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university wrote:
As much as the PR department says they’re trying to get the word out about the essays, they’re simply not. There’s no incentive to bring this knowledge to the faithful TBM’s. It’s not faith-promoting and could hurt the testimonies of devout members. The essays are there to cover the bases of the few struggling Mormons on the fringe and to finally have an answer—be it minimal—to the critics so that the Church can act like it has nothing to hide. Also, if more members become conscious of these issues in the future, the Church can act like they always were open about it and didn’t sweep things under the rug. I suspect in 30 years they’ll be saying they always talked about these things openly. But I don’t believe the church intends to pull these essays into the consciousness of members until it feels forced to. The essays are meant to appease and will stay marginalized until there is enough push for the Church to have to rely on them. Right now, there isn’t enough push.
That might change in the next 25 years. I’ve noticed YA wards are more curious about these things, as they are more internet savvy and don’t have as many years investing their lives into the Church, but even then, I don’t want to overestimate that tendency amongst Mormons. Even if YA wards are more open, there still is a line which people won’t cross. However, I’m not too dismayed at this news. It’s the sign of growing pains. If there’s going to be any progress on these issues, they’re going to happen. It’s just going to be a very, very slow process.
cwald wrote:The problem I see with this is it feels like we are all to often willing to justify actions of the church leadership, and to sacrifice individuals to protect the corporation and the masses… the 99.
One of my biggest beefs as a rank and file member.
Quote:I understand there is going to be some pain, but why not just do the right thing and let the consequences follow?
I think they are afraid of losing membership…they are doing a “slow burn”. I have to confess, based on my own understanding of organizational change, it takes a lot more than publishing an article to change a culture. Just think what it took to train the membership to learn new hymns. they had a hymn practice session at the end of sacrament meeting where people could learn them. A widespread initiative that affected every member who attended sacrament meeting.
Now THAT is change. A stronger way of implementing change in race attitudes might be to read a letter over the pulpit from the Stake Presidency encouraging everyone to read the article, with the Bpric distributing the article to the membership.
I think their fear is in alientating those long time members who grew up believing the fence-sitter argument…they cn release the articles now for all (in a quiet way), and then publish excerpts in manuals for youth and impressionable young adults, who will then grow up in the osmosis — years hence, many will forget that we ever had doctrinal racism…a way of introducing change in a slow way that doesn’t cause too much disruption.
I actually don’t think they would lose members. We are a pretty strong follow along crowd. The general church membership fully trusts the leadership. If the Ensign published every essay and had a GA comment on it, everything would move along fine. If a GA spoke about them in GC – same thing. Doing the slow burn causes more issues, IMHO. I totally agree with mom3. I agree, also, mom3. If we do lose membership, most might be ones I wouldn’t mind losing – said half-heartedly, since I don’t want tot lose anyone. (well, almost anyone)
mom3 wrote:I actually don’t think they would lose members. We are a pretty strong follow along crowd. The general church membership fully trusts the leadership. If the Ensign published every essay and had a GA comment on it, everything would move along fine. If a GA spoke about them in GC – same thing. Doing the slow burn causes more issues, IMHO.
I also agree. If Pres. Monson stood up tomorrow and said we were reinstituting polygamy and walking to Missouri, the vast majority of the rank and file would raise their hands to sustain the action and start packing their hand carts. The essays are not nearly as big as that.
Quote:The problem is that many members don’t know about the essays. The local leader that’s never heard of the essay gets a complaint from a parent that’s never heard of the essay and *boom* the emotion of the moment overpowers our decision making abilities, especially when exposure to the new information can take time to process for ourselves. I think most people’s immediate reaction is (and this is for DJ) “No! That’s not true! That’s impossible!!!” so we react without taking the time to adequately process things.
The scene has so much bearing for those of us here who have been affected by “hidden” or disguised/whitewashed church history or teachings. Luke didn’t believe it at first because he had been taught a different version of the truth. Personally I think Obi Wan did lie, but that’s relevant to us as well because that’s the basis of the FC for many – that the church lied. At any rate, after talking to Obi Wan again and having time to process the idea, when Luke again met Darth Vader he knew Vader was his father. I think the same can be true of the essays – we just need Obi Wan (probably someone like Pres. Uchtdorf) to tell us “many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.” Here’s an actual quote from Pres. Uchtdorf:
Quote:The “truths” we cling to shape the quality of our societies as well as our individual characters. All too often these “truths” are based on incomplete and inaccurate evidence, and at times they serve very selfish motives.
Part of the reason for poor judgment comes from the tendency of mankind to blur the line between belief and truth. We too often confuse belief with truth, thinking that because something makes sense or is convenient, it must be true. Conversely, we sometimes don’t believe truth or reject it—because it would require us to change or admit that we were wrong. Often, truth is rejected because it doesn’t appear to be consistent with previous experiences.
When the opinions or “truths” of others contradict our own, instead of considering the possibility that there could be information that might be helpful and augment or complement what we know, we often jump to conclusions or make assumptions that the other person is misinformed, mentally challenged, or even intentionally trying to deceive.
I love that quote, DJ. In the encyclopedia of phenomenal Uchtdorf quotes, that one is near the top. Quote:When the opinions or “truths” of others contradict our own, instead of considering the possibility that there could be information that might be helpful and augment or complement what we know, we often jump to conclusions or make assumptions that the other person is misinformed, mentally challenged, or even intentionally trying to deceive.
That is just as true of “us” as it is of “them”. We need to recognize and fight this tendency just as clearly and vigorously as those who see things differently than we do. We have no moral high-ground whatsoever if we do unto them exactly as they do unto us.
Here’s where I think your logic is flawed. You’re assuming uniform, high levels of faith in the membership that insulates them against the implications of the Priesthood Ban Disavowal article — that a century of doctrine was wrong, that prophets CAN lead the membership astray, etcetera. But your assumed level of faith of all members is highly unlikely. This is because at any time, there are fringe members who are more susceptible to doubt than others. The membership of this site is evidence of that fact, and the stream of new people who join is evidence of that fact.
I had to re-learn how to do bar graphs in Excel today, so I used this discussion as my practice. I created two theoretical distributions of faithfulness — the distribution that mom3, dj, ray and hawgrrl are assuming, and a more likely distribution I am suggesting.
The red box shows the kind of membership most likely to experience some kind of faith loss as a result of the articles. Your assumed distribution has no one in the red box/faith-loss cateogry.
The more likely distribution I am proposing indicates the people at the low end, (and maybe some of the lower-medium faith people) are probably far more susceptible to weakened faith than the high and very high faith people…and you’re assuming we don’t have any of the susceptible, low faith people. [don’t mind my spelling and sizing errors below, it’s still readable, use the scroll bars].
[attachment=0]Distribution of Faith.jpg[/attachment] Weakened faith is a totally different animal than departure. Also, since we are speculating wildly
🙂 , retention of one group might offset loss in another group – and that is true no matter what the Church does. In the end, all we can do is Monday morning quarterback – and all of us tend to believe we are right in that setting, even when we disagree with each other.Humans are fascinating that way.
Old-Timer wrote:Weakened faith is a totally different animal than departure.
But completely related..in my view. The weaker your faith, the more susceptible you are to other faith-detracting experiences that lead to departure.
In the more likely distribution, just make the red box a bit smaller and push it further to the lower end of the More Likely distribution, and you’ve probably adjusted for the difference between weakened faith, and departure, and its likely still a problem.
Is there an offset? Not sure — I find that much harder to justify than the theory that lower faith individuals are more likely to leave or have decreased faith than higher faith individuals, as a result of the articles.
Seems to me the church is being cautious about how it releases the information, and is doing so in a way they think won’t cause a widespread effect, if the effect is as I’ve proposed. If they are testing the articles this way, I think that is a good thing. Perhaps if they find there isn’t much weakened faith, or membership loss over the articles (perhaps by reviewing the chatter on the bloggernacle), they can be more proactive in getting the word out. For now, they are certainly being low key about it…which can be interpreted in a number of ways — pride, fear of losing people, market testing etcetera. And I think this has hurt well-meaning people like the Sunday school teacher who used the article in sunday school, and was removed. The culture she aint-a-changing mighty fast on this issue…
Anyway, I’m not about to keep this going unless you want to. Agreeing to disagree is the breakfast of gentlemen and gentlewomen, and I’m comfortable with it. (Reference: Wheatabix — the Breakfast of Champions!).
cwald wrote:
Is the church changing and evolving? Yes. Are they evolving fast enough to save the “one?” I don’t think so.More or less in a nutshell.
Old-Timer wrote:In the end, all we can do is Monday morning quarterback.
But TBM’s can’t do “Monday Morning Quarterback” since they didn’t watch football on Sunday!
LookingHard wrote:Old-Timer wrote:In the end, all we can do is Monday morning quarterback.
But TBM’s can’t do “Monday Morning Quarterback” since they didn’t watch football on Sunday!MNF. Where Monday morning quarterbacking makes a difference.
Oh, wait. FHE.
I
knowI’ve gone on my rant about the church having it out for the NFL… or maybe the NFL has it out for everything else. 
SD wrote Quote:The weaker your faith, the more susceptible you are to other faith-detracting experiences that lead to departure.
I sort of agree, but not completely. I believed I was strong in my faith, not just my religious practice but my faith. I honestly did not have a shelf, as the analogy goes. When I learned stuff I didn’t fall over, when I fell over was when I saw the impact of stuff on other people. Thus my faith in the institution fell. A lot of my preconceived acceptances hit the dirt. And yes I am distant from my religion. This is largely because I mourn. It is more than the fallibility issue for me. It is the Potemkin Village affect our religion has created that is my wrestle. Releasing the essays and acknowledging events in our history is a way, in my mind, to make the village stronger.
I don’t think anyone really knows where they are weak or strong. That’s the glorious surprise of this life. I did all the Sunday School answer stuff, with complete sincerity. I had few doubts or questions. I really believed I had a clear vision of life. Today I see a new vision. I have new people I mourn for, people I never imagined existed – us. I had to lose so I could find. Someday the empathy I have gained will be useful. After a decade of this, and ranging wide on it, I have determined it all comes down to choice. However that choice often needs a dark night of the soul. So are we doing anyone any favors by not letting them learn and see where they stand? I don’t want to send people away, but if this life is to be a growth towards Godhood, is it wise to postpone an experience out of fear. For God himself has said, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind.” I believe if the church released the essays boldly – they would be surprised by a positive result. The first bit might be a bit bumpy but it wouldn’t take long to iron out.
SilentDawning wrote:The weaker your faith, the more susceptible you are to other faith-detracting experiences that lead to departure.
A different take: the stronger your faith in things that you eventually come to realize are demonstrably false, the more susceptible… So two elements, a strong faith in something being a particular way and coming to realize that you were wrong.
This is coming from the angle where people have strong faith in things that are important to them, meaning if you have a weak faith in an aspect of the church it might be an indication that it wasn’t very important to you. If some of the narrative changes does it all of a sudden become this important thing for you or do you continue having a weaker faith in that aspect of the church?
Also, not everyone that reads the essay will reach the point where they see their old view as being wrong.
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