In 2017, I participated in the Maxwell Institute’s Summer Seminar, with the theme Mormonism Encounters the World and run by Philip Barlow and Teryl Givens. The seminar involves an intense few weeks of researching, workshopping, and writing. The result is a public conference of papers. Unfortunately, the papers that year were never posted onto the MI website, but WVS provided a summary here.
My paper looked briefly at the vertical relationship between Latter-day Saints and God but primarily at the horizontal relationship between Latter-day Saints and “the world.” I proposed two historical and competing models, ways of thinking about our interactions with “the world:”
- The “infection” model, which presupposes that Latter-day Saints received a pure intellectual inheritance of doctrinal understanding through prophets and modern scripture, which must be zealously guarded against outside influence. This model also characterizes almost all truth as “old” and static.
- The “quest” model, which presupposes that more “truth is out there,” and Latter-day Saints must venture out to find it, carefully weighing and “testing all things” to find what is good (per 1Th 5:21)
My paper received some very kind and enthusiastic comments, and I post the unrevised working draft here. I hope, eventually, to revisit and revise for publication, but in the meantime, enjoy.
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May 11, 2022 at 10:45 am
Good post. Ben, do you know of any surveys or research indicating how the essays have been received generally by the LDS membership or what % of active LDS adults know about them let alone knowing them like the back of your hand? I haven’t noticed them being promoted recently. Thanks