The specific alignment (or misalignment) between someone’s spiritual state and the actions of people around them plays, in many cases, a critical role in their decisions to leave and also return. The most effective examples of supportive ministry come from those who see their role to accompany others as a musical accompanist supporting and being in rhythm with a performer.
by Eric d’Evegnée
What’s interesting in reading these narratives is that it’s not simply one thing that makes someone leave or come back – nor is it the same configuration of factors that applies across these narratives. Depending on any number of things (background, personal characteristics, circumstances), it’s clear that individual factors can impact and influence people in very different ways – with very similar things sometimes happening in these narratives in ways that produce different results. One theme that did remain constant in these stories was the role that others played in the decisions of the people we read about.
While I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest that another person was the specific cause of someone’s leaving or returning, there appeared to be a clear relationship between where an individual was in their own lives and some other person’s actions or comments that became the tipping point for their decision to leave or return. On one hand, insensitive words at an inopportune moment pushes the narrator further away from the Restored Gospel, like pushing an already teetering person off an edge. On the other hand, we encounter many people using the right word or doing the right thing at the most opportune moment, supporting these people when they need just enough support to do what they feel is right. What is clear throughout the narratives is the impact we have on those around us in their journey of faith.
[T]here appeared to be a clear relationship between where an individual was in their own lives and some other person’s actions or comments that became the tipping point for their decision to leave or return.
I recently read an essay by Nicholaos Jones, a philosophy professor from University of Alabama Huntsville, who used the metaphor of musical accompaniment as the best model for helping others. As I read his description I couldn’t help but think of all the people I’ve read about who helped these people make the journey back. Jones wrote about this metaphor of accompaniment:
“In music, the accompaniment is the musical part that supports the melody or main themes of a musical performance, as when an organist or guitarist accompanies a choir, or a drummer and bass player accompany a lead singer. In a dramatic film, the accompaniment is the part that supports the dramatic action, as when a musical soundtrack accompanies dialogue between actors. These examples indicate that accompanying another involves lending support to the other in ways that amplify or strengthen their efforts. Like solidarity, accompaniment involves one uniting with another. But unlike solidarity, which typically aims to correct some injustice or satisfy some need, accompaniment aims to acknowledge and engage with the efforts of another – not for the sake of helping the other achieve some goal that’s impossible to achieve on one’s own, but for the sake of enriching, and making manifest the value of, the other’s efforts.”
These narratives are full of stories demonstrating others reaching out and accompanying others on their spiritual journeys, for better or worse – both of which serve to remind us to take seriously our influence on others for good and bad.
I love the image of the accompanist working along with the person who seeks to return to the Restored Gospel. This isn’t someone who takes over the performance but allows the seeker the chance to choose, but provides support while sustaining agency. These narratives are full of stories demonstrating others reaching out and accompanying others on their spiritual journeys, for better or worse – both of which serve to remind us to take seriously our influence on others for good and bad.
Leaving the Church
For a few narrators, the tipping point in their process of leaving the Restored Gospel coincides with some kind of disappointment or disillusionment with family members, ward members, or church leaders. Several of the comments express a deep sense of betrayal and injustice at the global church leadership; although, they’re often written as a general comment pointed toward a nebulous definition of the metonymy “the Church”.
“I hated the Church. It had deceived me” (Smith 4).
“I left the church due to. . . certain people in the local Church leadership” (Anon 8).
“I felt lied to. I felt the Church had hid a lot of things” (Havey 3).
For some, the feeling of betrayal is less abstract and more personal and pointed. Woerner emphasizes the significant difference between the outcome of her church discipline compared to the young man with whom she committed the sin: “[h]e obtained probation, and I was disfellowshipped. In my fury and confusion about our different outcomes, I left the Church for over a decade” (Woerner 14). For Shorr it was another form of personal injustice from the girls in her ward:
“I didn’t really like going [to Church] because the girls my age in the ward weren’t very nice to me. Many of the parents in the ward got together socially and my parents usually didn’t go to their parties. Inevitably, the kids of those parents were together a lot and they knew each other. They ignored me because my parents weren’t active in the ward or in the social scene. That was my impression” (Shorr 18).
Richerson’s story about her homosexuality brings together the indirect condemnation of her own family with her bishop’s misunderstanding:
“Well, when I was 11 or so my Uncle Michael, my dad’s brother, came to my parents and said, ’I have found the person of my dreams. We are going to have a commitment ceremony. His name is Tom. I love him very much.’ And my parents said, ‘No, we can’t come to your commitment ceremony because we can’t support you in that. We love you no matter what you do but we can’t support your lifestyle.’ Later, my mom expressed that homosexuality was just bad and evil and against God, a very grievous sin – only second that to killing someone, I remember her saying. . . I just stayed on my knees to feel the Spirit and the awareness welled up within side of me that I was homosexual. I was so afraid and so shocked, dismayed. It was the worst thing that could happen and I was just like, no! no! no! no! no! no!…I went and saw my bishop at home and said, ‘I think I’m gay.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s not possible. In order for you to be gay one of your parents has to by gay. Obviously neither of your parents is gay because they had you and God would never do that to anyone. He wouldn’t create someone homosexual. No, not possible’” (Richerson 20).
Although these narratives represent personal choices, these writers feel it’s a necessary part of their story to include how they feel other people (or entities like “the Church”) contributed to or coincided with their decision to leave.
Lack of Accompaniment–Obstacles to Coming Back
Some of the narratives detail interactions that not only didn’t help these people come back to church – those moments exacerbated the distance. Many of these interactions before the narrator comes back to church are characterized by a significant fear of being judged by other members. Quite literally for Smith, knowing that he was going to face a church council after years of anti-Mormon work, “he walked away, feeling it was unfair to put him on ‘trial’ when he felt he had done nothing wrong” (Smith 4).
In other situations the judgments are less formal but just as impactful. The fear of judgment in these narratives often doesn’t come from actual interactions but from a fear of what may be true and what “people” or “Church members” may think. It’s clear that even just an anticipation of such moments – or a feeling of worry about them – can act to keep people distant. Letitia and Pons describe quite similar reluctance to return to church services because of what other members might think:
“I guess I was feeling that perhaps I would be judged, that people wouldn’t welcome me back. ‘Why are you coming back now?’ And perhaps I just didn’t feel, like, worthy, and knew that if I did come back this was going to be a lot of work” (Letitia 39, italics mine).
“I had many concerns about my return: Church members might think that I was not worthy enough to come back to the Church or they might think that I had done something wrong. These heavy thoughts triggered my worries and I was reluctant to return” (Pon 21, italics mine).
Tippets writes that people who go through a faith crisis often “describe the frustration of trying to talk with believing family members or leaders who make them feel like they’ve sinned for asking legitimate questions or have no awareness of the issues they’re thinking about” (Tippetts 34, italics mine). Although these behaviors are never detailed, it’s interesting to consider exactly what behaviors explicit or implicit contribute to this feeling Tippetts describes. For instance, I wonder if sometimes defensiveness about religious beliefs can feel like stern disapproval to the one asking questions.
After her departure from the Church and her travels around the world, Cook found that she had to adjust to the social aspect of religion as much as to the worship practice. Her experiences were less ambiguous and more direct than the others in this section. Cook describes the jealousy and thoughtlessness of other members which in other circumstances could turn away someone from the Gospel.
“Well, when I moved back [to Utah] from New York, I was a single mom while I was teaching at the high school and working on my dissertation. And originally I was not well accepted. I could tell you some horror stories. Women would just walk up to me in church and say to my face, ‘Stay away from my husband.’ And I’m like, ‘Who’s your husband?’ So I was seen as this threat. I don’t know why they would say those things to me. In one ward that I was in I felt very, very ostracized and one day one of the gals in the ward that I had actually gone to high school with called me and asked, ‘What are you doing on Tuesday at 1?’ I got really excited because I thought, okay, finally someone’s going to include me. Someone’s going to invite me to go do something. I said, ‘Oh, I have to work but I will be done by 2 or 2:30?’ She’s like, ‘Oh shoot. Because a bunch of us are going to lunch and I needed a babysitter.’ I have a dozen more stories like that I could share. And the other thing is people couldn’t understand how happy I was. Why should I be happy? I was a single mom. They couldn’t figure out what I was so happy about. I didn’t need to be married to be happy. That bothered a lot of people and they tried to convince me otherwise” (17).
Wanting to talk about her own experiences which were different from the other people in her ward, she felt like she couldn’t fit into the culture that surrounded the religion: “I’d get to church and they’d be talking about their Bunco nights and their scrapbooking parties, and I’d want to talk about the political uprisings in Kashmir…I wanted to talk about things no one wanted to hear. I didn’t feel like I had anything to contribute or that this culture would accept what I had to contribute” (Cook 17, Italics mine). It’s this last phrase about the culture accepting what she had to contribute that is so revealing about how Cook felt at the time. This was a real barrier that the people who wrote these narratives experience, a real sense of feeling like they need to earn the acceptance of members of the group.
In these best examples, accompaniment “succeeds not by resolving problems but by aligning with the other person – experiencing the other’s suffering in common, allowing the other’s struggle to matter and affect one’s own experience, and responding, with speech or action or silence, in ways that don’t obstruct the other’s efforts to confront their [own] situation” (“At times of suffering”). In these examples, we can see the impact of a Christlike accompaniment through church members willing to reach out and keep pace with those who had lost their faith even across years.
Coming Back
Despite the challenges that some of these writers faced, many found the kind of accompaniment that helped them return to the Restored Gospel. In these best examples, accompaniment “succeeds not by resolving problems but by aligning with the other person – experiencing the other’s suffering in common, allowing the other’s struggle to matter and affect one’s own experience, and responding, with speech or action or silence, in ways that don’t obstruct the other’s efforts to confront their [own] situation” (“At times of suffering”). In these examples, we can see the impact of a Christlike accompaniment through church members willing to reach out and keep pace with those who had lost their faith even across years. One example of this kind of accompanist is Mike, a devout member of the Restored Gospel, who befriended Dusty Smith on an online discussion board when Smith was still an ardent anti-Mormon. Smith and Mike would have spirited debates, but Mike kept an open heart towards Smith. Mike was willing to accompany Smith on his path, “[e]very week [beginning in] 1999, he put my name in the temple,” Smith recalls, his voice breaking with emotion”. Mike put Smith’s name on the temple prayer roll each week for 16 years. He was there when Smith was ready to return to activity.
In these interactions between members and those returning to membership, the sense of welcoming is often connected in these narratives to the Spirit in these narratives. In these cases, the writers’ own efforts to feel the Spirit are met with people who are ready to love and help them.
“I made an appointment with my stake president. I took my temple recommend with me and resolved to return it to him, all the while hoping that he would say something that would restore my faith, and my life, to what they had been. It would be an oversimplification to say that he changed everything, but that humble man was a mouthpiece for Heavenly Father that day” (Olson 10, italics mine).
“I felt drawn and just short of being quartered. Because I knew this was the Lord’s handiwork and because I could not give up the hope of “someday” fitting in the Church, I had to accept this call [from her bishop]. In the year that followed I continued to resist any other involvement with the institution and to respond as purely as possible to the promptings of the Spirit. What I eventually had to do, of course, was to change my life to conform to the law of the Church” (Flake 11, italics mine).
“As soon as word got out of my newfound testimony, the Relief Society stepped in and personally invited me to attend Sunday meetings, and welcomed me with open arms and hearts. I often refer to myself as the ‘misfit toy,’ feeling like I’ve never belonged anywhere. At first, I felt awkward, and just couldn’t see where my place might be among my ward sisters. I regularly worried they would judge me. Slowly my shame dissolved and because of their reassurance and lack of judgment, I felt loved, valued, and accepted as myself. I realized I wasn’t defined by my past mistakes but welcomed as a daughter of God whose gifts were wanted and needed” (Bodily 15, italics mine).
“The following week I got a phone call from the Relief Society president of our ward, Ann. She said, ‘I just had a feeling I needed to call you. You’re on the no-contact list, and if you really prefer no contact, please let me know.’ I told her that I wanted to talk, so she came to my house, and I told her that I was having these strong feelings that I should go back to church. Ann said, ‘I just couldn’t get your name out of my head. Every time I looked at the names on the no-contact list, your name just glowed. I had to call you.’ I said, ‘You were inspired. I would like to work my way back into the Church, but I’m terrified.’ It took me about a year to get the courage to actually attend the ward” (Shorr 18, italics mine).
“Later on, both Joan and Vickie went on missions. Because of their great influence, I prepared to serve a mission also. Through my parents’ teachings and my friends’ examples, my testimony grew stronger” (Pons 21).
“Unfortunately for my direct involvement in the story, he [Alexander the “ex-Mormon”] ended up going to a different ward than the one I was in, but he sent us a text from his first time back at Church. I’ll paraphrase it: ‘I went to church in the city ward today and it was AWESOME! I felt the Spirit really strongly and everyone was so welcoming and good. Thanks for talking with me’” (Alexander 30, italics mine).
“Wow! These people treat their kids like adults. They’re all friends. They’re full of energy. They’re all doing crazy things. They’re all just busy and engaged and just really great people. And up to that point, I’d never I never seen a Latter-day Saint Family that just had this kind of engagement level and all this love amongst them and this [rapport] that was just so healthy and kind and loving and wonderful and whatever other good words there are” (Anderson 38, italics mine).
“She invited me to a couple of the events at the ward. and it just kind of went from there. The people were so nice and friendly and there was a lovely spirit there and that started me on that journey. I started to have discussions” (Letitia 39, italics mine). “The last step of my conversion was to shed my pride and ‘coolness,’ and this bishop who had only held the position for a month was the perfect man to help me do so. His ignorance in the exactness of his calling was exactly what I needed. His love, gentleness, understanding and compassion toward me brought me deeper into my testimony and my desire to shed my ‘cool’ persona and walk with God as I saw him and so many other ward members do” (Bodily 15, italics mine).
What’s most remarkable about these positive interactions is how much they “accompany,” to continue the metaphor, these people who are returning. The people doing the helping in these narratives don’t try to save or take over the performance of another’s path back.
For others, we see how just feeling like they genuinely belong helps them return. This is a reversal of the feelings of disaffiliation they felt when they made the decision to leave. These quotes reflect a healing return in their narrative when compared to the part of their story where they describe their metaphorical distance from their faith:
“I am active in my ward which fully supports me. My children and siblings have been fully supportive also” (Anon 8).
“The Bishop and his wife in the ward area I was living in started coming to our house and invited my son to Cub Scouts. He started going and loved it. Soon he was invited to Primary and then wanted to be baptized, so the missionaries started coming over to teach him because he was over nine” (Oviatt 9).
“I started going to church and soon was called to be in Cub Scouts. This calling helped me so much—the boys and the parents were an excellent example for me. They all loved and accepted me. The sisters in the ward always gave me a hug which embarrassed me because I knew I smelt like smoke. They never seemed to notice” (Oviatt 9).
“Our ward was also fantastic” (Oviatt 9).
“I found my way to a church and asked the Bishop if I could see him. I cried and cried as I talked about the last 26 years of my life. I thought I would have to go before a council of some kind. He just hugged me and said ‘Welcome home’” (Elaine 12).
“I realized that I know the truth, and as much as I love my husband and wish to honor him, I would find a way to nurture my marriage while also nurturing my faith. I made an appointment with my bishop, who turned out to be one of my strongest advocates as I returned to activity in the Church. I gratefully accepted a calling in the Relief Society, which has allowed me to get to know the women of our ward—and in so doing, I met a whole sisterhood who have supported and loved me as I became an active, involved member of our congregation” (Novac 13, italics mine).
“The most effective effort they made was to invite me to everything under the sun that was church related. Everyone in the ward warmly welcomed me to these events despite my church activity or membership. Then they invited my son Pratt to go on Pioneer Trek” (Bodily 15, italics mine).
“On the first Sunday I returned to church I received a friendship basket during Relief Society. I was welcomed by other sisters and felt a sense of belonging. Sometimes my mother-in-law came to church with me. She had the chance to interact with members. Even though sometimes she heard our neighbors saying that our church was a cult and people there were not friendly, she told me that people in the Church are actually very polite and show respect to others” (Luk 16).
“I slipped it [tithing envelope] under the [Bishop’s] door and the bishop, the new bishop, pops his head out and is like, ‘You! Who are you? What are you doing? Where do you come from?’ He was just so earnest, so curious. He wanted to talk: ‘I’m just really curious. Nobody pays their tithing who doesn’t come to church.’ He was so befuddled and he was just so earnest. So, I make an appointment to meet with him and it also happens to be tithing settlement time. It turns out that this bishop is a saxophone player himself! So, we talked about music. We talked about me growing up in the church and being homosexual. And he said, ‘Well, look the door is open to you any time. Feel free to come to church and you can bring your girlfriend too.’ Yeah, I was so shocked” (Richerson 20, italics mine).
“The first thing you do when you meet somebody is say, ‘So, how long have you been a member?’ or we always bring up something from the church because that is our commonality. We have some friends who, when I told them that my husband was a non-member, they didn’t look at me like, Oh poor you! They were like, That’s okay, we’ll have him come over, we’ll have dinner, we’ll talk, we’ll get to know each other! They connected on something more than just the church. They connected on music and that’s what my husband does. He teaches music and he is a musician” (Holmes 19 italics mine).
“So I go into the bishop’s office and he sits me down and he says, ‘Peka, how are you doing? I noticed that you weren’t taking the sacrament. Is there anything that I can help you with?’ And I just started bawling. And told him what was going on with my guilt and trying to get pregnant, and he said to me, ‘The Lord has already forgiven you. You’ve already done everything you’re supposed to do in the repentance process and the Lord has already forgiven you. You need to forgive yourself.’ That was so eye opening to me because it might have just been a drink here and there but because of what I had been taught and how I had been raised, they felt like such huge sins that I totally thought there was no way I could come back” (Holmes 19, italics mine).
“I was always curious about going back but was too intimidated. I felt like it was a place for ‘perfect people’ who had their lives together. Mine was far from that. Fast forward into adulthood and me and my husband were invited to a trunk or treat activity. Everyone was so kind. That gave us the comfort and courage we needed to go on Sunday. Where we experienced nothing but welcoming and kindness. That was a good start” (Phillips 28).
“The next day, I found Dr. Harper’s reply in my inbox. As I read, I not only felt his genuine love, humility, and honesty but his competence to answer my questions. In his email, Dr. Harper first confirmed a few facts of history and then detailed what he personally understood from the historical record. He didn’t try to coerce me to believe a certain way but asked if I was open to reexamining my assumptions about the facts. Was I assuming the worst about the characters and events in our history? If so, why?” (Winegar 32).
“This flood. The outpouring of love” (Havey 8). “This is what the Church teaches. This was Christlike love that I was witnessing first hand” (Havey 8).
“An episode of peaceful tears punctuated each phrase from the sacramental prayer. After several eternal minutes, I mouthed the “amen,” opened my eyes, and stood up. My mother beamed, and most of the congregation looked unsettled, in a positive way. My brother and friends wept quietly beside me” (Brown).
One of the best things about analyzing these narratives is seeing how vital and impactful the role of other people is in helping people return to the Restored Gospel. I can see that although there are moments where people are less than kind or thoughtful, there are other moments where people have taken the invitation from Christ to love one another as they love themselves, reaching out and being willing to help. What’s most remarkable about these positive interactions is how much they “accompany,” to continue the metaphor, these people who are returning. The people doing the helping in these narratives don’t try to save or take over the performance of another’s path back.
Sometimes our harshest judgments come from projections onto others about what we fear most. Knowing that people’s worst fear is judgment and overcoming a sense of banishment, regardless of the source, can help us recognize the need to be more welcoming. For some who have had some alienating interactions, our support in helping them feel like they belong might be just as important as the testimony we feel like we need to rekindle. I think often the impulse is to rekindle testimony by fixing doctrinal or historical issues when our primary concern should be towards how they feel when they’re around us. This is not to say that testimonies, policies, and doctrines don’t matter; it’s just that those concerns can only be addressed, in my opinion, when people feel like they are okay to belong. And I think these narratives and the roles of other people in them can help those people who feel alienated to know that there are so many others willing to help and reach out in a tender and compassionate way.
