Leaving the Saints

I'm reading a fascinating book by Martha Beck, a therapist/life couch and columnist in O Magazine. It's about her upbringing and official abandoning of the Mormon religion, with some amazing fascinating details about the inner-workings of the church.

Did you know that Bringham Young University, in its library of over 1 million volumes, actually goes through and censors out any published article that criticizes or contradicts official church doctrine?

Did you know sexual abuse and incest rates are probably far higher in Mormonism than any other religion in the U.S.? (And you'll have to read the book to understand Beck's theories why).

Did you know it is still the official church position that women are lesser forms of men who cannot get to heaven without marriage to a Mormon man (who, conveniently, upon his death, will turn into a God himself, with his own planets and wives to rule over)?

Uhhhh ... yeah ... I didn't know that. Fascinating stuff. Here is an excerpt I found particularly shocking:


Latter-day Saints are taught to test religious claims against their own sense of truth. This approach of learning, encouraged by (Mormon founder) Joseph Smith and his successors, made Mormonism very appealing to the religious seekers of the 19th century – but of course it has its exceptions.

One day, when I mentioned Mormon truth seeking to a non-Mormon friend, she said “Wait – I’m utterly confused. Wouldn’t that mean they’d encourage discrediting Church claims that aren’t true?”

“Utterly confused” is exactly how I felt most of the time I was Mormon because the “seek your own truth but believe in the Gospel” tradition is one huge double bind. It goes something like this: Before you accept any religious claim, you must scrutinize it to see if you really believe it’s true. However, if it’s an official church doctrine and you feel that it isn’t true, this is the work of a sloppy soul, or, worse, the devil. On the other hand, if you accept the advice of a Church leader, which then turns out to be wrong, it’s your own fault for not “discerning” that in this particular case, the leader was mistaken.

To deal with these contradictory instructions, Mormons are advised to use something called “the shelf.” “Put it on shelf” is the phrase used to describe the tidy act of deliberate denial that allows the Saints to keep occasional surges of disbelief from troubling them.

If it bothers you to know that Joseph Smith said the moon was populated by small humanoids who dressed like Quakers, “put it on the shelf.” Likewise if you find it improbable that God gives his favorite Latter-day Saints their own special magic rocks, called “seer stones,” which allow them, among other things, to find buried treasure. Or if you don’t wholeheartedly believe that there is a trio of immortal pre-Columbian American Jews, known as the Three Nephites, who were spared by Jesus from the curse of death and have spent centuries wandering the American continent, assisting Latter-day Saints with anything from missionary work to flat tires.

The improbability of these ideas needn’t inconvenience any Saint who has a sturdy, commodious and well-maintained shelf.

“Leaving the Saints: How I Lost Mormons and Found my Faith” by Martha Beck (p 230)