The Singles Crisis in the Church: A Manifesto

No mincing words here. I am fed up.

My mother told me last year that there are now more singles than marrieds in the church* (Does anyone know where this stat comes from?). You would never know by looking around on Sunday. Single people tend not to go to church. And I can tell you why. Socially, the church acts as an auxilary for the family, the nuclear family. Who wants to drag themselves out of bed and get dressed up every week so they can be made to feel less than a real person? Those single people who are active have my full admiration. I wish I were that strong. I believe in the gospel. I believe in Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon and the prophets. But I hate going to church.

The function of the church absolutely needs to change. It is past time. They will continue to lose their single members if something major is not done. What should be done?

First of all, the church needs to become a family for single people. A place where they can go to get unconditional support and love. Structurally, I think that might be achieved in the following ways:

1. Every ward should have family home evening at church every Monday. there should be a committee which runs it. Everyone is invited to attend. This will not only help singles, but new members who want to get a better understanding of what family home evening is about.

2. Every ward should have a calling in the bishopric for a single man, who will minister to the needs of single members. He will also voice their needs to the ward leadership, so they will not be left out.

3. Likewise, every ward should have a single woman in the Relief Society presidency whose job is to minister to the single women.

4. Once a month, sacrament meeting should be devoted to talks for and by and about the needs of single people. If there are more of us, than there are of you marrieds, then why the heck do we have to listen to crap about how to raise children week after week? That's absurd. Our spiritual needs are different. Trying to live with the law of chastity is extremely difficult, and we need support at church. Trying to maintain one's hope for an eternal family is extremely difficult, and should be supported at church, not undermined as it is now.

This would also address a problem that few marrieds have likely noticed, single people rarely get asked to talk in church and rarely get important callings. That is also absurd. We have more time than most married people, so we may be able to do more in big callings than family folk.

In short, it makes no sense that the church is so far behind with the social reality, that Satan is winning, the family is becoming endangered, and most members are not part of a marriage.

P.S. I expect to get the usual comment from some members, that I should stop complaining and see what I can do to be more Christlike and improve my ward. Blah blah blah. There is a time and a place for anger. Even Jesus got angry. A majority of the church members are being driven away by an outdated institution that marginalizes them. It is time to get angry. It is time for something to be done.

*I have no knowledge as to the actual veracity of this statistic. See comments for more info.

Our Frank

and open, deep conversations,
they get me nowhere, they bring me down so...

Yes, I am back to quoting Morrissey. Next week I'm driving down to south to go to the show with my bestest friend in the whole world.

Back to more pressing issues. What is it still like to STILL be Celibate in the City?

Sigh.

Do you ever wonder how it is that you've gone through so much, all the drama, all the work, all the gosh darn experience, and yet, you are still in the same place? Still alone and bored on another Saturday night? How did I end up so stuck here? How did I drive my life into the ground like that?

More importantly, what am I going to do about it? I had hoped it would be an exciting and fun date-filled summer. I had a man all lined up for the job. A great guy. But, he's just not that into me. Crap. I found him online. We went out 3 times, but spent 2 months courting each other via email, text and the phone. I must disappoint in person. The one or two of you who may have e-crushes on my blog personality should keep that in mind. I'm better in your imagination.

My plunge into insanity did destroy my social life, and I don't know how to re-create it. It gets much harder each year. As people get married and move away, move on, they fade from your phone contact list.

Any suggestions?

I'm too old for the singles ward so don't even breathe that blasphemy.

P.S. When I updated my template to the dumb version, to fix my comments, I thought it said that blogger would save a copy of my old template so I could revert to it later. Yet, I don't see it anywhere. Any help? It makes me sick to think that all the work I did on my blog is just gone. I want to restore all my links to everyone and everything else.

Comments should be fixed now!

I apologize for the inconvenience.

On a side note, I am in the running for a professional blogging job. I will keep you all posted.

Risen from the dead

I'm not dead yet! Despite the silence to the contrary.

I needed to retreat into myself. Writing forces too much self-confrontation, this blog was a mirror from which I needed a rest. I actually started doing much better after that last post. My new medication was raised to a level that finally seemed to work. The never-ending obsessions in my mind quieted and then disappeared. So I came back to NY and back to teaching. Which frightened me.

Anyway, I've been back in my little apartment in Jersey since late January. I didn't have internet at my house until 2 weeks ago. I didn't think blogging anonymously about my love life was a good idea at work. And I still felt like my footing on the ground was tenuous, liable to slip back into madness at any moment. So I kept things in my life as simple as possible.

Turns out, I have some sort of unholy combination of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder-Depression-and ADD!! What fun for me! This explains why the depression would never go away, why I tried to kill myself ten years ago to get my head to shut up, and why I felt so unstable and crazy after I went off my meds last year. Good to know.

I have new dating stories and new observations, if any one out there is still interested. I'll try to start blogging regularly again. But I can't make any promises.

Remember the movie "Never-ending Story"? The scene at the end when the hero has to face the mirror that shows you as you truly are, this was supposed to be the most difficult challenge of them all, and it never made sense to me as a child. I watched that movie over and over, and always puzzled about that stupid mirror. Big deal, you see yourself as you really are... how hard can that be?

Now I know. It is devastating. Once you get enough years under your belt, have lived long enough to have regrets and memories you thought you'd forgotten, then being forced to remember and see all your flaws is one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. This was what I was obsessed with, every mistake I ever made. It still comes back now, but only when life makes me unbalanced or stressed. And the noise isn't as loud as it used to be.

It killed my heart and my soul. So I am rebuilding. Rising from that death. Hopefully.