What about the Word of Wisdom?

Christ stated, "What goes into someone's mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them." (Matthew 15:11) While I fully understand that from a Mormon perspective Christ can speak again and give good advice and commands beyond what is recorded in the New Testament, I no longer accept the Mormon tradition as speaking for Christ. That doesn't mean I've decided to take up smoking or binge drinking. I just view them as about on the same level of moral concern as participating in extreme sports- having many potential negative consequences including death but not a black and white matter of right and wrong.

I've heard stories of people who leave the church and suddenly family and friends assume that they are immediately going to start smoking cigarettes and heavily drinking. Frankly any former member of the LDS church is probably going to have some period of experimentation with things that used to be forbidden to them like a teenager trying to figure out what their increased freedom really means. However, what each person experiments with and how they do it will be different- assumptions are inappropriate.

Just to clear things up, at this point I do not intend to drink much alcohol. Being on the autistic spectrum I have been and probably always will be at a high risk of depression, anxiety, chronic loneliness, and a high level of social inhibitions when I'm around people. Since drinking can loosen social inhibitions I'd probably enjoy social drinking quite a lot. It would also probably be personally risky. My life is hard enough without giving myself an unhealthy short cut to feeling better that would be easy to abuse. I just don't plan on going there, but that isn't the same as total abstinence.

I love trying new foods and I love to cook. Many recipes call for alcohol. I no longer feel a need to always substitute out other ingredients for alcohol. When I cook with alcohol, I see no reason not to taste it to understand better the flavors I am experimenting with. The three alcohols I've tasted so far I'd rate as tasting more "interesting" than "good" on their own. Cooked into other foods, they can be fantastic. For example, pasta with white wine infused into the dough tastes absolutely marvelous even with a bottled alfredo sauce. I've made red wine infused pasta that in the right context was heavenly. One of the best grilled steaks I've eaten in my life was marinated in ingredients including red wine.

What about the health risks of alcohol? Am I endangering my children by letting them eat wine pasta and marinated steaks? I'm honestly not that worried about it. I am aware that alcohol does not completely "cook out." I am also aware that especially for longer cooking times, much alcohol is destroyed or evaporated during cooking and what remains is very dilute. Most of the health risks of alcohol come from drinking more than something like one glass a day (for a man) or drinking too much at once. Most of the recipes that I have tried with alcohol in them have called only for a few tablespoons or perhaps 1/4 cup for a dish that might take my entire family two days to eat. We don't make many of these dishes because some of them are time consuming, wine is expensive, and many recipes that call for it we've substituted out the alcohol so long that it tastes right to us the way we've always done it and we forget to pull the frozen wine out of the freezer to thaw in time. My alcohol intake from cooking with alcohol over time is probably less than my alcohol intake from cough syrup or even my alcohol intake from eating fresh homemade yogurt with a drop of almond extract. McCormick Almond Extract flavoring is 32% alcohol-dramatically higher than any wine I've  even thought about cooking with and my kids eat a lot of homemade yogurt.  All told, since leaving the LDS church a little less than a year ago, our cooking projects have consumed a little less than two bottles of wine.

I have started to experiment with drinking tea. I love Indian food with the variety of spices and flavors that I would have found unimaginable before I started eating Indian food. Chai tea in its many varieties plays with some of the same flavors. I'm looking forwards to trying to learn to brew it properly with my own spices instead of relying on pre-flavored packets. So far, I have no plan to experiment with coffee. Though I might someday, at this point there simply hasn't been an inherent appeal. I do not intend to ever experiment with tobacco- there is no inherent appeal for me and the health risks are high and are not readily avoidable by using it sparingly.

For my still Mormon friends and family members, I promise I won't even invite you to dinner and try to trick you into eating something with alcohol in it. It probably wouldn't even be on the menu. For my non-LDS friends, if you want a little wine with dinner we'll have to check what's in the freezer.

Sad today

So the founder of Mormon Stories has been excommunicated.  This should be no surprise I suppose and its not as if I'm not very well familiar with how the rules and culture of the LDS church work.  But it makes me sad.  I'm not sad about it because I was a huge fan of listening to his podcasts.  Honestly, his podcasts are very long (3-5 hours per subject is not unusual) and I rarely have time for them.  I couldn't say I was a follower of him in any particular way, though I think he may have been more careful to be accurate in what he said than some other podcasts I did have time to listen to.  I live in the same town as he does, but we've never met.  It's sad because community is something horrible to lose.

Recently, the local Bishop stopped by to ask if we still didn't want any contact from the church.  The funny thing was we had never actually said that (we said we wanted no proselytizing contact, which is a very different request), and showing up at our door step uninvited while believing that we didn't want contact is kind of inherently rude.  As he left he said we would be welcome back.  And in a way I'm sure he meant it.  If we would be willing to never express any disagreement, be willing to look like everyone else, silently endure lessons and official church materials that presented often in an insulting and infuriating way, and be willing to be subjected to emotionally traumatic discipline whenever someone spread a rumor about us then sure we'd be welcome back.  These are the same people who told my wife that she couldn't conduct the music in Relief Society while wearing pants because she couldn't represent Jesus while wearing them.  Sure, we'd be welcome back in a sense.  If we openly discussed our opinions and explained why certain historical teachings were actually incorrect or didn't express the love of God appropriately we'd certainly be excommunicated as well.  Silence, except in private consultations with priesthood leaders who probably aren't interested or knowledgeable in the subjects at hand, is the price of admission if you have a problem.  That is unless you just get lucky and live somewhere the culture is different, then all bets are off.  As it was, I could hardly discuss basic biblical translation scholarship without scandalizing my home teacher.

Some parts of me miss having a "ward family."  There were times in my life the social support structure of the LDS church was very helpful and healthy for me.  There were times it was the only place outside of my family I could go and feel welcome and accepted.  As wonderful and as healthy as the social situation is in our new church, just like having a new child can never really replace one who has died gaining a new church family can't really replace one that fails to love or accept you.

So yes, some parts of me miss the emotional security that a healthy relationship with a ward can provide.  Some parts of me miss feeling like I fit in with one of the only social groups I remained attached to through out my whole life.  Caring enough about truth and love enough to leave wasn't without cost.  And its not as if going back would ever truly be an option.  I value the truth too much and I value the more expansive view of the Love of Christ that I can find outside of the LDS church too much to ever be willing to suffer in silence again.  If I wasn't silent, I would be treated like John Dehlin was treated.

That doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt.

Why? How?

I haven't put up much information about how I came to disbelieve in the LDS church doctrinally for several reasons.  These include

1. I don't want to start any arguments with people.
2. I don't want to inflict unnecessary pain on people.  Complicated church history and doctrinal stuff can really hurt sometimes.
3. When religion is so core to identity, its nearly impossible to discuss it in a negative context without it feeling like an attack even if for all the world it isn't meant as on.

So I've focused on the social and emotional aspects of leaving the church, which are profound and healing to write about.  Unfortunately, this kind of silence on the doctrine has a price.  I   It makes it look like I'm fitting right into the traditional narrative that I left because I was offended by somebody.  And honestly there were people who were offensive.  Society is full of offensive people and sometimes it is an emotionally healthy thing to do to leave toxic situations behind.  But when I felt my salvation was on the line, I wasn't just about to leave because of a little social toxicity.  This is me, I'm used to dealing with socially toxic situations that I normally can't fix (unless I try hard and I'm lucky) and that I often simply have to endure for a while till they get better.  Its kind of part of my life story.  So I want to share just a little more of how I came to make the doctrinal decisions to leave.  This won't be a grand theological argument.  Just a narrative of how I came to think it was worth the sacrifice of much of my sense of security in my emotional, spiritual, and personal identity to take a deep dive into the complicated messy nature that makes up life to figure out if the church was true.  Not just the kind of "I know the stories and I feel good about it" true, but the of "I know a lot about it that can be documented in the historical records and I still believe it" true.

But the thing is, if you are just going to want to argue with me, I don't want you to read this.  If your going to feel so hurt by it that you'll feel a need to distance yourself from me, I don't want you to read this.  If you feel like your testimony in the LDS church is wavering and you want to know my story, well, if you value the pursuit of truth that much go ahead and read it.  If you just value my friendship and want to understand me better, by all means I beg you to.  I could go on for pages upon pages about all the life events that led to triggering my dying thirst to know more about the LDS church.  But I'll give you the short version. 

Growing up I also had access to this little program called LDS infobases that had a huge collection of religious materials in from theological and academic standpoints.  I just loved to browse through it and tangentially follow subjects that just occurred to me or just following the hyperlinks to whatever sounded fun.  In any case I once found information in it about the temple that I didn't know what to do with.  It talked about the law of consecration being still active via the temple covenants,  about the true order of prayer and what was so true about it, and about a supposed link between freemasonry and the temple focusing on some kind of supposedly common metaphor regarding some kind of rope or string or something being around one's neck.  I had no idea what any of that was talking about, but I figured I'd learn when I got to the temple.  Growing up I was taught a variety of things that weren't true about the temple.  These included:

• That there were no such things as blood oaths in the temple except in the imaginations of anti-mormons.
• That the temple covenants had never changed.
• That the aspects of the temple ceremony other than the covenants had only changed to modernize the language.

These claims are indisputably not true.  They are historical absurdities.  The only one even close to disputable is if you just don't like using the term "blood oath" to describe a sacred ceremony but anybody who knows about the temple ceremony history knows exactly what is meant by that so its just a matter of preferred wording.

I also learned that the temple ceremonies gave a kind of literal access to heaven by the means of what I'll call heaven's login credentials.  Brigham Young is quoted today in Boyd K. Packer's temple preparation book describing them as key words, tokens and passwords if I recall the phrasing properly from the book.  I believed it literally, not figuratively.

Later I had a teacher at college who tried to claim that Joseph Smith was martyred as the result of an evil masonic plot for revenge (which is not true to the best of my knowledge) on Joseph Smith for publicized his intent to reveal some otherwise lost key word of masonry in the temple (which is close to true).  I had bumped into that subject in infobases as well, but only from someone writing that there was no substantive evidence masons had anything to do with Joseph's death.  Even if I didn't take this college teacher too seriously sometimes I still had never heard what the theory behind why the martyrdom might have been a masonic plot before since the writers in the infobase software apparently didn't think that was worth the time to cover.  Then again, the teacher in question was just a tad obsessed with Freemasons and literally believed a version of their mythology, so I let it slide as him being crazy.

When I went to the temple none of the stuff I had learned from LDS infobase about Masonry and the temple made any sense.  Where were even the roots of this supposedly disproved masonic connection?  I didn't recognize anything I experienced as having to do with the article.  It didn't bother me, just left me curious to figure out what everybody was talking about.

So eventually my wife and I started reading the Dialog Journal which was a wonderfully safe place to learn about the controversial issues in Mormonism from a scholarly rigorous place.  We were steadily becoming less orthodox but still true believing members.  But of all the questions I was curious about, dialogue journal wouldn't touch masonry and the temple with a 10 foot pole- more or less only stating that since both sets of ceremonies were held to be a forbidden subject by those who experienced them, little could be said about their connection beyond that it was significant and more significant than some apologists claimed.  I tried looking it up on FAIR- and their denials were so overwhelming as to be somewhat unbelievable.  I fully expected I'd find that the temple had some contemporary social influence in socially significant but eternally insignificant ways.  So a complete denial of substantive connection while admitting that the ceremonies were parallel enough to cause some people to claim the temple ceremonies were plagiarized from masonry just made me feel like FAIR wasn't dealing with evidence properly.  Nobody would talk about this subject in a detailed yet believable way.  Eventually, while reading the newspaper I read about some website whose author got in trouble with the church supposedly for talking about masonry and the temple.  It had never occurred to me to do a google search before.  So I found the Feminist Mormon Housewives and the Mormon Expression podcasts on the temple and masonry.  While they were very respectful in tone and content, they turned upside down most all of what I had believed about the temple.  I found profound connections between the temple and masonry that covered the central covenants, tokens, and keywords that I previously believed were directly given from heaven and some were secret even to the Devil himself because they were guarded by heaven so closely.  That's more or less what Joseph Smith is said to have taught anyways when I read the seven volume History of the Church set.  I found changes that weren't just language modernization.  I found that entire covenants and teachings had been added and removed over time.  I found that some of the covenants in the past were distinctly unchristlike and had sometimes led to tragic consequences.  In the early Utah era the connection between masonry and the temple was so obvious that it was talked about more or less openly, with some sources indicating that church leaders sometimes used the phrase "Celestial Masonry" to describe the temple.  I found that there was every reason to believe that Joseph Smith wasn't just trying to restore and change Christianity to a true and perfect state, he was also probably trying to restore and change freemasonry to a true state as part of a restoration of all things.  And there was a problem with that idea.  I had already dealt with the masonry obsessed college teacher and having researched the subject for myself a little decided that the masonry mythology wasn't true.  Not just fallen or some kind of apostate or derivative thing.  Just not true.  A fabrication, though a rich and satisfying one for modern people who aren't expected to believe it literally.  When it seemed that the only way I could believe in the temple the way I used to was to believe in some kind of warped version of the mythology of freemasonry, I couldn't believe in the temple in the same way anymore.  But you don't just stop having a literal belief in the temple and do it casually.  The temple is core to the LDS religious experience and I had always taken it very seriously.  My belief in the temple had been grounded in the teachings of LDS leaders from the top of the church to my local  leaders (some of whom were supposedly superb gospel scholars) and from the past all the way back to quotes from Brigham Young all the way to the present.  Shattering my trust in those people led me to no longer trust anything I had been taught about the church.  I started a desperate period of re examination and learning.  I tried out multiple theories for why the church could be true sort of despite everything.  I had to start reconstructing it all from scratch.  And the pieces simply didn't fit anymore.  It felt like I had two choices- abandon my attempt to make the LDS version of God the only one that could be real for me, or stop believing in God.  My relationship with God was stronger than my belief in the LDS church.

It was during this period of desperate faith reconstruction that the local Bishop started threatening us with church discipline over Bonnie Jean's clothing assuming that we were secret Ordain Women supporters.  You could say that in that period that I desperately wanted to believe the LDS church was true but that I was trying to figure out just how much or how little that might mean.  While sympathetic to Ordain Women's social justice concerns for the LDS church, we never found women's ordination to be a burning issue personally and we never formally or informally joined any group pursuing the matter.  The Wear Pants to Church day was something we supported in rejection of the threats of violence and spiritual intimidation against LDS feminists in general and that organizationally had nothing to do with female ordination even if there was overlap between the supporters.  It was a matter of intense personal irony to me that for all the questions and doubts that we had, we were attacked vigorously on something that was for us personally a very minor concern.  Once the local leaders had behaved so inexcusably threateningly towards us over what we looked like, we were certain never going to discuss any real concerns with them or with anybody who would report to them because they made it clear their only real interest in us was to find a reason to discipline us if they could.  Even if they had to stretch for it.  I never really felt emotionally safe in LDS church services since that time.  Which really was a tragedy since LDS church buildings had been one of the place I felt the most emotionally safe growing up.  Sometimes we don't feel emotionally safe around LDS people anymore either if we don't know them well- especially we've heard them speak negatively about non believers in the past.  I've even had coworkers openly criticize non believers or less believers around me without even realizing I'm one of the people they are being rude to.

Since the LDS church was still our people and our spiritual home, we tried to make it work for us sometime even after our belief fell completely apart.  In the end it just wasn't worth it.

A Lifetime of Covenants, Part 2

Covenants define a lot of what it means to be LDS.  As an LDS man I took mine very seriously.  As I grew up and made the covenants that defined so much of my life, I always wondered, what would I do if I ever decided the LDS religion wasn't true?  What do you do when you try to make an agreement with God but later decide it wasn't God on the other end?  Mostly you just try to move on.  I no longer feel bound by a promise to God to obey and not criticize and give my everything to the LDS church when I don't think God participated in that agreement.  But of course its more complicated than that.  The Episcopal Church doesn't require rebaptism for a situation like mine as we haven't pursued it nor have resigned from the LDS for personal reasons.  So my only baptism that I can claim is the one I got when I was 8 years old.  It is another way that I have a mixed identity- my baptismal commitment is still wrapped up in my Mormon identity, even if I now apply that understanding in another church.  Someday that may become really awkward.  Some LDS bishop in the future may decide we're dead weight on his ward numbers and decide to try to excommunicate us.  Or perhaps some ward leader in the future will decide it is time to aggressively try to save us and we'll have to resign our membership to force them to stop stalking us.  What would it be like if the only baptism you have is technically revoked or resigned by the authority that performed it?  I honestly don't know and part of me hopes it will never come to that.  There was lots of good in the way I was raised in the Mormon church and I'd prefer to honor that in my own way, even if my interpretation of what my baptism means to me changes over time.  While I appreciate the original covenant, I feel I have added to it, especially when in worship I "remake" my baptism covenant using a while new set of promises.

Baptism

The Episcopal Baptism covenant is a very unique system from Mormon Baptism.  Mormon baptism, according to Mosiah 18:8-10 involves promises made, without ever saying them directly as part of the ceremony, to

1. be "desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people"
2. "willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light"
3. "Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort"
4. "stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death"
5. "that ye will serve him and keep his commandments"

With the promised blessings:

1. "that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life"
2. " that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you"

The Episcopal baptismal promises involve the parents or godparents of children being baptized, the individual being baptized, and the community of worshipers in the parish.  Only a subset of what I list below are formally known as the baptismal covenant, but all these promises are made as part of the baptism ritual so I am including all of them.  The full ceremony, including the traditional phrasing for accepting these promises can be found in the online version of The Book of Common Prayer.  Altogether these promises are:

1. "Will you be responsible for seeing that the child you present is brought up in the Christian faith and life?"
2. "Will you by your prayers and witness help this child to grow into the full stature of Christ?"
3. "Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?"
4. "Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?"
5. "Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?"
6. "Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Saviour?"
7. "Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?"
8. "Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?"
9. (The next one is too long to quote directly, but essentially asks for agreement with one of the creeds)
10. "Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?"
11. "Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and  fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?"
12. "Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
13. "Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?"
14. "Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving  your neighbor as yourself?"
15. "Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?"

These promises are in exchange for the blessings or benefits:

1. "...you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever."
2. "that those who here are cleansed from sin and born again may continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Savior."
3. "...those who are sealed with it may share in the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ"

The Episcopal Church allows the baptism of infants with the idea that it is a way of automatically joining the community of God- similar to the LDS concept of being "born in the covenant."  Since infants cannot be expected to be bound to commitments made on their behalf, later a confirmation ceremony is held to reaffirm these commitments.  Again the full ceremony is available online.  The following promises are made:

1. " Do you reaffirm your renunciation of evil?"
2. "Do you renew your commitment to Jesus Christ?"
3.  "Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?" 

A proper comparison of the LDS covenant of Baptism wouldn't be fair without also including the LDS sacrament covenants which are almost seen as an extension of the baptismal covenant even though the sacrament covenants are actually distinct from the covenants outlined in the Book of Mosiah.  These promises as quoted from the D&C are to:

1. "eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son"
2. "willing to take upon them the name of thy Son"
3. "always remember him"
4. "keep his commandments which he has given them"
5. "do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son"
6. " always remember him"

These promises are for the benefit "that they may always have his Spirit to be with them" or "that they may have his Spirit to be with them." depending on whether the bread or water prayer is being recited.  Through promise 4 those partaking are said to be remaking their baptismal covenants even though theologically there is no limit to which covenants are being remade in the ceremony.  The Epsicopal church remakes baptismal covenants during baptism services.

Marriage

Though the LDS temple marriage covenant is not published by the church, those who want a refresher on what exactly is promised can find the text of the ceremony here.  The Episcopal ceremony (quoting only one gender role each since they are repetitive), which again is available online for full context, includes promises to:

1. "will you have this man to be your husband"
2. "to live together in the covenant of marriage"
3. "Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?"
4. "Will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage? "
5. "In the Name of God, I, [name], take you, [name], to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.  This is my solemn vow."

What may be of interest to LDS people is that Episcopalians do not have a doctrine of marriage necessarily only being till death.  While the ceremony may explicitly mention until death, it is not because the ceremony is somehow invalid in the next life.  It is because death parts people in this life who may then remarry in what would otherwise be a violation of promise to "forsake all others."  Most Christians believe that in the afterlife they will be reunited with their loved ones- because why would a loving God provide a heaven where the most meaningful relationships were denied unless they were authorized properly?  Also of interest is that the LDS ceremony has no direct analog of the gender neutral promise to forsake all others, probably because of polygamy.  Though it might strike some as odd, polygamy was a very real concept to me because of an friendship I had with a very devout roommate who was from a polygamist family but eventually joined the LDS church.  There was always that possibility that someday polygamy would be restored and that we would be assigned to it.  I knew it would likely ruin the happiness of my marriage if that happened but it was always a remote possibility.  As a result, I find the inclusion of that promise meaningful.  My wife and I will never have to worry about or wonder about another woman intruding on our marriage in this life.

Conclusion

For some reason, many of the wards I have lived in since coming to Utah have included people who openly discussed their fear of the sinners they expected to encounter outside of the church or even just outside of Utah.  In talks and lessons I've heard people talk about how afraid they were to visit the area where I grew up in Maryland because they thought all the bad people lived outside of the Wasatch Front, give their opinion that only in the LDS church were the basics of honesty and integrity taught, or explain how they felt that couldn't possibly have anything in common with a non LDS except experiencing the weather.  If there is one thing that my past and present have in common, its a focus on covenants where the basics of honesty and integrity, marital fidelity, empathy, and Christian identity are held strongly as important qualities.  While different religions and even atheists interpret and pursue their moral commitments differently from each other, it doesn't mean they don't still have them.  And in the case of the Episcopal and LDS churches, both define them in covenants that help define a lifetime of devotion to God.

A Lifetime of Covenants, Part 1

Growing up LDS, I took pride in special nature of the LDS covenant relationship with God.  At most my religion teachers told me about how other Christian churches were based on simply affirming your acceptance of Christ into your life and that nothing else was needed.  I was typically told about this deeply emotional and sacred process of other religions in order to impress on me how shallow those religions were in comparison to the LDS church.  It didn't even occur to me that any other Christian church viewed themselves as administering covenants between God and man or that these covenants might be meaningful and deeply powerful in the lives of who partook of them.  Having seen an Episcopal baptism service I was surprised at the beauty and depth of the covenant relationships entered into and the moral and religions obligations involved.  Upon researching further, I was also impressed by how differently the Episcopal system of covenants operated from what I was accustomed to.  The main differences I spotted were the following:

1. The covenants as modeled by the Episcopal church are explicit in nature.  Very little is implied or set up only to be understood by those in the know.  Very little theological background is needed to understand them.
2.  The obligations were not made to the church directly, but directly to God with few exceptions.
3.  Comparatively few of the obligations involved actions which were only moral or immoral in a theological sense.  Almost all of the covenants directly involved commitments to a moral way of life.

To explain what I mean I will be discussing some of the specifics of the covenants made in the LDS church including in the temple.  Specific wording won't be quoted nor any information presented that is covenanted not to be revealed.  But, if you don't like seeing the temple covenants discussed in even the most basic terms you'd be better off skipping the rest and going to part 2 where I will list the specific covenants made over the life of a typical Episcopalian to provide a context for this discussion.

To understand what I mean on point one, think of the LDS baptism or Priesthood covenants.  An outsider could watch those ceremonies without knowing that specific promises were being made because they aren't part of the ceremony.  Similarly, the LDS sacrament covenants involve a promise to keep all commandments given.  An outsider watching would have no knowledge of what commandments were meant and frankly many members don't appear to know either.  It is commonly taught that this only means baptismal covenants when theologically it includes marriage vows and pretty much everything else you can imagine.  Temple covenants are not even known to the people about to make them until the moment they are confronted with them.  A knowledge of the theology is generally required to understand what most LDS covenants actually mean.  This isn't inherently good or bad in many respects but simply a different culture of how commitments are presented.  Personally I think the LDS church would be healthier if most all of the temple covenants were a matter of public knowledge and discussion so that people could prepare for their commitments directly, but my opinion doesn't really count for anything in that discussion.

To understand what I mean by point two, consider that the LDS consecration covenant is explicitly made to the church itself.  The Law of Sacrifice covenant is made explicitly to the Kingdom of God which in practical terms means the church.  While there are plenty of other specific covenants that aren't made in this way, these who covenants are the most explicit and far reaching in binding LDS church members to obedience to God that I know of and they are worded to give that obedience to God through the LDS church directly.  This perhaps helps explain why there doesn't appear to be a strong culture of LDS people establishing 'personal ministries' where they try to serve God in their communities or in the world directly but instead channel that service to God through their church callings.  This does help create strong ward communities but also limits exposure to service outside of those communities except as mediated by community leadership.  For members who don't see that obeying their leaders is the same thing as obeying God, the format of these covenants can be damaging because it sets up a conflict between obeying the institution and obeying their personal moral understanding of the world.  For those who see God's will as directly manifesting at every level of the LDS leadership, there is no conflict here.

To understand what I mean by point three, consider the covenant obligations in the LDS religion such as garment wearing, not criticizing leaders, not laughing loudly, obeying leaders, attending meetings, and magnifying callings.  While many of these actions support the values and concerns of the church community and in many ways aren't inherently bad in many cases, they are not inherently good either except as defined by the theology.  There is nothing about complete obedience that makes the leader's decisions good or bad.  Attending meetings can be evil if it takes away from overarching concerns which are of greater moral priority.  Wearing garments can be deeply disruptive to marital intimacy for some people.  Laughing loudly is of so little moral concern that it's prohibition is extremely seldom thought to mean anything literally and the editors of the ceremony should probably reword it so that it has direct moral relevancy literally as stated.  For those who view the LDS church as having direct authority and guidance from God in how all covenants are established, the comparative moral, immoral, or amoral content of the specifics of covenant obligations are of no concern since their obedience to God is worked out through observances that may or may not have any personal moral relevancy to their lives.  Frankly, any religious or spiritual culture has its own baggage of expectations that are of cultural spiritual significance instead of direct moral spiritual significance.  But I'd argue it is healthy if obligations that are have little direct moral or ethical content be viewed in a more flexible light than the "covenant with God" model provides.

For part two of this discussion I'll present the specifics of the covenants an Episcopalian might expect to enter as they passed through baptism, confirmation, and marriage as well as discuss how I relate to my own history of taking covenants in the LDS church.

Am I ashamed of Mormonism?

My earlier post about being proud of the Episcopal Church begs the opposite question, whether or not I'm ashamed of Mormonism.  I don’t know how to answer that question simply, but I think I’d on the whole say no.  There are many things about Mormonism that are hurtful, painful, and frequently simply and demonstrably not true.  That being said, Mormonism has gone through many many improvements and I’d say is undeniably a much more Christlike religion now than when it was created.  I expect it will continue to go through such improvements.  I don’t see that as the result of any special revelatory providence such as the church claims.  I believe that if the church has such a profound endowment of revelation as it claims many of the problems that supposedly resulted from revelation in the first place simply wouldn’t have existed and Mormonism would have been created as a religion notable for its uniquely thorough institutional Christlike behavior.  But I do think the progress in Mormonism happens I think it is because God loves all people and works to grow love and understanding in the lives of all people- so as generation and generation of people try to seek for better understanding and divine direction many things can become better over time.  In many ways that is no different from any other church.  I’m fairly certain just about any church out there also has its history of traditional abusive behaviors, its traditional beliefs that are at many times demonstrably not true, and its own history that hopefully includes institutional and personal self improvement in the quest to love both God and neighbor.  On the other hand, any church can resist the spirit.  Any church can hold to the negative parts of their traditions and assumptions- certain that the previous generation understood God’s will perfectly.  Any one and any organization can be motivated by their fear more than their love.

When Mormonism was created it was intensely innovative and speculative- ready to assume that all before them had been wrong and that some new idea of their leaders might be the eternal truth.  This was an immense advantage in some ways- negative things found in some religious traditions could be ignored and dispensed with readily and with no real sense of loss.  Nevertheless, the ability to be spectacularly right about some things also creates the ability to be spectacularly wrong.  Unfortunately, the self-confidence of Mormon theology is a weakness when dealing with the issues when the religion is spectacularly wrong.  This I think is tragic and leads to a profound inability to say, “I’m sorry” or “We were wrong.”  Even the smallest admissions of the most obvious things seem to institutionally be like pulling teeth.  Recently I’d say the speed at which old rotten teeth are being ripped out is increasing.  This is both institutionally healthy and excruciatingly painful.  Both for people like me who find themselves outside of the church and for the church body as a whole that doesn’t necessarily know what to do with all the change that is happening to it.  This is no reason to be ashamed of Mormonism.  Mormonism has a rich and vibrant tradition and culture in many ways and will continue to be emotionally healthy for many people in many ways.  Unfortunately, that no longer includes me.  We teetered on the edge of whether we wanted to be in or out for quite some time.  By the end, things had reached the point where I was semi routinely discretely getting up and leaving the Sunday School or Priesthood because I just couldn't deal with the things I was hearing anymore.  There was so much that was unchristlike about ideas that were openly embraced in church that I had never noticed before and suddenly I was noticing a ton of them all at once in part because I was studying the issues like crazy trying to drive the sickness out of my soul that such unchristlike attitudes produce and in part because I was in the cross hairs of the leadership who didn’t like anybody to even look different.

Despite all that pain and some specific areas where I vehemently disagree with the LDS church, I don’t think I’d ever say I was ashamed of the church as a whole.  Mormonism is just another group of humans wandering this existence trying to figure out what it means to be human and what it means to love.  There’s nothing easy about that.

Mixed identities

At church today there was a baptism and I was struck by how different the covenant system of the Episcopal Church is compared to the LDS church.  So when I went to work I grabbed a Book of Mormon and the Book of Common prayer so that between calls I could really spend some time comparing the baptismal covenants contained in each.  While I was at work, a coworker asked me what book I had out and I explained it was the Book of Common Prayer.  He left before we could discuss it further so I have no idea what he thought of it, but if this coworker knows anything about Anglicanism he now can be pretty sure I'm an Episcopalian.  But if he had looked over just a few minutes before, he would have seen me with a Book of Mormon and been certain I was LDS.

Yesterday another coworker asked me out of the blue whether we were "doing Ezra Taft Benson" this year.  Though taken aback, I'm still connected well enough with Mormonism that I knew exactly what he was asking and why and could answer appropriately as if I were still Mormon.  This employee has reason to think me LDS since I started laughing when someone at work claimed that Orin Porter Rockwell delayed baptism until late in life so as to avoid having to give up his smoking, swearing, and drinking for as long as possible and I had to explain why that was so funny and why interpreting the historical context of something like the Word of Wisdom can be so difficult.  These kinds of things happen regularly.  I know the language of Mormonism enough that when I can follow along with the in group conversation, people assume I'm Mormon.  Even though I no longer believe or attend, the LDS church itself still considers me a Mormon by its own standards, making any discussion of the subject complicated, awkward, and socially dangerous depending on how judgmental the mormon is of former mormons.   I'd practically have to pretend not to understand what people are talking about around me to avoid this situation.

Part of me feels the tug of years of training that I am supposed to testify of my religious opinions and as a result make sure everybody knows where I stand whether they want to know or not.  Another part of me knows this is socially blunt and risky and would rather let people make what assumptions they want to as long as they don't hurt me.  Another part of me isn't sure how to be true to the new me that is becoming if I can camouflage chameleon style to whatever belief system the people around me want me to have.  I want to be able to accept myself not just in the privacy of my own mind, but also in sharing my thoughts and beliefs with other people as is reasonable to the situation.

There is no easy answer.  I want to just feel free to be me, but how to do so is simply a mess because my identity is mixed.  The fervent Mormonism of my past will always be part of me.