the heterodoxy that was always already there

First off, Ash Sanders wrote a pretty tremendous essay over at Project Deseret that I recommend you read. This post is not so much a response as a descendant of a common ancestor--the direction that I take with what I feel is a shared inspiration. So read it, compare, comment, share, contemplate, marinate, respond, translate, etc.

I'll start with a fantasy I have concerning the Church. I see the history of the Church as a linear progression. The endpoint that I want to see involves more spiritual autonomy for individual units in the Church--families, wards, stakes, individuals. This is not to say that we buck the rule of stewardship, but instead become more proactive in our local spiritual pursuits. Currently, we take all our cues from the First Presidency. It's not a bad thing, but I look forward to a day when we take more responsibility for our spiritual development and don't wait for something to be written in the official Handbook of Instructions before we do it. Think of Moses' statement "Would that all the LORD's people were prophets."

And I think it will come to be a logistical necessity. A worldwide Church cannot micromanage the affairs of every individual stake across the globe and still effectively meet each individual need. I can see the First Presidency becoming more and more general, leaving the specific decisions to more localized leadership. Maybe we adopted Israelites are too spiritually stunted to have this kind of pluralism work for us, but when we get serious about taking the Gospel to the House of Israel, I dream of how much the principles of the Church can take off and flourish in unprecedented ways in the hands of those for whom it was originally meant.

To be clear, I'm not talking about matters of doctrine or receiving revelation for those above your sphere of influence. I'm talking about matters of policy, the nuts and bolts of Church attendance, such as how many hours and when church meetings are, what kinds of musical numbers are appropriate, who home teachers and visiting teachers visit, the kinds and formats of sunday school lessons, the venue for church meetings (out in nature?? It was good enough for the restoration of the Priesthood and early temple ordinances). These are just examples of Church policy that have been determined largely through tradition and the initiative of interested individuals. Realizing that such things and more are simply policy and not necessarily the result of direct revelation opens us up to imagine more possibilities for worship.

But at the same time, we get nervous about playing with such things. We aren't accustomed to making these decisions for ourselves. Again, these are matters of policy, but we blur the lines between doctrine and policy to an extreme degree.

The funny thing is, Mormons are so so comfortable in complexity and ambiguity, the kind of complexity and ambiguity that would accompany a pluralistic, global Church. We just aren't comfortable articulating it.

Think about it. What is hard and fast in our doctrine? The commandments. Except for when Nephi is told to break one... Obedience, then. Except when Adam and Eve are heroes precisely for their disobedience... Revelation. Except for when the prophets speak as people (or make mistakes *cough*priesthood ban*cough*)... The scriptures. Except for the mistranslations of the Bible...

It is in this spirit of complexity that I believe Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon is "the most correct book of any on Earth" instead of testifying of its absolute "Truth." Or when Moroni writes that "whatsoever thing is good is just and true" (Moroni 10:6) or that we "shall know that these things are true; for it persuadeth men to do good" (Ether 4:11); there is a pragmatist flavor to those verses. The more I think about the exceptions, loopholes, and contradictions, the more I begin to wonder, What exactly is this Church about? (Btw, I've always been impressed by how many Biblical puzzles Joseph Smith solved without turning the Church into the Bible Solution Church. Think about baptism for the dead, for instance; churches have been founded on much less).

Throughout the history of the LDS Church, emphasis on doctrine--not to mention doctrines and ceremonies themselves--has shifted rather comfortably. The social justice bent of the early Saints is all but gone (but coming back!). For all the supposed rigidity of Mormons, how do we explain this dynamism, this collective spiritual sojourn? What exactly do we have for a mooring?

What I'm getting at is that the soil is there for this kind of spiritual flowering. We've been comfortable all along with twists, turns, and radical departures. Now we only need to realize that the Spirit, that thing that's led us along this whole time, is present with every worthy (by "worthy" I mean worthy, not perfect) Saint.

I'm beginning to rethink my ideas on intellectualism in the Church. Maybe it's the average folk in the Church who are the nimble-minded ones, and it's we intellectuals who want so badly to cling to dogmas. Like the protagonist of Pi, we're obsessed with finding the one pattern that will unlock all the secrets. But it doesn't exist, and it's the faithful, churchgoing Saints who are agile enough to handle that, hence their impatient scorn for those who want to distill the Church's expansive doctrine to a single formula.

But still, why are we so uncomfortable in dealing with ambiguity? I hope that it's a cultural leftover, and the rising, postmodern generation in the Church will be able to put sustaining faith in a prophet who makes mistakes, will be able to glean truth from a temple ceremony of dubious origins, will be able to cling to what is excellent and forgo any pretense of absolute perfection. I think of Dan Jones' response to a trick played on him by Joseph Smith--"I'd rather have a drunken prophet than no prophet at all." We've taken the drunk prophet every time; my hope is that in the next few decades we'll stop telling ourselves he wasn't drunk.