When You Can’t Trust Your Fellow Latter-day Saints

 

My relationship with the Church has been complicated for a long time now. I’ve worked at Church headquarters and suffered the effects of bureaucratic burnout. I deal on a daily basis in my current job at BYU Studies with the complexities and contradictions of LDS history, doctrine, and culture. I’ve learned to navigate these turbulent waters with some degree of equanimity, largely because in the background I’ve always had my ward family, in whose company I’ve felt both accepted and comfortable. Until this summer.

I endured the first part of the pandemic quite well. At work, it was almost as if there was no pandemic at all, except that the parking was fantastic. I went in to BYU every day, with two other colleagues, each of us in a different room, so we felt quite safe. The rest of the staff worked remotely, which worked out just fine. The faculty and students were doing the distance learning thing, so the large Joseph F. Smith Building, where our offices are, was quite empty.

On Sunday, attendance at sacrament meeting was very limited, and my wife and I watched the service at home on the TV, where it was streamed on YouTube. Those who attended, which we did very occasionally, wore masks and practiced social distancing. Second-hour classes were held on Zoom, although Primary was suspended for obvious reasons.

We also practiced great care when we shopped in retail stores, and although we patronized restaurants regularly to support this struggling industry, we did so through takeout, not in-person dining. This was inconvenient, but necessary to preserve public health.

Then things began to open up as the vaccines became available and case numbers dropped significantly. My two colleagues and I continued to go to work, but now others came to the office, although we still held staff meetings on Zoom. My wife and I shopped without masks and even dined inside at a few restaurants and attended a movie theater. At Church, things changed too. The social-distancing guidelines were relaxed, and second-hour classes (including Primary) resumed in person. Things were looking up.

But then the delta variant arrived, and all the numbers went south, for the state of Utah and especially for Utah County, where I live. Why? Because Utah County is heavily LDS and so many Latter-day Saints are Republican, which means they were getting their information from questionable right-wing sources, and they were taught to doubt both science and common sense. They were also taught that their personal freedom was the most important value in the universe. The percentage of the population vaccinated in Utah County, and especially in north Orem, where I live, was abysmally low, and many of the unvaccinated were also anti-maskers. My wife and I still attended sacrament meeting, but we were among just a handful of members who wore masks, even though we had been vaccinated. Some friends of ours who had been vaccinated came down with COVID. Then our elders quorum president and his wife also experienced breakthrough cases. These were not mild cases, although neither couple was hospitalized. Obviously, this delta variant is not something to take lightly. We figured we were doing our part to help stop the spread, especially to the vulnerable children who were too young to be vaccinated. And we felt that even if we weren’t contagious, we were setting the correct example. There was nothing political about this. Our actions were all based on public health guidelines and the statistics that were growing increasingly more alarming.

We were tremendously relieved when on August 12, 2021, the First Presidency finally sent this email to every member:

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

We find ourselves fighting a war against the ravages of COVID-19 and its variants, an unrelenting pandemic. We want to do all we can to limit the spread of these viruses. We know that protection from the diseases they cause can only be achieved by immunizing a very high percentage of the population.

To limit exposure to these viruses, we urge the use of face masks in public meetings whenever social distancing is not possible. To provide personal protection from such severe infections, we urge individuals to be vaccinated. Available vaccines have proven to be both safe and effective.

We can win this war if everyone will follow the wise and thoughtful recommendations of medical experts and government leaders. Please know of our sincere love and great concern for all of God’s children.

The First Presidency

Russell M. Nelson
Dallin H. Oaks
Henry B. Eyring

We thought, surely our fellow ward members will see the wisdom in this and, as the Primary song goes, “follow the prophet.” We were expecting to see a similar email from both our stake president and our bishop, urging members to get vaccinated and resume wearing masks at church meetings. No such messages appeared. So we were curious about what sacrament meeting would look like. We were both pleased and disappointed. Instead of just a handful of members wearing masks, about 50 percent were masked that first Sunday. The great disappointment came when our new bishop, who is a Church employee, appeared on the stand without a mask. At the beginning of the meeting, he came to the pulpit and said, in effect, “You all received an email from the First Presidency this week. We just want to assure you that you have your freedom of choice.” That was it. No encouragement to follow the prophet. No leading by example. Later that week, I sent him an email. He’s a good friend whom we’ve known for many years, so I feel comfortable giving him a piece of my mind. The piece I gave him was this: Never in my life did I expect to see a priesthood leader stand at the pulpit and tell the members, in word and by example, that following the prophet is optional. Sure, we all have our agency, but in the Church we don’t tell people that smoking is just a personal choice, or paying tithing, or being chaste. We encourage people to use their agency to do what is right.

To his credit, he did start wearing a mask to sacrament meeting the next week, but there was no encouragement from the pulpit to follow the guidance of the First Presidency. And in the weeks since that first Sunday after the August 12 email, the numbers wearing masks have decreased even as the numbers of COVID cases in Utah have increased and the ICUs have filled up.

The percentage of Utah County residents who have been fully vaccinated is 44.4. The percentage of north Orem residents who have been fully vaccinated is 42.7. I have no illusions that my ward is an outlier. I think my fellow ward members are pretty average for north Orem. Which means that a large number of them are both unvaccinated and unmasked. I don’t find church to be a very safe place. With the aerosol spread of this virus, any indoor gathering with the unmasked is a potentially dangerous event. The last time I attended Sunday School was shortly before the First Presidency email came. We sat in a poorly ventilated Relief Society room with dozens of unmasked ward members. I didn’t feel safe, even though I’ve been vaccinated and was wearing a mask. I haven’t attended Sunday School since, and I don’t attend elders quorum anymore either, even though it is held in the much larger cultural hall. Part of the reason is that I struggle now being around my fellow ward members.

When I go to church now, I can’t help judging. We all judge. We really can’t help it, and we need to do so for a variety of reasons, one of them being our personal safety. But I look around at all the people who received the same email I did, and I wonder what arguments they use for ignoring both the prophet and the medical professionals who advise them to behave differently than they are. Now, when I see my fellow ward members, I don’t see friends and fellow Saints. I see people I can’t trust. This is difficult for me. No matter what bureaucratic, doctrinal, or historical stumbling blocks I’ve encountered in Mormonism, I’ve always had my ward. But not anymore. What do you do when you can no longer trust your fellow ward members? I still attend sacrament meeting, but it depresses me. Not because of anything said from the pulpit, but because I am surrounded by people I can’t trust.

Some people say that trust has to be earned. They are wrong. Unless we trust each other implicitly, our society doesn’t work. Our economic and social relationships are all based on trust. No, trust doesn’t have to be earned. We generally trust others, within reason, until they prove to us that they cannot be trusted. Unfortunately, I’ve reached that point with my ward. I’ve learned this summer that I can’t trust the majority of them to do the right thing, and when you can’t trust someone to do the right thing, the relationship with that person is broken. I feel broken. My ward has disappointed me in such a fundamental way that I doubt I will ever feel the same toward most members.

I’ve said it before, but it’s still true: many Mormons are more Republican than they are Mormon. The pandemic has only made this more obvious. When a political party goes off the rails to the degree that it encourages its constituents to disbelieve facts and believe instead all sorts of nonsense and lies, it should be abandoned rather than embraced. But this is not happening. The disinformation is too prevalent on the right and too tribal. Ignorance and selfishness have carried the day in the Republican Party and, hence, in many LDS wards. I now am sad when I attend church, and I don’t see this changing anytime soon.