I was born in a small copper mining town in Southern Arizona
during the great depression of the 1930s. I was named after Arza Hinckley, a
relative of Church President Gordon B. Hinckley. Both my parents were members of
polygamist families from the Mormon Colonies in Mexico. When the Mexican Civil War
forced them to flee for their lives back across the border into Arizona, they lost almost
everything. But one thing they had in abundance was religion.
My parents have always taken religion very seriously. My father left his
new bride of a few days in order to go on a two year Church mission in Florida. He
has served in branch presidencies, stake presidencies, given thousands of patriarchal
blessings, and served many years as a temple worker. He has worked closely with
President Spencer W. Kimball and other general authorities on special assignments. I
think it would be safe to say that my father has done his very best to dedicate not only
his own life but the lives of his children and grandchildren to the Church and that my
mother has been equally faithful.
As a child I was told stories about angels, Joseph Smith, gold plates, and
pioneers. Some of my earliest memories include family prayer, both night and
morning. We also sang a Church hymn almost every morning before family prayer.
We fasted for two meals the first Sunday of every month. We paid tithing, fast
offerings, and other Church contributions. We went to church three or four times
every week. This included sacrament meetings, Sunday School, Primary, MIA,
firesides, and conferences. It seemed that we were always going to or coming home
from a meeting.
I was taught who and what to pray for. I was told stories about members
of our family who had suffered great hardships and persecution for their loyalty to
Mormonism. I was taught that our Church was the only Church on earth that had any
priesthood authority to perform baptisms or any other ordinances acceptable to God and
necessary for salvation.
We often made the long pilgrimage from Southern Arizona to Salt Lake City to
attend general conference. We considered it a rare privilege to sit or even stand
for hours in the crowded Tabernacle listening to Church leaders who spoke for God.
When I was eleven years old my family moved to Murray, Utah where we could be near a
temple and closer to the center of the Church.
I was taught as a child that the most important thing for any person to do in
this life was to gain a "testimony" of Mormonism and then remain faithful to it
forever. The worst sin that a person could commit wasn't lying, stealing, adultery,
or even killing. It was apostasy! Other sins could be repented of and
forgiven. The Doctrines and Covenants clearly teaches that there will be no
forgiveness in this life nor in the next for a man who receives the Melchizedek (higher)
priesthood and then changes his mind and turns against Mormonism. Conversion to
Mormonism is supposed to be a one-way street.
My parents did, in fact, belong to the Church. It owned them and they
owned me. I trusted completely in the wisdom and honesty of my parents. It
never occurred to me that they could be wrong or misled. I was quite sure that any
negative feelings or thoughts that I might have about the Church were only because I was
young, immature, ignorant, weak, or tempted by the Devil.
Church Authorities were doing the thinking for my parents who, in turn, were
doing my thinking for me. I was never encouraged to do my own thinking nor to seek
my own identity. Any of my thoughts or feelings that did not fit into the Church
mold were irrelevant or perhaps, even worse, a sign of rebelliousness or apostasy. I
had very little confidence in my own mind or in my own feelings. The important thing
was to think and feel the way I was supposed to think and feel. Anything else was
not acceptable nor respectable. I grew up thoroughly programmed with Mormonism.
I was always very active in the Church. I graduated from seminary and
went on a two year mission to the Chicago area where I helped convert many people to
Mormonism. Later, I was married in the Salt Lake Temple by Hugh B. Brown, a
Counselor in The First Presidency. I worked in the St. George Temple, worked on
welfare farms, helped build several chapels, and "magnified my callings" in many
Church positions.
I learned many things in my academic work at the University of Utah and also at
BYU that should have started me thinking. But I had been so effectively programmed
during my formative years that I simply rejected anything that did not go through my
Mormon thought filter. I was able to earn a masters degree and even become a college
professor and still switch off my critical thinking skills when it came to religion.
This is not unusual. I know many scholars who are able to do this. They are
not philosophers seeking truth. They already have the truth and are able to
rationalize anything that comes into conflict with Mormonism.
I was about forty years old before I began to seriously question my Mormon
indoctrination and programming. It is ironic how this happened. I decided to
strengthen my faith and testimony by making a serious study of the foundations of Church
history. With the honest intent of increasing my knowledge and my testimony of
Mormonism, I spent thousands of hours doing research into Church history.
I read the seven volume History of the Church by B. H. Roberts.
Then I read the six volume Comprehensive History of the Church by B. H.
Roberts. I read most of the twenty-six volume Journal of Discourses
containing the sermons of early Church leaders. I read The Book of Mormon for the
tenth time. Then I read books about the lives and teachings of Joseph Smith, Brigham
Young, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Pratt, Parley Pratt, and other Church leaders.
The result of all this research was just the opposite of what I expected.
I saw a great deal of deception, meanness, and lust for power. I saw glaring
contradictions and inconsistencies. I began to realize that the "Church
history" I had been taught in Sunday School and seminary was sanitized,
faith-promoting propaganda. For the first time in my life I began to have serious
doubts about the divine origin and mission of the Church. This was a very
frightening experience for me. I did my best to hide my doubts from my family and
became a "closet doubter." For several years I continued my Church
activity while denying even to myself the validity of what I was learning. Dreams
die hard!
I didn't want to believe what I was finding out. It was too frightening
and painful. It was pushing me out of my comfort zone and threatening my very
identity. I desperately wanted to believe in the divine origin and destiny of the
LDS Church. It was comforting to believe in a loving Heavenly Father concerned
enough with human affairs to communicate with this world through a series of latter-day
prophets beginning with Joseph Smith. This gave me a warm and secure feeling.
It made me feel important and special to believe that despite the billions of people and
hundreds of religions on this earth, I was one of the few favored with the true religion
and the divine authority to perform ordinances, give blessings, and even speak in the name
of God. It gave my life a sense of purpose to be part of an organization that was
working with God to save humanity.
Believing also gave me a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging. It
created a common bond between me and my family. As a believer I enjoyed the smiles,
handshakes, and friendship of an entire community of believers. As a doubter I would
be isolated and alienated. The social pressure to believe or at least pretend to
believe was almost overwhelming.
During these years as a closet doubter, the one thing that I couldn't explain
away, the last pillar of my faith, was The Book of Mormon. But then, as I began for
the first time in my life, to apply my critical thinking skills to this book, I could see
overwhelming scientific evidence that was a fraud. This broke my heart. I felt
profoundly betrayed. I became torn between my loyalty to truth and my fear of what
would happen to me if I told the truth. Would I lose my marriage? My
job? My friends? How would my children react? Would this destroy my aged
parents and anger my brothers and my sister? Would I be excommunicated from the
Church? I was now facing the greatest dilemma and trauma of my life. I learned
that religious freedom in America may be true for a group or community of believers, but
it may not be true for an individual unless he or she is willing to pay a very high price.
After living several years as a closet doubter, I finally became inactive in
the Church and started expressing a few of my doubts. My parents were upset and
heartbroken. My brother informed me that I was possessed of a "lying
spirit." I was not allowed to see my children married in the temple nor help
bless my grandchildren. I became an embarrassment to my family. The pressure
to deny everything that I had learned and go back into the closet was almost
overwhelming. But living a lie was just too painful.
Almost every time I even started to ask questions about Church history or
doctrine people immediately began to defend the Church by pointing out how much good it
has done. They didn't seem to understand that I wasn't questioning the fact that the
LDS Church does a lot of good in the world. It helps the poor, provides members with
hope and faith, provides close social relationships and support groups, performs
marriages, conducts funerals, teaches high moral values, provides activities for young
people, helps people stay away from smoking, drinking and drugs, and promotes a strong
work ethic. But all of this does not make the Church true.
With the exception of two or three other college professors, I found little
understanding or sympathy for the struggle I was having. I found myself increasingly
isolated, alienated and unable to communicate with others. There didn't seem to be
any community or support group for doubters. About this time a close friend and
colleague asked me to write down some of the things I had found in my research. He
wanted to show them to his mother who was very upset and brokenhearted over his inactivity
in the Church. Every time he went home for a visit she begged him to go back to
Church, start paying his tithing, put his regulation garments back on, and start going to
the temple again so that they could all be together as a family in the Celestial
Kingdom. She couldn't understand why he no longer believed the indoctrination she
had so carefully and prayerfully given him.
I related to my friend's dilemma because my mother, even on her deathbed, made
this very same request of me. I found this extremely painful. I just couldn't
do it. She was asking too much. She wasn't just asking for my time, my money,
or my love. She was asking for my integrity and my soul! I'm sure that neither
of these faithful Mormon mothers realized the pain that they were causing for their
sons. These women had been programmed to act this way out of love for their family.
At first, I started writing down a few things that I had learned and then a few
more, and then it seemed like a floodgate opened. Many things came into my mind that
were new to me, things that I had never thought about before... Soon, I was no
longer writing for my friend, but for myself. For the first time in my life I was
beginning to discover who I was. I even started to believe that maybe it was all
right to be me.
After many years of pretending, trying to please others, self deception and
playing the game, I found that honesty and self respect were good therapy. They were
good for my mental health. I also began to believe that writing a book might be a
better way to communicate with my family and friends. Perhaps such a book could also
be of value to others interested in Mormonism who do not have the time nor the resources
to do their own research.
I have written this book for men and women who like to do their own
thinking. However, when a person stands to lose her job, her marriage, and her
friends, she may begin to believe that the price of truth is just too high. After
all, why should a person be willing to sacrifice everything on the altar of truth?
And should truth always take priority over other important values such as kindness, family
unit, and social relationships? Should a person who finds great happiness believing
in illusions and myths be expected to give them up for the truth? But if feel-good
fantasies are more important than truth, then this book is irrelevant and readers are
wasting their time by reading it. Let's all go to Disneyland instead.
Ironically, Mormonism makes the basic assumption that every man and every woman
should be willing to sacrifice everything for the truth or else face eternal
damnation. Converts are expected to turn their backs on their churches and also on
their families and friends if necessary. If we accept this "truth over
all" assumption, it only makes sense that a person should also be willing to follow
truth out of Mormonism if that is where it leads.
Even though truth sometimes comes at a high price, it can also bring rewards
and compensations. There can be great exhilaration and excitement in being set free
from one's programming and spiritual slavery. It is exciting to be able to honestly
consider something without first asking whether it goes along with Mormonism. It
become easier to respect others, especially those from other religious, cultural, and
ethnic backgrounds when they are no longer seen as misguided outsiders in need of
conversion.
It feels great to abandon the heavy burden of guilt created by the unreasonable
expectations of Mormonism. An LDS person is expected to attend numerous Church
meetings, pay tithing and other obligations, have and support a family, have family home
evenings and family prayer, go home teaching, do genealogy, attend the temple, do
missionary work, accept all Church "callings," send children on missions, keep
the word of wisdom, fast one day each month, keep a personal journal,and store a year's
supply of food.
The list goes on and on. There are so many rules, duties, and
responsibilities in Mormonism that it is almost impossible for a man or a woman to escape
feelings of unworthiness, guilt, and even depression. But are all these rules and
requirements really part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or are they a matter of Church
power and security? Is it easier to exploit and manipulate a freethinker, or a
person who has been indoctrinated, made to feel guilty, and then kept too busy for serious
research and contemplation? It feels great to be set free from this heavy burden of
guilt.
It can also be a welcome relief to no longer feel obligated to explain away or
rationalize some of the teachings and behavior of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor
and other Church leaders. On many occasions they contradicted themselves, other
Church authorities, and even the Bible. They also broke state and federal laws, and
did a number of things that were clearly immoral according to widely accepted standards of
Christianity. Many examples of these teachings and this behavior are well documented
within the chapters of this book.
Joseph Smith, with characteristic modesty, described his Book of Mormon as
"...the most correct of any book on earth." He also indicated the critical
importance of his book when he said, "Take away The Book of Mormon and the
revelations and where is our religion?"
LDS Church President, Ezra Taft Benson, said,
