An avid history buff, I’ve been fascinated with American religion for quite some time, particularly with the Latter Day Saints.
Anyone vaguely familiar with the Latter-Day Saints knows that there are several iterations of of this faith, including the Utah-based “Rocky Mountain Saints,” the descendants of those intrepid pioneers who accompanied Brigham Young to Utah following founding prophet Joseph Smith’s tragic death, and the “Prairie Saints,” the somewhat more circumspect followers who stayed behind in Missouri and surrounding American Plains states.
The Prairie Saints, a comparatively moderate bunch, gravitated toward Smith’s widow, Emma. With the exception of the Book of Mormon, Emma appeared to regard most of her late husband’s revelations with a degree of skepticism, which, in turn, seems to have been passed along to the Smiths’ sons, grandsons and great grandsons.
Virtually from the beginning, the Prairie church that coalesced around Emma and her eldest son, Joseph Smith, III, hewed a more moderate line. As the church prospered and became better established, the Independence, Missouri-based leadership began sending some of its aspiring church leaders to the nearby St. Paul’s School of Theology, a Methodist institution, for formal training.
In time, these Prairie Saint seminary graduates began applying the textual critical methods they had acquired in the course of their training to their own sacred text, the Book of Mormon. In the years that followed, the insights garnered by these scholars no longer could be ignored by the church leadership. Today, the interpretation of sacred Mormon scripture is left to the discretion of individual believers.
To underscore their interest in becoming a mainstream Christian faith, the church, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, changed its name to Community of Christ.
A similar trend is unfolding among the Rocky Mountain Saints, albeit in somewhat attenuated form.
Much like their counterparts in the Midwest, Mountain Saints, more affluent and better educated than ever before in their history, are reading more and asking questions too.
The rising levels of doubt have prompted one LDS member to create a Web site, StayLDS.com, to persuade members stay in spite of these misgivings. Their message is aimed at the growing numbers of cradle LDS members who, while questioning many of the core beliefs of the faith, choose to remain in the church for cultural or familial ties or a combination of both.
Yet, I’d be grossly distorting the nature of modern American religious faith if I confined my remarks only to the various branches of the LDS.
American Christianity, most especially Protestantism, has always been deeply personalized – a process that has accelerated with the last 40 years.
As one who reads a lot of religious history and theology for pleasure, I’ve been deeply impressed by this. Much of it, I think, stems from the antinomian nature of American religious faith – a trait unmistakably reflected in the life and work of Joseph Smith, who had been a Methodist exhorter before the series of experiences leading up to his break with traditional Christianity.
In American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation, Harold Bloom wrote about how this peculiarly American trait was reflected in the soul competency of Baptist theologian E.Y. Mullins.
Bereft of the creeds and ecclesiology associated with the magisterial Protestant tradition, Baptist theology amounts to an unmediated relationship between the believer and his or her God.
Back to that word again, soul competency: Americans, whether consciously or unconsciously, have always considered it their God-given right to define faith on their own terms.
The post-modern trends sifting the ranks of American congregations, whatever the creed, have only worked to intensify those passions.
To an increasing degree pimping one’s faith – tailoring it to conform to one’s personal beliefs or cultural inclinations – is considered a inalienable American right.
Needless to say, this creates an especially challenging social and cultural context for a political philosophy that has always stressed the importance of rooted and permanent institutions – the reason why I have stressed more than once in this forum that conservatism, at least, as its been historically been understood, is alien to the American experience.
Musings of an American Red Tory 