The 0.1% Club: Why 99.9% Of Mormons Are Skipping Becoming Brigham

[I Have Questions]

After watching episode 5, I’m tempted to join the 99.9 percent. Here are some notable exchanges from the episode:

Peterson: I'd say prophets are not divine marionettes. I mean, they will get insight into certain issues in the Lord's timetable, not all issues. Joseph was still learning important things right up to the end of his life. The implication of that is that in 1835 he didn't know as many things as he knew in 1840. Brigham Young was still learning and it's piece by piece, line upon line, precept by precept. We say that but we sometimes don't really mean it. A prophet like anybody else is learning in bits and pieces and gaining insights here and there and occasionally probably being surprised by what he learns, what he's told. To expect a prophet to be somehow omniscient, it just seems to be unrealistic. We put prophets on a pedestal that no human being, including a prophet, can ever really survive on.

I wonder whether Peterson’s response will satisfy anyone who has questions regarding Young’s record on race, his priesthood and temple ordinance ban, and prophetic knowledge. Does abandoning the notion of prophets as “omniscient” and as “divine marionettes” resolve those individuals’ common concerns in this area?

What did Young learn about these matters between 1852 and 1877? Did he receive revelations from God during this period? When? Did Young’s personal views on interracial marriage (see the quotation in my signature) prompt his priesthood and temple ban?

As for Grow’s comments, I think he could identify at least one or two points of Latter-day Saint doctrine that might lead a church member to expect a prophet to prophesy.

It occurs to me that for at least one or two individuals, Young’s teachings and actions pertaining to race, intermarriage, access to priesthood ordination and temple ordinances, violence, and relations with native peoples of Utah (the Timpanogos living in Utah Valley, for example) were not “minor” things. I do regret that Grow gets frustrated by the focus on “the controversial stuff.” He deserves our sympathy.

I think about the implication of Peterson’s comments for the sitting President - Oaks. Because Peterson is stating, explicitly, that Oaks is only “sometimes” getting “divine insight” whilst the rest of the time he’s just speaking as a person with limited knowledge, just like the rest of us. But, like Young did, Oaks will act like, and expect members to believe that, everything he claims is inspired is a divine insight. Oaks might even believe that everything he claims is inspired is indeed a divine insight. But Peterson knows better, apparently.

Peterson is diminishing sitting Prophets in an effort to say that Young wasn’t really all that bad. Here is a quote that Peterson and Grow might do well to reflect on…

We can always trust the living prophets. Their teachings reflect the will of the Lord, who declared: “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.”

To be fair, it’s a bit of a mealy-mouthed claim because it doesn’t say that you can rely on the words of the once-living Prophet. So it is suggesting you can always rely on what Oaks is saying to be of divine insight up to the moment he’s dead. And then those very same divine insights can be claimed to have been just the uninspired words of a man.

But what Peterson is trying to convince his limited audience of, in regards to Prophets, does seem to be an apostate position.

[I Have Questions]

I thought this was interesting

In the past, views drove a video’s discovery and rank: that’s the total number of times anyone clicked “play” on a video.But views only show the number of times a video player loaded, and not whether someone actually wanted to see it, or bothered watching. YouTube recognized that not all views were equal, and adjusted our ranking algorithm to better account for user engagement.In fact, we’ve removed the views report entirely from YouTube Analytics and replaced it with watch time.

Would the Afore be willing to publicise the “watch time” data for Becoming Brigham? Because if a person starts watching and switches off after 30 seconds, it counts as a view the same as if they had watched the whole thing. Not all views are equal.

I also read that, and this is something the Afore may wish to consider (assuming he hasn’t already done so), channel owners can buy subscribers and YouTube are okay with it.

[huckelberry]

Putting all the blame for Mormon racism on BY overlooks some considerations. BY liked his Adam God explanation of Joseph Smith revelations. Other and later church leaders were uncomfortable with it so the teaching was rejected. Accepting all BY taught was not required. On the other hand his ideas about negros were happily seconded continued and insisted on for over a hundred years.

[I Have Questions]

Putting all the blame for Mormon racism on BY overlooks some considerations.

Is someone putting all the blame for the Church’s 200 years of racism on BY?

[huckelberry]

Putting all the blame for Mormon racism on BY overlooks some considerations.

Is someone putting all the blame for the Church’s 200 years of racism on BY?

I don't think anyone would admit to it. I was not thinking of any board participant. I was thinking of the general vagueness in church comments about the ban and the focus on Brigham being a part of general cultural attitudes.

[Doctor Scratch]

Great post, Tom. We were promised that the series would bravely confront the “tough issues,” and BY’s attitudes on race certainly rank right up there. But this has to be seen as a total let-down: “weak gruel,” as the Proprietor would say.

[I Have Questions]

Great post, Tom. We were promised that the series would bravely confront the “tough issues,” and BY’s attitudes on race certainly rank right up there. But this has to be seen as a total let-down: “weak gruel,” as the Proprietor would say.

Overpromising and under-delivering is a Peterson signature.