There has been a great deal in the news over the past several years about a generational dichotomy that is leading to a massive exodus of young people from the Church. We have a very colorful past as a Church, and there are a lot of thing in our past that are uncomfortable, scary, and down right disturbing. Traditionally, the approach taken by the leaders of the Church has been to, in effect, ignore those difficult subjects. "If it's not uplifting", the saying goes, "then don't teach or speak of it". I don't disagree with the approach, and for many decades it was a reasonable approach. Those who never ask hard questions will never have their faith tried by answers that are not a simple as they had hoped. However, that does, in my estimation, sell people short. It reduces apostasy, but it also reduces faithfulness.
Additionally, that approach has not been viable for the better part of a decade, and it gets less realistic every year. For decades the Church controlled the narrative, and had control of most of the records, journals, etc about our history. We were able to, in effect, hide the ugliness. The advent of the internet, however, has changed that dramatically. Our detractors make the same claims, but now they can back them up with sources that can actually be read by an average member. And, when faced with only one interpretation of a sub-set of the facts, it is VERY easy to be misled. Unfortunately, the Church continued to ignore the issue, assuming people would simply ignore the anti-Mormon literature out there. That is, until very recently. The last six months have been very refreshing for me.
You see, I spent the better part of 5 years deeply studying the literature of our opponents, and it was really hard work. I read their claims, checked their references, and in many cases had nothing left to stand on but my testimony. I knew that the Church was true, as was the Book of Mormon, and Joseph was a prophet. Yet, those facts were not consistent with many things I learned in those years. Ultimately, I prioritized absolute truth - that truth I had received from God - over partial truth - that truth I'd discovered in my own research. When the two appeared to conflict, I assumed I was missing some facts. I'm forever grateful for the perspective to take that approach.
What's more, after I learned to avoid the anti-Mormon stuff - it never was very uplifting or fulfilling to me - I was still left sitting in Elders' Quorum meetings that were full of nonsense. We'd talk about polygamy, for example, and someone would always mention things like "only a small number of men were polygamists, and they were always called to it by the prophet, and their wife always had to approve, and......." Or we'd talk about the issue of race and the priesthood and all sorts of ideas would fly about why and when and so forth. I was always certain that these "facts" were baseless, but I never had the resources to debunk them. I also heard people downright deny some of our tougher historical realities. The Saints were not just victims of mob violence in Missouri; our members were, at times, the initiators of such violence. The Mountain Meadows Massacre actually happened. It was real, and it was members of the Church that committed that heinous crime.
So what's changed? Well, several things.
First, there was Elder Uchtdorf's talk in this past conference. In it, he freely admits that we (as a Church) have made mistakes. Inspired leaders are not perfect, and not every decision they make is by direct and total revelation from God. It shouldn't need to be said, but it needed to be said. God doesn't have prophets on Earth because he wants to micro-manage the kingdom. If he wanted to make all the decisions, he'd be down here leading it directly. Rather, he wants us to do our best, and steps in when he feels it is particularly important we get things right.
Secondly, there have been two excellent articles added to LDS.org in the last month or two that deal directly with our most visible challenges - polygamy and race. The first one released was entitled Race and the Priesthood, and laid out what most researchers have been saying for a long time. The priesthood ban was, more or less, a direct impact of culture. We got caught up in the racist culture of the time, and once the policy was in place, revelation was required to fix it. It's a great read, albeit a little dry, but very honest.
The other article Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah, is also a frank look at a traditionally ignored subject. I've met many members who had no idea Joseph had more than one wife, and I can't blame them. We did two years in Elders' Quorum and Relief Society from the Joseph Smith manual, and I don't recall any references to any other wives, and the term "his wife" is used often. This article debunks many "well known" myths that I've heard spread for years in lessons. My favorite excerpt:
Still, some patterns are discernible, and they correct some myths. Although some leaders had large polygamous families, two-thirds of polygamist men had only two wives at a time.18Church leaders recognized that plural marriages could be particularly difficult for women. Divorce was therefore available to women who were unhappy in their marriages; remarriage was also readily available.19 Women did marry at fairly young ages in the first decade of Utah settlement (age 16 or 17 or, infrequently, younger), which was typical of women living in frontier areas at the time.20 As in other places, women married at older ages as the society matured. Almost all women married, and so did a large percentage of men. In fact, it appears that a larger percentage of men in Utah married than elsewhere in the United States at the time. Probably half of those living in Utah Territory in 1857 experienced life in a polygamous family as a husband, wife, or child at some time during their lives.21 By 1870, 25 to 30 percent of the population lived in polygamous households, and it appears that the percentage continued to decrease over the next 20 years
For me, these articles and this talk represent a turning point for the Church. A new approach to face our past head on, with honesty. No longer are we leaving doubters to seek answers from those who hate us. Rather, we are giving them good and honest answers to some really hard questions. I really hope the trend continues.
