Quote:
Originally Posted by Archaea
I have lost hope that change will be made in time to save Mormonism's soul. Or it may wander and dwindle before it finds itself again.
Dissent will not be tolerated and will continue to be treated as medieval Catholicism treated dissent.
BYU's leaders have no power and the fact that rapegate has no new policies shouts to the heavens that the old guard still can't understand why the rest of the world rejects autocratic management. The inner circles of Church management must be confounded.
Proposition 8 sounded the deathknell on the advance of Mormonism. The subtle changes of small advances of moderate Mormon women may come too late.
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I've never understood this notion of reforming a religion. Maybe because I just left. But it seems to me much like trying to "reform" a person's sexual preference. Being society's most conservative element, laying down the law, resisting progress, a magic world view that stands in opposition to science seem fundamental to what religion is. It's yet to be seen whether a religion can be "reformed" and survive. The ones that have moved overtly to the left are dying. As I type this I realize that the LDS Church's rejection of polygamy was a reform, but that was so outside of even the fringes.
The religion that I have seen most at peace with itself and in an easy relation with secularism was Italian Catholicism, typified by this beautiful inlaid artwork in the Siena Cathedral depicting Romulus and Remus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siena_..._tango7174.jpg
A lovely and frank acknowledgment of religion's essentially mythological roots and quality and debt to antiquity.