I often see exMos refer to the line from the Wizard of Oz, “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” in reference to a church culture that doesn’t want the membership to focus on seemingly problematic aspects of the church’s claims. Though I’m not in the same place as exMos, I do actually like the metaphor in terms of my proposed caretaker model.
And the metaphor is this. As I understand it, the Wizard really was a very capable administrator but figured out ways for his public persona to be much more grand with displays of great beings to deliver his messages. To me, I think the evidence does point to the caretaker model which is somewhat different than our more standard leadership theology. I think, as previous posts and discussions indicated, that many of our leaders felt that the membership expected them to be receiving a lot more revelation than they actually did. See Davek’s posts about quotes from Joseph F. Smith on this post.
I do think that expectation always persisted and that we find it central to our claims. I do wonder if that leads to problematic expectations of our leaders’ decisions.
I do think our church’s track record, though quite good, has a few problems. The race ban is a big one. Lots have been concerned about the SEC fine. I think it’s problematic to hold to what we often see demanded by our leadership theology that all decisions were the right ones. I don’t think that the ban or the actions that led to the fine were the perfect, divine decision.
I think those decisions fit better within the caretaker model of good people, trying to do their best, influenced by an imperfect society and the leaders’ own imperfection. As church (or other organization) scandals go, I see the SEC fine a fairly minor, but at the same time, I don’t think it makes sense to argue that the leaders didn’t make any mistakes (apparently not possible in our common interpretation of our leadership theology).
Racist attitudes that church leaders had played an important role keeping the ban in place were also quite common in the larger society. We can forgive our leaders, just as we all need forgiveness, but I don’t think we need to insist that the origin of the ban and how long it stayed in place weren’t a product of mistaken cultural attitudes.
Again, I view the caretaker model as more correct, while also believing in inspiration and guiding providence. But rather than viewing all the changes that came in President Nelson’s presidency as THE evidence of continuing revelation (I think revelation works in more diffuse ways), I see them more as capable administrators working to tinker with church policies in the face of challenges. Having been bishop when a lot were implemented, I was of the opinion that many didn’t work very well, (see comments) but I totally got the idea that our leaders wanted to try to make improvements. It’s what good administrators do. And I’ve kept saying Mormon.
In coming back to the-man-behind-the-curtain metaphor, I think we’re in a state where the “curtain” is drifting more and more “open.” Our history and other observations point to our leadership being short of the essential perfection that our leadership theology strongly suggests, and that indicates to people holes in that leadership theology.
Since we’ve gotten to the point where we claim that leadership theology as central to our church’s validity, I think many of us have a larger tendency to really want to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” But to shift the metaphor a little, our “man behind the curtain” is a pretty wonderful system of producing wise and competent leaders with a very good track record.
To me, President Oaks may be the best qualified leader not only we, but just about any religious organization has ever had. Extremely smart, extremely experienced, very dedicated, and very good. I’ve long disagreed with some things he’s said, but I don’t see that as undermining just how well prepared he is. I do think he faces a tremendous amount of unenviable challenges (including taking over a larger and challenging organization at age 93) but no one could be more qualified.
Again, I see that we’re in a position where the “curtain” is getting more “open” and more and more of us are and will continue to see a “man behind the curtain.” But as I do see us as having a wonderful system that will be led by a tremendously qualified leader, I argue that the man behind the curtain is something worth greatly celebrating.
Comments
27 responses to “The Caretaker Behind the Curtain”
As I was pondering this issue the last couple weeks I feel I was enlightened a bit as to why we think as humans that prophets are always being prophets. When we pray to know something is true in the church, such as we are told to pray about the BOM’s truthfulness, and we get an affirmative answer, we as humans tend to believe that is validation that the BOM in its entirety is correct in every word and tend to use it as such. When a Christian does the same thing about the Bible, they tend to also believe the Bible is the infallible word of God and complete word of God and every word written is literally the word of God. The thought that Paul or Mark or Luke could ever have written something that was their opinion or just got something wrong is just not an option. The Bible is always right!
If God tells me that Pres Nelson is a “prophet” then that defaults to me that everything he does or says is from God.
I believe we are told (through a spiritual event) the scriptures are true, the church is true, the prophet is the prophet, from God/Spirit but its our mistake to take that as literally at all times and in everything. The bible can be “mostly” true and still be a good thing. Prophets can get it right “most of the time” and still be prophets.
If we look at our church and leaders through this lens, we can maybe be ok with all the oddities of our history that just seem off or flat out wrong. Not everything JS translated was accurate. Not everything a “prophet” said or did is form God. Not everything we thought was doctrine was doctrine. Not every president we have had gets prophecy etc etc.
The caretaker model fits this IMO.
“When an honest man learns he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or he will cease being honest.” While Oaks has excellent credentials on paper, I can’t get past his repeated tendencies to dishonestly represent history.
One example that immediately comes to mind is his handling of the Mark Hofmann scandal. He helped orchestrate the purchase of the Salamander Letter forgery to bury it. After its existence was leaked, he gaslit us by explaining that a salamander could have been a spiritual being and not the small amphibian that the context of the document demands.
More recently, he told a group of college students that electroshock therapy against gay men at BYU had ceased before he became president there. We know that isn’t the case because his signature is on a thesis or dissertation that described this very thing during his tenure.
It’s hard for me to support a leader who does not prioritize honesty and transparency. I long for the day when a church president will fling open the curtain himself (or herself?) and tell us plainly that revelations are rare and they’re just doing the best they can in the meantime.
You bring up lots of good points, REC, and I think at the heart of the issue is that big question of Truth. Our world is so complex with so many competing views that having a clear and simple source of All Truth, whether the Bible or the president of the church, can be quite appealing. I agree with you that Truth is more complicated than that but not binary: the bible and our leaders have a lot of truth, but I don’t see either as the pure absolute source.
And I do think that dynamic has played a big role in the creation of our leadership theology. The idea of the president as the absolute source of Truth is very appealing and that desire ends up being self confirming between the leaders and members.
Davek, I understand there can be a lot of frustration over church leadership, but I think what I said to REC is largely at the heart of not yanking open the curtain. I think our leadership theology is pretty engrained so that I’m sure our leaders do believe it to a large extent. It sure struck me that President Nelson did.
I really found President Oaks’s recent talk at President Nelson’s funeral to be pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra8bzOcU2h0
At the beginning, President Oaks talked about President Nelson’s decision-making style of being very fast and self-assured like a surgeon needs to be, while the tendency among other church leaders has been to be more deliberative. I wasn’t much a fan of President Nelson’s policies, so I think the deliberative process is the superior one.
But what I thought was interesting is that President Oaks framed the issue of human bureaucrats making decisions, and made no reference to revelation. Now, I’m sure President Oaks does belief in inspiration/revelation, but to me, the talk was a little moment of giving a slight reveal that the decisions tend to be more bureaucratic than revelatory, which I think is accurate.
In my opinion, I think President Nelson did a lot of inadvertent “curtain opening” because I thing a lot of the policies were problematic. President Oaks pumping the brakes (at least for a time) on temple-building suggests that President Oaks has some concerns there. So already, I kind of get the sense of Oaks giving slight reveals of leaders having some disagreements.
But I also get that many leaders probably feel that the leadership theology is so entrenched that to make a clear statement against it would be a massive jolt to most church members. So I think it will be more along the lines of baby-steps, and in my view, President Oaks has already done of few of those.
I think you’re underestimating church members’ capability for nuanced understanding of leadership. This leadership theology isn’t something like the question of how many sub-levels are in the Telestial Kingdom – it’s something that most adult members have direct personal experience with at one time or another. A lot of the decisions in ward council are the best we can come up with at the time rather than the revealed will of God, and most lessons I’ve taught are not supernaturally dictated word by word. But the exceptions are real.
The leadership theology is also an important part of the social contract between leaders and church members. Members accept the day-to-day, committee-based decision-making because we are counting on a particular leader (of a ward, a quorum or auxiliary organization, or of the whole Church) to be able and willing to receive honest-to-goodness revelation on critical questions.
Leaders’ discomfort with this arrangement is also understandable. When a close family member comes to me for a priesthood blessing, they aren’t asking for some comforting words and kindly advice – they’re asking me to serve as a literal conduit for revelation. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in because it’s an awesome responsibility and they should really find someone who’s better at it, but it’s part of the job description and not something I can hand off to anyone else.
In general I think the amount of agonizing over when the prophet is speaking as a prophet is vastly out of proportion to the kinds of things we’ve actually been asked to do. Maybe we could just be more chill about studying the scriptures at home, being authentic in visiting other ward members, and getting vaccinated?
Davek,
President Oaks may have been mistaken but he wasn’t dishonest. There are good explanations for both of the examples you offer.
Stephen,
I think you’d be hard pressed to cull a caretaker model from the Book of Mormon. Maybe it’s there–but my own sense is that the BoM has a very strict and consistent telling of a prophet’s role among the saints and what our attitude should be towards them. That said–yes–there are a couple of examples of weakness on the part of BoM prophets–but that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on what our relationship should be with them.
And so, what we get from the BoM relative to your OP is: a prophet is someone who knows the Man behind the “curtain” and has been authorized by him to carry his message to the people. And I’d say that most of the time they communicate by means of quiet conversation through the curtain. But that’s not to say that there isn’t some peeking behind the curtain every now and again–with perhaps a total parting on rare occasions.
But that’s not to say that the prophets are infallible. The brother of Jared is a prime example of a great prophet whom the Lord chastised because of his negligence–but who would latter enter into his presence. And I love the brother of Jared’s prayer right before that miraculous event:
“Now behold, O Lord, and do not be angry with thy servant because of his weakness before thee; for we know that thou art holy and dwellest in the heavens, and that we are unworthy before thee; because of the fall our natures have become evil continually.”
If there was ever an admission of fallibility–there it is. Even so, there remains the BoM’s narrative on the role of prophets. And I think Nephi’s relationship with his father Lehi serves as an excellent example of how we should receive the Lord’s anointed.
Those are good insights, Jonathan. To me it presents a somewhat different view of instruction from our top leaders than how we usually talk about it in church and conference.
Those are good examples from the Book of Mormon, Jack, but in my observation, the history of leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has worked a little differently than that.
I could forgive a lot if they would just be honest and apologize for their mistakes. Make things right when they harm others. Oaks has said straight out the church doesn’t apologize. The D&C says if you have something against your brother, leave your offering at the altar and make amends with your brother, and then you can make your offering. So I guess the church will continue to only make amends when they are brought to a court of law and forced by a judge to make amends.
Even the institutional Church is not monolithic. You can find voices claiming Church leaders never make mistakes, but there are plenty of voices saying otherwise. Saints, for example, portrays Church leaders struggling to know what to do, disagreeing (fighting even), and yes, making mistakes. And for many members that’s going to be their main source of information about how Church leadership has historically worked.
President Nelson was about as far from thinking of himself as a caretaker as you can imagine, but in his talk Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives (April 2018) he described the leading councils of the Church functioning in pretty much the same way a ward council does (or should). Was he claiming every single decision is accompanied by a “spine-tingling” confirmation from the Holy Ghost? I don’t think so. Suppose they reach a consensus, but feel neither a strong confirmation from the Spirit nor a veto. Would they take that as an indication that the Lord is okay with what they’re planning and proceed? It seems likely. And I’d agree, with the caveat that the Lord is frequently okay with us making mistakes–making mistakes and learning from them is why we’re here. He made sure our mistakes will never be fatal.
President Nelson talked a lot about the nuts and bolts of receiving revelation because he wanted us to receive it ourselves. If you tried following his instructions I imagine you found the same thing I have: revelation is very real, but doesn’t come as often as we might like. It’s not much of a stretch to assume that’s true for Church leaders too, and it’s consistent with our history.
I’m with Jonathan: the substance of what you’re suggesting, Stephen, is pretty mainstream in the Church. Only the “caretaker” label is really different.
Anon, I do understand your frustration with President Oaks’s statement on the church not apologizing. I see that as a product of the theme I’m discussing in this post: the leaders feeling the need to make a presentation of greater church perfection than actually exists. To apologize means to admit mistakes which means to reveal the man behind the curtain more than the leaders want to do.
Again, I don’t see that dynamic is only being one the leaders are committed to. As REC notes, the members generally quite like the more ideal claims and most don’t find the man behind the curtain very appealing.
I am glad to hear about the openness of Saints, RLD. I’m interested in your closing line: “I’m with Jonathan: the substance of what you’re suggesting, Stephen, is pretty mainstream in the Church. Only the ‘caretaker’ label is really different.”
I’m arguing that the model (which you say you and Jonathan not only agree with but is “pretty mainstream” in the church) is better described by the term “caretaker” than by our much more common descriptions of our church leaders. I guess I’m wondering what would be the most accurate label or description for our leaders.
I’m going to go with “prophet” if we’re focusing on the fact that they are the people who are authorized to receive revelation on behalf of the Church (and the world). The nature and frequency of that revelation may vary, but the authorization does not. Of course having that authorization does not mean everything they do and say is by revelation, or prevent them from making mistakes. “President” seems appropriate when we’re focusing on their leadership of the Church as an institution, though obviously that term is unique to our day.
In saying that, I recognize the word “prophet” has multiple definitions–a bit like “teacher.” Someone can be a prophet without being the prophet (Agabus, for example). I also recognize that historically prophets may or may not have been presidents. (Moses was, Isaiah was not.)
“Caretaker” gives the wrong impression–there’s a reason you have to keep repeating that you think our leaders are inspired despite calling them caretakers. It seems to mostly appeal to people who disagree with you about that.
I think that the way be define “prophet” in our church doesn’t fit the history of our church’s leaders including President Nelson. I think caretaker works better. I understand that you disagree, RLD, but “prophet” seems problematic to me in terms of how we define the term in our official discourse compared to the reality.
I’m on board with most of your thinking here, Stephen. Like others, I just don’t love the term “caretaker”. There are synonyms, of course, but they’re also not a perfect fit. Custodian works a little better for me… a little. But fixating on the term misses what I think is your main point – that these men mostly aren’t acting as prophets. At least not in the way most people think of prophets. And that common notion of a prophet is taught and maintained by those designated as prophets, in ways I think are disingenuous because I believe they know it doesn’t accurately reflect how things happen. Anyway, maybe let’s not fixate on the terms and let that distract from the substance.
What Turtle says. Call them presidents, caretakers, custodians, CEO’s etc. But I agree with Stephen that we have to be careful looking at them as “prophets” all the time because members will turn that into acting as such all the time and we will start thinking the word mormon is bad….oh wait….
I wish we emphasized the “high priest” part of the Apostleship. After all, the President of the Church leads it by virtue of being the Presiding High Priest (see D&C 107 generally.) I feel like people’s expectations of a high priest are different from those of a prophet, especially if such expectations are informed by the Old Testament. The high priest, who sat in Moses’ seat, was responsible for overseeing the temple rites, seeking divine revelation on behalf of the political authorities, and maintaining the House of the Lord. But I don’t know how you walk away from the Old Testament with the conception that high priests enjoy even the suggestion of infallibility.
Stephen, one point I don’t remember you addressing is to what extent Joseph Smith was himself a caretaker. It seems to me a good number of his actions as leader of the early Church involved receiving some revelation or discovering some truth, then working out the implications or figuring out the best implementation of that truth as best he could.
Also, I very much agree with Hoosier about the importance of the presiding high priest. Certain matters of controversy – such as why deacons pass the sacrament – are most easily resolved not by appealing to cosmological principles, but as administrative matters. The president of the Church, as the presiding high priest, thinks that deacons should pass the sacrament. If the next presiding high priest recommends some other arrangement, that’s fine. Until then, the deacons have that responsibility.
I agree with Hoosier–the entire church is held together by the keys of presidency in the hands of presiding high priests. But here’s the thing–those keys open the floodgates of revelation. And so functionally speaking a presiding high priest is a prophet to his stewardship.
“But I agree with Stephen that we have to be careful looking at them as ‘prophets’ all the time because members will turn that into acting as such all the time…”
Too many members already do. I appreciate the dialogue that current leaders do not receive visitations and direct revelations as Joseph did, but instead act on their own in their stewardships while hoping for whisperings of the spirit, just as every other member of the church does in their callings. Joseph Smith was the great prophet of this dispensation.
This is an old debate, with statements from leaders supporting both sides. President Benson gives his “Fourteen Fundamentals of Following the Prophet” talk, President Kimball issues a correction, and on and on it goes. (The very fact that there’s disagreement between prophets on the subject seems like evidence to me.)
It’s too simple to say there’s a single way “we” define a prophet, and to call the position that they’re de facto infallible “official” cedes far too much ground. Worse, it feeds the narrative that you have to believe that to be faithful. You don’t.
Turtle, I certainly acknowledge “caretaker” as a less than perfect term, but custodian seems similar. But yes, I think you get at the heart of this post. The leaders have considerably more knowledge than us on how decisions get made as indicated by President Oaks’s funeral talk.
Still I do think there is a interrelationship between the leaders’ actions and the expectations of the members. Again, I would point to that dynamic with Young and JFS suggesting they didn’t feel like they got a lot of revelation but knew the members expected them to. Somewhere along the line (likely with McKay) the prophet role was more embraced. But I do see Harris’s book, Second Class Saints, really problematizing that presentation. That’s why I like the Oz metaphor. It does seem the leaders and apparatus work to present a grander presentation.
REC, agreed.
Hoosier, agree as well. I made a comment on a previous post (can’t remember which) that I very much see the president with the religious calling of presiding high priest and do see that as different than prophets.
Jonathan, JS is a very complicated topic for me since I’ve been working on my project related to him for 15 years (getting closer!) A little hard to summarize, but I do see him in a different position as RLD noted on my last post (I think). I also do think that JS was involved in more deliberation than he often presented, so perhaps a similarity there. But a very complex topic.
Jack, while I agree with Hoosier, it seems to me that our history suggests our church leader functions differently than that revelatory model.
ji, agreed.
RLD, in a recent video I saw from Ben Park, he gave a summary of how we tend to talk about Joseph Smith that I think can apply here. Ben said something like, “The leaders will acknowledge JS’s fallibility in THEORY but not in actuality. That is they will say that it is possible for JS to have made mistakes, but will reject any ACTUAL actions as mistakes.” (Something like that).
I see that very much applying to how we talk about fallibility of subsequent leaders. It’s common to hear, “Of course our leaders aren’t perfect,” but a member giving an opinion that any of the church leaders’ policies is an ACTUAL mistake can come across as full-on dissent. Thus, Anon’s point about our church’s refusal to acknowledge the ban as a mistake. We don’t apologize because our leaders making ACTUAL mistakes is against our theology.
I do think that can change and perhaps that’s where we’re headed (not sure), but I do think that Ben’s comments about JS do apply to the discourse about our leaders generally.
I think the reason church members often resist contemplating leaders’ mistakes is that the discussion almost always seems to veer toward “…so that’s why I stopped going to church/don’t actually have to follow the law of chastity.” If people retained faithfulness and obedience as basic assumptions, the discussion might go differently.
It seems to me that analyzing Brigham Young as a caretaker with regards to the priesthood ban gets us to about where we are today anyway. As the presiding high priest, Brigham Young was authorized to organize the priesthood, and he did so according to his best knowledge and belief (only those beliefs included racism, at a racist time in a racist country that was about to tear itself apart over questions of race); today, we reject the racist beliefs, but we don’t reject as invalid the priesthood as administered by Brigham Young.
Ben is probably right about Joseph Smith, though in this age of greater openness about our history I really wonder what President Oaks would say if pressed about Joseph’s participation in retaliatory violence in Missouri. (Understandable, but clearly a mistake both morally and strategically.)
We’re less shy about later leaders. We haven’t come out and said the priesthood ban was a mistake, but we have officially rejected the theology that justified it. That declared a lot of teaching by a lot of Church leaders to be mistakes. We’ve also declared the Adam-God theory and blood atonement to be mistakes.
Of course what a good bit of that has in common is Brigham Young. I do wonder if he felt pressure to be a theological innovator like Joseph Smith, and that got him into trouble. In Stephen’s terms, pressure to be a prophet when he should have been content to be a caretaker, though that’s too black and white for me. At any rate, I need grace at least as much as Brigham Young did, so I’m not going to judge.
Jonathan, no doubt people who leave the church can end up engaging in some harmful behavior towards themselves (sex, drugs etc) but I think your statement is an exaggeration. And I do think it’s wise to encourage mortality beyond, “the church president says so.”
But Jonathan, and RLD, the questions about how we talk about these issues in the church’s official discourse is central to the point of this post. That’s an interesting framing about Young, Jonathan, but it’s not how we do so officially. RLD, I’m guessing President Oaks wouldn’t allow himself to be pressed on that topic, which I see as related to my point here: wanting to make an ideal presentation that is less than candid.
Yet, I am seeing some interesting statements from President Oaks like “We do not have the answers to all the world’s problems. They have not been revealed.” That’s on the church’s website even. Interesting and I’m curious to hear more. https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-oaks-new-first-presidency
RLD, my sense of BY is that he did make statements of not being a prophet, but didn’t put up too much of a fight. I don’t see the error with Young (who did have other errors) but more with the members who insisted on seeing him in that prophet role despite Young’s claims otherwise. I see that error as very understandable and need my own grace.
Stephen, call it a generalization. I’m primarily thinking of various comments that have been made here while discussing church leaders as caretakers, such as REC911’s remark about requiring Word of Wisdom compliance for temple attendance, which he seemed to think was illegitimate. I’m not sure if it’s possible to take the approach of caretakers-not-prophets without inviting that kind of response. I don’t know how it’s possible to run an organization over the long term when any kind of innovation is suspect.
Jonathan, I do agree that there is great utility in our leadership theology generating buy in on policy changes. I’m thinking about posting about that next on the issue of abundant claims to revelations generating skepticism.