A couple of months ago I was asked to participate on a panel at my husband’s church, the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, where the congregation spent the entire Lenten season studying the Sabbath. (Here’s a longish video of the event, also featuring Slow Church author Christopher Smith, Bishop Tom Breidenthal of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, and my friend Nancy Hopkins-Greene, an author and priest at Redeemer).

I haven’t watched the video and in fact don’t remember much about the event or what I said, because during that week I was experiencing some pretty severe grief and sadness about my mom.

I do remember saying something about how I’d practiced the Sabbath for years but was only just beginning to understand why some people might be afraid of it. Of its silence. Of its demand that we rest.

That’s because as I’ve been grieving my mom, I’ve noticed that I feel better when I keep busy.

Much better, in fact. So I’ve been accepting almost every editorial project that comes my way and occupying myself with writing, travel, appointments . . . you name it.

A couple of weeks ago on my writing retreat (which was wonderful, but which made me cry a good deal more than usual, because I had slowed down enough that I had time and space to realize that every single thing reminded me of Mom), I came across this marvelous quote from Wayne Muller’s book Sabbath:

If we worry we are not good or whole inside, we will be reluctant to stop and rest, afraid we will find a lurking emptiness, a terrible, aching void with nothing to fill it, as if it will corrode and destroy us like some horrible, insatiable monster. If we are terrified of what we will find in rest, we will refuse to look up from our work, refuse to stop moving. We quickly fill all the blanks on our calendar with tasks, accomplishments, errands, things to be done—anything to fill the time, the empty space.

But this emptiness has nothing at all to do with our value or our worth. All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life. Without that emptiness, we are clogged and unable to give birth to music, love, or kindness. All creation springs from emptiness: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void . . . .

Wayne Muller, Sabbath

Those words rang very true for me. There is so much emptiness just now; and did I mention that everything reminds me of my mother? On the Sabbath, all the memories come crashing down, especially the ones about those terrible last few weeks.

Other people tell me that I’m not alone in this, and that grief is far from the only reason why people might avoid slowing down on a weekly basis. Maybe they feel guilty about past actions, or they simply don’t know how to fill unstructured time. Maybe they don’t know what to say to their family when they finally have the opportunity to spend time together. Or maybe they have no idea what to say to God.

But I am trusting in the knowledge that this emptiness will ease and that something fruitful will come of it. Muller’s final reminder — that in the beginning, everything was formless and void – tells us that when we allow space for formlessness, creation will happen.

New life begins from the void.

The post Sabbath Reflections: Why Are We Afraid to Slow Down? appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

Opening day! And this adventure is quite a ride. (Film poster courtesy of startrekmovie.com.)

Why is a religion blogger writing about Star Trek: Into Darkness? Some options:

a) Doing so makes it imperative that I see the movie on opening day and call it “work.”

b) Writing about the film makes my ticket tax-deductible. (Not sure if this also applies to the popcorn.)

c) I needed to burnish my geek cred.

d) Star Trek is, um, totally relevant to religion. There’s even a whole book about it.

e) All of the above.

Yeah, OK, so this is only marginally related to religion news, but . . . lighten up, people. It’s Star Trek! And I’ve waited four long years since the last movie!

I like my action movies to have an actual story with characters I care about. I’m weird that way. And in that respect, Into Darkness more than delivers. When last we saw the newly minted Captain James Tiberius Kirk, he was a cocky but brilliant young gun assembling a crack shot team of other young guns. In the opening scenes of the new movie (no spoilers . . .) that cockiness does not serve him well. One underlying theme of the movie is Kirk’s being taken down a peg and learning to trust — and be challenged by — the people around him. It’s about teamwork and sacrifice and all those other great action flick ideals.

The supporting actors give it their all, but the movie is completely stolen by Benedict Cumberbatch as a villain who will be familiar (and yet not familiar) to longtime fans of the series. He was born for this part. He billows so well. Remember last year when I criticized the new Sherlock Holmes series on BBC for making the character of Sherlock too dark? I may have been wrong about that, but I sensed in the Holmes remake that too little separated Holmes from Moriarty. All that darkness and acedia afflicted both characters, not just Holmes’s archnemesis. But perhaps I perceived this not because of the script so much as the way Cumberbatch approaches the role.

Whatever he does, it works here in spades. It’s hard to take your eyes off the man. He puts the eeeeeeee in eeeeeeeevil.

Reviews of Into the Darkness have been mostly positive so far; right now Rotten Tomatoes has aggregated the critical reviews as being 86% in favor. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s a great homage to the series (check out its reversal of one of the most touching and memorable Kirk-Spock scenes in Star Trek history) and a whole lot of fun. I mean, I would pay money to hear Bones say the requisite “I’m a doctor, not a __” again, or to hear Capt. Kirk order Bones to stop speaking in metaphors.

I’ve loved these characters all my life. I “have been, and always shall be,” their friend. And I am pleased.

The post A Four-Star Trek appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

This week’s CT article showcases differences between Mormon and evangelical views of grace. (Image courtesy of Shutterstock; http://tinyurl.com/cnyfzwq)

This month, the evangelical magazine Christianity Today asked three experts on youth ministry how Protestants might better engage their own teenagers and young adults, looking to Mormonism for a possible answer. With its recent sharp increase in new missionary recruits shipping out around the world, Mormonism has become the It Religion for youth involvement and leadership.

I should say at the outset that it’s progress that CT would dare to look to Mormonism for any kind of inspiration. As some of the article’s comments show, doing so is not a popular stance among evangelical readers; two commenters have already accused CT of having an editorial agenda “contrary to the scriptures.”

But apart from a grudging admiration of the passion of Mormon youth, the article itself is hardly laudatory of Mormonism. In fact, its title — “What Can Christians Learn from the Surge in Mormon Youth Missionaries?” – makes the age-old battle lines clear: Christian ≠ Mormon. All three of the experts fault Mormonism for a works-based theology:

“Trying to earn God’s favor through human effort is not going to help any teenager, whether Mormon or Protestant.” – Greg Stier

“Mormon culture is founded on a worldview requiring works in order to gain eternal life.” – John Divito

“Christians have a unique core that motivates our service, a core that separates our religion from others, including Mormonism. That core is grace—amazing grace.” – Kara Powell

And they’re right, up to a point. On the works-grace continuum, most Mormons stand closer to the “works” end of the spectrum than most evangelicals do. But an eloquent (and polite!) LDS commenter to the CT post notes that the theology inherent in the Book of Mormon’s “by grace we are saved, after all we can do” mantra (2 Nephi 25:23) is indeed compatible with a theology grace:

Those who quote this verse often misunderstand the meaning of the last phrase. It reads: “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” Alma 24:10-11 makes it clear that “all we can do” is repent. LDS beliefs are not a system of works-righteousness. LDS beliefs are in accord with the teachings of both Paul and James. We believe in salvation by grace through faith (Rom. 5:2; Eph. 2:8) but we also believe that faith without works is dead (Jam. 2:17). True faith will be accompanied by good works. Other portions of the Book of Mormon make it clear that our works in no way save us.

It’s good to understand the 2 Nephi quote in context, and it’s also important for evangelical writers to recognize that over the last two decades, Mormonism has been emphasizing grace more and more from the pulpit.

As I’ve tracked this theological evolution, though, I have seen a key difference in how Mormons use the language of grace and how evangelicals use it. Evangelicals often talk about grace as a means of salvation, which (in rhetoric if not always in lived practice) is an end in itself, full stop.

Mormons talk about grace as our means of salvation as well, for everything begins with the free gift of Christ’s atonement. But grace also equips us for service in the here and now. The opening sentence in the LDS Gospel Topics reference defines grace as “the help or strength given through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Mormon definition focuses on grace as “enabling power” and “spiritual strength.” It is a gift, yes, but it’s one we have to unwrap and put into play.

A danger of the Mormon view of grace is that it can easily devolve into the caricature that some evangelicals have charged us with – the notion that our works can save us. As the second CT commenter rightly observes, a performance-based religion “leads either to pride (‘I can do it!’) or to despair (‘I can’t do it!’).”

A danger of the evangelical view of grace is complacency. If grace is merely the key that unlocks salvation, then why does the vast majority of the Bible focus on grace-full ways of inhabiting this life—how we spend our money, teach the gospel, serve our neighbor, and feed the poor?

The answer is that it is a balance. I’m grateful for evangelical friends and writers (Philip Yancey in particular) who have taught me what makes grace so amazing. But I’m also grateful that Mormon theology demands, every day, that any faith that God’s grace has sparked in me be put into action.

The post Mormon Works vs. Evangelical Grace? Not So Fast appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

Maya Angelou’s new memoir details her relationship with “Lady,” her mother. (Random House, April 2013)

I once (almost not quite) met Maya Angelou.

I was in Atlanta having lunch with a publisher at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. (It was lovely, and they had the best strawberry shortcake I have ever eaten, but that’s not the point of the story so I promise I will stop discussing the food now.)

At one point I became aware of a very tall African-American woman in a white suit walking past our table to go to the restroom.

When she made her way back a few minutes later, I saw her beautiful face and knew this was Maya Angelou. She saw me staring at her, and as she passed by she smiled very beautifully, touched my shoulder, and murmured something. I felt blessed!

Recently I had the pleasure of reading Angelou’s latest book, Mom & Me & Mom, a brief memoir of the woman who did and did not raise her. For her early years Angelou and her beloved brother Bailey both lived with their grandmother in Arkansas. In the book, she does not particularly detail why her mother who lived in California was not raising her children herself. Later, when Angelou was a little older and her brother was becoming too saucy growing up as a black boy in the south, Angelou’s grandmother worried that Bailey might get into trouble in a racist society. So she headed to California to reunite the children with their biological mother, whom Angelou barely knew.

Angelou was stunned by her mother’s physical beauty. But she felt awkward in her presence, determined to exhibit coldness to the woman who seemed to have rejected her and her brother. She was incensed when her brother welcomed their mother with total delight and love. Angelou was so guarded with her own love that she would not call her mother mom or mother, but Lady.

Lady Baxter was quite a woman: she was a successful business owner, having invested in a gambling house and at least one hotel. She was a nurse, a real estate agent, and a member of the Eastern Star. She was always packing heat, with an undercurrent of violence evident several times throughout the book, including when Lady encouraged Angelou to gun down a man who had once beaten her.

And Lady was fearless. When Angelou was poised to embark on a literary career and take her son to New York, she was surprised to find that her mother, too, was leaving California.

“I am going to be a seaman,” her mother told her. Apparently Lady decided upon this unusual course of action late in life simply because she had been told that no women were allowed to join the seamen’s union. She was determined to put her entire leg in that door, thereby opening it for other women.

As she became a successful adult, Maya Angelou’s deep respect for her mother grew. It was not always a cozy relationship, but it was a passionate one. As her literary star was rising, Angelou went to Sweden where a film was being made of one of her books – the first novel by an African-American woman to ever be adapted for the screen. But when she arrived in Sweden, she found that nothing was as promised. She was treated badly and only allowed to stay on the set to dress the hair of the African-American actors, presumably because no one else knew how to do it.

After some weeks of this shoddy treatment, Angelou called her mother. Lady immediately got on a plane to Stockholm. People began treating Angelou with more respect, not because Lady came to the set or harassed anyone or waved her gun around (all of which, I think, she would have been capable of), but because Lady’s mere presence caused Angelou to treat herself with more dignity. This cool confidence was apparent to the people around her.

Here’s one thing I took away from the memoir. We often regard early childhood as the most important time for us to have a mother’s presence and care, and that certainly is a crucial season. But as Angelou’s memoir suggests, we never really outgrow that need. Since my mom passed away in January, I’ve felt keenly that I’ve lost one of my greatest supporters, who was still teaching me and cheering for me throughout my adulthood. Mom always had my back.

I can never repay that enduring love, but on this Mother’s Day – this very difficult first Mother’s Day without Mom – I can be grateful for it, and endeavor to pass it on.

Thanks, Mom. I love and miss you.

The post When We Really Need Our Mothers appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

Grant’s first all-new studio album in a decade releases May 14. Photo courtesy amygrant.com

Recently my daughter and I were on a car trip doing our usual you-pick-a-song-then-I’ll-pick-a-song routine. We can do this for hours. In this way she has introduced me to Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift, and I have made her a fan of Carrie Newcomer, the Beatles, and Amy Grant.

To my delight she started going back through Amy Grant’s old albums on her own and listening to the same songs I enjoyed when I was her age. But when she played me “Old Man’s Rubble,” I cringed.

Amy Grant recorded this song when she just a teenager, and when I was that age it made a lot of sense to me. The Christian faith was so black and white. So clear:

Are you livin’ in an old man’s rubble?

Are you listenin’ to the Father of Lies?

If you are then you’re headed for trouble

If you listen too long you’ll eventually die.

After my daughter played the song for me, I chose a tune from Grant’s most recent album, a 2010 hodgepodge of old and new songs. The song “Better Than a Hallelujah” makes a statement about raw, honest cries being like music to God’s ears:

We pour out our misery

God just hears a melody

Beautiful, the mess we are

The honest cries of breaking hearts

Are better than a hallelujah.

Grant did not write “Better Than a Hallelujah,” but I imagine that it resonated with her personal evolution. More than three decades elapsed between these two pieces of music, and in that time Grant was knocked around a bit. Her first husband became addicted to cocaine, and although he was eventually able to kick the habit, the marriage was rocky and they eventually divorced in 1999. She took a tremendous amount of criticism for the divorce and her rather quick remarriage to country star Vince Gill.

And in the meantime, Grant has raised four kids, lost a parent, watched another parent suffer from dementia, and a thousand other things. In short, life has happened. And life is complicated, filled with various shades of gray that weren’t present in her debut album.

Next week, Grant will release her first full studio album of new material in a decade. (There have been hymn collections, anniversary editions, etc. since then, but no completely new studio albums since 2003’s Simple Things.)

Photo courtesy amygrant.com

The new album looks promising, mature, thoughtful. A couple of weeks ago on Twitter Grant sent this link to “Don’t Try So Hard,” a duet with her childhood idol James Taylor. It’s a lovely song about grace. Other guest artists on the album include Sheryl Crow, Carole King, and husband Vince Gill.

I grew up listening to Amy Grant. She’s seen me through adolescence, marriage, parenthood, hard times, good times . . . . Her music would indicate that she’s grown up some too.

Grant’s new song says, “you’re lovely even with your scars.” It’s more than that. She is lovelier because of them.

The post Amy Grant’s New Album Releases on May 14 appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

Elizabeth Smart photo courtesy Shutterstock.com (http://shutr.bz/16hNMrz)

Last week, Elizabeth Smart publicly reflected on her experience of being abducted and repeatedly raped for months at age fourteen:

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

I applaud Smart’s courage in speaking out as an advocate for victims, even if that means criticizing the religion of her childhood, the Mormonism she loves. I hope that people will listen. As Joanna Brooks points out today, damaging messages about female sexuality continue to be a problem in Mormon culture despite the fact that the LDS Church officially teaches that victims of rape and sexual abuse are innocent of any sin.

That message of grace and redemption, I fear, may be more than drowned out by other voices in Mormondom. Kristine Haglund at By Common Consent notes that in the Young Women’s Personal Progress program, the very first scripture the girls are asked to memorize for the recently added “Virtue” value is Moroni 9:9, “which describes young women as having lost their virtue by being raped. That scripture reference needs to go, NOW.”

And just last month in General Conference, the outgoing Young Women auxiliary president, Elaine Dalton, gave a talk that many listeners found troubling. She said:

Young women, make sure your relationships with others are such that 40 years from now, you will not be embarrassed. No amount of peer pressure, no acceptance, no popularity is worth a compromise. Your influence on the young men will help them remain worthy of their priesthood power, of temple covenants, and of serving a mission. And who knows? Forty years from now, you may even have one of them walk up to you, there in your high school auditorium, and thank you for helping him remain worthy to fulfill his priesthood duty to serve an honorable mission. . . .

Second, be not moved in your desire and commitment to remain virtuous and sexually pure. Cherish virtue. Your personal purity is one of your greatest sources of power. . . .

What is this statement communicating to young women?

• That their worth consists in not tempting young men.
• That they are morally responsible for not only their own sexual agency and decisionmaking but boys’ as well.
• That their virginity is a precious commodity and one of their “greatest sources of power.”

I am sure that Sister Dalton would be the first to say that someone like Elizabeth Smart is innocent and not to be blamed for any of the terrible things that happened to her. However, it is not a stretch for a teenage girl to hear phrases like “Keep yourselves pure and worthy, and guard that which is ‘most dear and precious above all’—your virtue and chastity” or “virtue is the golden key to the temple” and assume that if she is not a capital V she is by extension impure, unworthy, and not precious to God.

If virginity is the cornerstone of female power, as Sister Dalton suggests, then its surrender, whether willingly or by force, is the very definition of disempowerment and devaluation. As Elizabeth Smart put it, who wants a chewed-up piece of gum?

Let this be a wake-up call to every YW leader, every bishop, every parent, to watch our words. Words are powerful, and the messages we send to young women about their sexuality can last a lifetime, and possibly beyond. When Christians attach the language of purity to female sexual sin — and as this cogent article points out, only to female sexual sin — the message of Jesus is lost.

It’s no longer “neither do I condemn you.” It’s “you’re used up and no longer have any worth.”

The photo of Elizabeth Smart is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

The post Elizabeth Smart, Mormon Girlhood, and Purity Standards appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

Newly weds holding hands image courtesy Shutterstock (http://shutr.bz/11k2P2S)

According to Naomi Schaefer Riley’s new book Till Faith Do Us Part, 36% of American marriages are now interfaith (when all brands of Protestantism are lumped together). This is up from 15 percent in 1988 and 25 percent in 2006.

But there’s a significant outlier to the national trend toward intermarriage. My own part-member family notwithstanding, Mormons are the least likely of any religious group to marry outside the fold, at just 12%.

Here are seven reasons Riley gives for the low rates of interfaith marriages among Mormons. The first is obvious; a few others make good sense when you stop to think about them; and the last one is surprising but likely all too true.

1)   The theology of eternal families confirms same-faith marriage as a goal for all Mormons.

This statement is going to seem obvious to Latter-day Saints, who are schooled from diaperhood that their families can be together forever—if their parents are married in the temple. But while Mormonism is hardly unique in its theological belief that families can be eternal, it makes that belief concretely contingent upon a particular wedding ceremony in an LDS temple, to which only orthodox Mormons are admitted.

2)   Mormon young people serve missions at exactly the time when many might drift away from organized religion.

Mormons, Riley says, don’t countenance the notion of a prolonged adolescence for twentysomethings. Even as the general culture makes more allowances than ever before for “emerging adults” to find themselves, possibly experiment with other faiths, change geographical locations frequently, and date (and maybe even cohabit with) multiple partners, Mormonism sends its college-age people on missions to learn responsibility and take personal ownership of their faith. And when they return, they are encouraged to marry as soon as possible—to other active members of the Church. Moreover, the Church makes meeting other eligible Saints easier with singles wards, which aren’t perfect but certainly contribute to the formation of endogamous unions.

3)   Mormons prohibit premarital sex.

Marriage ages for Mormons, while creeping up slightly, are still well below the national average. Since people who marry later in life are significantly more likely to marry someone of another religion or no religion, the Mormon prohibition of premarital sex—and the lower marriage ages that tend to result from it—have protected Mormonism against interfaith marriage.

4)   The LDS Church is run by laypeople and thus requires a significant time commitment on the part of an entire family.

Looking past the important twenty-something years of dating, Riley explores how interfaith families respond to the later challenges and complexities of raising children when the partners don’t agree on religion. This is difficult in the LDS faith, where so much is expected of ordinary members. It’s not just a matter of which church to attend; what about tithing? Will we pay it, and to whom? Will the kids go to early-morning seminary? If so, who’s going to get up at 5:00 to drive them? Etc. Mormons, Riley says, are expected to have high levels of religious commitment, which may be offputting to prospective non-Mormon spouses (though this theory undermines the book’s overall argument that most young interfaith couples blithely assume early on that love will conquer all and don’t plan in advance for possible areas of conflict).

5)   Mormons are loving and welcoming toward part-member families.

This seems on the surface to be a counterintuitive argument—if Mormons are kind and accepting of interfaith marriages and the people in them, as Riley claims from her interviews and research (and as our family has experienced firsthand, with only a few exceptions in two decades), wouldn’t the opposite be true? Wouldn’t there be more interfaith, part-Mormon marriages? Riley says that in Mormonism, there is no stigma attached to being in a part-member marriage. For example, there is no shaming of interfaith children (like one story in the book of an evangelical Sunday School teacher who told one of her students that Mommy was going to hell because she didn’t come to church–!). But instead of creating more interfaith marriages, this persistent, long-term welcome mat actually cuts down on such marriages because . . .

6)   As many as one-third of marriages that start out as part-Mormon become same-faith marriages over time.

Aha. Because of Mormonism’s strong emphasis on missionary work, approximately a third of part-member marriages will become same-faith marriages when the other spouse converts, sometimes many years down the road. (Incidentally, non-Mormon wives are almost twice as likely to convert to Mormonism as non-Mormon husbands.) These numbers are far higher than postmarital conversions in other religions, particularly in Judaism. There are several stories in the book of non-Jewish spouses who decided to convert but had to repeatedly bang on the door of the synagogue to be accepted, since conversion is not the norm. Mormons, by contrast, exude a “calm and quiet confidence that there are important truths to be found in the LDS faith” and that “their community is one that people should want to join.”

7)   People don’t like Mormons.

This to me is the most surprising reason for the low rates of part-Mormon marriages. Frankly, a whole lot of Americans flat-out don’t like us, or at least don’t know much about us. Interfaith marriage tends to increase when a religious group becomes assimilated, which is slowly happening with Mormons. But 2007 research indicating that “only 53% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Mormons.”* (And oddly, post-election surveys after the much-ballyhooed 2012 “Mormon Moment” show that those numbers have barely budged since 2007.)

Speaking for myself, I was sorry to read that the overall rates of marital dissatisfaction and divorce are noticeably higher for interfaith than for same-faith couples. Such problems have not been my experience in being married to a 100% awesome Protestant husband. Tonight is the 25^th anniversary of the evening we met, so forgive me if I’m a little gushy.

People ask me sometimes whether it’s hard for me that my husband is not Mormon. Or they want to know, on a practical level, how we make our interfaith family work. If you’re interested, you can read this article I wrote about that subject ten years ago. Not much has changed since then except that my husband is now Episcopalian instead of Methodist, and our daughter—who was given the right to choose for herself when she turned eight, the Mormon age of accountability—has generally followed in his Episcopalian footsteps, with time off the Canterbury Trail now and again to attend YW activities and LDS ward potlucks.

Sure, it’s complicated. And sure, there are compromises, but a healthy marriage is built on mutual compromise. I’ve no desire to change my husband, and he is equally respectful of my choices. I am proud to be in the 12%.

The images of the wedding rings and the Mormon temple wedding are from Shutterstock.com, and are used with permission.

* I had misunderstood this stat in the original post and corrected it on 5/10/13. Thanks to a reader for pointing this out! And in case you’re interested, the Pew study is referenced on p. 189 of Riley’s book.

The post Why Mormons Have the Lowest Rates of Interfaith Marriage appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

Sometimes, miracles do happen.

In January, right after my mother’s death, I felt the comfort of an attentive God.

I wasn’t just heartsick at that time; I was also sick sick. The day of the funeral, I noticed that I was feeling more tired than I could remember feeling in years, and just put it down to grief and the exhaustion of weeks of caregiving. The evening after that, though, I was leveled by that lousy flu that felled thousands of people throughout January. My fever spiked to 102 and was in the triple digits for nearly five days.

I don’t remember much about that terrible week, but here is one thing I’ll never forget: two nights after the funeral, God answered my prayer.

I had spent most of that day in bed, trying to read but mostly sleeping or simply lying there, missing Mom. My husband took wonderful care of me while also trying to pack our things for the departure the next day—my first time home in over five weeks. I was too ill even to pack my own suitcase.

In the evening I slowly shuffled downstairs to watch a movie. I was just getting settled when the doorbell rang. My husband answered it, and I heard male voices at the threshold.

“It’s the missionaries,” he said.

“Oh! Well, ask them to come in,” I responded. Two young (and very cold) men came in the front room, and I asked them how they had known where to find me. I figured that someone from my home ward in Cincinnati must have asked the congregation in Illinois to check in on me, or something. But they just stared at me blankly, and replied that they had been tracting on our street.

They hadn’t known I would be there. They hadn’t known that just that morning, feeling ill and desperately sad, I had been thinking how much I wanted to get a priesthood blessing, but I didn’t know any Mormons in town I could ask.

I had already felt deep love from the wonderful people at my mother’s Lutheran church, and was grateful for that. But there was also a part of me that wanted a connection with my own people, some Latter-day touchstones in my time of deep sadness.

And they came. They came without my even having to ask.

It’s a simple story, this tiny miracle. Skeptics will look at these facts—that the city’s only Mormon missionaries happened to be tracting on that particular street on that particular night, my last night in town, when I had great need of a priesthood blessing—and see a string of plausible coincidences. And it’s certainly possible that they’re right, that this was all just a fortuitous accident. It’s not like I have a slew of miracle stories I can trot out from more than a quarter century of being a Christian, Latter-day or otherwise.

I don’t believe the skeptics, however. I know what I felt. After the elders placed their hands on my head and given me a blessing for healing and comfort, I experienced peace and a sense of quiet wonderment: God hears me. God knows me.

And when I needed it most, God sent other people to minister to me.

The post When God Answers Your Prayer appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

A raw, funny memoir from a recovering alcoholic.

Heather Kopp knows her chardonnay. And her dark reds. And her beer.

In the memoir Sober Mercies: How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk, which will release on May 7, Kopp details years of alcoholism. Although the book is often quite funny, her addiction is not a pretty picture.

She carried mini-bottles in her purse wherever she went, sneaking a drink in the bathroom of restaurants because she couldn’t make it through an evening without the sauce.

She lied to those she loved, and then lied some more.

She forgot entire conversations with her family members, and started scribbling in a journal when she was intoxicated just so she could demonstrate to her husband that she remembered what they had done and said the night before, thank you very much. She did not have a problem!

Except that as often as not, she couldn’t remember where she’d stashed the journal.

And did I mention that Heather Kopp was an evangelical this whole time? She was “Little Miss Christian, smug owner of the answer book,” who had worked for a Christian publisher and written books about faith.

She felt like a complete failure as a Christian, especially when people told her that her addiction was the result of sin. Great. But on the other hand, she resisted labeling alcoholism solely as an illness or a disease. As she puts it, “It wasn’t a matter of sin or sickness, but both.” It would take both faith in God and the intervention of medical professionals to assist her recovery — a long, rocky road marked with relapse.

There are some hard, hard truths in this book. At times it is painful to read, but I appreciate Kopp’s willingness to share the “rock bottom” part of her story, and the fact that being a Christian didn’t magically make her alcoholism all better.

One of the saddest moments is when she confesses that it was because of her drinking that she never allowed herself to have children with her second husband. She couldn’t imagine going nine months without a drink, and she cared enough about her would-be baby to know that drinking while pregnant was not an option.

In the end, Kopp’s memoir is about discovering a well of grace — the grace of a God who loves her as she is. She reflects on this while taking down her Halloween decorations:

When I was young, my siblings and I wouldn’t dream of using a measly bucket for our candy — we used pillowcases. And we’d stuff them. And we’d run, breathless, from house to house. Our family was always poor, candy was a huge luxury, and Halloween was almost as good as Christmas.

Maybe this is a picture of how God wants us to come to Him, too. Anxious to arrive, breathless with a good kind of greed for a grace more generous than we could possibly deserve.

Christians, she says, actually make the most miserable addicts. It’s ironic that they’re the most likely to come to AA meetings with walls up against God. We’re Christians, they tell themselves. We should not have this problem! Faith in Jesus should be enough! Others, by contrast, come to AA as helpless cripples, ready for any trickle of mercy that comes their way.

This book is about that mercy.

The post The Christian Drunk appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.

A heretic looks at the way things are and imagines the way they could be.

I’m a heretic. There are strongly held cultural traditions in Mormonism that I’d love to change, whether they are major (women’s lack of authority), minor (embroidered Kleenex box covers—um, why?), or somewhere in the middle (having three hours of church).

A heretic is someone who challenges cultural or religious assumptions and codes. The word comes from the Greek root for “choice,” and acknowledges that human beings make choices to better themselves and their world. Heretics care, often too much, about truth and justice and all that muckety muck.

An apostate, by contrast, is someone who is literally out of the fold (apo + stasis = “standing away from or outside of”). An apostate is someone who has renounced her religion and has no role in it anymore.

Being a heretic sounds exciting and quite cutting-edge, but the sad reality for us heretics is that we are rather dull creatures. We know the truth of what Helen Keller once said: “The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.”

In other words, whatever we’re pushing for right now, whether it’s heliocentrism or woman suffrage or the end of slavery, is likely to be old hat in just a few generations. “But of course,” our great-grandchildren will say. “Haven’t Mormon women always held the priesthood?”

So when I am accused of seeking to “discredit the church” (see here), being an “armchair quarterback” (see here), or acting like a “spoiled kid who always wants more and is never satisfied” (see here), I’m not going to take it personally. It means that people are reading and thinking.

Even if they don’t agree that my views represent a viable way forward.

Even if they resort to name-calling.

And even if their only response to change is to shoot the messenger who asks why we do things the way we do.

At root, a heretic is only a person who wonders aloud about established conventions. I plan to continue doing that.

The image of the impossible becoming possible is used with permission of Shutterstock.com.

The post I’m Not an Apostate Mormon, Just a Garden-Variety Heretic appeared first on Flunking Sainthood.