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. It's probably immediately obvious why this is so interesting to us. But one of the things that we always say is that the cultural change that's happened in America, as it has secularized, isn't just.

That we stopped believing in God. That was actually the smaller part of the cultural change. The bigger part of the cultural change was all of the changes to the way we interacted with our community and our daily behavior patterns. And I think, to what you said there, a person who has stepped back from that, it is now in a secular world, but can look on it as an outsider, can probably better see the contours.

of what is actually unique about it. So I'd love if you could start by just going into what is it that your average secular person doesn't understand about the daily life of somebody within one of these [00:04:00] hard religious communities?

Trace Woodgrains: Absolutely. So I think that the standard secular view of the standard church going life is basically you do more or less the same things for most of your life and then you go to church on Sunday and you call it good.

And perhaps in some religious communities it is something akin to that. Within mormonism, there's It is a much more all encompassing situation. So the day to day in the life of a Mormon, first off, it's important to understand that almost every clergy member within Mormonism, almost everyone who has any sort of official position in the church is a volunteer.

It's only up at the top that you start getting actual salaries, actual living stipends, what have you for the global leaders, but everyone on down. So Mitt Romney, for example. Spent years as what's called a stake president, where for no pay, in addition to his [00:05:00] regular job, he had the job of overseeing six or seven local congregations, each of which would have a hundred, a few hundred members where he was on some level responsible for the organization and spiritual wealth and what have you of all the people in that below that you have bishops who, same thing, they have to spend 20 hours a week, however long, in addition to a full time job on all this over a period of, I'm forgetting the exact number of years, something like eight years that a bishop will stay in that position where one day, A regular schmuck working as a computer programmer or a garbage collector or what have you will be called into the office and be told, so how would you like to be given this volunteer position where you will work 20 hours a week for no pay for the next eight years?

Come on in. And every person within Mormonism, every adult and most of the youth will have some sort of position like this, some sort of calling, I would play the organ in church. Someone will be called to teach a [00:06:00] Sunday school lesson. Someone will be told, Hey, you're going to come up and give a talk on Sunday.

Someone will be told, Hey, you're leading the young men's group. So for example, I had, when I was on my mission, I met this professional athlete down in Australia, a rugby player. And he I would go to church and he would be the leader of the young men's church group on Sunday because that is just what they do.

A lot of things like that. So

Malcolm Collins: before we go further, there's a few points here I want to elevate because Simone was talking to me about this today and just commenting on how emotionally Healthy this is because when a lot of people think of community, they think of what the community is going to do for them when what they're actually probably getting the most benefits from is the burdens the community places on them.

And when I say burdens, I guess tasks or responsibilities. And that you have a community where it's an individual rises in status within the community, they are basically given more unpaid labor, [00:07:00] and their skill within that unpaid labor rises their status further which likely has pretty pos