LDS Correlation: Its Strengths and Weaknesses
The priesthood correlation program in the LDS church gives rise to challenging questions that are not altogether easy to answer. With its filtering mechanism to select, shape, censure, and simplify important doctrinal issues, I am led to ask—
What are the costs and benefits of this program? What are its strengths and weaknesses? How might a broad, unifying curriculum damage the questing-questioning spirit of the gospel? How might it be of aid? Is boredom a problem? If the goal is doctrinal unification, how do we reconcile past doctrine with new, paradoxical doctrine? Which prophetic teachings do we embrace? Which do we jettison? Are we destined to become pious automatons as a result of this program? Or is there still a way to resist such systemization, to rise above the parroted clichés, to become involved in an intensely personal act of self-transformation because of, or perhaps even in spite of, this program?
As I see it, the revelation of a panoramic correlation effort has done well to eliminate wild theology and stifle its chaotic, uncontrolled expressions. Such expressions, had they been maintained, would have led to the dissolution of LDS authority at wide and dismissal of coherent LDS religion as it now exists. Students of early church history understand this well. They know how widely incoherent the early brethren’s views were on doctrinal issues.
Brigham Young and Orson Pratt, for example, argued over the nature of intelligence; one saw intelligence as a progressive-democratic eternality, the other as a benevolent, hierarchal dictatorship. John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff disagreed on the eternal merits of polygamy. Joseph Fielding Smith favored creationism; James Talmage took to evolution. Bruce McConkie defended the idea of an epistemic divine ceiling that even God himself could not surpass, while B.H. Roberts defied this idea and taught the doctrine of progressive, divine eternalism.
All of these capricious views raise serious and troubling questions: If the brethren themselves, being called of God, are not bound together with unified hearts and minds, how can the average lay member of the church even begin to rely upon their teachings? Whose views are most favorable? Whose views lead us closer to Christ? Would the church not self-destruct in the wake of such disorderliness?
These questions, for some, have led to doubt, distrust, and disenchantment.
It is no wonder then why between the 1920’s and 1960’s careful attention was given to install a Correlation Committee under the direction of the First Presidency to screen and filter those opinions, quotes, and other historical documents that contradicted the official positions, policies and doctrines of the church. Widespread consistency and a unified curriculum was desperately needed to avoid the protestant schisms and fractured versions of Mormonism from rising up and destroying group harmony. To do this it became apparent that the words of living oracles had to overrule the words of dead ones. The same still holds true today within the LDS Church.
The philosophic ground and hermeneutical permutations of church doctrine that led to the death of the speculative tradition and the birth of the correlation tradition is, to me, something to be feared and revered. I will discuss here just a few of the shortcomings and potential dangers this program inadvertently has on the gospel spirit and conclude with the positive impacts this program means to engender upon members as a whole.
One defect of correlation screening lies in its tendency to dehumanize, to turn us into robots that speak the same, feel the same, dress the same, heaven forbid—bear testimony using the same catch phrases and buzz words. Individuality feels lost in this program. Groupthink is overvalued. The more inquiring of us get bored easily at church. And as a result of this mass roboticism we take an overly simplistic approach towards teaching church history, principles, etc. Latter-day Saints (especially eighteen-year old missionaries) who come across anti-Mormon literature because of rumors they hear or those who challenge them in the streets are typically less prepared to deal with difficult statements, doctrines, and practices performed by past church authorities.
For example, few church members know of Joseph Smith’s involvement in treasure digging, or that he used a peep stone to translate The Book of Mormon. They know little to nothing about issues of plural marriage and blacks and the priesthood, let alone the racist speech acts of Brigham Young and Bruce McConkie. They never knew Joseph was a practicing mason, that he drank alcohol the night of his martyrdom, or that he ordered the destruction of a public printing press in Carthage, Illinois that some argued was a breach of freedom of the press.
These kinds of issues and others are rarely if at all discussed in the church at wide. They slip through the cracks as though history were being forgotten, or erased like in some George Orwell novel. This, of course, has drastic consequences. People leave the church, get shunned, lose families, embitter marriages, grow angry, anxious, and depressed, feel isolated and alone, and in extreme cases, commit suicide.
I personally feel that if these things were confronted and dealt with during Sunday school there would be less of an impulse for some to react with fear and disaffection when learning about them. Many have needlessly left the church over these issues because of what they feel is some clandestine cover-up, or ploy made by their leaders to hide embarrassment and failure. They feel they’re being lied to. They feel betrayed by those they trusted.
Admittedly, I’m not sure exactly why we omit these troubling points, other than they are troubling. I’m hesitant even to say we should incorporate this stuff into our curriculum because very few of us could probably faithfully situate these facts into a narrative without coming across painfully apologetic. I mean, suppose our leaders were in some cases actually wrong, racist, suspect, or imperfect. Would this warrant then a swift, sweeping explanation on behalf of the correlated apologist, whose attitude is sometimes dismissively naïve? Or worse, would this warrant the critic to claim that the entire church must then be false?
Neither approach I think is desirable. I think the mere fact that ugly truths exist showcases very humbly that God has and always will use imperfect people to bring about His purposes. No amount of finger-pointing, or singling out human weakness, can ever pigeonhole the Gospel Spirit. There is the Gospel Spirit and then there is us—we who interpret that Spirit, who try to live up to its magnificent heights. We don’t always do that. But neither do our leaders. And that may come as a surprise to some members of the church.
For me, knowing that my leaders are fallible provides an opportunity for me to exercise faith and forgiveness on behalf of those who meant to live well but sometimes came up short. There is nothing wrong with this. If anything, it leads me to believe that God hardly holds prophets to higher standards than myself, so I shouldn’t at all be surprised when I discover that they’re actually humans. I would hope others judge me by the same standard.
Correlation means to do well. It means to sanitize the world, to simplify the gospel for the lowest common denominator so that no soul is left behind. This proves exacerbating for the intellectual who desires to learn the meatier mysteries, or at least discuss them realistically in Sunday school. But, in the spirit of Eugene England, the fact that correlation creates exacerbation and boredom in the intellectual is among its strengths. Correlation-laden lessons engender those weightier virtues in the intellectual, of love, humility, longsuffering, meekness, etc. Those virtues come to the intellectual not by being surrounded by other like-minded smarty pants, who, as we know it, puff up his ego, but by learning to love, yes, love—love even the idiot who said in my priesthood lesson last week that God could have instantly waved a wand to make us like him, if it so were his desire. Yes, even those who preach false doctrine need to be loved.
But I digress.
Correlation seems to me like a personified father. It wants to rigorously protect us from the ugliness of the world, even at the cost of shielding us from certain truths. This is not the same as saying that correlation is necessarily deceptive. It merely means that our historical record is complex. It’s muddy, ambiguous, raging with imperfection, so much that if our attention is given wholly to quibbling over the reality that human weakness exists, we’re losing sight of what the gospel, in its purest form, means to inspire in the lowliest of the low.
President Packer illustrates this idea in the following way: “I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting. It destroys. We should only focus on those aspects of the truth that inspire and uplift.”
Correlation is very much dedicated to the inspirational, devotional aspects of our discipleship. It values love over truth, which is to say it places love in a primacy relation to truth—not to minimize or ignore it— but is suspect of those who use the truth to malign others or to weave anti-Christ narratives. It is here that I agree most with the correlation effort, believing that while the modern LDS church at wide has sadly lost the questing-questioning spirit of the early pre-correlated church, I can still marvel at how it means to bring the divine and the human together through simple acts of priesthood service, ordinances, and basic principles taught in the classroom. Correlation is not about accelerating our knowledge at the cost of losing others. It is about calling those “others” our brothers and sisters and waiting, hoping, and working with them as they receive the gospel. Milk for milk, and meat later on. That is how I think the divine works with each of us.
(DMS)
