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Thank you.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out with Jim Bennett and Ian Wilkes.
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I am Jim Bennett and I am here with Ian Wilkes.
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Ian, how are you, sir?
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I am very good today.
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How are you, Jim?
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I'm doing very well.
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I'm very excited about this episode because you have told me that you have some very sexy stuff, really gripping, exciting stuff to talk about.
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That may give the listeners a bit of a wrong impression, because we're not going to be talking about literally sexy things, but something that's really kind of interesting, something that people have not discussed before, and that's the issue of the Lord forgives and forgets, but the computer doesn't.
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Is that an appropriate way to frame it?
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It is.
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That's one angle to see this.
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And that's...
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term, that reference there was, I heard many years ago, just before serving as a bishop.
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I've heard this friend by a number of different people who talk about the idea that once you've gone through church discipline, you can say goodbye to any sort of significant leadership calling.
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I used to work at the Tuakon Center for the Arts for Hiram Smith, not Hiram Smith, the one that was martyred in Carthage jail, but a descendant of that Hiram Smith.
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He's passed away, but he was the first cousin of Elder M.
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Russell Ballard and was a very prominent speaker and leader in the church.
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He was a mission president at a very young age, served in a variety of leadership callings, and a lot of people presumed that he would end up if not in the Quorum of the Twelve, at least as a general authority.
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And it came to light that he had been conducting an eight-year affair while he was involved in all of these things in the church.
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And I don't feel like I'm violating any confidences because Hiram has spoken very publicly about all of these things.
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And in fact, when he was excommunicated, which he was, it actually made the newspaper in St.
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George, Utah, which I think is an appropriate way But this is not a secret.
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This was all very public.
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And I remember having a conversation with him.
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And he said that when he was talking to his cousin, Elder Ballard, Elder Ballard said, you've got to figure out a way that you're going to be serving in the church now that you're no longer going to have any leadership callings.
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And Hiram said, I don't understand that.
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If I've been forgiven and I've been rebaptized and I've been forgiven and my blessings have been restored, why does the punishment continue?
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And Elder Ballard's comment was very similar to the way you've described it.
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He says, oh, the Lord forgives.
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It's the church that doesn't forgive.
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And is that what you're talking about here, or is it even something other
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than that?
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That is more than that.
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That's only one piece of this.
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That experience there with Hiram, it ties to the question I was asked by Elder Oaks when I was being called onto the state presidency, and the very first question that he asked me privately, so it's just me in the room, Elder Cook is saying, junior trainee companion as he put it elder oaks and he asked me is it any the first question was is it anything in my history that could harm or hurt the church and i was surprised shocked by that question um but as as he explained a little bit more about the question it became clear that the one of the primary um objectives of the church is to protect the institution protect the name the brand.
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It takes years to build a brand, and it doesn't take very long to destroy the brand.
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And so when Elder Oaks is asking this question, he was asking for a reason, because people's behavior, especially with a prominent name in the public eye, or you've got a prominent ancestry, and the person who's held a senior calling, then that could harm and hurt the church on a local level, as well as a regional level, as well as a public level.
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So, you know, information...
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on these individuals is maintained, is tracked.
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I mean, I have heard stories.
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I don't know anything about...
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I mean, I haven't had first-hand experience, and it sounds like you have.
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If somebody's been involved in a same-sex relationship, and they go and they talk to their bishop, they can be cleared of any kind of church discipline, but their records can be marked to say, this person should never progress to any kind of a leadership calling, or this person should never be allowed to work with the youth.
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And that mark can be placed by a bishop, and it can't be removed unless a general authority or somebody removes it.
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Is that accurate?
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It is generally accurate, yeah.
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Elder Stephen Snow, a General Authority 17 attrition star and recorder, as you know, he produced an article called The Sacred Duty of Record-Keeping.
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And it says here, beginning with the early church and continue today, the Lord has instructed his people to preserve and cherish records and history.
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He says here, the records and history of the church have been important to the Lord from the beginning.
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He taught Adam and Eve to keep a book of remembrance and counseled ancient prophets to keep records and checked to ensure that the Nephite records were complete.
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That's an audit.
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All right, they don't use that word, but that's an audit right there.
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In this dispensation, he taught Joseph Smith, another prophet, early leaders, that there shall be, quote, there shall be a record kept among you, end quote, continually, and that doing so would be good for the church and for the rising generation.
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And then he goes on to say that the church is committed to maintaining these records.
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And in fact, there's an interesting quote here.
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He talks about his privilege of working as a historian and recorder.
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And he says, where the saints gathered in Nauvoo, the work of the two officers were combined and assigned to Elder Willard Richards.
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in 1854, the Call of the Twelve Apostles, during which Elder Richard's time of service, church members lived among the Mississippi River in Illinois, in Iowa, throughout the eastern United States, Canada, British Isles, Isles of the Pacific.
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Joseph Smith instructed that it would be very difficult for one recorder to be present at all times and to do all the business.
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Thus, there can be a recorder appointed at each ward of the city.
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Then let there be a general recorder to whom these records can be handed, being attended with certificates over their own signatures, certifying that the record they have made is true.
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So I'd break this down into two areas.
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Information that's maintained on members and individuals internally, and what happens, what information is kept, and what happens with that information, how is that information used, and it is used strategically, tactically, and for other means.
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And what information does the church manage, control, or influence, or track externally?
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Because that's another part of this as well.
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The second piece I want to tie this to is the scope of the committee called the Strengthen the Church Members Committee, which you may be familiar with.
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I'm a little bit familiar with that.
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But the scope is to track and monitor publications of members for possible criticism of general or local church leaders.
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And if there is criticism found, the committee may forward information to local leaders who may bring charges of apostasy, and in some cases, excommunication.
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For example, people who are political activists who support policies or principles or doctrine or philosophies that oppose the church values or general church doctrine.
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The church does hold information and track information on those individuals.
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I suspect with your...
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political aspirations at some point, that information will have reached some of the church leaders.
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I have met with Richard Turley, who was the church historian at one point, and he was the head of the church public relations department.
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And he said, oh yeah, you're the guy who wrote the CES letter reply.
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And I went, oh, well, yeah.
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Have you read it?
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And he says, oh yeah, of course I've read it.
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And I've had conversations with other people who have made it very clear that the brethren are aware of my CES letter of reply and overall, as far as I know, are pleased with it, are happy with it.
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So it's never blown up in my face, but it's been very clear that they are aware of me and they are aware of what I say publicly.
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And it's interesting that the way that you have described this, the Strengthening Members Committee, is really concerned about criticism.
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The threshold for tolerance of unorthodox positions is actually much, much higher than people realize.
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And the other side of that coin is the threshold for even mild criticism of the brethren is much, much lower than many people realize.
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I have a brother-in-law, for instance, his name is Nate Ullman, and he wrote a marvelous essay that described a theological framework for how same-sex marriage ceilings could and should be conducted in the temple.
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And, you know, the hard-right people on Twitter and everybody else blew up and were very angry about this essay.
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It got a lot of traction.
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Nate is a good friend of Jeffrey R.
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Holland, who spoke at a Worldwide Youth devotional very recently and quoted a letter from Nate at length and used him as an example of a paragon of the faith.
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Not only did he not get any pushback for his unorthodox position, but an apostle was still willing to hold him up as a light to the rest of the church.
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Now, where people get into trouble, I also have a friend who did a very good Thomas S.
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Monson impression.
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He would just sort of fall into it when he was teaching lessons or something else.
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My
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Truman Madsen impression.
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Truman Madsen is my father's first cousin.
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And I remember right after I got home from my mission, I was sitting next to Truman Madsen at a family dinner and I described how we used to, I actually told him a story of how you went to McDonald's in Inverness.
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And you walked up to the counter and you said, if you do not give me my McDonald's, I will send you and McDonald's to hell.
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And Truman got a really big kick out of that.
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I
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just want our listeners to know that I did tell the person of the counter that that was a hot joke.
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But the
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point is, this guy doing a Thomas Monson impression, as far as I know, he wasn't doing it for a wide audience.
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I remember talking to him later and he said, yeah, the bishop said, I need to knock it off if I want to keep my temple recommend.
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And I'm like, well, that's ridiculous.
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I mean, you weren't being mean.
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You weren't being nasty.
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It came from a place of affection.
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But no, no, even that was not acceptable.
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So as I have become more and more prominent in how I talk about the church, and I am perceived, and I think rightly so, as somebody who is defending the church and loves the church and is inside the church.
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That said, I remember I posted a Facebook post where I took issue with the idea that there is conflict between the first great commandment and the second great commandment.
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The idea that if you love God, be careful not to love your neighbor too much if it takes away from your love of God.
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This is an idea that is starting to get traction at the highest levels of the church.
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And it's been the subject of a number of talks from a number of different general authorities.
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And on this occasion, I posted a link to one of those talks, but did not mention the general authority's name in my comments and just said, this is an idea that is getting practiced in the church.
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And I reject this idea wholeheartedly.
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I think it flies in the face of everything Jesus has ever taught.
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And I went through that and I got in a little bit of hot water.
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And I got in hot water not because of my position, but because I was perceived as criticizing the general authority whose picture was prominently in that Facebook post because it was part of that link that I had posted.
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And I said, I didn't even mention the man's name.
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I'm not even going to mention the man's name here.
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That doesn't matter.
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That was perceived as criticism.
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And so I think in all of this, it's very interesting to me.
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That, I think, is where the sensitivity is.
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The sensitivity is not, oh, geez, you believe women should be ordained.
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You don't believe the Book of Mormon is historical, or you have problems with polygamy, or any of that.
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There is a high tolerance for a diversity of opinions like that.
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There is zero tolerance for anything, even mild criticism or mockery or teasing, A Thomas S.
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Monson impression is not acceptable.
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In my experience, that's where the line is.
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Have you seen something similar?
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I have.
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I can get into some specifics.
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Again, I think of the Elder Oaks interview where we spent a good five minutes on screening and vetting my background and asking me some very personal questions about in regards to my history.
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So just for a moment, put yourself in the position of the church.
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You have an individual who's a political leader, political aspirations, or a successful business person.
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I'll give you the term that was used with general authorities and ourselves in our state presence.
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They call them opinion leaders.
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So we had meetings with general authorities for years, Canada, British Columbia, to talk about how we can advance, accelerate the missionary effort by engaging in developing relationships with opinion leaders.
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And they went into great length about what an opinion leader is.
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It's somebody who's, when they speak, people listen.
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Large numbers of people listen.
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They've got general respect.
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They've got integrity.
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And they've got an influence.
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They've got an audience.
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The audience is growing.
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The audience is strategic.
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And they can advance, accelerate the missionary effort and the missionary teachers, the teachers of the church, through these people, through this network of strategic opinion leaders.
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Are you talking about people in the church or outside of the church?
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At that particular meeting, it was mostly focused on, we talked about internal opinion leaders, lecturers at universities, prominent business leaders, and maintaining a relationship between the church and those people is really important to the church.
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Where the church, and again, going back to what I was saying, looking through the lens of the church, looking from a A cooperation perspective for a moment, because there's definitely the element to that.
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What does an organization needs to do to maintain and manage and advance, accelerate its brand and its position across issues?
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Well, it teams and partners with people that can help it.
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How do you get to A to B?
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Well, in business, you team with the right partners.
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You research them.
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You check them out.
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You find out what other people think about them.
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There's a whole process.
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of evaluating, determining who is a strategic partner.
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And the church is very sophisticated, very sophisticated, perhaps the most sophisticated organized religion in the modern world, and has got very sophisticated trained people that reviews, backgrounds, searches, checks people internally in the church.
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But it also spends a lot of time and effort and millions of taxpayer, sorry, taxpayers' tithing dollars on positioning itself with, you know, President Banks.
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I think President Banks was, one of his callings was, I think the affectionate term was the greeter.
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Yeah, President Banks, after he was mission president, and then he was general authority, he was in the second quorum of the 70, and then I think he was called into the first quorum of the 70, and then he was released and he became the temple president of the Jordan River Temple.
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And then after that, he became the head of church hosting.
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And so his job became sucking up to my parents that my father was a United States senator.
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And so my parents, that's when they got to know President Banks.
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I mean, they knew him from a distance because he was my mission president.
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But they got personally acquainted with him and became very good friends with him because his job was to accommodate my father, who was an opinion leader in and out of the church.
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Absolutely.
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He does a really good example of somebody who's the church wants and needs to have a good relationship with.
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So President Banks, I don't know the specific scope of his calling, but from talking to him and listening and understanding his calling there, and I think he termed it as the greeter, but he facilitated organized coordinated meetings with prime ministers and Prime Minister of New Zealand, who just resigned, by the way.
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She was a former member.
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And there is an active and developing strategy to identify and engage opinion leaders, not with the idea of baby baptizing them necessarily, although I think they like that.
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I think there's a lot of marketing value when you baptize Gladys Knight of the Pips.
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Yeah, and that's very, very few and far between, though.
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Yes, yes.
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So I think where it can and position itself to achieve favor, and again, I'm being a bit cynical here, but from a business perspective, I don't see anything wrong with that.
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I guess what I'm saying is I can see the reason why the church does this, and it makes sense to me.
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And I think from a church perspective, it's a good thing.
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It's a positive thing.
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It's an intelligent thing to team up with good opinion leaders.
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Just going back to the Strength of the Church Members Committee, if I may, Fair Mormon issued this statement.
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He says here, the strength of the church members' committee has been described as a clipping service.
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I disagree with that, by the way, profoundly.
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I'll explain why later.
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Which has kept track of public statements by church members who openly criticize church in the media.
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I guess include yourself there, to some extent.
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Although a clipping service probably made sense back in 1995, in the internet-rich world of 2013, it seemed somewhat anachronistic.
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Critics to the church have accused the committee of spying on members in order to move forward with church discipline.
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Well...
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That has happened.
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I think Fair Mormon deliberately uses the emotive words like spy to make such activities sound ludicrous.
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It's done that before.
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It's doing that here.
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You can describe things in many different ways.
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When we use the word spying on members, it sounds like 007, but that activity does happen, can be described differently in a way that doesn't sound like it's far-fetched.
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And I think it's disingenuous of Fairmore and not appropriate to use the word spy.
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You know, words mean something.
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I would say track monitors.
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The church does...
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I was writing this, the church tracks and monitors and acts against people that write negative stuff about the church.
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That's why we spend so much time with Elder Oaks on this.
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Well, I would push back against the word spy only because...
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I don't think the church actively spies on its members by trying to investigate their private lives or their private conversations.
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The things that the Strengthening Church Members Committee tracks and monitors are things that are said in the public sphere.
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Farrah Mormon may be setting up a little bit of a straw man there, because when I hear the word spy...
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I don't hear that as somebody reading something that I posted publicly.
00:21:08.670 --> 00:21:17.943
You know, I posted my CES letter to reply, and the fact that the church has read it and commented on it and is interested in it, I didn't do that in a corner.
00:21:18.183 --> 00:21:19.065
That isn't a secret.
00:21:19.286 --> 00:21:28.199
I did that publicly, and I expect it to be acknowledged publicly, and the fact that the church is backing and monitoring that doesn't disturb me.
00:21:28.219 --> 00:21:39.670
It would disturb me if the church was, you know, had operatives that were asking my friends, does Jim Bennett secretly believe this?
00:21:40.010 --> 00:21:45.298
Is Jim Bennett secretly, you know, that's what I see a spy doing.
00:21:46.098 --> 00:21:47.882
And I don't necessarily see the
00:21:47.942 --> 00:21:48.803
church do
00:21:48.823 --> 00:21:48.863
it.
00:21:49.884 --> 00:21:50.224
I agree.
00:21:50.384 --> 00:21:50.605
I agree.
00:21:50.625 --> 00:21:53.108
That's a really good way of characterizing the situation.
00:21:53.189 --> 00:21:55.952
The church doesn't spy, hasn't got the resources, doesn't do the...
00:21:56.512 --> 00:21:57.595
I agree with what you just said.
00:21:57.835 --> 00:21:59.017
I think it has the resources.
00:21:59.096 --> 00:22:00.838
If they wanted to spy, they could.
00:22:01.480 --> 00:22:02.582
And I don't think they do.
00:22:03.329 --> 00:22:06.894
But they track and monitor
00:22:07.596 --> 00:22:08.657
really quite aggressively.
00:22:08.817 --> 00:22:11.501
Track monitoring is the words that I would use, and it does that.
00:22:11.801 --> 00:22:21.056
We know for a fact that if you post something on Facebook, and I'm not referring to you, I'm referring to things I've seen, even myself, actually.
00:22:21.435 --> 00:22:31.701
On one occasion, I posted something on Wow's Member of the State Presidency, and I had a member say, an award, say, you know, President, could you clarify?
00:22:31.721 --> 00:22:33.163
It looks like you're supporting this.
00:22:33.624 --> 00:22:38.749
So, you know, you've got members that flag things up to leaders, by the way.
00:22:38.769 --> 00:22:39.650
We'll talk about that.
00:22:40.191 --> 00:22:48.439
I'm not saying the spies, but they're certainly, whether they're ass or not, you've got people in the state that like to gossip and share information.
00:22:48.619 --> 00:22:54.685
And then you've got people's social media activity coming into a church court, right?
00:22:55.266 --> 00:22:59.309
as evidence of their thinking, their behavior, and their beliefs.
00:22:59.871 --> 00:23:00.811
I'm aware of that as well.
00:23:01.333 --> 00:23:03.454
So, finishing off the Fair Mormon thing here.
00:23:04.715 --> 00:23:06.137
They describe it as a clipping service.
00:23:06.178 --> 00:23:06.518
It's not.
00:23:06.597 --> 00:23:07.720
It's tracking and monitoring.
00:23:08.140 --> 00:23:17.430
And then they say here that from the Church News, August 22, 1992, First Presidency Statement cites scriptural mandate for church committee.
00:23:18.571 --> 00:23:52.781
And it says, Generally, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not respond to criticism level levied against its work but in light of extensive publicity recently given to false accusations, and by the way, I must add, I've lost count how many times over the years, as a state presidency and as a bishop, as the internet was coming online, all the stuff on the internet, etc., the internet was seen as the predominant medium for the next generation, the church repeatedly said, and I'll try to quote Elder Oaks, we're bringing the church into the light.
00:23:53.250 --> 00:23:56.977
And the Internet is going to be the vehicle and the means by which we do that.
00:23:57.377 --> 00:24:12.685
There was a belief of church leaders that the Internet would be the savior of the church, that it would be able to promote the narrative, that missionary efforts would advance, accelerate, that the qualities of the church would finally be known to the world.
00:24:13.218 --> 00:24:38.145
the success, the qualities, the divinity of the church, and the value of the church would finally be spread to all corners of the world in a way that hasn't been done before, and that the world would respond favorably and openly and kindly towards the church's missionary effort, and we would see extraordinary success in terms of baptisms.
00:24:38.626 --> 00:24:50.702
The people at that time, with the emergence of the internet, really believed that, Jim, and believed that the internet would be the saviour of, in some respects, the technological saviour of the church.
00:24:51.144 --> 00:25:00.036
The reality, they didn't expect the criticism to come against the church or to have information released to the extent that it has been on the internet.
00:25:00.477 --> 00:25:11.644
I know for a fact that those early conversations at that level about the internet was not fully understood, and perhaps not understood by many or most people, of how the internet would be used.
00:25:12.026 --> 00:25:13.527
We're going to finish off the quote here.
00:25:13.906 --> 00:25:22.236
But in light of extensive publicity recently given to false accusations of so-called secret church committees and files, it says the First Presidency has issued the following statement.
00:25:22.875 --> 00:25:30.263
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in 1830 following the appearance of God the Father and Jesus Christ to the Prophet John Smith in upstate New York.
00:25:30.763 --> 00:25:34.992
This sacred event heralded the onset of the promised restitution of all things.
00:25:35.855 --> 00:25:41.542
Many instructions were subsequently given to the prophet, including section 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
00:25:42.443 --> 00:25:58.125
And again, we would suggest you can, for your consideration, the proprietary of all saints gathering up a knowledge of all facts and sufferings and abuses put upon them, and also all the property and amount of damages which they have sustained, both of character and personal injury.
00:25:58.402 --> 00:26:05.193
and also the names of all persons that have had a hand in their oppressions as far as they can get hold of them and find them out.
00:26:05.935 --> 00:26:20.141
And perhaps a committee could be appointed to find out these things and take statements and affidavits and also to gather up libelous publications that are afloat and all that are in magazines and encyclopedias and all the libelous histories that are published.
00:26:21.042 --> 00:26:21.963
And so the...
00:26:23.041 --> 00:26:29.328
He goes on to say that leaders and members of the church strive to implement commandments of the Lord, including the direction received in 1839.
00:26:29.989 --> 00:26:35.214
Because the church has a non-professional clergy, its state presidents and bishops have varied backgrounds and training.
00:26:35.715 --> 00:26:41.981
In order to assist their members who have questions, these local leaders often request information from jail authorities of the church.
00:26:42.383 --> 00:26:48.990
The Strengthening of the Church Remembrance Committee was appointed by the First Presidency to help fulfill this need and to comply with cited sections of the Doctrine and Covenants.
00:26:49.049 --> 00:26:55.676
This committee serves as a resource to preach to leaders throughout the world who may desire assistance on a wide variety of topics.
00:26:55.737 --> 00:26:57.920
I don't think we know what those topics are.
00:26:57.960 --> 00:27:04.508
I don't think we know anywhere in writing what the scope of the committee is or some specific assignments or projects that it's got involved in.
00:27:04.867 --> 00:27:05.669
I'm not aware of that.
00:27:06.130 --> 00:27:07.951
I think for transparency, I think we need to know that.
00:27:08.152 --> 00:27:17.395
But it is a General Authority Committee, they say, currently comprised of Elder Faust, Elder Russell and Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I think this is out of date here.
00:27:17.737 --> 00:27:22.483
They work through established priesthood channels and neither impose nor direct church disciplinary action.
00:27:23.085 --> 00:27:24.166
I think that's disingenuous.
00:27:24.227 --> 00:27:26.230
I don't think that's entirely correct.
00:27:26.290 --> 00:27:34.284
I think they do influence and have influenced stake decisions, local decision leaders, decisions that have happened regionally as well.
00:27:34.845 --> 00:27:42.657
Members who have questions concerning church doctrine, policies and procedures have been counselled to discuss those concerns confidentially with their local leaders.
00:27:43.362 --> 00:27:50.896
These leaders are deeply aware of the obligation to counsel members wisely in the spirit of love in order to strengthen the faith in the Lord in this great, lasting day at work.
00:27:51.699 --> 00:27:56.327
And so I think that is really important context.
00:27:56.667 --> 00:27:59.253
Let me give you a quick overview of what I've seen.
00:27:59.874 --> 00:28:01.155
Directly and indirectly.
00:28:01.455 --> 00:28:05.601
We said at the very beginning that the Lord does forgive and forget, but the computer doesn't.
00:28:06.021 --> 00:28:08.644
So let's talk about what we know.
00:28:08.684 --> 00:28:13.651
We know that the church knows who owns a temple recommend, who has a current recommend.
00:28:14.392 --> 00:28:16.815
It knows who's a four-part tithe payer.
00:28:17.395 --> 00:28:20.480
It knows the individual's callings and the calling history.
00:28:21.340 --> 00:28:27.769
So in the MLS program, this program allows bishops and state presidents who have got different...
00:28:28.769 --> 00:28:30.512
access levels, by the way, to MLS.
00:28:30.532 --> 00:28:31.574
I don't know if you're aware of that.
00:28:32.075 --> 00:28:33.938
We talked earlier about annotating records.
00:28:35.259 --> 00:28:42.891
There's different types of information that these leaders have got different levels of authority to annotate members' records across certain issues.
00:28:43.432 --> 00:28:46.676
But we know that the MLS program maintains...
00:28:47.117 --> 00:28:47.858
What does MLS stand for?
00:28:48.500 --> 00:28:49.741
Member Leadership Services.
00:28:50.502 --> 00:28:51.785
Member Leadership Services.
00:28:52.025 --> 00:28:57.453
Yeah, there's a member records component to it, as well as the finance, the tithing and donations.
00:28:58.306 --> 00:28:58.665
Okay.
00:28:59.146 --> 00:29:01.970
So it's an integrated software system program.
00:29:02.651 --> 00:29:06.094
There's also a member records component to MLS as well.
00:29:06.535 --> 00:29:09.999
And so we know that, you know, we know Jim's history of callings.
00:29:10.499 --> 00:29:13.162
We know whether you said yes or no to a calling.
00:29:14.022 --> 00:29:15.384
We know your temple attendance.
00:29:15.464 --> 00:29:18.288
So if I say no to a calling, there's a record of that?
00:29:19.209 --> 00:29:20.269
They can make a record of that.
00:29:20.589 --> 00:29:25.756
I think the upside of this is that many of the leaders don't have time.
00:29:25.776 --> 00:29:30.452
I mean, this is like a A calling of this nature is like another full-time job.
00:29:30.492 --> 00:29:35.178
Being on a state presence at a bishop is, honestly, if you haven't had that calling, don't aspire to it.
00:29:35.838 --> 00:29:37.201
I don't know if you know what you're getting into.
00:29:37.381 --> 00:29:39.943
From a time perspective, it could take over your life.
00:29:40.545 --> 00:29:42.547
You could throw as many hours into this calling as you can.
00:29:42.626 --> 00:29:44.829
It will suck every minute of the day.
00:29:45.549 --> 00:29:49.755
And that's without annotating or updating members' records.
00:29:50.576 --> 00:29:55.201
There's certain basics in the leadership, scope of leadership calling like a state presidency.
00:29:55.778 --> 00:29:57.780
that you have to do.
00:29:57.961 --> 00:30:06.471
For example, when you issue a temple recommend, so issue the bishopric or the bishop issues the temple recommend at the unit level, the ward level.
00:30:07.613 --> 00:30:13.361
If it's the bishop with the recommend, only the state president is the one that can interview the bishop.
00:30:13.881 --> 00:30:18.247
Counselor can interview under the authority of a state president, a counselor can interview a bishop.
00:30:18.547 --> 00:30:20.390
But it's usually bishop, keyholder to keyholder.
00:30:21.089 --> 00:30:30.080
And so when the term of recommend is issued by state president, or member of the state presidency, you then have to activate the recommend.
00:30:30.662 --> 00:30:42.096
So that person, I got in trouble once that after the long night session, and by the way, these meetings ended Thursday nights, I think it was, at midnight sometimes.
00:30:42.317 --> 00:30:42.798
I'm not kidding.
00:30:43.439 --> 00:30:48.064
You meet at six, five, six o'clock after work, and you go right through to every week.
00:30:48.785 --> 00:30:54.303
Honestly, There's another conversation around how much time these people commit.
00:30:54.383 --> 00:30:55.144
It's extraordinary.
00:30:55.163 --> 00:30:59.689
It really takes over your life to the point where you neglect your family.
00:31:00.490 --> 00:31:02.090
And I think that's another conversation.
00:31:02.951 --> 00:31:11.141
And so if you don't activate the recommend immediately and they go to the temple, you know, I met this Sunday on a Friday.
00:31:11.161 --> 00:31:12.923
It was last minute.
00:31:12.942 --> 00:31:14.104
You get these quite a bit, actually.
00:31:14.144 --> 00:31:16.987
Last minute, go to the temple.
00:31:17.407 --> 00:31:18.348
Sorry I left it so late.
00:31:18.729 --> 00:31:19.230
It's Friday.
00:31:19.586 --> 00:31:22.569
Friday night, 8 o'clock, go to the temple on the Saturday.
00:31:23.191 --> 00:31:25.472
Could we do the temple recommend interview?
00:31:25.512 --> 00:31:29.397
And the president, could we meet with you at 8, 9 o'clock?
00:31:29.438 --> 00:31:29.898
I said, yes.
00:31:30.680 --> 00:31:32.622
Again, that takes out your personal time, right?
00:31:33.222 --> 00:31:33.943
Sure.
00:31:34.243 --> 00:31:34.984
And they're half an hour.
00:31:35.145 --> 00:31:36.768
These conversations are half an hour at least.
00:31:37.367 --> 00:31:38.269
You then issue the recommend.
00:31:38.309 --> 00:31:40.673
You then got to go online from your house or whatever.
00:31:41.012 --> 00:31:42.734
Well, not your house, the building.
00:31:42.996 --> 00:31:44.657
You go to the building, do the interview.
00:31:45.410 --> 00:31:50.857
or to the house, sometimes come to the house if it's an emergency, you've then got to go online, you've then got to activate the recommend.
00:31:51.338 --> 00:32:09.047
So you go into the MLS, the other church programs, and you put Jim Bennett in, and because you've got this pass, you click it, you put the information in, support will be filled out with the information, your number, your temple recommend number, you've got a number assigned to you, by the way, and then I activate that.
00:32:09.126 --> 00:32:10.769
I'm authorized to activate that.
00:32:11.470 --> 00:32:17.960
So when you arrive at the temple in the morning, 8 o'clock in the morning, And you hand your recommend over the counter, and they scan it, the barcode.
00:32:18.780 --> 00:32:19.582
It's been activated.
00:32:20.604 --> 00:32:30.479
One time on the Friday, I forgot, and I got a call from the temple president saying, President, so-and-so has just arrived at the temple.
00:32:31.160 --> 00:32:32.821
He said he had a recommended view last night.
00:32:32.942 --> 00:32:33.723
It's not in the system.
00:32:34.003 --> 00:32:34.684
I apologized.
00:32:34.785 --> 00:32:36.968
I said, President, I just haven't got around to it.
00:32:37.008 --> 00:32:39.172
It's a good 15 minutes to put it in.
00:32:39.211 --> 00:32:42.016
And they didn't ask, you know, is this person in good standing?
00:32:42.036 --> 00:32:43.137
I said, yes.
00:32:43.713 --> 00:32:44.615
And they were fine, right?
00:32:45.056 --> 00:32:51.103
So things like that where you have to do, there's certain things that you have to do, which are basic to the calling.
00:32:51.843 --> 00:33:00.814
But the scope of the system there allows leaders, members to maintain, monitor track if they want.
00:33:00.854 --> 00:33:02.796
And I was finishing off a point earlier.
00:33:03.297 --> 00:33:11.346
I think the reason why they don't do it to the extent that they can, the technology is more than capable, is that these people don't have the time.
00:33:11.970 --> 00:33:16.657
You know, whether you take the sacrament or not can be recorded.
00:33:17.818 --> 00:33:21.025
So, you know, if you don't take the sacrament, the bishop knows.
00:33:21.164 --> 00:33:21.565
He looks.
00:33:21.986 --> 00:33:27.895
He is trained and, not trained, instructed to look at his members.
00:33:28.096 --> 00:33:28.977
No, I've never done that.
00:33:29.017 --> 00:33:29.939
I've never come across that.
00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:31.300
But they can.
00:33:31.401 --> 00:33:32.742
You know, they can profile a member.
00:33:32.784 --> 00:33:35.027
They can, you know, James not taking the sacrament for three weeks.
00:33:36.108 --> 00:33:39.294
You'll get the exec secretary making an interview with you.
00:33:39.713 --> 00:33:43.178
And you'll probably wonder why, and you'll say, Jim, how are you?
00:33:43.298 --> 00:33:43.959
How's your family?
00:33:44.439 --> 00:33:44.960
How's life?
00:33:45.099 --> 00:33:46.101
How's your work, et cetera?
00:33:46.601 --> 00:33:47.663
Is there anything good to help you?
00:33:47.682 --> 00:33:48.723
I've tried to get you to open up.
00:33:49.284 --> 00:33:54.230
And then if you're not forthcoming, you'll say, I noticed you haven't taken this acumen in the last three, four weeks.
00:33:54.951 --> 00:33:55.131
Right?
00:33:55.310 --> 00:33:59.315
So, you know, these things are tracked positivistically.
00:33:59.335 --> 00:34:01.538
It means there's a hard system.
00:34:02.077 --> 00:34:04.160
MLS is a means by which they're doing that.
00:34:04.740 --> 00:34:08.985
But phenomenologically, from a soft system of people, you know, leaders...
00:34:09.409 --> 00:34:12.474
see things, they track, and they remember things, right?
00:34:13.275 --> 00:34:15.699
And I think for good reason.
00:34:15.820 --> 00:34:21.969
I think there's a lot of, we said at the very beginning of the podcast, there's really good reasons, good qualities the church has.
00:34:22.610 --> 00:34:26.215
And like any tool, this tool is used for good things.
00:34:26.275 --> 00:34:27.077
I'll get into that right now.
00:34:27.838 --> 00:34:38.293
For example, if somebody's had a criminal history or a history, for example, in Scotland, they have what they call Disclosure Scotland background checks, and they've got them in England now.
00:34:38.849 --> 00:34:41.393
Or I don't know how, and they're about to do that.
00:34:42.034 --> 00:34:54.050
By the way, the church doesn't uniformly encourage or instruct leaders to do background checks on people who work with youth or children, where the law doesn't require it.
00:34:54.512 --> 00:34:54.992
I think that's a
00:34:55.032 --> 00:34:55.333
mistake.
00:34:55.472 --> 00:34:59.418
The church in the United States used to require that of Boy Scout leaders.
00:35:00.139 --> 00:35:00.320
Right.
00:35:00.360 --> 00:35:03.204
But that wasn't because of a church requirement.
00:35:03.244 --> 00:35:04.766
That was a Boy Scout requirement.
00:35:04.929 --> 00:36:07.639
And as the only true church upon the face of the earth who have advanced knowledge, spiritual knowledge, eternal knowledge, a perspective on life here and life beyond, you'd think that we would be leading by far light years ahead of implementing the many, many, many talks given in priesthood and general conference, how the church is in strongest terms is committed to protecting children and protecting youth you think that we'd be at the forefront of doing background checks internally using the information that we've got on the MLS system or using criminal checks where we can because those countries where it's not required there is still a process and system to identify if somebody is a predator a sexual predator The police may have a record of somebody, right?
00:36:07.900 --> 00:36:20.222
Well, we're getting better at that almost in spite of ourselves, because there have been so many scandals recently.
00:36:20.242 --> 00:36:28.858
There was the big AP article about a sexual predator in Arizona, and the bishop never reported it.
00:36:29.090 --> 00:36:31.693
to the authorities and just told this.
00:36:32.373 --> 00:36:34.416
The bishop called the church hotline.
00:36:35.117 --> 00:36:52.217
You know, the church has the hotline, the leaders call, and the hotline, it became very clear that the hotline was far more interested in protecting the church from liability claims than it was in terms of protecting the abuse victim.
00:36:53.025 --> 00:36:56.590
And so this bishop called the hotline.
00:36:56.630 --> 00:36:59.733
The hotline says, you don't need to report it and you shouldn't report it.
00:37:00.434 --> 00:37:01.614
We'll handle it internally.
00:37:01.655 --> 00:37:07.121
And that eventually came out and was a huge embarrassment to the church.
00:37:07.161 --> 00:37:24.539
The church issued a statement that I think made things worse because they accused the AP of slandering them while at the same time acknowledging all of the facts that the AP unearthed that were in the article.
00:37:24.559 --> 00:37:31.228
It didn't dispute any of the facts, but it just got indignant and made things worse.
00:37:32.369 --> 00:37:34.952
There's a case right now.
00:37:36.134 --> 00:37:40.579
There's a man in Enoch, Utah, a wife, five children.
00:37:40.619 --> 00:37:51.045
He came home and took a gun and murdered his entire family, murdered his mother-in-law, and then turned the gun on himself.
00:37:52.268 --> 00:38:06.492
And the reaction to that has been bizarre as people, so they published an obituary of the murderer that talked about what a great leader he was in the church and oh, he was wonderful here.
00:38:06.552 --> 00:38:09.998
And this is a man who murdered all of his children.
00:38:10.018 --> 00:38:22.391
And it's come out now that his daughter went to talk about this abuse, went to the authorities, and the authorities said, the man strangled his daughter.
00:38:22.550 --> 00:38:28.016
And the authorities said, that's close to assaultive, but it's not quite assaultive because you could still breathe.
00:38:29.137 --> 00:38:29.778
And let it go.
00:38:29.818 --> 00:38:43.614
But what's come out is that this kind of abuse, there were at least four bishops who heard complaints from the wife and complaints from the children that this man was abusive.
00:38:44.161 --> 00:38:45.483
And nothing was ever done.
00:38:46.704 --> 00:38:58.516
And now he's murdered his family, and even now there are some members of the church who aren't willing to sort of confront the horror of what that really is.
00:38:58.536 --> 00:39:04.360
And I think these kinds of things embarrass the church.
00:39:05.121 --> 00:39:08.784
I mean, you talked initially that the church is very concerned about being embarrassed.
00:39:09.606 --> 00:39:21.969
And I think that it can have the positive effect consequence, maybe unintended consequence, of getting the church, forcing the church to get its act together.
00:39:22.150 --> 00:39:31.478
I don't think we do the church any favors by defending systematic problems that lead to abuse and lead to suffering and lead to death.
00:39:32.159 --> 00:39:33.400
In this case, it led to death.
00:39:33.460 --> 00:39:38.947
There were so many red flags about this guy, but the church took no action and the law took no action.
00:39:39.728 --> 00:39:41.610
So it wasn't just the church that failed here.
00:39:42.081 --> 00:39:48.572
Joseph Smith talks about in the 121st section of Doctrine and Covenants, we learn by sad experience.
00:39:49.833 --> 00:39:53.199
And he's talking about unrighteous dominion and other things.
00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:58.809
But I think sad experience becomes a great teacher for the church as well.
00:39:59.690 --> 00:40:09.067
And unfortunately, it takes terrible, terrible things to prompt the church to to fix
00:40:09.367 --> 00:40:10.748
serious systemic problems.
00:40:10.909 --> 00:40:11.389
Thank you for that.
00:40:11.429 --> 00:40:30.891
That is a really important point because my expectation, I'm not alone here, is that as the only true and living church upon the earth with extraordinary knowledge and insight, a prophet, you know, 2 Nephi talks about the qualities of a prophet, can see things before they happen, can know things, right?
00:40:32.735 --> 00:40:39.554
Where's the leadership in understanding protecting vulnerable children and youth, right?
00:40:40.114 --> 00:40:52.208
Where's the leadership in using information, which I want to get into a few more specifics, in using that information to protect members and youth and children?
00:40:52.889 --> 00:40:53.570
Where's the...
00:40:54.690 --> 00:40:56.333
I'm going to talk about...
00:40:56.393 --> 00:41:01.278
It should be right out there, leading, beyond any other organization.
00:41:01.719 --> 00:41:03.661
The reason for that is because we have...
00:41:04.385 --> 00:41:30.760
a profound understanding of the nature of human spirit in a way that no others understand or know, a knowledge of the plan of salvation, where we came from, why we're here, the nature of our spirits, the nature of God, our relationship with God, the nature of the eternities, the whole eternal perspective, the value of the human spirit, the value of children.
00:41:30.920 --> 00:41:31.420
We talk...
00:41:32.353 --> 00:41:38.018
frequently about 35, 17, where Christ blessed the children.
00:41:39.420 --> 00:41:59.219
You know, the church materials replete with ox references, lessons on the importance of children and families and youth, and the need to protect, and that Christ saves his worst wrath, I think, a quote, for those who abuse children.
00:41:59.259 --> 00:42:08.885
Again, we must understand that The most important thing for the church is protecting its reputation, because it ties to everything.
00:42:08.945 --> 00:42:14.652
It ties to membership retention, credibility, intelligence.
00:42:15.855 --> 00:42:20.981
It ties to the financial status of the organization.
00:42:21.021 --> 00:42:23.563
It ties to risk, legal risk.
00:42:23.985 --> 00:42:30.992
When I was bishop, by the way, in Dalkeith in Scotland, the police station was right next to the building, and we had a good relationship with the police.
00:42:31.585 --> 00:42:36.090
And so one day, an individual walked into the building and sat down at the back of the congregation.
00:42:36.490 --> 00:42:51.925
My counselor leaned over to me and said, Bishop, you need to know that this person we think, we know locally, is a predator and is as a criminal record of sexual assault and is a risk to the congregation.
00:42:53.086 --> 00:43:41.932
Immediately, I asked during the meeting to speak with a brother in the elders quorum who's a security guy he had a security background I just had a word with him at the council so I had a word with him that was my instruction just to keep an eye on this individual and then once the sacrament meeting had finished I met with this individual and made sure that they stayed at the front of the building there's no way I was going to let this person near the youth or the children this person to out to be had assaulted a child in the past and that had gone to court and it was on a register or something and shouldn't have been in the building.
00:43:43.856 --> 00:43:55.597
During that conversation in the foyer, I had one of my counselors get the local police station on the phone and I spoke to them, I knew them, and they came and they asked this person to leave.
00:43:56.338 --> 00:44:00.525
And by the way, it was that time where primary was at the front of the building.
00:44:01.126 --> 00:44:05.775
When you walked in, the primary classes were on the left immediately.
00:44:05.795 --> 00:44:10.264
And this is relatively new into the calling.
00:44:10.384 --> 00:44:18.992
What I did, I moved the entire primary and youth right to the back of the building where You couldn't get in unless you can only get out through the exit door.
00:44:19.012 --> 00:44:21.195
You couldn't get in through the emergency door.
00:44:21.677 --> 00:44:27.869
You had to go through the building right to the back, through all the corridor and all the way past the bishop's office to get to the primary.
00:44:27.909 --> 00:44:32.097
And you saw physically moved all primary and kids right to the back.
00:44:32.577 --> 00:44:39.923
And I put the adult classes right to the front because I didn't want anything to happen to the kids or to the youth.
00:44:40.344 --> 00:44:46.590
So, you know, knowing this information is really important and required.
00:44:47.110 --> 00:44:50.773
But I don't think the church does that in countries where it's not required legally.
00:44:51.353 --> 00:44:54.297
And for a church to be the only true church on the earth, that's the point I'm trying to make.
00:44:54.896 --> 00:44:55.938
We should be the forefront.
00:44:56.057 --> 00:44:57.039
Look what we've said about this.
00:44:57.099 --> 00:45:03.324
We should be doing everything in our power, throwing all the resources we can to protect vulnerable people from predators.
00:45:04.045 --> 00:45:06.728
Other things are, you know, predatory behavior.
00:45:06.827 --> 00:45:10.771
If someone's being predatory, for example, help me on this.
00:45:11.192 --> 00:45:13.514
Let me pronounce this properly.
00:45:14.175 --> 00:45:15.856
Affinity crimes.
00:45:17.077 --> 00:45:19.079
I think the church is affinity.
00:45:19.159 --> 00:45:30.429
It's a whole conversation podcast I'd like to do if you're interested where you've got this relationships between members and they get into business with each other where a member will come to me and say someone in the water ripped them off.
00:45:31.170 --> 00:45:39.282
or promised a service and they didn't deliver, or took some money for an investment, I know about that one, and basically robbed them blind, right?
00:45:39.322 --> 00:45:41.885
So you've got this relationship in the church.
00:45:41.985 --> 00:45:55.746
And I think it's an organization, the church globally, from a city I saw a while back, I think, if it's reliable, is one of the organizations most at risk because we call each other brother and sister, right?
00:45:56.108 --> 00:45:57.769
You're my brother, right?
00:45:57.829 --> 00:46:00.114
So why wouldn't I trust my brother?
00:46:00.545 --> 00:46:03.650
on an investment or a service or whatever.
00:46:03.911 --> 00:46:05.813
And I had a few problems like that.
00:46:05.853 --> 00:46:08.878
And so I didn't write this down in the MLS.
00:46:08.938 --> 00:46:09.960
You can if you want to.
00:46:10.601 --> 00:46:13.023
And I think there's probably some value to that.
00:46:13.405 --> 00:46:23.219
But I certainly kept an eye on one particular individual that had promised services to some members and hadn't delivered some technical computer services.
00:46:25.025 --> 00:46:26.949
And so there's things like that which you can track.
00:46:28.130 --> 00:46:29.291
You can profile members.
00:46:29.632 --> 00:46:30.713
Members are politically active.
00:46:30.753 --> 00:46:31.494
I've talked about that.
00:46:32.036 --> 00:46:34.539
Members who support certain policies that are opposed to the church.
00:46:34.579 --> 00:46:35.920
The church tracks that.
00:46:36.262 --> 00:46:42.309
If you're prominent enough and you're an influencer, opinion leader at that level, the church certainly tracks and monitors that.
00:46:42.389 --> 00:46:44.152
And why wouldn't it, right?
00:46:44.512 --> 00:46:47.938
You look at the financial performance of members in a graph.
00:46:48.818 --> 00:46:53.405
Typically, the leaders in the callings often...
00:46:54.114 --> 00:46:56.697
not always, are the faithful tithe payers.
00:46:56.737 --> 00:47:03.728
So there's a relationship, in my opinion, between tithe, well, yeah, between tithe payers and holding a senior calling.
00:47:04.648 --> 00:47:08.775
I don't think that's completely set in stone or stripped.
00:47:08.835 --> 00:47:16.025
I think you've got leaders who don't pay tithing or can't pay tithing or are only part tithe payers who are leaders.
00:47:16.106 --> 00:47:30.047
But generally speaking, and particularly some people might push back on this, I don't know, but if you're not a full tithe payer, generally you might not be considered for, well, you won't be considered for a bishop, that's for sure.
00:47:30.248 --> 00:47:30.849
Sure.
00:47:31.650 --> 00:47:32.672
Or state president, right?
00:47:32.711 --> 00:47:39.440
So if you're only a part tithe payer, I'm saying there's a correlation between tithe paying and leadership callings, for sure.
00:47:40.021 --> 00:47:46.650
Well, if you're a part tithe payer, you can't hold temple recommend, which means you can't be a bishop and you can't be a stake president.
00:47:47.362 --> 00:47:48.043
If you're a part
00:47:48.143 --> 00:47:48.864
tithe payer, you can.
00:47:48.884 --> 00:47:50.666
You can hold a recommend if you're a part tithe payer.
00:47:50.927 --> 00:47:51.367
Can you?
00:47:51.427 --> 00:47:51.967
I didn't know that.
00:47:52.007 --> 00:47:52.909
Yeah, you can.
00:47:53.009 --> 00:47:58.016
So I've issued temple recommends of members who are part tithe payers who have pleaded.
00:47:58.056 --> 00:48:00.579
They didn't have to, but they pleaded with me.
00:48:00.878 --> 00:48:02.021
They're desperate to go to the temple.
00:48:02.541 --> 00:48:05.025
They're going to an event in the temple, an experience.
00:48:05.445 --> 00:48:07.327
They can't afford tithing.
00:48:07.688 --> 00:48:10.231
There's no way I'm not going to let them go to the temple.
00:48:10.271 --> 00:48:11.233
Why wouldn't I do that, right?
00:48:11.612 --> 00:48:13.815
But the time when I was...
00:48:16.065 --> 00:48:51.925
devout at the time my counsel was to do what you can to become a full tithe payer i didn't look at the records or income statements or etc some some people might do um you know to really vet them and scrutinize them i think that's that's a bit overzealous and a bit extreme but in terms of counsel them to do what they can do the best they can no pressure there's no way i was this uh this poor sister, this brother, not go participate in a temple audience because he cannot pay tithing.
00:48:52.126 --> 00:48:54.347
I think a lot of it is down to the discretion of the bishop.
00:48:54.527 --> 00:48:55.849
In the end, it's the bishop that signs it.
00:48:56.150 --> 00:48:56.449
There
00:48:56.489 --> 00:48:57.731
are plenty of bishops out
00:48:57.791 --> 00:49:06.460
there that wouldn't have done what you did, that would have said, you're not a full-time payer, I'm sorry, my hands are tied, but you can't go to the temple.
00:49:08.260 --> 00:49:10.744
There are plenty of stories where that kind of thing happens.
00:49:12.125 --> 00:49:12.606
The church...
00:49:13.057 --> 00:49:15.880
It's fascinating to me with regard to tithing.
00:49:16.161 --> 00:49:24.429
The handbook says that you have to accept the member's declaration as to whether or not they are a full tithe payer.
00:49:24.528 --> 00:49:26.371
They don't conduct tithing audits.
00:49:26.451 --> 00:49:35.721
They don't look at your tax returns and make sure that you're paying 10%, and they don't say it has to be gross or it has to be net.
00:49:36.320 --> 00:49:40.985
I mean, you hear that from individual bishops, individual leaders, or individual members.
00:49:41.793 --> 00:49:49.891
You know, I've been in classes where members say, if you're not paying tithing on your gross income, you are robbing the Lord.
00:49:49.931 --> 00:49:52.637
But that is not the church's position.
00:49:53.398 --> 00:49:59.952
I've also talked to members of state presidencies who said, oh, I pay my tithing on my net income.
00:50:00.074 --> 00:50:01.958
I don't pay my tithing on my gross income.
00:50:02.722 --> 00:50:14.536
And they are members, because, so if I walk into my tithing declaration, which is what they call it now, they used to call it tithing settlement, and just last year they changed it to tithing declaration.
00:50:15.757 --> 00:50:20.623
They haven't changed what happens, so I don't know why the change in the terminology is important.
00:50:21.385 --> 00:50:31.717
But you walk into your tithing declaration, your bishop is sitting there with a piece of paper that has all the money you've donated to the church that year, and the bottom line is zero dollars.
00:50:32.833 --> 00:50:35.838
And the bishop asks you, are you a full tithe payer?
00:50:36.420 --> 00:50:37.742
And you say, yes.
00:50:38.943 --> 00:50:40.786
The bishop has to take your word for it.
00:50:41.387 --> 00:50:43.731
I think to their credit, most bishops do.
00:50:44.833 --> 00:50:55.809
But the handful of bishops that don't and the handful of bishops that police that in ways beyond what the handbook allows do real damage to the church, I think.
00:50:56.226 --> 00:50:57.231
Yeah, that's a good point.
00:50:57.291 --> 00:50:58.235
I know we've got to wrap up here soon.
00:50:58.536 --> 00:50:59.300
I'm like the Mr.
00:50:59.320 --> 00:51:04.925
Incredible guy who the lady comes, she's got an insurance claim, and he says, yeah,
00:51:05.327 --> 00:51:05.849
yeah,
00:51:05.869 --> 00:51:05.949
yeah.
00:51:06.114 --> 00:51:11.277
And his boss comes and says, she's penetrating the bureaucracy, right?
00:51:12.619 --> 00:51:15.601
And I'm not the guy that helps people penetrate the bureaucracy.
00:51:15.641 --> 00:51:17.284
There's no way I'm not going to help somebody.
00:51:17.324 --> 00:51:18.123
Why am I there?
00:51:18.164 --> 00:51:20.586
What's my point in being there if I'm not going to help somebody?
00:51:21.246 --> 00:51:29.614
How can I say no to somebody who wants to go into the temple and witness their grandson's marriage, right?
00:51:30.094 --> 00:51:31.436
How can you do that?
00:51:31.715 --> 00:51:34.739
I don't give a crap about whether I got the call or not.
00:51:35.940 --> 00:52:00.163
There's way I'm going to be part of something like that so and no one checks up on me no one checks on the bishops about your signature right they don't oh I've got a signature there well has the bishop done the job right has he checked all has he done all the background checks all the questions right are you honest in your dealings with the following men there's 15 yes or no questions so I can memorize them I memorize them word for word I was uh criticized um by a member for not looking down and reading the questions.
00:52:00.182 --> 00:52:01.786
You've got to read the questions, by the way.
00:52:02.166 --> 00:52:04.791
You can't do them by memorization like I could.
00:52:05.373 --> 00:52:19.619
And just to kind of close off a little bit, we didn't get into too much of the external stuff, but in terms of information that the church captures and maintains, monitors, tracks, and uses, etc., there's a whole social media component around the missionary proselyting efforts.
00:52:19.679 --> 00:52:32.903
I've lost count how many Times, I've seen an advert of a missionary locally here saying we've got a free Book of Mormon that we'd like to deliver, or we can do Cut Your Hedge, or Trimmy Bush was one missionary.
00:52:33.844 --> 00:52:35.047
Trimmy Bush?
00:52:35.367 --> 00:52:39.153
Yeah, Trimmy Bush, and some of the comments I won't share here, but...
00:52:43.219 --> 00:52:44.201
Sheesh.
00:52:44.280 --> 00:52:46.143
So, you know, but anything to...
00:52:46.344 --> 00:52:46.905
I mean, think about it.
00:52:46.925 --> 00:52:49.389
You know, the knocking on doors didn't work, hasn't worked.
00:52:49.954 --> 00:52:55.541
Referrals are terrible, you know, they're terrible in Scotland in terms of performers.
00:52:55.780 --> 00:53:05.253
You know, President Greens, you probably still listen to our podcast, if you're still listening, President Greens, you know, the pressure on members to generate referrals was extraordinary.
00:53:05.793 --> 00:53:06.594
It never succeeded.
00:53:06.974 --> 00:53:08.476
And now the church has got the internet.
00:53:08.637 --> 00:53:19.018
And so it trains missionaries to, and you can speak to this more than I can, to be very active on social media, post adverts of Bibles, the Book of Mormon, the services, etc.
00:53:19.057 --> 00:53:21.282
It tracks the emails of missionaries.
00:53:21.364 --> 00:53:22.385
I know that for a fact.
00:53:23.748 --> 00:53:29.342
There's an email server that the church uses for missionaries, etc.
00:53:29.382 --> 00:53:33.612
It can read your letters and your emails, and it has done at times.
00:53:34.177 --> 00:53:36.827
And everything's done electronically now.
00:53:36.867 --> 00:53:37.628
So there's a record.
00:53:37.909 --> 00:53:41.501
There's an electronic footprint of everything that the missionaries do.
00:53:42.204 --> 00:53:43.809
They're restricted about what they can look at.
00:53:43.869 --> 00:53:45.173
And again, I think for good reason.
00:53:45.215 --> 00:53:45.454
I think...
00:53:46.465 --> 00:53:54.195
It can be dangerous for a missionary to go too far, too deep into the internet.
00:53:54.574 --> 00:53:58.018
So the church will use information technology.
00:53:58.059 --> 00:54:00.402
It's not unique to the church.
00:54:00.541 --> 00:54:04.246
Organizations have been doing this for a long time.
00:54:05.027 --> 00:54:07.889
It's part of human nature, control and manage information.
00:54:08.451 --> 00:54:10.532
Look what's happened to the Ukraine wall, propaganda, right?
00:54:11.333 --> 00:54:14.878
And so it is a church has a propaganda machine.
00:54:15.202 --> 00:54:16.402
It's very sophisticated.
00:54:17.063 --> 00:54:18.606
I think it shoots itself in its foot.
00:54:19.447 --> 00:54:21.809
It seems to be its own worst enemy.
00:54:21.829 --> 00:54:23.972
You could just sit back and watch it destroy itself.
00:54:24.893 --> 00:54:26.253
It's doing a pretty good job of that, I think.
00:54:28.717 --> 00:54:32.740
I'm not that pessimistic.
00:54:33.382 --> 00:54:33.601
Right.
00:54:34.023 --> 00:54:38.568
I don't think I'm quite as pessimistic as you are with regard to the church shooting itself in the foot.
00:54:38.608 --> 00:54:50.777
I think when the church gets something wrong, And it explodes across social media.
00:54:50.976 --> 00:54:54.260
It ripples through traditional media.
00:54:56.324 --> 00:55:07.757
But I still believe that the vast majority of bishops and stake presidents are doing everything in their power to do the right thing.
00:55:09.259 --> 00:55:19.972
And I believe that the church institutionally wants to do the right thing and sometimes trips itself up.
00:55:20.432 --> 00:55:30.166
It's the old, when a plane crashes, you get people say, well, nobody ever talks about when all the planes land safely.
00:55:30.206 --> 00:55:32.489
They only single out the one time it crashes.
00:55:33.289 --> 00:55:37.735
And so, well, yeah, because when a plane crashes, it's a tremendous, terrible, awful loss of life.
00:55:38.376 --> 00:55:44.846
But I think there is a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
00:55:45.601 --> 00:55:58.438
When we talk about these kinds of problems in the church, when we talk about problems with reporting systems, we talk about problems with the church being more interested in preserving its reputation than in helping abuse victims.
00:55:58.940 --> 00:56:06.329
I think those are largely anomalous, and that for the most part, the church is trying to do the right thing.
00:56:07.150 --> 00:56:14.960
But I think there is tremendous room for improvement, and I don't think that we do the church any favors.
00:56:15.873 --> 00:56:17.416
by trying to pretend otherwise.
00:56:18.538 --> 00:56:23.625
You know, when a plane crashes, you deal with the systemic problem that led to the plane crash.
00:56:24.105 --> 00:56:30.112
You don't just throw your hands up and say, well, 99% of our planes don't crash, so what's your problem?
00:56:31.534 --> 00:56:32.215
I struggle with that.
00:56:32.255 --> 00:56:32.797
I'll tell you why.
00:56:32.836 --> 00:56:37.844
You're speaking from the perspective of a member, a rank-and-file member, right?
00:56:38.664 --> 00:56:40.367
You don't have the experience of a bishop.
00:56:41.007 --> 00:56:43.512
You don't have the experience of a state president.
00:56:44.132 --> 00:56:44.994
You don't see...
00:56:45.505 --> 00:56:48.710
and feel and understand and know what they know, right?
00:56:49.331 --> 00:56:51.474
They know more than you know, okay?
00:56:51.994 --> 00:56:54.237
The general authorities, apostles, know more than you know.
00:56:54.277 --> 00:56:58.023
They see things from a very different vantage point than you do, right?
00:56:58.923 --> 00:57:00.144
Same with bishops, same with shepherds.
00:57:00.264 --> 00:57:05.913
And when you're at that level, when you're at a leader level, and certainly it got worse the higher it got, in my view.
00:57:06.193 --> 00:57:08.416
You see what members do in the stake.
00:57:08.956 --> 00:57:09.657
It's extraordinary.
00:57:10.210 --> 00:57:18.538
They stand up and they say these things, and many of them are wonderful and great, absolutely, the majority are, but you also, you have a window into the life.
00:57:18.577 --> 00:57:23.081
You see some crazy, awful stuff that they do on a personal level.
00:57:23.141 --> 00:57:30.650
It sometimes comes into the conversation or through a confession or whatever, and you have to take those things to the grave, by the way.
00:57:30.690 --> 00:57:32.632
You can't ever discuss those things, ever.
00:57:33.351 --> 00:57:39.077
And you see personal preferences of leaders over certain individuals for no reason other than they like them, right?
00:57:39.777 --> 00:57:41.820
God is no respecter of persons.
00:57:43.722 --> 00:57:46.146
It's just human nature, Jim.
00:57:46.547 --> 00:57:52.815
The members are simply an extension or a section of human life.
00:57:53.978 --> 00:57:55.400
We hire people because we like them.
00:57:55.460 --> 00:57:57.021
We don't hire them because we don't like them.
00:57:57.422 --> 00:57:59.726
They might have credentials coming through the yin-yang, right?
00:57:59.806 --> 00:58:02.690
But for whatever reason, we don't want to choose them, right?
00:58:03.070 --> 00:58:05.233
All those personal prejudices and preferences...
00:58:05.858 --> 00:58:10.262
which are ingrained into the human psyche nature.
00:58:10.621 --> 00:58:17.369
I do agree that most leaders' members are either doing or at least trying to do the right thing.
00:58:17.608 --> 00:58:21.432
But I've also seen mistakes made by bishops.
00:58:21.632 --> 00:58:23.054
You know, I train bishops.
00:58:24.295 --> 00:58:27.637
My job was to, you know, with the state presidency, to train bishops.
00:58:28.018 --> 00:58:29.079
And they made mistakes.
00:58:29.900 --> 00:58:32.023
And they did things deliberately.
00:58:32.123 --> 00:58:32.983
Like, why are you doing that?
00:58:33.003 --> 00:58:34.625
There was a bishop that was a rogue bishop.
00:58:34.664 --> 00:58:35.445
We had a rogue bishop.
00:58:35.746 --> 00:58:36.927
He's somewhere in the middle, I think.
00:58:36.987 --> 00:58:40.012
I think, yes, generally, trying to do the basic
00:58:40.092 --> 00:58:40.494
good.
00:58:40.934 --> 00:58:45.623
Generally, church leaders are trying to do the right thing.
00:58:45.643 --> 00:58:46.443
That's the key word.
00:58:46.864 --> 00:58:49.389
Well, with that, let's wrap this up.
00:58:49.630 --> 00:58:54.757
If you enjoyed this, please be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
00:58:54.838 --> 00:58:57.222
Until next time, thank you very much, Ian.
00:58:58.143 --> 00:58:58.684
Thank you, Jim.
00:00:01.217 --> 00:00:03.741
Thank you.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out with Jim Bennett and Ian Wilkes.
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I am Jim Bennett and I am here with Ian Wilkes.
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Ian, how are you, sir?
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I am very good today.
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How are you, Jim?
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I'm doing very well.
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I'm very excited about this episode because you have told me that you have some very sexy stuff, really gripping, exciting stuff to talk about.
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That may give the listeners a bit of a wrong impression, because we're not going to be talking about literally sexy things, but something that's really kind of interesting, something that people have not discussed before, and that's the issue of the Lord forgives and forgets, but the computer doesn't.
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Is that an appropriate way to frame it?
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It is.
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That's one angle to see this.
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And that's...
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term, that reference there was, I heard many years ago, just before serving as a bishop.
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I've heard this friend by a number of different people who talk about the idea that once you've gone through church discipline, you can say goodbye to any sort of significant leadership calling.
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I used to work at the Tuakon Center for the Arts for Hiram Smith, not Hiram Smith, the one that was martyred in Carthage jail, but a descendant of that Hiram Smith.
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He's passed away, but he was the first cousin of Elder M.
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Russell Ballard and was a very prominent speaker and leader in the church.
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He was a mission president at a very young age, served in a variety of leadership callings, and a lot of people presumed that he would end up if not in the Quorum of the Twelve, at least as a general authority.
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And it came to light that he had been conducting an eight-year affair while he was involved in all of these things in the church.
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And I don't feel like I'm violating any confidences because Hiram has spoken very publicly about all of these things.
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And in fact, when he was excommunicated, which he was, it actually made the newspaper in St.
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George, Utah, which I think is an appropriate way But this is not a secret.
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This was all very public.
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And I remember having a conversation with him.
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And he said that when he was talking to his cousin, Elder Ballard, Elder Ballard said, you've got to figure out a way that you're going to be serving in the church now that you're no longer going to have any leadership callings.
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And Hiram said, I don't understand that.
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If I've been forgiven and I've been rebaptized and I've been forgiven and my blessings have been restored, why does the punishment continue?
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And Elder Ballard's comment was very similar to the way you've described it.
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He says, oh, the Lord forgives.
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It's the church that doesn't forgive.
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And is that what you're talking about here, or is it even something other
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than that?
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That is more than that.
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That's only one piece of this.
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That experience there with Hiram, it ties to the question I was asked by Elder Oaks when I was being called onto the state presidency, and the very first question that he asked me privately, so it's just me in the room, Elder Cook is saying, junior trainee companion as he put it elder oaks and he asked me is it any the first question was is it anything in my history that could harm or hurt the church and i was surprised shocked by that question um but as as he explained a little bit more about the question it became clear that the one of the primary um objectives of the church is to protect the institution protect the name the brand.
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It takes years to build a brand, and it doesn't take very long to destroy the brand.
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And so when Elder Oaks is asking this question, he was asking for a reason, because people's behavior, especially with a prominent name in the public eye, or you've got a prominent ancestry, and the person who's held a senior calling, then that could harm and hurt the church on a local level, as well as a regional level, as well as a public level.
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So, you know, information...
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on these individuals is maintained, is tracked.
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I mean, I have heard stories.
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I don't know anything about...
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I mean, I haven't had first-hand experience, and it sounds like you have.
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If somebody's been involved in a same-sex relationship, and they go and they talk to their bishop, they can be cleared of any kind of church discipline, but their records can be marked to say, this person should never progress to any kind of a leadership calling, or this person should never be allowed to work with the youth.
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And that mark can be placed by a bishop, and it can't be removed unless a general authority or somebody removes it.
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Is that accurate?
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It is generally accurate, yeah.
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Elder Stephen Snow, a General Authority 17 attrition star and recorder, as you know, he produced an article called The Sacred Duty of Record-Keeping.
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And it says here, beginning with the early church and continue today, the Lord has instructed his people to preserve and cherish records and history.
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He says here, the records and history of the church have been important to the Lord from the beginning.
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He taught Adam and Eve to keep a book of remembrance and counseled ancient prophets to keep records and checked to ensure that the Nephite records were complete.
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That's an audit.
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All right, they don't use that word, but that's an audit right there.
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In this dispensation, he taught Joseph Smith, another prophet, early leaders, that there shall be, quote, there shall be a record kept among you, end quote, continually, and that doing so would be good for the church and for the rising generation.
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And then he goes on to say that the church is committed to maintaining these records.
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And in fact, there's an interesting quote here.
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He talks about his privilege of working as a historian and recorder.
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And he says, where the saints gathered in Nauvoo, the work of the two officers were combined and assigned to Elder Willard Richards.
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in 1854, the Call of the Twelve Apostles, during which Elder Richard's time of service, church members lived among the Mississippi River in Illinois, in Iowa, throughout the eastern United States, Canada, British Isles, Isles of the Pacific.
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Joseph Smith instructed that it would be very difficult for one recorder to be present at all times and to do all the business.
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Thus, there can be a recorder appointed at each ward of the city.
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Then let there be a general recorder to whom these records can be handed, being attended with certificates over their own signatures, certifying that the record they have made is true.
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So I'd break this down into two areas.
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Information that's maintained on members and individuals internally, and what happens, what information is kept, and what happens with that information, how is that information used, and it is used strategically, tactically, and for other means.
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And what information does the church manage, control, or influence, or track externally?
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Because that's another part of this as well.
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The second piece I want to tie this to is the scope of the committee called the Strengthen the Church Members Committee, which you may be familiar with.
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I'm a little bit familiar with that.
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But the scope is to track and monitor publications of members for possible criticism of general or local church leaders.
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And if there is criticism found, the committee may forward information to local leaders who may bring charges of apostasy, and in some cases, excommunication.
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For example, people who are political activists who support policies or principles or doctrine or philosophies that oppose the church values or general church doctrine.
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The church does hold information and track information on those individuals.
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I suspect with your...
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political aspirations at some point, that information will have reached some of the church leaders.
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I have met with Richard Turley, who was the church historian at one point, and he was the head of the church public relations department.
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And he said, oh yeah, you're the guy who wrote the CES letter reply.
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And I went, oh, well, yeah.
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Have you read it?
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And he says, oh yeah, of course I've read it.
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And I've had conversations with other people who have made it very clear that the brethren are aware of my CES letter of reply and overall, as far as I know, are pleased with it, are happy with it.
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So it's never blown up in my face, but it's been very clear that they are aware of me and they are aware of what I say publicly.
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And it's interesting that the way that you have described this, the Strengthening Members Committee, is really concerned about criticism.
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The threshold for tolerance of unorthodox positions is actually much, much higher than people realize.
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And the other side of that coin is the threshold for even mild criticism of the brethren is much, much lower than many people realize.
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I have a brother-in-law, for instance, his name is Nate Ullman, and he wrote a marvelous essay that described a theological framework for how same-sex marriage ceilings could and should be conducted in the temple.
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And, you know, the hard-right people on Twitter and everybody else blew up and were very angry about this essay.
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It got a lot of traction.
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Nate is a good friend of Jeffrey R.
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Holland, who spoke at a Worldwide Youth devotional very recently and quoted a letter from Nate at length and used him as an example of a paragon of the faith.
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Not only did he not get any pushback for his unorthodox position, but an apostle was still willing to hold him up as a light to the rest of the church.
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Now, where people get into trouble, I also have a friend who did a very good Thomas S.
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Monson impression.
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He would just sort of fall into it when he was teaching lessons or something else.
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My
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Truman Madsen impression.
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Truman Madsen is my father's first cousin.
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And I remember right after I got home from my mission, I was sitting next to Truman Madsen at a family dinner and I described how we used to, I actually told him a story of how you went to McDonald's in Inverness.
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And you walked up to the counter and you said, if you do not give me my McDonald's, I will send you and McDonald's to hell.
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And Truman got a really big kick out of that.
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I
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just want our listeners to know that I did tell the person of the counter that that was a hot joke.
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But the
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point is, this guy doing a Thomas Monson impression, as far as I know, he wasn't doing it for a wide audience.
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I remember talking to him later and he said, yeah, the bishop said, I need to knock it off if I want to keep my temple recommend.
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And I'm like, well, that's ridiculous.
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I mean, you weren't being mean.
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You weren't being nasty.
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It came from a place of affection.
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But no, no, even that was not acceptable.
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So as I have become more and more prominent in how I talk about the church, and I am perceived, and I think rightly so, as somebody who is defending the church and loves the church and is inside the church.
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That said, I remember I posted a Facebook post where I took issue with the idea that there is conflict between the first great commandment and the second great commandment.
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The idea that if you love God, be careful not to love your neighbor too much if it takes away from your love of God.
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This is an idea that is starting to get traction at the highest levels of the church.
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And it's been the subject of a number of talks from a number of different general authorities.
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And on this occasion, I posted a link to one of those talks, but did not mention the general authority's name in my comments and just said, this is an idea that is getting practiced in the church.
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And I reject this idea wholeheartedly.
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I think it flies in the face of everything Jesus has ever taught.
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And I went through that and I got in a little bit of hot water.
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And I got in hot water not because of my position, but because I was perceived as criticizing the general authority whose picture was prominently in that Facebook post because it was part of that link that I had posted.
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And I said, I didn't even mention the man's name.
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I'm not even going to mention the man's name here.
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That doesn't matter.
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That was perceived as criticism.
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And so I think in all of this, it's very interesting to me.
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That, I think, is where the sensitivity is.
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The sensitivity is not, oh, geez, you believe women should be ordained.
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You don't believe the Book of Mormon is historical, or you have problems with polygamy, or any of that.
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There is a high tolerance for a diversity of opinions like that.
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There is zero tolerance for anything, even mild criticism or mockery or teasing, A Thomas S.
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Monson impression is not acceptable.
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In my experience, that's where the line is.
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Have you seen something similar?
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I have.
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I can get into some specifics.
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Again, I think of the Elder Oaks interview where we spent a good five minutes on screening and vetting my background and asking me some very personal questions about in regards to my history.
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So just for a moment, put yourself in the position of the church.
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You have an individual who's a political leader, political aspirations, or a successful business person.
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I'll give you the term that was used with general authorities and ourselves in our state presence.
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They call them opinion leaders.
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So we had meetings with general authorities for years, Canada, British Columbia, to talk about how we can advance, accelerate the missionary effort by engaging in developing relationships with opinion leaders.
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And they went into great length about what an opinion leader is.
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It's somebody who's, when they speak, people listen.
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Large numbers of people listen.
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They've got general respect.
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They've got integrity.
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And they've got an influence.
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They've got an audience.
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The audience is growing.
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The audience is strategic.
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And they can advance, accelerate the missionary effort and the missionary teachers, the teachers of the church, through these people, through this network of strategic opinion leaders.
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Are you talking about people in the church or outside of the church?
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At that particular meeting, it was mostly focused on, we talked about internal opinion leaders, lecturers at universities, prominent business leaders, and maintaining a relationship between the church and those people is really important to the church.
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Where the church, and again, going back to what I was saying, looking through the lens of the church, looking from a A cooperation perspective for a moment, because there's definitely the element to that.
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What does an organization needs to do to maintain and manage and advance, accelerate its brand and its position across issues?
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Well, it teams and partners with people that can help it.
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How do you get to A to B?
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Well, in business, you team with the right partners.
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You research them.
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You check them out.
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You find out what other people think about them.
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There's a whole process.
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of evaluating, determining who is a strategic partner.
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And the church is very sophisticated, very sophisticated, perhaps the most sophisticated organized religion in the modern world, and has got very sophisticated trained people that reviews, backgrounds, searches, checks people internally in the church.
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But it also spends a lot of time and effort and millions of taxpayer, sorry, taxpayers' tithing dollars on positioning itself with, you know, President Banks.
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I think President Banks was, one of his callings was, I think the affectionate term was the greeter.
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Yeah, President Banks, after he was mission president, and then he was general authority, he was in the second quorum of the 70, and then I think he was called into the first quorum of the 70, and then he was released and he became the temple president of the Jordan River Temple.
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And then after that, he became the head of church hosting.
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And so his job became sucking up to my parents that my father was a United States senator.
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And so my parents, that's when they got to know President Banks.
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I mean, they knew him from a distance because he was my mission president.
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But they got personally acquainted with him and became very good friends with him because his job was to accommodate my father, who was an opinion leader in and out of the church.
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Absolutely.
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He does a really good example of somebody who's the church wants and needs to have a good relationship with.
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So President Banks, I don't know the specific scope of his calling, but from talking to him and listening and understanding his calling there, and I think he termed it as the greeter, but he facilitated organized coordinated meetings with prime ministers and Prime Minister of New Zealand, who just resigned, by the way.
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She was a former member.
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And there is an active and developing strategy to identify and engage opinion leaders, not with the idea of baby baptizing them necessarily, although I think they like that.
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I think there's a lot of marketing value when you baptize Gladys Knight of the Pips.
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Yeah, and that's very, very few and far between, though.
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Yes, yes.
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So I think where it can and position itself to achieve favor, and again, I'm being a bit cynical here, but from a business perspective, I don't see anything wrong with that.
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I guess what I'm saying is I can see the reason why the church does this, and it makes sense to me.
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And I think from a church perspective, it's a good thing.
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It's a positive thing.
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It's an intelligent thing to team up with good opinion leaders.
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Just going back to the Strength of the Church Members Committee, if I may, Fair Mormon issued this statement.
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He says here, the strength of the church members' committee has been described as a clipping service.
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I disagree with that, by the way, profoundly.
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I'll explain why later.
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Which has kept track of public statements by church members who openly criticize church in the media.
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I guess include yourself there, to some extent.
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Although a clipping service probably made sense back in 1995, in the internet-rich world of 2013, it seemed somewhat anachronistic.
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Critics to the church have accused the committee of spying on members in order to move forward with church discipline.
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Well...
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That has happened.
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I think Fair Mormon deliberately uses the emotive words like spy to make such activities sound ludicrous.
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It's done that before.
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It's doing that here.
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You can describe things in many different ways.
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When we use the word spying on members, it sounds like 007, but that activity does happen, can be described differently in a way that doesn't sound like it's far-fetched.
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And I think it's disingenuous of Fairmore and not appropriate to use the word spy.
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You know, words mean something.
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I would say track monitors.
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The church does...
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I was writing this, the church tracks and monitors and acts against people that write negative stuff about the church.
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That's why we spend so much time with Elder Oaks on this.
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Well, I would push back against the word spy only because...
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I don't think the church actively spies on its members by trying to investigate their private lives or their private conversations.
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The things that the Strengthening Church Members Committee tracks and monitors are things that are said in the public sphere.
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Farrah Mormon may be setting up a little bit of a straw man there, because when I hear the word spy...
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I don't hear that as somebody reading something that I posted publicly.
00:21:08.670 --> 00:21:17.943
You know, I posted my CES letter to reply, and the fact that the church has read it and commented on it and is interested in it, I didn't do that in a corner.
00:21:18.183 --> 00:21:19.065
That isn't a secret.
00:21:19.286 --> 00:21:28.199
I did that publicly, and I expect it to be acknowledged publicly, and the fact that the church is backing and monitoring that doesn't disturb me.
00:21:28.219 --> 00:21:39.670
It would disturb me if the church was, you know, had operatives that were asking my friends, does Jim Bennett secretly believe this?
00:21:40.010 --> 00:21:45.298
Is Jim Bennett secretly, you know, that's what I see a spy doing.
00:21:46.098 --> 00:21:47.882
And I don't necessarily see the
00:21:47.942 --> 00:21:48.803
church do
00:21:48.823 --> 00:21:48.863
it.
00:21:49.884 --> 00:21:50.224
I agree.
00:21:50.384 --> 00:21:50.605
I agree.
00:21:50.625 --> 00:21:53.108
That's a really good way of characterizing the situation.
00:21:53.189 --> 00:21:55.952
The church doesn't spy, hasn't got the resources, doesn't do the...
00:21:56.512 --> 00:21:57.595
I agree with what you just said.
00:21:57.835 --> 00:21:59.017
I think it has the resources.
00:21:59.096 --> 00:22:00.838
If they wanted to spy, they could.
00:22:01.480 --> 00:22:02.582
And I don't think they do.
00:22:03.329 --> 00:22:06.894
But they track and monitor
00:22:07.596 --> 00:22:08.657
really quite aggressively.
00:22:08.817 --> 00:22:11.501
Track monitoring is the words that I would use, and it does that.
00:22:11.801 --> 00:22:21.056
We know for a fact that if you post something on Facebook, and I'm not referring to you, I'm referring to things I've seen, even myself, actually.
00:22:21.435 --> 00:22:31.701
On one occasion, I posted something on Wow's Member of the State Presidency, and I had a member say, an award, say, you know, President, could you clarify?
00:22:31.721 --> 00:22:33.163
It looks like you're supporting this.
00:22:33.624 --> 00:22:38.749
So, you know, you've got members that flag things up to leaders, by the way.
00:22:38.769 --> 00:22:39.650
We'll talk about that.
00:22:40.191 --> 00:22:48.439
I'm not saying the spies, but they're certainly, whether they're ass or not, you've got people in the state that like to gossip and share information.
00:22:48.619 --> 00:22:54.685
And then you've got people's social media activity coming into a church court, right?
00:22:55.266 --> 00:22:59.309
as evidence of their thinking, their behavior, and their beliefs.
00:22:59.871 --> 00:23:00.811
I'm aware of that as well.
00:23:01.333 --> 00:23:03.454
So, finishing off the Fair Mormon thing here.
00:23:04.715 --> 00:23:06.137
They describe it as a clipping service.
00:23:06.178 --> 00:23:06.518
It's not.
00:23:06.597 --> 00:23:07.720
It's tracking and monitoring.
00:23:08.140 --> 00:23:17.430
And then they say here that from the Church News, August 22, 1992, First Presidency Statement cites scriptural mandate for church committee.
00:23:18.571 --> 00:23:52.781
And it says, Generally, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not respond to criticism level levied against its work but in light of extensive publicity recently given to false accusations, and by the way, I must add, I've lost count how many times over the years, as a state presidency and as a bishop, as the internet was coming online, all the stuff on the internet, etc., the internet was seen as the predominant medium for the next generation, the church repeatedly said, and I'll try to quote Elder Oaks, we're bringing the church into the light.
00:23:53.250 --> 00:23:56.977
And the Internet is going to be the vehicle and the means by which we do that.
00:23:57.377 --> 00:24:12.685
There was a belief of church leaders that the Internet would be the savior of the church, that it would be able to promote the narrative, that missionary efforts would advance, accelerate, that the qualities of the church would finally be known to the world.
00:24:13.218 --> 00:24:38.145
the success, the qualities, the divinity of the church, and the value of the church would finally be spread to all corners of the world in a way that hasn't been done before, and that the world would respond favorably and openly and kindly towards the church's missionary effort, and we would see extraordinary success in terms of baptisms.
00:24:38.626 --> 00:24:50.702
The people at that time, with the emergence of the internet, really believed that, Jim, and believed that the internet would be the saviour of, in some respects, the technological saviour of the church.
00:24:51.144 --> 00:25:00.036
The reality, they didn't expect the criticism to come against the church or to have information released to the extent that it has been on the internet.
00:25:00.477 --> 00:25:11.644
I know for a fact that those early conversations at that level about the internet was not fully understood, and perhaps not understood by many or most people, of how the internet would be used.
00:25:12.026 --> 00:25:13.527
We're going to finish off the quote here.
00:25:13.906 --> 00:25:22.236
But in light of extensive publicity recently given to false accusations of so-called secret church committees and files, it says the First Presidency has issued the following statement.
00:25:22.875 --> 00:25:30.263
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in 1830 following the appearance of God the Father and Jesus Christ to the Prophet John Smith in upstate New York.
00:25:30.763 --> 00:25:34.992
This sacred event heralded the onset of the promised restitution of all things.
00:25:35.855 --> 00:25:41.542
Many instructions were subsequently given to the prophet, including section 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
00:25:42.443 --> 00:25:58.125
And again, we would suggest you can, for your consideration, the proprietary of all saints gathering up a knowledge of all facts and sufferings and abuses put upon them, and also all the property and amount of damages which they have sustained, both of character and personal injury.
00:25:58.402 --> 00:26:05.193
and also the names of all persons that have had a hand in their oppressions as far as they can get hold of them and find them out.
00:26:05.935 --> 00:26:20.141
And perhaps a committee could be appointed to find out these things and take statements and affidavits and also to gather up libelous publications that are afloat and all that are in magazines and encyclopedias and all the libelous histories that are published.
00:26:21.042 --> 00:26:21.963
And so the...
00:26:23.041 --> 00:26:29.328
He goes on to say that leaders and members of the church strive to implement commandments of the Lord, including the direction received in 1839.
00:26:29.989 --> 00:26:35.214
Because the church has a non-professional clergy, its state presidents and bishops have varied backgrounds and training.
00:26:35.715 --> 00:26:41.981
In order to assist their members who have questions, these local leaders often request information from jail authorities of the church.
00:26:42.383 --> 00:26:48.990
The Strengthening of the Church Remembrance Committee was appointed by the First Presidency to help fulfill this need and to comply with cited sections of the Doctrine and Covenants.
00:26:49.049 --> 00:26:55.676
This committee serves as a resource to preach to leaders throughout the world who may desire assistance on a wide variety of topics.
00:26:55.737 --> 00:26:57.920
I don't think we know what those topics are.
00:26:57.960 --> 00:27:04.508
I don't think we know anywhere in writing what the scope of the committee is or some specific assignments or projects that it's got involved in.
00:27:04.867 --> 00:27:05.669
I'm not aware of that.
00:27:06.130 --> 00:27:07.951
I think for transparency, I think we need to know that.
00:27:08.152 --> 00:27:17.395
But it is a General Authority Committee, they say, currently comprised of Elder Faust, Elder Russell and Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I think this is out of date here.
00:27:17.737 --> 00:27:22.483
They work through established priesthood channels and neither impose nor direct church disciplinary action.
00:27:23.085 --> 00:27:24.166
I think that's disingenuous.
00:27:24.227 --> 00:27:26.230
I don't think that's entirely correct.
00:27:26.290 --> 00:27:34.284
I think they do influence and have influenced stake decisions, local decision leaders, decisions that have happened regionally as well.
00:27:34.845 --> 00:27:42.657
Members who have questions concerning church doctrine, policies and procedures have been counselled to discuss those concerns confidentially with their local leaders.
00:27:43.362 --> 00:27:50.896
These leaders are deeply aware of the obligation to counsel members wisely in the spirit of love in order to strengthen the faith in the Lord in this great, lasting day at work.
00:27:51.699 --> 00:27:56.327
And so I think that is really important context.
00:27:56.667 --> 00:27:59.253
Let me give you a quick overview of what I've seen.
00:27:59.874 --> 00:28:01.155
Directly and indirectly.
00:28:01.455 --> 00:28:05.601
We said at the very beginning that the Lord does forgive and forget, but the computer doesn't.
00:28:06.021 --> 00:28:08.644
So let's talk about what we know.
00:28:08.684 --> 00:28:13.651
We know that the church knows who owns a temple recommend, who has a current recommend.
00:28:14.392 --> 00:28:16.815
It knows who's a four-part tithe payer.
00:28:17.395 --> 00:28:20.480
It knows the individual's callings and the calling history.
00:28:21.340 --> 00:28:27.769
So in the MLS program, this program allows bishops and state presidents who have got different...
00:28:28.769 --> 00:28:30.512
access levels, by the way, to MLS.
00:28:30.532 --> 00:28:31.574
I don't know if you're aware of that.
00:28:32.075 --> 00:28:33.938
We talked earlier about annotating records.
00:28:35.259 --> 00:28:42.891
There's different types of information that these leaders have got different levels of authority to annotate members' records across certain issues.
00:28:43.432 --> 00:28:46.676
But we know that the MLS program maintains...
00:28:47.117 --> 00:28:47.858
What does MLS stand for?
00:28:48.500 --> 00:28:49.741
Member Leadership Services.
00:28:50.502 --> 00:28:51.785
Member Leadership Services.
00:28:52.025 --> 00:28:57.453
Yeah, there's a member records component to it, as well as the finance, the tithing and donations.
00:28:58.306 --> 00:28:58.665
Okay.
00:28:59.146 --> 00:29:01.970
So it's an integrated software system program.
00:29:02.651 --> 00:29:06.094
There's also a member records component to MLS as well.
00:29:06.535 --> 00:29:09.999
And so we know that, you know, we know Jim's history of callings.
00:29:10.499 --> 00:29:13.162
We know whether you said yes or no to a calling.
00:29:14.022 --> 00:29:15.384
We know your temple attendance.
00:29:15.464 --> 00:29:18.288
So if I say no to a calling, there's a record of that?
00:29:19.209 --> 00:29:20.269
They can make a record of that.
00:29:20.589 --> 00:29:25.756
I think the upside of this is that many of the leaders don't have time.
00:29:25.776 --> 00:29:30.452
I mean, this is like a A calling of this nature is like another full-time job.
00:29:30.492 --> 00:29:35.178
Being on a state presence at a bishop is, honestly, if you haven't had that calling, don't aspire to it.
00:29:35.838 --> 00:29:37.201
I don't know if you know what you're getting into.
00:29:37.381 --> 00:29:39.943
From a time perspective, it could take over your life.
00:29:40.545 --> 00:29:42.547
You could throw as many hours into this calling as you can.
00:29:42.626 --> 00:29:44.829
It will suck every minute of the day.
00:29:45.549 --> 00:29:49.755
And that's without annotating or updating members' records.
00:29:50.576 --> 00:29:55.201
There's certain basics in the leadership, scope of leadership calling like a state presidency.
00:29:55.778 --> 00:29:57.780
that you have to do.
00:29:57.961 --> 00:30:06.471
For example, when you issue a temple recommend, so issue the bishopric or the bishop issues the temple recommend at the unit level, the ward level.
00:30:07.613 --> 00:30:13.361
If it's the bishop with the recommend, only the state president is the one that can interview the bishop.
00:30:13.881 --> 00:30:18.247
Counselor can interview under the authority of a state president, a counselor can interview a bishop.
00:30:18.547 --> 00:30:20.390
But it's usually bishop, keyholder to keyholder.
00:30:21.089 --> 00:30:30.080
And so when the term of recommend is issued by state president, or member of the state presidency, you then have to activate the recommend.
00:30:30.662 --> 00:30:42.096
So that person, I got in trouble once that after the long night session, and by the way, these meetings ended Thursday nights, I think it was, at midnight sometimes.
00:30:42.317 --> 00:30:42.798
I'm not kidding.
00:30:43.439 --> 00:30:48.064
You meet at six, five, six o'clock after work, and you go right through to every week.
00:30:48.785 --> 00:30:54.303
Honestly, There's another conversation around how much time these people commit.
00:30:54.383 --> 00:30:55.144
It's extraordinary.
00:30:55.163 --> 00:30:59.689
It really takes over your life to the point where you neglect your family.
00:31:00.490 --> 00:31:02.090
And I think that's another conversation.
00:31:02.951 --> 00:31:11.141
And so if you don't activate the recommend immediately and they go to the temple, you know, I met this Sunday on a Friday.
00:31:11.161 --> 00:31:12.923
It was last minute.
00:31:12.942 --> 00:31:14.104
You get these quite a bit, actually.
00:31:14.144 --> 00:31:16.987
Last minute, go to the temple.
00:31:17.407 --> 00:31:18.348
Sorry I left it so late.
00:31:18.729 --> 00:31:19.230
It's Friday.
00:31:19.586 --> 00:31:22.569
Friday night, 8 o'clock, go to the temple on the Saturday.
00:31:23.191 --> 00:31:25.472
Could we do the temple recommend interview?
00:31:25.512 --> 00:31:29.397
And the president, could we meet with you at 8, 9 o'clock?
00:31:29.438 --> 00:31:29.898
I said, yes.
00:31:30.680 --> 00:31:32.622
Again, that takes out your personal time, right?
00:31:33.222 --> 00:31:33.943
Sure.
00:31:34.243 --> 00:31:34.984
And they're half an hour.
00:31:35.145 --> 00:31:36.768
These conversations are half an hour at least.
00:31:37.367 --> 00:31:38.269
You then issue the recommend.
00:31:38.309 --> 00:31:40.673
You then got to go online from your house or whatever.
00:31:41.012 --> 00:31:42.734
Well, not your house, the building.
00:31:42.996 --> 00:31:44.657
You go to the building, do the interview.
00:31:45.410 --> 00:31:50.857
or to the house, sometimes come to the house if it's an emergency, you've then got to go online, you've then got to activate the recommend.
00:31:51.338 --> 00:32:09.047
So you go into the MLS, the other church programs, and you put Jim Bennett in, and because you've got this pass, you click it, you put the information in, support will be filled out with the information, your number, your temple recommend number, you've got a number assigned to you, by the way, and then I activate that.
00:32:09.126 --> 00:32:10.769
I'm authorized to activate that.
00:32:11.470 --> 00:32:17.960
So when you arrive at the temple in the morning, 8 o'clock in the morning, And you hand your recommend over the counter, and they scan it, the barcode.
00:32:18.780 --> 00:32:19.582
It's been activated.
00:32:20.604 --> 00:32:30.479
One time on the Friday, I forgot, and I got a call from the temple president saying, President, so-and-so has just arrived at the temple.
00:32:31.160 --> 00:32:32.821
He said he had a recommended view last night.
00:32:32.942 --> 00:32:33.723
It's not in the system.
00:32:34.003 --> 00:32:34.684
I apologized.
00:32:34.785 --> 00:32:36.968
I said, President, I just haven't got around to it.
00:32:37.008 --> 00:32:39.172
It's a good 15 minutes to put it in.
00:32:39.211 --> 00:32:42.016
And they didn't ask, you know, is this person in good standing?
00:32:42.036 --> 00:32:43.137
I said, yes.
00:32:43.713 --> 00:32:44.615
And they were fine, right?
00:32:45.056 --> 00:32:51.103
So things like that where you have to do, there's certain things that you have to do, which are basic to the calling.
00:32:51.843 --> 00:33:00.814
But the scope of the system there allows leaders, members to maintain, monitor track if they want.
00:33:00.854 --> 00:33:02.796
And I was finishing off a point earlier.
00:33:03.297 --> 00:33:11.346
I think the reason why they don't do it to the extent that they can, the technology is more than capable, is that these people don't have the time.
00:33:11.970 --> 00:33:16.657
You know, whether you take the sacrament or not can be recorded.
00:33:17.818 --> 00:33:21.025
So, you know, if you don't take the sacrament, the bishop knows.
00:33:21.164 --> 00:33:21.565
He looks.
00:33:21.986 --> 00:33:27.895
He is trained and, not trained, instructed to look at his members.
00:33:28.096 --> 00:33:28.977
No, I've never done that.
00:33:29.017 --> 00:33:29.939
I've never come across that.
00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:31.300
But they can.
00:33:31.401 --> 00:33:32.742
You know, they can profile a member.
00:33:32.784 --> 00:33:35.027
They can, you know, James not taking the sacrament for three weeks.
00:33:36.108 --> 00:33:39.294
You'll get the exec secretary making an interview with you.
00:33:39.713 --> 00:33:43.178
And you'll probably wonder why, and you'll say, Jim, how are you?
00:33:43.298 --> 00:33:43.959
How's your family?
00:33:44.439 --> 00:33:44.960
How's life?
00:33:45.099 --> 00:33:46.101
How's your work, et cetera?
00:33:46.601 --> 00:33:47.663
Is there anything good to help you?
00:33:47.682 --> 00:33:48.723
I've tried to get you to open up.
00:33:49.284 --> 00:33:54.230
And then if you're not forthcoming, you'll say, I noticed you haven't taken this acumen in the last three, four weeks.
00:33:54.951 --> 00:33:55.131
Right?
00:33:55.310 --> 00:33:59.315
So, you know, these things are tracked positivistically.
00:33:59.335 --> 00:34:01.538
It means there's a hard system.
00:34:02.077 --> 00:34:04.160
MLS is a means by which they're doing that.
00:34:04.740 --> 00:34:08.985
But phenomenologically, from a soft system of people, you know, leaders...
00:34:09.409 --> 00:34:12.474
see things, they track, and they remember things, right?
00:34:13.275 --> 00:34:15.699
And I think for good reason.
00:34:15.820 --> 00:34:21.969
I think there's a lot of, we said at the very beginning of the podcast, there's really good reasons, good qualities the church has.
00:34:22.610 --> 00:34:26.215
And like any tool, this tool is used for good things.
00:34:26.275 --> 00:34:27.077
I'll get into that right now.
00:34:27.838 --> 00:34:38.293
For example, if somebody's had a criminal history or a history, for example, in Scotland, they have what they call Disclosure Scotland background checks, and they've got them in England now.
00:34:38.849 --> 00:34:41.393
Or I don't know how, and they're about to do that.
00:34:42.034 --> 00:34:54.050
By the way, the church doesn't uniformly encourage or instruct leaders to do background checks on people who work with youth or children, where the law doesn't require it.
00:34:54.512 --> 00:34:54.992
I think that's a
00:34:55.032 --> 00:34:55.333
mistake.
00:34:55.472 --> 00:34:59.418
The church in the United States used to require that of Boy Scout leaders.
00:35:00.139 --> 00:35:00.320
Right.
00:35:00.360 --> 00:35:03.204
But that wasn't because of a church requirement.
00:35:03.244 --> 00:35:04.766
That was a Boy Scout requirement.
00:35:04.929 --> 00:36:07.639
And as the only true church upon the face of the earth who have advanced knowledge, spiritual knowledge, eternal knowledge, a perspective on life here and life beyond, you'd think that we would be leading by far light years ahead of implementing the many, many, many talks given in priesthood and general conference, how the church is in strongest terms is committed to protecting children and protecting youth you think that we'd be at the forefront of doing background checks internally using the information that we've got on the MLS system or using criminal checks where we can because those countries where it's not required there is still a process and system to identify if somebody is a predator a sexual predator The police may have a record of somebody, right?
00:36:07.900 --> 00:36:20.222
Well, we're getting better at that almost in spite of ourselves, because there have been so many scandals recently.
00:36:20.242 --> 00:36:28.858
There was the big AP article about a sexual predator in Arizona, and the bishop never reported it.
00:36:29.090 --> 00:36:31.693
to the authorities and just told this.
00:36:32.373 --> 00:36:34.416
The bishop called the church hotline.
00:36:35.117 --> 00:36:52.217
You know, the church has the hotline, the leaders call, and the hotline, it became very clear that the hotline was far more interested in protecting the church from liability claims than it was in terms of protecting the abuse victim.
00:36:53.025 --> 00:36:56.590
And so this bishop called the hotline.
00:36:56.630 --> 00:36:59.733
The hotline says, you don't need to report it and you shouldn't report it.
00:37:00.434 --> 00:37:01.614
We'll handle it internally.
00:37:01.655 --> 00:37:07.121
And that eventually came out and was a huge embarrassment to the church.
00:37:07.161 --> 00:37:24.539
The church issued a statement that I think made things worse because they accused the AP of slandering them while at the same time acknowledging all of the facts that the AP unearthed that were in the article.
00:37:24.559 --> 00:37:31.228
It didn't dispute any of the facts, but it just got indignant and made things worse.
00:37:32.369 --> 00:37:34.952
There's a case right now.
00:37:36.134 --> 00:37:40.579
There's a man in Enoch, Utah, a wife, five children.
00:37:40.619 --> 00:37:51.045
He came home and took a gun and murdered his entire family, murdered his mother-in-law, and then turned the gun on himself.
00:37:52.268 --> 00:38:06.492
And the reaction to that has been bizarre as people, so they published an obituary of the murderer that talked about what a great leader he was in the church and oh, he was wonderful here.
00:38:06.552 --> 00:38:09.998
And this is a man who murdered all of his children.
00:38:10.018 --> 00:38:22.391
And it's come out now that his daughter went to talk about this abuse, went to the authorities, and the authorities said, the man strangled his daughter.
00:38:22.550 --> 00:38:28.016
And the authorities said, that's close to assaultive, but it's not quite assaultive because you could still breathe.
00:38:29.137 --> 00:38:29.778
And let it go.
00:38:29.818 --> 00:38:43.614
But what's come out is that this kind of abuse, there were at least four bishops who heard complaints from the wife and complaints from the children that this man was abusive.
00:38:44.161 --> 00:38:45.483
And nothing was ever done.
00:38:46.704 --> 00:38:58.516
And now he's murdered his family, and even now there are some members of the church who aren't willing to sort of confront the horror of what that really is.
00:38:58.536 --> 00:39:04.360
And I think these kinds of things embarrass the church.
00:39:05.121 --> 00:39:08.784
I mean, you talked initially that the church is very concerned about being embarrassed.
00:39:09.606 --> 00:39:21.969
And I think that it can have the positive effect consequence, maybe unintended consequence, of getting the church, forcing the church to get its act together.
00:39:22.150 --> 00:39:31.478
I don't think we do the church any favors by defending systematic problems that lead to abuse and lead to suffering and lead to death.
00:39:32.159 --> 00:39:33.400
In this case, it led to death.
00:39:33.460 --> 00:39:38.947
There were so many red flags about this guy, but the church took no action and the law took no action.
00:39:39.728 --> 00:39:41.610
So it wasn't just the church that failed here.
00:39:42.081 --> 00:39:48.572
Joseph Smith talks about in the 121st section of Doctrine and Covenants, we learn by sad experience.
00:39:49.833 --> 00:39:53.199
And he's talking about unrighteous dominion and other things.
00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:58.809
But I think sad experience becomes a great teacher for the church as well.
00:39:59.690 --> 00:40:09.067
And unfortunately, it takes terrible, terrible things to prompt the church to to fix
00:40:09.367 --> 00:40:10.748
serious systemic problems.
00:40:10.909 --> 00:40:11.389
Thank you for that.
00:40:11.429 --> 00:40:30.891
That is a really important point because my expectation, I'm not alone here, is that as the only true and living church upon the earth with extraordinary knowledge and insight, a prophet, you know, 2 Nephi talks about the qualities of a prophet, can see things before they happen, can know things, right?
00:40:32.735 --> 00:40:39.554
Where's the leadership in understanding protecting vulnerable children and youth, right?
00:40:40.114 --> 00:40:52.208
Where's the leadership in using information, which I want to get into a few more specifics, in using that information to protect members and youth and children?
00:40:52.889 --> 00:40:53.570
Where's the...
00:40:54.690 --> 00:40:56.333
I'm going to talk about...
00:40:56.393 --> 00:41:01.278
It should be right out there, leading, beyond any other organization.
00:41:01.719 --> 00:41:03.661
The reason for that is because we have...
00:41:04.385 --> 00:41:30.760
a profound understanding of the nature of human spirit in a way that no others understand or know, a knowledge of the plan of salvation, where we came from, why we're here, the nature of our spirits, the nature of God, our relationship with God, the nature of the eternities, the whole eternal perspective, the value of the human spirit, the value of children.
00:41:30.920 --> 00:41:31.420
We talk...
00:41:32.353 --> 00:41:38.018
frequently about 35, 17, where Christ blessed the children.
00:41:39.420 --> 00:41:59.219
You know, the church materials replete with ox references, lessons on the importance of children and families and youth, and the need to protect, and that Christ saves his worst wrath, I think, a quote, for those who abuse children.
00:41:59.259 --> 00:42:08.885
Again, we must understand that The most important thing for the church is protecting its reputation, because it ties to everything.
00:42:08.945 --> 00:42:14.652
It ties to membership retention, credibility, intelligence.
00:42:15.855 --> 00:42:20.981
It ties to the financial status of the organization.
00:42:21.021 --> 00:42:23.563
It ties to risk, legal risk.
00:42:23.985 --> 00:42:30.992
When I was bishop, by the way, in Dalkeith in Scotland, the police station was right next to the building, and we had a good relationship with the police.
00:42:31.585 --> 00:42:36.090
And so one day, an individual walked into the building and sat down at the back of the congregation.
00:42:36.490 --> 00:42:51.925
My counselor leaned over to me and said, Bishop, you need to know that this person we think, we know locally, is a predator and is as a criminal record of sexual assault and is a risk to the congregation.
00:42:53.086 --> 00:43:41.932
Immediately, I asked during the meeting to speak with a brother in the elders quorum who's a security guy he had a security background I just had a word with him at the council so I had a word with him that was my instruction just to keep an eye on this individual and then once the sacrament meeting had finished I met with this individual and made sure that they stayed at the front of the building there's no way I was going to let this person near the youth or the children this person to out to be had assaulted a child in the past and that had gone to court and it was on a register or something and shouldn't have been in the building.
00:43:43.856 --> 00:43:55.597
During that conversation in the foyer, I had one of my counselors get the local police station on the phone and I spoke to them, I knew them, and they came and they asked this person to leave.
00:43:56.338 --> 00:44:00.525
And by the way, it was that time where primary was at the front of the building.
00:44:01.126 --> 00:44:05.775
When you walked in, the primary classes were on the left immediately.
00:44:05.795 --> 00:44:10.264
And this is relatively new into the calling.
00:44:10.384 --> 00:44:18.992
What I did, I moved the entire primary and youth right to the back of the building where You couldn't get in unless you can only get out through the exit door.
00:44:19.012 --> 00:44:21.195
You couldn't get in through the emergency door.
00:44:21.677 --> 00:44:27.869
You had to go through the building right to the back, through all the corridor and all the way past the bishop's office to get to the primary.
00:44:27.909 --> 00:44:32.097
And you saw physically moved all primary and kids right to the back.
00:44:32.577 --> 00:44:39.923
And I put the adult classes right to the front because I didn't want anything to happen to the kids or to the youth.
00:44:40.344 --> 00:44:46.590
So, you know, knowing this information is really important and required.
00:44:47.110 --> 00:44:50.773
But I don't think the church does that in countries where it's not required legally.
00:44:51.353 --> 00:44:54.297
And for a church to be the only true church on the earth, that's the point I'm trying to make.
00:44:54.896 --> 00:44:55.938
We should be the forefront.
00:44:56.057 --> 00:44:57.039
Look what we've said about this.
00:44:57.099 --> 00:45:03.324
We should be doing everything in our power, throwing all the resources we can to protect vulnerable people from predators.
00:45:04.045 --> 00:45:06.728
Other things are, you know, predatory behavior.
00:45:06.827 --> 00:45:10.771
If someone's being predatory, for example, help me on this.
00:45:11.192 --> 00:45:13.514
Let me pronounce this properly.
00:45:14.175 --> 00:45:15.856
Affinity crimes.
00:45:17.077 --> 00:45:19.079
I think the church is affinity.
00:45:19.159 --> 00:45:30.429
It's a whole conversation podcast I'd like to do if you're interested where you've got this relationships between members and they get into business with each other where a member will come to me and say someone in the water ripped them off.
00:45:31.170 --> 00:45:39.282
or promised a service and they didn't deliver, or took some money for an investment, I know about that one, and basically robbed them blind, right?
00:45:39.322 --> 00:45:41.885
So you've got this relationship in the church.
00:45:41.985 --> 00:45:55.746
And I think it's an organization, the church globally, from a city I saw a while back, I think, if it's reliable, is one of the organizations most at risk because we call each other brother and sister, right?
00:45:56.108 --> 00:45:57.769
You're my brother, right?
00:45:57.829 --> 00:46:00.114
So why wouldn't I trust my brother?
00:46:00.545 --> 00:46:03.650
on an investment or a service or whatever.
00:46:03.911 --> 00:46:05.813
And I had a few problems like that.
00:46:05.853 --> 00:46:08.878
And so I didn't write this down in the MLS.
00:46:08.938 --> 00:46:09.960
You can if you want to.
00:46:10.601 --> 00:46:13.023
And I think there's probably some value to that.
00:46:13.405 --> 00:46:23.219
But I certainly kept an eye on one particular individual that had promised services to some members and hadn't delivered some technical computer services.
00:46:25.025 --> 00:46:26.949
And so there's things like that which you can track.
00:46:28.130 --> 00:46:29.291
You can profile members.
00:46:29.632 --> 00:46:30.713
Members are politically active.
00:46:30.753 --> 00:46:31.494
I've talked about that.
00:46:32.036 --> 00:46:34.539
Members who support certain policies that are opposed to the church.
00:46:34.579 --> 00:46:35.920
The church tracks that.
00:46:36.262 --> 00:46:42.309
If you're prominent enough and you're an influencer, opinion leader at that level, the church certainly tracks and monitors that.
00:46:42.389 --> 00:46:44.152
And why wouldn't it, right?
00:46:44.512 --> 00:46:47.938
You look at the financial performance of members in a graph.
00:46:48.818 --> 00:46:53.405
Typically, the leaders in the callings often...
00:46:54.114 --> 00:46:56.697
not always, are the faithful tithe payers.
00:46:56.737 --> 00:47:03.728
So there's a relationship, in my opinion, between tithe, well, yeah, between tithe payers and holding a senior calling.
00:47:04.648 --> 00:47:08.775
I don't think that's completely set in stone or stripped.
00:47:08.835 --> 00:47:16.025
I think you've got leaders who don't pay tithing or can't pay tithing or are only part tithe payers who are leaders.
00:47:16.106 --> 00:47:30.047
But generally speaking, and particularly some people might push back on this, I don't know, but if you're not a full tithe payer, generally you might not be considered for, well, you won't be considered for a bishop, that's for sure.
00:47:30.248 --> 00:47:30.849
Sure.
00:47:31.650 --> 00:47:32.672
Or state president, right?
00:47:32.711 --> 00:47:39.440
So if you're only a part tithe payer, I'm saying there's a correlation between tithe paying and leadership callings, for sure.
00:47:40.021 --> 00:47:46.650
Well, if you're a part tithe payer, you can't hold temple recommend, which means you can't be a bishop and you can't be a stake president.
00:47:47.362 --> 00:47:48.043
If you're a part
00:47:48.143 --> 00:47:48.864
tithe payer, you can.
00:47:48.884 --> 00:47:50.666
You can hold a recommend if you're a part tithe payer.
00:47:50.927 --> 00:47:51.367
Can you?
00:47:51.427 --> 00:47:51.967
I didn't know that.
00:47:52.007 --> 00:47:52.909
Yeah, you can.
00:47:53.009 --> 00:47:58.016
So I've issued temple recommends of members who are part tithe payers who have pleaded.
00:47:58.056 --> 00:48:00.579
They didn't have to, but they pleaded with me.
00:48:00.878 --> 00:48:02.021
They're desperate to go to the temple.
00:48:02.541 --> 00:48:05.025
They're going to an event in the temple, an experience.
00:48:05.445 --> 00:48:07.327
They can't afford tithing.
00:48:07.688 --> 00:48:10.231
There's no way I'm not going to let them go to the temple.
00:48:10.271 --> 00:48:11.233
Why wouldn't I do that, right?
00:48:11.612 --> 00:48:13.815
But the time when I was...
00:48:16.065 --> 00:48:51.925
devout at the time my counsel was to do what you can to become a full tithe payer i didn't look at the records or income statements or etc some some people might do um you know to really vet them and scrutinize them i think that's that's a bit overzealous and a bit extreme but in terms of counsel them to do what they can do the best they can no pressure there's no way i was this uh this poor sister, this brother, not go participate in a temple audience because he cannot pay tithing.
00:48:52.126 --> 00:48:54.347
I think a lot of it is down to the discretion of the bishop.
00:48:54.527 --> 00:48:55.849
In the end, it's the bishop that signs it.
00:48:56.150 --> 00:48:56.449
There
00:48:56.489 --> 00:48:57.731
are plenty of bishops out
00:48:57.791 --> 00:49:06.460
there that wouldn't have done what you did, that would have said, you're not a full-time payer, I'm sorry, my hands are tied, but you can't go to the temple.
00:49:08.260 --> 00:49:10.744
There are plenty of stories where that kind of thing happens.
00:49:12.125 --> 00:49:12.606
The church...
00:49:13.057 --> 00:49:15.880
It's fascinating to me with regard to tithing.
00:49:16.161 --> 00:49:24.429
The handbook says that you have to accept the member's declaration as to whether or not they are a full tithe payer.
00:49:24.528 --> 00:49:26.371
They don't conduct tithing audits.
00:49:26.451 --> 00:49:35.721
They don't look at your tax returns and make sure that you're paying 10%, and they don't say it has to be gross or it has to be net.
00:49:36.320 --> 00:49:40.985
I mean, you hear that from individual bishops, individual leaders, or individual members.
00:49:41.793 --> 00:49:49.891
You know, I've been in classes where members say, if you're not paying tithing on your gross income, you are robbing the Lord.
00:49:49.931 --> 00:49:52.637
But that is not the church's position.
00:49:53.398 --> 00:49:59.952
I've also talked to members of state presidencies who said, oh, I pay my tithing on my net income.
00:50:00.074 --> 00:50:01.958
I don't pay my tithing on my gross income.
00:50:02.722 --> 00:50:14.536
And they are members, because, so if I walk into my tithing declaration, which is what they call it now, they used to call it tithing settlement, and just last year they changed it to tithing declaration.
00:50:15.757 --> 00:50:20.623
They haven't changed what happens, so I don't know why the change in the terminology is important.
00:50:21.385 --> 00:50:31.717
But you walk into your tithing declaration, your bishop is sitting there with a piece of paper that has all the money you've donated to the church that year, and the bottom line is zero dollars.
00:50:32.833 --> 00:50:35.838
And the bishop asks you, are you a full tithe payer?
00:50:36.420 --> 00:50:37.742
And you say, yes.
00:50:38.943 --> 00:50:40.786
The bishop has to take your word for it.
00:50:41.387 --> 00:50:43.731
I think to their credit, most bishops do.
00:50:44.833 --> 00:50:55.809
But the handful of bishops that don't and the handful of bishops that police that in ways beyond what the handbook allows do real damage to the church, I think.
00:50:56.226 --> 00:50:57.231
Yeah, that's a good point.
00:50:57.291 --> 00:50:58.235
I know we've got to wrap up here soon.
00:50:58.536 --> 00:50:59.300
I'm like the Mr.
00:50:59.320 --> 00:51:04.925
Incredible guy who the lady comes, she's got an insurance claim, and he says, yeah,
00:51:05.327 --> 00:51:05.849
yeah,
00:51:05.869 --> 00:51:05.949
yeah.
00:51:06.114 --> 00:51:11.277
And his boss comes and says, she's penetrating the bureaucracy, right?
00:51:12.619 --> 00:51:15.601
And I'm not the guy that helps people penetrate the bureaucracy.
00:51:15.641 --> 00:51:17.284
There's no way I'm not going to help somebody.
00:51:17.324 --> 00:51:18.123
Why am I there?
00:51:18.164 --> 00:51:20.586
What's my point in being there if I'm not going to help somebody?
00:51:21.246 --> 00:51:29.614
How can I say no to somebody who wants to go into the temple and witness their grandson's marriage, right?
00:51:30.094 --> 00:51:31.436
How can you do that?
00:51:31.715 --> 00:51:34.739
I don't give a crap about whether I got the call or not.
00:51:35.940 --> 00:52:00.163
There's way I'm going to be part of something like that so and no one checks up on me no one checks on the bishops about your signature right they don't oh I've got a signature there well has the bishop done the job right has he checked all has he done all the background checks all the questions right are you honest in your dealings with the following men there's 15 yes or no questions so I can memorize them I memorize them word for word I was uh criticized um by a member for not looking down and reading the questions.
00:52:00.182 --> 00:52:01.786
You've got to read the questions, by the way.
00:52:02.166 --> 00:52:04.791
You can't do them by memorization like I could.
00:52:05.373 --> 00:52:19.619
And just to kind of close off a little bit, we didn't get into too much of the external stuff, but in terms of information that the church captures and maintains, monitors, tracks, and uses, etc., there's a whole social media component around the missionary proselyting efforts.
00:52:19.679 --> 00:52:32.903
I've lost count how many Times, I've seen an advert of a missionary locally here saying we've got a free Book of Mormon that we'd like to deliver, or we can do Cut Your Hedge, or Trimmy Bush was one missionary.
00:52:33.844 --> 00:52:35.047
Trimmy Bush?
00:52:35.367 --> 00:52:39.153
Yeah, Trimmy Bush, and some of the comments I won't share here, but...
00:52:43.219 --> 00:52:44.201
Sheesh.
00:52:44.280 --> 00:52:46.143
So, you know, but anything to...
00:52:46.344 --> 00:52:46.905
I mean, think about it.
00:52:46.925 --> 00:52:49.389
You know, the knocking on doors didn't work, hasn't worked.
00:52:49.954 --> 00:52:55.541
Referrals are terrible, you know, they're terrible in Scotland in terms of performers.
00:52:55.780 --> 00:53:05.253
You know, President Greens, you probably still listen to our podcast, if you're still listening, President Greens, you know, the pressure on members to generate referrals was extraordinary.
00:53:05.793 --> 00:53:06.594
It never succeeded.
00:53:06.974 --> 00:53:08.476
And now the church has got the internet.
00:53:08.637 --> 00:53:19.018
And so it trains missionaries to, and you can speak to this more than I can, to be very active on social media, post adverts of Bibles, the Book of Mormon, the services, etc.
00:53:19.057 --> 00:53:21.282
It tracks the emails of missionaries.
00:53:21.364 --> 00:53:22.385
I know that for a fact.
00:53:23.748 --> 00:53:29.342
There's an email server that the church uses for missionaries, etc.
00:53:29.382 --> 00:53:33.612
It can read your letters and your emails, and it has done at times.
00:53:34.177 --> 00:53:36.827
And everything's done electronically now.
00:53:36.867 --> 00:53:37.628
So there's a record.
00:53:37.909 --> 00:53:41.501
There's an electronic footprint of everything that the missionaries do.
00:53:42.204 --> 00:53:43.809
They're restricted about what they can look at.
00:53:43.869 --> 00:53:45.173
And again, I think for good reason.
00:53:45.215 --> 00:53:45.454
I think...
00:53:46.465 --> 00:53:54.195
It can be dangerous for a missionary to go too far, too deep into the internet.
00:53:54.574 --> 00:53:58.018
So the church will use information technology.
00:53:58.059 --> 00:54:00.402
It's not unique to the church.
00:54:00.541 --> 00:54:04.246
Organizations have been doing this for a long time.
00:54:05.027 --> 00:54:07.889
It's part of human nature, control and manage information.
00:54:08.451 --> 00:54:10.532
Look what's happened to the Ukraine wall, propaganda, right?
00:54:11.333 --> 00:54:14.878
And so it is a church has a propaganda machine.
00:54:15.202 --> 00:54:16.402
It's very sophisticated.
00:54:17.063 --> 00:54:18.606
I think it shoots itself in its foot.
00:54:19.447 --> 00:54:21.809
It seems to be its own worst enemy.
00:54:21.829 --> 00:54:23.972
You could just sit back and watch it destroy itself.
00:54:24.893 --> 00:54:26.253
It's doing a pretty good job of that, I think.
00:54:28.717 --> 00:54:32.740
I'm not that pessimistic.
00:54:33.382 --> 00:54:33.601
Right.
00:54:34.023 --> 00:54:38.568
I don't think I'm quite as pessimistic as you are with regard to the church shooting itself in the foot.
00:54:38.608 --> 00:54:50.777
I think when the church gets something wrong, And it explodes across social media.
00:54:50.976 --> 00:54:54.260
It ripples through traditional media.
00:54:56.324 --> 00:55:07.757
But I still believe that the vast majority of bishops and stake presidents are doing everything in their power to do the right thing.
00:55:09.259 --> 00:55:19.972
And I believe that the church institutionally wants to do the right thing and sometimes trips itself up.
00:55:20.432 --> 00:55:30.166
It's the old, when a plane crashes, you get people say, well, nobody ever talks about when all the planes land safely.
00:55:30.206 --> 00:55:32.489
They only single out the one time it crashes.
00:55:33.289 --> 00:55:37.735
And so, well, yeah, because when a plane crashes, it's a tremendous, terrible, awful loss of life.
00:55:38.376 --> 00:55:44.846
But I think there is a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
00:55:45.601 --> 00:55:58.438
When we talk about these kinds of problems in the church, when we talk about problems with reporting systems, we talk about problems with the church being more interested in preserving its reputation than in helping abuse victims.
00:55:58.940 --> 00:56:06.329
I think those are largely anomalous, and that for the most part, the church is trying to do the right thing.
00:56:07.150 --> 00:56:14.960
But I think there is tremendous room for improvement, and I don't think that we do the church any favors.
00:56:15.873 --> 00:56:17.416
by trying to pretend otherwise.
00:56:18.538 --> 00:56:23.625
You know, when a plane crashes, you deal with the systemic problem that led to the plane crash.
00:56:24.105 --> 00:56:30.112
You don't just throw your hands up and say, well, 99% of our planes don't crash, so what's your problem?
00:56:31.534 --> 00:56:32.215
I struggle with that.
00:56:32.255 --> 00:56:32.797
I'll tell you why.
00:56:32.836 --> 00:56:37.844
You're speaking from the perspective of a member, a rank-and-file member, right?
00:56:38.664 --> 00:56:40.367
You don't have the experience of a bishop.
00:56:41.007 --> 00:56:43.512
You don't have the experience of a state president.
00:56:44.132 --> 00:56:44.994
You don't see...
00:56:45.505 --> 00:56:48.710
and feel and understand and know what they know, right?
00:56:49.331 --> 00:56:51.474
They know more than you know, okay?
00:56:51.994 --> 00:56:54.237
The general authorities, apostles, know more than you know.
00:56:54.277 --> 00:56:58.023
They see things from a very different vantage point than you do, right?
00:56:58.923 --> 00:57:00.144
Same with bishops, same with shepherds.
00:57:00.264 --> 00:57:05.913
And when you're at that level, when you're at a leader level, and certainly it got worse the higher it got, in my view.
00:57:06.193 --> 00:57:08.416
You see what members do in the stake.
00:57:08.956 --> 00:57:09.657
It's extraordinary.
00:57:10.210 --> 00:57:18.538
They stand up and they say these things, and many of them are wonderful and great, absolutely, the majority are, but you also, you have a window into the life.
00:57:18.577 --> 00:57:23.081
You see some crazy, awful stuff that they do on a personal level.
00:57:23.141 --> 00:57:30.650
It sometimes comes into the conversation or through a confession or whatever, and you have to take those things to the grave, by the way.
00:57:30.690 --> 00:57:32.632
You can't ever discuss those things, ever.
00:57:33.351 --> 00:57:39.077
And you see personal preferences of leaders over certain individuals for no reason other than they like them, right?
00:57:39.777 --> 00:57:41.820
God is no respecter of persons.
00:57:43.722 --> 00:57:46.146
It's just human nature, Jim.
00:57:46.547 --> 00:57:52.815
The members are simply an extension or a section of human life.
00:57:53.978 --> 00:57:55.400
We hire people because we like them.
00:57:55.460 --> 00:57:57.021
We don't hire them because we don't like them.
00:57:57.422 --> 00:57:59.726
They might have credentials coming through the yin-yang, right?
00:57:59.806 --> 00:58:02.690
But for whatever reason, we don't want to choose them, right?
00:58:03.070 --> 00:58:05.233
All those personal prejudices and preferences...
00:58:05.858 --> 00:58:10.262
which are ingrained into the human psyche nature.
00:58:10.621 --> 00:58:17.369
I do agree that most leaders' members are either doing or at least trying to do the right thing.
00:58:17.608 --> 00:58:21.432
But I've also seen mistakes made by bishops.
00:58:21.632 --> 00:58:23.054
You know, I train bishops.
00:58:24.295 --> 00:58:27.637
My job was to, you know, with the state presidency, to train bishops.
00:58:28.018 --> 00:58:29.079
And they made mistakes.
00:58:29.900 --> 00:58:32.023
And they did things deliberately.
00:58:32.123 --> 00:58:32.983
Like, why are you doing that?
00:58:33.003 --> 00:58:34.625
There was a bishop that was a rogue bishop.
00:58:34.664 --> 00:58:35.445
We had a rogue bishop.
00:58:35.746 --> 00:58:36.927
He's somewhere in the middle, I think.
00:58:36.987 --> 00:58:40.012
I think, yes, generally, trying to do the basic
00:58:40.092 --> 00:58:40.494
good.
00:58:40.934 --> 00:58:45.623
Generally, church leaders are trying to do the right thing.
00:58:45.643 --> 00:58:46.443
That's the key word.
00:58:46.864 --> 00:58:49.389
Well, with that, let's wrap this up.
00:58:49.630 --> 00:58:54.757
If you enjoyed this, please be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
00:58:54.838 --> 00:58:57.222
Until next time, thank you very much, Ian.
00:58:58.143 --> 00:58:58.684
Thank you, Jim.
