The Mormon Dilemma

Mormonism is not a mere set of beliefs that one adopts. It is a heritage. Weekly worship is almost meaningless without the Mormon Story, the vibrant narrative that colors and gives meaning to the life of ritual and service pursued by the faithful Latter-day Saint. This narrative and its heritage create a deep-seated sense of identity, allowing individuals to understand their position in relation to their community, the broader world, and with God. The uniqueness of Mormonism lies in the concepts of priesthood authority, which gives the organization its imperative as the “one true church,” and in continuing revelation, which is available to living prophets and apostles as well as to the individual. The belief in the ability of their leaders to ascertain the will of God creates a climate that allows for the canonization of culture and puts the mandate of God behind social norms. The Mormon Story creates a perceptive lens that shapes the contours of the world of the Latter-day Saint. This framework alters the way reality is approached, enhancing life for many, but not all. The dilemma of Mormonism is that it creates a world that does not live up to its own teachings and fails to take responsibility for its failures.

The Mormon Story is paradoxically rigid and loose. The words of church leaders (referred to authoritatively as “the Brethren”) are taken as the mandate of God, and to question them is to question the Omnipotent. On the same token, Mormons admit belief not only in what God has revealed and is revealing, but that “he will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” The veneer of flexibility adds justification to inflexibility. What is being done must be right, because if it were not, God would simply change it. And so the Latter-day Saint accepts with joy that the current state of affairs is the way God ordains things to be, and that if they need changing, it will come from the top down, originating from God and being subsequently transferred through his leaders, who are not to be questioned.

The story that guides Mormonism is the story of a God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son to set up a church for its inhabitants, and then to give his life for them. And in Mormonism, it is the institution of the church that takes precedence over the doctrine of the atonement. Mormons believe that like the prophets of old, Christ established an institutional church for the good of mankind. He ordained his followers to be leaders of the church by the laying on of hands, bestowing a priesthood authority upon them.  On the cornerstone of prophets and apostles, Christ laid the foundation for the work of salvation which is to be accomplished in and through the workings of his church.

Any good Latter-day Saint would immediately critique this thought, proclaiming that the atonement of Christ is the centrality of the Mormon Story, and that it is His death and sufferings are at the heart of the religion. To an astute observer, however, the center of Mormonism is not the sacrifice, but the covenant of which the sacrifice is a portion. The end goal of Mormon theology is exaltation, and while the atonement of Christ is a necessary step for its occurrence, the path walked to its obtaining is the path of covenants. The sentiment of Joseph Smith that all aspects of the church are only appendages to Christ’s atonement is not completely accurate in the modern church, because salvation is achieved through covenant making.

In Mormonism, a covenant is believed to be a two-way promise between God and man that is undertaken in some sort of ritual. The first covenant that one makes is the covenant of baptism, in which one is fully immersed in water to symbolize the death and resurrection of Christ, and likewise the death of the man of sin and the resurrection of the spirit into the life of His redemption. Further covenants are made in the temple, including the covenants of the endowment ceremony, and the highest covenant of marriage. Covenants are undertaken in rituals, and rituals demand officiators. The priesthood authority is therefore central to acts of ritual and central to the process of covenant making. Without covenants, one cannot receive the remission of their sins, attain salvation, nor achieve exaltation, which is believed to be the greatest possible eternal attainment of the human soul. Covenants are the steps on the path to salvation.

Christ’s atonement enables covenants to hold their power, but the nature of the covenant places the necessity of a worthy priesthood holder at the forefront as a requirement for salvation to occur. In Mormon theology, an individual cannot simply pray their way to exaltation. Priesthood rituals must occur, and covenants must be made. In Mormonism, the priesthood holder is as requisite to the salvific process as is the atonement of Christ, for each are necessary elements without which salvation cannot be obtained. In essence, priesthood holders stand between a person and God, officiating the rituals that open the door to their salvation.

The church is the organization of the body of the priesthood, and is therefore the vehicle of salvation for the people. The story of Mormonism is that God sent His son to establish a church, and then to die for it. Both steps are necessary on the path of salvation, but emphasis is most clearly placed on the necessity of the church, its priesthood, and its rituals, for they come a priori to accessing the atonement of Christ. The most ornate symbol of Mormonism, the temple, is a monetary enshrinement of the importance of covenants, and therefore of priesthood and of the church. These temples built as the home of a God who “dwelleth not in temples made of hands” are more clearly the home of a ritual celebration of priesthood authority than of the God that proclaims “heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool” and poses the piercing question, critical of a pillar of Mormon theology, of “what house will ye build me?” (Acts 7: 48-49)

The Mormon Story continues in an understanding of the “great apostasy,” in which Christ’s church, following his death, fell apart and lost the priesthood authority, disintegrating into bickering factions that each holds only a portion of the truth. In the 1840s Joseph Smith claimed that in 1820 God appeared to him in response to his prayer of which Christian sect was the true church, revealing to him that none of them were true, but rather that they were an “abomination in [his] sight.” Joseph restored the church of Christ to the earth, receiving the priesthood authority that is requisite to salvation, setting up the institution of the church to continue on after his death, and translating the Book of Mormon as the ultimate expression of his prophetic calling. The Book of Mormon is the key stone of the religion because if it is true, then everything Joseph Smith taught was true, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God’s true church and the “Brethren” are called of God to speak for him.

Mormonism is the deification of an institution.  Its leaders are the doors to salvation, because they are windows into the mind and will of God. The Mormon Story is the story of a mandate from God communicated to mankind through voice of prophets. Emphasis is placed on obedience and obeisance to positions of priesthood authority, because they are our access to God and to salvation. This story holds not merely the weight of personal conversion, but of the sacrifices of thousands who died at the hands of mobs in the early days of the Church and those who died trekking across the plains on their journey to establish Zion.

Mormonism is not simply a set of rules. It is a heritage. The mandate of the one true church is shaped into the identity of every child who grows up into the church, and they know that it is their responsibility to continue the pioneer trek of their ancestors in establishing the kingdom of God on the earth. Mormonism is both a message and a mission, and it shapes the framework through which every Latter-day Saint sees their world.

The Mormon identity is so essential to the Latter-day Saint, that intellectual questions that bring doubt are deeply emotional and frightening. When Mormons are first exposed to historical facts that contradict the story that shapes their world, it feels as if the pillars that hold up their world are quaking and threatening to crash down around them, leaving their relationships with family and friends as casualties to their questions. Basic questions, such as whether or not Joseph Smith really translated the Book of Mormon and if modern prophets are actually receiving any revelation at all open the windows of despair, and can only be whispered about. To discuss them openly is to incur the wrath of testimony.

The idea of testimony plays a powerful role the life of a Latter-day Saint from the very beginning. Every first Sunday of the month, the central church meeting is focused on sharing testimony. The pulpit is open, and any member can stand up and share with the congregation what they “know” to be true. To the believing Latter-day Saint, such an event is strongly faith-promoting and is accompanied with the “feelings of the Spirit,” which manifest to the heart that what is spoken is true. Children are often taken to the pulpit by parents, who whisper in their ears the words they should say. Testimonies differ, but the most consistent variable is the inclusion of the declaration that “I know the church is true.” To an outsider, the event can seem bizarre, repetitious, and deeply boring. To the questioning member, it only serves to feed the fire of doubt.

A testimony is gained by personal witness from the Holy Spirit, a feeling that cannot be explained. As one commonly told story puts it, to explain how the Spirit feels is like explaining how salt tastes. Testimonies are most often born in reading and praying about whether or not the Book of Mormon is true, but also often come at other moments and other times, and they are deeply connected with prayer and the idea of direct revelation from God. Over time as an individual begins to learn how to recognize the spirit, however, it seems that emotions turn into messages from God, albeit emotions guided by the canon of the scriptures and the words of the prophets. If you feel positive feelings associated with anything contrary to the teachings of the church, it is most likely false revelation, because “even the devil can, at times, appear as an angel of light.” Negative feelings towards the church are ignored, because obedience is more important. Mormonism teaches you to rely on the feelings of the spirit, but only when they tell you that the church is true.

Testimonies of friends, family members, and church leaders only very rarely have their intended effect in the case of a sincere questioner. Often times, testimony only leads to further questioning, such as asking how it is that someone can claim to “know” anything based only on a feeling. If one experiences the same feelings of the spirit by which they came to “know” that the church is true telling them something that is contrary to the church, then how can they really know they ever knew the church was true in the first place? Can emotion really be trusted as a guide in what is objectively true and false? If we cannot know, then why are we basing our entire lives on what our emotions tell us?

Important questions concerning testimony are most often unasked by Latter-day Saints. For example, few people pause to question if the past experiences they label as revelatory could have any other explanations. It could be possible, for example, that a loving God was merely affirming his love for them, and they interpreted it as a revelation that Mormonism is the one true church. It could also be possible that there is no God and that the experiences were culturally induced. Mormons fail to ask this key question: all else held constant, if God did not exist, would it be possible for the experiences upon which I base my testimony to be explained by other factors? Another factor rarely considered is the role that incentives play in their testimonies. It is very easy for a person who stands to lose social standing in their community if they did not believe to interpret any positive emotions as reasons to believe. A cautious interpretation of past experience is commendable, but cautious interpretations are not what are being shared over the pulpit each month, but instead declarations of knowledge. Indeed, the oft repeated advice that to gain a testimony one must bare a testimony, beyond being an advocacy of openly bearing false witness, is confirmed by psychology to be a means of self-deception. Mormons regularly ignore the wealth of equally plausible explanations for their experiences, and instead translate them into a mandate for following the line of priesthood authority and upholding the deification of their institution.

Questions become even deeper when one looks at the fruits of the Mormon Story. On the one hand, it helps people to understand their place in the world and provides a sense of stability. But if we assume for a moment that the Mormon Story is not true, and then look at the ways it influences gay and lesbian members, members who, at no fault of their own, have not been able to get married, or whose families have fallen apart, or members who, for the life of them, cannot feel the spirit, then it becomes clear that the Mormon Story incurs psychological damage. The teenager growing up who discovers that they are only attracted to people of their own gender knows that if they follow those feelings to any degree, they will be disobeying the teachings of the church—disobeying the very voice of God. Who they are, must then be a mistake, or at least a temporary hiccup, or maybe a divine mandate for them to suffer through a life of celibacy because their natural feelings of love were not good enough for God. The member who never has the chance to get married must weekly go to church and be reminded that families are central to exaltation, and often face judgment and ostracization from other members. For the member who has no desire to get married it is even more so. Those whose families fall apart cannot escape the guilt and pressure created naturally by a system that tells stories about how a family ought to be, and that if one is righteous enough they can obtain it.

And so, the questioner of the church is faced with the world of pain caused by the Mormon Story and is forced to ask one ultimate question: is it true? Or is it just a story? The more one looks into the historical facts, the clearer it seems that prophets make false prophecies, change past revelations, and revise history. The more one looks into sociological facts, the more one finds that Mormonism seems to oddly create the very things it teaches against (such as the ridiculously high rates of pornography consumption in Utah). The more one really pauses to question the truth of the claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the less it seems to be true, and the more it seems to just be a story.

The question remains of what the thinking person is to do. Should they abandon intellect and embrace a faith that perhaps transcends reason? Should they continue activity in the church because of social reasons? Or should they throw up their arms and be done with it all? When missionaries teach about prophets, they proclaim that it is by their fruits that you will know them. The fruits of the Mormon Story are diverse, and many of them are good, incredible in fact, while many of them are devastatingly tragic. In order to decide, one must answer the question of where your loyalties lie. For myself, I have determined that my loyalties are with people who suffer and are marginalized, many of whom are not even mindful of their marginalization because of the depth of their indoctrination to a system whose framework is resulting their daily despair. And so I abandon the world of covenants, church, and priesthood, and embrace compassion and advocacy.