I caught most of the Saturday morning talks, which had plenty of interesting and troubling claims. Below I’ll highlight the New Retrenchment Gospel of temples, garments, and covenants, the major themes stressed in the Saturday morning talks. None of that faith, hope and charity stuff. Way beyond First Principles of faith, repentance, baptism, and the Holy Spirit. All that New Testament stuff — you know, the real gospel of Jesus Christ — just isn’t enough in this era of retrenchment, so it’s time to start doubling down on the weird Mormon stuff. I welcome your reaction in the comments. Let’s look at what the speakers said.

Elder Holland’s Vision

Back from death’s doorstep, Elder Holland gave a rather quiet and humble talk. He mourned the passing of his wife Pat and related something of his own six-week hospitalization that followed just a few days later. It should be noted that Elder Holland is now the Acting President of the Twelve. He made brief reference to a visionary experience he had while hospitalized, but he also related how during the initial four-week stay in and out of the ICU he was in and out of consciousness and has spotty or absent memories of those events. Let’s push back a little on the LDS habit of granting face value credibility to any claimed visionary experience (at least any claimed by an LDS leader that fits the current LDS orthodoxy).

Has anyone watched a parent go through their last week or two in hospital? Memories become spotty and confused. Patients might cycle from consciousness to semi-consciousness to unconsciousness. Dying persons have conversations with people who aren’t there and sense things (noises and objects and persons) that are definitively not there. The LDS approach somehow grants *extra* credibility to the claims of those near death, under some sort of “the veil is thin!” rationale. The objective approach is to acknowledge that dying persons see and hear and relate a lot of stuff that isn’t there and that never happened or is misremembered. There is no reason to give them a hard time about it — they are dying, after all, and need love and support — but there is also no reason to treat what they say as some sort of revelation of truth with enhanced credibility. Just the opposite! This is certainly true for what Elder Holland related. The message he received per his account of his partially revealed visionary experience was “Work harder, Elder Holland, get back to work and really put your shoulder to the apostolic wheel!” I’m summarizing but not exaggerating what he related. This is so wrong! We work these older leaders to death. Elder Holland has done fine work and given some memorable talks from the Conference pulpit. Give the man emeritus status and an award, not a binder full of new assignments.

So — God bless Elder Holland in his mourning and his recovery. I hope his apostolic peers ignore his impressions while under medical stress and instead reduce his workload. As a church or at least as individuals we need to be a little more concerned with reliability and credibility and truth. That’s one of the distressing things I saw in almost all the speakers this morning: Truthful history is increasingly taking a backseat to more useful genres such as fiction-based history and made-up stories.

J. Anette Dennis, 1C in RS General Presidency: Symbols and Garments

First she talked about how God uses symbols to teach things. Symbols are useful at times and in certain contexts, but they are malleable and open to a variety of meanings, often read into a symbol rather than out of a symbol. Waving a flag or singing a patriotic song can motivate and arouse a crowd to action, but you want a Constitution and statutes to clearly articulate the law in a fair legal regime. Rousing a crowd using emotional symbols is what you do when you want to go storm the capitol or to go lynch someone. Beware the too-frequent and unwarranted invocation of symbols.

Then she linked symbols to covenants and used baptism as an example. But let’s be clear about this, since muddled talk about covenants has become ubiquitous in LDS discourse lately. To the extent a baptism is a covenant, it is between you and God. It is based on your understanding of God when you make that covenant. If your understanding of God grows and evolves over the years, your understanding of that covenant grows and evolves. If your understanding of God dramatically changes or your belief in God evaporates, your understanding of that covenant may be that it was misguided or based on false teachings and that it is no longer relevant or in force. It may, in your understanding, become a nullity, no longer relevant and possibly never valid or relevant. You can do that: it’s your covenant.

What the Church wants to do is make personal covenants some kind of binding agreement between you and the Church, then appeal to those covenants to encourage you, manipulate you, or guilt you into doing things the Church wants you to do. What the leadership is doing with covenants right now is trying to weaponize them. What ought to be a personal thing, a positive thing to motivate members to do good and to become more holy (however that person defines it, as enlightened by scripture, etc.) is becoming a mechanism the leadership is using to manipulate the membership. It is appalling. And I haven’t even talked about having the mental capacity and the informed consent requirements necessary for a contract or covenant to be valid. If you trick someone into signing a contract or making a covenant, it is fraud, not a binding agreement.

Finally (and you probably saw this coming) she wraps LDS garments and garment-wearing in this web of symbols, covenants, and obligations. It’s the most detailed and explicit public discussion of LDS garments I recall hearing. This discussion — and it is strange Sister Dennis was selected to deliver this message — is trying to elevate garment-wearing to a covenant. Now there are covenants made in the temple, and I won’t talk about them, but they are aimed at spiritual and divine goals like keeping commandments and serving God. (Like all personal covenants, they are between God and the person and if the person’s understanding changes, their view of that covenant and its validity changes.) Wearing garments is an institutional feature of temple attendance and ritual that also extends into daily life. But it’s not the essence of what LDS temple ritual (and Sister Dennis actually used the term “temple rituals,” which is interesting) is about.

Most of the recent garment rhetoric seems to be aimed at young LDS women. Well of course they pick on the young women, a fairly powerless group in the Church. Look, even zealously orthodox LDS allow plenty of exceptions to the 24/7 idea. Like when you go swimming or when young men play basketball. Garments are oh-so-important, blah, blah, blah, but not needed if you play basketball. That’s how important garment-wearing is even for the LDS leadership: it’s not as important as basketball. Which means it’s not really that important. Have you ever seen an LDS religion prof charge to midcourt during a BYU basketball game and shout, “Sin! Impiety! There are endowed young men on this court not wearing garments!” If young men get a pass to play basketball, leave the young women going to exercise class and the grocery store alone.

So why all the recent discussion about it? They’re weaponizing garments the same way they are weaponizing covenants. Even Elder Oaks acknowledged in his Sunday morning talk that LDS garments are about regulating the membership, both self-regulation and regulation by others. It’s about social control. I don’t know what actual effect all this garment talk is going to have on LDS behavior, probably very little, but it is chipping another layer of credibility off the LDS leadership foundation.

Jack N. Gerard, a Seventy: Integrity

Seeing an LDS leader talk about honesty and integrity lately makes me want to throw things at the screen. They play fast and loose with LDS history and official accounts while carefully limiting the access of LDS and non-LDS scholars to documents in the LDS archives and other vaults. They hid alternate accounts of the First Vision for a century. They play fast and loose with financial reporting, not just refusing to disclose any details of LDS finances and assets to the membership WHO CONTRIBUTE ALL THE MONEY but also misreporting financial information to the SEC, resulting in a recent massive fine as part of the leadership acknowledgement that they filed misleading financial reports (largely designed to hide the extent of LDS assets). And they lecture us about honesty and integrity?

This guy made a comment about those who publicly criticize the Church or LDS leadership. That is, people who publicly talk about issues the leadership doesn’t want members to talk about. That is, people like you and me. And people who make accurate and truthful statements about things the leadership wants you to either stay silent about or to repeat misleading and inaccurate (sometimes simply false) official claims. It’s clear what the Church wants is institutional loyalty — regardless of integrity or truth. What you should do is to follow your conscience. They want you to do what you’re told.

In the course of criticizing people who speak truthfully about the Church and LDS leadership, this guy talked about Korihor. You know, Korhior who criticized religious beliefs and who was lynched by offended believers in a Book of Mormon story. [A lynching is an extrajudicial killing.] So this guy, from the General Conference pulpit, is signaling to Church members that (1) like Korihor, people who speak unwanted truths about the Church in our day are in league with Satan and are knowingly telling falsehoods; and (2) if you get upset and decide to kill them, well I guess they deserve it, don’t they? Sounds a lot like the way Trump signals his followers that political violence, if done to further Trump’s wishes, is okay, even commendable. So this is how low leadership rhetoric is sinking: They are endorsing religious violence against people who criticize the Church or LDS leadership, that is, people who tell the truth about topics and issues the leadership does not want discussed. This tactic is utterly appalling. Maybe it’s time to take another look at LDS religious violence in the 19th century and see whether there are any similar plans or activities under way today.

Bottom line: LDS leadership is in full retrenchment mode. Their tactics are shifting. Weaponizing covenants and legitimizing religious violence are part of the new toolkit. Give serious consideration to how you can protect you and your family from these new leadership initiatives.