This episode features guest scholars Melissa Inouye and Caroline Kline, joining us in an engaging discussion about:
- the new book of Hymns and Children’s Songbook,
- the attention to LGBT issues raised by the LoveLoud festival and Believer documentary,
- and the continuing protest against youth interviews including Sam Young’s hunger strike.
Hosted by Patrick Mason and Morgan McKeown
MORGAN: Thank you for joining us for this August 2018 episode of Mormonism Magnified. Just one note before we get started. This conversation was recorded last week, and just as we were about to publish it, the press release came out from President Russel M. Nelson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announcing the new name guidelines, and the desire to eliminate terms like Mormon, Mormonism, and LDS when referring to the Church. So due to timing, we won’t be discussing that topic on this episode, but we want to assure you it will be addressed in depth in our next episode, including implications for the Church, as well as for the name of this podcast. In this August 2018 episode of Mormonism Magnified we’ll be looking at three recent news stories:
- First, the Church’s recent announcement about plans for a new book of Hymns and Children’s Songbook,
- Second, Mormon Dan Reynolds of the rock band Imagine Dragons raising awareness of LGBT Mormon issues though the LoveLoud festival and the HBO Documentary Believer,
- And third, the ongoing protest against children’s interviews within the Church, including the hunger strike from Sam Young.
My name is Morgan McKeown, and with me is my co-host Patrick Mason, who is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and the Dean of Arts and Humanities at Claremont Graduate University.
PATRICK: Always happy to be here, Morgan.
MORGAN: As a reminder, both Patrick and I work together on the Mormon Studies Council at the Claremont Graduate University, and many of the guest scholars on this podcast will have some connection to the Claremont Mormon Studies program. Today we’ve got two outstanding Mormon scholars joining us, the first is Melissa Inouye, who received her PhD in Asian Studies from Harvard University, and who taught at Cal State University and Loyola Marymount before moving to New Zealand.
MELISSA: I teach Asian studies at the University of Auckland, and I also research Global Mormonism.
MORGAN: Melissa is also the creator of the website globalmormonstudies.org, and she was a speaker at the recent Global Mormon Studies Conference at Claremont.
PATRICK: I think more and more people are getting to know Melissa through her many writings, and she is definitely, in my mind, one of the essential and most insightful voices about not just Mormonism around the globe, but any issue with contemporary Mormonism. So just really grateful to have you with us Melissa.
MELISSA: It’s nice to be here, thanks for having me.
MORGAN: Our second guest scholar is Caroline Kline, who recently received her PhD in Religion from Claremont Graduate University, with a focus on Women’s Studies in Religion.
CAROLINE: I just finished my dissertation, and it examines the oral histories of Mormon women of color in the United States, in Botswana, and in Mexico. And it discusses the way these women understand and navigate Mormonism’s gendered theology and practice.
PATRICK: I have to say that Caroline’s dissertation is one of the best that I’ve read, and we can’t wait until it comes out so that everybody can read it. It’s really terrific work. And of course Caroline’s been a really important voice on all kinds of Mormon issues, but especially Mormon women’s issues for many many years. So great to have you with us Caroline.
CAROLINE: Thanks Patrick.
New Book of Hymns and Children’s Songbook
MORGAN: Let’s jump right into the first topic. In June 2018, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced plans for a new book of Hymns and a new Children’s Songbook. Before we talk about the implications of that, let’s discuss briefly the important role that music and hymns have played historically within Mormonism.
CAROLINE: It seems to me that hymns have been absolutely central to Mormon worship since the beginning. They’ve been used as communal prayers to God. They’ve been used to build a spirit of community. They’ve been used to teach doctrine.
PATRICK: The hymn books are underappreciated sources for understanding Mormon culture and Mormon belief. And the Church has gone through all kinds of hymn books over the years, going back to the first hymn book as compiled by Emma Smith. And you can look at each of these hymn books as a kind of snapshot of what was the Church like at that particular moment. What were the main priorities? What were the values? What were the core beliefs? Because the selection of hymns is a political process. I don’t mean that in the negative sense, but I mean it in the sense that the people make prudential decisions about what goes in, what gets left out, what is the message that we want to share.
MELISSA: Mormonism is a religion of practice. In some ways the things that we do as Latter-day Saints are much more consequential than the things that we believe officially. For instance, in local cultures of the Church, people have favorite hymns, they have hymns that they sing all the time, they have hymns that they don’t sing. The hymns are part of the culture of the Church, and they shape the common tenets of belief that circulate within the congregation. So I’m not saying that belief isn’t important. But I’m saying that hymns are a really important way in which people enact their beliefs, or live their beliefs, or make certain beliefs front and center, while other beliefs are less so. Especially in terms of Primary. Primary hymns are really important.
CAROLINE: It strikes me that it’s been very interesting the last couple of decades to see the kinds of songs that are coming out in Primary that really are aimed at teaching doctrine as opposed to the sort of fun “popcorn popping” kinds of songs that I grew up with. So certainly they’re very powerful in terms of teaching Mormon beliefs.
MORGAN: It’s clear that the songs of Mormonism have a large impact on the lives of the members of the Church. So with that context, let’s look at this Church announcement. It mentions the new Hymn book and Children’s Songbook would offer a consistent core collection of hymns and songs in every language that “reflects the diverse needs of the global Church.” It also says that there would be the same hymns and same hymn numbers in all languages, but that there would be additional sacred music online in each language, including music of local interest. Furthermore, they announced that they would first be gathering feedback using an online global survey, and that they would also be accepting new songs for possible inclusion in these new songbooks. What are some of the global implications of all that?
PATRICK: I think this Hymn book is obviously going to much more globally oriented. And it speaks to a church that wants to… this is sort of the hymn book for the beginnings of Mormonism’s third century, when it wants to and aspires to become more than just an American church, let alone a Wasatch front church, and really be a global church. So I think it’s exciting. We’ll see how the end product looks, but I think we’re going to look at this new hymn book as having the imprint of a globalized Mormonism, for the first time really.
MELISSA: I was really impressed to see that the survey that’s supposed to collect all these things is in multiple languages. And I clicked on the language button, and I just laughed out loud for joy, because there are about 40 or 50 languages listed here, from Hungarian to Polish to Romanian to Samoan, so it was amazing. So I’m so happy that they’re collecting this information, getting feedback in all these languages, it’s just fantastic.
CAROLINE: I’m excited by the announcement which mentioned that there’s a high probability that the new hymn book would actually feature songs originating in other languages, and then translated into English, for English speakers, which I thought was just such a wonderful thing to have happen. Because it’s a chance for people on the margins of the Church to meaningfully inform what is so often considered the center of the Church in the United States. And so often in LDS history the thrust has been knowledge, and information, and materials, and directions originating in the US and then being exported to other locations in the world. But here’s this opportunity for the rest of the world to redirect that flow of information and materials, and offer to English speaking Saints the most beautiful and holy music of their cultures.
PATRICK: I think the other thing that is worth mentioning along these lines is that they’ve indicated that probably in most or all print versions they won’t publish national anthems. Maybe they will still digitally, but the national anthems won’t be part of the official hymn book. In some ways that’s a return to the original sensibilities of Mormonism as a transnational religious movement, where nation states were NOT the main focus of organization. They just don’t show up in the early revelations. So this sense that the kingdom of God is not limited to or even complicit in the nation state project… removing those national anthems speaks towards that.
MORGAN: In addition to these global implications, what are some of the other shifts that we might expect, or that you might personally hope to see in the new song books?
CAROLINE: I’m really hoping that we can possibly change some of the male gendered language which permeates about 1/3 of our hymns. They use male gendered language when it’s really not necessary. And it would be so easy to change those “men” and “mankind” and “sons” and “brothers” to gender neutral terms like “Saints” or “all” or “souls.” There’s lots of options there. So I’m very hopeful that there might be some change on that score.
MELISSA: Amen. That’s awesome. I hope the new hymn book very sensibly accommodates for a range of instruments. Because sometimes the problem is not using the musical talents of members of the Church in a given location. The question is whether members of the church in that location who are musically talented can play the very small range of instruments that are listed in the handbook as being acceptable for use in Church. Guitars, drums… there are people who are incredibly talented musicians, but who don’t play the two European instruments.
PATRICK: I’ll be really interested to see what they do in terms of musical styles, because the 1985 hymn book was produced in an era where Mormonism was really emphasizing reverence. And that’s continued to be an important cultural norm for the Church. But what it means in practice is the Mormon hymnody is awfully boring most of the time.
MELISSA: Very boring.
PATRICK: And everybody comments on this. Everybody knows it. Now in some ways people appreciate the kind of reverent nature of the hymns, and so forth, but even the Primary songs… many of them are not very fun. Every summer we send our kids to a local Methodist Bible camp, and it’s terrific and the kids love it. And the music is so much more engaging. And it’s also teaching about Jesus, and it’s teaching doctrine, and it’s teaching good principles. So it does all the same things functionally that our Primary song book does, but it does it with music that engages these children in a whole different way.
MELISSA: On that same note, I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, visiting my parents-in-law when they were mission presidents there, and I remember walking in the outside area of an LDS chapel. And all of a sudden, around the corner I heard this joyful music… people were singing in harmony, it was exultant, it was loud, it was buoyant. There were these drums, it was rising and falling. It was so exciting. I ran around the corner and it was the “tent” church next door to our church. And they were having their own Christian worship service under this tent, having this fabulous time. I go into the chapel, and someone has put a small, half sized electronic keyboard on two chairs… And it’s just completely the opposite musical feeling.
CAROLINE: I think these are all great points, and let me echo what other people have said about hoping for some new variants in terms of music, musical style. I went to Botswana three years ago, and I attended church there, and I was really struck by the noticeable awkwardness that was there when it came to people singing hymns in Church. A real lack of enthusiasm. And it left me thinking that these songs, these hymns just did not work for them. And wouldn’t it be terrific if they could sing in a different musical style that did resonate more with their spirituality. So I’m really hopeful that maybe we can have some variation in terms of new musical style when this new hymn book comes out.
PATRICK: People who put these books together have to keep in mind, there’s a cautionary tale from other churches who have dramatically changed musical styles overnight, and I’m thinking especially of Roman Catholics in the wake of Vatican II, where they went from high Latin mass to, almost overnight, they introduced folk music. And the whole idea was to do it in the vernacular, in the musical styles that were appropriate to each culture. And it left a lot of people feeling cold, actually. So what was meant to connect with people in their local context actually left people saying, “There’s nothing special here. If I want to listen to pop music I’ll turn on the radio. That’s not what I come to church for. I come to church for a sense of transcendence, not for something that’s more low-brow” (or what they interpreted as that). So there is always a danger in shifting too much in terms of vernacular musical style, and leaving a sense that sacred music is something different and distinct from what you listen to Monday through Saturday.
MELISSA: There is the danger of having the pendulum swing too far, but you can mitigate that extensively by not assuming you’re going to produce a hymn book that everyone’s going to love. If this new hymn book is not only a new hymn book and a new Primary song book, but also a new paradigm shift in how we approach music, giving more flexibility to people locally, then people will be free to adjust what was working in the past, and what would be awesome now.
PATRICK: It will be really interesting to see how they do it, because my sense is that there will still be one hymn book and one Primary song book for the whole Church, but that electronically or digitally there will be some possibilities for variations. That will be really interesting to see how they do that in terms of maintaining Church-wide unity, this sense that I can go to any ward in the world and still sing the same hymns – which Mormons really value, and I think does have a unifying effect for a global Church. But at the same time being sensitive to local cultures. So how you pull that off, that’s a really tough proposition.
MORGAN: The Church hasn’t given us a timeframe for the new song books, but since they’re allowing submissions of new music until July of 2019, we can assume it will be some time after that.
LoveLoud/Believer/LGBT Issues
MORGAN: Let’s move to our next topic: LGBT issues with relationship to Mormonism, which have been front and center in national news, popular talk shows, and other media, in large part due to Dan Reynolds. Dan is a Mormon who became the frontman and lead singer for the musical group Imagine Dragons, currently one of the most well known rock bands in the world. Last year, Dan organized a musical festival called LoveLoud to draw attention to the Church’s positions on gay rights and rising suicide rates among teens in Utah. The 2017 festival was held in Provo, UT, featured prominent bands including Imagine Dragons and the Neon Trees, and sold out with 20,000 tickets thanks at least partially to what could be called a public endorsement from the Church. And I think it’s worth quoting a part of that Church statement to give you a sense of it, “We applaud the LoveLoud Festival for LGBT youth’s aim to bring people together to address teen safety and to express respect and love for all of God’s children.” Dan’s experience leading to the 2017 LoveLoud festival was captured in an HBO Documentary called Believer, which was recently released this summer. LoveLoud has now become an annual festival, with the 2 nd and larger event selling out with 45,000 tickets this July in Salt Lake City. It was again endorsed at least to some degree publicly by the Church, who emphasized that they remain committed to efforts to prevent suicide and bullying. Around that time the Church also made a public donation to Affirmation, an LGBT support group for suicide prevention efforts. So there continues to be a significant amount of activity, media attention and public interest in these issues. Let’s first discuss the broader context for all this.
CAROLINE: The context of all this is that there has been a lot of tension in the 21st century American Mormon Church over LGBT issues. It started, in the year 2000 with Prop 22 in California, and then in 2008 with Prop 8. And then of course in 2015 with the exclusion policy which prevents children of gay couples from getting baptized. And I think that these moves that the Church has made to affirm that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and to try to see that put into our legal system, it’s been very controversial in many Mormon circles, and it’s been painful for many Mormons, especially ones that lean a little bit towards progressive issues. And, another part of the context is that in the last few years, there have been some Mormon musicians like Tyler Glenn of the Neon Trees and Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons who have become very popular. And these musicians are very sympathetic to LGBT issues in the case of Dan Reynolds, or are actually LGBT themselves like Tyler Glenn. And these are musicians that are willing to use their voices as they perform to highlight LGBT issues and issues like LGBT youth suicide in Utah. So I think this is the greater context of it. And it’s been very interesting to see how the Church is reacting.
MORGAN: Thanks for that historical context, Caroline. Let’s hear some thoughts on how the Church is reacting to Dan Reynolds and others who, if anything, seem to be getting more and more attention on these issues.
PATRICK: This is not going to go away any time soon. And the Church is not going to change its official doctrine and practices anytime soon. And of course, the LGBT community becomes more and more accepted and embraced by the general culture. And we’re talking here mostly about North America and Europe. I think it plays out rather differently in many other places in the world, especially in the global south, where homosexuality is still not accepted, and in many places still criminalized. But at least in the North American Church, this is not going to go away anytime soon, especially because we know from polling numbers and other studies that the Church is losing the battle with its younger members. They have big questions about this. They have gay friends. They have gay family members. They don’t quite understand the Church’s teaching, or even if they understand it, they’re not quite sure how to fit it in with their lived experience. And I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing with people like Dan Reynolds, who just can’t quite square his friendships and, in the LGBT community, the values that he sees there… a culture of openness and tolerance and embrace of difference. A kind of widespread pluralism. How do you square that with the Church’s teachings in the 21st century? It’s very tough. And so the Church is going to keep fighting this battle. But it’s an uphill battle, especially for many of its younger members.
MELISSA: I will say that the Church has taken some very significant steps. I do think that they’re working hard. And I feel like the site previously was “Mormons and Gays” and now its “Mormon and Gay” as if you can be both. And that site is hosted at LDS.org. And it contains a really interesting mix of content. On the one hand, it’s people like Dallin H. Oaks kind of laying down the law, and saying, “these are the rules, you have to follow the rules.” At the same time it contains these very authentic, very interesting and moving portraits of gay Latter-day Saints themselves, telling their story in their own voice. And that’s just really significant compared to where we’ve been.
CAROLINE: I agree that certainly the Church is cultivating at some points a more conciliatory tone towards LGBT people and LGBT issues. And like Melissa says, it comes out in the Mormon [and Gay] website. It comes out in the reaction to the Loveloud festival, when the Church actually affirmed it and praised it. However, I want to emphasize that the actual policies and teachings are not really changing. I mean you still have the exclusion policy from 2015 where children of gay people cannot be baptized. We still have gay [married] couples labeled as apostates and potentially liable for excommunication. And so there certainly is a digging in on some level, but on the other hand, like Melissa talks about, we also have some more conciliatory rhetoric coming around. And so I kind of see both things simultaneously happening.
MELISSA: I think that the Church itself realizes that this issue is not going to go away. And since it’s not going to go away, it’s better for LGBT Latter-day Saints to not kill themselves. It’s better for them to feel like they can come to church. So I feel like this is kind of a preliminary phase… a phase that we’re going through. This is kind of a confusing, in-between time. I feel like if you look at other issues, other controversial social or cultural issues in Mormon history, those things eventually tend to resolve.
MORGAN: Is there anything else from this particular situation with Dan Reynolds that struck you as different than what we’ve seen previously on these LGBT issues within Mormonism?
CAROLINE: Well, I’ll say one last thing. I watched the Believer documentary last night. And one thing I was struck by, in terms of watching LDS culture possibly change on this issue, was the way that Dan Reynolds seemed to be trying to model a middle path in Mormonism. Throughout this Believer documentary he affirms over and over again that he is a Mormon. He says it over and over again, “I’m a Mormon. I’m a Mormon. And yet, I cannot go along with the Church on this one issue when it comes to LGBT stuff.” And so, I thought this was a really interesting position to take. And it seemed like he was trying to model this way of stepping away from in-and-out, black/white rhetoric when it comes to being a Mormon, and modeling a much more nuanced path forward. And, as this was a young guy with a lot of young Mormon followers, it would be very interesting to see if younger generations of Mormons also try to cultivate this similar nuanced way forward in Mormonism.
MELISSA: I agree with what Caroline says. I think we are moving away from the modern era which my uncle Charles who studies modernism at Tufts University says is the era of “one to many.” And the post-modern era is the era of “many to many.” And, I think that Mormonism is so complex in the ways that people live their beliefs, and interact with each other within our faith community has become so complex that it’s not an all-inclusive package anymore. And the kind of decentralization that we’re seeing around the Church systematically seems to be embracing this idea that it is possible to find true Latter-day Saints everywhere, and to find that they have different perspectives on the kind of mix of doctrines and practices that make someone a Latter-day Saint.
Protests and Hunger Strike Against Youth Interviews
MORGAN: Let’s move to our final topic. In our previous episode, we talked about the Church rolling out policy changes for interviews, including interviews with youth. Some people feel that those changes still don’t go far enough. The biggest protest group is called Protect LDS Children, and they recently gathered 50,000 signatures demanding further change. One of their biggest areas of contention is the practice of Bishop’s worthiness interviews with youth, which they claim puts both the Bishop and the teenagers in an inappropriate and uncomfortable position of discussing sexual matters one-on-one behind closed doors. One of the leaders of the movement, a former Bishop named Sam Young, has made national news recently with a hunger strike to draw attention to the issue. Let’s talk first about the approach. What are your thoughts on the method Sam Young has chosen here with his hunger strike and media attention?
MELISSA: I feel that the less effective way to make changes in the Church is to interact with the Church as people interact with political organizations. I feel that when people interact with the Church as if it’s a political organization, or a government office, it always goes badly. Because you then force the Church to respond the way that a political organization or a strategic office would respond. And that’s always not the kind of response we want to get out of an organization that wants to represent Christ.
CAROLINE: I think Melissa makes terrific points there. I will say that while I absolutely think she’s right in naming some of the costs of this kind of action, I understand where it’s coming from. When an individual is faced with something that really really bothers him, he has very little access to those high-up, Church hierarchy people. And so, yeah, he can talk to his local Bishop, he can talk to his Stake President, but they don’t have the power to fix it. And so, what someone like Sam Young is left with is going public. Because that’s a way to reach our most powerful leaders and to get their attention. Is it effective? Maybe it doesn’t always work out the way the people who initiated the actions hope it will work out. But I think they feel like they want to be heard. And using publicity and press is a way to make our LDS leadership accountable for their knowledge over what’s going on, or the situation, or the problems that these people want to talk about.
MORGAN: Let’s dive in now to the issue itself: what’s the context behind why this is being brought up now.
PATRICK: On this issue of Bishop’s interviews with children… we have to recognize that this is a long-standing practice within Mormonism that I think the majority of Church members have felt to be, not only a necessary evil, but actually a positive good. I think many Church members have historically felt like one of the strengths of the Church has been the way that it has mobilized the resources of a number of different adult leaders who have been positive role models in their children’s lives. Especially during the teenage years, when we all know that the relationship between kids and parents is oftentimes fraught. And so, many LDS parents are very grateful for the influence of adult leaders who step in and fill some of that role as positive leaders. And Bishops are a crucial point of this. Now, I think that Sam Young and the other people who are concerned about the way the Church has done interviews would acknowledge all of that. They say, “Absolutely, we want positive adult role models in our children’s lives. We are concerned about both the prospect, and sadly, the occasionally reality of abuse entering into some of those situations.” Not only in terms of explicit sexual abuse and the risks and dangers there of having an adult and a teenager in a closed room together talking about sexual activity and sexual practices. But also just the appropriateness of that, especially in the moment that we’re in right now, in a kind of #MeToo moment where we have appropriately heightened sensitivities about the proper relationships between the sexes and between adults and children, and the way that we talk about sex both in public and in private. And so, that context I think is essential to understand why did this surface now. It’s not a mystery. We’re more sensitive to these issues now. The question is really, how do you maintain this cherished practice, and really important pastoral practice of a Bishop being able to provide pastoral guidance to youth who may not want their parent in the room when they’re talking about tough things. Or another youth leader. You know, who may want to be able to confess transgressions with a Bishop privately, and to do that. So what happens when the youth doesn’t want the adult in the room… do we respect that wish, or do we say the youth is a minor and we’re not going to respect that wish. Just like they might want to drink alcohol, but we don’t make it legal for them. They don’t always know what’s best for them. And so, even if they wish to have a private encounter with the Bishop in that kind of pastoral setting, do we think that as a Church society that that’s the best thing for them.
CAROLINE: I think that there’s some potential changes that could be made even if we want to retain the interview process and keep this practice of other adults mentoring and counseling with our young people. Even if we want to retain that, perhaps it’s possible to have the young women talk to their young women leader about sexual practice, rather than to the Bishop. Or maybe we can get a woman in the room whenever there’s a teenage girl being interviewed about her chastity status. So it seems like there might be things like that that we could consider that might play down some of the risks involved in this practice.
MELISSA: I absolutely agree with you, Caroline, and I hope that these kinds of internal changes are in the works.
CAROLINE: (H4) For me one of the major concerns I have with the practice personally is not that the bishop is going to sexually abuse the youth who’s in the room. I think that almost never happens. Almost every bishop out there has the best of intentions towards young people. My concern, and I think Sam Young’s concern would revolve more around the lack of training bishops have when it comes to talking about human sexuality and development. And maybe they’re just not always equipped to have helpful conversations with youth who are navigating their sexuality. Maybe these conversations lead to a lot of shaming, self-loathing, and so forth. And so that’s a risk. Not to mention the risk of normalizing invasive questions in terms of older men talking to vulnerable young people and getting them accustomed to talking with these older people about sexually explicit things. This is what sometimes people refer to as grooming. And it could be setting them up for abuse in other situations, even if the bishop himself is not going to abuse this person. So it does seem to me like there are some serious issues here. I think that Church leaders really do need to wrestle with this issue and think about how they can mitigate against some of these very negative potentialities here.
MELISSA: It seems like a very sensible thing to do, especially given the way that people now have more access to public media outlets to make their grievances or their concerns known. So I feel like the Church leaders are aware of all of these issues that we are discussing. I think that they are aware of all of the possible options that are on the table. I think it’s a real challenge to steer a ship like the Church. It’s so big. It has so much gravity in different ways. And inertia. So, I’m sympathetic to those challenges; at the same time, I feel the pain of people who suffer because of certain policies or the ways that we do things in the Church.
CAROLINE: I will say, the Church came out with this statement about these interviews, and I’m looking at the handbook statement, it’s handbook 1, section 7:4, and it’s called “Protecting Against Misunderstandings.” And what struck me about this paragraph, and this section, which says that if a youth or a woman wants, they can have someone come into the interview with them, and there should always be a parent or someone close by in an adjoining room. I think those are good moves in the right direction, for sure. However, I think that this shows that they don’t quite get the problem from Sam Young’s perspective. I think someone like Sam Young would say, “The goal should not be to protect against misunderstandings (which is the title of the section), the goal should be to protect against abuse.” And so by even titling the section “Protect Against Misunderstandings,” they’re just not acknowledging the abusive potential in this setup.
PATRICK: This is really tough, because the Church is so invested in teaching and maintaining the boundaries of chastity as the Church defines it. And we all know that teenagers do engage in sexual activity. And so the Church starts to maintain and police these boundaries at the age of 12. But that becomes really tricky, I mean I know of Bishopric members who have for instance a 12 year old boy come into the room, and he wants a temple recommend so that he can go do baptisms for the dead. And the Bishopric member says, “Do you keep the law of chastity?” And the boy says, “What’s that?” And now all of a sudden, is the Bishopric member there to teach about sex and sexuality and to give the chastity talk in that setting? And if not, is the temple recommend given or withheld from this 12 year old boy (or it could be a girl)? So it’s really fraught. On the one hand, the Church absolutely wants to maintain the integrity of its teachings about chastity and recognize that begins at a very early age. But how do you actually manage this practice? It’s very very difficult. And I think all your points… the potential’s not just explicit sexual abuse, of which, thankfully there are very very few reported cases. And hopefully we will not see more of those cases. But all of the less formal ways that you talked about Caroline, ways that these interviews can just be really tough for everyone involved. And so how we manage that moving forward… I think more training, we do trainings all the time in the Church. And so that does seem to be a possibility in terms of trainings on how to talk about sex and sexuality with teenagers.
MELISSA: I think the most important thing we can do is to have conversations at the local level. Because it’s not like people who lead the Church don’t interact with actual people. They’re not in a bubble. They are aware of the conversations that people are having. And I think those conversations and the shifts that we make in our culture really do have an effect.
MORGAN: And on that note, we hope that this episode has given you some valuable insights to make your own local conversations even more meaningful. We want to thank our guest scholars Melissa Inouye and Caroline Kline for being with us today. And we especially want to thank you for listening. You can find us on the web at MormonismMagnified.com, and you can send your feedback to us at MormonismMagnified@gmail.com. Mormonism Magnified is independently produced and is not an official production of either the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Claremont Graduate University. Please remember to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you’re listening, and we’ll look forward to having you with us on our next episode of Mormonism.