Losing the Best and the Brightest
Seeing once deeply committed people recount their stories of leaving Mormonism, it can be tempting to conclude that the church is losing “the best and the brightest.” Since I considered myself in that category, a Benson scholar and a prodigy who started a PhD at Princeton while still a teenager, it seems like I could be the beginning of proof for this point. And I certainly know a significant number of academics and intellectuals who have left. But I don’t see any statistical evidence pointing to Mormonism losing more intellectuals than other religions.
Of course we who have left can succumb to the desire to believe that there was no other choice for us, that once you know “the facts” or “the history” or “the problems,” that the only moral choice is to leave. We sometimes try to use rhetorical flourishes to argue that if other people only knew, then of course they’d do what we did. Because we did “the right thing.” But I know this isn’t true. I have enough friends who remain Mormon who were also among “the best and the brightest” I met in college or graduate school, who haven’t left.
When I look at the pattern of my leaving the church, it seems clear to me now that one of the factors was a penchant toward literal belief and a desire to do “all the right things” to the point of real and painful sacrifice. How did that lead me out? I admit there might be a tendency to think of my way of doing things (the hard way) was superior to others. I sometimes take extreme stances. I pursue my curiosity to the very end, “down the rabbit hole,” as they say. I’m a justice warrior and can be rightly accused (at times) of seeing morality in terms of “right” and “wrong,” black and white.
I never said no to a calling until I hit my faith crisis, when I bluntly explained to the bishopric member who asked me to be the Gospel Doctrine teacher that I didn’t believe in God anymore and didn’t think that was what they were looking for. Nonetheless, I kept trying to serve. I struggle to let go of things easily, I suppose. And I hate change, which meant I kept trying to find a way to stay.
I tend to be blunt and state my opinion baldly in public. I will double down and keep arguing, even if I can see I’m not convincing anyone. I’m also very independent and stubborn, likely to do the opposite of what other people tell me to do purely because it feels like they’re trying to control me (blame my abusive father for this, if you’d like). In the end, it was hard for me to keep my mouth shut purely to keep peace in the ward. I suppose that however painful it was for me to step aside from my community, it wasn’t painful enough. I didn’t love the community enough.
I’m also going to try to avoid the tendency I see in some ex-Mormons (and progressives) to claim that I follow Jesus “the right way” by seeing those on the margins or by fighting against the establishment. It’s the same tendency on the other side as it is on mine to read Jesus with an intent to make him say what *I* already believe. Self-righteous quoting of scripture to support my more liberal beliefs doesn’t help convince anyone. It just beats the drum for people who already agree with me.
Ultimately, I don’t know that I think that my path out of the church was inevitable. I don’t think that the church is actually losing only “the best and the brightest.” It’s losing lots of different groups who don’t see that the church adds to their lives in a significant enough way to make it worth the cost in time and tithing. It has also lost a specific group of people who had zealous personalities and that zeal led them out on both sides, right and left.
But saying that we’re better than the people who remain is just the other side of the coin of them saying that they could tell that we were going to leave because we had “dangerous ideas.” It’s ex-post facto thinking. It’s congratulating ourselves for something that isn’t really something we chose. I’m trying to not duplicate Mormonism as I step away from it and as impossible as that is, I’m still going to try. Maybe I’m not the best or the brightest. Maybe I’m just me.
