Why Quitters Sometimes Win, Part 1

I've been lurking on several blogs for the past year - most of them are linked sites where the author has been involved in M*rmonism, but is either questioning or disbelieving in most or all of the doctrine. I can identify with most people but I, like everyone else in M*rmonism, has their individual story (if not an individual testimony...that NEVER, ever seems to come) of entry, indoctrination, disillusionment and exit.

It's been eighteen years since I made any concerted and sustained effort to go to a M*rmon church, and I've now officially been inactive/disbelieving for as long as I had been active/believing. It's a strange thing that I should still be so caught up trying to resolve an issue that plays no part in my daily life, especially since my family's history in M*rmonism began with my mother's and my baptism, when I was eight. We had been attending church for four years before our baptisms in the late 1970s- world record for investigators, I'd say! However, there was little pressure placed on us to do the deal until I turned eight, when I was called into the branch president's office and asked whether I'd like to be baptized. I, loving any opportunity to be in the limelight, heartily agreed and began making plans for an acceptance speech. In the weeks up to the event, I prayed in seven and three-quarters year-old earnest and felt certain that I would be blessed with a column of light at the end of my bed and a visitation from an angel, praising me for choosing the right.

For the preceding three and a half years, my mother was branch pianist (how controversial to have a calling without actually having been baptized, though my mother used to play mostly songs she learned in church while growing up as a Methodist, so our congregation sang a lot of 'How Great Thou Art', etc.). I attended Star through CTR classes, all the while having a fairly ad hoc religious education as my family spent our summers visiting my maternal aunts and uncles in a neighbouring state, attending Vacation Bible School (VBS) the Southern Baptist or the Methodist way, with our cousins. I returned to New Mexico after school holidays, tanned and steeped in hellfire, brimstone, and with a great-big-John-Wesley-Amen-at-the-end. I don't think the M*rmons in our branch minded though, it was the freewheeling Seventies - and everyone was church-hopping. I was one of a number of Primary kids whose families attended different churches, at times. I call it 'Interfaithfulness' and it was a good way to find out about other ways of worshipping, and it was also a good way to taste wine well before legal drinking age, and before the dreaded Word of Wisdom was branded into my psyche.

The New Mexican M*rmons were glad to see you step through the door on Sunday and grateful that they had bodies (other than the usual suspects) in the COLD, COLD, metal folding chairs. Most of the families in the branch were related to one line of an old polygamist clan, who had originally settled in Ramah, New Mexico. Their fate was sealed from the breast and it was a slippery slope from bottles of milk to popcorn popping. Of course, having been born in the faith I'm sure the clan never knew the pleasure of sleeping in on a Sunday, or singing a rollicking, happy-clapping version of 'Saved by the Blood of the Lamb', which is a SCARY, SCARY Pentecostal song, for a six year-old, by the way. Our branch was a good one, people were mostly kind to each other, and we had our share of scandalous events - a very human congregation. I liked being with other M*rmon kids and, for the most part, the church was a positive force in my childhood. I have heard horror stories in the community of former M*rmons and I believe their accounts because M*rmonism is a religion that was created to be 'different' by coming complete with its own mythology. This mythology is necessary to establish its difference from other churches, but the problem with mythology is that it is usually created to explain the inexplicable or impose the rather harsh will of another. Once one card in the house falls, the others quickly come down around it. I'm not a PR person, but had I been a man in a position of leadership in the church in the late 80's, I would have dealt with separating the mythology of the church (Book of Abr*ham, Sal*mander Letter, etc.) from the universal religious truths as other Christian-type denominations see them, and tried to move the core values of the church toward a more pragmatic and democratic approach, based on community and acceptance. I would have pushed to set up a church that trained and hired clergy, promoted a fairer system of tithing, promoted smaller families and engaged in community outreach/charity work - not just service projects for ward members or those who might welcome lessons from the missionaries.

Anyway, as time went on I grew in faith in some ways and questioned in others. Some things within the church doctrine, like withholding the priestho*d from black folks did not make any sense while the belief that anyone could receive revelation from g*d made a lot of sense to me. However, I never was content to accept things I could not understand and made a point of questioning them until I was a nuisance. For instance, I remember a time in Primary when I raised my hand to make a point that if you had a King James Bible and G*d inspired that translation to take place for that time (we had just been taught that it was a book inspired by G*d there were errors and so JS received the correct translation for the Bible), then perhaps there would be errors discovered in the JS translation later on, as times changed? I was, of course, met with silence and a little look from Sister 1 and Sister 2. It was the beginning of the end for me, and over the next ten years I gave M*rmonism lip service but I was increasingly convinced my feelings which ran contrary to accepting the complete 'truthfulness' of this version of Christianity, later to religion in general, and finally to the existence of g*d itself...but that's another post. I just thought that because there's now more than one reader on this blog, I might as well tell you why I visit the ex-mo sites.