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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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.

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.

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