There was a recent Reddit discussion in which people shared the most cringey thing they had done as a Church member, often when they were too young to know better, but not always! Quite a few of these stories had to do with service projects that were tone deaf or poorly executed. Here are a few cherry-picked examples, or at least a greatly summarized version:
- A YM group decided not only to deliver presents to those in need, but to make them as well, using what amounted to people’s trash. They constructed “cars” using empty milk cartons and bottle lids for wheels. They made rag dolls using actual rags and yarn. They made jump ropes using rope and PVC pipe. Then the leader (who spoke mission Spanish) insisted on speaking in his broken Spanish to the recipient, even though the man spoke perfect English. The leader complained that the man didn’t seem grateful to be given this trash.
- A teenage boy who felt pressured to go on a mission confessed to his bishop that he had a masturbation habit. He then felt compelled to proactively call several ward leaders and members and confess to them as well!
- Several examples of giving a gift-wrapped copy of the Book of Mormon to various people, including: a Catholic Art History professor, a non-member school teacher, a friend, a peer who was grieving.
- Instead of writing a position paper defending traditional marriage in a high school class, a Mormon kid wrote out an extensive testimony of the Church and submitted it for a school assignment. This did not result in a good grade.
- A family’s YW age daughter was battling cancer, and the family kept the ward updated on her progress. The stake decided to use her cancer as a faith-promoting activity with a slide projector, photos, and reading out personal family letters to everyone at the Girls Camp. The girl’s sister was in attendance, wracked with grief listening to her sister’s story being used this way. Later she found out that her parents were unaware and had never given permission for this activity.
- A Relief Society teacher explained to the class that since God will never give you a trial you can’t handle, that’s why her child had not died like the child of another woman in the class who was clearly stronger than she was.
- A Redditor told a Jewish woman she met that she too was part of the tribe of Israel, and what a coincidence! When she explained to the woman that she knew she was Jewish because of her patriarchal blessing, the woman was looking at her like a crazy person. This was at a business dinner.
- In the Navy, one commenter told his colleagues that he had been to the original Garden of Eden site in Missouri, near Kansas City. One of them was from Missouri. All of them laughed.
- One person told his entire (mixed race) 7th grade science class that black people bore the “mark of Cain.”
- When served iced tea at a university group event in the South, a commenter proudly and loudly proclaimed that he didn’t drink tea, instructing the waitress to remove it. He expected his peers to be impressed with his moral stance. They were not.
- Another youth Christmas charity project, this time with Young Women. The “gifts” were donated used Barbie dolls, many of whom were damaged with marker, teeth marks from pets, “haircuts” by toddlers, or missing clothes. The Beehive class was given nothing but soap and water to complete a “spa” for these Barbies, rehabilitating them. Since there weren’t enough clothes to go around, they used colored tape, pipe cleaners and craft supplies instead. The dolls were atrocious.
- A personal favorite: the ward youth would use rebar to mount US flags in yards throughout the neighborhood, but they accidentally broke a few water pipes in the process, so the ward decided instead to have them use an auger and drill holes in each yard for an official flag mounting device, resulting in even more broken water pipes.
- In a high school yearbook quote, replying the prompt “What are you looking for when choosing a university,” a commenter replied that he only wanted to go somewhere with “standards as high as my own.”
- The ward brought meals around to families without any advance notice. One recipient said, “Oh, I didn’t think we were that poor!”
- When given a school assignment to explain their national heritage, a kid’s mother made them dress up like a pioneer and explain about Mormon persecution and making the barren desert blossom like a rose. (The kid thought they were Danish which was how all the other kids in the class did the assignment).
- A woman in the ward brought in expired bread and asked that it be given to one commenter’s family as charity. (Protip: the poor generally don’t want your expired food).
- A YW president recommended a youth activity of driving the girls to a poor neighborhood so they could see what happened to people who didn’t “live the gospel.”
I could really only think of two Mormon-specific “cringey” things I did, off the top of my head anyway. Once when I was eleven, we had a cat that was very aggressive, and I tried to cast the demons out of her with my arm to the square. I only ended up getting scratched in the process.
Another time, when I was only 7 or 8, I was playing at a neighbor’s house on a hot summer day when his mom offered to bring us some kool-aid. I took one sip and realized it was iced tea. I spit it out and said I wasn’t allowed to drink it. His mom was shaking her head as she poured the wasted tumbler of iced tea down the sink. I was pretty embarrassed to have caused such a fuss, and she was clearly offended. At our 20th high school reunion, this same friend came up and said, “Hey, remember when you spit out my mom’s tea?”
I’m sure all of you can see where this is heading.
- What’s the cringiest thing you ever did as a Church member, thinking it was the right thing to do?
- Have you participated in an ill-conceived church activity that somehow got approved?
- Did any of these stories sound like ones you experienced or were they pretty far outside the mainstream?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Hmm. Would you look at the story differently if it were a mother who said she was offering chicken nuggets as a snack to her kid and her Jewish friend? But she actually serves breaded pork nuggets — then the young Jewish kid realizes what’s going on and spits it out? I’m not sure the story is really so cringey. I’m thinking Young Hawkgrrrl did just fine and the mother was being a little bit of a jerk. The mother should have said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …”
Maybe I’m just trying to give a younger kid a break and expecting adults to act more like adults.
Unfortunately, as members from the intermountain west move to other places, they bring their cringe with them. For example, a lot of them have moved to my neck of the woods (North Carolina). This is not to say that Utahans have a monopoly on cringe, but they sure do have a lot of it.
One Sunday, a deacon was giving a talk and as part of his introduction, he said “I’m from Utah just like everybody else.” Most of the ward laughed, but I didn’t. It was a not-so-subtle reminder to me that local members were now outnumbered by western transplants. This became more apparent when my ward hosted a potluck. I expected a bunch of food that’s typical of NC cuisine (pulled pork, cole slaw, etc…). Instead, we had funeral potatoes and casseroles galore. Then the cliques formed and cringe moments became more commonplace. Thankfully, things are better now since we have a local as Bishop, but cringe still rears its ugly head every once in a while.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that western Saints need to be contained in the west. Quite the opposite. I’m a firm believer that a brother/sister can get more out of the LDS experience when they’re outside of “the bubble.” However, they need to acknowledge that they don’t have it all together cause let’s face it: none of us do. By doing this, we can all stay humble and embrace the differences in each other so that we can truly become a people of Zion.
I’m with Dave B on the tea incident. Someone tried that with me in Japan, knowing full well I don’t drink tea. Handed me a glass of what they told me was mugicha – a cold barley drink popular in Japan and not dissimilar in colour to iced tea. I’d had mugicha many times before, and I’d made tea for my nonmember grandmother before so was well aware of the difference in colour and smell. I was pretty ticked off, and have no idea what the purpose of the exercise was.
A stark contrast to the mother of my friend when I was just five who would have my sister and I over to play with her daughter and refused to give us coke to drink, because my mother had told her we couldn’t have it. The daughter got coke and my sister and I cherryade,. My sister and I didn’t even know what coke was at the time.
The cringiest thing I ever did was accept the calling to be YM Priest group leader at 17. Two weeks later, when I realized that it involved me telling other people what to do, I promptly asked to he released. Some men get a thrill out of leadership (or management) I do not.
I still have this painful memory of teaching in the gospel doctrine class (for new members) how grateful I was that my husband followed the command to provide for his family – the church’s plan worked for sure. There was a lady in the class whose partner did not provide for their family and I knew it. I don’t know what I was thinking…. maybe I was hoping to get her husband to step up. But I know I hurt/embarrassed her/made her feel less than/failed to acknowledge her herculean efforts to provide for her family. I still feel so sad about it.
Right around the time Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage, a girl in my middle school class asked aloud what was wrong with gay marriage, what was wrong with being gay. I caught up to her in the halls after class and gave her the twenty-second version of God’s plan for marriage, gay couples can’t make babies together, etc. It wasn’t an incident that made a big difference to our mutual interactions as students, but I cringe when I remember it.
I’m pretty sure that Latter-day Saints do not hold monopolies on insensitivity, tone deafness or poorly executed service projects. In fact, I would describe these as being pretty broadly distributed throughout the human race.
“… been to the original Garden of Eden site in Missouri, near Kansas City”
Compared w/ this, blood atonement is small potatoes.
I had a missionary companion from Provo (dad was a byu professor) who, after explaining to our Argentine investigators about the temple, bragged to these folks that the state of Utah had x percentage of the world’s temples. He was so proud of X because it demonstrated how righteous Utahans are. Never mind that Utah is the location where the Church settled so naturally there’d be more lds temples, meetinghouses, etc. The investigator didn’t seem very impressed and frankly I’m still not.
Shortly after I was married, we moved to Wyoming. My husband was not active and I decided to go “inactive” for awhile. However, my in-laws and neighbors and fellow ward members had different plans for me. I was called to be a RS visiting teacher with an older lady in the ward. Cringe No. 1: I didn’t know how to say no.
My teaching companion was well established in the ward and community. There was no way she would shirk this calling. We visited one lady, in particular, who had specifically asked for no RS visitors. However, we went faithfully each month. She never was blatantly mean, but definitely cold. She was uncomfortable and so was I. Cringe no. 2:. Visiting a member or less than active member where you’re not welcome.
I was a teenage convert. When I got ready to go on my mission, my bishop told me I needed to break up with my non-LDS girlfriend AND get rid of any photos or letters that were from her or would remind me of her. Sadly and naively (but cringingly obedient to the letter), I did all of that. Now, in my 60s, I wish I would have kept those things from a more innocent time in my life, and a relationship that is a part of who I am.
1. When I was a newlywed, I volunteered to serve at the Bishop’s Storehouse. My assignment was to accompany that evening’s welfare recipients through the “grocery store” aisles, read their list of approved items to them, and check off the items as they put them into their cart. Cringe. The recipient and I both knew this was a total joke. The cart would be checked out by a storehouse missionary at the end. So what was the purpose? I felt so bad for the recipients. I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed like that. ….Oh. THAT was the purpose. Cringe.
Are they still Doing That?!
2. Later…Back in the day, when I worked for Legal Services, I had a client family in desperate need of emergency food assistance while awaiting approval for Food Stamps/SNAP. Other resources lacking, I called the Bishop’s Storehouse. The missionary on call asked if the parents were members of the church. (No.) “Sorry, the missionary replied, “the Storehouse services are only for members.” Really? Wow. Cringe.
Is That still a thing?
While I was a missionary at the Family History Library a few years ago, there was a woman who wanted information on her ancestor Jacob Hamblin. He was a prominent early pioneer and diplomat to Native Americans throughout the southwest, but since I came from a convert family, I didn’t know that. When I asked who he was, she loudly gasped and said “You don’t know who Jacob Hamblin is?!?!” She acted like I stripped naked and committed adultery right in front of her. I replied that I didn’t know who he was because I was the child of converts. She just looked at me in disgust and said, “oh my gosh” and walked away.
So to make a long story short: a Utah woman was offended that I, a 2nd generation Latter-day Saint, didn’t bow down and worship her pioneer heritage.
Southern Saint: I hope to god she now realizes that SHE’s the one who should be embarrassed by that story!
Merely 19 years old and knowing next to nothing about my own religion, I donned a white shirt and tie and went door to door telling people that not only was their specific faith or complete lack of it wrong, but also that mine–the one with gold plates and polygamy in its history–was God’s only true church. I didn’t know enough to cringe then, but I do now.
I’m sure I have plenty, but right now I’m just laughing about the original site of the garden of Eden in Missouri. And there are Mormons who don’t believe in climate change!
It’s no secret that BYU’s accounting program is top notch and accounting firms from around the country come to Provo to recruit. However, while it’s a recruiting power house, many of the top firms really don’t like BYU very much. For example, in the accounting program, before recruiting season, we were given a multi-page long list of “don’ts”. Man I wish I had saved that list. It included all sorts of cringe Mormon stories. The one that I still remember all this time later is that some intern on her last day handed out thank you presents to all the people she worked with that summer. They were all Books of Mormon. That’s some epic cringe right there.
My firm starts training Monday morning at 8 am sharp eastern time, which means I spend most of Sunday travelling to get there. Training goes until Friday afternoon. However, all my Jewish colleagues leave Friday morning in order to be home in time for Sabbath. One time I told our learning team I was taking a red eye late Sunday and would still be there in time Monday morning to teach and boy did they give me a tongue lashing. I found it odd that I was the first Sunday observer to request this. I’m not aware of my Jewish colleagues ever being given a hard time for leaving early. So to Dave B’s point, who we accommodate is constantly in flux.
Shortly after high school, I got a job at a scout camp. We lived at the camp. A bunch of the teenage employees would get movies to watch in the evenings. I would not watch the R-rated movies. All of us were lds, so I just came off as being self-righteous. Honestly, I might have stayed to watch them except they were all horror movies and I am freaked out by horror movies.
As an adult, I’ve had some really cringy missionary moments. The most memorable one was trying to talk to a neighbor about the church. It turned out she had been raised LDS and was now Baptist. She turned the whole thing around on me and basically bore her testimony about leaving the church.
On my mission in Texas, my companion & I were once directed by a ‘nice’, Christian, Southern Belle to visit her coworker’s address, who was a gay man of colour- “Because he needs more God in his life.”
We dutifully went and contacted the referral, and to his credit- the man was a complete gentleman, despite our ?loving insistence on ‘God’s eternal plan for families’.
I’ve often found myself thinking of him years later, after being excommunicated over my own (homo)relationship before the (second) policy change in 2019. (No we weren’t married but- leadership-roulette *shrug*)
Sometimes- it feels as though there ain’t nuff soap, sand, or salt in the world to scrub oneself clean of the all the religiously motivated harms I feel I committed upon my fellow 2SLGBTQ+ .
My stake was participating in the county Christmas in July program and had accepted a project to help an older resident with some much needed home repairs/maintenance. The stake decided to make this a youth project. With a small handful of adult supervision/volunteers who were not spread out with the youth and limited and/or inadequate supplies we “worked” on this innocent residents home. I was grouped with two other adults and we were tasked with an outdoor project. Later, a separate group of adults had to return to repair/fix the things the youth did. That was the only year the stake participated in the county service day. I’m guessing they weren’t invited back. It was embarrassing to have been associated with it and I still cringe about it, despite doing the absolute best I could in what I was tasked with.
Not my own personal experience, but in the 60’s/70’s my mother was a RS president and the bishop would make her go look through the kitchen cupboards of some of those who were asking for food from the storehouse to judge if they really needed food. She was also asked on occasion to go sit outside a single sister’s home at 7 in the morning to see if any men left her place – also to determine if she was worthy to receive food. I was about 8 or 9 at the time, so I left I got left home alone. Not cool and super cringe worthy.
Oohh! The set-a-date program! Remember the set-a-date program? We were supposed to prayerfully choose a date by which we’d have someone ready to meet with the missionaries. Then we heard lots of talks and stories about successes and how Heavenly Father was meeting all these deadlines and people were having wonderful missionary experiences. You never heard about the cringey failures! Then the church just … quit talking about the set-a-date program.
Anyway, my friends and I (who were all still single) set a date by which we would meet our future spouses. Fail.
Here’s a fun one. One time in high school, I may or may not have gotten a bit drunk while at a party. Some concerned friends drove me home, but first took me to the drive-thru at McDonalds to get me a coffee to sober me up a bit. I refused to drink the coffee, telling my friends that it was against my religion to drink coffee.
OMG, here’s one I forgot about. Years ago, I worked in SLC, and my work group paid for selected execs to go to a week long meditative retreat in the East Coast, usually just one at a time. We worked with this company a lot, and we were all of friendly terms. The retreat required that participants be open-minded and participate in all the activities. One of the activities was a guided meditation in the evening, and one of the people leading the meditation activity approached me personally to say he understood if I couldn’t participate for religious reasons. I was really confused. “On what grounds? What exactly are we doing in this activity?” He said he wasn’t sure what the objection had been, but a Mormon colleague of mine had declined on religious grounds. I asked him to explain the activity in detail, and I said, “Well, I don’t think there’s anything objectionable in that, so I’ll participate.” When I got back to the office, I asked the colleague why he had objected to the activity, and what were the “religious grounds.” He said it was a mixed gender activity in the evening (e.g. the Mike Pence rule), and that at the end of the day, he just didn’t want to do the activity and knew he could get out of it by saying he had a religious objection.
I could fill volumes with my previous cringey-Mormony behavior, but here’s one of my favorites:
In the last few weeks of my mission I decided I wanted to preach to a crowd in the city center before I went home. Ya know, like the early saints in England. This resulted in me half-assedly climbing a 2-foot wall and giving a 30-second version of the first vision story in front of a couple passersby and my nonplussed companion. I then sheepishly dismounted the wall and went about my day.
@kirkstall – thanks for the laugh!
My anxiety disorder gives me cringe amnesia. I don’t remember most events that did (and should have) embarrass me. So I can’t share that, but the flag pole example reminded me of when it happened to me.
My husband deployed to the Middle East when we were stationed in UT. As it happened, he left at O’ dark thirty on September 11th. Of course there was a flag in our yard that morning. Since it was still warm, our sprinklers were still on and I soon discovered a geyser in the front yard. I had a 5 month old, a 4 year old and a 7 year old and didn’t know where to start with fixing a busted pipe. Luckily, my FIL lived in the state and he came to help fix it. Because I was too embarrassed for the poor boy scout who would have punctured the pipe I didn’t tell anyone in the ward what happened.
I mentioned it to my husband a few weeks later and he remembered stepping into a mushy spot in the grass as he climbed into his taxi but of course wasn’t in a position to investigate.
I was always uneasy about flag holidays after that and was relieved when the boys stopped having to raise money for scouts.
In our New England ward circa 2004 it was an annual tradition to prepare Thanksgiving dinner boxes for the less fortunate. The affluent half of the ward failed to realize there were probably at least 7-8 families in the ward who would have been grateful to see charity beginning at home.
I also liked the pastime of whale watching and wondered if I could drum up the courage to preach to everyone on the boat.
20 years later I have not stayed in the boat nor held on and I had to cringe a few months ago at a family reunion where my family was the only LDS folk and my RM son told a relative that drinking is against God’s commandments.
Hoo-boy. When I was a teenager in the early 90s I went to a band leadership training camp at BYU. All who attended loved the clinicians to death – they were such positive and motivational people that we were sure they make great Mormons. But when someone suggested giving them each a copy of the Book of Mormon and someone else said they already had at least one, we decided to try to find something else. So looking around at the BYU bookstore, I saw a copy of The Miracle of Forgiveness. I hadn’t read it, but I had seen a copy at my house, so I suggested that and everyone else went along with it. I told my mom later that night and her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “That’s some STRONG medicine” is the phrase I remember.
A month or so later, I got a very nice letter from the clinician, thanking me for the thoughtful gift and that I would never know how often he found himself nodding in agreement with it.
To this day, I hope that was a tactful way of saying he never got around to reading it. After reading it as an adult, the thought of making this poor man read Pres Kimball‘s thoughts on pr0n, French kissing, and several other topics (mostly sex-related, but let’s not forget the “interesting story” about the early apostles who met the ACTUAL Cain in the road one day during his mission)… well, it still makes me want to hide.
My parents lived an hour and a half away from where my husband and I live. We called to see when would be convenient for them for us to go and visit them and they named a day and time. When we got there at the appointed time my mom informed us that they had 15 minutes to visit us in because they were going to the Saturday evening adult meeting prior to stake conference the next day. Our jaws drop to the floor. Since that time I have thought a lot about how it felt to know that a church meeting was more important to my parents than spending time with me and my husband who’d made a special effort to go visit them. I’d always suspected that the church was more important to my parents than I was, but now I knew it for sure. My husband later told me that he called my parents and read them the riot act about the way they’d treated us, especially me. As you may surmise we rarely visit my mom who, to this day doesn’t think that she did anything wrong. (My dad, who did apologize, died about a year after this happened).
For all those Facebook photos the Young Womens leader keeps sharing. Below is a list of twelve religious claims from my Mormon upbringing that I can’t believe I believed for so long.
https://darik.news/idaho/gcm-announces-an-update-on-the-anniversary-of-the-betrayal-and-the-aftermath-of-the-us-pullout-of-afghanistan/594390.html
Most sound very mainstream!
In college I was talking with a Jewish friend that was wrestling with the symbolism of the story of Moses and the 10 commandments. Symbolism and metaphor didn’t register in my Mormon scripture paradigm, so I proceeded to explain with complete sincerity about Moses originally receiving the higher law but seeing that the ppl were not ready to receive it and so were given the lower law until they were prepared. Ugggg! So anti-Semitic. He was incredibly gracious. That year I also argued with my PhD teaching fellow abt the story of Job.
those were some very cringey years in the mainstream world from the Mormon bubble.
I have since found such beauty in the Jewish approach to scripture and so many other ideas.
Stranger, your parents and mine would have gotten on famously.
I had an assignment when I was 11 to give a presentation on any topic, with A-Z related terminology. Naturally, I chose the church. A for Adam-Ondi-Ahman, L for Latter-day Saint, P for Priesthood, X for X-mas, Z for Zion. I remember having a bit of a crisis over whether Jesus Christ or Joseph Smith should be J!
I loved putting powerpoints together and adding extra transitions and effects. In this case, I had a slide with a white background for every letter of the alphabet. My special effect was adding another slide, with white text and a black background, appear briefly between every other slide. The text read MORMON.
The word MORMON flashed for half a second each time. I gave my 11-year-old audience 25 slides of subliminal messages, in an already church-themed presentation!!
Somewhere, somebody is already wondering about the Queen’s temple work.
On my birthday last month I received a small card, inside of which was pasted this message from a desktop printer:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
We hope you have a great day and know you are loved.
Love, (redacted) Ward Relief Society
(Envelope hand addressed to me, return is address only, no name)
I recently moved into this ward, and I’ve never attended anything at all, although I did give permission to the clerk of my former ward to get rid of my records. I’ve never had a single contact other than group emails, and this one snail mail. Even though the specific hope to feel loved was expressed, I don’t feel it.
I had this calling once upon a time. I sent notes and cards to everyone on the RS list who wasn’t assigned a VT, often including all the do not contact folks. Once each quarter for all birthdays occurring during that time, because statistics reports were due. And it was my assignment. My RSP and I agreed that everyone have at least an annual contact. To my credit, I did write by hand a personal note of goodwill and connection to each one. (Though the connection part was a struggle with someone I’d never met, who may have specifically asked that I not do what I was doing. And may not have been well received, so not a credit after all.) I always addressed the envelope with my personal return address, partly because I wanted to receive any return-to-sender, which was dutifully reported up the info-collection chain. And I was always rather pleased with myself and my righteous diligence, and especially how I made the effort to try to actually, personally connect with a loving message. Now I’m cringing, even as I’m judging how this diligent disciple fulfills her perception of the assignment re: lost sheep.
So yeah, lots to cringe about. But my cards were the best I could find, often letterpress printed on heavy stock, and a visual treat. So, so – SO anxiously engaged in being diligent. So much cringe.
My neighbor, a nice lady, divorced mom of 3, told a small group of friends about her old high school boyfriend in another state, and her efforts to convert him. Everyone seemed to agree that he was a good candidate for missionary discussions, then marriage to her.
Everyone also seemed to go along with this, even though he was living with his current girlfriend. Apparently, it wasn’t a valid relationship if the two weren’t married.
Essentially and actually, this devoted Mormon woman was the “other woman” trying to break up a committed relationship.
Of course this moment of cringe has resurface in light of the passing of Her Majesty The Queen: https://www.ldsliving.com/when-prince-charles-received-a-book-of-mormon-from-alex-boye-the-hilarious-behind-the-scenes-story/s/85184
Oh boy!
How apropos that the drive-by dumped their “disciple-making” attempt in the comments of this particular post, sharing cringeworthy stuff. I wonder if the human behind this calculating behavior has actually read any of the posts or comments? If so, it makes this action, devoid of any warmth of actual connection, even more crass. It’s like the blogging equivalent of throwing food against the wall to see what sticks.
One of my Mormon cringes:
Dropping off (dumping) our young children in temple waiting room while we attended various temple weddings. Assumed unendowed family/older cousins, etc. would watch them.
So narcissistic.
Years later, proud of one of my children, who’d become disenfranchised from church, and partner consciously, cheerfully willing to engage horde of children when sib got married.
So you have no cringeworthy accounts? A critic? Every one of these comments here are accounts of things you actually know are true.