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Five new General Authorities, 46 Area Seventies, a new Relief Society general presidency, and a change in the Young Women general presidency were announced today.
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Interesting...
Opposed.
Some professions must just be more inherently righteous than others... who knew that the path to the Celestial kingdom was paved with MBA's and CPA's....LOL---SARCASM--- for the humorally impaired.
Surely the Lord today can still use fishermen and farmers for his purposes. The fact that most GAs are high-ranking businessmen and/or lawyers has always somewhat troubled me.
Personally, I think calling businessmen and/or CES personnel is a very good idea, since those people have experience with administration and/or LDS policies, both important aspects of being a General Authority.
Yup, the thing is, General Authorities actually do lots of administrative work besides their spiritual-oriented responsibilities. But don't worry, as soon as the Church policies stop focusing on proselytism, charity work, humanitarian aid, disaster relief and overall temporal and spiritual well-being of its members, to pissing and moaning on the Internet, then we'll see more granola crunchers being inducted into the middle page of the Conference edition of Ensign.
In other words, I wouldn't keep my hopes up, CC ;) :)
I'm not disputing the temporal acumen of the men in charge. I am disputing the spiritual success, because the two do not go hand in hand. Spiritual matters are often quite expensive and don't balance the books. They don't fit on the balance sheet.
Case in point. My local ward is hopeless in financial matters. The clerks do their best, but their both recent converts and some things just don't get done right. The bishop comes to meetings somewhat sheepish at times as he's just been talked to by the SP. However, I've never seen anyone love people so much.
Furthermore, the church has this weird bueaucratic tradition that goes with CES and familial relationships in the hierarchy. It's why the granola crunchers like Hugh B. Brown made it into the 12 but the rest of them learned their lessons... (such pinkos could hardly have been spiritual men, I mean Civil Rights!!!)
After all, Henry D. Moyle was a very efficient head of the missionary department. He just wasn't very effective.
And somehow being a CEO makes you less spiritual? I think that is a little of a logical fallacy. I think all those CEOs or CES personnel (which BTW I know many of them who are great spiritual leaders) who were called this conference were not called ONLY because of their shiny MBAs from Harvard/BYU or their management experience, I think there is something more to them than that.
Also, I would never dispute your bishop's love for their people. I just think that when it comes to being a General Authority, love is not all that is needed (yea, John Lennon was a granola cruncher and a commie-newbie). I won't claim an MBA is necessary, but I would say some management experience is in most cases.
As to your Henry D. Moyle comments, I am not going to bash the memory of an Apostle. Elder Moyle made some poor managerial decisions that put the Church in a bad position, but they were happily reversed in time. I still support him as a Prophet, Seer and Revelator.
As for civil rights, I'm all for defending them. The ones that I don't defend are uncivil rights, but, sadly, those keep on tingling and stimulating granola crunchers' cerebellums. I'm sure some spirituality (even non-MBA-tainted spirituality) would help in the healing process.
This is how I was treated by the 1) MBA/BComm mission leaders v. the 2) MD/BA/BSc, academic types, farmers, etc, etc.
1) I was the one who made a district/zone look bad. It was all in my head. I was faking it. My numbers just wern't good enough
2) They didn't tell me what was wrong, but listened, and in the end made the right decision. I needed to go home to deal with the medical stuff...
So while I'm not disputing that there may be some MBA's out there with a strong spiritual life, from my experiences... I don't trust them. It's part of a further problem that I have with religious organizations running businesses like businesses.
I'm fascinated by your division of rights into civil and uncivil rights.
I lived my life not 'bashing' the memory of church leaders. It ended up with me hallucinating due to the effects of the drugs the mission doctor prescribed. There is nothing gained and much harm caused by just shutting up and going with the system.
I do have an issue with the whole MBA thing though, I know too many great people with MBAs who don't have their eye on the numbers but on the glory of God. Also, a church has many administrative issues that are business-like, my short stints as financial clerk have taught me that (entering the tithing info into the computer every Sunday is surprisingly similar to doing the books at the end of a day at a bank).
Numbers have a value that is not intrinsic. Good numbers do not equate to progress, but, in many cases, bad numbers are an indication of a potential dormant problem. In my mission, low numbers were not a concern if the area was known to be tough, or if the missionaries there were known for being hard workers (anybody can go through a rough time at tracting, getting members' help, or even with personal issues). Every companionship on my mission that had problems had low numbers (just note that the inverse implication did not necessarily hold). Numbers were are great indicator of what needed change and not necessarily of who to blame.
And, to be honest, my theories on rights are different to most Americans' (or Canadians, for all that matter). I called it "civil and uncivil" rights as a pun, since I think the uncivil rights aren't rights, really. I believe the US Constitution is inspired by God, but it has been misinterpreted both in private and public by uninspired men, just like the Bible has as well. So, there are several things that people call rights (according to their own private semi-literal interpretations of the constitution), yet I don't believe they are. That is why comparing ACLU and similar groups with the hypocritical Pharisees (who used arguably semi-literal interpretations as a way of circumventing the actual law) is so appropriate, accurate, snappy and delightfully insulting IMO.
The "uncivil" rights I mean are such as abortion, forcibly-twisted interpretations of freedom of speech (opposing democratic measures to provide on-demand filter --not stop-- pornography, protesting at funerals with no purpose other than offending family members of the deceased, etc), rather Disney-like new dimensions of separation of state and church (freestyle history "editing" by replacing the word "God" for "goodness") and other sexual issues (non-democratic introduction of gay sexuality and anal "sexual health" in public school curriculi).
As to whether rights are universal or not, that claim is easily supported in a theist context. On atheist grounds, I find it hard to build up significant basis for rights' universality on some nebulous yet romantic appeal to "humanity" or "reason" (humans aren't good examples of reason). Since theism is unconstitutional (according to "humanity"), I don't have a problem to legally define rights as they are ratified by our legal system and not as aethereal, heart-warming ideals floating in the clouds. This is not my personal view (I think God made universal rights), but I find it to be a better working definition when evaluating constitutionality (thus, according to most states, marriage is defined as one-man-one-woman-that's-it in a very significant sense).
I'm excited to see Sister Beck as the new Relief Society General President. I've very impressed with her remarks as a member of the YW presidency at conference and in the recent Worldwide Leadership Training. She also spoke at the Young Men's Open House last week; probably my favorite speaker there, no offense intended to the YM General Presidency :-) We'll miss Sister Parkin, but I think Sister Beck will be a great replacement.