If you’re like me, you probably held the notion as a young Mormon that doubt was the enemy of faith. Missionaries are to remain so insulated from anything challenging that what they read is restricted to only faith-promoting content. Our lesson manuals are to be adhered to strictly without using any non-church-approved materials. In fact, I was once taken to task as a teacher for sharing “outside” materials in a lesson about the Wentworth letter. Guess what the “outside” content was. I feel like you’re not going to be able to guess, so I’ll tell you. Yes, it was . . . [pausing for effect] . . . the Wentworth letter. The lesson in the manual was about the letter, but actually did not include the letter. I feel like I just lost IQ points retelling that event from my past experience.[1]

But why is there so much consternation about unapproved materials or encountering ideas that challenge faith? Is faith really so fragile? Isn’t life challenging? Won’t faith be challenged pretty much every time a person steps outside of his or her own bubble?

I’m reminded of the weak leaders I’ve dealt with occasionally in my decades of work life who couldn’t stand criticism and who only wanted others to agree with their ideas. That leads to some pretty poor ideas, either in terms of their merit, their workability, or the buy-in of others. Those leaders never succeed in the long-term.

There are some good reasons that faith that does not entertain doubt is the most fragile faith there is. Doubt does sometimes lead to a loss of faith–but avoiding doubt leads to a brittle sort of faith that is easily lost when challenges hit. Here’s how ignoring doubt creates fragility:

Without doubt, you’ve removed a core feedback mechanism. Doubt can function as an early warning system. Doubt tells you “something doesn’t fit” or “this explanation isn’t working” or “maybe there’s another way to look at this.” Any belief system that blocks feedback loses the ability to adapt. When doubt is suppressed, problems don’t disappear–they accumulate unseen and unaddressed. It’s like the expression “putting it on a shelf” that we hear a lot in LDS circles. Eventually, that shelf is not going to hold the weight of unexamined doubts.

It forces all or nothing thinking. The quickest way to avoid examining doubt is to tell yourself that “if any part is wrong, everything collapses,” which is unfortunately what some church leaders have advised as a way to avoid difficult issues. When a system tries to protect itself from doubt using this thinking, it becomes much more vulnerable to total collapse when doubt can no longer be avoided.

It disconnects belief from lived experience. Life is full of new experiences. When we were teens, we were often asked to write an essay (at school or at church) about how our future life would turn out. Mine is completely different than what I wrote–it’s better in many ways, and it’s more challenging in other ways. Our experiences are going to happen, and they will differ from what we expected. Experiences change our beliefs and worldview as we learn new information, develop morally, and learn from the natural contradictions in life. When faith can’t adapt to incorporate our changing views that emerge through experience, a gap grows between what we believe and what we experience. Eventually, that tension has to resolve. It usually results in an exit from the belief system that doesn’t ring true with our experiential learning or at minimum a crisis of faith or trust in the system that doesn’t serve.

It externalizes threat. This can occur when doubt is reframed as weakness, sin, corruption or an attack from outside (e.g. “outside” sources). This may create short-term in-group cohesion, but it reduces internal honesty, integrity and trust. It’s hard to be authentic when you have to pretend to believe things you don’t believe or be branded a threat.

By contrast, durable faith does the following:

Makes room for questioning. Doubt is a part of the growth process, not a failure. Questions should be explored and discussed, not hidden to avoid detection or punishment.

Allows for reinterpretation. While one’s core values remain constant, specific beliefs can evolve as new information is gained.

Separates identity from total certainty. Instead of having to say “I know” or “I am 100% sure” or phrases like “beyond a shadow of a doubt,” someone can be committed to a group or set of behaviors, even while uncertain about some of the beliefs.

Integrates experience. New information is allowed to improve and update understanding. Belief remains connected to reality, not to an idealized fantasy or an outdated imagined future.

Obviously, someone’s faith can remain intact for long periods of time if it just so happens that they avoid disconfirming information, their community reinforces their worldview (and they avoid mixing with those who do not) and their lived experience doesn’t challenge their beliefs. It’s possible to live your life with a fragile faith that goes untested and “works” for you within the limits you’ve set. But it’s far more likely to rupture if you have spent your life protecting it from any sort of doubt at all.

I was listening to an Ezra Klein podcast about the history of liberalism which has always existed in tension with more authoritarian, more dogmatic forms of human organization. The same tension that can make faith fragile through pretended strength (which is really just blocking feedback or doubt, claiming more certainty than is realistic, and casting opposing views as enemy threats) exists in other forms that we can recognize, not just in religions: in families, in governments, in nations and alliances, and in companies. While liberal or pluralist systems create more strength in the long-term through a marketplace of ideas, adaptation to new ideas, and integration of different viewpoints, they also have some short term tradeoffs that can be exploited:

  • Using coalition and concensus-building through persuasion takes more time than using force, so decision-making is slower if more endurable and often better.
  • There is messiness and visible conflict in the process of evaluating ideas. There are conflicts between groups that have different needs.
  • There are often long periods of gridlock where nothing gets done.

Authoritarian or rigid systems avoid these negatives and often take quicker, more decisive action with speed and coordination, mobilizing quickly in a clear direction–but it’s a direction that not everyone wants (e.g. Project 2025). The downsides of this faster, more “certain” type of leadership is:

  • Errors persist longer (there are no feedback mechanisms to change bad policy)
  • Problems are often hidden until they are intolerable.
  • Sudden disruptions occur as reality breaks through.

Ideally, a system should have a little bit of both. It should be designed to incorporate feedback, to legitimize disagreement, and to allow for course correction without losing the system’s cohesion. Any human system that cannot tolerate doubt will be more fragile than one that allows for dissenting views, whether that’s internal faith or communities.

  • Do you see more people with fragile faith who protect it from questioning or do you see people who adapt as their lives change?
  • Have you had a fragile faith or a more flexible one?
  • Do you think the church encourages fragile uncontested faith or adaptive? Can you think of examples?

Discuss.

[1] That same bishop effectively dismantled our women-only book club by inserting himself into the book selection and requiring that we only read books printed by the church. That was basically the last time anyone showed up for that book club because it was effing boring. While it was obviously none of his business what the Relief Society book club read, there were enough sisters who felt they couldn’t buck his authority that the group just quit meeting after that.