Why I went back to church

When it comes to village building, I haven't found a replacement

Thanks for checking out this blog. If you haven’t subscribed yet, have the faith that doing so is the right decision.

I’ve written before about growing up in a big Mormon¹ family, which was also part of a very strong Mormon community in Southern California. These experiences shaped how I think of community and “village” life.

But I have written much less about why, for much of my adulthood, I stopped participating in church, and also why more recently I’ve reversed and come back. So that’s today’s topic.

I will caveat this by saying that as someone who stepped away from organized religion for many years, I’m well aware of it’s shortcomings. I’m not here to persuade anyone to go to my particular church, or any church at all. But I decided to return for three broad reasons:

First, I was persuaded by the evidence that raising kids in a religious environment has benefits.

Second, I was unable to find — either through first-hand experience or through research — anything that is as effective at community building.

And third, I gradually adjusted my ideas about faith and what it means to be a religious person.

I will say again that I’m not writing to evangelize. But I am writing because I think the role of religion in community building is an uncomfortable truth for many over educated laptop warriors like me who have settled into adult life as a “religious none.” Many of us — especially me — are out here griping about a lack of village while rejecting one of the most effective instruments for village building. And I’m not sure that’s a tenable position. Perhaps you cannot be pro-village but anti-church.

Why I left

At some point maybe I’ll write a longer essay about my journey, but suffice it here to say that at the most basic level I stepped away from church participation because I was not getting anything out of it. None of my friends were members of my “ward" (the Mormon term for a congregation), I found the meetings beyond boring, and eventually sleeping in on Sunday morning was more edifying.

There were other factors too, including politics, spiritual experiences in other religious settings, etc. But I mention this because I think many people who haven’t left a religion often don’t fully appreciate the reasons people do; if people are enjoying a religious community, they will tolerate a significant amount of political friction (e.g. being a liberal in a conservative faith or vice versa), attend endless meetings, etc. But if the experience sucks — and I think even many active religious people feel it does² — it doesn’t take much to start the journey away. And that’s the very high level summary of what happened to me, along with many people across different faiths in my age cohort.

But the research on church is compelling

The original idea of this blog was to try to be more thoughtful, even scientific if you will, about my own decisions. So for example, I spent many years of my adulthood without kids. Then I became a parent. Which lifestyle is better? What does the research say?

Abundant research indicating that things like marriage and parenthood increase happiness was comforting because by the time I read it, I was already married and a parent.

But the research on faith actually hinted that I might be making a mistake by stepping away from church — which was not initially an easy pill to swallow. I can’t summarize every study, but here are just a few salient examples: Religious participation can improve physical health and longevity; it’s linked to greater civic engagement; and it can improve mental health and life satisfaction, which is something researchers have repeatedly found when coming at the issue from different angles. Arthur Brooks, of Harvard and The Atlantic, discussed some of these ideas in a very good Q&A last year.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The findings on mental health were of particular interest to me because there is also a large amount of research on growing rates of teen mental distress.

My kids are still young, but it worries me that they will face a mental health landscape that is much darker than anything I, an elder millennial, had to deal with. And in that light, there’s really not anything I wouldn’t do to buoy them up — including reconsidering my views on church. We live in a time when parents tolerate a huge amount of inconvenience to keep kids safe — or, “safe” — and in that light religious participation began to look to me like a fairly obvious choice. Sort of like a mental health seatbelt; not fool proof, but still a wise (if occasionally annoying) preemptive measure to reduce the odds of catastrophe.

There were no other villages

I’ve written many times before about how in the years before starting this blog I moved to Los Angeles, where I ultimately failed to find much of a community or metaphorical village. My solution was to move closer to my large family in Utah, which has generally worked.

But it has still been challenging to build a network outside of my extended family. It happens, little by little, through things like our kids’ school, or very occasionally via social media. But I have actually experienced a strong community first hand — that Mormon congregation I grew up in — and I have not seen any organic friend group, parent organization, or social club (eg adult softball etc.) that comes even close.

However, the thing that really convinced me that there’s currently no replacement for religion was the weakness of the proposed alternatives. For instance, Vivek Murthy, the previous surgeon general, was very concerned about loneliness, but proposed solutions that were so unserious I can’t believe even he thought they would have any impact.

More recently, we’ve seen a proliferation of friendship and co-housing tech that is meant to solve our isolation problems.

Also, occasionally I get a reader pushing back on my thesis that family is the foundation of a village and pointing me to a proposed alternative. But the alternatives are, like, communes of nonbinary marijuana farmers in rural northern California (a hyperbole, but not a big one).

All of this stuff works for some individuals, which is great. But I’m yet to see a solution that is an institution and which can be replicated or joined by other people who need a community. I’ve seen people suggest that Burning Man, or Trump rallies, or QAnon is turning into a religion. But look, when I was 12, the dads in my congregation would drag us youths around on Sunday afternoons to bring the sacrament (bread and water in our church) to old ladies in nursing homes. Is that a typical Sunday activity for a Burner? For online conspiracy theorists?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, a village is not just a collection of pals hanging out. It is also a collection of people who are sometimes not friends but help each other anyway. And a village is at its most village-y when it musters the will to do things that are not pleasant but need to be done nonetheless.

Obviously there are non-religious communities and individuals doing tremendous good. At the individual level, there are many exceptions to what I’m talking about.

But again and again, the proposed systemic solutions to village breakdown look to me like watered down versions of what faith communities already offer. Murthy wanted to organize neighborhood potlucks. But you know who already does that, and a whole lot more? Churches.

Feast upon the words of Christ

So here I was over the last couple of years, increasingly with compelling research on the one hand, and un-compelling church alternatives on the other. It really felt like an obvious choice to just go back to church.

Except for one thing: faith.

For me, and I think for many people, once you step away from organized religion it subsequently becomes very difficult to take seriously religious truth claims. And I found it more than uncomfortable to sit in church while believing that everything was fake.

Many people have wrestled with the idea of what it means to be a person of faith. Ross Douthat just barely published a book exploring these ideas, but of course people have been thinking about this for millennia. So I won’t get into the weeds with a philosophical review of what every great thinker has to say on the subject, which I am not qualified to write anyway.

What I will say is that I’ve made sense of this with the assistance of a passage of Mormon scripture that advises people to “feast upon the words of Christ.” This is a common phrase in Mormonism, and it’s usually understood to mean that you should consume and apply Jesus’ teachings with gusto. Don’t nibble, feast. And while this is a passage from Mormon scripture, I suspect most religious people would generally agree with the sentiment if it were applied to their own revered figures.

What I had overlooked in this passage, however, is that “feasting” is not just a matter of quantity or enthusiasm. I could make an entire Thanksgiving meal for myself at home, but if I eat it alone it’s not really a feast is it?

What I realized then is that a feast requires a community. Or, it is a community³.

In that light, to feast upon the words of Christ is less an admonition to believe than it is an admonition to participate.

For me, this was sort of the final piece of the puzzle. There is a well-known verse from the New Testament, James 2:26, that states “faith with out works is dead.” I suppose, then, that I fall on the “works” side of the equation. And not coincidentally, the idea of doing and participating also fits well with the idea of community building.

So that’s the gist. I’ll reiterate that I’m not sharing this to convince other people that religion is right for them, but rather because I’m very skeptical that anything has emerged to take its place. Church is still probably the best non-family tool in the village-building tool box. Perhaps that will change over time, perhaps not. But I think people who are serious about wanting a village have to wrestle with the idea that one of the most obvious resources has been staring us in the face all along.

Thanks for checking out Nuclear Meltdown. If you’ve enjoyed this blog, consider sharing it with a friend.

1. This is a footnote for my fellow Mormons: I refuse to give up the term “Mormon.” The official name of the church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the current leader of the church has condemned the word “Mormon.” But the church has not offered an alternative and non-confusing demonym for members, or an abbreviation for the church itself. Also, the 1984-esque response to this situation is one of the things that most annoys me about Mormonism. And in any case, my ancestors were Mormons, they called themselves Mormons, as did the church’s founder. I have no doubt this term will long outlive the current church leader who dislikes it.

2. A few years ago, Mormon leadership cut standard Sunday church meetings from three hours to two. This change was met with universal acclaim by every Mormon I know, which I think is an indictment of Mormon worship services. If people actually liked the experience, they’d be clamoring for more not secretly hoping for less. Can you imagine if Taylor Swift cut an hour out of her Era’s Tour concerts? Or if the MLB decided baseball games should have six innings instead of nine? The fans wouldn’t have it.

3. This isn’t really a thing in Mormonism, but of course “feast” is used to refer to a ritual celebration, rather than a meal, in other denominations. I think that highlights the fact that the idea of a “feast” is tied to the idea of an institution, an institutions need communities.