Blockchain Papers

David J. Howlett

In May 1991, an editor of the official magazine of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints reflected on a tumultuous quarter-century of liberalization within her church. She did so with a feature article previewed on the magazine's cover with the lines, “Framers remember formation of World Church Objectives,” and a picture of four of these framers. Those pictured were all elderly white American men. Ostensibly about a series of church objectives adopted in 1966, the article itself detailed the movement of the RLDS Church toward peace and justice theology, the inclusion of women in the priesthood, and a reframing of the very notion of mission in the church. In doing so, the article's writer included quotes from people involved in these changes. The individuals quoted had once held offices in the Council of Twelve Apostles or the church's First Presidency, the highest-ranking leadership groups in the church. The quotes were all from white American men.1In the 1970s, priesthood in the RLDS Church ranged from local priesthood who preached and presided over weekly meetings to denominational leaders who set church-wide policies. Until the mid-1980s, men filled all priesthood offices. Additionally, the RLDS Church, numbering 220,000 at its sesquicentennial in 1980, was overwhelmingly an American church, peopled by a white supermajority, even though it had a small presence in twenty-nine nations and an even smaller number of Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino, and Indigenous Americans.2 Most senior church leaders in the 1960s and ‘70s were also white American men. These were the individuals who gave new revelations to the church, articulated church policies, and shaped things as mundane as hiring practices. Given this, the small cadre of historians who have investigated the RLDS Church's late twentieth-century liberalization have focused, perhaps understandably, on white American church leaders with graduate seminary degrees. These influential RLDS leaders participated in ecumenicism, taught peace and justice theology, and had transformative, global encounters as they spread the RLDS Church to Asia and Africa in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.3This paper refocuses our attention on a different set of people who also shaped the church's rapid liberalization. These people included Barbara Howard, who wrote the article featured in my introduction. A longtime Saints Herald editor, Howard was also a founding member of a grassroots RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group. As I will argue, RLDS reformers like Howard allied with people across lines of identity, nationality, faith, and privilege, creating networks that helped make the church's liberalization plausible in the first place. Furthermore, the RLDS individuals and organizations that I will highlight in this essay gesture towards a broader story about how the New Left, forged in the fires of the 1960s, found religious denominations, like the RLDS Church, as fertile incubators for the extension of its projects across the global 1970s and 1980s. These were decades in which most scholars saw both liberal religion and the New Left in full decline, if not collapse.4 During these trying decades, the New Left emphasized the importance of grounding massive change in local organizations—in the small and the particular.In mid-twentieth century America, “small was big,” notes historian Daniel Immerwahr. This was particularly true of the New Left, that largely Western social movement advocating for identity-based rights in the 1960s. “Whereas the older leftism centered on trade unions and mass parties,” Immerwahr argues, “the new generation, enamored with ‘participatory democracy’ and ‘the beloved community,’ questioned the very basis for such organizations.”5 The New Left instead reveled in the democratic possibilities of small groups to create revolutionary change. For instance, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse told a New York audience in 1968 that the New Left was “diffused, concentrated in small groups and around local activities, small groups which are highly flexible and autonomous,” forming a “political guerilla force in peace.”6 For activists like Marcuse and his allies in the paradigmatic New Left student group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), smallness seemed an antidote to all social ills.By the early 1970s, influential sages, such as the Gandhian economist E. F. Schumacher, the author of the best-selling 1973 book Small Is Beautiful, promoted the virtues of smallness.7 Politicians joined this chorus, too. Ronald Reagan, hardly a paragon of the New Left, declared in 1975, “It is activity on a small, human scale that creates the fabric of community.”8 The valorization of smallness also had a creative global reach across the 1970s. For example, Filipino community organizers created small, networked student groups to resist Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship, and feminists across the United States and the globe met in small groups they called “consciousness-raising” groups for education, sharing, and political advocacy.I did not choose the latter examples randomly; the community organizing movement and radical feminism had distinct manifestations within the RLDS Church in the 1970s and 1980s. In what follows, I will highlight two individuals who exemplify these movements in the RLDS Church: the RLDS feminist theologian turned Unitarian, Sharon Welch, and the radical Catholic, community organizer, and RLDS NGO employee, Toto Delfin. As I will show, their social movements helped transform the RLDS Church, asking leadership to reimagine hierarchy and cultivate a more participatory understanding of the church. The RLDS Church, in turn, partially embraced these visions, redefining itself as a “Community of Christ” and proclaiming itself a “prophetic people,” not a “people with a prophet.”The RLDS Church's decision to do so asks us to reflect on the sources for rapid change within late-twentieth-century American-based churches. Put another way, did change come from above, below, or beside? More provocatively, the RLDS Church's evolution should also give us pause to ask what we mean by thinking about some religious groups as being successful in late-twentieth-century America. For instance, historians often talk about the success of evangelicals and Pentecostals in the late twentieth century. At the same time, they invoke words like “decline” when they write about liberal or ecumenical Protestants and liberal Jews from the same era. While it may seem less polite to do so with Restoration traditions, many everyday members of these churches point to the success of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the decline of the RLDS Church (Community of Christ). “Success” in these formulations, of course, is based upon the relative number of adherents that either one or the other group has, as well as the size of their endowments.I would like us to consider a slightly different question of and metric for success in this essay. In short, I would like us to think about how particular groups within a denomination can change their group internally. That is, how well do interest groups within their denomination change policies and orientations and exert wider cultural influence? As I will argue, New Left-aligned groups within the RLDS Church in the 1970s and 1980s might have influenced a numerically declining church, but they were astoundingly successful in giving their parent church a new set of orientations and policies. To make this case, I will first turn to Sharon Welch's story and detail the influence of small feminist groups upon the 1970s RLDS Church.In April 1977, twenty-five-year-old Sharon Patton Welch delivered a paper at a conference sponsored by an RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group called AWARE or Awake, Worship, Action, Renewal, and Education. The conference, held in Independence, Missouri, focused on women and the priesthood. Its keynote address featured a feminist theologian from Vanderbilt, where Sharon Patton Welch was a graduate student. For the April conference, Welch boldly proffered a constructive critique of the very idea of priesthood in her church.Welch began by methodically showing her audience problems with the notions of hierarchy in the Melchisedec and Aaronic Priesthoods and clerical Christianity. She argued that it was not just that the RLDS priesthood excluded women; the priesthood itself was based upon a hierarchical worldview, elevating some humans and lowering others. In an act of feminist resourcement, Welch offered a pragmatic intervention that drew upon particular RLDS traditions to counter this hierarchy. “If authority is defined as the ability to evoke skills and creative initiative in others,” she argued, “rather than the right to govern and lead, it seems appropriate that we think of it as emerging out of the social acceptance of one's effort to facilitate the growth of others.”9 This was what made priesthood a possibly transformative, liberating experience. Welch opined that such a system would enable the RLDS Church “to expand its ministry as it is open to the variety within each person, and is no longer restricted by fixed, limited definitions of the talents peculiar to each sex. This type of system discards the safety of defined patterns of service and hierarchical patterns of control. It is an acceptance of the challenge to develop a community characterized by collegiality and trust.”10 While somewhat vague, Welch envisioned a system of authority within the church that could be characterized as an interconnected web of consciousness-raising groups.Radical feminists created consciousness-raising groups in the late 1960s as a means for education, agitation, and, ultimately, they hoped, revolution. Many individuals who identified as radical feminists had felt shut out of New Left and Civil Rights advocacy groups where feminist issues might be marginalized or even ridiculed. In response, radical feminists advocated for forming small, cell-like groups where individuals could come together for face-to-face interactions, listen and validate each other's experiences, and be educated on feminist pedagogy and issues—and thus have their consciousnesses raised. These groups stressed egalitarian processes, too, where no one person was to dominate discussions, and group tasks would be rotated among participants, obviating the need for the specialization of roles or hierarchical leaders. In the 1970s, feminist consciousness-raising groups became places for radical political advocacy, personal growth, and group therapy.11In some ways, 1970s feminist consciousness-raising groups mirrored the best of what Welch had experienced in her church. Born and raised in the tiny farming town of Dimmitt, Texas, Welch attended a small RLDS branch (congregation) mostly composed of her family. In later reminiscences, she emphasized how it affirmed her, giving her great confidence in herself. Her voice was taken seriously, and she grew to believe that her calling in life was to be a scholar and earn a PhD, a degree that no one in her social sphere possessed.12 Welch also reflected that RLDS summer family camps, called by RLDS folks “reunions,” were really “socialist experiments.” “People paid what they could pay and donated their labor,” she noted. The RLDS folks who attended these camps were “farmers, janitors, and truck drivers,” and the vast majority lacked a college education. “The most uneducated worker,” she noted, “might have the insight in a class or prayer meeting that changed people's lives. There was no elitism.” As a child and teen, “it just seemed so natural for me to see people living in cooperative ways”—a stark contrast to the outside world.13Welch was a gifted high school student and left West Texas for Michigan State in a she to the RLDS Church's liberal she in but she did not That when she with RLDS her the and they and it an of feminist possibilities in Welch later that was I of the cultural of religion so in also her with RLDS feminists who became her and like Barbara Howard her to a small, RLDS where all in of priesthood Additionally, Welch was to do that no RLDS women had at the a graduate to she to in but not she and Barbara Howard attended the meeting of an RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group in in group was not the first RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group. A small group of and at had the in and it out to in some of its of these and and the group that would Welch to their meeting at the of in Independence, RLDS women and a to the RLDS Church's the leadership group in the church, composed of the First Presidency, the Council of Twelve and the of The began by This is on of all the women in the church by of their have from full within the church not to ask that another or be filled by one of the many women church but that a true in so that no one who is as and to tasks be for a this time, women of the in the RLDS Church, they held very with of authority within the church's and local Most of these priesthood and an RLDS conference women from in the priesthood. the that did not priesthood were largely filled by men. In the RLDS World a to and more women for but was no hiring 1973 and Given this the of the feminist the RLDS World AWARE women RLDS women from across the church to their At one such conference in AWARE women RLDS if they could their meeting in official conference as other interest like or their In response, AWARE member a longtime and the RLDS Church's a to the group. AWARE women their meeting on paper and in This act AWARE of new and a group of within the 1970s RLDS AWARE feminists to their and each other even if AWARE members had to be more when in official church AWARE met in the of its members in the Its meetings were a with and within the a it held in with many other 1970s feminist consciousness-raising In this way, AWARE women to the church they would be embraced more its two decades of AWARE became a for and AWARE women feminist also local women for the first for of in their advocated for more in church and helped a advocating for women in the RLDS priesthood. AWARE also the conference at which student Sharon Welch the Welch delivered her address in 1977, she was to called to a different As she later the RLDS Church in graduate At that women were not being and it was a the women who were but who were not and who movement being taken on She that “the for me was that more people of Jesus and the of in liberal not Welch to in her became as she began to other religious In Welch became a and taught as an of at the first person with in Restoration to at was not in her another RLDS left the RLDS Church in the early 1980s and was in the United Church of Welch, she a feminist at a in her case, of at AWARE and from in the RLDS Church, the became a college and and the latter a feminist in she that inclusion was not even for the majority in the 1970s RLDS This mirrored among as historian argues, the decline of churches in the 1970s can be to number of but one was that these liberal traditions were not liberal to many New Left activists in the Welch and some of her feminist who left the RLDS church a with it in Welch that was not so a the RLDS but a of what it taught For a time, Welch to to RLDS and feminist In she a to a on RLDS by Herald the official RLDS The official RLDS the in turn, a of Welch's first of and A of Welch even to in to an AWARE where she with the women with she first experienced a consciousness-raising life a of radical within the RLDS Church in the 1970s. While Welch left the RLDS Church, she and her feminist helped create an in which could be in the first place. She also a of RLDS that in which the priesthood itself became more egalitarian and even women to be to the RLDS priesthood in was not the one by the possibilities of grassroots In this the RLDS embraced a global in which community organizing could radical social in the and Welch's in on the of an RLDS NGO that did just to community organizing in the RLDS Church, we turn from the to the where radical who an RLDS NGO a new understanding of in the 1970s and a in the of in that time, as his called had for and its parent for more than in a for an with me that the and a told a I raised my a senior and a Filipino A This of a that from of in community that began a the first of Filipino and some of the Filipino Ferdinand Marcos's During these called the as it in the first of the called out the and The with and even student many joined the Filipino and its the New organizations to create social such as the Council for or in This latter group and from the community organizing movement in the United States by and from American the 1970s, community organizing like the as student activists to as places to create radical democratic from its not or could their and create change. A community could facilitate change but could not the they the people to for their articulated and helped the 1970s, most in the were that gave A community also in this was to local by the 1960s, the had the as a for local political and many of sponsored by Filipino churches or church became of to Marcos's policies and of this in the Born to a farming family in had attended a high school and college that many radical a with a community organizing NGO college in NGO to in the of to and his among the was when allied with local his in their small, upon the just the and would have if had NGO out of the and a for another NGO in met another radical NGO who was a was from a radical family. was one of the a group of who the for its and his had as to in the human for for a of liberal human the the more radical than their were particularly in community organizing to the of human found an to do an RLDS Church RLDS Church itself in the in 1966, four from a tiny church. These of their and family networks the RLDS church. also helped create the church's first NGO in the or This being in the of the First and Marcos's of in Marcos's with the New in the in A small RLDS in the of was in the The all of to their and from the the members of the RLDS and In RLDS Filipino leaders for to their RLDS and the church's the American and Filipino RLDS leaders upon a The would to from the and the of the the of their the RLDS would that the to in the new Furthermore, they would in how to like and this from of for This was successful as it was and As an of this, began to influence the RLDS Church, American thinking that local to in the in that the attention of American such as the early 1970s, his to the a mission of in and the RLDS this mission as its As the RLDS RLDS to the This the the of RLDS leaders and In RLDS the attended a on at the also the projects by in in an employee, was as the of for had not of a community organizing but of and their In the early an that to community organizing and human this to his In interest in community organizing to Toto a of the they created a they called or a that had a life of its in the RLDS and I have the I will just an from our radical of the and his valorization of the local the the could be for a variety of In it the to make liberalization in for the on this focused on in and of the of the global in the a and RLDS and a cultural and radical to participatory human to their This was on a too. the of the New Left and in the decades the 1970s emphasized the denominational leaders the of participatory human to a new of of their denominational for instance, church leaders opined that their denomination to be more from meetings to World became a that or even their to the church. It also some and offices. The and of the of which was one had a on the RLDS In a group of American RLDS leaders a to the church's of that meeting a to the denomination as “Community of The church who this emphasized that the denomination to be than people with a It was a of the and of the movement in the very of the American-based Barbara Herald article quoted at the of this Council of Twelve Apostles think we would be a a we had not the of that and I think be a if we had the might see and in of the 1980s. For example, of denominational for is of what it was in the late and its by a these latter the great of the 1970s and 1980s was a In this, of Christ other in it to if the success of the is by different small groups of people on the of the RLDS Church had created successful within the denomination by the late 1980s. RLDS could point to small things that had to projects the the inclusion of women in the priesthood, a networked with other liberal and peace and justice the what do we make of of liberalization and its as a The words of one of the of the church's liberalization a In Sharon Welch she was not about the of the global justice one that radical and Welch's RLDS American feminists helped cultivate within the RLDS Church in the 1970s and 1980s. she is that global justice by the and of who and to doing all that I can to it one should such a from a who grew in a small on the of a small For people like Welch and her of Christ is an in small

Phyllis Cole

MARGARET Fuller's essay-letter to William Henry Channing in the summer of 1842, “A Credo,” is her most forthright expression of radical Transcendentalism, affirming an evolutionary process of nature and spirit in both metaphysical principle and Biblical symbolism. Fuller directs her well-established understanding of world religions to comparison with Christianity, and she at least implies the possibility of new roles for women in the world's future. In both respects “A Credo” anticipates her major work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century.1 More immediately, however, she offers her testimony at a moment when competing ideas of Jesus stand at the forefront of the Transcendentalist movement and its related network of Unitarian churches. Fuller's statement of natural religion finds private expression but speaks powerfully within a collective history.Though occasionally excerpted in collections of her writing and commented upon by scholars, “A Credo” has lacked a critical text to stand among her works. This documentary project aims to provide Fuller's complete statement as well as position it within the Transcendentalist movement. The manuscript of “A Credo” has been overlooked largely through circumstances of transmission. Channing included a selection in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), while also censoring its content. However, by 1883 he valued this statement enough to send it to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, then working on his biography of Fuller, as a central expression of her “Prophetic Spirituality & Conscious Communion with the Divine Influent Life.”2 Higginson's more secular study found no place for “A Credo,” though he preserved it among the Fuller papers he eventually donated to the Boston Public Library. Soon a scholar of German Romanticism, Frederick Augustus Braun, transcribed the text as an appendix to his book on Fuller and Goethe; however, he used it only to argue for Fuller as a disciple of the German Romantic writer, “not a Transcendentalist at all.”3 With the recovery of Fuller's work since the 1960s, “A Credo” has been excerpted and commented upon several times, whether from manuscript or from Braun. Always its participation in Transcendentalist discourse is assumed. Most recently, a study of Fuller's religious skepticism in this essay has focused on the constraints preventing a woman writer from publishing such views in 1842.4 None of the recent scholarship, however, proposes publication of “A Credo” for current readers.Fuller's testimony is capacious in scale and perspective, open to examination in more than one way. It offers an important sign of Fuller's growing religious feminism by attributing cosmic origins to a “spirit” that is also “angel mother,” later referred to again as “she.” At the same time, Fuller speaks in primarily masculine terms, even while naming deities and prophets, as she addresses the Transcendentalists through Channing. The shifting narrative perspective of “A Credo” allows these concerns to emerge together. First, she tells in abstract terms of creation, its future unknown to “this being who now writes.” As she envisions it, the human race has no binary separation from either nature or spirit, participating in one pantheistic entirety. Nor is gender a significant internal division; soon she speaks as “we,” the collective humanity that, like the spirit, breaks through obstruction and achieves knowledge. But then an individual, intensely devotional but self-affirming “I” emerges in her account of Jesus: one who has “no objection to the miracles, except where they do not happen to please me,” who finally believes in Christ “because I can do without him.” Fuller implicitly acknowledges this first-person voice as a woman's when she specifies the Biblical text for a sermon “[i]f I were to preach on this subject.” She has no opportunity to preach, but “A Credo” is her laywoman's sermon by letter.All of the issues evoked in this statement—the miracles of Jesus, the status of the Bible, the power of nature and intuition—had defined the Transcendentalist controversy since 1838, when Ralph Waldo Emerson's “Divinity School Address” characterized the church's “noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus” as “Monster” rather than “Miracle.” In response, conservative Unitarian Andrews Norton blasted Emerson's words as the “latest form of infidelity,” going on to argue for the Bible's verifiable history of Jesus as the only ground for faith. Emerson made no direct response, but colleagues sprang to his defense by affirming truth as perceived by the individual mind. In “A Credo” Fuller was offering her own perspective on the miracles controversy. Earlier she had reported to Emerson on Norton's latest publications as well as describing the “paper-pellet” aimed by a younger critic at “that peculiarly nervous sect styled Transcendentalists.”5 Now, as she wrote to Channing, she composed “A Credo” because a friend had asked specifically for her views of Jesus.6 Fuller's own “infidelity” joined with Emerson and his allies, even as she went beyond them in directly presenting her cosmology of past and future.A long process of self-expression and interchange with others led to her testimony, extending from years before Emerson's manifesto to the moment of writing in 1842. Fuller held a position of quasi-clerical authority among Transcendentalists by this time. The third season of her Conversations with women had just concluded: since 1839 she had been leading path-breaking discussions of the truths suggested by Greek mythology and the fine arts, with frequent cross-reference to the Bible. She had described her first session's theme as a “genealogy of heaven and earth.”7 In the same period that such ruminations on divinity and humanity grew, furthermore, Fuller was serving as editor of the movement's Dial magazine, soliciting and judging work on religious and philosophical subjects from both men and women. All of those to be named in this essay had contributed to it. As editor, she reached out widely to the community of progressive belief. In “A Credo” she quoted a sentiment without identifying its author: “The soul must do its own immortal work.” Such words might have been Emerson's, but instead they were from a poem by Eliza Thayer Clapp, a woman outside Fuller's immediate circle, as published in the Dial a year before.8“A Credo” epitomizes Fuller's vision during this time of double cultural leadership; moreover, it embodies the personal transformation that she claimed amidst such work. At the opening of the second season of Conversations, in autumn 1840, Fuller wrote to Channing that she had found a warm reception from the group after telling of her “great changes,” recent experiences of mystical identification with the divine. In the same letter she also reported on her own writing experiments, “The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain” and “Yuca Filamentosa,” which would soon be published anonymously, with her as editor, in the Dial. Along with “Leila,” a third piece of experimental fiction, these appeared throughout the months between Fuller's “great changes” and the beginning of 1842, the year of “A Credo.” In them she affirmed the power of female forms in the natural and spiritual worlds: woman-identified flowers bursting into bloom under the moon's influence; a grand tree, “Queen of the South,” singing to herself in solitary power; the goddess “Leila,” her wild hair blowing in the wind, who embodied the Holy Ghost's descent into matter. And the personal immersion in divine nature that Fuller expressed in such work was confirmed by a contemporary journal entry remembering her earlier self-consecration, when after exiting from church she had found illumination in the sun's glory and vowed to sow “new and immortal plants in the garden of God.”9 The revelations of 1840 and their expression in fictional and autobiographical form offer a direct prelude to her apparently spontaneous essay-letter of 1842.Significantly, Fuller wrote her creedal statement as a letter rather than in published form, even though the Dial had already offered her the possibilities of anonymous authorship. Any statement that directly claimed kinship with divinity apart from Christ and the church was a scandal, all the more, as Caitlin Smith notes, from a woman.10 But in addition, Fuller was prompted to write “A Credo” by particular friends, both the person who initially asked about Jesus and the letter's recipient, Channing, amidst an ongoing dialogue with him. Letters underlay all of the Transcendentalist movement, as texts with a life of their own. Later writing tearfully from Rome, Fuller told Caroline Sturgis of her need to continue “friendships I had paid for with so much heart's blood,” admitting that without letters from her and from Channing, “so many thoughts in the long past seemed to flee from me.”11 “A Credo” lies within that body of thought and feeling. Here I will suggest how four epistolary exchanges anticipate its voice and theological ideas: first those with James Freeman Clarke and Emerson, then those with her even more memorable partners, Sturgis and Channing.From the early 1830s, James Freeman Clarke supported her growth in new German learning, later a strong foundation for “A Credo.” With him she waxed about and of this friend to the about the who the history his by and how and had Fuller also reported to Clarke and Frederick Henry on her immersion in Biblical under the of German She thought of from its expressed in and found in a new to her exchanges and her Biblical immersion directly in “A Credo.” Fuller's of a in as both and have in particular from who had for the of nature and humanity out of Biblical furthermore, to “A Credo,” even as like in the truth of with Emerson was both and through their long In 1840 she the power of his work first him it in four years later she it from the was to how much more I it now than at I the now I the The years do not in “A Credo” was in its of it was also not with however, and after the “great changes” later in 1840, she his her of mystical have I to the central she to her she wrote not the friend I the same year that she composed “A Credo,” in his “The Emerson the movement him as it in or not she wrote in to her essay found a position by on the of not their to the And where Emerson characterized the Transcendentalist as one who from the for it to offer work of response, Fuller both nature and humanity in and As she had to Caroline she rather than the who seemed to have She but also Fuller's a friend with she both of the beginning Fuller's letters expressed an upon Greek and mythology even while as well about the of Jesus as a friend and of She quoted about the his directly to the rather than the who She was a in these letters by the need for and whether with or with its its its the and the growth would only she do not direct like the But is in the Fuller this friend as the first to of her “great changes” in I is found And at the of is can be no but all the in must be of from Emerson, she found with In both their and their expression of religious Fuller's letters to her directly anticipate the of “A Credo,” where she by as an of within the spirit and by the in Fuller's however, was the friend who directly “A Credo.” with William Henry Channing out of Dial when Fuller from the to to in the grand she a new it on 1840 But their as to the after only grand their letters were to Fuller her own of and to in the before with Channing both the of her and the “great changes” in her first claimed her as a as an to she out in after her personal with the of I were a and then would be I in this of Divine I out into before I it. I I I I More was at for her than a to authority as a as she that with for the particular her to Divine the and that she would soon more in “A Credo.” With an from her to she her own and those of Channing in the of the Unitarian to a sermon that the new to an of and Fuller the instead as for herself to for would now preach the Holy as as have been and instead of the understanding and instead Fuller was her own religious apart from church or of however, not Fuller's for such a among the claimed to the Unitarian than she had James Clarke a for the of the he and Fuller but not And Channing, to this moment his an focused on the of humanity in Christ he claimed a religion that would this is the he wrote to his of Transcendentalist on the Boston that year to the about and Fuller had no as Caroline later an between Fuller told Channing in how much she sermon which with the of Soon such ideas in “A on the and in which to a theological manifesto and in his from the Unitarian of the and authority claimed by their on miracles as of his But he as the of his of and Clarke Channing joined in the of Fuller, while their of his views in the new of also held of her Credo” might be Fuller's statement of to Channing in of Christ had seemed at first a for In early of 1842, Channing wrote to his of an for all At the same time, however, he a of Christianity, Jesus as of the of in And though his from such his letter first a new of the of beyond so as to a which the not the Fuller of this and soon asked Channing to how to At the same time she him as directly as he had just The she had been to him the of the its As “A Credo” would the of that she affirmed had beyond Jesus, both through the and the essay also both directly and was the one contemporary she named in it, to his in and from the as of the had claimed that an like that of to his thought at which with the of In “A Credo,” Fuller both and his of her for But this just after she had affirmed in the even it was rather than the of Fuller his life as of a She of Jesus at the of an by naming and before even the in to be from Jesus and prophets, her evolutionary as form was for future At the of “A Credo,” the sermon that she to preach might have been to both Channing and as she offered as its text to his is for that I he so that the spirit her journal from the Emerson that Fuller wrote in an to “A Credo.” with Emerson, a of letters from Channing, she herself to both must own no to but the Waldo must not in William in the fine that has I have of Channing, she she not need the is at in is to to a to but it is affirmed in the of own and the soul and nature all I have church where I by and Fuller was from the earlier statement as it had both the forms of and her own within it. In vision and “A Credo” is Fuller's most testimony about and the soul and by a and in to exchanges within the Transcendentalist is a spirit and it all is whether of or its it to it is to be an of forms not in the of this being who now of as This is the or publication of spirit upon the like in the This is a a new as for for for the of as through his he the which the divine The is in the of was this second the divine to for for for the in the which the as the of it in the of the of is when he is is as through and has no to this as through and of into the nature of the Divine it is from own though the of where all already is this must has been by the of being must be for and only in time not do him and led by of of then the of the The moment have through an not but by the of to was to the and with soul that is it would that the Divine expressed his to more in than in the forms of and through him the which his forms of nature only in whether from or because he is not to the of the when is in a when he is not so with all as to their spirit, also must be at the form of nature and of the she has been to through those of men in the to one that this and spirit in the human But and is a of enough is through a to the and obstruction on the of through all the of thought the is in I well and many and offer to the whether of whether of do not to an upon the position and of because I of his and the of his The history of the the of the suggest already of being than and which more this of But I do his life to be the in one of in the and that all these to and when on these strong through which on the ground but how the in the to the as he now these forms is a of and a soul of the is to to to be And as the of spirit, a new for its is one in the garden of the his many religion The the history of the human it has into the but its several though expressed the not beyond and a the history of however, have been more and more and so in the history of of the have several is men from only in being made through the and words of is whether as or but its of expression though of it is is As the to its so do to the of do this through the others through the The first second these all all so as they to the of their and so as they to that of their as is a a form is as its as the the and is its as the and within the that is expressed in the as the and the and of and the and his so has of thoughts and its upon it to a a form which stand before it a of the of its It with and it them with it its life of in the it with It one life as as or It has made it has it of the of which humanity is and one of the in respects the it has was the life of Jesus of so much in his history as I own in the long of and the truth of I a in the of Jesus be the of his its and its and I in the as in the I in the prophets, and that they not only their but the of a an one to at the the would have made of the of his a of the of the I that Jesus when the time was that he was peculiarly a and of I have to in the of his the circumstances were in time he was of a and the a truth of the I have no objection to the miracles, except where they do not happen to please not a soul so and new and I can him the and the without of of not in the they is to such a upon and all who have him since on the have their within to it not be when I to that though I all this it is of no to whether it or that the truth such to is and that the of for had the and offered it to as a to as as I it would be just as how the that from the also that I in the history of the and its in as presenting one of spiritual It is to and a of I have no from the of for as it I it as a thought to be expressed by the of not that they who their through the to were and not more than an to Christ has made many of his not place Christ then in a place than for or because his life was not it was and he is a of the But then I the Greek as one men in Christ as a a soul must its for many only when men from and him by the of their own open to of the from can he be as he do not he on his own expression he but this is not in I like to of this in he was not and where men so was and is and where he them to the they not they with him and do not I in Christ because I can do without because the truth he I because it is in the nature of own But I do not to do without him. is and I will not and on him. he to I will when I to by I I do not the church men who can with in it. I I more widely than body of men I And as I than in the apart for that will not to do The the than at a of again that to be and I will they to But that time is not I & in and I with I as to religion in It would be a of But for the I will how it is with as to I as where spirit in It the of it it it But so the and a and the It is only one of the same Jesus breaks through the of the world's like through the & I its I it. But it is a of the is about it, but its will not though I in them one I most men in need of them their their them be them in the of past But of I in these and in as they more, they beyond I would from them to I no from the past to own soul or not to the of Jesus of will of that that was in the it is not but and it must future will like to the and the but to But as an for a & a for a so Christ for a life more complete and than that of have had the to and have a to out all the forms of human life with the and of a Greek with the of a with the & of have not with how the of the in Jesus for a But this as the by to his be of in a letter or essay on the process of in have not of his life as a so that his words all & they to with all the and of the of a divine It is the same with and in a with have not of men to from the same that them so on a or of the of In him the the But this is in as will must do its own immortal friends, from only to when can do without But when can and from to do without them they will no I were to preach on this I would for a text the words of Jesus, I the is for that I for I the will not but I I will send him

Patrick Q. Mason

I was a high school senior in September 1993, when Lavina Fielding Anderson, Avraham Gileadi, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano, and Lynne Kanavel Whitesides were disfellowshipped or excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While these six people's lives were being upturned via Church discipline, the great drama in my life was spending too much money on the homecoming dance and then sulking that I didn't get asked to the next girls’ choice dance. My daily journal from the time, in which I painstakingly documented what I was learning in history, English, or calculus class on any given Tuesday, gives no intimation that I even heard about the excommunications. I was serving on seminary council and faithfully reading B. H. Roberts's History of the Church while some of the people whose works about Latter-day Saint history and theology I would read and admire only a few years later were being expelled from the LDS Church, if not necessarily the Mormon community. Despite my ignorance at the time, these events ended up having a profound effect on the trajectory of my life.I enrolled at Brigham Young University the following year, in fall 1994. No one in my social circles was talking about Mormon history, at least not in any academic sense. I don't recall any of my professors mentioning the September Six during my freshman year. The excommunications didn't really register for me until four years later, during my final year at BYU, when I took a course on Mormon history from David Whittaker, who was the curator of Mormon and Western Americana in the BYU library's special collections. It was my first exposure to scholarly Mormon history. Professor Whittaker talked about the September Six as the latest chapter in the long and complex relationship between the LDS Church and its intellectuals.That was the same year I applied to graduate school. I sought advice from several professors about my plan to pursue a PhD in American religious history. No one explicitly encouraged me to become a Mormon historian. Not Professor Whittaker—for whom I worked in special collections, who was one of my mentors, and who clearly thought highly of my abilities and potential. Not Richard Bushman, who was very gracious when I audaciously cold-called him. Maybe it was because they could tell I was interested in the broader American religious experience, not just Mormonism. Maybe it was because they believed—as I do—that it's important for students of Mormon history to also study other things. Or maybe it was because it was 1998, they had lived through 1993, and they were still nervous.From the perspective of institutional boundary maintenance, the September Six excommunications were a resounding success. The tactic worked, at least in the short to medium term. The show of force did exactly what it was supposed to. It made clear that Church leaders would not tolerate intellectual exploration that they perceived as challenging Church doctrine and what they deemed to be apostolic prerogatives. This wasn't about Church leadership feeling threatened by one individual or drawing the line on one issue, as we later saw in the high-profile excommunications of the 2010s (Kate Kelly and John Dehlin being the most prominent cases). It was a broadside, a frontal assault on the entire independent Mormon intellectual community. The fact that the six recipients of Church discipline were writing about different issues and occupied different positions across the ideological spectrum is precisely what made the excommunications so effective. The not-so-subtle message to the rest of the LDS scholarly community was clear: it could happen to you too.Part of the mythical power of Church discipline—the way that it intimidates those who are not directly affected by it—is the way that the decisions of Church leaders, working individually and together, are shrouded behind the veil of bureaucracy. Even three decades later, we don't know all the details about who directed these six cases to go forward all at the same time, or the degree of communication and coordination between General Authorities (which ones exactly?) and the various bishops and stake presidents on the ground. Boyd K. Packer's name frequently comes up, but the cast of characters was no doubt much larger. Their names and roles are largely anonymous, however, because they were acting in institutional roles that left no paper trail (or at least not a publicly available one). It's not really accurate to say that “the Church” excommunicated or disfellowshipped any of these six individuals; most Church members had no knowledge of these disciplinary actions. Though we frequently speak of it as such, “the Church” is not a historical agent. Collectivities (like “the Church”) neutralize the individual responsibility of any one person acting on behalf of the whole. Accountability is anonymized and diffused to the point that there is no longer any real accountability to speak of. And that allows collectivities—whether mobs, corporations, governments, or churches—to act with at least a certain amount of impunity.With all of this in the background, it makes sense that no one encouraged me to pursue a career in Mormon history. They didn't want to cheerlead me into a professional dead end or an antagonistic relationship with Church leadership. In the late 1990s, the prospect of ushering me, an eager and faithful young LDS undergraduate, to a doctoral program to study Mormon history would have seemed tantamount to pushing me out of the trenches and sending me across the demilitarized zone to a doomed fate on the other side. My professors had learned well the lessons of September 1993.But I hadn't. When I eventually learned about the excommunications, it seemed like ancient history—something that happened, like that homecoming dance, way back when I was in high school. Besides, the late 1990s were halcyon years for Mormons and Mormonism. The Church was the “fastest growing religion in the world”—at least, that's what we told ourselves, aided by sociologist Rodney Stark's grandiose projections.1 Anything that happened in 1993 was not just one but two Church presidents ago. The Church was in full Gordon B. Hinckley mode. No dour anti-communist, he. Instead, there he was smiling on national TV, matching Mike Wallace and Larry King stride for stride. What's more, the prophet was encouraging Church members to get all the education we could. Anti-intellectualism was a thing of the past!As I started graduate school, I had imbibed all of President Hinckley's ebullient optimism. I was living proof of Mormons’ newfound standing in the world. The Department of History at the University of Notre Dame was one of the best doctoral programs in the country for religious history, and it had admitted two—two!—Latter-day Saints. Yes, we were occasionally objectified, even exoticized; in almost every class session of a seminar we took with a distinguished Catholic historian, he gruffly asked, “What's the Mormon take on that?” But there we were, at the table! If any of my Catholic, evangelical, or secular colleagues and professors ever mentioned the September Six during those heady days, I don't recall.It was in the mid-2000s that it began to occur to me that perhaps 1993 was not so distant after all. I published my first article in Dialogue in the Spring 2004 issue. Two years later, I was invited to join the Dialogue Foundation's board of directors. I wanted to keep all my employment options open, so when I received the board's invitation, I called several people at BYU to ask if adding my name to the Dialogue masthead would be a problem were I to apply for a job in Provo. Most of them said that it was a new era—my board affiliation might get raised in an interview, but any concerns could easily be allayed once the interviewer heard me express my heartfelt commitment to the Church. Only one of my former professors cautioned me against joining the board, warning that any formal association with Dialogue would undermine an otherwise strong application to teach at BYU. I learned firsthand on two different occasions over the next few years that she was right.Fortunately, BYU wasn't my only professional option, as I found other good jobs to begin my academic career. Right as I was publishing my first book, The Mormon Menace, Claremont Graduate University opened a search for the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies. A chaired professorship in Mormon studies at a secular university was still a novelty. I decided, almost on a lark, to throw my hat in the ring. I knew I had no chance: I was thirty-four years old and had (barely) published one book. Endowed professorships are supposed to go to accomplished mid-career or senior scholars, people in their forties or fifties or sixties who have a long publication record and are recognized as leaders in their respective fields.The establishment of the Hunter Chair represented an opportunity to pass the torch to the next generation of Mormon studies scholars. But the handoff was a stretch. There was a pool of qualified candidates, but it was much smaller and more academically junior than it should have been. What explains the gap between Mormon history's founding generation and mine? No doubt there are multiple factors, but the fallout from 1993 must rank high on the list. The September Six excommunications resulted in a lost generation of Mormon intellectuals—smart, talented people who should have written books, led scholarly organizations like the Mormon History Association, and shaped both the academic field of Mormon studies and the broader public understanding of the religion.2 Latter-day Saints were primarily affected, but non-Latter-day Saint scholars also picked up on the cue that the Church wasn't enthusiastic about open inquiry into its past. A few Latter-day Saint intellectuals stuck with it, foremost among them Terryl Givens (interestingly, a literary scholar, not a historian). But there should have been an entire generation of Terryl Givenses.The Hunter Chair should have gone to a senior scholar. In fact, it had originally, with Richard Bushman coming out of retirement at Columbia University (where he held another endowed professorship) to get the endeavor off the ground. But when Bushman stepped down from the Hunter Chair in 2011, most members of the founding generation of New Mormon History were either at or near retirement age. Furthermore, many of that generation had spent their careers teaching at BYU or working in the Church History Department—neither of which was an especially attractive career profile for a secular university like Claremont. Philip Barlow would have been an excellent choice, but he had recently been hired as the inaugural holder of the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. There was another younger member of that generation who had published enough influential scholarship to be a potentially competitive candidate for the job. His name was D. Michael Quinn. Yet the principal donors to the Hunter Chair, who did not control the search but whose generous gifts creating the position afforded them some degree of influence with university administrators, made it clear that they did not consider an excommunicant to be an acceptable candidate for a position named after a Church president.3 September 1993 loomed large over Mormon studies, even at a secular university. The fact that a thirty-four-year-old with one book was hired for an endowed professorship at a highly regarded university can only be regarded as a fluke. The stars aligned in an unpredictable way that worked out splendidly for me, but only after many others had paid the price.Times change. Things did get better in the early 2000s. The archives started to open up again. The Church History Department started producing and supporting first-rate historical scholarship, most notably the Joseph Smith Papers and the research that culminated in Ronald Walker, Richard Turley, and Glen Leonard's masterpiece Massacre at Mountain Meadows. Latter-day Saint intellectuals found new confidence, and more non-Latter-day Saint scholars gravitated to the field. Mormon history has blossomed and expanded into the multidisciplinary field of Mormon studies. Social scientists, theologians, philosophers, literary scholars, scripture scholars, and others are all producing pathbreaking work. We are living in a golden age of Mormon studies. Tellingly, most of the work is being done by people who were either young enough, or started graduate school late enough, to have not been scared away by the events of September 1993.There are still whispers. Fear remains, even if we try to push it to the back of our minds. I am frequently asked, “Have you ever been called in by a General Authority for something you wrote or said?” The answer is yes, once. We spent a little over an hour together, enjoying a wonderful conversation that I genuinely cherish. He revealed himself to be a deep thinker and compassionate minister of the gospel. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't think of the September Six when I opened the letter and read this leader's “invitation” to meet with him in his office. When friends and colleagues publish or say things that push the envelope, I actively pray they will be met with the same generosity and understanding I experienced.4 There are no guarantees. Some of Joseph Smith's most poignant insights into the human condition came when he languished in Liberty Jail during the winter of 1838–39.5 In his masterful prison letter to the Saints, excerpted in Doctrine and Covenants section 121, he reflected on the nature of power in a fallen world. Power may be exercised in various ways. Too often it is used “to exercise control of dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men.” When this is the case, “the Spirit of the Lord is grieved.” In heaven's eyes, the unrepentant wielder of that kind of dominative, manipulative, compulsory power is in a posture of hostility or enmity not only toward other humans but also toward God. Alas, “sad experience” reveals that “almost all men” will “exercise unrighteous dominion” at some point.6 They may get what they want—God offers no promise to intervene in such cases—but this is not the order of heaven.The prophet's key insight comes next. “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained” unless it is predicated on the divine qualities of persuasion, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, pure knowledge, and most of all “love unfeigned.”7 This oft-quoted scripture is usually interpreted with an emphasis on the ought. That is to say, we ought to be kind and gentle and loving in our relationships with one another. But the statement is more radical than that. This passage is not simply about the way the universe should work; it tells us the way the universe does work. It is descriptive, in other words, not merely normative. The key words are can, only, and maintained. Certainly, it's nice when people are nice. But in a world of agentive souls, power and influence can only be maintained over the long term when assent is granted freely. Compulsion, dominion, and manipulation can and do work in the short term. People can be controlled or subdued with the use of intimidation, fear, and violence. But the human soul yearns for freedom and fulfillment. Any form of power based on compulsion rather than persuasion, intimidation rather than invitation, fear rather than love is therefore inherently limited—not just in its ethical value but in its efficacy.The September 1993 excommunications effectively and tragically cowed a generation of Latter-day Saint intellectuals. When institutions and individuals are threatened by new ideas, there is always a temptation to retrench. The blunt force of Church discipline worked in the short term. Even within a few years, however, its effect had diminished. Why? Because ideas cannot be quelched by fiat. And, more fundamentally, because “no power or influence can or ought to be maintained” by fear, dominion, intimidation, and compulsion. A new generation of intellectuals arose and carried the torch of inquiry forward.Churches thrive when they count their intellectuals as assets not liabilities, partners not villains. Will intellectuals think unruly thoughts? Yes, because it is the divine nature of the human mind to inquire, to explore, to expand. The pursuit of knowledge resists institutional correlation. If members or leaders of a group encounter thinking they deem to be dangerous, they are generally served best not by attempting to prevent or squelch that thinking but rather by providing better, more persuasive thinking. Numerous historical examples suggest that the compulsory silencing of ideas deemed “bad” is ultimately more dangerous than the ideas themselves. Churches, like governments, lose their authority precisely when they have no recourse other than mere authority. If Church leaders want to promote or discourage certain ideas, they have ample opportunity to use their power as teachers to persuade the Church membership of their position. Even in a digital age, it is the rare intellectual who can even approach the reach of the general conference pulpit and other modes of official Church communication.Thirty years later, we can be grateful that the collective excommunications of September 1993 proved to be an exception rather than the rule in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints's ongoing relationship with its intellectuals. We cannot change the past. But hopefully we can learn from and avoid the unnecessary tragedy of future lost generations.