Brad Wilcox fireside to Alpine youth on Feb 6.

[Calm]

17 minutes ago, bluebell said:

'm not sure on the bishop stuff.  I know that it's policy that bishops be married, but I don't know that it's an absolute.  For example, if all that were available were single men and there was no likelihood of a married man showing up anytime in the future, perhaps a single man could be called. 

A bishop doesn’t lose his calling the moment his wife dies. He goes through the usual release process, just sooner usually….unless something has changed from the time of the examples I was informed of.***  So he can fill his calling without his wife by his side. 
 

And single men can serve as branch presidents and those function as far as I am aware in any way a bishop does. But happy to be corrected if I missed something because as a girl and woman such lessons on specifics of priesthood leadership were likely seen as a waste of time and I just got lessons on how to be of service to the priesthood.
 

***one source:

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/58714-widower-bishop/

 

Edited February 10, 2022 by Calm

[juliann]

7 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

All good points, but not taking account of the Relief Society under Emma.  As usual, the exceptions prove the rule.  Then there are the biblical examples of female prophets.  This may cause some discomfort, but it allows for much wider possibilities than we ordinarily think of.

As to Brad, who is a member of my stake (and he and I were both in cub scouting at the same time), if I didn't know better I'd think that he had been smoking some dope, but no that's not him.  Very strange.

If we are talking about possibilities, Emma may matter. But it is irrelevant to the current situation. This is what it boils down to when it comes to excluding women: the church can function without women. The church would cease to exist if there were no men. Women having some vague priesthood is meaningless when we can't even hold a sacrament meeting without a man. 

I hadn't heard Wilcox before. If he wasn't who he was, my first reaction would have been that he was tipsy. 

[ttribe]

15 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

All good points, but not taking account of the Relief Society under Emma.  As usual, the exceptions prove the rule.  Then there are the biblical examples of female prophets.  This may cause some discomfort, but it allows for much wider possibilities than we ordinarily think of.

As to Brad, who is a member of my stake (and he and I were both in cub scouting at the same time), if I didn't know better I'd think that he had been smoking some dope, but no that's not him.  Very strange.

Quote of the day.

[rchorse]

49 minutes ago, Navidad said:

Quick question - Is a managing director of a church organization a general officer? I have had the privilege of having known and had extensive chats with several church managing directors, both at conferences and here in my home. How does a managing director fit into the hierarchy of the church? I have tremendous regard for one gentleman who left his managing director position to become a Mission President. Is that considered a promotion, or just a different type of calling?

I'm pretty sure a managing director is a paid administrative position, and not an ecclesiastical one. It would not be a calling, but rather something in the same realm as a programmer who keeps the church website up and running.

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, juliann said:

I hadn't heard Wilcox before. If he wasn't who he was, my first reaction would have been that he was tipsy

Sounds like it is a performance persona looking at his other presentations. He is trying to be very casual is my guess because he thinks it will engage with the youth more than just another stuffy church talk. 
 

I can see it in a classroom of the popular high school teacher. Seeing it at the pulpit is off putting for me.  I would have just left it as a cultural thing except the casualness made the disrespect so very, very obvious. 

Edited February 10, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

9 minutes ago, rchorse said:

I'm pretty sure a managing director is a paid administrative position, and not an ecclesiastical one. It would not be a calling, but rather something in the same realm as a programmer who keeps the church website up and running.

I think likely a director would be paid, but there were significant administrative positions I have seen the Church asking for volunteers for and heard of asking directly an individual to volunteer for.  It was seen as a mission. 

Edited February 10, 2022 by Calm

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

Sounds like it is a performance persona looking at his other presentations. He is trying to be very casual is my guess because he thinks it will engage with the youth more than just another stuffy church talk. 

Yup. When he said, “What’s up with that?” all I could think of was this:

https://youtu.be/sqpnRyfz_aY

[juliann]

16 minutes ago, Calm said:

Sounds like it is a performance persona looking at his other presentations. He is trying to be very casual is my guess because he thinks it will engage with the youth more than just another stuffy church talk. 
 

I can see it in a classroom of the popular high school teacher. Seeing it at the pulpit is off putting for me.  I would have just left it as a cultural thing except the casualness made the disrespect so very, very obvious. 

It might have worked if anything was funny. I did hear some audience chuckling at the beginning so reactions were audible to some extent,  but the rest of it was dead silence. It made me wonder if he started trying harder because of that. It was the over the top vocal effects that gave me the tipsy vibe. 

[Saint Bonaventure]

So I watched the Brad Wilcox video.

I find his message quite objectionable, particularly in his description of non-LDS as "pretending." My mind immediately went to the group of 15-20 who arrive 30 minutes early to Sunday Mass at my parish in order to spend the next 20 minutes on their knees praying the rosary. Two couples in this group are in their late 70s-early 80s, and they have to stagger to and from their knees. One of these days, they won't be able to do it. 

At the same time, I suspect that about 1/3 of the people in a religious congregation, including mine, are capable of this sort of thing if given the platform. Certainly, I've heard Catholics hold forth in a brash manner about the LDS.

I think there's an opportunity for my LDS family and friends to reach out instead of spiraling into an insulated, internal discussion about authorities vs officers and that sort of thing. I guess it matters that it wasn't President Nelson, but beyond that, those issues probably won't matter to outsiders. What seems more important to me is that there's an opportunity to reach out and appreciate one another a little more. The pandemic makes this more difficult, but I rather enjoy how the LDS work with Catholic Charities, and I'd be delighted if this situation spurred some interfaith cooperation and discussion at the local level.  

 Not to get too personal, but many years ago an LDS member of my family read a news story that mentioned the LDS were working with Catholic Charities. That spurred him to attend Mass with me a few times, and our relationship has been better for it. 

[bluebell]

20 minutes ago, juliann said:

It might have worked if anything was funny. I did hear some audience chuckling at the beginning so reactions were audible to some extent,  but the rest of it was dead silence. It made me wonder if he started trying harder because of that. It was the over the top vocal effects that gave me the tipsy vibe. 

You can see this in his "His Grace is Sufficient" talk from 2011.  His voice, when he is talking for someone else, turns the person into a caricature.  I don't think that he means any disrespect or condescension when he does it (I think it's his "trying to be funny" voice), but it could easily be taken that way.

It happens in the first 4 minutes of the talk, if anyone wants to listen.  I think it's kind of his signature voice for these things.

[mfbukowski]

3 minutes ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

So I watched the Brad Wilcox video.

I find his message quite objectionable, particularly in his description of non-LDS as "pretending." My mind immediately went to the group of 15-20 who arrive 30 minutes early to Sunday Mass at my parish in order to spend the next 20 minutes on their knees praying the rosary. Two couples in this group are in their late 70s-early 80s, and they have to stagger to and from their knees. One of these days, they won't be able to do it. 

At the same time, I suspect that about 1/3 of the people in a religious congregation, including mine, are capable of this sort of thing if given the platform. Certainly, I've heard Catholics hold forth in a brash manner about the LDS.

I think there's an opportunity for my LDS family and friends to reach out instead of spiraling into an insulated, internal discussion about authorities vs officers and that sort of thing. I guess it matters that it wasn't President Nelson, but beyond that, those issues probably won't matter to outsiders. What seems more important to me is that there's an opportunity to reach out and appreciate one another a little more. The pandemic makes this more difficult, but I rather enjoy how the LDS work with Catholic Charities, and I'd be delighted if this situation spurred some interfaith cooperation and discussion at the local level.  

 Not to get too personal, but many years ago an LDS member of my family read a news story that mentioned the LDS were working with Catholic Charities. That spurred him to attend Mass with me a few times, and our relationship has been better for it. 

We're not really so far apart in our paradigms when you really get into both and realize that both are merely nuances of interpretations made by men.

Scapulars, habits and garments, spirit prison and purgatory, and on it goes.  The Coptic Catholics are VERY close indeed, among the oldest versions of Christianity, especially when you add Orthodoxy into the equation.

Until Plotinus came along, that is

 

[kimpearson]

9 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

It was offered at first as a simple correction that, with one or two exceptions,  instead of being accepted in the spirit offered was mocked, ridiculed and marginalized. It was met with absurd assertions that required further correction, such as “It’s a distinction without a difference” or “The difference between them is almost non-existent.” How would you expect a normal person to respond to such behavior?

You say that nobody has claimed Brother Wilcox was “a member of the 70, quorum of the 12 or the First Presidency.” Do you not understand that, by definition, to falsely call a man a General Authority and then to double down on it when corrected is tantamount to claiming that very thing? 
 

To me, the calling of General Authority is very sacred. I don’t like to see the definition of it blurred, so when I see it happening, I’m apt to speak up. 

Thanks.  I can see you feel very strongly about being fully correct in our descriptions.

[Nacho2dope]

2 hours ago, rongo said:

What are we to make of it, if/when the Church leaves Brother Wilcox in his calling and he continues to speak to congregations as a counselor in the General Sunday School Presidency --- without issuing a condemning statement? 

What should be read into that?

I have seen everything from Brad did nothing wrong to he needs to be fired. What do you feel should be done to help those that were offended? His apology did not seem to be accepted by most.

[Calm]

12 minutes ago, bluebell said:

You can see this in his "His Grace is Sufficient" talk from 2011.  His voice, when he is talking for someone else, turns the person into a caricature.  I don't think that he means any disrespect or condescension when he does it (I think it's his "trying to be funny" voice), but it could easily be taken that way.

It happens in the first 4 minutes of the talk, if anyone wants to listen.  I think it's kind of his signature voice for these things.

How far he takes it could be difficult to tell. Easy to cross the line, unfortunately. Actual choice of language is very important as well as analogies chosen. Using children as an analogy and the term pretending…don’t need any change of voice to make that dismissive, demeaning and therefore disrespectful. (Totally coincidental they all start with ‘d’,  ).

Choosing a white centric explanation of black experience…again doesn’t need voice changes to be disrespectful. Using girls and other stuff….

Edited February 10, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, Nacho2dope said:

I have seen everything from Brad did nothing wrong to he needs to be fired. What do you feel should be done to help those that were offended? His apology did not seem to be accepted by most.

Does it change your perception to know he has made similar apologies in the past without changing of behaviour according to a number of reports including one reference in the news article mentioned previous (Weaver’s quote).

[bluebell]

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

How far he takes it could be difficult to tell. Easy to cross the line, unfortunately. Actual choice of language is very important as well as analogies chosen. Using children as an analogy and the term pretending…don’t need any change of voice to make that dismissive, demeaning and therefore disrespectful. (Totally coincidental they all start with ‘d’,  ).

Choosing a white centric explanation of black experience…again doesn’t need voice changes to be disrespectful. Using girls and other stuff….

I agree, and I'm not really addressing that.

I'm just addressing the performance aspect of his talks.  He has a 'style' when he's trying to be funny that seems to be the same regardless of the subject matter.  

[kimpearson]

2 hours ago, Navidad said:

Quick question - Is a managing director of a church organization a general officer? I have had the privilege of having known and had extensive chats with several church managing directors, both at conferences and here in my home. How does a managing director fit into the hierarchy of the church? I have tremendous regard for one gentleman who left his managing director position to become a Mission President. Is that considered a promotion, or just a different type of calling?

Managing Director is a paid administrative position in the Church organization.  A managing director is the head paid position for a department like publications, missionary, family history.  Managing Directors report to general authorities, usually a seventy but can include apostles depending on  the department.f  It is the highest paid position in Church administration.

[kimpearson]

16 minutes ago, Nacho2dope said:

I have seen everything from Brad did nothing wrong to he needs to be fired. What do you feel should be done to help those that were offended? His apology did not seem to be accepted by most.

If the Church is serious about eliminating racism in the Church, he needs to be released and fired from BYU.  It's the only way to send the message that the Church is serious about racism.  If the Church is only sorta serious about eliminating racism, less serious actions will be taken.  If the Church doesn't really care about eliminating racism in the Church, it will do nothing more than maybe a public statement condemning what was said and then encourage members to be forgiving because Brad has done so much good or he made a mistake and has repented.

[Nacho2dope]

11 minutes ago, Calm said:

Does it change your perception to know he has made similar apologies in the past without changing of behaviour according to a number of reports including one reference in the news article mentioned previous (Weaver’s quote).

I am still trying to process this. I have several different thoughts on what I believe should happen. If he has apologized in the past, clearly he doesn't understand the problem. I guess my struggle is with consistency. All professor's at BYU need to be treated equally. If another professor states something that is offensive or doesn't align with doctrine then the outcomes should be the same. 

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, Nacho2dope said:

. If another professor states something that is offensive or doesn't align with doctrine then the outcomes should be the same.

Was this ever a question in this thread?  I am wondering why you brought it up…just as an aside or because of something said or not said?

[bluebell]

17 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

If the Church is serious about eliminating racism in the Church, he needs to be released and fired from BYU.  It's the only way to send the message that the Church is serious about racism.  If the Church is only sorta serious about eliminating racism, less serious actions will be taken.  If the Church doesn't really care about eliminating racism in the Church, it will do nothing more than maybe a public statement condemning what was said and then encourage members to be forgiving because Brad has done so much good or he made a mistake and has repented.

We all have our own way of processing this kind of thing, and I'm not saying that your way isn't valid.  But I do want to point out that your opinion how the church must react if it's serious about racism is not universal.  The president of BYU's Black student Union, Nate Byrd, has said that he doesn't believe that Bro. Wilcox needs to resign or be fired, for example.  I'm guessing that you would not accuse him of not taking racism seriously just because he has come to a different conclusion about how best to handle this than you have.

Setting up a "if you believe what I believe you'll react exactly how I would react" standard is often problematic and unhelpful.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, juliann said:

If we are talking about possibilities, Emma may matter. But it is irrelevant to the current situation. This is what it boils down to when it comes to excluding women: the church can function without women. The church would cease to exist if there were no men. Women having some vague priesthood is meaningless when we can't even hold a sacrament meeting without a man. 

...................

I hope that you are familiar with the Relief Society powers under Emma -- as assigned by Joseph.  That is no more irrelevant than the 1978 revelation on African ordination, which simply returned the LDS Church to what it had been under Joseph.  You should fully realize the irony.

[Navidad]

14 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

Managing Director is a paid administrative position in the Church organization.  A managing director is the head paid position for a department like publications, missionary, family history.  Managing Directors report to general authorities, usually a seventy but can include apostles depending on  the department.f  It is the highest paid position in Church administration.

Thanks for the information. I once spent the better part of a day with a managing director of the church history department. We traveled up into the Sierra Madre to visit the remains of the mountain Mexican Mormon colonies. What a fine Godly man he was. My wife cooked us supper that evening. We had a delightful day. I know he reported to Elder Snow.

Then I interacted with another managing director about the time that Dwight L. Moody, a famous fundamentalist evangelist (old school - 19th century) spoke in the tabernacle to standing-room-only crowd at Brigham Young's invitation. Then in the 1890s he was invited back to speak there again. The newspaper articles about the meetings said that when he (Moody) was done preaching there wasn't a dry eye in the tabernacle. Moody also traveled here in Mexico with his evangelistic crusades in the 1880s. He was a predecessor to future evangelists like Billy Sunday (whose wife was my babysitter) and Billy Graham who spoke at times with my father.

[HappyJackWagon]

3 hours ago, rongo said:

What are we to make of it, if/when the Church leaves Brother Wilcox in his calling and he continues to speak to congregations as a counselor in the General Sunday School Presidency --- without issuing a condemning statement? 

What should be read into that?

If that were to happen I think the only thing we can read into it is that the church approves of the work he is doing in his calling and wants him to continue.

It's hard to imagine that happening. At the very least I suspect Wilcox will fade into the background and not continue these speaking engagements.

I've witnessed other leaders (locally) do things (like an indictment for tax evasion) that one would suspect the church would want to distance from the church, yet that bishop continued serving. The only thing I could read into it was that the indictment wasn't a big deal to the church and they wanted him to continue functioning in his calling.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

But we don’t live with the speculative theology behind it all or the what life is like on the exalted level at this point of our existence. We are looking for explanations to explain what is happening in the here and now. To point to an eternal principle that is at best only partially lived in this life as if it should satisfy our questions is ineffective, imo.

What Joseph set up has been altered by later prophets. Emma is long dead and not the least viewed as any church authority these days. And when was the last time we call as a church a specific living woman a prophet and she was teaching the church in that capacity?

So how do those examples do anything to tell us what is going on now?  Future potential, they are very applicable.  Here and now, not. 

I just assumed that you knew how the Relief Society functioned as authorized by Joseph -- powers later taken away.  I also assumed that you knew of specific female prophets in the Bible -- and at least one female warlord (=Judge).  If the Restoration is anything it is about restoration of ancient functions and style.  The LDS Church does not simply function as some New Testament clone, but rather explicitly incorporates all previous dispensations.  That is why denominational christianity is so hostile to us.  It does no good to talk about "now" if you are not prepared to discuss the past.  That is the key to LDS theology.