In the Book of Mormon, we read several times about “dissenters” that caused trouble in the Church of God. These people fostered contention in the ranks and always ended up dividing the Church. Their numbers weren’t significant, but they escalated strife even to the point of causing brethren to resort to actual fisticuffs. The dissenters were almost always “liberals” in that they either disagreed with the leaders of the Church on some policy or they disputed the orthodox beliefs, doctrines, and practices of the Church. The conservatives were not ones to rock the boat. It was always the “liberals” among them who had to question normalcy. When the unity of the saints was disrupted, to restore it, the dissenters had to go.
Often, the dissenters left voluntarily. After realizing that the Church continued on just fine without them—that the roof didn’t collapse on their Neanderthal conservative brethren and sisters—they weren’t satisfied. After all, the point of their leaving was to damage the Church somehow. When the Church went back to normal, they couldn’t accept that they were the problem to begin with. Therefore, they went over to the Lamanites, the Nephites’ generational adversary. There, they would stir up old feelings of resentment and, since the Lamanites outnumbered the Nephites, they would push for the Lamanites to go fight the people that the dissenters had formerly called “Brother” and “Sister.” A battle would ensue. The Nephites, once placed in mortal danger, did what church people do—they prayed and humbled themselves before God. They received divine protection. The Lamanites and their anti-Church allies didn’t represent a just cause to begin with and typically failed to destroy the Nephites.
We still see this pattern in the Church today. A recent example came to my mailbox in my Google alerts. This year, the Church made a landmark decision and reduced the Sunday services from three hours to two. This was widely regarded as a welcome thing. With a lay clergy and volunteer ministries, the Church members give a lot of time. Not only were there three hours of meetings on Sunday, if you were a leader, you were probably there up to five hours. The change was facilitated by eliminating weekly Sunday school classes and alternating them bi-weekly with Priesthood quorum and Relief Society meetings. The intention behind the change was to give members of the Church more time to be with their family and do personal gospel devotions.
Now enters the dissenter. A member named Cinco Paul recently wrote a blog which was then guest-posted on the blog of liberal LDS commentator Jana Riess. Paul is a Hollywood screenwriter and filmmaker. (Are there a lot of successful conservative writers and filmmakers in Hollywood? Just sayin’.) In his blog, Brother Paul laments the demise of Sunday school time. Why? It appears that, in his ward, he was tasked to teach the Gospel Essentials class. This is a class that offers a yearly curriculum for new members. The reason the class exists is that new converts get thrown into the deep end of the pool when they join the Church. With four books of scripture (the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price) and nearly two centuries of Mormon history that they never heard before (because it isn’t taught in U.S. history class in school), this Gospel Essentials class gives them a basis to understand the background and fundamental doctrines of the Church. Brother Paul, along with the ward missionaries, taught this class in his congregation.
Apparently, however, Paul’s class had departed from the raison d’etre for the class. It had become a place for people who were “struggling with their faith” – doubters who were looking for a safe space to share their growing disaffection. These people were the ones who would spend the Sunday school hour hanging out in the foyer. These were the people who were critical of the “rote answers” and the “relentlessly benign canned comments” offered to these people’s troubling, doubting questions about the “thornier issues” of church history.
I have been a Gospel Doctrine instructor. It takes a lot of skill, knowledge, and preparation to teach the class. You know that you will have some of these people in the class inevitably. You are called to teach Church doctrines, not your own speculative ideas. As the teacher, you stay close to the “iron rod” of truth, not the weeds where the serpents of doubt are waiting to bite you. There are some people who are seeking to derail your instruction with these doubt-infusing questions. It takes discernment to tell whether a person who brings up something controversial is seeking real help or just trying to make you look bad. Most Gospel Doctrine teachers are not professional teachers. They have a lesson manual and the scriptures. They read and they pray. Being volunteers, they don’t have eight hours a day to do research and be prepared on the level that a university professor would be. Some malcontents delight in tripping you up.
In the case of Brother Paul, he had assembled a liberal “gospel hobby” shop. He had surrounded himself with like-minded doubters and he was grooming them to become dissenters. I guarantee you that they’d sit around and discuss how bad the policy was that banned the children of married gays from being baptized, or how bad it was that the Church banned giving the priesthood to blacks, or how bad it is that many LDS women don’t forsake their children to day-care centers while they pursue their careers, and of course, how bad Donald Trump is. Perhaps they dealt with thorny issues like Mormon Transhumanism and that sort of thing. These guys were too sophisticated to deal with issues like faith, repentance, baptism, and keeping the commandments.
No wonder, as Paul mentions in his blog, that ward baptismal numbers had really slowed down. Why would the Lord want to risk infecting potential new converts to this kind of indoctrination? One thing I can tell you, when Church leaders see convert baptisms drop in a ward or in a region, they know something bad is at work among the members. Worldly distractions, false teaching, or doctrinal contentions can slow the Lord’s work. The Good Shepherd won’t invite his lost sheep into the wolves’ den.
When the Church changed the Sunday School schedule, he was “crushed.” He went to the bishop to complain, as dissenters always do. The bishop told him he could organize a class outside of the regular church hours, but in the end that would defeat the purpose of reducing the Sunday school time to begin with—to give members an additional hour a week for their own home devotionals. Paul was not sure he would be able to gather the same numbers of people.
Cinco Paul ends his blog with a jab at the rest of us—which identifies him as a classic dissenter-in-hiding. He wrote that Gospel Doctrine classes are
“…a product of cultural attitudes that everything must be faith-promoting in the most traditional—and often the blandest—way possible. I know that works for some people, but it doesn’t work for everybody. It actually has the opposite effect on many of us. And the gospel is meant for everybody” (italics added).
Do you see what he is saying? This is the classic dissenter line—when he says “it has the opposite effect on many of us,” Paul is saying that middle-of-the-road doctrinal truth is driving him away. They always say “us” when they mean “me.” When he sys "everybody," he means "me." The liberal approach, in politics and the church, is to lay guilt upon the majority because their own inability to accept and conform to the requirements that truth, orthodoxy, convention, or normality imposes upon them. The majority must change to accommodate the minority. It is always the same.
Paul’s blog is full of that liberal virtue-signaling, which sounds so compassionate and erudite, but if you know how things work in the world and in the Lord’s Church, you can read between the lines. Liberals in the Church are a cancer, just as they are in any society. They rebel against tried and true traditions: the traditional family, the patriarchal order, marriage between a man and a woman, the parent-child relationship, obedience to commandments, questioning authorities, the authority of the Church, he scriptures, the history of the Church, etc. Just keep in mind the pattern. Dissenters become disaffected and critical; they leave the Church, and go over to the enemies of our faith and urge them to attack us, to take away the tax-exempt status, etc. They become empty vessels, clouds with no beneficial rain in them, vapid and hollow. The best way forward for all of us is clearly marked. Follow the path. Watch out for wolves in sheep’s clothing.
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