LDS leaders sin and policies change — and that’s OK, church says in new guides

The term “faith crisis” doesn’t show up anywhere in two brand-new resources on the official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But that appears to be precisely what the guides hope to address.

Nestled under “Topics and Questions,” the material consists of two guides — one for those seeking answers and one to help others with their questions. The advice found within mixes the practical (“Examine your source’s motives and background”) with the abstract (“Be a Christlike example”). And while some suggestions deal explicitly with testimony and questions of faith (“Trust that God is aware”), others are more widely applicable (“Corroborate what you learn”).

More than a mere collection of suggestions, these resources — which went live Dec. 13 and avoid offering answers for specific questions members might have — embody a seismic shift in the church’s approach to handling sticky conversations about its history, theology and policies, according to Latter-day Saints who have committed themselves to making space in the faith community for thorny questions.

Among them is author and scholar Terryl Givens, who described the effort as part of the global church’s ongoing work aimed at the “decriminalization of doubt.”

The importance and power of questions

The guide directed at those grappling with concerns opens with a simple yet meaningful acknowledgment: There are episodes in the church’s past that “may raise difficult questions.”

Quoting apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf, it explains that “some might feel embarrassed or unworthy because they have searching questions regarding the gospel, but they needn’t feel that way.” Rather, “Asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a precursor of growth.”

For Latter-day Saint theologian and anti-racism activist James Jones, this reassurance from an official church publication that “it’s OK if you have uncertainties” is by itself “significant.”

He stressed that for many members, raising difficult questions is “socially costly,” a fact that leads them to keep their arms firmly at their sides during Sunday school.

In contrast, the guides frame earnest inquiry, even on taboo topics, as positive, explaining that “revelation usually starts with a question.”

Esther Candari is an art editor for the Faith Matters’ Wayfare magazine and director of programming at Provos Writ & Vision gallery and bookshop. She greeted this new framing with a sigh of relief.

More than once, she said, she has raised difficult topics and questions in Latter-day Saint spaces only to watch those around her recoil.

“It’s nice,” she said, to be able to point to an official church publication as evidence that “the process of research and questioning” is part of a healthy faith practice.

‘Church leaders…sin’

Times change. Cultures and languages evolve. Don’t be surprised, then, when even “core principles” are “understood and expressed” in new ways, the section titled “Work to Understand the Past” reads.

For Givens, this section constitutes “one of the most remarkable acknowledgments we’ve ever had on the official church site about the role of culture and language in shaping our understandings and in limiting our ability to hear God.”

It’s a recognition, he said, that Protestants and Catholics came to in the early 20th century in what Givens refers to as the “Crisis of Modernism,” a period in which Western Christianity grappled with academic research on topics ranging from the historicity of the Bible to the theory of evolution.

“Our crisis was delayed about a hundred years for all kinds of interesting reasons,” he explained, among them the “insularity of our culture and reliance upon prophets rather than scholars.”

So what has changed?

For one, “wildly optimistic” forecasts made decades ago regarding church growth have “fallen flat.” Meanwhile, Givens said, more and more Latter-day Saints have seen loved ones disappear from the pews due to disaffection. As a result, the church has been forced to grapple with “the fact that God’s language is going to shift, or our understanding of his voice is going to shift with time and culture and context.”

Tied to this realization is the recognition that church leaders make errors.

Uchtdorf conceded as much in a 2013 General Conference sermon. “To be perfectly frank,” he said, “there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine.”

The new online resource builds upon that theme: “When we tell stories from church history, we tend to focus on heroic actions and happy endings,” it states. “It is good to remember people when they were at their best. But we sometimes forget that Latter-day Saints of the past, including early church leaders, were human beings. Human beings have weaknesses. They make mistakes. They sin.”

Becoming more informed

Jones, who graduated from New York’s Union Theological Seminary in May, said one reason questions make people uncomfortable is that they just don’t know how to answer them.

This “general lack of preparedness among members and leaders to minister to those” raising them often leads to “insensitive things being said or concerns being dismissed as consequences of laziness or wickedness.”

The guide “Helping Others with Questions” addresses this issue by calling on readers to put in the work to “become better informed” by pursuing “a thoughtful study of the church’s doctrine and history.”

To Candari, this direction from an official church source for members to study the faith’s history represents “a paradigm shift.” After all, 30 years ago Latter-day Saint leaders were excommunicating and disfellowshipping a number of high-profile intellectuals.

The new language in the guides, the artist said, “feels like an expansion of space, where those of us who function in the academic space and are striving to be active and engaged with the church can breathe.”

Givens likewise applauded this counsel, which he said reinforced a “landmark address” apostle M. Russell Ballard gave to Church Educational System instructors across the globe in 2016.

In it, Ballard, who died last month, informed teachers that they could no longer dismiss or sidestep difficult inquiries from students but instead were responsible for seeking out “the best answers,” whether about Heavenly Mother, race and the priesthood or polygamy.

“Gone are the days when a student asked an honest question and a teacher responded, ‘Don’t worry about it!,’” the apostle said. “Gone are the days when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony as a response intended to avoid the issue.”

He urged seminary and institute instructors to study the church’s Gospel Topics essays, which tackle prickly subjects such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Book of Mormon translation and the former priesthood/temple ban on Black members.

“It is important that you know the content in these essays,” Ballard said, “like you know the back of your hand.”

That message, Givens said, “was a tidal shift.”

Six years after Ballard’s exhortation, the church added a new institute class for young adults titled “Answering My Gospel Questions.” Like the new guides, the class is designed to help members learn how to find answers from reliable sources.

“This course is part of a larger effort to meet the needs of young adults in inviting and relevant ways,” Chad Webb, administrator of seminaries and institutes, said in a news release at the time. “It will allow them to faithfully address current questions and issues.”

More directness still needed

As needed as the guides are, Jones worries that they fall short of providing those with difficult questions what they really want: answers.

“The church is clearly making this in response to concerns with history and policy, which are commonly cited reasons people step away from the church,” he said. “Yet this is still not a direct engagement of those concerns.”

For those wondering where their gay sibling fits into the plan of salvation or if polygamy exists in heaven, giving them “generic counsel about centering your life on Christ or ‘being patient with the Lord’s timing’” probably won’t, he said, resolve anything.

Nonetheless, Jones hopes that the church will find ways to familiarize members with the guides, be it through Sunday school lessons or teacher trainings.

“If the church can name and recognize sincere questions,” he said, “then the general membership can raise them with the rest of us engaging in better faith than we have in the past.”

Do that, Jones said, and the worldwide Latter-day Saint community of 17 million will be that much closer to achieving its ultimate goal: Zion.

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