What Happens When Leaders are Duped by Predators, and Other Hard Questions about Spiritual Guidance

 The Mormon circles in which I am active have been rocked in recent weeks by the stories about Joseph L. Bishop, the former MTC president who has been accused by two women of sexual abuse during his time in that position. Much of the discussion of this situation that I’ve seen has focused on the problems of systems which protect predators, and a culture which disbelieves victims. I think these are vital problems to bring up, and I’m glad to see them being discussed. But I’d like to raise another issue which I see as central to this whole mess. To put it baldly: how is it that church leaders who are said to have special gifts of spiritual discernment get duped by predators? In other words, why didn’t the many church leaders who must have been involved over the years in selecting Bishop for different positions ever have any sense that something was amiss? And this is far from an isolated instance. You only have to raise the issue of what happens when people report abuse to church leaders on a blog or a Facebook group to get story after story of victims who weren’t believed by their bishops and stake presidents. I’ve seen this firsthand, watching an abusive relative con multiple local leaders into accepting his extremely farfetched version of events. Yet I was taught again and again during my decades in the church that leaders had special access to revelation regarding those under their stewardship, that they were being guided by the Spirit in their judgments. How is one to make sense of all of this?

As people consider what  this all means, I’ve seen multiple comments to the effect that even if these accusations are true, the problem is limited to the terrible choices of this one particular person, and the situation has no bearing on the truthfulness of the church. There are ways in which I’m sympathetic to this point of view; after all there is no human organization that is immune to these issues, that doesn’t have to sometimes deal with predators and others with less than stellar character who rise in the ranks and use the system to their own advantage. I can certainly see the case that it isn’t fair to malign the entire church because of the actions of one person, no matter how horrendous. At the same time, I do think it’s more than reasonable to expect the church to consider how they might do a better job of protecting victims, and safeguarding against scenarios like this—to ask about the systems in place. I’m glad to see some pressure in this direction, and I hope it will lead somewhere positive.

But I am also interested in the theological implications of all of this. And I don’t know that it’s possible to completely separate these kinds of incidents from at least some of the claims that the church makes about itself. For one thing, while every human institution has to grapple with these issues, the LDS church quite explicitly understands itself as being more than just another human institution. It claims to be an organization that is directly led by God in a way that no other organization is. (Think of how many times you hear about the “worldly” way of doing things set up as a contrast to the church’s way, which is often explicitly described as divinely mandated.) Priesthood leaders are often understood to have special access to God’s will, and all members are given the gift of the Holy Ghost, which I was taught meant a more privileged or reliable access to the Spirit. It seems to me that situations like this at least raise questions about the meaning of these claims. Maybe one way to get at the question I’m grappling with here is to note that it seems to be becoming more widely accepted (at least in the contexts I’ve seen, which I recognize may not be representative of the church as a whole) that it’s unrealistic to expect that the guidance of the Spirit alone is going to allow a church leader to recognize a predator, or to accurately evaluate claims of abuse. That seems like a reasonable view. But I find myself asking: if the Spirit isn’t reliable in this instance, what room is there to say that it’s nonetheless reliable when it comes to other topics—such as witnessing to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, or conveying the will of God to church leaders about current issues?

There are of course many ways that one might think about this problem. One possibility is that everyone who claims any kind of revelation or spiritual guidance is deluding themselves, that the whole thing is a sham. While I can see why someone might go there, that’s not the world I live in. I have my moments of cynicism, certainly, and I think these kinds of situations raise hard questions. But in the end, I’m inclined to take spiritual experience seriously, because it’s been a significant aspect of my life. And given that I’ve personally had meaningful spiritual experiences both inside and outside of Mormonism, I find that as much as on my bad days I might want to dismiss everything positive about the church, it wouldn’t be an honest move for me to make.

In a quite different vein, I’ve run across people who are so convinced that church leaders are always guided by inspiration that they have concluded that either the women in this situation are lying, because God wouldn’t have let that happen, or that God guided church leaders to call Bishop to this position for some complicated divine reason that we mortals can’t fully understand. I don’t think I’m going to spend a lot of time explaining why I find both of these perspectives completely untenable—in brief, disbelieving victims because “God wouldn’t have let that happen” is a horrific response to people who have been harmed, not to mention that it basically contradicts everything we can see about the world (namely that God lets terrible things happen every day). As far as the second possibility, all I can say is that a God who engineers situations of abuse is not a God I want anything to do with, full stop.

In considering these questions, I find myself starting with two basic beliefs: 1) spiritual experiences can be valid, and 2) all humans, no matter what fancy position they might have, are deeply fallible and make mistakes sometimes. I’m guessing that will not sound unreasonable to most believers. But I’d like to push this a little. I don’t think it’s fair to play the fallibility card, to fall back on the undeniable truth that we’re all only human, when grappling with situations like this, and then turn around and say that it’s nearly outside the realm of possibility that church leaders could be mistaken in proclaiming the will of God in other situations. I suppose you could argue that those are in some way different categories, that God doesn’t intervene to let people know that they’re trusting the wrong humans and are calling predators to serve in positions of authority, but nonetheless ensures that leaders are teaching only correct doctrine and enacting only divinely authorized policies for the church. I’m not persuaded by that sort of split, though, both because it seems to indicate that God cares more about the correctness of abstract doctrinal ideas than with real live humans getting abused, and because of the extent to which doctrine has changed over time (suggesting that humans having absolutely correct doctrinal understandings at any particular historical moment doesn’t seem to be the highest divine priority). It seems more likely to me that seeing through a glass, darkly, is simply the nature of our existence, even with the occasional flash of spiritual illumination.

As I said above, I really am a believer in spiritual experience. Yet I’ve struggled a lot to make sense of that belief. And I have to admit that over the years, I’ve become more and more skeptical about the use of spiritual experience as an epistemology. Having experiences in which you feel connected to God or divinely guided can be powerful, transformative, and intensely meaningful. I know that well from my own life. But the connection between those kinds of experiences and propositional truth claims seems increasingly dubious to me. If spiritual experience is in fact a definitive indicator of religious truth, I keep wondering, why do different people reach such contradictory conclusions? Devout Mormons, Catholics, and Muslims (to pick just three traditions which make exclusive truth claims) all report experiences confirming that their faith is the true one, the one uniquely authorized by God. But it’s hard for me not to suspect that there’s a leap being made between having a spiritual experience in the context of a particular religious tradition, and the conclusion that the truth claims made by that tradition are valid. To be fair, though, I’m basing this on my own experiences with spiritual matters—and in my life, spiritual experiences have not been particularly self-interpreting; in fact, the same experience has sometimes come to mean something very different to me years after it happened. I’ve also had occasions of being deeply convinced of something and believing that I’d had spiritual confirmation of it, only to have it turn out to be completely wrong. Those factors are obviously coloring my views on this subject; I realize it’s possible that others who talk about this are experiencing spiritual things quite differently. But while my belief in God, and a God who communicates, remains intact, I have a lot of questions about the nature and purpose of such revelation.

This leads me to another issue which the transcript with Bishop brings up. He talks a lot about his own spiritual experiences, with a kind of amazement that he had them. I found that to be one of the most jarring aspects of the whole thing. The easy answer is that of course they’re fake, that people behaving that way don’t have those kinds of moments. But I realize I can’t rush to that position without accepting a premise I’ve long since rejected—namely, that spiritual experience is tied to worthiness. At the same time, it’s awfully hard to read about him recounting how meaningful those times were to him, especially knowing that the victim reports having her own faith shattered. There is something terribly cruel about all of that—cruel not just on the part of humans involved, but quite frankly on the part of God.

A number of people have appeared on the bloggernacle over the years claiming to have amazing spiritual experiences. Some of them have sparked a bit of eye-rolling on my part (I’m remembering someone who appeared years ago with seven revelations to share with the bloggernacle, who was writing very lengthy comments sharing them until they were finally exiled to moderation). A more common dynamic I’ve seen multiple times is a person who comes across as extremely self-righteous, calls everyone around them to repentance, and when they get pushback for their behavior appeals to the amazing spiritual experiences they’ve had as justification for their obnoxiousness—they have superior spiritual enlightenment, they’ll assert again and again, and they’re just trying to help everyone else. I find that kind of thing off-putting enough that for a while I started to think that a basic litmus test for the validity of a spiritual experience was that if it led to someone being a jerk, it lost credibility. A basic, “by their fruits shall ye know them” sort of thing. But while I still think there might be something to that, I’m suspecting that there aren’t easy answers to any of this.

I went to a presentation several years ago given by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, who explores things like the relationship between science and spirituality, and the biology of belief. I was particularly struck by her suggestion that some people are simply more wired than others for spiritual experience. In her book Fingerprints of God, she references the analogy of a radio transmission: “In this analogy, everyone posses the neural equipment to receive the radio program to varying degrees. Some have the volume turned low—in the case of an atheist, it’s so low it’s inaudible. Many hear their favorite programs every now and again. Others, though no fault of their own, have the volume turned up too high, or they are receiving a cacophony of noise that makes no sense.”¹ At the end of the book, she concludes, “I believe that the ability to perceive and engage God is written in each person’s genetic code and brain wiring. Religion is the overlay that allows people to navigate the world . . .”²

While I think that perspective raises difficult theological questions, especially given the claim made by many faiths that anyone can communicate with God, I have to admit that it maps on to my real-world experience better than many of the theories I’ve heard (which frequently link spirituality to worthiness or effort, and blame people who don’t get answers to prayers for not having faith or not trying hard enough). What if we all simply have different wiring? This isn’t to say that human choice plays no role, but it does bring a different context to the whole thing. It might even be in line with the scriptural notion that people are given different gifts. And I am wondering more and more whether spiritual experience, as transformative and meaningful as it can be, might not be a very reliable means of establishing truth. I recently read Johann Hari’s latest book, Lost Connections, which is about depression. I have a lot of thoughts about that particular subject which I’m not going to bring up here; the bit of the book I want to mention in this context has to do with his account of talking to people who had transformative spiritual experiences that were brought about by taking psychedelic drugs. Some of them reported that these experiences were completely life-changing. I’m fascinated by that. Do spiritual experiences count as “real” if they’re drug-induced?

I’m still grappling with all these questions, both personally and theologically. But at least right now, as much as I want to hold on to the importance of spiritual experience in my own life and continuing to see where it takes me, I’m finding myself wary of too confidently basing truth claims on it. I wonder whether it’s more about drawing you into something beyond yourself, giving you glimpses of something greater, calling you to relationship, than about confirming the rightness of your beliefs. And I have to admit that I’m feeling particularly wary of anyone in any faith who is positive that they speak for God, or who cites spiritual experience either as evidence of their righteousness, or as the basis of their belief that they have special access to truth. I recognize that this stance puts me at odds with some of the tenets of the church I was raised in. But I think recent events have illustrated quite starkly just how badly things can go wrong when assumptions about spiritual discernment aren’t questioned.

1. Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 156. [↩]
2. Ibid., 282-3 [↩]