Antoine Taveneaux

People are very surprised when I tell them I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – or, the Mormon Church, as it is informally called. “How can someone as intelligent as you be a member of a cult?” a friend asked me in our first term at Cambridge. This is just one example of many things people have said to me on this issue, suggesting that they can’t reconcile my open-minded interest in the world with my Mormon religious beliefs.

It shouldn’t really be the case, but this means that I’ve kept my faith a mainly private matter since I got to Cambridge. I know that evangelising is a key part of my faith. Indeed, after Cambridge I’ll be going to France as a missionary – and promoting Mormonism in a nation where drinking and smoking remains part of the culture should be an interesting experience. Mentioning this plan for after exemplifies the difficulty I have talking about my faith: even close friends have raised eyebrows when I’ve said I’m going to be a missionary, and I don’t think I’m reading too much into it when I say that I’m sure they associate it with forcing religion on people, and can’t imagine someone they know and like doing something so abhorrent.

As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s a case of forcing the teachings of the LDS Church on people at all. Religious belief must come from deep inside the believer. It must be a matter of free, willing and happy submission to God. In spreading the word about LDS beliefs, the way I see it, I’ll be making clear what it believes, why it has brought me great happiness and peace, and why the church’s teachings seem so right to me that I can’t deny my feeling that they are the complete truth.

A lot of the questions I get about Mormon beliefs at Cambridge are about polygamy, and about the idea of the religion as a cult. Of course, Mormon beliefs about the Trinity, and our belief in the Book of Mormon as a sacred text, are very different from other Christian denominations. But it seems to me that in this context ‘cult’ basically means different. Admittedly, through history, there have been some very bad, very corrupt rotten apples in Mormonism. A lot of people think that polygamy is still a part of the church, when the official, authoritative body has consistently militated against it since 1890.

However, I suppose the fundamental issue that people in Cambridge, and indeed elsewhere, seem to have with Mormonism is that being part of it entails a very strong commitment to God. Submission might be an even better word. In this day and age, especially among inquisitive, intellectually minded people at places like Cambridge, there is deep antipathy to the idea of abandoning pure reason for a leap of faith. But it’s just a difference of epistemology. For me, the Bible and the Book of Mormon can communicate to me without me always understanding them. However, that instinctive sense of feeling the truth is there. And that’s what has brought me the most blissful sense of security and contentment in life.