Leaving the Church and Telling Family

John Dehlin [00:00:00] This is mormon stories. I'm John Dehlin. So I'm imagining that for my listeners who are in the church and contemplating options, the thought of resigning their membership is terrifying, and their projection of what they might feel after they've resigned is horrifying. What was it like for you guys?

Mary Danzig [00:01:15] Well, for me, it was actually a huge relief because all of a sudden I felt like I. Like you said, having the axe over my head, it was gone. I knew that they couldn't do anything to me anymore. I mean, it was terrifying. It was horrible to go and tell my parents that I was resigning from the church. It was such a painful, painful thing to tell them.

John Dehlin [00:01:38] How'd they take it?

Mary Danzig [00:01:40] Well, I think they took it really well. I mean, it was really painful. My mom was crying, and she was wondering what she'd done wrong, that this had happened and everything. But ultimately, they love me, you know, and my dad, his belief system's a lot looser than my mom's in some ways. And I think he feels like. I mean, he's told me that he doesn't think that I have to be a member of the church in order to be with our family again. And I'm not sure that my mom is quite at that point, but in her mind, I think she resolves it by feeling like my daughter was terribly hurt and she had to leave because she didn't feel safe, and so someone else will pay for this, and it'll all be okay in the end. It's been painful with my parents in a lot of ways. It's been painful for them. It's been painful for me. There have been ways that I felt like they couldn't support me that I would have really liked, but ultimately, I think they did really well. But it is scary. I mean, there are people that I saw in the grocery store, especially at first, where I'd turn around and go the other way if I thought they hadn't seen me, just because I was terrified what they would think of me. There's friends I've been terrified to talk to, so you have that element. But two years out, I have to say that for me, personally, I'm more at peace and I'm happier than I've ever been in my life. I feel free. I feel. I just feel like the world has so much more color. I feel like the only voice in my head now is my own voice. I used to have all the voices of the general authorities. Oh, you've got to do this. You got to go break bread. You've Got to go do your family history or whatever. And now I feel like it's just my voice. And I haven't, like, gone off the deep end and tried to do terrible things. I want to be a good person, but I don't feel that pressure all the time. That. So for me, it's been good. I mean, it was terrifying. But for me personally, it's the best thing that ever happened to me, even though it was the most painful thing ever.

John Dehlin [00:03:48] What about heaven and the afterlife and your eternal marriage and your covenants and your sense of meaning and purpose that religion gives you? What about all that?

Mary Danzig [00:04:02] Well, like I said in the beginning, my conviction about God always came from this really strong spiritual impression that we're supposed to love our neighbor and that we should love God. And that never really changed for me. And as I saw the church behave in a way that didn't fit at all with what that meant to me, it just wasn't true to me anymore. I mean, the things I love about the church, but I couldn't. There's no way that I can't wrap my mind around the idea at all that my salvation rests upon decisions that priesthood holders in the LDS Church make about me or my worthiness. It makes no sense to me. And if there is a God, which I feel like there's a God, but I don't really know if there's a God. What I have felt, my spiritual feeling, is that God is loving and he loves all of us. He's not punitive. And so my sense is I actually feel at peace because I used to worry about, oh, my gosh, I gotta help that person. They might not make it to Celestial Kingdom. And now I feel like I want to help people just as much as I ever did. But I don't feel like that they're going to go to hell, because I don't feel like anyone's going to hell. I feel like we're all on a journey and we're all trying and we all need to help each other. So actually, my sense of the afterlife is really at peace now. I feel like, okay, if there is an afterlife, I think it'll be just fine. I think I'll be with people I love. And if it's not, if there's no afterlife, I won't be conscious to know it, so it won't really matter. So I really feel at peace.

John Dehlin [00:05:37] Peter, how'd your parents take it? How'd your family take it? Answer the same questions I've asked Mary.

Peter Danzig [00:05:43] Okay, if I get off Track. Just remind me what they were my parents pretty good on the whole. Dad. This brought up a lot of old wounds for him. Right?

John Dehlin [00:05:58] I can imagine.

Peter Danzig [00:05:59] And for a while, he actually felt like he had made a terrible mistake not to go public with his own story. Because the one thing when they had asked him, what do you want? Do you want an apology? And he said, heavens, no. I don't want anyone to know what you did. It's that bad. He said, promise me that you will never do this to anybody else. And he felt like he had suffered so that he could fix this problem in the church. And all of a sudden, he realized that, no, the same kind of thing was happening again. For a while, he thought, I've made a terrible mistake. I should go out and maybe I should tell people about what happened in our family and what happened to me. But he eventually had a revelation that he was not to share that with anyone. I mean, it occurs to me. Now, I didn't really talk about it, but I grew up with my dad. We knew what had happened, but I was always told, you can't talk to this. This is a family secret. You don't tell anybody about this. Maybe that's part of why I felt so strongly that this was a mistake, because they're still doing it. And I saw this pattern in families all the time. If you don't say this bad thing happened, it happens over and over. So Dad, I don't know how he reconciles it, because he feels like there is a lot of rampant corruption in the church, but he feels like it's all part of God's plan somehow. He said the other day he thought maybe God was sifting the wheat from the tares, and only those with truly strong testimonies could stand the corruption and stay. So it's interesting. Mom, she seems pretty okay with me and families on the whole. I've known Mary's family forever, too, and so that was scary. But we've all found some equilibrium. It's been a good thing. What else? That whole belief system, afterlife, all of that. Well, it's been a long time for me without a literal belief.

Finding New Community and Spiritual Paths

John Dehlin [00:08:24] You had dealt with that before.

Peter Danzig [00:08:26] I really found Mormonism. I'm a very abstract person. Mary said I'm abstract to the point of disability sometimes. So all this concrete, that Mormonism is so concrete, this is what the afterlife's like. Here's how everything works, and here's what you have to do to get there. And here's how the authority works. It was interesting because going through this we talked about our concepts of God. And my deepest connections to the divine had been for me always when I was in nature. So church had always been a little bit of a struggle because I wanted to connect to the divine and music was the way I reconciled that. Because sitting in a church just really didn't do it. Without much art around and without many of the things that really connected me to my spirituality was difficult. So it was really incredibly liberating to me to get out and to find out that I don't know. And not knowing is a really wonderful feeling because it frees me to experience the moment instead of always to be worried about the future. With an anxiety disorder, that was a disaster because with an anxiety disorder, a lot of aspects of religions in general, and Mormonism in particular, any controlling or strict type of religion tends to increase anxiety. You're always worried about what's going to happen and am I good enough? And I could let all that drop. It's been a real relief and life is beautiful. My kids ask me about heaven and I say, I think we're in heaven and we should enjoy it. Because why not? Why does heaven have to be somewhere else? I love, hopefully I'm enjoying heaven. If I can't enjoy this, how would I ever enjoy anything else?

John Dehlin [00:10:34] What about if your kid asks you? I mean, one of the biggest questions I get is if you leave the church, what about the kids? What about a sense of community? What about the programs? What about the morals? What about spirituality? How do you raise the kids? How do you deprogram them but then not destabilize them? And then how do you move forward?

Mary Danzig [00:11:09] Sorry, go ahead. It's really not as hard as I think people think it is, actually, because first of all, morality isn't something that Mormons have the corner on the corner of the market. People all over have good, decent morals. And as far as communities too, with Peter and I, Peter's journey has been to Judaism and I still identify as a Christian. And so we attend a Reconstructionist congregation and we also, up in Salt Lake, it's a small Reconstructionist congregation. And then also Jewish. Jewish congregation, yeah. And then we go to the United Church of Christ. And you take the kids there, we take the kids there. And both of those places have been very loving and very kind to our kids. And actually I think it's been fine. I mean, some people worry that and I worry, is it going to be okay to raise our kids in 2Face? But because we don't feel like they have to believe a Certain thing about God, it works fine because they get exposed to two different faith traditions. The values are very similar in Reconstructionism, Jewish Reconstructionism. In the ucc, it's a lot about that. Spirituality has a lot to do with trying to be decent and trying to be decent to other people. So, I mean, we're both very involved in social justice and things like that. Actually, you know what? Church at both of those places is so much more fun. Our kids will talk about how primary was so boring and they'd have to sit in sacrament meeting for so long. And you go to ucc, you have an hour service during which they have a children's time where the children come up and they have a special lesson for the children that's really fun and participatory. They have a children's corner and it

Peter Danzig [00:12:59] allows the adults to connect with their inner child.

Mary Danzig [00:13:02] And they have a children's corner where they have things for the kids to color and books to look at and toys and where the kids are allowed to move around more without you getting looks from anybody, actually. And then they have Sunday school for the kids afterward, which only goes for an hour. And part of that time, especially with the younger kids, is playtime and craft time and a short lesson. So it's actually a lot more kid friendly. And then the adults get to go and get to know each other and socialize and eat donuts or whatever. And in the Jewish congregation, it's also been great. They've taken a lot of interest in our kids.

Peter Danzig [00:13:40] Yeah, it's very similar, really.

Guest [00:13:43] And

Peter Danzig [00:13:47] both groups are really democratic, very safe. There's a sense, like the United Church of Christ has a sense that each really similar to Mormonism, each person is a voice of God and that we value all those voices and that we move together as a group and we come together and we value the differences in perspective. It's a little different in that there's no authority really whatsoever. The leadership is there to support a community dialogue rather than to tell us how things are. But both are really empowering. Your kids will have morals. I think one of the damaging things that you find happen in abusive relationships. And I'm going to talk about some of these things in terms of abuse and that might bother some people. And I would invite you to sit with the discomfort of that. I experienced it as abusive, and so I sit with the discomfort of that whenever I think about it. And so I would invite, if you find some of these things I'm saying to be hard terms, just understand it reflects my experience and I invite you to feel that discomfort. And maybe you don't have to agree with me that you can feel my discomfort that way. In an abusive situation, you often find the abuser telling the person, this happens to us sometimes in religions where we're taught, I was taught growing up, you can't control your sexual drive. If you get in a compromising situation, you won't be able to stop. Well, people stop all the time. People also don't stop all the time. People just do stuff. And we get taught to be afraid. I got taught to be afraid that you won't be able to control any of this stuff. You'll just. But you know what? People are just, I think, generally good. And the kids that end up having no morals, or I wouldn't say no morals, but the kids that end up in a lot of trouble on drugs, they generally have a profile. It's been researched in psychology. They have parents that aren't involved enough sometimes, or there may be family drama that leaves them with a lot of psychological pain that they're medicating.

Navigating Mental Health and Relationship Challenges

Mary Danzig [00:16:12] Mental illness.

Peter Danzig [00:16:13] Mental illness is another one. These are all things that have nothing to do with religion. There are many beautiful things available in Mormonism. The thing that I would say is maybe a valid concern is where do I find a community that fits for me? I find that a lot of people struggle with that, particularly if they don't feel comfortable going to another faith tradition. But there are plenty of opportunities. Find something you love and find the people who love it and get together. And I just really haven't experienced that. And people ask me too, are you able to do service without the church? And I think, yes, I didn't break stride. I might be doing more now than I was then.

Mary Danzig [00:17:02] Well, and actually, both the communities we're involved in are very service oriented.

Peter Danzig [00:17:08] I love that when I give, you can decide what you want to give. You can pay your tithing and decide what thing in the world do I care passionately about and want to help with. And I can help specifically with that.

Mary Danzig [00:17:23] Well, and kind of going back to primary, I mean, for me, it came to a point where I felt like I can't raise three girls in this church because it's a very unempowering place. And I didn't even realize how unempowering it was until I needed to have some sort of voice. But ultimately, if you're. If you are a woman, you are at the mercy of the men around you, whether or not you have any voice. And some men will give you a voice. And some men will not. And if they choose not to, you have no voice, and there is nothing you can do about it. There is no recourse you can take. And so I felt like this is not a good place to raise my girls to feel like they have any voice in this world. And now they're in places where they have a voice and also where, of course, they're being taught morals, but they're not being taught morals based on shame. If any of my girls. Of course, I don't want my girls to run around having sex with every man that comes along. But if they should make that mistake, they. They won't be made to feel so ashamed of themselves. They won't. They can just deal with the fact that maybe that didn't work out very well for them. They don't have to feel all this shame and guilt. And now God doesn't want them. And they can't even be in God's presence because God can't stand being in the presence of someone like them. They won't have that. And I don't think that that helps kids to live a decent life. They might do things out of fear, but it doesn't. Doesn't empower them to be decent people, because they are decent people.

Peter Danzig [00:18:54] And to be fair, because I think we've painted a rosy picture. There are difficult things. We went to the United Church of Christ once, and they started playing a hymn. They don't always use the organ, but they played a Mormon hymn on the organ. Probably a Christian hymn, but it was one that I loved. And I grew up in a ward with a wonderful organist and a beautiful organ.

Guest [00:19:26] And

Peter Danzig [00:19:28] to be honest, I sat and sobbed for a few minutes because I think the closest thing you could describe it to maybe is being an expatriate from your country. I served my mission in East Germany right after communism had ended. And I knew that you could love your country and yet have to leave because of the government, because I talked to people who had thought about it or had done it and come back afterwards. And so obviously there are things you love about where you came from that you aren't as connected to in certain ways. One of the things about resigning, though, for me, I know I worried beforehand. I felt a real need to protect myself. And I was worried that I wouldn't be able to resolve any of the things I still really loved.

Peter Danzig [00:20:34] But

Peter Danzig [00:20:37] it actually put it in my hands. And it was kind of a surprise to me to realize that I had sort of assumed the church owned all these things. That I loved about it. But a lot of the things that I love about Mormonism, the church doesn't own it any more than the East Germans own the soil. It's there, and if you can partake of it in some way, you know, I love the music. Well, I can still have the music if I want. A lot of what I love, a lot of my worldview, is deeply informed from my upbringing in Mormon spirituality. And so there's kind of both sides. Probably the hardest thing is that there are certain family members with whom it's very difficult to feel the same deep connection. And we all get along, but there's a little tension. That was long.

John Dehlin [00:21:37] Sorry. No, it's great. So I guess other than asking you guys to play another song, there's a lot we could talk about. The. The work you've done since. Since you're leaving the church, about the handcart thing you guys did recently. I think we should probably bring this to a close for tonight. So maybe we'll talk about that another time. Unless there's anything you want to say about any of that.

Closing Reflections and Listener Encouragement

Peter Danzig [00:22:16] Oh, sure. Let me say two things real quick at the end. For anyone who's listening, who has a story to tell surrounding their struggle with homosexuality as a friend, family, or individual, we are collecting these stories through the year and hoping to compile them. We already have some. I think at some point there's going to be a writing contest. The website is ldsapology.org and so if you don't mind us just saying that, that's out there and there's not a whole lot to say. It's a long story.

John Dehlin [00:23:00] You're right. It might go better in a different way, I guess. I want to ask you to do one favor for me.

Peter Danzig [00:23:05] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:23:09] When I started really getting into Mormon stories and I interviewed Buckley Jepsen and I created ld@homosexuality.com and I started Mormons for Marriage with Laura Compton and some other wonderful people. I was surprised, kind of stunned at how many progressive, you know, progressive LDS people would just say to me, john, I love Mormon stories. I love it when we talk about Joseph Smith, I dig the blacks in the priesthood, Masonry, and talk about polygamy till the cows come home. The homosexuality thing is not my issue. I mean, I was surprised. Like I could bring up some of these other controversial issues. A lot of activity bring up homosexuality. Silence. So, I mean, that sort of set me back to realize how far we probably still have to go before this is understood and accepted in the mainstream. Because even among my progressive friends, there's just a lot of people who don't resonate. Can you spend just a couple minutes giving your best case for why someone should care about this issue? Like a believing or semi believing member of the church probably don't have a gay sibling, probably don't have a gay parent, probably don't have a gay friend. They see this issue at a distance and it doesn't resonate with them. It's weird. It's weird. It's weird, it's creepy, it's uncomfortable.

Mary Danzig [00:24:55] I'll answer that one too.

Peter Danzig [00:24:56] Oh, I'll let Mary go first.

John Dehlin [00:24:59] You got a couple minutes to make your best friends.

Mary Danzig [00:25:01] It's very simple. And that is that if you are a member of the church, you're a Christian. And that means that you, the center of your religious practice is supposed to be trying to emulate Jesus Christ. And you know, it's all nice to talk about intellectual, whatever, but the core of a religious faith is supposed to be what that does for you as a person, as a human being, and how that affects the way that you interfaith interface with other people. And so I think if you are a Christian, you have to care about those who are disenfranchised, you have to care about those who are hurt, you have to care about those who are vulnerable. And if you start to read, if you just read some of the stories that you can find all over the Internet about what LDS homosexuals have been through, it's heartbreaking. And if you are a Christian and if your objective is truly to follow Jesus Christ, I don't think you can be silent because Jesus would not have been silent. He was not silent when people were being hurt.

Peter Danzig [00:26:19] The other side of this is

John Dehlin [00:26:22] you

Peter Danzig [00:26:23] don't know who's gay. Someone you know and love is gay. I drove past it and I think of my one friend I told you about and I think, you know, it's really not true. And I was studying this in school and all of a sudden one day I realized that I had just never known that, yes, I did have a person very close to me that very probably was gay. And the more I thought about it and the more I studied and all my professional career has taught me, you do not know who in your life has been suffering silently, intensely. And so if this isn't your issue, you should know that somebody you care about and love deeply has been silent and has not shared their suffering with you because you refuse to be compassionate to them. Not in a mean way. It's just you don't know that you're doing that. And that really struck me when I realized I had somebody in my life that I had repeatedly teased when you were getting married. He's never going to come out. But I should not increase his suffering. And I should make the world a place that is beautiful for him to live in, just the same way I would do for anybody else I care about. So that's why I think this should be everyone's issue. And if you don't know anyone, if you don't have any friends, you do. They just haven't told you because why would they? It's too scary. That's my short answer.

John Dehlin [00:28:09] Well, thank you. I just want to thank you both so much for sharing your story. It's a beautiful story. Glad to hear you're doing well.

Peter Danzig [00:28:18] We're pretty happy.

Mary Danzig [00:28:20] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:28:21] And I don't think we should end without one more song.

Mary Danzig [00:28:24] Okay.

Peter Danzig [00:28:25] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:28:25] Do you guys have one?

Mary Danzig [00:28:26] We do.

Peter Danzig [00:28:26] Should we do it down to the river?

Mary Danzig [00:28:29] Sure.

Peter Danzig [00:28:29] What did you want to do?

Mary Danzig [00:28:30] Oh, I was gonna say we could do Holly now, but.

Peter Danzig [00:28:32] Oh, let's do Holly now. Thought I was ready.

Peter Danzig [00:28:49] When I was a boy each week Sunday we would go to church Pay attention to the priests he would read the holy word Consecrate the holy bread and everyone would kneel and bow today the only difference is everything is holding

Mary Danzig [00:29:14] now

Peter Danzig [00:29:17] Everything, everything, everything is holding now.

Guest [00:29:27] When I was in Sunday school We learned about the time we just put the sea into Jesus made the water wine I remember feeling sad Miracles don't happen still but now I can't keep track Cause everything's a miracle Everything, everything's a miracle

Peter Danzig [00:30:02] Wine from water is not so small Got an even better magic trick Isn't anything else here at all so the challenging thing becomes not to look for miracles Finding where there isn't one.

Guest [00:30:32] Holy water was red bell then write my fingertips Now I have to hold

Peter Danzig [00:30:42] my breath Like I'm swimming in a

Guest [00:30:44] sea of it's the world heaven and it's like every time we do I'm

Peter Danzig [00:30:54] walking with the river and air Everything is holy now Everything, everything, everything is holy now Everything, everything is holy now Read a questioning child's face say it's not a testament that'd be very hard to say See another new morning come say it's not a sacrament Tell you that it can't be done this morning outside I stood I saw a little red wing bird she was shining like a burning bush Singing like scriptures made me want to bow my head? Cause I remembered when church let out things have changed since then. Cause everything is holy now. Everything, everything, Everything is holy now. Everything, everything, Everything is holy now. Everything, everything

John Dehlin [00:32:36] oh, holy now

Peter Danzig [00:32:41] Only now

Mary Danzig [00:32:45] Everything

Peter Danzig [00:32:47] is holy now. Used to be a world half there heaven second rate Hand me down But I'm walking with the river in air Everything is holding now. Everything is holding now.

Mary Danzig [00:33:26] O,

Peter Danzig [00:33:32] Everything is holy now.

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