I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Introductory Remarks

Members of other religions, or persons with no religious affiliation, take on special challenges when they marry Latter-day Saints. In addition to the same problems any inter-faith marriage might encounter—conflicts over church attendance, child-rearing, value and belief systems —non-Mormon spouses also have to deal with the strong community and missionary character of Mormonism. They may feel themselves welcomed with open arms by the Mormon community—only to learn later that the primary motivation for that welcome was a strong desire for their conversion. Conversely, they may find themselves ignored, passed over —or the unintended victims of our in-group humor at, say, a ward dinner. Latter-day Saints, unfortunately, can sometimes appear incredibly insensitive to those among us who do not share our faith, our certainties easily translated into arrogance. Even our best efforts to make non-Mormon spouses feel welcome and accepted may leave them feeling, in so tightly knit a community as our own, the loneliness of an outsider. Within their own Christian religious communities, they may additionally have to deal with the view that the Latter-day Saints they have married are not mainstream Chris tians, if not actual heretics. Within non-Christian religious communities, reactions may be even more diverse. 

The following essays describe the experiences of three of these brave people—people who too often remain fairly mysterious within the context of our everyday ward settings. Their willingness to share their insights with us, though, dispels some of that mystery—and gives  us a rare opportunity to learn what such necessarily sensitive observers can teach us about ourselves.