Last night, two Mormon men unexpectedly knocked on my door and asked to “visit with me.” They took me by surprise, since I haven't had any contact with ‘the church’ in a long time, and my web searches for a graceful way to handle this situation somehow brought me here.
I was raised in a Mormon family with pioneer ancestry, and I also spent three miserable years at BYU, not feeling the spirit, before graduating and moving to Japan to teach English. There I met and married my Japanese husband, which was not the easiest thing for my family, but we have remained reasonably close. I stopped attending church for a couple of years, but did go back for about 4 years after we moved to the US, mostly because my Buddhist husband wanted the kids to have some understanding of Christianity. He was happy to volunteer in the nursery, and he realized that attending the Mormon church also helped our family to connect with the American relatives. I still visit Utah and my family about once a year, but haven’t lived there since I turned 21. I think that did make it much easier for me to gracefully fade away from the Mormon lifestyle without drama. For the many questioning young people I see on this site – it can and probably will get much easier to make the choices that feel right as you become more independent. You should, however, pick your spouse and friends carefully. You need people who can love and support you no matter what you ultimately decide about religion. That’s not always easy for people, especially in Utah – feelings run high on both sides of the Mormon divide.
I finally stopped attending church for good about 6 years ago, after my then 12-year-old daughter and I had her first interview with a new bishop, in a new ward, about her entry into the Young Women's Program. We were told, when assigned a meeting time, to wear dresses as a sign of our respect; we did, even though we had come straight from dance class and work on a Wednesday night. It was as ridiculous as the discussion. We sat in his office for 30 minutes while he told her, repeatedly, that she should be focused on a single goal: to grow up and marry a returned missionary in the temple. He encouraged her to pray for that several times a day. It was the same message I heard almost weekly at church in the 1970s. At special biannual women's meetings, we were also told back then that being a working mother was evil and wrong; unless the husband for some reason had died or was disabled, his role was to provide for the family, and the wife's role was to raise a righteous generation. This may be right for some families, but I have seen first-hand cases where talented, intelligent women gave up all career aspirations, and went on to struggle unnecessarily with depression, low self-esteem, and severe poverty. I don't believe my daughter would be happy with the limited goal the bishop wanted her to set, and I myself have no regrets that I failed to achieve it. I instead have had a successful career with the support of a loving spouse. I believe I owe my ability to set goals and achieve them to the Mormon women who influenced me in my youth and the goal-setting portion of the Church Young Women's Program, which was truly brilliant, so I do have some positive feelings about growing up LDS.
My own mother was a quiet "feminist" who felt much better about herself because of her part-time job, and had a fairly equal relationship with my dad. She didn't take a public stand on women’s rights or argue in church, but at home, she expressed serious frustration with the way the church had treated a friend who had joined Mormons for ERA. This woman was quiet, intelligent and thoughtful, and played the organ at church services. When her affiliation with the group became known, she was told by her bishop that she would no longer be allowed to play music, pray, or talk at any formal church meetings. What threat her political opinions and desire for equality posed for the organ music, I'm not sure, but clearly, they felt she needed to be "contained." It was an uncomfortable time for women like her and my mom, and for "feminist" leaning teens like me, since we were regularly lectured on why women should have their own "separate" sphere. Watching the experiences of Sonia Johnson, we learned that we needed to be careful of what we said or did, if we wanted to remain fully accepted by the Mormon community. It was almost a relief when the amendment failed and the issue was no longer regularly the subject of intense discussion. I am sure that many open-minded California members felt the same way about the Proposition 8 (anti-gay marriage) campaign a few years back.
While the ERA failed, the women's movement did not. The girls I teach in my college classes have very different expectations of themselves than I or most of my classmates at BYU in the 1980s did. I haven’t spent enough time in church to comment on young Mormon women today – though I do have a couple of younger friends, BYU grads and very active, who lamented that they were completely unprepared for real life. They experienced a great deal of stress and dismay when temple marriage didn’t bring a Cinderella-style happily ever after, but instead a whole new set of challenges that generally included figuring out how to earn money or live without it. In many areas where I have lived, it is financially difficult to survive on one income, and many Mormon women I have known work, though it's hard to avoid feeling a little conflicted about it after being raised the way we were. Even I have been affected. At one point, I was doing a nationwide job search and posted my resume where it was sent to BYU, among other colleges. A male faculty member, impressed by my research, encouraged me to come and meet the department, and sent me a longer application form. Then I looked at the required essay, which asked me to describe how I could serve as a role model for the students. In spite of my academic accomplishments, my dedication to community service, and my interest in being a teacher, I felt that nothing I could say would make me seem like an appropriate role model for young Mormon women in the eyes of the church. After all, I would be a married mother of two young children working full time. That in itself went against what I was taught.
I did take a teaching job, but not at BYU. At the time, my family and I attended our East Coast ward on a fairly regular basis, mostly due to the enthusiasm of my husband, and some very wonderful members who truly did bless our lives. My spouse isn’t a native English speaker and I don’t think he paid much attention to the lessons; I was constantly frustrated but held my tongue when I disagreed with statements made about the role of women, people of other races, gays, or how non-Mormons would not be admitted to the Celestial Kingdom. I guess I am a coward, because I didn’t ever argue. Angry as I was, I didn't even tell that bishop how very wrong I thought he was to stress that single goal for my daughter. Walking out of that meeting, the two of us knew, almost without speaking, that neither wanted to go back.
Instead I bid the bishop a calm farewell. I politely avoided most church contact, although I occasionally did agree to see my visiting and home teachers, just to be nice, until I moved. After that, I hardly ever thought about “the church” again. (Tip: if you don’t want to be found after moving, keep your phone number unlisted, don’t allow your family to send you any church-related publications and never contact BYU – I ordered a copy of my transcript and 3 days later they were at my door). I helped my daughter set her own goals, and six years later she is training with a professional dance company while attending a good university. I think that’s better than a temple wedding for an 18-year-old. I hope someday she finds a wonderful partner if she wants one, but I don't care about that partner's religion, race, or gender, as long as she or he is a good person. I regret that our experience made my daughter so bitter about Mormons, and that she missed out on the many positive things the church has to offer. However, I am happy that she won't struggle as much as I have with depression and guilt, because she won't be burdened with the church's ideas about proper gender roles. And so many other things.
My youngest daughter is now 12. She has little memory of attending church, except once or twice, while visiting relatives. When the home teachers (or area missionaries, or whoever they are) dropped by, she and her father didn’t experience the same sinking despair I did. They thought it might be fun to find out a little more, maybe have some debates…
I just can’t do it. Not anymore. I really don’t even think of myself as Christian, since I’m pretty sure a truly just God would just reward good people regardless of the religion they happened to be surrounded by during their lifetime. Some of the ex-Mormon websites I discovered over the past few days have highly entertaining suggestions for dealing with church outreach efforts (flash your breasts at the missionaries… soak them with water pistols while shouting that this is a baptismal rite to wash away their sins…). Tempting, but these are probably good people who deserve to be treated with reasonable consideration. I know that many of my relatives, visiting/home teachers, and missionaries truly believe (or want to believe) the that LDS church is “true” and they sincerely want to help unbelievers, either because they care about them or because they see it as part of their duty and a way to earn blessings for themselves. They really can’t change those feelings, and I don’t want to try to change their minds about religion, or be constantly blowing them off, or rude, so I looked online for help getting off the list.
Wow, what a difference the internet makes in connecting people. There was a time when I might have found great comfort in the online ex-Mormon community; too bad the internet didn’t exist in my teens and early 20s. Even now, reading those posts, I recognize from seeing my feelings mirrored by others how very deeply being raised a Mormon affects you, how some things become ingrained in your thought system and how painful it can be to question and to leave. I see why I fight feelings of bitterness and still have occasional flashes of anger. It’s the kind of thing that makes sense only to others with similar experiences. Having heard endlessly from childhood that the Mormon church was lead by living prophets who communicated with God and taught the truth of the everlasting, unchanging gospel on earth is what makes it so hard not to be completely cynical when confronted with “convenient,” often unacknowledged, changes in church doctrine – even when it’s a change I personally approve of. During my childhood, the Mormon church became much less racist, finally even allowing blacks to hold the priesthood and conveniently forgetting its “history” as soon as possible. Now, looking at the new official website mormonsandgays, I see the groundwork is being laid for a more “politically correct” policy in that area too. A dear friend, excommunicated in the 1990s simply for telling the bishop he was gay and couldn’t change that, is probably happy that people are being encouraged to express love and compassion towards family members who come out as homosexual, but somehow I don’t think it erases the way he and others were treated by the church and its members. The new approach is a step forward but still doesn’t promote full acceptance. I don’t think God’s views on race and sexual orientation have changed; much of the world finally has become as accepting as I like to think God is, and the Mormons are reluctantly following. I’m hopeful, but not really optimistic, about LDS attitudes towards women. Recently, I attended a service at a nondenominational Christian church in my neighborhood. As the sacrament service began, I realized that the bread was being distributed by both men and women of all ages, and my reaction completely surprised me – I began sobbing. In all my years in the LDS church, I had never thought to wish I could participate in priesthood ceremonies like the sacrament or blessings. I took it for granted that it was a man's role. (And who wants more church work, anyway?) But accepting that bread from an older woman, I saw that symbolically that church was declaring that women were just was capable, worthy, and spiritual as men when it came to the sacrament. Contrast that with the recent advance for LDS women - finally being allowed to give one prayer at general conference, and it seems that from a feminist perspective there is still a long way to go. I think it will be very interesting to see how the new mission rules affect women in the church. I believe that many more sisters will choose to serve, and will grow in confidence as they become capable persuasive speakers and meet the challenges of living far from home. Some of them will end up leaving the church as a result of personal growth; others will become even more spiritually attached to the LDS faith. The common marriage dynamic of my generation - inexperienced young 19-year-old girls marrying returned missionaries a couple of years older and immediately becoming mothers - will die out, and more "equal" marriages of people with the same mission experience and age will become the norm. Perhaps this will encourage a quiet groundswell of change and people will embrace greater gender equality, bringing the church into the modern world. The sad thing is, even though I would welcome the change, I am likely to still see it as hypocritical and insincere after all the rhetoric I had to listen to growing up. I don’t think I could ever go back, no matter how much change occurs.
I still believe there is good in the church, but I don’t want to argue with people, and I don’t want to bite my tongue. I just found the instructions for resigning my membership, but I know that if my mother ever found out she would be deeply distressed. My father died recently, and while neither of them were hard-core TBM, she is hoping its true enough that she’ll see him – and me – in the afterlife. So I have instead written a letter to my current bishop asking to be put on the no-contact list. I have a second copy by the door in case my visitors return, with a plate of cookies ready in the freezer to soften the bitterness of complete rejection. Really, I don’t see how they can take it personally since we’ve never actually had a real conversation. If my wishes are disregarded, then I will just formally resign. Perhaps I will never be truly free until I take that step, which I intend to do after my mother is gone. Living away from my family means we don’t face any regular pressure from them and they are unlikely to think about our salvation very much. I am at peace with my decision to leave, and for the most part, with the LDS church. I have not found a new “religion” but I have a strong set of moral principles and enjoy thinking about such issues by becoming better acquainted with other churches and philosophical works from different cultures and time periods. I hope that those of you struggling with questions, anger, relationships and frustration can eventually achieve a state of comfort. Reading through the stories of others here, I have gained a strong appreciation for what a struggle I have been through over the years to find my own “truth” and wish I could help others to let go and move on.