I’m pulling out a fascinating throwback interview from 2017. Shannon Flynn offered an unprecedented, insider’s look into the life and crimes of Mark Hofmann, the infamous Mormon document forger and bomber. Flynn, who worked closely with Hofmann in the years leading up to the 1985 Salt Lake City bombings, provides a chilling portrait of a man who masked a masterfully deceptive and murderous nature behind the facade of an unassuming, nerdy coin and document dealer.
Making of a Master Forger
Hofmann’s criminal career didn’t begin with historical documents, but with coins. He started forging at just 12 years old, discovering a complex electroplating technique to add mint marks to legitimate pennies, instantly inflating their value. He viewed deception as a profession, famously telling prosecutors, “I cheat people. I deceive for a living. I’m good at it.”
His expertise eventually escalated to creating some of the most sought-after Mormon and American historical documents, such as the “Salamander Letter” and the “Oath of a Freeman” (the first printed document in America). Hofmann’s methods were terrifyingly brilliant. To bypass expert scrutiny, he stole blank 19th-century paper from library archives using a razor blade. To simulate 150 years of ink oxidation in just 30 minutes, he built a makeshift aging chamber using an old fish tank and the ozone-producing motor of an electric toy train.
Beating the Polygraph
One of the most astonishing revelations is how Hofmann managed to pass a polygraph test administered by top experts. Utilizing self-hypnosis and biofeedback techniques he had practiced since he was 13, Hofmann essentially convinced his subconscious that he was innocent. He scored an extraordinarily high “truthful” rating, a feat that shocked examiners and forced the intelligence community to rethink the validity of polygraph testing for highly trained individuals like spies.
The Escalation to Murder
Despite his lucrative forgeries, Hofmann’s sprawling web of lies and debts ultimately trapped him. Under crushing pressure to produce the nonexistent “McLellin collection” to satisfy a $185,000 bank loan, Hofmann realized his exposure was imminent. Flynn likens Hofmann’s situation to wrapping a string around a finger until it hurts so badly you will do anything to get the string off. To buy himself time and distract authorities, Hofmann built pipe bombs filled with nails, cold-bloodedly murdering financial associate Steve Christensen and innocent housewife Kathleen Sheets. A third bomb accidentally detonated in Hofmann’s own car, permanently injuring him and ultimately leading to his arrest when investigators realized his story of the exploding bomb didn’t match the forensic evidence.
Innocent Caught in the Crossfire
Flynn’s own life was temporarily ruined by his proximity to Hofmann. Believing his friend was innocent, Flynn volunteered to help the police but instead found himself arrested, thrown in jail, and falsely accused by authorities of harboring a “bomb factory.” Today, Hofmann serves a life sentence in maximum security, having survived a suicide attempt that permanently damaged his forging hand. Flynn’s account remains a haunting reminder of how easily a brilliant, manipulative sociopath can fool experts, religious leaders, and closest friends alike.
Sadly Shannon Flynn passed away from lung cancer in 2021, but he was a major character in the recent Netflix series “Murder Among the Mormons.” Surgery following my 2017 interview ruined his vocal cords, which is why he speaks with a raspy voice in the Netflix documentary
Questions for readers:
- Vulnerability of Experts: Hofmann’s forgeries were so meticulous that he fooled top historians, the Library of Congress, the FBI, and forensic experts. What does this tell us about the vulnerability of our historical record, and how can modern institutions protect against master manipulators?
- Ethics of Police Investigations: Shannon Flynn was incredibly traumatized by investigators who lied to the media about him running a “bomb factory” and accused him of murder without evidence. How much leeway should law enforcement have to deceive the public or pressure associates when trying to solve a high-stakes, terrifying crime?
- Psychology of Escalation: Hofmann did not have a history of violent crime or present as a typical psychopath. Yet, he murdered two innocent people simply to delay a financial transaction and avoid being exposed as a fraud. How do white-collar criminals rationalize making the leap from financial deception to extreme violence?
- Flaws of the Polygraph: Mark Hofmann successfully beat a polygraph test by using self-hypnosis and biofeedback, scoring an incredibly high “truthful” rating. Should polygraph tests still be used in criminal investigations or by intelligence agencies knowing that they can be outsmarted by dedicated individuals?
- Faith and Fallibility: Some members left the LDS Church because they felt its leaders should have had the “magic powers” or spiritual discernment to instantly detect Hofmann’s deceit. How should religious communities balance their belief in divine guidance with the reality of human fallibility in their leadership?
Wheat & Tares 
I don’t blame people for leaving. The church has framed the the prophetic voice at near magical levels–“follow the prophet, he knows the way.” And even though it has given a little lip service to fallibility, it has never officially taken it on to dissuade beliefs of infallibility–because if they did, I think they know the bubble would immediately pop for a lot of people. When scriptures and church history are full of fantastic stories of prophets performing amazing feats and we’re told we have this same power, belief of infallibility is the inevitable end. And I think because they’ve let this circus go on way too long, they’ve backed themselves into a corner now where they are complete afraid to speak on anything of consequence for fear of destroying peoples’ faith (if you can even call it that at this point). Frankly, the balance would be to start by popping the bubble. Yes, it would break the faith of some, but that is no different than what is already happening today by their inaction and silence. At least with it broken, the community could actually start having real conversation safely about things it has badly needed to talk about for a very long time. It might actually awaken a few people to realize that life is happening right now in this moment and not in some far off magical imaginary place in the future.
You put “magic powers” in scare quotes as if it’s a silly thing for members to believe. But those men are sustained every conference as “prophets, seers, and revelators.” We’ve got Sheri Dew out here telling people the prophet can “see around corners.” Elder Bednar called Discernment the ability to “detect hidden error and evil in others.” I agree with chrisdrobison: the Hoffman thing is a glaring counterexample to the idea of prophetic infallibility.
The modern church has a Why Should I Listen to You problem. If the prophets have magic powers that allow them to see around corners, it would make sense that we should listen to them. If they don’t, if they’re just regular guys with the cultural biases and prejudices you would expect men of their age and background to have, if they’re just as easily fooled by forgeries and confirmation bias as the rest of us, then why should we listen to them?
Elder Bednar described discernment as the ability to “detect hidden error and evil in others.”
I agree that the Church should probably talk about discernment at least as much as it talks about obedience. But I find this definition surprisingly self-evident. It also seems revealing. Whether or not he intends it this way, it frames discernment primarily as the ability to identify the faults of others, while saying little about discerning our own blind spots. It echoes Jesus’ warning about searching for the mote in another’s eye while remaining unaware of the beam in our own. More fundamentally, discerning potential danger in others is hardly a uniquely spiritual gift. It’s a deeply human survival instinct. The ability to read people, detect deception, and recognize threats is one of the very capacities that has helped our species survive.
Chris – your observation about leadership paying lip service to fallibility while rarely acknowledging it explicitly connects with something I’ve been thinking about as I’ve revisited the “war in heaven” narrative. These days, I’m less interested in whether these stories are historically literal than in what they reveal about the human condition.
If we read Satan as an archetype rather than merely a character, he represents one of humanity’s oldest temptations: the desire for certainty. His proposal wasn’t simply rebellion; it was the promise of a world without risk, ambiguity, or genuine responsibility. It’s the fantasy that reality can be bent to our will rather than that we must learn to inhabit it wisely. But that’s precisely why it’s a fantasy. Reality doesn’t change to accommodate our need for certainty; we do. Growth comes not from escaping uncertainty but from being transformed by it. We mature by learning to perceive reality more clearly, not by demanding that reality conform to our expectations.
Claims of extraordinary spiritual powers can become another version of that same temptation. If someone can supposedly see dangers we cannot, discern hidden evil, or know the future with certainty, then it seems rational to surrender our judgment to theirs. But that comes at a cost. It weakens our capacity to become moral agents who wrestle with uncertainty, exercise wisdom, and take responsibility for our own choices.
In that sense, Satan’s proposal to “destroy the agency of man” wasn’t simply about forcing obedience. It was about eliminating the need for human authorship altogether—replacing the difficult work of becoming with the comfort of certainty. The irony is that whenever we seek certainty from another person instead of cultivating wisdom ourselves, we risk reenacting the very pattern that story warns us against.
“It weakens our capacity to become moral agents who wrestle with uncertainty, exercise wisdom, and take responsibility for our own choices.”
Well said. And I believe that our God wants us to become moral agents who wrestle with uncertainty, exercise wisdom, and take responsibility for our own choices — I do not believe our God wants us to obey other people simply because they hold higher church office. What the Germans called the Führerprinzip has no place under the gospel message.
I believe that others who hold higher church office are generally good people, but I don’t believe that all of their addresses and decisions are revealed — but I generally appreciate their efforts and sustain them in their offices which they hold by common consent of the members (but the changes to common consent over time is another topic).
Doctrine and Covenants 10:37 But as you cannot always judge the righteous, or as you cannot always tell the wicked from the righteous, therefore I say unto you, hold your peace until I shall see fit to make all things known unto the world concerning the matter.
We should talk about and push this scripture more. It gives a better frame work to talk about Hoffman and the brethren failing to detect him.
Great comments everyone! SH, I agree that scripture should be shared more.
When it comes to discernment, one almost almost finds what they are looking for. Bednar looks for fault and evil, and probably finds it. Explains quite a bit.
Here’s the full quote from Elder Bednar’s talk:
“As we integrate the teachings of Presidents Cannon and Richards, we learn that the gift of discernment operates basically in four major ways.
“First, as we “read under the surface,” discernment helps us detect hidden error and evil in others.
“Second, and more important, it helps us detect hidden errors and evil in ourselves. Thus the spiritual gift of discernment is not exclusively about discerning other people and situations, but, as President Cannon taught, it is also about discerning things as they really are within us.
“Third, it helps us find and bring forth the good that may be concealed in others.
“And fourth, it helps us find and bring forth the good that may be concealed in us. Oh, what a blessing and a source of protection and direction is the spiritual gift of discernment!”
Thanks for sharing the quote in context, Jack. I agree with him that seeing both the evil and the good within ourselves and others is important.
I disagree with the idea that discernment is a function of priesthood. I would actually go so far as to say that the sycophancy that accompanies priesthood (especially general authority priesthood) actively erodes one’s natural capacity for discernment. How are you supposed to see the evil/error in yourself when everyone is constantly telling you how great you are?
Kirkstall,
I think just about everyone who has received a patriarchal blessing can say that they’ve been blessed with the gift or an added measure of discernment. IMO, that’s as it should be as an increased ability to discern is part and parcel of receiving the Holy Ghost.
That said, I think discernment is essential in certain priesthood callings–especially those that involve the keys of presidency. A presiding high priest is typically blessed with the ability to discern all spiritual gifts–whether they be of God. Such a gift is vital for the protection and nurture of the flock–and the entire church is built on a framework of presiding high priests who are called after the holy order of God to stand in the place of the Savior and govern as he would. Of course, that’s easier said than done–but even so, a presiding authority cannot lead as the Savior would without an enhanced gift of discernment.
@Jack, “A presiding authority cannot lead as the Savior would without an enhanced gift of discernment.” Yep, orthodox believers need to overlook the failings and mistakes of priesthood leaders in order to believe that they really do have access to supernatural powers to “lead as the Savior would”. The “keys of presidency” were certainly instrumental in denying blacks the priesthood and temple access, insisting that polygamy was required for exaltation, teaching gay members that they could pray the gay away, teaching women that baring their shoulders was sinful, teaching women that they all should be housewives if at all possible, denying baptism to the children of LGBTQ people, etc. Is that really what “leading as the Savior would” looks like? I personally don’t think the Savior had anything to do with any of that.
A lot of other people, when confronted with the many failings and mistakes of priesthood leaders over the history of the Church, conclude that these men are likely just normal mortals who apparently don’t have any supernatural priesthood powers of discernment, at least not most of the time, and not any more than people outside our faith.
mountainclimber479,
If presiding officers have failed to the degree that you proport that doesn’t mean that the principles I’ve set forth are wrong. It just means that those officers need to do better. That said, I think there are flaws in your argument–and that church leaders, as imperfect as they may be, have not done nearly as bad as you suggest. In fact, I’d say that on whole they’ve done rather well in spite of their weakness.
As to your argument: I think you need to figure (1) the power of culture and how it has evolved over time and (2) the nature of partisan thinking and how it influences our perception generally.
Jack, at what point did using the word ‘Mormon’ to describe members of the church become a victory for Satan? Did it only become a victory for Satan the moment of Nelson’s declaration? Did prior church leaders who promoted it cause many instances of victories for Satan? Are victories for Satan changing? Do victories for Satan of this magnitude even matter? Can Satan influence church leaders who follow him? Is it ‘amen’ to the priesthood of leaders who followed Satan this way? Can personal feelings influence perceptions of what constitutes a victory for Satan? Cana church leader be ‘unleashed’ from the constraints allowing him to do good but he death of his predecessor? Do you want or continue this conversation on other issues? And are you finally admitting in your previous comment that church leaders might make mistakes while serving and acting in official capacity? Are you really Jack? Is it possible for people like you to change their mind and admit that had wrong perceptions about the church? Can ‘the church: be wrong? Does it matter? Who does or doesn’t it matter to? Can people get hurt by good intentions? Can people who hurt others be held responsible for their actions even if they don’t mean to hurt those people? How about legally? Who has the answers to all these questions? You? Does the atonement apply to church leaders, and does this suggest they can still ere? Does your faith require that leaders never err? How much can they err? How about ancient leaders? Could they make errors as leaders? Did they? How well do you know the Old Testament? Early church? Early modern church? Should we confirm the teachings of leaders or just accept? Is it possible we could never receive a confirmation of something have taught? Do you accept everything Jesus taught? Does the church? What did Jesus say about divorce and marrying people who are divorced?
I’ll go with the suggestion that it looks like you might possibly allow for the smallest error by a church leader on their capacity. Just the smallest, smallest error. So small hat it doesn’t even matter. That would be a miracle for you. Well done, you’ve experienced something miraculous–a mighty change of heart! May many more come your way, brother. There’s a world ahead of you.
Brian
On the one hand, if the church provides the keys (by virtue of the priesthood) necessary for obtaining eternal life–then we’re not going to let a little thing that a leader said keep us from moving toward that goal, right? If, on the other hand, the church does not provide those keys then who cares what anyone says.
That said, as one who is a firm believer in the restored church–I’ll say this much: I believe that President Nelson’s statement was an effect of having crossed the line of negative returns. In other words, before the change we were able to get enough productive usage out of the nickname to justify not retiring it. But the time came when it began to do more harm than good–and that’s when the change was finally made. And for my own part, when I think of the shift towards irreligion in the West and the loss of a literal Jesus even among many believers–I believe the timing of the change to be inspired.
@Jack,
“If presiding officers have failed to the degree that you proport that doesn’t mean that the principles I’ve set forth are wrong. It just means that those officers need to do better.”
That is the most defensible thing you have ever said on this subject. A church can claim genuine priesthood authority and real spiritual gifts while also admitting that its leaders have taught false doctrine and caused real harm. That position survives the historical record. What does not survive is the version where every reversal gets retroactively explained as God’s will all along. For the record, I don’t claim I can prove that LDS leaders discern no better than anyone else. That’s the way things appear to me, but that’s a hard thing to prove. Disproving infallibility is so much easier, and requires only a few clear examples.
Which is why I was disappointed that you immediately went back to explaining those examples away. You were vague, but I’ll take a shot at both points.
On culture. I take the argument to be that God works with people inside their own culture, so his instructions change as the culture does. However, not one of my examples fits.
Polygamy ran hard against the prevailing culture the entire time it was practiced, and it ended under federal legal pressure rather than because the culture came around. That example runs backwards.
On race, I expect you’ll say that the culture of Joseph’s and Brigham’s day couldn’t have accepted black equality in the Church. That claim doesn’t match with what was really happening in that era. Plenty of their contemporaries did far better. The abolitionist movement was in full voice. The African Methodist Episcopal Church had been ordaining black ministers since 1816, decades before Brigham instituted the ban. Joseph Smith himself ran for president in 1844 on a platform of compensated emancipation, and he ordained Elijah Abel to the priesthood. So the ceiling of what was culturally possible was demonstrably higher than what the Church chose. Brigham then went the other direction and signed territorial legislation legalizing black slavery in Utah in 1852. And the ban outlasted the culture argument by decades. It survived Brown v. Board by twenty-four years and the Civil Rights Act by fourteen. If God were waiting on the culture, the wait ended long before 1978.
The Church’s own Gospel Topics essay concedes the ban came after Joseph, and disavows the theories taught to justify it. That is the Church itself acknowledging that prophets taught false doctrine for over a century, and pointing at the surrounding racial culture as the cause. If culture explains the ban, then leaders were following culture instead of correcting it. That is my point, not yours.
Strapless dresses. When I was a BYU student, there was a row of photos of BYU homecoming queens from the 1950s hanging in the Wilkinson Center, the majority in strapless gowns, in a building where those same dresses were later banned. Western culture never concluded that a woman’s shoulders were promiscuous. The Church did, and then quietly walked it back.
Benson’s plea for women to stay home was badly timed against the culture, not aligned with it. The Church now calls women with lifetime professional careers into the highest offices open to women.
The counsel that gay members could pray it away arrived just as researchers were establishing that they could not. The November 2015 policy was explicitly defended as revealed, and rescinded three and a half years later.
None of these are God accommodating a culture that wasn’t ready. In most of them the Church was behind the culture, not ahead of it.
I’m not really sure what your partisan thinking argument is about. Partisanship means rejecting objectivity in favor of a group. But a religious organization is also a group, and the men who lead it are not culturally neutral observers. They are overwhelmingly of one political and cultural formation, and when they declare that the culture is wrong, that formation comes along with the declaration.
More to the point, the move is unfalsifiable. It engages none of my examples. It only supplies a reason to discount whoever raises them. If disagreeing with leaders is itself evidence of bias, then no evidence of leader error can ever be admitted, and your concession that officers “need to do better” means nothing in practice.
And neither defense touches the subject of this post. Culture and partisanship have nothing to do with Hofmann. The First Presidency was personally deceived by a forger, bought his documents, and locked them in a vault. No cultural pressure, no partisan lens. Just a con man and men who could not see through him.
Now, your reply to Brian. You opened by saying that if the Church holds the keys to eternal life, we’re not going to let a little thing a leader said keep us from that goal. That isn’t a defense of discernment. It’s a concession that the truth of what leaders teach doesn’t much matter as long as the keys are real. If that’s your actual position, then this entire discussion about discernment is beside the point for you.
Then, on the name change, you substituted a far better argument than the one Nelson actually made. Yours is that “Mormon” had crossed into diminishing returns and it was time to retire the nickname. If Nelson had said that in General Conference, I would have no complaint. That is not what he said. He said it is the command of the Lord, that removing the Lord’s name from the Lord’s Church is a major victory for Satan, and that the Lord is offended when we allow such nicknames to be used or adopt or even sponsor them. Not diminishing returns on a brand. Offense against God. And “sponsor” is not ambiguous: mormon.org, the “I’m a Mormon” campaign, “Meet the Mormons,” the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Hinckley’s talk teaching that Mormon should mean “more good.” Either Nelson is wrong, or Hinckley and Monson were. There is no third option. That a rank-and-file member has to build a more sensible rationale than the prophet gave is itself the evidence I’m pointing at.
So, a direct question. Name one thing a past president of the Church taught in his official capacity that was simply wrong. Not “the culture wasn’t ready,” not “the timing was inspired.” Wrong. If you can name one, we agree more than it appears. If you can’t, then fallibility is only theoretical for you, and everything above will keep getting explained away no matter how much of it accumulates.
mountainclimber479,
Let me ask you a question: can you pick one of the elements on your list of teachings that you disagree with and try to formulate an argument in favor of it? As to why it might’ve been something that church leaders taught in good faith–even under the hand of inspiration?
I realize that what I’m asking you to do — to steelman something you disagree with — might be harder than what you’ve asked me to do. Even so, my hope is to convey a sense that there are many TBMs like myself who have spent a lifetime thinking about these things–and that we don’t simply fall into a pattern of acceptance because we believe church leaders can do no wrong. And, of course, after chewing on these old bones for decades I’m convinced that the apostles do far less wrong than some folks ascribe to them.
Re: The Ban: I can’t say that I know all of the reasons as to why ten consecutive prophets kept it in place for so long. But I’ve become convinced that at least one of the problems has to do with social integration in the larger world. Here’s a comment that a left at another venue:
“I think we’ve failed to understand both the social dynamics of the time and how they play against the power of temple covenants. In my opinion if the ban had been lifted too early–or never put in place to begin with–it would have ultimately led to full integration before both the saints and the surrounding community were ready to embrace it.
“Now we moderns see integration as a wonderful thing–as we should. But nowhere in American history do we see anything that resembles such a community. Yes, there were many good people who fought for racial equality. But as far as establishing a community where blacks and whites lived together and worked together and intermarried and so forth–there had never been any such thing in this country until after the Civil Rights Movement–and we’re still having difficulty integrating.
“And so, what I’m proposing as at least one of the problems the church had to deal with–besides racism in its own ranks and what-have-you–is the impossibility of integration in the larger culture of which the church was a part.
“Having said that, I realize that I could be wrong in my estimation of how temple covenants might have informed both endowed blacks and whites in those days. But, my sense is that it would have ultimately led to integration–perhaps not in the first generation–but most definitely thereafter. And if that hadn’t been the case then it would’ve been a sure sign of inequality in our temple worship–which I think would be an even greater point of contention in today’s climate than waiting until 1978 to lift the ban.”
Having posted that quote–what I really want to emphasize is that we really don’t know the past as well as we think we do. And that we need to be really careful that we don’t end up linking arms with so many young folks today who have a hard time believing that any good people ever existed at all before their enlightened generation–speaking generally, not about you specifically.
Re: Brigham and Slavery in Deseret: Brigham was actually against slavery and sought to implement a program that would emancipate slaves over time–and there were many appendages to the bill that provided for the welfare of slaves and servants. Here’s a good article on the subject (and don’t let the name of magazine give you cause for doubt):
https://latterdaysaintmag.com/brigham-young-race-and-slavery-reexamining-utahs-1852-service-act/
That’s all I have the strength for at this point–writing can be very burdensome for me–but I hope that what I’ve shared at least gives you a sense of my perspective on these sorts of quandaries.
I should clarify: yes, I believe that it’s naive to think that the church or any other sizable community could’ve carried off full integration back in those days. It just wasn’t doable.
@Jack,
I absolutely can formulate the best arguments possible for all the items in my list (and many more). I was once an orthodox believer. As I learned about these issues, I had to confront them, and for quite some time, I clung to the best faithful explanations that I could find.
I’ll give you the best explanation for the November 2015 policy that I can construct…A bishop faces an eight-year-old whose parents are a married same-sex couple. Baptism means covenants and weekly instruction that the child’s own family is contrary to God’s plan. That is a genuine cruelty to put on a child, and it sets up a collision between her love for her parents and her standing in the ward. The Church already had a nearly identical policy for children in polygamous households, for the same reason. Waiting until eighteen, when the young person can choose as an adult and out from under that pressure, is a coherent and arguably compassionate solution. I don’t think the men who wrote it hated anybody. I think they were trying to keep children from being torn in half.
I mean that. Here’s why it doesn’t get you where you want to go: the policy was announced in November 2015, President Nelson told the young adults in January 2016 that it was the mind and will of the Lord and that each of the Brethren had received spiritual confirmation, and in April 2019 President Oaks announced the reversal as the product of united prayer. Both described as revelation–three and a half years apart–in opposite directions. This one isn’t lost to history or presentism arguments. We have the entire record, and it still doesn’t work. It turns out that Church membership was vocal enough in expressing their support for the scriptural mandate to allow baptism for *everyone* that leadership recognized their error and changed course. God had nothing to do with any of this. Those holding “keys of presidency” simply screwed up. They’re human. Go figure.
Which is the actual disagreement between us. I have never argued that church leaders act in bad faith. I don’t think Brigham Young was a monster or that Ezra Taft Benson was indifferent to women. Sincerity, prayer, decades of thought, and error are entirely compatible. You keep defending their motives. I have been questioning their accuracy. Those are different questions, and you have been answering one I didn’t ask.
On the ban: I appreciate that you’re candid about not knowing why ten prophets kept it. But we don’t have to speculate about the first one, because he told us. Brigham’s February 5, 1852 speech to the territorial legislature is the most developed rationale any church president gave for the restriction, and it rests on the curse of Cain and on fear of mixed-race offspring. It is not about protecting a community not yet ready for integration. Your theory is more humane than his stated reasoning, which is exactly the trouble–you’ve done here what you did with Nelson and the name change. You replaced the prophet’s actual argument with a better one of your own and defended yours. If the reasoning the prophets gave has to be swapped out for yours before it can be defended, that is my point, not yours.
Your claim that nothing in American history resembled an integrated community before the 1960s is answered from inside our own history. Walker Lewis was an ordained elder in the Lowell branch. His son Enoch married a white Latter-day Saint woman. Those Saints managed. What ended it was not social breakdown; it was Brigham’s reaction when William Appleby wrote to him about that marriage. Five years earlier Brigham had said priesthood had nothing to do with blood and called Lewis “one of the best elders”. American culture did not change between 1847 and 1852.
And notice that your argument requires the ban to have been the only available option, when it plainly wasn’t. This was never all or nothing. The Church could have ordained black men and sealed black families while still holding segregated congregations, discouraging interracial marriage, and moving slowly on everything else. That’s precisely what most American denominations did–they segregated the pews and ordained the ministers anyway. If the surrounding culture really was an immovable constraint, God had an enormous range of options short of withholding priesthood and temple ordinances from an entire lineage for over a century. He took none of them.
I’d also ask you to weigh the ban against what this church has demanded of its members when it wanted something. It asked the Saints to consecrate their property. It uprooted them to Ohio, then Missouri, then Nauvoo, then across the plains to the Great Basin. It required plural marriage, and held to it through federal prosecution, disincorporation, seized property, and leaders in prison and in hiding. Those things cost people their homes, their livelihoods, their families, their mental health, and sometimes their lives, and the Saints did them. And I’m asked to believe that this same people, under this same priesthood, could not have been asked to ordain a black man. Really?
Especially when the doctrine was already on the books. Second Nephi 26:33 says God denies none who come to him, black and white, bond and free, male and female, and that all are alike unto God. That was published in 1830, twenty-two years before Brigham’s speech. Acts says God is no respecter of persons. Moroni says God is not a partial God. And when Brigham defended black priesthood in 1847 by saying God made “all flesh of one blood”, he was quoting Paul. He knew the scriptures ran that direction, because he cited them that way himself. Five years later he ran the other way, and ten men after him followed.
Then sit with what your theory requires at the individual level. Jane Manning James asked for her endowment for decades and was refused, finally offered a proxy sealing to Joseph Smith as a servant. On your account, God withheld saving ordinances from a faithful woman so that other members would not have to be in the temple with her. I don’t believe God does that, and I don’t think you do either.
On presentism–I’m not measuring Brigham against 2026. I’m measuring him against Joseph Smith, who ordained Elijah Abel. Against Orson Pratt, who sat in that same 1852 legislature arguing black men should vote and calling the practice under debate “this abominable slavery.” And against Brigham himself in 1847. Every standard I’m using was available in that room.
Last thing, and it’s the honest center of this for me. I did not go through a faith transition over the ban. I transitioned over the refusal to say it was a mistake. If the Church had been willing to name its past errors plainly, apologize for them, and commit to doing better, there’s a very good chance my faith transition wouldn’t have happened in the way that it did. Instead we get essays that disavow the theories while leaving the practice unexplained, and members who spend their energy constructing rationales the prophets themselves never offered. I stopped believing in priesthood discernment in large part because an institution that actually had it would have been the first to say so when it got something badly wrong, rather than the last.
So my question stands, and it’s the same admission I’m describing. Not whether leaders meant well–I’ve granted that. Name one thing the Q15 has collectively taught in its official capacity that was simply wrong.
Fascinating that we believe that people can be convinced that God visited a 14 year-old boy, and God can convince thousands of people leave their homeland, travel across an ocean, build a city, leave that city, march 1,000 miles across the prairie, settle a desert, embrace polygamy, pay tithing, give up coffee and alcohol, and any number of other things, but apparently God convincing those same people that white people and brown people could just get along is so beyond the pale that we had to make sure we were extra racist for a hundred years.
I’ve lost count the number of times that someone here has asked Jack to find one single error from a church president. He never has, I doubt he ever will. When the starting premise is that there are no errors to be found, there will always to be a way to retroactively explain that the chosen path was the correct one.
One of the things that I appreciate the most about the writers and the vast majority of commenters here is that they’re able to have meaningful discussions with often very distinct opinions and still allow others to have their own opinions. It’s in those respectful discussions that I’ve been able to find ideas expressed in a way that helps me understand and better express my relationship with the Gospel as it was taught to me growing up.
I try to be empathetic to others’ viewpoints and to tread carefully so as to not damage what others hold precious. And in trying to read thoughtfully and understand what is being said I have to wonder: Jack, what do you get out of posting your comments on these posts? I don’t know that I need an explanation, I present this as an opportunity for reflection.
My reason for asking is that a delicate, in-depth discussion could be taking place, with personal stories being shared, and you, Jack, will come stomping in to declare what is right and what is wrong. You are dismissive of others’ experiences and hurts that have happened as a result of church teachings and doctrine. I know because you have dismissed my experiences. From my perspective, which is very subjective in this case, the bad experiences other people have had don’t matter to you, Jack, because the church is right and good. How very, very Mormon of you. (Around the turn of the century I started using “Mormon” and “good member of the Church” to differentiate between the members who were trying to be as Christ-like as possible and those who didn’t seem to care who got hurt as long as the Church was true. For me, calling someone Mormon is not a compliment.)
If your “purpose” is to try to help others return to the church, and I try to be charitable and hope this is what you want, at least in my case you have only confirmed that my decision to distance myself from active membership was the correct one. I am honestly glad that you find peace and joy in the church. And I hope that other faithful members continue to find happiness in the gospel. I don’t believe the church needs more staunch, hard-nosed defenders. The world as a whole needs more who are willing to mourn with those who mourn and help them process the difficult and hurtful things they have experienced that were coated with teachings of the church.
Jack writes “In other words, before the change we were able to get enough productive usage out of the nickname to justify not retiring it. But the time came when it began to do more harm than good–and that’s when the change was finally made.”
With hindsight, we should be able to observe with the naked eye the event or inflection point that made this statement true. I’m stumped. Buhler?
Also Jack “I should clarify: yes, I believe that it’s naive to think that the church or any other sizable community could’ve carried off full integration back in those days. It just wasn’t doable.”
This says volumes. You claim to believe in an all powerful priesthood, and yet you also apparently believe in a God who simply cannot do all things. If polygamy didn’t destroy the church, I find it hard to believe simply abstaining from calling black people cursed would have done it.
mountainclimber479 – As in the past, I agree with all of your summations and believe all of your examples to be completely factual. Thanks, I appreciate your efforts.
As I have stated other times here, I was a young missionary in Sydney in 1979-1981, as a result of a mission president gone haywire and seeing general authorities handling of the situation, I came to the conclusion that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is perfect and will always stand the test of time. The church on the other hand is simply the vehicle. Often, it is barely running, and sometimes gets the needed work to make it run smoothly. But in reality it needs a “frame off restoration.” I think Pres Nelson got that right, that the restoration continues. My testimony is of His Gospel, not the church, and that early/young realization has served me well all the way to present day.
Jack – I appreciate your thoughts and your testimony and respect your views. I agree that your descriptions of past events are much better than the GA that stated the church’s position. I am sure that you are comfortable with your views and testimony. We all have our path to follow. I firmly believe that there are numerous paths with iron rods leading to true and pure joy.
Cheers –
PS: Site Owners – Could you install other emojis other than just thumbs up/down?
mountainclimber479 – Thank you so much for your viewpoint. I particularly appreciate your careful wording and specificity. You’ve helped me settle some ideas so that I can better make sense of my own thoughts.
My only minor quibble is with Brigham Young. I think he was fairly monstrous, but your insight has helped me realize that maybe he was a little too focused on taking care of and leading his people and not nearly broad enough in his definition of who his people were. As someone who tries very hard not to harbor hatred or anger toward anyone, that allowance is beneficial to me.
mountainclimber479,
Your steelman argument for the restriction on the baptism of children of gay married parents is quote good–though I might add a few details if it were mine. But it’s when you get into the whys and wherefores of the change that your argument falls a bit short–IMO.
“Both described as revelation–three and a half years apart…”
And? How wide of a gap must there be between revelations–especially when we’re talking about a change in policy and not principle?
“…in opposite directions.”
I see it moving in the same direction–just softened by giving more discretion to local leaders.
“It turns out that Church membership was vocal enough in expressing their support for the scriptural mandate to allow baptism for *everyone*…”
Yes they did — though I think it must be stated that the membership didn’t cry out over the restriction on children of polygamous households which had been in place for something like 20 years. So I am not convinced that the out cry had as much to do with concern for the welfare of children as it did with fear of pushing LGBTQ people away.
“…that leadership recognized their error and changed course.”
Do we really know that’s how it played out? How do we know that the policy wasn’t exactly what needed to be put in place for a short time in order to get the church to face these questions head on?
“God had nothing to do with any of this. Those holding “keys of presidency” simply screwed up.”
I’m reminded of the counsel that the Lord gave to some of the brethren in Section 103. He told them in so many words that they needed to gather 500 men to go with them to Missouri. And then he went on to say:
31 Behold this is my will; ask and ye shall receive; but men do not always do my will.
32 Therefore, if you cannot obtain five hundred, seek diligently that peradventure you may obtain three hundred.
33 And if ye cannot obtain three hundred, seek diligently that peradventure ye may obtain one hundred.
34 But verily I say unto you, a commandment I give unto you, that ye shall not go up unto the land of Zion until you have obtained a hundred of the strength of my house, to go up with you unto the land of Zion.
Now I’m open to the possibility that the Lord gave the apostles two separate revelations on the question of baptizing children of gay married parents. But what seems more likely to me is that they worked within an acceptable range of what might be considered the Lord’s will–just as the verses from Section 103 demonstrate. This is not uncommon–especially when we’re talking about issues of policy. The Lord, in most cases, favors maximum participation on our part in solving problems–and usually there’s a range of acceptable action that he’s satisfied with.
And so, as you can see, I come to this with a whole different mind set. And frankly, though I can’t claim to be smarter than anyone here–not by a longshot–my take is perfectly reasonable to me–and to many who think along the same lines.
***
Re: Integration: I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. You what I’m saying at bottom is temple covenants would have opened rising generations to integration–blacks and whites would have become beholden to each other and it would’ve been only a matter of time before they were wanting to marry each other. Now we moderns have no trouble at all with that today–but back then whatever small degree of integration that may have existed did not look like a party in the culdesac where people lived next door to each other and worked together and married each other.
As you and Chadwick have pointed out–the saints had a lot of tough experiences so why couldn’t they have handled integration? I think that’s good question–and I dare say that had they been commanded to receive their black brothers and sisters as equals in their community many of them would have done their darndest to make it happen. That said, there are two things I think we need to keep in mind: first, being driven off their lands–and finally out of the country–happened for the most part because they were trying to do what the Lord wanted them to do. And so it’s only natural to assume that the same would’ve happened had they integrated blacks as full members of their community. And second, if they had integrated it would have brought down even greater powers from the states upon them. Look at what happened when the saints ended (officially) the practice of polygamy–and remember that the church would not have survived had it not relinquished the practice–and then imagine how it would have been for mixed marriages and their children for generations to come.
All of the said, remember–I’m saying that the problem of social integration was perhaps only one of several reasons for the ban–and even that is just my opinion and nothing more. Even so, I find it interesting that it’s after the larger community–including the church–makes a show of its willingness to give integration an honest effort–and then swifter than a jackrabbit, the ban is lifted.
***
OK–one thing that the apostles have said that I disagree with: As a group, speaking as one voice–I can’t think of anything. But I’m sure I could find a few things that they’ve said on their own–especially in situations that were less official than general conference.
DaveW – Your sentence above, “I’ve lost count the number of times that someone here has asked Jack to find one single error from a church president. He never has, I doubt he ever will. When the starting premise is that there are no errors to be found, there will always be a way to retroactively explain that the chosen path was the correct one.” This reminded me of learning about the “Preface Paradox.”
A few months ago, I was listening to Alex O’Connor discuss the philosophical problem known as the “Preface Paradox.” Imagine an author writes a book filled with 100 claims they believe to be true. Each page contains assertions about things they have absolute certainty in. However, in the preface, the author admits: “Despite my best efforts, there are most certainly mistakes contained in these pages.” Now, we certainly could confine the possible mistakes to mere grammar, but it also extends to substantive claims that are subject to further examination. The Book of Mormon itself begins with its own preface paradox: “And now, if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men.”
This seems reasonable and even rational people make mistakes, and total infallibility is unlikely. However, the paradox exists specifically because the author makes an admission up front that there are mistakes and then, upon examining each page independently, one by one, systematically rejects every proposed error. The tension lies between the general and the specific.
This creates a paradox. The author believes:
A1 – That each individual claim is true.
A2 – That there is at least one claim that is false.
This appears logically inconsistent. How can you believe A₁ is true, A₂ is true, …, A₁₀₀ is true, while also believing that not all of A₁ through A₁₀₀ are true?
Jack, what’s the point of acknowledging that leaders or scripture are fallible if, when pressed, no specific mistake is ever admitted? The Book of Mormon begins by asserting that, although it is “the most correct” book, it nevertheless contains “the mistakes of men.”
But where are they?
If every proposed example is ultimately explained away, reinterpreted, or declared not to be an error, then the admission of fallibility becomes little more than a verbal concession. It is affirmed in principle but denied in practice.
In fact, if no conceivable example could ever qualify as an error, then the claim that prophets or scripture are fallible has no practical content. It functions exactly the same as a claim of infallibility. A meaningful admission of fallibility requires that there be at least some imaginable cases in which we would be willing to say, “Yes, that was a mistake.” Otherwise, the statement “there are mistakes” is simply lip service.
The principle is the same for the Church as it is in my marriage. If I tell my wife, “I know I’m wrong sometimes,” but then, whenever a disagreement arises, I insist that every specific thing I did was justified and refuse to acknowledge a single mistake, what would that admission actually be worth? For most people, saying “I’m not perfect” only has meaning if, at some point, you’re willing to say, “I was wrong.” I think that’s the real issue for many of us here. It’s not that the Church or its leaders are fallible—we’ve all heard that acknowledged countless times. It’s that, when specific examples are raised, there often seems to be an overwhelming reluctance to ever concede that a mistake was actually made. A confession of fallibility that never results in admitting a concrete error begins to feel more rhetorical than substantive.
Thought I would pop in to comment on “though I think it must be stated that the membership didn’t cry out over the restriction on children of polygamous households which had been in place for something like 20 years”. Most members I know(a small group of friends and relatives) didn’t know this. I didn’t.
Not saying it’s good policy, because it’s not.
But(here’s the but) They are situated differently. There are polygamous groups claiming those almighty priesthood keys. And the last time I checked, section 132 was still canonized.
Now if section 132 instead of polygamy (and women as chattel), it stated that same sex marriage was necessary for exhalation, then I would understand the freakout over kids of gay parents.
Just sayin’
Alex is a smart cookie–and I wouldn’t want to be caught in a debate with him. But I think he needs to take some advise from a good engineer. In most situations a “close enough for all intents and purposes” attitude is the way to go. Some mistakes matter far less than we think they do. And if the net outcome is positive–that is, if the Book of Mormon brings us closer to the Savior then why grouse over “Nephi” being mistakenly written as “Nephihah”?
“It’s that, when specific examples are raised, there often seems to be an overwhelming reluctance to ever concede that a mistake was actually made.”
On the other hand some folks see mistakes where there aren’t any. The Lord’s people have historically been a gainsaying people–who watch for iniquity and make a man an offender for a word and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate.
Even so, I’ve seen leaders apologize and correct themselves. I’ve even heard them tell stories about they–themselves–making mistakes. And so I think what the real problem is here–is that some folks believe that the apostles have made mistakes–even serious mistakes–when they’ve spoken with one voice on sensitive issues. And it’s there–in that narrow category–that we’re far less likely to see the apostles making any apologies. And the primary reason for that is because when they work together they bring greater resources to bear on the issue at hand–and I mean both temporal and spiritual resources. A righteous council of united hearts and minds has the power to open the heavens like nothing else can.
Jack,
You have still not taken up the challenge. It seems you’ll happily preach fallibility but you’re really a defender of infallibility. Again, your comments lack specificity and factual support. When have LDS leaders apologized and corrected themselves? I have noted that when they are fined by the SEC that they circle the wagons and refuse to comment. Do you believe that was one of the times that members thought they made a mistake but really didn’t?
Jack,
“And? How wide of a gap must there be between revelations–especially when we’re talking about a change in policy and not principle?”
Notice that you’ve framed this two ways in the same comment. Here it’s “policy and not principle.” A few paragraphs later you say you’re “open to the possibility that the Lord gave the apostles two separate revelations.” Those two framings can’t both be right. If 2015 was mere policy selected from a range of acceptable options, then calling it revelation is meaningless, and there was no reason to present it as one. If it was revelation, the policy/principle line doesn’t get you out of the problem.
It’s worth noting that this is exactly the rebrand the Brethren themselves performed. In January 2016 it was revelation. By 2019 it was policy. The distinction you’re relying on didn’t exist until it became necessary.
As for the size of the gap: I don’t have a required number of years. But you’re the one arguing that conflicting revelations reflect God working with shifts in human culture over time. That defense needs cultural change to point at. Between November 2015 and April 2019, what changed? Not the culture. What changed is that members objected loudly and the Church absorbed sustained public damage.
“I see it moving in the same direction–just softened by giving more discretion to local leaders.”
This isn’t right on the facts. Bishops have always had discretion over baptisms, including baptisms of children with LGBTQ parents, and in practice they almost always approve when the parents want it. The POX removed that discretion and forbade the baptisms outright. The 2019 change gave it back. Going from “forbidden in every case” to “permitted in virtually every case” is not a softening of direction. It is the direction reversed.
If you want to argue otherwise, name something the 2019 policy still forbids that pre-2015 practice allowed.
“the membership didn’t cry out over the restriction on children of polygamous households”
There’s a simpler explanation than the one you’re reaching for. That restriction touched a small number of families, nearly no member ever encountered it, and it was never announced–it sat quietly in a handbook. The POX touched a large and growing population, reached every member within days because it leaked, and landed on families that people knew personally. Different scale, different visibility, different reaction. You don’t need to impute a motive to explain the difference.
But since you did impute one, let’s look at it. You treat “fear of pushing LGBTQ people away” as a suspect motive, something less worthy than concern for children. Why would it be? If a policy predictably drives people out of the Church, that’s a reason to question the policy, not a reason to question the people who raised the alarm.
Section 103
The analogy works only if the Lord specifies the range in advance. That is precisely what the text does. Five hundred, then three hundred, then one hundred, with a stated floor. Everyone involved knew they were operating inside a declared range, and knew the fallback positions were acceptable before they fell back to them.
Nothing remotely like that happened in 2015. No one said “this is one of several options the Lord will accept.” The opposite was said. In his January 10, 2016 worldwide devotional, President Nelson described the Fifteen meeting repeatedly in the temple in fasting and prayer, and said the Lord then inspired President Monson “to declare the mind of the Lord and the will of the Lord.” The apostles’ role, he said, was to sustain what had been revealed. That is not a man describing a choice among acceptable alternatives. That is a man describing a specific answer received.
And when it was reversed in 2019, the reversal was presented as continuing revelation as well.
There’s a second problem with the analogy. In Section 103 the options inside the range are roughly equivalent in acceptability — fewer men, same errand, same outcome sought. Here, one of the supposedly acceptable options produced documented harm to real families, was reversed after three and a half years of pressure, and the reversal was publicly justified as helping affected families and reducing contention. Options genuinely inside an acceptable range don’t usually require a public walk-back.
“my take is perfectly reasonable to me–and to many who think along the same lines.”
I’ll grant you that. Let me describe who those people are.
Category 1: A dispassionate non-member. Religious or not, not hostile to the Church. Hand them the 2015 announcement and the 2019 reversal with no commentary attached. They conclude the leaders made a mistake. Every time.
Category 2: Someone who holds that the Q15, speaking collectively, cannot err. That person starts from the conclusion that both the POX and its reversal were God’s will, and reasons backward to an explanation. Those explanations are always more elaborate than “they got it wrong.” Sometimes the elaborate explanation is the correct one. But then the same procedure has to be run on polygamy and its reversal, the priesthood and temple ban, women counseled out of the workforce, modesty rhetoric about shoulders, orientation change, and a half dozen more. The gymnastics compound.
Category 3: A faithful member who takes prophetic fallibility seriously–who believes leaders have made and will make significant mistakes, and that they are nonetheless called and can be inspired. This person reads the POX as a clear case of prophetic error, because that’s the simplest explanation that fits the evidence.
Integration
“back then whatever small degree of integration that may have existed did not look like a party in the culdesac…”
Two things you still haven’t addressed.
First, Elijah Abel was ordained an elder and a seventy under Joseph Smith and served missions. Q. Walker Lewis was ordained as well. The Church did this and survived it. Whatever the ban was solving, it wasn’t a problem that had already proven unsolvable.
Second, and this is the one I keep raising: ordination and temple access are separable from social integration. The Church could have ordained black men and admitted black members to the temple while maintaining segregated congregations and discouraging interracial marriage. That is exactly what a great many American churches did. It’s ugly and it would still be ugly, but it is far less than what the Church actually did, and it was available the entire time. Your explanation has to account for why that lesser option was never taken.
“being driven off their lands… it’s only natural to assume that the same would’ve happened had they integrated”
The ban was formalized by Brigham Young in Utah, after the Saints had put themselves beyond the reach of the people who had driven them out. There was no one left in the territory to drive them anywhere.
“the church would not have survived had it not relinquished the practice”
You’ve just made my argument for me.
You’re saying that a defining religious practice, taught as eternal doctrine and defended as revelation for decades, was abandoned because the institution would not otherwise have survived. That is external pressure producing a reversal of a revealed position. Once you concede that this mechanism operates–and you’ve now conceded it in writing–you can’t object when I apply the same mechanism to 1978 and to 2019.
On the substance: the notion that ordaining black men would have provoked greater federal hostility than plural marriage is simply not true. Polygamy produced federal legislation, disincorporation, seizure of Church property, and imprisonment. Integrated congregations existed in the United States throughout this period. They were unusual. They were not a federal matter.
“swifter than a jackrabbit, the ban is lifted”
Test that against your own timeline. The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965. If the ban tracked the wider society’s willingness to integrate, it should have come down in the late sixties. It lasted thirteen more years. Whatever that is, it isn’t a jackrabbit.
Here’s what was actually happening by 1978. The Church was building a temple in Sao Paulo, funded substantially by Brazilian members, in a country where “black blood” meant a large fraction of those members could not enter the building they had paid for. BYU was subject to a number of athletic boycotts and protests. The institutional cost of maintaining the ban had become unsustainable. Then the revelation came.
That is the same kind of mechanism you described for polygamy. You accepted it there without hesitation. I don’t see what makes it illegitimate here.
________________________________
“As a group, speaking as one voice–I can’t think of anything.”
I appreciate the straight answer. It clarifies a great deal.
It also means that when you agree on this blog that prophets are fallible (which you have done a number of times in order to soften your comments and to make yourself appear more open minded than you actually are), you’re saying something far narrower than most people here take you to be saying. Most people read “prophets are fallible” as “the Q15, acting together, can get things wrong.” You mean that individual men can be wrong in unofficial settings. Those are different claims, and the second one is nearly no claim at all — almost nobody disputes that a man can be mistaken at a fireside. I’d just ask that you stop claiming to be a believer in prophetic fallibility in your comments here, unless you clearly state what that really means for you.
Take ten sensitive issues in Church history where prophetic infallibility is questioned. For each one, set the best apologetic account beside the simple explanation that fifteen men got it wrong. Do that ten times and look at the total. At some point the accumulated complexity on the apologetic side is itself the evidence. The convoluted answer can’t be right on every sensitive issue.
None of this forces an all-or-nothing conclusion. There is room to hold that the Q15 has made serious mistakes, and that they are still called, still capable of inspiration, and still leading the Church. Moving from category 2 to category 3 doesn’t cost you anything you actually need.
mountainclimber479,
I think you’re smarter than I am when it comes to these sorts of arguments. I don’t know how you’re able to work through so many details in such a clear logical fashion–it’s truly impressive. That said, I think there a some finer points that need some clarification.
“If 2015 was mere policy selected from a range of acceptable options, then calling it revelation is meaningless, and there was no reason to present it as one.”
Of course you’re right if the range is so broad as to render any appeal for inspiration unnecessary. But remember–in Section 103 the Lord allows only so much leeway. And so there must be some measure of guidance to keep us from running afoul of the Lord’s will. Though I think a more positive way to think about it is that our desire to do his will is what keeps us within the range he has established.
“Bishops have always had discretion over baptisms, including baptisms of children with LGBTQ parents, and in practice they almost always approve when the parents want it.”
I think it’s important to remember that the 2015 policy was put in place shortly after gay marriage was legalized. IMO, it was a reminder to the members as to where the church stood on the matter in doctrinal terms. And so while I can agree that a “reversal” in 2019 is technically true–there’s really no going back to the way things were before. While it may look like a reversal on paper the mindset approaching it is forever changed.
I think we also need to remember that the 2015 policy was instituted under President Monson–whereas the change that occurred in 2019 was under President Nelson. I have no problem with the idea of President Monson feeling that it was necessary to markedly establish doctrinal boundaries–and then President Nelson feeling that it was OK at a certain point to soften the means of establishing those boundaries. Frankly, I believe the whole thing was inspired.
Re: fear of pushing LGBTQ people away: Maybe I was unclear–but I was addressing what I thought *you* believed to be the reason for the outcry. And so I was saying (in so many words) that it was less about excluding children and more about LGBTQ people being pushed away from the church–and I meant it without any qualification. Even so, my sense is that there were many people who were completely sincere in their soul cry.
Re: Section 103:
“The analogy works only if the Lord specifies the range in advance.”
Come now, brother. I agree that analogies have their limits–but within those limits there’s a whole lot that’s applicable to the subject. I think we can surmise that it is acceptable in many instances to work within a range of good. It’s not unlike the old yarn: the Liahona may show you which way to go–but it’s not gonna tell you which tree to stop under.
That said, I’m open to the idea of there being two separate powerful revelations. I don’t think it really matters how the whole thing played out spiritually so long as it was acceptable to the Lord. And if the apostles say that they’ve acted under inspiration–then I take them at their word.
Re: integration: I’ve failed to make myself clear–that is, with regard to the crux of the conundrum. I’m talking about the power of temple covenants. I simply cannot believe that endowed black members and endowed white members could have gone very long without becoming beholden to each other. I believe that interracial marriage would have been inevitable among them. And though that is a beautiful picture to us moderns–the only way that such a society could have thrived in those days is if Deseret had been a veritable City of Enoch.
I realize that some of my thoughts on this subject may seem a bit “out there.” Even so, I must admit that I’m a bit troubled by our collective lack of “boots on the ground” understanding of the past. The past is more than just a foreign country–it’s another planet.
“You’re saying that a defining religious practice, taught as eternal doctrine and defended as revelation for decades, was abandoned because the institution would not otherwise have survived. That is external pressure producing a reversal of a revealed position. Once you concede that this mechanism operates–and you’ve now conceded it in writing–you can’t object when I apply the same mechanism to 1978 and to 2019.”
Nor would I wish too object. The real question is: was it inspired? And I believe all of those changes were inspired.
“The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965. If the ban tracked the wider society’s willingness to integrate, it should have come down in the late sixties. It lasted thirteen more years. Whatever that is, it isn’t a jackrabbit.”
Social change of this sort typically requires generations to carry it off–and we’ve still got a long way to go vis-a-vis integration in the West. And so, IMO, thirteen years is really a very small amount of time in the grand scheme of things. It’s kinda like the gap between 1776 and 1787.
“There is room to hold that the Q15 has made serious mistakes, and that they are still called, still capable of inspiration, and still leading the Church.”
In theory–yes. But what happens all too often with members who hold to this view is that they don’t give the apostles the benefit of the doubt–at least not to the degree that they should–and base their disagreement with them on the premise of lack of inspiration. In which case I ask: why should we have prophets at all if we’re the ones who decide whether or not their inspired?
@Jack,
I’m going to let the POX and race threads rest. As your explanations become ever more convoluted and complicated, you’re making my overall point for me. When each sensitive Church issue is investigated individually, it is possible to accept that a complex explanation could be possible. However, when you look at these issues in the aggregate, the amount of mental gymnastics involved in order to make prophets remain infallible is just too much. That’s what you’re doing here.
Your closing question is the more interesting thing anyway:
“why should we have prophets at all if we’re the ones who decide whether or not they’re inspired?”
I hear that question constantly, and nearly always from Church members who were taught their whole lives that the Brethren would never lead them astray. It lands hardest on those who have just worked out that the Fifteen, acting together, have made serious mistakes. I have real sympathy for them, because I was one of them. They were taught a standard their leaders could not meet, and when it gives way it can take down a faith someone built an entire life on.
But once the grief and the anger settle, my answer is that Church members need to step up their game. There are more than two options here. It’s not either prophets are infallible and should be followed no matter what or prophets have zero value and should always be ignored. There is a huge amount of space between those two opposites, and that is where most thoughtful members actually live.
And that middle ground is not something I invented to get out of a bind. It is the Church’s own stated position, and has been from the start.
Moroni tells the reader not to take the book on anyone’s say-so but to ask God directly. Section 9 says to study it out in your own mind first, then ask whether it is right. Section 58 says a man who must be commanded in all things is a slothful servant. Every officer and every canonized revelation is presented for common consent, which is theater unless a member could sincerely raise a hand the other way. Joseph Smith said he taught correct principles and let the people govern themselves.
And Brigham Young, of all people, told the Saints in the Tabernacle in January 1862 that what worried him was not that one man might lead the people to destruction. What worried him was that the people had so much confidence in their leaders that they would never ask God for themselves whether those leaders were being led by Him. He feared they would settle into “blind self-security,” handing their eternal destiny to other men. He then told every man and woman to know for themselves, by the Spirit, whether their leaders were walking the path the Lord dictates. (JD 9:150. J. Reuben Clark quoted the passage approvingly to the seminary and institute teachers in 1954, so it isn’t a line critics dug up.)
So the arrangement you’re objecting to is the one the Church says it operates under. If members weighing their leaders’ counsel for themselves makes prophets pointless, that objection isn’t aimed at me. Now, I will say that I think recent Church leaders have erred in emphasizing their infallibility and insisting on blind obedience, but that doesn’t mean that the call to work things out for ourselves isn’t valid.
What prophets are for, under that arrangement, is direction worth taking seriously. Often useful, sometimes inspired, never a substitute for the work. A lifetime of outsourcing right and wrong entirely to fifteen fallible men produces spiritual immaturity, and learning to do that work is, I believe, among the main reasons we’re here. Yes, discerning right from wrong is hard when nobody hands you the answer. That difficulty is the point. The Church can help, and often does. What it cannot do is do it for you.
That path is harder than obedience. It is also the only version in which anything actually grows.
mountainclimber479,
As to your first paragraph–it’s really pretty simple. The Law of God is simple–which is to live by his word. However, because God is in the details his counsel may not always be simplistic.
“So the arrangement you’re objecting to is the one the Church says it operates under.”
You’ve got me wrong, brother. Yes, I love the apostles and I believe they’re inspired–but I’ve done my own hard work of learning to know the truth of things for myself. And of course, I’ve been blessed far and away beyond what my meager efforts deserve.
And so, it is precisely because I have a personal witness that the apostles are the Lord’s anointed that I am always poised to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks for engaging with me–take care, brother.
Jack
“I think he needs to take some advice from a good engineer. In most situations, a “close enough for all intents and purposes” attitude is exactly the right approach. Many mistakes matter far less than we imagine. And if the Book of Mormon genuinely brings people closer to the Savior, then why fret over “Nephi” accidentally being written as “Nephihah”?”
But this is where I think you continue to miss the point. You keep framing the critics’ concerns as though they are the equivalent of a marriage falling apart because someone squeezed the toothpaste wrong or hung the toilet paper the wrong way. That simply isn’t the issue. The truth claims surrounding the Book of Mormon or whatever other things deemed “revelations” are not only about the positive fruits it produces—which I readily acknowledge many people experience—but also about substantive claims regarding its historicity and the process by which it was translated. Those claims have come under serious scrutiny. The errors being discussed are not grammatical mistakes or misspellings; they are claims that many now believe are demonstrably false.
From reading many of your comments, I know you are a devoted husband, father, and member of the Church. But I wonder whether the same apologetic framework you apply to the Church would strengthen your family relationships. If you made a significant mistake, would it be better to continually explain why your actions were understandable, or simply say, “I was wrong”? Although that is often easier said than done, isn’t that ultimately what repairs trust? Ironically, that is exactly what the Church teaches its members to do: acknowledge mistakes, repent, and seek to mend the harm done so relationships can heal. Yet when it comes to institutional errors, the message often feels different. President Oaks famously said, “The Church doesn’t seek apologies or give them.”
Can you really blame people for walking away from a relationship they sincerely believe has been marked by deception, only to be met with explanations rather than accountability? If a spouse is unfaithful and then spends all of their energy justifying their behavior instead of taking responsibility, most of us would recognize that as corrosive to the relationship. Trust is rarely rebuilt through rationalization. It is rebuilt through honesty, humility, and accountability.
Jack
I can appreciate your generosity in assuming they likely did not intend to cause harm or deliberately deceive (though even that could be debated). But acknowledging that they are inspired does not require me—or anyone else—to assume that everything they say is inspired.
The problem, as I see it, is that the Church has created a culture that discourages dissent by implying that sustaining leaders means never “speaking evil of the Lord’s anointed.” That effectively insulates leaders from meaningful criticism. But to sustain means to support, and support is not the same thing as enabling. In any other context, refusing to acknowledge harmful behavior for the sake of preserving someone’s authority would be recognized as codependence.
For example, I personally thought the Church’s decision to separate from the Boy Scouts was inspired—though my bias is probably influenced by the fact that I only ever made it to Tenderfoot. They have unquestionably made many inspired decisions. But, as mountainclimber has documented well, they have also proclaimed some remarkably poor ideas in the name of God, only to later retreat from them with increasingly implausible apologetics. That pattern doesn’t strengthen faith; it weakens trust.
@Jack,
“As to your first paragraph–it’s really pretty simple. The Law of God is simple–which is to live by his word. However, because God is in the details his counsel may not always be simplistic.”
You are completely missing/misrepresenting my point. I believe in a simple gospel. What is not simple are the best apologetic arguments for polygamy, the race/priesthood ban, all women being homemakers, promiscuous shoulders, praying the gay away, the POX, etc. Those explanations are complex and convoluted. Every. Single. Time. Any reasonable person who doesn’t start with the conclusion that the Q15 as a collective body is infallible would look at these issues and the best apologetic arguments and conclude that in at least some of the cases, the Q15 screwed up. Again, the gospel is simple. The apologetics for the Q15’s mistakes are not. It’s an important distinction.
“And so, it is precisely because I have a personal witness that the apostles are the Lord’s anointed that I am always poised to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
I feel like my position from my previous comment on the value of prophets when they aren’t always right is closer to “giving them the benefit of the doubt” than where you are. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt means that you consider them trustworthy (but not necessarily 100% infallible) while still very much leaving open the door for that person to be wrong. Since you can identify no past big mistakes made by the Q15 in spite of mounds of evidence to the contrary, I think you are giving them far, far more than the benefit of the doubt. They can be the Lord’s anointed, who you give the benefit of the doubt, and they can still make big mistakes sometimes. None of that is necessarily incompatible.
Holy smokes, Jack. Have you taken a step back and read the words you’re posting?
You say that the Lord allows his servants to work “within an acceptable range of what might be considered the Lord’s will”?
Apparently that acceptable range allows for diametrically opposed outcomes within a 3 year period. If that’s all the divine guidance the keys of leadership afford, what’s the point?
Jack, they are men. They may mean well but the evidence you can see with your own eyes screams that this is an organization of men who have absolutely zero supernatural ability to claim even a modicum of edge or discernment let alone see around corners.
To second Butch. Just so you know, Jack, your absolute surety looks from a distance more like naivety than mature faith.
I’ve personally known many, many more people who have moved from your surety and belief to a complete and total loss of faith than I have known people with nuanced mature faith who then move to a complete loss of faith.
Jack,
I don’t see the advantages of group decisions that you do. It is obvious to me that the Q15 struggles with the same management problems that corporate heads of other organizations do. There is conformity pressure when loud, high-status speakers skew the room, suppressing vital dissenting views (Boyd K. Packer was the provlem for decades). There is process loss when leadership groups frequently underperform their single most brilliant member (which explains how Uchtdorf and a few others may be forced to go along with weaker ideas, just to get ANYTHING done). The immense amount of time consumed coordinating schedules, debating issues and building absolute consensus takes a long time (I know for a fact that Scouting was an issue beginning in the early 1990s, Tom Monson campaigned onto his deathbed to save it). And it can all be overthrown by the whims of one individual.
Sure, the system has a few strengths. If change is viewed as the enemy, then there is that.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Q15 was humble and sensitive enough to the Spirit that the Lord could just tell them changes that need to be made instead of having to let the Spirit work on members of secular society for decades or centuries before they finally get the hint?