A Poor Wayfaring Man

In the previous post, I focused on the fact that 12 year-old young women in the Church are taught, in YW Lesson Manual 1, Lesson 5, to find joy in their mysterious “divine potential”.  It is mysterious because Lesson 5, despite using the term repeatedly,  never reveals exactly what that “divine potential” is.  The mystery is rendered non-mysterious and solved, however, by reading through the group of lessons in the manual that follow Lesson 5.  Lessons 6 – 8 seem to flesh out the concept that Lesson 5 merely hints about.  Here is the whole group of lessons, in summary form: Continue reading

In the previous post, I asserted that young women in the LDS Church receive messages that essentially accord them second-class status to young men.  It is clear, based on the words of Church leaders and the contents of the YW and YM curriculum, that the Church understands that these messages are there, and that they are psychologically harmful to girls.  Instead of repudiating and changing these messages, however, the Church reaffirms them as divine truth.

As an example of this, I will use Lesson No. 5 in the current YW Lesson Manual 1, titled “Finding Joy in our Divine Potential“.  Here is the stated objective of Lesson 5:

OBJECTIVE:  Each young woman will understand her divine potential and learn how to find joy in it. (emphasis added)

Clearly, a young woman’s “divine potential” (whatever that happens to be) is not something she would be happy with naturally.  The Church recognizes that she needs to be persuaded and taught, from a young age, how she can adjust her thinking to eventually feel okay about it.   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 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

In a previous post, I outlined the concept of the LDS Church as a living system. I’ve been thinking recently about what keeps a living system like the Church together. I think the general answer has something to do with the system as a whole being able to obtain and create things that the system components need (or want), but are unable to get independently. 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

In the spirit of adjusting my perspective to account for fundamental attribution error, I’ve been trying to see people in the context of their situational and environmental influences, rather than simply judging the quality of their character. Because members of the LDS Church are part of a system with a stated mission that includes regulating their behavior, their relationships with each other, and their relationships with the outside world (i.e., “Perfecting the Saints”), I think understanding that system can probably go a long way toward explaining why they do some of the things they do. I think in most cases they are people with good intentions, making the best calls that they can, constrained in various ways by their roles in the system.
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There are a lot of Mormons and former Mormons who are annoyed and upset by the way the leaders of the LDS Church treat Church members, and the way Church members treat each other. It’s easy to see a leader disrespecting, belittling, or otherwise bullying somebody (or a group of people) and condemn him as an evil, arrogant, selfish bastard. Likewise, it’s easy to see a member snubbing, gossiping, or imposing social burdens on somebody and judge him or her to be self-centered, unscrupulous, or stupid. I know I’ve done that.

I have been wondering recently, however, if jumping to that conclusion about people in the Church is really warranted. Could I be exhibiting an error in judgment? Some bias buried in my all-too-human psyche? I think it’s possible.

Okay, probable.

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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. [↩]

My mom and dad married in the Salt Lake Temple at the ages of 18 and 19, respectively. They were civilly divorced when I was still a little kid.

By “civilly divorced”, I don’t mean to say that the divorce process was completed in a civil manner, without petty bickering (though I believe that is true). I mean they were legally divorced. Free, in the eyes of the state, to remarry and move on with their lives.

This is an important point, because their divorce was not fully recognized by the LDS Church. Continue reading