John Dehlin: A Spy Story

[_honorentheos]

I think it is most telling how an organization deals with those extreme situations. It illustrates the organization's core meddle and predispositions. It also shows those in the flock what they could expect if they strayed so far, and thus has a very chilling effect on the flock from even wondering in the slightest out of curiosity or whatever the enticement. In some high profile instances, I am sure the organization's punishment is more extreme and dramatic than would be exacted on a 'private' member, just so that news of the punishment has that very chilling effect.

I disagree that how a person/organization behaves in extremis is more informative of who they are than how they behave in normal circumstances. It helps to see people in extremis to know our basic instincts are what they are for very good evolutionary reasons and civilization is meant to bridle them. But that's not particularly relevant as I think the majority of your post is pointing out a fact about any organization. Every group has some form of boundary definition and engages in boundary maintenance. The chilling effect, as we may call it, is kinda the point. Maybe that's a Machiavellian way to see the world, but it's basically true. One doesn't have to look too far to see it occurring anywhere two or three are gathered together in the name of something. or whatever.

[_honorentheos]

To put it most simply,when a person creates a controversial presence that extends beyond the local level, a larger and perhaps orchestrated response is unsurprising. Policy in the church IS being ones brothers keeper. When that becomes overreaching is interesting to me but Dehlin doesn't seem like the victim of much overreaching in that he isn't a typical character. Were wrongs done? And perhaps orchestrated at the highest levels of the church? I guess. But it's a trolley accident thought experiment where the potential victims ran onto the tracks and dare the trolley to run them over. I'm not going to pull a lever or shove a fat guy on the tracks to save them. In that sense it's not interesting.

You are saying the same thing over again. It isn't "interesting" to you. Well, OK. Again, I am fine with that. I don't demand that you be interested. I respect you and your opinion, but I have to agree with sock puppet here. Stresses of the kind that Kate Kelly and John Dehlin placed on the LDS Church tend to show the organization's personality pretty well. I would say that in both cases, as well as many lesser cases, the Church has failed its test. It did not adhere to its policies, and, in my view, it behaved unethically.

We can all agree that if you are a shrimp and you walk up and slap a bully in the face, you have to expect that you will get the s*** kicked out of you. But, at the end of the day, a bully is a bully. And we should not give bullies a pass for being bullies when the people being bullied by them get up the gumption to give them a good slap. And I appreciate those shrimps who give the bully a good slap.

The Church can present itself with an image of puppies and sunshine, but it is at these moments that we see it for what it actually is. As it was back in the day when Brigham Young called for the death of a young attorney and sent his assassins out to kill him, so it is today when L. Whitney Clayton is sent out to find a willing stake president, who will find a willing bishop, who will enlist the aid of a neighbor to go online and poke around John's personal business so that they can haul in John Dehlin and cut John off from the LDS Church.

But, as I said, John Dehlin is, in a way, a distraction here. Put Kate Kelly in there, or the courageous young couple that declared its disbelief in D&C 132. The methods may vary, but the bullying remains the same. The departure from the policies of the CHI is often in the mix. The coordination of discipline by a GA in Salt Lake City, against Church policy, is part of it. Then the subsequent reiteration of the lie that discipline is a local matter follows. Rinse. Repeat.

So, let's go your way. Fine. But then let's also make these things stated policies in a Church Handbook for Members, given to everyone who chooses to receive baptism and join the LDS Church. The secrecy and inconsistencies need to stop. As long as Church leaders choose to run their organization as their organization and not the organization of the members, and they do so opaquely, leaving everyone in the dark as to what is doctrine or not, what one must believe or not, whether it is necessary or not to lick the boots of the apostles, or what have you, then we will continue this cycle of abusive Church leadership enabled by all those who just want to give these poor old guys in Salt Lake City a break for just doing their job after all.

Kishkumen,

It doesn't hurt to repeat that I also respect your opinion, deeply, as you well know. We'll certainly continue to disagree on this point, perhaps because where you see a bully being a bully when antagonized I see a tiger behaving as a tiger.

It does raise a question that I do find interesting. Is it really accurate to describe the LDS church's behavior as being akin to bullying? Is an organization that behaves as organizations are wont to do comparable to an aggressive person taking on weaker people to fill some hole in themselves? Or are organizational dynamics (or corporations, or nation states, or whatever else one wishes to scale up to) functionally different in motivation and function?

I don't feel any sympathy for the couple of examples cited above mostly because I don't think they were playing by different rules than the organization was playing by. Both JD and KK seem savvy enough to know what they were hoping to accomplish, and the dynamics of power. It just so happens they lost the most recent rounds. shrug.

[_honorentheos]

Hi hagoth7,

I tend to think you're right to some extent, though ward gossip can be it's own topic. But what if the bishop had specifically mentioned them in a ward council meeting? What then?

Hi again honorentheos,

I've been in many such meetings. Never once was someone asked to do anything like spy or gossip....on a member visiting a coffee shop...or on anything like it. Also, never once did someone speak up on seeing something even remotely like that. I would imagine the bishop would consider such a bluster an unwelcome intrusion into a busy agenda of much more important issues, and an imposition on the privacy of the individual. Those meetings simply weren't about spying or gossip or investigations. I've been an executive secretary twice, and an EQP once, so I speak with a bit of experience. I imagine some here have considerable more experience with such things than me, but I would be surprised if their experience was any different.

Also, I can remember only twice out of hundreds of more exclusive bishopric meetings (attended by the bishop, his counselors, and myself) when a pending church court was even mentioned, but in neither case was I made privy to the name of the person for whom the pending court was being held. Nor was anyone there asked to investigate anyone.

So from everything that I have seen, discretion and respect for the privacy and decency of individuals was how things were handled. I can't speak for how every ward leader approaches things, but I can certainly vouch for the bishops and ward councils that I observed.

As to bishops expressing concern, I did see cases where genuine concern for the welfare of an individual or a family was expressed. We weren't told specifically what that concern was based on, with the occasional exception of when we might be told someone was in a temporary financial bind and could use help finding work. In any case, it was decided in that meeting which individual should reach out to help, whether it was a representative from the Primary, Youth, Priesthood, or Relief Society or someone like the ward employment specialist.

From my observation, subsequent reporting back to the bishop or to the ward council NEVER included negative issues the visitor might have observed - it was instead all about what we might do as a ward to help meet their needs. THAT is what the council is for.

I think we see this different, hagoth7. I served under two bishops who were incredible good people, genuinely concerned about members of their ward. What you describe wouldn't have occurred in their ward council meetings, either. I served as the executive secretary to both, and later the second then first councilor in the Bishopric with the second. What I tended to observe was the tendancy to let ward gossip slip into how some people discussed who had needs, often with the concern expressed it was possibly behind someone's reduced participation or attitudes towards the church and in the context of considering ways to help fellowship them back to the ward family. It did include sometimes frank discussions by the bishop without naming names but to say something was becoming a problem but never anything at the level of a disciplinary council. Gossip examples included things like an elder's quorum president saying, "So and so (who is is pursuing a degree in archeology) told me he had doubts about evolution and the church"...or a member of the relief society presidency noting that "so and so was watching an r-rated video when they were visited which may influence their not wanting to come to church"...etc., etc. These points were not specifically at the request of the bishop per se, and on occasion they would arise when the council was discussing ward needs and the family name came up. Basically, ward gossip could easily slip into the conversation.

And you have to know how ward gossip works. In over 30 years of activity I never once lived in a ward that didn't have a healthy ward gossip culture at some level. And the leadership was connected in some way. Good people are just people, and wanting to help can be the motive for a lot of things one realizes in retrospect they might not be proud of being part of.

[_sock puppet]

I think it is most telling how an organization deals with those extreme situations. It illustrates the organization's core meddle and predispositions. It also shows those in the flock what they could expect if they strayed so far, and thus has a very chilling effect on the flock from even wondering in the slightest out of curiosity or whatever the enticement. In some high profile instances, I am sure the organization's punishment is more extreme and dramatic than would be exacted on a 'private' member, just so that news of the punishment has that very chilling effect.

I disagree that how a person/organization behaves in extremis is more informative of who they are than how they behave in normal circumstances. It helps to see people in extremis to know our basic instincts are what they are for very good evolutionary reasons and civilization is meant to bridle them. But that's not particularly relevant as I think the majority of your post is pointing out a fact about any organization. Every group has some form of boundary definition and engages in boundary maintenance. The chilling effect, as we may call it, is kinda the point. Maybe that's a Machiavellian way to see the world, but it's basically true. One doesn't have to look too far to see it occurring anywhere two or three are gathered together in the name of something. or whatever.

There's the rub. The forms of that boundary definition vary from group to group, and moreso when dealing with the extreme than not. That's why how a particular group deals with an extreme situation--the form that it takes then--is so defining and distinguishing it from other groups.

[_Mayan Elephant]

That's why how a particular group deals with an extreme situation--the form that it takes then--is so defining and distinguishing it from other groups.

but sock puppet, in the OP and thread examples, we do not even have an extreme situation. the antagonism was actually rather simplistic, just persistent. and in at least one of the cases it was a stunt more than extremism or activism.

now what snowden did, that is extreme. what anonymous is doing, also extreme. i would consider al davis a bit of an extremist of his time. throw pete rose in there too. the examples cited in this thread are tantamount to making clive bundy the face of the american revolution.

i am not defending honorentheos in this, nor am i lumping him into anything i am arguing. i think we have overlapping but different points. i understand his point to be that the social control or organizational control, or whatever process you want to call it, is normal. and in this case, drawing extreme conclusions from normal behavior for the group is not accurate or relevant. and i understand another point of his to be that you cannot put individual psychological diagnoses or speculations and apply them to an organization. that would be like making a clinical depression or anxiety diagnosis about Microsoft or Ford. not really useful. the church is an organization, not person. individuals operate the organization, yes. but it is still an organization.

Pete Rose is an extreme. how he was dealt with may actually be a reflection of MLB. if that was the example, i would agree with you, SP. but that is not what is happening here. in this case, we have someone showing behavior that is not socially or organizationally acceptable, and the group's organization held a boundary. i do not see the extreme. and pretending to have evidence to make it look extreme, does not change that fact. and that is where i may differ from honor on this. honor's points do not at all rely on my arguments and for all i know he too disagrees with me, like everyone else on this thread.

[_suniluni2]

I am a horrible person. I am bad at the core. The angels cried the day i was born. I am a net detriment to the human race. And because i need water to stay alive and i s*** in flushing toilets, im a net deficit for the environment too. When i die alone, the world would be wise to dispose of my ashes beyond the gravitational pull of this planet. In the meantime, here i exist, so low and so void even the devil can't stay. I am making bad choices and poor interpretations. Such is the life as a bigot, sexist, hating, unforgiving exemption of redemption.

Every once in a while you go DCP on us, and I wish you wouldn't.

You're doing a great job, and I agree, I haven't seen any good examples of your brand of spying. I think you guys just differ on what "spying" is. Kish has a broader meaning, yours narrow - that's all.

[_Kishkumen]

It does raise a question that I do find interesting. Is it really accurate to describe the LDS church's behavior as being akin to bullying? Is an organization that behaves as organizations are wont to do comparable to an aggressive person taking on weaker people to fill some hole in themselves? Or are organizational dynamics (or corporations, or nation states, or whatever else one wishes to scale up to) functionally different in motivation and function?

I don't feel any sympathy for the couple of examples cited above mostly because I don't think they were playing by different rules than the organization was playing by. Both JD and KK seem savvy enough to know what they were hoping to accomplish, and the dynamics of power. It just so happens they lost the most recent rounds. shrug.

I believe bullying is an apt description. I challenge the notion that all organizations are equal and respond in exactly the same way. There is boundary maintenance and boundary maintenance. Not all organizations will perform it in the same way with the same mechanisms. The way the LDS Church handles its boundary maintenance is bullying, in my view. And, I think that bullying style does come from the Church's collective sense of identity as a persecuted and marginalized sect.

It seems to me that in some ways the LDS Church behaves like a milder form of Scientology when it is challenged. Does every organization behave like the Church of Scientology? I don't think so.

And, while I understand why it is that people are annoyed with Dehlin and Kelly, as I can say I have been annoyed on occasion, it would be going way too far to say that I have no sympathy for them. However they might have expected things to turn out (and I think both of them saw what happened as a likely outcome), they did what they did at least partially out of their sense that they valued their LDS identity and cared about the future of the LDS Church and its people. They placed a lot on the line to pursue what they did, and they paid an emotionally devastating price for it.

Do I canonize them as saints or see them as innocent victims? No. Do I sympathize with the good intentions they had and the price they paid for acting on them? I sure do.

[_Mayan Elephant]

I believe bullying is an apt description. I challenge the notion that all organizations are equal and respond in exactly the same way. There is boundary maintenance and boundary maintenance. Not all organizations will perform it in the same way with the same mechanisms. The way the LDS Church handles its boundary maintenance is bullying, in my view. And, I think that bullying style does come from the Church's collective sense of identity as a persecuted and marginalized sect.

It seems to me that in some ways the LDS Church behaves like a milder form of Scientology when it is challenged. Does every organization behave like the Church of Scientology? I don't think so.

And, while I understand why it is that people are annoyed with Dehlin and Kelly, as I can say I have been annoyed on occasion, it would be going way too far to say that I have no sympathy for them. However they might have expected things to turn out (and I think both of them saw what happened as a likely outcome), they did what they did at least partially out of their sense that they valued their LDS identity and cared about the future of the LDS Church and its people. They placed a lot on the line to pursue what they did, and they paid an emotionally devastating price for it.

Do I canonize them as saints or see them as innocent victims? No. Do I sympathize with the good intentions they had and the price they paid for acting on them? I sure do.

Kish man. You keep injecting more and more unsuppoerted opinions as if they were factual. I am not sure why you want to do this.

As the conversation deepens, your standards seem to drop.

First, nobody said that all organizations are equal. Hell, the boundary and control process has even been described as a method of control for sovereignties. Before you say anything - nations are also not all the same, just like all organizations are not the same.

You do not know what the intentions are for both characters. For Kate, it may be more obvious and clear. But with John, not a goddamn person can defend or pretend to know his intentions. You may believe you know, but that is a belief based on your feelings and unsupported by ANY facts. Did you pray with real intent to arrive at those feelings?

And finally, neither of your subject examples "paid an emptionally devestating price". Not true. Not only is this not supported by the facts, THE FACTS PROVE THE OPPOSITE.

A persecution complex may be a reasonable hypothesis for the source of the behavior cited in this conversation. Try turning it around though. I think the persecution complex may be alive and well in dehlin and dehlinites.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think the persecution complex may be alive and well in dehlin and dehlinites.

ME,

Who are dehlinites, specifically?

- Doc

[_Mayan Elephant]

I think the persecution complex may be alive and well in dehlin and dehlinites.

ME,

Who are dehlinites, specifically?

- Doc

For this conversation, you, lemmie, kish and cwald. We can't have a dehlin conversation without mentioning cwald and the pleasures of pleasure.

But if you want to expand it, lets just say for now, the group outside the chapel with those signs and candles and crap, kish again, you again, and the mosto subscribers and Facebook groupies.

Its not a formal thing, ya know. You get that?