I want to add that I admit that applying it as a broad generalization isn’t helpful, and that I included it only because I felt that it was true in the case of my experience of Mormonism.

Lincoln,

I double-dog dare you to get up next fast and testimony meeting and start expressing that the LDS church needs to have equity in church gender structures (e.g. priesthood for the women), equity in marital prospects for all (e.g. homosexual marriage), complete renunciation of racist teachings by past prophets, and a culture allowing members to openly question the teachings of their ecclesiastical leaders. I think you would find that you would be given the choice—more or less tactfully—to either shut the hell up or get out. Any church where I can’t openly express those ideas without fear is not a freethinking church.

I realize that in general Mormonism and the LDS church are separate, but in this context, I’m using “Mormonism” as shorthand for the LDS church and the community surrounding that organization.

On second thought, I take back the dare. I don’t want to be partly responsible for the consequences.

http://www.spockwithabeard.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=13341

I believe we all benefitted from the experience of discussing the sins of Zion — our own sins as a Church.

Interesting lesson that seemed to beat around the bush (from what I could tell from the outline). The culture does not accept free thought, free expression, and doubting church leaders. Dallin H. Oaks made that quite clear..

Even if I had enough energy to work to change the culture, I doubt my family would appreciate me becoming the ward pariah because I asked the wrong questions in class or said the wrong things in testimony meeting. The truth is that I haven’t the heart to play David to this Goliath. A church that can’t take a little sincere criticism isn’t one that I want to be a part of. If a church wants me to walk on pins and needles to avoid rocking the boat too much (please pardon my mixed metaphors), then I want no part of that church. It’s a waste of my precious time.

If you want to prove me wrong, then take my dare without beating around the bush. Something short along the lines of “President Monson and the General Authorities are misguided and wrong to exclude women from the priesthood. I don’t believe that teaching comes from God. We cannot be compassionate disciples of Christ without also sealing homosexual marriages in the temple. We need to acknowledge the racist evils in our history and strongly condemn the statements of prophets and other leaders which have mingled the philosophies of men with scripture.”

Confrontational? Yes, of course. If the church is accepting of freethought, then saying this verbatim from the pulpit should pose no problem for you.

Thank you. Mormons are good people, and I wish I could help them somehow, but I’m tired. I feel like I’ve wasted too much of my short life already.

Perhaps some of my regret for my family is selfish. This will sound horrible. I love my wife and children, and yet I sometimes fantasize what I would do if I wasn’t obligated to them. I feel caged and part of me longs to be free. If I was freed from those obligations today, I would resign my membership in the church immediately and shake the dust from my feet.

Really what I want is for all of us to walk away together. I know that’s outside of my control, and I don’t want to coerce, manipulate, or force anyone to see things like I do. Life is full of compromises, and this is one I’m willing to make to be with my family.

I guess we would be most comfortable if we agreed with our spouses on such important (important to us anyway) issues. I am learning that I might have to do without that comfort.

Lincoln,

“It’s wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even if the criticism is true.”

I don’t see any way to make Dallin Oaks’ statement compatible with free expression of dissenting viewpoints. That most members of the church aren’t willing to criticize Oaks for this statement shows that either they are in agreement or they’re afraid to say otherwise.

I think we may be misunderstanding each other on a small point. I don’t necessarily want to impose my ideas on the members of the church. I don’t think that my beliefs are backed up by some kind of absolute moral authority. For the purposes of my challenge to you, I don’t even want them to accept what I said as a good and true. I just want them to hear and listen to the words without threatening you with marginalization.

I also don’t think your dare is an example of expressing free thought. Rather, it is an example of expressing antagonistic dogmatism, which no community in the world can accept and survive. For a community to survive, it must insist on constructive criticism, although dissenting constructive criticism is certainly essential. Within such a paradigm, free thought is certainly capable of navigating. Free thought, so far as I am concerned, does not mean apathy or antipathy in our communication of ideas. It means thinking freely and expressing such thoughts in a way that maintains ongoing free thought. Dogmatism, protagonistic or antagonistic, does not maintain a context in which free thought is truly open to expression.

Unlike you, I don’t feel a sense of duty to the church. I feel like the church betrayed me long before I betrayed it.

The duty I mention is not only toward the LDS Church. It is a general moral duty, without which there is no morality at all. For me, the LDS Church happens to be a particularly important aspect of the practical scope of my possible contributions. I supect you are in a similar position.

Knowing myself, I don’t think I have the space to forgive yet. It’s still too close, and I don’t know how to get that distance.

However, as for this statement:

Faith in anything short of that (in quantity or quality) is, to return to a word used by Jonathan, wasteful.

That is precisely the attitude that breaks up mixed faith marriages regardless of what religion we’re talking about. My husband and I have managed to build a strong relationship in spite of our differences in belief. We are madly in love, we have two wonderful boys, neither of us feels the need to separate based on such an attitude. There is a website out here on the bloggernacle called Facing East where spouses go to talk about building an eternal marriage in spite of differing beliefs. While such a thing may be a contradiction in terms for you, there are many faithful LDS who find that in spite of their spouse’s doubt, they still love who that person is at their base and want to go ahead and spend the rest of their lives with them.

Whether it is right or wrong is only for them to decide.

Just as you experience Mormonism differently, than your family; the same would apply if they embraced “free thinking.”
And since you want to keep your family together you would have to accept those differences just as you do now.