LDS Freedom Forum

What the future of Mormonism ought to be – Part 2 -- High-level summary of actions needed

The recipe for great religious success used by the early Christians

In many cases, government is not the solution; government is the problem. That is the situation we have with the LDS church today. There is no need for a central paid bureaucracy whatsoever in a Christian church. The seven churches of Asia were each totally autonomous but were willing to receive counsel from the apostles. Having a central paid bureaucracy is actually a sign of deterioration. It is called priestcraft in the Book of Mormon and is to be avoided at all costs. For religion, as with all other ideological pursuits, there is a constant pressure to succumb to the temptations of priestcraft. The first act, and all the continuing acts, of a priestcraft church is to immediately and continually warp all of the basic doctrines to financially benefit a relatively small number of self-appointed individuals

To repair the LDS church, everyone needs to stop paying tithing to that central church, and that central organization needs to gradually disappear, with a few small exceptions.* In general, the LDS church should become a "zero-based budget" operation where it has no fixed budget. The central church can offer programs to the members and to the world, but it would be more like the International Red Cross organization which exists and operates purely on voluntary contributions based on the public's perceived value of the services rendered or to be rendered. We might recall that under the law of Moses, 10% of the foodstuffs were to go to the Levites, and, in turn, the Levites were to send 10% of their receipts to the administration of the central temple. In other words, 1% of the foodstuffs went to the Temple. No such rule would operate in the future, but that is an indication of what the central offices might reasonably expect to receive from the members, assuming the members were pleased with the programs administered there.

All of the members' newly freed-up resources should be directed towards charitable purposes in whatever way and proportion those members wish to act. Good Christians must necessarily become very good at administering charity since their goal should be to constantly improve society in general. They could first benefit their families and neighbors, and then, if they have more resources, reach out to more generalized projects that will improve society. Education, medical care, and missionary work should be high on the list of these more general projects.

Members should be fully free to vigorously support concepts of freedom. In general, more freedom benefits everyone in the nation and the world. The gospel concept of the Gathering is an element of freedom in action, where people are free to join other members of the church to strengthen themselves economically and politically and to act together in a positive and virtuous spiral to increase the level of freedom and prosperity and spirituality in the nation and in the world.

People ought to feel free to plan for missions and to call themselves on missions. Many people could likely do a far better job of missionary work if they could avoid random assignments, do some research, and actually make useful preparations. That might mean that they would prepare themselves in advance with languages and historical and social education to be effective in introducing specific people to the gospel and helping them quickly gain the benefits of those gospel concepts, especially including freedom and prosperity.**

Whatever may have been the case in the past, today the main function of the centralized church is to prevent the church from growing organically and quickly as it did during and just after the life of Christ. However, in contrast, the last thing that a successful worldwide church needs is a restrictive command-and-control system which limits and taxes every ounce of Christian progress that takes place in the world.

Having a fully functional gospel society does not require a single architectural monument to itself. There is no doctrinal need for any chapels or temples. As far as I know, there were no chapels, and certainly no temples, that were built by the early Saints. It was only when the Christians merged with the pagans that they began to build semi-idolatrous structures. Avoiding any superfluous costs or duties means that every ounce of available member resources can be devoted to meeting the needs of some particular individual or more generally improving society. The parable of the Good Samaritan should be THE central guiding principal for church members.

Among early Christians, and again under the administrations of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor, all the sealing powers were vested in patriarchs who typically operated at the local or stake level. When the church under Wilford Woodruff decided to become a priestcraft church and began to claim member contributions as a matter of right for the living expenses of the church leaders, the first thing they did was remove the sealing powers from patriarchs and centralize them so that they could be sold at great profit as the church leaders enforced these sales by restricting entry to the temples. In fact, it may be that the main reason the Salt Lake Temple was finished when it was, was so that access to it could be restricted unless people paid tithing to the central offices. For 40 years before that, the less expensive and less pretentious Endowment House (one of several) was perfectly acceptable for a place to do the sealing ordinances. It was in about 1960 when the restriction on entering temples without paying tithing was finally made absolute.***

One might reasonably anticipate a period of turmoil as the church members withheld their Old Testament tithing and began to live the law of charity in proper New Testament style. The central church would need to give up its improper control of saving ordinances, distributing that power to the stake level once again. Presumably they would do so reluctantly, since no government willingly gives up money and temporal power. This could mean that, for a time, there might be no endowments done, and the only marriages that were performed for church members were civil marriages, not temple marriages. But, as we have seen during the COVID pandemic times, when temples were closed for all purposes for nearly 2 years, in spite of the emphasis often placed on the life-and-death criticality of temple marriage for young people, apparently civil marriages are perfectly fine as far as church leaders are concerned, since they were unwilling to inconvenience themselves the slightest bit to make those sealing ordinances available in the temples during that time period.

With these changes, the powerful gospel would again be unleashed and the church could again become an effective force for good on our planet.

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*It could, of course, continue forever at its current level of operation without ever receiving another dime from its members, using only financial returns from its current investments. Obviously, the big $100 billion nest-egg it now holds is a problem and an embarrassment to all concerned. At the moment, as things stand, it likely will not be returned, and it likely will not be spent for any valuable purpose. However, it does offer rather overwhelming proof that the LDS church has been operating as a priestcraft religion for a very long time. That fact itself may prove helpful in the future.

**There is a kernel of truth in the so-called "prosperity gospel" taught today by many sources. Indeed, there is great efficiency and social and economic power leading generally toward prosperity for everyone involved in being able to trust other people who hold similar values. For example, see Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995). This is actually the concept of Zion.

In contrast, on this topic of the prosperity gospel we are buried in lies and priestcraft today, coming from the LDS church which quietly teaches a prosperity gospel related to the payment of tithing, and from many other voices that teach a prosperity gospel more loudly, also misusing the concept of tithing.

Here are some videos that treat the subject in an entertaining and properly skeptical way:
The Dark World of Megachurches
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox ... rojector=1
The Multilevel Marketing Cults: Lies, Pyramid Schemes, and the Pursuit of Financial Freedom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He1bgJ0sqtw

***It may be that the church ending the principal of polygamy (ostensibly to make peace with the federal government) had some interesting interactions with the simultaneous centralization (and gradual monetization) of all sealing ordinances. The church leaders seem to have learned some lessons from civil government about how to create (illegitimate) profits through creating government-style monopolies using a religious mechanism. All ordinances and miracles were originally intended to be free -- "freely ye have received, freely give" -- but someone realized along the way that they were potentially valuable non-material intellectual property commodities, the perfect basis for a highly profitable priestcraft church. This appears always be the path to destruction for a religion and a society, which typically are almost the same thing.

Welcome!

What are your thoughts about the Snuffer movement? I have a cousin and his family who are involved in it. It is very decentralized and ad hoc, as you are advocating here. From my perspective, the movement has no vitality precisely because of its decentralized nature. It is not positioned to fulfill latter-day prophecy and the destiny of the Restoration. The people are sincere in their grievances with the Church, but are just like every other offshoot that lacks authority, in my view.

Do you see the Snuffer movement as the solution to what you propose? If not, some yet-to-be-determined movement?

I think that even if people think that the Church has lost its way, it's hard to get around the lineal transfer of authority. It becomes a very protestant "priesthood of all believers" movement then, with "rightness of view" being more important than transmitted authority.

Rubicon wrote: ↑March 22nd, 2022, 4:11 pm Welcome!

What are your thoughts about the Snuffer movement? I have a cousin and his family who are involved in it. It is very decentralized and ad hoc, as you are advocating here. From my perspective, the movement has no vitality precisely because of its decentralized nature. It is not positioned to fulfill latter-day prophecy and the destiny of the Restoration. The people are sincere in their grievances with the Church, but are just like every other offshoot that lacks authority, in my view.

Do you see the Snuffer movement as the solution to what you propose? If not, some yet-to-be-determined movement?

I think that even if people think that the Church has lost its way, it's hard to get around the lineal transfer of authority. It becomes a very protestant "priesthood of all believers" movement then, with "rightness of view" being more important than transmitted authority.

Rubicon,
Thank you for pricking my brain synapses…!!



I find it very difficult to believe a lineal progression will welcome the second coming.

I think the (r)evolution of a US corporate church will fall by the wayside, and the Priesthood authority will march all over the globe seeking the repented.

I think temples will thrive, but the Modus Operandi of slowly building wards and stakes will be overwhelmed by a tsunami of converts, and decentralization will prevail, with few formal church buildings designed and funded by HQ in the future.

I think branches will by and large be the predominant organization, and centralized correlation from SLC HQ will always be behind the 8 ball and not able to keep up, or respond to changing circumstances in the geopolitical world.

I believe the homogenization of LDS believers across all countries/tribes and villages will stop.

I believe the Doctrine of Christ and the Book of Mormon will be The message.

I think tithing will be local again, Apostles will be based outside the US for lengthy periods of time,
I think 70’s will be traveling way more than weekend jaunts to established stakes and areas.

I think the growth of membership will quickly eclipse a million a year, and could even, when times are darkest, pass 10 million a year.

I think church member-supported missionaries of all ages and family groupings will be sown far and wide. And tithing will again be by kind, and not necessarily by money.

I think we of the baby-boomer generation have to give way to the inspired leadership of heretofore unrecognized pioneers in the gospel.

I think snufferites are serving a purpose of breaking the mold, from decades of solidifying closed minded corporate organizations and policies.

I think it will be so far outside the current box, that we won’t recognize it, or be able to keep up.

I think resilience and responsiveness and stubborn strength to stick to the commandments in the face of grave personal peril will become our recognized trait.

I think Prophets, Seers, and Revelators will say: “Thus saith the Lord”, without checking back with HQ from deep inside China.

There are some functions of the church that require proficiency. In the late 60s the church had a hard time finding qualified people to do necessary jobs. Even in the 80s after the church realized they had to pay to get talent, most of the IT people were dumb as rocks. They actually bragged about having 400 copies of Word Perfect in the building. Little did they know how important font manipulation would become and WP did not have a clue about how to do it. The church placed idiots in high places based on the temple recommend.

I suppose that the argument could be made that if Jesus wanted a PR department, he would allow them the freedom to do a poor job. He did choose Judas after all. But once the church gets large, they had to control the narrative. And maybe that was the problem. Perhaps they should have simply set the example of each person following Christ and doing the best they can, and let the narrative speak for itself.

Tithing would have covered the cost of hiring good people. But once the motive became earning more money, Christ left the building. That would be about the time the Alta Club was built and the Federal Reserve was invited to SLC.

Thanks for your thoughts. You have obviously thought about this before.

First, having just read the post about the crash of the Chinese aircraft, when talking about the church I feel something like a crash investigator. We start out with seeing a terrible religious mess, a smallish church which is probably shrinking and has obviously lost its way, and then trying to figure out what is going on and how we got here.

I believe I have a fairly good grasp on what happened and why, but I'm still trying to work out what the correct reaction should be.

Incidentally, I have one more small project in mind which would be to list what I consider the most important parameters and events of the church over the last 2000 years, summarizing and compressing it all to about five pages. I will think of that as part of my future answers to your questions.

I have a couple of general answers. I only know a little bit about the Snuffer movement, and it definitely does not seem like the answer. The guy seems to imagine that he is a prophet, making up new scripture, etc. I don't see that approach going anywhere. I consider myself nothing but a particularly dogged student, trying to figure out the answer to the puzzle. As far as I can tell, the Scriptures we have are just fine, except that some of the more recent interpretations of the Scriptures make no sense at all, and are completely inconsistent with everything that went before.

As you hint, we have Martin Luther who apparently just decided the whole system was a wreck, and his complaints about obvious misbehavior was enough to spark the Protestant Reformation. From where they were, almost ANYTHING would be better than what they had. The "priesthood of all believers" seemed like a good short-term solution. At least it is a freedom-oriented solution, throwing off attempts at mental control.

I want to tell you a story as best as I can remember it. Once upon a time there was a stake in northern Mexico that had some political disagreements with the church powers-that-be. I believe the issue was that the local people wanted a local person as stake president and for some reason that was not acceptable to the higher-ups. The local people were quite stubborn about it, and it ended up that the whole stake was excommunicated. The stake basically ignored that action and just went on about their business, baptizing, confirming, teaching, ordaining, etc. Two or three years later they finally resolved the political difficulties and as part of the settlement the higher-ups simply ratified all the ordinances and activities that had gone on before. – first solve the problem, and then do the paperwork.

In times of stress, something like that could happen again, I suspect.
Let's imagine that the church members finally got fed up with central church failure and misbehavior and simply stopped sending them their tithing. If the church income dropped by 80-90%, that might get their attention. They might decide to shed a few hundred or a few thousand employees, and perhaps some of those employees might accidentally hold the priesthood in an appropriate way. I suspect that not everyone at the central church agrees with everything that goes on. But the church uses money and contracts to control people's thinking and behavior. If they ran out of easy money, then maybe some of those things would be broken apart.

It would be interesting to know, for example, what would happen if some of the Temple sealers would be willing to use their powers at the stake level. I'm sure that would make them nervous, but it might be feasible.

In the meantime, the church members would actually be living the gospel and exercising charity on a grand scale instead of being under the thumb of people whose goal is to limit them and exploit them. People could work hard to save our nation, and sweat some of the technical religious problems later. If we simply got rid of the lawyers, the Pharisees (many of them Marxist in their thinking), that might allow the rest of the people to think straight and stop trying to control everything.

I think people's impulses are to do the right thing, and they only fail to do the right thing because of the mind control exercised by the church leaders. Those people play a lot of games and manipulate the concept of "keys" to enable them to centralize everything and control everything. "Back in the USSR." Every system of that sort is bound to fail, just as we have seen in the case of the church.

Maybe I could summarize by saying that we might have to risk, for a short time, the "priesthood of all believers," concept, while we're working out how to make it more official.

But, otherwise, time is a wasting. According to our Scriptures, we are 22 years overdue on getting the millennium started, assuming the year 2000 was the estimated start date. I think we need to clear away some deadwood so that that process can actually get started.

Cheers!

Great thoughts Leland41-2,

I like hearing solutions to problems and not just complaining. Last year I paid a full tithe even though I am inactive, last week while preparing my taxes I owe the IRS about the same amount that I paid in tithes...If only I didnt pay tithing last year and saved that money. Does that make me a complainer?

Wait, Im not going to pay tithing this year, there ya go, I am now a problem solver.

"Wait, Im not going to pay tithing this year, there ya go, I am now a problem solver."

Now you can buy a used car for some single mom who is having a hard time making ends meet. Better than giving it to the church to buy stocks.

To be honest, I appreciate the candor with which you speak. I think a lot of this centralization happened with correlating the meetings and it would be a good thing to decentralize.

If there's one thing this p(l)andemic has taught me, it is the necessity of being able to stand on my own two feet and not delegate the authority that I have by right to others that would very well abuse that authority.

There will be some things with which the Church's central functions would work. Missionary work, done today for example, has to be done within the legal bounds of the nations where they are sent.

I can't see the church moving forward and fulfilling a divine destiny until they are willing to acknowledge and reconcile their many past mistakes. Very openly and honestly. Knowing and accepting the consequences of such an admittance.

"I can't see the church moving forward and fulfilling a divine destiny until they are willing to acknowledge and reconcile their many past mistakes. Very openly and honestly. Knowing and accepting the consequences of such an admittance."

I'm sure it would be satisfying to settle all these matters and tie everything up in a bow, maybe have a 100-page Supreme Court opinion on the matter. However, when I imagine that I have my realpolitik hat on, I would say forget about the past and let the members decide for them, since they never will decide any such thing, cutting off their money supply and their support, and simply go ahead with being the LDS Christians that we ought to be, leaving our "owners" behind. Like so many politicians, they will finally catch on and run to get in front of the parade. Whether we pay any attention to them at that point depends on if they finally have things right. Holding the apostolic priesthood does not make them a different kind of being or a superior being. It adds extra responsibilities, which they have either ignored or twisted. I don't mean to disrespect them, but I would judge them on how they support the actual scriptures, as opposed to their own interpretations.

"There will be some things with which the Church's central functions would work. Missionary work, done today for example, has to be done within the legal bounds of the nations where they are sent."


I am being a bit of a smart aleck and a rabble-rouser, but, at this point, I see the church headquarters completely controlling the missionary system as mostly a bad idea, or at least greatly overrated. The church deals with other countries as though the church itself were some sovereign entity with its own diplomatic corps, etc. In order for the church to collect tithing it has to have official recognition in a country so they can have banking privileges to handle the transfer of money. I'm not sure if there is any other reason to go through the formal church recognition process, at least in most free countries. (Operating in totalitarian countries is probably a little bit different.)

In contrast, if all the missionary work were done by individuals who just happened to be in a certain country, there really are no formalities for getting permission to teach the gospel there. If one is not too obnoxious, and takes into account local social practices, one could just go to a desired place and begin to do some missionary work. Someone might go somewhere as a tourist and just happen to stay there a few extra months. In that way, the church would have nothing to do with it. It is convenient for the church to supply mission presidents to manage these things, but I don't see it as a great difficulty in having adult advisers in various places to help guide the missionaries there, if it is actually necessary to do so.

I have a rather strange viewpoint, I guess, but I see the church missionary program, the way it is operated now, as a calculated way to limit the success of missionary work. At least there should be lots of other effective ways to do missionary work than are carried on today. For example, with today's communication technology, we could have some group of church members contact all the other church members in the world once a week without breaking a sweat.

If we had as many people doing missionary work as we have doing genealogy work, we could contact every person in the world once a year with various messages. I don't know how well that would work, but I mention this just to say that we seem to be trapped into one extremely labor intensive way of doing things.

I have a very hard time seeing the church leadership hand out authority again to local levels. I see continued unrighteous dominion like actions and control from the top, until something breaks. this is the global mantra, not just the church. global corporations, medical professions, governments, military operation, etc.... all taking authority to the top, adding to their previous power levels, more power and controlling the underlings from above. The more networking and computing the more control from the top.

Also, I never see a time when the PR and law departments aren't running it (all organizations, not just church).

For the church to become what it should be, we would need to trust the bishops and stake presidents with the overall welfare of the church (finances, worthiness, buildings,, etc...). I suppose if Jesus came and told them to do it, they might?

Thanks for a well thought post.

While I don't have all the same positions as you, I think it is interesting to see other's ideas.

I appreciate people spending some time on the questions and reacting. If people were ready to start a movement, I probably wouldn't know what to do about it, but, given enough thought, somebody might come up with a good solution. That is my hope, anyway.