Retired GA Steven Snow "We need to be more inclusive"

[Anonymous]

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2025/06/28/retired-lds-general-authority/” class=”bbcode_url”>https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2025/06/28/retired-lds-general-authority/

Quote:

“There’s nothing like having grandchildren. Do not mess with my granddaughters,” emeritus general authority Seventy Steven E. Snow said. “When I learned about my granddaughters, when they came out, that was real. That made a huge change in my life.”

Quote:

“We need to do more. We need to be more inclusive,” Snow said. “We need to find a place — hard as it may be right now — we need to find a place for our friends, our grandchildren and our children to be at home in the church.”

Quote:

Pearson also shared the story of a bishop in her area who ministers to a lesbian couple in his congregation. “The bishop has said, ‘If I am ever instructed by somebody in authority above me to do anything to discipline those women, I would before that resign my post as bishop.’”

[Anonymous]

Quote:

In an interview, [Carol Lynn Pearson] likened the church’s shifting posture to a kind of “pioneer journey” for individuals and the institution as a whole, with some members acting as “scouts out front” — seeing the territory ahead and urging the rest to move faster.

I like this. I have long gravitated towards the idea of a “continuing restoration” or that God is still changing and refining his church as fast as the members can tolerate it. I, personally, also combine this with the message shared by Matthew Holland in his 2005 talk “wrong roads and revelation” to suggest that the church can go down a wrong road (polygamy or priesthood & temple restriction) before God intervenes to pull us out of it. That God takes the long view and promotes progress, even if it meanders.

This perspective of Pearson adds something to that framework. There can be scouts out front of the mainstream church “seeing the territory ahead and urging the rest to move faster.” Some of these scouts can be urging us to go down what ultimately becomes a wrong road and some can be urging us to go down what ends up being the correct road. God allows all of this as a very messy process for revelation and progress. The scouts perform an important but very dangerous job and risk being alienated from the church that they are trying to help.

Part of my reason for adopting the “continuing restoration” model is to provide a bridge between my understanding and mainstream Mormonism. IOW, how can I frame my belief in “Mormonese?” Unfortunately, I think that bringing in the “wrong roads” idea and Pearson’s “forward scouts” idea is probably a bridge too far for most LDS.

I’m trying to be just different enough to be insightful but not so different as to be apostate. 😆

[Anonymous]

Inclusiveness is not a normal mindset for an exclusionary theology and organizational structure. We have a theology that excludes the interests of minority groups in the population (women – even if there are actually more women then men in the pews, racial minorities, and “liberals” who may or may not have an education). We aren’t that far off from those who run the church organization and receive revelation (in theorY0 from seeing the main threats to the church organization as “women, gays, and intellectuals”.

On some levels, it feels like telling a carnivore to “eat more rice” and expecting that to actually work.

TANGEANT: We got a puppy [Beagle-German Shepherd mix] recently after a multi-year no-pet-hiatus and I am now reading labels in the pet aisle of shops. The amount of cheaper grains that go into various meaty creations is a testament to the care that pet owners have as well as some nutritional creativity and magic in the pet food creation department.

But it actually goes beyond that. Not only are we looking at the carnivore “eat more rice” scenario, but the creative nutritional geniuses aka “nurturing, faithful women” are leaving their posts [and Jarod Halvorsen noticed last year].

According to the Pew Research group, Generation Z women are leaving church engagement more then Generation Z men – and women leaving church engagement in general is more common then it used to be.

https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/young-women-are-leaving-church-in-unprecedented-numbers/” class=”bbcode_url”>https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/young-women-are-leaving-church-in-unprecedented-numbers/

Quote:

Studies show that women tend to contribute much more time and energy to community building and volunteer efforts in places of worship. Without this dedicated source of volunteer labor, many congregations will be unable to serve their membership and their communities. What’s more, research finds that mothers play an instrumental role in passing on religious values and beliefs to their children. Americans who were raised in religious households credit their mothers more so than their fathers for leading in their religious upbringing, and children who are raised in mixed-faith households are more likely to adopt their mother’s faith in adulthood.

None of this is good news for America’s places of worship. Many of these young women are gone for good. Studies consistently show that people who leave religion rarely come back, even if they hold on to some of their formative beliefs and practices.

NOTE: The bolding is mine.

[Author]

Posts