Please be gentle on me for asking this question.


I live in the SE part of the US, where Morgbots are sparse.


As a result, I don't have Morgbots chasing me down, or invading my life, or whatever. I have not been love bombed. And I don't have children for them to pester.


Furthermore, there is no validity to TSCC. So I'm not worried about any eternal consequences if I were to resign, or if I were to just remain inactive.


I think if I resigned, it WOULD draw attention to me (since I'm BIC), and since I'm dealing with cancer already, I just don't want that interference in my life.


But I've only gotten one visit from a morgbot in the last four years (and even when they found out I have cancer, do you think anybody asked me if I needed anything?).


So, I'm just wondering - if it is more likely to be life disruptive if I DO resign, is there a good reason (under the circumstances I just described) to rattle the boat by pushing through my resignation papers?


Or should I just remain in my current state of permanent inactivity. (BTW, I long ago gave up any self identity as a Mormon. When people ask me my religion nowadays, I answer "Christian.")

I'm just inactive too. It doesn't really affect me. It would just stir the pot and cause a lot of trouble if I resigned because my family is TBM

It's certainly your choice, though I have to wonder why you would want to remain officially on the membership list of a group you do not want to be a member of...?

In your current circumstances, perhaps you won't be chased down, bothered, hounded.

If you move, if a family member or "concerned mormon" makes a suggestion to leadership, you might.

Official resignation forestalls that. It also lets the church know that you haven't simply become lazy, or that you've "sinned" and so feel guilty about going, it lets them know you are not a believer and no longer wish to be a member. Whether they *care* about that or not, I can't say. But on your part, it's more honest.

I am currently inactive and consider myself as no longer a member. Even though I am still on the records.

I want to resign, but with family situation right now. Doing so would just increase the issues we are having. But one main reason I want to resign is this. As long as I am a member, my wife and mom and who knows who else will think there is a chance for me to come back. I know this cause this is how my mom has been with my little brother. "Let's just be nice to him, and the lord will bring him back. And maybe he will decide he isn't gay anymore either!"

I just want to stop any thought of that sort of thing. I am not going to magically change my mind. I can't go back to church. I know it is not what it says it is. In my mind no religion is. They are all man made and I have wasted enough time and money in those.

I also want to resign so I don't have to deal with some future bishop who decides to get his power in his pants and try to "lay down the law" or whatever. I know they have no power or control over me, but I know how some bishops think they have more power then they really do.

I agree that it's a total personal choice. If you don't have any issues by just not going, great! It's just something personal for me. And I can't wait to send in my email that has been sitting in draft for about 3 weeks now.

Resigning might incite unwanted harassment.

If you were desperate for closure or expressing displeasure, I think you would have mentioned it. Avoiding contact is why many resign and that doesn't seem to be a problem for you either. So I just leave it as it is for now.

You have enough on your plate.

Best of luck with the Big C. We're rooting for you!


KW

I'm just inactive as well. Maybe I'll get to a point where I'll put in my resignation papers. I used to get calls a lot from home teachers. But, last year the bishop of the ward I'm supposedly in came to my home. He just asked if I was interested in coming to church. I said no, and I haven't heard from them since. That doesn't mean I won't hear from them, but the silence has been nice.

i haven't resigned cause we're just lazy. lol. more of a PITA than it's worth to me. although, every so often when the missionaries spend a couple weeks knocking on our door every damn night it kinda makes me wonder if it's not worth 20min of my time

If you resign your are off the rolls for statistical purposes.

If you stay and are inactive you are a statistic that pulls down the activity rate which can have the effect of hitting the local units money allocations.

They do not subtract anyone from the count. I'm not kidding.

You should do the math with those statistics the church publishes every year. It is evident they don't even subtract all who have died any given year (unless you believe the average mormon lifespan is 200+ years) so it's quite certain they don't subtract resignations. It is extremely poor book-keeping. Basically the number is anyone who was ever BIC or baptized minus known deaths and since only about 1/3 of the deaths are known that's it. No one is looking at obituaries to correct the number. Something in the order of 50k-100k deaths every year are unaccounted for.

There's a third choice besides resigning or being inactive.

For me, the second I said I was not a Mormon, I no longer was. Period.

There was no resignation when I left, only excommunication.

Just say you are not a Mormon with conviction if forced to even broach the subject at all. Papers are just paper. A name on their list is the same as being not he Publisher's Clearing House list. Means no more than that execept at least you could get some money from them instead of vice versa.

You are who you say you are and only you have the right to decide whether you are Mormon or not.

I hope your treatments are going well and wishing you a lot of strength to get through the cancer. All the best.

This is only how I feel and I do not judge anyone who feels different.


I resigned because I made a vow to not speak evil of the Lord's anointed. My new goal in life is to get as many people out of the church as I can. So, I had to resign so I can do some evil speaking.

My dh and ds have become permanently inactive because they believe in live-and-let-live.

You could still keep that vow...they are not 'the lords annointed' they are people that are delusional and want everyone else to think that.

I don't think they are the Lord's anointed, but my kids still do.

Augh! Why do we have to re-teach this concept all the time! But essentially, the answer is why go inactive and pretend not to be a member if I can actually resign and actually not be a member? Why be a member of a cult? Why not be able to say in truth, I USED to be a Mormon in another life? As an inactive, in the eyes of the church you are almost every bit as good as an active member because all eyes are on the numbers. I love to tell Mormons that I resigned my membership. Their eyes get so big and they can't connect with the concept. The church can make no threats and if they send people over you will have every right to send them away with a flea in their ear.

Once I discovered the church was a fraud, I realized church leaders had absolutely no authority over me. So from this aspect it really doesn't matter if you resign or just stop going.

However, I decided to formally resign just so I could give the church a huge "fuck you" which felt sooooo good.

I agree with those who say it doesn't matter. Once you realize the secret club is made up, it really doesn't matter if you are on their rolls or not.

For some like myself, it would be a cause of pain for those near to them and not worth it. It's not like they announce the number of resignations in GC and you're adding to a statistic that will concern and inform the rank and file.

I haven't resigned

I dont need to jump through hoops placed by the church, to know I am no longer a mormon

I dont believe *any resignations* affects the figures that the church spews out

I dont get visits - I am not in an area with a large morg population and resignation would not affect that

I see that people may want to do it, for one reason or the other. Fine - that's your decision but it doesnt affect me one way or the other

It's entirely up to you. Just realize that although you don't have a reason to resign at present, that could change in the future.

Personally, I would prefer to resign immediately and have no further contact with the organization whatsoever. I'm done.

But I have kids, and spouse is not on board. My name stays on the membership list as long as my kids' names do (my call). I will have them removed, but the process with spouse is going to take time. My marriage is more important than a formality, and although I do not believe the church's claims nor recognize any "authority" on their part, spouse does.

Shortly after determining that the LD$ church was not what I was raised believing it was, my DW and I went out with one of our close LD$ friends. I had served in the bishopric with the husband and he and I were good friends.

While at dinner, he stated that while he disagreed with my reasoning for leaving and going inactive, he just couldn't see why I "had to formally resign" my membership. He just thought I should go inactive. I told him I needed to make sure people knew to leave us alone. I reminded him of the countless times he and I went and visited "inactives". O how we would be told to leave or to stop coming over. Yet, we would continue bothering these poor folks, almost taunting them because "we had an obligation" to visit and invite them as they were our fellow members, even though they were inactive and wanted no contact.

So I then told my friend, that in order for me to make a statement about how serious I was and to prevent me or my family from being someones "re-activation" project I HAD to resign. I think he really understood from that point on that I was serious.

Funny side note. At the beginning of our chat he and his wife reaffirmed that our leaving "would NOT affect" our friendship. After that meeting, WE NEVER HEARD FROM THEM AGAIN! NEVER EVER!! True story...

Cheers!
Adamisfree2006

I resigned because I OWN MY NAME, and that organization is going to have NO part of it. I was boiling mad when I discovered I was being manipulated. Resigning means I am serious.

In my case, inactive would have been fine...but after Dad died in 2000, one of his HP friends took my reactivation on as his personal mission from GAWD, as I've written about many times on this site. When I resigned, all contact with him stopped. I'd asked for no further contact and that's exactly what I got. My doctor, dentist, and pharmacist are all TBM and include at least 1 bishop...but they are professionals and say nothing.
I should add that my parents are dead, my brother is inactive and no other Mormon relatives matter to me. If they know I'm out, so be it.

Ron Burr

Some people feel the need for closure. Honestly, it has no legal meaning whatsoever. Church membership is only meaningful to the church itself. If you have no interest in dealing with them, then you can just walk away and not look back. Millions have already, so why not you?

About 60% of Mormons are not active. Half of those don't even call themselves Mormon. Only a handful of people, maybe a few thousand, have resigned. If even 150k have resigned, that's only 1% of the church.

I resigned and I had my reasons, it was above all a statement to my mormon family, especially my parents. A personal declaration of independence of a sort. That doesn't mean I think you should resign. I think you should do whatever is best for you. From your post it seemed you have perfectly fine reasons not to resign. So don't. And if you change your mind later you can always change your mind.'To thine own self be true'.

I'm just inactive - sometimes they will get themselves worked up and try to launch deactivation efforts, but for the most part I really only have to tell them to get lost (on average) once every couple years.

All it takes is an email. Send it when you're ready to let them know you don't support their cult.

It's up to you. Do whatever you'd like. There's no law stating that you must resign in order to consider yourself to be an ex-Mormon.

For myself, I didn't want my name associated with them in any way, shape or form. But if it doesn't mean anything to you, then you don't have to bother.

Whatever you're most comfortable with.

If you are afraid of drawing attention to yourself through resigning and you are currently comfortable with your level of contact from the church, then I guess it makes sense for YOU to stay on the records.

The main reason people resign is to avoid being constantly harassed by the local ward members but in your case it doesn't sound that way.

For me, I resigned for 3 main reasons:

1) To avoid reactivation efforts

2) To send a statement to church headquarters, the GA's, and other church leaders that I reject the church and that don't consider myself a believer anymore. I wanted to send a reality check to these guys.

3) To hopefully influence whoever reads my resignation letter (I included a lot of juicy historical/doctrinal reasons why I stopped believing)

If reason 1 is your only concern then maybe you should stay on the rolls.

I'm BIC, multi-generational, and I figure resigning is nothing more than a "do not contact" checkmark on my undeleted record in the big SLC database.

Because I'm still on their rolls, they are "compelled" to deal with me. While some people don't want the contact from the church, (and that's fine), in a twisted way I enjoy playing with them. Call it extracting that pound of flesh for everything they consumed from me. I'm a literal, visible reminder to them that I don't believe in their made-up religion.

I see church membership the same way I see membership in Columbia House Music Club (back when it was a thing).

Columbia house was a scam. Once I figured it out and had bought my records, I was still a member of the club, but I didn't see a need to resign. I just didn't participate any more.

The church is the same thing. I figured it out. Its a scam. It has no power over me. Resigning somehow make them seem more worth my time than they are.