This General Conference had lots of interesting twists and turns that have now had time to ruminate in the minds of RFM and Bill Reel. And this weeks episode involves a dive into the Mormon phenomena known as the April 2023 General Conference of the LDS Church.
RESOURCES OF TALKS DISCUSSED:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYdM8WyYM – Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWYXk_7uLbU – Elder Vern R. Stanfill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0jTa8FG7A8 – Elder Allen D. Haynie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9freQw16qY – Elder Carl B. Cook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLplozLahP4 – Elder Gerrit W. Gong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQwObipvTJc – Elder D. Todd Christofferson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSmP5tnSevI – Elder Neil L. Andersen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQghSMOOYz4 – President Russell M. Nelson
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Your comments about the Sunday morning session expressing confusion over Oaks talk are interesting. My initial -and standing- thought is this: I think that there was a heated discussion between the three men in the presidency over what approach they would take in conference. I suspect Oaks, the slick attorney, wanted to back, perhaps even ‘explain’ the official statement about “mistakes”. Nelson wanted to mask the message and use the historical approach of ‘nothing to see here, just be nice about it’. Oaks wrote his intended talk anyway. Nelson pulled rank, shut him down, and then added into his talk his love for his counselors and how they ‘work’ together. Oaks, in passive/aggressive style, gave a jesus-quote talk, which baffles everyone but Nelson, who got the clear F*** You. (Even some of the Jesus quotes gave Nelson the upward middle finger.) If you have ever seen a corporate leadership power struggle, this is not uncommon. Nelson, Oaks, and Eyring played it perfectly.
Criticism of Elder Corbitt’s talk is misplaced. The offense is not that he counseled parents not to sympathize with children by criticizing church leaders. It is that the counsel was given with vagueness – lacking context and specific examples.
The dysfunction of the General Leadership of the Church is illustrated by its passive aggression. The leaders speak with deliberate vagueness. They rely on stories that emphasize trivialities (plastic bottles & comic books) or confuse the listener by conflating serious issues with nuance – such as telling stories of people tragically dying and focusing on some minor detail that could just as easily be told with a less tragic story. One gets the impression that emotional manipulation is at the core of the messaging.
We all know what the leaders want but they are afraid to say it. Or, in the case of Haynie and Corbitt they say it but without any substance, leaving the listener in limbo to figure out the full intent of what was said.
LDS General Conference has long suffered from being too general – hours of talks of fluff just to hear a few interesting tidbits. But now that the corporate church is flexing its muscle and reengineering the organization for maximum efficiency, General Conference has become a trainwreck.
We have feckless leaders, who know they are cowards, mailing in talks of fluff. At the same time we have the loyal soldier GAs proving their allegiance to the corporate cause, but doing so with such silly logic that it hurts the brain. All the while what we don’t get in 9+ hours of conference is honestly and clarity on what the Church leadership is doing, why it is doing it and what it plans to do to strengthen the church and improve life’s journey for all God’s children.
A perfect example of the superficiality of the church leadership is Elder Gong adding as an afterthought that the ministering reports are fudged and he knows it.
Does he care that the reports are fudged? We don’t know. Elder Gong just wants us to know that he knows and beyond that it is a mystery if anything will be done or anyone cares.
And that is how much the church leaders care about honesty . They don’t.