MrShorty

FWIW, One of my recent podcast choices was from Bart Ehrman's (notable atheist who is also a prominent New Testament scholar) podcast. At some point, he was asked what he thinks it was about the way Christ taught that made Christianity so successful. His answer fit right into this thread. He said that it wasn't so much something that Christ said or taught or anything, it was ultimately that His followers believed He had been raised from the dead. (If you want to hear it from Ehrman himself, it is episode 182 of his Misquoting Jesus podcast, towards the end during the "Ask Bart" segment.)

I get it, and, to some extent, that makes sense. In a case like this, though, it seems to me that "here's a general rule, but there are exceptions and it's up to you to decide if you are an exception" means essentially cancels out the general rule. If anyone can decide on their own initiative that they are an exception to the rule without any guidance on what legitimate and illegitimate exceptions are similar, then the general rule essentially becomes meaningless. At some point, it seems best to just back down from the "complementarian with exception" rule and just adopt egalitarianism -- as long as people are taking care of their families. I agree. I don't know how best to do it. We invoke divine revelation for stuff that we believe and do, so making changes requires more revelation, but too much revelation changing what was previously revelation begins to look like God is the one who is "tossed about by every wind of doctrine."

I would say, that, yes, this is a mixed message. Mostly because it contradicts the messages I grew up with that husbands/fathers should be the sole (or primary) breadwinner while the wives/mothers should stay home (to the extent possible) and care for the home and children. The big question seems to be whether or not the church still believes this, or if the church's beliefs are drifting in a more egalitarian direction, where families/couples decide for themselves based on individual circumstance which parent will fill which roles. Personally, I believe that families/couples should decide for themselves based on their individual strengths and weaknesses, but I have not seen the church ever make a truly official statement one way or the other on that. This is true. Perhaps I missed something, but every talk that comes immediately to mind failed to make a clear statement about this kind of scenario. They may have recited the appropriate paragraph from the Proclamation, but I have yet to hear a church authority (in recent years, anyway) declare that a breadwinner mom/stay at home dad scenario was inappropriate. In my experience, the church almost never "disavows" what prior prophets/apostles/leaders have taught, but the church will allow teachings to drift. This seems to me to be an example of this kind of drift. IMO, if the church and its leaders officially dislike the direction of this drift, they need to say something clear and unambiguous to that effect.

The tension I see in that post and comments section is just how much acceptance it displays of full egalitarianism. I see comments praising him for possibly accepting the role of "house husband" or "stay at home dad" when future children come into the picture. Other comments respond with "discomfort" around those possible roles and choices for him. Ultimately, I think it is the never ending tension we experience between complementarianism and egalitarianism. As a church community, we are still trying to grapple with those tensions. We haven't, yet, picked a side to be on, and the institutional church has largely claimed no official position as it doesn't seem to want to referee the controversies. Personally, I appreciate the example of this anecdote. It seems to me to be evidence that we are slowly sliding towards embracing egalitarianism, which, IMO, is more "true" than complementarianism. The church has a lot of inertia, so change comes slowly, but it comes.

Several years ago as I was contemplating how much of scripture might be "pious fiction," I recall asking myself the question from the opposite end -- How much of scripture must be historical for my faith to continue. As I contemplated that question, I concluded that there had to be some kernel of historic truth to the accounts of Christ's resurrection. Which isn't to say that I need all of the details provided by the Evangelists in their gospels to be historically true. I think I can be fine if much of the passion narrative is fictional adaptation of the actual events to make different theological points, but, in some fashion, Christ must have died and then been resurrected to immortality. I can still be flexible in the details, but there must be something historically true there.

For whatever reason, I recall asking myself once how long it took after RLDS/Community of Christ to extended priesthood ordination to women before a woman was called to the apostleship. I discovered that the first women apostles were called in 1998 -- a mere 14 years after women were first ordained. I realize that there are a lot of different dynamics in that branch of the restoration (smaller membership, they don't broadly ordain people to priesthood like we do, etc.), but I couldn't help but compare to our tradition that broadly began ordaining black people to priesthood in '78 and that has not, yet, trickled up to the top quorums. One of the differences between them and us is that the Q15 don't serve for life. I wonder how more frequent turnover in that top quorum causes the quorum to more closely reflect the demographics of the church at large. I don't know that it means anything, but that is one thought I've had on this topic.

Along the lines of what @The Nehor said about "best arguments" being a favorite definition of winning, I would agree. At one point (about 8.5 minutes in) Hansen says that there are still hard questions, but, in his opinion, there are good answers. As I see it, having good answers for the hard questions is the real definition of "winning" in this kind of apologetic space. For me, I'm not so certain that we have good answers for all of the hard questions. One evidence -- the hard questions keep coming up. Race and the church, was polygamy from God, LGBTQ+ issues are questions that never seem to go away. To the point that the church officially expresses its frustration that the questions keep coming up (See Pres. Oaks comments in the "Race and church" topics and questions section of gospel library, for example). At the extreme is the problem of evil and suffering that religionists have been wrestling with for thousands of years. We might have answers that we like for many of these questions, but I'm not certain they are as good as we think if the questions and problems keep surfacing. IMO, the content creators who are the best examples of winners are those like Faith Matters who usually don't claim answers, but express a desire to be in dialogue with the problems (my impression is that Hansen and many of the content creators he referenced usually don't like to include more nuanced/progressive channels in their group of winners). If anyone asked me (and they didn't), if I could recommend things that would help us "win." I would start with examining why these "good answers" to the persistent questions don't satisfy everyone. Too often, I see more conservative LDS seem quicker to make people's failure to accept a "good answer" as some kind of character flaw of the questioner rather than explore why the "good answer" isn't quite satisfactory. I think a bit of epistemic humility would be warranted so that we talk about what helps me stay in the church rather than declare something "a good answer." I think a willingness to stay engaged in the marketplace of ideas (in good faith) rather than retreat into our echo chambers helps us "win."

I have found that this issue is a central part of my own faith crisis, and this does seem to be a common answer. Thoughts, in no particular order and questionable ability to make them make sense. As noted, we often suggest that there are other virtues higher than "correctness." Humility and discipline, obedience, order, the perpetuation and growth of the church, sincerity, diligence. Early in my life, before it became more nuanced, I thought that truth (aka "correctness") was the highest virtue, but it seems that truth is not -- or not always -- the highest virtue. The question might then be, how do we know when to uncompromisingly seek truth, and when do we compromise our quest for truth in favor of one of these other virtues? Others have brought up the question of superior orders ("Nuremberg defense"). Human courts have gone back and forth as to what level of accountability or absolution to offer subordinates who are just following orders from their superiors. I can't help but think that, if human courts can find that one cannot always be absolved of wrongdoing just because the commandment came from a superior officer, then God's courts will find that we cannot simply absolve ourselves of sin just because the prophet told us to do it. In a couple of months, our SS curriculum will bump up against one of the ugliest examples, and build an entire lesson on the virtue of obedience based on that example -- 2 Sam 15 when the prophet Samuel claimed that God commanded him to command Saul to slaughter the neighboring Amalekites for various reasons, and Saul, out of greed, it seems, didn't follow through all the way on that commandment. Our curriculum doesn't suggest asking the question of whether it is ever appropriate to look a prophet in the eye and refuse to obey -- even when the commandment is genocide. I don't think I "know" any answers to all of this. For myself, I find myself unconvinced that order in the church or the perpetuation/growth of the church are such high virtues if they must occur at the expense of moral integrity. I think God mostly wants me to follow my own moral compass and trust Him to be able to redeem me when my compass errs. Hopefully I will have the humility to seek His will when things are hard to discern.

To bring this back to Elder Gilbert, I saw this interview by the Deseret News (https://www.deseret.com/video/2026/02/19/deseret-voices-episode-16-elder-clark-g-gilbert-on-conviction-controversy-and-compassion/ ). In the interview, Johnson asks Elder Gilbert about some of the controversies and criticisms of his calling to the apostleship, and he gives some interesting answers. He responded by saying, "It is so hard...standing for truth with love." He then goes on to talk about BYU and mentions some statistics from surveys of students and faculty and he talks about how the changes at BYU in recent years have resulted in an increase in students who say they grew closer to Christ and increases in the satisfaction of faculty. What I immediately wondered was whether those increases were due to the "goodness" the policy changes at BYU, or were they due to a "shrinking of the tent" that pushed the students and faculty more likely to answer negatively out of the BYU tent. That's the tricky thing with statistics -- what is it they are really trying to tell us? In another question, he was asked to respond directly to his critics, and his response included the same kind of tension between being compassionate and caring, but not giving any ground on (our perception) of truth. IMO, that is not something a "big tent church" dogmatically sticks to, but it seems to be what our church likes to cling to. I know we had a long debate about David Archuletta's choices here some time ago, and I don't want to resurrect that (as if I could stop it), but I listened to Archuletta's most recent interview with Richard Ostler. All in all, it seems to me that Archuletta is better off outside of the church's tent, in spite of Elder Gilbert's implication that people who move away from light and truth (implied to come from the church) will find happiness. It also seems to counter what Pres. Oaks said in his first devotional that God wants each of us [I assume he means all the world and not just the narrow audience listening that day] to be active participating members of the LDS church. I guess we'll see what happens. Recent parts of this discussion thread just reaffirm to me that there is still a lot of division in and around the church that does not seem like "big tent" kind of thinking, but that kind of boundary maintenance might be what the church really wants. It seems to me that a church that wants to be "big tent" would want to second and third guess its boundary markers until it is absolutely certain those boundary markers are revealed from God. IMO, there isn't much that is more damaging to a church than to claim a boundary marker came from God, then to later decide that the boundary marker wasn't from God.

Sorry to be unclear. I meant impossible for a single church -- even one with divinely appointed leaders -- to be as all encompassing as God's tent. How do you understand the distinction between "from" and "in?" My understanding is that God can only redeem us after some kind of repentance process that involves recognizing our sins and then repenting of them. I find that most church friendly discussion of the priesthood and temple ban, though, seem to promote the idea that 19th and 20th century leaders and members will be redeemed from their racist sins without ever recognizing or repenting of those sins. Theologically, we lean pretty heavily into beliefs that people can recognize and repent of sin after death to close this loophole. I guess it works, but, at least from the point of view of this life, their doesn't seem to be a lot of distinction between "from" and "in" when we insist that the 19th century church members and leaders' redemption is not seriously at risk. I think this is a decent summary. Perhaps only because it is a central part of my own deconstruction/reconstruction, but how completely does God make sure that His children "know" (or, at least, "strongly suspect") who the correct prophets and apostles are? How clearly do they understand what God has commanded so they know what commandments to obey? How clearly do people understand when they have violated divine commandments and need to repent? When people choose to enter or not into the church's tent, are they in possession of the knowledge that the church's tent is the only true tent (assuming it is the only true tent)? As I have studied the processes of discernment and epistemology, it seems pretty clear to me that there is always some uncertainty in everyone's ability to discern God's will, which handicaps people's ability to exercise their agency. This is a big part of why atonement is needed, and a big part of why I think that God's tent will always be bigger than any one church's tent. Amidst all of this uncertainty, good and sincere and well-intentioned people are going to choose incorrectly (assuming there are strict correct and incorrect choices). Since God, Himself, is often the gatekeeper of knowledge and testimony, it seems to me that some of this inherent uncertainty is intended to be a part of this process.

"Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be." It's not quite fatalism, but it's something of an expression of powerlessness to cause change, so we must just accept whatever is. I agree that, for those of us at the grass roots, we must leave such things to the Lord and His servants, because we are not part of those governing councils and have no influence on those councils. I think the same thing could be said about Catholicism, the various flavors of Protestantism, and so on around the world of religion. The vast majority of us navigating the religious landscape cannot influence the leadership of individual tents, so we just leave God to sort out the tents while we choose which tent we find most comfortable -- ultimately trusting that God wouldn't let us choose a tent that is completely outside of His ability to influence and redeem. As I've deconstructed/reconstructed this, what stands out to me is that God's tent seems to be larger than any church's tent. In which case, I tend to reflect on Is 54 where the church is told to "enlarge the place of [its] tent." If God's tent knows how to include and redeem people in all religions (and even LGBTQ+ people in same sex marriages or who transition genders), why should the church not seek to expand its boundaries to eventually include all of those whom God will redeem? Perhaps it is because it isn't possible? As so many conservative Christian commentators like to point out, those Christian tents that try to be too inclusive end up being "weak" tents. Perhaps there is something about the task of building churches that requires God to subdivide His tent into multiple smaller tents, and tolerate the inevitable contentious divisions that result?

Would you care to elaborate? Why do you think you would struggle with a prophet like Pope Francis?

Perhaps, then, we could say that the church is neither a big tent nor a small tent but more of a Goldilocks sized tent -- just the right size. Big enough to include the people who believe and practice the right things and small enough to exclude the people who believe and practice the wrong things. Every church needs to decide just how "big" it wants its tent to be, and what boundaries will determine who is "in" and who is "out," and I don't know that there will ever be a universally accepted answer to those kinds of questions. Thus, we get a proliferation of different churches and denominations, each deciding to draw in and out boundaries differently. I don't know that this should be surprising. At this point, perhaps the controversy is as much about whether, as Pres. Oaks said this week, God really wants each of us to be an active participating member of the LDS church. I sometimes think that the real controversy isn't about big or small tents, but about the nature of "strait gates" and "narrow paths."

I think this is largely the heart of the question. What "diversity" will the church allow and what won't it allow. I think your idea of big and small tent largely centers on what you put in the allowed diversity and the "disallowed" (I'm having a hard time choosing the right word here) diversity buckets. I think that it would be largely universally agreed that race and culture are not things that belong in the disallowed bucket, which leaves us with what you are calling doctrinal pluralism. IMO, the question of doctrinal pluralism is where the question of big/small tent almost exclusively gets debated, and the debate largely centers on what doctrines/practices are not essential and which ones are. Perhaps an example (mostly historical, since the church is largely settled that this is an allowed example of doctrinal pluralism). Scott Woodward and Cassie Griffiths on their Church History Matters podcast have started 2026 with a multi part series talking about science and religion and related controversies (including, of course, evolution and creationism). They have emphasized multiple times that (in 2026) the church has plenty of room for people who believe all kinds of different things (doctrinal pluralism) about the origins of the Earth and life and humans. The church mostly only insists that one agree that God is the creator and that humans are "children" of God in some way and created in His image. Of course, over the years there have been a lot of efforts (almost exclusively by creationist believers like Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie) to try to assert that evolutionists do not have a place in the church. During those years when evolution was softly considered a heresy ("deadly" according to Elder McConkie), the controversy would have centered on whether or not this view was "true" (another poorly defined word that we use a lot). IMO, the question of big and small tent is really going to center on what doctrinal pluralism one believes should be allowed in the church. In this respect it is probably more of a relative identifier rather than some kind of absolute truth. If one's experience in the church is to feel ostracized for sincerely held beliefs, they will view the church as "small tent." If one's experience is to feel that the "boundary markers" imposed by the church are unfair ore exclusive, then one will likely view the church as "small tent". If one's experience in the church is to feel openly embraced by the church and they find themselves largely in agreement with the "boundary markers," then one will experience the church as "big tent."

Something Elder Gilbert said in his interview with the SL Tribune highlights to me what is the main controversy around his calling to the apostleship. When Stack asked him about people's varying views on the Family Proclamation, Elder Gilbert said, "This is a big tent church." I've been around different "heterodox" LDS spaces for many years, and this has been a controversy for years (Elder Gilbert is only the current, temporary face of the controversy). Is the church trying to be "big tent" or "small tent?" I would say that much of the controversy around Elder Gilbert specifically is that, in recent callings, the policies and actions he has supported seem to suggest more of a "small tent" approach to the church. It's a difficult controversy to discuss, because "big tent" and "small tent" are rather vague concepts that don't lend themselves to easy definition. I guess we'll see what happens. Personally, I don't see Elder Gilbert as one who is really going to settle the big/small tent question by himself. As the junior apostle, he will have limited influence in the short term over long standing church policies and beliefs and practices. It's difficult to settle this kind of controversy in a brief interview, so I would suggest that, if he wants to settle controversies, he could take this assertion that the church is a "big tent church" and explain what that means to him and how he wants members to implement his vision of a big tent church.