How much does the current mormon church have in common with the 'original version' of Joseph and Brigham? —Tik

Or to put it another way, if you are a mormon and you could be transplanted back to Salt Lake in the 1850's and lived next to Brigham et. al, how much do you think you would have in common with him?

Let's see, did anyone speak in tongues at your last Relief Society meeting? Do men and women sit on the same side of the chapel? Does your patriarchal blessing say that you will live to see the Second Coming? And does it really seem like a small thing to you that Mormons then practiced polygamy? Not to mention Brigham Young believed Adam was God, so you arguably don't even worship the same being.

I think I get where the LDS responders are coming from, since it's widely taught that doctrines do not change and truth is everlasting. But that's problematic when you consider that people in 1850 did believe it was *doctrine* that a man needed to embrace polygamy to make it to the Celestial Kingdom. Then Gordon Hinckley says, "It's behind us." We believed that God was once a man, then Gordon Hinckley says, "It's more of a couplet."

Brigham Young taught that black people were less valiant in the preexistence and could only go to heaven as slaves. Is this still taught? Of course not. Joseph F. Smith insisted that the earth was 6,000 years old. Joseph Smith taught that the sun borrows its light from Kolob. It isn't just practices that have changed, things that were specifically taught as revealed doctrine also change. If you can't see that, you're uninformed or in serious denial.