Why I stay LDS - short-form

I've wandered a bit through many faith traditions...maybe I'm a bit of an interfaith tourist.  Not necessarily a good thing, and not necessarily as an adherent of the various faiths, for I never really fully left Mormonism.

After Proposition 8, I thought it was morally reprehensible to continue to claim to be "Mormon" or to sustain the brethren when they, in my assessment, were oppressing a very needy minority, which happens to include family members.

So, I took a job in India.  I preferred China, due to my experience in Taoism, but I also respected Hinduism, and my narrow specialty around identity was more applicable to India.  I spent two years there, immersing myself in Hinduism, Vedanta, Advaita, and other aspects of the culture and found myself on a very deep spiritual quest.  Part of my job, as well, was to provide identity to  the poor of India, so I had a chance to immerse myself very deeply in Indian culture and politics.

At the peak of all this, I went on a pilgrimage to Arunachala, the holy Shaivite temple revered by adherents to Advaita as the pilgrimage site of Ramana Maharshi.  I spent time at his ashram.  I participated in the most sacred rite of fire/lingam worship in a puja in the most holy place of the temple at Arunachala.

At the moment that my Indian sponsor and his family found most sacred, I had exactly the opposite impression.  Out of respect for Hinduism, I won't express what I thought or felt, but it was neither appropriate nor did it harmonize with the sacredness of the ceremony.  I found the whole thing completely and totally absurd.  Yet afterwards, my sponsor told me of how deeply spiritual and sacred that experience was to him, and how much he appreciated that I suggested this pilgrimage.

Later, having lunch with a Brahman priest and a very good friend, I was expressing some of my lessons learned by learning the Sanskrit texts in Hindu scripture.  I told him that my learning of Sanskrit had given me a lot more insight into the meaning behind the words.  He told me that I was on the wrong track.  The words didn't matter, only that they were pronounced correctly...which was, of course, impossible for me to do as a non-Indian old guy.

At the end of my India experience, I came to a conclusion.  Religion isn't a global absolute.  Instead, it is a cultural paradigm, arising from our evolutionary need to unite as a tribe and community for protection, guidance, sustenance, and life.  This is both good and bad.  Good, because it truly is life-sustaining, probably why our evolutionary ancestors, even back 100,000 years ago, had religion, and evolution favored those who did, because they survived as a group.  It's also bad, because we have allowed our religious exclusivity to go overboard and reject new communities arising from our global identities.  We are evolving, and in like manner, religion needs to evolve.

But the more important conclusion I made as a result of India was that the reason Hinduism failed to resonate with me was because it was not my tribal religion.  My tribe is Mormonism, my rituals are Mormon rituals, my faith language is Mormon-speak, and my family, friends, and tribe members use these symbols, rituals, and language to communicate and share eternal principles important to me and that go beyond words.  They are "true" for me, and in embracing them, and being an active part of my Mormon community, I can find life.

There is no such thing as "one true church" for all tribes.  There is definitely a "true church" for *my* tribe, and in that sense, I embrace Mormonism without regrets whatsoever.  Yet, the fact that it is my tribe doesn't mean that I need to accept it as normatively imperative for me, and especially not for anyone else in the world.  I need to own my Mormonism, to not only embrace it, but be the type of member of the type of church in which I want to have faith.

As for whether I'm right or wrong when I die?  I see little risk in that.  If I'm right, cool.  If I'm wrong and the're some other god out there, I am pretty sure that a more enlightened mind out there will appreciate a thoughtful faith more so than a blind one.  And if I'm wrong and there is nothing else, I pretty sure I'll never figure that out...

A Radical Rethinking of Religion

On occasion, I moderate online groups supporting those who stuggle with religion and faith. My point of view is that faith within a faith community is a "good thing", because when I tried the alternative in my sojourns to India, I really missed the communitarian aspect of Church and religion.  Maybe I was just brought up that way.

But I think another element is involved.  Religion, with all of its dogma and ritual, have a place in the community, if for nothing else but to fulfill a deep human need to be connected one to another.  Good religions foster this sense of community, and the best of religions tend to serve the needs of members and others through service.  This can represent the very best in humanity.

When I felt most isolated on my personal faith journey, I came to a conclusion that something inside me, very primal, needs the connection with others -- needs a place to call my "home".  For me, this is the LDS church, because that is the faith of my fathers (mothers, family, etc.).  As well, I have had deep spiritual experiences binding me to that faith in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Yet my sojourns through other faith traditions has given me a deep respect that as much as I self-identify as Mormon or LDS, I deeply respect that others, too, have an exclusive sense of connection to their respective faiths.  I share a lot with a colleague in Ireland who is a devout Catholic, and like me, conducts music in his congregation on occasion.  His family and mine could be identical: five children, deep commitments to family and to community, obviously the same kind of work. 

One weekend, I stayed with him in Dublin, going to a rugby game, participating in Irish folk music until late at night, and on Sunday, working with his folk choir as they prepared for and participated in the Mass.  It was a lot of fun, but also, a contest of egos as to who was in charge.... hard to give up old patterns, I'm afraid.

I had explained to him that once in Montreal, I had participated in Catholic communion, and did not understand how we can be exclusive in our religions as to who participates fully in the ritual.  He was mortified, because such a sacrilege by a non-Catholic is entirely inappropriate.  So, he explained that I could participate in the communion, but not take the host -- by crossing my arms in the form of an X.  During his mass, I did so, and the priest blessed me instead of serving me the host -- it was a remarkably spiritual moment.

There is something about the ritual that speaks to the soul.  Whether it be the Mass, or a Shaivite fire ritual, or the LDS temple, or elsewhere, the ritual stirs something inside -- a unity, a connection, a deep sense of awe.  I have been transported to another realm in hearing the Shema, or the recitation of the Qur'an.  Perhaps there are many paths to the top of Mount Fuji (as the buddhist expression goes), but to me, there is a path I'm on.

Why is (or was) religion necessary?

So what is religion anyway?  In speaking of the term, I'm refering to the organized, cultural construct whereby we worship together.  While individual spirituality and faith are often present in the organized religion, they are distinct, and indeed personal.  Religion serves a distinct purpose, to bind a community together through ritual, common caring, and identity.

I do not believe that any "religion" was and is a god-dictated construct.  I'll go with "inspired", but I also will say that in being 'inspired', some aspects of religion reflect that inspiration, but ALL religion is also a man-made construct, and arose necessarily out of the need for the tribe to survive.

Speaking from an evolutionary point of view, humans are not well equiped to survive as individuals in the wild.  Our evolutionary strength comes not only from our minds, but also our ability to form mutually-protecting groups.  It's evident to me that our rituals went back at least 100,000 years even among the related Neandethals, who dressed their dead with ritual and omens indicating some kind of community beliefs.

I would imagine, or theorize, that rituals helped bring a tribe together.  The unique languages of ritual practice, whether social or otherwise, would help identify a member of the tribe, as opposed to someone whose rituals differed.  A member of the tribe might be trusted, whereas the stranger in the midst would be distrusted.  Such behaviors did not develop because people are inherently racist or bigoted, but rather, the primitive society used these protocols to identify friends/family from foes/foreigners.  Our personal preference to those who speak and look like us, who pray like us, and who act like us is a result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary natural selection -- we are programmed to need the identifying rituals, whether we like them or not.

Today, religion stands at the gate between our tribal identities and our emerging global identities.  In fact, the more we globalize, the more desperate religion is to re-assert tribal identity among the still-faithful in the religion.  Indeed, the vast majority of the world's problems have to do with the assertion of tribal identity as a means of survival over globalization, especially in the presence of perceived scarcity of critical resources.  The global war on terrorism (GWOT), along with its partner, fundamentalist religious terrorism, dominate the world scene and serve to bring down progress and pluralism.

The Tipping Point has Arrived.

So here we are, in a world where religion stands in opposition to progress.  As I mentioned at the beginning, I moderate groups where people struggle with faith and religion.  I have been dablling in this since the 1990s, but during the past year or so, I have never seen more people flooding the gates of leaving religion.  When I was involved in early mormon-focused usenet groups (alt.religion.mormon, soc.religion.mormon), we had a few people join us on occasion -- one or two per month, maybe.  Of course, usenet was not as popular, say, as facebook or other fora (or is it "forums"). 

I've been participating on occasion within the "Disaffected Mormon Undeground" (DAMU - affectionately pronouncd "Damn-You") for the past several years.  My obsession with statistics has led me to observe the numbers of people in and out of those groups, and I have informally tracked these for the past four years.  I have seen steady increases in people involved, but within the past few two years, I can quantitively say that the number of requests for support about my particular religion, the LDS church, has not doubled, but rather, quadrupled.  This week, alone, we admitted 42 people into a facebook group after confirming that they had a legitimate concern abou their church adn were trying to make it work.  This contrasts with 20 maximum last year, and half that the year before -- and we were not nearly as selective in the past. 

And we're the ones trying to help people stay in the church.  The popularity of ex-mormon or really disaffected, "on-one's-way-out" sites is at least four to six times as great as those who wish to stay in.  These are quantifiable statistics based upon membership numbers and increase per week of the sites with various constituencies.

I'm reminded of Malcom Gladwell's book The Tipping Point, where he explains how certain social phenomenon achieve a certain critical mass, and after that "tipping point" a massive change in sentiment occurs.  I do not wish for the tipping point to turn against the good parts of religion -- but I can see the "writing on the wall" at this point.  The availability of information readily available on the internet, the social networking that connects people to each other in lieu of the community across global communities of interest -- spell a massive need for change in traditional religions.

A Radical Rethinking

I'm weird, but you know that.   I love religious ritual.  I love putting incense on the graves of the 47 ronin at Sengakuji.  I truly enjoyed the Mass in Dublin.  I enjoy the ritual of the LDS endowment, as well as the quiet, contemplative moments of communion (or what we call "Sacrament").  I love the traditions of Yom Kippur, where I draw near my family and re-assess where I stand in the book of life.  I have recited the necessary suras as part of islamic prayer.  I have chanted in sanskrit. Yet, I have been disappointed in my own efforts to create my own kind of spirituality -- it would seem to me that I feel most at home within the faith of my fathers and upbringing -- it speaks to me.

I would like to propose a new kind of faith -- a faith where we all recognize and appreciate that we don't know with certainty about the divine, but rather, we celebrate the divine in our rituals and in our daily lives.  I would like to stand, side-by-side, with a mullah, an evangelical, a hasid, and an atheist, and instead of arguing about who is right, find ways where we share our common humanity.  I don't want one world religion, I want as many as necessary to speak to our individual souls.

I would like to celebrate the Jesus Christ who challenged my forefathers' and fore-mothers' Jewish and Christian faith, by asking them who their neighbor was.  I would think that James the brother of Jesus could sit at the same table as Paul's greek converts, and while James might stay kosher in his meals, the converts may have a different view -- yet we are all one body of humanity.

Yes, there are going to be many messages in my religion, polemics of the past, that I'm going to have to discard.  I'm going to have to throw away the idea of "one true church" for everyone, except in the metaphorical sense of a unity across diversity.  I'm going to have to realize that the polemics of my church's past are not worthy of defense, but should indeed be apologized for, rather than a subject of apologetics. 

What I'm suggesting is that each church embrace a larger, interfaith community of acceptance.  Yes, our churches will need to change -- not the ritual, not the practices that are compatible with others.  We need to embrace a universal faith, while living within diverse religious traditions.  Our traditions can enrich us, but it is our faith that must unite us.

I am so much of a fool.