Personal Savior: Change and Confluence in Religious Rhetoric

Glen Leonard observed (somewhere in his Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, A People of Promise I think) that in 1985 the LDS Church consciously altered course in both its public persona and public rhetoric. In a way, outwardly fathered by the correlation idea, the Church moved to focus its message more simply and more on Christ. I observed the results of this effort in a number of ways.

Resurrection and What’s *that* in Your Veins?

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians reads (15:50) “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” That together with other statements in the same chapter suggest one of many clear differences in the resurrected body and the mortal body. Combining this with the account of the gospels and the resurrected Jesus, visible, touchable, etc. (“not a spirit”) led, essentially from the beginnings of post-apostolic Christianity, to lots of explosive argument about the nature of a resurrected body. Those arguments are still on the side-burner today, and they formed a prominent place in the religion of Joseph Smith’s era.