( Before reading this post, you must listen to the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go“, and get the song stuck in your head. Then enjoy the post!)
Dr Deborah Brix was Pres Trump’s Corona Virus Response coordinator. This last week, free from Trump’s repercussions, she told about the false data the President received from unknow sources, often discounting her own data. Trump would then present this false data at news conferences to the American People. She is being criticized for not speaking out. From the CNN article:
It’s tough to imagine that Birx would have changed much of anything by speaking out. She had a choice: She could call out the president for lying, lose her job and leave the White House Covid-19 task force in the hands of people like Atlas. Or she could keep her mouth shut and try to clean things up from the inside.
She said she chose the second option, setting off to meet with state governors and help them with their Covid responses — the only effective strategy at her disposal, since the Trump administration punted everything to the states.
She sounds a lot like the disenchanted Mormons that stay in the church even if the disagree with its teachings, thinking they can change it from within. I’m sure you’ve read in progressive Mormon online groups about people wanting to change the church, and realizing they can do more from within the church than if they leave. There are two main issues I see most often talked about for reasons people chose to stay to “change” the church:
1 LGBTQ: They hope by staying they can be an ally to LGBTQ Mormons, create a safe space for them, and be a friend to them in the church.
2. Women equality issues: Men can stay in the church, and hope to give women greater equality in the church. As an example, when I was bishop, I invited the RS Pres to Priesthood Executive Council, a since discontinued monthly meeting of the Bishopric, EQ and HP leaders, and Ward mission leader. The purpose of the PEC was to discuss Home Teaching and Ward Missionary items. I could not see talking about Home Teaching without involving the RS Pres, which represented over half the ward. Also, because I had three daughters and no sons, I had “father daughter” campouts.
Another reason people stay (or refrain from making so much trouble they get excommunicated) is so that their voice can reach more members. Think John Dehlin and Bill Reel. While they were members they probably could have influenced more traditional TBM members. Now they are ex-Mormon’s (not by their choice) their audience is more limited, and their influence to bring about change in the church is greatly diminished, although one could argue it was never that great even when they were members.
Do you know anybody (yourself, friends) that have made a conscious decision to stay in the church to change it from within? If so, how is that going? Do you know of other reasons apart from the two above that people stay so they can change them? Do you think it is a valid reason to stay, or conversely if the organization is so bad, does your staying (re: Dr Brix) lend legitimacy to the corrupt institution? And finally, did Dr Brix make the right choice?
Wheat & Tares 
Birx, not Brix.
I’m an EQ counselor band the EQP is a challenge, to put it nicely. My wife frequently says that maybe me being in that calling is to talk some sense into him and keep him from steamrolling other members with his half baked plans and thoughts. Using that as an example of staying, even in a calling that honestly you’d rather back out of, because you can do more good by staying.
Members who elect to stay can effect culture change at the local level. It’s next to impossible to effect that change at a church wide or policy level. But if I stay with my nuanced, unorthodox approach and don’t hide that then it signals to other people who may be struggling that it’s ok to be there without being explicitly all-in.
The song got in my head as soon as I saw the title, didn’t even need to listen to it…. 😉
I guess the underlying question I have among all these questions is whether or not there is a general threshold for people with regards to the truthfulness of the Church, or if it’s much more varied from person to person. I’m often surprised by stories of those who have rejected all truth claims of the Church but stay because they love the people and want to see change. Part of that still feels like a major waste of time to me. Conversely, I’m also surprised by those who maintain the Church is what it says it is, but want to see change in the Church, and more or less reject living prophets by hinting instead that they’re accepting the likely teachings of future prophets. That seems a bit naive and misguided to me.
I don’t know of anyone personally who decided to stay and change from within. It seems like it would be an uphill battle among most of the orthodox saints I know. Hard to think of other reasons than the two listed. I suppose there is a threshold in which staying makes things worse, but it’s difficult to determine based on one’s spectrum of how much truth is still with the Church.
I don’t know that we know enough one way or another to make the call as to whether Dr. Brix’s decision was the right one. As mostly an aside, I thought the administrative decision to “punt” it to the states was a proper one.
I guess I can relate in some ways. I’m not very happy with the Republican Party right now, but I remain a Republican and am advocating for some things I hope will bring it back to some of its principles. I do think that’s better done from within than with a rival party or outside criticism. Admittedly, political parties function much differently than religious organizations. That’s mostly a good thing.
Fundamentally that’s very personal and probably depends on what that person feels called to do. For me, I would be comfortable helping from the inside so long as I wasn’t enabling the person / policies I thought were wrong. (And I mean morally wrong, not just policies I disagreed with – in that case no one could work for or with just about anyone else …).
Dr. Birx is in the best position to judge whether she enabled Trump’s lies and mismanagement or if she did damage control. Sounds like the latter. I’d say she’s in a pretty different category than, say, Giuliani or Kushner.
I don’t stay at church to change it from the inside because I don’t think I have a whole lot of ability to do so. I do stay because I think communities are good places to support and love and understand better one another, especially those who are different from us. And yes, I do hope that I can be a safe place for LGBTQ folks and advocate for them (which I do) and I hope my husband can be more inclusive of women in his positions. But ultimately that is only about local impact, not trying to change things at the top. Arguably, folks who vocally leave / get excommunicated (like Sam Young) do a fair amount to trigger change at the top, even though the top will never admit that.
I do wish we at church would be more aware and tolerant of the idea that not everyone in our congregations thinks the same way. Some people seem pretty tone-deaf to that concept, and that makes it hard to stay. I also personally decided that trying to maintain a temple recommend was too much cognitive dissonance and personal stress so let that go for now. That might diminish in some ways my own local influence but I’ve found that since I am a woman and my influence is limited anyway, not by much.
I’m originally RLDS and have chosen to stay in Community of Christ, to keep the restoration history and teachings relevant and exciting to the next generation of church members.
Cathie, thanks so much for the correction. I will resist the desire to change it in my original post, so that your comment will make sense, and my terrible spelling will live on for posterity!
The Church’s primary problem is the Old Fogey problem, which utterly prevents it from dealing with issues that should have been solved or ameliorated decades ago: gender, race, sexual orientation, politics, social policy and historicity of scripture, to name the most important. The Brethren have been good money managers, and have kept programs such as welfare/social safety net and genealogy strong. But the toxic rightward drift of the membership has been encouraged in upper echelons, and this has been disastrous, not least because a large number of young, highly-educated progressives feel distinctly unwelcome and are leaving or have left. Without this cohort we become – are becoming!- Southern Baptist-West. Ironically the fabulous wealth of the institution bodes ill for positive movement any time soon under rubric “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” as if money were an arbiter of truth and justice. What’s it gonna take? A very good question. The decent, considerate Trumpublicans who constitute the large majority of my rural Midwestern ward don’t see a problem.
I was mostly an unbeliever in the whole Joseph Smith story from childhood. I just didn’t *like* him and had a hard time explaining that an intelligent God would never have picked him as prophet. But still I saw a lot of good in the church, so I stayed.
Gradually, over time the good I had seen was changed. We lost the community that the church had offered back when there were meetings every day of the week, with plenty of socials. The emphasis shifted from learning about the whole gospel to repeating conference talks where the general authorities quoted each other. It just shifted from worshipping Christ to worshipping the GAs.
Yet, the things it needed to change drug 30 -50 years behind the rest of society. Instead of looking at the direction the larger society was going and asking themselves, are Blacks just as human as we whites, are they equally the children of God? The church dug its heals in and fought civil rights and made up doctrine to justify their behavior. The God I worshipped was just very different. Then they did the same with women’s rights and LGBT rights.
I kept thinking that I could change more minds from the inside than from the outside. And maybe I did, but there was a cost. There was the constant problem that I really wasn’t like most in the church. People avoided me. I wasn’t given callings. I was really already outside the church, just not officially. I even told a bishop that I felt like I had been disfellowshipped and nobody told me. He looked at me confused because he also thought that my attitudes toward women’s issues and my lesbian daughter put me outside the church. And there was emotional cost to me personally from the church’s use of shame and guilt instead of love to change behavior. Sure, I had scars left over from me growing up in an abusive home, so I reacted to the shame with self hatred rather than the desired devotion to the church as the magical cure to shame and guilt.
I was paying all these costs of staying, and only maybe helping a few people change their perspective on all the issues where the church was 40 years behind the rest of the world. Finally about 60 years old, I decided I wasn’t going to live long enough to see the church change, so why keep bashing my head against a wall. I really wasn’t “in” the church anyway. I was fringe and fringe women are not put in leadership or any calling for that matter, and I wasn’t into blogging or podcasts, so my ability to change others was very minimal.
So, I dropped out and I am much happier without the church.
The Church’s primary problem is the Old Fogey problem, which utterly prevents it from dealing with issues that should have been solved or ameliorated decades ago: gender, race, sexual orientation, politics, social policy and historicity of scripture, to name the most important. The Brethren have been good money managers, and have kept programs such as welfare/social safety net and genealogy strong. But the toxic rightward drift of the membership has been encouraged in upper echelons, and this has been disastrous, not least because a large number of young, highly-educated progressives feel distinctly unwelcome and are leaving or have left. Without this cohort we become – are becoming!- Southern Baptist-West. Ironically the fabulous wealth of the institution bodes ill for positive movement any time soon under rubric “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” as if money were an arbiter of truth and justice. What’s it gonna take? A very good question. The decent, considerate Trumpublicans who constitute the large majority of my rural Midwestern ward don’t see a problem.
If you’re a woman, there’s no good way to change the church from within. Especially if you are a single woman (like I was until my late thirties) or a woman married to a non-member (me now) or a highly-educated and/or professional woman. The best you can do is show love to teenagers and try to mitigate the damage of the horrible lesson manuals. But even that only works if you get put into such positions, which we marginalized women seldom are.
Anna, You wrote pretty much my very same story. I really wanted to help change things from the inside, but finally realized that progress was ridiculously incremental over the 50 years I had been a member, and there was no reason to ever expect anything different. The emotional costs were just too high and increasing all the time—and by the end, like you, I was already alienated from most people at church anyway. I’m much happier now without the church, and have realized that walking away can also be influential in effecting change. (No judgment towards people who stay—I just couldn’t do it anymore). In the end, I no longer believed the truth claims, and I no longer fit into the community. There was nothing left.
I’m curious about Anna’s childhood experience being “mostly an unbeliever in the whole Joseph Smith story from childhood [because? she] just didn’t *like* him. I have been surprised sometimes at members telling me how much they love JS, because I don’t like him — or BY for that matter. (Probably I just don’t like people with authoritarian and sometimes megalomaniac behaviors; probably I’m naturally suspicious of anyone like JS with his charisma and a following that treats him like an idol.) I wonder if anyone has ever discussed in an LDS class or even social situation why they don’t like JS? What was the result?
But I have not seen any necessary connection between my dislike and my view of what use God might make of people I dislike — whether as prophets or otherwise.
I can’t think of a single reason to stay a member of this Church that makes sense notwithstanding any of the foregoing. There is no way to justify all the problems that the Church and it’s leaders have caused except the claim that the Church functions under Priesthood authority. The authority from God to perform the rituals and have those rituals recognized in the next life is the only reason why I stay.
Great question. It comes in different flavors for different people, I think.
We don’t think in terms of the One True Car. Some cars are better than others, but there are tradeoffs to any purchase. Different cars are the “right” car for different people. There is no One True Job. Some jobs are better than, and there are tradeoffs to any job you take. Different jobs are the “right” job for different people. I think more and more Mormons think about the Church this way. If salvation is, broadly speaking, a gift from God available to many people in the world and in history without much regard for denominational affiliation, then denominational choice is more of a “What works for me and my family?” question than a “Where is the One True Church” question.
It’s worth noting as well that the truth claims are all made about “The Church” at the highest level. No one claims the 9th ward is true but the 6th ward is sort of iffy and the 3rd ward is completely off the reservation. But the stay or go decision is largely about one’s continued participation with or separation from the local congregation.
@Bob Cooper I admit I am very confused by your comment. Are you saying you believe the Church and its leaders are super harmful yet you still believe they alone have God’s authority on earth? So you will continue to support them for that reason?
Personally I don’t believe the Church’s claim of access to unique and exclusive authority and indeed it is that claim that had caused the problems mentioned in the comments. I just think if the Church is useful to people in living a better life now, great. If not, people will find something else. The attitude that we will continue to support incorrect and harmful practices because of priesthood authority is confusing to me.
Elisa: And, if it turns out this really is the way things will operate in the afterlife (harmful practices through priesthood power), isn’t that all the more reason not to support that during our time here?
Here’s what I really wonder: how many of us “stay” with the Church due to family or social pressures? In other words, if we were completely free from those pressures what would it look like vs. how does it actually look?
Back when I was in graduate school I spent several weeks all alone while my wife and baby spent time with my in-laws traveling. Literally nobody from church knew that I was in the area and I was completely free to skip church. I was a TBM+ at the time and I was proud to say back then that I did not skip a single week, even though nobody would have noticed.
If I were in those circumstances today, I’m quite certain the result would be different. And I wonder how many of us would sit it out if we could free of alienating anyone else.
Wondering, I could not explain my dislike of Joseph Smith until I was older, so I kept quiet about it, mostly feeling like it was something wrong with me. But there are three reasons that I didn’t like the whole Joseph Smith story. One was his age at the first vision, another is he reminded me of my abusive father, and a third was that I saw personality traits that I didn’t have words for but that are the same as men we call evil, Jim Jones, David Koresh and other cult leaders.
I just don’t think God would pick a 14 year old boy as his prophet. There is too much that can go wrong with someone so young. Even as a kid, I could see how immature 14 year old boys are. I don’t believe in forordination, then or now. It just seems at odds with free agency. If God knows us all so well, then what purpose is there in an earth life at all. I don’t believe Abraham was picked before he was born either.
But even beyond his age at first vision, as a grown up, there was just something about Joseph that rubbed my wrong. Then after getting a bachelors degree in psychology, I found words for some of my gut feelings. He was charismatic; so was my abusive father. He had a streak of narcissism; so did my abusive father. He liked telling stories; so did my abusive father. He just didn’t “get” other people’s emotions, nor did he seem to care. Things like eloping with Emma against her parents wishes. Did he ever consider anything other than what he wanted? That was how my father was. If he wasn’t hungry, nobody got to be hungry. If he didn’t need to have a bathroom break, nobody got to have a bathroom break. And it was little things in Joseph that reminded me of my abusive dad.
Some things that I saw in Joseph, just kind of gave me the creeps. Even as a kid, I saw things that reminded me of the occult, but it wasn’t until I was older and got deeper into the history that I could confirm that Joseph believed in the occult. I didn’t know about Joseph’s polygamy, but I could see the personality that manipulated 14 year old Hellen Kimble into marrying him. It was that personality that I could see in some of the stories about him that just didn’t sit well with me. God could have done a far better job of picking someone for the restoration, and I just don’t think God is so hard up for righteous people that he had to use Joseph as the best he had available. Joseph’s “weaknesses” have never comforted me like they do some people, as in, “if God can use someone like Joseph, then there is hope for me.” No, I saw it more as “if God thinks someone as flawed as Joseph is the best he can find, then God plays favorites in a way that makes me hate God.” I saw it as “God loves some people, no matter how flawed, but he does not love me no matter how hard I try.”
I didn’t like Nephi or Brigham Young either.
I hope this answers your question.
Anna, Thanks. That makes perfect sense to me, though I’m not convinced that being called as a prophet or whatever is a sign or God’s love or that the lack of such a calling implies a lack of love. That is, however, a normal reaction for someone who grew up with an abusive father.
I could have added Nephi to my list also. Then there was Joseph who was sold into Egypt. I once heard someone in GD class point out that the Bible contains no record of Joseph being authorized, let alone told, to repeat to his brothers his dreams of his ascendancy over them, that it was already clear to him and all of him that he was daddy’s favorite because of who his mother was and regardless of his behavior, that maybe in repeating those dreams he was just acting like any other 14-year-old snot. That prompted an adamant “testimony” from another class member that God would NEVER use as a prophet anyone who had ever behaved that way! .I still wonder sometimes what’s behind that Mormon “testimony” other than ignorance of JS’ behavior and of the times in the D&C JS is called to repentance.
Slightly off-topic but…my Bishop continues to put a timeframe on the Second Coming which slightly annoys me. But then I remind myself that his five-year tenure expires this summer.
Two thoughts here.
Due to the short-lived nature of politics, Birx has now had the chance to explain why she stayed in a toxic situation. But for those of us who stay in the church, when will be our moment to set the record straight that we stayed to make things better? Or will our children and grandchildren instead look upon us unkindly for being complicit with an organization that causes tremendous harm for some?
This reminds me of Angela’s “would you rather” discussion from last year. I’ve really wondered: If I could see that in 50 years from now the Church makes tremendous strides to improve, then I want to stay. But if they either dwindle in irrelevancy or become even more harmful, then I definitely want to leave and get my family out while I can. But I have no idea what will happen 50 years from now. This is my struggle.
From Wikipedia: “Stockholm syndrome is a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity.[1] Emotional bonds may be formed between captors and captives, during intimate time together, but these are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims. “
Maybe a good number stay because of a Salt Lake City Syndrome.
At least that’s the best I can come up with.
When I read about members wanting to provide a “safe” place for their LGBTQ brothers and sisters, the first thing that comes to mind is that something is “unsafe” about the environment for this group of people. PS…I’m a gay Mormon and the LDS Church is definitely not a safe place for LGBTQ people.
@skdadyl I totally agree and if I had an LGBTQ kid I would advise them against attending, and if I were LGBTQ I would not attend either (no reason to subject myself to that, bad enough subjecting myself to patriarchy). I should have said be a “safe” person” since I totally acknowledge it is not a “safe place”.
I’ve been in the youth org for many years and I refuse to teach or say anything harmful about LGBTQ folks (which means I basically toss the manual) and I affirmatively state and show support with what I say & wear. The reality is our congregations are still full of closeted gay kids who will come to Church whether I’m there or not, as well as out LGBTQ people who for whatever reason still want to attend (I ministered to a gay couple in my last year), so at least I can maybe try to do damage control for those who are there.
That said I also understand people who refuse to participate period because it’s not a safe place for LGBTQ folks and I do often ask myself whether I can continue to participate with integrity or whether my participation actually supports homophobia. But that’s why I stopped giving money to the Church.
“ I do wish we at church would be more aware and tolerant of the idea that not everyone in our congregations thinks the same way. Some people seem pretty tone-deaf to that concept,”
My experience is that if one dares to share an mildly alternative view/experience—you are going to get smacked down. Apparently there is only one formula, one tidy neat box for the devout and anything else is of the devil.
Haven’t had regular church since Covid hit.
I’m still wondering what my relationship with the church will be going forward. But I don’t have any illusion that my staying benefits anybody.
I also wonder of what benefit organized religion is to society if so many of the devout support such a man as Trump to represent them. Seems to me he represents the opposite qualities we ought to be cultivating as moral people—at least according to what I was taught.
I think Dr. Birx was right to stay.
So glad science and medicine is now leading the way through this complicated pandemic.
Hi Elisa,
“@Bob Cooper I admit I am very confused by your comment. Are you saying you believe the Church and its leaders are super harmful yet you still believe they alone have God’s authority on earth? So you will continue to support them for that reason?”
Saying that the Church and it’s leaders are super harmful isn’t what I intended. If I gave you that impression then I need to restate my case.
I believe we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people. This is the point of the OP. When Bishop Bill asks if Dr. Birx made the right decision to stay with the Trump administration instead of leaving and making her case public and then compares that to what we, as members, are experiencing then he is arguing that staying a member of this Church isn’t easy. I agree.
One of the reasons why I think this is true is because our leaders are just as imperfect as the rest of us with one important distinction and this distinction can be found in D&C 121:39 when it says that “… almost all men…” will exercise unrighteous dominion. I take that to mean that most Priesthood leaders are by default acting unrighteously most of the time. This might be one reason why there are so many members who are disenchanted with the Church. And based on the available data it seems that most members have made the decision to leave. If this was just a man made Church then I would be the first person out the door but I stay in spite of the faults of men because I believe it has to be this way.
Personally I think that the Gospel is easy. What makes things tough is that the Gospel is being delivered by an organization full of imperfect people. And I believe that God knew it would be hard which is why He gave us the revelation in D&C 121. Knowing that our leaders would make things tough for us should prepare us for that time when we run into some aspect of what our Church leaders do, be that in history, or doctrine, or current practice, that causes us concern.
I hope that makes more sense.
All the best,
Bob
A couple years ago, my wife was an Activity Days leader. The 2 other AD leaders were unstable, difficult people. One was an elderly woman who was notoriously flaky, and often came unprepared and way late (sometimes not at all) with no advance notice. The other woman was constantly undermining my wife’s activity plans, made huge messes without cleaning them up and was really bad at time management and discipline. Frustrating as it was, my wife stayed in it for the sake of our then-9-year-old daughter, so as to provide her with a good recreational/social outlet. She tried to be charitable, reasoning that the other women needed their callings to help bring stability to their chaotic lives. Eventually, the emotional strain became too much for my wife and she asked to be released. She said it was hard enough wrangling a handful of pre-teen girls, but having to wrangle grown adults at the same time was not part of the deal. The bishop was hesitant to grant her a release (he too had a daughter in the group) but then relented after my wife told him “release me or don’t release me, I don’t care, I won’t be showing up to do this stupid job anymore!”. After her release, Activity Days became a total train wreck dumpster fire, and we stopped sending our daughter.
To some extent it may be honorable to stay in a failing organization to try and help it from the inside, or at least keep it from getting worse. But there is a cost, and often that cost is that person’s mental health, and in some cases, their long-term credibility (such as with Dr. Birx and many others who worked in the Trump White House). Perhaps at some point (depending on circumstances) the most honorable thing to do is walk away and let it burn.
I appreciate Bob Cooper mentioning DC 121. Since the wording of DC 121 indicates that this is a nearly universal condition, I agree with him that this Section of the DC should serve to prepare us for inevitable disappointment in dealing with Church leaders.
I also think that DC 121 is a warning to Church leaders to not act unrighteously. However, that warning runs smack into the depressing reality of the default assumption held by so many people that DC 121 is talking about OTHER people, not oneself. Also the default exemption that since I am receiving inspiration about my calling, DC 121 can’t be talking about me, and besides, I hold the keys (as Bishop, as SP, or whatever calling invokes the granting of keys), and the Lord wouldn’t let a person holding keys make mistakes, right?
Dc 121 is one of the most quoted and least observed of all scriptures.
@Bob Cooper, thanks for the explanation.
I don’t know anyone – active, less active, post, whatever-version Mormon – who expects leaders to be *perfect* and who left or disengaged because their leaders were not perfect. I do think it’s not a lot to expect that they don’t exercise unrighteous dominion “most of the time.” If someone is exercising unrighteous dominion “most of the time,” I am not sure they are worth following. That’s a *very* low bar. Unfortunately, our priesthood structure gives outsized impact to a very small group of individuals and their version of unrighteous dominion, and we don’t allow for a democracy of ideas to start weeding out the bad ones.
I agree the gospel should be easy. Unfortunately, leaders exercising unrighteous dominion have *made* it hard by insisting that racism*, sexism, homophobia, and hoarding riches** are part of it. Particularly the homophobia piece has absolutely torn families apart. I’ve seen it personally in many families. A supposedly pro-family Church that absolutely destroys families …
*Yes I know that the Church teaches against racism. But the Church *still* has not disavowed the priesthood ban – only said “we don’t understand why that happened.”
**See 100B dollar hedge fund.
For a long time I was thinking about how I and my family would leave the church. Truthfully, it was complicated because I knew that some of my children would be negatively impacted in the social sense with our leaving. We had family members that were going to have a strong reaction, too. However, I thought staying made us complicit in things that were horrible, dangerous, and wrong. I would say today that back then I had a viewpoint that centered itself on the church. Now, I’m seeing a lot of these problems through the lens of white supremacy, but that doesn’t get the church of the hook. When I started getting really involved in progressive activism and partnering with change communities (in Portland they are often dominant white) who on the surface seemed so different from Mormonism, I naively thought I wouldn’t encounter the patriarchy, hierarchy, male and white centered culture, misogyny, racism, homophobia. I actually thought “finally, I’ll be a little more free of this stuff.” It didn’t turn out that way. I found the problematic parts of Mormonism that were troubling for me, were on display or just under the surface at yoga studios and in mindfulness culture, academia, and very mush so in progressive activism. This is why allyship is so complicated. For me, I’ve concluded that these problems first come from white-supremacy and white culture. This doesn’t mean that I don’t think that people shouldn’t leave the church or that people can’t leave because they won’t find good communities. That’s not it. I think that the work of creating equitable communities and safe spaces and dismantling systems of oppression isn’t as simple as walking out the door of the church, though that may be absolutely a part of it. It’s got to be at the forefront of our minds in our workplaces, in our clubs and hobbies, in the way we spend money, and of course politics and in so many other ways. When my son came out very publicly and we embraced and celebrated him very publicly, I thought, “here’s when we leave.” It didn’t work out like that, because within an hour of this experience, closeted young folks were reaching out to our family and I realized maybe we need to hang around longer to be in community with them. I’m not sure how sustainable it is in the long run. And, in a complicated way, our family has received pretty similar judgements from both sides who either express that we are bad parents for celebrating our child or bad parents for going to church. I’ve concluded that the work of making change is really complicated. I feel so much love and appreciation for folks who have walked out and I believe they do make change in that experience. And, I think people have the right to leave even if it results in nothing. Also, I think at this moment my family is doing what we need to do.
Bob Cooper,
“What makes things tough is that the Gospel is being delivered by an organization full of imperfect people.”
What makes the church tough for me is that it is run by imperfect people who believe they are perfect. Not sure what gospel they’re delivering, but they’ve done a beautiful job convincing me they’re not all that familiar with the gospel of love.
Dr. Birx definitely made the right decision, as did Dr. Fauci, to stay on board in the Trump administration. Although Trump barely gave them a platform (only at first) and ended up pushing them aside when the coronavirus was at its worst peaks. We are suffering horribly as a result of Trump’s negligence.
On former believers staying in the church, I support that decision, but much like Fauci’s and Birx’s presence in the Trump administration, I doubt it will have much of an effect. I remember how about a decade ago it seemed, at least from what I would hear on the grapevine, that church leaders were entertaining giving Dehlin more of a place and platform in the hopes of helping to keep the questioners from fully disaffecting. Ultimately they decided against that approach and exed John, Bill, and others. There is no place in the church for a doubter who is too vocal. I am that doubter. I stay, but for family reasons. I don’t take callings, don’t obtain temple recommends, don’t go in for interviews, and refuse to attend tithing settlement. The church experience for me is much like the average parishioner’s experience in the Catholic church. Go to church, hear a sermon or two, take the sacrament, and come home. Rinse and repeat. I foster no expectations of changing anything in the church by continuing to attend. My voice on its own counts for nothing. There are larger factors at play causing change and my voice, when added to these factors, does have an effect, but only online, not in the chapel, and it wouldn’t matter if I attended church or not. Dehlin’s voice has had a huge impact, and Bill Reel’s voice, to a lesser extent. And the impact that their voices have had have indeed been due to their continuing to want to make things work with the church. But they are exceptions to the rule.
Bob Cooper, “Personally I think that the Gospel is easy. What makes things tough is that the Gospel is being delivered by an organization full of imperfect people”
As with most matters, the question is not whether or not, but to what extent. No one ever expected church leaders to be perfect. I often hear members say that of ex-Mormons as a way to dismiss them as black-and-white thinkers (and position the believers as more intellectual nuanced believers), but it is nothing more than a strawman argument. The issue is how much imperfection we are going to tolerate. There is a big difference between saying “no one is perfect” to a bishop accidentally swearing over the pulpit, and saying “no one is perfect” in response to a bishop stealing tithing funds. Similarly their is a big difference in saying “give brother Joseph a break” in response to hearing that Joseph Smith drank alcohol the day before being shot and killed by a mob at Carthage jail, and saying “give brother Joseph a break” in response to hearing about his trysts with Fanny Alger and marrying of 14-year-old girls. Some offenses simply tarnish a person’s reputation to an unsalvageable extent.
To use P’s words, I am a young, highly educated progressive. I stay only because a few radical members, inside the Church (most were Church university professors or fellow students) showed me a way to believe that saved my belief. They helped me see the beauty in our cosmology, our humanitarianism, even our scripture, despite the many ugly mistakes we’ve made (and still make) as a Church. They were doing this years before the CES Letter. Unlike many commenters here, I’ve taken a “long position” in the Church, and I’m optimistic. The Southern Baptists never taught that God is female, evolution is real, or humans are destined to become gods. More practically, they didn’t convert their sunday-school program to a home-study version literally the year before a pandemic shuttered churches. For all the Q15s errors, that was a huge prophetic success, and it doesn’t get enough credit (but yes, the curriculum can and should be much better).
I stay for these few, precious, beautiful things – “pearls of great price” (precisely because they are rare compared to the blunders) – but also hoping that I can pass on what was given to me – a tool for the doubter to maintain belief that is valuable, despite the pain and the “costs” as some here have well put it. On balance, for me, right now, the value outweighs the costs.
If anyone who reads this is on the fence, and would like to know more about how I believe, just ask. I’m happy to share what I’ve learned. It doesn’t work for everyone (and I don’t fault those who leave – I get it!) but it might work for you.
Hi John,
You are absolutely right. There is a huge difference in degree. When I argue that our leaders are practicing unrighteous dominion this isn’t to say that that is a blanket condemnation. Unrighteous dominion needs to be understood on a continuum. For example you might not be a fan of President Nelson but I’m sure if you needed a heart operation and President Nelson was the one surgeon available you would have no qualms about his performing the operation.
The same thing can be said about Joseph Smith’s behavior. The problem is history is messy. And this problem is magnified with the passage of time. The exact nature of Joseph’s offenses may never be know. Given this I tend towards charity when judging my fellow man. I may argue that all our leaders are practicing unrighteous dominion but when it comes to specific individuals and specific events I like to have overwhelming evidence that they are guilty before I’m willing to condemn any one individual.
All the best,
Bob
This topic is one I think about a lot–whether staying as an engaged insider is beneficial or not. Perhaps the core “problem” is the scope that any individual can effect. Institutions are incredibly resistant to improvement by default. They have to try very hard to overcome inertia, and most institutions don’t want to change. The existing power structures for sure don’t want change. Institutions are far more pliant to social and PR pressures than they ever will be to pressure from within. Therefore, remaining as an insider (lay person, not leader) means you can be a personal ally, you can be that feminist voice in that class, but that’s about it. You can’t change the organization in a meaningful way. You can make someone’s day brighter. You can make friends. You can make insightful comments that people think about.
Birx was in a much better position than your average Church member. She was in a communication role, a leadership role, an expert role. She was visible to the public (even when muzzled, her facial expressions were read clearly by journalists). Plus, the Trump administration had an end date in sight, as did the pandemic (albeit a fuzzy one even now). The scope of what she was trying to accomplish was much more specific and targeted than trying to create social progress on issues like LGBT, feminism, or racism across an entrenched social group.
There are two other analogies to this approach that I think about a lot. First, trying to eliminate racist outcomes in the police department. There was a great interview with one black officer who tried to do this very thing. Ultimately, he discovered that at best he could personally not be racist, but the systems literally created racist outcomes and marginalized anyone who fought against those outcomes. He ultimately left the force, realizing it was a hopeless cause and that rather than effecting change, he was himself becoming desensitized to the racism (against himself and others), because that’s where the incentives all lay.
The other example I think about is second wave feminism vs. third (and later) feminist movements. Second wave feminists are that first generation of women who went back to work, who pushed from within the patriarchal work structures to fight for equal pay and opportunity. But that came at a price, namely, having to play the game that was rigged against them. It also often requires women to fight other women (to prove they aren’t like those weak, emotional, feminine women who are just affirmative action pity hires–we REALLY deserve to be there–we are just one of the guys). Third wave feminism (and fourth) realized that instead of just adding women to male-created structures, we needed to burn it all down and start over again. IOW, if no sexists were born since 1960, the entire world would still be patriarchal. These structures live on, and they aren’t great for men or women.
So yes, we can make a difference inside the Church, but only to a handful of people around us who need to know they aren’t crazy, or they aren’t alone, or they are seen, or they matter. Maybe that’s really the best anyone inside a Church or other small community can do. It doesn’t appear that leaving changes the Church either, aside from making your local ward unhealthier and less diverse. Shifts in the Church will come from bad press and public martyrdom of dissidents, and the Church seems sufficiently able to create that on its own. Going to Church can feel a bit like a Green Bay Packers fan with season tickets to the Chicago Bears. You can wear your cheesehead hat and jersey which might get you dirty looks or death threats, or you can secretly know that you prefer the Packers and share knowing looks with the other secret Green Bay fans. What you can’t do is get the Bears to move to Wisconsin or to think you may be right about the Packers.
@Bob Cooper, the nature of Joseph Smith’s offenses against women and young girls is only “unknown” if we don’t believe the women and girls who testified about it. Or, for that matter, the very words he recorded in D&C 132 that treat women as chattel.
I am still active, I think we can still see that Joseph Smith did and said useful and powerful things, but I don’t have a ton of patience for justifications of the harm he did by ignoring the words of the people who suffered from it. We can only heal if we fully own that and then see what can or should be salvaged.
Also, FWIW, I wouldn’t be thrilled about Nelson operating on my heart right now (how long has it been since he performed surgery?). I am not sure what that has to do with whether his comments about, say, the exclusion policy were inspired or harmful and whether he is therefore a prophet worth following.
That “Packer[s]” reference was a nice touch, Angela. Otherwise you presented a fairly hopeless scenario-reinforced, I might add, by that $100B elephant in the chapel. It’s very possible that we will shortly experience a Golden Age of Cafeteria Mormonism as the only viable option for, especially, educated progressives too deeply rooted in the faith to leave, those dreaded Starbucks Buddhist RMs.
@Angela, oof, lots of good (but somewhat depressing) stuff in that comment.
I agree with most of what Angela wrote. I’d add these thoughts.
No individual can change the organization’s direction. If you stay in the Church hoping that your efforts will result in institutional changes that you can see, you are guaranteed to be disappointed. Change happens over time because of the aggregation of lots of little things. One of those little things can be your decision to stay or go, but you’ll probably never know how your decision made any difference at all.
Deciding to stay or go is something like voting in an election. Not because we have a democratic process of change in the Church—we don’t have that—but because votes only have meaning in the aggregate. Voting expresses our faith that the sum total of many votes will make some kind of difference. And it will. The culture changes to reflect generational changes in the values that active Church members hold. Those changes happen over time, in ways that are practically invisible until you can see everything in hindsight. Of course there are dramatic changes in institutional policy from time to time, but mostly there are deeper, gradual changes in the way we live from day to day, and in the ideas and teachings that we focus on most. By your decision to stay or go, you have an imperceptible influence on those generational changes.
The perceptible influence we can have has nothing to do with institutional change. Whether we stay or go has everything to do with our influence on individuals who see our choices. Most obviously, those people are our family and friends. My personal view is that what matters most is my ability to live my faith authentically. I choose to stay for several reasons, but one of those reasons is that I want my children and other people I love to see that it’s possible to live authentically in the Church.
If I felt that I couldn’t stay in good conscience, then I wouldn’t stay. I don’t criticize anyone’s choice to leave. Do what you need to do for your own sake and for the sake of those who need you.
Belated thanks to BH Roberts and J. Golden Kimball for sticking around…
Bob Cooper,
“The problem is history is messy”
It is one thing to claim that history is difficult to understand as an acknowledgement of fact (history IS hard to understand) and another thing to claim that history is difficult to understand as an excuse not to accept inconvenient truths and likelihoods. When I hear believers saying “history is messy” it has always come off as an appeal to the latter and barely ever to the former. If history is so messy, then it makes little sense to firmly believe that ancient American Jews saw Jesus on no evidence that corroborates the Book of Mormon’s claims. “History is messy” shouldn’t be said as a bad faith excuse to just believe whatever we want.
“The exact nature of Joseph’s offenses may never be known”
You could just as easily say that the veracity of Joseph Smith’s truth claims may never be known and on that basis dismiss all of his truth claims as not worth your time. That which can asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
“I like to have overwhelming evidence that they are guilty before I’m willing to condemn any one individual.”
Joseph Smith isn’t facing charges before a court of law. The category of “guilty” doesn’t apply. Since Joseph Smith isn’t going to be subjected to a sentence by a judge, the standards of evidence that would apply to someone being tried in court (since a guilty verdict would subject them to state punishment that would have a major effect on their lives) don’t apply to Joseph Smith. But alas we are up against the classic belief double standard which so many believers subscribe to. When it comes to the question of Joseph Smith’s truth claims being true, well the believer sets the bar incredibly low. When it comes to claims that cast doubt on Joseph Smith’s character and claims, well then the believer sets the bar so high that they’ll refuse to accept criticism no matter how well evidenced and articulated.
There are ripple effects from staying, going, or creating one’s own unique response. When someone stays when their children are small, there is a likelihood certain cultural norms and associations will be cemented in place. That will affect their family’s future dynamic.
My children were mostly grown when I lost faith. I am an island. My most understanding child chose to marry in the temple, followed by a reception, even when there was no longer a wait.
@Anon4Today, I am sorry. I hear stories of people like that and it’s heartbreaking. I haven’t left but I have totally and openly renegotiated my participation; my kids are young enough that I hope they end up pretty unorthodox as well. But I also hear about people whose kids actually rebel against their unorthodoxy by being more orthodox! Can’t win.
Well, we could win if the church would stop making the stakes for everything so high and stop talking about sad heaven and stop acting like leaving the church is the worst thing ever and we should pray those who leave should return.