"New Mormon History"?
The FARMS article reviewing Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins talks about something called "New Mormon History," apparently a movement within the LDS church among active Mormons (seemingly populated by former members of the CES) attempting to give an empirical perspective of Mormon origins, ineluctably debunking stories about gold plates, angels and visitations from Christ, yet purporting to retain a seed of belief in Joseph experiencing "an [ambiguous] encounter with God" (as Palmer puts it), and purporting to avoid polemics pro- or anti-Mormon. Is this true? FARMS says The New Mormon History is just anti-Mormonism by a new name, like creationism dressed up as "intelligent design" (my analogy not theirs). Comments?
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be.
—Paul Auster
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