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How have you reconciled church activity since the Nov 5 policy? For many of us, this has been the hardest thing the church has ever done. Staying makes me feel complicit in the moral wrong I deeply feel is being done. This isn’t just political. The church’s stance has gone further than its politically conservative cohorts. The policy also has been a struggle for me because I don’t believe it was revelation (as E. Nelson alone has claimed) which means either that he lied about that or that his definition of revelation bears zero resemblance to my own. The church has taken many stances that I’ve felt were morally wrong. This is just the most recent one. https://bycommonconsent.com/2016/07/05/nov-5/ I know that larger religions include people who disagree with the actions of leaders. Catholicism retained many members despite coverups of abuse. Protestants remain in their faiths despite disagreement with decisions their ruling bodies come to. Mormonism is still new enough and small enough that we don’t weather disagreement and diversity as well as these more established religions. Many Mormons prefer fealty to church leaders to faith in God. I feel as though God has put our leaders in as slightly older babysitters. Babysitters can be good, but they aren’t the parents. They sometimes make draconian rules for their own comfort, play favorites, eat all the ice cream, send the kids to bed early so they can chat on the phone with their friends. At the end of the day, babysitters are just slightly older children than those they are watching.
How do you stay when you feel the church’s actions are immoral and reckless?
I stay because: – imo, the revelation that was received could have easily been incorrect. Our human minds sometimes let our own opinions, biases, or feelings get in the way of revelation and so sometimes it’s not quite accurate. So the fact that it was revelation didn’t mean they were right, because I see prophets as people who are fallible just like everyone else. Basically, I don’t believe it was an accurate revelation, but I’m sure they think it was.
– there are many reasons that leaving the church has crossed my mind, this policy being one of them, but I feel it would negatively affect my family if I left the church. My husband is still going, and we have a young child so he would have a difficult time going if he had to deal with our son at church by himself. And my son loves church so I want to be there to support my son and my husband since they enjoy it.
– I also really enjoy socializing at church. I stay home with our son and so church is one of the few places I get to socialize with adults.
So those are the main reasons I stay at the moment. I always feel myself tense up when the subject of homosexuality comes up, though, because the majority of what is said about it at church, I disagree with.
It hurt. Still does. But something odd happened on the way forward. I wanted to remain even more. I haven’t figured out how to be a voice or body of love for all people, but the Nov. 5 policy may have had the opposite effect for me. It’s also no longer about LGBT for me, it’s all people. If our theology is as expansive as I comprehend it, then we need to have hearts equally as large. For tatted people, multiple piercings, purple hair, drunk the night before people, and so on. I am working on gently delivering my message, not because I am afraid of reprisal, but because I know that the war is already in full force, and I want to be the water girl on the field, not the banner carrier. We have plenty of banner and grenade carriers on both sides. Not enough water.
I want to be the woman at the end of this article. If that’s what I want to be, I need to stay engaged.
I stay because I don’t know what leaving will help do for me or my family right now. There are problems to be wrestled with. I embrace the struggle and wrestle with my feelings on this topic and many other subjects like it. I am not smart enough to know if I know better than E.Nelson or those on the other side of the aisle. All I know is how I feel, and I feel disappointed in the church on this issue, and it bothers me a lot. It reduces my trust in our church leaders. But perhaps, that is not a bad thing to learn.
I would also not leave the country if Trump or Hillary were elected. Unless I found a job in a different country that provided my family a way of life that would be better for us. Some ugly things can be endured until it changes and is fixed.
I would never say that will remain to always be the case for me.
Divorce became an option for me when things got so bad, it was the better option than staying. And I learned never to say never.
Right now, I don’t have a better life outside the US or outside the church. So I stay, and do what I can, and endure at times. And trust it will change towards godliness.
mom3, I’m more of a battle strategist that never executes my imagined orders. I love your thoughts. They ground me. It would be nice to be a water boy. I could do that.
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hawkgrrrl wrote:Staying makes me feel complicit in the moral wrong I deeply feel is being done.
That’s a tough pill to swallow. I’ve had a few non-member friends and family members make assumptions about me based on my association with the church. Events like these can present an opportunity for them to get to know me better or they can carry on with their assumptions, never bothering to get to know the real me.
I imagine there’s this great assumption that we make at church that everyone believes the same way but I think we’d find an ever increasing number of people don’t agree on this subject, it’s just that the ones that do are more emboldened to talk about it openly because they are supported by the people in charge – the people we sometimes get caught up in trying to impress.
I haven’t left but I know a few in my ward that left as a direct result of this policy (name removal leave). Sometimes I ask myself, if something like this doesn’t cause me to leave what
wouldit take? I stay hoping that at least at the local level my actions make a small difference. When I read the June 2015 statement I made statements that I hope lessened the pain for people in my ward. When the Nov policy was announced I asked my ward to not make it a subject of lessons or discussions, and when it comes up in Ward Council or lessons I can pretty easily change direction of the conversation. I don’t know how I will act if my wife decides she doesn’t need the church or if I’m muzzled by stake leaders. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to leave but then I realize virtually all my friends are LOS and I wonder if I’d be lonely.
I love the church but sometimes I don’t like it very much.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Staying makes me feel complicit in the moral wrong I deeply feel is being done.
That is and has been a major cause of angst for me since November.hawkgrrrl wrote:How do you stay when you feel the church’s actions are immoral and reckless?
If I leave, the protest will go unnoticed… and there will be one fewer soul who is friendly toward the young person who today is in primary, and in a few years will realize they are a homosexual among Mormons.Quote:If I leave, the protest will go unnoticed… and there will be one fewer soul who is friendly toward the young person who today is in primary, and in a few years will realize they are a homosexual among Mormons.
Yes, this.
I see my present roll as more of an Oskar Schindler (not that I am nearly as skilled), but I wear and am a member of the enemy party, and I know I can’t fix everything but if I “save one life”, maybe I can help “save the world entire.” This is a partial, on-a-good-day answer. I stay, or at least I’m here now, because of my kids. They’re making the connections, having the real conversations that will turn the tide. They’re deciding who to date based partly on how that person sees this issue. Not exactly a litmus test, but darn close. I’m happy to see them connecting with each other and trying very hard to stay.
I think they’re willing to stick their necks out just a little farther because I’ve been open with them. Not all of them, but the older ones can see that I’ve changed in the last ten years, and it seems to make them optimistic that others will, too.
When the policy was announced I told my bishop and then after a temple recommend interview a member of the SP that I felt it was a mistake. They both visited my SS class later on, I guess to be sure I was teaching heresy, and nothing more has come up. I think what is likely happening is that around the church bishops and stake presidents are dealing with it with various degrees of adherence, priesthood roulette, as it’s been called. I continue to attend because of the people and my calling but I don’t look to the church or mormonism for the spiritual needs in my life. The leadership will answer for it’s actions that I agree are immoral and reckless and for calling it revelation but for me, leaving isn’t a good option as it just would mean, as OON said, that there would be one less voice. I love mom3’s analogy of a battlefield nurse more than a combatant. Everyone of my children say it seems like a really stupid mistake. But for me personally it was a tipping point where I started working on not fully leaving, but starting to distance myself from the church and figure out what my relationship will be with the church.
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GBSmith wrote:The leadership will answer for it’s actions that I agree are immoral and reckless and for calling it revelation
This is what bothers me about staying – I feel complicit in something I consider wrong.
I stay because quite a few people need to hear my voice (in both camps regarding this issue) – about this and some other things – and because I don’t like any other theological option nearly as much – and because I want to help my tribe move forward – and because – and because – and because. Indifference is my mantra. Boundary setting, staying for spouse and family. Staying out of the knowledge that I may find I’m wrong in my indifference. Stay because cutting off options makes it harder to come back if you want to. Also, resigning over policy issues is a drop in the bucket in a centralized church like ours. A bit like writing to your member of congress, but your member of congress isn’t even listening at all…so why bother? When I talk to people about my Mormonism (normally forced out of them asking me blankly etcetera) I indicate that I am Mormon, but don’t think I necessarily believe everything a traditional Mormon does. That I am unorthodox. I might even share explictly some things I don’t believe with people who I know will have certain leanings the church to which the church is unkind. If I’m talking to a feminist, I’ll explain that I’m not chauvinstic. If they are gay and have come out to me, I will say I don’t share their approach to gays. Stuff like that.
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