*cell phone sings*
“Hello Jessica.”
“Hey Janet. [Insert small talk here, i.e., the humidity, my beloved puppy's health (he's fine, thank you), the last experiment Julia cooked up in the saucepan...] I have some questions for you… about… religion.”
She said it just like that. Like we were opening the floodgates to Hoover Dam.
I wait. She asks me, why, exactly was I no longer a Mormon. What made me stop going to church? When did I stop believing that God had appeared to a fourteen-year-old boy in upstate New York and told him to translate some golden plates and rebuild his kingdom?
Nick asked me the same question after my last post. And so, I’ve decided to clear the air and define my beliefs for everyone, just so there isn’t any confusion when I’m nude on the cover of Vanity Fair.
The largest turn-off for me was the position that the woman was always placed in. I am not a full-fledged, angry 1970s feminist, but I’m pretty damn close. I hated that I was being told to build my future around my future family. My future wasn’t my future, it was my family’s future. I hated that the boys were given special religious powers, including “presiding over the household” and the priesthood, while a woman’s “special power” was baring children. I wanted to be a boy. (And lord knows I tried my hardest my elementary years. You couldn’t force a dress on me if I was tied and gagged.) From a very early age, we are separated and given activities to establish our future roles. And for all that shit about “inner beauty,” we sure had a lot of activities discussing how to apply make-up properly.
“But, Janet, if the Mormon Church is still the only way to God despite this, that there are actually ‘roles’ we have to accept, isn’t it worth the degradation?”
If there is a God that considers women to be inferior, he and I are not friends.
So I struggled with that aspect of Mormonism for a while. From the moment I turned eight, and I was suddenly expected to only participate in “girl activities” and watch in-awe as the boys commandeered the gymnasium to practice basketball until that day when I informed my parents that I wasn’t going to church anymore. I wondered, “how do Mormon women stand it? Do they really all like baking cinnamon rolls and scrapbooking? Going to college only to get married? Bearing far too many children? What gives?” I concluded that they must feel something when they sing or pray that keeps them coming back.
I didn’t feel diddly-squat. When everyone around me was sitting through a testimony meeting and the speaker is commenting on the “strong spirit” present, you know, “There’s such a wonderful spirit here! Can’t you all feel it?” I’d be sitting in my pew thinking, “No…” It was kind of depressing sitting there not feeling elated when you should be feeling elated.
I would later find out that Utah subscribes to more anti-depressants than any other state, most of the depressed being Mormon mothers.
I didn’t agree with their stance on the invasion of Iraq, abortion, homosexuality, political support, interracial marriage, global warming, and basically everything else that appeared on the ballots one point or another.
And because of its sketchy history, it admonishes members to have faith instead of questioning about things “we couldn’t possibly understand.” For a religion that talked about “light” so much, members were ever and always kept in the dark about certain pasts and doctrines.
Don’t even get me started on the book of Mormon.
I mentioned before that I don’t trust organized religions. Mormonism is a multi-millions dollar business. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that God and Allah and Buddah and all the rest of them are fucking billionaires. Religion has caused more war and death and torture than plagues and serial killers and anything else you can think of.
I don’t flourish and thrive when I’m asked to sit tight and fill a mold. I’m just not a religiously-minded person.
“Yeah. Me too.”
???
“I’ve been having a lot of questions about this lately. One of my friends has been disowned because he is gay. And… like you said, I haven’t been feeling anything.”
“Well. There you have it then. I don’t advocate any particular “right” or “wrong” way of living, that’s one of the reasons I left to begin with, I think that spirituality is such a personal reality… but if you’re going to believe in a God at all, believe in one that believes in you and your potential.”
We actually talked much longer and more in-depth about these issues, intertwined with some personal family observations that I won’t be typing here, but that, I think, should answer your questions:
If you see a friendly fellow in a black suit with Book of Mormon in his hand, run like hell.
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