Thanks to Jeremy Runnells for pointing this out:

Questioner: In your view do you see room within Mormonism for
several different narratives--multiple narratives of a religious
experience or do you think that in order for the Church to
remain strong they would have to hold to that dominant
[orthodox] narrative?

Richard Bushman: I think that for the Church to remain strong it
has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not
true; it can't be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this
new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that's
what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of
people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.

@ 57:22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA0YS8LWWX4&feature=youtu.be&t=3442

Do you all grasp the magnitude of such a statement? I have been up all night going to C sections repeatedly and this just absolutely stopped me in my tracks....I hope not quoted out of some context because for this man to reach this conclusion....

Gatorman

It's not true, but it's true enough if you squint when reading the damning information.

Or something like that......

Not sure how Bushman can continue to have a testimony. Although I haven't read his book I'm going to get to it this year. I have found some motivation to do so.

I don't believe he has a testimony. He's made enough statements like this to cause one to wonder. Rough Stone Rolling may appear to be faith promoting to TBMs, but it also has plenty of damning information. I don't know how anyone could read it and come away believing in the priesthood restoration story told in church and taught by the missionaries. I wouldn't be surprised if Bushman is trying to get people out of the church. While RSR has some speculation about Joe really believing he was a prophet, it left me wondering if Bushman was going along with the pious fraud theory. I didn't find one bit of it faith promoting. It's actually what convinced me, once and for all, that the church was founded on 100% BS.

My TBM wife and I had dinner with the First Counselor and his wife soon after we were married. My wife told him that I was hesitant to join because I had questions about Joseph Smith. The First Counselor admitted that he, too, had serious questions until he read Bushman's RSR.

I dutifully read RSR at his suggestion, fully expecting to have all of my questions answered; but I came away from it more convinced than ever that JS was a fraud. As a bonus, Bushman provided me with a goldmine of topics that I hadn't even considered researching until I read his book.

Therefore, the church lies. On purpose. Deliberately. They are not honest with their fellow man let alone their members.

Is it possible to revoke the church's temple recommend since it is no longer "WORTHY"?

I think the church is already laying the foundations for changing the 'narrative'. This is why they've tightened their grip on the youth and lowered the missionary age. They've pretty much written off the older generation who can plainly see the BS.

"[the church] has to reconstruct its narrative"

Translation: The church has to produce a new model of b---s--- because the older model has run its course.

Bushman's statement is tragic because it implies that the church will continue to deceive, just using different modes of deception. Like the other bottom feeders who make a killing from the detritus of church controversy, Bushman needs LDS's survival--immoral though that is--in order to pay his rent, so he has a vested interest in that survival--truth be damned in the process.

The show must go on! Actually, no; no, it does not have to go on.

Good one!

Agreed. Unless what he means by "I think that for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true; it can't be sustained", what he actually means is:
The Church needs to reconstruct it's narrative in the sense that it needs to stop claiming to be 'the one true church', and instead be just another religion and remain a strong organization generally.

I DO find his choice of the word 'narrative' interesting because a narrative is something that can be either true or fictitious.

If they "construct a new narrative" slowly enough, as they've already been doing, lots of people won't notice. Kids being brought up will get taught slightly different versions of the old stories, then the next group a slightly different version, and so on -- before you know it, you've got leaders insisting, "I don't know if we ever taught that..."

:)

Now it's the Church that's in a double bind. They must believe their own absurdities to avoid the vampire-killing light of financial transparency. Note the tinted windows on Tommy's bulletproof Audi. And the fake windows on temples. Perhaps there are no real bats, but there are plenty in the belfry.

Let's leave Count Monson out of this. P.s. Don't let him near the blood bank.

"Count Monson"--dear Jebus, I just about peed my pants! That image will haunt me all day!

Wikipedia is not always 100% correct in content due to the ability of detractors to edit content. I believe, however, the Wiki article linked below is excellent based on my personal experiences. I have followed the Watchtower as a proxy for the Mormon Church as one always seems to lead the other in how they deal with information that is detrimental to their respective organizations. I often encourage new ex-Mormons to take a look at the Jehovah's Witnesses as it can be observed a bit more dispassionately. It is easier to see the cult traits in another organization and then realize the Mormon church is nearly identical in its tactics to control its members and dissemble information.

I was a Mormon missionary in Finland from 1974-1976. The Jehovah's Witnesses were wildly active at that time proclaiming the end of the world in 1975. I personally met JWs that quit their jobs, pulled their children out of school, sold their homes etc. so they could proclaim the impending beginning of Christ's millennial reign and, along with it, doom for unbelievers. They used megaphones outside apartment complexes and shouted at the residents. They were everywhere! Tracting was already tough and they made it impossible.

-----------------------

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_Tower_Society_unfulfilled_predictions
The passing of 1975 without incident left the Watch Tower Society open to new claims of prophetic failure. Instead of maintaining the prophetic significance of that year, however, the religion's leaders embarked on a lengthy period of denial and purge, blaming rank and file membership for misreading the organization's interpretations...

The Watch Tower Society has acknowledged that some of its time calculations and expectations resulted in "serious disappointments", with consequent defections, expulsions and opposition, which it claimed was a process of "sifting" true believers. Yet of those who remained faithful it said: "They certainly did not err in believing that God would without fail do what he had promised ... They recognized that a mistake had been made but that in no respect had God's Word failed."[2] The errors and speculation were attributed to an eagerness to see "the end of this evil system".[65]

Holden concluded: "Simple as it seems, what sceptics regard as failure, the Governing Body regards as a test of faith." Holden said that given the scarcity of reference in Watch Tower Society literature to past predictive failures, it was highly unlikely that those who had joined the religion within the past two decades were even aware of the Society's record. He estimated that more than 60 percent of current Witnesses had joined the movement since 1975, "hence the Governing Body has no reason to discuss with them the failure of its earlier prophecies." Yet he added: "The suppression of the 1975 prophecy failure by those who were active at the time but who have nevertheless remained in membership suggests an unusual degree of complicity."

-----------------

They lost nearly a third of their membership in a few years as a result of the failed 1975 prophesy. The Watchtower has now a larger active membership than the Mormon church. It hides the past and/or lies about the past. We are observing the Mormon church paralleling the Watchtower.

I think the LDS essays are a way of weeding out some of the membership who are old enough to remember a different church. Young members and recent converts have little idea of what Mormonism was like 30-50 years ago.

That is an extremely interesting point about the JW's. Its interesting their faith was able to survive such a monumental failure of prophecy. I would love to hear recent converts to the JW's view on that failed prophecy and see if they know about it and if they do, how do they view it.

The problem for the Mormons is that their "1975" moment is happening in the 2010's. The internet immediately captures everything and hold on to it indefinitely AND makes it immediately discoverable for anyone who wants to look. Whats worse is that now most people with access to the internet are conditioned to use the internet to check anything and everything. And all of this is happening at a time where more and more people are walking away from religion anyway. In a world so full of scientific marvels there is less and less of the uncertainty and upheaval that makes religion so attractive.

Can the church survive as a social club with very specific behavioral requirements? Probably. Can it survive as the same church it was in the mid to late 20th century claiming an unquestioned and complete grasp on millions of lives? No.

I really love Chris Johnson's comparisons of Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses on Youtube. Though it made me feel dumb for ever letting an organization like this have such mind control over me.

But... but...

Gee, Mr. Bushman, don't you remember that principle we learned from the film "Plan 10 From Outer Space"?

"Just because he made it up, doesn't mean it isn't true."

I about crapped my pants that he would even admit that in public in front of a camera. wow.

How this man can stand there and claim that the church authorities had no better knowledge than your average Joe Blow member about past conflicting Mormon church history makes me ill. Yeah, yeah, yeah he says MMM was an exception but, you know, the rest they did not hide, or lie about, or distort, or change, or......on and on.

Nope, Richard, no one in the Church is responsible for anything are they? The poor-picked-on-Mormon-theme surfaces once again. He mentions the strain that is present. Yeah, and who is responsible for that strain and no, the Church deserves NO SYMPATHY for that strain. Sure they can try all they want to doublespeak, to bellyache at the job that surrounds them, but who in the hell caused it? (I bet the evil Internet and the intellectuals are their usual scapegoats)/

"How this man can stand there and claim that the church authorities had no better knowledge than your average Joe Blow member about past conflicting Mormon church history makes me ill."

Actually, I cut the current GAs some slack on this. Most of the negative info about church history was deleted or altered in the 19th century. Today's GAs grew up being taught the same censored version that we older guys were. Fawn Brodie in the 1940s, and the Tanners beginning in the late '50s, began to get more of the truth out, but the church's leaders and apologists called them "anti-Mormons" so that rank-and-file members wouldn't read their stuff. It's only been roughly since the era of Michael Quinn's research and the advent of the internet that the full truth has been publicized.

But today, no GA nor any other Mormon has any excuse for not learning the truth. I'd say that that is what Bushman means when he says that the church has to reconstruct its narrative. When members get on the internet and learn that church origins and history are very different from what they've been taught, they lose faith. That's why the church published those essays: it's a gradual effort to "reconstruct the narrative" of the church's founding, claims to authority, and mission. They gotta change or die. 15-20 years from now, they might admit that the BOM, BOA, and most of what Joseph Smith came up with are bogus, sorta like the RLDS church has. The church will become less Mormon-ey and more mainstream Christian.

I'm not sure that will work. They can't just make JS and BY go away. Unsustaining Joseph as a prophet is a really big leap. It's all they can do to take baby steps. But it's hard to go mainstream with those turds floating in the punch bowl.

"I'm not sure that will work. They can't just make JS and BY go away. Unsustaining Joseph as a prophet is a really big leap."

I doubt that they'll try to "unsustain" the prophets; more likely, they'll just begin to de-emphasize the uniquely Mormon aspects of the church and work to become more mainstream and ecumenical. The RLDS have already done this by de-emphasizing the BOM as an historical work. And of course, the RLDS never accepted polygamy, temple work, or the BOA and PGP.

This shift has already been happening for several years, as the church has put more emphasis on Christ and Christian service. The way they're having missionaries perform more service work now, rather than constantly knocking on doors seeking out converts, is an example of that. On my mission in the mid-'70s, we were only allowed to do service work on our off-days. We were still expected to tract 20 hours a week and proselyte for 65 total hours a week.

This change will take decades to complete. It will be basically as Grant Palmer has predicted---the church leaders and program-setters have to wait until people who are now in their 40s and older, who grew up with the pre-internet and pre-essays Mormonism, die off. 25 or 30 years from now, the number of Mormons who are still alive and take the Joseph Smith story as gospel as it is taught now will grow smaller and smaller. They'll be like the older Mormons at the turn of the 20th century, who had grown up under polygamy, blood atonement, and the Adam-God doctrine. Those teachings have been disavowed, spun, or swept under the rug. All that the church leaders really care about is keeping enough of the traditions going to ensure its survival.

The dominant narrative is a lie.

...and eating it true.

But the promise of cakes is sooooo good. Just ask The French.

Every religion's dominant narrative is untrue.

That is more of a gray area for the older religions because there aren't many alternate narratives.

Bravo (or brava) Stray Mutt.

The dominant narrative of all religions is literally NOT TRUE.

The only reason it's an issue with Mormons is because they made it one--they insist that "truth" is so important to God that he had to restore the Truthiness to the earth by restoring the gospel via Joseph Smith, blaming Catholics for messing it up (whatever it was) and calling all Protestant churches an abomination.

All this makes me smile, convinced as I am that karma has come around to bite the arrogant sons of bitches in the ass.

I'll tell you the truth, NOBODY CARES IF ITS TRUE OR NOT. For most people, it boils down to whether it works for you or your family. When it stops working, people start googling. When it works, people turn a blind eye.


Kathleen

I guess people can stop waving Richard Bushman and RSR in our face to show it's "true"

As I have pondered how the Mormon Church could have possibly gotten to where it is today, I've had the same thoughts now reinforced by Palmer and Bushman. That when BY took the saints out to Utah then they became an extraordinarily insular and tightly controlled society.

Like what happened behind the iron curtain in the twentieth century, the leaders were able to write whatever narrative they wanted, and they did. Dissenters were dealt with ruthlessly; reform movements were impossible. The nearest exit was across 500 miles of desert.

By the middle of the twentieth century the then-current leadership of the church were people born in the back half of the nineteenth century after the narrative change had been solidified. After the deaths of JS and BY.

Throughout its history the church has experienced opposition and for good reason, but the church incorporated that opposition into the narrative and kept on going. So leaders from any generation would expect there to be those who would try to harm the church and didn't listen to them. Tried to shut them up.

The current leaders of the Mormon Church here in the opening decades of the twenty-first century were coming of age around 1950. These are people who grew up under a leadership who genuinely believed the altered narrative, the revised history.

Around 1950 or so is when the Mormon isolation began to break down. Those Mormons seeking advanced degrees at top schools began to learn how to do real research, and a scholarly approach to their own history began to emerge. Bushman talks about this in the video linked above.

By 2000 the historians knew what the membership did not: that "we now have a body of authentic, reliable documents and a near-consensus on many of the details. From this base, the overall picture of Mormon origins begins to unfold. This picture is much different from what we hear in the modified versions that are taught in Sunday school ... In other words, it didn't all happen the way we've been told" (Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, 2002)

In the back half of the twentieth century, the church had a tense relationship with these historians. Those who wanted and/or needed to stay close to the church have learned to speak and write carefully enough not to bring wrath down on themselves. Those who were ready to let the church go have gone on to more boldness. The naïve were bold and got unexpectedly ex-ed.

Over the last ten to twenty years, as the true historical information as discovered and preserved by the Tanners and others, came into contact with the internet -- and especially the last ten years when internet usage has become mainstream -- church members have been finding the information, formulating questions, taking those questions to their clueless leaders, and these questions have been bubbling up through the hierarchy. I think it is entirely possible that a large number of the leaders, GA on up, have only begun to come to grips with the true history of the church in the last five years or so.

When the Swedish Rescue stumbled, that heralded a new age. With the advent of instant global communication now in common use, the questioners and dissenters were in contact with each other in a way they never were before. The knee-jerk reaction to try to silence those who raise difficult questions was no longer being met with cowering but with defiance. Finally, the church was forced to respond.

The response has taken the form of the essays in 2013-2015, and now the changes to the seminary curriculum in 2016. Having recently visited the historical museum across from Temple Square, it seems clear that the church is not going to discard the 'dominant narrative' but is trying to incorporate real historical information into the 'dominant narrative' in the least disruptive way possible.

Where Bushman says that a new narrative has to emerge because the old narrative is not true and cannot be sustained, the church is saying we can piecemeal our way from where we are to ...

To where? That is the question. Is there a plan for where this is all going, or are hard-liners and reformers battling it out behind the scenes? Will the leadership even have the final say or will events overtake them before they can complete the transition?

Will the church still be a place of enforced orthodoxy, but with a new narrative, or will it be a place where alternate views are tolerated?

So many questions.

JAR

"Having recently visited the historical museum across from Temple Square, it seems clear that the church is not going to discard the 'dominant narrative' but is trying to incorporate real historical information into the 'dominant narrative' in the least disruptive way possible."

That "solution" will probably have a limited shelf life. Maybe a decade of so.