Item Detail
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25620
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3
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0
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English
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Long Narratives : Toward a New Mormon Understanding of Apostasy
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Standing Apart : Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy
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Oxford, New York
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Oxford University Press
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309-334
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The goal of much recent scholarship and writing on the Mormon concept of the Great Apostasy— and indeed the overarching goal of this volume— is to explore the tension between the fundamental LDS belief in a restoration of Christ’s church after a period of apostasy and a historical record at odds with some of the ways the story of that apostasy has been told.
Developing an appreciation of historical complexity and recognizing the problematic sources and methodologies that underpin the LDS apostasy narrative beg a new approach to that narrative. However, they need not lead to the complete abandonment of an apostasy narrative, for such narratives have both utility and power in Mormonism.
It is my task in this chapter to propose a set of suggestions for constructing, or rather, reconstructing, the providential narrative of the Great Apostasy. While this is not an exhaustive list of suggestions, taken together they provide a way to think about the Great Apostasy that is both true to the LDS restorationist doctrine of apostasy and responsive to evolving interpretations of the historical record. [From the article]