A Heretic Reviews General Conference, April 2024

Best hymn: “Oh, What Songs of the Heart,” Saturday evening. It gets bonus points for mention of Heavenly Parents, but I really liked it musically too.
Worst hymn:  “Lord, I Would Follow Thee,” Sunday morning. This was just very bland.
Fastest hymn: “The Lord Is My Light,” Saturday evening.
Slowest hymn: “Did You Think to Pray?” Saturday morning.
Best and worst choir: I really liked the Utah Valley Institute choir that sang Saturday evening. I was much less a fan of the BYU-I choir that sang Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t a knock on their singing; I just felt like the arrangements they sang had weird pacing changes. (Sorry, as a music noob, I can’t explain it any better.)

Longest prayer: 167 seconds, S. Gifford Nielsen, Saturday morning invocation.
Shortest prayer: 51 seconds, Emily Belle Freeman, Saturday afternoon benediction. I appreciated that she didn’t force herself to use proper prayer pronouns.
Unsurprising prayer difference: Men gave eight prayers, with the shortest being 93 seconds (average of 114 seconds). Women gave two prayers, with the longer being 68 seconds.

Best slip of the tongue: While conducting the Sunday afternoon session, Quentin L. Cook welcomed us to the 109th annual General Conference. (It was actually the 194th.)

Best title: Patrick Kearon, “God’s Intent Is to Bring You Home”
Overdone title: Dale G. Renlund, “The Powerful, Virtuous Cycle of the Doctrine of Christ” I didn’t realize until I read the talk that he was quoting Russell M. Nelson, who has a love of hyperbole.

Longest talk: D. Todd Christofferson, 1961 words. (He also gave the longest talk among Q15 members last conference.)
Shortest talk: Susan H. Porter, 1252 words.

Best laugh:

• Dale G. Renlund showed with his hands the sizes of the tiny waves that knocked him off his kayak.
• Massimo De Feo told how his wife told him the reason he didn’t remember them having any major problems was that he had a short memory.

Strangest joke: Jeffrey R. Holland, who hadn’t given a talk in a couple of conferences because of health issues, joked that it was because he gave a bad talk last time. He said that he was at risk of being banned again, “positioned on a trapdoor with a very delicate latch.” While I appreciate his willingness to laugh at himself, I found this an odd choice of jokes precisely because we have seen that speakers don’t get removed from the rotation if they do bad things. You can try to stealth canonize your favorite proclamation and still come back. You can openly set up a money-making scheme and still come back. It seems like a weird thing to call attention to.

Bad pattern: There was wall-to-wall discussion of temples and covenants. Two speakers—J. Anette Dennis and Dallin H. Oaks—brought up temple garments, which I feel like are mentioned in conference rarely if ever. (Gerrit W. Gong even exhorted members to buy our own temple clothes.) I have to wonder if President Nelson has noticed that maybe all the new temples he’s announcing aren’t drawing as much new patronage as he had hoped, so now he’s trying to drum up some more traffic to make them look more successful. This discussion showed up in some strange lines:

• Jack N. Gerard said that in performing the atonement, Jesus “fulfilled the covenant He had made with His Father.” I feel like I’ve never heard this called a covenant before. Is this new doctrine?
• Andrea Muñoz Spannaus said that “obeying our covenants” is one key to drawing on the power of Christ. Obeying? I’ve heard keeping, but a covenant isn’t a commandment or a rule.
• Ulisses Soares assured us that “having the spirit of the Lord’s house in us changes us, completely.” Wait, so the temple has its own spirit now? Is the Holy Ghost at risk of being displaced?

Beloved buzzwords:

• Russell M. Nelson’s “think celestial” line from last conference was picked up and repeated by a number of speakers, sometimes in strange ways. For example, Neil L. Andersen, with a reference to D&C 87, said that “[The Lord] spoke of a righteous people resisting the deceptions of the adversary, disciplining their faith, thinking celestial, . . .” Really? He spoke of that?
• There’s clearly been a push to call temples “houses of the Lord.” This often sounds clumsy. For example, here’s the opening to David A. Bednar’s talk: “During a recent open house and media day for a new house of the Lord, . . .” Of course, President Nelson has also pushed to use the full name of the Church, regardless of how or where it doesn’t fit, so he’s clearly not one to be deterred by verbal clumsiness.
• Ronald A. Rasband appears to not be able to give a talk without saying “by divine design.”

Lines from speakers gunning to take Neal A. Maxwell’s position as the alliterative apostle:

• Ulisses Soares: “[holier confidence] empowers us to overcome the seeds of doubt and despair, fear and frustration, heartache and hopelessness . . . “
• Taylor G. Godoy titled his talk “Call, Don’t Fall.”

Best quotes:

• Michael T. Nelson quoted Henry B. Eyring speaking about youth: “what will matter most is what they learn from [you] about who they really are and what they can really become. My guess is that they won’t learn it so much from lectures. They will get it from feelings of who you are, who you think they are, and what you think they might become.” [Brackets in Nelson’s quote.]
• Gerrit W. Gong quoted part of verse 2 of “Be Still My Soul,” which is one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite hymns:

Be still, my soul: Thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Worst quote: Jack N. Gerard quoted Dallin H. Oaks: “Our zeal to keep [the] second commandment must not cause us to forget the first.” [Brackets in Gerard’s quote.] It’s sad to be reminded of President Oaks’s worry that we might be too accepting of LGBTQ people.

Line missing a “so-called”: Quentin L. Cook referred to a man he was quoting and disagreeing with about free will being an illusion as a “biologist-professor.” Calling him a biologist or a professor alone would have been easy, so it seems likely to me that Elder Cook was using this mashup to make him sound a little ridiculous, as though biology professors were some newfangled thing. I hope that in response, the biologist-professor refers to him as a “prophet-seer-revelator.”

Best lines:

• Gerrit W. Gong: “Sometimes we yearn for someone who will grieve, ache, and weep with us; let us express pain, frustration, sometimes even anger; and acknowledge with us there are things we do not know.”
• Dale G. Renlund: “As we minister to others, we do not need to ask unhelpful questions or state the obvious. Most people who are struggling know that they are struggling. We should not be judgmental; our judgment is neither helpful nor welcome, and it is most often ill-informed.”
• Patrick Kearon: “No, [Jesus] does not put up roadblocks and barriers; He removes them. He does not keep you out; He welcomes you in.”
• Dieter F. Uchtdorf: “Joy is the very purpose of God’s plan for His children.”
• Ronald A. Rasband: “‘Thank you.’ ‘I am sorry.’ And ‘I love you.’ Do not save these humble phrases for a special event or catastrophe. Use them often and sincerely, for they show regard for others.”

Worst lines:

• Jack N. Gerard: “The worldly pull can be as direct as to destroy fidelity in marriage or as subtle as posting anonymous comments critical of Church doctrine or culture.”
  • Was this the only response the people in the epic thread on Instagram got? A scold about how we can’t even dare criticize Church culture?
• Massimo De Feo: “The voices of the world are trying to silence us, but that’s exactly why we must declare our testimony of the Savior louder and stronger.”
  • The Mormon persecution complex lives on!
• D. Todd Christofferson: “Being valiant in the testimony of Jesus means encouraging others, by word and example, to likewise be valiant, especially those of our own families.”
  • I really don’t like the idea that pressuring heretics will bring us back to orthodoxy (and I honestly doubt it often works). I much prefer Tamara W. Runia’s approach from last conference: “Our job is not to teach someone who’s going through a rough patch that they are bad or disappointing.”
• Neil L. Andersen: “Why would He [the Lord], at this specific time, give the needed prosperity to His covenant people that through their sacred tithes, hundreds of houses of the Lord could be built?”
  • I think the Church’s great wealth is an embarrassment, clear evidence of billions of missed opportunities to do good in the world. Elder Andersen loves it.
• Steven R. Bangerter: “These blessings and opportunities come in this life as a result of your righteous exercise of agency, just as your foreordination in your premortal life came as a result of righteousness.”
  • Could we please swear off any discussion of premortal differences in righteousness as hopelessly tainted thinking, seeing as it was used to prop up the priesthood/temple ban for so many years?
• David A. Bednar: “The ‘house[s] of prayer’ in which we gather on the Sabbath are meetinghouses and other approved facilities—holy places of reverence, worship, and learning.” [Emphasis in original.]
  • I’m probably just overly sensitive to the word approved, but it strikes me as overly controlling. Not to mention, didn’t Jesus say that all it took was two or three gathered together in his name?
• Matthew L. Carpenter: “Sometimes, due to feelings of betrayal and very real hurt, a faithful spouse may want to cancel their sealing with their unfaithful spouse to get as far away as possible from them, both on earth and for eternity. If you are concerned that you will somehow be tied to an unrepentant former spouse, remember, you will not!” [Emphasis in original.]
  • I feel like it’s needlessly cruel to pressure people to maintain a connection of any kind with a spouse who was awful to them. Don’t we believe God can work everything out in the afterlife? Let people cancel their sealings.

Weirdest line: Jack N. Gerard said that in fulfilling the atonement, Jesus “manifested a Christlike attribute . . . integrity.” If it was Jesus doing it, wasn’t it a little beyond Christlike?
Surprisingly vague line: Dallin H. Oaks built his whole talk up to a discussion of temple garments, and then when he finally got to his actual topic, he refused to get into any detail at all: “To achieve those holy purposes, we are instructed to wear temple garments continuously, with the only exceptions being those obviously necessary.” I’d like to think that he was intentionally letting members govern ourselves by not going into specifics, but I think it’s more likely that he’s imagining that all right-thinking people will agree about the “obviously necessary” exceptions, so the matter is closed.

Best line to get on Russell M. Nelson’s bad side: Jeffrey R. Holland: “We need to believe in revelation and prophets, seers, and revelators and President Russell M. Nelson.” Didn’t he mean to say like President Russell M. Nelson? Because it sounds like he’s putting him in a different category.
Best scripture quote to get on Russell M. Nelson’s bad side: Brent H. Nielson: “As the ancient prophet Mormon begins his record, he writes, ‘And now I, Mormon, make a record of the things which I have both seen and heard, and call it the Book of Mormon.'”
Best quote of Russell M. Nelson to get on his bad side: Jose L. Alonso: “President Russell M. Nelson taught that ‘when the focus of our lives is on God’s plan of salvation . . .'” The quote is from 2016. Needless to say, if President Nelson repeated such a statement today, he wouldn’t be so gauche as to say “plan of salvation.” It would be “staying on the covenant path” or “gathering Israel on both sides of the veil” or “thinking celestial.”
Best line to get on Dallin H. Oaks’s bad side: Patrick Kearon: “My friends, my fellow disciples on the road of mortal life, our Father’s beautiful plan, even His ‘fabulous’ plan, is designed to bring you home, not to keep you out.” I feel like President Oaks might agree in principle, but he wouldn’t want such a welcoming idea to be emphasized. And that’s not even getting into “fabulous.”
Best line to stay on Dale G. Renlund’s good side: Brian K. Taylor quoted Orson F. Whitney, who mentioned “our Father and Mother in heaven,” but presumably to avoid running afoul of Elder Renlund’s “don’t talk about Heavenly Mother” admonition, he replaced the phrase with “[heavenly parents].”

Lines missing an asterisk:

• Jack N. Gerard: “The world increasingly grapples with integrity by imposing codes of conduct or ethical rules that govern the relationships between people and institutions. While good, these rules are generally not anchored in absolute truth and tend to evolve based on cultural acceptance.”
  • *The Church’s rules also evolve based on cultural acceptance, for example in the ending of temporal polygamy, the ending of the priesthood/temple ban, and especially relevant to this conference, reduction in the size of the temple garment.
• Quentin L. Cook: “Some have wrongly encouraged us ‘to imagine people to be much more different from ourselves and from each other than they actually are. [Some] take real but small differences and magnify them into chasms.'” [The latter half is a quote from Peter Wood’s book Diversity: The Invention of a Concept.]
  • *The Church itself long drew lines between people of different races. And it currently draws lines between women and men, barring women from holding priesthood offices.
• Quentin L. Cook: “It is significant that all the qualifications for baptism are spiritual. No economic or social attainment is necessary. The poor and the rich have the same spiritual requirements.”
  • *As tithing is a flat percentage of income, it amounts to a regressive tax, making committing to it harder on the poor than the rich.
• Matthew L. Carpenter: “However, if a cancellation of sealing is desired, agency is respected.”
  • *A lot of women have not had this experience. Leader roulette is real!

The dictionary defines ___ as

• Dale G. Renlund: “A kayak is a low-to-the-water, canoe-like boat in which the rower sits facing forward and uses a double-bladed paddle to pull front to back on one side and then on the other.” (I’m laughing at the Mormon tendency to define things, but I think this one might actually be helpful.)
• Ronald A. Rasband dismissed the world as “emoji-filled” and then helpfully defined emoji in a footnote (see his note 29).

Best scripture quote: Dieter F. Uchtdorf quoted John 10:10, where Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
Best use of a non-KJV Bible: Dieter F. Uchtdorf quoted Luke 2:10 from the NRSV: “The gospel of Jesus Christ is truly the ‘good news of great joy’!” (See his note 12.)

Worst scripture quotes:

• Jeffrey R. Holland quoted 2 Nephi 4:35: “If we ‘ask not amiss,’ there are no limits to when, where, or about what we should pray.” It seems unkind to me to put in people’s heads the idea that they might pray for a wrong thing and make God mad.
• In emphasizing that baptism is open to everyone, Quentin L. Cook quoted 2 Nephi 26:28: “All men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden.” All men? Other speakers in this conference gender-neutralized their scripture quotes. Especially for one that’s about inclusiveness, it seems bizarre that he didn’t.

Mixed messages:

• Brent H. Nielson titled his talk “A Record of What I Have Both Seen and Heard,” and shared his testimony of what he’d witnessed as a GA. In the previous session, Alexander Dushku resurrected Boyd K. Packer’s idea of “a testimony is to be found in the bearing of it” when he said “Maybe you even stood and shared a testimony that you hoped was true and then felt it was.” I prefer Elder Nielson’s grounded approach to Elder Dushku’s see-what-you-can-convince-yourself-of one.
• Quentin L. Cook told a story about how his grandfather advised him to “avoid any sense of entitlement or privilege because of [my] faithful ancestors.” But he appeared to not process his own message, as he hastened to tell us that his grandfather’s grandfather was Heber C. Kimball. And his grandfather’s father, if you read his footnotes, carried stranded pioneers across the Sweetwater River. And his mission president was longtime Seventy Marion D. Hanks. He’s just full of Church connections. No big deal.
• Quentin L. Cook also pointed out that there are parts of life we can’t control, and COVID really highlighted this, as it affected even people who did things right. In the next session, Shayne M. Bowen trotted out D&C 82:10 (“I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.”) and the prosperity gospel in explaining why he was confident he’d be released when, as a missionary, he was arrested and held in a jail in Chile. Because his patriarchal blessing had said he’d marry and have sons and daughters. Which, of course, he did.

Best admission of human weakness: Jeffrey R. Holland talked about his wife, Pat, who passed away recently. He said that “should I prove worthy,” he could spend eternity with her. It’s probably just a rhetorical flourish, but I think a lot of other GAs would never admit under any circumstances the idea that their worthiness is an open question.
Best admission of happiness outside the Church: Dieter F. Uchtdorf: “We all know people who say that they don’t need God to be happy, that they are happy enough without religion. I acknowledge and respect these feelings.”
Best admission that building lots of temples is at least partly to show growth: Ulisses Soares: “The construction of new houses of the Lord across the world, under the inspired leadership of President Russell M. Nelson, has caused great rejoicing among Church members and serves as an important symbol of the expansion of the Lord’s kingdom.”

Thanks for saying this:

• Gary E. Stevenson: “Love of the Lord is not complete if we neglect our neighbors. This outward love includes all of God’s children without regard to gender, social class, race, sexuality, income, age, or ethnicity.”
• Russell M. Nelson: “We greatly appreciate the cordial and mutually beneficial discussions we had with leaders from Community of Christ that led to this agreement [Church purchase of the Kirtland Temple and other sites, artifacts, and documents].”

Best/Worst sucking up to Russell M. Nelson:

• Ronald A. Rasband quoted him 10 times (although most of the quotes were short).
• Ronald A. Rasband also told a story of how he felt inspired to modify the dedicator prayer of the Bangkok Thailand Temple at the last minute to add some of President Nelson’s latest buzzwords.
• J. Anette Dennis mentioned his name only once in her talk, but did so 21 times (!) in her footnotes.
• Steven R. Bangerter told how he loves to follow President Nelson’s Instagram posts, and he quoted one to prove it.
• Patrick Kearon cited him for a one-word quote: “Fabulous.”
• Massimo De Feo and Dieter F. Uchtdorf didn’t cite him at all.

Most interesting footnotes:

• Quentin L. Cook contrasted the theology of D&C 20 with Calvinism (note 28).
• Dale G. Renlund defined momentum in the context of physics, including its directionality (notes 3 and 9).
• Ulisses Soares reminded us that “Holiness to the Lord” is written in different languages on different temples (note 1).

Longest footnote: Matthew L. Carpenter had a 381-word tome (note 3) where he cited Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie to explain that all ordinances need to be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise.
Most defensive footnote: David A. Bednar had a strange footnote (note 10) where he appeared to be trying to answer the possible objection that two metaphors in the scriptures about building foundations—one where Jesus is part of a foundation, and another where he’s the rock underneath the foundation—aren’t entirely compatible. I’m not entirely clear on his point, but I think his worry is unfounded. I don’t need every metaphor in the scriptures to be reconcilable into one great whole.
Most important line that shouldn’t have been relegated to a footnote: J. Anette Dennis: “We should not seek to judge others’ use of the temple garment.” (note 39)
Most unnecessary footnote: Russell M. Nelson referred to the iron rod and added a footnote (note 22): “Meaning the word of God.”
Best set of footnotes: Gerrit W. Gong added extra commentary that I’m guessing he had to cut from his talk to fit it in the allotted time. Some other speakers did this too, but I enjoyed Elder Gong’s footnotes the most.
Most minimalist set of footnotes: Massimo De Feo had five, four of which refer to one chapter in Mark.

Best story: Dale G. Renlund told of a time when he and his wife and their daughter went on a kayaking excursion. He was overconfident and first got way ahead of them, but then he wasn’t ready for waves and got flipped over. The instructor gave him helpful advice and he was able to get going again. I like that he was willing to tell a story where he looked a little silly.

Worst stories:

• Alexander Dushku told of how he joined with others in praying for a man who was on a ventilator. The man recovered and “he serves today as a stake president.” Does anyone tell similar stories that conclude with the protagonist serving as a nursery worker? Tell me again how there’s no calling rank in the Church?
• D. Todd Christofferson told of a recent convert who typically prepared the sacrament bread, but was told to go home by his branch president one Sunday for fear that he might spread an unknown disease his daughter had been hospitalized with. The man was angry, but ultimately decided that he and his family could only be together as Church members, so he would let his offense go. I don’t find the content of this story objectionable, but I hate that GAs tell stories like this as though they were the typical reason people get offended at church. As Elder Christofferson, original face of the 2015 exclusion policy, should be well aware, offenses at church come from the general level, and are not minor matters.
• Neil L. Andersen told of teens in Heber, Utah, who attended a public meeting to comment in support of a temple the Church is planning to build there. I’m not really concerned with the story itself, but as there is legal arguing ongoing on about the site and the zoning, I think it’s a pretty bad look for Elder Andersen to tell the story now, as it looks like he’s trying to pressure opponents to give in to the Church’s wishes.

Overdone story: Henry B. Eyring told about the collapse of the Teton Dam in Idaho in 1976. I looked it up in the General Conference Corpus, and the Teton Dam has been mentioned 11 times before in conference, with five of those mentions coming from President Eyring alone. Could he branch out maybe a little? Just at random, the 1984 Bhopal disaster, which killed over 2,000 people immediately, and injured over half a million, has never been mentioned in conference. The Teton Dam collapse, by comparison, killed 11 people.

Unique story: Jeffrey R. Holland told of what sounded like a near death experience: “I cannot speak fully of that experience here, but I can say that part of what I received was an admonition to return to my ministry with more urgency, more consecration, more focus on the Savior, more faith in His word.”

What wasn’t said:

• Dieter F. Uchtdorf talked about joy. An obvious source he could have quoted from is Joseph Smith’s infamous “happiness letter” (“Happiness is the object and design of our existence . . .”). But he didn’t. I hope it’s because he didn’t want to bring up the awfulness of Joseph pressuring a much younger woman to become his polygamous wife.
• Neil L. Andersen must have been chomping at the bit to talk about the Church’s purchase of the Kirtland Temple. He even had a section of his talk on the Kirtland Temple. But he didn’t bring up the purchase, I’m guessing because President Nelson mandated that he be the only one to talk about it so other speakers wouldn’t be stealing his thunder.
• When I saw that Gary E. Stevenson, in his talk on the Two Great Commandments, was quoting from Dallin H. Oaks’s talk on the same subject from 2019, I braced for some harsh words. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he quoted a pretty mild part of President Oaks’s talk, and I have to wonder if he wasn’t consciously choosing to acknowledge it but also tone it down into a more kind and less mean version.

Best talks:

• I really appreciated Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s talk on joy. It reminded me of some of his best talks when he was in the First Presidency.
• Dale G. Renlund’s talk had some excellent parts, especially on not judging people when trying to help them. I also loved the kayaking story he told that showed his humanity.
• Patrick Kearon’s first talk as a Q12 member didn’t disappoint. It was simple, but so kind and welcoming. I so appreciate his focus on God’s love and concern for all of us, and I’m kind of amazed that someone with such a generous view of humanity belongs to the same church as other GAs who dearly love reminding us how many rules God has, and how he’s waiting with bated breath to punish us when we break them.

Worst talks:

• I was appalled by Matthew L. Carpenter reprimanding people who wanted to cancel their sealings with bad ex-spouses. His attempted reassurance (echoing Dallin H. Oaks) that God wouldn’t force them to be with someone they didn’t want to in the afterlife just came across as heartless and unconcerned about how it actually feels to be in a bad marriage.
• Ronald A. Rasband’s talk, ostensibly about words (“Words Matter”), while it had a few gestures toward using words in kind rather than cruel ways, mostly boiled down to obsequiousness toward Russell M. Nelson. I thought it was sad how he thought it was so deeply meaningful that he felt moved to insert buzzwords like “think celestial” into a temple dedicatory prayer.
• I found Shayne M. Bowen’s miracle-filled talk discouraging, as someone living in the ordinary world where problems don’t get miraculously solved.
• D. Todd Christofferson’s discussion of three kingdoms of glory wasn’t much better than Dallin H. Oaks’s last conference. Where Elder Kearon celebrates how many people God wants to save, Elder Christofferson hastens to point out that God likes damning people too.
• Dallin H. Oaks scolding people for not wearing temple garments enough feels way down in the weeds to me, not to mention really controlling.
• Jack N. Gerard’s talk was full of us-against-the-world rhetoric that I just find ridiculous and exhausting.

My heretical reviews of past General Conferences:

October 2023
April 2023
October 2022
April 2022
October 2021
April 2021
October 2020
April 2020
October 2019