Mormonism and church leadership/Independent thought

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Criticism

• Critics charge that the Church teaches that we should not exercise independent thought.
• "When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done."

Source(s) of the criticism

• Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), Chapter 15.( Index of claims )

Response

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Critics use a statement made in the Improvement Era in June 1945 to claim that members must do whatever Church leaders say without question:

Any Latter-day Saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or otherwise, any plan or doctrine advocated by the "prophets, seers, and revelators" of the Church is cultivating the spirit of apostasy.... Lucifer ... wins a great victory when he can get members of the Church to speak against their leaders and to "do their own thinking."...

When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan—it is God's plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy.^[1]

Brigham Young made the following statements:

Ladies and gentlemen, I exhort you to think for yourselves, and read your Bibles for yourselves, get the Holy Spirit for yourselves, and pray for yourselves.^[2]

The great masses of the people neither think nor act for themselves. . . . I see too much of this gross ignorance among this chosen people of God.^[3]

Joseph Smith said the following:

All have the privilege of thinking for themselves upon all matters relative to conscience. . . . We are not disposed, had we the power, to deprive anyone of exercising that free independence of mind which heaven has so graciously bestowed upon the human family as one of its choicest gifts.^[4]

Additional quotes from both early and modern Church leaders may be found here.

Endnotes

1. [note] Improvement Era, June 1945, p.354
2. [note]  Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 11:107. off-site wiki
3. [note]  Joseph Smith, Jr., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, selected by Joseph Fielding Smith, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976), 49. off-site
4. [note]  Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 9:295. off-site wiki