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Radical & Infinite Empathy: What the Atonement Means to Me

[An attempt to recreate my remarks delivered in the ***** Ward, 24th July 2022.]

Welcome! Good Morning!

It is Pioneer Day!

The day we commemorate the Saints’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, after leaving this place we all call home. And, I believe, the day that we all should think about our own role as pioneers—to realize that each and every one of us is a pioneer—no one else has ever been me, Conor Hilton, living in Iowa City in 2022! No one else has ever been you! I have experienced things that no one else has and no one can fully completely understand everything about me. Just like I can’t possibly know or understand everything about each one of you.

BUT I believe that Jesus Christ has experienced everything that I have experienced, am currently experiencing, and will experience. He experienced everything that you have experienced, are currently experiencing and will experience!  

Alma, in the Book of Mormon delivers one of my favorite sermons on the Atonement. He teaches that:

“And [Jesus Christ] shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.” (Alma 7:11-13)

These verses gave new life to the Atonement in my life. They have helped me come to realize that the Atonement is about radical empathy—Jesus’s empathy for me and you, and I believe, our growing empathy for one another as we lean into the power of the Atonement, doing what Jenn called us to do earlier today. Because Jesus fully understands everything that has happened to me, even the worst suffering and biggest evil that I have encountered, I believe that we can collaborate with him and God to find and make good out of even the worst things we can imagine. It is difficult work to transform suffering and evil into Good, it’s the work of Redemption and Consecration. I believe this sort of transformation is only possible with the complete and full experiential understanding of our suffering that the Atonement gives Jesus.

In honor of Pioneer Day, here’s a story about one of my ancestors, Ann Rogers (my great-great-great grandma), warning this is a tragedy.

Ann Rogers was born in Wales, where her mother died, before she came with her father to Council Bluffs, where he died. She left behind a sort of proto-fiance, John, in Wales. She left with some of the Saints, traveling with her stepmother, to come to Utah shortly after arriving in Council Bluffs. Prior to leaving, she and John arranged that they would wait 3 years for each other, exchanging letters, while he saved up enough to join Ann in Utah.

Ann wrote John faithfully throughout the entire trek, but never once received a letter from John.

She arrived in Utah, is proposed to almost immediately, but declines, as she is waiting for John.

Eventually the three years are up.

Ann then marries my great-great-great grandfather, William Snow (a man almost 30 years older than her) and becomes one of his plural wives. According to the memories of her grandchildren, she always referred to him as “Brother Snow”, ‘Your Father”, or “Your Grandfather”.

A few months after they are married, she receives a stack of letters from John that he’d written over the last three years—they’d been kept somewhere until now (family tradition is that the stepmother kept and hid them from Ann).

A few years later, after Ann and William have had a few children, John comes to Utah, he’s married and has a couple of kids of his own. John had refused to marry until he heard that Ann had gotten married.

I don’t know if Ann or John or anyone else involved found something good about this experience while they lived. I don’t know if they’ve found any good in it yet. But I believe that the power of the Atonement can transform this tragedy and their relationship to it.  

Thinking about this story and the Atonement reminded me of some things that Stephen Colbert has said about the loss of his dad and two closest brothers in a plane crash when he was 10. I’m paraphrasing lightly here, but he said,

“I learned to love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

I believe that through the Atonement we can too can learn to love the things that we most wish have not happened. Even as we may continue to wish that it hadn’t happened. We can love the thing and wish it hadn’t happened all at once.

I believe that we can also work with Christ and our heavenly parents to feel the radical empathy the Atonement allows towards others and even characteristics about ourselves. Basically, to collaborate with them to view ourselves and others more charitably, as Jenn talked about earlier today.  

A friend and mentor, Matt Wickman, recently published a book where he describes some of his experiences with the spirit helping him do just that. In one section he describes his anxieties and concerns about his teenage daughter who had moved in with her girlfriend and removed her name from the records of the Church. He took his concerns to God in prayer and describes the answer he received here:

“I found that these latest answers took an old, familiar form: gentle irony. A light from a corner of my darkness. A soft voice echoing through deep canyons of the ominous and unknown. I was anguished, and God was not. I mourned the prospect of lost futures for my children, and God did not. I expressed regret, and God would have none of it.

I lack a language for the strange hopefulness of these spiritual ministrations, for the joy it seemed God expressed, and expresses still on my behalf even if I could not, cannot, feel it myself.” (Wickman 156-57)

I’ve had this sort of experience with myself.

I am a naturally skeptical, questioning, doubting, critical person. For much of my life, I’ve sat through church meetings, school, and elsewhere, making snarky comments to my friends and family about talks, testimonies, comments, lectures, anything and everything. I poked logical holes in whatever people said. Eventually I realized that this was terrible for my spiritual well-being.

I decided to just stop. To not be critical anymore.

This was worse. I kept all my comments and thoughts bottled up inside, festering in a toxic stew.

I tried this for awhile. Before I paid attention to a feeling that perhaps this part of me that I thought was bad, part of my personal ‘natural man’, was not actually bad. But just misdirected. I listened to that feeling. I realized that I needed to use the skills that I had naturally been using for snark and criticism, looking beyond what was said to find flaws and problems, to instead take that same ability to look beyond what was said and creatively think about what would cause someone to say that, to imagine what other ways of expressing that idea there might be.

I’ve been trying to make this empathetic, connecting impulse my natural tendency for the last seven years or so. And I’m better at it than I used to be. But it’s still work. I still feel the impulse to be snarky and critical and skeptical. I still indulge that impulse when I can’t help it. But it has been remarkably healing to try and work at it, recognizing that God and Jesus love even the parts of me that I don’t know what to do with.

I believe that my work to be more empathetic is possible because of the Atonement. I believe that because of the Atonement we can all collaborate with Christ to learn to love the things that we most wish haven’t happened. I believe that we can grow and work to access the empathy that Jesus feels for all of us for not only ourselves and our experiences, but also for each other.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

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“The Public Memoirs and Confessions of a Doubting Believer”

This is more or less the text of remarks that I delivered at the 2021 Faith & Knowledge Conference on 30 Jan. 2021.

“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

These words, spoken by the father of a child with a “dumb spirit”[1] capture my own faith, which I will lay bare before you all today, in these public memoirs and confessions of a doubting believer. I have not always been confident in my faith as a doubting believer, eschewing some of the supernatural elements of my childhood belief to embrace a more rational, intellectual belief, fitting for a scholar. I wrestled with these two worldviews for years, arguably dating back to when I first honed my use of the shiny pin of skepticism[2] in high school debate.

Paradoxically, it was an academic endeavor that offered me the framework to make peace with the inner wrestle that I had engaged in for so long. After a long and winding road, I had settled on James Hogg’s enigmatic 1824 novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner as the core text that I would analyze for my MA thesis. Hogg’s novel embodies in characters and structure Joseph Smith’s principle that “By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.”

Hogg’s contraries are a nineteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment rationality and a particular brand of Calvinist religious zealotry, embodied (literally) in the nameless “Editor” and the titular justified sinner Robert Wringhim. The structure of the novel also works to prove these contraries, with the first half being from the perspective of the Editor, who within the narrative found the memoirs of Robert Wringhim, investigated the version of events that they contain, and then lays out what the empirical evidence he accumulated suggests. Once the Editor completes his account, Hogg’s novel offers us Robert’s own memoir, which then tells us essentially the same story that the Editor just finished, but this time from Robert’s perspective. The text concludes with the Editor returning for some final investigations and climatic revelations.

The central claim of my MA thesis is that Confessions offers a postsecular spirituality that is found in the tension between Enlightenment rationality and religious, specifically Calvinist, zealotry. During my defense one of my committee members asked if there was a pastoral motivation for my argument, and I was totally caught off guard. Though as soon as he asked, I realized part of what had drawn me to Hogg’s text was the way that it embodied many of the questions and wrestles that I was engaged in in my own spiritual life. Today, I hope to finally realize the pastoral potential of what I argued some years ago.

PART ONE: The Editor

Hogg’s text opens with the nameless Editor’s perspective, easing readers into the critique of rationality that Hogg offers. We get a sense of the Editor’s position on religion early on in the text, where he describes a recently married character’s unsympathetic response to his bride’s extreme piety:

“He [Dalcastle] had better have held his peace. There was such a torrent of profound divinity poured out upon him, that the laird became ashamed, both of himself and his new-made spouse, and wist not what to say: but the brandy helped him out” (7)

“profound divinity” is “poured out”, followed up with “brandy”. The Editor’s use of ‘profound divinity’ is drenched with irony. Skeptical of the very idea that there is some sort of transcendent reality that could be brought into contact with the immanent sphere that we are presumed to dwell upon.

The Editor displays this sense of the rational as superior to and in direct opposition to the supernatural throughout his recounting of Robert’s tale. Though we begin to see cracks in his story as supernatural occurrences are piling up that the Editor cannot provide alternative explanations for and strives instead to wave them away.

I am immensely sympathetic to The Editor’s position, and to my regret, have espoused ideas quite similar to the ones that he does. I too have treated the piety and extraordinary religious experiences of others with irony and disdain, mocking them as saccharine and unbelievable. I spent years after my mission snarkily commenting to my roommates and friends about what people taught or said at church, wielding my shiny pin of skepticism and ‘rationality’ with smug satisfaction to pop the balloons of simple or miraculous faith expressed by my co-religionists.

Throughout this time I read and read and read about Mormonism and Church history, devouring facts, increasingly frustrated that others at Church expressed ideas that didn’t line up with my understanding of the facts. I was convinced that if ‘these people’ could only swallow all the things that I knew, they would stop saying ludicrous things about God helping them find their car keys or receiving divine assistance on a math test (a particularly sore subject given what I perceived as an utter lack of divine intervention to save my calculus grades, hitting a low point of a 17% on a midterm exam—you know you’re doing poorly when you should have done better just guessing).

I wanted to reshape Mormonism into something purely intellectual, a religious thought exercise. Without knowing it, I was wishing for something similar to the way that Talal Asad describes the secular creating a sphere of ‘good belief’ to be cordoned off from ‘bad belief’ (a process that Mormonism already underwent in many ways, at least as recounted by literary critic Peter Coviello).

PART TWO: The Sinner

Yet, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was something more, I was wrestling with past spiritual experiences that in some ways called into question my newfound paradigm. This is precisely what happens to Hogg’s Editor as he encounters the memoirs of the titular Justified Sinner, Robert. The cracks in the Editor’s belief in the supremacy of rationality occur throughout his narrative, but we don’t fully get a sense of how different Robert’s perspective is until we start to read his own words.

Early in Robert’s memoir, after he has received confirmation that he is one of the justified, he recounts an encounter that quickly takes on supernatural overtones.  

 “As we approached each other, our eyes met, and I can never describe the strange sensations that thrilled through my whole frame at that impressive moment; a moment to me fraught with the most tremendous consequences” (89).

Robert is seeing Gil-Martin, his double and according to some scholars the Devil himself, who will lead him on a wild, strange journey including apparitions, brotherly feuds, deadly duels, murder, and more. Robert recounts here and elsewhere supernatural happenings, precisely of the type that the Editor expresses disdain for.  

Wesley J. Wildman offers some terminology that I find helpful for talking about the sorts of wild, supernatural experiences that Robert describes. Wildman describes ultimacy and anomalous experiences, which can and do overlap, but are marked by some distinctions:

 “anomalous experiences are defined by objective strangeness, ultimacy experiences … by subjective judgments of ultimate significance” (Wildman 84)

Robert’s experiences begin as both anomalous and ultimacy experiences. Yes, they are strange, but they also are significant to him. As the text progresses, they become more and more strange and their significance becomes muddied and possibly much darker.

One particular experience in my life often comes to mind when I think about these anomalous and ultimacy experiences—and is one that gnawed at my mind as I reveled in critique, skepticism, and rationality. I was a missionary in Lithuania. My companion and I were riding the bus back to our apartment with an electronic keyboard to practice for accompanying hymns at church. As we settle into position, standing, holding this giant keyboard, a very inebriated man climbs on the bus, which was not at all unusual. He sits down not far from where we were standing, and proceeds to growl, presumably in our direction. He starts talking angrily at us, muttering at first, but slowly rising in volume. I’m getting a little nervous, given the man’s heavyset frame and my, well, skin and bones build. He grows louder and louder, yelling at us, seemingly filled with rage.

I’m terrified. Shaking, holding onto this pole, standing.

Naturally, I do what any missionary would do. I pray.

A verse that I’d been studying came to mind, 1 John 4:18:

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear”

I ask God to help me love this man and I am overwhelmed with what I still only know how to describe as an outpouring of divine love from the heavens. Suddenly, I felt for this Lithuanian, what God did. Felt sorrow, hope, and above all love.

The instant that love filled me the man stopped, mid-yell. He sat patiently and quietly, like a good Lithuanian, for the next half hour or so that we were on the bus.

An objectively strange sort of experience. But one filled with significance for me. It may be possible to explain this experience away as a coincidence. And maybe it was! Yet, I cannot deny what I felt and that as far as I could tell, that love originated somewhere outside of myself.

What could I do with this sort of experience in my newfound rational, intellectual religion? What did it mean? How did it work?  

PART THREE: The Doubting Believer

And so we arrive at part three, The Doubting Believer.

In Hogg’s novel, after we read Robert’s own memoir, our fearless Editor returns to conclude his investigation. Except now, his faith in Enlightenment rationality is fully shaken. He experiences some miraculous and horrifying things, and close to his final word on the events of the memoir is that:

“With regard to the work itself, I dare not venture a judgment, for I do not understand it”

The Editor ends the novel in tension between Enlightenment rationality and the religious zealotry of the Justified Sinner.

This is spirituality, according to me, reading Hogg.

Notably, The Editor is not converted fully, but moved to a place of radical uncertainty. He has lost the surety that guided his ironic dismissal of a ‘torrent of profound divinity’ in the novel’s opening pages. He cannot bring himself to fully accept and believe Robert’s account, packed with strange happenings. Yet, he cannot dismiss it out of hand either.This is the place that I find myself. Living in the tension of these two worlds, which collide all around me. A world where belief is an “embattled option” to quote Charles Taylor. As that phrase suggests, it can be wearying to be here. But, it’s the only place I know how to be and I think it is worth the wrestle.   

I think that this is a Christian Wiman sort of spirituality. In his great spiritual memoir, My Bright Abyss, he writes of his own spiritual journey:

“Was the fall into belief or unbelief? Both. For if grace woke me to God’s presence in the world and in my heart, it also woke me to his absence. I never truly felt the pain of unbelief until I began to believe.” (Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss, 12)

As Wiman says, there are some unique pains that only become apparent once we embrace belief, once we enter the tension that I am calling spirituality.

Conclusion

I have found great peace as I have let go of the need to resolve these tensions in my own life. The idea that I found in Hogg, that the very tension that had been causing me grief and anxiety could be fruitful, that that very tension which had threatened to destroy my faith could actually be the ground for a renewed spirituality and belief, premised on the radical uncertainty that I felt?

It saved my faith.

It saves my faith.

With this new framework for spirituality, that doesn’t fully reject the rational or the supernatural, doesn’t ignore the transcendent or the immanent, but instead, embraces the tensions between them, I finally feel able to go forth and do, as my radically uncertain, doubting believer self.

I’d like to close with some words from one of my own personal minor prophets (to borrow David O. McKay’s term for poets and authors), the Slayer herself, Buffy Summers:

So, I will walk through the fire
Cause where else can I turn
I will walk through the fire

I love the conviction on display here, particularly with the underlying sense of uncertainty and almost inevitability. This blend of conviction, uncertainty, and inevitability matches my own lived experience with faith—a blend that I hope may serve as an alternative to some of the stories that we tell about spirituality and may perhaps due some of the work that Amy Hoyt and others called for last night.

Here’s to walking through the fire, to doubting belief, and to radical uncertainty.

Thank you.

[1] Mark 9:17, 24

[2] A reference to Bruce C. Hafen’s fantastic 1979 Ricks College Devotional “Love is Not Blind: Some Thoughts for College Students on Faith and Ambiguity”.

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Imagination, Hope, and Queer Mormonism

Imagine a world where weapons are transformed into tools of creation, instead of melting down church bells for bullets, we melt down tanks and guns and knives to form plows and homes (Isaiah 2:4).

Imagine a world where countries cease to fight with one another, where each one of us loves our enemies and helps those that hurt and use us (4 Nephi 1:2, Matt. 5:44).

Imagine a world where all things are held in common and no poor exist, where everyone has what they need and refuses to take advantage of another (4 Nephi 1:3).

Imagine a world where people and their desires are so good, that the devil himself will have no power to even tempt us to do evil (1 Nephi 22:26).

Imagine a Kingdom that is like yeast and a mustard seed, where the first shall be last and the last shall be first and the poor in spirit are in charge and and and… (Matt. 13:31-33, Matt. 20:16, Matt. 5:3).

What a wild world. I believe in that world, but I have no idea what it looks like, how to bring it into existence, or what my day-to-day life in such a world would look like. If I can’t imagine it, then how am I supposed to live it?

I believe that it is my moral responsibility to live as close to the world that Jesus and scripture describe as possible. Not to single-handedly usher in Zion and the Millennium, but to be actively working alongside my comrades in Christ to prepare the earth to receive its paradisiacal glory (AoF 1:10).

As I was recently reading Taylor Petrey’s Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism (2020), I was struck by the ways in which official church teachings surrounding gender and sexuality seem tied to beliefs and assumptions about what Heaven will look like. Since I think we should be far more humble about such beliefs (and all beliefs really), I couldn’t help but think that if we could imagine alternatives to the vision of Heaven that seems standard throughout much of modern Mormonism, that vision could inspire us to transform how we treat one another in the here and now.

For me, this type of imaginative, speculative thinking is key to hope. If I cannot imagine what the Kingdom of God is like, how can I hope for it? How can I work with God to bring it to pass? How can I hope for something that I cannot envision?

As pride month draws to a close, in the midst of national protests and conversations surrounding racial injustice, I feel a religious, spiritual, moral imperative to imagine a brighter, kinder, more Christlike world. I believe that Mormonism has rich potential for playing a role in bringing this world to pass, a true Zion community, where we’re of one heart and one mind. And, I think we can begin that work in speculative theology, carving out spaces to explore what Mormonism can offer to the Saints and what we can in turn offer the world.

So, let’s do some imaginative, speculative fiction! These are not meant to be binding in anyway, just springboards to more imaginative thinking about what a better, kinder, queer Mormonism could look like. I hope to do more stuff in this vein and I’d love for y’all to join me.

I. The Council

The Council convened. The Gods gathered together—God-Dad, God-Mom, God-Spirit, God-Brother, God-Sister, and the others. The time was nigh to decide the precise roles of the noble and great ones. The Council ruled with one voice, though they took turns writing the degrees (and on rare occasions there would be split decisions with dissenting degrees offered—Orson and Brigham’s debates will be, or were, or are (it’s hard to say when all time is present) an unfortunate side-effect of this approach). Tonight’s Council meeting once convened has never ceased…

II. ‘The Family’

“200 years ago, the Quorum of the 12—at the time all men—released the original ‘The Family: A Proclamation to the World’. Further revelation at the centennial of the proclamation expanded the teachings found within it to cover our nonbinary and genderqueer siblings, describing how the ‘male’ and ‘female’ binary contained in the original document is better understood as two artificial groupings of a spectrum, and that all of us have masculine and feminine characteristics,” the Bishop continued for the duration of the meeting weaving together the history and present gender teachings into a powerful sermon on how to best perform our own unique gender identity. She was one of the last bishops that had gone through the Church’s official clergy training before they reverted to the lay clergy model that had defined previous generations, focusing on the history and theology of gender and sexuality (a somewhat old-fashioned arrangement, but still useful).

III. Choose Your Creation

“Welcome to the highest tier of the Celestial Kingdom! I’ll be your guide during the brief orientation. Remember as we go through everything that even if it’s not what you expected, God’s house is a house of order. Here in the Celestial Kingdom, we’re all about creation—ambicreation and antecreation. That’s the creation of planets and the creation of spirit bodies. To maintain the order of God’s House, you’re each assigned tokens for each type of creation—you earn these at regular intervals and in regular amounts. You’re welcome to barter amongst yourselves for more or less of either token.

You’ll need at least two people to unlock either variety of creation—nothing is done here in isolation. Out of the mouth of two or three (or four or five or, you get it), witnesses, ya know. It is simply impossible to engage in either ambicreation or antecreation without the proper tokens and a second, consenting individual with their respective tokens. Don’t trouble yourselves with the how right now, that’s for another time. Now, on to your ‘mansions’.”

IV. Sealing

Louie was dead. She’d been dead for some time now, hard to say exactly how long, time is a finicky thing on earth, and gets even more so beyond the veil. She lived in CK with her wife and husband, though those labels may mask the nature of the bonds between the three of them, trying to force a mortal understanding that doesn’t quite capture the richness and complexity. Louie and her wife were sealed, as they say, as were Louie and her husband. Louie’s husband and Louie’s wife, however, weren’t. They just weren’t that close. They liked each other fine, but never felt the need to seal their friendship. They both were sealed to other friends and relatives, but just didn’t feel that special connection with each other.

V. A Calling

“Today’s a special day in the Celestial Earth 7th Ward. God is being released. All in favor of thanking Josh for his years of service as God please make it manifest. Thank you. Now, can Layla, please stand. We have extended a call to Layla to serve as God for the next dispensation. All who can sustain Layla in this calling, make it manifest by raising the right hand. Any opposed by the same sign. Thank you. Layla, can you please join us on the stand? Josh will share a brief testimony, after which Layla, excuse me, God will address us. After Her remarks, we’ll sing ‘In Our Lovely Deseret’. We’ll proceed to that point. Josh?”

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In Defense of Trek & Pioneer Day

I am a part of the minority among progressive Mormons (or perhaps actually, a part of the silent majority?) that is pro-Trek and pro-Pioneer Day. Here I strive to make that case and share some thoughts on ways of honoring and celebrating both that more responsibly, thoughtfully, and inspiringly engage with our Mormon heritage. 

On TREK

Trek to me feels like a mix of ritual and pilgrimage, a potentially powerful way of creating an egalitarian, group ritual. Not all members have pioneer blood relatives, but all Mormons have a pioneer religious heritage, simply by being Mormons. The pioneer ethic and mythos is embedded in how much of Mormonism manifests and I think that we can all honor that, whether our own particular ancestors crossed the plains or not. 

Trek, at its best, makes physical the sacrifices and toil and work and sweat of true religion in a way that I find powerful. Does a few days hiking compare to the true trek across the plains? Of course not. But trek doesn’t need to be the same experience as the literal pioneers to have value.

Caution and safety should be practiced at all times. Trek should probably be arduous, but not life-threatening. Everyone should be well-watered and cared for, with injuries receiving the best care modern medicine has to offer. Suffering for suffering’s sake is not the goal. 

Wearing “traditional” clothing feels to me like a valuable part of the ritual element of the experience, though the standards should definitely be enforced more equally across genders, since in my experience women and girls that participate have much more expected of them than men and boys, who look more or less like they always do. Creating or finding the clothing could be incorporated into the group preparations for the process, which could equalize this and add meaning. Also, all should be allowed to wear any period clothing, regardless of their gender. Period cross-dressing allowed. And again, be smart and responsible with this. Don’t force people to wear so many layers that they overheat. 

Trek should help us remember the sacrifice that our early Saints were willing to make, to realize what true persecution is and that we don’t face it anymore, to think about what we are willing to do for God and each other. Trek should be a deeply communal experience. Helping us reconnect with one another. A ritual that reminds us that Zion is ALL of us, that we are saved together or not at all. That if I neglect my fellow comrades in Christ, that I too am damned. Most of our rituals are focused on our own individual efforts, which can blind us to our responsibility to each other. Trek ideally helps rectify that, forcing us to work together, some doing more work than others, from all according to their ability and to each according to their needs. 

On PIONEER DAY

Pioneer Day, for me, does something similar. Yet, I think has even more potential for honoring a wide, diverse array of Saints and ways of being Mormon. Pioneer Day is a piece of a possible Mormon Liturgical Calendar. We don’t really *have* a Liturgical calendar within Mormonism and it’s something that I envy about other Christian traditions and making a peculiarly Mormon one seems to require the inclusion of Pioneer Day.

Much of the rational for celebrating and honoring Pioneer Day is tied to the reasons I feel that we should participate in the ritual of Trek. 

I also think that Pioneer Day allows for a uniquely honest and frank engagement with elements of Mormon history that are often neglected–colonial and racist elements relating to the demonization and displacement of indigenous people throughout Utah and the West.

A true and valuable celebration of Pioneer Day must reckon with the fact that the grit and commitment and dedication of our Mormon ancestors happened alongside and simultaneously with atrocities, perpetuated in the name of those same good attributes. 

I’m not interested in the Pioneer Day celebrations that function as sequels to the Fourth of July, with full-throated Americanism (particularly since such celebrations seem to ignore that the pioneers were literally fleeing America, but whatever). 

This sort of honoring of the day should also come with a decrease in the tendency to revere individuals that have “pioneer stock”, as we recognize the messiness and troublesome realities of that stock. 

I also envision a way of honoring Pioneer Day that incorporates the many other ways that people can be and are pioneers. Converts, first to receive degrees, the still fraught and pioneer-grit-filled experiences of people of color, the difficult and complicated lives of queer Mormons, and others. Stories like that of my great-grandma who was one of the first women to earn a Physics degree from BYU. Like that of Jane Manning James and Elijah Able. Like that of Chieko Okazaki. 

Pioneer Day should honor the past, while doing our part to heal the wounds that our ancestors caused and to reckon with the violence that is at the heart of the reality of Deseret. Pioneer Day should also look throughout our history and into the present to find and tell the stories of those that continue to embody the best of that pioneer spirit. 

The day doesn’t need to be all doom and gloom. Celebrations of the particular quirkiness of Mormon culture also strike me as valuable. I think there are things about Mormonism and our pioneer heritage that are worth celebrating and Pioneer Day feels like a great time to do that. 

Perhaps also because I think we can weave in the experiences of pioneers like Levi Savage that strongly resonate with me and serve to highlight the complexity of faith that some of these individuals had. That being a pioneer wasn’t always about obedience or knowing with every fiber of your being, but was about a recognition of the beauty of community and the value that each and every one of us can bring to that community. 

I long for ways to bring Mormonism out of the chapel and the temple and into my day-to-day life, ways that I can create communal and individual and familial rituals that allow me to connect with God in peculiarly Mormon ways out in the world. Pioneer Day and Trek are the beginnings of creating such a practice for me. May we work together to honor the grit and sacrifice of our pioneer heritage and to remember and reckon with the complexity of that legacy and the violence and harm that was done. 

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Queering Mormonism

One of the most pressing areas for continuing revelation in Institutional Mormonism is surrounding LGBTQ+ (grouped under the umbrella term “queer” for the remainder of this piece) Saints. Conflicting messages are being sent and have been sent the entirety of my adult life to my queer comrades in Christ. We desperately need a more robust queer Mormon theology. 

Luckily, people are working towards the reality of this (you can read two of the most notable pieces to my mind in this arena here from Blaire Ostler on Queer Polygamy and here from Taylor Petrey on a post-heterosexual theology). Blaire also happens to be working on a book all about this very subject that should be available in the coming months. 

I can’t create that theology right here and now. But I can lay some groundwork for the discussions that we should all be having to bring this to pass. 

Why Queer Mormonism?

Revelation is a communal project and I hope we can all play a meaningful part in the process of building a vision of Zion that is welcoming for all God’s children, including our queer comrades in Christ. 

I believe that Mormon theology can be and is inherently inclusive. The Mormonism that is currently found and taught in the mainstream Institutional Church is not. It excludes queer relationships and leaves the lived experience of many queer people unacknowledged and unexplained. The more extreme iterations of these teachings (which are even expressed at times by members of Church leadership in official capacities, like with Pres. Oaks at a BYU-H devotional recently) alienate queer people and leave no space for them in our pews. 

I find this appalling. 

The Body of Christ, and the Institutional Church is one manifestation of that Body, needs all of us. We cannot afford to cut people off. We may be losing our leg, our eyes, our kidneys, our mind, or even our heart. 

If we queer Mormonism, we can open our arms again to our queer comrades in Christ. We can make space for them on the pews, we can begin to do the long, hard work of atoning for the pain and suffering that they have experienced at the hands of the Institution and others in it, whether that pain was intentional or otherwise. 

Our queer comrades in Christ need a spiritual home in Mormonism that welcomes them and we need them, or Zion will never be whole or complete, or as we’ve been commanded — perfect.

What Does “Queering Mormonism” Even Mean?

“Queering” Mormonism is taken from academic slang that we used in the English department at BYU (and I assume is used elsewhere). Essentially, it refers to using queer theory to examine and interrogate Mormonism. Queer, in addition to being an adjective and sometimes a noun, can also be a verb, and that’s what’s happening here. 

I’m also riffing on the title of a recent book in Mormon Studies that presents a series of essays on a different, but also urgent, theological and cultural project within Mormonism: Decolonizing Mormonism. Much as that book argues that we must decolonize Mormonism, I believe we must queer Mormonism. 

Where Do We Start?

The beginning. Petrey’s piece does some of this work. Imagining a queer reading of the creation narrative as contained in Mormonism that would lay a different foundation for Mormonism. The danger in some of these efforts is that given the male-dominated space of Mormon scripture, doctrine, and theology, it may be easy to create a gay theology, but not necessarily a fully queer one. 

We must always be on the lookout for gaps in our inclusivity as we go about this work. 

Performing queer readings of scripture (we can draw on robust queer biblical readings and go further, including exclusive Mormon scripture). 

Removing heteronormative and exclusive doctrines and teachings. 

Listening to a wide variety of queer Mormon voices 

Working to make lived Mormonism, as well as the theology, inclusive and welcome for queer Mormons

Dismantling sexist and patriarchal elements of the Church

Decolonizing Mormonism

Those are just some basic areas to work within. We need all sorts of voices contributing to this discussion from the most radical to more moderate and even somewhat conservative ones (all with a recognition of the humanity of Queer Mormons and the need to reinterpret and seek revelation on new theological insights to bring Queer Mormons into the fold). 

What Does a Queer Mormon Theology Look Like?

I believe that the center of a Queer Mormon theology is found in reinterpreting the “family” that is central to God’s plan as the human family and the diversity of familial relations that that encompasses. As we do this, I believe we must move beyond gender essentialism, which allows for a wider array of acceptable life paths to exist fully within the Church. 

This would naturally come with a need to re-evaluate and reconceive of Priesthood. Doing so should come with a de-coupling of priesthood and administrative-ecclesiastical authority. As well as rethinking the sealing ordinance, much in the ways that Blaire describes (which to me seems closer to some of the ideals at the heart of Joseph’s vision for the ordinance). 

I believe that an ethic of sexual care would need to be a part of this. A new Law of Chastity, rooted in consent, care, collaboration, creativity, and communion. 

A queer Mormon theology depends on a strong community and shifts the core unit from “nuclear families” to local communities. This allows for single Mormons to be more fully integrated into the Church and strengthens our commitment to each other and to truly being a part of the Body of Christ. 

All of this requires re-thinking our understanding of God. We already have divine roles for Men (Heavenly Father) and Women (Heavenly Mother) and a little revelation and theological creativity, combined with Joseph Smith’s teachings of a “Council of Gods” could help shift us from a Man+Woman Union as the central, building block of eternity to one that places Councils or Communities at the center, recognizing a broader diversity of voices than just two. 

None of this insists on destroying marriage or robbing couples of the value and importance they place on their marriages. It simply helps integrate them into a larger community. 

That to me seems like the root of a queer Mormon theology. But I’d love to hear what you think, about any and all of this.

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“Lord, I Believe, Help Thou My Unbelief”: Doubt, Belief, and the Paradox of Keeping the Faith

Note: An effort to recreate the talk that I gave using the quotes contained herein as a base on 21 July 2019, in the Provo UT 32nd Married Student Ward. 

INTRO

If you were here the last time that Cec and I spoke, about a year and a half ago, you know that we have very different strategies when it comes to titling our talks. Hers is once again called, “church talk” and mine is “‘Lord, I Believe, Help Thou Mine Unbelief’: Doubt, Belief, and the Paradox of Keeping the Faith”. So let’s begin with the verse referenced in that title, Mark 9:24:

“And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

For the past seven years or so, and on and off since I was 16, my faith has been this sort of faith–a faith simultaneously composed of doubt and belief, that the two coexist in varying degrees and amounts at any given time. The past few years have been fairly stable, but those early years just after my mission were hard. 

I felt as though the faith that I had as a missionary and a young man in the church had died. That it was gone and with it, my sense of certainty and purpose and morality. Yet, I think now that that death was needed. After all, as Christians, we’re in the Resurrection business. Paul teaches over and over throughout the epistles that we must die to be born again in Christ. 

Rachel Held Evans, an Evangelical author that I find inspiring and powerful who I mentioned in a testimony a few months ago when she unexpectedly passed away, wrote of a Church experience that:

“It was a death, but it was a good death.”

Searching for Sunday, 229

I believe that we can make the inevitable death of our faith, a good death. Or as Mary sings in Rob Gardner’s Lamb of God:

“Hope did not die here, but here was given.”

“Here is Hope”

Not all deaths are inherently good deaths and not all give us hope. But they can. I hope that I can help you find hope in the midst of your faith dying, as it dies again and again. That your faith too can be reborn, as mine has been and continues to be, for the work is not done. 

BELONGING

The foundational idea that has helped me to keep the faith, is the idea of belonging. Particularly as Brene Brown explores the idea and contrasts it with “fitting in”. She writes that: 

“One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing, and, in fact, fitting in gets in the way of belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life, 25

Much of my experience at Church was that I didn’t fit in, that I didn’t belong. I thought because I believed different things or because I looked a little different that I couldn’t really be a part of the organization. I’ve always felt a little different than others and never felt a strong sense of community at Church, though that was at its peak in YSA wards in Provo, in the years immediately after my mission.

Not only did I experience all the pressures that come for almost all people in a YSA ward, but I layered on top of those this sense of confusion and frustration that I couldn’t really be who I was. I thought that everyone else knew for sure that all these things were true, that everyone had different political beliefs from me, that no one else had questions. That everyone else was dumb and judgmental, which ironically made me dumb and judgmental.  

As I started to be vulnerable and authentic at Church, sharing my own real expression of belief and doubt in testimony meeting and comments, I started to discover that I was wrong. All sorts of people came up to me and would thank me for being open and honest, for saying what they’d always felt and never felt able to say. I felt welcomed. Truly. For ME.

And I felt able to grant others that same space. Brene Brown describes this phenomenon like this:

“When we don’t give ourselves permission to be free, we rarely tolerate that freedom in others. We put them down, make fun of them, ridicule their behaviors, and sometimes shame them. We can do this intentionally or unconsciously. Either way the message is, ‘Geez man. Don’t be so uncool.’”

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life, 123

When I was unwilling to extend myself the grace to be real and authentic at Church, I turned that pain and suffering into ridicule of everyone else. And perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, as I refused to fit in, as I decided to stop trying to be like everyone else and to bring my whole self, difference and everything, to the table, I was suddenly much more comfortable with everyone else doing the same. 

Fast and Testimony meeting went from one of the worst, most painful, frustrating Sundays to consistently some of my favorite Sundays. If I want to be accepted and loved and welcomed for who I am, in all my weirdness and fringey-believing doubt or doubting-belief, then I need to extend that same grace and acceptance and love to those with faith that looks different from mine. 

Interlude: Epistemic Humility

For me, this idea is encapsulated in “epistemic humility”, which is a fancy, academic jargon-y way of saying, “recognizing that you’re wrong”. I believe that I am wrong about all sorts of things. Just like you. Everyone believes that everyone else is wrong about at least some things, and in some cases many things, but we have to believe that about ourselves as well. 

It could be easy to simply dismiss everything as unknowable and to reach a state of apathy and passivity, but I think that’s misguided. I recognize that I am likely wrong about all sorts of things, but I believe that my beliefs currently lead me to be a good person that helps others. 

ACCOUNTABILITY/RESPONSIBILITY/CLAIMING/INDIVIDUAL

I believe we must couple this sense of humility with claiming our own spiritual authority. 

Claiming our spiritual authority I think is often described in terms that actually describe spiritual autonomy, that people want to believe what they want and to choose the consequences. To me, spiritual authority is believing what you believe to be true and facing the consequences. I don’t see this as a competition with prophetic authority, after all, when Moses was confronted by someone who believed that he should be concerned with the Israelites prophesying, Moses responded:

“Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!”

Numbers 11:29

Moses wanted all his people to be filled with the Spirit, to be prophets, to claim their own spiritual authority. And if Moses wasn’t worried about it, then I shouldn’t be either. 

To claim your spiritual authority is not only to seek revelation and to do what you feel God calls you to do, but also to face the consequences of that course of action, whatever they may be. If you aren’t willing to face the consequences of your beliefs, what good are they?

Esther is a powerful example of claiming spiritual authority and maintaining epistemic humility. When Mordecai comes to her and tells her of the plot that Haman put into motion to kill all the Jews, she says to Mordecai:

“Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day : I also and my maidens will fast like-wise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law : and if I perish, I perish.”

Esther 4:16

Esther is willing to die for her beliefs. She doesn’t know if what she’s going to do will save her or her people, but she believes in it. She believes so strongly that she’s willing to put her own life on the line. I don’t know about you, but my convictions have never been tested quite that much, dying for my beliefs is not really in the realm of possibility. 

I’m also struck by the fact that Esther maintains this conviction even though God is entirely absent from the text. The Book of Esther is the only book of the Bible where God is not mentioned, not even once. Esther is living in the silences that I, and we all, experience. Yet, she believes. She sticks to her belief, in the face of uncertainty, in the silence from God, unto death.

Interlude: Weakness is Strength

I wonder if we misunderstand what strength means in the Kingdom of God. Ether reminds us that the Lord taught:

“… if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”

Ether 12:27

This teaching seems to be in line with what Christ taught us about the Kingdom of Heaven–that it’s a topsy-turvy place, where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Where it’s not like an empire or a palace or a political entity, but a mustard seed and yeast. 

The sort of faith that holds doubt and belief together that I experience may sound or look weak, but perhaps it’s exactly the sort of strength that God is looking for?

The Lord, importantly, instructs us to come to Him, and that takes us to the necessity of community, that we cannot isolate ourselves and be made strong. 

COMMUNITY

Rachel Held Evans describes the nature of and power of community and Church like this:

“We expect a trumpet and a triumphant entry, but as always, God surprises us by showing up in ordinary things: in bread, in wine, in water, in words, in sickness, in healing, in death, in a manger of hay, in a mother’s womb, in an empty tomb. Church isn’t some community you join or some place you arrive. Church is what happens when someone taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, Pay attention, this is holy ground; God is here.”

Searching for Sunday, 258

I’ve felt this. Here. With all of you. 

Often Church is kinda boring and mundane, but every once in awhile, in the midst of that quotidian mundanity, God is here. 

As we wrestle with the scriptures, share our struggles, ask our questions, air our doubts and concerns, strive toward the light, strain to see through the glass darkly, this ground and these carpeted walls are made holy. God is here. 

The need for community meets epistemic humility and spiritual authority in my favorite quote from Joseph Smith:

“And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it. Where this people are, there is good society.” 

Joseph Smith was willing to die and go to hell for his beliefs. That’s how open to being wrong he was. That he’d end up in hell. He was willing to face eternal consequences for his beliefs. 

Yet, he maintained hope and faith in the power and goodness of his beliefs and the beliefs that he shared with his fellow Saints. He would kick out those devils and transform hell into heaven. 

CONCLUSION

As we go throughout life we often pass through times where God feels distant or absent or silent, where the glass we see through is darker than usual, where we wonder how we fit in or where we belong. 

The words of General Princess Leia Organa guide me through those moments:

“Hope is like the sun. If you only believe it when you see it, you’ll never make it through the night.”

Darkness and silence are part of mortality. But they don’t erase the light that we’ve seen. 

“For I, [like Paul,] am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” –Romans 8:38-39

No matter what you believe or don’t believe, what you do or don’t do, nothing can separate you from the Love of God. And if we strive to divide ourselves to build walls to deny others our love, then we are trying to do what even God will not. If God’s love is never denied us, then who are we to deny others of our love?

I don’t know much. I believe much. I hope for quite a bit. But I know that God lives, that God loves each and every one of us and I say with Brother Joe that if I go to hell, I’ll turn the devils out and make a heaven of it because where you are, there is good society. 

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

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On Being an Ace Mormon Man

Occasionally I see the idea posited that the Church or Mormonism or some variation thereof wants people to be asexual. And I wince every time.

It’s tricky because there are definitely zones of crossover between a typical asexual experience (based on my own life and learning about the experiences of other aces from conversations and reading) and the “Ideal” Mormon experience (as I understand it). And yet, there’s something a little troubling implied in this assertion and in my experience it’s just not really true on the whole.

Asexuality is one of the lesser understood queer experiences (for a variety of factors: less representation, less systemic oppression, easier to blend into society, the label evokes bacteria, it describes an absence rather than a different presence, etc.). So, I think generally those that share this idea do so with good intentions. But to more accurately and compassionately describe what we mean, we can do better for each other and particularly for our ace comrades in Christ.

THE CROSSOVER

The main area of crossover between an ace experience and the “ideal” Mormon one occurs before 16. Dating is a taboo in Mormonism before turning 16, which for me was a piece of cake. I didn’t even like dating when I turned 16. Or ever really (but those reasons are more complicated than just my asexuality).

While kids in my ward were having boyfriends and girlfriends (which I think most would agree is against the intention of the “Dating” guidelines in For the Strength of the Youth, which is one of the standards for young adults, and some would argue everyone, but that’s a conversation for another day), I was still trying to figure out what these “crushes” were that everyone was talking about.

I’ve written a little about this elsewhere, but Law of Chastity lessons as a kid were easy. Not a problem at all. I was honestly baffled by what was wrong with all the other young men in my ward, who talked about making out with people all the time. But, I chalked it up to my own superior righteousness or something (I know, I know).

For those years, being ace was great. And definitely lined up with the ideal. I had zero interest in girls, boys, porn, masturbation, kissing, dating, and all of that. Golden.

Things broke down a bit when I was 16 because I wasn’t interested in dating, which was definitely expected and also encouraged. Lessons also started to shift a bit here to lay the groundwork for the differences in a typical ace experience and the ideal Mormon experience.

At BYU, dating was very encouraged, but also not (I was in a freshman ward, living in Helaman Halls, so casual dating was encouraged, but the serious “marriage is impending” dating was not so encouraged). Then I was on my mission, where the Church would LOVE it if everyone was ace for those 18 to 24 months. Missionaries are expected to focus entirely on missionary work and not to have any romantic relationships (and generally seem to struggle with that to varying degrees), so I’m sure if the Church could flip a switch that made all missionaries ace, but strictly for the duration of their missions, they’d be all over it.  

Once I got home, everything began to fall apart.

THE DIFFERENCE

You see, Mormonism has a complicated relationship with sex. There are fierce boundaries placed around it that determine when it is acceptable or not (rooted in heteronormative patriarchy), but sex, within marriage, is next to godhood.

Loads of Mormon discussions of sex are absolutely dangerously shame-y for sex outside of hetero-marriages, but they also elevate that married sex to celestial heights. People talk about God being present (setting aside how weird that is to me) and there’s quite a bit of stuff within Mormonism that praises the body and the importance of bodies that sometimes leads to the assertion that sex persists in heaven (according to some Church leaders only in the Celestial Kingdom, the only place where people will actually have genitalia).

All of this works to raise sex specifically to unbelievable heights.

I didn’t get it.

I had zero interest in sex, except from like a curiosity perspective.

I started to wonder if something was wrong with me, not just because the entire world was bombarding me with messages about sex being The Best, but because to be righteous and holy and good I felt like I needed to want and to eventually have sex. Which I was utterly ambivalent about.

I can only speak to my particular experience as a man within Mormonism, but there was absolutely an expectation and implication that I would be the driver and initiator of relationships, and likely, sexual experiences (all the way from kissing to sex). Now, some of this is imported from elsewhere and is by no means unique to Mormonism, but I had the impression that as a man, I needed to have some kind of sex drive, some like push for sex and that part of growing up was mastering it. That I was lacking because I never felt that. That I was not truly worthy or masculine because I had no desire for sex and that somehow I couldn’t ever really be godly without it? Like, that the desire needed to be present to be tamed and that without it being there I could never tame it and therefore, never prove my worthiness. Not to mention all the other stuff about true men being these sorta healthier expressions of a James Bond-esque charm and sex appeal (and sex drive).

Some of these expectations are different for women within Mormonism, so their experience will likewise differ.

Obviously, I did get married and I have a kid, and in that way do still fit the Mormon Ideal. But sex as this divine experience wasn’t a driver for either of those.

Mormonism doesn’t want aces. There is little space within Mormonism for the adult ace experience. Not all aces want to get married and some may want to but only within a relationship where they can truly be themselves (not necessarily with another ace person, though that’s definitely one option. But mixed-orientation marriages are complicated and from my reading have very low success rates, though no idea on the particulars for mixed-orientation marriages involving an ace partner).

The ace experience challenges the family-centric nature of the Church in a way that even same-sex marriages don’t (not to say that the ace experience is more oppressed within Mormonism because it’s absolutely not, just that it seems potentially easier to maintain Mormonism’s emphasis on family and marriage while including queer marriages than ace individuals that can’t or don’t want to be married).

TROUBLING IMPLICATIONS

I mentioned up top that I see troubling implications in the assertion that Mormonism or the Church wants people to be asexual. Some of what I meant by that is present in how I walk through “The Differences”, but other bits aren’t. So, here we go.

A quick clarification that responds to some of the implications I see in that assertion is that asexuality does NOT equal celibacy. Celibacy describes a condition of sexual activity and asexuality refers to a sexual orientation and the accompanying attraction, or lack thereof as may be more accurate. Some aces are celibate and happily so, others are unhappily celibate, and still others are not celibate. Often discussions of asexuality outside the ace community blur the distinctions between the two. Certainly, Mormonism would love for all unmarried Mormons to be celibate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mormonism wants people to be asexual.

The next troubling idea is tied up in how this discussion of Mormonism wanting people to be ace is wrapped up in conversations about Mormonism being sexually repressive. The implication then is that asexuality is the same as sexual repression and that Mormonism is responsible for my asexuality. Frankly, I think that’s erasive of my identity and bullshit.

Mormonism absolutely has sexually repressive elements, but as I’ve laid out, to claim that it is completely sexually repressive is misguided and, I think, untrue.

This line of argumentation also implies that Mormonism caused my asexuality AND that if we could rid the world of such sexually repressive rhetoric all people could live more fully and authentically. Essentially, this implicitly argues that I would not be ace without Mormonism AND that I (and other aces) could live a better life without my asexuality, that I’m actually *something else*, but that the sexually repressive ideas within Mormonism forced me into asexuality.

This is offensive and, I believe, untrue.

I’m not going to argue that Mormonism has no influence on my sexuality because that’s a fool’s errand. But to make it solely responsible?

That erases my own lived experience and strips me of any sense of autonomy, not to mention seems totally removed from empiric evidence. There’d be a hell of a lot more aces around if that were the case.

Even if Mormonism were fully responsible for my asexuality, if I choose to identify that way, that decision should be supported. Regardless of how it happened, my lived experience is that of being ace and is valid and good and brings value to the world. My Queerness, including asexuality, isn’t good because it’s “natural” or because I was “born this way”, but because it is Good, in and of itself.

Let’s be a bit more careful as we talk about each other. And remember that my Asexuality, my Queerness, goes unacknowledged by Institutional Mormonism, that my sexuality doesn’t even exist for the Institutional Church (for better and for worse), that my identity like many other queer identities is erased in the silence. (In many ways this is far preferrable to the rhetoric and teachings that surround more mainstream queer identities, but is a different sort of challenge.)

Remember that my Asexuality—my Queerness—is of God, Divine, and Eternal. Sure, it is undeniably shaped by my experiences in Mormonism and the world broadly, but it is so much more than that.

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Why I Came Out

Pride Month seems to be accompanied by the inevitable discussion of “why?”, including why Queer people feel the need to come out at all. The reasons to come out, or not, are probably as varied as the individuals that have chosen to do so, but I thought I’d share my own rationale, and why I continue to talk about being ace, even though I’m married and it’s presumably none of your business.

For me, coming out helped me feel more cemented in my sense of self. And helped me feel like I was being honest and open with friends and family (and the occasional stranger because that’s how the internet works). I gained a stronger sense of who I was and a confirmation that that was valid and good.

I also wanted to be a living, breathing example of a queer, ace Mormon because at the time, I didn’t know any. I wanted to give others a role model that I wish I’d had. And I wanted to give my friends and family another person that they know that’s queer.

That’s probably at the core of why I continue to talk about being ace and what it means to me. It’s still a huge part of how I connect to the world and describes elements of my experience that I don’t know how else to describe. My ace identity, like all queerness and all sexual orientations and gender identities, is about far more than my sexual behaviors. It’s a fundamental part of how I connect to and relate to the world.

Related to all of that, is that I think coming out is a way of pushing back against the continuing heteronormative culture we all live in. Essentially, that means that we tend to assume that someone is straight, until proven otherwise. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it can be alienating and exhausting for those that aren’t straight. Everyone is assuming something about you that isn’t true and it feels like they don’t really know you or like they’re talking about someone else. So, you come out. You tell people that you’re different than this assumed norm. And suddenly, you can be yourself. You are living more authentically, more truthfully.

I hate being misunderstood and before I came out, I lived my entire life with people defaulting to misunderstanding me.

It’s like when a counselor in my bishopric always called me “Colin”, no matter how many times I corrected him (he even set me apart for a calling as “Colin Hilton”…). Or when Lithuanians assumed I was Japanese and absolutely refused to believe me when I insisted I was American, with English and Irish ancestry (don’t ask me why). Or when people think I’m a conservative farmer who loves potatoes because I grew up in Idaho (ok that last part is true, I ADORE potatoes). Or when more orthodox believers and zealous former believers assume that I don’t understand some point of Mormonism when I tweet certain things (trust me, I’ve almost definitely read whatever you’re sending me and have thought long and hard about things).

Being ace and queer is like all of those things. A part of who I am that runs deep and is inextricable from the other parts. So, to be me and to be honest and filled with integrity in my interactions with my friends and family, I came out. And continue to come out, all the time.

Maybe some day assumptions about other’s sexuality won’t be common place. But until then, come out and live your life. Though remember, coming out is for you and you alone. You don’t owe anyone coming out and if you can’t or don’t want to for any number of reasons, don’t. Your identity is yours and you are in charge of how it helps you connect to the world around you, if sharing it will help, share, if not, don’t.

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If Truth Were a Child: REVIEWED

George B. Handley’s If Truth Were a Child: Essays is a deliberate and measured expression of lived Mormonism. The book resonated with me quite a bit, which is not that surprising given the shared, broad humanistic elements that color both Handley’s and my faith. The essays’ measured quality is rarely shaken, though there are a few moments peppered throughout the book, where Handley’s frustration with or distaste for a particular idea or practice or disposition comes through a bit more forcefully.

I found the whole collection worth reading, framing ideas in ways that were often similar to my own conception, but using language that I’d lacked, as well as occasionally providing some provocation for the certainty and zeal that I bring to some of the hottest topics in Mormondom. I may still believe that that zeal is justified, but Handley’s work calls for some introspection and epistemic humility that I appreciate and think we’d all do well to follow a bit more closely.

The guiding thesis of Handley’s religious life, and life generally along with the core beliefs that inform the entirety of the essays, I find embodied in the third essay in the collection, “On Criticism, Compassion, and Charity”.

The essay posits that a life of true discipleship balances those three titular principles. I found traces of Eugene England and Bruce C. Hafen (as well as some A.O. Scott) in this essay and it resonated strongly with my own approach to discipleship.

I was struck by Handley’s articulation of charity, where he states that:

“[Charity] recognizes there is a gap between our thoughts and God’s thoughts that we must seek to overcome by a perpetual search for more truth.”

pg. 37

The first part of the phrase draws our attention to what we lack as we interact with the divine and sets up the epistemic humility that characterizes much of Handley’s work. There’s a constant sense of checking himself, and the certainty of others, against the reality of recognizing the gap between what we think and what God thinks. I find this valuable, though I do still have a few other convictions that I personally am drawn to (though perhaps some of that is my relative youth in comparison to Handley’s experience).

The second part of this phrase pushes us to constantly learn and thirst after further light and knowledge and sets up one of Handley’s pre-occupations that colors the next two essays in the collection more explicitly and hang around the background of everything that Handley writes here.

I find myself challenged and motivated by the way that Handley describes epistemic humility as a drive to learn more, that our recognition of how little we know and understand should guide us in the pursuit of more and more truth (including the truths of the lived experiences of those around us, as Handley is always interested in how our discipleship frames and energizes our relationships with those around us).

This concern is clearly expressed in one of the lines from the next essay, “A Poetics of Restoration”, in a way that to me is perhaps the thesis of Handley’s work:

“We must resist, in other words, the temptation of assuming that it matters more to be or think right than to do good.”

pg. 64

As someone with an intellectual bent, I often feel this temptation. Or more that if I, and others, simply thought right I, we, would do good. Which is probably some side effect of a certain Boyd K Packer quote from Preach My Gospel.

Handley doesn’t delve too much into the relationship between thinking and doing good, but does consistently come back to a lived, practical sort of faith, rather than a thought, theoretical one. I appreciate the pragmatism of Handley’s work, even if I am sometimes wanting something more wild and cosmic in my search for the transcendent.

As Handley describes this poetics of Restoration (using language that I found familiar and comfortable, but could be mildly unfamiliar to those outside of advanced study in the humanities), I was again struck by how he takes a theoretical concept that I love about the Restoration (that Mormonism encompasses all truth regardless of its source) and once again ties it to the practical, lived faith experience of individuals in the pews:

“a poetics of restoration that seeks to find the reasons for inclusion of all God’s children rewards our leap of faith with a return to, not a dissipation of, the foundations of our religious identity, refreshed and restored in profoundly new ways.”

pg. 79

I LOVE this.

I love the way that seeking truth and deeper understanding is the way to expanding the bounds of our religious community.

I love that this greater understanding returns us to the foundations of our religious identity (that has been my experience as I have and continue to experience my own faith remodel, that many term a “faith crisis”).

I love the way this reframes the Restoration as continual and that the foundations of that very Restoration may be “refreshed and restored” as we learn more. That we reimagine and re-understand the significance of the past because of the present. There was something very Adam Miller in Future Mormon about Handley’s work here.

I dig it (though I am perhaps less optimistic about institutions and tend to be less generous, you could say less charitable, in my assessment of them than Handley is throughout the collection).

Handley models some ways in which we can live and embody this general poetics of the Restoration that he describes in the tenth and penultimate chapters of the collection that focus on how to read scripture. The tenth essay, “On the Moral Risks of Reading Scripture”, is phenomenal and offers a beautiful articulation of what I have been striving toward with my scripture reading for the past few years.

I love Handley’s framing of reading scripture as taking “moral risks”. It imbues the whole endeavor with excitement and stakes in a way that I often find it lacking. And obviously as someone with two English degrees and about to embark on a third, I think we don’t talk enough as a community about good, deep reading habits.

To the meat of the essay, where Handley describes succinctly the two moral risks in tension:

“We risk self-deluding idol worship—worshipping the god of our imagination—on one hand, and we risk self-exposure to the piercing eye of God on the other. There is no escape from these risks. We must be willing also to admit we have been wrong—wrong about God and wrong about ourselves.”

pg. 198

Wow.

Good stuff.

Scripture is one of the key places we learn about God and in that learning, learn about ourselves. Handley places that front and center here. Scripture is the text of our relationship with the divine and it is through careful, close reading of that text that we come to better understand God and ourselves because we better understand that relationship.

The criticism, compassion, and charity of the third essay return here, as Handley presents a view of what it means to read scripture faithfully:

“To read scripture in faith is, in the end, to believe in the possibility that all our broken readings might somehow be made whole once all the pages of the sealed book have finally been opened.”

pg. 209

This idea of faithful reading as the making whole of our broken readings echoes to me ideas of Paul and the Body of Christ, as well as Handley’s earlier discussion of the poetics of the Restoration. We must first recognize that our readings, our efforts, our lives will inevitably fall short and that in the end, we believe that some wholeness will be found.

My broken readings feel a little more whole, as I’ve encountered and wandered the halls of Handley’s mind and soul in these pages. I hope to better embody the spirit of generosity, the epistemic humility, and the unquenching thirst for truth that I see here in my own discipleship.

For those in search of a pragmatic, grounded, deeply measured faith, Handley offers ideas worth engaging.

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Mormonism’s Three Churches

Many discussions about Mormonism are frustrating to me because of the vagueness of the phrase “The Church.” I think there are at least three ways that “The Church” is used, which overlap and intersect, but also have distinct qualities and features. I’m focusing on different bodies of people can be understood to be “The Church” rather than some of the other ways that the phrase is used to refer to the culture and teachings and ideologies of those bodies. That is also a necessary discussion, but to me is more tied to the ongoing and, for me, rarely productive conversation surrounding the definition of “doctrine”

All that said, here are the three ways that I think of The Church being used:

C1: The Institution

C2: Local Congregation

C3: Family and Friends

Each of these groups has equal claim to being The Church and they undoubtedly are intertwined and influence one another. Without C1, you cannot have C2 or C3 (at least within Mormonism, as reflections of Mormonism). By the same token, without C2s and C3s, there is no C1. For the Institution to perpetuate, local congregations, families, and friends must continue to affiliate.

The ways in which these Three Churches interact with and influence one another are likely not unique to Mormonism. I suspect that every organized religion has some variation on these Three Churches. Even political parties and any other organization that has a national or other broad level of authority along with more local groups will bear some of the marks of what I’m looking at. (When I floated this idea in a very stripped down form on twitter, a friend remarked that I was channeling Charles Taylor. This was unintentional, but since I read his A Secular Age last year, he’s been bouncing around my head, so it’s likely inevitable. I hope I can make my case here with a tad more concision than he made his, but time will tell.)

C1: The Institution

The Institution of the Church could likely be made even more precise, given the large bureaucratic apparatus that exists in SLC and surrounding areas. But, that’s for another time. I tend to think of the Institution as Church headquarters, so the Church Office Building, the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the Auxiliary presidencies. This group has the largest consolidation of power in most traditional senses. They create the manuals and give the talks in General Conference and are the public face of the Church.

The Institution is responsible for any sense of doctrinal purity (however fruitless that errand ultimately is). The Institution is responsible for shaping the broad strokes of the narrative of my Mormon experience. In many ways, I cannot exist as a Mormon, that attends Church, without being touched by their influence. They determine what is in the manuals that are used in Sunday School and other general guidelines for what occurs on a weekly basis (and to some extent on other days throughout the week). The Institution determines in broad strokes what offenses should be met with which punishments.

The Institution also must compete with the spectre of its past. The Institution has existed in some form or another since 1830 (or the dawn of time depending on how you interpret teachings of The Restoration). The Institution then is constantly haunted by what has been said and done by every other previous manifestation of The Institution. The Spectre of the Institution is used in a number of different ways by people all along the ideological spectrum and perhaps it’s this spectre that motivates some of The Institution’s behavior (also I think it was David Holland that argued that Prophetic Authority is actually the weakest line of authority within a Mormon theological construct, as compared to personal revelation/the Holy Ghost and scripture, which may be why The Institution emphasizes it more than the others, to rhetorically even the scales).

Anyway. I am least interested in and least moved by The Church as The Institution.  

C2: My Local Congregation

The primary way that I think about The Church is as my local congregation, the people that I worship with every Sunday. This is where most of my lived experience as a Mormon takes place. This is where I participate in rituals and church services, this is where I serve, these are the people I see and wrestle with in the Gospel.

I have largely had very positive interactions with my various local congregations (all over Provo, Washington, D.C., London, northern England, and even to some extent Lithuania). In most of those places (Lithuania being the exception), I have been open about my experiences with faith and doubt and how I believe that doubt is essential to faith and that questions are good, that I don’t “know” things, but I “believe” them, and a number of related, semi-fringey positions. Without exception, I have people come up to me (often surprising people) and thank me for sharing my thoughts and remarking that they resonated with what I said. I have never been censured or called out (well, except once perhaps during an EQ lesson I taught with my brother about Race and the Priesthood).

All of that is to say that my experience has been very good in my local congregations. Not that I go purely to change hearts and minds. I go because they are my people, my spiritual community. I don’t feel complete in my worship without them. I learn from them, even when I disagree. I learn by being in fellowship with them.

Obviously, the local congregation is influenced by The Institution. But it’s also quite different. Even with somewhat standardized lesson materials and topics, the content and tone of those lessons varies widely. Someone’s experience with The Church as a local congregation may be radically different than their experience with the Church as The Institution.

For example, I think The Family: A Proclamation to the World is a, to put it lightly, problematic document that reflects and embodies certain sexist and homophobic ideas. The Family Proclamation is almost definitely a part of The Institution, and at least is frequently referenced by members of The Institution. However, I could go months in my ward without hearing people talk about it, which makes those two Churches quite different in relationship to categories of sexism and homophobia (though both are present at both levels, at least implicitly given structural considerations).

C3: My Family and Friends

I am Mormon, I was raised Mormon, and have lived my life up to this point surrounded by Mormons. The C3 Church helps to account for this group of people. Practically my entire family for generations, including my in-laws and their family for generations, is Mormon (Cec and I both come from about as Mormon stock as you can find). The vast majority of my friends are Mormon to some degree or another.

These people are The Church.

The robustness of this group will vary largely by individual, though the internet seems to allow for more connections than would be possible previously.

This body may be the most troubling (in a sorta Judith Butler sense) for definitional purposes and for a standard narrative or description of The Church. Everyone’s experience here is going to vary widely. This is also true at the C2 level, but there’s still enough Institutional power over local congregations that the differences among them are often of a lesser degree than the differences among the C3 Churches that people experience.

People tend to congregate with other people like them, which means that the Church at a C3 level is probably more homogenous than the C2 level, but that the different C3s have striking diversity among them. I mostly interact with similarly fringey Mormons (though my family members are largely quite traditional, orthodox, and conservative, so the make-up of my family and friend C3s is quite different).

Anyway, this iteration of The Church matters because it is one of the ways we understand and describe what The Church is capable of, or not. Like, my C3 Church is largely very on board with progressive politics surrounding LGBTQ+ issues, so I have a skewed sense of what Church membership broadly feels and thinks about them.

This becomes a sort of “found” Church, one that is self-curated. As I entered fringey Mormon spaces just after my mission, they challenged my understanding of what The Church could be. They opened my eyes to ways in which C2, and even occasionally C1, was different and more expansive than I’d previously considered. C3 seems to me to be the place where Mormonism is most interesting and potentially most alive, especially when welded with engagement in C2.

I’m a strong believer in the communal emphasis of Mormonism and for me, finding various C3 communities to be a part of (digitally and in person) has been instrumental in making my local congregation habitable. I realized that there were likely others like me to one degree or another in my congregation and I could do some work to claim and make space for me and others there.

The danger of a pure C3 communal space is that it lacks the diversity of thought and experience that I think is necessary for a truly healthy, welcoming, and sustainable community.

Obviously, without C3s, you cannot really have functioning C2s and the C1. This is partially why I believe so strongly in people (re)claiming Mormonism. We can shape what The Church is in a large sense, at least at the C3 level. There’s no formal hierarchy or gate-keeping (though in some C3s you may find plenty of informal elements of both of those). My experience with C3 Church is at its best when it has as little concern for The Institution (C1) as possible, though others’ mileage may vary on that point.

Breaking The Church down into these three categories is helpful for me in describing where my disagreement or problem or struggle or love or admiration is in relation to various elements of Mormonism. Some may span categories, which is fine and to be expected, honestly.

Understanding these distinctions and being more precise in our language I think can improve our discourse about The Church and our various frustrations or admirations. Or maybe it’ll just help me.    

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