Natalie Brown: Maybe LDS leaders can make big changes without big revelations

We routinely hear that it would take a revelation for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to change its positions on gender. To some extent, the perceived requirement for a revelation is a product of the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood (now canonized as Official Declaration 2) in which then-President Spencer W. Kimball ended the church’s practice of barring Black members from the temple and Black males from priesthood ordination. Women of all races are still unable to be ordained within the church.

The 1978 revelation now serves as a pattern for the authority needed to enact major shifts in church policy or doctrine (the distinction between which is often unclear). New research into the revelation, however, raises the question of whether we are holding change to too high of a revelatory bar. Does change require a revelation, especially if no one can point to a revelation that began the tradition? And, if so, what do we mean by “revelation?”

Matthew Harris’ recently published “Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality” explores the history, ending and legacy of the so-called priesthood/temple ban.

Harris tells an uncomfortably recent story that underscores how even well-intended church leaders at times struggle to parse human-made tradition from inspired doctrine. It is impossible to read this story and not perceive how this instance of mistaking tradition for the divine exacted a heartbreaking human toll, particularly for families denied priesthood blessings and individuals who spent years struggling to reconcile now-rejected church teachings with their own self-worth and moral intuition. This story demands that we work to dismantle the racism that lingers in the church and address past wrongs. It also demands that we think seriously about the claim that some changes must only occur through revelation.

“Second-Class Saints” offers a deep look into the lengthy process that led to Kimball and the apostles receiving the priesthood revelation. Members are often inclined to believe that significant revelation on behalf of the church requires something akin to Joseph Smith’s “First Vision.” Harris persuasively demonstrates, however, that the 1978 priesthood revelation involved nothing of the kind. He shows that it was the product of prolonged debate and discussion among general authorities as well as external pressure, including a federal investigation and threats to the church’s global aspirations.

“Mormon revelation isn’t the dramatic thunderbolt observers might imagine,” Harris writes. “There was no burning bush, no angels telling Kimball what to do, no cosmic force scripting it for him. Rather, Kimball, his counselors, and the 12 apostles, ‘thrashed out, discussed, and rediscussed’ the church’s race doctrine until they reached a consensus that it needed to change.”

What this means for other issues

For believers, Harris’ research does not discredit the view that the revelation was divinely influenced — even if it also raises soul-searching questions about why church leadership permitted the ban to exist and persist for so long. Indeed, Kimball’s ability to create a consensus among a deeply divided church leadership can appear miraculous. Many members will relate to the confirming experience of the Spirit pricking the apostles’ hearts.

Much to Kimball’s chagrin, however, the revelation was sometimes retrospectively embellished to include details like divine voices and visitations. Although these embellishments did not occur, they have left a legacy in which we are perhaps overlooking the importance of debate and discussion in the revelatory process. This has implications for other questions that the church continues to confront.

Most notably, rhetoric surrounding gender often assumes that the status quo was mandated by God and thus can be changed only by a new directive from God. Yet the history of confusion, human error and painful costs surrounding the priesthood/temple ban suggests that we should tread cautiously in making or following pronouncements where there is a substantial risk of conflating human-made tradition with divine design. Our institutional missteps on race suggest that our best approach might be greater humility (and more debate) when it comes to sweeping truth claims about other social roles and identities.

For example, we have recently seen many Latter-day Saint women express their sorrow over following past prophetic advice for women to forgo careers and stay home when the application of that advice proved inappropriate to their particular situations. What seems particularly painful for many is that the advice itself now seems to have been quietly downgraded by the church’s appointment of women who ignored it to prominent leadership positions. Did the women who regret following the prophet sacrifice for a teaching that was more a reflection of temporary American cultural norms than divine doctrine? Are we now saying that personal revelation can (and maybe should) trump what we hear from our faith’s leaders?

Give locals more latitude

Perhaps we should be equally cautious when insisting that revelation is required to change tradition, particularly when we don’t fully understand whether a revelation gave rise to the tradition in question. For example, research by scholars like Beth Allison Barr, author of “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth,” is revealing how many interpretations of biblical gender roles are of more recent human making. Requiring a formal revelation to change some practices related to women might be creating an unnecessary barrier to needed reform and preventing us from exercising our common sense and agency.

On a more local scale, we might also be hindering ourselves by too often requiring permission to change customs that were never carefully considered or authorized at the start. Why not, for example, allow local lay clergy to innovate and adopt practices like letting female leaders sit on the stand instead of discouraging departures from custom? Not every small experiment should require prophetic sign-off.

The history of the priesthood/temple ban suggests that we are not particularly good at discerning the difference between flawed traditions and divine doctrine. As we encounter problems like gender, perhaps the lesson is to err on the side of generosity and inclusion rather than wait for an official revelation or heavenly visitation to take action. Within our personal zones of control, we can be the change we feel inspired to embrace without anyone’s permission.

Natalie Brown is a writer, scholar and Latter-day saint based in Colorado.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.