The Quiet Death of the Old School

[Brent]

I had an interesting conversation once with a fairly well know LDS scholar and the issue arose about what happens after death to a marriage where a good, covenant keeping, celestial LDS woman is married (and deeply in love with) a good, honest, kind, charitable non-member. The answer surprised me and gave me hope for the Church and its future. (Paraphrasing): “The Lord must have some mechanism in place to keep them together—it doesn’t make sense, nor is it merciful to separate them.” That was a New School answer.

I know the Old School answer because I’m over 50 and the Old School answer per my Pop is: “Brother McConkie has made it perfectly clear that unless he receives his ordinances and lives his covenants he is lost to her FOREVER.” He didn’t yell FOREVER but there was a sternness and stridency that made it clear that marrying inside the covenant and keeping on the straight and narrow was the only way to keep Romeo and Juliet together. Thinking about it he probably didn’t like my choice in dates which were exclusively not LDS. The Church is slowly changing and culturally releasing a lot the hardcore “in or die” doctrines that it formally had. That’s why the refusal to bless, baptize or ordain the children of same-sex couples took so much heat; it’s Old School. New School (and this is grassroots, not top-down) is “Love them all and let God sort them out.”

There are very few active Latter-day Saints who want to walk up and say, “Your family is lost to you forever because you’re not LDS” or, worse yet, “Since you’ve had the discussions and not followed the Spirit, all is lost”. However, people once did. Some relished it. Some still do but they’re generally older than I am and don’t seem to have a lot of friends. Many simply thought, “The work will somehow get done and everything will be OK”, they probably don’t speak it but they think it and the beautiful thing now is: they are finding their voice. From an organizational standpoint you need the Old School view; if everybody gets to stay together then what good does following the Church do? This is a ledger issue, you need to buy-in to get the pay-out. What if the Church simply said, “This stuff is important and necessary BUT being Christian is good enough.” Why have a Church? Why keep all the records and dates and priesthood lineage? From the Old School standpoint you have to have eternal loss to make eternal gain worth something.

Makes a weird sense don’t it?

The Old School is simply about behavior because it needs to be. The New School is a bit more “touchy-feely” focusing on attitude and heart and that’s why current leadership is lost to what’s going on in the real world. My kids don’t care if you’re gay also long as you good at heart. My kids aren’t afraid that if they don’t take out their endowments they’ll lose their spouse forever, they claim the title “active Mormon” but don’t always make it to church and haven’t been endowed. There isn’t that Old School “alone in the eternities” stick to beat them with. No, it’s not an all over Love and heart matter more than ordinance. It’s the direction that the youth are going in, and the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. They’ll shape the world in their image, not Salt Lake’s; just give it time.

[Corsair]

I have wondered for a long time if Mormons could, or should, become a bit more like Jews where there are Orthodox (old school) Mormons and Reform/Liberal (new school) Mormons. Each group would at least acknowledge the "Mormon" status of the other groups but quietly hold their own teachings. The temple is kind of a tricky point, but making it more of a contemplative practice for New School might keep it relevant to the faith in general. I have commented to a friend in my ward that I would be happy to live simply as a Christian, but Mormon culture keeps complicating this option.

Is there any contingent of the younger generation that still holds to Old School? Is there a successor to Joseph Fielding McConkie teaching at BYU? Physicist Max Planck openly stated, "Science advances one funeral at a time." This is probably the model for Mormonism going forward.

[Nonny]

So true.
I like to keep in mind that NO ONE really knows. There is plenty of evidence for that if you need it, see any of the LDS essays. The problem is when TBMs really believe one speculation or another and base their decisions and conversations on these unknown assumptions, like divorcing over faith differences for example.
I still see plenty of young people anxious to go on missions and be married in the temple. I don't know how deep their orthodoxy goes however, and they might change their thinking as they mature and start to see from a different perspective.

[nibbler]

If that was the old school answer what was the purpose of doing sealings for the dead in the old school?

[Brent]

If that was the old school answer what was the purpose of doing sealings for the dead in the old school?

Just in case...besides you get Temple brownie points.

[Hagoth]

“The Lord must have some mechanism in place to keep them together—it doesn’t make sense, nor is it merciful to separate them.” That was a New School answer.

The church has kind of painted themselves into this less-condemning corner with the Nauvoo Polygamy essay in order to get Joseph Smith off the hook. The last line of that essay says,

The precise nature of these relationships in the next life is not known, and many family relationships will be sorted out in the life to come. Latter-day Saints are encouraged to trust in our wise Heavenly Father, who loves His children and does all things for their growth and salvation.

So, don't worry your little head about how Joseph messed up all of those peoples' lives because God's gonna sort it all out in the end. Whew.

I wonder how this applies to my wife's friend who is still sealed to her husband after he cheated on her, divorced her, then repented and also got sealed to the other woman. In the meantime the church won't grant her a temple divorce until she finds another "worthy" man to get sealed to.

I think it's nice when people express the sentiments you describe but the doctrine of the church remains as upside-down as ever, despite some individuals' personal moral compasses allowing them to soften the situation in order to make God more kind and loving than the being we find in the actual scriptures and doctrine. Good for them, but when will we hear it in conference? When will it be canonized as published and member-voted revelation?

[Corsair]

I think that part of the persistence of "Old School" thinking is that many elderly leaders of the church deep down don't want to ease up on the doctrine because it implicitly invalidates so many of the sacrifices they made in their youth. In addition, will they really have much of a church left if they change to a common sense, "be like Jesus", liberal, Protestant faith. What will the LDS church have left that is distinctive and compelling if the liberalize?

I suppose that going slow is probably a good tactic. That will tend to assuage the concerns of the Old School leaders. Simultaneously, it might avoid letting the institutional church endure the radical diminishing like Community of Christ experienced. Still, I simply have little patience for suffering along with the church while they inevitably converge on something radically different than the wide eyed, "fill the whole earth" church we had as recently as the 1980s.

[Brent]

By their fruits you will know them; and what are the fruits of the Church if not the people? I think we may underestimate the power of the grassroots of the church. The Priesthood ban was lifted in part because of coming lawsuits but also because the people of the Church weren’t willing to defend it anymore; the hearts and minds turned away. Likewise (I would imagine) with polygamy; sure the Government was on the hunt but at the end of the day it wasn’t something average folks were ready to fight for. In the day the average person was willing to see themselves as unique, chosen, and bound for glory. Today with the ecumenical bend the Church is taking it’s clear that people are not willing to damn “gentiles” to never-ending separation from God. In the day, folks were willing to do the Dr. Laura and say, “You made your bed—bummer, sucks to be you.” During the Member’s journey to a more Christian place that hard edged-sentiment has changed.

In the Church’s passionate quest to be seen as “more Christian” the unintended consequence is that the Members are becoming more Christ-like.

[moksha]

That’s why the refusal to bless, baptize or ordain the children of same-sex couples took so much heat; it’s Old School. New School (and this is grassroots, not top-down) is “Love them all and let God sort them out.”

When that new school thought of being merciful, loving and withholding of judgment came along it blew the doors off that old school eye for an eye stuff. No more stonings or animal sacrifice, out with matzos and in with Hawaiian pizza.

[Hagoth]

In the Church’s passionate quest to be seen as “more Christian” the unintended consequence is that the Members are becoming more Christ-like.

Funny things happen when morals collide with egos.

[redjay]

Still, I simply have little patience for suffering along with the church while they inevitably converge on something radically different than the wide eyed, "fill the whole earth" church we had as recently as the 1980s.

Amen

[Brent]

In the summer I'm a motorcycle safety instructor. One of the mantras we have is: "You see what you look for". Example: When I was a news shooter for the local ABC affiliate I was at the scene of a motorcycle/car collision, one of the classic "car left turns into path of motorcycle" ones. The lady who was driving was crying and kept repeating, "I saw him but I didn't know he was there!" Now, looking back what she saw was a pair of headlights coming at her which she identified as a car at great distance because the headlights were close together. She was looking for cars, not bikes.

Another issue is target fixation which has the catch phrase: "Look at the tree, hit the tree." The idea being that you're naturally drawn to what you look at, "you go where you look". A fair question for folks on this board is:

"What are you looking for?" and "Are you looking where you want to go?"

The Church is plagued, riddled, and thick with problems however, at some point we need to give up the hurt, the bitterness, the anger and start looking for something good. For me? The people are great...except the ones who aren't, and on the whole people are moving to a more Christian position simply because the Church is pushing "We're Christian" so hard that members have to adopt more Christian attitudes. Small. Slow. Irreversible. Never will come the day that LDS folks say, "Well, we're on the Westboro Baptist side of that issue"--the Corporate Church YES. The People? Hell no.

[Grace2Daisy]

I asked that question to a patriarch (I had two in the family), he basically said there is degrees of glory within the Celestial Kingdom and therefore there would be a place for couples like that. He also said the "worthy" one would be able to visit family in the higher order, but can return. I asked if he meant there would be "conjugal visits" for a persons who were not in the same degree of glory? He laughed and said probably the most profound statement of the sitting, "Who knows?"