Her Shoes Told Me She Didn’t Belong at Church

LAURA: In late 2021, I started attending church again. It is not an LDS church, but another one in my Mountain West area. Covid had left me feeling isolated from the kind of rituals and corresponding social-spiritual connections that feed my soul, and, while I’m tentative about organized religion, I found that Sunday services at a low-demand congregation helped fill that need.

One Sunday soon after I began attending, I noticed something about the family sitting near me. The four of them looked a lot like the families in the ward I attended when I was growing up: mom, dad, and two young kids with a bag full of activities to occupy little hands. Like all of us, they wore their masks and were dressed for church, although, because this was not an LDS church, they were not in the “church clothes” of my youth. But neither was I.

We sat nearby each other for a handful of weeks and, beyond the relief I had at not being the only parent with their kids at the service (instead of at the children’s classes), there was nothing that made them stand out to me. Until I noticed their shoes. Both adults were wearing tennis shoes.

I don’t know if I noticed their shoes that day because I had been 20 minutes late and this family still welcomed me warmly or if it was that I had changed my own shoes on the way out the door, opting for something comfortable and safe over something fancier. It may have been something else entirely, but their shoes grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go.

When I was about 9 years old, a girl I’d never met came to my LDS ward for the first time. Although she wore a dress, I noticed she was not wearing church shoes. I don’t remember what kind of shoes she wore, only that I noticed they were wrong for church. I don’t know if I realized then, or came to realize later, that she was probably an “investigator.”

Sitting in church as an adult, noticing this couple’s tennis shoes, I remembered her, and I was sad. I don’t remember anything else about that girl, how long she attended church with us, or why she stopped coming. I just remember her shoes and the sense that she didn’t quite belong with us.

By nine, I already knew who didn’t belong at church by their shoes. It’s tragic that a child so young could identify who was “other” by something so tiny and insignificant. The type of shoes someone wears to church doesn’t indicate their relationship with Heavenly Parents or their capacity for friendship or their need to be welcomed by a community. As an adult, I know that, but at 9 years old, I knew who belonged, whose life circumstances or choices clearly showed they were not right with God, who was faithful. And I knew who was not. Or had not been in the pre-existence.

And as I sat there, staring rudely at their shoes, I started thinking about all the ways that I learned to marginalize other people while growing up in the LDS church: by belief, by sexual orientation, by gender, by income level, by race. Despite how much I love the LDS church, there are doctrines that are not neutral, even when culture tries to soften them or frame them otherwise. And there are cultural elements that are also not neutral, even when it’s at odds with more inclusive doctrine.

I also realized that I have internalized this idea of “other.” Like the Amlicites, my piercings and tattoo distinguished me from the true believers. Like Laman and Lemuel, my “faithlessness” (my difference in belief) separates my children from the “faithful” children who live nearby in our heavily LDS community. I consciously do not believe this story–the one that says I’ve let go of the iron rod and fallen off the straight and narrow path that leads to the Tree of Life–but when dealing with church matters, I have had to work hard to break out of conditioned thinking.

The truth is, I will never again belong comfortably within an LDS ward and my children wouldn’t either. They wouldn’t know the songs sung or instinctively know what to do during sharing time. They have no idea who the prophet is, and they don’t immediately recognize a temple as anything other than a beautiful building.

Also, while they have shoes that could probably pass as church shoes right now, that often hasn’t been the case these past few years. Nine-year-old me would be able to identify that my own nine-year-old daughter didn’t belong.

There is a sense of irony in all of this. I stopped attending my ward entirely after the November 5th policy of exclusion leaked, largely because I wanted to protect my children from not being allowed to belong because of my sexual orientation and choices associated with it. Now they simply don’t belong because of my choices. There is a haunting sense of longing that accompanies that irony.

However, we also don’t belong because of the choices made by the church and its members. Mormons are very good at creating belonging through conformity and not very good at creating belonging through diversity. There’s no inherent reason that I shouldn’t belong; bad policy, bad doctrine, and bad culture create the conditions that ensure I do not. I am forever hopeful that that will change. 

Othering people because of their shoes is unkind and silly, but othering people for things like their sexual orientation or race can literally be life threatening, especially when the claim has the weight of God behind it. Too many lives are currently at risk and LDS leaders are still being cavalier about that risk.

I’ve lost track of the family whose shoes taught me so much about belonging. The impacts of COVID restrictions and inconsistent attendance mean that, just as I don’t remember the 9-year-old girl whose shoes told me she didn’t belong, I couldn’t identify this family anymore. I’m sure they have no idea of the lasting impact they had on me.

Maybe one day my kids, or my kids’ kids, can show up on Sunday to an LDS church in their tennis shoes and nobody will think anything of it. Until then, I’m grateful that I’ve found a place where my shoes don’t matter and who I am as a whole person is truly welcome.

~~Laura~~

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