1\u2014To get this out of the way: There was no good answer to the question of how the Church should have responded to Nazism. There was no safe middle ground between complicit engagement, impotent resistance, and needless death. If letting missionaries train the German basketball team had a .01% chance of making war less likely, then it was worth trying. The truth of the Church\u2019s response to Nazism is not a handful of missionaries playing basketball, but 100,000 LDS soldiers fighting in the war against the Axis powers, with 5,000 dying during the war.<\/p>\n
The lesson for today is: Don\u2019t vote for fascists for any reason.<\/p>\n
2\u2014The Trump administration is not Nazi Germany. But it\u2019s not entirely not<\/em> Nazi Germany, either. Here’s a quick 7-point plan for how Republicans can avoid being mistaken for Nazis<\/a>:<\/p>\n It\u2019s challenging but not impossible. Every administration prior to the Trump presidency managed it.<\/p>\n 3\u2014The good ending is still on the table. For the Church, the good ending means reaching the end of the current political moment with no major schism or loss of membership, still able to minister to members throughout the world and across the political spectrum. And the best way to achieve that is to ignore the Trump administration as long and as fully as possible. Look at other American institutions, such as large companies and leading research universities, which are slowly being sorted into three categories: the silent trying to avoid notice, the complicit profiteers, and those who have been forced into a ruinous conflict with the Trump administration by a threat to their core mission. The smart strategy is to stay in the first category as long as possible. You might find this situation dissatisfying, but the other outcomes are worse.<\/p>\n 4\u2014There are scenarios where the Church would have no choice but to condemn government actions and risk a substantial loss of membership, or remain silent and risk the loss of a different segment. These scenarios include the subversion of an election, an attack on a democratic ally, or interference with the operations of the Church itself. These scenarios seem unthinkable, yet the first was already attempted, and the president and vice president have openly proposed the second as recently as [check notes] today. Seizing Greenland would require the Church to either condemn the attack, and risk losing a segment of MAGA members, or remain silent, and risk losing Europe for a generation.<\/p>\n 5\u2014Should the Church publicly condemn the mistreatment of immigrants? I would welcome it, but the answer shouldn’t depend on my feelings, but on how it would affect immigrants. Would it make their lives better, or would it invite additional scrutiny of LDS congregations in ways that would make their lives worse? I don\u2019t know. But once made, the choice can\u2019t be undone. A year ago, the Church could exercise its rights and issue statements as a participant in the marketplace of ideas. Today, we\u2019re halfway between a public square and surveillance by a corrupt vindictive unchecked personalist autocracy that\u2019s willing to use the levers of government to persecute its opponents, and we\u2019re learning every day that First Amendment protections are not nearly as strong as we once thought.<\/p>\n 6\u2014In addition: We have no idea what anyone else is doing out of public view. We don\u2019t know what private options are foreclosed if the Church is compelled to speak. I can only control what I do and say. Getting upset over someone else\u2019s silence is actively harmful because you don\u2019t know what behind-the-scene moves you\u2019re hindering.<\/p>\n In some Catholic dioceses, priests are preparing to put their lives on the line for their parishioners. And that\u2019s awesome. I wouldn\u2019t want my bishop to do that, because he has to care for his family and minister to some Republican ward members who aren\u2019t ready for that conversation. But there\u2019s nothing stopping you or me from supporting Catholic priests or anyone else. Each member of the body of Christ has its own function, and carping about what someone else isn\u2019t doing is not useful.<\/p>\n 7\u2014Does all this sound dissatisfying and decidedly unheroic? That\u2019s the nature of life under fascism. Every act of resistance follows a dozen acts of compromise and accommodation where the cost of resistance wasn\u2019t worth the price. If you would prefer to have better options, stop voting fascists into office.<\/p>\n 8\u2014The Church is not a political institution, just like the Juilliard School and Starbucks and the NHL are not political institutions. Each of these entities has a particular mission while operating in various contexts (financial, legal, geographic, etc.), including a political context. These organizations seek to maximize the results of their various missions, not a particular political outcome. If you were drawing graphs, politics would lie along the X axis, not the Y axis. American society is worth living in because of all its non-political institutions, and we need to preserve that.<\/p>\n 9\u2014But the Church, like Starbucks and the NHL and the Juilliard School, is concretely embodied in the United States in a way that it was not in 1930s Germany or anywhere else in the world today. For better or worse, what happens in U.S. politics affects the Church unlike political events anywhere else, so the Church has to remain politically aware and engaged.<\/p>\n 10\u2014If you\u2019re appalled by what is happening to the United States \u2013 and you should be \u2013 you should do something about it. But it is a basic category error to expect your favorite grocery chain or sports league to be a vehicle of protest unless it serves its overall mission. Starbucks and the NHL hope to continue attracting fans and customers from across the political spectrum and are only going to get involved in politics if their missions are threatened. The Church is not going to perform your protesting for you, especially not at the cost of hindering its own mission. It will get involved in situations where its missions are threatened. Those situations are so dire and the outcomes at that point are so poor that I hope it never comes to that.<\/p>\n 11\u2014The scriptures set an exceedingly high bar for resistance. Perhaps you can find an escape clause from \u201crender unto Caesar<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s somewhat harder to get around \u201cWe believe in being subject to kings<\/a>,\u201d although there are some helpful clarifications in D&C 98<\/a> and 134<\/a>. The hardest teaching of all is Paul\u2019s injunction in Romans 13<\/a> for Christians to be subject to authorities, who are divinely established \u2013 even if the authorities are awful tyrants of the type that existed in Paul\u2019s time. Commenting on this chapter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:<\/p>\n It is not that Christians serve God when they pay taxes, Paul says, but that those who impose taxes are thereby doing \u2013 their! \u2013 service to God. Paul does not call Christians to this form of serving God, but to submission and to not owing anyone anything that is due to them. Any opposition, any resistance here would only make clear that Christians have confused the Kingdom of God with a kingdom of this world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Of course, Bonhoeffer eventually managed to find a bridge between Romans 13 and participating in a plot on Hitler’s life.)<\/p>\n 12\u2014Donald Trump is no Cyrus or Augustus. In terms of scriptural precedents, he is an uncannily accurate incarnation of wicked King Noah<\/a>. Trump, like Noah, is driven by the \u201cdesires of his heart.\u201d Trump\u2019s multiple \u201cwives and concubines\u201d are a matter of public record, while their precise ages remain a matter of controversy. His imposition of new taxes in the form of arbitrary tariffs is unprecedented; compared to some tariffs, Noah\u2019s 20% taxation rate is relatively mild. Trump moves government levers to enrich his family and friends, just like Noah changed the affairs of the kingdom to increase the wealth of his \u201cwives and concubines; and also his priests, and their wives and concubines.\u201d Like Trump, Noah was a lover of luxury and \u201cspacious buildings\u201d ornamented with fine woodwork, gold and silver (plus some brass, copper and ziff). Noah\u2019s building program and wine industry gave the land a superficial prosperity, even as its foundations were rotting. Although Noah was indifferent to the land\u2019s actual security needs, an episode of military success led the people to \u201cboast in their own strength, saying that their fifty could stand against thousands of the Lamanites\u201d and they \u201cdid delight in blood, and the shedding of the blood of their brethren, and this because of the wickedness of their king and priests.\u201d<\/p>\n 13\u2014You are here.<\/p>\n 14\u2014When the prophet Abinadi begins his prophetic ministry in response to Noah\u2019s reign, he doesn\u2019t mention Noah at all. Instead, he condemns the people\u2019s wickedness and calls on them to repent. Then he disappears for two years. When he reappears, he again calls for people to repent of their sins and idolatry and informs Noah that his life is fleeting, but still does not single out Noah for condemnation. In his final confrontation, Abinadi condemns the priests appointed by Noah for failing in their duty to teach the people. Abinadi teaches a basic message of obedience to the Ten Commandments while looking forward to the Savior\u2019s atonement.<\/p>\n 15\u2014The prophets and apostles have spoken out multiple names over the last year. In their Conference addresses, they have taught the gospel of repentance<\/a>, preached obedience<\/a>, cautioned against idolatry<\/a> and explained the Atonement<\/a>. If this isn\u2019t the message you want to hear, you may need to re-evaluate where you situate yourself in the confrontation between Abinadi and the priests of King Noah.<\/p>\n 16\u2014Anticipatory despair is not a form of resistance. It makes no sense to say, \u201cNoah has been building spacious buildings for his concubines for years and Abinadi hasn\u2019t said anything yet, so he probably approves of it,\u201d \u201cAll Noah does is talk about repentance without mentioning King Noah directly, and that just doesn\u2019t cut it,\u201d \u201cNoah said something once and then disappeared for two years, so he probably went hard core MNGA,\u201d or \u201cThe red sash Abinadi chose for his cloak identifies him as a Noah supporter.\u201d Cynical despair is a particularly harmful way to grant yourself permission to do nothing.<\/p>\n 17\u2014The cringe resist libs and MWEG moms have been right about everything over the last ten years. If you got it wrong, that\u2019s not unusual. We all get a lot of things wrong. But the first step in repentance is admitting you were wrong, and then changing course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1\u2014To get this out of the way: There was no good answer to the question of how the Church should have responded to Nazism. There was no safe middle ground between complicit engagement, impotent resistance, and needless death. If letting missionaries train the German basketball team had a .01% chance of making war less likely, then it was worth trying. The truth of the Church\u2019s response to Nazism is not a handful of missionaries playing basketball, but 100,000 LDS soldiers fighting in the war against the Axis powers, with 5,000 dying during the war. The lesson for today is: Don\u2019t vote for fascists for any reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics","category-scriptures"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52502","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\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52502"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52504,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52502\/revisions\/52504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n