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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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I agree completely with the facts in all but your last two paragraphs. You say a lot of things that are technically true, but together paint IMO a very misleading picture of the history of the change. Stuff like this:

But it was a shift: it wasn't a sudden discovery that the view had no scriptural basis and that it was simple policy, but a gradual change of rhetoric and emphasis that culminated in the reversal of what had been seen as firm doctrine

honestly strikes me as manipulative rhetoric. Firstly, because I just argued that it took place over the course of decades, and here you imply that I claimed it was a sudden discovery. Secondly, because "a gradual change of rhetoric and emphasis" is the natural result of a gradual shift in leaders' opinions, but here you insinuate that it was more of a tactic by church leaders to soften the blow when the doctrine was changed. If you truly believe that church leaders' beliefs shifted over time, then their rhetoric and emphasis should naturally shift at about the same rate. In the following sentence you practically confirm this take:

The task was not to educate church leaders on their own doctrine but to build a new doctrinal framework that allowed something that had been overwhelmingly seen as repugnant, but which society's views were rapidly shifting on, to be overturned.

This is a natural result of the process of educating church leaders (including the prophet) on their own doctrine. Or, if you don't think this was always the doctrine, how do you explain the black members who were ordained with the priesthood? If you do think this was always the doctrine, and Young essentially reversed it, then church leaders must necessarily "build a new doctrinal framework" as part of their education process because clearly their old one was flawed. It didn't account for things like prophets making mistakes, or policy changes, though the Bible and early church history are replete with examples of both of these.

Similarly, your sentence:

As social and political pressures mounted, as with polygamy, the leaders saw increasing reason to reexamine their views and shift doctrine

places the blame for the change on social pressures, when they had already been shifting doctrine in that direction for decades due to other important factors, such as the difficulty of verifying one's genealogy and the lack of eligible church leadership in many developing countries. So again, I think this statement is technically true, but somewhat misleading.

I think there are essentially three positions you can take here:

  1. The church is not true

  2. Young made a mistake instituting the priesthood ban

  3. Young was correct to institute the priesthood ban, meaning that Smith was wrong to ordain black people

I suppose there are other positions but we won't waste time with them. I hope you'd agree with me that church leaders earnestly believe in their faith and must choose between #2 and #3. However, no matter which option they go with, one of their beloved prophets made a pretty big mistake. Our own doctrine has forever been very clear about the importance of continued revelation, but they seemed reluctant to accept that, which is why I frame the gradual process they go through as their own education.

So, I also agree that they had to "build a new doctrinal framework", but it was their own framework they were building, and one which had been present in the church from the beginning. They weren't developing some new rhetorical strategy to manipulate members into sticking with the church as culture changed around them, as you imply (but never state). TL;DR: An implication that the church is inventing a new doctrine to stick with the times must address the fact that the doctrine was practiced in the early church, and you've failed to do so. I apologize if I'm being a bit hostile here, but you're a better writer than I am, and these implications (which may come across as charitable to you) come across as subtle, tricky rhetoric to me.

was it Tom Christofferson who tried to theorize that gay people might enter the second degree of glory in the Celestial kingdom? Where something like that becomes consensus.

I assume you mean practicing gay people here, since gay people can achieve that and exaltation. I'd prefer to frame this differently though, since we really don't know all that much about the different degrees of glory. Will the church ever come out and say that homosexual behavior is not a sin? I think not, and I'd be willing to bet on it, but I don't imagine you'd be willing to bet on a statement like that resolving within our lifetimes. I'd take a bet giving it 1% odds of happening within the next 50 years, but then all my money is locked up the entire time for a 1% reward. I find it more likely that the church undergoes some kind of hostile takeover than that they do that of their own accord.

At best, they could maybe de-emphasize how much of a sin it is and focus on compassion, a process they've already undertaken and which is complete for similar situations (such as people who never marry).

This will only be intensified by the growth of new technologies like IVG, with potential to allow gay couples to have natal offspring. LDS theology as it stands is poorly equipped to handle the prospect of a child who genetically has two fathers or two mothers

Is it? I feel like any doctrine that would have a hard time dealing with this would have a harder time with basic adoption.

Anyways, I've spent this whole time responding to you rather than making my own points, and I recognize that that can be pretty exhausting to deal with. Suffice to say that commonly-reviled policy changes such as polygamy and the reversal of the priesthood ban IMO have quite good scriptural and doctrinal support, and did long before they happened too. I find that discussion much more useful than arguing over what church members of the time thought, because I also believe that the idea that "church leaders and members can be misled" is quite well-supported doctrinally as well.

Edit: I apologize, I think I've been uncharitable here. I just think the "church leaders bent to the public will" theory needs to grapple with the inconvenient fact that their decision genuinely seems to be the correct one based on contemporary doctrine alone.

Thanks for the thoughtful response and for your willingness to engage! I know it can be tricky to speak across the divide of belief, and I appreciate your openness. I'm not aiming to be rhetorically deceptive in any sense, though I'll certainly cop to choosing my words with an eye towards persuasive effect.

Firstly, because I just argued that it took place over the course of decades, and here you imply that I claimed it was a sudden discovery.

To clarify, with the "suddenly" I was referring primarily to the 1954 committee. I broadly reject the notion that they re-examined the scriptures and concluded there was no scriptural basis after having defended it on a scriptural and doctrinal basis for years before that point. From my angle, it's more accurate to conceive of their conclusion not as "we learned there was no scriptural basis" but as "we would like to move away from our prior emphasis on the scriptural basis for this ban". I do think their opinions gradually changed; we agree on that point. I do not agree (and, to be clear, do not assert you believe) that any new doctrinal information emerged between 1947 and 1979 that would have given them doctrinal cause to reassess; rather, I think their social conditions changed such as to provide strong cultural motive to reassess, and they altered the doctrine as a result.

I also wouldn't present any of this as simple rhetorical strategy. I don't take a particularly cynical view of their beliefs; I think most or all who reach the core leadership of Mormonism are true believers. I think leadership most likely genuinely changed their minds over time, but the proximate cause for that change was not divine guidance that happened to coincide with major social upheavals, but the upheavals themselves, bringing with them increased salience of those issues and sociocultural pressure.

I do take your point in terms of addressing differences between Smith's and Young's practices of ordination. I won't quibble about that difference: while there is a degree of ambiguity in Smith's views and he made enough claims about racial inequality for Young and others to build on, his actions absolutely made the mid-20th-century doctrinal shift simpler. That's a clear difference between the doctrinal shift on interracial marriage and ordinances for black members and a theoretical shift for gay members. My claim is both that they adapted doctrine to stick with the times in response to social and cultural pressure, and that Smith's actions made that change easier to enact.

I think "Young made a mistake" is the most comfortable answer for modern LDS members, but would argue that it mostly falls apart once the record is clear that it was seen as unambiguous and lasting doctrine, not as temporary policy: claims like Woodruff's "the prophet will never lead the church astray" are compatible with many errors, but I do not believe they can comfortably be made compatible with virtually every leader in the church for more than a century being in apostasy on questions of racial equality, marriage, and salvation. When someone's framework contains the belief that virtually every leader in the church was in apostasy on those questions for more than a century, I don't find "...and they continue to be in apostasy on <pet issue here>" to be a serious stretch. The doctrine of continuing revelation and "he will yet reveal many great and important truths" provides serious leeway for ambitious/creative theologians. The language against interracial marriage during that time was every bit as clear as language against gay relationships is today.

Will the church ever come out and say that homosexual behavior is not a sin? I think not, and I'd be willing to bet on it, but I don't imagine you'd be willing to bet on a statement like that resolving within our lifetimes.

If reasonable terms could be arranged, I would take a bet at around 25% odds that the institutional LDS church will come out and say that homosexual behavior within the bounds of committed monogamous partnerships is not a sin within our lifetimes, whether via an overt institutional shift or via a schism. I think it's more likely than not that the shift does not occur, but that 1% is much too low.

I respect your preference for scripture/doctrine over beliefs over time, but I believe both are important to understanding religious evolution and the bounds of what is possible. As far as scriptural/doctrinal support goes, I think the wide range of beliefs among Christian denominations serves as a good sanity check for just what people can be convinced has serious scriptural support. Joseph Smith, so far as I am aware, never said a word about homosexuality in the works of scripture he dictated, his sermons, or otherwise. That is: setting aside the words of recent prophets (which can be done! As the Lowry Nelson letter indicates, unanimous written consent of the first presidency at any given time is not sufficient to determine doctrine), the LDS church relies strictly on the Bible for its doctrine on homosexuality.

While Paul's statements on the matter are unambiguous, the church has been shifting temple ordinances and other words/actions away from similarly unambiguous statements of his (eg women covering their heads) in accordance with modern social instincts. To go further back... well, let me quote a Catholic writer (from what is probably the most honest, perceptive Catholic argument for a shift on doctrine around homosexuality I know of):

During the 1850s, arguments raged over the morality of slave-holding, and the exegesis of Scripture played a key role in those debates. The exegetical battles were one-sided: all abolitionists could point to was Galatians 3:28 and the Letter of Philemon, while slave owners had the rest of the Old and New Testaments, which gave every indication that slaveholding was a legitimate, indeed God-ordained social arrangement, one to which neither Moses nor Jesus nor Paul raised a fundamental objection. So how is it that now, in the early twenty-first century, the authority of the scriptural texts on slavery and the arguments made on their basis appear to all of us, without exception, as completely beside the point and deeply wrong?

The answer is that over time the human experience of slavery and its horror came home to the popular conscience. [...] once that experience of their full humanity and the evil of their bondage reached a stage of critical consciousness, this nation could neither turn back to the practice of slavery nor ever read the Bible in the same way again.

None of this is to say that such a shift around homosexuality is likely. But I hope that helps explain why I don't wholly discount it as a possibility, despite its obvious tension with the LDS framework. Stranger things have happened.

Well this is all very fair, and thank you for your engagement too.

I do not agree (and, to be clear, do not assert you believe) that any new doctrinal information emerged between 1947 and 1979 that would have given them doctrinal cause to reassess; rather, I think their social conditions changed such as to provide strong cultural motive to reassess, and they altered the doctrine as a result.

I tend to agree, but I think there's at least a possibility that new information emerged. The leaders of the time strike me as somewhat ignorant of church history.

When someone's framework contains the belief that virtually every leader in the church was in apostasy on those questions for more than a century, I don't find "...and they continue to be in apostasy on " to be a serious stretch.

That's totally fair. For what it's worth, I don't either, but I generally think people should continue with prophetic counsel in the meantime. This is difficult to reconcile with things like activism, which seem somewhat likely to have influenced the church's policy change.

The language against interracial marriage during that time was every bit as clear as language against gay relationships is today.

In one sense, sure. Brigham Young even stated things like "God's punishment for interracial marriage is and always will be death." I don't think the doctrinal support was at the same level though, and I think if homosexuality had been the prominent topic of the time then Young would have said as bad or worse things about that. But who knows, the guy really seemed to care a lot about race. Still, we already have an example in the past of the priesthood being restricted to not just a certain race, but a small subset of them. I don't think his actions were doctrinally justified but they weren't super out of left field the way that I think an endorsement of monogamous, committed homosexuality would be.

That is: setting aside the words of recent prophets (which can be done! As the Lowry Nelson letter indicates, unanimous written consent of the first presidency at any given time is not sufficient to determine doctrine), the LDS church relies strictly on the Bible for its doctrine on homosexuality.

Sure, but to me that's like saying "set aside one foot and you only have the other to walk on." The only time you should really be choosing between them is when one conflicts with the other. The Lowry Nelson letter, for instance, conflicted with not only a scriptural basis but also with what we now know to be established fact in both Smith and Young's times. Additionally, I think you're giving it a little too much emphasis since the letter itself doesn't claim to be doctrine but rather to interpret doctrine.

If reasonable terms could be arranged, I would take a bet at around 25% odds that the institutional LDS church will come out and say that homosexual behavior within the bounds of committed monogamous partnerships is not a sin within our lifetimes, whether via an overt institutional shift or via a schism. I think it's more likely than not that the shift does not occur, but that 1% is much too low.

I have heard rumors that the reason church policy changed to allow civil marriage + immediate temple sealings was so that we could easily pivot to doing ONLY sealings in the temple. The worry is that we'll be forced to conduct gay temple sealings. No idea whether that rumor is true (i.e. accurately describes the motive behind the change) or is just conspiracy theorists looking for people who agree with them. Like I said, I think the odds of a schism are much higher than the odds of this happening, so if we include schisms then really I'm just betting on the odds of a church schism within the next 50 years or so.

Anyways, how about something like the following:

  1. I will give you a VTI share if the bet resolves in your favor. Otherwise, you'll give me 1/10th of a VTI share. We have a gentleman's agreement not to really worry about payment if one of us is in poverty or dealing with cancer bills or something, though the winner is still free to crow about it on TheMotte or whatever survives of our community at that point.

  2. If the church undergoes a major schism, each side of the schism with at least one former apostle and 10% of the other side's members, it resolves as invalid unless either side would resolve in the same direction. In other words if there's a schism and it's possible that either side of the schism could be the "true" church, and the two sides disagree on this issue, I don't think either of us win.

  3. If one or more of a, b, or c happen before 2050, the bet resolves in your favor. Otherwise it resolves in mine.

a) The church creates another document like the Family Proclamation meaningfully changing something inside the Family Proclamation, such as the claim that gender is eternal or that marriage is meant to be between husband and wife. Restarting polygamy or endorsing adoption won't count here.

b) The church updates policy to allow non-heterosexual couples to be sealed in the temple, and it's not immediately obvious they were forced to do so. This still resolves positively if they're just sealed for time and not eternity.

c) The church updates policy (and the policy stands for at least 1 year) and says that practicing homosexuals in married monogamous relationships can get temple recommends.

Alternatively I'd be fine with us both agreeing that we WOULD agree to this bet, just so that we don't have to remember to resolve it in 30 years. I think there's a small but tangible mental cost to just leaving these things stewing in the background, needing to be remembered, and the stocks managed (or at least not sold). I was an active stock trader in the past, and probably will be again, so even just having a single stock sitting around for decades in my account is a bit of a cognitive burden. I'd probably create a new account just to store it so I wouldn't have to think about it.

Sounds like a reasonable bet; I'm happy to take it. To reduce mental cost, I'd be happy to run it on a sort of "honor system"—if one of us happens to still remember it in 2050, they can prod the other and claim their due? The current value of a VTI share looks to be $200; at the time of resolution; I'm happy to go with your preference between an inflation-adjusted equivalent amount of cash or stocks so you don't have to think about it. I'll note that I do think 2050 is a bit on the early side of where I'd predict anything happening—my "25% chance" was positing sometime probably around 2060-70 (treating now as the equivalent to 1940 or so)—but it's a good compromise in terms of keeping it even theoretically resolvable, so I'm happy to stick with it.

That sounds great to me, I'd be happy to go with 2060 too. 2070 does seem a bit late since we'll both be in at least our 70's by then haha. The point of picking a VTI share was to not lose money to inflation, but since we're going with the honor system anyways (not locking money up in some betting site or anything) I'm happy to just say inflation-adjusted $200 vs $20. If I do end up losing then I consider it a pretty cheap idiot tax.

Well, I'm probably about as likely to remember in 2060 as in 2050, so 2060 it is! See you in 40 years, haha.

Well, it's funny what rabbit holes you end up going down! I was trying to see if there was anything in the Summa concerning the various races of mankind, then I went on to the samples of the Church Fathers, and for some reason stumbled upon this by someone I never heard of, one Bardaisan, entitled "Book of the Laws of Countries" with this little nugget embedded within:

But in the North, and in the country of the Gauls and their neighbours, such youths among them as are handsome the men take as wives, and they even have feasts on the occasion; and it is not considered by them as a disgrace, nor as a reproach, because of the law which prevails among them. But it is a thing impossible that all those in Gaul who are branded with this disgrace should at their Nativities have had Mercury posited with Venus in the house of Saturn, and within the limits of Mars, and in the signs of the zodiac to the west. For, concerning such men as are born under these conditions, it is written that they are branded with infamy, as being like women.

The text seems to be damaged in places, and there is bitter controversy over what the Greek word here means:

Laws in Hatra. — There is a law in force in Hatra, that whosoever steals any little thing, even though it were worthless as water, shall be stoned. Among the Cashani, on the contrary, if any one commits such a theft as this, they merely spit in his face. Among the Romans, too, he that commits a small theft is scourged and sent about his business. On the other side of the Euphrates, and as you go eastward, he that is stigmatized as either a thief or a murderer does not much resent it; but, if a man be stigmatized as an arsenocœte[either "homosexual" or "male prostitute" depending on what side you take], he will avenge himself even to the extent of killing his accuser.

Laws....— Among. ..boys...to us, and are not...Again, in all the region of the East, if any persons are thus stigmatized, and are known to be guilty, their own fathers and brothers put them to death; and very often they do not even make known the graves where they are buried.

The speaker is tying in astrological influences and human actions, and giving various examples of how behaviour in one land is praised or condemned in another, and it can't be said that every person who does X was born under the same astrological conditions, so that rules astrology out as an explanation for human behaviour.

So who is this Bardaisan?

The Book of the Laws of Countries (henceforth referred to as the BLC) is best described as a philosophical dialogue in defense of free will that aims to set definite limits on the scope of the power of astral determinism. The principal speaker is Bardaisan of Edessa (154-222), the “Aramaic philosopher” who propounded his own unique form of Christianity at the court of King Abgar VIII of Edessa.

So wider point - some places and times approved of, or were neutral towards, homosexuality while others strongly condemned it. This has been a long-running debate and we're not going to solve it here.

A cure for dysphoria?

In Syria and in Edessa men used to part with their manhood in honour of Tharatha; but, when King Abgar became a believer he commanded that every one that did so should have his hand cut off, and from that day until now no one does so in the country of Edessa.

An implication that the church is inventing a new doctrine to stick with the times must address the fact that the doctrine was practiced in the early church, and you've failed to do so.

The answer to this is that pretty much any religion that's been around for a while is going to have a minority arguing for pretty much anything. If it doesn't count as the religion changing their doctrine because a minority in the past already had that position, nothing will ever count as a change in doctrine at all.

Or to put it another way: If "no polygamy" doesn't count because there was always an anti-polygamy faction, could the church change back to polygamy, and that still wouldn't count, because there was always a pro-polygamy faction too?

IDK where your talk about minorities is coming from. When I say the early church I mean the entire early church, including its founder.

Polygamy is less of a mess than the race and the priesthood issue because the church has never said it was wrong or that any doctrine has changed, just that the commandment is now to not practice it. AFAIK it was (and was always presented as) an explicitly pragmatic move so that the church wasn't destroyed.

If you're going to quibble that the faction doesn't count as a minority, I think that misses the point. It's not true that every single important person in your early church, at every single time, opposed polygamy. So while you could claim that opposing polygamy is rooted in church history, someone else could equally claim that supporting it is rooted in church history. This standard lets you justify pretty much anything.

If early church figures really universally opposed polygamy, then why is polygamy associated with the early church at all?

Not sure I understand you. Seems like your point is "there will always be a minority for any position" and my point is "Yeah but I'm not talking about minorities, I'm talking about widespread accepted church practices." At any given point in time, given two conflicting practices (supporting vs opposing polygamy perhaps), one will usually be the majority and one the minority. So long as you stick with the majority, this standard only lets you justify one thing at a time.

That's not to say it's a perfect measure, but I just don't really see where you're going with this. It's in some ways true that opposing polygamy is rooted in church history, but I'd never claim opposition as doctrine for that time period, because it simply wasn't. I would claim "black people have access to the priesthood" as doctrine for that period because it was doctrine.

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