The Church is Changing?
This is one of a series social media posts that I wrote in 2021 during the height of my Faith Transition. Because I was publicly deconstructing in front of an entirely faithful network of friends and followers, I received a lot reactions, questions, and backlash from people I loved regarding my journey. Many of them were dismissive or hostile towards me because they had been trained to me as a “defector.”
Since an overly long response in a comment or personal message would have been seen as aggressive, I took quotes from these reactions to write these public posts in response. I never attributed the person who asked the question since I didn’t want anyone to feel specifically blamed or called out for having the response. The questions are also not unique. They are part of the scripted response we were taught to have as members of the “in-group.” Still, each post begins with a quotation because it is a question I personally received during my Transition.
Q: “I sympathize, but the Church is changing–can’t you be patient while it catches up?”
That is accurate, the Church is changing.
Most people seem to be talking about these changes in particular:
🏆Nelson changed our logo! And our name! And our website! And our PR style-guide! (Don’t call it our “brand” though because that’s worldly)
🏆Nelson has announced a bunch of temples (most of which have no concrete plans and some of which have irked foreign governments)
🏆We had the “Be One” celebration and Oaks officially blamed racism on God, so that means we’re not racist anymore
🏆the Church is backing away from the Book of Mormon as having been “translated” and as “history”
🏆the Gospel Topics have been published, so the Church can now be considered honest about its history
Spoiler alert 1: they’re extremely biased and poor scholarship 👎
Spoiler alert 2: the Gospel Topics Essays are tacit admissions that all those who have been excommunicated for writing or reading about the dark side of Church history were the real honest scholars. 💪
🏆The Church isn’t totally and completely condemning “same-sex attraction” or “alternative lifestyles” all the time in public, anymore
🏆If you’re famous and gay, you might even be allowed to date (on the sly), as long as you can give some faith-promoting firesides to keep your peers committed along the way
🏆BYU is now even more insular and rigid in monitoring students’ health and housing choices and employee loyalty.
and
🏆women can now officially witness men wielding all that Priesthood authority* that we are assured is both the MOST IMPORTANT thing about the Church and also not important enough that women should want it. Also, just in case you forgot, ladies–it will never, ever, ever, EVER be shared with you in any organizational way because that’s how God wants it.
*exceptions apply
🎭None of these changes are bad, per se…the problem is that these changes are happening SO LATE in this game.
⏰After almost 150 years of blatant, theologically-canonized racism, and the embarrassing fiasco over the Church reiterating that it would NEVER apologize for it, Oaks getting teary over how the Priesthood and temple ban just “didn’t make sense” to him, but he went along with it anyway, is NOT inspiring.
⏰After at least 50 years (since the publishing of “Miracle of Forgiveness”) of slander, violence, and dehumanization of the queer community, pointing out that Holland didn’t appeal to the staff and leadership at BYU to point literal muskets at queer students, is reprehensible, at best.
⏰After 100 years of actively hiding the non-historicity of the Book of Mormon while still teaching Central and South American, Polynesian, and First Nations peoples that their “real” heritage is documented in this Methodist-inspired 19th Century fan fiction, conceding the the Book of Mormon is “not a historical textbook,” is horrendously inadequate and still deceptive.
⏰After systematically stripping the Relief Society of even the subordinate power that it had in our Church, compromising women’s influence in the ERA, and reasserting a 50s-era conception of women’s “place” in the Family Proclamation, being given the opportunity to witness our own children’s baptisms and marriage does NOT foster equality.
🔥And these are only the hottest issues in the modern mind of what the Church needs to but won’t (according to the declaration of Oaks) apologize for.
And when you start to open your eyes, there is no end…to the problems.
💰The $100 Billion of flex money that was collected from young marrieds, college students, immigrants, and shoestring-budget families, on promise of providing Christlike aid to the poor(er), (more) needy.
💰The private threats of eternal punishment and separation from family in the name of “courts of love,” for anyone local or higher leadership deems a threat,
💰The smear campaigns and character assassinations of thousands of innocent people,
💰The simultaneous legal and PR protection of liars (like 70, Elder Paul H. Dunn), rapists (like MTC President Joseph Bishop), child abusers (like temple film director, Sterling Van Wagenen), and other sex offenders (see: https://youtu.be/fhX0ihYUgXA ) because they held some Priesthood office at the time of abuse,
💰The exploitation of children in the form of a missionary force, where their physical and mental health are both at the mercy of an unpredictable leader who may or may not be in his position purely for the sake of numbers and stipends,
💰The slimy, limp-waisted insistence that God or the members are to blame, if misconduct is made known…
It’s egregious.
I understand why people don’t want to look at the underbelly of the Church. I don’t think it’s a good thing to ignore and I hope that more people pick up their courage to do so and hold the Church accountable, but I also understand why many won’t.
😔It’s heavy.
What I don’t understand, is why anyone expects something radically different to happen in the next five to ten years. 🎢
🔎If you really have taken a close look at the organization’s patterns in the last 200, why would you expect the coming dozen to be much different?
🐻And more to the point for me personally, why should I trust that system with my kids?
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