I've been thinking about what the Nauvoo era meant for Mormonism. This was a time of creativity and innovation. In my view, Joseph Smith was a creative: an innovator, synthesizer and spiritual explorer. Nauvoo was the culmination of the early Brethren gathering together to search the scriptures intellectually in the School of the Prophets and learning Hebrew from a Jewish man; and Joseph Smith declaring that the glory of God is intelligence and to seek from the best books words of wisdom. This was the time of intellectual exploration and the implementation of what I would call spiritual naturalism and what Peter Coviello calls the development of a theology of the radiant body; as Joseph attempted to override the Augustinian/Protestant puritanical "despising of the body" by reintroducing a Hebrew theology of pro-bodied sensuality and Abrahamic expansionism.
This was a time of not a correlated curriculum but a time of often contradictory doctrines for the sake of the freedom to explore new ideas; like the Fifth Lecture on Faith still bound in the scriptural canon while Smith presented the King Follett discourse. A time when a perfectly correct doctrine and systematic dogma was not the goal (as it was for Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie later on), but a time for the exploration of God's "more liberal views" and the expansion of the human soul in order for us to learn how to become like a weeping, sensual, God.
So I began to think that I could describe myself as a modern Nauvoo Mormon. This is because I've grown to appreciate the Nauvoo era and Joseph Smith's creativity and his support of the freedom to explore new ideas without being trammeled by creedal dogmatism.
A modern Nauvoo Mormon is obviously not a polygamist. They are different from the Fundamentalist (polygamous) Mormons living in componds. But the Nauvoo Mormon would also differ from the prudish Mormon who has adopted the Protestant puritanical mindset. They do not believe that premarital sex is a sin next to murder and that having sex makes you the equivalent of a chewed up piece of gum nobody wants to partake of. They embrace the spirit of Joseph Smith's doctrine of embodied Gods with sexual bodies for divine pleasure and increase.
The modern Nauvoo Saint is uncorrelated compared to the correlated Salt Lake Saint. The Nauvoo Mormon is more interested in the creative explorations of Joseph Smith's scriptures and innovative revelations, more than some of the current Salt Lake City leadership and their fallible opinions; and how some of them (not all) have presented a modern version of the Tradition of the Elders.
The Nauvoo Mormon rejects the notion of just pray, pay and obey without having a say. They recognize the fact of prophetic fability ("a prophet is a prophet only when he is acting as such") and the importance of trickle-up revelation (this includes the voice of not just outspoken Mormon insiders but former-Mormons putting outside pressure on the leadership to do the right thing at times).
The Nauvoo Mormon is more interested in the LDS Standard Works than a Church Manual and respects more the explorative theology of those like Orson and Parley Pratt, BH Roberts, and modern creatives and scholars like Blake Ostler, Patrick Q. Mason, and Terryl and Fiona Givens, etc. Those who embody the creative and exploratory mindset of Joseph Smith himself. Who are less concerned with corralling the membership as gatekeepers of a caging dogma; and more interested in planting seeds and pastorally watering those individual seeds and growing a freely sprouting Garden of diverse Ideas of Faith in order for Zion to flourish.
