MIPodcast #174: Agency (Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants) Featuring Terryl Givens

Rosalynde Welch: From Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute Podcast: faith illuminating scholarship.

And, we’re back! Hello everybody, welcome to 2025 and a new season of the podcast. I’m Rosalynde Welch, associate director and fellow at the Maxwell Institute and host of this show. We’re thrilled to be back with you for another series of conversations on “The Questions We Should Be Asking.” When--and only when--we ask the right questions can we find the answers we need. But it’s not easy to know what to ask--whether we direct the question to ourselves, to experts, or, urgently, to God.

Asking good questions is something scholars practice daily. A powerful research question is the foundation of good scholarship. So this season we’ll explore with gospel scholars the questions we should be asking--the sharper, deeper questions that point us toward what’s real. And as we do that, we want to show you what we’re about here at the Maxwell Institute: our mission, our research initiatives, and the work we hope will serve you. We’ll go deep into our projects on scripture, interfaith understanding, and everyday discipleship in a changing world. I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

In 2024, we dedicated our entire season to the Book of Mormon. I hope you caught all of it, of course, and will go back to revisit your favorites often. In 2025, we’ll return to a broader focus for our interviews--but never fear, we’ll have plenty of discussion about the Doctrine and Covenants as we study it together in the global Church. In fact, we’ll be kicking off the season with a series of conversations about the Maxwell Institute’s newest book series, co-published with Deseret Book, which we’ve called Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants. We’re thrilled to launch these seven new volumes, each authored by a different scholar and covering a different doctrinal theme.

Many of you are familiar with the Maxwell Institute’s Brief Theological Introductions to the Book of Mormon, which we published in 2020. We heard from so many readers that the short and practical but rigorous approach of that series made the Book of Mormon exciting and accessible in a way you really needed. So Spencer Fluhman, past director of the Institute and the original editor of the series, wanted to bring that same approach to the Doctrine and Covenants. We approached seven of the sharpest, most faithful scholars and historians we know, and invited each to choose a topic that got them fired up. You can go to our website to see the full list of authors and topics, and I think you’ll be intrigued by all of them. Each one opened my eyes to things I had never seen in the Doctrine and Covenants.

For the next few months, we’ll feature interviews with each of the seven authors, and we’ll get things started today with Terryl Givens, my colleague at the Institute, who authored the volume on Agency. Dr. Givens is one of those scholars who practically needs no introduction. He’s the author or editor of over 20 books on the Latter-day Saint experience, and with the Maxwell Institute he’s published 2 Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction, The Doors of Faith, and now, Agency. As it happens, Terryl also joined me as a general editor of the entire series, but today I’ll be talking to him as an author. We’ll get into all the knotty questions about agency: what actually is it, does free will really exist, and what does it mean to say that agency is relational. It’s a fun and meaty conversation, and I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

Welch: Hello, Terryl Givens, and welcome to the Maxwell Institute podcast.

Terryl Givens: Hi, Rosalynde. Nice to be here.

Welch: So, Terryl, you and I co-edited this book series, Themes and the Doctrine and Covenants, but in addition, you authored one of those volumes, and today we'll be talking about the book that you wrote titled Agency. Tell us why you chose this topic.

Givens: Well, unlike the Book of Mormon, which is easy to organize by book or chronologically, Doctrine and Covenants doesn't lend itself to that kind of organization. So Spencer decided we would do it thematically. And I have always thought agency is one of the most interesting focal points of Restoration doctrine. And I think it gets some interesting treatment in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah, it connects in some ways to earlier work that you've done, right? Your work on pre-existence. I think agency is connected to this idea of our pre-moral existence. It's related in some ways to the ideas of atonement and grace that you've been exploring recently. Did you see connections to work that you've already done?

Givens: Yeah, yeah, I did. I've always thought that one of the most kind of radical departures that the Restoration takes from historic Christianity is to posit the problem of agency as the kind of germinal issue in the history of the cosmos, right? Rather than seeing a kind of premortal combat between good and evil, we refrain from the narrative as one between agency and challenges to agency. And so I think for this and other reasons, Sterling McMurray once said that Latter-day Saints have a kind of obsessive preoccupation with agency. And I think that's true.

Going all the way back to the very first hymn that Emma chooses for the hymn book, “Know this that every soul is free.” Joseph Smith tells us that he felt embroiled in this controversy between the Presbyterians and the Methodists, which was really a debate between the Calvinists and the Armenians. The debate was about free will. And so I think historically and theologically, it's always been at the center.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, right. In our account of this kind of pre-mortal war in heaven, what's at issue is not so much, as you said, good versus evil, but the question of agency itself. And this is something that the Doctrine and Covenants sort of explicitly lays out. Tell us a little bit, what are the key texts on agency in the Doctrine and Covenants? What are the central sections that you brought together and read together in this volume?

Givens: Well, I think in some ways the foundational moment when it comes to an exposition of agency is in section 93, verse 30, when we read that without agency there isn't even any existence. It seems to me really striking background to the statement of Joseph Smith, of which I'm sure he was not aware, is the fact that Plato said something virtually identical. Plato said that genuine existence only obtains when there is something to act or be acted upon, when something either exerts a force or receives a force. And so I think that's an interesting idea to posit that existence is co-existent with agency itself.

But it also, especially when you think about the way Plato frames it, it seems to me that that opens up the question of, well, in what sense is agency relational? In other words, in what sense can we only talk about agency when we are talking about a person who's imbricated in a series of relationships with other agents upon whom she or he exerts or receives action. The way I see the Doctrine Covenants doing that is in this kind of extensive thematizing of giving and receiving. Those are only two ways, really, we choose to exercise agency, is we are receptive to influences coming our way, so we're receiving for good or for ill, or we're exerting influence, we're bestowing gifts upon those within our orbit.

Welch: Yeah, that's one of my favorite parts of the book. I'd love you to expand just a little bit more on this idea of receptivity, because receptivity tends to be a more passive activity, right? If one is to receive, one can't initiate the giving of the other person. So it suggests--framing agency as a matter of giving and receiving suggests that there's a kind of passiveness or a vulnerability that is really central to agency, as well as kind of the active exertion and initiation of actions.

Givens: I'm going to answer that probably in a long roundabout way. And I'm going to do it by talking about the definition of free will itself and the controversy over whether free will even exists. So pull me back to the question if I get lost in this digression. But David Hume once said that the question of free will is the most contentious issue in the history of philosophy. And I think it continues to be.

Welch: Okay.

Givens: In large measure because the ethical and religious stakes are so high. How can we be responsible? How can there be sin or judgment in a universe where there's not freedom, which makes us responsible for our choices and actions? The argument against free will has always been of this nature, especially in religious history, it's largely been a compatibilist argument, which is an argument that tries to reconcile determinism and free will, God's sovereignty and human agency.

And this argument is best summarized by Schopenhauer who said, we cannot will to will. And so the way this argument takes shape is that we are free to act within our nature. A bird is free to fly. We are not free to fly because we don't have wings. So that's not consistent with our nature. So we can only act according to our nature. God gives us our nature.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Givens: So God is in charge, but we are free within the circumscribed realm.

I think that that idea is hostile to the whole enterprise of the gospel, to Christ's whole purpose, which is to help us transform into something that we are not. And so the only way that we can do that within the context of the new and everlasting covenant, the plan of salvation, the plan of happiness, the only way we can do that is by actively exposing ourselves to those influences that Christ makes available to us directly or through the intermediary of others. So repentance, I think, is metanoia, the change of heart, the change of desire is the process by which we can change our own nature by learning to desire different things, learning to covet and aspire to a different set of yearnings and longings. And so in that sense, it's a very, very active process indeed by which we selectively discern and choose and expose ourselves and immerse ourselves in environments and in relationships that are conducive to the kind of soul formation that we believe constitutes salvation.

Welch: So let me bring this back to earth for a second and let you in on a little dilemma that I experience in my own life, okay? There's one area in my life in which I feel that I exercise agency freely and well, and that is in getting my kids to practice their musical instruments. I am strongly motivated. I have a strong intrinsic desire, and I think I am able to act to motivate myself to act on them, get them to practice, and making music together is a wonderful way that we relate to each other.

There's another way in which I really struggle, and that is I wish that I were the kind of person that invited other people over to my house to have dinner. Seems like a small thing, but it's a wonderful way of creating community, and for years on end, I have said as my New Year’s resolution, this is the year I'm gonna invite more people over to have dinner with me at my house. And I just don't do it. I can't get myself to do it. I want to, it's on my list. I just don't get around to it. And ultimately, I feel like I just don't want it as much as I want, for instance, to make music with my kids. So am I stuck in this forever, or is what you're saying that there's a way that we can actually change our desires?

Obviously, this is a trivial example, and we could insert much more consequential examples with much more consequential moral outcomes there. Are you saying that we can change, sort of our motivational structure and our intrinsic desires that are at the base of agency?

Givens: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. The best book on the subject is called Aspiration, and it's by Agnes Callard, who's a Harvard philosopher, and from a non-religious point of view, she's asking this very question, how can we desire something that we don't desire? And she said it has to do with the capacity that we have as humans, which animals presumably don't have, to project ourselves into a future and to respond to that potential which we can visualize by working actively toward it.

I think it's interesting that behavioral science has in so many ways powerfully reinforced a truth that I think was always there in the 16th Proverb, which for me has been a powerful tool in motivation, right? And the Proverb reads, commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts will be established. And so I think what we're learning there is that sometimes we can do more, no more than just go through the motions, right? I tend to be pretty asocial. I'm an introvert. I don't like groups and parties and home teaching was always just this unbearable cross for me. But I found that to the extent that I mechanically went through the motions, then my heart was softened and turned and I grew to appreciate sociability and service and interaction in a way that then made me more likely to want to do it.

So this is, I think, the process by which we can change our heart. You might not like classical music, but you feel like you should. Well then you go to concerts and eventually you're exposed enough. So that's what I mean about we can choose the environment, we can choose the conditions under which our desires can be shaped in more constructive ways.

Welch: Yeah. So free will, it's not just a question of, we have it or we don't. It's more a question of particular forms of agency, shades of gray in between ways that we are indeed constrained by our brain, our biology, our environment, and yet ways that we can act within those circumstances.

Givens: Absolutely, yeah. And so I'm glad you reframe it that way because part of what I try to acknowledge in this book is a really disturbing reality, of ways in which our actions are influenced by unconscious motivations and circumstances.

Welch: Yeah, of, sort of pre-conscious biases that we might exhibit and yes, yeah.

Givens: That's cognitive biases. That was the term I was looking for, thank you. And so we have, there are all of these hidden influences always at work on us. And so it does turn out that the domain of freedom is in some ways much more reduced than idealistic free will philosophers have thought. We can't just suddenly decide I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and be Mother Teresa. And so there is a gradual process by which I think agency expands and builds. And I think the Doctrine and Covenants is sensitive, I think, to the fact that there is a process by which agency or will grows and is nourished until we reach this perfect day.

And I think another section of the Doctrine and Covenants that's really been pivotal, I think, to my reflections about agency is section 121, where we are schooled in this principle that human beings tend to migrate towards power structures. We tend to exploit powers that are available to us. And so in many ways, much of the gospel, especially within a hierarchical institutional church, has to be constantly urging us to be vigilant against the temptation to use coercion. And there are so many subtle ways in which we can use it.

You know, the perfect day is reached when there's no power or influence that is exerted externally except powers of attraction, which we write. And I love the language of the Book of Mormon, right? That Christ draws us. He doesn't drive us. He draws us. And so I think the image that I have in mind is we are always migrating further and further away from coercive modes of interaction and more and more towards the pure love, which ultimately displaces power hierarchies, we hope.

Welch:

Yeah. Yeah, I really loved your reading of D&C 121 and especially putting that in the context of agency. And you point out, yeah, these words like flow and draw, which are these kind of gentle words. He could have chosen words like push or pull or, you know, require, but instead it's this language, a very liquid and very organic and incremental language of power flowing towards somebody without these compulsory measures. Yeah, it's really beautiful.

Givens: Yeah, yeah.

Welch: I'd like to go back to this idea of agency as being something that is relational. Just unpack that idea a little bit more, and in particular, unpack this idea that relationality involves being acted upon as well as acting, right? I think from the Book of Mormon, from 2 Nephi chapter 2, we might feel that sort of the primary and preferable form of agency is acting upon others. But I think you have a different kind of reading where being acted upon at times is actually the more important form of agency.

Givens: Right. Yeah, I'm thinking of that scripture about the doctrines of the priesthood distilling upon the mind, right? That's a beautiful image that again is about flowing, about allowing, well, exerting the effort to open ourselves to these influences. I think that part of what has happened in Latter-day Saint culture is we were birthed in this moment of Jacksonian democracy. And there has been a movement from the 1820s, it seems to me, to the modern day toward atomistic individualism, this radical individualism, right? We've reframed rights from responsibilities to ways in which we think we need to be more empowered. I think Joseph Smith was, his vision was so incompatible with that kind of atomistic individualism, right? That heaven is all about sociability.

And so I think that it's not hard to exercise power, right? That's the perennial temptation. The hard thing is to relinquish power. And so I think there are times when the higher calling is to allow ourselves to be acted upon. Just as, right, it's a lot easier to give gifts. We all feel kind of awkward on Christmas Day when we have to open our gifts in front of people, we're not as good at receiving things. And so if you read the Doctrine and Covenants and are attentive to that language of reception, I think you'll be struck by how frequently it occurs, like in the School of the Prophets when they begin, right, with that expression of that covenant to receive one another as friends and in the new and everlasting covenant. And so there's a joyful receiving that I think we need to better cultivate.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah, I loved that reading of Section 88 and the School of the Prophets, the way that they receive one another as friends and as fellows in this joint process of learning together and receiving revelation together. But more than that, you point out in Section 88, it’s a picture of salvation and this idea of judgment and where we'll end up, which kingdom we'll end up in, it comes down to which law we are willing to receive. And it strikes me that that's--it strikes me because you pointed it out--that that's a very, there's a very different when we think about what law we're willing to receive rather than what deeds we are able to do or what, what we qualify to do.

Givens: Yeah, and I think to my mind, one way of thinking about this has to do with justice, the ways we think about justice. And clearly there's no question that in some ways justice is a concept that is scripturally affirmed. But in other ways, justice is a concept that Jesus radically critiques and deconstructs. And it seems to me that…

I had a wonderful exchange with a friend, I won't name him, but he's a fairly famous jurist. And in a talk he gave, he quoted a religious thinker as saying, the single greatest evidence of God is the universal presence of justice in the human mind. And I responded by saying, no, I think that's the greatest evidence of the reality of Satan. So we had a bit of a disagreement here.

Welch: Hahaha!

Givens: What I meant was when we talk about justice, I want to see justice. What we really mean is I want the satisfaction of retribution. And we have this image that justice is about finding perfect equilibrium and equity in the universe, right? And that's a myth, sociologically and philosophically, it's a myth. The Code of Hammurabi had nothing to do with establishing equity. It was about, let's see if we can arrest this cycle of retribution, so that if you break my arm, I can only break your arm, was the point. But what are we left with?

Welch: Yeah, Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth was meant to restrain us, not to empower us to seek vengeance. Yeah.

Givens: Exactly, exactly, right? So now we end up, we have two broken arms and two broken teeth. Where's the harmony in that? So it seems to me that part of what Jesus was asking us to do in his many parables and sermons was to understand that heaven has to operate by grace, that there has to be a fundamental asymmetry to the universe. That's what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is when we relinquish our claims and our demands upon justice and say, no, I willingly choose to accept this imbalance and restore a relationship amidst the wreckage of that failure of equivalence, equity, and justice. And so I think that's consistent with what I think I'm trying to say in this book about the importance of learning how to receive. It's not a passive receptivity, it’s an act of choice to relinquish our demand that the universe be fair, that others be just.

Welch: This seems to me related to your reading of this, I think, saying of Joseph Smith, that every soul is “susceptible of enlargement.” Talk a little bit about how you understand that idea of susceptibility.

Givens: Right, right. Yeah, thank you. Because I was just struck reading that one time that that was an odd choice of word. Normally you would say every soul is capable of enlargement, but susceptible is so emphatically about allowing yourself to be acted upon. And so I just found whether intentional or not, that what he was saying was making a profound theological claim that the way our souls and minds are enlarged is by the ways they are acted upon, and we have to choose to allow them. That's what it means that every soul is susceptible. Every soul has the ability to choose to let softer, kinder, gentler, more beautiful voices predominate in one's heart and soul.

Welch: Yeah. I mean, imagine how it changes the feeling if rather than asking myself, am I worthy to be in the celestial kingdom? Am I qualified to be in the celestial kingdom? What if I ask myself, am I susceptible to the law of the celestial kingdom? Right? Am I willing to open myself and to expose myself to the kind of radical love that reigns there? To me, that really changes the feeling, it changes the way I think about what that encounter with God will be like if what I am asked to do is to be susceptible to His love.

Givens: No, I think that's absolutely right. I've always thought that the single most provocative thing, maybe, unsettling thing that Joseph Smith said in this regard, so I think this is related. He said, if you have no accusers, you will enter heaven. Now that's a strange bar to meet, because he didn't say if you are innocent.

Welch: Yeah.

Givens: He said, We have no accusers. And so it seems to me that what he is saying there is, once again, it's not about equity. If somebody has a grudge against you, even if it's an unworthy, unmerited grudge, it's disrupted your ability to let love pass freely between the two of you. And so we have to find a way to breach that divide.

And it isn't about who's right or who's wrong sometimes. It's about, again, whether we can relinquish our demands, our insistence on equity and a transactional kind of equilibrium and just open ourselves to a love that isn't about merit, theirs or ours.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. So what matters more than anything is have I got my relationships right, right? That's what matters, to be able to receive that celestial law is am I right with those in my life? And of course, the commandments are there to serve that end, right? So when we're obedient to the commandments, they serve that end of living in love of our neighbor and of God and of self.

But those commandments serve the relationships and those are what is fundamental. I think that's maybe what you're getting at with the relationality of agency.

Givens: That's right, that's right. And there are really profound theological implications that I feel we don't fully recognize or develop in our own tradition. Because we know it's about sociality, we know it's about eternal relationships. And yet we still talk about salvation as something that we earn or that we are worthy of or that God gives us. But you don't earn relationships. God doesn't give you relationships.

He can't bestow a relationship upon you. What he can do is give you those laws and directives and principles that can shape us in ways that foster relationship.

Welch: Yeah. It seems like this discussion is related in some ways to a little bit of a fight that you pick in the book. And that's about the idea of authenticity. Talk to us about your quarrel with authenticity. And I think it's related to this idea of whether or not our righteousness is located sort of intrinsically within us or in the spaces between us and the communities and people in our lives.

Givens: Yes. Yeah, yeah. You know, the soul, separate and apart from having any kind of theological significance, has always served important functions in our society and in our psyches. Think, for example, of, you know, your mother, you've got a 14-year-old that went out and partied one night and went and smashed mailboxes. And so he's brought before the judge. And what would your defense of your son sound like? You would probably say something like, that's not really him. He wasn't himself that night.

Welch: Yeah.

Givens: All those ways of thinking are positing an independently existing stable nucleus to our identity. And I think that's a myth. It's a myth that I think the gospel is trying to wean us away from. We are defined by our relationships. Those relationships are continually evolving. We are always in the process of evolution.

And so the pernicious dimensions of that model are that it allows us to pursue a kind of selfish willfulness cloaked in this language of being true to my real self, right? So, you know, I had a friend whose wife decided that her true self was an actress. And so she apologized, but she left him and his six children to go find herself on Broadway. But we hear that kind of thing so frequently among young people especially, right? Well, I have to be true to myself. This is about authenticity.

And so this is where we find a frequent cause of conflict between individuals in the institutional church. The institutional church is trying to impose standards, values, teachings, beliefs. And we resist that because we think...

Welch: Mmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Givens: We're violating our integrity by not being true to an authentic self. Well, if our model is already shaped in terms of we either receive or we give, then the only question is, well, what influences are we choosing to receive? So we are always allowing ourselves to be molded and formed by external influences and factors. The question is, are we going to choose the ones that are light and beautiful and good?

I think scriptures reaffirm the fallacious nature of thinking about authenticity. Paul and John, and Moroni all say something very similar. They all say effectively, we don't even know who we are until that perfect day. Then we'll know who we are because then we'll know as we are known, which I think I find that a really remarkable kind of posture, and I think in trivial ways this is very evident. For example, I'm right-handed. Was I right-handed in the pre-mortal life? I don't know. Will I take my right-handedness through the veil? I don't know. I'm a workaholic. Is that genetic? Was that inculcated by my father? In other words, I don't even know what parts of me are traceable to some pre-mortal

Welch: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Givens: Nucleus and what parts are just cultural for me. So I think there's a certain arrogance and simple-mindedness in thinking that we even know who we are and I think that we can articulate an identity to which we have to be true. It's the potential to which we have to be true. If we're children of divinity, then that's about fully developing a potential that is always in the future.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's very, very difficult to give up that sense of ownership over my own self. And in some ways, I think it's important for children to first pass through a stage where they do kind of experience a sense of self, right, and feel a kind of sense of ownership and efficacy within that self. But then as we continue to develop, the great challenge I think becomes being willing to give up the sense that.

Givens: Right, right.

Welch: I own my life like I would a car or something like that. It seems related to the challenge of being willing to receive as well as to give. We're uncomfortable receiving. We want to be the ones giving. We're uncomfortable kind of relinquishing that ownership over our own life and our own selves and saying, actually, I am constituted by, replenished by, sustained by my relationships, my environments, the entities in my life. I think that's part of what Jesus is getting at when he tells us that to find our lives, we have to lose them, right? We have to give our lives away in order to truly receive them. But I think it's worth it to push through that discomfort in part because I think that leads us to…

Givens: Right? Right. Right.

Welch: A much more productive relationship with other people and in particular with other institutions. And I wanted to bring up this idea of common consent that you discuss as a principle that can help us mediate between our individual self and the institution of the church.

I did my dissertation on early modern English religious literature and in particular on the idea of the private conscience. And I think the way that conscience was understood in that period has been really influential to the present day. The conscience was understood as a kind of thing or a kind of place. And there was a battle for control over it, right? Who gets to control this place that we call conscience? Is it me? Is it sort of myself from my innermost depths of legitimacy and authority? Or is it some external authority? And that creates this kind of, this model in itself creates a constantly conflictual, agonistic site where we're always in the middle of a battle for control over conscience.

It seems to me like this idea of self that you're getting at with this idea of relational agency allows us to think about that relationship between an individual and a collective in a new way and much more productive way. And you call that common consent. Talk a little bit about that.

Givens: Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit about conscience, and then I'm going to go to common consent. So Protestant thinkers and Catholic thinkers have radically different ways of talking about conscience in its relationship to the institution. So, and here's why I think Latter-day Saints are often so bewildered and we're just so, this problem is so fraught for us, right? The institution and conscience, the authority and individualism. And I think it's because our thinking is clouded by a mixed inheritance. We are Protestant to the core in our sensibility. We are Catholic to the core in our institution. And those are coming into conflict. For a Protestant, it's very clear in their theology, you follow your conscience. And if it's in conflict with your church, your conscience is probably right because there's no divine assurance of a divine church or organization or institution. You follow your conscience and take it all the way to the stake if you have to.

If you're a Catholic, the obligation is just as strong to follow your conscience, but you follow your conscience knowing you're probably wrong. And this has been expressed verbatim for centuries all the way to the present post. The church is divine, the Church is infallible as an institution. If your conscience is in conflict with it, you must follow your conscience, but the Church is probably right. And then you just take the consequences. Take your lumps. In the Latter-day Saint tradition, we think we follow our conscience, but we believe the Church is divinely led and directed, and so we get to this impasse because we think the two should always be in perfect alignment.

Welch: Take your lumps. Yeah.

Givens: Well, the law of common consent was developed largely by the Puritans, right, as a way of reconciling these collisions between institutional authority and the individual. And they did it by carving out a space where conscience is always preserved and protected by virtue of you recognizing the mediating reality of an approved institutional form that represents the will of the collective.

So what this means in actual practice is, and this is actually kind of what's wrong in American politics today, is that America was also founded. It was rooted in notions of common consent, and we've completely lost those. But the idea of common consent, it's not the--what you are voting to sustain is the process by which a decision has been made. So you can vigorously disagree with the bishop that was called, but by raising your hand, what you're saying is, I am still a full and willful participant in this process that is governed by these forms, and I honor those forms by showing my consent to the process and its outcome. But that doesn't mean that I agree or align myself with the particulars of that decision. So my conscience is preserved, but the institution can function as an institution because we all sustain it collectively.

So when Joseph Smith starts using the language of common consent, that phrase would have been absolutely familiar to everybody in the audience because it went back to the pilgrims and it's also being used by John Locke, it's being used by political theorists of the time. We don't talk about it very much today. It doesn't function quite as frequently, conspicuously as it did in the 19th century church. But the minutes of the church are always referring back to, the meeting proceeded according to common consent. This decision was made by the principle of common consent. So it's as if they're recognizing, yeah, yeah, we know everybody didn't agree. But we move forward as a body with conscience preserved.

Welch: Yeah. That strikes me as so incredibly relevant and helpful right in this moment because as I talk to young people especially, but actually members of all ages, there's a concern that I'm hearing more and more, and I'm sure you've heard it too, Terryll, and it goes like this. If I can't fully endorse every single word that has come out of a prophet's mouth or every single passage of Latter-day Saint history, or every single position that the church currently holds, then somehow my own integrity is besmirched if I affiliate with the church, right? So if I raise my hand, or short of that, even if I show up on a Sunday, there's a way in which that is seen to constitute an endorsement of everything that has ever happened within the church. And not only the church, but any sort of organization.

It strikes me that that's a really limiting, almost paralyzing perspective because there's no social organization of any kind, whether it be a church or some sort of organization in civil society. There's no organization that has made the right call and has had no troubling passages in its history. So you're effectively limiting yourself from joining any kind of social, organizational affiliation. And this is the way that we make things happen in society.

So it really can be this paralyzing thought. I can't join with anybody to do anything because if I do, my own integrity is at risk. It sounds to me like this idea of common consent, if we could understand it more fully, could provide a way for people to be able to affiliate in the ways that they really want to without feeling that their own integrity is on the line.

Givens: I think you've hit the nail precisely on the head. When Fiona and I started doing what we call our faith firesides 10 years ago, there had been surveys conducted, what's your reason for disaffiliation from the church? And almost all of the top 10 were historical. The Book of Abraham or plural marriage.

Most recent surveys in this regard have shown that it has to do with tension between the institution and personal values. And it is precisely because somehow we have lost this understanding of how all collectives have to work. And that's why I say this is mirrored in our politics, where if you disagree with something that's happened, you don't like the candidate who was elected, then you're going to burn it down instead of saying, I applaud the process. We're a democratic country. Sorry for that result.

Welch: Yeah.

Givens: And we're losing the capacity to do that, seems, many times among our young people and certainly in politics at large. Yeah, common consent absolutely preserves integrity and the sanctity of conscience while allowing the collective to do its work as a collective. And yeah, we need, we...

Welch: And ultimately that for us as Latter-day Saints, those forms of collective action, they're not just like pragmatic ways to do things that we want to do. Being able to affiliate as collectives is in fact our vision of what salvation is. You write more beautifully, I think, than anybody on the idea of the city of Zion and Enoch and how unique that is in the broader Christian tradition. Talk to us just a little bit about how this idea of the city of Enoch and gathering together as one heart and one mind figures into this concept of agency.

Givens: Well, I think the most pivotal moment in Joseph Smith's life, can I say this? It's an extravagant claim. It was those moments when he's translating the prophecy of Enoch. In the 19th century, you can Google, you can go to Advanced Google Book Search and just Google words like Zion or everlasting covenant. They're on everybody's lips, everybody has these just cliches, building Zion, building Zion, we're going to build Zion. And then Joseph has this vision of, and he realizes, wait a minute, this isn't metaphor. This has bricks and mortars. And he goes from that experience. And that's the first part of the Book of Abraham that he publishes, right, in the Times and Seasons. It's that prophecy of Enoch. And that's when he starts telling the Relief Society, I'm going to help make you into a kingdom of priests and priestesses. And he takes the pseudonym of Enoch, when they all take pseudonyms for the revelations, he suddenly is just galvanized by this sense that no, heaven is the reality of this society that we are at work building.

Look, I love marriage, I've got a good marriage, I believe in eternal marriage, but let's not narrow the concept of sociality to just marriage. When Joseph Smith said heaven is eternal sociality, I think he meant book clubs and community groups and family reunions and best friends. I just, you know, it's like Richard Bushman said, right, he had this lust for kin. And I just think there's this exuberance with which he really believed friendship was a grand fundamental principle of Mormonism.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Givens: And this is one reason why I think N.T. Wright is a popular writer with a lot of Latter-day Saints, because N.T. Wright, he's very famous in the New Perspective on Paul movement. And I think he feels in some ways like his central mission is to dispel from the Christian mind the otherworldliness of heaven.

And Latter-day Saints used to be, right, pre-millennialists. It all used to be about, hell is, you know, everything's going to hell in a handbasket and Jesus will come and increasingly you hear the brethren saying, no, no, no, we got to actually do the work. We have to build a Zion before we can turn it over to Jesus. So N.T. Wright calls this idea the myth of the blue sky heaven. Insofar as there's any heaven, it's the one that we're already building and constituting right now. I think that's a powerful idea.

Welch: And it's gonna take precisely these forms of collective agency, collective relational agency to accomplish. Yeah.

Givens: Yeah, and that can be a terrifying concept. I'm reading right now a really lovely history of the Middle Ages that is in many ways a revisionist account, trying to take a fresh look at how we have misunderstood in many ways the religious history of the Middle Ages. But the author does say that one of the greatest transformations that we see occurring in the 13th and 14th centuries is that until that time monastic life was entirely about individual salvation. You retire to your anchor hold or you retire to the monastery so you can find your union with God. And then suddenly there's this recognition that, well, wait a minute, Jesus was about building love and community and service. And so monastic emphasis starts to shift. But we still have throughout Christian history kind of this, right, the schizoid kind of Christian aspiration that sees salvation is all about your relationship to God. When Augustine talks about the city of God, it's kind of ironic that he's talking about the city of God, but everybody in the city is just looking at God. Nobody has noticed seeing the person next to them. And so it's just such a vulnerable aspiration of my salvation depends on my ability to receive you just as you are and elicit your love and commitment to me and vice versa.

Welch: But I wouldn't want any other Zion. I wouldn't want any other heaven than that. Terryl, this has been such a helpful conversation full of really relevant ideas. So I encourage listeners to check out the full volume Agency in our Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants series. Terryl, the title of this podcast series is The Questions We Should Be Asking. I ask all my guests, to conclude, what are the questions we should be asking about agency?

Givens: Okay, I don't have a simple way of answering that question except to say this. The Church has posted now on our website a discussion of scrupulosity as a pathology that is afflicting multitudes of people in the Church. And scrupulosity is the belief that we are so responsible for our agency that it becomes an obsessive quest for perfection, and we live these guilt-ridden horrible lives. We have to avoid that Charybdis. But on the other side is the skill of rationalization and making excuses because, you know, woundedness is intergenerational. I've got all of these circumstances. And so it seems to me that we have to continually be assessing our decisions and choices with an eye to avoiding both of those extremes. And if agency…

Welch: Yes.

Givens: You know, there's an interesting change Joseph Smith makes in the Pearl of Great Price, which didn't make it into our edition. But initially in the Pearl Great Price, he refers to agency that was given to man in the garden. He changes that. But because the reorganized church had the manuscripts, we didn't have access to them. But he changed that and said, no, no, no, we had our agency in the garden. But it's certainly the case that God gives us the optimal conditions for its development in the garden. And so I guess if we think about agency as the gift that God maximizes, optimizes for us in this life, then we have to have healthier ways of thinking about it and not let it weigh us down to weariness, but rejoice in the power that he has given us to choose him.

Welch: How can I exercise my agency in a way that steers me between scrupulosity on the one hand and permissiveness on the other? That seems like indeed a question that we should be asking. Thank you, Terryl Givens. Thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. Bye-bye.

Givens: There you have it. Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Rosalynde.

Welch: I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Terryl Givens about his new book Agency, just out from the Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book. You can learn more about the volume and the series on our website, mi.byu.edu, and you can purchase the book at Deseretbook.com, or on Amazon. We’ll be back soon with more author interviews and more Questions We Should Be Asking.

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