Just as the Old Testament temple was a shadow of the crucifixion of Christ, and the works of the Mosaic Law are done away with through Christ, similarly the Nauvoo era temple was a shadow of modern Restorationist Movements that move beyond temple rituals and garments and leader-worship to form "fellowships" or Protestant style churches (like the RLDS) instead. In other words, I see a divine pattern in the history of Christianity and The Bible. The Old Testament's physical temple was replaced with the collective temple of "Christian bodies" (the ecclesia): where God's Spirit (Pneuma) would dwell in humans not buildings. But then a physical church was erected in the form of Catholicism in order to organize and sustain the early Christian movement. Like every organization run by fallible humans it became corrupt; and so Martin Luther provided a necessary protest which became Protestantism, which basically means a protest against the corruption of Catholic leaders. Then of course the Protestant churches became built up as large organizations themselves and their leaders became corrupt; and thus there was needed the Book of Mormon where Joseph Smith condemned the modern Protestant churches and their anti-body creeds, paid clergy, and attachment to Augustine's Original Sin and an Unfortunate Fall. Then continuing the same trajectory, whereas the Book of Mormon and early Mormonism was simply a protest of a protest (protesting Protestantism), it also grew into a large organization after Joseph Smith was killed and the Utah-based Mormon Church became similar to the Catholic Church in acting more like a Corporation.
Thus one can follow the cycle and its ongoing recycling of the same pattern, from the physical temple to the spiritual temple of the Body of Christ (Ecclesia), to the Catholic Church. Then the Catholic Church is protested against by Luther generating Protestantism. Then Protestantism is protested by the Restored Church of Christ through Joseph Smith. Then Joseph Smith is martyred and Brigham Young and Joseph Fielding Smith and others produce a new Corporatized Church similar to the Catholic Church. And thus many Mormon Restoration Movements emerge and begin protesting and breaking away from the corrupted Utah-based Brighamite Corporation.
What this means to me is that there's always going to be the large organized Corporate Structure and an original Spiritual Movement. They need each other. For example, the artistic innovations of Paul needed the later Roman Catholic Church to organize his Ethos into a structured hierarchy so that it could more effectively spread and change lives. So too, Brigham Young was a necessary agent in allowing Mormonism to spread despite his many errors, which Denver Snuffer also argues in his December 2021 interview with the Salt Lake Tribune here. In other words, I do not see all "institutional religions" as inherently bad or evil, but are a "necessary evil" so to speak because without them the original innovations of those like Paul and Joseph Smith would not survive without the later structure of the organized systems produced by their predecessors.
Keep in mind as well that Jesus himself, while opposing the Tradition of the Elders (a sect within Judaism) was himself a devout Jew and true to Torah observance. It is a misconception that Jesus opposed traditional Judaism. Jesus lived and died a religious Jew! From this perspective, with Jesus as more of a reformer of Judaism, seeking for his fellow Jews to focus more on "the spirit of the law" (interpreting the Mosaic Law based on the underlying principles of Torah over rigid dogmatism). Jesus as a religious Jew within Judaism, preached the Bible principles of love of God and neighbor as one's interpretive tool while remaining a member of the Jewish Religion. So one need not see all large organized religions as inherently problematic or something to reject outright.
Organized religion does serve a purpose, for example we would not have Christianity if the Jewish People had not encoded an ethic of hospitality in the Hebrew Bible; which the apostle Paul and Jesus both utilized to generate more Other-centered compassion. It was the ancient Jewish Religion itself that organized this Hospitality Ethic around beliefs, rituals, and an ethnic identity. So without the Jewish religion there could be no spiritual reformers like Paul or Jesus. Note that James the Just (Jesus' brother) and the leader of the Jerusalem Church after Jesus died, did not leave Torah-observant Judaism to join Paul's Gentile-Christian movement that did not observe the Torah-Laws like circumcision. So if the brother of the Lord (James) was a Jerusalem temple attending, Torah observant Jew, then obviously it is complicated to say one should reject all organized religions that meet in church-buildings or temples. So it is not so simple as to segregate the spiritual from the religious, or brick-and-mortar "Church" from the spiritual wall-less church of the Body of Christ. In other words, just as James's Torah-observant sect existed side by side with Paul's Gentile assemblies, the Brighamite sect can exist harmoniously with the various non-temple wall-less Restoration Branches/Movements.
So I do not look down on or criticize those who want to be part of the institutional Brighamite Church, or the Catholic Church for that matter. I think they serve a purpose, and if the institutional structure provides one security and identity and fits their personality and it makes them happy and content, I support that. But I also think that for other personalities and temperaments, the Institutional Brighamite Church and its confining structure does not provide security but scrupulosity, and does not make them happy but miserable. To put it another way, I see religion as not a "one size shoe fits all," but that for some people the "Brighamite Mormon shoe" fits them well; while for another a different "religion shoe" fits them better or maybe they even fit into the atheist or agnostic shoe best.
The "Brigamite Mormon shoe" does not fit me because as I see it, the temple was simply preparing nineteenth century Mormons for the eventual change in mindset we learn from modern science today; wherein we now know that the body is not inherently sinful and depraved but in fact our bodily drives for sex and status were designed through millions years of organic evolution. Today’s modern understanding of sexuality has moved us way past Augustine’s superstitious nonsense, and Joseph Smith’s temple ritual paved the way for helping Mormons make this transition. Unfortunately, modern Brighamite Church Leaders in the 1900s basically “apostatised” (i.e. fell away) from “true Mormonism” and brought back puritanical body-despising ideas back into the Utah-based Brighamite Church: with in my view quite stupid and actually harmful ideas about a young boy’s reproductive organs being a little factory that needs to be shut down and masturbation is evil, or oral sex even in marriage is an "impure and unholy practice." The whole point of the temple ritual was actually meant to liberate Mormons from this kind of Augustinian puritanical nonsense.
Today, modern Mormons have many options: they can remain devout Brighamite Mormons or they can resign their membership; or go "inactive" or be an "Edgy Mormon" or a New Order Mormon; or join one of the Restoration Movements, or reject all religions and spiritual paths. Or they can choose to be what I call an "Emergent Mormon": that sees no need for creeds, dogmas, secret garments or the temple; but instead can simply read the original Mormon Scriptures as inspired mythology or midrash, as practically useful for encouraging courage, strength, and vitality; as well as goodness, charity, and social unity; and embracing this life, this world, and seeing one's sexual body of muscles as good and holy. They can meet with other like-minded Restorationists or even non-Mormon Protestants or not attend any church or spiritual group, because it is about the Mormon Scriptures' stories acting as inspiration for transformation, not as a prescribed dogma; nor seeing temple rituals as a gateway to heaven.
