LDS leaders are poised for a major rollback of secrecy
(OPINION) Mitt Romney’s explanation that he voted to expel President Donald Trump as a duty to God, followed by the president’s religious scorn, renews interest in the senator’s well-known devotion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Journalists also need to know that the nation’s fourth-largest religious body will also be in the news on Feb. 19 for a very different reason. For the first time it will grant members (and thus the media and the public) full access to its governing rulebook.
This is a major breakthrough. The General Handbook prescribes the exercise of powers, procedures, and policies that define the church. The quasi-official Encyclopedia of Mormonism says it is “pre-eminent among Church publications” as “an authoritative guide.” But the contents were long kept secret except for those appointed to church offices.
Religion News Service’s “Flunking Sainthood” columnist Jana Riess, author of the 2019 book The Next Mormons (Oxford), noted that since only males hold office, as a woman she’s been denied access to policies “that potentially affect my life” and open access “helps to empower the general membership” of both genders.
We’re dealing here with the most secretive of America’s major religions.
Its strictly-held financial information is the stuff of legend. The texts of the sacred rituals in temples are kept confidential, and non-members and church members who lack their bishop’s approval cannot attend. (There’s special angst when non-LDS family members cannot witness temple weddings.)
Likewise, the Handbook was carefully distributed with numbered copies that were to be destroyed when no longer in use. (I am forever grateful to the source who provided the 1989 and 1999 editions, which were essential for co-authorship of Mormon America.)
Handbook secrecy hit the news in 1999 when the website of Utah Lighthouse Ministry, an evangelical LDS critic, posted the 17 pages on how to sever church membership. A church agency charged the ministry with copyright violation and got a federal court order not only to remove the Handbook excerpts but omit references to other sources of Handbook material.
The 2010 edition, volume one, on the governing hierarchy’s operations, remained off limits except for office-holders, while the Handbook 2 volume was available online. In next week’s release, the two volumes will be combined into one and fully available online to all.
This release should produce stories galore, for those with the patience and skill to parse religious language.
Check coverage in the Salt Lake Tribune and church-owned Deseret News, and details in the church’s own press release to be posted here. The treatment or total omission of Scouting will obviously be newsworthy, since 106 years of close collaboration ended in January due to differences over sexuality and gender issues.
The media may want to compare the 2010 and 2020 wordings on e.g. abuse occurring in church settings, youth interviews by bishops, dissenting votes against official nominees, women’s role, relations with other religions, improper use of church facilities or proper music and art in worship spaces. Also issues related to abortion, autopsies, birth control, cremation, dancing, dramas, divorce, euthanasia, firearms, funerals, homosexuality, hypnosis, lotteries, organ donations and transplants, out-of-wedlock births, singles, sterilization or stillborn children.
If writers want to pursue Handbook evolution in depth, they should note that columnist Riess (flunkingsainthood@gmail.com) has the secret editions going back to the first one in 1899.
(I have long been concerned about “Secrecy in the Church,” the title of his 1974 book on that subject, and helped the Religion Newswriters Association negotiate the U.S. Catholic bishops’ landmark 1971 decision to open meetings to reporters.)
Point of personal privilege: Let us now dance upon the grave of Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s dictator 1978-2002.
We do this in honor of Odhiambo Okite, a Christianity Today news intern, then newspaper editor in Nairobi who headed the daily at the World Council of Churches assembly there. Later, as leader of Kenya’s government-controlled media, he allowed a mildly critical TV news item. Moi’s goons tossed him into an abusive prison where he went blind from mistreatment of diabetes.
This talented colleague should have been the A.M. Rosenthal or Lester Crystal of East Africa. Instead, he died in 2006 in exile in Wausau, Wisconsin.
Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for the Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.