Terryl Givens unhappy about PBS documentary

I recently commented on the Church's advance response to the PBS "American Experience" four-hour documentary on Mormonism. The Church's news release referred to unnamed scholars, some of whom participated in the documentary, who were deeply displeased with its emphasis on polygamy and take on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I was bemused by the omission of the identity of these scholars, wondering why on earth they needed to remain anonymous.

Well, it turns out that at least one of these anonymous scholars, and one who did appear on the documentary, was Dr. Terryl Givens, professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond. Dr. Givens recently visited Duke (University, I suppose) and told members of the Church there that (and here I am quoting a paraphrase of his words posted on RfM) "the film will be a major disappointment to Church members who are expecting a favorable or even well-balanced treatment of the Church."

The criticism continues:

"Part of this is due to choices by the director but in some cases higher-ups at PBS' Boston affiliate, WGBH, mandated changes or edits that made the documentary less favorable. Note that the PBS affiliate in Boston is the one handling the documentary. Bro. Givens seemed to think that this had something to do with displeasure over the Romney campaign. My advice would be to watch it, but I wouldn't recommend it to your non-Mormon friends."

Here is an excerpt from the 4/28 article by Peggy Fletcher Stack published in the Salt Lake Tribune:

"But Givens, a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond in Virginia, takes strong exception to the film's inclusion of footage of some modern polygamists and their leader, Warren Jeffs, who is charged with being an accomplice to rape for conducting a marriage to which the bride objected. The LDS Church discontinued its official practice of polygamy in 1890.

"This does a grave disservice to the church in light of Helen's stated objective to get beyond the stereotypes," Givens said.

"Nineteenth century polygamy is part of Mormon history and deserves to be told. But there is no possible justification for including Warren Jeffs. It is misrepresentation at best and defamation at worst."

That would be like "showing photos of serial killer David Berkowitz, "Son of Sam" in a piece on modern Judaism," said Givens, who was interviewed at length for the film. "They are trying to turn PBS into 'Big Love' or 'Jerry Springer.' "

For a scholar, Givens indulges in some pretty sloppy reasoning here. Warren Jeffs' crimes directly resulted from his pursuit of a lifestyle that had been mandated as essential for exaltation in the kingdom of God in 19th century Mormonism. David Berkowitz claimed to have been a Satan worshiper when he committed his murders. Unlike Jeffs, whose activities were tied up in historical Mormon practices, Berkowitz neither claimed, nor gave any indication, that his crimes were motivated by or related to the Judaism of his adopted parents.

Givens elsewhere took aim at Will Bagley's contribution to Whitney's work on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I am not aware of the piece where Givens does this, unless it is in the lds.org Newsroom commentary I refer to in a prior post. In any case, here is Bagley's response:

"A copy of this fanatical assault on a beautiful film about Mormonism reached me through the email grapevine. Long experience has shown that apologists have little regard for the truth, and I would like to appeal to you to suggest that your fellow ward members watch the film and make up their own minds. I care little for whatever Dr. Givens thinks of my work--altho he shows no evidence of ever having read a page of it--but that work speaks for itself.

What does bother me is his zealotry, which apparently extends now to trying to destroy Helen Whitney's career. I suppose this modern Savonarola was offended he could not act as the film's censor and make it as happy and inspirational and dishonest as a Lee Grosberg or Keith Merrill movie.

"The Mormons" is a sympathetic, humanist look at a new religious movement that baffles outsiders. The American Experience presents all sides and opinions about Mormon history, but the film puts a very human face on Mormons. I expect it will increase understanding and sympathy toward Latter-day Saints and deepen the American public's understanding of a religion that is too often caricatured and mocked.

As for my "personal mission of trying to destroy Brigham Young," I pretty much put that in the tank when I published the heroic portrait Thomas Bullock paints of this frontier dynamo at the highpoint of his career in "Pioneer Camp of the Saints" lo these many years ago. And despite Dr. Givin's [sic] terrors, the Old Boss and his reputation is likely to survive even Helen Whitney's beautiful film."

If I were to guess who it was that wrote the commentary on the Whitney documentary at lds.org's Newsroom, I would say Terryl Givens. Givens perhaps felt silly, or a little vain, writing about himself in the third person, so he instead referred to a nameless collection of scholars that probably includes the Mormon friends he ranted to.

Balancing Reality and Fantasy

Yesterday I posted a piece on the LDS Church's response to the April 22 broadcast of PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" in which the program was criticized for certain comments made regarding temple covenants. Unable to locate the piece a second time, I mistakenly believed that it had been removed. As it turns out, the piece is still there, and so I will now comment on it using quotes.

As I mentioned the first time (I have since edited the post for being erroneous), a high-level Baptist official made a controversial remark about temple covenants on the show, which elicited this commentary from unnamed Church writers:

"Dr. Phil Roberts, president of the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, claimed, for example, that Church members who attend the temple — including Mormon politicians — swear “allegiance to the Mormon president.” This is simply not true. The center of temple worship is a commitment to God and devotion to the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In a place of quiet reflection, Church members contemplate and decide how their temple attendance will be reflected in their personal lives."

I did not see the broadcast, so I can't comment in full on Dr. Roberts' claims, but I will say that the Church response to them is incomplete and, therefore, arguably evasive. It is true that 'commitment to God and devotion to the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ' are central aspects of LDS temple worship. It is for this reason that for many years I enjoyed worship in the temple with my fellow Latter-day Saints.

What began to bother me, however, was the central position allegiance to the Church as God's kingdom on earth held. In fact, I would say that some of the greatest covenants in the temple center on the devotion of the individual member to the LDS Church. I came to think that the greatest commitments I make in life should be to God instead of a Church run by human beings. This is one of the reasons my interest in participation in the temple waned in recent years.

In any case, to say that 'Church members who attend the temple — including Mormon politicians — swear “allegiance to the Mormon president”' is a reasonable inference, which one might take issue with, but the Church does not so much engage the assertion as misdirect. The reason for this, I suppose, is that the truth of the matter is so close to Roberts' assertion that any attempt at an honest response would leave people with the impression that Roberts was essentially correct.

Who the heck are these people?

In describing reactions to the long-awaited Whitney documentary on Mormonism, the Church relates these reactions:

"A few scholars, including some who appear in the documentary, have seen substantial parts of the program.

Their initial reaction: Church leaders and members are extraordinarily eloquent in explaining the tenets of their faith. The film is not superficial, which is often a criticism leveled at television coverage.

However, some raised concern about what they feel is a disproportionate amount of time given to topics that are not central to the Church’s faith. For instance, polygamy comes in for extensive treatment in the first program, including substantial attention to present-day polygamous groups that have nothing to do with today’s Church. The time devoted to portrayals of modern fundamentalist polygamy seems inconsistent with the filmmaker's stated purposes of getting inside the LDS experience, and of exploding, rather than reinforcing, stereotypes.

Other scholars criticize what they say is an imbalance in the treatment of some topics, particularly the events at Mountain Meadows in 1857. One said the film provides a distorted and highly unbalanced account of Brigham Young and the Mountain Meadows Massacre alike."

Now here is a model piece of clarity. Why, pray tell, are the "few scholars," the "some," and the "other scholars" not mentioned by name? Are they ashamed of their sound opinions and reasoning? Do they fear Whitney's wrath for having criticized her work? Or, do they even exist? Are they instead figments of some PR firm's imagination?

One thing they do not fear is tooting their own horn ("Church leaders and members are extraordinarily eloquent"). It looks to me that someone in the Church hierarchy, perhaps, wanted to make an anonymous complaint and attribute it to nameless "scholars" in order to add that air of objective authority. I guess I can't blame them. I remain anonymous, but, then again, I am not the one with the power.

BYU students on Cheney's visit and protest

I decided to check out as much of the coverage of the BYU protest as I could find to try to figure out what it was the students were saying about Cheney's visit and the two demonstrations (pro-Cheney, and anti-Cheney). Some interesting rhetoric came from both sides of the issue--rhetoric I find somewhat revealing and disturbing.

To me it sounded as though the anti-Cheney demonstraters had been given a script. They all spoke of how Cheney did not represent BYU or its students, although none of them were very eloquent about the reasons why he didn't. One student referred to the vice president's ties to Halliburton and his permissive attitude about the use of human torture during interrogations. For the most part, however, students expressed that Cheney did not represent them or the University.

One reason for the continuity in the script was because a communications professor at BYU had presented their position more eloquently and probably molded the overall rhetorical strategy for the others. Woodworth's strategy was to condemn Cheney on moral grounds, a position that is likely to find more sympathy among people who purport to take their morality very seriously.

The other reason for this approach was that the university's administration placed some strictures on the protest in advance. In the words of one student, "...they sent an email out with a list of different things you could put on your sign. There's no real freedom of speech here, like a real protest, and you can't criticize the BYU administration at all, which is the point of the protest, but to get the protest approved they had to say they were just protesting Cheney, even though in reality the protest is about the BYU administration's decision to bring Cheney here."

So, there you have it. A polite 'protest' because it is the only kind that is allowed. The students were told when and where they could protest, how long it could last, what they were forbidden to say, and that they had to 'keep it down.' No shouting, etc. When they left the protest area, they were not even allowed to take their own signs home with them. If Martin Luther King and Ghandi had observed such strictures, we would still have segregation and a British India. And this is exactly why BYU handles things this way, because they do fear their youth and don't want change.

Allowing these young people to speak for themselves is very revealing. It helps us get behind the purported intentions and self-representations of those in power to what is happening among these students on the ground. It helps us understand what the BYU system is teaching them to do and to value. I thought this was particularly poignant:

"I've had fellow students to tell me to turn in my temple recommend, or that I am not a real Mormon, or that I don't support the First Presidency, all of which are completely false. We're just regular, good Utah Mormons who happen to disagree with the Vice President." -Diane Bailey, BYU College Democrats

You will not find similar sentiments coming out of the mouths of BYU College Republicans, because no one questions the Mormon loyalty of conservative Republicans. What does that tell you about the LDS Church as it is lived and taught at its flagship university? Leaders and adults may *say* that there is no political bias or agenda, but the behavior of the kids on the ground tells a more revealing story. It's a milder version of the child who reveals something embarrassing about his or her parents in Primary. The child just doesn't know what to hide.

What troubles me most, however, is the rhetoric of the pro-Cheney demonstraters. Regardless of political sympathies, I should think we would all be troubled to hear things like this:

"It's just an honor to have such a large part of the administration come and recognize us and speak at our graduation ceremony...to recognize us as one of the top universities, I mean, usually they speak at the Ivies, and its just such an honor to be up in that caliber." -BYU student

"We're excited to have him come, because we're excited for the opportunity for BYU students to have that close of a personal interaction with someone who has such power and an ability to alter and change the day to day actions of the United States and much of the world." -David Lassen, BYU College Republicans

Doesn't seem like such a big deal I suppose, but remember that this is a university that prides itself on providing a Christian learning environment. In other words, we might expect the values that Jesus taught expressed in the views of BYU students. Instead, we hear quite the opposite. The first student quoted above is impressed by recognition from the world. "BYU is just as cool as the Ivies now!" The second is impressed by POWER. "We get to have close personal interaction with a powerful man." This is interesting in the context of the anti-Cheney demonstraters who essentially made an argument from values and ethics (the recurrent theme of their position).

Hinckley reaches out to touch your BYU student

I recently watched an amateur video shot during the marathon two-hour protest against Cheney's commencement invite that BYU students held in a "free speech zone" on BYU campus. First of all, let me say my hat goes off to all of you idealistic young Mormons who are willing to make your voices heard on Rush Limbaugh's dream campus.

Kudos to you, O Plucky Ones! Your optimism and trust that you are making a difference against all evidence to the contrary is truly touching. And I can see that your fearless master, Cecil Samuelson, took notice and duly deigned to appear in person to show his warm sympathy for your cause. His "we're not afraid" was both heartfelt and utterly convincing. There is a man who truly cares about what you think. And he should, for according to all claims, BYU is a university, where people like Cecil are paid to help improve your thoughts. Do you think he is happy with the results of his hard labor?

Let's look at this from a different perspective. There is a cuddly little nonagenarian in Salt Lake City who wanted to reach out and touch you on that warm spring day. His heart went out to you as you expressed your feelings about the pressing issues of the day. In fact, he was so anxious that you feel his concern that he relied on HIRED GOONS to make sure your signs were gathered into a safe place and that you were shepherded out of your free speech zone to the unfree speech zone that comprises your daily lives on campus.

Consider this, O parents of the BYU students. When a University, a temple of the mind, has to designate a 2-hour free speech zone, you know your child's education is in expert hands.

Anyway, when I saw that giant, cuddly Polynesian bear of a fellow in his Secret Service suit placing his hands on your children, I thought of the love of President Hinckley for each of your little ones. He would have loved to have been there in person to intimidate your precious children into cooperating, but he just isn't that intimidating, and he didn't have time to make the trip.

Sad isn't it, when you think of it. There is a man in Salt Lake City who commands immediate respect from just about every person on that campus. Had he come in person, the bright-eyed, faithful BYU students and professors would have stood in awe, singing 'We Thank Thee, O God, For A Prophet,' eager for any half-credible explanation for his invitation of one of the most despicable public figures since Richard Nixon to BYU campus.

Surely the prophet, being God's primary spokesman on the earth today, would have a real good explanation. After all, not only is he the numero uno spokesman, he is also the Lord's PR man. And besides, he didn't need an explanation. I would wager that the little charmer could have cracked a wry joke, as he is wont to do, and much good will would have been won without any real dialogue or a change in the commencement program.

Such is the charisma of the Mormon prophet. Interesting that he shows absolutely no inclination to get involved and smooth out the untidiness created by the invitation he made. Interesting that the influence of this 'gentle man of God' brought the intimidating presence of Polynesian bouncers to put your children in their place, and will yet bring the bloodstained plutocrat Dick Cheney to serve as their moral exemplar. By the way, I bet they shipped that bouncer down from Hinckley's personal detail, just so that BYU students could fear the hand of the man who clasped the hand of the prophet.

Let me ask you, BYU parents. Is this what you envisioned when you sent your kids to BYU? Is this what proximity to the Lord's anointed wins them? Are you feeling the love? Because you should know that that love is Gordon Hinckley's love. I don't know about you, but I find that disconcerting.

Orson Scott Card: One Odd Duck

OK, let me get something out of the way. I love "Ender's Game." It is a really fun novel, and I hope it is made into a movie some day. Oh, and I suddenly have an urge to read the Alvin Maker series.

Having said that, I find the author of these novels, Orson Scott Card, a completely perplexing individual. Or maybe completely predictable. He is perplexing because as intelligent as he is, he seems unable to parse the problems of the LDS Church in a realistic fashion. He is completely predictable, because like many intelligent people who continue to cooperate with authoritarian regimes, he has a fancy set of partitions and blinders that help him stay on the right side of the regime.

Card begins a recent article entitled "Is Mitt Romney Serious?" with a slew of disparaging comments about Hillary Clinton and high praise for the probity of Mitt Romney. Is *this* guy serious? I quote:

"Everyone knows that Christian evangelicals hate Mormons so badly that if they had to choose between a bribe-taking, FBI-file-stealing, relentless-lie-telling, mud-slinging former first lady, and a Mormon ex-governor who doesn't lie, who's still married to his first wife, and who supports the entire Christian evangelical agenda, they'd still rather die than vote for a Mormon."

All I can say, Orson, is that you have devoted at least part of your dear soul to sheer lunacy. First of all, in your contention that Christian evangelicals would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than a Mormon man, you are laughably off target. I think it should be abundantly clear by now that what Americans really fear is a female president. I am sure evangelicals would be happy to overlook Mitt's Mormonism in order to get his maleness, whiteness, and dubious, opportunistic social conservatism. They, and millions of other more closeted misogynists, would happily sell their mothers to get to the polls to oppose a woman occupying the Oval Office. The fact that it is Hillary they would be opposing only provides a pretext to hide their deep hatred and fear of women.

As for your conviction regarding the moral probity of Mitt, this too is evidence of your indulgence of illusion. Mitt is not honest. The guy betrayed his polygamist ancestry in order to head off the gay lobby's political use of Mormon polygamy. He said that the federal government had been correct in harrassing and persecuting the religious practices of his own ancestors! I would say that if evangelicals have any reason to be afraid of Mitt, that would be the right one.

The fantasy continues:

"They try to leave the impression that the Mormon Church is racist, wacko, breeding like flies, and obscenely rich. "This tithing has helped the church amass an estimated $30 billion in wealth," says The Week. "Mormon holdings include the biggest beef ranch in the world and the largest producer of nuts in the U.S."

Here Card blames the press for attacking the LDS Church instead of facing the issues. In truth, the LDS Church does have things to answer for. I am sorry that Mitt has to take the brunt of this (am I?), but if his beloved Church had acted with sensitivity, integrity, and openness, he wouldn't have half of the troubles he is having.

Let's face it, the African American community has not let the United States off the hook for slavery (and rightly so), and so it is even less likely that the LDS Church will be let off the hook for an implicitly racist theology that persists to this day. And, for the record, I think the Church should be actively pursued by black activists for failing to apologize for racist doctrines and practices.

In other words, let's be realistic instead of whiney. Is it *fair* that people attack Mitt's Mormonism? Is it classy? Hell no! But since when is politics about fairness or class? (Well, it's obviously got a lot to do with social class, but that is not what I mean.) My guess is that Americans continue to be suspicious of Mormonism, and that they believe they have good reasons to feel that way. Mitt will pay for it. The Church and its membership can continue to indulge in persecution scripts, or they can actually openly and honestly address the issues that make others uncomfortable.

There is much talk about Mitt's situation being comparable to Kennedy and his Catholicism. I think there is a *huge* difference here. Sure, at the time people thought that Kennedy might obey the pope instead of acting in the interests of this country. Now we know that American Catholics listen to the pope about like they read Leviticus. They recognize his authority and largely ignore him when convenient. As a Catholic acquaintance of mine once said, "the only way to be an American Catholic is to attend mass and otherwise act like a Protestant."

Mormons have quite a different relationship with their prophet. And all Mormons know this. *They* even contrast him with the pope. Any Mormon can tell you that while the pope is both infallible and ignored, the Mormon prophet is fallible only when you need to make an excuse for him. Otherwise his most irrelevant muttering on Larry King is obsessed over with amazing energy.

It also makes a huge difference that Utah is smack dab in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, while the Vatican is located in Italy. Mormons aspired to have an independent theocratic nation in the Mountain West not even a century and a half ago. Brigham Young sympathized with the Confederacy. He enshrined racism in Mormon theology. Mormons authorities lied repeatedly about the practice of polygamy to the government and their own people.

In other words, unlike the pope, the Mormon prophet has been America's homegrown issue for many, many decades. The fact that this is still an issue in the Romney campaign is less evidence of human prejudice, which we can take for granted as always being present, than of the failure of the LDS Church to deal with uncomfortable issues in a satisfactory manner. The Church must bear the responsibility for this failure. One cannot rely on the fairness of American politics or the uprightness of the press on the best of days. Mormonism's leaders and rank-and-file members should stop whining and do something about things they can change.

Somehow, I am not confident they will.

Dutcher on Dutcher

LDS filmmaker Richard Dutcher recently bid farewell to the community of LDS cinema and the LDS Church too. His comments, some of them barbed, elicited an outpouring of bile from Kieth Merrill, whose worst work (Legacy, Testaments) is one of Dutcher's targets. To his credit, Merrill apologized.

As a Mormon of sorts, I find Merrill's bile and penance a familiar script. Mormons can get angry in the most juvenile ways, and then absolve themselves through their equally dramatic regret (I am quite familiar with this behavior because I have often done it myself). Both the bile and the regret are sincere, and yet oddly calculated at the same time. I know that subconsciously calculated is an oxymoron, but somehow it seems to fit here. Maybe 'culturally programmed' would be the better term.

Dutcher, too, has his stock Mormon rhetorical faults. There is a measure of arrogance in his initial farewell that is also familiar. Yet, Dutcher's rhetoric also has a wonderful self-reflective quality that transcends the usual boundaries of Mormon moral navel-gazing. It seems that every time I see a Mormon I have not been around for a while, that person engages in some talk about being scandalized by the state of the world (usually the lack of morals in the media) in order to communicate their continuing allegiance to the "true gospel."

Dutcher has so much more to offer than this. He understands Mormonism with the sympathy of an insider and the perspective of a more dispassionate outsider, all at the same time. Perhaps this is why his Mormon movies are effective, and Kieth Merrill's Mormon movies are cinematic pop tarts.

Dutcher recently added an addendum to his farewell, and man is it powerful. I think it is even more on target than his original farewell. This guy "gets it." My favorite part was his discussion of the ritual slandering of the "lost soul" in historical and contemporary Mormonism. I'll let him speak for himself:

"Thomas Marsh was one of the leaders in the early Church. Most of us know him only as that silly man who left the Church because his wife cheated another sister out of some “milk strippings.” The matter ended up with local Church leaders who determined that Sister Marsh had, indeed, acted dishonestly. As the story goes, Thomas was so offended and angry that he left the Church and didn’t come back until he was an old man, dead broke and half-senile.

But there’s so much more to the story.

Although the “milk stripping” incident is factual, it is not the reason Thomas Marsh left the Church. He left in those chaotic days in Far West, shortly before Joseph was arrested and taken to Liberty Jail. These were the days of Sidney Rigdon’s reach for power and his “Salt Sermon.” They were the days of the Danites (Yes, Virginia, there were Danites), and the days when Oliver Cowdery left the Church. Oliver’s complex and difficult decision was made at a time when his life was being threatened by other Church leaders. It was a crazy, dangerous time and Thomas was right in the middle of it. I’m sure those old milk strippings were the last things on Thomas Marsh’s mind when he mounted up and got his family the hell out of town.

Yet this man’s complex life, and his difficult decision, has been reduced to an inaccurate Sunday school lesson in Pride. I believe this “lesson” is a slander, and a violation of a very complex human being.

Although it may be out of my hands, I do not intend for something similar to happen to me. At least not without a fight.

It’s unpleasant to acknowledge, but the LDS community has a history of character assassination. It is an ugly truth, but it is the truth. I have often joked (darkly, and among friends only) that when wandering sheep stray from the fold, Mormons don’t go looking for them. What happens is: somebody climbs up on a really tall tower, takes out a high-powered rifle, gets the poor straying soul in the cross-hairs, and then blows his wandering brain out.

When individuals leave the fold, why do we find it necessary to blacken their names? This has been the case since the earliest days. Back then, a church member or leader could be in full fellowship one day and considered a wonderful, decent, loveable human being. The next day, if that individual chose to make an exit, he was the “blackest, basest of scoundrels,” an “adulterer” and a “counterfeiter,” etc.

Today, we’re a little less melodramatic. But still, when a scholar, artist, intellectual, or even a rank and file member of the Church decides to leave, his character is instantly under attack: “I think he’s gay” or “I bet she’s having an affair” or “I’ve heard he’s a drug addict,” etc.

Just for the record: I’m not having an affair. I’m not gay. I’m not a drug addict. I’ve never tried to illegally reproduce hundred dollar bills and I haven’t killed anyone. Sadly, I can’t even claim to have beaten anyone up, not since the 9th grade anyway. (Actually, now that I think of it, I didn’t win that particular fight. A neanderthalic 12th grader beat the snot out of me.)"

Dutcher then continues to speak about his leaving the fold as a progression through Mormonism instead of an eschewing of his experience in it--the latter being the usual ex-Mormon trope. It was this that I tried to express in my last post, but Dutcher does it so much better. I really like this guy.

The Church is "True"

I have been spending too much time over at RfM (Recovery from Mormonism). I question my purpose for visiting almost every time I pop over there. I think I do it because every once in a while some interesting tidbit appears from behind the 'Zion Curtain.' I find myself wanting to believe that the guy who is claiming to have worked at the COB, recently been a mission president, or some such, is actually the real deal. These guys have the unflattering stories that reveal the Church for what the skeptical among us want to see in it: a fumbling organization wherein the ambitious few prey on the good intentions and gullibility of the many.

Yup. It's not pretty. And this is really as good as it gets, at least for me. I am generally tired of all of the stories about the Church destroying people's lives, fabricating history, working for the Republican cause, etc. You see, I take all of that for granted by now. And, revisiting it for the umpteenth time is, well, boring. I know others out there really need to see that they are not alone, that the Church has hurt other people, etc. I generally find more people like myself out there on the good old DAMU. Different strokes, right?

One thing that I truly have lost patience for, however, is the declaration that a person has discovered that the LDS Church is "not true." I understand that for them this is a very important personal discovery, but others out there have discovered something even more worthwhile--that "true" was a problematic assertion in the first place. So if the expression that Church is "true" is fraught with problems and complexities, then the idea of the Church not being true is really vexed. Unfortunately, LDS people never had any discussion about what the former meant, so skipping right through to the "not true" part just leaves so many unanswered questions.

I can agree that I once thought that God had restored His Church through a farmboy named Joseph Smith. I once thought that this knowledge, and the life that I would lead on that understanding, would save me from some woes I now view as either imaginary or beyond fixing. I used to get up at Church and assent to all of this kind of stuff by using the expression, "I know the Church is true." I have to say, however, that I quit using that language long before I quit attending.

I think the problem with it, for me at least, was that it did not begin to cover the nuances of my actual thoughts and feelings on the issue. Such a statement, if used carelessly, could cover a multitude of doubts and misgivings in a manner that I found increasingly deceptive. This is the reason I quit saying it. Not because I suddenly thought the LDS Church was of no value, but because I wanted to express something of my real experience of it. At the same time, I understood that most people did not want to hear about that stuff.

Then I found the internet, and I felt a rush of liberation. I formed a Yahoo! group for liberal Mormons, and some interested friends and I started batting around the ideas and feelings that one is not comfortable sharing in the chapel. Having found that liberation, and having expressed those thoughts and feelings, I increasingly saw testimony baring as woefully inadequate. It was easy to drop it, because I now saw my statement encompassing so much I could not express, that I had no confidence I was sharing anything more than a gross banality. Worse yet, people listening to me say it could jump to whatever conclusions about me they wanted to.

In that wonderful spiritual journey, I grew into secular humanism. Ah, the dreaded evil. A spiritual humanism is the perspective that most appeals to me. Sure, there were many discoveries along the way about the inadequacies of Mormonism and the LDS Church. I found that most of what faithful Mormons believed about the LDS Church, its history, and its doctrine were things I no longer believed, at least not in anything but the most symbolic sense. This has not led me to say, however, that "Mormonism is not true." Somewhere along the way that expression lost all meaning to me. Instead, I came to understand that Mormonism was part of my learning process in life. For a time it gave me some valuable things, a long time. Now I no longer get out of it what I once did, and I do not want to participate in it or assent to it any longer.

Sure, I *could* say that "Mormonism is not true," and that would save a lot of time, but there is also something crass about it that would make me feel as though I never learned anything along the way.