This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Passion for Christ, a ministry of Utah Partnerships for Christ. In Acts 26, 18, Jesus said, Paul's purpose was to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light. and from the power of Satan unto God. That they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
We hope you'll join us for today's testimony of lives changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, let's begin today's episode. Welcome again to Passion for Christ. This is Russ East, your host. On today's episode, we're going to be sharing a Segment from a Podcast on YouTube by Sean McDowell. Sean McDowell.
Is the son of Josh McDowell, an apologist, and Sean is an apologist as well. He has. Aaron Shufflewalloff on his program. along with Brandy Bronson. This will be a three-part series.
The title of this is Why Mormonism Looks Different Than It Did. Uh This is something that I think you're going to find fascinating. Aaron was one of our first interns with Utah Partnerships for Christ. He is a volunteer now with Mormonism Research Ministry at the Utah Christian Research Center here in Utah.
So let's jump right into this really amazing interview with Sean McDowell, Aaron Shafowalof. and Brandy Bronson. Differently today. The clearest way I can think about it today is in terms of there just being different streams. After you become a member, after you pass the baptismal interview and you're baptized and you build the LDS church, you can kind of believe whatever you want as long as you're not agitating against the leadership.
And so what it results in is in a radical disunity at a belief level within the Latter-day Saint Lutheran. What is the new Mormonism? How are both the beliefs and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shifting today? Given their life experience, research, and ministry, I can't think of two people more qualified to address these questions than our two guests today, Aaron Shafavilov and Brandy Bronson. Thank you both for coming on.
Thanks for having us. Absolutely.
So let's just dive right in, and I'll start with you, Brandi. Why are you interested in this topic of the New Mormonism?
Well, I think it hits home for me because I was raised a Mormon and I was a Mormon for 27 years and I loved my experience as a Latter-day Saint. And I love the people. I love the people. And I see that as Mormonism is shifting right now, people are turning more not towards Christianity, but this weird mix where they're using a lot of the same words, but I still don't feel like we're getting the gospel.
So I think that this really matters and I want to speak to it. I can't wait to hear from your personal experience what you've seen from the time that you grew up and trends you're seeing shifting today. But Erin, you have a different story and motivation. Tell us about your interest in Mormonism as a whole, but in particular in the New Mormonism.
Okay. I moved to Utah in 2005 and I've been doing Evangelism either at Temple Square or in downtown Provo or near BYU for about 20 years, for about two decades, and we've Been seeing a lot of changes in the LDS culture. But a short answer to your question is: I just love the LDS people, would love to see Christ honored for who he really is and with the true gospel in Utah as a part of the evangelism church planning movement. And also, I work with Mormonism Research Ministry as a volunteer helping research these issues. I hope everybody watching this picks up on the fact that I picked the two of you not because you have an axe to grind, but because you love LDS.
You have an experience and a care for these people that God loves deeply. And I want, and I know that's gonna shine through today in our conversation. Aaron, let me shift you as we get into some details.
Now, we're actually going to dive into the details, but what is meant by the term the new Mormonism? I think that If You can divide it up into different eras. There's sort of the early Joseph Smith. Late Joseph Smith. Um And then there's the pioneer Mormon.
Season, some people call it middle Mormonism. Where they're running with the radical distinctives, the things that we think of. As being weird today about Historic Latter-day Saint teachings, really come to the foreground in Middle Mormonism or pioneer Mormonism. But in the 1890s, the Latter-day Saint movement really tried to be more integrated into society. And so it tried to systematize a lot of its.
Teachings be more American, fit in more, celebrate monogamy over polygamy. There's a number of issues there. And then what happened is that there was the correlation era, I would argue, where the LDS Church was trying to systematize even further with its manuals. And it's institutionally supervised, sort of outlets. And we got a lot of influence from Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkey, who became foregrounded, highlighted voices.
I think what happened to finish this off, in the late 1890s and in the 1990s, there was an emergence.
Well, there was really the foregrounding of. Mormon neo-Orthodoxy, where they're in dialogue with Latter-day Evangelicals, and they're becoming more comfortable with rejecting the teachings of their own leaders, if you will. And they're kind of quiet about it. They're polite. They don't overtly undermine, but they do implicitly undermine the Tradition of Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce Monki.
And so you had a lot of influence from BYU professors. And then you had another movement where there was more of a liberal LDS focus on higher criticism and following some of the sort of the Yeah. The atheistic criticisms of classical Christianity, Mormonism started adopting a lot of that as part of it. It's apologetic. And then we'll talk about it later, but you had the influence of an LDS philosopher named Blake Osler.
So today, the New Mormonism is sort of a mix of different streams of thought within the Latter-day Saint movement.
Some are more traditionalist, following the The big doctrines we think about coming from Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkey. And some are a vocal, apologetic minority trying to really reinvent a kind of synthetic or new Mormonism that is quietly and politely trying to undermine and reverse the teachings of some of its most prominent apostles and prophets. I'm going to come to you in a second, Brandy. But first, Aaron, it sounds like there's always been changes in the history of Mormonism. And of course, early in Joseph Smith's life, when you have The Book of Mormon, largely Orthodox in a lot of the teachings, but Doctrine and Covenant, Book of Abraham, King Fault Discourse.
Then you see some of these more radical teachings emerge. Would you say there's more change taking place today, or it's always been a movement in change and it's just shifting differently today? Oh, that's a great question. I think you're asking, is it changing at the same rate? Yeah.
Um I I don't know. The clearest way I can think about it today is in terms of there just being different streams. Within the Latter-day Saint movement. And I think that those streams are so different. I think of them as ships out at sea.
That don't put an anchor down. Each of these ships has the same flag, the same logo, the same veneer, the same stated allegiance, but they're going in different parts of the ocean. The winds are bringing them to very different places. And today, the Latter-day Saint movement, really sort of the unifying bond for Latter-day Saints in the mainstream sect is really the institution. When, after you become a member, after you pass the baptismal interview and you're baptized into the LDS Church, you can kind of believe whatever you want as long as you're not agitating against the leadership.
And so, what it results in is in a radical disunity at a belief level within the Latter-day Saint movement. Super interesting.
Now, we're going to get into your different streams, which, when you sent me some insights about this, it was so fascinating. I think our viewers and listeners are going to find this really helpful. Brandy, you break down categories of Mormonism a little bit differently. You call it kind of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. Give us some of the categories of how you understand the new Mormonism.
Yeah, first I want to add to what Erin was saying. And I think the Mormonism that I knew, the reason that I left Mormonism, a big part of it was that I could see there were inconsistencies and that things were changing that shouldn't be changing, right? Like we believe that it's line upon line, not retraction upon retraction. And when I started to see a lot of inconsistencies on that foundational level, that's when I started to go, oh, something's really, really wrong here, right? But regardless of the changes over time, I believe there's always been a foundational plane of Mormonism, which is a great apostasy, and that we are the one true church, right?
And there's this exclusivity to that.
So I think that those transcend all levels of Mormonism until New Mormonism. I think New Mormonism is really the first time that I'm hearing that the apostasy was more just an establishment of the ecclesiastical structure of the church, but that we're just merely a denomination. And for me, that kind of eradicates the. We'll be right back for the rest of today's testimony. Please know we at Utah Partnerships for Christ have been planting seeds of the gospel in Utah for over 24 years.
Mm. We welcome any questions you may have and invite you to visit our website to obtain a list of words and definitions that would help you understand how Mormons think and how to be able to better witness to your friends who belong to the Mormon Church. That website is www.upfc.org. That's upfc.org. We'll be right back.
Welcome to Passion for Christ, a ministry of Utah Partnerships for Christ. In Acts 26, 18, Jesus said, Paul's purpose was to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light. and from the power of Satan unto God. that they may receive forgiveness of sins And inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. We hope you'll join us for today's testimony of lives changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now let's begin today's episode. Before, there were still legitimate claims to Mormonism, and Mormonism now doesn't have that.
So, I would say the first version of Mormonism really is that OG Mormonism with Joseph Smith and Searston's and large volumes of doctrine coming forth. And that was just basically the Mormonism that I was aware of. And then 2.0 was really that isolationist movement, like Erin was talking about out west with the frontier and Brigham Young instituting blood atonement. And there was Adam-God doctrine, and there was a lot of really unique things that took its own form within that second stream of Mormonism. And then I would call 3.0 more of the Mormonism that I was raised in, which is that things were a little bit more harmonized.
You could see that the lectures on faith had already been removed in the 1920s.
So we didn't have that in the Doctrine of Covenants. We didn't have a question about how many were in the Godhead. I believe there were three and that they were all distinct beings with unified purpose. The Black Had the priesthood at this point, and Bruce Ormankonki was cool, and we had you know all of this doctrine really solidified for us. And so, that was the Mormonism that I knew well.
But I did believe, and I always said this to my friends growing up: which is we're different and it matters, you know. And especially my mom, she was a Methodist before joining the church as an early teen. And her hearing stories growing up about how Mormonism was worth converting to, that Mormonism was different than creedal Christianity, as they call it, and that. We needed the gospel. We needed the restored gospel on the earth, and that's what I believed.
And so, hearing this rhetoric now within New Mormonism that, you know, as long as you're glorifying God and you're working towards this, that there's really not a big difference is just unheard of, in my opinion.
Now in some ways, this is a whole separate conversation, but what what was like give me the kind of Twitter version of when those cracks started to appear for you that made you question the LDS faith? Yeah, well, first it was a lot actually had to do with abortion and some of their takes on things that really led me to believe, not that there was an issue with the Book of Mormon, because honestly, Sean, like even if I had social issues, I still was like, well, the restoration is true, right? Like I have a testimony of the Book of Mormon and of Joseph Smith and the Restoration.
So I was never really wavering in that testimony. It wasn't until a family member who I knew was disaffected with the church, I sat down with him and I said, hey, like, what's going on with the church? I almost feel like there's another apostasy going on. And I actually think a lot of Mormons feel that way now, which also leads into New Mormonism. I don't think that there's that direction that the leadership used to give.
If you listen to a general conference, you're just not going to receive a lot of meat anymore. But I just felt a little disaffected with the leadership. And so I was like, maybe we have another apostasy. And my family member told me to go. Look at Mormon Think, which is a site that had both the apologists as well as the critic's view.
And I never would have looked at the like the gospel, any other type of anti-Mormon stuff, right? Like the CES letter and things like that. I couldn't stomach that.
So, yeah, I looked at that and I started to realize for the first time that the history of the Mormon church was not what I was sold my whole life. And that was a really hard season for me because I didn't know about seer stones and hats and I didn't know about a lot of the things that the translation process.
So we can get into all that. You're right. This is a whole different conversation for another day. But yeah, I think it was the historical claims of Mormonism as well as the changing doctrine that really solidified that, oh, I've been sold something that isn't true. All right, folks, comment if you like.
You know what? We want you to have Brandy back to do a deep dive on her story and conversion. I'm so tempted to go there, but we won't. We'll hold off on that. Uh w one of the things you you sent me, Aaron, Was that kind of these different strains, like six or seven different strains, so to speak, for lack of a better word?
Who identify as Mormons today? And of course, one of those strains, you mentioned the name Blake Osler as an apologist who's influential. We can circle back to that. But what are some of these main differences? Once somebody says, I'm a Mormon, believe in the restoration.
follow some of these teachings. What are some of those different strains that people can follow today under the broad umbrella of Latter-day Saints? Yeah, it's really important when you hear Latter-day Saints say, we believe or we don't believe, they're typically. Speaking from a stream inadvertently, maybe sometimes over-representing their stream. But the main streams that I identify are.
pioneer Mormonism. where someone's got more of an interest in the distinctives of of uh Brigham Young and You'll find some modern Latter-day Saints that Have this sort of flavor where they're more friendly to some of these pioneer ideas. But you're going to see this more with the fundamentalist movement or some of the polyglotist groups. We interact with them in Utah, the all-red group, the Peterson group. There's just a number of, you know, it People think of this as like abstract, but it's quite real here in Utah where we interact with people that are a part of these groups.
And then there's some mainstream Latter-day Saints who kind of have one foot in and one foot out, and you can tell that they have some more affinity with this. The second stream would be correlated Mormonism, and this is going to be people who have a higher regard for Latter-day Saint prophetic direction. And they think of The manuals and the general conference talks is being more sticky and reliable and perpetual in their momentum. They're to be trusted. And there's a lot of influence here with, like I said, Bruce McConkey and Joseph Fielding Smith.
And these people are. Either very affirming of the King Follett discourse and something called the Sermon in the Grove. They're very affirming that God has a God. Affirming of something called spirit birth. They'll use language like we're literal children of heavenly parents.
They're very overt about heavenly mother, if you ask them.
Some people might hedge on the as man is, God once was, as God as man may be, but that rhetorical layer of hedging typically behind it, though, is essentially an affirmation of it. The third stream is, you could call it Mormon neo-Orthodoxy, or you might call it accommodationism. And this is. A view of it's it's I think it was really spearheaded mostly by BYU professors who realized that they could. Minimize Latter-day Saint doctrine proper to what they're Standard works or canon teaches, irrespective of what their leaders have taught publicly.
And so they really tried to approach something called official doctrine or sort of a sense of formal dogma. They really tried to strip away things that were not supported by the standard works. And so you even had some people. Starting to suggestively question whether Heavenly Mother was a doctrine, you had a lot of Latter-day Saint. uh professors uh r really uh Big names in this movement would be Stephen E.
Robinson wrote Believing Christ, arguably as a kind of an undermining and a rejection of Spencer Kimball's miracle of forgiveness. And then we have Brad Wilcox today, has a really famous talk called His Grace is Sufficient. And they're really trying to undo and undermine this very rich LDS prophetic tradition of teaching that. Salvation is, in the most robust sense, a merit system that we're earning, qualifying for, being worthy of the celestial kingdom and of exaltation. The neo-orthodoxy movement or the accommodationism stream.
Really is trying to say it's not about merit. There's still a works-based system there structurally, but they're really trying to go heavy into evangelical grace rhetoric. And if I could speak very informally here, it's almost like they have a crush on the evangelical view of grace and they yearn to have, they're thirsty for something that's more gracious. Another stream would be revisionism, and this is Blake Osler, Benjamin Spackman. Um These guys are really into higher criticism.
They have a very low view of Latter-day Saint prophets. For them, the standard works are not as binding. Rather, we have modern LDS profits to almost help us understand the subset or the parts of the standard works that are still trustworthy. And some of these guys, they don't even think God knows the future. They bought into open theism, contrary to the prophetic tradition of the Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles, who've taught very clearly that God knows the future exhaustively.
They really, Blake Osler, for example, argues that the Book of Mormon. It has an ancient authentic core, but Joseph Smith Added his own sort of fictional layer on top of it. His own, he expanded this ancient core.
So, I mean, it's. You're going to get this from guys like Jacob Hansen, where they're really trying to reinvent Mormonism. with a heavy influence from Blake Osler. I'll try to finish this off. Primitive Mormonism, and this is a real movement here in Utah.
This is very different. This is sort of a, this is. often a polygamy denier movement adjacent Stream of Mormonism that argues that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. They have a very low view of Brigham Young. Even a conspiratorial view of Brigham Young's involvement in polygamy.
And they do not, a lot of them don't really want to talk about the Book of Abraham or the later DNC sections. They don't really have a high regard for. Modern Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles, but they love the Book of Mormon. And so, because of that, there's more of that. early Mormon Protestant adjacent evangelical.
Sometimes I call it Evan Jellyfish. you know, version of stream of Mormonism.
Some of these are members of the mainstream Latter-day Saints sect or institution out of out of Salt Lake City.
Some of them have left of the Latter-day Saint institution and joined other groups. There's two more. There's the progress. And these are very real. These are people I talk with all the time.
Progressive Mormons who long for the Latter-day Saint institution. to adopt same-sex marriage in a more robust way, into its theology, into its liturgy, into its increasing accommodation and honor. They really celebrate the idea that in the Latter-day Saint movement, Um, you know, you can be transgender and go to church and hold your membership. And as of 2019, the LDS Church no longer counts same-sex marriage to be an act of apostasy for purposes of church discipline.
So, this stream, there's another osler, there's a, I think it's Richard Osler and Blair Osler, not Blake Osler, but two other oslers that really are representative of progressive Latter-day Saints who. um are very much into feminism and liberal politics, but they're very much accommodated and welcomed into the Latter-day Saint movement, who does it doesn't do a lot of boundary maintenance anymore.
Well, we will pick up from where we're leaving off here for next week here on Passion for Christ. You've been listening to Sean McDowell and Aaron Shafowaloff and Brandy Bronson on YouTube. The title is Why Mormonism Looks Different Than It Did. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again next time on Passion for Christ.
Yeah. Before we sign off for today, please know that all of us here at Utah Partnerships for Christ appreciate your prayers and support. We are also available to do Zoom call workshops or personal coaching on reaching Mormons for Christ. Contact us today at upfc.org. That's upfc.org.
Thanks so much for joining us on another edition of Passion for Christ.
