Скачать или смотреть Why this artist’s friends don’t know she’s Mormon

Agency is a crucial principle for graphic designer Alexis Rausch. It is how the Utah resident sees the world and her own faith.

Rausch is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — often called the Mormon church — while the majority of her friends in the arts community are “ex-LDS or non-LDS,” and do not even know about her religious devotion.

She says if anyone asks her, she will, of course, acknowledge her association. For the most part, though, they don’t ask and she doesn’t tell.

“I grew up with an LDS single mom (my dad wasn’t part of the picture) who did a lot of theater in New York in the 1980s,” Rausch explains. “All of my mom’s friends were LGBTQ+ and not religious at all.”

Rausch was reared to believe that religion was important, she says, “but it wasn’t the only way to determine whether a person was good. People aren’t defined by their religion.”

Rausch doesn’t speak about her faith much because she doesn’t want friends to feel “they have to censor themselves around me,” she says. “...I have less fear of them judging me, but I don’t want them to feel I am judging them. Their choices and beliefs don’t affect me.”

With such attitudes and friendships, the 30-year-old hopes to do her part to “co-parent” a divided community in the midst of a religious breakup.
She’s hardly alone.

Reporting by Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tamarra Kemsley
Video by Trevor Christensen
The Salt Lake Tribune