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Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith by Martha Beck Crown 306 pp., $24.95 |
In Leaving the Saints, Martha Beck, popular "life coach" and author of a regular column in Oprah Winfrey's monthly magazine, recounts her disillusionment with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which she was raised. Her memoir commences with her journey back to Utah (after receiving undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard), where Beck and her husband John reunite with family and friends and become employed at Brigham Young University, and concludes with their painful exodus from BYU and the Church some five years later. Latter-day Saints and those somewhat familiar with the faith who choose to read the book will cringe, roll their eyes, and even chuckle, while those who are thoroughly unacquainted with the faith will cringe, roll their eyes, and chuckle. But for different reasons. Beck is a fine writer who blends her eloquent prose with a nifty wit. So if one is not terribly concerned with what really took place, this book is a good read: it would make for great fiction.
Beck seeks to equate weird anomalies in Mormon culture with the norm. For example, the "niceness" of Mormon folk is really only the "top layer" of the LDS lifestyle; Latter-day Saints are robotic and Pollyannaish; they "make the Trapp Family Singers look like Hell's Angels." LDS women believe that making cakes from scratch will lead to a higher reward hereafter than using a mix. When not baking cakes, they keep "grinding away at the one occupation recommended for Mormon females: breeding well in captivity." All Mormons agree with the current president of the Church that mothers should not work under any circumstances. And their menfolk? "Men [at BYU] must … wear socks, on the premise that the hair on human ankles can be thought of as an extension of pubic hair." Mormon speakers often get weepy when talking about "stockpiling ammunition for the Apocalypse." This is plain ole nonsense.
How did Beck arrive at this point? She tells us. During a period of excessive frustration over what she perceived as stifled academic freedom at BYU, she retired to the university library to read all she could find on Sonia Johnson, the former Mormon who had fought the Church so vigorously over the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s. To Beck's utter amazement, there was nothing there. All of the articles, essays, and press releases on Johnson were nowhere to be found; they had all been carefully and mysteriously removed from the library, Soviet-style. This is ludicrous. Imagine the futile effort required to do such a thing. Imagine what a story the discovery of such a cover-up would have made. Thankfully, the stolen goods have been returned since then; the browser can read of Sonia Johnson to his heart's content!
Further, Beck speaks of a sneaky group of sleuths innocuously known as the "Strengthening the Membership Committee" but in reality—so Beck says—"a squad of investigators who work for the Church. Very hush-hush. A lot of ex-CIA guys." This is paranoia at its best (or worst). The Strengthening Church Members Committee is actually made up of a small group of general Church authorities who evaluate polemical materials against the Church and find ways to reach out to the disaffected. But Beck seems to be a magnet for improbable happenings. Consider her account of a time when she decided to have her hair cut short. A good Mormon woman, she notes, always has long, curled hair until middle age. Hence, she relates, "The stylist checked my left hand for a wedding ring, then reported my request to the owner of the salon, who asked me to call my husband to ascertain that I had his permission to change my hairstyle." Get out of town! I've never heard of anything like that in 57 years of Church membership.
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