As I was brainstorming about starting the safe-space group that I mentioned in a previous post, it was December 2021, and I started seeing people commenting online about the upcoming final (or nearly final) lesson in gospel doctrine that would cover the two official declarations. Since those cover what are generally considered controversial topics\u2014polygamy and Blacks and priesthood\u2014lots of people were interested in whether their wards would cover those topics, and if so how they would approach it.<\/p>\n
So since I was thinking about how to talk about hard issues, the morning of that lesson, I pitched the idea to my wife\u2014 who was then the gospel doctrine teacher\u2014that I teach a lesson on \u201chow do we talk about difficult issues related to church history?\u201d for the GD lesson.<\/p>\n
She was a bit apprehensive, but said okay, and I started brainstorming ideas. But as I did so, I felt the strong impression, \u201cRun the idea by the ward council first.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Doing so was an interesting experience, and long story short, the council\u2019s very strong feelings against me doing such a thing had me texting my wife asking her to teach the lesson as originally planned. Their strong reaction made it pretty clear that my proposed lesson was not going to go well, and I\u2019d been at the bishop thing long enough to know that trying to force-feed members ideas and plans that they\u2019re balking at tends not to go well.<\/p>\n
My experience with proposing that idea to the council was a big learning experience. 1) (the biggest!) The vast majority of members (if my ward is representative which I think it is) DO NOT want to talk about the controversial stuff. I think I\u2019d gotten the (mistaken) impression that a much higher percentage did want to talk about such things from all my time on the Bloggernacle. SOME people do, but they are a minority (I\u2019d say probably no more than 15 percent in most wards). As my EQ pres said after I proposed the idea, \u201cGo off with your little group of people who want to talk about such things, and leave the rest of us alone.\u201d So that\u2019s what I did (my safe-space group). So yeah, he was a little gruff but ultimately correct, I found.<\/p>\n
2) Another issue that came up in the meeting is one I want to discuss more on this blog: some apprehension that promoting more open discussion in the hopes of helping less orthodox people stay in the church could itself be somewhat concerning in that it could lead to the spread of unorthodoxy by such people.<\/p>\n
It was a pretty intense meeting and afterwards I felt a strong impression to prepare remarks for the next week\u2019s meeting as a follow up. I felt prompted to begin that second meeting with the title of this post, \u201cWho do we want at church?\u201d<\/p>\n
For context, I told the story of the time I’d been in Richard Bushman’s 2008 seminar to discuss how to help people with faith crises over church history. We would spend a chunk of the day researching, another discussing, and another chunk with the various guest speakers Bushman would bring in. John Dehlin* (still a member at that point) was one of the many guests he had come speak to us. I’d not heard of John before that, but some of the guys (older professors) were upset Bushman invited him, and others were bugged by those who were upset, and we had a big debate about it the next day.<\/p>\n
One summarized his issues with Dehlin by simply saying, “he doesn’t believe many of the important things that we believe,” and after some discussion, Bushman asked us all the question that I repeated to my council: \u201cwho do we want at church?\u201d We then discussed and Robert Woodford, an older guy who’s since passed and had a lot of church leadership experience gave the summary: “we want everyone at church. It doesn’t matter what people believe unless they are actively causing problems.”<\/p>\n
To that statement, I chimed in (in the 2008) meeting. I’d been an eq pres for a bit and knew it could be hard to get the guys to do stuff and wondered what it would be like to try to motivate a group full of Dehlins to do their home teaching. To my concerns, Woodford and the group pushed back: tons of guys don’t do their home teaching. We don’t kick them out unless they are actively causing problems. Everyone is welcome who wants to come. We don’t police what they believe in order to attend.<\/p>\n
So those ward council meetings were important learning experiences, but I\u2019m interested in thoughts on some of the uneasiness that my suggestions created for some of my ward members, and the uneasiness some in Bushman\u2019s 2008 seminar (including me at the time) had over people participating in the church while having unorthodox beliefs. What about when local leaders (like I was) have unorthodox beliefs also? Is that problematic, and if so, how? What about Woodford and Bushman\u2019s assertion that church acceptance (welcoming people) has nothing to do with their beliefs? Again \u201cWho do we want at church?\u201d<\/p>\n
____
\n* Yes I know he is controversial and don\u2019t really want to make this post a debate about him. So can we avoid that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I was brainstorming about starting the safe-space group that I mentioned in a previous post, it was December 2021, and I started seeing people commenting online about the upcoming final (or nearly final) lesson in gospel doctrine that would cover the two official declarations. Since those cover what are generally considered controversial topics\u2014polygamy and Blacks and priesthood\u2014lots of people were interested in whether their wards would cover those topics, and if so how they would approach it. So since I was thinking about how to talk about hard issues, the morning of that lesson, I pitched the idea to my wife\u2014 who was then the gospel doctrine teacher\u2014that I teach a lesson on \u201chow do we talk about difficult issues related to church history?\u201d for the GD lesson. She was a bit apprehensive, but said okay, and I started brainstorming ideas. But as I did so, I felt the strong impression, \u201cRun the idea by the ward council first.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46776"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46779,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46776\/revisions\/46779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}