I recently listened to one of Blair Hodges’ Maxwell Institute Podcasts. He was speaking with Elizabeth Drescher, discussing “The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones.” She studied the behaviors and beliefs of the increasing number of people who are leaving religion behind and claiming no affiliation. Personally, I hate podcasts, but this one was well worth a listen, and I’m a new fangirl of Blair as an interviewer. His questions were thoughtful and on point; it’s like he actually read her book! The podcast made me want to read it, too.
Spiritual vs. Religious
One of the critiques of Pew Forum Research that was mentioned in the podcast was that it preferences spiritual practices that religions consider spiritual, not necessarily the practices that unaffiliated people recognize as spiritual. Drescher found four themes among unaffiliated people, things they considered to be their own form of spiritual practices:
DRESCHER: “So among the whole group, the top five practices were spending time or enjoying time with family, enjoying time with friends, preparing and sharing food, and enjoying time with pets and other animals. I refer to them as the Four F’s of contemporary spirituality: family, friends, Fido and food. And the only traditional practice in there was prayer, which is of course the mobile technology of religion. One of the guys I interviewed was spiritual-but-not-religious, “Jesus Follower,” says it’s the one thing the church can’t get its hand on.”
Historically, we’ve privileged the types of things that religions call “spiritual”: attending church, prayer, reading scriptures. Churches exert a lot of control on these forms of spirituality. Even prayers in different religions have a set of approved guidelines from the church, be it the Catholic Rosary or versions of the Lord’s Prayer recited. Reading scriptures is likewise in a church’s control, although that control is somewhat indirect, because different churches regard different books of scripture as canon or not, and within Christianity, different faiths prefer different translations. Even if you are reading the same translation, within a religion you are subject to doctrine and dogma, the church’s interpretations of those scriptures. Regarding the observation that prayer was the one thing the church couldn’t get its hands on, this sounds a lot like correlation. That’s true to the extent that your prayers are from the heart and personal, but even preferences for the form of prayer are correlated by different religions.
Rejecting Labels
It should come as no surprise that the unaffiliated aren’t generally thrilled to be pigeonholed. This disdain for labels is probably connected to their original disaffiliation – they didn’t feel their religion described them accurately or was an accurate heuristic for who they were spiritually, so they know how crummy it feels to be inaccurately portrayed. They want to be themselves, not lost behind a label. Atheists don’t want to be affiliated with militant atheism. Drescher elaborated on the difficulty of identifying the unaffiliated.
DRESCHER: Some identify just as None. They don’t want to have any kind of label at all. But I will say and I talk about this in the book, the idea of labeling is part of that baggage of how we do religion and how we mark it demographically. So for people across that spectrum, first of all, the labels changed all the time. So they would start out saying “well, I’m agnostic but I’m really spiritual,” that there wasn’t really language for describing who they were in the culture but also that the labels themselves were heuristics. They were provisional. They were marking where they were in a moment, and people were really frustrated with this sense of having to have a durable label that would extend throughout a life and that was almost like an ethnicity or an ontological category. Across the board, people were really pretty uncomfortable with that.
For many, even the label “Christian” carried too much baggage.
DRESCHER: Among some people I interviewed…and this was like a big surprise. I was a speaker at a really big worship leader conference where I thought I’d find lots of Christian-y people, and I just happened upon lots of people who said, “Oh, no. I don’t identify as Christian at all. I see myself at best as a Jesus follower.” And these Jesus followers, whatever we might call them now, think of themselves as people who don’t want to be tainted by the negative aspects of Christianity—that they’re politically conservative, that they’re homophobic, sexist, anti-evolutionary, anti-environmentalist, all of those kinds of things, close-minded, judgmental, actually the whole “why don’t they like us” list. They don’t want to be associated with that.
So there was that variety but there were also people on the other end of the spectrum who traditionally would have been identified as atheists who don’t want to be involved in that argument either. So I think for people who feel like “if you put an identity on me that that makes me seem to be on the strident extremes of religiosity, then I don’t get to be human with you and what I want is for us to be having a human experience together.”
I could certainly relate to what she was saying as I imagine many Mormons can, particularly in the bloggernacle. If Mormonism means voting Republican, homophobia, women not working outside the home, having to care how other people dress and fake swearing, then don’t call me Mormon either. There’s a difference between a stereotype or a norm and what defines a group of people, and then there is the allowance for individuals to differ, the variety that exists within any group of people.
Why Did They Leave?
The most interesting part of these types of narratives is why individuals left their faiths. Drescher talked about religious people searching their collective souls about those who had left their faith, wondering “What’s wrong with us? Why don’t people like us?”
DRESCHER: “Somebody just said to me last week, “Well, how do you lure them in?” And I was just, wow. That sounds just like incredibly compelling, [laughs] as a strategy for engaging human beings. . . . they sort of vacillate between the shame-based “What’s wrong with us? Why don’t they like us? What did we do wrong?” and the “How do we get them? How do get them to come back?””
This type of relentless focus on evangelizing is doubtless off-putting for many who have unaffiliated. So let’s dig in. What’s wrong with us?
She noticed three distinct exit paths that were most common. What was interesting is that the exit path followed a pattern, not based so much on the type of person who had disaffiated, but based on the type of religious environment they had left:
- Mainline Protestants. She mentions Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ and Congregationalist, noting that Mainline Protestants are producing the most “Nones” when compared across churches. When they spoke about becoming unaffiliated, they regarded it as a sort of graduation, like they outgrew church attendance or simply got bored; this group did not generally feel bitterness toward their church. They said things like “I don’t need to hear the same thing every week.” They expressed a fondness for their childhood experiences in the religion, but no compulsion to continue in it as adults or at this later stage of life. There was a sense that they “got” it and didn’t need the repetition.
- Conservative Churches. She mentioned that these individuals were Pentacostal, Evangelical, some Mormons, non-denominational Protestants, American Baptists, and Southern Baptists.[1] These exit stories were more emotional and less positive. People expressed betrayal and anger. In Mormonism, one “None” talked about feeling that his questions weren’t welcome or that he was viewed with suspicion for having them. Drescher noted other conservative faiths took a similar approach to doubts, viewing the person with doubts as faithless or bad. An individual who left Evangelicalism talked about feeling embarrassed and mortified to discover through higher education that the alternative to science that he’d been taught through home schooling was not credible, that the earth was older than 6,000 years, that humans didn’t coexist with dinosaurs. Drescher noted that those who had left conservative churches were more likely to use profanity! They were often angry, and profanity allowed them to break former taboos.
- Catholicism. Somehow this made up its own group, although with the caveat that it was a small sample size of 100 individuals she interviewed more personally like this. These individuals felt wounded and mourned a lost identity; they felt they didn’t belong or that they were outcasts from an ethnic group to which their family belonged. They felt the church didn’t support them or that they didn’t fit in. They longed to be part of it, but recognized that the community didn’t embrace them. They didn’t belong.
I guess if I had to sum up these three reasons for leaving, I’d suggest the following:
- Church is boring.
- Church is too authoritative, pushy, and conformist.
- Church isn’t supportive enough of individuals who don’t fit the mold.
Any of those three exit reason categories fit Mormonism, depending on to whom we talk. So if we want to know (as Drescher puts it) what’s wrong with us, this is what’s wrong with us.
The author’s overview of her discussion with a disaffiliated Mormon:
Hodges: So here is a quote from Ethan from the book. He said, “Religion dictated so much of my life as a child, not just what we believed but really who we were against the rest of the world.” He’s describing an oppositional position vis-à-vis the world and he said, “We were Mormons first. We’re from five generations of Mormons but I was always asking questions. Why do we do it this way? Why can’t I drink a Coke? And my mom or dad would say, ‘Well, you just have to have faith.’ So I knew enough to shut up and you know as a kid I didn’t really disagree exactly, I just wanted to know why. And I was always like that so I asked questions about everything. But ask too much about the church though, that seemed to be the worst sin you could do.”
So that sort of shut-down conversation later manifested itself as anger in him when he ended up disaffiliating.
This anti-questioning approach happens when a religion is very authoritative, when those in charge hand down the “rules” and those below follow those rules whether they understand them or not. So when someone asks a question, the simple fact is that the person they ask, a parent or local leader, may not have an answer that explains “why” beyond “Act in faith” or “Follow the prophet” or “Obey.” But these aren’t answers; they are a subtle critique of the person asking the question. They put the onus back on the person asking, even if that person is a curious child. Children learn not to ask in this kind of environment.
From the discussion on Catholics who left:
DRESCHER: One of the people that I interviewed—Natalie Darling—still goes to a Taize service regularly, has friends in the church, had considered becoming an N-U-N nun at one point. But felt just, again, betrayed and heartbroken when her bishops came out so strongly against marriage equality and the full inclusion of LGBT people in the church and the role of women. She felt it undermined the role of women in the church. There was a sense of “I love this, but there is no place for me here.” She talks about having being cast out, but she didn’t leave. She was cast out of the tradition. Judith—the woman I talked about at the beginning of the chapter—turned to the church in the time of a horrible marriage crisis and got no support at all and was—
HODGES: Divorce is pretty taboo in some Catholic circles.
DRESCHER: Right. And just really found that she could not find any support, in the face of a very abusive relationship, in that community. Another guy that I interview, Frank, talks about his church community not being able support his whole family that had a big identification with Catholicism.
So all of these things, yeah, they have some of the elements of anger that I saw in more conservative traditions, Nones who came from more conservative traditions, but there was a sense of real loss, real sorrow. In some cases a sense of “I wish I could find a place there, but I’m just not going to. There’s not going to be a place for me.” And it was sad. It was a really sad kind of thing.
To take that to the next logical step, if the worth of souls really is great, if we love and value our fellow beings more than our own comfort and complacency, we need to quit blaming those who exit for their reasons for leaving and start listening to what we need to do better as a community. How does that blame look? Just applying it to the 3 themes Drescher identified, it looks like this:
- They’ll get as much out of church as they put into it. They need to pray and read their scriptures more.
- Let’s face facts, some of our lesson material is pretty threadbare, some of our teachers uninformed and uninspiring, and it’s all pretty repetitive–literally repeating every 4 years.
- They hate the prophets. They are too critical of others. They don’t want to be told what to do. They’re prideful.
- Contrast this with Joseph Smith who said, “It feels so good not to be trammeled.” Believe me, we know a thing or two about trammeling in most Mormon wards.
- Everybody thinks they are an exception. We have to preach the ideal. If they do what they are supposed to do, they’ll fit in.
- It’s not a sin to be different. If church is there to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, why are we so much better at comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted? Practice, that’s why.
So, what do you think?
- Is it possible to stanch the tide of disaffection? How do we do it?
- Does the church really care about the people who are leaving for these reasons? Do people care enough to change it? Why or why not / defend your answer.
- Does Drescher’s research feel accurate to you and your experience?
- What exit path do you see the majority of unaffiliated Mormons fitting?
Discuss.
[1] First of all, I was a bit dismayed to see Mormons lumped in with these groups; I’ve historically seen us as more in the category of Mainline Protestants–that universalist bent we have to our doctrine should preserve us from this type of characterization. But I think there’s an increasingly alarming case to be made that we’ve become like these faiths through the church’s association with them in the culture wars.
Wheat & Tares 
Well, Catholics consist of pretty much more than half of all Christians … probably why they have their own group. In addition, there is a strong sense of ethnic identity with many Catholics, much like many Jews.
As for:
Church is boring.
Church is too authoritative, pushy, and conformist.
Church isn’t supportive enough of individuals who don’t fit the mold.
You graduate from boring (or why people feel they “got it” and don’t need more of it).
Authoritative goes with stratified hierarchy and the growing domination of the Church by super-tribes.
It actually pairs with not fitting the mold.
It is a more and more common complaint in wards and stakes that each is dominated by a clique that excludes everyone else. That rather than the Church being inclusive and welcoming, it exists to feed the egos and pride of a narrow tribal group.
Of course that sort of trend always exists, and is always countered. It comes and goes in cycles.
What I got from the interview when listening to it was also that many Nones valued their political orientation over their church’s culture.
I’m not saying that is wrong, but it has been interesting to see the conflation of religion and political/social.
I’m grateful that we haven’t become the Church of Trump on top of everything else, but I don’t think that we should be conflating politics (on either wing) with Zion or spirituality.
Oh — and the kid who reported that they had a spiritual practice because they had a yoga class (though they didn’t know the names of their fellow students and were only in it for the semester) was a good vignette.
A very informative post. The paradoxes in this situation look unresolvable:
Conservative churches have much higher rates of activity BECAUSE of all the things that are making the “nones” leave: demanding conformity to a transcendent ideal, giving clear answers rather than inviting questions. If they became more Mainline Protestant in their viewpoints, more accepting of individuality, with more of an emphasis on questions than answers, even MORE people would leave, as they already have been for decades.
The trend towards “nones” seems to me to be a generational shift in our conceptions of individual identity with respect to more transcendent authorities. There is no stopping it, no stemming the tide.
But for those who stay, the religious experience will become more individualised and monastic, like a spiritual call in the wilderness. A call to ritual, boredom, prayer and meditation.
Is it possible to stanch the tide of disaffection? Not yet, Q15 is still living in the past and not showing any signs of awakening soon. Pay, pay and obey or don’t stay pretty well explains today!
Pray, pay and obey…
Great post. I think I’m with Nat. My own experience in the church mirrors his prediction about becoming individualized and monastic. The longer I spend in it, the more isolated I feel. Though I’ve become more diplomatic about sharing my views, everyone in my ward knows that I go against the church’s grain on most social issues and more than a few doctrinal ones. Because of the conformity and obedience that the church expects, that means I have few friends/allies/like-minded folks at church, so attending has become a highly individualized and often lonely experience. I don’t mind it so much, but I do occasionally think it’s a shame.
It’s difficult to say whether the church really cares about people who leave for the reasons you mention. The big problem that I see is that Mormonism is so intensely focused on maintaining and defending its version of “the Truth” that it misses two important things: 1) People are leaving in droves in part because they feel, like Ethan in the piece above, that questioning isn’t encouraged, it’s discouraged and 2) There are other truths out there, some of which directly contradict the LDS church’s historical narrative. Combine those two things and one can see how the church membership might become untenable for a good deal of people, even those who have been raised LDS.
Will things change? I doubt it. The church actually appears to be doubling down on the whole obedience/one truth thing, meaning that it’s going to drive more people away. Also, it’s important to understand that people leaving and the church resisting any kind of reformation is actually seen by most hard line Mormons as a good thing. They don’t see all these people leaving as a tragedy or even as something that’s too bad. They see it as the inevitable and necessary separating of the wheat from the chaff. In other words, the modern Mormon church, IMHO, has become much more committed to boundary maintenance, strict obedience and conformity and much less committed to inclusiveness, support and charity. Too bad, really.
I think one thing that would help would be to do more to disconnect “Christian” and “Republican”. The “I’m a Mormon” campaign would have been a bit more effective if they’d not stopped at jobs or activities different Mormons do, but also the variety of beliefs they hold. Diversity of political beliefs is a feature; show it off.
Another thing that would help would be to specifically call out things we see what are not “Christian”. Rather than leaving it to leadership training, talk about some things in conference and in whatever media you can about problems that have been seen and specifically say “this is not right. Do not do it this way.” Get the message out to the people who may become leaders one day so they can do better well before they get to training.
And no, I don’t mean things like “They say we’re not Christian cause we don’t follow Christ, but really they’re definition of Christ is confusing”. Look inward and you’ll find more than enough to declaim. Clean the inner vessel first, and all that.
We could really use a talk on consent, chastity object lessons, and not judging someone for being assaulted or raped, but that’s a whole other discussion.
Goodness, I must be having a rough morning. I can’t remember the last time I’d used the wrong “their”. 😛
@Hawk
Bravo! Applause!
One “Mormonism” I view with dismay is the obsession with perfection and self-consistency. On the previous DNA post, one poster said, paraphrasing, “The image of Joseph Smith and his actions has to perfect, because the authority of our modern day prophets depends on it.”
This in response to my question, paraphrased, “Why can’t Mormons just practice their religion and let some of that old history slide. Leave it up to members to take advantage of what’s good and improving about going to church. Let go of all that time and energy wasted on apologetic nonsense. It only makes the church look defensive and brittle.”
Just to add another twist on how I perceived Drescher’s recap of the three exit narratives, the Mainline Protestant departures still loved the gospel, still tried to essentially follow the tenets of their childhood faith; they just didn’t attend or affiliate (or believe their childhood faith held a monopoly on truth). The other two exits were far more negative: in the conservative faiths, relationships were destroyed. In Catholicism, the individuals leaving felt deeply rejected and “wounded.”
Another thing that was interesting is that she partly rejected the narrative that conservative churches like to believe, that if you water down the dogma, you get watered down followers. Here’s a quote:
HODGES: “And this is interesting because some of the more conservative religious elements would look at this pattern of disaffiliation among people from these types of traditions and say “this is what happens when you water down the gospel, this is the fruits of being liberal, is that you’re going to trend irreligious.” But what you found with these people, and we’ll talk about this more, is that they often would maintain a spiritual ethic and an engagement that was a product of their earlier Christian affiliation and it wasn’t a sense of saying, “Well, I’m liberal now and I don’t want Christianity.”
Basically, if you force conformity, if you are too unquestioning of authority, you create resentment. It’s like parents who are too strict. Some of their kids do just fine, but the ones who chafe against it, holy hell they don’t do fine at all! That’s a parenting problem. Parents have to give kids enough breathing room to become adults. So do churches.
I still say the Bloggernacle should have a testimony meeting. One that concentrates on God and truth and on what you know about Him and the truth. What does God think about this Mormonism thing and the leaders of that pack? As far as I am concerned, being with the pack when it comes to having gospel doctrine classes or High Priests classes with them (heaven forbid I should have to be in an elders quorum class), when the pack talks about what they consider truth, they talk so blatantly moronic that it makes me think they don’t even know Mormonism has holy scriptures. I would have left the Church long ago but God has told me that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is His church and that I had better not say anything bad about His anointed leadership. So, I’m here to stay until the leadership kicks me out. I’m very happy to have that knowledge. If you ever want to pay me a visit, stop by. You’ll find my name under M – Mormon – in the Twilight Zone.
So, are we talking about Mormons who formally leave the church, or those who just don’t show up on Sunday, the “less actives”?
I think the three reasons are pretty accurate, but the Church has little to no interest in addressing any of them. To wit:
Church is boring.
There is so much that could be done to liven up services and make them less boring. More video. More variety in worship music. More learning. More spiritual. In short, people would come if there was a chance they’d feel the Spirit, learn doctrine, or get help with the problems in their lives. But I see no indication change of this type is even on the radar. At the general level, conference is actually more boring than it was 50 or 100 years ago. Who is today’s LeGrand Richards, J. Golden Kimball, B.H. Roberts, or Orson Pratt?
Church is too authoritative, pushy, and conformist.
The recent actions taken against both conservative (Snuffer, Waterman)and liberal (Kelly, Dehlin) outliers, along with the three new apostles chosen indicate no tolerance for a broader palette of views.
Church isn’t supportive enough of individuals who don’t fit the mold. See above.
My thoughts.. as long as the church keeps getting further and further entrenched in the very far right conservative ideals (in my opinion) and all the hateful, judgemental attitudes that come with that, I think there will be more and more finding their on way, learning of Heavenly Father and Jesus in their own way. In one way this has all been great for me, centering my scripture reading and additional searching more on Christ..as it should be. In other ways I am just sad or angry a lot. I love the gospel. I go to church and have a calling in primary but church politics keeps me on the fence a lot.
Interesting post. I think there are plenty of reasons why people leave religion (including Mormonism) beyond the three mentioned above. But those three certainly drive plenty out.
I think, too, that with the advances of technology that allow for widespread media and education, the ways science/psychology are at odds with conservative religion become more and more apparent. I have often thought one of the most tragic statements made over the pulpit was about how the gospel changes behavior more than the study of behavior (I can’t remember who said it or the exact wording). In fact, the study of behavior (and I would add science) is fascinating and can offer useful information that goes much further than “pray and obey.”
I value critical thinking and making informed decisions, and information that challenges my current worldview. So when Elder Anderson says “You wouldn’t ask Judas about Jesus,” I think, “why, yes, you would. You don’t just seek out those who support your worldview.”
When conservative religions can tolerate (and even encourage) questioning, reason and room for disagreement and differences, maybe fewer people would jump ship.
LH, the quote you’re referring to is Boyd K. Packer in the Oct.198 conference:
“True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior.”
I believe it’s true that understanding WHY we do something is more important than WHAT. But the disconnect, I feel, is that the “why” always ends up being the Atonement or some other nebulous idea that doesn’t deal directly with the situation at hand. We don’t “connect the dots” between lots of other doctrine (honesty, tolerance, compassion, industry, dignity) and behavior. Instead we just toss out “atonement” and other Sunday School answers expect that to solve everyone’s problems.
So what would be a correlating term for “Jesus-follower” in Mormonspeak?
Seems like ministering to some of those on our home teacher lists that identify with the spirituality that comes from their Mormon roots by supporting that individual spirituality–without pushing them to the organization and “ward family” would be more effective.
This goes right along with the RS lesson I substitute taught on Sunday (President Hunter’s Lesson 12) which was all about reactivation efforts. The lesson started out with a guy who’d become inactive because he liked to play golf on Sundays. I had to spend part of the lesson bringing in Uchtdorf and Wixom to argue that people can leave for more than sin, offense, and hobbies. It wasn’t an easy lesson to teach.
I think the church is attempting to counter some of those reasons for leaving in their guidelines for dealing with tough questions (hoping to get a post put together on that soon). There is a lot of emphasis on acting in faith and relying on previous testimony-building experiences to get through periods of doubt. It really does put the responsibility for belief on the shoulders of the individual, in spite of their recent efforts at inoculation.
Rigel, maybe “Liahona Mormon?”
Other Clark: “So, are we talking about Mormons who formally leave the church, or those who just don’t show up on Sunday, the “less actives”?” The “nones” are those who answer the survey question about what religion they belong to as “none.” Most of them have not formally resigned their religion (although some have), they just don’t affiliate with it any longer.
I was thinking about the three exit paths as all exemplified in Mormonism.
– Boring. There are those who quit attending because it’s just boring, not uplifting, or repetitive. I remember a convert in Spain that I spoke with once. I asked her if she wanted to come along to the testimony meeting that Sunday, and she laughed heartily and said “No thank you!” She said that it was all good and well to accept and try to live the gospel, but there was no way she was going to sit through those meetings where people kept saying the same things and crying and telling their stupid boring stories. I really had no answer to that. If it doesn’t appeal (and it usually doesn’t to me either), I can’t make it sound better than it is.
-Authoritative. This works well for those who are extremely conservative and not bothered by the aspects of conservative politics that don’t jibe with the gospel. If not, you have to just go underground which also means you are less involved and less needed and given less involved callings. Eventually you end up where it’s boring and you are divested, and Gospel Doctrine sounds like you accidentally tuned into Fox News.
– Feeling rejected or wounded. Likewise, there are many who say “I’m just as Mormon as anyone else” or “It’s my church, too,” but then they see that they are ostracized for being different, treated poorly or marginalized for being divorced, single, gay, a working woman, having a child who leaves the church, not serving a mission, or whatever else is viewed as pitiable in our church. Even those multi-generational Mormons can feel ostracized if they don’t fit the mold or if they need help and support. Several of the BYU rape victim who were treated like suspects and not given support went into the experience trusting that church leaders and school administrators would help them, not realizing that instead they would be told to repent for being raped and that their academic future was in jeopardy. These are cultural failures, failures of community, and they cut deep.
Great post. I will check out the podcast. I like to listen while I drive.
The first thought to me was to remember that religion works for many people, even the mormon church. Should we be trying to make it work for those who want something different and try to be all things for all people? Or strengthen brand loyalty with those that believe in its divinity?
That is not to suggest we discard this interesting information and not care about what people who left are saying they need or want. Simply making the point that for those who leave the church and find peace and happiness as a none….let’s not freak out and send believers to their door to try to convince them they must seek spirituality the way devoted church goers find that spirituality.
As an active member of the church that StaysLDS, I find it works for me and my family. I invite others to try it. I keep eyes open to recognize it doesn’t work for some people. I find lots and lots of inactive people who kind of want to be apart of church but keep getting turned off by feeling they won’t fit in with the in crowd who act like their way is the best way to worship God. I sit in Ward Council meetings and regularly remind the bishopric and relief society that read, pray, and obey is not anecdote to life’s problems. I understand and speak up for nontraditional religious thinking, so those who want to come back to church will feel less labeled when they come.
I have sensed a shift the past 10 years, and many people are more conscious of this and have family members who are not active but are good people. There is more tolerance than before in spirituality outside religion.
But…that doesn’t change the church’s mission. The church needs to call people to follow christ, make covenants, and obey the gospel teachings. That works for millions. That does not need to go away.
It can just become more conjunctive faith where we accept orthodoxy works for some, and not for others….and that’s ok.
Let’s celebrate all goodness wherever we find it. If people are good spiritual people, why do we have to tell them they aren’t good enough unless they do their spirituality my way? I don’t get that. Especially when I have faith that temples provide opportunities for everyone at anytime. That removes urgency to a religious creed and emphasizes the more important christ teaching of becoming our divine potential and living the spirit of the law over any temporal law. Temporal laws, rules, covenants are still there to help those who benefit from that teaching style. But there are other ways to become christlike, and truly understanding spiritual laws.
I think the church will change the tune and back away from too much “us vs them” inclusive talk. We moved away from calling the Catholic Church the great and abominable whore of the earth. Because it wasn’t true, even if that made mormons feel good about themselves…it wasn’t godly to say it out loud.
We will move away from suggesting all Nones are lost and fallen and lack spiritual conviction, because in time, it will not hold water. Instead we will continue to focus on eating with the sick and sinners if we are to follow christ.
But while we change our tune, we can still strengthen our identity as mormons and the value it brings to our families for those it really does work for.
Listening to Nones is great. Let’s learn from thst info. But let’s listen to the needs of faithful believers too.
My own worldview agrees with Heber 100%. I believe in supporting people where they are and letting God worry about where they should be going.
However, we also had Lesson 12 last Sunday and it was all about ‘finding lost sheep.’ The lesson seemed to very much resonate with the ladies in our ward and the teacher did an excellent job. But at the same time, I kept wanting to raise my hand and point out that those that leave the church don’t actually consider themselves ‘lost.’ And not once were actual reasons for people leaving mentioned (denial?). I think we have a very long way to go before a none-type spirituality becomes understood / accepted on any level.
As to the questions:
Is it possible to stanch the tide of disaffection? How do we do it?
Not possible unless we start dealing with actual issues directly, which we don’t seem willing to do as that requires an immense amount of change – in what we do and what we believe. Our leadership structure makes change difficult and painfully slow. In the meantime, the tide continues and I think its going to get worse.
Does the church really care about the people who are leaving for these reasons? Do people care enough to change it? Why or why not / defend your answer.
Hard to answer. I think some people care, even at a leadership level. But not enough care. My guess is that many members of the church become defensive about the current structure/belief systems when faced with criticism. People leaving is the highest form of criticism, so a lot of the people who remain (and enough members of the 15 for it to effect policy/doctrine) dig in behind their barricades of how things are.
I don’t see leadership doing anything (other than occasionally lip service) to bring back the disaffected though. That burden (per the teacher of the lesson last Sunday) is on the wards. This to me is a mistake and makes me think the leadership has given up on the disaffected as a lost cause.
What I see happening going forward is that the tide is not stemmed, people continue leaving in droves, converts join and then leave until the church is forced to deal with it because it is shrinking (I hate to say it, but especially financially. We need US/European/Other Middle Class members for their tithing.). Then either the church is going to radically change to become of more value or it is going to become one of those small, extreme churches for radical conservatives.
Does Drescher’s research feel accurate to you and your experience?
Yes. I’d go so far as to say I’ve gone thru stages that matched her research. Step one was anger/betrayal. Step two was not having a place where I fit. Step three was boredom (and related to this is that the church is net-negative to me outside of the bloggernacle/books written by LDS philosophers/historians and a place to give service. Which is crazy (that I go to the bloggernacle to find God rather than Sunday services)). I have lots of non-Lds opportunities for service, so that’s really a neutral.
What exit path do you see the majority of unaffiliated Mormons fitting?
I rather wonder if our programs and sunday services were super engaging and fullfilling, we’d better overcome the other obstacles. It seems to me like when members hit the betrayal/anger or don’t-fit walls, they find there is nothing worth staying for. If we gave them such a spiritual, uplifting, engaging Sunday experience, that might give them something of worth.
As is, it seems like ward-family / bio-family is what holds people in the church when all else fails. And so many members end up rejected by those very families as part of faith-refining that even the families don’t hold them.
One of my other thoughts is that there will be a return to religion and communal spirituality at some point regardless of what we do. My children’s children perhaps, as movements tend to be generational. I also doubt we can anticipate what that will look like, other than it won’t look like what we have now. If the church doesn’t change by then, it seems unlikely it will benefit (although I could be wrong).
RT, as JRR Tolkein wrote:
“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost”.
Maybe the change the church can make is not using sacrament meeting attendance statistics as the definition of “lost sheep”.
The thing the ward council can focus on is to find people who are lost and searching and asking for the church to reach out to them and help them. Those are the ones that can be brought back into the fold.
The ones that say “thanks, but I’m not lost nor looking for something” don’t need to be labeled as lost or need to be saved.
But there are people in my ward that don’t come now because they were offended, they don’t come because church is boring, and they don’t come because they have a word of wisdom problem and don’t feel comfortable being around mormons who they FEAR will judge them (even if they haven’t expereinced that…they anticipate they will). Those people express a desire to use religion in their spirituality, and those are real church issues we can work on to get rid of obstacles and make them feel welcome so they can come.
But not all people who are not in church on sunday are lost. Some are just fine as they are…and should be treated that way.
Heber – I absolutely agree.
Very well-written, ma’am. I doubly appreciate because I so loathe podcasts (why sit thru meandering conversation when one can read so much more effuciently??). I stay on the rolls on account of my bio-family. I haven’t had the burden of a ward-family in 40+ years. If given the choice is rather have a root canal than sit they an F&T meeting
Isn’t part of this story about the nones is the conflict between some deeply held moral beliefs and church dogmas that violate those beliefs? For me and at least for my social circle that have left activity and begun to disaffiliate identity-wise this is being driven by deep moral conflict over things like gender equality and LBGT issues. I know this doesn’t capture everyone by any means but for at least an identifiable group of nones I think it does. In a Mormon context it looks a bit like this:
1) A deep, honest moral belief that men and women are equal or that policies, practices, theology that hurt LBGT individuals comes in conflict with church teachings and actions which are shoved down our throat with a claim of godly authority. We excommunicate and harass women that might (shock) feel like they are treated a second class citizens in their own church – which is just structurally true no matter how “nice” men are supposed to be to women with no power etc.
2) This causes cognitive and moral dissonance that we wrestle with. We try to find ways to stay. We try and devote our time, energy and talents to helping the church move toward a moral path. We are ostracized for these efforts, treated with suspicion and many come to believe that there is no reasonable short, medium or long (as within our lifetime long) path toward a church that harmonizes with important core moral beliefs. In any case, the common thing that collapses is our trust in the moral authority of church leadership. This becomes all the more acute when curriculum and culture of the church is one where our children march in lock step to “follow the prophet”, Benson’s 14 fundamentals continue to reign, and we lose moral respect for even those we really want to respect as the church continues to pass and publically support policies we see as moral retrenchment (hello November 5th).
3) This causes us to re-evaluate our affiliation. Some of us leave.
4) For many this ends up on a faith crisis which requires the re-evaluation of basic belief in God, spirituality etc. We all come down in different places. Some retain a general Mormon belief in Deity, some a more agnostic view of God, some become atheists. And some Mormon nones are born. We are labeled as apostates by some, weak-kneed taffy-pullers by others, pitied by others, empathized with by a few.
5) We then have to figure out a way to replace all that we lost in community, social structure, etc. We find we have to re-evaluate our identities which is incredibly hard, hard work. We might find some dispersed online community of morally disaffected in places like the bloggernacle but we also have to navigate real world communities and that is isolating and incredibly difficult. And nones we become not only in belief in moral authority in leadership but in identity and belief.
And let me tell you it isn’t easy. It kind of sucks. We finally left activity and more and more identity with kids on the cusp of teenagerhood. We moved and don’t have “instant ward friends”. Every so often we think, “hey maybe we should go back”. Then we ask can I even fake my way through all the lessons and talks and expose my kids to an institution whose local communities I can like but whose central intitution I simply don’t trust and can’t morally respect. Can I raise my daughter in a church when the probability she is going to show up to a temple ceremony that I have tell her can maybe be beautiful but is so clearly steeped in her theological inferiority that I am morally ashamed? No. Do I just hope one of my kids isn’t gay? Can I morally belong to a church where being gay is a condemnation to isolation, no intimacy and no family when I honestly believe it is only this way due to the hardened bigotry? No I personally can’t. So I don’t. And a None I now remain. While my path is unique in many particulars, I know many for whom this would more or less hold true.
The OP was very well done and thought-provoking, important for all of us to consider as we interact with brothers and sisters who do not currently find the church to be a good fit.
Although I don’t want to distract from that overall message, I was startled by this comment:
“-Authoritative. This works well for those who are extremely conservative and not bothered by the aspects of conservative politics that don’t jibe with the gospel….”
The connection of authoritative vs. conservative politics does not ring true in my limited personal experience. I think those are entirely different concepts or planes. And as Drescher noted, I don’t want the “taint” of being assumed to be politically conservative if I support religious authority.
I’m a USAmerican Democrat, in favor of single-payer health care and various other “liberal” causes. But I very much respect the authoritative nature of our church in a religious context, and believe that President Thomas S. Monson is the only true prophet on the earth today (although of course some truth can be found in many places).
This has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with self-certitutde. Before joining the church, dealing with alcoholism had already taught me NOT to trust my own desires and inclinations.
So when I heard the “natural man” terminology, it made a lot of sense to me.
And the church offers a reliable source of light and knowledge as I struggle daily to reshape myself into a more Christlike person. I am trying to submit my own will to that of the Lord, using my talents and gifts to further the work of the kingdom.
Of course there have been times when I questioned a church policy or teaching or whatever. But I gave the church the benefit of the doubt because of the great track record. And in several cases, time and subsequent events later proved the church happened to be correct. Which only increased my humility and willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt next time.
I actually envy the self assurance that many Nones have, as they are able to build good lives without the church. I know that for me, I would be dead of HIV or liver disease if I had not joined the church and followed a path of light and self-abnegation.
Naismith, that’s a valid point. I was thinking of Haidt’s research in saying that, although I’ve also previously pointed out that liberals, despite their “question authority” stance, have their own authorities they respect. I suppose I was relying too much on my own observation that if your political sensibilities are contradicted by those of church leaders, it’s not always easy to separate religious authority from the culture wars rhetoric. Certainly church leaders conflate the two. I tend to think all our political views are deeply ingrained assumptions that we have a hard time getting past in understanding the gospel.
I would challenge your assertion that your life would be ruinous if not for the church. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t, just that obviously something you heard in the church or felt through the community changed your patterns, and who’s to say that your receptiveness to that wouldn’t have been triggered by something else if not for the church. God speaks to us in various ways to alter course. Don’t give yourself so little credit nor the church so much. You are part of the equation. But I’m glad it has fulfilled that function for you.
“Is it possible to stanch the tide of disaffection?”
Often the conservative/staying member (okay, my husband) says my complaints are too numerous, my expectations too high, my disappointment too unreasonable, etc., because, after all, it is a huge church and we can’t possibly address all of these things adequately. But it’s a TINY church! And why grow if things are already unmanageable?
Given the defeatist attitude and explanations for snail-paced change and tone-deaf policies, I’m not optimistic about stanching, but I’m still here.
I know I am late to the party on this one. It came out when I was on a forced “off the grid” vacation. So I quickly read it, liked it, marked that I needed to listen to the podcast. I listened to about half of the podcast on the way in this morning and I have to get this book – even if it makes my unread stack of books so tall they might fall over.
And I re-read #10 hawkgrrrl’s comments and BINGO. I can’t say how much this resonates with me and the analogy of the church being analogous to a parent that is too strict. For the more conservative religions, it breaks relationships.