How could you best describe why someone decides to join the church?
I understand why people who were raised mormon, stay mormon. If that is all you know, and you were indoctrinated into that belief system, it is going to be a challenge to lose that. Many on here are naturally skeptic, or we have a desire for knowledge that many mormons don't have. Some have had bad experiences with church leaders that led them to question whether these "men of God" were really people worth following or listening too.
I guess I try to put myself in the living room of someone when the missionaries come knocking. What gets them to decide that a wacky religious dogma that submits you to the morality of highly questionable people from its past, as well as the Gang of 15 of today is right for them?
If anyone has any thoughts, especially those that served missions or were converted, it would be good to hear from you.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2012 07:26PM by archaeologymatters.
I've heard that people use religion to satisfy an emotional need to belong. My MIL for example was a young single mother who needed a sense of purpose in her life, my friend had verbally abusive parents and I think she craved the love of a Heavenly Father because she hadn't gotten loved well at home. Besides that, converts don't get all the nitty gritty details about Mormonism, but a picture perfect sample of eternal families. I think it all boil down to an unsatisfied emotional need.
My convert daughter was a child who always needed someone to hold her hand in new situations while she got her bearings and felt brave enough to be on her own. When she went to college, she needed someone to hold her hand again but she didn't want it to be me anymore. Plus, she was tired of being the odd-girl-out among her mormon friends.
She is a smart girl but somehow managed to ignore all the negative because she really wanted it to be true and she really wanted to fit in. I think if she had not met and married her BIC husband, she would be out today.
This, pretty much. I converted because most of my friends were a bit older than me and off at college already, including my significant other (who is now my spouse). My brother, who was always sort of the golden child, was a year behind me in school and my parents were so proud that he'd honored their wishes and gone to a Catholic high school, whereas I went to a regular old public school. He was going into his senior year and they were busy looking at colleges and whatnot. I guess I was just sort of bored, as dumb as that sounds, and I wanted to see what was out there. I thought the LDS Church would offer a good way to make friends and offer a way to do charity work. I converted more for the social aspect than anything else, because I always thought a lot of the BoM was scientifically inaccurate. It wasn't until I was "in" that I realized how closed-minded the leadership was and how completely racist and homophobic the church was and is.The doubts started within a few weeks of getting dunked and I was trying to get out within a year. I also had no idea how hard it would be to get out. This all happened right before the Internet was widely available; there's no way I would have joined if I'd been able to investigate more carefully ahead of time!
My parents joined in the 60's/70's and my Dad has always talked about how he was so impressed with how organized the church was, and that they seemed to trust him so quickly in leadership positions. My Dad loves to be in charge and he loves order. The Mormon church provided a perfect environment for him to feel important.
It doesn't help that until the internet was available, converts or those investigating the church did not have a variety of resources available to them to make a truly informative decision. All the dirty, gritty details were tucked away from their view.
I've also heard of many families that have joined the church after suffering a loss of a family member. The whole "eternal family" concept is just too good for them to pass up, and they'll do just about anything to hold on to hope of seeing their loved one again.
I left home the first time the summer between my Jr. and Sr. year of highschool. I met an LDS family with kids from 2-20 and was kind of adopted in. There was always a plate for me at dinner, I loved to play with the little kids and hung out with the ones close to my age. The mom was down to earth, hardworking, but funny and kind. The type of lady I wanted to be. I went to church with them because I was living in rural middle of no-where population 200 and church was something to do and scored me an hour ride into town.
Between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college, I was searching. I remembered those good times and felt like I was a better person when with the family mentioned above. After spending another summer near them, I decided to really search out the church. Went to YSA activities, institute classes, missionary discussions. I did have kind of a hard time with JS and the BOM. I heard the milk before meat, develop faith, delving too deep, need to understand the basics. I finally was baptized on a Thursday and went with the YSA's to the temple to do baptisms that weekend.
In retrospect, I think part of me just wanted it to be true. part of me wanted to believe that by accepting the package I would become what I wanted to be. Part of it filled a need I had to have something spiritual (I guess I'd say I was raised agnostic), to have a comfort to hold on through death and general difficulties of life.
I didn't have access to factual information and did not try excessively hard to disprove the church. The people who did try to "destroy my faith" were more fundamental type Christians who claimed mormons did not believe in god or jesus - and to me that was just a dumb argument. I wish someone would have came to me with facts, not theological differences of opinion. Of course they would think their church was better than mine because I thought mine was better than theirs!
What I hate most is how stupid I feel today for the choice I made then.
Wow - that is almost EXACTLY how my story played out. I converted at 22, right after college, when I was rebuilding my life and really looking for something to belong to, spiritually. I was raised going to church once in a blue moon, and TSCC seemed to have so many more answers than any of the churches I had been to previously. I regret that I didn't conduct extensive online research first - as that surely would have at least compelled me to think about it more - but, thankfully, I decided to do so about two years later... Shortly after that, I was out. Sadly, it also took that long for me to see that my spiritual, emotional, and social weakness (at the time of my investigation) were what led me to even begin to believe the lies.
Lucky you for figuring it out. It worked pretty well for me overall - moments of bureaucratic crap pissing me off - but I invested quite a bit into it for a long time. Something like 13-14 years. Then almost overnight I learned all this history and it just crumbled apart. The hardest part is feeling betrayed and anger at the waste of time.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Once I started doing some serious digging and got my eyes opened, I was out within two weeks. I just didn't want to waste any more time. Even though I didn't lose nearly as many years as you did to it, I still often wonder what else I could have done/accomplished in my life with that time... And I'm still upset at how selfishly TSCC took it all.
Oh, and I was pretty deep into it myself -- had a few callings in those couple of years, and was often handed multiple "assignments" on the side due to my "worthiness" (ugh, what a joke).
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2012 03:19AM by Lyrical Sage.
I think I was just looking for something to believe in and I was meeting a great group of kids. I wanted to believe it.
It's only now that I look back and realize that I'd spent 30 years trying really hard to convince myself. I was convinced at some times more than at other times, but I really spend that time working on convincing myself.
I'm an uncomfortable atheist, but it was finally time to face my true skeptical self and admit what I really was, even if I so dearly wanted to believe.
My daughter converted due to lovebombing and it was HUGE....25 kids- at least 3 times I was aware of....once in my own home....not doing Mormony things that time. They were just loving her.Like she didn't get love here. WE all had a great family here and she loved doing things with us.
Then she fell in love with one of those lovebombers. The rest is history....it took them over three yrs.and pressure from his family after she moved to another state.... to get her to convert....and a bankrupcy after marriage put the icing on the cake for her to do it. I think it is always a personal problem someone has that causes them to be swayed. Just my opinion. I know my daughter and can't imagine she loved that Temple. At least she married civilly first.
It wasn't the door-knocking missionaries that converted me. It was my cousins. I was 12 at the time and going through puberty. I was also painfully shy so I wasn't able to make friends all that easily. My cousins were my closest friends at the time since I grew up with them so naturally, I trusted and believed them. A few days after my parents had a huge fight and I went running for cover at my cousins' house, my cousin called me up and asked me if I wanted to go to girls camp with them during the summer. It was a prime time to lure me in to the cult because I was depressed and I had such low self esteem. This was my first time camping. That factored in to my confusing the peace I felt from being away from home and being in the outdoors for the spirit. After I got home, I converted. I really believed it even though I disagreed and thought Joseph Smith was a pervert but I pushed those thoughts aside because I so desperately wanted to belong somewhere.
People convert because they need something in their lives and they're so desperate to fill that need, they will cling to anything. I clung to the cult up until college when I grew out of my shyness, made friends, and after my parents worked to improve their relationship the sake of me and my siblings. I finally had a reason to look into my questions and doubts and after reading here, I cut the church out of my life.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2012 11:53PM by liberalbutteffer.
liberalbutteffer Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > People convert because they need something in > their lives and they're so desperate to fill that > need, they will cling to anything.
That was my mom. She was an only child who was unusually close to her mom, since her dad abandoned the family. Then she married my dad, who was never there for her because of his career. She heard about Mormonism as her mom was dying and got baptized several months after her death. She needed a parent, structure, someone to help her raise her kids (she admits the kid part) and a purpose. Instead of looking at her life like she's been sidelined by my dad and forgotten, she feels heroic because of all the ancestors she's saving with her temple work. I don't want her to find out the truth of the church - she's in her 70s and it would just be too hard.
I, on the other hand, was looking for that perfect Mormon family. I had to go through a year of hell realizing Mormonism could never provide the family image they sell, after I was married mind you, to break the mind-hold the church had on me. Once I realized what I was clinging to was an anchor, not a life raft, I was able to let it go and the door was open for me to find out the truth. I would have rejected the truth before - run from it even - just because I was so desperate to cling to the idea I could have that perfect Mormon family. Ironically, after I let go of the idea the church had the answer for me, I realized they were actually destroying my ability to have a happy family. Sigh.
I was nuts and needed a shrink but joined the church instead. Finally Found the psychologist 13 years later when I left. But no, I didn't look or seem crazy on the outside, but sure was on the inside.
Many of the people that I taught in the mission field who converted to the church were "looking for something meaningful" in their lives. None of them seemed crazy to me; just searched for and found a church that fulfilled them at that time.
I joined at 18 and was away at college. I was feeling lost and seeking a social outlet. That was in the early 90s - at the time the internet wasn't readily available. I think things are much different now with the availability of information on the internet.
My mother converted because she was afraid of the world. My father was an idiot who needed a submissive and frightened woman he could dominate. Any intelligent woman could see right through his "priesthood power." The priesthood is a kind of a foreskin for the mind, you know. It should be held back.
So how did I come out of that mess? My mother's parents were atheists, and I learned early on that they had a lot less grief in their godless lives.
I was in love with a guy who didn't tell me until our relationship was at the "I love you" stage that he had been investigating the Mormon church and knew he wanted to join. I started taking the lessons with him and got baptized the week after he did.
I knew in my heart I didn't believe in a lot of what the Mormons taught, but I didn't want to lose my guy. We got married in the Washington DC temple, and we were married for 22 years. For the first 15 or so, I tried so hard to be a good Mormon wife. A combination of turning 40 and realizing life was passing me by and I was not happy with the church OR the marriage, and in 1997 getting the Internet and learning a lot about the church I never knew, led me to eventually leave both.
My 4 adult kids are not in the church at all. My ex still believes but doesn't attend.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2012 01:02AM by DebbiePA.
In my case, it was because I was dating and later married a TBM, so I joined because I felt that I would lose him if I didn't convert. I quit going to church the Sunday after I filed for divorce, which was less than a year after I was baptized, so I never made it to the temple. Fortunately, we never had any children, so I was able to completely cut my ex out of my life.
outofthere is absolutely right. I was 19, almost 20 (now 22) and was at a very rocky spot in my life. My parents were divorced, I was recovering from an eating disorder, and I was living on my own. I loved living by myself, but I felt that my life was sort of in shambles...I was still a teenager and I still felt like I needed someone to parent me and tell me what to do. I wanted a sense of belonging. I guess you could say the church was kind of what I needed at the time. There was also a guy involved. I slept with him and ended up getting pregnant, so I felt like I somehow "owed" it to him to get baptized. I have no idea why I thought that...haha it's so completely irrational! Anyway, almost 2 and a half years later, I have no desire to be mormon. The church was just a phase for me. My testimony was never very strong at all. I don't want anyone micromanaging my life. I want to drink wine with my family. I want to make my own decisions and be true to myself! I'm so happy now :) sorry for the long story.
I wasn't raised going to church, I am the youngest of 7 children, I was partying a lot at 15, I felt a little lost and left out, so when those cute missionaries knocked on the door and showed some interest in ME, I was all over it. I was ready to change my ways, my parents were OK with it, and I really wanted to marry that horny missionary. My activity lasted about a year and a half. Being the only religion I was ever exposed to, when some missionaries came knocking many years later, I was curious again. When I went back, I felt a familiarity. I got a calling in RS so quickly it took all my time. After 2 years, I was released and stopped going to church that next Sunday. That was 4 years ago. I'm still on their lists, and I still entertain the missionaries, but thankfully I have pulled my head out if my ... Oops, out of the sand, and see TSCC for what it really is. I will NEVER allow my son to be exposed to the things so many of the folks here have had to endure.
1. A cry for help. Some people join a cult, or islam, or a fringe politics movement, to get the attention from people they love.
2. Attention sluts. Some people just enjoy being part of a smaller group outside the mainstream. Some of them become gothic music fans, others mormons.
3. A community. With some people, love-bombing really works. And they want to love-bomb others too.
4. Infatuation. Sister Dreamy Gaze getting baptized by Elder Jock and Elder Hug.
5. Pressure. "I promise you it will all make sense once you are baptized".
6. Inferiority. Some people feel worthless, et voila, up comes a group that wants to recruit you to their club, the one true church, the funkiest gentlemen's club in this world and the next.
7. Marriage. A lot of the people above mention this, but out where I live, few converts married a BIC mormon. Lots of investigators met at the church, however, and spiralled down together Sid and Nancy or Blake and Amy or any other couple of lovers who get hooked on dope together.
When it comes down to it, My conversion was for social reasons
I was tracted, by missionaries, around my own age (Despite being from a big family, I was the youngest, by several years) and they seemed to be able to empathise with my own situation (where's a rolleyes smiley when you need one). I went along to see what it was like, and got caught up in the social frenzy of a vibrant YA program.
I gradually went form being a social attender to a TBM, and stayed like that for quite a few years
My case? Mormon hotties and my hormones. Of course Mormon hotties, because they're Mormon, get all regretful afterwards and eventually it all goes bad.
Only then did I start looking at the actual beliefs and history and came to the only rational conclusion possible when one quits looking at the women and starts looking at the Mormon Church itself.
1- I knew nothing about mormons. Two sisters came to my door and shared their testimony that there is a prophet on the earth today. I was like wtf? I had to know what the hell they were talking about.
2- I have a long history of depression and anxiety and they happened to come to my door days before I was hospitalised. I was in a prime state to be converted.
3- The milk was alright. But the meat they gave me after being baptised was completely obnoxious.
4- I stayed because even with my shy awkward self, lots of people wanted to be my friend. Except that every time a new visiting or home teacher was assigned, the old one would magically disappear. It took me a few times to figure out they weren't really my friend, they were just fulfilling their calling at the time.
Several friends (with now TBM families) have flat out told me they joined the church back in the '70's because ME and MY FAMILY WERE SUCH A FUN HAPPY FAMILY and they wanted to be like us.
Sheesh. We weren't being happy to convert anybody. And I already as a teen had a ton of doubts about the morg. But dammit we WERE a happy family and I can't change that.
WE were happy NOT because we were LDS, but because we were happy people in general. My mom's inactive siblings had happy little unreligious families. My convert dad's non-mo siblings had happy little non-mo families.
I feel like I ought to apologize to the people we inadvertently converted.....
Anyway, many people convert because they think the gospel will improve their lives and they ASSUME happy people are happy because of their religion.
Also, some wards I've been in have a much higher conversion rate than others and it seems to me related not to the gospel but to the culture of a particular ward.
SLC likes to think they control everything, but I've moved around a lot, and every ward is unique. Some of them are a lot of fun, some not so fun, some hideously disfunctional. And just like in Catholic churches the experience of religion for people does NOT come from what the prophet or pope says and does but from what the people in the ward or parish are doing.