Things I don't like about the church - Leondard Arrington

From LDS Church historian Leonard J. Arrington's "Things I don't like about the church." Courtesy Greg Prince.

"While Leonard continued for the rest of his life to see God within the Mormon tradition and to participate in weekly worship services, he grew increasingly frustrated— albeit in private— about the institutional embodiment of that tradition. In a diary entry entitled “Things I don’t like about the church,” he vented, with disarming candor, in laying out an agenda for change that has remarkably relevance to the contemporary Mormon scene over two decades later:

1.      The imposition of one pattern for everybody rather than suggesting two or three patterns and letting local wards or stakes or districts follow the one most convenient for them. Examples, the three-hour meeting schedule on Sunday.

2.      Appointing the highest tithe payers to positions of leadership rather than the most capable or worthy. In choosing stake leaders, the General Authority comes with a list of the 15 or 20 highest tithe payers and starts down the list to choose a stake president and high council.

3.      The maintenance of a disloyalty file on liberals, including articles they’ve written with questionable statements, newspaper clippings. These are used against the person without him or her knowing what is in the file and having a chance to deny it or explain it. The supposition is that liberals are out to destroy or embarrass the church, a supposition entirely false.

4.      The insistence on unanimity among the Twelve, which means that the most obstinate member, the one holding out against the rest, wins.

5.      The insistence on choosing a new president from the senior member of the Twelve. This means we’ll always have a president far beyond his energetic, creative period of life. We should retire persons from the Twelve at age 75 and never choose anyone over that age to be president of the Church.

6.      The First Presidency and Twelve should call a person in to talk with him/her before putting the person on the blacklist, not to be cited, his/her books not to be sold in Church bookstores, not to be allowed to speak in Church, etc.

7.      The church should allow historians to present "human” material in biographies of presidents and General Authorities.

8.      We should allow women to be associates to the Twelve and sit in on their meetings. The Relief Society president should sit in on bishopric meetings. Mothers should be allowed to stand in the circle to bless babies, confirm newly baptized persons as members of the Church, just as they now can open and close meetings with prayer.

9.      The manuals used in adult Sunday School, Priesthood, and Relief Society classes are absolutely hopeless. Using the same gospel doctrine manual every fourth year; the same with Priesthood manuals. Hopeless. Why can’t they assign a skilled and experienced writer to do a new manual every year?"