Scott Lloyd

You can now say that you know at least one conservative who listens to him. I was never a subscriber to his cable program, but I’ve been a frequent viewer of selections from it on YouTube. I say that unashamedly. And no, contrary to what you’ve been led to believe (apparently through hearsay), he’s not an idiot.

It’s not just President Oaks and me. The Church News piece indicated he was speaking for the First Presidency. I know from experience the Church News would not have written that in the article unless they were so instructed. So “you do you,” Daniel2. I’ll cast my lot with the prophets.

And I stand with you. Eloquently stated.

I didn’t invent the term Judeo-Christian values/ethics. It has been widely used in public discourse for the better part of a century. I use the term in its normative sense to mean the morals and values shared by the two world faiths, Judaism and Christianity. Rather than go into it at length, I’ll cite this Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Christian_ethics

They don’t have to be “distinctly” Christian to be Christian.

Define “we”.

I firmly and unabashedly hold to those beliefs. If that alone constitutes being a “Christian nationalist,” you can add my name to the roster. I believe we should join with good people everywhere in resisting any movement to marginalize Judeo-Christian values in our society.

I saw this Church News article just before I noticed your post citing it. I believe there has been widespread misunderstanding about the Church leaders’ support of the Respect for Marriage Act — among our own people as well as among outsiders. In my view, this statement of clarification by President Oaks was sorely needed. I earnestly welcome it. Not long ago, there was a post on this board that included the Church leaders’ support for the Act on a list of examples of how the Church is changing. I responded at the time — and still feel — that the Church statement was, if anything, a doubling down on and a reaffirmation of the Church’s doctrinal view of marriage being between a man and a woman. I pointed out in my response that the Church’s expression of support focused on amendments to the legislation that sustain and protect religious freedom. I made essentially the same points then that President Oaks is making now in this statement of clarification. One thing that ought to draw our attention is the reaffirmation that the Church’s doctrinal position on marriage “has not changed” and, as stated at the time of the legislation’s enactment, “will not change.” This is very important in view of the continuing baseless and untenable expectation by some that the Church will one day abandon the Lord’s doctrine pertaining to marriage being between a man and a woman.

Not what I had in mind. I thought it was something similar to the Teichert case with a family member making a claim against the Church for money owed. But I can’t find anything on it at the moment.

Didn’t the Church go through something similar to this a while back with regard to the Arnold Friberg Book of Mormon paintings?

How sure are we that the plaintiff does represent Teichert’s estate and to what extent, legally or otherwise? There must be dozens of Teichert progeny by now. Are they all onboard with what this grandson is doing?

I never said I had not run into them before. Please see my reply to Buckeye’s post.

I’m totally fine with goal setting (I’ve said as much here) and I have no doubt it is common in local Church units. I do, however, see a distinction between said goal setting and what I take to be the gist of what is contemplated in the OP, that is, formulating an overarching “mission statement” or “vision” for the individual Church unit. We already have that in the form of the Church’s list of four divinely appointed responsibilities. If a unit’s mission statement would align with or merely be a re-wording of that list, why not let the list itself be the mission statement on which the goals are based? It seems to me a separate mission statement by a unit would at best be extraneous and at worst be prone to crowding out or shunting off to the side the Church’s outline of divinely appointed responsibilities in favor of what the unit deems to be its own focus.

Thanks. So not a Church-wide thing then. And where it does happen, it tends to be an in-house initiative among the ward council. I was feeling rather flat footed when you asked me what our ward was doing about “yearly required goals” as though it were a ubiquitous institutional mandate. I was afraid I’d missed something obvious.

It strikes me that pretty much everything done in our ward is more or less consistent with one or more of the four divinely appointed objectives. I’m content with that. I’m unclear, though, on what you mean by “yearly required goals.” I don’t think I’ve seen anything of that nature with a Church-wide scope.