A Poor Wayfaring Man

As noted in a previous post, Church leaders often struggle to control how the lifeblood of the Church (i.e., personal reassurance that one is on the path to salvation in the Celestial Kingdom–a concept I’ve termed “Hope”) is distributed to, and apportioned among, the members of the Church.  Below are two examples of such battles.

Example 1:  Elder Poelman’s View of Divine Love:

About a month after McConkie’s speech excoriating George Pace for promoting the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Elder Ronald E. Poelman, a fairly new member of the First Quorum of the Seventy (one level below the apostles in the Church hierarchy) gave an address in General Conference which appears to have been carefully worded to imply the existence of a personal relationship with the Lord, without crossing any of the lines that McConkie had drawn.  Elder Poelman’s talk included the following statement: Continue reading

As noted in a previous post, Church leaders often struggle to control how the lifeblood of the Church (i.e., personal reassurance that one is on the path to salvation in the Celestial Kingdom–a concept I’ve termed “Hope”) is distributed to, and apportioned among, the members of the Church. Below is an example of one such battle.

In the early 1980’s, a BYU professor named George Pace had previously given speeches and written a book promoting the idea that people should “center their lives on Christ and…develop their own personal relationship with Him.” Even though Pace was simply echoing ideas recently taught in General Conference by then-apostle (and future First Presidency Counselor) James E. Faust, his “taking out the middle man” approach to interacting with the Savior prompted a humiliating public rebuke from Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, which included the following counsel: Continue reading

Here is another example of LDS Church leaders retiring unwanted doctrine by playing with the concepts of “policy” and “doctrine” in order to avoid violating LDS stare decisis.

Despite early acceptance of black men into the LDS priesthood, the Church, beginning with Brigham Young in at least 1852 (and possibly earlier, with Joseph Smith), taught for more than 100 years that black people bore the Mark of Cain, which labeled them as a cursed and disfavored people in the eyes of God, and unable, therefore, to be part of the LDS priesthood. Continue reading

Here is an example of LDS Church leaders retiring unwanted doctrine by playing with the concepts of “policy” and “doctrine”, and then making overtures of respect to the originators of that doctrine, in order to avoid violating LDS stare decisis.

In the nineteenth century, leaders of the Church taught that the practice of polygamy was an inextricable doctrine of Mormonism, and the only way to reach the highest levels of heaven. Continue reading

The legalistic aspects of Mormonism are fascinating to me.  Here is one.

Stare decisis is a legal concept meant to establish consistency in decisions made by courts. The idea is that once a decision has been made by a court about a certain point of law, future courts should respect that decision and follow suit. This approach conserves judicial resources by obviating the need for people to bring the same legal dispute to court over and over again, because they can look at past cases and reliably predict what a court is going to say about the issue.   It also causes people to take more seriously the decisions of current courts, because today’s decisions are going to hold weight with other courts in the future. Thus, it is a way for courts to legitimize their own decisions by respecting the decisions of their predecessors. Stare decisis is a practical strategy for dealing with the fact that reasonable judges will disagree about what the law means, and even though it sometimes enshrines erroneous decisions into the law, it is generally considered a useful and effective element of the judicial system.

A similar concept is at work for the top leaders of the LDS Church (considered “prophets, seers, and revelators” by believing members of the faith), though the process goes largely unacknowledged. Continue reading

Here is another post inspired, in part, by a reader’s comment.  Deep Throat in the Deep South,¹ in a comment rich with interesting Mormon cultural material, wrote the following:

Every blessing we have is predicated upon a law. You break the law, the blessing is gone.

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (D&C 130: 20-21)²

One must be intelligent not to confuse administrative actions with the Gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e. truth) in its purest mode. There is a different between administration of earthly issues, the Truth of the Gospel, and, and what I call the “Doctrine of the Culture,” that some people cling to instead of the doctrine.

As a Mormon, I struggled with the legalistic LDS belief that all blessings a person receives from God are actually dependent upon his or her obedience to a specific Law (or body of Laws) of Heaven.  The reason I struggled is that I could never pin down exactly what the Law was, despite the fact that I was desperate to follow it.  (That seems to be a common theme in the LDS Church.) Continue reading

1. Yeah, the irony of an apparently straight-laced Mormon naming him or herself Deep Throat hasn’t escaped me.  I assume the name is referring somehow to the Watergate informant, rather than the classic porn movie from which the informant’s pseudonym was derived.  Then again, either reference is kind of random. [↩]
2. By the way, this section of the Doctrine & Covenants (which is LDS scripture on par with the Bible or the Book of Mormon) is a treasure trove of canonized Mormon oddities, like Joseph Smith’s unfulfilled prediction about growing unrest in the American South (that eventually developed into the Civil War) being a precursor to the second coming of Jesus Christ, his cautiously hedged prediction that Jesus Christ’s second coming would happen prior to his 85th birthday (1890), his explanation for why the Holy Ghost is incorporeal, his insight into the planets that God and the angels live on, his view of what the afterlife is generally like, and other fun stuff.  Definitely worth a read, since these things are part of the “meat” of the Gospel that Mormons don’t share with outsiders very often (the “milk” always comes first). [↩]

A reader posted a comment recently, asking two questions. Good ones. I answered the first one in my previous post, and the second one here.

Mormon Woman Wondering asked:

Please help me understand how you…speak with your children, with integrity to your beliefs and with sensitivity to their need for something to hold onto in this world.

This is a tough question, particularly for somebody like me, with a spouse who is active in the Church, and who wants our kids to be active too. Obviously, my solution is a compromise, and could possibly have been different if she felt differently.  But I think this solution does take into account the potential need for kids to have something to hold onto as they develop their own worldview. Continue reading

A reader posted a comment recently, asking two questions. Good ones. I will answer one of them here, and the other one in my next post.

Mormon Woman Wondering asked:

Please help me understand how you bore the gut-hole created by losing your faith.

I am not sure I understand what “gut-hole” means in this context. I have some guesses: Is it the psychological turmoil a person goes through when the philosophical basis for her lifestyle and choices is revealed to be deeply flawed and unreliable, and needs to be replaced? Is it the anxiety that accompanies the realization that she doesn’t know what to replace it with? Is it the nagging worry that she has set her children up to fail–to trust people and ideas that are not trustworthy? Is it the disappointment at finding that so much of her life has been spent earnestly pursuing and investing in what is ultimately a high-stakes fantasy? Continue reading

I was browsing the internet the other day and found a really interesting blog that discusses events and hot topics at BYU’s Provo campus. In this post about the conflict between the religious world and the secular world, the liberal-leaning Mormon author seems to support (very tentatively and with ample obligatory qualifications to deflect charges of heresy, since he is a BYU student) the view that the creation account in Genesis (six days, etc.) is just a metaphor, not literally true.

This seems like a neat and tidy way to avoid conflicts between science and religion–just treat the religious view as a divinely-inspired metaphor only.
Continue reading

My previous two posts (Confession and Polygyny?) deal with topics that are quite different on the surface, but share certain underlying concepts, namely

1. there are circumstances in which it is necessary for an LDS Church member to approach his or her local Church leader, seeking something that only the leader can provide;¹ and
2. the Church rules governing such circumstances are usually unclear or unknown to the Church member.²

Situations like this are the norm in the LDS Church. Continue reading

1. When I met with a counselor in the branch presidency, I was seeking a way to be forgiven of my sins; when my mom met with her bishop, she was seeking cancellation of her temple marriage [↩]
2. Neither my mom nor I had a clear idea of what kind of process to expect, or what would be required of us by our Church leaders in connection with our respective request. [↩]