Review
Title: Why I Stay 2: The Challenge of Discipleship for Contemporary Latter-day Saints
Editor: Robert Rees
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Essays
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: 178
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 978-1560852919
Price: 14.95
Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton for the Association of Mormon Letters
“So you got to let me know, Should I stay or should I go?”[1] I realize that it might be a little more complicated than a song lyric by The Clash, but many twenty-first-century Mormons are asking themselves this very question. In the early 2000s, Sunstone inaugurated a session at their annual Salt Lake Symposium that sought to help Mormons who wanted to stay but were having trouble finding a reason to. Titled “Why We Stay,” the session invited three to five speakers to narrate the story of why they decided to stay in the LDS Church despite the concerns they had about it. In 2011, under the editorship of Robert Rees, Signature Books released Why I Stay, a compilation of insightful speeches from the session’s first years of existence. Just over a decade later, Rees and Signature Books have teamed up again to release Why I Stay 2: The Challenge of Discipleship for Contemporary Latter-day Saints.
In his introduction, Rees explains that evolving world conditions, including the “Mormon Moment” and the rise of the “Faith Crisis,” made the creation of Volume Two more challenging than the creation of Volume One. Concerning people experiencing a faith crisis, Rees states:
the internet and social media have made it possible for nearly every bit of information and every possible point of view about the church and Mormonism to be accessed by millions of people around the world. Another way of putting this is that for the first 170 years of its existence, the church significantly was able to control its own narrative. That is no longer the case. Potentially anyone on the planet with a smartphone has access to nearly everything known about the church, its history, its culture, and its governance, including the unattractive and unsavory aspects contained in that information environment—and including a plethora of myth and misinformation. (viii)
But Reese identifies a condition even more important to the rising faith crisis than the internet and increasing access to information:
The faith crisis represents not just a failure of faith but also a failure of reason and, especially, a failure of love. Those combined failures have created a situation in which Latter-day Saints are pulled toward opposite ends of the religious spectrum, increasingly divided into camps that tend to see one another as misguided, unrighteous, and even alien. The casualty is the middle ground where dialogue and mutual respect are possible. The polar pull—both in the church and in society in general—away from the more complex, challenging, and uncertain center, tends toward reductionism and oversimplification of both secular and spiritual life. (ix)
The essays that Rees has collected in Why I Stay 2 seek to help people who want to keep a connection with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but who are struggling with valid concerns find the connection that they desire to have. The authors do this by sharing stories and examples of reason and love to reestablish that “middle ground where dialogue and mutual respect are possible.” About the essays collected in this volume, Rees states that:
Together, these voices give evidence of the remarkable legacy of Joseph Smith’s religious imagination, his boldness in challenging the religious axioms and institutions of his day, his restoration of ancient ordinances and doctrines, and his addition of new scripture that constitutes the heart of the LDS tradition. Together, these essays demonstrate that the progressive voice is vital to the health of Mormonism. (x)
After multiple careful readings of Why I Stay 2, I concur with this statement by Rees. I believe that this volume successfully achieved its goal of using love and reason to establish a middle ground. I believe that Mormons who are struggling who want to have a relationship with the LDS Church who read this book will find the middle ground that they need to do so. Those who read Why 2 who are not struggling with their faith and relationship with the Church will gain empathy for those who are struggling. I encourage all LDS leaders and members to read and pay attention to the ideas in Why I Stay 2. I believe that those who read will find a way to use the bold and imaginative legacy of Joseph Smith identified therein to gain access to a progressive voice that will help to keep people connected to Mormonism and keep it vital for a long time to come.
If I tried to tell you about all twenty of the essays in this book this review would be so long that you might as well skip it and just read the book 😊. SO, instead, I will just highlight a few points from the book that for me most embodied reason, love, and bold religious imagination.
After stating that she is not “in the process of leaving” and that she is instead in “the process of staying,” Susan Hinckley focuses on a theme of light. As she discusses some of the challenges that she has faced in her life and in the Church, Hinckley describes both how she has found light and the importance of creating light within her relationship with Mormonism. As she concludes, Hinckley shares this profound line:
Why do I stay? Because I want to be a light much bigger and brighter than I am now, and I feel it could happen if I’m willing to keep showing up with the wounded and weary and disenfranchised every Sunday, each of us a little less alone when we recognize something true in the other, standing together in a circle of collective light we draw for ourselves and anyone who needs it. (p. 20)
Playwright and former BYU Theater and Film professor Eric Samuelsen starts off his essay bluntly enough:
I am a Mormon because I was raised in a Mormon family. I grew up going to church every Sunday, attending Primary and MIA. When I turned nineteen, I went on a mission to Norway. Why have I stayed? Because it has never occurred to me to leave. (35)
Samuelsen then uses the same deft skill that allowed him to build the narratives of his finest plays to escort his readers through his various life experiences that brought him to the true reason that he stays. From frustrating experiences on his mission to his time as a student, from meeting his future wife when they sang together in a choir, to his reactions to the September 6 and the LDS Church’s treatment of LGBT members, Samuelsen lays his life bare. Samuelsen includes many serious and introspective moments in his essay. There are also humorous (yet insightful!) moments such as when he states, “If you aren’t filled with the desire to throw your shoe at the TV during general conference, at least occasionally, you probably aren’t paying attention!” (p. 36). Finally, after narrating how he was given an especially spiritual blessing during a time of sickness by a man whole could barely speak English, Samuelsen concludes, “Love. Kindness. Service. Love. That is why I stay” (p. 41).
There is an old clichéd compliment used about actors that people are particularly fond of, “I’d listen to her/him read the phone book.” Well, I am always so inspired by what Carol Lynn Pearson writes that if you handed me a phone book and told me that Pearson wrote it, I would read every word. Her essay, “Where God is: A Widening View” is that level of inspiring. Every Mormon should be required to read it. She closes her essay with a poem titled “Pioneers” that is worth the price of the whole book. I will share these precious words about why she stays:
There are two very large reasons. One—I find a great deal of love in this church. Two—where I do not find love, I have an opportunity to help create love. (p. 82)
Mitch Mayne, an openly gay, active Mormon, who gained some fame when he was called to be his ward’s executive in 2011 and documented his experience online, contributed the essay, “Staying Takes Work.” Mayne’s essay is more about how he stays than why. I’ll share this profound line:
I’m able to stay because I understand there is a distinct difference between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and my Savior on whom I have built my faith and to whom I have given my primary allegiance. (p. 88, Italics in original)
I could go on and on. I loved every essay in this book. Emma Lou Warner Thayne’s essay is as profound as all of her writings are. Dan Wotherspoon’s essay brought tears to my eyes as he discussed Babbette’s Feast, Places in the Heart, and experiencing “differences and conflicts…melting away” during the communal experience of the sacrament despite the occasional “bad theology and alienating rhetoric” that comes up in LDS meetings. Kimberly Applewhite Teitter’s essay “Lessons from My Grandmother’s House” describes her experience as an African American who is a convert to Mormonism should be required reading for all white members of the LDS Church. Charles Shirō Inouye’s “The Lasting Pain of Thankfulness” and Russell M. Frandsen’s “Thirty-Two Variations on an Enduring Theme” are two complex essays that will challenge any reader. And I have to mention my friend Curt Bench’s essay. Curt expresses his desire for a “big tent” Mormonism where everyone is family, arguing over doctrine on Sunday but working side by side to serve fellow members through shingling each other’s roofs and other acts of service on Tuesday.
I only have one minor complaint/criticism about Why I Stay 2. It does not match Why I Stay 1! I know, I’m a book nerd, a geek, but I like my series to match! The original Why I Stay is a hardback with a red spine that is 5.25 by 9.25 inches. Why I Stay 2 is a paperback with a blue spine and measures 6 by 9 inches! Okay, I am mostly being silly, and I realize that book sales are down and production costs are up, but I do wish that a book as important as this one had gotten a hardback publication.
At some point, if you have ever watched any amount of television, you have probably seen an infomercial for one of the many Time-Life “Best of” music collections. With names like “Forever 70’s,” “Ultimate Rock Ballads,” and “The Definitive 60’s Collection,” these “As seen on TV” CD box sets are advertised as being available for the low cost of only “Five easy payments of 19.95” as clips from the various songs are played in the background. In Why I Stay 2 Signature Books has given us a “Best of Sunstone” for the past decade and it can be yours for ONE easy payment of 14.95. All silliness aside, Why I Stay 2: The Challenge of Discipleship for Contemporary Latter-day Saints is an important and thought-provoking book that does contain the best of the best of a decade worth of Sunstone sessions. If you or a loved one is struggling with your relationship with the LDS Church and you want to make a connection with Mormonism, then Why I Stay 2 is the book for you.
[1] The Clash. “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Combat Rock, CBS Records, 1982.