- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
http://www.mormontransitions.org/033-follow-the-data-greg-prince-and-natural-transition/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.mormontransitions.org/033-follow-the-data-greg-prince-and-natural-transition/ I find it really interesting how those like Gregory Prince stay. I am not at all looking down on him. Just very interested – actually envious.
As I have said, I have meet AP and her other half. Gregory Prince reminds me a bit of AP’s hubby. A VERY nice person and as she says, he is very intelligent. He is a believer even though he very well aware of most all the issues that cause others to leave.
He is among that unique circle – the Armand Mauss’, Eugene England, Robert Rees. They know every ugly wart. They may even have been punished for their insights, but something deeper, more transcendent holds them here. What it is I couldn’t guess. I assume it was hard fought in it’s acquisition and it can only be attained by hanging on, opening your heart, and having a faith beyond the obvious. Very well put mom. I just can’t quite figure him out. Not in any negative way, but I just can’t get how he does it. I do think all 3 men you mention are confident in their abilities. But there is way more too it than that. I’ve enjoyed listening to a couple of his interviews. This one is nice and short and worth a listen, I think. He just never had a melt-down moment. He started hearing things way back on his mission, but describes assimilating all the warty information like “moving from room to room in the same house.” Leaving the house doesn’t seem to be on the table for him. He also likened it to adolescence. Some people just transition through that easily. Even so,
Quote:For me, the curtain isn’t just pulled back; it’s gone.”
And
Quote:It was a hard road long before the November policy.”
There were interesting tidbits about how he came to write both the McKay and Arrington biographies, how he has gotten insights into Mormonism by seeing how it strikes the non-Mormons who work with him on the books, his intimate involvement in the Hans Mattson situation and what came to be known as “the faith crisis survey.” He also said there was a deliberate decision made to place the essays on the website where they would NOT be found by the average member.
Final quote –
Quote:I paid for that pew, too, so why shouldn’t I sit in it.”
I get the inpression that he stays because he
isa Mormon. And I wonder if, as a child of non-Western U.S. converts, it just isn’t as solidly in my bones. Thanks for sharing LookingHard. I miss listening to these podcasts, and wish I was more intellectually minded. I also envy the ablitlits that many of these scholars have to balance their knowledge and faith. One of my favorites is Richard Bushman. We need to not lose such brilliant minds. Ann wrote:I get the impression that he stays because he
isa Mormon. And I wonder if, as a child of non-Western U.S. converts, it just isn’t as solidly in my bones.
Part of me wonders that also. I am the parents of converts and none of my parents family have joined the church. I have a few siblings that are not active in the church, but they seemed to have left more on the “I tried alcohol and I like it” route.But then I look at what is going on in Utah, and I hear story after story of people that have left the church. When they tell their story, they start by showing their “Mormon Creds” (credentials) and talk about how many generations back they go. So it isn’t that one fact alone.
Which still leave me asking, “what is it that makes him stay and be so committed?”
LH – I agree with your assessment that being a convert or coming from a convert background doesn’t make staying/leaving any more probable. One of the astonishing things in this present crisis-time is the amount of “Pioneer Stock” members who have fully walked away. GA’s relatives, etc. Just look at Thomas McConkie. Though his was earlier and different, he is living proof that heritage does not determine LDS longevity. You then asked
Quote:Which still leave me asking, “what is it that makes him stay and be so committed?”
I can’t fully answer for him or them, but a couple things stand out as possibilities. He has mentioned before that his teen years were spent living right behind Juanita Brooks who wrote the first Mountain Meadows Massacre book. It was not a delight to church members. He has talked about how watching her continue to be connected to the church even though she was under fire for her work had a great impact on him. That alone may hold a big answer.
The other idea I have comes from my personal life. So take it with a major grain of salt. But more than once during this long tenure of struggle I have felt distinct impressions that “this will be for thy good”. When faith crisis first hit our home, I was walking through the grocery store, traumatized and robotic and the idea that this experience would be useful in the end kept coming back to me. In my simple mind I assumed it would be some short lived intense process that would morph away as easy as it came. I was wrong. Dead wrong. It only got worse. I was sure I had made up that “be for the good” idea just to cope. Yet it returns at the oddest moments again and again in my life.
This past Sunday it nearly flooded me. I am so far past asking for deliverance it’s not funny. There I was sitting in a chapel listening to instruction about local refugee assistance and I had an impression/vision/fantasy (You name it) that those of us going through this deeply painful experience would be nurturers to others as time moves along. I could hear it, nearly see it, and deeply feel it. I don’t know when “that time” will come or how it will manifest but it was visceral for me. As I drove home I kept thinking about it. It wasn’t a call to StayLDS. Yet it gave me comfort for my choice. Right now I feel torn in my present choices and steps. In fact I got the deep impression that even those who have chosen to leave will be part of that leadership/help/healing in that future time. Now for all I know that was just the insane, warped mind of an aging women. But maybe those who have weathered this knowledge, like Gregory Prince, have had something similar. And if he has, he is fulfilling that role now as he writes, serves on Affirmations board, helps with European Rescue when it all went South, etc.
These are just my guesses from my strange seat in this arena of Faith transition. Take them for what they are worth.
I generally have a poor attention span and can’t focus on podcasts but… Ann wrote:This one is nice and short and worth a listen, I think.
Clicks link. 50 minutes.
😯 This comment isn’t about Gregory Prince or any person in particular, this is just me wondering out loud. Sometimes people say something like, “I know all the facts, the issues don’t bother me, and I’m still a faithful member of the church.” Now picture one of those informal contests where people see who can eat the hottest chili pepper without flinching. I’m not trying to equate the facts with a chili pepper to convince people how embracing the issues is akin to an exercise in who can tolerate the most pain, I’m more interested in what motivates people to make the statement or engage in the contest.
I know this is StayLDS and everything but I feel like there’s a potential trap that people can fall into… we’ll I’m not so sure about it being a trap so bear with me. Sometimes I worry that people equate “success” with coming out the other side of a faith transition with the desire to remain as engaged with the church as we were before the transition. Or to put it another way, if we decide to part ways with the church it is because we are somehow lesser than the people that have stayed. The reason I hesitate to call it a trap is because I feel like there’s a lot of value in finding people that we can relate to that have harvested the types of fruits that we would like to harvest. If we hold up the Princes, Bushmans, Englands, etc. as role models it’s probably an indication of the direction we want to head… just don’t lose sight of your journey being yours and yours alone. Which brings me to my next observation.
In the podcast (even though it was 50 minutes I did listen
madeit resonate. I wasn’t being true to myself or following my own journey, I was following someone else’s vision for me. So Prince’s secret? I think it comes down to two words: self confidence.
He’s had a lifetime to grow into the man he is right now. I also imagine that reading those journals (sequentially?) allowed him to evolve with David O. McKay. Reading something that takes you on a journey that is meted out one day at a time gives the reader time to grow as the author grew.
It sounds like he took a very scientific approach to religion with a policy of always trading up. If the data doesn’t support orthodoxy, how do we trade up?
nibbler wrote:I generally have a poor attention span and can’t focus on podcasts but…
Clicks link. 50 minutes.
😯
Get a podcast application and play it back at 1.5x speed (I listen at 2x). Listen while you drive or exercise. Some podcast applications (such as Overcast) also removes pauses so the dead air time is removed.nibbler wrote:Sometimes I worry that people equate “success” with coming out the other side of a faith transition with the desire to remain as engaged with the church as we were before the transition. Or to put it another way, if we decide to part ways with the church it is because we are somehow lesser than the people that have stayed. The reason I hesitate to call it a trap is because I feel like there’s a lot of value in finding people that we can relate to that have harvested the types of fruits that we would like to harvest. If we hold up the Princes, Bushmans, Englands, etc. as role models it’s probably an indication of the direction we want to head… just don’t lose sight of your journey being yours and yours alone. Which brings me to my next observation.
In the podcast (even though it was 50 minutes I did listen
madeit resonate. I wasn’t being true to myself or following my own journey, I was following someone else’s vision for me. So Prince’s secret? I think it comes down to two words: self confidence.
He’s had a lifetime to grow into the man he is right now. I also imagine that reading those journals (sequentially?) allowed him to evolve with David O. McKay. Reading something that takes you on a journey that is meted out one day at a time gives the reader time to grow as the author grew.
It sounds like he took a very scientific approach to religion with a policy of always trading up. If the data doesn’t support orthodoxy, how do we trade up?
I agree with much of what you say here. I do wonder if correlation has moved the individual members to feel strongly that it is imperative to follow the brethren and that is EXACTLY what God wants everyone to do and anything else is on a slippery slope to hell. Now when people see behind the curtain a bit, it breaks our entire (subconscious) framing of what we were basing much of life perspective. This correlated narrative has strength, but is brittle and it does not bend very much before it shatters. Did early events in Gregory’s life give him more malleability and he can take a few more hits (painful as they may be) before his framing shatters?And I do agree that I don’t see “staying 100% in the church” as the only successful outcome. I feel the main thing should be coming closer to God. Many leave and don’t obtain that, but a few do.
Maybe one approach is genuinely not caring what other people think. There will always be people that create a standard and measure everyone against that standard, that group isn’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean we always have to take what other people say to heart. That said, it can be difficult to survive in a culture where you constantly feel like you don’t belong. Notice I didn’t say “made to feel like you don’t belong.” Our feelings aren’t always rational but that doesn’t make them any less real to the person experiencing them. Maybe people in the community actively make someone feel unwelcome, maybe it’s all in a person’s head, the point is they feelunwelcome. Not caring what others think might also mean letting go of a lot of things that the community has to offer. That prestigious calling, friends, family, etc. It ain’t an easy road.
Here’s another aspect worth considering. Is it easier for the Princes, Bushmans, Givens’, etc. of the world to stay because they enjoy a place of prominence within the Mormon community? Compare that to Joe Nobody in the Provo 1428th ward that gets relegated to a virtual corner because of something they liked on facebook. I know those are extreme examples, I think my point is that everyone experiences the community differently. Maybe people leave because they find a place of prominence outside the Mormon community. That certainly happens as well.
I could go on. I better not.
:silent: I enjoyed the podcast very much even though the interviewer didn’t seem well prepared and didn’t seem to know what to say when Prince said he’d never had a faith crisis. The other thing that occurred to me is that I think that Prince and people like him, Bushman, Arrington, Mauss, Hardy, England, Mason, etc. are most likely born the way they are with the ability to take in evidence, examine and judge it and then move on without disturbing their core values. They seem to come closest to Richard Poll’s descriptions of liahonas vs iron rodders. For myself I always wanted things to be black and white so dealing with all this has been very hard and has taken years to come to terms with but for these men it seems to be more part of who they are. IMHO. I think that is where my mind is heading also. They all just seem to say they respect others decisions, but it just doesn’t affect them. I am generally a very calm person. I get more animated here than in real life. I don’t get mad very often at all and I calm down within a few seconds when I do. I think in the last 5 years I only “yelled” at my kids 1 time. I still stand behind that as he needed to really hear what I was saying because he were being an ignoramus self-centered teen. I didn’t really work on this – I just have always been this way. Maybe in my teens and during the frustrating times (when my parents probably would describe me as an ignoramus self-centered teen) I would go out and grab a bat and whack at a big dead tree in the back yard until my hands hurt (I wasn’t smart enough to put on some gloves – that took too long). I have never “Yelled” at my wife, but I have elevated my voice at times. As lady Gaga says, “I was born this way”.
nibbler wrote:Prince talks about leaving his copy of Mormon Doctrine by McConkie behind when he returned home. Why? The book didn’t resonate with him… but it did with other people. To me that decision is key. He was at a place in his journey where he could take what resonated with him and leave the rest behind.
In contrast, during my mission days I was in a place where if something coming from an authority figure didn’t resonate I incorporated it into my life anyway, Imadeit resonate. I wasn’t being true to myself or following my own journey, I was following someone else’s vision for me. This is where so many faith-crisis-fixers come up empty. I’m noticing on Facebook today an article by Michael Ash criticizing people for succumbing to doubt after reading big-list-of-problems-with-Mormonism materials. Assume he’s referring to the CES Letter and the like. But the problem isn’t those materials per se. It’s people recognizing that they’d been forcing – or faking? – belief where it didn’t really exist. Realizing that is a game-changer.
Quote:So Prince’s secret? I think it comes down to two words: self confidence.
And there’s zero desire to go back to the days of no self-confidence.
Be careful of dismissing people’s ability to deal with stuff out of a sense that it just doesn’t effect them. That could be said about me by people who don’t know me, and it would be wrong.
Old Timer wrote:Be careful of dismissing people’s ability to deal with stuff out of a sense that it just doesn’t effect them.
That could be said about me by people who don’t know me, and it would be wrong.
Would it be better to say it does not effect them the same way it effects others? I had to go and re-read the last few comments to see what you might be pointing at.My comments were in no way intended to be condescending or looking down on people like Gregory. In fact it is the opposite. If Greg Prince was anywhere near me I would be asking if he had a drive that was an hour or so away, I would be willing to drive him at no cost just to be able to talk with him for a while. The same way I love interacting with the folks here at staylds.org.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.