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I keep hearing about how “its harder being in Utah”, but I’ve never heard the specifics of what makes being a member of the Church harder in Utah when you have questions and concerns. I can guess a few things, but I’d like to hear it from people who know firsthand. I’m one of those who espouse the ‘manure principle’ — that is, spread it thin — and have often complained that I could never live anywhere along the WF. I have lived there in the past as a student, but I think that’s quite a different, sheltered experience. I think my biggest fear would be of being constantly reminded of the complexities and difficulties and paradoxes involved in implementing an idealistic and literal mythology (in the best sense) in the real world. This is in no way a condemnation of those that attempt to do it, just my untutored view. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if being confronted with that on a daily basis would help to clear one’s view. In any case, I may have to eat my words one of these days. I think two of the things that I see as making things harder in Utah are the dominant culture and the higher density of LDS population. First, it seems that the line between gospel doctrine and mormon culture/traditions is so often blurred and people begin to believe that the culture/traditions IS/ARE the gospel. They’re not. When I lived in NY, most of the people around me it seemed were either Catholic or Jewish. Even though those were two large groups, neither one of them dominated the culture. Here in Utah, most of them tend to be LDS and the dominant culture is the mormon culture. I think that in the mormon culture, we are taught to follow and obey… follow the savior, follow the prophet, follow the leaders, obey the scriptures, obey the commandments, don’t question… just have faith, just follow. Follow, follow, follow. So, when an LDS person questions something, it’s seen outside of the expected norm and people don’t know how to handle it. Because in some way it (the culture/traditions/gospel) has become their own identity, they feel threatened by someone questioning it. As a result, there is usually a knee-jerk reaction to it. I don’t think my Jewish and Catholic friends had the same drum beat played over and over and over to them on the same scale as we do here.
It’s a lot like when people are driving and they begin to see signs telling them there is a construction merge ahead. The majority of people go ahead right then and move over even though they are a half mile from the merge. Then they get all kinds of pissy when others continue on up to the merge and then actually move over in an every other car fashion. Why is that? Why are people content to just follow everyone else and maintain the status quo? Why do they get mad when someone takes a different path?
Second, I currently live in the boundaries of what is the geographically smallest stake in the entire world, at least up until just a few months ago when two wards were taken from another stake and added to ours. (We still may be, but I am not certain any more.) There are 243 houses in our ward boundaries that comprise six streets in our neighborhood. Our average Sunday attendance is about 200 to 210 people. The activity rate is about 50 percent. (Way too many years as a clerk.) By default, most everyone that we associate with socially are active LDS. A number of my neighbors are clients of mine as well. Some of them work in and/or teach at the public schools my kids attend. Escaping would be about next to impossible. As an active member, if you fart (or question), the ward council is aware of it and you go on a “watch list” so to speak because people start to think you’re on the way out. I know because I’ve sat in on more than a few of these meetings before. It would be much easier to move in to a new area as a non-member or inactive than it would be to go from active to not-active or to leave entirely.
Not sure if this conveys clearly what is really in my head.
Let’s say someone was formerly active, but decided they needed a break from callings to pursue further education while working full-time, for example. They still go to Church, occasionally missing, say once every couple months. How would that person fare in a Ward like yours? Would they be on the “watch list”? Looked down upon? SilentDawning wrote:I keep hearing about how “its harder being in Utah”, but I’ve never heard the specifics of what makes being a member of the Church harder in Utah when you have questions and concerns. I can guess a few things, but I’d like to hear it from people who know firsthand.
My theory is that some of the most extreme elements of Mormon culture and doctrine feed off of individual Mormons constantly having other practicing Mormons around to disapprove if they don’t believe and do what others expect. That’s why it’s no surprise to me if the LDS Church is strongest and the members are more obnoxious on average in Utah because the peer pressure and groupthink here have been taken to a whole other level compared to anywhere else that I know of. For example, I doubt that I would be quite so afraid to openly admit that I don’t believe in the Church to anyone other than my wife if I didn’t live in Utah but as it is I don’t expect anyone to understand very well and I know for a fact that many of them would judge me unfairly and gossip about me if they ever find out so it is easier to just keep quiet.
SilentDawning wrote:Let’s say someone was formerly active, but decided they needed a break from callings to pursue further education while working full-time, for example. They still go to Church, occasionally missing, say once every couple months. How would that person fare in a Ward like yours? Would they be on the “watch list”? Looked down upon?
Funny you should pose that question. Here’s more detail on my story…
Like I mentioned in my recent introduction, I just asked to be released (my wife and I were both raised to NEVER turn down a calling or do anything like that so, this was a very serious request) from my calling as a counselor in the EQ Pres. I’ve only been in it for six months. Prior to that, I was in YM’s, Scouts, clerk, EQ secretary. I’ve held anywhere from one to three callings concurrently at any given time since moving in twelve years ago. My (and my wife’s) decision to ask for the release was based on what we feel is best and prudent for our family at this time. I’m self-employed and need to focus more on providing for my family and recovering from the stress of being a care-giver in my home for a parent for the last five years. It has taken a real toll on my wife, myself, my business, and my health. (When you fly, you put the emergency oxygen mask on yourself first, then you focus on the others around you. I haven’t done that up until now.)
Sounds reasonable, right?
Apparently not.
I was told verbatim by the SP that “your reasons don’t matter and the future of your soul in the kingdom is in serious jeopardy. I’ve seen this before and it doesn’t end well.” Was this said with or in a spirit of love and compassion, or with concern for the needs of my family? No. There was no spirit in that room. I think I’ve sat through enough meetings to be able to recognize the spirit and when it is or isn’t there. His body language, tonality of voice, shortness, etc. spoke volumes. My ability to read these things is part of what I do for a living. Correctly picking up on the subtle little cues can make or cost me a lot of money when interacting with an individual so, I’m good at it. I also don’t try and guess or assume what it is people are thinking or meaning when they open their mouth. I’ll ask for clarification or explanation. So I did. The response I received was “It doesn’t matter what I said. It means whatever you take it to mean. It’s just a statement.” What? So, I asked again. The SP gave the same response with irritation in voice times ten.
He then said I released as of right then. I said “Great. Then I guess we’re done here.” I stood, turned, and walked out.
Are you kidding me? You’re supposed to be guided by the spirit as the leader for the stake. If you’re prompted or impressed to make a statement like that in a situation like this, you at least owe a better explanation that. Forget better, how about any explanation?
Anyway, all I did was ask to be released. For that, I got the passive-aggressive spiritual guilt trip manipulation card pulled on me. Nice. The jury is still out the repercussions in the ward. The vibe from those in the know is slightly cooled off from what it normally is. Maybe I’m still a little hyper-sensitive right now, maybe I’m not. I would like to think that it won’t matter on the ward level like it apparently did on the stake. Only time will tell.
(Silver lining: It caused me to undergo even more introspection than I had previously done leading up to this point. I recognize that this was good for me. I have more clarity now and a greater understanding of things with regard to my own personal beliefs regarding the gospel. Maybe the Lord felt I needed that and that is what it would take to get me to search deeper in myself. )
Now, if that’s the response generated for the simple request of a release from a calling, I can’t even imagine what the response would have been if it were an issue slightly more towards the edge of the reservation.
Wow — I think that explains the kind of treatment I received from our Stake leaders when I asked to be released as an HPGL after three years of very hard work and juggling huge commitments at work, going to school, as well as a newly diagnosed diabetic son and more. I thought their indifferent and callous behavior might have been an isolated incident, but give your own experience, it sounds like this is far less isolated than I may have thought. I too experienced the cooling off from the Ward leaders. They don’t talk to me any more about much. If I initiate conversation, it tends to be short and then they move on. I definitely feel like I’m in the out-group because I made the request for a release.
Come to think of it, 12 years ago I was serving as an assistant to a HPGL, and he asked to be released. We ended up having a sit-down meeting with a HC who asked the guy if he felt “his salvation was in danger”. It was a rhetorical question, aimed at his request for a release — and he did it in front of other people — very callous. I’ve never thought of calling performance as being directly related to salvation.
Yes, as a Church we have a long way to go in balancing the needs of our organization with the needs of individuals. We err far too much on the side of the organization for my liking….
You have me thinking I should be avoiding Stake callings if they are going to behave like this.
Utah. My first experience with Utah was when my wife, daughter, and I went to Salt Lake City to attend the temple for the first time. When I saw a cigarette tossed out of the car in front of me I realized that there really wasn’t mythical perfect place called Zion. My next experience was many years later and after my disaffection was increasing. I lived in Ogden for less than a year but I got a number of impressions.
Utah enforces the Word of Wisdom thus making it hard to exercise your agency but will let you kill yourself on a motorcycle by not having a helmet law.
If you aren’t LDS or don’t want to be identified as LDS you make sure everyone knows by your actions. You either are or you aren’t.
There are a lot of non-traditional medical practices.
You can’t escape the Mormon culture, it’s everywhere and in your face.
The pioneers, especially the handcart pioneers are worshipped.
There does seem to be a hierarchy or royalty. Hard to pin this down, just an impression.
Honor and sustain the law is a suggestion when it comes to driving.
Covert racism. Sometimes not so covert.
If you weren’t born in the covenant you aren’t as good.
If you aren’t from Utah but lived in the “mission field” you aren’t as good.
If you didn’t go to BYU you aren’t as good.
If you don’t follow the word of wisdom you have a “problem”. Well, maybe “problem” with anything is church wide.
There are probably more. I might think of more later.
[Yikes!!] I didn’t realize there was that much cultural nonsense…I could be a very low class citizen in the eyes of those people, as I’m not BIC, not from Utah, went to school at non-BYU universities. I also hear that if your mission was foreign that tends to elevate you as well in the pecking order. I served in North America, so I guess I’m toast. I don’t know how I would survive there really, it would be MUCH harder. My family are talking about moving there if my job goes belly up here in the mission-field….[/Yikes] SilentDawning, It depends on where you live in Utah – Salt Lake City is different from a little Pioneer town where everyone is related to the same pioneers (ok slight exageration). Dealing with belief shifts living in a small UT town is tougher, IMO. Since I grew up in CA, I’m a new kid on the block, no matter how long I’ve lived here.
The church is your life – it’s your social support, your children’s mentors/teachers…
Everybody knows you… in fact, neighbors will tell you what you did the other day that you didn’t remember. lol
There’s no hiding anything!! Except online, of course.
:shh: I hated my time at BYU, but I really did like our ward members in Utah. However, there are some things that I encountered that were buggy. I don’t know that they are the “norm,” but they exist and you will sometimes encounter them: – I encountered a lot of RMs who felt like they were God’s gift to women for returning with honor. They expected to be wooed, to be the center of attention, and to be able to have their pick of many possible LDS girls. Their vision of the future was very egocentric, and really any girl would do to be his +1 and fill that vision. This was maybe 50% of the guys I met at BYU.
– I had a boy at BYU tell me he really liked me, but he couldn’t date a girl with short hair because his parents just wouldn’t accept that.
– At BYU, students would narc on each other for every silly thing you can think of. I got sent to standards because my knee length skirt rode up a little when I was sitting, so someone said it was a mini skirt. I had an RA in an apartment complex that I found peeking in my roommate’s window from the bushes because he said he was sure her boyfriend (who was also an MTC teacher) was in her room (which he was).
My ward in SLC was better in that it was less judgmental, but I still had a hard time relating to people sometimes:
– The employment rates for sisters in RS were much lower than in other wards I’ve attended. I’m used to about 50-70% of the women working, but in that ward, I was one of only a handful who work, and the others had “jobs” not careers.
– The sisters were talking about how to boil weevils out of your stored wheat (madness!) when I pointed out that food storage should be things you already eat and you should rotate your stock. They looked at me like I was insane and went back to the weevil conversation.
– The GD teacher was an ex school teacher who pined for the days of being able to smack kids in class and said that women who dressed in high heels and short skirts were “asking to be raped.”
– People with pioneer heritage were very proud of their pedigree. Also those with polygamous ancestry were. I have neither.
I’m sure I could think of more. The comments about the cultural aspect are totally true; members mix up what is cultural with what is doctrinal, which is easy to do when the culture is so Mormon. It’s irritating for those of us who’ve lived outside of Utah. My homeward in PA was mostly converts, mostly democrats, and we were from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds across a very wide geographic distribution. Talking about the gospel with diverse people is different than talking about it with people who are not only very similar but live literally in the same 2 square blocks.
Hawkgirl, You nailed it! I could relate with many things you mentioned, but you put it in a way I hadn’t considered… especially about RMS… lol.
I was kindof feeling bad about what I wrote (Utah-mormon guilt? lol)…
So I wanted to add something positive…
Although, I know Utah has its share of crimes…
I’ve noticed many opportunities for crime but instead a display of integrity was shown.
I generally feel safe with my kids playing in our yard… although I do have to deal with “cliquish prejudice” – since, we’re not related to everyone here.
I have in-laws that live in a Mormonville area in Alberta. They have experienced similar things — not really accepted, and there is an attitude that if you’re not a descendent of Joseph Smith you aren’t on the same plane as other people. Thoreau wrote:If you aren’t LDS or don’t want to be identified as LDS you make sure everyone knows by your actions. You either are or you aren’t.
THIS!!!! This was my biggest memory of my short stay in Utah 20+ years ago.
I attended BYU for 1 full calendar year before going on a mission. I had no desire to return when I got home, even though that was the peak of my “normal” integration in the Church. I was very disturbed by the trend I saw of people going way over the top, going to extreme lengths to make sure others knew they were not LDS (or LDS and not “obedient”). I guess I was bound to confront this underbelly of Utah culture because I never really fit in. I also didn’t care to fit in, but I still wanted to have my faith (or whatever it was I had). I was drawn to being friends with others who did not fit in, so I saw how directly this affected people. People I knew made very poor decisions. If they wanted to drink, they drank way too much. If they wanted to fool around sexually, they went way overboard. If they were upset by the Church, they had to plaster the back of their car with virulent bumper stickers to tell the whole world they were OUT! If you didn’t care much for the nonsense of the Church, you had to HATE the Church with a passion.
On the flip side, people who wanted to believe they were “righteous” really had to go over the top and be extreme to make sure others could see (validate their desire to be more righteous). If they don’t stand out, how will they know they are “righteous?” (I can see most doing this unconsciously, to be fair and give the benefit of doubt).
I don’t recall thinking much about kids or a family as a teen. I didn’t have some plan about that. But I *DO* remember even at the young age of 18, based on living in Provo and attending BYU, that I would not want to raise kids there. I apologize to folks who like living there. I’m sure in a lot of ways it’s a wonderful place to grow up or raise kids. I can appreciate more of that now that I am much older and have raised my own kids. But I seriously thought that at the time. I was very concerned that people seemed pushed to such extremes, and thought about how I wouldn’t want children to have face that kind of too-much-faith-vs-damaging-apostasy pressure.
I never fit in there. I got turned into standards once for playing the wrong kind of music (I mean, I was playing instruments … not listening to the wrong kind of records/tapes). My dorm mom warned I would be turned into standards for shaving my head bald, but she never did. I did have some great experiences with a few professors though. I loved the Honors Colloquium program they had at BYU in the 1980s. I think my ceramics professor got a kick out of me too. I was the only one in his class that didn’t make mugs and soup bowls as Christmas presents for their grandma as their “artistic” projects. I made figurine sculptures of screaming souls, and vases that looked like nuclear cooling towers with cathedral windows and magic symbols.
Brian Johnston wrote:…I apologize to folks who like living there. I’m sure in a lot of ways it’s a wonderful place to grow up or raise kids. I can appreciate more of that now that I am much older and have raised my own kids. But I seriously thought that at the time. I was very concerned that people seemed pushed to such extremes, and thought about how I wouldn’t want children to have face that kind of too-much-faith-vs-damaging-apostasy pressure.
No need to apologize. The dream of someday escaping is what keeps many people going.
Brian Johnston wrote:I never fit in there. I got turned into standards once for playing the wrong kind of music (I mean, I was playing instruments … not listening to the wrong kind of records/tapes).
I’m seeing a set of Lynn Bryson tapes in your future… maybe for Christmas. HaHA!!!
😆 Brian Johnston wrote:I think my ceramics professor got a kick out of me too. I was the only one in his class that didn’t make mugs and soup bowls as Christmas presents for their grandma as their “artistic” projects. I made figurine sculptures of screaming souls, and vases that looked like nuclear cooling towers with cathedral windows and magic symbols.
The real question here is whether or not you still have the ceramic projects you made.
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