I am effectively an ex-Mormon, although I am not bitter or angry, nor have I officially resigned from the church. I have always been a skeptic at my core, but I enjoyed church. I enjoyed the community, and church was a very important part of my family life. Then around the year 2000 I went from having many questions to becoming convinced that the foundational claims of Mormonism, particularly that the Book of Mormon represents genuine history, could not possibly be true. I began interacting with online communities that shared these views, but I did not share my views with anyone in real life.
For a long time, I would drop hints to test the waters of my (now ex-) wife's receptivity to some of the ideas I had been contemplating for a while. In every case I found that she was not ready and would have had a very difficult time accepting our differences of beliefs. I elected to downplay or even hide my real views in order to keep the peace. I think I could have done this indefinitely. However, by around 2005 my views came boldly out into the open in the midst of a heated argument. I still would have been happy to continue church activity, but my ex-wife insisted that I talk to the bishop, mostly to determine whether I could participate in the upcoming baptism and ordination of our children.
The bishop allowed me to baptize my daughter, which left my ex-wife thinking that I had not told him enough. To satisfy her I wrote him a detailed letter outlining my views on the Book of Mormon and other aspects of Mormon belief. Once this was more clear to him, he released me from my calling teaching the 15-year-old Sunday school class, did not allow me to ordain my son, and suggested that I resign from the church so that my children were not confused into thinking my views represented the church's views. I refused his suggestion and assured him that my children are clear on that issue. He said he would pass my information up to the stake president because he did not have the power to convene a church court. The stake president never took any action. About a year after my ex-wife found out about my disbelief in Mormonism, she divorced me. I have since been remarried to another former Mormon and we are very happy in our new life, which started 7 years ago.
This is all by way of background. I don't intend to get into my specific issues in detail in this post, but I want to explore the social contribution to my disaffection. This is partly to make sense of how intelligent people confronted with the same information can come to such drastically different conclusions. Prior to living in this Colorado ward, we lived in New Mexico where I was on the leadership track in a small ward. I had already been called to be Elder's Quorum president, and the first bishop we had in the area predicted that I would likely serve as a Bishop some day. Had we stayed there, I probably would have never had the time to look deeper into some of Mormonism's foundational claims. I would have felt relevant and probably less inclined to question. It is quite likely that I would still be in the church.
What set the ball rolling was moving back to Colorado in 1996. In New Mexico I was a high school choir director and was fairly happy and successful in that position. In Colorado I took a job as a middle-school choir director and general music teacher and it was a terrible fit for me. Eventually I transitioned out of teaching and into a career as a software developer. The transition required me to go back to school and work at jobs that a recent high-school graduate could have filled just as well. This new situation did a couple of things for me. First, it allowed me time at a very undemanding job monitoring automated equipment to research Mormonism. Secondly, it decreased my social standing in the wards we attended that were filled with technical professionals, doctors, upper-level managers, and CEO's who occupied the highest levels of local church leadership.
So now I had time on my hands, was not burdened with a time-consuming calling, and was somewhat socially marginalized at church. It was a recipe for being motivated to find problems with the church. It is not that what I found were not real issues, but I may have never gone looking if had not felt socially marginalized at church. If they were not real issues I would have found satisfactory answers, which I did not even from apologetic websites. My case can be contrasted with that of one of our Colorado bishops. It was apparent from some of his talks that he went through a period of intense doubt and questioning. However, he stayed with the church and continued to serve in leadership positions. He was much more socially connected. His mother was on the general relief society board. When he was out of work, he stayed unemployed until he found a job commensurate with his education and experience rather than taking menial jobs similar to the ones I took while in transition. Somehow this allowed him to retain his social standing and the respect of the ward members.
Up to now I have only been talking about the social contribution to the beginning of my research and questioning. Greater social marginalization came once my ex-wife and bishop knew what I thought. They both assumed that I had committed a serious sin because in their world view that is the only thing that could lead to questioning. The bishop wanted to exclude me from full Mormon fellowship when he asked me to resign. The bishop and my ex-wife spent a year consulting and planning, without my knowledge, for her to divorce me. The bishop never called us both in to counsel with both of us together. If they had been more willing to accept me where I was at the time, there is a good chance that I may have found my way back to some sort of belief, albeit somewhat more liberal. There are many faithful church members in this category. At the very least I would have continued attending with my family.
My ex-wife notified me that she wanted a divorce by leaving me a note and taking the kids away for the weekend while I was out on my morning jog. She wanted me to be out of the house when she returned. During that time I made an appointment and went to talk with the bishop. That is when I found out that he was both aware and supportive of her plans, and had known about them for some time. I went to see him for help in talking some sense into her. I brought up the scripture in 1 Corinthians 7:12-14 that encourages a believing spouse to stay with her unbelieving spouse. He said that he did not believe this applied in my case, but only when the unbeliever was an unbeliever from the beginning of the marriage. He did not say this directly, but I was worse than an unbeliever. I was an apostate. He also pointed out that I had broken my temple covenants. This was completely untrue because they are all behavioral in nature and have nothing to do with personal belief. Furthermore, I did not qualify as an apostate for church disciplinary reasons because I was not spreading my views. I had only shared them with my ex-wife, and, at her insistence, with the bishop.
Even after having lost most of the social motivation to continue attending church, I still attended for a few months after the divorce. My new ward accepted me because they knew nothing about my history or my true beliefs. This was a community I had know my whole life and I was mostly comfortable with them. However, I was still somewhat marginalized in the community as a new divorcee. I attended back in my home town where many people had known me as a child. I only stopped attending when I met the woman I later married and began to develop new social connections. Even though I may have never gone back to full belief, I think I would have stayed connected and kept attending church had not circumstances led to my social marginalization.
I did not really leave the church so much as they made it clear to me that I was not welcome as a fully participating member. Stories similar to mine have been repeated thousands of times. Several groups of fringe Mormons have tried to make church work despite their changing beliefs. They go under various names, one of which is New Order Mormon after the message board, form.newordermormon.org. The staylds.org website was originally started to help people in a similar situation to mine to stay connected. However, experience has shown that these groups tend to be transitional for most people. Only a few are able to stay connected over the long term. This trend is so pervasive that those at the top are starting to notice, but so far they are not really making much of an attempt to reach out to the disaffected or to make them feel welcome. They have been losing some of their most intelligent, thoughtful, and dedicated members.
Why do I care? I am out now and probably never going back, but I still have family in the church. I want the church to be a better place for them if they ever find themselves in a similar position that I once found myself in. I also want them to understand how it was for me, which is partly why I wrote this post. I don't want to force it on them, but it is here for when they are ready.
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