And not something I ever thought I would do.
In 2021 my husband and I moved from Juneau, Alaska to just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. Salt Lake County, where we reside, is about 50% Mormon, or LDS (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), and Utah County, where I worked, is about 72% LDS. It has been a wild ride.
I’ll preface this by noting that I have several LDS friends and acquaintances, and while I don’t mean any disrespect, I understand this post could be offensive. If the notion that the LDS Church could be a cult offends you, please don’t read any further.
I’ll also note that I checked in with several of my ex-LDS friends to ask if they believed the church might be a cult. The hands-down, resounding answer was, “YES.” One friend responded, “Oh, absolutely do I think the LDS church is a cult, and I'm not alone. Most of my ex-Mormon friends and mutuals on TikTok would say the very same thing. There has been a lot of discussion about it within the ex-Mormon community, and content creators will often refer to the BITE model of authoritarian control and other characteristics of cults when deconstructing and identifying how we were all duped.
Active Mormons will find the label offensive, but that's one of the defining features of a cult: you never know you're in one.”
So what defines a cult outside of not knowing you are in a cult? A quick internet search relays that the key characteristics of a cult are as follows:
Charismatic leader: A central figure with significant influence and often seen as infallible by members. (Check. This is the Prophet and LDS members are to do as he (and always he, never she) says.
Extreme beliefs and practices: Unorthodox or unusual beliefs and rituals that differ significantly from mainstream society. (Check, check, double freakin’ check. I’ll elaborate more later.)
Isolation from the outside world: Discouragement of contact with family and friends outside the group. (Check, to a certain extent. Mormons tend to hang with other Mormons, although they do interact with outsiders. And when a Mormon decides to leave the church, they are often ostracized from their community.)
Strict control and manipulation: Members are often controlled through guilt, fear, and manipulation tactics. (Good Lord, check. More on this later.)
Cohesive group dynamic: Strong pressure to conform to group norms and loyalty to the leader. (Absofuckinlutely check. I have never seen more rank-and-file conformity than I have in Utah. From the rows and rows AND ROWS of cookie-cutter homes to the pervasive notion that any questioning of the church or its doctrine must be “put on a shelf” for fear of cavorting with the Devil, it often feels like conformity is prized above all else.)
Secrecy: Keeping aspects of the group's beliefs and practices hidden from outsiders. (Check. More or less. Some of the church’s practices are well-known (the “garments” they wear to keep them connected to God, the vows of chastity, the eschewing of harmful chemicals like alcohol and drugs (but not massive amounts of sugar, and curiously, not caffeine, just not hot caffeine – again, more on this later), but there are rights and rituals that are carefully guarded by LDS members (just not ex-LDS members, which is why I have learned of some of these practices.)
It would appear the LDS Church does fit many (if not most) of the criteria that defines a cult.
Now, about living here as someone who is not part of the cult, not even religious in the slightest, and is somewhat allergic to the notion of overarching authority. It’s really tough. The last person who should be here is me. But here I am.
This is exacerbated by the fact that until recently, I worked in Orem – Mormon central. About eighty-five percent of my colleagues were Mormon. Sometimes more depending on turnover. Most of the non-Mormons struggled in this environment and made their exit as quickly as possible.
There are the minor day-to-day irritations and frustrations, there are the weird idiosyncrasies that will drive you mad if you attempt to make heads or tails of them, and then there are the big, heartbreaking, soul-crushing stories of trauma.
Let’s start with the small stuff.
The first retreat I attended for work started at 8:30 in the morning. I had a cup of coffee before I left my house, and was counting on a second cup at this meeting to get me through the day. You may have heard that Mormons don’t drink caffeine. This is untrue. They guzzle it, in fact, just not hot caffeine for whatever reason. But they will drink other hot beverages, like hot chocolate or herbal tea.
They will slam a Monster energy drink, a Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, you name it. Just don’t heat it up. They will not touch coffee or tea, even green tea, and they will tell you this is for “health.”
You might think, “Surely, then, they would drink an iced green tea, since that is not a ‘hot caffeinated drink,’ and it is healthier than Mountain Dew.”
NOPE! And they will look you right in the face and tell you this is for “health.” Try to make any sense of it. Just try. They sure as hell can’t. But they adhere to this anyway.
And so I attended this meeting at 8:30 a.m. to find not a drop of coffee or tea, but a giant ice bucket full of Coca Cola and Dr. Pepper. For adults to drink. In the morning. Yummy.
My Dad has told me on multiple occasions that my biggest flaw is that I don’t take any bullshit from anyone, including myself. What he means is that I have a difficult time when people aren’t truthful with themselves, or with me. It drives me bonkers when people launch themselves through mental gymnastics to make themselves believe something that doesn’t make any sense. Bullshit irritates the fuck out of me. Which means I am often in a state of irritation here, because I live in Bullshit Central.
In addition to eschewing hot caffeine, they avoid alcohol. And any content with a rating naughtier than PG. And of course, swearing.
I once asked an LDS woman, “What do you do when you, like, stub your toe or something?”
“I guess I say, ‘Aaaargh.’”
Ok then.
Sex before marriage is also a big no-no. This packs a double net-positive for the church, as it convinces its followers that the totally normal feelings of lust and desire that they experience are sinful and wrong (as are they), and can only be fixed by the Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. AND it forces members to marry young if they want to avoid sin. This further binds members to the church, making it more and more difficult to leave. This helps to ensure massive profits for the richest church in the world, as members are required to tithe 10% of their income.
We ran into ex-Mormons while on vacation in Costa Rica who had left not only the church, but the state of Utah and the country, and they mused, “It’s the best business model in the world.”
Indeed. The product is invisible and can only be procured after death. Members are required to tithe 10% of anything they earn as soon as they have even a childhood allowance. Then they are required to march out into the world on their own dime to convince others to become members and tithe. And not only that, the church strongly encourages married couples to have many children as part of “God’s sacred plan,” who are then tithed and giving their money to the church. The cycle continues.
Brilliant.
Then there are the garments, or “magical underwear” as you may have heard. They wear them for protection and to remind them of God, I’ve been told. They also wear them to keep women in line in terms of modesty.
These garments look like mini cotton overalls, and they cover from the shoulders to the knees. They wear them every day, not just to church, and I have to say, being one of just a few people not wearing these, and knowing almost everyone around you is, is weird. It’s like they’re all in a secret clothing club. They all know that they have gotten up that morning, and participated in this sacred ritual of donning the garments, but you haven’t. And I suppose that is part of the point. Cults like conformity and garments are a facet of that.
This also forces Mormon women to be “modest.” No sultry, seductive, tempting shoulders here! If they exposed their shoulders, their garments would be revealed, and that would be a big no-no. And so the tantalizing shoulders of LDS women are capped with sleeves and protected from roving male eyes. And roving male eyes are protected from tantalizing female LDS shoulders.
After working in this environment for several months, I started seeing myself “through Mormon eyes.” This is literally how I thought of it when I looked in the mirror each morning as I dressed. Outfits to which I would have never given a second thought suddenly seemed edgy, slinky, verboten.
Mind you, these were outfits I had worn in other professional situations, not micro-minis and halter tops one would wear to go clubbing.
I would gaze in the mirror and wonder, “Is my skirt too short? Is my neckline too low? Are my dress straps too thin?” Dang it! Those Mormons had gotten in my head.
Living amongst a cult is weird.
Like I said, some of this is piddly, minor annoyances that anyone would experience living in a culture very different from their own. I happen to drink like a fish, swear like a sailor, and most of the entertainment I consume has a rating naughtier than PG. This makes things lonely when the entire way in which I live my life is considered taboo by the dominant culture within which I exist.
To that, I have adjusted somewhat. I have found my people, and after three years here, I have made some wonderful friends.
But there is another aspect to this that is far more troubling - the lack of the ability to think critically. This is cultivated by the church intentionally and I have been told by my ex-mo (their term, not mine) friends that this starts at a young age with intense indoctrination.
Questioning scripture is the work of the Devil, so if you are questioning, the Devil has gotten into your head and you must expel him. Put those questions “on the shelf.” Avoidance of critical thinking is taught and it is taught young.
The caffeine thing seems silly and somewhat harmless but it belies a more sinister indoctrination. If one can’t reason out for themselves that drinking green tea (largely regarded as a “superfood”) is healthier than downing a Monster energy drink with coloring, flavoring, artificial ingredients, and mounds of sugar, how can one reason through the more nuanced situations that life presents? LDS members have been stripped of this ability from a young age.
Take the issue of modesty. Again, it seems harmless enough, but in practice, it plays out in darker ways. At the performing arts organization where I worked, one evening during a symphony performance, an older gentleman pulled an usher aside. He said he was “distracted” by the leg of one of the women on stage, and asked if the conductor could stop the performance and give her a jacket to cover her naughty, fleshy thigh.
Yikes. Why not just hand her a burka and call it a day?
Some of the LDS employees were shocked and angered by this, some weren’t. But how could it be any other way? Of course this type of occurrence would arise. How could misogyny and policing of women's bodies not creep into day-to-day life when the whole premise of extreme modesty is to shame women and “protect” men from naughty lady bits?
Then there is the trauma.
Shortly after moving here, I was shopping at a thrift store. The young man who rang me up was decked out in some of the thrift store’s best – a fur vest over a black mesh shirt, a fluffy pink boa, and black pleather pants. I commented on the fabulosity of his outfit, and he mentioned that he had recently come out as gay to his family. He said it was hard because they were LDS, as was he, although he was questioning his faith.
“If God made me like this, then how can I be wrong?”
I wanted to cry for him, and I hope he has found his way out.
As I understand it, being “wrong” is a tactic used again and again by the church to further entrench its members. When you’re “wrong” you need to be made “right.” And guess which path is the ONLY way to get there? Surprise! It’s the LDS church.
But “rightness” is asymptotic in its unattainability. We are all wretched sinners, in need of saving. And the harder you try, the harder you fail. You may appear to be arching toward that evasive line of righteousness, but you’ll never quite get there.
This wreaks havoc on the minds of the church’s members. SO MANY people have confided in me the ways in which they have been damaged by the church’s doctrine.
I have a friend who has grappled with severe depression for her entire life because she could never be “enough.” But of course. If she were “enough,” why would she need the church?
She left in her mid-forties when her kid came out as trans, and she couldn’t reconcile the church’s stance on queerness with the love for her child. Ultimately, thank goodness, she chose her child. She was immediately ostracized by some of her friends.
Again, but of course. The church needs to make an example of folks who leave. Leaving needs to be so scary that most people don’t do it. Gotta keep that sweet 10% flowing in.
She has been articulate and vocal about deconstructing her faith, and for that she has received condemnation and insults. From the folks who are supposedly on a mission to “light the world” with Jesus’ love.
As she says, “There is no hate like Christian love.” Indeed.
Another ex-mo sends me private messages whenever I post something of a feminist nature on social media. She tells me she has felt devalued for her entire life as a woman. She has been taught that her only value was in her modesty and virginity, and then in her ability to bear many children. (Again, gotta keep that income rolling in! What better way to achieve this than through demanding robust procreation of MORE Mormons?)
She learned that her body is sinful and needs to be covered. She was told she must have children, despite the fact that she didn’t want them. It’s the only way to celestial salvation.
She has daughters, and since leaving the church, she has tried very hard to make sure they don’t receive these harmful messages. That is difficult in Utah.
One day one of her daughters came home crying. Another little girl with whom she had been playing chastised her for the tank top she was wearing. She was told she was “immodest” and needed to cover up. By a nine-year-old. The indoctrination starts young.
Then there is the double whammy of unexamined trauma resulting from the inability to critically examine a situation. Sort of a bullshit-trauma sandwich.
One woman with whom I worked considered herself liberal, and in support of all human rights. She believed LGBTQ folks should be treated equally, but she belonged to an organization (the church) that demonizes them. She couldn’t quite square this, and when she tried, she literally glitched out right before my dropping jaw.
She told me the church loves everyone, and treats everyone equally, including LGBTQ folks. I asked her how many gay weddings she had witnessed in the church.
“Well, none. But that is because most of them have left the church,” she responded.
“Don’t you think there is a reason for that?”
She froze for a moment, and then went into what I can only describe as a semi-trance. I have never seen anything like this. Her body went slightly limp and she just started repeating, “God is love and I love God and God loves me and my church is God and I love my church…”
It was like she had left her body. She completely shut down and stopped communicating with me. She couldn’t confront the implications of the answer to the question, “Why do you think gay folks have left the church?” so she glitched out, went on autopilot, and just started droning on incoherently about God and love.
Indoctrination is taught from a young age and is deeply embedded.
Another woman I know who is still a member of the church married young, as required, but unfortunately, her husband turned out to be gay. After five children. When he finally allowed himself to come out, he left her to care for those five kids all on her own.
One of her sons dutifully married at 18 or 19, but because he and his wife were 18 or 19 and in college, they couldn’t yet support themselves. So they moved in with his mother. But oddly enough, it turns out that marrying as a teen doesn’t always result in the best match. They have divorced, but while the son has moved out, the ex-daughter-in-law has stayed in the house, resulting in much strife.
Finally, and worst of all, this woman’s daughter was brutally raped. Unfortunately, she was raped by a higher-up member of the church, so despite having a mountain of physical evidence, this rapist has walked free, unscathed. The church swooped in to defend his “good name,” and in so doing, kept their own name from being dragged through the mud. How Christ-like.
The daughter has tried to commit suicide, and is now in an abusive relationship.
Her mother is still tithed to the church, giving them 10% of her income. I’d say she is in an abusive relationship as well.
I could go on and on with the batshit stories I have heard both from ex and current members of the church. Crikey, I haven’t even touched on the practice of “soaking” or “jump-humping” (look them up - the kids have found a loophole to have sex, sort of, by tricking God, because tricking an all-knowing omnipotent being is a rational strategy). And more darkly, I haven’t mentioned the people I know who have escaped Mormon polygamist cults with all the trauma you would imagine comes with that. But I am writing a post and not a novel, so I’ll stop rambling about the many horrors I have seen and heard about since moving to Utah…
The day-to-day strangeness and idiosyncrasies of all this are one thing. This will always happen when a person finds themself living in a dominant culture of which they are not a part. But the trauma, the abuse, the manipulation – all in the name of that almighty 10% - it is hard to live in that and witness what that does to people daily.
Living amidst a cult is weird.