Let’s think big today. My thesis is that, in the past, the Church has sometimes made bold moves but that it probably won’t do so again. Moving the whole body of the Saints to Utah in 1847 and following years was a bold move. Giving up polygamy (sort of) in 1890 was a bold move, albeit more or less forced upon the Church by the government. Dropping the priesthood and temple ban in 1978 was a bold move. I don’t think there is another bold LDS move on the horizon. From here on out, it’s just muddling through.
Some context. On the Internet, ads and links often trumpet big news. “This is huge!” gushes every other YouTube link, only to find some small or minor development if you follow the link. No, they didn’t trade the starting quarterback, they released a third-string cornerback and signed a third-string center. No, Kyiv wasn’t obliterated, it was hit by a single missile that put a dent in an apartment building … three months ago. You know how it works, even though you sometimes follow the link just to make sure.
The Church does this, too. Some special stake-wide meeting is called, teasing some sort of big change, and it turns out to be … the Area Presidency (who you have never heard of) is pimping its new Area Mission Plan (which you will never hear about again). The word is out that there will be Big News in General Conference, and … two new temples are announced. Sooner or later we wise up. I am hard pressed to think of any “special meeting” that announced anything special or even anything that I can remember. When there actually is Big News to share, they are very good at telling absolutely no one about it ahead of time.
So back to LDS history and current developments. Yes, there are some *potential* bold moves the Church might make in the future, but (in my opinion) won’t. Give women the priesthood. Drop tithing as a requirement for temple attendance (essentially making tithing optional, or more optional than it already is). You can add some additional candidates for bold moves in the comments.
Instead it seems like the senior leadership has settled into a policy of incremental changes when change become unavoidable. Women don’t get the priesthood, but they can serve as Sunday School President. Garment designs get modified, sometimes in strange ways: sleeves get shortened while britches get longer. Fiddle with the meeting schedule every ten or twelve years, it seems to make some people happy.
I’ll offer one exception before turning things over to the readers. When Covid hit and moved quickly from a concern to a crisis, LDS leaders rather boldly took two huge steps. First, all LDS missionaries were called home (more precisely, reassigned to their home countries), a monumental organizational undertaking. Second, LDS in-person Sunday services were cancelled for a time, several months as I recall. This shows that the LDS system, leadership and the membership, is capable of announcing and executing bold moves when required or when forced to do so by external forces. I just don’t see any self-initiated bold moves in the future of the Church.
What do you think? You can share a bold move you think might actually happen — or you can share a bold move that you *wish* would happen and perhaps *could* happen but simply will not happen.
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FYI, the Queen’s Gambit is an opening move in chess where, after the two queen pawns are advanced, White’s second move to c4 (QBP to B4 for you old-timers) offers the bishop pawn as a sacrifice, in return for a more open position allowing faster development for White. Every gambit is a calculated sacrifice.
An even bolder move that on rare occasions occurs later in the game is a Queen Sacrifice, generally undertaken only by those gifted players who can see a secure line of play leading directly to a checkmate. A 13-year-old Bobby Fischer did this and defeated a US Master in 1956. It has been called the Game of the Century. It’s worth watching if you’re into that sort of thing.
President Nelson had a tendency to make bold predictions that were at best unprovable and at worst simple rhetoric. That was just his style. I don’t recall Monson doing that and I’m not sure Oaks speaks that way either. Nelson seemed to like being in the center of drama and to him everything was the “Lord’s will” as opposed to simple administrative changes. I sometimes wondered if his favorite moments in life were the two times a year that he could announce 15 new temples. So dramatic (for some).
I guess my point is that whether or not the Church makes bold moves is largely a reflection of the president’s communication style.
I consider the adjustments to garments to be a bold move. There has been a very bold reaction and bare shoulders are now the norm with many LDS women. How long did that fashion change take? A year?
I can see there being a bold move on the Word of Wisdom where it becomes counsel and not a commandment. I think, as with garments, the members are pushing this change. The church leadership will need to concede or else live with cognitive dissonance that many temple going members are imbibing coffee and chemically enhanced beverages, begging the question of what exactly is the enforcement?
A really bold move would be a retrenchment to orthodoxy on the Word of Wisdom and the Sabbath Day and other outward indications of what it means to be a Latter-day Saint. That would send shockwaves across the church and especially in the mountain west. I just don’t see this happening . The church no longer has the institutional command it once had and the leadership is decidedly inclined to be more culturally open than closed.
And as I think about it, maybe the members have become blind to the huge changes the church has been making. The most recent change of allowing women to begin missions at 18 scarcely raised an eyebrow. I almost think that the church could declare every 5th Sunday a “one hour church day” and we would all yawn. Is this because we are shell shocked from the changes of the past decade? At least for me I must say that nothing about the church and what it announces surprises me. And yes, that some of the “big news” is a nothingburger is also a factor in my nonplussed disposition.