A couple months ago, the Mormon church decided to profile my brother for their “I’m A Mormon” campaign. A camera crew came to his house for an interview; now his profile and testimony are listed on the www.mormon.org website. My brother was thrilled about the opportunity --- he saw the honor as a mark of respect for his status as a member. On the other hand, I find myself feeling very uneasy about the matter.
At this point, I need to clarify. My brother is black. He was born in 1978, the same year that the Mormon church lifted its ban on blacks holding the priesthood. He joined our family when he was two years old. He grew up in a white family, in a predominantly white community, and was indoctrinated into a religion that has an uneasy racial history.
I love my brother. And he is, in every sense of the word, my brother. To give my parents their due, I never heard any indication, any hint that my brother was anything other than a full-fledged member of our family. We grew up together; I was a little girl tagging after her older brother with hero-worship shining in her eyes. Most of my family is very introverted and shy. In contrast, my brother was the life of the party, the person that lit up the room. A Will Smith look-a-like, he was charismatic, with the gift of putting people at ease.
In church, every time I learned about black people being descendants of Cain or being “fence-sitters” during the War in Heaven, my mind would always turn to my brother. These teachings left me confused and uncertain about the compassion of the religion I had been raised in. But even my perspective, infused by the love I had for my brother, was only a second-hand perspective. I can never truly understand the road my brother has had to travel in order to fit the teachings of the Church into his view of the world at large and his place within that world.
My brother never hinted that the teachings or attitudes at church hurt him; I suspect that he was trying to shield his little sister. But over the years I have watched him change from someone who was charismatic and out-going into someone who is obsessed with image and status. He is very much invested in the Mormon Church; he served a mission, married in the temple, and pressured his wife, a very talented biologist, into staying at home to raise their children. He has an over-whelming desire to be seen as the ultimate Mormon.
I hope that this opportunity helps bring my brother the affirmation that he wants. But every-time that I go to the www.mormon.org website or watch the commercials, I don’t see the church that I grew up in. I don’t see any hint of the over-whelming pressure to conform or the ugly white-centric doctrine that I was taught, that is still being taught today. All I see is a church trying to cover up their issues with a slick ad campaign.
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Poor Woman: I hope it doesn't backfire.
Sad to say, sounds to me like your brother is being used as a token, much as Herman Cain was used during the Republican primary, as a way to defuse the charge of racism in the Republican Party aka the New American Independent Party. Trouble is, the party stands convicted in the eyes of every thoughtful American, or at least every American familiar with the deathbed confession of Lee Atwater:
"Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
He doesn't really understand how I can claim to love God when I haven't been to church in years, but all I can do is keep loving him.
I'm sorry there's a wall between you and your brother - that's got to hurt so much. I'll pray for a better understanding between you. That kind of love is too important to let go of, even when it hurts.
K Halleron: Thank you so much for your kind words.
Congratulations on your EP!
Lezlie
I think much of our perception is the individuals we meet and it seems your family is warm and loving like my friendly neighbors. I wonder if that makes it harder to deal with the inner conflict that you and your brother must feel. I'm fairly certain the kids of my Baptist neighbor are not going to have any inner conflict in leaving their parent's church.
My grandfather, Coptic Orthodox, disowned his daughter and never spoke to her again for converting to Catholicism to become a nun, which to me seems crazy. Religion certainly takes it's toll on families, I hope yours can stay close and loving.
I feel blessed that my daughters spend K-4 in a public school where white skin wasn't the majority. They've grown up thinking less about skin color than I did. They are in private university prep school now and have friends of every skin tone, religion, country of origin. We are lucky.
ame: It is hard to believe that mindset existed in 1978. And from what I hear, there was a pretty significant faction within the Church that was quite upset when the priesthood ban was lifted. When I have children, I hope that they grow up being exposed to all mindsets. Which they should be, given that I am an American with a Mormon family and my husband is an Indian with a Hindu family.
Susan: The truth is indeed outrageous. :-)
I also hope your brother soon realizes that family is everything and reaches out to you across the stupid chasm.
Congrats on the EP.
@L -- I just can't believe when adult women convert to Mormonism. Its so overtly discriminatory towards women (women can never get to the highest level of heaven simply because they are women!).
But that's like the Catholic church, where my roots are. Despite all the propaganda, the people aren't really the church.
This line in your bio says it all for me: Renouncing the teachings of the Mormon Church is called apostasy and considered to be the worst sin that a person can commit. That's a dead giveaway that the church has replaced God with the church.
Of all the goofy belief systems there are around the world, the "Latter Day Saints" thing is the goofiest of them all. And Christianity, as presently practiced, isn't far behind.
Faith: Belief in the absence of evidence.
How otherwise rational people can literally suspend reason has mystified me for years.
Show me the plates!
nerd cred: thanks for commenting. And you're right, the people and the doctrine can be very different, it's important to differentiate the two.
Flylooper: Their timing is pretty convenient. And their approach isn't exactly representative of Mormonism as a whole.
Myriad --- it is pretty oog-ey. And sad; I wish I could tell my brother that it doesn't have to be this way but he is very defensive when it comes to religion.
So far, to this day, the most compelling portion of any of them is the New Testament related to Jesus. I feel for you and your brother and the rift of being an apostate. Be satisfied in knowing that Jesus and the Apostles were literally apostates of Judaism. Martin Luther was an apostate of Catholicism. Mohammed was an apostate of Islam. You are in good company.
Is your brother being used by the Church? You bet. I cannot believe he doesn't know this, at least somewhere in the back of his mind. This amounts to tacit willingness to accept that and also take advantage of it to the best of his ability. That makes it a quid pro quo exchange.
Irrespective of someone's faith, there can be no doubt that the filters we each of us wear sometimes blinds us to the intelligences that fit behind our masks. I have met some really great people who's only foible (from my filtered point of view) is that they are Catholics, Baptists, Protestant, Lutheran, Muslim or Jews. In turn they have been kind enough to reflect that they think I'm a great guy who's only failing is that I have no religion of any kind.
It works for me. It works for them. I'm willing to bet that, at least for now, it works for your brother. Of course, I also feel that if anyone has any ability to question their faith to any degree, they will have to wrestle with the conundrums of their religion as compared to the world around them. If they are satisfied with how they see things, then why upset their apple cart?
I hope that you and your brother can manage to somehow reconcile your apostolic position and still agree that family trumps religion every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
--r--
dunniteowl: Thanks for the compliment; I like thinking that as an apostate I am in good company. :-) I hope that the Church works for my brother but I have a very good hunch that it doesn't; the older he gets the more rigid he becomes in his beliefs. And I don't have a good way of reaching out to him, he is still pretty critical of my decision to leave.
Anne: Mormonism is a tough church to break out of. Leaving is one of the most isolating experiences you can go through. Ten years out of the Church and I still struggle sometimes with my family. To give them their due, they have tried very hard to accept my leaving but it has been an uphill battle considering everything the Mormon Church teaches about people who leave.