WELCOME
December 28, 2020
Hi Miram,
I made this for you - but once we’re done, I want to use this to help others. The same thing I’d say to others, I’d say to you:
If you’re here, you’re here by special invitation … and you’re probably swimming in the deep end of doubt - trying to discern faith from fiction, doubt from deception, and making sense of your own lived spiritual experiences. I want you to know you’re safe here. You’re not crazy. You’re not broken. You and millions of people who experience a faith deconstruction and reconstruction feel unsafe, alone, and afraid of what others will think of them if their beliefs change - as though our belief belongs to them.
This place isn’t meant to persuade you of anything - but instead, present facts, offer some guidance, and ways of thinking as you process things and come to your own conclusions.
Always here if you want to talk.
~ Chris
USEFUL RESOURCES
A FAITHFUL ASSESSMENT OF MORMONISM
This research was developed by a team of faithful members who were trying to understand the true thoughts and feelings of people who experienced a faith crisis. Nothing in this document is antagonistic to the Church - but instead present data, testimonials, and summaries of those who have left the Church. It was submitted to the Church in an effort to stem the tide of disaffection.
If you’re new to this exploration, this is a safe place to start.
A DISAFFECTED MEMBER’S SUMMARY OF PROBLEMS
Unlike the Faith Crisis study, this is the work of Jeremy Runnells, a former member who grappled with questions the Church would not answer. After a few years of being sidelined and ignored, he summarized his questions in the form of a letter to the Director of the Church Education System - which letter is now widely known as the CES Letter.
Although antagonistic, this is a largely accurate description of the problems the Church faces.
In response to the CES Letter - the Church eventually released apologetic responses to some of these questions in the Gospel Topics Essays. These essays, however, have been criticized for whitewashing facts, presenting half-truths, and academic dishonesty.
Jeremy was called to a disciplinary council and resigned moments before Church leaders attempted to excommunicate him. You can listen to his disciplinary council here.
Jim Bennett authored “A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter” which can be found here.
Here is a 3-part podcast series exploring many of the issues discussed in the CES Letter.
FAITHFUL SCHOLARS OFFER INSIGHTS ON FAITH CRISIS
In a talk to CES Instructors in February 2016, M. Russell Ballard spoke about the faith crisis many in the church are experiencing as they go online and discover difficult information about the Church’s past. He asked CES teachers to rely on faithful, LDS scholars to obtain current, accurate information to address their concerns.
This document offers a collection of faithful scholars who acknowledge the realities of the challenges the Church faces.
CURATED QUOTES FROM CHURCH LEADERS
This resource is a collection of thought-provoking quotes, statistics and facts you likely missed in Sunday School. Largely infographic and MEME-based, this content offers unfiltered, uncorrelated, and easily digestible content about the Church.
In their words, “This isn’t anti-Mormon, it’s Mormonism without the makeup.”
INVESTIGATIVE / CRITICAL RESOURCES
APOLOGETIC RESOURCES
HOW HUMANS WORK
Here are a few psychological principles on how the human mind works.
Net-net, we’re not that special or unique. Human nature is predictable.
Belief perseverance is maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it. Such beliefs may even be strengthened when others attempt to present evidence debunking them, a phenomenon known as the backfire effect.
Here’s a brilliant 4-part podcast series on the Backfire Effect and a separate article that further breaks down the psychology of why we have a hard time changing our minds.
Lastly, here’s an observation by Steven Hassan, a renowned expert in high-demand organizations and institutional manipulation: “Certitude is not evidence of truth. Nor does repetition make it true. If anything, repetition should make you suspicious. Truth always stands up to scrutiny on its merits.”
Truth is not useful in persuading people to think differently, but their readiness is.
The concept of truth, especially to people who’ve been indoctrinated by birth, is highly subjective. In the LDS worldview, we’re taught to “know the truth of all things” by feeling the Spirit.
No matter how much truth you possess, the evidence at your side, and the agony you feel holding your untold story - until a person is ready to hear the message, it will not work.
Here are a few resources to learn more:
Elevation is an emotional response we experience when we witness virtuous acts of remarkable moral goodness.
It’s experienced as a distinct feeling of warmth and expansion, then accompanied by appreciation and affection for the individual whose exceptional conduct is being observed.
Mormons identify this emotion as “the Spirit.”
A cognitive bias are blind spots. They’re errors in thinking that happen when we process or interpret information in the world around us.
Bias affects the decisions and judgments that we make.
Although the human mind is powerful, this is our universal handicap.
The Halo/Horn Effect is a cognitive bias that attributes positive or negative feelings depending on whether or not a person belongs to our in-group.
People who hold opposing views are often dismissed, feared or demonized, while those who share a world , religious or spiritual views are seen as trustworthy and good.
MEMBER TYPES
There are a host of challenges the Church faces and almost none of them are trivial, however much an active believer may try to dismiss or diminish them.
For some members, the November 2015 policy and its mistreatment toward its own gay community was enough reason to leave. For others, their doubt is rooted in doctrinal, historical, and factual issues.
It’s helpful to think of active members in two categories.
UTILITY MEMBERS
These members engage and enjoy the LDS church because it delivers a host of utilitarian needs. They may find a deep sense of community, a framework for faith, fulfillment in callings, joy in service, and spiritual fulfillment. These members believe in the utility of what they find in Mormonism. Ironically, they know little of LDS doctrine, history, and theology.
UTILITY MEMBERS LEAVE when they observe how Church policies, for example, harm others, go against social equality, or defy general Christian tenants.
They may choose to leave the Church pointing to Blacks and the Priesthood on a social justice complaint alone - ignoring the deeper doctrinal, historical, and theological realities that cut even deeper into Mormon truth claims.
VALILITY MEMBERS
Validity members engage the LDS church because of a deep belief in its doctrinal, historical, and spiritual validity. They may also find utility in church activity - but that is not the primary reason they practice Mormonism.
VALIDITY MEMBERS LEAVE when they discover how once eternal doctrines have changed, or when they stumble into historical issues that contradict the correlated stories they were told growing up.
They also leave when they discover certain spiritual experiences were testified of falsehood. Take for example once-popular Paul H. Dunn who traveled across the world teaching spirit-felt stories and powerful testimonies of the restored gospel. When people feel the Spirit and then later learn the stories were lies - they question the very nature of their own spiritual experiences. They determine the Spirit is not a reliable source of truth.
THE SHELF METAPHOR
Members who have questions or concerns are often told to “put those items on the shelf”, a metaphor for setting it aside and ignoring what troubles them. At some point, the items on the shelf become so heavy the shelf breaks and the person questioning loses all faith. The weight and severity of the issues people vary according to what the person values most.
THE VISIBLE CHURCH
Most of the visible, lived church experiences exist only in a very narrow band of information, engagement, and insight. Faithful members are kept so busy with activities, assignments, and church callings there’s no time to think critically or learn new things. When they encounter other facts and historical truths, they put these issues on the shelf. This is part of a presentation we made on faith crisis.
Click here to download the “Understanding Faith Crisis” presentation.
THE PRISON OF BELIEF
When people undergo a faith deconstruction it’s common to experience deep, existential pain. Unfortunately, some people exchange one prison of belief for another. For example, a once devout believer who criticized people for not sharing the same religious, moral, or worldviews may find themselves on the outside doing the same thing for people who remain believers. In effect, they traded one form of dismissal and judgmentalism for another. They left one church (or prison of the mind) for another.
If you’re experiencing a pull from one place to another, you may find it more useful to remain open and curious. Cultivating a search for truth is more likely to serve you best.
Fowler’s Stages of Faith
In 1981, James W. Fowler published a book outlining his research on the maturity of faith. His work can be applied across every belief system, including non-traditional, alternative spiritualities, and secular worldviews. For those raised in Mormonism (or in orthodoxy), adults rarely evolve past Stage 2 or Stage 3 - which is why it is so difficult to talk to believers and family members about faith struggles - and accounts for the fear our faith journey will be met with intolerance and spiritual immaturity. It is exceedingly rare for any person to reach and maintain Stage 6.
What this search reveals is what lies beyond your current faith crisis is a rich awakening and deeper spiritual fulfillment than you’ve experienced in your life. A faith crisis (or belief reconstruction) has the potential to push you toward more mature stages of faith, if you remain curious.
BITE Model
Steven Hassan, a world-renowned clinical psychologist, studied unhealthy cultures to learn how they influence how a person thinks, feels, and acts. What he uncovered was a brilliant set of guidelines that serve as red flags that someone is being controlled, manipulated, and suppressed. His BITE Model stands for Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control.
Though his work is often attributed to cults, which word is highly charged and often a pejorative, remember the world cult is a derivative of culture. Virtually any system, organization, or society that has a set of established and enforced behavioral and intellectual norms is a culture. The degree of control and consequences is a measure of that system’s health or toxicity.
As you measure your religion’s attempts at control over what you do, think, read, and feel - decide for yourself if it’s helping or hurting you. Though Mormonism does not condone the extreme aspects of the BITE model, it mirrors enough of its attributes to give serious pause and consideration. Fear of punishment, isolation, self-doubt, self-loathing, and myriad other conditions are common among members of the Church. Though there’s no definitive correlation between Utah’s ever-climbing suicide rates and religiosity - just talk to someone who made a “mistake” and wants their life to end. The suicidality rates among LDS LGBTQ people is not a trivial datapoint. In what ways is belief helping or hurting someone?
“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.
When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel
NOTABLE CHALLENGES TO THE CHURCH
There are hundreds of significant challenges the Church faces - each carrying different weight to different people, depending on whether someone is a utility or validity member. The following views are more biased toward validity and the Church’s foundational truth claims.
BOOK OF MORMON
From the beginning of the Church, the Book of Mormon has been heralded as the keystone of our religion, and that validity of the Church is hinged on the truthfulness of the book.
The troubles with the Book of Mormon are multitudinous - including the presence of 1769 King James Version errors, the inclusion of mistranslated biblical passages, historical anachronisms, the lack of archaeological evidence, geography problems, familiarity to other contemporary books, and an evolving view of the Godhead.
Further, a critical reading (see Higher Criticism) of the Book of Mormon reveals even deeper problems with the text - referencing passages of Isaiah that wouldn’t have been written in the middle east for hundreds of years.
What’s more, the characterizations of the translation process have misrepresented the translation process - which begs the question of the existence of the Gold Plates if Joseph Smith simply put his head in a hat with a seer stone.
The Net-Net for many who doubt is that the prevailing narrative around the Book of Mormon doesn’t add up.
BOOK OF ABRAHAM
Unlike the Book of Mormon where one must rely on faith because nobody physically saw the plates with their physical eyes, the Book of Abraham represents a testable sample of Joseph Smith’s translation abilities.
Specifically, Joseph Smith’s interpretations of the facsimiles have drawn considerable criticisms.
As early as 1856, after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, Egyptologists learned the true meaning behind the hieroglyphs and Egyptian characters and discovered the Facsimiles were funerary texts and had nothing whatsoever to do with the historical Abraham along with other significant historical anachronisms; all of which undermine Joseph Smith’s narrative.
As our understanding of Egyptology evolved over the decades, the Book of Abraham along with its facsimiles have struggled to maintain it’s truth claims.
FIRST VISION
The Church admitted to at least 4 versions of the First Vision in their Gospel Topics Essay: The First Vision Accounts.
The contradictory narratives surrounding the accounts are concerning to some as the substance or that event are not trivial.
Namely:
Who appears to Joseph Smith
The dates and his ages
The reason and motive for seeking divine help
Historical accounts counter indicating a revival in Palmyra, New York in 1820
PRIESTHOOD BAN
The Church’s evolving doctrinal position on race and the priesthood is yet another concerning contradiction that deeply undermines its truth claims. While Joseph Smith was liberal in his views of people of African descent, his predecessors, starting with Brigham Young’s aggressive teachings that Black people were cursed and should remain as slaves to white people were propagated for generations.
Apologists argue that church leaders were “products of their time” - and while it’s true their worldviews were shaped by their surroundings, what is most troubling is the Church’s disavowing any and all doctrines and theories taught and upheld by Prophets and other church leaders for over 188 years.
DEEPER DIVE
Although Mormonism is fraught with historical, doctrinal, and truth-claim-challenges, that’s not to say it’s devoid of goodness and even deep truths.
@srslyitsmenotyou
