There was recently a fabulous discussion on the At Last She Said It podcast about consent. It’s a topic that feels rather contemporary, and as Susan points out, I don’t think we talked much about consent until maybe 8-10 years ago. In a way, the topic of consent is like “boundaries,” another topic that the rising generation is talking more about than prior generations. It’s not that we didn’t want boundaries, that we didn’t think consent mattered (kind of), but it wasn’t in the public discourse, and it wasn’t respected to the degree it is now.
If you want a bleak look at how Mormons view consent, particularly as it relates to women, there’s no more salient example than the Reed Smoot senate hearing in which Joseph F Smith explained why it didn’t matter if women agreed to their husbands’ taking more wives:
“Senator Pettus. Have there been any past plural marriages without the consent of the first wife?
– Reed Smoot Case, v. 1, p. 201
Mr. [Joseph F.] Smith. I do not know of any, unless it may have been Joseph Smith himself.
Senator Pettus. Is the language that you have read construed to mean that she is bound to consent?
Mr. Smith. The condition is that if she does not consent the Lord will destroy her, but I do not know how He will do it.
Senator Bailey. Is it not true that in the very next verse, if she refuses her consent her husband is exempt from the law which requires her consent?
Mr. Smith. Yes; he is exempt from the law which requires her consent.
Senator Bailey. She is commanded to consent, but if she does not, then he is exempt from the requirement?
Mr. Smith. Then he is at liberty to proceed without her consent, under the law.
Senator Beveridge. In other words, her consent amounts to nothing?
Mr. Smith. It amounts to nothing but her consent.”
Agency. That sounds a whole lot like the latest shift away from “free agency” to “moral agency,” and talks by some leaders implying that as members, we are not “free” to choose things that contradict church teachings. What I was always taught growing up is that you make your own choices, but you don’t choose the consequences of those choices. But we were also taught that sometimes what is right for you as an individual is an exception to what the Church has taught as a rule; the Church can only preach what they consider to be a more universal ideal, but since we all have the gift of the Holy Ghost, we might prayerfully receive personal revelation that is unique and different. That “exception to the rule” loophole is something it appears some leaders would like to close. They would like insititutional revelation to trump personal revelation in all cases.
Implied Consent. The podcast also discussed implied consent through silence. If we sit in a lesson where things are said that we don’t agree with, others will infer that we agree with what is being said. Sometimes we keep silent because we see our views as being in the minority, too personal to share. We might even dislike “casting our pearls before swine” (no offense to the swine). Beyond this, though, dissenters are often told to keep silent about their disagreement. This occurs among the membership (being asked to take down social media posts that disagree with church statements, BYU students being disciplined for visible LGBTQ support through rainbow designs, etc.), and also at the top levels where unanimity is required for decisions, which is of course impossible, so the reality is that members of the Q15 who dissent can express their views behind closed doors, but not publicly.
Uninformed Consent. The podcast also mentioned uninformed consent, citing two salient examples: calling baptism a choice and lifelong covenant to things we don’t comprehend at age 8, and also the temple endowment in which onerous lifelong covenants are made without prior disclosure and in a high social pressure situation. I would add to this the issues of consent when there is no transparency. Would your tithing donations be the same if you knew some of that money was paying a sexist law firm to cover up sex abuse? Would you pay the same if you knew your money was going to cover tuition for a university that discriminates? Would you pay the same if you knew it was going toward a fight against gay rights? In the past, people avoided this by donating into different buckets, but about ten years ago the Church changed the statement on tithing donations to give them the right to apply them as they saw fit without disclosing how the funds were used (or sticking to the donation categories).
Assumed Consent. A final area of consent that was mentioned was around callings, assignments and assumption of consent by local leaders. Until you say no, and often even when you do, the assumption is that you’ve already pre-agreed to any calling, giving a talk, teaching a lesson, or cleaning the building. Now, secretly, all bishops know there are some church members who will say no when asked, and they do tend to avoid those folks, but that also puts them in the “marginalized” bucket from a social standpoint at church. There is also the issue around meetings with the bishop, either with the youth or adults. The assumption is that everyone is available to meet without knowing the topic at any time they are requested. And conversely, the bishop is assumed to consent to anything the church assigns, even though it’s an unpaid position done in one’s free time.
Any way you slice it, Mormons don’t seem to be great at consent and boundaries, and the younger generations are basically not having it. This is another place there’s a huge breakdown in retention. I have also observed in my own life that I have really struggled with knowing what I want and making my own choices at different times in my life. Most people who know me would say “You? No way! You’re very decisive.” It’s true that I have been decisive in my career and developed those skills in my work life.
In my personal life, though, I often feel conflicted and unsure about what to do. This feels like a common trait among a lot of the Mormons I know. We’ve been taught our whole lives that we have to do as we are told by authorities, by God, or in the case of women, by our husbands (or at minimum, to heed their counsel). At no point are we taught the value of figuring out what WE want, what makes us happy, what are our dreams and desires–in fact, we are often told what our wants SHOULD be, which further distances us from knowing what we want. If what we want isn’t what we are told we should want, that adds to the problem of knowing and admitting what we want.
- Do you think the Church is getting better or worse at consent?
- What examples of consent problems have you experienced in the Church?
- Do you have a hard time knowing or admitting what you want?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Not consent per se, but a related point. In the first or second general conference after he became president of the Church, President Nelson taught us that we need to learn to receive revelation for ourselves. This would appear to fit the “exception to the rule” situation in the OP, where we can’t wait for Church leaders to tell us what to do, and we will need to act independently, perhaps because of perilous times and communications with leaders won’t be possible, or because each of us will need to decide individually how to respond, and the Holy Ghost can help us there. All that is good.
The problem comes in making this a reality. I’m not speaking about issues where guidance is clear and is unlikely to change, like a man praying about whether he may ordain his daughter to the priesthood. But in more normal operations, are local leaders and fellow members willing to give someone the dignity of making a choice? Especially when one’s choice is different from another’s? For example, person A might think, because he’s prayed and received an answer, that they won’t watch television on Sunday at their house, in order to honor the Sabbath day. Another person also wants to honor the Sabbath day, and he prayed about wearing Sunday clothes all day long, and he felt good about that. A third person prayed about talking a walk in the woods near their home after church with the family, and then they watch a movie on TV afterwards, but they don’t wear church clothes. Is our church big-minded enough to let each of these three people get an answer to their question, and to honor each of them as acceptable and righteous? Are we able to accept that each of three people could have legitimately received a “yes” to their question? Oh, how quick people in the Church are to condemn their neighbors who do something differently.
Pres. Nelson told us to learn how to get revelation, and that teaching is mentioned in other general conference talks, but I also feel like the institution is trying to claw that teaching back, because it is too dangerous. Maybe we’re allowed to get our own revelation, but we can know that our revelation comes from the devil if it disagrees in any way with the revelation from the bishop, SP, or GA. That does an injustice to what Pres. Nelson tried to teach, I think.
I’m convinced that for most callings or assignments could be issued to any of a number of people, and the Lord would have been at peace. I’m also convinced that it is appropriate for people to say no, because we can’t know all that they have going on in their lives. Consent should not be assumed: it should be sought, and when it is not given, that decision should be respected, and the person treated with dignity, and with no gossip. That’s leading by persuasion, meekness, and love, as opposed to leading by coercion, guilt, and pressure.
I think the church is getting better at consent, at least in my area. Of course, anyone who knows me knows if I don’t want to do something I will just say no. However that’s a skill I matured to. I think sometimes young women are picked for positions specifically because it’s easier for leaders to work with people who are likely to just go along with whatever they say, and young women fit the bill.
I want to add that I never gave my consent to be born into a church community that would marginalize my leadership based on my sex and personality, so that as an older woman I would have little or no voice in that church. I was so entrenched in the way of thinking that this was normal and right, that I didn’t understand I was marginalized until I had worked under a bishop who dominated every decision in a ward, and also served in a stake primary presidency that served little to no function except ornamental. It was only then that I began to understand that women are 2nd class citizens in the church. It still took me years before I could allow myself to see and know what I was thinking.
No, I never had a chance to both understand and consent to being a 2nd class citizen in my beloved community. It was set up that way by men, generations ago, obscuring both my knowledge and consent. And to be completely clear, women were, in some ways less marginalized in the early days of the church when they gave blessings and handled their own RS fund raising and budgeting and ran their own organization, than they are today, after correlation
I think ones experience with consent regarding the Church depends on how you were raised. For myself, I was taught to never say no to the Church, so there was never any consent to be given. I’ve always been immensely jealous of those who grew up in Mormon families that held a nuanced view of the Church and consent when it comes to the Church because that was definitely not how I was raised.
Also, so glad I left right when Bednar started really hitting his “moral agency” talking points. In all likelihood he will be a future President of the Church, and it looks like it will be a doozy.
My wife was shocked to learn recently that about once or twice a year for several years now, I pray about whether or not I should stay in the church; their anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, their stinginess with the $100b hedge fund, and the BYUs generally keep actively irritating me. Thus far, I’ve felt that I should keep attending, so I do. This is of course the same thing I asked folks on my mission to do, and is likely what a General Authority would counsel me to do as well if I ever asked one. This is personal revelation in practice.
I also prayed carefully back in November 2015 about whether I needed to repent and support the child exclusion policy. I felt distinctly then, and every other time I prayed about it after, that it came of men and not God, so I have not defended or supported that policy at all. I am presumably not the only church member who felt that impression, and hence the larger GA push of late to claim that personal revelation only counts if it conforms to current Q15 pronouncements.
The problem, of course, is that if the GAs can get me to distrust my personal revelation on, say, the POX, then naturally I will begin to distrust my personal revelation on whether I should keep attending church, because they feel one and the same. Those GAs who preach that we must seek personal revelation except when it contradicts them personally are playing with fire, because the logical result is that one ends up with faith in neither.
The fundamental concept of Agency is a person has the freedom both to make choices and to experience accountability for those choices. Agency cannot exist without both the free exercise of choice and personal risk or reward for the consequence of choices made. From 1985 to 2019 the phrase “Choice and Accountability” was expressed in the Young Women’s theme. In 2019 it was dropped and the entire Young Women’s theme was replaced.
My perception is the current church leadership has little regard for Agency and the change in the Young Women’s theme is part of the diminishment of the principle. This is sad and unfortunate as Agency is a fundamental principle of the Plan of Salvation. Without Agency there can be no spiritual progress. Without Agency there is no need for Jesus Christ, a Savior or a Redeemer.
The difficulty the church leadership has in teaching and supporting Agency reflects the church culture. It reveals an institution that has been consumed by hierarchy and bureaucracy. The people in the institution do not have Agency. At least they do not see themselves as free to act and to be accountable for the risks and benefits of those actions. Local leaders have their hands tied in many different ways. Local leaders have a limited range of choices and they face mainly risk of independent choices going bad – local leadership are told by superiors to follow policy and no one will get hurt. The superiors – the professional managers – abide the philosophies of modern corporate management where hierarchical and bureaucratic decision making are the norm.
Consequently, as leaders in the church see themselves denied of Consent and Agency by the hierarchy and bureaucracy, they deny it from the membership. Why should members be allowed to choose not to do everything they are supposed to in the church when the leaders are denied that privilege? Of course leaders do have the privilege of acting for themselves. They choose not to because they prefer the prestige of their callings and are willing to trade their Agency for the Title and Authority of their Position.
And so we see the contention that for the membership, the church is always a volunteer organization and members are free to choose to what degree they participate in the church. Rather than recognize this and teach and practice the principles of Consent and Agency, the leadership resorts to the coercions of fear and social pressure to control the membership and keep it in line. Interestingly, older members are much more aware of their rights in the church and are more inclined to reject callings or demand consideration in accepting callings. Younger active members tend to cling to the ideal that whatever the church leaders asks, you do. I think this contributes to young active members having a “faith crisis” where they suddenly come to the awareness that the church organization does not actually operate consistent with the high moral and ethical standards it claims.
It would be a glorious day if the LDS Church recognized that true Consent in the context of actual Agency must be free of all coercion and made with full knowledge of the expected personal risks and rewards. Imagine Full Disclosure for mission calls, for Leadership assignments, for Baptism and for the Temple endowment. Would that not be a fascinating brochure to prepare and to read! As an aside, when I was a full-time missionary my companion and I would remark that being a missionary was the greatest secret in the church as we never expected our missions to be what they were. Too much of the church is a secret until you find yourself in the thick of it.
But I am not holding my breath for that day to come. The cultural inertia is too great. The church leadership simply does not understand that there is a better way to do things. That is how rigid and calcified the organization has become.
“Any way you slice it, Mormons don’t seem to be great at consent and boundaries.”
Yes! I think you’re spot on with this. I’ve recently thought of this point in the context of the primary song that begins “I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” I think the point of the song is to think of the Church as a place where you fit, where you’re welcomed, where people know you. But another interpretation that’s struck me is that I am *owned* by the Church. I’m an asset, like a car or a building. They get to dictate what I do and I don’t get to talk back. In terms of this post, my consent is irrelevant.
I feel like the most dramatic change for the good in my relationship with the Church has been rejecting this idea. Now *I* own my church experience. The Church doesn’t own me and it doesn’t own my experience. I get to decide how and when I’ll engage and how and when I won’t.
Great post! Consent is on my mind daily right now so here are some answers to your questions and a few thoughts:
Do you think the Church is getting better or worse at consent? I don’t believe the Church is getting any better at consent, but I think the Church might think it is. Teaching that we must seek for and listen to personal revelation still seems to be cloaked in the idea that your personal revelation only applies if it aligns with what the Church institution deems as correct. That hardly feels like consent. Especially when you add the idea that you will only be “worthy” to receive personal revelation if you check all of the boxes that the Church outlines.
What examples of consent problems have you experienced in the Church? All of them! Agency – see above. Implied Consent – Many of us choose to remain silent in Church meetings for many reasons, one of which is that we don’t want to be known as the one who “brings contention into the room” because you know who and where contention comes from. The Church keeps us even more silent by not providing any type of meeting, forum, or class where disagreement is encouraged and viewed as valuable in forming our faith. In the past, people created their own study groups which were then discouraged and condemned by the Church. Recently, though, I think there has been a revival of such arenas because people are seeking growth and cannot find a way to grow in the institutional Church. Uninformed Consent – This is a big one for me. In discussions with TBM who are trying to reconcile family members leaving, their reasoning is that they are leaving because they aren’t “truly converted.” Can any of us be “truly converted” without being fully informed and thus able to fully consent? Assumed Consent – Another thing that falls under this category is church leaders assuming that stay-at-home moms are entirely flexible and have an abundance of free time to provide service to ward members and to callings. In conjunction with that assumption is the implicit idea that anything related to the Church needs to be first in our list of priorities, and idea that I operated under for most of my life.
Do you have a hard time knowing or admitting what you want? Yes – in most areas of my life. For more than 50 years, I have rarely asked myself that question, deferring to authority figures in my life to make those decisions for me – almost always men. I am finally learning about consent, but it will always feel heavy to me that those lessons are primarily coming from my daughters who definitely “not having it.” When we have reviewed the way sex was taught in our home, they have expressed that not being taught about consent was a detriment in many ways. I wish I had known better then. But, I know better now so I’m seeking to better model what consent in all areas of life, and especially the Church, looks like.
A Disciple – to your point about cultural inertia and leadership not understanding there is a better way. I think it’s much worse than a lack of understanding, I think it’s complete and willful blindness. They believe that their way IS God’s way, which makes any significant change (repentance) impossible. My LDS faith tradition is as unwilling as the Pharisees of old to take the criticism Jesus was offering them. Those Pharisees also believed they were performing God’s way, and the result was, they crucified their critic. We have many, in the Church currently, who are branded as heretics because they are calling out the “Aristocracy” for their Pharisaical impropriety, and the leadership are responding very predictably by cancelling, and figuratively crucifying their critics.
The LDS church’s concept of agency is pretty interesting, and I find that it gets warped in the name of authoritarianism.
Many in the church try to portray agency as black and white…we invoke 2 Nephi 2 and the list of opposites: righteousness/wickedness, holiness/misery, good/bad. This binary logic translates straight into how we talk about agency…in this mindset, life is a test comprised of true/false questions; not multiple choice questions, and CERTAINLY not short answer or essay questions. And somewhere there’s an angel keeping score.
You’re either following the prophet 100% or 0%…” when you pick up a stick, you pick up both ends.”
This sort of thinking guts the entire idea of agency. It’s even rooted in how we talk about Adam and Eve in Mormonism: Eve ate the fruit, got Adam to eat some, and got them kicked out of Eden. We get told that Eve was the smart one who could see the larger picture, but she still chose the “wrong” answer on the true/false quiz – thus the consequence is that ALL women are somehow subservient to ALL men. (I guess that “MEN will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.” But women are somehow still implicated because Eve was smarter and more ambitious than Adam?? #agency)
In my mind, “moral agency” should be MORE freeing to us than “free agency.” It implies that we should be making good moral choices, and that the rest of them don’t really matter in an eternal sense. But some church leaders have warped this into something much more restrictive (carrot/stick).
Tithing is an easy target for an example (as usual). The church says paying tithing is a moral choice…pay it and you get a gold star; don’t pay it and you can’t do those saving ordinances. “Moral agency” (when interpreted correctly) suggests that it’s not so black and white…donating the money could be a good thing, so could donating it to the food bank, so could opting not to pay in order to care for your family during difficult times, so could using that money to go on an amazing vacation with your family to make lifelong memories…I suppose you could also throw away the money on booze and drugs. No matter what the church prefers, there are lots of options…we have the agency to find the best moral answer for our own situation.
Then there’s all those other decisions. God doesn’t care what toothpaste you use. But also things like praying before meals. It’s a tradition…if you like it, do it. If you don’t or are in mixed company, then don’t…just be grateful you have food. It’s a preference, not a moral choice.
I’m always struck by how some of these things manifest – – and manifest strongly – – simply as a preference or a willful desire to see the world a certain way. Almost willing it so. Take for instance the idea of callings being extended by inspiration. I certainly believe that can happen! I’ve personally experienced it happening. On both sides of the equation (both as the caller and the callee). But our cultural insistence on idealizing these ideas – – or, I suppose, alternatively, our collective preference to avoid controversy or difficult conversations of any type – – has us continually doing silly things like what literally just happened this past Sunday in EQ. Somehow the instructor chose to emphasize this “never turn down a calling” idea, and even trotted out an old Boyd Packer talk from the 90s to help make the point, and there was no shortage of priesthood brethren in second hour eager to share their own examples and experiences that reinforced the “leaders being inspired of the Lord” point. Including the late-40s guy sitting next to me sharing an experience that hearkened back to his days as an AP on his mission, and how a particular transfer move for Elder so-and-so didn’t feel right, until they changed it, and it did. OK, sure.
But here’s the thing: I ALSO have had some of those experiences, as I previously mentioned. So I have no problem with that. The existence of those experiences isn’t the thing that is at stake in that conversation! Good things happen in the world. Leaders can be inspired. You betcha. The problem i have isn’t that i disbelieve any of those lovely anecdotes. The problem I have with how conversations like that evolve is that they DON’T evolve, but are instead (typically) just do only that, and remain woefully incomplete. No one ever seems willing to say the obvious part out loud: that even if you’re a bishop or a bishopric counselor or a stake leader or in any sort of other calling-generating role, yes, of COURSE (hopefully) you have some moments or times when a calling — given or received — seems or is inspired, and that’s super. But the other 89% of the time, the leader is sort of just winging it, and working off info they have (which may be incomplete) and HOPING that what they’re doing is inspired. And…. that’s ok! I can’t believe that anyone in the gym last Sunday actually believes that anyone in a leadership position hears Jesus whispering in their ears all the time and therefore always hits the bullseye. Yet no one ever wants to say: “oh yeah, I extended that calling and it was clearly not a good fit and didn’t work out well.” Or otherwise normalize people declining callings since they may know lots of things the person extending the calling doesn’t. Etcetera. But no. We can’t countenance that type of observation during the 2-hour block, and instead have to have one more fake conversation that requires magical thinking about volunteer leaders serving in callings and somehow by definition always getting it right.
From the OP: “They would like insititutional revelation to trump personal revelation in all cases.”
An example of this occurred in a November 2017 YSA “Face to Face” broadcast when Elder Oaks declared, “If we get an impression contrary to the scriptures, to the commandments of God, to the teachings of His leaders, then we know that it can’t be coming from the Holy Ghost. The gospel is consistent throughout.”
I agree that the Church assumes that members to consent to accepting the Church‘s stance on doctrine, policies, issues, etc. To a certain extent, it seems like any religion needs to have a certain set of claims that it expects adherents to accept. If anyone in the religion can believe absolutely anything, then is that really a worthwhile religion? However, the Church has just constantly overstepped what should have been its boundaries because of “prophets”, “continuing revelation”, etc. This overstepping of boundaries is naturally going to happen in any religion from time to time, but the Church has a very hard time backing off when it realizes it has overstepped. The Church should stick to a small core set of doctrines/principles and then try to help its members develop faith and successfully practice those principles. Instead, we constantly have situations where the Church is trying to extend itself beyond this core set of doctrines/principles and repeatedly getting itself into trouble. There are far too many examples to cite, but some that immediate come to mind are:
1. Blacks and the temple/priesthood ban. Brigham had no business restricting blacks in the way he did. He should have stuck to the “all are equal” stuff found in the scriptures. That was the core doctrine, and he mistakenly chose to go beyond it. The Church struggled for decades to back off of Brigham’s overreach, and they still haven’t apologized for their error.
2. Women shouldn’t have careers. Church leaders had no business making these statements. It’s just not a part of our core beliefs of Christ’s teachings, but due to their backgrounds, they thought this should be a core belief. The Church has not yet apologized for this overreach.
3. Birth control. Again, Church leaders overstepped their boundaries. They’ve since backed down, but they haven’t apologized.
4. LGBTQ people. The Church has yet to back down on this, but I believe that given enough time that they will have to do so. They almost certainly will not apologize for their overreach, though.
5. Dress codes. The Church told people (mostly women) how to dress (must wear sleeves, no bikini swimsuits, etc), how many earrings to wear, etc. This was overreach, and there has been no apology.
Church leaders need to study Church history more closely and stop incorrectly allowing themselves to increase the size and scope of things it expects members to consent to. Did Kevin Hamilton consider all this Church history when he said, “Could I suggest an alternative approach? Substitute the word Savior or Lord or Jesus Christ in place of ‘the Church’—as in ‘I don’t support the Savior’s policy on (again, you fill in the blank)’ or ‘I don’t agree with the way Jesus Christ does (this or that).’ (https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/kevin-s-hamilton/why-a-church/) The overstepping of Church leaders beyond the simple gospel of Christ has backfired over and over again, and it is forcing people out of the Church who might otherwise remain. I can get behind a church that really focuses on Christ and His teachings, but I will never consent to rejecting LGBTQ individuals like the Church is currently doing. The narrower the Church can focus on just the small set of important doctrines/principles, the larger the number of people that will feel comfortable within the Church’s tent.
Mormonism reeks of what I call ‘Coerced Consent’. As in bad bishops and stake presidents using the old trope that “the Lord has revealed X, therefore, you are bound to do Y.” As a naïve newly called bishop, I tried this exactly once with disastrous results. I used the revelation approach to call a young mother with five children to be RS President.
After she left the office in tears, her husband paid me a quick visit. With remarkable restraint, he lectured me on the evils of religious manipulation and the importance of free will. The family became inactive because of my stupidity.
Uninformed and Coerced Consent are similar phenomena. As the OP stated, Temple endowments represent an egregious example. Expecting members to make eternal commitments without prior disclosure is ridiculous. Mormon leadership’s refusal to be transparent has endured from the beginning. Perhaps it began with the well documented practice of polyandry when JS sent husbands of desired concubines on “missions”. Whatever the origins, the practice is insidious and affects women disproportionately.
De Novo:
“The family became inactive because of my stupidity.”
The real question is: did you feel inspired to issue the call to that particular individual? And if you can answer that question in the affirmative–then you can humbly ask yourself how you might have handled the situation better. Yes–perhaps you could have approached the situation differently. Even so, that Lord knows his servants and he knows their weaknesses–and it is incumbent upon the members to be patient with their imperfect leaders.
The family going inactive over that episode says a just as much–if not more–about them as (you believe) it says about you. They’ve got some things to work on–IMO–things that go deeper than being offended by a clumsy call to serve.
Great post. The Reed Smoot excerpt is truly horrifying. I think Mormons aren’t good about consent because, as you point out, there are baseline assumptions about being a member that involve surrendering (or “consecrating”) one’s freedom, agency, etc. to God, which in my mind really just means turning over your personal liberty to an institution that demands you do so. This means that they aren’t good when it comes to talking about any kind of consent. They’re terrible about consent when it comes to sex, in part because Mormons are terrified of talking about sex and in part because there is still such a strong patriarchal bent in the church that I think it prevents any kind of legitimate recognition, acknowledgement, and respect of female agency when it comes to such matters (and yes, I know consent doesn’t only apply to women; I’m just making a point about one aspect of this issue).
The other particularly insidious way the church compromises agency is through the temple ceremony. I hear things may have changed a bit, but when I went through the first time, I was told nothing about what covenants I’d be making, what the ceremony was like or even any details about what to expect. And when you’re there with a whole bunch of family and your prospective bride, it’s not enough for someone to say, “if you’re not comfortable, you can leave”; you still don’t know what’s going to happen. And then, once you’ve made covenants you didn’t even know you were going to make, you’re told over and over again the disaster that will befall you if you break them. These are certainly not the actions of a church that continually touts the importance of agency. The church certainly doesn’t respect agency; quite the opposite, in fact. It acts consistently in ways that demonstrate that it values obedience much more than it values the agency of individual members. A Disciple is correct: the church does not teach about agency and consent, it teaches about obedience and uses fear to do so.
This whole discussion reminds me of the ol’ “when do I have free agency” debate that has been around in the church forever. (For a good summary of how the church’s understanding of free agency has evolved over the years and was influenced by libertarian hardliners like ETB, check out Matthew Bowman’s essay The Cold War and the Invention of Free Agency, in the collection of essays found in Thunder from the Right.) For years I have heard members take the position that the government should not be in the business of “forced charity”/welfare, because “that is the proper role of churches in society.” “Forced consent to taxes violates my God-given free will! This is satan’s plan!” “Socialism is the evil counterfeit of the law of consecration!”
So, the church tells you that you will not be allowed to live with your family for eternity if you don’t pay tithing, and paying tithing is a choice, but when the government threatens to put you in prison for not paying taxes, then paying taxes suddenly becomes a denial of your free will? Which is worse, existing without your family for eternity or doing a stint for tax evasion? You have free will in both circumstances, or you do not have free will in either. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
One of my biggest problems with the church revolves around the manipulative use of the doctrine of eternal families to procure members’ consent to control their lives. And I echo all the comments detailing how this problem disproportionately affects women in the church.
This sounds like a fun little theological debate! Let me ask a question about consent that might make some people uncomfortable:
How many Mormon women know they don’t have to have sex whenever their husbands want?
Starting at the honeymoon, and going on until the bishop is telling them that if they just put out more their husband wouldn’t be looking at porn.
I personally think porn is great, and have dated several purveyors of it! It’s certainly better than the “porn addiction” industrial complex in Utah and Idaho. But I also remember growing up Mormon with a really high libido, and asking myself “what am I going to do if I get extremely horny but my spouse doesn’t want it?”
This was a moral dilemma for me, because to me masturbating and coercing my spouse were both obviously wrong. What did god want me to do in this situation?
I think I know what the god of D&C 132 would’ve had me do. And I think there are a lot of Mormon men who know, too.
And now I am going to say something to Jack, and to everyone else who wants to believe in a god who doesn’t need your consent because he knows what’s best for you.
To everyone who romanticizes this kind of relationship, with divinity and with your divinely-appointed betters. Like husbands, parents, and leaders at church. Who believes it’ll all work out in the next life, and also in this one if we just obey, faithfully.
Have you considered hiring a professional dominatrix?
Because in real life, it doesn’t work out like that. Even the D&C itself affirms the universal truth that people who get just a little power and authority over others will tend to abuse it. It’s not your fault if you’re hurt by someone like that, it’s not your fault if you need to leave an abusive church, and that doesn’t change even if you’ve “got some things to work on” yourself.
There are no perfect victims. You don’t have to be free of sin before you can talk about what was done to you. You don’t even have to still be a member in good standing. If anything, that just says that you’re willing to overlook what’s done with your tithing money, and by the leaders you “choose” to “sustain.” It’s not a mark of good moral judgment.
So. If you want to live in a make-believe fantasy world, where Mistress is always correct and always has your best interests in mind? Where even when she punishes you, it’s for your own good, and you appreciate it? That’s kink, my dear, not theology. Try not to confuse it with real life.
This reminds me of that meme where Jesus knocks on the door and says “Open up, I’m here to save you.”
And a voice comes out, “From what?”
“From what I’m gonna do to you if you don’t let me in!”
Or an argument with a priest that went something like this:
“How come God doesn’t make it clear which religion is true? Like with a big sign on the moon?”
“Because that would take away our free will.”
The gold standard here in sexual matters is enthusiastic consent. Not a lot of enthusiastic consent at church.
If any of you watch team sport, if you can watch it I recommend the cricket world cup. I have just watched a game beteeen Australia and the Netherlandd. One of the Aus players scored 100 runs off 40 balls, amazing.
Jack
“The real question is: did you feel inspired to issue the call to that particular individual?”
No, this is not the real question, it’s the incomplete question that lives in an authoritarian world and uses imperfections as an excuse to impose dominance instead of allowing consent. You, like the Church, are hell bent on deflecting any personal responsibility for the damage done to interpersonal relationships.
When, our now, 15 year old daughter was 6 months old, our Bishop called my wife in and extended the calling of Primary President to her. He then did one of the most mature things I have seen a Bishop do. Our daughter was born with bilateral club feet, and hip dysplasia. She required a lot of time, both mentally and physically at that time. With that information, that Bishop said to my wife, my inspiration is only half of a revelation, it’s not complete without you also having the same inspiration. He told her, if now was not a good time, then that is what the Lord was willing.
When I was a young mother one time the bishop came to my house and asked me to be choir director (a calling I love and did later). I explained that my young son with a series of defects was going to have a serious back surgery sometime soon (we didn’t know when exactly) and that I was unsure how available I would be for that calling. My dear bishop simply said “I feel inspired to withdraw the call.”
Leaders have the option to choose how they use the church structure. They can exercise unrighteous dominion (D&C 121:34-46), or they can choose to actually listen to members and the Spirit when it shows them how to follow Jesus Christ in their leadership. There are many good leaders in the church, however it’s set up in such a way that bad leaders get the option to use their agency and hurt members. However, they don’t get to choose the consequences of unrighteous dominion.
To me, unrighteous dominion includes using fear of losing family members in heaven to try to control youth and break the hearts of parents. I feel sad and concerned when I see high up church leaders using fear instead of love in their duties of inviting us to follow Christ. Throughout the D&C eternal progression, rather than eternal family separation, is taught. There’s no need to emphasize family separation, except to try to control members.
Last year I had a pretty terrible ministering interview. As usual, I had not contacted everyone on my list, and I used the usual excuses-I was really busy with work, and life in general. I was then shamed-she told me that my job was my hobby and my choice, and it wasn’t that important. I was stunned. No one would say that to a man.
Three month later, it was time for another ministering interview. I still had not contacted everyone on my list. I was doing the best I could. When someone called to set up the ministering interview, I told her I felt like I just had one of those. She said it had been three months. After my experience earlier, I did not see the point of meeting again soon.
I told her that I was going to skip it this time. Then the person who was supposed to do the interview told me at church that ministering interviews are mandatory. You aren’t “allowed” to turn down an interview. I was stunned again. What was she, or anyone else, really going to do? Tell the Bishop? The RS president? Be my guest.
Interesting how in an organization of supposed volunteers (who actually can’t even opt out of ministering), meetings are not a choice. I refused the interview anyway. And nothing happened!
toddsmithson,
I think the bishop in your story handled the situation beautifully. But what if he had merely issued the call without leaving the door open to your wife’s personal inspiration? Would you have gotten huffy and left the church over it? Or would you have, perhaps, asked for some time to consider the call–and then come back with an answer after you had talked it over together and prayed about it?
Leading in the church is kinda like becoming parents for the first time–the only way to learn how to do it is to do it. And we’re going to make mistakes along the way–and hopefully we’ll learn from those instances when we might’ve done things better and not repeat those mistakes.
That said, I agree that there should be accountability on the part of leaders. But the same should hold true for all members. We are a covenant people–not a business or an academy. And as such we should we should be patient with each other regardless of what our relationship looks like on an organizational graph.
@Jack, I won’t pretend to know all the details about why the couple in De Novo’s comment chose to stop participating in the Church. I suspect there was *a lot* more to their decision that the calling from their bishop that they didn’t like or feel was inspired, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that was the primary reason. However, I’ll offer another possible reason that they chose to stop participating in the Church other than “they have other things to work on” or “they were offended”. In fact, the reason that I’ll outline will show, in my opinion, that the Church, not its members, has some things to work on.
First, as a lifelong member of the Church, I don’t know how many times I was taught that members are not to say no to callings–ever. Here’s just one example from Boyd Packer:
“Bishops are inspired! Each of us has agency to accept or reject counsel from our leaders, but never disregard the counsel of your bishop, whether given over the pulpit or individually, and never turn down a call from your bishop.” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1999/04/the-bishop-and-his-counselors?lang=eng)
This couple may have felt that they had to accept the calling because it was from God, but perhaps their situation or their own prayerful inspiration made it quite obvious that the calling was really not inspired of God. In other words, we have some cognitive dissonance going on in their heads. “I’ve always been taught by prophets and apostles to accept a calling from my bishop because they are always inspired of God, but I know for certain that this calling didn’t come from God.” When Church leaders teach in absolutes like this, people can start having some serious doubts when they discover that the rhetoric isn’t always true.
Second, the Church gives lip service to the idea that prophets and apostles are fallible men, but in practice it really teaches that these men can’t make any significant errors when guiding and directing the Church. If this couple has discovered that the teaching that callings are always inspired of God and should always be accepted is false, then it also means that their belief in essentially infallible Church leaders is wrong. In other words, more cognitive dissonance, and yet again, it is due to Church leaders speaking in absolutes: “the Q15 is always right, just do what we say”.
If the couple gets to the point of realizing that the Q15 sometimes teaches false things from the pulpit (which they do sometimes), then their entire faith in the Church may quickly disintegrate. Now, you may say that their foundation should have been built on Christ, not on fallible prophets, but the Church sure pushes and reinforces the idea of how special we are to have men that “will never (and can never) lead people astray”. The Church encourages people to build their foundation on the teachings of the Q15.
Like I said, I have no idea of all the reasons this couple chose to stop participating in the Church, but the scenario I’ve outlined above seems like a possibility to me. In fact, I’ve seen a lot of people leave the Church when they finally realize that the prophets that they’ve idolized their entire lives (and the Church actively encourages this type of thinking) have taught incorrect things or led the Church away from Christ from time to time. Perhaps it wasn’t this couple that has “some things to work on”; instead, perhaps it is really the Church that has “some things to work on”, and two of those things are:
1. Stop teaching that all bishop’s callings are inspired of God. In fact, tell people the truth and tell them that the vast majority are not inspired at all.
2. Stop teaching/implying/etc. that everything the Q15 says is straight from God. In fact, tell people the truth and teach them that sometimes they teach incorrect things. They could even cite the teaching that people should always accept callings from their bishop since they are always inspired of God as an example of a false teaching taught by the Q15 (and it certainly isn’t just Packer who taught this).
@Jack
“Leading in the church is kinda like becoming parents for the first time–the only way to learn how to do it is to do it.”
Sure, but our modern leaders aren’t leading for the first time. RMN has been a general authority for 50 years, and he is still acting like a bully, thinking his job is to be “Ruler” instead of how the Book of Mormon describes Prophets, as “Messengers”, called of God, not by man, which all modern Prophets other than Joseph Smith have technically been called by men. Jesus said over and over that, the greatest among you is a “Servant”, not a “tyrant”. And they are no less tyrannical just because they speak in soft tones with smiles on their faces. Our leaders (specifically Q15) have not, do not, and refuse to take responsibility for their failures, but require members to act differently. Please help me understand how you think our leaders are held accountable because I don’t see any accountability, only deflection and some silly practices held in formality to give the illusion of consent.
I don’t know how we ever expect to have something redeemed that we (the institutional Church) are unwilling to acknowledge needs redeeming. Hope for a better world depends on us wrestling with yesterday’s failures, not merely cloaking them in the common excuse of “context”. The Church itself, as a collective entity, just as each individual, has its own redemption story, but we have chosen to maintain the sanitized story that doesn’t need redemption, trading the truth for a manipulated, pristine PR image. Being in a relationship with the Institutional Church (distinct from my local ward), feels like being married to a spouse who cheated, knows you know, knows it hurts you, knows it was wrong, but refuses to apologize or make any efforts to repair the harm.
@mountainclimber479: The teaching that all leaders are always inspired is misleading and destructive for leaders just as much as for members. It gives leaders unrealistic expectations about how to fulfill their role. On one end it discourages to leaders who don’t always feel inspired, and on the other end it gives authoritarian leaders license for controlling & manipulative behavior. I had some wise leaders who offered a very practical approach to inspired church leadership:
1. You gather as much relevant information as you can, then do your best to make a wise & informed choice – God gave you a brain and expects you to use it.
2. With that choice in mind, you look for guidance, inspiration, and new information that would indicate that your choice is NOT correct – this helps to avoid confirmation bias because you’re looking for reasons why you’re wrong, not reasons why you’re right.
3. If nothing arises counter to your informed decisions, then have faith that you’ve done your best and move forward with the decision.
4. Acknowledge that people can choose to accept/decline, and that you may find new information at any point that could update your decision. Adjust accordingly.
This has proven way more effective than just hoping and praying for Jesus to whisper in your ear, or just assuming that having the leadership position means everything you say is inspired.
@toddsmithson: I think that you’re right that the idea of consent in the church has been replaced by a silly symbolic symbol…and it’s been that way for a long long time. There are lots of ways that it could be made meaningful, but that would also require acknowledging opposition and questions about the fitness of some leaders. I’m fine if common consent means a majority vote even…but the current approach is simply theatrics.
and to finish my last sentence, the spouse (the Church) then performs emotionally manipulative tactics to persuade the betrayed spouse to remain in the unhealthy relationship, citing things like, “You need me”. It’s basic gaslighting 101 stuff. The weird thing is, many would probably assume I have left the church, yet I remain active in my local ward. I love my community, but I have all but lost my trust in institutional leadership. I trust God, but not RMN. I have a deep sense that God cares about my wellbeing, while RMN and the Q15’s loyalty lies with the institution, not with individual people.
I just noticed that I wrote “silly symbolic symbol” instead of “silly symbolic vote” 😂
Re: consent and sex, there is no General Conference talk or youth lesson more effective than the short YouTube video “Consent is like tea.” We made each of our boys watch it as they came of age, and we remind them of it regularly. (I won’t link to it to avoid my comment ending in moderation. Just Google it.)
MTodd, I’ve been thinking the same thing, as the ALSSI podcast and this post and the ensuing discussion have been on my mind for several days now.
The part about the tea video that stands out to me is the idea of “you might have agreed to drink the tea/drank tea in the past/started drinking the tea, but can change your mind and stop drinking tea.” The idea that making covenants decreases future agency feels so wrong to me I actually recoil. I was taught that making good choices INCREASED my agency, not decreased it.
I’ve mentioned it in this space before that I’m a big fan of Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife. She spends a lot of time talking about how vital our choice is to a healthy sexual relationship – and because our sexuality is so important, so personal and vulnerable, it’s a key indicator of our overall maturity and development. In essence, you cannot be spiritually mature and sexually immature at the same time. She also says, “There cannot be yes without the option of no” and that our agency is truly the most important gift we’ve ever received.
She’s got a whole course for women called “The Art of Desire” helping them embrace their sexuality. And the very core of that course is how important it is that they learn that what they want – in every aspect of their life – is essential for growth.
Honestly, the idea that covenants reduce our agency is one of the most damaging, awful ideas I’ve ever heard and goes against everything I love about the gospel.
I don’t think the church is capable of consent currently. It’s not really understood in Mormonism and is frequently conflated with agency. Consent is at minimum a two party action wherein each party gives all the pertinent information and then come to an uncoerced agreement. Agency is a one party thing. I.e. we each have our own agency but we don’t each have our own consent. Consent is achieved in collaboration with others through information sharing. Consent and agency are worlds apart. In my experience members are generally afraid of the idea of consent and will shy away from a real discussion concerning the topic. The organization is too dictatorial, too secretive, and doesn’t seem to want its members to expect consent. If it starts using the term it will likely be bastardized to mean the opposite of consent, something like bending ones will to match that of the brethren (the lord) which will be a coerced response through repetitive discourse and lesson reinforcement. I don’t know that I’ve had an exchange ever with church leadership that could fall into the category of consent as the power differential at the outset of those conversations immediately make consent unlikely. I can’t even imagine a conversation with a bishop wherein I would have felt comfortable not responding to his questions or free to ask my own exploratory questions. Those meetings are generally designed to put the member at a disadvantage. Missionaries are taught coercive techniques in the form of a commitment pattern and it permeates the organization at just about every level. Teaching consent would mean teaching that the way the church does just about everything is wrong.
“the temple endowment in which onerous lifelong covenants are made without prior disclosure and in a high social pressure situation”
Hawk, I thought you’d been in the temple since then for some reason.
“Do you think the Church is getting better or worse at consent?”
There is no “the church” but I suspect I would heed my wife’s non-consent to me taking additional wives, should it come to that. It does seem the church is slightly less authoritarian having adopted some youth protection practices.
Or an argument with a priest that went something like this: “How come God doesn’t make it clear which religion is true? Like with a big sign on the moon?” “Because that would take away our free will.”
Suppose a huge sign on the moon was written, like in South Park, “The Mormons are correct”.
When would that sign have been placed there? Right after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden (or thereabouts).
What would the result be? Nearly every religion on Earth would be labeled “Mormon”!
In theory, God could easily compel choice, at which point it isn’t really choice. It also isn’t choice when only one option exists. Nephi describes it very well. The entire chapter 2 is among my favorite and most wise words:
2 Nephi 2:16 Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.
In Zion, the opposition is and must be IN church. That is why I write there is no “the church” because it is a composition that includes its own opposition. Good people and bad people. Good bishops and bad bishops.
Everyone must be opposed. Even Jesus, who chose his own betrayer.