Congratulations! After years of languishing in the Number Two spot, you’ve finally fulfilled the Lord’s plan for you by outliving your senior colleagues and picking up the mantle they dropped somewhere on the way to advanced senility. Millions of Mormons are now bearing their testimony of the greatness of Comrade — er, I mean, President — Monson, instead of that guy you played second fiddle to for … good lord, was it really twenty-three years? How time flies!
You’ve had a couple of months to settle into your role and get the recline on your presidential office chair just right. You’re off to a running start, what with overseeing the church while it carries on the time-honored tradition of harassing and disciplining Mormons who defend gay people. No doubt we’ll see more witch hunts to come (don’t forget to go after the feminists and so-called intellectuals!), and I’m sure you’re working on a list of new articles of clothing and types of body decoration that Mormons will no longer be allowed to wear.
But here’s the thing. That stuff’s old evil. You’re the prophet now! You get to put your own stamp on the calling! Do you just want to go on doing the same stuff your predecessors did? Gordon B. Hinckley will probably have historians naming a whole era of church history after him in years to come. Are you content merely to be remembered by generations of Primary kids as “what was the name of the guy who came after Hinckley?”
Or do you want to step it up and have the 2010s named after you? Do you want to be the George Clooney Batman, or the Christian Bale Batman? Just picture it: thousands and thousands of correlated manuals trumpeting the accomplishments of the Monson Era, remarking in passing, maybe in a footnote, that the Hinckley years were basically preparatory to the main event. You, sir, can be that Main Event.
In that spirit, I’m offering you some suggestions. You do some of this stuff, and you’ll have thousands of ex-Mormons flocking back, tithing envelopes in hand. You may even manage to get the Aaronic Priesthood to turn from the bombardment of girl-on-girl porn that they watch instead of General Conference. Mormonism may even survive and thrive to give people reasons to ask uncomfortable questions about polygamy well into the twenty-second century.
But ignore this, dismiss it as the ramblings of a post-Mormon crank, and I guarantee you, the only reason you’ll even be mentioned in any history of Mormonism is in a sentence noting that “Thomas S. Monson, who succeeded GORDON B. HINCKLEY (see also “Hinckley Era, the”; “20th Century, Notable Cult Leaders of”; and “McTemples, Lots of”), presided over the continuing decline of the LDS church into stagnation and irrelevance.” And by the way, that sentence will be in an endnote. Not even a footnote. Damn, that’s harsh.
Let’s start with sacrament meeting. It’s boring. You’ve got millions of people convinced that this is prelude to the celestial kingdom. No wonder so many people have decided to bail for the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms!
So why don’t you spice things up a bit, and start with some audience participation? I realize it’d be a little awkward at first, letting people actually have a say in their own church experience. But maybe you could correlate things a bit, just to ease the transition. Install “APPLAUSE” signs and maybe even add a laugh track (especially for when the high councilmen come to talk). You might end up with some excesses, of course — every ward would eventually have a loyal cadre of back-row hecklers like those two old guys on the Muppet Show. But the returns would be worth it.
You might think about hiring some professional actors. You might have to stick to B-listers if you want weekly visits, but you’ve easily got the budget to hire Patrick Dempsey for the occasional Enrichment Night, or Katherine Heigl to give the Young Men a very special lesson on the importance of chastity. You could invite Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell to guest star with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I’d bet Britney Spears would jump at the chance to be paid for a fireside where she stood as a cautionary example to all Primary age children.
While you’re at it, there are some things you can do to the endowment to attract more temple-goers. Hinckley went out and built all those McTemples; you can be the guy who filled the seats and got people ordering McEndowments with McBaptisms and a side of McSealings, week after week.
How are you going to do it? Three words: Full. Frontal. Nudity. All the nineteen-year-old soon-to-be missionaries are already secretly hoping for some Naked Eve action, and why not show that the church is moving tentatively toward gender equality by letting Adam show his stuff as well? Now, Boyd K. Packer will probably object, but you can just remind him that the Lord didn’t give them clothes until after the Fall, so you’re just staying true to the scriptures.
If you’re a little more daring, you might consider adding a sex scene to the part where Adam and Eve are wandering around the garden gawking at all the animals. If you want to add some doctrine to the mix, you might have a line where Eve says, “Not right now, Adam, I’ve got a headache.” And Adam can reply, “Come on, baby, it’s not like we can get pregnant before the Fall!” Or you might have Lucifer watching them in the distance and cursing the fact that he rebelled in the pre-existence and now he ain’t got no body. You might even consider adding a musical number, perhaps “Come, Come Ye Saints.” It’s your call. I guarantee you, it’ll keep the faithful coming. Again and again.
On to the next problem: the demographic crisis that’s going to knock on the church’s door like Jesus in those cheesy paintings, some time in the next generation. Let’s be serious for a moment. Your problems can be boiled down to three main issues. (1) The church is baptizing and not retaining converts. (2) Lifelong members are finding the church increasingly irrelevant and/or discovering that you boys have pulled the wool over their eyes as far as its origins are concerned. (3) The remaining faithful aren’t popping out enough babies anymore to cover the shortfall.
You know this stuff already, even if you’re not talking about it at Conference. Question is, what are you going to do about it? Well, the solutions are ready. First of all, there’s nothing you can do about (1). You can’t very well tell missionaries to baptize less, otherwise their mission presidents will have nothing in their arsenal to make them feel like worthless crap and bludgeon them into more hours of work; and the returned missionaries will have nothing to brag about once they get home so they can convince BYU co-eds that they’re all spiritchul and worthy of marriage, oh, in two weeks.
Some of the things I’ve suggested above will help with (2). Except with the part about people discovering the reality of the church’s origins. Truth is, you’re kind of screwed on that one. You really shouldn’t have let the Packer Posse set the agenda on “faithful history.” A little more honesty might have helped. Like back in 1980, when you guys maybe still had a little plausible deniability left. Right now, your best bet is to just keep praying some folks continue to think that history doesn’t matter in the present and that God, if he exists, hasn’t created a special circle in hell for you.
But you can definitely do something about (3). How do you create a new Mormon baby boom? Easy. Ditch the garments, and instruct the sisters at every Conference that it is their God-ordained duty to bare their shoulders, wear shorts at mid-thigh or higher, and put on no underwear larger than a thong. Why should this be the women’s duty? Practicality, really. I mean, you guys are already good at objectifying women by continually portraying them as quasi-pornographic temptresses who are out to ensnare every male over the age of 12 with their scandalously bare elbows and knees. Why not just put a new twist on old sexism and turn it to your advantage? And if you think a No Garment Policy would be going too far, you could mandate garment thongs and sell them at, say, Emma’s Secret. It’s got sex appeal, and you get to run a doctrinally justifiable — and guaranteed profitable! — church business on the side.
Well, that’s probably enough to start with. You can feel free to bring them up at your next temple meeting, but make sure you practice saying, “An angel with a flaming sword appeared to me and said…” lots of times in front of a mirror before you take it to the others. They’re probably going to need a revelation to accept the changes you’re proposing. And alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.
Yeah, you should probably abolish the Word of Wisdom, too.
Sincerely,
MagicCicero
