The feature art for this post is Saint Peter Martyr Healing the Leg of a Young Man by Antonio Vivarini, circa 1450.

In response to my post last week about the difficulties passing down LDS faith to children today, a fellow blogger invited me to think and write about practical ideas for helping kids navigate church activity and Mormon identity. If you found my recent post pessimistic and you are raising kids in the Church, this post might be for you. The last one was a criticism of the institution’s current approach, not an invitation to throw in the towel.

Having a Religious Upbringing Provides Grounding

At the university multi-faith center I work at, sometimes students who have grown up with no religious or spiritual community roots come into our office in crisis. My colleague offers one-on-one consultations focused on spiritual wellness. These young adults wonder what the deeper purpose of their efforts to learn and advance in life could be. They struggle to make meaning out of why life matters to them on a deeper level and sometimes feel depressed and/or nihilistic. They don’t know how or where to search for something to anchor themselves in, and they lack frameworks to help them work through ethical dilemmas and find peace.

Belonging to a faith tradition during our formative years often helps individuals develop a sense of connection and belonging to humanity and the world. It also helps us develop personal tools for creating meaning, a moral compass, and resilience. This seems to be the case even if we don’t stay very religious or involved as adults. A childhood moral and spiritual framework provides a springboard for developing a deeper sense of self and the values we want to live by.

As a parent, I want my kids to reap the benefits of having a religious foundation to work from while they are growing up. Even though their sense of religious identity is weaker than mine was at their age, it is still there on some level, and exposure to religion helps teens and young adults to flourish more, and to have more adaptive and resilient perspectives (see The State of Religion & Young People 2023: Exploring the Sacred). 

Here are some day-to-day things I’m trying to do to help my kids benefit from having a family faith tradition and to mitigate harm:

Teach Kids God and Spirituality are Bigger Than Our Church

I talk with my kids questions about God’s nature and existence can’t be definitively settled, whether using religious or secular frameworks. I teach them God is bigger and more complicated than the confines of our church. I talk about the value of recognizing that we don’t know all the answers to life’s big spiritual questions, that this can provide a sense of awe in life and open possibilities for us.

Model How to Foster and Benefit from Personal Spirituality

I share with them about how spiritual practices and experiences help me in my life. How they help me find peace, healing, meaning, and love. I sometimes share about spiritual experiences I have after we read the scriptures or during family home evening (my husband and I are trying to revamp these practices). Role modelling can help kids develop capacities to have and to notice spiritual experiences.

I am also teaching my kids about the powerful mental health benefits of journaling and petitionary prayer.

I talk to them about what I value most about being involved with religion. In addition to spiritual experiences, this includes hope, God’s love, community, and close friendships. I teach them that while many people seem to believe that the main benefit of being religious is knowing the truth about the world with certainty, this isn’t what’s important about religion, and this doesn’t work for a lot of people. The real benefit are community and spirituality.

Validate their Pain at Church

I validate all their complaints about church and take their side if they feel wronged. I acknowledge the Church has a lot of weaknesses and has made lots of mistakes, but I also affirm that my LDS spirituality has meant a lot to me throughout my life and continues to help me. I’m trying to convey that there aren’t simple answers about religion and that it’s something worth grappling with.

Respect that Religion is a Personal Choice

I require my kids to go to either our ward or to some other weekly community gathering of their choice. In doing this, I’m trying to teach them the value of communities of practice that can help them develop personal values and principles to live by. I tell my kids directly that they get to choose their religious path and that I will support them in it. When I used to have rigid expectations, it made things less likely they’d give faith a chance. It’s better to put relationships first. I teach them all faith traditions, including ours, have enlightened, helpful things, and more base and oppressive ideas too.

Teach Them Oppressive Policies Haven’t Lasted in the Past

I teach them that in church history, oppressive, fear-based policies do not survive or endure. Just after reading David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, my husband, Dennis Wendt, recently wrote, “fear and exclusion are always revealed in hindsight to be out of character with the divine mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” In the past, leaders have had all kinds of foolhardy policies. They antagonized working moms, communists and socialists, banned oral sex, preached against evolution, banned black members from the priesthood and the temple, excommunicated a young adult for being an anti-Nazi activist, created coercive and unequal marital systems and structures, fought politically against women’s rights movement and against gay marriage in the United States, and more. I’m hopeful that in time, current oppressive policies will go the same way as these boundary-violating episodes. The past suggests that in time, the Church will make space for queer experiences to be treated as personal mysteries for member to decide for themselves rather than something it has the right to manage. And that, in the long arc of history, it will come to treat women as equals.

I teach my kids that whenever the Church develops social practices or policies based on the premortal life, things get treacherous. The priesthood ban and polygamy were both at least partly founded on ill-conceived claims to know peoples’ statuses before they were born. Trans policies are rooted in the same pretentious soil of “we know who you were in the premortal life and what limits God wants to impose on you now.” 

Foster a Sense of Familial Mormon Identity

As a family, we engage Mormon identity in ways that help us bond. We affectionately joke about it. The Idaho potato jokes alone are endless, and while this may not directly connect my kids to God, it connects them to the LDS family and community my husband grew up in. My kids are enthusiastic about my identity as an independent-minded Mormon and things like their Dad’s creative approaches to testimony meeting. All of this helps create a sense of familial Mormon identity, which is a little different than what I had growing up, but is also actually richer in certain ways.

Normalize the Church’s Problems; Help Them See a Bigger Picture

I talk to my kids about how all world religions are facing challenges now with community engagement and learning how to navigate offering LGBTQ rights and women’s rights better. I try to normalize that such hot messes are pretty common today, and it is probably not going to be this strange or transitional forever. 

I talk to them about how Christianity itself seems to be going through some kind of big shift in how we think about God, serve, and build communities, and how there are wonderful manifestations of this in Mormon circles. In LDS letters and other circles outside the official Church, we’re talking about Jesus as the empathetic healer of our traumas and wounds rather than a blood ransom for our unworthiness. And we are focusing more on healthy spiritual development than ever before.

Correct and Reframe Teachings about Life and Suffering

I correct things that are said at Church as I decide is needed. I teach them that life is an opportunity to grow and learn to love instead of a test. That the adversity people face is due to societal problems and living in a complicated world and having fragile bodies rather than personal failings or God sending painful trials to refine us. I’m open with them about what I think and believe about tough issues like plural marriage and patriarchy.

Honesty is Fertile Ground for Resilient Faith and Spirituality

You could argue I’m doing the wrong thing in sharing some of what I honestly think about church with my kids. Having to deal with so much complexity is probably not ideal for them before adulthood. But I also realize that one reason I’m still religious is because adults in my life modelled dissenting thoughts and the capacity to criticize leaders while deeply valuing their faith throughout my childhood. I found similar ideas in George Handley’s book of essays If Truth Were a Child. His parents were open with him about how certain church policies troubled them deeply, and this seemed to open up a kind of neutral, low-pressure space that proved to be the ideal conditions for his own authentic connection with the divine to sprout and flourish. Honesty builds trust, and role modelling of mature spiritual differentiation can be powerful.

Enjoy What Authentic Hope You May Have

I hope that things could get better and have more space for a family like us in the years to come. I hope this Umbridge-like period that is especially evident in aspects of church like the CES will end just like it did in Harry Potter. I still hope that my grandkids could be raised in the church in a healthier, happier way. I even hope Church could be better and somewhat out of the wilderness/its current retrenchment by the time my kids are in graduate school. And whatever the Church does, I hope the spirituality and values I pass down will help my kids find grounding and meaning in their lives, whatever paths they decide are best for them.

Accept We Can’t Determine the Church’s Future and Set Your Honest Boundaries

I accept that my and my family’s future choices pertaining to religious practice will partly depend on the kind of direction the church takes, and that I can’t do much to control this. An LDS friend told me this week that whether he stays involved depends on how the church continues to change; right now church is really hard for him as it is for so many of us. I resonated. I admired his willingness to face current hardships with honesty and willingness to adapt, and recognized that I need to do the same thing. It’s not actually healthy or even integrous for me to have some kind of commitment to stay “no matter what.” The bonds in my family and the values I believe in are more important to me than the Church, if I need to leave, I don’t need to frame this as the end of the world or the end of my spiritual life. Mormon identity shouldn’t be what I place at the very core of who I am.

It is valuable to examine our families’ needs, limits and boundaries realistically and honestly as we face the tough issues and oppressive forces at work at Church. It’s healthy to set conditional limits and boundaries with the Church and our involvement. The Church certainly could continue to evolve in ways that will make it such that the deficits of being involved will clearly outweigh any benefits for my family or all motivation will die.  

For now, personally, I hope my kids are reaping more benefits from getting up on Sunday morning, walking to church, and watching how my ward community tries to function than they would having a chill and isolated morning at home. And I hope they are getting something out of hearing diverse church members’ voices about how they connect with God and find meaning in their lives, even if much of this doesn’t resonate with them. Even disagreement may help them build a framework for the convictions, values and spirituality they want to have themselves.

All this is not to judge those whose boundaries have already been crossed such that they are raising kids outside the church. I get that and respect it. This post is just to support parents for whom it might be helpful or inspiring. And these are just a few a my ideas, not anything definitive. I’d love to hear ideas from other parents about how they are navigating raising youth in the Church today.