Category: faith transition, faith crisis

Fallible Men, Empathy, and the Podcasters’ Resignation

On By lisatorcassodowningIn authority, ecclesiastical abuse, faith transition, faith crisis3 Comments

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.

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Cartoon “Plural Marriage” Destabilizes Family Life for Children

On By lisatorcassodowningIn Abuse, authority, Children, faith transition, faith crisis, Mormon Feminism, Polygamy, Polygamy Culture10 Comments

IF YOU NEED MORE EVIDENCE that polygamy culture is alive and well in the contemporary sphere of the LDS, look no further than your gospel library app, specifically at the new picture story published in the Doctrine and Covenants Stories for Children, titled “Plural Marriage: Faith to Obey a Law from the Lord Even When It’s Hard.” (Find it here.***) It provides a carefully curated cartoon version of early Mormon polygamy, stretching from its beginnings with Joseph Smith to its mythologized ending with Wilford Woodruff’s Manifesto, all in just eight panels. To say much is omitted is an understatement. However, its purpose isn’t to teach history but to use well-washed nuggets of fact to tightly define faith as obedience to God through obedience to priesthood authority. That may be the intent, but it seems destined to undermine the mental health (aka the emotional and spiritual well-being) of the children of devout Latter-day Saints, including those in the most secure of homes, by destabilizing their concept of marital boundaries. 

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The Strength of Serious Doubt, Difficult Questions, and Disagreement with the LDS Church

On By lisatorcassodowningIn faith transition, faith crisis6 Comments

LAST WEEK, I LISTENED to a previously recorded broadcast of LDS apologist and nuanced thinker, Patrick Mason, who asked something like: how can we minister to members with serious doubts and difficult questions about LDS doctrine and practice? It’s something I’ve thought a great deal about. But this time, the question hit me differently, and I understood the disempowerment inherent in categorizing people in faith (or trust) crisis as doubters and questioners of the gospel rather than as those in disagreement with the LDS Church. I felt down to my bones how condescending the question is, how it supposes doubts and questions are weaknesses in need of fixing as opposed to a step forward along a path of spiritual growth.

I consider myself a nuanced Latter-day Saint, but I’m not someone plagued with doubts and questions that disrupt my faith in God. I’m a woman who’s invested decades in study, reflection, and prayer about the difficult realities associated with being LDS. Although I’ll never relinquish questioning as a vehicle for learning or cease to view faith as impossible without its companion, doubt, I assert I am not weakened because of these perspectives, nor am I living in some miserable state of unknowing. My state of unknowing broadens me because it prevents me from shutting out possibilities. My study, reflection, and prayer (each catapulted by curiosity and desire for self improvement) have brought me to a state of disagreement with the LDS institution on some significant issues, not to a state of faithlessness in God. 

Continue reading “The Strength of Serious Doubt, Difficult Questions, and Disagreement with the LDS Church” →

Dear LDS Woman, on Discovering Joseph Smith Deceived Emma

On By lisatorcassodowningIn Epistles to the Saints, faith transition, faith crisis, Feminism, Polygamy5 Comments

You aren’t alone. Many of us have been exactly where you are. When you called, you didn’t have to say much before I understood. You’d encountered the Fanny Alger story. You’d been taught Joseph Smith’s polygamy began in Nauvoo, not Kirtland, and with Emma’s consent, not behind her back. Your image of Joseph Smith is shattered, and with it, your trust in the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These men who pushed a scrubbed clean narrative of Joseph no longer seem incorruptible. You feel broken. What was certain no longer is. With each breath, your pain reminds you of Emma’s pain.

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Today’s Lost Generation and the Crisis of Trust

On By lisatorcassodowningIn faith transition, faith crisis11 Comments

As Mormonism rounded the bend of the early 20th century, children who had not known Joseph Smith or experienced the pioneer trek came to adulthood—and many of them began leaving the church, earning for themselves the nickname “the lost generation.” These were people who didn’t experience the miracles of early Mormonism, nor did they understand their parents’ testimonies against the gritty reality of the industrial age. The old shoe didn’t fit.

One hundred years later, a second “lost generation” is emerging, a group for whom the feel-good narratives of the past conflict with the transparency of the internet age. To the first generation of lost children, their parents and church leaders probably seemed like zealots who lacked an understanding of a changing world. But to this generation, the conflict between the narrative they grew up with and the scholarship which contradicts it leaves many thinking their parents are fools and Church leaders, liars. To complicate matters, this lost generation is accused of experiencing a crisis of faith, even though it was their faith that brought them to study. To me, what they experience looks more like a crisis of trust. Continue reading “Today’s Lost Generation and the Crisis of Trust” →