A member resigns from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir over the Trump inauguration

Last updated on: January 1, 2017 at 11:52 pm by Dan Peterson

A member resigns from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir over the Trump inauguration 2017-01-01T23:52:34-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square, seated at the base of the Conference Center organ in Salt Lake City (LDS.org)

A signed editorial on CNN is entitled “The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Trump-sized mistake”:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/01/opinions/mormon-tabernacle-choir-mistake-reyes/

I’ve already pretty much stated my view on this matter, here and here and then, most lengthily, here.

In my judgment, the “Trump-sized mistake” was made not by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir but by the American — and, most specifically, the Republican — electorate. I don’t, however, want to re-litigate the political issues today. That’s not the point of this blog entry. (I try valiantly, and mostly successfully, to avoid politics on Sundays, which I prefer to devote to more fundamental things.)

But, for better or for worse, Mr. Donald J. Trump will soon be the president of the United States of America. And the best way to deal with that sobering fact isn’t for decent, competent people to refuse to serve in his administration. Rather, such people are by far our best hope that things might go well. Neither is it best for his presidency to begin it with an inauguration in which the oath of office is administered to him by Vladimir Putin while he’s surrounded by a few of the Rockettes against a background video of Wayne Newton and the Rat Pack and continually interrupted by an audience made up solely of activists from Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street.

We must hope that Mr. Trump can be encouraged to listen to “the better angels of his nature,” that he can perhaps rise to the solemnity of the office he’s about to assume.

I’m encouraged, on the whole, by many of his appointments. I’m not bothered by the fact that many in his cabinet are very wealthy; I hope that they will be people of achievement and competence. Nor am I worried about the fact that he’s appointed a number of military generals to his cabinet. After all, he hasn’t given a post to The General, let alone to General Zod, and military officers tend to have impressive experience as leaders and in dealing with crises and international issues. My major reservations center around Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson. Not because he’s the CEO of Exxon Mobil, but because of his too-close friendship with the current oligarchs of Russia. (Mitt Romney might have helped to guard against Mr. Trump’s man-crush on Vladimir Putin; Tillerson will, if anything, make it worse.)

Anyway, the latest phase of the controversy surrounding the Tabernacle Choir’s agreement to sing at the 2017 presidential inauguration has focused on Sister Jan Chamberlin’s decision to resign from the Choir rather than perform in Washington DC.

Many, in and out of the Church, have praised her action. Quite a number have condemned her and it. Apparently, she’s receiving hate mail. Certainly I’ve seen some pretty nasty things said about her.

It’s deeply wrong for believing Latter-day Saints to call her names, to insult her, to speak public ill of her. She is, unless I’m mistaken, still a faithful member of the Church. Until very recently, she was a member in good standing of the Church’s official choir, and, if I understand accurately the way these things are done, a set-apart Church missionary — a status with which the Church was evidently quite comfortable. I’m quite confident that she’s an active member of a Latter-day Saint ward somewhere along the Wasatch Front, not very different from the many good Mormon sisters known to all of us. And, more fundamentally than that, she’s an ordinary human being who should be treated with charity.

Moreover, I fully appreciate her reluctance to sing at Mr. Trump’s inauguration. It’s a matter of record that I came out early and publicly as a committed “Never Trump” conservative, that I resigned from the Republican Party on the night that he accepted its nomination, and that I continued to voice my opposition to Mr. Trump pretty much daily for many months. This has come at at least some slight cost to me: I’ve been unfriended and even personally insulted by some. One member of the Church, enormously displeased at my criticisms of Donald J. Trump, publicly pronounced me “mean-spirited” — a description that’s been applied to me, heretofore, pretty much only by a handful of really, really nasty ex-Mormons who don’t know me personally. (I thought it an especially nice touch that the description came on Christmas Eve, on a forum where, so far as I know, I’ve never participated.)

My point is that I’m not writing here as someone who’s unconcerned about Mr. Trump’s election, let alone as somebody who’s delighted at it. I’m happy that Hillary Clinton lost; I’m not happy that Mr. Trump won.

Some have asked, though, for my stance regarding Sister Chamberlin’s action. I’ve been ill with an intractable sinus infection for roughly the past five weeks — Merry Christmas! — and have been operating at about 10% of my already very limited capacity, so I’m late getting to it (and to a great many other things). But here are a few thoughts:

I’m told that only a portion of the Choir will actually travel to the inauguration. (This is, I think, typical of the Choir when it’s on the road; a substantial minority of the members don’t go.) Those who don’t wish to participate will not be required to do so.

Thus, Sister Chamberlin could simply have opted out of singing at the swearing-in of Mr. Trump and still remained a member of the Choir in good standing. Yet she chose, for some reason, not to do so.

And, even if she were bent on resigning from the Choir, I’m just a tad puzzled at her need to do it so publicly. Her action has brought a great deal of additional negative publicity to the Church and the Choir, which was easily predicted and which seems an odd thing for a set-apart missionary to do. I can’t imagine that the good she’s done by serving as one of the Choir’s 360 members for the past five years outweighs the harm that she’s done to the image of the Church and the Choir via this latest uptick in critical stories and angry comments.

Still, though, while I don’t endorse what she did, I don’t condemn her, either. And I certainly think that those members of the Church who’ve written and spoken unkindly about her need to consider their own behavior.

Posted from Carlsbad, California

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