Integrity is one of those complex virtues that has a broad meaning that carries a lot of moral baggage. If you say that someone lacks integrity, that doesn’t tell you anything specific (like say if you called someone an adulterer) but it throws a lot of negative implications, implying that person is dishonest, unreliable, untrustworthy, and so forth. If you say someone *has* integrity, it implies there was some situation where that person’s values or duties came into conflict with some antagonist (the law? peer pressure? a personal threat?) but despite some pressure, they did the right thing. But who’s to say what the right thing is in various circumstances when morality and ethics are, in all their varieties, hotly contested subjects? So don’t expect a humble blog post to resolve what you might call “the integrity dilemma.” And let me restate clearly what the integrity dilemma is: most all of us would like to have integrity, most of us would admit it’s hard to give a clear definition of it, but when we observe a particular person’s bad acts, questionable behavior, or malicious words on a specific occasion or over time, we are quite confident in saying, “That person lacks integrity.”

This topic arises because of a comment to a post here at the blog last week that spurred some reflective conversation backstage on the W&T List. Here is the comment:

 I feel most permabloggers are a bit coy on where exactly their beliefs are …. I do wish authors were a little more upfront about where they stand, as it does seem to chip away at the integrity of the blog (however strong it may be) at times.

I’m not sure what “integrity of the blog” means, as I do not think a blog is an entity to which integrity or other moral virtues can be ascribed. It’s just a website, folks. The comment might be a reflection on the integrity of the blog contributors as a whole, so if you could assign a numerical integrity score to each of the ten or so authors who presently contribute posts at W&T, then take an average of those ten scores, that might represent the integrity of the blog. And who knows, like everything else in America after Trump, maybe our collective integrity score has fallen a bit since 2016. But I think the label is properly applied to persons, not to institutions. Either you have integrity or you don’t. I’m not sure you can have a little integrity or 50% integrity.

So here’s a quick road map. First, I’m going to look at Elder Jack N. Gerard’s recent Conference talk, “Integrity: A Christlike Attribute.” Then I’ll return to the question of integrity and what it means to me and, by extension, the blog, although I am speaking only for myself, not for other permabloggers, who may choose to weigh in with their own comments.

Integrity Does Not Mean Institutional Loyalty

Print that out and clip it to your fridge: Integrity and institutional loyalty are not synonyms. In fact, in many circumstances an individual shows integrity by REJECTING institutional loyalty in favor of doing the right thing, whether telling the truth to authorities or warning a third person they are at risk for some unwarranted action or simply being candidly honest when an institution demands or expects you to be helpfully dishonest or misleading when talking about the institution. And here is the problem: When LDS leaders talk about integrity, they mean institutional loyalty. Which means that when they talk about integrity, they don’t know what they are talking about. Please, read on.

I already commented on Elder Gerard’s talk in my Conference post three weeks ago. That was posted before transcripts were available, so now I can quote from the actual talk. In the first section of the talk, he said this: “Integrity means we do not lower our standards or behavior to impress or to be accepted by others.  You ‘do what is right’ and ‘let the consequence follow.‘” I have no problem agreeing with that, although I would note in many cases awareness of the consequences of one’s words or actions informs the “what is right” determination. If you are a Utilitarian, believing that “what is right” means what brings to pass the greatest good for the greatest number, then consequences are of supreme importance in deciding “what is right.”

Here is where it gets tricky. He leads the second section by saying this: “A life of integrity requires us to first and foremost be true to God.” Now if that meant using and applying the moral virtues gleaned from a reading of the New Testament, that might be a workable plan for “a life of integrity.” But Elder Gerard is a senior leader in the LDS Church, regarded as the Kingdom of God on Earth, with the President himself generally held out as an inerrant mouthpiece for God. When Elder Gerard says, “be true to God,” what that means is be loyal to the institution and to whatever its leaders tell the membership to believe or ask the membership to do. This expected loyalty and deference largely extends, of course, to local leaders, the stake president and the bishop. As noted earlier, equating integrity with institutional loyalty is simply wrong in most cases. I would restate the claim as follows: “A life of integrity sometimes requires us to place other virtues or values above loyalty to an institution, even the LDS Church.” I’m sure you can easily think of a dozen examples of my restated claim.

Here’s a paragraph from Elder Gerard’s talk that raises this issue of a conflict between the two duties (to love God and to love one’s neighbor).

Just as integrity flows from the first great commandment to love God, being true to each other flows from the second, to love our neighbors as ourselves. A life of integrity is not a life of perfection; it is a life in which we strive every day to foremost be true to God and within that context to be true to others. President Oaks reminds us, “Our zeal to keep [the] second commandment must not cause us to forget the first.”

This quote shows that Elder Gerard was linking his “true to God” and “true to others” discussion to what President Oaks said five years ago in the October 2019 Conference. You might re-read that talk, where Oaks does say some nice things about treating others, even those who we disagree with or who don’t follow LDS rules for behavior, with kindness and civility. Re-reading it myself, it is rather vague on specifics, but (1) it does seem to imply that there are often conflicts between loving God and loving your neighbor, and (2) it does seem to equate “loving God” with following what President Nelson tells you to believe and practice. So it shows the same confusion between integrity and institutional loyalty that I noted above in Elder Gerard’s talk, albeit with some very good counsel to treat all people with kindness and civility.

Here is another paragraph from Elder Gerard’s talk that is quite relevant to online discussions like ours:

The oppositional pull of this world is an essential part of God’s plan of salvation. How we respond to the pull is the essence of who we are—a measure of our integrity. The worldly pull can be as direct as to destroy fidelity in marriage or as subtle as posting anonymous comments critical of Church doctrine or culture. Exercising integrity in our choices is an outward expression of an inner commitment to follow the Savior Jesus Christ.

That brings us back to our initial discussion of “blog integrity.” What does integrity mean in the context of speaking online, whether in a blog post, a blog comment, a Facebook post, or whatever?

The Ethics of Teaching and Speaking

What does integrity mean in the context of teaching or speaking in the LDS Church? From the two talks above, my impression is that LDS leadership thinks this would be teaching or speaking only things that mirror (and certainly never contradict) what LDS leaders are presently teaching. And when the doctrinal or policy wind shifts, you ought to quickly come about, so “I’m a Mormon” was a good thing to say ten years ago, but not anymore.

Here’s my own approach. I have been a Gospel Doctrine teacher (that’s the LDS adult Sunday School class) at least five times in my life. My approach is that I will not teach anything false or misleading. Which means I ignore much of what is in the manual and just use the scripture block for that week as my foundation. For decades now, the official counsel in the teacher’s manual and from LDS leaders is to stick to the manual and only the manual. That leads to a pretty dull class and, more to the point, often conflicts with my own sense of ethical teaching, defined above. If I have to bring in outside material to explain a tricky scriptural passage or make a relevant doctrinal point, I’ll try to use an LDS Conference talk or an LDS book (an LDS publication or a Deseret Book book) to make my point. But there is a lot of stuff in the Old and New Testament that only makes sense in light of commentary and explanation by biblical scholarship as a whole. Sometimes I just use a scholar’s comments or insights to explain a passage; once in a while I’ll actually read a helpful sentence or paragraph prefaced by, “Here’s what one biblical scholar said …”.

Here’s a wider view of my personal ethic of LDS teaching. First, it’s not a lecture. Those in the class get a lot more out of attending if class members contribute comments and their own insights. I structure my lessons around four or five discussion questions, and I use scripture quotes or my own comments to set up the discussion question and hopefully set up class members to have comments to add to the discussion. Whether as a teacher or class member, when someone says something screwy or simply wrong, I’ll usually step into a response with something like, “Well, there is another way to think about that issue …”. Gospel Doctrine is not a graduate seminar, where spirited and critical discussion is the modus operandi. It’s a devotional exercise where people attend to learn a thing or two about the scriptural text, to add a comment or two of their own, and to leave hopefully encouraged or uplifted to be a better person and a better Mormon.

My approach, my own personal ethic of LDS teaching, carries over almost entirely to online discussion and blog posting in particular. I don’t write anything false or misleading. I try to do a positive post (here’s something nice about the Church …) at least once a month to balance out the other stuff. I try to address topics of interest to LDS readers (and fringe LDS readers and former LDS readers and non-LDS readers) and do so in a way that leads to a good discussion in the comments. While it would be wrong to judge the success of a post by how many comments it garners, I generally feel good about a post if there is enlightening discussion in the comments and feel a bit disappointed when no one has much to say in response. If there are no comments, I have in some sense failed with that post. There are some issues I pass on writing about or choose to not post on. There are some books I read that directly or indirectly say something relevant about the Church or its history, but I just can’t figure out a good or productive way to talk about in a blog post. Like “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.” Or several books discussing recent scholarship on ancient Israelites, their ancestors, and the Hebrew Bible. Or books or current events when applying it to LDS life is just too big a stretch, even when I would really like to talk about the book or event. Take the recent protests on campus all over the country. When I can figure out a way to do a good blog post on that in the context of W&T, an LDS blog, I’ll post. If I can’t, I won’t.

A final word. There’s a difference between self-criticism and criticizing a third party or (in this context) another church. If I’m writing a post that points out a problem or issue with an LDS doctrine, belief, or practice, that’s self-criticism because I’m LDS. When an Evangelical do-gooder points out problems or issues with LDS doctrine or practice, well that’s her right to do so, but my initial reaction is generally that’s the pot calling the kettle black. She’d do better to look at her own Evangelical denomination and beliefs, because Lord knows there is plenty of material to work with. There is a large dose of integrity associated with self-criticism. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates, the ultimate exemplar of moral integrity, at the trial in which he was sentenced to death for annoying the citizens of Athens with unwelcome questions concerning justice and integrity.

As for the permabloggers or regular contributors here at W&T, all of them have some strong connection to the LDS Church (not necessarily current membership or activity) and a continuing interest in some or all things LDS. That’s obvious — otherwise they wouldn’t be here and writing posts. There are no flat-out critics here. There are plenty of online sites hosted by LDS critics and some of what they post is informative or insightful, but that’s not what W&T is about. I think we do a good job of posting material across the whole spectrum: posts that are positive about the Church, posts that are neutral on some topic or address both sides of a tricky issue, and posts that are critical on some doctrine or topic because sometimes that’s just where the chips fall. We allow wide-ranging discussion in the comments, and only rarely de-publish a comment or block a commenter in order to keep comment discussion friendly, civil, and relevant. I welcome comments from any W&T contributor who has something to add to my description of the blog and what it’s about. Like General Conference, we don’t coordinate or script our posts here. Everyone does their own thing.

So that’s that, a short discussion of integrity in the context of the LDS Church and in particular in teaching classes or posting online. Maybe you think differently about this topic. The floor is yours.

  • Am I off-base in thinking that when LDS leaders talk about integrity what they really mean is institutional loyalty?
  • Have you encountered a conflict between your conscience (telling you to do the right thing) and an institutional directive (telling you to do something else)? That could be a business, government, or other institution, or it might be the Church.
  • If you teach an LDS class, what guides your decisions about what to teach? What do you do when the manual is misguided in its approach to a topic?
  • What do you think about the recent LDS leadership claim that the two great commandments, loving God and loving your neighbor, are sometimes or often in conflict?