I mentioned in some comments in previous posts about having a different view of church leadership that I called a “caretaker model,” or seeing the leaders more as caretakers of Joseph Smith’s program and revelations. There’s a lot to this, so I thought I’d give a little overview of bullet points, and perhaps I’ll blog more about some of these if the conversation heads in any of these directions.

1) I do see Joseph Smith as inspired and as having put together quite a religion that I practice even if I’m a bit unorthodox. There’s a few thorny issues with his teachings, like polygamy, which seems best to have been done away with. But as I posted a few times over the years, I do think JS had a communal aspect to the whole thing and makes me wonder about the afterlife. [Fn 1] That is, I don’t see JS as bad for having practiced polygamy, but I also understand the need for later leaders to make changes to that big practice along with tinkering with other various administrative policies along the way.

2) As REC911 noted in a previous post, I’ve heard that Brigham Young often claimed not to be a prophet, while still claiming authority. I think the quote that ji put up from Elder Stephen L Richards is also interesting and also seems in line with what I’m proposing.

3) Michael Quinn traces how leaders were referred to the in the Church News up to David O. McKay and notes, “By the late-1960s LDS publications and speakers routinely identified McKay as ‘the Prophet,’ ‘our Prophet,’ and ‘beloved Prophet.’ These terms have previously applied to the martyred prophet, Joseph Smith, while the living LDS president has simply been ‘the President.’” “No headline referred to the living LDS president as ‘prophet,’” before 1955, notes Quinn (Mormon Hierarchy, 2:363).

4) Reading Matthew Harris’s book Second Class Saints really highlighted for me instances of mid-twentieth century Mormons like Lowell Bennion teaching our current church’s teaching on race—all are equal before God and we shouldn’t promote notions of premortal curses—and church leaders pushing back against such claims with doctrines the church now disavows. That is, Harris gives clear examples of people like Bennion teaching ideas we now call doctrine in opposition to ideas our leaders taught at the time but that our leaders now disavow.

5) Serving as bishop from 2019 to 2023, I felt like I got to observe a lot of policy tinkering during those years, which looked to me a lot more like administrative changes organizations try in an attempt to improve things rather than blow by blow instructions from God. With my “caretaker” belief, I’m fine with being in an organization whose leaders make prayerful adjustments to policies in an attempt to improve things. But I don’t see every or even very many policy changes our leaders make as being continuing revelation. I do believe in revelation, but think we often over-attribute such claims to our leaders’ decisions.

6) To me it seems that implementing the “exclusion policy” of children of gay parents not being allowed to be baptized and then the leaders reversing the policy fits the caretaker model. I’m glad our leaders changed that policy.

I appreciate being in an organization the preserves Joseph Smith’s teachings and revelations and believe we have a very good church. I appreciate our leaders commitment to their roles and do very much want to sustain them in their efforts.

I don’t believe, however, that individual righteousness is primarily defined by how closely we follow our leaders’ instructions (ie “follow the prophet”). I do think that righteousness can generally be defined by following our leaders since our leaders tell us to do good things. But again, I define Mormon practice more along the lines of Joseph Smith’s teachings than strict adherence to current instructions. I do recognize our leaders’ authority to lead our organization, and, again, I see that Elder Richards’s quote linked to above as a model that makes sense to me. Thus I want to sustain our leaders’ efforts to lead our church, while at the same time noting that Joseph Smith was fine with the word Mormon, etc.

[1] I argue that “shared marriage” (see here, here, and here) was Smith’s original extra-monogamous plan, or the ability for both men AND women to have multiple spouses (done in a regulated way). I argue that Smith changed the policy to polygyny in the spring of 1843 and that DC 132 reflects this policy change. Thus I agree that polygyny has patriarchal problems (among others), but would argue that, HYPOTHETICALLY, shared marriage could have less of that. Shared marriage, however, seems even harder to implement than polygyny, and thus isn’t practical at all. Yes, shared marriage has Platonic antecedents along with other forms of utopianism, so no I don’t see JS as wicked for trying it.