My Disaffection Part 2- I find out how the sausage was made.

     For those of you following along, you will remember that my last post, I shared the story of my discovering the world of Atheism and how I was enlightened by the top figures in this area, Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris. 
     The introduction to critical and logical study of religious claims let quite naturally to looking at the religion I had spent the last 19 years grumbling through because it was important to my darling wife.  Now I was essentially cheating on her with another way of thinking.  I was faced with a crisis of personal integrity.  I knew that I didn't believe in the church anymore.  It would be pretty hard for me to have believed in it less.  I had to be honest with myself and with her, and I had to stop all this philosophical philandering.  The big question was:

How do you tell your LDS wife that you might be an Atheist?

      I started googling variations on the following:  "Atheist married to Mormon"   I was looking for a way to maintain my marriage in the light of my rapidly dying (it was never very healthy) testimony. 
     That is how I found Mormon Expression podcast (you can find it Here).  I found a group of Mormons of varying degrees of disbelief, from angry ex-Mormons who had officially resigned, to the infuriating yet admirable TBM (True Believer Mormon) Mike Tannehill.   John Larson and his lovely wife Zilpha have, over the course of several years and over 200 episodes, explored Mormonism from nearly every angle with the help of a cast of wonderful friends and dozens of notable experts.  These were amazing.  Here I found others who felt and thought as I did.  This was not a group of outsiders spreading 'anti' propaganda, these were people who grew up in, served missions for, were married in the temples of and believed in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (COJCOLDS).  Now they were coming out and sharing the view from the inside and the problems they found that led them to conclude that everything they once believed was a lie.  When I wasn't reading, I was listening to these podcasts.  My MP3 player had the option to play podcasts at a slightly faster speed, and I flew through episode after episode as they informed, amused and amazed me with their earnest, chipmunk voices. 

      I could go on and on about them and recommend about 100 episodes, which have helped me along my way.  But for now, just a few all time faves that will give you a good intro:

175-top-10-reasons-to-stay-in-the-church     176-top-10-reasons-to-leave-the-church  These two present the challenge that faces someone who loses their belief.  The humor  and frank discussion blend well to present a well thought out case.

94-mixed-feelings-for-mormonism  Things to love and hate about the church.  John's rant is epic.

89a-14-fundamentals-following-prophet-for-dummies-part-1   89b-14-fundamentals-part-2  These emphasized the pervasive feeling that we should all just shut up and pray pay and obey.

76-mistakes-were-made-how-not-to-leave-the-church   I heard stories of others who were faced with the prospect of telling their beloved spouse that they no longer believed. I learned from the advice they shared along with the mistakes they made along the way.  I was advised to take this transition slowly, be respectful and show her that I still love her and I am not a different person. I found that overloading my wife with all my issues and the things I found would be a big mistake.

These and many others opened my eyes to a panorama of historical and doctrinal conundrums that were part and parcel of the LDS religion.  They also led to more books and more questions.  Those books led to other books, and more questions and still more books and more questions. 
     You see, in the last 19 years I haven't really given two shits about the church.  I didn't care about Joseph Smith, Nephi, Brigham Young, Korihor, or Hugh Nibley.  I never paid any attention to General conference or read the Ensign.  I just sat through the damn meetings because I had to.  I believed it was pretty much all bullshit anyway, so why waste another second outside of those boring damn meetings?  But now,  I became pretty obsessed with understanding how the so-called 'true church' had failed me some completely and yet sunk its tentacles in nearly every area of my life.  It was fascinating.  It was like a car wreck; you can't help but look at all the gore and destruction. So in addition to listening to ME podcasts whenever I could, I was reading more books, books that I was still hiding from my wife. 

One of the first that I read was John Krakauer's
 Under the Banner of Heaven  
 Krakauer tells the story of the Lafferty Brothers and their brutal murder of their sister in-law, Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old baby girl Erica.  Ron and Dan Lafferty were extreme fundamentalist Mormons, and to tell their story, Krakauer had to tell the story of the Mormon Church and other fundamentalist splinter groups from the beginning.   It all began with Joseph Smith.  Krakauer does a good job weaving the story of Laffertys  and their fanatical brethren with an honest outsider's view of Mormonism and it's questionable and sometimes violent past.  He makes some mistakes, and this is by no means a scholarly historical treatment of Mormonism, but it damn well has a lot of information that your standard, tithe paying members probably don't know.  It made me want to know more.

     This led to wanting to know more about that old Primary story they always told us when we were forced to attend Primary.  Thinking back to those quaint songs- "Mountain Meadows Massacre my teacher tells to me are about the Brighamites and the Fancher One-Twent-EE."  Oh, wait, they never told us anything about Mountain Meadows in Primary ever!  I heard all about the handcart pioneers and Haun's Mill, but I never heard this anywhere in church.

     My local Library claims to have Juanita Brooks' classic "Mountain-Meadows-Massacre"    -Amazon but I'm still on the waiting list.  So I went with the next best thing, Will Bagley's
  "Blood of the Prophets" -Amazon  Here I had a historian and scholar of the overland migration explaining how a group of emigrants were slaughtered in cold blood while crossing through the Mormon territory.  This book I read in plain view.  I considered it "safe" to let my wife know I was reading.  It was to be my first breadcrumb on the trail out of the shadows and into the open.  I discussed this book with my family and did my best to present a fair and semi objective summary.  I walked the line between "Brigham Young had them 'Used up' and essentially condoned if not tacitly ordered those people to be slaughtered," and "It was a big misunderstanding and those mean, old lamanites did a terrible thing and made the church look bad."  You can see how well I concealed my personal bias in the matter.  This bit of church history fills me with revulsion and flat out pisses me off.  (Yes I know about Mormons being persecuted, and that is terrible as well, but this was not only a brutal act of religious intolerance or persecution.  This was cold blooded murder compounded by deception, collusion and conspiracy.  The glimpse of the character of Brigham Young (beloved prophet) is just the tip of the iceberg of evil, crazy shit that came from the church's 2nd President.  I have yet to delve too much deeper into studying him. 

     While I was openly reading Bagley at home, in secret I had been pouring through Grant Palmer's

 "An Insiders View Mormon Origins' -Amazon Palmer is not some outside mountain climber/crime writer or cowboy historian, he is a "three-time director of LDS Institutes of Religion in California and Utah, a former instructor at the Church College of New Zealand, and an LDS seminary teacher at two Utah locations. He has been active in the Mormon History Association and on the board of directors of the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association."  -Amazon About the Author.  If you are going to read one of the books I have read, this is the one I would most strongly recommend.  This book is the most informative and most thought-provoking book about the church I have ever read.  I've read it twice, I have traveled hundreds of miles to attend a book club and discuss this book.  I have listened to several interviews and podcasts with Grant Palmer.  Go Read It.

   By this point, the wheels had come off the belief bus completely and I was just trying to find the right time and the right way to talk to my wife.  I had dropped a few more crumbs, slipping little nuggets into the conversations  here and there about the church's misogyny, polygamy and religion in general.

     One of Palmer's main sources was the amazing 1945 biography by Fawn M. Brodie.

 "No Man Knows My History"   -Amazon  A niece of future president David O. McKay Brodie was excommunicated in 1946, a year after the publication of this book that non-Mormon critics praise for its literary style, and thorough  research, and called  a "definitive biography."  It is the big bad biography that all good members know is just anti propaganda and lies.  As you may have guessed, this too, was hidden in my car. 

     I read The Nauvoo Expositor -pdf   and skimmed through The Journal of Discourses -pdf

     I decided to take the open road and got the more 'faith promoting' biography by Richard Bushman,

  "Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling" -Amazon  Bushman presents basically the same view of Joseph Smith that Brodie does, with a more apologetic, and less negative slant. He is still a temple attending member and I believe  a Patriarch. So, this book is also sold at Deseret Book, the official Church bookstore.  I could read this in the open.  Hell, I even read it in church.  I found it to be a bit too apologetic and almost seemed like the abused wife trying to sugar coat what an asshole her brute of a husband is.  I eventually gave up and finished "No Man Knows My History." 

     I also displayed this little church sanctioned gem.
  "The Journal of Joseph" -Amazon  Just a quick note on this one.  Boring and a waste of my time, this was my trusty bathroom reading material.  sitting openly on the back of the toilet for all to see.
 
     I read the biographies of  Porter Rockwell,  Wild Bill Hickman, and John D. Lee in the open as well.  Those were some old-timey cowboy Mormon Bad-asses!


     Next came the "Serious Historian", D Michael Quinn.  The end notes of his books are longer than a lot of books others write.  He is one of the famous "September Six," a group of BYU professors and academics who were excommunicated as a part of an "Intellectual Purge."  I got this:
"Early Mormonism and the Magic World View" -Amazon  and one of his Mormon Hierarchy books, big, dry and containing over 400 pages of notes, these books are a hard slog to get through.  Dreary as I found this as a read, it also was every bit the scholarly look at all that wackiness that was part of Joseph Smith's treasure seeking and 'peep stone' adventures.

     Of course, if you know anything about Mormon history, you know about Polygamy.    From Joseph Smith's revelation as contained in the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 132, came one of the most controversial LDS  tenets, that of polygamy.  I soon found that what the church refers today as a minor thing from the past, that has no bearing on today's church was a deep, dark secret that was just as tawdry and appalling as outsiders thought it was.  I next read Todd Compton's

"In Sacred Loneliness' -Amazon and found out all about the at least 34 women Joseph Smith 'Celestially Married" behind Emma Smith (the only wife you ever hear about in church media).  I learned of his marriages to 11 teenage girls, one of whom was 14, only a year older than my own daughter. I also learned a new term, Polyandry, and how the Prophet told some of his male followers that they had to let him marry their wives, or sent them on missions and then swooped in with a 'revelation' that God wanted these women to marry Joseph.  A brief overview of these women can me found here.  From Kirtland to Nauvoo, Joseph Smith cut quite a swath through the women of the early church. 



     I saw behind the curtain at last, and the emperor was butt-assed nekkid!  Not only was the church not what it claimed to be, it had purposely set out to ignore, and at times, actively conceal historical facts they found were not "faith promoting."

      I've barely scratched the surface here, I haven't mentioned  The First Vision, Kirtland banking scandal, Joseph's bid for President, The Book of Abraham, The Kinderhook Plates, the Greek Psalter, The Anton Letter,  DNA evidence, Lack of Archaeological proof of the Book of Mormon's claims, and that Soylent Green is people! 

     That's just the early historical problems, we barely touched Brigham Young and his boat load of crazy.  There is and the Racism, the Marc Hoffman "Salamander Letter" and bombing scandal, Boyd K Packer's homophobic rants, City Creek Mall  and  Prop 8.  This fish is rotten from the head on down, and I'm still giving 10% of my income to these assholes.
     I had to talk with my wife; I had to come clean about my philosophical problems with the Church.  I needed to pick my moment carefully, leave a few more crumbs and eventually when the time was right, I would tell her.


Next Time, Forget the trail of crumbs, here’s the whole damn loaf of bread!