Guest Post from A3Writer
The four volumes of the Standard Works—Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and D&C/Pearl of Great Price are misleading. I’m not talking about books missing from the Old or New Testament, or the King James as a translation (though that could be another post). Nor is this about the veracity of the books of Abraham or Moses, or the appearance of Old and New Testament scriptures in the Book of Mormon. No, this is about the insidious expurgation practiced on all of the scriptures in teaching manuals.
Crack open your choice of a Come, Follow Me manual, and it will detail scriptures to read for a given week’s lesson. But have you noticed how selective it is in choosing the scriptures. Whole chapters get skipped, and, in some cases, it drills down to skipping only selected verses, as if those verses did something wrong or just did not live worthily enough to be included in the lesson. Righteous enough to be in scripture, not righteous enough to be included in lessons. And while other chapters and verses may be included in the reading for the lesson, they don’t get referenced by the lesson itself.
After all, the Church has already determined what lessons people should take away from scripture, defining a very strait and narrow path without deviation, for in deviating from the path—that is, coming up with other interpretations to scripture passages—we stray into darkness.
While this occurs throughout all scripture, detailing all instances would take a lengthy series of posts. So, we can just talk about a few of the instances in Genesis. From the outset, the manual sends us to the Book of Moses rather than to Genesis. The beginning chapters of Genesis are shuffled off to the back corner as if they had acted inappropriately. Moses gives us a cleaner, more detailed, and more streamlined narrative, but that overlooks some fascinating elements of Genesis where there are two different creations of human beings. First, there is the simultaneous creation of man and woman (Gen 1:26-27); in the following chapter there is the creation of woman from the rib of man (Gen 2:15, 20-25). We generally ignore that first creation. We don’t offer reasons for this other than we like the second story better. Jews wrestled with the dual narratives, and the rabbis came to the conclusion that both were correct, and that Adam had a wife prior to Eve, named Lilith.
Competing narratives also show up in Noah, where he is commanded to take two of every animal, but a slightly different narrative dictates that he takes two of every unclean animal (Gen 6:20), and seven of every clean animal (Gen 7:2-3). Why are there two versions?
And when it comes to Genesis 6, the manual only mentions it in connection to the flood. What about verses 1-4 that talk about the sons of God taking daughters of men as wives and having children by them? Are we just to ignore these verses entirely?
I’m already getting long in this, so how about some quick bullet points:
· Cain takes a wife, but if the entire world is Adam, Eve, Cain, and the now dead Abel, who can he marry? A sister? Or perhaps there are other people, especially considering Cain believes other people will kill him if God turns him away (we could have an entire discussion about the mark of Cain and its true meaning as a mark of protection).
· Abraham claims Sarah is his sister multiple times, guilting Pharaoh and others into giving them gifts lest they offend God, and Isaac gets in on the same scam with Rebekah.
· Before the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham plays host to guests, demonstrating the importance of hospitality, but hospitality never enters into the discussion of Sodom.
· The lesson on Sodom is confined to Gen 19:15-26, starting with the angels telling Lot to go, ending with his wife turning back. But what about the story of Lot’s daughters and what they do to him after getting him drunk (Gen 19:31-38)?
· And how about the story of Onan (which turned out to be a highlight of Janey’s post The Bible Ban in Utah Schools) in Gen 38?
The lessons, in only citing certain chapters and verses to read, effectively censor the scriptures. More than that, the lessons only focus on particular themes within these cited passages, targeting very specific ideas, and avoiding the messiness inherent in scriptural narratives. Many of the passages in examples above are certainly messy when they aren’t downright offensive and inappropriate. Yet they were retained in the scriptures, presumedly for a reason.
Questions for discussion:
· How do selective passages in lesson manuals change our understanding of the scriptures?
· What reasons did scripture authors (or God if those authors acted out of direct, divine inspiration/revelation) have for including these passages?
· Why would Church leaders choose to keep us from exploring these chapters, verses, and stories?
· Manuals omit whole stories from scriptures. Is it better to omit stories completely or selectively read from other stories, possibly misrepresenting them?
· What are the merits of teaching a whole book of scripture in a year as opposed to doing a deep dive? (Personally, I think I could spend an entire year just teaching Genesis).
· And the one not like the others: How many are familiar with the last story in Judges (chapters 19-21), that makes Sodom and Gomorrah look like a Disney ride?
Wheat & Tares 
2 Kings 22:14–20 and 2 Chronicles 34:22–28 both talk about the prophetess Huldah. This isn’t a minor prophetess under patriarchal hierarchy. King Josiah specifically sends his high representatives to get her counsel about what he should do to return the Israelites to following God. She responded and told him with authority “This saith the Lord…”
In the Come Follow Me this year they managed to tell a patriarchal story of King Josiah repenting without ever mentioning Huldah’s name and her authoritative role in the Israelites repentance. This is a messy scripture for both patriarchs and feminists alike. It’s believed her directions to Josiah were to eliminate worship in the groves (worship of Asherah, or Heavenly Mother) and keep all worship in the temple worshipping a male Jehovah.
It blows my mind that I have been a member all 56 years of my life and never once heard the word Huldah. It’s a messy story, but it opens up many possibilities that the church apparently wants to avoid discussing.
Thus not this
“But what about the story of Lot’s daughters and what they do to him after getting him drunk (Gen 19:31-38)?”
Yeah, how come they left that part out? That’s my fave part of the Bible.
I’m thinking maybe listing selected chapters would be easier for class members to read, so maybe one or two students in adult Sunday School would read them, as opposed to zero if you list 10 or 15 chapters. Many teachers just teach right out of the scriptures and mostly ignore the manual anyway. (But place the manual conspicuously on the table so they think you’re using it. Gesture toward the manual a time or two as well.)
Here’s a sincere question. Is the same degree of scriptural selectivity practiced in other denominations? My guess would be yes, but I don’t have any experience to verify that.
Dave B. I had a friend who was asked to write curriculum material for another denomination. In doing that she read the entire Old Testament.
She thought she was reading the entire Bible regularly. In her sixties in doing this project she discovered that she was not.
Dave B, speaking to a couple of Catholic friends, there is selectivity in their curricula. In fact, their curricula varies wildly from congregation to congregation, not just denominationally. The LDS Church is much more regimented. The various manuals are standardized across the world. I remember one leader making it a point of pride that you could walk into an LDS Church anywhere in the world and get the same lesson. But is that really a virtue?
As for the readings. Yes, I’m sure the abridged volume of reading makes it much easier to stay current with the lesson, but are we actually getting the scriptures when so much is left out? As Stephen R. Marsh’s friend discovered, it’s an entirely different book. How much more so when spread across so many books?
I hope that answered your sincere question. I’ve got another of my own: Why doesn’t the church slow down the pace? Most Old Testament stories are very short, consisting of just a chapter or two, for the most part. An entire lesson could be devoted to a single one of Christ’s parables. The suggestions for teaching could ask teachers to pick one such story instead of attempting to be completionist and teach everything.
No backlash yet as I recently told my Gospel Doctrine class about the “lost ending” of the book of Mark. No one seemed to have any clue about this, it was Fast Sunday so they were probably daydreaming about cherry pies, candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies.
Dave B., I know other denominations use scriptures as proof texts, but I suspect we do it more than most. A lot of Christians claim to use scripture as the reason behind their teachings, so it makes sense that they might take it more seriously. But the basis for our doctrine is *modern revelation*. The current prophet is more important than past prophets. So we focus on what they say, using the scriptures that back it up and mostly ignoring the rest. Of course many other Christians do this too, but without calling their leaders prophets.
You are spot on and your words will fall on deaf ears because, since the early days of correlation the Church knows exactly where they want to go in all areas of exegesis, both with the writings of ancient and modern prophets. There are only a certain number of topics that are allowed to be discussed and individual scriptures/quotes are chosen based upon fitting in that criteria. A great example is The Teachings of The Prophet… series where the Church would prepare a manual of quotes from modern day prophets that would be used the entire year for RS/PR instruction. Now, in the regular world, the idea of buying a book entitled The Teachings of, ( i.e. The Teachings of Arthur Schopenhauer), would be to find out the different and unique ideas and perspective of that person. But the LDS manuals specifically and intentionally did just the opposite. Year after year the exact same topics, although worded somewhat differently, would show up among the 48 weekly lessons. Then, all the manual “writers” had to do was cherry-pick quotes from that year’s prophet and insert it under the correct topic. That way it appears that Brigham Young and Ezra Taft Benson and Russell M. Nelson all believe the exact same things in the exact same way, and the Church has never really changed at all in 200 years.
The manual writers, who are apparently not chosen for their scriptural expertise, do the same thing in cherry-picking scriptures to fit the Church’s current list of acceptable interpretations, so this way Ezekiel and Paul line up perfectly with today’s beliefs. This is done so well that it is quite a shock for a young missionary who goes to the Bible Belt and finds out that there are Christians who truly believe that a particular scripture means something completely different to a Southern Baptist than it does to him.
Bottom line, indoctrination and not education is the goal of Sunday SCHOOL. And the list of acceptable topics is shrinking. It is my personal belief that I can find 52 subjects to speak on from the Sermon On The Mount alone, probably none of whom you will hear in Sacrament Meeting. Yet, in my ward, we now get a monthly Temple talk.
Okay, that’s enough, I’m through ranting.
p.s. Chet, that’s an impressive list of foods that you use to break fast!
The last time I remember a teacher using the scriptures to teach about helping the poor and needy, I think I was a Targeteer. So, maybe in the mid 1970s?
The lesson was on the OT guideline for landowners to leave the corners of their fields unharvested so that people with little means could glean food there.
(The LDS Church even named a group of men (I think) called Golden Gleaners.)
Some years later when I read the Old Testament start to finish, I was surprised at how often social justice is taught, exhorted, etc.
-Ezekiel describes the “sin of Sodom” as wealthy people being fat happy cats and not caring about poor hungry people.
-Jeremiah describes Fox Cable as a house full of noisy birds justifying the rich getting richer and not caring about the needy, the fatherless, widows, etc.
(I may be throwing in more categories of need than he did, but the gist is there, and those words are all used somewhere. Also, Fox Cable is not be mentioned by name, but a house full of noisy birds *is* a good description of it.)
Isaiah gets in on the action, with his graphic: grinding the faces of the poor.
I don’t recall the specific scriptures, but some warned against blaming the poor for their circumstances.
Jesus, of course, continued on with teaching social justice.
On a different note entirely, I do not recall ever being taught to get the elders of the church to help me stone my rebellious and gluttonous son, either. Too bad, Mr. Deuteronomy. That teaching did not have sticking power.
Michael Austin’s BCC piece on a Bible scholar’s recognition that “judgement” may have been better translated as “justice”.
Our parable of God being Justice and Jesus being Mercy never sat right with me. It’s as if an attribute of God is harsh, unfair, unjust. So we need Jesus to fill in God’s gap. What kind of a God do we worship?
I think we can take the view that the church has an obligation to teach the *gospel*. Yes, it utilizes the scriptures and the words of modern prophets to support and bolster its teachings–but it is not obligated to provide an exhaustive curriculum on the scriptures. That’s something we need to do on our own.
That said, I agree that it’s important that the scriptures not be forced to say something that they’re not really saying. And my guess is that the vast majority of the time the scriptural references provided in the church’s lessons are close enough to the mark to be supportive of the content without being misrepresented.
The church is interested first and foremost in helping its members to become saints–not scriptorians or theologians–as useful as those avocations may be to the Kingdom.
It would be interesting to gain more insight into the process of how manuals are produced. Here is my only contribution: A relative of mine was asked to write an Ensign article about a topic. He did so (and is a professional writer and teacher) and was surprised to find that the GA in charge of editing it completely altered it, made it less interesting, and dumbed it down. I imagine a GA sitting at the head of the curriculum committee who receives manual drafts from people who have interesting ideas and suggestions, and then he chops it down to the level of 3rd grade and there’s our product. I admit this is pure speculation, but there seems to be a pattern.
I am a lifelong Church member, I’ve read all of the standard works multiple times, I graduated from seminary, served a mission, and graduated from BYU (with all of its religion credits). The Church’s current Come Follow Me curriculum simply doesn’t serve me well at all. My ward currently has SS teachers that do a decent enough job, but they are really just sticking very closely to the Come Follow Me lessons. We have proof-texted scripture interpretations, and we ignore large chunks of scripture as this post correctly notes. I know all the lesson material, it is presented in a pretty dry manner, and I am generally not normally inspired much by the lessons. I would love to have a SS that dived deeper into scripture and asked difficult questions. I’m not sure your average ward, even in the Mormon Corridor, has enough members that are able to teach this way, so I’ve wondered about having the Church asking truly qualified people to teach these deeper lessons and have them piped into SS rooms over the internet.
On the flip side, my daughter is currently serving a mission in a part of the world where 95+% of each congregation is converts. Some pretty crazy stuff–stuff that would never likely be said in the Mormon Corridor–is said each week in sacrament meeting and 2nd hour lessons. These people love the Church and the gospel, but they are still learning some pretty basic gospel concepts (she’s not in a Christian country, so I’m talking about really basic stuff that all Christian denominations generally agree on). I can understand why the Church would want to keep things really simple for congregations full of new converts like this. While I don’t agree with the proof-texting in Come Follow Me, new converts actually learn quite a bit from this curriculum that I find so boring.
So, why can’t the Church offer a deeper SS option for lifelong members and a more basic Come Follow Me option for new converts and people who like that style? It seems like the answer is correlation. Correlation insists that everything is done the same for everyone in every congregation throughout the world. Come Follow Me needs to be improved, but it is probably not too far off from what congregations full of converts need. It doesn’t matter that many lifelong members find the Come Follow Me lessons boring and lifeless. Correlation demands that everyone has the same lessons. Besides, if a SS class were actually to be offered that truly delved deep into scripture and challenged people with difficult questions, the correlation review committee would neuter it to the point that it was essentially just like Come Follow Me before it ever saw the light of day.
I do think the Church has a duty to try to enrich and deepen the spirituality of its members by providing SS lessons that do that for all of its members, not just new converts. This “lowest common denominator” approach forced upon the Church by correlation is unfair to members who have had the Come Follow Me lessons over and over and over again throughout of lifetimes.
Scriptural Crocodile Dundee arrives on scene, pulls out four translations of the Bible, and says, “That’s not a deep dive. this is a deep dive.”
I don’t think there is anything wrong with spending a year on a book of scripture. No matter what you do you have to decide what to leave out. If you spend a year on Genesis you may never talk about Ruth.
The biggest problem is that we repeat that same year every four years. It’s a matter of convenience and practicality really, because I think the church cannot afford true scholarship in Sunday school. They can’t afford the time for volunteer teachers to learn it. They can’t handle the questions people may have when they discover all the proof texting that goes on. In creating a curriculum that can be repeated in any ward or branch, they kind of limit the depth they can reach to the least common denominator.
I have completely given up on Sunday School being anything more than it is today. The old Restoration ideas that humanity was step by step returning home to God line upon line, learning and growing in the process? Completely abandoned by CES. We have our pablum and we need not step beyond that. Infants we are and infants we shall remain.
It seems there is a big difference between “pondering and praying” about if the scriptures are true and “pondering and praying” about how the scripture apply to you.
Of course limiting the scriptures in the Come Follow Me manuals limits discussion. It also makes it easier to have some members beat other members about their interpretations of the gospel according to the republican platform. I mean only some of the Bill of Rights apply to some of the people, not all of the Bill of Rights to all the people.
Studying the gospel in depth raises a lot of questions that most leaders either can’t or don’t want to answer. It’s easier to set a baseline and not expand it and warn people who explore more and condemn those that question to much.
The Sunday school lessons use scriptures in a way that support the church’s doctrines as well as justifying their version of morality. Cherry picking scriptures also gives church leadership their power since they are the authorities that determine what those scriptures mean.
It’s what all religions do.
The Come Follow Me curriculum could easily shave 6 months off the D&C and add it to the Old Testament. Those lessons were so repetitive!
No offense intended, but boy, I think the original post has REALLY missed the point of Sunday School and personal scripture study and revelation from it. I’ve never looked at Sunday School as the end all for scripture study. It’s impossible to fit in multiple Chapters in an hour or less. If we went back to the old block schedule, we still could not fit it all in. I was an inactive member for over 20 years and a few years ago I had a powerful experience and revelation that told me to get my butt in gear, so I came back a few years ago. My second and current calling is a SS teacher and in the year I’ve been doing it, I have NEVER stuck to the manual verbatim and have pulled items from other text, talks, books and member and non-member materials. And I have never received a complaint, counseling on it, or anything. My bishop loves the lessons. We had an area 70 sit in on one not too long ago and he loved it.
Just last week we read about (amongst other people), Stephen and Saul. Most of the material focused on service, God’s will, and to a lesser extent, Saul. Stephen was a glance in the material. I spent all but maybe 5 minutes on Stephen instead and even brought in ways in which the church could improve/grow based on his example and how we as members can help and how we often fall short. Both in the temple and out of it. I had quotes from member talks, and two non-LDS sources that people read. And I had a few people come up and tell me after how much they liked it.
Each week when I prepare, I read the Chapters first completely and only then open the manual and see what the topics could be and sometimes I use the material pretty close but I ALWAYS bring in outside material. And some weeks I only hit on a small portion.
This is not to toot my own horn, it’s to serve as an example that SS lessons are just that-lessons. One perspective of many. TO ANSWER ONE QUESTION- I have been told (from someone very high up in the church administration) the lesson plans come from topics that are fundamental in their ultimate message and can also be impacted by changes in society. And truth be told, when the next New Testament CFM comes out the next time around, it’s not the same material repeated. My Mom has kept old manuals and I have seen some sizeable differences in the material, i.e. new(er) topics and bullet points. Scripture study could take you a lifetime to do and even then, you won’t know all of it. Scripture study is not for SS lessons either. It’s for you and your family. I spend about 3 hours a week on top of lesson prep/reading in personal scripture study and I started at the beginning of the NT and I am only now nearing the end of Mark because I dive deep into other source material and listen to podcasts and do online research and such to really dig out the material. I figure by the time the end of the year has happened I MIGHT be halfway through. And I’ll continue to finish the Bible before I move on to any other books. I suspect it could take up to two years to get through it. It took me well over a year to get through D&C/POGP.
Someone else mentioned two different lesson tracks for deep dive v, overview and I think that would be great but I don’t know how feasible that would be. I think that’s more geared toward individual or small group study. Hell, my best friend is a devout Catholic and we often go very deep into Bible topics as we sit around and discuss and debate. I think it’s a good idea if you can find someone/others to jump into it with you.
The church should maintain its current curriculum rotation, but only change the studied book when the church President changes. Start at the beginning on Genesis and work through the OT until the prophet passes. If God wants his church to skip Song of Solomon, he can bring his prophet through Death’s shadowy valley right around when the church is studying Psalm 23. (I’m sure many Mormons will take this as a sign of the Church’s truthfulness.) If the current prophet doesn’t want the church learning about polygamy, he can pull a pope Benedict and retire in the mid 120’s
“Why would Church leaders choose to keep us from exploring these chapters, verses, and stories?”
I would offer a couple of reasons. First of all, the scriptures are a conglomeration of stories and ideas, many of which conflict or even contradict other passages, which are impossible to correlate into a uni-vocal message. Skipping over parts of the text which conflict with your particular viewpoint is one way to address this.
Second, many if not most members are comfortable with the narrative they’re given by the lesson manual that skips these challenging passages. Church isn’t a place where people go to learn new ideas or have their current assumptions challenged, but rather an echo chamber where they gain consistent assurances their belief narrative is the correct one. It’s comforting to hear over and over that you are the “chosen”, or “righteous generation”, or “children of Israel”. No one really wants to discuss why Paul said women are to remain silent in church and are not to usurp the authority of a man. This passage was skipped in favor of the scripture when Paul said all scripture is given for the benefit of man. No one wants to really wrestle with the idea of an angry, genocidal god of the Old Testament, and there’s absolutely no discussion regarding the Documentary Hypothesis or other textual criticisms.
And lastly, most members are probably not reading even the watered down lesson manual and narrative anyway. I was an elders quorum teacher and Sunday school teacher for years and most simply didn’t do any reading, but rather seemed to expect to be provided the same comfortable story week in and week out. For 40 years I heard the same lessons from the time I was in primary, which is why many say one never graduates from primary in the LDS church. Also, there used to be two classes for adult Sunday school, gospel doctrine and gospel essentials. The gospel essentials class was said to be eliminated, but I think it rather became the new dumbed-down gospel doctrine course where teachers are provided a subset of the scripture passages and even given questions to ask.
The members prefer religious pablum, and the correlation committee and leaders are all too happy to give it to them.
To be fair, I think the church has realized that most people are showing up to class having read not one word of the assigned reading (myself included in most of cases), and as others have pointed out, really don’t want to be challenged intellectually when they come to church. That being said, I have never had SS teacher completely shut my “nuanced” comments when I do come prepared. Families an individuals can study the chapters covered how they want and bring whatever perspectives they want to during the week and then bring that into the discussion. As I said, I don’t recall ever being completely shut down by an SS teacher for my “, progressive” perspective but others might have different experiences.
Addendum to the above discussion: the church has recently announced that “Adults, Youth, Children to Study Book of Mormon in 2024 Using A Single Manual.” That’s right, the four current manuals, covering adults, YM/YW, and Primary, have been consolidated into one manual for ages 3 to 103. The Era of the Sunbeam Level for the examination of the holy scriptures by all members has begun! We better at least get treats and a possible nap time for this.