This 4-part workshop series was recorded during the August 2010 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium. During the workshop, we explored techniques for navigating a marriage when one in the couple loses their LDS testimony.
Supporting the workshop were:
- Natasha Parker LCMFT — also known as The Mormon Therapist, and
- Laurie and Dan Gallagher — a mixed-faith couple previously featured on Mormon Stories.
You can access Natasha’s handout from the workshop here.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
11 Responses
I learned a lot. I had heard Natasha Parker before, but she grew on me more in this sort of setting. The Gallaghers? Well, I wish they lived next door. I divorced twenty years ago (a multitude of issues). My TBM ex is always around though, even here at my house. Oddly enough, the dialogue from this Podcast gave me a few ideas to continue in our current role as friends and concerned grandparents. My apostasy is less threatening today. She can see my core values are still the same.
I have a lot of respect for Natasha, but I have to disagree with her view that the LDS church has no “absolutes”. Absolutes are what define the LDS church! It is the only true church, the Lords church, it has the keys of the priesthood, the Book of Mormon does contain the fullness of the gospel, the FP and twelve are prophets of God, etc, etc.
In all my years as a member of the church I never heard anything like Natasha suggested. There may be some cultural variations at the ward or stake level depending on where you live, but to suggest that the church has no absolutes is inaccurate and I think encouraging people to lean on that delusion is not a good idea.
This whole issue boils down to the question: “What is more important, my family or the church?” I had always said my family was most importsnt. When my wife stopped believing in Mormonism, I had to examine my core beliefs and realize that I really did believe that my family was the most important thing. The loving God that I believe in knows my heart and knows the heart of my sweet wife and realizes that we are both trying to do the very best that we can. How can either of us be faulted for that?
This whole issue boils down to the question: “What is more important, my family or the church?” I had always said my family was most important. When my wife stopped believing in Mormonism, I had to examine my core beliefs and realize that I really did believe that my family was the most important thing. The loving God that I believe in knows my heart and knows the heart of my sweet wife and realizes that we are both trying to do the very best that we can. How can either of us be faulted for that?
This was a good discussion and I think it will be really helpful to me to improve my relationship with my husband. Can you post Natasha’s handouts?
I agree with Aaron on this one. It’s the absolutes that make navigating a faith crisis so difficult in the beginning. As Latter-Day Saints, we are trained from youth up to think in black and white. This leads to my comment which is this: If there’s anything at all out there that’s going to blow black-and-white thinking to smithereens, it’s going to be this steady flow of people like John Dehlin and Natasha Parker etc. respectfully addressing these sensitive issues. To the black-and-white thinking Mormon, people who leave orthodoxy become pretty horrible people (Alma 47:36 reads, “Now these dissenters, having the same instruction and the same information of the Nephites, yea, having been instructed in the same knowledge of the Lord, nevertheless, it is strange to relate, not long after their dissensions they became more hardened and impenitent, and more wild, wicked and ferocious than the Lamanites—drinking in with the traditions of the Lamanites; giving way to indolence, and all manner of lasciviousness; yea, entirely forgetting the Lord their God. ” This scripture is what TBMs believe about people who leave the church. So when they go to a conference like this and hear non-orthodox LDS people sensitively discussing these issues, it’s the first black-and-white domino down. The church can handle angry apostates; they’ve done it for over a century. It’s the loving, sensitive AND VOCAL non-traditional thinker that the church cannot tolerate.
Maybe I’m a little blind, living in the Morridor, but Dan doesn’t really seem like much of a traditional believer. I respect his views and it sounds like he’s in a happy place in his life and in his marriage, which is awesome! But I wonder how this would’ve gone had Janelle or another more traditional TBM participated in the discussion.
Where did you get that married couples picture?!! I went to highschool with them
What does TBM mean?
TBM stands for “True Believing Mormon.”