George Miller wrote:All the while Hamblin and others want Joseph Smith's revelation to restore ancient customs and practices. Then the modern Saints look at their own revelations and instead see how their Deity touched mind assembles fact and information from their contemporary environment. Expecting the distorted picture they have been presented with, they have no other choice but to assume their own lessons from heaven are inferior.
Unless I am mistaken, you edited a bit while I was composing my response. I wanted to add something to this. One of the most valuable insights of Mormonism and Freemasonry, at least in my view, is that there is something enduring about the human experience that should be celebrated and commemorated regularly, not just in word, but also in symbol and ritual action. Maybe this is what Terryl Givens would have liked to say about the importance of dancing in Mormon culture. In this sense he would be absolutely correct.
If you contrast that concept with what I feel is the unhealthy overemphasis on the new. This might seem like a complete contradiction of what you have said, but stick with me a second. What I am referring to when I speak of the new is a teleological view of progress that is completely cut off from the yang of circular patterns of time. There must be a balance between the two views.
The question is this, however: what ought to be repeated? Mormonism is ancient in its structural devotion to the ancient pattern of celebrating this human meaning-making as rooted in creation and orientation in a cosmic schema that is teleological on one level, and cyclical on another. It is not ancient because Joseph Smith saw the priests of ancient Israel performing the Mormon endowment dressed as LDS initiates dress now. Nibley, I believe, had a view that combined both of these senses of the ancient. His successors seem to me to place too much emphasis on the latter. They look for squares and compasses, certain arm gestures, etc., in ancient art and say, "Voila! The Endowment!"
Some of this confusion may result from Smith's own assumptions and worldview. They need not define how LDS people conceptualize the antiquity of Mormonism forever. I think this modern view of the ancient is very detrimental for Mormons because it sets up false expectations that the discourse of larger society will rip to shreds, as, in fact, it is. I know it sounds like I am playing semantic games here, but my background is in Roman Studies. The Romans loved to talk about their religious conservatism, and how they were bringing back ancient practices that were moribund, etc. Really, they were using the cultural mechanisms in place at the time to innovate in a particular way, about particular cultural objects. This kind of view of "ancient" within a religious context is more workable in Mormonism than the modernist view that struggles to dominate Mormon minds today.