Review
======
Title: Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology
Author: Adam S. Miller
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
Genre: Philosophy / Religion
Year Published: 2016
Number of Pages: 134 + xii
Binding: Paperback
ISBN13: 9781589585096
Price: $18.95
Reviewed by Jenny Webb for the Association for Mormon Letters
I warned them that I would be biased when I accepted this review. Can’t help it. I’ve enjoyed Adam Miller’s work for a long time now. I even like the guy in person. Still, I’ll do my best to be fair in my assessment of *Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology*, Miller’s latest publication in what has been a very productive year, following *The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom and Addiction in an Age of Distraction* in February and *Nothing New Under the Sun: A Blunt Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes* in April. Given my jealousy at his prolific output, it may be easier to be unbiased than I originally anticipated!
Similar in construction to Miller’s previous collection of essays, *Rube Goldberg Machines* (Kofford, 2012), *Future Mormon* gathers thirteen essays that, as a whole, paint an intriguing picture of Miller as theologian. A quick look at their titles demonstrates both breadth and depth:
1. A General Theory of Grace
2. Burnt Offerings: Reading 1 Nephi 1
3. Reading Signs or Repeating Symptoms: Reading Jacob 7
4. Early Onset Postmortality
5. *The God Who Weeps*: Notes, Amens and Disagreements
6. A Radical Mormon Materialism: Reading *Wrestling the Angel*
7. Reflections on President Uchtdorf’s “The Gift of Grace”
8. A Manifesto for the Future of Mormon Thinking
9. Network Theology: Is It Possible to be a Christian but not a Platonist?
10. Jesus, Trauma, and Psychoanalytic Technique
11. Every Truth is a Work, Every Object is a Covenant
12. The Body of Christ
13. Silence, Witness, and Absolute Rock: Reading Cormac McCarthy
Unsurprisingly, Miller continues his work on the topics of grace, truth, law, and love, grounding them in the earthy realities of this world, this life, this time, and this space. For Miller, the toothy grip of Mormonism lies in its insistence on and embrace of the quotidian as a fit vehicle for the divine. Mormons, in Miller’s view, are not on a journey through the earth and into some nebulous eternity filled with nameless joys and indecipherable prayers. Rather, Mormons live earthly lives as aggregate, bringing heaven to earth and earth to heaven. The same grace that can save you later can save you now, so why put things off until after you’re dead? Might as well see the truth of grace as coexistent with the truth of creation itself: “In the beginning there was grace. God’s creative work is the most fundamental expression of his grace, of his willingness to freely give what cannot be earned or observed. Furthermore, grace, rather than simply naming the *what* of creation, primarily names its *how*. Always and freely acting out of love, all of God’s actions are acts of grace” (2). The move Miller makes here is a move he repeats throughout the entire collection: read and rethink a faith’s familiar texts in order to find moments that, for the right person at the right time, might provide the opportunity to move past acceptance and toward conversion.
In fact, as I read and reflected on the essays in *Future Mormon*, what struck me was not so much what Miller chose to think about but rather the consistent practice of careful reading employed as a means for faithful exploration and expression. Miller’s theological approach has, at root, an unsettling, gaping hole: he could read something else and change his mind. As he explains, “Every truth must be thought through again because truths are bigger than we can manage. They cannot be confined to our own limited perspective. … A truth that is small enough to be thinkable only from my position and only in opposition to my enemy is no truth at all” (72). Mormonism for Miller, then, is the continual practice of recognizing our own limitations, our own biases, our own misprisions, and then chucking them out the window as best we can. Mindful reading, it appears, is Miller’s preferred method for such “chucking.”
In *Future Mormon*, Miller reads and responds in his own way to a diverse set of texts and authors: Paul, Bruce R. McConkie, Nephi, Jacob, Melville, Givens, Uchtdorf, Lacan (via Bruce Fink and Marcus Pound), Latour, Cormac McCarthy, Joseph Smith, and, at root, Jesus Christ. Each author, regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof), says something that, when read carefully, causes Miller to engage in the kind of theological speculation otherwise known as charity. That is, Miller reads *connectively*, weaving divergent voices and views into the warp and weft of Mormonism. It’s not the size of the tent that counts so much here as the familial fabric that forms the tent itself.
Miller practices a voracious Mormonism throughout *Future Mormon.* He manages to balance the continual hunger that accompanies existence against the exuberant gathering of truth, and the result is a thoroughly Mormon sense of community: “Inquire into the body of Christ. And then, perhaps, be willing to say: Though I may not even know what it *means* to say that the Church is true, I’d stake my life on the fact that this is Christ’s body, broken and shared, and that we are its members” (115). The product of all this reading and thinking and re-reading and reflection is, for Miller, a Church sealed up together here, and now, whether we’re ready or not.
Near the middle of *Future Mormon*, Miller offers up what he describes as “an invitation” (71) in the form of the essay “A Manifesto for the Future of Mormon Thinking.” In it, he argues for a “fearless thinking conducted as an act of love for the enemy” (73). And while I agree with much of what Miller says throughout, I do think it’s worth pushing back a bit. For as good as Miller is with materiality, when it comes to the immaterial, to the subjectively “supernatural” (Miller’s term), his writing sees the supernatural as a blank, almost uniform, void. Yet if, as Miller argues, the grace of this world is manifest through myriad materialities, it seems to me that any supernatural structuring would follow a similar form.
So when Miller says “This is not to say that supernatural things aren’t real or that your neighbor down the street may not be entertaining angels. But I think it’s fair to say that, even if granted, such things are pretty rare and peripheral” (77) I want to respond “But this position is still essentially subjective. Wouldn’t it be better, following your logic, to think the supernatural as earthy? What happens when we think the supernatural from the position of that angel being entertained? How does that change things?” After all, if Mormonism is committed in any way to the sealing of heaven and earth, moving the supernatural aside simply because it isn’t necessarily common, or commonly understood, is, I think, ultimately problematic. And in the context of a global church of Christ, with its incredibly rich variety of cultural knowledge and traditions, including those with long-standing supernatural or spiritual realities, it’s important to find ways to think the supernatural as rigorously and productively as other areas of Mormon theology. We’ve got to remember what Moroni says in Ether 12:6: “faith is *things*” (emphasis added)—if we can see grace in the material world, we likely need to find ways to see the material in the supernatural.
But take this critique as an endorsement: Miller’s work here and throughout *Future Mormon* is important not just because it represents some of the most careful, creative, and charitable work going on in Mormon theology today, but precisely because it encourages readers to engage and respond in a similar manner. Miller never claims to have all the answers; in fact, I think he’d find that position untenable. But he does have questions. And he works them beautifully.
Working the questions—taking Mormonism seriously enough to read one’s entire world as Mormon—this is the work of conversion. We can never take Mormonism for granted. Mormonism will only exist so long as the work of conversion continues from generation to generation. Miller knows this: “if Mormonism continues to matter, it will be because they [the next generation], rather than leaving, were willing to be Mormon all over again. Like our grandparents, like our parents, and like us, they will have to rethink the whole tradition, from top to bottom, right from the beginning, and make it their own in order to embody Christ anew in this passing world” (xii). But the fragility of Mormonism—its continued dependence upon each individual conversion—is, as Miller’s work illustrates, also its strength. A Mormonism rethought here is a vital, regenerative faith.
Miller writes *Future Mormon* for his children and their own oncoming futures, futures in which they will ask the questions and make the decisions that will form both their faith and their selves. He offers his own questions, his own thinking and rethinking, as a way to make those decisions both faithful and fruitful. Miller may write for them, but we are lucky to have his words and work now, in our lives today. Go read this book. Enjoy it. It’s some of Miller’s best work to date, and it’s a powerful invitation. One you won’t regret accepting.