In early November of 2018, Kristine A, Happy Hubby and I wrote separate articles discussing the supposed “Middle Way” in Mormonism. I found myself thinking about these posts after reading RJH’s recent post about the supposed “Day the blogs died.”
As someone who has not gone to church in a long time (and whose blogging has also dwindled), I could totally understand if someone proposed me as proof of RJH’s thesis. Yet, even in 2018, I took ownership and pride of my status as an outsider, and so I do the same today.
See, I think many outsiders — but especially thoughtful exmormons — wonder about one thing in particular regarding non-traditionalist Mormons. I would propose that it’s easier for exmormons and traditionally believing Mormons to see eye to eye — they both accept Mormonism as the same basic thing, but one side agrees with it and the other side does not.
The mystery is in non-traditionalist Mormons who seem not to even agree with the premises. So, I think many thoughtful exmormons wonder how some non-traditionalist Mormons stay in the long-term. While certainly, it seems that whatever you want to call it — new order Mormonism, Middle Way Mormonism, liberal Mormonism, progressive Mormonism, the “inside of the edge” (to take Chris Kimball’s survivalist subversion of the more typical “edge of inside”) — often ends up being merely a waystation on the way out of the church. (I personally recall writing a statement like “the entropic endstate of middle way Mormonism is disaffection” but I cannot for the life of me find this anywhere.) This is not surprising. After all, many exmormons “tried to make it work” so seeing people leave after trying alternative ways is not unusual.
However, we still observe that some people seem to be able to last a lot longer than others. (I do understand how convoluted this conversation could become…if someone deconverts on their deathbed after a lifetime of activity and belief, is that just the entropic endstate effect happening? But I also don’t have a timeline for how long is long enough to “stay” to avoid the accusation that every liberal believer eventually leaves.)
Back in 2018, I wrote that what seemed to me to be the distinguishing factors were a spiritual independence combined with a calling to continue striving with the constellations of Mormonism. Today, I think these factors are more relevant than ever, but for today, I focus on spiritual independence. In my mind, I thought that if one’s staying was for extrinsic factors (maintaining family relationships) or out of a mission to effect change in the church, then they would be more likely to burn out based on disappointing responses from others. A sense of spiritual independence, on the other hand, provided a source of renewable energy regardless of what the institution or fellow ward members or family aid or did.
(Again, as an outsider, I don’t have this spiritual independence, and I can’t help you get it. I can only comment on what I observe.)
I don’t know what the right terms are or should be to distinguish those who stay longer from those don’t. I don’t really like “middle way” or “liberal” that much in general, and obviously, the problem is that these terms are not predictive. Part of me suspects that, much like the Calvinist elect and reprobates, or this blog’s namesake wheat and tares, it probably is impossible to sort people out until all is said and done. (And I do not mean to imply the judgment implied by these these analogies — I don’t think nonbelievers or liberal believers or whatever are “tares”…or maybe even if they are, I don’t share the same moral judgment of tares or reprobates as is probably implied by a traditional viewpoint.)
What strikes me with RJH’s writing about the former vibrancy of the Bloggernacle and its bloggers is that it doesn’t appear to engage with the topic of spiritual independence as I wrote about it at all. To the contrary, the vibrancy is based on almost diametrically opposed foundations that, when cracked, would explain why the blogs died.
Rather than a vision grounded in spiritual independence, the vision that RJH paints of the “reasonably liberal”, “Hinckleyian progressivis[t]” Bloggernacle types was a belief or hope that the institution secretly, deep down, supported their way of thinking and believing, or at least were compatible with it. And so:
We knew that the church was a conservative institution but there was also a small but not insignificant Hinckleyian progressivism afoot. These were the years of the Joseph Smith Papers and the “I am a Mormon” campaign. We believed we were nudging things along. There was realism but also hope. And then November 5, 2015 happened. Turns out, it was all a mirage. Those of us opposed did not simply disagree with the policy, we were shocked by it. We had thought there was an inevitable inching towards LGBTQ+ inclusion but we saw it reversed in an instance. Prop 8 was not an aberration, it was the norm. We knew then that no matter what we had written, no matter how passionate we had argued for a faithful Mormonism on the left, we had lost and would always lose in a church that was never ours in the first place. And so Mormon blogging died, at least for those of us who struggled to recover from the PoX.
While recognizing the inadequacy of language, I would actually mark a distinction between “liberal” Mormonism as something that trusts in on relies upon institutional support (which I would for the sake of this post use to describe the now “dead” Bloggernacle type of Mormonism) from the Middle Way Mormonism that persists, which, as I wrote about in 2018, instead relies upon independence as a core value.
…I wonder if this isn’t relevant anywhere else in our lives. Where else are we seeing institutions pushed to their breaking point, or subverted in ways that are, to reuse a term, shocking? And can relying on institutionalism bears us through, or is it possible to discover a wellspring of independence while still feeling called to the constellation around a dream that is dimming through decay?
Wheat & Tares 
Hi Andrew, this post really resonated with me. In my spiritual journey, I consider myself to be one of those “non-traditionalist Mormons who doesn’t even agree with the premise – and who has found spiritual independence.” I have essentially created my own religion for myself, with a direct relationship with God (no middle man), I don’t rely on the institution or think it’s necessary, and I don’t consider leaders to have any authority over me… but Mormonism is still my home.
One analogy that I like, is that I view religions as gyms for the soul. But just going to the gym doesn’t automatically make you healthy or in shape, and you can still be healthy and in shape if you don’t go to the gym… but going to the gym can definitely help you be healthy and in shape. I think that Mormonism is the cross-fit of gyms. It’s super demanding and it can produce good results. My experience with cross-fit instructors is that they think that cross fit is the one true way to get in shape, and that you should follow their training program with exact obedience.
I’m grateful for my upbringing in Mormonism/cross-fit, I’ve learned how to work out and be spiritually healthy and in-shape. And now, I’m no longer dependent on the cross-fit trainers/leaders to tell me exactly what I need to do. I can recognize when the crossfit workout is actually going to cause me harm and adapt it, and I can design my own workouts. But I still find value in going to the gym, and a lot of my friends and family go to cross-fit, so I still show up because it’s familiar and I take the good that it offers. But I feel like I’m to the point where I can recognize what I need and what is going to help me be spiritually healthy and in-shape, and I can get that directly through a relationship with God. (But I’m not anti-crossfit or anything. I recognize it works really well for a lot of people, and I think that’s great.)
I’ve been going along like this for a while, and it feels sustainable to me… but I guess we’ll see what happens in the future. I’m very open that I have beliefs that are different than Mormonism, and so far people have tolerated me as long as I don’t push those beliefs on to other people. And I feel like being open and honest has been a big part of what has made it sustainable for me, since I still feel like I’m living with integrity.
i really love the gym and cross fit analogy – I might steal it sometime 😆.
(I definitely have thought about body weight exercise vs weight lifting vs machines. While a lot of articles point out that even body weight exercise is better than nothing, it definitely seems like it would be more optimal to leverage an institution (gym) that is loaded with the right resistance requirement. Certainly, one probably shouldn’t need to rely on a trainer forever, but having someone there in the beginning can help to avoid obvious form errors. Over time, training should likely become differentiated and personalized. This metaphor goes so far!)
I too read the RJH piece. Dialogue and discourse has simply changed. It isn’t what it used to be. I would say that now what we’re seeing more than ever is the rise of echo chambers. People don’t have to engage thoughts and thinkers who challenge them. So they seek out what confirms their biases, and there is plenty of that to go around.
But I think you’re right that there are plenty of middle path Mormons. They just sort of have to keep quiet at church. Liberal instituationalists seemed to have life in apologetics, which in decades past seemed liberal. Hugh Nibley was more liberal after all, favoring a communitarian society over rugged individualism and was deeply critical of rigid, unthinking traditionalism among the rank and file. However, apologetics now just seems hyper-conservative, dated, debunked, and quite frankly ridiculous. Old school liberals used to think of the Book of Mormon as partly true, but not 100 percent true, as traditionalists did. Now it seems quite common for the middle pathers to almost entirely reject a historical BOM and embrace moralistic therapeutic deism and cultural Mormonism.
it’s been almost 7 years ago so I blogged about “middle way” Mormonism, and in a way I’m kind of surprised I’m still here. I think I will have proven your rule, though: For me to be able to stay my relationship with the institution has had to increase in distance. I love some parts of Mormonism (i’m an Amy Brown Lyman Mormon, btw) and love the idea of participating in a congregation, but the parts I can’t abide I leave aside. I definitely have to be spiritually independent, and that factor has increased the longer I’ve stayed.
ETA I’m a full participant in my local ward, just dropped off a funeral potato dish for a funeral today and have signed up for cleaning the church next month. I think the biggest thing that has changed for me is that I no longer think I have answers about staying or going. Certain things, once seen, cannot be unseen. Your relationship w and trust in the institution will change. I don’t have any answers to any of it. I’m’ making this all up as I go along, as we all are.
I don’t have any idea of what other people (liberals, independens, etc.) are doing, but I definitely think that I fit into the category of “spiritual independents” described in the OP. My faith transition happened quite slowly, but at a pretty young age, so I’ve considered myself an “independent” for decades now. I really do belong to a very, very different–and much simpler–religion than TCOJCOLDS. I also really like aporetic1’s Crossfit/gym analogy.
That said, I too am finding less and less value in Church participation than I used to. There’s just not much happening in a ward at all these days for a newly minted empty-nester like me. What is there for me other than a generally very uninspiring 2-hour block, plus “temple worship”, which I have never found any value in?
Also, I’m pretty good at just kind of letting all the silly doctrine and beliefs (Book of Abraham, infallible prophets, angels with swords, priesthood authority, etc.) go in one ear and out the other, but it has become ever more embarrassing for me to be a member of an institution that so openly discriminates against LGBTQ people, still refuses to acknowledge that its racist past originated from its members and leaders and not from God, treats women as second-class citizens, etc.
When I was a younger “spiritual independent”, I think I would have still participated in the Church even without any family ties. Nowadays, it’s really my family ties, and especially my wife, that keeps me going. Last Sunday, my wife woke up and said she wasn’t able to go to Church because she had a headache. I immediately took that as an opportunity to stay home from Church, and I very much enjoyed my week off. At this point, I’m pretty sure I would just stay home from Church forever if it weren’t for my wife.
If the Church were to provide something of value in terms of lessons, activities, and relationships for someone like me, and if they would fix their most problematic positions on social issues, then they might have a chance to draw me back in again. I still wouldn’t believe a lot of the Mormon stuff, but I might be able to find some value in “going to the gym” again as a “spiritual independent”.
An example of other institutions that are subverted in “shocking” ways might be public high schools (a topic that is familiar to me since I just recently became an empty-nester). In theory, the main purpose of high school is to educate teenagers, but I think anyone that has been to high school understand that many high school students choose not to use high school to receive an education. Instead, it’s almost entirely a social club, an athletic team, or something else that has very little to do with math, science, or the humanities.
Both this piece and the BCC piece make interesting reading. I think the claim in the title that “institutional liberal Mormonism is dead” is accurate and more relevant than any navel-gazing about blogging this and blogging that. The problem is that *mainstream* Mormonism — which has veered farther and farther right over the last two decades — does have a secure institutional life in the mainstream right-leaning Church. Liberal Mormonism or Middle-way Mormonism, or whatever you want to call it, does not.
That’s where blogs came in, as well as other fringe outfits like Sunstone and Dialogue (legacy Liberal Mormon media) and social media and podcasts (newfangled Liberal Mormon media). But none of these media have any institutional traction. It’s just folks who find the endlessly recycled orthodox talking points one hears at church every Sunday, and at Conference every six months, increasingly less uplifting and less relevant. The biggest problem with the LDS Church in 2025 isn’t that it isn’t true, it’s that it is so boring.
Still, as Andrew notes, some persist for year and decades. That’s leads to an entirely different discussion, so I won’t pursue it here. But, somehow, it seems to be the case that LDS blogs (and the earlier and later media in the same vein) assist participants who want to persist. It still strikes me as a worthwhile endeavor.
Churches, I think, have an especially difficult time navigating and differentiating boundaries between their institutional and community aspects. Ideally, the two should be complementary but, in fact, they often end up being at cross purposes. My personal relationship with my denomination, Community of Christ, changed the day I was informed back in 2009 that my employment at church headquarters would end as part of a series of staff downsizings. Although a fairly generous early retirement package was offered (and accepted), much changed for me after that. It’s not that I’m antagonistic toward the institutional church; it just doesn’t matter as much any more. My focus is more on congregational life and the community aspects of a worldwide church. Prime example of the latter is World Conference, now held every three years, with the next one coming the first week in June.
It’s been a year since church leaders approved the sale of historic sites in Kirtland and Nauvoo, along with numerous items of historic import, to the LDS church.. That was an institutional decision mandated by the church’s rather precarious financial situation (directly related to an aging membership/contributor base in North America). Lots of folks are still upset about that because they felt the negotiations and sale were done in secret without input from the general membership. In other words, they felt it should have been a community decision made after considerable members’ input and a vote at World Conference. Now, if the church is just or primarily a community, then that line of reasoning makes some sense. But years-long negotiations and a decision to sell could only (or perhaps at least “best”) accomplished by institutional means.
From what I can ascertain here at W&T, the LDS situation is almost a polar opposite. The church’s institutional structure has, by far, the upper hand, and apparently a good many members are comfortable with that. Sure, many folks long for the days when each ward was actively engaged in all sorts of activities for children, youth, and families (not as sure about single young adults, though). I remember when my own daughter was in middle school and was invited by a good friend who was Mormon to attend numerous dances and “mixers.” But decisions are made in Salt Lake City, with consequences filtering down from there.
I, too, like the gym analogy. I regularly go to a community center that has an excellent weight room, swimming pool, handball court, and gym. I’ve noticed fewer and fewer people swimming laps in the pool and I have no trouble finding equipment to use in the weight room. The gym, however, is usually set up for five and sometimes six pickleball courts, all of which are busy with people waiting their turn. Sometimes they’ll leave one space open for a basketball player to shoot some hoops. I don’t want to dive too deeply into all that, but maybe there’s something to be said for giving people what they want. Within reasonable limits.
Brad,
I’m not so sure that echo chambers are “new” recently, so I’m not so sure that they can explain the changes. Although, hmm, if middle path Mormons “just sort of have to keep quiet at church,” then I guess that would contribute to church itself becoming more of an echo chamber
The gym analogy is an interesting one that seems to resonate with many here, but doesn’t persuade me personally.
The thing is, I love working out. I love all kinds of work outs including weights, cardio, swimming, and workouts that involve hitting a ball. I work out solo sometimes but I love the energy of working out in the same space as others working out.
I do not enjoy church energy. As Dave B notes, I mostly find it boring, but I also find the experience inauthentic and the way we virtue signal maddening. I would much rather worship deity individually in nature, or through a breathing exercise, or in small group setting like with my immediate family where we can have real conversations about the divine, messiness and all. I guess this is an area where individual work dynamics truly matter. Temple worship (endowment excluded) was more my speed as I enjoyed the more contemplative nature, until it wasn’t.
No shade at all to those who experience differently. I’m happy it works for many. Just doesn’t work for me.
I identify with Aporetic1’s characterization of membership, which also aligns quite well with Alma’s characterization to the impoverished people rejected by the Zoramites. He says in chapter 33:2 2 And Alma said unto them: Behold, ye have said that ye could not worship your God because ye are cast out of your synagogues. But behold, I say unto you, if ye suppose that ye cannot worship God, ye do greatly err, and ye ought to search the scriptures; if ye suppose that they have taught you this, ye do not understand them. Alma vehemently opposes the mediated institutional model of a relationship with God, saying “ye do greatly err”, and apparently, if you believe this idea, you have not carefully read the scriptures.
I love the crossfit metaphor also, as it could go on and on and on. I can still remember being a red blooded, card carrying TBM, proclaiming with vigor that mine, ours, is the “One and only true and living gym”. When I apply that phrase to a “Gym”, I can even more readily see the absurdity of applying it to an institutional church. But I believed somehow that, the gym I went to was the only one on the planet capable of delivering access to “real health”. Afterall, we had trainers and equipment that was blessed with “authority”, where the other gyms were just “playing health”. This worked right up to the point I went to another gym. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, people at other gyms who were equally, if not, more fit and healthy than my “one and only true gym”. My eyes were opened, and ever since, I have been unable to close them again. My gym does not have to have exclusive superiority to make it useful or meaningful, only to provide intention and attention towards cultivating good health, that’s good enough.
I was recently called to be 1st counselor in our Utah county ward, which, needless to say, has its challenges for me. I, like others above, love the congregational and community aspects, those are what draw me in. The dogma and truth claims have faded into the abyss. Twice now, it has been my turn to conduct, which includes kicking off testimony meeting on the first Sunday of the month. I’m sure there are some astute members who will realize at some point, but I will never state the institutional phrases that usually dominate our testimony meetings. I cannot and will not state that “I know the church is true” or that the book of mormon is true, etc. It’s not even that I necessarily have an issue with other people thinking or saying those things, they just don’t matter to me. I simply share something about my personal spiritual journey, the things that inspire me to aim towards “God”, and my highest self, and the practical everyday experiences that I witness Godly things happening. For me, James words, “Faith without works is dead”, is not a theological concept, it’s the reality abstract ideas are dead without them finding a way to act them out. Friedrich Nietzsche’s infamous words “God is dead”, is the echo of the book of James. Without human beings to bare God’s image, spirit cannot manifest itself, it remains, like breath and wind, undetected and unseen, which is the death of God.
I am a cultural Mormon, born and raised. They are my people, even as much as they drive me insane. However, to emphasize propositional truth as the foundation of testimony is like asking someone to read a book about a gym, acknowledge its truth and never go to the gym. The truth of any proposition is not found in the proposition, it’s found in the embodiment and acting out of that truth.
Rich,
Really interesting comparison and contrast between CofChrist and the LDS church — as I was reading the first part of your message, I immediately had a sort of thought: “Did CofChrist never have its own correlation moment?”
And you also got to the same point later in your comment:
Emphasis added.
Certainly, I have heard the stories of some folks in the LDS church whose disaffections were influenced by employment at the Church Office Building or things like that, but the scale and reach of the “institution” of the LDS church is far more encompassing than employer/employee.
Andrew,
I wouldn’t call it a Correlation Moment but it had something of the same effect. Especially after W. Wallace Smith became president in 1958, church leaders began to subtly and eventually not-so-subtly discourage several “Mormon themes” among RLDS members: BofM. Historicity, Joseph’s 1st Vision, hierarchy/patriarchy, priesthood sole authority, One True Church, End Times emphasis, etc. Many traditionalists in the church began to suspect some grand, secret conspiracy and became increasingly vocal. In hindsight, church leaders could and probably should have been more open and forthcoming. But maybe because there’s a long history of heated debate and even dissention among RLDS they were unwilling for a long time to stir that hornets nest. By the 1980s it was all ready to explode and the Revelation opening priesthood to women lit the match. Here we are now 40 years later and I cannot imagine priesthood ministry in Community of Christ without full, active participation by women at all levels of the church. In June I anticipate we will ordain a woman as prophet-president.
Hi, Andrew. I miss your blogging and comments. It’s always interesting and often surprisingly in line with my own thoughts, even though we describe ourselves quite differently.
Thanks for the “subversive” tag. I wear it proudly. Someday I should write out how differently I view the inside of the edge and the edge of the inside. To me they are very different concepts. But not today.
To the point of your OP, I can contribute three observations (but no statistics):
@aporetic1 and @Andrew S.
The gym/CrossFit analogy is an interesting one. In the for what it’s worth category, I was warned years ago by a workout friend to avoid CrossFit due to concerns there could be a higher risk of injury. Maybe this fits with the analogy?
I continue to believe that our participation in church can fill one of several needs: identity, community, meaning. (Maybe others but those three are top of mind.) I think it still meets one or more of those needs to participating middle wayers. If it stops meeting one of those needs, the middle way isn’t super rewarding. I’m an orthodox-turned-middle-wayer-turned-almost-non-participating in a journey that pretty much parallels the church simply no longer meeting any need of mine. It’s not worth the time and attention for me anymore. It so poorly meets any of my needs that I don’t even spend a lot of time thinking about it anymore, which is why I mostly stopped blogging (for better or for worse).
I honestly think that likely explains why it hangs on for some and not others. Because we are all wildly different individuals with different family, social, and other situations that bear on how well or poorly church can meet those needs, we respond differently.
Dave B,
Was thinking about your comment and then something you said offsite. From the last part of your comment, it seems that you’re suggesting that the impetus for *all* “external” Mormon media and community building is similar. Whether Sunstone/Dialogue, the blogs, or maybe we can extend this to things like listservs in one era, the era of Facebook groups, and now increasingly various social media platforms, all of it arises from a desire to build spaces to have conversations that aren’t happening in the local ward.
If this is so, then it becomes clearer that the change in *medium of expression* is probably not due to anything that the church did (the church didn’t “do” anything to cause people to use Facebook more when Facebook was ascending, or to cause people to use Facebook less as it has become increasingly irrelevant.) Some people may have “come of age” during Facebook’s hey day, and thus had most of their discussions on Facebook, and they may also have stopped engaging on Facebook because of something that the church did…but we can also say that a lot of people have stopped relying on Facebook as their dominant medium of expressions for systemic reasons they have nothing to do with the church.
It’s tempting to make the question: but why do people drop out entirely from discussion rather than just switching platforms or media of expression, but that question seems both entirely different and also easier to propose answers for.
Perhaps we can view each dominant media as generally catering to a cohort of people who either “grew up” with that medium natively, or plus those who are able to adopt it as it spreads. In this case, maybe those who grew up with blogs haven’t appreciably transferred to other media because we’re too “old” for it, lol
Then, we can start making some interesting hypotheses and predictions. Let’s hypothesis that once someone has some sort of event that changes their relationship with the church, then they have some average number of years to try to “make it work” before things will become increasingly harder to maintain (some number of years before the entropic endstate arrives). We can then map people along whatever medium of expression is most dominant at the time they start their faith transition, and then make some hypotheses about how long the communities they build will last.
(I think this also helps to explain why when people who have been having discussions on one medium for a long time TRY to explore new communities on new media that they often find the conversation boring and tired — to the “old” person, the “new” people are rehashing things that they’ve already discussed ad nauseum in the old medium. To the “new” people, this is their first time discovering and discussing these topics.)
toddsmithson,
Thinking more on the gym and fitness analogy, I have been reading a lot of articles about fitness, health, diet, exercise, and what intrigues me is exactly how there are different “camps” on what is the best, what is optimal. (I think this is definitely the case in nutrition/diet circles). I am also thinking of the history of mixed martial arts/MMA, because my understanding is that over time, a few martial arts have risen as essential portions of any top competitor’s “mix” — an art focused on grappling (e.g., brazilian jiu-jitsu or wrestling) and an art focused on striking (muay thai or boxing).
There’s that Joseph Smith quote about Mormonism receiving all truth from whatever source it may come. That feels like the MMA approach. But the current church definitely doesn’t feel anything like that.
anon,
I absolutely think your comment fits in with the analogy as I understand it.
christiankimball,
I also vaguely recall you discussing the difference you see between inside of the edge and edge of inside — maybe it was on a podcast somewhere? — but I can’t find it now to confirm. So I think that if you wrote more about the difference, preferably in a location with good SEO for the search engines, that would be fantastic ;).
The main reason why I had to put that line in the opening post is because I originally tried googling for “edge of inside” and literally couldn’t find ANYTHING for you, and I was going crazy, wondering, “I know there is a book!” and of course, I had to switch the wording to find it.
Regarding your observations, but especially your first observation…I’ve been watching a lot of videos from Dan McClellan recently. He usually does videos on bible scholarship and in fact almost never talks about his own beliefs intentionally, but even in talking about bible scholarship, there’s one thing that he says a lot that has made me rethink a lot of things. We are told to liken the scriptures to ourselves, but we also want to believe that the scriptures were written *for* us. But when we take that latter interpretation, then we end up distorting what the original authors were actually trying to say, the radically different contexts in which they lived, etc.,
When we learn the actual history and contexts of the ancient scriptural authors, the most striking conclusion we get is that it’s not relevant to us. We live in a radically different world with radically different assumptions. The past is a foreign country, as they say. Our “traditional values” are certainly NOT the traditional values of yesteryear, and we would be horrified if they were.
In reality, we all renegotiate the text and reinterpret the texts within our communities. It’s just that some of us are more aware that this is what’s happening and others are either not aware that it’s happening or in denial. And, more importantly, some of us choose to renegotiate texts to use power to uphold the marginalized, while others of us renegotiate texts to push the marginalized down.
Elisa,
I think that identity, community, meaning as a framework makes sense. I guess my question is more — what causes any of these 3 factors to continue to work for someone, and to not for others? Obviously, I am fully aware that these answers will be personal to every person who assesses them, but I wonder if there are trends — or maybe, not just if there are trends, but if there is anything unexpected that we wouldn’t immediately guess.
For example, I definitely think we can think of the archetype of someone for whom identity and meaning had long gone away, but they still had a good local community. Then Priesthood roulette takes a spin of the wheel, and the local community changes for the worse. That is tragic, but it makes sense. On the By Common Consent comment threads, but also Dave B’s post here, I was amused by some commenters who came in just to say something like, “My ward isn’t a MAGA ward” or “I don’t think wards outside of Utah have this problem.”
My impression to that was, “Ok, wow, great, so your local community is good. Congratulations. Why are you now disputing someone else’s experience with their community?”
But it absolutely does seem reasonable that if a lot of people were holding on because of local community, and there is a greater trend towards local communities going bad, then it makes sense why people would drop out. But my question is more like: is there a greater reason for local communities to “go bad”?
Maybe there isn’t. But I’m also thinking about the United States more broadly politically. I am afraid of asking the question of how so many people are not only OK with how things are going, but also happy with it. They will gladly answer that’s exactly what they voted for, no matter how “bad” things get. I don’t have any answers here. I’m guessing people way smarter than me also don’t, given the lack of a decent coordinated response to *waves around*.
Andrew —
I think Dan McClellan’s point that everyone negotiates the text is perfectly apt. I also view it as subversive in the sense that as soon as we recognize everybody negotiates the text we naturally, almost inevitably, consider whether we have enfranchised somebody else to negotiate for us. Churches offer that “service” and often fight anybody else taking that role. The history of bible translation into whatever was the common vernacular of the time is illustrative. Negotiating the text for yourself, and knowing you’re doing it, is subversive vis a vis established institutions.
—–
In brief, my “inside of the edge” is the individual recognizing they are not mainstream and nonetheless working to remain a communicant in some form. When others use “edge of inside” they are usually talking about an individual perched on the edge of the community making wise (or otherwise) observations about the community. More often than not, I see you–Andrew–doing edge of the inside kind of work. The two are not mutually exclusive about any one individual. Both or neither could be true. Most often the phrases are primarily useful to characterize a conversation, not a person. We can have an inside of the edge conversation, or an edge of the outside conversation, but they are not the same and it’s confusing when they are mixed without clear signals.
[For a longer form, that will have to wait. And where anything I write might have a good SEO?? I don’t know and I’m not sure it exists.]
@Andrew S, I think there are objective factors that are causing the Church to decline in relevance to identity & community for lots of folks. Just quick examples:
Identity – availability of information calling into question truth claims goes a long way towards defraying the sense of identity one might have from being in the one-and-only TRUE CHURCH; getting rid of our more unique truth claims (like everyone getting their own planets); sanitizing & making more boring the temple ceremony. Sociologically, in general, we know that Americans are identifying more with things like political affiliation than religions for their identity.
Community – some the the political trends and polarization people have touched on in other threads have definitely hurt the community aspect; Nelson has also been terrible for community by shrinking youth programs (elimination of young men’s presidencies), cutting activities, etc. Even cutting three hour church to two – as much as you might like that, it prob doesn’t help with community. I don’t get a sense Nelson “gets” community at all and a lot of his work has diluted communities. And, again, there are broader sociological factors that have influenced this where people are less reliant on geographic proximity for community / more disconnected geographically and choosing community based on shared interests and political affiliation on-line.
Meaning – this is probably tied up in the other two less than standalone, although for me personally the hoarding of wealth & emphasis on temple work vs. serving to living people has factored into meaning.
These are just off the top of my head but yes, to answer your question, I think there are trends that have hit each of these.
The Gospel is a proclamation to individuals. The institution of church is derivative or accumulated from that. So, I agree with your distinctions and focus on independence. The ability to stay connected to the church is essentially of a matter of figuring out how the church can be compatible with one’s individual relationship with God.