Sammy Jankins wrote:A reply by Whitney in the comments.
Well, Gary, I really hit a raw nerve, didn’t I?
I recognize that people are legitimately frustrated with my suggestion that “we’ve been lied to” is an oversimplification that maybe we should stop saying. I’m not suggesting that people should just believe the shoddy history that has been produced, I’m only suggesting that the shoddy history may not have been produced with malicious intent to deceive the membership–but rather from a shortsighted preference for a “heritage” approach to history over an academic approach. As a historian yourself, you understand historiographical trends and how easily bad history can be produced, even by people with overall good intentions. History has always been manipulated to serve political ends. I’m not saying we should excuse that, but rather recognize it for what it is and move on—cheering when better history is produced and calling the church out when shoddy history is produced. But it’s a misnomer to say that the “facts speak for themselves.” In most cases, the “facts” of history require interpretation. How we interpret them, what lens we look through, is very much a product of what our interests and priorities are the at present. We assume that what is important to us now must have been equally as important to people fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago. We will never be “done” with History, because we will always find a new interpretive lens to apply on the past and arrive at different conclusions about it. I’m suggesting that the bulk of church leaders for the past half century believed in the overly-simplified narrative that they promoted, and quickly cast aside anything that challenged that narrative without serious examination. Packer’s statements to CES were not, I argue, the remarks of a man well-versed in the history, but rather of willful ignorance. And that is the mess we are in: the result of a “consensus” narrative, willful ignorance, stubbornness in many cases, fear in some cases, and a bias against history that they felt threatened the spiritual aspects of our heritage. I’m arguing that it serves us very little to stand around pointing our fingers, calling out “LIARS!” We would be better served with a modicum of charity; a recognition that the leaders of the church are products of their generation, upbringing, and surroundings, as much as anyone else; and easing up on the “us vs. them” mentality.
Could I have framed it differently? Or chosen a less “clickbait” title? Sure. Guilty as charged. And I apologize to anyone that I offended through carelessness (ironic, since that’s what my post is about). One of my favorite comments that I think really summarizes why I wrote this is:
I actually think understanding how and why we got here allows us to approach where we’re at as a church body with more grace, learn from it and move forward in ways to prevent this from replaying in future generations. I think it’s far more valuable than simply assigning blame.
Whitney's problem is that the Corporation of the President touts itself as the lord's church, the vehicle at which god's oracles stand at the head, that it dispenses "truth". Don't recall GM, IBM or even Enron having set its own standard every so high. So, it is by the Corporation of the President's own standard that it should be evaluated.
Next problem for Whitney is the Corporation of the President's historical narrative is not merely the product of sloppy history. If that were the case, that narrative would not be just the dreamy, mythical, all positive version of JSJr. That is the result of a selection process, and deliberate effort to leave out (and thus hide) the unsavory facts and the mundane ones that might lead to it. No, this was a carefully, deliberately crafted fairy tale.
Third, Correlation is only about the last 50 years of the 185 year history, and much of the "cleansing" of the narrative has occurred during this time. In these 50 years, too, is when the sensen papyrus was found, the KEP was uncovered despite it being tucked away neatly, historian Arrington being replaced with fantasy writers as church historians, the Hoffman forgery debacle, that the black ban from the priesthood went from being a declared in no uncertain terms as a "direct commandment from the Lord" and "doctrine" to being inexplicable policies of men, and even the brown seer stone revealed. All that has come tumbling out, and had to be covered up or were the cover up steps taken since Thomas S. Monson has been one of the FP/12. The current clowns own this, they've had just as much a hand in it as their predecessors--and one of them, Anderson, is calling this month that it is time to "give Joseph a break."
Whitney's got this ass backwards. The currently leaders, who live in this information/internet age, themselves know that the manuals etc still being shipped from the COB is a misleading lie. They could stop it, but at best hide short essays in a far corner of lds.org, essays that only admit a bit of what is commonly known BY THE FP/12. For example, what was in the 55 page essay on Race and the Priesthood that got pared out when they dumbed it down to just a handful of pages. The deception continues, by the current FP/12. They continue to crank out the propaganda. They are liars.