This:

They don’t want to provide the illusion that the Church is any kind of a democracy or socially influenceable institution

is the other problem, and I think it explains the phenomenon that K (and I, frankly) struggle with.

But it still seems irresponsible when the liturgy is at odds with other teachings of the Church

In my judgment, in the absence of something so dramatic as an OD, the church chooses to deal with such things by deemphasizing them in arenas like the Ensign and General Conference. This is done through ceasing to mention the offending doctrine, or proclaiming the opposite of it, again without mentioning what prompted the current point in the first place. President Hinckley’s attack on racism is a prime example. This can cause some confusion on the ground floor, but it allows the church to preserve an image of constant progress.

However, the church is _not_ exempt from cultural influence; our discourse has been wildly remolded by things like the (alas) the John Birch Society and racism, but the true-church meme is powerful in the minds of many, and would have us believe that nothing alters the shape and form of the institution but God. This is why such cognitive dissonance as I described one paragraph above might occur. And though individuals can often be supportive, there is a cultural feeling that if you question the church, you’re obviously questioning God.

Thus, while I want to believe that the GAs care at some level about what we think (I read Hinckley’s use of letters as something of a symbolic gesture to this end), and I don’t think the exclusion of grassroots voices is malicious, I do believe that – particularly in middle management – the true-church meme weighs heavily, and thus grassroots protest is discouraged.

This has been abetted by increased stress on heirarchy and authority, which has come from the top, in an attempt to increase local autonomy. Thus, we have an organizational problem here – a choice on their part between heavy-handedness and distance. The other alternative is to deemphasize authority altogether, but I don’t see that happening.

And really, if I hear “God’s house is a house of order” used to defend something so mundane as Area Authority Seventies one more time, argh.

This was somewhat disjointed, I think – apologies, am off to the library hoping to find a Josiah Strong book.

But, then, by what mechanism was this widespread disquietude communicated to Church leaders? Through collection of survey data? Through leaders’ own interactions with those with whom they were in close contact (possibly spurring the collection of survey data?) Did the publication of exposes embarrassing the Church play a role in bringing issues to the attention of Church leaders, possibly prompting investigation into whether there was widespread disquietude? This is where I have no information, but tend to believe that multiple factors influencing one another ultimately brought about the change.

I like your list of possible causes of change in the temple ceremony. And of course it might be taken as a list of causes of changes in the Church more generally. But of course, as you both note, there’s only one officially acknowledged way for change to come about, and that’s when God dictates it from on high.

I wonder if Church leaders don’t prefer it this way. Of course members’ concerns (if they reach Church leaders) influence Church leaders, and of course bad press does too. But they are likely hesitant to acknowledge these influences because to do so would be to invite more attempts to change the Church from below and without. That, I think, is the number one reason why the Church does not have any formal way for members to give feedback to the top leaders. They don’t want to provide the illusion that the Church is any kind of a democracy or socially influenceable institution. But in doing this, I think Church leaders inadvertently convey that they don’t care much for individual members.

(Of course I’m not saying that local Church leaders convey that they don’t care much about members. My experience is that most local leaders do care about members. It’s just that they don’t have any power to resolve issues that concern the way the Church as a whole is run.)

JWL, as you point out so well, the problem of general Church leadership being able to avoid getting feedback from the membership at large is a relatively recent one. Perhaps the Church leaders will eventually realize that they have been cut off from a potentially valuable source of information. Matt, as you said, the Church’s changes are always just a step slower than you would expect. I fear, though, that Church leaders might enjoy the quiet of not hearing feedback from us. It’s probably a lot less stressful to hear from only a few selected people who carefully filter any feedback that you do get to make sure it’s not too negative. I wonder if they will ever get around to asking to hear from members in general again.

(1) Historically feedback very much occurred in the Church, but on an informal basis. When the Church was smaller and more geographically concentrated, almost every Church member had some connection through acquaintanceship or family with at least one high Church leader. If you were visiting Salt Lake, it was no big deal to pay a call on an apostle or even the president of the Church. Two apostles attended every stake conference for at least two full days and always stayed in Church members’ homes. In these circumstances, feedback happened all the time naturally. Obviously with the tremendous growth in numbers, geographical expanse and linguistic diversty of the Church, these informal means of communication between the Church rank-and-file and the hierarchy have completely broken down.

(2) The one probable exception to this breakdown in the informal social mechnisms for feedback is a small number of members from the East Bench of Salt Lake who still have personal and family contact with the Church’s leaders. I suspect that these informal mechanisms are is still operative for this limited group. An example is the policy limiting the Sacrament Meeting focus on departing missionaries. This was a policy clearly dictated by the experience of a small number of older East Bench wards who were going through a period of having a lot of missionairies leaving and ignored the experience of little mission field wards and branches where a departing missionary is a rare event. When the policy came out, you could almost hear the apostles’s elderly friends grousing “I don’t mind missionary farewells, but is seems like every Sacrament Meeting is a missionary farewell IN MY WARD these days!”

(3) The Church does have a very professional survey unit in the Correlation Department which was founded by Spencer Condie (BYU sociology professor now a Seventy) staffed by social science professionals. However, its operations and results are highly confidential, and it is unclear to what extent various of the Church leaders understand or pay attention to their findings.

(4) One interesting paradigm is the Nibley/FARMS school. They did not set out to “change” the Church per se, but in the course of pursuing new avenues of professional scholarly rigor in the service of goals which would be seen as positive (understanding and confirming the BoM) they have set in motion a substantial shift in our understanding of the Scriptures. I wonder if there are not indirect ways of effecting change which would be more efficacious than what might be interpreted as direct “lobbying” of the powers-that-be in the Church.

Are you saying the Church is “not entirely stable”? I’m glad you’re here to tell us these things!

Maybe someone should take Kiskilili into the back and plug her into the hyperdrive . . .

Upon further reflection, I think I would qualify my earlier statement by saying that the Church does have a way of processing change, but only one: by invoking the manifestation of God’s mysterious will in enabling us to adapt to changing circumstances. It’s struck me before that in some situations we claim that transcendence (for lack of a better term) is evidenced by our continuity through time, whereas on other occasions we point to our very adaptibility (that is, mutability) as evidence of the same thing. We typically construe that adaptibilty as a sign of God’s continuing involvement, but with limited acknowledgment of any human component motivating earlier changes. If we did acknowledge a human component, I think it might make it easier to put in place formal mechanisms for examining current policies.

I absolutely agree that our liturgy and our official policy tend to lag significantly behind cultural changes that affect the Church in more subtle ways. It’s one of the things that frustrates me most about the Church. I can see reasons liturgy would change infrequently and at a snail’s pace (our leaders come from a very different generation, there’s no particular reason for them to be aware of dissatisfaction, a consensus has to be reached at the top, etc.). But it still seems irresponsible when the liturgy is at odds with other teachings of the Church; I wish we would either own up to the implications of our liturgy in our rhetoric outside the temple, or else change the liturgy. Instead, I think our tactic is to use extra-temple teachings to attempt to force new interpretations onto our liturgy. (Okay, personal rant over.)

Like Lynnette, I do think there’s psychological benefit in communicating my own perception of a problem or an inconsistency in what the Church says.

On one hand, I think the church is uniquely rhetorically prepared to deal with change. After all, most church members these days think the two ODs are absolutely wonderful – and the fact that we did about faces on such deeply entrenched policies allows us to celebrate continuing revelation. And I think that if, when Gordon Hinckley dies, we are told that God has revealed that Elder Uchdorf is to replace him, few people would have a problem that a long tradition of succession got suddenly upended. So, if the leadership chooses to approach change using those rhetorical tools, it often goes smoothly. Even those in opposition are marginalized, as the Woolley family can attest.

On the other hand, I think you’re on to something when you point out that the church, as an institution, is ill-equipped to process the _process_ of change. In fact, it’s my sense that we as a membership tend to assume that everything in the church now is pretty much like is always has been. The default assumption about change here is that it comes over the pulpit from God, like the declarations, so if there’s a problem, it will be dealt with top down. This, I think, is reflective of the “true-church” meme – what you call our claims to transcendence. This makes it institutionally difficult to process attempts at grassroots change; indeed, there’s another meme out there that equates such attempts as criticizing the Brethren.

Here, I think, it’s useful to bring back the women and the temple example. This alteration happened in 1990, which, comparatively, is surprisingly late; similarly, OD-2 seems very bringing-up-the-rear to us now. My sense is that the assumption that change will come from the top down, combined with the demand for consensus at the top, and – to be frank – the fact that the church leadership is rather old and naturally conservative makes action that shifts policy move very slowly.

I think you’re right that a combination of things will work to bring such issues to their attention – I think I heard somewhere in the nacle that there was in fact a survey associated with the 1990 reforms – but ultimately action is directed in consensus from the top; if there’s a faction in opposition among the Twelve, nothing will happen. Greg Prince’s David O McKay book has some useful information on this.

I think what you say about correlation is probably true, and the very gradualism of it allows such drift to be rhetorically framed as “renewed emphasis” or “clarification,” thus making it much more safe than radical change. I think you do have a good point the role of particular leaders – certainly Mormonism today is heavily flavored with Bruce McConkie and Neal Maxwell, through an interesting combination of their particular rhetorical abilities and adoption, I think, by the official media of the church. Of course, this sort of thing is a much more gradual shift that direct policy reversals, but again, I think, it’s pretty much top down.