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Over 10 years ago an exchange student named Sofia from Russia stayed with us for the school year. She obtained permission to remain indefinitely. She finished high school, then college while living with us. There were problems back home with alcoholism and she just needed another family. We had plenty of room and she didn’t eat that much and she helped with chores and taught our children to speak Russian. She was a lot of fun and enriched our lives as much as if she was another one of our children. We took Sofia to church with us and quickly the youth in the ward became her best friends. She attended their activities followed by the sister missionary lessons. She was baptized during the first year and became a very zealous new member and motivated the rest of the family to greater diligence.
Sofia dated a number of LDS guys but most were not right for her. Then she met the dashing, resourceful and confident Davi from Brazil. They dated for a couple of years before getting married. Now they have 3 children, including 6 month old twins. They are struggling with the usual domestic and economic challenges. We have dinner together once or twice a month and my wife probably talks to Sofia several times a week and they come to our family events.
Davi is an interesting guy. His parents were converts in Brazil and married in the temple there. His mother fled their abusive marriage and brought her 6 children here. His mother is poorly educated and worked babysitting at home when her children were small and they relied on church welfare during the leanest years. Davi began working as a young teenager in construction to help support the rest of the family as did all of the children when they were old enough. He worked and saved enough to serve a full-time mission while helping support a family of 7 people. Then he paid for his two younger brothers to go on missions. They have really struggled the last few years when the building industry collapsed.
We noticed recently that Davi and Sofia do not say much about church and we had the aching hunch that they were not in the middle of things anymore. Perhaps only attending some of the time, maybe because of the difficulty of taking small children and job demands and general fatigue? Last night we had them over and they told us that they have been inactive for several months and the twins have not even been blessed. They opened up and explained why.
The problem began with their marriage in the temple. At the time they were so in love and focused on each other and planning their new life together (and the honeymoon) that they did not think much about other people close to them. But as time passed they have grown to regret what was done. This has worsened to the point Davi says he is through with the LDS church. Sofia is more ambivalent and might go back if it was easier with the children. Davi doesn’t object to the children maybe attending in a few years but at this point it is not worth it. And exactly what was done?
Davi’s family have been active members of the church for decades. His mother served faithfully in many ward callings and was in the Relief Society Presidency in a Spanish branch. (She speaks both Spanish and Portuguese.) Everyone loves her warm smile and her unselfish open heart but she is not one to be very strict with the rules. She experienced friction with a new Anglo Branch President over use of the church kitchen and enforcing modesty standards and that sort of thing.
When he released her the attendance dropped and the number of activities that she planned decreased. They blamed her and accused her of not supporting the new leaders. She next lost her job as a janitor in a small company along with some of her children who moved back in with her and they all did everything they could to scrape enough money together to pay the mortgage. (They would lose the house a couple of years later as eventually even the resourceful Davi was not able to find enough work and all their savings were completely depleted.) She did not pay any tithing after her salary stopped. Not all of her children are active and even the active ones do not always pay tithing when they seem to not have enough for food and bills. When she went in to get her temple recommend renewed before Davi’s wedding, the Branch President told her that the money her children gave her to pay the mortgage was income and she should be paying tithing on it. He would not give her a temple recommend.
At their wedding I did not know about any of this. But I noticed that Davi’s mother had a smile plastered on her face while she seemed otherwise extremely angry. I thought, perhaps she did not like Sofia, I didn’t know. Davi’s mother is a beautiful woman and she dressed to the hilt and outshined the bride in her cheap modest temple wedding dress. None of her other children or relatives went into the temple but stayed out with her in a phalanx of family solidarity.
Sofia wrote to her 3 older sisters back in Russia of her marriage many months before it happened. They were not close, mostly ignoring each other and their painful memories. They had all escaped the torment of their home at an early age and gone their separate ways. But they all decided to work hard and save/borrow the money for a trip to America to be together at their little sister’s wedding and to celebrate a new beginning. None of them are legally married although I think they have a couple of children between them and assorted live-in boyfriends. Much to our surprise the 3 Russian sisters and one boyfriend did show up. They were so happy the first few days. They boarded with us and we took them around to see the sights. But they became extremely disappointed when they realized that, not being members of the church, they would not be allowed in the temple for the actual wedding. They even asked if they could quickly join and then be able to go to the wedding; but of course that was not possible. They saved more than a year’s salary and traveled half way around the world, to sit outside the temple on a blanket.
My wife and I seeing the volatile situation decided to say out with the two angry extended families and try to keep them as happy as we could while Davi and Sofia were getting married. Only a few old friends they might see once every 10 years made the 2 hour drive to the temple and actually saw the wedding.. My wife, a music teacher, reached out to Davi’s mother and they began to sing folk songs. First one from Brazil and then one from Russia. My children, mostly teenagers then, joined in the Russian songs since Sofia had taught them a few and they quickly learned others. Each group had an audience in the other and each tried to impress the other with the beauty and passion of their songs. The Brazilians had the larger number but the Russians made up the difference with their energy. (Folk songs likely included drinking songs).
One of Sofia’ sisters had a fifth of vodka in her purse and they passed that around. They tried to give it to my children who refused under pretty severe pressure. But Davi’s mother astonished everyone by taking a long swig when offered the bottle and then so did some of her young adult children. His mother remarked that was her first drink in over 30 years. By the time the bride and groom came out of the temple we had quite the party in progress, which seemed pretty much unrelated to their somber wedding.
The reception later at the church was not quite right. They had not planned much and had no money for much of anything and not that many of our friends or typical ward members came because no invitations were sent. We previously offered to help plan and pay (my wife would have loved it) since we could make a claim of being the substitute family of the bride but Davi said it would insult his pride if we did that. The newlyweds left early and the reception degenerated into a rabble of mostly Hispanic people playing loud music and dancing (and some drinking on the sly) with Davi’s mother in the middle of it. Well after midnight they were kicked out by an angry bishop summoned out of bed. I tried to clean up the mess as best as I could before church began a few hours later.
Sofia says her sisters remain insulted and have taken it out on our missionaries in Russia. They correspond often now. One sister invited the missionaries over for dinner with her guy and child. She served them a can of coke she brought all the way from America, secretly laced with vodka and got them drunk. Or so it is claimed. Another prides herself in shouting insults at them whenever she sees them in public. (My apologies to any missionaries in Russia).
Davi’s family are all inactive at this point. Some of his younger siblings are making poor choices in dating partners, shacking up, using alcohol when they really need to be saving their money which leads them to the dishonor of being on state welfare and now we know of two children born out of wedlock in this kindred.
I realize this is only part of a complex story. I did not speak to the Branch President who refused a groom’s mother a temple recommend. I realize that people are responsible for their choices regardless of how they are treated. But somehow I think we as a Mormon people really missed out on an enormous opportunity to inspire people to improve their lives by the way we handled this wedding.
As I contemplate what we could have done better, I wonder was it really worth it? Did we really need to exclude Davi’s mother from her oldest son’s wedding after all she has done to raise her children and all her efforts in numerous church callings; efforts which were, admittedly, less than perfect? What was accomplished by excluding the three sisters after the sacrifices they made? Did that generate interest or even respect for the church in their hearts? Or rather hatred and contempt? We could have politely asked them to not drink alcohol during the ceremony and they probably would have complied or perhaps they never intended to drink until later. They never tried to drink while in our house for several days. The best part of that entire wedding celebration was the singing. The bride and groom didn’t experience any of that.
What we did insulted and really angered several people. When we insult people this deeply we should not be surprised if they “return the favor.” Sofia agrees with her sisters that what was done to them at her wedding was outrageous and deeply regrets it. Davi’s loyalty to his mother is unquestionable and he has nothing good to say about church leaders now. These wounds are deep and do not heal quickly. They fester and can prove fatal. I see more than a dozen people in Davi’s family eventually leaving the church over this and many more missionary opportunities missed. I see the eternal culmination of all of the joyful experiences over a decade we had bringing Sofia into the church in jeopardy.
Of this I have a testimony: We should not exclude family members from weddings. Especially not parents and siblings! This is not pleasing unto the Lord. It goes against what is best in Mormonism. We need to develop a better way to celebrate the union in marriage of devoted members of the church who were raised by less than perfect families.
Any suggestions what I can do?
Be patient. I expect that soon the temple will do sealings only, which means weddings will happen outside the temple beforehand. That will leave the wedding festivities open for all to participate and the sealing can be a small, personal ceremony. Family will no longer be excluded from the wedding and they likely won’t care about the sealing. I would love to have everyone married civilly with all family present who can attend – but . . . What you described is an extreme situation that goes WAY beyond the temple sealing attendance policy, for many reasons that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that no policy should be made based on the extreme exceptions; we already have too many of those to want more.
As I often do, I encourage you to find posts in our archives about the temple sealing restriction – especially the one-year waiting period, as it relates to excluding people from a wedding – and also the temple recommend process.
Steve; I guess you are right. I can’t do anything else except wait.
But I have a problem with that. I live in the South. About 20 or 30% of my stake is Black. The history of discrimination is one thing but the lateness of Mormons getting on board is quite another. Every Black person knows when the Civil Rights Act was passed, when MLK was shot, etc. 1978 is painfully too late. The recent admission that all the prophets from BY to HBL were simply wrong was supposed to mollify some of the anger. But it had quite the opposite effect in my ward. Although appreciated, it also reminded every Black member again what happened and re-opened old wounds. Maybe in another century this will not be an issue. Maybe. That is the price of waiting.
The progressive leaders in the church and many members could see as early as the 1950’s where the problems of racism were going. If we had managed to get this one right early, we would be a much stronger church here in the South. We might be as much as twice as strong as we are now. The waiting for 20 years did unacceptable damage.
Ray: I am having trouble comprehending what you are saying.
I agree that policy should not be driven by extreme exceptions. But I do not see how what I relate is extreme. The details of my 2000+ word rant are extremely long and unique but so is every life situation. The number of exclusions in my case is high. But how is it acceptable to exclude just one person and extreme to exclude virtually everyone in both families using the same policies? What if the mother of the bride of an engaged couple both from near perfect families snitched a bit of coffee and is the only one excluded; how is that morally any different than what I describe?
I would also like to make an argument that exclusions of immediate family members from temple marriages are not rare, but quite common.
1. Over half of the church is first generation converts and conversions of whole families are rare. If all young people randomly pair then ¾ of these marriages the parents of one or both of the engaged couple would be excluded. Of course they don’t randomly pair off, new converts probably tend to marry other new converts, since many are concentrated in certain areas. But even so it might be as high church wide as 60%.
2. Tithing compliance is the most common reason a temple recommend is not given and it was published as late as the mid 20th century. It never exceeded 30% of the church membership. I seriously doubt it is any higher today. If most people don’t lie about it then we have the same percentages as above. About 25% of the parents of engaged couples pay tithing. And there are probably more random pairing across this variable. (Alternatively we have quite a few people lying about tithing to go to temple weddings and I suggest this is just as bad if not worse). Similar arguments could be made about other temple recommend deal-breaker laws of the church such as word of wisdom.
3. To the extend that converts are generally more zealous, we have independent sorting of both of the two factors above resulting in something clearly greater than 60 to 75% exclusion of parents. The only place these calculations do not hold true is in the small tight-knit communities in Mormon strong holds where social exclusion of nonmembers and inactive members is pretty much a cradle to grave process. Active children almost exclusively marry other active children and generally all parents go to the temple wedding. It is very easy to ignore the people outside the Mormon social circle in these places. And these places no longer make up the majority of the LDS church, not even close.
4. Simple calculations of determining how many siblings are excluded are much more difficult. There is a general trend of children following the behaviors of their parents and the results probably are similar and probably the same group of people are excluded. However, we also by policy also exclude all younger siblings of both genders who are under 18. We exclude most of the unmarried female siblings older than 18. This is because Mormon women do not participate in the temple until after their temple marriage, or are near hopelessly too old to marry. This is not a small group. For a sibling to attend a wedding they either have to be off their mission, or married. I will mention that participation of our boys in full-time missionary service is under 40% and so we exclude another chunk of siblings. That has got to add up to over half.
5. A person can go to Temple Square in Salt Lake on a spring or summer Saturday where perhaps a dozen or two temple marriages are performed. The waiting room of shame can be visited and excluded people counted. This can be compared to the number of people who leave the temple with the bride and groom. You only have to walk a few steps to count these two groups. You will find more people waiting outside the temple than coming outside of the temple. And this does not include those excluded who prefer to skip the painful waiting in the room of shame. And this where the church is strongest and has the highest portion of multigenerational members.
Here is an extreme situation. A girl grew up in my ward with 5 older brothers. She was hot, I would have probably sold my brother into slavery to date her at the time. I think 4 of her brothers went on missions and the 5th repented. All of them were married in the temple and this girl was excluded from all of these weddings. She went to BYU and somehow went off the rails there within a year. Next was UCLA and then bumming around Europe as a hippie. She came back to Utah when the cash ran out, or rather her parents quit supporting her decadent lifestyle. She lived with various guys and finally settled down with one of them.
She decided to get married at a nudist camp and the invitation she sent to all the straight arrow members of her former ward said: “All nude wedding. Clothing not allowed.” Some of the guys from the old gang went and claimed she gave them a hug and it was worth it. She managed to exclude her entire family as they had excluded her.
Does anyone esle see a similarity?
Yes, orthodox marriages in the church are unique. It’s very different than the experience that is ingrained in most people’s culture because it’s a new tradition that shares the name of an existing tradition. I think your estimate of converts is a bit high (if you include converts and children of converts you are probably up to half or greater though) but your point still stands. Not everyone can participate in the sealing ordinance. Even ultra orthodox, ultra obedient, TR holding members can be excluded simply because there’s not enough room in the sealing room. You’re probably looking at 20-30 attendees
topssimply due to spatial constraints. Compare that to the number of people one would expect to turn up to a traditional wedding and yes, the overwhelming majority of the people that would ordinarily presence the ceremony are being excluded one way or another. We’ve talked quite a bit on this site about a possible solution of allowing people to get married civilly outside the temple and later getting sealed on the same day. Separate the civil union from the sealing ordinance. That would solve a lot of problems and it’s already done in other countries to accommodate their laws. The church doesn’t appear to be all that eager to make the policy change though. My own personal opinion is that if people really want this done they might have to eventually force the church’s hand by lobbying to pass similar laws in the US.
Porter, you misread what I meant – meaning I didn’t make it clear what I meant. 
I want a change in policy to allow ALL members, no matter where they live, to get married civilly and then get sealed without the standard one-year waiting period – exactly like the policy is in countries that don’t recognize a temple sealing as a legitimate civil wedding. That would solve all of the exclusion issues we currently face in the Church, since ALL family could attend the marriage and then fewer could attend the sealing.
The “extreme” nature of what you described is the alcohol and the fact that people who came from Russia didn’t know they wouldn’t be able to attend the sealing. BOTH of those aspects are not the “fault” of the LDS Church; they are issues with individual people having alcohol at the temple and the reception and the couple being sealed not communicating a policy about which they had to know to the family from Russia.
Again, I agree completely with you that the policy is harmful and should be changed – but your example goes WAY beyond an issue of changed policy and can’t be used as a “standard” reason to change the policy. Trying to cite it when talking to regular members will blow their minds and cause them to not be able to focus on the central issue of the policy. That’s all I meant.
Also, I’ve lived in the Deep South. I have written extensively about the Priesthood ban and racism, for a long time – but,
currently, the LDS Church is more integrated racially in the Deep South (including black members helping lead predominantly white congregations) than many Protestant churches. That’s small comfort when dealing with how long it took, but it also means the Church itself (not every congregation) has admitted the past mistake and changed (which is the root of the word “repentance”) – and that, ultimately, is more important than mere words. Porter, I’m wondering if roles were reversed & the wedding was in Russia through the Russian Orthodox church with the same restrictions, would you (& the family from the US) feel the same way? At some point, with the restrictions we know exist within the church, there should of been an explanation given before the family came to the US.
I’m the only member of the church in my family. We explained to everyone about the restrictions well in advance & no one came.
There were no hard feelings afterwards, that I’m aware of. We had great a reception & party after we came home.
Everyone was invited. A great time was had by all.
In my own opinion: As with anything in life, the key to any success, is in the preparation.
I think I agree with y’all close enough on this topic that if we sat down face-to-face we would be on the same page. Estimating number of converts: The LDS church only had 3 million members when I was in high school in 1970’s about a half a lifetime ago. Today we claim 15 million. My estimate that half the church are converts might be too low. More like 80% of the church is new converts and random pairing of marriage partners would lead to exclusion of 96% of parents. Retention of converts versus multigeneration members is drastically different and they do tend to marry each other. But for my half estimate to be high, that would imply single digit percent of retention of new converts. Did it ever occur to anyone that the exclusive judgmental attitude behind the temple exclusion also helps drive the poor retention?
I agree that violating the W of W for the first time in 30 years on the temple grounds was unusual. As far as switching the tables and being excluded by the Russian Orthodox church. I sort of would expect that from them (and I would expect that a small bribe of a snort of vodka would allow me to enter). But I expected a church indigenous to the USA with centuries of religious tolerance to do better than the Russians. At least we are not shooting down passenger planes flying over Utah. How would anyone feel about that? Not so bad the Russians do it, why not the Mormons.
I do agree that we in the South are better integrated racially than most other churches and that is a big plus. But we also set up every Black member for a faith crisis with our history. Retention is far less than if we had done a quicker (1950’s) and better (not wait 36 years to admit wrong doing) job of putting the racial past behind us. The extensive damage from excluding family from marriages continues to burn too many testimonies and faith.
My daughter had a music teacher in an mixed race marriage and they did not feel welcome in many churches. We broguht them to our ward and (aside from the horrible music) they found the Mormon people friendly and accepting. She wanted to do a week-long summer music camp using our building and initially was given permission by the bishop. But then he started reading the handbook and making more and more conditions that seemed to be unreasonable and eventually she moved the music camp to another church with the $300 fee. About 200 music students came to the week-long music camp. We felt so awful about what had happened that we paid the $300 fee to use the other church ourselves and took it out of our tithing. Needless to say the music teacher did not show further interest in the LDS church.
Not directly related, except that it is part of a pattern. Again we have a problem of central authority interfering with good works. Will that ever stop?
[Admin note]: Quote:But I expected a church indigenous to the USA with centuries of religious tolerance to do better than the Russians. At least we are not shooting down passenger planes flying over Utah. How would anyone feel about that? Not so bad the Russians do it, why not the Mormons.
We don’t do hyperbole like this here at StayLDS.com. As a new participant, you can’t be aware of the rules completely (and there really aren’t that many of them), but the above is out of line here. The question that was asked was perfectly appropriate for the post (in summary, there are other churches that are just as restrictive as the LDS Church, so how would you feel if the situation was reversed and it was American family being denied participation by the Russian Orthodox Church) –
and it was about the Russian Orthodox Church, NOT the Russian government. The Russian Orthodox Church didn’t shoot down a plane, and the temple restriction is NOTHING like shooting down a plane, so that analogy is inappropriate. More bluntly, comparing the Mormon Church to the Russian government / military in that way is not appropriate here – even if it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek but especially since the actual wording above does not appear to be tongue-in-cheek.
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