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. President Young said the following:

[A]ny man having one drop of the seed of [Cain] … in him cannot hold the priesthood and if no other Prophet ever spake it before I will say it now in the name of Jesus Christ…

Recorded in the Diary of Wilford Woodruff, January 16, 1852

Later, in 1947, the First Presidency of the Church made the following official statement of LDS doctrine:

From the days of the Prophet Joseph Smith even until now, it has been the doctrine of the Church, never questioned by Church leaders, that the Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel.

Statement of The First Presidency on the Negro Question, July 17 1947, quoted in Mormonism and the Negro, pp.46-7

Two years later, the First Presidency again reiterated the doctrinal, non-policy nature of the ban:

The attitude of the Church with reference to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time.

The First Presidency on the Negro Question, 17 Aug. 1949

This LDS doctrine did not age well. The African-American Civil Rights Movement (which roiled the leadership of the Church¹) rolled forward , and the popularity of race discrimination began to wane. In the years prior to the Brown case, the Church attempted to officially explain its reasoning with respect to the racially discriminatory doctrine. In 1951, the First Presidency published the following statement:

The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the pre-mortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality… Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes…

[The Church believes that] Man will be punished for his own sins and not for Adam’s transgression. If this is carried further, it would imply that the Negro is punished or allotted to a certain position on this earth, not because of Cain’s transgression, but came to earth through the loins of Cain because of his failure to achieve other stature in the spirit world.

Yes, the Church found itself in a hole created by its doctrine that got deeper and uglier over time. Finally, in 1978, about a decade after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the leaders of the Church felt that it was time for the Church to retire the doctrine. They did so through a letter, read in General Conference, announcing that all “worthy” males, regardless of race could now hold the priesthood.

In the years leading up to the change, Church leaders had made what appear to be efforts to begin preparing the Church for a change, characterizing the priesthood ban as a mere policy, even more vocally and clearly than they did with polygamy. As early as 1954, President David O. McKay was teaching that the priesthood ban was not doctrinal:

There is no doctrine in this church and there never was a doctrine in this church to the effect that the Negroes are under any kind of a divine curse.

We believe that we have scriptural precedent for withholding the priesthood from the Negro. It is a practice, not a doctrine and the practice will some day be changed. And that’s all there is to it.

Letter written by Dr. Sterling M. McMurrin, reported in the Salt Lake Tribune, January 15, 1970

In 1963, Apostle Spencer W. Kimball (who would be President of the Church at the time the ban was lifted) continued to blur the line between doctrine and policy:

The doctrine or policy has not varied in my memory. I know it could. I know the Lord could change his policy and release the ban and forgive the possible error which brought about the deprivation.

Kimball, Edward L., The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball. Bookcraft. p. 448–9

Today, Church leaders seem to lean more toward calling the priesthood ban a policy or practice that was changed, rather than a doctrine. Recently, Jeffrey R. Holland has said that, despite what his predecessors have said in the past, the status of the ban (as doctrine/policy/practice), and the reason(s) for the ban, are now (and perhaps have always been) unknown:²

I have to concede to my earlier colleagues. … They, I’m sure, in their own way, were doing the best they knew to give shape to [the policy], to give context for it, to give even history to it. All I can say is however well intended the explanations were, I think almost all of them were inadequate and/or wrong. …

At the very least, there should be no effort to perpetuate those efforts to explain why that doctrine existed. I think, to the extent that I know anything about it, as one of the newer and younger [apostles] to come along, … we simply do not know why that practice, that policy, that doctrine was in place.

Interview for The Mormons, PBS documentary, 2006

Holland may have just been following Gordon B. Hinckley’s lead:

Helmut Nemetschek (interviewer): Until 1978 no person of color attained the priesthood in your church. Why did it take so long to overcome the racism?

Gordon B. Hinckley: I don’t know. I don’t know. I can only say that. (long pause) But it’s here now.

Interview, ZDF German Television, January 29, 2002

Unlike the retirement of the polygamy doctrine, there hasn’t been an effort among leaders of the Church to rehabilitate, or reconcile the modern Church with, the LDS prophets who originated and promoted the priesthood ban doctrine.  This is probably for the best, given the frankly dispicable things that came out of their mouths during the ban. One Apostle’s response was to make an extremely rare exception to stare decisis and explicitly invoke a Brown-like overruling of the past prophets:

Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.

Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, CES speech, All Are Alike Unto God, August 18, 1979

Gordon B. Hinckley’s most memorable statement on the topic seems to vaguely imply broad condemnation of his predecessors and even himself (though I don’t think the faithful heard it that way):³

Now I am told that racial slurs and denigrating remarks are sometimes heard among us. I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ. Nor can he consider himself to be in harmony with the teachings of the Church of Christ. How can any man holding the Melchizedek Priesthood arrogantly assume that he is eligible for the priesthood whereas another who lives a righteous life but whose skin is of a different color is ineligible?

General Priesthood Meeting speech, The Need for More Kindness, April 1, 2006

The LDS Priesthood ban has gone from a rock-solid, eternal doctrine of the Church, to something that may or may not be a doctrine, or a policy, or just some kind of practice of the Church. A few things are clear, however: From the current Church leaders’ perspectives, the priesthood ban was definitely a horrible thing, and they were thrilled that the Church discarded it (whatever type of rule it was), but in a big, cowardly nod to stare decisis, no leader of the Church has (1) openly repudiated the LDS prophets who were responsible for initiating and perpetuating it, or (2) claimed that the ban was not divinely mandated. And that’s where the issue stands today.⁴

-PWM

_____________________________________

1. See, e.g., D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power. Signature Books. p. 81, describing a struggle between Apostles Ezra Taft Benson and Hugh B. Brown over whether the Civil Rights Movement was part of a communist conspiracy to destroy the United States. Benson, who eventually became President of the Church (1984-94), was insistent (and taught publicly, including in General Conference addresses) that it was a conspiracy.
2. Interestingly, while I basically like Holland’s approach to explaining the issue, it certainly makes him look like he is just as lost as everybody else when it comes to this important topic. Unfortunately for him, he is officially a “special witness of Christ“, and he and his colleagues at the highest levels of Church leadership not only perpetuate the idea that they receive regular instruction from the resurrected Jesus Christ, they also declare to the world, twice a year, that they are “prophets, seers, and revelators“. Jeffrey Holland’s direct line to God doesn’t allow him to be as ignorant as everybody else.
   This illustrates the difficulty of his situation–it’s lose-lose for him. He can ignore stare decisis and disavow the bigotry, but if those dead prophets can be so wrong, what does that say about his own prophetic claims? He can also honor stare decisis, but that means honoring what most of America already thinks is morally and ethically wrong, and what does that say about his prophetic moral compass? He appears to have chosen the former for himself. (What do you expect him to do, deny altogether that he is a prophet who hangs out with Jesus? Yeah, right.  The type of people who end up in the position he is in are not the type who would ever voluntarily relinquish that power.  I would love him to prove me wrong, but he won’t.)
3. In the last sentence of this quote, Hinckley describes the whole Church, including himself, for the entire period prior to 1978, when the ban was lifted. It seems like a subtle statement that the ban was a huge mistake, driven by arrogance. If so, I totally agree with the sentiment, though not the passive, ineffective way it was delivered.
4. Note that this is not where the Mark of Cain doctrine stands now, just the priesthood ban.  The Mark of Cain (or Curse of Ham) doctrine itself–the underlying basis for the priesthood ban–has never been repudiated by the Church, probably because of stare decisis too.  Yeah, I think that’s a problem.  It makes lifting the ban much less meaningful, since the underlying beliefs remain racist.  In fact, it seems almost like the bare minimum a post-Civil Rights American church has to do to avoid being a pariah.  Kind of pisses me off, actually.  But I suppose that’s a topic for another post.

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.

President Brigham Young taught:

The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory, because they had blessings offered unto them, and they refused to accept them.

Journal of Discourses, Vol 11, p. 269, August 19, 1866.

Apostle Heber C. Kimball declared:

You might as well deny ‘Mormonism,’ and turn away from it, as to oppose the plurality of wives. Let the Presidency of this Church, and the Twelve Apostles, and all the authorities unite and say with one voice that they will oppose the doctrine, and the whole of them will be damned.

Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p. 203

Apostle Joseph F. Smith said:

Some people have supposed that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity, or nonessential to the salvation of mankind. In other words, some of the Saints have said, and believe that a man with one wife, sealed to him by the authority of the Priesthood for time and eternity, will receive an exaltation as great and glorious, if he is faithful, as he possibly could with more than one. I want here to enter my protest against this idea, for I know it is false…whoever has imagined that he could obtain the fullness of the blessings pertaining to this celestial law, by complying with only a portion of its conditions, has deceived himself.

Journal of Discourses, vol. 20, pp. 28

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the LDS Church encountered massive rejection of its doctrine of polygamy among the people of the United States, which caused Church leaders to very reluctantly rethink the religion-defining doctrine. The United States enacted and enforced laws that severely punished the Church and its leaders for embracing the doctrine, culminating in the dissolution of the Church as a corporate entity and seizure of all of its assets. The Church made a formal announcement that its practice of polygamy had ended, and after attempts to continue performing polygamous marriages in secret, eventually stopped polygamy altogether in the early 1900s.

That is not to say that the Church completely abandoned the doctrine of polygamy after that time, rather, it merely instituted a policy suspending the practice. Belief in the doctrine as described in the quotes above was not changed.  The doctrine, Mormons believed, would never go away, and the practice would return again. That’s what I was taught when I was a kid. But now, 100+ years after suspension, the practice has never resumed. In fact, a President of the Church has denied, without apology or retraction, that it is a Church doctrine (see below), and the Church has since become America’s most earnest, organized, and outspoken opponent of laws that attempt to define marriage as anything other than a union between one man and one woman.

President Gordon B. Hinckley professed:

I condemn [polygamy], yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.

Larry King Live, CNN, 1998

Does this mean that now polygamy is doctrinal only when it is legal?  Possibly.  Nobody really knows.  One thing that it does seem to make clear, however, is that the practice of polygamy has gone from being an essential, permanent, religion-defining doctrine of Mormonism, to a non-doctrinal¹ policy that can be suspended as needed.

So what does all this say about the prophetic chops of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor, the first three (uber-polygamist) Presidents of the Church, who went to their graves teaching that practicing polygamy was, had been, and always would be, essential to the salvation of humanity?  Were they fallen prophets?  Never prophets in the first place?  How do people still trust these guys when they were so obviously wrong about fundamental LDS beliefs?

Take Brigham Young, for example.  President Hinckley not only denied Brigham’s eternal doctrine of polygamy as anything more than a quirky artifact of LDS Church history, but Hinckley’s tenure as President also saw Church curriculum used to hamfistedly repurpose Brigham Young as a stalwart monogamist.

How could a modern LDS prophet like Gordon B. Hinckley so thoroughly dismiss key beliefs and teachings of Brigham Young without also undercutting Young’s authority as a prophet of God (as well as his own)?  Well, Hinckley clearly made an effort to at least pay lip service to stare decisis–putting forth the appearance of deference to Brigham Young’s prophetic authority, even if it may not have been completely sincere.  Hinckley was not shy about connecting his own authority to that of Brigham Young.  He kept a large portrait of “Brother Brigham” on the wall in his office, and he referred to it often in his speeches and writings:

At the close of one particularly difficult day, I looked up at a portrait of Brigham Young that hangs on my wall. I asked, “Brother Brigham, what should we do?” I thought I saw him smile a little, and then he seemed to say: “In my day, I had problems enough of my own. Don’t ask me what to do. This is your watch. Ask the Lord, whose work this really is.” And this, I assure you, is what we do and must always do.

An Ensign to the Nations, a Light to the World, President Gordon B. Hinckley, General Conference Speech, October 5, 2003

Hinckley was also willing to lean on Brigham Young for words of wisdom, sometimes even taking those words from statements Brigham made about the doctrine of polygamy (and then reworking them to apply to other things Hinckley wanted to emphasize² ).

Even though Hinckley tried to subtly erase much of what Brigham Young taught and believed as a prophet of God, his choice to align himself with Brigham Young and draw from Young’s teachings can be explained by the LDS concept of stare decisis: Hinckley’s own authority was legitimized through his demonstrated respect for the authority and wisdom of Brigham Young.  For members of the Church given to skepticism, who paid attention to the differences between the beliefs and teachings of the two men, Hinckley’s approach made him look like a spin doctor or a slick politician, posing for cheesy pictures with Brother Brigham, while secretly stabbing him in the back.  For most faithful members of the Church, however, Hinckley looked like a humble servant of the Lord providing modern guidance for the Church, while remaining part of an unbroken chain of authority–another in a long line of LDS prophets.

-PWM

_______________________________

1. Well, it’s a non-doctrine only if you exclude non-physical living/loving arrangements, like my parents apparently had for 20 or so years as a divorced, but still sealed, couple.  Otherwise, Hinckley’s description of the practice of polygamy as a non-doctrine is deceptive doublespeak, and Mormons don’t do that.  (Just kidding.)  And LDS Prophets definitely don’t do that.  (Kidding again.)
2. Here is an example of Gordon B. Hinckley taking a (slightly veiled) Brigham Young teaching about the Gospel principle of polygamy and reapplying it to other Church doctrines:

   [Brigham Young said,] “Every principle God has revealed carries its own convictions of its truth to the human mind, and there is no calling of God to man on Earth but what brings with it the evidences of its authenticity.” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 9, Jan. 12, 1862)   That’s a remarkable statement, really…I’ve never found a man who paid tithing who had any doubt that it represented a commandment of the Lord…And so I might go on with every principle of the gospel.  Each one, as we observe it, brings convictions of its divine source.

   President Gordon B. Hinckley, July 16, 1995 speech, reported in the LDS Church News, week of July 22, 1995

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. LDS prophets do not openly dispute or dismiss the doctrinal pronouncements of past prophets. This LDS version of stare decisis has an effect similar to judicial stare decisis: the prophets’ doctrinal declarations stay fairly consistent from one generation to the next, and current prophets are legitimized by the idea that the past prophets were always right. LDS stare decisis, however, is not exactly the same as its judicial counterpart, in that it is not presented to the Church as a practical solution for inevitably conflicting doctrinal interpretations of the prophets. As a believer, I knew that the reason the prophets’ doctrinal understandings never conflict was because they each have a special connection to God and are getting Truth straight from the source, not because they always defer to their predecessors.

So how does stare decisis work in a world that is always changing, where yesterday’s answers aren’t always right for today’s circumstances?  In the courts, when that kind of situation arises, judges typically have a couple of different options for handling it: (1) they can be bold, make an exception to stare decisis, and overrule the previous case, acknowledging that it was originally decided in error, or (2) they can pay lip service to stare decisis, but use their mad reasoning skills to make room for a new answer, usually by figuring out a way to relabel the current case as something different from (and therefore inapplicable to) the previous case.   Courts generally prefer option 2, and use option 1 only as a last resort, because overruling a previous case can destabilize the law and harm people who invested resources in complying with the rules established by the overruled case.

A famous example of a court explicitly overruling a clear precedent is the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which overruled Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), holding that laws segregating blacks from whites violate the U.S. Constitution, and “separate-but-equal” accommodations are not equal in practice. Cases in which stare decisis is not honored often get very uncomfortable reactions from lawyers who value a system that is reliable and predictable. For example, one of my law school professors (who happened to be black) made a point of voicing his dismay at the departure from the principal that Brown represents. Most people, however, seem to think that Brown was a good call–an idea whose time had come.

As hard as it is for a court to overcome stare decisis, it may be even harder for a leader of the Church to overcome the LDS version. How does one go about overturning something that many people believe to be Truth from God? The backlash against attempts to do that could potentially fracture the Church. Additionally (and not insignificantly), current LDS prophets have a very strong incentive to avoid giving anybody the impression that doctrines taught by their predecessors were never really True–doing so undercuts their own claims to the prophetic mantle and the power and authority that comes with it.  Thus, to my knowledge, a Brown v. Board of Education-style doctrinal reversal has never happened in the LDS Church, and I wouldn’t expect one any time soon.  Like the courts, however, LDS Church leaders have found an option 2 for discarding bad doctrine.  Their mad reasoning skills have culminated in the development of two dueling concepts: “doctrine” and “policy”.

-PWM

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.) I studied the teachings of Mormon prophets over the 150+ year life of the LDS Church and found that certain Laws (or doctrines) they emphasized as “eternal” and “fundamental” to God’s plan for humanity had changed over time.  This was very distressing to me, as I had been taught my whole life that God’s Laws are eternal and unchanging, because they are based on Truth, which is eternal.  I was taught that the doctrines of Mormonism embody the sum of those unchanging Laws.  Clearly, however, doctrines had been changing and evolving the whole time.³

Once I realized this was the case, the contradiction between reality and what I had been taught and always believed about the LDS Church caused me to lose much of my confidence in the Church as the one true organization of God on Earth. I tried to figure out ways to reconcile the contradictions, trying to make distinctions between them that allowed both to be true at the same time.  My mind was working in ways similar to Deep Throat above, conceptually separating “doctrine” and “Truth” from “Mormon culture” and “folklore” in an effort to define the consistent Laws in LDS teachings upon which all blessings are predicated.⁴  Despite my best efforts, I was largely unsuccessful at convincing myself that the contradictions weren’t really contradictions, and that there was a consistent Law of the Gospel buried in Mormon beliefs.

When the believers in my family learned of my confusion, they pulled all of the strings they could to get me some help.  They put me in contact with Max Anderson, an LDS apologist, who had published a book defending mainstream LDS beliefs by deconstructing Mormon Fundamentalist claims to divine authority.  Max and his wife were very kind to me, and they had me over to their house on several occasions to sit in their living room and talk through my concerns.  A few times, Max invited other apologists to join us and discuss issues they had researched.  These meetings presented me with various ways of parsing the contradictions so that they made more sense.

One meeting in particular really blew my mind.  At that meeting, Eldon Watson, who had compiled a book of Brigham Young’s writings, attempted the mindbending feat of explaining how everything Brigham Young taught is in harmony with mainstream LDS beliefs about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I was flabbergasted to learn that what made it all fit together for him was to draw a distinction between “LDS doctrine” and ”Truth”.  The key, he explained, is to understand that Truth is eternal and unchanging, but LDS doctrine is only an expression of the Church’s acknowledged beliefs at a specific moment in time.  Thus, LDS doctrine when Brigham Young was alive included polygamy as a requirement to get into the highest part of heaven, but current LDS doctrine does not.

This idea was shocking to me because, despite its (semi)effectiveness as a logical solution to the problem of contradiction in authoritative LDS teachings, the concept is clearly heretical.  All LDS Church leaders I know of, and regular members alike, have talked about LDS doctrine as embodying “the fullness of the Gospel”.  Any past changes have been carefully characterized as adding more previously unrevealed Truth to the doctrine, because Truth is what LDS doctrine is all about.  Watson was explaining that doctrine freely changes with the needs of the Church at the given moment–things that are Truth, like the divine nature of polygamy, can be taken out and disavowed.

I’m pretty sure that Watson, in offering up his idea, was mainly just trying to accommodate the fact that Church President Gordon B. Hinckley had recently blurted out, on international television, that polygamy is not doctrinal⁵ when it had clearly been doctrinal (though not always practiced) during the previous 100+ years of LDS Church existence.  I think, however, that drawing a distinction between doctrine and Truth is just an apologetic invention, and has never been part of Church teachings. As far as I know, President Brigham Young never made that distinction, and Apostle Boyd K. Packer (currently the next in line to be President of the Church) doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo either, because he has taught that Some things cannot be changed. Doctrine cannot be changed. And understandably so.  Malleable doctrine undermines the authority of Church leaders, because it means that at least sometimes what they teach is not the real Truth, and therefore need not be obeyed.  This is also the reason why Mormons almost never admit (with any specificity) that Church leaders make mistakes.  Changing doctrine is just a slow-motion mistake.

Funny, though, because now that I have apostatized, I agree with Elden Watson.

-PWM

_______________________

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).
3. For example, the importance of polygamy in attaining the highest glory in the Celestial Kingdom, the meaning and importance of Doctrine & Covenants 89 (the “Word of Wisdom”), the role of Blood Atonement in the Gospel, the meaning and importance of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the role of seer stones and other implements of folk magic in the Gospel, the role and meaning of race in determining worthiness to hold the Priesthood, the ancestral origins of the American Indians, the location of lands and people featured in Book of Mormon, the eternal and unchanging nature of LDS temple ceremonies and other Priesthood ordinances, etc.
4. I never went as far as Deep Throat has, however, in making distinctions between “administration of earthly issues” and “the Gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e. truth) in its purest mode”, probably because that contradicts the basic Mormon belief that God doesn’t give any exclusively “earthly” rules–they are all applicable to spiritual matters (see D& C 29:34-35).
5. Larry King: You condemn it [polygamy].

   Gordon B. Hinckley: I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.

   –1998 Larry King interview of Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet and President of the LDS Church

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.
The strategy carries forward to other events described in the Bible that conflict with science (e.g., Noah’s Ark (and the flood) , or even the Exodus). Once science has persuaded you that the events probably didn’t actually happen the way the Bible says (and perhaps you were taught to believe), you simply thank science and conclude that they’re just metaphors.

It’s actually easy for a Mormon to do this with the Bible, because Mormons believe the Bible to be the word of God only to the extent that it has been translated correctly, and the current version of the Bible is missing many “plain and precious things” that were removed or otherwise corrupted since the books were first written. In the mainstream LDS view, the Bible is already a potential minefield of half-truths and uninspired poetry, so relabeling seemingly literal elements as metaphorical in light of new scientific knowledge is no big deal.

But what about taking that same approach with the Book of Mormon?

Such an approach is rarely seen in the LDS Church, if ever. Joseph Smith once said that the Book of Mormon is “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion.” That quote is proudly printed in the introduction of every copy of the Book of Mormon published by the LDS Church, as is the following challenge to the world: “We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true.” Now, as a Mormon with those sweeping declarations ringing in your ears and permeating your concept of the religion, which Book of Mormon stories are you going to declare to be not literally true? I didn’t think so.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that events and facts depicted in Book of Mormon stories don’t conflict with the discoveries of science. In fact, I would assert that under scientific scrutiny, the Book of Mormon fares significantly worse than the Bible (which is saying a lot, considering the Bible’s track record). Here are a few clear opportunities to label Book of Mormon stories as metaphors that mainstream Mormons never take:

1. The American Indians, who the Church (until 2006) believed were descended principally from large Semitic nations that dominated the Americas for about 1000 years (Nephites and Lamanites), as chronicled in the Book of Mormon,¹ are actually genetically Asian. Their ancestors came from Siberia to the American continent via a land bridge that existed anciently.
2. Crucial Book of Mormon animals (horses, domesticated cattle, elephants, domesticated sheep, goats, swine)? No trace.
3. Crucial Book of Mormon ores and alloys (iron and steel)? No trace.
4. Millions of Jaredites and hundreds of thousands of Nephites and Lamanites (numbers rivaling the size of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans) who died on the same battlefield, years apart? No trace.
5. The Book of Mormon’s Jaredite civilization is supposed to have formed in the wake of the miraculous confounding of human languages at the Tower of Babel. LDS apologist John L. Sorenson places the date of that event at the unreasonably early date of 3100 BC². Even accepting this strained, faith-accommodating date as the best estimate for the event, it is still right around the generally accepted date of the emergence of the Sumerian writing system (3100 BC), which developed long after humans were already speaking Sumerian and any number of other languages, not the mythical “Adamic” language.

For somebody taking the “inspired metaphor” approach, just the few conflicts between the Book of Mormon and scientific consensus listed above seem to place the entire Book of Mormon narrative in the category of metaphor. It’s no wonder this approach is not accepted in mainstream Mormonism–as applied to any LDS Scripture, including the Bible and the Book of Mormon. This rejection of the “inspired metaphor” approach places mainstream Mormons in the same camp as the creationists and intelligent design proponents.

Definitely not my camp.

-PWM

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1. For example, the Nephites and Lamanites “did cover the whole face of the land, both on the northward and on the southward, from the sea west to the sea east“
2. I think 3100 BC is early because the Book of Mormon indicates that only about 30 generations of Jaredites lived prior to the civilization’s demise sometime after 600 BC, which requires an unthinkable 80+ years per generation, if we take Sorenson’s early date. With this in mind, the more mainstream Christian/LDS date (acknowledged by Sorenson) of around 2200 BC seems early too (50+ years per generation). Using Sorenson’s dates, about 125 generations (20 years per generation) would be more reasonable, but possibly still a bit low. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that as far as science is concerned, the chronology of Middle Earth is just as real.

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. Non-leaders are not supposed to have much (if any) access to the Church’s rules and procedures. The Church publishes a rulebook for select local leaders called the “Church Handbook of Instructions” (the “CHI”).

The CHI sets forth the Church’s official rules regarding a variety of topics, as well as the official Church doctrines under which many of those rules arise. For example, the CHI explains why Church members are disciplined by the Church³ for committing serious transgressions. The purpose of discipline is three-fold: “1. to save the souls of transgressors, 2. to protect the innocent, and 3. to safeguard the purity, integrity, and good name of the Church.”⁴ The CHI provides that formal discipline is mandatory for murder, incest, child abuse, apostasy, serious transgression while holding a prominent church position, a transgressor who is a predator, a pattern of serious transgressions, or a transgression that is widely known.⁵ Formal discipline is sometimes necessary for “serious transgression”, an abortion, or a transsexual operation.⁶ The concept of “serious transgression” is defined to mean “a deliberate and major offense against morality”, including, but not limited to, “attempted murder, rape, sexual abuse, spouse abuse, intentional serious physical injury of others, adultery, fornication, homosexual relations, deliberate abandonment of family responsibilities, robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement, sale of illegal drugs, fraud, perjury, and false swearing.”⁷

When I was a 19 year-old missionary standing outside of that MTC classroom/confessional, fretting over my fate, it would have been nice to have known that “masturbation and/or viewing pornography in years past” was not included on the “serious transgressions” list. In fact, that bit of information would have probably spared me a sizeable portion of the angst and personal torment that hobbled my spirituality, not to mention my social life, during my teenage years.

But keeping Church members informed is not how the LDS Church uses the CHI. In fact, the Church zealously enforces its copyright with respect to the CHI when anybody attempts to distribute it to unauthorized recipients.⁸

I don’t know exactly why the Church keeps its rules such a big secret, but the effect of the secrecy is clear: (1) It gives local Church leaders an informational advantage over the rest of the flock, which creates or augments an aura of authority and wisdom; (2) it makes local Church leaders almost wholly unaccountable to the members they serve for the decisions they make, and for the quality of their leadership; and (3) the combination of 1 and 2 above leaves members in a position of subservience and vulnerability in nearly every interaction they have with local leaders (the higher-up the leader, the greater his dominance). It is a formula for maximum control over members of the Church by local leaders.

If those are the Church’s reasons for secrecy, then I get it. I just strongly disagree, on ethical grounds.⁹ Basic fairness demands that people be allowed to know the rules for which they are to be held accountable. Even if the Church’s policy in this regard has been adopted with the best intentions, it has the real-world effect of being unfair, oppressive, and enabling ecclesiastical abuse of powerless members of the Church (the very people the Church should be trying its hardest to protect). 

-PWM

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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.
3. i.e., put on probation, disfellowshipped, or excommunicated; see CHI p. 109
4. CHI p. 105
5. see CHI pp. 110-11
6. see CHI p. 111
7. CHI p. 110
8. A full copy of the latest (2006) CHI has been made available on Wikileaks, but to avoid a cease-and-desist letter from LDS Church attorneys, I won’t directly link to it. Just google it.
9. As an aside, the Church’s expectation that it is inappropriate for Church members to ever criticize a Church leader (even if the criticism is true) makes its policy of withholding the CHI from the members (and therefore removing a key means of formulating criticism) understandable, though cynical, unethical and self-serving.

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. Their marriage in the temple was both a civil marriage and a religious marriage–a ritual (or “ordinance“) in which my mom and dad had been “sealed” to each other, not just “till death do [them] part”, but “for time and all eternity.” From the perspective of the LDS Church, they continued to be sealed together for eternity as husband and wife, despite the civil divorce.

I think there is a similar dynamic at play in Catholic “sacramental” marriages that end in divorce–the divorce isn’t recognized by the Catholic Church, and any remarriages occur with that in mind. In the Catholic Church, if the marriage is sacramental, neither of the divorcees will be married in the Church again. In the LDS Church, it’s a bit different. My parents’ story continues:

For those of you keeping score, in the eyes (and the records) of the LDS Church, my dad was now simultaneously eternally married to two living women, and both of those women were eternally married to my dad, and nobody else.

Around the year 2000, decades after my parents’ civil divorce, my mom’s new husband realized that in the Mormon world, she had been living as my dad’s “spiritual” wife the whole time. He was thoroughly creeped out, and very dismayed that there had been no “temple divorce”. He asked my mom to make sure that the temple divorce was made official, so she looked into it.

Surprisingly (to me, at least), the polygamous union was not just a record-keeping anomaly, and dissolving it wasn’t a mere formality that the Church could take care of right away. No, here is what had to happen for the Church to acknowledge that she was no longer my dad’s wife:

1. She had to obtain, from her local LDS bishop, an application form asking the First Presidency to cancel her sealing to my dad;
2. The application form required a letter from her, addressed to the First Presidency, explaining why she wanted to have the sealing canceled;
3. The application form also required a letter from my dad, also addressed to the First Presidency, agreeing to cancellation of the sealing;
4. The completed application could only be submitted for First Presidency review by the senior local ecclesiastical authority, the stake president, who was required to interview her and attach his own written approval before sending off the application.
5. The First Presidency, in its sole discretion, would decide whether or not to cancel the sealing.
6. She would receive written confirmation of the First Presidency’s decision.

To dissolve the polygamous sealing, my mom had to get the permission of not only five different leaders of the Church, but also her already remarried ex-husband. And it wasn’t a quick process. Step 6 was completed a full nine months from the time that my mom initiated Step 1 (and it was on the desk of the First Presidency for six of those months).

If, as President Gordon B. Hinckley (whose signature, incidentally, is on my mom’s sealing cancellation letter) once asserted, in the LDS Church the practice of polygamy is “not doctrinal”,¹ then what do we call the doctrine supporting the LDS Church practice of sealing my dad to both my mom and my stepmom?

-PWM

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1. Larry King: You condemn it [polygamy].

   Gordon B. Hinckley: I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.

   –1998 Larry King interview of Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet and President of the LDS Church

A very popular LDS scriptural example of this process is found in the Book of Mormon, in the story of a man called “the brother of Jared”, who lived at the time the Tower of Babel was built, and who was commanded by God to build a fleet of submersible ships to cross the ocean. The problem was that no light could reach the inside of the ships, and windows couldn’t be installed. The brother of Jared climbed a mountain and talked to the Lord about it :

23 And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire.

25 …Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?

See Book of Ether 2:23, 25

The brother of Jared then set out to answer the Lord’s question. His solution was to melt a rock (don’t ask me how) into 16 small stones that were as transparent as glass and ask the Lord to touch them and make them glow. The Lord obliged, and Jared had his solution to the problem :

2 For it came to pass after the Lord had prepared the stones which the brother of Jared had carried up into the mount, the brother of Jared came down out of the mount, and he did put forth the stones into the vessels which were prepared, one in each end thereof; and behold, they did give light unto the vessels.

3 And thus the Lord caused stones to shine in darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not cross the great waters in darkness.

See Ether 6:2-3

Among Mormons, the brother of Jared story is considered a classic example of working with the Lord–and invoking his divine power–to solve real-world problems that might normally impede a person from doing the Lord’s will. The Covenanting with the Lord concept applies that process to missionary work in a fairly straightforward way. It should have worked–and I had a testimony that it would work, and was right for me–but it didn’t.

My Covenanting with the Lord missionary experience is not unique; it has been implemented in many missions, with similar results. Despite its universally spotty success record, the principles behind it are solid, mainstream Mormon beliefs about God’s way of working with people, so it is very hard for Mormons to reject. See, for example, this By Common Consent blog post, in which the author acknowledges the general failure of the concept in LDS missionary work, yet blames only abusive and “destructive” implementation (rather than a problem with the underlying concepts) for the failure, and expresses the belief that “when done out of personal volition [the program] does work”.

I don’t know precisely what he means by “personal volition”, but when I covenanted with the Lord, I felt like I was trying the program of my own volition (despite there being obvious external pressure to get results). I think I employed as much of my own volition as the brother of Jared did when all of his friends’ and family’s futures depended on him solving their lighting problem. I was a willing participant in the process.

Several commenters to the BCC blog post go further than the original poster does in trying to marginalize the Covenanting with the Lord concept. Some dismiss the entire premise and attack (criticize!) the judgment of the mission presidents and General Authorities of the Church who allow the program to resurface from time to time. The general critique is that “you can’t tell the Lord what to do”. Another recent BCC blog post adopts the pejorative descriptor “manipulationist” for people who subscribe to this mainstream LDS concept. The critique, however, misapprehends how the concept works–at least as I experienced it. The idea is to confirm, through the Holy Ghost, what criteria the Lord would have you follow in order to bind him in a personal covenant. Thus, the Lord isn’t being told what to do, rather, he is dictating the terms in essentially the same way that he does through any other divine covenanting process found in Mormonism.

Covenanting with the Lord is not “manipulation” of God, it is a test of the Mormon concept of the Holy Ghost as the messenger of God, and a person’s ability to communicate with the Holy Ghost. It tests the LDS concept of personal communication with God. That is the most interesting part to me.

-PWM

When I had been proselyting as a missionary for just about three months, my Mission President (the volunteer LDS clergy supervising the activities of the entire mission) assigned me to work in a new city with a partner (i.e., a “companion”) who was in the final month of his two-year term of missionary service. The Mission President met with me to tell me I was chosen for the assignment because this missionary needed a faithful, enthusiastic companion to try a new method of proselyting that had the potential to usher in a surge of baptisms in the mission. It was called “Covenanting with the Lord”.

The idea behind Covenanting with the Lord was the fact that Heavenly Father has a system in place for helping people achieve their righteous goals. Jesus Christ touched on it in Luke 11:9-13 when he said “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But for Mormons, the concept has another dimension–the Lord explicitly promises that if a person has faith in him, that person shall have power to do whatever “is expedient” for the Lord. And the Lord is obligated to make good on his promises when people hold up their end of the bargain. We had answered Jesus Christ’s call to be missionaries, so clearly our desire to be the best (i.e., “most successful”) missionaries we could be was expedient for him. All we had to do was properly ask for Heavenly Father’s help and demonstrate our unwavering faith in him. We would pray, asking Heavenly Father to send the Holy Ghost to tell us what we needed to do in order to strengthen and demonstrate our faith and invoke the Lord’s obligation to make us successful (i.e., “baptizing”) missionaries. Once the Holy Ghost told us what we needed to do, we just had to take up the challenge and covenant to do it, and the Lord would have to give us people to baptize.

I learned that the Mission President had taught the whole mission to follow this Covenanting with the Lord program just a couple of weeks before I had arrived in the mission, and my new companion had been one of his shining examples of success in following the program and finding people to baptize. Now the Mission President and my new comp were looking at me to get in gear and continue the process.

The day I arrived in my new apartment, my companion told me how the program worked, and how I needed to join him in covenanting with the Lord for baptisms. I needed to sit down with him and prayerfully determine (through the guidance of the Holy Ghost) how many Book of Mormons we needed to distribute, and how many missionary lessons (i.e., “discussions”) we needed to teach people each week in order to demonstrate the level of faith necessary to bind the Lord in granting us success.

I was honored that the Mission President had chosen me, of all the new missionaries, to take up the challenge. I was also taken aback by the audacity and ambition inherent in developing a formula for calling down the power of God to serve our desires as missionaries. It made sense to me, though–we were on the Lord’s errand, so he’s got to support us; this could be how.

My companion and I fasted for 24 hours, prayed, and wrote up a plan laying out, in addition to a commitment to be perfectly obedient to all mission rules, all of our performance goals for the next four weeks. Each week, we figured, our faith would need to increase, and that increased faith would show forth in increased statistics–more Book of Mormons given out, and more discussions taught. The first week contained pretty ambitious numbers, and each week those numbers increased, until, by the last week, the numbers were ridiculously high–equal to a month’s worth of work for most missionary companionships. This was my companion’s last month as a missionary, and he was going to go all out.

We prayed together for the Holy Ghost’s confirmation of our plan, and my companion received that confirmation. I, on the other hand, did not feel anything I considered communication from the Holy Ghost. My comp was absolutely convinced that our plan was right, and as the senior companion, he could have just told me to go along with it, but he was also convinced that the plan wouldn’t work if I wasn’t fully on board. We went back to our apartment and he waited in the front room while I retreated, plan in hand, to the study, where I was to pray until I got my answer.

After about 15 minutes of continuous pleading with the Lord for an answer, I started to feel a light, almost tingling sensation in my spine that grew into a wave that passed through my whole body. I took that as confirmation from the Holy Ghost that our plan was approved of the Lord, and his promise of success would have to be fulfilled as we completed our plan.

The details of the plan and how we went about completing it are the subject of another post, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll just say that we worked like crazy each week, meeting our goals–miraculously, it seemed, as the goals got bigger. The third week, we achieved our goal with five minutes to go before the end of the week. The Lord seemed to be helping us meet our goals–rewarding our faith and tenacious desire to do his will. The fourth week, we were worn down from weeks of non-stop working, but kept at it through the end. After giving our all, we were both very disappointed to find we had come up just barely short of our final week’s goals.

After covenanting with the Lord, we put up what were easily the biggest numbers of any companionship in the mission, but in the end, we baptized nobody during that month (not even close), had no additional serious investigators, and to my knowledge, nobody we met with during that month was baptized at some later date either. We had absolutely zero success, despite our testimony that our plan was a divinely approved path to baptisms. The Mission President never talked to me, or the rest of the mission, about Covenanting with the Lord again. It was abandoned as if it never existed.

-PWM

When I was a child, maybe 8 or 9 years old, I thought up the concept of reincarnation. I didn’t know it by name, and I didn’t know that anybody else had ever thought of it. What I did know is that I got a real charge out of contemplating the possibility that my soul could inhabit another body and I could live another life again after this one was over. The feeling I felt as I put the theory together in my mind was something I hadn’t felt before. It was a spine-tingling, euphoric, exciting sensation. Everything seemed to make sense at that moment, and for that moment I felt a sense of clarity, confidence, and peace about my future that overwhelmed my usual petty concerns and fears. I still remember it.

I later came to understand that the sensory and emotional phenomena I experienced that day are how most Mormons describe their encounters with the power of the Holy Ghost. I realized that the Holy Ghost had been giving me essential information about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, including the purpose of my life, and what awaits my eternal soul after this life is over. I was thrilled.

Then, I learned that reincarnation was a false “philosophy of man”, not a part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and not a part of Mormonism.

-PWM