Riess- Come Follow Me just Us v Them propaganda.

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_I have a question
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Riess- Come Follow Me just Us v Them propaganda.

Post by _I have a question »

Jana Riess is not a fan of the new curriculum.
In the Mormon world, the past two weeks have witnessed vigorous condemnations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ “Come, Follow Me” curriculum for 2020, specifically the printed version’s inclusion of racist ideology that describes dark skin as a “curse” from God for unrighteousness.

The online version of the curriculum has been corrected to remove the offensive teaching; the church reiterated its current stance that it “disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse”; and an apostle expressed regret about the gaffe when he spoke to the NAACP on Martin Luther King Day.

Fair enough. I’m glad the church has acknowledged the error and done what it can to remove it. My favorite response on Twitter was Emily Jensen’s photo of setting fire to that particular page of the manual:

But while we’re at it, could we just burn down the entire “Come, Follow Me” curriculum and start from scratch? The racism of that one page is only the most glaring issue. Let me explain.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/01 ... -thinking/

After one year of the new curriculum, however, I don’t think it’s an improvement. It contains many of the same us-vs.-them formulations of the past (and has even, as we saw with the racist statement from which the church is now trying to backpedal, imported some of the wording of the old manuals wholesale). It’s insular, it can be shallow, and it often feels more committed to advertising the correctness of the institution of the church than it does uncovering the actual meanings of the scriptures.

Riess has a suggestion...
James Faulconer, a professor at Brigham Young University, has created a sort of cottage industry of this “made harder” series, which seems a clear rejoinder to the “made easier” promises of other books.

What it is, essentially, is an entire book of questions, arranged chapter by chapter according to the Book of Mormon.

“We learn new things when we respond to new questions, and the person who says, ‘I no longer get anything out of the Book of Mormon’ has stopped running up against questions to think about as he or she reads,” Faulconer writes.

Whereas the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum approaches 1 Nephi 11–15 by declaring that “The Lord prepared the way for the Restoration” through events like the arrival of Columbus and the American Revolution and then demonstrating that the “great and abominable church” wants to tear down the truth we possess, Faulconer’s book is not about positioning ourselves as the lone heroes in God’s ongoing story. It is trying, first of all, to simply understand the Book of Mormon in its context. That begins with asking fresh questions.
Hmmm, asking fresh questions is not what Church Leaders want its members doing, they know where that leads...
“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')
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