LDS Revelations

I hadn’t heard about this until I read a post on a Mormon online discussion board yesterday. It seems in October 1984 Elder Ronald E. Poelman, a member of the First Quorum of Seventy, gave a talk in General Conference that created a stir. On the post I read a few people recalled hearing the talk and distinctly remembered it was different. Very different. The comment was that it stood out enough above the stream of standard talks as to ‘awake’ listeners out of the trance that is LDS General Conference.

The talk, entitled “The Gospel and the Church”, discussed the idea free agency in the context of LDS Church and was applauded by many as a important— in that it recognized the importance of an individuals right to choose how to live and what to accept rather than being a strict obedience message. Evidently Church leadership had issues with the talk. The conference report in the Ensign magazine the following month had a dramatically different version of Poelman’s talk. But that’s not all. The Church went through the effort of re-recording Poelman giving the revised talk from the Tabernacle pulpit. A “cough track” was even edited into the re-tape to make it appear as though it was the original presentation.

So what are the specifics? What material did the original talk contain? How different were the two versions of the talk? See for yourself.

L. Jackson Newell, writing in  Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, [vol. 19,  (1986)] said, “The rewriting and refilming of Elder Ronald Poelman’s October 1984 Conference address, originally a rare and inspiring defense of free agency, so that it became yet another cry for obedience. His text was not edited — his ideas were turned inside out.”

Anyway, I thought this was interesting. I wonder if anything similar could happen today. Is there no one among the General Authorities who has similar opinions and the boldness to sahre them? Or do the Brethren pre-screen Conference talks a little better these days?