More on the Brother Bott controversy

The Church Statement Regarding 'Washington Post' Article on Race and the Church is the closest the Church has come to repudiating the teachings that were used to legitimate the black priesthood/temple ban. This is an important, if absurdly tardy, development.

But let's be clear about what happened here.

Church leaders didn't issue this statement because they were shocked and dismayed to discover that a BYU religion professor was teaching these things to his students.

Nor did they issue the statement because they had been moved by the pleas of church members, African Americans among them, that these teachings needed to be officially repudiated. I know of two instances within the past 15 years or so when members have organized in an attempt to communicate such pleas to church leadership.

Church leaders didn't care what Bott was teaching in his classes--until he communicated those same ideas to a journalist at the Washington Post. Church leaders didn't care when members objected to these teachings; they only moved to repudiate the teachings (sort of) when publicity got them worried about what non-members would think.

Why is that? Fundamentally, because church leaders are invested in the idea that members are supposed to obey them. Consequently, leaders are inclined to discount petitions or complaints from church members. Members who presume to tell church leaders what they should do--i.e., repudiate these teachings--are bad members. They don't trust that the leaders are divinely inspired. If God wanted the leaders to repudiate past teachings, he would tell them. So members should just wait for God to tell the leaders what to do instead of trying to steady the ark themselves.

But church leaders wouldn't repudiate their predecessors' teachings anyway: note that the latest statement doesn't actually say that what Bott was teaching was wrong, just that it should be regarded as "speculation and opinion, not doctrine"--i.e., not the church's official position, which at present is, "We don't know why God didn't want blacks to have the priesthood. We just know he did." Church leaders can't admit that the ban was wrong because that admission would undermine the prophetic authority of church leadership--ergo, the authority of the current leadership. If church leaders could be wrong in believing that the black priesthood/temple ban was God's will, then members would have grounds for suggesting that the current leaders are wrong when they say that certain doctrines, policies, and programs are God's will.

And that church leaders cannot abide. They want to be obeyed; they want to be beyond criticism. That's why you have Ballard repeating the Woodruff line that the Lord will never allow the General Authorities to lead the church astray. That's why you have Oaks insisting that members should never criticize church leaders even if the criticism is true.

And this is why I think gay-friendly members who hope to "change the church from within" are doomed to frustration. Maybe they can change minds and hearts in the pews, and that would certainly be a good thing. But they will never get church leaders to listen to them. Because church leaders don't listen to members whose petitions are implicitly critical, however diplomatically couched. Such listening is not part of the role to which church leaders understand themselves to be called.

Go and tell this people: Hear--
but they heard not.
And see--
but they perceived not. (2 Nephi 16:9)

But--and this is the really infuriating thing--while church leaders don't care when members criticize them, they care very much when outsiders launch certain criticisms against them. When members complain that these teachings are racist and should be repudiated, they get Gordon B. Hinckley shrugging affably and saying, "What's the problem? The 1978 revelation speaks for itself." But when a major newspaper suggests that these teachings are racist, in the middle of an election year when Church officials are on high-alert regarding their public image, then the leaders see the teachings as a problem that needs to be addressed.

What makes that seeming inconsistency consistent is the fact that the same impulse underlies both the leaders' unwillingness to respond to members' complaints and their swift response to bad press from outside. What's consistent is that church leaders don't want to be criticized. In dealing with members, that means maintaining a working fiction of prophetic infallibility--ergo, you can't admit the priesthood/temple ban was wrong. In dealing with the press, avoiding criticism requires getting your spin doctors to write carefully crafted statements that seem to offer the repudiation you would never offer your own members.