bobcat
26th December 2005, 08:10 PM
So I don't know that it will be all that epic, although it is long. I like the content, though. There are no catastrophic faith-rocking events or disagreements with specific doctrines. I never felt like I NEEDED to leave, but rather a series of events which culminated in a logical conclusion: I walked away from the church and never had any regrets. I never felt that I was FORCED to leave or HAD to leave to save my sanity, but I did so by my own choice and on my own terms. Perhaps you will enjoy the story. I know I have enjoyed living it.
They say curiosity killed the cat. It was surely what killed my chances at living an uneventful Mormon life. I have spent my entire life trying to figure things out. In high school, I had a history teacher who first taught me how to think critically and logically. He was not a member of the church (though I found out MANY years later that he's been a PostMo for decades) like the vast majority of the other teachers, and therefore he had few qualms about helping his students contemplate religious matters. My natural curiosity and desire to understand everything in the world benefited greatly from this training in the methods of thinking and logic.
Not long after that, the choir department was preparing its yearly "show choir" program for the madgrigals et. al. This was the pinnicle of every choir student's high school singing career. As usual, most of the selections came from Broadway musicals. We sang several from Miss Saigon and South Pacific. But the shocker was that about half our tunes came from RENT. At the time, this was known in my community as "the gay musical" and of course there was a major uproar. But I loved the music, and while everyone else was spending their time figuring out how to reconcile their religious beliefs with this show, I dove into the story and the music. I remember exactly what I felt: for the first time I felt the cries of human emotion from the characters in the musical, where all I had been taught to see before were sinners and their sins.
At the time, I took notice of the event, but gave little thought to it. I was the type of kid that had always gone to church because he wanted to, not because he felt forced to do so. I was a bit liberal in my political/social views, but I saw nothing wrong with being a liberal and a Mormon at the same time. So, after high school I packed up my things and headed off to BYU to begin my Freshman year of college.
At BYU is where it all started to unravel (doesn't it always?). Once I was immersed by the mormon social scene more than the mormon religion, I became more solitary and stand-offish. I hated the dating scene, I hated most of the people there, and so I kept to myself. Again, I figured there was nothing wrong with not enjoying the social scene and maintaining my religion at the same time. Plus, that was in the fall of 1999, when the church unofficially mobilized its congregations for the "Defence of Marriage" act in California. I didn't agree with blatant politiking by my church, but I didn't let that make me lose my testimony. It was a bad year academically, but by the time I was done, I still got ready to go on a mission.
A mission to me was something I never contemplated NOT doing. Sure, I had many minor disagreements with certain doctrines and ways of doing things, but I didn't think that would make a difference. I would do as I felt I needed to, so I accepted a call to Brazil. I went to what I fondly remember as the "Nazi Mission", because some of our rules felt to me that they were out of some fascist guidebook. I did a good job out there, and baptized a lot of people (plus had a LOT of fun :D), but still I spent far too much of my mission arguing with leaders that I didn't agree with. A lot of things about the rabid mormonism I experienced bothered me, but I kept telling myself that I would be done soon enough, and that I didn't need to be a rule Nazi myself.
So then I came home and went back to BYU. Over the subsequent months I spent more and more time trying to reconcile the way I saw the world with the Mormon doctrine I honestly and truly believed in. I promoted a variety of Mormonism that was tolerant of gays, abortion, other religions, multiple earings, tattoos, the University of Utah, and other things that most of my friends despised. I thought I could be a hero of the new type of Mormonism or at least be a liberal mormon in the Kirby tradition. I was content with that idea.
About this time, I began to realize what I was doing. Slowly but surely, I was chipping away at, and discarding, the religious "beliefs" that I didn't really believe. I found that as I studied them, I wasn't rabid about any of the stupid things anymore. Pretty soon, all I had left were certain core beliefs (basically the general stuff from the temple recommend interview). So naturally, I started to look at those things next. As many of you know, this is where it starts to get REALLY interesting. :D
I learned about Mountain Meadows, I learned about peepstones and treasure hunting, and I learned about scandalous polygamy episodes. Soon I broadened my studies and learned about changes to the temple ceremony and other "occult" things like that, all the things that the internet has but the church doesn't acknowledge. These studies didn't culminate in some great struggle of faith vs. knowledge or anything like that. Eventually I simply arrived at the end: nothing I believed in previously made sense anymore. So that's when I started to walk away. Rather anticlimactic, really.
Because I was still at BYU, I had to hide my lack of testimony somewhat, at least until I could tranfer to the U of U. So I went to church for 5 minutes a week, usually the start of sacrament meeting, to keep up appearances and make people think I was actually attending my meetings. I did my home teaching. Essentially, I did as Orwell suggested in "1984": I kept the small rules so that few people realized I was breaking the big ones. I drank occasionally and did some other things, but really I just kept things low-key while I was still in Provo. I didn't want to cause a scene and/or get kicked out.
Once I got to Salt Lake City and the U, the transformation was complete. I moved in with a never-been-Mormon friend, and just started living my life as a non-religious person in a religious town. I didn't really do TOO much different than before (other than a few drinks here and there and some less restrictive moral stances), as I'm still essentially the same person as I've always been. I had just finally realized that there was no reconciling my beliefs with my religion. I kept my beliefs, and tossed out the religion. I've never been back to church, and I've never regretted it.
It's not to say that some things haven't been tough. My old group of friends, mostly Mormon and to whom I was nothing but a dirty liberal anyway, had to be replaced with people that liked to drink and go to clubs too. Changing entire groups of friends at the age of 22 or so is traumatic. The dating scene, of course, is tough because it seems everyone my age is either TBM or too wild for my taste. And although my immediate family is mostly supportive of me, my extended family harasses me a lot.
But really these are minor inconveniences. I'm happier now than I've ever been, and I'm content in the knowledge that I'm actually living my beliefs instead of a dogma. And here's the weirdest thing: I don't regret my Mormon past. I don't regret the time I spent/wasted at BYU or on a mission. I learned useful skills, but it's more than that. It comes back to the old adage: you wouldn't be who you are if not for who you were. I'm sure that I wouldn't be the same person (that I'm very fond of) today if I hadn't come from the background I did. So that's why I'm always quick to raise a glass to my mormon past and the post-mormon future it led me to :)
They say curiosity killed the cat. It was surely what killed my chances at living an uneventful Mormon life. I have spent my entire life trying to figure things out. In high school, I had a history teacher who first taught me how to think critically and logically. He was not a member of the church (though I found out MANY years later that he's been a PostMo for decades) like the vast majority of the other teachers, and therefore he had few qualms about helping his students contemplate religious matters. My natural curiosity and desire to understand everything in the world benefited greatly from this training in the methods of thinking and logic.
Not long after that, the choir department was preparing its yearly "show choir" program for the madgrigals et. al. This was the pinnicle of every choir student's high school singing career. As usual, most of the selections came from Broadway musicals. We sang several from Miss Saigon and South Pacific. But the shocker was that about half our tunes came from RENT. At the time, this was known in my community as "the gay musical" and of course there was a major uproar. But I loved the music, and while everyone else was spending their time figuring out how to reconcile their religious beliefs with this show, I dove into the story and the music. I remember exactly what I felt: for the first time I felt the cries of human emotion from the characters in the musical, where all I had been taught to see before were sinners and their sins.
At the time, I took notice of the event, but gave little thought to it. I was the type of kid that had always gone to church because he wanted to, not because he felt forced to do so. I was a bit liberal in my political/social views, but I saw nothing wrong with being a liberal and a Mormon at the same time. So, after high school I packed up my things and headed off to BYU to begin my Freshman year of college.
At BYU is where it all started to unravel (doesn't it always?). Once I was immersed by the mormon social scene more than the mormon religion, I became more solitary and stand-offish. I hated the dating scene, I hated most of the people there, and so I kept to myself. Again, I figured there was nothing wrong with not enjoying the social scene and maintaining my religion at the same time. Plus, that was in the fall of 1999, when the church unofficially mobilized its congregations for the "Defence of Marriage" act in California. I didn't agree with blatant politiking by my church, but I didn't let that make me lose my testimony. It was a bad year academically, but by the time I was done, I still got ready to go on a mission.
A mission to me was something I never contemplated NOT doing. Sure, I had many minor disagreements with certain doctrines and ways of doing things, but I didn't think that would make a difference. I would do as I felt I needed to, so I accepted a call to Brazil. I went to what I fondly remember as the "Nazi Mission", because some of our rules felt to me that they were out of some fascist guidebook. I did a good job out there, and baptized a lot of people (plus had a LOT of fun :D), but still I spent far too much of my mission arguing with leaders that I didn't agree with. A lot of things about the rabid mormonism I experienced bothered me, but I kept telling myself that I would be done soon enough, and that I didn't need to be a rule Nazi myself.
So then I came home and went back to BYU. Over the subsequent months I spent more and more time trying to reconcile the way I saw the world with the Mormon doctrine I honestly and truly believed in. I promoted a variety of Mormonism that was tolerant of gays, abortion, other religions, multiple earings, tattoos, the University of Utah, and other things that most of my friends despised. I thought I could be a hero of the new type of Mormonism or at least be a liberal mormon in the Kirby tradition. I was content with that idea.
About this time, I began to realize what I was doing. Slowly but surely, I was chipping away at, and discarding, the religious "beliefs" that I didn't really believe. I found that as I studied them, I wasn't rabid about any of the stupid things anymore. Pretty soon, all I had left were certain core beliefs (basically the general stuff from the temple recommend interview). So naturally, I started to look at those things next. As many of you know, this is where it starts to get REALLY interesting. :D
I learned about Mountain Meadows, I learned about peepstones and treasure hunting, and I learned about scandalous polygamy episodes. Soon I broadened my studies and learned about changes to the temple ceremony and other "occult" things like that, all the things that the internet has but the church doesn't acknowledge. These studies didn't culminate in some great struggle of faith vs. knowledge or anything like that. Eventually I simply arrived at the end: nothing I believed in previously made sense anymore. So that's when I started to walk away. Rather anticlimactic, really.
Because I was still at BYU, I had to hide my lack of testimony somewhat, at least until I could tranfer to the U of U. So I went to church for 5 minutes a week, usually the start of sacrament meeting, to keep up appearances and make people think I was actually attending my meetings. I did my home teaching. Essentially, I did as Orwell suggested in "1984": I kept the small rules so that few people realized I was breaking the big ones. I drank occasionally and did some other things, but really I just kept things low-key while I was still in Provo. I didn't want to cause a scene and/or get kicked out.
Once I got to Salt Lake City and the U, the transformation was complete. I moved in with a never-been-Mormon friend, and just started living my life as a non-religious person in a religious town. I didn't really do TOO much different than before (other than a few drinks here and there and some less restrictive moral stances), as I'm still essentially the same person as I've always been. I had just finally realized that there was no reconciling my beliefs with my religion. I kept my beliefs, and tossed out the religion. I've never been back to church, and I've never regretted it.
It's not to say that some things haven't been tough. My old group of friends, mostly Mormon and to whom I was nothing but a dirty liberal anyway, had to be replaced with people that liked to drink and go to clubs too. Changing entire groups of friends at the age of 22 or so is traumatic. The dating scene, of course, is tough because it seems everyone my age is either TBM or too wild for my taste. And although my immediate family is mostly supportive of me, my extended family harasses me a lot.
But really these are minor inconveniences. I'm happier now than I've ever been, and I'm content in the knowledge that I'm actually living my beliefs instead of a dogma. And here's the weirdest thing: I don't regret my Mormon past. I don't regret the time I spent/wasted at BYU or on a mission. I learned useful skills, but it's more than that. It comes back to the old adage: you wouldn't be who you are if not for who you were. I'm sure that I wouldn't be the same person (that I'm very fond of) today if I hadn't come from the background I did. So that's why I'm always quick to raise a glass to my mormon past and the post-mormon future it led me to :)