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Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith Author: Martha Beck $10.17 |
Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith |
Editorial Review:
As "Mormon royalty" within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Martha Beck was raised in a home frequented by the Church's high elders in an existence framed by the strictest code of conduct. As an adult, she moved to the east coast, outside of her Mormon enclave for the first time in her life. When her son was born with Down syndrome, Martha and her husband left their graduate programs at Harvard to return to Utah, where they knew the supportive Mormon community would embrace them.
But when she was hired to teach at Brigham Young University, Martha was troubled by the way the Church's elders silenced dissidents and masked truths that contradicted its published beliefs. Most troubling of all, she was forced to face her history of sexual abuse by one of the Church's most prominent authorities. The New York Times bestseller Leaving the Saints chronicles Martha's decision to sever her relationship with the faith that had cradled her for so long and to confront and forgive the person who betrayed her so deeply.
Leaving the Saints offers a rare glimpse inside one of the world's most secretive religions while telling a profoundly moving story of personal courage, survival, and the transformative power of spirituality.When graduate student Martha Beck's son Adam was born with Down syndrome, she and her husband left the chilly halls of Harvard for Utah and the warm, accepting embrace of the Mormon community. Determined to assimilate back into her childhood faith after years of atheism, Beck's disenchantment resurfaced when censorship from the church heavily influenced the curriculum at Brigham Young University where she taught part-time. More disturbing was Beck's eventual belief that her father, a virtual celebrity in the Mormon Church, had sexually molested her as a child.
Beck frames her narrative around a conversation with her aged father, dipping in and out of stories of her childhood, marriage, third pregnancy, and teaching. She contrasts her perceptions of the leadership of the institutional church as controlling and patriarchal with stories of the warmth and generosity of her Mormon community. Beck unfolds her search for identity, forgiveness, and a personal faith in competent prose, punctuated with surprising dark humor and glimpses into her anorexia, suicidal obsessions, and alleged abuse. Although she leaves readers with many unanswered questions after the last page is turned, one thing is clear: Beck believes that "no matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth." --Cindy Crosby
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0 
What a great read: 
This is an extremely engaging book. Every chapter is so well-written, so compelling. I couldn't put it down. This book is so many things: a personal journey, a critique of Mormonism, an exploration of childhood abuse, a meditation on family dynamics, and an expression of personal spirituality. It is poignant, insightful, painful, and yet even funny at times.
Thank you for writing such a courageous, human, illuminating, inspiring book.
Insider View of Mormonism: 
Leaving the Saints is Martha Beck's second memoir. Chronologically, it picks up where Expecting Adam left off, although Adam, Martha's Down syndrome child, does not figure significantly in the memoir. This book is the story of Martha's and her husband John's return from Harvard to Utah and return from atheism to Mormon faith. It is also the story of their subsequent disillusionment with Mormonism, Martha's confrontation of her father about the childhood sexual abuse she allegedly received at his hands, and...more info
If you want to know about the mysterious Mormon church . . .:
I grew up in a town that was 98% Mormon. Being in the minority, I spent my youth being either left out because I wasn't Mormon or barraged by members of the church to become one of them. If they are anything, Mormons are as relentlessas they are exclusionary. So I thought I knew a just about everything I'd ever want to know about them and their religion.
In that, I was wrong.
I've come to admire and trust Martha Beck through her other books and articles. She is funny and brutely honest in equal...more info
An original work from an original thinker:
Leaving the Saints is a valuable book for anyone interested in closely taking a look at what they believe and why. I grew up enmeshed within religion and spirituality, most of which was taught and ingrained into my mind from as early as I can remember. While it is frightening for me to take an unbiased (as much as is possible anyway) look into my own belief system, it is necessary to do so. I don't want to be settled on what I believe primarily because it was the mainstream religion within my circle of...more info
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