I like fast and testimony meetings. I like them even though I sometimes feel like I’ve wandered into a UFO convention by mistake. I like them despite the clichés, the predictable scripts, and the annoying claims of religious certainty.
I like them because it’s an unfiltered look at our Mormon faith in its natural habitat-that is, in the minds and lives of the people living it. After all the manuals have been written, the conference talks published, and official pronouncements read from the pulpit-this is what’s left. It’s our own private Mormon reality show.
We should bring a reverence and a degree of gratitude for the privilege of being witness to it. There aren’t that many forums where adults share their most intimate religious thoughts and feelings. At times the honesty can be unnerving.
Testimonies are like magic tricks. Instead of the pledge, the turn and the prestige, testimonies have four parts: context, experience, explanation, and conclusion. Understanding how testimonies are put together makes fast and testimony meetings more interesting, if not more worthwhile.
For example, when I was thirteen or fourteen, a woman stood up and recounted, while sobbing convulsively, how Satan had personally nudged her car off the interstate the day before to prevent her from attending the temple. For her, the incident was confirmation that Satan didn’t want her to attend the temple, and therefore the church was true.
This testimony has all the right components: 1) trip to the temple (context), 2) car accident (experience), 3) it was Beelzebub’s handiwork (explanation), 4) the church is true (conclusion). It’s as easy as 1-2-3-4. In this case, however, most of us in the cheap seats probably got off the bus somewhere between the second and third stops (particularly if we know that the accident occurred in the middle of a torrential downpour and that the interstate was probably covered in an inch of water). For us, hydroplaning probably seems like a better explanation.
But we were on the bus for half the trip-and there is value in that. In general, the higher up in the cheap seats you are, the more hesitant you are to accept, at face value, the explanations and conclusions of others offered in steps 3 and 4.
Here’s another example. A gentleman makes his way to the pulpit. He pauses for effect, and then, in a somber tone, carefully works his way through all five fingers of the testimony glove. Midway through, he adopts the “pulpit lean” to give his remarks more weight. [Note: For the uninitiated, the pulpit lean involves standing behind the pulpit and rotating your torso enough to bring one hip into light contact with the back of the pulpit, then resting your elbow on the surface of the pulpit on the same side. This stance may require some practice in front of a mirror in the privacy of your own home to perfect.]
In this case, there isn’t any context. No specific experiences are related. It’s just a floating list of conclusions presented as spiritual certainties. It’s ironic that the most expansive claims of spiritual knowledge are often the emptiest.
These kinds of testimonies remind me of Boyd K. Packer’s suggestion that church members bear public testimony, as a kind of experiment, of the things they hope are true, but privately have doubts about. It’s one example of church members being encouraged to be less than truthful as an act of faith.
One more example. An older woman stood up a few months ago and described how she had held the hand of her husband as he had passed away. They had been married for more than forty years. “Prayer,” she said, “had made it bearable.” For her, prayer had taken the vertigo out of the overwhelming loss and tempered the enveloping loneliness. Her testimony was a gift of distilled life experience presented simply and matter-of-factly. For me, it took the air out of the room.
In this case, the context is clear (the passing of her husband), and so is the experience (the solace of prayer), but she sat down before getting to steps 3 or 4. For those of us in the cheap seats, we prefer it that way.
The first testimony–the one about being prevented from attending the temple by Satan–is an opportunity to recognize that not everyone makes sense of the world in the same way you do. And that’s not a bad thing.
The second example–Mr. Testimony Glove– is why I suggest always having some reading material on hand. I recommend The New Yorker, or if you enjoy short stories, either The Paris Review or American Short Fiction.
The last example is why I still go to church.
Loved the 4 part breakdown analysis.
I also enjoy when people violate certain pronouncements by providing travelogues or whatever other story they choose to tell. That, for me, is when I feel most connected to others.
I love travelogues too. I know they’re self-promoting, but at least they’re a break in the monotony.
Thanks for the smile. Love the UFO convention reference. Intend to plagarize it widely.
Loved this, Brent. Thanks for pinning down the nebulous things which bug me about listening to people’s testimonies and then sorting the wheat from the chaff.
I like the 4 part breakdown too! I agree with you that parts 3 and 4 are those that I find most difficult. I think this connects nicely with your last post where you asked why we spend so much time telling each other what experiences mean. I think part of the reason that I don’t always like hearing people’s explanations in particular is that the implication (whether explicit or not) is that I should be explaining my experiences in the way they’re explaining theirs.
I agree, Ziff. Why the need to explain everything that we feel? We watched Apollo 13 with the kids a couple weeks ago. The kids were laughing (sort of) because they said they felt “the spirit” in that scene when–after those long, long three minutes–the space shuttle finally re-enters the earth’s atmosphere and you know they’re going to be safe. After we finished chuckling, we began to talk more seriously about what those feelings are and what they mean. I just told them that I had stopped worrying/thinking about what they mean a few years ago. Instead, I just choose to enjoy them for what they are. Those are amazing feelings. Just enjoy them and be glad for them.
But that’s just me, of course. I know plenty of people would want to argue with me and say that we DIDN’T really feel “the spirit” during Apollo 13 or that I don’t when I hear the amazing Les Mis anthem (“Do you hear the people sing? . . “) But I’m not interested in arguing with them. They’re my feelings, right?
@Ziff, Heather, I think what y’all are discussing really is the crux of it. Religions in general, from one perspective, are social systems built around identifying those experiences and interpreting them in certain ways (i.e. making certain attributions, assigning them a particular significance). I think it’s interesting that we are told to “test” the truth claims of the church by seeking out these spiritual experiences, but we never really discuss testing the test, or testing whether or not the signifiance we attach to these experiences really makes any sense. For example, can you pray about what a spiritual experience means? And if you have a spiritual experience while you’re praying about the significance of spiritual experiences, then what does that mean? What if I ask if spiritual experiences are a product of biology and I experience a confirmatory spiritual experience–then is that my biology telling me that spiritual experiences really are just biology? That’s where I think faith comes in. At some point, you have to chose to believe (or not believe)–or maybe just decide that you can’t decide (and that if God wanted you to figure it out, he would have given you a bigger brain, or more to go on). Or better yet, maybe the answer to the riddle of life is that there is no answer, and this life really is a test to see how many of us, by using the brains God gave us, reach the correct conclusion and declare ourselves agnostics?
I have nothing to add, just wanted to say excellent post!
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Although this is excellent, I really must recommend a One Story subscription for fiction lovers.
@Th., I’ll second that: http://www.one-story.com/.
Beautiful. I think this is the space in which we can make connection with anyone — this place of human experience that transcends religious differences.
Got your link from the Mormonmatters podcast on testimony, and enjoyed you on the cast and your comments here.
I personally enjoy testimony meeting, simply because of the human-ness of it all. It’s wonderful to have people share a portion of their life experiences (yes, even travelmonies and even the little kids who know that their parents love them; now that’s testifying of something that someone knows is true) and relate how they have affected them spritually. I have rarely heard a scripted talk where the speaker actually speaks from their experiences and their hearts, so when someone stands in F&T meeting ands shares part of their life experience, it is actually refreshing. I get to know their personal context and gain better love/empathy/etc. for them. I really think that it’s a horrible shame that we get direction from corporate headquarters of what a “valid” testimony is and that it should basically be the “glove” and nothing else. It absolutely sucks the life out of personal expressions of faith. Why stand at all, except to say that you affirm and are marching to the same beat as everyone else. I agree with you that this seems so empty.
What also seems funny is when I hear someone say in F&T meeting that they “know” the glove stuff, and then I run into them in the store or on the street and they tell me about a struggle they might be having. I may say to them, “Well, luckily God is in charge, so He is on your side and I’m sure it will work out.” Most often their reply is “I hope so, this is really difficult”. Does this sound like someone who really “knows”? You get the point.
My biggest dislike of testimony meeting probably relates the semantics or vocabulary that we use in the church. I’m not sure that all those people standing and “testifying” really “know”. But what I am thinking here is that in the book of Alma we learn that faith is supposed to take you to “knowledge”, and then your faith is dormant. Yet, we are told to walk by faith, and it is the fist principle of the gospel and I have heard more talks on faith probably more than any other topic. Also, biblically, we are told that those who believe in Christ will be saved, not necessarily those who “know”. So why is so important culturally or semantically to have to testify that we “know”? I would be perfectly fine to hear someone in F&T meeting to simply say, I believe in Jesus Christ and the gospel, and have everyone be accepting of that. It’s been awhile, but I think that the temple recommend questions don’t ask if you “know”, they simply ask, “Do you believe….” or, “Do you accept…..”.
Like you, I take my tablet computer with some good reading on it and slip into something more meaningful when I get the empty glove testimonies. I personally hope that F&T meeting can still be a loosely run meeting with personality.
One other thought that I forgot to add.
So why is it that corporate dictates what we should say as a “valid” testimony without allowing room for the context? I mean, F&T meeting would be nothing more that 36 “glove” recitations. Kind of everyone chanting the same mantra. Why is it then, that the “special witnesses” that “know” seem to be the only ones allowed to give long recitations of experience or pithy story that precede their “special” knowledge testimony. General Conference is or should be the ultimate F&T meeting, considering that you have the 16 prophets, seers and revelators who are supposed to give testimony to the world, yet we never hear from them all. Perhaps they should each just stand in turn and give their special “glove” testimony and sit down.
Heresy? Sorry.
Brent – You just made my day. I laughed and cried, learned a lot more, and became much closer to God reading your short treatise on testimonies than I will in the full 3 hours of Church…including testimony mtg. But now, instead of taking silly random notes about the testimonies (staring into a small notebook and jotting down my impressions is all that gets me through some meetings), I will have nice neat outlines… Perhaps at the beginning of testimony mtg tomorrow, I could get up and share this neat technique I’ve learned for paying closer attention and getting more out of testimony mtg! All you have to do is count 1-2-3-4-and your testimony is done! (I have yet to see someone get up and actually use that testimony glove – deseret book sells a little book with the testimony glove right in it! And proceeds of the book go to provide testimony gloves to primaries throughout the world. Looks like the future generation is being trained to go straight to the kill – only #4 is required, no need to differentiate ourselves, no how or why.)
I felt really grateful to have been in our fast & testimony meeting today. We had a couple people share some very tender experiences they’ve had this month and it was powerful.