Terryl Givens's Feeding the Flock contains eleven chapters on Mormon ecclesiology: 1. What Is the Church and Why is One Necessary; 2. Latter-day Saint Covenant Theology; 3. Sacramental Theology; 4. Priesthood: Authority, Power, and the Mysteries of Godliness; 5. Ecclesiastical Structure; 6. Sacramental Ordinances—Salvific; 7. Sacramental Ordinances—Non-Salvific; 8. Spiritual Gifts; 9. Scripture; 10. Worship; and 11. Boundary Maintenance and Discipline. It also has an index that is thorough enough to be usable to researchers.
Givens's thesis is that, for Mormons, “the church exists as an indispensable means for developing communities of sanctified individuals that can endure eternally” (5), He sets about showing that by first explaining the theological background necessary to understand a discussion of how Mormon theology issues in its ecclesiology. The theological explanation is essential because the development of communities of sanctified individuals is an explicit part of Mormon worship, which “entails adoration and praise but also the forging of an eternal familial relationality.” The transition from a focus on background to a focus on ecclesiology proper occurs quite naturally in chapter 4, on priesthood.
Even the chapters that deal directly with ecclesiological matters follow a similar pattern, beginning with a brief history of the topic in question, for example, the sacraments. Sometimes that history begins with the New Testament church, sometimes it begins with nineteenth-century Protestantism, the milieu within which Mormonism emerged. That is followed by a history of the matter in question within the Mormon tradition. Often those histories are divided into subdivisions appropriate to each chapter as a whole. For example, the chapter on spiritual gifts (chapter 8) takes up revelation, healings, the gift of tongues, exorcism, and other spiritual gifts. Within these subdivisions, Givens follows the same pattern, giving a broader history of the subject followed by a history of Mormon belief and practice.
For those doing research on Mormonism, Feeding the Flock is an excellent companion volume to Givens's earlier work, Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought, God, Cosmos, Humanity (Oxford University Press, 2015). His treatment of theology is necessarily brief in this volume, but it is thorough and accurate, as are the connections he makes between Mormon practices and ecclesial structures. In fact, the book is perhaps surprisingly thorough, a result of Givens's focus on the history of Mormon ecclesiology rather than only its present state. He includes, for example, discussions of speaking and singing in tongues, practices that disappeared from Mormon worship by sometime in the late-nineteenth century. The historical view is beneficial because it allows a reader to understand present practices and structures in the context from which they arose.
However, the advantage of Feeding the Flock, its attention to historical context and development, is also its difficulty. Because Mormonism developed out of nineteenth-century North America, in a largely Protestant environment, the background that Givens provides in each chapter is mostly related to American Protestantism, despite the fact that Mormons specifically deny that they are Protestant. Additionally, there are few references to other Christianities. For example, Givens occasionally refers to Roman Catholicism, but less than might be expected given the similar attitudes of Mormons and Catholics with regard to things such as authority. As a result, the comparisons Givens makes between Mormonism and other Christian faiths is of limited value. At best the work compares Mormonism to other Western Christian denominations, but there is minimal discussion of Roman Catholicism, much less Christian Orthodoxy, or groups such as Moravian, Armenian, Assyrian, Melkite, Syriac, and Maronite Christians. American Protestantism provides Givens's baseline for talking about Mormonism.
But no book can cover everything, and Givens did not intend to write a comparative theology. Furthermore, Mormonism did develop in nineteenth-century America, and at present almost half of all Mormons live in either Canada or the United States. So considerable reference to American Protestantism is not surprising. Nevertheless, since Givens often explains Mormon beliefs and practices by comparing them to those of others, the book would have been strengthened by more attention to a wider range of Christian ecclesiology. For example, both the notions of theosis and Zion are important to understanding Mormon beliefs and practices. Yet in the case of the former, the only reference to Christian Orthodoxy is merely parenthetical. Speaking of the Eucharist, Givens tells us that it is “related . . . to Catholic (and Orthodox) ‘belief in salvation as a sacramental process of theosis’” (200). (The parenthesis is Givens's, though the internal quotation is from Roger Olson.) The comparison is helpful, even if brief. Some comparative expansion of the point, including a discussion of how what Mormons call “exaltation” differs from Catholic and Orthodox theosis would have benefited readers. Similarly, Givens's discussions of “Zion” and “covenant” would have benefited by comparison to traditional covenant theologies. The result is that the place and meaning of several practices would have been clearer with wider comparison.
In the end, though Feeding the Flock is weakened by the absence of a wider engagement with Christianity, it is not by any means fatally flawed. Anyone looking for a thorough historical account of Mormon ecclesiology will find what they need in this book.
