I have a grandchild that at 15 is a lot like me. The other day they sent me a link to an article on “Survivorship Bias”. I had never heard of it, and thoroughly enjoyed the article. I asked my grandchild if they learned about this in school, and their response was “no, I just found it on YouTube and though you’d like it”
The one example from the linked article I really liked was the one about the airplanes from World War Two. The military collected data from returned airplanes (the survivors) on where they were getting shot (see photo above). They then had a plan to reinforce the airplanes in these areas (where all the red dots are). A statistician by the name of Wald noted that the military had only considered the aircraft that had survived their missions; any bombers that had been shot down or otherwise lost had logically also been rendered unavailable for assessment. The bullet holes in the returning aircraft, then, represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still fly well enough to return safely to base. Thus, Wald proposed that the Navy reinforce areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed, since those were the areas that, if hit, would cause the plane to be lost.
How does survivorship bias affect the church? I came up with a couple of areas.
Leadership only talks to survivors , not the ones that left. To get re-baptized after excommunication (or whatever the current name is) , you need to to have an interview and approval by a GA. (The handbook say FP approval, but it has been delegated). So these GA’s will only talk with people that want back in, and thus form their whole view of excommunication, the reasons and mindset of the excommunicated from the very small percentage that want to come back! These are probably the people that had a loving and caring Stake President, a family that didn’t shun them, and felt community at church and missed it.
These GA’s do not interview the vast majority of people that are excommunicated. They don’t talk to the people that had a hard nose SP that made their life a living hell. They don’t talk to those that had a falling out with the SP on some subject, and were excommunicated for not following their leaders. They don’t talk to those that were excommunicated for teaching incorrect doctrine (according to the SP).
Another way that survivorship bias is manifested in the church is that leadership is selected from survivors, people who had nice bishops that they admired. So they can’t imagine a bad bishop, because they never had one. The people with bad bishops or Stake Presidents, that were vindictive, they have taken themselves out of the running be either leaving the church, becoming inactive, or if they are active they get labeled as a trouble makers. Thus our current leaders, from the Q15 on down to our bishops are the survivors of good bishop youth interviews, inclusive youth activities, bishops that cared for the members, and showed Christ like love to everybody.
What other ways do you see survivorship bias in church?
Illustration by Martin Grandjean (vector), McGeddon (picture), Cameron Moll (concept) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102017718
Wheat & Tares 
If the church would truly research this and look introspectively, they would realize and then should acknowlege that a high percentage of the causaulties are from “friendly fire”. They should already know this, but in their own pride and combat overzeleousness, they refuse to lay down their arms and change stradegy.
Having run across this before as soon as I saw the title I guessed accurately where Bishop Bill was going to take this.
It can be taken to far as there are people that are in the church that have had a bishophole and they felt they needed to just outlast the bishop until he was released and it didn’t dent their testimony. But even that can be a bit of survivorship bias if you try and talk to those people and figured out why they stayed fully committed. The conditions that lead up to someone staying in the face of bad leadership are not ones that generally can be manufactured. I suspect part of it is just the person’s personality, but also a lifetime of experiences.
This issue highlighted is one of the reasons I really liked both Jana Riess’ “The Next Mormons” and David Ostlers “Bridges” as they both give an insight into those that leave. I do think the church does some polling of those that have left, but I don’t think they can really absorb most of the feedback of this type – for some of the reasons Bishop Bill mentions.
If you like this type of stuff, I would recommend the book and/or podcase “you are not so smart”.
I suppose where it is easiest to see where survivorship bias comes into play is with the stories GA share at general conference. Do you think that bugging people on membership roles who have asked for no contact with an official visit from the EQ every few months is a bad idea? Well you must be wrong because GA X has a shared a story from stake Y about one person (in a thousand?) who this was effective for. (And not all the people who this drove them further away.) Do you think that it is toxic for LGBTQ youth to stay in the church? Well you must be wrong because the GA has a heat-warming story of one youth who felt that staying was the best thing for them, ( and not all the other stories of youth who struggled for years or committed suicide). The problem is that when we hear these heart warming anecdotes, its easy to substitute these powerful narratives for careful analysis. GAs may not necessarily be any more prone to this bias (although I suspect confirmation bias is strong with them) but since as you state, there are few mechanisms in place for them to actually evaluate effects of policy in an unbiased manner, so it’s easy for them to believe that they are getting the full picture.
“… There is something about the individual and combined wisdom of the [Church leaders] that should provide some comfort. We have experienced it all, including the consequences of different public laws and policies, disappointments, tragedies, and deaths in our own families. We are not out of touch with your lives.”
M. Russell Ballard, “Be Still, and Know That I Am God” (Church Educational System devotional, May 4, 2014) and “Stay in the Boat” (General Conference, October 2014)
I am very about the reference to World War II, when we drove fascism out of Europe and saved the world. I also appreciate the use of statistics. However, Bill’s entire point here is built upon a faulty premise.
The irrefutable fact is that most members do not leave because they had a bad experience with a stake president or because a bishop forgot their birthday. People leave because they want to engage in behavior that is inconsistent with church teachings.
What good would it do to interview people who just plain want to hang out in the local honky tonk, Dairy Queen or 7-Eleven than they would like to fulfill a ministering assignment? What good would it do to interview those who prefer frolicking like demented stoats to attending the temple.
For you see, nothing would be learned by this besides the obvious fact that sin is momentarily pleasurable and can be a distraction. It takes more to win a war than this.
Great post, very thought provoking. I was in a reserve unit for a long time, and for several months after a deployment a large percentage of people just were not showing up to weekend drills. After the first month or two of this, every month the first sergeant (ranking NCO) would gather everyone and ask why people weren’t showing up. Every time people said they had no idea, because he was asking the people who DID show up. This concept seems so obvious but sometimes people really are blind to it.
I wish that someone would talk to college age members. If someone did, they would find that the college kids are leaving because they feel the church has nothing to offer that makes their lives better.
College kids tend to feel that the church is mired in refighting old wars that really ended long ago. College students today have gay friends, relatives, and coworkers. They have seen that same sex marriage did not destroy traditional marriage, as was prophesied. In fact, life went on as normal with no devastating impact.
Then there is the word of wisdom. The fight against things like green tea makes no sense at all to college students. It appears to be an arbitrary line in the sand to outlaw a drink with proven health benefits that does not impact intellectual functioning like alcohol does. While obesity rates increase among members who freely scarf down soft drinks and cheese burgers, the fight against healthy drinks makes no sense.
So I think it would be very beneficial for leaders to talk to people who have left. At least, it would be if the church would use what it learned.
@John Charity Spring So would it not be good to check with the number of people that have left the church and go on to be ministers in other churches? Not everyone leaves over bad leaders. Not everyone leaves because they want to frequent a honky-tonk. Not everyone leaves over history issues. Not everyone leaves over what they feel are leaders being untruthful. Not everyone leaves because they are pro LGBTQ. You are correct that not everyone leaves because of bad leaders. There are many varied reasons as to why. And that is where it is so good to look at statistically valid samples like the one from “The Next Mormons” that gives a good (relatively) non-biased sample. Even if it is only 10% of people leave for “bad leaders”, wouldn’t that be good to know what that percentage is and if it is increasing over time you might need to invest more in training leaders?
@rudi I think the best example of polling college kids is the book “the next mormons” (yes I have mentioned it now 3 times in comments today, but NO – I don’t get any royalties from the sale of the book). This was focusing on millennials, which most of have finished college. But it is the closest I am aware of of “talking with kids in college”. But to your point, the author does state that the majority of those that leave don’t leave because of history issues, LGBTQ stances, etc. They just don’t find it compelling.
That reminds me of the following quote I heard on a podcast and I looked it up:
“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion–its message becomes meaningless.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
I wonder how many of the “survivors” whom the church investigates remain “survived”. I suspect there are a significant number of folks who, returning to the church when life outside it turns out to be challenging without the old strategies and expectations they were prepared with, find that the church has retained all of the problems they previously rejected. I suspect they may eventually accept that the church can’t meet their needs and, once again, commit to going it on their own.
What, then, is the value of the data gained from such individuals during their temporary re-affiliation? Bad information leads to useless solutions.
OTOH, my best guess is that people who leave, rather than hanging out at Dairy Queens, have discovered something about religion itself that doesn’t prepare them for the challenges of their lives or add to their efforts in overcoming them. They may find the resources within themselves to meet their needs. Those are the people and methods that I suspect the church would prefer to dismiss. But that’s something I would definitely want to know about!
Meanwhile, although it’s an entirely different question than Bishop Bill asked, when Mr. Spring asserts “we” drove fascism out of Europe, I wish “we” would turn our attention to driving it out of the contemporary US. Too many practicing Mormons are seeming to come down on the wrong side of it these trying days and this terrifies me. And I am not exaggerating in the choice of that vocabulary.
You may be interested in knowing the Jana Reiss is working on a new study and book on why old farts (like me) leave the church. Data from “Next Mormons” revealed that there is a significant story with that age group as well. The new book will draw heavily on extensive phone interviews (I am fortunate to have been one of the interviewees).
I’m looking forward to the analysis and book.
As a former TBM (with major leadership callings too) who now does not attend, I’m frankly a little surprised that nobody from the ward or stake has reached out to me. If they did, they might learn a thing or two. And heck, maybe I would learn a thing or two. The funny thing is, I have not been vocal about my reasons for leaving. So my ward and stake leaders can only speculate at this point. Aren’t they curious?
I am not offended that nobody has reached out to me, I’m really not. I just find it kind of curious. I have no ill will or agenda against anyone at any level of the Church. And I’d be more than willing to engage. But if they continue to treat me “out of sight out of mind” we will never speak again. And it won’t be my loss.
For what it’s worth, I usually can’t give a vote to JCS. There is a chunk that I agree with and another I don’t – so no vote. No problem with a thumbs down today.
Stating something is an “irrefutable” fact, as you are wont to do, does not make it so. Your reasons for why people leave the church are the same three things they’ve been talking about for over a century and now have a lot of evidence that they are in fact in the bottom five reasons for why people leave the church from at least two major studies.
Also saying “People leave because they want to engage in behavior that is inconsistent with church teachings” – duh. For that to be a bad thing, church teachings must be overwhelmingly true/beneficial/promote a relationship with God/not be harmful to members/demonstrate love for God and fellow man. That is definitely open to debate and requires an individual calculus. For some, there is enough to stay. For others, not enough. That is not moral relativism – that is free agency and power to create one’s best life.
In a few weeks, it will be four years since I stopped “believing in” and practicing Mormonism (and I had previously always all in and had never had a period of inactivity or any reason for church discipline). The only Mormon sins of commission I have since picked up is a love of my morning iced coffee and some sweet tea in the summertime when the weather is fine.
Hardly frolicking in debauchery. And I have been able to resist the siren call of crocs.
Survivorship bias also applies to an individual’s spiritual experiences. I once had a bishop who multiple times shared an experience where he felt the Holy Ghost tell him that his child would lose their baseball game. The problem is that everyone constantly has random thoughts go through their head, and by sheer luck a few of these thoughts will turn out to be correct predictions. In his case, he had a 50% chance of being right even if he wasn’t inspired by the Holy Ghost. Unfortunately, people forget all of the times they were wrong and only remember the ones that affirm their faith. The same applies to priesthood blessings, promises for paying tithing, etc, and the faith-affirming stories are the only ones shared in testimony meetings. On my mission, I started recording everything I thought was a spiritual prompting, and most of them turned out to be demonstrably wrong.
And on an unrelated note, survivorship bias also applies to things like relationships and careers, and here is an excellent YouTube video about it :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k7jeQQdqPA
And another thought: if you want to have a testimony of a gospel principle such as tithing, you will never know the blessings it if you have always followed it your whole life. As Lehi says, you must know the bitter to know the sweet, otherwise you might be mistaking random events for blessings. I’ve been thinking about making a randomized control trial, where I write a program that decides whether to pay my tithing using a random number generator and without me knowing . Unfortunately, no church leader would ever encourage this idea.
Church leadership needs to get more information from ex-mos and TBMers alike. For myself, who is both inactive and old, I don’t get the Church’s emphasis on work for the dead. As Jana Riess has wondered: Why the emphasis on temple construction? Member growth has flat lined. Shouldn’t we be more concerned about the living? Instead of giving to the Church and have the leaders make resource allocations that I don’t agree with, I would rather help those living in poverty directly. For me, that is paying tithing and it is making better use of my personal time.
If the Church wants to energize the membership (both young and old, both active and inactive), it would help for the Church to have a stronger mission than work for the dead. It is my personal belief that helping resolve global issues like health and hygiene, water resource development, education, etc. would be a mission that would resonate with the membership. The Church has the financial and manpower to have a major impact on the well-being of the world’s poor. Instead it is piddling around on the fringes.
“The irrefutable fact is that most members do not leave because they had a bad experience with a stake president or because a bishop forgot their birthday. People leave because they want to engage in behavior that is inconsistent with church teachings.”
This is offensive.
What if the behavior that is inconsistent with church teachings is having some compassion and love for LGBTQ individuals and respecting their right to a life of companionship? What if it’s expecting charity to result in more people living in less misery instead of amassing obscene wealth? What if it’s having the belief that an institution should be an example of the principles it espouses? What if it’s considering the talents and ambitions of one half of the membership to be equally important to the other half’s? What if it’s merely wanting to worship with people you feel affinity with instead of people you share an address with? Or where leadership supports and inspires you? What if it’s accepting that the life that members of the FLDS church practices is closer to what Joseph Smith established?
The kind of simplistic and sneeringly dismissive pronouncements you make — tongue in cheek or not — are what make church culture so inadequate and antithetical to Jesus’ teachings.
This applies more to the Church in Latin America, and I imagine Africa, Asia and other developing parts of the world, but in my own experience it’s with missionaries baptizing kids. This was a big thing in my mission. Missionaries loved baptizing kids. 9 years old? That’s a convert baptism right there. Just get their parent’s permission and dunk them. Followed by a few weeks of attendance (since their parents wanted nothing to do with the Church, it was often us picking them up every Sunday) and then nothing. They had no real support so of course they stopped attending.
Baptizing kids was easy. It gave you another number. Not every missionary liked this practice. But some were notorious for it. As a junior companion, I think my companions and I racked up 6 or 7 baptisms of children, most or all of whom didn’t last long past my time in the area. I really began to really hate the practice. One of my zone leaders at a conference told a story of a child who was baptized, went inactive soon after that and then came back many years later. At the end of the story, this elder revealed this kid was his dad. “Don’t stop baptizing kids” was his lesson.
I wonder how many members on the rolls are just kids who got lessons 1-4, were baptized a week later and then never show up again.
I think JCS is wrong here. I think most people leave the church because they feel like leaders have hidden the history or are offering nothing relevant for today’s youth. But those above who discount his view are making a big mistake.
For the truth is that JCS’s comment represents the majority view of the church. Most active members do believe that those who have left did so because of sin. Certainly it appears that the leaders are convinced of this, or they would moderate their views.
So those who just discount JCS’s view are foreclosing an opportunity. If they really want change, they should seek for it. But they won’t get it if they fail to realize how the majority of active attendees feel.
The ultimate survivorship bias is to take the longest surviving pilot and to put him in charge, even if the war is not being won and new strategy is called for. 🙂
Trish, I wouldn’t dispute for a moment that Brother Spring is articulating the majority view of the members and, more to the point, the leadership. But that only underlines that the church is no place for survivors.
What’s the point of dialogue if you’re only going to feel more beaten down and discounted and no closer to a community of people looking for values less and less in evidence in the church culture? How does the church become more welcoming and inclusive if they rely on toadying up to the most conservative and calcified among them and leadership only becomes more insulated?
The church community couldn’t reach consensus on wearing masks and getting vaccinated to prevent serious illness and death to fellow members. For more than a decade they’ve turned their backs on the gay youth who’ve been committing suicide to escape the marginalization or outright rejection. Are you suggesting that there’s room for movement on issues like gender equality or financial transparency?
Maybe it’s already been more or less said, but I see survivorship bias in the Church’s approach to YSAs. The success stories there are happy: young, well-matched, faithful LDS people marrying and setting off on their lives together. They are help up as success stories and worthy of emulation. I think the church would get a big earful if it sought out the many (women especially) who have virtually no chance of marrying in the church because they didn’t marry at the typical time.
And this is to a certain commenter – don’t dare suggest that the sincere, always-serving young people in my house left to “engage in behavior … inconsistent with church teachings.” That is it simply not true.
Frankly, I don’t think many in leadership care about those who leave. It just fulfills what they preach—that Satan is working hard luring those away to the great and spacious building. They can feel good about themselves.
My youngest feels the church was emotionally damaging. The beginning of the end for him was when he, (salutatorian in his class) had the audacity to attend a school other than BYU (and not serve a mission). Never mind his chosen university had an LDS institute just right off campus, which he attended—until the leaders there made it clear his non-member girlfriend was not welcome and that he was going to ruin his life if he didn’t break up with her. (Uh, aren’t we in the business of converting people)? That non-member girlfriend became a wonderful daughter-in-law, the most kind, caring and loving person I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine our family without her.
Too often we are so focused on cramming people into a cookie cutter, not allowing the tent to grow, and in doing so we miss growing ourselves.
Years ago, I can remember packing up my mom’s books when she had to move because it was no longer safe for her to live alone. Her Relief Society materials included a cultural curriculum— learning about other countries etc. I think I can also recall a curriculum that explored literature— not just church books but classic literature. Maybe this what they did for “enrichment” activities?
(The Prop 8 campaign forever changed my spouse’s relationship with the church when Stake leadership used misleading and false political material to instruct members during the Sunday meeting block).
I don’t think there is really much in the way of leadership training. Pretty much every meeting is just another version of a sacrament meeting.
Hello fellow sinners. My name is bwbarnett, and I’m a sinner. Nevertheless, I’m on good speaking terms with my bishop and SP, who by the way are also sinners. I think Bishop Bill is wrong. The Q15 on down DO care about sinners of all types, in and out of church fellowship. I believe they are 100% willing to talk to anybody and offer their counsel when asked. I have heard GC talks addressed to those who are no longer members of the church or have never been members of the church. I’ve heard bishops and SP express love and concern for former members and non-members. I think Bishop Bill makes some pretty broad assumptions, with limited or no data to back them up. For example, this closing paragraph is complete “Bishop Bill Bias”:
“Another way that survivorship bias is manifested in the church is that leadership is selected from survivors, people who had nice bishops that they admired. So they can’t imagine a bad bishop, because they never had one. The people with bad bishops or Stake Presidents, that were vindictive, they have taken themselves out of the running be either leaving the church, becoming inactive, or if they are active they get labeled as a trouble makers. Thus our current leaders, from the Q15 on down to our bishops are the survivors of good bishop youth interviews, inclusive youth activities, bishops that cared for the members, and showed Christ like love to everybody.”
How can he possibly know that? Do you believe that none of the Q15 on down to our bishops have never had a “bad bishop” or other leader? Do you believe our current leadership has never had something offensive said to them in a church setting? I don’t.
As to what leaders think is causing people to leave, the RS lesson today was about Pres. Nelson’s GC talk that included his thoughts on this topic. The gist of it is that faith requires a lot of work, constant reinforcement, and avoiding doubts, and especially avoiding discussing doubts with those who doubt. Someone in the class recommended only discussing your doubts with people who don’t have any doubts, and all I could think was “Wow, that’s going to fail hard.” I was left with two strong impressions: 1) why is faith so insecure that it requires this kind of effort and protection, and 2) what is fast & testimony meeting if not rehearsing your beliefs with other believers (the exact same thing doubters are told not to do). It struck me as a very specific kind of psychological game we are encouraged to play: confirmation bias, echo chamber, and clamping down on any different views. The real question I was left with was “Faith in what? Doubt in what?” What is the faith we are supposed to be killing ourselves to protect IN? It doesn’t seem that this is maintaining a faith in God or Jesus specifically, but in doing what we are told by leaders and staying under their authority. If so, that’s not a faith worth protecting. Shouldn’t we be talking about the teachings of Jesus? Shouldn’t the object of our faith be compelling without all these extraordinarily defensive tactics? I also felt as if this advice was parallel to Trump’s warning against media that was critical of him, calling it fake news and an enemy of the people, and touting newcomers in conservative media like OANN and MaxNews.
Great topic and application, Bishop Bill. I really like kamron2’s points about (supposed) promptings of the Holy Ghost, and the need for randomized controlled trials.
Another area that survivorship bias affects that I don’t think has been mentioned is the stories we tell of people faithfully paying tithing, even in when in extreme distress like not being able to afford rent or groceries. We hear in church all the stories of people who paid their tithing and were then miraculously rescued by random income or an understanding landlord or an inspired visiting teacher. But what about the people who faithfully paid their tithing and then were evicted or went hungry? Such people are probably more likely to leave the Church, whether by just quitting attending or formally resigning. In extreme cases, people who donate to a church rather than look out for their own most basic needs might actually die, and thus not be around to tell their stories. I think the stories we tell each other about tithing at church are massively biased by this problem. In one moment, we’ll say that the blessings of paying tithing aren’t material, and then on the other, we tell these stories over and over about how they actually are. We’re missing the stories from the people for whom the blessings didn’t happen at all.
“ Someone in the class recommended only discussing your doubts with people who don’t have any doubts, and all I could think was “Wow, that’s going to fail hard.”
Yup. Absolutely. I tried that, with someone I considered a friend.
And, I wouldn’t have even described it as “doubts,”
but questions that I have for which really we can’t answer in the here and now, yet I was choosing to have faith.
Instead of saying, yeah those are hard questions—I was stridently told I need to figure out what is wrong with me, I need to humble myself, I need to read the scriptures and pray more etc etc
Our relationship forever changed that day. When my mom died last December she sent me a “sympathy” card saying first she is sorry about my mom, but we should maintain our separation and that she is really happy with her life and what she is doing. Ouch. (btw she was the Stake Relief Society President)
Certainty is everything in the church.
There is only one formula— A+B=C
We can’t acknowledge complexity.
Angela C re. what causes people to leave: “Shouldn’t the object of our faith be compelling without all these extraordinary defensive tactics?”
What *is* the object of our faith?
The tactics seem to be more necessary when it comes to Joseph Smith, not God and Christ. Yet the messaging from the church suggests an equivalency of all three that many people leaving find distasteful. President Nelson: “If you have doubts about God the Father and His beloved Son or the veracity of Joseph Smith’s divine calling as a prophet, choose to believe and stay faithful.”
I was struck by how wrong it seemed to me now to have all those in the same sentence. And I think a lot of people who leave no longer want Joseph Smith in their statement of faith. They aren’t out there revved and ready to sin. They just no longer fit into a church that so venerates a person of questionable (my word) character.
“I wouldn’t dispute for a moment that Brother Spring is articulating the majority view of the members and, more to the point, the leadership.”
I hope everyone in this thread speaks only for him- or herself. No one here should undertake to speak for anyone other than him- or herself, and yet it happens far too often.
I think the faith-promoting tithing stories are great examples of survivorship bias. You also don’t hear a lot of stories about awful missions over the pulpit, but I’ve sure heard plenty personally.
Here’s another survivor bias: in April GC when Elder Anderson told the story of a woman who had very high-risk pregnancies deciding to have another kid. Lucky for her she lived to tell the tale! I don’t think he mentioned any stories of women who died in childbirth, or suffered severe, life-altering post-partum depression. But I can assure you that they exist.
@wondering I have a hard time taking that Ballard quote seriously. For one thing, not a single priesthood leader has experienced being a woman. None have experienced remaining single or celibate for life. Etc etc. Given the lack of diversity in those ranks, it’s hubris to think they understand everything and have no need to listen to the masses. They aren’t even remotely representative.
@Angela I agree – when I hear Pres Nelson speak on this topic, he strikes me as either totally unwilling or unable to understand people who struggle or leave. Which is disappointing because it is just not that hard to understand. It’s not. There is data.
I think that his, and many other GA’s advice, is actually more tailored toward the faithful friends and family of those who are struggling—he’s trying to salvage them, trying to make them feel strong for not doubting or leaving. He’s not ministering to the strugglers because ministering requires listening.
I’ve been so baffled at why the Church won’t make hard changes that will hurt it in the short-term but help in the long-run. Then someone on this forum (I think?) mentioned that Nelson thinks the second coming is just around the corner and I think that’s so true. There is no incentive for short-term pain, long-term gain, they are just white-knuckling it until Jesus comes for the survivors. That honestly made me really lose hope for change.
@Elisa, A “hard time taking that Ballard quote seriously”?! There’s an understatement to match Ballard’s overstatement! His comment was patently ridiculous. But I didn’t see it as hubris — rather as lack of understanding, possibly born of living for years in a bubble with only occasional, distorted views of the outside world, combined with years of reinforcement from the adulatory masses. (Don’t we all “see through a glass darkly”? but maybe not a bubble.) After all, it is natural for one’s confidence and commitment to one’s own opinions to be reinforced by focusing primarily on those who hold the same opinions or merely reflect one’s own admiringly. On the other hand, “hubris” might be the appropriate word. I’ve lately been cogitating on the at-least-sometimes inverse relationship between certainty and humility.
I’d go with RMN being “unable [rather than unwilling] to understand people who struggle or leave” — just as he seems to have been unable to grasp (at least in advance) the incoherence and offense engendered by his Ensign article on “Divine Love” or by the November 2015 policy or his Victory-for-Satan speech or some of the statements in his BYU speech on the reversal of the November 2015 policy. While he is reported to be extremely intelligent (and it was evidenced by his career as a brilliant surgeon), that doesn’t preclude the possibility of his also being somewhere on the autism spectrum. I do appreciate his willingness to make at least some needed changes (e.g. no more 3-hour block) — whether they result from long preparation by the Church bureaucracy, from the random firing of synapses and scribbles on yellow pads, or from divine inspiration. Some others — bleah!, e.g. wasting resources trying to eradicate “Mormon” when the emphasis on Christ and His teachings could be accomplished more effectively and significantly otherwise, and without offense to those who bought into the pro-“Mormon” rhetoric and campaigns of Presidents Benson, Hinckley and Monson. Some people might have respectfully waited a little longer to change course established by predecessor prophets , or at least avoided implicitly accusing them of being minions of Satan. 🙂 But then, some in the past waited much longer than many had patience for.
Have you really lost hope for change? or only hope for change on your preferred time-table? “[W]e have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things.”
@wondering, I’ve lost hope for change on a timetable that will benefit my own children, and while I’m all for enduring and believing, I’m not for a Church that will hurt my kids in their lifetimes. My stewardship is to protect them from harm, not to put up with a harmful institution hoping that in 100 years it’ll see the light.
Also @Wondering I totally misread your initial comment. I thought you were citing the Ballard quote with approval. Obviously we are on the same page.
Re Nelson, I think unable and unwilling are probably very interrelated. Someone whose life, livelihood, reputation, etc depends on the Church is probably not consciously but is subconsciously unwilling and therefore unable to look realistically at its faults and dissenters. I’m sure I have my own blind spots.
This reminds me of the “best hen” error one of our kids was describing to us recently. Farmers looked at the caged hens and bred from those hens that were the fittest hens from each cage. This resulted in a lot of hens that fought each other for the position of top hen in the cages. Recognising their error it was decided to breed using hens from those cages in which all the hens seemed to be doing well. This was much more successful.
The idea of applying lessons from Survivorship Bias is interesting. I find it interesting that so many commenters are so sure about “why people leave” and that the other commenters are wrong because they didn’t line up with their difficulties. In reality, there are lots of ways to “crash and burn” and lots of reasons why. Things that others raise as major sticking points (Prop 8, Race and Priesthood) don’t impact me much at all, so wouldn’t contribute to me leaving the church. But that may well be the bullet that takes down a different plane.
I suspect that each person has to make a cost/benefit calculation multiple times in his life regarding “How much will I put into the Church?” To increase activity and retention, the Church has two possible paths to pursue. 1) lower the bar so that participation is easier/less taxing 2) increase rewards for participation. I suspect that both options can be pursued. The move to 2 hour church is decidedly an effort to address the first option. Increasing “rewards” is where I think most of the difficulty exists. For some people, there are negative rewards as mentioned multiple times. Those could be bad interactions with other leaders, difficulty with doctrines and practices, increase pressure to conform to social norms, etc. I think what we can really do better at is adding positive rewards or more accurately recognizing positive rewards. This is a case where comparing survivors to casualties would go a long way. How do those two populations differ when answering the question “How does participation in the Church benefit me?”
I gave a talk a few years back where I listed out ways the Church has blessed my life and was pleasantly surprised by the activity. Maybe that’s a topic for a future discussion. I’d love to see the discussion from others on ways the Church has made you a better person. We don’t do that often at church, and unfortunately, even less here on W&T. If we only focus on removing negatives, we really don’t grow. From a business perspective, if you want your company to grow, you need to grow the top line (i.e. the positive rewards). If we only focus on “cutting costs”, we are doomed to stay as we are with just a bit less leakage.
In Elder Gifford Neilson’s Priesthood session talk last April (This Is Our Time!), he shared a story about how he, as a new Seventy, was sent on an errand by the 1st Presidency. He gave a priesthood blessing to a young man who was about to go on a mission who had suffered a bad head injury. You guessed it, shortly after the blessing, the doctors did one last X-ray and found that surgery was no longer needed. The young man ended up serving a mission and is now raising a family. What you might not have guessed is that Elder Neilson also shared the following:
“Of course, that is not always the outcome. I have given other priesthood blessings with equal faith, and the Lord did not grant complete healing in this life. We trust His purposes and leave the results to Him. We can’t always choose the outcome of our actions, but we can choose to be ready to act.”
So sometimes we do hear stories in GC that aren’t the perfect and rosey kind where the keys are always found after a prayer or the missionary follows a prompting and knocks on a door of a golden contact, or like this one where a priesthood blessing is given and a miraculous recovery follows.
@bwbarnett, “faith not to be healed” is a pretty common theme in GC. I think that is necessary to address the very obvious issue that many, many people do not recover from illness despite receiving priesthood blessings. That’s very different from someone giving a talk about how a person was actually *harmed* by following a Church teaching. So personally I don’t think they get any points for “faith not to be healed” talks.
@squidloverfat, makes sense that we should practice gratitude and not be nit-picky. You’re lucky that race and the priesthood & Prop 8 didn’t affect you personally – they didn’t me personally, because I’m neither black nor gay – but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be bothered by them because I’ve been commanded by Jesus to love others who are impacted by them. On issues of race, LGBTQ discrimination, and sexism, I think those negatives are too costly to simply ignore and for many people no number of positives is going to tip the balance. In the case of LGBTQ policies, they literally cost human lives and create huge rifts in families in a way that does not befit a Church that claims to be pro-family. In the case of sexism, more and more women I know personally, who have been very faithful, served missions, etc. etc. are fed up and are taking their time / talents / energy to organizations that value them as whole humans.
I do think you’re right that they are trying to increase rewards. Some of those, like the new youth app & youth conferences, are promising. Others, like emphasizing sad heaven (which is a punishment, not a reward) are not. My two cents is they really need to focus on community-building – Church needs to be a place where people feel like they are part of a community that is doing meaningful things in the world and where they are making meaningful personal connections – and less on correlated material and fighting culture wars that were lost years ago.
Elisa: “Church needs to be a place where people feel like they are part of a community that is doing meaningful things in the world and where they are making meaningful personal connections – and less on correlated material and fighting culture wars that were lost years ago.” A thousand times, YES. I keep having the thought that the Church I grew up in just doesn’t exist anymore. I’m sure that’s true for everyone on some level because we are no longer our younger selves, but the Church culture is really very different from what it was in my home ward and in my formative years. I honestly did not know that the majority of Church members were conservatives until I was in college. I would have guessed it was maybe 50/50, which in my mind felt roughly right to get a variety of viewpoints and to grow. The culture war gay-bashing racist echo chamber we’ve become is just alarming. The rest of the country has gotten less racist, less homophobic, less sexist (while still unfortunately being all those things), but the Church has completely steered into those things hard.
@Elisa I guess I should be more clear in that Prop 8 and race. Saying they don’t affect me is not true. A more accurate statement would be that I am more or less inclined to agree with the current approach of the Church with respect to these issues. I didn’t mention sexism in my post, but I’d be inclined to agree with you on most of your points. I think a substantial portion of the active Church would agree with that position as well. Inertia is likely the stumbling block for a lot of change here.
As far as emphasizing rewards, thank you for your mention of youth programs–I hadn’t included that in my personal list. I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that community-building is the area we need to focus. I find that this is something we as a society (bigger than the Church) are losing. How often do we interact with our neighbors or others in our community. Our ability to seek out people who are just like us allows us to insulate ourselves from anyone who might think/act/look different than us. Looking back 30 years ago, many of the community organizations are much smaller and less pervasive. This includes not only churches, but also civic organizations (Rotary, Lions), Fraternal Orders (Elks, Shriners), Youth Organizations (Scouts, Little League, Boys and Girls Clubs). At risk of stealing Mr. Charity Spring’s thunder, we’ve replaced them with easier and more immediate entertainment options. In the short term, Minecraft and Youtube are much more attractive than Mutual or baseball practice. An evening with Netflix is more enjoyable than a Fireside or Rotary Dinner. The cost is longer term, though in that each of those other activities represents a constant replenishment of that nebulous term “community”.
You are absolutely right that some people will see costs so high to justify any number of benefits. For most of us, we just want to be better people and to be better because of what we do at church. And it has to be noticeable enough to make us want it more than sleeping in on Sunday morning.
Angela C: I like the way you framed the question in your response – is faith in important things really so fragile? There’s a very old idea (goes back at least to Socrates) that truth or goodness or virtue have a self-preserving property; a good idea can’t be harmed by disagreement, and a good person can’t be fundamentally harmed by other (bad) people (because there is ultimate justice). This idea got a BIG renaissance with the post-Enlightenment rise of utilitarian speech theory in the 19th century (marketplace of ideas, “truth will prevail,” yada yada). I suppose our Mormon version is something like what’s attributed to J. Reuben Clark: “If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”
Or, at least, I *wish* we were that confident. Apparently, RMN isn’t, so we’re advised to keep a thumb on the scale in favor of the status quo. Which is an astoundingly protectionist view coming from a 96-year-old Replublican, when you think about it.
John Charity Spring: To put it the way Stephen Maturin might (and judging by your alias, there’s at least a decent shot you’re familiar), do stoats frolic, at all? And never think to bring the sloths into any of this. The creatures won’t stand further debauchery.
– Your obdt. servant., a Possum
@Angela, I grew up in a very conservative ward (Bo Gritz signs in the neighborhood and a lot of Ross Perot fans, I’m 40 so that’s my era), but honestly that stuff just didn’t come up that much. I think we’re in a super weird time where everyone is talking about controversial political things all. the. time. and it’s the worst. I have always been a fish out of water at Church because I was literally born feminist, but the last 5 years it has been just so intense (and was somewhat intense for a number of years before that as well with Prop 8). Add Covid & masking controversies and an election year to the mix and it was unbearable. I’ve said here before but bears repeating related to your comment that the Church in the 90’s was not a whole lot more racist, sexist, or homophobic than mainstream America so it didn’t feel like a big deal. That’s no longer true – the divide is huge and the Church is on the wrong side of it (in my not-so-humble opinion).
As for community, I agree that’s really been/being lost. @squidloverfat makes an excellent point about that being a universal problem but it’s one I think Church could be uniquely positioned to solve if it would just be more inclusive. No youth program will maintain my kids’ interest if the Church still fights gay marriage – that’s proven to be a dealbreaker for them so far, despite my pleas that they look beyond that and try to see the good (and I really do try).
Growing up, I always looked down on “ward-shopping” and people who disassociated with the Church because they didn’t like their ward. I felt like that should be irrelevant and that one should remain active no matter how awful their ward was because it’s not about the ward or community – it’s about God. I feel very differently now – I think that the whole entire *point* of Church should be community, because I can have a relationship with God on my own. (Of course, that also relates to a faith shift in which I no longer believe the Church to be the sole arbiter of truth or authority – but I think a LOT of millennials are of the same mind, so the Church just has to offer them community or they’ll drop out).
JCS: Frollicking Stoats = excellent band name
Bill Possum: My mother used to always say “Truth crashed to earth shall rise again” (she might have said “crushed” rather than “crashed”). I actually wasn’t really sure what that meant when I was a kid. Was the truth crashing to earth it being debunked (crashing & burning) or embraced by the earthlings (the “to earth” focus)? Did rising again refer to truth being triumphant (rising above our petty human squabbles) or leaving the earth (REALLY rising above us) because we are incapable of fathoming it? Regardless, I think my child-brain eventually decided that it meant that our human ability to understand truth was only intermittent at best, and that ultimately, truth was an entity beyond our human control, something we encountered fleetingly. Now that I’m an adult I think it was just a folksy way of saying “Truth will out” or eventually the truth always comes out. But maybe my childish understanding was on to something after all. You can control narratives. You can manipulate feelings. You can use psyhology to trick people into believing things. But the truth rises above all those things, even though we are bound to misunderstand it. It can’t be controlled or altered by us.
Elisa: “No youth program will maintain my kids’ interest if the Church still fights gay marriage” Yes, with the caveat that I have found the older I get that my childhood friendships in the Church can endure all things, including the fact that most of them have left the Church. Community outlasts the Church’s influence. So the Church can foster community, and should (boy, it’s getting worse and worse at this, though), but it has to quit trying to use that community it creates as a voting bloc or an activist arm to do its dirty work in ill-conceived culture wars that require alignment to something that EVERYONE BUT THEM seems to see is a generationally lost cause. As our kids continue to leave, at some point, we have to say “Why am I still in this thing they’ve all rejected when I also don’t want to fight these culture wars I don’t agree with? Why am I paying even one cent or the endless quantities of time towards someone else’s political goals that run counter to my own?”
I was also thinking of the way we treat at-risk pregnancies at church as an example of literal survivor bias. However, I think I remember an Ensign article from maybe 20 years ago with a cautionary tale of a women advised by her doctor not to have more children who died ignoring that advice. Applause for either the editor who let that in and/or the (possibly) GA who said it.
Even though we nominally believe that the life (and even health, per one quote from GBH) of the mother is an acceptable exception to our opposition of abortion, our veneration of stories of mothers who walk “through the shadow of death”(THM) to give miraculously healthy births belies that.
I wanted to share in a sacrament meeting talk my experience with the Lord helping me get through my terminated ectopic pregnancy, but I realized people might be rather judgmental about that. Then I counter-realized that that was exactly why I should share the experience; we never hear from mothers like me who listen to doctors instead of dying, and obviously we never hear from the ones who die, so it’s just subconsciously believed that abortions are really never necessary. (Technically, the procedure for ectopic pregnancies isn’t labeled abortion, but effectively it is, so…)
_______
About survivor bias and leaving the church: I sat through the stereotypical Sunday school discussion about why people leave. One sister had managed to talk her inactive husband into coming that day for the first time since he’d left. He listened for just a little to the standard answers — he wanted to sin, he’d been offended, he was too weak and/or prideful — before he stood up and walked from the front row to out the door. As of a year later his wife said she couldn’t get him to come back again. Why do we even have those lessons?!
Laurel, I’ve been to about 60 years of SS that I remember, but never heard any discussion of “why people leave”. Are such things common somewhere? Did it happen after President Uchtdorf basically told the Church to cut it out (October 2013)? If so, why didn’t someone speak up to tell those with the sin, offense, weakness, pride answers that they were flat wrong to be generalizing judgmental reasons and omitting other reasons, if the discussion needed to take place at all? (It didn’t.)
I’ve often thought the Church is no longer the Church I grew up in. Heck, it isn’t even the Church I raised my kids in. But I suppose I’ve not ever been in the same Church some of the commenters here have experienced. Maybe that’s because I’ve never lived in Idaho or Arizona or in Utah (except when at BYU).
Wondering, it does my heart good to hear that these lessons aren’t the norm. I’ve bounced around a lot of wards in Utah, and it seems to come up at least once a year. I’d just assumed it must be part of the various manuals.
Wondering: Our RS lesson yesterday was kind of about that because it was about Pres. Nelson’s talk about the need to reinforce one’s faith and not “rehearse your doubts with other doubters.” Well, that of course always opens the pandora’s box.
The Church needs to give members a reason to stay, and investigators a reason to join. One way to reorder priorities is by asking the active members, inactive members, ex-members, and the general public. The current priorities don’t seem to be inspiring the young or the old.
I suggest that the following be deemphasized: anti-LGBTQ+ policies, work for the dead, temple construction, biblical literalism, anti-science sentiments, legal entanglements, etc.
The money saved from the above (plus a portion of the interest on $100+B) could be repurposed to assisting the living, or more particularly those in trouble . Young missionaries could do more volunteer work. I would argue that this redirection of resources would move the Church closer to Christ’s teachings. And encourage K&M to quit living off the largess of the Church and get real cases.
Yes, Angela, that would do it! I’ve either been lucky my local leaders have not chosen to review such talks with us or that that did it on a week I was elsewhere. Who knows?
One of the things I remember from the film “Saving Private Ryan” was a scene where a glider had been armoured because a vip was going to ride in it. The armour plating was so heavy the glider could no longer glide. It sank like a stone.
That we have vips in the church , and that they are protected from reality and meeting members, and ex members, seems wrong. Was there a time when visiting authorities visited, and even stayed the night with real members.
I am pretty sure Mark E Petersen stayed in our home in Scotland, when I was a boy.
He is the last Apostle I have met. I don’t believe there is much relationship between church leaders and members.
Apart from homophobia, and sexism, the number of members that voted for trump, and still follow him has really shaken me. The anti mask, anti vaccine, and racist sentiment/vitreol, even against Oaks advice, make me wonder why I associate with these people. The church is the only thing we have in common, and our understanding of that does not have much in common. If 80% of members over 40 are trumpers, what am I doing here? And how many Apostles does that also describe?
Laurel, I remember a lady in my ward some years ago bragging how she had defied doctor’s orders not to have more kids because of great risk to her life after child number two and proceeding to have four more kids after that. I was very irked at her sharing that. You shouldn’t be risking your life to have kids. That makes zero sense. Glory-seeking braggadocio. Sorry, lady, you are not a recipient of my awe and admiration. I simply see you the same way that I see free-style rock climbers: a bad example whom nobody has any business making a hero or heroine out of.
I also remember my time at a university ward where the bishop thought it was a good idea to invite on two separate occasions two different couples to talk to the singles who had had over 12 kids (this seemed to turn students off to the idea of having families at all more than it encouraged them). One couple had 16, I remember. They presented on the importance of the family. Sorry folks. If you have had 16 kids you obviously don’t value family. For your motivation in having that many kids is quite clearly glory-seeking in Mormon culture at the expense of the care and attention that your older kids need. You cannot properly give enough attention to your kids and end up forcing the older ones into positions of care-takers at young ages when they should be focusing on their education. You are no paragons of virtue. You’re paragons of selfishness and militant fecundity.
Very interesting.
It’s extremely easy to assume the Church doesn’t make any effort, but I think it makes efforts to be aware as it can be. I’ve read words from sociologists outside the Church looking in who feel the Church’s efforts to understand its membership rivals many academic organizations. I can remember a talk from Merrill J. Bateman while I was at SUU where he talked of a comprehensive study the Church did of young adults who left the Church. The number who came back later in life was actually higher than I thought it would be, but that was twenty years ago. It may be less now. Admittedly, I don’t know how much of that study involved getting feedback from those that left, were inactive, or involved actual excommunication. There is always the temptation and fault to fail to recognize that because someone came to a different conclusion than we would, and/or reacted differently than we would, means we conclude they failed to notice or react entirely. That’s not a problem limited to religion.
Does the analogy, though imperfect, sort of go both ways? A lot of these airplanes in WWII went off the radar, never to be found again. Some were damaged beyond recognition. Some fell behind enemy lines and were now unreachable or obscured by others. Despite that, I’m sure there were plenty of engineers who clearly wanted to examine these planes and learn everything they could about them, but couldn’t because of some things beyond their control. That doesn’t automatically mean it’s the fault of the engineers (though in rare cases a few of them may have missed some things in earlier inspections that led to the plane never coming back in the first place).
Excommunicated people who don’t want to come back but want to give the Church an earful will often do it either officially or through a blog or podcast. I’m sure there’s some aspect of the Church that keeps an ear to the ground with regards to these things. Some of the leaks in recent years indicate such. Others probably do have a lot to offer but simply do not want to be found. I ran into one or two of those on my mission, and struggled to get a whole lot of feedback out of them, despite some effort. They just wanted to put things behind them.
A lot of it admittedly pivots back to the justifiability and validity of the excommunication in the first place. My own experience with the Church and talking to excommunicated or formerly excommunicated members is that the Church really is trying to do what’s right, and succeeds more than the media would lead you to believe. If those that believe they were wronged vocalize it, they’ve automatically given the media, members, and the Church a chance to listen (whether the Church or members reconsider the issue is another matter entirely). But if they pull themselves out the picture, they’ve removed the possibility of any of that happening at all. Not trying to blame the person (given the amount of scrutiny they’re given by those both in and out of the Church, how could I?), just stating a reality.
Eli – that trend of leaving and coming back has been across Christian denominations for many decades. Once kids come into a marriage it can change many things – one of which is wanting the children to have religious instruction. But that seems to have really fallen off the last 2 decades. I read a book “Choosing Our Religion” and it didn’t really focus on Mormons but on American religious society and it covered this in statistical detail.
I do agree that there is some awareness, especially now that there are so many leaving that those that leave feel they can post what some of their issues are. They are much more vocal. I think the bigger question is if the leadership is aware, what effective changes have they made?
Sqidloverfat, maybe you missed my post a few months ago on why I love the church.
I haven’t read all the comments, so I apologize if this has already been addressed, but I wonder if the plane analogy is apt here. That is, if you only talked to the disaffected who will never come back, wouldn’t you get the same skewed view as only talking to those who returned? And what do you do with what I suspect is the huge middle-ground group who have left the church, but probably didn’t have a horrible bishop or overbearing SP, but instead just decided they didn’t believe enough to keep coming?
I’ve read “Next Mormons,” and I understand why people above would be calling for that kind of approach. But I also assume someone at Church headquarters has done so, or–more likely–had already had similar research done many times over. So I strongly suspect the Church already knows why people are leaving, at least in broad terms. I guess that’s why it doesn’t bother me much when a SP gets up and tells a story, for example, about how someone came back after a diligent ministering visit: I know it’s the anomaly and the Church knows it’s the anomaly, but it’s also something that happens with enough frequency that it can be a useful call to arms.
Happy Hubby,
I want to answer your question. I don’t want to seem heartless in the process, and I do have some real answers.
First, at the risk of sounding heartless, maybe the Church doesn’t need to change (a lot), but the world is simply getting a lot worse. We were willing to lose 1/3 (or 1/3 part—some say there is a distinction) of our brothers and sisters to come down here. The scriptures call them sons of perdition, so they knew full well what they were rejecting. Life would be hard. Likewise, I think the rest of us knew the risks and ramifications of what letting go of the rod would mean and opted to come here anyway. Whatever efforts the Church would make clearly would not be enough for everyone while in mortality, and I think we knew that. Having said that, I do think the Spirit World offers a clear path for redemption more than many other Latter-day Saints (or other religions for that matter) might believe. I also think we as individuals can step up our own efforts to leave the 99 to go after the 1. We make up the body of the Church, after all. No leader, program, punishment, or incentive from the organization is going to be able to replicate the process of one Saint helping another Saint (or former one).
As for other ways of keeping people in the Church, I can only largely write as to what has kept me in, as well as things that already seem to be working for my own children.
One would be my love of science. And by “love” I mean a healthy, if not full, understanding of all its purposes, limitations, interactions between its own disciplines, and its own built in cautions that too many who profess to be scientifically minded either ignore or remove entirely. Take that love, a place it side by side with Gospel truth I feel the Spirit has borne witness of, and I see no real conflict between the two, or at the very least I see some clear paths for reconciliation. In summary, no matter how many doubts I might enjoy entertaining, a love of truth keeps bringing me back around to the Gospel and the Church.
Another would be just being a bigger influence in the lives of our children. I enjoyed my school experience, but in retrospect I am just amazed at how much I was away from my family, how much I was at the mercy of the school system, and how much time and energy my parents had to use for deciding if and when to compete with something being taught at school. My wife and I made the decision to home school. My kids get plenty of socialization with other home-schooled kids. My kids know how to talk to adults more than most kids their age. We teach them what we think is right, but also what the world thinks is right, and why we disagree. My kids are growing up with an innocence about them, but they are far from stupid when it comes to reality. The oldest has both a common sense and serenity about him that exceeds that of many adults I know. As of now, these attitudes seem to be keeping my kids on a clear Gospel path they can be self-reliant on. The fact that the Church has always encouraged active involvement with our kids just underscores that they were right. Though I don’t think they’d outright encourage homeschooling, I do recall the Church announcing a homeschool curriculum, though I haven’t seen anything since. We would definitely add it to our own hodge-podge of materials. I do think an increase in homeschooling may have been one of the few silver linings of Covid. I guess a shorter way of saying this would be that I think it has less to do with what goes on in Church and more to do what goes on in our own homes, which the Church has stressed as long as I can remember. Not listening to that is not the fault of the Church.
One final thought, looking at my entire life as a member, is that although there are a lot of external values about the Church, many of which do not appeal to others, it’s what it’s taught me to value internally that has given me internal joy that sort of springs from itself at some point, and has external manifestations of who I am and how I treat others. The Church can only go so far in those regards. The older I get, the more I realize the Church is both the departing gate and vehicle, not the road or final destination.
“First, at the risk of sounding heartless, maybe the Church doesn’t need to change (a lot), but the world is simply getting a lot worse.”
This conversation has happened a lot on this blog, so I’ll keep it short.
The world isn’t getting worse. It’s getting better. It’s increasing in love and acceptance towards racial, gender, and sexual orientation minorities that have been marginalized in many cultures throughout history. The Church isn’t keeping up with that, and that’s a major reason it’s losing people. Good people. Not people who are not valiant. Some of the most valiant for Christ.
There is no better decade or century to live in in the United States for a woman, a non-white person (except for Native Americans – that’s a different story – they were better off pre-colonialism), or a sexual minority.
I actually agree with a lot of the comments about communities deteriorating, etc – I am not saying today is without problems. But it is incredibly offensive to assume that people who leave are wicked or faithless, this is just a sifting of the wheat and tares / sheep and goats, etc. That has been like, the entire point of a ton of the comments above. If we have that attitude, we have no hope of retaining or regaining people who leave. Why on earth would they want to stay around a bunch of people who look down their righteous noses at them? Why would the one lost sheep you’re going after be interested in rejoining such an unwelcoming flock?
Perhaps the Church/World contrast is unhelpful to some — at least to me and many of my extended family. It seems to us that there are multiple contradictory “Church” teachings (from leader to leader and from time to time) and multiple contrasting Church cultures (from place to place and from time to time), just as there are multiple contrasting non-Church cultures and beliefs in the “World.” If so, then it is impossible to teach “what the world thinks is right” as if that were a monolithic thing of some sort. But parents teaching children what they think is right AND that everyone makes mistakes seems to me a good idea.
The “problem [ with the philosophies of men mingled with scripture”] is our ignorance of that mingling, our assumption that we are not mingling scripture with philosophy when, in fact, we are. Much of what we say about the gospel is simply late nineteenth-century philosophies of men rather than contemporary philosophies of men” Jim Faulconer, BYU Philosophy professor.
For all those who clutch their pearls while decrying the evils of the world, like where do you want me to live?
@Chadwick – What?
Wondering: Loving that Jim Falcouner quote. Stitch that on a pillow, stat! (It’s also one reason our blog purports to be “the philosophies of men mingled with the philosophies of women.” This stuff is mostly invisible to people, but it’s literally the air we breathe).
@bwbarnett: A few commenters were discussing how the world is getting worse. My point is that I have nowhere else to live. I don’t think the world is horrible, mostly for the great reasons Elisa cited, but also because I have some pretty great neighbors. Yes the annual block party includes hot dogs and neighbors who sometimes frequent 7-11 and honky tonks, but they are all I have, and quite frankly, they rock!
Eli honestly you sound more clueless than heartless.
Eli – thanks for your response and concern about pushing hard on me. But I am a big boy and I have the pull-up diapers to prove it! 🙂
On your comment that maybe the church doesn’t need to change and could lose some. The only issue is that it seems to me that Elder Marlin Jensen was right when he said, “we are losing some of the best and brightest”. Also if you have read “the next Mormons” (or watched leaked working sessions of the Q12) you can see the trend line for retaining people growing up in the church is heading for less than 50% – baring anything that changes that. That combined with significantly slower growth does mean it is important. Not so much to bring them back, but to find out why they left in the first place. I don’t have a reference, but I recall that a top church leader confided that once someone went down the rabbit hole and really left, it was not likely for them to ever return. That is different than someone that goes inactive due to feeling they are not good enough.
I just have to say it seems quite condescending to imply that those that don’t believe the same as you do as a “son of perdition”. To me that just feels like it is condemning the vast majority of everyone around me. All my neighbors have had the missionaries knock on their door multiple times a year – year after year. Are they all rejecting the gospel/God? I just don’t get the logic. It used to make me feel good – special – one of the elect. But I just can’t see it that way anymore.
I am glad your “real answers” work for you.
Elisa,
I honestly would not prefer to be born at any other time on the earth. However, I think it’s hard to argue against the fact that pornography is more abundant and available than it’s ever been. Human trafficking is also abundant but also seems to be more in the crosshairs. Corruption, at least to me, has also appeared to have been amplified by the worldwide web, where deals can be made at the click of a mouse.
I’m grateful equality has gotten better. And although I love to celebrate and learn from differences, I think far less in terms of gay, straight, black, white, male, or female and more in terms of “child of God with the Gospel” and “child of God without.”
I did not wish to imply all who left were wicked and faithless, nor do I believe the Plan of Happiness is a rat race of some sort, or celestial Darwinism. I don’t think anyone is beyond reach. I do think mortality is messy and that we accepted that with eye wide open. The Church has changed and can again, but at some point I think the changes many are advocating for start to call into question many other aspects of what makes the Church exactly what it is (which many already are questioning).
Happy Hubby,
By “Sons of Perdition” I was referring exclusively to those who were cast out of heaven for rebellion. I apologize if I didn’t make that more clear. I think only a handful of other individuals will ever fit the definition. And by “real answers” I meant sincere ones, take that as you will.
I don’t look down my nose at people (if I’m honest, I think I’ve seen more looking down the nose at active members from bloggers and commenters here than I ever did from active members of the Church to others, but I did grow up in some pretty awesome and non-judgmental wards). I guess beyond what I already said, the answer becomes more of a “I don’t know.”
Let’s say you have a person who has left the Church, and give ten reasons for doing so. If I’ve studied all those reasons in as much or greater detail but see no reason to leave, does that automatically mean I need to change something, and the Church as well? If I’m honest, I don’t think it does, but I’m all for gaining, retaining , and seeing returns. Contrary to whatever impression I gave, I do think the Lord weeps every time someone leaves, and I come quite close. Some change is likely needed. I’m just not sure most of it can or should come from the Church itself. Maybe a lot of the tools are already there, and it’s just up to the members to utilize them.
@Eli, I truly and sincerely hope your words don’t come back to haunt you if/when one of your children distances from the church some day in the future. It’s likely to happen. I don’t know almost any parents of young adult children that haven’t seen at least one leave. Primary teachers, bishops, stake presidents, general authorities, church presidents. It doesn’t matter how faithful you are, how good of a parent you are, how wonderful your children are. Some of the best, most faithful people I know have had a child leave. We see through a glass darkly and it’s best not to judge but to welcome others with an expansive heart. The church has historically changed as old practices have been found to be untenable and that is likely to continue. People can change, but sometimes institutions also need to change. And yes, we are losing far too many of the best and the brightest among us. The loss will have profound implications for the church over time. Please, please, please read “Bridges” by David Ostler. You can buy it at Deseret Book. Or at least listen to one of the many podcast interviews he has given. It will be well worth your time. And please don’t speak of sons of perdition when you are discussing those who have left. It is not the day of judgement, church leaders teach of an atonement, and the scriptures describe a God that looks on the heart.
e,
I didn’t see your comment earlier. Must have been stuck in the queue. Kind of wish I’d missed it still. Believe what you want. At least give me an A for effort. Most active members I know have no idea W&T even exists, let alone spend any time here. They have no idea what variety of ideas exist among members, even if that variety represents a minority of disputed size. I rarely agree with what I read here, but I do come here to understand, among other things. At times, I’ve even been an ambassador of sorts to other active members for some of the ideas I’ve come into contact here. But purely gaining ideas comes off a little selfish to me, so I try to add to the discussion from time to time. I may come off as a “run of the mill” active member (I feel I’m far from that, actually, and think active members get lumped into a stereotype by less active or former members just as often as active members do to them), but I’m just trying to represent myself honestly. I do venture out of my comfort zone to come here. I’ve been at W&T six plus years and still haven’t totally figured out what it’s trying to accomplish, so maybe there is something to your label of cluelessness. Somewhat alienating and insulting comments like yours, however, I feel are one of many reasons thousands of active members likely stumble upon this blog each month, only never to return (as I was at first tempted to do). You know, for all I love about the Church and its members, I’ll readily admit that it might not be fully up to snuff, as of now, to be fully able to bring individuals to Christ and prepare the World for his return. But as of right now, few bloggers and commenters here have convinced me they have the moral upper hand to do it either. I’ll stay hopeful though.
Eli I apologize.
@Ruth June 13, 2021 at 5:59 pm
Your comment about YSAs worthy of emulation as they become YMAs reminded me of a regional conference I attended. GBH spoke. He told about looking out over the plaza east of the SL Temple (presumably from his top floor apartment window), watching the many newlywed couples. Then he said, “I wonder how many of those marriages will last”.
My thoughts on young married, faithful couples are similar. Many here have been those idealistic, beginning families, devoted members. Personal life experiences (work, kids, church, finances, illnesses, balance), then seeing close friends go through tough things no one deserves, … so many things can affect how we understand things.
Church answers don’t always work in “regular” life circumstances. That’s even before one becomes aware of the info in the gospel topics essays, and have to figure out how to deal with it.
Life happens to everyone, each person reacts in his/her own way.
Side note: GBH also talked about something he read in the paper that morning. At the time, the Salt Lake Tribune was the only Sunday paper in SL. He said he cuts interesting articles out of the newspaper and puts them in a drawer. Sometimes he would take the one on top and use it in his talks.
In church when I was a teenager, my friend’s mom suggested that we read a local newspaper every day, and a weekly news magazine. Options were simpler at that time.
That’s probably the best advice I ever got at church.
@Lois June 13, 2021 at 6:53 pm
“… until the leaders there made it clear his non-member girlfriend was not welcome and that he was going to ruin his life if he didn’t break up with her. … That non-member girlfriend became a wonderful daughter-in-law, the most kind, caring and loving person I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine our family without her.”
Not only ruin his life, but his entire eternity! /s
Good on your son for not listening to the authoritarian voices. Congrats on having a great DIL!
Endogamy is the push to marry within one’s group. In a relaxed way, it’s quite common, because people tend to hang out with, then marry, people similar to themselves.
When it’s codified, it has some drawbacks. The most glaring to me is that it undermines helping people use their own critical thinking skills [CTS], based off observations, interests, values, compatibility, etc. It emphasizes and elevates the role of the institution in personal lives.
It makes it so we have a hard time really looking at people outside of church parameters.
This is somewhat peripheral, but what I’ve been thinking of as I read recent comments. My daughter and grandchildren are marginally active. My grandson decided to attend a ward activity this afternoon. As they drove away from dropping him off at the activity and watching for the first 15-20 minutes, my granddaughter started crying and asked her mother how the kids could be so mean and completely ignore her brother. Do I think they will continue to attend church activities? Probably not. I’m VERY active and committed to the gospel, but I really can’t say I think they should. It breaks my heart.
@ PWS
That is very, very sad. Difficult all around. Your granddaughter shows sweet empathy.
I apologize if/when I may have been/done something like that.
Thanks for the response Eli. I do think if we were sitting it a room having a chat we would more likely come away feeling we see many things the same way. Playing blog comment tag isn’t always the best form of communication.
A parent who loves . . .,
Missed your comment earlier and have been away a few days. That I struggled with my points is clear. I do appreciate the book recommendation.
Happy Hubby,
I wholeheartedly agree.
E,
Thank you. I look forward to future discussions.