Episode 249 (Transcript): Big Ideas | Belief
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Rebecca Bigelow for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:
SH: I don’t know though. I’m still doubtful of that because I don’t think that we consider the temple to be a place that lifts people who aren’t quite there yet. I think we consider the temple to be a place where you’ve already arrived at a certain level and you’re maintaining a certain level. I know a lot of leaders and members would probably argue with me on that.
They feel like they’re very much getting, you know, lifted and continuing to progress at the temple. Okay whatever. But if we draw lines around temple worship, and we do, we draw very specific lines around it, and they leave out those among us who are operating from desire or willingness, but lack of certainty.
Aren’t we specifically leaving out the man from the scripture story who sought the blessing for his son? Like he is not getting a temple recommend, I don’t think, the way things are in the modern church.
CW: Hi, I’m Cynthia Winward.
SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley.
CW: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is Big Ideas: Belief.
Welcome back Susan.
SH: I’m so excited, Cynthia.
CW: I’m excited to be back. It’s been a minute.
SH: Yep, it has.
CW: Well, let’s go ahead as we begin Season 11 to talk about our theme.
We kind of introduced it a little bit for our last episode of Season 10. But we wanted to talk about Big Ideas this season. So is this gonna be a new franchise? Will it go past this season? We will see, but we’ve kind of had our franchise of “We don’t believe our own stuff”.
But then you and I have been talking the last three or four months about big ideas, meaning those ideas in our church that we kind of minimize or that we don’t really delve into, and yet, you and I are like, let’s take this idea that we make really small in our church, and let’s really go a little bit deeper and make it bigger.
SH: Is there a bigger idea in our church than belief, Cynthia?
CW: No.
SH: We’re not totally sure. There’s a reason that we’re starting here.
CW: Exactly. There isn’t a bigger hurdle that we have to overcome in our church than belief, and not just our church’s. I’m… I mean, that’s what it means to be a member of all these different churches we have. You subscribe to maybe their beliefs or values or, I don’t know, just their flavor of how they worship.
SH: Well, now you’re getting right into it. So just put a pin right there, Cynthia, because you’ve used the word belief, and you’ve used the word values, and you’ve used the word flavor, and we’re gonna talk about all of those kinds of things today. So I think we’ve probably touched on at least, if not completely unpacked all of these big ideas before, but I feel like just kind of taking them one at a time and really breaking them down. Talking about how they have operated in our faith lives and how they continue to operate in our lives after things have become complicated. I think that’s a value. It’s gonna be a value to me anyway. I’m kind of tired of conversations that are in reaction to the church, if you see what I mean? I wanna do conversations that I’m choosing because they mean something to me, and so I’m thinking of this as being one of those.
CW: Yeah. We’re simpatico on that for sure.
SH: I had a conversation with my husband over breakfast this morning where I said, oh, we’re recording today about belief.
And he said, well, that’s a paradox. You know, on the one hand, I think it means almost nothing at all. And on the other hand, it matters a lot. And right there is the crux of this conversation as I see it. Belief is something that doesn’t really matter that much to some people. And in some ways, I’m gonna… Spoiler! In my own life, belief is not the driving force, but I know it is for many members. I mean, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say maybe most members.
CW: I think so.
SH: Yeah. I mean, is there a bigger idea than belief for Latter Day Saints?
Belief or, you know, conviction? There are a lot of different words that we can use here. Conviction is kind of the foundation, right? We base everything in the church on the assumption that we all share the same basic beliefs.
Like you said earlier. We don’t talk about faith so much as we talk about knowledge, which to me is more about belief. Knowledge is more about belief. While faith is more rooted in action. Faith is kind of more about what we do, right? So I think most members would put belief above faith in the hierarchy of importance, for church members.
Even though officially on the website, they are interchangeable. I looked up belief on the church website because where else to start a conversation like this, and it said to have faith in someone or to accept something is [00:05:00] true.
CW: Ooh, maybe that’s part of the problem then right there. We do use them interchangeably.
SH: Yep. I think that we do, I think we use them interchangeably with... also, knowledge.
CW: Yes.
SH: You know, I mean, we have all these words. Do they really mean anything when we use them all interchangeably? I’m not totally sure. I looked up testimony just to see because I think most people, when they think of a testimony, they think of standing up and sort of reciting some of their beliefs…
CW: The five things!
SH: Right, their beliefs. And so from the church website under testimony, and I’ll link to all of these things in the show notes. It says this. “The foundation of a testimony is the knowledge” (there, that word is) “that heavenly father lives and loves his children.” (Not the belief that heavenly father lives and loves his children. The knowledge) “That Christ lives, that he’s the son of God and that he carried out the infinite atonement. That Joseph Smith is the prophet of God who was called to restore the gospel. That the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Savior’s true church on the earth, and that the church is led by a living prophet today.
Okay. That’s a whole lot of things. That you’re essentially to…
CW: Those might be the five things.
SH: if you have a testimony, right? Okay, but then there’s this line, then there’s this line… “With this foundation, a testimony grows to include all principles of the gospel.”
CW: Aghh!,
SH: So, aghh! That’s what I said. So the assumption is like, if you’re doing it right, like line upon line, belief upon belief, the way these things are supposed to build, eventually you’ll believe it all.
CW: I mean, that’s not really a surprise to you, right? Like when you read that on the church website, you were like, oh, okay this is absolutely what we believe. Because it’s the whole, if you get a testimony of the Book of Mormon, then that means Joseph Smith was a prophet. That means that… you know what I mean?
Do you see this differently?
SH: I just see that it’s kind of problematic.
CW: Well, okay. That’s, yeah.
SH: And where it gets even more problematic to me is, I mean, this is sort of like, it’s all true or it’s all a fraud, right? I mean, this is sort of, it gets into this binary. And also because I think when a lot of members here- to include all principles of the gospel- they throw into that all kinds of cultural baggage. They throw into it- the programs of the church- like everything is part of the gospel.
When we talk about gospel in our church, we’re not just talking about the first four principles and ordinances of the gospel, right?
We’re talking about everything in the church.
CW: Yep.
SH: And so that gets pretty mushy. And that’s how I guess I never really felt like I was doing it right because I did not- my testimony did not grow to “Include all principles” (using that word in air quotes) “of the gospel.”
Some specific requirements for belief have changed over time. So I thought this was interesting. I was looking at the origin and evolution of the temple recommend questions, and in a Wheat and Tares blog post, I came across this line- In 1856 a letter from the first presidency clarified that any candidates for temple worthiness must believe in plural marriage. Even though most did not practice it, of note, all leaders did practice it- So this requirement really implied support of the leaders’ practice of it. This is like sustaining your leaders in polygamy. Is what you had to assent to.
CW: Oh my gosh.
SH: Right. So a belief in polygamy. So we took that right out of there. So beliefs that are expected, and I mean, I mean I have to go straight to required, I guess. Beliefs that are required of members have changed over time.
But do all Latter-day Saints believe the same things, Cynthia? Like, is it important what we believe? Does it matter how we came to believe the stuff that we do?
And then, you know, what happens when some beliefs previously fueled your church life and engagement and what happens when those evaporate?
CW: Yeah,
SH: What’s left? And also how important is belief anyway to a spiritual life?
CW: Ooh, that sentence right there.
SH: And then of course, my favorite question, which is- Can you just choose to believe? You know I love that question! I wrote a lot about it in our book.
CW: I honestly think this might be that one sentence, “Can’t you just choose to believe?” might be the whole reason we’re having this episode. Because the first time I heard you say that years ago, I remember going, oh yeah, how can I force myself to believe X, Y, Z? Like you either do or you don’t.
SH: I agree
CW: I don’t see how we can argue otherwise. So let’s talk about that then for a little bit.
SH: Okay.
CW: Can we choose to believe? Because how much am I in control of what I believe? You just used the word evaporate there. Trust me, when so much evaporated for me about my [00:10:00] beliefs in certain things, trust me, like life as an LDS woman would’ve been a whole lot easier if I could have just made myself believe again.
SH: Right? Oh, I totally relate to that.
CW: Which would be, that would actually be easier because if I already believed it before, I remember what that felt like. You would think it would be really easy to go back to that, but downright impossible.
SH: Yeah. I mean, here I’m gonna bring the tired old Santa Claus reference back. Because you used to believe in Santa Claus too, but could you choose to do that again?
CW: Nice, Susan, nice.
SH: I can’t help but ask.
CW: Well, I mean, when things started getting super shaky for me, they were very specific beliefs, right. Creeds (however we wanna call that) really started to crumble and that’s kind of what made me go, Ooh! I’m in trouble- or am I?
I mean, of course I think I landed in a different place, which we’ll get into.
SH: It sure probably felt like trouble at the time though, didn’t it?
CW: Oh, it totally felt like trouble at the time. Totally. I was like, who have I become? Who have I become?
SH: Right.
CW: Have you ever searched “choose to believe” on the church website?
SH: Oh, I haven’t, but I’m already going wa, wa, wa…
CW: Well, for a fun time on a Saturday night, Susan, go on the church website and type in “choose to believe”, and you’ll get about 15 pages. At least that’s what I got- of things. And so I just want to read three different things that I found on the church website.
And this is where it all gets tangled up because like, are they talking about belief? Are they talking about knowledge? Are they talking about faith? Because I think we do use it all interchangeably. The first is actually from a beautiful talk by Dieter Uchtdorf called “Be Not Afraid, Only Believe”. And he said, “When we choose to believe, exercise faith unto repentance and follow our Savior, Jesus Christ, we open our spiritual eyes to splendors we can scarcely imagine. Thus, our belief and faith will grow stronger, and we will see even more.”
And then how about this…by Whitney Clayton called “Choose to Believe”. It’s right there in the title. “Belief and testimony and faith are not passive principles. They do not just happen to us. Belief is something we choose.” (ding, ding, ding!) “We hope for it. We work for it, and we sacrifice for it. We will not accidentally come to believe in the Savior and his gospel any more than we will accidentally pray or pay tithing.”
And then of course, one of our most beautiful scriptures that I know you and I say to each other all the time- “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”
SH: Yeah. We’re gonna unpack that story a little bit later on in this episode. Just looking at those three things, I’m thinking, is there anything in there that I specifically disagree with?
I’m not totally sure, but I’m kind of hung up on- here’s what I’m thinking about- I’m kind of hung up on this line from Whitney Clayton. “We will not accidentally come to believe in the Savior and his gospel anymore than we will accidentally pray or pay tithing.”
Okay? First of all, I don’t equate belief with praying or paying tithing because those are actions that I do choose, but I did accidentally lose a bunch of my belief at one point. I didn’t go looking for that. Man, that just happened one day. I am looking around and casting around in my mind for something, and it ain’t there anymore. That very much did happen to me.
CW: So to use his word “accidentally”, do you feel like that accidentally happened to you? Would you use that word?
SH: I feel like I accidentally discovered it because of the story of when… well, when I had a serious brush with my mortality, and one morning just started thinking through the inevitable things one thinks about at that point, and realized I had no belief in the afterlife.
Yeah, that was totally an accident. I meant to believe it. I thought I believed it. I talked like I believed it. I just realized, oh, wait a minute. So yeah, that does feel accidental to me. It does.
CW: When you get a cancer diagnosis and you realize, oh, I could be dead in X amount of time, and then you realize, oh shoot. I don’t believe X, Y, Z, then to me, that does sound like an accident because nobody makes themself have cancer. Nobody. You didn’t go looking for trouble, is what I’m trying to say.
SH: Correct? Yes, exactly.
CW: This was an accident.
SH: Yes. I mean, it was an accidental discovery at least.
CW: Yeah, that’s good.
SH: Would I have come to know it eventually anyway or accept it or admit it to myself or whatever it was that happened in that moment. That’s a great question. But that is how it did happen to me.
CW: But that’s what triggered it. And it could have been anything, and it probably would’ve been something else, maybe.
SH: I mean, I don’t, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know. Maybe it would have, maybe it would have, but it explained a lot to me. Explained a lot about that thing I said at the beginning, which was- I think I was [00:15:00] defective because I never did grow to accept everything, right?
So there were cracks there. Who knows how long they had been there. I don’t know because I didn’t realize they existed till the rubber hit the road for me. Anyway. This is such an interesting topic to me.
CW: I know!
SH: Just for this reason, there’s so much here.
CW: I can’t believe we haven’t had this convo before, actually, but I really can’t think of a bigger idea than to break down exactly what we mean by that. What we mean by belief and all that goes with it. I said earlier, we’ve been talking about this and thinking about this for months, and here’s one of the things that triggered it for me is- we were interviewed by Faith Matters last fall.
In that interview, Tim Chaves said, this is a quote by him. “When we say faith promoting, I think we often mean belief promoting.” And I wanted to stop him right there when he said that, because that rings so deeply, deeply true to me. I just wanted to be like, okay, we’re turning the tables, we are now the interviewers, Tim Chaves, and we are gonna interview you because I wanted to know so much more about what he meant with that one little line.
“When we say faith promoting, I think we mean belief promoting.”
SH: I think that’s because we have those words so hopelessly tangled up in the church.
CW: Yeah.
SH: We see faith equated with belief all the time. And I’m not sure, like sometimes I wonder how much value is there in untangling those two things. And yet for me, when I lost my belief, untangling those things was really important. That became really important to what do I do now? and what do I do next? I had to go in and do that dissection and understand what my religious life had been made of and find the important parts of that. And so it did mean a very real untangling of things like faith and belief.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Okay. I wanna go back to that scripture story that we just mentioned, because my mind goes here all the time. I taught a Relief Society lesson about it some years ago, and it was when I was deep in the wrestle of wondering if I believed anything. I think it was Elder Holland who gave a talk about it.
I mean, this would be sometime in the past 10 years. I don’t know when it was. But anyway, here’s what it says. This is in the New King James version. “Jesus said to him, if you can”… okay, well let’s back up. Let me set up the story.
CW: Okay.
SH: The story is that the man brings Jesus his son, who has these fits and says, can you help him?
Jesus said to him, “if you can believe all things are possible to him who believes… Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” And this happens in Mark 9:23. If people wanna look that up. In the NIV, he’s the man that says, “help me overcome my unbelief”, which is different...
CW: Wow!
SH: …from “help my unbelief” to me, because “help me overcome my unbelief”... That sounds less to me like Jesus is gonna overlook his lack of belief and just fix it anyway, and more like the man wants to actively work through his unbelief.
Help me overcome my unbelief. So I feel like the point of that story is that desire is what matters. This is why I’ve always loved the story. This is why I could teach that lesson as a person who had little to no belief at the time, because it did have desire. I was there in front of the class trying to wrestle through these things. Right? And so I’ve always felt like that’s the point of the story. The point of the story is faith.
Although Jesus says plainly that belief is the thing that matters.
Because where does that story start? If you can believe all things are possible to him, who believes.
CW: But don’t you think… if you and I spoke Greek or whatever… we would see what word could that really be? Like what other words could he be saying,
SH: Which is why I looked at a bunch of different translations. I looked at the NRSV, I looked at the NIV, I looked at all of them to see, is there a different word that someone else… is there a different translation that puts a different word in there?
And they all used the word belief. So yes- how I wish I spoke any ancient language so that I could find some translation handle to grab onto sometimes with the scriptures, but I don’t. But is he talking about the Tinkerbell effect, like clap if you believe, you know where something exists if people believe in it.
Is that what Jesus is talking about? I don’t think so. But again, I love it when these conversations get into this kind of deep, muddy water, and we’re forced to kind of wrestle with it.
So the next thing I thought I was, let’s see what Alma had to say about it. This is Alma [00:20:00] 32:27. And he says, “But behold, if you will awake and arouse your faculties even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can, no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.”
So the Jesus story becomes clearer to me when I put it in the context of the Alma explanation there, right? That the man- he showed up with his desire intact. And I think that because Jesus didn’t really say anything about his lack of belief, but healed the boy. What we’re meant to take from it is that the desire was enough.
CW: Yeah, I love the words in that Alma scripture. The verbs, right? Awake, arouse, experiment, desire.
Sometimes, well, okay, let’s see. So Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. We could say, Lord, I have trust; help me to have faith- or I have faith; help me to trust.
I feel like just even substituting those two words in there seems to get closer to the heart of what the man was trying to say to him about his ill son.
SH: Yeah. I mean, I think he was saying Lord, I really need this for my son, and I wanna believe that you can fix it.
CW: Love it.
SH: So will you?
I don’t know. The other thing I love in the Alma scripture is that- until you can believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words, right? Can you even believe any of it? Which is very different from that line, from the church website in the beginning where I was like, eventually you’re gonna believe all of it.
Can you even give place for a portion of my words? I’ve never really struggled with that. I think that’s exactly probably where I have lived and will live the rest of my faith life. It’s never all gonna make sense to me, and I’m probably never gonna believe it all. (Using belief in air quotes.)
But can I give place for a portion of Jesus’ words? Absolutely. Absolutely. I can.
CW: I’ve always loved Alma 32.
SH: Yeah, that’s good.
CW: I loved it when I was orthodox, and I love it now for all of the reasons we just mentioned.
SH: yeah.
CW: Good stuff. Well, getting back to that same Faith Matters interview, one of the biggest vulnerability hangovers I’ve ever had and all the public speaking that you and I have done these last six years- probably the biggest one occurred on that podcast when I used that Rachel Held Evans line from her book Wholehearted Faith, where she says over and over throughout that book, “on the days when I believe”.
SH: Ooh, ooh!
Can you just say a little bit more about that? Why do you think that was? I mean, we’ve had a lot of opportunities for vulnerability hangovers, so why is that the one that stands out?
CW: I guess because I see the Faith Matters audience as more orthodox. I mean, definitely more orthodox probably than ours.
And so even to bear my soul in that tiny way to say, you know what, if I’m really honest, there are some days where I don’t believe. That just felt really vulnerable to me considering their audience.
SH: Well, my question to you is- Is there anything worse that someone could stand up and say to our most orthodox members?
I’m not sure there’s anything for which they would judge you more. Or turn or shut off their podcast app. Stop listening to you, right? Nothing could cause a Mormon to stop listening to you faster than telling them that you don’t believe the things that they do.
CW: Right, the vulnerability.
I mean, I already discussed why it was vulnerable for me, but I didn’t necessarily regret it just because I do believe that phrase wholeheartedly, Like in the title of her book. Because when I first encountered Rachel Held Evans and her work and how she talked so openly about doubt, while at the same time speaking deeply about her commitment to God and Jesus, it really was a breath of fresh air.
SH: Right.
CW: Both/And
SH: Right. Both/And.
CW: and so what about other spiritual seekers, probably all those who are listening. How many of us, if we were truly honest, carry a hefty dose of doubt about God or anything under that? We carry a hefty dose of doubt about all things churchy.
Or, I’m gonna rephrase that. Maybe it’s a hefty dose of faith, because that’s how I see it now. I don’t see myself as necessarily having a hefty dose of doubt. I prefer to see myself as someone who has a hefty dose of trust or faith or hope.
SH:I love that distinction.
CW: Those are my descriptors now instead. One, they seem more positive than just doubt. Which says nothing about who I am.
SH: No, I love that. And I think that the [00:25:00] reason that- I think I agree with you that Rachel Held Evans phrase- there’s so much in there- and it does make me feel like suddenly there’s room for me to breathe.
And some sort of the same thing that you described, and I think it’s because of all the things I’ve never heard people talk about at church. Their struggle with belief is the thing I have most never heard them talk about. But I do believe if you were to get inside everybody’s heads in that room, there would be an awful lot of days where doubt creeps in or something like doubt, right?
Less certainty, let’s say that there are days when…
CW: Let’s say that.
SH: days that are less certain than others. And I think that’s just true for everyone. Except for my mother who stands up the microphone and says, I never had a moment of doubt and means it, right, means it. I don’t know.
This is very- belief is complicated for Latter-day Saints. It matters. This is where my husband said, and also it matters a whole lot because I think it does. And I think that’s what you are feeling in that moment. I love the phrase a hefty dose of faith, Cynthia. As a person who’s always been belief-challenged, faith is a lot easier for me to access because I can act as if, right?
Acting as if is acting out my hope. I can choose how to live even if I can’t choose to believe.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Having it completely wiped out was actually the best thing that ever could have happened to my belief. Yes, I’m gonna say that, and I stand by it. That was the best thing. That was the path to something kind of, if not resembling belief, something durable like belief is for other people.
That was the path for me because having my belief wiped out required me to start over with nothing. And to see what grew in its place, right? So it allowed me to make the shift from what to believe to how to believe. Speaking of that Faith Matters conversation because that came up in that conversation.
My previous church life was built around what to believe. All the things that had been given to me that I had never really questioned, you know, all the things loaded into my pockets when I went into the baptismal font. But now my faith life is built on Richard Rohr’s tricycle. I know that you are familiar with the tricycle metaphor.
CW: Love it.
SH: Love it too, right? There are three parts to the tricycle- scripture, tradition and experience, right? So yes, I value scripture. Absolutely do. There are many parts of our scripture that are sacred. I consider sacred.
CW: Like Alma 32
SH: like Alma 32. You’ve got it right there, that’s scripture for me, right?
I’ve kept lots of pieces of my religious tradition and heritage. This is my language. These are my people. This is who I am and where I come from. But the front wheel of the tricycle now is my own experience, and I didn’t even know that I could include my own experience when considering belief until I started over. That’s where I learned that.
CW: Okay, that just that one line that you didn’t even know you could include your own experience says so much about how we are all, I don’t wanna say indoctrinated, but do you know what I mean? It says so much about… Ooh, the spiritual tradition we came from that you didn’t even know you could consider your own experience.
Duh.
SH: Totally agree. Yeah. No, this is Mary Cox, though, knocking down her block towers. You remember when Mary talked to us about that?
CW: Best metaphor.
SH: It is the best metaphor because then the first thing she thought was-she grabbed the block, the me block and realized that had to be in the foundation, right?
But it wasn’t in the foundation before and it wasn’t for me either, but I didn’t really know that it could be. So that’s part of why the tricycle metaphor feels so deeply resonant for me, I think it’s because I can make that front wheel my own experience.
I have some quotes from Barbara Brown Taylor that I wanna share in the rest of this episode. All of them come from the same interview, which is with someone named Ryan Kohls. And his podcast is “What I Wanna Know”. I will of course link to it, but she says this- I just love it. “Growth is not additive. It often requires subtraction. Something learned must be unlearned, something practiced must be laid down. The false figure does not disappear quietly. She resists because she once kept us safe, but safety is not the same as life.”
And that last line of “safety is not the same as life” is such a good description for me, of the difference between what to believe versus how to believe. Because to me, the “what” is safety.
When someone tells you what to believe and you accept that, that’s safety. But the “how” is life.
CW: Oh, gorgeous.
SH: That’s my own experience. That’s a whole different thing.
CW: I just wanna marinate in that for a little while about what versus how, [00:30:00] because that kind of sums it all up. I think that sums up the whole problem all in one sentence. We as Latter-day Saints focus so much on the “what to believe” instead. Instead of the “how”. I mean, I think “how” gets a shout out but less than the “what” does.
SH: “How” gets a shout out, but I think the how is something I hear a lot less about. I don’t very often sit in a testimony and have someone stand up and say here’s what I believe and here’s why. Here’s how this knowledge came to me.
CW: Yeah.
SH: You know, I would love to hear more about the how.
CW: Well, that Barbara Brown Taylor quote reminds me of Richard Rohr, his quote about the second half of life being mostly about unlearning, and in his book Falling Upward, he says just that. Transformation is often more about unlearning than learning.
And that is such crazy talk to a Mormon. So crazy that no wonder it took a cancer diagnosis for you- and my life falling apart for personal reasons- for us to be like, oh, I need to unlearn a lot of things. I need to knock that tower down and start building it up from the bottom with me at the base with my experience.
So, that really is true transformation, isn’t it? When you choose everything willingly. That’s what transformed me.
SH: Yeah, I think that is, that’s different. Between transformation and transaction. I think that’s exactly it. But I didn’t realize I had permission to choose it for myself, I guess.
Does that make sense?
CW: Yeah, until you were backed into a corner and you were like, okay, what now? Now what do I do? At least that was for me, I felt backed into a corner.
SH: Same. I had nothing. So I just sat there.
CW: Good stuff.
SH: I just sat there. Yeah.
CW: Well, speaking of other spiritual people who have made a big impact in my life…
Along with that Rachel Held Evans line, I recently ran across- I think it was the very first Substack Post from Mirabai Starr. She just started a substack, Yay! And one of the paragraphs in that essay says, “for as long as I can remember, I’ve been madly in love with a God I do not actually believe in. Lucky for me, faith is not about belief. My inner atheist can knock itself out constructing exceedingly rational arguments for why religious beliefs are thinly veiled versions of magical thinking, while my heart falls at the feet of the mystery and finds true refuge there.”
SH: Gorgeous.
CW: I know.
SH: So good.
CW: I wanna give a talk someday called My Faith is Not About Belief.
SH: Yeah.
CW: They might run me outta town, but Mirabai just, she just captured the both/and. She just loves her spiritual practice, and she’s not totally sure about it all. Maybe on some days, like Rachel Held Evans. I don’t know.
SH: I can’t think of a talk that I feel like we need more than that.
CW: Same.
SH: And when I say we need it, I’m not saying like every member feels the need for it. I’m saying collectively that’s a space-making talk. An idea that has real legs, and that a lot of people could grab onto in the audience.
CW: I think so.
SH: Yeah.
CW: Yeah, I think so. Well, here’s another quote about belief, and this is from LDS philosopher Adam Miller, and he said this in one of his first books called Future Mormon, and he said this, “For some, belief in God comes easily and naturally. Belief isn’t a choice and can’t be unchosen. God, like words or air, just is. But this isn’t enough. Though this common sense belief in God’s reality can be a blessing, it can also be a hurdle to practicing faith. It can lull us into thinking that the hard work of being faithful is done. When, in fact, we haven’t even started.”
SH: Oh my gosh. Yes, yes, yes.
CW: So in that pretend lesson or talk that I wanna give about faith not being about belief, I would love to break that line down that Adam Miller says. That belief can be a hurdle to practicing faith. Because I really think we think, well, I already know what I believe, the thinking has been done.
Whereas Adam says, you haven’t even gotten started because now you need to put legs on that. Now you need to practice it. Now you need to do the Jesus work as you and I always say to each other, you know? Practicing that faith.
SH: Yeah, it’s practice. It’s the word practice in that.
That is mesmerizing to me because I’m thinking about my life as a church member from the time I’m a young child, and was it about practicing faith? Or was it about practicing belief when I would show up at church? Well, I’m gonna argue that it was about practicing belief. We did things like memorize the Articles of Faith.
We did things like have the same cycle of lessons [00:35:00] every four years, right? Where we would come to the same conclusions, talk about the same principles, all of those things. To me, that’s like ingraining belief in people, but it’s absolutely not the same as practicing faith.
CW: Absolutely, yes.
SH: I would say the first half of my life really was devoted to practicing belief. It didn’t take, by the way, as we found out later- as I said earlier. I practiced it a lot, but it didn’t take. It’s kinda like piano lessons for me. Piano didn’t really take either, and I, man, I worked hard at that, but anyway.
CW: Oh goodness.
SH: But practicing faith has really been the work of my second half of life so far.
CW: Yeah. Yeah. Such a great line that our beliefs can be a hurdle.
SH: So good
CW: -a hurdle to practicing that faith. It’s something big we gotta jump over, I think. And it’s interesting because you just mentioned memorizing the Articles of Faith, which is what so many of us do as children in this church, and the irony of that in a non creedal religion, right?
That was Joseph Smith’s whole thing.
SH: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We’re going there later in this conversation too!
CW: Just saying that we start out our little ones pretty early with some creeds. So anyway, one more quote here I wanted to share before we move on a little bit, and it’s from Jared Byas in his book, Love Matters More.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve read this on the podcast, but it’s something I think about all the time because until he said it, I was like, oh yeah, and here’s what he said.
“What does it matter to the world and to the people around me if I check off belief in Jesus’ resurrection as a fact, but it doesn’t inform how I live my life. When someone asks me, what do you believe? I’m more likely to answer what I wish I believed, than what I actually believe. If you’re just going by what’s in your head, what’s the difference between what you actually believe and what you wish you believed? Almost none.”
SH: Oh, so good. You chose such good passages for this conversation. Oh, I’m looking at that and I’m like, okay. That’s what Russ was talking about when he was like, “it matters hugely, it doesn’t matter at all.” Oh, that’s it right there.
CW: Right, right.
Let’s move on then to another section, which I’m calling instead of beliefs, can- fill in the blank. (Faith, trust, thirsting, yearning, whatever). What can be the focus?
CW:So let’s talk about that. Since I can’t make myself believe any type of creed, can faith or trust be the antidote for belief in a religion such as ours, which leans heavily on correct beliefs?
Let’s talk about that.
SH: I mean, I think it depends on who you ask or who’s asking
CW: Exactly. If you ask Susan Hinckley...
SH: Yeah. But also if the bishop is asking you in your temple recommend interview. I mean, we’re gonna talk about that too.
CW: We’re gonna get to that.
SH: Can those things stand in for belief? Great question.
CW: Yeah. And let me read another quote here from Future Mormon. Adam Miller says “Whether God is or isn’t obvious to us, the work is the same. Faith is a willingness to lose our souls and faithfully caring for the work that’s been given to us. Common sense theist, common sense atheist, common sense (or anguished!) agnostic. The work is the same. Each must practice faith.”
SH: Right.
CW: Love it. Love it. The work is the same. Whatever is firing in your brain synapses, the work is the same for you and for me and for Dallin Oaks, all of us, right?
SH: Right, right, right. Something occurs to me, and I wanna just put it right here in the conversation.
We have a lot of listeners who’ve stepped away from church activity. I think we have a lot of listeners who have stepped away from all of it, and I’m not really sure that they’re interested in practicing faith anymore in their lives. If that makes sense. Do you know what I mean?
Like, they’ve moved on to a spirituality that isn’t reliant on things like faith or on these kinds of ideas. And so I just wanna say that wherever you are and whatever language you might use to describe it, the thing about a Big Idea to me is that it speaks to some kind of truth that is universal.
Or that is a universal question, maybe. A big human question. And so hopefully, wherever you are on this arc of faith or belief or all of those things- hopefully we’re doing a good job of getting to the thing behind the thing in this conversation so that there’s something here for you.
Because for me, I’m really interested in practicing faith, and that’s a resonant idea for me. But I am perfectly willing to [00:40:00] accept that for some people, they don’t want anything to do with that word at all.
CW: Well, and you and I use that phrase, “doing the Jesus work” because this is where we’re planted, right, as followers of Jesus.
SH: Right.
CW: But I’m thinking of a conversation I just had with one of my dearest friends the other day, and she said, you know, I’ve just accepted, I’m not a very spiritual person, and I’m okay with that.
I’m thinking about this friend of mine. She is one of the most grounded, common-sensy people that I know; who will run into a homeless person and take them to their house for the night and do their laundry and help them.
Like it almost doesn’t matter if we call it the Jesus work, it almost doesn’t matter. Well, it doesn’t matter according to the Adam Miller quote that we just read. The work is the same,
SH: right? The work is the same
CW: relieving suffering-
SH: Right.
CW: -in this world. I’m glad you brought that up.
SH: Gorgeous.
CW: Here’s a quote by David Brooks, the New York Times columnist.
He wrote, “the most surprising thing I’ve learned since then is that faith is the wrong word for faith as I experience it. The word faith,” (and he’s putting air quotes around faith here), “the word faith implies possession of something. Whereas I experience faith as a yearning. For something beautiful that I can sense, but not fully grasp. For me, faith is more about longing and thirsting than knowing and possessing.”
More great words. More great verbs.
SH: Yes, exactly. More great verbs. And that kind of gets back to that Mirabai Starr idea, I think. That’s something beautiful that I can sense, but I can’t fully grasp it. Right? So the grasping must not be the important part, I guess in this.
The one teaching that I’ve taken away from Sharon Salzberg in all of my reading of her work, who is a Buddhist, by the way, Buddhist teacher. The thing that she reminds us is that faith is a verb. Right? And so I love that in this conversation, all of these verbs are coming up.
Because I feel like you can plug a lot of different ways of describing the idea into this concept, and it still works. So, we faith. Which is not the way that we really think about it and talk about it in English. We don’t use it as a verb, but she describes faith as an action, a movement of participation.
It’s like an offering of your heart. It’s not a state that you either have or don’t have as David Brooks says. It’s trust and experience developed by practicing teachings to see if they work. Hello Alma. It’s allowing doubt to work as curiosity and trusting your inner wisdom.
Isn’t all of that what this whole podcast has been about? Really? All the ideas are in there.
CW: I just wanna take that line from Sharon Salzburg, how doubt can work as curiosity.
SH: Allowing doubt to work as curiosity.
CW: Yeah. Have a whole side conversation about that. Although I guess that’s kind of what we’re doing right now, but,
SH: Well, we’ve had big conversations about curiosity.
But I think doubt is also a Big Idea that could stand some unpacking in our church. And I’m not sure we’re getting to it quite as fully in this conversation as we might have. So that’s something we can think more about. As Barbara Brown Taylor describes it, “I went out of the answer business and into the question business.”
CW: Nice.
SH: Yeah. Love it. That’s exactly what happened in my own life, and it changed everything to use a very tired line. It did.
CW: Likewise.
SH: It’s true.
CW: Yeah. Well, let’s talk for a few minutes about Jesus and beliefs and doing, because,
SH: okay.
CW: I know we were talking earlier about that scripture, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief”.
And Jesus seems to use the word belief a couple of times, but I don’t really see any evidence that Jesus called us to have correct beliefs. And there is kind of a distinction a little bit, I think, between belief and beliefs, right? And so,
SH: okay. Yeah. Yes.
CW: You know, to have to believe this versus that is a focus on specific beliefs. Our Articles of Faith kind of a thing.
Matthew 25 continues to be probably my most favorite chapter in all of scripture. And it is the chapter where Jesus is talking about the judgment of the nations, you know, the whole sheeps and the goats, and who ends up on Jesus’s right hand. You know, ‘cause he never mentions beliefs. But when pressed, when his back is to the wall, and his disciples are trying to figure out who’s gonna be with you? Who’s gonna be on your right hand?
Jesus only seems to answer about the doing, not about the believing. And he said this, “for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.”
All of those actions. Actions, actions, actions.
SH: Yeah, I love that example. I can imagine Jesus saying [00:45:00] no matter what you believe about me, do this.
CW: Nice.
SH: Right? Because it kind of makes me laugh to try to make Jesus about believing things. I just don’t see it. I don’t see it. You know, he spent most of his time actually playing with people’s heads, didn’t he?
Like challenging their assumptions and their personal biases and challenging their, dare I say, beliefs, right? Barbara Brown Taylor had something to say about this, and she says, “Every time someone asked him for a definitive answer, Jesus would say, ‘but you know the answer to that’. Or he’d say, ‘let me tell you a stor’y. Or he’d say, ‘what do you think’? It must be a second or third generation thing that we’re supposed to be certain about someone who upset people’s certainties so much.”
CW: Like you said, he messes with their heads.
SH: Exactly. So I mean, of course, leave it to human beings to try to make it about something that it isn’t about, but I think that really might be the biggest message of Jesus- This isn’t about what you think it is. And that’s definitely what the message is in that sheep and goats story.
CW: Yeah. One more quote here in this section by Jared Byas again from Love Matters More. He said this about beliefs.
“I have heard my entire life that Christianity is about love, but what I saw through our programs, services and interactions is that Christianity is about belief. I’ve come to realize that fear about being wrong in our beliefs has crowded out the clear message of Jesus’ life and death, the unmistakable emphasis in the Bible, and in thousands of years of church tradition. Love matters more.”
SH: I mean, ouch. Just ouch. And also, here’s the lie down part of the episode, because he’s right, Cynthia, in my experience. Yeah, he’s right.
CW: Yeah. So yeah, those were my thoughts about specific beliefs, like as far as Jesus and beliefs and doing. Yeah, because I’m open to being wrong. Email me listeners if you find specific scriptural evidence where Jesus says, this is what you need to believe. Because I didn’t, I don’t see that.
SH: Well, it’s certainly not the overall emphasis of what Jesus was doing here- telling us what to believe. I think you are completely justified in making that argument, for sure.
CW: All right. Let’s talk for a minute about the belief police. Woo woo woo!
SH: Oh boy.
CW: Cue the sirens because we were kind of touching on earlier before, in a non-creedal church- at least that’s what Joseph Smith said that we were- (I don’t know about now). The idea that we police the brainwaves of our members is just bananas to me.
SH: Well, I totally agree. And yet Cynthia, I think I can hear out in my front hall, the belief police bashing in my door as we speak here, because they’re listening to this episode. I mean, are we a non-creedal church? Because I don’t think we are. I don’t know. My husband wrote a whole book about this, as you know, and one of the key ideas right in the intro is that quote, “Very little of what Jesus said or did is reflected in the creed. The creed came in response to Jesus, not from Jesus.”
CW: Ding, ding, ding!
SH: Jesus did not dictate these beliefs, and then church fathers wrote it down. That’s not the way that this happened. Yet in the modern church, correct beliefs are the baseline marker for evaluating worthiness of members.
CW: Right?
SH: Am I wrong about that?
CW: No.
SH: I mean, there are some behavior questions in the temple recommend interview, but that’s not where the bulk of it is. You don’t answer questions that get to whether your religion changes how you treat other people. Like- Are you kind? Do you take care of the people around you?- in a temple recommend interview.
You answer a lot of creedal questions though, right? And our own Articles of Faith, as you point out, begin “We believe”, which is pretty high irony coming from Joseph Smith.
CW: Yep.
SH: It functions as a creed. But if it’s all fingers pointing to the moon, Cynthia. Why do we spend any time at all on arguing about who has the best finger?
I mean, it’s ridiculous, but also, spoiler- We do. We have the best finger. We do. That’s why we have spent so much time arguing about it.
CW: That’s my favorite take- That’s gonna be my takeaway from this episode. We have the best finger.
SH: We have the best finger, and we’re willing to give it to you. We will give that finger to everyone else and their beliefs.
CW: Okay, now we’ve gone off the rails.
SH: Oh dear.
CW: Yes and yes to all of that. But I just wanna read those first three temple recommend questions that do police the brainwaves that go on in our head. Here they are. [00:50:00] Number one, do you have faith in and a testimony of God, the eternal Father, his son, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost?
Number two, do you have a testimony of the atonement of Jesus Christ and of his role as your savior and redeemer? And number three, do you have a testimony of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
So my honest question is- what if you say in your interview- “I have no idea” to those questions, can you go to the temple?
Because honestly, that would be my reply to probably all three right now. I get that there’s a way to answer with nuance, and I have for many years as I got my temple recommend. But the bigger question I think is like, well, what is the purpose of those questions?
SH: Well, right, that’s what I was gonna say. My fourth question then would be, are these load-bearing questions? Do these questions bear weight?
CW: Ooh.
SH: Because I’m not sure they do. But anyway, continue. Continue.
CW: Ooh, I like that. I would rather be asked, have you been taught about God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost?
Because I get it. Our church, like all other churches, we have specific doctrines. So we should at least know about those doctrines. Maybe spend some time studying about those doctrines. But professing a belief in those doctrines, not so fast.
SH: Yeah.
CW: That’s just me.
SH: I mean, as you say that, I’m thinking- okay- I’m okay that we have specific doctrines because this is what churches do.
They have specific doctrines, and then you go to the one that aligns closely for you or inspires you. Who’s the church that the professed beliefs inspire you to do what it is you want in pursuit of a relationship with God. I mean, I guess that’s how I would describe it.
CW: Right. I think that’s fair.
Did you know, well, you do know, because you and I talked about this. The most recent Pew Research study that came out in 2025 said that 24% of Latter-day Saints are not certain or have no belief in God.
SH: Oh my gosh. I love it so much! Thank you.
CW: 24% of people do not have the correct brainwaves.
SH: I’m not alone!
CW: They do not have the correct brainwaves in their head exactly about Jesus and the atonement and God and the restoration of the gospel.
SH: Right.
CW: I hope everyone is feeling like you’re feeling right now, Susan. I’m not the only one! Or you know, because I think you started out this conversation saying, I think most of us think because we’re all in the same church, that we all have the same brainwaves and beliefs about those first three Temple recommend questions, and yet- the Pew Research study tells us 24% do not.
SH: Well, that’s just fascinating.
CW: That’s just the God question- not even all of our very specific creeds. So, fascinating.
SH: Fascinating. Okay. To answer your question that you started this whole thing with. No, I don’t think you can go to the temple.
I have no firsthand knowledge of this. I haven’t tested it to see in a temple recommend interview. But my guess would be no. But also I think it would probably be a case of leadership roulette, because now that I say that, we’re gonna get some emails from women who say, no, it’s exactly what I said in my temple recommend interview, and I still have my recommend. Could you say, help thou mine unbelief and get a temple recommend?
I don’t know though. I’m still doubtful of that because I don’t think that we consider the temple to be a place that lifts people who aren’t quite there yet. I think we consider the temple to be a place where you’ve already arrived at a certain level, and you’re maintaining a certain level.
I know a lot of leaders and members would probably argue with me on that. They feel like they’re very much getting lifted and continuing to progress at the temple. Okay, whatever. But if we draw lines around temple worship- and we do- we draw very specific lines around it, and they leave out those among us who are operating from desire or willingness, but lack of certainty. Right?
CW: Yeah.
SH: Aren’t we specifically leaving out the man from the scripture story who sought the blessing for his son? Like he is not getting a temple recommend, I don’t think- the way things are in the modern church. Here’s what I think belief comes down to in our church and probably many other churches, all churches. Belief is a powerful tribal identifier, right?
CW: Yes.
SH: So that’s part of what those lines around temple recommend are- tribal identifier. We think our belief makes us special, and so we cling to it. I wanna push back in two specific ways to that idea. The first one is that none of us have it right in our beliefs. I mean, I hope! I’m putting that in caps. It’s right here in our note in caps, [00:55:00] because really, please give me a God who surprises me. Cynthia, please let there be something I didn’t know or didn’t have figured out, when I get there. How many people would we need to excommunicate in the history of the world for not believing our one true churchy way?
That’s just ridiculous to even consider. Snaps it right into perspective.
CW: When you say it out loud. Yeah, ridiculous.
SH: It’s ridiculous. My second pushback is that there is a difference between what people believe and the values they exhibit.
CW: Yes.
SH: Right? And I’m not just calling other people hypocrites. I mean, this includes me. This includes you. I’m willing to go there anyway. And assume that it does. I think it includes human beings, right? And we’re both in that category. You and I come from a religious tradition that highly prizes correct belief, a very specific set of beliefs. But belief is not a reliable marker of discipleship.
Embroider that on a throw pillow for me. Would you please? And like, even more importantly, and I don’t wanna get political here or anything like that, but our correct beliefs have not saved us as a church. Members have bad politics. The organization continues to create bad policies. We have amassed great worldly wealth, which just flies in the face of everything I see about Jesus.
Like at this point, I really feel like. I really feel like we need deconstruction as a church. Like we need some kind of “come to Jesus” moment. And I do intend that pun- a “come to Jesus” moment. This hard reset that’s gonna pluck us off our collective path, and set us on a new path that is centered less on shared belief and more on shared values that manifest in the specific traits of discipleship.
I’m just not sure our beliefs are making the jump to discipleship in the world. To doing the Jesus work in the world.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And again, that’s not just our church, that’s Christianity.
CW: Oh, for sure.
SH: It’s very large. I think.
CW: You and I just heard a lecture over the weekend from Randy Woodley where he said someone had asked the question- How do you know if it’s right to stay in your church?
And again, I have no idea what church Randy even belongs to.
SH: No, don’t know either.
CW: …belonged to or belongs to.
SH: Right.
CW: But he said, you know what he said- Go with a church that shares your same values because nobody has the beliefs part right anyway.
SH: Right? I think he has a book coming out actually that’s like How Christianity Got It Wrong or something like that.I think that’s coming out later this year, and I’m gonna read it.
CW: Oh my gosh. I think that just goes exactly along with your second pushback here. Our beliefs don’t really have a whole lot to do with our discipleship. And I mean that for people in churches and out of the churches, because… I’m thinking of another specific friend of mine who is an atheist and has been a professed atheist for decades who does more good in the world than almost anyone I know. So, it goes both ways.
SH: Right? Right.
CW: Your brainwaves don’t necessarily dictate how much good you’re putting out there in the world.
SH: They absolutely don’t. And I continue to be haunted- I’ve told you about this- but I continue to be haunted by this line- And I wish that I knew the name of the man, (former preacher) that you and I heard speak this fall.
He was telling a story- he was a bestselling author- He was telling a story about getting on the phone with a friend, like right at a book release. He’s at the Barnes and Noble or whatever, where they’re releasing his book.
And his friend calls him and his friend says, don’t confuse delivering the message with doing the work. And that just struck me because, man, I am good at delivering the message. I’m here doing it on a microphone right now. I’m really good at that. I can talk a good game, but when it comes to doing the work, I fall short over and over again. I fall short. My words don’t always make the jump into full discipleship. They just don’t.
CW: For all humans.
SH: I think, yes, for all humans. Which makes it easier for me to confess that. If it was just me, that would be a lot harder to confess. Right? So I say that from the assumption that it’s all humans, but I am deeply aware, ever since I heard that sentence come out of his mouth. I have thought of it and thought of it, and thought of it because putting myself in front of a microphone- that raises the bar on that a little bit for me, you know?
I need to, I need to be living. I need to do a better job of living the things that I say on this mic. I don’t think a truly Jesus centered church will ever be centered on our own certainty. I really don’t. I think we are here to learn to rely on God and not to rely on our own understanding. And I say that because [01:00:00] even Jesus’ disciples were pretty disillusioned when he got crucified. Jesus didn’t turn out to be powerful in the ways that they were expecting.
CW: Yep.
SH: They had to be willing to trade their initial beliefs about him for something better, which it turns out was faith.
CW: Just hearing you use that word rely. There’s another verb. I wanna- maybe Susan, we need to make a social media post when this episode comes out and it’s just gonna be…
SH: Word Cloud!
CW: Yeah, word cloud. All these verbs. All these verbs that we think are a better thing to rely on. There’s “rely” again- rather than beliefs.
SH: Or things that flesh out the word belief. Things that give more meaning to the word belief.
CW: There you go, that’s a better way to put it.
SH: Things that support belief. Maybe- I don’t know. I would think about that. I like that idea as a graphic.
CW: Well, you said something just a minute ago that I had never connected these dots before. That even those who hung out with Jesus in the flesh had to change their beliefs. Because in their defense, in those clumsy disciples’ defense, who wants a God that gets killed by the bad guys?
SH: Well, right. They were waiting for a Messiah. I mean, I get it.
CW: I get it, they wanted a Messiah.
SH: Exactly. Surprise ending.
CW: But Jesus’ whole ministry was a paradox,
SH: Right? Right.
CW: You descend to ascend. You die to live. You lose yourself to find yourself. So again, here’s that Richard Rohr line about unlearning. Which is another paradox because unlearning has been the biggest teacher to me more than anything in my life.
SH: Same. I mean, another paradox that occurred to me as you’re reading that list, I’m thinking, yeah, you believe, but it doesn’t always translate to action.
CW: Nice!
SH: I can deeply believe some things, but is it gonna really save me in the end? I don’t think so. I don’t think it is. Talking about belief in Jesus, one last word from Barbara Brown Taylor. She said this, “If I made myself put words on it, I would come to the same conclusion as a lot of people who’ve studied Jesus, that in the end, he’s a figure walking into the mist.
The minute I have it figured out, it’s done. Who in the world would want to figure out who he was? Was he a failed revolutionary? Was he a divine creature walking around on Earth? In that case, I want to see the DNA. But when I try to go down all my scientific and theological paths, I end up with the mystery of someone whom I’m still wondering about.”
Amen. I am with Barbara Brown Taylor.
CW: Yes, I am too.
SH: Whether we’re talking about Jesus or God or anything else in the spiritual realm, I believe that belief is the low bar. Belief is the kiddie table, Cynthia.
With credit to Rob Bell, you know, because he talks about the kiddie table, but that’s where belief lives. Like when we’re stuck on belief, we’re stuck at the kiddie table. Give me something more robust than my own mind can conjure up or choose, or really even understand. I need more than that.
So I’m gonna take faith over belief every day of the week, Cynthia, and twice on Sunday.
CW: Oh my gosh, Susan, that’s just the perfect way. I have nothing left to say. That was the perfect way to end this episode, so thank you. Thank you for showing up for a Big Idea: Conversation about Belief.
SH: and we’ve hardly scratched the surface. Thank you, Cynthia.
Voicemail 1: My faith deconstruction really began about five years ago when my oldest was almost eight. Around that time, I started noticing the covenant path language showing up more and more, especially in conference talks, and it started to weigh heavily on me. I just couldn’t reconcile the idea that there’s only one way to be close to God, or that families can only be together forever if they follow a single prescribed path.
At the same time, I was wrestling with the idea of my son being baptized at the young age of eight. He hadn’t been to church in over a year because of COVID, and honestly, church was always very overstimulating for him as a neurodivergent. Despite teaching him at home about baptism, I knew he really didn’t understand the covenants and commitments he was making and that if we were to go through with this, it would be under my pressure and persuasion.
My husband and I spent many hours diving into the topic, reading the scriptures, meeting with the bishop, and at the end of the day we decided to wait. There’s more to the story, but that really was the impetus behind me entering this nuanced space. Almost immediately in our ward, we felt like the outsiders and a project family.
Not long after, stories of abuse coverups in the church came out, and my husband stepped away. That really unraveled a lot for me too. I still try to attend church sometimes, but I just don’t feel the same connection or community that I used to. Being nuanced in that space feels almost impossible. For myself, honestly, I feel like I’m trying to live incongruent to my values. I just want my kids to grow up knowing they’re loved and divine no matter what. [01:05:00] For now, I’m finding other places to teach them how to love themselves and others safely without the fear or shame. Thank you again. This space has truly helped me stay grounded.
Voicemail 2: I grew up with very faithful parents and grandparents who also knew that church members didn’t all have to think and be the same. So I always knew that it was okay to be Mormon and Democrat, and that you could have good relationships with family members who had stepped away from the church. And entering my dating years, I knew that just because someone was an RM didn’t mean they were a good person, and that not every 19-year-old male had to serve. Things like that.
A college friend introduced me to Feminist Mormon Housewives, and I read every single one of those blog posts for years, and I believed that the church was true, but I understood why people had issues with it, and I thought that was okay, and I think that I would still be on that faithful but independent thinker trajectory if it hadn’t been for the church’s LGBT exclusion policy in November, 2015. Pretty much overnight, my relationship to the church changed, and I decided I was not going to feel guilty about not doing anything that I was “supposed to do” according to the church. I haven’t had a temple recommend since, and within a year I stopped wearing garments.
It has now been 10 years since that policy change. And when you started playing voicemails about faith journeys on the podcast, I thought that I would hear lots of people mention that policy, but I actually can’t remember anyone who has, and it’s just so interesting to see how we all have our own experiences and timelines.
For me, 10 years on, I still go to church a couple times per month, and I hold it much more loosely than I used to, but I will always value my Mormon identity.
Voicemail 3: Hi, Cynthia and Susan. My name is Angie and like many others, I had just always had a feeling in the back of my mind that women were always less than.
But the change for me and my faith really came from a childhood of sexual abuse and the way it had been handled in the church where I was eight years old. My bishop did not believe me. I was the first one to come out about this man. And it turns out he had molested over 150 children in the neighborhood. Well, he was excommunicated. He went to jail for six months and was let out on good behavior and ended up being rebaptized and then put as a greeter for Stake conference every time so he would feel welcome back.
And when I heard the story about the sexual abuse case in Arizona, many years ago, I just couldn’t deal with it anymore, and that really became one of my major things that I tried to reconcile- how the church handled sexual abuse cases versus helping the victims.
And there are many other stories and cases that I could share, but that is when my faith changes started.
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