D&C 145-152

(About this reflection)

My reading for this week was the W. Wallace Smith revelations. WWS was the third of JS Jr.'s grandsons to serve as RLDS president. He's also the president under whom the RLDS Church began the institutional shift that has brought it into greater affinity with liberal Protestantism. (The LDS Church, by contrast, has undergone shifts that have brought it into greater affinity with conservative Protestantism. That's another story, though.) In retrospect, the schisms the RLDS experience in the 1980s under the Wallace B. Smith presidency begin with the W. Wallace Smith presidency.

Incidentally, the section headings are getting longer now. They include, even more frequently than earlier, descriptions from the president regarding how the revelation was received, and summaries of major points from the revelation. I'm wondering if this reflects a certain defensiveness: "Look, these really are revelations; he describes the process," and "Here are the important things we have to take from these documents."

Section 149 is particularly important. It announces that "the time has come for a start to be made toward building my temple in the Center Place" (149:6a). The building of the temple is a powerful expression of the Reorganization's continued commitment to the Zion-building project of the early Saints. At the same time, section 149 offers a soft, indirect rebuke to "some of you [who] have sought security in the words and phrases by which the faithful of earlier days have expressed their knowledge of me." The Lord instructs his servants to "bring to their searching for truth and their service to my people all the treasures of understanding I have opened for them elsewhere. . . . My servants of the leading quorums are commended for their diligence in seeking more light and truth from all available sources" (149:4-5). This is a reference to church leaders having resorted to a Protestant seminary (Methodist, if I remember correctly) for theological education, a major factor in the liberalization of church leadership beginning in this period.

Section 150, given in 1972, appears to speak against the Vietnam War and exploitation of the environment:

These are portentous times. The lives of many are being sacrificed unnecessarily to the gods of war, greed, and avarice. The land is being desecrated by the thoughtless waste of vital resources.

The Saints are called to become leaders in advocating for peace and environmental stewardship:

You must obey my commandments and be in the forefront of those who would mediate this needless destruction while there is yet day. (150:7)

In a similar vein, Section 151 tells the Saints:

You who are my disciples must be found continuing in the forefront of those organizations and movements which are recognizing the worth of persons and are committed to bringing the ministry of my Son to bear on their lives. (151:9)

The Saints are told, in fact, that a shared commitment to these causes will heal division in the church:

Working together to this end will promote unity, resolve conflicts, relieve tensions between individuals, and heal the wounds which have been sapping the strength of the church, spiritually and materially. This you must do in the spirit of love and compassion as revelead in my Son during his journey in your midst. (151:10)

Calls to unity are a recurring theme in the revelations of W. Wallace Smith. Like Frederick Smith's calls for unity, W. Wallace Smith's have a somewhat sinister sound to my ears, given that I know there's another schism coming. With that knowledge, I start to hear calls for unity as a rebuke to the opposition—an insistence that dissenters fall into line. That sends a shiver up my liberal spine, even as my liberal heart warms to the call to seek light and truth from all available sources; to find new ways of expressing the gospel; to march with movements for peace, stewardship, and the worth of persons.

Because of time constraints, I need to set this aside for now. The bottom line is: I'm really ambivalent. In one sense, W. Wallace Smith's revelations are so exciting. There is so much about them that rings true for me, that prompts me to say, "Amen, this is the voice of God!" But I know that this vision for the church prevailed at the cost of alienating something like a fourth of the membership. As a liberal in the LDS Church, I have no power, so it's easy for me to rail against abuses of power by conservatives. In the Reorganization, the balance of power shifted in the liberals' favor, and I feel obliged to judge their use of that power as demandingly as I judge how the conservative LDS establishment has used its power. I'll have to revisit this.