FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mormonism and church leadership/Independent thought
This article is a draft. FairMormon editors are currently editing it. We welcome your suggestions on improving the content.
Criticism
Source(s) of the criticism
- Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), Chapter 15.( Index of claims )
Response
- 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.[1]
- 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.[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]
Conclusion
Endnotes
- [note] Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 11:107. off-site wiki
- [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
- [note] Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 9:295. off-site wiki