Morley wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by your suggestion that the current climate for intellectuals might be better, or might be worse, than that of Roberts' time. How would it be better? How would it be worse?
I think there are some paradoxes. In my view, the heyday of Mormon thinkers was the Roberts/Widtsoe/Sjodahl era, but that era was also heavily dominated by Joseph Fielding Smith fundamentalism. So, it was both a "good" climate, and a "bad" climate for thinkers. Mostly good, overall, I think, because while there were some headwinds, they were influential and productive. The decades went forth to Sperry, Nibley, and non-believing thinkers as well (e.g., McMurrin, et. al.).
Today, by contrast, Mormon intellectuals are institutionally much more unshackeled, I think. JFS-style fundamentalism holds much less sway. Unless they create a great deal of trouble for the Church and remain defiant when corrected, they can openly write and even teach things like multiple Isaiah authorship and de-mythologizing of the New Testament (e.g., Bokovoy and Wayment). Jana Riess is free to do her activities and publish her studies with her commentary without jeopardy to her membership (for now. It remains to be seen whether she will cross the Rubicon at some point). In contrast to the "old school" era, though, modern believing intellectuals have very little influence on the rank-and-file active Mormons. So, while there is probably more freedom to range further from orthodoxy and correlation, it has an inversely reduced influence on most active Mormons.
Does that help? That's where I'm coming from in thinking that it is a complicated question as to whether the past or the present is a better or worse climate for Mormon intellectuals.
