In one of the recently leaked videos of meetings with the 70 and the quorum of the twelve, an Oregon senator, the man who introduced Gordon Smith (no longer in office, praise be) uses the term “church broke” to describe Smith’s staffers who would defer to direction from church headquarters rather than taking initiative or listening to his constituents.
This term is used by church leaders, often with a chuckle (as in the video), as a way to describe people the church desires most, those who are willing to do whatever they are told, no questions asked. It seems to be a tongue in cheek term. Given that the senator also divulged confidential information in the meeting and said that his loyalties were to the church over his constituents, the term is certainly a dangerous idea to those of us who believe in the separation of church and state as well as to any Mormons seeking political office in the wake of this leaked video. This senator’s comments aligned with the criticism leveled toward Romney, that he would put his church’s interests above the country’s. Just because Gordon Smith did it doesn’t mean Romney would, but the meeting is pretty unsavory since nobody checked him for his reckless comments.
The use of the term “church broke” means relinquishing your personal conscience entirely to what church leaders tell you to do. In the video the senator linked his support for the Iraq war with paving the way for missionary work that wasn’t going to be able to progress under Saddam Hussein. But leaving the lauded senator’s horrifying remarks aside, let’s talk about the term “church broke,” what it means, and why it’s being used. Often an analogy is powerful because it reveals even more than we intend when investigated more closely. This is why Jesus’ parables are so effective and timeless.
Some people assumed the term “church broke” refers to housebreaking a pet, a natural assumption given the average member’s suburban life. However, the term is a little older and is actually about breaking in a horse. The pet analogy may be more insulting (don’t pee on the floor), but the horse analogy is how you harness the power of the animal to do things for you, so the horse can become a beast of burden or be safely ridden. Wild horses are too willful, unbiddable, and dangerous. They threaten the rider. They are unpredictable and unsafe. They have their own ideas. They don’t always obey your commands. They may throw you or bite you. A broken horse, like a trained soldier, doesn’t question your orders or get distracted by its surroundings. A politician who is “church broke” is a powerful horse indeed.
The steps to breaking a horse can be found on WikiHow for those of us who haven’t done it. Methods include things like grooming the horse with personal attention to build trust, using treats and sweets as rewards to make unpalatable things (like having a bit in your mouth) more pleasant, and the last step which is placing ear covers on the horse to block out distractions. Some horses also have blinders placed on to the sides of their eyes to help them stay focused (the Amish use blinders to keep horses from being spooked by passing cars on the freeway). This is doubtless a great way to domesticate a horse, but why would we ever think docile people who only take orders would be a good thing?
The process of breaking a horse reminded me of a familiar Book of Mormon scripture:
2 Nephi 26: 22 And there are also secret combinations, even as in times of old, according to the combinations of the devil, for he is the founder of all these things; yea, the founder of murder, and works of darkness; yea, and he leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever.
For someone who thinks being “church broke” is a positive thing, they would equate it with being loyal to the institution or with living the law of consecration or dedicating yourself wholly to God or “not my will but thine be done.” The problem with this definition is that becoming disciples of Christ should improve our moral agency, not eliminate it. We don’t have a doctrine that our leaders are infallible, believe it or not, so undue loyalty to the point of completely relinquishing one’s choices to them results in poor decision making as demonstrated by the senator in the leaked video. Our church leaders aren’t God. They aren’t gods. They aren’t infallible. I sometimes think that when we have been told that our church leaders will never lead us astray that’s because we are only led astray when we abdicate our moral agency. That’s on the person who has suborned his or her own conscience to the arm of flesh.
I used to have a related discussion with co-blogger at Mormon Matters Bruce Nielson. He said that some dissidents would never override their conscience to follow the brethren which meant that they were never open to the promptings of the spirit. But someone who is “church broke,” like a broken horse, doesn’t actually have a conscience anymore, or not one they are using regularly. They don’t think things through or operate on principle after considering the implications. They simply act in response to the tug of the reins. It becomes an instinct to follow orders without question. Rider and horse become one.
The way I was raised in the church wasn’t to be “church broke,” but to follow a process that is more or less like this:
- Follow your conscience. Do what is right, let the consequence follow.
- If the brethren say something that contradicts your conscience or doesn’t sound right, you should let personal revelation be the arbiter between your conscience and their advice. It may be that you have an imperfect understanding or don’t know all the facts. Or it may be that their advice is generally sound, but your circumstances are unique. Or it may be that they have made an error or it’s just a human opinion.
Personal revelation allows for you to be wrong or them to be wrong for your situation. Here’s where the problems may occur:
- When church leaders are wrong in general, not just for your situation, but their advice is truly their opinion or prejudices or political views and they are unaware that they are not in fact revelation for the church. There is no tolerance for individual church members to publicly disagree with the brethren, even if the matter is a personal opinion, if the individual seeks to persuade others that church leaders are wrong.
- When individuals ignore church leader advice and don’t seek personal revelation because they simply assume that everyone’s conscience is an infallible guide – but of course, it’s not. Hopefully our moral compass improves with experience and wisdom.
- When individuals fully suborn their conscience to simply become automatons doing what church leaders tell them and assuming that’s the same thing as “thy will be done.”
Unfortunately, #3, which describes being “church broke,” is not such a strawman. There are a lot of folks who in fact do this, as evidenced by the November 5 policy. There are many who are the policy’s most staunch defenders who truly have set their own conscience aside. How do I know this? Because many of these same individuals were the first to claim that the leak of the policy was “all anti-Mormon lies” but then when the church said the new policy was real, they immediately changed their minds to defend what they had just claimed was an impossible and outrageous lie. When I talked with some of these individuals, I was literally told by several people that no matter what the church does, they are OK with it. That’s being “church broke.”
In a similar vein, many members likewise claimed that things from the church’s essays that have been published over the last 18 months were all “lies” until they saw them on the church’s own website. And again, when they were found to originate from the church, suddenly they were A-OK. The only difference was the source, not the content.
One of the biggest risks to a culture in which being “church broke” is valued is that leaders will not be given feedback or have their ideas kept in check in any meaningful way. This means that policies and procedures within the church may be based on distortions or fantasy rather than reality, and may create difficulties on the ground that are hidden from decision makers. In infamous Nazi Albert Speer’s memoirs, he said:
“In normal circumstances people who turn their backs on reality are soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them, which makes them aware they have lost credibility. In the Third Reich there were no such correctives, especially for those who belonged to the upper stratum. On the contrary, every self-deception was multiplied as in a hall of distorting mirrors, becoming a repeatedly confirmed picture of a fantastical dream world which no longer bore any relationship to the grim outside world. In those mirrors I could see nothing but my own face reproduced many times over. No external factors disturbed the uniformity of hundreds of unchanging faces, all mine.”
Although we certainly have reason to hope that church leaders don’t suffer from the same types of self-deceptions as those evil men, they are human beings and therefore do suffer from normal human foibles including self-delusion. Self-delusion is rampant in the human race. I like to think it’s why marriage is ordained of God. Having a spouse available to keep your nutty theories at bay is a good thing. Anyone’s fears, their hopes, their human and imperfect understandings of things will only be distorted in an environment free from the checks and balances of criticism and questioning. More than any of us, church leaders should resist encouraging people to be “church broke.” They have the most to lose if “church broke” people surround them. What’s at stake? Their credibility to rational people.
Beware of these “church broke” people; they are not small in number. Their cult-like devotion is dangerous. But they are “church broke,” and the church apparently loves them like no other if these leaked conversations are the norm and not cherry-picked moments of human weakness. Being “church broke” should not be encouraged. People who are “church broke” should not be voted into public office. The Danites were most certainly “church broke,” as were the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It’s not a compliment. We should be a church full of personal revelation, Christian virtues, and people whose conscience is elevated by the light of revelation from our leaders, not quashed by it.
The term “church broke” has no place in the church of Jesus Christ. As a joke, it is too sinister to be funny.
Wheat & Tares 
HG – a very interesting post.
Good summary and commentary of being “broke”.
For a church leadership that espouses Christlike qualities of humility and love, I saw very little of that in those videos. What I did see was a church whose executive was overly concerned with things they had no business in (medical marijuana – what the hell..!!), patting each other on the back for being republican and obviously feeling good about creating a culture where a large number of members are devoid of expressing their own will.
Hearing apostles enquiring about whether someone is homosexual when that had no bearing on the issue is telling. As is the Senator calling those who support democrats (miscreants – I think that was the word he used) and then have people in the room laughing at that is irreverent, discriminatory and unchristlike.
I see little content in the videos that will be really damaging for the church (a couple of things are going to have some fall out). But for me, the worst part of this is the absolute lack of the Q15 possessing any of the qualities we heard about all conference weekend.
My first wife worked at the COB back in the 70’s and used the term to refer to people that could work around the GA’s and still believe the church was true
Is this leadership? Is this leadership you want to follow?
It’s unimaginable that God actually sits in on those old fart echo chamber meetings. Change in missionary age, well I guess we know where that came from now! The curtain has been pulled back and the wizards exposed and they are even more boring and out of touch than their critics feared!
‘I see little content in the videos that will be really damaging for the church”
I am not so sure about that statement. I watched the Gordon Smith video all the way through, and there are quite a few damaging nuggets in there. I think some of the rhetoric might be more obvious to those not raised within the LDS church who are somewhat inured to it. The things that popped out to me, among many, were the importance to the LDS church of having allies in positions of power in both the United States and in other countries as well, some rather nasty things said about other religious bodies, plus the call to “use them where you can”, and circumventing visa procedures to start a mission in India. Of course, these are things all religious bodies likely do, but the LDS church likes to claim the moral high ground, and it’s somewhat deflating to see they are grubby as everybody else.
On a side note, I found it amusing that Elder Wong delivered the presentations about statistics, science, and computer technology. Sure…. get the Asian guy to crunch the numbers and explain technology to the smug old white guys in charge. No stereotype there. I admire Elder Wong, both for his eloquent presentations, and for his attempt at tact when the “Brethren” tried to turn the discussion to gay bashing. I was thinking we need more like him in the First Presidency and Q12. Time for a promotion!
@LDS Aussie, you got all that? that they lack any qualities they talk about, from 14 short videos? amazing
Manson often with his 1,000 yard vacant stare needs to be held up at the podium so that just leaves Uchtdorf and Eyring. Hurry die off or goodbye church!
@howard
I don’t much approve of how the LDS church won’t let Thomas Monson retire with dignity. That being said, whether I approve of the LDS church or Thomas Monson, I tend to be forgiving of his advanced age and dementia. I keep in mind that some day soon I will be old and frail, as will we all. Just something I think about when I am tempted to say cruel things about others.
It was a description anon, not an intolerance or lack of empathy for the aging process and certainly not a cruel description.
Continuing my earlier comment…
I also didn’t much like Gordon Smith’s ignorant characterization of Muslims as martyrs who want nothing more than to die and kill non-Muslims in the process. What a horrible stereotype of a wonderful culture and religion with 1.6 billion adherents world-wide and over 3 million in the U.S. alone. The saddest thing is that nobody in the room had the guts to stand up and dispute this blatant bigotry.
The other thing that I found slightly creepy was the whole conversation about “the Republican party shall rise again”. It makes the men in the room sound like some kind of gloating cabal plotting to overthrow the world. I can only picture Mr. Burns from the Simpsons rubbing his hands together and letting out a sinister cackle. The tone in the room was just plain weird, IMHO.
My Mormon heritage goes back to 1836. Raised in the church, I was “church-broke,” Peter Priesthood, and all that until sometime during my mission (in the late 60’s). Then my mind began to clear, the conditioning of my youth began to wear off and I started to think for myself–though still highly active in the church. I gave a Sac Mtg talk at BYU my first semester back from my Mission on the theme of “Stop looking to Salt Lake for what you should think.” Church-think was so prominent and ingrained–and likely always had been.
So, for nearly 50 years I have “strained at the bit” and objected to the lack of open-mindedness among my fellow members that so frustrates actually learning anything at church. And, after all that, last of all, this term and its use by our putative “leaders” is somehow the cruelest, most disheartening.
Years ago, I had a friend in a northeastern province of Canada who was a staunch Baptist. Yet, she was fascinated by the LDS Church and often met with the missionaries. She decided to make a pilgrimage of sorts to SLC to see if the Lord would guide her. By some bona fide miracle, she was able to meet with a Q12 member for 20 minutes in his office. (I am leaving out identifying information). She had a very nice visit with this apostle. At the end of the conversation, the leader told her “I am going to break you.” She did not understand what he met. Anyway, she returned to Canada and is still a baptist as far as I know. Anyway, this another example of the usage of “break” in the COB. For the record, I otherwise have great respect for this apostle.
Angela, great work here — very helpful explanation and analysis of the background and ethical merits of the “church broke” attitude.
Here’s another scripture, perhaps even better in its simplicity, for support:
“Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle,
else it will not stay near you.” (Psalm 32:9, NRSV)
Unfortunately, despite this scripture admonishing us not to be as the horse, Elder Perry as recently as a couple of years ago recommended we be like the horse, easy to be led by the bridle.
You say that the term is used in “several of the leaked videos.” Could someone point me to when it is used other than in the Smith one?
Well said, Hawkgrrrl. The idea that members should be “church broke” is harmful both to us, and to Church leaders, who so dearly need feedback rather than to be surrounded by “church broke” yes-men and yes-women.
Whizzbang – if what was in the videos was inconsistent with the policy and general direction of the church, then maybe you’d have a valid point. But if I look to the entirety of what I see, the lack of Christ in those meetings appears to not be something that is just, per chance, in those 14 videos.
Combine then with Prop 8, the November policy, the “we don’t apologise” comment, the widespread use of media releases in a church that espouses revelation, city creek mall – etc. No – this is not some unlucky non representative sample wherein all the other videos would have them acting different.
In any case, let’s speak about something far more positive (insert mass killing example)…
Sarcasm intended…
Nitpicking: looking for small or unimportant errors or faults, especially in order to criticize unnecessarily.
None of these men have ever claimed that they were perfect. Yes, they are old. Obvious. Yes, the era in which they were raised may affect their personal opinions of politics and such. They are just human, like me and you. But one thing they have professed is that they have a love for God and His purposes. If you can listen to their sincere testimonies of Jesus Christ and call them phony that is your opinion and you’re very much entitled to it. But mine is simply that God lives and He is a wonderful God. He sent His son Jesus Christ – a Savior that we so dearly need. Just as Christ established a church while He was on the earth – calling men to be his disciples, and giving them priesthood keys – He has done that again in our day. His gospel has been restored. These men that people are relentlessly nitpicking, are the men I believe He has called.
Amos 3:7, “….Surely the Lord GOD does nothing Unless He reveals His secret counsel To His servants the prophets.” If this verse is true, and God really has called prophets today as He did in days of old…. then why are we hating so hard on them? I suggest that we have a little more faith that God really does know what He’s doing when it comes to us, and a little less spite when maybe imperfect things are said by fellow human beings. Christ invites all of us to repent and follow Him. That includes these men we know as prophets. We shouldn’t go quickly forgetting that fact.
I’ve watched several of these leaked videos today to see what all the ruckus is about. Nothing in the videos I saw struck me as insanely evil and awful. I may not have seen the same video that all of you have seen? I tried to find the part where the Senator talks about being “church broke”. But I could not find it…. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe that it was said and that it has offended people. I just don’t think we should let those things get in the way of our faith in the Jesus Christ. Because that’s what really matters when it comes down to it. John 3:14-17, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”
I feel like these leaked videos must be so one-sided. That’s what the media does. We all know that. I feel like we rarely hear anything positive these days. And this is just another example. I may sound so “broke” to you, but I don’t feel broke. All I want is to be a good person. I want to live life like there’s no freaking tomorrow. And the best way I’ve found to do that is to focus on Christ and live His gospel as best I can.
There are lots of stories that are about being “church broke,” even without using the term. One that comes to mind is E. Bednar’s horrible story about the passive-aggressive young man who breaks up with his girlfriend rather than marrying her because she doesn’t immediately take out her second pair of earrings when Pres. Hinckley suggests it. That’s a pretty trivial thing to break up with someone over without having an actual conversation with that person. There’s a girl that dodged a bullet.
Found the ex-mormon reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/55iq5z/the_gordon_smith_leak_is_scandalous/
What was interesting about that was the discussion of classified information and what Gordon Smith shared (which, it appears, was not classified):
“I haven’t watched but I’ll share some info. Usually classified information is not the knowledge or existence of some thing but instead the numbers involved.
For example, totally made up, America has nuclear weapons on mars. Secret might be that there are 10,000 of them and top secret would be their locations and specs (design and payload).
[–]FuzzyKittenIsFuzzyI am not a dodo 7 points 1 day ago
Can confirm, my dad was working on some “top secret” stuff at one point and he told me he was free to say it was paint technology for military tanks in the middle east, but he was not free to say why his company (which does nuclear stuff) would be involved, how this paint is different than other paint, etc. Another family member also had TS clearance and told us he was free to say he was working on making less obtrusive bugging equipment and he was free to tell us the government agency it was for, but he couldn’t give any details about the technology itself.
[–]1SoulShallNotBeLost 3 points 1 day ago
Yeah that’s how I have seen it as well.
I worked on a project for several months and I never knew who the customer was because my clearance was not high enough.”
// I’m providing this update in the comments per a request.
Cruel things? What is the guy behind Monson in the shadow doing?Looking for his keys? What is Monson doing? Receiving revelation?
Please release my last comment from moderation.
@Stephen
Not to shoot the messenger 🙂
The quote from Gordon Smith reads, “Probably, by this year, Iran may well have… enough fissile material to create a nuclear bomb. They have in their battles plans — and some of this may be classified. Maybe the 2009 data is classified still — but they have the rocketry to hit Israel…”
I think the objection to this quote is that he shares the information along with the statement “some of this may be classified”. If he’s not *sure* whether the information is still classified or secret, he ought not to be sharing it out of an abundance of caution. At the very least, his words *sound* irresponsible, and one is left to wonder what other information he was unsure about but shared anyway.
Stephen – glad to know he didn’t actually divulge confidential information even though it was apparently a happy accident.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/4428322-155/no-need-to-fear-leaked-videos?fullpage=1
For the leaker’s comments.
Howard is fishing for attention else why would he say all those weird things?
Yes indeed let’s discount them as weird and Howard as attention seeking so that folks can just move along ( these aren’t the droids you’re looking for) without seeing what’s actually going on. Are you a shill Ronkonkma or just a troll?
Great article that gave me a lot to think about. But as a hobbyist horse trainer the analogy made me squirm enough that I can’t seem to stop myself from commenting. (I recognize nobody probably cares but me , but I care deeply.)
Nobody worth talking to breaks horses anymore. Not even the wild mustangs. Trainers ‘back’ horses. Or trainers ‘start’ horses. The goal is a horse who is your partner (meaning not ‘broken’). Who can think through what is being done and work with the rider/driver as a team member. Breaking destroys the animal creating a ‘shut down’ (emotionally) horse. It happens, but that is bad training. Horse training (understanding animal behavior) has evolved from the way it is portrayed in this article (and old west movies).
That last photo used isn’t even breaking. That’s a horse in some serious pain from the over-the-top bit in it’s mouth. It’s a picture of abuse. Based on the rider and his lack of shoes, I’m going to guess it was taken in a poor part of central or south America where modern methodologies haven’t hit yet.
Also that scripture from the O.T…. Uh yeah. Long shot here, but I’m guessing the psalmist never studied animal behavioral.
(okay, horse rant that no one cares about but me is officially over.) And I get why you wrote it the way you did.
ReT: Thanks! Very interesting information.
It’s up on Drudge now. It’ll spike by 100ks of hits before tomorrow morning.
I watched a few videos, not the Smith one. The young adult one was right from when i was leaving BYU unmarried and going to grad school. Hit home on alot of what they said. I wish this kind of stuff was available to watch regularly for the church body; yeah there is the whole ‘not liking how the sausage is made’ analogy, but alot of this would help members understand and appretiate the work that is ongoing more.
Was cool to watch Elder Gong though; he was my stake president at BYU and when he was released Elder Perry come down for that stake reorganization and did it and talked about how important and useful he was to the Q12 when he came up and gave them presentation to their meetings. Now I understand!
never forget: I too found E. Gong pretty impressive. He was good at distilling the information and remaining factual, respectful and neutral in fielding some of the off-the-wall questions from the apostles. Very professional.
ksetoki – “None of these men have ever claimed that they were perfect.”
But if a person also *never* says that he is mistaken, or unsure, or lacking knowledge, what’s the difference?
I’d always pictured their private meetings to be the vulnerable place where they asked questions and doubted themselves more.
I’m middle-aged and have a lifetime of affection and respect for our leaders that still animates me as a Mormon. But, increasingly, yes, I don’t let something like these videos get in the way of my faith in Christ because I I won’t let *anyone* – even my leaders – do that.
Excellent post. Every point was spot on. Some of the content here reminded me of my time working at Church headquarters. After a particularly absurd department reorganization, for instance, our GA executive director stood up and bore testimony that the insane organizational reshuffling was inspired, and if we didn’t like it, we could go take a walk in the part until we did. After a couple of weeks of frustration had proved that the reorganization was just as crazy as all the employees knew it was, management started backtracking, but they were never able to really put Humpty Dumpty back together. And yes, it is impossible to send feedback up-line in the Church corporation. Everything that comes down from above is simply acknowledged to be inspired. Call it de facto infallibility. This is why we referred to our managing director’s office as “the place where good ideas go to die.” This whole bureaucratic mentality would be pretty easy to fix, but it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
ReT, doesn’t the scripture from the Psalm support your comment? That we shouldn’t be like a horse that is broken and therefore only obeys because emotionally crippled and forced to do so? Rather, we should be a partner in the way you’re describing the new way to train horses? So if we’re going to be horses like Elder Perry suggested, then the onus is on the trainers (church leaders) to see us as valuable partners, respecting our emotional and moral integrity, rather than placing value on “breaking” us to be like the Psalmist’s horse and mule.
Ruth, in fairness, these videos aren’t the apostles duking it out in private. They are just briefings with the 70 and them, so I wouldn’t expect them to be no-holds-barred open discussions or they would last all day. However, I would have (personally) expected a little more intellectual curiosity in some of these meetings. Some of the discussions just felt so “been there, done that, it’ll never work.” Institutional inertia, even when programs aren’t working.
Ang,
Have you forgotten the endless meetings at work where ridiculous things were said and discussed? I think some people expect the GAs, especially Apostles to use Jesus in every sentence.
@jeff
“Have you forgotten the endless meetings at work where ridiculous things were said and discussed? I think some people expect the GAs, especially Apostles to use Jesus in every sentence.”
That being said, nobody in the long boring meetings I attend actually claims to *talk* to Jesus. 🙂
I’m being facetious, of course, but my point is that these gentlemen are prophets, seers, and revelators. More than that, they are the highest level of leadership the LDS church has on Earth. It’s reasonable to hold them to a high standard. For example, when a presenter makes a comment stereotyping Muslims as murdering terrorists, I’d expect God’s representative on Earth to say, “Woah there! We don’t talk like that about God’s children!” Yes, it was a closed meeting and there was no expectation at the time that this behavior would be made public, but (as Hawkgrrl pointed out) you’d expect some sort of congruency between their private and public behavior. Perhaps more importantly, you’d expect better congruency between their behavior and what they ask of their followers.
Anon,
I agree that apostles should be held to a high standard. That being said it was pretty clear that Smith was only referring to a small subset of Shia Muslims (I believe he even referred to Islam as a beautiful religion). While he was overgeneralising about their hold on power in Iran(something we only know for sure because of hindsight), his statement has a lot of truth to it. However, he in no way was talking about all Muslims.
I’ll go back to lurking now.
John F –
Yes. I had that thought, but was hesitant to add more to my comment about horses (I am quite capable of creating an entire allegory based around the different methodologies of approaching animal training. However, I don’t know that anyone outside the horse world wants that much detail about animal behaviorism).
With that, I’d argue that it isn’t the church we are supposed to partner with, it is God – and that’s huge. The number one most upsetting thing in these videos to me (and I only watched about 1.25 hours, not the entirety) was that not once was did anyone talk about what God wanted in all these situations.
@hanson
“However, he in no way was talking about all Muslims.”
Very true, and thanks for setting me straight. The Muslim thing jumped out at me when I watched the video, but I could have picked a better example to make my point. It’s hard to put my finger on what bothered me, but there was just a kind of smug good-ol-boy attitude in the room that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe that bothered me more than any specific issue that came up. As I mentioned above, I do admire Elder Gong so much for not being drawn into the gay bashing thing. I’d have been so pleased to see more of that sort of thing happening.
@hanson
continued….
You really got me thinking about what *really* bothered me in those tapes (at least the ones I watched). Here it is: I would have been so pleased if the tapes were presentations and brainstorming sessions centered around “How can the LDS church make the world a better place? How can we use our vast resources to provide (secular) education, healthcare, food, clean water, housing? ” Sure, the LDS church claims to do all those things, but I’d have been so pleased to hear these gentlemen pitching in with lots of good ideas and watching presentations centered around those noble goals.
What we got instead were presentations about threats the LDS church was facing and how to circle the wagons, field a larger sales force, and improve market share. When I scanned the room, I saw a bunch of men looking bored and/or sanctimonious. Nobody seemed excited about making the LDS church better and putting the LDS church to work in the world. Mostly, they seemed defensive, somewhat jaded, unenthusiastic, and tired.
Anyway, that’s *really* what bothered me more than the actual content (though some of the content was pretty cringe-worthy from my perspective).
anon: “Nobody seemed excited about making the LDS church better and putting the LDS church to work in the world. Mostly, they seemed defensive, somewhat jaded, unenthusiastic, and tired.” I hate to point this out, but listen to the last 10 minutes of the YSA video. They say they want to get a “mother’s” perspective and Julie Beck (I believe that’s who it is–the standing RS president at the time, not just “a mother”–so much for women having any authority to these men) enthusiastically shares her insights about the international church and calls out the fact that they have basically only been talking about a Utah-centric problem for the first hour without thinking about how the program works elsewhere. She has lots of great ideas, challenging the thinking, and she is very enthusiastic and energetic. I’ve never been a Julie Beck fan, but she was impressive in this meeting. Finally, Packer cuts her off and says “That’s all the time we have for this” and like a needle scratch across a record, that’s all there is. End video.
But, bear in mind that this preceded the mission age change which was a fairly radical solution, albeit a solution in search of a problem perhaps. It’s an attempt to solve a problem, and like most solutions creates new problems in the process. But I’m glad they made the change for women even though men at 18 aren’t IMO ready for a proselyting mission–service missions maybe.
The purpose of those meetings is primarily a briefing so the apostles can get additional information. It’s not the place they deeply discuss and council together.
In a national security briefing the president doesn’t start a debate with the one presenting the facts. Sometimes they ask a few questions if it helps to generate some additional thoughts from the one doing the briefing, but it’s clear these meetings are very effective at giving a presenter an hour to share some information while the quorum reflects on it if necessary.
People who expect these briefing meetings to be where decisions are made miss this point. That might be why Pres. Packer cut the meeting “short”. They seem to stick to a fifty minute briefing, time for a few follow-up questions or comments and then move on. The decision isn’t made in the briefing. It’s just an opportunity to have information briefed to them.
Ward council where we report, discuss, debate, make assignments is a totally different kind of meeting. And I think people get the impression that’s what this is. I don’t know frequently they have these, but it’s obviously not their council meeting.
What’s also interesting is the complaint about “end video” and Pres. Beck seemingly being cut off. Seriously, did you see an opening or closing prayer? Do you know if the format of this meeting is opening prayer, song, scripture, 60min briefing, lunch break, return for discussion, closing prayer, end meeting.
It’s so clear this is just a snippet. It’s also clear if you reflect for just a minute there’s so much more going on before and after these videos.
Angela, I was bothered by that part as well. They did not refer to her in terms of her Church calling, but as a mother. They did not see her as someone who had any position in the Church. BKP made that quite clear when he cut her off to end the meeting. I mean, really? Would he have done that to Elder Perry who sat next to him? Doubt it. Great post!
GSO: “It’s also clear if you reflect for just a minute there’s so much more going on before and after these videos.” I don’t doubt that. It felt like one of many meetings on this topic. However, it was a shame that the best contributor was an afterthought, not given any actual presentation time, just asked for a “mother’s perspective” (a very odd framing for her contribution), and then the meeting ended abruptly after she made the most insightful comments of the whole thing. One hopes that she was asked to head a committee on it. It was clear to me that she was the most forward thinking on the topic in that particular meeting.
It occurred to me that the very existence of the bloggernacle is a grass roots version of these meetings. Nobody asked us to present on the topics we write about, but these are the topics we feel are most relevant to our lives as members of the church at a given time. These are the things we would like church leaders to know and be thinking about as they set the direction.
Have yet to watch the videos.
On the horse analogy, love the comments by ReT and john f.
Really not in favour of breaking at all. Reminded of D&C 121:41-, which seems more along the lines described by ReT.
Regarding the Mormon Leaks video, it’s interesting how many people want to believe the worst about the LDS Church instead of simply watching the video. Since many of you haven’t watched it, I’ll recapitulate it for you:
“Ralph Hardy, who introduces Senator Smith, says at about 4:15 into the segment that “it was fair to say that his staff in the senate was Church broke. In fact, not many months ago, his legislative director called me on the phone and said ‘Ralph, you haven’t called us for six weeks. What are we supposed to be doing?”
12:45 into the video – At this point the “church broke” comment from Ralph Hardy’s introduction is put into context. Smith points out that the kinds of requests that the LDS Church leaders have made of him and his staff “in Madrid, Rome, India, Belgium, Russia, and other places usually has to do with the right of conscience” and the right of the Church to pursue its mission of sharing the gospel with the world.
http://frankstaheli.blogspot.com/2016/10/mormon-leaks-what-they-really-said.html
A very good article. Thank you for posting.
I realize this is a very late post; so be it. As a fledgling dissident (which sounds so dramatic, but I don’t know how else to put it), I’ve observed that the rhetoric of personal revelation on First Presidency statements you disagree with, etc. almost universally focuses on how personal revelation only affirms these statements. In other words, you might not understand a teaching, you might need a little more faith, or you might just be a disobedient apostate. Aside from some quotes by J. Reuben Clark and others, the teaching that general authorities aren’t always moved by the Spirit has largely been swept under the rug in favor of unquestioning obedience and infallibility.