Examples of the church being "progressive"

[MrShorty]

tl:dr -- What examples from church history can you describe that show the church being "progressive" (encouraging change) rather than being "conservative" (resistant to change)? The question probably won't make sense without the following context. Up front, I want to emphasize that I am not using progressive/conservative in necessarily a political context, but in the sense that conservative behavior is resistant to change in favor of past traditions or the status quo, and progressive behavior is encouraging change, often rejecting past traditions or the status quo.

For context, in recent weeks I have been reflecting on some of the difficult, controversial issues I see in the church (priesthood and temple ban based on race figures prominently in my thoughts, but my goal is not to emphasize that particular issue). In these reflections, I often find myself commenting that <blank> is more about the church being conservative (so that it isn't thrown about by every wind of doctrine as St. Paul put it) rather than being right. As I have contemplated these things, in order to better understand my thinking, I have asked myself what I would be looking for to counter this somewhat cynical view of the way the church is governed. One frequent response I give myself is to wonder if there are examples of the church being progressive. Examples where the church took on a traditional belief or policy or practice and changed it in a way that anticipated a problem with that tradition. The idea being that examples of the church being progressive can counter the cynical belief that the church often acts more out of conservatism than what is right.

Anyone with examples they want to share?

[MustardSeed]

I wish I did. 

[Duncan]

Single people can serve as temple workers, interracial marriages and in the Temple come to mind

[blackstrap]

Utah being one of the first states to give women the vote,

GAs stop growing beards. 😁

[LoudmouthMormon]

Compared to other Christian churches, media with a religious bias, and LDS voting members of congress, this counts as progressive:

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/respect-for-marriage-act-statement

There just ain't much conservative traditional God-fearin' churches out there making public statements about "preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters".

 

The Lord's university is so crowbarred full of wokism, folks are wondering if it's still a part of the church: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/byu-releases-findings-from-its-diversity-and-equity-survey-designed-to-root-out-racism-on-campus

Not to mention the General Presidency introducing a queer young woman at the 2021 BYU Women's Conference and giving her 6 minutes while they stand by smiling affirmingly, displaying as much love and acceptance as they found humanly possible:   https://youtu.be/KtTwPQseMzU

 

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by LoudmouthMormon

[Pyreaux]

The church since its founding always baptized black people into the church while other churches were still wondering if they were human with souls that could be saved. The Church never had segregated churches, so during the civil rights era, we were dealing with a mere priesthood ban that other churches like the Baptists bring up, while at the same era they still had racially segragated churches. The Church befriended the Native Americans when they were enemies of the state. The Church declared there was no position on evolution, its taught in Biology at BYU. We seem to cooperate with organizations with environmental issues.

[MustardSeed]

30 minutes ago, Duncan said:

Single people can serve as temple workers, interracial marriages and in the Temple come to mind

Those things feel less progressive and more like “hello, why not?” to me

[MrShorty]

@Duncan. Can you expand some on the history behind single people serving as temple workers? I'm just not familiar with that history.

Interracial marriage is an interesting example I had not thought of. From what I can see, the church's attitudes towards interracial marriage seem to roughly parallel broader US trends. Wikipedia's article on Interracial marriage in the US notes that Utah (using the state of Utah as a stand in for the church, even though the correlation is often far from exact) repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1963, 4 years before SCOTUS took on Loving v. Virginia that overturned all remaining anti-miscegenation laws in the US. Of course, before '78, those married to black Africans could not be sealed in the Temples. I recall as a seminary student in the late '80s being taught that the church discourages interracial marriage because some believed that interracial marriages were more difficult and therefore more prone to divorce. From what I can see, the church's stance on interracial marriage seems to be about as progressive as broader American opinions about interracial marriage, neither being substantially ahead of broader American culture nor substantially behind (other than the part about being able to have those marriages sealed in our temples). Something to consider, thank you.

[Rain]

Missionary work being done online. As much as people complain about it the fact that they were will to try things online show a willingness to change.

Just Serve - while there are other sites where charities can post needs, Just Serve has the ability, if the charity wants to use it, to sign up for projects making it much easier for some charities to do that kind of thing especially if they are a smaller charity without a website.

[Rain]

The apps the church has.

Light the World in each Dec.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Rain

[MrShorty]

@blackstrapWomen's suffrage could be an interesting one. Again, there's the small problem of conflating Utah with the church, but Utah and its strong LDS majority with our Wyoming neighbors were very progressive in giving women the vote. Of course, broader women's issues get more mixed results, as we strongly stick to more conservative, complementarian beliefs about women's roles in the family (fathers preside and provide while mothers nurture) and in society (to what extent should women be encouraged in the workplace) and in the church (women are still barred from holding priesthood offices and serving on priesthood only councils). Broader women's issues is one of those big issues where I struggle to discern how much is "true" and how much is "perpetuating tradition due to conservatism."

In the mid-20th century, our attitudes towards beards seemed to simply follow the broader attitudes of US fashion. When they were fashionable we wore them. As they fell out of fashion, we stopped wearing them. When beards became associated with the hippie/counter-culture movement, we banned beards from church schools. Then our conservatism shows up and we retain these beard bans at CES schools (and, depending on local leadership, for temple workers, bishops, stake presidents, and other leaders) until today even though broader society's fashion trends have become much more accepting of beards in recent decades. So, we were content to go with the flow until we got some bee in our bonnet about how beards are associated with "certain" people, and our conservatism just won't seem to allow us to let that go.

[Stormin' Mormon]

According to your definitions of the term, the whole plural marriage thing was rather progressive in that it was a rejection of the traditional status quo.

Pioneer Utah was also rather progressive in the realm of urban planning.  I have a master's degree in that field, and when in grad school, I was impressed by the fact that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young came a generation or two before the men that academia considers to be the founding fathers in the field (Ebenezer Hower, Le Corbusier, etc.)

The development of the Church Welfare program was innovative and progressive in its time.  On a related note, the Perpetual Education Fund and the Pathways program are both rather progressive in nature.

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by Stormin' Mormon

[MrShorty]

@LoudmouthMormon Another interesting example. Certainly, we are being more progressive than many staunch, conservative Christians out there in supporting RfMA. I am still a bit on the fence about whether supporting RfMA is really about changing our belief that same sex couples ought to have the legal right to marry or more about waving a white AoF 12 flag that we will submit to the law of the land and stop fighting the legal issue. Whatever the law says, while we allow legally married same sex couples to attend our meetings, they cannot (subject to leadership roulette) be in full communion with us. Another of those issues I find difficult to discern the difference between "we are doing this because it is right" and "we are doing this because we have always done this."

[MrShorty]

@Pyreaux The church's history with issues of race is certainly interesting. We were progressive in that, as you noted, we, unlike most other Christian churches, did not segregate into "white" and "black" congregations. However, we also did not really counter many of the traditional beliefs that race was a marker of some kind of divine favor/disfavor, perpetuated beliefs around mixing seeds, and so on. In my analysis here, issues around race seem to be a mixed bag.

[Duncan]

48 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

@Duncan. Can you expand some on the history behind single people serving as temple workers? I'm just not familiar with that history.

Interracial marriage is an interesting example I had not thought of. From what I can see, the church's attitudes towards interracial marriage seem to roughly parallel broader US trends. Wikipedia's article on Interracial marriage in the US notes that Utah (using the state of Utah as a stand in for the church, even though the correlation is often far from exact) repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1963, 4 years before SCOTUS took on Loving v. Virginia that overturned all remaining anti-miscegenation laws in the US. Of course, before '78, those married to black Africans could not be sealed in the Temples. I recall as a seminary student in the late '80s being taught that the church discourages interracial marriage because some believed that interracial marriages were more difficult and therefore more prone to divorce. From what I can see, the church's stance on interracial marriage seems to be about as progressive as broader American opinions about interracial marriage, neither being substantially ahead of broader American culture nor substantially behind (other than the part about being able to have those marriages sealed in our temples). Something to consider, thank you.

as far as I know they changed that policy maybe 5-6 years ago, my guess is they realized that marital status has nothing to do with working at the recommend desk. My bro is a worker and he's single

[MrShorty]

@Rain As I understand it, missionary work being done online was mostly a response to the Covid pandemic, when most jurisdictions where our missionaries were serving made public, in person proselytizing illegal. This feels more like a reaction to the realities of a pandemic where we decided that our tradition of evangelizing was important enough to get creative about how we accomplished that task.

Our use of various apps shows that we are willing to use new technologies for whatever purposes we find them useful for.

Light the world and Just Serve seem like "programs" designed to help us with our traditions of trying to help and serve our fellow man. I think they show creativity in trying to achieve our goals, but I don't see anything that fundamentally changes our Christian ideal of helping and serving other people.

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, blackstrap said:

Utah being one of the first states to give women the vote,

GAs stop growing beards. 😁

Utah's voting rights for women being the first in the country was my first thought too.

[pogi]

1 hour ago, MrShorty said:

tl:dr -- What examples from church history can you describe that show the church being "progressive" (encouraging change) rather than being "conservative" (resistant to change)?

The restoration. 

Open canon. 

 

[MrShorty]

@Stormin' Mormon You are correct that polygamy was very progressive (downright liberal) in the mid-19th century. As one of the "twin relics of barbarism," it was a complete slap in the face to traditional Christian/Western mores. In many respects, much of what Joseph Smith did would be progressive, as he believed he was "restoring" a Christianity that had been supplanted and adulterated by various false traditions. In some ways, because Joseph Smith knew/believed he was blazing new trails, his progressivism doesn't fit into my analysis. It seems that many of the things that were novel in the 19th century have become our favorite traditions, but are we holding on to them because they are right or because Joseph implemented a new thing that then became our sacred tradition that we dare not question or overturn.

I have heard anecdotally about early LDS urban planning and how that broke with tradition. I do not know details (other than the well known "have streets wide enough for a horse and wagon to turn around in" and the so-called "grid" system).

I call mixed on the church welfare system. We have always believed that we have a responsibility to care for the poor, so we didn't change any fundamental belief. However, our programs for how to implement the belief were novel and progressive for the time. It shows that we are willing to find new ways to implement our traditional beliefs, but it doesn't necessarily show a willingness to challenge our beliefs entirely.

[MrShorty]

@Duncan If the change to allow singles to serve as temple workers was that recent, it might be more of an example of our conservatism than progressivism. How many decades has our temple worship looked substantially like it does now, and you are saying that it was well within the last decade that we decided singles could participate as temple workers? There's probably more to the history, but that feels more like conservatism to me, that it would take decades before we open up that service opportunity to singles.

[MrShorty]

@pogi As I noted to Stormin Mormon, much of what Joseph Smith did was progressive, as his whole purpose in many ways was to challenge and correct long-standing Christian traditions. Perhaps I will add this on the topic of restoration. With Pres. Nelson, we have started to talk about an "ongoing" restoration. Perhaps one way of seeing my OP is to wonder if, ~200 years after Joseph Smith, have we let our conservative desire to retain traditions set by him and his successors impede our ability to seek out changes. What things since Joseph Smith initiated the restoration do you see that show an ongoing restoration?

[Duncan]

14 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

@Duncan If the change to allow singles to serve as temple workers was that recent, it might be more of an example of our conservatism than progressivism. How many decades has our temple worship looked substantially like it does now, and you are saying that it was well within the last decade that we decided singles could participate as temple workers? There's probably more to the history, but that feels more like conservatism to me, that it would take decades before we open up that service opportunity to singles.

you used "conservatism" as being resistant to change and then I said that singles serving as temple workers isn't that and its progressive, which you use as "encouraging change" so I say that in the last decade they decided to be progressive and not conservative and open themselves up to the idea that singles could actually serve as temple workers-So it was conservative up to a point and then it became progressive, which is how progress works you continue to make changes as the system goes along or the kingdom advances

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

The church since its founding always baptized black people into the church while other churches were still wondering if they were human with souls that could be saved. The Church never had segregated churches, so during the civil rights era, we were dealing with a mere priesthood ban that other churches like the Baptists bring up, while at the same era they still had racially segragated churches. The Church befriended the Native Americans when they were enemies of the state. The Church declared there was no position on evolution, its taught in Biology at BYU. We seem to cooperate with organizations with environmental issues.

There was no real debate over whether black people had souls. That is a common myth. Like the supposed Catholic debates over women having souls that also didn’t happen.

We did baptize them into the church. Often very reluctantly. Saying we were racially integrated while they were segregated is a little disingenuous. Our policies meant we only had a relative few people in the church to discriminate against.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Duncan said:

you used "conservatism" as being resistant to change and then I said that singles serving as temple workers isn't that and its progressive, which you use as "encouraging change" so I say that in the last decade they decided to be progressive and not conservative and open themselves up to the idea that singles could actually serve as temple workers-So it was conservative up to a point and then it became progressive, which is how progress works you continue to make changes as the system goes along or the kingdom advances

They have let singles serve in the temple for much longer than the last decade. It just used to have the age cutoff at 31. I remember. I got released over it. Shortly thereafter they raised the age to 35 and then got rid of the age cap.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Stormin&#x27; Mormon said:

According to your definitions of the term, the whole plural marriage thing was rather progressive in that it was a rejection of the traditional status quo.

Pioneer Utah was also rather progressive in the realm of urban planning.  I have a master's degree in that field, and when in grad school, I was impressed by the fact that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young came a generation or two before the men that academia considers to be the founding fathers in the field (Ebenezer Hower, Le Corbusier, etc.)

The development of the Church Welfare program was innovative and progressive in its time.  On a related note, the Perpetual Education Fund and the Pathways program are both rather progressive in nature.

 

Mixed feelings on the Church Welfare program. It was in many ways reactionary. Not just to the Depression but to New Deal programs. Much of the impetus was to compete with the federal government in a concern (real or imagined) that getting help from the government would lead the Saints astray.