Lesson 5

Title:  Finding Joy In Our Divine Potential

Objective: Each young woman will understand her divine potential and learn how to find joy in it.

Key Point: “The gospel guides and blesses our lives by helping us understand our divine roles and potential as women.”

Lesson 6

Title:  Finding Joy Now

Objective: Each class member will feel the joy of being a Latter-day Saint young woman.

Key Point: “Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you.” (Why such an ominous quote from Church President Harold B. Lee?)

Lesson 7

Title: Homemaking

Objective: Each young woman will better appreciate the joys that can come from homemaking. (This is easily the most scripted lesson of the group.)

Key Point: “Homemaking is one of the responsibilities we have been given. Heavenly Father wants all men and women to give their greatest priority to their homes, their spouses, and their families. Our families are part of our divine mission.” (Now we are starting to get the point of Lesson 6, right?)

Lesson 8

Title:  Attitudes About our Divine Roles

Objective: Each young woman will develop a positive attitude about her divine roles of wife and mother.

Key Point(s):

“Do not … make the mistake of being drawn off into secondary tasks which will cause the neglect of your eternal assignments such as giving birth to and rearing the spirit children of our Father in Heaven” (This is a warning from President Spencer W. Kimball.)

“The worldly view of women’s roles is false partly because it is selfcentered. It focuses so much on a woman’s rights to receive that it almost ignores her opportunities to give.”

“By cheerfully and enthusiastically supporting our husbands and by bearing, nurturing, and teaching righteous spirits, we can experience the greatest fulfillment.”

“A woman should never minimize the tremendous power of being a comfort and help to her husband. He may have need to be comforted and encouraged to perform his roles as husband, provider, leader, or teacher.”

“Young women should plan and prepare for marriage and the bearing and rearing of children. It is your divine right and the avenue to the greatest and most supreme happiness” (Another admonition of President Spencer W. Kimball.)

I think we find, in Lesson 8, the “divine potential” of young women in the LDS Church: “wife and mother“.  All of the lessons leading up to Lesson 8 are carefully crafted to prepare the young women to hear the difficult truth about their destiny within the Church, which is limited to finding and serving a husband, bearing children, and managing a household.

I don’t have a problem with a woman getting married, having children, and choosing to be a homemaker (from among a whole world of options).  I have a big problem with the tripartite “wife/mother/homemaker” option being the only valid one for a woman to choose.  Men in the LDS Church are not limited in this way–sure, they are expected to be husbands and fathers, but they are also allowed to freely choose a career outside the home, and their identity and purpose aren’t bound up in their biological functions.  As a result, young men in the Church do not need a group of manipulative lessons like the young women receive, prodding them into compliance with the Church’s expectations.

These expectations were recently illustrated very efficiently in a disturbing little story told in an April 2011 General Conference talk by Elder Quentin L. Cook (who apparently thinks it’s cute for a group of people to dig through and comment on the contents of somebody’s lost purse).  I will close out this post with his (incredibly condescending!) words:

When I was recently assigned to a conference in the Mission Viejo California Stake, I was touched by an account of their four-stake New Year’s Eve youth dance. Following the dance, a purse was found with no outside identification. I share with you part of what Sister Monica Sedgwick, the Young Women president in the Laguna Niguel stake, recorded: “We didn’t want to pry; this was someone’s personal stuff! So we gingerly opened it and grabbed the first thing that was on top—hopefully, it would identify her. It did, but in another way—it was a For the Strength of Youth pamphlet. Wow! This told us something about her. Then we reached in for the next item, a little notebook. Surely this would give us answers, but not the kind we were expecting. The first page was a list of favorite scriptures. There were five more pages of carefully written scriptures and personal notes.”

The sisters immediately wanted to meet this stalwart young woman. They returned to that purse to identify its owner. They pulled out some breath mints, soap, lotion, and a brush. I loved their comments: “Oh, good things come out of her mouth; she has clean and soft hands; and she takes care of herself.”

They eagerly awaited the next treasure. Out came a clever little homemade coin purse made from a cardboard juice carton, and there was some money in a zippered pocket. They exclaimed, “Ahh, she’s creative and prepared!” They felt like little children on Christmas morning. What they pulled out next surprised them even more: a recipe for Black Forest chocolate cake and a note to make the cake for a friend’s birthday. They almost screamed, “She’s a HOMEMAKER! Thoughtful and service minded.” Then, yes, finally some identification. The youth leaders said they felt greatly blessed “to observe the quiet example of a young lady living the gospel.”

This account illustrates the commitment of our young women to Church standards. It is also an example of caring, interested, dedicated Young Women leaders all over the world. They are incredible!

- Quentin L. Cook, LDS Women are Incredible!, April 2011 General Conference

-PWM

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.  

What is this “divine potential”?  Amazingly, despite the clear lesson objective stating that each young woman will understand it by the end of the lesson, the “divine potential” is not actually explained or defined in the lesson materials.   The only way for a young woman to understand her divine potential is to draw inferences from whatever is presented to her during the course of the lesson.   Here are some clues from the manual:

PREPARATION:

1. Invite an exemplary sister (preferably one who has married in the temple and has a family), who has been approved by priesthood advisers, to speak to the young women about the joy of being a woman.

2. You may invite a grandmother, mother, and young married woman, who have been approved by priesthood advisers, to briefly express the joys of womanhood they are presently experiencing.

3. If it is possible and you wish to do so, prepare a copy of the message from the Young Women general presidency [comprised of four women appointed and supervised by the President of the Church] for each class member and guest.

(emphasis and bracketed explanation added)

Note that the messages above are supposed to be delivered by women (i) who are married in the temple and/or have children, and (ii) who have been specifically approved by the priesthood (i.e., male) leaders.  Apparently, in the Church’s view, the only people qualified to teach about the “divine potential” of young women are married mothers who say what the local male church leaders want them to say.  So perhaps it’s fair to infer that a young woman’s “divine potential” is related to being temple married, having children, and being approved by the priesthood.

The message from the Young Women general presidency referred to in Item 3 above provides clues about how to obtain this elusive “divine potential”:

Our Heavenly Father knows…you. He has confidence and faith that you will use these years of preparation in being an obedient child of God who can be molded and shaped for the special mission and destiny he would have you fill. Pray always, know your Savior Jesus Christ, study the scriptures, and think of specific ways you can apply the teachings in your life. Live to be worthy of the blessings of the priesthood, be happy, and walk tall with joy and thanksgiving in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. (emphasis added)

So, a young woman’s “divine potential” is achieved through learning how to be an obedient child of God who is molded and shaped for whatever purpose God would have her fill.  To do this she should obey the teachings of Jesus Christ and “be worthy of the blessings of the priesthood.”  Of course, in practice, all of these things (i.e., God’s special purposes, Christ’s teachings, and her personal worthiness) are delivered, interpreted, and judged within the Church by male priesthood authorities.  Thus, a young woman will be on the path to realizing her “divine potential” when she obeys and defers to the men of the Church and is joyful and thankful in doing so.

It is no wonder that finding joy in being a young woman in the Church is an acquired skill.  The confidence and will that she was born with must be broken (i.e., “molded and shaped”) somehow, so the men of the Church can take control.

And that’s the end of this lesson.  The concept of a young woman’s “divine potential” is not analyzed or explained, but the means of reaching it (obedience and subservience), and the results of reaching it (joy) are directly spoon-fed to the girls.  As a result, they may walk away from the lesson not really knowing their “divine potential”, but they certainly do know that the Church expects them to be submissive and happy.

Note that there is no similar lesson in the YM curriculum.

-PWM

You may have noticed that the names of these two organizations are not symmetrical. The boys’ organization is named after the priesthood–the power authority to act for God–bestowed upon the boys at that age in a religious ceremony that the whole family and friends in the congregation attend. The girls’ organization, on the other hand, has a generic name, because girls are bestowed with nothing of any spiritual or doctrinal substance at that age. There is no formal rite of passage for girls who turn 12, or 14, or 16 comparable to the advancement in the Aaronic Priesthood organization the boys experience at those ages.

Thus, there is a subtle (and sometimes not subtle) set of messages LDS boys and girls receive through personal experience in the Church, from at least the time they turn 12. Boys have authority in the Church hierarchy, and girls do not. Boys are natural leaders, and girls are not. Boys have clear evidence that God accepts them, and girls do not. Boys have a special connection to God, and girls do not. If a girl wants any of these things, she needs to marry a boy and get it vicariously through him.

These messages (and the psychological baggage they carry) form the focus, in one way or another, of much of the Young Women (YW) and Aaronic Priesthood (YM) programs’ respective curricula and activities. Some of the messages are countered and their effects mitigated (to an extent), while others are basically supported and reinforced. I will discuss this further in future posts.

-PWM

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:

By disobeying the laws of God and breaking his commandments, we do offend him, we do estrange ourselves from him, and we don’t deserve his help and inspiration and strength. But God’s love for us transcends our transgressions.

–God’s Love for Us Transcends Our Transgressions, General Conference speech, delivered April 3, 1982

It’s possible that I am reading too much into Poelman’s choice of words in this talk, but I note that he used concepts commonly reserved for personal relationships, like “estranged”, “reconciled”, “God wants us to return to Him”, and “God’s love for us, his children”, without using the actual word “relationship”. He also used the words “Lord” and “God” interchangeably, blurring the line between “God the Father” and “Jesus Christ”, a line McConkie had been very careful to draw in his BYU smackdown speech. Poelman suggested a concept of God’s love that was like a parent’s love: liberal, unconditional, and independent of any sins or disobedience we may engage in. This concept effectively takes God’s love out of the control of the Church by removing the possibility that conditions could be placed upon it by Church authorities.

If George Pace’s experience is any indication, Elder Poelman was skating on thin ice with this concept. But would Poelman’s status as a General Authority of the Church (rather than a religious educator) save him from the harsh correction of the top leadership? Well, McConkie didn’t crucify him for the speech, if that’s what you’re wondering about.  Years later, however, Poelman’s concept of divine love as unconditional in nature was definitively superseded by a 2003 article written by Apostle Russell M. Nelson, which places God’s love back in control of the Church by explicitly conditioning it on obedience:

While divine love can be called perfect, infinite, enduring, and universal, it cannot correctly be characterized as unconditional.

***

Why is divine love conditional? Because God loves us and wants us to be happy. “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.”¹

–”Divine Love”, Ensign, Feb 2003, p. 20 (emphasis added)

I’m not saying that Elder Nelson’s article was specifically prompted by Elder Poelman’s view of God’s love (I don’t think Poelman’s 1982 talk was especially influential in 2003), rather, Poelman’s view is symbolic of the very common belief among members of the LDS Church that God has unconditional love for them. They aspire to model their own love for others based on this unconditionality. The persistence of that belief is what, I think, prompted Elder Nelson’s article, which puts an official stamp of disapproval on the concept, reclaiming for the Church (and its leaders) its traditional place between the Latter-day Saints and God.

Example 2:  Elder Poelman’s View of the Gospel and the Church:

On October 7, 1984 (an appropriately Orwellian year), Ronald E. Poelman’s General Conference talk became the most famous casualty to date in the ongoing battle for control over the lifeblood of the Church.

His talk was titled “The Gospel and the Church”, and it was about recognizing distinctions between the Church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Poelman emphasized, among other things, that following the Gospel makes members of the Church less dependent on the Church for fulfillment, and that concepts of Mormon “orthodoxy” and conformity should be founded on the eternal laws of God, like free (moral) agency, rather than the institutional Church.  Prior to publication and distribution of the talk (in print and video format) to members of the Church worldwide, the talk was drastically rewritten, and the new talk was refilmed (and spliced into the conference program tape as if originally delivered there).  The edited talk now focused on the harmonious “essential relationship” between the Church and the Gospel, and it emphasized the members’ dependence on the instruction of the Church and its leaders in order to correctly follow the Gospel.  The original version of the talk, as far as the Church was concerned, disappeared down the memory hole.

Fortunately, however, people had recorded the original television broadcast of the talk (see [Part 1] and [Part 2]), and in November 1984, when the Church published the altered version of the talk, people transcribed the original talk and compared the two versions.²  For a side-by-side comparision of the entire talk, Click Here.  Below are some highlights:

1)         Original quote (deletions marked):

As individually and collectively we increase our knowledge, acceptance, and application of gospel principles, we become less dependent on Church programs. Our lives become gospel centered.

Edited quote:

As individually and collectively we increase our knowledge, acceptance, and application of gospel principles, we can more effectively utilize the Church to make our lives more gospel centered.

2)        Original quote (deletions marked):

The conformity we require should be according to God’s standards.  The orthodoxy upon which we insist must be founded in fundamental principles and eternal law, including free agency and the divine uniqueness of the individual.

Edited quote:

Therefore, as we live the gospel and participate in the Church, the conformity we require of ourselves and of others should be according to God’s standards.  The orthodoxy upon which we insist must be founded in fundamental principles, eternal law, and direction given by those authorized in the Church.

3)        Original quote (deletions marked):

When we understand the difference between the gospel and the Church and the appropriate function of each in our daily lives, we are much more likely to do the right things for the right reasons.

Edited quote:

When we see the harmony between the gospel and the Church in our daily lives, we are much more likely to do the right things for the right reasons.

4)        Original quote (deletions marked):

Institutional discipline is replaced by self discipline.  Supervision is replaced by righteous initiative and a sense of divine accountability.

Edited quote:

We will exercise self discipline and righteous initiative guided by Church leaders and a sense of divine accountability.

The details of how a completely new version of Poelman’s talk came about are not publicly known, and it is doubtful that the folks involved in the censoring will ever explain what happened, as Elder Poelman was, and continues to be, a loyal General Authority of the Church.  Clearly, however, the edits made by the Church to Poelman’s talk demonstrate Church leaders’ insistence on asserting themselves into the middle of the relationship between Church members and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  By doing this, the Church leaders retain control over Hope, the lifeblood of the Church system.

-PWM

_________________________

1. As an aside, this statement quoted by Elder Nelson comes from a letter written by Joseph Smith to 19 year-old Nancy Rigdon, in an attempt to persuade her to be his secret polygamous bride, using the rationale that anything God commands is automatically moral and right. She was ultimately unconvinced, and showed the letter to her father, Sidney Rigdon (Joseph’s second-in-command). Joseph allegedly told Sidney that the letter had just been a test of his daughter’s virtue. The episode remains one of Joseph Smith’s creepiest alpha-maleish abuses of power.  With that context in mind, Elder Nelson’s use of the quote raises questions. What kind of “happiness” was Elder Nelson thinking of? The kind that comes only through fully submitting to the authority of Church leaders? Very clever, Russ.
2. The incident was reported in Sunstone Magazine.

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:

The proper course for all of us is to stay in the mainstream of the Church. This is the Lord’s Church, and it is led by the spirit of inspiration, and the practice of the Church constitutes the interpretation of the scripture.

And you have never heard one of the First Presidency or the Twelve, who hold the keys of the kingdom, and who are appointed to see that we are not “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14)–you have never heard one of them advocate this excessive zeal that calls for gaining a so-called special and personal relationship with Christ.

***

I wonder if it is not part of Lucifer’s system to make people feel they are special friends of Jesus when in fact they are not following the normal and usual pattern of worship found in the true Church.

–Our Relationship with the Lord, BYU Devotional speech, delivered March 1, 1982

George Pace’s idea had (inadvertantly or not) removed the Church and those leaders “who hold the keys of the kingdom” from their position as mediators between Church members and the Savior, and in doing so, had given Church members a means of independently obtaining Hope, through their personal connection with Jesus Christ. Elder McConkie put Pace, and the rest of his Lucifer-inspired (possibly unintentional) populists in their place. In McConkie’s view, only the prophets and apostles have the right to a special or personal relationship with Christ. Only the prophets and apostles have the power to prescribe the proper way for mankind to approach God and obtain salvation.  Hope is managed and apportioned through them.

After McConkie’s rebuke, Pace apologized for his impertinence:

I mean to stay in the mainstream of the Church, urging any with whom I have influence to listen to the words of our leaders, to pray earnestly for guidance, and to grow spiritually in our capacity to be obedient to the will and mind of God for us, giving full and appropriate reverence to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

-PWM

____________________________

This can be seen, for example, in an organism, which is a living system made up of highly specialized components (subsystems, cells, symbionts, etc.). These specialized components have certain needs that are outside the scope of the functions they perform themselves, and they must therefore rely on other components of the system to meet those needs. The paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is blood, a system component that performs oxygenation, nutrition, waste management, temperature regulation, immunological response, communication, and other functions for the specialized parts of the organism, enabling those parts to spend their time making unique contributions to the whole. Blood is a key part of the system, because most other components rely directly upon it for continued existence.

Higher-level systems, like business organizations or religions, are made up of individuals that aren’t as fundamentally dependent on the system as the specialized parts of an organism, but there are analogous “lifeblood” elements that keep individuals engaged in, and contributing to, the system.

A business organization’s lifeblood element is money. Money, like blood in an organism, is the key medium through which the individuals in the system are able to meet the needs they must set aside in order to participate in the system (e.g., they buy food instead of spending time hunting it, buy clothing instead of spending time making it, etc.). Money is also the central incentive motivating people to contribute to the system, because money allows them to eat better food than they could come up with on their own, wear better clothing than they could make on their own, etc. The top managers of a business organization perform the important function of determining how the money earned by the organization should flow through to the different parts of the system. More important individuals generally get more money, but everybody gets something–enough to keep the system intact.

The LDS Church (at least the religious wing of the organization) has a lifeblood element, but it is not money. The lifeblood of the Church is hope or reassurance about one’s eventual salvation in the Celestial Kingdom (I’ll call it “Hope”). Like business organizations, the top managers of the Church exercise control over how the lifeblood of Hope flows through the system to nourish and motivate the members of the Church. The strength of the Church system depends on how effectively Church leaders manage the distribution of Hope.

I started to see the Church in these terms during the early days of renegotiating my relationship with it. I noticed that the LDS apostles and prophets usually make sure to place themselves and the Church between God and Church members, in a position that allows them to meter out and control Hope, and therefore control the members. The more a Church leader’s personal interests are aligned with the interests of the Church organization, the more of an interest he has in controlling the means by which Church members can obtain Hope.

Church leaders at different levels of the hierarchy have butted heads over this issue. Sometimes a lower-level authority or academic will advocate for a view of salvation that allows for Hope independent of the Church hierarchy. Such populism-flavored views are usually corrected by the top leaders of the Church, sometimes in particularly nasty ways. I will give examples in future posts.

-PWM

As a new missionary, I was in the (common?) position of having never really leveled with my local bishop back home about grave sins like masturbation and/or looking at pornography. Before the MTC, I had convinced myself that looking at my dad’s erotic photography books (or Showtime: After Hours) in the privacy of my own bedroom (or mom’s TV room) and/or masturbating, was a victimless crime–if a crime at all, and certainly not something that required shouting from the rooftops, for goodness sake. After a couple of weeks in the MTC, however, I was convinced that I had to confess my adolescent sins to somebody with authority from God to make the sins go away. I tried to find an opportunity to discreetly meet with a member of my missionary branch presidency, and found that there was a line of male missionaries waiting, outside an empty classroom, for a meeting with him. I decided that I would just blend in with them and wait my turn.

While I stood there, my mind began racing. “What if I what I’ve done is actually really bad? Have I broken my temple covenants? What will happen to me? Can I be sent home from my mission for this? How will I face everybody back home? What will I do? Is confession worth it? I definitely won’t ever masturbate again–do I even need to confess? Should I just get up and leave?”

Too soon, it was my turn. I entered the classroom to find the first counselor in the branch presidency waiting for me. He was a tall skinny man with wire-rimmed glasses, completely bald on top. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He exuded confidence and wisdom. He seemed comfortable talking to me, but I was not comfortable. I was worried that my life was going to suddenly go sideways, spinning off in the wrong direction.

He made an attempt at small talk. He asked how I was doing, whether I was used to the schedule, learning a new language, getting along with my companion. I played along. After a minute, he asked me why I wanted to meet with him. Was there anything he could do for me?

I was brave. I didn’t cry or anything. I confessed to (most of the) bad stuff. He asked me how often I had masturbated. I told him. He asked me if the pornography and the masturbation had ever happened at the same time. I told him yes. I braced for the consequences of my awful deeds.

He smiled and told me that he was glad I had confessed. He told me that he generally considered habitual masturbation or pornography viewing to be sins requiring confession to a church leader. He told me that when masturbation happened while viewing pornography, that was a sin that must be confessed, even if it happened only once. He told me that my repentance was now underway, and that the next step was to never do it again. I told him I was already there.

I walked out of the meeting feeling light and happy. I wasn’t going to be sent home, humiliated. In fact, I was now actually worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. It was now possible for me to be a decent missionary. I would never masturbate again.

(And I didn’t do it even once for the balance of my mission. Two+ years of perfect sexual “purity”. Been there, done that.)

-PWM

In case you are wondering, the right answer is always “Nephi”.

When my professor heard that answer from us, he laughed. He told us that if a guy like Lehi were to tell us to leave our homes and go camping with him for an indefinite period of time to escape the evils of our community in Provo, Utah, we–along with most other Mormons–would refuse out-of-hand, saying something like

My professor thought that we students, and most other mainstream Mormons, would probably not have seriously considered following Lehi, because we were already convinced that our church leaders, and LDS culture along with them, were on the right path. We fully bought into the mainstream LDS idea that if we stick with the herd, we cannot be led astray.¹²³⁴

Nephi, on the other hand, was not dogmatic about the perfect safety of sticking with the Lord’s chosen people. Even Laman and Lemuel, despite their complaining, still abandoned the chosen people of God to follow Lehi into the wilderness.

My professor’s point was that we shouldn’t give Laman and Lemuel such a hard time for their difficulty conforming to the expectations of their highly non-conformist father Lehi. To ignore or discard the expectations of one’s culture is abnormal and often imprudent. Laman and Lemuel were normal and prudent, operating within the paradigm in which they were raised. They had firm concepts of right and wrong, and they believed the religious dogma they were taught when they were young. Just like most Mormons.

-PWM

_______________________

1. “The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty.” –President Wilford Woodruff, Sixty-first Semiannual General Conference of the Church, Monday, October 6, 1890, Salt Lake City, Utah. Reported in Deseret Evening News, October 11, 1890, p. 2.; see also D&C Official Declaration — 1
2. “Joseph the Prophet … said, ‘Brethren, remember that the majority of this people will never go astray; and as long as you keep with the majority you are sure to enter the celestial kingdom.’ ” –Apostle Orson Hyde, Deseret News: Semi-Weekly, June 21, 1870, p. 3.
3. “I have heard the Prophet speak in public on many occasions. In one meeting I heard him say: ‘I will give you a key that will never rust,—if you will stay with the majority of the Twelve Apostles, and the records of the Church, you will never be led astray.’ The history of the Church has proven this to be true.” –William G. Nelson, in “Joseph Smith, the Prophet,” Young Woman’s Journal, Dec. 1906, p. 543; paragraph divisions altered.
4. “I heard the Prophet Joseph say that he would give the Saints a key whereby they would never be led away or deceived, and that was: The Lord would never suffer a majority of this people to be led away or deceived by imposters, nor would He allow the records of this Church to fall into the hands of the enemy.” –Ezra T. Clark, “The Testimony of Ezra T. Clark,” July 24, 1901, Farmington, Utah; in Heber Don Carlos Clark, Papers, ca. 1901–74, typescript, Church Archives.

“Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.”

Now, that’s pretty high praise coming from a Christian. Maybe a little too high? It is probably fair to say that this statement is just soaring, sentimentality-soaked hyperbole penned by someone mourning the loss of an admired leader and teacher.

At the same time, however, it is also fair to say that the LDS Church, by adopting the statement into its scriptural canon (see Doctrine & Covenants Sec. 135:3), singing hymns about Joseph Smith (see official LDS Hymns #26, Joseph Smith’s First Prayer, and #27, Praise to the Man), and extensively focusing on the favorable mythology surrounding Joseph Smith (see e.g., the Joseph Smith birthday commemoration web page, linking to an elaborate website dedicated to Joseph Smith), has elevated this sentiment to the level of mainstream LDS religious belief. This common belief is substantiated by the teachings of Brigham Young , which include the following (possibly also sentimentality-warped, but nonetheless extant and never officially disavowed) statement:

“…no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith. From the day that the Priesthood was taken from the earth to the winding-up scene of all things, every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ are—I with you and you with me. I cannot go there without his consent. He holds the keys of that kingdom for the last dispensation—the keys to rule in the spirit-world; and he rules there triumphantly, for he gained full power and a glorious victory over the power of Satan while he was yet in the flesh, and was a martyr to his religion and to the name of Christ, which gives him a most perfect victory in the spirit-world. He reigns there as supreme a being in his sphere, capacity, and calling, as God does in heaven. Many will exclaim—’Oh, that is very disagreeable! It is preposterous! We cannot bear the thought!’ But it is true.”

(JD, Vol. 7, p.287)

Unfortunately, mainstream members of the LDS Church not only feel pressure to believe that Joseph Smith is the greatest-man-ever-next-to-Jesus (and the gatekeeper of heaven), but also, for those who attempt to learn more about Joseph Smith through studying history, to reconcile that belief with growing evidence that Joseph Smith was a man of very questionable personal morals and ethics, willing to use the beliefs of others (particularly regarding eventual rewards in the afterlife), as well as his own position of ecclesiastical power, to further his personal interests.

For many members of the LDS Church today, this conflict over the character of Joseph Smith extends also to current leaders of the LDS Church, who claim authority–through Joseph Smith–to speak for God. As authorized spokesmen of God, the current LDS prophets and apostles, whose words and actions are often ethically and morally questionable themselves, are simply not (religiously) accountable to members of the Church. In fact, as Apostle Dallin H. Oaks has taught, LDS Church leaders are never to be criticized publicly by members of the Church. The only redress against abuse is to privately contact the offending apostle himself, or go over his head and privately contact the prophet about it. Not much of a feedback mechanism there (particularly if it is the prophet who is behaving badly). In the end, I suppose, these men eschew accountability to Church members for their actions because they feel they are called of God to interface with the people, not elected by the people to interface with God. (Also, they don’t want accountability because they are typical self-interested human beings, and they are lucky enough to be able to indulge that preference. JMO.)

However it technically works, the result is to place sincere, faithful members of the Church in the difficult position of excusing or ignoring nearly all of the bad leadership and abuse that they see perpetuated by these men in the name of God. Even for abuses perpetrated by middle managers in the Church organization (Stake Presidents and Bishops) there can be tremendous cultural and official pressure to just let it slide. For a particularly glaring example of this, CLICK HERE (long version) or HERE (short summary in last two paragraphs). The moral crisis this creates in the minds of members of the Church becomes a catalyst for apostasy, as people who have always cared deeply for, and taken very seriously, the Church, its leaders, and its teachings, are not able, in good conscience (and sometimes despite their sincere desire), to continue participating in the LDS faith community.

-PWM

Jack Mormons, despite having left the Church, continue to view the world essentially through the lens of Mormonism, and maintain the essential beliefs of the mainstream LDS Church. They are basically orthodox (i.e., correct in their religious beliefs), but they are not orthoprax (i.e., correct in their religious practices). Jack Mormons and mainstream members of the LDS Church get along pretty well, because Jack Mormons confirm and support LDS religious beliefs; their only problem is failing to obey the rules. They agree that they aren’t doing what they are “supposed” to do, and they can often be coaxed back into participation.

Apostates are a different story. Apostates and mainstream members of the LDS Church generally have a much harder time getting along, because Apostates are often neither orthodox nor orthoprax–they have knowingly discarded the essential LDS paradigm and beliefs, and that is why they do not obey the rules. The dynamic of the relationship is different from the relationship with Jack Mormons–it’s not merely about participating (”active”) vs. non-participating (”inactive”) Mormons, it’s about believing vs. non-believing Mormons. When believing Mormons engage Apostates, they come dangerously close to questioning their own beliefs, and becoming Apostates themselves. Not surprisingly, the LDS Church openly demonizes and belittles people it considers to be Apostates, and teaches that they are covenant-breaking servants of Satan (see, for example, this 2007 adult Sunday school lesson, titled “Beware the Bitter Fruits of Apostasy”, which was recently presented in LDS congregations worldwide).

Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland recently publicly belittled people who don’t believe in the literal historicity of the Book of Mormon. He called them “foolish”, “misled”, and “deceived”, and derided their attempts to explain the origins of the Book of Mormon in naturalistic terms as “pathetic”. He likened people who leave the Church for intellectual reasons to insects or vermin of some sort who have to “crawl over, or under, or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit.” Jeffrey R. Holland apparently likes to pontificate about the awful fates and consequences that await intellectual dissenters from the Church (and their children). I wrote more about that here.

Obviously, if you want to leave, but still maintain relatively positive contact and open relationships with members of LDS communities, it is easier to be a Jack Mormon than to be an Apostate.

-PWM