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There is a new book out by Christian Kimball (grandson of SWK) called Living on the Inside of the Edge: A Survive Guide.>have issues with the church.
>want to engage at some level.
>assume nothing changes or gets fixed with the church in your lifetime.
The book helps you stay LDS, even if it is just inside of the edge of the Church. It draws on examples in the authors life on how he has made it work. Examples are:
Setting boundaries on your relation with the Church (not a child/parent, but adult/adult)
Stop thinking in binaries. Black/White, True/False, In/Out.
No Checklist solutions.
I became aware of this book via this Salt Lake Tribune article: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/02/06/how-doing-temple-recommend/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/02/06/how-doing-temple-recommend/ https://www.sltrib.com/podcasts/mormonland/https://www.sltrib.com/podcasts/mormonland/” class=”bbcode_url”> Sounds like Kimball has been walking the middle way for some time and seems to have some practical advice similar to what is often posted here.
From the article:
Quote:Have you been happier in the space that you’re in now than when you were a fully practicing member?
Happy is an odd word. I have felt much more whole. I have felt like I’m honest about who I am. I can talk with my bishop about who I am and what I do and what I don’t do. That feels good….For about 10 years — from the mid-90s to the mid-aughts — I silenced myself. No one, no church leader, ever did that to me, but I did. I shut down. … After the November [2015 same-sex marriage] “exclusion policy,” as it came to be known, I decided to stay as much a backbencher as ever, but still to stay involved and engaged. I would take off that filter, that I would stop worrying about how I sound and I would speak up.
Quote:Though you were a Latter-day Saint bishop, why do you flatly advise members living on this “inside of the edge” against talking to their bishops — except under certain circumstances?
What I’m really saying is that the general model that we grew up with as members talking to bishops is of a kid talking to a father. You go to your bishop as a father image and as a man who has all the answers, who is speaking to God. This book is saying, if you’re in that liminal world of on the edge, but still wanting to be engaged, that’s not a survivable way to deal with the church. …The only way you can survive that is to restructure your relationship with the church so that you have adult-to-adult conversations. And when you can do that, then, yes, go talk with your bishop.
Quote:After being released, I found for myself that I could not deal with the temple recommend interview process and turned in my recommend. That’s a pretty clear dividing line.
from SLTrib article
Quote:It can take years for someone to be able to like the author does and tell the bishops, “I don’t sit ‘interviews’, but if you want to chat sometime that would be great.”
From W&T book review
It sounds like this is mapping out a pathway for individuals that are not interested in having a TR. The adult to adult conversations and differentiation that is described might be more challenging to achieve while still submitting to interviews.
This is similar to something that Brian used to say about growing up from being a child of God to becoming an “adult of God.”
That is certainly one way to StayLDS and live within the edge. I am not quite there because I still submit to tithing settlement/declaration as a non-tithe payer and it always makes me feel like I am a deadbeat parent making lame excuses for why I am not financially supporting my dependent (the church). I continue in this dance because I am fearful that being more transparent and asserting a change in my relationship to the church as being more between equal parties would forever close the door for me to participate in priesthood ordinances.
From the more traditionally believing perspective, asserting a relationship of equals with the church could be borderline apostacy because it challenges the authority of the church and the covenants that were made in the temple and elsewhere to subject yourself to the church’s authority.
I also can totally appreciate what Brother Kimball means when he talks about feeling more whole once he redefined the nature of the church/individual relationship.
Quote:Happy is an odd word. I have felt much more whole. I have felt like I’m honest about who I am. I can talk with my bishop about who I am and what I do and what I don’t do. That feels good….For about 10 years — from the mid-90s to the mid-aughts — I silenced myself. No one, no church leader, ever did that to me, but I did.
from the SLTrib article
I suppose I am still in the period of silencing myself. I think this book might be right up my alley to help explore what the next chapter of my journey to StayLDS might look like.
Roy wrote:
That is certainly one way to StayLDS and live within the edge. I am not quite there because I still submit to tithing settlement/declaration as a non-tithe payer and it always makes me feel like I am a deadbeat parent making lame excuses for why I am not financially supporting my dependent (the church). I continue in this dance because I am fearful that being more transparent and asserting a change in my relationship to the church as being more between equal parties would forever close the door for me to participate in priesthood ordinances.
Thank you for explaining to me where I stumble in the “hidden curriculum” of the church. I have been implicitly and explicitly calling for and/or demanding equality between the church organization and myself for a very long time – it never really sunk in that that wasn’t an end goal of the church either to treat me as equally as someone else, or as equal importance as the church as an organization.
[I expected it in the next life despite being a woman. I expected it because I took literally “We are children of God” and “on a pathway back to God”. I took power gap as a technicality of organization, not a gigantic gap of power differential for a very long time.
Roy wrote:
From the more traditionally believing perspective, asserting a relationship of equals with the church could be borderline apostacy because it challenges the authority of the church and the covenants that were made in the temple and elsewhere to subject yourself to the church’s authority.
I always half-wondered how I could be “faithful” and “righteous” and do the stuff I was supposed to and come across as “challenging the church”.
All the poor people who tried to explain to me “how it worked” – it was literally going over my head.
Thankfully, my husband also challenges authority (for different reasons), so this became both less of an issue and a different issue.
Roy wrote:
I also can totally appreciate what Brother Kimball means when he talks about feeling more whole once he redefined the nature of the church/individual relationship.
Quote:Happy is an odd word. I have felt much more whole. I have felt like I’m honest about who I am. I can talk with my bishop about who I am and what I do and what I don’t do. That feels good….For about 10 years — from the mid-90s to the mid-aughts — I silenced myself. No one, no church leader, ever did that to me, but I did.
from the SLTrib article
I suppose I am still in the period of silencing myself. I think this book might be right up my alley to help explore what the next chapter of my journey to StayLDS might look like.
Walking away from the church made me feel more “whole” as well. But I have usually been the individual who told people who I am, and what I can and can’t do (and why in intellectual detail). Apparently, it is “normal” for me to tell people to take me at my word, to take me at face value, and then I say something that requires them to do, and they are both caught off guard and happy about it.
I guess that I am in a period of being “speechless”. I don’t really talk to the church.Church representatives periodically talk to me about youth activities. I talk to a close friend, and some family members about the church as an experience and my perspective – but they are acting as a member of my tribe, not as a representative of the church.
I have been thinking deeply for the last while about the expectation that the church and I will have a conversation about my daughter and her baptism. I don’t have the answers really, I have some specific statements about what I will and won’t do. But my stomach churns at the thought of those conversations with the church representatives and with my family as I do not meet their expectations. I don’t come out a “winner” from any of those conversations – at best, it’ll be a “draw”.
Roy wrote:
This is similar to something that Brian used to say about growing up from being a child of God to becoming an “adult of God.”That is certainly one way to StayLDS and live within the edge. I am not quite there because I still submit to tithing settlement/declaration as a non-tithe payer and it always makes me feel like I am a deadbeat parent making lame excuses for why I am not financially supporting my dependent (the church). I continue in this dance because I am fearful that being more transparent and asserting a change in my relationship to the church as being more between equal parties would forever close the door for me to participate in priesthood ordinances.
I am a subscriber to the idea of “adults of God” and scripturally speaking 1 Corinthians 13:11 (When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways). I think at least some of us here (including you Roy) see ourselves as having matured in our faith or in the gospel to the point we consider ourselves more adult in our relationships with the church and with God. That’s not to say that some more active/believing members have not matured but from my perspective the vast majority have not or at least won’t or can’t admit they have. I think that’s part of what Kimball is trying to convey – we can be adults of God and have adult relationships (as I now do with my own adult children).
At the same time I hear you – having the kind of relationship Kimball says he has will likely preclude us from participation in some aspects of the church that we might like to participate in. I couldn’t care less about having a temple recommend currently and I have known our current bishop for many years and could have an honest conversation with him without serious repercussion to my current status. (FWIW, I do believe I am worthy of a TR except for church attendance, I’ll come back to that in a moment.) On the other hand, I do have an unmarried child who will in all likelihood want to marry in the temple when he finds “Miss Right” (he’s about to join the ranks of the menaces to society). When that time comes I will want to participate, and I will want to participate in the blessing of my grandchildren when that times comes (probably no sooner than 2025). In the meantime I think I am OK as a backbencher in a colored shirt and no tie.
Quote:I suppose I am still in the period of silencing myself. I think this book might be right up my alley to help explore what the next chapter of my journey to StayLDS might look like.
In light of my above statement, I probably am also silencing myself, but in not making any noise I am also not attracting any attention. I
couldhave adult conversations with my leaders, but I don’t. This book may also help me come to a better understanding of where I’m at and where I want to be. (I am managing to catch up on my reading since my retirement.) Back to the temple recommend, as promised. From the Tribune article:
Quote:I felt like the questions were not the right questions. They were not evaluating what might make sense to evaluate if I were to write my own questions. The questions didn’t have good answers.
I agree – I think some of the questions are spot on (although I don’t believe any of them indicate “worthiness”). I think the questions about belief in God/Jesus/Holy Spirit are fine. I honestly believe God doesn’t give a hoot about the rest.
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