Of particular interest was my discovery of many people outside the Church who had exceptional powers, such as healing, effecting other physical change through thought, or extraordinary intuitive knowledge. Of greatest importance to me were those who were offering compelling metaphysical understanding that is dramatically beyond common human understanding””more particularly, Mormon understanding””such as the insights mediated by Helen Schucman (A Course in Miracles), Jane Roberts (“Seth” material), Mary-Margaret Moore (“Bartholomew” material), Pat Rodegast (“Emmanuel” material), Ken Carey (“Starseed” material), Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God), and Esther Hicks (“Abraham” material). I had been accustomed to thinking of such powers of “revelation” as belonging only to those who had been formally given the “gift of the Holy Ghost” or who held the “holy priesthood” within the Church. These other gifted people usually did not affiliate with a religious movement. Their powers could be called “spiritual”, “psychic”, or just “intuitive.” In effect, it did not seem to matter. In all, I was finding much more evidence of authentic spiritual value and empowerment outside the Church than within. In contrast, the beliefs and evidences I was getting from the Church seemed frozen in language and custom, less mature, less valid, less relevant to the living spiritual reality I was experiencing. And frankly, “even boring.
The Book of Mormon states that God speaks to all people of the world and that His wisdom is written in their books. But ask a Mormon to name just one other book of authentic spiritual wisdom outside the Church and you will inevitably draw a blank. It is as if the total life program of the Church acts as blinders on its members to the rich spiritual life going on all around it. At the same time, it began to seem strange that no one outside the Church put any credibility in The Book of Mormon. The Church”‘s claim to being the torch-bearer of truth began to seem vacuous.
Ultimately the Church should be judged not by its secondary features but by its irreducible essentials. “That-without-which-there-is nothing” for the Church is its claim of priesthood power and authority, and the “Gift of the Holy Ghost.” Eventually I had to accept the clear reality before me: There was no significant difference between Mormons who formally had the “Gift of the Holy Ghost” or “the power of the Priesthood”, and non-Mormons who did not. Certainly there was ample evidence of spiritual power within the Church, but it was not distinctive in contrast to the evidence I was finding elsewhere. I was finding that people of all religious persuasions have the same kind of spiritual experiences that Mormons have, and like Mormons, interpret those experiences in their own terms and take them to validate their own faith. In comparison though, spiritual manifestations in the Church actually seemed rather low-grade, and as often as not, simply lacking. You might hear occasionally of a manifestation of “the power of the Priesthood,” but you would certainly not hear of the thousands of other non-manifestations of priesthood power in attempted ministrations or inspired dictums. Such are explained away or conveniently ignored. As the actual presence of a real and distinctive spiritual endowment is the essence of the Church”‘s claim to legitimacy, that legitimacy ceased to exist in my mind. Beliefs I made fit as a true believer no longer fit.
It seemed clear to me that if the “gift” truly existed in the Church, that the rich spiritual insight originally evident would continue to be abundantly evident in the experience of its leaders and members. Instead, whatever well of fresh inspiration there may have been in the Church seems to have gone dry. While spiritual gifts may have been more evident in the early Church, they exist now more in the ideal, or in symbolic vestige. The early spiritual insight and power seems to have turned into formalisms in an arrested state of development. I could no longer “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
–Robert Bushman
Read his full story here.
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today (Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
