Dave wrote:
I do think there's a legitimate critique of Momon culture in "Leaving the
Saints." I really identified with what she was talking about to the point
that it was quite painful to relive. The examples you give are the most
spurious ones that people have picked up and run with ad nauseum--a strategy
that was also used by LDS defenders against John Krakauer's "Under the
Banner of Heaven." At BYU, and in Utah Valley, there was an atmosphere of
fear and recrimination. At BYU, for example, people were being watched,
reports were being written, spies were even used as far back as the
Wilkinson administration at BYU. And for five years historian Michael Quinn
was trailed by search committees who were dishonest about representing
themselves so that they could locate him in a ward for the express purpose
of excommunication. Fear of violence is almost as debilitatating as actual
violence--witness international terrori! sm--and Beck talks about how it was
crazy but she felt vulnerable to Danite-styled actions because she was
challenging a system that was somehow considered sacred.
Would you mind taking this paragraph out of the passive voice and putting a
few names on the record? You’re beginning to sound like Martha.
Futhermore, the explanations she was allegedly fed about bobbed and pubic
hair is pretty consistent with my experience in the LDS culture:
explanations--some often wild and quite funny--are often given from
everything to why the blacks denied the priesthood to why hot drinks are
disallowed.
Hers were not explanations; she was stating them as fact, either facts that
happened to her, or as in the case of the ludicrous pubic hair claim, as
administration policy. And the attempt by her hairdresser to call Maratha’s
husband to get his permission to cut her hair short? That fits with your
experience? Yeah, right.
And as for the no-Sonja Johnson-found-in-the-campus library claim, I don't
know if that's true, but I think the kind of silly efforts to regulate
people's behavior as well as information that have occured in the past on
campus suggest that it could have easily happened, even if it was rectified
later.
You’re sounding like Martha again. Suggests that it could have happened?
Sorry, but the facts—the real ones that is—don’t support her story (see pg.
134 of The Farms Review 17/1).
And, so that we don't forget, there were important concessions Beck made of
individual kindness and Chrisitian living in the book that leavened the
report.
You mean where she praises the Oak Hills Ward for their acceptance of Adam
before she accuses them of ritual shunning? Or maybe you’re referring to
the ridiculous story of her Bishop sticking his fingers in his ears and
chanting “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you”? Maybe you’re referring to
the Primary president who tried to baptize Martha’s daughter without her
permission? Ask John Beck how his parents enjoyed their “Christian”
treatment in her “brilliant expose”? Or take a look on page 59 of her book
where she talks about how accepting her new Ward was:
“It felt like a miracle to be so welcome and so safe. It was clear that the
compassion these sweet people were offering me was real and spontaneous,
that nothing I could ever do would set me outside the circle of their
acceptance. Looking back over the various illusions I’ve harbored during my
lifetime, I would have to say that this was one of the very, very best.”
You mean that kind of kindness and Christian living? Dave, she simply set
them up, so she could knock them down. Leavening indeed.
Greg Taggart
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