I haven't actually officially left the church yet. I haven't been to church since 2007, except for family things. Lately the bishop of the ward I'm assigned to has been stopping by my place. My roommate, who is also mormon, but not active, has mentioned that he has been asking about me (I usually work late). I have been living with my girlfriend/fiance for the past 4 years. We have been sexually active that entire time. I drink, and used to smoke although I quit last year (still mixed feelings). And worst of all, I don't believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Basically, I'm saying that given the evidence I should be excommunicated. I know that most of you will say to just tear off the band aid, but for some reason I'm still scared to "officially" leave. I have no rational explanation why, although I think it is family related. Also the fact that I've been mormon my entire life. I think that it's mostly family though. I think that I'm scared what will happen to the relationships of my siblings. It's not so easy for some of us.

I haven't left yet, though my journey hasn't been half a year in the making. I Think you need to do whatever brings you closure and sets you free.

You haven't attended or contributed since 2007. Good grief, that's a clear demonstration of your non-membership!

Anyone would be deluded if they still think you have a bishop with authority or permission to stalk you.

Write this creepy bishop stalker an email or leave a message on his phone, "Stop following me. I won't be entertaining you if you show up at my house. I haven't attended your church since 2007 and won't start because of stalking or harassment. I'm shocked that you seem to have no concern for personal privacy violations or the legal ramifications of your intrusive activities."

Your room mate could hand this creep a sealed message from you with this information. I would think, however, that it would be better to head him off.

I filed a police report about Mormon stalking and the local chief was very sympathetic and helpful. He phoned the harassing bish, sent him a letter of complaint, and sent a police officer to his house to explain the letter and tell the bish an arrest might result if he didn't stay off my property and away from me and my family.

It's understandable that you have qualms about facing this problem. We were all programmed to feel this way. I can promise that you'll feel better if you stand up for your rights and be brave. This growth will help you in your personal and professional life as well as keeping the unwanted harassers at bay.

Why not tell your room mate to stop letting the bishop in.
Talking to church reps is always a mistake if you want to be left alone.

Good grief, you are adults who do not owe anyone any explanations.
Handing over your personal power to Mormonism makes no sense.

Can you convince your roommate to ignore the bishop's knocks? Just because someone knocks on your door doesn't mean you need to respond. In any event, your roommate should definitely not be answering the bishop's questions about you. The standard response should be, "You will need to ask jcrichards about that."

If you have a chance to talk to the bishop, I would be straightforward with him. Tell him that you want to stay officially a member for family reasons, but that you will never again be active. If he needs to send someone by once or twice a year so that he can say you've officially been contacted, fine. But any further harassment will result in your resignation. You do not have to (and should not) discuss your beliefs with him. What you believe or don't believe is none of his business. Your personal life and habits are also none of his business.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2014 11:22AM by summer.

It helped a lot to study about the REAL Mormon history and the lies; now I have a testimony that it isn't true. Have you seen www.cesletter.com? Read something like Palmer's Insider's view of Mormon Origins? That might set you free from any wisps of belief that remain.

I have opted to remain on the books for now because my mom's mental health is fragile; she is a widow clinging to the doctrine of eternal families. I was really wanting to resign, but decided it's ok, because being raised Mormon is obviously part of my identity, and resignation won't change that.

It's ok to do this at your own pace. I am guessing that the bishop is wondering about ways to reactivate you. I doubt he would excommunicate you unless you respond in a hostile way that makes him really mad. Not worth the bother. If he does invite you to a court, then you can worry about needing to resign before you are exed.

Personally, I think I will stay a member on the records until my mom dies and there's a time I feel I can use my resignation to help push for changes that will help my still LDS family.

As an adult, and from what I got from your message, does not believe the church is true. If you don't believe in it, why stay apart of it? There's no truth to the church so why invest in the emotional guilt that you need to even care if you get excommunicated? For example, as soon as I knew the church was a big fat scam, I stopped caring about the whole "repentance" because it was all made up anyways for that church. I won't do morally wrong things like hurt people, or stuff like that, but there's no sin in sex, alcohol, etc. They are just things to be responsible about but are not inherently sinful. Basically, sure if the church was true, then yeah there's going to be ramifications according to what was said to be sinful leading to excommunication, luckily for all of us, since it's not true, then it has no meaning. It's like a person trying to convince the world that Santa Claus is real. No matter how convinced they are. He doesn't exist. No matter how real the ramifications and eternal consequences are to the Bishop, doesn't mean they exist or should be followed. Hopefully this all makes sense. Basically don't worry about it, it's a false church and you get to move on with your life. Sure it sucks, but unfortunately we all bought into it at various degrees, and now have to be okay with the fact that it's not real. That's what sucks at times, because there are wonderful things about the church, but unfortunately they do more emotional damage which can tear someone's life apart with depression, guilt, and unnecessary anxiety. Do what is best for you! Not what's best for them, because they don't matter.

Sex !! Alcohol !! Unbelief !!

I love the trailer; when does the movie come out?

You might be disfellowshipped if the bishop knew about the above, but not likely; at this point you're just the typical young inactive single mormon. They'd be involved in constant Courts of LoveyDovey if they were to discipline all who 'deserved' it.

One wonders why the bishop has his sights set on you. Has your roommate, who is also inactive, had any reactivation overtures made by the bishop? Is there any reason to suppose the bishop has more in mind for you, compared to your roommate? If your fiancee is mormon, could her parents be trying to break you up? Or get you married?

I haven't officially resigned yet but I did tell the bishop and stake I don't believe in JS or Church and have no time (even a minute) to waste by meeting/talking with any church leaders. I have not been exed or bothered!

Thanks for the responses. I actually don't really remember writing the original post, I was pretty drunk last night. When I get drunk I stay up late pondering and cleaning.

My girlfriend finds it creepy that the bishop of a ward I've never been to knows where I live and tries to visit with me. She isn't mormon, she was raised Catholic and is pretty much athiest now as well. I was home one time when the bishop came over, which was over a year ago and I told him then that I was no longer interested in coming to church and so forth. But maybe this is a new bishop or something.

I was never as obviously non-believing, non-participating as you but I,too, was afraid of what would happen if I officially left. I very slowly informed my mother of my doubts a little at a time. Ever so slowly she started seeing the light. Finally, I told her I was completely non-believing and she took it very well. She is now non-believing as well. I'm out officially and she has not resigned but doesn't pay any tithing or attend any meetings.

I support the "take it slow and easy" route. Your family probably wouldn't be too surprised if you left if they know how you are living your life. You could just tell them, "No offense to any of you but I'm tired of being a hypocrite and I'm resigning. If I ever decide to rethink my lifestyle I'll give Mormonism another chance. But for now I think it would be best if I lived honestly and left."

Or you could just leave things as they are. No harm. No foul.

I think keeping official visitors and missionaries away is sort of like the National Do No Call list. You have to re-submit your request occasionally.

Many years ago the local missionaries kept trying to contact or come by to see me. I finally got tired of it and decided to just tell them. I don't recall how much detail I went into, but I politely told them that I no longer wanted to be visited - and to please make sure that gets passed on.

And they actually did stop for many years thereafter. My husband tells me now, though, that a couple of missionaries have stopped by a couple of times this month and asked to see me.

Guess I need to resubmit my DNC request again.

After my mom is gone, I will officially resign and I hope that will take care of it permanently. But until then, I know I'm on their books and that people will hope to "bring me back into the fold." I don't think they're evil for wanting to do that. They are much less annoying than the robocalls we get all the time.

Occasionally, a local ward here or there or a mission area will start such a list, but many wards refuse to honor such requests. They visit come hell or high water and there's no stopping them unless they're afraid of hosing or police threats.

Resigning usually helps but doesn't always eliminate contact 100%.

I would probably just say that I haven't been to church since 2007. If I suddenly felt the need to attend, I know where the building is.

You don't have to answer any personal questions he may ask about your worthiness. He's a complete stranger. It's none of his business.

That is my argument totally Greyfort. If I want to reconnect with tscc, I know where the Church building is, and I can even find it in the phone book or on line. Surprising really, considering I am over 60 Heh heh!!!

I must admit no one from tscc bothers me. I guess they have given up or ar too busy doing churchey stuff. Fine with me!!
I used to go the church once a year or so, but don't now, I am SO over hearing what a GREAT person JS was!!! The perv!!!

You're unlikely to be excommunicated. That's a tool usually reserved for people who fear the institution's authority or to discredit popular people who don't tow the party line.

Just say "I was able to use google to dig up all the nasty dirt on Joseph Smith and I think I can use google again to find the nearest meetinghouse if I ever decide polyandry and pedophilia are AoK"

I agree with good clean fun, they probably won't bother with excommunicating you unless you actually care about it (like not wanting your family to know, or actually thinking it is some sort of "shame"). If you tell him you can't be bothered resigning from his cult that you didn't make adult decision to join, he probably won't bother excommunicating you unless he thinks he can get to you through family.

The best way to get them to stop coming is to get on the blacklist by having a solid antitestimony that you eagerly share when they visit. Read through Mormonthink and the CES letter and give them both barrels. They won't be back.

I remember when I resigned my friend told me she would be too scared to in case it was true.

I asked her to research but she's just not into mormonism enough to do that. She never really was into it even when she was into it, if you know what i mean.

I think it's far harder for people like this because they don't really confront their own beliefs as they never really had any in the first place.

So I had a printed list of 300 isues of mormonism that used to be floating around rfm (before it got put in a nice concise format of the CES letter -- those around years ago will know the list of 1 to 300 or so issues I'm talking about.)

I gave this printout to her and she was still too scared to read it. But, she was still not interested in mormonism at all and continued to be inactive.

My question to you is if there was anything about mormonism that you believed in? If so, you may want to research that.

I also think people like my friend, and possibly you too, might want to review mormon doctrine and presentations in a way that identifies their fear tactics and shaming techniques.

You both have an obvious issue with fear but can't consciously identify where it's coming from. Somewhere along the line some fear tactics must have hit you unconsciously even though you don't sound like you were ever what I was --- which was TBflamingM.

Are Mormons nicer to excommunicated people than they are to people who resign? I had never really thought about that before. Maybe if you can get yourself excommunicated, you won't face as much of the shunning that you read about on this board.

I've read the CES letter and it brought up issues I hadn't thought of before, and wow. But I had already mentally checked out of Mormonism before then.

My roommate is having a crisis of faith and is thinking of going back due to family pressure. So I think that's the main reason the bishop has been visiting her.

Look at a world globe. Look at Utah, then the rest of the land masses. Then do the math to determine what percentage of the world's humans are mormon. Compare to other world religions.

The religion you are hesitant to officially leave is insignificant.

As far as family, don't underestimate the power of example, aka "The Emperor's New Clothes." A couple of my siblings left the church soon after I did. They just didn't know they could.

The longer you are out, the more odd, small, and esoteric the church appears.

Best wishes.

I resigned, and part of my reason for going this route was to say, on no uncertain terms, that I was finished with the cult and did not want to be associated with it any longer. While the other route, being inactive, at least for me, was more uncertain in that it says, well, I might come back and I might not.

Most of us have had those same fears but eventually you will come to a point where you are so disgusted by it that you will have a burning in your bosom to have your name removed.

Removing your name before they excommunicate you robs them of their opportunity to say you're a bad person and adds one more digit to their false claims of 15 million members.

Another person here to tell you I had many of the same fears - mainly family. I was out at 18 after being raised in TSCC from birth and it's been over 25 years now. Like anything else in life, it will be a little rocky at first as you find the courage to stand up for what you want to do with your life (including what you will, or will not, believe).

Been married for over 23 years, no kids, still have decent and caring relationships with family. I didn't bother resigning nor did they try to excommunicate me - in order to do that, you have to cooperate with them anyway (as in, actually talk to them). So stop talking to them - say "no thanks, I'm busy".

Key point to remember here is that your life is simply none of their business from here on out. The guy asking about you is not even a 'bishop' as much as he's just some guy without any ecclesiastical training who volunteers for his church down the road who thinks he has some sort of pretend authority over you.

All of this make believe is set up in order to ensure that TSCC continues to get 10% of your money if you buckle to their harassment and start talking to them, letting them guilt/manipulate you into giving them another try. There's nothing left to try - you know what this is and why it's best for you to leave it behind you.

You can do this. Just because you grew up being told something doesn't mean you can't find your own way. Many of us have done it, and in the next decade many many thousands more will continue to find out they're happier and better off without it. I wish you all the best - you'll do fine!