No Longer a Believer

I no longer believe in Mormonism. I still cherish the relationships I have with friends and family who continue to live the faith, but I have decided that I no longer wish to practice the Mormon religion.

There are several reasons for it: the biggest thing that caused me to seriously reconsider my participation in the Church was the policies it enacted in Nov. 2015 prohibiting children of gay parents from getting baptized. That seemed cruel to me because it seeks to punish gays (or at least distance itself from them) by scapegoating their children. And the fact that it’s similar to the Church’s policy for children of polygamists doesn’t make it any better, because it’s unfair to them, too. I just could not think of a satisfactory justification for such a policy.

I can imagine many of my believing friends are wondering how I lost my faith after “feeling the Spirit." I indeed experienced the emotionally euphoric experience that can be described as “feeling the Spirit.” It was genuine, and it was pleasant. However, I find it an insufficient basis for belief, especially considering what the LDS church asks as a result of that belief:

-Believe wholeheartedly in a controversial 19th-century religious leader.

-Believe wholeheartedly that the philosophies of the leadership of the Church, especially when pronounced as a group, are reliable enough to base important life decisions on.

-Give up a significant portion of money (in the form of tithing, fast offering, paying for missions, and other donations).

-Give up a significant portion of time (in the form of church attendance, activities, callings, etc.)

-Adherence to a dietary code which can be confusing and can seem arbitrary (tea and coffee are banned but pop is not).

-Adhere to a strict standards of sexual purity.

-Recruit others into the religion.

Those are lots of demands placed on one’s life, especially for just a feeling.

And this feeling has shown to be unreliable. The most prominent example is the ban on blacks and the priesthood.

For nearly a century and a half, every president of the Church (Young, Taylor, Woodruff, Snow, Joseph F. Smith, Grant, George Albert Smith, McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, Lee, Kimball), along with the corresponding members of the 12 and the 70, taught, and sincerely believed, that blacks deserved to be denied the priesthood. They reasoned that God deemed them an inferior people before they were born. “Feeling the Spirit” was enough to convince them to put the ban in place and continue it for so long. Further, the reason it took so long for the Church to lift the ban was because not enough leadership “felt the Spirit” convincing them to do away with it.

If “feeling the Spirit” led that many top leaders of the Church to be wrong on such a major issue for so long, who’s to say that the current leaders haven’t been misled by “feeling the Spirit” on major issues? For example, on homosexuality (I discuss other qualms I have with the priesthood ban below).

That’s why I think the “pray to know the truth” instruction is a hollow promise, especially given the fact that the Church’s official narrative is that if praying doesn’t convince you to believe in the Church, then you did it wrong. In other words, the logic is circular, and therefore unconvincing.

As I mentioned above, I'm ashamed of the Church's history of institutionalized racism, prohibiting blacks from being ordained to its clergy, and from entering the temple (meaning their families couldn't be declared eternal). It was only in 1978 that the church lifted the ban. That was less than 40 years ago! Star Wars came out in 1977. That means Star Wars has been around longer than blacks have been able to have the Mormon priesthood. For almost a century and a half before that, they weren’t allowed to. Outrageously racist doctrinal justifications were promoted to justify it—such as the ridiculous idea that black people weren’t as valiant in the pre-mortal war in heaven, so God cursed them with darker skin. Plus, the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, nearly a decade and a half before the priesthood ban was lifted. It took the Church way too long to figure out that that policy was racist and needed to be done away with.

And even now, the priesthood is limited to just men. The Church apparently hasn’t figured out how sexist that is, because it means that the church is operated primarily by men. Any female church leadership is chosen *by men* and is supervised *by men.* Budgets for women’s activities in local congregations have to be approved by the bishop (a man). To make things worse, there is nothing in the canon of Mormon holy books (Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price) that specifically prohibit women from being ordained as clergy.

I hate the manipulative tactics the Church uses to get its membership to pay tithing (President Hinckley himself said they could be described as membership dues). 

I dislike the Church's disingenuous portrayal of its history. It’s so sugar-coated that believing membership is blown away when they discover that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon using a rock in a hat, or that he practiced polygamy and polyandry, including with several teenage girls.

Which brings me to another thing: the Church's history of polygamy. The actual practice of polygamy doesn’t bother me if it involves consenting adults, but a lot of the polygamist brides in 19th century Mormonism weren’t exactly “consenting” or “adults.” But all that is compounded by the fact that Joseph Smith repeatedly denied allegations of polygamy and compelled others to do so, even though his polygamy is a proven fact. The Church continued to sweep his polygamy under the rug until just recently.

Also, it bugs me how the Church still symbolically holds on to polygamy by allowing widowers and male divorcees to be "sealed in the temple” (in other words, declaring that the marriage will be valid in the afterlife) to more than one woman, but not allowing widows and female divorcees to be "sealed in the temple" to more than one man. It’s a sexist practice.

And speaking of temples: I hate the secretive rituals performed in the temple, with the bizarre clothing to accompany it. People who have performed those closed-door rituals (which are borrowed extensively from the Masonic rituals) are required to wear “garments” (underwear that memorializes those rituals) for the rest of their life, and are essentially banned from other types of underwear. I find that creepy and controlling.

I hate the exclusive nature of temples, because it means that anyone who isn’t a card-carrying Mormon isn’t allowed to attend a wedding that takes place in the temple. I deeply regret that half of my siblings weren’t allowed to attend my wedding. If I get married again, I want ALL of my family to be there. There may still be extenuating circumstances why they can’t all make it, but I will ensure that my wedding does not require adherence to a religious orthodoxy (i.e. “being worthy”) in order to attend.

And I refuse to let myself be buried in those goofy-looking temple clothes. Even when I was an devout believer, I thought that was a terrible way to dress the deceased.

I despise the Church’s prudish attitudes on sexuality. I hate the private meetings that members are required to go through with clergy regarding their sexuality, because those meetings can be very intrusive. I think if a person really needs help, (for example, if they’re a sex addict, which vast majority of the Church membership is NOT), then they should speak to a professional therapist. Most of the church’s clergy mean well, but most of them have not been trained the way therapists have been trained, and that’s unfortunate.

Many people, including those in the Church who are LGBT, have suffered crippling depression for failure to adhere to the Church’s strict standards on sexuality. Young girls are made to feel like sluts for showing their shoulders, and young boys are made to feel like sexual deviants for masturbating—and it doesn’t help when they are told that sexual “sins" (even the benign practices that aren’t criminally punishable) are only slightly less bad than murder. That comes from a toxic interpretation of a passage in the Book of Mormon that’s often taken out of context and blown out of proportion (the context for that passage is a prophet scolding his son for sleeping with a prostitute). The Church needs to stop guilting people for failing to adhere to its rigid guidelines on sex (which 99.9% of adults in the world have failed to do at some point in their lives), and it really needs to be more accepting.

Finally, I like coffee. Coffee is great. If you’ve never had coffee, you don’t know what you’re missing.