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August 12, 2005
Answering My Own Question
The church's approach to homosexuality is to "hate sin but love the sinner." For a long time that was my approach to the church: I hated the sexism, the racism, the homophobia of the church; I hated its smug certainty, its foolish and self-defeating attempts to stifle creativity and questioning; I hated its more illogical and vicious doctrines; I hated and I still hate the Book of Mormon, which lacks the linguistic beauty, the human diversity and the spiritual complexity of the Bible. But I told myself that I loved the church: Loved the community, loved the heritage of sacrifice and striving, loved the hymns, loved the habits of discipline and self-control I was taught to cultivate. The problem, I eventually had to acknowledge, was that the church simply would not let me love the sinner while hating the sin: I had to love the sin as well; in fact, I had to convince myself that the sins were not sins at all, but were instead God's righteous decrees, and that by not loving them, I was the sinner.
And trips to Utah are traumatic because there, I encounter people who want--oh so generously, oh so magnanimously!--to help me see how I've sinned against God's righteous decrees, and bring me back to a fold I cannot survive in.
I am never able to attend all the sessions I want to attend at Sunstone, but there are so many I just want to run from. No--I don't want to run from them, because that implies genuine horror and fear, whereas what I feel is mostly heartsick fatigue. It's fine that other people want to continue to debate the historicity of the Book of Mormon; I just don't want anywhere near such a discussion. It's fine that others want to plumb the depths of Joseph Smith's psyche, but I don't give a shit about the guy! I feel about such discussions the way Catherine Morland, heroine of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, feels about history:
I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilence on every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all; it is very tiresome; and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs; the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.
For one of the panels I was on this year, I needed the text of Boyd K. Packer's "Talk to the All-Church Coordinating Council" in May, 1993, in which he discusses the dangers posed by "the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement (both of which are relatively new), and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals." I admit this was the first time I bothered to track down the actual text of the infamous talk, and I was vexed and wearied by his glib trivialization of the feminist movement as "relatively new," given that one of the most important feminist texts ever written, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft, was published in 1792, almost 40 years before the Book of Mormon; that the Seneca Falls convention on women's rights was held in 1848, two years before Utah was organized as a territory; that the women's rights movement was referred to as the "feminist movement" in newspapers worldwide in the 1890s; and that women were finally given the right to vote in this country in 1920, not because it simply occurred to Congress that it was a good thing to do, but because many women agitated and demonstrated tirelessly, demanding this fundamental right.
Instead of talking about what should actually be done to improve the lives of women in the church and in the world, Mormons have to pretend that feminism is a new and therefore illegitimate phenomenon, simply because Mr. Packer assumed its existence could not predate by much his notice of it. How very vexing. How very wearying.
And I don't want to deal with that, but I still have to, simply as part of doing my research for presentations on what I do want to deal with: discussions of the NOW, of how Mormonism made me into the person I am today. I don't love the sinner any more: I don't love the church. But I also don't hate it. I simply accept that it has affected my life in on-going ways, not all of them negative, despite my conviction that so many of the church's doctrines and practices are profoundly immoral.
The contribution to Sunstone I'm proudest of was a panel I organized for the 2004 symposium, entitled "Mormonism as Praxis" (reprinted in SUNSTONE December 2004), inspired by Karen Armstrong's discussion in The Spiral Staircase of the difference between orthopraxy (right behavior) and orthodoxy (right thought). Armstrong convincingly cites the argument that in many religions, orthodoxy and doctrine are of little significance--what matters is behaving rightly, cultivating behaviors that change us for the better, regardless of what we believe. This argument was so revolutionary and astonishing to me when I encountered it in March 2004 that I needed to explore it further.
Remarkably, once I abandoned the idea that orthodoxy--that troublesome, unswallowable bone in my throat--mattered at all, I felt more at liberty to celebrate and embrace those practices inherited from Mormonism that truly have enriched my spiritual life. The five panelists, including me, considered the special benefits offered by cultivating religious habits and behaviors either unique to Mormonism or approached in a uniquely Mormon manner. (I talked about keeping a journal.) The panel was what I hoped it would be: a positive and validating experience for any audience. Active Mormons were able to affirm those practices that reinforce their faith, while people who were no longer active or believing Mormons could acknowledge and remember what was valuable about their training as Mormons. The idea was to celebrate the ways in which Mormonism inculcates and encourages behaviors that truly do make us better people, regardless of belief.
That's what I want to do at Sunstone--and I keep going because I'm able to. But I still have to confront all the people who are horrified by and angry at me because I reject orthodoxy, and who resist my self-definition: people in Utah always want to call me an ex-Mormon. But I refuse that label. I'm not an ex. I'm a post-Mormon or a cultural Mormon.
And all of that really is a kind of psychic assault, and dealing with it wearies and vexes me, and makes me heartsick, and tired.
Perhaps I should be pleased that it takes me only a month to recover from that, instead of three or four.
Posted by holly at August 12, 2005 12:16 AM
It's interesting how you and I have a similar outlook on being a "cultural Mormon" since I think this attitude is rather rare.
I've written about being a cultural Mormon in some of my earliest blog entries (from back when my series of articles was a column in a student paper before it morphed into a blog):
The Mishies and Me: Cultural Mormon nostalgia
Cultural Mormon: Who are these apostates coming down, coming down?
Mormon Lit Misfit
Given the similarity, it's kind of funny that you've rejected the term "exmormon" whereas I've embraced it to the point of actually using the word as the title of my novel. ;-) Yet -- looking at this in terms of community -- it makes perfect sense that I would accept the label "exmormon" and you would reject it.
From your writing, it's clear that you've been in continuous contact with Mormonism since you stopped believing, and that you're still connected with the LDS community in a fundamental way.
My story is a little different:
When I graduated from BYU, I set off for eight years of completely amormon living in New Jersey, and from there I was off to France. My mom and my sisters are believing Mormons, but we have a mixed-faith family since my dad and brothers and I left the church, and that means I don't even get Mormonism thrust upon me when I visit home.
In a fundamental way I used to be a part of the LDS community and I'm not anymore. I'm an "ex" even though I've never been exed.
And more to the point, it was actually my fellow exmormons who drew me back into cultural Mormon community. On the Internet, I discovered a whole community of people who share this background of having been Mormon (and rejecting it), and I was surprised by how much I had in common with them and how much connection I felt with them. This community got me interested in exploring my Mormon roots again.
So it seems natural that for you the label "exmormon" means not being a part of something, whereas for me the same term means being a part of something. :D
CL--I'm perfectly happy to let people call themselves whatever they want as they define their relationship to Mormonism. I like "po-mo" in part because of its echo of "post-modernism" (not that I really care for post-modernism--that's one reason I want to undermine THAT term), but if someone else feels "ex-mo" more accurately and succinctly sums up their identity via the church, I'm perfectly willing to accept that. I only get snippy about the distinction when people insist on calling ME something I feel does not accurately reflect my view of myself or the world. And given that, I feel I owe it to other people to respect their desires if they want to maintain similar distinctions.