Re: LDS: Theology
In reply to Heath (msg # 893):
I'd echo hakootoko's questions. To me "seminary" is a specialized school someone goes to to become an official church leader (e.g., priest, ordained minister, etc.), and wouldn't be something teenagers would go to. Sounds like it means something else in an LDS context, and perhaps that's causing me some confusion? Ditto for sunday school. To me, sunday school is a thing people (mostly kids) go to that's less formal than adult worship, and tends to involve some manner of religious education (hence the "school" part) rather than just being worship. Sort of sounds like you're saying for LDS folks it's more of a formal worship event, where answering a teenager's question about the church's history and current positions wouldn't be considered appropriate. Some clarification might help.
Also, what I said in post 892 was that there were things not to be discussed in sunday school, which seems to be exactly what you're telling me. I didn't say 'not to be discussed at all.' The fact that it's considered a verboten topic in sunday school is sufficient to worry me, even if it's "allowed" to be discussed elsewhere.
Perhaps this is the issue at the heart of the question: Was the teenager wrong to ask the question in sunday school, or was the teacher wrong to answer? If you're saying it's the former, and the teacher should have just said "Shush, we're singing now, you can ask your questions later," I could understand that. But if you're saying it's fine to ask questions in sunday school, but that teachers should avoid some topics of discussion, that makes me agree with what Doulos says, and reinforces what I was originally saying: that I get the impression many LDSers are too keen to ignore/silence/avoid discussion of some of the unpleasant aspects of their church's history. Again, it's something I really notice from the LDS folks I've had interactions with, that they understand on an intellectual level that their church is made up of fallible human beings and thus isn't perfect, but become really uncomfortable about admitting any specific instance of imperfection. As Doulos says, that kind of "no, no, everything is fine! No, no, don't worry about that thing you just mentioned...in fact, don't mention it again, we don't talk about that here! Just do as we do and you'll be much happier for it!" response frightens people a bit. It seems a bit hive-mindy or borg-y or something. "Central leadership has determined that providing the answer to that question is not beneficial to the collective, initiate 34343. Continue with your pre-approved lesson plan. Further enquiries on this topic may result in disciplinary activity. Trust and obey, initiate!" ;)
Actually, now that I think of it, the other group that comes to mind for having a similar defensive, circle-the-wagons response to any questions about its imperfections is the scientologists. Not putting the two on the same level of culty-ness, but they do seem to share that trait of having a lot of members who seem to get agitated and defensive when people question their chruch's past actions. Doulos has it exactly right when he says it doesn't matter how nice and kind the mormons you meet are, it still throws up big red flags when you see these kinds of "do not question!" responses.
And I stress that it seems entirely unnecessary to me for this to be the case, because every mormon I've ever met has accepted that their church is made up of normal old human beings who sometimes make mistakes. I've never heard any Mormon claim that their church has never made a mistake. They don't claim perfection. So it doesn't seem like it should be hard to just say "yeah, the church leaders back then were just people, and like all people, they sometimes got things wrong. And one thing they got wrong back then, like so many people did at the time, was the treatment of black people. It's unpleasant that it happened, but it did, and the best thing we can do is admit it, and learn from it so we don't repeat the mistake." It seems like even a simple statement like that really makes a lot of mormons very uncomfortable. And it's that discomfort, I think, rather than the fact that the LDS church suffered from the same prejudices that most of the country at the time suffered from, that makes non-LDS people wary.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:23, Thu 24 Sept 2015.