I was reading with great interest some of the latest "Unfriendly letters" and wanted to know if you've noticed the same thing that I have. It seems that the great majority of unfriendly letters are poorly written, and obviously come from uneducated or ignorant minds. But when you click on over to the "Friendly letters" most of them are well written by educated and enlightened people.
What do you think of this?
I have been developing a theory lately that the main reason the church sends 19 year old boys out into the real world to sell their church is because they are only 19! I'd venture to guess that if they allowed the young men to grow up first, get an education, and have a chance to experience the real world first without the requisite brainwashing, that a lot fewer of them would be willing to go through with it.
I can see the church working it. My own family was working me when I was 19. My own father promised me full funding if I would just go on my mission. My response was that if the family had all this money stored up then why don't they pay for my tuition and books instead? But that was not acceptable. Only for a mission.
At that time, I didn't know what I believed, I just knew I didn't enjoy church at all. I hadn't enjoyed church since my annual bishop's interview when I was 15 when he pried into my sex life and asked me about masturbation. I couldn't understand why that was any of his business then, and I know now that it wasn't any of his business! It made me very uncomfortable and shortly afterwards I began finding reasons to not be there.
I went through college claiming to be agnostic whenever friends would ask - inactive when family would ask. But it wasn't until I took certain classes like philosophy, astronomy, geology, and physics that I began to formulate my own view of the universe.
I believe that the church understands the importance of an education all too well. And that is why they send their youngsters out to the field so early in their education. A little education gives them the knowledge they need to survive in the world. Too much education - especially in the earth sciences, history, and philosophy - makes the church's story a little too hard to swallow, at least for the reasonable man.
The letters from missionaries in England is a prime example of this charade. Their writing style is poor and reads like an arrogant teenager yelling "nanner nanner nanner, I know more than you do!" They back up their points with quotes from scripture, as if using the Book of Mormon to prove the Book of Mormon is a viable reference. Their so-called "History lesson" is nothing of the sort. It is a retelling of an old biblical tale. They have obviously not read any of the extensive research into all the points they tried to rebuke.
And to think those people are actively seeking the poor, the miserable, the weak-hearted, and the weak-minded to join their ranks! I am certainly glad that I never went through the Missionary Training Camp, and I sure as Hell am glad that you were wise enough to come correct and pull yourself out of it, too.
Thank you so much for this web site.
This was my first expedition into searching about the Mormon Church on the Net and WOW. I have spend a day and a half reading different posts and web pages. I know everyone says this but I thought I was all alone out here in the non believing world. For the first time I feel validated in my beliefs about what the Church did to my self worth.
I was raised in the Church but not in the West. I grew up in the South, among the Baptists and being a Mormon youth was both very difficult and a source of pride. I was different and BETTTER than my classmates and friends. Our branch, too small for a ward, had a very tight group of youth and I was the center of it. I thrived in the attention I got at church. At school I faded into the back ground. I had a group of friends but because of mine and my parents involvement in the church I had no time for school activities. Because I only dated Mormon boys, I was seen as a snob. This served to isolate me and that isolation was very damaging.
I looked like the typical good Mormon girl. Encouraged my fiance to go on a mission and sent the appropriate care packages. I even attended BYU. That is where it all began to fall apart. I have read accounts on the web of the church going to extreme measures and invading peoples privacy. I know to what extremes they go to. I was subjected to in Provo and it scared the hell out of me. Big brother is alive and well and lives in Utah. The school knew things about me that my parents and roommates and boyfriends didn't know. They sent people to our apartment for an inspection and they went through our drawers, our cabinets, everywhere. There were people driving by our apartment every night to see how many of our cars were out side and if we had any visitors. They knew about every trip we had taken and where we had stayed. Then, the school officials call me and my roommates in to questions us one by one and even tried to turn us against each other. I was and still am amazed at the lengths they went to to crack a group of five young women.
I left BYU and came back to the beloved south but still tried to remain active in the church. It was my history of religion in america class at college that opened my eyes and I started searching for answers to the questions that had always bothered me. I am not active in the church. None of my brothers or sisters is either. My parents are very active and strong believers. In the past I have thought about asking to have my name taken of the rolls but didn't because my dad is usually the Bishop I have not been strong enough to go through the pain and anger this would cause. Because of the power men are given in the church I have been abused by more Mormon men than not, physically, sexually and emotionally. I have identified with many of the stories of other women on your web page. Do you know of a resource on the web for former Mormon women of abuse? I would be very interested.
Thanks for your great resource.
Lisa
This describes very well what happened to me. The ward fellowshipped me into the church from a jack-mormon family at age 12. In early morning seminary when I was a freshman my seminary teacher started talking about the little couplet that GBH doesn't know very much about. (He should have gone to seminary....) Anyway, this was blasphemy -- God was once like man, and we were going to be Gods!! I reported him to the bishop.
The bishop explained to me that the seminary teacher was right. Not long after that my seminary teacher died in a small plane accident. His funeral, and much of what was discussed at seminary afterward, somehow gave credence to everything he had said. He _must_ be right -- he had died and now became almost a saint in my young mind.
Anyway, by the end of highschool this wierd doctrine (and others) began to seem normal. Then BYU clinched it. Everybody there believed it too. It must be normal. JS marrying teenagers behind Emma's back still seemed a little off but I didn't think about it much. I wouldn't want to read Satanic material (like non-approved history) or talk about taboo subjects. So this even began to seem ok, or at least was way in the background.
As long as I trusted other people's ideas more than I trusted my own I would stay mormon. It must be right. Somewhere along the line, maybe because I got older, I don't know why really, I started to trust myself. I found out my ideas were just as good as anyone else's. Even better, for me. I started to realize that I was the expert in my life --- and that I knew as much as other people. I even ignored the counsel about not being "prideful". I must be very prideful to believe that I know more about my life than do the brethren.
So here I am, prideful, daring to believe that my experience with God and life is more valid for me than what the brethren have to tell me. By the cult's standards I have been led astray. I am happy to be out while my children are still very young. I am thankful that I won't have to mourn about having indoctrinated them into losing themselves. My children will grow (I hope) to trust themselves and to fear no one who has a message for them from God. If God want to tell them something God(dess) can tell them Him(Her)self.
There was always that seemingly infinite amount of time between testimonies when the pressure built up. Shouldn't I go up there now? Don't I believe like all the rest of my friends and family? Even if one didn't, it's not like it would have been too hard to fake it. I bet I could give a passing testimony right now, years removed from church, if I had to. The "I know that (fill in the blank) is true" mantra is so ingrained in my memory.
But I never did once bear my testimony in church. Public speaking never appealed to me, especially as a shy teenager, and I don't recall my parents ever taking me up as a little kid. That, and I never seemed to receive that magical gift of a testimony that was somehow bestowed upon you through reading scriptures and such that let everyone have the certainty that they expressed. Not that I never tried or took the BOM challenge or studied the scriptures. Indeed, I was always a good student in lessons and seminary because I could remember scriptures and doctrines (although my Seminary teacher once had a talk with my mother about me - said I "questioned" too much).
Any ways, now I think you guys have hit the nail right on the head with your analogies about Brave New World brainwashing and convincing themselves of the big lie. I think the whole bearing of testimonies reminds me of the quote from Hamlet: "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."
If the church were really founded upon such a bedrock of obvious truths as professed in testimony meeting, why would it need to be so passionately and incessantly repeated? I can just see myself getting up at the next physics colloqium: "I just want to say that I know that General Relativity is true, that I believe Albert Einstein to have been a true scientist, and that I know that the earth revolves around the Sun." Pretty silly.
I promised you a story. I may have to do this in installments because I am short on time, and you may have to proof read for spelling. Any way, here it is.......
I spent a little time in retrospect today, thinking of my life and how much more fulfillment I am getting now that I am no longer a Mormon. Today is Superbowl Sunday, and my Denver Broncos have won the title. I spent today with friends and family, having a few beers and watching the game, and I didn't think once about Mormonism; no guilt about missing meetings, watching others work on Sunday, word of wisdom breaking, etc. It was a fantastic day, a day I will remember for a long time.
There was a time though, when I would not have enjoyed a day like today. I am from a mormon family who converted to the church when I was five years old in Upstate NY. I believed everything that was taught to me, mainly because I never knew of anything else. I did most of what was called for as a young woman in the church; MIA, seminary, etc, and prepared for marriage. That is the only route open to young women in the church, and that's what we were all conditioned to achieve.
My father loved the church. He went up through the ranks and quickly became a high priest, and a member of the bishopric. He taught church doctrine classes. He visited the temple often. He did all the things a mormon man is supposed to do.
My mother also loved the church. She taught seminary, was relief sociaty president, did her visiting teaching, the whole nine yards.
One would think that with this "fine mormon up-bringing" that me and my siblings would have turned out average mormon men and women just like our parents, but there was something terribly wrong with my family. My father sexually abused me and my sisters, possibly my brother, my neice, my daughter, and possibly others that we don't know about.
Let me explain here that there is a fine line to what is sexual abuse, and what is not. My father stepped right up and put his toes on that line, but he never crossed it, at least not with me. One of my sisters did not fair so well, though. I will tell more about her later.
Where was my mother during all of this? She spent part of her time denying that there was anything wrong, and part smoothing things over. I think a great deal of my mother's influence kept all of us from making this terrible secret public. My family's main goal was to never let there be an outward appearance of anything other than the happy mormon family, a family that would be forever.
Even though my family was this way, I still believed in the church. I fantasized that one day I would blow the whistle on my dad, and the mormon church would surely punish him if they knew what kind of man he was.
It is common knowledge that an adult who is sexually abused as a child will eventually have to come to terms with the abuse, and that this happens in most adults in the late twenties through the forties for most people. Anyway, as I was turning 32, I was hit like a ton of bricks with what happened to me, and it was time for me to heal.