Hello everyone I'm Christi Keller
I'm a mom of Three and grandmother of six. I love to read, spend time with family, ride my bike, listen to music and think.
About me
I was baptized at 8 years old on the Fourth of July. But I wasn't active in the church until I was 18. As a result, I've always felt like a convert. There were a few months of Primary-- which explains my memorization of The Articles of Faith and a perplexing bishop's interview-- no Young Women's and no Seminary. I agreed to the baptism because I felt it was something my mother wanted, but I understood none of it, and in fact, what I was really looking forward to wasn't the baptism at all but the fireworks that night. Mormonism was just another religion to me because all my friends were Catholics or Baptists or nothing at all. I had been attending a Baptist elementary school since kindergarten, and I occasionally joined my friend for Saturday mass. Fast forward to the summer before my senior year of high school when my mother, my siblings and I moved far from Los Angeles to a sleepy little town on the central California coast. It was there that we began attending the local Mormon church, and it was a welcoming experience for all of us. I became involved in the Institute where I found a wonderful group of kids, several of whom became good friends. I felt that I was among my people. And I felt that I had a lot of catching up to do.
So I dove into the Book of Mormon and excitedly read James Talmage's Jesus the Christ and The Articles of Faith. ( I really needed to understand what I had memorized and quoted to the intimidating man in suit and tie years earlier). There was so much to learn. Two years later I was at BYU, thinking it would be a great experience to be surrounded by so many church members. And it was for a few months until a sense of Too Much began settling in. I still loved the church, and I loved my people, although Provo was a strange place indeed, and BYU had ridiculous rules. Immediately after graduation I left on a mission to Uruguay. Oh how I wanted to share the gospel that I held so dear. It was a good experience all in all, but I began to have questions. And the biggest questions centered on polygamy. Polygamy niggled at me for years. I was told to have faith. We can't understand everything in this life after all. So the whole disquieting issue went on the back burner where it slowly simmered. And I was anticipating marriage and family. As a 26 year old, I felt (wrongly) that I was getting old and didn't want to be a single LDS woman for the rest of my life. There was the temple sealing I had long been looking forward to, but not a single member of my family was allowed in the temple, and I had another question on the back burner: Surely there's a way to include non-member and inactive family members at a temple wedding? And don't get me started on the Endowment ceremony. Could it be any weirder? That back burner was starting to get crowded.
# Why I left More stories of 'Why I left' the Mormon church
We began work at then Ricks College, later BYU Idaho, in Rexburg. Wow, if I had thought that Provo was an insular place, I was to live for three decades in a claustrophobic, narrow-minded, self-righteous community where I never entirely felt I belonged. I tried. Oh I tried. And I held the usual callings, but again the niggling. What I needed to do was try harder. Pray more. Attend that temple where I felt so uncomfortable. Read the scriptures. Put that shoulder to the wheel. I did love the many students who came and went in our lives over the years. Our three sons grew up in a safer town and played with good kids whose parents were all somehow associated with the university. But the questions were growing. What about Joseph Smith and polygamy? 30+ wives? Did he really marry children as young as 14? Did he marry married women? What were the plates for if Joseph just needed a rock in a hat? Wait-- a rock in a hat? What in the world does Masonry have to do with the temple ceremony? The Book of Abraham doesn't have anything to do with Abraham? Thank you Internet. Thank you Fawn Brodie, B.H. Roberts, Richard Bushman, Dan Vogel, William Clayton, Todd Compton, Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Grant Palmer, Robert Ritner, the Tanners, the Joseph Smith Papers, and a host of podcasters. And thank you Jeremy Runnells, Letter for My Wife, and thank you Gospel Topic Essays. There's more, so much more. And I had not been taught ANY OF IT --not at church meetings, general conference, Institute classes, BYU, a mission, a lifetime in the Mormon church. What a betrayal. I wanted it all to be true. Like so many others, I began researching and chasing footnotes not to prove the church false but to prove it true. I felt sick. I felt angry. I felt deceived. So here I am, after nearly 50 years in the church, realizing that all I had believed in is false. The keystone of my religion has come crashing down taking Joseph Smith and the doctrines of the church with it. The Mormon church is not the one true church. Joseph Smith is not a prophet. The Book of Mormon is not a true history. I don't believe any of it because I can't. And it has been so difficult, but it is getting better. I promise that it gets better. Now I look at the church much as I did when I was an eight year old. It's one of many religions. And certainly there are many good believing Mormons trying to live good believing lives. But I'm out--out of the boat. And I love who I am.
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