A while ago I listened to a great Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called the Danger of a Single Story. She talks about the issues that emerge when we only know one story about a group of people.
She uses the example of stories of pity told about her native Africa that often didn’t match her life experience, and that when she met people they had expectations on that single story. She notes that having multiple stories is often a privilege that comes with power, having the power to portray yourself more robustly through many different stories. For example, she points out that while many people have only heard one story about Africa (an entire continent): a story of underprivilege, oppression, violence, and tribal customs, that most people know many stories about America because America has the ability to tell many stories about itself. She illustrated this by pointing out to a friend that she had recently seen the movie American Psycho, and it was unfortunate that Americans all chose to be remorseless serial killers. That was how it was being African and constantly given the assumption that she was like the “one story” of Africa, a story that did not match her life experience which was far more robust.
There are many problems with only knowing a single narrative about someone. I’ll share a few stories that immediately came to mind for me. One of the areas in my mission that was very difficult was the island of La Palma. There had been two vibrant branches on the island less than a year before I was sent there. When I went there, the branch in Los Llanos (on the west side of the island) had been closed, and we were just reopening it for missionaries. The branch on the other side of the island in Santa Cruz had two active members out of the 32 who were on the records. Most had reneged in that very recent time period due to very strong social pressure against converting. The island was always difficult due to a wariness of outsiders–they didn’t even like tourists. But one issue emerged when a local priest or Cura was offended by a missionary (I’m not sure what the story was) and he began to spread the rumor that the Mormon missionaries were only on the island to kidnap children. This story was, for most of this isolated island, the one story they knew about Mormons. It was bad enough that one set of elders turned a corner and saw a young boy playing in the street a few houses away. The boy’s mother ran into the street, scooped up her child (leaving his toys in the street) and ran into the house locking the door behind her. For a while, this story resulted in so much opposition that this city was shut down for missionary work, and it was in fact based on nothing more than a Cura’s lie to (in his mind) protect his flock from leaving the faith.
Likewise, many of us are aware of the power of the film The Godmakers when it is “the one story” people know about Mormons. In my case, when this film was shown in the small town I lived in, most of my classmates were not persuaded that it was accurate because they knew I was a Mormon and that I wasn’t some wacky cultist. The efforts by the church in it’s “I’m a Mormon” campaign were helpful at dispelling the “one story” problem for those who went to the trouble to go to the site. There wasn’t just “one” story or one acceptable way to be a Mormon. Interestingly, because of the church’s elevation of some family and personal choices as “ideal,” there were some members who disliked the “I’m a Mormon” campaign for normalizing personal narratives that they felt were “cooler” than their “more righteous” or “more ideal” story.
Years ago, I was in a lesson at church that I really didn’t like. I didn’t know the teacher well, but her examples seemed anti-intellectual to me–poorly researched, very superficial. I was also prone to think ill because my kids stated that her son made “gay-bashing” comments in a lesson they were in, something that they didn’t like at all. It would have been very easy to stop right there, to choose to avoid this family. Instead, I decided to get to know her better. We became good friends, and I found that there was more to her than just that one story. I was also able to share my own views on things that (because we were friends) might have gotten her to think more about some of her assumptions. Or maybe not. These things don’t always result in lifelong friendships, but they can.
Sometimes when there is “one story” it’s an exaggeration of the real story, and a little digging can radically change how the story is perceived. I was reading about Stetson Kennedy, an undercover journalist who wanted to break into the secrets of the KKK as a way to oppose their movement back in the 1940s. You can read about him in Freakonomics or in this article How Superman Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. At that time little was known about the inner workings of the Klan, so trying to subvert them was difficult. They were a terrorist organization, but actual acts of terrorism such as lynchings were at an all time low. What he found by talking with others in the movement was that they were really not active at much more than shooting off their mouths and engaging in silly rituals that made them feel important in the face of their depressed economic circumstances and prospects. Their speech was hateful, to be sure, but the majority of them had no intent to do any violent acts, unlike the reputation of the Klan. It took the fangs out of the organization when he discovered this, and made it easier for him to take them down. After he published their secrets in a Superman radio program, attendance at the next meeting was almost nil. They felt silly because children were making a game out of their antics, laughing about their ceremonies. He made the Klan the subject of mockery rather than fear, so the narrative of white power lost its pull, at least for a while.
When we talk about church leaders, they aren’t people we know well or personally, and so often we have “one story” about them. When we gather more stories, it presents a more complex picture. For example, many know Pres. Packer as someone who fought against gay rights, someone who called intellectuals, feminists and homosexuals the three biggest threats the church opposed. Many see E. Oaks as the “no apologies,” anti-gay marriage person who equates Fox News with capital T truth. But I’ve also heard a couple of stories that run counter to these. Some examples I’ve referenced elsewhere:
Let me add to the mixed bag on Pres. Packer. A good friend was greeting several apostles in their visit overseas. Packer was the most senior. A local leader had asked a procedural question, and one of the more junior apostles was about to give an answer when Pres Packer stopped him and cautioned him that answering that kind of question given their position often resulted in unintended consequences because members took what they said casually too much to heart and would turn an off hand remark into a new rule forever. This from the author of The Unwritten Order! (important to note: Pres. Packer ALSO declined to answer the question).
I also heard from E. Oaks that Pres. Packer is the one who bought the Q12 iPads to use for their scriptures and to access the LDS apps.
Oaks is also quite interesting. He loves a white shirt and pushes for outward obedience but he is also a strong advocate of equal pay and rights for women. He also did a lot behind the scenes at BYU to reduce how oppressive and right wing the environment was. And yet, he’s quite comfortable stewing in the political right.
E. Bednar infamously promoted passive aggressive behavior and judgment about something as trivial as earrings, and yet he doesn’t try to shackle women in the home, recognizing his mother as a strong woman and financial contributor.
On the flip side, Pres. Monson is someone who is well known for visiting widows and promoting service as the 4th mission of the church. But I did hear one story in which he was rude to underlings which one or two people said was typical in their experience, and of course his role in Prop 8 is well known, an action that proponents of gay rights (including me) will not see as evidence of charity. These other stories give me pause, and my belief in his universal kindness has dialed down to “mixed bag” levels. I suppose all people are a mixed bag.
- What contrary stories do you know about church leaders that change or soften the “one story” approach?
- Does having a more nuanced view of people help or hurt your view of the church?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
On Elder Oaks and politics, in a stake conference my parents were at where he was the presiding authority, he said that he was “sick and tired” of members “excommunicating each other” over their politics and that both Republicans and Democrats belonged in the Church. That was a very powerful statement to me.
I think having a more nuanced view helps, at least for me. Here’s my story that I feel helped me:
I am from eastern Nebraska, which for Salt Lake may as well be Mars. Almost no one from Q15 comes here and Stake Conferences with any General Authority present are surprisingly infrequent compared to other places. When my wife and I were dating at BYU, Pres. Ucthdorf was going to be presiding in my wife’s Stake Conference, so I went there instead of my ward. It was held in the old Provo Tabernacle and after the meeting I wanted to shake his hand because I knew I’d probably not get the chance to do something like that back home. At the end of the conference, he was surrounded by a mob of people wanting to do the same. Instead of doing that, I went outside because I knew where his car would be parked. As he was leaving the building, I walked up to him with the goofiest grin on my face and my hand outstretched (and I know what I did was very rude and thoughtless; I was only a few months home from my mission and was very young and dumb, not that that’s an excuse). He looked at me with one of the most irritated expressions on his face, as if to say, “Come on man. I’m just trying to get to my car. Leave me alone.” So he grabbed my hand and shook it quickly all the while still walking. Probably the most brusque handshake I’ve ever had.
Fast forward about 7 months. My now wife and I are in Chubbuck, ID because my father-in-law’s stake is having stake conference and who is the presiding authority? Pres. Ucthdorf. After the conference, he is once again mobbed by folks and I have figured where he’ll be as he leaves the chapel so I go there. As he is walking out, I once again walk up to him with the goofiest grin on my face and my hand outstretched (dumb, I know). He gives me guarded, knowing look on his face like “This is that idiot from Provo that kept me from getting to my car. Is he stalking me?” He slowly shook my hand and left without saying a word.
I love this story because for me it humanized him and the other brethren. They were people who felt things and had normal reactions just like the rest of us. Too often we put them on pedestals where I know they don’t want to be. Experiences like these help us to see them as people and stop lionizing them.
Very thought provoking post. Maybe I’m sidestepping your questions but my hot take is I think if we taught people that making mistakes is part of being perfected. Perfection is something you become, not something you had until you screwed up! What that means is screwing up is part of becoming perfect. The worst thing anyone could do is just lock themselves in a room all day (though had President Monson, E. Oaks done that either they would have never made mistakes or we would not have heard of any of them.) They also wouldn’t have achieved anything! I wish would could instill a culture of people who cut themselves, their family, their friends, their enemies, their leaders, people they lead, and really everyone some slack. Believe that the vast majority of the human race is mostly good stuff mixed in with some bad stuff. See the best in everyone.
Some mixed bag stories that I am fond of GA: Elder Oaks clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren and in some of his books wrote some pretty high praise of the guy while also acknowledging he probably would have come to different conclusions had E. Oaks been the judge.
B. Young: Rightfully gets taken to task for the priesthood ban and revisions to the RF minutes and Adam God. But I also think that going forward the church needs his legacy. He spoke multiple times about NOT believing in a literal old testament. He also embraced to a very large degree the scientific learning of his day (he chose to endorse an old earth that geologists were finding rather than the young earth many religionists felt the scriptures demanded.) I also like how B. Young focused on how the purpose of the gospel was to have an impact on living life and finding joy now. He also–in spite of his many faults on women’s issues–allowed no fault divorce for women.
B.R. McConkie- I hope someday someone does a really good biography on E. McConkie, because I must admit that as of yet I don’t get the guy at all. He defended some of the church’s most racist teachings, but according to SWK bio Lengthen Your Stride he wrote a memo stating that the priesthood ban was NOT based in scripture. He also is the only church authority that I am aware of to admit he was completely wrong on the ban and that people should ignore anything he or B. Young said on the subject. (Didn’t go far enough, but nearly 40 years later it is still the closest an Apostle ever came to apologizing that I’m aware of.) The last thing I found most interesting about Elder McConkie: he actually has a theory of the creation of the world that involved women. He felt that all great and noble spirits were part of the creation. Men and women and he specifically named Eve, Mary and Sarah. Anyway, somebody much smarter than myself needs to write a biography cuz Elder McConkie is a guy that sometimes I just shake my head thinking “man, how could he be this far off” only to read something that strikes me as pretty ahead of his time.
I suppose all people are a mixed bag.
I think so. I’ve always thought of Elder Ballard as one of the most dour of the 12, but he spoke at our stake conference a few years back, and was delightful – amusing, bantering, humorous. Especially in the Saturday eve adult session.
Heaven help anyone who takes their opinion of me from a single encounter. Good or bad, it’s sure to be inaccurate. (I’m an acquired taste.) And I know my own views and statements on some issues have changed as the years have passed. My oldest son has commented that I used to be something of a stickler for passing the sacrament tray with the right hand due to the symbolism of the right; now, I find myself passing it with the left on purpose just to avoid pointless symbolism. My view of the white shirt as “priesthood uniform” and several other cultural but non-doctrinal touchpoints have changed as well. I find myself boiling my gospel down to its real components, and I am a work in progress.
I suppose, and I devoutly hope, that imperfect apostles and prophets are also works in progress and that they recognize that about themselves. I never bought the missionary legend that they all meet with the Savior every week in the celestial room of the Salt Lake temple, as comforting as that might be. They, like us, see through a glass darkly – with the added advantage of time and focus, perhaps, but still doing a fair amount of groping in the dark.
It also may be – and this kind of ties to Jason’s comment – that each has a “spiritual specialty,” in some way. Joseph Fielding Smith had no business anywhere near an anthropology or geology discussion, but some of his teachings on other topics are magnificent. My opinion of Elder McConkie is colored by the fact that my first exposure to him was “The Purifying Power of Gethsemane,” his dying Conference address from November 1985; he may have been a prickly, arrogant man and disagreeable in many ways, but that is a moving and powerful testimony. We are all imperfect in too many ways to count; the prominent simply have more opportunities to make people angry. That was, I think, one of the points President Packer was trying to make in Hawk’s quoted anecdote.
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Church’s wounds; to care for them who shall have borne the battle, and for our widows, and our orphans—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all our brothers and sisters.”
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes.” -Whitman
I think it must be really hard for average GAs because for most of them, the only story people will hear is the one they present themselves with from the pulpit. Spin a phrase the wrong way and you’re in internet hell.
It’s even worse if you’re the General RS President. Suddenly people expect you to represent the ultimate female ideal, and everything about you is being judged (Sophisticated? Too forward? Too self-effacing? Too distant? Too familiar? primary voice? bat-wings? too much, too little make-up? Fat? Feminist or Patriarchal sympathizer?) So many people measuring you against their established and contradictory standards. And again, the only story most people will know is the one you present from the pulpit. Talk about a no-win situation. Maybe if we saw more women in the pulpit, people would be open to more variation, but right now I really for those sisters in this situation.
I absolutely agree with New Iconoclast. Ballard is one of the most boring General Conference speakers, but he visited Sacrament Meeting a couple of times in SLC and was a wonderful, funny speaker. Maybe he shouldn’t read the teleprompter anymore!
Interesting, that for us “internet Mormons” (or NOMs, or whatever you want to call us), the dominate single story about GAs is the bad things (Anti-Gay Packer, No apologies Oaks, etc), yet the the majority of TBMs, they have never head of these things, and the single story for them is how great and perfect these same men are. So there is multiple stories on these men, but we tend to believe what reinforces our view of them, and by extension the church.
Sorry for all the typos in the above post, its been a long day!
My sister was reactivated and gained an unshakable testimony by simply sitting down and reading Gospel Doctrine all the way through. Love Elder Mc Conkie. Went to grand opening of Valley Music Hall. Surrounded by preening self important movie stars and celebrities AND President David O. McKay, who was making it a point to look everyone in the eye amid smile at that person. Will never forget it. I
I feel that we sometimes choose a single story narrative, the one we are most comfortable with, or that maybe the bits and pieces that fit our current paradigm are made to fit into a puzzle that none of us has the final picture for and discard other pieces, forming a distorted view.
My mission president, BKP, once told us in zone conference that Joseph Fielding Smith was “as funny as a three dollar bill” and once he got to know you would be your friend for life.
I really enjoyed talking with Oaks as a law professor.
Not much to add. Just another in a long history of outstanding posts, Hawkgrrrl. Keep it going.
Great post and yes one must be very careful before exercising any amount of judgment about another without attempting to fully understand who they are and what their story may be.
So I hate to be overly controversial, but the scripture “By their fruits ye shall know them” keeps coming to mind lately when I think of the brethren and I can’t stop thinking about the City Creek mall. Just thinking out loud, but I feel that if I were to ask any active member of the church a simple yes or no question: Do you know that Joseph Smith was a prophet or do you know that the Book of Mormon is true – inevitably most members would not hesitate to answer “yes” immediately to either of those questions. However, if I were to ask the question, “Do you know that if Jesus was on the earth today and was running his church he would spend $2 billion to build a high end mall housing some of the highest-end retail outlets and place it next to his Holy temple?” – I have a feeling many members might hesitate and may not be so reticent to answer in the affirmative.
I simply state that because I believe we can all receive personal revelation as to not only the works and teachings of Joseph Smith but also of the general authorities today. The City Creek mall is one of the works of the brethren. I realize it was not funded by member tithes; however, I believe that every dollar that is a part of Christ’s church is still a sacred one. So for those who hesitate to answer either yes or no to the above question I simply state that I believe prayer can help to solidify one’s testimony as to that particular subject. One could argue without end using logic and reason as to whether Christ would build a mall, but ultimately it comes down to the individual just as any other belief relating to religion and spirituality always will. Thoughts?