Seminary – Elder Nelson – Redaction

I’ve had a few days and I’m still not sure how to process. It sounds like there are warring factions in the correlation department. We’ll never know but I’d love to know the motivations behind the various changes.

All the revised versions shared one thing in common, references to the priesthood ban were removed (including the reference to the ‘Race and the Priesthood’ essay). My cynical side thinks leaders probably don’t want to draw any attention to what may be the most frequently cited case study that critics use to justify questioning authority of current church leaders. They probably don’t want a kid in seminary to think, “I never thought of that before.” On the flip side I can see how leaders would also like to leave that mistake in the past. Personally I think it would be a fascinating topic of conversation for the youth and adults alike, it could be a good object lesson about how challenges in life are seldom presented as a choice between black and white (no pun intended). How do we proceed when the path forward isn’t as obvious as “all things which are good cometh of god; and that which is evil cometh of the devil.” If it were that easy life wouldn’t be as difficult as it sometimes can be.

Maybe the motivations don’t matter as much as the result, the lesson improved after revision.

I wasn’t a fan of the uncle thing. I do find it interesting in a “you can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him” way. Concern about public opinion is on the mind of whoever added the weird uncle paragraph. They’re making it clear that the church doesn’t care about public opinion… unless it’s your weird uncle’s opinion about the church caring about people’s opinion. Someone cares a lot about that opinion.

I don’t think it comes as much surprise but I think it’s an indication that there’s a faction that is going to be extremely reluctant to roll back the November policy if nothing more than to save face. How would rolling the policy back look to all the normal uncles of the world? Would it lead them down the path of becoming a weird uncle? Won’t someone think of the uncles?