Buffet Mormonism

 I'm not entirely sure where this concept originated, but it has been repeated numerous times through general conference talks. The idea of "buffet Mormonism" is the concept that someone can pick and choose which parts of the gospel, commandments, rules, expectations, and traditions they want to adhere to, and which they want to throw out or ignore. This refrain serves a very distinct purpose that isn't hard to realize, namely that in order to call yourself a true believer/member, you HAVE to accept every part, no matter how uncomfortable it is, how unethical it is, or how cruel it may end up being. It fits snuggly in the same vein as "it's either all true or none of it is." 

It's no secret that the Latter-Day Saint church often operates in absolutes and binary thinking, but I think this particular form of absoluteism is deeply problematic. If you follow this train of thought to the end, the place you arrive is rather troubling. If you HAVE to accept every part of the church's official doctrine/policies/rules/expectations/traditions, then that means they can force ANYTHING onto their adherents. This, I think, is why the church often gets placed in the high-control religion or cult category. A system of shame-based obedience that sends you further and further into the bizarre because not to do so means that you're not a real believer. (I'm looking at you, crazy temple outfits/hats)

The crazy thing about this, particularly when it comes to the temple, is that the bizarre is seen as a reward for good behavior/adherence. It's almost like they say, "You followed all the rules, here's your award: awkward and jarring rituals and handshakes that you can't talk about with others, otherwise we'll kick you out of the church. You just have to accept them without question, and if you feel uncomfortable with them, then that's your failure, not ours." 

And to be honest, the temple rituals are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a much darker history to the church that doesn't get discussed very often, and when it is, it's dismissed as a conspiracy theory or hoax. While I'm tempted to discuss those things, I'm going to set them aside and instead look at a verifiably troubling part of church history, namely polygamy. Brigham Young was believed to have married at least 50 women, some of whom were under the age of 18. How many teenage girls do you think ACTUALLY wanted to marry old crotchety Brigham Young? One of his wives was 43 years younger than he was!!! 

Although I can't be certain, I strongly suspect a bit of that you HAVE TO follow every part otherwise you're not a true believer, was part of what convinced these young girls to marry him (assuming they were convinced and not just coerced/forced). If a 60-something man tried to marry and father children with a 16-year-old today, he would end up in prison and be put on a sex offender list. While the apologetic response to this is often "things were different then. It was a different time with different norms," that doesn't change the fact that a 16-year-old's brain development WASN'T different compared to today. Sorry, apologetics, biology wins this argument. No sixteen-year-old is cognitively prepared or developed enough to make a vow for all eternity, no matter what era it was or how "normal" it was at the time. 

Let's ask an honest question: if "buffet Mormonism" had been an option in the 1800's, how many of the women in the church would have agreed to polygamy? The answer isn't zero, sadly, but I think it stands to reason that most would have said no to it, or opted out. Why do you think it was done in secret before it was openly accepted? They had to find women willing to go along with it (either by coercion or choice) so they could shore up the argument for not only allowing the practice, but for making it a requirement for celestial glory. This is what I mean when I say following the train of thought to the end arrives at a troubling place.

Using the HAVE TO accept it all mentality, the most selfish, greedy, carnal, disgusting, and abusive behaviors suddenly become free game. They can just continue to push the limits further and further until you don't even recognize yourself or what you stand for anymore. This is cult behavior. It's textbook at this point. They get you to buy in and then push you further and further into discomfort, but you can't say no, otherwise your entire identity is called into question. 

How many times have you said or heard the words "I know the church is true"? If we swear, day after day, month after month, year after year, that we KNOW it is true, then when we are presented with something about the church that makes us uncomfortable or seems wrong or contrary to the teachings of Christ, that knowing gets called into question. And how fiercely we, as humans, defend the things we know to be true. If I witness Joe rob a bank, and someone questions that, I will vehemently assert what I know. My integrity as a person who tells the truth is at stake, and it needs to defend itself. The word know is used in the church for a reason. If we said, "I think the church is true," that suggests we could be wrong or that our opinion can change. If we say "I think the church is true," and then we find out that the church actively suppresses the negative or problematic parts of its history rather than admitting fault, then our thoughts about the church can change, and rightfully so.

Which is why the concept of "buffet Mormonism" is such a terrifying thing for the church leadership. If their power structure, based on shame-induced conformity and adherence to everything they say, is suddenly seen as optional, it falls apart. They can no longer convince you that you HAVE to give 10% of your money to the church that's worth 300 billion dollars, even if that 10% means you have less food or have to juggle paying bills to live. You HAVE to agree to church callings, even if it would put an enormous strain on your already strained schedule. You HAVE to agree to wait until marriage to have sex, and you HAVE to get married to get into the celestial kingdom. You HAVE to keep the temple rituals secret, even if you find them bizarre, awkward, or even frightening. You HAVE to make babies, otherwise you're being selfish. You HAVE to be heterosexual, or you HAVE to be celibate for your entire life if you're not straight. You HAVE to adhere to the gender norms in the church, otherwise you get punished and excluded.

Now, it might just be me, but this reminds me a great deal of how the Pharisees were when Christ was alive. They demanded adherence to certain rules, norms, doctrines, and traditions, even if those rules, norms, doctrines, and traditions were actively harmful. How many people were stoned to death because the law of Moses demanded it? There was no "buffet Judaism" back then. It was either you fully lived the religion/traditions, or you were ostracized, humiliated, excluded, or even killed for non-adherence. And what was the thing that seemed to most aggravate Christ? The way the law of Moses was used by the power structure to excuse unethical, harmful, and cruel treatment of those it deemed unworthy or less than. 

They demanded rigorous adherence to their system of power and were so enraged at Christ's undermining of that authority that they literally killed him for it. Today's church is unlikely to kill any of us for not adhering to their authority, but they will ostracize you. They will tell your friends and family to stop associating with you. And they will excommunicate you, which can be akin to socially destroying you, depending on how much of your social network is active church members. 

So you might be wondering, "What's the point of this rant, Emma?" Am I saying all of this just to criticize the church? Am I trying to convince people to stop believing? Am I trying to turn you to the dark side?

No to all three questions. The purpose of this is to point out that the Church has gone astray BECAUSE WE LET IT. We allowed them to drive it into the behemoth of hypocrisy that it is today because we chose to accept everything they did, no matter how wrong it felt at the time, and the ONLY way we are going to fix it is through "buffet Mormonism." We have to collectively agree to stop adhering to authority simply because we're afraid that not to do so means we stop being Mormon. I am still Mormon, even though I refuse to attend a church that would rather strip me of constitutional protections than let me sit in Relief Society. I still read the Book of Mormon regularly. I still believe a great deal of what the church believes. I didn't lose my connection to the spirit. I didn't stop feeling the love of God. I didn't become an agent of darkness or the enemy. If anything else, I am MORE devoted to God than ever before. I eat, sleep, and breathe my faith in God and Christ. I'm writing this because I want you to embody the understanding of Christ when he said the religious authority was like a tomb, beautiful on the outside but filled with dead men's bones and decay on the inside.

The Church has become that tomb. It is beautiful on the surface, but underneath it has gone septic, and rather than treating it through reform and progress, they have tried to hide the decay and rot behind fake smiles, platitudes, and demands for unquestioning obedience. They have excommunicated anyone they saw as a threat to their power structure, while simultaneously NOT excommunicating people like Ruby Franke, a convicted child abuser. 

Perhaps the church was always this way and to think otherwise is naive, but I'm not convinced that's true. I think when the church was founded, it was built on a solid foundation. I believe that the ideals of the early church were revolutionary for their time and had great value to them. To cut through the darkness and confusion of post-enlightenment Christianity and create a completely unique religious movement, was no small feat, and I believe it was propelled by people truly seeking understanding of Christ and God. I believe that they found it and I think they turned 19th century America on its head with how closely they hit the mark for what Christ's ideal society looked like.

He had many faults and was far from the ideal we hold him up to, but Joseph Smith was unlike any religious leader in history. His ideas were often way ahead of their time, demonstrating that he was tapped into something beyond the understanding of someone from his time. While the Christian world was shying away from communally structured priesthood, the early church built a structure of collectivistic governance that had great promise.

Sadly that promise was short lived and has now become a bastion of patriarchal misogyny and hypocrisy, but it didn't have to become that. In the early days there wasn't the notion of "you have to believe all of it" forcing people into subservient obedience. Joseph Smith didn't say that people had to obey him or else be ostracized, at least not at first. There weren't the bridges that went too far like there are today. There was simply a devotion and love for God, a new understanding illuminated by the Book of Mormon, and an excitement of the heavens opening again. 

The reality is we could realize almost everything the early church strived for. Our world now, with the more evolved understanding of human nature along with rapid sharing of information could allow us to restructure the church into something better, something closer to what it was meant to become. But first, we have to admit that our reliance on fallible, and oftentimes predatory, men to be the sole voice of God's will was a mistake. Human's cannot handle that level of power and influence without corruption eventually seeping in or taking over. We made a terrible mistake when we put the teachings of a mortal man higher than the teachings of God incarnate (Christ). 

We took the second witness of Christ and his teachings, and almost immediately made it secondary to the prophet. I understand why they did it. It's so much more comforting to have someone you can see and hear with your eyes and ears telling what to do, compared to words recorded thousands of years ago. It makes sense that we would hope a prophet would continue to reveal God's will to us, but through their desire for comfort, the early church inadvertently created their very own golden calf. They turned the prophet into an idol. And through two centuries of this escalating idolatry we've arrived where we are now. The golden calf demands obedience so that it can reign supreme in our minds, and it does this because it knows it's a farce.

The succession of prophets is a farce. The succeeding leaders of the church were intended to serve as a bureaucratic role, not the mouthpiece of God. They were meant to guide the structure and growth of the church, not the doctrine of it. But after Joseph died with no clear successor to the role of president of the church, they fell prey to the ambitions of an objectively immoral individual named Brigham Young, a man who made countless incorrect prophesies and who singlehandedly structured the entirety of the church around a morally bankrupt practice of polygamy. 

That legacy has tainted the church for nearly two centuries, but it doesn't have to continue. We can put a stop to it. We can restructure the leadership to embody the collectivistic governance it was intended to have. We can diversify the role of apostles to include women. We can carve out the septic core of the church and replace it with something better, something more in alignment with Christ's teachings.

Christ taught about the importance of repentance. I think it's time the church repents and changes direction before it's too late. But perhaps I'm just another Samuel the Lamanite, shouting from the top of the walls to deaf ears who would rather risk destruction than admit they got some things wrong, that it's okay to make mistakes, and it's okay to change our ways.

And that is why I believe "buffet Mormonism" is the solution to our problem. We have to keep what's good and useful, and discard the things that are antiquated, unethical, immoral, or simply bizarre. We have to use our own discernment rather than rely on the words of a fallible man who has been given far too much power and influence for far too long. We have to melt the golden calf and stop worshipping it.