Last week, Tom Stringham published an article called “The Other Religion” in the Public Square Magazine. In it he compares the relationship between the Church and its “disaffected members” to a marriage in which a faithful spouse (the Church) is bewildered by the behavior of its wayward spouse (the disaffected member). The wayward spouse gradually loses interest in the marriage, but the faithful spouse cannot seem to understand why and, if anything, its overtures toward and accommodation of the wayward spouse only make things worse. Eventually, the wayward spouse abandons the marriage, and the faithful spouse learns that the wayward spouse had simply “fallen in love with someone else, become unfaithful, and left.” In other words, it isn’t so much that the Church is failing wayward members. It’s that wayward members are abandoning the Church for another lover.
The remainder of the article sets out to define the “other lover.” Stringham proposes that the other lover is, in fact, another religion–albeit a false one: the “false religion” of “progressivism.”
While I don’t disagree that too many people–on both my side of the aisle and Stringham’s–treat politics like religion and are identifying more closely with political affiliation than racial or religious background, Stringham might have found additional insight about the “other lover” had he asked a so-called wayward spouse what they were leaving for. I’m going to address that question here.
To be clear, I only represent my own experience as a “wayward spouse”–although I’ve got many close friends and family members who are in a similar situation, and for similar reasons, as mine. We are return missionaries, temple-married, former ward and stake leaders. We are pioneer stock or brave converts. We hung on every word of the prophets–we took notes during General Conference, and we took our second piercings out when President Hinckley told us to. We paid 10% on our gross income, we attended the temple monthly, and we wore our garments night and day.
Since meeting the other lover, though, our relationship with the Church has indeed shifted dramatically. Some of us still attend and even have callings in Church, but it has taken on a much diminished role in our lives; we are constantly reassessing the relationship and may be looking for alternatives. We no longer feel a strong sense of loyalty to the Church or trust its leadership, even if we have affectionate community and familial ties. We may not carry temple recommends or follow all of the rules. We may have unorthodox beliefs and may even disbelieve many fundamental truth claims in the LDS Church. But God and spirituality are still at work in our lives—maybe more than ever—and we are doing the best we can at navigating changes in belief that we never anticipated having and that were just as shocking to us as to our “faithful spouse”. Sometimes we navigate ourselves out of the Church; sometimes we make it work, but on radically redefined terms. I’m speaking about that group, because I’m in it.
Mr. Stringham, the other lover is not difficult to identify. The other lover is God.
We met God, and everything changed.
We were plodding along the covenant path, thinking our spiritual power depended on it, only to realize like Dorothy in Oz following the yellow brick road that the power was within reach all along. The man behind the curtain was not the source of power and we do not need to perform arbitrary tasks for his benefit to access it. We had only to recognize the divinity within us.
We were hustling for our worthiness, hoping to one day earn a prize in heaven, when we realized that we are already more than conquerors through Jesus Christ, and that nothing–nothing–can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. We listened carefully to the heaven Mormonism promises us and realized that we didn’t want dominions or kingdoms or principalities. We don’t need to rule over anybody. We just want to rest peacefully in the shade of our own vine, under our own fig tree.
We met God and realized that He didn’t want us to worship the false idol of the heteronormative nuclear family. He loves all of the human family, and weeps when we are without affection for our queer brothers and sisters and when we hate our own blood and turn our queer children out of our homes. He wants us to drop our muskets, to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and to stop making our queer family afraid.
In fact, when we met God we realized She is not some petty, jealous being in the sky demanding that we worship and obey Her without reason. We learned that She, like a woman who cannot forget her nursing child or the children of her womb, simply wants us to connect with Her and to care for one another. Any commandment that does not meet one of those aims is not of Her but of humans. And She will never ask us to hurt others to prove our obedience to Her.
We learned that eternal belonging isn’t something obtained through a man-mediated covenant given to a select handful of people. We have always belonged to God and to each other, and we are all chosen.
We met God in women and learned, finally, that women matter. Their bodies, their voices, their health, their choices, their dreams, their abilities, their leadership matter. We know that it is not arrogant but faithful to ask, seek, and knock. We know that our experiences and our theological work is not speculation. We learned that we look like God and She like us. We learned that if we ask God for fish, She gives us fish, and if we ask for bread, She gives us bread, so we dropped the serpents and the stones that our leaders kept insisting that we carry and followed after Her trail of breadcrumbs wherever it might lead us.
We met God in black people and felt to our core that Black Lives Matter. We realized we had so much work to do to root out our own racism and to acknowledge our privilege. We knew that the first step was to apologize, unequivocally, for things we have done and said out of ignorance and prejudice and the ways the organizations we support perpetuate white supremacy. And we recognized the call of our baptismal covenant to mourn with those who mourn, and we are mourning.
We met God in queer people and knew that only the best will do for them–no second-tier heaven isolated from family and connection both in the here and hereafter. We recognized that there is one Body of Christ and every week we are to remember Christ, so our hearts break when Church leaders dismember him instead by excommunicating our queer friends for the sin of loving and committing to one another. But we know that there is one fold of God and we found it in the folds of the rainbow flag we fly.
We met God in the earth and awoke to the need to better care for it. We lamented that we had been spending too much time waiting for Jesus to return and fix all of our problems and cleanse the earth and too little time taking responsibility for fixing them ourselves. We committed to do our part to reverse the environmental degradation that is inseparable from spiritual degradation.
We met God in the homeless man, in the prisoner, in the cancer patient, in the impoverished child, in so many suffering people and we realized that we had been spending too much time looking for God in expensive, exclusive buildings when we should have been looking in the homeless shelters and prisons and hospitals and schools and anywhere else there is suffering or need. We decided to let the dead bury the dead–we need to attend to the living.
We met God in scriptures that we had read dozens of times but had not yet allowed to read us. We met Jesus again for the first time. We realized that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and within us–just like Jesus said–and that we didn’t need to wait until a literal second coming to welcome him into our lives and homes or to see him embodied in others or try to embody him ourselves.
We met God in other books, too, and in art, and in music, and film, and we saw that God has revealed Themself time and again across peoples and cultures and religions and mediums. Because our trust is in God and not men, we can drink widely from the wisdom in other places without fearing ideas that might upset our worldviews or insisting on deciding what we do and don’t agree with. There’s no box we need to fit God into anymore and the world has never been more marvelous. We learned what a prophet really is, and we found many–both within and outside of our faith tradition.
We met God in a million ways in a million places and we finally, finally realized this Truth that Mr. Stringham seems to miss:
We were never meant to be married to the Church in the first place.
We are the bride and Christ the bridegroom. Church was the other lover, not God.
“Wokeness” did not take us away from God. God woke us up.
Questions:
- Do you think progressivism has become a false religion? How about conservatism? How would you even define either of those terms?
- If your relationship with the Church has shifted, can you identify the “other lover”? What other options are there?
- What do you think of Stringham’s metaphor of the Church as a “faithful spouse” and a disaffected member as a “wayward spouse”?
Wheat & Tares 
Yes. The other lover, for many of us, is God.
Elisa, you never cease to amaze me. Thanks for putting into words what many struggle to say.
I join Elisa in questioning the premise that the Church is the faithful spouse. It seems more like the Church is an inattentive spouse.
It used to be that ward members were close friends because they spent much time together building relationships. There were ward plays, roadshows, and other regular activities. Perhaps more importantly, there were regular service projects to help the poor and others in need.
The effort to stamp out the Mormon name and it’s associated culture has changed this for the worse. The elimination of these activities means that ward members are not spending time together in activities where they build relationships with each other. They spend time at home watching Post Malone videos, rather than working together on a beneficial project. The only time they get together is for two hours of watered down messages on Sundays.
And yet, the time that was previously spent as a congregation has been taken and devoted to small groups spending time in meetings. Time spent in meetings to plan the next meeting.
In essence, the institutional Church is like a spouse that is no longer willing to participate in the activities that made the marriage strong when it was new. The spouse now spends time on self-desired interests, without considering what the other spouse would like to do.
So a conservative Mormon who conflates his conservative politics with “the Gospel” looks at anyone who doesn’t embrace his conservative politics and sees an apostate. This seems entirely antithetical to both the longstanding attempt of the Church and LDS leaders to be apolitical — to WELCOME all people into the Church regardless of political views — and not at all in harmony with recent Conference talks, which echo that approach.
Here’s a summary of this kind of thinking: “The Church would be better if everyone in the Church thought like me and held my religious, political, and cultural opinions. It would be a lot smaller, but that’s not important compared to the value of everyone thinking just like me.” It’s shallow, selfish, and thoroughly misguided.
I like the comparison between marriage and a relationship with the Church. It’s a pretty clever way of looking at it. Let me add something.
In many marriages the spouses change over time, or at least one of the spouses change. And spouse 1 wants spouse 2 to either change along with 1 or to go back to the way 2 used to be. And when that doesn’t happen a split occurs.
I see a lot of that among progressive Mormons. We’ve changed and we think the Church needs to. . Or we think the Church has changed and we wish it was the way it used to be. Either way, there’s a division that exists that didn’t used to be there.
Unfortunately, most marriage counselors will tell you that you shouldn’t try to change your spouse. You should accept that person for who he/she is. And I think the same holds true for the Church. So many of us want the Church to change when in fact the better course is to vote with your feet and walk away.
I realize that’s easier for some than for others. I waited until my kids were all graduated from high school and fortunately my wife was with me. If I had still little kids or a spouse who wasn’t ready I’m not sure where I’d be. You know, like when marriages stay together for the kids. Also, I’m not a dentist in Utah County so I don’t have to pay a high cost for leaving. Lucky for me, because it’s much healthier to leave than to try to change a huge corporation.
@Josh H, that’s a good extension of the analogy.
FWIW, the group of people I’m describing in my post aren’t trying to change the Church. I think we are more like the spouse that is trying to be accepted as we are … but the Church isn’t interested in having us.
I left a comment on Tom’s article that I’ll reproduce here.
Tom,
I’d love to know how you came to understand what disaffected Church members are experiencing and how you became confident enough to generalize about them breaking rank to join the religion of wokeism. Frankly, it strikes me as a straw man and an oversimplification–especially since wokeism and cancel culture have become hisses and bywords among so many in our community and country.
Ironically, this sentence of yours spoke most directly to my own feelings of disaffection: “…if you want a belief of yours to be binding on others, you should defend and answer questions about it (think of Catholics on abortion).” The Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), more than ever, is allergic to this type of accountability. Members are urged at general conference to get in line and avoid questioning. Those who have questions are accused of being “lazy learners.” And so my close friends and brothers and mission companions are leaving the church. Not because they’re drawn in by wokeism, but because the Church fails, over and over again, to live up to its claims of a prophetic connection to the divine. Prophesy doesn’t equal a new logo, a rebrand, a repackaged curriculum, or repeating the sayings of other leaders over and over again.
Blaming the bogeyman of wokeism misses the real reason why people in my cohort are leaving (and, respectfully, if people tell you why they are leaving the Church, perhaps you should consider believing them).
Heschel’s quote speaks to me, and I think, to a lot of the disaffected. If you’ve been listening, you’ve probably already heard it:
“When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors 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.”
@jesse that’s a fantastic comment. Thanks for sharing it here.
“Progressive religion” is an oxymoron. For instance, the Catholic Church is 2000 years old “the world’s oldest and largest continuously functioning international institution.” (Wikipedia). It didn’t get there via any semblance of progressivism. Quite the opposite. Thus the confidence with which Dallin Oaks delivered his anti-LGBT rhetoric. He’s aware of the precedent. He knows what religion is, for better or worse.
JSC, is the Babe Ruth of Wheat & Tares. Lots of stike outs with the occasional thunderous home run.
Well written, Elisa. Thank you for writing this response.
Stringham seems to be working to make the tent as small as possible. His words are a self-fulfilling prophecy, and self-serving besides. You offer a compelling contrast here. Thanks for this great post.
Stringham labels the Church as the faithful spouse and disaffected members as wayward spouses (in his words, “contemptuous and indifferent”). Wokeism is then characterized as the other lover/religion.
I strongly disagree with these assumptions. In my experience, the Church plays the wayward spouse role; members then fall into the faithful spouse category – to a point. Indeed, the Church is becoming more pharisaical with each passing day. Before you disagree, consider a partial list of synonyms linked with pharisaical: sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, pious, moralizing, superior, smug and hypocritical.
So how has the Church become the wayward spouse? The list is too long to itemize here, but in my opinion it can be summarized by the Church’s expanding attempts to exercise power and control. As in how we interpret scripture, judge others, worship and dress. Church members are expected to base testimonies on ever changing supernatural tenets. Difficult to stay in a relationship where only one spouse makes and enforces the rules.
The dilemma for the Church then becomes how to maintain fealty in a society where information and scientific knowledge are ubiquitous and updated in real time. Their preferred option is to become even more authoritarian. Marginalize the wayward is the new mantra. All very Christlike.
For me, the burning question becomes what role should the institutional Church play in how I worship Christ? Do I really need layers of bureaucracy to intercede into what should be a very personal relationship? Perhaps a better approach is to consider the Savior as the ultimate faithful spouse. We then become the wayward spouses always attempting to become faithful.
///Do you think progressivism has become a false religion? How about conservatism? How would you even define either of those terms?///
By framing things in terms of progressivism versus conservativism we’re already papering over wide swaths of diverse thought, competing values, and assumed realities. I also resist the totalistic framing of false religion versus true religion, since every single human and every single institution contains flaws, errors, falsehoods, etc. The question for me isn’t whether progressivism is right or wrong, but rather what is true, goods, useful in progressivism. The same goes for conservativism. Stringham has given himself over to the culture wars. But that isn’t the only way to go.
@BHodges, you’ve captured better what I was really trying to ask in “how would you even define progressivism or conservatism”. I think those categories aren’t helpful when it comes to talking about faith and religion.
I have nothing to add to this post because it’s just absolutely brilliant!
///Do you think progressivism has become a false religion? How about conservatism? How would you even define either of those terms?///
If either of these are trying to play religion, then it begs the question “who are the leaders/prophets of these movements?” Progressives have no leaders. One could argue Trump is the leader of conservatism for some, but I’m sure many would disagree. So then what people leave is not for religion, but simply for a marketplace of ideas.
///If your relationship with the Church has shifted, can you identify the “other lover”? What other options are there?///
While I love the idea that the other lover is now God, I also think the other lover became myself. I never took care of myself previously. It was all work and serve in an effort to suppress my natural man. Now I actually have hobbies and goals. I’m not ashamed of my imperfections. To a lesser extent, the other lover also became my spouse. Critically challenging our faith tradition actually increased our personal connection in ways I didn’t know possible before. So there’s that.
///What do you think of Stringham’s metaphor of the Church as a “faithful spouse” and a disaffected member as a “wayward spouse”?///
Obviously I think it’s dumb. I now view it more as the Church being the authoritative spouse and I was the submissive spouse.
Analogies can be great for communicating many things, but in this case I would not use any kind of analogy to describe my relationship with the church.
I can summarize my relationship to the church sac follows: I was raised in the church, from which I learned many things, both true and untrue. The church also provided a robust and supportive community. I benefited greatly from my church involvement and belief, but As I grew older I eventually decided that the methods taught by the church of determining truth through prayer and feelings are unreliable. Over time I also felt less connected to the community the church provides. I see less and less epistemic and social benefit to association with the church.
Personally, I don’t feel like comparing this to a relationship of lovers really illuminates much. In fact, it really muddies the waters quite a bit. I wonder if Stringham gave thought to how disaffected members would feel about being compared to an unfaithful lover? Such a comparison may garner a great deal of sympathy among the active members, but the message it conveys to the disaffected is the farthest thing from an olive branch.
Here is the problem with comparing my membership in the church to a marriage: there is no question that my spouse actually exists and that the commitment I made to her were to an actual person, but it is not so with the church.
In the church, the covenants and promises are made to God. So what if I decide that god is different than I thought when I was eight years old? Or eighteen? So what if I decide that God does not exist?
It would be ridiculous for me to decide after 20 years of marriage that my wife actually does not exist and never did, or to suddenly claim that I never married her, I actually married her cousin. But with god, who really knows if there was anyone to receive my promises when I made them? Or perhaps the real god is the god of Zoroastrianism, and my promises were to him or no one?
Nicely done, Elisa.
I find Stringham’s basic premise of progressivism as “another lover” offensive, because it supposes disaffected/progressive members to be metaphorical adulterers; as though disaffection were some kind of personal moral failure. To the contrary, my own sense of morality, which I now claim for myself instead of outsourcing it to an external organization, is what compels me to believe as I do now, even when it puts me in opposition with the Church and its leaders.
I very much appreciate your refreshing take on the analogy, in which God is the other lover. For many of us, our “first marriage” to the Church was abusive, exploitative, toxic and/or entered into without full knowledge or consent.
@Rockwell, this: “In the church, the covenants and promises are made to God. So what if I decide that god is different than I thought when I was eight years old? Or eighteen? So what if I decide that God does not exist?”
It’s why I agree it’s absurd to call disaffected members “wayward spouses.” And honestly, to me demonstrates the entire problem with a lot of orthodoxy: they actually *do* substitute Church for God. Which makes Church the object of our worship and a false idol.
I discount anything that goes against the notion of a loving God or the Atonement. Almost every week, I hear something in church I know is not true. So if my “spouse” would stop lying to me, I wouldn’t have to cheat on him.
@ Dave B I remember Benson speaking in a stake conference when I was about 15 where he preached that the Republican R that appeared on the ballot after the candidate’s stood for “Righteous” and the D for the Democrats stood for “Damned”. My sister and I had to pick our jaws up from the floor because we were absolutely appalled when he spoke these words and by the fact that the vast majority of the adults in the congregation nodded and completely concurred with his statement. We had a long talk with my dad after that SC about the blatant pride and air of hubris that an “anointed apostle of the Lord” had deliberately demonstrated in a special worship service and did so without shame, knowing that young people would hear and question his words that our parents and church leaders all told us were straight from God’s own mouth. Dad was very upset too and told us that Benson’s talk and its subject matter were thoroughly wrong and inappropriate for an apostle at an SC.
I don’t even recognize the church of my youth, (which I loved with all my heart and soul) and young adult years. It has been replaced by a top down obscenely wealthy mega corporation that is run like an authoritarian regime and which relies on fear tactics, intimidation and severe punishment for anyone who dares to question the top leaders’ words and actions as well as to keep the “peons” below them in line and compliant at all times. The leaders are also incessantly worshipped by the members who are ranked below them in authority and desirability while sitting in cushy red velvet chairs high above the congregation where they can look down upon us and demonstrate their religious superiority to us regular members. Shades of “1984”! This is definitely NOT the gospel of Jesus Christ as preached and lived by the Savior Himself when He was living here on Earth. If we will truly know a people and their leaders by their “fruits”(our behavior, words and deeds) it’s time to reconsider whether or not wormy, rotten fruit is considered to be desirable and acceptable. Unfortunately for me it definitely is not.
We talk about the War in Heaven when Satan offered to make sure that we, with our fellow brothers and sisters, would all return to our Father and Mother’s presence after death because he would force us to obey him. This is where the discussion about free agency usually takes place.. My question is don’t the FP and Q12 realize that they’re doing the exact same sort of thing here on earth that Satan presented as his plan for humans in the pre existence? I’m not trying to be disrespectful or provocative. This a genuine heartfelt question. Talk about ironic! If Satan decides to use fear, intimidation and endless lists of right and wrong rules to keep God’s children in line it’s considered to be wicked. However, when the church leaders use the exact same methods with church members it is called righteous leadership. By insisting that they do all of the thinking for us the leadership not only infantalizes church members but also renders them unable to recognize right and wrong for themselves because they are unable to think for themselves. So much for the glory of God being intelligence!
I’m chuckling over here at whatever troll came along to downvote everyone’s replies.
I think the metaphor of a marriage is interesting when describing the church and members. However, I’d describe it like an abusive marriage, where the church is the abusive spouse who wants to appear to the outside world as magnanimous and righteous, but does real harm behind closed doors and makes it terribly difficult for the abused spouse to either leave or for things in the marriage to improve. A member who sees the problems is like the battered spouse who wants so badly for the family to stay together and for things to be happy despite repeated abusive episodes, and may not have established an identity outside the marriage.
Outstanding post, @Elisa. I resonate especially with your paragraph:
“Since meeting the other lover [God}…our relationship with the Church has indeed shifted dramatically… it has taken on a much diminished role in our lives; we are constantly reassessing the relationship and may be looking for alternatives. … God and spirituality are still at work in our lives—maybe more than ever—and we are doing the best we can at navigating changes in belief that we never anticipated having and that were just as shocking to us as to our “faithful spouse”. Sometimes we navigate ourselves out of the Church; sometimes we make it work, but on radically redefined terms.”
This succinctly describes my faith journey the past number of years. I have a closer and more genuine relationship with Deity now, although others who have not begun their individual wilderness faith journey may not be able to yet see this.
Mr. Stringham’s perspective is disappointing coming from a PhD candidate at a respected university. Evidently he’s destined to either teach at BYU or work for church finance so he can continue to pursue circular reasoning and various logical fallacies. He and Muhlestein can have lunch and yuk it up while ordering the various academic disciplines around a predetermined outcome. So. Much. Fun.
I respect John McWhorter and appreciate the perspective he tirelessly provides, but I suspect he would say the ‘progressivism as religion’ allegation is an argument AGAINST dogmatic belief systems that don’t stand up to scrutiny, not a valid explanation for why people choose to leave one.
For me the analogy would be that after putting up with years of abuse that left me suicidal, I finally left. I escaped to save my life. Yes, I loved my spouse deeply, but he didn’t care one bit about my welfare, just controlling me and demanding that I be loyal to him above any loyalty to myself, my children, or God. He was more loyal to his lover of patriarchy than to me. I suspect he was secretly gay because he was obsessed with the subject and very homophobic and obviously loved men more than me.
Now, to explain my analogy, I was sexually abused as a child, but the church nay cared about the welfare of my abuser, probably because he was male. The church used so much shame trying to control members that it crosses the line into emotional abuse. For me this was extra harmful because I grew up with emotional abuse. I was treated by my parents as second class for being a girl, and the church repeated this. The church created much of the same abusive environment as I grew up with. This just made it impossible for me to heal and then the church criticized me as worse than my offender because I was “unforgiving”, confusing forgiveness with healing.
“Stringham proposes that the other lover is, in fact, another religion–albeit a false one: the “false religion” of “progressivism.”” I saw that one coming A MILE OFF. Predictable.
Here’s a more apt marriage metaphor I see with the Church. It’s been made increasingly clear over the last ten years that the Church doesn’t want us to be any kind of participatory equal partner with our own thoughts and ideas, just to reflect theirs back to them and get in line and do as we are told. “Church leaders only face one way” we are told and being “church-broke” is joked about behind closed doors. That’s not a marriage between two people, but it’s not far off from the vision of polygamy that Brigham Young had in which his wives were “free to leave whenever they wanted” (of course if they did, poof goes the financial support, and for women, marriage was always an economic necessity), but these wives needed to quit whining and complaining about their lot in life because that’s just how it is. He boasted that he didn’t even know all of their names. They were basically interchangeable to him. That’s how it feels to be “married” to the Church.
When Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the US House of Representatives he strongly counseled his GOP members from moving their families to Washington, DC. He wanted them back in their home districts every weekend, in large part because they’d be less likely to develop friendly relationships with Democrats. He wanted them to view everybody outside their “tribe” not just as opponents but as nasty adversaries. It’d always be an “us vs. them”
The rest of my sentence: …and “good vs. evil” situation. A very rigid, institutional way of approaching life.
I find this whole marriage metaphor to be extremely ironic considering I have two different friends who decided to take a step away from the church and in response BOTH of their spouses demanded a divorce.
I love this, thank you.
When you wrote, “Church was the other lover, not God” did you mean not progressivism?
Thanks @Tygan. No … I meant to write that, and what I mean is that Church is the interloper in the relationship between us and God. But your way would work too.
Amen, Sister! That has absolutely been my experience: I met God. And realized that what I needed in order to meet God, was…….me. He wanted me to meet Him all along! I had convinced myself (with great help from the church, I might add) that I needed more then just “me” to meet and experience Him. But I was wrong. And the meeting changed my life. Not quickly, though. Even after that, I spent years trying to justify placing my faith in the arm of flesh (the Church and it’s inspired leaders) – and THAT resulted in lots of confusion and heartache, because the messages from the spirit, and the messages I was getting through Church, General Conference, Leaders and lessons did not align. That was painful. I don’t believe it was ever intended by God to be that way. We built that obstacle ourselves.
Elisa – all your words. A thousand times.
Another twist on the ‘wayward spouse’ metaphor: the whole temple teaching my husband was to be my Savior really did me in the first (and second, and third) time I went to the temple. I gave it 3 tries and never went back. I married the man because I wanted him to be my partner, and nobody takes my Jesus from me. It felt wrong then, and it still feels wrong and disloyal when we’re asked to give what belongs to God to the Church.
I kept my recommend current for almost 2 decades but felt prompted?? to let it lapse last year just before my two queer kiddos came out to me. My husband did the same. They (my children) need to know there are no divided loyalties in our home, that I will choose my kids every single time.
Right now, we are sitting for awhile, mourning the loss of community and celebrating our children for being brave and authentic. We don’t know where we will go, but we’re not in a hurry to get there. We do know, though, that we can’t walk across the water to meet God if we stay in the boat.
At first, I really didn’t like the “Don’t say Mormon” campaign. I grew up as a “Mormon” and I’m proud of my heritage. Over time my opinion has changed. I never latched on to telling people “I’m a MemberoftheChurchofJesusChristofLatterDaySaints – please call me that”. But instead, I’ve found a lot of confidence and joy in just telling people that “I’m Christian.” I feel like that reflects my commitment and devotion to Christ, rather than an institution, and connects me to a much broader portion of the population. I’ll be able to keep that label my entire life, regardless of any new policies that the church makes declaring what we should or should not call ourselves.
@middleradish, thank you for sharing that.
Stay in the boat! Dang, I should have used that metaphor / contrast in this piece! Love it.
@aporecti, I don’t like the campaign because it’s crazy to me to call Hinckley a Satanist and get so worked up over something minor. But I’m with you on identifying myself as a Christian (who happens to attend an LDS congregation – so that’s my denomination not my religion). Plus, I actually think using Mormon to denote a cultural connection to the Church is helpful and actually quite inclusive. Unintentionally perhaps, but Nelson created a space for folks that are somehow affiliated with or adjacent to the Church to have a name even if they not longer practice.
I pretty much have learned that any groups I was in that changed to “LDS” in response to the admonition weren’t for me, and groups that kept “Mormon” were.
Here’s a nice little article that may shed some light on the subject of this thread:
https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/three-degrees-of-gospel-understanding/
Beautiful. Thank you.
My other lover is my own best judgement. I no longer have to wonder what the Bishop, Prophet, etc. would say. I do it if my conscience tells me to.
@Jack, that’s an interesting connection. Although it’s focused on Church history, Petersen’s article seems to be describing faith stages pretty generally (like you’d find in Fowler or, my favorite, Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt). It’s also pretty similar to what Bruce Hafen has been teaching in “Faith is not Blind.”
I don’t disagree that you can go from simplicity –> complexity –> second simplicity. I also totally agree that simply trading one black-and-white way of thinking (Church is perfect) for another (Church is evil) isn’t very mature (although passing through those stages is normal).
I think where this article misses the mark for me is that Level C isn’t going back to placing the Church at the center of your world with God as an appendage (which is, TBH, how a lot of people experience Level A). Level C means reorienting so that God is the center of your world. Maybe you still participate in Church and maybe not. But your center of gravity has shifted significantly. i.e., you’re no longer married to the Church … and you realize you never should have been …
Elisa: My post tomorrow is back to the boat metaphor, so it looks like it’s metaphor week at Wheat & Tares!
One of the things I don’t like about the wayward-spouse metaphor is that it carries way too much biblical baggage, specifically with “backsliding Judah” and “backsliding Israel” in Jeremiah and similar language in Ezekiel and Isaiah. The Old Testament uses almost exactly the same metaphor, but the “faithful spouse” in that metaphor – God – threatens to punish Judah and Israel, who are metaphorically playing the harlot, in surprisingly (and shockingly) graphic language. To which I respond: get away from that man, Judah! Get away from that man, Israel! A man who threatens you and beats you and says he loves you tenderly is BAD NEWS! Now, I know the author of the linked article would never extend the metaphor that far with the Church as the faithful spouse and the disaffected member as the wayward spouse, but that baggage still comes with the metaphor. The metaphor of Christ as the bridegroom and the Church (or the individual) as “the bride of Christ” is more useful, since Christ would never threaten and beat his wayward bride the way the Old Testament god does. But in this metaphor, CHRIST is the steady, faithful spouse – NOT the CHURCH per se. Which is precisely the point that several commenters in this thread have already made. And that’s not the metaphor the author of the linked article makes.
@angela, DIVINE SYNCHRONICITY at work.
Who ever said wokeness wasn’t a real religion?
God bless you, Jack, as you soldier on. You even have the nerve to post Daniel Peterson in this forum, which takes some gumption.
I’m not sure how Peterson sheds light on this conversation. Stringham’s assertion is still blatant straw-manning about something he doesn’t like as the cause of something he wants to prevent, but he doesn’t connect those things. Like Trump is not the cause of modern conspiracy theories, Qanon and the like, progressivism is not the cause of people leaving the church. The wounds are self-inflicted.
I’m also not sure that Peterson’s memories have not been altered by passing through his personal filter. As I read the interview linked to below with Stanley Kimball, the man was committed to revealing absolutely as much Mormon history as could possibly be published to the point that he responded to Mark E. Peterson’s grousing about the need for historians to tell everything with, “Brother Petersen, you can’t bottle up truth. Now, would you rather have responsible Mormon historians answer the critics, or should we just abandon the field and let the anti-Mormons run all over it?” That was good advice before the internet; it’s existential-level truth now.
https://rsc.byu.edu/conversations-mormon-historians/stanley-b-kimball
Finally, while I like Peterson’s use of the three stages to illustrate levels of belief, doesn’t it seem like the church should be working to get members to Level C instead of encouraging Level A? Are you convinced they are doing that?
As a fellow Canadian I can say unequivocally Tom’s opinions are absolutely outside the norm. He is from Alberta, where there are about as many members there as there are in the rest of Canada. Not everyone in Alberta though share his extremist views and as I say not many outside. In Alberta they can afford to be a small tent church, here and everywhere else in Canada we can’t afford to lose members. I don’t think Tom still lives in Alberta, and I wonder what he thinks of the church where he currently is and if its so perfect as he thinks it is. I fully expect him to bail on the church at some point.
Thanks for the response, Elisa. I don’t want to belabor this threadjack–but just to clarify: I don’t think Peterson makes a distinction between God and the church–at least not in levels A and C. If the church is true then God is at its center, so to speak. And so, when an individual hits level C what they’ve really done is returned to level A — God and, by extension, his church — with a deep sense of earned ignorance.
Being a member of the Church is being in a relationship with a community and a set of beliefs. The marriage metaphor works for me, though I disagree with the labels of faithful and wayward spouse.
I was in a marriage with an inattentive spouse who expected me to meet his needs while ignoring me. When I finally got through to him that I wasn’t going to live this way and was leaving, his response surprised me. I had honestly hoped that his response would be, “I love you! I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you. Tell me your feelings, and I’ll work on making this relationship so good that you don’t want to leave.” That would have saved our marriage. Instead, his response was more like, “You quit too easily. It will be too hard for you to leave. People will judge you because you’re the one who doesn’t want to stay married. This is all on you; I’m innocent.” He attacked, minimized, blamed and otherwise made it clear that he had no obligation to change anything he was doing.
I couldn’t help but notice the parallels when my relationship with the Church crumbled. There was no effort to listen to me as a human being and work on change.* The Church blamed me for being a lazy learner, a quitter, threatened me with family consequences and threw shade.
When you tell someone (or a community) that there’s a real problem going on, the response is very telling. If they listen to you in order to understand and improve, you can save the relationship. But what my XH and the Church do is basically the nail in the coffin. You can’t work with either a person or an entity if they won’t see that their behavior is contributing to the problem.
*No, I don’t expect the Church to change to deal with one person’s issues, but collectively a lot of us have brought up the same issues and the Church has ignored the concerns raised by a lot of its members.
@jack, and my point is still that failing to distinguish between God and the Church is one of the most basic problems that Church leadership & apologists make. It’s not only incorrect but deeply harmful to conflate the two. It causes us to worship and be in relationship with the Church INSTEAD of God (and, unfortunately, this ends up fracturing people’s relationship with God because of things Church members do that God never did).
*Even if* the Church were “God’s church,” – I would say God is in the Church but God is a lot of other places too, and God is not in everything the Church does or says by a long shot – that still doesn’t make “God, and by extension his Church” accurate or helpful. The Church is an organization that at its best is helping people grow their relationship with God and serve each other. (And at its worst is throwing God under the bus for human mistakes.). But it is not an extension of or substitute for God.
I also disagree that ignorance is *ever* a virtue, particularly if you’re ignoring marginalized groups you’re not part of. I can get behind patience or compassion. But never ignorance.
jaredsbrother,
“Finally, while I like Peterson’s use of the three stages to illustrate levels of belief, doesn’t it seem like the church should be working to get members to Level C instead of encouraging Level A? Are you convinced they are doing that?”
I’m convinced that the church has gone to great lengths over the last 20 or so years to provide resources regarding its history. But even so, maturing in the gospel takes time–and it’s not an identical experience for everyone. I think what the church hopes is that its members will be converted by the reception of the Holy Ghost–which is typically an incremental process–and that process of conversion will enable them to remain grounded in its central truth claims while they go through the maturing process.
Elisa,
What I mean by “earned ignorance” is that we have some sense of our lack of knowledge precisely because we’ve gained some degree knowledge. We know enough to know that we don’t know very much–rather than being in a state innocent ignorance wherein, like a child, we hardly know that there’s more to be known.
Re: God and the church: clearly there’s distinction between the two. Even so, the Lord makes it abundantly clear that we are to receive counsel from his anointed as if he himself were speaking directly to us. This is not trivial. Now that’s not to say that his servants suddenly become perfect–and that everything they say is automatically approved with some heavenly rubber stamp. But it does suggest that the church as directed by living prophets and apostles is intimately tied to the Savior–so intimate in fact that he has warned that “thus shall be the destruction of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, that shall fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”
@Jack, I 100% disagree with that interpretation of prophets / “the Lord’s anointed” (which I don’t interpret to mean prophets BTW) or that “the Lord” has made any of that clear. So we aren’t going to see eye-to-eye on this. A post for another day.
Progressivism is all we have. And I don’t mean progressivism as in Bernie Sanders’ policies (although Bernie is certainly onto something in many regards). I mean progressivism in a larger sense of relying on science, data, and a balance of many different considerations to achieve a human flourishing that is had by a larger number of humans in a way that is sustainable with the earth’s environment. Progress is the only way forward. Clinging to mindless and uninformed traditions is more often than not a massive impediment to the progress that humanity needs. We need to progress to sustainable forms of energy, sustainable political models that are more inclusive and can accommodate peoples and cultures from all over. We need progress in developing an economic system that more evenly distributes sustainable resources. Without such progress, we slide backwards, and we don’t want that.
I have no “other lover.” What a ridiculous concept.
As for Stringham’s metaphor, I can think of some places he can shove that.
A follow-up comment. I listen to self-identified progressives on a regular basis. Chris Hayes, David Pakman (my favorite), Sam Seder, Trevor Noah, etc. The difference between what they say and how conservatives portray progressives couldn’t be further apart. Conservatives have created a massive strawman of progressivism that they attack ad nauseum. It is truly mind-numbing to listen to. My brain literally shuts off now when I hear someone rant and rave about cancel culture.
Jack: I’m with Elisa on this one. Last time I checked either everyone who was endowed was anointed, or Jesus is “the anointed one.” Giving that distinction to fallible humans who are very temporarily in charge and surrounded by sycophants is a quick way to run things aground.
Father Richard Rohr discusses conservatism vs. liberalism as we progress spiritually. “During the 2nd half of life………daily life now requires prayer and discernment more than knee-jerk responses toward either the conservative or liberal end of the spectrum. You have a spectrum of responses now, and they are not now predictable, as is too often the case with knee-jerk responses.”
Try having a “spectrum of responses”.
Just wanted to add my voice in thanking Elisa for another beautiful piece. I just wanted to keep saying Amen and Amen. As we progress through Holy Week this week, I am so thankful for the things I have learned in the past two years as I left the LDS church behind for mainline Protestantism. So relieved not to hear the constant rhetoric of homophobic and misogyny any more and instead find joy and stretching of my soul to learn to love others. If “wokeness” means being awakened to the awesome majesty of God, then yes my other lover is God. But I was always betrothed to God, the LDS church was just usurping that relationship.
Elisa, your post was excellent.
Because of the well-known analogy from the NT where Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the wife, Tom Stringham had to remove gender identity from the marriage he supposes exists between the LDS church and its members, so he can’t say that the LDS church is the man and the members are the only wife. Maybe the members are all plural wives of the church? Or maybe the church is a woman as in the NT and the members collectively are a woman too so we are in a gay marriage? In any case, it made me smile. Christians would of course sadly shake their heads seeing the replacement of God in the NT analogy.
Angela C (and Elisa), I agree with those interpretations of what the “Lord’s anointed” means. I think there are other applications too–one of them being a title for a king in Israel. And in it’s in that sense that the apostles are called by that title. They’ve been chosen by the Lord to lead his people. But even if that title were misapplied to the church’s leadership it wouldn’t make them any less the prophets, seers, and revelators that they are. A rose by any other name…
To add another wrinkle to this discussion, pick up the OT book of Hosea, arguably one of the strangest tales you’ll come across in the Bible. God tells the prophet to go and marry a whore, which he does, has children (who are given weird, metaphorical names) by her, divorces, then remarries her. Many scholars believe Hosea’s marital relationship is not just a metaphorical representation of that between God and Israel but a literal way (through Hosea’s marriage) to show God’s steadfast love and forgiveness for God’s “wayward spouse,” Israel. As strange as it all is, it’s essential to keep the focus on God’s nature.
Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian scholars have been pondering over this book for centuries, and I expect that will continue.
I don’t know if I believe in signs, but as I read this post and the comments the following song came on the muzak in the background.
Lyrics
Sunshine go away today
I don’t feel much like dancing
Some man’s gone, he’s tried to run my life
Don’t know what he’s asking
He tells me I’d better get in line
Can’t hear what he’s saying
When I grow up, I’m going to make it mine
But these aren’t dues I been paying
How much does it cost, I’ll buy it
The time is all we’ve lost, I’ll try it
But he can’t even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine, Sunshine
Sunshine go away today
I don’t feel much like dancing
Some man’s gone, he’s tried to run my life
Don’t know what he’s asking
Working starts to make me wonder where
The fruits of what I do are going
He says in love and war all is fair
But he’s got cards he ain’t showing
How much does it cost, I’ll buy it
The time is all we’ve lost, I’ll try it
And he can’t even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine, Sunshine
Sunshine come on back another day
I promise you I’ll be singing
This old world, she’s gonna turn around
Brand new bells ‘ll be ringing
I’ll just leave this right here.
I read mention of John McWhorter here. His argument is that anti-racism (I think he might say that progressivism is as well) is a cult, and one that should be avoided at that. I’m not sure that I agree with him entirely. I’ve heard him make really poor comparisons between Maoism and anti-racism (Mao Zedong was a mass murderer who routinely suppressed political freedom and jailed and killed opponents, such a comparison is ridiculous, out-of-touch, and just plain insulting. No one is Mao in the US, period, and Maoism is not any significant phenomenon in the US, period). However, of all the anti-antiracism speakers to listen to, McWhorter is the best, most articulate one, who is full of nuance, perspective, and makes great points. He just needs to learn more about Maoism to avoid making over-the-top, preposterous comparisons. McWhorter has actually praised many aspects of progressivism and has castigated anti-cancel culture folks for overreacting to using new pronouns for transgenders. He navigates the difficult topic of race with poise and sophistication that I rarely see from anti-racists and racists (such as Tucker Carlson) alike.
Stay in the boat! The Titanic is unsinkable!
Wonderful post, Elisa! I particularly like Angela’s extension to Brigham Young and polygamy. The Church has, it is so fond of reminding us, over 16 million spouses. So if one or two or 10,000 choose to file for divorce, the Church is maybe mildly concerned, but not enough to even drop its stance of forbidding contact from the spouses to the Church.
I guess Tom deleted my comment to his article (reproduced above).
“Your comment on The Other Religion has been deleted with penalty by a site administrator at Public Square Magazine.
The comment was deemed inappropriate and inconsistent with this site’s image. Your World Table score will be penalized accordingly.”
Ouch.
@jesse wow! I thought it was a totally respectful comment. Talk about cancel culture :-).
Membership in a religion isn’t (and can’t be) like a marriage commitment. Marriage is between two people (except for, uh, some of your ancestors and wayward cousins, and ignoring the role of in-laws), and both of them are expected to adjust to each other. If one of them has a problem, then they both have a problem. But you can’t expect a whole religion to adjust to one rank-and-file member.
Many religious groups offer what I consider to be “false community.” That is, people will be friendly to you as long as you’re one of them, but as soon as you turn heretic they turn off the friendship act, whereas a friend or (halfway decent) family member would stick with you regardless. Companies do the same thing–lots of high-sounding talk of family and community, until one day you’re fired.
Not every religion does this. They vary in intensity (how much they require of members) and authoritarian-ness (whether anybody can tell you what to do, or kick you out if you don’t). You Momos are somewhere in the middle, in between Scientologists at one end of the spectrum, and Quakers, Unitarians, and Anglicans / Episcopalians at the other.
Since Baha’is and Mormons have a lot in common, you might be interested to know that a similar discussion was all the rage in Baha’i circles about 15 years ago. (The Baha’is are a smallish religion founded by a 19th century Iranian, which emphasizes world unity.) Here’s the article that started it all:
https://bahai-library.com/momen_marginality_apostasy
Momen, the author, is a Baha’i in good standing, who analyzes the ressentiment-ful psychology of “apostates” (a technical term from sociology) who not only leave the religion, but continue to criticize it afterwards, and even build identities and mini-communities around their opposition to the Faith. His paper was followed by a flurry of responses from those criticized (we’re talking about maybe a dozen people).
Thank you @Zla’od – I will check that out.
I have found that many issues that seem unique to Mormonism aren’t actually and I love reading about experiences people have in other faith traditions / cultures.
I just want to say that reading this was like listening to the thoughts in my own head. (Only more well said!)
Thank you so much for writing this. It is how I feel as a convert for over 50 years who has outgrown the church. And I’m to the point that I no longer feel guilty about my changing beliefs. Our Father and Jesus Christ are the ones who I put my faith in. Not the church.
Excellent post, Elisa. That is almost exactly how I feel when I wake up every Sunday morning. A lot of metaphors going around W&T lately…marriages, boats … ok, only two but still. May l add one more: “the Hotel California.” Yes, the Eagles song. I know it was originally meant as a metaphor for drug addiction, but if you listen to the lyrics, you have to admit it works for the church as well.
“Do you think progressivism has become a false religion? How about conservatism? How would you even define either of those terms?”
Exactly, to the sub-question. These are slippery terms. Today’s “progressives” are last century’s Eisenhower and Nixon Republicans. Nixon, after all, supported a universal income and signed into law the legislation that led to the EPA. Conversely, today’s “conservatives” are yesterday’s Nazi Party (ok, I’m exaggerating – at least a little). But it begs the question, will the church, and it’s mainline membership always align with whichever iteration of “conservatism ” happens to be the norm? And how far could this go? And how scary could it get?