We often hear about Mormon faith crises, but it was interesting to hear a non-LDS one. Dr Cristina Rosetti grew up pretty uninterested in religion. Yet she converted both to the Pentecostal Church and then Catholicism, while finding great joy studying not just Mormonism but Mormon Fundamentalism as well. Find out more about her faith journey. Check out our conversation….
Cristina 10:00 But yeah, all that to say I left eighth grade, really not knowing what an Episcopalian was. Even though I had just gone to chapel every Monday for most of my life.
GT 10:13 You just like blew off everything or they didn't [teach it?] I don't know.
Cristina 10:16 Yeah, I mean, I didn't go through Christian formation in any way. Again, my mom was Christian and always talked about it. And so I knew that she was Christian. And so I kind of was like, Well, I guess I am too, but I never really thought about it. It wasn't part of my life at all. And then I went to high school. I went to high school in Southern California. And my best friend got saved.
GT 10:43 Born Again.
Cristina 10:44 She got born again. And she invited me to church, and a lot of people did in my high school like the surrounding area.
GT 10:52 This is Southern California.
Cristina 10:53 Yeah. So I was in Southern California. I went to Aliso Niguel High School. And a lot of people started going to two churches that were really prominent. And it's interesting because one was reformed. So it was very Calvinist. It was called Compass Bible Church. And then a lot of people started going to...
GT 11:09 Calvinist is once saved, always saved?
Cristina 11:12 Calvinism is predestination. It is total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.
GT 11:22 Okay.
Cristina 11:22 So, predestination; But on the other end, a lot of people started going to Living Hope Christian Fellowship, which is where my best friend got at the time got saved.
GT 11:33 They're a Born Again Church.
Cristina 11:34 Born Again. And she invited me to church to youth group, which I had no interest in going to, but I went. Yeah, she was like, "We'll get McDonald's." And I was like, "Great."
GT 11:46 This is weird, because you're a religious studies scholar, you sound like you're so uninterested in religion.
Cristina 11:50 In high school, I was really uninterested in high school up until this moment. And we went to a youth group. It was called Altared Youth, but it was a play on words. It was Altared, like an altar, like an altar call, which is funny, because most non denominational churches or evangelical/Pentecostal churches don't have altars anymore. So I went to youth group, and I really liked it, everyone was really nice. I kept going back. It was part of the international church of the Foursquare gospel, which is a pretty small Pentecostal church. And I had a salvation experience, a born again experience where I thought I [was saved.] Well, it's complicated, how you look back on moments like that. But I believed that I had been healed of something that had been a physical problem for quite a while. And I decided that I was going to get saved. So I went to [someone] who became my youth pastor. pretty soon after, and we did the prayer. And then I was baptized.
GT 12:20 The Sinners Prayer?
Cristina 12:21 The Sinner's Prayer, he did it with me. And then I was baptized in the ocean at North Beach.
GT 13:08 Wow.
Cristina 13:08 In San Clemente. My parents came. My parents have always been incredibly supportive of my religious...
GT 13:15 Journeys.
Cristina 13:16 Meanderings. They have always been incredibly supportive. But I was baptized in the ocean. It was very cold.
GT 13:23 Southern California, your water is very cold. If you want warm water to go to Florida.
Cristina 13:27 The Atlantic Ocean is warmer than the Pacific is what people tell me. Yeah, I was baptized in the ocean. And I was Pentecostal.
GT 13:38 Did you speak in tongues?
Cristina 13:40 Well, Rick, this is why I'm not Pentecostal anymore. Welcome to my faith crisis. We're just going to jump ahead.
GT 13:50 I want you to know I attended a Bickertonite Church with Steve Pynakker in Florida.
Cristina 13:54 Yeah.
GT 13:55 And they're very Pentecostal. It's called The Church of Jesus Christ. And they sometimes speak in tongues. I was so disappointed they didn't do it while I was there.
Cristina 14:05 Yeah, a lot of people did around me. It was a very common part of my Christian experiencing people speaking in tongues. For those who don't know, the International Church of the Foursquare gospel was founded by Sister Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1920s. She was the first woman on the radio. And in LA, she built this building called Angelus Temple. And she was rad. I wanted to be her. She was so incredible. I mean, she had a very complicated life. She ended up, at some point, staging her own kidnapping to collect a ransom.
GT 14:44 Really?
Cristina 14:45 She ends up having multiple affairs, dies of a drug overdose. But I didn't know that when I was [investigating.]
GT 14:50 I bet they don't emphasize that very much.
Cristina 14:53 They don't.
GT 14:53 That would be anti-Foursquare gospel, or anti-Pentecostal.
Cristina 14:57 {Laughs} It's anti-Foursquare material. Yes, no one talks about that. I learned that later. And I was like, "What?" But she was...
GT 15:07 We've got some scandals in somebody besides Joseph Smith? This is great. We might have to have a second interview about this.
Cristina 15:13 She was beautiful though. She was charismatic. I mean, she was beautiful. And she did these big productions. People gravitated toward her. But the four squares are Jesus/Savior, Baptizer, Healer and King. And by baptizer, it doesn't just mean in water. It also means in the Holy Ghost. And so because of that, a lot of people speak in tongues.
GT 15:33 That's where people get the four squares, huh?
Cristina 15:35 Yes. And I remember going to the Foursquare convention in the Anaheim Convention Center. And I remember this distinct moment where like the lights dim, and then like the stage lights come up, and everyone said, "We are Foursquare," and put their hands up like this.
Cristina 15:50 And I was like, "I don't know if I'm this, actually." We didn't do this at church. A lot of people spoke in tongues. There was a lot of healing.
GT 16:02 It didn't freak you out or anything?
Cristina 16:04 I thought it was different. I mean, I want to Episcopalian school. And that didn't do that, for sure. And my mom's Christian, and she doesn't do that.
GT 16:13 Well, Episcopalians are pretty [Catholic.]
Cristina 16:15 It was different. But I mean, it never seemed weird to me. It was just kind of like "Hmmm." I thought the deliverance ministries were a little strange at the time, which was like when you cast demons out of people. That was kind of a little like, "Oh."
GT 16:38 The Exorcist?
Cristina 16:39 But now I'm Catholic, and we have Exorcist, but it's different I guess. I don't know. I just remember a lot of things connected to demonic spirits. And so like, I had a spirit of insomnia cast out of me once.
GT 16:55 Oh, wow.
Cristina 16:56 I had a hard time sleeping one week. I don't know.
GT 16:59 Did it work?
Cristina 17:01 I mean, I never had chronic insomnia. The woman who did it just sensed that I had this.
GT 17:08 For the last seven years, I don't know. I think it's just because I'm getting old. I have a hard time sleeping through the night anymore. Usually I get up. I go the bathroom or whatever, and then I go back to sleep. And I'm good. But it bugs me because I used to sleep, 8-9-10 hours straight. It was fine.
Cristina 17:08 Well, Deliverance Ministries are available.
GT 17:16 Okay. {laughs}
Cristina 17:32 Apparently, I mean, I happened to me. But I was really invested in being Pentecostal and being Foursquare. And I wanted to go on a mission. And I looked at the forms. The forms to go on a Foursquare mission, you have to put the date of your water baptism and the date of your baptism in the Holy Spirit.
GT 17:52 They are not the same date?
Cristina 17:54 Well no. Your baptism in the Holy Spirit's the day you start speaking in tongues.
GT 17:57 Oh, that's interesting.
Cristina 17:59 And I didn't have that. And in the Foursquare Church it used to be very kind of in the camp of, "are you saved if you don't speak in tongues?" It's no longer like that anymore, for the most part. But it really used to focus on that speaking in tongues as a sign of your salvation. And that's really hard when you're deeply invested in this religion, but you don't have the outward sign that you are saved. And so that was really hard for me.
Cristina 18:28 And I went to college camp. This is right before I peaced-out. I went to college camp. And if people have seen the movie, "Jesus Camp", it was very much my camp experience where it's heightened emotion. It's really intense. It's really intense. And it's kind of modeled after there's a day where you get saved. And then there's a day where people just pray over you to receive the gift of tongues. And I couldn't do it. Like I couldn't do it. And I knew that people lied and pretended to be baptized in the Holy Ghost. But that didn't feel [right to me.] The whole thing, it was really difficult. It was really difficult. And ultimately, that eventually led me to no longer being Pentecostal.
How did a Born Again Christian become a Catholic while studying Mormonism? Dr Cristina Rosetti answers.
Cristina 02:07 But yeah, so I started doing that. And I got to the Reformation. And I read a book, called "Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism." And there was a section in it, where it's talking about the radical reformation. And the radical reformation was rough. It was violent. It was rough. I mean, there were the stories about people decapitating statues and feeding the Eucharist to dogs and mocking it. And it was a really difficult rough period. And I was upset at the radical reformers. I was angry at Thomas Muntzer.
GT 02:47 Okay.
Cristina 02:47 Why? I have no reason to be mad at these people, at all. I'm not invested in this story.
GT 02:52 We don't even know anything about the Reformation until Luther. Is he before Luther?
Cristina 02:56 He's after. So Luther initiates what's called the magisterial reformation in 1517. After Luther, there's this big question in the minds of a lot of people in Germany, where people think it's really great that you are starting to change the religion and our place in the church. But what are you going to do with anything about our temporal position in the world? There was a drought in Germany at this time. Things were really difficult and a lot of peasants specifically called on Luther to help them temporally, not just spiritually. Luther says, No. Luther tells people that are really suffering, that your freedom and your salvation is found in God. The rest of it, you're on your own, kind of. It initiates what's called the Peasants War.
GT 03:55 Luther initiates the Peasants War?
Cristina 03:57 No. These peasants end up revolting against their temporal situation. Thousands of peasants die in this war. And Luther is very hands off, but someone named Thomas Muntzer steps in. And Thomas Muntzer is a radical who says, "We will fix your temporal state as well as your spiritual state at any cost." And the radical reformation is really marked by this very, as the name says, a radical way of trying to change the world. Luther has initiated a spiritual change to the world. The radical reformers were going to change the temporal world as well. This manifests in reformers like Ulrich Zwingli. He is in Switzerland. He makes art illegal in Switzerland. He puts Catholics in like [jeopardy.] I mean, if you can't change Catholics, if you can't reform them, you can kill them. And so Zwingli starts going on [rampage.] He starts starving out Catholics in Switzerland. And so the radical reformation is a rough time in history.
...
GT 08:19 You were just ticked off at all those doggone Protestants.
Cristina 08:20 I was just mad. I was just mad. I just thought it. I don't know. I was just upset. And then I was in a perfect storm. And I really want to emphasize that it wasn't just the history. because
GT 08:32 You should have become a Quaker. They were all peaceful. Right?
Cristina 08:34 Well, this is why I'm a Catholic, though. It's a perfect storm. At the same time that I'm reading for this exam. I go on a cruise.
GT 08:43 Oh? To Italy.
Cristina 08:46 {laughs}. Yes.
GT 08:46 I love Italy. Italy is the best.
Cristina 08:48 I go on a Mediterranean cruise. We got a good deal on this cruise. And I finished reading this book. I get on this boat. And I got like an advanced [cruise.} I booked ahead to be able to get a ticket to the Sistine Chapel. That was cool.
GT 09:03 Yeah, it is cool.
Cristina 09:04 Of course it's cool. And while I'm there, I'm like, "Well, I might as well get in line to go and St. Peter's. I didn't really know what was in there.
GT 09:12 Yeah, me neither.
Cristina 09:13 I went in. So I get in line, go inside. I see the Pieta and I'm like, "What is happening?" I see the altar. And I'm like, "This is it."
GT 09:24 Wow.
Cristina 09:25 And I'm like, "This is why I was angry. This is why I was so mad at the Reformation." And for those who don't know when you go, you walk up to the altar and there's the altar. Then there's stairs that go under it. And there's a little sign that says, "Here lies Peter the first Pope." I was like, "There he is. The first Pope." The person I was with...
GT 09:46 Was he black?
Cristina 09:49 What?
GT 09:50 No, here's what I mean by that.
Cristina 09:51 Because he's decayed?
GT 09:52 Because he's all decayed. Some of those Catholic churches especially in Italy I remember, they were mummified remains.
Cristina 09:59 Oh.
GT 09:59 So they would just turn black from, I don't want to say decomposition but like [oxidation.]
Cristina 10:04 Yeah, so you can't see. Peter is in a tomb.
GT 10:07 Okay, so you can't see him. Because they have glass coffins of these priests or I don't know what they are.
Cristina 10:13 John 23
GT 10:14 Bu they are really gross looking if you ask me.
Cristina 10:18 Those were the great saints of old.
GT 10:19 I'm sure they are. But it's just [gross to look at.]
Cristina 10:21 John 23's body was on [display.] It was out. I mean, his tomb is glass. So I saw John 23, who was the pope that did Vatican II. So I saw him. John Paul II, I couldn't see him, but I saw his tomb. But all the Pope's are underground. They are in the crypt. And Peter is the big one. But yeah, so it's "Here lies Peter, the first Pope," and I was like, "There's the first pope. His name is Peter."
Cristina 10:22 And the person I was with was like, "Cristina, you don't believe this."
Cristina 10:22 And I was like, "I've never actually believed anything more in my whole life."
GT 10:59 Really?
Cristina 11:00 Then Peter is right there. And he's the first pope. Sign me up.
GT 11:04 So this was your second. This is Born Again 2.
Cristina 11:05 This was my second born again experience. So, I mean, this one fortunately, I think the wisdom of the Catholic as well as the Orthodox tradition, is the formation period is pretty long. So, whereas when I became Pentecostal, I was like, "I want to be this." And they just baptized me a week later. When I became Catholic, I signed up for RCIA, which is a Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, which is the formation period. And I started RCIA, which is a weekly class. You have a sponsor that you have to meet with. I started in September of 2015. And I was initiated in March of 2016 on the Easter Vigil, which is the Saturday before Easter Sunday.
GT 11:56 Now, my friend got baptized into the Episcopalian Church, and it was Easter weekend. I guess that's a common time to get baptized is Easter weekend.
Cristina 11:58 Yeah. So that is the tradition of the church. You are what is called a catechumen. So you are kind of in formation. You go through classes, et cetera.
Cristina: I was interested in Mormonism. I talked to my advisor. And she was like, "Have you met Mormons?" And I was like, "well, here we go."
GT 52:26 No?
Cristina 52:27 So actually, I walked across the street to Institute.
GT 52:31 Oh, really?
Cristina 52:32 That's my first encounter with the LDS Church. And I asked the institute director, if I could go to Institute?
GT 52:39 Were you Catholic at this time?
Cristina 52:40 I was not.
GT 52:41 You were just still in the agnostic phase.
Cristina 52:42 I was still agnostic, but I was said, "Can I go to Institute?" And he was so kind. We're friends on Facebook.
GT 52:48 Oh, yeah.
Cristina 52:50 Yeah, he was great.
GT 52:51 He would have been like "Golden investigator here."
Cristina 52:53 I know. But I signed up. And the institute that I went to was interesting in that there wasn't very many LDS people. There was only three people who were LDS. You got free parking. You got lunch on Thursdays, baked potato bar, which I loved going to.
GT 53:09 Wait. Three in your class?
Cristina 53:12 There was three LDS people who were in my class. Yes.
GT 53:15 Okay. So it was just a tiny class.
Cristina 53:17 No, it was pretty big. The only classes that were offered were Book of Mormon, New Testament. And they offered twice in two years, they offered "Foundations of the Restoration."
GT 53:28 This is at Riverside.
Cristina 53:29 Yeah. So they didn't have like "Eternal Families," because there wasn't a need to run that class.
GT 53:34 So it was a tiny Institute, it sounds like.
Cristina 53:35 There wasn't a need to run like a D&C class. There wasn't a need to run those, so it was small.
GT 53:42 Okay, so were there more people that were not LDS that were attending these Institute classes?
Cristina 53:46 Oh, yeah, there were more non-LDS people for sure.
GT 53:47 Really? I've never heard of that.
Cristina 53:49 Yeah. [They came] for the parking.
GT 53:51 Oh.
Cristina 53:52 It was a lot of athletes, especially who would use it for the free parking. Yeah. But the director of it was great.
GT 54:02 They had to pay like five bucks for the parking for the class room. Right? At least when I was going there [at Weber State,] it was like five bucks for the class.
Cristina 54:06 We got free parking, and the classes were free.
GT 54:12 Oh, we had to pay at Weber State.
Cristina 54:14 At Institute?
GT 54:14 If I remember right. I think so.
Cristina 54:16 For us it was free.
GT 54:17 In Utah.
Cristina 54:18 It was a big sell.
GT 54:19 Yeah, I mean, parking can be a big sell at any college.
Cristina 54:22 Oh, yeah. I mean, and lunch on Thursday.
GT 54:24 Yeah.
Cristina 54:25 It was usually a baked potato bar.
GT 54:27 Yeah, those are good.
Cristina 54:28 I had never had a big potato bar until this and it was [great.] Yeah, I really liked it. But I signed up for Book of Mormon. I had never read the Book of Mormon. And one of the interesting things...
GT 54:43 I think Steve Pynakker still hasn't read it. Jab!
Cristina 54:47 You've got to do Moroni's promise Steve. One of the things I really appreciate about my Institute though, because there was so few is the Institute director. He actually spent quite a bit of time going through and asking people like, what are some stereotypes you have about Mormons? People will just be like, "I heard this." And he would spend significant time just hearing a lot of wild ideas about his own people and going through them. And I really appreciated that. Because that's hard to do to stand up and say, "What are stereotypes you have about me?" And then just kindly and generously go through them. To do that with grace is hard. {He did that] for a long time/for days on end. And so that was a really [great.] He was the first LDS person I like really spent time talking to.
GT 55:10 Wow.
Cristina 55:37 He's great. And so I did that I started going to a YSA word with some of the people in my class. And then as I was doing this, I was reading more about the LDS Church. And two things converged.
GT 55:53 So you understand YSA Culture really well then, I would think.
Cristina 55:56 I mean, I've never been a YSA. I mean, I have been a young single adult, but I have not been in the programming for YSA's. But no, I mean, yeah, I went to Institute. I went to Institute almost every day.
GT 56:12 Wow.
What are your thoughts about Cristina's faith journey? Are there parallel's with an ex-Mormon faith crisis? Are you surprised she embraced Catholocism over Mormonism?
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