9/11 Impact on my Faith

[Guest]

When the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were struck by terrorist-hijacked planes, I was still an active member of the LDS Church. I would remain an active member of the LDS Church for another 6 years. Sure, I was aware of problems with the history. I was already persuaded that the Book of Mormon was not an ancient text. Still, I believed in fundamental teachings about charity, forgiveness, etc. There was a lot that I liked about the LDS Church.

My departure was complicated. I can't point to just one thing. What I would like to do, however, is say something about the role that 9/11 had in my disaffection from the LDS Church. Maybe no one else looked at things in this way, or was impacted by those events in the way that I was, but in my estimation my desire to affiliate with the LDS Church was deeply impacted by the 9/11 attacks.

First, you should know that, for better or worse, I voted for George W. Bush. I came to regret that over time, and I was troubled by the events in the Supreme Court and in Florida that secured his victory over Al Gore. But, I did cast a vote for W, albeit in California, which went heavy for Gore anyway. OK, I knew that my vote had no great practical impact on anything, but I have always taken my responsibility to vote very seriously. When the Twin Towers were struck, for a while I felt relieved that I had voted for W. In retrospect I had no good reason to feel relieved by my choice. Again, California. When Bush rallied Americans and promised to strike back at the terrorists, I felt a visceral hometeam pride that we would get our revenge.

It was when there started to be rumblings about the role of Iraq in 9/11 that I was first really unsettled. Honestly, I just didn't believe that Iraq had anything significant to do with 9/11. It didn't make sense. Moreover, the thought of initiating yet another serious war on the other side of the world just seemed like a bad idea. The evidence against Iraq was dubious, the prospects for success dubious. By the time we invaded Iraq, I was convinced it was a bad idea and probably a trumped up war. I could not believe that we were doing something so risky and consequential based on such flimsy evidence.

And here is where I get to the LDS Church part. The Church, of course, was very supportive of these wars. This should be no big surprise, but I think it was my conviction that the Iraq War was such a bad idea that was founded on faulty or false evidence, that really started to alienate me from the leaders of the LDS Church and my fellow members. You see, I saw the Church cozy up to the Bush administration, and I saw conservative members of the Church increasingly as loudmouthed ideologues who were blindly in favor of a bad war and not sufficiently concerned about the impact of 9/11 and our wars on our financial future as a country and our freedoms as citizens. I recall one particular low point when BYU gave Dick Cheney an honorary degree. By this point in time, that really sickened me.

So when the Church decided to mobilize for Prop 8, I was already in a very bad place with the LDS Church. It was this further conservative political activity against gay marriage that did me in. As a descendant of polygamists, I found it the very height of hypocrisy for the LDS Church to push the definition of a "one man/one woman" marriage in a fight against gay marriage. I started to get tired of the LDS Church playing both sides of various issues. Sure, they won't repudiate polygamy, but gay people sure as hell shouldn't infringe on "one man/one woman marriage"!

If 9/11 helped significantly to erode the line between politics and religion at church meetings, then Prop 8 removed any remaining barriers. What I perceived was the LDS Church's strong alignment with the GOP and with cultural "conservatives" of the Religious Right. Obviously the members bearing testimonies of George W. Bush and against gay marriage saw exactly the same thing. Personally, I did not a person with my values being comfortable in that place. The fact that we had moved to the South did not help. Southern Mormons seemed to be a lot more like their Bible belt cousins than Mormons in other areas of the country where I had previously attended church.

I hope everyone understands that this is an autobiographical story. It is a story of my perceptions and my recollections. It is not sociological work that seeks to explain disaffection from Mormonism on political grounds as a phenomenon. All I can say is that for me, 9/11 was a significant event that put me on a course that took me out of the LDS Church. It is not the case that I felt I had ceased to be Mormon as a result. What I lost was any real sense that I needed to be concerned about the leadership of the LDS Church and the opinions of other LDS people.

[_Philo Sofee]

This all makes good sense to me actually. The fact that the church has entrenched itself even further in the GOP and Trump is just positively horrifying to me these days. They can have no moral compass being in league with Trump. NONE. That such a heinously immoral man is looked up to by so many church leaders exactly tells me of their own moral compass. It simply isn't there anymore. They have nothing to offer either in this world or the next. I found that elsewhere, happily enough!

[_Res Ipsa]

I understand, Kish. Thanks for sharing the story.

[_Shulem]

Yeah me too, I get your story and it makes sense to me. Looking back, we should not have invaded Iraq. If we had proof they had an illegal station then we could have hit it from the air. Going into Iraq was macho Americanism with the big stick and it didn't need to go down that way. So much suffering and misery has come of it. I suppose had the US just left the powers that be in force it would have served as a check against Iran and the status quo would have continued.

But all that is just my viewpoint. I would much rather have Bush as president today than that madman that's in the White House now. It's really all come down to this? What a circus. What a joke. What a sad story and situation. I don't even like being an American anymore. I just don't care. I don't give a damn anymore. I'm going to vote for Biden and a straight ticket and leave it at that. I'm not doing anything else. I'm done.

[_Jersey Girl]

Personally, I did not see a place for a person with my values being comfortable in that place.

This tells me everything about the person you are and who I have come to know over time. I can relate to the need for authenticity that you discuss in your post. It is the very same reason, in fact, that I left my own SB church. The straw that broke the camel's back for me would seem inconsequential to most anyone else but it was one in a series of experiences that so glaringly convinced me that I needed to disassociate myself from my SB church.

I get it, Kish. I so completely get it.

[_Aristotle Smith]

It's funny how people experience things differently. My main memory of the LDS church and the Iraq war was the talk given by Gordon B. Hinckley on the subject. The talk could best be summarized as: "Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't; it's hard to say." At that time I was, like you, a faithful member. However, even at that time, that talk was disappointing to me. For me the main philosophical/theological issue was the new political doctrine of a preemptive war and I was hoping that the LDS church would address it. When GBH started talking about the war, I thought he would do so. I wanted and was expecting to hear a prophet of God, instead I heard a political operative wanting it both ways.

My wife and I were living in California at the time of Prop 22, the often forgot precursor to prop 8, and I was still fully LDS. The LDS church convinced us to do some door-to-door canvassing for that proposition. We went to three doors on the list we were assigned. After the third door I looked at my wife and said, "This is BS, who cares?" She agreed, we chucked the dumb list, and went home. By the time of prop 8 I was out of the church. My memory of prop 8 was that the LDS church was not showing their true colors and were going all in. It was almost like they were trying to use the proposition to show Evangelicals and Catholics how awesome they were and that they too could fight political battles for good. Ironically, by that time I think a lot of EV's and Catholics had given up on politics, which is why the LDS church basically had to go for it alone in 2008.

I think their involvement in gay marriage issues had little to do with gay marriage and more about being able to continue to hold up the fig leaf of the Manifesto as the reason for no longer engaging in polygamy. They surmised, probably correctly, that preventing gay marriage would also prevent legalization of polygamy. I think the LDS church is absolutely petrified of legalized polygamy. Wilford Woodruff left the door open to a return of polygamy by not denying the doctrine, but only stopping the practice based on the legality of it. When the legality problems go away, the Manifesto becomes null and void, at least on a plain reading of the text.

[_Kishkumen]

This all makes good sense to me actually. The fact that the church has entrenched itself even further in the GOP and Trump is just positively horrifying to me these days. They can have no moral compass being in league with Trump. NONE. That such a heinously immoral man is looked up to by so many church leaders exactly tells me of their own moral compass. It simply isn't there anymore. They have nothing to offer either in this world or the next. I found that elsewhere, happily enough!

Yeah, I’m so out of the loop these days that I have no clue how favorable LDS leaders are toward Trump. I have heard of b-list former leaders who are. I know that idiot Hatch is. I have heard, though, that his support thins out among the top leaders. Where he finds a lot of support is among the general membership in the US. I wouldn’t want to try going to an LDS Ward in the South right now.

[_Kishkumen]

I understand, Kish. Thanks for sharing the story.

Thanks for reading, RI.

[_Kishkumen]

Yeah me too, I get your story and it makes sense to me. Looking back, we should not have invaded Iraq. If we had proof they had an illegal station then we could have hit it from the air. Going into Iraq was macho Americanism with the big stick and it didn't need to go down that way. So much suffering and misery has come of it. I suppose had the US just left the powers that be in force it would have served as a check against Iran and the status quo would have continued.

But all that is just my viewpoint. I would much rather have Bush as president today than that madman that's in the White House now. It's really all come down to this? What a circus. What a joke. What a sad story and situation. I don't even like being an American anymore. I just don't care. I don't give a damn anymore. I'm going to vote for Biden and a straight ticket and leave it at that. I'm not doing anything else. I'm done.

I’m feeling pretty down myself. The country is so terribly divided.

[_Kishkumen]

This tells me everything about the person you are and who I have come to know over time. I can relate to the need for authenticity that you discuss in your post. It is the very same reason, in fact, that I left my own Southern Baptist church. The straw that broke the camel's back for me would seem inconsequential to most anyone else but it was one in a series of experiences that so glaringly convinced me that I needed to disassociate myself from my Southern Baptist church.

I get it, Kish. I so completely get it.

That must have been difficult, even though you felt it was the right thing to do. It is interesting. I used to wonder how it could be that others did not see what I was seeing. It was definitely a learning experience—wrestling with that question. I continue to be surprised at my own limitations.