I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what is meant by this. I thought that we have tons of it already. If it isn’t in conference talks, Ensigns, LDS blogs, LDS lesson manuals, sacrament talks, church lessons, family home evening lessons, then what are you looking for? I’m confused.
Can the word “theology” be interchanged with “doctrine” or are you looking for something else?

cheers, Wakener.

Excellent response. However, I don’t believe I advocated Mormon theology solely on the basis of its uniqueness. One of the things I like about Mormonism is its various idiosyncrasies, true; but that is not the sole basis for adopting a Mormon theological view. I sympathize with my friend (see my above comment) in that I don’t think we can simply say we are Christians just like any other Christian denomination. Even saying we are Restored Christianity does not tell the whole story. I agree with Jan Shipps’s assessment of Mormonism as a new religious movement, with a unique theology and unique religious characteristics.

But this speaks to my first post. It is not so simple to say we are Mormons and not Christians; our ties to both Christianity and the revealed and historical Jesus Christ are real and obvious. On the other hand, we cannot flippantly say were are Christians either; we really are distinguishable (usually in a good way) from mainstream Christianity. This is why I prefer caution when describing Mormon theology. We haven’t yet decided (collectively) what we are. And maybe that’s a good thing in the long run.

The other response I have is that because of the way it uses revelation, Mormons are often blind to the fact that they are theologizing all the time; in many ways more than the average Christian. We may not have an official theology–as defined as adopted by church membership in general–but we systematize and define doctrines in ways that help them interrelatedly makes sense to us, and that is pure theologizing. So saying we do not do nor have a theology is simply incorrect, and the problem lies in not admitting this fact.

That brings me to a second point that interacts with your view that what you like about Mormonism is precisely that it is different and we lose something to the extent we are like other Christians. You want a specialized field of study for Mormonism. Well, by definition every religious tradition has a unique history, but are all alike in that what one is studying in doing religious studies is primarily history. We are just doing what others do when treating a religious tradition from the outside.

I would comment that adopting a theology because it differs is a pretty poor criteria. Christians are all devoted to the man who walked around the Palestinian countryside two millenia ago. We ought to have significant commonality. Something isn’t true just because its different. On the other hand, I would never condone bending the revelations of the restoration to mean something that they don’t just to fit into the club.

That brings me to my third point. Mormonism suffers in religious studies because we have so little work in actual theology, philosophical theology, systematics, phenomenology or philosophical reflection. We are reduced to studying history and that history is and will necessarily remain a third party endeavor from the outside when it enters the academy. To that kind of study I say — isn’t that apostasy?

The interesting thing for me is that even though we do it, we often (or many in our tradition often) want to say that we don’t do it. What we do is something different. This is sometimes simply an observation of what is done in practice, but more frequently it appears as more of an ethical statement: “we don’t do theology; we do something different; and that makes us special and unique.” In other words: our religion is qualitatively better than those that traditionally do theology and see a valuable place for it. I’ll give an example of this type of thinking, which I think parallels what I am trying to say.

Some of the students here in Claremont were discussing the SMPT conference, which only one of us could attend. The student who attended told us that during Stephen Davis’s presentation (Steve is a professor of religion here at Claremont) Steve said that if Mormons understood the nature of God in the way that Blake Ostler does (i.e., as monarcho-theistic and not one god among many as in the infinite regress model) then many Christians could get behind Mormonism and not see it as so heretical. One of the students put up his hand and said, “That – I don’t like,” meaning that as soon as Christians began seeing Mormons as truly “one of the club” then Mormonism for this student has ceased to be the special, unique, different religion that he has always held dear. He doesn’t want Mormonism to be just another Christian denomination. Mormonism must retain its distinctiveness from Christianity in order, in his opinion, to be authentic.

I sympathize with this view on some levels. I like esoteric Mormon doctrines. I like Mormonism’s unique take on traditional concepts like Christology, atonement, revelation, temple ritual, etc. However, if this is our motivation for saying that “we don’t do theology.” then we are not being honest with ourselves and furthermore, we will find it more difficult to speak to other Christian faiths; our impetuousness about our own religion will get in the way. The point is that we need to be more nuanced in both how we see the Christian Tradition and how we see our own tradition. Sure our theology is different. Systematic theology (and many other traditional theologies) will never be the sole way that Mormons understand and explain their faith (though as I have argued, systematic theology can be a valuable tool for us). But we do engage in theology. Call it our own “brand” of theology, fine. But theology is and has always been, useful to us. It’s not something to be ashamed of.

I think a lot of LDS religious studies falls into a traditionalist camp, relying on tradition and scripture rather than a modernist view, pushing more with reason and current social experience. I think this is why a lot of LDS theology seems more bent on History.

Also, I think this is based on the idea that revelation to the whole of the church comes from the prophet, so often, it is more fruitful for academicians to cherry pick historical quotes to support a point of view, rather than offer a “reasoned argument.”