I guess I feel sort of like you and that is throughout the Church teaching can be improved in the ways you have described. Often I feel we water-down the lessons and don’t want to challenge the students. I see this quite a bit in the Youth program in our stake (and I’m concerned now that my oldest daughter is in the Youth program). I strongly believe that we should be taught by those who, as you say, know their material, avoid folklore and myths, etc. I think sometimes we get caught up in the “warm-fuzzies, feel-goods” and avoid the intellectual issues. While I would not willingly try to shake people’s faith, I do think that teachers need to go beyond the “feel good”. I also think that it is critical in the Church to emphasize developing personal testimonies. In my opinion that is what the youth desperately need! (We all need.)

I’m sorry to hear about your negative experience as EQ teacher and your former Bishop. I’ve had my own cross to bear in those areas. I’m glad that you’re in Ardis’ ward. It sounds like what you were needing.

I also appreciate your comments about the “unvarnished” stories and seeing the pioneers as real people. I think so often we elevate their experience to unrealistic levels. What they did was important for the Church, no doubt. I do find it a bit disingeneous when Youth groups do “treks” to get the pioneer experience in order to strengthen their testimonies. Case in point, last conference a member of the stake presidency talked about a trek they did a number of years ago. Some of what they had the youth do while pulling handcarts was not historically accurate. I feel we should look at the pioneers for what they did in an unvarnished way. Thanks for your comments on this.

Those that take issue with it amuse and baffle me.

Thanks for the great post and the great site. I’ve just encountered this place recently and I’ll be back as time permits.

Regarding the possibility of correcting the manual, I agree that it would be too costly and time consuming for the church to fix the manual (they might as well write a new one and update it while they’re at it) but I do think they could easily make amends by publishing an addendum or by simply sending a letter to the units, offering either a revised lesson or a simply advising instructors of the error and asking them to omit it or research it further. Both would avoid the cost of reprinting and would be adequate in correcting the misconceptions.

cheers!

The interesting thing to me about those who have faulted this post is that not a single one of them has made the slightest defense of the inaccurate material itself — no attempt to explain that what Chad Orton identifies as errors are not in fact errors, and no defense of the single instance of false doctrine as being in fact true. All anyone can say in opposition is that several prophets have quoted Solomon F. Kimball’s account. I suppose historical error somehow becomes magically true if a righteous man quotes it. Dunno how that works, but that’s the only evidence given in opposition to Orton’s claims.

The manual we’re using now is quite an old one; it predates the publication of the Orton articles– as do, by the way, all use of the problematic quotations in general conference (the incident has been referred to since then, but the problematic quotation has not been used). I don’t know what all is involved in correcting a manual, much less producing a new one, but I suspect there’s a lot more work involved than you and I know. It isn’t just a matter of the expense of reprinting all those manuals, for instance — how many languages do those manuals appear in? wouldn’t they want to correct the statement in French and Vietnamese and Finnish and Mongolian at the same time? Imagine the work of translation and coordination that would take!

Anyway, I have reason to hope that although we will continue to hear about the rescue of the handcart pioneers, we won’t hear that particular paragraph quoted over the general conference pulpit again.