When people leave the church over intellectual issues, I believe that part of what this means is that people leave the church because of the feelings associated with confronting these issues. In other words, when a LDS learns that Joseph Smith engaged in polyandry, for instance, it usually occurs in a context that induces fear and loneliness, which eventually leads to frustration and anger. Such a person may not be literally alone when he or she discovers Joseph\u2019s polyandry (although he may be; finding the information online, for instance), but he or she likely feels alone in the sense of not knowing anyone with whom he can relate. Hiding such loneliness can give way to not only frustration, but also detachment from fellow LDSs as one seeks to render oneself invulnerable to the pain associated with loneliness. After a while, frustration enables anger, and the distance one has created between oneself and other LDSs via detachment makes \u201cflight\u201d (rather than \u201cfight\u201d) the easiest response to a difficult situation. In other words, some people leave the church because of frustration, fear, and anger.\u00a0 I think we can do better at creating a context where these feelings are coped with in healthy ways. Much of this can be done by means of what I will call \u201can apologetics of care.\u201d<\/p>\n
An apologetics of care seeks to reconfigure the context that induces feelings such as frustration, fear, and anger. It does not seek to remove these feelings since they serve important moral functions (frustration can signal, for instance, the fact that something valuable cannot be tended to); rather it seeks to validate these feelings through a process of sympathy (discussed below). An apologetics of care recognizes that people are relational beings seeking concern, comfort, and communion often before seeking an answer to a question. It recognizes that answers to intellectual concerns, provided without tending to the relationships they invoke, all too often fail to recognize the reasons for anger and frustration. The question of Joseph\u2019s polyandry, for instance, isn\u2019t simply a question about how a prophet could marry a woman who is already married to someone else and still be a prophet; rather it is also tied to our relationships with church leaders (why haven\u2019t the leaders of the church discussed this more openly?) and\/or our relationship with our spouse (will I have to share my spouse with someone else in the eternities?), among others. An apologetics of care seeks to recognize the fact of vulnerability\u2014the things we care about most, our relationships with others, are by nature vulnerable to other forces in the world, but they are also vulnerable to our changing beliefs.<\/p>\n
Care apologetics is apologetic in the sense of decreasing the need for frustration and anger by eliminating the space of fear and loneliness. It provides reasons for people to stay by recognizing vulnerability as shared\u2014that we care when someone else hurts, even if we cannot fully understand their pain. Care apologetics does not decrease the need for other apologetic efforts. Explaining how one might believe Joseph Smith is a prophet while he still participated in polyandry, for instance, can compliment care apologetics. The often-discussed \u201cinoculation\u201d as a form of apologetics also dovetails nicely with care apologetics because it creates a context where emotions such as fear and loneliness are largely relieved. Further, care apologetics is something we can practice without lots of study; it\u2019s something we can for the most part do immediately.<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019ve briefly explained the notion of care apologetics (I hope to elaborate more in the future), here are some practical recommendations:<\/p>\n
1. Sympathize with others. All too often we distance ourselves from others. Thinking, \u201cI could never doubt,\u201d relieves us of the burden of sympathy. Instead, we should open ourselves up to the real possibility that our places could very well be switched. If otherwise good people could kill 100+ innocent strangers at Mountain Meadows, it\u2019s certainly within the realm of possibility for \u201cme\u201d to become someone who \u201cdoubts\u201d the church.<\/p>\n
2. Validate negative feelings. Feelings like anger are natural reactions to pain. Discounting anger is asking someone to pretend that they don\u2019t hurt. Simply recognizing someone\u2019s suffering (\u201cI see that this frustrates you\u201d) can go a long way. Further, if we are serious about conceptualizing our relationship with God as a parent-child relationship, we must allow feelings such as anger, betrayal, or frustration to be permissible feelings we might take into this relationship. We are all involved in a number of significant relationships, think about it this way: would you love your child, spouse, brother, or sister less if he or she were mad at you?<\/p>\n
3. Listen and don\u2019t rush to resolve concerns.<\/p>\n
4. Don\u2019t police the boundaries of orthodoxy. The church has its own procedure for establishing its boundaries. Let those involved manage this process.<\/p>\n