The role of a "testimony" in the new Church?

[SeattleUte]

So I read the attached review of the Bushman book with interest. I thought the author of the article--which gives the book a very favorable assessment--showed some sharp insight into LDS culture and history. One of the most intriguing passages of the article is the following:

"The mystery of the scripture's [the Book of Mormon's] origins (was it really translated from 'reformed Egyptian' or was it made up or borrowed from other sources?) is just one of the burning questions about Smith that Richard Lyman Bushman, his latest biographer, examines from every conceivable rational angle before declaring it to be unanswerable - unanswerable in a way that vaguely suggests such puzzles were divinely intended to stay that way. Bushman, a retired Columbia history professor who also happens to be a practicing Mormon, has a tricky dual agenda, it turns out: to depict Smith both as the prophet he claimed to be and as the man of his times that he most certainly was. 'The efforts to situate the Book of Mormon in history, whether ancient or modern, run up against baffling complexities,' Bushman writes, seemingly closing the door on the whole matter while slyly leaving it open a crack for a faith. 'The Book of Mormon resists conventional analysis, whether sympathetic or critical.'

"As refracted through Bushman's intellectual bifocals - one lens is skeptical and clear, the other reverent and rosy - most of the rest of Smith's remarkable story is shown to resist such analysis as well. So why make the effort in the first place? By showing the inadequacy of reason in the face of spiritual phenomena, Bushman seems to be playing a Latter-Day-Saint Aquinas. It appears he wants to usher in a subtle, mature new age of Mormon thought - rigorous yet not impious - akin to what smart Roman Catholics have had for centuries."

Bushman's ultimate point of view is not that of the Church I was raised in. The Church I was raised in had too much swagger, was too cockshure to recognize that for practicing Mormons the origin of the Book of Mormon must be left to the realm of ineffable mystery. My father's conviction was that yes, applicatoin of reason itself would vindicate the Book of Mormon. Seemingly he was expressing the prevailing view--remember all the conference talks about meso-American ruins proving the veracity of the Book of Mormon, the film Christ in America, etc.?

It's my view that the Church has indeed lost its old swagger in the past 20-30 years.

Do you agree with me? Is that a good thing? How does Bushman's idea of a "subtle, mature new age of Mormon thought" (in the words of the New York Times) square with the absolute certitude that the concept of a "testimony" connotes? "Testimony" has been such a key ingredient of Mormon culture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/bo....html?emc=eta1