Leaving The Saints

“They say that religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, and spirituality is for people who’ve been there. If you’re in the second category, this book is dedicated to you...

"I know the Church is true. I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. I know our president is God’s prophet on the earth. I know these things beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Mormons tend to know a whopping lot of stuff beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I envy them. My whole life is shadowed by doubt. The only conviction I embrace absolutely is this: whatever I believe, I may be wrong. For a moment, looking at the stern pioneer conviction on my father’s handsome face, I’m so disoriented that I feel my brain twirling even faster—not in agreement but in familiar hopelessness, in the sickening conviction that no one will ever take my word over his.

Everything seems to slither right off the hard drive in my head. He’s right: People underestimate the capacity of things to disappear. At the moment, I can’t even remember the chain of events that took me out of Mormonism, that have made me “a hiss and a byword” not only to my father, not only to my family, but to an entire religion.

Then I remember Miranda and Diane, just a few feet away, and my vision seems to clear. The whole thing comes back to me, the journey that has taken me out of religion and into faith. I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I’ve gained. I wouldn’t give up the journey, not a moment of it.

On the other hand, I have no desire to live it again. If Santayana is right, this means I must be willing to remember the whole story. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and force myself to go back to the beginning..."

-- Martha Beck, Leaving the Saints How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith