Hope:
You listed four causes for a lot of the troubles. I would submit a fifth --
Good, decent men (and women, to some degree -- but they were 'lesser') who truly loved God and wanted to serve Him. These men were usually 'born' leaders, with charisma. They were appointed as elders. With no experience, often, and almost always with no real training or education in dealing with the sort of human problems you describe in your post. Family problems, kids, marriage, work, all these things. I remember some of the 'elders' as real youngsters -- married maybe 5 or 6 years, having toddlers and preschoolers, and working at their 5th or 6th job. Not much life experience, really. Even the gentlemen that were older had little or no training in counseling or family support skills. An exception that I think of (I'm sure there were more, I just don't know them) was John Smith in San Diego. He had been a Baptist minister pre-LC, had experience and education being a pastor, a shepherd. And it showed. He also had a few years under his belt, raising a family, etc. He was the man I wrote about early on this (long, long) thread that stood up and said 'my kids WILL be in school sports, etc'. Some easier to stand up when you are the leader, but still a brave, honorable thing to do. Amazing man, John.
So, in all of our superiority and arrogance about poor, fallen Christianity, we allowed unqualified men to become leaders that really shouldn't have been leading in that sort of powerful capacity. Because we all know how much power those elders had. I can imagine that many of the good, decent, sincere men (Don, you included, I think) just trembled at the responsiblity and plowed their way through as best as they could, given the tools they had. Or lack of tools. But we just couldn't follow the ways of 'religion' and have trained, educated leaders. Heavens, no!!!!
Yeah, there were plenty of bad people going for the gold of controlling people --- terrible. But some of the people were just in way over their heads. Still, that does not in any way excuse them. Not even close. Hurting people, especially kids, is never every excused for ANY reason.
It was a sick, corrupt system.
Bookworm, boy howdy was there a class system. And single sisters? Bottom of the heap. I have some thoughts about that, sometime for another thread -- (oh, boy something to look forward to
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Has everyone checked out my post on the My Perspectives thread? I am shameless. Self promoting. The worst.
fpo