Leaving Home, Leaving Church: Why Leaving Mormonism is Like Divorce

By William T. Dobbs
bellerophon22@comcast.net

Especially early in the transition, moving toward intellectual or emotional distance may not relieve the former believer, or the ex-spouse, of continuing entanglements in daily life. In a bitter divorce, it may take years of conflict before ex-spouses can talk rationally to each other.

Even minor decisions regarding children cause major battles. This keeps wounds open, preserves a sense of righteous victimization, and twists the lives of children into the bitter parental drama.

Children can also be in the middle of a tug of war between the believing and the religiously transitioning parent. Also imagine, if you will, that your ex-spouse has spread nasty rumors about your behavior to all your friends.

No matter what you say, as a former Mormon who comes from devout family and lives or works with active believers, you may never be able to regain acceptance or respect from them.

Apostles teach Mormons that their only safety lies in following the church. Your former best friends, or even casual acquaintances, may fear and shun you. You may lose neighborhood status, professional standing, or job opportunities. You cannot speak honestly about religion without risking rejection. Following the integrity of your convictions may also cost your marriage.

Whether you leave a relationship, or leave the church, you must go through similar steps to form a new identity. Sociologist Diane Vaughan points out that falling in love and coupling, then falling out of love and separating are processes that mirror each other. Falling in love involves sharing mutual positive feelings. You talk about interests and enjoy common activities, introduce each other to friends and family, begin building a wider common circle. You create common history and memories, talk, think, and act in ways that make you feel you belong together, then set up a common household. Others see you as a couple, confirming that identity.

Separation starts with secret dissatisfaction by one of the partners. The relationship feels like it no longer fits who you are. Your partner’s shortcomings become more and more prominent in your mind. You attempt to change your partner, or adjust to the dissonance, but you fail. You withdraw from common activities, and find separate pursuits. You look for books or magazines which help you see the relationship differently, and you seek feedback from sympathetic friends. New information, activities, and friends might actually help provide outlets that help you stay in the relationship.

On the other hand, they can also provide help and support in your divorce. If so, you continue to withdraw from your partner. You speak more openly and extensively about your unhappiness. Your new activities and friends confirm you in a new and separate identity. You know that you no longer belong in the old relationship, and you gain the courage to leave. When you live a post-divorce life that validates your new identity, you have successfully transitioned. As time passes and your identity strengthens, you are better able to see your old relationship more objectively, to appreciate your ex-spouse’s good points. 4

How did I fall in love with the LDS Church, and why did I leave her embrace? I was fortunate to have a rich religious background. I was raised as a Catholic by non-churchgoing Protestant parents in a Jewish neighborhood of New York City. My mother converted to Catholicism during the Second World War, and when she married she promised to raise her children in the faith. I continued to attend parochial grade school after she was no longer a believer.

Catholicism taught me that no one could be saved outside the church, though neither I nor my parents believed it. I could never really think that a loving God would consign my non-Catholic father and grandparents, or my ex-Catholic mother, to the eternal flames of hell. A God that could be so narrow and cruel had no credibility with me. Catholicism required the faithful to go to confession at least once a year to gain forgiveness of sins. Failure to do so was a mortal sin, sufficient upon death to separate you from God for eternity.

When I was in eighth grade, an emotionally troubled priest bitterly denounced me in the confessional for my longer-than-year delay in seeking absolution. He scathingly asked: "Why don't you become a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Jew!" 5 He spat out the last word like a curse, testament to his bigotry.

After getting over my shock, I became indignant. I asked myself what right he had to judge me so harshly. Why do I believe what I do, and why must I belong to this church? What could be so terrible about other religions? Why not consider other beliefs? Believers in other religions did not look any different than me. I lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and nearly all my friends were Jewish. My background already predisposed me to believe that there was more than one path to God. This priest’s tirade prompted me to strike out on my own for answers. Since then I have been living my questions, in Mormonism and out of it.

My mother and father took our family to the Mormon Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in the 1960's. After my father signed a card requesting further information, the missionaries showed up a year later, taught us the six discussions, and we were baptized into the LDS Church as a family. We learned that we could have a close, intimate, relationship with a God we called our Heavenly Father. We learned that we could receive personal revelation, even to confirm the revelations of the prophet. I took that quite seriously, believing it was possible to get a valid “no” answer on occasion. After all, if it is not possible to get a “no” answer to prayer, how much is a “yes” answer worth? Why pray at all if the answer is predetermined? Whatever his authority, no human being is always right.

The LDS missionaries taught us that there were many degrees of glory, and no flaming hell. This really appealed to me. Shortly after I joined, I attended a class based on Lowell L. Bennion's An Introduction to the Gospel. 6 I loved his positive exposition of LDS doctrine. He taught that Mormons believed both life and the human body were good. To gain God’s favor you need not mortify the flesh with painful ascetic practices, as many Catholic saints had done. Service to your fellow human beings is service to God.

It felt good to embrace such an optimistic and practical religion. In my branch, which quickly became a ward with many converts, I encountered loving father and mother figures. I learned how to belong, a great thing for a shy teenage boy.

I learned to give talks in Sunday School and Sacrament meetings. Over the years I loved and cared about the men and women in my wards. I served in many positions, and I felt esteemed and loved in return.

After almost a decade, I fell in love and married a Utah woman in my New York ward, and then moved west with her. After living in Utah for about two years, then Las Vegas for a decade, I moved back to Zion in 1989. I was again privileged to encounter friendly, unselfish, and extraordinary people who inspired and helped me. When my marriage started to unravel, fellow ward members proved to be lifesavers.

In fact, I waited until my marital crisis ended before I stopped attending LDS meetings. I knew I desperately needed supportive community. But I also have to say that it was quite a shock to come from cosmopolitan New York to the narrow religious provincialism of Utah. Shortly after coming to Utah, I noticed that most ward members had little knowledge of other religions. In Elders quorum I well remember the lesson where we learned that the Catholic Church was the great whore of all the earth spoken of in the Book of Mormon.

Misunderstanding of Catholics in my Utah circle distressed me. Our instructor was sure that the Pope was Satan’s servant. Lack of contact with Catholics made their stereotypes safe. Nobody openly questioned the instructor.

As a Catholic I had experienced reverence for Jesus, Mary, and the great saints. I was no longer a Catholic but could never deny the reverence I had felt. I knew that devoted Catholics and members of other churches cherished their religious beliefs as much as Mormons cherished theirs. Many Utah Mormons did not respect other religions. Brigham Young once said that every people had its prophets. Living in New York taught me that there was little difference between people of widely varying religious beliefs.

Condemnation of other faiths found little sympathy with me. Indeed, the positive value that LDS doctrine gave to embodied life on this earth, and the belief that those from other faiths would be treated with love after death, are two of the things I found most attractive in Mormonism. I discovered that Apostle Bruce McConkie, however, had no problem in condemning other faiths. In his book Mormon Doctrine, considered by many Mormons to be an authoritative statement of Mormonism, he indicated that the church of the devil was much more than just one organization:

“The titles church of the devil and great and abominable church are used to identify all churches or organizations of whatever name or nature--whether political, philosophical, educational, economic, social, fraternal, civic or religious....Any church or organization of any kind which satisfies the innate religious longings of man and keeps him from coming to the saving truths of Christ and his gospel is therefore not of God.”

This judgmental and fear-laden attitude denies the wisdom and joy experienced by human beings in different traditions all over the world. It leads Mormons to fear anything outside the church. Part of the joy and grace of life is learning to appreciate other people and cultures. It is a narrow religion that fails to foster growth in understanding and compassion for others.

One organization does not have a monopoly on truth. The insights of others need not threaten yours. Indeed, you can better appreciate your own truth when you learn the views of others. M. Scott Peck, in his classic book The Road Less Traveled says that “To develop a religion or world view that is realistic, we must constantly revise and extend our understanding to include new knowledge of the larger world. We must constantly enlarge our frame of reference.” 7 All our experience is the source of this revision. Anyone we meet may be a source of enlightenment.

Unlike New Yorkers, Utah Mormons bearing testimony did not speak openly of their doubts. Instead I heard constant injunctions from both ordinary members and authorities about the danger of deviating from prescribed thoughts. It had been my family's adventure to join the Mormon Church. Had we been concerned principally about religious safety we never would have converted.

This official fear of unauthorized sources clashed with my youthful experiences of people from many different cultures. I never found that dangerous; I thought it was fascinating. Besides, it was ingrained in my nature to read and reflect about my religious experience. I felt that God called on each of us to use the gift of intelligence. A general authority’s pronouncements should be respected, but did not remove my responsibility to gain my own insights. Hiding from questions increases our fear.

Exploring questions is our human imperative. I believed that Mormonism that embraced all truth. Faith and study were both part of continuing revelation. Nevertheless I paid a price in stress for my independent beliefs, for I also felt shame over critical thoughts.

My reading, however, raised serious questions about the historical basis of my faith. I had an especially hard time when I discovered Joseph Smith's polygamy and polyandry, the evidence against the ancient nature of foundational Mormon scriptures, and the violence encouraged by revered nineteenth century prophets in the wars and internal conflicts of the church. Just as the church was becoming less and less spiritually satisfying for me, I felt I could not share my historical questions with anyone.

Talking openly of doubts not only risked social ostracism, but harm to the faith of those dear to me. I knew and loved converts who now had purposeful lives free from drug addiction. I did not dare do anything to tear their faith down. I agonized over the discrepancy between Sunday School lessons and history, perplexed and yet excited to learn more about the deception, seduction, and violence of the pioneer past.

I also felt irrationally guilty about what I was reading and thinking, as though I was causing this distressing history by discovering it. It was both horrifying and fascinating, and I could not and did not want to stop learning. I tried to hide these problems from myself by saying that I needed the church as an ark of safety for my children in a wicked world, yet here was this hidden wickedness within the foundational period of Mormonism.

During this mid 1980's period I discovered the Sunstone symposium, and attending it felt like coming home. It was the one place where I could hear problems discussed openly, where I could share my doubts without condemnation or fear of hurting those who knew nothing of these issues, where those who knew more history than I did still held faithfully to Mormonism.

In 1991, general authorities officially cautioned members against attending “recent symposia,” a clear reference to Sunstone.

During the symposium of 1992 we learned that the church had formed a committee to collect information on church members who spoke and thought independently. After that year’s symposium, a First Presidency statement claimed that D & C 123 justified this. This 1839 Liberty Jail revelation from Joseph Smith commanded pioneer members then to gather the names of their Missouri oppressors. Modern Mormon scholars expressed dismay at being compared to violent Missourians of the pioneer period. This incredible conflation of violent nineteenth century anti-Mormons with modern-day intellectual Mormons is a sad example of how much the church hierarchy fears independent thinking. 8 Close attention to these warnings might have alerted me of darker days to come.

Shortly after the Sunstone sessions in 1993 I was stunned out of my complacency by the church courts that punished scholars who had spoken at that symposium. 9

The years following saw more such punitive actions. Ever since then, publishing or speaking in public risks the membership of anyone who dares to think or act independently. Claims of perfect leadership, continued calls for obedience above all, and church discipline of intellectuals honestly and courageously grappling with difficult issues are signs of a church that considers itself under siege.

Learning about unsavory Mormon history was difficult enough for me to take. Then when church leaders spoke out against forums where issues were examined openly, denying involvement in subsequent discipline to those who speak or write, it only offended me more.

These abuses of power showed no care for truth, or for the pain of scholars, their families, and the wider circle of those independent souls who prized intellectual exploration. Is this the power of a loving Heavenly Father? Does God command that we hide our eyes from history? Does God command that we not look at facts or discuss them?

My feelings about the church shifted. I originally found it exciting in the universal sweep and confidence of its ideals, inspiring in its exhortation to seek truth by study as well as by faith. Now it felt narrow and defensive, its leadership abuses shattering any remaining sense I had that the church was a spiritually nourishing place for me.

Does a leadership of prophets act punitively in secret against honest and loyal members? Certainly not if the God of those prophets is Love. Unaccountable authority that punishes those who tell inconvenient truths is not based on the power of Love.

The satisfactions of intimacy and the pains of losing it are much alike for either the faithful Mormon or the devoted lover.

In marriage, the sharing of sex with your spouse creates an intimate bond. In our culture it has been traditional, at least until recently, not to talk to outsiders about that intimate life. The LDS church confirms the sacred and eternal nature of this marital intimacy. Temple marriage promises that you may be together forever with your spouse, continuing your sexual relationship in heaven as on earth, if you are faithful to the church.

Eternal marriages or “endowments” are done only within the sacred precincts of the temple. You promise not to reveal the temple ceremony to outsiders. You then pledge to wear special undergarments for the rest of your life as a token of your faithfulness to the church (that do little good for your sexual life on earth) as you wear a ring in marriage.

During regular temple recommend interviews, bishops ask single and married men and women, young or old, whether they are "morally clean”, a reference to sexual purity. Submission to such intimate questioning by church authorities is a crossing of personal boundaries that would make most Americans uncomfortable.

A healthy sexual life is dependent on exploration and experience. Developing healthy sexual identity and self esteem, acting sensitively with integrity, are difficult enough without the shaming presence of a church authority. This aspect of life may wonderfully enhance our joy and self esteem, or deeply wound confidence. Bishops without professional training pass judgment, and members hear them as though they speak with the voice of God. They have the power to declare us unworthy. Those who use their authority insensitively, like a cruel or clumsy parent, can inflict deep pain.10

The intimacy of marriage consists of much more than sex, of course. It extends to child discipline, relationships with outsiders, the trials and adversities of every day life. Correspondingly, your intimacy with the LDS church extends further than the temple.

Your bishop and your ward leaders tend to know you better than anyone. They have ample opportunity to see your faults and your strengths.11 It is, of course, easier to deceive your fellow church members than your wife, who I speak from experience will inevitably know all your faults much better than you do. Ideally at church you are accepted despite your faults, finding happiness while you work to overcome them through service. Or instead, you may feel so much shame at your shortcomings that you try to hide them by working harder and harder to show your obedience.

Church leaders and friends help you carry on with both your church work and the rough spots of your life. If you lose a loved one, Relief Society sisters bring in meals. If you are financially in need, the Bishop may pay your rent. In return, you give your obedience and the right of intimate oversight over your entire life. Thus there is a kind of parent-child dependency internalized by the faithful member.

Mormons generally cannot live at ease with themselves when their actions are not approved by a leader, any more then a sensitive child can feel good about himself without parental approval. The child knows she cannot survive without a parent. The Mormon knows she risks losing everything without submission to church authority.

This relationship of intimacy and obedience is something not easily understood by non Mormons. Mainline Protestants, for example, find it much easier to attend church, stay away from it, or change their church affiliation without much sacrifice. There is no intimate oversight of their lives.

With harmony in my marriage and family, I experienced the greatest happiness of my life. When family life disintegrated, I experienced my greatest misery. The misery in my case mainly involved difficulties of my children. Problems of others can cause distress, but there is nothing so greatly distressing to a father as watching the suffering of his own children. For the faithful Mormon believer, losing children or grandchildren to apostasy adds anxieties with eternal implications.

For the Mormon in transition, struggling to follow the truth where it leads and to reach a new and satisfying view of life, it is deeply unsettling to be misunderstood and feared by those you love. The intimacy of LDS Church membership is a double edged sword. If you meet its conditions, it promises happiness not only on earth, but throughout eternity. To fall short, or especially to forsake the church, is to forsake generations of family, and even godhood itself. The promise of salvation and exaltation always also implies the possibility of damnation and hell.

One who contemplates leaving the LDS church must confront shame and rejection here in this life, and then the possibility she will be condemned by God to live in eternal separation from friends and family she loves.

We fear such rejection and we become angry. Years later we may continue to feel angry. As Dr Willard Gaylin points out in his perceptive book, Feelings: Our Vital Signs, you naturally feel the most anger for those you love. The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference. "To love someone means to be involved with, to identify with, to engage with, to suffer with and for them, and to share their joys.... anger...thrives on intimacy."12

An emotional storm overwhelmed me when I lost my loving marriage and my familiar life. Waves of grief and anger pounded me from all sides. I was enraged at my spouse, yet missed her terribly. Turmoil penetrated my life, causing sleepless nights. Crying fits struck, and my masculine pride withered.

Self doubt and fear for the future tormented me. I did not know if I could find love again. I had lost for all time what was so important to me.

Neither men nor women are exempt from these consuming feelings, so distressingly common in divorce. After going through all this, it is not realistic to expect the divorced spouse to feel as objective about an ex-husband or ex-wife as he or she would about a stranger. After loss of an intimate community life in the LDS church that involves alienation from friends and family, it is equally unrealistic to expect the former believer to have no feelings about his lost “brothers and sisters,” and his lost faith.

Faithful Mormons like to say that those who leave the LDS Church “can leave it, but can’t leave it alone.” They think that we “apostates”--a murderous, contemptuous, epithet that blocks all thinking--leave the church simply to follow our taste for sinful self-indulgence. According to this view, we faithless traitors must hide the chasm between our religious beliefs and our evil actions by lashing out at the faithful whose good lives stand as a rebuke against us.

We ex-Mormons are moved only by the bitterness of the wicked against the innocence of the righteous. This villainization of us fails to understand not only our motivations, but the courage it takes to “leave it,” and the near impossibility of “leaving it alone.” Indeed, in the experience of seekers, when we “leave it”, believers will never leave us alone.

When they look at us they refuse to listen to us or respect us, and they draw back from us in fear. They can never look at us and simply see the human being in front of them. They can only see us as either faithful or apostate. Our relationship to the LDS Church is their only measure for our worth.

When they refuse to let us live our own lives, we feel we need to fight to maintain our independence. This makes it difficult for us to let go. Feeling threatened, we may become aggressive or delight in sarcastic, startling statements or actions. We occasionally need to step back, and look at where we want to go.

As years pass, when we repeatedly act as though we are still compelled to prove ourselves right, we only feel weaker. This ties us to the past. We need to follow a new and different vision. To successfully accomplish divorce, according to sociologist Diane Vaughan, we must not simply separate, but we must change our identity and find new roles. Marital partners not only must redefine themselves, but this redefinition must be acceptable to

“family and friends, and finally to acquaintances and strangers–the response of others perpetuates the separate paths the partners have begun. Uncoupling is complete when the partners have defined themselves and are defined by others as separate and independent of each other–when being partners is no longer a major source of identity. Instead, identity comes from other sources.” 13

This is equally true of leaving Mormonism, but believers abhor our new independent self definition. It seems inconceivable to them that their loved one could leave the only meaning that they have been taught from the cradle, the only meaning that gives purpose to life or hope for the future. They can only think of us as deceived and lost.

Meanwhile, we are trying to find some firm basis for our lives after experiencing shattering disillusionment. We must cope with shame, guilt, worry, loss of family and friends, and the frustration of not being heard or understood. Sociologist Vaughan notes that divorce is “a dramatic life event.” When people heard she was doing research on stages of divorce, everybody wanted to tell her their stories, and “there was no one who was not visited again by sorrow and loss in the telling of it, regardless of the passage of time.” 14

Sorrow is also in our hearts as we leave Mormonism. It is difficult to leave church, like divorce a traumatic life event that will stay with us all our lives. Whatever the difficulties, Mormons are certainly more willing to accept you as divorced than as an unbeliever.

At least after divorce, especially if you are a man, you may eventually get married in the temple again. Although you may be released from leadership positions, when you find an appropriate eternal partner you might hold such responsibilities again in the future. In the eyes of the faithful, however, when you leave church you leave the only community that matters.

When you live in a Mormon area, you are constantly reminded of your choice. Even strangers or those you are just getting to know feel free to ask about your religious beliefs. This is one of the first things that disconcerts non-Mormons coming to Utah from other states. No insult is intended, they just want to know how to relate to you. Are you a prospective convert, or are you an insider who speaks their language? They do not realize how condescending and intrusive non-Mormons or ex-Mormons consider their questioning, or how their limited lens excludes much more important information about people.

Especially for those raised in traditional Mormon areas, the religious culture gives you everything. It tells you what you “know,” what you may feel, and what you are expected to do. It gives you your role and your tasks. It gives you your place with your ward, neighborhood, co-workers, and the wider Mormon culture.

Because you are Mormon and accept your callings, you do your home and visiting teaching, you spend hours calling members to go to the temple, or you go to the welfare farm. You attend ward socials, stake conferences, leadership meetings. You spend hours reading scriptures, preparing talks, and Sunday School lessons. You go on splits with missionaries. You make meals for those in the ward with illnesses or problems.

You know what to tell your kids about the only true religion and its standards. You go to the temple and promise absolute obedience. You submit to interviews about your most intimate life, and you may struggle with shame when you either openly or secretly fail to measure up. You take the sacrament every week, renewing your baptismal covenants. You know that if your family is going to be together in eternity, you must follow church teachings. You know you are special.

You know things that those who remain outside the church can never reach. You need never feel doubt or anxiety that there is life after death, though you may doubt your worthiness.

One day, however, you come across evidence of violence and intimidation at the foundations of church history, and you see that Joseph Smith is more like Warren Jeffs, the recently arrested FLDS polygamist prophet, than he is like Gordon B. Hinckley. You see that Gordon B. Hinckley is more a CEO than a prophet. You see that Mormons who tell the truth about the past, and speak out about how people today are suffering from unjust abuses of authority, are condemned and disciplined. You see there is little if any persuasive evidence that the Book of Mormon is an ancient historical document.

Suddenly you realize that everything you thought and did was based on illusion. Why can’t you just leave it and leave it alone, indeed?

Needless to say, your new views of Mormonism are not acceptable to your believing spouse or parents. You talk to them, but they cannot hear. They have not gone through the work of researching this material, and they have not experienced our feeling that we just can’t fit our mind and heart into the church anymore. They do not want to hear you. You do not want to hurt them, and you shrink from the consequences of pressing your case too strongly.

Those who simply need to leave a bad marriage, rather than a faith community, will also face social opposition to their course. But as Vaughan points out, a spouse leaving a partner may reduce the opposition to her marital separation by explaining to friends and family why her marriage no longer works. She can reassure people that she is not undermining the legitimacy of society’s marital expectations. She may, for example, explain that the spouse was untruthful and abusive. Most people will understand.

When it comes to leaving the LDS Church, however, things are entirely different. Merely by intellectually disagreeing the transitioning Mormon is seen as a threat to everything important. If you explain that you were victimized by lies and abuse from the LDS Church, this will not gain sympathy from your Mormon friends.

Even inactive Mormons will not support you. In light of the way LDS membership organizes all activities and channels all thoughts that is very understandable, but it does not make it any easier for the transitioning Mormons. Non-Mormons may sympathize, but they seldom really understand. Once again, that is why it is so important for us to gain support from ex-Mormons, particularly those living a satisfying post-Mormon life.

In rocky marriages we may experience much abuse or misery, but feel lonely or sorry for our spouse when he is out of our life. We may lack the self confidence to feel secure on our own. We may reconcile, for the good of the kids, or because we really love him, or because he really wasn’t so bad, after all. Things will get better. Then we find ourselves miserable once more. Outsiders watch this sad spectacle, and wonder why the aggrieved spouse cannot see how impossibly bad the relationship is, when it is perfectly obvious to everyone else. Perhaps the spouse simply cannot survive on her own. Perhaps she can’t face being all alone, while trying to raise kids who are also emotionally overwrought. Perhaps she will have too little money to support herself. We hate to give up the only security we’ve known in exchange for a life of uncertainty.

We seldom leave relationships easily. Even when our spouse makes us miserable and we know he isn’t right for us, we are reluctant to hurt him by saying this straight out. Such directness brings emotional and social pain we want to avoid, until we are absolutely certain we must leave. 15

Especially if Mormonism was part and parcel of our family of origin, leaving it has momentous emotional, social, familial, and religious consequences. Where do you look for community support in leaving Mormonism when you live in a Mormon community?

At times, people have felt compelled to stop attending the transition group I lead because the cost of following their real beliefs is just too high. They hope they will be able to find satisfaction when they retreat back home. They may actually find that years later they have only have succeeded in drinking the cup of suffering to its dregs.

Even when we know we will never again believe or practice Mormonism, many of us just cannot bring ourselves to resign from church membership. It will just wound mom and dad too deeply. It will cause our spouse to divorce us, when we are trying desperately to save our marriage. Then again, our mixed signals may not serve us. Officially leaving the church can be a powerful statement of independence to both ourselves and to others. In any case, few people realize how hard it really is to “leave it, and leave it alone.”

Each partner to a marriage brings his or her own unspoken assumptions to the relationship. For example: can we talk openly about problems? Are we expected to obey without question or are decisions made with respect for individual circumstances? Did parents and siblings in our family of origin readily express joy, anger, humor? Or did they hide grievances and sulk? Were they upset by aggressive exchanges? Or did they enjoy humiliating each other? Were certain subjects and emotions forbidden?

I suspect that the quality of your experience in Mormonism, and how well you can let go of it, depends a lot on your family background. Dr Robert Karen, a clinical psychologist, says parents should allow children to experience their authentic feelings without trying to force them into submission.

As children it is natural for us to feel both love and anger toward our parents. Children will strike out verbally or even physically at parents. If the parents have good self confidence they can absorb this without feeling the child must be attacked in retaliation. Emotionally secure parents do not feel terrified of losing a child’s love, so they need not give in to tantrums. They can set appropriate consequences for misbehavior without explosions or insults. They will not make the child feel defective. Instead they can just allow him to be himself.

Later, when the child wants to repair a breach with his parents, he can feel comforted and consoled by a parent whom he knows will love him regardless of his “bad” emotions. Because of the empathy and nurture he receives, he can in turn empathize with and nurture others. He does not hide his negative emotions. He is comfortable living with them; he feels secure. He can tolerate contradictory feelings within himself, accepting the ambiguity of life. He is free to authentically be himself, allowing others that same privilege. As a result he has a rich emotional life and satisfying relationships. 16

If your Mormon parents raised you with love and the freedom to be yourself, judgment of church authorities will not cut you so deeply. You will not be so obsessed with church demands for obedience and perfection.

On the other hand, if abusive parents shamed you, compulsive obedience and perfectionism reign. Once you leave the church, you can see only bad in your experience, as you previously saw only bad in non-Mormon beliefs. You find it more difficult to see your experiences objectively. You react viscerally to judgmental attitudes of church authorities. A shame based person cannot easily let go of anger and resentment.

Dr. Karen points out that when we resent our parents, we ironically cling to the worst in them. Whether you hold grudges against a parent or the church, you remain a victim, rather than taking the power of a new life into your own hands.

Leaving Mormonism presents the opportunity to think differently. We can get away from the good versus evil, saints versus apostates thinking that blinds true believers to the virtues of other points of view. Someone who has suffered parental abuse may first need to confront childhood pain, preferably with the aid of therapy, before she can be more balanced and objective about her sojourn in Mormonism. Later experiences of healthy love from others can help to heal prior abuse.

Moments arise in any relationship that make us question everything. They shake us out of our routine. The church brought such a moment to me with its 1993 discipline of intellectuals and feminists.

When we have gotten beyond crisis and can think rationally, we need to determine why our relationship failed. We need to assess what worked and what did not. What was my responsibility? Why did I not see problems areas sooner? What was wrong with the spouse, or the church? Why when I saw problems did I not act sooner to resolve them, or to leave the relationship?

In the wake of this church discipline, I asked myself how the Mormon Church could act so cruelly against honest men and women of integrity and intelligence. I had to admit that I could no longer view the church as the place where honesty and the quest for truth were empowered. Disciplinary actions suggested that the church was not confident of its truth, that its leaders thought honesty undermined their authority. Rather than caring for the spiritual welfare of each individual member, the church obviously cared more to prevent the spread of honest information through its ranks. This sickened me.

Once you have become disillusioned, either in love or in faith, questions continue to disturb your peace. Were you mistaken to even believe in the possibility of a true love or a true faith? Did you believe only because you feared disapproval? Can you ever trust someone who claims he has absolute authority from God? If you cannot, does that mean there is no higher power at all? How do you trust prayer again when you previously received faulty answers?

Perhaps we got only what we expected. We learn that intense feelings and hopes guarantee neither a true love nor a reliable faith. Nevertheless, we still need both love and meaning. We need to find how can we can legitimately fill religious needs. Once our relationship has ended the worst has happened, and we can start over again without fear of disapproval. Disillusionment hurts, but also brings the opportunity to bring balance and proportion to our lives. In the shattering of our faith we seek a more reliable truth and wisdom. In the collapse of idealized romance we seek a more realistic and authentic love.

First, though, we have to suffer our losses and survive. In my situation, relief swept over me when I stopped struggling to fix a relationship that was hopelessly broken. But then I quickly found a great hole within me that had formerly been filled by the struggle. I wept over the empty bed at home. And as I lost faith in the church, I felt the loneliness that my community had once saved me from. I had to live with a void in my life, without anyone to share my deepest hopes and dreams. In return I was freed from the pains of an intimacy that was no longer nurturing , from conflicts that sapped my energy and kept me from the life I wanted to live.

As compensation for loss of my marriage, I had the opportunity to explore new relationships. Losing my church compelled me to search for a new world view, and a religious community that could accept me and encourage my spiritual growth in a nourishing and credible way.

Lack of communication is a serious problem that often leads to the end of a marriage. Failure to express needs openly means that problems cannot be addressed. You hide from your own feelings, and keep settling for misery. Silence, secrecy, and threats for revealing family secrets, signs of an abusive family, are uncannily like the actions of LDS General Authorities today.

Like the traditional wife of the past who never dared utter a criticism of her husband lest she wound his masculine pride, the obedient Mormon must refrain from speaking of issues beyond her sphere. The church views any critical word with suspicion. Apostle Dallin Oaks warns members “never to criticize or deprecate a person for the performance of an office to which he or she has been called of God. It does not matter that the criticism is true....LDS readers and viewers [should] apply [this standard] to those things written about our history and those who made it.” 17

In light of this remark and similar statements and punitive actions, we must conclude that church leaders think good history is dangerous. Fundamentally they consider loyalty more important than truth. This attitude explains why historians and intellectuals who dare to speak about difficult issues in public may be excommunicated. Such treatment warns those who want to speak honestly in public that they will pay a price for their independence.

Lack of criticism, however, also exacts a severe price. We all know criticism, especially true criticism, is painful to hear. We do not easily see unpleasant truths about ourselves.

Only by listening, however, may we understand how our actions affect others. Criticism irritates us, but it can become a gift. Good feedback is essential to good leaders. If general authorities could listen, they might actually do their most important work. Lack of criticism promotes harmful policies; lack of critical thinking promotes ignorance.

By penalizing independent discussion, authorities cut themselves off from feedback about their actions. Officially prohibiting criticism causes a cascade of lies. Authorities lie to themselves that their decisions are infallible, that God demands we never question them. Ordinary members dare not speak the truth to each other. They cannot tolerate their own honest thoughts or feelings. When local authorities follow the example of general authorities, they will consider criticism from ward members a sign of apostasy. This gives local leaders a free pass to think that their own intolerance or arrogance reflects God’s will.

Think about your life. What kind of a person would you be if you had no feedback on how your actions affected others? If you were told that your decisions were God’s decisions, would you ever feel motivated to criticize yourself? Would you care about the harm you did? You cannot care if you do not know. Leaders of organizations need more criticism than ordinary members, since their actions seriously affect so many people.

By showing care for all members, by allowing wider latitude for free expression, general authorities could set a good example for everyone. Then ordinary members might not have to pretend they were perfect, feel ashamed to admit normal doubt, or fear when openly telling how leaders caused them pain. They could admit their leaders are human, capable of error. Then they might not blame bullying by leaders on their own unworthiness.

If members did not so defer to authority, child abuse would not stay secret. Bishops and Stake Presidents would stop asking overly explicit and shaming questions about sex. Mission Presidents would stop ridiculing missionaries for not achieving impossibly high goals. Scholars telling the truth about history would not fear being silenced. Church courts would presume innocence, avoid hectoring questions, allow proper defense and due process. Homosexuals could be free of the judgment that makes them loathe themselves, and bishops would no longer thoughtlessly pressure them to marry heterosexual partners. Young men with normal sexual urges would not consider suicide because they are so ashamed about masturbation. 18 Pain could be healed, the broken-hearted comforted, the talents of all men and women cherished. This sounds to me like a true task for an apostle of Jesus.

One of the dictionary definitions of criticism is “the act of making judgments or evaluations.” Without making judgments, the act of sustaining leaders is only a conformity promoting ritual. In a healthy Mormon Church, feedback from ordinary church members could be considered part of the revelation process.

After baptism, Mormons are confirmed and given the Holy Ghost, which will reveal all truth to them. If members are punished for speaking the truth, what exactly does having the Holy Ghost mean? Moreover, truth expands our boundaries, giving us sympathy for struggling humanity, showing us that we are all one family. Instead of widening its boundaries, however, the church narrows them by intimidating members who raise uncomfortable questions and suggest different points of view.

Recently, an apostle has even warned parents against expressing honest doubts in the sanctity of their own homes. 19 Shouldn’t we encourage family members to share honest questions and concerns with each other? Questions are a crucial part of a vital and living faith. Sharing questions is a sign of love. Suppressing questions does not show strength, but fear. Being authentic and truthful builds trust.

In a 1981 talk to the LDS Student Association when he was a professor of history at Brigham Young University, D. Michael Quinn responded to attacks on historians by general authorities. He pointed out that neither Mormon doctrine nor history support the idea of prophetic infallibility. Claims that any leader is infallible are inconsistent with our personal experiences and ample historical evidence to the contrary. Demands for sanitized history are inconsistent with the way problems and foibles of great leaders are dealt with so openly in scripture.

Most important for Quinn, prophetic infallibility cannot be reconciled with the doctrine of free agency. To think that a prophet’s official teachings or actions will inevitably be error free is to make him the only person in the church (he could have said the only human being) who is not accountable to God for his actions.20

In such circumstances it is evident that accountability becomes one sided. Mormons are accountable to the prophet, but the prophet is not accountable to them, because God guarantees that the prophet will never lead them astray. The prophet is deprived of feedback. Individual members are deprived of their proper responsibility to make moral judgements.

Perhaps we so readily give our moral and intellectual responsibility away because the burden of uncertainty is too heavy. We relieve our anxiety by giving our freedom to a revered leader. We delude ourselves that we will always be safe and right if we just obey. If we hesitate we condemn ourselves. All history testifies, however, that unconditional obedience to authority leads to terrible abuses.

This is tragically illustrated by religious murders and wars throughout history, from the Jewish Holocaust to Jonestown. In Mormon history the Mountain Meadows Massacre is only the most egregious example of this danger. With cultural conditioning and pressure to obey, anyone might do such horrible things--ordinary people, not fiends. Nobody is immune to such pressures, and so we need to empower others to give us honest feedback on the consequences of our actions. Secrecy and ignorance allow abuses to flourish. Honesty about history, as well as in our personal lives, is the foundation of all ethical action. Author Richard Paul points out that

“There is no more important subject, rightly conceived, than history. Human life in all its dimensions is deeply historical. Whatever experiences we have, the accounts we give of things, our memories, our records, our sense of ourselves, the ‘news’ we construct, the plans we form, even the daily gossip we hear–are historical. Furthermore, since we all have a deep seated drive to think well of ourselves, and virtually unlimited powers to twist reality to justify ourselves, how we construct history has far-reaching ethical consequences. Not only do virtually all ethical issues have a historical component (moral judgement presupposes an account of what actually happened) but also virtually all historical issues have important ethical implications. “ 21

The applies to all human activity, not simply religion. All human groups think insiders are better than outsiders. This can be dangerous. In the past America’s confident sense of its own goodness and moral mission justified the slaughter of thousands of Indians when whites wanted their land.

Today this undisturbed confidence in our own goodness, along with fear in a time of crisis, justifies vicious violations of human rights that are out of harmony with traditional American values of fairness and due process. We transport terrorist suspects to “black prisons” where they can be tortured free from prying eyes, in violation of recognized international legal standards. We do not presume innocence. At home, peace activists find themselves under surveillance, and even before protests some are subject to intimidating interviews by the FBI. Thousands of telephone calls and e-mails have been intercepted without warrant. Legislators , journalists, and television hosts, with few exceptions have not had the courage to stand forthrightly against these things because they are afraid to be thought unpatriotic. Public criticism in post 9/11 America has not been much more popular than it is in the Mormon Church.

In these days of war made by zeal without knowledge, in our sanctification of greed without restraint, there is not a politician, corporate officer, or talk show host who does not skillfully manipulate public perceptions for private advantage. The smoke of public relations has become more important than the fire of integrity.

We live in a competitive culture that says our appearance and status are the most important things about us. We feel pressured to deny our weaknesses, pretending we are perfect. Criticism threatens us, and so we diminish others to magnify ourselves.

Recognizing this unpleasant truth can make us more responsible and compassionate. We all need praise and encouragement for the good we do. We also must recognize that we are not perfect, and we all need constant course corrections. We need to work seriously at honest communication in our marriages, churches, governments, and places of work. Neither we nor our organizations will change unless we make listening a priority, especially when it is inconvenient.

Working my way through loss of marriage compelled me to seek support from friends and therapists. Coping with loss of faith required hours of honest discussion. In the early days of my disenchantment I was fortunate to find the St. Chad Society at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, where I met other Mormons grappling with their conflicts. We openly shared our anguish, anger, and regret. We honestly examined deficiencies of church doctrine and practice without any fear of retribution. It felt so good to discuss these difficult issues in an accepting environment. This was a real lifesaver.

I have also discovered loving people and living truths in other religious communities. I appreciate the several years I spent meeting with the Salt Lake Religious Society of Friends. I admire their theology of the inner light, applied democratically as they strive to put their ideals of peace and social justice into practice.

I am currently a member of South Valley Unitarian Universalist Society. I welcome its respect for diversity. It is a safe place to explore beliefs. I am reassured by its dedication to the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. The inherent worth and dignity of every person, and the right to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning are two more fundamental tenets of this community that I deeply affirm.

I still believe that there are many paths to God. You may give another name to the highest ultimate meaning. Whatever your quest, follow your path wherever it leads. We do not find heights without climbing mountains, or depths without descending through valleys. I cannot imagine a God worthy of worship who condemns the pilgrim with courage to walk into the unknown. As Albert Schweitzer, said: "Living truth is that alone which has its origin in thinking. Just as a tree bears year after year the same fruit, and yet fruit which is each year new, so must all permanently valuable ideas be continually born again in thought.”22 Shutting your eyes to pretend you believe what you do not does violence to your soul. Your faith springs from your life, and you must grow or die. Freedom means the possibility that you may grow away from the community or the spouse that you love. It is risky, but there is no other path to authentic wholeness.

At South Valley it is my privilege to facilitate the Religious Transition Group (RTG), meeting every first and third Sunday. Here those who are in conflict with Mormon identity and community can finally speak freely. We are no longer alone. It is with relief that we openly share our long-hidden feelings, the things that our families still cannot hear.

I have gained enormous respect for my fellow seekers who struggle daily with frightened or rigid spouses, who love their children, and fear losing them. Extended family members such as grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins sometimes tell our children to disregard our parental guidance . When we meet new people, we encounter shocked looks and incomprehension if we say we say we were once Mormons. Often spouses cannot endure the strain of religious differences, and our marriage ends. Despite this, we draw strength from each other; we love our lives, and we look forward to new adventures of discovery.

The Mormon leadership dares not extend its acceptance to apostates. It has not advised its members to respect, dialogue with, and extend tolerance to members who openly question, let alone those who leave the church. From leaders we hear only the voice of pity or warning. We who leave the fold cannot expect a ready ear from those who still believe in absolute authority. We have long struggled to be honest with ourselves; we dread acting on our insights.

Many of our loved ones simply cannot face the consequences of thinking the church is “not true.” We seekers must continue to support each other. Just knowing others who walk with us gives us the courage to ascend an unfamiliar and rocky path. The more confident we are, the more we can speak to believers both honestly and compassionately.

Former Mormons must be more charitable toward differences in religious belief than the church they have left, if they hope to gain personal peace and to promote dialogue with family members. It is helpful to understand that intolerance is usually based on fear.

If you have left Mormonism, but once again believe that you have a monopoly on truth, you may spend your life telling Mormons they are stupid, blind, misinformed, and perhaps even doomed to hell. Personally, I do not feel there is much to gain from such an approach; it is too similar to the kind of judgment I left. I do believe in speaking honestly. After that, though, refrain from babbling like a scratched CD. Do not get stuck in rejection; affirmatively seek your heart’s desire. If we want truth, beauty, and love in our lives, we are not likely to get it by constantly complaining that others are untruthful, ugly, and unloving. Most of us do the best we can, given what we know.

Mormons find it almost inconceivable that a once loyal believer could leave the faith for good and honest reasons. Their culture tells them that such an apostate will forfeit her celestial glory. She must be “denying the sun while looking at it.” Authorities say that such apostates deserve outer darkness after death. It is certainly disconcerting to find yourself consigned to hell because you prize truth more than conformity, barred from even the lowest kingdom of glory where liars dwell.

A son or husband, wife or daughter, who leaves the faith dashes one of the faithful member's deepest hopes: to be together now and forever. The believer is angry and confused when a loved one or friend leaves the church.

On the other hand, the former believer is angry at years of sacrifice built on nothing more than false confidence through group conditioning. Anger propels us toward independence–damn the consequences. As we move further on, however, our sight becomes distorted by continued focus on anger. We are tied to the past by resentment, and we find no peace.

To counter this, increase your awareness by finding what you fear and why you fear it. Then ask yourself what you really want. How can you get it? Reaching credible personal truth demands putting aside preconceptions. Good listening involves looking past your roles, calming the fears within, and really looking at the human being in front of you. 23

We dialogue with individuals, not cardboard representatives of “apostasy” or “righteousness.” Institutions are collections of individuals, past and present. Everything that matters about them is carried in the minds and hearts of human beings. Institutions want us only to fulfill the conventional roles they assign to us. At best, individuality inconveniences them. We must look past the roles we play if we are to see the living human beings behind them. It is essential to presume that your partners in dialogue want to do what they think is right, however much you might disagree with them. Thinking otherwise blocks both compassion and effective listening.

The worst heartache of transition is not a mere loss of belief. All too often families do not simply reject their loved one’s new beliefs, they refuse to talk to them about anything significant. We live in the dim twilight of strained reserve, where nothing uttered is important, nothing heartfelt. The Great Wall of China is nothing compared to the Great Wall of Silence we endure. The believer cannot speak honestly because he so dreads living in a world without Mormonism; the seeker colludes in silence because she dreads rejection.

If church authorities encouraged honesty at home, if conflicts were confronted honestly at church this would not happen. We seekers, we believers, each try to cope with shattered dreams. We have no constructive models for looking at each other, no history of dialogue. To speak with love and respect is the one thing I can imagine that may breach walls built by fear.

We must recognize that people of good faith can come to different conclusions. As a pioneering Unitarian preacher said in the 16th century, “We need not think alike to love alike.” 24 Christianity is hundreds of years late in following that injunction.

Make sure to calm yourself before and during stressful conversations. Most of all, show love and respect. At a recent session of RTG, Bob McCue 25 said that if he had it to do over again, he would have presented his best case to his family once. As time passed he would not have gotten drawn into conversations that went over and over the same hyper-emotional ground. Bob also suggests that people may live together with different beliefs, if they can find common activities to share.

Take time to think what you could do together. Ask what you both enjoy. Can you stretch yourself to get interested in activities your partner prizes? This might include neighborhood walks, trips to parks with the kids, athletics, concerts, or movies. Beyond that is the question of what good you want to contribute to the broader world. Can you agree to put aside religious disagreements and raise your children to be confident, honest, authentic, compassionate, and hard working? This is not an easy task across a religious divide. It may not be possible, but it certainly does deserve your best thinking and effort.

It is important to exercise patience with our spouses, children, friends, and not least with ourselves. You must not think that one talk with your spouse, or other loved family, will quickly convince them that all they hold dear is utterly false. This may sometimes happen, but runs against our strong preference to persistently maintain beliefs that provide identity and security. We should not be surprised at a shocked reaction followed by angry demands.

After that, the previous quality of your marriage, and a history of good communication will help to weather hard times. Talk compassionately and reasonably about how things look to you. Confide how hard it was for you to face this information when you first encountered it. We really need frequent conversations, not just one. Distressing information that violates our world view takes many repetitions to absorb. They key is not recycling into anger, defensiveness, and judgment. Calmness and compassion must accompany our listening. If possible arrange sessions with a spouse where each of you can explain fully what is in your hearts, without making any comment or criticism in response. Look for the feelings behind the comments. You can take turns doing this, perhaps even on different days. Experiment with whatever works best for you.

Do not be surprised if you shudder before the lonely religious road ahead of you. Old habits persist, and it is difficult to brave disapproval of family members and friends. Review clearly why you do not believe, and why you do not accept church power over your life. Despite your new intellectual beliefs, the internalized voice of Mormon group disapproval prompts visceral feelings of shame and fear when you cross old boundaries.

Keep reinforcing your new beliefs and act consistently to build different reactions. How will you exercise the personal power you have taken back from the church? Do not get trapped in the fleeting satisfaction of a rebellious reaction. Persistently move towards acting on what you really believe. While it is risky to tell your loved one the whole unvarnished truth of your disbelief, doing so clearly may help them to give up unrealistic expectations of you.

Fear that we may lose our spouse and hurt our family is legitimate. I believe, however, that when we cannot be honest, when we draw back from truth that has been dearly purchased, when we shrink from expressing our real needs we feel more weak, helpless, and fearful.

When we live in the limbo of knowing but not doing, we breed resentment. We shy away from pain, but what else is this limbo but pain? We do not live a life of our own. We do not achieve a new identity. In summary, be clear with yourself about your beliefs and desires. Tell your loved ones the truth. Be kind and patient. Don’t get sidetracked by living a life only in opposition. Don’t get drawn into unnecessary conflicts. Act to find common ground. Find the courage to act on your convictions. Perhaps you will find that your spouse cannot share any common value with you because he cannot see any compassion, beauty, intellectual integrity, or purpose outside the bounds of LDS authority. If so, you will have at least the satisfaction of knowing that you that you did all you could.

I now find claims for the authority of the LDS Church thoroughly unpersuasive. It hurts people deeply through its unaccountable exercise of authority. His selfish behavior reveals Joseph Smith’s character as seriously flawed. His bizarre sexual practices and his concept of polygamous exaltation in the eternities demeans women.

When the church praises obedience as its highest value, it overlooks the primacy of love in our experience, in the teachings of Jesus and other spiritual masters. Its perfectionism and claims of absolute authority lead many ordinary members to hide their flaws. This fosters feelings of personal unworthiness, and contempt of those who differ. It distresses me to see Mormons I care about who are afraid to think their own thoughts, feel their own feelings, or pursue valuable spiritual ideas that could enrich their lives. If I could wave a magic wand and make Mormonism “true,” I would not do it. It no longer expresses my highest aspirations. It has too much fear, and too little vision. Its narrow world is hemmed in by judgement, its power counts more than honesty and compassion.

Nevertheless, at an earlier stage of my life I would have been deeply distressed if someone had tried to persuade me that these beliefs were true. I was not ready to see what I do now. Currently other faithful Mormons neither interpret the data as I do, nor share my ideals and life experience. They see something entirely different in Mormonism. Perhaps they can find in it what Sterling McMurrin praised as the highest function of religion:

“Religion should bring consecration to life and direction to human endeavor, inspire men and women with faith in themselves, dedicate them to high moral purpose, preserve their natural piety in the presence of success, and give them the strength to live through their failures with nobility and face with high courage their supreme tragedies.” 26

I am sure many take their faith in that way. We can all cherish such an attitude, but my body will turn to dust before the LDS authorities prefer this model to their insistence on obedience. Whatever the church or its believers do, I will not die before I seek a faith that satisfies my needs. I believe that I grew in confidence and compassion because of my experiences, good and bad, in the LDS Church.

To stay, however, would have meant spiritual suffocation. Perhaps at some future time your loved one’s pain, and his need to live life authentically will lead him to a different vision. His sense of self may conflict with LDS identity. If that never happens, I am willing nevertheless to respect everyone’s right to religious freedom.

We have different religious needs. We all must find our own path to growth. I do not demand that they be like me, for they have their own unique life experiences. The LDS Church can offer support, meaningful work, self discipline, hope in trial. Growth is even available in working through conflicts with the church. We each learn lessons in our own way. Good humans may flourish anywhere. “Gray are all theories, green alone life’s golden tree,” said Goethe. Religious differences of opinion are not about to disappear, and so we had better learn to live with them.

In the meantime the church faces an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy. The more members learn honest history, the less they will believe in church authority. Naive belief and absolute obedience will become less tenable. Much as I disapprove of the hierarchy’s repressive actions, I recognize that in similar circumstances only a rare organization would refrain from stifling open discussion.

No dramatic changes in the way church leaders view us are likely very soon. Churches generally make significant changes only when forced to do so. Some members, however, may truly see our hearts. As more of us leave the church, increasing numbers of closet doubters are left within it who may sympathize with us. By speaking and acting honestly, we invite faithful members to question their customary beliefs.

The stereotype of wicked apostates will begin to crack. Some faithful family members will see us through eyes of love and respect, despite our differences. Through their trials, they can learn the painful lesson that our common humanity persists despite different beliefs. Things will become easier for those who take our journey. In the meantime, we must continue to encourage each other, learning compassion from our pain.

As sociologist Vaughan also points out, when you divorce your spouse, you do not divorce your memories. You cannot forget sharing grief and joy. Years together formed my thoughts and actions today. 27 The mother of my children means more to me than any casual woman I chance to meet. Though I cannot and now do not want to be married to my ex-wife, that does not mean that nobody else ever should. If she is given love, I am not deprived of anything. I experienced considerable anger during our separation. It was not easy, and I was not proud of it, but I was able to use this energy to make a new life for myself. At one time I had to withdraw from her to preserve my emotional peace. As more time passed I accepted the new situation. I grew tired of anger. I no longer thought of myself as a victim, no longer depended on her for my sense of self, and anger fell away.

Years of reflection helped me to better understand what had happened and why. I grieved my loss. My children and I suffered in ways I never imagined possible. Now and then I still feel twinges of grief. If I had held on to my anger, I never could have properly mourned my loss.

In our religious life, I think we would benefit from making an honest inventory of what we lost and what we gained by our sojourn in Mormonism. What good things did we learn? What love did we experience? How can we take the good things into our life today, in a way that conforms with current values? What unkindness did we experience? How can we use this to become wiser? How can we make sure that we do not inflict the same unkindness on others? I am grateful for the loving times I spent with my ex-wife. When we fall in love we cannot see our future. We see more deeply the more we open to experience, suffer what we must with dignity, and work to learn the lessons of that suffering. This applies to personal as well as religious development.

When I remember my personal experiences in the Mormon Church now I do not think of distant authorities. Instead I remember all the wonderful people I have known. As new converts my family and I were welcomed into our New York City branch, soon to be a ward. These were exciting and hopeful times. I received kind mentoring, and I learned to serve and to lead. I felt genuinely loved and esteemed. I can never forget that. When I moved from New York, and my wife suffered serious health problems, the ward in Las Vegas was a pillar of both emotional and physical support.

Meanwhile as my parents grew old in upstate New York, ward members loved them and helped take care of them. They put loving arms around my dad as he lost his wife of over fifty years. His bishop told me with great emotion how much he loved my dad, though my dad was definitely no orthodox Mormon. My sister and I prayed with another bishop in a Pennsylvania hospital over the body of my youngest sister shortly after she died. He loved and supported us with sensitivity through that ordeal.

During my separation and divorce members in the ward knew the pain and adversity I faced. While many of them did not know how to talk to me, others gave me sympathy and kindness. The emotional upheaval of my divorce made me realize that I was not able to deal with adversity in my normal independent fashion. I was emotionally exhausted from not only my own grief and anger, but from kids in crisis. I decided that I had to reach out to other people for support or I would not survive.

I found a couple in the ward whom I could visit unannounced at any time when my emotions became too much for me to bear alone. They invariably stopped whatever they were doing, and listened to me with empathy. They supported and accepted me. I was never judged. I felt cared for and strengthened every time I saw them. They embodied the love of Christ for me. They knew that I did not have a conventional “testimony,” and I never, ever, felt judged in any way. I felt only compassion.

Years earlier in my Las Vegas ward my wife and I had the opportunity to take care of a mentally retarded man whose parents had died, and whose surviving family wanted nothing to do with him. We managed his finances and helped him socially. We felt privileged to help him, as many others had done before us. Our ward did a fine and noble service for this man, and I am glad that I was part of it. He was always so appreciative.

While there were few things I did as important as that, my Mormon experience over the years was filled with little kindnesses, jokes, confidences given and received that created warm memories. I always shared humor and laughter in various ward choirs. I encountered so many people to love and enjoy. I will never regret this. Both my ex-wife and my ex-Church have formed the person I am today. I am grateful for them.

Alas, Mormons are not always nonjudgmental and open. When we question our beliefs, take an independent stand, and talk honestly about serious flaws in church life, history, and doctrine, our believing spouse becomes defensive. Our heads spin when she demands that we believe or get divorced. Where is unconditional love? We cannot find faith in blind belief despite all evidence, hope in fear of honest discussion, love in threats of rejection. It is scant consolation, but we know all human beings have limits. If we change our beliefs and behavior in ways far less momentous than leaving traditional religious views, family and friends resist strenuously. Friends and family become alarmed at all kinds of changes. For example, parents tend to see their adult athletic children as awkward pre-teens, or confident speakers as tongue-tied five-year olds.

When we improve ourselves by getting more education, finding better work, or uncharacteristically refusing to argue when old wounds are opened, family members and friends feel threatened. Dad has angry outbursts, mom speaks sarcastically. Brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles, demean your achievements as they fear being eclipsed and losing their places in your life. How much more, then, is it likely that Mormons who have never questioned their faith will resist a beloved mother or father, wife or husband, son or daughter who rejects their precious religious heritage?

Your thoughts are a rebuke to their life’s purpose, an abandonment of marriage covenants, a threat to goodness and salvation. Born-again Christian parents feel similarly threatened by an unbelieving child. Jehovah’s Witnesses dare not associate with family members or friends expelled from membership for fear of like treatment. Amish also shun those who think, read, or speak in ways that violate group norms, believing it is impossible to be saved outside their religion. 28

People in everyday society feel contempt for those in prison, and many state laws deprive them of rights even after they serve their sentences. Corporate culture looks down on those who do not compete well. This tendency to look down on others who are different from us takes persistent effort to overcome. We should do all we can to look for the common humanity in others with different views.

Understanding varying ideas can lead us to fresh ways of thinking, and can be both personally and intellectually enriching. It takes persistent work to go beyond the customary prejudices of our groups. Indeed, through the discussions in RTG, and what I have written here, I hope to contribute to expanding the narrow boundaries that hurt so many of us. It will take time, however, before more inclusive attitudes prevail.

When my marriage crumbled I learned the limits of my love. As much as I wanted that marital love to continue, as much as I treasured the past, I could not stay in an intimate relationship that made me miserable. I kept my sanity by recognizing and working to accept my ex-wife’s limitations. It was bitter to learn that fervent desires cannot stop divorce. I am glad that we tried family therapy. When that failed, however, I knew what I had to do. I also painfully learned my own limitations when I tried to act as father and mother to three teenage girls. One daughter repeatedly violated important rules. Angry demands changed nothing. Therapy changed nothing. Overwhelmed with exhaustion, I finally surrendered and abandoned all expectations. I had done all I could. The terrible truth was that I could not stop her from destroying herself. Suddenly she changed. She told me later that she simply realized on her own that she had to do it for herself, not for me.

Through my divorce, life demanded that I extend my boundaries by giving up the illusion I could control others. I do not have that power. I do not expect anyone to stay married and take abuse because they practice unconditional love.

As human beings with great needs but limited capacities, we cannot long continue to give active love without any reciprocation. Our strength fails us. When I realized my limitations I surrendered, and strangely, I felt a new power within. I must choose those I can touch with my limited reach. Now that I have stepped outside Mormonism, I can no longer expect Mormons to feel comfortable with me. Fear blocks love. If I keep demanding they love me unconditionally then I am destined for disappointment.

Staying focused on the inadequacy of their love for me only harms me. If I surrender bitterness and abandon expectations, if I accept and love myself-- weaknesses and all--in time hostile persons may relax. In giving up my expectations I make a more accepting response from them possible. I can live with this. In the meantime, I am grateful for the love Mormons gave me in the past, but today I get my love from those who can respect the way I think and act now.

The LDS religion is more than the official church. Mormonism is also comprised of men and women who have the courage and integrity to speak independently in public and bear the consequences. I am thinking particularly of the five intellectuals and feminists who were punished in the wake of their talks at the Sunstone Symposium in 1993: Lavina Fielding Anderson, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano, Lynn Knaevel Whitesides, and Maxine Hanks.

Others like them also felt the weight of church penalties in the years following. The church history I learned was for the most part written by independent and courageous Mormon historians. I was stimulated, educated, and moved by the articles in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought for many years, and I still enjoy attending the Sunstone Symposium today. It was other Mormons who gave me the information and the example that enabled me to reach informed and independent decisions on my beliefs, and I will always be grateful for that.

I also cannot forget Jeffery Nielsen, the BYU philosophy professor who in June of 2006 wrote a piece in the Salt Lake Tribune speaking out against an unjust and immoral gay marriage ban supported by his church.29 He was terminated by BYU for his efforts. He continues to speak out for more openness and honesty in the church today.

Wherever courageous men and women do that, they exemplify for me the highest values of a humane Mormonism. I will always be honored to think of them as “brothers and sisters” in spirit whether or not they think well of me. My path has taken me out of the church, but they and others like them, in and out of the church, always remind me that we can act with courage if we choose. Their courage and integrity inspire me. When one of us speaks our truth, we are all strengthened.

When we follow our own star we not only enrich our lives, but the lives of those around us. We feel true power when we see a man or woman acting with integrity in the teeth of opposition. Pain is our opportunity to awaken from our long sleep, to live the life we choose. When the religion you once loved violates your ideals and your increasing understanding, when it no longer supports your personal dignity and growth, leaving it is a powerful affirmation of your courage and freedom. You confront loneliness, guilt, and anger. Resentment and disillusionment challenge you.

Know what you are leaving and why. Find help from those who came before you on this road, and give help to those who follow. Then also look to the best of your past, while you reach out for a new life. Find a high purpose that inspires you. Surround yourself with friends. Appreciate your opportunities, and never forget to give yourself credit for your courage to walk into the unknown.

End Notes

1. See Sterling McMurrin, letter to editor in Salt Lake Tribune, July 19, 1995. This letter protests the excommunications of Lavina Fielding Anderson and Janice Allred. McMurrin memorably said “The LDS Church has considerable power and wealth, with a strong tradition of leadership and action. It is not a fledgling sect that can survive only on conformity and obedience. In its theology, the church celebrates freedom, intelligence, knowledge, and love as the great values. It can afford to practice what it preaches.”

2. The punishment of independent thinkers and increased calls from the hierarchy for obedience violated my belief in an unconditionally loving God, the dignity of the individual, and the spiritual integrity of the lifelong quest for knowledge. I see now that my instinct was always to be a religious liberal, one who thinks it is essential to consider wide areas of human knowledge and experience in formulating religious belief, not just the statements of authorities. Religious liberals have a disposition to welcome changes that make for respect and kindness. For us the individual religious conscience bears great authority. Science, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, individual experience--knowledge from all realms--have an important part to play in making religion credible and vital for us today.

3. Diane Vaughan, Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships (1986, Oxford University Press, 1990 Vintage Books edition), 44-50

4. Vaughan, 1-6, 13-15, 20-30, 173

5. He was clearly mentally unbalanced. He was soon removed from our parish.

6. Lowell L. Bennion, An Introduction to the Gospel (Deseret Sunday School Union Board, 1955). Here is one quote showing Bennion’s positive approach to life: “We look upon the body not as evil, but as a wonderful instrument through which man may find joy and realize the purpose of life. We reject celibacy...We believe that the good things of the earth, such as food and drink, are ordained of God for the use of man. ‘Men are that they might have joy.’” (page 250). Unfortunately in practice the Church instills a great deal of guilt about sexual feelings. See footnote 10, below.

7. Bruce McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (Bookcraft, 1966) entry on “Church of the Devil,” pp 137-138. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (Simon and Schuster, 1978) page 191.

The Book of Mormon, I Nephi 13: 5-7 talks of “a church which is most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God...and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it. And I also saw gold, and silver, and silks, and scarlets, and I saw many harlots.” The reference to “a church” and the fine garments and objects might be easily associated by many Mormons today, and in the nineteenth century, with the Catholic Church.

Conventional Mormons leave no room for individual judgement that differs from authority. Leaving Mormonism is a wonderful opportunity to get beyond such all or nothing thinking. We need not accept the “one true church” model that Mormonism gave us. A mature religion can give purpose and meaning to life, make us more compassionate and confident, and create rites and practices that open us to experiences of the sacred. There are many ways to accomplish these tasks, not just one.

Enlarging our frame of reference enriches our lives, makes us more humane and better able to appreciate those who differ from us. Once we seekers have separated psychologically from Mormonism, are focused more on future life than past ills, and can maintain a satisfying independence, we can better extend such tolerance to Mormons.

8. Lavina Fielding Anderson, “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1993 (Volume 26:1) pp 35, 46, 47.

9. For an account of conflicts between the church and its intellectuals, and information about the “September Six” who were punished (four excommunicated, one disfellowshipped) by church courts see Richard N. Ostling, and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (HarperCollins, 1999), chapter 21 “Dissenters and Exiles.”

10. Couples are sometimes so uncertain about what sexual practices are acceptable that they ask their bishop to tell them what they may or may not do in bed. The answers they get may not take a positive view towards sexuality, or be sensitive to personal needs, especially the needs of a woman. The quality of advice depends on the maturity and sensitivity of a leader with no professional training, who may have his own personal hangups. Feeling that you have to submit your bedroom practices to church scrutiny is a gateway to shame, and another way to reinforce that you have little personal power or freedom.

In annual interviews of teenagers, bishops ask about masturbation, a practice the church considers a sin. In an excellent and illuminating paper, William Gardiner, L.C.S.W, points out how strident church warnings about sex, combined with the paucity of positive statements about it, shames young people’s sexuality. They are sometimes so shamed by masturbation, a completely normal and widespread practice, that they contemplate and even commit suicide. They may be abused through “voyeuristic , probing, bishop’s interviews....One young individual was coerced into telling her bishop the number of thrusts encountered during her sexual behavior.” He gauged the degree of her sin by her answers, even though the Church’s General Handbook of Instructions does not require any such detail.
William M. Gardiner, LCSW, in “Shadow Influences of Plural Marriage on Sexuality Within the Contemporary Mormon Experience.” This is a paper posted on the internet at <http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/magazine/pmm_article_full_text/215>, last accessed on 10/28/06.
It is unlikely that higher authorities will rein in a bishop or stake president who humiliates or shames members. The local official has all the advantage, especially when he is dealing with naive youth whose parents and church have taught them to hold authority in awe. Individuals or families will have to insist on limits if they expect any.

For poignant examples of bishops, stake presidents, and mission presidents inappropriately shaming members, see Case Reports of the Mormon Alliance, Volume 3, 1997 (Mormon Alliance, 1998), edited and compiled by Lavina Fielding Anderson and Janice Merrill Allred.

11. There is also be a powerful tendency to overlook faults in a father or priesthood leader. One woman told me that when she confided in her Bishop how her father had abused her, he said that her father was such a good man they would have to “sweep it under the rug.” Another woman told an authority that she was abused by a family member who was prominent in the church. She was told to ignore this, and instead think about all the good things he had done. In neither case was the legitimacy of the information acknowledged. These are clear cases of patriarchy at work, as well as a strong testament to the need human beings have to suppress information they do not want to hear.

12. Willard Gaylin, M.D., Feelings: Our Vital Signs (Ballantine Books, 1980),186.

13. Vaughan, 6

14. Vaughan, 7

15. Vaughan, 66-70

16. Robert Karen, Ph.D., The Forgiving Self: The Road From Resentment to Connection (Doubleday, 2001), 74-80

17. See “Reading Church History,” CES Doctrine and Covenants Symposium, Brigham Young University, August 18, 1985, 28.

18. These kinds of abuses are amply documented in moving detail in Case Reports, Volume 3. See also Case Reports of the Mormon Alliance, Volume 1, 1995 (Mormon Alliance, 1996), also edited and compiled by Lavina Fielding Anderson and Janice Merrill Allred. This entire volume is devoted to cases of child sexual abuse

19. Jeffrey Holland told a General Conference audience on April 6, 2003: [P]lease be aware that the full price to be paid for...[a skeptical] stance does not always come due in your lifetime....Parents simply cannot flirt with skepticism....It won’t help anyone if we go over the edge [with our children]...explaining through the roar of the falls all the way down that we really did know the Church was true...” If parents and children cannot speak frankly in their homes, how can anyone really know what they believe? Each of us must have a safe personal space of our own in which to experience our genuine thoughts and feelings.

20. D. Michael Quinn, "On Being a Mormon Historian (and Its Aftermath),” , in Faithful History: Essays On Writing Mormon History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), e 119, ed. George D. Smith, pages 81-83. It is telling that the term “free agency” has been downgraded to simply “agency.” By deleting the word “free,” perhaps authorities think members will feel less justification to violate church rules.

21. Richard W. Paul, Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive In a Rapidly Changing World (Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1993), page 310

22. Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought (1933, Mentor Books edition).

23. For a singularly interesting and helpful discussion of listening skills, see Rebecca Z. Shafir, The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction (Quest Books, 2000). See especially chapter 9, “Listening Under Stress,” where the author emphasizes the importance of calming ourselves while we are listening.

24. Francis David, as quoted in pamphlet, “Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith” (Unitarian Universalist Association, 2006).

25. Bob McCue is a Canadian attorney, and former Mormon Bishop from a strong Mormon family. He is well-known in ex-Mormon circles due to his voluminous writings on the internet. He says that writing has helped him to put things in context as he tries to gain the most reliable knowledge available–that based on science.

26. Sterling M. McMurrin and L. Jackson Newell, Matters of Conscience: Conversations with Sterling McMurrin (1996, Signature Books), 374

27. Vaughan, 83,84

28. Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (Fawcett Books, 1987), chapter 6 “When ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Change.” Also Harriet Lerner, PH.D., Fear and Other Uninvited Guests: Tackling the Anxiety, Fear, and Shame That Keep Us From Optimal Living and Loving (HarperCollins, 2004), chapter 6 “Why We Fear Change.”

Raymond Franz, Crisis of Conscience: The Struggle Between Loyalty to One’s God and loyalty to One’s Religion (Commentary Press, 2004) 38,39, 380,381. Franz is “Former member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Franz was expelled after a lifetime affiliation with Jehovah’s Witnesses because he spoke against the many cases he saw of cruel, insensitive, and unnecessary expulsions from the Witnesses. He felt these actions were contrary to the demands of Jesus, the Bible, and human decency.

Ruth Irene Garrett with Rick Farrant, Crossing Over: One Woman’s Escape from Amish Life (HarperCollins, 2003). Garrett is a former member of the Old Order Amish, a strict group. She left because she felt women were oppressed, she had an unquenchable curiosity that could not be accepted in her religion, and she fell in love with an outsider. Her mother, siblings, and other family constantly wrote her after she fled, calling her to repentance. One letter from her uncle Earl Miller said “You know there is no hope for a banned member...Our wish is that you seek your Creator before it’s too late. And the only way we see this can be done is come back to what you have fallen from and repent and be sorry for the rest of your life.” (155).

29. “LDS Authority and Gay Marriage,” by Jeffrey Nielsen, Salt Lake Tribune, June 4, 2006.

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