{"id":49043,"date":"2025-02-16T03:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=49043"},"modified":"2025-05-29T05:19:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T11:19:49","slug":"i-love-president-nelson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2025\/02\/i-love-president-nelson\/","title":{"rendered":"Over-the-Top Leadership Acclamations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In some sectors of the orthodox world there is a tendency for people to effusively exclaim how great a Church leader or Church leaders are. Of course I\u2019m not opposed in principle to making such statements, but I\u2019ve wondered who the audience or what the purpose is of such acclamations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the purpose is to demonstrate solidarity and support for the Church or some particular aspect thereof it would be more effective to direct one\u2019s rhetoric towards the Church itself or the specific characteristic or thing the Church is doing since, as the leaders would agree, the Church is the thing. (I could see some cases where support for the individual is warranted if they are being assailed by the media, but this rarely happens divorced from attacks against the Church more generally.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While much of the time such acclamations are done tastefully, sometimes it can come off as hagiography for hagiography&#8217;s sake, and in some extreme cases has a bit of a \u201cdear leader\u201d vibe. Furthermore, there are several potential negative side effects:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prophets are people too, and are also subject to the risks inherent in excessive adulation. In a moment of more vulnerability and openness than we ever get from political leaders (see, even I do it sometimes), President Hinckley noted to Peggy Fletcher Stack that \u201cadulation is a disease I fight every day.\u201d I don\u2019t know much about the personal lives of the brethren, but purely speculating I have this sense that they deal with people who (living as they do near Salt Lake City) either absolutely hate them or adore them. They don\u2019t have the non-member neighbor Bill who thinks that Elder so and so is nice enough but that his dog could sure shut the heck up sometimes (again, purely speculating).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The more we lionize and deify leaders, the harder they fall when we\u2019re faced with their complexities as human beings. Dear leader-esque acclamations don\u2019t help us easily transition to seeing them as human beings when they inevitably do something that makes us realize that if they are pricked they bleed too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When non-members sometimes hear us singing the praises of our leaders it comes off as a little culty. Anecdotally it has led to a lot of cringe moments with investigators in Elder\u2019s Quorum and sacrament meeting.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So again, I\u2019m not against providing some support per se, especially when they are actually under specific and direct attack, but it can easily slide into something that feels a little off.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In some sectors of the orthodox world there is a tendency for people to effusively exclaim how great a Church leader or Church leaders are. Of course I\u2019m not opposed in principle to making such statements, but I\u2019ve wondered who the audience or what the purpose is of such acclamations. If the purpose is to demonstrate solidarity and support for the Church or some particular aspect thereof it would be more effective to direct one\u2019s rhetoric towards the Church itself or the specific characteristic or thing the Church is doing since, as the leaders would agree, the Church is the thing. (I could see some cases where support for the individual is warranted if they are being assailed by the media, but this rarely happens divorced from attacks against the Church more generally.) While much of the time such acclamations are done tastefully, sometimes it can come off as hagiography for hagiography&#8217;s sake, and in some extreme cases has a bit of a \u201cdear leader\u201d vibe. Furthermore, there are several potential negative side effects:\u00a0 Prophets are people too, and are also subject to the risks inherent in excessive adulation. In a moment of more vulnerability and openness than we ever [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2970],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-leadership-and-policies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49043","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\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49043"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49121,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49043\/revisions\/49121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}