Are we doomed to the dark side of some issues?
Mark Butler is contaminating M* with spill over from the dark side of New Cool Thang. Much of that weird stuff has lead me to ponder why some of Joseph Smith’s controversial works, like the KFD, are not canonized but others are? Not being canonized made it easy for open minded LDS to take the KFD at less than face value and allowed GBH to thankfully put the nails in that coffin. But what do we do with works that probably should have also shared apocryphal status like the KFD but have ended up in our standard works? Can anything be decanonized in a church as traditional as ours or are we doomed to be stuck on the dark side of some issues?
Steve EM
Steve,
It’s all part of the assimilation process, ala Armand Mauss’ description in The Angel and the Beehive, if you ask me. Accepting the KFD means challenging God’s “universal fatherhood” because JS explicitly states, several times, that “God does not have the power to create the spirit of man at all.” Them’s fightin’ words to a correlated Mormon.
Frankly, I have my own theory about why the KFD didn’t officially take, but it depends upon some rather sketchy inferences which, sadly, lead to casting certain past members of the First Presidency in less-than-savory light, which is a no-no for a card-carrying member like myself.
Comment by David J — September 13, 2006 @ 5:52 pm