Being a person who was psychologically traumatized at BYU (a strong phrase but true), and feeling a consuming indignation and sorrow for the stories I had read, I tried to use my talk at Sunstone to explain what it felt like to live under the honor code—under any system, including the Church, that rests on circular arguments that demonize awareness of the circles. I knew that in doing so I was risking the exact consequences that I was criticizing. If I stood up and honestly expressed my terrifying anger at the injustices of the honor code and BYU culture, I would lose the legitimacy to speak at all—at least in the eyes of the majority of my audience. My honest emotional descriptions would be interpreted as hysteria, weakness, irrationality, and unfair or ‘sweeping’ condemnations. I would be asked, certainly, to change myself before changing the Church, to work from the inside, to put Church imperfections ‘on the shelf’, to focus on the good, to avoid anger, to remember the difference between gospel, church, and culture, and any other arguments that require perpetual deferment and miss the point of the criticism entirely—that respond to injustice and sorrow with strategy.
And indeed, that was what happened: One person stood up and condemned my descriptions as totally fallacious and generalized (forgetting that any criticism is necessarily a caricatured warning but does not necessarily lose criticism for being such); another man told me and the other panelists that he was “charmed” that we were still surprised at injustice; while the responses to the Salt Lake Tribune article included the 150 inevitable comments suggesting that I knew what I was getting into when I went to BYU, that it was a private university and could do whatever it wanted, and that if I didn’t like it I could stop wasting the Church’s tithing money and get the hell to Berkeley. I wanted to tell the first commentator to do a rhetorical analysis of the billboards from Salt Lake to Provo and then maintain his contention that Mormons do not equate righteousness with money, modesty and self-satisfied provincialism. I wanted to tell the second man that I was not ‘surprised’ at injustice, but actively concerned, and that it disturbed me if sorrow for sufferers was now a charming idiosyncrasy of youth. And I wanted to ask the hundreds of Salt Lake Tribune commentators if the qualification for belonging to a school, church or country was unadulterated acceptance of whatever those institutions decided to champion, and if they thought that the definition of “private university” exempted all of us from a discussion about the morality of that school’s principles. Just as in modern political discourse, religious strategy now not only outweighed but utterly eclipsed the ethical or substantive conversation that should be occurring. Punditry and presentation has replaced the moral polemic.
The experience made me think, as I often do, about the problem of minorities. I am sure there are many definitions of “minority,” but mine is this: a person or group that must bear the consequences of the majority’s lifestyle—that, being necessarily ‘removed’ from reality, keeps the majority from having to see those consequences; a person or group that will be eternally discredited because the things they suggest are not institutionalized and the things they decry—no matter how insane or wrong— always are; a person or group that realizes that the conversation is not about right or wrong but about inside and outside, that the majority’s smug, self-serving morality is simply a polemic of insides; a person or group that the majority will try to contain by prescribing personal morality in response to its structural critiques—that will say ‘forgive this leader or that injustice’ rather than admitting the consequences of those structural, built-in atrocities; a person or group that gets progressively angrier at the bullheaded unimaginativeness of the majority—at their smug cruelty encased in arguments that make that cruelty necessary, inevitable, or even invisible—but whose anger disqualifies them from participating in the conversation, whose anger will offend the politeness of the cruel majority that sees anger at its cruelty as the only impropriety (that refuses to acknowledge the diffuse anger of a system built on inequalities); a person or group that will, if practicing the virtues of the majority, be defined only in the negative (if they are persistent they are egotistical, if they are Christian they are extreme, if they fight injustice they are complainers, if they admit unpleasant truths they are whiners); a person or group who can never, never say how they feel when they are subjected to cruelty or injustice, if only because the whole system of discourse is designed to prohibit and profane the honest expression of personal pain.
At least, this is how I have felt as a minority in my religion and at BYU. Every time I have tried to say that something was frightfully wrong, I got a load of strained apologetics, a prescription for PR, and a blight on my character for getting mad at injustice in the first place. Worse still, though, my criticisms were neatly folded into the everywhere-system I was criticizing.
Ash,
I am not one to want to disagree with such a morally principled argument as yours, but it is in a sense precisely the tight moral logic of your thinking that I find troubling. This is mostly because you are replicating, in part, one of the problems you highlight: you have made it very dangerous for anyone to want to disagree unless they are willing to be categorized in the way you have categorized those who wish to defend BYU, its honor code, or any other aspect of church culture. I fully recognize many of the dangers you highlight about circular thinking in the church and at BYU and have been myself a victim of such logic many times, as I suppose you know. But I find it possible to remain in the church and at BYU precisely because those reactions have never struck me as the marrow of the life of the institution as you suggest they might be. I rather see them as the necessary and anticipated spasms and reactions of the more conservative elements within a complex organization when it undergoes challenges, changes, and when it confronts its own contradictions. But what is interesting to me is that not all of what those reactions accomplish are bad. To see it that way is simply, for me, a much too manichean way of interpreting the history of a place like BYU. It is the general direction and the general health of the institution I try to keep my focus on and that gives me reason to stay.
When I have let those moments of offense pass and have persisted in finding the necessary common ground with my ideological “enemies,” I find that over time the reactions soften, the institution seems more open to change, and I gain influence I didn’t have before. I fear that it is the tone you use that creates more problems for you than you want. I am not saying it is your fault, by any means, that people can’t seem to question themselves instead of questioning you, but one’s tone doesn’t always have to convey moral urgency in order to be morally efficacious. If you sound like you are picking a fight, you will have no shortage of folks wanting a brawl. There are a great number of us at BYU who believe in the overall good of the institution, who stick with it and work with it and uphold it (and yes that too includes the honor code) but we are not naïve, defensive, or short-tempered when it comes to listening to or offering our own criticism of the institution. In short, there are many of us who neither share your sense of outright moral contradiction at the heart of the institution and its honor code but neither are we the defensive or accusatory type of people you describe. That seems to be too significant of an empirical fact to ignore. You can still offer these criticisms but it would help to acknowledge what are the good reasons so many of us, indeed the vast majority of us faculty and students, are quite happy overall to be at BYU? It seems like that deserves consideration in your argument, but it is missing. The experience of the minority is one of my great concerns when it comes to life at BYU and in the church and that is where we need to do more work perhaps than in any other way, but sometimes the problems and tribulations that majority cultures create can be addressed and should be addressed without wholesale or overly indignant criticisms, even when they are deserved. That is because there is too much good we can’t afford to throw out in the process.
I was reviewing the manuscript of an interview with Marilynne Robinson (yes, the one you participated in, which will be published soon) and she said these wise words: “I think that the basis of human happiness ought not to be what you hope will happen but what you, appraising your life, can be glad has happened.” Maybe they aren’t a mantra for all of life’s circumstances, but these words offer a glimpse into what a fully charitable openness and admission of blindness might feel like.
I hope these thoughts are useful and that it is clear I offer them with abiding and deep respect and admiration for who you are and what you stand for.
Ash,
I am sorry you had to go through that. It sounds extremely frustrating and the culture you describe is a big part of what kept me out of BYU, straightlaced as I am. My question is this? Do you really feel this is an institutional flaw or is it a matter of people? Are we responsible for our own prejudices or those we lash out at, or does the groupthink make us do it? I honestly don’t know, except to say that to some degree both have to be partly true.
If I recall right, self righteousness, defensiveness and judgementality are condemned by no less an authority than Jesus Christ in the scriptures. Yet, we often fall so very short of this in practice, whether we are majority or minority. The very phenomenon you describe is the heart of the 121st section of the Doctrine and Covenants. It is the nature and disposition of almost all men.
I don’t know that minorities are any better at this. Too often the sense of injustice and indignation becomes a club, wielded for all the power and gain it could ever be worth. When it works as a type of power, authority, and justification, it becomes very difficult to ever put the club back down.
Frankly, I think all of us, minority or majority, like or opposite thinking could use a whole lot more attention to the nature of righteous dominion. What do you think is the place for forgiveness, empathy, or understanding is in situations like you describe?
Ash
Well articulated. I wish I could have been there.
I am sad. Sad that people say such things. I hope you (and little ol’ me) can make the changes and continue speaking out against injustices forever more. Love you, Ash.
Ashley,
It has been a long time. I ended up staying up too late reading a good portion of your blogs. Right now I think I am too tired to comment intelligently on this or any of the other posts. So take what I say with a grain of salt. Just wanted to say that I admire the journey you are taking. It takes guts to stand up to your ideals, however while I often find myself thinking along a similar vein as you do, I realize that there is a danger in constantly judging the church by the actions of the individuals inside of it. When we do so, we run the risk of becoming a law unto ourselves, a good warning from Doctrine and Covenants. The strength of the church and its weakness lies I think in our conception of community. One of the most beautiful things about the church is that I know I can always count on people to help when I need it. On the other hand this community becomes by nature insular and suspicous of anything that would seem to threaten its ideals, and it also has a hard time including people who don’t fit the mold. Change takes time, but it does happen. All institutions have their flaws, however what would our world be like without them? I think George had some good points about BYU, after seeing what life is like for the kids here at Albany who have few rules and are constantly making poor decisions, I am grateful for the experience I had at BYU with its ultra-conservative warts and all. It was nice catching up with your thoughts, I miss the discussion nights, you don’t get to do that kind of thing as much married with kids, although my wife provides a good soundboard when I need to vent about something religous. Best, John
Talk about circular arguments. If anyone disagrees with this point off view they are therefor automatically deemed incorrect. Ash is basically arguing, using many words, that anyone who opposes her or any minority is wrong. Not all majorities are bad. Sometimes lableing yourself as a minority and throwing your lot against the majority is causing more harm than good.
I love BYU and its honor code and think it helps people. Not everyone who criticizes BYU or the church is labled as a heretic. If it is an honest critique that needs to be adressed it will be appreciated.
I would recomend listening to some of the opposing arguments, they may be beneficial. For instance, you do tend to emphasize the bad and deemphisize the good. Emotionally traumitized? It doesn’t take much research to find thousands of good things BYU has done for the world and its students. Did you consider this?
It reminds me of a joke. A person goes to the doctor and says “I hurt.” The doctor asks where. And the person responds “everywhere, such as here, here, over here, and here,” as she pokes different body parts with her finger. The doctor thinks and then responds “well, your finger is broken.” Are you sure that it is everone around you that has a problem?
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