Day 19. October 16, 2006
Movement 2. Solus Jesus
Lecture 9. Another Testament of the Christ: Jesus and the Latter-day Saints (Part 2)
Lecture 10. Reform, Race, and the Civil War: Jesus and American Slavery (Part 1)
Unlike Textual Mormonism, Temple Mormonism revealed a cosmos more akin to the Hindu or Buddhist cosmos than the Christian Cosmos. In it everything is material, growing, and evolving, even God. The faithful strive to become more like God - a process of exaltation - by following Temple practices. Jesus through obedience to the Father provides a model. On Joseph Smith's death in 1844, Mormonism split. Brigham Young led a group out of the U.S. to Utah to establish a theocracy around the temple. Smith's spouse Emma led a movement back to Textual Mormonism that rejected polygamy and re-emphasized Jesus. In this period Jesus also became the focal figure of reform movements which grew out of a redefinition of sin. Many came to see sin as the product of individual choice, rather than an original and irreparable corruption of the soul. If individuals can choose to sin, they can choose to not sin. By implication, societies too can renounce sin. Thus, was born the fight against slavery and against other social ills.