thesis entry · structural pattern

The Speaker and the Room

Every entry on this site describes a different dispute: over succession, over historicity, over a word's ownership, over who may be ordained. Read across all of them, a single structure recurs at every scale: one figure occupies the position of narrating, testifying, or performing, and a body of others occupies the position of listening, sustaining, or following.

This holds regardless of which side of any given schism a person is on. It is a structure that Brighamite and Josephite, believer and ex-Mormon, institution and critic, have each independently reproduced.

The content of what is taught changes constantly across this tradition's history. The shape of who is positioned to teach it, and who is positioned to receive it, does not.

The two positions

The Speaker

narrates · testifies · performs · selects

→

The Room

listens · sustains · follows · applauds

Keep, destroy, de-contextualize, out-wait

The Speaker's authority is not exercised only through what is said. It is exercised, just as consequentially, through editorial operations on the record itself: what is kept, what is destroyed or excluded, what is retained but stripped of its original context, and what is simply outlasted. A Speaker does not always need to overturn a predecessor's position directly. Holding the office long enough, or returning to it after enough intervening Speakers have passed, can substitute for an argument entirely. Mormon's own account of compiling his people's record, see Mormon: The Narrator's Position, describes the first three operations. The clearest modern evidence for all four together is not ancient or textual. It is the documented, dated editorial history of the Doctrine and Covenants, and, standing beside it, a single decades-long dispute over the word "Mormon" itself.

Kept, differentlySection 132 · plural marriage The original 1835 Section 101 affirmed monogamy outright. In 1876 it was removed from the LDS canon and replaced with the revelation on plural marriage, renumbered Section 132: kept by the LDS Church as scripture to this day. Community of Christ's editions omit Section 132 entirely, having never accepted plural marriage as doctrine. The identical section is canon in one church and absent in the other.

Destroyed / decanonizedLectures on Faith Present in the Doctrine and Covenants from its first combined edition in 1835 as the book's actual "Doctrine" half, the seven Lectures on Faith were removed by the RLDS Church's Board of Publication in 1897 without a stated reason on the record, and by the LDS Church in 1921: both branches independently deciding, decades apart, that material once bound into scripture had never really been scripture at all.

De-contextualizedthe Talmage abridgment An officially sanctioned condensed edition titled Latter-day Revelation, prepared under James E. Talmage and published in 1930, omitted ninety-five sections entirely and trimmed parts of twenty-one more "to reduce its bulk," including, notably, the complete text of Section 132 itself. Fundamentalist members accused the church of altering scripture once the omission was noticed; church president Heber J. Grant withdrew the book from sale and ordered remaining copies destroyed.

Each of the three operations above is retroactively justified with the same kind of language: material is reclassified as never having been authoritative in the first place. The LDS Church's 1921 explanation for removing the Lectures on Faith stated they had "never [been] presented to nor accepted by the Church as being otherwise than theological lectures or lessons," a decision rendered eighty-six years after the material's first canonization, by the office holding sole authority to make that determination.

Nelson and Hinckley on the word "Mormon"

In April 1990, Russell M. Nelson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, delivered "Thus Shall My Church Be Called," building from the scriptural phrase "thus shall my church be called" to the position that the church's Lord-decreed name deserves reverent, careful consideration before any nickname is treated as a substitute for it. Six months later, in October 1990, Gordon B. Hinckley, then First Counselor in the First Presidency, opened his own address by naming Nelson's talk directly and commending it to the congregation for a rereading, then reached the opposite practical conclusion: rather than resist the nickname, members should redeem it, adopting the motto "Mormon means more good," a phrase Hinckley credited to a missionary companion who was himself paraphrasing Joseph Smith. Hinckley did not destroy Nelson's position. He kept it, cited it, praised it, and de-contextualized its conclusion in the same breath: the same operation documented in the Talmage abridgment above.

Hinckley became church president in 1995 and served until his death in 2008. Two years later, the church launched "I'm a Mormon," an eighteen-year, roughly $300 million global advertising campaign, commissioned by his successor Thomas S. Monson and explicitly built on Hinckley's 1990 motto. Nelson's 1990 position did not resurface publicly again until 2018.

In October 2018, Russell M. Nelson, by then church president himself, the office Hinckley had held in 1990, returned to the identical scriptural citation and delivered "The Correct Name of the Church," stating that using "Mormon" institutionally is "a major victory for Satan" and that the church's full name is "not negotiable." The Tabernacle Choir was renamed within days. Nelson's address does not name Hinckley, engage his 1990 argument, or account for the twenty-eight intervening years of church-run "Mormon" branding. The position Hinckley had gently set aside in 1990 was restored in full, without argument, by the same man who had first proposed it, arriving at the one office whose authority had been sufficient to set it aside in the first place.

Documentation

Most instances of out-waiting are hard to document. A position simply fades and a later Speaker's silence looks like consensus. This case is unusually visible because both Speakers used the same scriptural citation, the same public forum, and near-identical language ("not an appropriate alternative" in 1990; "not negotiable" in 2018), separated by exactly one change of office-holder. The Room, the church's general membership, received both instructions as settled and binding, forty-eight years apart, from the same governing structure, on opposite conclusions.

The instances

Each entry below names which role a given figure occupies, and how that role was acquired or claimed.

Mormon, the narratortextual · 4th century Speaker: sole editor of the record, deciding what was quoted, summarized, or omitted. Room: every reader of the finished text, receiving a record they cannot independently verify or compare against what was excluded. See Mormon: The Narrator's Position.

The callingcongregational Speaker: the leader who extends a calling, determining who teaches, presides, or serves. Room: the congregation, who sustain the assignment by public vote after the decision has already been made privately.

Nelson's directiveinstitutional · 2018 Speaker: the church president, announcing by stated revelation which words the entire membership and press may use. Room: members, media, and the wider public, expected to adopt the new terms. See Who Owns Mormon.

Dehlin's podcastindependent media Speaker: the host, selecting which guests, framings, and episodes reach an audience of roughly 800,000 subscribers. Room: listeners, who receive a curated account of church history and testimony they did not independently research.

Faith Matterseditorial Speaker: the editorial board, determining what "making sense" of contested church history looks like for its readership. Room: readers, encountering a curated synthesis rather than the primary sources directly.

Nelson & Hinckley1990 → 2018 · same citation Speaker: whichever man holds the office of church president at a given moment, empowered to bind the whole membership by revelation. Room: the general membership, receiving opposite instructions on the same scripture, 48 years apart, each delivered as settled. See "Keep, destroy, de-contextualize, out-wait," above.

Wallace B. Smith, 1984institutional Speaker: a single president, presenting a document to the World Conference as revelation after a church survey had found members almost evenly split against it, reordering priesthood eligibility for the entire church. Room: the RLDS membership, roughly half of tithe-paying members leaving by the mid-1990s, some to form independent Restoration branches rather than occupy the room on these terms.

What this pattern does not claim

Occupying the Speaker position is not, by itself, evidence of bad faith, deception, or wrongdoing. Teaching, editing, hosting, and presiding are ordinary and often necessary functions. Every tradition, secular or religious, requires someone to occupy them. This applies to the Nelson–Hinckley case above as much as any other: the record shows what each man said and when, and shows that Nelson's 2018 address does not engage Hinckley's 1990 argument. It does not show, and this entry does not claim to know, what either man privately believed motivated the other. The pattern documented here is descriptive: this structure recurs across every faction of this tradition regardless of what any faction believes, and every group that criticizes another faction's version of it has, in its own institutions, reproduced the same shape.

Why this belongs at the center of the index

This site catalogues disagreements: over words, over history, over doctrine, over who may lead. It would be easy to read that as a catalogue of differences. The more useful reading is the opposite. Underneath nearly every dispute this index documents is the same unresolved question, asked again in new terms: who gets to be the Speaker, and on what authority does the Room agree to listen?

That question does not resolve by picking a side. Brighamites, Josephites, Dehlinites, and Faith Matters readers each answer it differently in content, and identically in form.

Sources

Book of Mormon Central, "Mormon — The Chief Editor of the Book of Mormon, Part 2" — on Mormon's editorial proportion in the book of Alma.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Handbook, "Callings in the Church" — on the extension and sustaining of callings.
Deseret News, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issues new name guidelines," August 16, 2018.
Mormon Stories Podcast, subscriber figures as reported in Axios Salt Lake City, April 20, 2026.
Religion News Service, "Wallace B. Smith, great-grandson of Joseph Smith and pioneer for women's ordination, dies at 94," September 26, 2023 — on the 1984 revelation, the preceding membership survey, and subsequent RLDS membership losses.
Church News, "Doctrine and Covenants: History and evolution," July 11, 2021 — on the 1835, 1876, 1921, and 1981 editions.
FAIR, "1835 Doctrine and Covenants denies polygamy," citing Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy, Volume 1: History (Greg Kofford Books, 2013) — on the 1876 replacement of original Section 101 with Section 132.
Church History Department, "Ask Us: Top Five Reference Questions about Doctrine and Covenants Publishing," history.churchofjesuschrist.org — on the 1921 LDS removal of the Lectures on Faith and its stated rationale.
"History of the Lectures on Faith," centerplace.org, citing RLDS Church History and F. Henry Edwards, A New Commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants (1977) — on the RLDS Board of Publication's 1897 removal.
Sunstone, "Sacrificing the Lectures on Faith," August 2015 — on the 1921 Talmage-led committee and its stated reasoning.
James P. Harris, ed., Latter-day Revelation (Talmage abridgment), publisher's note, and Goodreads edition summary — on the 1930 publication, its omitted sections, fundamentalist backlash, and Heber J. Grant's withdrawal of the book.
Russell M. Nelson, "Thus Shall My Church Be Called," General Conference, April 1990, churchofjesuschrist.org.
Gordon B. Hinckley, "Mormon Should Mean 'More Good,'" General Conference, October 1990, churchofjesuschrist.org.
Church News, "'Mormon' name can bring luster, honor to Church," October 13, 1990.
Russell M. Nelson, "The Correct Name of the Church," General Conference, October 2018, churchofjesuschrist.org.
The Salt Lake Tribune, "Members 'offend' Jesus and please the devil when they use the term 'Mormon,' President Nelson says," October 7, 2018.