“Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration”

For many years now, my wife and I have belonged to a monthly reading group, the rarely used but genuine formal title of which is The Gadianton Polysophical Marching and Chowder Society.  I led our discussion this past Sunday evening, on Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration, by Robert A. Rees.  My wife and I chose the book for this month’s discussion.  Why?  Because, for one thing, it’s thought-provoking and very discussable.  Bob Rees is definitely located to the left of me, both politically and theologically, but he is a faithful, devoted, and thoughtful Latter-day Saint, and I find his writing a valuable challenge to my points of view.

I share a few general passages from it.  Perhaps, at some point in the future, I’ll come back to specific issues that he raises.  Here, first, is a powerful statement from the Prophet Joseph Smith:

“Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God.” (cited at 10)

I’m not sure what to make of the statement that Bob Rees cites from Harold Bloom.  I wonder what Bloom expected, and I wonder whether a Jewish agnostic is well positioned to fully evaluate the fruits of the Restoration.  Still, his perspective is interesting and worthwhile. and I think that his critique can serve as a goad, an impetus for good things.  And I’ve long loved the challenging quotation from B. H. Roberts:

According to Harold Bloom, former distinguished professor of religion and humanities at New York and Yale Universities, Joseph Smith “was an authentic religious genius and surpassed all Americans, before or since, in the possession and expression of the religion-making imagination. . . . There had to be an immense power of the myth-making imagination at work to sustain so astonishing an innovation” as the Restoration. . . .

According to Bloom, Smith did not live to see the full flowering of his visionary imagination. What is more, Bloom does not believe Smith’s modern and contemporary followers have completely fulfilled or continued the promise and possibilities of the Prophet’s religion-making imagination. No less an authority than B. H. Roberts came to the same conclusion at the end of the nineteenth century. Roberts distinguished between what he calls “disciples pure and simple . . . whose whole intellectual life . . . consists of their partisanship . . . and mere repetition” of religious formulas and those disciples who “bring to the new teaching, from the first, their own personal contribution . . . [and] help lead the thought that they accept to a truer expression. They force it beyond its earlier and cruder stages of development.” Note Roberts’s use of the word “force,” by which, in this context, I think he intended “[ to] bring about by unusual effort.”  Roberts added (and this is the part of his essay most relevant to reimagining the Restoration) that Mormonism “calls for thoughtful [and I believe he also intended imaginative] disciples who will not be content with merely repeating some of its truths, but will develop its truths; and enlarge . . . [Mormonism] by that development.” Then he states this astonishing idea: “Not half—not one-hundredth part—not a thousandth part of that which Joseph Smith revealed to the Church has yet been unfolded, either to the Church or to the world.”

Pause a minute to consider the profound implications of such a statement. Most Latter-day Saints would readily agree that the truths revealed to the Prophet have yet to be unfolded to the world but would likely have difficulty agreeing with Roberts that they have not been unfolded in their fullness to the Church. I contend that his statement should excite our imaginations rather than provoke our doubts, because they encourage our active participation in that very unfolding. Roberts continues, “The work of the expounder has scarcely begun. The Prophet planted by teaching the germ-truths of the great dispensation of the fullness of times. The watering and the weeding [are] going on, and God is giving the increase, and will give it more abundantly in the future as more intelligent [and, one might add, more imaginative] discipleship shall obtain.” Roberts adds, God “will give it more abundantly in the future.” 8 To some extent our present is a partial fulfillment of that “more abundant future,” but we are also charged with extending the Prophet’s vision of the Restoration into an even grander, more abundant future. What Roberts emphasizes, I believe, is that Mormonism’s future requires not a passive waiting for God to reveal those things yet to be revealed, but an active, energetic, imaginative seeking and working for their unfolding. He concludes,

“The disciples of “Mormonism” [which includes contemporary Latter-day Saints], growing discontented with the necessarily primitive methods which have hitherto prevailed in sustaining the doctrine, will yet take profounder and broader views of the great doctrines committed to the Church; and, departing from mere repetition, will cast them in new formulas; cooperating in the works of the Spirit, until they help to give to the truths received a more forceful expression and carry it beyond the earlier and cruder stages of its development.” (16-18)

“I have always been struck,” writes Brother Rees, “by the fact that the Lord refers to His church as both “true and living” (216).

While I believe all that God has revealed, I am not quite sure that I understand what he has revealed, and the fact that he has promised further revelation is to me a challenge to keep an open mind and be prepared to follow wherever my search for truth may lead. (215)

On page 202, he cites two more of my favorite statements from the Prophet Joseph:

“Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.” That the Prophet intended the positive qualities of the word “liberal” I listed above seems confirmed by what he taught a couple months earlier: “The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs.”

Finally, I share a comment from Brother Rees that resonates powerfully with my own attitude and point of view:

My heart breaks anew with each saint who leaves because I feel that each takes something vital with them and that anyone’s leaving diminishes us as a community. I experience each departure of which I am aware as a loss, and I have a strong impulse to persuade all who leave to return. To that end, what I am calling for is a more expansive moral and religious imagination, one that more fully opens our hearts and minds to the profound treasures of the Restoration and then employs those treasures in blessing our own people as well as others in the wide world. (217)

I began this morning with a very painful visit to a new dermatologist — my former dermatologist having recently retired, aided powerfully toward his retirement, no doubt, by the considerable income that he derived from his work on me.  The pain is a legacy of my misspent California childhood and youth, which often had me on the beach or in the desert or high in the mountains or, especially, in and around a swimming pool — places that would have been very foreign to my Scandinavian ancestors.

So, of course, after paying some of the dues for my Southern California years this morning, I am, this evening, back in Southern California.  And forbidden to get into a swimming pool for the next week.

Posted from Newport Beach, California