I have a question wrote:If it's "simply" adultery (He's had a fling or a one night stand with a consenting female adult) then I don't understand the need for the Bretheren to drag his family into it by making it a public spectacle. I can't see why they needed to make a public announcement. They threw his family under the bus to get out there to make sure members didn't think he had *gasp* stopped believing. That seems like pretty low behaviour by them on the face of it.
Some things suggest adultery, but I tend to agree that it is surprising the church would be so public about announcing his excommunication. The church's pattern with stuff like this is to keep it quiet for PR reasons. Maybe they don't think this strategy works well and have changed it. The church I knew would only announce excommunications if the person being excommunicated was not on friendly terms with the church. If they were repentant it was always keep as quiet as possible.
I have a question wrote:If it's "simply" adultery (He's had a fling or a one night stand with a consenting female adult) then I don't understand the need for the Bretheren to drag his family into it by making it a public spectacle. I can't see why they needed to make a public announcement. They threw his family under the bus to get out there to make sure members didn't think he had *gasp* stopped believing. That seems like pretty low behaviour by them on the face of it.
Some things suggest adultery, but I tend to agree that it is surprising the church would be so public about announcing his excommunication. The church's pattern with stuff like this is to keep it quiet for PR reasons. Maybe they don't think this strategy works well and have changed it. The church I knew would only announce excommunications if the person being excommunicated was not on friendly terms with the church. If they were repentant it was always keep as quiet as possible.
I would agree with you, especially in terms of the PR assessment. Why announce something like this, unless there was a specific need for the church to publically disassociate itself from this person? I'm wondering if there was some financial impropriety for which Hamula is taking the fall, voluntarily or not, so that the church can protect itself.
When they ex'ed Richard R. Lyman, they publicly announced that it was for violating the law of chastity or something like that if I remember right. I wonder why they wouldn't do that now if Hamula's excommunication was indeed for adultery. Maybe it's against some more recent policy, or maybe in Lyman's case they were over anxious to assure the public that it wasn't about polygamy. Rulon C. Allred, a Mormon fundamentalist leader in the 1960's and 70's, told about a LDS general authority who was interested in joining them:
I am reminded of a sister, the wife of one of the general authorities, who came to me this month. She had been studying the fulness of the gospel. She has read the Journal of Discourses, she had read The Most Holy Principle, and everything she could get her hands on. Her husband also studied these things, and they became converted to the fact that it was essential for a man to live celestial, plural marriage if they wanted to enter into a fulness of exaltation. In the meantime, this man being a man of responsibility in the Church, decided it was his duty to go to President Kimball and present his case before him and let him know what he intended to do. They convinced this man that he was making the biggest mistake of his life. They said they would cut him off from the Church if he continued to travel about with this conviction, and in doing so he would lose his salvation forever. They counseled him to set his life in order and forget about it.
He therefore went to his wife and told her that he wanted her to stop studying these things. He wanted her to stop associating with people who believed in these things, and if he had any trouble with her about it he would get a Church divorce from her, and he would see to it that because of her folly and the precedence established in the Church and in the land, that he would get custody of her children and take them from her forever. With this terrible situation facing her, she came to me and said, "What am I to do? Am I to cease believing this principle, am I to cease studying it, am I to cease associating with anybody who believes in it? What can I do? I want salvation, I want exaltation. I know the only way I can obtain it is by entering into this holy law. Brother Rulon, I know that, I don't just believe it." I said, "All right, if you know that, I want to ask you a few questions. First question, do you want a release from your husband?" No. "Do you love your husband?" Yes. "Would you rather have him than any man in the world?" I surely would. I said, "All right, this being established in your own words, you remain true to your husband. You be subject to his guidance and will. You were sealed to him in the house of the Lord; the family that you have is sealed to both of you. You remain subject to his direction. But don't ever surrender your testimony of this holy principle. Tell the Lord in your prayers night and day that you believe it, that you know you have to live it, and touch the heart of your husband. If you do this, the odds are in your favor that your husband will get a testimony of thecourse that he has to pursue, notwithstanding his exalted position in the Church. He will come and ask your forgiveness and say the time has come to go ahead. "But, my beloved sister, if he does not say this, you remain true to him anyway and keep your covenant which you have made in the house of the Lord and abide by the love that brought you together as man and wife and that resulted in the wonderful family that you have. If you die without an opportunity to enter into that law, since you are subject to your Priesthood head, when you get on the other side and if you are worthy of exaltation and your husband is not, and you will be worthy if you remain faithful to your testimony, your husband will have to surrender you, and you will be taken by the Lord and given to somebody else, and the work will be done vicariously for you, and you will be exalted." She wept, and said, "Thank you, Brother Rulon, I believe that with all my heart. I will follow that course."
I think if Hamula's case were anything like that, they wouldn't have insisted that it was not for apostasy though, as they consider teaching or practicing polygamy to be evidence of apostasy.
A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth. --Albert Einstein
DoubtingThomas wrote:Someone in my ward said Hamula was excommunicated for getting into philosophy, he said philosophy is of the devil. My ward is full of s***!
Philo Sofee is of the Devil?
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
kamenraider wrote:When they ex'ed Richard R. Lyman, they publicly announced that it was for violating the law of chastity or something like that if I remember right. I wonder why they wouldn't do that now if Hamula's excommunication was indeed for adultery.
It's a fascinating insight into what they're thinking that they felt the need to immediately announce that it wasn't for "disillusionment or apostasy." First of all, disillusionment isn't an excommunicable offense. To be disappointed by new information isn't a sin. It seems that they either assumed that everyone would jump to the conclusion of disillusionment, or they were tacitly revealing that it is their own biggest concern.
George P. Lee, on the other hand, was excommunicated for apostasy.
"Be excellent to each other." - Bill and Ted “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” - Mark Twain
Hagoth wrote:It's a fascinating insight into what they're thinking that they felt the need to immediately announce that it wasn't for "disillusionment or apostasy." First of all, disillusionment isn't an excommunicable offense. To be disappointed by new information isn't a sin. It seems that they either assumed that everyone would jump to the conclusion of disillusionment, or they were tacitly revealing that it is their own biggest concern.
Either way, it is an acknowledgment that disillusionment is the biggest challenge facing the LDS church today when it comes to member retention. Seems like the FP/12 know that people don't leave primarily to sin, as the mopologists so frequently try to claim.