Building Zion: the controversial plan for a Mormon-inspired city in Vermont

A Mormon businessman is buying up land to build master-planned towns from scratch, inspired by church founder Joseph Smith’s idea for a ‘plat of Zion’ – so why does the church oppose it?


How the Mormons are planning a city for 500,000 in Florida


The Guardian
Claire Provost in Sharon, Vermont
January 31, 2017

The roads through rural Vermont wind past rolling forested hills and quaint small towns, including South Royalton – used as the quintessential New England village in the opening sequence of the TV series Gilmore Girls.

A short drive away, the Tunbridge World’s Fair has run almost continuously since 1867, with games, contests for best pig or pumpkin, and displays of old-time printing presses and candle making.

And not far from there, one stop on the area’s low-key tourist trail dotted with maple syrup farms, pottery workshops and picturesque covered bridges, is the birthplace of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church.

The site now hosts a museum, run by the church and staffed by cheerful missionaries. Outside, a giant granite obelisk rises towards the sky. Calming music flows from speakers located high up in the trees. It is a peaceful place, designed to inspire reflection.

But, over the last year, it has also found itself at the centre of a controversy. In front of many houses and shops, signs exclaim: “Save our communities. Stop NewVistas.”

NewVistas is the name of an unusual, indeed, one-of-a-kind project led by a Mormon businessman named David Hall to build new, master-planned towns from scratch – inspired by notes written by Joseph Smith himself in 1833.

Hall says these designs, which described how ideal Mormon settlements should be laid out and were drafted almost 200 years ago, offer answers to modern-day challenges of sustainable living. And to make it happen, he has been buying land – lots of it.

The first goal is to build a NewVista community near Smith’s birthplace in Vermont, which would be home to about 20,000 people. The next step: to build more. Ultimately, Hall’s vision describes a new “city” of connected communities, with a total population of up to one million.

The fantastic story first came to light last spring, thanks to the careful eye and diligent research of a librarian in the small town of Sharon, who uncovered a series of local land purchases that she traced to the businessman and his plans.

Reflecting on that time, Nicole Antal, 30, says she’d found it all hard to believe – particularly the scale.

“This is very big for Vermont,” she says. “Burlington is 40,000 people. Montpellier, the state capital, is 7,000. This is not one guy buying a house and trying something new.”

To date, the NewVistas project is thought to have purchased as many as 1,500 acres in central Vermont – with plans to buy much more. It’s focused on a largely rural area at the intersection of four tiny towns – Royalton, Sharon, Stafford and Tunbridge – which have a combined population of just 6,400.

Nor is the project just buying up vacant lots. It appears to be purchasing whatever it can. Antal says a few properties sold to NewVistas were second homes. But so far acquisitions have been fragmented parcels.

Antal first blogged about the land purchases in March 2016, setting off a flurry of articles in the local media. Soon Bloomberg Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal picked up the story, revelling in its unusual characters, audacious vision and local controversy.

Residents in Vermont, meanwhile, had started to organise in opposition.

“This threat is like nothing we’ve ever seen or could have conjured up ourselves,” says one long-term local resident Jane Huppe, 58, describing it as a “top-down venture” that doesn’t fit with the area’s own ideas for how it should develop.

“It hit us like a ton of bricks,” she adds. Antal agrees, and says it could completely overwhelm existing communities. “Why does he not bring this to where they need massive amounts of housing, instead of disrupting the rural countryside?”

Building Zion

Joseph Smith left central Vermont as a child with his family, moving to rural New York, where he later founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But despite his rural upbringing, Smith outlined a vision for new and compact settlements that would go on to influence the planning of hundreds of American towns.

“This farm boy ... dreamed to build a metropolis that rivalled the large seaport cities he had only heard about,” writes the academic Benjamin Park, in a 2013 paper.

In the 1830s, Smith laid out a detailed plan called the “plat of Zion”. It described new towns, designed to be self-sufficient, ordered by rigid grids, and surrounded by farmland and wilderness.

The plan included ideal sizes of streets, blocks and lots. Roads should be straight and oriented to the points of a compass. Homes, built in uniform stone or brick, should sit within deep individual lots, with front yards and back gardens.

Significantly, the plan lacked designated areas for government buildings and town halls, as well as for markets or commercial districts. Instead, central blocks would be set aside for temples and community buildings.

Once fully occupied, with 15-20,000 inhabitants, the settlement would not be expanded. Instead, others would be built, to “fill up the world in these last days”.

This wasn’t a theoretical plan. Smith hoped to build a new town like this – in Missouri, specifically. In 1831, he said that Independence, in Jackson County, had been revealed as “the land of promise and the place for the City of Zion”.

Unlike other new religious movements in America at the time, which were “warning congregants of the evils rooted in urban cities”, Smith believed that “cities were not to be fled, but sacralised,” writes Park. This reflected key Mormon principles that “focused on establishing a righteous civilisation ... rather than individuals.

“[Zion] was literally the ‘centre place’ for a new civilisation destined to expand as God’s people multiplied. Gathering and city building were not incidental parts of sanctification, but the goal.”

In the summer of 1833, Smith and other church leaders met in Kirtland, Ohio, and drew up specific blueprints for a city of Zion, including designs for specific buildings. Smith sent these to church members in Missouri, who were to“purchase this whole region of country, as soon as time will permit”.

It didn’t happen; early Mormon settlers were driven out of Missouri. And in 1844, Smith was killed, before his city plan could be realised.

His designs survived, however, and were later used as a blueprint for as many as 500 communities in the American West. In the 1990s, the American Planning Association went so far as to recognise the plat of Zion documents for their historical significance and influence.

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Most famously, church leader Brigham Young drew on the plat for the design of Salt Lake City, which was established by Mormon settlers in 1847. The city’s core still reflects this: it features wide streets, oriented north-south, and mammoth blocks focusing on Temple Square, where a church museum also holds the original plat of Zion documents.

The concept of Zion remains key to the Mormon faith. The church explains that it represents the “pure in heart”, but also “a place where the pure in heart live”. It says: “In the latter days a city named Zion will be built [in Missouri] ... to which the tribes of Israel will gather.” In the meantime, members “are counselled to build up Zion wherever they are living”.

Salt Lake City itself was also, of course, heavily influenced by broader trends in American life, such as the completion of the transnational railroad in the 19th century, which brought new visitors and migrants, and later by car culture and sprawl.

In December 2016, a popular architecture and design podcast noted that the city’s design means that addresses “can read like sets of coordinates. ‘300 South 2100 East’, for example, means three blocks south and 21 blocks east of Temple Square.” But, it said, “the most striking thing about Salt Lake’s grid is the scale”:

The streets are so menacing and crossings so long that the city has placed plastic buckets on lampposts which hold flags that pedestrians can carry to the other side while crossing. In present-day Salt Lake City, it’s hard to get around without a car.”

Nevertheless, some experts argue that the plat of Zion was a precursor to intelligent urban planning – and leaves a legacy that could help tackle haphazard developments today.

The NewVistas project

This is of little comfort for those Vermont residents who oppose NewVistas. The Mormon church, too, is apparently displeased: they don’t support the plan.

David Hall, the businessman behind the contemporary and controversial NewVistas project, lives in Provo, Utah. His background is in big energy: he reportedly made his fortune selling sophisticated drilling tools to the oil and gas industry.

In an interview with the Guardian, he says Smith’s city plans remain remarkably relevant for today’s challenges.

“The plat describes a very low footprint, 20,000 people on only three square miles. Everything else was supposed to be wilderness. It’s telling us not to sprawl, which is what we do, we even go into the mountains,” Hall says. “It really makes sense for our time.”

The project’s website says it follows the plat laid out by Smith and that its architectural plans are also “based on the same sizing specifications for early Mormon temples, which were designed to fulfil multiple functions”.

But, Hall says, the goal is to develop “secular, sustainable communities” taking advantage of modern technology, including food production techniques that make it possible for people to live in ever-smaller spaces. It is envisaged for Mormons and non-Mormons alike.

The NewVistas Foundation argues: “Sustainable living in the modern world requires high density urban development,” pointing out that sprawl consumes too much energy and other resources, not just in urban areas but rural as well.

It presents a detailed, wide-ranging plan, including specific designs for three-storey “standard buildings” with apartments, businesses, and some farming and manufacturing, all located in one place.

More futuristic ideas include internal walls and floors that could be moved by robotic systems, so that families could live in small spaces that are easily rearranged. Outside, “walkway-podway” systems (something like elevated sidewalks and an underground tube network) would operate on multiple levels to transport people and goods. New toilets would monitor users’ health.

Not unlike Smith’s original vision, the foundation says the goal is “massive scalability”, so that these communities can be “replicated to encompass all of the earth’s billions of people”. It calls itself nothing less than a new “urban model and economic system for the 21st century”.

Each complete “NewVista” would have as many as one million people, but be composed of 50 similar and carefully designed communities, each with a population of 15,000 to 25,000 and “the capacity to be self-sufficient with respect to basic needs”.

There are also unusual proposals for how these places will be run: “organised according to a private capitalistic economic structure. The community is not a political entity but a productive enterprise, like a company town.”

There is even a suggestion that a NewVista Community Corporation would have control over things like “land use, transportation, and community environment, which are usually matters of government concern”.

Hall predicts that the first NewVistas community could require as much as $3bn (£2.3bn) to build, expecting 20% to come from the first residents and the bulk from other investors – with nothing from the church.

“NewVistas is my own modern interpretation of Joseph Smith’s community documents and I have not ever discussed the ideas with the church and won’t involve them in the future.”

Vermont strikes back

“We didn’t waste any time when this came up,” says Michael Sacca, 61, director of the Alliance for Vermont Communities, a new non-profit organisation formed by local residents in opposition to Hall’s plans – and any other similar large-scale developments in future.

Sitting on the porch outside the house he and his wife built themselves 15 years ago, with the sun setting below the hills around him, he says: “We want to protect our future and our children’s future and the region ... we want to maintain our lifestyle and our communities.”

The NewVistas plans simply don’t fit into local, regional or state visions of how Vermont should develop, Sacca argues, which instead aim to “concentrate development as much as possible in village centres, town centres, leaving rural areas for rural life”.

Sacca also describes the corporate structure envisaged for NewVistas as “Orwellian” and as an experiment designed to “stand on its own as an insulated corporate town”.

Opposition to the project, which would transform the area, has been vibrant and vocal. Sign and stickers are visible on the streets of central Vermont, and petitions are calling for discussion at town meetings in March.

The Alliance is also tracking land purchases. By their count, NewVistas has already acquired an estimated 1,200-1,500 acres of land – with purchases continuing despite the controversy.

The Mormon church is itself, a significant land and real estate developer, with farms, ranches, residential and commercial properties across the US. In Florida, a church-owned property is now set to become the site of a new “city” for as many as half a million people by 2080.

However, it does not seem to be too happy about the NewVistas project either.

In August 2016, a church spokesman said: “This is a private venture and is not associated with The Church ... [which] makes no judgment about the scientific, environmental or social merits of the proposed developments. However, for a variety of reasons, we are not in favour of the proposal.”

The NewVistas website explains that “the community layout” envisaged “follows a city plot pattern created by Joseph Smith in June of 1833”. But it also carries an “Important Note” stating that its model “is not presented as a fulfilment of Joseph Smith’s vision. It is not supported or endorsed by the Church”.

The church in Salt Lake City did not respond to requests for comment or further elaboration of its position.

In Vermont, some of the project’s opponents hope they can use Act 250 – the state’s premier land use law – to stop it. This law was enacted decades ago after new highways and ski resorts lured investors into the state. It requires that developers comply with regional plans, as a way to manage growth and protect the environment.

Hall acknowledges his project has been controversial and many people are against it. But he says he’s drawn to Vermont in particular because of its connection to Joseph Smith, because land is relatively cheap, and because there is too much of what he calls “rural sprawl”.

“There’s lots of rules that keep you from building things, so Vermonters would eventually have to approve it – but not right away,” Hall adds, stressing that nothing is happening overnight and it would take decades to realise his plan.

He says technical components must first be worked out, and he needs to “consolidate land”, which can take generations because “we’ve had this trend of subdividing and sprawl, so the reverse process will take a long time”. The project, he argues, “is very unique, but I have a hard time getting people to really look at it and study it.”

Meanwhile, land is also being bought in his home town of Provo, Utah, where NewVistas is again facing local opposition. Professor emeritus at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School, Warner Woodworth, who lives in Provo, described it as a “takeover”.

“To have someone with money and power enter our area and gradually buy up homes, offering distorted purchase power to grab residences, is troubling. It shakes the peace and violates the sense of continuity and mutual care for one another,” Woodworth wrote in September, arguing that Hall’s plans are also a “far cry from the original” plat of Zion idea:

Hall’s system is corporatist, while Joseph’s was more communal. Hall wants to establish a top-down power structure, whereas Joseph envisioned a bottom-up community of common consent. Hall seeks to control. Joseph sought to liberate. The early Zion plat consisted of large family yards and agriculture. In contrast, Hall plans for tiny urban apartments of 200 square feet in a bare, boring apartment.”

But, he suggested: “It may have been more achievable and acceptable if he had engaged more participants from the beginning. While one may disagree with some of his ideas, it’s the process he uses that becomes the fatal step.”

As for Antal, who first discovered Hall’s project, she is concerned about the impact on her family.

“There are some good ideas [in the NewVistas project] ... Polluting less, creating local agriculture. But I don’t think it applies to Vermont. I think Vermont is doing a pretty good job at being sustainable,” she says. “I don’t like that this is being imposed on us.”

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jan/31/building-zion-controversial-plan-mormon-inspired-city-vermont

The Supreme Court probably won't approve polygamy. Here's why.

KEVIN JONES

IN: NATION

September 23, 2016

 

Washington D.C., Sep 22, 2016 CNA/EWTN News.- A polygamous family featured on a reality TV show has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a law intended to combat polygamy, but one attorney doubts their case will prevail.

“Here, the proposed constitutional right to plural marriage is on a potential collision course with the preexisting constitutional and statutory rights of women and children,” Matthew Kacsmaryk, deputy general counsel at First Liberty legal group, told CNA Sept. 20.

Kacsmaryk said the plaintiffs may have difficulty prevailing against arguments that polygamy causes social harm. If the Supreme Court takes the case, it may still cite available data on sexual exploitation and physical abuse in polygamous communities to find a rational basis for Utah’s law.

Kody Brown and his four wives, featured on the television show “Sister Wives,” last week filed an appeal to the Supreme Court challenging the Utah law, which bars cohabitation with other partners when the man is legally married to just one woman. 

An appellate court in April ruled that the Browns cannot sue because they were not charged under the law. That ruling overturned a lower court that said the law violated their right to privacy and religious freedom.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied a request to reconsider the case, resulting in an appeal to the high court.

Jonathan Turley, the attorney for the family, explained the appeal.

“This has been an extended and difficult struggle for the Brown family but they have never wavered in their commitment to defending the important principles of religious freedom in this case,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “Utah is a state that was founded by courageous citizens seeking these very protections from government abuse and religious inequality. This lawsuit is true to the original dream of those seeking freedom in Utah.”

But Kacsmaryk suggested that the already well-established constitutional and statutory rights of women and children would stand against the argument for religious freedom in the case.

Brown is legally married to one wife and claims “spiritual marriage” to his other wives. The family now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. They said they fled their home in Lehi, Utah in 2011 because local authorities opened an investigation after their television show debuted in 2010.

The investigation was closed without charges but the family said they can still face prosecution.

Kacsmaryk served as assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas when it prosecuted polygamists from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose claim that they were practicing the free exercise of religion was rejected in court.

He said that constitutional rights “are often balanced against other constitutional rights to achieve something like an Aristotelian ‘golden mean’.”

Kacsmaryk said it is unsurprising that the plaintiffs would invoke arguments made in recent Supreme Court precedents mandating that all states recognize “gay marriage” and strike down morals legislation on the grounds of “radical self-definition” and self-actualization.

In his view, the court has never explained an adequate principle limiting its standard of consenting adults to simply two people.

At the same time, the Brown plaintiffs cannot make any constitutional arguments unless the Supreme Court agrees to hear their case.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, colloquially known as Mormons, renounced the practice of polygamy in 1890, though splinter groups still practice plural marriage. U.S. anti-polygamy laws have been upheld in several Supreme Court decisions.

 

http://www.thebostonpilot.com/article.asp?ID=177518

 

The Ghost Children of Mormon Country

CHADWICK MOORE
Advocate
APRIL 29 2016

Ryannah Quigley grew up in a modest home in Kaysville, Utah, with 22 siblings. Her father was a bishop, the head of a congregation, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The family was staunchly Mormon.

By age 7, Quigley — who was assigned male at birth — began to wear women’s clothing, at times taking down the curtains to make dresses. On many occasions, her parents attempted to quash the problem — as they saw it — but to little avail. Worried that this behavior not only would induce their other children into perversion, but might hinder the entire family’s chances of meeting God in the hereafter, the Quigleys relinquished custody of their child to the state foster care system, where she bounced around from foster homes to treatment centers to hospitals around the state. 

At 15, Quigley was living at the Mill Creek Youth Center, in Ogden, where over the next 18 months she would be raped four times by four different men residing at the state custody facility. When she nearly became victim to a fifth rape, Quigley fought back and injured the assailant. The police were called. Although Quigley had acted in self-defense, she was arrested for assault. Standing before an orthodox Mormon judge, she was tried as an adult with a fourth-degree felony and sentenced to two years at the Weber County Jail, where she would be placed in solitary confinement (called “protective custody,” due to her gender identity), raped an additional 11 times, and assaulted many more times, once ending up in the hospital to get 27 stitches after being stabbed. She attempted suicide by hanging and was in a coma for three days. 

In Utah, the covert theocracy behind policy-making, the insular and unquestioning faith of Mormon families, and vague, often contradictory statements and actions from LDS church leadership combine to form a unique and particularly dire crisis for LGBT and gender-nonconforming kids. There are, by most estimates, 5,000 kids experiencing homelessness in Utah at any given time. Roughly 42 percent of them identify as LGBT, and most come from Mormon households. This means, of the 450,000 people in Utah between the ages of 15 and 24, a projected 22,000 to 35,000 of them will experience homelessness at some point, according to data provided by outreach workers. 

The LDS church has a well-documented anti-LGBT agenda. By 2008, it had funneled more than $20 million to support Proposition 8, California’s anti–marriage-equality initiative. The church had been aggressively battling same-sex marriage since 1994 (when it stepped into Hawaii’s court battle), but as the national tide turned to favor marriage equality, church leadership appeared to back off. The faithful lawmakers in Utah, however, did not. 

In early 2015, attempting to bridge the gap between so-called religious freedom and LGBT rights, Utah’s governor, Gary Herbert, a Mormon, with the support of the LDS church and the ACLU, signed an antidiscrimination bill into law, referred to as the “Utah compromise,” that protects LGBT citizens in housing and employment. It was soon revealed that the law had provisions that would not fly in other states or under federal law, allowing religious groups and religiously affiliated nonprofits — such as schools and hospitals — to be exempt from the antidiscrimination laws protecting LGBT people, just as they are exempt from many women’s equal rights laws. LGBT people are also not protected in Utah from discrimination in public accommodations like restaurants, hotels, or restrooms.  

Following the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision last year, Utah lawmakers pushed at least three bills through the legislature that targeted the rights of LGBT people, all sponsored by Representative LaVar Christensen, a member of the LDS church. Another bill which was presented earlier that year but did not become law, would have given heterosexual couples preferential treatment over gay couples when adopting children. 

Then, on November 5, 2015, in response to the Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage nationwide, the church leadership secretly issued an edict to the leaders of its 30,000 congregations worldwide. The order instructed them that children being raised in same-sex headed households cannot be blessed, baptized, or ordained, nor can they serve as missionaries — regardless of that child’s sexual orientation or gender identity — and that church members in “same-gender” relationships — married or unmarried — are apostates subject to excommunication. The policy, which was issued as an update to a confidential handbook, was leaked to the press. There were mass resignations by former church members partial to the gay rights cause or embarrassed by the punish-the-child policy. Within a month of the policy being made public, suicides of LGBT kids in Utah reportedly soared to 32 deaths in a span of four weeks — a figure that would typically have accounted for half the yearly average for the state. 

The number-one cause of death for people under the age of 24 in Utah is suicide. Nationally, Utah ranks among the top five states for youth suicides, and by some estimates it has the highest rate of LGBT youth suicides in the country. 

Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen, a United Church of Christ minister who acts as a liaison between LGBT youth and the Mormon church, is heading a state-funded suicide-prevention program. She used to run a youth center in Ogden that served about 700 individuals a month. 

“Every single youth I spoke to had a friend or acquaintance who died of suicide. And over 60 percent had attempted suicide themselves,” she tells The Advocate. “The culture of the church has to change. It’s a culture of fear. It’s a culture where if you break the ranks, you can be shunned. There’s a real disconnect between the leaders of the church that I deal with — who say, ‘We tell families to not throw their children out, we tell families to love your children no matter what’ — and the rank-and-file members and the bishops who say, ‘You need to kick your child out if they don’t straighten up.’”

Edmonds-Allen also says there’s a rampant culture of homespun reparative or "ex-gay" therapy, of Mormon parents isolating their children and trying their own brands of pray-the-gay-away.

“The approach here is, ‘We are going to scare you straight.’ They don’t have the sort of mental-health access here as they do in other places where I’ve lived. [Families] just refer to their bishops,” she says. 

Activists say the November 5 policy may have caused a spike in homeless numbers as well. In the entire state, there is one LGBT youth homeless shelter, in Ogden, 40 miles north of Salt Lake City. And it has a mere 14 beds.

“There are more services for animals in this state than there are for homeless youth,” one activist says. Because many kids fear entering the foster care system, which is dominated by orthodox Mormon homes — similar to the ones many youth have fled — these homeless kids in Utah have established roving tent cities in the parks and canyons outside Salt Lake City and Provo, 45 miles to the south, and elsewhere.    

For the runaways living in these canyons and riverbeds — they call it being “off-grid” — it is perhaps the best of many bad options. The shelter system, like in many cities, is saturated with drugs, alcohol, violence, and prostitution. Mormon children grow up notoriously sheltered and naive and are particularly ill-prepared for life on the streets, outreach workers say. Scores of them become funneled into the sex trade and trafficked out of state. Outreach activists say nearly 100 percent of unaccompanied youth in Utah are approached by sex traffickers within the first 48 hours of hitting the streets, and many of them are shipped off to major cities on the East Coast. 

The LDS church entered mainstream politics in the 1970s; the church’s massive lobbying effort was one of the reasons for the demise of the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1993, LDS apostle Boyd Packer, who was second in line for the presidency of the church, proclaimed that the three greatest threats to Mormonism were the gay rights movement, the feminist movement, and intellectuals. The church’s attitude toward LGBT people has not improved. 

Openly supporting gay rights is an excommunicable offense; excommunication means the loss of a place to worship, and also the loss of one’s entire culture, community, and often family. As many told this publication, the tightly knit nature of Mormon communities is wonderful and supportive — until it turns brutal. 

Starting in 1989, the LDS church referred gay members to a Salt Lake City–based nonprofit called Evergreen, a reparative therapy program that attempted to diminish same-sex attraction through widely discredited, borderline-abusive therapy techniques. In January 2014, fearing potential litigation as governments cracked down on such programs, Evergreen disbanded and reformed as North Star. Literature, personal essays, and confessional videos found on North Star’s website, which has a separate resource section for youths, encourage gay Mormons to enter into opposite-sex marriages and continue onto the heteronormative family path. Same-sex attractions are not a sin, North Star reassures, but acting on them is a very different story. 

On whether to tell parents and bishops about same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, the literature is discouragingly vague, telling young people to pray on it and come to their own conclusions. It goes without saying that there are zero referrals outside of family or church recommended to young people through North Star, and kids are also told they may experience a backlash from the gay community if they don’t dive headfirst into the gay lifestyle. 

Berta Marquez was born in Guatemala. Her parents were members of the LDS church, which deploys a massive proselytizing effort in Central and South America. Mormons believe the native inhabitants of the Americas are descended from the tribes of Israel, that they arrived here on a boat, and that they need to be brought back to their ancestral faith. 

Marquez’s religious upbringing differed from the Mormonism most people imagine. She says many Hispanic Mormons grow up with a variegated religion that is more similar to socialism than it is to the neo-con, pro-capitalist, American-exceptionalism version of Utah Mormonism (see: Mitt Romney). Though Utah is the uber-Mormon environment, many Mormons across the United States, and around the world, often raise their eyebrows at what happens in Utah, she says.

When she went to Brigham Young University, the Mormon-owned and operated private university in Provo, in 2005, she was shocked by the ultraconservative atmosphere. 

“It’s a very heavy courtship culture. You’re expected to seek out marriage as a part of the plan of salvation,” she says, sitting in her living room in a small town near Provo. 

The pressures on family members and congregations to keep one another in line is intense, cultish, and debilitating for anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. Before she came out as gay, Marquez had a very specific suicide plan to make it look like a hiking accident, to avoid casting shame on her loved ones. 

“It can be a beautiful way to grow up. You are cradled in this culture where there is a network of support and a whole community is rooting for you,” Marquez says. “As an LDS kid, you’re raised to want a family very acutely. From the time you are tiny, you learn about being [married] in the temple. At BYU, all of your friends are dating actively, all seeking out their eternal companion, and you’re raised to want that, to want companionship.

“There’s a lot of shame, secrecy, and terror if you have an LGBT child. ‘My child no longer fits this narrative; what’s going to happen to us? We’re not going to be together forever.’ It’s not necessarily spite or malice, but parents are not prepared with the skill sets for inclusive thinking,” she says. 

Since the November policy, Marquez and her wife Cathy, a fellow Mormon who is also a survivor of the Columbine High School massacre, stopped going to church. 

In Mormonism, there is a mantra that goes something like, “When the prophet has spoken, the thinking is done.” The prophet, or the president of the church, is believed to have a direct line of communication with God. 

“You’re expected to fall in line,” Marquez says. “So you never have to examine if what you’re doing is ethically correct.” 

Slight rain washes through City Creek Canyon just outside downtown Salt Lake City as I make my way off the tidy jogging path and up the muddy and wooded eastern slope. The Utah State Capitol building looms marbled and elephantine atop the opposing western ridge, nearly casting a shadow on this landscape littered with hundreds of sleeping bags nestled between the trees. For any kids who might still be living here, they would be gone during daylight hours to avoid drawing attention to themselves, or risk having the police confiscate or destroy their few belongings. Some trees have been rudimentarily hacked down and bushes twisted into makeshift shelters, and there are backpacks and scant belongings hidden among the rocks. I come across one sleeping bag with dozens of discarded snail shells surrounding it, as though someone had been eating them. Along another site, with three makeshift beds, someone had adorned a leafless tree in several pairs of ballet slippers tied at the laces and looped over the branches. It is a virtual city unto itself here. Alongside a brook, there’s a scrubby pine tree with tattered silver garland and a few Christmas ornaments still clinging to it. Yesterday was Easter, and next to one sleeping bag I find a pink plastic egg, where inside, the words “Love yourself enough to love all beings” are scribbled on a scrap of paper.

Before the November 5 policy was made public, the LDS church made a donation of an undisclosed amount of money to the Utah Pride Center, a Salt Lake City LGBT nonprofit. It was reported that the money was meant for homeless youth services. It seemed to be a strange, almost guilty gesture. Or perhaps it was meant to buy influence and suppress discontent. According to multiple sources with intimate knowledge of the Pride Center who wished to remain anonymous, the nonprofit routinely, almost as policy, turns away homeless youth who enter its doors, whether they’re seeking a shower, a meal, social services, a respite from the elements, or just someone to talk to.

Once upon a time weekly breakfasts were held there to feed homeless LGBT youth, some days attracting more than 50 kids, but as the Pride Center came under new leadership, the breakfasts stopped. One of the most popular programs at the Pride Center was free HIV testing provided by the state health department. This year, that service stopped as well. 

“They continue to solicit and accept donations for homeless youth services and they’ve discontinued services for homeless youth. They turn youth away,” one source said. “Kids come in there, and maybe they smell and maybe they’re dirty and the Pride Center doesn’t want that image, so they kick them out,” another source said. The Pride Center was unable to be reached for comment. 

Cai Noble spent her entire 20s being homeless in Utah. She’s since helped found Operation Shine America, a youth homelessness advocacy group, after she walked across the United States a few years ago to visit homeless camps and raise awareness. She grew up in a trailer in Cheyenne, Wyo. Her mother was married 12 times, and Noble lived through persistent trauma and abuse. After ending up in the hospital, at age 14, she was put into foster care and sent to live with a Mormon family in Utah. Her adoptive father was a bishop. She went from failing her classes to getting straight A’s in school, but as she began to express her queer identity, her adoptive siblings abused her, physically and verbally. When she came out to her adoptive father, he, naive but well-intentioned, plunged himself into learning everything he could about the Mormon church’s beliefs on homosexuality. 

“He came home with a stack of books,” Noble says. “He says, ‘You’ve been hurt. All you’ve known is brutality. You’ve been sexually abused, so of course you’re gay.’ What he found in the literature was that gay men are pedophiles and sex addicts and beyond salvation. But for women, it appears they’re merely sick and they can be cured.” 

Noble and I drive to an encampment site along the Jordan River outside Salt Lake City that looks to have been recently cleared by law enforcement. In a clearing, a mound of belongings appears to have been bulldozed to the center, but some settlements remain, many of them impressive structures built from plywood and tree limbs. Some even have doors. Some are dug into the muddy slopes along the river, like pueblo homes. There’s evidence of children being reared here: diapers and bibs and cans of formula are littered about. 

When Noble left home, after being expelled from a homeless shelter in suburban Sandy, Utah, she was approached by a sex trafficker. “The predators go out and look for certain kinds of kids. They know exactly what they’re looking for,” she says. She ended up in the guy’s car, almost robotically, and as he drove her out of town, the car overheated; when he pulled over, she snapped to and fled. 

“The Mormon ones don’t have the street smarts, and they are more trusting. They get sold and shipped all over the country. They just disappear,” Marian Edmonds-Allen says. 

Laurin Crosson runs a safe house in Utah, called Rockstarr Ministries, for the victims of sex trafficking. She was trafficked for 20 years and says the average age of children who are picked up by pimps on the street is 13; they end up in the “West Coast circuit” — Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland — and many of them will be murdered before they reach 21.  

“We have this horrific culture of throwing away kids here in Utah,” she says. “These pimps are waiting for these people. They are exactly what they are looking for. They don’t care about your sexuality or your gender identity. You’re flesh, and you’ll bring in a paycheck of about $150,000–200,000 a year.”  

It was many years into Crosson’s forced prostitution before she heard the terms “human trafficking” or “sex trafficking,” and she sees the situation in Utah as clandestine and grim. For those kids who may be on the verge of homelessness, because of Utah’s conservative policies, people like her are forbidden to address public-school students about human trafficking.

“The church is the state here,” she says. “In Provo, there’s even an image of the Mormon temple on the metal badges that police officers wear. What else do I need to say?”

http://www.advocate.com/current-issue/2016/4/29/ghost-children-mormon-country

Op-ed: What I have learned as I transition from my faith

Julienna Viegas-Haws
Salt Lake Tribune
May 03 2016

Julienna Viegas-Haws.

I grew up and spent the majority of my life as a dedicated member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2014, as I learned more about damaging historical facts that the LDS leadership deliberately excluded from instructional manuals and as I learned more in depth about the LDS Church's unfair treatment of women, blacks and LGBTQ members in the name of godly inspiration, I lost faith that such an organization could truly be led by God.

A faith transition can be very difficult and painful, often resulting in loss of identity, community, friendships and alienation from loved ones at times. Going through such a transition taught me a great deal about myself, those who genuinely care, my place in the complex world we live in and the fact that I can be spiritual without being religious. Here are 10 things I've learned while transitioning away from the faith of my childhood:

1. When the prophet speaks the thinking is NOT done because he could be wrong as many have been in the past and present time.

2. To properly develop mentally and spiritually, I must follow my own conscience whether it is in opposition to the leaders or not. (Mormons are taught from a young age to always follow the prophet no matter what.)

3. Using my feelings (feeling the "spirit") to determine what is true or not is a very subjective and incomplete measurement of truth.

4. Beliefs/revelations/speculations do not equal knowledge. They are what they are: beliefs, revelations, speculations and not perfect knowledge. (Mormons love using the phrase "I know" when expressing their beliefs.)

5. I jumped off the "cliff" I was told my entire life to stay away from and I discovered I had wings. I started soaring and the view from where I stand is magnificent as I discover tastes and colors I never knew existed.

6. Fear, shame and guilt no longer determine my actions. The threat of eternal damnation is lost on me. I believe we create our own heaven or hell right here on earth and, if there is an afterlife, whatever we created will follow us.

7 . I am neither "special" nor "chosen" like I was told all along growing up. I am just like everyone else, trying to make sense of this unfair yet beautiful world we live in.

8. Until the LDS leadership openly and publicly apologizes for the hurt they have caused to women, Blacks and LGBTQ members, I can no longer take the leaders seriously. Not only sincere apologies are needed but reparative actions such as diversifying the leadership should also take place.

9. I can no longer accept the double standards I see at every corner of the Mormon doctrines and the actions of leaders and members such as, "We love everyone but we pick and choose who can fully be accepted among us based on gender, race or sexual orientation" and "Let's make sure we focus on the Syrian refugees crisis but totally ignore the fact that we are tearing families apart and causing deaths among our own people."

10. Last but certainly not least, today I feel totally comfortable with my body, what I wear — which does not include the LDS garments I wore for almost two decades — and what I do with my body according to the dictates of my own conscience.

I still care because too many members are still trapped and afraid to openly express what they think or feel for fear of the consequences. This is a sad reality for a growing number of members. I admire the members who stay with the hope of making changes of inclusion happen. The only way for change to happen is for the majority to step out of their comfort zone.

I don't think that solely focusing on the good in the church and ignoring the bad is the answer. Working on being inclusive, truly loving and accepting God's children just the way they are is what real disciples of Christ should be about.

Julienna Viegas-Haws was raised in the LDS faith in Belgium. She graduated from BYU with a BA in International Politics. She works and lives in Texas with her husband and three children.

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/3826343-155/op-ed-what-i-have-learned-as

Jeremy Runnells, author of the renowned Letter to a CES Directorfaces excommunication from the LDS Church on charges of apostasy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CES Letter Foundation
Phone: 801.609.8301
Email: media@cesletter.org

Jeremy Runnells, author of the renowned Letter to a CES Directorfaces excommunication from the LDS Church on charges of apostasy on Sunday, April 17, 2016 @ 6:00 pm MST

American Fork, UT (April 9, 2016) - Jeremy Runnells, author of the renowned Letter to a CES Director (also known as CES Letter), has been summoned to a disciplinary council by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on charges of apostasy. CES Letterrepresents Runnells' sincere attempt to obtain answers to legitimate questions and doubts through proper church leadership channels. The LDS Church has chosen to continue its recent trend of excommunicating members who openly question or doubt LDS foundational truth claims.

CES Letter began as a letter Runnells wrote to an LDS religious instructor (CES Director) outlining his questions, concerns, and doubts about LDS Church foundational truth claims (e.g., Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham historicity, Joseph Smith's polygamy and polyandry, LDS priesthood restoration, multiple first vision accounts). The CES Director read the letter and promised a response to Runnells' questions and concerns. No response ever came.

Upon its public release, CES Letterwent viral and immediately became a Mormon internet phenomenon, providing validation and support to tens of thousands of questioning current and former LDS Church members. CES Letterhas been downloaded an estimated 600,000 times to date, and over 12,000 LDS Church members have reached out to Runnells after reading the CES Letter.

Runnells reports that he met twice with his LDS Stake President, Mark Ivins, in the fall of 2014. During these discussions Runnells sought answers for questions posed inCES Letter and raised concerns about the LDS Church's recent historical essays (http://lds.org/topics/essays). President Ivins assured Runnells that he wanted to help, and that he would obtain answers. Runnells did not hear back again from President Ivins until January 25, 2016 when Ivins telephoned Runnells to inform him of his intention to challenge Runnells' LDS Church membership. Runnells requested a delay until March 15th, citing a close family member in hospice care, which was originally accepted by Ivins. On February 8, 2016 Ivins reversed his decision and informed Runnells of his disciplinary council scheduled for February 14, 2016.

Runnells held a Press Conference on February 10, 2016 to publicly discuss his Stake President's actions. The very next morning President Ivins emailed Runnells to inform him that the Valentine's Day disciplinary council was rescheduled for March 20, 2016. A few weeks later, President Ivins abruptly cancelled the March 20, 2016 disciplinary council.

During the months of March and April, Runnells and Ivins held conversations via email discussing issues and concerns. A theme consistent in the conversations is Runnells' pleas for Ivins to answer his questions and Ivins' refusal to answer them. Among the main questions Ivins consistently and repeatedly refused to answer are:

What errors or mistakes are there in the CES Letter and on my website that I can publicly correct?If there are no errors or mistakes, why am I being punished for seeking and sharing the truth?What questions am I being punished for asking?

On April 8, 2016, Runnells received a letter from Ivins informing him that there will be a disciplinary council held against Runnells onSunday, April 17, 2016 @ 6:00 pm Mountain Time.

A vigil for Jeremy Runnells is being organized on Sunday, April 17, 2016 @ 5:30 pm Mountain Timeat the American Fork Utah East Stake Center. Address is: 825 E 500 N, American Fork, Utah.

For more information and developments on this story, seehttp://cesletter.org.

http://cesletter.com/jeremy-runnells-faces-lds-excommunication-april-17-2016.html

Transgender and Mormon: a growing movement that's fighting for acceptance

Sam Levin
The Guardian
March 28, 2016

At age 13, Emmett Claren used to lie in the middle of a football field behind his house, look up at the sky and beg God to strike him with lightning and change his body. “I would tell him, ‘I have a lot of faith. I believe in you. I know you can do anything,’” Claren, now 22, recalled.

The Utah resident and member of the Mormon church is a transgender man, which means he was assigned female at birth, but knew since he was a young child that he identified as male – even though he didn’t learn the term “transgender” until many years later.

“‘Just change me to a boy right now,’” Claren said he would ask God every day. But his prayers went unanswered.

After wrestling with his faith and identity for years, struggling through periods of severe mental anguish, he came out as transgender at age 21 and is now pushing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to welcome transgender members.

Claren is part of a growing movement of trans Mormons in Utah publicly fighting for acceptance in a conservative church that has long alienated LGBT people.

Zach Stafford

Claren’s advocacy, onYouTube and in local Utah media interviews, is risky. He could face discipline or excommunication from a church that has always been a fundamental part of his community, faith and identity. But Claren also knows firsthand that if trans Mormons don’t speak up, and if the church doesn’t shift its views on LGBT members, the consequences will continue to be dire – and in some cases deadly.

The LDS church – which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, 40 miles north of Claren’s home in Orem – prompted significant backlash in November 2015 when it unveiled a new anti-gay policysaying that children of same-sex couples can’t join the church until they turn 18 and won’t be baptized unless they move out of their parents’ home and disavow same-sex relationships.

The policy raised concerns about a potential increase in depression and suicide among LGBT Mormons and prompted many to leave the LDS church.

This is one reason Claren’s story is unique: He refuses to leave. On the contrary, he hopes his story will encourage other transgender members to come out and stay in the church – and in some cases even consider returning if they’ve already resigned over fears of discrimination and excommunication.

While the church has long opposed same-sex marriage, Mormons don’t have a clear policy on transgender people.

'Just change me to a boy right now,’ Claren said he would ask God every day

Pressed on the matter, Mormon leaders recently said the church is unfamiliar with trans issues and has more to learn – a statement some LGBT advocates have interpreted with optimism, hoping the church may consider embracing trans members.

Asked about policy on transgender members, Eric Hawkins, LDS church spokesman, said in an email that bishops “recognize that these situations are difficult and sensitive”, but added: “We believe that gender is part of our eternal God-given identity and purpose. Because of this, the Church does not baptize those who are planning trans-sexual operations, and those who choose to have a trans-sexual operation may place their membership at risk.”

 In November, a member of the LDS church holds a sign as she resigns her membership to the church following the controversial anti-gay policy. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters

Under that ambiguous guideline, some transgender LDS members, including Claren, have been able to remain active in wards with tolerant bishops.

But according to Brigit Pack, who co-founded a Facebook support group for trans Mormons and their family members, others have faced discipline, which in some cases could mean they have to pledge not to present themselves as their preferred gender. And some trans members have been excommunicated, meaning they are formally kicked out, she said.

“The majority really want to stay active in the church,” said Pack, a 37-year-old Syracuse, Utah woman whose spouse recently came out as transgender. “Instead of fearing what we don’t know, I wish we would embrace everyone and love unconditionally.”

There’s no reliable data on transgender Mormons, but Pack said her Facebook group now has 87 members who identify as trans, and there are likely many more locally who have not yet discovered the group or come out.

How am I supposed to help people and change things if I leave? I need to be here to stand up for people like me

Emmett Claren

Claren said he always knew he was not a girl, but spent years of his childhood trying to conform to gender norms and the expectations of his church and parents.

At age 14, he attempted suicide for the first time.

It wasn’t until he was 17 years old that he learned about transgender people from a friend, and he instantly knew the identity fit. “It was like, ‘I’m not the only one that feels this way. I’m not crazy. This is who I am.’”

Claren subsequently served as a Mormon missionary in Salt Lake City and enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU) Idaho, a college run by the LDS church. But he still struggled to come out as transgender, and at least one counselor advised against it: “She said, ‘If this is the direction you’re going to go, I can’t help you,’ and she dropped me,” he recalled.

He fell into a deep depression and again attempted suicide at age 21.

“I was just done with life,” he said. “I was begging God to keep me alive.”

But in a moment of deep prayer alone on campus, he had a revelation – that God loved and accepted him.

Knowing the college would kick him out once he began presenting as male and transitioning, Claren dropped out of BYU. University spokesman Brett Crandall confirmed this policy in an email, saying, “Deliberately dressing or presenting oneself as a member of the opposite biological sex … is an outward expression that is inconsistent with the university’s Honor Code.”

Claren moved to Utah, changed his name and pronouns and began taking testosterone. In April, he is scheduled to undergo a procedure known as “top surgery” to remove his breasts.

Claren said his parents have struggled to understand and accept him, but they are trying. If his family had positive guidance from the church, they would be much more likely to embrace him, he added.

That’s one of the reasons he stays in the church. “How am I supposed to help people and change things if I leave? I need to be here to stand up for myself and other people like me.”

Meanwhile, Claren has found a supportive community of trans Mormons in Utah, and more of them are speaking out.

The trans LDS community exists now. When I first transitioned, there wasn’t anything

Grayson Moore

“Every one of us knows what it feels like to be alone and to believe you’re the only one,” said Ann Pack, Brigit’s spouse, who transitioned two years ago and is still active in the Mormon church. “To finally connect not just with other trans people, but trans people in the church, and to see they’ve had similar experiences as you is huge.”

Grayson Moore, a 21-year-old transgender man who transitioned when he was 16, thanks God for helping Utah trans Mormons connect and uplift each other. “It feels like the lord is really doing his work in gathering us together,” he said. “The trans LDS community exists now. When I first transitioned, there wasn’t anything.”

Emmett Claren, a transgender member of the Mormon church, had twice attempted suicide before becoming an advocate for others like him. Photograph: Sam Levin for the Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/28/transgender-mormon-lgbt-rights-emmett-claren

Why Do Mormons Have Churches and Temples?

Huffington Post

January 20, 2016

Mette Ivie Harrison 

Mormon in progress, recovering from depression, former atheist, mother of 5, author of 'The Bishop's Wife,' Princeton PhD, nationally ranked triathlete

Mormon temples are beautiful architectural additions to any city they are in. When Mormons arrived in Salt Lake City in 1847, the first thing Brigham Young did was to mark out the temple site. The whole city was designed around it. This was partly because the temples the Mormons had previously built in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois had been destroyed by angry mobs. Building a new temple was a sign that this was a place that Mormons believed they would be able to stay long-term, that the Lord had promised them safety here.

 

Other temples in Utah were actually completed before the Salt Lake Temple, because of the unique care that went into its construction and it remains the iconic temple for many Mormons and non-Mormons who visit Salt Lake City.

 

Until the twentieth century, there were only temples in Utah and Mormons from other countries had to find the funds to travel to Utah, which was very costly, in order to go through temple rites necessary in Mormonism for salvation. But now there are currently 149 temples worldwide (with about 25 others in various states of construction). Some of the temples are very small, built in conjunction with chapels, and are to allow the Mormons who live in the area the chance to return to the temple often and renew their covenants. But it's not always clear to non-Mormons what goes on in Mormon temples and why Mormons would also then have churches, as well.

 

Mormon churches are the space Mormons use for regular Sunday worship meetings. Like many Christian churches, Mormon churches have a chapel for communion services (called "The Sacrament") in the center and classrooms circling around the chapel for Sunday School, women's meetings, priesthood meetings, and children's classes. There are also often kitchens for warming food for many events, anything from a Boy Scout meeting to a graduation celebration or a funeral or wedding reception, often on weekdays. There is even a "gym" that is used for basketball or volleyball practice for church teams and which can be converted with tables and chairs for a potluck.

Nearly every Mormon church also has a baptismal font (with warm water!) for live baptisms with a changing area connected to it to make it convenient for multiple baptisms of eight year-old children that often happen one day a month. Some Mormon church buildings are "stake buildings," which means they are designed beyond a single ward (or congegration). In these buildings, there is space to house the Stake Presidency offices and the chapel is often large enough, and built with overflow areas for stake meetings. There is a nursery with toys for young children while their parents worship and a mother's lounge for women who are more comfortable nursing babies away from others.

Mormon temples, on the other hand, are not used for regular Sunday worship and are usually closed on that day. Mormon temples exist because of the Mormon belief in a responsibility to ancestors who did not have a chance to hear about Christ or to choose baptism. We believe these ancestors may be waiting for these rituals to be done in order to be allowed with their own families. Sealing together married couples and families both living and dead is part of the great work of Mormonism.

Some of the rituals that can only be performed in Mormon temple include:

1. Baptisms for the dead.
2. Weddings and marriage sealings for eternity.
3. Endowment ceremonies.

On the lower level of the temple, there is a "Baptistry," where twelve stone oxen hold a basin of the water to symbolize the covenant twelve tribes of Israel, which Mormons believe they are spiritual descendants of. This is where baptisms for the dead are done, and it is the only place in the temple Mormon youth (ages twelve to eighteen) are considered old enough to attend--if they are worthy of a temple recommend. If you are interested, here is a link that shows some photos of the interior of the temple rooms.

On the main floor of the temple, there is a "bridal room" where a bride can put on her wedding dress and have a few special people with her to guide her through the big day (and the groom, as well, has a special space and guides to help him--usually a father who is designated with a specially colored tag to make everything clear and efficient).

Above the main floor, there is a sealing room with a marriage altar and mirrors on either end to symbolically represent the eternities that this marriage will last, and an altar where very simple Mormon vows are recited. (There is not "I do" in a Mormon wedding ceremony, just one simple "Yes.") Mormon weddings are usually quite small and because they require all attendees to hold a recommend, sometimes can exclude family members, which can cause some hurt feelings. Families members without a temple recommend are invited to a special waiting room and can participate in all the photos outside the temple, which is the only place photography is allowed.

The celestial room is the center of every Mormon temple, and is often a beautiful, very quiet room with a crystal chandelier in the center, stained glass windows, and with beige or very light-colored couches and other chairs. This room represents the celestial kingdom, or the highest level of Mormon heaven. Mormons reach it after they pass through the work of the endowment ceremony either for themselves or for deceased ancestors. It is a place of contemplation, peace, and often divine revelation. Here is an official link about ordinance work in the temples.

 

Once a temple has been dedicated, only those who hold a temple recommend can go enter its doors. There are temple workers stationed there who check the passes (now electronically coded). The temple recommend requires an interview with a bishopric member and a stake presidency member and there are numerous questions, designed to ensure that only the faithful and most worthy enter the temple. Some include questions about following the Word of Wisdom (the health code that determines Mormons should not drink or use tobacco, for instance), about not being involved in spousal or child abuse, paying proper child-care payments, and belief in basic tenets of the church. Members are also asked if they consider themselves worthy.

 

I think the reality that most religions do not have an equivalent of the Mormon temple is part of the reason that it has become an object of so much speculation--even the ridiculous claim that sacrifical blood rituals are being performed (they aren't). Temples are sacred spaces to Mormons, who have done work worldwide to gather genealogical records to help join the human family together. If you are interested in your own ancestors, you can get free information about them here. Last year, the Mormon church released information about millions of African slaves brought to America whose names, birthdates, and other information were not previously available.

 

Many Mormons spend years studying the lives of their ancestors before they do temple work and they find great meaning in the experience of drawing close to them in the temple. Mormons believe that the spirits of these ancestors may prod on their work, guiding them to certain important pieces of information or artifacts, and that these ancestors may also be present while their temple work is being done. However, no Mormon believes that any spirit is forced to believe in Mormonism in the after-life through these rituals. Mormon temples may seem expensive and extravagant, but they are built both to glorify God and for the practical work of sacred rituals for us and our eternal families.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mette-ivie-harrison/why-do-mormons-have-churc_b_8914054.html

The Health Effects of Leaving Religion

JON FORTENBURY
The Atlantic
September 28, 2014

Curtis Penfold got kicked out of his apartment, fired from his job, and left Brigham Young University all in the same week.

He left BYU—a private university operated by The Church of Latter-day Saints—because he had started to disagree with some of the Church’s views, causing tension between him and school officials. His exit from the school caused him to lose his on-campus job, and he subsequently resigned from the Mormon Church. Resigning from the church resulted in getting kicked out of his religiously-affiliated private housing, and he received angry emails from old friends and phone calls from his disappointed parents who said he “lost the light” and “used to be so good.”

“I felt so hated by this community I used to love,” Penfold said.

Penfold originally went to BYU to be around fellow Mormons. But over the course of the two-and-a-half years he spent there, he started to find the lack of LGBT rights in the church distasteful and was unable to reconcile the idea of a loving God with the evil he saw in the world. This loss of faith in God went beyond his separation from Mormonism, leading to months of depression, anxiety over the prospect of no afterlife, and suicidal thoughts. He’s better now, but for a while there were days when he wouldn’t even leave his bed.

Like Penfold, many who leave religion in America become isolated from their former communities, which can make them anxious, depressed, or even suicidal. Others feel liberated. No deconversion story is the same, but many who leave behind strongly-held religious beliefs can see an impact on their health.

Americans are less religious than ever. A third of American adults under 30, and a fifth of all Americans don’t identify with any religion, according to a 2012 study byPew Research (an increase from 15 percent in 2007). But though scientists have studied people who leave cults, research on the health effects of leaving religion is slim.

"Just like it’s hard to unlearn English, it’s hard for people to unlearn the concept of hell."

The most mainstream research on this is a 2010 study out of Pennsylvania State University, which examined data from 1972 to 2006. The study showed that 20 percent of people who have left religion report being in excellent health, versus 40 percent of people currently part of strict religious groups (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Latter-Day Saints) and 25 percent of people who switched from a strict religion to a more lenient religion. “Strict” in this study was defined as “high-cost sectarian groups that are theologically and culturally exclusive."

There are some studies comparing the health of religious and nonreligious people. A 2010 study by Gallup showed that nonreligious people are more likely to smoke and less likely to eat healthy and exercise than the faithful. A 2004 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry showed that religiously unaffiliated depressed inpatients are more likely to display suicidal behaviors than religiously affiliated patients. And a 2011 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that people in economically developed societies tend to have similar levels of subjective well-being regardless of religious affiliation. But studies rarely seem to single out people who have left religion. Even the Penn State study didn’t clarify how recently people had deconverted. Recent deconverts are, understandably, those most likely to see health effects, according to Dr. Darrel Ray.

Ray has been a psychologist for more than 30 years and founded Recovering From Religion, an organization that connects nonbelievers with therapists and each other. According to Ray, it generally takes depressed deconverts two to three years for their health to bounce back. A few years after leaving their religion, they tend to reestablish a social community and rid themselves of guilt they may have felt over premarital sex, depression over losing God, and anxiety about death and hell.

Ray, author of The God Virus and Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality, said not all of his clients recover within the typical three years, though. Getting over a fear of death after believing in an afterlife for so long takes some of them five years or longer. And about five percent of his clients can take even more time to stop fearing hell. Ray often compares learning about hell to learning a language.

“When you were five years old and learning English, you never stopped to ask your parents why you weren’t learning German,” said Ray, who uses cognitive behavioral therapy to decatastrophize the concept of hell for clients. “You just learn it. The same is often true of religion. When you’re taught about hell and eternal damnation at ages four through seven, these strong concepts are not going to easily leave you. Just like it’s hard to unlearn English, it’s hard to unlearn the concept of hell.”

Dr. Marlene Winell, a California psychologist and author of Leaving the Fold, compares leaving religion to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She even created a term for it: religious trauma syndrome (RTS), which she defines in an article forBritish Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies as “struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination.” Not every deconvert goes through RTS, but she writes that like PTSD, the impact of RTS is “long-lasting, with intrusive thoughts, negative emotional states, impaired social functioning, and other problems.” RTS is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, though, and some critics say it is just PTSD, applied to religion.

Any negative experiences after leaving religion, from depression to social isolation, can take a toll on your physical health. Isolation, according to a six-yearstudy out of the University of Chicago, can cause health problems such as disrupted sleep, elevated blood pressure, and a 14 percent greater risk of premature death. Depression can cause fatigue, trouble concentrating, headaches, and digestive disorders; and persistent anxiety can cause muscle tension and difficulty sleeping, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Anxiety is also sometimes linked to stomach ulcers, said Dr. Javier Campos.

Campos, a family practice doctor in Kerrville, Texas, says he will sometimes ask patients about their spiritual lives, if he thinks it’s affecting their health or if they’re going through the loss of a loved one. He’s observed a link between his patients’ thoughts on the afterlife and their physical health.  

“If you have this thought of hell and that you’re going to be punished for unbelief, it [sometimes] translates into other sematic symptoms, such as headaches, anxiety, and needing to be on medication to sleep,” Campos said.

There are now several resources to help combat negative health outcomes after leaving religion, beyond taking medicine for the symptoms or seeing a therapist. Recovering From Religion has monthly support groups across the world and is about to offer a phone hotline for those struggling with deconversion. Journey Free, an organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area, offers an online support group for deconverts and weekend retreats where small groups come together to help and support each other. There are even groups that are essentially atheist churches, where deconverts can go to find weekly community in a nonreligious context.

Not every recent deconvert necessarily needs these resources, though. Some who leave religion become healthier than they were before. This was the case for Annie Erlandson.

Raised Evangelical Christian in Lincoln, Nebraska, Erlandson developed anorexia at age nine, modeling after her pastor father, who wrote a book about his own eating disorder. But Erlandson’s struggles with food were tied to her beliefs. She was petrified of growing into womanhood, fearing she would cause men to lust after her and sin. She thought if she could prevent her first period, she could prevent growing breasts and minimize sin. Finally at age 15, doctors caught on to her persistent low weight and diagnosed her with anorexia.

After this, Erlandson began doubting Christianity, and eventually, she lost her faith.

Like Erlandson, some people’s health improves after deconverting because they stop practicing negative health behaviors that may have been tied to their religion. For example, leaving a faith such as Christian Science, which dissuades medical treatment, obviously opens up more opportunities for healthcare intervention.

Other negative health behaviors sometimes associated with being religious, according to social psychologist Dr. Clay Routledge inPsychology Today, are cognitive dissonance (consistent religious doubts can harm your health) and avoidant coping. An example of the latter is the attitude that things are “all in God’s hands,” which could potentially keep people from taking action on behalf of their own health.

Unlike those who become isolated from community after losing their faith, Erlandson’s social life improved drastically after her deconversion. She began hanging out with theatre kids and people in the local punk rock scene.

“I never really had a social group when I was a Christian,” Erlandson said. “I tried joining a youth group and just never felt like I connected with them. I remember one time, when I was nine, being in church during a hymn and everyone was singing and raising their hands and closing their eyes. I didn’t feel it. This wave of isolation and trepidation came over me. Everyone seemed engaged except for me. I knew I was not like everyone else.”

But not everyone's health and well-being improves after leaving a religion. Since for many people, religion means being part of a community, and belief in an afterlife can make death less frightening, leaving that behind can lead to isolation and anxiety. The end of a positive religious experience can lead to a decrease in health, as was the case for Penfold. But leaving a negative religious experience may be a way to boost health, especially if someone has a nonreligious community to support them, as Erlandson did. But one way or another, a person’s faith, or lack thereof, is often so important that it affects physical, as well as spiritual, well-being.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/the-health-effects-of-leaving-religion/379651/?utm_source=SFFB