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Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories

Stephen C

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There was a kid I knew growing up who was a Grade A toxic masculinist. Like, really, really bad. A real Lord of the Flies type. Copious uses of the F-slur, especially if you showed any sensitivity and he smelled blood. He especially enjoyed trying to make kids cry, at which time he would get the other boys together and hound them even more. One time he threatened to cut off my [edited] and I remember thinking that he totally would if there wasn’t any adult supervision in the world. (As a strange aside, his dad was a real Mr. Rogers type, so this wasn’t a case of an abused kid lashing out, he really did seem to just be born that way.)  

So anyway, you can imagine my surprise when I saw a leaving-the-Church Facebook post where he noted that when he was growing up he wondered why women couldn’t have the priesthood. My eyes rolled back hard. I grew up with the kid. The only “women’s issue” he was concerned with was how many of them he could hook up with. 

I don’t think he was being insincere in his post, he probably does remember something along those lines, but the past several decades of memory research has shown us just how incredibly malleable our memories are, especially when motivations are at play. It is actually quite easy for scientists in laboratories to implant memories in subjects that they, for example, were lost in the mall for an extended period of time as a child when they weren’t. 

To awkwardly transition, the latest thing in the LDS sphere that has been making the rounds is a book by Jeff Strong that interviews a very large number of disaffiliated members.. At the outset, I should note I have not read the book (although I have seen slides he’s put together summarizing the take-aways), so this isn’t a critique of his book per se, but if my understanding is correct, the idea is that a lot of the people who have left have been hurt, therefore, the Church wronged them, ergo the Church and its culture needs to change. 

I’m sure there is useful information in ex-member accounts that we can learn from. However, I can’t help but think that for many ex-Mormon leaving narratives that you run across online, there are Church leaders or family members involved in those same events who saw the blue car swerve left instead of right, and have a very different take on what happened. (And of course, those people are also biased. Unless you’re an emotion-less automaton, we all are, and that’s fine.)  

That’s one reason why in adversarial settings both sides of a court case, for example, collect their own testimonies and evidence, under the idea that if you juxtapose both arguments against each other it helps facilitate the truth rising to the surface as both sides push against and hold each other to account.* In the case of leavers, I assume that the truth is often somewhere in the middle between what they say and what their TBM parents/leaders would say, but assuming that the corpus of leavers presents the unvarnished truth is equivalent to only listening to the prosecution in a court case. Of course the person (in this case the Church and its culture) is going to sound guilty if you haven’t heard the other side of the story.  

Of course, there are some contexts where an adversarial, both-sides approach is inappropriate. I don’t expect fast and testimony meeting to start including rebuttals, that’s not what it’s about. It’s supposed to just be faith-affirming, and if there’s a context where you want something to just be faith destroying by its nature then I guess that would be the equivalent.   

And above and beyond motivated memory, sometimes we’re just bad at perceiving things. A famous illusion I show to my class when I teach the social psychology section shows how easy it is to miss very big things when you’re focusing on something else. In this case, while students are trying to count how many balls are being bounced, about a third of them routinely miss the man in a gorilla suit who walks in the middle of the frame, beats his chest, and walks off-screen. On one hand, if you’re focusing on things that fit into the Church-is-offensive narrative you can find it even if you have to misinterpret things to do so. On the other hand, if you’re focused on getting speakers for that Sunday, you can easily miss the things that are actually offensive and hurtful–the sword cuts both ways. 

Does that mean that all is well in Zion with how we treat our brothers and sisters who have left? No, but in the same way that we should be skeptical of a devotional take on Church history that seems all roses and cream, neither should we feel an obligation to take the accounts of the hurt as unvarnished, unqualified reality and set our frameworks accordingly. Life and perception are messy.

*To be clear, Strong did interview orthodox members about Church culture, but according to what I saw, in particular regards to the phenomenology of leaving the almost exclusive emphasis was on the accounts of those who had left. This makes sense–it’s hard to track down the TBM associates who went through the same thing–but even so it still has the limitations outlined above.

Comments

9 responses to “Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories”

  1. REC911

    Funny how most of us had that same bully in our past. I have often wondered what prison or company they ended up in.

    The reasons why people leave the church has been a personal curiosity for me. All my children, (all adults) my spouse and I, (old people) are still in and my siblings are still in but some of my siblings kids are out. (all adults)

    As most here know, I am far from being “orthodox” in the church. It works for me. I have never been what I would call orthodox even tho I partook in most of the traditions in the church such as mission, temple marriage, and church service.

    Lots of reasons out there to leave the church but if members would just live the gospel in a heathy way to them, I think it would help them stay for the stuff they like instead of leaving for the stuff they dont like.

    Our culture doesn’t like members who don’t do/believe everything the church teaches 100% of the time. We are viewed as “cafeteria members” that are slacking in the faith. Not a fan of that culture.

    We tend to be an all or nothing religion of overachievers. Slackers are welcome only if you are on the overachieving covenant path at the same speed the “elect” are on. Having said that, nothing wrong with being an orthodox, overachieving 110% kind of member if that works for you. Nothing at all wrong with that.

    This is what I mean by a “healthy way to them” life in the church. What works for you, not me.

    Having recently retired, many in the church have asked me straight out “so when are you going on a mission?” Very few ask me IF I will go on a mission. The culture expects me to go. Some of the orthodox well intended members are actually disappointed in me not going. Like I just leaped of the covenant path or something. Some family treats me like that as well. (the orthodox family)

    There is room in the pews for all of us. IMO.

  2. Robert

    Fascinating, Your memory of events from decades ago is correct, while his perceptions of the time are wrong. You make a perfect point in your piece about the ephemeral nature of memory but it sits so completely hidden by your blind spots, that you cannot detect it in yourself.

    As I said, Fascinating.

  3. Stephen C

    Only a superficial reading of the post would draw that conclusion. I specifically said on multiple occasions that these memory issues affect all of us–orthodox or not, stayers and leavers, etc. That doesn’t mean that memory is irrelevant or useless, just that we often need to triangulate different accounts to get at the truth, and that presenting one side is going to skew things.

  4. Jonathan Green

    You know what they say about the plural of anecdote.

    One issue I see in a lot of the popular research on exit is that it often proposes highly LDS-specific causes for worldwide trends. If the phenomenon you’re describing is just secularization – which it is – then the driving causes at the group level are going to be similar to whatever causes secularization elsewhere in the U.S. and globally. Was there an Episcopalian Kinderhook Plates that was just too much for a bunch of 20th-century Episcopalians? No, there was not. Individual experiences and outcomes certainly vary, but collectively, the list of historical issues for exit is just an acceptable way for people to justify their decision in favor of secularization.

    I’ve posted before about how we remember our experiences as teenagers or missionaries, and people didn’t take it well. But we really are terrible at it.

  5. Robert

    Just once I would like to encounter a mormon who when confronted with their bad behavior (or writing) stops and says. Hmm, maybe I am wrong. If you care at all about those members who have been hurt you might try it just once.

  6. RLD

    I remember the day my parents and I (and my younger siblings, though I doubt they remember) learned about the revelation on priesthood. We had picked up my Dad from work, and on the way home we heard it in the news on the radio. My parents were thrilled, but they had to explain to me why, because I didn’t know Blacks couldn’t hold the priesthood up to that point. (I was seven at the time.)

    But…for many years, when I replayed that memory in my mind, the scenery I saw through the car window was a specific street in the city where we lived in 1977. Maybe a decade ago, we were reading Official Declaration 2 in a class when I realized that it was given in 1978, and by then we had moved to a different city. I noted it as a lesson on the fallibility of memory. But I can now add a lesson on the malleability of memory: if I replay that memory now, I see a similar street in the city where we lived in 1978. Given the drive, that probably is the street where the event took place, but I doubt my brain dug up a more accurate memory–it just substituted a location in the city where I now realize this happened. Picking my Dad up from work was a fairly common experience in both cities, and it was the same car, so the background of the event is pretty interchangeable.

    Yes, memory is weird and not entirely trustworthy. It’s a fun family game to compare early memories–there will be surprises.

  7. Kay Cookie

    If you look at his data, the biggest reason people leave is history, not being hurt. That tracks with my experience. But honestly, I think the idea of many things all culminating in leaving is true. Probably members who stay or join the church also have many, many factors combining there. I think casting doubts on people’s stories and experiences is not a useful way to approach them. It is true that memories change over time, but so do everyone’s. A short encapsulation of my story is that as long as I believed, I could put up with all kinds of hurts and offenses, but once I no longer believed, they all combined to bring me out of the church. But the final straw was really church history and doctrine.

  8. ji

    I haven’t read Jeff Strong’s book, but for some reason (maybe a review?) I thought he approached the matter from a faithful perspective. It so, I am glad he gathered the information.

    I have a few extended family members who have stepped away (loudly or quietly), but really no one in the church hierarchy cares. I wish someone did.

    Anyway, one may leave the church, but someone who was a brother or niece or neighbor before leaving is still a brother or niece or neighbor after leaving.

    Regarding cafeteria Mormons, aren’t we all cafeteria Mormons? When invited to a grand buffet banquet (or even a ward potluck), I can nibble here and nibble there, or I suppose I could gorge on one thing in particular, but I likely can’t eat some of everything, and that’s okay. In the old days, I once observed that I was spending hours on Scouting for Aaronic Priesthood youth, while someone else was spending hours on temple work, and while someone else was spending hours on missionary work, and that was okay. As shown in another recent posting, for example, I’m not thrilled with including heavenly mothers in our worship meetings, but I still identify as a faithful Latter-day Saint. So yes, I think we’re all cafeteria members — hopefully, we can all sustain each other like in Paul’s parts-of-the-body expression.

    Last thought: I agree that Latter-day Saints are affected by broad societal trends.

  9. Dave B

    Interesting post. If motivated memories or implanted memories explain what Exmos say about leaving the Church, I wonder if the same dynamic holds for conversion stories of those who join the Church. Maybe some conversion stories have grown over time or simply been implanted. Especially when they regularly hear conversion narratives recounted monthly in fast and testimony meeting, in LDS magazines, or in General Conference.

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