Episode 150: Why We Stay

Season 7 begins with a series of conversations exploring reasons some women continue to find spiritual value participating in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and some do not. Every individual has her own faith story, and in Episode 150, Cynthia and Susan ask themselves and each other the question listeners continue to ask more than any other: Why do you stay?

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Notes & Quotes:

What’s In It For Me? ALSSI Episode 038
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor
Custom-Fit Faith, ALSSI Episode 064
The Process of Staying, ALSSI Episodes 104 & 105
On the Meaning of Life, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, 11/9/2021
Cynthia’s IG post, 5/13/2022

“I want to be awake to all my choices.” — Melissa Febos

 “I will keep the Bible, which remains the Word of God for me, but always the Word as heard by generations of human beings as flawed as I.” — Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church, p. 216

“In a quip that makes the rounds, Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom, but it was the church that came. All these years later, the way many of us are doing church is broken and we know it, even if we do not know what to do about it. We proclaim the priesthood of all believers while we continue with hierarchical clergy, liturgy, and architecture. We follow a Lord who challenged the religious and political institutions of his time while we fund and defend our own. We speak and sing of divine transformation while we do everything in our power to maintain our equilibrium. If redeeming things continue to happen to us in spite of these deep contradictions in our life together, then I think that is because God is faithful even when we are not.” ― Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church, p. 220

“Someone can believe in an organized religion and still have qualms about certain aspects of it. There’s a nuance to everything.” — Kelly Corrigan

“Like campers who have bonded over cook fires far from home, we remain grateful for the provisions that we have brought with us from those cupboards, but we also find them more delicious when we share them with one another under the stars.” — Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church, p. 224