The language we use, including our use of comparisons, reveals the truth of our experience and can become a guide to knowing how to better understand and help those who walk similar paths. In these narratives, the dominant comparisons highlight a pervasive sense of alienation from loved ones, friends, and “the Church” as a whole. This theme of alienation likewise better helps us understand how we can best support those in similar circumstances.
by Eric d’Evegnée
Language as Guide
Language is a window through which we can better understand others’ perception of their experiences. If the predominant feature of their experience is a sense of distance and alienation, then our response of love and welcome becomes all the more essential. While there are different doctrinal, historical, or practical triggers for both their departure and return, the intensity of the journey most often relates back to the social experience of the religious community. Although one reason for the significance of the group in these narratives is that they are describing coming back to and not just away from the fold, it’s the pervasiveness and potency of the focus on the cultural and social aspects of their experience that makes their use of specific language especially significant in these narratives.
Sometimes even a well-intentioned defense of beliefs or practices can make it seem that we’re building fortifications rather than bridges. Awareness of how language shapes their experiences and guides their thinking can help facilitate a rebirth of faith and a reaffiliation with the community.
This awareness about how these people describe their experience in these narratives can be instructive for both those who are on a difficult faith journey and those who love them. Having a question or challenge to one’s faith need not affect our relationship with others, even if we fear that it may. For family and friends who are close to those who are having concerns or questions, we need to be more aware of how well-intentioned defenses of the Restored Gospel or comments about keeping the family together can reaffirm or reinforce a feeling of alienation. Sometimes even a well-intentioned defense of beliefs or practices can make it seem that we’re building fortifications rather than bridges. Awareness of how language shapes their experiences and guides their thinking can help facilitate a rebirth of faith and a reaffiliation with the community.
Conceptual Metaphors
It’s easy to imagine metaphors as tools only poets use to simply find new and impressive sounding ways to say “I love you” to their soulmates. But in their groundbreaking book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that rather than just flowery words, metaphors and metonymies, which we’ll speak about later, are essential to how we think. In short, we use metaphors to help us understand a new idea by comparing it to something else we already know.
When we say something like “Life’s a rollercoaster,” we’re comparing life to the uncomfortable and thrilling ups and downs of a rollercoaster ride. This comparison between two dissimilar things is called a metaphor. We use metaphors often when we sense that a more straightforward description doesn’t quite have the impact of everything we want to say. An example of how we use a root comparison to understand a concept is how in English we often compare words to containers. This conceptual comparison becomes the foundation for the way we describe how language works. However, some metaphors and metonymies are so essential to our thought process that we sometimes don’t even recognize them as figurative language.
In these conceptual metaphors there is a clear sense of distance between the narrator and the people and religion they left behind, which conveys a sense of alienation from the Church of Jesus Christ and its members.
The Conceptual Metaphor of Distance in Return Narratives
In analyzing the return narratives, we noticed that almost all of them compare their experience of disaffiliation and reaffiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to physical distance. In these conceptual metaphors there is a clear sense of distance between the narrator and the people and religion they left behind, which conveys a sense of alienation from the Church of Jesus Christ and its members.
Coupled with that sense of distance is that conceptual shortcut “the Church” which can unintentionally make it easier to dismiss the diversity and complexity of faith and religion and possibly heighten the sense that there are more or insurmountable obstacles to rejoining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The most common expression is “left the Church” (Anon 8, Olson 10, Flake 11, Bodily 15, Cook 16, Pon 21, Tippetts 34) and its derivatives like “away from the Church” (Bodily 15, Cook 16, Cook 17), “my lifestyle diverged from the church” (Alexander 30), “distanced herself [from the church]” (7),”faded away” (Flake 11), “get away for a little bit” (Shorr 18), “fell away” (Holmes 19, Phillips 28, Alexander 30, Sutton 31), “my faith journey” (Richerson 20, Winegar 32, Tippetts 34), “as if wandering lost in the dark” (Hersee 29), “the path” (Sutton 31, Winegar 32, Call 36, Letitia 39).
Noting this use of metaphor gives us insight into the inner experience of disaffiliation and reaffiliation. One interesting feature of these kinds of metaphors is that our use of them tends to emphasize the part of the comparison that the speaker wants to highlight. In most of these narratives the distance metaphors emphasize the action of leaving and creating physical distance, rather than say, the path itself or the destination at the end of that path.
The most stark example of focusing on the departure part of the distance metaphor came from Woertner who writes, “I left the Church for over a decade” (14). She means, of course, that she didn’t attend or affiliate with the Church of Jesus Christ for over a decade, but the focus of the imagery on the leaving and the addition of time highlights the image of a decade-long leave-taking. Sutton depicts the moment right after deciding to leave, “But I had to make some choice about which way I would head next” (Sutton 31). Looking back, Tippets refers to his time of disaffiliation as “My time outside the Church” (Tippets 34).
The distance metaphor is so central to many of the narratives that rejoining or attending church again uses the same distance metaphor but now emphasizes return. This dual use of the metaphor is most vividly exemplified by Havey who wrote to her father in a vulnerable moment, “Is anyone too far gone to come back?” The metaphor helps her describe both the experience of disaffiliation and the desire to reaffiliate. There are many examples of the distance metaphor being used to describe the experience of coming back to the Church of Jesus Christ, “Brought me back” (Anon 8, Kelly 35), “journey back” (Olson 10), “my path” (7), “pull back to the Gospel” (7), “Submitted to his will and traveled the distance” (11), “go back to church” (Alexander 30, Shorr18, Tippetts 34), “returning to the Church” (Shorr 18), “return to the Church (Richerson 20, Alexander 30, Tippetts 34), “come back to church” (Richerson 20), “wanted to go back to Church” (Alexander 30),“I also learned life is more enjoyable sober and following God’s path” (Oviatt 9), “The journey back to peace in the gospel” (Olson 10), “This is the tale of my return to activity” (Novac 13), “The last step of my conversion” (Bodily 15), “I was going to stop being angry and go back to activity” (Cook 16), “I doubted if I would ever go back” (Shorr 18), “maybe I would return to the Church. I thought that if I ever did return” (Shorr 18), “I would like to work my way back into the Church” (Shorr 18) “Returning to the Church has blessed our family” (Shorr 18), “long road of testimony building experiences” (Phillips 28), “I was able to begin walking back toward faith” (Winegar 32), “God was directing me to this church” (Tippetts 34). One writer used the distance metaphor in describing how God helped her on her journey back to the Restored Gospel. She said that “He kept reaching” (Burkinshaw 7). It was that “reaching, and reaching, and reaching” (Burkinshaw 7) that helped her return from where she had been.
What is so fascinating about the metaphors in these narratives is the way in which they help reveal the internal experience of their departure. It underscores the fact that how something is said is as important or even more important than what is said.
This emphasis on the departure suggests something about the significant pain of leaving, involving having to move away from the church, culture, and potentially the people that form so much of one’s individual and social identity, especially for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who make up one of the most collectivist subgroups in America (Ivers 14).
What is so fascinating about the metaphors in these narratives is the way in which they help reveal the internal experience of their departure. It underscores the fact that how something is said is as important or even more important than what is said. Knowing that the dominant conceptual metaphor these speakers use is a distance metaphor helps us understand their experience better and directs us in how we may need to treat people who are experiencing it. Rather than simply seeing them as leaving something they once loved, understanding the way they try to communicate their experience guides us towards seeing how the sense of alienation needs to be addressed and understood.
The Conceptual Metonymy of “the Church”
Like metaphor, metonymy is a figure of speech that plays a role in how we think. Metonymy is simply whenever we use something closely related to an object to signify the whole. When we refer to the executive branch of the United States government as the “White House” or a painting as a “Van Gogh” we’re using metonymy. Most often we use metonymy as a kind of shorthand to refer to things easily and quickly.
People use the phrase, “the Church,” to describe just about anything related to our faith and our culture isn’t new to anyone familiar with the vernacular of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The phrase “the Church” is often used to describe not just our church buildings, but also our religious beliefs, our culture, our leaders, and even other members of our faith. Saying that “the Church is true” is one of the most repeated idiomatic expressions in our faith.
Rather than directing feelings towards specific individuals and circumstances in a constructive way that could then be resolved, the metonymy compresses people, relationships, ideas, behaviors, and experiences with the divine into one single, abstract entity and that undefined, nebulous entity becomes the focal point of that relationship. . . Since “the Church ” becomes a catch-all symbol of so many things (bishops, stake presidents, friends, moms, siblings, policies, buildings, etc.) any one problem in that compressed metonymy ripples through everything else in the symbolic relationship.
In all, the phrase “the Church” was used 257 times in 110 pages of the original narratives we collected. For contrast, the word “God” was used 188 times, “Father ” 82 times, “faith” 151 times, “spirit” 123 times, “Christ” 68 times. Often the uses of “the Church” were used to quickly refer to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In these return narratives there are unsurprisingly many expressions that are common in everyday parlance of members of the Restored Gospel like “raised in the Church” (Burkinshaw 7) or “growing up in the Church” (Anon 8). In this form, the use of the metonymy is more about efficiency in writing – i.e., getting as much meaning as we can from the fewest words possible. A phrase like “raised in the Church” is a quick way to communicate the similarities we share as a people: week night youth activities, roadshows, youth conferences, General Conference, Family History, associations with good people, feeling the Spirit, etc. As a shorthand, the metonymy provides efficiency as members and those with ties to “the Church” communicate; however, the analysis of its use in these narratives spotlights the significance of this seemingly simple literary device.
In most cases, like calling a painting a “Van Gogh”, the effect of a metonymy is innocuous; in other cases, the linguistic shortcut can become a conceptual shortcut. The metonymy, “the Church” compresses a complex assortment of ideas, actions, experiences, friendships, judgments, memories, policies, etc. together into one small compact phrase that while simple in usage tends to obscure, or leave unclear, what part of the church the writer is focusing on. In this usage, such a simple phrase doesn’t provide efficiency or clarity for the audience.
As Lakoff and Johnson write: “[F]ocusing on one aspect of a concept, a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor” (10). Likewise, when we compress our spiritual lives into a form that involves each aspect of membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one is bound to find something in a global institution that irritates, annoys, frustrates, disappoints, betrays, and upsets. But the phrase, “the Church ” in these narratives makes it harder to accurately diagnose the source of one’s trouble. Additionally, it may be easier to demonize an institution rather than deal constructively with a wide variety of individuals who may have weaknesses, flaws or blind spots. Rather than analyzing specific issues or specific relationships in a way that presents the person with specific choices about how to respond with frustration, anger, or forgiveness, one can simply blame “the Church” in a general way without finding any sense of resolution or understanding.
Rather than directing feelings towards specific individuals and circumstances in a constructive way that could then be resolved, the metonymy compresses people, relationships, ideas, behaviors, and experiences with the divine into one single, abstract entity and that undefined, nebulous entity becomes the focal point of that relationship. By reducing something large and complex into something so simplistically symbolic, it effectively moves the challenge from a place of practical resolution into a place of abstraction where concrete solutions are more difficult and sometimes even impossible to grasp.
Since “the Church ” becomes a catch-all symbol of so many things (bishops, stake presidents, friends, moms, siblings, policies, buildings, etc.) any one problem in that compressed metonymy ripples through everything else in the symbolic relationship. A thoughtless bishop who says something hurtful or doesn’t protect an assault victim or a cruel word from a sibling, or a cold shoulder in church becomes a referendum on the rest of the metonymic structure of “The Church.”
For instance, a few of the writers distinguish between the Gospel and “the Church,” but what defines the boundaries between the two is unclear for the audience. Novac writes about “Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, The Gospel, the Church, and my faith are sources of incredible joy” (Novac 13). Holmes adds about her father that “he fell away from the gospel, he fell away from the church” (Holmes 19). Pon, in discussing her past religious activity, talked about wanting to get away from the influences of the Restored Gospel in her life by living “without the Church and the gospel” (Pon 21). What is clear in these examples is that there is often a separation between the Gospel and “the Church” whatever that distinction is. Referring to Tami, for instance, one interviewer writes, “[a]lthough she no longer believed in the Church, she did believe in God” (Havey 2). Once again, there’s an unstated assumption here in the distinction between belief in “the Church” and belief in “God,” but that distinction is not fully clarified.
For instance, an anonymous poster wrote, “I never lost my testimony of God or Jesus Christ, just distrust in the Church” (Anon 8). Additionally, some authors even used the metonymy in a way that personifies the institution, giving “the Church” the ability to choose and act deceptively.
The problem of separating the Gospel and “the Church” in these narratives isn’t readily apparent until a writer experiences a significant failure of their expectations of “the Church” and how it should symbolize or represent the Gospel. In these cases the use of “the Church” can oversimplify the complexities of a concept or institution like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, making it harder to pinpoint the source of the problem when someone has been hurt or feels deceived. Associating this hurt with an abstract concept like “the Church” can also make it much harder for the narrator to find a resolution.
For instance, an anonymous poster wrote, “I never lost my testimony of God or Jesus Christ, just distrust in the Church” (Anon 8). Additionally, some authors even used the metonymy in a way that personifies the institution, giving “the Church” the ability to choose and act deceptively. Dusty describes his desire to attack “the Church” because, “I hated the Church. It had deceived me” (3), which is straightforward in terms of the speaker’s emotion, but doesn’t help us understand who did the deceiving. On the surface it could imply the entire community of believers deceived the individual or the entire current or past leadership locally or globally, or it could refer to a mixture of certain individuals within the general institution.
Another example of where the emotion behind the metonymy results in a kind of personifying of “the Church” comes from someone who posted about Alexander, an ex-Latter-day Saint who wanted to come back to church. The writer talked about how Alexander “identified strongly with ideas of a gospel of personal progression, a church that expected action and improvement, and related concepts” (Alexander 30, italics added). This writer says later of Alexander and others like him, “there are even times when it seems they can find a comfortable place within the faith and apply some doctrine they still hold close. And then the church doubles down” (Alexander 30, italics added). This sense of betrayal and anger towards “the Church” is most acute when the expectations are unexpressed or unexamined and come as a shock to the writer. The added personification of “the Church” in these examples puts their experience in terms we can understand, but it may also direct those feelings towards a vague and personified entity rather than at specific aspects of the institution.
The metonymy can also make it difficult to come back to membership as well since it can make “the Church” appear monolithic and unwelcoming. These negative associations, although general, often inhibit people from feeling like they fit in . . . The problem is that returning to “the Church” often takes on an additional meaning or meanings that are clear to the writer but are never articulated.
Flake admirably articulates her feelings about coming back to church membership, but it’s clear that she feels anxious about how she “fits” in “the Church”. She writes about being extended a call from her bishop, “I could not give up the hope of ‘someday’ fitting in the Church, I had to accept this call” (Flake 11). In this case, what does “fitting into the Church” mean? If we mean the whole of what we consider “the Church” experience, that can mean many things to many people. Additionally, it implies that all aspects of anything associated with Church culture or faith are equally important, whether the subject is food storage, the Book of Mormon, the Restoration or jell-o salad. Everything becomes equally important, which may not allow people to distinguish between saving doctrines and cultural preferences.
The metonymy can also make it difficult to come back to membership as well since it can make “the Church” appear monolithic and unwelcoming. These negative associations, although general, often inhibit people from feeling like they fit in. The effect of this compression is best seen in connection to phrases from these narratives that combine the distance metaphor with the metonymy, whether someone is talking about “Leaving the Church” (Smith 3) or “Returning to the Church” (Smith 3). The problem is that returning to “the Church” often takes on an additional meaning or meanings that are clear to the writer but are never articulated. Schorr in her story talks about how she “would like to work [her] way back into the Church” (Shorr 18). The metaphor is clear here. She feels like she now has to work to overcome the distance to get back into “the Church,” but the “work” that she would need to do isn’t clear. In some cases, the answer can be obvious like “the work” of coming back to regular Sunday meeting attendance or a rebaptism. But often working their way back to “the Church” is assumed to include particular ideas about what it means to them to be a member of the “Church,” which could involve everything from political leanings to cultural beliefs about caffeine.
These uses of “the Church” mirror active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who often say that they know or believe that “the Church is true”. While that phrase often efficiently communicates the connection between Jesus Christ and His Church, it’s the smaller details on the edges that may be more difficult to navigate for those trying to join or return. Similarly, for people coming back to church there’s a navigation that needs to take place about the lived practice of our religion, and how membership in “the Church” is defined. In different interesting ways, certain usages of the phrase “the Church” potentially contribute to the appearance of wide-scale conformity in beliefs and actions that may cause generalized hurt, anger, and frustration and may also be a stumbling block to people attempting to return to full fellowship.
