{"id":46864,"date":"2024-04-06T05:19:25","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T11:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=46864"},"modified":"2024-04-06T09:45:07","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T15:45:07","slug":"my-atheist-conversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/04\/my-atheist-conversion\/","title":{"rendered":"My Atheist Conversion, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post got a little long so I decided to break it in two.<\/em><\/p>\n

The title is a little bit click bait as I am not an atheist, but I do want to tell a story of what I call (in my head) \u201cmy atheist conversion.\u201d Real atheists may find this disingenuous as my atheism lasted a very short period of time (half a day), but nonetheless it had a significant impact on me and I don\u2019t know what else to call it. The impact was in a \u201cpro-church direction,\u201d and allow me to explain as such an experience frames a lot of my thinking on things I\u2019d like to share on the blog.<\/p>\n

All of us can have challenges to our beliefs and perhaps mine are a bit unusual. Back around 2010, I shared at \u201cMormon Scholars Testify\u201d<\/a> about dealing with getting into scholarship and getting comfortable with the unknown. As I shared in a recent post at the JI<\/a>, I\u2019ve also worked to make adjustments to faith assumptions along the way.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yet academia led me on an unforeseen path as my own personal historical research led me to some unorthodox conclusions. In short, in my upcoming book I will be arguing that JS had access to all Mormon ideas in books that I believe he read (long story and a big book that I\u2019m working on). I was always okay with that idea. As I say in the write up for Mormon scholars testify, \u201cWhatever means God used to facilitate the Restoration was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet over time, I became increasingly uneasy about how my research comes across to other members. That plus professional (or the lack thereof) frustrations led a moment a few years before being called as bishop where I thought that perhaps atheism is what made sense (this was NOT my atheist conversion, but a prequel.) Bottom line, I was doubting my spiritual experiences and felling that I could \u201caccount\u201d for Mormonism through my research.<\/p>\n

That experience of worrying about atheism rattled me a bit though only last a few hours. Though I was back to theism pretty quickly, I still had a lot of stuff unresolved, and was in that state when I was called as bishop a few years later. I would describe my state prior to being called as bishop as \u201ca low level faith crisis\u201d: questions and discomfort but soldering on. The moment I said yes to serving as bishop, the faith crisis went from low level to what I\u2019d called \u201cmid level\u201d: feeling all that stuff but a lot worse (Yes I believe there is a stage beyond that, got a little taste of, but a story for another time). The \u201ccrisis\u201d was a little different than more standard concerns of most faith crisis (though related) as mine was more of a sense of how to make sense of these things I\u2019d felt \u201ccalled\u201d to do: bishop and my personal scholarship.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019d said yes to being bishop and I had a problem. I struggled with the calling on many levels, and a big issue was the feeling I was supposed to proceed with my scholarship. Not only did I know what I knew, but I felt called to share it, which I knew could be quite controversial and upsetting. I felt terribly uneasy my first six months.<\/p>\n

I got some resolution after that (I\u2019m doing much better now), but I continued to really struggle to make sense of my faith and spiritual experiences for a while. So much so that I started thinking about atheism as an answer again. Yet, now as I considered atheism, I did so in the context of the prompting I\u2019d felt about making a secular case<\/a> for the church. As I mentioned in that post, I felt like I started seeing evidence for the case that the church for a good and helpful institution for people and society, in addition to the problems that \u201catomization\u201d (our disconnection from each other) is causing.<\/p>\n

That led me to another thought: if I came down on the side of atheism, this Mormon thing may still be the best way to live. That John Delhin list I keep quoting<\/a> seems pretty vital whether people believe in God or not.<\/p>\n

And that started me on another unusual thought: serving this community the way I did as bishop may be a good thing based on the community being a good thing. Yeah, it was really hard for me,<\/a> but I\u2019d become convinced that happiness wasn\u2019t found in avoiding hard tasks but in showing that commitment that Brooks<\/a> (and Jesus) talk about.<\/p>\n

So these factors came together for me, I think about a year and a half into being bishop (I keep a journal, but alas didn\u2019t write this down). I felt frustrated enough with my attempts to make sense of things that I decided that I no longer believed in God. I remember the moment will when I came to that conclusion. This time was a little different than my previous brush with atheism, because that time I felt worried there was no God, this time it felt more like my own decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow what?\u201d I thought, and at that point I made the other determination as well: based on everything I\u2019d studied and my own moral conviction, I thought the best thing for me to do was to remain as bishop. No doubt that could be concerning to some readers, but as I said in previous posts, I had some pretty unorthodox beliefs even as a theist anyway, and as I said in this previous post<\/a>, there was the feeling that the ward needed me. Being committed to what Mormonism did seemed very worthwhile even from that atheist point of view.<\/p>\n

This round of atheism didn\u2019t last long either (half a day) but it was a meaningful experience that I felt I learned a lot from. More on that in my next post, but that basic realization that in the moment I felt like that right things was not only to remain active, but also the bishop is what I would call \u201cmy atheist conversion\u201d: my true conviction that serving in Mormonism was a good thing with or without theism.<\/p>\n

I had a hard enough time as bishop as a (mostly) theist, that trying to pull that off being bishop for years as a convicted atheist seems unlikely, but my conversion was nonetheless quite meaningful to me.<\/p>\n

Part 2 next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post got a little long so I decided to break it in two. The title is a little bit click bait as I am not an atheist, but I do want to tell a story of what I call (in my head) \u201cmy atheist conversion.\u201d Real atheists may find this disingenuous as my atheism lasted a very short period of time (half a day), but nonetheless it had a significant impact on me and I don\u2019t know what else to call it. The impact was in a \u201cpro-church direction,\u201d and allow me to explain as such an experience frames a lot of my thinking on things I\u2019d like to share on the blog. All of us can have challenges to our beliefs and perhaps mine are a bit unusual. Back around 2010, I shared at \u201cMormon Scholars Testify\u201d about dealing with getting into scholarship and getting comfortable with the unknown. As I shared in a recent post at the JI, I\u2019ve also worked to make adjustments to faith assumptions along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46864"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46939,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46864\/revisions\/46939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}