There are of course all kinds of reasons that people stop attending Church. I’m sure some people simply don’t like it or don’t care all that much. And of course, the people who got offended by something (we hear about these people in Sunday School all the time). But there are also a great many people who want to believe, or don’t really know what they believe, who perhaps care a lot, but find certain aspects of the institutional church or church culture too difficult or painful. And of course there are quite a number of people who after careful and heartfelt soul searching find they simply do not believe.

For the most part, in current Mormon parlance people who no longer go to church on a regular basis, usually qualify their Mormonness somehow, “I was raised Mormon” “I used to be Mormon” or “I’m not active.”

It has long been bandied about the bloggrnacle the idea that many cultural Mormons wish to/should be able to embrace their Mormonism in much the way that Jews identify as Jews regardless of their ‘activity’ status. I’m generally in favor of this, as I know all kinds of “not active” Mormons who are just so thoroughly Mormon in their world outlook that it seems awkward or not truish or something to call them ‘former’ or ‘ex’ or whatever. I guess for many saying “I’m a cultural Mormon” pretty much covers it.

But I was just listening to the Mormon Stories podcast of Richard Bushman (author of Joseph Smith bio Rough Stone Rolling) in which they discuss some of the more difficult aspects of Brother Joseph at great length, and he had this whole different approach to the idea that I found fascinating.

Toward the end, Bushman discusses his view that people who encounter a lot of problems, who don’t know quite what they believe anymore, or who are perhaps angry and want to dump the prophet, for whatever reason they feel like they are not ‘in’ the church anymore, that it doesn’t work that way. He thinks that Mormonism is more than just the institutional church and the churchy busy work we do. But rather that Mormonism is all the souls, all the individuals struggling and searching for what is right and good and true within the overall Mormon context. And people who struggle, who are obsessed with these questions, even people who might be considered antagonists, show a kind a devotion. So long as they are sincerely searching for what they think is right (and not tying to harm anyone), and they are doing so within the context of Mormonism, studying Joseph Smith or whatever, they they can’t be outside of Mormonism, because they are in the cultural boundaries of Mormonism.

Then he mentions something he’d like to see discussed and I did too (and we’re good at that discussion thing here), about what happens to a person, morally and spiritually, after going through a struggle over Joseph Smith and the Gospel (or whatever church thing threw you for a loop). If Mormon faith doesn’t/hasn’t yet work out for you, where do you go? So if this describes you, if you’re no longer active and/or Mormon and you feel like sharing:

How your spiritual focus change? Is God still a part of your life? Do you pray? Did you perhaps become more Christ centered? Or did you become atheist/agnostic? Did you go through a period of or give up entirely on living Mormon standards (drinking smoking tithing ‘n stuff like)? How much is Mormonism still a part of who you are and how you think?(because you wouldn’t be reading this if it weren’t non at all)