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 type of personality: an innovator, synthesizer and spiritual and philosophical explorer. 1840s Nauvoo was a time of intellectual freedom and exploration, as the early Mormons leaders as free thinkers gathered together in the School of the Prophets, where Orson Hyde as the teacher of the school taught Joseph grammar and where Mormons learned science and history; and even studied the Hebrew language from a Jewish teacher; a time of learning, when Joseph Smith declared that the glory of God is intelligence and to seek from the best books words of wisdom. This was a time of intellectual exploration and the expansion of their minds beyond Protestant dogmas. During this phase of development, Mormonism more fully embraced a more pro-science, more "humanistic" paradigm, what I call "spiritual naturalism," and what secular non-Mormon scholar Peter Coviello calls the development of a theology of the radiant body: as Joseph attempted to override the Augustinian and Protestant puritanical "despising of the body," by reintroducing ancient Hebrew theology with its more pro-bodied sensuality and eventually forming what I call Abrahamic Expansionism.
This was not a time of 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 mind-soul in order for us to learn how to become like a weeping, sensual, "god-like being" ourselves.
So the Emergent Mormon seeks to revitalize that freedom of exploration in Nauvoo. The Nauvoo era was a time when Joseph Smith's philosophical creativity was at its apex: as his embrace of the freedom to explore new ideas without being trammeled by creedal dogmatism was at its height.
A modern day "Nauvoo-era Mormon" as an Emergent Mormon is obviously not a polygamist. They are different from the Fundamentalist (polygamous) Mormons living in compounds. But the Emergent Mormon would also differ from the prudish Mormon who has adopted the Protestant puritanical mindset. For example, 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. But they also see sex as sacred and better enjoyed in mutually respectful monogamous relationships; while warning against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases from a lack of safe sex practices. They embrace the spirit of Joseph Smith's doctrine of embodied Gods with sexual bodies: who approve of divine pleasure and the increase of seeds (reproduction) over the Augustinian despising of the body and the advocacy of permanent celibacy.
The modern Nauvoo-era Saint is uncorrelated compared to the correlated Salt Lake Utah Saint. The Nauvoo-era style 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 spirit of Nauvoo rejects the notion of just pray, pay and obey without having a say. The Emergent-Mormon recognizes the fact of prophetic fability (as Joseph saisd, "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.
