MrShorty

Both and... When I look at LDS and Biblical history, I see the people of God, following their prophet leaders, actively endorsing and promoting slavery and racial segregation. Not merely accidentally giving the impression that they aren't completely opposed to these practices, but active endorsement and promotion. When I see these issues discussed by devout LDS, the general consensus seems to be that God will know how to redeem these people in/from these sins. I figure that, if God can redeem people who actively promoted slavery, God also knows how to redeem people who endorse violating the word of wisdom or the law of chastity. That I think is the biggest part of the tension around your second statement -- just how far does God's mercy and grace and forgiveness and redemption go? I think, for devout LDS, it is sometimes hard to accept that God actually knows how to redeem sinful people. We cannot look past Alma's declaration that God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, so we don't really believe your second statement. We give lip service to it, but, when the rubber hits the road, we don't trust that God can redeem "those people." I think it does. I think that "hopeful universalism" reduces our obligation to repent at some level. I can acknowledge that there is a lot of unresolved tension here, but, at some level, it leaves open the very real possibility that God will redeem people who don't repent in this life. As I noted above, our history contains plenty of examples of people who have not repented (in this life) of sins that are about the worst the 21st century mind conceives of, and, yet, we tend to also insist that God has the means to redeem even them. If we really believe that God can redeem the ancients in spite of their misconstrual of sins, then I think God can redeem us when we misconstrue God's call to repentance in our day. I understand that there is a real tension here. With two years to prepare, is there anyone in church curriculum or in the podcast universe around CFM that wants to prepare a lesson on Alma 45 that does a real deep dive into what Alma is really saying about God being unable to look upon sin with any allowance, when scripture and history are full of examples where God commands, endorses, or even turns a blind eye to sin?

I hope we hold these two ideas in tension at the same time, as well. For the devout, 1 is pretty straightforward. I find many devout LDS who seem unable to hold onto number 2 -- especially when we are talking about someone who has left the church. I encounter so many who insist that someone who has left the church is irredeemable unless they return to activity in the church before they die. If they die in their disaffiliated state, they cannot be redeemed and exalted. Personally, as I try to hold both ideas in tension, I find myself in a place that I've heard Teryl Givens describe as "hopeful universalism." That God so perfectly knows every one of His children that He will know how to show them their errors (mostly in the next life) in such a way that they will repent and accept Christ's atonement and the restored gospel. That includes those who disaffiliate from the church. I recognize that we LDS have a certain dislike for universalism; we don't like the idea of people getting some kind of "free pass" to get the same blessings that we struggled to cling to.

I think you are right. The caution I would make is, when you decide to force someone into such a decision, make sure it is an absolutely critical decision. As a bio-ag major at BYU within living memory of Elder McConkie's Deadly Heresies talk, some of the saddest case studies were those who decided they had to choose between the church and evolution. I think it was Patrick Mason who observed that, at times in our history, we have insisted on putting things in our truth cart that don't really belong there. I think the hardest part of any "choose ye this day" type of decision is knowing when God really demands that kind of decision and when our "exclusivist" type culture demands it. Strong claims that 80+% of his group sought out someone to talk to, so I can't explain why your sample set doesn't reflect that. Perhaps Strong's convenience sample is over-representing those who talk about it or maybe it's just luck of the draw. I'm reminded of a short video I saw by Jared Halverson in which he talked about a close relative (in-law, I believe) who left the church because they couldn't find anyone to talk over their concerns with. Jared vowed to himself that he would make sure that people around him were aware that he was able and willing to have those conversations. I know that I am careful about who I share my own faith crisis with. Strong's data shows that those conversations go poorly with some groups of people. As we're saying, figuring out how to help those conversations be better is a big part of the conversation. I could be reading to much into this. One thing I feel like I encounter among devout LDS is the underlying assumption (I'm not sure it is even conscious) that anyone who "makes a real effort" or "gives the church a fair hearing" will inevitably come to the same conclusion as the other devout members of the church. Of course, the same thing can be seen from the worst of the church's critics, who seem to believe that everyone who gives the church a fair hearing will come to their same conclusions. I cannot speak for all (though I don't believe I'm alone) that the best conversations I have are those where my sounding boards don't care what conclusion I come to, as long as I am using reasonably good judgement. They will respect whatever conclusion I come to. In a space talking about how these conversations go with devout LDS, I feel like all to often, coming to the "wrong" conclusion will lead devout LDS to assume that I must have been insincere or biased against the church or some such. That would be one thing I would suggest that devout members of the church could change if they wanted to make these conversations "better." I think you're right. I wonder if we can allow that being active in the LDS church may not be the best thing for all of His children. Tangent alert: As we come to the end of the genocidal conquest narrative portion of our OT studies, I find it interesting what kinds of "misconduct" get attributed to God. I find it interesting (if not a bit troubling) how many LDS and Christian commentators who are willing to defend attributing things like genocide or slavery to God. All things considered, God allowing good people to leave the church and be good people outside the church seems pretty mild compared to the other kinds of misconduct that we attribute to God.

As I've been monitoring the conversation around the internet, I'm finding a common theme or tension. In some ways, I think these conversations with Dyer and his team contrasted with the conversations I see with Strong (aside: I think it would be great to get them both on the same podcast and let them compare and contrast their different data sets) is where to place "blame" for the trends in disaffiliation that we're seeing. It would probably require a deeper dive into the whole of the data to really tease this out, so I'm not sure that anyone has really pressed the issue. What I'm seeing is that Dyer and his team like to emphasize these kinds of statements that seem to put the onus for disaffiliation on the disaffiliates themselves while seeming to characterize the church and the devout members as innocent bystanders. Strong's emphasis has been on "culture" and trying to push a narrative where, if devout church members were "better" at talking with potential disaffiliates, then fewer would disaffiliate and the disaffiliates are just responding to what the devout members say and do. To polarize the conversation, it seems that everyone either wants to claim that the disaffiliates themselves are all to blame or the church is all to blame. I just don't think it is a clear dichotomy. I think people who disaffiliate make choices and otherwise have their part to play in their own disaffiliation, AND the church and its devout members make choices and have their part to play in people's disaffiliation. I feel like the better conversations would try to understand what is happening in the middle ground where we try to understand how both parties are interacting together. While we're trying to parse out blame for the disaffiliation phenomenon, the other difficult thing I see in this particular quote is when does God Himself become complicit in disaffiliation? I recognize that it's kind of a "problem of evil" question, but, if Dyer is right about this being the strongest predictor, then why doesn't God make Himself a little less hidden for these people? Strong notes that many of these disaffiliates wrestle with things for years before pulling the plug. If God would just be a little less stingy with His "presence" in their lives, would fewer disaffiliate? Or could this observation tell us something about God's priorities? I have noted before that it seems that the church's ultimate priority is to convince people to stay active and participating in the church. What if that isn't God's highest priority?

I came out 77% Givens, and 70% ProgMo, and only 47% McConkie.

Someone in my ward made the same point about "pursuit of happiness." In a few recent podcasts, I've heard Bart Ehrman talk about the ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia. I like the idea as long as we are talking in vague generalities. The trouble seems to come when we try to determine exactly what beliefs and practices lead to human flourishing (and, as government is concerned, what legislation it should enact). I find that the same question when we turn to the church's idea of the "plan of happiness." It sounds good in vague generalities, but becomes difficult and controversial when we try to pin down exactly what beliefs and practices lead to eternal human flourishing.

In a thread that started on the topic of LDS specific disaffiliation, I want to make one observation. Not everyone who disaffiliates from the church is unwilling to be yoked to Christ. Not everyone who remains active in the church is avoiding Satan's hellish grasp. Perhaps it is just an axe I grind, but all too often we in the church conflate church and Christ as if to leave one is to leave the other. I recognize that, statistically, a majority of those who disaffiliate from the LDS church lose belief in God and Christ, but a minority continue to believe in God and Christ and some other variation on Christianity. And many who never join the LDS church (like @Navidad) are strongly yoked to Christ even if they actively choose to stay officially unaffiliated with the church. I fear that all too often we invoke the separating of the wheat and tares as if that is clearly what is happening when we talk about affiliation/disaffiliation. I'm not convinced that people who disaffiliate or never affiliate with the LDS church are officially tares/weeds.

I think one of the challenges here is understanding exactly what we mean by "retention" and exactly how we are measuring it. The timing being what it is, I can't help but wonder if this is somehow aimed at Jeff Strong's latest work, which claims that 40% of those who were active LDS 25 some odd years ago are no longer active or have completely disaffiliated. The Des News article in the OP focuses on Pew/PRRI data that suggests that the overall church population has remained roughly constant or grown slightly. IMO, Strong's measure seems more in line with my understanding of retention, where the Des News statistics would seem to be more of a combination of people leaving and being offset by new converts so that the overall growth rate is slightly positive. At least that's how Strong reconciles his 40% number with other claims of slow, overall growth. Ryan Cragun (former LDS and researcher in the field of sociology of religion) went on Mormon Book Reviews and suggests that data he is aware of largely agrees with Strong's data that 30% or more of LDS disaffiliate (details needed to pin down exactly what it is measuring). Within my own circles, I don't see that many people disaffiliate, but the disaffiliation rate is clearly more than 0%. I largely agree with the idea in the Des News article -- accurate information leads to accurate conclusions. The never ending trouble with statistical data is trying to understand exactly what the numbers are measuring. I can see ways to understand how the church can both have a near steady population, and also have a relatively high percentage of people who disaffiliate.

The idea of a journey versus an object really resonates with me. As I've been working through a "faith crisis" or "faith deconstruction/reconstruction," I've encountered many who describe these kinds of processes as "journeys." It makes room for my current state of belief and practice to be just as "true" as the state I was in 20 years ago, and doesn't prescribe what my beliefs and practices will be in 20 years. "Sufficient to the day is the evil (or good or faith) thereof." It makes space for grace for the things I couldn't have known in my youth, and things that I don't know I don't know now, and the epistemic humility to acknowledge that I will probably never know all truth. It encourages me to ground myself in today.

Resurrecting to add a recent news piece from a local NBC affiliate. Even though the legal negotiations are over and the church has all its permits and such, the mayor of Fairview is asking the church to reconsider the steeple/building height: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/fairview-mayor-asks-lds-church-reconsider-temple-steeple-height/4021254/#yrzr2u56folp604itbx9qkz2iy1gnz0c I have no way of knowing if the mayor's impressions of community sentiment are correct, but I can't help but wonder if we are going to build a nice temple with all of the right legal permits and such, and still leave a bad taste in the mouths of local residents.

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.