In 2013, the LDS Church sent Elder Marlin Jensen and Richard Turley to Sweden to answer tough questions about church history. This was a pivotal moment in addressing faith crisis, and led to the Church putting out the Gospel Topics essays to answer thorny questions of Church history. We’ll learn more about this with Dr. Newell Bringhurst and Dr. Matt Harris. I’m excited to have them back on the show. They’ve put together an anthology on essays critiquing the Gospel Topics essays. We’ll learn more about the key players behind the scenes.
Matt: The topic that I gave or presented on that day was how the Gospel Topics Essays came about. The earlier sessions that Newell and I had worked on dealt with our respective content themes, Newell with polygamy, and I did the race one. Well, in this instance, at the MHA, I looked at the introduction and I recognized that there were many Church employees in the room that day, including the Church Historian, Elder Snow, who had inside knowledge about all of this stuff. So, I remember prefacing my remarks to the Church History employees, and also Elder Snow. I said, “Look, if there’s anything that I say today, that is incorrect, or you would like me to flesh out more of a detail or some lead to pursue, please let me know, this is the chance. This is why we do these conferences. I am eager and energetic to solicit your help.”
So, anyway, I presented the material and the first person who came up to me afterwards was Elder Snow. He pulled me aside and he said, “There’s something,” he said, “Congrats this is a great, I really enjoyed the presentation, the panel today”, and so that was nice. And he said, “There’s something I want you to know. Have you ever heard of the name Travis Stratford?” I said, “No, I have not.” For your viewers or listeners today, Travis Stratford is the person who really deserves most of the credit, much of the credit for getting the Church to release Church History essays. The introduction talks about that at length, how he does that. He works with the brethren, the General Authorities. He does a number of things. I guess we can talk about that in a second. But nonetheless, it was Elder Snow, who planted that name in my mind.
Then I remember telling Newell later on, maybe that night at dinner, “We’ve got some work to do. We got to find this Stratford guy, who is he.” So I went on this sleuthing mission to figure out who this Travis Stratford guy was.
It is important to note that Travis served a mission and is acquainted with Hans Mattson, the general authority Seventy whose faith crisis led to the Swedish Rescue, where Church leaders went to Sweden to help with faith crises of members in Sweden. We also talk about several surveys put together by Travis, as well as John Dehlin, that helped motivate the brethren to put together the Gospel Topics Essays.
The LDS Church began publishing the LDS Gospel topics essays in 2013, but are they hidden or public? Many church members don’t know about them. Why is that? Dr. Matt Harris & Dr. Newell Bringhurst will tell us more about how church leaders talked about the essays behind the scenes.
Matt: Some of the brethren, like Newell pointed out, didn’t want to release them. Now, the question is, why didn’t they want to release them?
The great Mormon historian Richard Bushman said it best. He said, “Look. If you acknowledge things about the past in these essays that contradicts other things that the Church has said before about them, that may cause people to question their faith.” So, it became really an interesting commentary about people leaving the faith over transparency issues, but then creating some position papers that were transparent and causing additional damage. That was the predicament they were in. So, several people told Newell and I, off the record, and we’ll keep names anonymous, but several people told Newell and I off the record, that that was the predicament they were in. They didn’t want to release them. They didn’t want to talk about them. They didn’t want to broadcast them. Newell mentioned something about Apostle Ballard a minute ago. He is one of the first people or leaders that I know of who talked about “This is a problem. We’ve kept these quiet. We now need to talk about them.” He’s told Seminary and Institute teachers. He gave this fireside I think, to the CES and Seminary and youth of the Church, I think. As I recall, he said that “We need to know these essays like the backs of our hands. Gone are the days where we can just say, ‘don’t worry about it,’” or that silly little metaphor, just put your doubts on the bookshelf. Then the bookshelf starts to get heavier and heavier and heavier, and before you know it, it collapses. So it was a period of couple of three years where the Gospel Topics Essays were slowly starting to eke out after having been concealed for a long time.
There was a story that Peggy Fletcher Stack did in the Salt Lake Tribune, this is I think, December of 2015, maybe, where there was a teacher in Hawaii–I don’t know, I think, early 30s, maybe. This brother in Hawaii was teaching a youth Sunday School class, and the race issue came up and he came prepared. He brought the race and priesthood essay from the Church’s website. So, just to remind you, he’s in Sunday School class at Church on Sunday teaching the youth using a document from the Church’s website to teach the youth revolving around, relating to the race issue. The bishop released him for, quote, “teaching from unauthorized sources.” Peggy Fletcher Stack writes about this story. She says, “Memo to Mormons. These essays had been approved at the highest levels of the Church.” They were not signed. But the vetting process that these essays went through was extensive.
Do you think the Church should highlight the essays better? Were you aware of the role the Swedish Rescue played in bringing forth the Gospel Topics essays?
If you’re interested in Matt and Newell’s book, here is a link on Amazon:
Wheat & Tares 
It’s great the leadership supported the drafting, editing, and eventual approval and publishing of the Gospel Topics Essays. It ran counter to the usual leadership approach to problems or issues, sort of an experiment. It’s hard to evaluate the results. What was the leadership expecting? What sort of “results” can you measure to evaluate whether the Essays were “successful”? What does success even mean in this sort of project? I’m afraid there has been too much negative reaction and pushback from the rank and file membership, who simply weren’t prepared to deal with fairly straightforward treatments of difficult issues after two generations of Correlation and apologetics. I suspect the leadership views the Essays as a mixed bag at best, as a big mistake at worst.
The Swedish Rescue: tough to deal with a dozen tough issues (that require a lot of facts and context to properly address) in a 60-minute Q&A. It wasn’t quite a gotcha sort of meeting, as the Church itself set up the meeting and invited selected Swedish members to attend, but Jensen and Turley had a tough job and faced a tough audience (Mormons asking tough questions about tough issues). At least they tried to answer them. LDS leaders, despite Elder Ballard’s exhortation, still typically try to sweep tough questions under the rug and avoid real engagement with tough questions.
I have had a real change of heart on the question of whether or not the Church should highlight the Gospel Topic essays. Stick with me here.
My initial reaction, upon reading these in 2013, was that the Church needed to get this information into the hands of the common member. They needed to put the material in their official magazines. They needed to talk about the essays in General Conference. And they needed to reference the essays in the official curriculum. My thinking was, it’s time to be transparent and authentic and trust the members with this information.
And then something happened to me. Instead of simply being inoculated from other controversial material because it had been covered in the essays, I became more curious and inquisitive. I found the essays to be less enlightened and more deceptive. I discovered that instead of addressing common concerns in a thoughtful way, the essays were just a little too clever for their own good. And naturally, I came to the conclusion that further study on these topics was warranted. And thus began my drastic change in perspective.
Therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Church/Brethren are absolutely correct NOT to highlight the essays. They are wise to keep these from the common member. They are clever to keep these several clicks away from the home page of LDS.org (that’s what I still call it). They can NOT afford to expose to the masses these essays. Why? Because it is my belief (and I hope this doesn’t sound self-centered) that as more members read these members, more members will leave the Church. So the Brethren are handling this just right.***
***By handling it “right”, I mean they are doing what they have to do to maintain the power and control of the Church. Of course, if they wanted to be truthful and transparent and authentic, they would expose every member to this material. But the essays are not about truth and transparency and authenticity, they are about institutional viability.
Thanks so much for this, Rick. Great “inside baseball” stuff.
I’ve always thought there was a need for a critical assessment of the Gospel Topics Essays, so I am delighted to see that Bringhurst and Harris have taken on the task. Thanks for the link to their new book.
I think josh h is correct, as much as I hate the truth of it. The question is, can the church silo information effectively enough to keep members away from the toxic truth or is the horse out of the barn and everyone will know eventually? Before the last two presidential elections, I had more faith that the truth emerges reliably. Now I have virtually no faith in that. The church can control information well enough to maintain a sizeable organization. They cannot, however, control it well enough to achieve the growth rates that were once considered evidence of truthfulness. So, they’ve started to dial back expectations, which is the logical choice if your goal is to protect revenue streams. What remains will be more insular organization defined by allegiance as much as anything else. What is truth, after all, in a world where Q-anon can endure?
Yes we need highlighting. Whenever I watch an inspiring “true” movie I conclude by finding online sources which supplement or correct the narrative. I just read about “divining rods” in the book “Revelations in Context” over the weekend.
I’m also tired of us propping up our prophets as God’s dynamic mouthpiece even though they may be rapidly declining in health (Benson, Monson).
I think Dave B’s observation about negative pushback from Church members against the essays is correct. Rick B’s post referred to the story about the Sunday School teacher in Hawaii who was released because he had used the materials in the essays for his class presentation.
It was in Honolulu, and the parents of one of the girls in the youth Sunday School class that the teacher taught, complained to the Bishop about the use of the essays. The Bishop then released the teacher. The story had its 2 minutes of fame in the national news.
Church membership is IMO more reactionary than Church leadership, and often resist attempts to become more aware. When I was a Counselor in my Ward Bishopric, one of my duties was to help interview the youth for temple baptism trips. On three separate occasions, when I asked the question about the law of chastity, I got the following answer: oh no, I don’t drink or smoke. I informed the three youths that I was glad they observed the WOW, but the LOC was (I was redacting and sanitizing as much as possible): don’t you let others touch your sensitive areas, and don’t you do it, either. I did not push the issue, because the kids were clearly in the dark, and approved all three kids for the temple trip, and informed their parents that their children did not understand what the LOC entails. One set of parents thanked me, and said that they needed to teach their child. The other two sets of parents got angry with me for my extremely basic explanation to their kids. These were teenagers.
A lot of members don’t WANT knowledge, whether on the MMM, the priesthood ban, or the LOC.
Now, of course, there has been a change of attitude about the appropriateness of Bishop interviews on the LOC. I simply asked the question, and was told to refer any problematic answers to the Bishop.
1 – Just finished listening to Matt Harris on Mormon Stories (re: Benson) and loved him – excited to hear more from him.
2 – I didn’t know the gospel topics essays were prompted by the Swedish Rescue (well, I didn’t know anything about the Swedish Rescue at the time). I had heard, though, that the church was having issues where missionaries were going out, hearing this stuff from investigators, and then freaking out, so we needed to inoculate them.
3 – I think the church should highlight the essays better. There are still so many teachers out there who are teaching false history – like that JS didn’t practice polygamy – or false doctrine – like that blacks didn’t have the priesthood because they weren’t valiant in the pre-existence. That this stuff is still being taught when we have official (but unadvertised) church resources disclaiming these ideas is not good. It’s not good for people who are getting taught lies, and it’s not good for people who then discover the truth.
23- That said, agree 100% that the essays are misleading and incomplete. They (like the stuff that FARMS puts out) may satisfy the gently curious person but they don’t withstand scrutiny which then makes things even worse for the church.
I get that the church is stuck between a rock and a hard place – be transparent, and lose a ton of people at once; be misleading, and lose people over time. I don’t think historical reality, or 21st century culture, will sustain the fundamentalist narrative our church insists on. But instead of taking steps towards nuance and trying to unburden ourselves from the weight of our history and focus more on God and Jesus, it felt like in April conference we really doubled down on the importance of the history and we continue to double down on the importance of prophetic authority. It puts nuanced members in a tough spot because there’s no model or support.
Elisa:
Thank you for your excellent comment.
I like your “nuanced members” phrase. Sadly, it is not just with the Church that nuance is a lonely position. Politics today favors the extremes, and the tribal “we are good, they are evil” approach to life.
I have friends scratch their heads in incomprehension when I say that I voted for Biden, even though I disagree with the majority of his positions, that I voted for him because I think Trump’s temperament is toxic to our Republic, and that the issue of character is defining us as a nation, for good or ill. They also do not understand when I say that although I disagreed with most of RBG’s SCOTUS votes, I think that she was a great jurist and made our country a better place. The ultimate absurdity of tribal identification, IMO, was the special election to fill the vacant Senate seat in Alabama a few years ago, and the republicans nominated a pedophile as their candidate, and he nearly won. Almost 50 percent of the people would rather have had him than a Democrat.
If you want to be depressed, go back sometime and watch a video clip of the 1960 presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon. It was positively scholarly, compared to what we have now.
There is excellent scholarship on Church issues now that is neither accusatory nor apologetic, but you’re not going to encounter it in Church meetings. That is why I like W and T. I don’t always agree with what is said, but the open discussion is a breath of fresh air. I have had Church members get agitated when I quote DC 93 (glory of God is intelligence) or DC 88 (seek wisdom from the best books).
Thanks again.
My suggestion: Re-write the essays!
They are intended to deceive and as such are lies. The conclusion reached in my struggle with “can I trust the leaders I desperately want to follow” is why I felt I could no longer participate.
So – they are left with a couple of options to keep folks in the church:
1 – Leave the essays as they are and keep them on the down-low, or
2 – Rewrite them to straightforwardly deal with the facts, lay responsibility where it belongs, and say “this is the way we are going to deal with you going forward”. And shout it from the rooftops!
Some will probably leave from the shock of it all. But it will go a long way towards re-establishing trust and give us a refreshing hope for the way forward.
“intended to decieve” is not the same as “put in the best light possible.” While Matt, Newell, and I will discuss weaknesses of the essays over the next few weeks, we also give credit where credit is due. I get a little frustrated with hyperbole from cynics.
One of many problems with the sweissh resxue meeting was the way the leadership treated its own members ( like little kids).
Some highlights…….
Area President Kopischke prohibited the members from speaking with anyone about what had been discussed during the meeting.
Kopischke also gave the members an ultimatum to decide whether to stay in or leave the Church.
In addition, he later directed the members’ bishops and stake presidents to speak with each of the members in attendance and get his/her answer about staying in or leaving the Church, which Mattsson said did occur (Mattsson, when asked for his answer by his bishop, responded that he “needed time
This was not an open siscussion….it was a poorly ran sales push.
Go back and listen to what really happened ay the meeting and any good hearted person wiuld be shocked….and the people who think the church does no wrong will blame the regular swedish member.
“can I trust the leaders I desperately want to follow”
This seems to me a question that could only be asked by one committed to an all-or-nothing approach to trust. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood Been There’s comment, but I can remember formerly desiring to be able to trust GAs fully in that way. I haven’t been able to do so at least since encountering the Ezra Taft Benson/Hugh B Brown disagreements in the 60s, or since recognizing at least some GA rhetorical overstatements as such in the early 70s. That doesn’t prevent trusting them in some ways for some things. (Chris Kimball has an approach to “trust” that differs significantly from that implied by Been There’s question. If interested, see https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/9/15/chris-kimball-the-language-of-doubt ) I suspect there’s no approach to trusting Church leaders that would work for everyone.
I get a little frustrated with hyperbole from cynics, critics, and Church leaders alike. :). Even though I sometimes find myself indulge in it myself .
@Wondering, fair, but the leaders are asking us for all-or-nothing trust. Follow the prophet, trust the brethren, we speak for the Lord, consecrate your time / talents / lives to the church.
I agree you can try to renegotiate that for yourself and view things / act differently, but at that point you’re in a nuanced zone for which there is little institutional support and that will put you on the fringes of a lot of wards.
Yes, Elisa, it will put you on the fringes of a lot of wards. Some people are happy there. Others not so much. The one-size-fits-[or even should fit] -all approach just doesn’t work for me or for many of my friends.
I understand frustration with cynicism. At a younger age, I mistook cynicism for wisdom and awareness. Now I just see it as projecting negativity and faux erudition. That said, I also get frustrated with the magical thinking exhibited by so many church-can-do-no-wrong members. I just can’t stomach “several months before her fifteenth birthday” without feeling that someone is trying to deceive. There are times when dogmatically putting things in the best possible light is just absurd and is playing the recipients of the “things” for suckers.
@Wondering
I desperately wanted to trust the leaders at a particular time – a time when I was reaching a tipping point. Far from “all-or-nothing” – I had already shelved so many things and spent several years in the nuanced borderlands. I had lived 50+ years all-in, raising seven kids in the church: committed to making it work. I came up with a definition of sustaining that I could live with – until I couldn’t. I couldn’t get a temple recommend without lying about sustaining the brethren that, in my mind, weren’t shooting straight with me and had eroded my trust.
Standing on the precipice, staring down into the gulf – I was desperate to trust. In our everyday interactions, we give trust and receive trust and both parties sometimes fail to be trustworthy. We forgive and extend and receive trust again. Eventually, if the failings are consistent enough and big enough, we withdraw our trust or become untrustworthy. We don’t want a cherished relationship to end – but sometimes it must.
I didn’t need it all – just enough for it to keep working. One day, it wasn’t enough for me.
Faith, I recently talked to someone in the Swedish Rescue meeting. It is disappointing to learn how they were treated by leaders after the meeting. It was not Christlike.
As for “desperately” wanting to follow leaders, well I guess I have been disappointed both in leaders and in God not answering prayers the way I wanted. Maybe I’m not faithful enough. But it did cure me from desperation and disillusionment. Maybe it’s good that God didn’t answer my desperate prayers, because in some ways it made me more resilient, less reliant on leaders, more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, less subject to the cynicism I see from so many former members. It is hard to be in the middle. I’m both seen as not faithful by the orthodox crowd, and too faithful by the cynical crowd. But I feel I have a realism that isn’t available to either group. I’ve never thought of it as a blessing to be disappointed in leaders/God, but I’m glad I am not so cynical as the hard-core critics.
I’m sad for those disillusioned and angry. I hope you can find peace. I’m happy with where I am, even though I get attacked for being too faithful/faithless. I think this is where God wants me to be.
@Been There,
Thanks. That makes more sense to me than my first understanding of your question. And I think your analysis/description of issues and trustworthiness is correct, though definitions of “sustain” and workable understandings of trust should be expected to vary from person to person. When it just isn’t enough anymore, it isn’t enough. I tend to be frustrated with those whose experience has passed the point where it isn’t enough being disrespectful of those for whose experience has not. More commonly in my limited observational experience, I find myself frustrated with such disrespect being directed by persons in the latter group toward those in the first. President Uchtdorf seemed to me to be expressing the latter kind of frustration in general conference some years ago.
As I understand it, no temple recommend interviewer is authorized to ask the additional question what “sustain” means. And no one has ever asked me. If they did, I might tell them that’s an unauthorized question and they have no business asking it. I have encountered or inferred a wide variety of meanings of “sustain” from the extreme, all-or-nothing belief, trust and action Elisa described to one temple recommend holder’s privately noting that one can “sustain an injury” or another’s telling me it means that they pray for the prophets to someday “get it right”! Some wards seem open to discussion of possible meanings; others not so much. I’m not inclined to tell anyone what it must mean to them.
There sure is a lot of emotional and spiritual pain associated with/caused by/occasioned by the kind of authority or authoritarianism some (many?) associate with “sustain.”
@Wondering, agree that there are lots of ways one can define “sustain.” I have found that while I believe I could truthfully answer that question with a “yes” by defining sustain in a certain way, I no longer want to. And perhaps that’s the big difference – do you desire to sustain those men as prophets, seers, and revelators (even if that looks different to you than to other people) or not. And where I don’t even desire that, at that point I don’t think I could answer that question “yes” with integrity. And that matters to me.
I guess for me I have no real expectations of perfection. Maybe it is the historian in me, but I see these things as part of a larger movement. It may not play out for another 100 years so I don’t worry too much about what is being said or done now. Was JS a polygamist? Sure. Was BY a racist? Yes. Did they do things that were wrong? Of course. Did they do some amazing things? Absolutely. Over time, some teachings have proven to be part of the historical setting. Other teachings have transcended time. Those are what I hold to. I have hope that some things taught today will also go the way of history while others will be revealed to be more core to the doctrine. We are only a 200 year old church. Look where the Ancient Church was at 200 years old. It was going through the same growing pains and doctrinal refining.
Do I believe it is the one, true church? That depends. I am a universalist at heart, but do believe in the saving ordinances. I also believe that those can be received after death and are available to be accepted through all eternity (yes – progression through the kingdoms). So yes, I believe the ordinances are true, in spite of the Masonic origins and that the church has the authority to practice those ordinances. Whether the church is perfect or not, does not negate the ordinances,. Maybe I am also am Anti-Donatist when it comes to the church, its leaders and God.
I’m with Wondering. Hugh B Brown has always been my hero and his nuanced view of leadership is what should have won the day, not Pres. Benson’s.
“With respect to people feeling that whatever the brethren say is gospel, this tends to undermine the proposition of freedom of speech and thought. As members of the church we are bound to sustain and support the brethren in the positions they occupy so long as their conduct entitles them to that. But we also have only to defend those doctrines of the church contained in the four standard works——the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Anything beyond that by anyone is his or her own opinion and not scripture. ”
(An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, ed. Edwin Firmage [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988], 123-26)
@Gilgamesh, I get that, but I think “I don’t expect perfection” is a straw-man. I don’t expect perfection either and I never have. That would be unreasonable and I can see thinking it’s silly to cast something off just because it’s not perfect.
But what I have a hard time accepting now is that we know full well that there are some messy bits of church history, and times when church leaders have been wrong, yet whatever leadership is currently in place seems to believe that they aren’t capable of being wrong like their predecessors might have been. So current leadership perpetuates harm (against gay people and women, for example) in the name of God without any apparent self-reflection or willingness to question whether those harmful teachings and practices actually come from God or maybe come from their own experience and biases. And current leadership perpetuates a myth that they are pretty much always speaking for God, and to perpetuate that myth, they obscure history and treat members like children who can’t handle the truth. And when some of their ranks go off the reservation, they might privately discuss that but they don’t ever publicly apologize or clarify because they want to continue to project confidence and perfection (the Matt Harris discussion of Ezra Taft Benson is a great example of this). So they let the harm (like Benson’s 14 fundamentals talk, or excluding blacks from the priesthood for extra time so that they didn’t appear to be caving to public pressure because that would undermine their authority, etc.) stand.
So I totally get that some members are able to reconcile that and I think that’s fine. But I also totally get that some people are unwilling to continue to participate in an institution that inflicts harm in the name of God. At some point, the “imperfections” pile up in a way that does more harm than good for some people and it’s not really about expecting perfection, it’s about expecting goodness and not finding enough to balance out the bad. (That balance is different for different people and I respect that. I just don’t think it’s fair to say that people who are upset about church history had unrealistic expectations of perfection. And even if they did, they came by it honestly because that’s what they were taught to expect.)
Here are the swedish questions that were asked and continued to be ignored
……………………………………
1)Why does the Church not show the correct method of BOM translation? Why were the plates preserved for 1,500 years and never even used? Why did the Church keep the correct method from the members?
2) Was polygamy and especially polyandry teachings from man or from God and is it right or wrong?
3) Was it right and Christ-like to force women into polygamous marriages?
4) Why doesn’t the Book of Abraham translation match up with Egyptologist translations?
5) Lying for the Lord. Are there circumstances which it is OK to lie to protect the reputation of the Church?
6) Why did the Church buy the Hofmann forgeries?
7) Blood atonement.
8) First Vision problems; why did Joseph claim he was persecuted when there is no evidence he even taught the FV to the members until at least 1838?
9) Do the leaders of the Church really believe they are inspired to act in such a way as to selectively provide Church history in such a way as to deceive the members?
10) Brought up quotes by apostles like Elder Packer that ‘it isn’t good for the members to know all the truth’.
11) No contemporary evidence that angels were involved in the priesthood restoration.
12) Blacks and the priesthood. Why was the first ‘vote on letting blacks have the priesthood’ voted down when all but 3 of the apostles apparently felt the spirit to vote one way and the others did not?
13) Temple and how disturbing the experience was for a member.
14) Brought up how they know where the Vikings came from as they found the evidence. Why is there no evidence of the Nephites and Lamanites? No DNA evidence of Hebrew blood?
15) Why was the Adam-God theory ever taught? Why wasn’t it struck down right away back then if we have real prophets getting real revelation?
………………………
The church created their own problem…and owes the whole church an apology….and more importantly not as much for the history but how we have been mistreated and manipulated.
Elisa, I’m reminded by your comments of what Steinbeck said in East of Eden: “Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” If only.
The Wheat and Tares community has meant so much to me. I am truly sorry if it ever comes off that I don’t value the association. If we were to sit together for a while, I’m sure we could leave feeling that the other is a person of goodwill. In 45 seconds, Wondering you would know my definition of sustain. RickB, you would know that I am not sad – and that God answered my desperate prayer: “You are accountable to Me. Counsel with your wife. Teach your children.” And how I worked out what that meant over the ensuing years.
In real life, I have never tried to persuade anyone I know to leave the church (nor have I sown doubts) and I have not ridiculed anyone for staying in. That would be an exercise in self-loathing.
If I have come across on these pages as being critical or disparaging of those who remain either faithful or have negotiated a way to stay in despite it all – I truly apologize.
I’ll be more mindful and never click “Post Comment” after 10 p.m.
Quick question: Has the church ever completely (or even partially) answered the questions that faith mentions? If yes, where are those answers to be found? (not in the essays, I assure you) If no, does that mean the church leaders don’t know the answers?
BeenThere
For me, your comments fall into my “must read” category. Stuff has happened with my kids that has really thrown me for a loop. The essays came out about two years after the most disconcerting of the “stuff”. I know that your comments will resonate.
I have found Wheat & Tares to be accepting of people with all kinds of outlooks, recognizing we all have different life experiences that contribute to our understanding. Also, accepting that we are each at various stages on our journeys.
I don’t mind what time you post your comments.
Elisa, I loved your comment. You hit the nail on the head with the issues. I wish the Church would come clean, but they don’t because the are fearful that if they throw previous leaders under the bus, then we will question current leaders and the don’t want that. It’s sad but true. They’ve built a cult of personality and don’t want to tear it down for fear of losing their own power.
BeenThere, I know we all say critical things and are overly harsh at times. I have done so too. I’m glad you’re here, and I don’t mind 10 pm comments. I hope to be as forgiving of others as they are to me.
BrotherSky and Faith, No Church leaders haven’t answered those questions. They seem to prefer “if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.” In a future episode we will discuss the Randy Bott/Washington Post problem and why silence isn’t always the best answer, but that seems to be the go-to for certain tough questions. Maybe if we had more Randy Bott’s on those problems, they would be addressed better. Until then it will be radio silence.
Rick B, the problem with a policy of silence is it is ambiguous. Sometimes it means “we just want this stuff to go away quietly,” like with the racial folklore. Only when Randy Bott did his thing with the Washington Post was the leadership forced to come out and explicitly renounce the racial folklore (which, of course, circulated among the leadership and lay members as doctrine for generations).
But sometimes silence means “we want to keep this stuff but not talk about it.” Like polygamy. It was so successfully not talked about under the excising hand of Correlation that a generation of Mormons grew up not hearing about it and largely dismissing the occasional rumor of Joseph Smith practicing polygamy as an anti-Mormon falsehood. Surprise! Only with the publication of the Gospel Topics Essays on polygamy (there are four of them) was it suddenly clear how much LDS leadership is still dedicated to The Principle (of plural marriage).
So silence is often useful to the leadership to avoid talking about something they don’t want to talk about, but the rest of us are left guessing what they are thinking and confused about what the current state of “official” LDS doctrine is or what the “official” LDS policy is. In a similar vein, the 30 or 40 LDS policies that are included at the end of the current Handbook were, for many years, printed in the secret CHI that only local leadership could look at, not the rest of us. So there were all these policies spelling out the LDS position on relevant topics, but the rank and file were not allowed to access them. Hell of a way to run a church.
Preaching to the choir Dave! I agree completely. That’s why I said we need more Randy Botts! (Although I feel bad he got thrown under the bus. That wasn’t cool.)
Elisa,
Thank you for your well thought out response. I totally understand why the the issues of racism, LGTBQ inclusiveness, women and the priesthood, etc… could cause faithful, loving people to leave the church. When my son announced he was done with the church, (truth claims and LGBTQ concerns) it pained me. I wish I could give him good answers and reasons and I couldn’t. I just knew I needed to love him and hope the church would learn from him, and others, leaving. I will share that, as a believer in salvation after death, I realized I was not practicing my own theology when it came to my son. If this is the true church and if God never gives up on his children and if we all can find forgiveness, even after death, then I needed to trust in God that he would be able to find and guide my son in this or the next life, with or without church. Do I hope he comes back? Of course, but it is more important he knows I love him and trust him to follow his conscience – that is what we came to earth to do.
As for the 15 questions – I would be glad if someday they answer yes or no to any of these. Even a maybe is better than silence.
I will quickly add that I also am more process oriented theologically. I believe God has limits and cannot impose his will on people. God’s relationship with the church is a give and take. The leadership have to be open and willing to work together with God and not expect revelation to come pouring down. Those moments are rare. In most cases, I believe God works through people and if the leadership (or membership) is not attuned to God’s will due to imbedded biases, then the work of God gets paused for a time. We may be in one of those times right now. Or, we may be finally leaving one of those times and we are transitioning. We will see.
I’ve enjoyed the interviews Rick. I went out and bought the Anthology on Kindle – primarily to read the Introduction. It is great and worth the price alone. Working through the topics now.
I’m really enjoying this series of interviews, Rick!
There seems to be a big difference in who the Church wants to consume the essays. President Ballard told the seminary teachers to know them “like the back of their hand”. The seminary curriculum uses them, and they are a frequently recommended and referred to in seminary teacher groups.
My conclusion from all this is that they are being used to inoculate the rising generation and downplayed for adults (who were taught very different things).
Moss:
Thanks for that good comment. Agreed, the Church is trying to keep the rising generation in the fold. I think the older generation doesn’t like dealing with these issues. I am reminded of the Pat Bagley cartoon in which two Mormon boys are talking as they skateboard. One boy says to the other, “And then my Dad said, ‘Son, sex is not secret, it’s sacred. And besides, talking about it makes your mother faint.’” The same principle applies to the essays’ topics.