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Introduction

I hope those of you who read this doc­u­ment do not get the wrong idea: I am not leav­ing the Church out of anger, sin, or lazi­ness. I am not leav­ing due to anti-Mor­mon lit­er­a­ture or to pur­sue dif­fer­ent lifestyle choic­es. And I am not leav­ing in hopes of bring­ing oth­ers with me. Rather, I am leav­ing for only one sim­ple rea­son: I no longer believe fun­da­men­tal Church doctrines.

I real­ize my deci­sion to leave the Church will be both dis­ap­point­ing and painful to my fam­i­ly and friends. In draft­ing this doc­u­ment, it is not my intent to cause addi­tion­al heartache, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of all that the Church has giv­en me. The Church has mold­ed me into a bet­ter indi­vid­ual, hus­band, and father. It has pro­vid­ed me with life-chang­ing expe­ri­ences and life-long friends. Walk­ing away from the only faith I have ever known feels a lot like leav­ing behind a loy­al friend.

My cri­sis of faith began in 2008. At the time, I was serv­ing as Branch Pres­i­dent. In so doing, I met and coun­seled with many indi­vid­u­als who were strug­gling with their tes­ti­mo­ny. Dur­ing these coun­sel­ing ses­sions, sev­er­al mem­bers raised dif­fi­cult ques­tions about seem­ing­ly obscure doc­trines and cer­tain aspects of church his­to­ry. Ini­tial­ly, I dis­missed these con­cerns and tried to shift their focus to bet­ter-under­stood doc­trines and prin­ci­ples. About that same time, I invit­ed a friend and co-work­er to take the mis­sion­ary dis­cus­sions. He agreed to do so, but sup­ple­ment­ed the dis­cus­sions with his own Inter­net research, which he then con­veyed to me through sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions. In so doing, my friend raised some of the same con­cerns that I had pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed with var­i­ous branch mem­bers. Once again, I dis­missed these con­cerns as the prod­uct of false, anti-Mor­mon literature.

At the con­clu­sion of these con­ver­sa­tions, I felt some­what dis­sat­is­fied with the way I han­dled the var­i­ous ques­tions and con­cerns. As a Branch Pres­i­dent, I felt an oblig­a­tion to have answers and insights to gospel ques­tions. I there­fore decid­ed to delve into a research project in order to square­ly address these unre­solved issues.

In the days and weeks that fol­lowed, I stud­ied a vari­ety of LDS sources ful­ly-intend­ing to find answers to my ques­tions. To my sur­prise, how­ev­er, I dis­cov­ered that the con­cerns at issue were both fac­tu­al and legit­i­mate. Although I was secure in my tes­ti­mo­ny, I was shak­en by the fact that I had nev­er heard of these issues. Occa­sion­al­ly, I began to won­der what else I didn’t know about the church. For the first time in my life, I began hav­ing small doubts of my own.

Over the next sev­er­al months, I put my doubts aside and hoped they would sim­ply go away. Or, at the very least, I thought I could dimin­ish the doubts with increased faith and church ser­vice. To my dis­may, my doubts were unrelenting.

As the months mor­phed into years, I fruit­less­ly searched a vari­ety of LDS-friend­ly sources look­ing for answers. Instead, my research both rein­forced my con­cerns and cre­at­ed new ones. In turn, I began feel­ing increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able at church. Sacra­ment meet­ing talks about Joseph Smith and the ear­ly church no longer rang true. I fre­quent­ly felt inad­e­quate in my call­ing and fraud­u­lent dur­ing priest­hood bless­ings. I felt trapped between what I want­ed to believe and what I was dis­cov­er­ing about my faith.

I tried to cob­ble togeth­er a set of beliefs that could some­how rec­on­cile my faith in the church with the many prob­lem­at­ic aspects of Joseph Smith’s life and church doc­trine. But every time I set­tled on a posi­tion, I dis­cov­ered new cracks in the foundation.

My cri­sis of faith ini­tial­ly caught me off guard and, in turn, my emo­tions ran the gamut. I felt lone­li­ness, frus­tra­tion, some­thing com­pa­ra­ble to betray­al, sad­ness, con­fu­sion, and hope­less­ness. But I have found peace in my cho­sen path.

I am now com­ing to under­stand that my sto­ry is not unique. In recent years, numer­ous news out­lets have detailed the so-called Mor­mon exo­dus. A recent Reuters arti­cle, Mor­monism Besieged by the Mod­ern Age, quotes Elder Mar­lin K. Jensen, then-Church His­to­ri­an and Gen­er­al Author­i­ty, as say­ing: “Maybe since Kirt­land, we’ve nev­er had a peri­od of — I’ll call it apos­ta­sy, like we’re hav­ing now.” The arti­cle spec­u­lates that this col­lec­tive cri­sis may be attrib­ut­able to an Inter­net-age where the Church’s warts are sub­ject to exam­i­na­tion. Recent research (includ­ing a 3,000 mem­ber sur­vey) indi­cates that the cri­sis may also be attrib­ut­able to the fact that the Church does not ade­quate­ly brace its mem­bers for what they will find upon engag­ing in a thor­ough examination.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, our dis­cus­sions at church are often an inch deep and a mile wide. We seem to yearn for a sim­ple reli­gion. We nev­er learn in church, for exam­ple, the dif­fer­ences in the var­i­ous First Vision accounts. We nev­er learn that the Book of Abra­ham papyri were dis­cov­ered and ana­lyzed by Egyp­tol­o­gists and ulti­mate­ly trans­lat­ed much dif­fer­ent­ly than by Joseph Smith. We do not talk about the revi­sions to the Book of Mor­mon, the details of Joseph Smith’s polyg­a­mist mar­riages, or the DNA stud­ies impli­cat­ing the Book of Mor­mon. Ques­tions about such top­ics are frowned upon because they are uncom­fort­able. More­over, many mem­bers do not under­stand the force of this “new” infor­ma­tion. Not know­ing how to respond, they react defen­sive­ly. They are inclined to dis­miss much of the evi­dence as anti-Mor­mon. In turn, doubters are often instruct­ed to return to the famil­iar for­mu­la: scrip­tures, prayer, and church attendance.

This approach has iso­lat­ed many of us from the rest of the Church and ulti­mate­ly proven unhelp­ful. Part of the prob­lem is that church mem­bers too often believe that faith should not be ques­tioned or exam­ined unless the premise and endgame remains con­stant: the Church is true. I believe quite the oppo­site: an unwill­ing­ness to sub­ject one’s beliefs to rig­or­ous scruti­ny is, inher­ent­ly, a weak­ness of faith.

My acorns of inquiry and doubt did not mature into oak trees of under­stand­ing through prayer and scrip­ture study. On the con­trary, my doubts fes­tered and con­tin­u­al­ly under­mined much of what I want­ed to believe until they even­tu­al­ly became debil­i­tat­ing. Nonethe­less, for sev­er­al years I con­tin­ued exer­cis­ing faith in the Church because I hoped it was true and I didn’t think there was any way to defin­i­tive­ly prove or dis­prove its truth­ful­ness. But as I care­ful­ly stud­ied church his­to­ry and doc­trine, it became appar­ent that cer­tain LDS teach­ings and beliefs are objec­tive­ly false. As these issues added up, I found it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to trust those aspects of the Church that must be accept­ed by faith alone. A burnt child dreads the fire, so to speak.

My deci­sion to leave the Church is the prod­uct of a five-and-a-half-year jour­ney that includ­ed count­less hours of research, study, and prayer. And now that I have arrived at this point, I feel com­pelled to pro­vide an expla­na­tion for my deci­sion. The fol­low­ing essays ana­lyze the evi­dence under­min­ing both the Church and my once flour­ish­ing tes­ti­mo­ny. I have com­piled the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion from many sources (most of which would be con­sid­ered friend­ly to the Church) and, in many instances, copied with­out attri­bu­tion. [1]

I real­ize that many of my loved ones will nev­er agree with my deci­sion to leave the Church, but I hope those who read through these essays can come to appre­ci­ate the depth of my doubts, the sin­cer­i­ty of my search, and my ratio­nale in part­ing from a faith that has, despite my heart­felt efforts, proven elusive.

1. I ini­tial­ly dis­cov­ered a great deal of the infor­ma­tion con­tained in this doc­u­ment while read­ing books, essays, and arti­cles writ­ten by LDS authors (includ­ing Richard Bush­man, Ter­ryl Givens, B.H. Roberts, Todd Comp­ton, Michael Ash, etc.) or authors who are viewed cred­i­bly with­in the LDS com­mu­ni­ty (includ­ing Grant Palmer, Simon Souther­ton, Charles Lar­son, etc.). How­ev­er, I ulti­mate­ly relied heav­i­ly on Jere­my Run­nels’ Let­ter to a CES Direc­tor and mor​mon​think​.com dur­ing the draft­ing process, as these sources (1) were avail­able online, (2) quot­ed many of the LDS sources I had read pre­vi­ous­ly, and (3) con­tained infor­ma­tion that I was large­ly able to ver­i­fy with LDS-friend­ly sources. In so doing, I essen­tial­ly uti­lized Run­nels’ letter/outline as the foun­da­tion for this doc­u­ment; I mod­i­fied much of the word­ing and some of the issues, dis­card­ed aspects that did not cause me con­cern, and sup­ple­ment­ed and added infor­ma­tion relat­ing to aspects that I deemed most prob­lem­at­ic. ↑

Related posts:

Leav­ing the Church, Part 13 — Tes­ti­mo­ny, Truth, and the Holy Ghost Oth­er trans­la­tions by Joseph Smith, Jr Leav­ing the Church, Part 4 — Book of Mor­mon Translation Leav­ing the Church, Part 3 — Kinder­hook Plates