roulette wheel
roulette wheel
Picture of Candice Wendt
Candice Wendt
Candice Wendt is an American-Canadian writer and interfaith worker. She is a staff member at McGill University’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and a contributing editor at Wayfare Magazine. She holds a master's degree in comparative humanities studies from BYU. She is married to the psychology scholar Dennis Wendt and they are raising two French-speaking teens together in Montreal. She recently accepted the challenge to try to form and coordinate a choir in what must be one of the most transient and multi-cultural wards in the world.

Latter-day Saint Families Gamble for Children’s Belonging and Salvation

A Weakened Sense of Religious Identity

In one of our recent Exponent II blogger email discussions, Linda Hamilton wrote “My children (ages 13-6) do not identify as Latter-day Saints/ Mormons. The way they are being brought up in the church programs right now does not include much culture because there are so few cultural offerings. My kids see church as a place we go or something we do, but respond with confusion when I talk about the church being part of their/our identity. I think this is in large part because our stake does nothing outside of church programs, no cultural events, no mention of “Mormonism” after RMN declared it a “victory for Satan.”

When I read this, I resonated, and felt inspired to write this post. I grew up with a strong sense of religious identity, but my kids and their peers are having a different experience. I agree that the Church providing significantly less community funding and programming and dropping “Mormon” as a kosher term are obstacles to our youth gaining a sense of LDS faith and belonging. 

The weakened sense of religious identity and community can make parents’ efforts to pass down faith feel more like a precarious crapshoot than anything satisfying or sure-footed. We can feel like we are gambling for our children to win big on the covenant path rather than steadily hiking along the iron rod together. Our anxiety is exacerbated by many factors we can’t fully control beyond changes in the Church, including our generations’ economically necessary nomadic lifestyles, the current rise in mental health problems among youth, and ways society is rapidly changing due to the tech revolution. Black and white definitions of success and salvation–children staying in the Church and following the covenant path as life-long temple recommend holders–lead to intense stress and fears of failure and disconnection for many parents like me.

Particularities Become High-Stakes Liabilities

Today, when an LDS family has to move, parents may feel they are risking all prospects for their kids having any kind of future in the faith. They may ask themselves: Will local Church leaders foster a welcoming and community-focused environment, or not? Will our stake have resources or will members be fatigued and spread thin? Any chance that church could be enjoyable and supportive to our kids wherever we’ll need to move?

I don’t think even the strongest stakes and local leaders are having an easy time passing down the faith right now. It can be hard and frustrating anywhere, including where it is the majority religion. Despite recognizing this, I have sometimes feared that details in my kids’ lives could tip the scales hopelessly against them developing any kind of religious belonging or faith. In addition to where a family ends up living, this could be an unsupportive leader, a mental health issue, a friend’s influence, a lack of friends at church, and so on. Sometimes it has felt like eternity itself could hang on one unpleasant relationship with a bishopric member or a Young Women’s leader, an unhappy four days at FSY camp, boredom during family scripture study, or failure to complete early morning seminary. All of this doesn’t even acknowledge how adverse and unfair things can get in a family’s relationship with Church life and teachings if a child comes out as queer or is questioning, esp. since new exclusionary transphobic policies were set in place. Families in which no children are queer (as far as they currently know) also report feeling their safety within and commitment to the Church are weakened by its antagonism toward queer and trans children.

Faulty Equations for Conversion in our Families

During the Fall 2023 General Conference, we were instructed that parents’ lack of total concordance with institutional teachings/platforms put their kids at risk of not achieving exaltation. As if the following is the equation, with much being determined and controlled by the parents’ stances and efforts:

Parents submitting to institutional policies +diligent gospel teaching at home = a happy family headed for eternal life together

Messaging like this gives the impression that whether children get on board with the “covenant path” depends on exposure to Church teachings/policies and submitting to their truthfulness. 

Religious conversion is not a matter of conforming to ideology–that’s just indoctrination. In reality, all kinds of community and relational experiences are major parts of recipes for how young people’s values and choices turn out. Developing faith is more likely to happen through feeling loved and safe in a community and gaining access to personal spiritual meanings and experiences. The actual equations that contribute to our children’s religious outcomes include complex and often ambivalent experiences with faith, the Church, and greater society. Here is an example of a list of contributing factors that two siblings in just one family today could face based on things I’ve witnessed (from the youth’s perspectives): 

Living away from extended family/ close family friends

+ using today’s addictive apps for kids and teens

+ supporting friends during times of depression, suicidality and disordered eating 

+ lonely and depressed periods due to lack of social contact

+ 5 minutes of family scripture reading a few times a week motivated by treats

+ having a close friend who is queer, or realizing I’m queer myself, and then learning about the Church’s rules for gay marriage and transgender members

+ a panic attack when my youth leaders confronted me about something that they disapproved of

+ being pressured at YM and YW to commit to a heterosexual temple sealing while I’m 12 years old, not interested in thinking about marriage, and don’t feel confident of my orientation

+ not wanting to pass the sacrament because girls aren’t allowed to

+ watching Keep Sweet Pray and Obey (Netflix doc. about FLDS sexual abuse) and realizing my own Church also abused people using polygamy doctrines and still upholds the practice as having been divinely sanctioned

+ that time a ward member was racist to my friend in the church bathroom 

+ hearing my grandparents’ or other relatives’ testimonies every few years

+ high pressure from my ward/stake/relatives to do early morning seminary and being physically and emotionally miserable when I tried it

+ not having many friends at school who understand my religious background

+ semi-regular family night discussions and/or Come Follow Me Lessons

+ thinking a prayer was answered, and then worrying it wasn’t 

+ my anxiety about the world’s future and how I will survive

+ being chided by the bishopric for not passing the sacrament one Sunday

+ not feeling sure whether I should listen to people believe in God or those who don’t 

= ??? A spiritual result that parents cannot control much. As in this equation, the odds are often not in the Church’s favor, and this is not the child’s or the family’s fault. The Church’s lack of care and accountability for children’s individual experiences is running amok. Children’s flourishing and well-being are not treated as priorities. Instead, adherence to authoritative messages and institutional goals take center stage. The Church could do much better at meeting our children where they are actually at and supporting them as people.

Spiritual Belonging and Salvation for Our Kids Shouldn’t Be a Cruel Game of Luck

When kids do get and stay on the covenant path, this will not necessarily be because those families are more righteous, faithful, or deserving. This success will largely be by virtue of random circumstances that gives them a leg up LDS-wise. This can include where they end up living or are privileged to choose to live, their socio-economic situation being more favorable to a non-dissonant and enjoyable LDS life, winning the leadership roulette, not having any queer family members to be persecuted by Church policies (by chance), having better mental and/or physical health/genetics, having kids who are less independent, defiant, or questioning, etc. By chance, the equation adds up favorably, and in the eyes of the Church, it is these lucky people who are religiously successful, valiant, elect, and worthy of receiving God’s favor and infinitely superior blessings and statuses in the next life.

What an arbitrary, cruel, crap game we’ve been asked to play! I don’t think our Heavenly Parents want for us helping children develop a sense of spiritual identity and belonging to be this kind of disheartening, crapshoot gamble. Surely they don’t opt for such poor odds themselves when it comes to their children reaching their potential and finding joy. Jesus’s healing is not just for the lucky, the prosperous, the comfortable, the conventional, or those with a natural affinity to believe, to fit in, to be heterosexual, and so on. He intends for it to reach the downtrodden, the sick, the questioning and doubtful, the outcast, and the broken. Our hierarchical, conformity and submission-based heaven has never aligned with the gospel Jesus taught. I condemn the ways we treat kids who struggle most at Church or who are on its margins as disfavored and spiritually unfaithful or inferior. Our Church today is no better than the self-righteous people in The Best Christmas Pageant ever who insist a family of unlikeable, defiant, impoverished children should be left out of Jesus’s community.

The Church is strong at supporting spiritual worldviews from the early and less developed “simplicity” and “complexity” stages of faith. In these stages, preferred frameworks for life’s endeavors are comparable to a war (stage 1, simplicity) or a game (stage 2, complexity, see Brian McLaren’s The Four Stages of Faith Chart). Things are cut and dry in these earlier stages: You’re right or wrong, good or bad, a winner or a loser, exalted or stunted. Institutional frameworks are much weaker at supporting a more mature, compassionate and inclusive “harmony” stage of faith. In these more fully developed faith perspectives, we perceive life as “a mysterious gift.” We acknowledge that not all things are knowable, and that one of the greatest purposes of life is loving collaboration with those who are different from us. Raising kids in the church shouldn’t be a spiritual war or game to win, but a learning experience that gives them opportunities for connection, love, and growth. The Church doesn’t see the arbitrariness and cruelty of its own approach to kids’ belonging and salvation because of ways it is stuck in spiritually underdeveloped, black and white, certainty and superiority-focused assumptions.

Wanted: A More Realistic and Expansive Framework for Familial Spiritual Success

During a time when fewer and fewer kids are meeting the Church’s definitions of righteousness and many families are in pain, we need revised definitions for success that are more expansive, inclusive, healing, and practical. Parents like me are recognizing that being a fully active, conforming member does not necessarily equal spiritual growth, and that the afterlife is not a flipchart with clear outcomes. We also see that the influence of religious values and principles can benefit our kids in many ways even if they aren’t fully on board. If church community decreases loneliness, depression, or purposelessness in any way, that’s no small victory. If it helps kids avoid drugs and alcohol, harmful media, or teenage sex, those are wins. If kids become even just somewhat more thoughtful, religiously literate, compassionate, or service-oriented thanks to church experiences, this benefits the world. Should they learn even just one spiritual practice at Church that helps them throughout their lives, even this is huge. And if our children happen not to benefit in these ways, the gospel can help us minister to them as Jesus did. The Church should focus much more on the more practical and direct ways it can help our children in their lives, and aim to help our kids through many diverse ways besides temple covenants.

Parents can also find greater peace in recognizing that the Church and our temples don’t have a monopoly on spiritual growth or drawing closer to God, and that spirituality is not one-size-fits-all. One faith’s set of mystical founding stories, religious texts and spiritual gifts, however legitimate, does not dominate over all others or by default or mean other paths or traditions are inferior or impotent. Other faiths have unique and intersecting paths to God, and many non-religious people have underappreciated, courageous ways of making meaning out of life and growing spiritually. We parents can trust our children will find a spiritual path and uphold values we’ve passed down to them, even if this will end up looking quite different.

Church, It’s Time to Adopt a More Accountable, Caring Approach Toward Our Children

Church administration needs to take more responsibility for ways they are failing youth and their families rather than put yet more pressure and responsibility on parents. They should address how narrow, impersonal definitions of familial success are preventing many of us from experiencing a “Church of Joy.” Inadequate, top-down, tone-deaf approaches to today’s children are a major aspect of what’s preventing rising generations from developing faith and belonging. Much of what is going wrong is due to the stripping away of religious community life, failures to move toward gender equality, antagonism toward queer and trans individuals at church, and a lack of institutional care and concern for members as individuals. The Church needs to turn away from indoctrinating children, making decisions for them, offering conditional acceptance, and invest their energies into ministering to their needs–social, spiritual, emotional, economic, mental health, and temporal–in the here and now. Church, its time you let get go of long-held imperialistic impulses to be bigger, richer, and more powerful at the cost of members’ interests and well-being. It’s time to grow up and get more spiritually mature and culturally humble. Let’s reframe raising children in this tradition as a wonderful opportunity to help and serve young people in their lives and offer them a foundation to be grounded in rather than a high-stakes game that produces winners and losers, insiders and outsiders.

Candice Wendt is an American-Canadian writer and interfaith worker. She is a staff member at McGill University’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and a contributing editor at Wayfare Magazine. She holds a master's degree in comparative humanities studies from BYU. She is married to the psychology scholar Dennis Wendt and they are raising two French-speaking teens together in Montreal. She recently accepted the challenge to try to form and coordinate a choir in what must be one of the most transient and multi-cultural wards in the world.

28 Responses

  1. When “home centered, church supported” became a buzz word, I thought there was a very clear positive potential for impact, especially in giving women greater autonomy, and I never would have thought that “home centered church supported” policies could lead to a situation where the home could be blamed for the church’s failure to support youth and their families, but I have no doubt now that is a reasonable conclusion.

    We saw a brief period of a supposed lifting of onerous regulation: rigid visit/home teaching toward ministering, rigid badges and checklists and awards toward a more open and undefined youth program, even CFM to an extent opened up scripture study.

    It will be both saddening and predictable to see control mechanisms reach back into the home when results aren’t satisfactory, as they already appear to be. And it will be both saddening and predictable to see more parents, especially mothers, told they are doing everything wrong.

    “Much of what is going wrong is due to the stripping away of religious community life, failures to move toward gender equality, antagonism toward queer and trans individuals at church, and a lack of institutional care and concern for members as individuals.” Preach.

    1. Beelee, this is a really interesting perspective predicting a future in which the Church will reinstate a more structured/demanding community life for young people in a controlling and oppressive way. I can imagine that possibility happening too.. It would be hard to recreate something that has been ended and that one grew organically over decades in an effective way. Here is something I wrote that didn’t make it into the final cut of this post, but which resonates with your thoughts about the failures of the home-centered church model:

      Top-down administrators have cut down the Sunday block such that kids get half the instruction time/interactions with peers. The transition to home based-church has been like parents suddenly being assigned to give their kids private music lessons instead of kids taking part in band. Trying to pass down faith feels like an angst-filled solo endeavor rather than the team sport it once was. Kids usually teach all the YM and YW classes, without grown-ups even taking a turn, so they don’t even hear from adult mentors much. Bishops, now doubling as YM presidents, are spread too thin to give adequate support to boys. The Church has withdrawn much of the funding for community and cultural events, turned away from recognizing kids’ accomplishments, and ended mission farewells. They have watered down the youth personal project curriculum such that it’s basically purely home-based, bland and vague, and fails to motivate kids to complete projects. And they have passed down iron-fisted, unfounded messages about missions being commandments or an unspoken part of baptismal covenants down the line, leading some children to lose interest in religious life before they have a chance to try it out.
      Susan Hinckley said: “The Church today feels profoundly different from the Church of my youth. That was the church I joined, and this is the church I’m in now. But I never really agreed to be in this one. Can covenants and temples take the place of everything we’ve lost?” When we decided to raise families in the Church, we thought we were signing up to raise them in a loving and rich spiritual community that would help us raise spiritually grounded children. Like Susan points out, we never consented to all the changes, including being so alone in our efforts to pass down our faith, or to temple worship being the one central goal or experience for our children. The covenant path cannot replace the culturally and spiritually rich experiences past generations enjoyed. The Church is no longer a “Church or joy” for many parents. It is a church of disconnection, fear, and grief.
      Rather than parents, Church administration should be held responsible for neglectful, inadequate, uninspired approaches to today’s children that are preventing rising generations from developing faith and/or a sense of safety and belonging in the Church.

      1. Watered down is a good way to put it. When I was RS Pres, I hated that we had RS only twice a month, and we’d lose even more to stake conferences and canceling church for Christmas. It was really hard to work with people I never saw or had time to discuss anything with.

        Here’s the hilarious part to me about the youth program … The Church dropped BSA from its youth program, to loud cheers and much rejoicing. The inequity between the boys and girls programs was appalling. I was excited about the overhaul of the goal program but it has been a disappointment. It doesn’t DO anything. There’s no incentive to earn, no structure to it, nothing. So 2 years ago, my husband and I registered our kids – all girls – in BSA. Our oldest was in for just a year before turning 18, reached First Class, and spent last summer working at Scout camp. The three in now are headed quite rapidly to Eagle – one merit badge left for Life, just advanced to Star, and the youngest is Tenderfoot. I’m the Scoutmaster over a dozen girls, and we’re having a blast.

    2. I was at my most fragile moment of my faith transition / deconstruction when “home centered, church supported” came out. I got so mad that night at the system setting me up for failure. In context, I was grappling with “the nature of God” being “No God” (Atheism) and “Personal Connection to Undefined God” (Agnosticism) – with the attendant grief.

      The last thing I needed was to get the massive responsibility of “teaching the nature of God and all the things” to my kids at home – when I was barely, barely, barely making “church centered, home supported” work for us as a system (if at all). I was there at that meeting to be sustained by my then-community and earn any righteousness points.

      The women in my life whom I asked about it as a peer or as a mentee were fine with the new system and looking forward to it. In the real world, I felt alone in my feminine fears, doubts, worries. Online, there were lots of women like me who felt that this huge burden was being placed on them by mostly tone-deaf leadership. Even Elder Eyring’s talk was pretty much “it’s a lot we ask and we don’t know why we are asking (though we suspect it’s because that is how stuff gets done – burden the women with it)” vibe.

      Now, I run with a “my best self-centered, circles of community supported” model. I actually hold myself to a higher standard of self-honesty and self-compassion then I did then. I frame points of sustainable connection and accommodation as the main part of how I live my life, and how I set up experiences for my children.

      1. I resonate with your experience when this shift happened at church, and I think a lot of parents in this community do.. The home-centered model started in 2018, when the anti-gay family policy was still in place, and many of us where still trying to cope with its fallout and how it had impacted our faith, people around us, and how we felt about the institution.

        For me personally, you might as well have told me and my kids it was now my job to teach them private accordion lessons. It’s not that I didn’t like have convos with my kids about faith and spirituality, but to become their principle at-home teacher was not at all optimal. Kids need to be given options and agency when it comes to their spirituality, and they need mentors besides their parents.

        The way you have grown, your reframing of your priorities, and the way you focus on your time with your kids sounds awesome and I admire it.

  2. Great article. You mentioned many points that resonate with me.

    We ‘thought’ that we would have a supportive community when we raised our son in the church. When he was younger, in Primary, we did have some support. My husband’s family, the reason we moved here, ended up moving back to Utah so we didn’t have extended family. When son went into YM, that’s when we had issues. I went to our bishop and asked for help but was told that maybe having a current temple recommend would help. Me, “Seriously?” Son’s seminary teacher told his class they were old enough to make choices. When son rebelled and refused to go to church, he shared the reason why. How the deacons made not-too-nice comments. After son couldn’t come up with a scripture on the spot, one of the kids in the class told him, “Why don’t you just leave? You’re taking the spirit away from here.” Later, that same kid was held up as being a righteous member and how he was on God’s chosen path.

    Yet, church leaders then have the gall to blame us for son’s decision to drop out? Uh, NO.

    My son had other issues such as one seminary teacher trying to get the class to sign an oath to be against homosexuality. He told the kids that they were only trying to ‘help’ them. There was a lesbian girl in that class.

    I’m just over blaming the parent especially when members do try to reach out and are brushed off or told to just go to therapy. Then the church wonders why so many people aren’t going anymore to services. You’re right. This isn’t the church that I grew up with that had a sense of belonging. Now it seems it’s just a list of things you have to do in order to get to the Celestial kingdom.

    1. Kim, thank you so much for your supportive response. We also had more positive experiences during early childhood, much of that was thanks to living in a university-based ward with lots of other young families looking for connection and to organize events together.

      Whether they are queer or not, so many kids today lose trust in the institutional and its leaders due to these kinds of tactics. My kids have regularly heard leaders emphasize that same sex marriages are not okay with God and that they should commit to a heterosexual sealing here and now.

      I gave a recommendation to my bishop that he put in place some kind of plan to protect and include queer youth. All I know he did was have a 5th Sunday lesson in which he pointed out the policies about trans individuals at that time–limited inclusion and tolerance, and teachings against trans lifestyles. As far as I can tell, local leaders just keep on perpetuating messages that antagonize queer and trans children, and they have 0 plan for including them or meeting their needs.

      I empathize with your experience and I feel for your son. It saddens me he’d be pitted against other kids in this way by leaders and the kids themselves. Some similar things have happened to my kids in our ward– comparisons, gossip, guilt trips. Leaders pitting my kids against other kids and saying the other kids are right/have higher standards. It has been very damaging.

  3. “Going to Therapy” taught me to “stand my sacred ground” and to be “the best presider I can be” as a woman. It taught me about different forms of behavior that were damaging to my mental health and soul in a way that the church never could/did.

    It taught us how to use different tools to create a more connective, maybe even spiritual, accommodation-based family culture that elevated our spirituality more then the influence that the church doctrine, teachings, and culture had. Therapy has had a higher return on investment (for this life) then the church institution did (and cost less then tithing and church activity did)..

    1. Thank you so much for sharing this Amy. Your thoughts remind me of how the other night I had a dream in which I was in a beautiful peaceful house. I picked up a dish in the kitchen and there was a tiny fish inside in a small amount of water. When I glanced at the fish a second time, it was much bigger, and had outgrown the space. I wondered around this house and looked out on the yard not knowing what the do with the fish. I feel like it was a symbol of the spiritual and psychological growth I’ve undergone over the past few years. I don’t quite know what to do with it all yet. Then, in the dream, a relative of mine who was concerned about my church life called me on the phone along with their ministering companion. They wanted me to talk about what was going on in my life, but I didn’t want to share and just thought they would give me prescriptive correction and try to fix me and make me orthodox again. I looked at the clock and realized I couldn’t talk, I had to travel to work. For me, this dream is about the tension between my personal growth inner knowing and Mormon expectations and pressures. The expectations of others can disrupt my efforts to care for my own spirituality. I have work to do that is far apart from reporting back to the church or meeting its expectations and objectives. Our personal psychological and spiritual growth is a powerful thing, and it shows up in dreams!

  4. Candice- the church would benefit so greatly from implementing what you suggest here. I took my daughters to another church for fun a while back and we all cried talking about our experiences- the main one being how much that congregation supported each other in ways we never have in the LDS church or have lost.

    1. Thank you so much for your supportive response, Melissa. I’m glad some readers are seeing themselves in this post. I admire the efforts to try out other communities and see how they do things and how they feel. I’ve cried over church experiences with my daughter too. Relationships with leaders have been paternal, judgmental, anxiety provoking, and disciplinarian. It’s nuts. And people don’t seem to be aware of how it comes across. Kids can’t ground yourself in a tradition that makes you feel shamed/ not good enough. A sense of grounding and being connected to humanity and its history is one of the main things I would like out of church for my kids, but now even this foundational thing seems to be working.

  5. This articulates so much of what I have been thinking about for the past few years. My daughters and I weren’t accepted in a ward we moved into about a decade ago – the contrast with how my husband was treated made the different way we were treated starkly apparent. My daughters both still carry scars from the exclusion they experienced. Right before the pandemic we finally started attending a different ward near where we used to live (our previous ward and stake had since been dissolved and combined) and then a year later that ward too was dissolved and combined. One daughter made the transition while the other was too wounded by having the rug pulled out from under her to continue attending. Why leaders can facilitate a transition rather than announcing in sacrament meeting that the ward is dissolving that day baffles me.

    Anyway, yes, I agree that it feels like a cruel game of luck.

    1. Bailey, thank you so much for sharing your experience. I don’t feel accepted, understood, or appreciated in my ward., and my kids don’t either. I am the only American mom raising teens in the ward right now. It is lonely. It’s a struggling inner city ward with lots of asylum seekers and immigrants from all over the world. From what I can see, the longer-time members with leadership callings tend to be converts and people who don’t have connections to LDS people elsewhere or much exposure to questions being raised outside our local bubble or nuanced views. And we live in Quebec (I’m from the western US), where the culture at large is allergic to religion and being religious is not a desirable or respected thing. It has felt like the odds have stacked been stacked against me from the get-go. My daughter’s YW leaders weren’t mature, experienced, or nuanced enough to understand her and accommodate her need. She never attends YW anymore. They chose ideological purity over relationships and inclusion. My son is told he must commit to a mission now at age 13. That it’s a commandment. Also told he should commit to a temple sealing now. This pressure repels him. The leadership is paternalistic and chides the kids sometimes. I give suggestions, and it’s like talking to thin air. No validation or acknowledgement I might have something useful to contribute.

      1. Ugh, on the mission thing. We haven’t been to sacrament meetings since our American election, but while sitting in the foyer I overheard a leader in another ward saying that missions were a requirement now. I called BS on that. My husband had a positive experience on his mission but I dated a couple of guys who hated their missions. One was so traumatized he ended up dropping out.

  6. Candice, I have been quietly following your work and I resonate deeply. Thank you for your faithful discernment and your courageous advocacy for healthy and whole experiences of spiritual maturity and autonomy. . I am so very disheartened and troubled by the recent and (to me) heightened doubling down on conformity, rigid orthodoxy, and exact obedience to church leaders (who are now set up as the equivalents of God). I feel that we have lost sight of Jesus in our fixation on the Golden Calves of temple and prophet worship. There are so many asterisks attached to God’s abundant and effusive love and grace. I’m so very tired and so very sad. The God of the LDS church and the God I love and worship are becoming two very different Gods.

    1. Jenny, thank you so much for your support. I feel inspired to be involved and do this writing, but sometimes it’s kind of hard to share it. Knowing people like you value it and feel seen by it helps me keep going. I love your phrase “the golden calves of temple and prophet worship.” It’s perfect!

  7. When I first heard about “home centered, church supported” church, my reaction was “What about kids with inactive parents, part member families, stressed families?” Because that kind of church would never have even gotten a visit from me. Without a strong community “church” would stop being church. The church is the community, by definition, “church” is the group of worshippers meeting together, NOT one religious family. My experience was that without community, you have beliefs that end up pretty meaningless. “Love the neighbor?” When you don’t even know your neighbor? So, this new emphasis would quickly result in more people out of the church. The thing that made church work was community, and by further removing any sense of community, the church would work in people’s lives much less. The missionary efforts had been all about selling the community for most of my life, and gradually there has been a reduction until there are no good meetings at all to invite our friends to and no loving sense of community for the investigators to feel. I would NEVER invite a friend to Mormon services for the last few years before I myself left because the community was dead and “Mormonism” without community never did work for me. I was Mormon because of the community, not because of beliefs. And I found that without community, the beliefs don’t even work. I am not inspired to be Christlike by “covenant path” at all. And there are things about TCofJCof LDS that I strongly disbelieve.

    Starting when I was a child, community was the only thing that got myself and siblings to church, where we got our only religion. My parents were partially active and if primary had not been on Wednesday and fun, we would not have gone. Going was actually pretty difficult as children of inactive parents. Sunday school happened if our parents wanted peace and quiet, they would send us. Scrarament meetings Sunday afternoon never happened for me as a child. By my teenaged years, there was enough social pressure in Provo Utah to keep a child of inactive parents active.

    But looking back, community fell apart for two of my three brothers. They had a really bad scout master, and between being too poor to buy new scouting uniforms and having poor leaders, they both only ended up inactive. My younger sister was badly failed by the community as a teen and left the church before college. I didn’t leave until the community failed me as there were fewer and fewer community activities and nothing but Sunday meetings that were always hurried and no time to visit with friends. So, my oldest brother was the only one to make it as a life time member. When church does not provide community, what does it provide? A few meaningless rituals? A few questionable teachings? Lack of equality and acceptance unless you fit (male, white, cis, straight, extrovert, successful businessman) perfectly?

    1. Important points abt how current approaches exclude those who arent very active. This is a powerful personal narrative about what is most compelling and valuable in religious life. And how teachings and rituals need to be joyfully applied to avoid becoming empty or absurd. As a kid, I had wonderful community mentors. Many of them got me involved in music and other community happenings. I felt seen and valued. This point about neighbors is so spot on to contemporary experience. Life today tends to be isolating. I also resonate with your points about missionary work not being motivating when being a community member ceases to be rewarding and gatherings are lame

    2. Thank you for your comment, Anna! I love your perspective because I feel like I simultaneously resonate with some of your frustration even though I sought to resolve it differently than you. You shared, “Starting when I was a child, community was the only thing that got myself and siblings to church.” As a young child, after being on the receiving end of judgement and gossip directed at my family for years, I felt the opposite. I did not trust or feel supported by my church community, so I reached for anything but the community of the church for support to ground me. As I have gotten older, I have enjoyed how months of at-home church during COVID and the more “home centered church supported” shift have given me the space to step away from aspects of church community engagement and Church Culture and top-down institutional policy/hierarchy to pursue my testimony in a more individual way. I have felt lots of freedom to nurture my testimony in ways that feel good to me (hikes, attending other religions’ services, podcasts, reading philosophy books, praying to Heavenly Mother, etc.) through space from church. I used to feel like church community engagement was almost elevated above all else, but I now feel freedom to use it as one of many tools to further my spiritual maturity.

      However, I can imagine through your eyes how a lack of community could be incredibly damaging, especially as a young person needing more support outside the home or needing mentors/peers to help foster and model faith when one is too young to feel all that confident searching for it themselves. “When church does not provide community, what does it provide? A few meaningless rituals? A few questionable teachings? Lack of equality and acceptance unless you fit (male, white, cis, straight, extrovert, successful businessman) perfectly?” Though I love the contemplation and tranquility I feel by stepping away from the institutions and people of the church to find what resonates with me specifically, your comment reminds me of the twinge of sadness I felt reading about the collaborative projects and community found within the early Relief Society. Yes, I love my time alone, but you helped express a secret longing I feel for greater community within the church (something my wards have constantly been lacking)! Individual searching is beautiful but community and inclusion is so vital for spiritual growth! (And I have definitely suffered in the second category in the last few years.) What good is it for me to ponder in seclusion mercy, service, compassion, and love if I do not engage in a community (whether a church community or any other kind of community/gathering) where I can practice giving and receiving these virtues? Though people are bound to be imperfect, community is needed to practice what a church institution preaches, otherwise the doctrine is full of empty words that does not inspire true growth in its believers.

      1. Ann, I appreciate you bringing up these points. I love Matthew Wickman’s spiritual memoir “Life to the Whole Being.” In it, he talks about his ongoing struggles with church life while simultaneously cherishing all the spiritual experiences that faith and LDS tradition made possible for him. Personal spiritual experience and the peace/anchoring/personal meaning faith can provide is another big aspect of how religion can change our lives for the better. I suspect there are many Latter-day Saint who cherish how Mormonism has benefitted their personal spiritual and intellectual lives and often their more intimate relationships but perhaps for decades, even before recent shifts away from community, have struggled with community church life, even if they benefit from it in some ways. There has always been a lot of pressure to fit in, check the boxes, accept callings, etc.

  8. A hard article to read, because as a parent and life long member it evokes feelings about my own upbringing, raising my family, and serving in many callings. It caused me to remember once as a bishop a mother (wife of our stake president) telling me how it broke her heart that her daughter’s friends in the ward were influencing the daughter for the worse. Ward roulette. Leadership roulette. Congregation roulette. Only the tip of the iceberg.

    1. CJ, I hear you. I’m sorry it was a painful one. I feel that way looking at it myself. I’ve had situations a bit like the one this mom described. When teens at church are really struggling, such as with substance use, anger, bad depression, you feel for the teens and want them to be loved and supported, but they also aren’t the best influences for other kids at church.

      My boss who supports young adults in their spiritual lives frequently talks about the value of being spiritually grounded in a familial faith tradition. Even if people turn out to be not very religious or very involved, having this grounding/background can really help people’s mental health and sense of purpose and hope/spiritual possibilities. People who were never offered this or any exposure to spiritual ideas or values or practices regularly really struggle at some point. At this point, this is what bothers me the most about belonging and this sense of grounding. I don’t want it to die in my family. I want others in the future to benefit from it as much as I do.

  9. A hard article to read, because as a parent and life long member it evokes feelings about my own upbringing, raising my family, and serving in many callings. It caused me to remember once as a bishop a mother (wife of our stake president) telling me how it broke her heart that her daughter’s friends in the ward were influencing the daughter for the worse. Ward roulette. Leadership roulette. Congregation roulette. Only the tip of the iceberg.

    1. CJ,

      I found this out too with my then-teen son. It was the seminary kids that influenced him in the worst way. They either ridiculed or told him it didn’t matter if he wasn’t caught. It brought up very painful memories of my own teen years. I dropped out when I was 15 and dreaded the once-a-year YW leader and teens dropping by with the plate of cupcakes/cookies asking me to come back but ignoring me at school. My son’s one LDS girlfriend ghosted him and he didn’t know why. The problem was most of the kids in our stake did the same thing. It really is Congregation roulette. Either you hit the winner’s mark or not.

  10. Good point that often the church’s “official” community can influence people into harmful things or right out of the church. My oldest daughter first ran into “church trouble” when in early morning seminary. The teen daughter of a very rich and powerful man was disrupting the class so badly that the other kids were dropping out. I tried to talk to ward and stake leadership about how they had lost ten teens because the teacher was afraid to discipline this young woman. My bishop who knew the family really well and knew how much tithing this man paid responded with “what are we supposed to do? Kick her out?” And I said yes rather than drive all the other teens away. And he looked kind of hopeless and said, “but she is Doctor Supper Rich’s daughter.” And then looked embarrassed. And ended the discussion. We were due for the military to move us and were worried about our daughter’s increasing bad attitude toward church because of how this one girl was allowed to ruin things for everyone else. So, we moved her to the “safety” of an Utah ward and released time seminary. Bad choice as it turned out the released time “more professional” seminary class was composed of all the LDS football players and spent the whole time period talking football with a couple of sports metaphors thrown in to attempt to call it a class on the BoM. My daughter dropped out and never went back to church. As her parents we could only call “bad kids” an exception for so long before she decided that Mormons were blatant hypocrites who responded in unChristlike ways to wealth, power, and “important people” like the school football team.

    1. Anna, your experience resonates, I’ve also had that impulse to move back to Utah. When I was having trouble with my teens, my bro. in law was visiting from Utah. I said “would things be better if we moved somewhere with more Latter-day Saints?” He told me about how much many teens were struggling with their mental health and church there and it was sobering.

      My kids associate church people with acculturation, control, and shame. It’s sad, but leaders who act this way don’t see it. They think they are showing loyalty to God. Sometimes kids resent other teens’ seeming superficiality when they answer rote questions the right way at church to satiate adults.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Our Comment Policy

  • No ads or plugs.
  • No four-letter words that wouldn’t be allowed on television.
  • No mudslinging: Stating disagreement is fine — even strong disagreement, but no personal attacks or name calling. No personal insults.
  • Try to stick with your personal experiences, ideas, and interpretations. This is not the place to question another’s personal righteousness, to call people to repentance, or to disrespectfully refute people’s personal religious beliefs.
  • No sockpuppetry. You may not post a variety of comments under different monikers.

Note: Comments that include hyperlinks will be held in the moderation queue for approval (to filter out obvious spam). Comments with email addresses may also be held in the moderation queue.

Write for Us

We want to hear your perspective! Write for Exponent II Blog by submitting a post here.

Support Mormon Feminism

Our blog content is always free, but our hosting fees are not. Please support us.

related Blog posts

Never miss A blog post

Sign up and be the first to be alerted when new blog posts go live!

Loading

* We will never sell your email address, and you can unsubscribe at any time (not that you’ll want to).​