For those new here and don't know what this is, the STMC is a organization with the Mormon church whose purpose is to spy on members that are controversial and or disruptive to the mission of the church. Now, this is what my assessment of it is.

My questions are, what other functions does this element of the church carry? Also, is there anyone on the board now or in the past who has worked in this "committee" or know someone who has? I would like to have further information for my personal reference about this draconian organization.

In talking to active members about this, they say it's bull and that such a committee doesn't exist. Can someone call the COB and talk to someone at the head of this organization and request personal files? Is this an organization that is denied to exist by the church itself? Can someone on the board give me some insight?

It's actually the Strengthening Church Members Committee or the SCMC.

The church admits its existence. I can't find other reference I had, but here's wiki's version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strengthening_Church_Members_Committee

Ron

Thanks Ron for the correction and the link.

Sometimes they can't hush it up however.

In 1977, a dissident who I think conferred the priesthood on a Black man was visiting SLC during conference. He stayed at the home of John Fitzgerald near Holiday. It was right before GC.

During the night, a city cop who was stationed outside to keep on eye on him was shot. It turned out he was accidentally shot by a partner and was paralyzed. What was he (and 5 other cops) doing in the county? It couldn't be covered up, although the city police chief initially denied it. The church had asked the city cops to keep on eye on Wallace - apparently the county wouldn't.

http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no39.htm#A%20REAL%20COVER-UP
scroll down to 'shooting of officer olson'.

Olson later committed suicide. Another fine mess thanks to the leaders of this church.

But they can't burn people at the stake anymore. Society doesn't go for that kind of spectacle nowadays.

They do attempt to destroy the lives, reputation, self-respect and livelihood of some members who have been under surveillance and inquiry of this gestapo type entity.

For example, D. Michael Quinn, excommunicated and former church historian and BYU Professor, applied for a job at Arizona State University and was denied. One of the largest donors to ASU is Ira Fulton, owner of Fulton Homes. He was influential in Quinn not being hired at ASU.


In an April 2006 article, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden wrote that Quinn has become unhireable because almost all the funding for professorships in Mormon studies comes from Mormon donors. In 2003, Brigham Young University threatened to withdraw funding for a conference it was co-sponsoring at Yale if Quinn were allowed to speak. More recently Arizona State University administrators vetoed the department of religious studies in its recommendation to hire Quinn. ASU faculty believe officials fear alienating ASU’s 3,700 LDS students and offending Ira Fulton, a powerful Mormon donor who, according to Golden, has called Quinn a “nothing person.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Michael_Quinn




Fulton, a Mormon receives favors from the church like when they purchased his land in Maricopa for more than the market value. Quid pro quo type of thing is what I see with this mormon home builder and the mormon hierarchy.

"The deal has left local real-estate professionals shaking their heads. They say the land isn't worth anything close to what the church paid", according to the Arizona Republic.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/mormon/mormon568.html

I only noted what they CAN'T do to you anymore.

:-)

I watched a documentary about high school students in the former Soviet Union. They were learning about the atrocities of Joseph Stalin. They watched film and listened to lectures with mouth wide open. The individuals or families being sent to the Gulags by the thought police was something these students never knew about. They were aghast at the number of people murdered or exterminated by Joseph Stalin. He too had citizens spy and report to the higher ups like is done with the SCMC.

For us, we went through a similar experience learning about bloody castrations or inhumane be-headings or families being torn apart and reassigned to others or property being confiscated.

I was in shock when I learned of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith's, B'hoys or thugs who cleansed Zion of any traitors. Don't you love the song "Praise to the man" with it's verse about... "traitors and tyrants shall fight him in vain"? Porter Rockwell took care of any who look at the prophet the wrong way. When I started to learn of all this, I felt like I was in the Twilight Zion or Zone.

You have to love Mormon appreciation for Orwell. Excommunications are done in "Courts of Love". Firing janitors and making members clean toilets is "an opportunity to sacrifice". Giving them 10% of your income is "the blessing of tithing".

An Inquisition-like committee is called "Strengthening the Members". How does it "strengthen" them? By censorship and hounding dissidents. Members lives are enhanced by strong arm tactics worthy of the Catholic Inquisition.

Re-reading Orwell while I was going through my questioning process was one of the tipping points for me. So many passages from "Animal Farm", specifically Napoleon's speeches, were like direct quotes from Brigham Young. I can't even tell a difference between Napoleon or Brigham Young anymore.

The historical revisionism. The "Newspeak" examples you pointed out. It doesn't just insult your intelligence, it violates it!

Thanks to ExMormonRon for the wiki link.

We have meetings like this during BYC. I really gotta find that Cynthia chick and let her know she ISN'T pressured to come to church. Being part of the leadership(which I am. Ugh) has to mean something.

Read Martha Beck's book "Leaving the Saints". She talks a lot about this. It's unbelievable.

The "Committee" or at least one member of it, was responsible for informing on some lessons I taught at a "Private" gathering or fireside. An invited person bought along a couple of friends. That was it, the next thing I knew I was being summoned to a high council court where what I had taught was repeated nearly word for word.

JB

I went to the church office building once and tried to go up to see the guy in charge of the SCMC. I can't remember his name now. Might have been Nelson, but don't quote me.

For starters, I didn't know where to go--where his office was. So I asked one of the Sweet Sisters at the volunteer desk. She wouldn't tell me where to go to the guy's office, but she found his name and put in a call and let me talk to him.

I told him I wanted to see my file. He said something like, "Here is what you have to do. You go home and take to your stake president and ask him to request your file. He can talk to us about it."

In other words, I was not allowed to see my file unless I begged the SP, who in turn would beg the guy in the COB on my behalf.

I had a good SP, so I asked him to get it. (I was in the process of being "strenghthened" by him at the time, at the behest of the higher-ups.) He declined. He said that he prayed about it and was impressed that if he requested my file, it would have a negative impact on me.


That was the end of that. I actually wrote a letter at one point to Faust about it. Can't remember why I wrote to him. He sent me back a short letter about how it is common for organizations to keep personnel files on their employees. I wrote back and told him that first, I'm not an employee, and second, employees have the right to see their personnel files and to put in a rebuttal to anything in it that they feel is inaccurate. I never got a response to that one.

Once, though, I wrote something and had my SP send it to a higher up with a request that what I wrote be placed in my file. I have no way of knowing whether or not it made it into the file.

I kind of figure that by now their file on me is so thick that they wouldn't know where to find anything in it. :-)

Wow Sophia, how long ago did this take place and how did you know you had a file? Were you outspoken in Gospel Doctrine class about the lack of information on certain subjects? Were you a GD teacher? What happened that precipitated the higher ups to come down on you?

That was truly courageous of you to go to the COB and ask to see the Chief of Station of mormon church intelligence. I find it very telling that the director didn't want to meet with you. Then he would have to answer questions he didn't want to answer. Someone needs to insist on talking to this jerk and record the conversation for Utube.

D. Lamb, this was in the mid-90s. I had written and spoken in some of the standard "liberal" forums--Sunstone, Dialogue, Mormon Women's Forum, etc. I was sure I had a file because I knew they kept files on people who did that, and I couldn't imagine that I would have escaped notice.

My SP, BTW, was a good guy who was trying to do right by everyone involved, including me and the higher-ups. The higher-ups put some pressure on him, but ultimately left decisions in his hands. I don't want to say too much IRL information about this, as it may be that no good deed goes unpunished, and I would like them to leave him alone.

Skeptical, I'm pretty sure he never asked them for the file. I'm sure he knew the file would have negative stuff about me, because by then I had educated him to the fact that they had files and that they didn't keep them on stalwarts who sing their praises. He was pretty honest with me throughout, without maintaining any fiction that he was just doing this stuff on his own. He told me up front who had asked him to talk to me and what they said. Some SPs involved in "strengthening" their members during that era, at the behest of higher-ups, lied about that, but he never did.

I think he may have feared that if he asked for the file and got it, then HE would have more negative information about me, that he would just as soon not have, but I don't read minds, so I don't know that. He really didn't want to take any action against me, though I'm sure he wished I would shut up. I think he also probably thought that if he asked for the file, that would flag me as more of a trouble-maker, and they would press him harder to take action against me.

I have heard before about the messengers getting axed, so what you say about those who were willing to talk with the press about the arrested and excommunicated bishop rings very true to me. I can think of another case in the Mid-west in which people were excommunicated for "telling" on someone. I think in that case it was a Stake President. I read about it years ago in the Mormon Alliance Case Reports (which I think are now online).

Weeder, I can believe that they came down hard on you. I think they are even more afraid of fundamentalist types than they are of scholars, historians and feminists. They sent printed copies of stuff I had written and tapes of talks I had given. Same pattern, but it sounds like you had written a lot more than I had, and your stuff was in a more public forum, being online.

I haven't heard about much of this kind of stuff going on for quite a few years now. Besides the high-profile excommunications of scholars in the early 90s, I knew of quite a few other people who got harassed in the mid-90s in much less public ways. I think maybe they have been sufficiently burned by bad publicity that they have decided to knock it off. Compared with info that is on the internet today, the stuff I did and said seems pretty mild.

I know dealing with a SP is just so infuriating. They are ALL pure a$$holes.

In my case the "Strengthening" committee sent to my Stake President about half a ream of PRINTED copies of much of my internet activites, mostly from BeliefNet, at the time I was a FULL TBM. however my leanings were much to the fundamentalist view point and thought much of the church activity at the time was a bit wayward (I was struggling with my testimonkey of the current church) ...

Their agenda was clear -- get me straight or cut me off.

I took it all the way to the Area President (Vaughn Featherstone at the time) ... the higher up you go in the organization the crap-heads only get to be bigger a$$holes.

The process kill any faith I had in church leadership. Then I started thinking more about all the church history I knew and realized the pile of a$$holes extends all the way to the origins of the church ... it fell apart fast for me.

i guess they can't trust the missionaries with this job anymore. you can only tail people for so long on a bicycle.

Kind of like Viagra for the spirit...

I have a couple of thoughts about your request and the Stake President's response:

1. He may have requested and it and been denied but didn't want to admit the same to you;

2. He didn't want you to see the file because perhaps he had commented about you (which is very likely); or

3. He knew the contents were negative and didn't want you to see the file.

When I was in a church leadership position, a former bishop in the ward had been arrested and his story had been highlighted in the local media (US Midwest). It was very embarrassing to the LDS church. We were instructed to forward any mention of the LDS church or the ex-bishop and his accusers to the the Committee to place in the file. The LDS church leadership was more disturbed by the members voicing negative opinions to the press than the allegations against the ex-bishop. An apostle came out to access the problem and direct a cover-up in my opinion. Everyone was execommunicated, the ex-bishop and those members who went to the press after being asked not do by church leaders.

Just, just YIKES. Kinda confirms what we all thought.

"In response to this public discourse, the LDS Church spokesman Don LeFevre acknowledged the existence of the committee.[5] LeFevre said that the committee "receives complaints from church members about other members who have made statements that 'conceivably could do harm to the church'", then the committee will "pass the information along to the person's ecclesiastical leader." According to LeFevre, however, "the committee neither makes judgments nor imposes penalties." Discipline is "entirely up to the discretion of the local leaders."[6]"

Flatlander? You out there? Was it the Strengthening Committee that contacted you through your local ward leaders? What were the repercussions of your criticism of TSCC via the Internet?