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Does truth matter? How does a willingness to bury truth affect civilizations, communities, families, and churches? How can truth telling help victims of abuse? Are we telling the truth in how we teach polygamy? What could we do better?
Links
The Loophole: Episode 2
Bernays documentary
President Hinckley: Do not practice polygamy
Elder Ballard Address to CES instructors — clips
Doctrine and Covenants and Church History: Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual, Lesson 31
Doctrine and Covenants and Church History Seminary Teacher Manual, Lesson 140
Book of Mormon Seminary Teacher Manual, Lesson 44
Transcript
[00:00:01] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. As always, I recommend listening to these podcasts in order starting at the beginning. They’re meant to start with more basic topics and build on from there. My name is Michelle Stone, and this. Episode 29 Polygamy indoctrination, where we’ll look at what we’ve been taught and try to understand why we believe what we believe and what we could possibly do better. Thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. This episode is going to touch on some different, um, I guess habits or ways of being in our relationships, in our personal relationships and our families, in our communities and also in the broader culture that I think are worthwhile to consider and explore in our own lives and how they show up in the world around us. And so I want to cover a couple of different things. We’re going to talk a lot about propaganda and indoc. just to set sort of a broad understanding of what that is. And then I want to go to a different conversation to talk about some ways that I think that that shows up in different areas of our personal lives and also in the church. I want to clarify from the beginning that when I talk about propaganda and indoctrination, I am not accusing the church of anything like the same motives or the same. Um, intentions. I, I, um, I want to be really clear about that. I just think it’s interesting to see how sometimes similar moves, I guess, show up and so I, I, let’s let’s set that as the groundwork and then we’ll go go on with the conversation. So if you’ll remember the very first topic I covered in this podcast was In episode 2, which I called the loophole because it was about the one verse of Scripture, Jacob chapter 2, verse 30. This is an essential scripture in this discussion because it really is the hinge point that the entire under our entire understanding of polygamy hangs from and turns from, right? It depends on how we choose to interpret that one verse. Here we have Jacob 2 that is I think the strongest condemnation of polygamy and scripture, and then we have 132, and how can we possibly bridge that divide? Oh, we can use Jacob chapter 2 verse 30, right? So we have to work really hard to make sure that we have the desired interpretation of that verse. I think it’s really interesting to look at how this has been done and how this is done. So, I, I first, I do want to point out that I think that this is um unnecess, I don’t want to say necessary, but I think that if we want people to interpret Jacob 2:30 in this way, we have to make a concerted effort because I think that when you come to it just independently without, if you were just, if someone were just reading through Jacob chapter 2, they would certainly interpret it. One way that I think would be very different from someone coming at it with an effort to try to justify Section 132. Does that make sense? I think that the interpretation that we are given in order to justify 132 does not work. It doesn’t work textually, meaning the words that are actually written on the page. It certainly doesn’t work theologically if we compare it to the rest of God’s teachings and the rest of scripture. And it also really doesn’t work logically or historically or biologically as we’ve been talking about in these other episodes, and we will continue to talk about.
[00:03:55] So that’s why, you know, we have to come up with a solution of how do we make sure that this is interpreted this way and in my opinion, that’s where indoctrination comes in and as as as. We get toward the end of this episode, we’re going to talk about some other things first, but I hope you’ll stick around until the end, or at least, you know, if you can’t stick around for the rest of it, at least listen to the last, I don’t know, 10 minutes of this, maybe more, so you can see the actual evidence of how this has been happening. And so first, I want to, um, I want to define what I am meaning by indoctrination. I think that it’s um. Let’s see whether there was something else I was going to say, but first we’ll go to this. So what I wrote out is that if we want to compare indoctrination and education, I say indoctrination is it seeks to teach people what to think as opposed to true education which teaches people how to think, right? Good education that’s not based in indoctrination focuses on teaching facts and reading actual source, original source texts, and then encouraging the student to use those facts and those texts to draw logical. Conclusions and then to have to justify and support and defend those conclusions right? so we can learn to be good critical thinkers. I think that’s what we really should be wanting for ourselves and for our children and our communities is to really engage in critical thought that’s done best through. Like putting out our ideas and having our ideas attacked by those who disagree and you know that forces us to clarify, to think more deeply, like I hope that those who really support polygamy engage with this podcast because even if they continue to believe in polygamy, they should have to go deeper and answer more and more difficult questions, right? Where indoctrination really does the same thing, um. Let’s see, it focuses mainly on the desired outcomes. It seeks to influence people to believe desired conclusions without necessarily relying on facts, original texts and sources or critical thinking. In fact, Indoctrination tends to bury things that don’t support the desired conclusion. And um it it it really like true education, you’re trying to help students understand the difference between facts and opinions, right? Indoctrination is trying to disguise opinions as facts so that you can get the desired conclusions. It tries to carefully control the actual source. It tries to carefully control the dialogue, right, the things that are allowed to be said so it can steer to the desired interpretation, and it relies on repetition of shallow assumption, and it disallows anyone to poke holes in those assumptions. So just like I said, we should present our ideas and then have them. Um, other people should, I don’t want to say attack those ideas, but I guess engage with those ideas and say I disagree because of this and this and this and that forces us to, as we all engage in that together, we get closer and closer to truth, right, cause we see where we’ve made mistakes, where we’ve made flawed assumptions, where we have assumed that assumptions were were the facts were assumptions. What am I trying to say? We’ve assumed that we have facts when what we really have were assumptions, right?
[00:07:14] That’s the, that’s the rigor that we want to get involved in. And I think that we can see a lot of areas in our lives and our communities and civilization where those things aren’t happening. We can see where it plays out in many different areas in our life, in our media. Our social encounters, um, it’s been really disconcerting for many people to see the shutdown of the freedom of speech, when this has always been a nation that has really been proud of the freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas and the idea is that if someone is saying something that you disagree with, the best thing to do is engage with it and show that show why they’re wrong, right? The best solution for bad ideas is better ideas. It’s never a good solution to shut down ideas and say you’re not allowed to say that. It’s much better to say, well, yeah, you can say that, but these are the reasons that you’re wrong, right? That that’s a much better approach. So, um, that’s, that’s what I want to talk about. So we’re going to talk because I think it is something that is pertinent to us in our world today. So we’re going to talk about a little about indoctrination and propaganda. I’ll try not to take too long on it. But it’s important to understand it so we can begin to more and more to recognize it around us, so we can see when we are being indoctrinated. Versus being educated, right? We can go to the effort of doing what we need to to keep ourselves as free from indoctrination and propaganda as we possibly can. So, um, let’s see. Oh, another thing and one thing that’s good to pay attention to that I just want to throw in here is defensiveness. When defensiveness shows up, I really think it’s a good indicator. That you, you may be, we may have a belief like when the defensiveness shows up for me, I try to take it as a sign to me that I have some assumption that I’m not really sure about and so I feel threatened when it is called into when it is questioned, right? And so instead of going, oh, OK, that’s a good point. Let me, let me see what I think about that. I instead get Angry and mad and start to feel like how dare you say that, right? I think it’s really good to start to listen, learn to listen to those cues cause defensiveness really shouldn’t. It doesn’t really have a good place in healthy relationships other than as a signal to me, right? If I’m feeling defensive, that’s not that the other person did something wrong. They might have, but that doesn’t cause my defensiveness. My defensiveness is a is a signal for me to do some, some investigative work in myself. I hope that that makes sense to all of you, so. That’s one thing that I think is a good clue for us to listen to. Um, OK, so propaganda indoctrination, for those of you who have already know all of this, just put it on double speed, right? But for the rest, hopefully it’s valuable. So Edward Bernays, if you haven’t heard of his name, I really recommend. Learning more about him. If you have heard of his name,
[00:10:10] fabulous. So he wrote a book called Propaganda. I didn’t write down the year he wrote it, but it was in the beginning of the 19th of the 20th century, the 1910, 1920s, it was before 1920, I believe. But anyway, he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, interestingly enough, and he’s really one of the reasons that Sigmund Freud became a household name. There are lots of other thinkers and even psychologists who did a lot of things. But you know, when you get to control propaganda, you could prop up the characters that you feel, feel like to prop up. So, um, he just as a human, you can learn more about him. In fact, I’m, I’m going to link, if it’ll let me. Um, James Corbett is someone whose work I like speaking of critical thinking. And, um, so he did a short documentary on Edward Bernays that I’ll link and there’s a ton more information you can get about him and his book Propaganda and Just a lot of information that I think was at the BBC or someone did did um. A short documentary of him as well, but it was pretty um whitewashed, right? So it’s good to get different sources so you can see who he really was. I know that his daughter said that he used the word stupid a lot in a very sort of contemptuous way, like he just thought people were stupid and don’t be stupid, and he had a lot of disdain for. Sort of the stupid masses, right? And he thought that they, his, his idea was basically that the leaders of society could and should propagandize the masses and control them in that way and It’s, it’s really interesting because to me he basically what I think he basically discovered is that people who are generally honest in society and therefore expect those in their institutions to be honest tend to trust their institutions. So if you get their institutions to lie to them, they can be fooled. That’s basically, I think, the discovery he made. And so it reminds me of. The father of lies, right, and 2 Nephi 99 and Moses 5:24. It’s like congratulations. You learned to control people by lying to them when they trusted you. Well done, right? I, I, I’m, I’m I’m not terribly impressed personally by what he came up with, but. You can learn more about him, but it is interesting to know many of you also will know the name Goebbels, excuse my American pronunciation, my dad went on a mission to um Germany and would just die at my lack of an umlaut. But Goebbels was the minister. Of propaganda in the Nazi regime in Germany, right? And interestingly, he held in very high esteem and learned from Edward Bernays. He was one of his mentors, one of his heroes. He read all of his books and quoted him and learned from him. So the propaganda that happened under the Nazi regime was actually Sort of developed in America. Maybe there were other people going along with that as well, but it is interesting to consider. And so,
[00:13:18] um, let’s see, here’s a quote from something from a documentary about Goebbels. He promoted the Nazi message through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, and the press, and censored and censored all opposition. Isn’t that interesting, right? And um here are a few quotes from Goebbel’s diary and papers. He said, The essence of propaganda or he wrote the essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally that in the end they will succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it. So that was his goal to get things so firmly embedded in their mind that they could never think differently. And he also was quoted as saying there’s some, you know, some people question if this is his quote, but um, but most people believe that he also wrote, If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained for only such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic, and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state, right? Aren’t those interesting quotes, and I think it’s good for us to consider how some of those same ideas might be showing up in our world today and even in our own society and culture. So, um. I think, I think that this is really interesting to learn. It’s especially interesting when you consider that Bernays was a Jew and yet was kind of who Goebbels looked to to learn the art of propaganda, right? But I want to also just quickly note here that the Nazis also had a Ministry of Education because they also had to control what was allowed to be taught in the schools. They also had a Ministry of Public Health, which was also both of those were very instrumental in the societal indoctrination that they put into place that they implemented to move forward the Nazi agenda and I think it’s unfortunate that the Nazis have gotten so much more attention than other totalitarian regimes, which all were actually based in Marxism, so that includes the regimes in the USSR, in China, Cambodia, the Ottoman Empire, North Korea, and, and others. So please note all of these also all of these totalitarian regimes also had ministries of propaganda and ministries of education and Ministries of public health or public well-being, right? That, that is, those are things that have all been done before. So it’s good to be aware of that and try to recognize it, right? Because generally when we start seeing these ideas come into a society, it go, it can go dark places, right? I think that shutting down freedom of speech is something we should all be concerned about, in my opinion. So, um, let’s see. OK, I’m gonna move on, right? But, um, I do want to just again clarify that
[00:16:27] we have to have one mindset or the other, right? Either we really believe in the victory of truth, that the best thing is to let everyone speak and the best ideas will win out, right? We can apply that everywhere in our society, including in our families and in our religions, right? And in school and in our associations, and we have that or we have the other mindset where we think we don’t want things spoken that could be possibly. We can label them as offensive or we can label them as dangerous or whatever the ideas might be labeled as we need to silence and, you know, cause we’ll always come up with excuses for why we should shut down ideas. So those are two different different directions that we can go. I think that another good thing to look at is, in my opinion. The main tools of the adversary are fear. God has not given us the spirit of fear, um, and also shame and also resentment or blame, blaming others. Those are, those are tools that are really useful to the adversary. And um I think that we can look at what messages, what the messages we’re receiving are based in. Are they promoting fear? Are they promoting shame? Are they promoting resentment or blame? Then we know who they’re coming from and whether they’re more truth-based or more propaganda and indoctrination based, right, that someone is trying to get us to. Let be controlled by our fear or act a certain way because of our resentment or our blames or do certain things or else because we’ll be ashamed if we don’t. So those, I’m just throwing in some of the things that I’ve been thinking about that are hopefully useful because I think we are in a day and age where these things are. important. So, um, with that broad understanding that’s been way too quick to fully gra grasp, but hopefully you get an idea of what I’m talking about and maybe we’ll go on to study more if you’re curious, but, um, with that kind of that understanding of propaganda and indoctrination, so I would say. This is an off on the fly definition people can disagree, but indoctrination is more what we do in our classes and our intentional education, right? And propaganda is more the broad spectrum what we do in society to try to accomplish the ends that we desire, right? So actually World War I, um, was it Wilson who was elected with the promise of keeping America out of World War I, but then all of a sudden pure beautiful propaganda we got Uncle Sam that said, I want um. You know, Uncle Sam wants you, and it was a beautiful example of propaganda that got people to do what they had previously not wanted to do for other people’s purposes. So it’s good to see where this has showed up in the past and where it continues to show up. I think people tend to be really engrossed with what’s on the news, and I think 11 thing I’ve really tried to teach my kids and myself is like. To think about who chooses the news stories, right? Who chooses what is going to be on the news, cause there are things happening everywhere all the time and we can have something that happened far away that we would never have known about, but it’s blasted all over the news. Why is that? What is, you know, there are lots and lots of. Murders, there’s lots and lots of cases of all of all of the things that we might see in the world.
[00:19:51] Why is that one being put in all of our living rooms? Why is that person getting so much attention? Why is that person being elevated? Why is that message the one that we’re supposed to focus on? Those are questions to ask rather than just believing and, and I mean, I’m, I maybe the news stories are all true, but why are they being promoted, right? That’s, that’s, those are good questions to ask when we’re trying to understand propaganda and indoctrination. So, um, I want to break this down also because something that’s really been in sort of the cultural milieu lately is. What what are called toxic families, right? And so these, these same energies can show up in the broader culture, in our smaller communities, in our individual relationships and in our families, and in a lot of families there um maybe unhealthy families, um, there can be an maybe unspoken or not unspoken rule of the image of the family is paramount. You don’t tell that, you don’t speak. The truth, right? You put on the perfect image, because that’s what matters more than the reality of maybe what might actually be happening. And so that’s something that can happen with enmeshed families where the family culture is much more important than each individual in in the family and the children are not allowed to individuate, right, without feeling a lot of, without causing a lot of upheavalheaval in that family system. And also, There’s a lot of talk about narcissistic families where that where 11 or both of the parents might have narcissistic um personality tendencies, and again, the family system has to serve them. The image is what matters. And so, you know, I’ve heard the stories of the the. You know, well, I guess we probably all know people whose maybe father or mother was in a high up calling and so there was a lot of pressure on them to have their children appear to be perfect. And some of those kids grow up to be adults that really have a lot of issues because of the controlling nature of the family and the, the need to put on a perfect show. And I think that that is something that can show up in I don’t want to say in Mormonism. I think in all religious cultures, and I think that’s something to be aware of so we can be very careful to not fall into it. It really doesn’t matter what our neighbors think of us nearly as much as what is real as that real relationship with that child with our child, as our children feeling loved, valued, accepted. No matter where they are or what what struggles they’re having or what path they’re following, the real, the reality of our lives matters so much. And if we get into the image, it’s because we are falling for fear and shame and blame, right? We’re being motivated by that. So I want to point out that if we are in a family where truth telling is punished, where we have to keep this facade. Then, um, that’s not healthy for the people in that family, and it doesn’t lead generally to very good outcomes. People have to do a lot of healing if they were raised in that kind of a family. And so
[00:22:56] that’s, that’s one thing that I think it’s just a matter of valuing truth over image, right? Or valuing truth over whatever our objectives might be. So while there’s indoctrination and propaganda, it can show up in a different way even in our families and I also believe in our church, right? If we have a culture where the image matters more than the truth, we have problems and it leads to bad outcomes. And so I think part of the reason that I’m choosing to go into this today is because again, it’s August of 2022. Right now, the church is under a lot of scrutiny for some very painful cases that have been just the latest to gain publicity. Um, about the way that that the church has sometimes responded to particularly sexual abuse in this case. And um I think it’s really difficult. There’s a lot of outrage and it it seems to me to be centered mainly on the fact that whether this is the case or not, the church appears to, at least in the past when these cases happened. To have been more focused on its own reputation, its own image, and financial risk than on the well-being of children who are victims of sexual abuse, and that is a really, really hard thing for people to have to realize. Um, I think this is getting a lot more attention, so it’s being talked about more. There are many of us who have been following this or have been aware of it for A longer time and so this is just the latest case that happens to be getting a lot of attention. So I, I think I just want to give voice to the many victims out there who have grown up with the understanding that they were not the priority either of their family or of the church or whoever was willing to cover up the painful abuse that they experienced. I think it’s important for us to realize that. Many people have had this experience, and um sadly this experience has been in my own family by someone close to me who was a young teen, was painfully and carefully groomed by someone who had a lot of influence and authority over her and who also happened to be serving in um a church position as a general authority and um. It was really, really bad and it caused debilitating shame for this girl for years and years, and it wasn’t until she was in her twenties that she was finally able to heal enough to realize that it wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t fair that she had been carrying all of the shame. So she went to her local bishop to tell what had happened and was basically told, I know a lot of you will be able to predict, but basically was told that was a long time ago. This is a good man, we don’t want to destroy his life. Think of all the pain you would cause for his family, you would destroy his family. Jesus can help you to forgive, right? And that was basically how it was handled. That’s quite devastating, right? So a little while later she came to her home homeward and told the same thing to the bishop there and was met with pretty much the same answers, um, came back again after a new bishop had been put in into the homeward. The same thing happened, said the same thing and pretty much the same answers. And um I think it’s not fair to judge this, this girl, this woman for viewing the the priesthood based basically as an old boys club,
[00:26:52] right? Cause that was her experience. The priority was on protecting the well-being of the abusers instead of seeking redress for the victim. And um I think that’s something we really need to think about now. I know at least two of these men who were serving as bishop, and they were good men. They were really good men. Um, the problem is that the structure is set up in a way to prioritize the well-being of men, right? Like a bishop really is a law in this particular case where it was a general authority. Um, a bishop’s really a low man on a totem pole compared to a general authority. My dad served as a bishop. I get it, right? I, and they’re like, I don’t think that the bishops feel empowered often that there’s anything they could do to seek redress or to help, and I think that they just have a sense that they would just get themselves into a lot of trouble and you know, and it’s way easier to say that was a long time ago. Jesus can help you forgive. Like I totally get. I don’t think they had to be trained in that response. I think it’s a very natural response based on the structure that we have. So I think it’s something we need to look at and see what we could do to maybe help it work better. Um, I, I, I While those are good men doing that in every system. Enablers need to recognize how they are contributing to abuse, right? Cause really what those bishops were doing in effect was being enablers. They were enabling abusers to go free at the expense of victims. And everybody’s accountable for that. And even if they would just stick their neck out and have, you know, be be be have their head chopped off as a result, be punished, be, you know, you know, have the, um, feel like it did not serve them well to try to defend an abuser, it is still. Critically important that that happens because the only way toxic systems survive, and the church as a whole isn’t a toxic system, but this part of it is the way the church deals with abuse tends to be quite toxic to the victims. It’s not been a healthy way of dealing with things. And the only way those systems survive is for the abusers to play their part. This is also true of families that have, you know, families that have some, some amount of toxic toxic family systems to whatever degree. They only can continue because everyone goes along with it, right? Everyone plays their role and does what they need to to enable whoever is the narcissist or the abuser or the controller in that family system. Because they’re afraid of getting on their bad side, cause then some of the negativity could come back at them. So it’s way better to just keep heaping it up onto the scapegoat than to risk becoming a scapegoat yourself, right? And I think that that same dynamic can play out in our families or in our church, and I just want to say. That we need to stop doing that. Every single one of us needs to take the individual responsibility to recognize where there are scapegoats or black sheep, black sheep or victims, and
[00:30:18] If we are doing something to enable that, we need to be willing to stick our, you know, to stick our neck out, to put ourselves on the line to protect people who need our help. That truly is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was willing to be killed on a cross to be crucified in order to do that very thing, to stick his neck out for the well-being of all of us in all of the ways that we are abused and victimized in life, right? We can each do that in our own little way because even if we feel like we can’t make a huge change, even if we feel like all we’re going to do is risk being punished ourselves or like Sam Young be excommunicated, you know, and. And I, I don’t wanna throw my full weight behind it I cause I see that there is a place for bishop’s interviews that, you know, these, these are complicated, tricky. Situations without easy solutions, but I still find it so sad that Semyon was excommunicated. That really is a hard one for me. But even if a bishop who tried to pursue allegations of abuse, even if he was released from his calling and not given another calling or whatever it may be, what would happen is that victim, instead of being given the message yet again, you don’t matter, and what happened to you doesn’t matter. Instead they would see that somebody in a position of authority and trust is willing to to stick his neck out to defend them, to say you do matter and what happened to you matters. The more people that. Say that, the better off victims are, and we can all be people who do that and who say that to help victims of abuse, know that they’re not alone and know that they do matter, even if we can’t fix everything. We can at least do that and they want to make that plea that Everybody in our families, in our relationships, and in this church make a personal commitment that we will not enable things that are toxic in our relationships and our communities and societies and in our in our church structure. So, OK, we’re sorry for the sidetrack. I just think that these are important things to at least address because. It is yet again, you know, shaking up the church in really difficult ways. So, OK, now I want to pivot and go to the point, the, the real point of this episode, and that is how this indoctrination, I know we took some sidetracks, but how indoctrination applies to specifically the teaching of polygamy in the church. So. It’s hard to know how, like, get a comprehensive understanding of how what things people have been taught throughout time. I haven’t been able to find old church manuals. I, I don’t see those online. I’m sure I could go to the church library or some library and find them, but just in my search I can only find the current manuals on the church website. But Um, but, but looking at the history, I, I’ve done my best to kind of just draw a like really distant sketch, like a, you know, not, not in fine detail, just kind of sketch out how I think we’ve gotten where we are, some of the key points. I’m sure there’s a lot I’ve left out since it’s just been my own thinking.
[00:33:34] So again, feel free to add anything, anything. That I’ve left out, but I think that for, you know, for those who grew up in the mid um 20th century, they probably heard very little if anything about polygamy, right? Because it really was like the embarrassing old history of the church that it wished would just had never existed and that they could just keep hidden under under the rug and the only People talking about polygamy were the anti-Mormons, right? The people printing anti-Mormon literature. And so um that’s, that was how it was for a long time. And then this is my understanding that we got a new, um, for the first time the church historian was an actual historian, Leonard Arrington, right, in the days of that he had D Michael Quinn working with him, so 70s and the early 80s, they started to uncover more history of the church and more things started to be published about the claims of Joseph Smith’s polygamy and, and that, that kind of got the ball rolling and it was in this period that Elder Packer gave his talk. The mantle is far, far greater than the intellect. That was in ’81. And it’s the it’s the talk of the controversial statement. Some things that are true are not very useful. It was really interesting to go reread that talk. They’re again, they’re trying their best. So much of what he says makes sense, but some of the comparisons he draws, I don’t think are really fair. It, it honestly sounds that while his intentions are good, much of what he was advocating for was more along the lines of indoctrination than education. And no, I don’t think we need to just Like, like, there’s a huge difference between just airing people’s dirty laundry and gossiping, right? And, and actually standing up for truth. Like when there is an actual victim of abuse, it’s not airing someone’s dirty laundry to say, hey, abuse is happening here, right? And, um, when we have claims that we make in the church, it’s not just gossip or airing dirty laundry to say, hey, these facts might challenge some of these claims, right? That’s Not just being mean or being gossipy. It’s, it’s important to actually make sure that we have truth. So here’s, here’s one of the quotes from his talk. He’s warning, he basically is warning that those who don’t keep other people’s secrets might have their secrets shared, and he says perhaps this is what is contemplated in having one’s sins preach from the housetops. Now I found that so interesting cause he’s basically threatening like no one wants their sins preached from the housetops, but the scriptures that talk about that are actually saying the exact opposite thing like Doctrine Covenants 1:3, for example, and the rebellious shall be pierced with much sorrow, for their iniquities shall be spoken upon the housetops and their secret acts shall be revealed. And so it’s,
[00:36:27] you know, I think we see that happening now more and more and The solution isn’t keep other people’s secrets, so they’ll keep your secrets. The solution is try to live a life of integrity and own what you do wrong and don’t live in shame and. Don’t keep skeletons buried in the closet, right? And like, of course we all are going to make mistakes, do things wrong. We could be embarrassed, but if we have genuinely repented and moved forward, we don’t have to live in fear of deep, dark secrets being revealed, right? And, and I just think it’s useful again, let’s not go around gossiping and trying to, what is it, dig a pit for our neighbor because of his word. It’s like, like that’s, that’s not the same thing as saying, hey, truth matters. Let’s deal in truth. And so anyway, sorry, I spent a little more time on that than I meant to, but then, so we had that period of sort of a little bit more revelation about church history and then a series of events started that seemed that started to create a lot of national and international focus on the Mormons like there had never been before. So the things I thought of were The Olympics in Utah, right, the Winter Olympics in 2002, that brought a ton of attention. And then that combined with President Hinckley’s, like he was really a media expert and he went on all kinds of talk shows, including Larry King Live, right? He did the Meet the Mormons campaign. He really sought to utilize the media to get more attention for um the For the Mormons, which he liked the word the Mormons, right? So and then that led up to Mitt Romney then running for president, right, in 2008. He didn’t get the Republican nomination, but he ran for it and that brought a lot more attention into the church, onto the church that was mostly positive. I think that the church kind of liked it. It was called the Mormon moment, right? And um but at the same time there were some, of course, you know, it’s never all good. The um the BBC did a show called The Mormon Candidate that I think had some embarrassing things for the church. I know that I’m guessing President Elder Holland didn’t like how that went. I, I don’t, I haven’t been able to find um a video of that. I think there are some clips on YouTube, so I can’t promise I can link to it. If I’m able to find something, I will. But um and then also much to President Hinckley’s and the church’s consternation, also getting national attention at the same time was Warren Jeff’s because he was on the FBI’s most wanted list and the FLDS, and I think it was really a bitter pill to swallow that in our time of the Mormon moment, it was being, um, I guess polluted by our dirty our dirty past again, right? It was again like. We’re not polygamists,
[00:39:13] and that’s when President Hinckley did everything he could to try to disavow polygamy. I think those were the, oh, my hair is not having a good day, so sorry I messing with my hair. That’s when President Hinckley made very strong statements. Here’s a compilation that the church made for media outsources, so you can see how hard President Hinckley was working to try to distance the church from polygamy. I wish to state categorically. That this church has nothing whatever to do with those practicing polygamy. They are not members of this church. Most of them have never been members. If any of our members are found to be practicing plural marriages, they are excommunicated, the most serious penalty the church can impose. Not only are those so involved in direct violation of the civil law. They’re in violation of the law of this church. More than a century ago, God clearly revealed unto his prophet Wilfred Woodruff that the practice of plural marriage should be discontinued, which means that it is now against the law of God. Even in countries where civil or religious law allows polygamy, the church teaches that marriage must be monogamous, as not and does not accept into its membership those practicing plural marriage. So all of that build up to the positive attention with the frustration of the FLDS being confused with the church right, them getting attention at the same time. And then ironically, all of that attention that had been building suddenly really went south with and all turned negative with Proposition 8, right? So that happened and brought the church a lot more attention, which led to the Book of Mormon musical and you know, a lot of more things happening during the same period, or I guess after it, the um The internet coming online, right, led to a lot more information being shared, a lot more access to information. Um, John Dehlin’s Mormon Story podcast was getting turning into really quite a phenomenon. And um all of the anti-Mormon literature published by people like the Tanners, all of a sudden started to change from anti-Mormon literature to actual church history, some of the things, you know, of course there were the ridiculous ones like the Godmakers, but also we had to start grappling with some of our history that we had really wanted to hide and hide from. And so that all started to happen and um in in that time period, Fair Mormon grew in response to sort of the critics of the church and um that started to get bigger and bigger, the apologetics that the church uh that organizations, they weren’t actual church organizations, but the church would point people toward them to have their questions answered and then In 2013 and 2014, the church began publishing the Gospel Topics essays on their website, right? And I, they did, they published them without publicizing them, which I think was an effort to try to deal with some of the controversies without bringing additional attention to them, so they didn’t have to. Upset people who weren’t already upset, but they could, they could at least address them. So, um, let’s see, I, that was, it was at that period, well, or just after that, then we had Elder Ballard’s 2016 talk to the CES teachers
[00:42:55] when he told them they needed to address, they needed to teach these controversial issues. So then And you know, the, the education actually changed to say we need to proactively handle these issues. I’ll see if I can get a clip of that. If, if so, you’ll get one. If not, I’m just going to keep going. But some of the things he said, well, we need to address polygamy. And um so that’s that was the setup and then, you know, all of this additional attention. Made kind of an unfortunate situation where what could be seen as blunders by the church. I don’t wanna, you know, I know we’re on makes some people uncomfortable if we criticize the church, but what I see is blunders, for example, the 2017. Change to the handbook, which um required homosexual members that were married to be excommunicated and said that children of homosexuals couldn’t be blessed or baptized, uh, that, that got a lot more attention than attention than it otherwise would have and caused a lot of problems for the church. And so some of you will remember Elder Christopherson’s sort of painful attempt when he was assigned to make that OK, you know, um. If any of you know Tom Kristofferson, um, deto Kristofferson’s older brother, he’s talked quite a bit about the phone call he got from his brother that night saying, Hey, I don’t think anyone is going to be any more satisfied with this than I am. And if you feel like you can’t talk to me for a while, I’ll understand. And so just such a Difficult situation for the church and for many of the people in the church and their personal relationships. That was a hard time. So I’m, I’m certain that I left a ton of this out. I’m just trying to paint sort of a broad brushstrokes picture of how we got where we are, at least as I see it. And so I think that this at least can help us to understand maybe some of the pressure that the church employees and leaders feel like they’re under while they’re trying to hold to and teach the traditional narrative while also trying to navigate these difficulties, right? It’s a situation that I don’t envy that I wouldn’t want to be in. And so, um, I think that’s kind of where we are and that’s led us directly to this place where we have created. Manuals and information to be taught in CES and in um Sunday lessons and so that’s what we’re going to talk about. Oh, did I already talk about, yeah, I think I did talk about the um gospel topics essays. My understanding is that Brian Hailes was the main contributor to the essays on polygamy. There are several of them, which of course the Um, church edited as it as it needed to. So, um, so it’s, it’s just a hard situation and then the CES teachers, you know, the seminary teachers and institute teachers are just told you need to deal with this when there’s so much confusion and so much difficulty and they’re not really supposed to come up with their own explanation, so it’s just a tricky tricky situation and so um.
[00:46:06] I didn’t go into when Elder Ballard gave his talk telling the CES teachers what they need to teach. The one of the quotes was gone are the days when, um, when you, uh, a student could ask a sincere question and you could just say, we’re not going to talk about that, or, uh, you know, but yeah, some of my children had, we, they had a teacher year after year who one of his favorite lines was, that’s a very good question. We could spend all day talking about. This, but we have other things we need to talk about and we’re just kind of move it along. So it’s still, it’s still a tricky situation. So right, that was a long setup to get to the main meat of this episode that I wanted to cover, which is what our church church manuals currently teach and why I believe we and our children are now being indoctrinated more than educated on this topic, which admittedly is tough, right? Which is why I think we should just. Give all of the information, which is what I’m trying to do and let people really think about it and make up, make up their own mind, right? Let the chips fall where they may. So the first one I’m going to go to this first lesson manual is the most egregious that I have found. Um, but it may help explain why so many of us believe what we believe and including that we believe the scriptures say things that they don’t actually say. And so this is from the doctrine, the the manual is doctrine and covenants and church history gospel doctrine. Teacher’s manual. This is lesson 31 sealed for time and all eternity. And so you can see um section 6 is plural marriage, and it’s just for in case questions are asked, it shouldn’t be the focus of the lesson, but if you look down to the highlighted part, you can see that it quotes Jacob too. Um, and it quotes the first part, for there shall, there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife than an ellipsis and an added word, but if I will, sayeth the Lord of hosts raise up seed unto me. Now that is a critical alteration. Because the scripture says for it is building on not contradicting the previous verse, right? So that right there teaches us something very different than what it actually says that is a big deal. It makes a huge difference and it helps us interpret it in the way in the loophole context, the way that is convenient to the polygamy narrative, right? So I think that that’s a really big deal to recognize. I think in general when I don’t know, after seeing a few of these things, when I see ellipses in manuals, I tend to really be more motivated to go find the original source to see what was cut out. Sometimes it is just for Um, application or convenience, you know, there was something that wasn’t necessarily applicable, but sometimes it can be pretty tricky, like those ellipses can be used um intentionally, which I think is a problem. This is why, you know, when we are actually changing the wording of the scriptures to make to strengthen our case, it shows both that it is a very weak case that is in need of
[00:49:19] strengthening and also that we are in danger of getting into the area of indoctrination. So that one was a pretty, pretty big deal to me. And then um I spent quite a bit of time looking through various manuals. Um, most of them are not this blatant in actually changing the wording of the scriptures, um, but they do mainly follow the same basic course of indoctrination. So here’s another example. This is less than 140 from the manual um Doctrine and Covenants and Church History seminary Teacher manual. And this lesson 140 covers section 132 verses 1 through 2 and 34 through 36. I guess that’s all that they want to cover. So I recommend again, I’ll put the link. I really recommend reading this lesson through in its entirety because I can’t do it justice here. I’m just gonna pull out a few little instances, but the entire lesson is pretty appalling in my opinion. So, um. After already priming the class by teaching as facts some very controversial historical claims, um, claims that aren’t even asserted in the Gospel topics essays cause they’re too controversial. It then goes on to say, It tells the instructor, write the following question on the board. Why would the Lord command righteous men and women to obey the principle of plural marriage at certain times? So you can see that it makes a very strong assertion and just is all the way through it’s training the kids with the questions they should ask and the way they should look at this. It’s very. Shaping and directing the thoughts that they are allowed to ask, think and the questions they’re allowed to ask. And then after another example, after quite a bit more directed thinking, right? Telling students what they should look for, what questions they should ask, and how they should inter interpret certain scriptures, it then says, to help students further understand the prin you have written on the board, suggests that they write Jacob 2 Jacob 2:27 and 30 in their scriptures near Doctrine and Covenants 1:32 34. So it’s teaching them to make that connection between those two. It’s not all of Jacob 2, it’s just 27 and 34, so we can say raise up. Seed, raise up seed, right? That’s the entire focus. And then, um, then it says, invite a student to read these verses aloud, point out the monogamy, marriage between one man and one woman is, is God’s standard for marriage unless he commands otherwise. Right? And then much later at the lesson toward the end, it, it tells them to make the point. Based on what you have learned from verse 63, that’s 132 63, what is one reason why the Lord has at times instituted the practice of plural marriage? After students respond, write the following principle on the board. The Lord has at times instituted plural marriage to provide further opportunities for His people to raise up righteous children unto Him. You may want to refer again to Jacob 2:30. So you can see how it’s changing the wording it still says raise up, but instead of saying raise up seed unto myself, it says raise up righteous children unto him, so. You can see how carefully that’s done. There are several other examples like this that we won’t go into, but where they don’t actually alter the wording because they don’t quote it, but they go to great lengths to train the students’ minds to only see one interpretation. Um,
[00:52:42] so you know, to basically make them unable to read it in any other way because it’s been so consistently and repeatedly sustained that what the what the the interpretation should be. So, um, then let’s see, I’m just going to use one other example. This is from the manual. Um, Book of Mormon seminary teacher manual lesson 44, which covers Jacob 2 chapter 2 verses 12 through 35, and um it’s not, it again it’s just interesting what they do, so you can see right here they they actually quote the. First, but instead of changing the word for to but, this one simply omits the word for and pretends it capitalizes the I and if and pretends that the verse starts with if I will raise up seed unto me. And so, um, so there’s another instance where you can see that we are really. Using the scriptures in ways that are useful to our desired narrative, to our desired interpretation. I just, I find it so much more valuable and effective to say, here are the scriptures. Let’s have a discussion on what they mean, recognizing that everybody has access to the spirit of. Discernment and to their own interpretation, right? And we can all have a great discussion and maybe maybe that gets messy. I don’t know, but I am concerned about this kind of what seems to me to be indoctrination. And so I think understanding this, I just have one more example I want to give. It helps me better understand why a very educated PhD professor like Valerie Hudson would actually get. The wording of this wrong in her presentation on polygamy as an Abrahamic sacrifice. So this is a fair this is fair examination number 9, polygamy as an Abrahamic sacrifice by Dr. Valerie Hudson, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to play the audio of her speaking, so you don’t just have to listen to me, but I’m going to quote it just in case. It starts around 7. She is asked to address the apparent inconsistency between Jacob 2 and Doctor. Covenants 132, she says, you couldn’t find any more condemnatory language if you tried. Now Jacob, of course, says very plainly, he says, you know, it’s the law, right? That a man shall have only one wife and concubines none unless, right? We do have and it says, and concubines none, unless, right? We do have and unless the Lord wishes to raise up, raise up seed unto Himself, in which in that event, he will take that command he will make that commandment. So she says that there’s an unless, and she actually repeats that at least one other time in this presentation, and maybe more. One other time she says, we have that unless, which is really interesting, right? I think that, I mean, we could interpret it to say maybe she’s just trying to say, well, there is that caveat, but still she’s saying the scripture says, unless, which is, you know, unless I will say the Lord raise up seat unto me. So again,
[00:55:46] tricky, right? I’ve, I’ve talked to other people who think that it says nonetheless Less. And, um, so, or nevertheless, right? And so it can be, it can be tricky that we don’t even know what the scripture actually says because of the way we have been taught to interpret it, that we make the wording work that way, or we’re directly taught that that’s what the wording is. And so, um, just one more point is even just the way that we link the scriptures in a way that is designed to teach this perspective. So if you go to the scriptures on LDS.org and on the app, there is only one, Footnote, I can’t think of the word. The little letter that they put, what’s that called? Anyway, there’s only one of those and it’s on the word seed and interestingly it links to Malachi too, which is another very strong condemnation and prohibition against polygamy. So I’m glad that they included that. But the other link is to Doctrine Covenants 132 61 through 64. And so that’s so interesting cause I think that a better linking would be to link to verse 25 for raise up seed, right, where it talks about what the Lord means by that, which is raise up a righteous branch unto me. And then linked to verse 30, I mean 23 for these things when it talks about the things written about concerning David and Solomon, right? That’s what it means by these things. So even the scripture linking could be done differently if we weren’t trying to indoctrinate. And so, um, just in closing, the most common defense to this approach, this indoctrination approach is that we are protecting faith, right? That’s one criticism that I’ve probably gotten the most is that I’m destroying faith and I I, I don’t know, my, my, um, you know, I, I used to be told that about how I was raising my children that I was destroying their faith by asking the hard questions and having the hard discussions and being willing to really get in there. I, I don’t know, maybe I’m just different cause I like that. I like knowing what is true. And when I experience any level of cognitive dissonance, I’m like, Whoa, what’s going on here? And I really dive into that. And I, I maybe just because I’m like that, I think it’s good. I don’t know, but I really have valued raising my kids that way because their faith is not. We, it might be, there might be fewer things that they think they know for sure, but they have their reasons that they know them for sure and they really do know them, right? And that’s how my faith is too. My list of what I can absolutely say I know I can only testify of that because of my own personal experience. So I can’t testify of the truthfulness of everything that maybe I once thought I could, but the things I know, I really, really do know and um and I’m willing to. I’m willing to investigate, so I think that it’s interesting when people say this, that that we are weakening faith. Because that is the opposite of what I’m trying to do. It’s like we forget Alma’s definition of faith,
[00:58:39] right? If you have faith, you hope for things which are not seen, which are true. Faith is not faith if it’s built up on falsehoods or on errors. It has to be founded on truth. That’s, that’s the only way it even qualifies as faith. And so, um, I think that when we also when we do. approach we’re basically saying be enablers, keep the family secrets, right? Like join with us in this sort of toxic don’t tell the truth approach which I just refuse to be part of. I reject that. I don’t think it’s healthy and I don’t think it leads to good places and honestly I don’t think it’s of God. I think that the author of that viewpoint is the deceiver because it is a deception and so. I just so strongly believe we can never damage faith by exposing falsehood because faith is not faith unless it is based in truth, right? Truth matters. We have a hymn. Oh, say what is truth, tis the fairest gem that the riches of worlds can produce. It is easy to sincerely believe that sentiment until we come up against truths that may challenge us, that may make us uncomfortable. That may call us to question some of our certainties, right? And then all of a sudden what do we what do we do with that challenge, that cognitive dissonance? Do we, are we willing to step in and face the difficult truths with faith in God that he can bring us through it and through it and lead us to greater truths and greater understanding, or do we ignore, ignore the truths? Do we find easy. Explanations to try to explain it away like the misinterpretation of Jacob 2:30 and then insist on those so that we can cling to. Our traditions, right? I think that these are good questions for us to ask. It reminds me of one of my favorite verses that I’m sure I’ve brought up before, um, chapters of Scripture, Alma 12, where he talks about the difference between hardening our hearts and then knowing, knowing less and less of the mysteries of God until we are captive in the chains of hell, or if we will accept more and more, so we know more and more of the mysteries of God, and I just so strongly want to I guess give my testimony that that truly is how we come to know God. I am. I that we have, we have two great thinkers, scholars who said a similar thing. Um, Thomas Jefferson, I love his quote, question with boldness, even the existence of God, because if there be one, he must approve of the of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear. I mixed that up a little bit, but that’s what he said. And then J. Ruben Clark said or wrote, If we have truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed. And that is actually true. That is true. We should care about truth. We should value that so highly above all, love and truth. That’s what we, those, that’s what we cling to and seek and want a desire to fill our lives with and build our lives upon,
[01:01:43] right? Truth and love, and they have to be real. And so, um, I just, I do want to say just in closing, I believe we have truth. I, I. I know we have truth. I can say that I have come to know God and I do know God and. Mormonism was the vehicle that I was in when I came to know God. It wasn’t that Mormonism necessarily brought me to God, but I came to know God in and through Mormonism, right? And, um, the scriptures have been one of the main tools that have helped me to come to know God, and that. Includes the scriptures of the Restoration, the Book of Mormons, so much of the doctrine the covenants, the pearl of great price. We have truth. We have the Spirit of God. God exists and is real, and the only way that those things can be built up and built upon is by embracing truth which requires and necessitates. Rejecting falsehood, right? I just feel so strongly that if we want to have strength in our testimonies, have the truth, the church be strong, it needs to be founded on truth, and all of those, all of us that are in it can at least make sure that we are founded on truth by clean by just. I guess testifying of clinging to, I hate the word clinging, but really clinging to the truth while releasing the errors, letting them go, not holding on to them anymore, not even storing them back on the shelf. So anyway, thank you so much for joining us again. I hope that this has been useful, and I will see you next time.
