<\/p>\n
I recently had a co-worker ask me how many wives my husband had. “Just one,” I answered. Red-faced, I hurried to explain that Mormons don’t practice polygamy. By the end of our conversation, he looked unconvinced and I felt uncomfortable because I belong to a church outside the mainstream.\u00a0The innocuous encounter gave rise to one of my least favorite emotions\u2014feeling guilty for feeling embarrassed about the most important thing in my life. Religiosity, I often worry, isn\u2019t chic.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I know my beliefs aren’t cool. It’s why I don’t often tell people that my great-grandfather did<\/em> practice polygamy. Growing up my siblings and I would look through old family albums, pleased that\u00a0we came from the prettiest of the wives. Amongst ourselves, our history is not a point of shame. But it\u2019s easy to see the way outsiders view it and suddenly my adolescent yearnings to “belong” rear their pimply head and I find myself trying to shrink off to the sidelines.\u00a0<\/span>It’s the same way I felt when a\u00a0Rasmussen Reports survey said that 43% of American voters would never even consider voting for a Mormon candidate. A jovial colleague put the newspaper clipping on my desk–and I pretended I never saw it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We always laugh\u00a0(nervously) when my cousin Emily tells about the time she was sitting in a diversity class as a graduate student at Columbia University. In a discussion where students were admitting their prejudices so they could debunk them, the boy next to my cousin leaned over and whispered, \u201cMormons scare the crap out of me.\u201d It was another instance where my suspicions were confirmed: this big, important thing in my life makes me look nutty.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I can see why others think we\u2019re weird. Because really, no alcohol ever? No premarital sex? Except for my junior year of high school when I was too na\u00efve to know that people could put marijuana in brownies, no drugs. No coffee, or R-rated films. Not even tank tops or the occasional well-placed swear. I’m like\u00a030 Rock\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0Kenneth the Page, gawkily entertaining because I am just so darn\u00a0<\/span>righteous<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On top of which, it\u2019s not exactly hot these days to claim you do things because a higher power told you to. No one would think twice if I said I didn\u2019t drink coffee because I don\u2019t like the way it tastes.\u00a0But the reason I’m caffeine-free is because I believe it was revealed to a modern Moses that it\u2019s bad for me. I can understand how anyone who didn\u2019t get that same revelation might be frightened by someone who so fervently believes God speaks. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Any time I feel self-conscious because of my beliefs, my thoughts land on Paul, \u201cFor I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,\u201d and I feel lousy for being such a worldly disciple. “Maybe if I had more faith,” I reason.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For years I’ve piddled around with different ways of handling my discomfit. I used to try keeping my religion a secret until friends knew me well enough. Once they did know, I\u2019d downplay it. When I explained the tactic to a friend she said I sounded like I was gay. “It’s like you’re trying decide when to come out of the closet.” Seeing as we\u2019re a people who actively proselyte, the evasion tactic left me feeling guilty and false.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When I moved to Manhattan five years ago, I considered taking advantage of all those open minds in an effort to appear normal. I\u2019d make conservatism the new liberal. \u201cTripping acid induces hallucinations? I think people have transcendent visions when they\u2019re stone-cold sober.\u201d\u00a0Not surprisingly, my views were off-putting. \u201cSexual revolution? Here\u2019s one to blow your mind: abstinence before marriage, monogamy after.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n While it was easier to find acceptance for my views in New York than it had been growing up in Colorado Springs, once nicknamed \u201cthe Evangelical Vatican,\u201d playing on others’ professed tolerance felt forced.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I called my oldest brother the other day to see if he ever feels the way I do. \u201cYeah, I do,” he answered. \u201cBut awhile ago,” he said, “I decided just to get over it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Talk about a revelation. It made me think back to my favorite take-away from the PBS documentary on the Mormons. I watched it with some level of anxiety. \u201cPlease don\u2019t let us look weird,\u201d I prayed. I was especially worried about how the First Vision would be explained\u2014and at first, I focused on how weird that story must sound. But then the documentary cut to a clip of President Hinckley speaking. \u201cWe declare without equivocation,\u201d he said, \u201cthat God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, appeared in person to the boy Joseph Smith.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>When President Hinckley spoke\u2014without equivocation\u2014there was no trace of that familiar embarrassment in me.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s like the NY Times reviewer noted, \u201cThe tenets of the Mormon church may not be to everyone\u2019s tastes, but the church members and leaders who speak in this program are admirably forthright about the religion\u2019s history, strengths and challenges. It\u2019s great to hear people who believe in something and can articulate it without sounding crazy or defensive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And all this time I thought people wanted me to sound apologetic\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently had a co-worker ask me how many wives my husband had. “Just one,” I answered. Red-faced, I hurried to explain that Mormons don’t practice polygamy. By the end of our conversation, he looked unconvinced and I felt uncomfortable because I belong to a church outside the mainstream.\u00a0The innocuous encounter gave rise to one of my least favorite emotions\u2014feeling guilty for feeling embarrassed about the most important thing in my life. Religiosity, I often worry, isn\u2019t chic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1058,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","category-mormon-life"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819","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\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8821,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819\/revisions\/8821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}