Has anyone on the board tried to climb the TSCC ladder to enact any kind of change from within a position of influence? Or do you know anybody that has?

My guess is that there aren't many... It would be incredible if someone were able to do it all the way up to the Q15 then publicly denounce things through GC.

Though, I really doubt anyone would have the time or the patience to complete such a feat.

It wouldn't work. The believers have shown time after time that for them fact simply do not matter. The only thing that matters to them is warm feelings they get from the church. For them, The Church must be true. There is no other option. Even if all the G-15 declared that they were frauds, The Church would still go on with pretty much the same structure and the same participants as now.

..."Inside job"=Toilet scrubber?

...better than grounds keeper?.......I don't know.

It would take a psychopath to pull off something like that!!

Irony, thy name is EOD.

Haha you may be right here EOD. I kinda had the fleeting thought while I was still active-- "maybe I should stick around and just try to be the instrument for change here".

Yeah that didn't last long.... too much cognitive dissonance would be involved with fighting from within to stay sane.

I seriously considered it! Back in Sept. '67 when I got off my mission, the church went all out to save my butt from the draft and get me into the Y. I was a stone atheist by then. A year later, married and living in a civilian ward, Lakeview, I was called to be the EQP. I literally thought to myself, "It's my image!"

You know, handsome Latino who liked Corinthian leather... I remember thinking (which I continue to joke about), "I could be the first Brown afossil!!!! I could ride an image right to the very top!

Naw, I never would have been able to get away with it. It came to me like a punch in the gut when I found out that I was extended the call because I was new in that ward and didn't have any enemies. All the other candidates for the calling did! Yay, me, everybody came together in unity to hate me!!!

And I can be as phony as anybody!! ...well, almost...

I like Corinthian vinyl. I wonder if I could be an apostle.

Well, I guess a few things would have to change. . .

Oh, pooh!

You're all peaches & cream, a product of your destiny, while I am all Peaches 'n Herb, a product of the mean streets...

Peaches & herb: assuming that means the same thing to a man of your august age as it does to us youngsters, I find that highly amusing.

In fact, you owe me a new keyboard!

Youngsters be all weird 'n shit!!!

All I know is that Peaches and Herb covered Mickey & Sylvia's "Love is Strange", one of my all-time favorite songs.

Further affiant sayeth naught.

..."Fine corinthian leather."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc

That's exactly where I learned the phrase.

My dad got one while I was on my mission and my BYU temple bride and I borrowed it for our hornymoon.

"Corinthian leather is a term coined by the advertising agency Bozell to describe the upholstery used in certain Chrysler luxury vehicles. The term first appeared in advertising in 1974. ... The standard term in period car catalogs was "leather with vinyl", and sometimes "leather seat facings".

Now where other than RfM am I going to learn gems like that?

I don't always drive a car but when I do it is a Cordoba

Well crap! No wonder my temple marriage collapsed! We were in a Chrysler Cordoba WITHOUT Corinthian leather!

When asked if he was a prophet, Hinkley answered “the members sustain me as one”.

In other words, no.

After the internet’s exposed the multiple versions of the first vision Hinkley said:

“That is the way I feel about it. Our whole strength rests on the validity of that vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud. If it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens.”

He flat out said on national television the church was a fraud. No one cared.

It was indeed strange, as if he was subtly planting the seeds of apostasy.

I think he was so blind to the concerns of the members that he thought they wouldn't care if he equivocated. But people are on the edge of leaving, and he quietly encouraged them to do so.

I think that best describes him. To think he intended to bear testimony ironically is probably too cynical (even for him) and, in a sense, too generous.

Read my short story. Based on many many events over the past 30 years I believe I’m closer to truth than fiction.

I didn't know that I was disagreeing with you.

But if you are saying that Hinckley intended to tell the world that Mormonism is a fraud, I do indeed dispute your view.

I believe that Mark Hoffman destoyed Hinkley testimony and he made a conscious decision to continue to propogate the lie of the church because he thought the good outweighed the bad.

I don't believe Hinckley's views changed due to Hoffman. Hinckley had been buying documents to hide them for a long time. He knew the truth well before then.

That said, I think it reasonably likely that Hinckley knew the church was false and was persisting because he thought it was, on balance, a force for good. 'Tis easy to think that of an organization when it coincides with your own interests, of course.

I suspect a lot of senior LDS "leaders" tell themselves the same thing.

Interesting stuff-- are you taking this from GBH's interview with Larry King? Or were there other instances of him on television? I was pretty young...

I tried. I was pretty close to one of the now Big 15. It was just before he was called to be an apostle. I got a lot of insider information from his wife.

One day I made an appointment and talked with him at work about many of the things that needed to change. He was all agreeable, sympathetic, and understanding. We had also talked about some of these things when he and his wife had dinner in my home. Boy was I full of hope! Then, when I was to have a follow-up conversation with him, he sent a subordinate to tell me that Brother Big Cheese was too busy to meet with me and, basically, always would be. His subordinate all but patted me on the head and shooed me off.

As a side note, his wife dislikes a lot about the church too but she LOVES his status and financial windfall. She has become rather meek compared to the woman I first knew.

I'm fascinated by stories like yours!

Real people who were witness to "The Change"... When they saw someone human gave themselves up to a cause and changed who they were.

One moment, "Hi, how are ya!", and then, BOOM!, "I don't know that we teach that."

I'm more cynical than you.

In politics, business, and the church, it is always best to be warm and sympathetic until you get the desired promotion. Then you switch gears and do exactly what your employer expects.

I've seen that in several contexts, including the church, and consider it normal bureaucratic behavior.

not in the way that ordinary Mormons think of testimonies.

He was an ambitious manager. The Church was his job, his career, his claim to fame. He rose to the top. Therefore he was successful in his chosen career field.

He liked to think of himself as a public relations whiz. So much of his emphasis was on making the Church seem more respectable to outsiders.

He threw core doctrines and teaching under the bus as casually as you would wipe boogers off onto the side of a chair, if you thought nobody was paying close attention.

Eternal progression? Just a couplet. Don't know if we teach that.

Polygamy? Just a fleck of history.

Prophet? Sustained as one, so...yeah...a guy who is sustained as a prophet.

I was on my way out right about the time that Hinckley ascended to the Top Prophet Guy throne. And the timing couldn't have been better because everything Hinckley said and did just confirmed to me that I was on the right track. Thanks, Hinckley! I don't know if that was his intent. But it got the job done.

Mark Hofmann got to drop in and chat with GBH. That's pretty "inside". He deliberately conned the leaders for money, but also to make them look like fools. He succeeded at the money part for a while, and most definitely made them look like fools.

That shook a few Mormons out of their stupor of thought, but not as many as you might hope.

You could argue that Nelson, Oaks and Eyring are doing that now... shortening meetings, distancing themselves with the word "mormon" (including the BOM).
The lard works in mysterious ways.

But no one cares anymore.

The church has been losing momentum externally for decades, especially since the advent of the internet. Less obviously, I think the church had a "come to Jesus" moment with a lot of its membership 8-10 years ago, when the Disaffected Mormon Underground was developing.

A lot of people wanted to reconcile with the church for family or community or values reasons, but the church slammed the door. That was an enormous error. It drove a lot of people out and left the church with fewer of the reasonable people who bridged the gap between the church and its younger members. That bridge is now thoroughly burned.

People on the other side of the river don't really care anymore about what the Q15 do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2018 10:34PM by Lot's Wife.

Very good point!

I left much earlier, but I couldn't believe how rigid church policy was regarding petty issues. For example, I had a job that required me to work consecutive Sundays. The guilt started to get to me so I decided to bring a change of clothes so I could attend a "late" afternoon SM that was not my assigned ward.

I got cornered by a counselor upon dismissal of the meeting. He blew a fuse that I was not attending my assigned ward and informed me that only a letter from the SP would permit me to attend a different ward. I decided that it wasn't worth the hassle and found it easier to not attend church when working Sundays.

Another sister in my ward got into a legal dispute about a joint business venture that failed. She sought permission to attend a different ward and the bishop agreed. However, the SP saw it differently. He denied her request and told the BP to encourage the feuding sisters to work it out. One sister ended it all right. She never returned to the church.

It's too late now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2018 11:27PM by messygoop.

Just like the "anyone can grow up to be President" myth in American politics, I think it is equally unlikely that just anyone can grow up to be prophet by being good and hard-working and stuff.

The degree of nepotism and elite family networking is very high. You'd have to be one of the elite Mormon families to have a good shot at it.

You would probably also have to be a lot more cunning, conniving, politically minded and adept at intrigue than ordinary Mormons would ever expect. These guys are ambitious organization men. They are businessmen and politicians masquerading as religious leaders.

The irony is that the person who leaves the faith due to respect for facts, truth and evidence and due to an honest inability to pretend to believe in obvious lies...would typically have too much integrity to rise to the top of LDS Church leadership, even if they otherwise had the family connections needed to do so.

Absolutely true.