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Dear friends! I don’t know your political persuasions AND I love you. May you all have joy and love in your lives. I am afraid of the erosions of our national unity that I have witnessed. The “othering” of people that we disagree with has reached a fever pitch.
Perhaps 4 Non Blonds said it best when they said:
Quote:I scream from the top of my lungs “What’s going on?”
In this environment, I applaud anyone that tries to bring down the temperature.
Quote:“Love your neighbor and treat them with compassion and respect,” [Pres. Nelson] wrote. “A century of experience has taught me this with certainty: Anger never persuades, hostility never heals, and contention never leads to lasting solutions. Too much of today’s public discourse, especially online, fosters enmity instead of empathy.”
President Nelson recited his call for peacemakers — “building bridges of understanding rather than walls of prejudice” — and recalled times when he has seen bitter divisions softened when one chooses to listen with respect rather than suspicion.
“Even small acts — like reaching out across lines of faith, culture or politics — can open doors to healing,” he wrote. “There is power in affording others the human dignity that all of God’s children deserve.”
He underscored that such efforts begin at home, saying that “families — though never perfect — remain one of life’s strongest sources of stability and meaning.
Governor Cox spoke to my children’s generation. He said:
Quote:“You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option but … we can choose a different path. Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now.”
May there be a road! Amen and amen!
AmyJ wrote:[list]- Culturally and doctrinally, it is acceptable for a widower to be sealed to multiple women within his lifetime (he doesn’t have to choose which spouse to remain sealed to), but it is unacceptable for a widow to be sealed to multiple men within her lifetime (she has to choose which spouse to be sealed to).
[/list] [snip]
I hope to be there in heaven with popcorn to witness the conversations and introspective monologues when the consequences of what they were doing are laid out. I also entertain that that aspect of mortality may not be so important to actually be worth placing my attention on those conversations.
From Wikipedia:
“Eternity is a 2025 American fantasy romantic comedy film directed by David Freyne, written by Pat Cunnane, and starring Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, John Early, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
Premise
After death, everybody gets one week to choose where to spend eternity. For Joan, Larry, and Luke, it’s really a question of who to spend it with. Joan must choose between her first love, who died in a war, or the man she built her life with.”
My wife and I will join you in the theater with popcorn!
skipper wrote:
I see polygamy as it was inspired for a short time, like in the Old Testament. And just like in the Old Testament it often led to negative consequences. There are many negative outcomes that still affect the Church today. However, I resist the historical view of a binary (all good or all bad) and think there are some cases of both the man and multiple wives had good relationship and felt good about their choices. There is a large, blurred continuum between these two poles.
Some thoughts to consider: We do not have anything to suggest that polygamy was inspired or commanded in the Old Testament. This was just the practice of the time. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all owned slaves as was also the custom of the time for wealthy men. There was no attempt to “restore” the ancient practice of slavery. (It is worth noting that the slavery of the OT is not the same as the “chattel slavery” practiced in the US at the time of JS)
I agree that nothing is all bad or all good. The OT version of slavery gave some individuals a more stable, safe, and secure quality of life than would have been possible otherwise. In cases where the slave master was just and kind the slaves/servants could be fiercely loyal.
I do not judge these patriarchs for doing the things that were considered normal for their time and place.
I think I will wait a while since we just had the priesthood discussion, but I also want to give my son freedom to name his first born boy whatever he and his future wife want and not impose the weight of the tradition to carry on the name of Roy. That too, is something that can stop and not be continued on – generation to generation.
AmyJ wrote:
What I also think is happening is that men are left without protections or power and are bribed with access to women as the prize of sorts.
I agree. I think this is why Elder Holland was very cross with young men stating that they wanted their future wife to be an RM and yet doesn’t appear to have any problem with young men stating that they want their future husband to be an RM.
I remember a lesson that we had in seminary about the attributes that we wanted in a future spouse. Every young woman put RM and temple worthy on their list, just like they had been conditioned to do. For young LDS men, the need to be seen as “dateable” within one’s community can be intensely motivating.
I left late on a mission (about 20.5 years old). I know that some young women that were considering dating me, felt wary because I hadn’t gone on a mission even though I was old enough to go. I don’t know if they saw my lack of missionary service as a red flag but certainly as a yellow flag.
Yes, Amy, I am making an effort to not bring it up. I am practicing mourning for my dreams of watching my kids carry on the traditions without giving hints that I am mourning. I think that if Roy Jr. does receive the higher priesthood and I am asked to ordain then I should not make a big deal about the priesthood line. That shouldn’t be hard to do because church culture only cares that it can be traced back to Christ.
I don’t want to give my baggage to my son. It’s ok if it stays and dies with me.
I don’t want him to feel like I’m disappointed in him if he doesn’t receive or pass on the line and I certainly do not want my grandsons thinking that they need to jump through these hoops to honor my memory.
If my son receives the higher priesthood from someone else, that’s ok. If my son never receives the higher priesthood, that’s ok too. I’m practicing getting comfortable with that being ok, anyway.
Great discussion! I loved the “fun” links, Amy. I think that the church (leadership, publication, members) are trying to spin equality the best that they can.
As if to say, “We are not equal but what if being unequal is even better for women than being equal.”
In the third of Amy’s links was this sentence: “Women can be executives, but men can’t be homemakers.”
It reminded me of a male LDS friend with a very difficult male child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Because of his diagnosis and the trouble that was causing at school, they opted to homeschool. Because my friend had greater success than his wife in working with their son AND because his wife wanted to work, my friend became the stay-at-home parent. My friend’s wife told me that she needed to work because staying at home made her feel isolated, imprisoned, alone, and fearful of her son’s angry outbursts.
My friend told me that well meaning church members (especially the older generation) would continuously ask about his job hunt and offer ideas or other helps. Sometimes their offers to help came with hurtful comments that subtly questioned his manhood like, “If you got that job, then your wife wouldn’t have to work.” They just couldn’t imagine that having a stay at home father could be the best solution.
Update. We are not regularly attending the LDS ward in favor of another church with a stronger youth program.
I had a car conversation with Roy Jr. and DW. I essentially told him that he is approaching the age to receive the higher priesthood and be ordained an elder. Different then when he was baptized or received the Aaronic Priesthood, we would like for him to make the choice of what he wants.
We talked about the pros and the cons.
Pros are that he would be able to give and assist in blessings of healing and comfort and this would also be a pre-requisite for temple endowment or sealings. Another pro would be to better fit in with his age group at church.
Cons are that this also comes with expectations of missionary service, callings, tithing, and leadership in the church.
We can either be proactive in setting up his ordination as his birthday approaches in November or we can sit back and wait for him to to be added to the list of prospective elders.
Roy Jr says that he would like to receive the higher priesthood but he is not in any hurry to do it. We’ll take the latter approach of waiting for local church people to bring it up and then going from there.
I have not said anything about priesthood line of authority or asking who Roy Jr. might want to ordain him in an attempt to not put pressure on him.
nibbler wrote:
Roy, out of curiosity how far back does your patriarchal PH line go? Is it just you and your father, or does it extend back more generations?
It is just my dad. My grandfather on my dad’s side never joined the church, even though he did support his children being raised in the church. Grandpa was baptized and sealed to his family posthumously.
I think part of my hang-up has to do with being named after my grandpa and dad and also being the only boy in the family. I remember being told that I was the only person that would continue the family name. I am also the third Roy in the line and I carried on the tradition by naming my son Roy. There is also the pressure for father’s to baptize, confirm, and ordain their children and I think that my little mind and heart internalized all of those formative experiences as needing to carry on the tradition, the name, the line.
AmyJ wrote:
It’s more important to be good ancestors than dutiful descendants. Too many people spend their lives being custodians of the past instead of stewards of the future. We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud. The responsibility of each generation is not to please our predecessors—it’s to improve conditions for our successors.
I love this quote Amy!
Maybe tying my son to a lifetime of obligation is not the best way to honor my dad. Looking back, my grandfather (the 1st Roy in the line) never joined the church but was supportive of raising his kids in the church. My dad never served a mission and worked away from home so much that I don’t remember him ever having a calling – he was likewise supportive of his children being raised in the church. Now here I am, a disaffected member that has for many years gone through the motions of church expectations (minus tithing payment – much to the frustration of successive bishops) with the motivation and hope of passing on my priesthood line of authority and all the obligations that come with it to my son (once again the only boy to carry on the tradition, the name, the line).
Maybe it is kinder to grant Roy jr. the freedom to set his own course – not forgetting the legacy that came before but also not feeling bound to retread the same paths.
MM in the OP referenced garment wearing. My wife has a condition HS or hydrogenitis that garment wearing and even bra wearing exacerbates. This has resulted in multiple surgeries over the years to remove abscesses. She was medically advised to reduce layers and increase airflow and she told this to her bishop who essentially gave her permission to follow medical advice. When I had my faith crisis, I stopped paying tithing. Because I was the sole income provider, DW felt that my not paying tithing was also her not paying tithing and felt an obligation to push me into becoming a better man by paying. When she met with the bishop, he said something like “Your tithing is separate from your husband and is acceptable. As for pushing him to pay his tithing, let’s give him some time and space.”
In both of these scenarios the bishop gave permission to lighten up and DW has held to that authoritative permission for years afterwards. Everytime that DW is in conversation about these topics she brings up how the bishop at the time gave her permission to individually adapt.
I’m just at a place where I’m starting to wonder if God/Jesus would want us to seek permission for everything and not trust our own judgement.
AmyJ wrote:
– These are the same leaders that benevolently insist that “they know best” about what should happen equally on the unit and individual levels – up until they don’t. It doesn’t take much to find a topic outside their league of “knowing best” – which is pretty much taking the abstract doctrinal framework (as understood by the leader) and applying it to the pastoral side of living – disability, divorce, abuse, trauma, identity dynamics, conflict resolution, lifestyle priorities (non-church based – the church will tell member lifestyle priorities at the drop of a hat).
I am big on the “individual adaptation” clause in the family proclamation. Why wouldn’t we want members to adapt general principles to their individual circumstances? In Sunday School a few years ago, I brought up the “individual adaptation” and how wonderful it was that we can essentially be taught correct principles and then govern ourselves.
The teacher, a former stake leader, pushed back stating that we should be careful thinking that our circumstances excuse us from following the gospel path as strictly and earnestly as we otherwise might.
I understood his message to be that for a small subset of people, the traditional nuclear family is impossible and if you belong to these groups then your bishop can be merciful and release you from the expectation – but be very careful of deciding for yourself that you qualify to “individually adapt” lest you enter into apostacy.
It’s pretty maddening. Let people live their lives and form their families and provide financially and parental nurture the best way that they can.
Wonderful explanation, Amy. When I was a missionary, I was accidentally kicked in the groin during a p-day soccer match. My testicles hurt for several weeks after that and turned noticeably bruised (black and blue). It was uncomfortable to sit down. Even worse, I found a painful lump that I don’t think was there before.
I emailed my best friend back in the states and asked for his mom (an RN) to give me her medical opinion. (we were not permitted to use email at this time.) She recommended that I get checked out by a urologist.
I tell all this to my MP and he makes the arrangements for me to be seen. The doctor tells me that the lump is scar tissue but that it should not impact my ability to father children later on (big relief). I then go to the mission office where the MP has asked for a report and I share with him the good news.
He then somewhat gently chastises me. He says that, as MP, he has a pretty good sense about these sorts of things but because I went around mission authority to seek medical advice and that advice was to be seen by a urologist – his hands were effectively tied.
:wtf: You mean to tell me that the MP had a feeling (spiritual inspiration) that it wasn’t serious and would have preferred to have me take some ibuprofen, wait out the pain and discomfort, and possibly worry for years about my ability to father children?I dutifully acted contrite until I left the mission office with my companion.
I do not blame my MP. He was trying to exert control over several hundred young people distributed in various rural areas of a foreign country and some of his only tools to maintain control were shame and guilt.
However, in this case the MP was annoyed that I had sought an outside opinion because it limited his ability to control the situation. I believe that he might have sought to control the situation in a way that was not in my best interest. As the mission president, he might be considering the lost half day of productivity and medical fee for the checkup. But if I was his biological son, I imagine that these considerations would wash away and he would have erred on the side of having me seen by a medical professional.
I feel that this situation has, in retrospect, been instructive for my relationship with local church leaders. They are focused on what is good for the ward or the church generally and not primarily focused on what is good for me individually. It is up to me to set boundaries. I give what I can give and do what I can do freely and without expectation but I am very wary of doing more than this.
You can call this “spiritual inspiration” if you wish, I like to think of it as self-care.
skipper wrote:
Besides me, does anyone believe polygamy was inspired for a 50 year duration to build up a LDS community, but in the process, and within subsets, our not so divine human nature complicated things?
I do not believe that polygamy was inspired.
A major reason why I don’t believe it was inspired is that I can look back over 150 years of LDS history and see what a disaster it was.
I can imagine a scenario where war or a virus kills of 90% of the male population. In this scenario, polygamy might make sense.
That was not the case with Mormon pioneers. In the 50 years in which polygamy was practiced, there were more men counted than women in each Utah census (from 1850 to 1900). While polygamy certainly increased the progeny of a number of the leadership, it’s effect towards increasing the total population (over and above what would have happened through monogamy) was negligible. (I am not able to find a good percentage number. I find that women in polygamist relationships had an average of 5.9 children while women in monogamous marriages had an average of 8 children. However, during polygamy more women were actively married – in some areas it could be quite challenging to find a non-married woman – and therefore the population did increase a small amount more than it would have under monogamy.)
Also polygamy was a public relations nightmare for the church. When Polygamy was finally out in the open under BY, missionary work and immigration slowed to a crawl. The United States government was so determined to stamp out polygamy as to enter the Utah war. Later in the Utah period, husbands and the church leadership went into hiding to avoid getting arrested. The manifesto happened because the government was going to confiscate all church assets (including the temples). We could have grown even faster through conversion and immigration without polygamy.
Now, more than 100 years after the manifesto, we are still known for our polygamy past and it makes us seem like a sex cult (creating a drag on our conversion growth rates that remains today). There are also multiple Mormon offshoots were teachings on polygamy are used to manipulate, exert control over, and trap young women in marriages that they otherwise would not have chosen for themselves.
The official LDS essay on the topic reads:
Quote:For many who practiced it, plural marriage was a significant sacrifice. Despite the hardships some experienced, the faithfulness of those who practiced plural marriage continues to benefit the Church in innumerable ways. Through the lineage of these 19th-century Saints have come many Latter-day Saints who have been faithful to their gospel covenants as righteous mothers and fathers, loyal disciples of Jesus Christ, and devoted Church members, leaders, and missionaries.
For me, this is an effort to look for the cloud’s silver lining and then prove that the situation was God inspired because you found a silver lining. In 1857 about half of the Utah population lived in polygamous households. Therefore, yes a good number of current church members are descended from polygamous households but I’m not sure that’s a blessing. I’m imagining a scenario where two people have sexual intercourse, pregnancy ensues, and a baby is born. The baby is a unique person and arguably a divine miracle (in the sense that everyone is a miracle and a child of God). Could we not argue that God inspired or approved of this sexual intercourse. Could we also argue that everyone descended from that baby is a further blessing from that sexual union? What if the sexual intercourse was fornication, or rape, or incest? Are we comfortable saying “Be not too quick to condemn rape or incest – many people alive today wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for rape or incest.” If the child born to David and Bathsheba had lived and that child became the progenitor to countless people alive today, would that justify the sexual union of David and Bathsheba?
AmyJ wrote:
This works as long as it is understood that there are 3 “worlds” at play here:a) The joint world of JS and BY (which is a stretch actually)
b) The 1950’s “Modern Era” that upper leadership still lives in divided by gender roles.
c) The world from the 1970’s and beyond that includes a lot about civil rights, autonomy, and consent that wasn’t given air time in either of the other generations.
There is the sticking point that the culture emphasis is on “eternal truths” and “restoring pure principles” that cross all generations and assuming that specific niche cases in the world views are truths that cross time and space. EXAMPLE: The farmers who lived on the edge of starvation and wrote the Word of Wisdom spoke vaguely at best about what easy access to sugar and the intense refinement of the food chain would do across the board to the saints’ diets.
I agree, Amy. We can never understand our ancestors if we insist of retroactive continuity. We can either know them or know the story that we tell ourselves about them in order to feel good.
nibbler wrote:
Netflix has a documentary called ‘Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey’ about the FLDS church. It’s a series that shows some of the traps groups that practice polygamy can fall into.I think there are many commonalities between the FLDS practice and the LDS practice from the 1800s but there are also many differences. Among the key differences is that I don’t think BY ever reassigned wives and children from one family to another, nor did he separate children from their families. At least not that I’m aware.
Either way, the documentary is worth a watch. Women were treated like possessions. The number of wives dictated status in the community.
It’s not a competition of the sexes for who had it worse, if it were I know where I’d place all my bets, but I think in the case of the men it was the ones that were expelled by the leaders because there weren’t enough women to go around or because they were seen as competition for acquiring more women.
Yes, there were some men that were fairly high up in the community and were respected. They were rewarded by their loyalty to the prophet with additional young and beautiful wives. Yet, the situation is dependent upon the good graces of the prophet. He giveth and he can take away. Even those higher status positions within the FLDS church contained an element of control and fear that is scary.
If I remember right, after his father died, Warren Jeffs pre-emptively accused 3 of his biggest competitors of serious sin and exiled them from the community (reassigning their wives and children). In this one bold move, Warren removed his biggest competition and also sent a message to anyone else that might dare cross him.
