UNDER THREAT of excommunication, the high profile wife/husband team behind the Latter-day Struggles podcast, which caters to the mental health needs of LDS Church members, is resigning their membership in order to prevent their being “burned at the stake center.” Valerie Hamaker (a licensed therapist) and her husband Nathan have received an official letter calling them to a proverbial “court of love.” We all know what that means.
I’ve listened to the Latter-day Struggles podcast since its inception. Let’s be clear about who the Hamakers are. They are active members who are raising their children in the LDS Church and who have been wrestling with local leaders for 18 months, hoping to remain on the membership rolls. Therapist Valerie and Nathan, her sidekick, use the podcast to address “beliefs and issues within the LDS faith that are challenging to talk about but vital to discuss for those trying to navigate their relationship in or around the Church.” Unfortunately, however, the couple have lost in the game of leadership roulette. Listen to their episode 313 for the details, but the gist is that their local leaders are uninformed about spiritual development, misunderstand it, and would excommunicate the healer (and her husband) rather than learn from her, which leaves me wondering what they envision the mission of the Savior to have been.
The Hamakers reflect back to individuals already in a faith crisis that they aren’t crazy, alone, or evil, and the couple also instills hope that the ambiguity that comes in letting go of psychologically harmful teachings or policies makes space for a greater ability to love ourselves and others, as well as a stronger desire to be like Christ. As long as there is hypocrisy, there will be people who are hurt by it. The effort to erase the Hamakers from Church records will not erase that harm. It only calls attention to the problems the Church faces which are, after all, not with the healer/helpers but with those who create and enact spiritually abusive policies that limit and exclude.
The Hamakers have dared speak openly about the trauma church membership may bring some members, particularly our LGBTQIA children and siblings. They recognize the high rate of suicidality that religious marginalization often brings. Of course, the LDS hierarchy also knows this but thinks the work-around is polite phraseology. I resurrect this, spoken by Elder Holland at BYU in August 2021:
“[W]e have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people. As near as I can tell, Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, “Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments.”
Do you know what else Jesus never said? He never said, “You are a sinner.” Not even once. Instead, he said, “Your sins are forgiven.”
His disciples called people sinners. Jesus did not. The Pharisees called people sinners. Jesus did not. Jesus taught us the first law of heaven, and, surprise, it was not to follow the religious leaders of his (or our) day. Rather it was that we are to love God and our fellow human beings as ourselves. On this love hangs all truly divine commandments.
It’s not a stretch to suggest that the majority of sins Jesus forgives are those manufactured for us by Pharisees, both past and present, men who emphasize the rules of purity rather than the promise of spiritual communion with God. In every “You are forgiven,” Jesus invites us to draw nearer to God, to not allow the judgments of men to separate us from the divine.
When the fallible judgments of fallible men are lived as infallible truth from God, believers will be drawn to the precipice of confusion and doubt–doubt first in themselves as arbiters of their own spirituality and then doubt in those claiming religious authority. When a church leader won’t give space to his own fallibility, the healer enters, acknowledges it, and, in this case, is both condemned and rejected.
In episode 313, Hamaker affirms receiving her divine call to the work she’s doing and reveals she and Nathan were faulted by local leaders for “get[ing] ahead of the prophet.” Make no mistake, this is a denial of the gift of the Holy Ghost. Nothing more aptly communicates a leader’s lack of faith in our own doctrine than when he denies that a member can receive light and knowledge to govern their own life. Orthodoxy and loyalty are not principled when they deny the potential of God’s children to communicate with and be guided by divinity.
When leaders stifle personal revelation, they cap the priesthood they claim to honor. It’s bad enough that women are told the revelation we receive for our callings comes through the priesthood authority of the man above us. Are we now to understand that local priesthood leaders may decree, from a place of their own inexperience, that our personal revelation is evil when it’s more active than their own? This they did to Hamaker. Pedestaled women–women who are told we’re more holy than men and, therefore, don’t need priesthood of our own–are again degraded as daughters of God when the very men who bestow the gift of revelation upon us lack the faith to recognize it working within us. This is the type of dissonance that brought me to my faith expansion decades ago and that brings many LDS to the Latter-day Struggles podcast.
Unfortunately, the Hamakers were compelled into discussions with local leaders in which there could be little effective communication. Those familiar with Fowler’s [imperfect] model of spiritual development have likely realized stage three people don’t understand those at stages assigned higher numbers. And, until someone reaches at least a stage five (the stage when the angst of dissonance begins to be replaced with compassionate understanding), they likely won’t comprehend that these stages, though numbered in ascending order, are not about rising above others. In episode 313, Valerie reports telling local leaders that “at the beginning of [someone’s] stages of faith, it’s normal to outsource your authority, to kind of want somebody to tell you what to believe and how to believe it and what to do.” She then explained that challenging the status quo and differentiating to reclaim your own spiritual autonomy are also normal, even healthy stages of spiritual growth. But what her stage three leaders likely heard her say is, “So guys, because you outsource your authority to a prophet, you aren’t as spiritually mature as I am.” Then came the accusation she lacks humility. They cannot understand that faith development is a journey toward expansiveness and inclusion, not a threat to Truth, and that we are all limited in our ability to discuss spiritual development by our linear language and world.
Unfortunately, that dynamic will sometimes compel imperfect local leaders to exercise unrighteous dominion through formal church discipline against good people they don’t understand. But the beautiful thing about faith expansion journeys is that those on them discover no one really has power over them unless they are given it. The Hamakers’ local leaders cannot remove them from God’s care, nor have they the power to strip them of their empathy, wisdom, and commitment to their fellow human beings. Nor will the Hamakers release those things by resigning rather than facing the traumatic experience of excommunication. Valerie Hamaker will continue to minister to the broken among us with Nathan cheering her–and us–on. And God will honor them both for doing this divinely appointed work.
For behold, again I say unto you that if ye … receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do (2 Nephi 32:5) .
Be sure to like and follow Life Outside the Book of Mormon Belt on Facebook by clicking here and on Instagram here.
Life Outside The Book of Mormon Belt 
“His disciples called people sinners. Jesus did not. The Pharisees called people sinners. Jesus did not.”
John 8:11 She said, “No man, Lord.” And Jesus said unto her, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.
Clearly he is telling her she has been a sinner and she should cease and desist being a sinner and it was not a sin manufactured by the Pharisees.
LikeLike
Fair enough. But let’s consider two things. First, most biblical scholars can’t lay this story solidly at John’s (and thereby Jesus’) feet. It seems, they say, to have been added about the 4th century and solidified into Christian thought as a genuine Jesus story in the 5th, or about the time the stories/books that went into the Bible were selected. But who knows? So I’ll give it to you.
Just remember, though you are engaging with a teacher of literature and a rhetorician, a writer and editor. Now, take a look at the text of the story:
KVJ John 8:3-11
3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
In V 3-5, the Pharisees speak and act. They bring the woman to Jesus and say, essentially, according to the law which Moses commanded us to follow, she is an adulterer.
In v 6, John tells us what their motives are, something we must assume Jesus later revealed unless we accept John as a mind reader. And maybe he could accurately interpret the situation. But if we say maybe he could, we also have to say maybe he couldn’t. But that’s not my point. Jesus ignored them.
In v 7, we learn he wrote until he couldn’t ignore them, but the ignoring them is crucial in my reading. What they said wasn’t worthy of his response. Others assume he was thinking or receiving guidance, or something along those lines. That’s the usual interpretation but the text doesn’t bear it well because he only “lifts” himself and speaks when they continue (without stopping) to ask. So he speaks to shut them up. He’d prefer to ignore them. John says nothing about receiving revelation or decided on a course of action.
In v 8-9, Jesus returns to the dirt and writes somethin. When he speaks, does he accuse the woman of sin? No. Does he accuse them of sin? No. He asks them to consider their own behavior against their list of sins, which Moses gave them. The law of Moses is, in this instance, the rule guide that defines sin. They decide they are sinners and leave. To my mind, the story sounds as if he returns to writing as they file off.
In v 10- , Jesus then rises again because she’s still there. He doesn’t say, “You’re a sinner.” He says, “Where are your accusers? Haven’t those religious dudes condemned you?” At no point in this is *he measuring her against the law of Moses. He’s asking if *they are and if they condemned her.
In v 11, she responds that no man condemns her and he says only that he doesn’t condemn her. Then comes the pivotal line that’s wide open for interpretation: go and sin no more. I ask you, if Jesus didn’t compare her adultery against any standard but the one the Pharisees offered, how can we be sure “go and sin no more” is an acknowledgment that he views her as a sinner rather than as a child of God?
And that’s my point. Jesus didn’t perceive people according to their actions. That was what happened under the Law of Moses, which he fulfilled, and under the Pharisees, who clung to their lists in order to be the class in power.
Jesus didn’t need that power, not from an organized religion, not from society. He was the definition of power and he used his power over and over to thwart the rule keepers of Judaism.
Proof texting? What I’ve written here is no more proof texting than what you propose. You’ve filled in many assumptions about the storyline that are commonly forwarded. I don’t hold to those assumption. I see no place where Jesus looked at those around him and accused them directly of sin. In this case, the closest case we have to that, he is, instead, asking them to hold themselves accountable to a set of rules the church imposed on them, removing that power from the church and keeping it for himself.
Do I think adultery is sin? Yes. I think any action we take that harms ourselves and/or harms others is sin, or an act against our divine nature that stunts spiritual growth (and often other types of growth). What I’m arguing is that Jesus saw/focused on people, not sin. It is Pharisees, then and now, who focus on sin and punishment in order to maintain power over the people.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“…how can we be sure “go and sin no more” is an acknowledgment that he views her as a sinner rather than as a child of God?”
“What I’m arguing is that Jesus saw/focused on people, not sin.”
Not certain I follow this. I never said he was focused on sin and not her or that he viewed her as a sinner rather than as a child of God. That was never part of the issue and not what you wrote in your original post. You said Jesus did not call people sinners. You said that because that is a point you needed make to support your hypothesis in your original post.
The truth is that Jesus saw her as he and the Lord sees everyone. A precious child of god whom they want to see become more like the Savior which involves repentance and overcoming those aspects of our personality that preclude us from becoming like him i.e. sinners who they want to become like the Savior.
There is nothing negative about Jesus referring to people as sinners. That is part and parcel of our being here on the earth and working to overcome those sins to become more like our Savior. He helps us acknowledge that we are sinners who need to repent and become more like him and he focuses on how we do that and the benefits or our doing that.
Your statement that I referred to in my initial response is not an accurate representation of the Savior or the gospels but, as I noted above, is rather a conclusion you wanted to use as support for the hypothesis you were espousing in your post.
I’m not certain what the fact that I am engaging with a “teacher of literature and a rhetorician, a writer and editor” has to do with anything other than perhaps a display of arrogance on your part to somehow intimidate me. But sorry, all I see is someone who has misrepresented reality in an attempt to support the conclusion they reached before starting the argument and where I come from that “ain’t” someone to be impressed by.
LikeLike