Rector tries to heal religious wounds
Her own painful experience with estranged family prompts forum
According to one local woman who made that journey — and lost both family and friends in the process — there has to be healing at some point. That's why the Rev. Bonnie Roddy, associate rector at All Saints Episcopal Church, returned to Utah and found friends within a local movement to heal Utah's religious divide.
In seeking to heal her own and her family's religious wounds, she's found a wider movement to heal the community, based on the work of several local groups, including the Utah Psychological Association. And she wants you to be a part of it.
A former Latter-day Saint, she's asking people of all faiths to consider participating in a local forum to be held at All Saints, 1710 Foothill Blvd., on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
"We really want LDS people to come to this — that's the whole point." Simply drawing those who have been disaffected with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or those who feel dominated by its influence, doesn't provide balance or an accurate perspective, she said.
The panelists — two of them LDS — have all been involved in community discussions about how to reach across denominational lines and help bring Utahns together. For the Rev. Roddy, it's a subject of more than passing interest.
"My family is very divided, and I moved back to Salt Lake City with the hope that I could find some way to help heal our family," she said, adding she is "totally cut off from my daughter. I don't know what it is that I say that sets her off. I haven't seen my brother for a year. I know that I play into it but don't know how that happens.
"I'm an Episcopal, and who I am is hard for them to deal with. My family was LDS. I'm an apostate, is what my father told me." The Rev. Roddy moved from Utah decades ago, changed faith traditions and became an Episcopal priest. But a constant search for "Eden" in her heart and her family brought her back to Utah recently.
"When I retired, I just couldn't let it go. I knew I needed to write my (self-published) book and explain there were reasons I left. It's not against the Mormon church, it's that I didn't fit." Her father's journals told about her life and choices from his perspective, so the Rev. Roddy said she wrote a book to describe the same events from her own vantage point.
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