One time in sacrament meeting, back when I was maybe 11 or 12, one of the men in the ward was giving a talk about something or other. I wasn't paying much attention so I don't remember what he was saying. This was back in the days when speakers had only the slightest of guidelines for their talks. It was also the era when the church was really certain about all sorts of doctrines that are now considered unessential for our salvation/exaltation, or hidden mysteries, or things we just don't know much about and therefore don't talk about anymore (translation: embarrassing stuff).

So, after speaking for several minutes, the bishop suddenly got up, placed his hands on the speaker's shoulders, steered him away from the pulpit, saying, "That's enough of that, brother. Sit down."

Suddenly, I was alert, asking myself, "What just happened?"

As one of the counselors had a hushed exchange with the speaker, the bishop told us that what the speaker had said wasn't approved doctrine and to ignore it.

Aw, man, I didn't know what forbidden thing he had preached. It must have been something way out there in Fringe Doctrine Land, maybe even Fundyland, because other speakers routinely pontificated about scripturally unsupported deep doctrine and such. I guess incidents like that contributed to the brethren clamping down on the content of talks.

Ah, the good old wild and wooly days.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2012 04:27PM by Stray Mutt.

He was teaching that:
Adams is God
Or, Being Black is the sign you have been wicked in the pre existence
Or, Polygamy is the only marriage style in heaven
Or, Blood oaths are necessary
Or, Hoffman has some ancient documents
Or, ....

Something similar happened in a ward when I was a teenager...

There was a family that was really struggling, I think one of the kids had a chronic condition and there were financial troubles... You know things that are private, but everyone in the ward somehow knows...

Anyway, he gave a talk and told a story about the "Saturday's Warrior" musical video that was really popular in the church for a while. He said something about how he was thrilled that he knew his family in the pre-existence, etc.

At the end of the talk, the Bishop jumped up and lovingly put his arm around this guy's shoulder and proceeded to publicly correct him and humiliate him in front of the whole ward because, "Saturday's Warrior" isn't approved church doctrine and shouldn't be taught as such. He was sure that the Brother didn't mean to cause harm or problems, but as the Bishop, it was his duty to make sure that no false doctrine was taught.

My parents, who are as TBM as you can get (I'm pretty sure, if the prophet asked them to kill someone, they would answer, "just the one?") They were mortified for the guy... I mean, you could get the video in the church library, buy it from the church website and here the Bishop publicly humiliated someone who was already on the verge of inactivity over something that even doctrinaly was incredibly trivial.

The Bishop, btw, was a bit of an odd guy... He announced, during a testimony meeting that he didn't love his wife when he married her, because according to the church any man and woman could grow together in the gospel... He later became Stake President.

One of the only things I miss about attending church in a small southern town is the loons that would speak at F&T meeting.

There were a lot of laughs by me and uncomfortable shifting of seats by everyone else back then. We had a bishop who would not stop anyone from talking. It was crazy.

It was usually the Bo Gritz fans/survivalist whistleheads who got that treatment when they started going on and on about the "last days".

That sounds like the weird couple that used to teach Sunday School in my old ward. One week when studying Revelation they started talking about the Gulf War and how the "locusts" were referring to Apache helicopters. (The husband tried to get me to watch videos about microchips being the "mark of the beast" too.) They never taught again.

Or prattle on about the yellow fringe in the American flags in US court rooms means we are under Admiralty law rather than common law?

Oy. I think every mormon ward has fruitbats like that in it.

Now that's one I've never heard of.

That one even made it onto an episode of "King of the Hill." Dale Gribble is in court and notices the gold fringe. He then asks the court to recognize his unfringed flag as an American Flag. The judge says, "sure, whatever."

Supposedly if you do this then it cancels out the fringe-flag effect that the tin-foil-hat people believe in. They call it "capturing the flag."

Here's one website that buys into the idea.

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/flag.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2012 06:53PM by baura.

He even started luring other naive ward members into believing his BS, too.

LMAO...I've seen that video. I have a bunch of other conspiracy cds lying around my house. I haven't watched them, but I'm fairly certain it's all about the dollar bill, Illuminati, and grey vs green aliens.

My Dad got shut down like that sort of. Towards the end of his life and while he was patriarch, he started giving talks about when the end of the world would be. He knew his scriptures and this was his thoery......The scriptures say no one knows the hour or minute when god/Jesus will return to earth.....but it doesn't say you can't know the "day".....so he figured that he had "the day" figured out and started talking around the stake about it.

Had people all freaked out and getting scared, running to the bishops, etc. The leadership told him to stop speaking about it, didn't ask him to speak anymore, and may have done some damage control from the pulpit.

After his dimentia came on and got worse a few years later....he pretty much forgot about church unless someone mentioned it.

"Whistleheads"--that's a keeper.....!

Hahaha we had a developmentally disabled African-American gentleman in my first ward who probably should never have been baptized (he clearly had no idea what was going on). He used to walk around during the passing of the sacrament, ask people for a dollar, and sometimes he would wander up on stage when people were speaking and start pounding the organ. It was HILARIOUS. Once he was asked to give a prayer. He started giving a prayer in the Holiness tradition, "testifying to the Lord." I actually found it to be one of the more moving spiritual moments of my life, and it seemed so genuine and heartwarming. Of course i was trying to stifle my laughter, but it was just so warm and real that you HAD to know that he was only trying to pray to God in the best way he knew. Nothing about it was doctrinally inappropriate, either. Nonetheless, the bishop cut him off. Only time I've EVER seen a prayer cut off in my life in the LDS church. The gentleman never returned. I heard that the bishop asked the couple who had been giving him rides from his group home to stop immediately. Dick. So much for us all being children of our HF...

Here's a re-print from Simon's post a couple of years ago about an elderly woman being shut down at the pulpit. It is a disgusting display of arrogance by a stake priesthood "authority":


This is a repost of something that Simon Southerton posted about a couple of years ago. It popped up in my memory again, and I wanted to post it for all the new folks. I searched around and found it on the website //RfM actually prohibits naming of the website//. There are so many of us who will recognize these actions as typical of the arrogance, bad manners, and uninspired leadership in the Mormon church. The following is about a leader who was "prompted by the spirit" to be an ass. Read and learn:


"I just had a call from a friend of mine, a former Bishop, whose last day at church was Easter Sunday. He didn’t need a motive to stop attending, because he already knew the church is a fraud. He just hadn’t picked a day to stop going. He decided on Easter Sunday that he had just attended church for the last time. This is what he witnessed in his last Sacrament Meeting.

An old lady nervously got up to talk and blue-tacked a picture appropriate to her talk to the front of the podium. She then commenced to give an excellent talk. Ten minutes into her address, a counselor in the Stake Presidency behind her who was visiting the ward stood up and removed the picture. He then took the microphone and announced that he had been prompted by the Spirit to remove the picture as it had been revealed that visual aids were not to be used in Sacrament Meetings.

My friend’s wife stood up and walked out, closely followed by her husband. They were livid, and were soon joined by a dozen other members who had also walked out. It wasn’t long before the elderly lady walked out in tears and left the building. My friends ran after her to comfort her. She told them that it had been 5 years since she had given a talk and she had been worried that she would make a mistake. I am sure they reassured her.

After the meeting my friends had words with the SP member and he defended his actions, explaining the church policy. My friends had a relative from England visiting them, who is extremely TBM. She told him to his face that in all her years in the church she had never witnessed anything as despicable as his behavior.

I am still struggling to come to terms with the depravity of it all. How can someone be so ruthlessly callous, yet think they are doing exactly what God wants done. They can I guess because they belong to a cult. With people of this caliber in a Stake Presidency the cult must be in deep trouble.

Next Sunday my friend will get up at the same time, stroll down the street and buy his first Sunday paper. After a relaxed breakfast of bacon and eggs he will sit down on his front porch and read it from cover to cover. And he will be the happiest man alive. "


NOTE: The message to take home with you today is that LDS "church policy" trumps all, even good manners and Christian compassion.

Sometime in January or February, the new high counsellor in the stake was speaking in our ward. I guess he had been assigned to speak about family history or the new family history model or something. I was too busy trying to keep my son occupied as well as the little foster kids with the family in front of us who'd forgotten to bring things to keep them entertained. So, I don't know all of what he was saying, but he was doing a lot of "How many of you have traced your family history back 4 generations, raise your hand?" And "how many of you are interested in family history? (again expecting a show of hands)" He did that a few times, whipped out the visual aids of the new family history fan or whatever that is, and no one did or said anything because, well, he's the one who was presiding at the meeting.

Yeah. A primary teacher got cut off during her SM talk for using visual aides in my ward when i was in law school. It was sad. You could tell she was really embarrassed and flustered having to give the remaining talk without them.

Of course to an outsider (or even along time exmo) this "no unapproved insanity allowed--only approved insanity allowed" idea is, well, insanity.

If they don't want embarrassing stuff coming out of the mouths of the speakers, perhaps they should hire PROFESSIONAL preachers who only teach their doctrine. Only problem is that the professional would need to have serious memory problems to forget that the doctrine changed from last Sunday. OUCH!
That does explain why only laymen can speak in church. Heaven forbid that someone who knows about doctrine (changing or otherwise) speaks about it.
Church goers should only hear lies about how wonderful Brother or Sister U. Ben Hadd's mission was. GAG!