Could you please contact me. I have a request from Mormon Matters for a possible guest post there which your work with Apostle Luffman re Sunstone seems to make you an ideal candidate to write.

I presume my e-mail address is visable to you as a columnist here. If not, let me know if you’re interested through my blog.

Many forget that the Restoration is a fusion, a mash-up, although its creativity is often labeled as inauthentic Christianity by those outside of it. Yet nothing is new under the sun. Christianity itself involves the radical (re)creation of other religious, cultural, and ideological elements, until those with the most power determine that the recipe is complete.

This is an excellent article. I am all for the hybrids and the (re)innovative ways of approaching Zion and believing Christ. Personally, I have never been a big fan of rock, but I can see how others might get inspired by it – and acknowledge that God speaks to us all in our own tongues, according to our own understanding, and reaches far far deep into our soul and touches the core of our being wherein lies our transformative power.

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You find many examples on the net of fusions and mash-ups that are both creative and mostly authentic (my own site “latter day satyagraha” http://mormongandhi.com is just one example among many others). Will the idea prevail? God knows.

But as you say, Jesus and what he taught through his words and example are essential, if not fundamental elements in our pursuit of peace, justice and happiness. And for us, his followers, he is the light, when we reflect the light of his teachings, and we do as he did: “re”-invent religions of the day (Judaism). God, through Peter, made this re-invention, Christianity, available to Gentiles too by re-introducing the idea that we are all God’s children.

Now, was Gandhi re-innovative? Yes, he read Leo Tolstoy, who was reading Henry David Thoreau, and Gandhi was himself the one who inspired Martin Luther King’s nonviolent interpretation of God’s eternal message.

I believe that the Restoration, without the added creative and nonviolent impetus that can be derived from the peace movement, will continue to stagnate in the face of coming societal and spiritual challenges, or turn into something not necessarily intended by the Creator, as we, the co-creators, part too far from the tree (or the rod, whom I consider to be Jesus). Mormonism, although a resilient faith, may find it difficult to re-invent itself, AND at the same time, stand put, centered in Christ and his message of peace for humanity.

Let us be one. Let us “re-new our strength” (Isaiah 41:1).