How far back do you have to go to get the whole story? My father’s parents became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before he was born. They had two children at the time, but upon joining the church, they decided they’d better have two more. My mother was raised mostly without religion in a rather unstable environment. She was introduced to the church as an 18 year-old when she left home to go to university. She was baptized soon after.
Some of my earliest memories revolve around church and church-related activities. I remember going to Primary and wearing a bumblebee name tag. Apparently I could sing “I Am A Child of God” when I was 18 months-old. I was taught religion as fact and I don’t remember questioning it as a child. When I turned 8, I was excited to be baptized (aside from the fact that I didn’t like the kid who was getting baptized at the same time as me). Naturally child-like faith does not last forever, and as I approached adolescence, I began to rebel in some small ways against the religion in which I was raised.
In grade seven, a male friend asked me out. I wasn’t especially attracted to this boy, but he asked, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I said yes. In grade seven, when you asked someone out, you weren’t actually asking them to go on a date, but rather, you were asking them to be your boyfriend or girlfriend and for the most part that just meant that you held hands at lunch. As innocent as it was, it was still a rebellion because of the church’s stance that people should not date at all until age sixteen. I soon grew tired of the boy, and had another girl break up with him for me, but that was not the end of my rebellion.
When I got to high school, another boy “asked me out” during the first week of school and said yes, because it could be fun to hold hands at lunch. That year I spent many of my lunch hours in “the smoke pit” because that’s where my friends went. At the beginning of the year I would often take puffs of my friends’ cigarettes. It gave me quite a head rush, and I sort of liked the taste. Then the youth temple trip rolled around and I found myself in the bishop’s office, being interviewed. I wanted to go on the trip, so I confessed that I had tried smoking, but said I wasn’t going to do it anymore. That was satisfactory to my bishop, and I was allowed to go to the temple to perform baptisms for the dead. After that I did stop.
The next year I found a new group of friends, mostly people who were in honours classes with me, and there was significantly less opportunity for these sorts of small rebellions. I am trying to recall what my inner environment was like during these few years. Since I find that events and actions are easier to recall than thoughts or feelings, to some degree I can only speculate about my own orientation. I remember that I was always told about find out for myself if the church was true. And I remember kneeling by my futon and praying about it, and feeling rather empty inside. I knew what I was supposed to feel, because I had felt “the spirit” at certain times in my life, but I didn’t feel it then. Thus I was left unsatisfied.
As a youth, I bristled against the Young Women’s program. I barely touched Personal Progress after age 14, and I disliked the things I was being taught. I sat through lesson after lesson about being a wife and mother. I took pleasure in telling my leaders that I would never marry and would just have a bunch of cats. I became furious with the homophobic comments of a Sunday School teacher and stormed out of class. These generally accepted attitudes in the church were offensive to my soul.
I remember reading 1984 the summer I turned sixteen and it had quite an effect on me. It pushed me to think about society and religion in a new way. That year I was introduced to punk music by my boyfriend and I then went on to discover “Riot Grrrl” on my own. The music of bands like Bad Religion captured many of the ideas that had been going through my head since reading 1984. “Riot Grrrl” was a music scene that started in the pacific northwest during the grunge era, and consisted of angry, feminist, queer-positive, mostly female bands. These things were significant to my developing world view.
During this period of my life, I attended church pretty much every week to appease my parents. I graduated from high school at the same time my stake created a YSA branch. I attended there because I liked the later meeting times. I finished reading War and Peace during sacrament meetings, and I could slip out quietly once that was over.
To be continued…
