Last summer, I visited the area where I grew up, including going out for ice cream with a group of my old high school friends. None of my high school friends were Mormons, which are super rare in Pennsylvania, but most of them grew up attending church. The majority were part of a mainline Protestant sect of the Church of the Brethren, and the local congregation at that time was fairly progressive. And yet, in our post-pandemic, increasingly secular world, most have abandoned religion altogether. One friend, a fellow trans mom, talked about going to a family funeral in which the preacher’s sermon was very fiery about Hell and damnation, a total turn-off to her. She finally walked out of the sermon, and told her family she just wanted nothing to do with that harmful, controlling kind of thinking.
While fiery sermons aren’t really a Mormon thing, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t fears instilled through Mormon doctrines. To name a few off the top of my head, there are fears about eternal families, physical protection (through garment wearing), financial security from paying tithing, being afraid that Satan rules the waters, fear of “straying from the covenant path,” etc. Common religious phobias fall into these categories:
- Fear of Hell or damnation
- Fear of divine punishment
- Fear of blasphemy
- Fear of religious rituals
- Fear of religious authorities
I had a close friend who was Hindu whose parents were afraid of monkeys due to the role of Hanuman who was sometimes a mischievous god, a human cursed into monkey form. Let’s be honest; monkeys are basically tiny thugs, so there was some reason to be wary of them. I just disagree that it’s because of their religious or divine power.
Many other religious beliefs function this way. About a year and a half ago, I wrecked on my bike because a woman was in my path, and I had to swerve to get around her which caused my wheel to get caught. She was apologetic, but then she explained that it happened because she used birth control and God was punishing her for it (!). This had also caused her to have liver problems (I wondered if drinking and genetics might have also been a factor, but I didn’t know her). So, basically, according to her, I was caught in the cross-hairs of her divine punishment. I admit that I uncharitably hoped that she continued to use birth control.
I’ve been talking a lot about Steve Hassan’s work with former cult members. One of the difficulties he talks about in the “deprogramming” phase is that cult members have been indoctrinated with phobias, and it’s one of the key reasons they stay in a destructive cult. They often believe that non-members are literally demons trying to harm them. Many of our readers will recall that phobia of demons is what led Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell to murder their children. While they were Mormons, I don’t think phobia of demons is common among church members, although as I pointed out in my mission memoir, there was a lot of “joking” that the MTC was surrounded by demonic forces, and we were only safe if we stayed in the borders. Did some missionaries take that seriously? Maybe. I mean, Provo may be full of dark forces, but I think it’s mostly just religious extremists and judgmental nosy neighbors.
And yet not every church member is subject to phobia indoctrination to the same degree. When I’ve heard others share a religious-based fear they have that I don’t share, it just sounds like superstition to me, like a silly idea that I don’t share. For example, when people have said “Satan rules the waters” my reaction is to laugh about it. Like does he rule the water in a puddle, a garden hose, or how about sacrament cups? I stumbled across an article outlining some post-Mormon phobias (part of the reason Hassan considers Mormonism to be a cult) that are based on church teachings about Satan. I guess I just never really considered these to be valid, but that doesn’t mean others don’t feel differently.
- Satan can outsmart you
- Satan never sleeps
- Satan deceives people into believing he doesn’t exist
However, I do remember being told that Satan could read your journal and use the things you said there against you, as temptations. I just thought the idea of Satan reading my teenage diary was mostly hilarious, imagining him dishing on my friends’ relationship gossip (the majority of the content of my journals). It just seemed ridiculous to me. I could picture him crossing his legs, his hooved feet tapping as he held my pink fuzzy notebook, turning the pages to find out what would happen next as these teen dramas unfolded.
But, like everyone I’ve felt vaguely superstitious about things from time to time. About 15 years ago, I had to board an 8-hour flight without garments (after spilling an entire cruse of oil and vinegar all over myself, requiring a last minute hooker shower in a public bathroom), and I was slightly afraid that the plane might crash. I also used to have the fear that my professional success was linked to paying tithing.
Phobias like this are of course not unique to religion. One of my favorite movies, mostly for the Philadelphia connection (Fly, Eagles, Fly) is Silver Linings Playbook. The main character of the film is Pat, who suffers from bipolar disorder. He deals with his phobias through positive thinking, trying to counteract his anxieties. But why I like the film so much is that the other characters who don’t suffer from mental illness also use rituals and coping mechanisms to deal with their superstitions, including in relation to trying to control the outcomes of Eagles football games by the placement of the remote control, where family members are seated, and whether the correct jersey is worn by spectators. In a world that can feel unpredictable and challenging, these rituals and superstitions can create a sense of control, even if that feeling is not based in reality. The show explores the idea of whether our phobias control us or we use superstitions to control our environment, and where does superstition end and mental illness begin.
- Have you had any Mormon superstitions or phobias? What were they? How serious were they?
- Have you heard of other people’s phobias that you considered superstitions? Why didn’t they hold sway for you?
- Do you see deliberate indoctrination of phobias in the church, or is it just a byproduct of normal human behavior?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I think the church deliberately indoctrinates parents into self blame and fears over how their kids will turn out. This is especially powerful with women, who have been encouraged to base their entire life’s value on how their kids turn out, evaluated against the covenant path standard. It feels controlling, even sadistic to me at this point in my life. Many parents hearts are sensitive and wounded. We come to church for comfort and support as we mourn, and instead leaders rub salt in our wounds with talks like “Think Celestial”.
How does this benefit anyone? It’s actually destructive of family relationships when children feel their parent’s positive regard for them is entirely based on their compliance with the covenant path.
I’ve never really been impacted by much of the cultural wackiness. Mainly because I grew up in a family where the BS meter was pretty strong in my parents. Sunday dinner was an exercise in dad having us tell him what was taught that day and then him correcting the nonsense. Certainly, it’s out there. Maybe more in the Mo Corridor. I am very interested in your mission memoir. Would you mind sharing it with me?
“Let’s be honest; monkeys are basically tiny thugs, so there was some reason to be wary of them.” -Amen!
We all have the fear of leaving. The “what if I’m wrong”. I’ve heard that from so many who’ve left.
It’s a little disconcerting to notice how often and how easily Satan-talk slips into LDS discourse at all levels. He is the go-to explanation for LDS leadership when the world refuses to conform to LDS wishes, of course, but it’s more than that. He gets a nod in most Conference talks, and rank and file members pick up the habit and bring Satan in as an explanation for anything that doesn’t go quite right in their life. It’s like no explanation or commentary on anything Mormonish is complete without a nod to Satan trying to throw a wrench in the works. He’s like the weather, just always there. Mormons are strangely overcommitted to Satan.
Superstition is baked into LDS religion the same way it’s baked into sports fanaticism. A Church member or sports fan believes his or her behavior is directly linked to his or her fortune/misfortune or his or her’s team’s success. I’ll be wearing a certain hat this weekend during the Super Bowl in order to help my team. And that’s just as rational as what some of you believe.
My parents taught me that Satan can’t know our thoughts until we reveal them to him. How we act, speak, and pray does disclose our struggles to Satan. They taught me that when we desire intimate prayers, where we repent or ask for help with struggles, we should pray silently.
Also the 1/3 of the hosts of Heaven that followed Satan want our bodies sooo badly. If we sin we are more likely to allow them to take over our body. This played into scrupulosity.
I don’t think I ever really believed the prayer thing, seems like God would somehow watch over sincere verbal prayers. The whole Satan followers taking over our bodies did kind of freak me out until after my mission. On my mission I was asked to cast out demons but I never did because it scared me so much. I think once I got into the real world as an adult I started to believe that Satan possessing humans was just mental illness. But holy crap, talk about messed up!
One of the biggest phobias I remember as a kid but also reinforced over and over again as an adult was Rock-n-Roll and R-rated movies being from Satan. The latest iteration was an older guy in our ward getting up and talking about all the movies he’d walked out on and they weren’t even R-rated movies and how the Woodstock Festival was the critical moment that Satan won control over kids’ minds.
When I was young I’d hear this from Boyd K Packer and see off some of my albums. Over time though, I began to think more seriously about what they were saying and realized they weren’t bad at all in spite of the beat. As an adult, I played in a cover band for over 30 years sang a lot of different songs, and thought about many more. Then I realized that some of the songs that church members may have thought were really bad were in fact another way of looking at things and were pretty good. In fact, some of the “worst” songs were critical statements about social justice and society that talked about the greater good. The same can be said about movies. There have been some great truths stated in R-rated movies.
So when I heard the guy in my ward put down Woodstock, all I could think was how he had locked himself off from experiencing some wonderful expressions in music.
dlcroc58: Here’s a link to my mission memoir on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Hermana-Plunge-Angela-Clayton-ebook/dp/B07NQ4CXFB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=D30HIP4VNVW2&keywords=legend+of+hermana+plunge&qid=1707330057&sprefix=legend+of+herm%2Caps%2C192&sr=8-1
Instereo,
I agree. If you don’t take the time to listen to another point of view, what do you understand about the world? Without the context others may offer, what do you really know about your own point of view? Don’t panic when bad things are depicted or discussed. You have the ability to listen and consider the things you watch and listen to. You can decide what is not good for you. You can listen and turn things off, or just think about them and make your own choices. Why be afraid?
I can still recall a joint youth meeting run by the stake presidency circa 1995 where I was taught that if I sinned and repented and then repeated that sin then the previous repentance didn’t count and now I had to repent twice. This view of thinking really did a number on me where at some point I used to feel on the one hand I had been forgiven but on the other hand realized there is no way forgiveness could be that easy given the sheer volume I was dealing with here. I was constantly expecting horrible things in my life because I was bad, and given some family and personal stuff growing up, I felt I deserved it all.
I really have no idea if this is Mormon unique or is a general Christian teaching but I’m not sure where the scriptural foundation is for it.
When I finally took that final step away from my faith tradition, I feared I would lose all my relationships. Family relationships remain but I pretty much lost all my friends, so that one came true. Making new friends as a shy adult has not been easy but apparently I can do hard things.
I am kind of like dlcroc58, in that I grew up with the common LDS suspicion and extremism being debunked. Only instead of discussing what was taught at church in positive ways, and debunking superstition, they mocked the superstition and extremism as silliness. Meanwhile we were forced to attend church to keep the grand parents from having a hissy. So, in a way, religion was good and necessary, but also laughably silly. So, lots of mixed messages we had to use our own critical thinking to sort out. Luckily they did teach critical thinking and discuss evolution, geology, and other science that did not match with fundamentalist thinking. But I guess because of the grandmothers, all hell would break out if we dared leave or seriously question the religion. So, while the common superstitions were debunked, we were given an equally toxic one of our own.
It wasn’t until my maternal grandmother had been dead for 20 years that I actually saw the extent of my mother’s terror of displeasing her mother over the church. My mother hated garments, but was deathly afraid of not wearing them, but didn’t believe the church was true in any way shape or form for 50 years or so, and still could not shake the fear of not wearing them. The garments were the outward sign of staying faithful, and even when she hadn’t been to church in 50 years, the ghost of her mother might see.
I remember the shocked look on my two very sweet, but very conservative, Mormon aunts’ faces when my believing, but more open minded, uncle informed them that he wished to be cremated instead of buried when he passed. The belief that one’s resurrection might be at risk somehow if you choose to be cremated seems to be a fairly common Mormon phobia. How many Mormon funerals have you attended where the deceased was cremated? It doesn’t take more that a minute of thought to realize that this phobia doesn’t make much sense. What about all the righteous souls taught by Alma and Amulek who were executed by fire? Is it really easier for God to reconstruct a body that entirely decayed in the earth than it is for him to reconstruct a body that burned to ashes? Is God really not omnipotent after all?
I want to back up Chadwick’s comment about repeated sins undo the prior repentance and you have to confess and repent of those sins again.
That happened with bishops in California and also Washington.
There’s a phobia about praying before eating – this is a generally harmless tradition that has no doctrinal base beyond “be grateful for what you have.” My uncle used to tease the younger kids at family events by telling them they had to keep their mouths open during the prayer if they ate before the blessing, that way it could uncurse the food they’d already eaten…he meant it entirely as a joke, but it was funny to watch. I also had a roommate in college who refused to eat without first praying – this extended to going out to eat on dates or with large groups. He’d stop talking, fold his arms, close his eyes, and visibly pray while people awkwardly looked at him.
There’s the idea that the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight; pesky youths beware! It can certainly be easy to get into trouble late at night, and I think this mostly stems from parents trying to get their teenage kids to make good decisions and come home at a reasonable hour. But I know people who swear this is doctrinal.
There’s the phobia about praying for humility or patience – that somehow God is all too happy to rain down trials and hardship on people “foolish” enough to ask for help in those areas. This is silly.
I find the modern ideas about tithing to be a superstition that’s maliciously reinforced by many leaders. Tithing started as a way to help the church out of financial trouble, with promised blessings for those who helped, which is fine. Joseph F. Smith even said that there’d be a day when the church was so wealthy that tithing would be replaced by voluntary donations. Since then it’s morphed into a phobia with people being terrified that they won’t get into heaven without paying tithing as defined by the LDS church (giving to other causes is great, but doesn’t count toward your quota). Then leadership reinforces it by saying there’s no celestial kingdom or eternal families without the temple and then using tithing to gatekeep temple access. This is an example of a weaponized phobia.
“We all have the fear of leaving. The “what if I’m wrong”. I’ve heard that from so many who’ve left.” -Andy
I didn’t see it quite like that, I just didn’t know how to believe in god anymore. I tried to.
Finally, I came to this peace, that if there is a god, and god is good, any judgement from that god will be based on how I live my life, how I treat others. My belief or disbelief will not affect a good god’s judgement.
Further, I would choose to not worship a god who is not good.
Back in the mid 80s, there was a Youth Conference speaker doing the circuit, a guy named Lynn Bryson (I think?) who told us all that our rock albums contained Satanic back-masking that would cause us to, I dunno, worship Satan? Allow him into our lives? I’m not exactly sure how it was supposed to work. He went through a big spiel about the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven being about some other pagan worship thing. Anyway, to nobody’s surprise he was selling his own crappy CDs (Satan-free) in the lobby. I don’t know why I was so cynical at such a young age, but even 15 year old me couldn’t believe the church was letting this guy milk us like frightened cash cows as a captive audience at a mandatory session of youth conference. I was sitting through this lecture next to a friend who was wearing a Led Zeppelin cap, and we were laughing through the whole thing.
Fears are institutionalized by the temple recommend interview. The fear of not being with your spouse, children, grandparents, cousins, etc., in the afterlife is used as leverage to compel compliance to whatever the interview questions prioritize – currently tithing, wow, purity culture, and loyalty to the people who decide what questions should be asked in that interview, etc. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of non-manipulative ways to maintain and encourage beliefs in the doctrines/teachings/policies that give rise to the current recommend questions, but to do away with that level of controlling fear would (I think) fundamentally change the nature of the church as we know it, so it will never happen. The core distinguishing doctrine of the church (“eternal families”) is premised on a policy of exclusion – just another example of how mortal men would rather err on the side of justice than mercy. If it is all going to get “sorted out in the end” then why are we as imperfect humans erring on the side of exclusion on the blessing of eternal families? Fear and control to maintain the status quo is the answer.
I wish I could remember who said this first, probably Hwkgrrrl as it is both hilarious and painfully true, but the church seems to get to most of us, Mob-style, through those we love:
“Awfully nice family you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to ‘em.”
This was and is the animating phobia/anxiety of so many Mormons I know: if we don’t do everything exactly right and force our kids to do it too, we’ll all be lost to each other -forever-!
For years, I was afraid of the insistent, pervasive thoughts I had. I knew they were one of Satan’s followers whispering things to me like in The Screwtape Letters. The more I tried to drown them out with hymns, prayers, even blessings, the worse they got. Even the most mundane thoughts were suspect. Thinking, “go get extra blanket. It’s cold,” might be Lucifer himself and if I obeyed, I was showing him that he had control over me.
After years of therapy, these thoughts have nothing to do with Satan, are completely normal, and I had an anxiety disorder. But the lengths I went to try to prevent this. Obviously, it was because I wasn’t doing enough- not righteous enough.
My parents were definitely not super-strict, fundamentalist-leaning Mormons in their approach to child rearing (so I was spared a lot of this nonsense about Satan gaining access to your thoughts or whatever), but they also did not do very much to refute or counteract other orthodox teachings I was absorbing in seminary, Sunday School and Aaronic Priesthood quorums. Even well into young adulthood, I firmly and fearfully believed that the redemptive power from partaking of the sacrament only lasted 7 days (which is why we are expected to do it every week); so if you came late to Church and missed the sacrament on Sunday, then died in a freak accident on Tuesday, you would not have a complete forgiveness of your sins, so forget about making the Celestial Kingdom, and no chance of seeing your family in the eternities. Thus, I had a lot of unnecessary anxiety about getting to church on time, and going out of my way to find an LDS ward to attend if I happened to be traveling on Sunday. Somehow, I rationalized that the Lord made built-in exceptions for Stake Conference Sundays, as well as legitimate illnesses, but missing the sacrament for any other reason would ruin your chances at salvation/exaltation. It took me a lot of deconstruction to get over that.
So no, we don’t really do fire and brimstone preaching in the LDS Church, but we seem to have mastered passive-aggressive fear based manipulation. And I’ve mentioned this before elsewhere, but it bears repeating: RMN himself uses the fear-based approach quite frequently in his public discourse (e.g. “sad heaven”, allusions to “TK smoothie” doctrine) because I think he genuinely believes it himself, and is often prone to self-aggrandizement to mask the fact that he is deeply insecure about his own salvation, and is using his bully pulpit to make everyone else feel as insecure as he is.
Obsessive Compulsive Religious Scrupulosity is a genuine mental health disorder that is made much worse when people ignore reality when they are teaching religious principles. Religion is a beautiful thing when it actually supports mental health. When it encourages unhealthy beliefs that interfere with normal life by encouraging shame, and treating ritual behavior like it is the actual thing it symbolizes (it isn’t, repentance isn’t taking the sacrament), than it isn’t good (it doesn’t bear good fruit). When we are encouraged to think in a literal, all or nothing way, we prepare ourselves to have our faith broken when life and reality inevitably catch up to us. Unfortunately, this the path the church has walked down. As some of you have shared, nuanced parents can protect their children with good discussion about reality. I want the church to start facing up to reality and teaching it from a young age. Then we will be able to bend rather than break. Toxic, hurtful theology should be eliminated.
Keep it simple. Just follow Christ and treat others well. Thanks for listening to my rant.
@Chadwick and @mountainclimber
Another for repeat repentances don’t count and cremation. I took a class from a very famous Mormon author in the late 90s and he taught that all God needs is one molecule of DNA to re-create a body. He probably taught that to thousands of students. I distinctly remember thinking that millions of unfortunate soldiers and war victims would never be resurrected because their bodies ceased to exist for various violent reasons – and that God must not be as powerful as we think.
My current favorite phobia is the TK smoothie. In a popular faithful LDS Facebook forum this came up and a surprising % of people believe it. Fear of no eternal sex and losing your family is alive and well.
When I was in the MTC we got lectured on how not swimming had nothing to do with Satan. They wanted us to know it was about accidents and not superstitious nonsense.
They also told us not to play football as missionaries for the same reason.