Future of Mormon History (Part 5 of 8)

What does the future of Mormon history look like? Steve Pynakker is the evangelical host of Mormon Book Reviews. He and I sat down to talk about recent events that surprised us, as well as what the future of Mormonism might look like.

Steve: what does the future of Mormonism look like to you?

GT: I’m a historian, not a future teller.

Steve: Okay, based on history, so I, what do you think? You know the history and you know the history of religion and stuff like that. Do you have any inkling of where you think this is going? Do you think there might be some kind of turn that you wouldn’t have expected, something down the road that you didn’t see coming?

GT: I mean, it’s like my March Madness bracket. I’m terrible at picking.

Steve: Yeah, Loyola beat Illinois today.

GT: Yeah, I saw that.

Steve: That busted a lot of people’s brackets.

GT: Just the stuff that’s happened in the last five years has been a surprise to me: two hour church, now, instead of three. That’s been a surprise. What they’re doing the Salt Lake temple is horrible, if you ask me, and the Manti temple. I’m very disappointed to hear about that we’re killing our own history. Why would you do that? I think President Hinckley would be rolling in his grave to find out what we’re doing there, to take out those beautiful murals that we spent so much time and effort and money on. To me, that’s very disappointing. But I’m not the Prophet. That’s above my paygrade. The combining of elders and high priests, I would never have predicted. I remember, I walked in late to that meeting with my son, and I was like, “Did they just dissolve the High Priest’s quorum?” The guy said yes. I was like, “Wow.” So, President Nelson’s definitely got his surgeon’s knife out, and he’s cutting out what he thinks is garbage. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have predicted many of the things that President Nelson has done. I have no idea who’s following [in his footsteps]. We don’t have any other surgeons in the quorum, so, maybe it won’t change much. But, yeah, future telling us is very hard.