I've been lurking here and posting a little here and there for about a year now. Thanks for being here - you all have made quite a difference. I've never formally introduced myself, so here's the brief rundown: Female, BIC, RM (Missouri, St.Louis), temple married, no kids. DH and I stopped attending church after being very active 3 years ago. We moved into a new ward and were just "flying under the radar" for a little while by not attending, but quickly realised we weren't missing anything and that in fact, the church was making us stressed out and unhappy. As sort of a New Year's resolution in 2010, we decided to be open and honest with our friends and family about not going anymore. We just basically said we were following our hearts and there was nothing to talk about. For the most part, the families have been respectful even though they disagree. We just refuse to talk about it. This year's resolution is to read 1 church related book a month. I hope to post monthly with my impressions and what I have learned from each book. Almost done with Mormon Enigma and I have learned more about church history in 3 weeks than I did in 28 years of church, 4 years of seminary, and a mission.

Need a little help from the board: We might be moving in a few more months and I really don't want to take our membership records with us and start over with the "do not contact" schpeel to new ward members. This has caused us both to think and talk a lot about resignation in the last couple of weeks. I started working on a letter using the links on RFM. I didn't expect to feel so emotional about it, but it is what it is... I am having a hard time with the line about understanding that this action "cancels the effects of baptism and confirmation, withdraws the priesthood held by a male member and revokes temple blessings". I just feel like I am giving them power that they don't have - I don't believe that they ever had power to give me blessings of eternal life or take them away. I feel like I am signing my name to something that could be used against me in the future or something... I don't know. Like I said, I was not ready for any of these emotions. Just looking for some encouragement, humor, chastisement for being a total wuss, ya know, the RFM board treatement I guess. Thanks for reading.

You don't need to talk about any church "ordinances" if you don't want to.

Your letter can be as short as:

"I hereby resign my resignation in your church. Process my records immediately. Do not send church members to my house. Life is too short to deal with you folks any longer."

Enjoy your new life!

Also, if you have an attorney, (so the church knows you're serious) you can threaten legal action.

Getting it notarized confirms for the church that you are who you say you are and takes away any reason for them to meet with you in person.

When I resigned I got the letter back saying, "its a local matter, you have to meet with your bishop, blah, blah, blah", essentially their version of "no you can't".

I wrote back with my version of "yes I can" and they eventually responded with a "yeah, we guess you can".

Yup, you will be flooded with a lot of emotions. So stock up on kleenix, might need it. It's different for everyone. Some mourn the loss/change. Some can find some humor in it. Some need more time than others to process it. Sounds like you have taken some of the first steps and have a support system in place. That helps a lot, I think.

Moving is a good time to make the change. It will accomplish a clean break for you, if that works best.

My process took a long time to finally break the tie officially, but when I did, I was amazed and surprised at how it hit me.I felt like I was walking on air, a bit giddy, I had closed a door, I had no regrets I was moving in a new direction and energized.
Not everyone has that response, however.

So, resign on your time table. Do it your way!

If they accept email, maybe you could be the first to TEXT in your resignation. That might be fun! :-)

Do what makes you and your husband happy. If ditching the cult now makes you feel like you won't be troubled by them after your move, I think that it is a wise decision to do it.

The emotions ARE tough, as you noted. But that is part of the Mormon double-bind: it is how they kept you hooked in the first place, but it is a false construction of reality and depends heavily on those who do not question anything.

Best wishes.

Yeah I understand that it sounds like you're admitting that you're giving something up when it's phrased like that.

According to TSCC it's the bish's responsibility to make sure you understand what you're giving up before you throw it all away, so most of us included that to make sure they knew we already understood it, so they wouldn't bother us.

Maybe say "cancels the supposed effects of baptism and confirmation, withdraws the fake priesthood held by a male member and revokes temple blessings I never had because the church is not true and never had the power to bestow them on anybody in the first place". Or something along those lines, just to make it clear you already know what THEY think the consequences will be and won't insist on an interview or something to confirm.

Just email it! It is easy. Go to the main page on this site and go to the resignation page and copy and paste the letter you will find there, to your email. Fill in your personal info and send it. 2 weeks later you will get the first letter.

I think if you have come to peace with the church not being "true," and you don't have to constantly be defending your position in front of member family/friends, why not bail out? If you don't have to maintain some sort of imaginary connection to the church, why not cut the ties? It brings an immediate end to invasive church behavior. You'll be left alone at last.

Good luck with whichever.

The sentence you reference is thrown in as boilerplate because the CHI instructs the bish to ascertain that you know that is what will happen (in their eyes) if you resign. You are in effect saying "yes, I already know what you think this does, and I am OK with that". You are telling them you are making an informed decision.

By putting it in your letter, you might preempt that spiel from the bish. Or not. It's really not that important, and the sentence can be left in or removed.

All that is actually needed is that you clearly identify yourself, and state that you are resigning your membership in TCOJCOLDS. It can be done in a single sentence. All the rest is window dressing.

Google Richard Nixon's resignation letter for a study in brevity. IMHO, the shorter the letter the better, and it should never ever go beyond one page. People moved to include a long rant should send it as a second letter.

Legal documents (and a resignation is a legal transaction) should be simple and address one topic only. This minimizes the chance that the receiver of the document will miss the point and go off on a tangent.

Very tough to extract oneself. People who resign are heros to me -- I know the terror (emotionally) of jumping off that bridge. Kudos to you for your courage.

It may help emotionally to reject the boilerplate language. How about this:

"After considerable due diligence we have confirmed that the basis of the church is fraudulent and false, and therefore any ordinances, rites or rituals performed by the church have no connection to any god. We reject any baptisms, priesthood ordinations or so-called eternal sealings you have performed as pure fantasy, with no actual effect."

rodolfo Wrote:

>
> "After considerable due diligence we have
> confirmed that the basis of the church is
> fraudulent and false, and therefore any
> ordinances, rites or rituals performed by the
> church have no connection to any god. We reject
> any baptisms, priesthood ordinations or so-called
> eternal sealings you have performed as pure
> fantasy, with no actual effect."

I really like this statement - it is EXACTLY how I feel. Thank you so much! I may end up keeping the letter really short and sweet, but if I decide to add a zinger, I would love to use this.

Wow! Thanks for all of the responses. I feel a lot less silly for getting emotional about this. I think I will go with a short and to the point letter. I know that sentence is in there for them and not for me - just don't feel like giving them the satisfaction.

@Rebecca - Thanks for the advice about notary. I don't want them to have any reason to drag their feet.

@SusieQ#1 - I do feel very lucky to have a good support system. After reading so many stories on this board, I am glad to be leaving with my marriage in tact and stronger from this process. I know many are not so lucky. I'll do this on my time table - starting the letter was a step I didn't think I'd ever be ready for, but I am confident that I won't regret it. The church is not true.

@cludgie - I really do believe resignation is the only option that will save me from a lot of future harassment. Thanks for the encouragement.

@jon1 - I have been considering email, but may want to send it in paper so it feels more official to me. It would be funny to text it in if I could get Dodge's cell #.

@Brother of Jerry - I googled Nixon's letter - thanks for that. I laughed that it was literally 1 sentence - good to know that I don't have to legally do much more than that!

I was baptized 25 years ago and active for about 2 weeks. And yet they would show up at my house in a different town than I was baptized in and ask for me by my maiden name! I wrote a letter to the bishop and basically all I said was leave me alone, you are embarrassing yourselves and being rude by bothering people at home and that I am not mormon.

I got a letter back saying my letter was sent to SLC and shortly after got a letter from SLC saying they have granted my request.

And I threatened to go to the media and to attorneys if they kept bothering me.

Actually it would be funny for everyone to just text the Morg general number anyway. My service has a text-to-speech function and will deliver the message to whomever picks up the phone.

But if you come to doubt the existence of the rock on which the whole premise is built, it follows that cancellation or affirmation of baptisms and priesthoods are meaningless.

Good luck.

I never offically resigned for the very same reason. I too was BIC so I actually never joined. My parents did. To me it was all a big lie and fairy tale so there was nothing to resign from.

However, I have gotten knocks at my door and letters in the mail. In my case I'm pretty sure that its been my TBM family making sure records were transferred.Its been a few years, though since I actually got a knock at my door.

Its nice to hear stories like yours where both husband and wife left and it didn't break-up a marriage. YAY!