stemelbow wrote:I've never said it sounds unreasonable to me. The main concern I have now, after getting more of the story, is that John seemed to attempt an ecclesiastical barrier between he and Dr. Peterson. Other than that, I get the concern. And, in a way, I get why he included others in his emailing. I think DCP did not appreciate the way he went about it, and I think DCP was going through quite a bit at the time. I get why he reacted as he did.
I am not sure what you mean by ecclesiastical barrier. But indulge me for a moment.
One might ask what business one member of the LDS Church (Greg Smith/Daniel Peterson) has publishing a long negative article about another member of the LDS Church (John Dehlin) under the auspices of the Church's university (BYU), when to our knowledge Greg Smith/Daniel Peterson has no ecclesiastical stewardship over John Dehlin and was not called upon by anyone with stewardship of such a kind to do what he did. I mean, we all get the idea of men "anxiously engaged in a good cause," but this seems to go way overboard and gets into rather murky territory.
Oh sure, it's not unprecedented. But maybe it is time to start thinking about this in "Correlated" terms. Where is the line of authority or procedure for this? Where does it fit into the CHI or the regular workings of the priesthood, which are supposed to be the model for all Church activities now? If the priesthood is *the* model, how does this conform to that model?
Might not the idea of pastoral apologetics better conform to Correlation?
If we were to title the journal appropriately for this purpose of writing critically about John Dehlin and other such people, how would Neal A. Maxwell Journal for Exposing Liberal Mormons sound?
When it comes to the human and situational aspects of these particular events, however, I do sympathize with Daniel. I am happy he did not receive an angry communication from a General Authority in the midst of all of the other stresses he has had in his life recently. I understand why both he and John reacted strongly to the situation. And I think that the Neal Maxwell Institute needs to stop publishing articles critical of members of the Church in good standing.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist