Commentary: Yes, the LDS Church brings me ‘friction,’ but it also provides community

I’m on a summer vacation visiting family in Provo, and the grocery store is bringing me a surprising degree of joy. Maybe it’s the abundant displays of puzzles and toys implying that this is a community where people still have the luxury of spare time and families and friends with which to spend it. It’s more, though, that the checkout lines are staffed by actual people. This is an increasingly rare luxury in my aging hometown, which has priced out middle-income families. I value the chance to say hello to a fellow human. Life feels abundant.

I’ve recently begun mentally tracking my in-person interactions. It’s not uncommon on weekdays for me to speak only a few sentences to people outside my family. These interactions are almost entirely transactional: words spoken to a counselor, for example, when picking up a child from camp. When I do speak to the person tending the self-checkout machines at my grocery store, it is not to ask how they are but to explain that the machinery is once again broken. I’m starving for human contact. I look forward to Sundays when there’s a chance to speak with a friend.

The emptiness of my physical existence stands in sharp contrast to the saturation I feel within my online communities. There, I find it difficult to know what is worth saying or consuming in an era of too many words. We’ve all heard the story of how algorithms reinforce our political echo chambers and shatter our sense of shared reality. Today, I’m concerned by the constant notifications and reels generated by artificial intelligence that have left me in a perpetual state of anxiety and stolen my time. I have an inkling that the words that add value to my life are the ones that take time to write and that foster relationships. Words are cheap. Relationships are priceless. What I see in this Provo grocery store are the signs of a community where it remains possible to form relationships.

‘I’m from a blue state, but I love Provo’

While in Provo, I attend the Colonial Heritage Festival hosted by America’s Freedom Festival. I almost don’t go because I worry that the foundation’s focus on “the traditional American values of God, family, freedom and country” will feel overly political. But I table that concern and am richly rewarded by a stunning reenactment of our shared colonial heritage. I marvel at the old-fashioned printing press and the cost and care once involved in conveying words. I am reminded that our hearts still swell together to America’s founding story and that most of us do, in fact, share the values of God, family, freedom and country, no matter our politics. I’m from a blue state, but I love this event. And I love Provo. I’ve never met a person in Utah I did not like.

At night, a relative discusses how she is working with members of her Latter-day Saint ward, or congregation, with differing political views. She calls them all friends. They have earned that title after years of living as neighbors, parenting children, and serving together in wards and schools. I am grieved to reflect that my own friendships, by contrast, are now divided along political lines — likely because they are primarily online. I am painfully aware that the housing crisis has left many younger people unable to establish community networks of lifelong friends.

Craving community

There is no replacement for the long work of living in a community. In the absence of in-person interactions, we are judged primarily by the fragmented media we consume and political litmus tests. Whom one listens to and votes for becomes a proxy for whether we could be friends. Sustained, in-person relationships can allow other connections to flourish. People who meaningfully interact with one another in their daily lives have topics other than politics to discuss. Living in a community, however, seems a privilege to which many of us have less and less access. The housing crisis cannot be separated from our fragmented politics.

Latter-day Saint podcaster Cynthia Winward has said she is drawn to the idea of “friction” being an important (and, nowadays, often missing) aspect of social situations because it forces us to deal with other “messy humans.” Friction is not merely resistance. When applied lightly enough, it is also the glue that tethers us to the ground. It’s the tension that forces us to slow down and recognize the presence of another.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is my greatest source of friction and my greatest tie to other human beings. Many of us are hungry for the stability of community, and it’s unsurprising that this has corresponded with an uptick of interest in religion. There is no other institution in my life that has forced me to wrestle as deeply with ideas that challenge parts of my identity or that has so effectively brought me into sustained relationships with people who are vastly different from me in viewpoints and background. It is the anchor of the community I see flourishing in Provo.

I know as well as anyone that the friction of church can be a source of pain. It is perhaps also the church’s greatest asset. At its best, the church is a model for bringing us back into the community our country is sorely lacking. We should invest more rather than less in its community-building potential.

Note to readers • Natalie Brown is a Latter-day Saint based in Colorado. She is writing in her personal capacity. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the church or her employer.