From what I've read from leaders across the Generations of the LDS Church, the emphasis had changed a bit. Or rather downplayed. As the Church has become more evangelistic and more mainstream, there are certain things the Church has abandoned, i.e. Blacks now have the Priesthood, Plural Marriage is Prohibited...
First of all, you might consider your focus in seeking out the quotes you are familiar with in the earlier writings of church leaders. It seems to me that you would not be as likely to be looking for quotes by early church leaders that are more in harmony to current teachings or even to traditional Christianity. Is it not true that you have been more drawn to the more controversial statements, at least in recent memory and therefore influencing your current perspective. If you had the time to do a thorough search through all 26 volumes, you would find that the controversial statements and teachings make up a very small percentage of the whole.
I would agree that the tone of the teachings of church leaders has definitely changed, at least compared to the sermons you are most familiar with. Also, the care in what they said and how they said it. In the 1800s the church was young and eager to explore all the possibilities within this new frontier of revealed religion. There was much speculation mingled with officially accepted doctrines. There was not much concern with being misunderstood or being taken out of context. They reveled in being different from traditional Christianity, perhaps to a fault. But they were a young church and learning.
You also have to understand the complete context. They knew that the vast majority of the persecution they unfairly suffered, including murder, rape and forced mass eviction from homes in the middle of winter was instigated by Christian ministers who felt threatened by their teachings and even their success. There was indeed a sense of “in your face†attitude that came across in some Mormon sermons. Often in their delivery of unique doctrines they accentuated the differences, rather than the commonality between the Mormon perspective and that of traditional Christians. This approach was not so bad in their day, but would not work so well in our society today.
It is important to understand the difference between doctrine and practice, or the application of doctrine. The official core doctrines of the church have not changed at all. There are no contradictions if you understand and see the whole picture. From Adam till now, plural marriage has always been a practice that has only been allowed or commanded by God at certain times and not in others. Practicing it for a limited time is well within Biblical precedent. Holding the Priesthood has been limited to certain groups throughout the time of the Bible. From the time of Brigham Young it was always understood that the Blacks would eventually receive the priesthood, but the Lord had not revealed when. Because it had not been revealed, many made speculations and assumptions that turned out to be inaccurate. But these are in the category of practices, not doctrine.
Christians believe that we are not under the Mosaic Law, therefore I don't go around hoping not break the 9th commandment.
This is quite a surprising statement to me. So you believe that the ten commandments are invalid because they were a part of the Mosaic Law? I have never heard that stated so bluntly by a Christian before. I thought Jesus was pretty clear when He explained that the two most important laws were love of God and man. And that the 10 commandments were just examples of what that looks like. In other words, the new law included and explained the reason behind the 10 commandments, not replaced them.
Mormon Doctrine has a centralized theme that is overemphasized.. that is restored gospel of Jesus Christ and the continued prophets to lead the church in teaching and edifying to make them more like Christ, I will grant that is the primary emphasis. But if you will zoom out and look at the whole scope of what has been taught over the years, it will appear as if there has been an eternal cycle of gods creating universes and worlds to populate to create more gods to continue this creative process. However, I do understand that the leaders of the church, and the church curriculum do not often focus on this, it is though I believe a large part of the overarching story that Mormonism paints.
This is well stated and I don’t disagree with it. But we must realize that when we back out to see the large picture, as you speak of, and see the fringe parts of the overarching story you start to see that the puzzle is missing more and more pieces the further you get from the center. There is much we do not know when it comes to what happens and how it happens eons after this life and eons before the creation of this earth and the details become less and less relevant to us here and now.
1. This was taught to me in Sunday School, so it is your opinion that this is not Mormon Doctrine, as I can site sources across the history of the church that agree with this quote.
I, of course, cannot argue with what you remember about what you learned in Sunday School. I do know what is the official position of the church, however, and what I have learned in my several decades in the church. But if you actually thought that anything taught in Sunday School should be classified as official church doctrine, it is no wonder you left the church. Just because some of the early leaders believed that God in some incomprehensible way continues to learn, does not mean it has ever been official doctrine.
Whenever we learn anything new, it is human nature to make assumptions and put it into the context of our current understanding. Without realizing it we can make false assumptions. It is hard to argue with Joseph Smith when he said that if you were to gaze 5 minutes into heaven, you would know more than all that has ever been written on the subject. But there is another reality that goes along with that. A 5 minute gaze into heaven would give you a lot of information that you would not fully comprehend and you would make assumptions based on your limited understanding that would likely be at best incomplete and at worst just flat out wrong. Unconsciously you would fill in gaps with earthly perspective, which would cause some of your explanations of this experience to be inaccurate. It would reveal more questions than answers. But it would still be light years ahead in accuracy of any understanding you had before that experience. If you had a second heavenly vision you would likely notice things that you didn’t the first time and realize you were wrong about some of your first conclusions. Or God could pull you aside, so to speak, and correct a critical misunderstanding. This is what I mean by learning line upon line, precept upon precept. The conclusions you came to from the second vision, could not have been reached without the knowledge of the preceding one. As the church has matured, it has become more aware of this and taken precautions not to jump to conclusions.
2. The Journal of Discourses was produced by the Mormon Church and approved by the First Presidency of that day.
The Journal of Discourses was NOT produced by the church. The first volume was privately published George D. Watt, the transcriber of many of the sermons of several church leaders to be used as a reference by the members overseas who did not have any other access to most of the sermons of the leaders in Utah at that time. It was also definitely NOT approved as a source of official doctrine. This first volume was recommended by the First Presidency in the beginning of the book as good reading and suggested that it be purchased to assist Mr. Watt financially.
As far back as I remember ever hearing about the JofD, it has always been a treasure and rich resource for reference and research, but never considered as a source for official doctrine. I personally love the JofD and value it highly. It provides many inspiring ideas and historical perspective. It is true that general authorities and official church manuals reference quotes from the JofD, but they also quote a lot from Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis and many other non-Mormon authors.
It was not produced via a stenographer so it would be one thing to grant mistakes here and there but whole sections of coherent sentences about a very specific theological idea is a rather strange mistake. It would be odd if Brigham Young was talking about loving black people... but then the stenographer ended up recording that those who have intercourse with black people should die. So your point is really just an attempt at a defenses that in my opinion fails. The Journal of Discourses is a good and accurate look at the theology of the early prophets and teachers of the LDS church, it's also been a great bain for the church since people actually began to read these sermons in our time.
I answered much of this in a previous paragraph. I agree that some of the things said in that culture and those circumstances sound very strange even to members of the church today. But even if the exact words were transcribed accurately, we are still missing much of the context. When excerpts from talks and even entire talks are considered by themselves we miss the context of everything else Brigham or others taught. We miss the context of certain specific situations that may have existed at that precise time in history. We miss the different meaning of words back then compared to now. We may forget the culture of the time and what those words meant then. For example, the word “die†can have many different meanings and nuances even in our day. When we add the possible nuances in meaning that come from the time difference you can see the problem. These sermons were usually not proofed and approved by the speakers themselves and certainly not screened by the other leaders.
Using statements from the 1800s to show contradictions between then and now is also forgetting the youth of the church and that God gives us wisdom line upon line and precept upon precept. As I said earlier, those leaders tended to mix their own speculation and assumptions in with their sermons. That is another reason they are not considered official doctrine. As the church has matured and as technology has advanced, the leaders have learned to be more careful how they say things in ways that are less likely to be misunderstood. The JofD may have become a bane to individuals like yourself, who read isolated quotes and sermons and jump to conclusions without seeking to understand the full context and patiently allowing those in the church who are knowledgeable to give a reasonable explanation. But it certainly has not been a bane to the church as a whole.
Imagine all the things the early apostles may have spoken in sermons that were inaccurate assumptions and speculations that we do not have record of. We only have what has been filtered through several centuries of acceptance and rejection. Think of all the censoring and book burning practiced by the early Catholic Church. They didn’t even want the common person to be able to read the scriptures. You can imagine that anything embarrassing or contradictory recorded of what the early apostles said would not be preserved. But even in the scriptures themselves we find personal opinions that have been preserved. For example, do you really believe that it is inappropriate for women to speak in the church today? Do you believe that all women should have long hair? You may say that Paul was only offering his opinion here or that it was only applicable in his day, but if so, why is it preserved in scripture? Isn’t scripture supposed to be only the word of God for all ages?
In teaching the gospel to non-Christians I have had a much harder time explaining some unusual things in the Bible than some of the crazy things said by Brigham or Parley. There are some pretty difficult things to explain about what occurred in the Old Testament, like mass genoside of all men women and children of entire groups of people or talk of nephilim and giants. Being myopically critical of isolated statements in the JofD is really a double standard when you consider these things.
This is getting quite long, so I'll continue my response to this post in my next post.
