Today’s blog post is an excerpt from the churchistrue Faith Crisis and Reconstruction podcast episode 10 on the subject of “Trickle Up Revelation”.
Next topic: trickle up revelation. One of my favorite topics. I learned this from Greg Prince. He talked about how sometimes policies are enacted in the church and prophet receives revelation on something where it’s prompted by just regular members doing something. And then it trickles up to the prophet who gets visibility on the issue and seeks revelation from the Lord. And then a revelation is made.
He gives an example of single adult wards, where someone, I think in California just said, we have a need for a single adult wards. Let’s do it. And then they did it. And then the church saw how that worked and then received a revelation to implement that policy church wide. And now we have young adult words.
As part of the law of Moses, Israel was told not to have a king and that God would always be their king. Fast forward a few hundred years and the time just before Saul, and they were getting beat down by neighboring enemies. They had just lost a battle and their enemies came in and stole the ark of the covenant.
And they’re deciding that they need a better organizational structure. And they said they wanted a king. Samuel is the prophet, and he advises them not to do this, but they say it’s important. They asked Samuel to receive a revelation about this. And they asked Samuel to go to God, to ask if it’s OK. Samuel is reluctant, but he goes to God and says to God, the people want a king, what should we do?
1 Samuel 8:22 “And the Lord said to Samuel, hearken unto their voice and make them a king.”
And you might think this is like a passive aggressive thing where God is saying, okay, they want a king, they’re going to disobey me. I said that I’d be their King, but if they really want a king, okay, I’ll give them a king, but it’s going to backfire. It’s going to be bad news for Israel. But no, it was the right thing.
Saul wasn’t a great king, but then came David and then came Solomon. And this is Israel’s glory years. They unite Israel and they had power and this was great for them. They built the temple. This was the peak of the Israelite nation. This was their glory years. So, the people were right. I believe this is a true concept that the Body of Christ and that’s anachronistic to think of the Israelites as the Body of Christ.
But let’s say the LDS Body of Christ. What we collectively wish for. I think God will honor. I think the prophet will honor the Body of Christ. And that is a different way of thinking about things. And I’m not saying that the people dominate the prophet and override the prophet. I think the prophet and God honor the voice of the people and that puts a large responsibility on us as the Body of Christ to be informed about issues and to be seeking the Holy Ghost on what’s right. And to have opinions on doctrines and teachings and ideas that are formed by following the the Spirit and the will of the Lord.
And then I think if I disagree with a policy or if I have a disagreement on something, I actually feel like I’m more empowered. I don’t feel powerless in that there’s this prophet, that’s like a dictator and I have no contribution into the process.
We used to have common consent in Joseph Smith’s day. In the early days, they voted on things like they would vote on whether or not a revelation should go into scripture into the Doctrine and Covenants.
They voted on it. And it’s called the doctrine of common consent. There was even one anecdote where Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon disagreed on something and kind of got in an argument. And Sidney Rigdon was in the first presidency at the time. And Joseph Smith wanted to get rid of him and remove him from his office in the first presidency.
And they had a little debate and Joseph Smith spoke to the people and Sidney Rigdon spoke and defended himself, and then others came up and spoke and testified on, on their view of the issue. And then the people voted, and guess how they voted. They voted to keep Sidney Rigdon in his office. And Joseph Smith went along with it as the prophet.
He didn’t say no, I’m the prophet, I’m the boss. I get my way. He honored that as the doctrine of common consent. I’m not making too strong of a point here. I’m not saying that we’re wrong in that we don’t do that anymore. I think that logistically it would be impossible for us as a 15 million member church to still do the common consent.
And we have an organizational structure that’s a little bit different, but I think the prophet does honor that voice of the people and the LDS Body of Christ. And so we’re empowered. If we disagree with something we don’t need to campaign against the prophet, we need to discuss amongst our family and amongst our friends and amongst our sphere of influence and good ideas will win the day, I believe.
And if there are ideas that need to change, the Holy Ghost will work on the Body of Christ and those ideas will come forward and then they will become visible by the prophet and our church leaders. And the prophet will seek revelation on that. And I think that’s a reasonable view of how change is made in our church.
So, my contribution in this effort is to have an informed opinion, following the Holy Ghost and respectfully state my opinion. And then it stops there. If that opinion is something that is shared by a large portion of the Body of Christ, then there’s a good chance that the prophet will then take it upon himself.
And then that becomes his responsibility. Not mine. It becomes the prophet’s responsibility to seek revelation and to decide for the church, which is his steward to receive revelation from God, what direction to go.
That’s not always how revelation is received by the prophet. But I think that is a process that occurs in our church sometimes.
Wheat & Tares 
While I agree with the importance of the idea presented here, I disagree with the example and conclusions. This is not the time to be using the OT as an example. Much of it is fiction (or inspired fiction if you like) so there must be better examples. Clayton Christensen, of “disruptive technology” fame, has listed several contemporary examples of trickle-up inspiration/revelation.
The conclusion of the OP is problematic: “my contribution in this effort is to have an informed opinion, following the Holy Ghost and respectfully state my opinion. And then it stops there. If that opinion is something that is shared by a large portion of the Body of Christ, then there’s a good chance that the prophet will then take it upon himself.”
“And then that becomes his responsibility. Not mine. It becomes the prophet’s responsibility to seek revelation and to decide for the church, which is his steward to receive revelation from God, what direction to go.”
This is a very disheartening conclusion. First, we are dealing with a period of rapid change and churchistrue is advocating for a process which is painfully slow. Decision-making is far too slow. The organizational leadership and bureaucracy are way too cumbersome. It took too long to repeal PoX. BYU-P has been working on Honor Code revisions for years and still hasn’t got it right.
But most importantly, claiming that the membership just needs to bring up an issue and then wait for the Prophet to get a revelation, lets the membership off way too easily. Actions speak much stronger than words. For example, if the Church leaders want to horde money instead of investing in the poor, then members can take action. They can spend some of their tithing money on humanitarian efforts.
The time for sitting around and waiting for leaders to take action is over.
Here’s the dilemma for those of you encouraged by the concept of trickle up revelation: There is no doubt that many ff the changes we have seen within the Church, including actual doctrine, has been modified to reflect the needs of members. Think temple changes for example. And of course the POX. On the other hand, the Brethren do not like to be backed in a corner and if they are pressured overtly, there’s always the risk that they dig in. Think WoW modifications for example. So each of us has to decide whether a particular concern is best addressed loudly or quietly because you never know what the reaction will be.
Now here’s the really bad news: what was heresy yesterday is now considered mainstream today. Think the Gospel Topic Essays and Bushman’s works. And the reason this is “bad” is that it highlights how it’s all changeable. It’s all malleable. Nothing is unchanging. I’m not just referencing policies and procedures. I mean doctrine too. But should doctrine be subject to trickle up?
Should doctrine be subject to trickle up? Sure. Why not? On the one hand, the church is perfectly situated to make changes based on “continuing revelation.” On the other hand, every human-constructed institution changes. Are the church and religion in general human constructs or does God just regularly make changes that align with what the humans prefer? That is a question.
It seems even J. Reuben Clark, Jr. of the First Presidency promoted a form of trickle-up revelation for doctrine for those ” occasions when even the President of the Church in his preaching and teaching has not been ‘moved upon by the Holy Ghost.’…The Church will know by the testimony of the Holy Ghost in the body of the members, whether the brethren in voicing their views are “moved upon bythe Holy Ghost”; and in due time that knowledge will be made manifest”
I really like this reading of the Old Testament king calling story, and the partial trickle up paradigm in general. It makes sense in scripture (like zelophehads daughters) and real life ( like blacks and the priesthood). The timescale it occurs on is both a positive and a negative. It often takes longer than some of us want, but results in less rapid and confusing flip flopping mostly responding to longer term major trends. POX was a fast flip flop but I think that’s more the reason exception than the rule.
Should doctrine be part of trickle-up revelation? I think yes. The Church is often very vague about just what IS doctrine.
Jesus is the Christ? Yeah, that’s doctrine. Joseph Smith as the Prophet of the Restoration? Yeah.
But today’s doctrine, today’s true teaching, tomorrow often becomes only a policy that leaders decided needed to be changed. Examples: what does the W of W entail. The ban on Blacks holding the Priesthood. The content of the Endowment ceremony.
I do not know what is involved in revelation, but JS was exhausted by it when he was a teenager. I can not see a personn in his 90s surviving the experience.
I also think people the age of our senior apostles, have definite ideas, and are not going to ask for revelation, on something they know. Risking their life, and risking being wrong too. Can you imagine Oaks asking about gay marriage?
I am not aware of any way to communicate with the top?
I do not want some of the ideas held by those on right wing blogs getting up, and there are probably more of them than progressives.
I love the idea of listening to and honoring the collective revelation of the Body of Christ. I would expand it beyond the “LDS Body of Christ”. 1) LDS is less than 1% of worldwide Christendom – that’s a whole lot of recipients of the Spirit of Christ to ignore. Can we afford to exclude their inspiration and voices? 2) It may take a generation for Mormons to unshackle our minds from the notion that everything with powerful meaning and value must come from the top. We need the faith and conviction of the other 99.2% of Christians.
And it would be really nice if it didn’t take decades for stuff to trickle up. Water seeps through a limestone mountain faster than the revelation to the people seeps into the thinking of the top 15.
I don’t think everything the first presidency comes up with is a result of “revelation”. When Moses’s Father-in-law suggested Moses not decide on every little argument that people were having, I don’t consider that revelation. I consider his suggestion a very wise and great idea tho.
I also don’t think God is passive-aggressive. In the same way that God changed his answer after telling Joseph Smith not let Martin Harris have the 116 pages of the BoM, God let the Nephites have a king. Just because the Israelites came out ahead with their kings doesn’t mean they would not have been even better off not having a king. God respects the principle of free agency. If my 6 y/o kid keeps bugging me to be able to put his finger in the pot of boiling water, especially after I have explained to him all of the consequences of doing that and he continues to pester me about it, should I send him to his room or should I let him learn for himself while I get a bag of ice water for him? My son will go from having “knowledge“ to having “wisdom” in an instant. Just like Joseph Smith did. And I am guessing that after his suffering for that, he never did double-question God again and became one of God’s most dedicated servants having seen God’s ability of for-knowledge, just like my kid would see of me. Except I’m pretty sure that he will doubt my for-knowledge again in the future when he’s learned that I’m not the perfect person he thought I was. And, he will again, regret not listening to me down the road, but that’s all OK. Line upon line.
Like the idea of listening to the Body of Christ. Two issues I see currently:
-the (mainstream LDS) body of Christ is, overall, extremely reluctant to say publicly (by which I only mean among friends and family, not to mention other truly public forums) anything that conflicts with the Q15 because they interpret temple covenants as not permitting them to disagree. I’ve been in so many conversations lately where I watch friends censor and police their thoughts and words lest they say something unfavorable about the church (specifically right now as relates to racism, women and authority, and LGBT issues). We don’t feel free to think and feel differently than leadership, let alone speak about it when we don’t. So people don’t speak and often feel they are the only person who wonders. And of course, there’s no formal way to communicate thoughts any further than your bishop or SP and sometimes I wonder if the Q15 is really quite the echo chamber.
-I don’t think your post suggests this but I am a little tired of people saying that overt disagreement (like Ordain Women) puts us behind because the Q15 doesn’t want to appear to cow tow to pressure. I hear that a lot in discussions of trickle-up. That may in fact be true as a practical matter (but I’m not actually too sure about that). But it also sounds a lot like moderately progressive but privileged church members telling the disenfranchised to behave. At some point and for some people I think it becomes contrary to our moral conscience and integrity to stay quiet and well-behaved in the face of wrong. And actually while this might be true for tiny but vocal movements, at some point a critical mass of enough voices would probably speed up action. But too many fear retribution and excommunication.
So yes, trickle up is great, but I think there are tons of systemic barriers in place to stamp it out.