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Sorry, I’ve not been able to get back on this for a few days. I hope I didn’t come off as condescending in my prior post.
For me personally, I don’t see the LDS Church as a top-down patriarchy ever being anything but what it is, so for me, the agile approach is something that I can use as a means for managing personal spirituality/behavior/meaning as a non-trad Mormon.
I do think that the LDS church would gain by becoming more ‘agile’ or pliant or progressive or whatever you want to call it, else it risks losing many of coming generation. But what I think as an individual member doesn’t really matter relative to the institution.
The is that all of the items can have importance, including ritual, but we value the left more than the right. I would love to be wrong and to be more optimistic, but I don’t think substantial changes are coming in the near to mid-term future. My reasons:
1) Top-down power structure
2) Binary, non-nuanced mindset and narratives
3) Cumulative, case-law kind of truth model; what each prophet and GA said was true. Only easy change to make is to become more strict.
4) Many of the dissenting are leaving, which leaves the general membership to tilt right.
I kind of feel like things are starting to unravel for the LDS church, regardless of the approach they take. I’m waiting for the day when the posthumously restore Fawn Brodie’s membership, once everything is out in the open.
If the church decides to move away from Scouting, and has to re-think the YM program then, I think it’s a perfect juncture to introduce parity in to the Young Women’s program: 1) Financial parity. There should be a lot of money freeing up.
2) Adventure parity (girl’s should have high-adventure and not just low-adventure).
3) Non-gender-biased parity in learning core competencies that some of Scouting provides and that are not provided by public education.
4) Non-gender-biased parity in allowing girls to explore areas of interest for careers and hobbies that the boys were allowed/encouraged to explore via merit badges and activities.
5) Getting rid of or at least paring back the Priesthood baby sitting that is mandatory for Young Women. I’ve known of so many activities that get shut down, because a priesthood leader can’t go along. I think that model is ridiculous in this day and age.
Thanks for the comments all. And I apologize for my vehemence.
I totally think that my daughter is going to come out of this great and that she is positioned to be a strong and independent thinker.
I also think that we will continue to have a great relationship with her and to be tolerant and supportive of whatever decisions she makes.
I guess what I need to get over is how much control the LDS church still exercises in my life, in spite of carefully trying to extricate myself. I think that’s partly due to geography, density of mormonism and to family and local culture.
Thanks for all the advice. You have left some very good points on this post. I can see however, that I maybe should have given more background: 1) We are lifetime, 5-generation Wasatch Front members. I’ve been in many callings, ward mission leader, EQ, bishopric member, as has my wife (RS/YW, etc).
2) Our disillusionment with the church is full and complete and culminated several years ago. I am marginally active to give my daughter someone to sit by in sacrament meeting. My wife is actively not participating, except to support daughter as needed.
3) If I could start over, we would not raise my kids in the church and would raise them very differently than we did, but as it is, our disillusionment came right at a time when my daughter was in her early teens. I feel very badly about that. We recognize the social/cultural value of her being able to be on the A-Team “White Hats” (active LDS kids on the Wasatch Front) and also, recognized that actively trying to pull her away from the church could completely backfire, so, we’ve tried hard not to sway her and to be supportive of whatever she wanted, which by the way, is the opposite of the parenting we received which pretty much gave us no personal choice.
4) That being said, when I say they are stealing my daughter away, I am not talking so much about the temple ceremony itself, as the overall brainwashing she is still actively receiving at the hands of bishops, seminary and YW, with some of her YW leaders being at the forefront and undermining and actively demeaning us as parents.
5) There is no pending wedding. It may still be several years away. The issue is at the forefront, because there is another family wedding coming up in a few weeks where we will miss the sealing. The issue is bothering my wife immensely.
6) My daughter is leaning decidely liberal and feminist, which I can see causing problems for her down the road. Already, she has friends (male) with whom they have mutually decided not to talk about politics, religion or feminism.
7) We don’t give a fig really about actually missing the temple ceremony, and if my daughter were to choose a temple wedding, we would never hold anything personally against her for it. Actually, I can see that she is going to have some soul searching to do herself when the time comes, because none of her immediate family would be able to or want to attend. Her only sibling (brother) has stepped away from the church (after serving a mission).
We are deeply bothered by much of temple ceremony and temple culture, pressure to conform and the whole enslavement/cultishness of it, not to mention the deeply anti-feminine bent (our opinion). We are also deeply troubled by the continuing pressure for kids to marry young and start families immediately.9) We really DO hate the policy of not allowing people to have a private wedding ceremony before a temple ceremony here in the states, and requiring the temple sealing to be posted for a year after a civil wedding. The family church really tears families apart at these, the most important moments.
10) If the priesthood were true, it would be true and able to do sealings regardless of who is present. As I say, I don’t care much about the LDS ceremony, but I think there is room within dogma, culture, to open up a ceremony and the healing benefits for families would be huge.
11) As far as ‘worthiness’ goes, there is really nothing in our lives that has changed, except we don’t attend, and we don’t feed the church financially. It’s a personal gripe that we have family members who are nasty, who have nasty personal relationships with family and others and they get to be recommend holders, but we are labeled as the evil ones.
Sorry for the amount of vehemence here. It’s hard to hold it all in at times. I thought time would water it down, but it’s not.
Lots of interesting comments here. Thanks. Ray, yes, I had thought of the flawed container idea. This may be a bit controversial to say, but both Joseph Smith and MLK Jr. led active sex lives. MLK Jr. felt like his life was so stressful that sex was a kind of therapy and that a lot of leaders had done the same thing and semi-successfully rationalized it that way,. Joseph, IMO, created a framework that enabled his behavior and we are paying for the creation of that framework to this day. I know I’m far left on this one.
Regarding the communism issue, Martin Luther King Jr. did associate with people who had communistic leanings and also saw the shortcomings that capitalism held for the poor and oppressed and looked to socialistic values to help correct that. And, remarkable as it may seem, given today’s LDS culture, Joseph Smith was a huge experimenter in communalism/socialism.
We have decided in our family that we will never again meet within the context of a bishop’s office. There are too many symbols of power and domination there for us. Usually, we don’t see the need to meet with the bishop. If WE decide we are okay with it, we have him meet in our home. Even for callings for our daughter. Even for temple interviews for our daughter. You would be surprised how much this evens out the playing field.
We have the power; we just need to exercise it.
My wife and I have had our church foundation break into very fine dust for a number of reasons. We are 50+ years old and lifers in the church, from five generation LDS families. We served in all the callings, up to and including bishopric and RS presidencies. I served a mission. We married in the temple. The whole deal. I would just say, it’s not easy, BUT, we have succeeded in putting things back together in a way that has made us happier than we ever remember as active members, in a way that has pulled my wife out of a life of repression due to cultural and family norms for female roles and helped her deal with lifelong problems of depression and anxiety in a way that we never thought possible within the context of church activity. Along with that comes the unfamiliar territory of learning to accept unknowns and unknowables, and still be happy. And stronger. And having the ability to see things without the LDS lens distorting things. In that context of uncertainty, there is a great freedom in truly charting your own course.
My message would be not to despair. The old chapter closing means a new one is opening, and opening up the mind and improving critical thinking skills can help you see bright new horizons that you never before thought possible.
Welcome and thanks for your comments. I think, contrary to popular narrative, that many of those who end up with doubts, or who decide that the church is not true, started their journey with an honest foray into wanting to understand more. I include myself in that category.
You have come to a very mature approach that speaks to a good long-term outlook for your marriage. Many are not so lucky.
My experience is that sharing your real feelings with other believing members irretrievably changes my relationship with them for the significant worse. I would be hesitant to share, both in front of members and in front of leaders, who are indeed the ones who will be the portkeys for future membership status.
