Eight years ago I posted about the rites of passage I went through as a boy/young man in the Church. That post, for those not inclined to click the link, was about my memories as a Deacon passing the sacrament, a Teacher preparing the sacrament, and then as a Priest blessing the sacrament. I have fond memories of that time in the Church, and I’m glad I got to participate with my peers.
This last week I got to participate in these rites of passage that young men have in the Church with two of my grandsons. On January first each year, young men become eligible to receive or be advanced in the Aaronic Priesthood if they turn the appropriate age in that coming year. So eleven year old boys are eligible to become Deacons on Jan 1st.
My daughter’s family is visiting from Eagle Mountain UT, and both sets of grandparents are close here in California, so my son-in-law got permission to ordain the 11 year old a Deacon, and advance the 13 year old to a Teacher on January 1st in the home of his parents here in California. Also a cousin was ordained a Deacon.
My wife and I attended, and I stood in the circle while my SIL did the ordination/advancement for each boy. While I’m a nuanced/culture Mormon, it meant a lot for me to be able to stand there and participate in this rite of passage for my grandsons. I did feel sorry for my twin granddaughters who will never have that experience.
These two boys are growing up in a different Church than I did. While they will experience some things I did, they will miss other things. They also live in a much more tolerant world. When I was their age I did not know any LGBTQ person, and for the most part didn’t even know what that meant. The afternoon after the ordination, the boys went to visit their cousin (my grandson) who is trans. Both boys knew this cousin before he transitioned, and have no issue loving him for who he is and look up to him as he prepares to graduate from collage and go on for a graduate degree.
As readers of this blog, I assume many of you are nuanced or culture Mormons. What rites do you still enjoy participating in at Church even though you don’t fully believe like you once did? Family weddings which can now be done outside the Temple? Missionary homecomings? Baptisms/ordinations?
Wheat & Tares 
Honestly, I have a really hard time enjoying any of them. I have to remind myself that if I attended a ceremony of any other religion, I would see it (aside from, say, human sacrifice) as a sincere expression of belief and appreciate it as such. But Mormon ceremonies are now so fraught in my mind—the temple is patriarchal and tied to polygamy, baptism means the church will claim you as a member forever, missions are mainly meant to tie people more firmly to the church. I find myself being very cynical about all of it, and it really saddens me.
The only church-related thing I still enjoy is the Sunday before Christmas, when my ward spends all of sacrament meeting singing Christmas carols. That is lovely.
Being female I really cannot comment on rites of passage in the church because for girls, they are conspicuously missing. So, I will jump to your other comment about how much the world (but not the church) has changed as far as LGBT issues.
About a generation ago, when my youngest son was engaged I was tending my oldest grandson. He was about 3 and something about preparation for the wedding came up. He asked about it, and I told him that J and E were going to get married. He asked what “married” meant. So, I told him it is when two people who love each other start a new family. They make promises to love each other and they move into the same home, and sometimes they have a new baby join them, so it is about starting a new family. I told him that his parents got married, then he was born. I told him that his grandpa and I got married a long time ago and we had first his mama, then aunti Em, the J become part of our family. I told him that his granny and gramps were a family and his daddy was their little boy before he grew up and who did his daddy get married to? So, J and E love each other and have decided to start a new family. So, he says, like (this other couple) and like Aunti Em and Mary.
It was so obvious to his three year old mind that his lesbian aunt and her “roommate” loved each other and were a family. He didn’t realize that in the world as it was in the late 1990s that Aunti Em was not allowed the same right to marry the person she loved as his Uncle J.
The fact that it was so obvious and so simple to a three year old, made me wonder what was wrong with the so called adults in his Utah world that so many of them could not see that yes, it is exactly the same thing. But the church was having a melt down over not being willing to see what even a three year old saw as obvious. Love is love. At three years old, my little grandson saw the difference between Great Aunt K, who has lived with the same roommate for 20 years and were just friends who shared a house, but Aunti Em and Mary were a family who loved each other.
I am glad we as a society are no longer teaching children to insist that some love is a “perversion” but just allowing them to see that love is love.
And I long for the day when girls in the church will have the same rites of passage as boys in the church have. But some “adults” still can’t see that love is love and all children are children and deserve to be honored and acknowledged as they grow up and that it isn’t only boys who deserve to be recognized and deserve rites of passage. And Bishop Bill will be proud when his daughter stands in a circle to ordain his granddaughter.
I was for a while baffled by your post, reading SIL as sister-in-law. I have 5 brothers and am not short of sisters-in-law. I read on waiting for some kind of explanation which was not forthcoming. I finally worked out this must be son-in-law. None of my kids are married, so this wasn’t something that immediately sprang to mind. So I am back with a bump from that alternate reality.
I may have said before, but I remember when the eldest of my brothers was ordained a deacon, and ward members excitedly fetched my sister and I from our YW class, so we could watch their ordination during the priesthood meeting. They seemed to think we should be very excited about it. I really wasn’t, and resented the idea that I ought to be. It wasn’t as though there’d been anything for my sister and I when we turned 12 and joined YW. Though back then I do recall for both boys and girls there were Primary graduation certificates, which required memorisation of the articles of faith, which were handed out in sacrament meeting.
My oldest just turned 11 in November. He is now graduated from primary and slated for priesthood ordination. Not sure how I’ll proceed. I’m having my wife handle everything since it is her decision to remain in the church and have our kids go through some motions, which I’m fine with. I simply hope that they opt not to serve missions, and I plan to gently dissuade them from that in their teens (my oldest has loudly stated that he does not want to go on a mission, so already it seems I won’t have to do much dissuading with him). I don’t teach my boys the church’s teachings, I don’t give them blessings, I don’t have them pray over the food when my wife is not present for dinner, and I don’t take them to church. I simply attend church with my wife and she takes them to church. I didn’t baptize my oldest but I stood in the circle for the confirmation. My mom’s dad did the baptism while my dad did the confirmation. I guess I’ll stand in the circle for the Aaronic priesthood ordination.
I still haven’t told my parents or parents-in-law that I no longer believe, nor do I have any plans to.
My two girls did the typical LDS rites of passage for YW, such as they are. YW awards, Patriarchal blessings. One served a mission and is still LDS. When we drove to Utah for her wedding / sealing, it was my last time attending the temple, and I knew it beforehand, just holding on long enough to witness it. My son who was 18 said “I traveled to Utah to wait outside the temple in the cold?” I performed a mock-marriage afterwards but it wasn’t quite the same to the people left standing outside in the cold, literally and figuratively.
That son did almost all the rites of passage but left the church after high school. He earned his Eagle – I think he resents the way the church dropped scouting as much or more than everything else. He’s deeply bitter the way scouting ended up, which to be fair isn’t all the fault of the LDS church.
I left the church about the same time as my sons who will probably be eternal priests. I gave them enough of a framework to choose religion if they want and we experienced 80% of the rites of passage. The new rites of passage for my family are graduating college.
I’ll say this, rites of passage can be almost anything. During my time as bishop I organized a monumental joint YW/YM activity: crossing the Grand Canyon rim to rim in a day. We trained and planned for months and we had something like 40 people in our ward do it successfully. People to this day tell me their most memorable activity as a youth was the Grand Canyon. I like to think that adventure was as meaningful as most other events / rites of passage in their church youth.
Trevor, I hope that no YM or YW were left behind on the Grandcanyon trip because they could not pay the cost. I never made it to girls camp even once because it cost a pittance for the food while we were there. But it would have come out of babysitting money and I needed that to buy shoes. There were fund raisers and/or my parents paid for scout camp. But girls camp wasn’t important to my parents or the ward, so they made me pay my own way, as well as buying most of my own clothing as a teenager. I always resented that the scouts had fund raisers to pay for 12 or so camp outs a year, while in my area the girls got to pay or stay home.
So, you know what, I celebrated when the church dropped scouting. Of course, scouting was great for one brother, a disappointment for the second, and an abusive nightmare for another. My youngest brother and my husband were both sexually abused at scouts, one by a leader and the other by fellow scouts. His fellow scouts tried to burn my brother’s tent down, with him inside asleep. There was constant bullying never stopped by a leader. This was back before there were safeguards. And of course, back in my day the YW got nothing but lessons while the boys did fun activities, or at least that was how it looked, mostly they played basketball. This was when YW’s was in the evening and not on Sunday, so the YM had priesthood lessons Sunday morning and activities weeknights and the girls had YW lessons weeknights and zero activities. But the boys playing basketball meant the girls never got to use the kitchen because the boys “needed” the gym and what the boys wanted, the boys got. So, yeah, I don’t have too much sorrow that the church stopped sponsoring scouts. My own son did not like church scouts so he joined a troop sponsored by the US Air Force.
So, just a different perspective. From the dark ages before you were born. 😳
I have blessed all six of my babies (I also caught all six of them when they were born). I baptized them all. I’ve gone through the temple with four of them–and will be going through with another one this week. Sheer joy.
Oldest is being ordained a priest this week, second son will be baptized by him, and then I’ll confirm him.
It’s an exciting week!
Graduating from Primary was a big one for me. I thought I had to pass an oral examination of my memorization of the Articles of Faith so I studied! I did not understand that I was going to be kicked out regardless, LOL.
Also, becoming a Priest was a big step. I was extremely uncomfortable with public speaking so saying the Sacrament Prayers always made me extremely nervous.
And then leaving on a mission and coming home were big steps, maybe the biggest steps of maturation directly linked to my religion.
But yes, as a father, blessing and baptizing my children and ordaining my sons were also rites of passage for me.
I have mixed feelings about LDS rites of passage. Like Bill, I have happy memories of climbing the “ladder” as a young man, ascending through each priesthood quorum/office on a predictable schedule, with corresponding escalating responsibilities and privileges, and how proud it made my parents and leaders of me. Meanwhile, my sister did not have such celebration-worthy milestones as she worked through her “separate but equal” program, which I was largely ignorant of at the time. It didn’t really hit me until I became a father to daughters (no sons). My oldest, in particular, has a naturally sensitive BS meter and has always caught on quickly to the fact that the boys get to do religiously important things that she doesn’t, and it rightfully bothers her. It doesn’t help that in my ward, the young women are lumped together in a single class while the young men still meet in separate, distinct quorums (I’m not sure if this is a Church-wide thing or just my ward), reinforcing the idea of a tiered, ordered organization only being important for the boys. Moreover, the young women class president is the stake president’s daughter; I probably didn’t know the definition of the word “nepotism” when I was 14, but my daughter absolutely does. In general, my daughter is disengaged and unenthusiastic about anything to do with the Church, and I don’t blame her. There are no milestones or praiseworthy achievements for her to look forward to, no levels of membership. Knowing her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she chooses to leave the Church behind someday, and I will fully support that decision if it means she will be happier and healthier.
My favorite LDS rite of passage, by far, is baptism. There is something quite tangible about being in the water as a manifestation of a symbolic commitment to following Jesus, which I appreciate even as a much more non-literal/nuanced/PIMO member nowadays. I loved my own baptism, and also baptizing my kids, as well as witnessing others being baptized; it’s always special to me in a way that makes typical laying-on-of-hands ordinances seem perfunctory. Baby blessings are nice, but are basically fake christenings, and the child is too young to remember anyway. Receiving my own endowment was just weird and unsettling, and being sealed to my wife was a big let-down (as in the ceremony itself, not the marriage it solemnized). Priesthood ordinations eventually lost their appeal for me, when I realized I was a fully-formed adult with no more milestones or levels to aspire to, while my daughters get nothing to being with.
My philosophy tends to be that if it’s meaningful for someone in my life it’s meaningful for me. I baptized both of my kids and did all of my son’s ordinations. I also got permission to have my kids’ baptisms away from home while visiting grandparents, and am glad to have done so. Neither of my kids has yet gone on a mission or through a temple endowment, but I’m still a recommend holder, so I’ll be there for any of them should they happen in the future. Even though I can attend temple weddings, I have a lot of things to critique about holding them in the temple. Should the situation arise with my kids, I’ll encourage them to have separate wedding and sealing events, for a variety of reasons that should probably be another post for another day.
Given that the OP mentions mission homecomings, I thought I’d comment on those briefly. When I was coming of age, they had become quite an event. The church felt it was becoming a distraction and took steps in the last couple of decades to scale them back quite a bit. I think that was probably needed, but sometimes I wonder if the pendulum hasn’t gone too far the other way. The mission homecomings have got to the point of being easy to miss if you weren’t listening closely to the person conducting the meeting. I’m not entirely sure what I’d do differently; I just think they might deserve to be treated as a bit more of an occasion than they currently seem to be.
Funny(not) how men love these rituals that are only for men and boys! Women, not so much! My three boys were blessed, baptized, and ordained by my husband. It didn’t take somehow! Girls and women don’t need priesthood, but then neither do boys or men!