Whitewashing in the new Joseph Smith Manual?

[_beastie]

Church classes are boring? Do you have horrible teachers or something? Come to mine. I often get big enthusiastic thank-yous and we have a very lively class with a lot of laughs, introspection, and spirituality. I'm the Gospel Essentials teacher and people seem to love my class. The Gospel Doctrine teacher is also brilliant and a lot of fun. We both sit down and present the material in a new way or come up with some new insight that will help the people we're teaching.

I have been to wards where the teachers quite bluntly sucked but those seem to be in the minority. In those cases I just get my scripture study out of the way earlier in the day.

We do discuss different aspects of the gospel examined from the points of view of everyone in the class who chooses to participate. I suppose the intellectual thrill of instructing in obscure topics might be fun but I'll take people coming up in grateful tears and thanking me any day. People come to Church more for help than for facts. It's also the mandate I teach under.

There are plenty of good teachers doing their best to make the material interesting by trying to think of some different or new way to present it.

It's hard, isn't it?

It's hard to find new ways to present material that has been presented to the same members over and over and over and over since they were children.

I'm sure members are grateful when teachers put some effort into livening up what otherwise would be a lesson inducing a snore-fest. But wouldn't it be nice to actually just discuss something stimulating rather than trying to find a new way to present material that has been presented a million times already?

[_The Dude]

Gad quite clearly demonstrated that your 'abridgement' excuse holds no water.

Ummmm, no. He guessed at the cause.

whatever.

Have you read this part of the Joseph Smith manual (I gave the link to the LDS.org site earlier in the thread)? Have you compared it to the actual wentworth letter? And if you've done both, are you seriously claiming there's nothing more going on here, other than simple abridgement?

When I saw the thread on MAD about this I didn't think there was much going on, but then I followed your link to the actual Wentworth letter and realized how much detail they did print, excepting this one part about how the Americas came to be populated by Book of Mormon civilizations. Wow, it's certainly a purposeful decision, premeditated to shape the way people think about the Book of Mormon.

For you who don't read the comments at MAD, here's the TBM explanation:

It could be because that paragraph doesn't seem to contain anything of importance that is not already known (by 99.99% of the people who will read that book).

Yeah, but they printed the articles of faith, which most people have memorized.

It could be to save space.

Really quite doubtful.

It could be to avoid discussions veering off into speculation of the specifics of the passage. I can see this being an important reason. Old men in priesthood could definitely veer off in a direction irrelevant to the lesson if for some reason a conversation on the topic of the section was started. It would not be a discussion I'd want to have a priesthood class where I ought to be subjected to a discussion that would strengthen me spiritually. For this reason alone, now that I think about it, I don't care that they took out the passage.

That's more like it. They thought some uncomfortable discussions could arise so they just eliminated the offending words of the prophet.

Whether Joseph Smith thought that Book of Mormon peoples were the first to arrive here or not has no bearing on my salvation or anyone else's.

Oh please!

It gives the impression that those two groups of people were the only inhabitants; a concept that is not doctrinal.

That's right, it isn't doctrinal anymore. It might have been printed in past editions of the teaching manual, but certainly not in this day and age.

[_harmony]

I agree with everyone else here, Who Knows. . . GREAT CATCH! This is huge, in my opinion. Yet more proof that FARMS is guiding church doctrine, not the prophets, seers, and revelators.

Well, didn't DCP say he was on the curriculum committee?

[_Lucretia MacEvil]

Church classes are boring? Do you have horrible teachers or something? Come to mine. I often get big enthusiastic thank-yous and we have a very lively class with a lot of laughs, introspection, and spirituality. I'm the Gospel Essentials teacher and people seem to love my class. The Gospel Doctrine teacher is also brilliant and a lot of fun. We both sit down and present the material in a new way or come up with some new insight that will help the people we're teaching.

I have been to wards where the teachers quite bluntly sucked but those seem to be in the minority. In those cases I just get my scripture study out of the way earlier in the day.

We do discuss different aspects of the gospel examined from the points of view of everyone in the class who chooses to participate. I suppose the intellectual thrill of instructing in obscure topics might be fun but I'll take people coming up in grateful tears and thanking me any day. People come to Church more for help than for facts. It's also the mandate I teach under.

Uh-huh. As long as you are willing to close your eyes to dishonest manipulation and bury your head in the sand as to the obvious intentions of these "ellipses" you are part of the problem, not the cure.

[_SatanWasSetUp]

Church classes are boring? Do you have horrible teachers or something?

I wouldn't call them horrible teachers. You seem to be blaming the poor members. The teachers, for the most part, are not trained instructors, they don't really know how to teach, they didn't volunteer to teach, they were asked to do it, the only thing they're given to help them is the manual, and they're told to stick to the manual. It's the material that sucks, not the teachers. The church desperately needs new material.

[_The Nehor]

. . . people seem to love my class. The Gospel Doctrine teacher is also brilliant and a lot of fun.

Is the Gospel Doctrine teacher also as humble?

No, she's way more humble.

[_The Nehor]

Church classes are boring? Do you have horrible teachers or something?

I wouldn't call them horrible teachers. You seem to be blaming the poor members. The teachers, for the most part, are not trained instructors, they don't really know how to teach, they didn't volunteer to teach, they were asked to do it, the only thing they're given to help them is the manual, and they're told to stick to the manual. It's the material that sucks, not the teachers. The church desperately needs new material.

Church experiences are supposed to teach us how to teach. Most fall into a rut. If trained instructors and teachers make classes more successful than I suspect I would have enjoyed High School more.

[_The Nehor]

Church classes are boring? Do you have horrible teachers or something? Come to mine. I often get big enthusiastic thank-yous and we have a very lively class with a lot of laughs, introspection, and spirituality. I'm the Gospel Essentials teacher and people seem to love my class. The Gospel Doctrine teacher is also brilliant and a lot of fun. We both sit down and present the material in a new way or come up with some new insight that will help the people we're teaching.

I have been to wards where the teachers quite bluntly sucked but those seem to be in the minority. In those cases I just get my scripture study out of the way earlier in the day.

We do discuss different aspects of the gospel examined from the points of view of everyone in the class who chooses to participate. I suppose the intellectual thrill of instructing in obscure topics might be fun but I'll take people coming up in grateful tears and thanking me any day. People come to Church more for help than for facts. It's also the mandate I teach under.

There are plenty of good teachers doing their best to make the material interesting by trying to think of some different or new way to present it.

It's hard, isn't it?

It's hard to find new ways to present material that has been presented to the same members over and over and over and over since they were children.

I'm sure members are grateful when teachers put some effort into livening up what otherwise would be a lesson inducing a snore-fest. But wouldn't it be nice to actually just discuss something stimulating rather than trying to find a new way to present material that has been presented a million times already?

With the Holy Ghost most gospel topics are incredibly stimulating. Without it, they fall short.

[_The Nehor]

Church classes are boring? Do you have horrible teachers or something? Come to mine. I often get big enthusiastic thank-yous and we have a very lively class with a lot of laughs, introspection, and spirituality. I'm the Gospel Essentials teacher and people seem to love my class. The Gospel Doctrine teacher is also brilliant and a lot of fun. We both sit down and present the material in a new way or come up with some new insight that will help the people we're teaching.

I have been to wards where the teachers quite bluntly sucked but those seem to be in the minority. In those cases I just get my scripture study out of the way earlier in the day.

We do discuss different aspects of the gospel examined from the points of view of everyone in the class who chooses to participate. I suppose the intellectual thrill of instructing in obscure topics might be fun but I'll take people coming up in grateful tears and thanking me any day. People come to Church more for help than for facts. It's also the mandate I teach under.

Uh-huh. As long as you are willing to close your eyes to dishonest manipulation and bury your head in the sand as to the obvious intentions of these "ellipses" you are part of the problem, not the cure.

If the cure is to throw stones on message boards then I don't want to be the cure.

[_beastie]

With the Holy Ghost most gospel topics are incredibly stimulating. Without it, they fall short.

I guess the universal manifestation of being stimulated by the HG is to lean forward, put your head between your hands, and close your eyes. You know, the Mormon "pondering" pose.