proclamation on the Family, and contemporary social science. The PotF has always struck me as a surprisingly weak argument against gay marriage, which is not even explicitly addressed in the document; there are several steps between “gender is eternal” and “gay marriage is wrong” (especially once you differentiate between gender identity and sexual orientation, a distinction that has unfortunately been blurred in many LDS writings)—and the statement that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God can be read as just that, as opposed to a condemnation of any other kind of marriage. The same holds true, I think, of the Genesis account. Contemporary social science seems like an odd place to go (especially given the existence of those social scientists who are finding no difference between children raised by opposite-sex and same-sex parents). And history and tradition are not insurmountable obstacles to a church which believes in continuing revelation. I am not disputing that the church currently has a strong stance on the subject, but I do wonder whether it is as ironclad as it often seems to appear.

In any case, I have only mentioned some of the questions raised by Taylor’s thought-provoking article. If you haven’t yet, you should totally go read it.

[mrmandias]

Petrey used to be Mormon, if memory serves.

[Buckeye]

If Petrey is not a member then he surely has done his research. Regardless of how one approaches the article, it is clear the author has a deep knowledge of LDS scripture and doctrine. Its not a fly by night piece.

For my part, I found the article very enlightening. One of the more important scholarly articles I've read in a long time.

[sethpayne]

Don't have a clue.

https://twitter.com/TaylorPetrey

The way he phrases a comment in one of his blogs, I would say not.

http://www.patheos.c...ism-ridiculous/

Looks like he is UU:

My sermon title today! pic.twitter.com/Tp6ZybUm

— Taylor G. Petrey (@TaylorPetrey)

March 25, 2012

Taylor is a very active Latter-day Saint and a great guy. I've worked with him since 2007 organizing "Faith and Knowledge" conferences for LDS graduate students in religious studies.

http://www.faithandknowledge.org/

[Calm]

So the sermon of the day was just a reference to someone else's sermon he agreed with? (I get the 'academic tone' of not using "we mormons" in his comments on patheos)

Edited July 18, 2012 by calmoriah

[mfbukowski]

Taylor is a very active Latter-day Saint and a great guy. I've worked with him since 2007 organizing "Faith and Knowledge" conferences for LDS graduate students in religious studies.

http://www.faithandknowledge.org/

Very interesting stuff- but it seems like not much is going on presently?

And is Taylor mostly interested in gay issues? That appears to be the implication here. I know his name but cannot place him at the moment.

[sethpayne]

Very interesting stuff- but it seems like not much is going on presently?

And is Taylor mostly interested in gay issues? That appears to be the implication here. I know his name but cannot place him at the moment.

I'm not on the organizing committee for the next conference but will be (marginally) involved. Should be coming up in Feb 2013.

When we set out on this adventure back in 2007 we had no idea where it would go. The last 3 conferences have been fantastic. LoaP, David B, Matt Bowman, Mark Wright, Carl Cranney, Sheila Taylor, Melissa Proctor, John-Charles Duffy .... the list goes on. I am, without any doubt, the dumbest person in the room at the F&K conferences.

We've had some great guests as well:

Richard Bushman

Terryl Givens

Kathleen Flake

Jan Shipps

Grant Hardy

The conferences have been a great mix of spirituality and academic discussion. In 2011 I though the panel of non-LDS scholars studying Mormon issues was incredibly fascinating.

The conferences will still be run under the auspices of the Mormon Scholars Foundation but Taylor, Ariel, and I have passed the torch on to current LDS grad students.

Taylor is actually a NT scholar and a darn good one. I think he is very interested in the role of gender in LDS theology but his expertise is in biblical studies and early Christianity.

Another interesting article from Taylor:

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news-events/harvard-divinity-bulletin/articles/an-uncomfortable-mormon

[mfbukowski]

I recommend this article- as a starter- for anyone who has not read Dewey in this context:

But for over two thousand years the weight of the most influential and authoritatively orthodox tradition of thought has been thrown into the opposite scale. It has been devoted to the problem of a purely cognitive certification (perhaps by revelation, perhaps by intuition, perhaps by reason) of the antecedent immutable reality of truth, beauty and goodness. As against such a doctrine, the conclusions of natural science constitute the materials of a serious problem. The appeal has been made to the Court of Knowledge and the verdict has been adverse. There are two rival systems that must have their respective claims adjusted. The crisis in contemporary culture, the confusions and conflicts in it, arise from a division of authority. Scientific inquiry seems to tell one thing, and traditional beliefs about ends and ideals that have authority over conduct tell us something quite different. The problem of reconciliation arises and persists for one reason only. As long as the notions persist that knowledge is a disclosure of reality, of reality prior to and independent of knowing, and that knowing is independent of a purpose to control the quality of experienced objects, the failure of natural science to disclose significant values in its objects will come as a shock. Those seriously concerned with the validity and authority of value will have a problem on their hands. As long as the notion persists that values are authentic and valid only on condition that they are properties of Being independent of human action, as long as it is supposed that their right to regulate action is dependent upon their being independent of action, so long there will be needed schemes to prove that values are, in spite of the findings of science, genuine and known qualifications of reality in itself. For men will not easily surrender all regulative guidance in action. If they are forbidden to find standards in the course of experience they will seek them somewhere else, if not in revelation, then in the deliverance of a reason that is above experience.

This then is the fundamental issue for present philosophy. Is the doctrine justified that knowledge is valid in the degree in which it is a revelation of antecedent existences or Being? Is the doctrine justified that regulative ends and purposes have validity only when they can be shown to be properties belonging to things, whether as existences or as essences, apart from human action? It is proposed to make another start. Desires, affections, preferences, needs and interests at least exist in human experience; they are characteristics of it. Knowledge about nature also exists. What does this knowledge imply and entail with respect to the guidance of our emotional and volitional life? How shall the latter lay hold of what is known in order to make it of service?

These latter questions do not seem to many thinkers to have the dignity that is attached to the traditional problems of philosophy. They are proximate questions, not ultimate. They do not concern Being and Knowledge "in themselves' and at large, but the state of existence at specified times and places and the state of affection, plans and purposes under concrete circumstances. They are not concerned with framing a general theory of reality, knowledge and value once for all, but with finding how authentic beliefs about existence as they currently exist can operate fruitfully and efficaciously in connection with the practical problems that are urgent in actual life.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/dewey.htm

In other words, religion and morality are not about abstract questions of "being" which cannot be resolved, but are about practical problems of how we act and what gives our life meaning.

Truly we can be absolutely certain about what gives our life meaning, and that is the sense in which we can "know" the church is true. It is not about facts, it is about what ideas give us spiritual direction and what ideas we believe God has manifested to us.

In other words, it is about testimony

[mfbukowski]

I'm not on the organizing committee for the next conference but will be (marginally) involved. Should be coming up in Feb 2013.

When we set out on this adventure back in 2007 we had no idea where it would go. The last 3 conferences have been fantastic. LoaP, David B, Matt Bowman, Mark Wright, Carl Cranney, Sheila Taylor, Melissa Proctor, John-Charles Duffy .... the list goes on. I am, without any doubt, the dumbest person in the room at the F&K conferences.

We've had some great guests as well:

Richard Bushman

Terryl Givens

Kathleen Flake

Jan Shipps

Grant Hardy

The conferences have been a great mix of spirituality and academic discussion. In 2011 I though the panel of non-LDS scholars studying Mormon issues was incredibly fascinating.

The conferences will still be run under the auspices of the Mormon Scholars Foundation but Taylor, Ariel, and I have passed the torch on to current LDS grad students.

Taylor is actually a NT scholar and a darn good one. I think he is very interested in the role of gender in LDS theology but his expertise is in biblical studies and early Christianity.

Another interesting article from Taylor:

http://www.hds.harva...fortable-mormon

Thanks.

Sounds like a group well-worth keeping tabs on.

[mapman]

Well, I enjoyed the article. I don't know that it really has anything to do with New Order Mormons, though. I don't know what Reform Mormons are supposed to be (are they like Reform Jews?). I've heard neo-Orthodox used as referring to Bruce R. McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith types, so I'm not sure what you mean by that either. Perhaps you should explain why these people and this essay are so scary because I don't see it (my opinion is that labels are usually problematic and encourage people to demonize each other). Petrey might be exploring ideas that aren't part of what is orthodox these days, but that only makes him an enemy of dogmatists, not the church. One of the main tenants of the gospel (and the whole reason why the church exists at all) is that we should seek for revelation that changes our worldview.

For everyone who is concerned about "New Order Mormons", I think this is an interesting discussion to read: http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2012/07/the-threat-of-new-order-mormons/

Edited July 18, 2012 by mapman

[mfbukowski]

Seth

Again- for all I know you have read and assimilated all this, but if you have not, I will post this as well- it is from Dewey, A Common Faith- and is actually from a short summary of this work- it is about the only way I could figure out to get this online

Rather, the word "religious", according to Dewey, is an adjective which describes a particular quality or aspect of experience. This quality or aspect of experience is represented in essence by a change of attitudes which composes and harmonizes "...the various elements of our being such that, in spite of changes in the conditions that surround us, these conditions are also arranged, settled, in relation to us."(p. 16) Thus, experience which produces this harmony is essentially religious in nature. That this quality of experience can result from participation in or association with an institutionalized religion, Dewey does not deny. What he does deny is that it must issue exclusively from this source. Experiences such as the aesthetic, scientific, moral, political; experiences such as companionship and friendship, he says, may all be charged with "religious" potentiality.

Dewey also points out the fallacy in logic of those religionists who claim to prove the existence of the object of their religions empirically (e.g., God) by interpreting religious experience in terms of a particular religion (i.e., these religionists infer that the objects of their religion -- a personal god, for example -- is responsible for their experience). In refutation of this contention, Dewey says:

In reality, the only thing that can be said to be 'proved' is the existence of some complex of conditions that have operated to affect an adjustment in life, an orientation, that brings with it a sense of security and peace. The particular interpretation given to this complex of conditions is not inherent in the experience itself. It is derived from the culture with which a particular person has been imbued.... The emotional deposit connected with prior teaching floods the whole situation.(p. 13)

Since religious experience is so commonly associated exclusively with particular religions, Dewey points out that there are many people who, because they find it impossible to accept the intellectual and moral implications of established religions, "...are not even aware of attitudes in themselves that if they came to fruition would be genuinely religious." He maintains, therefore, that a wider realization of the differences in meaning between "religion" and "religious" would operate to emancipate religious experience from the supernatural encumbrances which at present envelope and constrict it. In the light of this realization, says Dewey,

The idea of invisible powers would take on the meaning of all conditions of nature and human association that support and deepen the sense of values which carry one through periods of darkness and despair to such an extent that they lose their usual depressive character.(p. 14) Religious experience, thus, would be more universally enjoyed and profited from by man than it is at present.

Given the emancipation of religious experience from religions per se says Dewey, a new basis for faith emerges. Instead of a faith founded upon ideals guaranteed to exist by supernatural authority, there would be faith in ideals apprehended by the imagination as being intrinsically valuable possibilities or ends inherent in the natural relationship existing between man and his environment. This latter type of faith, says Dewey, is moral faith, and, as such, it represents "The authority of an ideal over choice and conduct..., not of a fact, or a truth guaranteed to the intellect, not of the status of the one who propounds the truth." (p. 21) The faith in ideal possibilities inherent in man's relations with man and with the rest of nature proposed by Dewey would take cognizance of the dynamism present in nature. It would repudiate the idea that the ideals to which it is dedicated are supernaturally pre-established in the framework of things. It would embody an insistence upon the necessity and "...upon the capacity of mankind to strive to direct natural and social forces to humane ends."(p. 24) It would not rely upon the assertions of absolutistic credos that ideal ends are supernaturally fixed in a universal scheme of things. This faith, says Dewey, would be characterized by a natural piety that would ...rest upon a just sense of nature as the whole of which we are parts that are marked by intelligence and purpose, having the capacity to strive by their aid to bring conditions into greater consonance with what is humanly desirable. (p. 25) Dewey goes on to emphasize that faith in ideal ends on the proposed basis is faith in ideal ends rooted practically in existing conditions. In this connection he says:

What I have been criticizing is the identification of the ideal with a particular Being, especially when the identification makes necessary the conclusion that this being is outside of Nature, and what I have tried to show is that the ideal itself has its roots in natural conditions; it emerges when the imagination idealizes existence by laying hold of the possibilities offered to thought and action. There are values, goods, actually realized upon a natural basis—the goods of human association, of art and knowledge. The idealizing imagination seizes upon the most precious things found in the climacteric moments of experience and projects them. We need no external criterion and guarantee for their goodness. They are had, they exist as good, and out of them we frame our ideal ends.

www.rationalists.org/resources/downloads/common_faith.doc

The bottom line is that Dewey never conceived that God could be seen as a part of nature- and that is precisely the main point we need to understand here.

He was arguing against a transcendent being - in other words, the Neoplatonic god of Plato and Aristotle.

Taking these words in an LDS context turns everything on its head, where God is himself a human, an immanent rather than transcendent being who is indeed our Father. Suddenly religion becomes about humanism, and Pragmatic truth is in fact the only kind of truth knowable.

Those who do not understand this will see it as apostate, but of course it is far from that. In fact, I think it is the only orthodox position one can take to make intellectual sense of Mormonism and the truths it teaches.

Furthermore, understanding that humans express themselves culturally can be seen as an explanation of the differences experienced in revelation- we all see revelation and religious experience in terms of our own cultural values and language. Of course as Mormons we "know" we are right- and we are! And so are others.

We all express revelation in the only way we can- in a cultural context, and that does not make differing cultures "wrong".

I think that God is the perfect teacher and he leads and directs us from where we are to where he wants us to be, and as a perfect teacher he uses all the tools at his disposal, and that includes teaching us culturally.

After we pass on, we will all discover the path that will take us further. And I think that the LDS faith is probably the only Christian faith that teaches that.

Edited July 19, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Pahoran]

Just now "new" is "New Order Mormonism?"

I have wondered about this question, and I think I may have found the answer:

Revelation 3:

14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;

15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Evidently the phenomenon of people being "neither cold nor hot" isn't all that new at all.

Regards,

Pahoran