Richard D. Poll, Liahona Saint

I have been reading most of Richard D. Poll’s articles this evening, vectoring off of the articles listed in the wikipedia article on Poll.

You can find this article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_D._Poll” class=”bbcode_url”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_D._Poll. To read his articles, go to the articles portion of the wiki, and read some of the following key articles:

(Winter 1967). “What the Church Means to People Like Me”. Dialogue

(Summer 1983). “Liahona and Iron Rod Revisited”. Dialogue

(May 1988). “Dealing with Dissonance: Myths, Documents, and Faith”. Sunstone

(September 1994). “A Liahona Latter-day Saint”. Sunstone

I find Poll’s articles and point of view to be quite refreshing and informative. He represents, to me, the level of integrity necessary to be someone who has dealt with the congnitive dissonance in the church, the swing toward the right and fundamentalisms, and remains faithful as an LDS. He had access to the highest leadship of the church, and sparred with many.

His seminal work is his 1967 talk in a Palo Alto sacrament meeting “What the Church Means to People Like Me”, published in Dialog in 1967, and then later republished in Sunstone in 1980. The article is also here on StayLDS.com at http://staylds.com/docs/WhatTheChurchMeans.pdf” class=”bbcode_url”>http://staylds.com/docs/WhatTheChurchMeans.pdf. In this article he describes two types of faithful saints: Iron Rod Saints, and Liahona Saints. Iron Rod-types see the church as having the answers and rigorously defend infallibility, whereas Liahona-types see the church pointing to ultimate truth, but not precisely so. Poll declares himself as a Liahona Saint, without condemning the more TBM-Iron Rod Saints.

Shortly after his publication of the Iron Rod/Liahona model, Apostle Harold B. Lee condemned the article and idea of being a Liahona without mentioning either the term or the author. Most who read Poll’s article knew exactly what HBL was saying, including Poll.

I think his articles are useful in helping to understand how to rationalize the differences in the church.

In the later articles written in 1983, 1988, and 1994, he makes observations of how the church has in the the period between 1967 (his original article) and 1983 and later become more like fundamental christianity, with near infallibility of the bible, and with the progressively more strident claims of how we won’t be led astray by the brethren. He observes the effects of Correlation. Things which I believe those who are middle-way LDS see all the time. The key is that he remained a believer, faithful, while maintaining his integrity as one who questioned everything, and knew the really congnitively dissonant parts of LDS history as well as anyone could.