After my first year at the UW, I became president of the Secular Student Union. Feeling once again that I had a mission and calling, I dedicated myself to its growth and establishment. I connected our group with larger, national organizations such as the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry. I debated with a local megachurch pastor for a video podcast series and organized Richard Dawkins’s visit to UW, which was the most attended atheistic event in the history of the Pacific Northwest.
Feeling empowered and connected, I also began dating girls and developing myself socially. It didn’t take long, however, for me to realize that the same approach that had brought me success within the non-theistic movement was not nearly as effective outside of it. My venomous anti-theism was usually met with indifference at best and revulsion at worst.
I began to grow in my beliefs and worldview. Atheism started to feel less and less new, exciting, and definitional, becoming merely a part of who I was. I no longer felt like a freed prisoner from a Mormon mental gulag but more as if I had been free all along.
When I was at BYU, my parents weren’t expecting to have to pay much for my college education. Because I had earned a full-tuition scholarship there and lived in tithe-subsidized housing on campus, my costs were about as low as possible for a college education in the United States. Unfortunately, I had no such scholarship at UW. My parents informed me that they were willing to pay as much as they had been paying for BYU, but no more. I maxed out the amount of public student loans available to me — an amount determined by my parents’ income — but it still wasn’t quite enough. I started putting tuition on credit cards, worked as much as I could, and ate all the Top Ramen I could stomach. Despite my efforts, nearing my degree, my credit limit was maxed out, and I was broke. My only option was to get a private student loan. Most private school loans require a cosigner, and mine was no exception. I asked my parents, but they told me that they were opposed to cosigning for loans as a rule. With my tuition deadline coming up fast, I began to panic.
After I did some initial planning for an interfaith project with a student Christian group, their pastor, a man named Greg, asked me how I was doing. Since I could barely think about much else, I told him about my financial situation and how I wasn’t sure what to do. He nodded, paused, and said, “Let me talk to my wife. We might be able to help you with that.” I was taken aback — I had barely met this man, and he seemed to be willing to consider helping me in such a meaningful way.
I fully expected him to reconsider his offer later, so I continued to search for a solution. Valerie Tarico, a local psychologist and secular activist I met through the Secular Student Union — she has written a wonderful book called Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light — was generous enough to cosign my loan. Not long after, I was studying when I received a Facebook chat message from Greg. “Hello there! I know that the tuition deadline is coming up soon,” he wrote. “And I wanted to let you know that I talked to my wife, and we would be able to cosign that loan for you.” I sat back in my chair, tears welling up in my eyes. Having been treated like a pariah and with utter distrust by Mormons I had known my whole life, it was utterly overwhelming to me that this man who barely knew me was willing to trust me so sincerely. Before I could respond, he said, “We’ll talk later. I have to go. I’m at the hospital right now — my daughter was just born.” Greg took the time to step away from his newborn baby girl to help a near stranger in a time of need, to help me. When I think about the best parts of Christianity, I think of Greg.
Over time, my interactions with wonderful people of all faiths began to quell my anger and frustration. I began to realize that I care a great deal more about who a person is than what a person believes in, that I care more about being a good person than being right.
That’s not to say I never get upset with religion in general or Mormonism in particular. Due to the involvement of the Church in fighting against same-sex marriage, for example, I’ve seen people I love actively seek to take away the rights of other people I love. I also get upset at the deceit of the Church — when they teach whitewashed versions of history, deceptively represent homosexuals, atheists, and other groups, and subjugate and oppress women, among other things. Being upset, however, does not lead me to confront individual Mormons on their beliefs and try to change their minds.
My relationship with my family will never be the same, but I believe it is as good as it can be given the circumstances. Mormon women are taught from a very young age that their primary responsibility and greatest calling is to help ensure that their families end up together in the next life. Since I am no longer Mormon, my family believes that I will be separated from them after death, and that thought is something that my mother will never be able to overlook. From a Mormon perspective, it would have actually been better if I had died prior to leaving the Church. There may always be an unspoken wall between myself and my family, and while that makes me sad, I am pleased that we’ve come as far as we have.
Looking back, there are very few things that I would change about what I’ve been through. In the moments of darkness that accompanied my transition, I wasn’t sure that I would ever enjoy life. The only advice I would give to my past self would be to know that I will find a way to survive and that some day I will be happy.
Leaving Mormonism stripped me of my pride, put all of my secrets on display, and left me with nothing but my own will. I’ve gotten the chance to choose what kind of man I want to be and how I want to live my life. I’ve been able to do so in my youth, before I had, relatively speaking, all that much to lose. Not long ago, I was staying at a hostel in Washington, DC. It had a communal bathroom. I saw a man brushing his teeth at the sink, wearing the Mormon garment top. I asked, “Are you LDS?” “Yes,” he replied. “Are you?” “I used to be, actually,” I responded. He sighed and looked at the floor. Then, he spoke. “I envy you. I have been in Mormonism my whole life, but recently I’ve stopped believing. You have the fortune of being young — I have a wife, children, and grandchildren, and I work for the Church. I can’t leave because I would lose everything.” Meeting him reminded me of how fortunate I should feel for leaving Mormonism when I did.
I used to see the world in binary. If something wasn’t of God, it was of Satan. If someone wasn’t Mormon, it was because they were, at best, ignorant. I believed that I had access to absolute truth and knowledge, while the rest of the world had only pieces. I thought that I knew the right way to live and freely judged anyone who lived otherwise. I perceived anything that challenged my faith or choices as a threat to be ignored, avoided, or destroyed. If you weren’t us, then you were them, and they aren’t as good, righteous, intelligent, or blessed as we are.
I like to think that I now see the world as it truly is — messy, human, nuanced, and beautiful. No person, philosophy, or idea is without flaws, and I think that’s wonderful. I have yet to hear a moral or philosophical absolute that is completely logically sound. I have found that I favor virtue-based ethics, such as the four Aristotelian ethics of justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom — so long as each of the virtues is rooted in empathy and not considered an absolute. I find that, by distancing myself from moral absolutism, I’ve been able to find a deep peace.