The weeks that followed are now a blur to me. I lived in my own personal hell. My little brother, in middle school at the time, had been vocally proud of me and my mission to his peers. Upon my return, he had to explain to his friends why I was back home. My little sister wasn’t quite old enough to understand the gravity of the situation, but she provided the kind of unconditional comfort and love that only a little girl can. My parents didn’t know what to do with me other than to make sure that I was fed and going to church. I met with all of my local church leaders and begged them to let me return, assuring them that I had repented and was ready to serve God. They had known and loved me for years. Believing my sin to be an uncharacteristic mistake, they told me that if I continued to repent, they could consider sending me back in as soon as three months.
Three months. It seemed an age away, but at the same time, I had been warned that it could take up to a year. If I could last for three months, then I could get away from the shame. Soon, I realized that if I truly wanted to be able to return and serve in earnest, I needed to be able to accept the Endowment ceremony as part of my spirituality and faith. I began carefully investigating the temple, asking leaders and friends for Church books and other material on the subject. There wasn’t much — members are prohibited from talking about the ceremony outside of the temple. I was also quite hesitant to turn to the internet for information since I knew that I would be bombarded with anti-Mormon propaganda.
Mormons actively revile materials that are critical of the Church. Labeled “anti-Mormon,” simply “anti,” or “spiritual pornography,” they’re believed to be the tools of Satan as he attempts to destroy the faith of the members. Since the Church is of God, anything that attacks, criticizes, or otherwise discourages it must be from Satan. It is entirely inconceivable to most Mormons that someone could have a legitimate concern or grievance with the Church or its doctrines.
Mormons believe that because their faith is the fullness of truth, if people leave, it is because there is something wrong with them — perhaps they were too prideful or too weak to abstain from sin, for example. It’s fairly common that Mormons who had painful experiences within it leave the Church and become disdainful of it, thereafter saying or publishing negative things. These attacks are taken as proof that they actually know in their soul that the Church is true and have to constantly and stubbornly reinforce their rebellion against their God-given nature: “They can leave the Church, but they can’t leave it alone” is an oft-repeated phrase.
I had always imagined “anti” to be metaphorically covered in a black tar that would crawl up my arm and taint my soul if I were to ever touch it, so my research on the internet began only by browsing official Church websites. Turning up nothing, I began to look at the blogs and websites of Mormon apologists. They had some interesting content, particularly on the connection between Mormonism and Freemasonry, but that only served to pique my interest rather than satiate it. At some point in my investigation, I got an e-mail from a cousin in California. I knew that he was in a questioning phase with the Church, and he had heard that I had had difficulty with the Endowment ceremony. He referred me to a particular website run by an active member called MormonStories.org and told me that he would love to talk to me if I had any questions or if I just wanted to talk. It was comforting to know that someone in my family might understand what I was going through. I went to the site cautiously and found a video called “Why People Leave the Church.” I plugged in some headphones and hit play.
It began with John Dehlin, the man behind the website, introducing himself, his background, and his intentions. He said that he was an active LDS member and wanted to help bring understanding and compassion to those who were struggling with the faith. As the presentation continued, he brought up a number of things that I had never heard before. I had known that, at some point, black people had not been allowed to hold the position of priesthood or go to the temple, but I did not know that the ban hadn’t been lifted until 1979. I had known that polygamy had been common for a phase in early Church history, but I didn’t know all of the facts about Joseph Smith: he had 33 wives in total, some of whom already had husbands, the youngest being a 14-year-old. The room began to spin, and I felt dizzy and weak. I paused the presentation and walked away. It was the same feeling I had had in the temple — the feeling that there was a completely different side to the Church that I hadn’t known about, a dark side that had been hidden from me for nearly 20 years. After taking a brief walk around the block, I returned and finished the presentation. I don’t think I read a single thing for days afterward.
After I finally resumed investigating online, I began to discover an entire segment of the Mormon population that I hadn’t known about before — the “fringe” Mormons. Their stories were usually similar to mine — faithful members who chanced upon something that shocked them about the history of the Church, began researching, and found a hoard of facts that didn’t match the official teachings. Some left, but some stayed active in the Church, though their beliefs morphed into very non-traditional forms. Prior to the internet, they stayed connected through two key magazines/discussion groups known as Dialogue and Sunstone. Afterward frequently known as “Sunstone Mormons,” they supported each other, often in secret to avoid repercussions, as they struggled to cope with life within the Church. The internet has allowed them to connect more directly through sites such as MormonStories.org, the Further Light & Knowledge forum, and NewOrderMormon.org.
The Church, especially in the past 50 years, has worked hard to establish a firm doctrine. The Correlation Committee, a group of Apostles, decides the message and works to keep the Church consistent on that message. For example, this Sunday, every Mormon 10-year-old in the U.S. will hear the same Sunday school lesson. Faithful Mormons will only teach and learn about their faith from correlated materials. Thus, mainstream Mormons are commonly known in “fringe” circles as “Correlated Mormons,” “Chapel Mormons,” or “TBMs” — True Blue or Believing Mormons.
Compelled as I was to fully unearth the hidden trove of knowledge I had chanced upon, I was finding it difficult to study online. With the computer quite intentionally placed in a highly trafficked area of the house, I was afraid that my parents might find out what I was reading. I decided to try the local library. They had several non-correlated histories of the Church, which I checked out immediately. I poured through the pages as fast as I could in the remaining daylight in the library parking lot and drove home, leaving the books in the car.
A day or two later, my parents spotted the books — one of them being The God Makers by the infamous anti-Mormon Ed Decker. “I will not have that sort of material in my home,” my dad told me. “It brings a spirit of blackness with it. I don’t want it anywhere near here. I won’t allow it on my property — including the car.”
I was furious. So alien and disruptive were the facts I was discovering about my faith, I might as well have discovered secret documents proving that the Founding Fathers were actually lizard-people in disguise — and here was my dad, seizing the classified documents and placing me in an information quarantine. I immediately began drawing up an escape plan from my perceived intellectual prison.