REVIEW: Mason, Restoration, Pt. 2

In my previous post, I began a review of Restoration: God's Call to the 21st-Century World by Patrick Q. Mason. I ended with Mason's six areas of focus for the future. They are

1. re-enchantment
2. human identity
3. religious freedom
4. refugees and immigrants
5. social justice
6. community

Here's what he means by each of these.

RE-ENCHANTMENT (pp.79-80): Mason means returning a sense of the supernatural to a secular world that rejects all aspects of it. "Anytime we increase faith in the world, or encourage others to do the same, we are doing the work of restoring enchantment in a disenchanted age." Personally, I think the "I believe in science" crowd is ill-informed and thinks they are signaling advanced learning when they are really marking themselves as middling intellectuals. I'm no great scientific mind, but even in my limited reading in this area I have come across enough to know that there is more that surpasses our understanding than is commonly understood. Just in the past year I've read Stephen Hawking calmly claiming that there are around 11 or 12 dimensions and Govert Schilling's book summarizing the latest thinking in dark matter. "I only believe what I see" takes a major hit when science says we can't see most matter. The calm reversal of conventional wisdom on UFOs since early 2020 should help loosen up the disenchantment that held most "learned" people for the past 100 years.

HUMAN IDENTITY (pp. 80-1): In a world more willing to believe in unseen things, we can increase society's understanding of our origin as spirit children of Heavenly Parents. Mason claims that our theology is radical (it is) and that it deeply resonates with people (it does). Assuming when he writes "one remarkable gift the Latter-day Saints could give would be to more fully reveal our Mother to her children around the world" that he means just making this teaching more broadly known, I agree. However, there is not much we know TO reveal than that. Given our Church's cultural tendency to embrace speculation as doctrine, I worry that too much exposure of this doctrine will result in more confusion than clarity. But could it be appropriate for the general members of the Church to humbly but persistently ask for more information to be revealed? What's the worst that could happen? Get told "trouble me no more concerning this matter" (Doct. and Cov. 59:22)?

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM (pp.81-3): This has been an area of increasing focus for Church leadership. If we view this from the perspective of "whatever Church leaders spend a lot of time on is what will be society's main problem in 20 years" it is pretty disconcerting. But let's leave that alone for now. Mason writes our actions on religious freedom are "a model of how Latter-day Saints can ... mobilize in the service of others."

REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS (pp. 83-5): Mason begins from Elder Patrick Kearon's fantastic General Conference talk from April, 2016. I fear that many members of the Church whose politics leave them inclined to xenophobia decided to reduce their cognitive dissonance by just ignoring Elder Kearon. That is a terrible shame. This is an area where agreement should be easy.

SOCIAL JUSTICE (pp. 85-6): Here is another area where the political ideas of most members might cause some problems. (As an aside: do these people think Jesus is going to join their political party when He returns? They DO know He plans to come as King, right? That is a role currently absent from the American Constitution.) I was recently at a meeting where our stake's one Black member of the High Council suggested our stake create a community event to commemorate next year's Juneteenth. I think it's an excellent idea, but I'm afraid I don't know how a majority-white church can pull off something like that without seeming pandering or condescending. On the other hand, I've had family respond disparagingly when I've told them my work will be closed for Juneteenth. I said, "Slavery is wrong, so I can get behind a holiday that celebrates its end." There might not be room for the leadership of the Church to do much with a "political" issue, but there's plenty of room for each of us to do so as individuals.

COMMUNITY (pp. 86-7): Mason thinks our Church's "you get what you get and you don't get upset" approach to ward membership and leadership is a good model for building community with anyone around. I would caution that many Latter-day Saints have discovered how to game that system by aiming to live in wards they like. My ward shares a building with the "good" ward of the stake, and our stake as a whole is the poor relation of the next stake to the north of us. In his April 2013 General Conference talk, Elder Stanley G. Ellis shared this tale of "community building":

For 16 years I served in the presidency of the Houston Texas North Stake. Many moved to our area during those years. We would often receive a phone call announcing someone moving in and asking which was the best ward. Only once in 16 years did I receive a call asking, “Which ward needs a good family? Where can we help?”

We can do much better on this issue.

So those are Mason's six goals for the Church in its third hundred years. From my perspective of millennial social thought (MST), the last three seem directly related to my area of interest. Building Zion will definitely involve elevating our thinking and behavior on issues of refugees and immigrants, social justice, and community. What is standing between us and meeting these challenges in a "higher and holier" way? Mason identifies six items of cultural baggage the Church must address. They are

1. racism
2. patriarchy
3. nationalism
4. cultural colonialism
5. inequality
6. fundamentalism

In my next post, I will look into these stumbling blocks in more detail.