The church I would attend (sometimes)

 Last week’s post might have given someone the wrong idea about my feelings about growing up in the Mormon church. I disliked the services because you had to sit through a talk, but if they had changed a few things with the basic format and removed the proselytizing part from the missions, and some other things, then I would still be attending. 

I’ve compiled a list of proposals for the church leadership:

1. Women given the same priesthood designations and leadership positions as men. No separate Sunday school classes for girls and boys. 

2. Gay marriages recognized as equal to heterosexual unions

3. No tithing, and no more requests for individual members financial data. Voluntary and self-directed donations only. 

4. The donations can be itemized to go toward specified building projects, towards charitable services for the poor, etc

5. No stake presidents. Bishops must be elected by a secret ballot of the ward adults. The quorums will nominate the candidates. Each ward will elect 1 regional representative. The regional representatives will vote on all the general authorities in open ballots. The prime duty of the general authorities will be doctrinal rulings and fundraising. They won’t be running the organization. 

6. The church service will be the sacrament and musical numbers or holiday pageants. Strictly under 30 minutes. Attendance of individual members will not be tracked. 

7. Sunday school may be offered but refreshments are mandatory. The lessons will be optional audiovisual depictions of scripture stories, or an actual scripture study preparatory course for the priesthood exams. That’s right! Everyone becomes a deacon at 12, but advancement depends on passing scripture exams! The priesthood levels will mean something! 

8. The missionary program is humanitarian, no proselytizing at all. The point will be for young people to go out and learn about other people in the world and make friends with them, not to pester them with intrusive door to door telemarketing. And the church funds will go to those humanitarian missions. 

9. Yes to the two and a half minute talks. No sermon or talk can exceed two and a half minutes in any meeting. 

10. The general conference will be videos, and a Mormon video game competition. 

11. Total freedom of speech. The church leaders don’t get to excommunicate people. If someone commits a crime the congregation votes on excommunication. The leadership can put out announcements saying that something is not canon or not doctrinal, but they don’t get to rule on people. 

12. Baptism at 12. 

13. Comic book versions of scripture stories are to be celebrated and openly read

I think that covers it. I would definitely attend that church. Not every week of course, but more often than not. I would particularly welcome the rigorous scripture studies meant to weed out the morons of either sex from the upper priesthood levels

My youth in church part 1

 I don’t write about going to church as a child, because although I remember some specific moments from church services and Sunday school, I don’t think about it very often, and I remember very little on the whole. I could describe a Mormon service to people, maybe in dreary detail, and I could describe the sometimes annoying way Mormons talk at church, but I don’t recall many specific or meaningful instances from particular service or meeting because to be honest these memories blend together in their blandness and uniformity and the painful sense of wasted time, but I do remember that there were many non-remembered times sitting on the benches with my family or with the other deacons or the teachers and not paying any attention whatsoever to whatever the speakers at the pulpit said but daydreaming relentlessly about the girls my age in the congregation or maybe a science fiction book I’d read the previous day. 

Later I’d moved from science fiction to Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov and by the time I’d turned 16 and become a priest (a Mormon priest, ages 16-18) I had not learned to drive and did not wish to go on a Mormon mission but I kept going to church in order to see my friends and some of the girls. 

Truthfully, I enjoyed church a little more after I stopped believing, because I knew I could completely ignore the sermons or talks and I wouldn’t go to hell. I could think whatever I wanted and didn’t have to worry about the creator of the universe reading my mind and getting pissed off at all my sex dreams. 

But eventually I got tired of it. 

Now I never go unless it’s a funeral.  But although I don’t believe in a human-like creator, and I don’t believe in any of the miracles of the Bible or anything at all in the Book of Mormon, my youthful church experiences did imprint my mind with most of the Mormon values. I believe that even when religious people talk about believing in a religion, they actually mean the values of that religion, and not the miracle stories. And values means the value of people. When someone lists the “values” that are important to them, they really mean “people-judging-criteria.”  A person says; “We value chastity,” but they really mean “We assess people based on their chasteness.”  Or “we believe the creator of the universe assesses people based upon their chasteness, and we believe this because we read about it in the Bible which is the ultimate authority on how god evaluates humans.”  If you think of yourself as chaste, this is a very comforting thought. 

I still have a Mormon youth inside me, instinctively judging myself and other based on the nonsense I learned in Sunday school. But I have to admit that without the validation of the miracle stories, those judgements no longer carry much weight