gramps wrote:You are a Mormon hippie?
Can such a thing actually exist?
Apparently you've never spent very much time at the Mormon Dialogue and Discussion Board. The fundamental problem at FAIR, as things now stand, however, isn't the presence of any "Mormon hippies," but that is now the home of a small group of (rather intolerant) "neo-orthodox" intellectuals for whom it has become, less an organization dedicated to apologetics (defending the church and its teachings from critics and articulating the doctrines and teachings of the church in an intellectually serious, scholarly, and faithful manner) and more a place around which liberal, avant garde LDS intellectuals can discuss and promote their own personal perspectives regarding LDS doctrine, church historical issues, concerns such as the origin and meaning of the KEP, and positions on the intersection of the gospel/church and politics (from an almost uniformly secularist influenced, leftish standpoint).
Much of what goes on there isn't about "apologetics" per se, but about apologetics within the scope of the articulation and defense of their own private doctrinal, philosophical, and political positions and interpretations of doctrine/scripture. One example is the development of what appears to be a small coalition of LDS intellectuals dedicated (against Nibley, Royal Skousen, Will Schryver, and other sundry apologists (and against the Church itself)) around the proposition that the Book of Abraham is the production of Joseph Smith's imagination, centered in the 19th century, and that the KEP is important to that production, taking, essentially, the position of both the EV and secular critics of the Church for several decades, but modifying this by claiming (following Hutchinson on the Book of Mormon) that it can, nonetheless, still be understood in some sense as "inspired fiction."
Other themes that have appeared on the message board over the last few years among members who present themselves, overall, as friendly to the Church, if not "faithful" members, and which the vast majority of "chapel Mormons" (I use the term for the sake of taxonomic brevity) generally, would not recognize as ideas held by "faithful" or "believing" LDS, is the United-Order-is-socialism meme, fixations on Heavenly Mother (as seen here as well), an anti-intelligent design animus and strident allegiance to strict Darwinian reductionism (odd, it would seem, given Church doctrine here and the ease with which a synthesis between the requirement of God's creative activity and evolutionary development per se can be understood), a preoccupation (and a rather narrow, academically arcane one) with placing any and all scriptural works claimed to have ancient origins within a 19th century setting, an equally strident (and mod protected) animus against individualism, free market economics, conservative precepts on social issues, and the coincidence of LDS teachings and conservative political/social concepts generally; an ongoing project aimed at synthesizing postmodern ideas and the church (one of Juliann's pet projects, but something that interests others as well), and a strong sensitivity to any criticism of feminism and its general view of the relations between men and woman.
But by far the worst corruption that has seeped into FAIR and its message board of late is the sheepishness, reticence, and unwillingness of its moderators and intellectual leadership to act like adults and talk seriously about present racial issues across the culture broadly speaking, and within the church specifically (and Bro. Smith has been right at the center of that retreat from actual apologetics (defending the Church) for quite sometime). The intellectual intolerance of the FAIR mods and leadership here, in respecting long held and mainstream conservative/libertarian views on racial issues and their negotiation has become all but visceral, and can only be understood as a capitulation to the fashionable political correctness that dominates the academic world from which these people have come and have spent much of their lives.
Some clearly came out of modern academic unscathed, if battle scarred. Others, however, appear, like David Bokovoy, to have drunk deeply from the well of fashionable academic leftism and come away, like the Alexandrian-trained church doctors of old, with a greater fealty and concern for the ideologies and philosophies of their generation and the academic milieu in which they are embedded, than with the teachings and principles of the gospel
as they have been revealed and taught by the Brethren and with an overwhelming desire to create a syncretic fusion of the church with certain of the reigning politically correct ideas and beliefs of their generation (while at the same time marginalizing and labeling as "reactionary" and intellectually primitive/uneducated anyone who dares oppose them and actually do apologetics - defend the Church).
This project of reaching an accommodation with secular modernity and the "political correctness" that functions as its regnant philosophical/political/social orthodoxy, is well represented on the MDDB, and indeed defines the concept of "New Order," "reform" or "neo-orthodox" Mormonism and its primary concerns.
