Adventures in Mormonism

I run another blog (And Still I Persist) with a co-blogger, Bruce Henderson. I’m from San Diego, and BruceH has lived there for many years. So when the fires broke out a little over a week ago, BruceH started posting information on the blog, including photos, maps, and 3-D visualizations of the fires; I joined in as best I could (I currently live in Colorado, but have many family members, including children and grandchildren, in San Diego County).

As is typical with such disasters, LDS relief efforts started almost immediately and have continued through the course of the fire. Most people outside the LDS Church don’t realize the global reach of LDS relief and humanitarian efforts, most of which goes to people who are not members of the LDS Church. In the past 22 years, that aid has totaled nearly $1 billion — all given without consideration of creed, national origin, or ethnic background, and almost all of which comes from the pockets and donated labor of the Latter-day Saints members themselves.

But, of course, we’re not Christian. ..bruce..

The 177th Semi-Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has started, and it began with Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley presenting the general authorities and officers for sustaining. The two biggest changes:

• Elder Henry B. Eyring was presented and sustained as 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency, replacing Pres. James E. Faust, who died earlier this year.
• Elder Quentin L. Cook was presented and sustained as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; he had previously been serving as a member of the First Presidency of the Seventy.

Even as I type this, Pres. Boyd K. Packer is talking about how LDS ministry and leadership differs from other churches. ..bruce..

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my sources of both frustration and amusement during my 40 years as a Latter-day Saint has been the sheer number of people who either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent LDS history, beliefs and practices. So it is always a delight to run across a well-written article by someone outside the LDS Church who not only under understands LDS culture and doctrine, but who provides new insights.

Such an article is “A Mormon President? The LDS Difference“, written by Laurie Maffly-Kipp and published in The Christian Century. Maffly-Kipp is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and one of her areas of specialty is Mormonism. She clearly has done her homework; I’ve never seen someone outside the LDS Church (or few within it) so clearly articulate the balance of authority and independence within the Church:

Yes, the prophet can receive revelation. But this power is couched within a set of concentric circles of revelation and authority: the prophet receives revelation for the church, bishops receive revelation pertaining to their wards (local churches), and fathers and mothers receive revelation relating to their families. Most important, Mormons—like Protestants—attach great importance to the agency of the individual believer, who is expected to pray and receive guidance for herself. This set of interconnected responsibilities makes for clear lines of authority, to be sure—few agencies are as efficient as a local Mormon ward in action—but it also means that leaders cannot, in theory, overstep the bounds of the authority bestowed on them by virtue of their office.

In practice, then, LDS religious authority is diffused and regulated in quite orderly ways; indeed, one might say that this flow is both more controlled than in many Protestant churches and more democratically distributed than in Roman Catholicism. Mormons are taught from a very young age that their purpose in life is to exercise their own spiritual agency and to maintain a right relationship with God. The church hierarchy, of course, has a major role in facilitating that growth, but not the only role. Higher education is valued for both men and women, regardless of one’s career path. Healthy living and moral values are extolled not simply as exercises in discipline, but as keys to individual progress. Considerable emphasis, in other words, is placed on the individual cultivation of personal agency, a fact that may help explain the resounding business success of someone like Mitt Romney.

Nor do LDS Church members in good standing bow to church officials at every point; the authority of many church teachings is, in fact, somewhat ambiguous. There are a number of incontrovertible teachings, of course (such as: Joseph Smith was a prophet; sex before marriage is forbidden), but these are surprisingly few in number. Many other decisions are left to the dictates of individual conscience. One need only ask 10 church members about whether Mormons are allowed to drink caffeinated soft drinks to encounter a wide range of interpretations.

I strongly recommend the article, and I plan to keep a look out for other articles and books by Maffly-Kipp. ..bruce..

[UPDATED 01/27/08 2125 MST]

This entry is suddenly getting a lot of hits, due undoubtedly to the death earlier today of Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley. With the death of Pres. Hinckley, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been dissolved; Pres. Thomas S. Monson and Pres. Henry B. Eyring return to the Council of the Twelve Apostles (which now actually has 14 apostles in it); and Pres. Monson resumes his role as President of the Quorum of the Twelve, taking over from Pres. Boyd K. Packer, who has been serving as Acting President of the Twelve.

The Quorum of the Twelve, under the leadership of Pres. Monson, now leads the LDS Church. At some point, most likely within the next week or two, the Quorum of the Twelve will move to reorganize the First Presidency, with Pres. Thomas S. Monson as President of the Church, along with two counselors of his choosing. There’s a good chance (based on tradition) that Pres. Monson will retain Elder Eyring as one of his counselors, but that’s Pres. Monson’s choice, not a requirement.

Also note that this means that a new member of the Quorum of the Twelve will be called, though possibly not until the LDS General Conference in April.

[UPDATED 10/06/07 1034 MDT - Elder Henry B. Eyring has been called and sustained as 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency, while Elder Quentin L. Cook has been called to the Quorum of the Twelve. See here.]

==================== [ORIGINAL POST] ==============================

Peggy Fletcher Stack over in the Salt Lake Tribune writes about the “wild speculation” (her phrase, not mine) regarding whom Pres. Hinckley will call to replace Pres. Faust as 2nd Counselor in the First Presidency. First, in my own experience, the speculation tends to be tame rather than wild, though (in fairness) it’s probably a bit more of a topic of discussion within Utah than outside of it. Second, Stack gives no substantive basis for the specific candidates she mentions; one could as easily list all of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve instead of the few she picks out. Stack does correctly note that counselors have on occasion been chosen from outside of the Quorum of the Twelve, though it’s been roughly half a century since that happened. However, she incorrectly states that the calling as a counselor in the First Presidency is a “lifetime calling”; when the President of the Church dies, his counselors are automatically released and revert back to their positions in (or outside of) the Quorum of the Twelve, and the new President of the Church is free to select whomever he wants as counselors. (I sent Peggy a note on this, and she replied that she inadvertently left out a conditional phrase; easy enough to do with deadlines.)

Those minor quibbles aside, Stack’s article clearly lays out the principles underlying succession at the highest level of the LDS Church. Once you are called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, you are on a very slow-moving track toward being President of the Church — but only if you live long enough (i.e., longer than those called before you). This has always struck me as a very elegant and corruption-free process. There is no voting, no jockeying for position, no way to leapfrog ahead of those called to the Quorum before you. It is, quite literally, in God’s hands.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my most distinct LDS General Conference memories over the past 40 years surrounds Pres. Faust being called as a General Authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After having been sustained as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve earlier in the conference, he got up to speak briefly. He opened his first-ever talk in General Conference by saying, “For 22 years, until last Thursday morning, I have been a lawyer. And since then I have been trying to repent.” Laughter rumbled through the Tabernacle.

That was in October 1972,  just five years after I had joined the Church and while I was in the Language Training Mission, learning Spanish for my two years down in Central America. For the last 35 years, I have always enjoyed, listened carefully to, and learned from Pres. Faust’s remarks in General Conference and elsewhere. As a former Democratic state legislator and a former member of Pres. Kennedy’s Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, he has served as a role model for those of us in the Church who believe that there are — or at least were — core principles within the Democratic Party worth defending and promoting.

I will miss his warm voice and unmistakable cadence, which I have listened to for nearly two-thirds of my entire life. My prayers are with his family and friends.  ..bruce..