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
ISBN: 978-1-953677-04-4
Price: $11.95
Reviewed for the Association for Mormon Letters by Doug Christensen
Patrick Mason generates a useful metaphor in his latest book, Restoration: God’s Call to the 21st Century World. His view of the Latter-day Saint Church as a “fortress church” develops from his historical perspective of a young church under serious duress for its first 50 years and properly embattled right into the twentieth century. But Mason believes that it might be time to retreat from a defensive posture in a time where contemporary threats are more existential than temporal.
Modern Latter-day Saints whose curiosity traverses beyond the correlated message of the Church will eventually encounter a paradox. If the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God’s one true church, why is it so small and why isn’t it growing faster? Why is it vexed on every side by dissent? How do I position myself in relation to other faith traditions, even to the ever-increasing unreligious population, without indulging in over-confidence and the kind of pride that comes along with being right, with being the one true Church? Mason has tackled questions like this before (you might remember reading his book Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt). In Restoration, Mason fine-tunes questions that might have received less attention in Planted, questions like: do we have to be a “Fortress Church”? or is it okay for us to try to be a little more “of the world?” Though a thin 100-page book, Mason’s ideas are thick with relevant questions and clairvoyant recommendations. Characteristic of his other academic work, he writes in a way that is at once faithful to the Church’s missions and also faithful to objective questions we might expect from a professional academic historian.
He begins by contextualizing the Church’s impulse toward protection: “In response to 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 through narrow arrow slits, 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” (2). He openly wonders if it isn’t time for the Church to throw the doors open and approach “the world” with less suspicion and more trust in the goodness of humanity. He wonders if the Church is now confident and comfortable enough in its own skin to embrace “the world” and invite it to band together against forces that threaten everyone and not just the Latter-day Saint institution and the people it has been intent on protecting. Eventually, he will argue specifically that the real threats to the Church and by extension to the health and well-being of humanity are racism, patriarchy, nationalism, cultural colonialism, inequality of wealth, and fundamentalism (see 59-69). These touchstones are not some veiled liberal agenda for Mason—he addresses each one using the words of the Church’s prophets, apostles, and other leaders. At the same time, each of these topics could be its own book, some readers might especially hope for more careful development of his section on wealth inequality.
Prior to highlighting these prescient concerns, Professor Mason unpacks the title of his book. He wants his readers to reimagine how they think about The Restoration. What is The Restoration? What was actually restored through the prophet Joseph Smith? Significantly, he questions the narrative that God restored what Christ established when he was on the earth, noting that although this idea was prevalent among religious people generally in the early nineteenth century, there is little evidence of this particular framing in the writings of the Prophet Joseph or the early saints. About this story that missionaries (including Mason) have been telling for at least the past century, Mason writes: “But here’s the funny thing. As far as I’ve been able to discover, Joseph Smith never talked about a ‘restored church.’ Not once” (11). Instead of restored Church, Mason wants to broaden the scope of this story the Church has been telling itself toward a more nuanced and philosophical idea of a restored people. To support the idea of restoring God’s people, he builds upon a notion from apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf, who suggested that all Church members are part of an ongoing restoration. “Yes, there are many ‘things’ to restore.” Mason writes, “But ultimately God isn’t concerned with restoring ‘things’ as much he is with using those things to restore what really matters—‘his people.’ . . . The restoration of God’s people simultaneously affirms and transcends human individuality. We will each be restored to our own families even as we are all reunited with the entire family of God” (17). This rich notion of restoring each broken family, fractured individual, and messy ward family (or tribe, however large or small), invites the Church to pan outward in its scope, to emphasize the global outreach that the Church is good at and so well poised to do.
Mason puts into perspective the ambitious efforts of the Church when he suggests that as of 2020, “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints constituted only two-tenths of one percent of the global population. (‘Active’ church members would be less than have of that—less than one-tenth of one percent” (41). If these statistics hold true, what are we to do? Wouldn’t any robust effort ultimately be an exercise in futility? Mason doesn’t believe so. His big idea in this book is for the Church to concentrate more energy on what it does well. “Now is not the time to rest on our laurels,” he writes. “Latter-day Saints have an absolutely vital role to play in the modern world, but we can fulfill our mission only as we work in love and unity with one another and in partnership with others. This isn’t the latest in a series of new Church initiatives or programs. The purpose of the Restoration is nothing less than to restore God’s people—all of God’s children, not just the members of our church—to wholeness . … Our broad purpose and mission beckon us out of our fortress church. We are called to be a light, yeast, and salt, to elevate and transform the world. Our Heavenly Parents want to restore all their children to happiness and peace and flourishing, in this life and the next” (88).
Mason concludes his book with his own reinterpretation of Doctrine and Covenants section one. He calls it his “Restoration Manifesto.” This section of scripture revealed nearly 18 months after the organization of the Church would otherwise appear as section 70 or 71 in its proper chronological context, instead, it serves as a preface to the Doctrine and Covenants. Mason’s emphasis in his manifesto corresponds to chapter four wherein he openly examines the idea of the one true church. In Doctrine and Covenants section one the Lord famously acknowledges “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which, I the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the church collectively and not individually” (D&C 1:30). Mason capitalizes on this notion by suggesting that he sees the Church as the one true Church because “collectively, the church points people to salvation in Christ and the building of Zion” (Mason 96). Taken as a whole, this manifesto amplifies Mason’s commitment to a more welcoming approach to sharing the good news of the gospel. He draws out of D&C 1 the love God feels toward His children and also His patience with our hubris and folly. I see that notion as a worthy representation of Mason’s book as a whole and as such, it joins the work of many others who are advocating for a gospel message that transcends division and instead points to largess and unanimity.