Perspectives on the Benefits of Mormonism from Ex-Mormon Trace Woodgrains
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Summary
Tracy Woodgrains joins us to talk about his new article, "Mormonism: What Happens when Cultures Lose Their Religion," and why it's so important to know what happens when a culture loses its religion.
Transcript
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Hi, everybody. I had the best reading experience this week, thanks to our very special guest,
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Tracy Woodgrains. He had actually tweeted on Twitter someone else's article. Someone wrote
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for The Atlantic about what happens when America loses its religion. But Tracy included a 2020
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substack piece that he originally actually posted on. So it was originally a Reddit thread,
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but it's on his substack now. Related to this article, his substack write-up, which you should
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all check out at tracingwoodgrains.com, is called Mormons and Voluntary Organization. And he
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brought up basically this article because it describes the extent to which religious involvement,
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especially in the LDS church, can be very profound and have a profound impact on people
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and communities. So anyway, I read The Atlantic article, whatever, it was meh. It's nothing that
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anyone who watches Basecamp wouldn't be very familiar with. It's all stuff that we're really
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familiar with. What happens when cultures lose their religion? Not great stuff. But man,
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Tracy, your article is great because what you do in it is you detail how different the life of a
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practicing Mormon is vis-a-vis the life of someone just in a general atomized society. So we would love
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to have you on today and discuss it because I think the implications of what you write about here are
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pretty huge. Would you like to know more? Yeah, absolutely. What inspired you to write this,
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by the way? So look, I grew up Mormon and I grew up in this somewhat isolated subculture that is so
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very different to the life of, as you were saying, the standard modern atomized individual.
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And so this was the water that I swam in. This is the air that I breathed. This was just what the
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world was like for me. I was 11 years old before I realized that the majority of the world was not
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Mormon. That is how much of a bubble I was in. And going through that, my whole childhood, going on a
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Mormon mission, so forth, really, it has an impact on whoever goes through that sort of thing. And having
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stepped away from it now, I feel like my job in large part is to paint a picture of what is possible
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within something like that, recognizing the flaws that I saw that caused me to step away, but looking
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and saying, how can the rest of us replicate the positive, powerful elements of this? What are the rest
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of us missing? What have the rest of us forgotten about? And in particular, I feel inclined towards that
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because you see a lot of people who step away from Mormonism, who really understandably feel very burned
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by the whole thing, feel very frustrated that they've given their whole lives to what they feel has been
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based on a lie and so forth, and just get really hostile to it all and feel essentially that there
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is nothing good there, nothing good worth pointing out. And I had a much happier, gentler glide path out
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such that I feel like I am in a much better position than many who have left to look at it and say,
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here is what I see that I did value in it. And here is what is worth taking away.
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So I'd love it if you could just start going into that for our audience. It's probably immediately
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obvious why this is so interesting to us. But one of the things that we always say is that the
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cultural change that's happened in America as it has secularized isn't just that we stopped
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believing in God. That was actually the smaller part of the cultural change. The bigger part of
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the cultural change was all of the changes to the way we interacted with our community and our daily
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behavior patterns. And I think to what you said there, a person who has stepped back from that,
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it is now in a secular world, but can look on it as an outsider can probably better see the contours
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of what is actually unique about it. So I'd love if you could start by just going into what is it
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that your average secular person doesn't understand about the daily life of somebody within one of these
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hard religious communities. Absolutely. So I think that the standard secular view of the standard
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church going life is basically, you do more or less the same things for most of your life, and then you
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go to church on Sunday, and you call it good. And perhaps in some religious communities, it is
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something akin to that. Within Mormonism, it is a much more all-encompassing situation.
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So the day-to-day in the life of a Mormon. First off, it's important to understand that almost every
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clergy member within Mormonism, almost everyone who has any sort of official position in the church
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is a volunteer. It's only up at the top that you start getting actual salaries, actual living stipends,
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what have you, for the global leaders. But everyone on down, so Mitt Romney, for example,
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spent years as what's called a stake president, where for no pay, in addition to his regular job,
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he had the job of overseeing six or seven local congregations, each of which would have a hundred,
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a few hundred members, where he was on some level responsible for the organization and spiritual
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welfare and what have you of all the people in that. Below that, you have bishops who, same thing,
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they have to spend 20 hours a week, however long, in addition to a full-time job on all of this over
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a period of, I'm forgetting the exact number of years, something like eight years, that a bishop
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will stay in that position where one day a regular schmuck working as a computer programmer or a garbage
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collector or what have you will be called into the office and be told, so how would you like to be
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given this volunteer position where you will work 20 hours a week for no pay for the next eight years?
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Come on in. And every person within Mormonism, every adult and most of the youth will have some
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sort of position like this, some sort of calling. I would play the organ in church. Someone will be
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called to teach a Sunday school lesson. Someone will be told, hey, you're going to come up and give a
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talk on Sunday. Someone will be told, hey, you're leading the young men's group. So for example, I had,
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when I was on my mission, I met this professional athlete down in Australia, a rugby player, and he,
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I would go to church and he would be the leader of the young men's church group on Sunday because that is
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So before we go further, there's a few points here I want to elevate because Simone was talking to me about
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this today and just commenting on how emotionally healthy this is because when a lot of people think of
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community, they think of what the community is going to do for them when what they're actually
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probably getting the most benefits from is the burdens the community places on them. And when I
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say burdens, I guess tasks or responsibilities. And that you have a community where it's an individual
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rises in status within the community. They are basically given more unpaid labor and their skill
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within that unpaid labor rises their status further, which likely has pretty positive effects
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on an individual's mental health because the more independent things you are doing within your life
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that you feel are things of value and that you are improving on, the more areas you have to potentially
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succeed. If you're not doing as well at work, at least you're doing well within what you're doing for the
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church or if you're not, and it helps move you forward. And it also allows less time for like
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rumination, which, which likely also has a positive effect. Another thing you noted there that I want
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to elaborate on is you're like, except for the senior people at the church. But as I remember
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from Simone discussing your pieces of me, they, the people who are paid by the church, like the very
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senior people, they don't make like that much money, right? It's like 120 K or something.
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Right. They don't make banks. They, yeah, about 120 K or so, as I recall. So it's not anywhere near what
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someone, uh, at the head of any secular organization, anywhere near that size would be
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making. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd love it if you could talk a bit about, because another thing that she
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was elevating was even at a very young age, like speaking to crowds is something that's expected a
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lot. Yeah. There was one funny tweet that I saw recently where someone was talking about at a Quaker
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ceremony, they went to where at Quaker ceremonies, a lot of them will just be silent until people feel
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moved by the spirit to speak. And so I was like, yeah, at this Quaker ceremony, I went to one guy
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the past couple of weeks has just stood up and given his dune reviews. Mormonism has that about
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once a month. It's called fast Sunday, fast and testimony meeting where they spend that Sunday
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fasting, not eating, not drinking for supposed to be 24 hours. And at church, they'll get up and
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rather than having the regular talks that members of the congregation are delivering, it will just be
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extemporaneous speech from anyone who feels like it going up to the podium and saying whatever they
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feel like. So you'll see adults come up and you'll see kids come up. And usually it's fairly generic.
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I know Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know Jesus Christ is the
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savior, all of these standard Mormon beliefs. And sometimes people go off the rails, but you'll see
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even very small kids like wander up and stand and say all that. And there's a little bit of
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discomfort for me now looking at it and seeing these kids training themselves into these very
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specific patterns of thought from an early age. You can examine that. But very early, they are getting
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this experience going up and seeing a few hundred people in the stands, staring at them and speaking
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to them. And then as they get a little older, as they turn 12, 13, what have you, then usually a couple
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of the, there will be like three to four talks. That is short speeches in the first hour of church on
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Sunday. And usually the first one to two of those, at least in the congregation I was in would be from
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a youth, people 12 to 18. And so from the time you're pretty young, you're again, standing up in
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front of a crowd and giving a scripted five minute speech. And there is something really healthy, I
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think about that sort of environment that immediately is training those skills in people. You have not just
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those speeches and stuff. You have say the young men's group organization, you'll have the adults
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tasked with overseeing it. And you'll have one of the 13 year olds placed in as the president of it.
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And another placed in as his secretary and so forth. And so really early on, all these kids are,
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again, getting experience with these same volunteer positions.
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Yeah. When I find it pretty interesting from a social dynamic, what's happening here is that you're
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having a community of people who differ from society, specifically due to their beliefs and
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practices, affirm those beliefs and practices to each other in a way that like when you are very
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young, because what's being affirmed is the ways in your beliefs that you're different from
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the other, the mainstream society, likely creates much more a feeling of community, not just a skill
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set, which of course can be looked at with malevolent intent by people who choose to look at it
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that way. But one of the things I always note as somebody who, when I grew up, I was around the
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atheist movement and stuff like that is in the atheist movement, specifically the new atheist
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movement. And then the atheist plus movement, a huge portion of the leadership cast of that
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movement was X, which was really interesting to me. It was almost like they were training the
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Mormons something that allowed them to out-compete other ex-religious members in terms of social
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skills or at least like mass media social skills.
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Yeah, I think there's definitely something to that. And one big part of that, I think, is that
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every Mormon man and many Mormon women, virtually every Mormon man, will go on a mission sometime
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between the ages of 18 and 26, usually towards the early end of that. So I went at 18, where they
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spend two years. People hear mission trips and different religions have a lot of different
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approaches to whatever mission trips. Mormon missions are hardcore. They are intensive.
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They are not a time where someone's playing around and having fun and then taking a few
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pictures of them building houses or something. My daily schedule as a missionary, every day
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for two years, pretty much every day, with a few exceptions, looked like this. 6.30am, wake
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up, exercise for half an hour, eat breakfast, do independent study personally of scriptures for one
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hour, do a study of scriptures with my mission companion for another hour, then go out and from
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10am to 9pm with breaks for lunch and dinner, be knocking on doors, talking to people on the street,
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going into people's homes and teaching them, going around just looking for people to teach,
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looking for people to instruct. And this is all you and your companion independently in whatever area
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you're assigned to. And you do that until 9pm. You come home, you plan for half an hour, you have
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maybe an hour of downtime-ish, and then you go to bed. Every day for two years. No movies, no books
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except church books, no music except church music, no TV, internet once a week to write home to family,
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and that's about it for that. Just very structured, restrictive, rigorous.
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And I note for the audience, you have to pay to do all of this. This isn't paid. You are paying to do
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this. And you have to pay for training to do this before doing it.
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Yes and no on the paying for training. You pay a flat sum for the two years, which includes the
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training and then wherever you're sent. Oh, okay. I thought that was separate. So something I,
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an interesting point I have before we go deeper on this is, or I've wondered, because this is what
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I've noticed anecdotally, and maybe you've noticed it, is I've always seen the mission trip as actually
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a huge, I guess I'd say like problem with modern Mormonism is it seems to be the part where most
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people start deconverting is during, like when people question their face, Mormons, at least my
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deconversion stories I've heard, it seems like the majority of the ones I've heard, it was during their
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mission trip. Is that a trend you've noticed as well? Or am I noticing something that's not
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there? It's a good question. I would say that a mission is really a time of focusing very
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intensely on all these spiritual questions and really figuring out where you stand with all of
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it. And because you're spending so much time and so much focus on it, it, wherever someone goes in
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their spiritual journey from that point, like that is going to be a hinge point, no matter what happens
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from there. What I'll say in my own story with it, in my own process, before my mission, I always
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fancied myself a skeptical kid. And so I went in my teenage years and dug into all the apologetics and
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all the counter apologetics, all the responses, all the like intellectual side of things. And at some
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point, I knew I had questions that I couldn't answer, but felt I, that was causing some distance for me
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wasn't really something I wanted to address head on. And wasn't really something that I figured would be
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productive from within the Mormon framework, where within the Mormon framework, it's really
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emphasis. Their emphasis is really on do the basics, focus on spiritual things, see whether this is good
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for you, and then develop your testimony that way. Pray to God and God will tell you that sort of thing.
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And so at some point, after those teenage years, I stepped away from that sort of really intellectual
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process and just decided I'm going to commit myself to this. I'm going to lean in, I'm going to do what
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I'm supposed to do. And God is going to speak to me with all of that. And for me, it was specifically
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on my mission. This is where I'm going to figure everything out. And I would spend 45 minutes a
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night, sometimes kneeling down, begging for some sort of witness from God. I would go around, I would
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be trying to be exactly obedient. I would be doing everything I could possibly be doing within the
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Mormon framework. And if you have two years where you're really trying to do that and really trying
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to figure out, is God speaking to me? Is God guiding this? What's going on? Do I have answers
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to all these things that I'm trying to figure out? That's a long time to think through it and to
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really start settling in on, I don't fully align with this, especially as more complicated things
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started happening towards the end. It really became clear that my differences with it were
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irreconcilable. So that was my path that very much, I was already on my way out. Then I went on my
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mission and knew when I got back from it. I stayed in two years after that, but I knew when I got back
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from it that I just didn't, did not fit within and could not answer the questions I needed to.
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But for others, it's hard to say. I will say that the way it's conceived of, particularly among the
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leadership, is that this will be the time that will really lock people in and really anchor them in,
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anchor their testimonies of the church in, and make them really stalwart and solid moving forward.
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And I, yeah, I agree that it's a hinge point. I don't know that it's necessarily the cause of any
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leaving. That's a good point. Yeah. And that would explain the pattern I'm seeing. So a question I
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have in regards to this, because this is another thesis we have, and you can tell me if this aligns
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with your experience as well or not, is that was in religious communities. The perception is that the
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reason why people deconvert is often by wanting to do the things that aren't allowed in the
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community, when in fact, I think usually it's specific theological questions that they couldn't
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make work. Or like, what was it for you that that was like your key, like pushing out point? And
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how could it have been circumvented by the community?
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Yeah. So there was a Mormon apostle, so one of the 12 global leaders of the church some time ago,
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who gave this speech where he was talking about the great threats to Mormonism. And he appointed out
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feminists, the LGBT movement, and so-called intellectuals. I was a so-called intellectual.
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So what I would say is that Mormonism works really well for people outside of those three
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categories. I didn't think of myself as gay back then. I thought I didn't really recognize my own
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sexuality, didn't consider any of that. And that wasn't really anywhere on my radar. What was on my
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radar was all of these intellectual questions and all these doctrinal questions and just trying to figure
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out where do I stand on these very specific points of history and very specific points of doctrine and
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very specific points of theology. I really liked the commandments structure that I was in. I've
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always valued structure. I've always valued having a framework. And I was able to very convincingly
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persuade myself of this is why all these commandments exist. This is why it makes sense that we don't
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drink alcohol. This is why it makes sense that we go to church on Sundays. This is why it makes sense that
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we pay a 10% tithe. This is why it makes sense that we don't drink caffeine. This is why all of these
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very specific rules make sense. This is the broader metastructure like that I could do. What I couldn't
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do was answer some of the very specific theological questions with it and some of the very specific
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historical questions with it. And the more I tried to dig and the more I tried to answer some of those
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and the more I looked through every part of the framework trying to find the answers for some of
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these things, the more I realized that the answers really just were not there. But that's not quite
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what made me step away from activity. That's what made me realize I couldn't believe in Mormonism.
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But what made me step away from activity in Mormonism specifically, it's well known at this
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point that Mormonism changed its doctrine on whether Black people, whether Black men could get
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the priesthood, that is have the power of God working through them, whatever, within Mormonism in the 1970s.
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What's less well known, so Mormons will internally frame that as, oh, this was just a policy change.
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Yeah. What's less well known is just how deeply that permeated within the doctrine. So there were
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letters that the leadership sent to this sociologist in the 40s who was trying to persuade them God's
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children are equal, this or that, things that they now in modern times espouse. And the Mormon global
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leadership sent this very emphatic letter describing how racial intermarriage had always been wrong since
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the dawn of time, how the races were absolutely not equal and how God had definitely cursed Black
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people, this or that. And just very emphatically that he needed to repent, he needed to get in line
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or he would be in peril. And that's not the sort of thing that modern Mormons really think about.
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That's not the sort of thing that modern Mormons really look at. But what that made me think about,
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what that made me realize is I was really letting what the prophets said control the direction of my
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own thought. And if my thoughts were out of line with what the prophets said, I would work really
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hard to figure out how to align them. And in as much as something wrong crept in, and it was really
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clear to me that was one absolutely wrong per modern Mormonism, absolutely wrong thing that had
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absolutely crept in and had absolutely controlled the minds of members. In as much as anything wrong
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crept in, I would be doing a very good job persuading myself to think that wrong thing or to think that
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I was in the wrong for not thinking that wrong thing. And as soon as that really sunk in for me,
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I felt like I needed to step away. Okay. And was it in part, if I was going to word this a little
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differently, did it bother you that if the church could have been quote unquote wrong about something
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back then, and you're trying so hard to follow all the rules right now that how do you know the rules
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aren't going to change again? Was that sort of it? Yeah. So that played in again, even at that point,
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I didn't think of myself as gay. And honestly, all through that point, I was perfectly okay with the
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church's stance on gay marriage, which was one of those rationalizations that I had. And one of those
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ways that I was justifying the framework to myself, I was like, this all makes sense. And at some point I
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shifted to, if I stepped away from Mormonism, I would start supporting gay people getting married.
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Uh, or, or sorry, if the church changed its stance on gay people, I would support gay people getting
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married. And then I would leave the church is what I thought about it at that time. And then when I
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stepped away from Mormonism, I was like, okay, now my stance has changed. And then after that, I was
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able to have a better space, think about what do I want realized that I was interested in dating men fell
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in love with a man, the rest is history. But the point is that it wasn't any sort of, I am struggling
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with this aspect of the doctrine, I'm struggling with this aspect of the commandments, I wish this part was
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different. I want this part to be different. I need this part to be different. But it was very much
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if the church is wrong on something, it is impacting the way I am thinking about that thing on a very
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fundamental level. And that is a problem. Interesting. So as somebody who wants to become a
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parent, what aspects of these systems are you going to try to incorporate in your own childbearing?
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That's a really good question. I was lucky to have a phenomenal childhood, which a lot of it I do
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attribute to Mormonism, and a lot of it I attribute to my parents. I had loving parents in a stable home
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where, in a neighborhood where I knew all of my neighbors, and we had all sorts of rich community
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activities, all within the context of this church. And quite frankly, that's not directly
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replicable. There is not a structure that I can step into that fills that same role. So in terms of how I'm
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going to bring it into the lives of my kids, I can't just go and say, oh, yeah, you'll go to church
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every Sunday, and you'll go on a mission when you turn this age, and you'll do this, and you'll do
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this, and you'll do this. You have all the structure to hang on. What I do feel obligated to do is, first
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of all, I need to find communities of like-minded people, and I need to find some place to give the
00:23:38.200
kids a sense of community. And I need to find some way to start cobbling together this structure for
00:23:42.820
them. But it is very much a cobbling together structure versus stepping into this pre-existing
00:23:48.780
and really solid structure. Because I don't really see any that is lacking the really major
00:23:58.660
flaws that would keep me away from it. And so I'm basically looking and saying, I see the value of
00:24:04.060
this. I see what this brought into my life. I want to figure out how to replicate this for my kids.
00:24:08.860
I don't think the world as it stands right now is really equipped for that. And so it will be a lot
00:24:13.920
more piecemeal, figure it out. I'd like to follow up on that, though, because there's a community
00:24:20.540
aspect that is really important. But then there's also, I can't get over just how much responsibility
00:24:25.480
is put on people at all ages. And also, the responsibility gets piled on more, the more
00:24:31.540
competent or successful you show yourself to be. So it's just you get more and more of a burden.
00:24:37.320
And it seems to be extremely beneficial. You've left the church, but now you are
00:24:42.300
like doing, you're writing these amazing pieces. You're going through law school. You're going to
00:24:47.620
start a family soon. And you are working on blocked and reported. Like, you just keep it going.
00:24:54.160
Do you have any plans for your kids to give them extra responsibility in life? And how would you
00:25:01.740
structure that? Because it's not exactly, it's not exactly hardship that's being given to people.
00:25:09.040
Yeah, like maybe you can utilize secular institutions to give them or burden them with this responsibility.
00:25:17.620
Yeah, that dovetails with a lot of my thoughts on education. I do think kids are a lot more capable
00:25:22.780
a lot earlier than we often give them credit for. And I would say that my thoughts on that get
00:25:28.380
filtered a lot more through my thoughts in terms of education than they do with my thoughts on
00:25:32.760
Mormonism at this point. And that I think particularly early on, I will be really trying to figure out
00:25:39.980
what is the appropriate level and pace of education for them? What can they handle? What are they going
00:25:45.460
to be able to handle? And yeah, there will be a lot of fairly academic focus with all of that. I do hope
00:25:51.820
to find organizations that they can participate in and get early responsibility in. There's this idea,
00:25:57.700
let kids be kids. And of course you want to let kids be kids, but childhood is very long. There are
00:26:03.180
very many hours in a day. And there is plenty of time, both for kids to enjoy a lot of unstructured play
00:26:10.600
and to take on more serious structure and more serious responsibility. So both with my thoughts
00:26:16.400
on Mormonism and my thoughts on education dovetailing, I think that a lot of it really
00:26:20.000
will come down to, I think there is a lot of productive structure that you want to stick
00:26:24.320
into people's lives. Not so much that it is overwhelming, but enough that it gives them
00:26:28.460
something to build off of something to hang on and something that gives them an idea of just how
00:26:32.300
much they can do. Something that Simone touched on today when she was referring,
00:26:36.880
like talking about your story to me, was that you did the math on how many hours a day you
00:26:41.680
actually spent on religiously dedicated activities growing up. And it was something, what, two hours
00:26:46.180
a day or something, Simone? Yeah, including your mission. And then it was, if you took out your
00:26:50.260
mission, it was still about one hour a day. Yes. And like, when you think about this, how do you think
00:26:59.200
that this is broadly beneficial to people? And if it is, how can you structure it secularly?
00:27:04.900
I think that it could be a lot more beneficial. I think that if you look at the specific activities
00:27:11.820
Mormons are doing, a lot of those specific activities, some of them are good uses of time
00:27:16.560
in a general distant view sense. Some of them, Mormons will go into temples and sit and watch a
00:27:22.620
two hour video, the same video on repeat fairly regularly throughout adulthood and go and do baptisms
00:27:29.880
on behalf of dead people, things like that. And things like that, they have sense and structure
00:27:34.720
within the Mormon theological context. But outside that theological context, it just looks like a lot
00:27:39.140
of very confident people spending a great deal of time on nothing in particular. And I think that
00:27:45.140
if you redirect that same energy towards more explicitly altruistic, more explicitly outward
00:27:52.540
facing ends that lack the same theological context, I do think there's a lot of potential. But you need
00:27:59.360
something to give that energy and something to give that drive towards building those structures.
00:28:03.740
You need the organized structure to do it. You need the organized framework to have permission
00:28:07.820
for people to do it. It's not something that you can just go out and do on your own without the backing
00:28:14.020
of a community and the backing of expectations and the backing of a framework within which to do it.
00:28:19.060
And so I think that's a major task for secular people now is to build that sort of structure.
00:28:23.100
Interesting. Yeah. And something we haven't talked about on this, did you ever do one of those Mormon trips
00:28:26.780
where you try to reenact what the founders, like the first people who moved to Utah, went through?
00:28:35.880
Yeah, pioneer trek. Can you talk to that a little bit?
00:28:38.940
Yeah. So that's a shorter experience. That's just a few days where you get thrown into a
00:28:43.860
quote unquote family. You have your people volunteering as parents and you have the other
00:28:47.880
youth around you who are siblings. And you'll all just drag this handcart together and walk all day
00:28:53.000
long, dragging this handcart and then camp at night and eat what the pioneers ate and share your
00:28:58.600
testimonies of Mormonism and your testimonies of this and that and do it again the next few days.
00:29:02.520
And it's this fairly short, fairly intensive, really spiritually meaningful for the people in
00:29:07.960
it experience that's just basically camping on steroids.
00:29:11.440
Would you do something like that for your kids or do you think it's like too intense?
00:29:15.340
Yeah, it depends on the ritual context. It depends on what the opportunities are. It depends on what
00:29:22.880
the situation is. I think it's hard to invent things like that from scratch. It's hard to just
00:29:27.560
pull something like that from scratch and say, we're going to do this and we're going to make
00:29:30.400
it meaningful. But if there is something that makes sense, if there's something that fits a role
00:29:34.520
like that, I think something like that is help. Yes, I think it's cool.
00:29:38.300
That's really fascinating. Yeah. When you do have kids, we would love, you can reach out to us. We'll be
00:29:43.000
putting together like pseudo religious stuff for our kids to try to recreate some of this
00:29:48.500
technology. And we'd love to give you like our contact when we do it, because the more people
00:29:52.700
we can have our kids around that are like thoughtful and intentional, the more, the larger a community
00:29:57.580
we could build, the more effective these sorts of rituals are. But yeah, I have absolutely loved
00:30:03.320
having you on. And this was really fascinating to learn about. Yeah, we're really big nerds about
00:30:08.680
finding a better way to build culture. Like just going back to the old ways, going back to
00:30:12.900
tradition, we think is not the right solution. You seem to share that sentiment to a great
00:30:16.160
extent. And we're really interested in how can you make it better from a first principle
00:30:20.560
standpoint. So to come across this right up to come across your thoughtful commentary
00:30:24.880
and analysis makes us so excited because it means that you're going to really take a crack
00:30:28.780
at this. And the more people doing this, the better. So thanks for that. And everyone
00:30:32.640
make sure to check out tracingwoodgrains.com and at Tracy Woodgrains on X. He's really
00:30:39.960
awesome. All right. Thank you guys so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
00:30:43.840
Wonderful. All right. I'm going to hit in recording here.