Leave it alone
…an homage to the September Six (because it’s 9/6, ahem…)
It’s a well-used, well-known trope in LDS culture for members to complain, saying that former members “leave the church, but can’t leave it alone.”
My mother used to say it all the time. I recall, back when a member of the church, Sonja Johnson, became a vocal proponent of the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, and a rabid “anti-Mormon,” which was how my parents described her, after she was excommunicated.
I recall looking at her photo in a magazine once, and my mom called Sonja Johnson “the devil.” She told me to “look in her eyes,” because “you can see it,” and I could. Mom told me it was there, so it was.
I mean, can you see it? All the evil? Look harder. C’mon.
No? You’re doing it wrong.
I looked at her photo in the magazine and those two things clicked for me: outspoken female critic of the LDS Church was akin to absolute evil. Good thing (I’d likely thought at the tender age of 10-ish) I’d never have a crisis of faith.
Good thing I would always be a faithful member of the ChurchofJesusChristofLatterDaySaints for the rest of my life.
I’ve always bristled at the term “ex-Mormon.” Or ex-Mo, or any permutation using the “ex” prefix because that also had connotations of the term “excommunicated” for me.
So I used these and other terms when explaining to people that, while I am from Utah, I’m no longer a member of the Mormon Church. I’d tell them I was a “cultural Mormon,” or a “secular Mormon” (rarely, but still a fun poke at the weird Hebrew/Israeli fetish many church members have.)
“Former Mormon/member” is my preferred moniker and remains how I see myself, and I’ve been watching the ChurchofJesusChristofLatterDaySaints (so important, the distinction now, as opposed to the reductive and peculiar “Mormon” of a bygone era) from the outside, looking in, and from the weirdly inside periphery of the outer-insides, if that makes sense. If not, just roll with it.
Today’s Mormons are not the Mormons of the 20th century, and I say that with both fondness and consternation.
What hasn’t changed is that anyone who speaks out against the LDS Church, if they’re already a member of it, will get excommunicated.
I know, personally, a lot of people who resigned their membership. I know people who got excommunicated. Here’s a fun fact I bet you don’t know that I just made up.
People in the LDS Church who are excommunicated are usually getting excommunicated because they know they did a bad thing, so they confess to their priesthood leaders and then, their membership becomes something held in the hands of petty-authoritarian figures in cheap suits.
But that’s not really true. The last part. From The LDS Church’s website (bold added for boldness purposes):
All Church members who have need to repent must first of all find the courage to seek out their priesthood leaders for help. Relatively few transgressors are excommunicated. Some are disfellowshiped[sic] for a season; many, many more are quietly placed on probation by the bishop or stake president. The great majority of those who talk to their priesthood leaders about their personal problems are worked with confidentially without even the need for a court hearing or a formal disciplinary action. The attitude of the individual is all[sic] important as he comes to his priesthood authority. If we seek help and correction with a contrite spirit and an unmistakable desire to do right, the priesthood leader can frequently bring about the miracle of forgiveness without the need for court action.
A bishop has the authority to convene a bishops[sic] court. The court consists of the ward bishopric, and they may consider the matter of excommunication for any member of the Church living in the ward except for one who holds the Melchizedek Priesthood.
Judgment that is too light or too harsh often defeats the purposes of the Lord. A fair hearing and a final decision of the court that is ratified by the gifts of the Spirit will always be in the best interest of the member being tried. It is usually those who are so far removed from the spirit of truth as to be imperceptive to the love of Christ and the need for proper priesthood reprimand who leave the Church court with belligerence and ill[sic] feeling toward their priesthood leaders. These people are seldom sorry for what they have done but only sorry they have been caught.
Okay.
First and a) I’m not trying to be an asshole about the spelling [sic] errors, it’s just… you’re on the world’s stage, Dude. Spellcheck. And b) What in the actual — eff?
If you’re not sorry, why would you go to your priesthood leaders in the first place?
How long is a ‘season’? Is it longer than a Norwegian fortnight from the Pleistocene period and/but shorter than “someday”?
If you are sorry, if you repent and promise not to “sin” again, why would you need a court?
Judgement? Yo, judge not, butt-munch, lest ye be judged. Ah, but we’re dealing with human beings who believe they know the purposes of the Almighty God. Creator of Heaven and Earth. The LORD.
Let that sink in.
So, some Bishop named “Bishop Bill Christensen” in BFE small-town Utah and his friends, Counselors 1 & 2, get to decide your eternal everythings as their decision is ratified by the Spirit. Meaning, “we all agree this Bozo isn’t really contrite. Unmistakable, their lack of desire to do right. Do we agree? We sure doggone do, amen.”
From the same article:
The process of Church court discipline might well be likened to fresh, clean water that is ever flushing out the constantly forming cesspools of sin and corruption common to mortality and continually thrust upon man by the power of Satan. (Hmmm…)
There are very few reasons for excommunication in this Church. I can only think of three.
Church members can become candidates for excommunication as they involve themselves in gross iniquity.
Church members become candidates for excommunication as they become involved in or advocate plural marriage.
Church members become candidates for excommunication as they apostatize from the teachings of the Church.
Gross iniquity involves such transgressions as murder, adultery, sexual perversion, or serious civil court conviction such as a felony.
-From the Study and Answer Questions, “What are the reasons for and the process of excommunication?” Today’s answer was brought to you today by an Elder Robert L. Simpson, ladies and gentlemen, Assistant to the Council of the Twelve! And if someone wants to check his credentials, don’t bother. “Lay-clergy” means “not-trained-by-anything-but-the-Spirit-inside-their-burning-bosoms.”
Being excommunicated is like being flushed down the toilet like the gnarly, wicked feces you are, even though the sin was “thrust upon” you (in you, atop you, behind you — get thee?) by Satan himself, ladies and germs. I don’t know why my writing voice turns into a talk show host from the 1970s, but there it is. Satan? I’m sorry, no, that would be ‘Who embodies evil, and the answer is SONJA E.R.A. Johnson.’
Annnnnd we’ll be right back after the commercial break…
So, “gross iniquity” really means anything that would be distasteful or shocking to the most uptight Mormon Nana on the planet circa 1854. Or if you’re found, in civil rather than criminal court, guilt — er, responsible for something as egregious as… felonious, uh, “…defamation (including libel and slander), breach of contract, negligence, and property damage…”(from my Google search) FROM WHICH THERE IS NO MERCY OR RESTITUTION UNTO THE LORD.
So the author means, of course, the “law of the land” and if you’re found guilty of a felony, it’s an automatic excomm-buhbye.
Okay, sheesh, we get it, stop protesteth-ing. Plural marriage is a ‘no,’ we get it — the ChurchofJesusChristofLatterDaySaints is NOT OKAY with earthly orgies, just the heavenly ones — but really, brothers and sisters — are there any other kind?
Onto someone like me. Ha, ha, I see what ya did there, I meant moving on TO…
Hm…
So, if someone apostatizes… they are a good candidate for excommunication. Does “apostatize” mean question? Challenge?
I happen to know “apostatize” means “tergiversate” and “palter” and “equivocate” and “quibble” and “vacillate” and “fudge” and “nitpick” and “beat around the bush,” and damn! Wouldn’t that be a fun swap-out up there?
My point is this: If you have any questions or doubts about the veracity of your faith, you’re a candidate for expulsion, despite the glory of God.
So I’d say those “very few reasons,” above, are as many as ‘a peck, bushel, and three and a quarter seasons, combined.’ Approximately. Relatively speaking. More or less.
The thing is…
I know a large chunk of folks who weren’t sorry because a) they showed up to the “court of love,” but b) they defended themselves because what they were doing was morally right.
They wanted to stay Mormon, but they got excommunicated, and they’re known as the September Six.
They were all LDS scholars who were charged with overthinking things a little too much. My husband had the majority of these folks as teachers when he attended BYU. He remained friends with Paul Toscano, and I absolutely love, love, love this from Wikipedia and Paul:
According to Toscano, the actual reason was insubordination in refusing to curb his sharp criticism of Church leaders’ preference for legalism, ecclesiastical tyranny, white-washed Mormon history, and hierarchical authoritarianism, which privilege the image of the corporate church above its commitment to its members, to the teachings and the revelations of founder Joseph Smith, and to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In 2007, Toscano wrote that he lost his faith “like losing your eyesight after an accident.” He regrets that church leaders have disregarded his criticisms of what he considers the church’s growing anti-intellectualism, homophobia, misogyny, and elitism.
-Wikipedia, The September Six
Some of these folks have returned to the faith. Others, notsomuch. My husband’s faith never recovered. My faith took hits from too many directions to really pin it down but that’s why I write about it. It’s not that I don’t have anything else to write about.
But when I left the faith, there was loss as Paul noted, above, but for me, it’s more like having your eyes opened after the accident and seeing that there was no accident all along. That the carnage and blood and mess before you was what you thought ‘normal’ was.
So, whenever I find myself bogged down by too many ideas or emotions surrounding something, I like to find the root, the foundational underpinnings in the language. It’s where I find clarity and a semblance of order.
The word “excommunicated,” according to a right-click of my mouse, has these for synonyms:
- anathematized/ anathemized
- expelled
- debarred
- excluded
- ejected
But I want more. More clarity, more options.
Excommunication need not be the end of all hope.
It should also be made clear that an apostate is not an indifferent or an inactive member of the Church but rather one who flatly denies the divine nature of the Church or one who is antagonistic against or unresponsive to his priesthood authority.
Where serious transgression requires a court hearing, may I promise you that the procedure is kind and gentle. The Church court system is just; and as has been stated[???] on many occasions, these are courts of love with the singular objective of helping Church members to get back on a proper course.
…by flushing you.
God is the Word, and The Word was with God and the Word is God and words matter.
Look at all the many ways the LDS Church punishes curiosity and sincere challenges to its impossible premise.
Couched in “love,” you’re treated like a piece of waste and to reverse the horrific banishment and communal shame, all you have to do is agree that you are indeed a piece of excrement and you’ll never, ever, ever, ever question why your intellect and knowledge is dangerous or when a priesthood leader touches you in your silly place or whether any of it makes sense, no matter how hard you try to make it make sense.
The thing is — it doesn’t matter what a fetid bag of crazy the Mormon Church is. When you are excised, eliminated, expunged, erased (see? I thought all these ones up all by myself) from your community, your family, your friends, and soon, your career suffers, your finances, and amid the ruins, that community keeps on marching along, left, right, left, right, while your life implodes, ostensibly because you “apostatized” …well.
You don’t leave it alone. Not if you want to keep your sanity.
And, if you’re someone like me, you use The Word to reach those who feel alone, abandoned, lost, forsaken. You tell the disenfranchised and isolated that they’re not alone, they’re not nuts, and there is so much more to this magnificent world that’s waiting for them.
You tell them they are a light, and don’t let anyone tell them different. You tell them there’s a garden on the other side of this thing, and if they believe in anything like Heavenly Father at all, you tell them that they are good, they are loved, they are agents of truth, and if Jesus has already come back, it’s likely he was excommunicated, medicated, and died in an institution for the insane run by the Mormon Church’s Third Hour-branch.
(Wait…the THIRD HOUR? See below**)
You tell them to leave the actual cesspool — that inevitable wreckage of cognitive dissonance, one they will be forced to reconcile, or NOT, at some point in their lives — behind.
You remind them to be gentle with themselves, and remember to grieve and honor the loss. It’s a big one, but it can also be the best one if you find the sweet spot between ‘moving on’ and ‘poking the soft, pasty, white badger.’
Then, you bless them with new scripture.
Here’s one of my favorites, one I recite whenever I feel forsaken and discarded.
Self-Portrait
by David Whyte
It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong — or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying “this is where I stand.”
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.
We want to leave the church alone. We want to move on. But the shit that the church keeps shoving through the fan effects all of us.
Like the ERA. Oh, did you not know?
It’s still not completely ratified, kids. Were you not aware?
Yes, it seems the ChurchofJesusChristofLatterDaySaints has poured millions of dollars into the political arena to assure we remain in the 19th century — except for polygamy of course, obviously, don’t be silly, not cool, man, because they’re against polygamy, and how disgusting, wrong, gross, sohhhh grossly-gross.
So, here’s the situation. And I really hate to break it to you, but that’s not leaving “free agency” alone then, is it, Mormon Church leader-guys?
You very old, white, wrinkly, wealthy, liver-spotted, out-of-touch theocrat-guys “… so far removed from the spirit of truth,” it’s astonishing you can’t see your corporate greed from your million-dollar high-rises in downtown Salt Lake City.
Outer darkness is absolutely spending eternity as one of your ovens. Talk about ‘gross iniquity.’
*ick shudder* and AMEN.
**
The Third Hour: Convos with crazy
Non-Mormon: “So, why ‘Third Hour’? Sounds a bit cryptic and mystical and Armageddon-y, doesn’t it?”
Mormon: “Oh, no, no, ha-ha, ‘course not. See, it’s because they took an hour from the Sunday meeting schedule so it’s only 2 hours…”
Non-Mormon: “Really? Which meeting?”
Mormon: “The first one…”
Non-Mormon: “Then why not the ‘First Hour?’ Why not the Second Hour’?”
Mormon: “B-b-because the Third Hour sounds…cooler.”
Non-Mormon: “Does it, now.”
