Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

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Corsair
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Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by Corsair » Wed Jan 22, 2020 11:19 pm

Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

This article was initiated by the recent old school views of race in the printed "Come Follow Me". The first paragraph outlines a deep problem:
wrote:I recently had a (now-deleted) conversation about the “printing error” in the 2020 Book of Mormon manual. I raised some substantial concerns, filled out with a number of links to my own research and posts about cursing in scripture (e.g. here and in my forthcoming posts on 2 Nephi 1-5). Two S&I (Seminaries and Institute) /COB (Church Office Building) employees responded by bearing testimony of the Curriculum and Correlation process and berating anyone who dared hold any other opinion.
Brother Spackman is a believing Mormon and likely the kind of guy that would be an excellent leader and theologian. I fully expect that he will never advance beyond the rank of bishop at best. While I am truly not wanting to beat up on the poor COB employees, it's this kind of attitude that is undermining everything good that the LDS leaders think they are doing.

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deacon blues
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by deacon blues » Thu Jan 23, 2020 6:30 am

That's a great article by Spackman, and it brings up some serrious thoughts. As you point out Corsair, challenging inerrancy could be a brave gesture, but such move will likely result in consequences for the whistle blower.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

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Advocate
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by Advocate » Thu Jan 23, 2020 7:11 am

The church's desire for inerrancy was one of the issues that really opened my eyes and made me realize the church might be wrong.

It was during GC in April 2014, Elder Bednar finished his talk by stating that we know through revelation that Jesus was born on April 6. I specifically remember thinking to myself "we don't really believe that, do we?" I researched it and came to the conclusion that we didn't believe that; it was a misinterpretation brought on by the way one of D&C scribes (Whitmer) had written out the year in the preamble to the section. I waited for the written version to come out to see if there was a correction made. There was not. Rather, the claim was reinforced with references in a footnote. The entire purpose of the footnote was to prove that Elder Bednar was right. It did so by relying on a several quotes. One in particular was from President Kimball, wherein the written record does not reflect what he actually said (the oral record is different from the written record). Of course, the footnote didn't bother mentioning any of this controversy. (details on this issue can be found at https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_ ... -of-jesus/).

At the time I was hoping Elder Bednar would fight for truth. He could have put in a footnote that described the controversy. He could have changed or modified his statement so the written version was different from what he said. He did neither. It was more important to him that members think that he was right, rather than members know the truth. Unfortunately, this attitude seems to be the norm in the church office building. The church being seen as right/correct is the primary concern; the actual truth is less important.

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Red Ryder
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by Red Ryder » Thu Jan 23, 2020 8:15 am

I liked his article but not his conclusion.
You want to know where some cancerous faith-destroying messages are coming from? Not “the world” but middle-management Church employees.
I’d posture to suggest it comes from the top.

I’ll give him a pass though because he did say “some” cancerous faith destroying messages.
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deacon blues
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by deacon blues » Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:10 am

I noticed Spackman's article starts with "I recently had a (now deleted conversation) about the printing error..... It feels like he's already concerned about someone watching over his shoulder. What kind of environment would that be to work in? :(

Another thought. The Church could save itself some trouble if it had someone in the review process who had a feel for the issues that cause these kind of problems. It would have saved Elder Stevenson having to apologize. (I admire him for doing that.) It seems the people that the Church enlists for the "review" process don't sense the "boomerang effect" until it comes back to hit them in the eye.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

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Jeffret
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by Jeffret » Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:47 am

Red Ryder wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2020 8:15 am
I’d posture to suggest it comes from the top.

I’ll give him a pass though because he did say “some” cancerous faith destroying messages.
Responsibility does have to be placed at the feet of those at the top. They've carefully nurtured the environment for this sort of behavior, at adds with what really occurs. They could take actions to get the message out better. They could provide guidance to reduce the fundamentalism and literalism. They don't because most of the time it benefits them. It's easier to handwave the few instances it doesn't to maintain the benefits it gives them.
"Close your eyes, for your eyes will only tell the truth,
And the truth isn't what you want to see" (Charles Hart, "The Music of the Night")

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Advocate
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by Advocate » Thu Jan 23, 2020 11:43 am

Jeffret wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:47 am
Red Ryder wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2020 8:15 am
I’d posture to suggest it comes from the top.

I’ll give him a pass though because he did say “some” cancerous faith destroying messages.
Responsibility does have to be placed at the feet of those at the top. They've carefully nurtured the environment for this sort of behavior, at adds with what really occurs. They could take actions to get the message out better. They could provide guidance to reduce the fundamentalism and literalism. They don't because most of the time it benefits them. It's easier to handwave the few instances it doesn't to maintain the benefits it gives them.
I'd add that I think leadership is scared of being pinned down on anything. Easier to post some stuff online (where it can be easily changed or deleted) if it turns out it wasn't such a great idea, rather than reading into the formal record as a general conference talk announcement, or worse an official proclamation. If the top 15 don't act (or say anything) besides the usual, they can't be shown to be false prophets.

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FiveFingerMnemonic
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by FiveFingerMnemonic » Thu Jan 23, 2020 4:10 pm

The comments from the church employees on this blog post remind me so much of the material in Daymon Smith's "The Book of Mammon". So much managerial disfunction and fear culture. It must be crazy to work there at times.

Also interesting was the comment about doctrinal statements coming out in kids magazines instead of conference talks now.

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Mormorrisey
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by Mormorrisey » Thu Jan 23, 2020 9:36 pm

FiveFingerMnemonic wrote:
Thu Jan 23, 2020 4:10 pm
The comments from the church employees on this blog post remind me so much of the material in Daymon Smith's "The Book of Mammon". So much managerial disfunction and fear culture. It must be crazy to work there at times.

Also interesting was the comment about doctrinal statements coming out in kids magazines instead of conference talks now.
Yeah, those comments were gold from COB ex-employees - and I have a bit to add. I know for a fact, that the church did a workforce survey a few years ago that addressed this problem of a fearful workplace. One of the questions was, "do you have the ability to be honest with your managers without fear of reprisal?" Over 90% of the global workforce answered no, according to my source. A church employee informed me of this, and they had a large discussion about it in their department about how to fix it. That just goes to show you WHY the church regularly steps on its own toes, if people are afraid to speak the truth or give feedback that goes against the fundamentalist/literalist views of the COB. When Oaks gives a talk that explicitly says "there is no loyal opposition in the church," they've got a big problem.

And it does start at the top. They've created this culture of infallibility, and now they're stuck with the crap on their shoes.
"And I don't need you...or, your homespun philosophies."
"And when you try to break my spirit, it won't work, because there's nothing left to break."

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alas
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by alas » Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:45 pm

I went back to this to see the additional comments from the first time I read it and someone quoted from statements from the first Presidency a quote about the WoW where they say that “using coffee or tea in the usual way” is wrong but carefully using it for medical purposes is alright! For medical purposes tea and coffee are alright.

That statement came out years ago and I have never heard that. I am in shock. I have never heard that using tea or coffee was acceptable for medical purposes. My mother was told by her doctor that there were some expensive pills she could take, or she could drink one cup of coffee a day. She never started drinking more than her one cup and had it with one cup of milk, because diluted with coffee was the also the only way she could digest milk and her doctor worried about osteoporosis if she didn’t get some milk. But when I got married she had stopped her coffee and gone on the pills and the stake president still gave her almost two hours worth of crap because he didn’t think she was repenting of the coffee, just discontinuing it for the TR. She never got another TR because of the crap and the pills were expensive and of course she went back to her sinful ways because it was never sinful to begin with to follow your doctor’s recommendations. I shall have to tell my TBM son who takes green tea extract pills because his doctor wants him on green tea.

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jfro18
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by jfro18 » Sun Jan 26, 2020 4:48 pm

alas wrote:
Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:45 pm
I went back to this to see the additional comments from the first time I read it and someone quoted from statements from the first Presidency a quote about the WoW where they say that “using coffee or tea in the usual way” is wrong but carefully using it for medical purposes is alright! For medical purposes tea and coffee are alright.
This reminds me of my in laws. The moment they get a cough, they immediately go to Jim Beam for it... and that's fine because I know people do it, but I just have always found it funny how they always would recommend it to DW and me when they knew we had a cough.

And, again, it has a legit record of helping with coughs so I'm not knocking it, but they would recommend that before dayquil or any other cough suppressant. Almost as if they wanted an excuse to have some...

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blazerb
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Re: Inerrancy among Church Employees about Church Materials

Post by blazerb » Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:01 pm

After reading this and listening to RFM's new podcast today, I have thought a lot about what goes wrong in curriculum development in the church. I think someone really wanted this quote in the lesson to try to prove that our doctrine did not change in 1978, in spite of the need to adjust the quote to get rid of the most offensive parts. However, they could not see that the quote, even adjusted, was still so unacceptable. Heck, it might have been one of the Q15 who insisted that it be in there, if the statements of the CES folk that Ben Spackman dealt with can be believed.

But they took it out of the online manual quite a while ago, at least by November. Elder Stevenson told the NAACP that members have been asked to disregard the quote. However, I have never been told to disregard the quote. The church probably did not want to draw attention to it by asking people to ignore it. That certainly did not work. In any case, it seems to me that Elder Stevenson is lying.

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