McMurrin v. McConkie

I read a fascinating interview that Sterling McMurrin gave in 1993, and it really got me thinking. McMurrin quotes the book 'The Wrestle of Religion With Truth' (what a title) for the proposition that “a theologian is like a cook. He takes all of the ingredients and cuts them together in such a way that the people like it.”
That, to me, is in a nutshell what Bruce did. He is by no stretch the only one, (most writers trying to get published by Deseret Book are exercising as much of a ‘tell people what they want to hear’ outlook as they are attempting to add something new), but he is the quintessential one, by far the most influential.
In my opinion, McConkie put together a narrow, ethnocentric, absolutist worldview in authoritative and scriptural language. People could cheer America, wish death on communists, frown on blacks, gays, uppity women, etc., denounce evolution and other scientific things that made them uncomfortable, vote for Strom Thurmond (on Ezra Taft Benson's Presidential ticket no less!) and condemn liberals to hell, and put it in all in the language of God. He was the chef and would eventually have a generation of apostles eating from his menu.
Of course, as McMurrin said, the chief strength of Mormon theology is its opposition to absolutism theology. People don’t realize that is what Joseph Smith did.
Theology is, of course, systems that people come up with to make everything they believe fit together. To try to write up one’s own is a noble exercise, but I can’t do it with my own. I am full of contradictions, and, as Orson Welles says, so are you. The complete summation of all my beliefs falls apart at the blueprint stage. Like something made of brick, it is solid enough at the lower levels, but crumbles if I try to push it past 4 stories high, just like brick.
Perhaps one thing, above all else, that irks me about McConkie is that he looks at the rest of humanity and says “uninspired.” Artists, musicians, philosophers, story-tellers, insofar as they deviate at all from what he thinks (err, knows, McConkies don't think, they know), they are uninspired.
‘Mormonism makes a great mistake when it departs too far from the position of Joseph Smith.’ More than twenty Joseph books and seven or eight Bruce books in, and with a quarter-century in the Church, it seems Mormonism has left Joseph for Bruce. Bruce’s personality dominates this Church more than Joseph’s does today.
Joseph was a revolutionary, Bruce a reactionary- what are we?
Joseph had extreme ideas, Bruce’s often repeated advice was to “stay in the mainstream of the Church.” Do Mormons today have extreme ideas… or do they, like Mitt, want to shake that off their shoes and play mainstream?
Joseph said “I didn’t like calling the man up for erring in the doctrine like Methodists do”, Bruce and his Gospel Doctrine dominating fan base live for such, and see his role “to proclaim the doctrine and yours is to repeat it or keep quiet”, as he wrote to Eugene England.
Joseph erred in judging people too leniently, we… well, we’ve obviously learned and will never err on that side again. John C. Bennett wouldn’t pass a background check today, let alone be 1st Counselor. We've stopped believing in forgiveness and second chances and started thinking our credit scores will get us into heaven. My religion is to try to cut through that back to a man who declared bankruptcy and who flopped in every business endeavor he ever attempted.