A Heretic Reviews General Conference, April 2021

Funniest number: The statistical report gives Church membership as 16,663,663. So five sixes, and two threes that can be added together to yield a sixth six! Talk about victories for Satan!

Best musical number: “Arise, O God, and Shine,” Saturday morning
Worst musical number: “God Loved Us, So He Sent His Son,” Priesthood. I just found this slow and uninteresting.
Highest-tempo musical number: “Guide Us, O Thou Great Jehovah,” Saturday afternoon. I didn’t actually measure tempos, but this one seemed quite fast.
Best choir outfits: Korean girls singing “I Love to See the Temple,” Sunday morning

Longest talk: D. Todd Christofferson, “Why the Covenant Path,” 2179 words
Shortest talk: Russell M. Nelson, “Welcome Message,” 507 words

Longest prayer (“I should have been giving a talk.”): Arnulfo Valenzuela, Sunday morning benediction, 144 seconds
Shortest prayer (“Let’s move this thing along!”): Carl B. Cook, Saturday afternoon invocation, 54 seconds

Best title: Dale G. Renlund, “Infuriating Unfairness”
Emphatic titles: Ahmad S. Corbitt (“You Can Gather Israel!”) and S. Gifford Nielsen (“This Is Our Time!”) gave consecutive talks with exclamation marks on the titles. Henry B. Eyring (“Bless in His Name”) unfortunately didn’t continue the trend.
Missed opportunity title: Choi Hong (Sam) Wong titled his talk “They Cannot Prevail; We Cannot Fall,” when with just one letter change and very little meaning change, he could have made it rhyme: “They Cannot Prevail; We Cannot Fail.”
1955 called and wants its title back: Dallin H. Oaks, “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution”

Best visual aid: Dallin H. Oaks, amid a bunch of stock photos of Jesus that we’ve all seen a thousand times, showed a photo of a family that’s delightfully imperfect, with one person not looking at the camera at all, and a baby who looks like they might be about to bust into a fuss.

Best stories:

• Gary E. Stevenson told of how Church members driven out of Missouri in 1838 were cared for so kindly by residents of Quincy, Illinois. I appreciate this as a counterweight to the prevalent narrative of how early Church members were constantly persecuted.
• Gerrit W. Gong told of a young woman selling ice cream cones out of a pushcart who he witnessed having her cart upended and her cones smashed by an angry customer. The scale of her pain might not have been great in the grand scheme of things, but I appreciated how he told the story with no resolution and no happy ending, which I feel like very much goes against the typical Mormon grain of wrapping stories up with a bow. He concluded:
  

  I can still see the young woman on her knees in the street, trying to save broken wafer pieces, tears of anguish streaming down her face. Her image haunts me, a reminder of the unkindness, uncaring, misunderstanding we too often inflict on each other.

• Jorge T. Becerra told of a dream Brigham Young had where he encountered Joseph Smith driving a big herd of sheep and goats that were varied in size and appearance. Brigham asked Joseph what he was going to do with such an unruly flock, and Joseph seemed unconcerned and said “they are all good in their places.” Brigham took it to mean the Church should gather a variety of people. I really appreciated Joseph’s line, particularly given that the most familiar discussion of sheep and goats in the scriptures is of Jesus separating them. This seems like an unusually hands-off approach to differences between people in the Church.

Worst stories:

• Neil L. Andersen told of a couple who felt their family was complete with their four children, but who were then successfully guilted into having two more children in spite of the fact that the wife was prone to high-risk pregnancies. Elder Andersen is clearly completely okay with sending women the message your health and life do not matter; all God cares about is your reproductive capacity.
• Joy D. Jones told of a soldier who was angry when, in basic training, his drill instructor made the unit lie on the ground without moving for over two hours. The soldier was later grateful when he learned that holding still was a crucial skill in combat. The bad part about this story is that the obvious metamessage is that leaders do not have to explain themselves even when there is a logical explanation for what they’re asking. It is only up to the rest of us to obey unquestioningly.
• Henry B. Eyring told of going to the temple with his daughter, and having her stay far longer than they had planned, because she kept agreeing to complete more baptisms for names that had been prepared. President Eyring happily concluded that his daughter had learned to say “yes,” whenever the Lord asked something of her, but to me the more obvious and sinister conclusion is that she learned to have no boundaries or concern for herself when it came to demands from the Church.

Most puzzling story: Taniela B. Wakolo told of learning, when he asked someone to deliver a package to his sister, that she had died and her funeral was already ten days in the past. Nobody in his family had felt it necessary to tell him. But the lesson he took from the story was that he was somehow in the wrong for caring that he hadn’t been told, and God was chastising him.

Best quote: Reyna I. Aburto quoted Russell M. Nelson: “Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love . . . .The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.”

Worst quote: Neil L. Andersen quoted Gordon B. Hinckley being very harsh about abortion and totally minimizing situations when it might be necessary. I’m a little bit heartened that Andersen didn’t seem to feel like he could, on his own authority, give the full-throated condemnation of abortion that he clearly wanted to, and instead had to quote someone else.

Most unnecessary quote: Timothy J. Dyches quoted Russell M. Nelson (of course!) for the two words “Hear him.”

Strangest quote reference: In the text of his talk, M. Russell Ballard attributed a quote about the importance of a sense of belonging to “the Mayo Clinic.” To be complete, the statement he quoted was from an individual counselor who works for the Mayo Clinic Health System, in Wisconsin, who wrote a blog post. His footnote makes this clear, but the in-text description feels kind of misleading.

Best scripture quote: Edward Dube quoted Paul (in Philippians 3:8) as saying that he counted all the things he lost in the pursuit of Christ as “dung.” The LDS Scripture Citation Index lists no previous quotes of this verse in Conference since the 19th century! I feel like we definitely need to hear more about poop in Conference, and I’m glad that Elder Dube has set the example so that others can follow!

Worst scripture quote: Ronald A. Rasband quoted D&C 42:48:

“He that hath faith in me to be healed,” He said to the Saints in 1831, and the promise continues today, “and is not appointed unto death, shall be healed.”

Just how many outs does God need here? So if someone isn’t healed, maybe it’s because they didn’t have enough faith, but even then, maybe it’s because they were appointed unto death. It seems like a preemptive list of excuses more than an actual promise.

Best laugh: Edward Dube told a story of how anxious he was when he went to his first general conference leadership meeting, but he relaxed when Elder Holland greeted him warmly and “tenderly patted my face.” Then later, he saw Holland doing the same to President Oaks, which I wish there were a picture of, because the mental image makes me laugh!

Best lines:

• Gerrit W. Gong: “our Savior, Jesus Christ, knows everything about us we don’t want anyone else to know, and He still loves us.”
• Dale G. Renlund: “We will be judged not so much by what we say but by how we treat the vulnerable and disadvantaged.”
• Dallin H. Oaks (on people deciding which political issues are most important to them): “This process will not be easy. It may require changing party support or candidate choices, even from election to election.”

Worst lines:

• Russell M. Nelson:
  

  Lazy learners and lax disciples will always struggle to muster even a particle of faith.

  Of course he’s not talking here to the lazy learners. His audience is people who may have a few reservations, but are mostly fully in the Church. He’s trying to reassure them that as long as they’re trying, they’re not at risk of losing faith. Still, even trying to read this dispassionately, I find it hurtful. There are so many counterexamples that President Nelson clearly doesn’t know about or doesn’t care about.

• Russell M. Nelson:
  

  If you have doubts about God the Father and His Beloved Son or the validity of the Restoration or the veracity of Joseph Smith’s divine calling as a prophet, choose to believe and stay faithful. Take your questions to the Lord and to other faithful sources. Study with the desire to believe rather than with the hope that you can find a flaw in the fabric of a prophet’s life or a discrepancy in the scriptures. Stop increasing your doubts by rehearsing them with other doubters.

  Although he’s ostensibly talking to doubters here, I think his intended audience is still the faithful, trying to shore up their sense that doubters are at fault for their doubts, and of course, giving a clear warning that doubt is contagious and doubters should be treated with suspicion. Again, it’s sad to me how many people’s counterexample experience he’s ignoring. It’s also sad that he’s happy to consign doubters to be ostracized, while he tells them/us not to violate our ostracism quarantine.

• Taniela B. Wakolo:
  

  because of the Savior’s sacrifice and ransom, I will no longer refer to my challenges as trials and tribulations but as my learning experiences . . . because of His perfect and sinless life, I will no longer refer to my shortcomings and lack of abilities as weaknesses but rather as my development opportunities.

  Please can we not endorse this motivational speaker doubletalk and just allow ourselves to call things what they are?

• Ahmad S. Corbitt:
  

  When you set a good goal, you are looking forward, as you did before, and seeing what your Heavenly Father wants you or another to become.

  I was with him until “or another.” Setting goals for other people is something I learned to loathe as a missionary and that I have continued to loathe ever since. We can set goals for what we’re going to do, perhaps even hoping to have an effect on others, but let’s not be so manipulative as to actually set goals for other people.

• Neil L. Andersen:
  

  Let us share our deep feelings about the sanctity of life with those who make decisions in society.

  It’s clear that he was quite unhappy that he couldn’t just come out and say that to be good Church members, we must support pro-life candidates.

• M. Russell Ballard (to single people):
  

  Waiting upon the Lord does not imply biding one’s time. You should never feel like you are in a waiting room.

  This seems to blame single people for feeling exactly how Church teachings are set up to make them feel. When virtually every talk and lesson and example and story is directed at married people, who is responsible if single people feel like they’re waiting for their real lives to begin?

Best term or phrase: Dale G. Renlund tells of an attorney who encouraged a church congregation to be supportive of an inactive member who had been wrongly accused of murder. Taking a page from the story where Jesus dismissed accusers of a woman taken in adultery by telling them they could cast a stone if they were without sin, the attorney pointed out that people do sometimes cast stones at each other when they stumble, and encouraged the congregants to become “stonecatchers” to interrupt such attacks.
Worst term or phrase: “Youth battalion.” Please can we not use military imagery to talk about teens?
Term or phrase that is already beyond worn out: “Let God prevail.”

Best comparisons:

• José A. Teixeira compared us trying to find our way home to God to salmon that are able to smell their way back to the stream where they were born. I love the image of people sniffing and asking themselves, “Is this the right path to God?”
• D. Todd Christofferson compared mistakes keeping the commandments can help us avoid to unforced errors in tennis.

Best patterns:

• A surprising number of speakers talked about their own human frailty. (I say surprising because I feel like GAs have been mostly trained to present themselves as perfect and invulnerable.) M. Russell Ballard talked about experiencing loneliness since his wife’s death. S. Gifford Nielsen expressed self-doubt when sent to represent the prophet and visit a hospitalized teen: “As I drove to the hospital, my mind raced. An errand for the prophet—are you kidding?” Reyna I. Aburto talked about grieving her older brother’s death after he was killed in an earthquake when they were children. Edward Dube doubted himself when he was going to his first general conference leadership meeting: “You do not belong here! A mistake has been made!” Michael John U. Teh told how a leader asked him to write a summary of what he had learned after a particular reading of the Book of Mormon, and after initially thinking the task would be easy, he actually found he couldn’t complete it.
• There were multiple mentions of grace (Gerritt W. Gong and Jeffrey R. Holland).
• At least three speakers (Jeffrey R. Holland, Gary E. Stevenson, Russell M. Nelson) quoted from D&C 121, a bit of scripture that our hierarchy-loving church could definitely stand to pay more attention to.
• I thought it was cool that several speakers (Jorge T. Becerra, Thierry K. Mutombo, S. Mark Palmer, Edward Dube, Taniela B. Wakolo, Alan R. Walker) gave talks from locations other than the Conference Center.
• I appreciated the Sunday morning session that had so many non-North Americans speaking and singing. (I did feel like it was kind of a mixed message, though, when President Nelson still gave the closing talk of the meeting, like a blunt reminder that Americans still preside.)
• Two speakers (Gerritt W. Gong and M. Russell Ballard) mentioned that over half the adult members of the Church are not married. It would be great if we could move from knowing this to actually making the Church more welcoming for single people.

Worst patterns:

• Women and young women were grouped with children to sing “I Am a Child of God” in the Sunday morning session. Was this to signal that, as non-priesthood holders, women and young women are supposed to be more childlike? Yuck.
• The Church style guide (I’m assuming) can’t bear to have “heavenly parents” capitalized, which is especially glaring when you have a sentence like this one from Dieter F. Uchtdorf that is just littered with capitals referring to the Father and the Son:
  

  He has proven His love in endless ways, but above all by giving His Only Begotten Son as a sacrifice and as a gift to His children to make the return to our heavenly parents a reality.

  Seriously, even “apostles” gets capitalized in Church materials. I’m assuming it’s some of these apostles who are so hung up on their own importance who are preventing the style guide from allowing anything so radical as “Heavenly Mother” to be written.

Other patterns:

• I feel like more speakers than usual identified Jehovah (rather than “the Lord” or some other title) as the speaker in a scripture they were quoting.
• Lots of speakers use italics to add emphasis to their scripture quotes. I haven’t looked at this systematically, but it seems to be true. I suspect this comes from President Nelson, who uses lots of italics in his talks.

Speakers who I appreciate not separating things by gender:

• Gary E. Stevenson said that the principle of maintaining influence only by kindness “has a universal application to all Latter-day Saints: adults, youth, and children.” I think a far more typical way of saying everyone in the Church would be “men, women, and children.”
• Quentin L. Cook, speaking of older teens, said “During a short period of time, they make decisions that have significant lifelong implications. They determine whether they will qualify for the temple, serve a mission, strive to be married in the temple, and prepare for their life’s work.” I think it’s far more common in the Church to see one list of decisions for boys and another list of decisions for girls.
• David A. Bednar referred to the Fall as “the Fall of Adam and Eve,” where it seems like it’s very often (including in the scriptures) referred to as “the Fall of Adam.”
• Dieter F. Uchtdorf mentioned Heavenly Parents. Unfortunately, I think he was the only one.
• S. Gifford Nielsen listed some scriptural figures who we might think are larger than life. Even though he was speaking in priesthood session, he included a couple of women on his list.

Things that should go without saying, but I’m glad they were said anyway:

• Gerrit W. Gong:
  

  Our standing before the Lord and in His Church is not a matter of our marital status but of our becoming faithful and valiant disciples of Jesus Christ.

• Gerrit W. Gong:
  

  We receive inspiration as we counsel together, listening to each person, including each sister, and the Spirit.

• M. Russell Ballard:
  

  Our spiritual identity is enhanced as we understand our many mortal identities, including ethnic, cultural, or national heritage.

  I’m pleasantly surprised to hear this said after we’ve had talks recently that discussed the “culture of Christ” and suggested that people really needed to pretty much abandon their culture to join the Church. I’m extra happy to hear it from President Ballard, who strikes me as one of the more traditional members of the Q15.

• Ahmad S. Corbitt mentioned the youth leading in organizing “fun activities.”
• Jeffrey R. Holland:
  

  In no case are we to be guilty of any form of abuse or unrighteous dominion or immoral coercion—not physical or emotional or ecclesiastical or any other kind.

  I wish he had talked about abuse and coercion in more detail, because I think abusers are very good at framing the world so, if anything, they’re the victims. But I’m still glad he at least said it.

• Dale G. Renlund praised attorney Bryan Stevenson, whose practice is dedicated to, among other things, “ending excessive punishment.” I particularly appreciated this because I feel like so often we’re an authoritarian people who love the idea of harsh punishments.
• S. Gifford Nielsen, after telling a story of someone making a miraculous recovery after Elder Nielsen gave him a blessing, also said,
  

  Of course, that is not always the outcome. I have given other priesthood blessings with equal faith, and the Lord did not grant complete healing in this life.

• Gary E. Stevenson:
  

  Prejudice, racial tension, or violence should never have any place in our neighborhoods, communities, or within the Church.

Good messages about COVID:

• Henry B. Eyring told the story of a man who took the sacrament to a woman he was assigned to minister to, and then later also to her 87-year-old neighbor. He continued to do so for the neighbor even after most of the ward had begun to meet in person again. President Eyring seemed to think this was normal and right, which seems like a rebuke of the bishops I’ve heard about anecdotally who have tried to force people to rush back to in-person church, regardless of their comfort level, by withdrawing authorization for the sacrament outside of sacrament meeting.
• Multiple speakers (Reyna I. Aburto, Neil L. Andersen, Edward Dube) told stories of people who had died during the pandemic, which I thought was a nice acknowledgement of the pain so many people have gone through.
• Russell M. Nelson emphasized the importance of community in response to the pandemic:
  

  The recent pandemic has been unique in that it has affected everyone in the world at essentially the same time. . . . our common trial has the potential to help unite God’s children as never before. So, I ask, has this shared trial drawn you closer to your neighbors—to your brothers and sisters across the street and around the world?

  This framing seems like a condemnation of the anti-mask and anti-vax “I don’t care about anyone else’s health” response to COVID that’s been displayed by so many American Mormons.

• In the same talk, President Nelson talked in a matter-of-fact way about in-person church meetings being on hold as a natural response to the pandemic. He showed none of the pique that Elder Bednar did last June when he complained that governments were unfairly requiring churches to stop meeting.
• In the last talk of the Conference, President Nelson encouraged Church members to “Do all you can to bring COVID numbers down in your area so that your temple opportunities can increase,” which seems like a pretty clear endorsement of things like social distancing, masking, and vaccinating.

Lines from speakers gunning to take Neal A. Maxwell’s place as the apostle of alliteration (or the rhyming reverend):

• Russell M. Nelson: “It takes faith to follow prophets rather than pundits and popular opinion.”
• Russell M. Nelson explained that during the pandemic, “we made the difficult decision to close all temples temporarily.” He could have said “to temporarily close all temples,” but he deliberately chose the Maxwellian formulation.
• Gerrit W. Gong: “He entreats us to make His Inn a place of grace and space”
• Dieter F. Uchtdorf: “Because of Jesus Christ, our failures do not have to define us. They can refine us.”

Mixed messages:

• Joy D. Jones advocated for a pretty regimented formula for getting kids converted to the gospel. “Accidental conversion is not a principle of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” she said. In the very next talk, Jan E. Newman suggested that conversion can’t be forced. He said, “We can’t give our children a testimony any more than we can make a seed grow. But we can provide a nourishing environment,”
• The Sunday morning session featured many speakers and choirs from outside North America. Dallin H. Oaks then kicked off the Sunday afternoon session with the most US-centric talk of the whole Conference.

No one answer: Gerrit W. Gong briefly mentioned two women he knew of, both of whose husbands had serious cases of COVID. One woman felt peace when her husband died, and the other felt inspired to pray for her husband to have more time to live. I like that he put these side by side because so often the Church seems overly focused on the idea that we can find the one right answer and apply it to everyone.

Are you sure you want to use that term? Quentin L. Cook said that Russell M. Nelson had emphasized the “seminal” role of the bishop in working with the youth. For one thing, I think “seminal” only means “first” in a temporal sense, not in an importance sense. For another, now that it’s become clear that a lot of religious authorities use their position to sexually abuse their congregants, maybe we shouldn’t use sex-adjacent words to talk about bishops taking special interest in teens.

Tell me again how no calling is more important than any other: In Ronald A. Rasband‘s story of the Face to Face event that was briefly delayed by a power outage, he got a concerned text from President Nelson, in which he addressed him as “Ron.” In Taniela B. Wakolo‘s story of running into President Nelson in the parking lot after he (Elder Wakolo) had had surgery, President Nelson calls him “Taniela,” and he responds by calling him “President Nelson.” The titles and lack of titles used clearly follow a person’s position. Can we please just admit that we’re deeply in love with hierarchy, especially at the GA level?

Once “President,” always “President,” even retroactively: David A. Bednar quoted something Dallin H. Oaks said in 1988, when he was Elder Oaks, and quoted something Russell M. Nelson said in 2015, when he was Elder Nelson. However, in both cases, he referred to the men as “President.” This is far from unusual. I think it’s another sign of how much GAs love hierarchies.

You might want to check on that: Timothy J. Dyches asserted, “We know that sunlight is vital to all life on earth.”

History is already being rewritten! David A. Bednar modified a quote from Ezra Taft Benson about the importance of the Conference Ensign to be about the Conference Liahona.

How well will this age? D. Todd Christofferson talked about a “poorly informed newspaper reporter who explained that the way we perform baptisms for the dead is to immerse rolls of microfilm in water.” Elder Christofferson went on to explain that this isn’t done because “it ignores the infinite worth of each soul and the critical importance of a personal covenant with God.” The reporter was obviously wrong at the time, but it is true that we already do something similar by praying for people in the temple en masse, using a list of names. And President Nelson seems to clearly be signaling that he values efficiency over any concern about form when it comes to temples. So while dunking microfilm in water to baptize people isn’t something we’re likely to do in the immediate future, it seems like we might end up doing something moving in that direction eventually, and then I wonder how Elder Christofferson’s explanation will look.

Three six favorite talks that I would be happy to see lessons based on:

Gary E. Stevenson, “Hearts Knit Together” — He told three stories, all of which I really liked, tacitly endorsed scientific thinking, and most importantly, talked about the importance of kindness.

Gerrit W. Gong, “Room in the Inn” — I really appreciate his vision of how welcoming a place we can make church, even if I think the reality falls terribly short.

Jeffrey R. Holland, “Not as the World Giveth”

Dale G. Renlund, “Infuriating Unfairness”

Reyna I. Aburto, “The Grave Has No Victory”

Dallin H. Oaks, “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution” — I admit that part of why I’d like to see a lesson based on this talk is that I’m curious to see what knots the Trumpists in my ward would tie themselves into to explain how no, what we really need is the rule of a charismatic dictator, and not the pesky rule of law. More so, though, I appreciate this talk because, US-centric though it may be, coming a few months after the January 6th coup attempt, it seems to me to be a clear statement that President Oaks doesn’t approve of Trump and his disciples’ attempt to overthrow the government. I think Oaks and I disagree on a ton, but I admire his integrity in standing up for the rule of law against the Trumpists.

Three least favorite talks that I would be disappointed to see lessons based on:

Neil L. Andersen, “The Personal Journey of a Child of God” — His obsession with getting Church members to reproduce more, with aggressive disinterest in what this will do to women’s health, really shows a contempt for women. Also appalling is his framing of abortion as a women’s issue, while totally ignoring men’s contribution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy, and using a quote from Gordon B. Hinckley to wave away the very real circumstances in which abortion results from rape or is medically necessary.

Russell M. Nelson, “Christ Is Risen; Faith in Him Will Move Mountains” — This is the talk where he dismisses people who leave as “lazy learners and lax disciples.”

Michael John U. Teh, “Our Personal Savior” — This talk is just extremely black and white.

 

My heretical reviews of past General Conferences:
October 2020
April 2020
October 2019