Category: authority

Fallible Men, Empathy, and the Podcasters’ Resignation

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, ecclesiastical abuse, faith transition, faith crisis3 Comments

UNDER THREAT of excommunication, the high profile wife/husband team behind the Latter-day Struggles podcast, which caters to the mental health needs of LDS Church members, is resigning their membership in order to prevent their being “burned at the stake center.”  Valerie Hamaker (a licensed therapist) and her husband Nathan have received an official letter calling them to a proverbial “court of love.” We all know what that means. 

I’ve listened to the Latter-day Struggles podcast since its inception. Let’s be clear about who the Hamakers are. They are active members who are raising their children in the LDS Church and who have been wrestling with local leaders for 18 months, hoping to remain on the membership rolls. Therapist Valerie and Nathan, her sidekick, use the podcast to address “beliefs and issues within the LDS faith that are challenging to talk about but vital to discuss for those trying to navigate their relationship in or around the Church.” Unfortunately, however, the couple have lost in the game of leadership roulette. Listen to their episode 313 for the details, but the gist is that their local leaders are uninformed about spiritual development, misunderstand it, and would excommunicate the healer (and her husband) rather than learn from her, which leaves me wondering what they envision the mission of the Savior to have been.

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Cartoon “Plural Marriage” Destabilizes Family Life for Children

On By lisatorcassodowningIn Abuse, authority, Children, faith transition, faith crisis, Mormon Feminism, Polygamy, Polygamy Culture10 Comments

IF YOU NEED MORE EVIDENCE that polygamy culture is alive and well in the contemporary sphere of the LDS, look no further than your gospel library app, specifically at the new picture story published in the Doctrine and Covenants Stories for Children, titled “Plural Marriage: Faith to Obey a Law from the Lord Even When It’s Hard.” (Find it here.***) It provides a carefully curated cartoon version of early Mormon polygamy, stretching from its beginnings with Joseph Smith to its mythologized ending with Wilford Woodruff’s Manifesto, all in just eight panels. To say much is omitted is an understatement. However, its purpose isn’t to teach history but to use well-washed nuggets of fact to tightly define faith as obedience to God through obedience to priesthood authority. That may be the intent, but it seems destined to undermine the mental health (aka the emotional and spiritual well-being) of the children of devout Latter-day Saints, including those in the most secure of homes, by destabilizing their concept of marital boundaries. 

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Fairview: An LDS Temple or a Test Case?

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, Temple6 Comments

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?

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Dear Sister Larson, This is Why I Stand with the LDS Women who Spoke Out on Instagram

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, Church Discipline, Excommunication, General Conference, Holy Ghost, Mormon Feminism, Priesthood, Race9 Comments

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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LDS Men, Power, and Gender Equality: A Continuing Discussion

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, Feminism2 Comments

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

On By lisatorcassodowningIn Abuse, authority, Children, ecclesiastical abuse, Mormon Feminism13 Comments

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

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, Christ, Inclusion, LGBTQIA, revelation2 Comments

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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LDS Sr. Leadership, the SEC, and my Sustaining Vote

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, Temple, Tithing16 Comments

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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Heavenly Mother Reportedly on the Outs with Priesthood Authorities

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, Heavenly Mother14 Comments

A FEW WEEKS BACK, I offered the closing prayer in my ward’s sacrament meeting and expressed gratitude for Heavenly Mother. It felt like a risk. I’ve never, in my 43 years in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, been present when She was mentioned in a public prayer. Afterwards, two women grabbed me and shared their gratitude for my prayer, giving me the sense it was because of Her mention. I could be wrong. What I’m not wrong about is the hunger so many LDS women have for a connection to the Divine Feminine. I recently learned, through the multiple witness of other LDS women, that Heavenly Mother is, once again, on the outs with the General Authorities. If I offered the same prayer this Sunday, it might earn me a sit-down with my local priesthood keyholder.

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On Elder Holland, the BYU Speech, and Error

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, ecclesiastical abuse, Holy Ghost, Inclusion, LGBTQIA5 Comments

ON THE SAME DAY THAT BYU announced the creation of an Office of Belonging, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland took the pulpit at BYU’s annual conference for faculty and staff and delivered an address in which he takes imprudent aim at gay students, student allies, and allies on the staff and faculty. He gaslights those present who have embraced the Church’s occasionally kinder, softer rhetoric on homosexuality and inclusion, accuses them of disloyalty to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and blames them (and BYU students within the LGBTQIA and ally community) for divisions in the Church. The new Office of Belonging would do well to build moving sidewalks throughout the campus to facilitate transporting the alienated employees and students from wherever they’re found directly to it’s door. After this talk, it’s going to take some hard labor to convince queer students they belong at BYU (or in the Church for that matter) or allies that there isn’t a target on their backs.

To recap in brief, Elder Holland made homosexuals (particularly in gay marriages) out to be enemies of the Church.  He called members to figuratively bear muskets against those who don’t see gay marriage as a disruptor of the plan of salvation. He blatantly misrepresented the facts surrounding Matt Easton’s 2019 valedictorian address, accusing the graduating senior of “commandeering”  the pulpit to come out when he had received university approval for every word he said. Thick was the indirect accusation that Easton’s coming out was an attack on Church doctrine. It wasn’t a good look for an apostle.

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