Natalie Brown’s recent commentary in The Salt Lake Tribune about the seeming lack of influence by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints among today’s church membership is a straw woman. She implies that church influence is a product of democracy. She is wrong.
I am sure that some people inside the church care about what Generation X, millennials and Generation Z think. But the old guys who run the church, set its policies and uphold its long-standing doctrines seem unimpressed and unaffected by immature voices.
Many progressive Latter-day Saints — those who believe that modern secular, cultural and political ideas should guide church policies and doctrines — seem to think that the church is a democracy. It is not. Those progressive Saints will never lead the Lord’s church. The church is not a cramped family car on its way to Disneyland. The reality that policies, like anticipated potty stops, sometimes change when the children whine is little proof that the grown-ups lack influence and control. After all, the adults still drive the car.
Do faithful Saints — those who are temple covenant-centric — really care what “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” think? Brown calls out an experience inside the church labeled “cafeteria” Saints, wherein members pick and choose obedience and disobedience. Yes, we all do that. We’re all sinners; we’re all mortal. We will sin, and we will choose our sins. As progressive Saints have a penchant to do, we will even project our personal sins onto the church broadly.
Church leaders and faithful Saints keep it simple and focus on repentance, on “becoming,” not justifications to continue in sin.
Brown writes that despite the efforts of “prior generations of Mormon feminists,” that it’s probably past time for members (read: women) to assert “their own spiritual authority.” Their own spiritual authority? To me, that sounds like sacred church garments are inconvenient or incompatible with today’s women’s fashions. In response, church leaders heard the plaintiffs’ cry and made some changes. Are the plaintiffs, progressive Saints, happy? No? Why not? Some don’t like garments, don’t understand their significance, and women alone didn’t make the decision.
Brown speaks of “the rise of a generation that increasingly rejects institutional authority” and a generation concerned about “what underwear one must wear … dictated by distant authorities.” Underwear? Distant authorities? For faithful Saints, Brown’s “distant authorities” are our prophets, seers and revelators speaking intimately about sacred temple garments and the priesthood of God.
In the context of her commentary, raising the issue of shrinking church membership implies that losing progressive Saints of any age or identity matters. It doesn’t. This concern is like a boy who killed his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court for being an orphan. Losing some people is sad, but such identifiable losses do not define the church or its truthfulness.
Progressive Saints struggle to fit into mainstream church life because they make a huge philosophical and ideological mistake. They separate spirit from body. Just as secular feminists do, they objectify the mortal body and worship at the altar of personal autonomy. It’s why they clutch their pearls over abortion, homosexuality, sacred garments and the Word of Wisdom. Faithful Saints understand that spirit and body are one just as the resurrection of Jesus Christ reunited spirit and body. Faithful Saints don’t proclaim, “It’s my body, and I’ll do what I want with it!”
In a weak effort to help democratize the church, Brown writes that “it’s unclear to me that attending the temple provides a sufficient sense of daily identity and community.” Good lord. Gospel unity isn’t a cultural or political community. We’re not a “ward family” serving up a gospel of unconditional love. Covenants unite faithful Saints. I don’t care what women or men think about what the gospel of Jesus Christ should be. I only care what God says it is and, unfortunately for Ms. Brown, what God says is expressed today faithfully by 15 old, (mostly) white, conservative men.
(Paul Mero) Paul Mero is the author of “Defeated: A Latter-day Saint’s Witness and Warning from 40 Years Deep Inside the Modern American Culture War.”
Paul Mero is the author of “Defeated: A Latter-day Saint’s Witness and Warning from 40 Years Deep Inside the Modern American Culture War.”
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