Posted by:
enigma
(
)
Date: May 18, 2011 11:03AM
Just to clarify the positions of the folks in my wife’s family. The Brother-in-Law is more of a social progressive and a fiscal conservative in many respects. He’s magnanimously accepting of a variety of different tolerant positions that would put him at odds with mainline Mormons and fundamentalists. He’s far too much of an individualist to ever start propagating his own dogma. He’s more of a Mormon-slanted philosopher. It’s hard to explain but you’d understand if you sat down and talked to him. He is bent on pursuing truth and will accept scientific discovery along with his pursuit of increased religious understanding. He has little to say about any manifestation of the organizational/institutional church and focuses more on the philosophical underpinnings. As for my parents-in-law, they have no inclinations of going fundie. In all cases involving my wife’s family, they feel that the corporation has replaced the church and that there is no concern about nourishing spirituality any more. Instead, they see the focus of the church as more bent on control and profitability – both antithetical to their collective philosophical understanding of the roots of Mormonism – hence, their feeling that the church has gone astray. They choose to stay in the church ‘for now’ because they feel, as members, they can have some influence in helping others to open their eyes to the controlling and abusive nature of the modern church and encourage people to focus more on Christian attributes instead. They’ve got the brain power to back it up so they can be very persuasive in that regard.
It’s a different kind of erosion to be sure, but it’s erosion nonetheless. These folks will no longer just tow the party line. They will disagree and argue. They will no longer sustain the leaders, they will no longer hold temple recommends in some cases. They will tithe according to their conscience in other cases. It’s true that the church is not ‘losing’ a member so to speak. But the seeds of grassroots change thanks mostly to the information age are opening people’s eyes and giving them the courage to define their own spirituality according to the dictates of their own conscience. Of course the church will adapt and survive – all social organisms are bent on that pursuit. But the church will be forced to evolve. I hope that this trend will continue to eat away at the church’s power over people’s lives.