Overall, I thought “The Mormons” was a wonderful documentary that showed most of the positive things about the Church from a secular perspective while also exploring many of the criticisms in a fair way.
In this post, I would like to touch on one area where I thought the documentary really fell short, and this is the area of how we treat intellectual dissidents.
UPDATE: Look at this link for complete transcripts from “The Mormons.” Both Elder Holland and Daniel Peterson touch on this issue pretty eloquently.
As many of you know, I am a convert to the Church. I have been a member since 1999. Most of my family members are in the Church but for various reasons I was not baptized when I was young. Before I was a member, I was extremely suspicious and even hostile to the Church. I considered myself an agnostic, humanist intellectual and of course found all of the Church’s claims preposterous.
I could quote anti-Mormons books on polygamy and our “discriminatory” treatment of gays, our opposition to the ERA and of course could give long discourses against our onetime policy of not giving blacks the priesthood.
But one thing that never bothered me about the Church — even a little bit — was the idea that if you opposed what the Church stands for you could get kicked out. I just don’t think opposing or criticizing the Church for this reason passes the common sense test.
The first problem is that, of course, most people who disagree with what a group stands for end up leaving anyway. And, in the vast majority of cases, the Church leaves you alone if you stop coming. I’m not talking about home teachers and/or missionaries — I’m talking about Church discipline. Yes, there are a few cases, and some of them are prominent, that contradict this point, but the reality is that if you don’t believe in something foundational about the Church, and you speak out about it, and you stop coming to Church, chances are extremely good you will never have to face Church discipline. Anybody who has served in a bishopric on on the high council knows that, in practice, most Church members are much too busy trying to keep things together with the members who come to Church to worry about those who have stopped coming and don’t want anything more to do with the Church.
So, Church discipline is not a Torquemada-like process where enforcers are out there searching for dissidents so they can bring them before a show trial. In reality, dissidents are mostly left alone.
The second problem has to do with the basic issue of how groups describe themselves. And this is where “The Mormons” really failed, in my opinion. A group has a right to define what it stands for. If you what to change what that group stands for, and the majority of the members do not agree with you, at a certain point, you have two choices: leave the group and join another one that represents your beliefs or accept the majority view.
And when you take into consideration that one of our foundational beliefs is that we are guided by revelation, not the philosophies of men, it becomes even more important that you accept the precept that your little ideas don’t determine Church policy.
But, getting back to the idea of group definitions, it is basic common sense that the members of groups either accept what a group stands for or they leave. If you are in a knitting club and you want to make it a bridge club, and the majority of the members of the club want to keep it a knitting club, well, you have two choices: go join a bridge club or shut up and start knitting.
I think there is a lot of room for intellectuals to explore different areas of Church policies. In my eight years in the Church, I have heard some wild, wild theories tossed around. Anybody sitting in Gospel Doctrine or Priesthood for a few weeks is likely to hear some very strange ideas put forward. But at the end of the day, the Church has to stand for something or it stands for nothing. And if you are an intellectual who wants to challenge the foundational aspects of the Church, and Church authorities tell you repeatedly that you can’t be a member of the Church if you challenge those foundational ideas, well, you have two choices: leave or find something else to study. If, at the end of the day, you can’t accept those two options, then, yes, you may face Church discipline.
As a Church member, I wholely support the Church’s position on this issue, if only from the common sense viewpoint that a group has the right to define itself. I think we have to look no farther than the Episcopal Church to see what can happen to a group that lets its members change the definition of what it stands for.
I would also like to point out that as a member of the High Council I have served on disciplinary councils. The process is exactly the opposite of a Torquemada show trial, which is what “The Mormons” seemed to imply. Instead, it is a process of love and caring that emphasizes the importance of repentance and personal growth. Without going into details, I can say that the Spirit is always attendant in such councils.
I thought “The Mormons” did an extremely poor job of dealing with this issue. The viewer was left with the overall impression that a group of aging patriarchs grill dissidents to death and then gleefully excommunicate them while being falsely nice about the whole process. Except for a five-second clip of Terryl Givens pointing out the obvious — that we always hear only one side of such councils — there was no Church response at all. Perhaps the Church decided not to talk about such Councils, but I find it hard to believe the producers could not find a faithful bishop, stake president or Church member to defend the Church disciplinary process.