In ninth grade at South Davis Junior High, I began seminary.
And looking back, it's sad to me that all of us students were introduced into seminary by having one Brother Heaston. We all liked him when we had him; he was a fun guy, and I think he was good at making students passionate about the gospel.
But I remember a few years later, I was in a conversation with people who had him, and although we had liked him at the time, we realized he taught some false doctrines and did some other questionable things. So I'm going to remember some of the things that make me question why he still got to teach seminary.
For one thing, his class was the most rigorous seminary class I had all four years, and it was more taxing than many of my regular classes. During spring break, we had to do a writeup about Isaiah. It was due the day after Easter, and it required us to read every day during spring break and write about it. Which meant he was basically ensuring that we would be doing homework on Easter, a family day. Toward the end of the year, we had to spend ten hours on a gospel project, at a time when we had projects in other classes.
Now, there's nothing wrong with challenging seminary classes, because many students don't take it seriously. But his demands were excessive, and since it was our first seminary class, we didn't know just how excessive it was.
There was one day in which we had an entire lesson for the entire class period about how we should never call adults by their first name, or even just their last name--even if they asked us to call them by their first name. We must always use "Brother or Sister" or "Mr. or Mrs." But calling your friends' mom "Mom" was acceptable because it was a title. I understand the idea of respecting your elders--but to devote an entire lesson to it was a little ridiculous, and calling an adult "Sister" or "Mrs." when they asked you not to seems more disrespectful.
Once we had a lesson about fasting. He asked, "How long should you fast?" One student said, "Two meals." He said, "No, it is not two meals, it is twenty-four hours." Umm, a quick search on lds.org reveals that Church publications say two meals. I remember one conference talk in which a Seventy said "Two meals or twenty-four hours." So even with your point of twenty-four hours, you can't say "two meals" is incorrect, and in fact it looks like two meals is the more doctrinal one. "Two meals" may be easily misinterpreted, but it isn't wrong.
Occasionally we would write essays in class, and he would edit our papers when he gave them back, although we weren't graded on the grammar. However, he said that serial commas (also known as the Oxford comma) were incorrect, because a college professor had told him they were. Um, no. It depends on the style, but according to The Chicago Manual of Style, the most common style in the U.S., they say you should use them. They aid clarity. As a seminary teacher, he had no right to insist on not using those commas, especially when he was wrong.
I remember one day when he passingly mentioned he didn't believe in dinosaurs. That seems so absurd to me that now I'm wondering if he really said that. But I think he did.
Early in the school year, he gave a lesson about how to give a good talk. One of the things he said to do was to engage the audience by saying, "Turn with me to [such and such a scripture]." The First Presidency has issued letters saying you shouldn't have people turn in their scriptures during sacrament meeting. I don't know if they issued that statement before he gave us that lesson, but it's wrong.
Once during the opening hymn, Colby Johnson was just lip-syncing to the opening hymn, so Brother Heaston sat directly in front of him to intimidate him into really singing.
One day someone was saying the prayer and saying "Lord" repeatedly throughout, and afterwards Brother Heaston told him it was a great prayer. It seems weird to me to compliment a prayer, especially if he didn't compliment others'.
One day, he was explaining that he didn't like movies like The Singles Ward because they make fun of our religion. It's OK not to like those movies (I find them a bit ridiculous), but I don't think they make fun of our religion--they make fun of the non-doctrinal subculture of our religion.
This was the year that The Passion of the Christ came out. He was very adamant that you shouldn't see it because it was rated R and the prophet said not to watch R-rated movies. That is not doctrine, and there are multiple reasons why. I wouldn't have a problem with him saying why he didn't think it advisable to see it, but to say not to simply because the prophet said not to--which isn't true--was overly simplistic.
One day, we learned about the requirement in the law of Moses to put lamb's blood on the right ear, thumb, and toe. As an object lesson, he took a red marker and made marks on those places on all of us. Which isn't necessarily bad, but is definitely odd, and a little hypocritical since he was a big advocate of not writing on yourself.
I'm sure there were other things he said or did that seemed wrong to me. I'm sure there are other things as well that didn't strike me as odd at that time, since I was young in the gospel, but if I heard them today I would find them false. After a mission, graduating from BYU, and being thrust into the world of Mormon scholarship because of my profession, I could engage him in a discussion and prove him wrong.
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