It’s been about a year now since I realized that the LDS Church isn’t all it claims to be. Having grown up completely devoted to the church, my transition out of it became a time of immense growing and learning for me. Yet despite all the changes, or maybe because of them, I am now happier and freer than I have ever been in my life, and so is my family.

I’ve been invited to post my story here, which explains how and why I left the church and how I came to the conclusions about it that I did, the mental and emotional struggles I went through in the process, and how my beliefs have evolved since then. It’s a fairly long document, so rather than posting the content here, I’m including a link to the PDF version of the document on my website, which you can download and read at your leisure.

http://www.brandonpearce.com/why_i_left_the_mormon_church.pdf

A lot of my friends and extended family still don’t know that I’ve left the church, and I’m debating whether or not to make a public announcement to them about it. I moved away from Utah (and the USA) a couple years ago, so I’m not as tied to Mormon culture as I once was. But I feel like many of my old friends no longer know the real me. Yet, I wonder if I would lose their respect and trust if they knew my current beliefs. I’d be interested to hear your experiences about opening up to your family and friends, as well as what you think of my story. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or contact me directly on my blog, Fullness of Life.

For the first time since I moved into my new home in Florida, Mormon missionaries stopped by.  Now, as I have officially resigned, and because I asked the Elders, I’m sure they didn’t swing by my house because I’m still on the rolls.  I watched them contact several houses on my street before they stopped by my house.  Anyway, their visit was relatively short – maybe 10 minutes.  As soon as they walked up to our house I started pestering them with questions: “Where are you from, Elders?”  ”How long have you been out?”  ”How many Elders are there in the mission?”  ”Have you baptized anyone recently?”  Etc.  It took them a couple minutes to catch on that I wasn’t your standard “random contact.”  They eventually asked how I knew so much about Mormon missionaries and I told them that I was one, a loooong time ago!  Since they hadn’t seen me in church, they quickly put 2 and 2 together and realized I was either completely inactive or a former Mormon, though, interestingly, they didn’t actually ask me that.

Eventually they did ask me if they could come by another time to share a lesson with me.  I told them they were always welcome as I know how hard it is to be a missionary.  But it was also at this point that I told them it was unlikely they would have anything to teach me about Mormonism.  ”Why?” they asked.  I told them that I’m a college professor and that one of my research interests is Mormonism.  I know a fair bit about the religion and, in all likelihood, any meeting we had would boil down to either me correcting what they were trying to teach me or them trying to convince me that I should have faith and me informing them that I think faith is highly over-rated.  Once my occupation came up, they pretty quickly decided it was time to move on and headed down the street to annoy my neighbors on a nice Florida Saturday night.

Now to the juicy part of the story.  I posted a short comment about this as Facebook status update:

Mormon missionaries tracted our house tonight. Why do they always run away once they find out what I do for a living?

There were a lot of comments, mostly from my Mormon relatives.  But one really stuck with me:

[ProfXM], do you think they just leave when the[y] feel the spirit leave?

The more I thought about this comment, the more it pissed me off.  Just for clarification in case a reader doesn’t know, what this person is referring to is the Holy Ghost.  While the Holy Ghost is an actual entity in Mormon theology, the Holy Ghost is intentionally disembodied so he can dwell within humans.  But, of course, the key point here is that, because the Holy Ghost is disembodied, he can dwell in all humans, simultaneously.  Of course, Mormons also believe that the Holy Ghost only visits unconfirmed Mormons, he doesn’t actually stay with them.  Ritual confirmation post baptism creates some supernatural bond that makes the Holy Ghost a permanent indweller in Mormons, assuming they are worthy.  The assumption, then, is that Mormons carry with them in some supernatural way “the spirit.”

Now enter the problems…

According to this comment, good worthy Mormons are so in tune with this “spirit” that they can detect when this “spirit” leaves.  But what can make the Holy Ghost leave a worthy Mormon?  If I’m not mistaken, the only thing that can make it leave is if the worthy Mormon becomes unworthy.  Right?  (Do correct me if I’m wrong.)  There are lots of things a worthy Mormon could do to become unworthy, but simply coming into contact with a non-Mormon shouldn’t be one of them, right?  If that’s not the case, then most Mormons are constantly having the spirit leave them because they are regularly in contact with non-Mormons.  So, that doesn’t seem logical (not that Mormon thought has to be logical, but I’m trying here).

What if a worthy Mormon comes into contact with a particularly “evil” person, like, say, me?  I mean, I am a returned missionary, temple endowed, married in the temple former apologist and TBM who resigned his membership, giving up all of his priesthood and ordinances in the process, and have now become an atheist and critic of the LDS Church.  Yes, I’m generally a moral person: I pay my taxes, vote, am faithful to my wife, spend a lot of time with my son, do service, give to charities, and genuinely care about other people.  But, well, I was a Mormon insider and now I’m a Mormon outsider using my insider knowledge to criticize the religion.  So, I am “evil.”  Would coming into contact with me drive the spirit away from a worthy Mormon?  Again, this seems illogical.  The worthy Mormon didn’t do something unworthy simply by coming into contact with me.  At least, I don’t think the missionaries did.  The missionaries were, in fact, being worthy by contacting late into the evening on a Saturday night.  And, in fact, doesn’t it seem like they would need the spirit more than ever to discern just how “evil” I am and that they should leave?

Another possibility is that my raising the fact that I’m somewhat knowledgeable about Mormonism and even briefly talking about religion was “offensive” to the spirit, forcing it to leave.  Since all we discussed was religion, specifically Mormonism, this seems odd. How could discussing religion, specifically Mormonism, make Mormon missionaries unworthy, thereby forcing the spirit to leave?  That, too, seems illogical.

For the life of me I can’t figure out why the spirit would “leave” these worthy young men when they did nothing to make themselves unworthy.  So, let’s pretend that the spirit did not, in fact, leave these worthy young men when they contacted me, since reason and logic suggest that it would not.

If that is the case, why did my relative say what he did?  In thinking this through, I think what he was suggesting is probably that the missionaries were told by “the spirit” that I was a lost cause.  Thus, “the spirit” didn’t actually leave, it just told them to leave.  Why, if this is really what my relative meant, didn’t he say, “The spirit told them to leave when it became apparent that you are an “evil” apostate.”?

Of course, regardless of how it is said, the statement is still phrased in a way that says that I am evil or that I say evil things.  But, insult aside, why say it this way?

It’s possible I’m reading too much into this and it really is just a reflection of the doctrinal ignorance of some Mormons.  Or maybe this is just Mormon shorthand and I’ve been out too long to understand it.  What do you think he was trying to say by saying what he did?

Sunstone was an interesting experience for me.  I was there Friday and Saturday, and Saturday morning I presented my paper “Two Paradigms for ‘Gay’,” which compared themes/reception of Langford’s No Going Back (which if you overlay onto the categories at the right, takes a North Star-like stance), and my novel Ockham’s Razor (which takes an Affirmation-like stance).

The presentation itself went very well, and will probably translate into some sales (for example, Michael Quinn came up afterward and asked for my website).  Hugo Olaiz, website administrator of Affirmation, also expressed further interest in doing an interview and spoke fondly of my novel on more than one occasion… (I love Hugo.  So personable.)

[click here for a copy of my presentation]

I went to lunch with some folks and heard some insider gossip.  For example, Langford’s novel was pulled from BYU’s shelves because of Dean Byrd.  This means that Byrd (who would be backed by someone like Boyd Packer or Bruce Hafen) still actively prevents the distribution of alternative voices.  By alternative, I do not mean that someone like Ty Mansfield who is already well-known within the “gay Mormon” world, and who has reviewed Langford’s book positively, does not have his own kind of clout; rather, Mansfield and North Star do not have that much power to sway discourse for the Church generally.  And well, it was Byrd who introduced Hafen at Evergreen’s conference last year.  And something more interesting, and insider-ish, is that the GAs were not happy with Hafen after his speech, because he stepped too far out on his own accord.  From what I understand, he has been relocated.

To know that the GAs are not happy with another GA takes a bit of insider status, because the public face for the Church is meant to be monolithic and all the GAs are meant to be in agreement (which explains why Hafen’s speech remains on the Church website).  Anyone who knows how the GAs really feel on a particular matter, or how they squabble on a particular stance, is an “insider.”  For most Mormons, this squabbling is moot; they would rather uphold the notion of GAs as prophets (and how can prophets “squabble?”).  To not uphold them this monolithic way gives many Mormons a visceral feeling of vulnerability.  A GA could say, “This is a Mormon play, so I want those colored kids replaced with white kids,” and people will quietly obey, seeing the racism, but at once forgiving it, because the man is a church leader.  This movement toward a monolith is poison, IMO.  John Gustav-Wrathall has mentioned that “masculinity” in Mormonism includes the ability to be obedient, and that is fine to an extent — I respect humility.  But humility has its place.  There is a lot of value in making power dynamics clear, even if you do so quietly.

Insider gay male Mormons who are married and hold important callings might also hold knowledge that can’t be made public, often including their own sexualities, or their contacts might drop away, fearing for their own piece of the Mormon pie.  I know a lot of folks don’t view the pie as a “pie,” but I think people are blind to their privilege and/or mistake “the power to define what constitutes faithfulness” with “faithfulness” itself.  In his presentation, John put it this way:  “Spiritual immaturity is when one assumes that communal error makes the Church false.  Spiritual maturity is when one can entertain the possibility that communal truth might be false.”  I guess I would side with someone like John who as an excommunicated person has really no power in the Church, but hopes to change hearts and minds through one-on-one discussion.  I have no power in the Church (not really interested in it) but I still see outlets to create change, because I see how the power works and can speak to changes in discourse as an “outsider.”  Yes, the GAs who make policy are the most important ones to sway, and you can’t just barge into their offices unless you have clout, but the GAs must ultimately bow to the membership as a whole.  (I also think Mormon policy on the topic of homosexuality is unsustainable because of forces outside the GAs’ control — i.e., gender dynamics in twenty-first century America and changing discourses about the place of sexuality in marriage.)

The weekend was fascinating for me as a younger gay, not-all-that-Mormon male primarily interacting with older gay males who are very Mormon.  One thing I noticed was how often the Holy Ghost came up to describe personal affirming revelation.   Gustav-Wrathall mentioned in his presentation that the Church literally pulls gay Mormons in “two,” but I couldn’t help but feel that this “Holy Ghost” was a continuing feature of being “pulled in two,” a mind split by a heterosexist culture.  I do not wish to step on these gay Mormons’ religious experience, but I wouldn’t need a Holy Ghost to tell me that I’m equal to other church members.  Why can’t this Holy Ghost be a little more helpful by perhaps speaking to ignorant church members?  In my novel, the character of Micah puts it this way to his mother:  “I don’t exist so that people can learn to treat me the way they should already be treating me.”  John does plan to publish a book about his religious experience, but there is a real question of:  “If you’re considered outside the Church, then won’t your religious experience be dismissed by those who think you don’t have access to the real Holy Ghost?”  John and I talked on the way to lunch, as he was interested in my presentation when I talked about gay Mormon fiction versus nonfiction.  The nonfictional gay Mormon narrative can often backfire, but I’m sure John is considering the nuances.

I found myself so wrapped up in these connections that when I was asked if I had met anyone my age (and yes, there were some hawt gay guys my age there), I disregarded the question.  “Sex isn’t in the picture if there’s a big age difference,” I was told by my 60+ friend, “which makes talking easier.”  This is true, but I also felt not-Mormon enough at times that attraction-being-in-the-picture seemed like a good enough reason as any to potentially connect with those younger guys, lol.

I recently saw the documentary “Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock” about Teri Horton, a woman who may have purchased a Jackson Pollock painting at a thrift store for $5.

It was a fascinating documentary, with a clear perspective. The crux of the film is that Teri cannot prove that the painting is in fact, a Jackson Pollock painting. Through forensics, it appears as if a fingerprint of Pollock’s is on the back of her painting. Also, you look at the painting, and certified Pollock paintings, and it certainly looks very convincing. In a court of law, it’s possible that this evidence could be used to convict a criminal. Or, it could be faked. Either way, it’s a powerful argument.

I admit I have a soft spot for Horton, seemingly a salt of the earth type of person. And I have interacted with snobby art people in the past. I suppose saying someone is a snobby art person isn’t very kind, but perhaps very opinionated, particular art expert(s) is a better way to put it. The documentary shows the clear difference in class in this country. There are differences in class in the U.S., and it does have to do with education but also socio-economic status.

The tension between the art community and the scientific community in the film is pretty inspiring. And yet MSP readers might ask, how does all this relate to mormonism? Well, first of all, we actually have Teri Horton’s painting which can be studied and examined. It was shown multiple times during the film, and one of the forensic experts had examined the paint type(s) – as well as the paint drippings on the floor of Pollock’s studio.

It goes without saying that we cannot see the gold plates that the book of mormon was translated from. Only twelve people claim to have actually seen them (the three and eight witnesses), in addition to Joseph Smith *. They are inaccessible to forensic, scientific and art/artifact communities for study and examination.

Whether or not Teri Horton’s painting was actually painted by Jackson Pollock, we may never know for sure. The fingerprint analysis is still being reviewed. I’m sure there will be continued investigation, and the experts (both forensic and artistic) may continue to disagree. In the end, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. It matters to Ms. Horton and to the art community at large. Perhaps (as I saw on one website), artists will be fingerprinted to make sure that their work is correctly identified.

And it is not out of the realm of possibility that Jackson Pollock did paint the work, and his wife and dealer(s) never knew about it (or never recorded it accurately). The point is, the original work can be studied, today. It can be compared to other works by the artist. It can be sampled for evidence. In the film, they took a section of the painting and compared it with a known Pollock work. It seemed remarkably similar to my untrained layperson’s eye.

And that’s the other thing is Ms. Horton’s favor, to my mind. It is in her interest to allow as many people to review and study it as possible, in order to reach consensus. And consensus can be difficult to reach at times.

It seems to me that it would have been in Joseph Smith’s best interest, or the early LDS church to allow everyone possible to review and test the gold plates. To weigh them, measure them, study them. As it is, that’s not possible (unless the gold plates are somewhere that I wasn’t aware of that independent scientists can review). The burden of proof rests with someone making a claim. Faith in the miracle of the Book of Mormon is not enough for everyone.

*I was pretty certain only the 3 witnesses and 8 witnesses (in addition to Joseph Smith) claimed to see the plates. I could be mistaken, however.

The following is an essay I’ve written on my journey out of Mormonism (originally posted on my personal blog here). My journey to atheism is another story. Perhaps I will post it in the future.

“Tell me about your testimony.”

I was 24 years old when my bishop asked me this question and I thought back to the origins of my testimony.

My parents were and are as faithful Mormons as ever you’ll meet.  They had raised me and my ten siblings in the Church. We went to church every week and read scriptures every day. When I was 14 years old, I decided that I wanted to know for myself that the Church was true instead of just believing. I decided to test the promise of the prophet Moroni, found in the last chapter of the Book of Mormon: “And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10: 4-5).

I spent a weekend and shut myself up in my room and read all 531 pages of the Book of Mormon. I fasted during this time, interrupting my reading only to attend church Sunday morning. I finished the book late Sunday night and knelt beside my bed, giddy with anticipation for the testimony I was sure God would give me. “Father in Heaven,” I prayed, “Is the Book of Mormon true?”

I waited. Nothing happened.

I looked at the verses again, scouring the instructions like a recipe; perhaps I’d forgotten an ingredient. Hmm, well, it says to ask if these things are not true. So I asked again, “Is the Book or Mormon not true?” Silence.

Again and again, I reread those verses and prayed, asking myself, Do I not have enough real intent? Enough faith in Christ? Is my heart not sincere enough? But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t make any kind of revelation come.

I walked through the dark house to break my fast and wept alone in the kitchen, eating a peach.

When the Church’s semi-annual General Conference convened a few weeks later, apostle Robert D. Hales related the story of how David O. McKay, the ninth president of the church, as a boy had wanted to know for himself regarding the truthfulness of the Gospel, and decided to pray about the matter:

“I dismounted, threw my reins over my horse’s head, and there under a serviceberry bush I prayed that God would declare to me the truth of his revelation to Joseph Smith” (New Era, Jan. 1972, p. 56).

He prayed fervently and sincerely with as much faith as he could find within him. When he finished his prayer, he waited for an answer. Nothing seemed to happen. Disappointed, he rode slowly on, saying to himself at the time, “No spiritual manifestation has come to me. If I am true to myself, I must say I am just the same ‘old boy’ that I was before I prayed” (ibid.).

A direct answer to this prayer was many years in coming. While serving a mission in Scotland, Elder McKay received a powerful spiritual manifestation. He later commented, “Never before had I experienced such an emotion. … It was a manifestation for which as a doubting youth I had secretly prayed most earnestly on hillside and in meadow. It was an assurance to me that sincere prayer is answered ‘sometime, somewhere.’ ” (Francis M. Gibbons, David O. McKay, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1986, p. 50) (Hales, lds.org).

This story comforted me. If even a man who had gone on to become the prophet hadn’t received a testimony the first time he had asked, then maybe there was hope for me too. I would have faith and patience and trust that God would show me the truth in His own time and in His own way.

When I was 18, I was hanging out in a Religion and Philosophy chat room when a user asked if there were any Mormons online. I responded that I was Mormon and he began sending me private messages, asking for help in clarifying some doubts he had. Although I hadn’t had any dramatic spiritual experiences, I now felt that I had a testimony. As I put it in an email message that I composed to this stranger, “I know because of the sweet peace I feel when I read the Book of Mormon. I know because of the happiness that enters my life when I abide by the Church’s commandments and the sadness that enters when I don’t. I know what it is to have doubts and to study and to seek and to ask God and have him show me answers that wiped all doubt from my mind. I know the joy and love and conviction that swells up in my soul every time I sing, ‘Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah!’” (Hymns #27)

I repeated analogies I’d heard over the years. “The Gospel is like a jigsaw puzzle. When you’re working a puzzle and you can’t fit in all the sky pieces right away, you don’t toss out the puzzle and declare, ‘This puzzle isn’t true!’ Everything has to come in the right sequence and sometimes you can’t fit certain pieces in until you fit others in first.” Or, “I don’t have the slightest idea how a computer works, but that doesn’t change the fact that it does work.”

I ended my message to this man with: “Don’t feel alone in your doubts. They come to everyone but if you study and ask Heavenly Father he will give you answers as he’s given to me and millions of others. I know this Church is true and it will prosper and conquer any man or devil that attempts to hinder its progression. The Gospel of Jesus Christ will roll forth and fill the earth whether you go with it or not. I hope you will, because you’ll be happy. And I’ve yet to meet or hear of a happy apostate.” Our leaders taught that anyone who left the Church did so under the influence of Satan and that they spent the rest of their lives miserable, angry and tormented, and I believed it.

Ironically, even as I testified about the Church’s power to bring happiness, I was myself being treated for clinical depression. But I attributed my depression to one of the trials of mortality, part of the Refiner’s fire that would help me grow stronger, or because I was allowing the influence of Satan into my life, whose sole aim was to “[seek] that all men might be miserable like unto himself ” (2 Nephi 2:27).

I began college and remained faithful to the teachings of the Church. I attended services every week; abstained from coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco; took classes at the Church’s Institute of Religion and dutifully handed out Books of Mormon to my non-member friends. I was even preparing to serve as a missionary.

That all changed when I was excommunicated at the age of 22. My sin? I gave my virginity to the man who would become my husband three months before our wedding.

I loved the Church and had devoted my life to its teachings. To be stripped of my membership because of one mistake was devastating. D. Michael Quinn describes excommunication this way: “For a believing Mormon, one who sees Mormonism as the true church and believes in the priesthood and the revelations that have been published, Mormonism is their whole life. All their hope, all of their anticipation is connected with that. Now, to be deprived of membership in the LDS Church is to lose all of that. And for a Mormon who is an ardent believer, that is a kind of death.”

Yet even with the underlying trauma, the year following my excommunication was actually fairly happy. The letter from the Church informing me of the bishop’s decision to excommunicate me had said that it was the will of our Father in Heaven to release me from my covenants.

All my life, I’d lived with the pressure that I must be a good example to those around me. Along with this wonderful blessing of the fulness of the Gospel came the responsibility to be a light to the world. If I slipped up, others might judge the whole Church based on my actions. Now I was no longer a member and no longer under covenant. I took the opportunity to see what it might be like to just be like everyone else. My foray into Babylon included taking a job that required me to work on Sundays and wearing tank tops on hot days. I didn’t look for ways to work God into conversations, hoping it would segue into an opportunity to share the Gospel. I rented R-rated Erin Brokavich and let cuss words slip.

One morning, I was sitting in the hall waiting for my French class to start, shooting the breeze with my classmates and I smiled as I thought, I’m not the weird one anymore.

My first year away from the Church was also my first year of marriage. Creating a bond with my best friend wove a security and contentment like nothing I’d ever experienced before. When I got married, I went off my anti-depressant medication by default; I couldn’t afford it now that I was no longer under my parents’ health insurance, but somehow I wasn’t experiencing depression anymore.

I recognized that I was happier outside of the Church, but deep down I still believed that it was true. What else could account for the peaceful feelings I had when I read scripture, or the happiness I felt when I sang at church, or the synchronicities that sometimes followed prayer?

When I became pregnant with our first child, the question of what to do about God and the Church weighed more heavily. I believed that I’d be held accountable in the next life if I chose to ignore what I knew, and doubly accountable if I didn’t teach my son what I knew. I wished I could honestly say that I didn’t believe it so that I could be at peace about turning my back and walking away, but years of indoctrination ran deep, and no matter how much I wanted to uproot my testimony, I couldn’t.

So when the bishop asked me to tell him about my testimony, just weeks after my son’s birth, I replied, “I’ve had a testimony for years. I’ve tried to forget. I’ve tried to explain it all away and convince myself that it’s not true, but I can’t. I know it’s true.”

“That’s a pretty strong testimony,” he said approvingly.

I told him that I struggled to understand why excommunicating me had been necessary.

“Does that seem harsh to you?” he asked.

“Yeah, honestly, it does,” I said.

To my surprise, he said that he agreed with me. After reading through the proceedings of the disciplinary council, he couldn’t understand why my previous bishop had come to the conclusion that I must be excommunicated. Furthermore, he could see no reason for me to remain outside the Church any longer and he wanted to see me re-baptized as soon as possible.

It didn’t quite make sense. If it was going to be so easy to come back, why the violence of excommunication? So far as I could tell, the only penance I’d done was to start showing up at church again. Well, that and Ray and I had gone to the county offices and gotten a piece of paper, and this document somehow magically turned sex into a beautiful gift from God instead of an abominable sin. But I’d just had the biggest scare of my life. During labor, my baby had gone into distress and had to be born via an emergency c-section. That was all the wake-up call I needed. God had wrought a miracle and brought me and my baby both through that ordeal healthy, and as a token of my gratitude, I would follow the counsel of His appointed representative, take it on faith and try.

The morning after my re-baptism, I wrote in my journal, “I actually don’t feel very different. I’m disappointed because even though I’ve been given the gift of the Holy Ghost, I still don’t feel him and I thought I would.” But, I reminded myself, “I didn’t feel any different when I was baptized and confirmed at age eight, but I certainly did feel the Spirit during my life. I didn’t lose the Spirit all at once so I shouldn’t expect to regain it all at once.” The Book of Mormon teaches that faith is like a little seed. It takes time and nourishment to grow (Alma ch. 32).

So I kept going to church and started reading my scriptures again, though it reminded me of exercising or eating vegetables, something you do not so much because you want to, but because you believe that it’s good for you. Had church always been this excruciatingly boring? I hoped that if I kept going through the outward motions, eventually the inward emotions would return.

Every now and then, I did feel a familiar flicker inside, but my new awareness of all the flaws within the Church smothered any sparks of a re-burgeoning testimony. My two-year absence gave me my first opportunity to look at my religion from an objective standpoint. My beloved Garden of Eden was overgrown with thorns, and I wondered, Have these thorns always been here?

Every week the gender gap glared at me. I’d always known that women were expected to be mothers and homemakers and that they couldn’t hold the priesthood, but motherhood also held such a special place of reverence as the most holy calling of all. Men and women had different roles, but they were both equally valued. At least, that was the party line. I realized that the bishop or one of his councilors would sometimes sit in on the women’s Relief Society meeting, checking in and presiding, but knew that it would be unheard of for the Relief Society president to visit the men’s Elders Quorum meeting. Women were only allowed to preside over other women or children. The bishops, stake presidents, apostles and prophets–all of the positions that had any real authority–all had to hold the priesthood, and therefore all had to be men.

All my life, I’d been tom-boyish because I knew no women whom I wanted to emulate. Most women at church acted unintelligent, incapable and dependent, and it made me angry. A female religious instructor that I had admired and loved was an exception. The Church allowed her employment only because she wasn’t married and didn’t have a family. She was intelligent and charismatic, fit and attractive. Seemed any man with half a brain would have snatched her up, but she was in her early forties and still single, and I suspected that it was because she was too independent and confident. Most Mormon men want a wife who is more submissive and less questioning.

One incident in Relief Society particularly troubled me. A woman–I’ll call her Sister Jones–announced that her son and daughter-in-law were moving to the ward soon and she hoped we would be welcoming to them. “Now,” she said, with a smirk, “Susan’s last name is Bennett, not Jones, and she’s very particular about that, but if you can just get past that–” she threw her hands up in the air and rolled her eyes, as if to say, What can you do? “–she’s very nice.” Laughter erupted all around the room, and I felt sick at the derision for this woman who had the courage to keep her name. The middle-aged woman sitting next to me muttered with contempt out the side of her mouth, “She didn’t take his name?” What kind of sisterhood was this?

Talks and lessons about homosexuality now troubled me. I had believed it when I’d been taught that homosexuality was a perversion and a gross sin, but my younger brother had since come out. This person that I knew and loved did not fit the Church’s picture of a subversive deviant. My brother was one of the sweetest and gentlest people I knew. How was I to believe that he was among the vilest of sinners?

The issue of same-sex marriage was just gaining steam in the media. I never dared say so at church, but I couldn’t oppose gay marriage. Even though our priesthood leaders–the appointed mouthpieces of God Himself–preached that gay marriage threatened the nuclear family and the very fabric of our society, I couldn’t see how allowing gays to marry would interfere with my right to be married to a man and to raise my children in a traditional family.

Ray and I are both intensely introverted, and we did not fit the Church’s social expectations. Mormons equate being friendly and outgoing with being Christlike, and becoming like Christ is the ultimate goal of our existence. Having to go to church and make meaningless small talk every week was torture. I knew the adage: “The members may not be perfect, but the Church is,” and so I tried to smile and be nice, but my tolerance for annoying people evaporated faster than rubbing alcohol without the warm, fuzzy “feeling the Spirit” experience that I’d had before my excommunication.

My depression returned. Others brushed it off as a postpartum symptom, but I recognized it as the all-too-familiar despair of knowing that no matter how hard I tried I would never measure up. I hadn’t realized how much the Church bulldozed me until I’d been out from underneath it for a while.

For almost as long as I could remember, I’d been aware of certain gaps in Church doctrine or history, but I wasn’t going to let the pieces of the puzzle that didn’t fit bother me. I had a testimony from the Holy Ghost and I had faith that one day, everything would be clear. For eight months now, we had been going to church and trying to do everything right, trying to have faith, and the pleasant, peaceful feelings on which I had previously based my testimony still would not return.

I made a decision: If I was going to devote the rest of my life to an institution that made me miserable, it had damn well better be true. So I began to write. Despite my current doubts, I knew that I had “known” it was all true before. I figured all I had to do was get it all out on paper so I could sort it all out and then everything would be okay.

But that’s not what happened. The more I wrote, the more questions I had and the less any of it made sense.

I remembered bits of doubt that had crept in since I had been excommunicated. One evening, I had watched a documentary called The Journey of Man. Geneticist Spencer Wells presented DNA evidence that proved that the native peoples of North and South America descended from a group that came over from northeast Russia about 10,000 years ago, not from the Middle East in 600 B.C., as claimed by the Book of Mormon. My seminary teacher had accounted for the lack of archaeological evidence by explaining that the Book of Mormon was not a history of all of ancient America, but rather the proceedings of the lineage of one family, but this DNA evidence troubled me. Right there in the book’s Introduction–written by the prophets of the Church, whose words are considered scripture–it stated that the Lamanites who remained at the end of the Book of Mormon were “the principal ancestors of the American Indians” (1981 ed.) (Though, interestingly, in the 2006 edition, this was altered to say that they were “among” the ancestors of the American Indians.)

The story of Adam and Eve is taken very literally in Mormonism and plays an integral part of the temple ordinances that they believe are necessary for salvation. Church doctrine teaches that the Fall occurred about 6000 years ago, and no human beings were on our world before then. I had heard of evolution, but we didn’t believe in it. I didn’t worry about all the fossil records because my mother explained that carbon dating was flawed and geologists and paleontologists had their dates wrong. Why wouldn’t I believe her? My mother is a very intelligent woman, and scientists get stuff wrong all the time. They’re mere men who used to think the world was flat, for crying out loud. Our prophets, on the other hand, were talking directly to God. What more reliable source could there be than that?

About a year after my excommunication I took an art history class. The paleolithic cave paintings didn’t faze me because I knew those were all misdated. But then a slide came on the screen of a human skull with restored plaster features found in the city of Jericho. It was a ghostly image, but it haunted me because of its date: about 6000 B.C. The next slide was of the Turkish city of Çatal Hüyük, dated between 6000-5900 B.C. I didn’t have any qualms dismissing dates that were too far removed, but it seemed less likely to me that a date that recent could be so far off. It didn’t fit with the Church’s official history, that everything had started with two people only six thousand years ago. Furthermore, Joseph Smith placed the Garden of Eden in present day Missouri. Here was an entire civilization on the other side of the world two thousand years before their first parents had supposedly walked the earth.

I put it in my notes: Çatal Hüyük, Jericho skulls, 6000 B.C., and I felt like I was driving a straight pin into a dam.

Later in the semester, we studied the ancient Greeks. I saw sculptures of Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena. I saw the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, temples to Hera, Artemis, Demeter and other deities. I had always thought of Greek mythology as just that: mythology. But I couldn’t imagine that the Greeks were building these structures just for fun. I realized that they must have believed in their religion then just as fervently as we believe in ours now.

I remembered further back to my first day of classes as a music major, just four months after I’d been excommunicated. In choir, we rehearsed “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the same arrangement that made the Mormon Tabernacle Choir famous. It was the sopranos’ turn to come in with the “Glory, glory, hallelujah,” but tears welled up in my eyes my voice failed me. I hadn’t attended church for about three months, the longest absence in my life at that point. Nothing communicated the love of God to my soul the way music did. Never did I feel the Spirit more strongly than when I was singing. I loved singing sacred music and I missed it. “If anything can bring me back to the Gospel,” I wrote in my journal that night, “music can.”

And yet, at the back of my mind crept the thought, The ancient Greeks must have had hymns to their gods, too, that were no less powerful and moving to them. Maybe I didn’t love music because of God. Maybe I just loved music because of music.

I thought about what my current bishop had said about how he felt my previous bishop had made a mistake in excommunicating me. In a way, it had been a comfort, but it raised a disconcerting question: Is everything the bishop does subject to second guessing? If these bishops disagreed, they couldn’t both be right. Supposedly our priesthood leaders were all working under divine inspiration to carry out God’s will, but if that were so, how could my bishop have made such a big mistake? And if he could make a mistake, what made him any more special than any other man?

If you believe in Christ–and I did–then the premise of Mormonism that the true Church that Christ established when he was on the earth was lost and corrupted through the ages and needed to be restored makes sense. But I looked at the Mormon Church and thought, Can that really be it? Look at how they treat gays. Look at how they treat women. Is that really the way Jesus would have wanted things?

Nowadays, we think the Greek beliefs are absurd, but if I thought about it, were mine any more plausible? Even if I took Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates and the Lamanites out of the equation and just looked at the Christian story: A virgin conceived a child, who was God, and somehow when this child grew to adulthood and underwent a form of execution that was fairly common at the time, this act somehow saved all of humanity from…

Saved from what?

What about neanderthals? They were a separate species from humans, but still intelligent. Were they intelligent enough to be capable of sin? Were they among the children of God that Christ died to save, or mere animals?

The theory had too many flaws to any longer hold validity. I couldn’t justify the risk of a leap of faith across this ever-widening chasm. I couldn’t believe it anymore, and it was like I had taken off a corset and suddenly I could breathe.

Todd Whitaker recently bore his testimony. The video of Todd testifying to his ward has now gone viral. As you may have seen, it was not your typical Mormon F&T meeting fare.

I caught up with Todd by email and he agreed to answer a few questions.

CB: Before we get started, I just wanted to mention a comment I noticed on another board that neatly described my own reaction the first time I watched your clip: “This video has many layers of win.” From your deadpan delivery of some harsh home truths about Mormon involvement in the Prop 8 campaign, to your calm side conference with the concerned bishop, to your not skipping a beat when the mike goes dead, all the way through to the calm exit with your escort in tow … The clip is a baklava of win. Did you have any idea – before you stood and bore witness at that meeting – that there’d be anything like the kind of response you’ve seen?

TW: I had no clue that it would become what it has … but I am pleased to have helped so many other closeted gay Mormons, as they seem to have derived some sort of courage from my testimony to stand up to their own bishops and friends and family members.

CB: What did the Bishop whisper in your ear when he got up?

TW: He said, “Todd, this is about Testimony, please step down.” My reply to him was, “I am almost finished. This is a Testimony, sir.”

CB: What thoughts were running through your head when you realized he had turned off the microphone?

TW: I was thinking to myself how one-sided this church really is. After all, I helped pay for that mic and the power to operate it. It also made me think about what my mother told me when I came out at the age of thirteen. She said, “I don’t want anyone to hurt you my son, and the Mormon Church will hurt you if they know who Todd really is. They will never accept you for who and what you are, so my advice to you is to not get too involved, as the rest of the Whitakers are deeply entrenched in this religion.”

I was also thinking that if I had any doubts before, I was absolutely certain now. I wanted to say a few words to the bishop but decided it wasn’t worth my time.

CB: Were further words exchanged in the foyer or outside the chapel as you left?

TW: Yes, a lady from the aisle in front of me followed me to the parking lot, grabbing my hand tightly as we walked to the rear of the building. She wanted to share her personal experience with me regarding her former husband of twenty-three years, who had left her for a man. She informed me that due to the animosity she had harbored towards him, she herself was disfellowshipped from the church. No one else dared to come near as they were all dismissed to go to their regular Sunday school meetings.

CB: What has the reaction been from friends and family?

TW: My immediate family, especially my father, has commended me for standing up for my rights, and I have unconditional support from my siblings and nieces and nephews. I am overwhelmed by the positive support they have all displayed. As for the Utah family members? I have sent a few emails to selected individuals and absolutely no reply. I haven’t heard a word from the Church or any Whitaker Mormons, interestingly enough. As for friends, again, I am overwhelmed by their unconditional love, respect, and support through all of this.

CB: Thank you, Todd.

And with that, we will now turn the remainder of the time over to Main Street Plaza for your comments.

And Todd, if you’re reading, please feel very welcome to join in!

I have thought of my “exit” story as boring. Boring, but different. Rather than a narrative of the Once-Happy-TBM who unwittingly came across a troublesome theological or historical issue and lamented as it gobbled a once easy faith, my story has from early on featured something amiss…but what I’ve thought to be amiss was something about me.

And so, my story was not finding some troubling history or troubling scripture. Even when younger, I looked at odd parts of history or scripture with incredulity. Instead, my story was discovering that I didn’t have to beat myself up for my doubting nature. And until I looked carefully, I had failed to realize that it was the church that had given me values that enabled me to take a step away.

How could I come to realize the church’s goodness and truth? Years ago, I began to feel the source of my faithlessness was complacency. It was complacency since I had lived a good life with good parents. Since I was one of the 13 million individuals on the face of the earth who was born with knowledge of the gospel.

So, I needed to be humbled. If only the Lord would provide reformative adversity.

I needed a trial of faith. Ether 12: 6 clarified.

6 And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that ^afaith is things which are ^bhoped for and ^cnot seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no ^dwitness until after the ^etrial of your faith.

I could receive no witness until after the trial of my faith…and so, it was obvious why I lacked amazing spiritual experiences: no trials of faith.

Feeling defective, I welcomed subjugation to the worst trials in life. From the experience of the worst things in life, I would either perish to weakness or become renewed through faith.

I became obsessed with such a concept…in the back of my mind, I planned to postpone university and go to some third-world country. I’d beckon the world to come at me. If I were mugged or killed…so be it. But I could hope that God would never give me a trial I could not handle.

On Easter a few years back (I don’t remember the year, but it certainly was Easter Sunday), I had a conversation with my father about this. He was in the Young Men’s Presidency, so he taught my third-hour class (for Priests, I believe)…none of the other young men were there that day (which wasn’t surprising…these guys were often truant), so it was just my father and I.

I shared my ideas and plans with him about how I should be struck down that I may experience the worst things in life in a trial of faith.

I thought my father would be proud of my maturity…but he denounced my ideas as destructive and silly. He told me something that pacified me for a time: “If you know that evil exists…and it is obvious, then do you need to experience it to learn good exists? Good is the opposite of evil, so if evil is obvious, good is subtle.” So what if I couldn’t find reason to believe in God? God did not operate like the adversary and give reasons.

I saw some of the older guys (once as unrepentant as my quorum) repent and serve missions. When they came back home…they were reformed.

So my gears began to turn…missions were the trial of faith that I should’ve focused on! My father had denounced my plans for good cause — I had been like Naaman, still proud and desirous of a great task to complete despite desperation.

I didn’t tell my father (I wanted it to be a surprise), but I prayed…I came to the conclusion that while I was on this spiritual high, I should speak with the Bishop, insisting that when it came time, he should make me fill out the mission papers no matter what. I had to do it now before I developed doubts.

…yet…I never made the contract. I asked others — was a mission a good place to develop faith?

I thought the others would be proud of my maturity…but they denounced my ideas as destructive and selfish. And they told me, “A mission is not for the missionary. It is for someone truly converted to the Gospel who wants to place God before himself.”

I was crushed. I realized I couldn’t, in good faith, go on a mission. Sure, I could pass every technical question of worthiness better than most of my peers did, but they could just repent and become fit to serve. I could not even believe.

I went off to university and put things aside. I remembered things I had read about agency and choice, and began to see things, especially Helaman 14:30 and words from Joseph B. Wirthlin, in different contexts.

You are free to choose (see 2 Ne. 2:27) and are permitted to act (see 2 Ne. 10:23; Hel. 14:30), but you are not free to choose the consequences. With absolute certainty, choices of good and right lead to happiness and peace, while choices of sin and evil eventually lead to unhappiness, sorrow, and misery.

I wondered. If I was racking myself to unhappiness and misery over lack of testimony, what if I stopped? I could keep my lifestyle but stop worrying about belief. I could recognize I do not believe. And if things soured, I’d have my trial. But if things turned for the better, then I’d know my choice was good and right, and I’d have happiness and peace.

And with that, I had courage to leave. At first, I was simply willing to accept whatever ill consequences that came (even eternal ones), but soon I realized that not even temporal ill consequences were forthcoming.

I’ve been reading an article at Mormon Matters about More Open Mormon History, and it seems to me there is a fundamental idea at play here: if you hear about “true Mormon history,” you’ll lose all hope and faith and then apostasize. OMG!

The author, Mormon Heretic, tries to deflect this claim. He posits that people should learn about true Mormon history upfront and that it won’t lead to more apostasizing — this original assertion is baseless. Instead, those who know more about Mormon history tend to be more active and those who know less are actually less active (but this study that he refers to hasn’t been parsed in the topic).

I offered early on an idea. In my opinion, I guess it’s not so much the history of the church that may hurt some members, but the idea that the church correlates and hides so much early on, and then people find out the true events much later. This shatters everything they once knew, and that, more than the actual nature of the history, is what breaks the faith.

I guess the church would suggest that sometimes, people can’t handle the truth, so it’s better not to share it all. But my idea is…people will already believe crazy things, so why not just present history as it was and then let people go with it?

But now I’m curious…was something history-related the final straw for any of you?

For me, I don’t think so. But then again, I think my nonbelief was of a much different stuff. I can understand that many ex-mormons truly believed, then found something that shattered their trust in the leaders or the church or the history or the doctrine, but I always had a skeptical approach. I never had a problem with recognizing that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young or any prophet or leader was fallible, because I already recognized that. The problem was, because I always recognized they were fallible, I couldn’t really believe in that.

So the prophet is fallible. I’m fallible. So why should I exchange my fallibility for some other guy’s fallibility, especially when what that other guy is saying doesn’t really fit into how I actually experience the world? If I were able to see some kind of evidence of something higher, then that would justify things, but as it is now, the gray nature of the world is poor motivation to believe in something higher. Moral grays and areas of fallibility make sense in a universe that doesn’t have a caring, coordinating deity but they don’t quite make so much sense, no matter the justification, in a worldview that actually posits such a deity.

On the other hand, I guess this allows me to be more moderate about the church. I look at it as a human, social institution. I’m not going to join a group like Mormon Coffee and decry how it’s leading people to hell, because I don’t have heaven and hell as my goal posts. I do have some problem with the political actions the church has taken with gay marriage, but this is, of course, from a social aspect, and not from a theological aspect. I don’t really care about showing the church that God wouldn’t care about gays getting married, because I don’t really care about showing the church anything about God.

After years of talking with current and former mormons, I am well aware that the reasons for people leaving and becoming disaffected are as different as snowflakes.  Everyone has a different story and takes a unique path. I didn’t get a chance to listen to John Dehlin’s mormon stories podcasts while they were still available. This is a link to the new staylds site – and an essay on staying mormon after a “crisis of faith”.

Lisa, from the Liberal Mormon that Could blogged about the “bitter fruits of apostasy” lesson here. Personally, I’m disappointed by some of the points in this lesson about apostasy.  I resent the implication that all or most former mormons leave because they aren’t strong enough, or they want to sin.

What strikes me as the most interesting is the impression that no one (in the current LDS leadership) made a concerted effort to find out WHY former mormons left.  From the lesson, it seems that there are quite a few assumptions that have been made – assumptions which may or may not be grounded in reality.  It may be true that there are smokers who become inactive because they fear the judgment from other ward members. But many of the examples are the same that I remember hearing  in the late 80s, that a person is offended or wants a particular calling.

The other impression given is that former members are never really happy – eventually they will realize their mistake in leaving the fold and distancing themselves from the spirit.

Some readers might ask why this is important to me.  This is a valid question.

To some extent, I want to allow a difference in opinion and perspective.  But many of my family members remain active LDS members.  Because of lessons and attitudes such as this one, sometimes our relationship is strained.  I can’t explain why the leadership doesn’t want to ask former members – or even try to better understand “cafeteria” or new order mormons.  The leadership seems caught in the binary dilemma (see the stay lds article) – the church is either true or it’s not (there is no middle ground).

I don’t know if they feel like their own testimonies might be shaken by trying to better understand former members.  Or that the leadership feels threatened by any acceptance that former members might genuinely have valid reasons for no longer believing.  Through lessons like this, leaders ignore that there may be some members who stay and have valid reasons for picking and choosing what they believe.  Such members might believe there is truth to the LDS church but don’t agree with everything.

Over the years, I’ve appreciated the philosophy, seek first to understand, then to be understood.  I find I can’t understand why the LDS leadership doesn’t want to find out the real reason(s) that people leave the mormon faith (or choose to be cafeteria mormons).  At some point, assumptions based on inaccurate information will become obvious even to the faithful.

I have been miserable at Church ever since my mission. I still couldn’t get out because I had to act on my testimony even though I experienced Church as toxic every Sunday.

To me, the mission experience was dehumanizing and sacrilegious reducing converts to trophies and missionaries to tools. Any amoeba will leave an inhospitable environment and strike out for greener pastures and yet I came back for more for something like sixteen years only to despair more because I could not get over my testimony.

I had a wonderful experience at Church before my mission. So one day, I decided to google my boyhood friends. One of them had begun to agitate against the Mormon Church. This particular essay argued that the rejection of evolution proved that the president of the Mormon Church could not be the prophet.

I though that argument was weak since other apostle like Widtsoe and Talmadge had no problem with Darwinism but I trusted my friend enough to reinvestigate the Church. One of the first sites, I stumbled upon was the Mormon Alliance, which documents cases of ecclesiastical abuse.

When I learned that Church leaders demand that scholars retract their research to remain members, I realized that they are not speaking for God because their behavior created a paradox, which denied the atonement.

Basic Christian theology stipulates that Christ redeems humanity by paying for our sins. Basic Christian theology also says that sinners need to repent to take advantage of the atonement. According to Mormon theology, people can only take advantage of the atonement if they perform priesthood covenants such as baptism and remain members in good standing.

Insofar as research represents scholars’ best effort at determining the truth, asking them to deny their research by threatening their membership in the Church creates a paradox for the atonement that cannot be resolved if one takes Mormon theology at face value.

If you are excommunicated, supposedly, you are damned. Denying your research without being persuaded to be wrong amounts to a lie. Lying is sinning. Sinners are damned.

This problem contains a logical loop because if scholars repent of their lie, they shall loose their membership. If we accept the Mormon worldview for the sake of argument, then that means that the brethren’s requirement for faithful research creates a class of people to whom the atonement does not apply.

I concluded from that contradiction that the brethren did not act on behalf of god. My testimony had misled me. My experiences did not mean what I thought they meant.

Two weeks later, I had figured out that the feelings approach advocated by Joseph Smith contradicted Jesus Christ. Christ warned us that we shall recognize the false prophets by their fruits.

Observing fruits has nothing to do with feelings. Observing fruits is an empirical exercise. It relies on the use of our brain and our senses. We only need to have a pretty good idea about good and bad views and observe the evidence.

Since then I have concluded that Smith’s approach to truth in Moroni 10, Doctrine and Covenants 9, and Alma 32 is really an auto-suggestive technique that relies on suspension of disbelief (Moroni 10), wishful thinking (Alma 32), and attribution error (D&C 9).

They are the same techniques that let us enjoy novels or movies and that are the mainstays of any confidence trickster. By the way, that leads me to conclude that Smith was at least a co-author of the Book of Mormon. The feelings epistemology reflects the experience of the con-man. Since Smith has the history of a con-man and Sidney Rigdon does not, the feelings epistemology is probably a genuine creation of Joseph Smith.