Re: "Agenda" and persecution of Mormons

[Robert Justin Lipkin]

In a message dated 7/15/2003 12:36:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Is there some church document saying that plural marriages would not be
legitimate even if they were permitted by temporal law? That would seem
to indicate that there had been a change in the church's religious
views, but so far nobody has come up with such a document.

       I wonder whether this is a necessary condition for assessing whether an institution has changed its position as opposed to an accommodation, or rather a sufficient condition. If it is necessary, it seems to be a remarkably strong test for assessing such changes. It requires the representatives of the institution to know now what their response would be in significantly different circumstances in the future. Some institutions might indeed know--or at least think they know--what their response would be. But such knowledge and resolve isn't available to every institution that changes its views. Consequently, such a test conflicts with a rather commonplace, but significant,  understanding of what it means "to change one's views."  One ordinary example. A law school might adopt the practice of requiring teaching evaluations. This situation is appropriately described, I would think, as the law school changing its views. Now one might further ask whether the school would stick to this change if all other law schools abandoned evaluations. It is difficult to see how an affirmative answer to this question is required before we can describe the school as changing its position on teaching evaluations in the first instance.

Bobby Lipkin
Widener University School of Law
Delaware