Title: Restoration: God’s Call to the 21st-Century World
Author: Patrick Q. Mason
Publisher: Faith Matters Publishing
Genre: Devotional/Religious
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages:100
Binding: Paperback
Reviewed by David L. Cook
Patrick Mason is becoming the go-to academic for “friendly,” but sometimes honest to the point of ouch, analysis of the modern LDS culture. As the Arrington Chair at Utah State University he has some big shoes to fill and is doing an outstanding job. In his latest contribution Mason makes a case for breaking out of the LDS cocoon and finding good from sources beyond the traditional LDS “Beehive.” Although, this should not be surprising given the 13th Article of Faith: “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” We can always use reminders of this seemingly simple concept and Mason’s book does just that.
Mason uses the analogy of “the fortress church” to describe how we as LDS have sometimes approached the world. “At the center of the village, like any good European village, is the church. But this is no ordinary church . . . [the] church was where villagers would gather not only for worship but also for safety when marauders came. Indeed, from the outside it looks more like a castle . . .. In response to the very real persecution, they had received in the nineteenth century, our people – the Latter-day Saints – metaphorically built a fortress church in order to protect ourselves and our precious holdings from invaders. When viewed from narrow arrow slits (of the fortress towers), the rest of humanity and their ideas – or simply “the world,” as we came to know it – seemed ominous and threatening, single-mindedly focused on our destruction. So we closed the gates, occasionally cracking them open to send out missionaries, conduct business, and watched nervously for the next assault.”
This reminds me of a statement by Judge Monroe McKay in a lecture delivered when I was a young law student. He encouraged us to leave the Beehive State, like he did as a young lawyer. He reminisced about the themes he heard in church as a young man growing up in Huntsville, UT – “Pay your tithing, obey the Word of Wisdom, and they’re coming to get us.” Although, tongue in cheek, indeed there is a lot of truth to that cowboy reminiscence.
Although the fortress is a great analogy, in my view it is somewhat dated, at least outside the “Mormon Corridor” of Idaho, Utah, Arizona. For those of us that have lived in the Northeast, the walls of the fortress have long been abandoned. In almost every major Northeast city there is a very similar pattern that has played out. A post WWII college graduate (often a veteran) took a job with a major company in the East. He and his family moved to a city in the East and found church presence very small. Often meeting in rented facilities that needed to have the cigarette buts swept up before church on Sunday morning. Few wards existed. Those reverse pioneers became leaders in their business and communities and the church grew and flourished. The church was a place where they felt fellowship and community but their daily engagement in the larger community brought personal growth and respect. As I filled church assignments as an Area Seventy I saw this pattern over and over. Sometimes I feel our co-religionists in the west could benefit from some out migration.
I like Mason and this book is a good reminder of where we have been as LDS and where we are hopefully going.
Quotes
“And on shaping the world instead of fearing it: Do we fear the world more than we shape it? Do we let our anxieties prevent us from making a difference? Do we spend more time hiding from society’s flaws than fixing its problems? … Society is not something that just happens to us; it is something we help shape. The main thing is to engage, dialogue, bridge, and interact with people of all sorts. Unless we participate, we lose our ability to both influence the world and learn from it.” Elder Patrick Kearon