I
The last time the Young Women presidency in my ward got released, a young woman got up to bear her testimony. It was probably the first time she ever had—she had only been coming to church for a few months. You could tell she was nervous, but you could also tell it was important to her to speak. As she expressed her gratitude for the outgoing leaders, conviction strengthened her voice. She knew that those women had made a difference in her life.
I don’t know this young woman well, but I recognized that feeling. I know something about what it means to find a refuge among the Saints. I remember being twelve years old, living in a ward member’s basement and wearing donated clothes after my family’s moving truck was stolen and we ended up between homes. It’s disorienting to have so much of the familiar torn away. Back then, I sometimes resented the ward’s kindness and the way it reminded me of my own vulnerability. But most of the time, it was good to have people to try to trust. Reaching out for the spark of God in them helped me learn to recognize the spark of God in myself.
I hope that the young woman whose testimony moved me finds the same lasting meaning in the gospel that I did. Sometimes, faith sinks its roots into the soil of our need. Maybe she’ll get baptized. Maybe she’ll go to the temple someday. Maybe she’ll join herself to the network of relationships the temple points us toward, extending her own threads of trust through time and eternity.
Then again, maybe her time with us will be brief. People drift into and out of groups all the time. There might be some stumbling block that gets in the way. Or maybe she’ll end up getting interested in something else. In her life, it’s entirely possible that this isn’t a new foundation so much as a temporary haven. If that’s the only role we end up playing, does that mean we failed? I don’t think so. Jesus called his people to be like salt. Sometimes, salt’s job is just to get people through the winter.
Whatever path that young woman chooses, I’m glad to be part of a community whose doors are open to her. I’m proud of the outgoing leaders who were there for her when she needed them. I’m proud of the newly called leaders who will freely offer her their time, energy, and attention over the coming months or years. I’m content to leave the rest of her life to whatever combination of human choice and God’s will guides the world.
II
In theory, I should feel the same way about every child of God who crosses paths with me on this brief time on earth. But sometimes it’s hard. To accept that someone who walked into a meetinghouse one day might walk out on another is one thing. It feels different when it’s someone you know, someone you love, someone whose relationship with you is tied up in the language and rituals of faith.
I did not react with peaceful acceptance when my dad left the Church.
He was a pioneer of sorts, blazing a trail of disaffection across online message boards during the 1990s, when I was a teen and the internet was still young. A researcher now might be able to comb through those threads of conversation and place them into context as an emerging mode of religious conflict, but at the time it was all terra incognita. It’s disorienting for anyone to feel a gulf open between information and understanding, old assumptions under strain before new models can take their place. It must have been especially disorienting for him to go through a digitally driven open surgery of the soul at the time he did, when he and his peers were still coming up with language to describe the experience. It was disorienting for me, too. So much happened in spaces I couldn’t see. As a kid, I had learned that I could count on certain religious things as part of our family culture—and as a teen, I discovered (in fits and spurts) that I couldn’t anymore.
My dad tended to respond to overwhelm in general with outbursts of anger, so we never really figured out how to talk about feelings with each other. I knew that he was angry at the Church, that he felt betrayed, and that he increasingly felt himself locked in a battle for control with this sprawling institution that never seemed to offer him a fair fight. I’ve wondered how he thought about my religiosity as I aged. Did he regret having raised me in a faith that now left a bitter taste in his mouth? Did he hope at some point that I might join him in a different future? Did he come to view me as a battleground in his fight with the institution . . . and did he resent me for reminding him of his vulnerability in that fight?
For my part, I desperately wanted my dad not to leave the faith. I suspect my fear was fueled in part by the religious narratives I grew up on, which focused on the path to sealing and the principle of enduring to the end. That general trepidation was magnified by some personal concerns. When I was young, for example, it was never clear if my dad was going to stay with the family. On some level, I brought the same fear of abandonment to the prospect that he might make a formal break with the faith. There was also the fact that some of my most positive memories of my dad were tied up in religious rituals. Asking for a blessing, for example, was the best way I knew to go to him for comfort. He knew how to be gentle and attentive when he put his hands on my head. I was terrified by the thought that, in a relationship that had never felt easy to me, some of the working doors might close.
But desperation, however sincere, is seldom helpful to someone dealing with a panic of their own. Looking back, my anxieties and awkward attempts to pull my father back toward faith mostly added to the emotional cacophony he was making his way through. While my father was treading water, I was clinging to him like dead weight.
We made things harder on each other in the last years before he finally took his name off the records of the Church. We each said defensive, thoughtless, hurtful things. We each wondered what the other was thinking without knowing how to ask. (I know my father felt this way because one of my early online searches for myself led me to a post of his on a forum. What we never could say to each other, we each cast out into a vast digital sea.)
III
I have four children. I am almost the same age my father was when I went on a mission against his wishes. My oldest child is twenty and on a mission of her own. My youngest child is eight. She likes to tell people that I am her second-favorite father—her Father in Heaven being the first.
I would love it if a faith in the restored gospel is something we always share. In another era, I might have imagined that training my children up with healthy doses of wonder, duty, and love would more or less guarantee that they would stay in the Church. Even if I thought to account for the possibility that my children could wander, I might have assumed that my wife and I had enough life experience for our own decisions to be firmly set. Now, though, I recognize that I can’t really take any of those things for granted.
If one or more of my children leave, have I failed in my religious duty as a parent? I don’t think so. Jesus called his people to be like salt. If I’ve added some savor to their formative years, I’ve done my work. I’m determined to leave the rest to whatever combination of human choice and God’s will guides the world.
But I do hope that, if any member of my family leaves, we’ll be able to talk. If I were the one changing, I would want to give my children something to hold onto. My daughter, who grew up thinking of God and me as two of the great sources of stability in her life, would deserve some reassurance in a time of change. I don’t expect a child to understand or evaluate a parent’s choices right away; that’s the work of a lifetime. But I’d want her to know that my letting go of the faith does not mean letting go of all the things we experienced together in those shared religious years.
If my children are the ones changing, I’ll have worries and insecurities of my own to sort through. I don’t expect to make peace with my children’s choices right away; that may be the work of a lifetime. But I believe that the same sociality that we nurture here grows beyond the grave, so surely it’s worth tending across our differences. No matter what happens, I want to offer them a path to talk to me.
That work has to begin long before any moment of decision. As I’ve taught my children the gospel, I’ve also left them periodic, nonjudgmental reminders that they might make choices in their own lives that don’t take our religious standards as a starting point. I want them to know that I know.
I also want them to have a ritual way to come to me, trusting that I’ll know how to be gentle. And so, if the day comes when a child or grandchild of mine decides to shift away from our faith, I plan to buy them a clear, empty vial. When I give them the vial, I’ll remind them that many good people before them have taken this or that thing they learned from our culture out into the world. I might mention how my dad ministered to those in need long after he had any assignment to do so. Or how my little sister drew on her experience with ward family home evening activities in college to nurture a close group of friends in the years after she stopped being religious. Then, I’ll ask the person leaving if they want to go to the kitchen and fill the vial with salt. If they want to keep the salt as a symbol of ideas, traditions, or memories they’re taking with them, I’d love to hear whatever they are willing to share before they go with my blessing.
And if they want to keep the empty vial only as a question, I will give them that question with my love.
James Goldberg is a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, documentary filmmaker, scholar, and translator who specializes in Mormon literature.
Art by Amy Hunter.
I loved this essay. Thank you.