I don't expect much more but it does make you wonder how you and I could have been convinced by missionaries to join the church and then be missionaries ourselves! I went to BYU and married in the temple and now have my oldest son on a mission! I'm beginning to experience some deep felt bitterness and loss but I'm not blaming it on missionaries, the church, or GA's. I see here a basic situation which has been replicated many times because human nature doesn't seem to change. People lie! People want power and once they have it, they don't want to give it up.
The church is struggling with telling the truth and doesn't even want members to know the truth or be conversant in it. It reminds me of the wreck of the Edmund Fitsgerald when it had cracked its hull in a shoal and was slowly cracking in half but the captain only had one choice and that was full speed ahead to make White Fish Point. He couldn't turn around because of high seas would capsize the boat. The ore boat finally did break in half suddenly and all the crew were killed. The leaders of the church and TBMs [True Believing Mormons] have no choice but to speed ahead because admitting there are leaks or fatal damage to the ship would sink it. Let someone else deal with it!
Keep up the good work. Making the truth known is worth all the crap you put up with.
Hello,
I would like to try and tell my story. I was interested in religion when I was a teenager (well I am still but not in the same way). So I read about different churches and religions and Mormonism came in my way. I thought it sounded very nice. At the same time I also had write about something for a class in school and I choose Mormonism. So I called the church and asked them if I could come and ask them a couple of questions for my work at school. They answered my questions but they were more interested telling me about the first discussion. I thought what they said sounded very nice and after 4 weeks I was baptized at the age of 14. My parents didn't want me to get baptized that fast first but the missionaries talked to my parents.
I soon became very active and held callings. It didn't take long before I was very influenced by the church and it was a part of my everyday life. I really loved the church and believed in it. The church here in Sweden isn't very big but there were a couple of girls in the Young Woman. We did a lot of things, went to the temple. I am so amazed how the classes and the material can influence anybody so much. I accepted everything the church told me. During the 9 years I was a member of the church I kept my friends outside the church. I am very happy for that, especially now when I have left the church. It would have been so much harder to leave the church if I wouldn't have any friends left outside the church.
The thing that made me think of leaving the church was when I was searching for something about the church on the Internet late summer 1997. Among all the positive stuff about the church there were some things that weren't so good about the church (according to members....). Somehow I got very curious about this stuff that members always warn about. I had stumbled on things like this website and I read and read. I read all the stories about people who had left the church and even other articles about the history about the church etc. So from being a very active and faithful Mormon one week I changed my mind and decided the next week that I didn't want to believe in this church. I had then been a member for almost 9 years (I guess I am still a member since my bishop hasn't given me any sign of having removed my name). I am lucky to have persons who listened to me while I decided to leave the church and most happy am I because of my friends outside the church. My friends, my parents and people around me were very surprised when I told then that I was going to leave the church. I guess the most surprised person was my bishop. I would have loved to see his expression on his face when he received my letter. I had written him a letter that I didn't want to attend to church anymore and I wanted my name removed.
I feel very happy and relieved that I have got out of the church. It feels like I can be myself and not something that someone or something else has formed. In church I felt like I was being in a shell with ideas, values that really wasn't mine. When I was a member I felt sorry about the people who weren't members because they didn't know the "truth" as I did. Now I feel sorry for the people who are members. If I hadn't had access to Internet I might have been a member a lot more years. And I wouldn't have enjoyed being totally myself. Now I can look at the world with different eyes and have a good time.
If anyone wants to write to me, my e-mail address is New ex-Mormon
If it weren't for your web site with all of these other stories about Mormons leaving, I wouldn't have much hope that someday I could eventually do the same thing. I stay here for family reasons now, but the information on your web site confirms what I have known for years. The Mormon Church is simply a dishonest organization which is more concerned about public relations than the truth.
This is a great website. I know the true believers in the LDS church do not like to hear anything bad said about their beloved church. But, people need to be told that it's "buyer beware". The church is so eager to baptise new converts that it can't understand why a year later 90% of them are inactive. Many people do find the church to be a utopia and God sent. It has many positive attributes. However, as the stories on your web page point out, many people find trouble in paradise. I bet the church doesn't keep official records on suicides, however; two single woman in my ward shot themselves. One of them I knew. The LDS church is not for everyone!! The word needs to get out.
I joined the church in '90 or '91 (I can't remember). I never considered myself a Mormon because the word had no meaning to me. I guess I was one of those people who were just passing through. I am single, and therefore, considered only half a person by church standards, a sub-sub-specie. (I think I know why the church does not let women hold the priesthood. LDS women are the true backbone of the church. They get things done. If women had the same power in the church as men, the only use for them would be as sperm donors. The church would function just fine without them.) After going to a temple prep class and learning about having to wear special garments for the temple, I decided the church was not for me. (After reading about secret handshakes, signs and tokens, I am glad I never went.)
I understand the hurt and anger people have expressed in their stories. The church claims that it has the "stamp of approval" from God himself and is superior to all other religions. What a let down when people discover the church suffers all the faults of man which isn't very God like.
If people are to be treated like intelligent human being, they need to be told both sides of the story and make an informed decision about whether the church is right for them. Members need to know it's all right to leave if they can't fit into the mold.
Thanks for letting me air my opinion.
I thought you'd like this bit of news. My daughter is a freshman at Oberlin College in Ohio. Its quite a liberal college where independent thought is highly encouraged. She just told me that the Oberlin Feminist Student Organization was launching a protest against BYU because of their treatment of women professors and their policy to eliminate women from the faculty.
Oberlin is quite a small college (2,500) and not in a highly Mormon area. I'm fascinated that the reality of BYU has traveled that far and is causing such a reaction. Thank God for the Internet. Maybe its the modern trumpet of a modern Joshua.
(I know, archeologists find no evidence of Jericho's walls ever having tumbled down, but its a great metaphor. We can hope.)
I know you must be inundated with e-mail. I am happy to send you encouraging notes from time to time and don't expect an answer.
I've shared some wonderful e-mails with some of those whose stories are on your page. To encourage them makes me feel useful in ways that I never thought my Mormon background would lead me to. Thanks for your work.
Blessings----Jan
I left the church after searching THEIR scriptures and other "educational" materials. Only after I found those intellectually bankrupt did I start to ask questions to which I got spiritually and emotionally bankrupt answers (like "yours is not to question why, etc.).
I only wish I'd known all of this information was available long ago -- so affirming!
Please keep up the good work. Maybe my mother will find her way out someday too!
I am neither a Christian nor Atheist. I guess you could say I'm agnostic, in that I feel that there must be SOME kind of creator out there. What or who it is I have no idea. And by accepting the fact that I may never know, or even comprehend, who or what this creator is has brought a lot of comfort in my life. Hell, this could all just be one big accident! Who knows? No one! I just try to live by the "golden rule" and be a good person.
Thank you again for the time and money you've put into running your site. I'm sure it has helped MANY people find comfort in their lives!
I was baptized in North Wales round about that time, though I was never a fan of base-ball. Two missionaries knocked on our door one Saturday afternoon when I was out at my violin lesson. My mother told them she was too old to change, but that her son was investigating religions and they should come back when he was in. They did. Two real nice guys who smelled good and seemed to like me. I was fifteen and very impressionable. After a few "lessons" they invited me to church. They even came to pick me up in their VW mini-bus because I lived out in the country. At church, I met a whole bunch of people who seemed to be happy that I was there - and, believe it or not, that made me happy too. (This was in 1962.) A couple of months later my parents gave me permission to get baptized.
So I got baptized.
And soon became a model Mormon teen-ager. I played the piano during the meetings, bore beautiful testimonies, fell in love with a remarkably neurotic Mormon lady, married and twice my age, did all the right Mormon things, like not drinking alcohol, and feeling horrendously guilty about masturbation. Then I grew a bit older, went away to university, met an evangelical who proved to me from the bible that Mormonism was false (took her about five minutes - I had a real strong testimony!!) went out and got drunk with my pals and forgot about Mormonism for a while. I never forgot about my neurotic lady, Nancy.
Alas. I became a hippy, dropped out of school, played fiddle and banjo in a folk group, had numerous sexual partners, smoked pot, lived on the dole - just ordinary kind of stuff for that time. Then I grew a little older, and wiser, went back to school, got my teacher's diploma, and - you've guessed - got all nostalgic about Gold'n'Green Balls (mine were always pink'n'hairy) and, for love of Nance the Neurotic, had a spiritual experience in the train going home to North Wales one day and got a brand new 1970 model testimony. Not many British mormons went on missions in those days, and as I had always had a taste for adventure, I pretty soon convinced God to reveal to me that I should serve a mission. I even sold my Lotus Elan (don't cry, I've gotten over it now) to help finance my two year mission in France.
Those two years were the most grueling, unspiritual years of my life. I met lots of nice people, become a thoroughly incapable Zone Leader ( must have been the masturbation!) and ended up taking home with me the most unlikely french lady missionary you can imagine. We got married in the London Temple, had two children, got divorced and she took the children back to France. Fairly standard stuff, you might say.
And you'd be right.
Oh, I forgot to mention one thing, but you've already guessed:- I started losing my testimony whilst on my mission, and completely gave up church participation round about the time my wife took my daughters across the Channel to France.
Today, I'm fifty and reasonably happy with my life. I'm a happy, convinced atheist. If you like I can even bear my testimony to the truthfulness of atheism with sentimental music at the right moments, and dramatic pauses for greater effect. And I can still repeat "I KNOW that it's true" over and over so often that you decide to agree with me just to get rid of me. But I won't. I don't need to evangelize. Remember, I'm a happy atheist. People who are at peace with their beliefs don't go round trying to convince everybody else.
You probably know better than I do, all the proofs concerning the falsity of Mormonism are now available to any who bothers to look them up. I know where I got my first and second Mormon testimony from. I just needed so badly to feel loved and needed that I would have believed almost anything ("I know deep in my heart that this fading geranium is a message from God. I know deep in my heart that it is. I KNOW IT'S TRUE.)
A bit of human psychology helps out a lot. Recent studies have shown that in court hearings, juries are more influenced by witnesses who are convinced about what they say, than by contradictory versions which have more proof and a more solid basis in reality! Any latter-day Casanova knows that the easiest way to get a woman into bed is by making a declaration of love. If you want to get her into a Church, tell her that God, her Heavenly Father, loves her as well. If your victim is a bit emotionally fragile, she'll get a burning in her bosom ( or anywhere else for that matter) in less time than it takes you to rip off your old style, one piece priesthood garment.
If you want to get out of Mormonism - just do it! I can promise you that guts aren't going fall out over your Nikes if you've been through the temple. "To thine own self be true" "Know thyself" - those are attitudes that really work if you're trying to get happy. Really, they do. I've tried them. Today I'm high-school English teacher in the south of France, married to a lovely Algerian lady, Salima. We have two boys and a rich life. Mormon missionaries have been warned to stay away from me by their mission president. I can't imagine why. Can you. I'd love to hear from you. And if ever you're in the South of France, I can always fix you up with a mattress on the floor and a nice hot cup of tea.
- E-Mail: Richard in France.