On a recent Sunday, I asked my child how he had enjoyed Primary. He replied that the class had played hangman since he was the only student. Such moments have become more frequent.
Our ward, or congregation, was reorganized recently, and the result is that my children now go to church with even fewer peers than they did before. The Primary is small. Far too small. I’ve moved on from discussions about demographics and the ward’s future. That future is here, and I am mourning that our congregation has lost too many families to recover a critical mass. I leave each sacrament meeting grieving for the community that could have been, cognizant that my future in the faith is likely to be more lonely — puzzled by how it came to pass that I now identify less with Nephi than Moroni. But I am no prophet. I can no longer envision a future. My son asks where the kids have gone.
Had you asked me in my 20s what would break my heart about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I would never have imagined that my sorrow would be parenting nearly alone in a ward that once had a robust community. I was mostly concerned that the church only valued women who were mothers. Yet now that I am a mother of Primary-age children, I find that I am the exception rather than the rule in my congregation. There are not enough families left to sustain the kinds of youth programs I grew up with. In fact, there aren’t even enough similarly situated members left to understand why I feel this circumstance is so dire. The emotional gulf between me and the older members to whose opportunities I can no longer aspire is what feels most isolating.
It’s the economy
My ward has now been reorganized twice over the nine years I have lived in Colorado in order to address the shrinking Latter-day Saint population in Boulder. Some members have left the church for various reasons, including frustration with teachings that they no longer believe or feel are insufficiently inclusive, and tension with other members whose political values have departed too much from their own. But I believe most of the demographic loss is attributable to the severe, unrelenting cost-of-living challenges confronting younger members.
I believe these economic problems and the demographic shifts they cause amount to the most significant hurdles facing the American church. As I wrote in my first column for The Tribune, many younger people cannot afford a middle-class lifestyle in order to live the ideal prescribed to my generation of a stay-at-home mother with a large family. The consequences of this economic fact for the church can be vast, ranging from theological alienation if the faith’s teachings seem unresponsive to modern realities to members simply no longer having time to staff their congregations because both parents are working. And, of course, fewer children.
I feel alone raising kids in the church, and I am acutely aware of how little ward programming is addressed to parents my age. I lack access to many of the community parenting resources that were available to my parents’ generation — even though far too many of those resources were provided through women’s unpaid labor. My generation cannot aspire to large families, big houses, neighborhood networks and cheap babysitting. I worry that people younger than me feel that they cannot aspire to have families at all.
Thou shalt experiment
I have written extensively about ways in which we could better support families. There is no lack of ideas for making the church more responsive to the needs of those raising children now, even if the economic problems require more national solutions. I find hope in stories about the places like Chicago’s Hyde Park Ward that are innovating programs that meet community needs. Yet for every success story, I hear more of demoralized members who feel unable to implement ideas in their own wards or of people who, like me, feel lonely in a church that most of their friends have left.
We often assume that we cannot do anything that is not expressly permitted in the church handbook. We should take the opposite approach: We should experiment with good ideas that are not expressly prohibited. We need to allow congregations the flexibility to personalize the gospel to meet their needs. Too often those making decisions are men from older generations. We should include not only women but also younger members in our decision-making. Latter-day Saints want to be creative. They want to build their communities. We will lose them if they feel they cannot innovate or bridge the gap between the gospel and their lives. Perhaps, more accurately, we already have lost them.
We cannot continue to let sound ideas die in bureaucracy or fail to address members’ concerns. It is almost too late to avert the crisis we face. I do not believe my own ward can recover from its demographic losses. But I hope my experience serves as a warning for other communities. The church needs to focus more on its middle-age and middle-class families, and it needs to do so quickly. We are not thriving.
(Natalie Brown) Tribune guest columnist Natalie Brown.
Natalie Brown is a Latter-day Saint based in Colorado. She is writing a book on narratives of happiness in the Latter-day Saint tradition. She is speaking in her personal capacity. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the church or her employer.
