Were I ever to leave the church - Kevin Barney

[_Sammy Jankins]

Were I ever to leave the church

After thinking about it quite a bit, I decided that the conclusion to the sentence I began in the title to this post was as follows: “Were I ever to leave the Church, it would (very likely) be over social issues.”

[_Sammy Jankins]

There’s kind of a stereotype of the young person who gets blindsided by something in Church history, scripture, or doctrine, does some internet research, learns all kinds of crazy stuff from the Mormon past, and decides to chuck it all. And that simply is not me. For one thing, I’m not all that young anymore; I’ve been around the block a time or two. And all of that CES Letter type stuff simply doesn’t resonate with me; it involves things I’ve known about for years and years and years. I’ve read the journals, I’ve attended the conferences. I feel I know as much as any non-specialist Mormon about those things, and I’m simply not ever going to leave over something like say, the Kinderhook plates. I just don’t see that happening.

Why not both? Why not social and historical issues?
And so what if you've known about it for years and years? Just because you know about it doesn't mean you can't change your mind. After all if you did leave the church, isn't something like facsmilie 3 still pretty damning?

[_fetchface]

Why not both? Why not social and historical issues?

I think if you dig a bit you will find that nearly everybody who leaves over historical issues is really leaving over historical and social issues.

I mean, sure I left over historical issues. I decided to read the Wikipedia article on Joseph Smith one day and that led me to lose all belief in Joseph's story in about an hour. But that was only possible because I had been miserable in the church for years and years. I had grown mentally weary of justifying God's mistreatment of gays, blacks, women, and introverts. So it was a big relief to realize that the reason it doesn't work socially like it says it does is because it just isn't true.

[_Markk]

Were I ever to leave the church

After thinking about it quite a bit, I decided that the conclusion to the sentence I began in the title to this post was as follows: “Were I ever to leave the Church, it would (very likely) be over social issues.”

He's done...it is like with a NFL coach...the owner always says "I will never fire him" and two weeks later they are gone.

It shows that he is thinking about it and reinforcing his doubts. It's a scary place to be for sure.

[_Mayan Elephant]

historical issues when it comes to religion are kind of funny. people consume a metric butt ton of content every day where the historical content is irrelevant. we have entire media industries built around fiction. not being historically accurate is irrelevant, and that is the case for EVERY religion.

people can get over historical and mythological beliefs and work around it for their family, tribe or whatever the hell else.

people are leaving the church not because of historical issues exclusively, in my opinion. they are leaving because the experience sucks. it is boring. it is mundane. rote. the historical aspects of the church are not a factor because they are corny, everything in the world is kinda corny to somebody. the Mormon historical issues are a problem because they are part of a rote exercise for newborns>toddlers>kids>youth>adults>seniors>deadproxycorpses.

getting over the historical stuff means breaking the rote learning cycle. and that cycle is one on which the leaders of the church are doubling down.

the social issues and the experience will force people to call BS on the entire cycle. there appears to be two groups in the crosshairs of these leaders: youth and young families. the youth are fed up with the experience, and families with young children are contemplating how to deal with the rote process of being a Mormon and entrenching bigotry and complacence in children. history is just a widget in this process, in my opinion.

[_sock puppet]

There’s kind of a stereotype of the young person who gets blindsided by something in Church history, scripture, or doctrine, does some internet research, learns all kinds of crazy stuff from the Mormon past, and decides to chuck it all. And that simply is not me. For one thing, I’m not all that young anymore; I’ve been around the block a time or two. And all of that CES Letter type stuff simply doesn’t resonate with me; it involves things I’ve known about for years and years and years. I’ve read the journals, I’ve attended the conferences. I feel I know as much as any non-specialist Mormon about those things, and I’m simply not ever going to leave over something like say, the Kinderhook plates. I just don’t see that happening.

Why not both? Why not social and historical issues?
And so what if you've known about it for years and years? Just because you know about it doesn't mean you can't change your mind. After all if you did leave the church, isn't something like facsmilie 3 still pretty damning?

I think when young and yet idealistic, the history that undermines the LDS 'truth claims' are crucial. After all, it is to that idealism of youth that those truth claims work the most. So if when young and yet idealistic you learn it is a crock of crap, well it's easy to walk away from it.

Social expedience usually comes with age, while simultaneously being inoculated one small unsavory bit of fact about JSJr after another until fully immune from whatever that rascal JSJr and his co-horts did. No matter, I want my family in this social structure. But then there's the social conscience side of that too. The weirder socially, the more detached from the general population, that the LDS culture becomes, including per the dictates of the FP/12, the less attractive it is. Keeping the kids from sex and drugs/alcohol is one thing, teaching them to be homophobic haters is quite another.

[_Symmachus]

I think when young and yet idealistic, the history that undermines the LDS 'truth claims' are crucial. After all, it is to that idealism of youth that those truth claims work the most. So if when young and yet idealistic you learn it is a crock of crap, well it's easy to walk away from it.

Is that your experience, Sock? Maybe I was not very idealistic, but the historical stuff wasn't as problematic as the fact that I was surrounded by total dicks who treated me like I owed them my life and all of its potential resources. No thanks, was my reply. That is not a social issue in the sense that that phrase is being used here, but it was the social reality of Mormon life and the utter distaste it left in my mouth that led me to check out in my late teens/early twenties (I can't pinpoint a particular moment because there was no dramatic "faith crisis," just a gradual liberation).

I have maintained before and maybe I'll underline it here again that I think the history stuff is a catalyst that allows people to look at their Mormon experience in a different lens, and then they leave or stay, but I don't think history in itself is really all that meaningful. If being Mormon were just oh so wonderful, most people would find a reason to stay despite the history.

[_sock puppet]

I think when young and yet idealistic, the history that undermines the LDS 'truth claims' are crucial. After all, it is to that idealism of youth that those truth claims work the most. So if when young and yet idealistic you learn it is a crock of crap, well it's easy to walk away from it.

Is that your experience, Sock? Maybe I was not very idealistic, but the historical stuff wasn't as problematic as the fact that I was surrounded by total dicks who treated me like I owed them my life and all of its potential resources. No thanks, was my reply. That is not a social issue in the sense that that phrase is being used here, but it was the social reality of Mormon life and the utter distaste it left in my mouth that led me to check out in my late teens/early twenties (I can't pinpoint a particular moment because there was no dramatic "faith crisis," just a gradual liberation).

I have maintained before and maybe I'll underline it here again that I think the history stuff is a catalyst that allows people to look at their Mormon experience in a different lens, and then they leave or stay, but I don't think history in itself is really all that meaningful. If being Mormon were just oh so wonderful, most people would find a reason to stay despite the history.

That was my experience. Ours differed, but at about the same stage in life.

[_Philo Sofee]

Mark:

He's done...it is like with a NFL coach...the owner always says "I will never fire him" and two weeks later they are gone.

It shows that he is thinking about it and reinforcing his doubts. It's a scary place to be for sure.

That's my impression also.

[_Some Schmo]

I left over social issues; I didn't want to tell people I believed that crap any more.

What's funny is that I found most members to be decent enough. I was never offended by members generally (unless you include my sense of reality). Sure, some members offended me personally, but I never thought to conclude it was because they were LDS. Some people are just offensive.

I didn't learn about the historical issues until long after I left. The fact that the church's history is troubling only reinforces the fact that the religion makes no sense in the first place. If you're observant, you don't need to know the history to have deal-breaking doubts about its claims.