This past Sunday I was struck by a question in Sunday School. After the teacher had explained that the early Church had been forced to move from place to place until it reached Utah, a man who was baptized a few years ago asked, “Why were church members forced to leave so many places? I mean, the members here are so nice!”
The subsequent discussion was wonderful, as well-informed members pointed out the need for gathering, how gathering can feel like a threat to outsiders, how members often didn’t act as they should — they weren’t always nice.
One example given was the recent situation with orthodox Jewish groups north of New York City in Rockland county. There, according to the speaker, because group members don’t travel on Sunday, they need to gather to central locations. They buy a house, convert it into a synagogue, and then many people move into the neighborhood, sometimes upsetting neighbors because their practices are different, or because the neighbors now feel uncomfortable in their own homes. As I understand it, the groups then ask local governments for specific accommodations to address their needs, which neighbors don’t always agree with — leading to conflict. [The speaker was not suggesting that the Jews or their neighbors were doing anything wrong, just that the actions required by their different belief structures led to the conflict.]
Sound familiar?
Later that day I was working on the “Come Follow Me” lesson for the week starting May 12th, which includes a section titled “The Savior welcomes all who want to worship in His Church.” Unfortunately, the lesson doesn’t go into what it means to be welcoming.
I think the vast majority of Church members will claim that we are very welcoming. We say as much on our buildings: “Visitors Welcome.” But what does that mean in practice? Most of the time our ‘welcoming’ comes with lots of unwritten and unspoken rules or cultural norms we expect visitors to follow. If they don’t follow those rules, without even realizing it we may exclude them — if they smell like cigarettes or alcohol, we may shy away. If they aren’t dressed ‘appropriately’ for church, fewer members will talk with them. If it’s clear that the visitor is new or a non-member, we may give them a pass, at least at first. But continued violations of social norms often mean that those violating the norms are excluded or ignored. Of course, this isn’t because we are LDS—all social groups do this.
One of the ways this has shown up in our ward recently is with clapping after musical performances. Some members recently baptized members frequently clap after musical performances, while long-time members don’t clap, following LDS tradition that we don’t clap in Sacrament Meeting. The result sounds half-hearted, and I don’t think it’s clear how to interpret it. It’s especially difficult when the musical performance is by a recently baptized member, or someone not familiar with LDS tradition—does the half-hearted clapping come across as unwelcoming?
I think much of the problem is simply because the new members are coming from groups and places where clapping is the norm, while more experienced members know what the LDS tradition is.
Of course there are ways around the problems. The Bishop could make an announcement from the pulpit suggesting that it isn’t appropriate to clap in church. Or that could be discussed with individual members one-on-one. The problem could simply be ignored, and everyone would eventually accept the norm of not clapping, or a new norm of clapping would develop. If many members expressed appreciation to those who performed after the meeting, then maybe the lack of clapping would have less of an effect.
I’m NOT suggesting that any one way of approaching this problem is correct. Instead, I want to present it as an example of how minor things, like clapping, can lead to conflict, hurt feelings, and people not feeling welcome in our buildings.
And, it’s not just our buildings. It’s our country.
The struggle to be welcoming is complicated by the encroaching ideas and cultural norms of where we live. Here in the U.S., an uncomfortably large portion of the country is hell-bent on excluding immigrants, and the government they elected has taken those desires and turned them into active persecution and hate.
And a rather large portion of Church members defends these actions, claiming that immigrants ‘just need to follow the law’. What laws are we talking about here? Are they the complicated regulations and procedures and artificial quotas that delay those who want to come for years and decades? Are they the laws that are more like the norms against clapping than they are like any gospel principles?
When are our laws designed to control and support our lives, and when are they purposely meant to make life more difficult? When are they meant to discourage, to be less welcoming?
Let me end by adding a few questions:
Is it possible to still be welcoming when laws are meant to discourage people?
Can you agree with government policies about excluding immigrants and still be ‘welcoming’?
Will the underlying attitudes behind the politics seep into how we act locally?
Can you follow the gospel and not be welcoming?
I don’t know what the answers are to all of this. Since I am troubled by the fact that so many members of the Church are supporting the government’s actions against immigrants, I would like us to explore this more. Given that we, the LDS people were once not welcomed by much of the country we called home, can we really fail to be welcoming to those from other countries?
And, perhaps as important as the political issues, are the details of how our wards and branches function really welcoming? Do we insist that those we welcome act like we do?
Comments
6 responses to ““The Savior Welcomes All” — Shouldn’t We?”
It is our practice that we abstain from voting to either sustain or oppose members for a calling if we are visiting another ward, unless the sustaining is for general church callings or stake callings in our own stake.
After Katrina, I relocated for a few months out of state in a city where I had previously lived. As it happened, another Katrina evacuee was in the same city, met the missionaries and was baptized. When he was presented in sacrament meeting and welcomed into the ward, I abstained from voting, as I was not a member of the ward. I immediately realized to my horror that had the brother noticed that I hadn’t raised my hand, he quite reasonably would have interpreted this as actively unwelcoming. We don’t ask for an opposing vote in this circumstance, so there is no difference in appearance between abstaining and opposing. That the new brother happened to be African American added to my concern that my abstention could be misinterpreted.
Ever since then, I have raised my hand to welcome members into the ward, and have given a vote of thanks for members being released, even if I am a visitor. Neither of those is an instance of common consent for which I am expected to sustain someone in their calling. There is never any harm in being welcoming to new ward members and giving thanks for church service and there is potential harm if I fail to do so.
Another way to be welcoming in church is to abstain from any reference to politics or weird culture war issues. There may be a place for that sort of thing but church ain’t it. The gospel is for everyone, not just those who are like me and who share my view.
I raise my hand to sustain wherever I am, because in the absence of any particular knowledge other than the priesthood of God in action, I still know enough to sustain the function of that priesthood wherever I may be.
Left Field’s comment fits perfectly. He/she observes that “our” practice might have offended someone — but I would question who is covered by “our”? Does Left Field intend to cover his/her own family, or the entire church?
I am part of the church, but I do not share Left Field’s practice. My practice is to sustain local matters when attending wards other than my own as a sign of fellowship with them, knowing that my vote won’t count if there is a split among the ward members and a need for careful counting arises.
I appreciate OP’s questions about whether we (LDS) are welcoming. I think that while we may be welcoming to those who seem to fit, I regret that we may not be truly welcoming to everyone who seeks. Sadly, this includes members as well — a bona fide church member who falls below the economic, social, or other standard of his or her ward may no longer feel welcomed in that ward.
As OP notes, this seems to happen in many or all human organizations and societies. It is good to question ourselves from time to time.
Okay, wow. I would have thought that the first paragraph would be the least likely part of my post to get pushback. In my experience, whenever the subject has come up of visitors participating in sustaining, the consensus has always been that ward visitors should abstain from voting. I never thought it was the Third and Great Commandment or anything, but I’ve always understood it to be the general practice in the church. Maybe I’m the only one who thought that, but it does seem like I’ve read it in the Ensign and similar sources. Maybe it was something that was taught in years past, but has not been reiterated in recent years.
In any event, the obvious point of my comment was that abstaining could be seen as unwelcoming and perhaps those who do abstain from voting should reconsider the practice. I have not abstained from voting, at least for “votes of thanks” and “welcome to the ward” since 2005. So it seems like ji and I have mostly agree on this and mostly do indeed have the same practice. If the rest of the Church is already going along with that, more’s the better.
Let’s posit that immigration is a complicated political, social, and economic issue and that reasonable people of good will can disagree about it and vote differently as a result. But unless enforcing immigration law is your profession, immigration law should have no bearing whatsoever on how you treat people. We don’t make immigrants wear, say, a mark on their clothing so we can easily identify them. The odds are good that anyone you meet is a citizen, even if they happen to have brown skin and speak Spanish. If you find yourself thinking otherwise, you should recognize you’re being influenced by stereotypes and push back against it.
So to answer the questions in the OP, #1 and #2 are emphatically “yes,” and #4 is emphatically “no.” #3 is a “yes” as well, while noting that underlying attitudes vary. Someone who thinks “I understand why people want to come to the US and don’t mind that they do, but for [reasons] we can only absorb a limited number of immigrants” will have a very different attitude seep into how they act locally than someone who is motivated by animus. That applies to those who enforce immigration law as well, and the cruelty with which our immigration laws are being enforced right now (Deporting a four-year-old with late-stage cancer without any medication? Really?) suggests it is being motivated by animus.
I yearn for the personal rule of Jesus Christ, under which our obligations to our communities need not conflict with our obligations to our own souls.
However, since we’re still on this side of that happy event, everything RLD said is right.