Yeah, Jeff Holland admitted on BBC back in 2012 (?) that it exists. Some of us here know people who were personally affected by the SCMC.
You generally recognize circumstances when they show themselves. It's often easy to recognize SCMC activity when they make some sort of apparent top-down instruction to a stake president, who in turn dictates the instruction to the affected member's bishop. You know for sure that it is an SCMC event when two prominent "troublesome" Mormons on opposite ends of the continent receive orders on the same day to attend a church court (so-called "disciplinary council"), which is what happened, as I recall, with Kate Kelly and John Dehlin. You also know the SCMC is active in the event when church leaders hinge their finding on some arbitrary action or information they know the affected member cannot satisfy. This was apparent when Kelly's bishop demanded that she go back to her original ward in the eastern US for her disciplinary council after she had just moved to Utah. She couldn't meet the short-fuse timeline or the expense of the demand, so they excommunicated her.
Apostate Simon Southerton was tried for adultery instead of apostasy, a clear attempt to ruin his reputation among local members. The church offered no testimony or witnesses, and did not allow him to provide any; they would try him on adultery, they insisted, and that was the end of it. I think that the stake president was forced to admit that it was not his decision. The stake was required to excommunicate him on grounds of adultery (which is not, interestingly enough, an offense that requires excommunication, although apostasy is); the stake president's hands were tied. How local leadership can participate in these "councils" and go on to live with themselves is beyond me.
There were several high profile members apostatize in one of my stakes. This resulted in others questioning and the reaction from the SCMC was to work at defaming the apostates and anyone that attempted to follow. Some of the actions were subtle and others fairly blatant. Whispering campaigns seem to be a favorite of the committee. They also sent a member with law enforcement bona fides to our area to have some pull within that community as they deemed necessary. Some of it constituted having this "peace officer" aid in the whispering campaigns and some general harassment also (e.g. having apostates pulled over or investigated on bogus charges).
Just a side note, the SCMC makes TSCC look and smell like an organized crime syndicate rather than any form of a Christian religion. Any group of leaders that truly believed in the Bible and the god defined therein would not feel a need to engage in the sleazy, thuggery of the SCMC.
cludgie Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think it's a paid position. I have no idea which > office at HQ it falls under.
That is my understanding too with much help from the rank-and-file and local leaders. Since Mormonism has always been amateur hour based on the doctrine of the loose cannons, the SCMC often seems to cause way more harm than intended. There ham handed tactics often result in the merely curious leaving and those on the fence being turned into enemies of the church.
Their playbook could have been written by the Stasi.
Defaming people to family, ward members, and colleagues are some of the more destructive tactics I have observed.
The goal of the harsh tactics may be two fold:
1) Keep the truth from those who are not currently questioning
2) Get rid of people that are likely to question sooner rather than later so that the church can settle back into a stable routine with only those who will believe "no matter what" left in the pews.
The problem is, they may end up with many fewer people than they had hoped and the remaining core will likely make Mormonism unrecognizable over time. Just a few of the problems when people with investigative and manipulation skills embark on a course that is not well thought out, is based on a false belief that some god approves of destroying other people's lives to defend a false religion, and that they somehow know more and are more entitled than millions of other people around them.
Several years ago while an active Mormon, I wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper that criticized a decision at BYU and at the same time criticized the church. My name and city were printed with the letter I wrote.
Within a few hours of the paper hitting my driveway, I received a phone call from a man at the COB (that's how it came up on my caller ID). He said that he called to tell me how much he liked and agreed with my letter. He was very difficult to get off the phone and kept fishing for information about my political and church beliefs while all the time agreeing with me.
The call left me with a funny feeling, but it wasn't until a few years later that I heard about the SCMC and put two and two together. I'm sure that I was ultimately considered a non-threat, but the fact that someone from church headquarters followed up on me because I dared to voice a few opinions should make all church members uneasy.
Wow, the LDS church must be seriously insecure to have someone from their worldwide headquarters respond (within hours) to a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. That's messed up.
When Jeffrey Holland was caught lying while being interviewed by a reporter from Britain who was making the documentary, Meet the Mormons, it is mighty telling in my book just how easily lying is built into the walls of the MormonCult. He declared he knew of no such organization as STMC, only to have his words debunked later in the documentary by a spokesperson for the cult.
I personally know someone who has been stalked by the STMC....this committee is alive and well and scary, and brings up the question as to just why any "one true church of god" would need such an organization? It is a cousin of the Danites.....ruins reputations, intimidates, snoops, etc. Yeah, maybe it has not killed anyone, who knows for sure???, but it does plenty of other damage.