A few years ago, I found myself enmeshed in a long afternoon conversation with a linguistics professor. His area of expertise includes analyzing changes to English wrought by internet communications. As he opined on the etymological drift of a verb’s transitive and intransitive forms during the last twenty years, I was fascinated by his approach to grammar and language.
“It must drive you crazy to be so precise with your usage,” I remarked, “and yet be surrounded by people who use words incorrectly all the time. Do you ever feel like Henry Higgins?”
Instead of agreeing, he challenged me. “There is no such thing as incorrect word usage,” he responded. “Rather, when I hear others use a word in a non-standard way, I ask myself: what is the cultural context and experience in which they were raised that led them to that usage? I’ve found asking that question leads to a wealth of productive research.”
I’d forgotten that professors are intellectually curious nerds. I later learned his answer was emblematic of widespread academic dialogue on prescriptive vs. descriptive language. His comments came to mind when I once spent hours pouring over dialect maps of the United States. I was shocked by how much mild variations in language revealed about my upbringing.
When the New York Times reduced similar maps to a 25-question quiz, it accurately pinpointed my Midwestern cultural context based on whether I said “firefly” or “lightning bug”, “kitty-corner” or “catty-corner.” I marked it on my results: I grew up outside Indianapolis.
Take the quiz yourself!
Around the same time as my conversation with the linguistics professor, I had a conversation with a friend at church who was considering quitting Sunday attendance. As we discussed why, his answer gave me a sense of deja vu:
“It drives me crazy to hear so many incorrect things taught at church. I feel like not a week goes by without some guy in Elders Quorum masquerading Republican politics as doctrine. If I hear one more anti-climate-change comment at the same time as we’re praying for rain to end this drought, I’m going to lose it.”
I sympathized with his frustration, but I reminded him that lay comments are not doctrine. He was free to respond with his counter-perspective. He could have subversively born his testimony on the importance of being good stewards of God’s environmental creations. Maybe he would open minds, or discover like-minded friends in the process. That’s what building a ward community is all about.
But I later found myself asking: Is there even such a thing as an “incorrect” comment at Church? Is it possible to create a cultural map of the variations within Mormonism, just like we create linguistic maps of variations within English? Instead of rushing to correct or contradict a fellow saint, what if I started a dialogue instead? What if I curiously asked “what is the cultural context and experience in which that person was raised, that led her to share that religious perspective?”
I started experimenting with that new approach, and my Sunday School and Relief Society experience dramatically changed. Instead of retreating to a mental place of arrogant or exasperated condescension, instead of making wry whisper-commentary to my sardonic like-minded friends, I found myself practicing curiosity and empathy. I heard the pain and the doubts and the life experiences lurking beneath the surfaces of others’ comments. I admired their sincere efforts to align their lives with Christ, even if their choices were different than my own. I noticed examples where teachings I chaffed against had led to their empowerment. I started to see how others’ passionate devotions to missionary work, or family history, or emergency preparedness, or religious freedom, or mothers not working outside the home, aligned with the prevailing General Conference talks and cultural messages of their formative decades.
Active and curious listening has led me to a wealth of relationships with brothers and sisters I might otherwise have ignored or dismissed.
As lay people, our Church experiences and perspectives vary widely. Like linguistic maps, our precise doctrinal beliefs may say more about our geographic and cultural upbringing than normative truths. Berkeley and Cambridge wards are different from Mesa and Spanish Fork wards. United States English-speaking wards are different than Brazilian Portuguese-speaking or Filipino Tagalog-speaking wards. We know this. We sometimes joke about the Church being “truer” in our preferred locale — but we also recognize that’s a pithy inaccuracy. Culturally different wards are still part of the body of Christ. We all still speak Mormon.
Church experiences vary by other cultural factors as well: age, gender, race, education, wealth, family, missions, marriage, relationships, sickness, hardships, mobility, or length of time in the faith. All of those perspectives matter.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is known for our lack of systematic theology. Yes, there are touchstones we believe in — The Book of Mormon, the Restoration of the Priesthood, the importance of Living Prophets — but our “doctrine” is remarkably non-prescriptivist. By and large, we don’t have creeds. We don’t have a catechism. We don’t have a paid, trained, professional clergy. Our Sacrament Meetings and our Sunday Schools are lay people trying to make sense of God by talking to other lay people. I believe the reason we have lay people teaching other lay people is to learn empathy from our diversity. We mess up, constantly, together — but in loving each other anyway, we’re working to build Zion and striving to live like Christ.
*Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash