Like many Americans, I have had a new appreciation for the existence of checks on the President’s power since Donald Trump was elected. They may not always work as they were intended to, but I’m glad that at least the framers were concerned about the question.
The organization of the US government (and of many other governments) is a striking contrast in this way to the organization of the LDS Church. As the Joseph Bishop story sadly shows, there really aren’t checks on the power of LDS church leaders. I mean, there are in cases where they do outrageous things in public, or if they get on the bad side of leaders over them. But what I’m talking about here is that if a church leader does awful things in private to the people he’s presiding over, then the victims have pretty much no recourse. A situation like this can always be reduced to he said/she said, and the presumption of higher-level church authorities appears to pretty much always be that the accused leader is innocent. The woman assaulted by Joseph Bishop reports having raised years later to her then-bishop, but he said he found her accusations not credible, based on the simple fact that Bishop had been called to several high callings in the Church.
This follows a lot of people’s experience, I think, in the response they get when lodging a complaint about one church leader to another church leader. Leaders are often reluctant to believe that other leaders are capable of the wrongdoing being reported. As in the Bishop case, the leader has more credibility simply by virtue of his position. A man who has high callings in the Church, or who has in the past, is assumed to be a good and righteous man, who of course wouldn’t do awful things to the people they preside over. And in the more common situation, where a member complains about their bishop to their stake president, it goes even further. The stake president may have called the bishop, and certainly has sat in a bunch of council meetings with him. It’s no surprise when a stake president feels like a complaint about a bishop is also implicitly an attack on his better judgment, and responds by siding with the bishop.
What about going to higher-up leaders? In the Bishop case, the woman victimized by Bishop said she got to meet with a Seventy, and he told her that he would interview Bishop about the assault, but it appears that he never did. That she even got to meet with a Seventy is a bit surprising to me, as the Church generally discourages members from bringing concerns up with General Authorities, and notes that communications to them will typically just be returned to the member’s stake president. Even if a wronged member does get through to a GA, though, I suspect that the same issue of church calling credibility would come into play. Who is the GA going to believe, a man who has served in X, Y, and Z high callings, or an ordinary member? And of course the more probable outcome is that the member will just be referred back to their stake president, who will likely call them to repentance for stepping out of line.
What’s really sad about this lack of check on Church leaders’ power is that a warning about this problem is actually written in one of our most cited scriptures:
That they [the rights of the priesthood] may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.
Behold, ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God.
We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.
Almost all people will exercise unrighteous dominion, given the chance. Do we seriously believe that or not? The organization of worldly governments at least acknowledges this problem by putting limits on the power of any one person and ways for people to raise grievances when the leader oversteps. How does the organization of the Church take this problem into account? As far as I can see, it doesn’t at all. Members who are mistreated by leaders run into a wall of infallibility all the way up (God called the prophet, who called so-and-so, on down to me, so I must be right.) Like Starfoxy observed in one of my favorite comments ever on the Bloggernacle, there isn’t an “amen squad” that busts in and revokes men’s priesthood and position when they exercise unrighteous dominion. Instead, they’re generally left in their places to dominate away. The Church organization of having no controls on how leaders can treat the people they preside over works well enough when leaders are good, and certainly a large number of people report good experiences with good leaders. But it makes no allowance for the fact that some leaders might use their position to do evil, so when they do, it doesn’t stop them very well.
How could this be solved? One things this calls to mind is a post Mike C. wrote a few years ago where he suggested the creation of a church ombudsman position. Although Mike’s framing of how such a position might work is more in the realm of handling doctrinal issues than resolving cases of leaders who abused their congregants, I wonder if such a solution might work for both types of situations. What’s most important is just that there be a way for ordinary members to communicate problems to people higher in the hierarchy without actually going through the hierarchy, where experience shows they will be dismissed at every turn. Although as I said above, I’m not terribly confident that leaders higher in the hierarchy would necessarily be more likely to take wronged people seriously. I’d like it if they at least got a chance to hear from ordinary members, though.
Really, though, it’s sad to say, but perhaps the only way that checks will be placed on Church leaders is by having people go outside the Church to get their problems addressed. I know many members are insulted when other members take their grievances about the Church or Church leaders to the media (although it appears that this isn’t what happened in the Bishop case, as the recording of the woman’s conversation with Bishop was released without her consent), but it seems to me that given the Church’s unwillingness to structure the organization with any allowance for the possibility that bad leaders can be called to high positions, this may be the only recourse that most ordinary members have.
One of the things that’s been exposed in the last few days is just how far behind the church is in handling abuse, especially when it’s perpetrated within the institution by leaders. If they really want to address the needs of the victims in these cases, it appears they need a pretty comprehensive overhaul. I don’t see how it could happen with the mindset that is so dead-set against women’s voices when they conflict with the all-male status quo. And there is the specter, raised by the church’s reaction (so far) to the present case, that they don’t really care; they don’t see a need to reform, so they just find more ways to claim that “it’s out of our hands.” If so, people will go to outside sources for redress, because there are institutions working to reform the old ways of handling perpetrators who abuse those in weaker positions. I was encouraged to witness a friend who report a sexual assault to the police in a mid-size western city almost a year after it happened; she had a legit complaint, so she was believed and reassured, questioned by a female officer, evidence taken and an investigation opened that resulted in the questioning of the perp, and the case sent to the county attorney. It died there, unfortunately, but the professionalism shown her was as good as therapy. If the cops in a little western city can up their game, why can’t the church?
Great post Ziff! I’m grateful to my priesthood quorum which allowed me to call BS last week on President Eyring’s talk from last General Conference where he said we need to have faith that God never makes mistakes when He calls people. It was a healthy discussion. Unfortunately it ended with some quorum members expressing that local leaders may occasionally make mistakes when issuing calls, but that higher ups are less likely to make mistakes (because the higher level leaders are clearly closer to God).
The saddest part about this topic is the original church organization had checks and balances: The Q12 is supposed to be a body equal to the First Presidency. The Stake High Council is supposed to be more autonomous than it is today. And most of all, common consent used to be more than the rubber stamp it has become. All these things were checks on power. Now, contrary to the revealed, written bylaws of the church, Russell M. Nelson has already been ordained President of the Church, in spite of the fact that his name has not been presented for a sustaining vote.
The underlying problem here is that the Church has morphed over the years into a top-down hierarchy. In the early revelations (such as on common consent), the Church was set up as what Joseph Smith called a theo-democracy, even though Joseph didn’t allow much democracy either. Power is a difficult item to handle correctly, and if the organizational structure reinforces authoritarianism, then any democratic doctrines we may have will simply fall by the wayside. How, though, do we restore the democratic element that we have shoved aside?