http://www.sltrib.com/home/2229999-156/new-mormon-mission-how-to-teach#disqus_thread

Reader Edwin Firmage, Jr.:

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In Mormonism as it now stands, or in any Mormonism I can foresee, such efforts are doomed. They're doomed for the simple reason that it's not a question of yesterday's fairy tales versus today's new and improved, and APPROVED, version of history. Today's history, Mormon or academic, is a narrative, and it too will change. And it is, in any event, different as told by different observers. The essential problem is therefore that at any given moment, there are lots of competing versions of history to choose from, competing world views in fact. And NO ONE in the 21st century--no one with a brain and an Internet connection--is going to let a bunch of reactionary, privileged, old, white, American males tell them what to believe.

This is the essential existential challenge and opportunity of modernity: everyone must choose what he or she will believe. Religion is, and has been for a long time now, a matter of choice, not diktat. This goes not only for matters of history, theology, and ideology, but also for every other aspect of life. Modernity is about diversity and choice, whether we're talking about interpreting the Joseph Smith story, gay marriage, premarital sex, masturbation, or what have you. But that is not how Mormonism, the world's most top-down religion, works, and that is why Mormonism will probably not survive as more than a historical curiosity.

Ironically, the very people who might help Mormonism make the transition to modernity are the ones the church cannot tolerate, the Kate Kellys and John Dehlins, who, inexplicably, choose to identify as Mormon even as they are run out of the church on a rail.
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>> Religion is, and has been for a long time now,
>> a matter of choice, not diktat.

But if both sides of the equation, the governors and the governed, agree to keep this equation 'sacred' then the existence of Facts is superfluous. The governed won't change just because of the internet, or because the average age of the creepy White guys is 80.

The church will continue to suffer an 'erosion' of membership but will likely continue to have a 'presence' in Zion. And in the bulk of the "Christian" less educated world.

People can be fooled into liking it...