I just noticed that Signature added a new book to its library of free online books. It is Quest for Refuge, by Marvin Hill, giving an account of early LDS history under the theme "the Mormon flight from American pluralism" (which is the subtitle to the book). I read it about a year ago; my comments on the book are here.
Here is part of the first paragraph from the Introduction:
When the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., recalled the beginnings of his movement in a history published in 1842, he noted that a revival he attended in the area around Palmyra, New York, had initially created "unusual excitement" among the people but then divided them, with "priest contending against priest, and convert against convert." Whatever good will had flourished among his neighbors was soon "lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions." In another version of his experiences, Smith concluded that "if God had a church, it would not be split up into factions." Thus the prophet spoke of the deep Mormon aversion to religious institutional diversity, which I term here religious pluralism.
Oddly, Jesus said the same thing in John 17, which doesn't seem to bother Protestants over much.
But I wonder why Mormons had to rediscover this insight through their prophet, rather than from the original.
That's a sincere question: was the tradition of reading John 17 in a symbolic manner so ingrained in the Protestant tradition by 1830 that even today Mormons don't read John 17 as a literal call for a single institutional structure?
Posted by: Peter Sean Bradley | Feb 08, 2006 at 08:53 AM