Communal Discernment of Revelation

Communal Discernment of Revelation describes the shared process by which believers assess whether a claimed message comes from God. In the account of Ron Lafferty’s case, Dr. Noel Gardner distinguishes a revelation considered within a group from a private experience interpreted as a symptom of psychosis. Yet the book’s other episodes complicate any simple equation between agreement and sound judgment: collective practices can bind a community, while shared assumptions may leave vulnerable people unheard and warnings unanswered.

Shared Assessment and Its Limits

In explaining Ron Lafferty’s revelations, Dr. Noel Gardner emphasizes that Ron belonged to the School of the Prophets, where six people prayed, read, talked, and weighed whether revelations were genuine. Gardner presents this as a communal religious experience rather than an isolated claim: in his account, members shared a reality and considered the message together. He connects the practice to a broader Christian tradition of discerning whether encountered spirits came from God.

That argument describes a process, not proof that a revelation is true. Group discussion can make an individual claim intelligible within a community’s religious framework, but the evidence does not establish that consensus independently verifies its divine source. The distinction matters in Ron Lafferty’s legal history. After his 1985 convictions, the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated them in 1991, ruling that the trial court had used a faulty standard to determine whether he was competent to stand trial. The dispute concerned legal competence; Gardner’s account of communal discernment supplied a different framework for interpreting religious experience.

From Revelation to Obligation

Other episodes show how collective reception can move beyond assessment into commitment. After John Taylor said that God had revealed to him that plural marriage should continue, he called trusted associates together, including John W. Woolley and Samuel Bateman. Taylor placed those present under a covenant to defend the principle and devote their lives, liberty, and property to it. The meeting made acceptance of revelation a shared pledge, with substantial consequences for the participants’ loyalties and actions.

A related transformation occurred after Joseph Smith’s death. On the anniversary of his death, Brigham Young responded bitterly to the trial verdict and called for vengeance on behalf of the church’s slain servants. Church authorities then incorporated an Oath of Vengeance into the temple endowment ceremony. What began as a response voiced by a leader became a repeated element of a sacred communal ritual. The episode shows the force of collective religious practice, while also distinguishing communal affirmation from neutral testing: a shared rite can preserve and intensify a particular interpretation of events.

Belonging, Memory, and Public Meaning

The book also depicts religious gatherings and hardship as forms of collective reinforcement, though not as formal tests of revelation. More than ten thousand Saints attended the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant, staged with a large multilevel platform and extensive lighting. Although nonmembers were welcome, more than 95 percent of attendees belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the event functioned largely as an occasion for members to gather at a place they regarded as their origin and affirm their faith together.

The earlier migration from Nauvoo to Utah offers a harsher counterpart. Many migrants died on the way, while survivors became more devoted after years of hardship and violence in Missouri and Illinois. The narrative describes adversity as forging a close-knit group whose loyalty to Brigham Young was unconditional. Such solidarity can sustain a community through danger, but loyalty is not the same as discernment: the same bond that supports shared religious life can strengthen deference to a leader.

Credibility, Silence, and Consequence

The account of Ruby Jessop brings the problem of whose testimony a community accepts into sharper focus. After the fourteen-year-old was allegedly taken back into the custody of members of the FLDS Church, a sheriff’s deputy accepted church leaders’ explanation that she was on vacation and left. At a later meeting with a social worker, Ruby was interviewed in the presence of a person alleged to have abducted her; she said everything was fine and was returned to members of the faith. Antipolygamy activist Lorna Craig contrasted Ruby’s treatment with the state’s response to Elizabeth Smart, arguing that Ruby’s experience had been discounted and was not properly investigated.

This episode is not a deliberation about divine revelation, but it exposes a related question of communal and institutional judgment: who is allowed to interpret a person’s words, and under what conditions are those words believed? The book likewise notes that Bernard Brady, concerned about Ron Lafferty, filed an affidavit away in a desk drawer rather than alerting police. Across these episodes, shared religious frameworks may organize interpretation, but they do not guarantee that a group will act responsibly on what it knows. Communal discernment is therefore presented as both a form of religious reasoning and a social practice shaped by authority, loyalty, and unequal credibility.