The word “literal” is being misused all the time.
I walked into the meeting and it was a literal mine field of hostility.
I literally fell on the floor laughing at his jokes
My dad literally had a heart attack when he saw the wrecked car.
It is misused so much that linguists believe its meaning could be changing.
If misuse of “literally’’ continues at the current rate, its true meaning could meet the fate of words such as “nonplussed’’ (meaning surprised and confused, but often misused as a synonym for disconcerted), or “bemuse’’ (to bewilder or puzzle, but often misused as a synonym for amuse). These are words that have been misused for so long that their original definitions have been completely distorted.
It is now being used as a form of dramatic flair, to add intensity to your voice. But it has lost its original meaning for the younger generation.
How this ties into Mormonism is I was reading an article a while back on active Mormons and how “literal” they take the Book of Mormon and First Vision. The article was based on a B H Roberts Foundation survey, which you can read about here
The results from active members was that 90% believed that the Book of Mormon is a literal history, and 85% agreed that Joseph Smith literally saw God the Father and Jesus Christ.
I wonder if this will mean the same in 20 years? 40 years? Will we have a whole new generation of members who can say that Joseph Smith literally saw God and Jesus, and in the next breath say that they literally split their gut at the funny movie they watched last night?
Regardless of the changing meaning of literal, are we as a Church moving away from the literal translation of the Book of Mormon from plates, from it being a history of real ancient people? Apologist have changed the meaning of the word “translate” as it applies to anything Joseph Smith did.
We are also hearing more and more that the Book of Mormon is a not a history book.
“There are some things the Book of Mormon is not,” President Nelson said. “It is not a textbook of history, although some history is found within its pages. It is not a definitive work on ancient American agriculture or politics. It is not a record of all former inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, but only of particular groups of people.”
President Russell M. Nelson at 2016 Seminar for New Mission Presidents
This is not what I was taught growing up. The Book Of Mormon was a literal history of the indigenous people of all the Western Hemisphere. Everybody that Columbus found when he got here was literally a Lamanite. I baptised literal Lamanites in Chile in the 1970’s. Alas it is no more.
What other things that we take as literal today in the Church will be changing in the coming years?
Wheat & Tares 
as I was reading the first part of the post, I actually thought you were going to transition into talking about how the meaning of doctrine as a word has been misused so much that it has lost its original meaning in the church.
I think already a majority of Mormons do not take the Adam and Even at 6,000 or so years ago as a literal history of the human race, and probably most do not take the 6 day creation as literal history of the earth. I think most Mormons probably believe in maybe sorta 6 periods of creation of several billion years for the first one or two with how long the Big Bang was supposed to take.
When I was growing up, several general Authorities were insisting that all of that was quite literal, and now Pres Nelson is probably a minority insisting that the creation could not have been evolution, because he believes that would be too chaotic. He must not understand the process and forces driving it, because when you do, you see it as natural as humans breeding dogs or corn into what they want. If Humans can do it, why not nature. I believe in the power of nature maybe more than any power of God running this world.
Also, More Mormons are understanding that much of the Bible is not history, but the myths used by the Israelites to unify into one nation, but we are not to a majority on that yet.
I think the whole of the Joseph Smith story is starting to be questioned by many Mormons, from actually seeing God and Jesus to making up the Pearl of G. P. And BoA. As well as making up commandments like polygamy. I think among progressive Mormons many doubt polygamy and probably most doubt the ban on Blacks having priesthood as literally being revelation from God. Nope, men’s opinions.
As to how long before that is a majority, well, there are still people who think the world is flat and that Trump won the 2020 election, so who knows.
I remember stating throughout my entire mission, “This is literally the Church of Jesus Christ, and we have a prophet that literally speaks with God”.
Now that I no longer attend church, I am occasionally told by family members that we took the church too seriously and literally. We were too black and white, thinking, they state.
Many of our family members have no issue going to the store, working, or studying on Sunday, or staying home from church for something important. Some of them never got the whole JS story. They were not as routine for Family Home Evening or reading the scriptures as we were. They are not interested in deep dives of church history, compared to those who want to literally learn all about the Church of Jesus Christ. We did not listen to Hard Rock music or use face cards in the 80’s because the prophet told us not to. Like many on this sub, we listened, followed and obeyed as we are told; but now we had a second birth/awakening.
It is over generalizing, but I think for those still attending church, they never absorbed the messages as literal and are OK with the problematic facts now coming to light as highlighted in CES letter and internet searches and I think they just want the community. Or another group loves the power and prestige of the decision making over other people and dam the facts!!
Doing a quick web search on lds.org it notes…we are literally children of God, literal gathering of Israel, temple literally house of Lord, OT has literal stories, literal seed of Abrham, etc. The church is gradually walking away from these statements and telling us to give them a break, we never taught that, and acting as a man vs. prophet.
Maybe I have a touch of autism. Are LDS members to listen and believe them or is the Q15 just filling up time and words on a page? I interview people daily, and try to believe what is told to me, until shown otherwise. I do not want to live a life seeing the world as completely untrustworthy.
If all church materials and talks have to be interpreted and reexplained by apologists, the author has poor communication skills or is someone is trying to “pull the wool over our literal eyes”.
Bishop Bill
“…and in the next breath say that they literally split their gut at the funny movie they watched last night”
Is this the pre-1990 temple movie?/s
I really wish I’d thought to think of it as a funny movie.
A quote that hopefully will have a short life – closing minutes of Conference, April 2024 RMN reminded us that on 04/03/1836 which was a Sunday in Kirtland, Ohio, “Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery experienced a series of remarkable visitations,” including Jesus, Moses, Elias, and Elijah.
@Faith
My deconstruction of religion has hit a lot harder than it did for my wife. I was raised with all the things and the associated guilt smack dab in the middle of Mormonland. My wife was raised by a single working mom with no priesthood in her home whose best friend was her gay brother outside the jello belt and therefore simply did not believe all the things.
So I think you are on to something.
It is now 7 AM Monday morning in Sydney. I was thinking of our fellow blogger Geoff Aus.
I hope you are out of the hospital and recovering and keep contributing to the discussions.
I thought for sure you were going to mention Quentin L Cook’s 2013 conference address in which he described a woman who “literally dissolved in tears” in the Celestial Room.
A gruesome image if we believe the dictionary.
In Joseph Smith’s time, literalness in belief was endemic. People held a wide range of superstitious beliefs and treated the Bible as actual history. It was commonplace to view Adam and Eve as the first humans. Even high intellectuals of the time held such beliefs. Now, however, the list of events, phenomena, and figures that one must regard as literal according to the dictates of Mormon culture are smaller than they used to be. One must maintain literal belief in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Joseph Smith’s witness of God and prophethood, the still small voice, the ancientness of the Book of Mormon in order to be a Mormon in good standing. It is expected that you openly express your belief in the literalness of such from time to time as well. Then there are areas where it may be less expected of you, yet still expected, for you to maintain literalness of belief, even if you don’t express explicit belief in these as literal. Things such as the historicity of Moses and Abraham, even if you don’t get up and say in your testimony how you believe that they literally existed. Then there is an area where literalness in belief may not be expected, but it is expected that you not challenge the idea of literalness. Such as the historicity of events described in the Bible and Book of Mormon. You’re not expected to find evidence or defend against skeptical narratives about these events, but you’re supposed to treat it all as if it did actually happen. You’re supposed to err on the side of literal, even if it is OK if you privately regard it as metaphorical. I see many of the OT miracles as such. The expectation is that you not openly challenge Moses parting the Red Sea or the occurrence of a flood. Maybe you think that it was some sort of local flood, but there was a flood nonetheless. On Adam and Eve, I think it is expected that you believe them to have literally existed. Although maybe it is OK to believe that they existed probably over 6,000 years ago.
Just recently my brother-in-law criticized members who treat the Genesis miracles as metaphorical and not having really happened as having less faith in God.
Faith, you’ve described how my wife sees things in relation to my inactivity. I stopped believing in the church because I was too rigid in it at all earlier age, or that my parents raised me too rigid and to see things in black and white. Therefore I reversed too hard and now continue to see things in black and white, but from the opposite direction.
This is not how I see it at all. In my view, the church encourages black and white thinking, and I left it to get away from that type of thinking. It is the one and only true church. It is the world vs. them. It insists that members subscribe to a set of very specific beliefs that they are not just to express belief in but ideally 100% knowledge in. It reserves time every month in every ward for members to testify before other attendees about how they know things with certainty. Even if some members are less literalist or more liberal than others, the culture of black and white thinking in the church is still fairly strong and affects even the more liberal types of believers like my wife.
My position is that what I used to “know” to be true (as was encouraged of every member to express by the leadership, especially on a mission), I now find unlikely. And why cling to ideas that seem unlikely.
But alas, the idea that inactives just saw things too black and white or were too rigid is a common apologist criticism foisted upon the ex-Mormon community as a put-down and gaslight. It doesn’t hold, either. If that were the case, then it would logically follow that missionaries would regularly and routinely be going inactive, for on the mission there are lots of people who take things too seriously. My sense is that the individuals who take things very seriously generally continue to take things very seriously and remain committed members.
I’m a literary scholar by training. The more literary criticism and philosophy I read, the less likely I became to take anything as literal—or at least as literal only. It puts me at odds sometimes with people I admire in other fields.
I remember a grad seminar twenty or so years ago deep in the basement of what was then the JKHB. Another student and I were agreeing the historicity of the Book of Mormon was entirely irrelevant to us. We were careful to say we weren’t taking the position that it was ahistorical—but that if it were, the ways we read it didn’t change. A few of the other students looked scandalized. The professor looked shocked—pleased, but shocked.
We see so little, we know even less, to want to absolutely insist we know the full meaning and provenance of anything—I’m just not interested in that. So I tend to tune out anybody claiming that kind of knowledge and have for a long time. It’s served me well. I agree with Faith (and Chadwick). It’s part of what’s allowed me to stay on the inside edges of our religious tradition and the institution.
Having said that, the disingenuous ways the institutional church has represented its history combined with its dubious leadership on some of the most important moral issues of the last two hundred years puts me in deep sympathy with everyone who’s had enough.
Margie,
You said it perfectly .
I think the comments of Faith, Brad D, Chadwick, and Margie are very interesting. My daughter, who is currently serving a mission, has noticed that a large number of returned missionaries are becoming inactive within a short time after returning from their missions, so she and I have been theorizing about the possible reasons for this for some time. John Dehlin recently claimed to have some insider knowledge (https://youtube.com/shorts/nhZw36seLKk?si=cjekRJ96a6RdkZhw):
Nine years ago, Greg Prince claimed that a General Authority had told him that 50% of missionaries will become inactive within 5 years of returning home (https://radiowest.kuer.org/curiosities/2015-08-24/lds-missions).
Our admittedly very anecdotal observations are that it doesn’t matter if a missionary was a hard core missionary or a more relaxed missionary–both types of missionaries seem to become inactive at high rates after returning home.
I suspect that there are a number of reasons for this high rate of inactivity of returned missionaries. My daughter and I have theorized, though, that one of the reasons is similar to what Faith said about black and white thinking. Missionaries really live in a bubble that is tightly controlled by the Church. They can only read official Church publications, they don’t have access to most of the internet, they are instructed to bear black and white testimonies to people whenever they can, they are told to promise blessings to people for “keeping commitments” whenever they can, etc.
And then missionaries return home, and the bubble is instantly popped. They are immediately exposed to the entire internet, they can read whatever they want, and they no longer have to say “I know” and “I promise” all day long. They are also now in their early 20s and more capable of independent thought that the 18-year-olds who leave right out of high school. My theory is that once that bubble is popped, and these returned missionaries recognize that the black and white thinking from their missions doesn’t actually match reality, they leave. After all, they were told their entire missions that it was all or nothing, black or white, so when they recognize that faith and religion are actually messy, and the world is really full of many different colors other than black and white, they leave.
What’s a possible solution? Encourage missionaries to read widely (which includes things that aren’t “Church approved”) about Mormonism, but also about other religions (including the dominant religion(s) in the country they are serving in, duh!), and spirituality in general. Encourage missionaries to be authentic when they share their thoughts and feelings about the gospel instead of robotically repeating “I know” and “I promise” over and over again. Allow missionaries to express and explore doubts with each other and their mission president, and don’t hold harboring doubts against them in any way.
Acting like robots doesn’t lead to a mature faith. When young adults return from missions, many of them quickly realize that what they said and did on their missions doesn’t reflect reality or their true beliefs. In other words, the black and white thinking they were required to conform to quickly leads to their disaffection. If the Church instead allowed missionaries to be authentic and independently explore their own faith and spirituality, many of these missionaries might return with a more mature faith that could support them for years to come. That’s my daughter’s and my theory, anyway. I have no idea if it’s correct (and even if it is, I think there are a number of other reasons returned missionaries leave the Church besides this one).
In casual conversation I wouldn’t be surprised if “literally” is actually used more often as an emphatic replacement for “practically” than its ostensibly correct usage. And people understand what it means this way. This usage has existed for many decades, if not centuries. (Citation needed)
So personally, I no longer say it is “misusing” the word “literally” when it is used as described above. Words mean what people use them to mean, or what people understand them to mean, and not necessarily what dictionaries dictate that they mean. Or, as Dan McClellan puts it, dictionaries are descriptive and not prescriptive. I don’t really intend this as a correction to the OP or the links provided; that would be (even more?) anal retentive behavior on my part. The OP is not incorrect in its use of “misuse” , because we all understand what Bishop Bill means when he says the word is misused.
On the other hand, context and usage is very important. The phrase “To take literally” is not reasonably interpreted or used to mean “to understand as a metaphor”. So if a one says “the news said he literally died” there is some ambiguity about whether a real death is being discussed, but if I say “when I heard he died, I took it literally”, it is clear that I’m using the more tradition usage.
What has or will the church changed from literal belief to literal? Literally everything has changed and will continue to change. But the one that strikes me as the most blatant is the gathering of Israel. This may sound familiar: “We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent”. Well that literal gathering has changed focus from a gathering on the American continent. Now it is taught that Zion is gathering to its stakes (a metaphor) throughout the world. This is a good change, in my view.
lf the institutional Church is indeed quietly letting go of several long-held literal beliefs, as the OP describes, the general membership has not received the memo, IMHO. I was reminded just today that even among my fairly open-minded elder’s quorum, belief in a literal Adam and Eve, and literal fruit on a literal tree, is pretty much universal. (Opinions on how they ended up there varies, with some form of intelligent design, being a popular option). But all scriptures are considered to be more or less historical, with some exceptions, the Holy Spirit (or Ghost) is literally a man, rather than a metaphor to describe God’s felt influence in the world, the Sabbath day is a literal day (for us, Sunday) of “rest,” rather than referring to the ideal of providing equitable rest from labor for all in society. I would go on, but I “literally cannot even.” Too tired.
@MountainClimber
I believe that post-mission inactivity rate is can be somewhat attributed to the age change.
I served my mission when they announced the age change, and a big reason why they did the age change (according to Church leaders) was to catch the young men who leave home for a year and decide a mission/church is not for them. Having them go on a mission right after high school means that many are still on autopilot (and often under their parents thumb). It pushes that self-discovery and potential decision to not do Church to after the mission.
With regards to the Sabbath, I don’t view the injunction of “a day of rest” as literal as I used to. My personal application of the Sabbath as “a day of rest” is more as a guide of “anything that helps you to recharge your battery.” As such, I enjoyed a nice long run yesterday as I listened ot uplifting material and spent time in God’s creation and nature. It was a nice rest for me, though not a literal one.
With regards to literal vs figurative, here’s one: I don’t believe that the 11 witnesses literally saw the plates with their physical eyes. If anything, I think they saw them with their spiritual eyes in a vision or perhaps something else entirely (like a prop). I suspect over time the idea of whether there were physical plates at all and if they were necessary for the “translation” will take on an evolution similar to what we’ve seen with the native Americans not being literal descendants of Lamanites. I think the provenance of the Book of Mormon will come to resemble something along the lines of what the Quran is for Muslims: direct inspiration from heavenly/angelic sources and the actual physical plates of the Book of Mormon (whether they existed at all) being largely irrelevant to the value and application of the text for believers.
I was discussing this post with my wife yesterday and she said that when she was young her family hosted a student who was part of the Indian Placement Program (e.g., Lamanite Placement Program). Her parents sat the kids down and said, “We’re going to have a Lamanite come live with us for a little while.” She said that at the time, she and her sisters were incredibly terrified! She said she was worried that the Lamanite student might harm them or worse (after all, the Lamanites were the bad guys in most the Book of Mormon stories). I couldn’t stop laughing about now absurd that is and to reflect on and how utterly dehumanizing that must have been for the victims of the Indian Placement Program, to say nothing of the cultural erasure that took place.
I have an example of something that I think was meant figuratively but which I have taken to be literal only because I find it more meaningful to me. Luke 21:26 discusses a prophecy of “men’s hearts failing them [for fear].” Heart disease has been the leading cause of death for the past 100 years. I’ve thought about that a lot in my role as an RN. If there is anything I can do to help people’s literal heart health, I try to do it.
This moving target of doctrine greatly annoys me. The unique doctrine of being LDS loses almost all meaning if you don’t believe in its literalness. This is why I believe the Q15 still believe in most doctrines as literal.
Also, like others have mentioned, I tried being the one taking the doctrine seriously and it didn’t work for my brain. I tried interpreting everything as symbolic and it didn’t work for the soul (if it’s symbolic do we have to treat some people so crappy??).
Toad,
It is symbolic, and no we don’t have to treat some people so crappy. Treating some people crappy is an evidence of a lack charity and of unrighteous dominion, so no, it isn’t required even if leaders and members do it. Treating anyone crappy is absolutely an error in following Jesus Christ (not to negate the necessity of boundaries and protecting oneself… another topic).
I believe many of the unique doctrines of Mormonism have value, even for people like me that are less literal. For instance there is the doctrine of Eve choosing to disregard the Father’s authority and eat the fruit, thus bringing forth the plan for all humankind to grow and learn. That’s the kind of theology I can follow and it is unique among Christian churches. To me it has the same power of teaching the necessity of personal spiritual authority, whether the story is seen as a symbolic story about the beginning of mankind or if you think Eve was a “literal” person.
Another valuable doctrine is the idea that a 14 year old could get their own answer from God even when religious authorities have told them they can’t. I don’t care whether Joseph “literally” saw God or not. The symbolism of asking God and depending on your own personal authority has power.
Another valuable doctrine is the idea of ongoing revelation. This means as a people we can have a current relationship with God rather than relying on ancient writings from the past. We can learn more information from God and expand on and correct things we have learned in the past. This is also a unique doctrine in Christianity (correct me if I am wrong please). I think it has value even though I don’t take it “literally” in that I don’t expect RMN has met with God physically, or that he necessarily has been inspired on everything or even anything. The symbolic value of this doctrine is that the church, and the people that make up the church can change their minds as they receive more information, and change direction.
We also have the unique doctrine of a Heavenly Mother. I don’t actually care if She “literally” has a body or if she is a representation of the feminine side of God that symbolically fills the universe. Her existence in our doctrine, either symbolic or literal, has a supportive and bolstering effect on women and our feeling of the value of our existence.
We do have vestigial doctrine in the equality, power, and autonomy of women. This can be seen in our history of women giving blessings, receiving the priesthood from John Taylor under the direction of Joseph Smith, and the autonomy of the Relief Society for nearly a century before correlation brought us under the domination of male authority and removed almost all the remains of our spiritual authority, except in one temple ordinance.
Our leaders have avoided building upon and teaching much of this unique doctrine, and have instead leaned toward literal interpretations that are often about being obedient to leaders, making us more similar to other churches without these doctrines. That doesn’t mean unique and valuable parts of our theology doesn’t exist. Symbolism conveys even more valuable lessons than literalism, at least to me.
lws@ respectfully – and I appreciate your thoughtful responses in this forum – I just don’t see it that way. Of course we don’t “have to” treat people crappy but our leaders insist we treat whole groups as less than. I refuse to do that any longer, therefore I’m either disobedient or I misunderstand doctrine according to leaders. I may be good with Jesus but I’m not good with the leaders so why would I bother with the trappings of an unwelcoming church?
The beliefs you describe to me seem not unlike the missionary in the Book of Mormon musical who takes so many liberties with doctrine that it’s essentially his own church.
Toad,
Just to be clear, I wasn’t in any form suggesting you stay with the church or leave the church. To me that has nothing to do with the topic of unique doctrine or literalness of doctrine. I was just responding to an intellectual discussion of the topic.
You sound as if maybe you are suffering from betrayal and pain. I apologize if my response came off in a way that diminishes that at all. You have every reason to feel betrayal, and to leave the church if you find that is supportive for you.
My interpretation of the doctrine can be supported by scriptures and history just like church leader’s interpretation can be supported by scriptures and history. The scriptures conflict, so people do pick among them to find those things that feel right to them and confirm their own views. Yes, I am doing that, but so is the leadership.
Many of my views were actually taught to me at church and at home in my 70s to 80s childhood. Things may have changed, or were expressed differently in different congratulations. Others I found by reading writings by people who study church history. I feel a lot of peace in the uncertainty of this. I genuinely don’t want or need to know anything, or to have someone in authority tell me what I should think. My attendance at church is a separate topic and doesn’t mean I endorse or don’t endorse what leaders are teaching currently or in the past.
One book I recommend is “All Things New” by Fiona and Terryl Givens. They do have a list of 60 plus scriptures that directly contradict other scriptures. They also talk about how words in the scriptures can be translated in various ways, and that we can choose a restorationist way to see a word or a more protestant or Calvanist way. For instance: sin vs woundedness or salvation vs healing. In many ways the church has rejected what Joseph taught to fit in with other churches (good in some ways, bad in others). This book has really changed the way I think about what I was taught and it is very healing for me, for me from some of the ways the church has wounded me.
I also follow Dan McClellan, an LDS biblical scholar. He says the meanings of the scriptures are renegotiated in each generation to support institutional power. As for doctrine, it absolutely has changed, is changing and will change, no matter how many times Oaks says otherwise. It doesn’t take much study of church history to know this.
In all respect Toad, you can also just reject the whole thing, God and everything connected to Them. That’s your call, and I support your decision on that, however you renegotiate it. Thank you for your response.
testing again, having trouble posting.
Rockwell, you said; “Words mean what people use them to mean, or what people understand them to mean, and not necessarily what dictionaries dictate that they mean”
This is a wonderfully nuanced way to describe the evolution of language. That being said, I find etymology incredibly fascinating, to locate alternative meanings from prior generations often informs how our modern usage becomes disconnected from a deeper and truer meaning. This is particularly true with religious language, which in our modern westernized Christianity, not only has a problem with literalism but also legalism. Take for instance the word “Religion”, having its roots in the latin “re-ligare”, re being a suffix meaning “again” and ligare coming from ligature or connecting point. Religion at its core would carry a sense of relational quality and community, “to connect again” would be its “literal” meaning (haha) or at least the literal meaning at some previous point in time. Sadly, IMO, “Religion” has become an institutional power structure containing dogma, rites, and ritual practices rather than a place of community and refuge. Religion for many has just become yet another thing to fail at. It seems to me that the very subtle shift religion risks is believing that their moral codes somehow make them more special in God’s eyes, meriting God’s favor, instead of being dispensers of it. The slide from Alma 1 to Alma 4 and again in the story of the Zoramites are the clear and present dangers of religion becoming to much about itself.
Like others in the thread I grew believing that most scripture, the JS story, BoM provenance and stories should all be taken literally. Even Adam and Eve, the garden, and tree have been promoted in GC as literal multiple times within recent memory.
From my perspective it seems that most mormons I know are taking things quite literally. I would be shocked if the most active mormons that I am acquainted with think of things like the temple ordinances, BoM, restoration of the priesthood, first vision, etc. as solely or even primarily symbolic. I would be less surprised to find that folks understand the flood, garden of Eden, and story of Moses symbolically, but I am very confident that some of the TBMs I know still cling to a literal interpretation these stories as well.
Regarding church history and BoM I struggle to understand how to find value in these without at least some literal interpretation. Is there any way to understand the restoration of the priesthood as symbolic, while still maintaining that the priesthood itself is a real thing? And if the priesthood isn’t a real thing, then what does the mormon church really have at the end of the day? Same with other doctrines that are interesting and perhaps comforting, like eternal progression, eternal families, and heavenly mother. If these aren’t real concepts, but were just made up by JS and others in the church through the decades, then aren’t we better off to just make up our own things to believe, rather than rely on these dudes? Being a mormon is not an easy thing to do, and I struggle to understand the motivation behind keeping it up after one understands that it was mostly just made up at the beginning with some other made up things added over time.
The central message of the BoM, at least according to LDS church messaging as far as I understand it, is that Jesus Christ visited the Americas after His death and taught here as well as the middle east. This is big if true! But if it’s just a made up thing, does it have value? Would God inspire JS to write it, and then inspire him to lie about its provenance? If it’s not at least partially historical/literal, and contains only, at best, some of the same glimpses of symbolic truth that we are all entitled to, then how much better off are we to read the BoM vs any other set of (maybe) inspired literature?
It’s often noted that most of the Bible isn’t historical or literal, which may be true, but I think most christians would assert that the story of Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection is literal and that that’s the main thing that matters. Setting aside what that means for the BoM and its story of Jesus, the Bible is still, to some extent, historical. Much of the bible was written in the time or near the time that the things being written about were happening. We can look for and sometimes find supporting evidence of other things that were going in the time the Bible was written, and use that information, along with a study of the bible, to better understand the context in which it was written and what it meant. Without historicity we don’t have that with the BoM. Historicity absolutely does change the way we read the BoM, vs the Bible at least, because there’s nothing else there. We may as well just be reading Hugo or Austen or Dickens, at least those stories are true to a period in history that we can research and learn to better understand, and even better the authors didn’t lie about their provenance, start up a church with them, and then use their newfound power to sleep with lots of teenage girls and other people’s wives.
A friend recently recommended to me an auto-biography, and told me a sad story about the book being written shortly after the author’s wife died of cancer. I read the book with that in mind and found it potent and meaningful. After I finished the book I looked a little bit more in to the author’s life. Turns out, when he wrote the book, his (first) wife wasn’t dead, but was actually quite alive and taking care of their infant child. Meanwhile the author was away on adventures, including sexual ones, that would become the body of the book. He did write a book after a girlfriend died of cancer, but it was much later, while on his third marriage, and when published led to a third divorce. Normally I’d take most of this in stride – the best artists seem to live the most tumultuous lives, and I’m not one to reject the art entirely. However, I’ve had a hard time picking up another book from this particular author after this experience. I guess I feel the same about mormonism.
mountainclimber, that is an interesting point about missionaries leaving the church. I think we generally lack statistics on inactives and why people go inactive. Out of all church members, the overwhelming majority of inactives go inactive because they weren’t ever really integrated into the church. They get baptized, attend for a period, then gradually fade away. What we’re talking about are those who become inactive because of information they discover about the church that causes them to change perspective. Especially people who were raised Mormon in the US, UK, Australia, and other English-speaking areas.
I disagree with the idea that being a black-and-white thinker is why Mormons leave. If anything, apologists employee this as a put-down. They want to cast inactives and ex-Mormons as black-and-white thinkers because such a label implies that they are incapable of higher intellectual reasoning that requires seeing nuance and complexity. As I wrote before, the commonplace thinking in the church is black-and-white on church issues. I don’t mean to imply that people aren’t or can’t be smart and intelligent, of course they are, but when it comes to church matters, too many members bury their heads in the sand and just say its all good and true and those who say otherwise are wrong. The apologists ARE more nuanced thinkers than average churchgoers. But most apologists have deep social ties to the church and would suffer great social costs if they said anything against it. Many of them are employed by the church or a church-sponsored entity and stand to lose their jobs. Most importantly, they decided at early ages to defend the church and once you start publishing in defense of the church, it is human nature to hunker down and not want to retract or contradict oneself. They’re defending the reputations they’ve built and the social networks of other believers that they are a part of. They dread fallout among this network. One thing is for sure, however, they aren’t convincing or coming even remotely close to convincing their non-believing/non-Mormon academic colleagues of any of the core teachings of Mormonism that they routinely defend. Plus, I’ll add my own little nuance, that many of the apologists on matters Mormon are actually very black-and-white in their positions but acting under a veil of false nuance. Are any of them suggesting the pious fraud theory of Joseph Smith in which he was inspired to make up the Book of Mormon? No. Do any of them dare challenge the leaders on many of the core and key things they say? No. Not even close.
So I reject the idea that people leave because they are black-and-white thinkers incapable of nuance. I have an academic background myself, and have engaged in my fair share of hairsplitting and nuanced thinking. However, I believe that extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence and that the church lacks such for its major truth claims. So I dismiss them. I have engaged with apologists who have accused me of black-and-white thinking for so doing. I must regard some of what the church teaches as true or hold out high possibility that at least some of the Book of Mormon is ancient, right? To that I say three things: 1) where is the evidence for me to consider, I don’t bear the burden of proof. 2) Are apologists, church leaders, or church members willing to answer to questions about the idea of other religious claims possibly being true if forced into relevance? Are they willing to pray and ask God if Warren Jeffs is a true prophet, for instance? 3) Some questions lend themselves to yes or no, either/or. Either the earth is spherical or it is not. Similarly, either the Book of Mormon contains the words and ideas of pre-Columbian Americans or it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways. Acknowledging the existence of either/or questions does not make me a black-and-white thinker.
Zwingli, I think there is likely some truth to your theory that the younger missionary age has led to more RMs leaving the Church when they return.
Brad D, I certainly agree with a whole lot of what you said. Now that you say id, I, too, have heard apologists accuse people who leave the Church as only capable of black and white thinking and use that as a put-down, as if they aren’t as mentally capable of those who remain in the Church. I completely reject that idea, and I didn’t mean to insult anyone in that way in my comment. Indeed, many people who choose to leave the Church have done a whole lot more thinking about their faith than a lot of orthodox members before finally deciding to step away.
I’m going to refrain from using the phrase “black and white thinking” since it seems that it may have picked up some negative connotations. All I was trying to say is that, anecdotally, my daughter and I have noticed that there have been a handful of missionaries who have returned home from their missions all fired up about the Church, and then within 6-12 months they are no longer participating in Church at all. Some other missionaries were fired up when they returned home, and it just appears that the Church didn’t really fit well into their post-mission lives, so they just kind of faded away. We also know another set of returned missionaries well enough to know that, at least in some cases, they encountered, for the first time, unsavory information about the Church which led to their disaffection. For example, in one case, an RM who is quite close to our family read the CES Letter, and immediately discontinued his Church participation. One week he was all fired up, and the next week he was done. We are aware of a few other, similar cases. My daughter has had to sit down and have some very long discussions with currently serving missionaries who she was sharing apartments with who had some pretty serious breakdowns when they encountered things like Joseph Smith’s polygamy or the temple/priesthood ban for the very first time while serving as missionaries.
As Gordon Hinckley said,
This type of thinking is hammered into young missionaries’ (and all Church members’) heads throughout their terms of missionary service, so when one of them sees a big enough chink in the armor (which certainly aren’t hard to find if one is willing to look), they can be done with the Church pretty quickly.
I don’t blame people at all for making this choice. I feel this way myself a lot of the time. The Church sets itself up as the One True Church–believe it all or please leave–so the Church gets what it deserves when people do inevitably recognize its flaws and decide to leave.
There are other people, perhaps like Margie, and myself to a certain extent, who manage to continue to engage with the Church with the understanding that some or all of the fundamental truth claims of Mormonism are probably not literally true. These people manage to find value and “truth” in Mormonism even if these truth claims are not literally true, plus there is still the unique Mormon culture and community which can be a very beautiful thing at times (and, yes, very ugly at other times) at the local level. Mormonism can be a very, very different religion to these people than it is to orthodox believers, and sometimes it’s not fun to be around all these orthodox believers at church who believe so differently than I do (nor is it easy to listen to sermons by people like Dallin Oaks who belongs to a very different church than I do).
In any case, I suspect that a certain number of returned missionaries (and yes, members in general) stop participating in the Church because they have had Hinckley’s claim that “everything we have in this Church is true” drilled into them, and when they discover that at least some aspects of the Church are not literally true, then they might as well just walk away. I would suggest that the Church would be better off if it found a way to be more welcoming and accepting of members who don’t believe that literally “everything we have in this Church is true”. Instead of practicing extensive thought control on young missionaries by forcing them to live inside the artificial mission bubble that the Church currently insists on, it would be wise to encourage young missionaries to explore this type of faith while they are still on their missions. Otherwise, they will just continue to lose some of these missionaries who might otherwise stay if they understood that the Church doesn’t have to be an “all or nothing” proposition for everyone.
I remember reading the “”Left Behind” books as they came out, and wondering how they would interpret Apollyon, the destroyer angel from Revelation 9:11. Turns out, they interpreted it as a giant angel, seen by astronomers as it approached earth from space. I call this the “Godzilla vs. Megalon” school of biblical exegesis.
@mountainclimber479, you said it so well. Much of lws329’s 6/24 list at 1:25 resonates with me too.
Brad D is also correct that another big part of why I stay engaged are the social benefits of staying and the social costs of disenfranchising. My little ward is great, the ward I grew up in and frequently visit even better, and it would shatter my parents if I left. No need, not for me, anyway. I mercifully have no financial skin in the game, though. Many years ago I was encouraged to apply for a job at BYU, and although I love my old department and my colleagues, some of them like family, I knew that it would be a bad fit for me, unable to toe the institutional party lines as I am. Boy am I glad I made that decision. If I had been successful in getting the job, I would be thoroughly miserable at BYU in the current climate.
There’s no question in my mind that many of the people who leave are anything but binary-type thinkers. You can’t read Brad D’s comments all over this blog without acknowledging as much. But even if some are, so what? It’s not the way my own brain works, but who am I to say it’s not a valid way to address the question of the Church’s truth claims? Any reason so-called apologists for the Church invoke to disparage those who leave is a bad reason, period. Agency is sacred (another Mormon teaching I really dig), and once we start casting aspersions at others for using their agency in good faith but differently than we do, we are on the road to no place good. (Uchtdorf’s “Stop it” sermon comes to mind.)
I do stand by the claim that my own comfort with ambiguity and distaste for certainty (in many things) have made it easier for me to remain active in and benefit from church. But that is me. Maybe it’s you, too. But if it’s not you, all the more reason for me to listen. Nobody learns anything if we all think the same.
Margie – you said; “Any reason so-called apologists for the Church invoke to disparage those who leave is a bad reason, period.”
I see this problem with the leadership and apologists sharing many similarities with disfunction in marriage. As much as anyone may like to think they have dated for long enough to uncover every possible problem which will now secure a clear path to marital bliss, past performance is still no guarantee of future success.
If we imagine the church as a “person” that we begin a formal relationship with through a blind vow at age 8 (baptism) and then again through other further vows taken to showcase commitment to the relationship, it becomes clear how abusive and domineering this marriage between member and institution can be. If I married someone, who over time, I began to learn new and disturbing truths about their past, the possibility of my marriage continuing and thriving would depend on the willingness of both parties to acknowledge their part in the mess. However, the “person” here “The Church” refuses to acknowledge that the person they presented in the courting phase is not the real person, with warts, and flaws, and its own speckled past. The apologists, on behalf of defending the Church’s innocence in the marriage, play the endless and pathetic blame game, suggesting that people are leaving because they want to “sin”, are lazy learners, are unfairly critical, lack faith, and every other disparaging reason to place ALL fault on the betrayed spouse. This is gaslighting 101. When a spouse finds out they have been betrayed multiple times, the proper response by the offender is not “just trust me”, yet this is essentially how the Church is responding to members who find the literal truth propositions not only lacking evidence but having significant evidence disproving the validity of the claims. The flaws and faults are NOT the problem, it’s the feeling of betrayal, overt denial and lack of contrition. Of course, this marriage dynamic is a perfect recipe for divorce and the rate is climbing.
In the 12 steps of AA, Step one is the foundation of building, sustaining and maybe most important, repairing relational bonds, “Honesty”. The kind of honesty where our humanity is presented in wholeness instead of the ego bound masks worn to protect our precious image. The Church readily peddles the idea that “the truth will set you free”, but it hinds behind a veneer of perfection that is suspicious, inaccessible, and untrustworthy. In spite of what it thinks, if they owned up to their errors, they would find out that the truth does set you free. It doesn’t guarantee that members will stay or that the marriage will be bliss, but it does remove the major barriers of authentic relationship.
toddsmithson
I am completely with you on this. How can anyone trust them with their tithing when they have hidden so many funds so long and even broken the law and then blamed it on the lawyers instead of being accountable? And they still offer no transparency. It does appear they may be trying to use the funds more on lots of things. But as a member of the church I want be seen as an equal rather than a child in how I choose to spendy money. I get that they want to represent God in their spending. However, I get to decide if I think they represent God in their spending. They don’t get to just say they do and expect me to trust them. They are fallible men. That’s reality.
There are other issues I could go on about, but not I don’t have time today.