The Church Fails J. Reuben Clark’s Test of Truth
In 2021, I did a 10-day series of posts leading up to Thanksgiving to share resources, quotes, and stories about how I deconstructed the doctrine of LDS Mormon Polygamy, or as the early Latter-day Saints called it “the Practice.” I used the hashtags #givethanks for each of these posts because then-Prophet Russell M. Nelson had just hyped up members to receive a modern day prophecy which consisted of him suggesting that all members of the Church do some humble-bragging missionary work with that hashtag in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. As far as I know, Church Members are still circulating this hashtag around Thanksgiving as a way to signal their loyalty to the Church when posting about the holiday.
These posts were a bit more passive aggressive than normal for me, since I generally try/tried to be very gentle with Church Members. I know how it feels to be in that tender balance of earnestness + cognitive dissonance while being overloaded with Church chores and family duties. My goal even as I deconstructed, was to be hard on the system but soft with people. However, getting a full face of gushing gratitude about Temples and the General Authorities and Joseph Smith every day when I went to Social Media was pretty grating and ultimately, these 10 posts were an attempt to communicate with the community I come from by using the “in-speak” of the Church while inviting critical thinking, rather than herd-compliance.
The #Givethanks Anti-Polygamy Posts
Day 6
Muckraking is not my favorite type of writing. While it can be interesting to write or read, ultimately, it makes me feel a bit sick to continually remember how little some people value the lives or autonomy of their peers and how eager we are, as humans, to make excuses for cruelty, if it means that we get to keep our comfortable stuff, our familiar patterns of behavior, or our pre-constructed paradigms.
In my Writing MFA, we often reminded each other that the purpose of critique was to make better writing. We were encouraged to “kill our darlings” (a pretty disturbing metaphor, actually…) meaning that we had to be extra aware of how our most belabored passages were affecting the whole, because it was likely there that we were losing the dynamism of our topic.
I’ve taken that approach to our faith crisis, too. Our “reinvestigation of the Church,” is not an end to itself. It is a path to a healthier engagement with spirituality for our and our kids’ future. At this point, it seems rather doubtful whether that future will include the LDS Corporation, but I plan to end this mini-series of posts with ideas about how we (collectively) could make this community healthier for all or, at least, a lot more people. I still hold a lot of hope for the Church community. I think, given better education and better mental tools for analysis and reconstruction, we could maximize the best parts of Mormonism’s heritage and cut away the rotting parts.
Anyway, if you’re one of the 10 people who has made it this far on this roller coaster–Gold stars for you!
I #givethanks for you showing up here to care, to learn, to brave the wilderness. Thank you <3
If we have the Truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”
J. Reuben Clark, Counseler in the LDS first Presidency 1934-1961
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