Common Consent?

[CV75]

"So, your people's vote carries veto power over God?"

Cool--just as all mankind! People veto God all the time, and they don't even vote, they just exercise their right as individual and independent autocrats! I think this is how people can opt to end up alone (not sealed) in the next life.

[rockpond]

I think common consent (aka “sustaining votes”) is a very important and much neglected topic. Most people (good people) don’t give it much thought. I think all of us find ourselves in the boat of the people at the stake conference that J. Golden Kimball was presiding over. As he conducted the sustainings, he noticed that everyone was mechanically raising their hands in sync with everyone else, without considering and thinking about them. Keeping his voice the same, he said, “It is proposed that we take Mt. Nebo and place it in the Great Salt Lake. All in favor of this, please raise your right hands. Anyone opposed? Please raise your hands.” The people sustained this action as unanimously as the others. He seriously scanned the congregation for dissenting votes, and then said, “Well, now that we’ve got it there, what in the [world] are we going to do with it?”

I struggled with this thought when I learned that a neighbor of ours had been put into the bishopric in the part of rural Idaho we had moved from when I was ten. They were a family of 14, and he was an incompetent farmer (mainly due to laziness). They were also a mean, conniving family, and they lived down the hill from us. What drove us nuts when we lived there was that everybody always talked about what a sweet family they were ---- sweet, but so unfortunate in their circumstances. We didn’t dispel anyone’s mistaken notions, and just stayed silent, but if only people knew them like we knew them.

They had bought their farm from my uncle, and about two months after buying it (not having made any payments), they wrote him a letter and told him that they considered their debt paid and were not going to pay him anything. When I asked my parents how that could be if they had a loan, they told me that there was no way in the world they could borrow money from a bank, and that they were reneging on a gentleman’s agreement with my uncle. When I asked my uncle why he allowed that, he said, “What else can we do? Where would they go, and what would they do? They and their twelve kids would be indigent vagabonds.

I was shocked as a young man when I asked my parents if we lived there when he was put into the bishopric, if we would vote not to sustain him. I expected them to say yes. They said, No, we would sustain him, even knowing what we know. It made me mad ---- what good is the process, then? Under what circumstances would one ever vote “no?” Never, really?

My first counselor when I was a bishop is a wealthy, powerful, influential man (dual law degree and MBA, with an influential role with political ramifications (he was instrumental in bringing Dan Peterson to our stake for a fireside). He told me that in another state, a member of the 1^st Quorum of the Seventy sat down with him, told him that they were going to present a certain man to be sustained as the new stake president, and asked him what his thoughts were about the sustaining vote. He told him that he had personal knowledge of dishonest business dealings from the proposed man, and that he couldn’t sustain him with that knowledge. The general authority asked him how he would vote if they presented him anyway, even with what he had told him. He told him that he had shared everything he knew, and if the Church felt to present him anyway, he would sustain him. The man was sustained as stake president, and two weeks later, vanished as his business dealings reached a legal critical mass. He still feels that he did the right thing in sustaining him, because he had shared everything that was needed to make an informed and inspired decision. His skirts were cleared of blood . . .

My only personal experience with dissenting votes was in the Bremen, Germany ward that was ground zero in the “Bremen Apostasy.” I was visiting as a zone leader and about a third of the ward voted no on every calling ---- and they were routine callings, like primary workers. I thought that was very odd at the time, and the aftermath shows that there were serious spiritual problems in that ward. (That’s a completely different and huge topic of its own. My dad and I knew and were close to Dietrich Behl, the main figure in the “Bremen Apostasy,” and the mission president who succeeded my second one was the one that the whole thing blew up on. He has provided me with fascinating and intriguing “fly-on-the-wall” details that happened long after I had returned from my mission). The main thing for purposes of this thread is that I believe that voting no is a very, very serious thing, and should be treated with extreme caution even when people have good, firsthand knowledge of things. They should try to share these things with priesthood leaders before the vote, where possible, but when “blindsided” with a vote they aren’t prepared for, they should be very careful about voting no. When conscience demands that they vote no, they should have no trepidations about it (easy to say, right?), and should expect that priesthood leaders will handle that well. They should also be prepared to sustain if the person is presented, even with the revelations that have been shared.

In short, withholding a sustaining vote is a very serious matter, and can be a “canary in the mineshaft” about other things.

I think those are all really interesting and useful examples. Thanks for sharing those.

As a side note, the handbook explains that whenever a dissenting vote is given, ward/stake leadership should meet with that person (after the meeting) to determine if they have actual knowledge that disqualifies the individual.