Originally Posted by Sleeping in EQ
I'm not going to nit pick you here, AA, but the fact is that the mullahs are trying to downplay what's going on (Move along, there's nothing to see here!"), because they are the ones being taken to the woodshed. We could disagree about what counts as "reform" and "revival" until the cows come home, but the fact is there have been several periods of attempted course correction in the Church. Brigham Young in the 1850s, Joseph F. Smith in the wake of the Smoot hearings, and even David O. McKay.
The hagiographic wall, a wall that CES types and mullahs have been trying to build for decades is showing alot of cracks (they've been trying to build it all along, really, but they've been more sucessful since CES has gone fundy--I know, not every CES employee is that way, but those who aren't are often embattled), When Mormons respond to a Church-sponsored survey and say that they want their Church to level with them in terms of its history, the seasons are changing (in the Ecclesiastes 3 sense). When the Church actually asks for feedback about the PBS documentary from its members, the seasons are changing. When a Church publication discusses scholarly responses to various versions of the First Vision, something that it has very much downplayed in recent years (there has been the occasional Ensign article on a touch historical or doctrinal topic, and especially during the Hoffmann stuff, but nothing like the old Improvement Era days. For the most part manuals, conference talks and so on have been 'correlated'), the seasons are changing. When a document comes through official Church channels declaring a few core doctrines, affirming heterodoxy and Christian life in the face of the plurality of perspectives throughout it's history, the seasons are changing (note: I don't think the Church's heterodoxy ever really changed, but the mullahs have had their way in official publications in recent years). When members talk about the "web Church" and the "Official Church" while my stake can't get 10 people to show up for an Institute class, the seasons are changing. When my HT family stops me in the foyer to ask me about polyandry and half a dozen people gather around to listen to my answer, the seasons are changing. When Elder Packer backs off of his famous CES talk that slammed intellectuals on national television, the seasons are changing...
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