As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I went to the Mormon Stories Conference in Houston, I had a vague sentiment that most, if not all people there, would be those who had disaffected from the church. I was disabused of this notion when Lee Prince went up to speak and introduced by saying that he was a TBM, as it were. Nevertheless, he also disclaimed that his talk, named after the Oliver Cromwell quote: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken,” would be applicable for Mormons regardless of where they were on the belief spectrum.

Other than the basically self-evident title of the talk, Prince described that his talk was about discussing a Mormon way of discussing issues of faith crises. It focused on three inequalities that Prince hoped we would adopt in our discussions and dialogues.

People > Truth.

The first inequality that Prince posited we should have is that we should consider people more important than the truth. He linked this concept back to Mormonism by appealing to a horizontal atonement…rather than the vertical atonement that links earthly beings to heavenly ones, the horizontal atonement is how all of us on the ground level become at one with each other. Mormonism specifically employs sealing to this effect, but more generally, the Joseph Smith quote that friendship is the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism also gets at this idea.

More broadly in the Christian tradition, this is what the parable of sheep and goats is about. Continually, the New Testament talks about the importance of how you treat people. The sheep are separated from the goats not by believing certain things, but by helping the least of people.

The thing is that this inequality, like all of them, applies to both sides of the fence. One thing that happens for both TBMs and disaffected Mormons and everyone in between is that one’s belief in the truth of one’s convictions entices one to burn bridges with relationship to those bridges.

…I understand Prince’s point here, but I wonder if everyone would agree that people are more important than the truth. Obviously not, since we have great fallout over differing beliefs…but is it ideal that we de-emphasize truth just to maintain relationships? I haven’t thought it completely through.

Questions > Answers.

The second inequality that Prince offered was that questions are more important than answers.

I find this an interesting inequality. Obviously, people who experience negative reactions from others when they are going through doubt themselves know from person experience that some people don’t react well to questions. But another idea is that I think many people conceptualize of religion as a place for answers. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that if religion can’t or doesn’t provide answers, then I’m not really sure what the point is. (Or, if it has answers, but no valid authority to defend and justify those answers, then I also don’t really see the point.)

So, hearing the idea that religion is more about getting one to consider certain questions (and question the answers one had settled in naturally) is intriguing to me. I do think there is a lot of growth that comes from critiquing our own assumptions and working through our biases, but it seems to me that not only does religion not have a lock on encouraging questioning, but sometimes, it can be the source of stagnation with which to begin. I feel far more often that being a minority in many aspects is what has made more thoughtful about criticizing my or others’ privileges.

(P.S., I think this dynamic between questioning and accepting answers relates well with Jeff’s recent post at Wheat & Tares about agency and many people’s willingness to abdicate it. In fact, that leads to the final section of Prince’s talk…)

Agency > Outcomes.

Jeff has addressed the agency question in a slightly more limited scope (I don’t think he’s seriously considering the possibility that people should use their agency to leave the church, but instead just to renegotiate what they will or will not do within the church), but Prince took this concept to its more extreme ends. Quite simply, to have productive discussions about crises of faith in Mormonism, then we need to be comfortable with the idea that everyone doesn’t have to stay and everyone doesn’t have to leave.

Once again, this applies to both sides. It’s too tempting to say, “If (the other side) only know x, then they would leave,” or “If (the other side) only knew y, then they would convert.” But different people simply have different experiences that make different options more or less viable for them.

…Prince approached this last part in a way I thought was interesting, but narrow. He said,

“In the face of equal evidence either way, our “heart” is truly free to choose.”

This phrase sounds nice at first, but it has several assumptions that can be analyzed. Firstly, it presumes that there is equal evidence either way. I think that it is an interesting apologetic development to claim that there is “equal evidence” either way, but I think many people don’t feel that way. Many people feel that evidence is overwhelmingly to one side or another.

It doesn’t have to be the case that evidence is mostly one way or another, but the thing is…most people believe strongly in what they believe in. To get to this point, they’ve processed whatever data they’ve come across and come to the conclusion that one side is more compelling than another. These people’s “hearts” aren’t going to be truly “free to choose” — one side will always seem more compelling or supported than the other, regardless of which side actually may be true or right.

Prince made an analogy whose exact content I don’t recall, but it was something about an animal who had a choice between two equally appetizing meals. In its indecision, it starved. Prince’s point was that humans, with the gift of agency, are (uniquely?) situated to come to face with an impasse, and freely take a leap one way or another. As a result, not only should we take a leap, but we are remiss if we do not!

This entire reasoning seemed to be a criticism of agnostics (at least, those agnostics who say that they “don’t believe either way” because either both sides are unsupported or because there is equal evidence for both sides.) It seems to be trying to get “fence sitters” off the fence.

The pressing question…

Ultimately, Prince’s talk, while sounding good in theory (and in certain limited cases where someone is absolutely agnostic to both sides and feels they can’t make a choice), hits a big roadblock. The question it raises quickly is: given that most people believe in what they do strongly, then how can we encourage people to consider their belief’s fallibility? Does such consideration cheapen their belief?

Here’s the deal: if I believe in something, then I probably believe that something is probable. I believe in something not because I’ve made an arbitrary leap at a precipice of equiprobability, but rather because I’ve perceived the evidence to be more in favor of one position than the other.

So if I’m not at a precipice of uncertainty, then how do I get to the point (or how does any person) where I can look at my strong beliefs and make sure those aren’t beliefs strongly (and rigidly) held?

While the first speaker at the Genuine Mormon Conversations conference was John Dehlin, the keynote speaker for the conference was Dan Wotherspoon. As with John’s talk, Dan’s talk wasn’t formally named in the program (and remind me to talk one day about those programs — it was amazing how much the programs invoked the Mormon church counterpart, what with conductors,  invocation and musical numbers listed…and at the same time, it played a twist on those same LDS counterparts…I don’t think you’ll soon see a woman conducting in an LDS sacrament meeting. And maybe as a nod to the confusion over whether women can give the opening prayers in sacrament meetings, the Mormon Stories Conference had that too. The similarities continued all the way down to the “Story Sharing Meeting,” where someone took the standard testimony format on its head and literally said, “I know the Mormon church is not true.”) However, in my notes, the central subject I found for his talk was Wrestling with God, the church, one’s family, and the battle itself.”

Dan framed this talk around a Sunstone article by Rick Jepson: Godwrestling: Physicality, Conflict, and Redemption in Mormon Doctrine (PDF alert!).

I’m not a wrestler, so Rick’s article in Sunstone doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but getting away from the physical dimension of wrestling in building and re-evaluating various relationships, Dan focused on the more conceptual basis for wrestling as a key aspect to maintaining positive relationships.

Wrestling with God

One point that Dan brought up (and which was present in the Sunstone article as well) is that when we don’t wrestle with God, that’s more of a sign of estrangement rather than reverence. To an extent, I understand that you can only really have serious, heavy conversations — arguments, even — with people whom you seriously regard. The moment that you don’t take someone seriously, that you think they are a lost cause or feel that you aren’t close enough to wear you can let down your veneer of politeness, that’s the moment when you can’t have a deep discussion with them and your relationship will stagnate.

But personally, I don’t understand how this would apply to God, because, well, durh, I don’t really know of any such guy or girl.

What does make sense to me is that, given any sort of presentation of who God is (or who someone claims God to be), we probably should be grappling with whether those presentations make sense. Does the God of the Old Testament make sense? How do we make sense of it without trivializing, demonizing, or just throwing out the Old Testament? And so on.

Wrestling with the Church

A far more immediate (yet somewhat related) aspect is wrestling with the church. This is, as Dan mentioned in his talk, a process of finding the right relationship with respect to it.

For this section of his talk, Dan made sure to quote — either directly or indirectly — several ideas. For example, he noted that the best people in any tradition will recognize that said tradition is just a tool — I guess for Mormons, this relates to Elder Poelman’s famous 1984 General Conference talk: The Gospel and the Church (warning: another PDF!) To summarize, the church — or any church — is just a tool…it isn’t the moon, but the finger pointing to the moon.

Dan related the same point from a James Fowler/Stages of Faith perspective…he pointed out that while every religion points to Stage 6, every institution tries to keep people in stage 3. The trick is for us to center ourselves in a tradition — whatever tradition that may be — but then find a way to transcend it.

Overall, this section too doesn’t really resonate a whole lot with me. It seems to me that Dan is trying really hard to get people to find some way to stay within the church (although he certainly always claims to accept that for some people, maybe staying in the church isn’t the right answer…it just seems that even though he has these values as a legal disclaimer, his own personal position leans one way in particular…) when it’s really not that simple a process to manage being in the church when you don’t believe literally (or at all). I really would like to understand the nuanced approach that people like him or Joanna Brooks advocate, but every time, I find it really problematic.

But maybe that is the point? Because I haven’t “wrestled” with the church, I too easily concede the status quo way to interact with it as being the most “legitimate.”

Wrestling with family

I think the one idea that struck me from this one was a concept that I’ve actually heard many times before, but which only really clicked when I heard it this time. The concept I’ve heard before is this: anger is a secondary effect of fear.

But the idea that extended the first concept which really helped me to comprehend the first: when we meet someone who’s afraid, we instinctively respond by nurturing. But when we meet someone who’s angry, we generally don’t recognize that the anger is just a manifestation of a fear of pain, and so we lash out, when instead, we ought to nurture those who are angry just as we would those who are afraid.

Keeping this in mind, much of wrestling with family is about being the one who will nurture rather than the one who lashes out.

Wrestling with the battle itself

Particularly that last point — of taking the higher road and nurturing rather than lashing out — is a tough pill to swallow. It seems unfair that when we are hurting (after all, we are the ones having to renegotiate our identities when for the wholes of our lives, we have had a comfortable place in the church until this moment), we don’t get anyone to nurture us. We get people who love-bomb us (trying to get us back into the old way of things rather than recognizing and accepting our migration.) We get people who shun us (as if they are afraid that doubt or disaffection is catching.)

And after all of those reactions, we are the ones who should be gracious?!

That’s why all of the rest of the wrestles hinge upon our ability to wrestle with the battle itself. To come to terms that we have to meet with others halfway or more, because we aren’t the only ones who are undergoing tectonic shifts…our families and loved ones have to go through the shift of seeing their friend, their son, their husband — whatever the case may be — change in an aspect they thought would be fundamental to the identity.

In the end, Dan mentioned a way of framing a testimony that I had heard before, but hadn’t seriously considered. The TBM will say, “I know the church is true.” People who have shifted away from the TBM position may say, “I know the church is good.” But wherever we are on any part of the belief spectrum, perhaps we can say, “I know the church is home.”

UPDATE: An expanded version of this talk has been posted at Mormon Matters.

The first speaker I’ll address is John Dehlin, of course. I didn’t catch the title of his talk (and I’m sure that eventually, some kind of recording will go up on Mormon Stories so everyone will just be able to watch or listen to what was said), but I think it was something like Having the Difficult Conversations.

Before I go into the content of the talk itself, I’ll talk a bit about the name of this conference itself.

I’ve been referring to it as the “Houston Mormon Stories Conference,” but (as I’m sure all locations’ conferences do) it had a specific theme. Genuine Mormon Conversations: Maintaining Positive Relationships Through Empathy and Dialogue.

Wow. That’s a mouthful. And what does that mean?

Going into it, I had a thought that it would focus on keeping families together. And certainly, there was a lot of discussion about that, whether it was between husband/wife, parent/children, etc., But there was a broader theme that I think made the day’s discussions easier to frame, and that was the theme of coming out.

Certainly, I was able to talk to more gay Mormons (face-to-face, that is) on Saturday than I probably ever have in my entire life, but the theme of “coming out” was about more than sexuality. And that’s what John brought out in his talk on having the difficult conversations.

Whether through something like sexual orientations or through one’s beliefs and positions with respect to the church, one has to be able to have difficult conversations about these things…but must also develop a way to engage in these difficult conversations in a fruitful way. By being open and forthright with one’s own situation, then one helps to create a space where others can come out. In Mormonism, this is really important — based on how the statistically trends play out with respect to activity rates, etc., it’s not as if there is an insubstantial number of uncorrelated, disaffected, inactive, or otherwise “outsider” Mormons. But would we know who they are? I mean, consider what I said before: “I was able to talk to more gay Mormons on Saturday than I probably ever have in my entire life.” But how would I know if I had known someone all along who was gay and Mormon if they weren’t out.

(Who am I kidding? How can I have any room to talk about others if I am not forthright myself on the same issue?)

The thing about this process of coming out in one’s own path — whatever it is — and in communicating those results, is that it isn’t something that is against Mormon ideas. Rather, it is part of the Mormon pioneer archetype. Pioneering isn’t *just* about non-Mormon ancestors becoming Mormon (in the same way that religious freedom isn’t just freedom for Mormons to be Mormon), often at great personal cost. Pioneering can also be about someone who grew up several-generation Mormon pursuing a path outside of the church, or maybe even just a different path within the church. The pioneering is not the destination, but the journey and the willingness to make that journey.

Ultimately, I really respect people who pioneer for themselves, even at great sacrifice. Personally, I haven’t had to sacrifice a whole lot, and I’m really fortunate for that. Even more, I know that I am a very risk averse person, so I would be the kind of person to suffer things quietly until I knew I had a safety net established. I find myself seeing a lot of reddit posts from high schoolers or people in university who ask how they approach their families, and I always say something like, “Wait until you’re financially independent before rocking any boats.”

But that’s kinda why it’s true that pioneers create space for others to follow…after all, the issue is not having a safety network. It’s about losing support and not knowing where to go after…but if there are people who have “come out,” they can be mentors.

No, I didn’t go to some official church function. No, I didn’t go back to church (especially since today is a Saturday). Instead, I went to something totally different: the Mormon Stories Conference on Maintaining Positive Relationships Through Empathy and Dialogue that was in Houston this weekend. (Unfortunately, since I was stuck in O’Hare airport trying to get home from training yesterday, I couldn’t make the Friday session where there was dinner and a live Mormon Stories interview, and because my next engagement wants me to work tomorrow, I won’t be able to attend tomorrow’s “late morning meetup.”)

It was a great experience. Definitely way better than if I had gone to some official church function or to sacrament meeting itself (not to knock sacrament, but this set a pretty high bar). I wrote plenty of notes for most of the speakers, so depending on how much of a shill I feel like, I will either make another summary post for the entire conference, or I’ll make several posts addressing each speaker individually to maximize page views. But today, I wanted to talk just about my overall impression with the event.

Why did I go?

The first thing I’d like to mention is that this is the first sort of thing that I have ever done. I usually just lock myself in my apartment, so going out to meet strangers was something different. So the natural question that arises is: why did I do it?

The first part of the answer is simple: I have always wanted to go to something like this. It’s just that between my natural aversion to going out to the unknown and my desire to put some faces to online presences, the aversion would win every time if the event was in Utah or some other place outside of Texas. However, since this event was in Houston, just ten minutes away from where I’m living, I didn’t think I really had any excuse to miss it if I had the free time (which I just barely did.)

The second part relates to the first: since I was putting faces to online presences, what I originally said about meeting strangers wasn’t exactly true. Rather, I knew several people there, in a general sense and in a particular sense: the particular sense in which I knew some was in the fact that I had read certain people’s blogs (e.g., Kiley of We Were Going to be Queens, Heather of Doves and Serpents was there, and Spencer of Clean Cut as well), or had known of them through other venues (e.g., impotent_rage), or because they were e-famous (obviously, everyone going to a Mormon Stories conference are going to know about John Dehlin, Dan Wotherspoon, etc.,) However…the general sense, and the one that was really interesting to me, was that there was so much common ground already…truly cultural Mormonism shared. As Amanda N. expressed later in the day, this conference is one of those places where you can be talking to someone for 10 minutes, ask them, “OK, what’s your story,” and then after hearing their story feel that you know them on a truly profound level as a human.

What did I learn?

The last part of the previous section really plays into what I learned from the event. I left before the final panel discussion, but I was able to stay for the story sharing section (think of it as the Mormon Stories conference analog to testimony bearing)…while I ultimately did not bear my test…story…I did try to formulate what I would have said if I had to drill my story down into a bite-sized morsel.

Many of you dear readers may have already read posts scattered across this site that flesh out the details of what I’ll say here, but basically it’s like this. One of the reasons I’m really fascinated in things like this, the blogging scene and the Facebook groups and whatnot, is because I want to hear about differences. It’s interesting to find people who have similar experiences to me, of course, but it’s even more interesting to find people who had different experiences to me.

See, when I was growing up in the church, I never believed in it. So, for me, someone who converted and then had a faith crisis, or someone who believed, and then lost her testimony…those stories are new and exciting because I don’t personally know what that’s like.

But getting back to my story…as I was saying, when I was growing up in the church, I never believed in it. But my issue was that 1) I wasn’t really conscious that I didn’t believe in it and 2) I wasn’t conscious that others did believe in it. It was only later that I came to realize that others aren’t just treating church as a game or as a performance…and with that came my attempt to try to figure out why I wasn’t like everyone else at church in that respect.

My conclusion then was that if I didn’t (and couldn’t) believe, then I didn’t have any business going on a mission. I didn’t have any business trying to fit in as a priesthood holder and going through motions. I didn’t have any business going to a church that I strongly felt was for believers.

And so, I stopped going.

Since starting to blog, I’ve come across an idea that is incredibly foreign to me: the idea that an individual should negotiate his own identity within the church, regardless of whether he believes literally or not. But while that idea has been really interesting to learn about, I haven’t been convinced of it. I guess I can see why others would try to stick it out with the church, but for me, church is still a place for literal believers. As a nonbeliever, I am an outsider, notwithstanding the fact that I grew up in the church. And I thought that was something that would necessarily be the case: you would always alienate one side or the other.

No, seriously, what did I learn?

The biggest thing I learned from the Mormon Stories conference is that you can have a Mormon environment that doesn’t make either believers or nonbelievers feel like outsiders.

This was a really interesting thing to experience first-hand. I went into this with this silent assumption that most people would be inactive, or out of the church, or something like that…I didn’t even realize I had that bias until others mentioned that they still attended, still believed, etc., And as people told their stories, there were those who described themselves as true believing Mormons, those who were uncorrelated, those who were out of the church but still believed in some kind of deity, those who were atheists, etc., And despite the diversity of positions with respect to the church, everyone seemed to fit in.

I’ve said a few times that if church were like the Bloggernacle, I’d be there every week…but now that I’ve been to a gathering of Mormon internetizens, I can really confirm that sentiment: I’d be ecstatic if the church could somehow adopt the spirit and atmosphere of a Mormon Stories conference.

The second biggest thing I learned from the conference is that Mormonism is deep enough to provide for all sides.

In many of my discussion of cultural Mormonism, some commenter (or maybe even me personally) will remark that cultural Mormonism can’t thrive on its own. It’s a one-generation kind of thing that leeches off of conservative religion, but does not generate its own self-sustaining and self-perpetuating material. In other words, it has seemed to me that if one disaffects, then even if she sticks around in a cultural-Mormon-friendly environment (like Mormon Stories) to sort out the problems relating to her disaffection, then essentially, that ends at some point. Maybe she will not raise her children in the church, so they will not share in the cultural Mormonism at all. Or maybe she will raise them in a way that will not induce them to stay.

The idea there is that the conservative portion of the religion is what binds people through steep requirements. Liberal and progressive religious teachings have no past because they are divergent from tradition. Because they are not enforced through authoritarian hierarchy, they additionally have no future.

The thing about many of today’s talks was that they incorporated LDS scriptures and ideas…but in a way that was different…broader…than the way the church uses them. The church likes to talk about pioneers, but doesn’t generally apply the pioneer concept to those who pioneer by being open about their disaffection, their sexuality, or what have you. Today, however, the various speakers were able to take broad Mormon cultural ideas like that of pioneers and employ them in a reconstructed context.

To the extent that this was done coherently (and it was very coherent), it made me see why people like Dan Wotherspoon talk about “renegotiating identity” with respect to the church — it’s because for him and others like him, Mormonism truly is broad enough, substantial enough to be used as a base for a radically different religion…we can still draw from its depths to reforge life narratives, goals and aspirations if we simply will take care not to let the old interpretations, lessons, and assumptions that proved inadequate to us hold us back.

But, as you all may have been able to tell, since I’m an introvert post-Mormon who blogs on the interwebs about my old religion, I decided to play the game of, “Who’s a Mormon.”

Admittedly, this game really isn’t fun with accountants. When you hear, “From BYU,” the thinking’s done. (I am aware that non-Mormons attend BYU, but…)

But even more interesting is the idea of Mormon radar.

What’s the Mormon Radar?

The idea is simple: there are certain traits endemic to Mormons that make them easy to spot…if you know what you’re looking for. Most posts about Mormon radar focus on statistical correlations or stereotypes about Mormons, but even more interesting is the research that suggests that facial features can help people identify others as Mormon or non-Mormon (although I’ve seen other links that criticize exactly how significantly above chance that facial feature recognition goes).

I’ve written about Mormonism (maybe) having a cultural aspect, and I’ve also played with the idea of a Mormon ethnicity, but usually the unstated (or directly stated, depending on who’s commenting) wrench in the prospect of shared ethnic identity is the fact that, as a missionary-based religion, Mormonism has a diverse membership characteristic-wise.

…so, maybe I can just cop out here and say that maybe there is something to generational Mormons (say, in Utah). Because, not to be scientific or anything, but there’s just something about (Utah?) Mormons that makes me suspect that a random person I’ve met could be one. I’m not even talking about behavior or anything…just something about how the person looks.

Once again, this isn’t anything really scientific. I haven’t even tried to write down in a formal way what “traits” make me suspect people. (I will decline from doing that now or in the near future here as well.)

But needless to say, that’s a thing. At least for me.

And how is this a tale from the work lulls?

Anyway, all I’m saying is that I noticed one guy who had The Look. And then afterward he confirmed (in fact, many times, he did) that he went to BYU. Oh yeah, and his first name was Brigham. So, maybe this isn’t a good case for detective sleuthing since all the information is pretty available.

Anyway, here’s the tale: at lunch I ate with him and some other people he knew (since as an eternal itinerant in these situations, I’ve just been going around from group to group intruding into their knit social tapestries)…and he started talking about how on his mission in Brazil, he remarked that he loved that because McDonald’s was standardized across the world, it was a familiar place no matter where he was.

Immediately in my head were thoughts of correlation…I mean, if I were talking about something standardized across the world, the church would rank almost as highly.

And then I almost said that…only catching myself after I had said enough words to move to the point of awkwardness (but before I had said anything to identify myself as having a Mormon background.) Yeah…so smooth.

One day I’ll be courageous enough to play funny social experiments with Mormons in random places by saying Mormon identifying cultural insider things.

…Some people would argue that we won’t lose that many people if we start teaching history using the Richard Bushman model (or some such). What they are actually saying is we won’t lose many of the right people if we change our teaching model. Remember, we have all heard stories of people losing the church when the priesthood ban ended (but that was okay, because they were racists) or when polygamy ended (but that was okay because they were polygamists). I’ve even heard stories of people leaving the church over misspellings or over the introduction of the three hour block (those silly, silly apostates). That people will leave the church over just about any reason is a truism; the question we should be asking ourselves is “what sort of people are we trying to retain?”

I ask because, for all that I dislike the Church Education System model of teaching, I understand its purpose and I think it is a noble purpose. It strives to provide an inoffensive, generally palatable spiritual product for the masses. We are actually interested in retaining everyone in the church, even the people who think that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy or that Jesus drank grape juice because the Word of Wisdom is eternal in scope. So thinking that improving the rigor of our historical narrative or our exegesis isn’t really about our struggle for truth; it’s about our desire to reshape the church in our own image (at least partly).

As could probably be expected, there was a lot of push-back in the comments.

Some questioned whether an inoculation strategy would lead to loss of members at all, while others challenged that if one isn’t learning the truth, warts and all, from church sources (or, to put it in a more Mormon way…the “meat” of the Gospel), then where can one learn it? In response to that was an interesting response: one should be studying that independently…one shouldn’t rely upon the church for information about church history and controversy. For example, Faith-Promoting Rumor’s Mogget writes:

I have a lot of sympathy with this idea. Lots. But there is one more facet to consider: age and maturity. We all learn to handle ambiguity and deal with punctured narratives better as we age. Indeed, we come to expect it and even, if you’re me, be amused by it.

What I’m saying is this: my association with the church is no longer strongly linked to its narratives because I’ve come to a point in my life that such things are almost immaterial. My relationship with God is what it is, and church is the place I go to work out certain parts of the obligations so incurred. But church is not where I go to learn much, nor is church history a significant aspect of my relationship with God. And that would not have been the case when I was younger.

Emphasis added.

Or, more strongly, from Clark Goble of Mormon Metaphysics:

A few other thoughts. First if your primary knowledge about the gospel comes from what you hear in seminary and Sunday School you’re doing it wrong. You should be studying on your own. There are tons and tons of resources out there if you want them. If you only do the absolute minimum then sorry. It’s sad you leave but don’t blame the Church.

Or from Kant66 of BYU Academics:

I think there’s a vital distinction here between teaching the Gospel and teaching an academic subject. A class in D&C in institute or BYU is and should have a different focus than a class in LDS church history. I’m sympathetic to the view that, while a little context is required for understanding D&C, the point of seminary or institute is not to give a survey of early folk practices in early 19th-century New England, whereas such material might be more appropriate for a specific church history class. It’s not that these issues should be avoided or whitewashed if they do come up, but simply that there is limited time and decisions have to be made according to what the focus of the class is, and a CES D&C class should not become a slightly modified version of a church history class.

I’ve read a lot of the similar exit stories. I think that, with the internet, there are less and less excuses to go through half a century of your life without doing some basic historical research into the church that you affiliate with. I think that the “bowdlerized” version that we get at CES is for the most part sufficient, covering the major aspects that directly pertain to the doctrine and scripture. If people are interested in the more sensational issues there are definitely fora for discussing and analyzing such issues, but we shouldn’t blow their importance out of perspective and make the Gospel all about Fanny Alger and Elijah Abel, fetishizing faith crises and the sensational in the process.

And finally, most succinctly from Blain:

You can have meat. You just have to find it on your own. Choking on it is a common initial experience, but it doesn’t have to be fatal.

Notice a trend?

With the exception of Blain, of whose background I’m not entirely sure, the commenters I’ve quoted are from relatively academically, theologically, or philosophically rigorous backgrounds. Maybe there’s something to be said that these individuals are “self-starters” when it comes to navigating “nuance” in the church.

But here’s the thing…it seems like this reasoning is flawed. I can’t really speak for every disaffected person, but if I am meant to find out the truth about history, doctrine, x or y practice, on my own time, and furthermore if I have to come to realize that what the church teaches on any particular issue will not only be shallow but probably inaccurate as well, then the question for me is: why am I even attending? It’s like people who say that students get out of college what they want, so it’s really the student’s fault if he or she doesn’t learn the material. To an extent I understand that students have to put in their effort, but the reason they are going to college (and paying for the privilege) is because they think there is some value-add above just buying textbooks or surfing websites and reading on their own. If that isn’t the case, then paying all the tuition is really worthless (EDIT: well, I guess you’re paying for a very expensive piece of paper, regardless).

I am intrigued by the position that some take that church isn’t really about learning and studying complex doctrinal or historical issues…As Mogget says, “church is the place I go to work out certain parts of the obligations so incurred” from a relationship with God. Nevertheless, to me, when I’m going to something called Sunday School, or if I’m going to attend something provided by the Church Educational System, then I feel like I should be learning something. Now, the church doesn’t have to air its dirty laundry, but at the very least it should teach things in a way that preclude the dirty laundry from existing in the framework. In other words, maybe we don’t need to focus on (insert sensitive issue), but if and when I find out about said issue, I should be able to say, “Oh, yeah, I guess that could work like that,” rather than saying, “Impossible! That goes against everything I’ve learned!”

…The Internet was the problem for many…

Once again, I don’t speak for every disaffected person (and not even really for myself, since my problem wasn’t finding something unsavory but never being convinced of any of it to begin with), but it’s interesting to hear people saying that people should do more independent research of their church…Because many disaffection stories I read or hear came about when one did independent research. They were going smoothly, found something questionable, did some research on it, and then that loose thread unraveled the entire sweater. Even more damning, they did the research and tried to turn to people in the church, but didn’t get satisfactory answers. If you can’t go to the CES or Sunday School, then there should be someone institutionally supported whom you can go to.

It seems to me that some of the commenters at By Common Consent are blind to this because for them, they found tough issues and didn’t have a problem with them (or maybe they did, but were resilient enough to get over those problems). Perhaps they had people in their lives who were able to “address” those issues on a satisfactory basis. But the issue is: what about those who find tough issues and do have major problems from them? Can we just assume that everyone is robust enough to just “figure things out” on their own? Should we assume that someone will informally have a contact who helps him navigate the issue? OR wouldn’t it be appropriate for the church to have some sort of institutional mechanism whereby people could be helped on these issues?

If that’s not the CES or Sunday School, then fine, but  then where?

While I would love to say “the Bloggernacle” or “Sunstone” or “Mormon Stories,” I have a feeling that it can’t be By Common Consent or any other unofficial blog. It can’t be Sunstone or any other un-condoned symposia. It’s got to be something institutional to the church so that people can feel assured that the church hierarchy or leadership or whomever official has a handle on it, rather than feeling (at best) that they have to sneak around or go against the official party line.

Why do people react the way they do, anyway?

The underlying question to this whole mess is…why do people react the way they do to various pieces of information, anyway? It’s not a foregone conclusion that if you find x fact about the church, then you will fall away, after all. Some people are unfazed by the new information, while other people have major hangups.

Some of the commenters tried to address this. As one summarized the popular expression: “It’s not the crime but the cover-up.” In other words, what causes disaffection is the loss in institutional credibility that comes NOT when people learn x fact,  but when they feel that the church either hid or omitted that fact from them. If this hypothesis is true, then an inoculative style won’t lead to people leaving because it’s not the facts that are problematic after all, but the church’s lack of forthrightness with respect to the fact.

I’m not so sure about this hypothesis, however…It seems to me that there are some concepts that, if presented, would be dealbreakers no matter if they were presented forthrightly. I will decline to mention any concepts in particular. Needless to say, I often don’t understand many “nuanced” testimonies…They just don’t seem compelling to me, and I wonder why they don’t seem so to me, but they do seem so to others.

I know Fowler’s Stages of Faith are a pretty popular buzz concept as well, but I have to wonder…what is it that causes one person to move between stages? Is it repeatable? Can it be taught and trained and guided?

At some point during the week, I noticed that another person on my team had the last name Monson. Being the dork that I am, I thought…hmm, what a coincidence.

I wonder if he’s Mormon?

At that point, I put on my hardboiled detective hat…It was time for some genealogy sleuthing.

I want to try to rationalize my thought process…so it doesn’t sound so random or crazy, but honestly, at the time, this was just a random and crazy suspicion. I don’t really know how common the name Monson is, and I don’t know how represented it is in the church. Obviously, the prophet is a Monson…but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Monson is an LDS dynasty family.

Anyway, today, as I mentioned before, the team had to work on a Saturday. Everyone (other than me) was wearing casual clothes to the client site — I didn’t get the memo, so I was wearing a white shirt and tie. -_-

I noticed that my Monson-monikered coworker was wearing a BYU shirt.

This guy has to be Mormon.

I guess I will explain my rationalizations now: for some reason, just like Mormons love being dentists, Mormons also love being accountants. I guess it’s because BYU has a really awesome accounting program, so if you’re going to BYU to get your money’s worth, then you can’t really go wrong with accounting.

So yeah, a guy with a BYU shirt and the last name Monson? Has to be Mormon, right?

I googled for said coworker between assignments. I found his linkedin page. Ahh! Yep, one of his previous “jobs” was as a “representative” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

…I got kinda excited upon validating my suspicions, I’m not going to lie.

Of course, there was/is one nagging question that probably will remain unresolved for now: are Mormon Monsons all related? How likely is it that this guy is meaningfully (as in, probably has a chance to see at family reunions) related to the Prophet?

In fact, I’m still somewhat convinced of the following idea: while kids and teenagers and college students “hang out” after getting done with whatever their assigned tasks area, the distinguishing hallmark of a Real Adult (TM) is that one stays home after getting home.

…I don’t think my parents are shut-ins…I just thought (read: think) that’s how adults conduct their business. And, from the stories I hear about their coworkers, I can’t really blame them for not wanting to hang out with them either. (And I mean, if the people you see most often are bad coworkers or people from your ward at church, then I guess…it’s best to stay home.) Yet, the reason I am writing this post with a strongly implied hedge to all of my statements here is because at some point, someone pointed out that many adults do similar things to what kids/teenagers/college students do: they hang out with friends after they get back from work. Ever since, I’ve doubted whether that was true or not.

So, are my parents shut-ins and homebodies? Are they just introverts like myself? Or is there something else to explain this?

As I have started work (this time, as a full-time hire rather than an employee), I come to grips with a sobering fact that I also came to grips with when I was on my internship that may help to answer the question: work is exhausting. I mean, really, as in when I get home from work, I just want to go to sleep. Even if it is only 8:06PM.

I don't even take advantage of coffee...

(I’ll tell you that it is past 8:06PM in my time zone, and I’m basically keeping myself awake by sheer will power…I just have things that I want to do before going to bed.)

It’s strange how this works…when I was in school, I would stay up all hours of the night, and not be worse for wear…but working…I can guarantee I’ll be tired when I get back from work.

Although I am aware that there are changes everyone goes through as they grow up, I don’t quite think this is just an effect of getting old. After all, this happened on my internship two years ago, but disappeared when I got off of it. So, it seems to be something related to work.

That isn’t to say that work is bad…rather, it’s a kind of exhaustion from mental challenge. It’s something interesting that I simply didn’t experience a whole lot in school.

But what I really wanted to write this post for was to remark about how amazed I am at all of my Real Adult friends on the blogs who blog and comment and whatnot while holding real jobs. I mean, for me, it was easy to churn out entries here and at Wheat & Tares because I was either a college student or on break…no big deal for my schedule…but my co-permabloggers were doing the blogging thing while managing work commitments.

So, yeah, mad props. As for me, I haven’t figured out how to juggle the two together yet. So, if you haven’t fully noticed, my working has really decimated my presence on various social networking and social media sites.

This isn’t to mean that Irresistible (Dis)Grace or any of my other various online involvements will now be defunct…but, I really can’t commit to posting regularly…Ah well, I still post a status or two on Facebook (are you friends with me? Then again, do I want to be that public?)

if you had to convince a 23 year old that a religious / faith / spiritual life was worth the investment, what would you say?

I recently had my 22nd birthday, so given there aren’t too many life differences between a 22-year-old and a 23-year-old, I suppose that this question could be greatly relevant to my interests. And personally, I am very interested in reasons people might make to convince me that a religious/spiritual/faithful life is worth the investment, although even still, I don’t really know what these terms mean and people are pretty unclear about defining them in an accessible, consistent way. Ah, such is life.

Anyway, several people on twitter took a stab at Joanna’s question, and as usually happens with these kinds of questions,  I either wasn’t completely on board with the answer or had no freaking idea where the person was coming from.

Ah, such is life. Anyway, let’s dive in…

Brian Hayes @peacecompassion says:

To bring out your highest potential to always be true to yourselve [sic] help others

Umm…ok. I would just ask for clarification on what this means…what is one’s highest potential to always be true to him (or her)self and how does a religious/spiritual/faithful life bring that out? What does one say to a jaded 23-year-old (or 22-year-old) whose experience with religion/spirituality/faith is seeing how it encourages people to be “true” to some standard other than who they are (and in fact, may actively oppose the individual as it currently exists [e.g., natural man is an enemy to God, etc.])?

This is especially evident in another of Brian’s responses:

in order to live true to your sincere convictions create a world where many share your earnest view of life …

I don’t want to be totally cynical and jaded, but I think the issue for many 22 and 23-year-olds is that they feel that religion doesn’t share their sincere convictions or help create a world where many share their earnest view of life. Whatever those are or that is.

Alan Hooker (@awhooker) has an interesting response (and a few followups to other people):

I don’t really like the use of ‘investment’. Spirituality might make you happier/healthy, but without God, what’s the point?

He clarifies his dislike of the term “investment” in other tweets:

As in, you shouldn’t have a spiritual life if you want something out of it. It shouldn’t just be an ‘investment.’

Actually, with this clarification or without it, I don’t really get what Alan is trying to say. So, is a spiritual life not supposed to have anything to it? I mean, a lot of people talk about having a “relationship” with God, but don’t relationships also require “investment”? And, is it unreasonable to want some return to come from that investment…at the very least, a response from the being with whom you’re pursuing a relationship?

Then came answers from those like TentTrash @MulletPatrol:

look at the blessings / benefits of the lifestyle vs, a more hedonistic lifestyle. I’ll take the spiritual life any day.

or Chris Knudsen (@Chrisknudsen):

life without religion/faith, etc is like a soccer field without rules and goals. Stay inbounds and kick for the goals.

At this point, I began to gain the distinct impression that I sometimes get that people aren’t even seeing eye to eye on this issue, so whatever benefits of a spiritual/faithful/religious life there may be are going to be lost on people like me coming of age in society…because I can’t even get on board with the premises implied in these statements.

So the dichotomy is spirituality/faith/religion or hedonism/goal-lessness/aimlessness. That’s all they see.

This is actually a complicated one to address, because it’s not as if there isn’t something there. If you’re coming from a strict background, then yeah, some of the restrictions that most people don’t follow that you do are going to seem like hedonism. I mean, if you believing drinking alcohol, tea, coffee, whatever are sins, then how can you explain someone who drinks these other than by calling them hedonistic sinners?

But here’s the deal: this “hedonism” isn’t “black” to the “religious” lifestyle’s “white”. Rather, you can see even within so-called “hedonism” variations…so you can even see people who may drink (gasp) disapprove of Jim who doesn’t do so responsibly and consequently acts like a jerk. Because there is more than the extremes of “tee-totaller” (or whatever the abstinent extreme would be) and “raging irresponsible drunk” (or whatever the excessive extreme would be).

This get to my issue with Chris’s tweet: it’s not like you have rules, boundaries, and goals with religion/faith/spirituality, but without these, you are on a soccer field without rules or goals. Maybe nonreligious people tend to play a different game, but that doesn’t make their game illegitimate.

…but I understand that this one is also complicated to address, because once again, it’s not as if there isn’t anything to what Chris and others like him say. But again, I don’t think he addresses this deeper criticism. Maybe 22 and 23-year-olds are not satisfied with religious offerings because they think the rules enacted by those religions are uncompelling? It doesn’t work just to have any old goal or set of rules…these things have to be coherent. So, to the extent that people do dabble with nihilism and postmodernism, it’s to the extent that the current discourses are so very flawed.

Some of the responses I read after those were downright depressing, however. From Chappy @chappy:

maybe the bleak circumstances, debt, and environmental destruction leads the younger generation to seek religion…Eventually

and

sometimes people have to be compelled to be humble (though it is better if they don’t have to be) right?

Yikes.

I’m not going to begin to state that “bleak circumstances,” “debt,” and “environmental destruction” are all the fault of religion, but I would venture to state that religion doesn’t necessarily have a good track record with these. (Obviously, all religions aren’t the same, but I don’t think most Evangelicals are espousing evangelical environmentalism.)

But I guess the scary thing about these two tweets is that it isn’t really about whether religions help or hinder against these problems. Rather, these problems are going to exist and you’re just going to have to be humbled into being religious.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 39,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 14 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Some things I would like to say about these statistics are that there are some “distortions,” I guess (not that I’m complaining, hehe.) If you check the section “Attractions in 2011″ for example, you’ll see that some of the most viewed entries aren’t necessarily the ones that had the most comments…now, that’s fine…sometimes, posts can be popular without drawing a lot of conversation. However, the reason why these posts are popular is something a bit different. For both Public Smith Announcement and Blow in Her Face, these posts draw visits day in and day out because people are searching for images found within those pages.

Basically, if you want to draw constant daily traffic, you just need to have posts with popular (or controversial) images…who knew?