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Radio Free Mormon: 99: The Prophet Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

In a recent BYU speech, President Nelson explained the background behind the 2015 Policy of Exclusion and its reversal 3 1/2 years later.

How well did President Nelson do?

Radio Free Mormon and Bill Reel give you their take.

This is the one you’ve been waiting for!

 

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14 thoughts on “Radio Free Mormon: 99: The Prophet Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”

  1. The policy in the new May 2019 handbook (page 177) does not say bishops have authorization it just says stake presidents can approve baptisms. It also says they still need approval from the Office of the First Presidency. The policy did not change much. This is so wrong!

  2. Thanks for a top-notch analysis! You guys are the best!! Superlatives to both of you, because so far, you’ve covered this ground much better than anyone else. NAILED IT!

    PS – I was literally in the process of writing you to BEG you to immediately do this, when I opened up your podcast and discovered it. Thank goodness you beat me to it!

  3. Gents,
    You weakened your own arguments by using the word “policy” instead of “revelation,” which is the official term they used to double down on the November 2015. The reversal policy has not been called a revelation.
    By using the word “policy” over and over to refer to the 2015 “revelation,” you, unfortunately, prop up the language change they have used to bury the word “revelation.”

    If you had distinguished the 2015 revelation from the 2019 policy nonchange, your whole argument would have been so much stronger.

    Capitulation to their flagrant language change shows that even their critics are buying the terminology change (from “revelation” to “policy”) that is socketed into the roots of their intention.

    You usually pay such close attention to language. This is a big miss.

  4. Yesterday I posted about the capitulation to Mormon Q15 parlance downgrading the policy-to-revelation escalation of the November 2015 policy on 11 January 2016. The persistent use of “policy” instead of “revelation” cedes important ground in the discussion to the hierarchy. Call it a revelation, as they did, and your argument is stronger.

    What you said in minutes 42-50 of the Snow podcast (distinguishing between revelation and policy in the racism issue) applies equally to the revelation/policy distinction, so clearly you know the difference.

    Apply the policy/revelation distinction in all directions, please.

    1. I’m hoping that was a beer?? Was it?
      You will lose credibility with the TBM’s, just saying.

      On the other hand there seems too much of an echo chamber between the two of you. Can one play the role of Good Cop/Bad Cop or devil’s advocate, or the role of Mercy instead of both leaning on the side of Justice per the disciplinary roles in the high council rulings?

      Just saying…
      Wow, President Nelson we are losing too much credibility with you.

      It’s time for the church to apologize….

  5. “Wherever it may form we will together burn it away. All in all, however, we can say that we have carried out this most difficult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people.”

    “Men may hate us. But, we don’t ask for their love”

    Heinrich Himmler

  6. This kept reminding me of Infants on Thrones General Conference, channeling Uchtdorf: Do not break your mothers’ hearts by leaving the church, unless you are joining our church from another church. In that case, by all means, please break your mothers’ hearts. – Causing strife in families is a specialty of the church. This talk and the entire 2015 fiasco all go to show how uninspired Nelson is, even about his own thought process.

  7. The gaslighting in Rusty’s comments is phenomenal! Once again RFM and Bill, outstanding job! Rusty’s words about the return of Christ are nothing more than what we sing each year about Santa Claus coming to town. Likewise the same dribble about being the chosen generation of youth in the last days, the last times, is the same rhetoric that was shoveled into the minds of youth in the 1980’s.

    The adjustment of “policy” sounds to be the eventual justification for allowing same sex marriages to be performed in the temple. Rusty draws a distinction between God’s definition and what ends up in policy; definitions do not change but policy can. And you bring this point up Bill.

    It would be helpful to make the distinction between men and women when talking about marriage sealings regarding to whom each can be sealed and under what circumstances i.e. living or deceased; men can be sealed to more than one deceased woman while they are living whereas a woman can be sealed to all husbands by proxy – after she and the husbands are all deceased. This is detailed in the Dec 1988 1p letter and the 1998 Handbook reaffirms this. You are correct however that a “living” woman can only be sealed to one husband which is detailed in 3.7.1.2 of the 2019 Handbook 1.

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