In 1955 in Washington, D.C., I worked on a daily basis with the Senate Un-American Activities Committee. What had begun as a noble effort to protect the American political system from communism degenerated into a power base used to manipulate those of any supposed opposing inclination.
In the spring of 1956, Sen. Arthur Watkins, as special panel chairman for the Senate, succeeded in dissolving the committee, amid much individual pain and public consternation.In the 1960s, I watched as teachers at BYU struggled with innuendo and accusations from a committee set up by the administration to monitor classrooms for errors or false doctrine. After much pain and an apology from the BYU president, the committee was dissolved.
When I read recently in the Deseret News that "the Strengthening the Members Committee pores over newspapers and other publications and identifies members accused of crime, preaching false doctrine, criticizing leadership or embarrassing the church," I felt a despondent chill.
The LDS leadership's recent attempt to silence the "alternate voices" makes thinking members question the scattering this action brings. Healthy members will always continue to intellectually explore. To limit those parameters of discovery smothers vitality and diversity. God's children, as flowers in nature, do not all face the same direction.
The continuous search for worthiness before God has never been an easy discipline. Hoped-for spiritual acceptance is elusive even to the dedicated. The authorities, in attempting to maintain some control over the members' introspective study and expression, should consider what might be lost in vital growth of mind and spirit.
They must be careful not to step into a fearful system of ever-narrowing circles which eliminates, first, the nonbelieving, second, the noncaring, and third, our own members with insufficient or misdirected enthusiasm.
In any endeavor, exclusion diminishes influence. If the church is to improve the individual and the world, it must seek to embrace rather than exclude those whose ideas, expression, culture or lifestyle are disparate.
The discerning spirit, for leader or member, is elusive and must never be impoverished. It is extended to every individual in private judgment of his thoughts and actions. This spirit can be defined, expanded and shared by concerned love and example. It can be enlarged by teaching and obeying the precepts of Jesus Christ. It can never be orchestrated.
Keith Frogley
Salt Lake City