Why I Can Never Believe Again

I have grown quite comfortable with my post-Mormon life. It took many years to get past the frustration of having believers make insulting assumptions about why I stopped believing. There are only a few believing family members who I interact with, and while they may not be happy that I left, they no longer talk to me about it. I no longer participate in fringe Mormon message boards or listen to Mormon-themed podcasts produced by former believers.

So why am I once again writing about Mormonism when I have not written a Mormon-themed blog post in almost 3 years? It all has to do with a private message I received recently on Facebook Messenger from a relative.

You grubby little apostate! I always knew you were weak, abandoning your wife and 5 children for some internet bimbo. You must have a real high opinion yourself and your stupid ideas about the church. Be very careful that you don't try to lead others astray. You have nothing to offer since you lost the gift of the holy ghost. Very disappointed in how your life has been conducted.

I will not post my response to this message here. Suffice it to say that I used some direct and colorful language to dispute some of the assertions contained in the message. I did not deny being an apostate from the Mormon point of view, but I did not abandon my family. My believing ex-wife chose to divorce me, and I continued to support my kids and spend as much time with them as I could after the divorce. They are all grown now and I have a good relationship with them.

I outed this relative on my Facebook wall, but then later made the thread private after this relative apologized for the tone of the message and for the factual errors, while re-emphasizing the admonition that I not lead others astray. I have chosen not to post any personally identifiable information about this relative here except for the initial message itself. I just wanted to make a few observations and clarifications here.

I choose this forum because only interested parties who seek it out will read it. I have never intended to lead anyone out of the church if it is working for them and they are happy participating and believing. However, there are many people for whom the church does not work as well. I would like those people to know that there are alternatives that may work better for them and there are people who understand who will be there to support them.

My relative accused me of arrogance after reading a couple of my blog posts. I am not sure which ones, but I recommended my Book of Mormon Research Blog as the best explanation for why I can no longer believe in the foundational claims of Mormonism. The accusation of arrogance is a puzzling one to me. I never get accused of arrogance in real life. I think this accusation has more to do with the discomfort caused by having one's beliefs questioned than actual arrogance. According to dictionary.com, arrogance is "having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities." It seems to me, by this definition, that someone who stubbornly clings to beliefs that have been thoroughly refuted by the evidence is far more arrogant that someone who is willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if it means giving up long-held, cherished beliefs. To the contrary, giving up ones beliefs because the evidence contradicts them is an act of the deepest humility.

My relative also admonished me not to lead others out of the church, which is something that my ex-wife also worried about. This is also very strange to me. When I was a believer it was quite a challenge to convince people to join the Mormon church as we were constantly asked to do. I never had much success at it. How did I suddenly become so persuasive when I am still basically the same person? I have never really tried to lead anyone out of the church, but only to tell my story and express my opinions. I have only done it in forums where interested parties have to seek it out. I rarely share my opinions about religion in real life unless I am asked. It is not that I would not like to, but I realize the the effort is useless for the unprepared. I would rather be supportive after someone has already come to their own conclusions.

Of course, I will not stop sharing my opinions with anyone who is interested. I have just as much right to share my opinions as any believing Mormon. Sometimes believing Mormons have big misconceptions about people who leave. Some of my believing relatives think that I still know the Mormon church is true, but I am being willful or obstinate or lying to myself to relieve the guilt of sinning. This is completely false. I acknowledge that I may be wrong about many things, but my lack of belief in Mormonism is quite sincere, and I believe the facts support me.

One problem with Mormonism is that it makes claims that are testable and that have been demonstrated to a very high probability to be false. Many more mature faiths have backed off from such claims. You cannot disprove the existence of God or an afterlife, but you can easily demonstrate that Mormons are wrong about ancient America, just as you can demonstrate that young-earth creationists are wrong about evolution and the age of the earth. Anyone who still believes in such claims are ignorant of the facts or are clinging to an emotional basis for this belief.

Because my lack of belief in Mormonism has a well-supported factual basis, I cannot choose to believe again without denying all the evidence I am aware of. The preponderance of evidence would have to swing to the church's favor for me to reconsider, and there is a long, long way to go for that to ever be the case. This is something that my believing relatives are afraid to acknowledge because it could become a threat to their own faith if they follow the evidence too far, but this is the main reason why so many people are leaving Mormonsm.

Most human decisions are based on emotion, not on facts, which is why most people stubbornly cling to the beliefs they have always held regardless of how much the evidence is stacked against them. It is possible to rise above this, but it is very difficult without at least some training in the methods of science, and a willingness to follow where ever the evidence leads. Which leads to the last point I would like to make about my relative's statement, "I always knew you were weak"

Leaving the church is not taking the easy way out. In her book "Willful Blindness," Margaret Heffernan argues that maintaining beliefs that we have always held is the easy way. The far more difficult cognitive path is to change our minds. This coupled with the high potential social costs of leaving Mormonism suggests that it is not the weak who leave, but the strong.

Bored With Mormonism

I have been thinking about Mormonism, participating on message boards, listening to fringe Mormon podcasts, and blogging about Mormonism off and on ever since I stopped believing in Mormon claims about 15 years ago. Much of this activity was therapeutic. It is traumatic to lose faith in something that requires such a huge sacrifice of time and money. It is especially difficult to have those I once called friends think I have lost my way and that I am being led around by Satan, when from my perspective I am the only sane and reasonable one when I am among true believers. I have already paid a high price for my intellectual integrity. My true-believing ex-wife divorced me and succeeded in alienating at least one of my children from me. My true-believing oldest sister mourns the loss of my soul while my return-missionary son, perhaps the only true believer among my five children, holds out hope that I may yet return to the fold.

So now, after all this, I am getting quite bored with Mormonism. This is much to the relief of my current wife, who is also a former Mormon who was traumatized by events surrounding her departure. My interest has waned previously, but I was always sucked back in by prominent events such as the release of the Gospel Topic essays, news conferences about LGBT issues, and the recent rash of excommunications. I was especially interested in watching whether the church would come clean about the deception they have practiced for so long and stop demonizing those who ask honest questions. I suppose that I was looking for some type of vindication. I have felt vindicated by others who share my views, but any admission of wrongdoing on the part of the church will likely never come. Dallin H. Oaks made it very clear in a recent press conference that the church will never apologize.

During the Swedish rescue, then assistant historian, Marlin K. Jensen, and apostle Jeffrey R. Holland told the Swedes who had questions and doubts that the church was launching a new initiative that would take care of them all. It turns out that this was the first hint about the essays the church was about to release on its website addressing problematic areas of history and doctrine. This new transparency was welcomed at first by the fringe Mormon community. It seemed to be a harbinger of new things to come. Many thought the final result would be a broader-tent version of Mormonism where honest doubters would be welcome. However, recent excommunications reveal that this was never their intent. Rather, they only wanted to leave doubters without excuses and deflect criticisms of non-transparency.

Well, guess what?  You can no longer count me among the doubters. I am now more certain than ever that many of the Mormon church's core claims are absolutely false. I am also now convinced that the Mormon church does not truly care about its people, but only about their strict conformity to outdated and increasingly irrelevant values, chief among which are blind obedience to authority and bigotry towards those who are different.

So the church has chosen to stay weird. They have chosen to keep themselves out of sync with evolving societal values of greater compassion towards and greater inclusion of those who are different. I admire the heroes who have fought a good fight from within trying to encourage the church to change. The church has chosen to retrench rather than evolve, no doubt a reflection of the ultra-conservative attitudes and over-sized egos of its gerontocracy. If they hold this course, they will continue to decline into ever-increasing irrelevancy, while my unplayed queue of Mormon-themed podcasts grows ever longer until I finally unsubscribe.

This is likely to be my last post about Mormonism, unless something interesting happens. I have heard it said that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. The church is quite adept at dealing with persecution, even seeing it where none is intended. How will they deal with indifference?  I just don't care enough to keep watching and wondering. I have too many audiobooks to listen to on topics totally unrelated to Mormonism. So finally I might do the unthinkable, at least for a while: leave the church AND leave it alone.

Religious Liberty

The reaction of some conservative religious people to the recent Supreme Court decision has me a bit perplexed. This article from the Witherspoon Institute by Carl Esbeck claims that the Supreme Court's decision has the effect of redefining marriage, which erodes religious freedom and freedom of speech. The article has links to three briefs filed with the court to argue against striking down state laws forbidding same-sex marriage. This brief was written and filed with the Supreme Court by lawyers, including Esbeck, representing the Mormon church and several conservative Christian churches.

On the point of redefining marriage, since marriage is a legal contract it seems appropriate that it should be legally defined. No particular religion owns the definition of marriage. Since it is a legal matter, it seems appropriate to be decided within the legal sphere, not the religious sphere. Furthermore, broadening the definition of marriage takes nothing away from any religion for whom the marriage of one man with one woman is important. Those who hold this view are still free to practice "traditional" marriage and deem it important, even to do that exclusively if they choose. The only freedom they have lost is the freedom to force their views on the rest of society, which is not a right guaranteed by the constitution and in fact violates the constitutional rights of others.

Esbeck asserts, "Support for marriage is not founded on bigotry, hatred, or irrational prejudice." "Support for marriage" in this sentence is a euphemism for opposition to legally recognized same-sex marriage. In other words, what Esbeck and other religious conservatives really want is to deny a right to others that in no way affects any of their rights. Legalized same-sex marriage takes no rights away from anyone. It only grants new rights to a class of people who did not previously enjoy them. If opposition is not founded on bigotry, hatred, or irrational prejudice, I have no idea what else it could be founded on.

Religious conservatives are disingenuous about the reasons they oppose same-sex marriage. I say this because the reasons keep shifting. For years, opponents of same-sex marriage claimed that it would destroy traditional families. Then the data came in when some states legalized same-sex marriage and were subsequently found to have a lower divorce rate than states where same-sex marriage was still banned. Objective data showed that legalized same-sex marriage did not destroy traditional families. Opponents of same-sex marriage merely switched to using different arguments, because the real reason for opposition probably lay much deeper in the psyche and had more to do with natural disgust and a tribal mentality.

The main arguments in the court brief in the link above include assertions that legalizing same-sex marriage violates religious freedom, and that deciding the issue on a national basis violates state's rights.  I believe these arguments were chosen for pragmatic considerations because the Supreme Court is only authorized to determine constitutionality, not because these are necessarily the real reasons for opposition.

At least two arguments in the brief seem motivated by fear of marginalization. The brief's authors urge the court not to determine that traditional marriage laws are founded in animus, and not to determine that sexual orientation is a suspect class. These concerns basically mean that the brief authors do not want ulterior motives assigned to their opposition to same-marriage, and they do not want the LGBTQ community to be granted special rights because of historical discrimination. These arguments seem motivated to make those who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds immune from criticism. This concern is at the heart of the claim that legalizing same-sex marriage violates the religious freedom and free-speech rights of its opponents.

The idea that anyone can introduce ideas into the public arena and be guaranteed to be free from criticism is ludicrous, and it conflicts with the free speech rights of those who have valid criticisms of these views. It seems to me that the crux of the matter is that opponents of same-sex marriage want to be bigots, but not to be labeled and criticized as such. The first amendment is intended to limit the power of the government to pass laws abridging our rights, not the power of fellow citizens to express opposition to bad or maliciously-motivated ideas. When opponents of same-sex marriage have failed to provide convincing evidence that their views are based on anything other than bigotry and a mean-spirited desire to control the freedoms of others, they ought to be criticized. Of course, they have a right to their bigoted views, but the rest of us have an equally valid right to criticize them and expose them for what they really are. This is all part of letting "truth and falsehood grapple in the free marketplace of ideas," as John Milton put it.

What It All Means

Former church historian Marlin K. Jensen said the following during the question and answer session of a fireside at the University of Utah on November 2011.

We are aware. Maybe I’ll just say this: You know what, I often get this question, “Do the brethren really know?” They do.

And I’m not speaking of me; I’m speaking of the fifteen men that are above me in the hierarchy of the Church. They really do know. And they really care. And they realize that, maybe, since Kirtland we’ve never had a period of—I’ll call it apostasy—like we’re having right now, largely over these issues.

So we do have another initiative that we’ve called “Answers to Gospel Questions.” We’re trying to figure out exactly what channels to deliver it in and exactly what format to put it in, but we want to have a place where people can go.

We’ve hired someone that’s in charge of “search engine optimization.” The Church is very tuned in to the world that we’re living in, and we realize that people basically get their information through Googling. They don’t come to LDS.org; if they get there, it’s through Google.

The initiative Jensen referred to is by now well known, if not to the membership at large, to members of the fringe Mormon community.  The church has published a series of essays to address problematic issues from a believing perspective and posted them on the official church website here.  The release of these essays inaugurated a period of optimism among Mormon doubters.  I discussed my take on these essays in my previous post, About the Essays.

One segment of the fringe Mormon community consists of unbelievers who still attend church, sometimes hiding their unbelief from believing family members to keep peace.  These are known online as New Order Mormons or NOMs.  Many NOMs celebrated the publication of these essays.  Finally they had a vehicle through which to introduce their issues to believing loved ones without being accused of reading anti-Mormon material.  This initial optimism, however, was short lived.  Most believing Mormons did not want to delve into the actual contents of these essays, but were content that their mere existence indicated that all was well in Zion.  NOMs who at first felt vindicated became frustrated that the essays had little impact on their loved ones.

The essays were not completely without impact among believers.  Some, learning of the problematic issues for the first time, became disaffected themselves and joined the ranks of the fringe community.  This helped maintain at least a degree of cautious optimism that the church might be forced to enlarge the tent of Mormonism and welcome greater diversity within the ranks of Mormons considered to be in good standing.  However, subsequent events beginning on June 23, 2014 have dashed such hopes.

On June 23, 2014 Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated for her role in the movement.  She had been informed of the pending court two weeks prior, coincidentally (or by plan as some have speculated) the same week John Dehlin was informed by his stake president that he was under investigation for apostasy for the content of some of his Mormon Stories podcasts, and for his support of gay marriage and Ordain Women.  The church PR department has since denied that this action had anything to do with John's support of LGBT rights.

Action against John was postponed, possibly to avoid having two such high profile cases hit the media simultaneously.  John's stake president outlined the conditions he would have to meet to maintain membership.  This included taking down certain podcast episodes that were critical of the church and discontinuing his support for Ordain Women and gay marriage.  The only thing John agreed to do was to work on maintaining a positive respectful tone in his podcast.  He did not agree to take down any podcast episodes or withdraw his support of Ordain Women and gay marriage.  A transcript of John's initial meeting with his stake president, which he secretly recorded, can be found here.  John did not release this transcript until he was finally excommunicated on February 9, 2015.  A day after John's excommunication he released this press release.

Not since September 1993, when the church excommunicated six scholars, have such prominent members been excommunicated for apostasy, drawing national media attention.  In this case it was more for activism than scholarship, but in both cases members were excommunicated for holding to and publishing the wrong views from the church's perspective.  In the case of the 1993 scholars, much of what they published has been subsequently vindicated in the recent essays.  In the case of John and Kate, it is quite probably that they too will be vindicated at some point given how much the church is rowing against the current of the larger society.

The church has consistently been about 20-30 years behind positive societal change, owing to probably the most unenlightened leadership succession policy ever devised.  The most senior apostle automatically becomes the new president ensuring that the top leader will always be quite elderly, if not, as is frequently the case, incapacitated.  This has been consistently followed by tradition and precedent since Brigham Young, rather than being officially spelled out in any document.  It is uncertain that church founder Joseph Smith ever intended the current succession policy.  The policy virtually ensures that the LDS church will never have dynamic, forward-thinking leadership at the highest levels.  It is doubtful that they could ever have their own version of Pope Francis, for example.  Catholic Popes are chosen by vote and only Cardinals under 80 are allowed to vote.

Church is at a crossroads.  They have opted to retrench rather than modernize.  They have made their position known.  Doubters are not welcome.  Hopes for a broader tent, more compassion, and more understanding as suggested by Marlin K. Jensen have been dashed.  At the highest level's of leadership, the church's attitude to those with questions and doubts is better exemplified by Jeffrey Holland's angry tirade starting at minute 50 of this talk.  Doubters are left with two alternatives: shut up, or get out.

About the Essays

The Mormon church's publication of a series of essays on problematic areas of history and doctrine provides a disturbing picture if you look beyond the surface.  Links to these essays along with critical analyses can be found on the MormonThink website.  The essays are part of a trend toward greater transparency and have been welcomed by many Mormon critics.  However an obvious question is, why was a church that claims devotion to truth not being transparent all along?  That the information in these essays has been widely available elsewhere online forced the church to address the issues from their perspective.  This has forever robbed them of the opportunity to demonstrate that they would have been transparent of their own volition.  All indications from past history indicate that they would have continued to obfuscate and mislead if they had not been caught doing it.  This is hardly what one would expect from a church claiming to be the one true church.

While it would be difficult to prove that the church has outright lied, examples of purposefully hiding embarrassing information or at least making it very difficult to find are quite easy to demonstrate.  For example, the first manual in the "Teachings of the Presidents of the Church" series covering Brigham Young, first published in 1997, made no mention at all of any of his wives but the first.  Another example involves the Book of Abraham papyrus.  I first heard from an Evangelical Christian coworker around the year 2001 that the papyrus from which the Book of Abraham had been "translated" was found in the New York Metropolitan Museum and sold to the church in 1967.  After examination by Egyptologists, it was found to be a common Egyptian funerary text that had nothing to do with Abraham.  As a senior in high school in 1981, I was taught in seminary that this papyrus had been destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.  I was certain that my coworker was wrong about the 1967 discovery until I confirmed this information on pro-Mormon apologetic websites.  The information itself did not bother me nearly as much as the cover up.  At some level someone who knew better chose to keep this information out of the seminary curriculum.  I do not think my seminary teacher was the one being dishonest in this case.

I learned about another instance of a cover up at a high level while listening to John Dehlin interview Sandra Tanner on Episode 473 of the Mormon Stories Podcast.  Sandra and her husband Jerald met with the Apostle LeGrande Richards to explore his grandfather's journal entries that supposedly contemporaneously verified certain aspects of Joseph Smith's First Vision story.  All Richards produced was a page of typed quotes that he could have just typed himself.  They asked to see the original documents and he reluctantly showed them the microfiche in the library so quickly that they could not see the context.  Later they went back to the library on their own and found that the card catalog entry for this microfiche had been removed.  Fortunately, a helpful librarian remembered how to find it.  When they found the relevant entries they discovered that they were from 1875, some 55 years after the First Vision is purported to have happened and 31 years after the death of Joseph Smith.  Richards' obvious impatience and irritation with them indicates that he likely knew full well the context of these entries, but chose deliberately to hide this information.

Perhaps the publication of these essays is a step in the right direction, but they fall far short of undoing the damage that has already been done.  Regardless of how open the church becomes now, it cannot make up for the excommunications and broken families that resulted from members holding views and revealing information that the church now admits was true all along.  The church offers no apologies for past coverups or for excommunicating many of the scholars who first brought this information to light.  The essays are anonymous compositions produced by committee, as revealed by assistant church historian, Richard Turley, in a recent RadioWest show hosted by Doug Fabrizio.  Turley also admitted that the essays were deliberately made difficult to find for the casual browser of the church's website.  The idea is to address these issues for those already aware of them while not creating an issue for those currently unaware.  The essays seem to be as much an attempt to deflect criticism about lack of transparency as to address the specific issues.  Some of the wording is misleading, such as stating that Joseph Smith was married to Helen Mar Kimball "several months before her 15th birthday" rather than just saying she was 14.  Turley stated that he was not in favor of this particular wording, but it was inserted during the committee editing process.

There are various opinions about whether these essays address the issues effectively.  They do seem to satisfy some believers, while critics have expressed both vindication that this information is finally out there from an official source and disappointment about the particular slant and omissions.  Another reaction has been disillusionment on the part of believers who were completely unaware of some of the information contained in the essays, especially Joseph Smith's marriage to a 14-year-old girl and his practice of polyandry (marrying other men's wives).  For those in this category, some apologists have blamed the victims saying that it is their own fault that they were not better informed before now.  However, the disillusioned members previous ignorance may only indicate that they were particularly good at following the counsel of their church leaders to avoid reading things about the church from unofficial sources.  Blaming them for not knowing is rather calloused and uncharitable.

The anonymity of the essays follows the recent pattern of the highest church leaders' unwillingness to address issues directly and authoritatively.  There has been no comment at all to the general membership or the media by any one in the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve.  This is similar to other recent events, such as the excommunication of Kate Kelly where communication came only from a young representative of the PR department.  The highest authorities have been unwilling to give these essays their official stamp of approval.  This contrasts sharply with recent statements by Pope Francis who has acknowledged Catholic acceptance of evolution and the Big Bang Theory, and advocated for fair and compassionate treatment of gays.

For me, these essays are too little, too late.  My former bishop helped to break up my family, and also made it clear that I was not welcome as a fully participating member given my unorthodox views, even though I kept these views to myself.  These essays do nothing to heal the wounds the church has already inflicted on so many.  Furthermore, they do not go far enough.  While they do acknowledge that some of the criticism of the detractors has been valid, they seldom admit that the church or its leaders have ever been at fault.  The essays are not dated, I think deliberately so.  Once all the attention over their release from the fringe Mormon community dies down, I am guessing that they will conveniently forget their release dates and claim that the church has always been transparent.  As Gordon B. Hinckley would say, "That's all behind us now."

What Would Jesus's Church Do?

Two days ago news broke that two prominent Mormon church activists were facing excommunication: Kate Kelly for her roll in founding the Ordain Women movement that has drawn attention to gender inequality with their peaceful protests during General Conference, and John Dehlin, founder of Mormon Stories, for speaking out on issues facing the LGBT community.  This news has quickly gone viral in several online communities.  Dehlin posted the following quote on Facebook from Mormon founder, Joseph Smith.

"I did not like the old man being called up for erring in doctrine. It looks too much like the Methodist, and not like the Latter-day Saints. Methodists have creeds which a man must believe or be asked out of their church. I want the liberty of thinking and believing as I please. It feels so good not to be trammeled. It does not prove that a man is not a good man because he errs in doctrine."
-- Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts, 2nd ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 5:340.

In taking these actions, not only is the Mormon church at odds with its founder, but it is also at odds with Jesus himself who was far more inclusive in who he invited to be part of his movement than the modern Mormon church.  In standing up for equal treatment of women and inclusion of the LGTB community Kelly and Dehlin are being called to task for behaving in a more Christlike way than the church itself.

Thirty-six years after the church belatedly revoked their racist priesthood policy by extending the priesthood to men of African descent they once again find themselves on the wrong side of history.  Recently the church published this essay as one in a series to explain controversial or difficult issues.  The essay admits that denying the priesthood to those of African descent was not doctrine, but due to the racist climate that prevailed when the policy went into effect.  Once again the church has a chance to be proactive in extending equal rights more broadly, but once again they are failing and will have to be reactive when their current policies are no longer tolerable in the society at large.

Old Testaments prophets frequently spoke hard truths to those in power.  As the moral voice of the people they put themselves at great risk to speak up for what they believed to be right regardless of the consequences.  In taking a stand, Kelly and Dehlin are behaving more like prophets than are the leaders of the church, who claim to be prophets.  The behavior of church leaders has been both immoral and cowardly.  Immoral because they are seeking to punish people for advocating for the disenfranchised, and cowardly for not addressing the issues openly and directly themselves.

Social Contribution to Disaffection

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.