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Jan. 11th, 2016 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnI was surprised by how many people wanted to know about our new bishop! I'll probably f-lock this after a week or so, for what I think should be obvious reasons. Also, I tried to give some background on LDS structure/theology/terminology, but I've also elided in a bunch of places to make this a more-or-less manageable length; please ask questions if there's anything that you'd like more information about.
First, let me give some background: an LDS ward (congregation) is headed by a bishop, aided by two counselors. The bishop is in the same role as a pastor or minister in a more conventional Christian church, in terms of being the head of pastoral care of the ward, although he does not generally give sermons. (LDS chapel services feature talks given by members of the congregation.) All these positions are lay positions; they are unpaid, and performed by these men (they're always men) in addition to whatever jobs they may have. The bishop is "called" (appointed) by the next level up in the hierarchy, the stake presidency (again, a leader with two counselors; a stake is a collection of wards). It is a rotating position, as all ward-level positions are; the same man who is a bishop today might be a nursery leader next week, or a chorister. (In practice this does not happen all that often, but it does happen.) The bishop position, in particular, lasts approximately five years, give or take a year or two.
There have been plenty of cases of bad bishops, but I've been lucky enough never to have personally experienced one. All the ones I've known have been legitimately invested in helping their people. None of my bishops have given me grief about my, let's say, complicated relationship with faith (which is something I understand has happened to other people); in fact, they've all been really understanding about it.
Our previous bishop, whom I will call Bishop S, had been the bishop for about five years, since I moved into the ward. He was — well, let's just say that whenever he got up to talk I would think, "He's such a godly man!" I didn't mean it as an insult. I didn't always mean it as a compliment (though I sometimes did). It wasn't that I thought he was proud of being A Good Person, or that I thought he was inflexibly Good, or anything like that. Just that he has always struck me as the sort of person who was very invested in being a Good Mormon Person in following both the spirit and the letter of all the rules.
His tenure as bishop was very much like that, too. The Three-Fold Mission of the Church is to perfect the saints, proclaim the gospel, and redeem the dead (oh hey, this last year we've added caring for the poor and needy) — and there was a lot of emphasis on all three parts of that. There was a lot of emphasis on things like following the prophet; all sacrament meeting talks were basically asked to be based on talks from the current Presidency of the Church.
He is not a music person, and while he respects music I don't think he loves it, which led to (in my opinion) some subpar music administration decisions (one of which meant we had almost no music in Sacrament meeting for almost a year -- this was not really his fault, he chose the person who was best at music and not the person who was best at music administration to do the job, which is a natural mistake) as well as some clashes, one of which I've previously documented here and here. He was also really overly (from my point of view) worried about music at church being non-completely-theologically correct, to the extent that "Amazing Grace" (for example) was banned for a number of years. (Finally his sister-in-law made him allow her daughter, his niece, to play it on violin.)
I should reiterate that he is a very nice person and was a good bishop. He gave a confirmation blessing yesterday in church (this is the blessing that occurs after baptism) and it was this really awesome spiritually uplifting thing. I do think he is really very spiritually uplifting and cares deeply about the ward. The only time I really spent any time with him was during my miscarriage, and he was incredibly helpful and sensitive to my pain and even to the fact that I didn't know him very well and wasn't super comfortable with him.
The new bishop, Bishop G., was called maybe three months ago? He is completely different. He has a vision for the ward, and it's a vision that involves unity of our ward through deeply knowing and therefore loving each other. It has not been super overt, but it is there and if I've noticed it, it is a thing, because I'm pretty oblivious. The Sunday School classes have moved to a less lecture-based and more participatory format. I was asked to give a talk, and the topic was not to talk about some other General Authority's talk. It was, "As you have worked and struggled to live the Gospel, what blessings have come from Heavenly Father as a result of your faith and perseverance?" In fact, all the talk topics seem designed to draw all of us closer together. Last Sunday he got up and talked about a crisis of faith he had had during his residency, which is something I just can't ever see Bishop S. ever doing (then again it's hard for me to think of Bishop S. having ever had such a crisis of faith, he's not that sort). I feel like I'm not really getting across how different this is in feel, but it's really different.
Also, Bishop G. is the husband of one of the main musicians in the ward, so the music has been a lot better since he became bishop!
I now find that I want to talk about something I have kind of avoided mentioning, which is the recent LDS Handbook changes. The Handbook itself I cannot tell you very much about, as I have never seen it; it's a, well, handbook that bishops and the guys above the bishops (? I think?) use as a guide to policy. Anyway, as you may or may not have heard (this made secular news at the time), there was a change about a month or two ago, which was leaked by some renegade bishop to the public, which says that children of same-sex marriages are not allowed to be baptized or have baby blessings done, even with the consent of the parents. (The LDS church does not perform infant baptism; the baby blessing is its infant rite and what puts the baby in the records of the Church. Baptism at age 8 is a major, perhaps the major, childhood rite/ordinance.)
So — the LDS Church has always been against the legalization of same-sex marriage, because of its theology. Currently, I vehemently disagree with its stance on this (partially because I don't really agree with the theology, part of my complicated relationship with LDS faith/theology), but I do understand why the Church does so, and why it is consistent with its theology, and I can fit it into my worldview without assuming the Church leadership is completely crazy and bigoted.
These latest changes are neither understandable nor theologically consistent. The thing is that Church leadership defended this policy as saying that it was all about loooove for the chiiiiildren, that it was about how they didn't want the children to be placed in a situation where they had to choose between their parents and the Church —
Well. The thing is, D is not LDS. In fact, he disagrees pretty strenuously with a lot of LDS theology. If I died, and he was E and A's only parent, they would still be able to be baptized (with his consent). So if this policy for same-sex families is out of so much love (which is also inconsistent with LDS theology, which is all about how love means choice and agency, but anyway), it follows therefore that they don't love my kids enough to spare them this same burden — but I don't really think that's what they're thinking about. I don't really think they thought at all, to be honest; I think this was a kneejerk reaction to the legalization of gay marriage in the US.
But anyway. This was very hard. It's the closest I've been in years to leaving the Church entirely. I was very close to doing so.
Bishop G. gave a lesson a couple of weeks ago. He talked about how the root of the gospel is love, and how everything else is policy. And how policy is not necessarily permanent, how it can change. He talked about the policy change of the priesthood being given to black people. More than that: he talked about how we now understand the lack of the priesthood for black people before that as a mistake, even though a lot of ink was spilled by prominent Mormons trying to justify it before that time. He talked about how the recent changes are a hard thing, and how we don't understand it, and how this could mean that it was correct or incorrect, but in any case we need to hold on to the root of the gospel.
Bishop S., I think, would not have been able to give the lesson that Bishop G. did. I think he might have been able to give one that did not alienate me entirely. But I don't think he would have been able to give this lesson, because it specifically required the bishop to think about it from the perspective of people who might look at the changes very differently, both those who accept it and those who don't, and while I think Bishop S's sympathy level is high enough, I'm not sure he could have empathized to the degree that was necessary.
First, let me give some background: an LDS ward (congregation) is headed by a bishop, aided by two counselors. The bishop is in the same role as a pastor or minister in a more conventional Christian church, in terms of being the head of pastoral care of the ward, although he does not generally give sermons. (LDS chapel services feature talks given by members of the congregation.) All these positions are lay positions; they are unpaid, and performed by these men (they're always men) in addition to whatever jobs they may have. The bishop is "called" (appointed) by the next level up in the hierarchy, the stake presidency (again, a leader with two counselors; a stake is a collection of wards). It is a rotating position, as all ward-level positions are; the same man who is a bishop today might be a nursery leader next week, or a chorister. (In practice this does not happen all that often, but it does happen.) The bishop position, in particular, lasts approximately five years, give or take a year or two.
There have been plenty of cases of bad bishops, but I've been lucky enough never to have personally experienced one. All the ones I've known have been legitimately invested in helping their people. None of my bishops have given me grief about my, let's say, complicated relationship with faith (which is something I understand has happened to other people); in fact, they've all been really understanding about it.
Our previous bishop, whom I will call Bishop S, had been the bishop for about five years, since I moved into the ward. He was — well, let's just say that whenever he got up to talk I would think, "He's such a godly man!" I didn't mean it as an insult. I didn't always mean it as a compliment (though I sometimes did). It wasn't that I thought he was proud of being A Good Person, or that I thought he was inflexibly Good, or anything like that. Just that he has always struck me as the sort of person who was very invested in being a Good Mormon Person in following both the spirit and the letter of all the rules.
His tenure as bishop was very much like that, too. The Three-Fold Mission of the Church is to perfect the saints, proclaim the gospel, and redeem the dead (oh hey, this last year we've added caring for the poor and needy) — and there was a lot of emphasis on all three parts of that. There was a lot of emphasis on things like following the prophet; all sacrament meeting talks were basically asked to be based on talks from the current Presidency of the Church.
He is not a music person, and while he respects music I don't think he loves it, which led to (in my opinion) some subpar music administration decisions (one of which meant we had almost no music in Sacrament meeting for almost a year -- this was not really his fault, he chose the person who was best at music and not the person who was best at music administration to do the job, which is a natural mistake) as well as some clashes, one of which I've previously documented here and here. He was also really overly (from my point of view) worried about music at church being non-completely-theologically correct, to the extent that "Amazing Grace" (for example) was banned for a number of years. (Finally his sister-in-law made him allow her daughter, his niece, to play it on violin.)
I should reiterate that he is a very nice person and was a good bishop. He gave a confirmation blessing yesterday in church (this is the blessing that occurs after baptism) and it was this really awesome spiritually uplifting thing. I do think he is really very spiritually uplifting and cares deeply about the ward. The only time I really spent any time with him was during my miscarriage, and he was incredibly helpful and sensitive to my pain and even to the fact that I didn't know him very well and wasn't super comfortable with him.
The new bishop, Bishop G., was called maybe three months ago? He is completely different. He has a vision for the ward, and it's a vision that involves unity of our ward through deeply knowing and therefore loving each other. It has not been super overt, but it is there and if I've noticed it, it is a thing, because I'm pretty oblivious. The Sunday School classes have moved to a less lecture-based and more participatory format. I was asked to give a talk, and the topic was not to talk about some other General Authority's talk. It was, "As you have worked and struggled to live the Gospel, what blessings have come from Heavenly Father as a result of your faith and perseverance?" In fact, all the talk topics seem designed to draw all of us closer together. Last Sunday he got up and talked about a crisis of faith he had had during his residency, which is something I just can't ever see Bishop S. ever doing (then again it's hard for me to think of Bishop S. having ever had such a crisis of faith, he's not that sort). I feel like I'm not really getting across how different this is in feel, but it's really different.
Also, Bishop G. is the husband of one of the main musicians in the ward, so the music has been a lot better since he became bishop!
I now find that I want to talk about something I have kind of avoided mentioning, which is the recent LDS Handbook changes. The Handbook itself I cannot tell you very much about, as I have never seen it; it's a, well, handbook that bishops and the guys above the bishops (? I think?) use as a guide to policy. Anyway, as you may or may not have heard (this made secular news at the time), there was a change about a month or two ago, which was leaked by some renegade bishop to the public, which says that children of same-sex marriages are not allowed to be baptized or have baby blessings done, even with the consent of the parents. (The LDS church does not perform infant baptism; the baby blessing is its infant rite and what puts the baby in the records of the Church. Baptism at age 8 is a major, perhaps the major, childhood rite/ordinance.)
So — the LDS Church has always been against the legalization of same-sex marriage, because of its theology. Currently, I vehemently disagree with its stance on this (partially because I don't really agree with the theology, part of my complicated relationship with LDS faith/theology), but I do understand why the Church does so, and why it is consistent with its theology, and I can fit it into my worldview without assuming the Church leadership is completely crazy and bigoted.
These latest changes are neither understandable nor theologically consistent. The thing is that Church leadership defended this policy as saying that it was all about loooove for the chiiiiildren, that it was about how they didn't want the children to be placed in a situation where they had to choose between their parents and the Church —
Well. The thing is, D is not LDS. In fact, he disagrees pretty strenuously with a lot of LDS theology. If I died, and he was E and A's only parent, they would still be able to be baptized (with his consent). So if this policy for same-sex families is out of so much love (which is also inconsistent with LDS theology, which is all about how love means choice and agency, but anyway), it follows therefore that they don't love my kids enough to spare them this same burden — but I don't really think that's what they're thinking about. I don't really think they thought at all, to be honest; I think this was a kneejerk reaction to the legalization of gay marriage in the US.
But anyway. This was very hard. It's the closest I've been in years to leaving the Church entirely. I was very close to doing so.
Bishop G. gave a lesson a couple of weeks ago. He talked about how the root of the gospel is love, and how everything else is policy. And how policy is not necessarily permanent, how it can change. He talked about the policy change of the priesthood being given to black people. More than that: he talked about how we now understand the lack of the priesthood for black people before that as a mistake, even though a lot of ink was spilled by prominent Mormons trying to justify it before that time. He talked about how the recent changes are a hard thing, and how we don't understand it, and how this could mean that it was correct or incorrect, but in any case we need to hold on to the root of the gospel.
Bishop S., I think, would not have been able to give the lesson that Bishop G. did. I think he might have been able to give one that did not alienate me entirely. But I don't think he would have been able to give this lesson, because it specifically required the bishop to think about it from the perspective of people who might look at the changes very differently, both those who accept it and those who don't, and while I think Bishop S's sympathy level is high enough, I'm not sure he could have empathized to the degree that was necessary.
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Date: 2016-01-11 11:23 pm (UTC)(In my church right now I'm on the Pastoral Search Committee - in other words, I'm one of the people who gets to have significant input in who our next pastor is going to be. So I'm thinking a lot about church leadership styles right now!)
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Date: 2016-01-12 04:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2016-01-12 05:38 am (UTC)Aren't there practical and spiritual consequences to children as a result of this? Isn't this considered a form of ostracism by the church against same sex couples? To me, the children are being punished, as well as their parents, which I presume is the Church's intent. Denying baptism to anyone who desires it is theologically suspect to me, but I'm not of your faith, so I guess that's irrelevant. Maybe baptism doesn't mean the same thing in your faith.
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