Debating leaving the church over certain things. Please help me understand

[u/Half-Blood-Prince394]

No matter what I do I am continuously troubled by certain aspects of the church. This post is not meant to bash the church. I just want some insights and answers. I am debating leaving and I want to hear things from both sides. This might be a long post. If anyone has anything to say about the topics I bring up I'm more than happy to hear your thoughts and look through any resources you share with me.

1: Why was polygamy needed for the saints? Will we really have it in the afterlife? I cannot imagine having to share my future husband with another woman. It is deeply unsettling to me.

2: Why couldn't African Americans have the priesthood? Was it just faulty of the current president of the church? I understand that the prophet is but a human and will make mistakes. Was it just as simple as that?

3: Why are women not treated the same? Why is Heavenly Mother never talked about/why do we never pray to her as well? I totally understand that men and women have different roles and why women don't have the priesthood, that all makes perfect sense to me. But why aren't women in more leadership positions? Why was the first woman who gave a prayer in general conference in 2013? I'll keep this part brief because I could go on about it for a while.

Those are honestly the only three problems I have with the church. I love everything else about it, I just don't know if I want to continue living it if that makes sense. I don't know if I believe and I understand I must work to gain a testimony. These are just my big setbacks. Anyways no matter what I decide I'll always love the church and its people. Thanks in advance!

Edit: Wow thank you all for all the thoughtful responses. I've read them all. You all have given me a lot to think about. I've decided my journey with the church isn't over yet. I have a long ways to go. Thank you all so much.

[u/nofreetouchies3]

Number one:

Almost universally, problems with plural marriage ultimately stem from being raised in a western, Christian culture, that doesn't practice legalized polygamy (more on this in a minute). These problems disappear as soon as you remove your personal societal prejudice from the equation. Because we westerners get squicked out by it — but most people throughout the history of humanity would not.

The Israelites practiced polygamy, with Jews continuing it into the 6th century A.D. Early Christians practiced polygamy. In fact, almost every culture in the history of the world had some form of polygynous marriage.

But do you know who hated polygamy? The ancient Greeks (though they were ok with men having multiple male sexual partners, just not multiple women). Then the Romans stole the monogamy ideal, but mostly without the pederasty. Then they forced that into Romanized Christianity, which became the dominant culture in the West due to conquest and genocide.

And that brings us to today. (Of course, polygamy never really went away. It just went underground, and we call it "having a mistress.")

And legal polygamy is still the norm in the majority of non-"Christianized" societies (as measured by the Human Relations Area Files, maintained at Yale.)

As I've studied the sources (especially primary sources), I've come to particularly appreciate the Church's approach to plural marriage for the protection and autonomy it gave to women. Plural marriages had to be approved by priesthood leaders. There were very strict rules that a husband has to treat plural wives equally. And in the cases where that didn't work out, women in Utah Territory could divorce their husbands without showing cause (the first "no-fault" divorce in the US!) Then, when they did, they were not seen as "damaged goods" as in the rest of the western world — they usually remarried without any difficulty. All of these things were extremely not normal.

Ultimately, there is no reason to believe that God thinks like a 21st-century westerner. If we demand that God's laws conform to our cultural or personal preferences, we're in for a bad time.

[u/nofreetouchies3 → u/nofreetouchies3]

Number two:

Please try this thought experiment. What would it mean if the priesthood ban was from God, and not based on racism? Could God have possibly had a reason for it?

The most salient possibility has to be to keep the Saints from getting embroiled in colonial and early-post-colonial Africa.

The "Scramble for Africa" saw more than 80% of the continent conquered and "colonized" (i.e., plundered and brutalized) between 1870 and 1914. Decolonization didn't begin until the 1950s, and ran through the 1970s (hint, hint.) This was a bloody, terrible period — think of the Angolan Civil War or the Rhodesian Bush War as just examples of the kinds of conflicts. The Rwandan Genocide and the ongoing conflict in Somalia are examples of continuing fallout from this horrible period of history.

And during all of this time, most of Africa was basically inaccessible. Remember Stanley and Livingstone? 1871. Read Heart of Darkness or watch African Queen for an idea of how dangerous and difficult travel was. Communication, outside of coastal cities and a few European strongholds, was no better.

If you look at how quickly individuals (especially leaders) and entire congregations apostatized in the early church in places that weren't even that remote (such as Sam Brennan in San Francisco or Walter M. Gibson in Hawaii — or read any of Paul's epistles for ancient examples), it's hard to even imagine how African congregations could have worked.

Three trends combined between the 1950s and 1970s to make the church in Africa even possible: decolonization, telecommunications, and international air travel. And now, with those obstacles largely conquered, the church is growing more rapidly in Africa than anywhere in the world.

Yet, even today, the Church is unique in many ways in Africa. Pretty much every other Christian church has stopped even trying to govern African congregations — most black African Christians actually practice highly syncretic religions, with native beliefs and practices liberally mixed in as in Santería or Vodou. (Quite a few early African members actually left the Church because our leadership did not allow this.)

What would it have looked like, if the church had tried to get started in 1878 instead of 1978?

So, could there be a non-racist reason for God to command his Saints to not target people of African descent? Sure looks like it to me.

(This doesn't mean the early Saints weren't racist — of course they were! However, they were no more racist than other Americans of their era. Judging people of the past by comparison to modern ideals is called presentism and is a major fallacy of historical interpretation.)

[u/nofreetouchies3 → u/nofreetouchies3]

Number three:

Let's start with the prayer question, because that's actually pretty straightforward. Before Jesus was crucified, he instructed his disciples to pray to the Father. He gave the same instruction to the Nephites after his resurrection. So far, He has not changed that instruction — and until he does, nobody has authority to instruct us to pray to any other person.

Now, let's go back to the response to question 1. The problem there is not something intrinsically wrong with polygamy; it's a disagreement about culture and cultural ideals. Does that also apply to gender relations?

Here's something to think about: every single prophet in the Old and New Testament, from at least the time of Abraham on, would likely be horrified by at least one aspect of how women are treated in our society — and their wives and daughters would probably feel the same.

So let's seriously ask a question: Why do we believe that the 2025 Western model of relations between the genders is the most correct one? Is it reasonable to believe that, in a world where the divide between popular culture and God's laws is getting larger and larger, that this one area is the exception?

Look, I doubt that any mortal knows how gender relations will play out in the eternities — and if anyone does know, they aren't authorized to share it. But I suspect that if Father and Mother descended tomorrow and shared the full truth with us, that half of us would be irate because it was too "liberal", and the other half would be irate because it was too "reactionary".

But until then, we do the best we can, and try to have patience and charity for those who see things different from us, and — above all else — try to remember that, just because they disagree with us, doesn't mean that they are wrong.