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.

FWIW, if it is legit, I would be concerned as a member of the church. There are some "optics" around this that could easily backfire on the local ward and the church as a whole. I think most of us are aware of the disclaimer on the bottom of the church's donation slip that states that all donations become the property of the church to be used as it sees fit. Advertising this as an opportunity to donate to a fund that will benefit the poor and needy, but without a way to demonstrate that the money actually went to those purposes could create some bad optics for the church. It isn't hard for me to imagine someone becoming "offended" if they believe their money is going to help poor people to later discover that their fast offering donation ended up paying for the ward's utilities. One strike I see against legitimacy -- I see no mention of tax deductibility. It could have been overlooked, but I would expect any well thought out donation campaign like this would include some mention of tax deductibility.

It's a significant tangent from the main thread topic, but I often wonder about all of the people who sincerely believe stuff that I think is wrong. What will happen to all the sincere Protestants and Catholics and other Christians who failed to accept the restored gospel? What will happen to all of the sincere LGBTQ who reject the church's stance on their choices because they believe God has communicated that He approves of their choices? What will happen to the sincere LDS who believe (or have believed) that race is an indicator of divine disfavor? What about sincere LDS who believe that all are alike unto God and race is meaningless? I look around the world and I often think of the fate of those who sincerely believe the wrong thing. Most of the time, I end up in a place where God knows how to redeem these sincere believers. Latter-day Saintism has taught me that God has contingency plans to re-educate in the next life those who didn't know better in this life. He has taught that necessary ordinances/rites/sacraments can be performed by proxy so that no one misses out on those. At that point, I usually end up trying to figure out what might be the important things to learn in this life. From this comment, I wonder if the most important thing to learn in this life is epistemic humility. The ability to accept that you might be wrong about something and are willing to change your beliefs and practices if/when God tells you they need to be changed. This might even be what Alma was talking about (Alma 42) when he talks about "the penitent man." Of course, I look around at my fellow LDS and I see some who seem so certain of their beliefs that I wonder if they, too, will find themselves arguing with God when He tells them something they believe is wrong.

FWIW, in the current lesson scheduled for June 8-14, the curriculum writers left out any reference to the commandment of genocide. The commandment Saul disobeys is unnamed. To extend @The Nehor's point, I find that "we don't know" often has two meanings in the church: 1) We legitimately don't know whatever it is. 2) We don't like the answers that we can immediately see, so we claim not to know, hoping that there will be an answer that we do like sometime in the future. Similar to @The Nehor's example, I've seen some frustration recently expressed by some scholars and content creators around the church's "we don't know" in the heading to OD2. We know enough of the history to know the reasons given by the 19th century church why the priesthood and temple restriction was put in place, but we've disavowed those reasons, but we are unwilling to provide alternative explanations, so we preface OD2 with "we don't know." Which isn't to say that I expect us as a church to know everything. I believe there are some issues (like the problem of evil) that are ultimately intractable, and there is an inherent element of not knowing. I think it would be valuable for us to explore these places where we don't know and see what is really going on behind it. For me, most of them end up boiling down to something intractable, and it is helpful for me to acknowledge that it is intractable and why it is intractable. Too often, it seems like our not knowing is a kind of self-induced blinder to prevent ourselves from actually looking at the difficult issue.

At the risk of putting the burden of speaking for the whole church on you, I often see this and wonder if it really means that the church is not interested in being part of these discussions. I understand that the church needs to determine how to best utilize limited classroom time and other resources, but it sometimes feels like the church really just wants to wash its hands of the whole thing and not be involved. Even looking at the "Obedience" topic in the "Topics and Questions" section of the Gospel Library (where one might expect the church to publish some kind of wrestle with the moral ambiguities of obedience) finds nothing that talks about what we are talking about here. Putting my point into a "stages of faith (McLaren style)" paradigm, a comment like this sometimes feels to my like the church is disinterested in anything beyond stage 2. For those who transition into stage 3 and on to stage 4, some find that the church is no longer relevant to them. It's important to note that stages are not better or worse, just different, so it's perfectly fine to want to minister to those in stages 1 and 2 and not other stages, but that also means that the church can't be surprised when some people determine that the church is no longer relevant for them. This doesn't mean the church needs to use its limited SS/PH/RS time for this purpose. It can figure out other ways that it wants to be involved in these discussions -- if it wants to. This kind of comment makes me wonder just how universal/catholic the church really wants to be.

Agreed, though I would divide the "difficult" things into two categories. There are difficult but morally neutral things (like pushing boulders up hills) and there are things that are difficult because they violate our sense of ethics and morality (like genocide or slavery). I think there is real value in preparing ourselves to perform difficult tasks that are inconvenient or tedious or that may seem like busy work. I think there is a real difference when we are talking about preparing ourselves to be obedient to directives that run contrary to our sense of right and wrong. This is when I think the question of prophetic fallibility must be addressed. If a prophet is going to tell me that God expects me to practice polygamy even though my wife is adamantly opposed to it, that prophet needs to be prepared to explain why he thinks this command came from God, including all of the ways that he might be mistaken and the measures he has taken to avoid mistakes like the 19th century saints made in practicing polygamy. Even after all of that, God (the gatekeeper of testimony) will need to confirm such commands to me. I've reached a point in my deconstruction/reconstruction where I no longer believe that obedience to prophets (or maybe even God Himself) is the highest virtue. If fallible prophets make immoral demands, then they must expect that I will not comply. Until they really wrestle with their own fallibility, fallibility is the first "excuse" for my non-compliance. This, I think, is where we ought to begin. You are correct, we and they are extremely reluctant to identify specific mistakes. In many ways, I'm beginning to see this as expression of the "preface paradox." We acknowledge in a vague way that prophets can make mistakes, but we are unable or unwilling to identify specific mistakes (except, perhaps, for personal errors like wearing ugly ties). The preface paradox is supposedly an expression of epistemic humility. Even though we currently can't recognize our mistakes, we are implying a willingness to recognize those mistakes later when new information comes to light and correct them. The problem that I see is that, in spite of new information, we and our leaders are reticent to acknowledge mistakes that have been made. For many in faith crisis, this leads to a "trust crisis" where they decide that they cannot trust the prophet to acknowledge mistakes, so they can no longer trust the moral directives the prophets make. Which is fine for you and the majority of LDS who would agree with you. For those of us in faith or trust crisis, does the church want to help rebuild some of that trust that has been lost in their eyes? As I look at the church's efforts to help people like me, it seems like all it knows how to do is gloss over the moral ambiguities of the past, often invoking God's ineffability. It's true that God and His purposes can be difficult to impossible for mere mortals to comprehend, but it sometimes begins to feel like we are invoking God's ineffability in order to avoid making hard conclusions about the truth or error of scripture and prophetic declarations. That, I find, doesn't help inspire trust in following current prophets into morally ambiguous paths.

The underlying assumption that I see is it is more important to believe and trust (and maintain loyalty and obedience to??) prophets than to follow your own moral compass. Based on my experience and what I hear talked about in various faith crisis circles, I think your observation is largely correct. Something about the tension between prophetic moral authority, prophetic ecclisiastical authority, and personal authority to discern right and wrong is a significant part of many faith crises. I am less convinced that it is a universal negative that some decide that they can no longer submit to the moral authority of our leaders (and sometimes even refuse to accept their ecclisiastical authority). In my own current state, I have no trouble granting the church ecclisiastical authority -- the authority to decide who receives sacraments/ordinances/rituals and who serves in what callings and so on. However, I can no longer grant the church and its leaders unquestioned moral authority because of the doubts and questions and concerns about several current and historical issues. At present, I think one of the biggest "blocks" to this is the church's refusal to really wrestle with what it means to be led by a fallible prophet. IMO, if it is such a horrible thing to have people conclude that the church is not everything that it claims and then leave the church, I think it would serve the church well to explore why people leave and seriously consider what, if anything, the church can do to help people stay. IME, the church as a whole does not really want to do the hard work necessary to help people resolve their doubts, questions, and concerns.

I find that this gets to be one of those thorny issues that we struggle to really have a good answer for. Yes we are excited to have what we think is a definitive answer for the "what happens to those who never here of Christ or the gospel?" question, but, no matter how hard we try, we still end up with gray areas. IMO, the hard part isn't about the ancients or those in far flung locations where the name of Christ rarely or never is spoken. The hard scenarios for us to grapple with are those that are a lot closer. With all due caution about judging individuals, consider hypothetical cases like: 1) A person who was very active in the church who one day encounters a bit of troubling history, this discovery triggers a "faith crisis." After much study and prayer, they determine that the church was never everything it claimed, and they withdraw from participation in the church. They may find a different Christian/religious home or they may choose no religious participation. 2) A person who lived in close proximity to a loved one who is a member of the church. They would have many conversations with their loved one about the church, maybe some missionary lessons, but ultimately they never feel sufficiently convinced of the church's truth claims to fully embrace the restored church. Pres. Nelson in his Apr. 2019 Conference address ("Come Follow Me") described a scenario like #2 and seemed rather skeptical. He "question[ed] the efficacy of proxy temple work for a man" like that. I'm sure we could come up with other "hypotheticals" if we wanted to. Ultimately, what I see in our beliefs and practices around the redemption of the dead is a slippery slope that leads down to near universalism, and that makes us uncomfortable. So we spend some of our effort trying to find footholds and handholds on that slippery slope to avoid the bogeyman of universalism. Every attempt at drawing lines around who can and cannot be redeemed in the next life ultimately includes a scenario that someone thinks should be excluded and excludes a scenario that someone thinks should be included. We eventually end up with the less than satisfying answer that it will ultimately be up to God and we are incapable of making such determinations. Ultimately leaving latter-day saints who know and love people in those gray areas uncertain about their future, contemplating "sad heaven" scenarios, and trying to figure out how to really trust that God knows how to untangle these knots.

Here's what I see in the BoM text itself: 1) After the Lehites left Jerusalem, they kept records. After they split into Nephites and Lamanites after Lehi died, the Nephites continued to keep records. Not much is said about Lamanite records, if they existed. 2) After 1000 years, when we get to Mormon's day, there is a library of records that Mormon becomes "librarian" over. Mormon, claiming divine inspiration, takes it upon himself to abridge what he considers a vast library of writings into a single work that he calls the Book of Mormon. Mormon does this with only few direct references to the text of the library of writings that he is referencing, and gives no indication how he chooses what to include and what not to include nor how he evaluates his sources (other than to claim divine inspiration for his choices). He includes in this abridgement a collection of writings called the Small Plates of Nephi. Moroni adds his abridgement of the Book of Ether and a few of his own writings. 3) Based mostly on Moroni's promise and a few other passages, Moroni, at least, and perhaps Mormon, too, expected a measure of skepticism from his/their future readers. They encourage the reader to accept the text as "true," perhaps without further explaining what it means for the record to be "true." That seems to me to be a summary of what the text claims for itself -- A divinely inspired summary of Nephite history based on the library of records that Mormon had access to in about 400 CE. We in the 21st century generally acknowledge that ancient people didn't do history the same way that we do, and Mormon does not reveal much about his methodology. Mormon does say that his overall purpose is to testify of Christ, but does not elaborate on how that purpose influenced choices he made while summarizing the history. This could be important because we can look at other texts and see how an author's purposes influence the history they write. I am far from an expert, but I have had some quick introductions to the conflicts and comparisons between the Books of Kings and the Books of Chronicles in the Old Testament, and how the differences reflect differences in the authors' basic theologies and purposes for writing these histories. In the case of the BoM, we have no alternative histories to compare to and we don't have access to any of Mormon's source documents. Does that seem accurate?

I liked it. I've also seen commentary by those involved in the project (in particular Jim Bennett). Most of what I saw from the series was a chance to address some of the hard issues in a way that is neutral to somewhat positive towards staying in the church. The producers say that they have no interest in convincing people to stay or leave, but there also seems to be a slant towards seeing how people who choose to stay deal with these issues. One of the most interesting and compelling cases that was highlighted was John Gustav-Wrathall who was excommunicated years ago, married a man, then felt something (the Spirit) prompting him to come back to the church, but not to separate from his partner. Because he won't separate, he can't be rebaptized, but he participates to the extent that church policies and his leadership will allow, and finds meaning in that.

I agree, it would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall for such a discussion. Usually when I think about this, as much as I might want to think about how it plays out when discussing Abraham and Isaac, I usually end up thinking it might actually work better later, when discussing 1 Sam 15 where we can talk about obedience and the commandment relayed through Samuel to Saul to kill all of the neighboring Amalekites. That lesson often focuses on verse 22 and 23 that asserts that obedience is what God really wants, and one could then ask questions like, does this kind of unfailing obedience extend to things like genocide that one might believe are immoral or unethical? Saul got called on the carpet for disobedience, but his disobedience appears to have been motivated by greed. What if I were in Saul's place, but my disobedience was motivated by the fact that I think genocide is a horrible evil? Much worse than letting past injustices go unpunished or learning how to live peaceably adjacent to people who worship differently than we do. I have no idea what the conversation might look like, but that is a conversation I think would be interesting.