Restoration: God's Call To The 21st Century

Key Takeaways

Under Consideration — to be added.

Interconnections

Under Consideration — to be added.

Highlights

• The church’s main contribution to the twenty-first-century world is as a museum. You go there to be transported briefly into the remote past, not to be guided in your present or future course.
• A new generation struggled to maintain interest in the old stories and old ways because we weren’t even asking, let alone answering, their current questions.
• In our people’s history, there have been moments when the most expedient thing to do was to retreat into the fortress and raise the drawbridge. Having been hounded by mobs, our pioneer forebears thought they could outrun the world. The world caught up. Then they figured they could sequester themselves in their mountain valleys. The world intruded. If physical separation wasn’t possible, they surmised, then spiritual separation might work. But the internet has rendered the fortress’s walls permeable and fragile. In our twenty-first century information age, there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. “The world,” as poet William Wordsworth put it, “is too much with us.”
• As Elder Patrick Kearon asked, “Do we fear the world more than we shape it? Do we let our anxieties prevent us from making a difference? Do we spend more time hiding from society’s flaws than fixing its problems?” In answer to these searching questions, Elder Kearon concluded, “Society is not something that just happens to us; it is something we help shape. The main thing is to engage, dialogue, bridge, and interact with people of all sorts. Unless we participate, we lose our ability to both influence the world and learn from it.”
• How can this be if the kingdom of God is destined to fill the whole earth? As always, Jesus points the way. The metaphors he used to describe his disciples, both ancient and modern, were light, yeast, and salt.10 Particles of light are so small they are invisible, but they overpower the darkness. Other ingredients are far more substantial, but it’s the tiny amount of yeast that causes a lump of dough to rise. And only a pinch of salt transforms a dish from bland to savory.
• We are not called to trade our fortress church for a religious empire. Rather, we are called to be light, yeast, and salt—to overpower darkness, elevate the whole, and transform the world.
• The Spirit is breathing new life into Christ’s church. You can feel it. It’s time to lower the drawbridge, open the shutters, and let the air in. It’s time to take the precious gifts that God has entrusted us with, and that we have been carefully stewarding for two centuries, and use them to bless the world. It’s time to let the Restoration do its work not just for the church but for the world.
• But here’s the funny thing. As far as I’ve been able to discover, Joseph Smith never talked about a “restored church.” Not once. I’ve scoured both the scriptures he produced and publications in The Joseph Smith Papers, which aims to gather and publish every known surviving Joseph Smith document. Except in the historical introductions, which are written by modern scholars and are not part of the original sources, I have not found a single use of the phrases “restored church” or “restoration of the church.”
• Of course, that could be chalked up to idiosyncratic phrasing. What about the “restored gospel”? It turns out that the phrase “restored gospel,” while considerably more popular than “restored church,” also became popular only in the twentieth century. “Restored gospel” appears a mere three times in General Conference addresses prior to 1900.
• The prophet Joseph Smith wrote and spoke on multiple occasions about the “restoration of the priesthood,” mostly in Nauvoo in connection with the developing theology and ordinances of the temple.
• These scriptural passages about the restoration of Israel and the Lamanites are among the least quoted and discussed among contemporary Latter-day Saints. That wasn’t always the case. In fact, the first generation of Saints couldn’t stop talking about Israel. One historian found that the restoration of Israel was the number-one theme discussed in the Saints’ published literature from 1830 to 1846.18
• Despite our feasting on the Book of Mormon in unprecedented ways, it seems that over the past century, the restoration of Israel—once a staple of the Latter-day Saint theological diet—got bottled up in a dusty jar at the back of the top shelf.
• God’s great restoration project seeks to unite all generations of the human family from the beginning to the present and onward all the way to the end of time.
• The great Christian author C. S. Lewis beautifully wrote that “next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
• The restoration will remain ongoing and incomplete so long as there are any poor or “any manner of -ites” among us.37 Zion has not been achieved. Followers of Christ therefore have a special calling to the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blind, the bruised—both our sisters and brothers immediately in our midst as well as those who find themselves in dire circumstances anywhere in the world.
• In this view, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the functional equivalent of a contemporary staging of a Shakespeare play in a carefully and lovingly restored version of the Globe Theater. The performance features modern actors and sets, of course, but we also have the comfort of knowing that it’s the same old classic Bard as performed in the “original” setting. We can call this perspective the “Restoration-as-reprise.”
• Perhaps we have focused so much on the primitivist elements of the Restoration—those aspects that hark back to an earlier age—that we have overlooked some of its prophetic power for today. That is to say, what if the Restoration isn’t meant to get us to look backward as much as it is to get us to look forward? We don’t have to deny the essential connection to previous dispensations—this is not a matter of either-or. But something remarkable can happen when we emphasize the “new” in the “new and everlasting covenant,” when we believe that God isn’t just singing old standards, but continuously composing new melodies and laying down new beats in order to capture the ears and hearts of new generations.
• In particular, he believed that God’s work of restoration in the last days entailed a return to an earlier state of purity that had subsequently been corrupted. Pratt popularized these views in his 1837 tract A Voice of Warning, which, other than the Book of Mormon, was arguably the most influential and widely read Latter-day Saint publication of the entire nineteenth century.
• The Restoration is not about re-entering or re-creating a sacred past, as many primitivists sought to do, but rather summoning the past in the service of a holy present. Joseph sought less to return to Eden than to create an Eden for a new age.
• Certainly, we build on the insights and achievements of previous generations, but we believe God has more to say—not only because changing circumstances require new responses, but because an eternal God still has much more to teach us. The Restoration is ongoing because God has unfinished business with the world.
• We worship a personal God who never sleeps, never rests, never takes a day off in pursuing his “work and glory” of enticing his children to share his life with him.13 The Restoration is the ongoing reconciliation between God and humanity in modern times.
• By itself, ongoing revelation is insufficient to fuel an ongoing Restoration—or at least not if we understand revelation simply to be the act of God speaking to his children. As any parent knows, talking to your kids is one thing, but it’s another thing entirely for them to listen and understand. The gift of ongoing revelation must therefore be paired with the gift of discernment. We have to listen to God’s voice and discern what that voice is telling us today.
• None of this is to relegate primitivism to the dustbin of history (or theology). At its best, primitivism serves as a prophetic check on the cult of the new. Recall Paul’s disgust at the Athenians who “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.”
• The ongoing Restoration is the “new” in the “new and everlasting covenant.” God calls us to co-create with him, to co-restore with him, until working together we behold a new heaven and a new earth.
• Latter-day Saint scholar Philip Barlow suggests that “only true and living” can be read not only as a divine endorsement but also as a nineteenth-century term of endearment, the way that Joseph Smith wrote in a letter to his wife Emma that he was her “one true and living friend on Earth.”2 However we understand the phrase “only true and living church”—used only once in all of scripture—my student’s question should force us to think. What does it mean for Latter-day Saints to make such strong truth claims in a world where we are a tiny minority of the global population? If truth can be found in Buddhism or Islam or secularism, why bother being a faithful Latter-day Saint?
• Can divine love, favor, and revelation really be concentrated on just two-tenths of one percent of God’s children? My head and heart both say no. The scriptures and prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do too.
• When people assert the truth of any particular religion, their statements typically fall into one of two camps: exclusivism and relativism.
• So that’s the exclusivist camp: it recognizes only one legitimate path to one absolute truth. The other camp is relativism, which allows for many ways. This view was captured by Huston Smith, a well-known scholar of religion: It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge. At base, in the foothills of theology, ritual, and organizational structure, the religions are distinct. Differences in culture, history, geography, and collective temperament all make for diverse starting points. Far from being deplorable, this is good; it adds richness to the totality of the human venture… . But beyond these differences, the same goal beckons.
• Each camp has its attractive points. Exclusivism offers certainty, while relativism promises tolerance and goodwill. But each has its shortcomings as well. Relativism negates the real differences between religions.7 For instance, as much as I respect and have learned from Catholicism, there is a reason (actually, many reasons) I choose to be a Latter-day Saint. Exclusivism, on the other hand, might lead me to a position of contempt or condescending pity toward Catholics or others whose faith I don’t share.
• I often hear Latter-day Saints decry the demerits of relativism, with good reason. But we should also be keenly aware of the dangers of religious exclusivism, knowing what it’s like to be on the wrong end of it.
• We should therefore be deeply concerned by survey data suggesting that Utah is the second-most biased state in America against atheists and other nonreligious residents.10 Latter-day Saints, of all people, should create communities where no one is hurt or made afraid because of what they do or don’t believe.
• In 1978, the First Presidency issued an official statement regarding “God’s love for all mankind.” President Spencer W. Kimball and his counselors taught that “the great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.” While affirming that “the gospel of Jesus Christ, restored to his Church in our day,” is the best way to achieve “a mortal life of happiness and a fullness of joy forever,” the First Presidency testified that “God has given and will give to all people sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation, either in this life or in the life to come.”
• This view gives us a third camp beyond exclusivism and relativism: a position I call particularism. Just as individuals are blessed with particular spiritual gifts, so too are groups. These gifts are given to particular communities to bless all of God’s children. The differences among the many gifts are intentional and real, and should be not only tolerated but celebrated.
• Throughout the scriptures, God often speaks of his work as occurring within a vineyard. For the sake of analogy, let’s allow God to diversify his holdings and envision him instead as the owner of a large farm with a variety of different crops. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been called to tend one particular plot of that sprawling farm, the whole of which is far too large for any one group to cultivate. Other communities—different religions and cultures—have in turn been given stewardship over other plots. All the different sections of the farm are interdependent; if one suffers from blight or lack of tending, it can negatively affect the surrounding plots.
• There are some crops—faith, hope, love, prayer, service, family, care for the poor, the sanctity of life, religious freedom—that are planted in the commons at the center of the farm, open to anyone to both nurture and harvest. But the cultivation of many other particular crops seems to have been divvied out to different groups—not to hoard but to steward and then share. From my perspective, evangelical Christians have expertly cultivated the grace section; Buddhists have cultivated meditation; Jains have cultivated nonviolence; and so forth. Secular communities such as government and science also have their important stewardships.
• So what “crops” have Latter-day Saints been uniquely assigned to cultivate, protect from harm, harvest, and distribute to all? I suggest there are five of them:16 1. Restoration scripture (the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) 2. Modern prophets and apostles beginning with Joseph Smith 3. Priesthood, as exercised by the Aaronic and Melchizedek orders and by all endowed women and men in the temple 4. The “new and everlasting covenant,” consisting of the covenants and ordinances that culminate in the ceremonies of the temple 5. A distinctive view of God’s plan of salvation, based on the human potential to become like God and on family-based exaltation
• Body parts can’t afford to be exclusivist or relativist—no single part has a fundamentally “true” function while the others are all false, nor can the parts pretend that they all do essentially the same thing.
• The nuclear family can become an idol that blinds and alienates as much as it enlightens and binds. Our Heavenly Parents’ plan of salvation was never focused on preserving your family so much as reconciling and exalting theirs.
• As James Baldwin wrote, “the past is all that makes the present coherent.”
• Whenever students take one of my history classes, I want them to learn two basic principles. First, history is the study of change over time—so get comfortable with the fact that the way things are now is not the way they have always been nor will be. Second, as the novelist L. P. Hartley wrote, “the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
• Ninety-six percent of current operating temples were dedicated during President Nelson’s lifetime, most of those since his ordination as an apostle in 1984.7
• Change means growth and development, but it also may entail leaving behind certain things. For us to move forward into the Restoration’s third century, it’s important for us to assess whether there are any teachings, practices, or habits from its first two centuries that are weighing us down and will hinder our progress.
• The Restoration does not exist independently from culture, so it’s inevitable and even good that the Restoration takes on many aspects of the society in which it finds itself. In fact, the only way the gospel can find its way into people’s hearts is if they find it relevant to their everyday lives.
• If we want to receive the full message that God is revealing at the top of Sinai, then we need to tear down the graven images we have forged down below in the likeness of some of the modern world’s false gods: racism, patriarchy, nationalism, cultural colonialism, inequality, and fundamentalism.
• What I do know is that if our conversations, practices, or policies begin from any premise other than women’s and men’s fundamental “alikeness” in the sight of God, we are more often influenced by patriarchal cultural baggage than we are by the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
• Here’s a thought experiment I do with my students. Answer honestly: If necessary, are you willing to die for your country? If necessary, are you willing to die for your religion? If necessary, are you willing to kill for your country? If necessary, are you willing to kill for your religion?
• The author of this thought experiment, the Christian theologian William Cavanaugh, suggests that most people’s willingness to kill for their country but not for their religion reveals the way the nation-state has set itself up as an absolute authority that functionally operates as a rival, if not a replacement, for God in modern times. As Cavanaugh concludes, “at least among American Christians, the nation-state—[Thomas] Hobbes’s ‘mortal god’—is subject to far more absolutist fervor than religion.”24 By this measure, at least, the nation-state is an idol—or, in President Spencer W. Kimball’s words, a “false god.”
• Is it possible to be “subject to” secular governmental authorities without uncritically worshipping at Caesar’s altar?
• The Restoration does not call us to withdraw from political society, but neither does it consider the nation holy. National identities dissolve in the kingdom of God, a fact both aspired to and largely achieved in our temples.
• Political engagement is good, but if our partisanship compromises our Christianity, we need to reconsider which bags we’re carrying and for whom.
• Jesus was not a capitalist; he cared nothing about the accumulation of material wealth. The same held true for his most immediate disciples in both Jerusalem and the promised land. The Bible and Book of Mormon unitedly attest that the people who most directly experienced the resurrected Lord created a new type of community in which “they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor.”
• In 1875, the church’s First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles denounced the American capitalist system because it created “the wonderful growth of wealth in the hands of a comparatively few individuals.”
• Simply put, we picked up America’s allergy to talking about inequality and began to skim over scriptural mandates that had once been central to the Restoration.
• In a classic case of what the scholar René Girard called “mimetic rivalry,” we began to imitate our rivals, adopting their own tools, techniques, and blueprints in order to build our own supposedly impregnable fortress church.
• The good news is that we can streamline for a new century with confidence, knowing that the Restoration’s foundations are strong and its basic structures are sound. The ongoing Restoration is a constantly new creation, alive and breathing and developing. It’s informed by, but not captive to, the past.
• For much of our history, our general modes of operation vis-àvis “the world” were risk aversion, retreat, and retrenchment, with limited forays out of the fortress church in order to gain converts, make money, play sports or music, or get elected.
• Brigham Young, who was hardly wishy-washy about his religion, insisted that Latter-day Saints should seek all the truth they could find, regardless of where it came from: It is now our duty and calling to gather up every item of truth … whether the infidels have it[,] the universalists … the Church of Rome … the Methodists … or Quakers or Shakers or the Presbyterians or the Baptists … every one of them have more or less truth … yes to the sciences of the day[,] yes to the philosophy in every nation kindred tongue and people … no matter how many errors they have they have a great many truths.
• With the Spirit as our guide, the world is our school. “Things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad”—it’s all part of the Restoration.
• Here is the crucial point we have too often missed: Zion is not only for the Saints. Zion is for the world. Latter-day Saints have a crucial role in envisioning and building Zion, yes, but establishing God’s beloved community is never an exercise in tribalism.
• The great sociologist Max Weber observed that one of the characteristics of modern society is “disenchantment.” In place of traditional societies that are “enchanted” with supernatural beings and cosmic portent, modern societies have organized themselves around rational, secular, scientific, and bureaucratic norms. As we’ve noted, the Restoration is fully at home in that rational, secular, scientific world. And when a religion canonizes meeting minutes and press releases in its scriptures, as we have, you know it’s comfortable with modern bureaucratic forms.
• The eleventh Article of Faith states it succinctly: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all [people] the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.” Our “allowance” for others should be as active as our “claim” for ourselves.
• Refugees and immigrants. “Their story is our story, not that many years ago.”
• But “their story is our story.” This could be the kind of signature issue upon which we take a stand, organize our considerable resources in partnership with others, and say “never again.”
• Elder Holland reminds us that the work of ending hunger is the work of the Restoration. The work of alleviating poverty is the work of the Restoration. The work of education is the work of the Restoration. The work of preventing violence and building peace is the work of the Restoration. The work of fighting for human dignity, racial justice, and the elimination of any form of prejudice is the work of the Restoration.
• Religion is at its most potent when it “challenges the present, and reimagines the future.”
• Tara Isabella Burton, “Christianity Gets Weird,” New York Times, 8 May 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-christians.html.
• You’re idol worshippers, plain and simple. Money, sex, drugs, McMansions, stock portfolios, technology, ideologies, politics, “likes.” You’ve created a golden calf out of your own ego. You’ve become captives to your own desires.
• That’s what sin is—the act and state of alienating yourself from me and my love.