The Nehor

According to Brigham Young the office had keys. When he made John Smith (Hyrum’s oldest son) patriarch he conferred upon him all the keys of the office. It is important to note that the current understanding of Priesthood keys was not yet established though. Admittedly though Brigham Young wanted to make Joseph F. Smith the Presiding Patriarch but Joseph refused. John Smith was good at giving blessings but he wasn’t good at administration. Having to coordinate local patriarchs vexed him. John Smith was also regularly in trouble with the Twelve. Partially for his maintaining familial relationships with Reorganized church leadership and for being very unenthusiastic about polygamy. You can also see how these two issues are related. He did reluctantly take a second wife but wasn’t happy about it. He also had some Word of Wisdom issues but a lot of the general authorities did. It is likely the other two suspicions about him magnified other perceived failings. As to it being a higher office Joseph Smith said so at least once. He gave his father the highest seat in the Kirtland Temple. Joseph’s (possibly short-lived) plans to abdicate to Hyrum also suggest the same thing. If Hyrum had lived he probably would have led the Church as the Patriarch and the office may have continued and been over the Quorum of the Twelve. It is important to note that in the Doctrine and Covenants the Quorum of the Twelve were never the designated successors. In some cases the Twelve seem to have been designated as a kind of equivalent to a Stake Council with authority over areas where the Church is not established. I am not as certain of this as I used to be.

I agree in general but still come up against the “law irrevocably decreed in heaven” and similar verses elsewhere throughout the Standard Works. I am uncomfortable explaining away the verses. At what point does that mean I am just selectively editing the scriptures to match my life experience? I have a few cases in scripture that I know (or suspect) the narrator is unreliable to a degree and can ignore those but that is harder with the D&C.

Depends on who you asked and when. Joseph Smith suggested in some ways that the office of Church patriarch was over even the First Presidency. When he talked of stepping down to let Hyrum take charge this was part of the reasoning. When Hyrum was called to be the patriarch he was pulled out of the First Presidency. It was also described as having the ability to be a “prophet, seer, and revelator”. Joseph said at one point that “the patriarchal office is the highest office in the church” which is kind of baffling. William Smith took the office and suggested it was over the Quorum of the Twelve by saying the Twelve followed him as he followed Christ. The apostles quickly tried to ‘correct’ him. Lucy Mack Smith then had a dream that she believed was prophetic that William Smith was to one day be president of the Church. The apostles spoke with her and she backed down a little. The power of the office was diminished. If you look in D&C 124 it has a mini pseudo sustaining of the officers of the Church. The Patriarch is given first before even the First Presidency. After William’s unhappy tenure that ended with his excommunication the sustaining was later moved to after the First Presidency in future conferences but still before the Twelve. When John Smith (Joseph’s uncle) was called the sustaining order was moved again to after the sustaining of the Twelve. There was a lot of discomfort with the office since it was lineal descent meaning anyone could end up with it. John Smith (Hyrum’s son) succeeded him. He annoyed some in power due to his maintaining strong familial ties to Joseph Smith III and others in the RLDS Church. He also had troubles with adherence to the Word of Wisdom which was being pushed much harder at that point and he was lukewarm about plural marriage. Joseph F. Smith was the half-brother of this John Smith and when he became President of the Church Joseph insisted that he be set apart as President of the Church by the Church Patriarch and for a time the Church Patriarch was publicly called a “prophet, seer, and revelator” again. The patriarch was moved up in sustaining order and regularly spoke in general conference and had far greater power and responsibility. Heber J. Grant was not happy with the way the office worked and tried to remove the lineal descent aspect and to alter it so it was a more limited role. The patriarch was moved physically in general conference from being near the apostles to a space between the Twelve and the Seventy. President Grant sought to limit the office’s authority to choose new local patriarchs and supervise them. Some apostles objected. Eventually a compromise was worked out where the patriarch’s role was trimmed back a bit and it was no longer based on direct lineal descent and was available to any Smith descendent. After that the role continued to diminish. When Joseph F. Smith II (grandsom of Joseph F. Smith and nephew to Joseph Fielding Smith) took the office in the 40s it was now the “patriarch to the Church” and not the “presiding patriarch” or other more prestigious sounding titles. The office also no longer had responsibility or authority to call and supervise other patriarchs. He only served for four years before scandal erupted as it was found he had had several male lovers over the years. He was released and continued in the church unable to hold any office until President McKay was satisfied with his repentance and lifted the restrictions later on. The last Church Patriarch was Eldred G. Smith and he was released in 1979 by President Kimball and given emeritus status. This was announced in conference with no indication of what would happen to the office in general. Later the emeritus patriarch was told he could continue giving blessings himself but the office was over. There was no formal announcement that the office was discontinued and this ruffled the feathers of a few Church members who saw it as an essential office. The usual justification for it ending is that it is no longer needed due to the presence of local patriarchs but while that makes sense to a degree local patriarchs had been around for a long time. Some say it was the lineal descent bit that made the apostles eager to discontinue the office. The most cynical saw the office as a threat to the power of the First Presidency and the Twelve considering how it was rated in the D&C and the words Joseph Smith used to describe its necessity and how high an office it was. I dunno.

I’ve been to fun weddings but they are few and far between.

Wait, are you saying the lack or loss of testimony turned her queer or that the lack or loss of testimony led her to stop being closeted?

They’re more likely to just leave religion all together. I think it is more a fear of disappointing or being estranged from family and closeted people fearing discovery than that kind of advocacy. There isn’t a ton of advocacy in this direction. There is some but the Church has laid out the “Not Welcome” sign enough that most don’t advocate for it. The Ordain Women movement was spearheaded by women (in and out of the church) who could fit into the culture seamlessly except for wanting women ordained. Queer people generally don’t fit into church culture or church practices unless they can pass as straight. It is hard to advocate when you are “the other”.

Which traditional marriage and family values? The early Christian “no divorce” ones? The chattel sex slave ones in the Hebrew Bible? I reject quite a few of them. Also the Founding Fathers didn’t give themselves or their work all the holiness you are trying to drown them in. A lot of the ideals of the Constitution came from the Puritans but they explicitly and deliberately cut the religious wackjob bit out because that was tried and didn’t work and they embraced a secular republic. Now we have people trying to do that. They must like religious wars and conflicts or something. The Founders weren’t evil. They were flawed and some were brilliant. I like Benjamin Franklin best. And no one of any significance is advocating for some form of authoritarian communism. That is just a weird fever dream fascists have used since they first showed up. In both Germany and Italy they didn’t get a voting majority but they drummed up a fear of communism and people were willing to give them power to stop those filthy commies. It didn’t go well for them. And people are obviously still falling for it. To the point that they think a serial adulterer and sex predator being in power is the best way to protect “traditional Judeo-Christian marriage and family values”. They took a culture war and sold it as a spiritual war. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Wait, you want me to spend all night outside waiting with a lamp and I have to acquire and conserve my own power source for the lights because someone doesn’t know how to plan and schedule an event? All this so I can go to a wedding….one of the most boring social events humanity has ever devised? I think I will go inside and go to bed instead.

Worth noting that this is probably not Paul. I don’t really like or trust the author of 1 Timothy. The guy spewed a lot of misogyny. I’m envious of those who are able to be optimistic and expect the best and usually find that it doesn’t happen and then somehow continue to be optimistic. I want to call it self-deception but it is too sincere. No idea how they do it.

You just made up what you assume Catholic and Protestant beliefs are. No need to check them against reality. Not getting basic Catholic and Protestant thought right is just lazy. Be better. Me? Violent? No. I only advocate punching fascists. A lot of people around seem deeply worried about the safety of the poor fascists. Lots of volunteer fascist safety advocates around for some reason. Weird, isn’t it? I’m old enough to remember when punching fascists was an uncontroversial take.

That is a twisted and ignorant misrepresentation of the stance of Catholics and Protestants and LGBTQ “DEATH TO THE FAMILY” advocates. It is nice to see you admit that the whole thing to you is just about physical sex and reproduction because without that gender is inherently meaningless. Of course again you confuse biological sex and gender. It is profoundly weird that you think LGBTQ people just sit around all day plotting how to destroy the family. I think you might be projecting your own eagerness to see everyone you disagree with destroyed onto everyone else.

Human: Wow, that is really impressive. Can I see these laws? God: No. Human: Okay, so everything will just appear arbitrary. Got it.

In my experience they don’t work very well. You end up falling back on you’re getting a bunch of blessings you just don’t recognize as such or you have to figure out how you didn’t actually qualify for the blessings and need to work harder at it somehow.

This is like a joke aimed at people that believe in astrology. Not a lot of malice and just a lot of eye-rolling at how ridiculous it is.

I believe Paul was perfectly fine with slavery as an institution because he seemed to be perfectly fine with slavery as an institution. Oursourcing understanding scripture to AI? Hail the coming of the MACHINE GOD!!!!! Praise the OMNISSIAH!!!!! There is no such thing as a loving and benevolent slave owner. Slavery is violence. Also it is motivated by love and not fear? That is not slavery. I liked God better when He was out freeing the captive instead of claiming they are His. This is standard apologetic drivel to try to make it not sound bad that the Bible compares God to a slave owner. Which the AI slurped up and vomited out. How very uninteresting.

I would say that you can safely ignore the other counsel given in the same context then. I’ve heard Ignatius supposedly said that but I can’t find anything supporting it. The current consensus from what I have read is that Clement misread Philippians. Eusebius’s comment about Paul’s wife is explicitly pulled from one of Paul’s epistles and does not suggest Clement knew this from any other source: The thing is Paul doesn’t greet his wife in any of the epistles we have. Then Origen in a commentary says: So Origen got the same idea from an epistle of Paul’s and it is supposedly in Philippians but isn’t there either. However there is an easy way to misread Philippians that could suggest such a reading. I don’t know ancient Greek but the explanations I have read seem to be reasonable. Another possibility could come from Paul talking about having “a believing wife” accompanying some of the apostles in their ministry. Maybe his wife wouldn’t convert and their marriage was terminated? Maybe the “unequally yoked” bit came from very personal experience.

While I think the current situation is bad in many ways comparing this kind of feeling poverty to chattel slavery is hyperbole. Smacks a little too much of this kind of thinking: The Romans were equally deluded about slavery and how violence controlled their society. They created the whole paterfamilias thing where slaves were part of the household to soften the idea of slavery. Slaves, women, and others were caricatured as violent and sexually rapacious and only the wise educated Roman citizen was moral enough to control them. So they had to control them using violence (often sexual violence). So the whole system was set up to convince the people doing all the violence were only doing it to prevent all the violence. There were similar justifications in the pre-Civil War South. The fear was that abolishing slavery would lead to widespread murder and rape. It did, except it was the KKK and their ilk doing almost all of it. Never believe someone who says they have to be violent and predatory and rapey for the good of others and/or for society as a whole.

It was admittedly to an audience that thought the Second Coming was coming any day now so it can be seen as special circumstances. I haven’t seen any such sources that appeared convincing. The consensus of most biblical scholars is that the “present distress” is the incoming and imminent return of Jesus. The bit about Paul not taking along a wife could just as easily be Paul saying that he could have a wife and travel with her. Paul is bragging about how he abstains from a lot of things to avoid tripping up the “conscience” of the weak to encourage the people to avoid doing anything that would cause other believers to falter.

That advice was given to people who expected Jesus to return any day now. It was next to advice to not marry, not have children, not change your job, and basically just don’t alter your life because it wouldn’t matter soon. And because he will discipline you harshly if you don’t. In a very loving way of course. Using the master/slave relationship as a metaphor for the gospel doesn’t do God or ourselves any favors.

Paul seems to have been perfectly fine with slavery of all kinds. Using a metaphor about God being a slave owner seems to reinforce that.

The problem with this is that it isn’t suggested in the Biblical text that God had to approve of men taking additional wives or concubines. The Mosaic Law doesn’t put any such provisos on Israelites marrying additional wives or buying concubines or taking war captives as sex slaves.

Generally concubines were slaves. For all practical purposes they were even if they weren’t explicitly a slave (and most were slaves). They had less power than full wives and full wives didn’t have much power. The Torah talks primarily about two kinds of slavery. One is debt slavery and the other is chattel slavery. Debt slavery was temporary for adult male Israelites (or forever if you married another slave and didn’t want to leave your wife), maybe temporary for female adult Israelites (depends which law code you read), and permanent for non-Israelites and probably also for children. Chattel slavery was forever or until you were voluntarily released. The King James translation hides a lot of slavery. The servants in the New Testament in the parables are usually slaves. The handmaidens are slaves. A lot of the parables compare God to a slaveowner and the people working for Him as slaves. That puts a bit of a question mark on the D&C when God talks about people being his servants and calling Emma His handmaid.

Not sure that pointing out that sex slaves existed is nit picking. Some might consider it important.

To quote C.S. Lewis: “Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.” Also pedophilia has (for better or worse) become the worst sin so being able to ascribe it to your enemies gives you license to vent hate. The caricaturing of trafficking turns it from a business with an understandable and common motive (money) into something foreign (satan worship and sin for the sake of just being as vile as possible and the like). It lets you dehumanize your opponent. If they don’t operate like the rest of humanity it is easier to justify fighting them in an unjust way or directly harming them. This is especially tragic when the claims about their vileness are baseless. As a side benefit if someone is a terrible person then making up much worse people helps them feel better about themselves and lets them feel heroic by comparison.

Most of the Church’s stronger areas are in the southwest and east and the church is reportedly stronger in the urban areas. These aren’t usually the big conflict areas. A short piece on the struggles of LDS Church members in Nigeria due to culture: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/6/445 The conflict isn’t particularly targeting Christians though there is propaganda drumming up this angle at the moment by some groups with specific objectives. Boko Haram is anti-Christian but it is also anti-Islam except for those allied to it directly. They have gotten around the prohibition on killing other Muslims by declaring them all apostates. In this case apostasy is tied to being involved with such repulsive practices as “democracy” and “scientific” anything. Basically an anti-intellectualism that in some cases holds that reading anything other than the Quran is bad. That being said while they would gladly fight Christians (and do) they are most active in the northeast which is mostly Muslim and the actual conflicts on the ground are often not tied to religion. There is ethnic conflict and just plain old banditry and economic conflict. The effects of climate change and desertification in Nigeria is bad and getting worse and this has pushed some people south and is causing a lot of local conflicts over resources and land. There is also plenty of Christian on Christian violence going on as well. This isn’t some stark divide where innocent and devout Christians are being preyed on by caricatured jihadists. International watch groups estimate that around 10% of the violence has religion as its primary justification. The Nigerian military and law enforcement is trying to clamp down on this but they have been infiltrated (particularly at the lower levels) by the various groups involved. There is also some political grandstanding by Nigerian politicians that isn’t helping anything. The security forces also have the habit of acting way beyond the bounds of the law and often attack without legal provocation and execute suspected terrorists with no due process. A big human rights problem. The current Nigerian government does not want a US military intervention so moving in would be an invasion. Some opposition groups do want intervention but this is likely more about wanting to destabilize the government and/or thinking it will aid separatist groups in breaking away from the nation. There is also still some simmering resentment in the Nigerian government and people for the sudden and unexpected shutdown of the United States foreign aid programs worldwide that left a gap in several areas, mostly in dealing with the effects of climate change and medical aid. Projected death toll of pulling this aid will occur slowly but will probably be thousands dead in the country. If I can put on my amateur geopolitical nerd hat for a second: A US military intervention would be bad. The best case would be a few air strikes are launched that kill people and it is over. It won’t accomplish anything but the cost in blood would be low. If that sates the bloodlust of those calling for this that would be the best option to minimize damage all around. Solving this conflict would need boots on the ground and a lot of them. The US military is trained to fight conventional opponents and they are VERY good at this. If it weren’t for the Russian nuclear deterrent the US military could intervene and end the conflict in Ukraine within a few months. This wouldn’t be like that. This would more likely be a cross between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Patrols that have to fear suicide bombers from all parts of the populace. A population and government that doesn’t want the troops there. It is counterinsurgency so you have to target people who may or may not be ‘civilians’. It would almost certainly be a boondoggle with lots of human rights violations and a lot of traumatized military personnel. A quagmire with no real end game. It would also give the US military a black eye and threaten national security. Recruitment numbers are slowly growing back towards normal levels but getting involved in a conflict like this would tank US recruitment and could present an ongoing problem for decades. One good article on the current conflict: https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/nigeria-united-states/why-president-trump-threatening-humanitarian-intervention-nigeria Another: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/11/8/nigerians-demand-own-solutions-to-violence-as-trump-threatens-us-invasion