Holland, Holy Temples and Harmons at City Creek
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:51 pm
Some personal observations:
Obviously Elder Holland’s BBC interview was not his finest television moment. But I think we can be confident that the BBC production crew was probably not very interested in casting Mitt Romney or the Church in a favorable light, and probably not even in a truly objective light. Now, if the subject of the program had been Christopher Hitchens, or the plausibility of atheism’s arguments, or Buddhism, or something more attractive to the far left-leaning British media, the BBC would take great pains to edit the film with beautiful, flattering scenery, inspiring music, and they would be careful to edit their subjects’ interviews to remove all fidgeting, moments of tongue-twist, inconsistency in statements. They would even take pains to ensure that camera placement and lighting was optimal to make their subject as attractive and smooth as possible.
Even the program’s music – the short, sharp, shots of sound – seems designed to create a viewing atmosphere of mystery and even dread, as if Salt Lake was the personification of Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World. In reality, the production crew was probably bored out of their skulls in Salt Lake while they filmed.
The show seems to portray a lot of weird folk in general. If Holland comes across like a nervous buffoon, some of the Church’s critics they interview seem equally silly. For example, at about the 7:05 mark in part 1 of the BBC show on YouTube, a lapsed or estranged member being interviewed at a restaurant insists that he’s been followed by ex-FBI and ex-CIA agents within the past month. The implication is that the “Strengthening the Church Members” committee hired the goons to shadow the guy because he had begun to be publically critical of the Church. However, the inference I took from his comments was that he was a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
The Strengthening the Church Member’s committee is something we all know about and something hopefully most of us are embarrassed about. According to Wikipedia, the committee was started at the behest of President Benson only in the mid-1980’s, but the recent apostles have defended its formation by claiming that such a committee is actually called for in D&C 123. The committee was behind the September Six fiasco and still operates to this day. Apologists would cite the role of the committee as a body whose mission is to make sure that publically disseminated information about the Church, by Church members in particular, is not erroneous or doctrinally wrong. Critics would call the committee the ultimate religious Big Brother. However, the most the committee can do is refer a questionable matter to a member’s ecclesiastical leader, and the most that leader can do is excommunicate the member. To a lapsed or antagonized member, the threat of such action is largely meaningless, I suppose.
The truth of the committee is probably one of cubical tedium. I can imagine a small paid staff of 10-25 people, overseen by a rotating member of the Quorum of Seventy or the Twelve, who surf the internet all day and read all the latest printed material they can find, whether from critics or from friends. You can bet that every day they make edit suggestions on Wikipedia on the myriad Church-based articles. You can be sure that all belong to Mormon Discussions and Mormon Curtain and Mormon Dialogue and that they have a fairly big file on William Schryver.
In the modern media age, I expect the committee to take on less and less of a role, and be discontinued ultimately. There is simply no way to police an organization the size of the Church, even if 60% of its members are inactive and no longer associate with it any way. There is no way to police all the stuff said in the media about the Church, and no way to rectify even lies or half-truths they come across, except with the threat of religious sanction which, as noted above, is not a deterrent for a hostile member.
We have a long way to go, still. Unfortunately for the Church, this type of media scrutiny will only increase as time goes by. It’ll become especially noticeable this summer and autumn as we head into the general election cycle, but will continue to increase. Mitt Romney will be assailed from every angle by his opponents, which include most of the American and European media, including the bizarre church to which he belongs. Let’s face it, folks: the Church has a strange history and none of us have ever been helped by simply learning the whitewashed version of it. Give us the truth, and we can – and generally will – study, ponder, pray, and eventually accept. But, give us legends and unassailable historical dogma, and nobody is edified other than the Church’s enemies. People like Marlin Jensen understand that, as do New Mormon Historians like Richard Bushman, who never approaches the common Packer-esque historical dogma in his book on Joseph Smith.
Did you notice that for the first time in many years this past General Conference, there were no new temple announcements? I’ve researched this today, and have learned that during the last 4 decades, there has always been a temple announcement at every general conference except for the following years: 1974, 1977, 1979, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, and 1995. So, while the lack of new temple announcements isn’t unprecedented, it is uncommon over the past 40 years, and it hasn’t happened at all since 1995. Perhaps they’ll have a new temple to announce later this year in October. Or, perhaps the 5 billion USD City Creek Center has bled the coffers dry for a while. Plus, with only a 40% activity rate in the Church, perhaps they can’t financially justify new temples even though they want to build them.
It seems like many of the temples sit largely vacant, with just a few sessions a week. Frankly, it shouldn’t be too surprising since there are only so many ancestors a member of the Church can locate and do work for. Most members in Utah and the western U.S. are born into the Church, where genealogy has already been exhaustively done. Most members that I know literally have no ancestors of their own they can do work for, and that is supposed to be what temple work is all about. I know that repetitious temple work for the same people is a big problem in the Church. On NewFamilySearch.org, the Church’s website where a member can access his family tree and see what temple work has been done and for what ancestors and where, and also where a member can add to his family tree any newly researched ancestor and what temple has been done/needs to be done, I saw something interesting recently. I noticed that temple work for my grandparents, including baptism/confirmation and the higher ordinances were done multiple times over the past three decades. My grandparents were born in the Church and had already received their ordinances during mortal life. Temple work isn’t needed for them, yet some well-intended descendants decided to have their temple ordinances done several times.
Anyways, upwards and onward.
Obviously Elder Holland’s BBC interview was not his finest television moment. But I think we can be confident that the BBC production crew was probably not very interested in casting Mitt Romney or the Church in a favorable light, and probably not even in a truly objective light. Now, if the subject of the program had been Christopher Hitchens, or the plausibility of atheism’s arguments, or Buddhism, or something more attractive to the far left-leaning British media, the BBC would take great pains to edit the film with beautiful, flattering scenery, inspiring music, and they would be careful to edit their subjects’ interviews to remove all fidgeting, moments of tongue-twist, inconsistency in statements. They would even take pains to ensure that camera placement and lighting was optimal to make their subject as attractive and smooth as possible.
Even the program’s music – the short, sharp, shots of sound – seems designed to create a viewing atmosphere of mystery and even dread, as if Salt Lake was the personification of Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World. In reality, the production crew was probably bored out of their skulls in Salt Lake while they filmed.
The show seems to portray a lot of weird folk in general. If Holland comes across like a nervous buffoon, some of the Church’s critics they interview seem equally silly. For example, at about the 7:05 mark in part 1 of the BBC show on YouTube, a lapsed or estranged member being interviewed at a restaurant insists that he’s been followed by ex-FBI and ex-CIA agents within the past month. The implication is that the “Strengthening the Church Members” committee hired the goons to shadow the guy because he had begun to be publically critical of the Church. However, the inference I took from his comments was that he was a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
The Strengthening the Church Member’s committee is something we all know about and something hopefully most of us are embarrassed about. According to Wikipedia, the committee was started at the behest of President Benson only in the mid-1980’s, but the recent apostles have defended its formation by claiming that such a committee is actually called for in D&C 123. The committee was behind the September Six fiasco and still operates to this day. Apologists would cite the role of the committee as a body whose mission is to make sure that publically disseminated information about the Church, by Church members in particular, is not erroneous or doctrinally wrong. Critics would call the committee the ultimate religious Big Brother. However, the most the committee can do is refer a questionable matter to a member’s ecclesiastical leader, and the most that leader can do is excommunicate the member. To a lapsed or antagonized member, the threat of such action is largely meaningless, I suppose.
The truth of the committee is probably one of cubical tedium. I can imagine a small paid staff of 10-25 people, overseen by a rotating member of the Quorum of Seventy or the Twelve, who surf the internet all day and read all the latest printed material they can find, whether from critics or from friends. You can bet that every day they make edit suggestions on Wikipedia on the myriad Church-based articles. You can be sure that all belong to Mormon Discussions and Mormon Curtain and Mormon Dialogue and that they have a fairly big file on William Schryver.
In the modern media age, I expect the committee to take on less and less of a role, and be discontinued ultimately. There is simply no way to police an organization the size of the Church, even if 60% of its members are inactive and no longer associate with it any way. There is no way to police all the stuff said in the media about the Church, and no way to rectify even lies or half-truths they come across, except with the threat of religious sanction which, as noted above, is not a deterrent for a hostile member.
We have a long way to go, still. Unfortunately for the Church, this type of media scrutiny will only increase as time goes by. It’ll become especially noticeable this summer and autumn as we head into the general election cycle, but will continue to increase. Mitt Romney will be assailed from every angle by his opponents, which include most of the American and European media, including the bizarre church to which he belongs. Let’s face it, folks: the Church has a strange history and none of us have ever been helped by simply learning the whitewashed version of it. Give us the truth, and we can – and generally will – study, ponder, pray, and eventually accept. But, give us legends and unassailable historical dogma, and nobody is edified other than the Church’s enemies. People like Marlin Jensen understand that, as do New Mormon Historians like Richard Bushman, who never approaches the common Packer-esque historical dogma in his book on Joseph Smith.
Did you notice that for the first time in many years this past General Conference, there were no new temple announcements? I’ve researched this today, and have learned that during the last 4 decades, there has always been a temple announcement at every general conference except for the following years: 1974, 1977, 1979, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, and 1995. So, while the lack of new temple announcements isn’t unprecedented, it is uncommon over the past 40 years, and it hasn’t happened at all since 1995. Perhaps they’ll have a new temple to announce later this year in October. Or, perhaps the 5 billion USD City Creek Center has bled the coffers dry for a while. Plus, with only a 40% activity rate in the Church, perhaps they can’t financially justify new temples even though they want to build them.
It seems like many of the temples sit largely vacant, with just a few sessions a week. Frankly, it shouldn’t be too surprising since there are only so many ancestors a member of the Church can locate and do work for. Most members in Utah and the western U.S. are born into the Church, where genealogy has already been exhaustively done. Most members that I know literally have no ancestors of their own they can do work for, and that is supposed to be what temple work is all about. I know that repetitious temple work for the same people is a big problem in the Church. On NewFamilySearch.org, the Church’s website where a member can access his family tree and see what temple work has been done and for what ancestors and where, and also where a member can add to his family tree any newly researched ancestor and what temple has been done/needs to be done, I saw something interesting recently. I noticed that temple work for my grandparents, including baptism/confirmation and the higher ordinances were done multiple times over the past three decades. My grandparents were born in the Church and had already received their ordinances during mortal life. Temple work isn’t needed for them, yet some well-intended descendants decided to have their temple ordinances done several times.
Anyways, upwards and onward.