"Born-Again Mormon" Review, Part 5: "They leave the Church but can't leave it alone"

Continuing review of Shawn McCraney's I Was a Born-Again Mormon. See part 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9. For an overview of the historical use of the phrase "they leave the church but can't leave it alone," click here.

“…the least egregious infraction of Church law is the failure to act LDS while the most serious action a member can take and the one that draws the heaviest retribution from defenders of the faith is speaking up about the Church, its doctrine, or its leaders in a critical way – or even asking questions” (McCraney, p. 69).

Because Mormons place a heavy emphasis on the power of testimony based on personal experiences with God, coupled with the testimony of others in a community of covenants with God, statements directly challenging beliefs can feel threatening and personal. Terryl Givens, a professor of literature and religion, described a tension within the LDS Church resulting from the paradox of simultaneous searching and certainty: 

Mormons are admonished to ‘get their own testimonies’ and not live by borrowed light. But immersion in a culture so saturated in the rhetoric of certainty inevitably produces the pressure to express, if not to actually possess, personal conviction; and it produces a socially reinforced confidence about those convictions.

Perhaps this explains in part the proclivity of disaffected Mormons to so frequently react with bitterness and feelings of betrayal. It explains why people can leave the Church but cannot leave it alone.¹

Perhaps it also explains why it can be tempting for members to vilify those who actively or aggressively manifest antagonism or even simply doubt toward the Church. McCraney remembers having often heard “local leaders and higher [saying] 'They leave the Church, but they won't leave it alone'" (p. 63).² He admits to not knowing the original source, but it is commonly said in reference to disaffected Mormons who publish criticism or actively attack their former faith.  It is not true in every case that one who leaves the Church will never thereafter “leave it alone.” Some are perfectly capable of ceasing Church activity without attacking it. Those who can't leave it alone often do so loudly, however. Many of the more vocal apostates can't seem to get over their apostasy. Some feel compelled to warn others about staying in (or becoming involved with) Mormonism. Some actively seek confrontation by ridiculing former friends and church members as McCraney did. The Internet offers a new avenue for apostates both outside and within the Church to anonymously criticize the faith of those who still believe, thus finding support without disclosing their true identity. There are entire online communities, “cyber-wards” of sorts complete with testimony bearing of the falseness of the Mormon cult (or the “Morg” as it is sometimes called) and even general conferences.³

Indeed, at times the feeling of hate is manifest when former believers vent about their former faith. As Eric Hoffer described in The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements:

We always look for allies when we hate...Whence come these unreasonable hatreds, and why their unifying effect? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt and other shortcomings of the self. Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others- and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch. Obviously, the most effective way of doing this is to find others, as many as possible, who hate as we do...Much of our proselytizing consists in infecting others not with our brand of faith but with our particular brand of unreasonable hatred.⁴

“Hate” here could easily be replaced with “hurt,” and Latter-day Saints should recognize there are former members who carry real pain resulting from alienation and loss of faith. Some carry the pain quietly, others more vocally. I don’t intended to paint all former Mormons as utterly miserable; some report the feeling of peace and release upon losing their faith, but some understandably continue to emotionally struggle.

Reacting to doubt with hostility, indifference, or accusations of unworthiness can be destructive to  testimonies as well as relationships. In light of how McCraney discusses his own drug and alcohol abuse, he seems to believe some Saints inevitably attribute apostasy to sin. He is quick to explain at the outset of the book that in presenting such an “unadulterated expose” he risks “jeopardizing the small amount of credibility more anonymous authors generally enjoy.” However, he emphasizes, the book includes these details in order to demonstrate that his spiritually-unfulfilled condition was the result of Latter-day Saint beliefs, which “produce religious people who may not have any idea what it means to really know, love, worship, or serve God” leaving them unhappy and unsaved ("Prologue").

While some Latter-day Saints may hold that those who fall away must have committed, or desire to commit, grievous sin, I believe such a view is too short-sighted. Certainly there is scriptural precedence affirming that various sins can lead to apostasy,⁵ but there is also abundant scriptural precedence asserting that, if such were invariably the case, no one would retain a testimony or remain in the Church: “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6), and “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Sin and apostasy is a chicken-or-the-egg argument; the process is generally not an easily traceable, universal, or well-defined sequence.

Nevertheless, McCraney asserts that most Mormons struggle because they cannot live up to the expectations of the gospel. In the next section I will address his concerns for the "suffering Saints."  

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
Terryl L. Givens, People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture, Oxford University Press, 275. See also David G. Bromley’s The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements.

[2]
Apparently the saying was coined by Neal A. Maxwell in his 1979 book All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co.), 108. Maxwell repeated the saying elsewhere, including several General Conference addresses (see “The Net Gathers of Every Kind,” Ensign, Nov. 1980, 14; “‘Becometh As a Child’,” Ensign, May 1996, 68; “Remember How Merciful the Lord Hath Been,” Ensign, May 2004, 44). The phrase is often conceptually tied with an account of Joseph Smith asserting that once someone has joined the Church they have left neutral ground forever (see Daniel Tyler, “Recollections of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” Juvenile Instructor, 15 Aug. 1892, 492). Both the phrase and the story have since received a fair amount of notice in various LDS publications and General Conference addresses. For example, see Hyrum and Helen Andrus, ed., They Knew the Prophet, (1976) 53-55; Truman G. Madsen, Joseph Smith the Prophet, (1991) 52-53; Book of Mormon Student Manual Religion 121 and 122, (1996), 95; James E. Faust, “Enriching Family Life,” Ensign, May 1983, 40; Glenn L. Pace, “Follow the Prophet,” Ensign, May 1989, 25; Mary Ellen W. Smoot, “Steadfast and Immovable,” Ensign, Nov. 2001, 91. For an extended discussion of this phrase, see BHodges, "They leave the Church but can't leave it alone," LifeOnGoldPlates.com, August 25, 2008.

[3]
Seth Payne's Sunstone presentation ("Purposeful Strangers: A study of the ex-Mormon Narrative,” 9 August 2008) notes some of the unique vocabulary these online communities have developed. These new phrases and names often reflect a “captivity narrative,” with names like “Reformed Former Mormons,” or using terms like “escaped” or “recovered” (Payne, pp. 2-3). It should also be noted, as Payne’s paper describes, there are unique strains of criticism coming from both secular and sectarian sides. McCraney’s approach is an interesting hybrid of each-- a rigid, fundamentalist approach to the Bible, but a naturalistic more secular approach to the Book of Mormon as an inspiring fiction, and Joseph Smith as a pious fraud rather than an evil and false prophet. 

[4]
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Harper and Row, New York, 1956), p. 88. I was promted to read Hoffer again when McCraney recommended his book several times: “Eric Hoffer, aka, the longshoreman philosopher, wrote an insightful but fairly despairing book titled, The True Believer...I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand the psychology of people and their relationships to mass movements. Unfortunately, Hoffer is an atheist and can be quite acerbic in his approach to life...For every page of Hoffer, however, I recommend a chapter or two of the New Testament and some considerable time in earnest prayer” (p. 101, and p. 147 where he places Hoffer's work alongside Niccollo Machiavelli's The Prince and Christ's words in the book of Matthew). Hoffer’s approach is a remarkable and interesting one, especially because it often seems to make the most sense to any given reader in reference to the views of others.

[5]
For instance, see Alma 24:30 which states: “And thus we can plainly discern, that after a people have been once enlightened by the Spirit of God, and have had great knowledge of things pertaining to righteousness, and then have fallen away into sin and transgression, they become more hardened, and thus their state becomes worse than though they had never known these things” (see also D&C 93:38-39). I believe taking these verses universally is problematic, unless doubt or loss of faith itself is argued to be sin.