It would have been as strange as this.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/mets-make-strangest-gm-hire-in-baseball-history-with-brodie-van-wagenen/ar-BBP8ntv

The difference is ChurchCo doesn't negotiate with, apologize to, or take any kind of feedback from...

mere members.

It would be more likely that ChurchCo merged with CommunityCo (formerly RLDS) and make all their leaders GAs.

Sam lives to be accepted and promoted by the Church. He is the fool. Not the Church.

It is like getting booted out of Amway. You have to really stir some shit and when you do all of your former people turn on you when their quadruple diamond priesthood powers would make them a pariah in the sales of their product. Got to keep paying the tithing and towing the line as another sheep gets sacrificed for a good cause people sympathize with but ultimately don't want to stop buying from their pushers.

Poor Sam. I admire him for his fight but wish he'd denounce the church.

He's a sheep already slaughtered but doesn't know it.

Can we agree that most changes to church policy have come from within the church?

I don't think the church really gives a damn about external pressure or otherwise they would have changed their baptismal policy by now.

messygoop Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't think the church really gives a damn about
> external pressure or otherwise they would have
> changed their baptismal policy by now.

I don't think they give a damn about their members. They implement programs, change them up, rearrange things, but ultimately never get more than a vote of confidence in their divine powers. They could care less about their members. IT is all about the calling and erection of the corporation made sure and the hoi poi can use a revolving door. They have an aggressive missionary program.

Scientology for Christians.

My view is that the church never changes major doctrines/policies UNLESS there is outside pressure.

History is replete with examples. The church only let the federal government install judges in Utah Territory when forced to do so. It only renounced polygamy when coerced into doing so in 1890; and only stopped performing such marriages under renewed pressure in 1904 (or was it 1907?). Likewise, the modern church only lifted the priesthood ban in 1978 under intense outside pressure. In all these cases the external environment was an essential factor in the changes.

More recently, it was national embarrassment that forced the church to start pretending to respect gay people with its gay-friendly website; and it was largely the glare of national attention, generated by Sam Young, that produced the new policy allowing parents to attend their children's bishops' interviews. We see the same thing with medical marijuana. That was a tactical retreat, seen as necessary to preserve the bishops interviews.

The same thing happened with weed. Only when the church saw that the whole country is moving towards legalization of all marijuana did it decide to endorse medical usage. This was not a willing decision; it was the only way the Q15 saw to prevent the Democrats in SLC from using the national wave to shove full legality down their throats.

As Elder Berry writes, the church really doesn't care about its members. There are times when some leaders may want a change, but the odds of something happening are always low unless there is intense outside pressure. The church is a monstrous bureaucracy that resists almost all internal demand for change but proves more biddable when confronted with outside political and media forces.

That's why agitators like Dehlin, Kelly, and Young are right to stay in the church. The moment they leave, they lose leverage. By staying and goading the church from within, they keep outside attention focused on the Q15. When push comes to shove and people are excommunicated, the church gets still more attention. That's how reformers have the maximum impact.