Why are we not discussing the Brad Wilcox fireside?

[Red Ryder]

What a clown…

[lostinmiddlemormonism]

If you can't say something nice...

[Just This Guy]

I've seen it posted on the Mormonism Live Facebook page.

Finding this is about as much effort as I have put i it:
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/02 ... ad-wilcox/

Was Brigham Young, the faith’s second president, “a jerk,” he said they ask, or were early Mormons “prejudiced”?

Maybe they are asking the wrong questions, Wilcox suggested. “Maybe instead of asking why the Blacks had to wait until 1978 to get the priesthood, we should be asking why did the whites and other races have to wait until 1829.”

Yikes. How racist/victim blaming can you get?

[wtfluff]

What a clown…

Oh darn.

Does this mean he will never be promoted to a big red clown chair amongst the Q15 bigots? Or will they ignore him going against Oaks proclamation of "no apologies," and put him on the fast-track to the clown chair?


Afterthought... Is there a huge difference between a clown and a puppet?

[2bizE]

Problem: youth are leaving the church rapidly. ( We know from leaked presentations from 2009 that 70% of youth leave).

Audience: Youth

Issues Youth (millennials and Gen Z) care about: Primarily social issues around LGBTQ, social justice, racism…)

Brad Wilcox: tries to prevent youth from leaving by trying to address social issues including race and priesthood (ie. Racism). He failed in many ways.

Why failed? You cannot Churchsplain away social issues. It will not work. The only thing that can be done is for the church to offer a true apology on all of the social issues the church is failing at like racism, LGBTQ, etc.

[Red Ryder]

[Mormorrisey]

Is it even worth discussing? My goodness, what a crapshow of misogyny, racism and belittling of other religions. I don't even know where to begin.

Someone at HQ recognized the problems, though, and Wilcox was very quick to offer an actually pretty good apology. But that's done a lot of damage, I'm not sure that this apology is going to work. Probably pissed off Oaks too, "what are you doing? We neither accept or offer apologies, Bro. Wilcox!"

Wilcox reminds me of a dude in our area, who is rising through the Mormon ranks. A good dude, one of these "youth life coaches." But he never really went to college, says a lot of dumb things, and we're all just waiting for him to say something like Wilcox over the pulpit and get pummelled for it. It's inevitable, when you fly on the seat of your pants with the things you say. This is why teleprompters and the correlation committee exist.

[nibbler]

There's quite a lot wrong with the talk.

False dichotomies:
If you walk away from the church you have to walk away from your entire concept of god. Uh, no you don't. You certainly can but you don't have to. You can keep any babies you happened to find in the bathwater... and you are allowed to drain the bathwater.

Language people use in abusive relationships:
If you leave the church you'll lose everything, and he keeps revisiting this idea over and over again.

Story about the BYU kid that doesn't "believe in Joseph Smith":
I think this is another made up story. It sounds too on the nose for the points we wanted to make, but ignoring that:

1. Who cares about JS? The church should be teaching people about Christ but spends most of its energy trying to convince people about JS. Let JS go. Don't tell me you don't believe in JS anymore? Who is JS that I should believe in him, god? We supposedly don't worship JS, but you'd never know it by what's discussed the most at church.
2. In the story he tells the kid, "Do you realize how stupid you just sounded?" Ok, so I'm pretty sure he made up this story and that he's only saying this to sound hip to the kids but that is no way to address people's legitimate concerns. Take your beliefs, project them onto another person, and then call them stupid for not reaching your conclusion.

Only true church:
The talk is about the G.O.S.P.E.L. where each letter in the acronym is a subject covered in the talk. The "O" in the talk is in reference to the "Only true church."

Wilcox talks about people that get bent out of shape when people testify of the truthfulness of the church. He claims people get upset because it's a question of tolerance. Maybe some do get upset over an issue of tolerance, personally I think tolerance is a strawman but I won't contest that. I think most people get upset at the one true church claim because it comes with a lot of baggage. The one true church mindset produces a lot of arrogance as a byproduct. The one true church produces a lot of narcissism as a byproduct. People probably aren't getting upset by the claim itself, they're getting upset by all of the bad fruits that are inseparably linked to that claim.

Most people are playing church:
One of the two biggies from his talk. People are "playing" church because they don't have authority.

Story about a young lady getting married civilly:
It's not fair to say that he made this story up, but he made this story up. The story hit far too many Mormon teaching bullet points for me to think that the story happened in real life. Why not present a hypothetical story as hypothetical? It was a story about a woman that was upset over the, "til death do you part" bit in the vows. He does what Mormons do, uses it as a missionary moment, she likes the time and all eternity phrasing, and wants it in her ceremony. Here Wilcox takes a dig at other religions, the preacher will change the vow if they pay them extra. Wilcox then gets indignant when he hears the protestant preacher seal the couple for time and all eternity. They're "playing" being an eternal couple.

Racist remarks:
The reason for the tread and the reason I listened to the talk. I'm legit shocked that a church leader would say such a thing. I was in such disbelief that I had to hear it for myself. I had assumed that someone had made it up, it couldn't possibly be true. It was.

Women and the PH:
He uses the same deflection he used for blacks and the PH to dismiss the question over why women don't get PH ordination/keys. (paraphrase) "Most men don't have PH keys either!" Then repeats the apologetic that women were so good in the preexistence that they don't need it.

Miscellaneous:
I'm not a youth, I'm far departed from being youth, I recognize I can't relate to youth... but I won't pretend to. I found the moments where he tried to relate to youth very cringe. At times his shtick came across like a Stanley Spadowski impersonation.

Talks about how youth today are more disengaged from religion when compared to prior generations. The very next thought is about how people leaving church today is no big deal because the problem is no worse than it's been in prior generations.

[wtfluff]

The sad thing about this is: Wilcox lives in such a tone-deaf bubble, that he didn't have any clue that there was anything wrong with what he was saying. He truly believed what he was saying "made sense."

Another sad thing: I'd venture a guess that the vast majority of the "upper" leadership are exactly the same.

And another sad thing: I was born into that same tone-deaf bubble and it took me more than half a lifetime to realize it.

[Red Ryder]

Great post response Nibbler and Fluff.

There’s been many “Wilcox” moments from the pulpit from Brigham Young to Benson, Packer, and on and on.

The Mormon church is full of nut jobs.

[Red Ryder]

[MoPag]

What a gem Debi Wilcox is!

"And any other labels..."

No Debi, we aren't taking about labels, we're taking about people. That's why everyone's mad.

[MoPag]

Story about a young lady getting married civilly:
It's not fair to say that he made this story up, but he made this story up. The story hit far too many Mormon teaching bullet points for me to think that the story happened in real life. Why not present a hypothetical story as hypothetical?

Okay this was soooo made up. He said the lady was from his work. Um... doesn't he work for BYU? And if by some chance he did have a non-member friend at BYU, how would she know so little about mormonism that Brad would need to educate her?

He was supposedly close enough to her to be invited to her wedding. That probably means they are friends on social media too. I bet someone could debunk his story be going though his friends list. I doubt he has many non-member co-worker friends. (Do your thing GenZ)

[Hagoth]

So, according to Debi, Brad is teaching "eternal truth" and the real problem is with the people who offer "criticism and denial" concerning that not-to-be-questioned-or-criticized "eternal truth." And the only "unchristian" behavior here is from those people, not from the people who can say whatever they want because they self-define it as "eternal truth." Hmm.

[wtfluff]

P.S. "Brad's" wife lives in a completely tone-deaf bubble too.

No empathy. No attempt to understand the "other side." And instead of listening to the any sort of criticism, the instant reply is: "Yeah, BUT..." Then again, they have invisible, absentee, "loving," all-powerful father-figure who lives near Kolob on their side, so they can't be wrong...

[2bizE]

…eating popcorn…..this is an amazing $hit show to watch….did the question of why white people didn’t get priesthood for one thousand eight hundred twenty nine years ever get answered? I mean….that’s the question we should be asking…shoving more popcorn in my mouth….

[nibbler]

Yikes on the Debi Wilcox response.

Reading these comments makes me realize how truly unchristian people have become.

People are reacting to comments they found hurtful. I know it's the church leader go-to, but I'm not sure a mixture of judging people and casting victims as the true villains is the right approach.

I'm not sure what there is here that can't be "condoned." I'm assuming that the word condone got mixed in with the rest because it's almost an automatic any time love is discussed at church. We've always got to tie mercy down, gag it, and sink it to the bottom of a lake with cinder blocks to make sure we don't treat people too nicely, otherwise we may inadvertently condone... being black, white, female, LGBTQ, and any other label? I'm at a loss. What can't the Wilcoxes condone that's related to this event?

...there is such a thing as eternal truth that no matter how much criticism and denial can change.

All of the criticism is in response to a racist comment. Is the racist comment above criticism because it's an eternal truth? What's going on here?

The response made it worse in my opinion. I don't know how it can stand unaddressed like it never happened. This is one of those "nip this $#!+ in the bud" topics for Nelson to address directly during general conference but you're worried if he does he'll triple down scenarios.

[blazerb]

The sad thing about this is: Wilcox lives in such a tone-deaf bubble, that he didn't have any clue that there was anything wrong with what he was saying. He truly believed what he was saying "made sense."

Another sad thing: I'd venture a guess that the vast majority of the "upper" leadership are exactly the same.

And another sad thing: I was born into that same tone-deaf bubble and it took me more than half a lifetime to realize it.

This was my immediate thought. It was followed by, "There but for the grace of God . . ." What if my life had been different? Today, I expressed to a friend that I am so glad that the church was a nightmare for me. It enable me to get out. Brother Brad has never had to discuss difficult topics with the outside world, or if he has he did not really grapple with the problems. I feel sorry for him. He could have spent time understanding the woman at the conference even a little, though.

My guess is that he find himself receiving a mission call a la Randy Bott. It will get him away from BYU. He won't give any more conference talks. He won't be speaking at the next FSY conference. Of course, that is meaningless because Nelson, Oaks, etc. all have the same ideas he does. Maybe their racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other hateful attitudes are worded more elegantly, but the church is still teaching horrible things.

[jfro18]

If you think Debi's comment was... not great... just check out her deleted comments in reply to Gerardo who works with John Dehlin:

[Mormorrisey]

Okay, I take back what I said about the apology. Reddit is blowing up right now with video of Wilcox spewing the same bile two years ago in Georgia. And apparently this fireside schtick has been going on for even longer. So this is not a one-time "mistake," it's been a carefully scripted message from a master of priestcraft.

He's quite deserving of the firestorm surrounding him right now. Wonder if he'll get the chop from his calling and BYU - we all know how much the church loves negative publicity.