IN MY PREVIOUS POST, I made it clear I find the way the LDS Church and its leaders, from the top down, are attempting to ramrod a massive temple into Fairview to be unethical and really quite silly. The threats of litigation made against the Town of Fairview follows a pattern we’ve seen with other temples, but the patterns at play go back much farther than our recent temple building spree. Chances are, you’ve heard the expression “might makes right,” but for LDS, the pattern is more akin to “right makes might.” Many LDS across the nearly 200 years of our story have acted without reasonable forethought, as if the consequences of their actions couldn’t possibly bring disappointment. (Think Independence, Far West, and Nauvoo.) The LDS belief that God is guiding his “one true church” through a modern prophet is so strong that it’s as if members expect God will give them the power to overcome all opposition under any condition. Hence, right makes might. Most recently, many local LDS members followed this pattern by swarming the Fairview Town Council meetings and plaguing the town’s mayor with thousands of emails. The message was clear from our Stake Presidents: the Church (therefore, God) wants the McKinney Temple built as planned on the church-owned lot adjacent to the Fairview meetinghouse. We swarmed and, of course, the town began to resent our arrogance. That’s the pattern. The question is, why is it so dang important to build this temple in this way and in this place? Why are we creating animosity when we could create cordiality?
Continue reading “Fairview: An LDS Temple or a Test Case?”Author: lisatorcassodowning
Build the McKinney Temple According to Fairview’s Ordinance, or No, I Won’t Help Deluge the City Planner with 15,000 Emails
THIS ISN’T GOING to win me any friends locally. I may live within the boundaries of a fantastic stake and have one of the kindest, gentlest men I’ve ever known as my stake president, but I’m also in north Texas, near Fairview, where the LDS Church hopes to build the McKinney Temple. I am endowed and sealed, and I sustain my stake president. In this case, that requires me to refuse to do something I find out of the line with the gospel of Jesus Christ and contrary to the mission of the LDS Church. For clarity, I no longer hold a temple recommend because my familiarity with its historic connections to problematic, early Mormon polygamy make it uncomfortable for me to be there. My disinterest in participating in temple rituals disinclined me to speak on the controversy surrounding the proposed temple, all of which hinges on the fact that it’s height would require an exemption from current city ordinances. Yesterday, however, at 3:58 pm, I received an email that I found compromising and manipulative, asking me to help flood the Fairview City Planner with emails–15,000 to be exact. This pulls me into the issue in a personal way and so I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind.
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An Apology to the Community of Christ for My Arrogance
MARCH’S SALE OF THE KIRTLAND TEMPLE by the Community of Christ (CoC) to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has put me in a lasting, reflective mood about the history of my own LDS arrogance. It’s memory unsettles me and compels me, these many weeks later, to make a confession of my pride and apologize to Community of Christ members, as well as members of other churches I previously thought myself above.
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Dear Sister Larson, This is Why I Stand with the LDS Women who Spoke Out on Instagram
DEAR SISTER LARSON, I want to respond to your recent, public post that pertains to the aftermath of last week’s Relief Society Worldwide Devotional, as well as those who agree with its content. I consider myself an LDS feminist, something I haven’t come to easily or without decades of study and reflection, both of Church doctrine and history. I’m disheartened because I think your words alienate LDS women from one another. There’s been too much of that lately, from both views. Because of the many hats you wear (therapist, chaplain, RS leader), your words bear a unique sway that, I think, deserves to be answered. It’s unfortunate that this answer is coming from a place of my own perceived self-defense, but you were neither generous nor kind to those of us who think differently than you do. As you can see, I will be at least as direct in my tone as you were. What I’ll do is repeat each paragraph you wrote and then respond.
(Note to readers: you can click here to read it straight through.)
Sister Larson, you write:
“So I don’t normally weigh in on stuff like this because honestly I feel like it shifts our focus away from assisting in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man(kind). But I feel like I have an interesting perspective because of all of the hats I wear.”
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Celestial Bodies and Eternal Increase: The Line Connecting a Modern Prophet to Early Mormon Polygamy Defenses
I’VE BEEN CHIN DEEP IN Utah era polygamy again, this time scouring the plural marriage defenses written by Orson Pratt and his contemporaries. I’ve long been intrigued by how polygamy continues to shape the traditions and values of the mainstream LDS church, and I’ve written before about what I call polygamy culture. I admit, though, that when I coined the term years ago, I hadn’t yet comprehended the depth of the problems. I’m still working it through and am now in the process of writing a book to satisfy this need of mine to put then and now together in a meaningful way. As I study, I can’t stop thinking about Pres. Russell M. Nelson’s Oct. 2023 General Conference address, “Think Celestial!.” In it, Pres. Nelson forwards ideas that Pratt used to defend and promote polygamy. In other words, justifications for polygamy persist in current prophetic teaching. I find that disturbing but not surprising, considering the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints still believes in eternal marriage for eternal increase. But its side effect seems to be that Church leadership continues to view women as helpmeets for men with priesthood rather than as their equals. Let’s start with what Pres. Nelson said and then trace it backward along a Church history timeline to its origin with Orson Pratt, who, to be clear, was called by Brigham Young to be the Church’s official voice for plural marriage.
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LDS Men, Power, and Gender Equality: A Continuing Discussion
IN MY PREVIOUS POST, I make the controversial assertion that LDS men who recognize LDS women don’t have fair, much less equal, footing in the Church should resist edicts of up-level priesthood leaders when those edicts diminish the visibility and influence of women. The essay was a reaction to Bay Area leaders removing Relief Society (RS) presidents from the stand during Sunday meetings after being instructed to by an area authority. In general, LDS will acquiesce to higher authorities, even if they object on ethical grounds, to keep their callings. Giving in on this, they reason, will let them positively influence on that later. I don’t fault anyone for wanting to continue serving as best they can in a flawed system. However, as long as our forward-thinking, local priesthood leaders continue in this pattern, the status quo lives on. LDS men and women share responsibility to even the playing field within the Church. In the future, I’ll address a woman’s responsibility, but today, men still have my attention.
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LDS Men, No More Passes for Your Wrong-headed Obedience
TODAY I DIRECT MY THOUGHTS primarily towards the men who hold the LDS priesthood because two recent events have garnered my attention, in part for the way each involves decisions made by LDS men. The first is the child sex abuse civil lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was just dismissed by an Arizona judge, and the second is the sudden ending of a San Francisco Bay Area tradition that had Relief Society (RS) presidents sitting beside bishoprics during Sacrament meetings. The decisions I’d like to focus on are not those made by the men considered to have high authority in the Church (or their attorneys), but the decisions of the local leaders to obey them, even in situations where they know obeying them is not only wrong but could bring harm to others.
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Allyship is a Love Unworthy of Rebuke
LAST SUNDAY, I CAUGHT another glimpse of what it might be like to sit as an LGBTQIA congregant in a chapel surrounded by people you love, while they are comforted by a sermon that depicts your greatest hope as evil. If you’re LDS, you’ve likely had a high councilor deliver a classic sermon like the one mine did last Sunday, one that used thinly veiled language to praise those who resist “the pressures of the world” which “call good, evil and evil, good” by “fully sustaining the prophet.” While this language may be used to encourage avoidance of various sins, in this instance, it was also clearly coded as a rebuke against those of us who don’t accept and promote current LDS doctrine and policy about LGBTQIA people as eternal truth, whether we be LGBTQIA ourselves or an outspoken ally. The assumption is that if we disagree with the fallible human who serves us in the priesthood office of prophet, we disagree with God. Today, I’m not going to run a convoy of reason through the gaping holes in that logic. Rather, I want to speak specifically as an ally who was subjected to a type of public rebuke.
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Dear Amy, Here’s Why This LDS Supports LGBTQIA People
TW: death by suicide
At the March 2023 Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults, first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dallin Oaks, read aloud an excerpt taken from a letter written by Amy, an LDS teenager. For your ease, I offer the excerpt, followed by my own, brief response to her:
“I feel like I sometimes get inconsistent and confusing messages from the Church. In my day-to-day life, I see members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on social media act as if they aren’t part of this gospel. … I feel like I am the only young woman in my ward who sees the things I see wrong with the world. … I truly don’t understand why so many youth in our church don’t see any problem with people changing their gender every other day, dating people who are the same sex or identify as no gender. …
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LDS Sr. Leadership, the SEC, and my Sustaining Vote
PUBLIC CHATTER HAS largely abated regarding the February 21 SEC order and its incumbent fines of $1 million against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and $4 million against church-owned Ensign Peak Advisors. You can read the specifics in the order by clicking the colored link above (its surprisingly easy to understand), but the tldr; version is that, between 1998 and May, 2018, the First Presidencies and Presiding Bishoprics (identified as “senior leadership” in the order) created 13 shell (or unfunded) companies into which they pretended to transfer portions of the Church’s billions in order to hide it from the public, and then they knowingly falsified documents (F13 forms) to cover it up. This is a civil* crime. The realization that our senior leadership spent two decades willfully committing crime ought to shock members to their core. It does me.
SEC orders are negotiated documents, which means the Church agreed with the accusations as stated in the Feb. 21 order. They did it. For 20 years, the First Presidencies and Presiding Bishoprics willingfully broke the law. The fact is, the following men, each of whom served in either a First Presidency or Presiding Bishopric sometime between 1998 and 2018, made hypocrites of themselves as they illegally hid the Church’s wealth from the SEC, the general public, and, most importantly, from its membership. They are:
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Life Outside The Book of Mormon Belt 