An Agenda for President Nelson’s First 40 Days in Office

Day 1: Demote Dieter F. Uchtdorf to regular old member of the Quorum of the Twelve.
Day 2: Talk to the staff at the Ensign and lds.org, and tell them to get the women out of the centerfold in the Conference issues and off the General Authorities page.
Day 3: Get to work editing hymns. In verse 2 of “In Humility, Our Savior,” change the beginning of the second verse from “Fill our hearts with sweet forgiving; Teach us tolerance and love” to “Make our hearts obedient to thee; Teach us who we must not love.”
Day 4: Schedule a tour to promote Sister Nelson’s book The Not Even Once Club.
Day 5: Compose a letter to be read in all sacrament meetings that exhorts members to leave some positive reviews of The Not Even Once Club on Amazon.com.
Day 6: Work with Sister Nelson on her manuscript tentatively titled The Don’t Even Think About It Club.
Day 7: Announce a new, improved exclusion policy that bans the children of parents in a gay marriage from entering meetinghouses.
Day 8: Demote Dieter F. Uchtdorf to Seventy.
Day 9: Talk to the facilities management staff about getting those pesky “Visitors Welcome” signs taken down from meetinghouses.
Day 10: Send out a decree that all sacrament meetings must include a reading of the Proclamation on the Family.

Day 11: Commission someone from The Interpreter to write a book in response to the the Givens’ namby-pamby The God Who Weeps. Suggested title: The God Who Whips.
Day 12: Edit the Handbook to require the initiation of Church discipline against any newly-married couples who have not produced at least one child in their first two years of marriage. Permit no exceptions, as infertility is clearly a sign of sinfulness.
Day 13: Tell Church historians to search for instances of Conference speakers modifying scriptural language on the fly to make it gender inclusive, and have them stricken from the official record.
Day 14: Commission a team of BYU religion professors to edit all references to women out of the Book of Mormon. For example, replace mentions of Mary with “God’s chosen vessel.”
Day 15: Demote Dieter F. Uchtdorf to Area Authority. Preferably in some godforsaken place like Germany.
Day 16: Some hymns are beyond saving. Announce that the wicked grace-infected hymn “Rock of Ages” must never be sung again.
Day 17: Announce that women will no longer be permitted to pray in General Conference.
Day 18: Send out a decree that all sacrament meetings must begin with a reading of the Proclamation on the Family.
Day 19: Ban the singing of “Deck the Halls” in meetinghouses.
Day 20: Rest. Practice pronouncing “evolution” as “EVIL-ution.”
Day 21: Talk to the staff at the Conference Center about getting the pictures of women taken down.
Day 22: Announce an updated missionary age change. Women must achieve the age of Methuselah (969 years) to be permitted to serve.
Day 23: Announce an even more improved exclusion policy that forbids all immediate family members of a person in a gay marriage from being members of the Church. Permit no grandfathering: members must be retroactively excommunicated as necessary. If they had enough faith, they would have stopped their family member from getting gay married.
Day 24: Ban women from being employed by the Church. Too many righteous priesthood holders are having difficulty finding jobs, and their places should not be taken by mere ornaments!
Day 25: Ban women in the church from being employed at all, on pain of Church discipline. Accept no excuses. If they had sufficient faith, their finances would be blessed so they would not need to be employed. If the single women had sufficient faith, God would permit them to find a righteous priesthood holder with a job.
Day 26: Demote Dieter F. Uchtdorf to bishop.
Day 27: Some children’s songs might need to go too. Ban the use of “I’ll Walk with You,” and its insidiously tempting message of inclusion.
Day 28: On second thought, commission a replacement song titled, “I’ll Walk away from You.”
Day 29: Announce that women will no longer be permitted to speak in General Conference. The Chieko Okazaki disaster must not be repeated.
Day 30: Work with Sister Nelson on an even newer manuscript tentatively titled Club Members in the Hands of an Angry God.
Day 31: Send out a decree that all sacrament meetings must begin by having the congregation rise and recite the Proclamation on the Family in unison. Announce that all members are expected to have it memorized in one month.
Day 32: Demote Dieter F. Uchtdorf to elder.
Day 33: Announce that women will no longer be invited to General Conference at all. Too many priesthood holders are missing the opportunity to hear from God’s chosen servants in person.
Day 34: Announce that women may still participate in Conference through the holy ordinance of making Conference donuts for the men.
Day 35: Since there’s already a precedent for editing its words, change the penultimate line of the first verse of “I Am a Child of God” to say “teach me all who I must shun.”
Day 36: Announce that from henceforth, only men will be called “members of the Church.” Women, if they are righteous, may be called “auxiliary members.”
Day 37: Encourage members to have the Proclamation on the Family tattooed over their hearts. (Naturally, auxiliary members must not do this, as the very thought of tattooing on or around a woman’s breasts is unseemly.)
Day 38: Reinstate earthly polygamy.
Day 39: Raise tithing to 12%. Twelve is a holier number than ten anyway.
Day 40: Excommunicate Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

15 comments

  1. Alternately funny and harsh.

    But quite frankly, I was expecting to see this at the end:

    Day 40: Demote Dieter F. Uchtdorf to woman — er — auxiliary member. Because that would curtail his influence more than anything else.

  2. Totally fair, E. You’re probably right. Just to explain myself in case it isn’t clear, I have found President Uchtdorf to be an oasis of kindness among a Q15 that seems mostly concerned with boundary drawing. When President Nelson announced that Uchtdorf was being demoted in favor of Oaks, another hardliner, I was hurt and angry. This type of sarcastic, mean-spirited silliness is my go-to response. It’s a childish response to be sure, but I hope with this background you at least understand me a little better.

  3. Brilliantly sardonic. I think I needed this in light of what’s happened. Losing Uchtdorf in the presidency is heartbreaking. I have so many friends unsure of if they belong now, and unsure they’ll stay, because their safe haven is gone.

  4. This is hilarious and a little too real. The loss of Uchtdorf, for me at least, really is a loss of hope for goodness in the Church as an institution. I’m out.

  5. My safe haven has gone with Uchtdorf going back to the quoram of 12. Feel like the rug has been pulled out from under my feet. Will try and hang in there.

  6. Whitty and does a great job of articulating concerns. I keep thinking of the quote from Brother Joseph about reflecting on contentions with others and considering whether one had laid a foundation for the problem by an unguarded word or by creating the setting. If so, one should forgive the other’s criticism. Applying this advice, President Nelson would need appreciate your words, even the tone.

    On a tangent, I signed the change.org petitionablit the clubhouse book, wrote a review on Amazon and sent a letter to DB. DB’s response was disappointing (but not surprising as Wendy is best friends with Sheri Dew. Sheri set up Wendy on her first date with Elder Nelson. Sheri and Wendy even purchased a vacation/investment home together in Heber). The scuttle over the book erupted in late summer/early fall of 2013. I wondered whether Elder Nelson would respond to it in the October conference , and was shocked to hear him correct the doctrine of his wife’s book without mentioning it specifically. In a talk that began focusing on children and extolling our physical and spiritual development he said, “ Not one of us manages them [temptations] perfectly. Mistakes happen. Errors are made. Sins are committed. What can we do then? We can learn from them. And we can truly repent.”

    He could have doubled down- talked about steering the stagecoach as far from the edge as possible, extolled that the spirit can warn of sin, pounded CTR, etc. but he didn’t. He essentially corrected (during the heat of the Clubhouse-gate) the false doctrine in his wife’s harmful book. Props. Of course, voluntarily retracting the book would have been the next step, but that’s the problem with nepotism- it’s a minefield.

  7. Not sure if it’s funny or horrible. Both, I guess. Especially the part about women being auxiliary members. I feel like we get pushed further and further away from equality with every recent retrenchment.

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