Posted by:
Lot's Wife
(
)
Date: May 13, 2020 01:55AM
I like your analysis but will quibble with some of your points.
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> I sincerely believe that Kimball laid a way for
> the church to become a self-serving ponzi scheme
> to grow its billions.
Would you not agree that the church was always a ponzi scheme? Give everything now, including your wives and daughters, so you can obtain godhood and eternal sex later?
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> Kimball called and promoted the worst people to
> ascend the church corporation. He enabled BKP to
> establish his way to worship through correlation;
> ie white-shirt priesthood power, revision of
> church music, what-to-say at lds funerals.
I'd put the blame for the ideological straitjacket on McKay. He ran what was for most Mormons a much gentler church, but he also let McConkie republish Mormon Doctrine, which defined the modern church's history and doctrine. I believe it was also under McKay that the Strengthening the Members Committee was born. McKay thus sowed the seeds of doctrinal tyranny that would bear fruit in the 1970s and 1980s, a process to which Kimball did not object even if he wasn't its sponsor.
It was likewise McConkie, that McKay acolyte, who started the musical pogram when he banned Bach from worship services on the grounds that it was secular music. I believe the white shirt nonsense also antedated Kimball, who only became prophet in 1973.
Finally, it was McKay who chose Packer as an Assistant to the Q12. Given that McConkie was Packer's father-in-law, that assignment virtually guaranteed that Packer would ascend to the apostleship. I don't think McKay thought through the implications of these various decisions, but he effectively set in motion the centralization of power and control that ended the period of relative tolerance over which he presided.
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> Both
> GBH and TSM were poor choices as church
> administrators~ first presidency leaders for 30
> years. He also called both Nelson and Oaks before
> he croaked.
I agree with all of that.
What I would add is that Kimball launched the sexual inquisition, raised homophobia to the centerpiece of the church, and took the homogenization of doctrine to another level. Part of that was unintentional; he believed the doctrines, including prominently the Lamanite stuff, and he was confident that setting Leonard Arrington loose would serve the church's interests. It was only later, when Kimball was taking his meals through a straw, that the Q15 decided to shut down historical inquiry. But in the meantime the switch to the three-hour block, the simplification of the missionary discussions, and the repetitive course plans were adopted.
What came out of this history was not a ponzi scheme--that was always present--but rather the commodification of Mormonism, the abandonment of any doctrinal diversity or individual spiritual autonomy. He turned the Mormon Church into McDonalds and the gospel into a heterosexual Big Mac, a flavorless meal that was the same everywhere one went.