Review
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Title: Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt
Author: Patrick Q. Mason
Publisher: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and Deseret Book Company
Genre: Mormonism
Year Published: 2015
Number of Pages:
Binding: Softcover
ISBN13: 978-1-62972-181-1
Price: USD $15.99
Reviewed by Les Blake for the Association for Mormon Letters
There is a new and refreshing air wafting from the edges of Deseret Book Company, and it takes the form of *Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt*. Jointly published with the Maxwell Institute in its consistently terrific “Living Faith” series, *Planted* is the timely contribution of Patrick Q. Mason, scholar, author, and Howard W. Hunter Chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University.
Mason sets the stakes early. “How we deal with doubt in the church today is one of the most pressing tests of our collective discipleship.” What follows is a sense of urgency, not just for the well being of the church as an institution, though there is that, but also the more pressing well being of individuals clearly and justifiably encountering real pain and struggle.
This is no easy task. *Planted* has its work cut out, largely because of its intended audience. Mason seeks to address the full faith spectrum within LDS ranks. At one end are those who are so comfortably LDS that spiritual distress and fundamental questioning are wholly alien (the “switched off”). At the other end are the relentless questioners, the doubting edge-dwellers (the “squeezed out”), many of whom stand already at the exit door threshold, if not already through. Mason seeks to encircle the entirety in mutual understanding, validation, and community.
Mason counsels default believers with a few immediate what-not-to-do’s, normalizing the reality of doubt within the macrocosmic secular culture in which most church members live, at least those within reach of this book. He then effectively pushes against the culturally built fence around testimony. Using Mother Teresa as a model of how saints suffer acute doubt, inner pain, and spiritual alienation, while simultaneously engaging fervently in the Christian enterprise, Mason asks a series of difficult questions about what it really means to know. For some the heavens are irreparably silent. Following the lead of Michael Rea, he forwards the possibility that God “perhaps values communion with us as much as he does direct communication – that being with us does not always entail talking to us.” Given the ubiquity of direct personal revelation in Mormonism, such a suggestion would likely be received uncomfortably in our worship services, let alone validated. But we need to be better, Mason says.
“In our wards and families, can we, in our pale imitation of Christ, develop deep empathy for those struggling with doubt, disbelief, feelings of betrayal, or suffering from God’s silence? Can the church be a place for people who cannot now, always, or ever say ‘I know’?” Right now, today in actual practice, the answer to those questions are all too often a well intended, but ugly, *probably not*. I have, as do many other within the Mormon faith community, enough anecdotal evidence to curl one’s toes on this matter. And to the extent that that is the case, we are falling short. Mason employs Dieter F. Uchtdorf to make his point: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a place for people with all kinds of testimonies.”
*Planted*, while still an apologia for faith, is not a point/counterpoint rebuttal common to so many defenses of Mormonism. Mason doesn’t avoid the laundry list of what might be called the sticky bits of LDS history. He rattles them off consistently throughout the book, but most of the time he does so parenthetically, as if to set the table and lay out the ingredients for a banquet and then invite the reader to do the cooking. The point being there are tricky, even bitter, ingredients, that when used in their context yield an overall meal that still tastes delicious. A real strength of *Planted* lies in the fact that it doesn’t try to do the hardest work for you. That ultimately is and always will be the reader’s task, and to pull back to the 30,000 foot view, that is the task of life as it presses upon each of us–to acknowledge messy reality as best we can, receive it, then tend to it with all the grace we can muster.
A great deal of this framing takes place in Mason’s discussion of “A Principled Approach to Church History.” If church members aren’t wrestling with our complicated history, Mason suggests they should be. “Learning how to make better sense of the difficult problems is not simply an esoteric exercise for an intellectual elite. Given that so many people are struggling with their membership in the church because of some of these issues, finding better ways to think and talk about the issues is an act of compassion…”
Mason juxtaposes the dynamic tension that between two of the latter chapters, namely “The Church is True” and its successor, “When Church is Hard.” He borrows from, and credits liberally, the work of Claudia and Richard Bushman, Lowell Bennion, and Eugene England. For my part, as one who feels a spiritual uneasiness in the Church, I felt constructively challenged by this section of the book. For me the hope that is painted by these giants of Mormonism can feel at once beyond the vexing horizon of my current circumstances, yet simultaneously rest heavy and fragile in my own tired hands. It is a “both/and” scenario, and rather than engaging in a discussion of whether or not that tension should exist, we should acknowledge the inevitability (or blessing) of its existence, and move on to the better discussion of “therefore what?” “Latter Day saints must find a way,” Mason writes, “not to simply coexist with but to truly embrace the diversity that already exists in the family of God.”
Amen to that.
If I have any misgivings about the book I will admit, before voicing them, that perhaps they lie beyond the scope of *Planted’s* intentions. But I am left wanting to ask Mason, my church leaders, and fellow saints: what about my dear loving friends who have already exited Mormonism and have done so not just out of frustration, but genuine compassion? I trust that conversation will be shot through with love and sympathy. But I’m curious, would you consider them uprooted? Dying off the vine? Un-planted? And what of my dear friends I perceive to be planted and growing in ideological or religious soil that is not and never will be Mormonism, or even soteriologically Christian? I do not think Mason would offer an easy “yes” to any of those questions, but I would have welcomed a chapter speaking to this, for it is a deep concern for many LDS members all along the faith spectrum.
Mormonism is a lay church with well-intended by-the-handbook training replete with checklists and procedural do’s and don’ts. But it is surprisingly slim on practical pastoral training. *Planted* works to fill that training vacuum, treading where handbooks either can’t or won’t. Because of that, this book genuinely should be something of a touchstone for church leaders seeking to love and lead in our secular age. I say “church leaders” because they bear the brunt of the shepherding care in local congregations, but *Planted’s* core message asks to be, truly needs to be, absorbed generally. As Mason puts it, “This is not beyond the scope of our capabilities. This is not just the job of church historians, bishops, Relief Society presidents, and General Authorities. This is the baptismal covenant of every member of the Church of Jesus Christ…not to bury our head in the sand or ignore the problem in hopes that it will go away.” The Church is hard. It is an almost humorously painful note to hit – but I wager that Mason hits it in a such a way that for many readers along the faith spectrum, a framework with open up in which hope can seed itself, take root, and grow.