Religious Kudzu

[Anonymous]

Here’s my latest post. I was listening to Peter Bleakley’s Mormon Civil War podcast. He has more hope than I do that things will change. Since returning from the pandemic, it was a huge shock to me just how much of our worship services are full of leader worship and “obedience” focus. My solution would be a one-year experiment during which time:

– no leaders are to be quoted. None.

– the word “obedience” (rather than the word Mormon) is striken from our vocabulary.

Just one year would do it. Never going to happen, but I think that would help reset the timeline.

https://wheatandtares.org/2021/07/06/religious-kudzu/

[Anonymous]

Thanks for sharing. Interestingly I have noticed the same thing where I live. It’s almost unbearable. I had posted a few weeks back that I’m struggling with why, and I still am. They cut off SM broadcasts 3 weeks ago and I have gone to SM only (and sat in the foyer) since then. One other trend I’ve noticed is a strong focus on the temple, presumably because they were closed so long. That may only stand out to me because I’m not a huge temple fan to begin with, but it’s also coupled with the obedience thing. Hasn’t anyone else heard of grace? And do I really want to bring my friends to a church meeting (at the Church of Jesus Christ) where we talk about following the prophet and don’t talk about Jesus Christ? (Rhetorical question, of course.)

I’m not sure there is a civil war, but in a way I wish there was. Either way, the Mormon Pharisees have had the upper hand for a long time (probably similarly to the Pharisees of old in Jesus’s time) and they’re not going to give up easily.

I agree that your proposal won’t happen, but we can dream can’t we? Or are we just Variants risking annihilation?

[Anonymous]

I am experiencing this too.

I think that part of it was that after swimming in these waters for so long we can become desensitized to it. Then after returning from a long absence, it feels rather jarring or discordant.

[Anonymous]

One of my many dead horses is that we only do three things at church: worship obedience, worship leaders, and worship the church itself. I can sympathize, some people need those things in their spiritual journeys, but we’re so exclusively focused on those things that it starves anyone that doesn’t benefit from them.

Now I’ll take a jab at another dead horse… alleviating the church’s insecurities about itself is a religious kudzu. What would meetings even be like if none of the time was spent reassuring ourselves that we were in the correct church? Would we adjourn immediately after the sacrament?

Either my perspective shifted or there has been an institutional shift, but worshiping the church has been the focus for several years now. Like DJ, I have seen an uptick in the focus on the temple. Presumably because that’s the pinnacle of what the church has to offer, perhaps the only thing church leaders believe the church has left to offer. So add temples to the kudzu pile.

Temples have been closed for a while and they’re starting to reopen, I’m sure that adds to the focus. I’m just not as excited about temples as nearly everyone else at church wants me to be, it’s become another part of our services I have to muscle through.

Joseph Smith was a prophet. Here’s a mythologized church restoration story. The church is true.

Temple temple temple.

Nelson Nelson Nelson.

It’s our ward’s turn to clean the building this Saturday.

Rinse, repeat. The heat and humidity that nourishes our kudzu.

[Anonymous]

Also, even if we did abandon the word “obedience” for a year, we’d just substitute some other word, like “qualify” and continue to preach the same messages.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

Also, even if we did abandon the word “obedience” for a year, we’d just substitute some other word, like “qualify” and continue to preach the same messages.

Here the word would most definitely be “worthy.”

[Anonymous]

The kudzu is a by-product of building hedges about (around) the law – since ivy and other climbing plants grow on those hedges and end up obscuring the core law.

Leadership roulette is a real and powerful thing.

In my ward, our Bishop is committed to continuing remote video meetings for as long as possible – with the solid reasoning that there are a lot of members who can’t attend physically but want to participate in our worship. He is solidly orthodox in many ways, but he also is open to interpretations that work for people. (For example, he loved Pres. Monson but once said that the story of Bishop Monson visiting every widow in his ward every month is damaging to a lot of leaders, since it sets an expectation that is impossible for many to achieve without neglecting their families to some degree.)

I feel for everyone who is in a more traditional, hardcore orthodox ward (or has such leaders) when they need a more gentle, accepting approach.

[Anonymous]

I feel like I am getting a never ending obedience talk from our government just now… But thankfully not in our chapel.

[Anonymous]

SamBee wrote:

I feel like I am getting a never ending obedience talk from our government just now… But thankfully not in our chapel.

Just the opposite where I live.

[Anonymous]

😮

I can’t even imagine attending a church meeting and not hearing about obedience a few dozen times.

[Author]

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