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http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/2229999-155/new-mormon-mission-how-to-teach?fullpage=1 ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/2229999-155/new-mormon-mission-how-to-teach?fullpage=1 I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading this, but I like the article. I appreciate that it quotes Givens, Bushman, and others. And I agree with the premise that more openness and honesty are needed, and that the essays need to play a more prominent role in our meetings and teachings.
Quote:Many historians insist such a shift is not only possible but also essential.
Agreed, but how do we shift? I’ll toss some ideas over the fence at the end of the post.
Quote:The answer isn’t to replace simplistic stories with footnoted essays. It is to tell better, more complete, stories, stories that are true, that touch issues people really care about.
Only being exposed to a whitewashed version of history robs us of our ability to relate to that history. We are human, the history that has been presented in the past is cast with caricatures, that makes it more difficult to relate to and it’s hard to learn life lessons when we can’t relate. Humans learn from both the good and the bad. How do we learn to apply gospel principles to our nuanced lives when the examples we draw on are not equally nuanced?
Quote:Others, both professors and students, told of stories whereby they drew upon the essay in church meetings and were met by resistance from fellow Mormons who said the essays were not official and merely [church] Public Affairs pieces.
This has largely been my experience. Some people did a little too good of a job in convincing themselves and others to fear anti Mormon half truths. We’ve taught people to fear information as opposed to teaching them how to process information.
Another problem we face, some people have built up a testimony on the whitewashed version of history. What happens when the rug is yanked out from under them? Losing trust in fallible people may be a good thing in the long run but they may run the risk of losing trust in their ability to feel the spirit (sound familiar?).
For instance, several months ago our PH quorum spent half of the class discussing justifications for the priesthood ban for black people. This also included personal testimonies of divine intervention during a PH ordination. God stepped in and forcibly prevented an ordination, no one knew why, come to find out the person being ordained had a great great grandfather with African ancestry. I can raise my hand and mention the essay but a lifetime of faith in the
leadersof the church coupled with personal witnessisn’t something that is going to be corrected during one lesson, besides… the things that created that testimony will trump correction from a class member. We talked about this when the essays were being released, they need more exposure. Exposure from people with more clout than well meaning local members. Some of Nephi’s plain and simple speaking on these issues would go a long way.
As far as the shift…
Focus less on church history. Church history is woven into every aspect of the correlated material, we’ve placed too much emphasis on church history. Examples of gospel principles come from scripture but many come from church history as well. I’d love to see more examples in our manuals of gospel principles being lived by people that come from outside Mormonism. It’s the principle that’s important. I think we’ve ended up with church history events that have been whitewashed until they fit the mold of a principle being taught. Why bother doing that when there are so many examples of principles in action that surround us. Our own church history is a gospel hobby that has been woven into the very fabric of all correlated material.
Focus less on the leaders. All the leaders should be doing/saying is pointing people in the direction of Christ.
Culturally we’ve asked members to develop testimonies of historic church events to establish the church’s truth claims. Culturally we’ve asked members to develop testimonies of the leaders. Those are sandy foundations.
I agree its time for more transparency. I’m saddened that it took the Internet, and the inability to hide the history from members for the church to do the right thing in publishing its essays. This to me, shows a lack of character — when organizations and individuals only do the right thing when they have something to lose. However, I guess its time to forgive them, in spite of the kind of low-key, hidden way they did it. I’m also saddened that the church members are clinging to the old “not official church doctrine” or “not official church statements” line of reasoning. The essays are a bit too threatening for them? Don’t they realize they also deny themselves the kudos less orthodox people would like to give them for acknowledging what is true, and what is not?
I also agree that we must confront the objectionable parts of our history — and embrace the truth. As I’ve said before, we are in the “truth business”. The first missionary discussion used to focus on the need to distinguish between truth and error. Moroni’s promise — the process for knowing the “truth” of all things are central points in our religion. An organization that claims to help people find the truth can’t embrace the truth only when it’s convenient for the organization. The endless testimonies that affirm the central role of truth “I know the church is true” underscore the need for the church to be truthful about its claims. And sometimes, the truth hurts. Sure, you may lose membership over it, but at least you have your values intact. As a GA once said “honesty is expensive, sometimes embarrassing, and often, inconvenient”. And its unjust to lead people astray regarding our history so they won’t leave the church.
I find it really frustrating that as members we don’t seem to want to live up to our own values on big picture items such as the truth about our history.
I gotta say Nibbler and SD that I have not encountered the same resistance to the essays, not that I don’t believe you, I certainly see it could happen and it has been mentioned here and on other forums as happening. Perhaps it’s because I live so far outside the Corridor (probably in a locked cell!). It could also be that living in an area where some of our history actually occurred we are more likely to have some previous understanding that things were not necessarily as taught in correlated materials. On the other hand, other than making the occasional reference to the essays I have not ever made a big deal of them – I tend to stay quiet in class (even sometimes when I should probably speak up). Last night Terryl and Fiona Givens gave a fireside in our stake. I was going to not say anything about it on the forums until later to help protect my identity (you can just go look on Terry’s webpage and see where he was yesterday – although interestingly not many of his presentations are on there). At any rate, the question of culture came up and Fiona, who seems a bit more rebellious than Terryl, jumped on the idea of Utah Mormon culture being too influential – but she also said she sees that changing and sees that it will continue to change as the church grows outside of Utah. That is heartening. I agree with you both (and the article) that the essays should get more exposure and perhaps even from the pulpit in GC – I think that is the only way for them to get by those who would say they are not doctrine or official. It really wouldn’t take much for one of the Q15 (preferably an FP member) to say “Over the past year and a half the church has released a number of well researched and commissioned essays regarding issues in church history and doctrine. These essays are approved by the FP and Q12 and are the official stance of the church in regard to their content. They will be integrated into correlated Sunday School, Primary, Relief Society and Priesthood curricula in the near future.” A fairly simple statement like that should diffuse resistance. It would also be helpful, I think, if an article like this appeared in Deseret News as opposed to the Trib.
It’s a nice article, but it has a an “intellectual” bent. I don’t mean that intellectuals are bad, or that they should be avoided. But I think it only represents a fraction of the overall LDS and non-LDS populace. Let me nit-pick on the article for a second. Under a sentence that states “ Others worry…” we are given a viable non-intellectual view: Quote:“No religion I know of would want to turn its founding stories into history, at least as history is understood today in a scientific sense,” says Kathleen Flake, who heads up Mormon studies at the University of Virginia. “Faith is not about fact; nor about fiction, for that matter. It’s certainly not a question of sophistication, at all, but of religious sense.”
For me, I don’t think the above statement is born of ‘worry’; on the contrary, I think that’s where the Church should go. That’s what spirituality is all about. The article seems to assert that every member or potential member should be told in excruciating detail all the past faults of the Church and its leaders before making a commitment to the organization. I don’t believe that. If I were thinking about becoming Catholic, I doubt that the Priest would want to sit down with me and go over the bad popes first.IMO, the Church needs to re-vector its teachings. The Church needs to acknowledge some of the issues openly, but that in itself is not the key. The key (still my opinion here) is to marginalize the history and get the discussion much more into the here and now. Here’s what I would do if I am mistakenly put in charge:
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Revisit the D&C/PofGPand decide what parts are truly canonical, then leave the rest to historical footnotes. The BofA wasn’t canonized during JS’s lifetime, why was it later? –
Abolish polygamy. Take it out of modern teachings. Acknowledge that it existed and even say that it was well-intended (which is a concession I can live with), but that it was not from God. Get it out of our current practice (men can be sealed to more than one woman). Stop apologizing it. –
Re-Wisdom the WoW. It is too draconian to be a commandment. [Please don’t smoke. We advise you not to smoke. God doesn’t intend for you to harm your bodies in that way. You know you shouldn’t. Strive to stop smoking on your schedule. But even if you can’t stop, just don’t do it at Church.] The idea of keeping an investigator from being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit because they can’t stop a lifelong addiction to cigs is sort of ridiculous. –
Change the SS and Seminary curriculumto “BofM”, “NT”, “Faith in a Modern World”, and “Christian Love and Service”. Get rid of both OT and Church History/D&C as Church curriculum. Faith cannot possibly hinge on either Numbers or Missouri. I would use the “Faith in a Modern World” year to explore contemporary views of the OT or Church History, including the issues, but in a way to balance faith with that information… Why does the OT seem so harsh? Why did Mormons seem to always make enemies of their neighbors? How can we avoid mistakes of the past in our lives today? Sprinkle in there a handful of the good stories in to show that people then could find faith in troubling times, and ask how our times are different and how our times are the same? –
Stop using Church President Teachings for P/RS manuals. I don’t hate them, but it puts too much focus on the person and not the teachings. –
Purge hobbyism from worship. Faith is not the pursuit of information, yet most Sacrament Meeting talks, and many lessons are about information, as if that is what will save us. On Own Now wrote:Here’s what I would do if I am mistakenly put in charge
Most of these are sweeping changes. And like it or not, you and I are not in charge. The church will do what the church will do, and even change initiated from the top doesn’t percolate to the local membership very quickly — because the leaders aren’t doing much other than publishing articles in small corners of the church website, and conference talks. Even a talk on it in WW training isn’t enough to change the mindsets of lifetime members and their traditions.
The quest, for me, is inner peace. I can choose what I believe in the church and what I can’t. Sure, there are talks saying “you can’t pick and choose” what you believe in the church, but the fact is, members do it all the time. They do it with their commitment, with what they are willing to do (anyone who has been a leader know that), and also with the extent to which they embrace all of the church’s teachings in their personal lives.
So, I choose to believe as much as the PoGP, BoM as I choose. I live the Word of Wisdom, but only because I think it’s a good idea. I don’t attend Priesthood meeting lessons unless I want to — and if I ever do teach them again, I tend to amplify whatever I feel passionate about and leave the parts that that I object to, out of the lesson.
All these things, so far, have brought me peace, and I think that is probably the most we can strive for in our relationship with the church.
A couple of things. I don’t think you can avoid or minimize church history. Doing that just gives rise to the shock that comes when people find out about the bothersome parts. It’s out there and needs to be dealt with. Most of us are here in spite of the weird things that went on. It’s just part of the deal in being Mormon. The SS curriculum needs to be revised. The current iteration is about 10-11 years old and is based on a proof texting model where a topic is just supported by passages from that particular book(s). I still remember starting a class in GD and having a sister raise her had and say that the scriptures quoted for the lesson made no sense as regards the topic. I finessed my way around it but she was right.
I strongly disagree with the idea of not teaching old testament. It’s the foundation that all of the gospel ideas and principles are built on but in the current curriculum it’s given no background or context. I taught it for most of last year and tried to bring in as much as I could about how the books fit historically and what their relevance is to our day. OT has been the subject this year in the University of the South’s Education for Ministry program that I’ve been taking and has been a real eye opener for me about how far we have to go in teaching the scriptures.
GBSmith wrote:I don’t think you can avoid or minimize church history.
Agreed, but you can marginalize it. I think the Church’s problem is that it has spent so much time aggrandizing its history, that it has made it (the history) the main message. Now that scholarship is showing that the Church’s declaration of its history is off, the Church is suffering because of the high status it has created for its history. The Church needs to get out of the history books and into the heart of spirituality. Then, the Church will be much better positioned to weather the storm of historical criticism. I think the Church is already doing this, and we are bound to see much more.GBSmith wrote:I strongly disagree with the idea of not teaching old testament. It’s the foundation that all of the gospel ideas and principles are built on but in the current curriculum it’s given no background or context. I taught it for most of last year and tried to bring in as much as I could about how the books fit historically and what their relevance is to our day. OT has been the subject this year in the University of the South’s Education for Ministry program that I’ve been taking and has been a real eye opener for me about how far we have to go in teaching the scriptures.
That’s fine. I like much of what is in the OT. But I would argue that MOST of it’s value is context and not Doctrine. Early Christian writers looked back at the OT and found all kinds of references to the suffering messiah that no one had ever noticed before Jesus’ crucifixion. So, that’s interesting. But I would say that if the only scripture we had in Mormonism were the OT, then I would have given up a long time ago. I don’t believe it deserves an entire year of study for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment. As a study of religious history, sure.nibbler wrote:Quote:Many historians insist such a shift is not only possible but also essential.
Agreed, but how do we shift? I’ll toss some ideas over the fence at the end of the post.
Quote:The answer isn’t to replace simplistic stories with footnoted essays. It is to tell better, more complete, stories, stories that are true, that touch issues people really care about.
Only being exposed to a whitewashed version of history robs us of our ability to relate to that history. We are human, the history that has been presented in the past is cast with caricatures, that makes it more difficult to relate to and it’s hard to learn life lessons when we can’t relate. Humans learn from both the good and the bad. How do we learn to apply gospel principles to our nuanced lives when the examples we draw on are not equally nuanced?
Quote:Others, both professors and students, told of stories whereby they drew upon the essay in church meetings and were met by resistance from fellow Mormons who said the essays were not official and merely [church] Public Affairs pieces.
This has largely been my experience. Some people did a little too good of a job in convincing themselves and others to fear anti Mormon half truths. We’ve taught people to fear information as opposed to teaching them how to process information.
Another problem we face, some people have built up a testimony on the whitewashed version of history. What happens when the rug is yanked out from under them? Losing trust in fallible people may be a good thing in the long run but they may run the risk of losing trust in their ability to feel the spirit (sound familiar?).
For instance, several months ago our PH quorum spent half of the class discussing justifications for the priesthood ban for black people. This also included personal testimonies of divine intervention during a PH ordination. God stepped in and forcibly prevented an ordination, no one knew why, come to find out the person being ordained had a great great grandfather with African ancestry. I can raise my hand and mention the essay but a lifetime of faith in the
leadersof the church coupled with personal witnessisn’t something that is going to be corrected during one lesson, besides… the things that created that testimony will trump correction from a class member. We talked about this when the essays were being released, they need more exposure. Exposure from people with more clout than well meaning local members. Some of Nephi’s plain and simple speaking on these issues would go a long way.
As far as the shift…
Focus less on church history. Church history is woven into every aspect of the correlated material, we’ve placed too much emphasis on church history. Examples of gospel principles come from scripture but many come from church history as well. I’d love to see more examples in our manuals of gospel principles being lived by people that come from outside Mormonism. It’s the principle that’s important. I think we’ve ended up with church history events that have been whitewashed until they fit the mold of a principle being taught. Why bother doing that when there are so many examples of principles in action that surround us. Our own church history is a gospel hobby that has been woven into the very fabric of all correlated material.
Focus less on the leaders. All the leaders should be doing/saying is pointing people in the direction of Christ.
Culturally we’ve asked members to develop testimonies of historic church events to establish the church’s truth claims. Culturally we’ve asked members to develop testimonies of the leaders. Those are sandy foundations.
I’m going to chime in and say I am one of those who thought I had a balanced testimony, but in reality had much more of a “testimony” of leaders than not, and the rug was indeed yanked from under me. There are so many people within my age group who are in my same position and I’m finding more and more every week. It’s relieving I’m not the only one, but also concerning because it’s so wide spread.
To me there are two viable options that could be taken. I think both could do a lot to help “The Rescue” which I think has died, and to save the future that metalrain speaks of. Option 1 – Go back to our name – The Church of Jesus Christ. We have the means to do this, the money, and it is the least bumpy. Just get on the Christ train? Build lessons, talks, etc on Him. Joseph Smith sought Him out, he got an answer that his sins were forgiven him. Joseph Smith also said everything after Christ is an appendage. So cut the strings.
Option 2 – A little dicier but do-able. Open the doors of the history wide, and leave it as an option. Have adult Sunday School class offerings that teach the unvarnished story. In fact, instead of rotating classes, have 4 options all the time. Book of Mormon, Bible – Old and New, LDS History (not Doctrine & Covenants under the name of Church History), World and Cultural Religions.
As we have discussed here often – Make Sacrament Meeting a Christ Centered Service. There are a million ways to do that.
Last of all live up to 3 Nephi 18:22.
Quote:And behold ye shall meet together oft; and ye shall not forbid any man from coming unto you when ye shall meet together, but suffer them that they may come unto you and forbid them not. vs. 25 And ye see that I have commanded that none of you should go away, but rather I have commanded that ye should come unto me.
With this plan anyone can attend the Sacrament Service, feel included, not have to wrestle the uncomfortable and have an hour with Jesus. The next two hours are available for those who want to discuss, study, learn, etc.
I just wish they would call me so I can tell them. I keep waiting.
Thanks a lot for this post, guys. I was recently asked to be a Relief Society teacher in my ward; it’s my turn to take the lesson coming up, and I struggled with the thought of putting so much focus on a single male leader’s view of the topic (church president teachings manuals) in a women’s class. I think I know how I’m going to approach teaching it (more emphasis on the topic in a broader, less-Mormon culture sense), and we’ll see how it goes with the leaders and see if they think they’ve made a mistake in asking me to teach. 
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