I love coming on this board and seeing stories of active, believing Mormons leaving the church, whether they are new to the board or friends of regular posters. But I'm not seeing this in my life. I have two high school friends who left not long after high school because it wasn't the way they wanted to live their lives - not because it wasn't true. Part of them still believe. One college roommate and one relative are the exact same - still believing but unwilling to live the lifestyle.

Other than that, all my high school friends, ex-boyfriends, BYU roommates, mission companions, friends from my singles' ward, members of my current ward, extended family (mostly in-laws since I don't have a lot of Mormon family) ... ALL of them are still active, believing Mormons. At least, all of them I still keep in touch with. They post cheerful messages on FB about ward activities and uplifting thoughts by the GAs. On the phone and in Christmas letters, they talk about ward activities and how their kids are doing on their missions. They may be feeling the squeeze of internet and unrealistic church demands, but it hasn't cracked anyone yet. And it's not entirely them setting a "good example" for the inactive (me). Most of my old friends don't know I've left the church, although there is absolutely no mention of Mormonism anywhere on my FB page (well, except for saying I'm a BYU grad).

I believe you all when you say you see whole families and devoted TBMs leaving and I find it very encouraging. But I wish I could see it in real life. Am I the only one surrounded by hard-core believers?

I'm in the same boat.

Do you live in a Mormon "stronghold" area? Most of my family have left the Church, despite a very devout upbringing, but I think a lot of it had to do with social disapproval. It was not cool at all to be a Mormon where I grew up, and it was something you wanted to keep to yourself.

I have two brothers who are still in the Church, but they moved to Utah many years ago and will probably never move out.

Same boat here, too.

What I am seeing, though, especially as the older generation (grandparents, granduncles etc.) dies off, are some significant changes in exactly *how* to be mormon, everyone seems to be becoming more liberal.

The younger ones, early 20s, are saying in private that they expect an official declaration equivalent to 1978 concerning homosexuality. These are the more educated ones.

The uneducated ones, who happen to live with less income, are still trying to read the signs for a "last days" moment any time soon. But seeing the world from their point of view the world is unbearable, with all their richer family members travelling and remodelling their homes and paying for the kids' University tuitions etc, all of it glossy-broadcasted on facebook etc. It must be unbearable for them to see.

Well, except for an old high school classmate, who's sort of a NOM, and my college roommate who went from jack to TBM. But we only communicate via Facebook, so it's not like they're current friends. My real, day-to-day life has no Mormons in it. That's very nice.

As for family, it looks like the percentage of those who have kissed off the church has been increasing with each generation. The majority are TBM but about 15% no longer consider themselves LDS. There's even a Wiccan in the bunch.

I'm so jealous of you.
I know of no one even remotely close to me from my TBM days that's left.

Luckily RfM has introduced me to some new friends... but it sure would be nice to see some apostasy from my friends and family.

I don't see it much apostasy among my family, or Mormon friends on FB. Much as I would like to see it, I've made peace with the fact that I may never. Luckily, one of my best friends from growing up in Utah is a nevermo. I always seek him out when I go back for a little dose of sanity!

There are a couple distant cousins that I don't keep in much touch with on dad's side who I'm aware have left. This is out of a large crowd to keep track of, since dad has seven siblings. A couple of dad's siblings left back in the 1970's, so their kids never experienced much of Mormonism.

On mom's side there is no proud tradition of apostasy, I'm really a black sheep there. I am the only one in the extended family to leave the church--and Utah for that matter. I hope one day someone else will join me on the other side.

I was disbelieving, but "active", for nearly five years. Ultimately I was waiting for my wife to get on board. At the time, she was really the only person who knew about my situation, and I really wasn't aware of anyone else's. In the last two years she and I have both gone innactive, and in some circles have even been willing to share our disbelief in the Church. In doing that, we have bumped into a number or friends and acquaintances who have admitted to being at some stage of disbelief as well...yet most of them still attend Church. It would still be a small number of people overall that I know about, but it was much larger than I actually thought.

I'm also seeing the emergence of a looser more "liberal" demographic in the Church, which in my opinion is somewhere between "TBM" and "apostate". These people want to "reform" the Church and take a looser stance on certain theological propositions, including the historicity of The Book of Mormon??? Fundamentally, I see this as an ultimate rejection of Mormon authority and divinity, at least on some level, while still holding to some strange infatuation with the institution.

This move towards theological liberalism probably isn't that unusual though, I think, at least from a sociological standpoint. Here would be my hypothesis. If we assume that TBM and apostates are still the extreme ends of the population distribution of those connected to Mormonism, I would expect the numbers on either side to be rather small. Anecdotally, even growing up, there were "molly Mormons" who lived, breathed, ate, slept, Mormonism. Then there were those who were part of it, who were willing to attend Church and participate in the culture, but who were also a little less rigid in their adherence to Mormon commandments or principles. These people probably made of the base, or 68% of the mean (assuming a normal distribution for the sake of hypothetical). They served missions, went to Church, watched conference, held callings, etc....but they did it all to a mediocre standard, and more in a minimum requirements checklist kind of way. I see this group transitioning more towards a liberal demographic. I guess to expand upon this argument briefly, this is either because the distribution is actually shifting, or because it is widening (quite possibly the latter, now that I think about it), so that either way, the representative demographics of "average" Mormonism are changing.

In other words, look more to the base to see what is happening, rather than to the extremes. That is a better indicator of things..and might just mean that there are more of you than you realize.

For the sake of curiosity, and mabey this has been done, but it might be interesting to get a survey for the participants here on RFM, to find out how many are still "active" in the Church, or in other words, how many are "closeted apostates".

Great comments and observations Erick. I've too noticed the encroaching liberalism from even my most hardcore TBM friends. The oldest generation living in the church today will take their hardcore beliefs to the grave, but the 40-50 crowd I'm around are much more at ease with taking The Brethren with a grain of salt, poo pooing conference talks, poo pooing the doctrine and basically just being cafeteria Mormons. They pick what they deem the best for their families and ignore the rest.

Don't get me wrong, their kids are still going on missions, they attend every week, hold down big callings, etc. but the difference is in the approach. It is much less black and white for them compared to how our parents viewed things (if you missed church, your salvation hung in the balance type thing).

Very interesting observations. My personal experiences vary widely with yours - granted the sample set is small so may not be too meaningful. (I'm in Utah Valley which may explain some of the difference.)

First I need to differentiate 3 sets of people:
Devout TBMs - true believing Mormons - they believe Mormonism is true and live it in a devout way.

Casual TBMs - they are casual about the church - don't always show up - may turn down callings or do a halfway job. They may not even be active at all but still believe it completely.

NOMs - New Order Mormons - what you would call the reformers. These are the people who don't believe or only partially believe.

My experiences is that Casual TBMs are a huge group, not NOMs. In fact as I left the church I approached a few people in my ward that were very casual - would show up once a month, skip priesthood, etc. I expected these folks to be doubters. I was surprised to find the opposite - despite their casual approach to the church they believed it completely: hook, line & sinker.

I personally don't know any NOMs. I know people who are out or who are TBMs - either casual or devout.

So I personally don't think the NOMs are as common as you do. However, I do agree that the LDS church will move more and more that direction over time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2013 12:26PM by bc.

BC:

Yeah, I'm in Utah as well. Still, part of the problem is sort of my fault, in that I am trying to use measurement language to describe something that I actually haven't measured. The closest thing to a measurement that I have seen on this issue was an online survey conducted by John Dehlin last year. You may google it if you haven't seen it. It gives some indication of what is going on, though as the report admits, the sampling method was non-scientific.

Still, you might find some difficulty in taking a pulse through the direct approach. Naturally many people will be guarded about sharing these kinds of things, particularly in Utah County where there is going to be some fear of "coming out". Even so, admittedly we are stall standing on our convenient perche's and trying to take a "lay of the land" approach to a rather complex question. I comfortable enough with my observations to believe that there are some shifts taking place within the theological demographics of the Church, but I think there is a tendency to want to believe that the Church is headed in downward spiral. They have critical mass, massive financial capital, including substantial sources of non-tithing income, so for better or worse the Church is here to stay. In other words, despite what many people here say, I would wager that the Church actually could manage quite well even if there was a significant drop in tithing income. So, what happens to all these business's if the Church membership dropped? They would stay owned and operated by the Church and it's agents, and the Church would continue on...just that simple.

I did a quick search and didn't find the survey - just the one on why people no longer believe.

Do you know if the poll was self-selecting or if it was a random sample. (Obviously if it it were self-selecting the people paying attention to Dehlin are predominantly NOMs.)

My sample size was pretty small but I was very direct that I didn't believe first so I don't anticipate it was them holding back.

I definitely agree that the church is already taking a shift towards the NOM world - I was a closeted one myself for years. However I also appeared to be devout vs. believing - my point I was trying to make is more that how devout/casual someone is about the church does not seem to be a strong indicator of their level of belief.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2013 12:52PM by bc.

It was self-selected, which is why the sampling was non-scientific (also because it was self-selected and advertised online, in predominantly liberal forums of the "bloggernacle"). There were however a series of questions, as I recall, about whether the person had shared their concerns with family, friends, ecclesiastical leaders, and whether they were active.

I think he's talking about these:
-- http://www.whymormonsquestion.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Survey-Results_Understanding-Mormon-Disbelief-Mar20121.pdf

-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gVUuWd2gP0

I agree. LDS Inc is here to stay, but the church division, particularly the hardcore TBM who live it devoutly segment, is taking a hit. The current crop of 20 somethings don't have a problem with gays, don't care if the BoM is historical, and most importantly don't care to live their lives by a bunch of old, white guy's standards.

Now, all this is purely anecdotal from my observations and from others on the board. I come from a large very TBM family and the drop out rate is around 50 percent for the 30 and less crowd to date. Same hold's for my large group of friends and their kids in SE Idaho.

I've seen the rise of cafeteria mormons who live the lifestyle devoutly (missions, WoW, temple worthy) due to cultural reasons, but don't really believe the doctrine nor care to reform it.

Yeah, me too - except that the youth are are wearing sleevless tops and shirts on their FB pages - and not ashamed to post them. Whereas when I was a Mormon teen, we would have gotten in big trouble for doing so.

But I think the reason they are mostly all still active is because they are fairly sheltered and not particularly well educated, meaning they are not readers and inquirers. Most of them don't seem to care about reading or learning much of anything.

I've noticed the same thing in my life. My dad and my sister are out. And of course myself. But as far as others that I have tried to "guide" out like my mother and some friends?

I have noticed that they jump all over the information I provide and gobble it up like candy. Then they just lose steam. It's obviously not important enough to them to make finding the truth about the church a priority.

I know this may sound a bit pretentious but I find most of the general membership intellectually lazy. In fact one of my good friends that knows its a bunch of malarky told me he stopped his investigating because he realized he just didn't give a shit.

in their teens, but 2 of them are jack mormons. My youngest brother--whom I'm the closest to--for a while kept saying, 'you really don't believe?! Really!?" He told me I had given him permission to let go. I do still note he gets hung up on mormon guilt stuff now and then.

But, like you, all my friends, most of my extended family, singles ward friends, high school friends, neighbors are still mormon. My 2 best friends are still mormon. One of my best friends has the perfect family, she has served 2 couples missions, but can't get out of bed because of depression. I mean--her kids are all well educated, have perfect marriages it seems, are all wealthy, though she and her husband are not, and yet she can't get out of bed. My other friend has nothing but problems, has lost 3 close family members in the past 4 months (son and parents) and yet she is always one of the sweetest people I've ever met. She doesn't let it get her down.

Anyway--that has been something that has been bothering me lately--looking around and seeing how all the active mormons lives seem to be perfect, but I have to wonder because my marriage and family seemed for all intents and purposes to the ward members to be perfect. So not everything is as it seems.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2013 12:05PM by cl2.

I finally had a few cousins and nieces become apostate. Only had to wait decades.

I know the MMM was the straw that broke the Book of Mormon's back for one. The other just started looking and found an avalanche.

The rest of my myriad family are See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil if you know what I mean.

I have a few cousins who are considered "less than valient", but as I am the black sheep of the family, I don't know much more than that.
I guess they probably still attend, because putting on that show of faith is very important to their parents, but they are not TBM by any means.

I completely lost touch with all mormons who are not family when I left, but the ones I can remember and can find on Facebook still list LDS as their religion.
Well, scratch that. There is this one guy who I hung with, and we both "sinned it up" back in the day. He still posts about drinking and drugs and women on Facebook though, so he's at least as out as we both were back in the day.

Intellectual laziness is what you would expect from people conditioned to let others do their thinking. I remember feeling grateful that I didn't have to bother my head about the lofty concepts because the Brethren have told us everything we need to know.

Like getting a backpack already filled from the Red Cross vs. making your own list and buying your own backpack then doing the research and selecting the items you will need.

Mormonism is Fast Food Religion = for one low price, your kit contains all that you must do to live with Heavenly Father one day.

Consequently, you get a vast majority (imho) who don't care whether they truly believe or not. This is how they were raised, it's what's familiar, it feels comfortable, they know exactly how far to bend the rules--why upset the spouse and give granny grief?

Who cares whether Joseph Smith smoked or screwed teenagers-- all that stuff is from church enemies anyway. They are busy with important concerns like how to avoid cleaning the chapel on the day they promised the kids they would have a family picnic.

My sense is that everybody is waiting for something to happen. Everybody feels that something must happen, the church is losing members so it has to do something. The changes in the missionary program and the layoff are both responses to declining revenues, but it's not enough. Perhaps projections showed this was coming and the church thought the City Creek project would fill in (and hide) these facts.

Revenue from CC clearly has not been enough and the whole project is a huge demonstration of the lack of foresight and just common sense of the Mormon leaders claiming to speak with God about their decisions. Guess what? They were acting as businessmen... and poor ones, I must say.

It's hard to understand what would make them think that a mall/condo massive construction project would be just the thing? The justification that it would bring work is ridiculous. They could bring work to Salt Lake City by doing their printing there instead of in China.

I think the something that is coming is that City Creek is going to go bankrupt and that will result in a lot of people stopping paying tithing because they realize that their contributions are not supporting the Lord's work but supporting the Corporation's investment program.

That large body of lukewarm Mormons are milling about and will be expelled when the whole financial bubble bursts.

Anagrammy

Do you really think they will let it go bankrupt and cause those doubts?
They have a huge disposable flow of cash they could easily infuse into CC to avoid those publicly visible problems.

They may be sucky business men, but they tend to be pretty good about hiding damaging information.

Just some friendly thoughts for discussion:

"...you get a vast majority (imho) who don't care whether they truly believe or not."

If this were true I would expect family members and friends to be much more willing to listed to and discuss with RFMers why they don't believe.

That someone willing to listen to the issues is the exception not the rule strongly indicates to me that the majority are still true believers.

"It's hard to understand what would make them think that a mall/condo massive construction project would be just the thing?"

My guess is this had a lot less to do with finances and more to do with reputation/prestige. They likely anticipate that an crummy downtown area reflects poorly on the church / attracts less visitors to attempt to convert at temple square.

I think there is a difference between cheap and hurting for money. The Mormon church is cheap - with it's members and employees but I'd bet 2 to 1 odds they aren't hurting for money.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2013 01:56PM by bc.

Coming soon, feature page on:

deadmalls.com

As a former employee of LDSCorp. properties management, I do feel that the mall and temple construction, and even land purchases, are ways to pass money to favored businesses and family members.

Three of my sons have left the church since I came out. I do believe that if the others (married to tbm's) could be exposed on a regular basis to us inactives, that more of them would start to pull away. Even DW has changed her ideas about church leadership, history and doctrine, and is now openly praying to Heavenly Mother. But she still knows the chuch is twoo.

Most people try to avoid s**t storms, so they don't broadcast news that will generate such a storm.

Losing even 1% per year would be a huge loss rate. If you came up with a list of, say 200 Mormons you have known throughout your life, you would discover that some several of them were at least mentally out. We tend only to notice those that stay, on top of which often those that leave make an effort to not be noticed.

Do not despair! The field is white, and ready to apostasize.

Same boat as you CA girl...

I LONG for the day when some of the fam leave the Cult...

I just figure they at least know about the fraud and...

One day they will see the LIGHT and get out...

Don't have any family/friends that have left. I do know people whose relatives have left, and a couple of missionaries I vaguely knew from my mission, but that's it.

I've met with DW family in several western states -- all more hard core believers now -- very disheartening.

But it happen.
I would say if everyone knows a person in the ward that works on disbelief openly so everyone could see, the Church would disappear in a year.

For insider in the Church the process of disbelieve is slow and hidden, often not even exposed to friends.

And the Church is full of disbelievers which don’t leave and just play along for several private reasons.

I have a friend he is atheist down to the bone. He is still in Church he said it is a good community if you find out how it works and can use the system. Go figure.

Some of my DH's friends have left mentally, but are still in to keep their wives happy. As for my pioneer stock family and friends, nope most are still TBM's as far as I can tell. One cousin left due to coming out as gay a few years ago. That sure rocked my very large TBM family's boat, but other than that, conformity is the norm. The TBM's are still TBM's, the jackmo's are still jackmo's and I'm the only godless heathen, lol.

I'm only close to one TBM. As an 84-year old widow, she relies so heavily on her ward for social support and help with things like yard work that she'd never leave Mormonism, even if she questioned it. And with a dead husband and daughter waiting on the other side of the veil, she'll never question it.

And that's OK, she has come to accept my stance. Or maybe she secretly still prays for me to return to the fold, but she never mentions church to me.