This is how things used to be: you opened your mouth or you kept it shut. If you spoke up, there were risks. Maybe everyone would shrug and forget about it. Maybe everyone would cluck and think, Oh, there she goes again, and you’d just be the ward eccentric, that one weirdo, beloved but never quite understood or respected. Then there was the other possibility, a very real outcome — that this would be the beginning of the end. You’d be asked to meet privately with the bishop. You’d be told you were on the verge of losing your temple recommend or facing formal discipline if you said such things. You’d be ostracized and cut out of the social machine that is a Mormon ward.
Keeping your mouth shut had its own risks. The loneliness, the doubt, the fear, the worry that you were the only one and nobody understood and what would they think of you if they knew? You could lose your spouse over this, you could lose your family, and so maybe the awful depression that surrounded you was worth it if you could hang onto them.
Whichever way you chose, you almost always went it alone. There was no script to recite, no model to follow; you just made your own way.
But that is not how things are anymore. Now the world of Mormons isn’t just the couple hundred or so people who go to church with you every week. Now there are blogs by and for Mormon feminists. There are Twitter accounts and Facebook groups for people like you. You know you’re not alone. You can have a conversation, share your story, and hear people reply, “Me, too.” Those other people may live in other cities, some might be the lone feminists in their wards just like you are the lone feminist in yours. But now you can work together, bit by bit. You can organize. You can find your best argument, your strongest message, and deliver it together.
At one time, and most recently near the end of the 20th century, Mormonism took a strong stand against those who spoke up about feminism. Women were excommunicated for speaking out, writing articles, and trying to share their message widely. For many of us this seems as though it happened long ago; we were too young to observe it, and our mothers didn’t tell us about it.
Enough time passed that feminism within the church moved from dangerous to merely controversial. Over the last decade, the feminist Mormon movement has grown larger and made itself visible through organized acts of protest. Sometimes they fight against Mormon culture, the ways in which the church tells women they don’t matter and encourages them to conform to an outdated view of femininity and domesticity. Sometimes they fight against doctrine: one group has openly lobbied for women to be ordained as members of the priesthood. As they push harder, the church has begun to push back by once again excommunicating the outspoken — including Kate Kelly, who founded the Ordain Women movement.
The comfort and strength that comes with numbers, with connection, with knowing you are not alone cannot be overstated. Something has changed. It may never change back.
What we teach our little girls turns us into the women we are, and it breeds self-shame and self-blame and the need to always smile and say yes. This is how I was. I hated conflict and I hated rocking the boat. I was learning that not everything is happy, I don’t always have to say yes and smile, and sometimes when we avoid conflict we are overlooking real problems that should be addressed. That’s what finally did me in. –Genna
I am an atheist, liberal, feminist bisexual woman. I am also, technically, a Mormon, though I haven’t attended regularly in over a decade. I grew up in the church. I was baptized at eight years old. I was a Molly Mormon, as we say, the good girl who never broke the rules. I looked just right on the outside, but I never felt comfortable. I attended BYU for seven years and left single, since it turns out most men there weren’t interested in dating a biochemistry major or a law student; there were plenty of other young women who made their expectations clear by majoring in child development.
The more I came into my own, the less I fit the model of what I was expected to be as a Mormon woman. It started with small rebellions against the mostly unspoken rules of Mormon culture. But the culture is secondary to the doctrine, and ultimately it was the doctrine that led to the years of doubt and struggle that ended in my decision to leave the church.
I say I left the church, but there’s leaving and then there’s leaving. I stopped attending. I told my parents I didn’t believe anymore. I drank coffee and alcohol and wore tank tops and let my friends gradually figure it out. But I never removed my name from the official rolls of the church. Every year, when they announce their membership numbers, I am still included. Next year that number will finally be one less.
My husband and I were hoping to wait until our parents died before resigning. Our doing so will break their hearts, but we cannot in good conscience stay on the rolls. –Lynn
The decision to leave isn’t always like mine. I stopped believing in the church’s teachings, but I also stopped believing in God. I didn’t leave for another church or continue to study my scriptures and seek spiritual fulfillment on my own.
The thing that can be so hard to explain is how much many of us continue to love the church, whatever our beliefs. Some do leave vindictive and angry, but others leave only because we feel we must, and the loss is an ache that does not go away. We love the culture we grew up in. We love the rituals that are second nature to us. We love the doctrines and teachings we believe in. But then there are the things we don’t love, the things we can’t believe, the things that are inconsistent with what we feel in our hearts.
When you’re told that a thing is from God, being against it can feel like siding against God. When that happens, there’s a little part of you that you have to turn off. Yes, that was the subject of a rousing musical number in The Book of Mormon musical. But that switch is very real, and its effects are irreversible. Here you are on one side, they tell you, and here is God on the other. Between you might be just a thin line or a wide chasm, but there is something separating you. No matter how much you feel you are right, there is God, standing over there, proving you wrong.
Sometimes you’re not sure where God is. Who’s to say whether God supports this candidate or the other, whether God even cares? But at other times, there’s chapter and verse telling you exactly where God stands, and it’s not with you. You can choose whether to put down the part of yourself that believes something is right, or you can put down the part of yourself that loves God. In this situation, neither feels good.
I’m heartbroken and upset, but I’ve yet to finish my post-secondary degree at BYU, so if I put one toe out of line I could lose years of work and tuition money. My best-case scenario right now is to keep my head down and my trap shut until I can graduate, then let my recommend expire and stop tithing. –Elizabeth
Perhaps from the outside, it seems strange that the tipping point for so many feminists isn’t about feminism at all, or women within the church. But LGBT issues have dominated the church’s agenda for the last ten years, coinciding with Mormon feminists organizing online. The precursor was the Proclamation on the Family, released in the 1990s, distilling the church’s position down to one page: It forbade premarital sex, defined marriage as between a man and a woman, declared gender as “essential,” strongly discouraged divorce and single parenthood, and gave men and women drastically different roles within the family.
Then there was Proposition 8 in 2008, when Mormons were encouraged by their leaders to vocally and openly support and campaign in favor of the measure outlawing marriage equality in California. The church was a quieter but similarly strong force in battles over constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage around the country.
Now there is the new policy on LGBT families, taken from the church handbook, which offers guidance and lays out procedures for bishops and other priesthood leaders. It restricts children being raised by same-sex couples from being baptized at the normal age of eight, receiving the traditional naming and blessing ceremony given to infants, being ordained into the priesthood, or serving a mission. It does allow these children to be baptized and receive other church ordinances after the age of 18, but requires them to leave their household first and “specifically disavow same-gender cohabitation and marriage.”
This policy is not a cultural tradition or a habit. This is a statement from the leaders of the church, the men who have titles as prophets and apostles of God, who receive revelation on behalf of the church. This, we are told, is God. We have been told this before. The church has a history of racist and discriminatory policies — later revised or rescinded as times changed.
Some of us say this new discriminatory policy cannot be God. This is not the God we know, the one we were brought up to worship. Some of us see the problem not with God, but with the church itself.
This is not the church I love. The God I know would never turn innocent children away…and most certainly would not tell them that it was for their own good. And yet, here we are. And that breaks my heart. –Kalani
I’m not sure why the policy change was so important to me because I don’t currently consider myself active in the church, but as soon as I read the policy, I started sobbing. To me, it simply felt like more evidence that the church doesn’t care about or trust people like me. –Kylie
This has been the final straw for so many of us. Those of us who never cared enough to leave officially but now cannot stand the association. Those of us who care deeply about equality and view this as an essential act of protest. We do it because we must. We know who we are. We know what we stand for. We cannot accept this, even from those who say they do it on God’s behalf.
Some of us leave behind our families, our spouses, our parents, our children, our friends, our teachers, our mentors. There is a narrative already created for those we leave behind, no matter what we say: We are not leaving because of integrity or faith or love. It is because we do not trust God’s prophets. We are letting our doubts rule our faith. God’s ways are not man’s ways, and we aren’t strong enough.
You’d think it would be easier to tell your non-Mormon friends about leaving the church, but it’s just painful in a different way. They treat us as if we’ve made the obvious rational decision and finally come to our senses. They don’t understand the pain of the decision, our torn loyalties, the complexities of faith.
This is the biggest and hardest thing we have ever done. The only ones who understand are others like us. So we stick together.
I will most likely resign from my Relief Society Teacher calling, which I love, so I am super sad about it. But I can’t in good conscience teach something that feels so wrong. It is important for me because I want to live a life of integrity, and I want my children to see that sometimes that looks like giving up something you really love because it is hurtful to someone else. I cannot stand idly by and turn a blind eye to the hurt my LGBTQ brothers and sisters are experiencing. I will mourn with those who mourn. –Kalani
It is my heritage and my history and I feel firm in my desire to change it for the better if I can. If they want me to go they must force me out, but I will stay and refuse to let them ignore me or my brothers and sisters who are suffering, regardless of the cause. I will stay and be a safe place/person for those who are afraid. –Sally
There is one other group, the ones who stay. Some still have hope that the church will come around; some still believe enough of the doctrine to find spiritual nourishment; some just want to be there for all the people still to come.
The ones who stay walk a difficult tightrope. They’re still subject to the policies they find abhorrent. They stay in order to speak up — to maybe make a difference for someone else, who may be struggling silently. But they are stuck in the middle, surrounded by the faithful while they doubt. Surrounded by the doubting while they have faith.
It is hard to talk to people about your faith if they don’t share it. When people hear I was brought up Mormon but no longer practice, they think they can safely crack jokes, call it a cult, say it’s ridiculous, and I will join right in. From the outside, it’s easy to call faith ridiculous. It’s easy to compare God to Santa Claus. From the inside, it’s different. Faith is a real thing. A relationship with God is something you can’t easily explain.
Progressive feminists who remain in the church face the difficult task of never being fully accepted anywhere. To be Mormon among non-Mormons is to be an other. To be progressive among Mormons is to be an other. There is no refuge. But they let their faith guide them and make the best choice they can.
I have been teetering for over a year, trying to find a reason to stay in the church. I don’t know if I can anymore. I cannot see that this is what Christ would have done with His church on earth. It hurts my heart and soul to see others marginalized just because they don’t fit the same mold as the majority of the church. All I know now is I believe in Christ and in a Mother-Father God. I believe They love us and want us to be happy. —Kim
Whether you leave or whether you stay, it can seem like an impossible decision to make. It is often difficult and painful and unrewarding, and it is hard to know precisely where to place the blame for all the anguish. For some of us, nothing is solid ground anymore. All we can know is what’s in our hearts, and that is what we try to follow.
The one thing we know, the one thing we all agree on, is that as Mormon feminists we are part of a unique and beautiful sisterhood — one founded on love, equality, and respect. No matter what we decide to do, individually or together, we know who we are, and we know what is right, and that will never change.
Thank you for speaking. This is beautifully, painfully written.
Excellent article. Sending to a friend who may find this highly relevant. Thanks for writing it!
Same. Great, great piece.
I’m one of the ones who’s staying, and I love how you ended with talking about our sisterhood, even though we’re all responding in different ways. I feel it. Just this week, I found the old Daughters of Mormonism podcast on dealing with gender bias in the Book of Mormon, and was so happy to hear someone else’s, “Me, too.”
The stuff of compassion, that’s what it is.
Thank you for this – it expresses many of the feelings I’ve had about leaving evangelical Christianity, a necessity for my own survival once I came out, but always something in my mind wondering what if I had been able to stay.
Love this: “It is hard to talk to people about your faith if they don’t share it. When people hear I was brought up Mormon but no longer practice, they think they can safely crack jokes, call it a cult, say it’s ridiculous, and I will join right in. From the outside, it’s easy to call faith ridiculous. It’s easy to compare God to Santa Claus. From the inside, it’s different. Faith is a real thing. A relationship with God is something you can’t easily explain.”
That’s exactly the paragraph I was going to quote, too!
Thank you for this.
Question: where are the quotes from?
I put out a call for interviews in a Mormon Feminist Facebook Group and interviewed several people via email. Quotes are theirs, last names not included and some pseudonyms used.
Thank you! They are so honest and revealing.
“Progressive feminists who remain in the church face the difficult task of never being fully accepted anywhere.”
I think this is true for a lot of Christian denominations. 🙁
This was a great story, thank you for sharing it.
yes!
This speaks to me very personally. When I stopped believing in God, I told my husband I would stay in the church until our son is 18 (to save my marriage) but I wish I could walk out the door right now and tell them why — because of the systematic exclusion of women in the church, and because of the shoddy, shameful treatment of LGBT brothers and sisters. Every week I sit in relief society and try not to scream. And yet all my friends are there and most of the people are such good people who try so hard. Talk about being torn in half. Thanks for such a thoughtful piece.
i “left” 18ish years ago. i’ve been out longer than i was in. this year is the year i can take it no longer. it’s finally time to formally remove myself. the sadness is unexpected and hard to explain. thank you for this, for giving words to these feelings.
This is so good. “From the outside, it’s easy to call faith ridiculous.” Resigned a few weeks ago, so this is timely and v. accurate.
Thank you so much for this piece. I see a lot of parallels with Orthodox Judaism, but the one thing that I think has held me within my community, as a progressive feminist, is the fact that there’s no Church or Pope or central governing body. It’s very easy to separate faith from faith in typically patriarchal rabbis (for me, anyway), and draw one’s connection directly back to God. And the more feminists that do this, the more the Orthodox rabbinate itself changes, to the point that there are now Orthodox women rabbis (I’m learning to be one).
The bravery and conviction of Mormon feminists is incredibly inspiring to me; I don’t know how I would handle a world of such high stakes as apostles and central doctrine and excommunication. More power to you all, we all have much to learn from you.
Oh, man, I hear that. I love my lil non-denominational church, with our cool lady pastor and our social justice stuff, and it would be really hard for me to be disappointed by and subject to getting BOOTED by leadership. Also, mazel tov on your rabbincal journey, I WILL expect a pitch about it.
heck yes!
There are obviously a lot of differences between the Catholic church and LDS, but I still felt like this really spoke to my experience with Catholicism. Trying to reconcile the central church’s (in my case, the Vatican) horrible stances with my own loyalty to the Church has been really hard but trying to go to other denomination’s services just doesn’t feel right. Thank you for such a wonderful piece.
I still describe leaving the Catholic church as “the worst breakup I ever endured.” This piece really spoke to my experience.
I was about to write something about leaving the Catholic church parallels too! In fact, this piece made me wonder; I haven’t been to church for ages (other than for funerals and weddings), but I was confirmed when I was 12, and have not communicated my lapsed status to the church, nor have I, to my knowledge, been excommunicated. Is there someone I need to call about this?
That I’ve heard of, the Church doesn’t honour people who want to be taken off its registers. Which is really frustrating for a lot of ex-Catholics, to never have that recognized by the Church–it’s never over until THEY say it is.
Yes. This really really spoke to me and how I am struggling with the Catholic church.
Something you hear so much, if you’re a Mormon who has issues with the inequality and judgmental attitudes in the church, is “why don’t you just leave?” You hear it both from devout members who only want their church community filled with the similarly devout and unquestioning, and from non-Mormons who can’t understand why anyone would bother to be part of such an organization.
I did just leave, years ago, and have had no regrets. Not only because of my feminism, but because I just did not believe in the doctrine of the church, on any level. But I am lucky; my family, though mostly devout themselves, is very loving and open-minded; they care more about loving one another than about forcing anyone to conform or get out. Also, I live in an area where my employment and social life don’t depend on the church community. And I still haven’t officially resigned. I probably won’t as long as my parents are still alive.
For some people, especially those in super-Mormon families and communities, the entire social scene revolves around church. Jobs are gotten through referrals from other church members. Leaving the church would mean being an outcast, and maybe outright losing friends and family connections, or maybe being barely tolerated but never really one of them, always subject to snide criticisms and judgment, or possibly having all those people turn you into a missionary project, always hassling you to settle down, conform, and placidly rejoin the fold.
That’s why many people don’t “just leave”. Sure, they could move and start over someplace else, but being on your own without your support system is also very hard. And lots of people embrace some parts of the church, and don’t want to give up the good aspects.
YES. Thank you so much for this post.
As someone looking in on Mormon feminism from the outside, I’ve learned a lot from reading along with Feminist Mormon Housewives for the last several years. I originally picked it up when I was moving to Mississippi because I wanted feminist writing that doesn’t originate from the coasts, that included people of faith reconciling their beliefs with their quotidian communities. For sure, reading the work of Mormon feminists has made me a more compassionate person.
Which is to say: no, seriously, thank you for this post. Thank you for letting us in on your transits in faith and thought. Thank you for letting us listen.
“I originally picked it up when I was moving to Mississippi because I wanted feminist writing that doesn’t originate from the coasts, that included people of faith reconciling their beliefs with their quotidian communities.”
this, yes.
oh good. there’s a dude named mormon_scholar who is attacking people who mention this article on twitter. thanks dude, that’s really convincing me that there isn’t a problem with mormon dudes attacking feminism from an uninformed place
burn them all!
SITS ON HANDS TO REMAIN OFF TWITTER
Holy shit, this is so good. I was raised Mormon, my entire family and most of my friends are still true believing Mormons, but I “left” two years ago. (In quotes because I also haven’t removed my name from the records, as they contact your family when you request your records be removed. Which is just so manipulative and disgusting.) Thank you thank you thank you for this.
If it helps, I had a friend who just sent in her resignation letter, got a confirmation back REALLY fast and no funny business. We suspect that the big increase in letters may mean they’re laying off the crap.
I came down here to say ‘hello, are you me?’ but it seems we are legion. Thank you for this, you captured so many poignant bits so well – there are many facets to the pain of leaving. I am trying to recreate a narrative where nothing is lost, only gained – it is difficult to keep that narrative alive when the paradigm my family etc. live in see me as apostate first, and not as the happy liberated human I feel I am. I hope things can change for all the women who feel called to stay, but I must be honest and say that I also hope the LDS church burns to the ground and that all people within it are freed from suffering.
Ex-Mormon feminist atheist here.
I want to say a thousand things about my feelings of betrayal when I started reading the uglier parts of church history, how lost I felt when my entire worldview crumbled, how awful it is when your friends and loved ones are taught to believe you’ve left the church because you were “too weak to resist temptation.”
I want to confess the terror I felt so many mornings after leaving the church, waking up afraid that I’d never have an eternal marriage, the shock at how few people cared about me once I wasn’t a Good Girl in the eyes of the church any more, and how alone the universe feels when you still feel a deep need to pray, but but don’t yet know how to separate God from all the self-congratulation, spite, and petty social policing that can happen at church…
For me, leaving the LDS was the only possible choice, and my life is much better now. I miss the community, and I’ll NEVER give up my LDS hymnal, but for me, Mormonism was an electric fence; getting through was painful, but there was a whole world of choice and freedom outside.
I like this narrative!
This fits with so much of my own journey. I remember feeling different, alone, and a need to be silent when I was in the church. So much about the church seemed good and it was easy to write off a lot of the sexist parts as just being “culture” instead of “doctrine” (until I went to the temple). And now that I am out of the church, I also feel the pain of telling people that I used to be mormon. It may seem ridiculous, but it WAS the most important part of my life until one and a half years ago. It was my identity, my everything. (I use the word “church” to encompass the idea of God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, mormon doctrine, the scriptures, etc).
But honestly, I’m glad I’m out. I feel more free, happy, and GENUINE. Now, this is the only way that I can live with integrity. So I guess that’s something I kept- I learned integrity from church, and now to have integrity I have left.
I’m an ex-Mormon Feminist. I left when Kate Kelly did. Not because she was excommunicated, but because her excommunication was the final sign that people like me were not wanted. It was the only way forward for me, though I still miss a lot of things. I do feel like there aren’t too many people who understand or are interested in understanding what it’s like to live on the fringes of Mormonism. But I needn’t worry, for The Toast is here, and it has my back even in this. Thank you.
My cousin started the annual Wear Pants to Church day. She got death threats for a while.
Adding my thanks to Jessica for writing this so clearly and thoughtfully, and for compiling LDS women’s voices. As some of you probably know I am among the ranks of those who left, in no small part because of this:
“Keeping your mouth shut had its own risks. The loneliness, the doubt, the fear, the worry that you were the only one and nobody understood and what would they think of you if they knew?”
I have been amazed to watch LDS feminism grow and gain traction in my lifetime. I hope that these movements can bring necessary change to the Church.
“It is hard to talk to people about your faith if they don’t share it. When people hear I was brought up Mormon but no longer practice, they think they can safely crack jokes, call it a cult, say it’s ridiculous, and I will join right in. From the outside, it’s easy to call faith ridiculous. It’s easy to compare God to Santa Claus. From the inside, it’s different. Faith is a real thing. A relationship with God is something you can’t easily explain.”
Perfectly said.
Mormon here, feminist, staying, struggling. Thank you for this. Life is hard. So hard sometimes.
Kind of Catholic bi feminist here and this spoke to me SO MUCH, oh my god, thank you for writing this. The faith and the ritual and the hole that they leave when you try to leave. The central authority you can’t change. The pain of knowing that you can love what hurts you, you can, you can. The people who wonder why you haven’t left yet. The child inside you who just loves and loves and doesn’t understand what’s changed.
Kind of Catholic bi feminist here and this spoke to me SO MUCH, oh my god, thank you for writing this. The faith and the ritual and the hole that they leave when you try to leave. The central authority you can't change. The pain of knowing that you can love what hurts you, you can, you can. The people who wonder why you haven't left yet. The child inside you who just loves and loves and doesn't understand what's changed.
“You’d think it would be easier to tell your non-Mormon friends about leaving the church, but it’s just painful in a different way. They treat us as if we’ve made the obvious rational decision and finally come to our senses. They don’t understand the pain of the decision, our torn loyalties, the complexities of faith.
This is the biggest and hardest thing we have ever done. The only ones who understand are others like us. So we stick together.”
There isn’t a single one of us who have left any church, cult, family, that didn’t feel the same sense of loss. We each hurt in our own individual way, because we leave what we cannot stand, and lose all the rest that kept us there. It’s the biggest, hardest anyone does. If you keep it quiet, it festers, and keeps yo from moving forward. By sharing with others who have experienced loss, you will heal faster.
I still love the smell of incense burning in church, the way people greet you and support you when you arrive, the generosity toward one another, but each and every single religion tells you that you are better than everyone else, just by having been a member of their special group. Their god is mightier and better than the ‘others.’ All religions promote division, separation, and power.
We all belong to the human family. We are here, to welcome you to another kind of life. Don’t stay for the ritual, the fear, the control. If you believe in god, you know that fear is not the way. You will find your ‘tribe’ and a new joy of freedom.
I appreciate you bringing something to my awareness. I hadn’t realized the pain one who has left the church might feel when hearing others mock the church. I haven’t always understood that those who willingly leave feel pain about it. I always assumed they sort of left happily. That was very narrow-minded of me. I’ve felt a lot of pain and grief about the new policy, but I finally came around to seeing why it exists. I may be wrong. I have been before. In any case, as someone who is still actively and devotedly mormon, I feel we have something in common; it sounds like we’re both people who ponder our personal integrity and our place in the universe, and as a fellow “thinker,” I’d happily embrace you and anyone else feeling the pain, even if we come to different conclusions at the end of the day.
That I've heard of, the Church doesn't honour people who want to be taken off its registers. Which is really frustrating for a lot of ex-Catholics, to never have that recognized by the Church–it's never over until THEY say it is.
“But that is not how things are anymore.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Leaving the Mormon church was the best decision I ever made. My single regret was that I didn’t do it years earlier before my poor kids got steeped in dogma. I could never apologize to them enough.
Reading this a little late but so, so timely in my personal struggle with exactly these issues. Thank you for this piece and its empathy and personal heartbreak–I have felt a bit alone among my largely nonreligious group of feminist friends who are otherwise wonderful, but can’t understand why the decision could possibly be so hard, or my reluctance to sever ties completely.
I’ve tried to be passive and removed from the major conflicts for as long as I can, partially because my parents have seen two of their other children leave the church recently and I know that my leaving on top of all of that will just break their heart. It’s hard to express to nonmormons the sheer stakes and the agonizing fear brought about by the concept of an eternal family to those who truly believe in it–even though I don’t believe, the idea of my parents seeing “three empty chairs at the table” is wrenching.
I know its going to come to a head for me very soon, and I’m terrified. I have kept my mouth shut as hard as I can because I know that as soon as someone asks me, I will tell them the truth. I can’t bear to parrot the doctrine anymore even knowing that I don’t believe it, I feel like a liar just by staying silent at all.
It’s time.