NOM

I found this remarkable statement while reading through old "Dialogue." magazines. It is worth repeating. (Thanks W.L.Williamson)

In the Church I have never heard talks about personal conscience, about the risks of abdicating personal conscience to those in authority, about the dangers of Dachau, Jonestown, the Inquisition, My Lai, or Mountain Meadows. Juanita Brooks in The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962) suggests that there were dissenters at Mountain Meadows who fired their guns in the air (p. 74). How many lives would have been saved if only one man had stood up and said as did General Alexander W. Doniphan when ordered to shoot Joseph Smith, "It is cold-blooded murder. I will not obey your order.... if you execute these men, I will hold you responsible before an earthly tribunal, so help me God" (Comprehensive History of the Church 1: 490.) Integrity does not count the personal cost; it is the ultimate value to which we owe our obedience, and all else must give way before it. (W.L. Williamson, "Dialogue," 1987, v. 4, 'Letters.')

It pains me that I don't remember the name of one brother in particular, who was in the meeting with Wells and others when the attack was planned on the Fancher wagon train, but he spoke against it and told them he thought they should wait until they could receive a more direct approval from Brigham Young.

It did not go over well and he was subjected to a thinly veiled threat for not conforming. (I'm fairly sure he did not participate in the attack.)

In his diary he stated he was so intimidated that he took his horse and wagon home in a roundabout way that night to avoid anyone who knew his common route home for fear of retaliation.

He's my unsung hero of the entire Mountain Meadows atrocity.

What can individual members do when they learn about things like the Church's policy of exclusion, or head-spinning ex-communications?

moksha wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 06, 2021 11:46 am

What can individual members do when they learn about things like the Church's policy of exclusion, or head-spinning ex-communications?

I haven't resigned yet, but every time they announce more temples I feel better knowing I stopped paying tithing.