the narrator

Please explain how this responded to anything I asked.

What do you mean? Do you have privileged information on how it was put together to add as an amici brief to a lawsuit opposing SSM in Hawaii?

I just recently rediscovered Mormon twitter after actively avoiding it for several years. It's weird. Not sure if they a version of the DezNats or something else. But it's not overrun by right wing conservatives really adamant that women should be trad wives. Along side that are influencer wannabes endless putting out the worst apologetic arguments with the confidence of the current POTUS.

There is so much proof and common sense as there is. Sorry, but they are hopeless. Are they flat earther's too? They seem to go hand-in-hand now.

That's why I said "majority of"

I thought it was pretty obvious that I was referring to the top 15 leadership in the FP and Q12, but if I wasn't I hope that this reply makes that clear now.

I guess by whether or not they actual consider changing a policy and how long it takes them to consider it. For example, it seems pretty clear that the racist priesthood and temple ban/policy/doctrine would have been lifted much earlier if a majority of leaders didn't assume it was rooted in revelation.

Yes, mostly, but this fixes it: Rather, there’s a very human tendency among members and leaders to treat existing policies that way...

Maybe I'm just ignorant of when it hasn't, but in my experience virtually every current policy is viewed and treated as rooted in revelation--especially those that have gone through years or decades of members asking for change. However, once the policy changes it suddenly retroactively becomes simply a tradition.

In hindsight that always seems to be the interpretation, but before the change the policies are almost always determined to be rooted in revelation and doctrine.

Didn't know he was a proto-Nibley

As an 18 yr old pre-missionary in '98, I was a naive apologist on the internet (ZLMB being one place) and arguing that Ethan Smith was actually evidence for the historicity of the BofM.

Focusing on supposed plagiarism and details completely misses the biggest point--which is that even if Joseph himself never touched one of Ethan Smith's books, what they show is that the broader themes of the BofM concerning the origins of Native Americans were widely held and speculated on at the time. Ethan Smith wasn't coming up with these things himself.

So for all the talk of moral agency, we're just supposed to instead be blind lemmings and pass on moral responsibility to others?

Seems there was inspiration in early revelations to Joseph Smith requiring revelations and policies by top leadership to be adjudicated by the general membership rather than giving them unilateral authority. Perhaps much wrong could have been prevented over the past nearly two decades.

Over the past few years, several friends I have in BYU faculty have told me that fears of being spied on, censored, and the pressure to portray a particular type of conservative orthodoxy is the worst that it has been in decades, particularly in Religious Education.

Yeah, that was something I had never heard about and found delightful. There are a few pages dedicated to Edwin and Norma Morrell, and he is named a dozen other places in different chapters.

After Nelson's edict, there was a small panel at UVU on the topic that I was a part of, and following that there was an emergency meeting of heads/chairs/editors of pretty much every Mormon studies program, journal, association, and press to discuss the best way to go forward. At that later meeting, it was agreed upon that the proposal I gave at the panel was the panel was the best way to go, and it essentially expands on the distinction you make here.

This is the book for you then. The focus is local and non-GA members, which is the sort of Mormon history I find much more interesting and inspiring these days. Looking at a May release right now.

In early Mormonism it was understood as a simple matter of fact that revelations dictating that "all things shall be done by common consent in the church, by much prayer and faith, for all things you shall receive by faith” (D&C 26:2) meant that all decisions of leadership, policy, and doctrine were to presented the the membership to vote on. Over the years, this was abandoned to the mere formality of only accepting such things. This is a simple summary: Perhaps if Nelson's exclusion policy was presented to the membership (with a healthy understanding that In the end it was their responsibility as a community to determine whether or not it was the will of God), much harm could have been presented rather than it being imposed unilaterally by Nelson and eventually rejected by protest of the membership. Maybe a lot of good could happen if leaders trusted and put faith in the membership more instead of treating them like children who ought to be obedient to them and dismissed if in disagreement.

Yeah, one of the many ways in which the Church doesn't follow its scriptures.

Given the large percentage of Mormons (like Longview) who are predisposed to blindly and ignorantly swallow up Zionist propaganda for flimsy theological and theologically based reasons, there does seems to have some relevance.

BWAHHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAAHHAA!

Wendy's comment about him being "unleashed" makes it pretty clear that Nelson had a list of priorities/grievances that he intended to address once he was in power. Regardless of whether you think his decisions were inspired, his "revealed" decision to push out the exclusion policy and later revelation to rescind it makes a good case for Church leaders to propose their ideas to the membership and have them decide by vote whether it was from God, as directed by scripture. I'm currently edited a book about LDS efforts to maintain and grow the faith in Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc during and after the Cold Ward, and (despite my many and strong criticisms I have of Nelson) I am impressed and touched by the years of efforts he put into that area.

True story. A little over 2 decades ago, I had the opportunity to meet with Bonner Ritchie, who was tasked by President Hunter to make the BYU-Jerusalem Center. His experience in Israel led him to becoming a vocal defender of Palestinians and a critique of the evil Zionist agenda. He opened my eyes to the utter lie you are repeating here, and the reality of the lies you are sharing have only become clearer since.