If I were ever to leave the Church (which I’m not planning to, by the way; but Brigham Young himself said he didn’t trust anyone who said they would never leave the Church–that in fact those are the ones most likely to–that even he himself said he would never leave, only that he hoped he wouldn’t–that even Heber J. Grant on his deathbed was purportedly overheard praying to God for strength to “persevere till the end,” cause he was keenly aware that anyone and everyone has the capacity to quit, even in the home-stretch), I say, not that I have any present intention to, but if I were to, I hope I wouldn’t use such a sterile, feckless, bland and bureaucratic phrase like “faith transition” to describe the experience. (I mean, if I were to leave, it would likely because I had at last grown tired of the stifling, bureaucratic language of the modern Church–seriously, “faith transition” sounds like something the Church Correlation Committee would’ve come up with, ironically).

No, if I were to leave, I would want a phrase with a little more blood and guts to it. Not even a whole lot! But at least a little more frank acknowledgment that something traumatic had occurred, that something has been lost.

The even bigger irony, then, is that we already have a phrase for that, and it’s been in circulation for over 30 years now–in fact, it has been so overplayed on supermarket and throwback radio at this point that such is likely the reason we have tuned out and forgotten all about it in the first place: simply, “Losing My Religion.”

Now granted, REM frontman Michael Stipe has said in interviews that “Losing My Religion” is actually just a Southernism (REM hails from Athens, GA, after all) meaning “to be at the end of one’s rope” (e.g. “Willy, ya seem all shook up, what’s the matter?” “Ah, Bill, they’s announcin’ layoffs down at the plant, and my dog done gone run off, and my wallet is tighter than a billy-goat’s butt in a sandstorm. I’m losing my religion, I tell you what.” “I’m real sorry to hear that Willy, real sorry. See you at church Sunday?” “Yeah, I’ll see you Sunday, Bill.”) Nevertheless, that Grammy-winning music video, with all of its religious imagery, does little to dispel the natural assumption that he is here describing a much more spiritual catastrophe.

But if the phrase “Losing My Religion” is much more bluntly obvious (not to mention overplayed over the past 30+ years) than “Faith transition,” it at least has the dignity of not sounding like something the correlation committee came up with. It is OK to feel like you’ve lost something–even if, like a gangrene-afflicted appendage, it’s something you felt like you had to amputate for your own well-being–and to mourn that loss.

Again, I sincerely hope and pray that I never have to experience that loss. But like Brigham Young and Heber J. Grant and innumerable others, I am nonetheless keenly aware that I could, and wish to treat that precarity with all due respect, caution, and dread reverence.