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Perspectives on the Benefits of Mormonism from Ex-Mormon Trace Woodgrains
In this fascinating discussion, Trace Woodgrains shares his unique perspective on growing up in the Mormon faith and the lessons that can be learned from this tight-knit religious community. Trace discusses the extensive volunteer work and responsibilities given to members at a young age, the rigorous structure of Mormon missions, and the challenges he faced reconciling his own beliefs with church doctrine. He also explores how secular communities might adopt some of the beneficial aspects of Mormon culture while avoiding its pitfalls.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hi, everybody. I had the best reading experience this week. Thanks to our very special guest, Tracy Woodgrains.
He had actually tweeted on Twitter, someone else's article. Someone wrote for the Atlantic about what happens when America loses its religion. But Tracy included a 2020 sub stack piece that he originally actually had posted on. So it was originally a Reddit thread, but it's on a sub stack now. Related to this article his sub stack write up, which you should all check out at tracingwentgrants.
com is called Mormons and Voluntary Organization. And he brought up basically this article because it. describes the extent to which religious involvement, especially in the LDS church can be very profound and have a profound impact on people and communities. So anyway, I read the Atlantic article, whatever.
It was meh. Like it's nothing that anyone who watches based camp wouldn't be very familiar with. It's something, it's all stuff that we're really familiar with. What happens when cultures lose their religion, not great stuff. But man, [00:01:00] Tracy, your article is great because what you do in it is you detail.
How different the life of a practicing Mormon is vis a vis the life of someone just in a general atomized society. So we would love to have you on today and discuss it cause it's, I think the implications of what you write about here are pretty huge.
Would you like to know more?
Trace Woodgrains: Yeah, absolutely. What
Simone Collins: inspired you to write this, by the way?
Trace Woodgrains: So look, I grew up Mormon and I grew up in this somewhat isolated subculture that is so very different to the life of as you were saying, the standard modern atomized individual. And so this was, The water that I swam in, this is the air that I breathed. This was just what the world was like for me.
I was 11 years old before I realized that the majority of the world was not Mormon. That is how much of a bubble I was in and going through that, my whole [00:02:00] childhood, going on a Mormon mission, so forth really it has an impact on whoever goes through that sort of thing and having stepped away from it now I feel like.
My job in large part is to paint a picture of what is possible within something like that, recognizing the flaws that I saw that caused me to step away, but looking and saying, how can the rest of us replicate that? The positive, powerful elements of this, what are the rest of us missing? What have the rest of us forgotten about?
And in particular, I feel inclined towards that because you see a lot of people who step away from Mormonism, who really understandably feel very burned by the whole thing, feel very frustrated that they've given their whole lives to what they, to Feel has been based on a lie and so forth and just get really hostile to it all.
And point feel essentially that there is nothing good there, nothing good worth pointing out. And I had a much happier, gentler glide path out such that I feel [00:03:00] like I am in a much better position than many who have left to look at it and say here is. Here's what I see that I did value in it.
And here is what is worth taking away. So I'd
Malcolm Collins: love it if you could just start going into that for our audience.
Published on 1 year, 8 months ago