By “Leadership Theology” I mean the common declaration that we make about our leaders, presidents in particular, as the mouthpiece of God, God not allowing them to lead the church astray, etc. For example, over the last few years, our leaders have made a number of structural changes and pointed to the changes as evidence of God’s continuing revelation. The implication is that God makes that decisions and instructs our leaders through revelation and has done so with all our leaders and policies.

Having a living prophet is a cornerstone of our identity and claims to being the true church, and thus as REC pointed out in my last post, concerns over our leaders can cause faith crises.

But I do think our leadership theology can get us into conundrums: why put in the exclusion policy and then revoke is just a few years after? Such an action can clash with how many of us assume God operates, and perhaps no issue creates more conundrums for our leadership theology than the priesthood ban.

I figured I knew the gist of the history of the ban pretty well, but I still found Matt Harris’s Second Class Saints pretty jarring. Opinions will certainly vary, but for me, Harris’s excellent research suggested major problems for out leadership theology. I think taylorgkirby at By Common Consent gives a pretty good summary of the issues.

Again, I propose a slightly modified way of thinking of our leaders, and for me, I think we tie ourselves in knots in trying making our leadership theology “work” in the context of the priesthood ban. I get the sense in a number of discussion with people on these issues that we need to make our leadership  theology work because that theology is so central to our overall conception of the church.

Racist and tribal attitudes are a human problem and have long caused our nation to come up short of its ideals. I’d say the church and its leaders have been affected by this problem as well. The endowment tells us we can be cleansed of generational sins, and I like to think that promise can apply to the ban. Racist attitudes were common for a very long time, and society and the church have made a lot of improvements.

I see such improvement as central to how I view the church. Our leaders, as caretakers of Joseph Smith’s vision, were not immune from these racist attitudes and implemented problematic policies and said problematic things, as was common. Our church and leaders have been able to grow and make adjustments.

I think this caretaker theology works better for our church’s history than trying to argue that God really wanted the priesthood ban from 1852 to 1978. It seems to me instead that God does allow our leaders to make significant mistakes, often in line with the broader culture, that we can all learn and grown from.

I do believe we have a very good church with great validity and divinity apart from our leadership theology.