Last week there was a thread asking what was the high water mark for Mormonism. good cases were made for the best period for various aspects of the LDS Church, but I kept thinking that every decade I remember, LDS Inc managed to massively shoot itself in the foot at least once in that decade.

1950s
Cleon Skousen, J Reuben Clark and Ezra Taft Benson thoroughly infected Mormonism with Bircherism. LDS Inc tried to resist, and still tries to keep its survivalist/Bund-yesque wing from getting totally out of hand.

Assistant to the Twelve (remember those GAs?) Alvin R Dyer gave a talk delving into "deep doctrine" that justified Mormon racism. This being in the era before photocopiers were widely available, typed carbon paper copies of the talk were circulated among Mormon True Believers. Alvin got emeritused, I think to shut him up. He was immensely popular with Mormon wing-nuts, and I think that scared David O McKay and the Boys. [edit: Dyer's famous talk was in 1961, but then, the 1960s didn't really start until the Kennedy assassination. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_R._Dyer

1960s
In the late 1960s, the Book of Abraham papyri were found and returned to the LDS Church. Hugh Nibley, the supposed star LDS scholar on all things ancient, wrote a bunch of articles about them, in the Improvement Era, and similar venues. They had enough footnotes to choke a horse, a tactic Nibley was famous for.

When I got off my mission, I couldn't wait to read his articles, because this would be real evidence. Unlike the 1840s, we can now read Egyptian, and can carbon date ancient manuscripts, so if it really was written by the hand of Abraham, we could confirm or refute that claim.

Turns out the papyri were 2,000 years too young to have been written by Abraham. The text was that of a perfectly ordinary funeral scroll written roughly about the time of Christ.

Plus I actually read Nibley's footnotes. I'm kind of a geek that way. What a hot steaming pile of horse hooey he had concocted.

It took me 6 more years to get up the nerve to leave, but Hugh Nibley and the BoA broke my shelf.

1970s
Around 1975 or so LDS Inc was campaigning furiously to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. In point of fact, it almost certainly would have passed if SWK had given it a nod of approval. It fell three states short, and if SWK had approved, it would have passed in UT, ID and AZ. It did pass in ID, and was rescinded after SWK gave it a thumbs down. If it didn't pass in AZ, it was extremely close, and whatever LDS Inc wants, LDS Inc gets in UT.

Anyway, Sonia Johnson, living in VA, testified in a US Senate hearing representing Mormons for ERA. One of the senators on the panel was the then new Utah senator, Orrin Hatch. He took exception to her claiming there were any Mormon women for ERA, and she took exception to his taking exception.

Her big Aha! Moment during the hearings, was that Orrin, no doubt unconsciously, addressed her in his "LDS Churchman's Voice". You all know what that is - that condescending lugubrious slop that gets poured on you at General Conference.

It was so out of place in the halls of Congress, that Ms Johnson finally recognized it for what it was, and she was furious about how it had been used to subdue and disempower Mormons, especially women, all her life.

Long story short, she turned in LDS Inc for lobbying in VA (organizing people to go to VA legislature, providing busses and babysitting, etc) but not registering as a lobbying organization as required by law. She got excommunicated for publicly embarrassing The Organization, and not following orders (the orders being to STFU).

1980s
Mark Hofmann. I won't even bother to explain what happened there. If you are not familiar with the story, read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann

Why anyone ever believed a word that came out of Gordon B Hinckley's mouth after that debacle is completely beyond me. "Gift of Discernment" my ass. My Unholy Trinity of LDS leadership completely lacking in integrity during that scandal: Hinckley, Dallin Oaks, and Hugh Pinnock.

1990s
1993 was the banner year. That decade may well have been the high water mark for the Women's Movement. 1991, the film Thelma and Louise was released. 1992 was The Year of the Woman.

In 1992 Maxine Hanks came out with the book Women and Authority, showing how a good case could be made that JS had conferred Priesthood authority on women during his lifetime, and both the founding of The Relief Society and the temple Endowment ceremony were consistent with that. Lavina Fielding Anderson headed up The Mormon Alliance. Margaret Toscano was a founding member of the Mormon Women's Forum. I don't recall if she was head of it or not, though I suspect she was.

Then came 1993, and everything hit the fan in LDS-World. Cecelia Conchar-Farr and David Knowlton were fired from BYU, he for writings that the church deemed injurious to the missionary program, and she for being an excessively feminist faculty member, though they claimed it was for insufficient scholarly activity. (I have a story about that, post for an other thread)

Martha Nibley Beck released a book that claimed she was sexually abused by her father, Hugh Nibley, who was still alive at the time.

In August 1993, a number of controversial papers by historians were presented at Sunstone, and the next month, the September Six were excommunicated. Even the Catholic Church learned its lesson about punishing people for writing after the whole Galileo debacle. Three of the September Six were women. It was rumored that Margaret Toscano was also on the hit list, but they exed her husband instead, having four of the September Six be women would be too heavy handed, even for LDS Inc/Boyd Packer. They got Margaret a year or two later as I recall. Oh, and Michael Quinn was in that group of excommunicants too.

That was also the year that Steve Benson and the Arizona Republic, individually and jointly caused the Brethren massive amounts of well deserved heartburn. I think Dallin Oaks deserves a special shout-out for his role in that particular debacle.

And last, but not least, Deborah Laake came out with her book Secret Ceremonies, detailing the Endowment in horrifying detail, and showing what a mindf*** Mormonism was, especially for women.

If there was a low point for Mormonism in the last 80 years, 1993 probably wins.

2000s
Not a lot sticks out in my mind for this decade. LDS Inc stuck fake fiberglass bell steeples on their buildings so non-Mormons would recognize them as good Christians and flock to LDS Inc after the 2002 Olympics showed what wonderful people the Mormons were.

That didn't work out that well.

The bar was raised on Missionaries. That lasted about 6 years, then it was lowered in the 2010s, along with the age limits for both male and female missionaries. So raising the bar didn't pan out very well either.

California Proposition 8 in 2008. LDS Inc blasted that one out of the park. Oh, wait..........

RFM built up a good head of steam in that decade. Various LDS-debunking/informational websites were created. Canadians Bob McCue and Tal Bachman posted up a storm of good stuff on RFM. So did lots of others, but to me, those two were particularly noteworthy, especially when they first came here.

2010s
The missionary age was lowered so there would be a huge surge of missionaries when the election of President Romney would make everyone want to be cool and Mo like Mr President.

Oops.

I think we are still too close to the age-lowering to be able to assess what the long-term results of that decision will be.

The Swedish Rescue, the Boise Rescue, Dehlin, Kelly, Snuffer, oh my.

The Policy about children of same-sex couples will be the low water mark for this decade, IMHO. LDS Inc used to be able to say they didn't have a double standard about sexuality. It was opposed for anyone who is not married to be in a sexual relationship. Too bad same-sex couples can't get married, but we can't be expected to not live by our standards.

When same-sex marriage became legal, they could no longer hide behind that claim, and their nakedly anti-homosexual policy was recognized for what it had been all along: rank bigotry.


And we still have almost 2 years to go.


I think the last two decades may be a little too close still to recognize what were the most serious missteps by LDS Inc, but that's what makes history interesting. We are notoriously bad at predicting the future, and not all that great at predicting the past. :)

If y'all have additions or corrections to The Minutes, please chime in.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2018 06:23PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Two infamous statements from church leaders come to mind. I don't know the dates 1.) "We do not seek apologies, nor do we give them". 2.) With regard to the statement "As man is, god once was. As god is, man may become", Gordon B. Hinkley said "I don't know that we teach that".

So the church denies it's foundational beliefs about exaltation, and apologizes to no one for their own wrong-doing.

"I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it," is from Time's cover story interview August 4, 1997.

That was when my shelf started to break. I was a teenager, and had grown up knowing the Snow couplet, and that this was something that was taught by the church. To hear Hinckley lie so forthrightly about something so fundamental to Mormon doctrine was nothing less than crushing.

Thought that was a very arrogant statement, turns out it goes back to the 1950s.

Sometimes the worst thing they have done is nothing, like sitting on a decision about priesthood for the non-white-and-delightsome men in the church for nearly 15 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I think Kimball said he prayed about it every night. Well for 14 times 365 times (5110) the "prophets'" prayers got either nothing or the wrong answer.

As was mentioned, in the most recent civil rights drive (for gay marriage) they have doubled-down on the their stand, which is alienating even more of the young people in TSCC.

Their followers will swallow anything. Look at how they vote.

A quibble.

Martha Beck did not go public with her accusations against her father until 2015.

In 1993 she and her husband John were peripherally involved in the September Six fiasco and left the church. In 1999 she published Raising Adam, which described her departure from the church but did not mention any accusations of abuse. Those came with Leaving the Saints in 2005.

2005, not 2015.

You are correct, the book came out later. I suspected that as I wrote it, but didn't bother to check. What I was remembering (imperfectly) was a Woman's Conference of some sort at BYU that was held in 1993. It was held in the lounge across from the Varsity Theater. I don't recall the exact circumstances, but I think David Knowlton and Cecelia Conchar-Farr had already been fired, and I don't think the September Six had been disciplined yet, but rumors may have been flying.

Whatever the situation was, the atmosphere in the conference was explosive. I was at the conference (post for another day as to how that happened) and as I remember it (no guarantees on accuracy) there was a panel discussion where Martha was either a panelist or moderator, and in the question and answer period, I think she made a remark about being sexually abused. That'll make a rather boisterous room (which it had been) fall dead silent.

I am sure she recounts that conference in her book Leaving the Saints. I used to have a copy, but gave it away some years ago, so I can't easily check. If anyone else has a copy of the book, if you could give that section a look, I'd appreciate a refresh on my fuzzy memory.

That makes sense to me although with some complications.

Martha's work at the time, if I recall correctly, was on the incidence of depression in Mormon women. She was hit hard for doing any research on Mormon women that might reveal they were anything short of blissful.

I believe a reporter called her soon after the conference to talk about either the research work or the purge and she said something off the cuff that put her in direct conflict with the church. In the ensuing covfefe, she felt like she needed to exit and John departed in solidarity.

I could have the details of that wrong; I'm working from memory. But Martha published a lot of stuff over the following decade, including Expecting Adam with its frequent references to her family and the church, without mentioning the abuse. In a review of Leaving the Saints, John said he had not heard the abuse accusations until quite recently. This was at roughly the same time as the divorce, so that may have affected his recollections.

More on Martha Beck here:

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1637533

I was too young to fully grasp what was going on in the 70's, 80's, and most of the 90's.

For me, President Hinckley's interview on 60 minutes "I don't know that we teach that" was the first thing that started weighing down the shelf.

The final straw was punishing the children of gay children this decade; the 2010's.

DONE!

A friend suggested a topic that may be a still developing bullet to the foot issue:
bishops' interviews with youth in private on sexually oriented topics.

I always thought GBH's interview response to being asked if he's a prophet to be very telling.

I am sustained as such.

So the answer was no.

What no Essays? Essays, Essays, you say you have Essays? And Tom Phillips?

Two good points there. I think the Essays fall in the same category as the Swedish Rescue. They were unsuccessfully trying to salvage their history.

Tom Phillips, OTOH, was a total fail on their part, especially Jeff Holland.

Thank you, Brother of Jerry, for this decade by decade synopsis. My awakening began as a naive 17 year-old in 1978. My mother was the first woman I had ever heard give a prayer in sacrament meeting! (As if that would appease the LDS women in favor of the ERA!) The following year, as a young, idealistic voter, I was appalled at LDS INC's all-out effort to help defeat the Equal Rights Amendment!

Looking back at that decade, I now realize the significant social changes I was living through and inadvertently caught up in. While, as a nation, we have a long way yet to go, my daughter's have not experienced the abject inequality that I experienced. I taught them that they could go out and do anything they wanted. They recognized Mormonism's sexism early on as was so apparent in the indoctrination of the Young Women program. It was inevitable that my daughters would follow me out of Mormonism. Good thing is, my husband and sons followed us out as well.

Top

Did U overlook the statement (Hoax?) 'obey (Don't Critcize) leaders, even if they're wrong'.

Talk about lowering the bar!

Flies in the Face of (remember?) "Lengthen Your Stride", "Stand for Something", & countless other meaningless travel spewing from their pie-holes



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2018 02:34AM by GNPE.

(been thinking about this thread a lot...)

a. the admission of African Males to the PH (1978, I remember calling friends) hasn't really Bloomed like it might have; GAs still called from Utah residents (a couple of exceptions), apparently they haven't developed ANY African Males to the upper rooms...

b. if there was ONE shining example of self-less, unbiased choices/actions (charitable) ... other than their ethno-centric histories... Something that other than the LDS stood up & applauded... How different would we (& others) feel about LDS, Inc?

Not Gonna Happen, you say?

A HUGH “shot in the foot” for the church occurred, in my opinion, in the 2002 General Conference. Russell M. Nelson gave a comprehensive talk regarding how Christ’s love is conditional and confirmed what the rest of the Christian world had always suspected true of Mormonism - that, at its basis, it is a cult.