Professor and author Joanna Brooks delivers the keynote "Mormon Identity in the 21st Century: Claiming and Belonging" at the 2011 Salt Lake City Mormon Stories regional conference, recorded June 11, 2011. John Dehlin introduces her as a voice from the Mormon Matters podcast, a blogger at religiondispatches.org, and the writer behind the "Ask Mormon Girl" column at Feminist Mormon Housewives — telling the room that "if you ever have a friend, Joanna is your friend" — before Holly Anderson Robbins opens the program with a musical performance.
Brooks asks who gets to define Mormonism, laying out a divide in religious studies between an institutional view of religion — membership, activity, orthodoxy — and a "lived religion" approach that locates identity in the everyday practices and feelings of ordinary members rather than church leadership alone. She walks through the "three B’s" (believe, behave, belong, in whichever order you like) and through the 20th-century correlation movement, which she argues pushed Mormons — under pressure to abandon polygamy and assimilate — to withdraw their distinctiveness into internal belief while tightening behavioral boundaries like the Word of Wisdom. Along the way she credits a scholar she identifies as Damon Smith with tracing correlation’s roots to the early 20th century, and closes by considering what that boundary-drawing has meant for Mormons who don’t fit an orthodox mold.
What’s covered
- 00:00 Conference opening and musical performance
- 07:43 Introducing Joanna Brooks
- 15:17 Defining Mormon identity and belonging
- 24:13 Correlation, boundaries, and unorthodox Mormons
Related episodes: 346-347: Boston 2012 Conference with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, John Dehlin, Joanna Brooks and Open-Mic Story Sharing · 366-367: Joanna Brooks – The Book of Mormon Girl · Joanna Brooks | Ep. 112-113
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guests: Holly Robbins, Joanna Brooks
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Opening Song
Guest [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3. Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy wend your way.
Guest 2 [00:00:18] The 2011 Salt Lake City Mormon Stories Conference was brought to you by the Salt Lake City Mormon Stories Support Community, found on Facebook and also by the Open Stories foundation and by the generous support of listeners. To join or start a Mormon Stories support community in your area, please go to MormonStories.org and click on the Support Communities tab to host a regional conference in your city like this one. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com for more information on how to host a conference. Finally, to keep this podcast and all of these communities and projects alive, please donate today@mormonstories.org oh, and please enjoy the conference.
John Dehlin [00:01:07] What's not to love? Thank you, Carolyn. We're very, very lucky to have you here today. Beautiful. We will now have another musical performance by Holly Robbins. Thank you so much for agreeing.
Holly Robbins [00:01:22] There's a story behind this song, and I hope it's all of our stories. I hope it's a bunch of Mormon stories all condensed down into one hokey little country rhythm. A few years ago, well, let me go back to when I was seven. I was in second grade and I drew a picture of a bunny like you would see in a coloring book that you color. And so I drew the outline of this bunny and I colored it pink.
Holly Robbins [00:01:55] And I took it up to my. I took it up to my second grade teacher's desk and I showed it to her. And I adored her. I worshiped the ground she walked on. And she said to me, only babies outline their pictures in black.
Holly Robbins [00:02:19] And as a seven year old who, you know, loved her teacher that much, I was just shocked and so hurt. And I went back to my chair and, you know, just kind of cried. And I kind of carried that with me for a few years, you know, into high school. And, you know, and as I grew, I began to look back and think, you know, she must have been having a bad day or, you know, I didn't. I didn't know how to frame it, but I just kind of matured into it. And then eventually after I had kids, I thought, yeah, she was really busy.
Holly Robbins [00:02:48] So anyway, one day I was going through all sorts of trauma. This is five years ago with regard to my own Mormon story. And I was having some serious divine feminine things going on and thinking, I've got to reject this. And I was in a serious panic about this, just praying that what I was doing was right. Worshipping Heavenly Mother and all of this and looking for some kind of a sign from heaven. And we were in our. I was teaching a class of little children and we were doing watercolor. I had never done watercolor before. I like black lines. I like safe black lines.
Holly Robbins [00:03:26] I like to color the bunny. Dry out a picture of the bunny with black lines and then color it. That's what I like to do. And I. And calligraphy and all that. And so anyway, we were doing watercolor and I'd never done that before. And the instructor was showing us how to do that. And I was shocked at what I had turned out. It was this soft yellow sun against a summer blue sky. And it was beautiful. I didn't know that I could do that. So I went home and took it home with me. And the next day I was doing laundry or some mundane thing.
Holly Robbins [00:03:57] And all of a sudden Mrs. Miller's words came into my head. She said, only babies outline their pictures in black. And I was just stunned. I thought, I'm not a baby anymore. I don't have to live inside these safe black lines. I can live my life in watercolor. And I realized then that Mrs. Miller wasn't insulting my 7 year old self. She was instructing my 37 year old self. And I think that must have taken her a lot of faith to be able to say something that would seem so cruel for such a long time. So this song is called Summer Girl. And I hope it's every one of your stories because that's what I intend to.
Holly Robbins [00:04:43] I drew the hard line every time, but I could never get it right. It was the quintessential tragedy in my world of black and white. And then the fire of heaven came. Consumed my charcoal in the flame. It was the end of shadow black and winter white.
Holly Robbins [00:05:06] It was the world come to an end. But I'm alright because my colors bleed into the misty sunset. I cannot tell where I end off and you begin. My soul's a raging fire in the wind. And I'm not afraid to look into the sun.
Holly Robbins [00:05:39] No, I never saw a solid rainbow that appeared. God's rays of summer glory in that sky are the pains I mixed with tears. My brush flies lightly across the blue. I'm so happy and in love with you. You were the end of shadow black and winter white.
Holly Robbins [00:06:02] You were my world come to an end. But I'm alright because my colors bleed into the misty sunse. I cannot tell where I end off and you begin. My soul's a raging fire in the wind. And I'm not afraid to look into the sun.
Holly Robbins [00:06:35] I'll lightly Fall the blossoms now the leaves and glistening snow. Somehow I carry August fire Inside my sky so. Cause I'm a bright summer girl in this watercolor world? So now my colors bleed into the misty sunset and the sky I cannot tell where I end off and you begin. Oh, how we fly our souls this raging fire in the watercolor. That's why I'm not afraid to look into the sun. No, I'm not afraid to look into the sun.
Holly Robbins [00:07:34] Thank you. Thank you very much.
Joanna Brooks Introduced and Mormon Pioneer Heritage
John Dehlin [00:07:43] Our next speaker is our very own lovely Joanna Brooks. You may know her from the Mormon Matters podcast. She also blogs@religion dispatches.org it's an online religion magazine and has the Ask Mormon Girl column at Feminist Mormon Housewives. And I just want you all to know that as I've gotten to know Joanna, if you ever have a friend, Joanna is your friend. She's here for you. We love her. And I want to tell you one thing that I heard on Mormon Matters podcast that she said that may. I may or may not be repeating correctly, and you'll have to go to her and find out, but this comes from Judaism, supposedly.
John Dehlin [00:08:24] And she was talking about the three Bs, and she told me that the three Bs, Ortholas were believe, behave, belong, or belong, behave, believe, depending on which order you put them in. And one of the things I think is beautiful about this opportunity that we have is that perhaps we've been. Some of us have experienced this idea that if we believe something and we have it in our minds and we hold it in the right way, and then if we behave, then, therefore, we can belong.
John Dehlin [00:09:01] And what I love is the idea, as Joanna presented it, was to reverse that and say, first, we belong. Secondly, yes, there are some behaviors that we need to keep up with. We need to treat each other with love and respect and acceptance. We're not here to argue and fight. We're here to be a community and join each other. And then finally, what we believe, what we hold in our own heads is going to change over time. But it's up to us. And it's something that we hold and we choose as we grow, move forward.
John Dehlin [00:09:33] So thank you, Joanna, for your wonderful wisdom, and we love you. And thank you for making so many moves to help us move away from isolation towards a place where we belong and have a place to be. Joanna.
Joanna Brooks [00:09:59] Oh, heck, don't make me cry before I even get up here. Be warned, I'm a Mormon and I cry sometimes, and I have my bonnet that some of you took pictures in. Because right. This is Open Mormon Pioneers and I have this Sharpie and I'm going to ask Carolyn to sign my pioneer bonnet after, during the break because I can't think of anything cooler than a hot pink pioneer bonnet signed by Carolyn Pearson.
Joanna Brooks [00:10:28] Thank you, Carolyn. And thank you for the planning committee, Katrina and Jared and John and Ann, and thank all of you for being here. You look amazing. Do you feel good? I want to describe for the people who will be listening to this someday what this room looks like. It's this beautiful home. Was this building built, do we know? I mean, early 1900s. It kind of looks like a very small version of the St. George Tabernacle without the all seeing eye on the wall.
Joanna Brooks [00:10:57] There's gorgeous natur and high ceilings and a balcony and a lot of people who are smiling and breathing deeply, excited to be here. And they're in church on a Saturday and some of the women are wearing pants. There's two microphones. Okay. In honor of the theme Open Mormon Pioneers, I'm going to begin by telling you two pioneer stories.
Joanna Brooks [00:11:26] My great, great, great grandmother, Lucy Evelina Waterbury was born in 1833 in the very cold northern reaches of St. Lawrence County, New York. One winter afternoon when Lucy was 12, her father left her to watch over her dying mother and two younger siblings while he trudged out to a neighbor's for help. Lucy's mother, Charlotte Post Waterbury, died. And Lucy, who must have been really terrified, she really didn't feel like she could stay in the house with her mother's body. And so she took her, her two younger siblings and bundled up and trudged out into the cold.
Joanna Brooks [00:12:01] And we don't know anything about her story for about three years. And then three years later, when Lucy was just 15 years old, somehow she shows up at Nauvoo. We don't know how she came those miles. And then three years later, again in 1852 when she was 19, Lucy crossed the plains with her husband and her one year old daughter Rachel and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley.
Joanna Brooks [00:12:25] My grandmother who I love America. Pearl Thornton was born in 1919 in Garland, Utah. When she was just a young girl, Pearl's family dissolved and her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to Salt Lake City. And these were very humble working class Mormons. On the morning of her eighth birthday, with her mother sick in bed, my grandmother set out by herself to walk the long blocks down South Temple Avenue past the mansions of the prophets, seers and revelators, governors and bankers, homes where her mother had found work cooking and cleaning to present herself alone for baptism at the Mormon Tabernacle. Alone, she changed into a little handmade one piece suit of white clothing and she stepped into the baptismal font, that majestic golden bowl resting on the back of the 12 oxen.
Joanna Brooks [00:13:16] And a stranger, a total stranger, took her in his arms and lowered her beneath the water and raised her up again. My grandmother always remembered that long lonely walk and this bone soaking sense of loneliness. It pervades so much of my pioneer history. Do you find it in yours? A lot of loneliness. But I also find in these stories a great reason for hope as well. For what my grandmothers found at the end of their terrible and lonely walks was community.
Joanna Brooks [00:13:44] 15 year old Lucy Waterbury found it when she walked out of the shadow of her mother's death and made her way somehow to Nauvoo. 8 year old Pearl Dorten found it at the end of the long sidewalk in a lighted tabernacle. And a stranger, a total stranger who recognized her as a fellow Mormon and baptized her with dignity alone. A long and often lonely walk has brought me to this place, this moment. Perhaps that's what brought you here too.
Joanna Brooks [00:14:10] A walk of searching or isolation or fear or difference. But now we find ourselves here together because we recognize one another as Mormons. And in that sense of mutual recognition, that belonging, that sense of identity, many of us are finding a renewed sense of kinship or hope, new relationships, new common grounds. As Mormonism enters the 21st century, I'm going to take a moment to reflect on what it means to be Mormon, what it means to claim a Mormon identity.
Joanna Brooks [00:14:44] I'm going to speak personally as an unorthodox Mormon, and I'm also going to use some of the sinky crunchy analytical tools that come from my day job, which is not having a good time with Dan Weatherspoon on a podcast, unfortunately. But I'm a professor and I have a scholarly background studying race and religion and culture, and I've done so for the last 20 years. And I'm going to talk in some academic terms because I think thinking critically about what it means to be Mormon or about Mormon identity can create more sense space for us to tell the truths about our lives and experiences as Mormons.
Defining Mormon Identity and Belonging
Joanna Brooks [00:15:17] So what does it mean to be a Mormon? Who defines Mormonism? In the field of religious studies, there's a divide on the question of who defines what a religion means. Some scholars focus on religious institutions, churches, policies, people in charge.
Joanna Brooks [00:15:36] Others take what's called a lived religion approach, focusing on the thoughts and the Practices and the hopes and the feelings of everyday people. And according to scholars in the lived religion camp, the story of a faith tradition is not just written by the institutional powers, but by all those who identify with it.
Joanna Brooks [00:15:55] In Mormon culture and scholarship, it's been very common to take a very institutional perspective on Mormonism. An institutional perspective on Mormon identity would hold that what makes you a Mormon is your membership, activity, and according to some people, orthodoxy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And according to the most rigid proponents of this institutional view, not maintaining membership or activity or doctrinal orthodoxy as defined by the institutional church is tantamount to forfeiting your Mormonism. And some of us have kind of felt how this logic feels when someone says, you, if you disagree on Prop 8, or if you have questions about historicity of the Book of Mormon, or if you think that Joseph Smith's polygamy was a little bit objectionable and you dare to talk about it, you might as well leave the church.
Joanna Brooks [00:16:44] Or maybe you already have. We felt that. But as Mormonism enters the 21st century, this sort of institutional, all or nothing approach to Mormon identity tells only a fraction of the whole glorious story. A lived religion approach to Mormonism would say that what makes up Mormonism is a phenomena far broader and more complicated than the official record.
Joanna Brooks [00:17:05] It encompasses all of the lives, ideas, practices, hopes, fears of all of the everyday people who have called themselves Mormon in the last 175 years. All of it. It includes not just the official and the orthodox, but the incredibly imaginative, diverse, contradictory and unorthodox stories of all Mormon people. Our lives help define what it means to be a Mormon in the 21st century.
Joanna Brooks [00:17:32] Now, this lived religion approach to Mormonism is backed up by 20 years worth of scholarship on identity. Identity, experts tell us, is not something fixed, static, objective, unchanging. It's not a thing. It's not a property that can be given or taken away.
Joanna Brooks [00:17:50] It's an ongoing process. Right? It's not a property. It's a process. It's a process of assessing what we inherit and constructing something meaningful from it. It encompasses contradiction, discontinuity, change, dissatisfaction, hurt and difference, as well as joy, happiness, belonging, all of it. So to translate that idea into familiar terms, what Mormon identity is is far more complicated than than your ascent to a set of orthodox beliefs and practices. It's the story of your consciousness as a Mormon, the sum total of everything that you've invested in Mormonism over the years. It's your genealogy, it's your family, it's your upbringing. It lives in your relationship to Mormon places, from the temple to the welfare cannery to the small towns where your grandparents lived or the place you served your mission.
Joanna Brooks [00:18:41] It resides in your knowledge of Mormon history, scripture, doctrine, folklore, culture, books, food. You can't wash that stuff out right. It lives in this set of spiritual practices you've engaged in over the years, from prayer to rites of passage like baptism or endowment, Sunday worship, temple worship, scripture study, community service. It lives in your relationships, real and imagined, to God, your ancestors, your parents, the church, church leaders, the ward you grew up in, the wards you may or may not attend now, the people you interact on Facebook with and the people sitting in this room and the people who will be listening to this podcast.
Joanna Brooks [00:19:15] All of this makes up our Mormonism. The whole range of feelings we have towards everything we've experienced as a Mormon, and most importantly, the way you wake up every day feeling responsible to make sense of it. If we think of identity as this process, this process of trying to make sense of everything we've experienced as something always being worked on, always unfolding, it follows that Mormon identity is a historical phenomena.
Joanna Brooks [00:19:43] It emerges at specific moments in time, in response to specific conditions, and it changes over time. Here are some parallel examples of historical identities. There was no such thing as a black identity as an African American before the 17th or 18th centuries.
Joanna Brooks [00:20:00] People didn't call themselves black. There's no such thing. Africans who were brought captive to the Americas came, identified with different African cultures, Fawn, Yoruba, and became black after being grouped together, told they were black, and abused collectively as black people. That's how people became black. And then black people reclaimed and reinvested that category of experience with positive cultural associations. They fashioned themselves over time.
Joanna Brooks [00:20:29] Let's bring some real church to this church. All right, then. The term homosexual is a very similar identity. For queer identity, the term homosexual was coined in 1869. No one necessarily identified as a homosexual before the late 19th century. And yet we've seen how that identity, including the word queer, formerly a term of abuse, has been reclaimed and reinvested with meaning fashioned by gay people themselves.
Joanna Brooks [00:21:10] The comparatively modest queer shout out, It's okay. Don't have to be silent here. Okay. Similarly, there were no Mormons before 1830. The appellation Mormonite or Mormon originated as an anti Mormon slur. It was reclaimed and reinvested over time by meaning by LDS people, with meaning by LDS people. In the 1850s and 1860s, it was very rare for a GA in conference to use the word Mormon There's a nifty tool. Someone emailed me. Somebody at BYU put together all the conference talks on the corpus. You could search them by a keyword. Gas over the pulpit in the 1850s, did not talk about, did not call ourselves Mormons except for in scare quotes as a reference to what mobs call us.
Joanna Brooks [00:22:07] It was not something we were calling ourselves a lot. The pattern reverses 100 years later. General conference talks, use of the term Mormon to refer to a positive individual identity peak in the 1970s. Conference talks are 10 times as likely to use the phrase Amormon in the 1970s as they were in the 1860s.
Joanna Brooks [00:22:26] So we see that over time, the transit from the idea of Mormons being this hostile label applied to us by outsiders to something we've adopted for ourselves and invested with tremendous personal meaning. The cradle of Mormon identity was our migration to the American west, the Mormon corridor stretching from Canada to northern Mexico from the 1850s through the 1930s. In our lovely Deseret, we developed a sense of almost ethnic belonging based in shared communities, shared history, shared collective experiences, and Mormon kinship networks. Our relationships, including plural wives, observance and orthodoxy, did not play as great a role in fostering Mormon identity. Many a Mormon in a small town in small town Utah kept a coffee pot on the stove.
Joanna Brooks [00:23:09] Believe me, my grandmother told me so. She's from Garland, okay? And no one thought anything of it. However, with the depression, greater numbers of Mormons began to out migrate from the Mormon corridor in search of work and education. We began to live in communities where we were the minorities. And at the same time, the church expanded its global missionary program.
Joanna Brooks [00:23:29] Out migration and missionary work put new stressors on Mormon identity because the traditional proximity and intimacy of Mormon communities was changing. Mormon leaders reacted to these new stressors on Mormon identity by instituting the program we now call correlation, an effort to discipline the definition of Mormonism around a systematic, historically static set of concepts. How many of you have listened to the correlation podcast that Damon Smith. Yeah, the take. Yeah, good stuff. He was. Are you here today, Damon? You were here last night. Where is he? He was here last night. Okay, so correlation this notion. You could develop a set of terms like 75 static terms for a church doctrine that were the key words that was the core of Mormonism.
Correlation, Boundaries, and Unorthodox Mormons
Joanna Brooks [00:24:13] These key words, and both church leadership and rank and file members extended the social logic of correlation by putting a new emphasis on behavioral boundaries, like, for example, the Word of Wisdom. Identity as a Mormon retained for many of us its familiar bases in cultural belonging, kinship, place, and genealogy. But it also saw an emerging sense of something that was rooted in discipline and orthodoxy.
Joanna Brooks [00:24:37] This idea of correlation as a structuring force of Mormon identity was best explored by Damon Smith. And we'll get really thinky here for a second, and then my Mormon story is coming. This is Saturday. You don't want to be too thinky, but stay with me. Smith traces the beginnings of the correlation process to the early 20th century, when, under pressure to abandon polygamy and assimilate, Mormons adapted by withdrawing our difference into our minds. What made someone a Mormon under the logical correlation was whether or not he or she had internalized a certain kind of conformity with central church administration, mandates and doctrines, as well as a strategic adoption of language used every day, designed to protect our Mormon identity. We keep sacred right here while surviving in a non Mormon world. Does that make sense?
John Dehlin [00:25:24] Right.
Joanna Brooks [00:25:25] Keep it here. Learn to get along here. Okay? We learned through this logical correlation to monitor ourselves and others to adopt habits of speech and behavior that quietly telegraphed our Mormon identity. You know this. I call it like, you know, six degrees of Kevin Bacon. It's like three degrees of Mormon Bacon, right? Who do you know? Okay, where's your word? Got it. We learned to monitor ourselves, to adopt habits of speech and behavior that quietly telegraph Mormon identity while protecting the core secrets of our culture. Public Mormonism was always to be orthodox or correlated Mormonism, and that was it.
Joanna Brooks [00:26:02] The logic of correlated identity reached its apotheosis, its high point in the 1990s, when several Mormon feminists, liberals and scholars were excommunicated or otherwise disciplined for having and publishing unorthodox thoughts. For most the 20th century, excommunication was reserved, was a routine ecclesiastical function. And this is, I'm kind of taking from Leonard Arrington, used to either terminate the institutional relationship between the church and people who wanted to separate from the church, or, in the case of serious sin, as one step in a repentance process.
Joanna Brooks [00:26:31] For either reason, excommunications were fairly rare. The 1990s saw morphing in the use of excommunication, a very public use of excommunication to discipline members who failed, who had expressed public nonconformity with church institutional positions and processes. And there was, like, no way back when Lavina Fielding Anderson was excommunicated and yet continued church attendance.
Joanna Brooks [00:26:54] She was told the only way she could be reinstated was that she, quote, stopped thinking the brethren could do wrong. So we kind of just see in the historical record how excommunication morphed from an ecclesiastical process. To a tool used to sort of discredit or spoil the identities of Mormons who publicly were unorthodox or dissented from orthodoxy on matters of conscience.
Joanna Brooks [00:27:16] And this had profound effects, not just for the people excommunicated, but for a lot of us rank and file. Mormons came to understand over the process of the 20th century that unorthodox public expression was a threat to belonging in the community. And that has real consequences for the way that we've treated one another and defined ourselves. Many in this room have seen or experienced how Mormons, I like to say, correlate on each other or discipline one another for perceived lack of orthodoxy. And we've seen or felt the intense anger and bitterness that kind of treatment engenders.
Joanna Brooks [00:27:50] And many of us who are unorthodox in our beliefs or practices, we've absorbed deep feelings of vulnerability, fear, shame and guilt, as if we don't deserve to belong, as if we are vulnerable to being put on trial, as if our belonging in the world of Mormonism can be revoked.
Joanna Brooks [00:28:11] Thousands upon thousands of unorthodox Mormons have experienced these feelings in isolation, walking that path alone, right? Have you experienced them? There's a lot of nodding heads
John Dehlin [00:28:23] now.
Joanna Brooks [00:28:24] We're leaving the thinky. There may be tears ahead. Don't worry, we'll all get through it. You're Mormons. You know how to deal with crying. That loneliness was my world for almost 15 years. I was 22 years old when the September 6th was excommunicated. We're excommunicated. Born in the Covenant, pioneer stock, always active, highly orthodox Mormon girl, a seminary graduate, a bur BYU scholarship student, and a feminist.
Joanna Brooks [00:28:52] I had seen BYU fire my feminist mentors and punish liberal students and faculty. And I had held in my hands a copy of a top given by a member of the quorum of the 12, declaring Mormons like me, feminists, intellectuals, gays and lesbians, to be dangerous to my own church.
Joanna Brooks [00:29:07] The church of my childhood, my ancestors, my aspirations. I'd invested everything in my Mormonism, and yet I was feeling like I no longer belonged. At worse, I was a danger. And I saw the church keeping files on people like me, feminist women who wrote and published.
Joanna Brooks [00:29:27] It was only a matter of time, I felt, before they would revoke my membership, my belonging. But I continued to try. For many years, I continued to attend church. I taught gospel doctrine. I served a stake mission until the church began its formal involvement in anti LGBT equality politics in the late 90s. That's when something inside me broke.
Joanna Brooks [00:29:46] I couldn't set foot inside a chapel without crying. And I am not kidding. It was not an act. It was ridiculous. I couldn't write a sentence or two about Mormonism without crying. The fear sat on my chest. I remember sitting at my desk. I couldn't do was physical.
Joanna Brooks [00:30:04] I stopped attending church. I stopped writing about anything related to Mormonism. And I associated with no Mormons at all, except for one very gentle visiting teacher. And I have a testimony of visiting teaching. Let's just say that. And yet I did not abandon my Mormon identity and my Mormonism did not abandon me. This should be fun. But I'm crying.
Holly Robbins [00:30:29] I don't know why.
Joanna Brooks [00:30:29] I'm going to talk about green Jello.
Holly Robbins [00:30:31] Why am I crying?
Joanna Brooks [00:30:33] I convened Pioneer Day dinners for my non Mormon friends, introducing them to the wonders of funeral potatoes and my grandmother's green jello restaurant recipe. When my babies were born, I sang Come, come, you saints to them every night in the rocking chair. And I prayed. I kept praying. I prepared to pass on to my daughters what I knew. My culture, my heritage, my faith, even though I felt so alone, so betrayed, like such an exile. But I was determined not to let anyone. Oh, goodness. Unitarians don't cry. There's no Kleenex. Don't, don't. John, sit down.
Holly Robbins [00:31:17] I'm okay.
Joanna Brooks [00:31:18] I got a sleeve. I'm a pioneer. I was determined not to let anyone tell me I wasn't. Oh, don't hurt yourself.
John Dehlin [00:31:31] Thank you.
Joanna Brooks [00:31:32] I was determined not to let anyone tell me I wasn't or couldn't be Mormon. I knew who I was. I'm a Mormon. Yes, I am. And I was not an enemy to my own people. A turning point came for me in 2007, when, still not attending church at all, I very ambivalently tuned in to see the Mormons on pbs.
Joanna Brooks [00:31:56] I saw face after face of people I knew and loved. Gail Houston, Michael Quinn, Albert Peck. And I recognized that as a young feminist during the purge years, I'd lived through an important moment in Mormon history. And that's when I figured it out. Being an unorthodox Mormon did not mean I did not belong.
Joanna Brooks [00:32:20] It meant that my life experience was, in fact, an important part of the larger Mormon story. Six months later, my heart pounding with fear, I took my daughters to church. And you should see it. When Ellen, who is now 7, was 2 and she heard, like other people sing come, come, ye Saints for the first time, she was shocked. She started dancing in the overflow. It was awesome.
Joanna Brooks [00:32:46] I took my daughters to church, determined to connect them with the resources they needed to understand Mormonism, this wonderful, massive part of their mother. And as luck would have it, six months after I went back to church in California, the church initiated the Proposition 8 campaign.
Joanna Brooks [00:33:07] As a queer, positive, less active Mormon in California, I knew that I was in the vast minority of LDS people. I felt sad and ashamed and once again estranged from my community and family. But one of my closest friends, a 60 year old non Mormon lesbian, took me by the hand and said, you've got to come out of the closet. You've got to tell the truth about who you are. And I did. Especially when I showed up to work the phone bank at the no on 8 campaign in San Diego. When all the volunteers introduced ourselves, I said, I, my name is Joanna and I am a straight Mormon feminist.
Joanna Brooks [00:33:58] I felt I had to claim space for and represent the Mormon tradition I loved in all of its diversity, with its emphasis on daring to be different, kindness and hard work. Now, telling the truth about who we are as unorthodox Mormons and has costs. You've experienced them. But it also brings many benefits, and among those are the opportunity to connect with others.
Joanna Brooks [00:34:27] In my work on the no. 18 campaign, which was not tremendous. It was, you know, I showed up and did my part. I met many LGBT and pro LGBT equality Mormons for the first time in more than a decade. Thanks to this unorthodox tribe, I found my way back into a Mormon community.
Joanna Brooks [00:34:46] And in January 2010, John Dehlin called and welcomed me to the world of Mormon stories and into the podcast. Nervously, I began to tell my story. And then I started writing again. And then I met you. All of you.
Joanna Brooks [00:35:04] Along with becoming a mother to my two daughters, being heard and welcomed home by a family of unorthodox Mormons has been one of the great healing and transformative experiences of my adult life. So here we are, together. No longer as strangers on earth need we roam.
Joanna Brooks [00:35:29] You're laughing. It's never going to be washed out of you. And the great question before us is, can a broad, shared sense of Mormon identity carry us through the hard parts of our lives and serve as an anchor for being in this world?
Joanna Brooks [00:35:48] Can we as Mormons, regardless of our relationship to any institution or doctrine, pursue in the language of our common tradition, the great, distinctive, beautiful, unique Mormon tradition, lives of goodness and meaning? We are not the first people of faith, of course, who have faced this basic modernizing shift.
Joanna Brooks [00:36:11] I feel like I've become the Jewish informant for the Mormon stories people. And there are other mishpuka out there so, you know, give me a little help. But I think, for example, mishpuka is Yiddish for family, I think, for example, of Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism. In 1885, a group of American rabbis, 18, 1885 met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and developed a platform, a state of principles for modern or reformed Jewish life. They formulated a modern definition of Judaism that set aside literal Zionism and recognized the validity of other religions like Christianity and Islam. And they called on Jews to engage in acts of tikkun olam, social justice as an expression of modern Jewish identity.
Joanna Brooks [00:36:57] They rejected Jewish observances that placed an undue emphasis on ritual rather than morality. They even held a completely unkosher or traf banquet, sitting down together as rabbis to dine on clams, soft shelled crab and shrimp, all forbidden. And this was in the 1880s. It's like stake presidents having a cappuccino or worse. It's like it's big time now. I don't mean to be facile in drawing comparisons with Judaism. There's some serious thinking required here. And there are significant differences between Judaism and Mormonism. But there's a saying in Reconstruction as Judaism that Anne referred to and it gives me great hope. Belong, behave, believe in that order.
Joanna Brooks [00:37:41] It's not correlate or die. It's not that if you believe you get to belong. It's not that if you stop behaving, we may not claim you and we should give credit. There are a lot of Mormons, like even orthodox Mormons who don't live like this. But there are some who do, and some non orthodox Mormons who are really judgmental too. Let's notice that. But it is belong first. Claim your identity, claim this community, show up and put in the work and we will claim you and good consequences will follow. Belong. Mormonism is a religious tradition that emphasizes belonging. We are a tradition with a theology of bold enough to define eternity as a state of mutual belonging to one's ancestors, to one's beloved and to one's descendants.
Joanna Brooks [00:38:28] We are a tradition with a history distinctive enough to foster something miraculous, a modern form of peoplehood, belonging. And yet in some spaces, and in some moments, we've seen an incredible brittleness creep into that sense of belonging, a willingness to disown or revoke just because one of our own turns out to be liberal or gay or a non literal believer or an atheist or an intellectually curious soul.
Joanna Brooks [00:38:57] That's not the Mormonism my grandmothers handed down to me. Perhaps you've come some long miles alone. Perhaps you have been silent. Perhaps you have felt disappointed, sad, angry, afraid, frustrated, unworthy to belong. Surely there is a place in the Mormon story for all of us.
Joanna Brooks [00:39:23] As healing as it was for me to hear someone like John Dehlind say and to be able to tell my story. And I hope we'll talk about storytelling a little bit in the roundtable. But as healing as it was for me to hear, someone like John Dehlin said, I hear you. I recognize you. I claim you.
Joanna Brooks [00:39:41] Let me say the same to you, too. Clamp down the tears so I can say it. If you identify as a Mormon. I hear you. I recognize you. I claim you. I claim you. Gay or straight, liberal or conservative, white, black, brown, perfect, imperfect, active, less active, post, present, literal, non literal, agnostic, atheistic. Your story matters. You belong. We are Mormons. We may be uncorrelated, but we are still Mormons.
Joanna Brooks [00:40:13] We are open. We are open to each other. We are open to difference. We are open to the beautiful and the difficult facts of our Mormon history. And we are open to the potential of mormonism in the 21st century. Let's see what beauty we can make of our Mormon identity together. Thank you.
John Dehlin [00:40:56] Thanks, Joanna.
Joanna Brooks [00:40:57] We need you.
John Dehlin [00:40:58] We obviously need you. And we need all of you, everyone. So let's take a moment now.
Joanna Brooks [00:41:06] We'll have a break.
John Dehlin [00:41:06] We've got about 15 or 20 minutes and let's be a community. So we've got some food over here. Come partake and meet new friends. Thank you.
Guest 2 [00:41:19] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Sable Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.
Closing Hymn and Benediction
Guest [00:41:34] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy when you. Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the sand. Jo, your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, always well.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
61 Responses
I think people who have listened to this Joanna Brooks podcast are still in tears, putting themselves back together before they are able to write a comment. Joanna, your thoughts, your words which are very moving, very healing have captured my thoughts exactly and I would guess the thoughts of many others. You are indeed a Mormon, and I think your talk will help others to say proudly that they too are Mormon, owning in that part of themselves. Thank you for this podcast, dear Lady. (John, passing you a well-deserved cyber tissue : )
wow. i have seen some of the pics on FB. read some of the reviews of the weekend. i didn’t put two and two together—that we might all get to listen in, to be a part of IT. i am writing from Mexico City, unorthodoxly Mormon-Quaker. one of the first times i heard Joanna speak about Mormonism and her story, in TX in 2006, i was unmarried&pregnant and my orthodox mama was by my side, and miracles happened. first, i felt the deep tissue, long-buried parts of my heart–and my story–healing for the first time really. it was the same recognition and then the same “spirit of God like a fire is burning” feeling that i felt while listening to this podcast. and second, my mom and i talked about our mormon stories and the parts that we had avoided over the years. and in a startling unorthodox moment, tears, oh the mormon tears, her tears, my tears, my tears right now just remembering, she told me that her God would never love His children any less or any differently than a Mother loves her children and she believes with all her heart that we are an eternal family. period. there is still a lot of silence, a fair share of correlating all over each other, many of us walking lonely roads in my tremendous mormon family, but i feel so solidly like i am walking in new territory, much more like the crowded pioneer treks that populated my childhood imagination. THANK YOU Joanna, John and ALL of the OPEN PIONEERS for inviting us along!
So beautiful. Thanks for sharing, Jill.
MoSto conference in Mexico someday? :)
Jill,
You’re welcome to join us in the Lomas ward (the one English-speaking congregation) in Mexico City.
Best,
Josh
I was so, so moved by this. What a powerful clarion call. I always want to remember and emulate these words:
“If you identify as a Mormon, I hear you. I recognize you. I claim you. I claim you gay or straight, liberal or conservative; white, black, brown. Perfect, imperfect, active, less-active, post-, present, literal, non-literal, agnostic, atheistic; your story matters. You belong. We are Mormons. We may be uncorrelated, but we are still Mormons. We are open. We are open to each other; we are open to difference. We are open to the beautiful and the difficult facts of our Mormon history, and we are open to the potential of Mormonism in the 21st century. Let’s see what beauty we can make of our Mormon identity together.”
Thank you, @Joanna:disqus . You added so much to this conference, to this moment, this community. I feel so much love for you and our family community. So good to have a home with you all.
Amen, brother Jared. Amen.
If there was one podcast you could use to say, “This is what it means to be a Mormon,” this is the podcast!
I just finished listening to this podcast. I’m broken and hopeful. When I was excommunicated from the LDS church thirty years ago, it was as if I had been robbed of my faith, my beliefs, my family, and my friends. But I knew that I could not remain in the institutional church. It broke my heart, and left an empty place for me.
I don’t mean that my life has been unhappy. No, I’ve been blessed with a wonderful partner, and a full and wonderful life. But I missed the community. I missed the companionship. I missed my former wife and my children. In my living, I felt like I was on a different planet than they were on. We not only had different perspectives, we had different realities, different worlds.
So thirty years later a friend introduces me to Mormon Stories, and I listen to Joanna. I hear my own story, my own loss, and my own longing and belonging. It gives me great hope that I can reclaim my faith and my family. I’ve recently been reaching out to my children (all adults), and it’s like walking on eggshells. We talk about the weather when I really want to tell them that this old gay atheist ex-mo is Mormon to the core. I may not be their expectation of what Mormon is, but I’m part of the tribe, and always will be.
Joanna, thank you for the tears.
Amen, Happy.
Joanna, I enjoyed the talk and even the tears! I really wish I had been there, but your spirit radiated through time and space. Thank you for your enthusiasm and love.
However, I respectfully disagree with your assertion that the “Mormon” self-identification label is helpful in understanding who we are. I too come from a long list of Mormon Pioneers on both sides of my family (check-out the name link above – a book about my John L. Blythe, my maternal great-great-grandfather). My paternal great-great-grandfather’s brother was with Joseph Smith just before he was killed and is mentioned in the D&C. My ancestors on both sides sacrificed a lot for Joseph, Brigham and the Church. I am related indirectly to Desdemona Fullmer who was one Joseph Smith’s wives. We share common disillusion with our association with the Church although it was a bit different as I am a bit older than you. I went to firesides in California listening to Paul Dunn tell us his baseball and war stories only to later learn that they were false. I had a gay cousin that lost his life to AIDS who would probably not have done so with more family and church support. I have another gay cousin that has been less than accepted when he came out which cost him almost as much. Working for a Church-owned business I found that most of the GAs are paid directly from those businesses. We all have our stories. I believe that trying to find ones identity in an organization that has caused much pain is misplaced, however. One person wiser than I put it this way:
“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the skins burst and the wine is spilled out and the skins are destroyed. Instead they put new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved.”
I wrote this for a couple of recent Mormon Matters podcasts, but I think it apropos here:
Your true identity is not a label or anything that is a mental form. You are bigger than that! Labels are OK if they are functionally defined precisely but only for communication and not for self-identification. One learning I like is in the “A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose” by Eckhart Tolle. He writes:
LETTING GO OF SELF-DEFINITIONS
As tribal cultures developed into the ancient civilizations, certain
functions began to be allotted to certain people: ruler, priest or priestess,
warrior, farmer, merchant, craftsman, laborer, and so on. A class system
developed. Your function, which in most cases you were born into,
determined your identity, determined who you were in the eyes of others, as
well as in your own eyes. Your function became a role, but it wasn’t
recognized as a role: It was who you were, or thought you were. Only rare
beings at the time, such as the Buddha or Jesus, saw the ultimate irrelevance
of caste or social class, recognized it as identification with form and saw that
such identification with the conditioned and the temporal obscured the light
of the unconditioned and eternal that shines in each human being.
In our contemporary world, the social structures are less rigid, less
clearly defined than they used to be. Although most people are, of course,
still conditioned by their environment, they are no longer automatically
assigned a function and with it an identity. in fact, in the modern world, more
and more people are confused as to where they fit in, what their purpose is,
and even who they are.
I usually congratulate people when they tell me, “I don’t know who I
am anymore.” Then they look perplexed and ask, “Are you saying it is a
good thing to be confused?” I ask them to investigate. What does it mean to
be confused? “I don’t know “ is not confusion. Confusion is: “I don’t know,
but I should know” or “I don’t know, but I need to know.” is it possible to let
go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are? In other
words, can you cease looking to conceptual definitions to give you a sense of
self? Can you cease looking to thought for an identity? When you let go of
the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to
confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don’t know,
you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly
are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting
yourself.
==================End of Quote==============
Joanna, I truly do appreciate you and all that you, John, Dan, Jared and others are doing to help those of us who have been on the outside trying to find people with common experiences. My question to you: Is it necessary? I see the Church as abusive in a number of different ways and maybe it is because my experiences and leaving the Church long before your experiences that I have found peace over time and not a great need to find or be part of another group even if we have common negative experiences. That being said, thanks all who made this conference possible. It is nice to know that one is not alone, but I am not sure if I want to see it institutionalized. I don’t know who I am and “Mormon” doesn’t fit!
Glen
LOVED this. Needed this. Thank you, Joanna.
John, you have chosen a rather public approach, do you plan to make public your own story with what is happening currently with Stake and Church leaders and yourself? Tks
Is there a transcript available?
There is a group working on transcripts through Facebook but I’m not sure when this particular one might be done. Perhaps John or one of the other moderators could give us an idea…
Sister Brooks’ line of thinking may work well with a Universalist point of view, but I seriously doubt that it flies except for those hangers on that want to keep their identity as a Mormon outside of the church. By definition they no longer belong to and no longer are Mormons except in the broadest of definitions. They have left the LDSs. I am sure that the third of the host of heaven along with their leader would like to have all that Heavenly Father has, but they have forfeited their inheritance through rebellion. Many fundamentalists with an LDS identity would consider themselves Mormons, but in reality they lie outside the stakes of the tent of the church. They have no inheritance in the kingdom.
Unity is the determiner for an inheritance. Unity is the fundamental law of heaven and I would say in God’s kingdom here on earth. One can argue until they are blue in the face, but like the prodigal son, they may be welcomed home, but they have lost their inheritance through rebellion. Some seem to keep clawing their way trying to come in through some back door. The truth is that until one is ready to make a change of heart and realize that unity through God’s living prophet and God’s Christ is the only way, they will continue to experience the heartbreak and disappointment of being outside of the stakes of Zion.
To place a false claim is really of no effect in God’s kingdom. I am glad that somehow Sister Brooks finds some rest of soul in hanging on, but I doubt that rebellion will ever bring an inheritance in the Church and in the Celestial Kingdom now or in the hereafter. Sad but true.
My heart and love go out to those caught in the conundrum of spiritual crisis that fall into a rebellious spirit, The buffetings of Satan cannot be an easy path for those that have tasted of God’s Spirit and love and then fight against His church under the guise of inclusion. Church membership has never been for everyone as much as we would like it to be. It is God’s commandments and rules that prevail not ours.
Your response illustrates why I don’t think there is anything worth celebrating in Mormonism or wanting to identify as a Mormon.
And yet here you are… still lurking around Mormonism’s fringes not willing to let it all go yourself. Interesting to me.
I sincerely hope that my interest in figuring out what people do when they don’t believe anymore isn’t that interesting to a judgmental Mormon like you. But if it is, I wonder why you are here. Doubting? Can’t shake those unanswerable questions? You really don’t believe either do you?
No
Odell, not doubting. It might
interest you that we are here for virtually the same reason, “Figuring out what people do when they
don’t believe anymore.” But even
more interesting to me is what caused them to discontinue believing. No one comes into the restored gospel
without some type of conversion with the exception of perhaps a few of those
born into the church that either were not given an opportunity to have a spiritual
experience or were liars from the beginning faking their way through life as a
LDS. The same could be said of
some converts that may be liars from the beginning. All should have had some type of spiritual experience or an
answer to prayers that validated their beliefs.
The
argument could be made that when mature in the gospel they determined that they
had been lied to by those of us that believe and the founders of the faith, but
how does that explain having had that spiritual experience to begin with? Why does Momonism evoke that kind of
experience if all of Mormonism is just a bunch of hooey? Why do people turn from the light that
they had?
You’ve
made a fine list of things that you no longer believe in, but I can make just
as valid of an argument for why one should believe in them. Yes, each and every one of them, but
without boring you with the details (if you would like I would be happy to
respond to them) I will say that I have had both academic and spiritual
confirmation that they are all tenets necessary for the restored church.
Judgmental? Hardly, just proclaiming the truth as I
understand it.
God
bless in what ever your life’s experience brings.
JCH, I am not here to find out why people no longer believe. I understand that part all too well having personally gone through that process over fives or six years ago. I am here trying to understand why a non-believer would still want to self-identify as “Mormon.” And originally, I was interested in helping others who transition out of Mormonism. That was a rough journey for me to make and I could have used a sympathetic ear and some sage advise. I think this pod cast community are more interested in being considered non-believing liberal Mormons, while I am proud to call myself a former Mormon or ex-Mormon, or post-Mormon or whatever the current term is. Comparing someone to being the same as the third of hosts ejected from heaven is pretty harsh remark to make.
Good luck in dealing with your hidden doubts. I find it hard to believe that a faithful Mormon would come and listen to thise pod casts if she or he were happy in their faith. And you came across as very judgment in your reply basically condemning those who don’t view spirituality the same exact way you do.
Sorry Odell to come across as looking judgmental. I was just quoting you in an earlier post that:
“I sincerely hope that my interest in figuring out “what people do when they don’t believe anymore” isn’t that interesting to a judgmental Mormon like you.”
Your words not mine.
I can appreciate the difficulty in leaving the church. For many give there all and then wind up with a faith crisis, especially generational LDS. The social aspect of leaving let alone spiritual, in my mind, would make it very difficult. I still believe that you along with anyone else that leaves the church is left to the buffetings of Satan. Tough way to find peace although some profess that they have found peace outside of the church.
Odell truth is where you find it. I go out of my way to study anything I can about Mormonism pro and con. I am very comfortable with my faith and convictions of the restored gospel. The spiritual experiences that I have had confirm everything I believe in. Faith precedes that miracle my friend and I have experienced many miracles in my life. I would be interested to know when and where your faith left and whether you have ever had any of these spiritual experiences yourself and if so, how could you even think of leaving if you have? That I would think is turning against the light that you were given isn’t it?
You are indeed being judgmental, JCH. You repeatedly insist that Joanna Brooks or others that are in a similar situation are “rebelling”. That’s extremely judgmental.
It should be obvious to even a casual observer that such people are holding on to as much Mormonism as they possibly can. To rebel would be to pretend they believe it when they don’t.
I always wondered, if I am being judgmental when I quote Jesus: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. ;-)
Glen,
For believing LDSs they would usually use the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible:
JST Matt. 7:1–2 Now these are the words which Jesus taught his disciples that they should say unto the people.Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged: but judge righteous judgment.
I used to be a believing LDS and never quoted from it or used it as scripture as it was never authorized nor completed. ;-) Now that I don’t believe in the Church, I have a copy.
That is quite funny and ironic I have to admit. The JST is included in the LDS version of the scriptures along with the Quad. But then you probably already knew that. Thanks for the light moment Glen I appreciate it.
Vin,
You said, “It should be obvious to even a casual observer that such people are holding on to as much Mormonism as they possibly can. To rebel would be to pretend they believe it when they don’t.No argument here.
What would you call it when the leaders of the church say that homosexual sex is a sin and someone in the church says….no it’s not and openly fights to have it allowed in the church? Is this person not rebelling and coming out in direct opposition to the church and it’s leadership? This is but one example of what I have heard here in Mormon Stories and the community that it supports. Am I wrong to think that it is not some form of rebellion?
Definition of REBELLION1
: opposition to one in authority or dominance2a : open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established governmentb : an instance of such defiance or resistance
JCH, I respect your opinion on this forum, but I have to disagree with some (or most) of your statements. First off, who are you to define what a Mormon is and isn’t? Do you hold the trademark definition on what a “Mormon” is? If so, I would love to hear the complete definition. Second, God alone will determine who has “an inheritance in his kingdom”–not you. Who are you to judge who is in and outside the “stakes of the tent of the Church”? Third, last time I checked, the fundamental law of heaven and the LDS Church is obedience, not unity (see D&C 130:20-21).
Finally, and this is the most important, let me tell you why it important to remember the first (fundamental) law of heaven. Not all of those that experience a spiritual crisis of faith “fall into a rebellious spirit” nor will they experience “the buffetings of Satan.” Doubting is not a sin (don’t confuse it as such). Doubting also doesn’t automatically make someone disobedient. I highly doubt that the majority of the people on this forum are here to “fight against [the] Church.” Don’t confuse those that doubt with those that sin, hate, and fight against the Church. I agree with Odell; comparing doubters to the “third of the hosts of heaven” is a pretty offensive comment. These are the same people that fought, with you I might add, for the right to have agency (i.e., the freedom to choose for themselves) in the prexistence. I can tell you lack clarity and understanding on a very crucial doctrine of the gospel just by making such a comparison.
Complete definition of whether you are a mormon or not resides in the same questions that one is asked by a servant of God before entering the waters of baptism. This interview by one who has authority to act for God either qualifies or not entrance into the church of God and remains a bellwether as to whether you still are a member in good standing or not :
Do you believe that God is our Eternal Father? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world?
Do you believe the Church and gospel of Jesus Christ have been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith? Do you believe that [current Church President] is a prophet of God? What does this mean to you?
What does it mean to you to repent? Do you feel that you have repented of your past transgressions?
Have you ever committed a serious crime? If so, are you now on probation or parole? Have you ever participated in an abortion? a homosexual relationship?
You have been taught that membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes living gospel standards. What do you understand of the following standards? Are you willing to obey them? The law of chastity, which prohibits any sexual relationship outside the bonds of a legal marriage between a man and a woman?The law of tithing.The Word of Wisdom.The Sabbath day, including partaking of the sacrament weekly and rendering service to fellow members.
When you are baptized, you covenant with God that you are willing to take upon yourself the name of Christ and keep His commandments throughout your life. Are you ready to make this covenant and strive to be faithful to it?(The above was quoted from the manual Preach My Gospel, page 206)If you answer yes to any of the questions entailed in point four, the missionary conducting the interview will refer you to the mission president to determine if you qualify for baptism.I am not a judge in Israel, but there are Priesthood holders in positions of authority that are.Next….What is the purpose of obedience? I think it is to have unity if I am not mistaken.Next….Thanks for clarifying doubt -vs- rebellion. I couldn’t agree more. If one does not have some doubt we would probably cease to grow. It’s a fine line though with some that cross the line and become open critics and are at war with those in authority and strive to drive people out of the church not unlike Odell who has through his own words lost faith and no longer wants to be part of the church. At what point does one become a “law unto themselves”?D&C 88:33-35 33For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift. 34And again, verily I say unto you, that which is agoverned by law is also preserved by law and perfected and bsanctified by the same. 35That which abreaketh a law, and babideth not by claw, but seeketh to become a law unto itself,…It seems to me that many presenters in Mormon stories and many of the people that comment on them have become a law unto themselves. They no longer want to be governed by any authority. They no longer want to conform through obedience and unity in the church. That’s all I am saying. Wouldn’t you say that this is at least the appearance? I look forward to your response.
JCH, I think you’re missing the broader point of this conference. There is something more to being a Mormon than getting an A+ on a baptismal interview. There is more to being a Mormon than “aceing” a temple recommend interview. If I were to leave the Church today and completely resign my membership, I would still feel and consider myself Mormon. It will always be a part of me. It was how I was raised, and it’s my heritage. That’s my point. And you’re right, you are not a judge in Israel, and neither am I, so I’m not going to judge how obedient or unified other members (or ex-members) of the Church are. If they want to call themselves Mormons, then more power to ’em.
I will say this though. Listening to the talks in this conference, I definitely see a group of people who have agreed to “take upon them the name of Christ”–regardless of whether they still have their membership or not. I think that is the most important part.
Thisiscrazy28,
No I got the jest of the conference. By the way, I loved Sister Brooks’ and Sister Pearson’s passion in their presentations. My question is simply, at what point does disagreement become open rebellion and one not be recognized as a LDS? According to Sister Brooks’ assessment if I understand her right is that all I have to do is want to be identified with mormnism or even if I don’t and have had exposure in the past with Mormonism, I am one. Which begs the question in my mind at least, when do you become unrecognizable and to use the word of many at the conference “uncorrelated” or no longer united with the LDSs? In my mind, at some place there has to be some kind of unity to be part of the LDS church. I would suggest if you are in the church and not in rebellion against the church that you are. If you are in open rebellion than even if your membership has not been challenged, maybe not. I think the church is pretty unique in that there is qualification for membership in the church as well, I might say, that same uniqueness in needing to qualify for God’s kingdom. Those that want to buck that authority stand on thin ice in my opinion.
I know in Judaism for instance….eh…once a Jew always a Jew. But does that apply to the restored gospel of J.C.? I am not so sure at least to my understanding of what the scriptures say and what the brethren have said.
Look at the children of Israel when there was a dispute and some had the appearance of rebellion by making a huge altar for all to see.
Joshua 22:10-34 What kind of altar is Mormon Stories? I believe that it is still developing, but…
22The Lord aGod of gods, the Lord God of gods, he knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, (save us not this day,)
23That we have built us an altar to turn from following theLord, or if to offer thereon burnt offering or meat offering, or if to offer peace offerings thereon, let the Lord himself require it; 24And if we have not rather done it for fear of this thing, saying, In time to come your children might speak unto our children, saying, What have ye to do with the Lord God of Israel?
Are the people at this conference willing to sit down with the brethren and offer a sacrifice on an altar that is not a symbol of rebellion? If not I would say that they are no longer Mormons. They fight against the Lord and His church .
What do you think?
What do I think? I think you’re wrong. Let me tell you why. You asked a simple question: “My question is simply, at what point does disagreement become open rebellion and one not be recognized as a LDS?” Here’s the simple answer for a devout member such as yourself: When that person is excommunicated by the Church. If the LDS Church believes (as you apparently do) that Joanna Brooks, John Dehlin, or Carol Lynn Pearson were in open rebellion or “fight[ing] against the Lord and His Church,” then they would have been excommunicated. Since they haven’t been, they, and all of the Mormon Stories community, can obviously continue calling themselves whatever they want.
I think we can agree on that with one exception. Usually not always, but usually when someone earns a disciplinary council for doctrinal issues, that person apostatizes long before the council is held. In other words the brethren are very patient in those situations. At least that has been my experience. I live in Colorado City, AZ, we have a few of those doctrinal issues down here.
I find this fascinating. You obviously know a lot about the Church. It would be interesting to have a face to face discussion with you. It’s difficult to do here. It it is safe to say though that many, many faithful, knowledgeable members of the Church, in leadership or not would have strong disagreements with you on many points.
But there aspects of this that, I think, are pretty straightforward.
First, ‘Mormon’ is an informal title and it not officially linked with being a member of Church .
Second, I am free to self-identify as a member of the Church as long I am on the rolls of the Church, regardless of what I believe or whether ‘I’m united with the Saints’. As long as I am on those rolls, and no one can remove me without me requesting it, except in the case of excommunication, I am a member of the Church. I still fall under the stewardship of my local unit and they are still responsible for my welfare and should be providing me with the services such as Home Teaching that are part of their responsibilities, even though that often doesn’t happen even if one is very active. That’s what the handbook says.
Third, as far as my standing in the institutional Church goes, whether I am in good standing, on probation, or disfellowshipped or excommunicated is strictly between me and the priesthood leaders who have stewardship over me.
It’s not for anyone else to define or judge. Unless I am excommunicated, I have full access to the companionship of the Holy Ghost to the degree that I live worthily. I work out my salvation with fear and trembling before Him and Him alone. I must live by the rules of the institutional Church of course, but in everything else it between me and the Lord. People observing me are free to their opinions about the path I take to find my way to my place in eternity, but it’s my path and He is the only judge. That doesn’t mean that I can do it alone. I can’t. I have to learn how to practice the Gospel in all it’s aspects, but how I understand the Gospel and apply it in my life is for me to judge in consultation with the Lord. No one has the right to interfere with that, unless I break the rules of the institutional Church.
Fourth, as far as the use of the informal term Mormon goes, it can, in my opinion, be defined in many different ways. For example, regardless of my standing as a member, I would most likely self-identify as a Mormon because both sides of my family are members of the Church all the way back to the beginning and were involved in nearly all the major events of Mormon history. My great, great, … great grandfather was baptized by Sidney Rigdon. He lived in Nauvoo when Joseph Smith was killed. He had four wives and he is my great, great … great grandfather on my mother’s side and my father’s side through different wives. It’s my heritage. It’s part of what defines me. It’s part of who I am. No one, even in authority in the Church has the authority to tell me how I can use that term.
And as another example, from my dreadful days of living in Utah, I know there are countless ‘cultural’ Mormons who don’t believe anything sincerely and do nothing but go through the motions that still call themselves Mormons.
Fifth, one can clearly have a broad range of opinions on a great many things and be an active, faithful participating member, in good standing. No one is qualified to determine what their standing is before the Lord.
As a clear personal example, I just received a new temple recommend. I told my branch president
and the counselor in the stake presidency that I was answering the
questions honestly with the disclaimer that by answering, I was exercising my faith in those
things, not because I knew them, or even believed them yet but I was
working on it. I was, in fact at the point where I was
putting the entire thing to the test. They accepted that without hesitation
as being sufficient to quality for my recommend. Immediately after that, much to my surprise the Stake President extended the call tof Elder’s Quorum President in my small branch in Europe. He only wanted to know two things. Did I have a temple recommend and was I worthy. I answered yes, but I felt that I needed to go further. So we had a long talk. I was very clear with him that I did not have entirely orthodox or literal beliefs and that I had many doubts and questions and that I have not worked out. I told him that I believe there is a large gap between what is taught, what is believed and many of the facts of history. I said that I thought there were some these could not be reconciled and that the only way to accept them was on blind faith in the face of contradictory evidence. I told him that I had had a serious crisis of faith in the previous months and had almost turned to atheism. I made it clear, that I was, in effect an ‘uncorrelated Mormon’ but that I was working to develop my faith. That was considered by my him, who has the sole authority and the stewardship over me in that calling, to be enough to qualify me for the job.
Clearly, not all leaders would be so ‘liberal’.
Now I believe that I am worthy. I believe that I am in harmony with the Lord at this point in my life and that I am doing my best to improve. I believe that I can carry out my duties in my calling with integrity and do a good job. And my leaders confirm that I am doing a good job.
I would say that a lot of the people in this community fall into my category or similar.
But, If you were one of leaders, I question whether I would be in the calling that I am. Or have a temple recommend.
If you have issues with that, if it were appropriate, which it is not, I would give you their contact information to you so that you could discuss it with them. I also know of people who are in leadership positions who do not live up to your standards, but who have been vetted by those who have stewardship over them.
All that being said, as I said above, I do have serious concerns on issues where I have found no satisfactory resolution from any source. Not FAIR, not the Maxwell Institute, not any other knowledgeable Church member that I have been able to locate.
Without adequate answers to these issues, in my opinion, it is *impossible* to believe in many aspects of the Church literally. Some these issues are foundational. Some of us who want to remain Mormon *and* be members of the Church have had to courageously grapple with these issues and find a way to deal with them. Some leave. Some are forced to take a ‘liberal’ approach as a result, or in some other way reconcile the irreconcilable. Some exercize blind faith despite the facts, but my experience is that there are very few of these. Once you are exposed to some of these facts, the dominoes began to fall and there’s no way back. You can’t un-know them.
And this is only going to increase, especially with the young technologically literate. All you have to do is type Mormon into Google and it’s all there for anyone to see.
I really hope you, or someone, does have answers for these issues.
In fact this was the single
biggest issue discussed at a recent leadership meeting I attended. Members are asking questions right and left about these issues and no
one knows how to deal with it.
The
Church is not forthcoming with them.
It would help me and many others to find a lot more peace of mind in our beliefs and it would save a lot of people from leavi
So, the bottom line is, if you have answers for these issues then, by all means, let’s talk.
If you don’t then I don’t see that you have a basis for judging what is orthodox, what is liberal, who is a Mormon and who is not.
Regardless, in my opinion, you have no basis of any kind for establishing standards of judgment of any kind beyond your own stewardship.
If you disagree I suggest that you take it up with those who have stewardship over you.
Jonbill,
First, I certainly do not consider myself to be an authority on anything. Meeting issues in the church head-on is my approach rather than sweeping them under the rug. Perhaps you missed the upshot of my question:My question is simply, at what point does disagreement become open rebellion and one not be recognized as a LDS?It sounds to me like you are working and doing your best with the understanding that Heavenly Father has provided for you or for what your capabilities of understanding have merited you. You certainly are not fighting against the church, in my opinion, based on what you have shared. So, how would you answer my question? Especially now that you are in authority in your Elders Quorum?To respond to your points:First – I don’t disagree with you. Hence, the term “Jack-Mormon” and lots of other derivatives.Second – No problems here. I hope as Elders Quorum President that if you feel the need to have Home Teachers that you assign yourself (through your Bishop) one that will do the job. I’m trying to be funny here! (-;Third – Totally agree with you. I hope that I have not insinuated anything lessFourth – I don’t believe that heritage makes you a Mormon. It’s more what you do with that heritage as in staying true to the faith that matters in my mind. However, it makes you at least a person with a Mormon heritage. By the way, a bunch of my cousins and siblings sat down with our aged Grandfather, a Patriarch and faithful LDS all his days that spent most of his life in Utah and asked him this question, “G’Pa if there was any advice that you could give us to help us in this day and age, what would it be.” He responded, “GET OUT OF UTAH!” Now why do you think of all things he could have said that getting out of Utah was so important? As I heeded his advice I found out. I imagine that you have found out too.Fifth – You have no idea how pleased I was to here you say that you were honest in your temple recommend interview. You have my utmost respect dear brother. I just renewed my recommend. I never answer all encompassing questions without asking my Priesthood leader what his understanding of those questions are. When asked, “Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?” (I live the in home-base of the largest FLDS polygamous sect in the US. I affiliate everyday with them) I ask my Bishop & Stake President what their understanding of “Affiliate” is. If it matches mine I feel like I can answer that I do not affiliate with them and feel honest in saying so. They are the judge in Israel. If it is wrong in the Lord’s eyes they will be held accountable, not me.I agree that the brethren and the church as a whole are grappling with the information age. I disagree with you that the church is not forthcoming. The information is and has been available to all that have an interest and have wanted to slog through it. In this day and age it has been a lot easier. I think the larger problem has been that the church or brethren are inundated with the enormity of the task of all the historical stuff that has been in the possession of the church and other places. I feel confident there are satisfactory answers to all of our historical and doctrinal questions. Unfortunately too many members give up seeking and forget what brought them into the faith to begin with. I do not fault the brethren for their emphasis in putting on the best face of the church to the members and the public. I do not consider this to be not forthcoming.This is getting way to lengthy, but I would love to speak to you in whatever forum you feel comfortable with. Let me know how and where by responding to this post.
I do think that we agree on many things and I’m glad about that. There are things that I don’t agree with, of course. For example, when I say that the Church is not forthcoming about certain things, I do not mean that it is dishonest or hiding things. I mean that it only goes part way in explaining things, at least I hope that’s the reason. I agree that it should put up a good face (though I’m somewhat uncomfortable with the slick, business-like, PR polished image) But, It gives the impression that maybe there aren’t really answers and I don’t agree with you on this point. I don’t think there are adequate answers for many things. I often ask ‘If such and such a person knew what I know, would they still believe?’ My wife assures me that somebody, somewhere knows about these issues and has the answers, but I haven’t found them. They are not coming from the Church through any official outlet. If there are answers then why be silent? Regarding, Joseph Smith, for example, the Joseph Smith Papers Project is a good start. If the Church were to pull the plug on that project, I and many others would have serious problems over it. But the Church certainly has the resources to do more. If there are answers, then why isn’t it doing more about other problematic issues and leaving those of us who are really struggling hanging? Is this intended to be a test of faith? Do we really need to be left so much in the dark that some of us are having to stretch faith to the breaking point? No one is more willing to commit and work and sacrifice and serve than I am but It’s a constant struggle for me.
I need to be able to reconcile these things in a way that I can live and serve with integrity with conflict sapping my energy. Everyone has stress limits and exercising faith has costs and people have no choice but to budget that cost. It’s a material world and most of us have to make a living. I can’t keep my balance if I’m required to exercise faith to such an extent that it’s net cost is more than I can afford. So if I have to ‘liberalize’ my beliefs, by, for example, letting up on believing that the Book of Mormon is authentic history in order to reduce the cost then I might have to do that. But that may be just knocking over the first domino and at some point it becomes unmanageable. It’s a very difficult balancing act. There are a couple of reasons why I even try but I won’t go into that here. Sometimes I would just like to blow it all off. But there are reasons why I can’t do that.
Now, I’m not criticizing the Brethren. I’m with John Dehlin that this has got to be the hardest job in the world. Yet a very conservative leader might think that if I’m discussing my issues in public that I’m promoting an unorthodox position. They might want to talk to me about that. That might even be grounds for discipline in the minds of some leaders. Fortunately, it’s not for mine. I like what you have said about how you handle interviews. I’ll take that to heart. But I’m not even talking about the distortions of enemies of the Church. I long ago had to develop the critical thinking skills to sift through that. I try to go to the primary sources for the facts and derive my own conclusions. And there are things that don’t add up and there are not adequate explanations for them. The only apologetic resources that even try to address these issues are the Maxwell Institute and FAIR and their answers are not adequate on many points and are often even embarrassing. There is a laundry list of things that don’t add up and I, along with many others would love clarification, if there is any.
If you listen to Richard Bushman’s podcasts on this site for example, toward the end he explains that he ‘chooses’ to live in a world where prophets talk to man and that he looks for goodness now rather than truth. I have found that that is an invaluable help, but I still stumble and fall back to asking my question which is symbolic of many of the issues: ‘Where are the horses?’
The plan of salvation is a beautiful thing and exaltation, is, in principle, worth any amount of work or sacrifice. I’m highly motivated to solve these conflicts and to help other do the same. My wife is just able to believe and not question. My mind has never worked like that. I’m a scientist by nature. On the other hand, I have a pretty high tolerance for ambiguity and I deliberately make an effort to keep open questions open. I do everything I can to balance all of this and it is still a strain. My brother is much like me in that regard and finally left the Church over similar issues. I really don’t want to lose the battle. But I, like many others are not finding the answers.
So, that’s as far as I want to go in public. I would like to talk to you. I’ll think about it and see how we can arrange that. It’s difficult to find a way to transition from the anonymity of a public forum like this to something private. I don’t want to public post my email address, for example.
Hmmmm….. Horses! I thought you were going to give me a tough one. Something other than FAIR or the Maxwell Institute offer. Okay, I’ll give it my best shot.
First I do know that Nephi road a horse because I know what the horses name was. “Untoyou” That’s right “Untoyou. Text proof. Have you not read where Nephi says, and I quote, “Wo, Wo, Wo, Untoyou”???
Now for the rest of the story. On the journey across the ocean the group ran into the “Bermuda Triangle” (by the way, that was one heck of a storm in the crossing) altering the space time continuum. They lived on about 500 square miles somewhere around Palmyra, NY undetected from the other inhabitants of the area. Through unrighteousness they were gradually exposed to the other inhabitants but only to see their remains and eventually they engaged the Mulekites who were caught in the same type of storm around the Bermuda Triangle. Then when the last prophet dies all of the evidence of their existence is swallowed up or taken back into the anomaly of the “Bermuda Triangle” and found in a cave that disappears except to spiritual eyes.
Well what do you think? I know, sounds better than some of the stuff you read at FAIR or the Maxwell Institute. For the most part though I think they do a pretty good job of LDS apologetics. Sometimes I think our brothers and sisters in the church try too hard to explain some things that are currently unexplainable.
Now that I have lost all credibility, I think you are safe in following Bushman’s lead in following the good. If it is true that we are going to be judged by how we treat our fellow man, then I cannot think of a better place to do it than in the church following and doing the good for the living and the dead while looking forward to the day when all truth will be circumscribed into one great whole. For me, I have a great conviction that no one comes into this church without some kind of answer to prayer and spiritual manifestation and that it is what we purport it to be. The restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I have never understood how returned missionaries can leave the church after serving two years or eighteen months of their lives watching people that they have never met before change for the good by getting answers to prayers. Oh well…. I guess according to Sister Brooks it takes all kinds and they can all call themselves Mormons.
Very thoughtful, Jon. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks John. I wish that I had prefaced my comments the same way. Jonbill’s comments were “Very Thoughtful” and I was rather flippant to begin with.
Complete definition of whether you are a mormon or not resides in the same questions that one is asked by a servant of God before entering the waters of baptism. This interview by one who has authority to act for God either qualifies or not entrance into the church of God and remains a bellwether as to whether you still are a member in good standing or not :
Do you believe that God is our Eternal Father? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world?
Do you believe the Church and gospel of Jesus Christ have been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith? Do you believe that [current Church President] is a prophet of God? What does this mean to you?
What does it mean to you to repent? Do you feel that you have repented of your past transgressions?
Have you ever committed a serious crime? If so, are you now on probation or parole? Have you ever participated in an abortion? a homosexual relationship?
You have been taught that membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes living gospel standards. What do you understand of the following standards? Are you willing to obey them? The law of chastity, which prohibits any sexual relationship outside the bonds of a legal marriage between a man and a woman?The law of tithing.The Word of Wisdom.The Sabbath day, including partaking of the sacrament weekly and rendering service to fellow members.
When you are baptized, you covenant with God that you are willing to take upon yourself the name of Christ and keep His commandments throughout your life. Are you ready to make this covenant and strive to be faithful to it?(The above was quoted from the manual Preach My Gospel, page 206)If you answer yes to any of the questions entailed in point four, the missionary conducting the interview will refer you to the mission president to determine if you qualify for baptism.I am not a judge in Israel, but there are Priesthood holders in positions of authority that are.Next….What is the purpose of obedience? I think it is to have unity if I am not mistaken.Next….Thanks for clarifying doubt -vs- rebellion. I couldn’t agree more. If one does not have some doubt we would probably cease to grow. It’s a fine line though with some that cross the line and become open critics and are at war with those in authority and strive to drive people out of the church not unlike Odell who has through his own words lost faith and no longer wants to be part of the church. At what point does one become a “law unto themselves”?D&C 88:33-35 33For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift. 34And again, verily I say unto you, that which is agoverned by law is also preserved by law and perfected and bsanctified by the same. 35That which abreaketh a law, and babideth not by claw, but seeketh to become a law unto itself,…It seems to me that many presenters in Mormon stories and many of the people that comment on them have become a law unto themselves. They no longer want to be governed by any authority. They no longer want to conform through obedience and unity in the church. That’s all I am saying. Wouldn’t you say that this is at least the appearance? I look forward to your response.
Why is it important to be considered or labeled a “Mormon,” correlated, orthodox or otherwise? I find no use in it anymore in my life. My heritage is Mormonism, but I am NOT a Mormon.
If one does not believe in the literalness of the First Vision;
If one believes the entirety of the Book of Mormon is fictional 19th century writing;
If one does not believe that John the Baptist, or Peter, James and John ever gave any powers or authority to Joseph Smith or Oliver Cowdery;
If one believes that Joseph Smith did not receive a single authentic revelation;
If one believes that Smith and his successors spoke in the voice of deity only to manipulate followers;
If one believes that there is no New and Everlasting Covenant and Nauvoo era temple ordinances were not only highly Masonic but also a reason to keep polygamy secret;
If one believes that the LDS church was a racist church for its exclusion of blacks from the priesthood and continues as a racist institution for not apologizing to blacks and for not giving significant leadership position to blacks;
If one believes that the LDS church is a highly sexist organization which deprives women of equal partnership; and
If one believes that the LDS church is bigoted by assisting in furthering anti-gay propaganda, legislation, and misinformation;
Then why “reclaim Mormonism?”
I am ashamed of having been Mormon. I am bewildered by my ancestors’ motives. I do not have a heritage to celebrate. Those who cling to Mormonism as a self-identifier must have had a different experience than me.
Mormonism for me, is only worth celebrating of the was a First Vision, if temple marriage was real; if there was a restoration of heavenly power and knowledge. If not, Mormonism is no different than Scientology.
I would never fight to belong to a group who despises me, hates me and views me as a cancer.
So for those who view themselves as “uncorrelated Mormons,” I ask: “Why is it so important to you be considered Mormon?
Is Mormonism worth saving, and if it is, what is it to you?
If you really believe this, why even bother to post? Interesting to me.
JCH thanks for helping to point out who belongs on here and who doesn’t.
You add absolutely nothing to the discussion.
Sorry that I disappointed you. I will try harder in the future to add something of interest to you.
Odell, one of the primary tenets of this group is that we are not here to “reclaim” the Church, “save” the Church, or create a new Church. This is a just a group of very diverse people who want some sort of forum and support. It’s also about raising awareness.
I agree with JCH, your posts are very paradoxical. You no longer want to identify as a Mormon, yet here you are, on a Mormon-related forum, passionately commenting on Mormonism. I would encourage you to listen to the first part of this conference. In Part One, Carol Lynn Pearson quoted Carl Jung’s idea of coming to terms with your ancestral religion. Jung felt that the psyche is weakened by not making peace with one’s ancestral religion. I’ll spare you a full Jungian analysis, but I will state that you commenting on this post is one of the ways that you are coming to terms with your heritage (much like the attendees of this conference are coming to terms with their heritage). “Coming to terms” means different paths for different people. Some will stay in the Church, some will leave the Church, and some will find other unique and individual paths. I respect your path and wish you the best of luck on your journey.
I listened to the pod cast at the request of someone associated with Mormon Stories. I am asking my above question in an attempt to understand others who are similar to me but who still need to be labeled Mormon or who want to be included in the Mormon tent.
I am quite content in being an ex-Mormon. I enjoy listening to some of the pod casts because it helps me understand my journey away from Mormonism. I find myself less involved every day with my Mormon past.
I enjoy learning about human nature.
I would still like an answer of why people who no longer believe in unique LDS claims and tenets still want to be considered as Mormons?
Odell, I can’t speak for the people who have your exact beliefs, but I will speak for myself. First off, I do share some of your disbelief (though I do not share all of your disbelief). Hell, I’m not sure I even know what “belief” is anymore (and mine is continually evolving). I question many of Joseph Smith’s claims as well as his intentions. I see many of the dark parts of our history that you mention: truth claims, polygamy, racism, sexism, etc. I also see a Church that has continued to evolve and change over the course of 170 years (for good and bad, but mostly good). While the Church has had many suspect leaders and members, they have also had millions of amazing members and leaders. That is the heritage that I am proud of–the members and leaders behind the scenes. I’m proud of the pioneers who faced such great persecution because they truly believed in the teachings of the Church (many of them beautiful teachings) and the leaders and members that helped to raise me in the Church.
I respect those that can entirely walk away from their Mormon heritage: to never speak of it, to not teach their kids about it, and even to fight against it. However, I’m just not one of those people. I’m very proud of my Mormon past and heritage. I still want to attend Church with my family because of the great organization that it is today. I love the auxilliaries of the Church. I love to listen to General Conference. I even love the Priesthood (especially as it relates to the family). I’ve weighed the pros and cons of raising my children in and out of the Church, and I have decided, for myself, that raising them in the Church is the right choice for me. Does that mean I will teach them things that I don’t believe in? Definitely not. I plan on being very honest with my children about the flaws and checkered past of the Church; however, I also want them to see (and benefit from) the good that is in the Church.
I don’t see how I could walk away from being a Mormon. I’m a multigenerational Mormon. Even if I left the Church I would still be a Mormon. The best comparison is, although imperfect because we are not an ethnic group, is that I am a Mormon like a Jew is a Jew. I can’ un-Mormon myself. I would have to walk away from six generations of ancestors, everything they did, which was mostly positive, and how it has shaped my life and me.
This is beautiful. I cried so hard my contact popped out! Thanks Joanna.
The line that stuck with me the most (besides the one Jared posted above) was when Joanna said, “Mormon identity is…most importantly, the way you wake up every day feeling responsible to make sense of it.” It’s literally what I think about the most during my free time. It’s why everyone’s stories are so fascinating and important. It’s what John has been talking about in every podcast. That was very well said.
I don’t believe in the purpose or direction of the club.
I don’t believe in doing what the club does, nor do I accept club leadership decisions.I don’t believe that the club is of use to me or anyone else.
I think the club bylaws are not for me.
I think that the members of the club are (silly/wrong/awful/not as enlightened as I am).
I don’t want to participate in the club, or pay club dues.
But I *really* want to put that I’m a member of the club on my resume and business cards, and tell my neighbors that I’m a member.
and (stomp) *YOU CAN’T MAKE ME STOP* because I claim it as my own!
¿ ((O.o)) ?
Hey N.,
Mormonism isnt just a club. It is a people, a culture, a heritage and something that is so interwoven with your life that you cant just leave it like some bunny breeders association. Its a part of you and a defining factor to your identity.
Henning
Oh my goodness, this talk was abolutely beautiful in its clarity and compassion. It was difficult to maintain composure hearing Joanna talk about singing ‘Come Come Ye Saints’ to her babies. The talks from this conference from both Joanna and Carol Lynn have given me a small measure of hope that I too might find my own place in the Mormonism tent, but not have to compromise who I really am and what I believe, as fluid and ever-changing as that is. Thank you so much for making this available for those of us who weren’t able to be there!
Thankyou Joanna, I can’t stop crying. Amen and amen!!!!!
I hear you JCH. I agree.
Amazing.
Joanna,
I had been meaning to listen to your talk for weeks now and yesterday as my husband and I were driving home from the Oregon Coast I was able to have some quiet, down time to really listen. It has been a rough couple months for me working through my Mormon identity. I have gone in cycles my whole life of being able to ignore or have the screaming of the cognitive dissonance in my heart and head. Recently I’ve had more extreme turmoil for various reasons.
I really needed to listen to this yesterday. I have felt everything you express in being an outsider in my community (doctrine question, political issues etc etc). I have often wondered what it would be like to step away for a bit and see how it felt to take some of the pressure off. I just don’t even know what this would look like?? My Heavenly Father Loves Me naturally comes out of my mouth as I rock my 10 month old to sleep. I can’t help it. I really identified with your feelings about your daughters and Mormonism. I am so much a Mormon. All of my insides. It is in my DNA. I love this community. But sometimes I don’t know if it wants me??
You words truly affected me. You were articulate, wise, and brave. I was moved to Mormon tears :) Thank you for sharing yourself with us all and telling your story so people like me don’t feel so alone.
Aimee
Wow. That was amazing. It’s a little weird to be tearing up at work but I guess it’s all good.
Joanna almost convinces me that I could ignore the things about the Church that I have issues with and start attending again. Then again maybe not. I can at least engage more with people like those at the MS SLC Conference.
I’ve probably given Joanna some grief in my comments on RD but must admit that I’d be proud to identify myself with any group she is a part of.
Thank you, Joanna.
You truly have a Christlike heart, Joanna. THANK YOU for accepting us…ALL of us! I’m basking in a spirit of love and warmth.
I am a “selectively open” celibate gay man serving as the clerk in a stake presidency in Idaho. For most of my life, I have felt the fear of rejection from my beloved family, my beloved BYU, and my beloved Mormon faith, which kept me silent and suffering for so long. But thanks to crusaders like you and the Mormon Stories family, there is a changing Mormon culture where I am now happily serving the Lord without fear. I serve in a indispensable way in my stake, as I offer a set of talents nearly perfectly suited to my calling. I am so grateful to be on the inside and not on the outside looking in. The Church needs people like me.
I am slowly gaining courage and being more open and willing to share my story. I, like you, feel so much love and acceptance for EVERYONE. But one of my frustrations is that I am perceived as so “perfect,” so pious, and so valiant, that marginalized members may feel uncomfortable approaching me or being open with their struggles, which I would very compassionately accept and deeply understand. I’m sure I can overcome that by being more open myself. Thank you for your example to me!
Jeff,
I’d love to have you on the podcast if/when it works for you.
Thanks for sharing your story.
John
Dear, sweet Joanna Brooks…BEST. EPISODE. EVER.