Transcript of Boyd Packer’s Address at Multi-Stake Conference

Editorial Note: I have previously reported about rumors of Boyd Packer’s and Gordon Hinckley’s response to criticism of Julie Beck’s conference address, which has not only been discussed with a variety of points of view on the Bloggernacle and the DAMU but also by readers posting on the websites of various Utah newspapers.

Thanks to Saganist who has attended the conference, we now have a transcript of the speeches that we can share with you.

Here is the entire text of Boyd Packer’s speech:

I am very happy to be here this morning, and doubly happy because we live in this area, so our families are in stakes that were not invited to the Conference Center, so they’re listening in the stake centers from Kamas to Herriman. That’s the way it is now in the church, because of the great growth of the church. The number of General Authorities can’t increase, so the manner of broadcasting stake conferences around the world has become part of who we are and what we do. I was very happy to see all the little children here as we came in. We love little children.

I’d like to speak to you as families, and I suppose my message could be summed up in “do not fear”. Fear is the opposite of faith. And in the world that we live in, other speakers have mentioned the difficulties and challenges, but we’re not afraid. The church moves on across the world, and we see the hand of the Lord in what is done. We are broadcasting in General Conference in over 100 languages. This conference here, we’re broadcasting in four languages in this building, and about another four languages out to some of the stake centers. So we’re becoming a very cosmopolitan congregation in the church. The promises made and the challenges given by the Lord to preach the gospel in every nation, kindred, tongue, and people is being fulfilled.

When the pioneers first entered this valley, some of the brethren went up on Ensign Peak, which is just a very short distance north of us here. And President Young took a yellow bandana that Heber C. Kimball was wearing around his neck, and they put it on a stick, and they waved it and said, “Hooray, hooray for Zion!” And this was an ensign to the world, and they talked about the gospel moving forward. Not likely, that they were living in wagons then, had been driven from here and there, and were settled here and yet we see the fulfillment of the promises that the Lord has made.

Now we know we’re tested, and to you little children and to your parents, I say, don’t be afraid. Be happy. Life is good. And you can find a full and a righteous life ahead, for children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren because the work is not done. And parents, you assure your children, particularly you little children, that you need not fear if you will be prayerful. The Book of Mormon makes it very clear that men and women, yea even little children, oft do have things given unto them that confound the wise and the learned. So little children can be watched over and blessed.

We have a large family, and I traveled a lot in our early married life, and that left my wife to take the children to church in the Lindon ward. She was sitting there with the children, almost a rowful of them. And our children, unfortunately, were just like your children. Or maybe fortunately. Because one of them would push another, and then he’d say, “Don’t look at me, don’t touch me.” So my wife was trying to handle this little brood, and Sister Walker, a gray-haired grandmother in the ward, moved from the back row up, slid in the row where my wife was sitting with the little children, sat between two of them, broke up some of the combinations, and then after the meeting, as they were leaving, she said to my wife, “You have your hands full, don’t you?” And my wife shook her head. “Yes, I have my hands full.” She then patted her on the hand and said, “Your hands full now, your heart full later.” And as we have raised our children, married now and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, we have the assurance and have come to know from our own experience that the power of the gospel and safety can surround them.

There are so many things that you parents can see that are not done. You wish you could do them. And so many things that are not quite right. We have some of you who are not married and want to be married. Some who are divorced. Others have other problems of one kind or another. They’re the problems of employment, there’s a problem of housing and food and clothing and shelter that are so real. And sometimes we maybe think that we’re not doing quite as well as we ought to.

There were two farmers once who had adjoining fields. The one never worked in his field on Sunday, and his neighbor used to chide him about it. He said, “Your crops aren’t doing as well as mine are. Why don’t you work on Sunday?” He said, “Well, I want to do what the Lord said. I want to gain the blessings of the Lord.” Then one October day, they stood at the fence line, and the one farmer said, “Well, just look at it. Look at my field. It’s beautiful, the grain is tall, the heads are full of wheat. And yours show a little sign of neglect. You haven’t tended yours as well as I have tended mine. Look at my harvest compared to yours. What do you say now about the blessings you thought you were earning?” This man thought for a few minutes and said, “Well, the Lord doesn’t balance his books in October.”

As Latter-day Saints, we don’t get everything done, we don’t get it done in our lifetimes. Sometimes we see challenges and problems that don’t get fixed. And yet if we have the patience and have the understanding, we know that we’re in an eternal pattern in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it goes on. And no blessing will be denied the righteous who are striving to do that which is good. Sometimes there are wayward children, and parents mourn and wonder. And sometimes those things don’t get fixed in mortality.

Once in a general conference, I made a statement quoting both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to the effect that if parents were sealed in the temple and lived faithfully, they would not lose their children. That the promise was that in the eternal scheme of things, their children would be protected. I got an interesting letter from one woman. She was upset at the talk. She talked about her boy that was wayward, and she said, “He doesn’t deserve to be redeemed.” She told me, without thinking she did, what part of the problem was. The matter of raising families isn’t easy, and it doesn’t all get done in this lifetime. And the Lord doesn’t harvest everything in October. It isn’t all accounted for there. So you who have things that are worrying you or disappointing you or that are breaking your heart, just have faith. And do not fear. You little children, learn to pray.

The story is told of a little girl that was upset with her brother. He was building a trap to catch birds. She one day went out and kicked that trap to pieces. She had said to her brother, “You won’t catch any birds. I know, because I have prayed about it.” Well, she acted on her prayer to make sure it came true. Little children are very wise. We’re always smiling at one another, my wife and I, at the profound wisdom that comes from our children.

I was in a conference in Virginia not too many months ago, and I asked the stake presidency, wise, experienced men, as I often do, “Tell me what the biggest problem is that you have in this stake.” And the president gave me an answer in a simple sentence that I thought of over and over again. He said, “Our problem is that the programs and activities of the church are becoming a substitute for a testimony of the gospel.; The programs and activities of the church are becoming a substitute for a testimony of the gospel.

Now we have 107 stake presidents in this combined conference, and I would think between 650 and 700 bishops. Stake presidents are stake presidents. You are given the keys of presidency. You are to do what is best for your stake. If you do what is best, you will see that there is room for the families to be families. There will be time on Sunday for families to get together, and meetings sometimes are shorter than they might have been otherwise. Some meetings will not be called. Now the essential ones we call, the ones that are not optional. But we put so many other things on the schedule that parents sometimes have a hard time meeting their children. All kinds of activities.

Now I know we hear the statement, “If we don’t provide it, they’ll go to the community or the school for the various activities.” That part of it is not our problem. That part of it is for them to choose. But if we leave room and teach parents to gather their children, and to be fathers and mothers, that’s the eternal part of their activities.

I was out in the Uinta Basin a year or so ago, and I noticed a large number of gray-haired women. Widows, obviously, and I commented to the stake president about them. These beautiful grandmothers and great-grandmothers sitting there in the meeting, and faithful. I said, “Oh, how blessed you are to have these lovely grandmothers.” And he said, “Yes, but they’re not active in the church.” I thought for a minute and said, “Well, are they active in the gospel?” He’d never thought of that. It was the coming and going to meetings and the getting their names on the records that was counted as valuable. Are they active in the gospel?

We’ve sent our children away on some occasions, one of our sons and his little family were leaving in a car that wasn’t all that reliable to go to one of the eastern states to take his job. As we saw them drive out the gate and prayed that the car would make it, and a tear or two from the wife, and maybe one or two from the father, I said, “It’s all right. They’ll have a grandma there.” And we’ve told them, when they get to places, that there’s always a grandma in the ward, to look after them, and told our son that the older people around are very wise. They’ve been where you are, and done what you’re doing. See if you can find a grandma and a grandpa for your children while they’re there. And they’re there. You’re here in this meeting.

I was there to visit them. He had bought a little home, and the brick on the one corner of the house was eroded, so that I thought it needed repair. He actually showed it to me and asked me what to do about it. I didn’t know because I hadn’t lived in that climate. I could have said, “Why don’t you get a professional to come out and look at it?” but I said, “Is there an older couple that lives near here?” He said, “Yes, over across the street and down a few houses, there’s an older couple, but I haven’t met them.” I said, “Why don’t you go over someday and talk to this older man, not a member of the church, and ask him to come over and say, ‘Look at that’ and see what he would suggest.” He’d lived there all his life, he’d seen that a lot of times, and knew what to do about it. And everybody is happy to help everybody.

Now I want to say a word to you about living here, in the environs of the church headquarters. We are in the middle of the opposition of the church. That’s gone on forever, and we see so much published in the newspapers, and particularly on the Internet, those who are criticizing the church or criticizing the leaders, the priesthood or auxiliary leaders. Sometimes they’ve asked me, “What do the brethren think of this?” And I say, “Not much. We don’t have time.” We’re trying to operate the church across the world, and we don’t talk about those things, and in one way aren’t interested in them. When we see the enormous growth of the church, the marvel that’s there and the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are not turned away by that opposition. It’s always been there. In fact, it isn’t our problem, it’s theirs. We don’t oppose them and we don’t go out preaching against them, trying to disturb them. They can go their way. So it becomes their problem.

We can say, however, that they can’t escape the consequences. Let me read what the Lord said about that.

“Cursed are all those who shall lift up the heel against mine anointed, saith the Lord, and cry they have sinned when they have not sinned before me, saith the Lord, but have done that which was meet in mine eyes, which I have commanded them. But those who cry transgression do it because they are servants of sin, and are the children of disobedience themselves. And those who swear falsely against my servants, that they might bring them down unto bondage and to death– wo unto them; because they have offended my little ones they shall be severed from the ordinance of my house.” A terrible penalty. “Their baskets shall not be full, their houses and their barns shall perish, and they themselves shall be despised by those that flattered them.” And then the most terrible of all penalties, “They shall not have the right to the priesthood, nor their posterity after them for generation to generation.”

The Lord has said he will fight our battles, and we don’t wince much when there’s opposition and challenges. We go back and take care of our families and do the best we can. There are so many things that are apparent in family life, the wife and the mother, and their challenges.

President Lee told a few of us once that he had gone east to reorganize a stake. The man he chose by revelation as we know it was the husband of the stake primary president. He explained that we don’t usually put two official presiding positions, load that onto the same couple, so he explained that in the morning, she’d be released from her assignment as president of the stake primary. She was not pleased. The next morning, she approached then-Elder Lee and said, “Elder Lee, I misunderstood you, didn’t I? I won’t be released as primary president because my husband was called as stake president.” And I’m sure Brother Lee was thinking of the family. As wonderful as it is to give that service, there was a family to be taken care of. She said, “I misunderstood you, didn’t I?” He said, “Dear sister, Harold B. Lee has many faults and failings, but being misunderstood is not one of them.”

There are times when decisions must be made by bishops and stake presidents. Bishops look after the families. We know you look after the organizations, and there are many, and the activities are multitudinous. But look after the family. You’ll have a lot of decisions to make, and you have the authority to make them. The bishop is the presiding officer of the ward. He has the right to revelation and inspiration concerning all that goes on in the ward. The stake president likewise. Each of them holds the keys. The priesthood keys are a powerful safety authority to govern church organizations, and to look after the church in such a way that families can have breathing room.

We have so many things going on, and we ought to look at ourselves and you’ve already been told by the other speakers to slow down. And to, the scripture quoted, “be still and know that I am God.” Each of us in the church have the gift of the Holy Ghost conferred upon us at the time of our baptism, in a ceremony separate from baptism. As the Article of Faith says, “baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.” And that is a great and marvelous blessing. As we look across the church and visit the church in the world, we have the assurance that wherever we go, there will be leaders to lead the church, guided by inspiration. But more and more we see fathers and mothers, clinging to one another, raising their children, following the counsel and guidance of the Holy Ghost.

Part of the duty and office of the Holy Ghost is to warn. You’ll be warned of dangers, and learn to follow those warnings, and your little children likewise. Teach your little children not to be afraid. Tell them at night not to be afraid, that the Lord loves them and the Father in Heaven loves them. He is a father, and he has that love for them for all of us, and he will watch over us, to the end that we can look forward to the great and marvelous things that are ahead of us, ahead of this church. We don’t downsize anything in the church. Everything is growing. Everything is moving across the world. There is power and strength and faith in it.

If we will do the simple things of paying our tithing, observe the Word of Wisdom, attend the temple and make sure the ordinances are in place, and do the best we can, to make a living and have a family, and see them well taken care of. Now if you do all of that, your field might not be quite as productive as the one next door. And you may look at others who seem to have so many more blessings than you do when you have the challenge of meeting the obligations and seeing all that’s entailed in keeping your children in school. You may wonder, “Why aren’t we more blessed materially?” Just think of that farmer, who was wise and inspired in answering the question, “Where are your blessings now?” The Lord doesn’t balance his books in October.

And you’ll be blessed, and as time goes on, you’ll see that the Lord has been looking over you, as you’ve been faithful Latter-day Saints, paying your tithing and the other obligations. And you’ll come to know that this is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, by his own declaration. And his power is upon it, and the Father broods over it. The Lord said he did nothing save what he saw his Father do. We have a Father in Heaven. A father. I bear witness that the Father lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph Smith was the prophet of God. I bear witness of Gordon B. Hinckley. I love him. See him often, sit next to him. I’ve seen the power of inspiration and revelation come to him. And the guidance and correction and direction of the church, that is poured out upon Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet, seer, and revelator. I pray the blessings upon all of us, as fathers, as mothers, as grandfathers, as grandmothers, as children, as members of his church. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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28 Responses

  1. Phouchg says:

    “”What do the brethren think of this?” And I say, “Not much. We don’t have time.” We’re trying to operate the church across the world, and we don’t talk about those things, and in one way aren’t interested in them.”

    So why are you bringing it up? You know why, Kenny-Boyd – you secretly LOVE it. If all the criticism went away, you would have no reason to live. If there were no opposition to TSCC, you would have to create it, just like The Party created Emmanuel Goldstein.

  2. swisster says:

    I think the apostles don’t want to spend too much time listening to the concerns of the American church. But of course, some of the ideas from American intellectuals could actually help the international church a great deal. Here’s a quote from the extended PBS “The Mormons” interview with Kathleen Flake:

    “I think when you talk about intellectuals, you’re talking about American members. Who are these American members? They are the children of the pioneers.

    “I think…the Mormon Church leadership …expects its life members to not rock the boat because they don’t want to think about the United States. They have too many fires burning everywhere else, to mix my metaphors. And so when fifth-generation, sixth-generation Mormons run around asking how many angels can stand on the head of pin, or why is that bad guy over there doing something over there and why aren’t you doing something about it, then they just want them to fix the problems themselves. That’s why everyone has revelations — just go away and fix it, and meanwhile I’ve got to go figure out how to build a chapel a day for the next foreseeable future; I have to figure out how to get out of some country or into some country. They don’t want to think about the American church.”

  3. Hellmut says:

    Thanks for the quote, Swisster. You wouldn’t happen to remember who said that, please?

  4. chandelle says:

    “If we don’t provide it, they’ll go to the community or the school for the various activities.”

    oh, the horror!!!

    “Why don’t you go over someday and talk to this older man, not a member of the church, and ask him to come over and say, ‘Look at that’ and see what he would suggest.”

    yes, go out on a limb and deign to talk to someone “not a member of the church.”

    and how does:

    “we don’t go out preaching against them”

    make sense when two sentences later he PREACHES a hostile scripture AT them?

    all in all, makes me glad i left. i love to read a long talk like this in which christ isn’t mentioned at all but in passing. oh, but growth, growth, growth. condemnation, condemnation, condemnation. does my heart good.

    that being said, i did like what he said about being active in the gospel if not in church. i hope some will take heed to that if they are struggling.

  5. Wayne says:

    He lost me somewhere after the story about the two farmers.

    I think, I understood his point. What I got from it was that the farmer who works on Sunday will get to feed his family and the other will have to get church welfare.

  6. dpc says:

    Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see where Boyd K. Packer singled out the critics of Sister Beck and her talk as Hellmut’s source claimed he did. He only spoke about critics in general.

    Hellmut: Why do you think that he raised this point as specifically in response to Sister Beck’s talk? Did the other speakers reference it and it’s one of those things you can’t get from reading the transcript, but everyone who was there knew what he was talking about? I get the feeling he was focusing more on the people arguing about why the number of angels that could dance on the head of a needle didn’t match the scientific and historic evidence

    Swisster said:

    “But of course, some of the ideas from American intellectuals could actually help the international church a great deal.”

    Because we all know that Americans have the answers to all the world’s problems regardless of their ignorance of local conditions, culture and practices.

    Will Americans (Mormon and non-Mormon) ever lose their Puritanical “We’re the light on the hill, we have all the answers” arrogant attitude?

  7. chandelle says:

    i believe hellmut was referring to the following:

    We are in the middle of the opposition of the church. That’s gone on forever, and we see so much published in the newspapers, and particularly on the Internet, those who are criticizing the church or criticizing the leaders, the priesthood or auxiliary leaders. Sometimes they’ve asked me, “What do the brethren think of this?” And I say, “Not much. We don’t have time.” We’re trying to operate the church across the world, and we don’t talk about those things, and in one way aren’t interested in them. When we see the enormous growth of the church, the marvel that’s there and the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are not turned away by that opposition. It’s always been there. In fact, it isn’t our problem, it’s theirs. We don’t oppose them and we don’t go out preaching against them, trying to disturb them. They can go their way. So it becomes their problem.

    We can say, however, that they can’t escape the consequences. Let me read what the Lord said about that.

    “Cursed are all those who shall lift up the heel against mine anointed…”

    i’m going on a limb here, because i’m usually one to point to americans as the cause of most of the world’s ills. but i do think that specifically mormon intellectuals could indeed help the international church. americans have so many privileges and one of them is access to most any information available in the world. mormon intellectuals who have access to that information can condense it, interpret it, and dispense it in ways that people who don’t have regular access to such materials may not have the opportunity. i think that’s a pretty benign statement about american intellectuals, since of course that could be applied to any privileged member of the western hemisphere.

  8. dpc says:

    chandelle:

    Are you arguing for a new kind of “White Man’s Burden” here?

    With all due respect to American intellectuals, I think people from around the world have access to the same types of information without the need for any American to muddy it with their interpretations. I’ve been to Central America and Asia several times and never had any problems accessing the Internet or any of the information there. You don’t have to be rich to use an Internet cafe after all.

    I would rather local leaders who know local conditions better solve problems rather than the armchair theories of distant intellectuals.

  9. chandelle says:

    “Are you arguing for a new kind of “White Man’s Burden” here?”

    absolutely not.

    i can see that i was misunderstood, but i’m not sure how to rephrase my statement. suffice to say that i DO agree with you, but still believe that there’s a place for intellectuals in the universal church.

  10. swisster says:

    #3 — The quote is from Kathleen Flake from Vanderbilt Divinity School. Here’s the link:

    http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/flake.html

    Re: American intellectuals’ good ideas to help the international church — All I meant was stuff I DO read on the blogs like expanding the definition of ‘worshipful music,’ limiting the influence of American middle class business values on church doctrine, allowing for more local decision-making and curriculum-making. These ideas aren’t even necessarily “intellectual;” but to me, they show an open-mindedness and a willingness to learn from the Saints in India and Taiwan, not just tell them what how gospel works for Americans. In fairness, I’m sure the apostles probably DO discuss a range of ideas, but change is always hard…

  11. Hellmut says:

    Hi dpc,

    I agree with you that it is not obvious that Packer responds to a particular event.

    Watching LDS leaders reminds me a little bit of Kremlinology during the cold war. One has to read between the lines to figure out what is going on. When Pravda reported that fatty food was unhealthy that might have meant that the planned economy had run out of sausages, for example. Mormon management is similarly opaque.

    I am assuming that Boyd Packer is a reasonably intelligent person with a track record of paying close attention to what is going on at the margins of Mormon orthodoxy.

    When Grant Palmer was disfellowshipped, Packer, for example, appeared to be responding to An Insider’s View by giving a talk about the Book of Mormon a couple of weeks later during General Conference.

    Of course, Packer neither mentioned Palmer nor his book, which only would have amplified Palmer’s publicity. But Packer did speak to the problems that arise from the questions the Palmer is raising.

    If one carefully reads Packer’s stake conference address, a couple of issues jump out.

    a) He begins to talk about how much we love children. (It is unclear who the pronoun refers to. It could stand for Mormons, the Brethren, Elder Packer and his wife, or the royal we).

    b)Packer defends the practice of releasing a woman to empower her husband to take a leadership role.

    c) Packer’s metaphor of the two farmers is a more skillful version of the analogy between an unhappy woman with a third grader. She might be miserable now but will be happy eternally.

    d)He then mentions criticism on the Internet.

    e) As Phouch notes, even though Packer claims not to care, he speaks about the problem to the members of 107 stakes.

    f) Packer explains that he does not care because the phenomenal growth of the Church both reassures him and keeps him and his colleagues busy.

    It is odd to me that Packer takes so much solace from growth because he must know that there is no sustainable growth. Surely, he knows that Elder Holland just closed hundreds of wards in Chile, that similar action would be appropriate in any Latin American country, that only one third of all reported Mormons in various Latin American countries self-identify as Mormons, that the membership in Europe is rapidly aging, and that even in the Mormon corridor the size of Mormon families is steadily declining.

    In light of these themes and arguments that Boyd Packer is advancing, it is clear to me that he is backing Julie Beck’s notion of motherhood. He is also warning her critics that their salvation is at stake.

    Packer’s statement that he does not care about the critics is not credible. After all, Boyd Packer is the man who had the September Six excommunicated. More importantly, if he would not care, he would not elaborate before such a large audience.

    Packer’s statement that he does not care would make sense if he realized that he cannot do much about Mormon pluralism on the internet. He can, however, damage the reputation of internet sources by calling them sinners who will be damned.

    It will be interesting to observe how the Brethren will relate to internet Mormons in the future. In the past, there has only been the pornography addiction canard. Apparently, that was not enough to discourage faithful members from communicating with each other at the ‘nacle.

  12. chandelle says:

    hellmut, can you give some resources for your information? where is the talk by packer following palmer’s disfellowshipment? (at least a title, if you have it.) and where are you getting your information about church growth and so forth? i know that many people feel that the church’s membership numbers are seriously flawed, counting only baptisms and not taking into account the inactive or those who have effectively resigned, with or without a letter stating so. some even wonder if the church continues to count the dead or those who have officially resigned in their numbers. i’m very interested in this issue, as far as their assertion that it follows prophecy.

  13. swisster: “If we don’t provide it, they’ll go to the community or the school for the various activities.”

    oh, the horror!!!

    Nice Harold Bloom-esque misprision there, swisster. “Oh, the horror!!!” is actually paraphrasing what he says.

    I think you guys are reading a lot more into this here than there really is. Hellmut, I think you’re _really_ reading a lot into this. These addresses (the new stake conference kind) tend to be fairly extemporaneous, and your reading seems to rely heavily on the structure of the talk. Based on the couple that I’ve been to, the talks seemed pretty unstructured. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that there’s that much reason or intent to the ordering or even the general conglomeration of his points into one talk.

    No need to respond to me, I definitely am not up for engaging in some kind of lame debate. Feel free to dismiss me as a non-thinking, irrational TBM or whatever, but when it comes to interpreting texts you guys might wanna check out Umberto Eco’s “The Limits of Interpretation,” and maybe “Focault’s Pendulum” and then follow Ice Cube’s age old adage to Check yo self before you wreck yo self”.

    Mouse out.

  14. swisster says:

    A. Nonny Mouse — Just a heads up that the “horror” quote didn’t come from me (Swisster).

    Can anyone elaborate on what President Hinckley said?

  15. Seth R. says:

    This is probably the reason that Church policy holds that you aren’t supposed to record these regional addresses by GAs. They aren’t supposed to be the law. And if they are recorded, you just know somebody is going to take it that way.

  16. Hellmut says:

    Notice that Packer substituted the much criticized unhappy woman as a third grader with the farmer metaphor, A Nonny Mouse. This element indicates that the talk was well prepared.

    Besides a spontaneous threat is more sincere than a scripted one.

    To how many telecast multi-stake conferences have you been? My impression was that they are relatively new.

  17. Phouchg says:

    I think Hellmut is on to something. The demonization of internet porn is the first step. When Palpatine takes the reins of the corporation, I would expect a full-frontal assault on the internet. Oh, they will talk about how wonderful technology is to advance missionary and family history work, but I suspect we will start seeing calls to discuss doctrinal peculiarities with their bishop, instead of doing independent research on the internet. Aside from genealogy work, faithful Mormons will be strongly encouraged not to use the internet for anything else. The governing body of the Watchtower Society (JWs) have been able to do so with their members, and based on what I have read on sites such as freeminds.org, they have been rather successful.

    The boys in black are no dummies. They have to know that the free flow of information will doom the church to becoming nothing more than a society of sheep who are easily indoctrinated. While this period of retrenchment will continue under the presidency of Palpatine, the genie may be out of the bottle, and the church will never be the same.

  18. chandelle says:

    Nice Harold Bloom-esque misprision there, swisster. “Oh, the horror!!!” is actually paraphrasing what he says.

    that was me, and i have no idea what you are talking about. i can’t imagine that he was the first person to use such a statement of sarcasm or a variation of it. sheesh, the nitpickiness! 😉

  19. Hellmut says:

    Sorry, Chandelle. Here is Packer’s Book of Mormon talk of the April 2005 General Conference. Palmer’s court was the previous December.

    Here is an analysis of the Annual Statistical Report, which shows that the membership numbers do not add up.

  20. aerin says:

    Chandrelle – in response to your question about numbers, please see my post here:
    Put your money where your mouth is. I think many people (mormon, non mormon and other) would like to see an independent audit of the membership numbers.

    Nonny – I think part of main street is to encourage conversation, so I don’t think anyone would be dismissed so easily. I do think many of us are interested in the conversation and would like to continue it (instead of fly by night one post type thing).

    While we may be reading too much into things – I have to agree with Hellmut. There are some parallels to the soviet union – information is tightly guarded and monitored. I think this can be seen by the censuring/exommunication that has happened to writers/scholars like Grant Palmer and Fawn Brodie. In Soviet Russia, citizens were branded as dissidents and sometimes exiled.

    On the other hand, when I first read this post, I thought about a recent company press conference I heard. Much of the conversation was very much the same – employees had to read into his comments.

    I’m not a member of another mainstream religion, so I don’t know how common it is for mainstream religions to operate like multi-billion dollar corporations. Like I mentioned in the previous post – I don’t really understand what LDS Inc. has to lose by making some of this information public.

    I’m not trying to change the subject here, just explaining that I think it makes sense to discuss these sorts of topics. I think it makes sense to examine what LDS leaders are saying and what they’re not saying – simply because many of us are (or were) involved in that religion and just like shareholders in a company – have a stake in what decisions are made.

  21. Phouchg,

    I doubt that we’ll see them preach against all uses of the internet except genealogy. I think they’ll start talking more about the other perceived dangers of the internet aside from pornography. I wonder how big of a problem the information on the internet will pose for the LDS church. I doubt it will create a total collapse in membership numbers (perhaps in growth). I hope that it transforms it into a more honest religion.

  22. dpc says:

    “There are some parallels to the soviet union – information is tightly guarded and monitored. I think this can be seen by the censuring/exommunication [sic] that has happened to writers/scholars like Grant Palmer and Fawn Brodie. In Soviet Russia, citizens were branded as dissidents and sometimes exiled.”

    There is a world of difference between twenty years of hard labor in the middle of Siberia versus not being allowed to take the Sacrament on Sunday.

  23. aerin says:

    dpc – while that is true, what Margaret Merrill Toscano described – being shut away from your eternal family – spiritually might be a little like 20 years in a gulag. And it is more than not being able to take the sacrament. No longer being able to fulfill any callings – no positions of leadership and not being able to attend family weddings in the temple.

    So you disagree that information is tightly guarded? I can find many talks where the prophet and others encourage members to only look at faith promoting materials. Or where members are cautioned that people are lying and only want to decieve them. Back to the soviet metaphor, this was also very common in Soviet Russia. US criticism was not valid and was deceptive.

  24. dpc says:

    Aerin

    Good points. I think that effect of excommunication is less the farther you go from Utah. In a lot of places in the world, you can only get sealed in the temple, not married (e.g. Mexico, UK).

    There is a difference between discouraging looking at unfriendly sources and actively using police powers to shut them down and forcing people not to read them. No one to my knowledge has been disfellowshipped or excommunicated merely for reading anti-Moromon literature. There’s a lot of talk of ‘control’, but I see that as emanating from the culture in the form of peer pressure, not the organization itself. The church doesn’t have the resources to monitor everything that its members read, think or say.

    As for the comment about associating with apostates in the temple recommend interview, I don’t think it means “Are you friends with any apostates?” (If you spouse leaves and you don’t, are you forever temple unworthy? I doubt it.) I think that it means a deeper relationship. I think that it refers more to organizational association with apostates (e.g. joining the FLDS church or Concerned Christians or something like that)

  25. belaja says:

    Those talks were not extemporaneous. They were retreads. I have heard many of those anecdotes–in almost the same words–from other talks by both men.

  26. Hellmut says:

    I agree with you, Belaja. Hinckley’s talk was originally published in 1984, which probably means that he presented it in various forms earlier than that. He has also republished in a new pamphlet promoting The Family: A Proclamation to the World, which has been the priority of his administration’s agenda.

    WIth respect to Packer’s remarks, my opinion is that he meant what he said. Nonny’s opinion appears to be that Packer did not mean what he said.

    That’s certainly a possibility. Speakers often do not mean what they say, There is irony, for example, or the stylistic device of exaggeration. Or the author’s may simply misspeak.

    However, one would have to find indications thereof in the text or at least in the larger body of the speaker’s work. In other words, I would like to see some evidence for the hypothesis that Boyd Packer said something other than what he meant.

  27. Guy Noir Private Eye says:

    BKP’s remarks BREAK the ‘folksy-om-meter’ all the time. The bretheren may ‘someday’ get another shtick.

  1. November 1, 2007

    […] The LDS leadership has included the original 1984 speech in a brochure that promotes The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Therefore, it is clear that we are dealing with a concerted effort to reassert traditional gender roles, a fact that also illuminates the meaning of Elder Boyd Packer’s speech. […]

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