- Coffinberry on Phoning it in: How Did You Participate in Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About) Yesterday, 5/17?: “RLD, I know this is off topic, but I want to know more about the Tornado Warning, and why the “Gym” was where everyone went. And did everyone go? How did they know where to go and what to do? I’ve never in my lifetime seen a Tornado drill at church, and cannot imagine the pandemonium that would result. (Actually, my personal bet is that everyone would just stay put on the theory that “Got will protect His Church” and the local habit: “Tornado? Let’s go outside and watch!”) My experience as a midwesterner is that a large room with a relatively unsupported roof is not a good choice for sheltering in case of Tornado… as I find myself thinking about your situation i’d have thought hallways, bathrooms, materials center, font room might be better choices. And now you’ve got me thinking about where would we go in our own (member-built late 1950s era) building if a tornado warning went off during Sacrament meeting… or worse, second hour. (Holy shoot! I can’t imagine the chaos in our narrow hallways where people are trying to reunite with family members before sheltering!) You would think after events in Michigan last fall there would have been more effort toward creating and sharing emergency plans, but I’ve seen nothing of the sort here. To the back channel… can we have a post or conversation about this?” May 21, 07:25
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “@James: Good point. Culture where I am at is very different than everywhere else. I am in the mormon corridor where the culture is completely different away from here. I lived in Utah for a while when young and that was even a weirder culture for me. I fit better with a CA, HI or small branch in MI church culture/vibe…more chill. The author of the book mentioned above spoke about the culture needing to change and I agree. As you point out, depending where you experience the church and its culture, it can be a positive or negative experience based on the experiencer. But there is a culture present wherever you church at. I would love to move out of my current church culture into a chill one. I dont “fit” in my current ward culture. I think members that leave are focusing too much on the culture and not the gospel and they tend to not know the difference. For example…when some leave they feel a sense of relief. A relief from being burdened by the busy church life can be one such relief they experience which is a very common one. IMO, you dont have to leave to feel that, you just have to adjust your church experience to fit your current situation. Slow down, say no, take a step back vs leave the church because the 110% all the time culture is something I cant keep up with anymore. 90% of the meetings I go to in my ward/culture someone is pounding the “do more” pulpit. Add to that the new current “Jesus is coming soon” culture we are re-experiencing as a church and some members are whipped into a frenzy of “do more” culture. This is culture, not the church. Local leaders pet projects are culture, not the church. My stake is trying their best to bring home teaching back. The local culture cant handle the fact that most do not want to be visited and they take that as a failed program. They want us back in the home every month because not wanting to be visited is not an option. Culture. The temple pres that speaks in stake conference tells the members to “double their efforts” in temple attendance. The mission pres in that same stake conference is telling the members to double efforts in missionary work. Culture, not church. The church is overworking me….I am out! No, dont do it all, do what you can and stop chasing the checklist and to-do’s. Now, if a member left because a local leader “offended” them, which is a real thing and unfortunately happens all the time, and that x-member says the “church” was the offender, then yes I agree about the perception being off. The church did no such thing, the local leader is not the “church” nor be considered as such. Hope I am making sense. Think Mountain Meadows. The church did not make that happen, the local culture did. Most blame the church. Culture is a very real thing and the church gets most the crap about that bad culture when IMO it should be local leaders and members getting the crap for it.” May 21, 02:58
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “@REC911: good on you for staying, but since the topic is memory / perception, I don’t think it’s accurate to paint “the culture” as a homogeneous thing. There are certainly a subset within the church who would expect you to go on a mission, and that may even be dominant where you are, but I don’t think it’s “the culture”. I certainly perceive very little of that where I am from. Senior couples going on missions while not unheard of here, is far more the exception than the rule and it’s certainly not expected. I’m skeptical of the concept of “the culture” as a whole because it’s not the same everywhere, and two people in the same ward can perceive it very differently, based on many things but in this case where it rubs against whatever their own individual thoughts / beliefs / actions are. I know this isn’t an LDS-specific thing, but I’ve heard various young women over the past few months talk about how “the culture” expects them either not to have children but go out and work, or not to go out and work but stay at home and have children. “The culture” expects no such thing, but these individuals had encountered other individuals who had opinions about their life choices and these have been salient because they were points of disagreement. If I’m making sense. @Stephen C: Good article, fair points. I haven’t read the book either (yet) but Jeff Strong has been on lots of podcasts in the LDS circle and I’ve listened to many of them. I find his work quite compelling personally.” May 21, 01:00
- on Phoning it in: How Did You Participate in Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About) Yesterday, 5/17?: “I leave the phone at home now. I don’t have to worry about it and my mid sacrament meeting naps are notification free.” May 20, 19:53
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “I think Stephen’s point is that people who leave have some vested interest in telling themselves that they were always uncomfortable with certain things in the church, that they never were all that convinced it was true, and that certain bad experiences were really bad. All those things justify their current choice to no longer affiliate, or to affiliate differently than they used to. So, we should keep that in mind when listening to their stories. The converse is obviously also true. Active members have an interest in limiting their personal investment in complicated history, placing things “on the shelf” that aren’t to be worried about, to fondly remember past spiritual experiences, to minimize stories of people who have left, and to minimize our own past negative experiences with the church. We all do these things because they reduce the conflict between our understanding of the church and our current actions and situations. Human brains get overwhelmed if they are constantly fighting with conflicting views, so to keep our whole species from anxiety-induced paralysis, we evolved to pick narratives that lesson that discomfort. This is good to the extent that it lets us function in the world. It is bad to the extent that it locks us into our current beliefs and shuts us down from considering other experiences. And none of this is unique to the LDS church or religion. We clearly see it politically. We see it in rooting for sports teams. We see it in relationships, decisions at work, and everything we do that gets messy. I think the point of this post is just to be aware of this. We have biases, and sometimes they need to be broken down and eliminated. But there’s a limit to how much we can do that, and there will always be remaining biases. But in being aware of our bias, we can hopefully not let our lives be ruled by them.” May 20, 15:51
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “RLD: My grandfather-in-law had a memory of meeting Albert Einstein when he was at Princeton for a conference–and then he later somehow found out that Einstein demonstrably wasn’t in the area during the conference…. But yeah, a lot of fun cases like that. Kay Cookie: I think the idea that people largely simply leave when they stop believing makes sense–no reason to overthink it. (And, to Jonathan’s point, it’s more difficult for people to believe exclusivistic religious truth claims nowadays for a broader set of reasons). Dave B: That’s reasonable. However, I do suspect that the total mass of memory-shaping energy from online fora and popular culture far, far outweighs the effect of once-a-month testimony meetings. It reminds me of a point somebody else made that religious parents relying on Sunday attendance are nuts if they think that the one hour of religious socialization a week would be able to hold a candle to the deluge of what’s coming out of their kids’ phone. Jonathan: Amen Seth: “That seems to be entirely opposite the charity we’re expected to strive for in living through gospel.” Sure, but I’ll push back a little bit when it seems like the appeal to charity is being weaponized. “You have to change X, Y, Z because I’m hurting, and if you doubt my diagnosis for my hurt then you’re being uncharitable,” is often used as a way to use the principle of charity to coerce a particular prescription. I can be sympathetic to your hurt and recognize that it’s real while still disagreeing about your take on what its implications are for Church culture and policy.” May 20, 15:44
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “I’m not sure what truth you’re looking for here, Stephen. If someone decides to leave because their temple recommend was revoked for what they felt were unreasonable causes do you expect telling them not to feel that way is standing for the truth? That seems to be entirely opposite the charity we’re expected to strive for in living through gospel. And that’s not an example chosen at random. The person I know in that case stayed in the church, not even a consideration of leaving as far as I know. And that is in every regard as valid of a response. People have different backgrounds, different needs, and different abilities.” May 20, 14:29
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “Of course it works both ways; that was Stephen’s point. That means that we should try to rely on more than just personal memories, for example. And it also means that often it comes down to a choice: if we choose to believe, we can find ways to interpret our life stories and church history in line with that. And it breaks down the idea that believers are just brainwashed sheep. People who leave also have motivated memories (to see themselves as victims, for example), because otherwise they look like garden-variety covenant-forsakers evading their responsibility to the community that helped form them.” May 20, 14:25
- on Ex-Member Anecdotes and Motivated Memories: “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.” May 20, 12:44
