In the comments to my previous post, there was some unrest at the portrayal of faith as unquestioning.¬† I read the diagram as a caricature, and I don’t think it was intended to be a balanced portrayal of science and faith (any more than¬† editorial cartoons are equitable).¬† I want to make it clear that I don’t think that there is necessarily a binary between scientific and faith approaches to the truth (the relationship is often complex).
That said, uncritical religious belief exists in this world.  I had many a painful encounter with it as a Mormon:
High level Church leader N. Eldon Tanner closed his August 1979 First Presidency message with these words:
We cannot serve God and mammon. Whose side are we on? When the prophet speaks the debate is over.
Thomas Monson, the current #3 guy in the LDS Church, and here’s an excerpt from his February 2001 First Presidency message:
Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other.
Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts: ‘I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people. I know that happiness and contentment are there, and I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts, to destroy the house of my faith. I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. I grant that I cannot explain the miracles of the Bible, and I do not attempt to do so, but I accept God’s word. I wasn’t with Joseph, but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it’.
Ezra Taft Benson was prophet when I joined the Church in 1989, and when he was the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he gave the Church Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet, which include:
First: The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.
Fourth: The prophet will never lead the Church astray.
Fifth: The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
Eighth: The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
Ninth: The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.
Eleventh: The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.
Fourteenth: The prophet and the presidency–the living prophet and the First Presidency–follow them and be blessed; reject them and suffer.
There are some modern counter-quotes (though not quite as many, and generally in less authoritative or older sources) that encourage honest inquiry, open debate, and the risks that accompany them.  I encountered them less often (when I sought them out) than I did anti-intellectual-inquiry messages (which came up in Sunday talks across the pulpit, in all-Church General Conference sermons, and even one time when I was given a line condemning intellectuals in a Church play).
This post is not meant to be fair and balanced portrayal.¬† There are plenty of sources you can find online that defend the intellectual integrity of Mormonism.¬† If that’s what you want to hear, go track them down.¬† I cherished ones by Hugh B. Brown and James E. Faust in particular.¬† But that’s not what this post is about.¬† I am voicing my frustration and my painful experience of oppression.
These quotes above aren’t ones I pulled out of a hat.¬† They scared the shit out of me when I began having doubts.¬† It took me some time before I developed enough courage to allow myself to question.¬† My experience of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that it devalued my critical inquiry and honest questioning in a way that the academic world does not.¬† It wanted my silent acquiescence regarding hard questions.¬† It used scare tactics to keep me from openly expressing my doubts to my family or even privately entertaining them.¬† My initial, happy relationship with Mormonism turned into something truly dysfunctional, and I can honestly say that this environment truly left me mentally and emotionally fucked over.
[The combination of profanity and discussion of the Church really offends some of my Mormon readers.  I offer no apologies.  I use these words sparingly, but I use them when they convey exactly what I want them to.]
This has been a rambling, thinking out loud post.¬† Thank you for bearing with me through an emotional moment. As I cool off, I can see the roots of this outburst: the portrayal of uncritical faith was minimized in the last post, I viscerally experienced it as a minimizing of my own trauma.¬† I don’t like complaining about the Church.¬† In fact, I’d like to stop being critical of it (except as a feminist).¬† I’d like to stop talking about Mormonism, except as an academic.¬† I still have a couple of pseudo-institutional ties to the Church, and I think that maybe I should cut even those off because they leave me spinning my wheels over the same anti-hierarchical nonsense I thought I left behind last summer, when I left the Church proper.
Okay, got that out of my system.¬† If you want to argue with me on this topic, let’s hold off for another post.¬† This is not a rational exposition but an emotional rant welling from an obviously unhealed wound.¬† If you have a similar grievance, or if you have an positive experience of unfettered inquiry within institutional religion, feel free to share it with us.
14 responses so far ↓
1 Johnny // Feb 20, 2007 at 5:02 am
I can honestly say that this environment truly left me mentally and emotionally fucked over.
-dido
This post stings me because I feel very similar about my experience within mormonism. I still struggle to make sense of it and at times I get VERY VERY ANGRY about it. One night, while as a true believer, I was in such angst about my doubts I spent all night rummaging through quotes trying to affirm my critical intellectual side. After I found a few, I would quote them to others, only to get these more recent authoritative quotes thrown back in my face with an aire of superioty and disgust. I finally had to realize that I could not survive in a community like that.
If religious faith is nothing but what I experienced within mormonism then it is one of the most degraded forms of psychological manipulation.
This leads me to react very strongly against fundamentalist forms of faith. I think the Jesus Camps, Mormonisms and Evangelical Seminaries of the world lead to such pain, suffering and mental anguish that any critical believer has the obligation to publically reject them as abberations of the divine.
As for me, I find deep existential doubt to be the space I occupy most of the time. I don’t consider myself a believer or a person of faith, but want to believe its possible without all the abuses that I experienced in my mormon past. I guess that is why I react strongly to anti-intellectualistic portrayals of faith. I think they are immoral and I think that if faith is possible it must be deeper than that.
2 Elise // Feb 20, 2007 at 9:04 am
Thanks for sharing that, John and Johnny both. John, so much of your writing and your in-person discussions are calm, rational, logical and academic. It is actually refreshing to hear you express your anger, frustration, and emotion in general more candidly.
I feel sad and even a bit depressed reading the quotes above because it reminds me how I am perceived by my family members in the context of such authoritative and fear-inducing philosophies. No wonder some people feel threatened and afraid of the doubt expressed on blogs such as this.
I have a favorite quote by John Locke used in describing religion - he says “Let us now consider what a church is. A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls.” When I was still an active member, I would read this quote and wish that church could be more of a voluntary community of believers who made decisions together, rather than a on that seemed to follow the dictates of one person so quickly and without question. I suppose a church can choose to judge acceptable the following of one man without question, but its something I don’t choose to sustain.
I still have a lot of fear, discomfort and hurt at the thought of being rejected by those people because I don’t sustain that type of authority, because those people that do mean so much to me - mostly family, some respected friends, in big part my parents and my husbands’ parents. Occasionally I start thinking they really can respect my doubt or accept me fully - doubts and all - but I have always been brought back to reality by some type of quote or comment or attitude thrown my way that reminds me that my doubts (which are a big part of me as a person) must be left at the door.
3 Bored in Vernal // Feb 20, 2007 at 10:16 am
John,
I hope I didn’t contribute too much to your pain. And thank you for being so gentle with me in your reply. I hope you don’t stop talking about Mormonism critically, academically, _or_ emotionally. You need to say it and people need to hear the validity and integrity of it.
I have a word to say concerning this quote:
“Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other.”
This quote makes me want to bear my testimony: I Know With Every Fiber of my Being that faith and doubt can exist in the same mind at the same time! I Know Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt! In fact, I can even say that I am a Special Witness that faith and doubt can exist in the same mind at the same time. At times they compliment each other, and at times they battle, but if I dispel either one at this point, I will not be true to myself.
Caaan I get a witnessssss??
4 nee // Feb 20, 2007 at 10:35 am
When I wrote on my decision to be baptized I followed it up with how I look back now on the experience.
I think one dilemma within the church is that while ‘testing’ is encouraged in the scriptures, if someone arrives at a different answer, the prevailing attitude at church is that they are insincere or not in a place where the spirit would accompany then. Even if you can get past this attitude, and I thought I did, you rationalize. For example, I believed that if people didn’t get the same answer I did it wasn’t because it wasn’t true, it was that it wasn’t the right time for them.
In the end, all belief in a god is based on faith. If that concept works for someone, super. I can’t disprove it to them, nor would I want to. What is troubling is what you’ve touched on before, when you step out of the current you see flow differently. There is a fair amount of mind control and it’s certainly not limited to the lds.
Revelation always troubled me. Who’s to say who god is really talking to, if there’s a god to talk? I have listened to this particular episode of This American Life numerous times with a segment on an lds splinter group and am always amazed to hear the testimonies. They are sincere - as sincere as any I ever heard - and yet it contradicts other people’s testimony in the main lds church.
Who is to say who god is really talking to, if anyone?
What about heaven’s gate and branch davidians? What about Muslims and Hindus and Wiccans and all stripes of Christians? In the end, there’s all these people who believe something because it feels good.
Is there a god talking to anyone or is everyone just wanting it so bad they feel it? It’s okay to believe something unless they hurt others or try to impose it on others.
Faith is belief and feelings and if it’s just as strong for one person as another, who is right?
5 Andy J. // Feb 20, 2007 at 10:43 am
Your emotions shared in this post remind me of my own memories of feeling dysfunctional, desperate, afraid and alone within Mormonism. I can’t pinpoint one particular breakthrough moment during my own exit process because it was a combination of many thoughts, opinions, feelings, experiences that all ultimately contributed to my exit. However, what did play an important role for my decision was the fact that the LDS Church fundamentally discourages open discourse and honest inquiry. And the more experiences I had with Mormonism, the more I recognized this atmosphere that existed to squelch and unwelcome any signs of members thinking differently from the hierarchy and dogma of the LDS Church; I realized more and more I could not be a conformist, especially when it concerned my own sense of spirituality and what I considered to be “true” and “not true.”
Feelings of disappointment and bitterness are completely normal in the recovery process, so I wouldn‚Äôt feel guilty or ashamed for sharing them. And no need to apologize. In my humble opinion, not having a chance to vent sometimes defeats the purpose of moving on and making progress. So John, it’s good to hear you shout!
Thanks for sharing.
6 amelia // Feb 20, 2007 at 12:14 pm
john–
it’s *never* my intent to devalue your experience and i hope that my comments have never conveyed such an intent. i respond to posts like your previous one (and this one) because i feel strongly that the depiction of mormonism as a place completely unwelcoming to critical inquiry or to intellectual pursuits must be balanced a bit. that depiction may be true to your experience. but my experience is radically different from yours. i have experienced little bits of anti-intellectual attitude from other members. i generally dismiss it and move on. and i have heard the quotes you cite above. for some reason they do not affect me. for some reason when i read thomas monson’s words about the impossibility of faith and doubt co-existing, i can simply dismiss them as the mistaken words of a man (i share BiV’s conviction that faith and doubt co-exist; in fact i believe it is impossible for either to exist without the other). i do not know why i can do this. but i can. when i read that we cannot serve both god and mammon, i see an infinite expanse of gray between god and mammon in which who it is we are serving is anything but clear. and i recognize it as the space in which i exist and do my best to use the light and beauty i find in my understanding of god and the divine to illuminate that gray so that hopefully i am serving god, even if i cannot tell.
while my existence within the church has not been without its occasional turbulences, it has been and continues to be entirely possible for me to follow intellectual pursuits and engage in critical inquiry within the bounds of active mormonism. i share that not to say that your experience is not true or real or valued; i share it only to illustrate that it is not an all-or-nothing game–that it *is* possible to be mormon and not be an unthinking automaton.
7 Miko // Feb 20, 2007 at 3:27 pm
BiV: WITNESS! or… AMEN! ? whichever, dittos, witnesses, and amens, sister. I have discussed at length my dualism and doubt and faith seem to fit in. Each contains a grain of the other and cannot exist without the other. Undoubted faith is no faith at all; unfaithful doubt is merely confusion.
When I was a child growing up in the Catholic Church, questions were not encouraged, nor was exploration. I’ve frequently heard (usually with reference to sex) that, when a child is old enough to ask, she is old enough to hear the answer. I think the CC could learn from that with regard to religion as well. George Carlin’s take on the CC hits the nail on the head: if you’re ever confused, the response you get is often “well, that’s a mystery”. Now that I’ve studied other teachings, most saints came up with these questions and answered them in a manner that might actually have been satisfactory to me at one time. But by the time I was given those answers, it was too late.
I do find religion to be dogmatic, across the board. Perhaps, one at a time, religious people are not dogmatic, do have doubts, and welcome a discussion of their beliefs, but as a whole, religion takes too many things as given. I’ve seen this in every faith I’ve visited or tried, not just the Faith of Contension. The Dalai Lama occassionally transcends this (’cause he’s a really cool guy), but even Buddhist teachings are dogmatic when you get right down to them.
I respect those who can live within the confines of that dogma and be real people, but I have met so many clones that it makes me sick to think of. And so, when I saw Grey’s diagram, I thought it amusing, but when I hear Dawkins say religion is child abuse, I’m with him. Nothing is better than education and learning to think. Teaching children about religion is one thing, but teaching them religion is hideous, especially when the love of a parent hinges on it.
8 Parker // Feb 20, 2007 at 4:29 pm
John,
I have this quote in my notes: “The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.” When I finally allowed myself to be honest with myself, I came to realize that there was very little that I was certain of, and hardly anything that “every fiber of my being” told me was true. It is much more comfortable for me to live with faith (and often doubt)within this sea of mystery, than upon a self-constructed island of certitude, where I have to expend inordinate amounts of time keeping it afloat.
Years ago I had a stake president friend who told the members of his high council, that when he wanted their opinion he would tell them what it was. That was his humorous way, but alas . . .
Parker
9 Jonathan // Feb 21, 2007 at 8:43 am
John,
What you describe is terribly discouraging. I don’t like to criticize another person’s religion, so I will use my own as an example.
As you already know, I have experienced similar patterns in the Evangelical church. I at one time encountered religious attitudes like those manifested behind your quotes, and like Ameila, I simply shrugged them off as being the thoughts of misguided men. But as time went on, I rejected their spiritual authority entirely - thinking them to be more than just misguided, but entirely deluded. At the same time, I began to realize that I had too much influence in the church, and I began to butt heads with the pastors themselves. My rejection of their authority got me into deep trouble and I finally had to leave. They acted like all scared boy-men who have contenders for the throne (which is no more than a pile of dirt). They used whatever power their subjects perceived them to have - ’spiritual’ authority - at their disposal. I was labeled a black sheep, a ‘wolf in the flock’. I was under the influence of Satan, I was a divider of the body, I was going to hell. All I was doing in reality was pointing out the fact to him and the pastoral staff that he was stealing, and would have a lawsuit on his hands if he didn’t become a moral person again.
I guess I was lucky. I was ready for this to happen before it did. Otherwise, I would be writing as an atheist today.
I was raised by a Evangelical seminary professor. When I doubted some tenant of Christianity, my father would laugh and say he doubted that too. Frequently he would tell me in the face of such an enormous amount of religious bullshit, he found it hard to even tell people that Christianity was real at all. He saw so much crap that he was often overwhelmed. He would try to answer my questions as best he could, and he was an intellectual (and a meditate-er) at heart, so he would bring every great influence to bear to the cause (the Bible, ancient languages and near-eastern studies, Emerson, Thoreau, archeology, and personal revelations from God) to answer my questions. But he said that these were hard questions - and his answers were his best guesses, and to rely on God himself to answer me or to test what he (my dad) said for myself. In the end, true authority on anything spiritual comes from God alone, and from any man or woman who tells you to never question them.
In my Christian culture, there is no higher standing than the one who teaches pastors. My father had the highest authority in our community. But my father rejected this world. He taught me early on that no one has authority over you; there is no one special who speaks for God, but as a friend of God, you earn the right to speak on behalf of God just as much as any pastor, prophet, seminary professor, or pope. This is the reality in our universe with relationships. I can speak on behalf of my human friends, I can speak on behalf of my divine one as well. Anything else is man-made religion, people borrowing from the concepts of worldly authority and force-fitting that into Church and thus gaining an unhealthy and sick ’spiritual’ power over others - and can use it to hurt people when their power is questioned. You can’t question these ‘false’ leaders (intellectually or whatever), and if you do, you are going to hell, but while you are on earth, they will make your life a living hell, especially if you have too much influence as a leader - an upstart (in their paranoid minds) - ready to pull power away from them. It’s all a vicious mess of man-made religious bull*H@#$ and power grabs cleverly disguised as something spiritual or Godly to the simple-minded. But the atheist or disgruntled Christian sees through it.
I’m not saying that their exists no spiritual leadership. True spiritual leaders are usually the ones that aren’t pastors or people in positions of religious authority. They are the ones quietly walking with God and living ordinary lives, off the radar scope of the power/prestige hungry and the movers and the shakers. They desperately try to understand God and find truth, and humbly, quietly, walk with God and are an agent of good in the world in the smallest, simplest of ways. Those are the men and women we need to sustain us - who are wise beyond us - they are the true leaders. This is in line with what Jesus taught - the leaders are the servants, beware of the ‘visible’ leaders.
This is a subject that makes me incredibly angry, and I see the use of strong language and emotion as appropriate. Church has been overrun in most cases with impostors who hunger for power and prestige rather than the good of equal-standing people around them.
Johnny is right - the quote from John Locke (who I really appreciate) is a description of how the church should be, but somehow, power-hungry men came in and f*#$&d the whole thing up.
The end result (from my world-view) is these impostors, and the religious society and culture that results from the perpetuation of this god-forsaken lie (of absolute human authority) they alienate great, intelligent, gifted men and women from God himself. Good people, when they see this ugly side of man-made religion, throw it all out, as they should. God is probably leading them away. Even my father, who is as high as you can go in many denominations, struggles to come up for air and find truth and God amid so much filth and garbage that makes up a majority of religious life and culture today in this country.
I must find a place were power and real Christianity are not bedfellows. Then the power-hungry will leave and the culture that results will be one of equality and mutual spiritual edification between peers with the end result of everyone growing closer to God. I mean, why else would we gather together? So that we can be bossed around and feel guilty?
10 John // Feb 21, 2007 at 11:25 pm
BiV, you so do not need to apologize for anything! And hallelujah, sister.
Thank you, everyone, for sharing your experiences. Parker, it is always good to see you here.
I guess you can all tell that I was feeling pretty down yesterday. I have to say that I really appreciate you taking the time to share your own similar experiences. Sometimes Mind on Fire seems like a support group for people who are recovering from bad religious relationships.
11 Miko // Feb 22, 2007 at 10:46 am
um, yeah.
12 Rich // Feb 24, 2007 at 9:51 am
John,
I realized some time ago that NOBODY escapes this little gem of truth, including the men I sustain as “prophets, seers and revelators”. The “almost” is thrown in for making Jesus the sole exception.
Your head is screwed on straight my brother, and many of your sentiments here resonate strongly with my own personal walk. I struggle at times between my faith, my need for community, and flawed, human leadership. I’m still active in the LDS community, hoping to effect positive change. But isn’t that also faith? :o)
13 Rich // Feb 24, 2007 at 10:01 am
(Drat! I never seem to get those darn emoticons right! It’s supposed to just be a smiley face).
14 John // Feb 25, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Thank you, Rich. It’s an elegant, scriptural version of “power corrupts,” a principle that seems to transcend religion, political philosophy, and social context.
I’m glad that the Church has people like you. You all are its best hope.
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