Cassandra Hedelius

Several weeks ago, I was excited to learn Elder Quentin L. Cook would be visiting our Annapolis, Maryland Stake Conference. (When I learned he had brought his wife, Mary, I was even more thrilled.) My husband’s calling required him to attend the Saturday afternoon priesthood leadership meeting, and I rode down with him to avoid having to drive down by myself for the Saturday evening adult session. I settled in on the couch in the foyer to listen to the priesthood meeting, and will always be grateful to have heard what I heard.

Elder Cook shared some prepared thoughts, and then opened the meeting for questions. My husband was called on, and asked about a matter concerning the Church’s teachings about families and LGBT individuals. Elder Cook first answered the particular detail my husband sought, but then continued in a much more personal vein.

He reminisced about presiding over a San Francisco stake in the early 1980s, when the city was an early gathering place for many LGBT individuals and social tensions were high, in part due to the AIDS scare. Elder Cook found himself responsible for many heartbroken individuals in extraordinarily difficult circumstances–––diagnosed with a terrifying disease, estranged from their families and the Church, sometimes disowned by their families and shunned by members of the Church, alone and unmoored as death approached.

Elder Cook’s recounting of this situation was no humdrum recital–––his voice shook with plain emotion. His descriptions of the men he tried to help were incredibly tender. It was obvious that even all these decades later, the love he felt for those men, and his sympathy for their pain, had stricken him to the core.

Elder Cook ended his answer with a forceful command to love everyone, and especially LGBT members. To try harder to reach out with compassion and understanding.

When new Church policies cause controversy, it’s tempting to suppose our experience, joined with the experience of the multitude of voices weighing in on social media, gives us sufficient wisdom to judge. It’s good to learn from others, and to have the easy opportunity to learn from so many others via the internet. But those voices can give us no insight into the motives and hearts of the leaders responsible for the policy–––only assumptions that often reveal more about the assumer than about Church leaders.

I share my experience listening to Elder Cook not because it will resolve the debate about the new Church Handbook policy on baptisms and parents in same-sex relationships, but because part of that debate is perpetuating a troubling falsehood. The accusations that the Brethren are bigots and clueless about people out in the real world are false. The accusations that the Brethren are acting out of hatred or ignorance are false.

Sustaining our leaders means, at the very least, extending to them sufficient benefit of the doubt to reject such accusations. Fully reject accusations against Church leaders; don’t let conventional wisdom and assumptions constantly repeated by others start to cloud your judgment. I fear that even when we don’t agree “the Brethren are bigots,” we almost subconsciously incorporate some cynicism into our opinions of them just because we see the accusations repeated so often. We conclude so much smoke proves at least a tiny fire. We have to consciously reject that false conclusion.

Church leaders are not automatons at a podium. They’ve led full lives and had broad experience. There’s no Utah bubble to hide in for Church leaders, because to be a high-level Church leader, even in Utah, is to deal with a constant stream and bewildering variety of hard and heartbreaking situations.

And to be a former Stake President in San Francisco is to have a deeply compassionate and loving perspective on the situation of LGBT members. That’s not incompatible with the new policy.

The news that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plans to develop some of its ranchland in Florida for commercial and residential use has prompted the incorrect story that the Church is “building a city.” The implication is that the Church would own or control the eventual city. This is untrue.

Deseret Ranches has owned the 290,000 acre ranch for 60 years. Last year it acquired a further 380,000 acres. The Ranch plans to convert 130,000 acres of land to commercial and residential use over several decades, and is working with Osceola County officials to envision what eventual development would entail.

Understanding the real estate development process is key to understanding the Ranch’s intentions. The owner of a large parcel of land who wants to sell his land to businesses and homeowners cannot simply put out a “for sale” sign. Building on such a large parcel involves a great deal of practical planning, which requires county government input, and has environmental implications, which could require several layers of local, state, and federal government approval.

So the landowner must devise a development plan, which lays out, in varying degrees of detail, which portions of the land will be sold for residential building, which for commercial use, which will be set aside as off-limits to building in order to protect sensitive environmental areas, where new roads will be placed, where existing roads will be altered, whether public transportation will be needed, how big of lots people will be able to buy for their homes, how the new buildings will be provided with utilities like electricity and water, whether eventual occupants would be part of existing cities or form new cities, and other factors.

The Ranch is presently working with local officials to envision these details, and the main point of continuing discussion seems to be the amount of land to set aside for environmental protection.

After a development plan is eventually approved by all the necessary government regulators, the Ranch will be free to sell off portions of the land to those who want to build houses or businesses on it. The Ranch would not retain any ownership stake after the land is sold. The Ranch would not own a city or any of the resulting houses, businesses, or other new developments. Even the land set aside for environmental conservation would likely transfer to the ownership of the county or the new city.

Why is the Ranch preparing to sell off some of its land? Why now? The Ranch has never before developed its Florida land. But if it doesn’t make a plan for intentional development, it will lose control over its own land bit by bit. Neighboring cities have been suing successfully for water rights, and a neighboring county is attempting to condemn a portion of the land for use as a landfill. Rather than losing a significant portion of the land’s value to such actions, the Ranch has chosen to be proactive and make a coherent plan for the land’s future.

Myth: The Church is building a city in Florida.
Fact: The Ranch is working with local officials to draft a development plan that will allow the Ranch to sell parcels of land for commercial and residential development in the future, which will probably create a new city.

Myth: The Church will have ownership of the future city.
Fact: The Ranch will sell the land to buyers and developers, and will not retain ownership interest in any parcel sold.

Myth: The Ranch’s plan has something to do with creating a gathering place for refuge from future calamities.
Fact: Future development of the land will produce a normal, diverse city without any special LDS character. The only way to live in the city will be to buy or rent a home there from a developer who bought the land from the Ranch.

For more information on Deseret Ranches, see their website here.

To begin with, we offer our love to Sister Kelly. It is a hard, and sad, and sobering thing to lose a member of the church. The power of fellowship and universal opportunity to serve is central to the experience of being Mormon, and the loss of one is a loss to all.

Excommunication is not an extreme practice or unique to the LDS church; most Christian denominations and some non-Christian traditions have long-standing provisions for formalizing a discordant relationship between an individual and the church. Throughout Christian history, the aim of excommunication has been not to punish or cause pointless suffering, but to spur reconciliation.

Catholicism has lately suffered its own turmoil over the propriety of excommunication; Pope Francis recently reaffirmed that individuals who encourage abortion and euthanasia should not receive communion, despite ongoing criticism from some Catholics as well as some non-Catholics.

Religious language like “apostasy” is very loaded in our culture; it can bring to mind caricatures of pitchforks, torches, and witch-burnings. Most Mormons don’t see it that way in this case; apostasy would be better expressed as breaking faith with the community of members. Personal opinions and hopes regarding church doctrine and practice vary widely in the church, and expressing and exploring disagreement is acceptable. But it crosses the line to act and teach in ways that will threaten others’ faith in the church and its leadership.

This is a crucial point. Sister Kelly has said that she fervently believes in the church’s basic truth claims, and I am happy to take her at her word. But even if she feels secure in her own belief, her actions and teachings have led others to reject those beliefs. One cannot teach that church leaders are unable or unwilling to seek the Lord’s will on a crucial matter, without expecting that some who hear will conclude the leaders are not inspired and not even basically decent people in important ways. Her actions have broken faith with the community of members by encouraging disunity and threatening the spiritual welfare of those whose beliefs are less firm.

Seeking and questioning is central to religious faith; public accusation and fomenting disaffection is not. Sister Kelly has allied herself with others who have made blatantly untrue, flawed, and biased accusations against the church under the guise of benign “questioning.” She is part of a movement that may offer commiseration to struggling members but also feeds a false narrative that the church and its leaders’ actions can best be understood through the lens of cynical politics, and that God does not guide the church, if indeed He exists.

For all this, Sister Kelly’s leaders expressed as kindly as possible their conviction that excommunication is necessary. Their letter made it clear that she is not being cast out or shunned or forbidden from the church. The letter forthrightly invites her to continue to attend church, and practically begs her to return to full fellowship.

A faith community bound by loyalty to an inspired organization and leadership can reasonably conclude that loud public antagonism, destructive to that loyalty, requires discipline to preserve the overall health of the community. We hope that sorrowing church members and outside observers can understand that truth. Above all, we hope that regardless of present pain, friends at first will one day be friends again at last.