Why I Left the Mormon
Church
Robert Bushman
May, 2001
Last revised 31
Mar 2008
After a lifetime of committed membership, I have left
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For me, the Church was not just a religion, but a
deeply-held personal belief, a beloved family tradition, a total way of
life. The transition was a 15-year
period of indecision from fear, and ultimately cost me my 32-year
marriage. When I finally left, I
was surprised how easy it was. I
felt relieved and clear. Because of
that, I knew I had done the right thing.
I was free to move on. Free
to be real.
I was born and raised in the Mormon Church. Both sides of my family came out of the
early days of the Church in the 1800’s.
These determined people pioneered in the western wilderness on the
strength of their faith. They knew
that they were creating a better life under a divine star. This was and still is my heritage.
I had the full measure of Mormon training and acculturation: life-long religious instruction at home, church, and school. I was a dedicated missionary for the Church, a student at Brigham Young University for eight years, and married in a Church temple. I was fully active in all phases of Church life. I was a “true believer”--sure and secure in my faith. It was good, true, and beautiful, and I enjoyed it.
The Church claims to be the one and only true
church--the only Church that Jesus personally authorizes and directs, and as
such, the only reliable source of spiritual truth. I embraced that.
Moreover, the Church was my only source of spiritual sustenance. I was not interested in other sources
of spiritual information because I was sure that the truth was no where else to
be had. For me, other sources were
tainted, misguided, incorrect, or even evil. All spiritual questions were either already answered or
answerable within the Mormon scope.
The teachings were pure and good.
I had no doubts. I was
fully convinced and totally committed.
An LDS doctrine that had always strongly appealed to
me was free agency: that God
respects our right to choose, and that it is our ethic to likewise respect
unconstrained choice for all people.
That notion was badly shaken when I was first “endowed” in an LDS temple
at the beginning of my missionary service. Before attending, I was told that I would be making solemn
promises or covenants, but was not told what those covenants were, because they
were apparently to be discussed only in the temple. So I was anticipating learning about them in the temple and
that there I would choose to take them upon myself. The ceremony I went through turned out to be totally
uncharacteristic anything I had ever experienced in the Church. It was a lock-step affair, with every
move and every word by every participant rigidly choreographed. When it came
time for the making of covenants, without any preliminary discussion of the
covenants, or even any notice that we were then to be making covenants, the
approximately one hundred of us who were undergoing this initiation were told
to raise our right arms to the square and repeat after the officiator. In this manner, I learned of the
covenants I was to make while I and everyone else was making them for ourselves
by repeating them after the officiator, phrase-by-phrase, just as we were told
to do. Though the covenants
themselves would be reasonable enough to a fully-committed member, the manner
in which they were administered non-plussed me. There was an incredibly strong group pressure to make these
covenants exactly as we were told.
I felt I had been manipulated, and could never reconcile it with the
ideal of free agency as taught in the Church. This was probably the first incongruity in the Church that I
became aware of, and from then on, I chaffed every time the Church called upon
herd instinct for me to publicly affirm my loyalty to the Church leadership.
When I began missionary service for the Church in
1962, I was given a “plan for teaching the Gospel” to use in converting others
to the Church. This plan was
usually referred to as “the discussions” and contained teaching instructions
and a carefully crafted script designed to lead investigators inexorably to
baptism, the ultimate measure of our success. To refer to that process as “discussions” however, was
actually to engage a euphemism, as it was in effect a lock-step catechism. This plan was presented to us as having
been “inspired”, or in other words, it had the imprimatur of the “Spirit of
God” as its authoritative source.
We were told to follow it conscientiously and we would be “blessed with
success.” I accepted without
reservation the proposition that it was inspired, and set about wholeheartedly
to use it as directed. It became
immediately obvious, however, that in practice the plan was not only logically
faulty in a few respects, but its directions for application were in some cases
inappropriate. Indeed, its general
effect on investigators was transparently manipulative. Even though we were given explicit
instruction to follow this plan literally, we also got informal supplemental
instruction that we were to “follow the spirit” in adapting the plan to
circumstances as may arise, which was, in effect, a tacit recognition of the
faults of the plan and license to use common sense. These conflicting instructions were tricky to resolve, and
we generally did so by simply ignoring the conflict. The dissonance of the mixed messages nevertheless lingered
and undermined my confidence in the authority from which the plan came.
Some years earlier, the war in Vietnam had been
gaining momentum and arousing greater domestic opposition. As consternation grew in the Church
membership over this issue, especially among the many families with young men
being conscripted into the war, Hugh Brown, one of the highest authorities in
the Church, spoke at a general assembly at BYU and affirmed that the Church not
only upheld the “laws of the land” but also specifically supported US
involvement in the war. The
statement was in the context of many years of pronouncements against communism
from high Church authorities. This
position was directly reaffirmed to me by another Church authority, Boyd
Packer, in a private conversation I had with him over my reservations about the
war. With my reservations
answered, and like a loyal subject, I volunteered for duty in Vietnam in 1970,
believing that I would be helping stop the spread of dreaded communism. As an intelligence officer there, my
perspective on the war began to shift.
Years later, I was finally able to admit the truth of what had become
abundantly clear: US involvement
in Vietnam, by any analysis and from any perspective, was catastrophically
wrong, its devastation to the Vietnamese and to ourselves was enormous, and no
positive outcome was achieved. I
was ashamed for my country and disillusioned with my Church authorities for not
having seen it coming. It was
their job as inspired leaders to be “the voice or warning” against such
debacles. The Church’s support for
the war has now been largely ignored and forgotten. But I have not forgotten. For me it was a decided failure of Church leadership that
cannot be explained away. Mormon
leader and attorney Bruce McConkie liked to call priesthood leaders “legal
administrators.” Mormon leaders were
definitely administrating, but they were certainly not looking like “prophets,
seers, and revelators.” In this
critical sense, there was neither prophecy nor backbone. It is one thing to make pious words
from the pulpit, but when such words lead to five million real people who
really die in the real world, then it would seem time for real accountability.
While a student at BYU in the mid ‘70’s, I attended a
University-sponsored forum to which speakers with enlightening and uplifting
messages were invited from various fields of inquiry outside the University and
Church community. Raymond Moody
(author of Life After Life) spoke
at such an assembly about his collection and analysis of near-death experiences
(NDEs). Moody’s work established
the existence of an afterlife and a spirit world in a non-religious and
empirical way. I was fascinated to
learn of this external evidence of my faith, but my emotions were mixed,
because I couldn’t help wondering with some disappointment about why our many
fine LDS scholars had not long ago picked up on this research opportunity that
had rich potential to make this important spiritual understanding more
accessible to the larger public.
(Mormon belief is a closer match to NDE reports than that of most
denominations.) I couldn’t answer
the question, but I did notice first, that Moody’s NDE research had uncovered
much more significant information and understanding about the non-physical
world and afterlife than were available from Church sources. Moreover, some of the NDE information
that came out was at variance with the teachings of the Church. The Church had represented itself to me
to be the channel of pure,
revealed truth, and suddenly it appeared to have lost its lead.
Once this awareness formed, I noticed the same
phenomenon in other areas of inquiry, especially the social sciences, where I
would have expected the initiatives and performance of our LDS scholars to have
been naturally abundant and forthcoming.
I particularly expected us to shine in psychology because of what we
perceived to be our correct understanding of the nature of man. Instead, our contributions were
conspicuously absent in the presence of a flood of significant development
outside the Church, particularly in the human potential movement. The attitude of scholars within the
Church seemed not to be one of pushing the boundaries of knowledge, but instead
of staying safely within the boundaries of the established Mormon worldview, as
if the range of their inquiry were co-opted by their Church status or
livelihood. The University was
just then celebrating its centennial under the theme of the pursuit of
truth. The irony was not lost on
me.
My interest in near-death experience continued as a
result of my little son’s accidental death. My deep love for him and consciousness of his new state led
me to search for deeper understanding.
I subscribed to the Journal of Near-death Studies, joined the International Association of Near-death
Studies, and attended its conferences and local meetings. The many firsthand experiences I heard
in that forum touched me deeply and spiritually. They had a greater ring of authenticity than most of the
many “testimonies” of spiritual experiences I had heard in lifelong Church
membership, and were to my mind much more mature in their understanding and
depth of spirit. I found that this
source was providing me far more immediate and satisfying spiritual nourishment
than all the scripture reading, priesthood meetings, and gospel doctrine
classes I had been experiencing in the Church. I was hungry and this was a source that was feeding me. While thousands who had a near-death
experience were joyously telling of their profound life transformations from a
brief encounter with the divine, the “special witnesses of Christ” leading the
Church were conspicuously silent, some holding that such experience was “too
sacred to speak of.” It seemed a
bit hollow.
After finishing graduate work in linguistics and
education at BYU in 1976, I found professional work in the translation
department of LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. Even though I thought I already knew a
lot about language from my study of languages and linguistics, wrestling with
semantic problems in the world of translation taught me more of importance than
I expected to learn. My main
discovery was how metaphoric language is and how much language interpretation
and production is a function of our unconscious beliefs. I began to see that what we believed
the scriptures to say was a reflection of our apriori beliefs.
I began to discover more passages of scripture that the Church held as
literal were actually metaphoric, and that many of the stories with historical
basis had so much missing that they made more sense as mythic images than
literal history. Literal
conceptions suddenly seemed shallow and disappointingly amiss of richer
underlying meaning. I began to see
literalism as a default for the absence of true spiritual insight. I yearned for a better exposition of
the underlying truth, but did not find it in the Church.
When translating, one must of course understand the
meaning of what is to be translated before it can be rendered in another
language. But this understanding
must go well beyond the kind of understanding we normally content ourselves
with when we casually read something in our own language. Because the language into which one
translates has a different set of assumptions about reality, and different
requirements on what is to be made explicit in language, translators often find
themselves in the awkward position of necessarily having to interpolate an
author’s intended meaning. Their
process of inquiry entails a high degree of scrutiny of the source text and the
context from which it sprang. In
making such careful analyses of texts by Church authorities, we found
occasional but disconcerting contradictions between authorities and even within
the teachings of the same authority.
For example, a book that has attained near standard-work status, Teachings
of the Prophet Joseph Smith, was
found to be riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and implausible
authenticity. We had our way of
explaining away such irregularities, but I could not escape the feeling of
disappointment in the “oracles of God.”
I began to wonder if the emperor had any clothes.
During my time there, the Church Translation
Department was funding a major research and development effort at Brigham Young
University on automatic language processing--that is, computer translation of
natural language. There were those
at the University who believed they were inspired to do such a thing, which
would result in Church scripture and literature going out in multiple languages
quickly and effectively. This
vision was easily picked up at the University and at Church headquarters, where
inspired vindications of our life are welcome. The project got a lot or press and was the darling of the
then university president, Dallin Oaks, now a high Church authority, who
entertained visions of this project bringing fame to the University and hence
to the Church. About ten years and
over three million dollars later, it finally became clear that the project was
not delivering on its promise, so it was abandoned. After that, no one mentioned anything about the “divine
inspiration” that was supposed to have guided the project. Actually, what was said was mainly
nothing at all. Though it was the
largest line item in our translation budget for years, it didn’t even make it
into a detailed history of Church translation during that period written by the
department director. It was as if
it never happened. Another senior
administrator would not cooperate in a post analysis of the project and
sequestered all documentation. In
the world of politics, this would be called a “cover-up.” Today, inexpensive commercial software
is readily available that translates natural languages, but was not written at
BYU. So much for Mormon
inspiration, I thought.
In the translation department, I participated in a
project to study The Book of Mormon at
the finest level of linguistic detail in order to prepare a guide for
translators. For my part of the
project, I happened to be assigned to work on that part of The Book of
Mormon which contained a description
and explanation of an unusual device known as “urim and thummim”--something
like crystal eye glasses that could be used for discovering knowledge
unavailable to normal perception.
According to The Book of Mormon, those who could use this device were known as “seers” and with it had
the power to translate unknown languages.
I reflected on how the present-day leaders of the Church publicly held
themselves as “seers,” and that the definition for that term in the Church was
this passage in The Book of Mormon. It necessarily followed that our
leaders were claiming to have powers that would enable them to translate. Yet when those of us in the translation
department would take difficult translation problems to these “seers,” not only
did they not evidence any particular power to translate, but their opinions
were of no better in quality than those of a naïve person. The best they could offer was not only
not helpful to us, but sometimes even retrograde. To me, it seemed like an obvious failure of our inspired
leaders in a primary role they at least nominally held for themselves.
While working at Church headquarters I developed some
acquaintance with the office that did institutional research. It was the role of that office to use
the finest available professional research and evaluation methodologies to
develop empirical information to support decision making by Church executives
(--an interesting proposition, in light of the belief that the Church is
constantly guided by divine inspiration).
One large project performed for the Missionary Department was a study of
the conversion process. This was
done to provide a basis for the design of a more effective proselyting
program. After a long and thorough
process, the researchers arrived at a description of the conversion process
with a surprising perspective.
Though the conclusions were not stated in these terms, what the
researchers essentially found was that conversion to the Church could be
adequately explained by psycho-social dynamics. Implied in the findings was that there was no necessary
place for either theology or “the Spirit” in conversions. It was not a model that supported the
view that converts joined the Church for the most part because of compelling
spiritual or theological reasons, but rather that they joined because of their
desire to identify with the values, ideals, aspirations, and lifestyle that
they saw exemplified by its missionaries and members. Though these findings are generalities and may not explain
individual cases, they suggested a different perspective on the importance of
the social dynamic of conversion than I had previously held and caused me to
radically reinterpret my own missionary experience.
The social dynamics of conversion became obvious to me later when I visited the Museum of National History in Stockholm. In the mid 1800’s, it was not uncommon for a Mormon missionary to garner hundreds of converts in Sweden. It was then seen as a miraculous “outpouring of the Spirit” and was a tremendous affirmation to the young church. Nowadays, of course, missionaries there can feel relatively successful if they get one or two converts during their two-year term of service. The museum showed me dramatically how in the 1800’s, rising expectations coupled with severe economic dislocation motivated several hundred thousand Swedes to emigrate to America. Conversion to an idealistic new religion and then “gathering to Zion” conveniently fit within those other, stronger motivations, and made a little wavelet to Utah within that larger tide of emigration.
While I worked at Church headquarters, the Church was
coming under increasing attack from its detractors as not being
“Christian.” The Church was
discomfited by these accusations because its self-image is that it is
quintessentially Christian. Still,
public perception is important to the Church because it translates into
conversions. To better understand
the public perception of the Church, the institutional research department
undertook another study. Again,
their findings were revealing: If
the public knew anything at all about the Church, it was about its
eccentricities, but virtually nothing of its Christian belief. Even the fact that the Church had
“Jesus Christ” in its formal name did not seem to register on the public. After the enormous effort they thought
had been made in taking their message of Christ to the public, Church leaders
were dismayed by these findings, and began a concerted campaign to revise its
public persona by changing visitor center displays and missionary lessons,
rewriting public communications and internal curricula, commissioning new
hymns, and subtitling The Book of Mormon “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” Now, of course, even the Church logo has been redesigned to
make “Jesus Christ” salient. The
leaders began conscientiously and conspicuously to speak more about Christ and
less about Joseph Smith. All of
these actions were of course appropriate, but I could not help wondering why
the “divinely-inspired” Church of Jesus Christ could ever have had such a
positioning problem in the first place, and why it should take detractors and
researchers to bring its central mission to focus.
I once confided some of my reservations about the
Church to my bishop, an intelligent and accomplished attorney. Instead of addressing those issues, he
merely said, “You think too much.”
From that amazing admission, it is only possible to conclude that to be
comfortably enfolded, a Mormon must deliberately put disconnects out of
mind. For me, that was a wholly
unsatisfactory solution, and only served to increase my dissatisfaction.
My interest in NDEs coalesced with an interest I had
developed as a graduate student with enhanced learning in altered states of
consciousness. As I pursued this
interest, one topic led to another, until a whole new world of spiritual
awareness came cascading through.
Though the arena might be called psychology, parapsychology, mythology,
human potential, consciousness, metaphysics, mysticism, Eastern spiritual
thought, or New Thought spirituality, it was all related and all spiritual to
me. I approached these arenas with
interested but cautious skepticism.
While I encountered much that was clearly of no value to me, I also
found much of value in many small but precious surprises, such as in the
thought of Joseph Campbell, Ernest Holmes, Alan Watts, Deepak Chopra, Tom
Brown, Wayne Dyer, Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass), and Paramhansa
Yogananda. Through my reading in
these areas and exposure to other people and ideas of a spiritual nature
outside the Church, I noticed a new pattern emerging. I found much that was spiritually compelling but lacking
from my faith, which faith was supposed to be comprehensive and whole. It was also unsettling to find much in
my faith that could not be corroborated anywhere outside the Church. As an indicator of my impending shift,
whereas the evaluation criteria I used on these new ideas at first came from my
Church belief system, as time went on that shifted to my own, inner, spiritual
criteria. They felt better.
Of particular interest was my discovery of many people
outside the Church who had exceptional powers, such as healing, effecting other
physical change through thought, or extraordinary intuitive knowledge. Of greatest importance to me were those
who were offering compelling metaphysical understanding that is dramatically
beyond common human understanding--more particularly, Mormon
understanding--such as the insights mediated by Helen Schucman (A Course in
Miracles), Jane Roberts (“Seth”
material), Mary-Margaret Moore (“Bartholomew” material), Pat Rodegast
(“Emmanuel” material), Ken Carey (“Starseed” material), Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations
with God), and Esther Hicks
(“Abraham” material). I had been
accustomed to thinking of such powers of “revelation” as belonging only to
those who had been formally given the “gift of the Holy Ghost” or who held the
“holy priesthood” within the Church.
These other gifted people usually did not affiliate with a religious
movement. Their powers could be
called “spiritual”, “psychic”, or just “intuitive.” In effect, it did not seem to matter. In all, I was finding much more
evidence of authentic spiritual value and empowerment outside the Church than
within. In contrast, the beliefs
and evidences I was getting from the Church seemed frozen in language and
custom, less mature, less valid, less relevant to the living spiritual reality
I was experiencing, and frankly, even boring.
The Book of Mormon states that God speaks to all people of the world and
that His wisdom is written in their books. But ask a Mormon to name just one other book of authentic
spiritual wisdom outside the Church and you will inevitably draw a blank. It is as if the total life program of
the Church acts as blinders on its members to the rich spiritual life going on
all around it. At the same time,
it began to seem strange that no one outside the Church put any credibility in The Book of Mormon. The Church’s claim to
being the torch-bearer of truth began to seem vacuous.
Ultimately the Church should be judged not by its
secondary features but by its irreducible essentials. “That-without-which-there-is nothing” for the Church is its
claim of priesthood power and authority, and the “Gift of the Holy Ghost.” Eventually I had to accept the clear
reality before me: There was no
significant difference between Mormons who formally had the “Gift of the Holy
Ghost” or “the power of the Priesthood”, and non-Mormons who did not. Certainly there was ample evidence of spiritual power within the Church,
but it was not distinctive in
contrast to the evidence I was finding elsewhere. I was finding that people of all religious persuasions have the same kind of spiritual experiences that Mormons have, and
like Mormons, interpret those experiences in their own terms and take them to
validate their own faith. In
comparison though, spiritual manifestations in the Church actually seemed
rather low-grade, and as often as not, simply lacking. You might hear occasionally of a
manifestation of “the power of the Priesthood,” but you would certainly not hear of the thousands of other non-manifestations of
priesthood power in attempted ministrations or inspired dictums. Such are explained away or conveniently
ignored. As the actual presence of
a real and distinctive spiritual endowment is the essence of the Church’s claim
to legitimacy, that legitimacy ceased to exist in my mind. Beliefs I made fit as a true believer
no longer fit.
It seemed clear to me that if the “gift” truly existed
in the Church, that the rich spiritual insight originally evident would
continue to be abundantly evident in the experience of its leaders and
members. Instead, whatever well of
fresh inspiration there may have been in the Church seems to have gone
dry. While spiritual gifts may
have been more evident in the early Church, they exist more now in the ideal,
or in symbolic vestige. The early
spiritual insight and power seems to have turned into formalisms in an arrested
state of development. I could no
longer “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
The perspective within the Church is that its
spiritual life is rich. But the
broader perspective I was seeing made the Church’s spiritual life seem shallow
and impoverished in comparison.
The Church warns its members against going beyond the fundamentals,
arresting their development as well.
At worst, going beyond is sometimes labeled “of the devil.” Such a last-ditch defense fails me
utterly in view of the positive, uplifting and even joyous expansiveness of my
new-found spirituality.
Though I had considered dropping out of the Church for many years, the crossover event came one Sunday in 1998 during a weekly men’s meeting. I had been struggling to come to a decision about my position relative to the Church. The lesson for that day was on the Spirit of God. It was an important topic to me. I had thoroughly studied the lesson in advance, and was eager to reach a higher level of understanding about it. I was unusually receptive and attentive during our lesson. The lesson was delivered in accordance with a manual published by the Church, and involved discussion and comment by class members who were well-informed, experienced, and mature. The comments made were similar to what I had heard in life-long attendance at such meetings, and also similar to the comments I myself had made. But in my heightened state of awareness, I was amazed to discover that the system of thought manifest in the lesson manual and the comment from the class was fundamentally that of interdependent non-sequiturs. By the end of the lesson, it was apparent that the framework of belief from which these non-sequiturs sprang would be better called folk wisdom rather than spiritual insight, that there was actually no compelling insight there, and that such was characteristic of Church teaching in general. Mormon leader, Boyd Packer warned of climbing the ladder of success only to find it leaning against the wrong wall. My wall turned out to be the Church.
It wasn’t any longer worth the strain of trying to fit what was being offered by the Church into my rapidly expanding system of spiritual thought. I was not getting value from what was being offered by the Church, nor did I see that the situation would change. I left and never went back. Not only have I not missed it, I have felt positively relieved. Later in 2000, it became clear that even formal affiliation was pointless and incongruous, so I withdrew from membership.
It is difficult for the faithful to countenance a
repudiation of their faith. One
appeal is to our mutual desire for happiness, approximately as follows (with a
nod to A-H):
LDS: You must be a faithful member of
the Church to be truly happy.
RB: How is it then that
many of the faithful are not happy,
while many non-Mormons are happy?
LDS: That mystery will all be clear in
the hereafter.
RB: All I know is, I’ve
never been happier. So I’ll just
have to leave you with your mysteries.
A supposedly ultimate charge from Church faithful
occasionally levied on the likes of me is of the form, ‘But what of your temple
covenants?’, referring to the promises of loyalty and obedience made by all who
have participated in advanced Mormon temple ceremonies, including me. My answer is this: Mormons define the temple covenant as a
two-party contract--one party is you and the other is God. Once I found there never was another
party to the contract, it became only my own choice at the time. I’ll put it as a parable: What think you of a certain man, who
after having undertaken a long journey, discovers that he has been traveling in
the wrong direction, but nevertheless decides to remain “true and faithful” to
his original course?
More difficult to deal with on the personal level was
the issue of familial loyalty:
Leaving one’s tribe is a universal taboo. To this, I can only say that in leaving the Church I am being loyal to our mutual ideal of integrity, which of
myself only I can answer for. At
the same time, I do remain a member of my family, and still very much do love
my family. For my mid-course
correction, I recall the passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that the late Mormon president, David McKay was fond
of quoting: “This above all: To thine own self be true.” The time had come for me to be true to
myself.
Since dropping out, with my newly-acquired sense of
objectivity about the Church, I have been able to see many more aspects of its
belief and life as inconsistent with its claims of legitimacy. To justify my leaving the Church, it
has been tempting to catalog those aspects, but I am not interested in taking a
position of opposition to the beliefs of anyone. I can remember how off-putting and even impossible to hear
that was to me when I was a true-believing member. Ironically, I now find it engaging to list aspects of the
Church that I find to be spiritually compelling. There are several.
Any balanced assessment of the Church must take them into account, though
critical appraisals rarely do.
In its early days, the Church was distinctive within contemporary
Christianity for its unorthodox though progressive and uplifting beliefs. In large measure, these beliefs gave
compelling impetus to the movement.
Those with which I still resonate include:
·
The underlying spiritual
essence in all life and even matter
·
The eternalness of life
·
Our existence prior to
physical life
·
The value of every soul
·
The positive value of
physical existence
·
The intimate interaction
between our physical and non-physical dimensions
·
Spiritual creation as
antecedent to physical creation
·
That “there is enough
and to spare”
·
‘Seek and you will find,
ask and it is given’
·
Divine attributes as
inherent in our nature
·
Jesus as a model for
connection to Source
·
Source energy (“light”)
filling the immensity of space, ‘lighting our eyes and our mind’
·
The underlying
commonality and connectedness of all
·
The primacy of revealed
knowledge over empiricism and rationality
·
The access all have to
inspiration
·
Respect for individual
will as undetermined and free
·
The necessity that there
be contrast (“opposition”)
·
Personal responsibility
for one’s life experience
·
The attraction of likes
·
Unconditional
forgiveness and love
·
Personal empowerment and
entitlement
·
Eternal development and
expansion (“progression”), even for God
·
Joy as our purpose for
being
These are very life-affirming, empowering, and spiritually compelling notions, but one does not get them exclusively from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most of them are common outside the Church in New Thought spirituality, and many of them are well represented in the human potential and consciousness movements. Disappointingly, the Church does not undertake to expand our understanding of these magnificent principles, or take us onward, but instead eddies in a backwater of frozen language and scripted dogma.
It has recently dawned on me that in contrast to the affirmative notions above stands a large body of core Christian doctrine in the Church that cannot be said to have been teachings of Jesus restored in their pristine state. It is virtually certain that those beliefs did not originate with Jesus, but were superimposed by the early Christian church onto the surviving image of Jesus, and come straight out of paganism. These beliefs were strengthened through early Christian tradition and solidified into dogma by Constantine’s Council of Nicea in the year 325. That dogma includes assertions of Jesus as a divinity—the son of a virgin mother and only begotten of God, the intercessor with God and savior of humankind; the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood as a sacrament, the sacrifice of his life as an appeasement for our sins; and further notions of our guilt, salvation or damnation, sacraments as necessary for our salvation, and the authority of a priesthood (i.e., the Church) over such matters. All this for the greater glory and power of church and State, but not the authentic Jesus. The position that The Book of Mormon is an independent corroboration of Jesus as a divine redeemer fails in that it perpetuates the very paganism enshrined by the Council of Nicea.
There are some distractors who claim that the Church
is not Christian. Ironically, what
condems the Church is that it is
Christian—that is, it partakes of the fatally flawed, orthodox Christian
tradition and fails to deliver the whole, unadulterated truth of Jesus that it
claims to have (see http://robertbushman.info/NT.htm).
I do however feel a need to be able to account for
what the Church actually is--to account for the vitality that is obviously
there and not to casually dismiss it.
I recognize that to do so in a comprehensive way would take a higher
perspective than I now have. It’s
tempting to be simplistic, but that would not be fair. For the present though, I characterize
the beliefs of the Church as nineteenth-century New England folk Christianity,
mingled with idealism and flashes of spiritual insight. Whatever his incongruities, Church
founder Joseph Smith did offer
some authentic spiritual value.
The best of his teachings, however, may have been unique in his time and
place, but are not unique today, and many of his other offerings are simply
unfortunate--some no doubt formed in honest misinterpretation of his
experience, with others reflecting the spirit and view of his times, and even
including some self-serving fantasy.
The succeeding institution has evolved like many other churches,
gradually sliding into formalism.
Though generally well-intentioned, the contemporary
Church has compensated for its relative lack of authentic spiritual life by
emphasis on behavioral norms and formal orthodoxy. Some would say it’s about institutional power, and though
that may be, in my mind it does not fairly characterize the life of the
Church. In the end, for me personally,
the Church essentially fails to offer authentic or compelling spiritual
leadership. Its ideals, as
represented in its sacraments, remain largely symbolic of high aspiration, with
their authenticity supplied by the believer. On the down side, some of its skewed beliefs translate into
unfortunate social and personal dysfunction.
I believe that the perceived success of the Church
today, taken by its members as validation of its divine source, may be
attributed to a relatively coherent presentation of conservative “family
values” for those who are uncomfortable with a rapidly evolving social culture,
and to the personal empowerment that one may feel when allying with such a
formidable organization and its comprehensive plan of life. Much of the staying power of the Church
has come from its having created a strong sense of community among its
members. The success of its early,
arduous trek into the Great American Desert was its Long March that bonded the
hearts of its members so strongly that it persists as a cultural backbone even
today. Some would emphasize the
psychological effects of the systematic private interviews to establish
personal orthodoxy, its strongly conformist ethos, the substantial sacrifice of
time and money expected from the faithful, and its cult-like rituals and
repetitions of secret and solemn oaths of loyalty. All these too have no doubt played a large part in what
staying power the Church has, though only 20% of those who enter the Church
remain in it throughout their lives.
I appreciate the Church for what it has given me,
especially the experiences of my missionary service and the caring support of
its community. I acknowledge that
the Church is vital and fulfilling for many of its members. I am happy to allow them their beliefs
as valid for them, as I do for anyone.
I admire the Church for the close community it engenders and the
positive wholesomeness it represents.
For myself, I can only personally validate what works for me
spiritually, and the Church does not.
As for the conviction I once believed I had of the
Church’s validity, I understand now that it was in part my resonance with the
authentic aspects of its beliefs, mixed with idealism and the elation of high
aspiration, plus some wishful thinking.
I still do hold the conviction that some of the teachings of the Church
are inspired. I just no longer
believe that the existence of that inspiration translates into the whole of its
claims and beliefs as true. The
opposite holds as well--that the presence of contradictions in the Church does
not mean that there is no value there.
The “all-or-nothing” position commonly advanced both by the Church to
support it as well as by detractors to attack it, is simply fallacious.
On a metaphysical level of analysis, I speculate that
in their conviction, most true-believing Mormons, myself formerly included,
have unconsciously tapped into a bank of Mormon memes, or thought-forms, by
achieving vibrational resonance with them through thought, imagination, belief,
faith, and wishful thinking. Like
any thought-forms, they are non-physical, exist independently, and have causal
potency. The genesis of many of
these thought-forms may pre-date Joseph Smith, but Smith altered, supplemented,
and strengthened them, creating his own set. Ever since, devout Mormon believers have continued to
strengthen that set of thought-forms with their own fervor. Thus, as the Church has grown over the
years, the strength of these thought-forms has become very imposing. When one achieves resonance with them,
one feels it, and may interpret that feeling as religious experience and
spiritual confirmation. But the
existence and potency of these thought-forms does mean they are valid
constructs. They simply exist and
may be sensed on an intuitive level.
(For more on this idea, see my paper at http://robertbushman.info/First_Vision.htm.)
Since leaving the Church, I have been puzzled that my
many Mormon friends have not shown interest in engaging with me over the
reasons for my disaffection.
Arguing such points does not interest them nor me, but the elephant in
the room is hard to ignore. There
seems to be a great communication chasm that separates us. For the believer, the Church is “true” by
definition, and therefore any other possibility simply does not exist, so
dialog on that topic is a non-starter.
There seems to be no interest in “suspending disbelief” in order to
examine other possibilities.
Perhaps such a suspension would be too threatening to the believer. Perhaps the believer is uncomfortable
facing someone whose mere presence is a repudiation of their faith. Unfortunately, even in science, it is
very difficult for those with a major personal investment in a belief system to
dispassionately examine whatever is outside that belief.
Institutionally, the Church does not attempt to bridge
the communication chasm. Its
authorities do not field questions in public forums; they avoid discussions of
Church doctrine and history, and even discourage participation in open forums
of examination of Mormon thought, such as are sponsored by unofficial
Mormon-interest publications, Sunstone and Dialog. Though I am disappointed by this lack
of fearless engagement, I take it as yet another evidence of an insecure
position. Ironically, the Church
proclaims itself to embrace all truth.
The believers may sing “Oh say what is truth…” but truth for them is whatever fits their
belief. What does not fit is spun
or ignored. Belief trumps
evidence. Obviously, “truth” is
LDS new-speak.
My New Life
As my understanding of the nature of religious belief
and conviction has matured, it has slowly dawned on me that it is our general
human tendency to unconsciously manifest validation of our beliefs, whatever
they may be. Not only do we tend
to perceive what validates our belief and not perceive what invalidates it, we
positively attract validation into our experience. Though there is obviously a commonality to human experience,
we also all have our own “truth” that is personal to our own unique
experience. This is how Mormons,
Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, animists, and atheists
alike can all say with confidence that their beliefs are experientially
valid.
Our self-validating nature and our desire for
validation, makes it tricky to get outside our box and learn something truly
new--to shift up into a more comprehensive paradigm. That nature is what held me back for so long. It was a belief trap, …a hall of
mirrors, …a self-licking ice cream cone.
But it’s not an impossible situation to transcend. The awareness of this trap is in itself
empowering. And somehow in its
transcendence I sense the ineffable.
The exhilaration of a peek out the box is unmistakable. And what I sense as I peer out of my
box is an intimate connection with all that is--a non-dualism that comprehends
all my dear Mormon friends and their ideals, and far beyond.
The Church had taught me to think of myself as
something of an elitist in the sense that I possessed many special distinctions
others did not have--revealed truth, inspired leadership, the priesthood, the
“temple endowment,” and “sealing” in an eternal family relationship. I was said to be one of a “peculiar
people” “set apart from the world.”
Although this mindset was calculated to empower me, and did in many
ways, the downside was that it led me to develop an attitude of separation from
non-Mormons that did not serve me well.
Now that I have left the Church, I feel as if I am finally joining the
human race and opening to a productive, co-creative connection with others in
ways that did not seem possible before.
There is the odd perception in the Church that if you
leave it, you will lose your moral compass. My actual experience has been nothing of the kind. Not only have my ethics remained
intact, they are now more secure because they derive from my connection to
Source instead of institutional or behavioral norms. The perception too is that leaving the Church amounts to a
major failure of faith. My
experience is that it has been one of my finest spiritual accomplishments.
My departure from the Church has been a major life
change--as a friend put it, like a sex-change operation. But my sense is that I have managed an
astounding feat: I have escaped
the grip of an all-pervasive mind set as if I had escaped from a high-security
prison. And I seemingly did it on
my own: There was no one leading
me--no one cheering from the sidelines, and at the risk of alienation from
those close to me. Though there is
little external validation of the break-through, there is the clear sense that
I have done something of remarkable significance. I have set out into a brave, new world, leaving behind the
comfort of the supporting beliefs of the imposing institution and community of
the Church--of my many dear friends and family. It is at once intimidating and exhilarating. While I wish my many Mormon friends the
very best on their path, I am firmly on my own spiritual path now, no longer as
a co-dependent child, but responsible for my own beliefs. Even in the vulnerability of that
independence, I sense an empowerment of spirit--the overwhelming support of
what I now recognize and gratefully appreciate as a benevolent universe.
I eagerly anticipate much learning and change
ahead: to take full responsibility
for my experience, to not confuse religion for spirituality, to not substitute
belief for being, to claim the validity of my own interests, to find security
in my underlying wholeness, to be congruent with the highest in me, to express
from my authenticity, to allow others even in their disallowance of me, to
savor the enrichment of diversity, to open to expansion, and not least, to
fully enjoy the exquisite adventure of life.
Your e-mailed responses are welcome to RobertBushman at comcast dot net
(adjust to standard e-mail address format).
Copyright © 2008
Robert Wm. Bushman
May be freely
copied if no changes are made.