Coggins7 wrote:Quinn notes in one of the Mormon Hierarchy books that around the 1950s, during the administration of David O. McKay, the Church began to really "promote" the LDS leader as a "prophet"---I.e., Church publications began to refer to him as the "Prophet" in print (rather than "President"). Perhaps most intriguing, as Quinn states, images are sometimes altered/adjusted to emphasize this effect. Quinn references a book on Pres. Hinckley in which GBH and his wife have glowing, halo-like aureoles of light around their heads in the cover photo.
Here we go. Scratch, the resident Snowball of Mormondiscussions.com trots out his attack Doberman, Mr. Quinn, the only serious scholar he's ever read cover to cover, with more of Quinn's subtle scholarly torturing of evidence to produce novel interpretations that can be attributed to his "impeccable' research. You can see Joseph referred to as a prophet (as he has always been understood in the Church) in sources from the 19th century onward, and he was always considered so by the Saints. Slight alterations in linguistic usage are precisely the kinds of things Quinn picks up on and blows into a discovery that he, breathlessly, transmits to his readers as some sea change in LDS understanding or doctrine.
This is the same charade Quinn plays in Same Sex Dynamics, a work the historical "evidence" for which he wove almost completely out of whole fabric and whose inferential excesses belie his thesis' inherent lack of substance.
A couple of thoughts here.
1) Has Coggins bothered yet to even read any of Quinn's work? (I am going to go out on a limb and venture a guess that, in fact, he has not. Probably Coggins has not bothered to read anything that doesn't fall under the purview of frontpagemag.com)
2) What, exactly, does this post even mean? I had originally made a point about the resurgence of promotion of the LDS president as a "prophet" during the administration of David O. McKay. Of course Joseph Smith had, and continues to be, revered as a prophet, seer, and revelator. My point (and Quinn's) is that this treatment of LDS leaders had waned since the time of Joseph Smith, but saw a revival during DOM's presidency.