Regarding Elder Snow's comments that they hired outside historians so that they would have the best and most current research from the best historians for writing the gospel topics essays, I call BS (at least partially).
In this case the LDS church is just showing itself to be what it is: a huge corporation operating under the same unwritten rules all US corporations operate under. Anyone who has worked for big companies knows this song and dance. When something controversial or risky has to be done, it is usually not done by people working for the corporation, it is usually farmed out to consultants and consulting firms. Why?
- It provides plausible deniability if the project goes bad. You just blame the consultants if you don't get the product you want.
- It allows upper management to take all of the praise if things go right. The consulting company won't be invited to the meetings where praise is given (they know this is part of the game too). None of the rank and file are involved and can't share any of the praise. Thus upper management is free to claim all of the praise and merit because nobody else can or will.
- It costs a lot of money to hire these consultants. If this seems like a downside, you don't know how upper management thinks. Power in upper management is mostly tied to the size of one's spending. If you spend more, you have more power. Hiring consultants is a great way to boost your spending, hence your power and perceived importance.
- Upper management does not have to treat rank and file equals nor to share any power with them. In management power is meant to be used, not shared. In modern knowledge based corporations, this is a real problem for upper management. They manage knowledge, but usually don't have a single clue about the knowledge nor how it is used or produced.
I think all of these apply here. The non-church paid historians (read consultants) gave upper management the deniability they needed. They could fire them at any time with no repercussions. The apostles could continue to take all of the praise, no church historians would need to be acknowledged. I'm sure the church historians were fine seeing their budgets include pricey line items for outside historians. While it's probably nowhere near as expensive as hiring management, accounting, or IT consultants I'm guessing they did command a higher wage than do the on staff historians. Note, I may be wrong on this one, I'm just guessing.
Finally, the apostles didn't have to share power with the rank and file historians. The last thing they want is for historians to get all uppity and think they have some sort of influence or power they can wield. I also think this accounts for the why Snow threw them under the bus by saying they hired outside because they wanted the best. There are ways of hiring outside people without throwing your own people under the bus. Usually the line is something like, "Our people are just so busy doing other important projects that we had to hire outside consultants to get this important project done."
In summary:
- The LDS church behave just like any other US corporation.
- LDS apostles behave just like upper management at any US corporation
- The historians working for the LDS church are probably just as competent as other historians, but it is convenient to throw them under the bus.
There is one benefit the historians received: they all kept their jobs. Had they written the essays, they would have been marked men and women. They would be the ones who had unacceptable ideas about the Book of Abraham, polyandry, and teenage brides. To put it in Shades' terms, they would be expressing Internet Mormon ideas in a Chapel Mormon context, which is always a dangerous thing to do. Even Internet Mormons know when they are supposed to pretend to be Chapel Mormons.
