On Being Mature

This is really the kind of thing I would typically post to my other blog, but I have the feeling that this blog gets more readers, and I would like to disseminate this to a rather wider audience. A few members of the ward have made mention of the recent/upcoming controversy over the depiction of temple ordinances in an HBO series; since we don't pay for TV (we're too cheap/disinterested in TV to buy the converter box for our circa 1999 set, we're a few months awat from losing all TV—and looking forward to it—for the most part), I have no context to discuss this specific show/network. But I have been waiting to see what—if anything—the church might have to say through its official channels.

So I was interested to read this commentary on the church's newsroom site late yesterday. I was struck by the measured, mature, intelligent tone of the piece. There was a moment of snideness when referring to the right of individual church members to boycott HBO and/or its affiliates ("Last week some Church members began e-mail chains calling for cancellations of subscriptions to AOL, which, like HBO, is owned by Time Warner. Certainly such a boycott by hundreds of thousands of computer-savvy Latter-day Saints could have an economic impact on the company. Individual Latter-day Saints have the right to take such actions if they choose."), but on the whole this was the voice of the responsible adults in the conversation.

I think this speaks well of who we are becoming as a church and how we can expect (and be expected) to respond to the inevitable controversies that will arise as the church achieves even greater notoriety. Clearly there are parties who wish us ill, both among right-wing and traditional religions and among left-wing and radical groups. We find ourselves staking out an odd middle ground, one that I personally find very comfortable, between these two extremes. And I think the opportunity this presents for us to redefine ourselves—not as the dogged victims of persecution, but as confident and therefore open-minded agents of tolerance and pluralism—is valuable. In many ways it allows us to align our rhetoric, which has historically tended toward the loud and caustic, with our theology, which is one of deliberateness and patience.