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I listened to most of the recording of the meeting. I find myself just shaking my head every time I think about it.

mom3 wrote:

the prediction that in 10 years we won't be able to talk about religion outside our homes

Or perhaps we will have dug our own hole.

Aren't we supposed to look at the beam in our own eye?

Good news is, I barely talk about my religion outside my home. Guess I'm ahead of the curve.

All the anti-religious paranoia reminds me of Fox News. I know I should be more empathetic towards people's genuine concerns...but...

If Elder Oaks is predicting that Mormons will face public backlash for some of their viewpoints if these views don't evolve with the times...then, why yes, he's correct. While Elder Oaks may lament this, public acceptance for LGBTQ individuals and relationships will continue to grow as my generation gets older. The church will have to tone down their rhetoric or they will get backlash. Mind you, there are still bigots in my generation, make no mistake. But generally, outside of conservative areas, it's not popular with my generation to believe things along the lines of the "gay agenda being a danger to the well-being of society”, “gay lifestyles being one of the worst sins”, etc. While Elder Oaks may believe this is about religion, I've rarely experienced anti-religious sentiment amongst even atheist millennials (although it does happen and there can be a level of mockery). Rather, millennials are tired of the social/political views the church (and conservative churches) tends to support. Since these views are supposedly informed by the religion, then millennials start getting irked with the religion itself. That’s where a lot of the mockery stems from. Bottom line: most millennials want to learn more about how to love your neighbor than the sins of their neighbor.

Also, religious beliefs of millennials are largely dependent on where they live, but I will take a guess and say at large, my generation seems to be weary of authoritarian, obedience-based religion. I would say millennials are more spiritually-based than religiously based. I think they've become weary of dogma that's associated with religion. The Church can either evolve naturally with this evolution of beliefs, to be more spiritual than dogma-based, or continue on its course. I could see both happening. I’ve heard some good general conference talks that are hits with millennials that seem to touch more on this spiritual aspects of the faith. We’ll see what happens.

For the record: once I started my faith crisis, one of the areas that really hit was that I no longer believed the assertion that countries that turn away from religion are more wicked. In some of the least religious countries (aka, some countries in Europe), women have a better quality of life, there is less sexual trafficking, domestic violence, murder, war, etc. Some of the most religious places in the world have the worst qualities of life. The assetion that less religion = more "sin" isn't correct, unless you're counting premarital sex. Even then, I doubt most members nowadays would believe premarital sex is worse than high concentrations of sex trafficking operations or rape. And when people talk about how the United States is getting more wicked, I have a hard time. I'm not saying our day doesn't have it's own challenges, but I want to comment, "Slavery? Institutionalized Racism? Genocide of the Native Americans? Women having no legal protection against rape by their husbands? Overt sexism? Yeah, we're so much more wicked now."

Well said, GBSmith. I agree with you.

Ray DeGraw wrote:I have done research on activity and growth rates throughout our history, and theoverall activity rate is at or near an all-time high. There have been times in the past when it was amazingly low...The overall church membership world-wide is growing, while most denominations are losing members when measured the same way. The growth rate, as a percentage, still is near the top of the Christian world...Certainly, all is not well in Zion - but things are nowhere near as bad as many assume. Much of their view is confirmation bias, just as much as the inability to see issues is for the more traditional, conservative members.

I don't see how you would know these activity numbers unless they are only for limited areas or you know some inside connection at that COB. So far the only specific statistic I remember seeing that sounded like it was based on actual attendance counted rather than questionable assumptions and guesswork was the recent 36% activity figure that was temporarily leaked by a Church employee and later removed from a newspaper article. Even if we assume that is accurate, it was a one-time breach of what the Church apparently wants to report to the public or not so I don't have any idea how exactly that statistic would compare to 20-30 years ago and before. What I do know is that the numbers the Church has actually reported for total membership and the number of wards and branches have shown the numbers of members per unit has been gradually increasing fairly consistently recently.

So to me the numbers we do have suggest that the activity rates are decreasing because otherwise I would expect the number of wards and branches to increase at a similar rate as the total membership. As far as comparisons to other churches, one problem with the idea that this supposedly shows the Church is in better shape than most other churches is that many of these other churches don't even need nearly as much commitment out of the average follower to continue to operate at a minimal level as the LDS Church currently does because they have full-time ministers to keep them running whereas the LDS Church basically depends on a certain number of stalwart members to keep a ward or branch alive at this point. Well in Chile, for example, the Church actually recently closed a significant number of wards and branches and I don't see why the same thing couldn't easily happen in many other areas if it hasn't started to happen already even if it will probably take a while before it ever happens on a large scale in the Mormon corridor.

DarkJedi wrote:

NonTraditionalMom wrote:

DevilsAdvocate wrote:Well what happens if they don't know what they are talking about to begin with, is there any way within this system of, "Follow the leaders no matter what" to rectify the situation in that case (Matthew 15:14)?

I was watching a rerun of The West Wing the other night, and one of the characters said something about how the founding fathers knew that power would corrupt, so they set up a system of checks and balances to keep that corruption in check. I'm not saying that the US government is a model of morality or anything, but it did make me think about the system in the church. Do we have any kind of check and balances in the church?...It's kind of a scary logic to say that I'm right because I said I'm right.

I think the closest we come to a check and balance is that the Q15 pretty much have to agree on anything major - and it wasn't always that way. They are not the "yes men" many in the church believe them to be, they do have varying opinions and disagreements. I honestly don't think under the current president that has been a big issue, he hasn't done anything major for one thing. But I think some recent past presidents have been kept in check by this and I could see how some who could potentially reach the big chair might run into it.

I guess I see this required Q15 consensus not so much as an effective system to keep Church leaders from doing anything crazy as much as mostly an impediment to them doing much of anything period beyond mostly repeating the same teachings they inherited from previous Church leaders and maintaining established LDS traditions. For example, it looks like this was one of the main reasons the racial priesthood ban lasted as long as it did because many of the top leaders already wanted to abandon it long before they could get every one of them to agree on it. So if there are still any existing policies or doctrines that are less-than-ideal or downright harmful overall the problem is that the current leaders are basically never held accountable for the results and there is not much of a built-in process for honest feedback and re-evaluation regarding current doctrines and policies but rather what looks like extreme resistance to anything of the sort in most cases.

The check and balance system is supposed to be the law of common consent. But it only works if the members take it seriously. Which they don't.


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An excellent write up of the meeting is found here by Anonymous Bishop

Sheldon wrote:An excellent write up of the meeting is found here by Anonymous Bishop

I guess I have to disagree. The red flag for me is trying to get an apostle to say whether or not he's seen the Savior. It's a gotcha question that I see coming from someone who already sees themselves as more right, righteous, and religious. The part about whether or not BY had or just took authority is another example of picking something from history to invalidate something today.

Some people say that Brigham Young didn’t hold keys to have authority over the church? ‘Answer – Well then who had them!? If he didn’t then there was no authority on earth.’ (I don’t find this answer very satisfying – it’s as if to say “Because we claim authority, then we must have it. This shows me the church is unwilling to consider another narrative even though other possibilities may be more accurate and might just help us better understand God’s plan for us. I wish Elder Oaks had addressed the controversies surrounding the succession in more detail. If the argument is Brigham had the keys all along then why take 3 1/2 years to make Brigham President? If Brigham always had the keys then why did he say “We’ve lost the keys…” when he heard Joseph was killed, followed with “Oh wait, the 12 have the keys”? If the 12 had the keys, then why didn’t they transfer them to Brigham, or ordain him? If the 12 had the keys, wouldn’t it be important that the 12 unanimously sustain BY? And then ordain him? John Taylor and other apostles opposed BY succeeding Joseph. Does that matter? Addressing the authenticity of section 110 added many years after Joseph’s death, addressing why Emma and Lucy didn’t believe BY to be fit to succeed Joseph, discussing how BY in the beginning argued the succession belonged to Joseph III and that anyone coming in as president would do so as caretaker until Joseph III was old enough… So much more that should have been discussed in my opinion. This is a really important issue for people struggling with their testimonies as it pertains to keys.)

In conclusion he says:

I find it interesting that the efforts of the church do not seem to be to reclaim those they consider apostate, but rather only seem intent on preventing others from leaving. If the effort was to reclaim those they’ve lost they would do so with patience and persuasion without calling them preposterous and apostate and other names while not addressing their sincere concerns. I know many good people who do have faith in the Restoration, in Joseph Smith’s mission, in The Book of Mormon and The Pearl of Great Price, who are looking for reasons to stay in the church. I think not digging deep to make more compelling arguments is short-sighted.

The reality here is that when people start giving voice to their concerns they've usually already divided it up into an us vs them and there's no reasoning or persuasion that's going to work. At this point prevention is likely the only treatment. (As a disaffected under the radar heathen, it feels really weird to be writing this. Loyalty I guess.)

Sheldon wrote:An excellent write up of the meeting is found here by Anonymous Bishop

Wow, that looks like a lot of this is about the Denver / Rock concern, that those guys are "false prophets" with an alternate path. Based on that write-up, that's what it sounds like to me. IOW, conservative critics = false prophets, liberal critics = hippie love in free for all.

I take Oaks' remarks about seeing Christ as a direct response to Denver Snuffer's claim that he has. He's saying "don't buy it." Again, that's how I take his remarks.

hawkgrrrl wrote:

Sheldon wrote:An excellent write up of the meeting is found here by Anonymous Bishop

Wow, that looks like a lot of this is about the Denver / Rock concern, that those guys are "false prophets" with an alternate path. Based on that write-up, that's what it sounds like to me. IOW, conservative critics = false prophets, liberal critics = hippie love in free for all.

I take Oaks' remarks about seeing Christ as a direct response to Denver Snuffer's claim that he has. He's saying "don't buy it." Again, that's how I take his remarks.

Yeah, this is def the case. And I can't imagine this response by Oaks is going to do much to help. Anyone on the fence about the motives of the leadership would see this as a clear signal to jump ship.
"And I now believe there is at least one true messenger, like Joseph Smith, in our day, sent from the presence of God. His name is Denver Snuffer. In the name of Jesus Christ I urge you to petition the Lord to know the truth for yourself and not reject my words because of my weakness, or the words of his servant today because of any weakness he bears." -one of the comments to the above post. So weird. So much for the liberals and doubters of our kind being a threat.


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