Afterword
January 2, 2022
Why am I writing an Afterword to an already lengthy book?
While Crossroads is already a lengthy work, I have decided to write this Afterword because, given the nature of the book and what I say about my faith throughout it, I feel like I owe an update to anyone who has read it regarding where I am now on my personal journey. I hope that anyone reading this Afterword will afford me the grace of being an imperfect person who can feel strongly about something at one point and then feel very differently later because of ongoing learning and experience.
[Side note: Because I made the decision to write this update after the paperback copy of Crossroads became available to purchase in June 2021, this Afterword will unfortunately not appear in any paperback copies that are purchased going forward.]
The short version of the update I want to provide here is as follows: After writing Crossroads in 2020, my ongoing studies concerning the origins of ancient (and purportedly ancient) scriptures that are accepted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as canon, have resulted in me no longer being able to believe in the church’s teachings about God. I have therefore decided to join Cheryl and each of our children in their respective desires to resign our formal memberships in the institutional church. However, I still have every intention to maintain a meaningful relationship with any church member who wants to stay my friend. And I do not want to abandon any lessons I learned in church about the importance of love for my fellow human beings.
So even though I am no longer a member of the institutional church, I still plan to remain involved with efforts to promote greater love and understanding for LGBTQ people within the Latter-day Saint community. To be clear, I did not decide to resign my formal church membership because I have met any sort of breaking point with respect to LGBTQ advocacy efforts within the church. Rather, I remain committed to such advocacy and simply desire to stay honest and authentic regarding what I believe in general as I persist in those efforts.
Specifically, I plan to continue to assist Marci McPhee, the amazing editor of my book, with the weekly blog we have on our Crossroads website: https://www.gayldscrossroads.org/blog. She remains a believing member of the church – one who is not just active, but in her words, she is “hyper-active”, in church service and related endeavors. I am hopeful our collective perspectives might help the weekly blog posts continue to speak to Latter-day Saints across the full spectrums of belief, church activity, membership, or lack thereof. I also plan to continue to support LGBTQ-focused charities and Facebook groups like: Affirmation; Beyond the Block; Dragon Dads; Encircle; Emmaus; Human Stories; Listen, Learn & Love; Latter Gay Stories; Mama Dragons; Mormons Building Bridges; Peculiar and others. And I will also continue as one of the administrators of the Facebook group “I’ll Walk With You”, which is a unique community of Latter-day Saint parents who espouse a wide range of beliefs, church activity and membership statuses and who are all focused on simply helping one another find the best ways to show love to their LGBTQ children. One of the rules of that group prohibits attacks on the church or its leaders by attributing harmful or evil intent to them. I am glad that group tries to offer a safe space for believing parents to process their feelings and learn how to support their children. I hope to model that sort of approach in my interactions with church member friends going forward – because I do not want to feel threatening to them even though we may see things differently now.
Somewhat ironically, I think my continuing commitment to help advocate for LGBTQ equality within church-related circles and my ongoing love for church members, actually result in me remaining a member of the “scriptural” church. That’s because, rather than being a legal entity like the institutional church is today, in scripture, the word “church” is frequently used metaphorically or simply as a group of people with a certain level of shared belief (See 1 Nephi 13-14, Matthew 18, Acts 2, Acts 8, 1 Corinthians 14, Romans 16, Ephesians 5, etc.). So even if the only shared belief I have with certain progressive institutional church members now is the importance of trying to love other people as ourselves, I am happy to consider myself a member with them of a metaphorical “church” founded on unconditional love. In any event, I feel that no matter what path I take in my life going forward, I will always be a Latter-day Saint to some extent due to my ancestry, upbringing and the decades of my adult life that I have devoted to the church.
However, I will admit there have been moments in my journey after writing Crossroads, particularly when I’ve learned something new about the origins of the church’s scriptures, teachings or practices, where I have felt angry at the institutional church for teaching as divine truths many things that I now know millions of fully-informed people can confidently describe as falsehoods. And I still feel that way at times due to the pain the church can cause to many current and former Latter-day Saints through its propagation of such falsehoods, even if done without malicious intent. But rather than focus on anger, I want to instead choose to remain positively engaged in the cause of lifting and loving others. I feel like I can do that best by being open about the shift in my beliefs – so that any love I attempt to share with others will hopefully continue to be seen as genuine. So it is that desire – to remain true to myself and others – that has ultimately motivated my decision to resign my church membership – not any sense of anger at the church. In fact, the love and affection I have for many members of the church, including those in my family and in my local ward and stake, leads me to plan to still attend church periodically as a non-member. I hope to do so whenever I can to support major events in the lives of my loved ones and, if my family commitments allow for it on any given Sunday otherwise, to simply stay connected to friends in the church.
Will anyone care to read an explanation of where I’m at now?
Now, I know it may seem presumptuous to some people that I have assumed there is sufficient public interest in my personal journey that I feel it necessary to post about my beliefs online again. But I feel there have been enough people who have taken an interest in Crossroads that, to remain authentic to them and to anyone else who reads my book going forward, this Afterword is necessary.
As of the date of this writing, almost 11,000 people have downloaded or browsed Crossroads for free online and over 2,200 copies of the e-book or paperback version of Crossroads have been purchased. Tens of thousands more people have listened to the podcast episode that Cheryl and I recorded with Richard Ostler on Listen, Learn & Love (see Episode 291 here: https://www.listenlearnandlove.org/top-introduction-podcasts-for-local-leaders-and-parents).
While all that is above and beyond the number of people I ever expected would take an interest in our family’s story, those numbers are not what has touched me the most about the reception that Crossroads has received. The personal communications that I receive from readers about the book are what fill my heart with gratitude the most. I have received hundreds of messages from readers saying they really resonate with the approach I describe in the book of staying in the church while simultaneously speaking up about how doctrinal change is possible. And I have received even more messages from LGBTQ church members expressing gratitude that I was being a “voice from the inside” to encourage a softening of hearts among other active members of the church.
So I do worry that some readers will be disappointed to learn that my faith journey has now taken me to a place where I no longer feel that I can authentically remain a member of the institutional church. But I hope, as I stated above, that such readers will be kind and understand that, like everyone’s personal journey, I am continually learning more and adjusting my perspectives accordingly. I hope readers will understand that I am NOT giving up on the fight for LGBTQ equality in the church. Rather, I am simply choosing to continue that effort while following a path that I feel compelled to walk in my pursuit of truth as well.
What exactly did I learn that changed my mind?
I don’t know if it would be helpful here, as explanation for my change in beliefs, to get too specific about what I learned regarding the origins and authorship of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the Bible, and Joseph Smith’s “translation” of the Bible, that led me to no longer be able to consider most of the stories and teachings contained in those works to be historically accurate, authentically authored, and/or of divine origin. There are already great resources online and in print that both summarize and delve deep into the historicity and authorship problems of such scriptures. None of what I learned is new to the world; it was just new to me – so I won’t try to recreate here the work that other people have already done. And rather than try to summarize what I’ve learned over literally thousands of hours of study, I will instead just provide a brief overview of how I viewed scripture before vs. how I see it now.
For many years before I wrote Crossroads, I had known there were human fingerprints all over the scriptures – because I accepted that the prophets/apostles who actually penned the words that appear on the pages of our scriptures were, like all of us, incapable of telling a story without doing so using their own human perspective and understanding. I was comfortable with the idea that even if a lot of the content in our scriptures reflected the imperfect human perspective of prophets/apostles, most of the stories that the scriptures related were at least largely accurate historically-speaking. I was aware of many criticisms regarding the purported origins and authorship of the Book of Mormon and other books of scripture, but my study of church-friendly scholarly works about such criticisms led me to keep my belief that most of the stories in our scriptures actually happened in real life.
For many years, I was even comfortable with the idea that some books of scripture, like the Book of Abraham, could reflect historical truths even if the source from which the church originally claimed the text of such scripture originated was proven to be something completely unrelated to the canonized text. For example, I was okay with the idea I had read from some scholars that, even though the content of the Book of Abraham was not contained on the Egyptian papyri/scrolls that Joseph Smith purchased from the antiquities dealer and entrepreneur, Michael Chandler, in 1835, it was still possible for the presence of the scrolls to have acted as a catalyst for the revelation of ancient scripture to come through Joseph’s mind. So I was happy to see the church accept, in its 2014 online essay titled Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng), that such “catalyst theory” is now a view the church accepts as a legitimate way for faithful believers in the church to approach the Book of Abraham. Likewise, I was okay with the idea that Joseph Smith didn’t actually look at the golden plates to dictate the text of the Book of Mormon. I was comfortable thinking that the plates (which I now do not believe ever existed) similarly just served as a catalyst for the revelation of that book of scripture.
But after I wrote Crossroads, I decided to expand my study of scriptural authorship to include sources that didn’t mention the church per se (i.e., I studied books about the origins and authorship of the Bible written by non-Latter-day Saint scholars like Bart Ehrman and Richard Friedman). I also began to study sources that were actually critical of the church’s truth claims as well. As I did so, I continued to try to be balanced in my studies by also reading more from church-friendly sources too. Specifically, I explored church-friendly scholarship that allows for believers to take a largely metaphorical (rather than historical) approach to the scriptures if desired (like the book Understanding the Book of Mormon whose author, Grant Hardy, has said: “Can faith in the Book of Mormon as inspired fiction be a saving faith? I think the answer is, absolutely.” (https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2016/more-effective-apologetics , 2016)).
Eventually, I came to realize that the church-friendly scholars and apologists’ arguments are not nearly as strong as other arguments and the impartial evidence. I also came to accept that my feelings could not be a reliable measure of objective truth – because many other peoples’ feelings tell them conflicting things to what my feelings did. As my knowledge increased and my beliefs shifted, I found I needed to embrace a metaphorical approach to the scriptures. I now see the scriptures as powerful allegorical stories that contain many inspiring and uplifting messages. But I do not believe anymore that they are, for the most part anyway, written by the ancient prophets/apostles whom the church claims authored them; and I can no longer believe, again for the most part, that they relate ancient historical events that actually occurred.
I thought for a time that I could stay in the institutional church while maintaining that metaphorical view. But, after a while, I started to feel uncomfortable knowing that many readers of Crossroads and other church members I interacted with in person and online thought my beliefs in the truth claims of the institutional church remained literal. Even after I posted in some private Facebook groups about my belief now being mostly metaphorical, I was still having interactions with other people where they seemed to assume things about my beliefs that were not accurate.
So, I came to realize that, because of what I wrote in Crossroads about my faith (which was genuine at the time I was writing), and because of what some people will always assume about my beliefs as long as I remain a member of the institutional church, the best way for me to feel like I’m being honest with anyone who may be curious about my current position, was to resign my church membership. But more importantly, I feel that resigning from the institutional church was the only way I could be true to myself too, given my newfound perspective and learnings. I didn’t feel like I could authentically remain a formal member of the church if I did not believe that even its basic teachings about scripture, and therefore what it teaches about God, were true.
What do I believe now?
While slowly abandoning my prior beliefs, I also did some significant searching to find a new way of viewing the meaning of life. Thus far in my searching, Humanism is what has resonated the most with me. That said, I plan to always remain open to change as I continue learning. But for now, the ideals and tenets of Humanism help me feel excited for every day of life, explain human existence in a plausible and non-supernatural way, and guide me to feel more connected with, and to strive to do more good for, other people. If you are interested in learning more about Humanism, I would encourage you to read the book Good Without God – What a Billion Non-Religious People Do Believe by Greg Epstein, the Humanist chaplain at Harvard University (https://www.amazon.com/Good-Without-God-Billion-Nonreligious/dp/006167012X).
Because I assume I will always consider myself to be a Latter-day Saint, by culture and background even if no longer by belief or formal church membership, I think the best way to label myself (for now anyway) is as a Latter-day Saint Humanist. But that might change in the future as I continue to live and learn. So I don’t want to actually embrace any label too zealously right now (or ever again, I suspect). I just want to love other people more fully, embrace each moment of life as precious and meaningful, and help ease the pain of those who are suffering as best I can. Trying to do all of that without any belief in God to motivate me recently, has surprisingly helped me feel more joy, peace and unity with people in general than I have ever experienced before. I am grateful for where I am now on my journey and look forward to continuing to evolve in my views going forward.
Most importantly, as my beliefs have shifted, I have felt closer than ever to Cheryl and our kids. We are supportive of each other in our various respective approaches to life, spirituality and belief – without any judgment. We love each other unconditionally and have never felt more grateful for one another. I suspect a large reason for all that is because we have learned to emphasize mental health, personal well-being, and the precious “now” more than we ever could as members of a church that often prioritizes the institution over individuals and that is so focused on the end of the world and peoples’ standings in an afterlife.
In any event, while I will always be grateful for the role the church played in bringing Cheryl and our kids into my life, I remain at peace with my decision to leave the institutional church. And I am excited to experience this next phase of my life. I hope anyone reading this will feel excited, not sad, for me too. I hope you will share my joy for life and for being kind and loving to others simply because it feels good to do so as a human, not because God is watching.
Finally, thank you for your interest in Crossroads and in our family’s story. I hope whatever feelings of kinship and shared purpose I have felt with those of you who have reached out to me about my book will continue to exist mutually among us as I move forward with this next step on my path. And I hope anyone who reads Crossroads going forward will understand that, when I wrote it, I was a true-believing church member who was trying to describe a faithful way to maintain hope for change. I still feel strongly that, based on the church’s own current teachings and scriptures, doctrinal change that results in full LGBTQ equality in the church is not only possible – it is required to avoid hypocrisy. And from the perspective of my new beliefs, based on the goodness of humanity, I still maintain hope for the situation of LGBTQ people in the church. I love the LGBTQ church members I have come to know as a result of writing Crossroads and will always have faith that goodness will prevail and doctrinal change will occur in the end (even if still decades away). I hope to continue to be a part of the effort that might help such positive change occur.
Sincerely,
Evan