I like your idea of presenting balance in the lesson, and I agree it is wholly absent from the manual. The section dealing with “Losing confidence in leaders” has several quotes from church leaders saying that if we don’t follow counsel, serve missions, etc that we are on the high road to apostasy. The balance you mention is completely mission.

I also wish the lesson would have had some balance, like discussing how to best approach Church leaders to express valid concerns; that was wholly absent from the lesson. As a result, it was a lopsided presentation about how people should just do what Church leaders say and not question them. Reminded me of that recent post about the plane flying into the side of the mountain because nobody wanted to speak up and second-guess the captain. I wish there were more talk about the appropriate way to talk to our leaders when we feel they are flying a plane into the side of a mountain. Dallin H. Oaks wrote a good Ensign article entitled “Criticism” along those lines. I think the lesson would have benefited from the inclusion of Elder Oaks’ words on that topic.

But, then again, who am I to question whoever it is that creates the lesson manuals. Sounds like I’m already on the road to apostasy!

Certainly, Joseph was a much different leader than our current leaders. We don’t trust Pres Monson with running a bank. If the bank was mismanaged (as it was in this case), I can’t imagine that it would be inappropriate to “lose confidence”, and “criticize” the leaders of the bank, even if they happen to be church leaders.

Certainly, if I had lost my life savings, I’d be pretty upset. On the other hand, there were some economic problems that contributed to the banking problems. It’s easy for me to be understanding of those problems 150 years later, but if I had lost money, I’d have definitely lost confidence and criticized, and I don’t view that as inappropriate in this situation.

Having said that, we shouldn’t be “neglecting any duty required by God”. However, if I’m unemployed and out of money, I’m not going to have a desire to go home teaching, as there seem to be bigger fish to fry in the situation these early saints found themselves in.

Of course, this does not describe the fundamentalist apostasy at all. Their apostasy consisted in having too much confidence in past church leaders, valorizing them, and adding to the duties required by God many others.

Repeated, open opposition to the policies of the Church might be a better definition of apostasy. Of course, the equation of apostasy=EVIL, as in FROO-ITS OF THE DEV-ILL, is part of the definition I would strongly disagree with. Yesterday’s apostates are today’s mainstreamers. Yesterday’s mainstreamers are today’s fundamentalists.

Most apostates are just ahead, or sometimes, to the side of, their times.

As I’ve studied this further, I realize that McLellin wasn’t the only one to fall away. All of the Three Witnesses to the BoM were excommunicated at the time of the bank failure: Martin Harris, David Whitmer, and Oliver Cowdery who held the title of Assistant President of the Church.

Additionally, 5 apostles were excommunicated over the bank: McLellin, Lyman Johhnson, Luke Johnson, John Boynton, and Thomas Marsh.

According to Wikipedia, George A Smith (November 15, 1864) attributes the bank failure to Warren Parrish (a former scribe of Joseph Smith.) “Warren Parrish was the teller of the bank, and a number of other men who apostatized were officers. They took out of its vault, unknown to the President or cashier, a hundred thousand dollars, and sent their agents around among the brethren to purchase their farms, wagons, cattle, horses and every thing they could get hold of. The brethren would gather up this money and put it into the bank, and those traitors would steal it and send it out to buy again, and they continued to do so until the plot was discovered and payment stopped.”

Parrish and those supporting him soon claimed ownership of the Kirtland Temple. Eliza R. Snow relates that Parrish and a group of others came into the temple during Sunday services “armed with pistols and bowie-knives and seated themselves together in the Aaronic pulpits, on the east end of the temple, while father Smith and others, as usual, occupied those of the Melchizedek priesthood on the west.”[14] Parrish’s group interrupted the services and, according to Snow “a fearful scene ensued—the apostate speaker becoming so clamorous that Father Smith called for the police to take that man out of the house, when Parrish, John Boynton, and others, drew their pistols and bowie-knives, and rushed down from the stand into the congregation; John Boynton saying he would blow out the brains of the first man who dared to lay hands on him.” Police arrived and ejected the troublemakers, after which the services continued.[15]

Warren Parrish, Martin Harris, Luke Johnson and John Boynton took control of the Kirtland Temple and they and their High Council excommunicated Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, who fled to Far West.

This doesn’t seem like apostasy as much as it does Civil War. It also seems to be a case of greed more than apostasy.

According to Apostle John Boynton, Joseph Smith did say the bank “was instituted by the will & revelations of God, & he had been told that it would never fail.” President Smith replied that “if it had been declared…that unless the institution was conducted on righteous principles it would not stand.”

Steven, I was under the impression that Sidney Rigdon was the president of the anti-bank. Are you saying he embezzled money?

One other observation. This anti-bank and the anti-Nephi-Lehies share an interesting similarity in the use of “anti”.

The focus went from a local bank to land speculation, and you can read a lot on Joseph Smith warning them against trying to get rich by buying up the land and then trying to gouge the latecomers (if you’ve ever wondered the context for parts of the D&C and commentary on them, that is it). Any resemblance between that event and the current debacle with sub-prime mortgages linked to land price bubbles is purely a coincidence.

Then there was a general bank failure in the U.S. (something that was pretty regular) combined with a drop in the price of land, and the embezzlement of $15,000.00 by the president of the anti-bank. The combination led to the anti-bank failing and a lot of land speculation not paying off. Which angered a lot of people who blamed Joseph Smith in the general belief that he had kept them from becoming rich.

It makes for a nice tangle to the background. $15,000.00 was a lot more in that day than it is now. Without the embezzlement the anti-bank would probably have survived in spite of the land speculation and the mortgage defaults it produced.