Progressive vs Conservative in The Restored Church

Fall Conference has concluded, with a historical announcement about Sunday meetings going from 3 hours every Sunday down to 2 hours, and 12 new temples, many of them in remote or destitute parts of the southern hemisphere - everything was pretty progressive and exiting. But the strange thing is this has all be side tracked by Elder Oaks talk that was a rehash of all our current politically incorrect beliefs. What was Elder Oaks thinking?

Before you can understand what Elder Oaks was doing there, you first have to understand the ongoing debate that has dominated General Conference since I can remember. The Church has been making an awkward transition from a theocracy to a spiritual practice since Utah joined the United States. At one point in those days of yore The Church was running a form of Christian Socialism called "The United Order" and was anti-slavery, just as progressive as you can possibly imagine for that era. As The Church has assimilated slowly into its place as a global religion instead of a local theocracy, it has taken political positions similar to other major Christian religions.

But if you are a member of The Church, those political positions do not weigh on your day to day life. What takes its toll on your life is how much time your religion takes up out of your day. As an all volunteer ministry, you donate significant amounts of time keeping your local congregation going in volunteer assigned positions called "callings." The Church puts other demands on your time. Consider the expectations I had as a 16 year old member of The Church:

• Go to Church for 3 hours each Sunday.
• Go to Boy Scouts once a week and try to become an Eagle Scout (no small task.)
• Have a part time job to save money to serve a mission (I got employee of the month at my local Safeway.)
• Go to an hour of early morning Seminary each day before school.
• Participate in extra curricular activities, particularly athletics.
• Do well in school, doing lots of homework.
• Socialize with other youth from Church.
• Practice personal prayer and scripture study.
• Participate in family prayer and scripture study.
• Get adequate rest to do some fraction of the above.

Obviously that was impossible, and I chose to do martial arts instead of much of the above. But in the past The Church was an entire society/ethnicity/culture/theocracy that completely consumed the time of the people in it (as most cultures do.) 

The debate inside of The Church is about "how much time should members have to spend doing things related to The Church?" On a local level you might call this a power struggle between the Stake Presidents, (who's job it is to administrate the church in their area and thus need lots of volunteer man hours to help them do that,) and the Temple Presidents (who need people to have lots of free time to meditate, spiritually develop themselves, and thus spend time at their temple.)  If you pay attention to General Conference carefully, you will see some people are clearly on one side or the other, and others are caught in between in the fray between these two opposing factions.

This conference was a near total scorched earth victory in this great tug of war, with the 3 hour church meetings being reduced to 2 hour church meetings. The divorce between the Boy Scouts of America and The Church was another such victory. The Church is focused on becoming a serious spiritual practice rather than an all consuming volunteer activity.

Elder Oaks is the most single outspoken proponent of members spending as much time as they possibly can doing church stuff... to listen to some of his previous talks, you would think doing anything that was not in direct service to the faith could be considered a senseless waste of your life. So from an internal perspective as a member of The Church, Elder Oaks is the most conservative Apostle, the one who embraces the old theocratic lifestyle more so than the others.

Obviously Elder Oaks wasn't really able to do his usual thing at conference where 1/3 of the membership's Sunday duties were just excused. Instead, he just focused on his other extraordinarily conservative views. The apostles are not supposed to agree on everything, and it is refreshing to me that even with the frustration of not really being able to tell who the progressive minds within the apostleship are, we can at least see who the most conservative one is. I appreciate Elder Oak's transparency on this, even if his positions make it harder for me be a member of The Church: