Some recent related threads here make me curious about this question.

I ran across this interesting older book (published in 1957), "The Mormons", an ambitious sociological study of the group by scholar Thomas O'Dea (who at the time was with the University of Utah, though IIRC, he ended up as a sort of religious specialist-sociologist at UC Santa Barbara). I haven't read the entire book yet but I was immediately drawn to the final section of the book, "Sources of Strain and Conflict", particularly the portion called "The Mormon Encounter with Modern Secular Thought". O'Dea's assertion is that the mormon organization, as a religion, has a unusually problematic task in untethering themselves from religious literalism and fundamentalism (and therefore, increasingly have a problem retaining educated/more intellectually inclined members....or vice versa, such members may stay, but struggle unhappily as members).

From "The Mormons":

"The church was based upon the idea of modern revelation, upon the belief in the restoration in our time of what had been lost through the sinfulness and apostasy of man. Arising at a time of great confusion, the new church offered to it's followers clarification on the basis of a new revelation, thereby resolving, on what seemed to be the highest authority, many of the important issues about which other denominations could only quote an ambiguous scripture. It was an age when most believing Christians in America still held to a literal acceptance of the Bible as the content and rule of faith. A new revelation that seemed consistent with older beliefs and arguments based thereon had great cogency and appeal to the early converts who came from such backgrounds. The explicitness of the new Mormon revelation addressed itself to the very points about which contemporary religious thinking puzzled without conclusion. From a new revelation so explicit; from a modern scripture so timely, whose translation was a divine work and therefore uncorrupted; from scriptures given by God himself to chosen people in the latter days, a literal reading of the word would certainly offer solution to any important religious problems."

"Therefore, despite Joseph Smith's recognition that the Bible need not necessarily be taken literally in all cases, the modern scriptures were certainly to be so understood. Literalism became and has largely remained characteristic of the Mormon approach to the text of modern revelation. The Bible, re copied for generations, translated over centuries into various languages, may be unclear, may even be seriously corrupted, but the scriptures presented to the world in our own time by a man who talked with God, translated by a modern prophet through divine inspiration and miraculous assistance-these scriptures must be literally true, or the very foundations of Mormon faith are threatened."

"Thus it was a very literalist kind of religion, on the whole, basing its claim to divinity and veracity upon the status of it's revelations and their literal meaning, that was placed in close relation to and communication with modern thought by the reincorporation of Mormondom into secular American life."

"Mormonism, as we have seen, was the child-the stepchild may be more accurate-of nineteenth century American Protestantism. It's early appeal lay in the fact that its restoration of divine revelation in the latter days answered the problems about which the older denominations could only quarrel. Thus the church must hold to its latter-day revelations literally or lose the theological and charismatic basis of it's legitimacy. Because of the great conviction on the part of Mormons that they are close to a generation especially chosen by God and that their immediate ancestors talked with God-a belief that is supplemented in our day by the supposed presence of miraculous works and prophecies-there has never arisen any distinction in Mormon thinking between the natural and the historical elements of it's beliefs, on the one hand, and the supernatural and transcendent elements, on the other. With any distinction between absolute or relative aspects ruled out, it has been impossible for a middle position to emerge between literalism and liberalism. There is actually no room in Mormonism for philosophy as distinct from theology."

"Furthermore, the immediacy and explicitness of Mormon revelation make that theology a very literalist one. This immediacy and explicitness and the doctrine that there is no fundamental difference between the spiritual and the material or between the temporal and the eternal leave little legitimate room in Mormon thinking for what some Mormon leaders call "the philosophies of men." These latter are seen as vain and invalid, presuming to answer problems for which official Mormonism has divinely inspired and explicit answers. The origin of the earth, the destiny of man here below as well as in eternity, the temporal significance of contemporary events, the basic attitudes towards governmental forms, even the origin of American Indians-all these are answered so explicitly in Mormon scripture and with such immediacy to a divine source that there is little place for a religiously oriented, though not divinely inspired, philosophy. Mormonism can have only a theology, for it's theology monopolizes the field that philosophy would seek to develop."

"As this theology is literal and fundamentalist, the liberal can choose only between submission and personal disquietude or apostasy and suffering the guilt of deserting the tradition in which he has been reared and to which he feels great attachment."

"If it were not for the fact that Mormonism arose in literal Protestantism and took this attitude into it's own outlook, we wonder if there would not be room for reinterpretation..."

"There has been no attempt by Mormon leaders to separate a central core of dogma from the latter day revelation, because of two factors. First, it has been held equally important because of its immediateness to a divine source and the explicitness of the statement of modern Mormon revelation and because the spirit of [nineteenth century] Protestant literalness has been carried over into Mormon thinking. Second, the basic organization of the church, involving as it does the principle of lay leadership, has not produced a specialized core of theologians who would be professionally prepared to grapple with the problems involved."

-Thomas O'Dea, The Mormons, 1957

Although this is an old book, isn't the issue raised here still relevant?

In contrast, normal world Christianity (excluding the irrational creationists and the fundamentalists, I know there are millions of them) has developed a religious philosophy as distinct from a literalist theology. In other words, if you regard the writing in the Bible as allegory, there is still a meaningful universalist philosophy there to be distilled from the pre-scientific writings/world view. Even note, you don't need to be a member of any specific group to be a X'tian---it's more an outlook, a collection of philosophy. Christians can argue (and anyone may disagree with this, but it is a least a rational argument) that the emergence of X'ity was a progressive movement towards intelligence in the context of contemporaneous religious systems which taught that purity and worthiness were contingent upon purchasing animals for sacrifice, ritual bathing, belonging to a certain group, or one's wealth/status within a hierarchical religious structure. Christianity taught that what was more meaningful was true personal transformation, ie., remorse for doing wrong, learning from mistakes, and an honest desire to do better. It could be seen as early psychology (in an era before psychology existed as a concept of course), personal autonomy winning out over superstition and hierarchical authority. There are other examples, there is more to Christian philosophy, but the point is, X'ty untethered from literalism can still be palatable as a cultural tradition to even a modern, educated, intellectual mind. Most take it non-literally as symbolism of universal moral/psychological concepts. Forgiveness, gratitude, equality, etc.

If you remove the superstition/literalism from Mormonism, though, what do you have? If you distill it to it's essence? And keeping in mind that it is supposed to be an improvement over the basic philosophy of Christianity, correct?

Polygamy is an improvement over monogamy, since plural marriage is the new and everlasting covenant? White men have supremacy over darker skinned men and women? A worship of capitalism/prosperity gospel? You can't use "families are forever", because that is not an improvement, most religions including X'ity already see that as obvious...we are all one, etc.

I mean, I am seriously asking. Is there a legitimate foundational concept or concepts that TSCC could legitimately reinvent themselves around as a religious philosophy?

I think the young generation of Mormons actually do not relate to literalism in theology. Very few of the teenage to thirty-somethings among TBM's take the scriptures to be literal. This is very perplexing to me (a fifty-something member) since I do not think it is possible in any way to uncouple the LDS scriptures from literalism. Too many things have to be literally true for the LDS doctrine to retain any solidity at all.

I recently wrote this email to my TBM daughter:

"I have noticed a move away from literalism in the church, where it doesn't seem to matter whether there was a global flood, or a real tower of Babel, or an exodus of Israelites from Egypt, or a priesthood curse on the seed of Cain, or a protected continent for the Jaredites or Lehites/Mulekites to populate, or a host of other scripturally claimed events. You get the picture."

"I believe that faith requires literalism, simply in the sense that some things have to be "literally" true (or factual or real) in order for faith to have any foundation at all. God must exist, but he (or she) does not have to be an exalted mortal, or male, or even possess any of the "Omni" powers we claim are essential to his character. Without literalism (a literal view of scripture), there can be no faith. The degree of literalism one needs to retain faith is the issue that makes faith problematic."

"The LDS belief system contains more literalist essential claims than any other religion. The tower of Babel must be real or the Jaredites make no sense; the flood must be global or the temporal existence of the earth (baptism by water with a future baptism by fire) makes no sense; the location of the Garden of Eden must be in Missouri; there could have been no death before Adam's fall; the dispensations of the earths existence must be constrained to seven thousand years; spirit is matter; gender is eternal; resurrection involves our actual body; and there are three degrees of glory in the afterlife. These are purely LDS literalist absolutes, without which we would have to discard significant portions of our scriptures."

"My thought about this is that even though faith requires literalist interpretations of at least some scripture, scriptural literalism is incompatible with actual reality (broader truth) in almost every respect, if not every single respect. What we know about the world by other means of knowing are inconsistent with what we know about the world by faithful interpretation of scripture. Literalism is both the core and the enemy of faith."

"I actually have no problem with a completely non-literalist view of faith. I think I can say that I find truth in the scriptures, but not truth about the universe. Non-literalism can embrace truth about human nature, or truth about moral considerations in scripture, but as soon as we lay claim to any literalist interpretation (a claim about the universe we live in), we have lost the value of what the scriptures offer. In this sense, the LDS faith is faced with the biggest challenge. LDS scriptures make more factual claims about the universe than any other religious doctrine."

"So, for the LDS family, moving away from literalism is like denying the faith that moves us. There is just too much there (in our Standard Works) to allow for non-literalism."

Her Response? Literalism is not part of faith and the scriptures are there to testify of truth, not declare history.

Therefore, I think that TSCC has pretty much already succeeded in untethering itself from literalism. It just doesn't seem to be a big deal to anyone whether the scripture accounts are actual accounts.

I don't get it.

I think we have to see this as psychological coping mechanism. Not meaning to cast aspersions on her.

As for Thomas O'Dea, he nailed it. The Mormon church is literalist by its very nature. However, the actual human beings involved in Mormonism who are intellectually sloppy will find workarounds that are satisfactory to them (not a very high bar).

Sure, I understand what happens at the individual member level. But I am talking about legitimate intellectual evolution informed by honest scholarship occurring at the leadership level.

There is a saying, "literalism leads to fundamentalism and fundamentalism leads to death." Death can be taken literally as in Mountain Meadows and 9/11 or non-literally as in death of faith or killing the soul. Either way, I think this applies to Mormonism--most members are leaning towards a much more fundamentalists mindset these days-- you only have to read those who comment on boards or Facebook to see where they are coming from--fundamentalism will align TSCC much more with the FLDS than with liberal Christianity! Thanks for sharing this thoughtful post 2+2=4!

Interesting that the author made such a distinction so long ago, before the Catholic church accepted evolution (thus indirectly calling the creation myth "allegory"), and before so much bible literalism had been tossed on the garbage heap of "modern" christianity.

I found your daughter's response more than a bit sad..."the scriptures are there to testify of truth not declare history."
She doesn't recognize (or want to?) that if the history they declare is false, there is no "truth" to be gleaned from the scripture. You can't extract "truth" from a pack of made-up lies.

While in a sense I'm glad that much of christianity is moving away from bible literalism, at the same time I see it as nothing but a temporary coping mechanism, a desperate attempt to maintain "faith" in the face of massive evidence showing what they have faith in to be without merit. The bible stories are false, they're made-up myths. Some were made up with the intent of making some "moral" point, some weren't -- in any case, they're false. Trying to extract "truth" from them seems rather pointless, unless you can't bear to give up what you've always believed to be true, even though you know it's not true.

Still, it IS more difficult for TSCC to do that. Either Joseph was visited by god & jesus or he wasn't. If he wasn't, then trying to rationalize some kind of "truth" out of his claims is pretty pointless -- unless you can't bear to give up what you've always believed to be true. :)

The author's distinction reflects the development of a religious philosophy as distinct from biblical literalism that has been ongoing in X'ity over the centuries. X'ity has evolved alongside science in western culture, their histories are interwoven. There is a conceptual religious philosophy in X'ity that can be a stand-alone, independent of literalism. The regressive, reactionary creationist and fundamentalist X'tian movements are new developments, new branch offs from X'ity over the last 200 years. The conditions for it were probably created by populist Protestantism. I suppose Mormonism could be seen as just another example of this phenomenon, but with it's own invented "ancient" text to be fundie about.

The religious pundits in the media who treat TSCC with such respect I see repeatedly saying that mormonism's problem is that they are a young religion, they just need time to evolve, as other ancient religions have evolved. I question this. The whole foundational gimmick that Smith, Rigdon, Cowdery & Co used was literalism, that was it's huge selling point/advantage at the beginning. As time goes on, the gimmick of literalism "we have a direct hotline to God!!" which was an early advantage turns into a major liability. I don't know that they can develop a unique religious philosophy as distinct from literalism. If they need to imply to the public that they do have a conceptual religious philosophy, they seem to just crib from X'ity. I don't see a clear path for legitimate, scholarly, honest evolution for this group.

> "The regressive, reactionary creationist and fundamentalist
> X'tian movements are new developments, new branch offs from
> X'ity over the last 200 years."

Well, I would certainly dispute that. That position ignores more than 1,000 years of christian history. Galileo, for example, wasn't tried for (and convicted of) heresy because he "offended" some developed, sophisticated christian "philosophy" -- it was because his assertions conflicted with a literal bible reading. The same is true for thousands of others persecuted by christians.

The modern fundamentalist, literalist movements are a *return* to what they think christianity was for most of its history (and what they think it should always be), not something new. While there have been non-literalists popping up now and then (as early as Aquinas, and perhaps before), they were the exception, not the rule.

Have you heard of this book: "The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood" by MacArthur Award geologist and professor of geomorphology at U Wash, David Montgomery. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about the history of geology as a scientific discipline. The book is about the dance and interplay between "science" and "religion", from before they even carried those names, up through the present day. It's also an interesting look back at how paradigms change, how progress in intellectual thought happens. Scientists and intellectuals can become overly attached to their old beloved, familiar paradigms in the face of new, conflicting, evidence too. Mormonism is never mentioned in the book, but it is actually really interesting to read parts of the book with the development of Mormonism in mind.

From the author's preface: "In looking into the origins of flood stories, and the story of Noah's Flood in particular, I thought I'd find the standard conflict between reason and faith. Instead, I found a much richer story of people struggling to explain the world--and our place in it. The initial development of the discipline of geology was premised on the Flood as fact, which naturally led to imaginative theories of how to interpret the story of Noah's Flood. Later, with evidence literally in their hands and beneath their feet, geologists began to influence theology, showing that a global flood fell short when tested against the rocks that make up our world. Along the way, scientists were as apt to be blinded by faith in conventional wisdom as Christians proved adept at reinterpreting biblical stories to account for scientific findings. The historical relationship between science and religion was far more fluid, far more cross-pollinating than I ever thought--or,was taught at Sunday school or in college."

There's a lot more to the book, I highly recommend it. Mostly it IS actually a criticism of the creationists and anti-intellectualism...but it's more than that.

Montgomery does write about Galileo in the book. And, sincerely, hope this isn't too obnoxious of me, but FWIW, here's one of the blurbs: "Spirited and compelling...reminding us that the relationship between religion and science is more complicated than, say, the overemphasized Galileo affair of the early 17th century." Michael Gordin, Wall St. Journal

Honestly, I understand what you're saying. It's the reason for the increasing secularism of the educated/thinking world. Which I think is healthy and for the most part inevitable and great. I myself have no belief in an omnipotent God, but I have no problem with normal world, mainstream, progressive X'ity. It is more a philosophy, as I have written, than anything else. I do think it's important to try to be fairly accurate about history, that is why I am engaging with you here. That is one of the main reasons I find the mormon organization so abhorrent, the willful deception.

And here is from the section on the development of modern fundamentalism creationism:
"We can trace the roots of modern creationism back to the nineteenth century, when geology emerged as a profession distinct from theology and natural philosophy. As geologists abandoned Noah's Flood as a central subject and moved on to other pursuits, Christianity splintered into those willing to accept geological findings and those who insisted on the reality of a global flood. The later conflict over evolution served to strengthen such differences. As mainstream Protestants and Catholics adapted biblical interpretation to accommodate geology, a new breed of American fundamentalists defended the reality of a world-destroying flood as central to their faith.

The Bible was one of the only traditional sources of authority that emerged from the American Revolution unscathed (despite the best efforts of Thomas Paine). The war fostered independence in multiple forms and encouraged the revolutionary conviction that everyone (except women and slaves) possessed both common and moral sense. American Protestants began rejecting traditional forms of authority, confident that their own vision would lead them closer to God. This common sense populism paved the way for the fundamentalism that, in turn, spawned modern creationism.

In the early nineteenth century, camp meetings and revivals brought organized religion along as westward migration took people far from the established churches of the eastern seaboard. One of the first, Kentucky's Cane ridge revival of 1801, was attended by thousands eager to hear populist preachers, gamble, and carouse--not necessarily in that order. The popularity of the weeklong meeting taught frontier preachers a winning strategy for spreading the gospel across America.

In contrast to Presbyterian denominations that disciplined ministers who participated in boisterous revivals, Methodists and Baptists used the rowdy meetings to swell their ranks. Employing charismatic preachers with little or no education who could relate to the masses heading west, these sects grew into the largest Protestant congregations by the close of the frontier.

Populist preachers who considered the common sense of ordinary men more reliable than opinions espoused by seminary-trained theologians and book-learned professors encouraged people to cast off the chains of religious authority and interpret the Bible for themselves. The most successful preachers--those whose flocks grew the fastest--adopted popular language and manners. When coupled with belief in the Bible as the sole source of religious authority, populism encouraged settling theological disputes in the court of public opinion where everyone was entitled to interpret the Bible for him- or herself. This produced an interpretive free-for-all in which discredited ideas could compete with reasonable ones.

Sectarianism flourished in America's religious marketplace. Splinter groups left mainstream denominations in disputes over doctrine, practice, and/or belief. Although the founders of these new denominations obviously disagreed on matters important to them, most shared the belief that the Bible was the only real authority for Christians and that it's meaning was laid out plainly. Scripture meant exactly what it said, even if they didn't agree on what it meant.

The advent of the American Civil War presented a theological crisis for American Christians. Both North and South used the Bible to either condemn or defend slavery. How could a plain-sense interpretation of scripture be infallible if one side had to be wrong? Such dilemmas only hardened divergent interpretations of the Bible.

Conservative Protestants began to forge a reactionary biblical literalism, based on biblical inerrancy. They believed that admitting even the slightest error in or sign of human influence on the sacred text would undermine the whole notion of Christian salvation. One need not look for deeper meanings because common sense tells us what the Bible means. Efforts to uphold literal, plain-sense, scriptural interpretations began to distance evangelicals from mainstream thought.

Fundamentalism arose among conservative Protestants who viewed liberal accommodation of modern ideas and values as a betrayal of the core doctrines they viewed as fundamental to their faith. Foremost among these was biblical inerrancy. In 1895, the founding fathers of fundamentalism declared this doctrine one of the "five points of fundamentalism" at the Niagara Bible Conference where they staked out their unnegotiable beliefs. Two decades later, the conservative Protestant academics who authored "The Fundamentals", a series of essays published between 1910 and 1915 that gave birth to fundamentalism, attacked critical historical and literary analysis that questioned biblical authority.

At first fundamentalists did not insist on strict biblical literalism. The Bible could not be wrong, but interpretations could adapt as needed to preserve biblical infallibility. The Bible could be read in different ways. The original fundamentalists juggled what to read figuratively and what to read literally in order to preserve biblical infallibility. Their approach was surprisingly flexible in comparison to their counterparts today. Most accepted an old Earth through either the day-age theory or the gap theory and were open to the idea that Noah's Flood may have been a local affair that wiped out humanity's roots.

By the 1920's, a loose coalition of militant Protestants began to characterize liberals as false Christians who had lost faith in traditional beliefs and doctrines. Claiming to defend the true faith, newly militant fundamentalists combined biblical inerrancy with biblical literalism. Their zeal to combat biblical criticism lay in the conviction that admitting the Bible had a history colored by human fallibility opened the door to doubting redemption through Christ. A literal reading founded on biblical inerrancy formed the levee fundamentalists built to save the Bible from the flood of modernism.

Fundamentalists became increasingly isolated as their efforts to stem the rising tide of liberal thought failed to sway mainstream denominations in the 1930's. They then focused on building their own network of churches and schools dedicated to teaching biblical infallibility. As fundamentalists began slipping into a self-contained world, the recycled arguments of flood geology seemed to provide fresh ammunition for the fight to ban teaching evolution in public schools--and it's heretical foundation in ancient Earth.

By the mid-twentieth century, conservatives militantly pushing literal biblical interpretation stopped interacting with geologists just as breakthroughs like the ability to use radioactive decay to directly date the age of rocks and fossils began to revolutionize the earth sciences."

Mormonism means nothing if it is not literally true. There is no way to redeem it as they are in too deep for too long claiming it is historical fact. It will one day collapse like a heap of garbage.

Agreed. They can't get away from the BoM, "revelations" from JS, other garbage from Joe about Adam & Eve in MO, etc... They can come clean, admit the BoM isn't True, just "true", whatever explanation they can come up with for that. Abandon the idea of exclusive authority, stupid temple rituals, etc... and try to rebrand, but NOBODY will give 10% of their income to a rebranded LDS social club.

I say they should distribute ownership shares to all members based on past financial contributions and set up an exchange where those shares can be traded. The "church" part of the corporation will eventually disappear as shares are sold to the board (15) and other interested investors, and it will be nothing but the for-profit ventures.

In spite of my flight from religion, I still believe the Bible story about the talking ass. All one has to do is watch GC to know that story could very well be true.

This was very interesting to read. Thanx for sharing. This is a question that goes to the heart of why I left mormonism in the first place. Being surrounded by relatively liberal mormons from the start I became quite liberal myself. And I noticed something that nobody around me seemed to notice: mormonism doesn't really allow such liberalism.

Take the age of the earth for example. Any school kid here in scandinavia will know early on that about 12000 years ago the ice started to recede and this melting process, lasting thousands of years, created a host of features still visible in the landscape. Often the local geography and geology is deeply interconnected not only with each other but with some kind of local patriotism aswell.

Now put mormonism in the mix. I know lots and lots of mormons that have no problems whatsoever with the last ice age as a historical fact. Neanderthal settlements from some earlier interglacial age and modern humans settling the land mere centuries after the ice is gone are taken as historical realities without the slightest regard for what it means for mormonism. And yet I seemed to be the only one that noticed that 'the prophet' always made a reference to the 6000-year old earth in every GC, and that the D&C explicitly states that the world hasn't been 'in temporal existence' more than 6000 years.

The liberal mormon explains that the garden of eden episode could account for millions of years and that all those prehistoric humans didn't have souls until 6000 years ago or whatever. But then we just get to the big contradiction, that death supposedly didn't exist on earth until 6000 years ago. But the fact that prehistoric dating methods largely rely on bones and fossils,that is, the remains from death makes the entire field of prehistoric archeology incompatible with mormonism. How can dead things from 8000 years ago exist if death didn't exist for another 2000 years? How could these hunter-gatherers hunt if they couldn't kill any animals? Why would they hunt if they were immortal anyway?

And without this death didn't exist doctrine the entire mormon scheme of fall and salvation in falls flat. Adam ate a fruit so that humanity got cursed with divine souls? Then following that logic Christ must have died so we could overcome having souls instead of overcoming mortality.

My main reason for leaving mormonism was the flood story. I could never believe in a global flood and on top of sounding unbelievable I also found the story lacking any kind of spiritual content. I tried the liberal mormon approach for many years, but in the end I found that no matter how I try, mormonism simply cannot be divorced from it's literalism. It's not merely half of the BoM that relies on it being literal history. It goes deeper than that. The supreme importance of baptism in mormonism hinges
on three things. One of them being that the earth itself had to be baptized. The other two that Jesus had to be baptized and the last point again that the symbolic death and ressurection of it reflects the historical death introduced by the fall and the ressurection introduced with the atonement.

As we now see the liberal mormon in order to stay liberal must abandon the very core of literal interpretation that keeps fundamental concepts and every detail of the 'Plan of salvation' together. In mormonism literalism is not, as in mainstream christianity, the 'meat' of it's doctrine. Literalism is the very skeleton and connective tissue of the faith. And it has always astonished me when mormons are so utterly oblivious to this. For example when prehistoric horses from 15000 years ago (that obviously died 15000 years ago) are cited to support the BoM, a book that attempts to support a creationist timeline where there couldn't exist any horses, atleast no dead horses, 15000 years ago.

Great post...and your summing up metaphor:

brefots Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


> In mormonism literalism is not, as in mainstream
> christianity, the 'meat' of it's doctrine.
> Literalism is the very skeleton and connective
> tissue of the faith.


Love it.

It, Hoffer's "The True Believer" and Lamont's "The Illusion of Immortality" pretty much inoculated me from observing the events of the mission through rose-colored glasses. Instead, the chicanery, manipulation, and emotional abuse I observed and suffered only confirmed my skepticism of TSCC.

By-the-time-I-returned-I'd-had-more-than-enough-ly yrs,

S

For an insider's view of Mormonism's Fundamentalism (literalist, anti intellectual, anti science, patriarchal) profile, Sociologist Armand Mauss, former professor at Washington State University wrote a great book called, The Angel and the Beehive, outlining the church's moves toward and away from, and toward again; fundamentalism.

His book is based on the well known theory of respectability from the host society. Small religious movements arise from time to time and in order to gain some kind of acceptance from society at large they must adapt, and gain a degree of respectability or their numbers begin to decrease; or they must isolate themselves if possible.

He shows how the LDS Church has waffled back and forth several times throughout history and clung to fundamentalism, and then become progressive, and then doubled down on fundamentalism again, and the reasons why.

Oh, interesting, thanks!