I must confess, I sometimes dive into rabbit holes because my curiosity is piqued by my incredulousness. The more I learned of the context for Section 49, the harder it was for me to understand how Shakerism got started. The Wikipedia page suffices to share the salient facts, but what it can't do is help a modern reader like me, with the background in scripture I have, see how anyone could take the obviously selective readings and partial analogies of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming seriously. There are just too many holes, too much incoherence. Live and let live, of course, but let's not pretend they have legs to stand on logically or scripturally. Or at least, if they do, they have to admit that some of their doctrines are extra-biblical. Those beliefs stemming from outside the canon share that quality with a substantial number of doctrines from every self-professed Christian sect, so please don't believe I'm singling the Shakers out. But their particular bundle of tangential beliefs that began somehow rooted in the Bible struck me as so untenable as to be impossible to gain root: a mortal woman claiming to fulfill the prophetic criteria of Christ's second coming; an insistence on celibacy for all; Jesus as son of Joseph, not of the Father. I also, mostly by convention, but also by doctrinal understanding, find ecstatic forms of worship inherently off-putting, since I believe in a unity of Spirit, a usefulness for all spiritual manifestations, and in order and authorized direction of meetings. So the Shaker manner of loud, trembling, and "charismatic" worship, perhaps akin to today's Pentecostals, would have left me unenthused to investigate further.
With that said, it's not judgmental to disagree with an interpretation on logical grounds, and leave the other free to learn, to change their mind, or to continue in peaceful pursuit of their own path. Let them worship how, where, or what they may as long as they allow me the same freedom. Furthermore, while it's okay to patiently take efforts to help them see their own errors (which is a delicate task unless your interlocutor is humble), it's also not self-contradictory to applaud the good within another's doctrines and/or motivations. And it's probably the best strategy 99% of the time to approach negotiating of doctrinal meaning with adherents of other faiths, through simple positive building upon common ground rather than to try to root out the errors first. Faith is a vector. It has magnitude and direction. And while I may know that an idea is misdirected, I can still celebrate the magnitude of the holders.
This is the approach that Copley, Rigdon, and Pratt were commanded to take in the text of the Section, but which, apparently, they didn't quite carry out as we can tell from the Section's heading. They were to reason with them. They were to take a friend of theirs (Copley) who was a recent convert and use his knowledge to find the common ground on which to build; take a biblical scriptorian with them (Rigdon) who could help ground the inevitable back and forth in appeal to an outside authority; and take a faithful student of the Book of Mormon (Pratt) whose conversion story is the likeliest direct antecedent to Smith's framing of the Lord's command to preach the Gospel they had received "even as ye have received it."
But let's not mistake the frame of the revelation for the historical frame of its delivery to and rejection by the Shakers. Pratt, I'm told, was the instigator, in his zeal to be direct, of laying Smith's revelation out to the Shakers rather than taking a more patient approach, and so one might be tempted to reproach Pratt for cavalier overboldness as the cause of the Shaker rejection of the Restored Gospel. Maybe to that audience, the text of this revelation seemed too pointed, too confrontational, and therefore it prompted a defensive reaction rather than a reasoned response.
Maybe.
But let's step back into the revelation itself. Who is it addressed to? Not the Shakers, but the missionaries. Who was it teaching in bold clarity? The missionaries. Who was it instructing as to doctrinal purity? The missionaries. To whom was it dismantling false doctrines? The missionaries. The text itself isn't inflammatory, its misapplication to an outsider audience may be, but its intended use is not.
And even where it does boldly correct error, it actually does so in a very gentle way! Rather than hammering down on the ludicrous falseness of the concept of Anna Lee as Christ and thoroughly dismantling claims supporting her by appeal to biblical proof-texts, it gently reminds the Elders of the core positive doctrine they must teach: salvation comes through Jesus Christ and no other name. Instead of deconstructing a ridiculous misreading of the Bible centering on how false it is to believe a mortal reincarnation of Christ, the Section positively restates the essence of the purpose and symbolism in Christ's crucifixion and return: he died only once, in submission to His Father's will, and will return in glory, submitting all other powers unto Him, having earned the Glory. So that they wouldn't take the true doctrines to be expressions of superiority, the Lord made sure to remind them that all were "under sin," and to teach "like Peter," who shared testimony, not recrimination, and invited all to come to the waters of baptism on the day of Pentecost (that day of striking parallel which featured manifestations of the Spirit of the kind that these ecstatic Shakers were drawn by).
As Smith's wording got to specifics, its sharpness was on substance, not accusatory. Celibacy is not ordered by God, but by humans--this is bluntly true. But mistaken humans need to understand the purpose of progeny in order to let their false conclusions fall. Knowing there was a purpose for marriage BEFORE this life allows for a re-centering of the debate on the grounds of telos and design, rather than on the ick Shakers were taught to feel for contact between the sexes because of the innuendo they believed about the "fruit" Adam and Eve ate being code for intercourse. Shakers had taken a narrow reading of a symbol to a conclusion unwarranted by the context, they had insisted on it, and expanded upon it until it became a fundamental principle to them, no matter how self-destructive to their own community it nevertheless objectively was. But the Lord's revelation wasn't merely a correction, but a reasoning that these missionaries could lean into: marriages answers "an end of [humankind's] creation," and therefore had a logical purpose that scripture attests to and testifies of.
Vegetarianism likewise wasn't condemned per se, but the elevation of such a diet to the level of commandment was simply incorrect. And again, rather than confrontationally insisting that, no, it's just false, the Lord provides a purposive reasoning that helps ground the missionaries in His balanced approach to providing for the food and clothing of all people: animals are part of the mix and there should be no abuse or waste of the resource they provide.
Curiously, as if breaking up the coherence of the explanation on what dominion over animals should look like, there is a surface non sequitur in the text that stumped me for a minute. Between a verse on all humans having food and raiment in abundance because of balanced use of animals, and a verse condemning abuse or waste of animals, lies verse 20: "it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin." Why, I wondered, break up the discussion on animals for a broader comment about the connection between sin and inequality of property? Is that even really true that God doesn't "give" more resources to some humans than others, and that some having more constitutes a sin? We're commanded not to covet, even our own property, but it's not actually the mere fact of being blessed with greater resources at a given time that constitutes sin--that's not what the parable of the talents shows--but instead the unwillingness to consecrate surpluses for the benefit of the needy--the ingratitude of refusing to contribute to equalizing the means to supply all human needs is what's sinful. It took me learning about the Shakers' mode of communal living, and comparing it to the fledgling United Order that the Kirtland community of saints was barely getting started before I noticed that the "abundance" from verse 19 was the logical link. The Lord was being careful to show the missionaries that the Shakers weren't to be condemned, but rather congratulated for their willingness to live according to the light they had received--to ensure, in their own way, that differences in human abilities were used to address human needs within their community, without respect to property. They were trying to avoid sinfulness in some of their strictures in style of living, and while the vegetarianism went too far, the "all things in common" concept they were trying to live could serve as a point of commonality to build upon. The missionaries could make a through line to conversion through that approach.
The Shakers ultimately rejected the message. And if the missionaries thought, by this fact, that their purpose was confounded, it would be understandable. However, the Section's promise was not strictly that their immediate purpose wouldn't be confounded--it promised that THEY, the individuals, would not be confounded. And the three in question were, in fact, strengthened in their own testimonies and abilities to reach potential members in the future. All three later served missions and garnered souls for the Lord's community of saints to varying degrees, and as long as they stayed repentant and went with the Lord, they truly were not confounded.
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