55 responses so far ↓

• 1 Anonymous // Nov 15, 2006 at 1:04 am

  Bravo John, for your very heartfelt, brazen and honest approach to this whole situation.

  I would like to comment some more when I have the time. So best wishes in the meantime.

• 2 justafriend // Nov 15, 2006 at 7:18 am

  Dear John,
  You are obviously on a journey, but it is time to start moving forward. To continue to try and walk forward while looking back is going to lead to continued distraction and diversion. Why don’t you write about where your journey is going, what you are learning and looking forward to, rather than your constant rationalization about where you have been?

  You have too much intellect and smarts to waste on a continued diatribe about what others are doing or saying or thinking. Let’s hear where you are headed.

• 3 John // Nov 15, 2006 at 8:01 am

  justafriend, this is some of the best advice I’ve heard. You’re absolutely right, I keep lingering, looking back. Time to move on!

• 4 Bored in Vernal // Nov 15, 2006 at 10:09 am

  I think your letter sets just the right tone. I hope your Bishop will give you some space. I’m also looking forward to seeing where you go next!

• 5 Matt Thurston // Nov 15, 2006 at 11:30 am

  Very well said, John. I’d love to know your Bishop’s private thoughts in response to such a letter. (Actually, I’d love to know your entire ward’s private thoughts regarding this letter.)

  Their response will either be:

  1.) “I feel close to you as a fellow seeker of truth… your honesty and integrity — your testimony — speaks plainly to my heart and soul… thank you, and good luck, Brother John, in your ongoing search for truth…” or

  2.) “I’m saddened because you have clearly been deceived… but such was the risk we took when we agreed to come down to this world… I cannot interfere with your free agency so I will have to say goodbye… at least until you repent, or until we meet again at the judgment bar…”

• 6 Miko // Nov 15, 2006 at 12:32 pm

  Thank you for sharing this; I hope it goes well.

• 7 Watt Mahoun // Nov 15, 2006 at 4:37 pm

  Eh, Matt … it’s going to be response #2 or no response at all. If it’s #1 then I’ll eat my, um, Patriarchal Blessing.

  Dear Remy’s, you rock.

  FWIW… justafriend’s advice is good but a wee bit premature. I hope you save it for the eventual day when you (and everyone you love) can no longer benefit by a stellar and rare example of how to leave Mormonism with grace and integrity.

  Best,

  Watt

• 8 Matt Thurston // Nov 15, 2006 at 4:50 pm

  Watt, I’m inclined to agree with you, though I’d venture a guess that some percentage in the ward would respond with #1. What percent, I don’t know. When I’m feeling optimistic I can sometimes convince myself that 20% of ward members would answer somewhere along the lines of #1.

• 9 Jonathan // Nov 15, 2006 at 5:07 pm

  Watt is right - You guys are leaving with a lot of maturity. I didn’t leave my church with any such grace whatsoever. The next church I leave (which is inevitable) I’ll lean more towards your approach.

• 10 nee // Nov 15, 2006 at 5:38 pm

  This is a thoughtful response. I find it somewhat annoying when it’s assumed people are leaving because of being offended (or alternatively because they are in moral decline).

  In reference to the second commenter, one cannot know where they are headed if they do not know where they’ve been. Part of knowing where you’ve been is articulating it. What I’ve read thus far on your blog encompasses where you’ve been, where you’re headed and mostly what you are going through right now.

  Furthermore, this is not like leaving one job for another. You have vacation from a job. You have a start and stop time. You have a couple days off. Leaving the church is leaving something that impacts everything in your life from what you wear to what you consume to scheduling everything else in around the obligations involved. It is all that and so much more. Leaving is a process - especially when you are learning how to leave behind certain parts and still keep friendships, fellowship, and the parts you cherish intact.

  Discussing where you have been helps you figure out the process of “now” and the future. Do what is cathartic for you.

• 11 John Dehlin // Nov 15, 2006 at 9:15 pm

  Nice letter, man. Thanks for sharing.

• 12 John // Nov 16, 2006 at 12:09 am

  Matt and Watt: the Bishop’s answer just came, and I think it’s a mix of #1 and #2. I’ll blog some more about it tomorrow.

  Nee, you are so right–leaving is a process. Because we’re unwilling (and unable) to cut off everything that is Mormon (esp. friends, family, academic interests, some cultural identity, etc.), it means we have to do some careful untangling.

• 13 Armand // Nov 16, 2006 at 9:34 am

  John :
  Being an old geezer, I’m really not used to the bloggosphere or to whatever norms of etiquette have evolved in the use of it. Were I in your situation, however, I don’t think I would have resorted to such a venue — essentially for the same reason that I would not do so to discuss my marriage or family conflicts and problems, especially if church leaders’ responses were being referenced and described.
  After a mutual friend called my attention to your blogs of recent days, I spent much of yesterday (Nov. 15) reading through your statements and those contributed by others. It was quite a long and thoughtful string of correspondence. In the process, I found myself referenced a few times by some of your respondents, so I decided to weigh in today, at least this once. I would much rather have a long personal conversation with you, and maybe we can still do that, if you are interested. Meanwhile, I will offer a few thoughts here, because the matter at hand is one of considerable gravity, and you are very important to me.
  Ultimately no one can get into anyone else’s head, heart, or soul and truly understand that other person’s thoughts and feelings, so I am not trying to do that, and I am certainly not passing judgment on you or on your situation. I can comment only from my own personal experience and from inferences taken from what you yourself have written. Judging from the latter, it does not seem to me that your bishop is anxious to see you out of the church. Since you yourself declared your intention to leave, and made public certain grievances (”public” at least in your blogging community, but elsewhere too), I imagine that the bishop was wondering whether he was facing the prospect of an escalating public spectacle that would eventually call for some kind of formal public action on his part. If so, then his suggestion that you simply write a letter of “resignation” from the church could be understood as an effort at “damage control” on his part — damage, that is, not only to you and your family, but also to the larger LDS community.
  I have never been a “real” bishop, but I was a bishop’s first counselor for five years in a large suburban ward, and before that I was president of a large branch, and then for ten years most recently I was group leader of a large high priest group. These were all pastoral roles in which I had to deal regularly with member disaffections of various kinds, so I have some sense for how a bishop might feel in this situation. As I read what you have said, and then try to put myself in your bishop’s place, I see a member who’s telling me that he has made up his mind to leave the church, and is starting to tell the whole world what his reasons are. This resembles somebody who is starting to sound and act like the formal definition of an
  “apostate,” and doing so increasingly publicly. As his bishop, I would not want to see this process become any more aggravated or any more public, so if this member has made up his mind to leave the church, then the most painless and least damaging way to accommodate his decision is to suggest that he write a “goodbye” letter and leave the matter at that. The member will continue to be welcome at church activities and will continue to have friends at church, but we will no longer expect him to act or speak as a formal church member.
  Such, at least, is the construction that I would put on your bishop’s suggestion that you write the letter — NOT that he is trying to push you out, only that he is seeking the most peaceful and least damaging process for you — one might even say a Quaker-like process. Of course, I don’t know what else has transpired between you and your bishop, or whether the written communications that you have shared are the totality of your interaction over this particular issue of “leaving.” I do not see, however, any indication that you have sought a face-to-face talk with the bishop, in which both of you could candidly and privately share whatever your feelings and perceptions are. Had I been your bishop, I would have appreciated that, and it might have obviated the need for written correspondence altogether. Anyway, such are my thoughts about your relationship with your bishop.
  I certainly realize, however, that there is much more to the story than that, for I know that your disaffection with certain aspects of your Mormon experience has been growing for some time. I have but little to say about that publicly, but I’ll be glad to talk with you at any time. I will say only that I can fully sympathize with almost any grievance that you have felt in your church experience, since I have been dealing with probably the same ones for the past 50 years. I have been offended by members and leaders who have spouted right-wing and war-mongering declarations as part of their “testimonies” or gospel doctrine lessons in various wards. However, in other settings (including Sunstone symposia, and certain wards of the church near universities),I have been equally offended by pompous intellectual posturing on the parts of some members who are sure that the latest academic theories they have discovered have given them special insights into the ways that the church and/or the world need to be changed. To be sure, I have encountered the former more often than the latter, but these kinds of folk wisdom simply come with the territory — not just Mormon territory but the territory of any social group or community.
  In my adult life, I never confused any of that with the sublime and loving teachings of Jesus, or with the bracing and exciting teachings of Joseph Smith. I refuse to be driven from the church by opinions that I cannot respect, even though they sometimes come from people whom I do respect (including church leaders, general or local). Like Eugene England, I have learned that if I cannot tolerate and learn to love Mormons who irritate me, I will likely not learn to love at all. For me, social aggravation is the price to be paid for community participation (or, indeed, family life!), and ultimately it has been worth the price for me, and for my children, in LDS community life. If I want to see change in my community, I know that it is less likely to occur if I walk away than if I stay and continue in gentle persuasion (also a Quaker attribute, as I recall!). All of this, however, is at the level of social relationships. It has nothing directly to do with faith, with commitment (either intellectual or spiritual), or with a testimony of the efficacy of gospel teachings. These have always worked for me, and I think they will work for you, if you can just keep your eye on what truly matters. Whatever you decide about your own path will make no difference in my feelings toward you. I love you, John.

• 14 Randy // Nov 16, 2006 at 10:31 am

  Good golly, your bishop doesn’t have anything better to do than track people down on the Internet? On second thought, that’s kind of what google is for, isn’t it? Anyway, excellent letter; my own exit was marked by a brief e-mail resigning my calling and saying I was tired of banging my head against a proverbial brick wall regarding church.

  BTW, I like this blog.

• 15 Caroline // Nov 16, 2006 at 3:42 pm

  Armand,
  I really appreciated hearing your thoughts. As someone who likewise deeply struggles with certain aspects of Church doctrine and culture, it’s very meaningful to me to hear more about how you’ve navigated it. Thank you.

• 16 Matt Thurston // Nov 16, 2006 at 4:31 pm

  Excellent thoughts, Armand. I heard my Dad’s voice as I read your remarks. (That was a compliment, by the way!)

  I think you have shown some valuable light on what might be the Bishop’s point of view in this matter.

  However, the key to this whole thing is what you say here: “All of this, however, is at the level of social relationships. It has nothing directly to do with faith, with commitment (either intellectual or spiritual), or with a testimony of the efficacy of gospel teachings.”

  I absolutely agree that the social costs you describe are universal (not endemic only to Mormonism) and worth the continued struggle. The “rub” is the faith or testimony part. When one cannot develop the requisite faith or testimony in the gospel, or worse, develops faith or testimony of things contrary to the gospel, how does one maintain meaningful ties?

  As you know, faith or testimony must be borne. I say “must” not as something we “should” do, but something we feel “compelled” to do. So those with faith at odds with the gospel must either sit in silence, speak out and be marginalized, or filter everything through the de-stygmatizing metaphor machine.

  I maintain ties in large part because of the social costs and benefits and because of people like you and my Dad, and outlets like Sunstone and MHA, but I sometimes wonder if I’d be happier in a more open community where I can bear my soul and ask my questions without fear of reprisal from the orthodoxy police. The Remys have no doubt wondered the same thing (”Can we be more happy elsewhere?”) and have taken that leap of faith to find out. While it is a major bummer for our Mormon family, the seeker in me can’t help but wish them luck.

• 17 John // Nov 16, 2006 at 4:57 pm

  Randy, welcome and thank you.

  Armand, thank you for your contribution. I agree with much of your analysis, and can see how things must appear from the bishop’s eyes. I know how you feel about going public about these sorts of things–I guess I fall more in the Lavina camp.

  You use the words ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ to describe why you wouldn’t discuss such problems publicly. I see a government institution as a more apt metaphor for the church. The media is one of the great checks that we have on the power of government institutions. Because power in the Church is so one-sided (and maintained through secrecy), I felt that going public empowered not only myself, but others who find themselves in similar situations. Deep doubters are isolated and beleaguered. The church has enough defenders and apologists; who will speak and minister to the marginalized?

  Armand, I know you place high value on loyalty to the church institution. At what point do you think the price too much to pay? (I ask this sincerely, and not rhetorically.) I’m sure that many here would like to hear your response to this question; I’ll ask you the same question when I see you next if you’d prefer to answer privately.

  As always, I am grateful for your friendship. I’ve never felt judged or devalued by you. You have been a mentor to me and are one of the main reasons I stayed in the Church as long as I did.

• 18 John // Nov 16, 2006 at 5:02 pm

  I cross-posted my comment with Matt. Once again, he asks the questions that I really wanted to ask, but more clearly.

• 19 nee // Nov 16, 2006 at 8:37 pm

  If you don’t get a confirmation, no one can argue that. It is extremely personal. Armand’s response overlooked your very real concerns and reasons and went right into leadership mantra.

  Your post discusses faith issues, doubt issues, lack of confirmation. These are issues no one can argue you on. They are desperately personal. You can discuss them publicly but no one can tell you that you’re wrong. You know how to pray. You know how to get answers. No one can argue if you get different answers than they did. Well, they can argue but the point is moot.

  So what to do with that? Instead of delving into the scary territory of considering what it means if the church is true for prayerful and moral brother so and so but not true for equally prayerful and moral brother such and such, people will simply label the latter brother as misguided and probably just offended.

  It is easier for many in leadership to focus on social issues as the impetus for leaving. To consider the alternative is dangerous.

  Also, again with the secrecy thing, what’s up with that? I was grateful to happen upon writings online over the last month of people who love many aspects of the church but can’t be part of it anymore in the same way they used to. I thought the only people out there were staunch church supporters or anti’s. What I’ve come to find out (with a debt of gratitude to John Dehlin) is there are people who are seekers. They are not haters nor are they lemmings. They speak with respect but speak the truth. They don’t seek to disprove the church as much as they seek to say, “This is MY journey and what I’M going through.”

  People in the church are big fans of saying “The temple is not secret; it’s sacred.” I don’t see the Remys and other like them criticizing what others consider sacred (unless someone worships their bishop… ah but that does go to the root of something doesn’t it? There are many who seem to worship authority). I see them speaking about their journey and criticizing the unfortunate politics of religion.

• 20 Armand // Nov 17, 2006 at 12:48 am

  John :
  I just spent two hours writing a long blog, but when I submitted it I got a big notification that it had failed because of something to do with unpaid “WP Hash Cash Checks”. What’s that all about? The notice said that my blog had been archived somewhere, but I didn’t understand where. Can you find it somehow and post it for me? I really hate to lose all the time I spent on it.

• 21 Armand // Nov 17, 2006 at 6:09 am

  Dear John and friends :

  Thanks for all your comments (#14 through #19). They are all important to the ongoing conversation. My responses here will be mostly to John, but I think they will be applicable to others, as well.

  First, I will concur that different analogies will frame arguments differently. I used the family analogy because the church has always felt more like a family to me than like a government institution, and that is mainly because of the ties I feel to the people, rather than to the hierarchical structure. On the other hand, if I were to think of the church as a government institution, I might not like the logical consequence of that analogy — e. g., if I am prepared to walk away from the church when I object to certain of its policies or programs, would I also feel compelled to move to a different country if I became disaffected with its government and couldn’t change it? I think not. I have always opted to stay and keep up the struggle.

  Second, the church is, to be sure, one-sided in its distribution of authority. We should all know that “going in.” It is not a democracy and has never claimed to be. It has its secrets, too (again, as do many families and other institutions). Let’s not expect it to be something that it is not. I don’t find that situation inherently repressive, since I have always regarded my membership as voluntary. I can leave any time I wish. Such ties as keep me in the church when I am discontented are the ties to my brothers and sisters, and to the few leaders whom I know personally and respect for their efforts to lead in accordance with D & C 121; these ties too are familial in nature.

  Third, if I were to leave the church, I would do so for my own reasons, without any public announcement, and certainly not in an effort to champion entire categories of others with whose grievances I might identify - such as the beleaguered and the deep doubters - however those categories might be defined, since I would be in no position to know truly and fairly what process lay behind their feelings. Any kind of alienation is a bilateral process : it results from a series of actions and reactions on two sides (maybe more than two). Since you mentioned Lavina, John, my criticism of her (for her 1993 article), as she well knows, was that she publicly championed the cause of various putative victims of unrighteous dominion while knowing only one side of each story. (In two cases with which I was personally familiar, there was another side to the story that would have cast a different light on the process of alienation). You have not shared with me,John, nor are you obliged to, whatever grievances you have personally felt in your church experience, so I don’t know what part they might have played - if any - in your decision to leave. I can only assume that they must have been severe, although I never got any intimation that you were ill treated by members or leaders in your ward. If you are indeed motivated partly by a desire to
  “minister to the marginalized” in acting so publicly, then you are taking on a heavy burden indeed. I never felt up to such a responsibility.

  Fourth, you ask at what point I would find the price of loyalty to the church too much to pay — again, interestingly, a little like asking what price for loyalty to my country would be too much. In both cases, I would have to have some pretty compelling reasons to leave. For me, where the church is concerned, I would withdraw my loyalty only if confronted by an official demand that I act against my conscience and/or my will (agency). That has never happened to me. I can tell you that during the past 20 years I have been summoned by three different stake presidents and one general authority to explain and account for something that I said or wrote in public. In all cases, the interviews turned out amicably. My explanations proved satisfactory, and the leaders who interviewed me all gained some enhanced understanding in the process. I refused to get angry or intimidated, and they made no attempt to bully me. If they had made demands on me against my conscience, and I had refused to comply, then I might have been removed from the church. If so, I would have retained my faith in the gospel and in the Lord, assured that any injustice to me by the church would not be ratified in the heavens. Notice that I speak of being pressured to ACT against my conscience or agency. I do not regard doctrines or teachings with which I disagree as demands that I ACT against my conscience. I feel free to accept or reject anything taught by the church or in the church, so the promulgation of doctrines that I find dubious — even if they come from general authorities in general conference — do not constitute grounds for me to withdraw my loyalty or membership in the church. When I teach a class, or bear a testimony, I do not feel obliged to say anything that I don’t believe. There is always a lot I CAN say that I DO believe. I have never felt pressured to espouse or declare or testify to anything I didn’t believe, and I would not do so. Nor do I feel obliged, however, to tell everyone (or anyone) what I do NOT believe.

  Fifth, this leads me to the matters of faith and doubt, which nee felt that I had overlooked earlier. It’s true that I did not address such issues earlier, not because I don’t find them important, but because — in light of what I said just above — I don’t see those issues as requiring decisions about staying or leaving. We all have our doubts, and we all have greater or lesser levels of faith at different times in our lives. No one gets kicked out of the church for doubting, or for merely expressing those doubts to other members or even to leaders. Of course, some teachings are so fundamental that members are expected to accept them as conditions for temple recommends, but even if one does not qualify for a recommend, s/he is still welcome in the church. So why should doubt, or wavering faith, or even lost faith require a person to leave? Ultimately we are ALL the “seekers” that nee referred to (as per John Dehlin), so we might as well do our seeking from within the LDS fold as anywhere else. Do we find that some in the church will disapprove of the doubts and lack of certainty that go with our seeking? Of course, but now we are back to the social level again, and the question again becomes : Can we learn to love everyone, or only those who approve of our ideas? Whose journey is this anyway (to paraphrase nee)? If we know the Lord is with us in our journey(s), why should we care who disapproves?

  SO sorry to have gone on so long! Love and best wishes to all.

• 22 John // Nov 17, 2006 at 7:19 am

  Apologies, Armand. I found your comment in the database and am submitting it for you here. The hashcash thing is supposed to combat automated spammers, but seems to affect legitimate comments occasionally. Hitting the back button and resubmitting is usually enough to overcome the problem. I will probably take it down so it doesn’t cause more heartache.

  I know this isn’t a response worthy of your well-thought out comment, but what I hope to address, which your arguments don’t, is a recognition of and empathy for the pain experienced by those who leave. You represent the choice as a very clean freewill decision. But in most cases it seems to be a very messy, drawn out and painful process, both cognitively and socially, with the Church resisting it every step of the way.

  To use another metaphor, the Church sees those with serious doubts as sick. It responds by trying to heal them and/or to avoid the contagion. I understand why it does this. But I see these budding skeptics as whole, as going through a difficult maturation process. Those who are able to find their faith again have tons of emotional support from the Church, and I am genuinely happy for them. But those who continue to grow in doubt are generally pretty isolated. I don’t pretend to understand or even represent doubters–I don’t want to speak for them. But I would like to reach out to them, and soothe their anguish and ease the pain of their journey.

  One reaction to the government analogy: You’re right, of course–I’m not willing to leave the United States just because I’m disgruntled with its current government. But I can be critical of its administration without fear of reprisal, and I can work effectively to change it more to my liking. You acknowledge that the church is not a democracy. Most Americans don’t complain when citizens of dictatorships (even tame, rather ‘benevolent’ ones) choose to leave their motherlands for freer countries.

  I am trying desperately to love even those with whom I disagree. I disagree with you, but love you, so maybe this isn’t so tough. I’m looking forward to speaking with you more in person tonight.

• 23 Armand // Nov 17, 2006 at 9:00 am

  John :
  I’m SO glad you were able to dive into cyberspace and recover my lost blog. My admiration for your expertise is even greater than before!
  I think our exchange has about run its course, though I am always glad to talk with you whenever we can get together. I was a little surprised by your comment (early this morning - Nov. 17) that in my latest response I had not acknowledged your desire to show “a recognition of or empathy for the pain of those who leave.” I thought I had indicated pretty clearly that to cast myself in the role of champion for the cause of such a varied and amorphous category of people would entail a burden that I never felt capable of carrying (and, by inference, I wondered why you would feel able to do so).
  To be sure, leaving the church can indeed by a “very messy, drawn out, and painful process,” like leaving a family or any other important institution. Yet it is ultimately an individual process, with each person having his/her own reasons and making his/her own “cost-benefit assessment.” Those of us who desire to “reach out” to the doubters and
  “soothe their anguish” or “ease the pain of their journey” can do so as well from the inside as from the outside. If we decide to join them in the exit, it should be for our own individual reasons, not for theirs — or at least that would be my own intention if I were to leave.
  As for the “reprisals” that you see awaiting the exiters, I don’t see them as very different from those experienced by people leaving families or other “high demand” institutions. None of us can withdraw from any institution that matters and still expect to retain all of the benefits of membership. I’m not sure what other kinds of “reprisals” have occurred in your case. Maybe there have been some. I hope not. If I were to feel, in conscience, that I had to leave, I would expect to lose something in the process — maybe (sadly) even the love and respect of some of my friends — but I would still feel free to leave, and I would not anticipate any “reprisals” that would affect my life, liberty, or property (apologies to John Locke). I would expect my “pursuit of happiness” to be actually enhanced if I were free of the demands of an institution I could no longer support.
  In any case, dear friend, you will get no reprisals from me. I’ll see you later. Much love to you.

• 24 Caroline // Nov 18, 2006 at 9:40 pm

  Armand,
  I’ve been reading your comments with great interest. Thank you for your perspective.

  I’m interested in your statement that you would feel the need to leave the church if you were compelled to act against your conscience. I’m trying to apply that logic to myself and my own issues. I’d like to know how you would deal with the following situations, if you were me and these things did indeed compell you to act against your conscience.

  1. The temple ceremony that requires women to raise a hand and pledge to hearken unto her husband as he hearkens unto God. Doing this act - raising my hand and promising this promise (though I realize this is by proxy) - would require me to act against my conscience, since I find it morally repugnant to have women promise to subjugate themselves in this way. (My perception of women’s subjugation is obviously subjective - certainly others will disagree.) If you were in this situation, perceiving as I perceive, would you choose to no longer do endowments, so that you would not be compelled to act against your conscience?

  2. I find the whole male hierarchy of the church very distressing, as you know. I fully believe that ordaining women and giving them an equal opportunity to serve is the morally right thing to do. I believe a loving and just God would want nothing less for his daughters. What I feel about women being ordained, I imagine, is very similar to what you felt about black men being ordained 30 years ago.

  Anyway, When I go to Church and participate and support its programs, meetings, and classes, (all planned, designed, implemented, approved etc. by this male hierarchy ) am I acting against my conscience? In other words, is my very participation in Church meetings and activities supporting a policy that I find morally repugnant? These are questions I often ask myself. I’m interested in your answer since I’m sure you faced a similar question 30 years ago.

• 25 John // Nov 18, 2006 at 10:32 pm

  Caroline, great comment, and I’m curious to hear Armand’s answer as well. I know that one of the last straws for Jana and I was seeing how differently our children would be treated solely on the basis of their gender.

• 26 Armand // Nov 19, 2006 at 12:52 am

  Dear Caroline :
  As a geezerly old patriarch, I’m sure that I am not capable of feeling as personally and deeply as you do about the role of women in our families, our church, and our society in general. However, I might be considered a “recovering patriarch,” for I have really been trying to learn some of the required empathy from my wife, daughters, and granddaughters. Insofar as I have succeeded in doing so, I might be able to respond to your questions in a helpful way. Forgive me if it seems from my responses that I have not yet made it all the way!
  1. As for your question about the temple endowment, but speaking only for myself, I would not make a commitment in the temple or anywhere else to do or say anything that went against my conscience. At the same time, I “read” the temple endowment in the same way that I read the scriptures — namely in recognition that not everything is to be understood literally, or to be rigidly acted out against reason. Like other commandments, they are, to my way of thinking, expected by the Lord to be carried out in reasonable and productive ways, as the Holy Spirit directs in specific cases. (That is the way I look upon the consecration commitment, too, for example). In the case of the “hearkening” promise, I would read that to mean hearkening to another’s counsel IF AND ONLY IF he or she were hearkening to the Lord.
  In other words, in promising to “hearken to the counsel” of any other person (spouse, bishop, or anyone else) as he or she “hearkens to the Lord,” I would understand that I am responding to a hypothetical situation — namely one in which I KNOW (or feel sure) that the other person is acting on the Lord’s own counsel, and I am being asked, in effect, to follow the same counsel — that is, NOT that other person’s counsel but the Lord’s. An important implication of that understanding is that I would NOT feel obliged to follow another whose counsel I did not feel had a divine origin, perhaps because the Spirit did not so confirm that origin to me, or perhaps because I recognized that the counsel came more from an exercise of unrighteous dominion than from pure love. My agency is thus not curtailed by such a promise.
  To the extent that any of this has application in the marriage relationship, I would take it to mean NOT a license for patriarchal domination but a method by which the partners could seek and find unanimity in a joint embrace of the divine will (and of each other!). Besides, as a practical matter, no one (not even the Lord!) would expect anyone to stay in a marriage relationship in which one partner was making unilateral demands on the other and claiming divine authority to do so. I hope that interpretation helps you try to see the offending passage from the endowment through a different theological AND practical perspective.
  2. The rest of your query derives, in one way or another, from your discomfort with the male domination in the way that the church operates. You point to a comparison with the policy of denying the priesthood to blacks a generation ago. Where the priesthood itself is concerned, there never was a doctrinal basis for denying the priesthood to blacks, and I have never been able to find a doctrinal basis for denying the priesthood to women, or for maintaining the derivative inequality that exists in the ecclesiastical power of the two sexes. Certainly, I have never bought into the false analogy that the men get the priesthood and the women get the babies (reminiscent of some of the old folklore about why blacks couldn’t have the priesthood!). Accordingly, I have concluded that the differences between men and women in the callings that they get at church (including the priesthood or lack of it)are a matter of POLICY, rather than doctrine. That understanding, in turn, implies that the policy could be changed.
  It does not, however, NECESSARILY imply that the policy is not divinely guided. We can’t be sure about that. Unless we know that what the Lord thinks is “the morally right thing to do” will always be in accord with what is politically fashionable in our own society in a given age (but not necessarily other societies?), we can’t be sure that any particular church policy that we find questionable by our own moral lights must also be seen as immoral in the Lord’s eyes.
  I always took this same position on the issue with blacks 40 years ago. That is, I always said (and wrote) that there was no scriptural or doctrinal basis for denying them the priesthood, and that such a policy had all kinds of undesirable implications. But I never took the position that the church would have to change its policy in order to keep my loyalty, because I was never so sure that I knew the divine will with such certainty. I always wondered whether and how the divine will could be involved in the policy to start with, and in the historical TIMING of the policy — that is, when it started and when it ended.
  Now we have a somewhat analogous situation. Could there be any other reasons for not extending the priesthood (and its derivative prerogatives) to women in today’s world - OTHER than sheer patriarchal obstinacy and power-hogging? I’m not so sure I know the answer to that question. I do not know the divine will in this matter, and I’m not so sure anyone else does, either (whichever side of the question they might be on). However, my knowledge of history and my own experience convinces me that TO THE EXTENT THAT the divine will is expressed through the acts of church members, it will be efficacious NOT through strident remonstrances with the leaders, and still less through the departures of the disaffected, but ONLY through the faithful enterprise of the committed. To the extent that change in the race policy was influenced by whatever rank-and-file members did, I’m convinced that it was the faithful example of the Brazilian saints that had the greatest impact. We now know too that when the church leaders were finally open to considering a policy change, they reviewed the careful and quiet research of faithful scholars on the subject, not the angry criticisms of the policy from both inside and outside the church.
  So are you acting against your conscience by your very participation in a church that has this policy that you find morally repugnant? Only you can decide. As you think about it, though, I urge you to consider the question from more than one perspective. If the organization in which you were participating were (let’s say) a school or university that had one or more policies with which you disagreed, would your ongoing participation in that institution raise a similar question of conscience for you? Would you consider leaving? You would probably have a serious cost-benefit assessment to make. For me, that’s always the way it has been at church. I don’t like all the policies of my ward, stake, or church, and I personally do not see a justification for denying the priesthood to my wife and female descendants. But I (and they) continue to see a favorable cost-benefit ratio from our participation.
  I hope you find these other perspectives to be helpful. I hope too that you can find the strength and the tolerance to forgive the slights that you experience under present policies and stay in the struggle. The ironic fact, Caroline, is that the patriarchy won’t change unless women like you help us to change it. Please consider that too as you wrestle with your conscience.

• 27 Oborosama // Nov 19, 2006 at 10:34 am

  Armand,

  It sounds to me as if it is as difficult for you to stay in the LDS Church as it was for me to leave it behind. I think in the end what this whole question (whether or not to leave the church) comes down to is a personal choice, based on each individual’s own experiences and desires. You choose to stay, I chose to leave. Each choice is fraught with reasonings, justifications, conscience-rattling paradoxes, and social as well as personal consequences/sacrifices. Either choice is equal in my eyes, but I am content with the choice I made and it sounds like you are too. In the end, it is what the individual is most comfortable with that determines the course. I think the only real bad choice to be made here is to choose that which will either add to or stagnate such inner turmoil.

• 28 Caroline // Nov 19, 2006 at 10:41 am

  Armand,
  Thank you for your thoughtful response. I especially appreciate your comment about how patriarchy won’t change unless women like me stick with the church. For a couple of years, i have very deliberately decided to remain an active Mormon for this very reason. As hubristic as this may sound, I truly believe the Church needs people like me to help it move forward and evolve to become the loving, inclusive institution that I know it has the potential to be.

  I have a few follow up questions and comments to your response.

  1. I appreciate how huge the “as he hearkens unto God” clause is. If an obedience to husband covenant has to exist for women, I’m very glad that at least there is this clause. However, for me, that clause in no way makes the covenant palatable. Firstly, it is not palatable because the covenant is not reciprocal. If men also had to promise to hearken unto their wives as they hearken unto God, I would have absolutely no problem, for all the reasons you enumerated above. However, when it is ONLY women who have to make this promise, then men are in no way beholden to listen to their wives when these wives are hearkening unto God. And that sets up a hierarchy of God at the top, then man, then woman. It implies that men are women’s intermediaries with God. It implies, again, that husbands don’t need to listen to wives. Now in practice, I myself don’t have to worry about this covenant. As you know, Mike is far too smart and kind to ever pull this kind of rank on me. But my heart aches for women who have less sensitive and kind husbands, who feel beholden to obey their husbands because of this covenant. My heart also aches for the women who hear this covenant and wonder if God respects and loves men more than women.

  Armand, I’ve asked myself this question more times than I can remember, and I would love to hear your answer to it: is there any reason why women can’t just promise to hearken unto God, like the men? Why on earth has this covenant not been changed?

  2. I was so happy to read that you can find no doctrinal reason why women shouldn’t be ordained, and I’m thrilled you consider this a policy. I absolutely agree, of course.

  I find your analogy of the church to another institution, like a school, very interesting. In answer to your question, I can tell you that, absolutely, I would withdraw from any school in which only men could be the professors or administrators. I’d be out of there in a flash without one glance back. If it was other more minor policies that I disagreed with, like you said, I’d have to balance out the negatives and positives in my mind and make a decision.

  My problem also with making the analogy of the church to an institution like a school is that a school does not purport to be God’s institution, run and headed by Christ himself. It would actually be easier for me to deal with a school with faulty policies because I and everyone else could so easily write these policies off as the stupid mistakes of men. It becomes immeasurably more complex and painful when it’s God’s institution that you see promulgating sexist policies. Because a)it implies that God is fundamentally unfair and unjust or b) the leaders are out of touch with what God would really want for his children.

  For Mormons, both scenarios are difficult to come to terms with, but I have found it therapeutic in the last couple of years to simply believe the latter. And to hope that men’s understanding will evolve and that the church may move forward in time.

  N.B.I appreciate your humility about not being quite sure if God really did want black men to have the priesthood. I sometimes wonder if I it is wrong for me to be so certain that women should be ordained. But as I said above, thinking that God wouldn’t want that for his daughters is too horrible and frightening to express.

• 29 Deborah // Nov 19, 2006 at 10:48 am

  I’ve enjoyed reading the discussions here the last few days. Caroline/Armand: One of the questions Armand raises in his thoughtful response poses a difficulty for me:

  “If the organization in which you were participating . . . had one or more policies with which you disagreed, would your ongoing participation in that institution raise a similar question of conscience for you? Would you consider leaving?”

  Yes. Without question. And therein lies my conundrum. I would never willfully align myself (direct participation or monetary support) with an organization that blocked women from the highest levels of leadership or that denied full fellowship to homosexuals. And this is the irony that follows me each week when I enter the chapel doors. Were it *any* other organization, I would not only leave, I would shun. Instead I sit, largely quietly. I write for Exponent about Christ, interfaith marriage, and my love for my lesbian sister. More than that, I do my visiting teaching with joy, attend bookgroup each month, and sing the hymns with gusto.

  But if I apply that question with logic instead of aching faith, I could not sit in the pews each week. Am I surpressing my conscience in these moments? Sometimes I think so, sometimes I think I lose a little light each time I hear a fearful comment about homosexuals over the pulpit and I remain silent. Beyond this tension, it seems selfish in some ways to cost/benefit my relationship with the church. The benefits that it provides me — including this fellowship — is something that is denied the woman I love best in this world.

  These are not new issues . . . I just wish things were different . . .

• 30 Deborah // Nov 19, 2006 at 10:50 am

  Looks like Caroline and I posted at the same time . . .

• 31 Armand // Nov 19, 2006 at 1:25 pm

  Oborosama (interesting choice of pseudonym!):
  Your assessment of our two situations looks about right to me. It has not, indeed, been easy for me to stay in the church for lo these many years. It is always difficult to stay in any institution or community that makes strenuous demands on its members, especially if some of those demands do not accord with one’s own sense of what’s fair, just, or reasonable. I think again of my analogy to family life, and how often certain strenuous demands (or at least expectations) are involved in the alienation between husbands and wives or parents and children. You are right that all any of us can do is to make cost-benefit assessments according to our best understanding at any point in time, and then make our choices. Sometimes the choices work out for the best, and sometimes we learn only later what we did not take into account in making them. I devoutly hope and pray that you find it not too difficult to move on from here to a more peaceful and less stressful existence, and that you can truly put permanently into the past all that has been so unpleasant in your LDS associations. You can always count on my love and friendship in the process.

• 32 Kaimi // Nov 19, 2006 at 1:58 pm

  Caroline,

  Each person navigates the temple in their own particular way. I don’t know that this helps you, but it strikes me that the ceremony _can_ be read to require reciprocal treatment. The husband, after all, covenants to hearken to the Lord. And that entails a number of scriptures — D&C 121, for instance — which imply communication and conferring in decision-making, rather than patriarchal dominion.

  The problem is that the ceremony is also amenable to other interpretations. How are we to treat a ceremony which is amenable to (relatively) egalitarian readings, but is _also_ amenable to highly patriarchal readings? (Particularly if we’re well aware that many rank-and-file members choose to follow a patriarchal interpretation.)

• 33 Armand // Nov 19, 2006 at 3:20 pm

  Deborah :
  You have articulated very well the irony and stress that we all feel from the cross-pressures between “logic and aching faith,” which is so common in many communities — especially, it seems, in religious communities, where faith is so often called upon to trump logic. My experience in life has taught me that if faith is often misplaced, logic is often imperfectly recognized or not so clear. In giving your response to my question about what to do when confronted with a question of conscience in a valued organization or institution, you gave the answer that I think ALL of us would like to give ideally and in THEORY. Yet existentially, in the real world, we all tend to fall short of that ideal, and that is because human institutions tend to present us periodically with moral dilemmas.
  The most general example is in national political life, when (let’s say) we are powerless to change a national policy that we regard as evil. Theoretically, we can eventually change it through collective political action, or theoretically we can move to Canada (as some have done - but very few). Realistically, though, we probably will not do either, partly because Canada might present us with simply some different moral dilemmas, and partly because we have too many social and emotional investments in our own country. Nor is it enough to hope (or have faith) that eventually we can change things — at least not necessarily in our own life time(s). The militaristic policies of our own government have lasted for generations and so far show no signs of changing. The feminist movement began at least as early as Seneca Falls in 1848, but American women did not get the vote until 1920. A lot of women lived and died in the meantime. And now today’s feminists realize that the earlier movement was not only incomplete but actually misguided in certain respects (e. g., in pressing for such
  “progressive” legislation as restrictive workplace rules to “protect” women).
  Unintended consequences of seemingly desirable political policy changes are often ironic and paradoxical. I worked for 30 years at a major public university, where we were informed more than once that we could not admit any more white graduate students to our department until we had admitted a certain number of students of color, with but little regard to differential qualifications. The chief beneficiaries of the policy were well-prepared (and relatively well-heeled) students of Asian background, not the black, hispanic, or native American students who really needed the help — to say nothing of how unfair such a policy was to white students of both sexes. Nor could we hire a male professor in women’s studies, or an Anglo professor in ethnic studies. I found all of this ethically objectionable, but I never was tempted actually to quit my own faculty job.
  My daughter is a kindergarten teacher who is forced to belong to a union as a condition of her employment. She objects to the unfairness of many work rules and curricular demands required by the union, and particularly to the effects of some of those policies on her students. She also finds it practically impossible (if theoretically permitted) to opt out of either the union itself or the political fund that the union spends on candidates or issues that she does not support.
  My point obviously is that membership in the LDS Church is not the only kind of membership that presents us with moral dilemmas, and while we might be inclined to make facile declarations of conscience in the abstract, we rarely, if ever, feel able to carry them out existentially in institutions OR relationships that we value highly on other grounds. We stay on, we try to personify the changes we seek, we remonstrate with those leaders who will listen, and we hope and pray for a better future. We do that in so many other settings. Why not do so in the church?

• 34 Armand // Nov 19, 2006 at 4:30 pm

  Caroline :
  I’m glad that you are finding our exchanges to be useful, and I thank Kaimi for his most recent contribution.
  1. With regard to the “hearkening” passages, I understand your hierarchical interpretation, and it is logical. I realize too that whether or not these passages have any practical significance in your marriage, you still object to their SYMBOLIC significance. Yet they are also theoretical or hypothetical, and (as Kaimi notes) they need not have all the practical implications that you impute to them. I would suggest that as you make your own covenants, you simply refuse to impute implications that you don’t believe in. As for the concern about hubris mentioned in your first paragraph, I do not see hubris in your desire to remain in the church so that you can personify and exemplify your views for others in your own way. However, you might wish to consider whether there is some danger of hubris in your apparent desire to represent the cause of OTHER women with “less sensitive and kind husbands.” We rarely know much about the quality of relationships in other marriages than our own, or how those relationships are perceived from the inside. I would be very careful in making assumptions about others’ relationships on the basis of limited outside observations, or (still less)how I think all or some other women understand
  and act out the “hearken” passages.
  Finally, I can understand your frustration with why these passages “have not been changed.” I guess it is small comfort for me to tell you that they used to be worse! That is to say, they actually HAVE changed, and I expect further change in the near future.
  2. Your second issue I have already addressed in large part through my response to Deborah, just above (#33). Of the two alternatives you pose for making sense out of the present situation, a)and b), I would recommend a variation of b). My “take” on the situation is this : I have come to believe that the LDS Church has a divine ORIGIN, that Joseph Smith did indeed have a number of encounters with Deity (the exact details of which remain open to historical research and scrutiny, in my opinion).
  However, SINCE its origin, the Church has evolved in the same way that all other new religious movements evolve — that is, toward bureaucratic containment and channeling of “charisma” (obviously I don’t mean “New Age” channeling here!). That is, whatever its origin, the Church NOW functions as an essentially HUMAN institution in its major organizational traits and processes. This does NOT mean that the “prophets, seers, and revelators” do not get revelations, but it does mean that their revelations depend ultimately upon their own HUMAN initiative. The process is clearly there in D & C 9, in Alma 10:4-5, and in other scriptures. If and when they seek divine guidance, individually or collectively, I feel sure that they will get it. But first, like the rest of us, they have to shake off their own cultural predispositions as they approach the Lord for confirmation of their teachings and policies. Especially in the collegial revelatory process that has evolved in today’s church, this means that they do a great deal of preliminary thought, prayer, and consultation, and in that process they help to question and criticize each others’ preconceptions. This is obviously a conservative process (in method, quite apart from content), so change takes a long time — especially drastic change. This is a far cry from Joseph Smith’s sometimes precipitous
  “thus saith the Lord” dicta, but the good news is that the collegial process helps to reduce the risk of error and to open the leaders to a purer and less “humanly filtered” revelatory content.
  With that conception of how revelation works among the prophets, I expect major change to take time, but I also expect it to come in response to the recognition of our leaders that there is really a “problem” that they need to address. And we can help raise their awareness or recognition about a given problem as we talk about it and write about it and live our own lives in that recognition — as long as we do so faithfully and in
  “gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned,” as we expect them also to do.
  On your N. B., I would add that I too feel sure that the Lord wants his daughters to have everything given to his sons, and where the priesthood is concerned, there are precedents (in Nauvoo and even now in the temple), and there is openness to change in this church, but it is change that is carefully measured and occurs only after adequate preparation. On other issues, I have felt the same frustration that you now feel about the slow pace of change, and I share your hopes for the future.

• 35 Caroline // Nov 19, 2006 at 5:59 pm

  Armand,
  Thanks for your input. I actually do find this helpful. If a ” geezerly old patriarch” can wish for progress along the same lines I do, then it gives me hope that authorities too will someday ask these questions and start petitioning the Lord for answers. I like your take on scenario b) and also feel that if these men would just really start thinking, discussing, and asking God about these policies, changes would be made.

  Regarding 1) I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that some men (and I would hope it would be a small percentage) would take advantage of this hearken covenant. Do you really think it is? I have talked to a lot of women and I personally know both a) women whose husbands are less kind and sensitive and who do pull priesthood rank and b) women who feel less loved and valued because of this covenant. (I spent years feeling this way myself.) So it’s funny to me that that’s where you would find my attitude potentially hubristic. Maybe I was unclear in my first response. Let me assure you that I was by no means implying that all other LDS men and women interpret the covenant along those negative and disturbing lines. But I really don’t think it’s an extravagant claim to say that some do. And I don’t think it’s potentially hubristic to worry about that and hope for better policies that would not lead to such misunderstandings.

  Armand, you expect change in the near future? Do you know something I don’t???? Throw a dog a bone here!
  Regarding 2) As I said above, I very much like your take on the revelatory process today. And I will hope that my questions and agitations will maybe in a small way help bring the leaders to a place where they will ask these questions.

  It sounds to me like you think a good case could be made about how a male priesthood is a policy not a doctine and how there is precedence for ordaining women. I would love to talk to you more about this.

• 36 Caroline // Nov 19, 2006 at 6:04 pm

  Kaimi,
  Thanks for your comment. I like your positive reading of that part of the ceremony to entail men to likewise show similar consideration to their wives. I suppose it is that covenant - plus the constant circumscription of women’s roles in the temple - that leads me to take a more negative reading. (i.e. priestess and queen UNTO YOUR HUSBAND)

  Deborah,
  I loved your comment. You said it way better than I did.

• 37 John // Nov 19, 2006 at 8:39 pm

  Armand, you may find it interesting that Oborosama is the one who converted me to Mormonism. And O-sama, Armand is in a position to appreciate your name, since he spent some time growing up in Japan.

  Armand, you seem to advocate staying in the Church at almost any cost. Most of what you’re saying to Caroline and Deborah does take into account some degree of faith in the divine origins of Mormonism (even if tenuous).

  But you also argue that even if one has no belief, Mormonism is as good a place as any. This argument troubles me. What would my role be in the Church as an atheist, feminist, semi-Marxist Mormon? Would I have to spend my days in quiet service, biting my tongue most of the time, nudging things here and there? Why shouldn’t I move to an organization that would amplify my efforts to change the world, rather than mute or suppress them?

  As an unbeliever, what would be my glue to the LDS Church? I don’t have the LDS heritage (on my father’s side, I come from more than four centuries of religious protesters, going back to the first Remy in America, a French Huguenot who fled persecution to settle Virginia in the 1500s). My ties to the Mormon intellectual community are not jeopardized by my atheism or my church inactivity.

  I should make it clear that I’m not arguing that every doubter should leave the church. I myself stayed in for years for Jana’s sake. But sometimes I feel the degree of your advocacy is akin to saying that gay man should stay married to a straight woman (or that the majority of dysfunctional marriages should be preserved). It’s not a perfect metaphor, but my involvement in the Church has produced emotional scars that are similar to those caused by dysfunctional family relationships (I say this from experience with both).

  As a closing thought, here’s a short list of religious dissenters:

  • Buddha
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  • Jesus
  • Anne Hutchison
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Martin Luther
  • Mark Twain
  • Joseph Smith

• 38 Armand // Nov 19, 2006 at 11:48 pm

  Caroline :
  1) No - it is certainly no stretch to believe that some men would appropriate that “hearkening” passage and try to use it in abusive ways. I have known some such in my time. It might be a uniquely Mormon male form of emotional “blackmail,” but such blackmail is not unique to Mormons. It would be only ONE example of the many forms of blackmail that are used by both men and women to try to manipulate their partners. When I think I see that sort of thing in some other couple’s marriage, I am inclined to assume that they are adults who will work out their own problems without my help. However, if a spouse of either sex should ask for my advice (which has occasionally happened), I would recommend resisting all such attempts at blackmail, whether or not it involves a violation of a gospel principle, and urge the offended spouse to seek allies in the form of marriage counselors and/or priesthood leaders, IF experiences with the latter inspire confidence in their judgment. If it were an LDS female spouse seeking my advice, I would assume that she were just as much a grown-up as her husband is, and that she would be bright enough and tough enough to look out for her own interests without needing me to “run interference” for her just because she is a believing Mormon woman. There is certainly no hubris merely in worrying about and regretting such cases, OR in wanting to see the removal from LDS liturgy and culture of any apparent pretext for the exercise of “unrighteous dominion,” OR in giving advice to aggrieved women when they ask for it as friends. Potentially there is hubris, however, in seeking to take on and represent the interests of some general category of women who we presume are in need of our help. I think you made clear in your last blog that such is not your intention, so no — I do not see a question of hubris in what you are advocating.

  2) Sorry, but I have no specific “bones” to throw your way that might suggest imminent change. I’d be glad to talk with you some time about my reasons for optimism. The precedents I have in mind are mainly those you already know about — the strong evidence for Joseph Smith’s anticipation in Nauvoo about some form of priesthood for women (as per the Quinn essay in the Hanks collection); the spiritual gifts once commonly available through women’s ministrations; and the current exercise of the priesthood by women in temple ordinances. All such things constitute a collective heritage available to the next generation of leaders as a basis for a focused quest for the divine will in this matter at an historically imperative moment in the future (not too distant future, we all hope). For some time now, men and women have been called to preside over temples and missions as COUPLES, which is another little push of the envelope. To be sure, the man is still the ultimate head in these callings, but increasingly mission and temple presidents are sharing power and leadership with their wives in important ways. Whenever new policies are adopted in the church, especially if they are major departures from the status quo, the leaders like to be able to cite precedents, so that the change does not seem quite so radical. Therefore the examples I have cited in this paragraph have a potential importance much greater than their present scope and number might indicate.

• 39 Armand // Nov 20, 2006 at 12:37 am

  John :

  Apparently I owe an apology both to you and to Oborosama for assuming that the latter was your pseudonym. I couldn’t imagine anyone else who might want to get into our discussion under a Japanese name. I trust there is no harm done to either of you.

  I think I can be somewhat more brief this time. Let me be as clear and explicit as possible : No, I definitely do NOT think that anyone should stay in the church after having become an unbeliever. In entering this conversation with you, I did not realize that such was your intellectual position. What I thought I “heard” in our exchanges, and in what you had to say about your relationship with your bishop, was that you were having serious doubts and that some of your friends and/or leaders at church were pressuring you to do things you did not want to do, or to say things that you did not want to say. My initial points boiled down mainly to only two: 1) there was no reason to assume that the bishop had unfriendly motives in suggesting that you write a simple letter of
  “resignation” if you really wanted to sever your connection with the church; and 2) having doubts is not necessarily a reason to leave, since lots of us stay in the church while working on our doubts. I guess actually a third point would have been 3)if you are going to leave, you should do so for your own reasons, not because you feel the need to champion the cause of others “out there” whom you believe to be feeling pressures to comply with church teachings or policies that they don’t like.

  So you are absolutely right : Once you have lost all belief in the basic truth-claims of any religion, it makes no sense to stay with that religion, especially if it is producing the “emotional scars” of which you spoke. I certainly never meant to advocate otherwise. It’s true that my conversations with Caroline have proceeded on the assumption that we share
  beliefs in the basic truth-claims of the church, for Caroline has never told me otherwise. If I had understood at the outset that you were “coming from” an outright and fundamental rejection of the LDS faith, I could have saved us both a lot of blog time. Still, it might have been useful for us to air our respective positions before others. I continue to hope, however, that our mutual esteem and friendship will continue.

• 40 Kiskilili // Nov 20, 2006 at 8:30 am

  As a long-time admirer of Caroline, John, and especially Armand Mauss, I’ve found this conversation fascinating. Although I continue to explore doubts and questions on virtually every front of Mormon theology, I remain convinced that the Church is of divine origin and that God is in some way involved.

  However, since receiving my endowment a few years ago, I’ve lost my belief that God is good or loving, and this makes my participation in the community excruciating. I see a number of possible routes I can take from here:

  A. Remain in the Church and accept the “cosmic terror” to which God subjects Job, the unresolved possibility that, finally, the universe is morally inscrutable, and that God may ask of us things that hurt us without providing any ultimate benefit. (Most pertinently, the very real possibility that God simply does not value women the way he values men.)

  B. Resign my membership as a way of formally renouncing the framework which the Church has given my relationship with God, which has become intolerable, but continue to participate in the community as a nonmember, worshiping God as I hope he is.

  C. Resign my membership and walk away.

  (I don’t expect, or even want, advice: I’m basically just talking to myself out loud–apologies if this is too much of a threadjack.)

• 41 Miko // Nov 20, 2006 at 10:43 am

  Kiskilili (what a beautiful name! what does it mean?): I’m right there with you. It’s like being between a rock, a hard place, and hell. The choices for someone who agrees with many-but-not all of any church’s tenets are none of them easy. My prayers (if you will accept the prayers of an atheist) are with you.

• 42 Kiskilili // Nov 20, 2006 at 11:05 am

  Thanks, Miko! (Kiskilili is a demoness.) Prayers from an atheist are my favorite kind.

  Cheers to John and Jana for doing something they feel strongly about, and with integrity!

• 43 Matt Thurston // Nov 20, 2006 at 2:13 pm

  Armand, I know you are not a big fan of blogging, but I appreciate the time you’ve taken to answer John’s and Caroline’s questions here. Many people can relate to your postion and to John’s position and to Caroline’s postion(and in my case, all three), and it is great to be able to vicariously experience varying points of view. A blog offers some avenues of expression that a face-to-face conversation or published piece does not.

  I’m pleased to see that the back and forth eventually came to the key issue: whether or not one believes in the basic truth claims of the gospel. As long as one maintains some reasonable faith/doubt, I’d agree that many of your reasons to endure and fight for change make sense. If one does not believe in the basic truth claims, I’d agree that the balance tips to the point that the costs outweigh the benefits.

  My wish would be that the Mormon Church could eventually get to a place where even people that did not believe in the absolute truth claims of the church could feel comfortable and valuable (in other words, be able to contribute and be open about their beliefs of lack thereof), but this may be asking the Church and its believing members to compromise too much.

  And my second wish would be to better understand the nature of belief… why some believe and others do not.

• 44 John // Nov 20, 2006 at 2:53 pm

  Kiskilili, I’m fascinated by your comment, though I am sorry about the pain encapsulated in it. When I was trying to come up with different ways of re-imagining God to conform to my experience of him, I encountered two different characters: one of a God who is powerful and arbitrary (and whose ways are most definitely not our ways); the second was the silent, suffering God, who wants to rescue us but is prevented from so doing. There are sophisticated theologies that support these characterizations of the divine (and many others). Some of these strike me as more mature in some ways: based more on harsh reality, less on wish-fulfillment.

  I’d like to know where you are on your journey right now. I just read your moving ‘apostasy’ post. Would you mind sending or posting a couple of links to more recent posts so I can catch up to where you are now?

  Namaste.

• 45 John // Nov 20, 2006 at 2:54 pm

  Matt: any possibility that you will blog that last question of yours on Sunstone?

• 46 Deborah // Nov 20, 2006 at 5:05 pm

  Armand: I want to thank you for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate and respect your perspective.

• 47 Armand // Nov 20, 2006 at 5:47 pm

  Thanks to all for your responses to my interminably long comments. I hate it when I get sucked into blogging, since I am never quite satisfied with my first version of a message, so I keep tinkering with it, and it uses up hours that I am reluctant to spare. (Remember that for someone my age, every hour used up is a bigger percentage of the time I have left than it is for any of you younger folks!). However, I am thankful for your patience and for your gracious responses, include the most recent from Kiskilili, Matt, and Deborah.

  To Matt I would add that yes, your first wish is asking too much for the LDS Church. Religious organizations (and many other kinds) depend upon boundaries (among other things) for their very survival. As those boundaries erode or become ambiguous, the religious community appears less and less distinguishable from humankind as a whole (to which we ALL belong already), and the process of assimilation will eventually destroy that community. The so-called “Protestant mainline,” sad to say, exemplifies this process very well, which is why most of those venerable old denominations are dying out. Boundaries do not have to create mutual intolerance, however, if we can all find ways to REACH ACROSS boundaries in loving and cooperative ways. I think the LDS Church is getting a lot better at that than it was when I was young. I prefer to work toward change within, as long as I share enough beliefs and commitments in common with my community to be influential among its members. Yet, at the same time, I try to communicate regularly with other religious communities (right now, in fact, that is part of my LDS church calling as rep to the local interfaith council). The idea is to reach across boundaries without breaching them or kicking them over altogether! That’s not easy for any of us.

  Your second wish is shared by all of us, I think. Why do we believe in the same things more fervently at some times and less fervently at other times? I’m sure the answer is a complicated mix of the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, social, and psychological. One thing that psychology has discovered is that we tend to feel stronger commitments to those people and causes for which (whom) we sacrifice — or even suffer. (This is the old “cognitive consistency” theory). That’s not the whole story, of course, but I think there is something to it. Maybe the more we do for the church, or for the LDS community more generally, the more commitment we will feel. And maybe the harder we try to tolerate our fellow LDS community members (including those whose politics appall us!), the more love we will feel for them.

• 48 Matt Thurston // Nov 20, 2006 at 6:00 pm

  John (#45) Maybe, someday. Right now I don’t have the answer. But it is probably my biggest remaining question.

  For the past couple of years the question has been “What do I believe?” I’m now a lot more comfortable with what I believe (and don’t believe) and with the idea that the “what” will probably continue to evolve over time. Now I want to know “Why I believe?” and why others, when faced with the same set of facts and experiences believe otherwise. The typical Sunday School answers to such questions are very unsatisfying.

  I find it interesting that the discussion happening here over the past several days has largely centered around social or doctrinal or institutional issues, while the what and why we believe the basic underlying truths are largely taken for granted, as if belief were beyond our control. I find that this is generally true around the bloggernacle… the interpretation or importance of social, doctrinal, and institutional church issues are easier to debate, while the underlying beliefs that support those issues just “are.”

  Of course part of the problem is that the “why?” question is really an epistemological and ontological question for which answers are much more difficult to divine and not nearly as fun to argue.

• 49 Kiskilili // Nov 21, 2006 at 2:28 pm

  I’d like to know where you are on your journey right now. I just read your moving ‘apostasy’ post. Would you mind sending or posting a couple of links to more recent posts so I can catch up to where you are now?

  The short answer is: lost. I seem to have a surprising ability to persist as a liminal Mormon. Which is why I’m so fascinated by the choices other people make about their membership, how, and why.

• 50 John White // Nov 21, 2006 at 7:19 pm

  I found it very painful to read Kiskilli’s post (#40). I -think- I had a conversation with John Remy about this exact subject and how my readings about God brought me to a similar point. Coming from a different religious heritage, I happened to find it a simple(ish) thing to set aside the teachings of others as Man’s obfuscation of God. That is, it was easy for me to discard doctrine, dogma, and creed because no one was asking me to adopt them as condition to belong to a community. Which made my “cost/benefit analysis,” as Armand puts it, a fairly simple one.

• 51 Matt Bowman // Nov 21, 2006 at 9:40 pm

  “I seem to have a surprising ability to persist as a liminal Mormon.”

  Amen. I was inactive from ages sixteen to twenty six, then decided I wanted to go to church again. However, doing that has made me increasingly positive I don’t want to go to the temple. I also would feel fairly uncomfortable with a calling.

  After any number of failed prayers and a struggle with my own doubts, I have given up on trying to understand God. I believe divine transcendence exists, but I expect nothing from him but the perspective that grants. This has torpedoed my ability to talk meaningfully about my religion with most Mormons, whose God-talk seems to revolve around divine commandments and resulting blesings, all of which rings hollow to me.

  Nobody seems to know what to do with me. However, I can’t imagine leaving, because I find the theology in abstract quite meaningful and have a hard time imagining myself without it.

• 52 nee // Nov 21, 2006 at 10:48 pm

  Matt (#48),
  You said a mouthful with this: “I find that this is generally true around the bloggernacle‚Ķ the interpretation or importance of social, doctrinal, and institutional church issues are easier to debate, while the underlying beliefs that support those issues just ‚Äúare.‚Äù ”

  It is a trecherous road to go the core. Some never have the need. Some are forced to by circumstance. For those who do, one has to be prepared for what they might find. Faith in god, ultimately, is built on a potentially fragile platform. It can hold a lot but may need to be tread on lightly.

• 53 Armand // Nov 22, 2006 at 8:34 am

  As a general kind of response to #48 - #52, and for what it might be worth to the conversation, I will add that living with doubt and ambiguity has for me been a way of life. I believe that a tolerance for ambiguity (indeed, living at peace with ambiguity) is simply one of the characteristics of spiritual and intellectual maturity. As Matt T. says, epistemological and ontological issues are the hardest ones to deal with. In our world, where epistemologies are culturally variable, and reality is socially constructed, our mental health seems to require that we choose a framework or “template” as a general guide for our own respective epistemologies and for how we will live our lives. Ultimately these must be matters of individual choice, for ultimately
  no one can be certain of any of the “answers” given by any of the religious traditions for any of the fundamental questions about the nature of Deity and its (his/her) relationship to us. Each of us simply constructs an evolving understanding of such matters for him-/herself during a lifetime.

  We might start with the “template” provided by the religion with which we are most familiar, if any, but we all “customize” that template in ways that make the most sense to us as individuals. For me, the starting template is, of course, the gospel of Christ as taught primarily by Joseph Smith, but I know from many conversations with other Mormons that even the most orthodox have their own ways of customizing their orthodoxy (some of them pretty bizarre to me!). I think that happens in all religious communities.

  Like Matt B., I remain intrigued by the theology of Joseph Smith, and at times I feel a pretty strong “testimony” of my (customized) Mormon theological construction, but at other times I entertain a lot of doubts. Even at times of doubt, however, I have found that the most PRACTICAL and least stressful posture is to treat my construction AT LEAST as a “working hypothesis,” and thus to try to live AS THOUGH my understanding is about right and see what happens. Experience in living has mostly confirmed my understandings about Deity and my relationship with him/her to my own satisfaction. So I stick with that, constantly trying to “fine-tune” it. That is about as much certainty as I can muster, and I doubt that anyone really can have more.

  Since this is an ongoing process that will last throughout mortality, I have long since decided that I WON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, and I recommend the same to others who seem to be stewing over such ultimate and unknowable issues. The rest of it is all about relationships with whatever religious community one chooses, if any. That’s why this whole conversation (started by John’s announcement of his departure from Mormonism) has seemed preoccupied with social interactions among Mormons, or between Mormons and their leaders.

  For me, none of these theological or epistemological issues have anything directly to do with how I feel about the LDS Church, or how I relate to its leaders and members. My Mormon “template” has outlines that are clear enough to me, but at an abstract enough level that I have no trouble, in good conscience,
  “passing” an interview for a temple recommend. My “customizing” of the Mormon template might raise the eyebrows of some LDS leaders and members (if I were to go into detail), but some of the folklore that they integrate into their Mormonism seems bizarre to me, too. I don’t make any attempt to disabuse them of their peculiar notions, and I insist that they leave me to mine. I try to avoid giving offense to their sensibilities whenever we talk, and I feel no “calling” to lead them out of darkness or liberate them from the tyranny of their (or their leaders’) “superstitions.” They are grown-ups, responsible for looking after their own interests, and free to leave or stay in whatever community(s) they choose. I claim the same for myself. I try to “work out my own salvation” — maybe not always
  “with fear and trembling” — but as best I can in the absence of certainty, and beset with doubt and ambiguity. We have all known since Eden that there is no other way. Ironic though it may seem, I find peace in that knowledge, and I am thankful for that in this Thanksgiving season. I wish such peace likewise for all of you.

• 54 Matt Thurston // Nov 22, 2006 at 2:38 pm

  Armand (#53), Very well said. Oh, that everyone had such a fluid and open-minded way of looking at faith and belief.

  I have more or less come to the same conclusions. I am generally happy with my “customized” brand of Mormonism/Agnosticism (at least for now), though I am still struggling to find the right balance or “activity level” with the “Mother Ship” (the institutional church), and to communicate that level of belief and practice to those close to me. As you say, your “template,” your beliefs are your own business, and with respect to fellow ward members and leaders, I’d agree. However, our relative orthodoxy (beliefs) and orthopraxy (religious practice) does have an effect on those close to us, primarily family, but possibly friends as well.

  Since, at the end of the day, it always comes back to “social interactions,” I guess I just want to feel comfortable and accepted in my community (both my immediate family, and my religious community). Right now I feel like Matt Bowman in #51, but I recognize that others before me like yourself, and even more unorthodox, Levi Peterson, have managed to carve out a place at the table to both feed and be fed.

• 55 John // Nov 22, 2006 at 4:04 pm

  Matt Bowman, I sympathize with your struggle, and can understand the value of the abstract theology to you. I wish you well on your journey.

  Armand, I really like your “working hypothesis” approach to faith. I find that easy to reconcile with my own approach to life’s deepest questions. Maybe I could say that my hypotheses are more appropriate in another discipline, in dialog with others who are using some of the same basic tools and assumptions as myself.

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