not.

If you stop attending or associating with the organization you have quit.

If they don't remove you from their rosters then they become bearers of false witness and are in violation of the 10 commandments.

Therefore it is a matter of poor record keeping on their part.

IMHO

+1

Novel legal reasoning. When they don't remove you from the ward roster, sue them and see if you can find a judge who agrees with you.

You can decide you own the Salt Lake Temple. The trick is getting someone with the legal clout to enforce your decision to agree.

It's not novel at all.

It's called freedom of association, which is the legal principle behind the current law which precludes them from disciplining you after you quit.

While you are correct that if you want to sue them for shitting on you after you quit, a formal resignation will be useful in court. The eight million of us who have quit by just quitting and walking away, are not planning on a legal action, so to quote Sir Timothy of the "It's Friday," "Who give a shit?"

:-)

Sorry, but I disagree.

Anybody who quits attending, even for a long time, is just "inactive." To assume that the person has quit is to make an unjustifiable assumption. The church is morally and legally justified in keeping the name on the membership lists.

You're legally a member until you resign or are excommunicated.

A spouse who abandons a marriage and leaves, no matter for how long, is still "married" until there is a divorce.

A citizen of Country X who emigrates to another country is still technicallly a citizen of Country X, even if there is no intention of ever returning to X.

Sorry Richard, I disagree. Both of your examples, citizenship & marriage, are legal statuses. If your born, in America, into an American Mormon family & at age, say 13, decide to walk away, you're still legally an American, but not legally a Mormon. It's like not shopping at a store, that you once did 20 years ago. You're not an "inactive customer" because you shop at their competitor. You're just not a customer.

Legally, on the store thing, it is at best a gray area.

You can put companies on notice not to make marketing calls to you, unless you have had a previous business relationship with the company.

For example, if you once held a Big Bank Visa card, but never held a River Bank Visa card. You can prohibit River Bank from contacting you by going on a Do Not Call registry. Big Bank, however, can contact you over and over and over.

Joining an organization establishes a legal status between you and that organization. It is not unreasonable for that organization to keep you on its rolls. In fact, it may be illegal for that organization to randomly remove you simply because you became inactive.

This is a company. You are not a member of that company. You once did business with them, that doesn't mean they own you.

Being a member of an organization means you have rights and responsibilities. You have no legal relationship with the LDS Church by joining, so you have no legal obligation to quit.

A marriage is a legal contract. Citizenship grants real rights and real responsibilities like paying taxes.

Church membership has no more legal meaning than belong to a treehouse club. Once you walk out the door, your membership is utterly meaningless.

BTW, you don't have to resign to tell members to leave you alone. Their church callings do not give them any more rights over you than any of your neighbors.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2015 08:11PM by axeldc.

That isn't what case law says.

If you voluntarily give info to a company that you do business with, that information becomes part of their business record and they have the right to retain and use it even after you stop doing business with them.

Courts have rule that if you join a church, then you do have a legal relationship with that church. It exists until you notify them that it doesn't. However, they can retain and use any personal information you gave them during your time as a member.

It establishes a relationship that, unless you have withdrawn your membership, the church can take disciplinary action against you. The church can direct its members to shun former members, and it can discipline members who refuse to do so.

Court cases that made it legal for Mormons to resign also established that churches can discipline members. That clearly establishes a legal relationship.

The church retains your record and just annotates. Resignation changes nothing in your relationship with the church, except that you have to "repent" if you want to come back.

If you request a Book of Mormon or ever invite the missionaries in, the church creates a record of you. We had an investigators' book in our mission apartments. We annotated it and kept records. If you didn't join, we still kept your record.

I'm still failing to see how resignation does anything to alter your legal obligations, which are nil, to LDS, Inc. The only thing Packham could come up with is that they can ex you, which is the same thing as you resigning. They consider resignation "voluntary excommunication".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2015 08:33PM by axeldc.

The marriage analogy fails even more than your post argues for.

If you get married at 8 you are NOT legally married, even in Arkansas or Utah.

You are not married to the church. Marriage is a legal contract enforced by courts. Church membership is like joining a club. It's meaningless outside the club.

I agree with Richard.

Why just go "inactive"? Does make sense. If you hate it, don't want to be contacted, or known as a member or someone who condones their doctrine, why the hell wouldn't you formally resign.

Church isn't the same as shopping at Walmart, not even fucking close.

Question-How do you formally resign from a Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, church, etc?
Answer- you don't. You just stop going & they stop counting you as a member. Resigning from something that they signed you up for at age 8 is playing into their belief that you still belong. I doubt that they ever take resigned people off their official "15 million member" total anyway.

Actually that is not exactly true.

I stopped attending a Methodist church about 25 years ago. After about six months they sent a letter asking if I wished to remain a member of record.

I answered that I did not. I suppose, in effect, that was a resignation.

"resigning" is all a power play by TSCC... they want to pretend like "membership" actually means something.

The only meaning 'membership' has is in your mind, it is not a legal status of anything...

The idea that there is a difference between "inactive", "member", "non-member", "ex-member", etc. is a column in some table of the membership database that is owned by Intelectual Property Reserve, INC. Outside of mormonism the idea of membership is truely and completely meaningless.

When you "resign" they just update your membership record, nothing gets deleted... you just have another note next to your name.

What does resigning do for you? You get a letter giving you permission to leave, yet if you never go back, you've already left. If they continue to count you as members, so what? They probably lie about you anyways.

If you send in your letter, you are recognizing their power and authority over you. You are jumping through their hoops to regain the rights and power that are already yours.

They don't stop there. They then demand you meet with the Bishop so he can try to talk you out of it, and to see if there is a good reason to excommunicate you. Again, you are putting all the power in their hands.

If you walk out the door and don't return their phone calls, you are already out. That's the way it happens in normal churches. LDS, Inc. doesn't have any more power over you just because they say so. You are just continuing to give them power over your life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2015 08:15PM by axeldc.

They give you nothing tangible and you owe them nothing. What exactly is legally binding about church membership?

If you quit going and never come back, how are you still a member? Because they decide to keep you on their rolls? That sounds like their problem, not yours.

Lapsed, lazy, jack-, resigned, inactive---whatever. That just doesn't matter.

What gets their attention isn't the label of ex-suckers, but the diminishing tithing totals.

Quit tithing. Put their business plan in jeopardy...

When you were eight years old you AGREED to be a member. That's
a binding contract as well as a sacred covenant.

It is not legal for an 8 year old to enter into a binding contract.

I agree.

That is why I personally consider TSCC to have nil members. Reasons? Well, those who are baptised aged 8 are minors, cannot enter into a contract, so their "membership" is void. Anyone joining as an adult has been lied to and had material information withheld so their membership will also be null and void.

If that is true, there is no need to resign, that only legitimises the fact you are a member. Also, if it is true, the TSCC membership is nil, not 15 million+.

What do you think?

"What do you think?"

I like the way you think.
Plus, I wish instead of parroting the "15 million member" number. Some legit reporting outfit should really drill them on that number instead of taking the churches word at face value.

I had a conversation with my wife the other day about baptism at the age of 8. Saying they are too young to make such a choice. She shot back with 'Your older son felt the spirit at the age of 5! He knew it was true.'

So you will have some who believe it's all well and good. I on the other hand know better. I know that my son aims to please. He wants to make everyone happy. And when he told my wife that he felt the spirit, she was beaming for days.

You're a smarter guy than I am. I would've responded that the 5 year old also knew that Santa & the Easter Bunny were real too.

Tom Phillips Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I agree.
>
> That is why I personally consider TSCC to have nil
> members. Reasons? Well, those who are baptised
> aged 8 are minors, cannot enter into a contract,
> so their "membership" is void. Anyone joining as
> an adult has been lied to and had material
> information withheld so their membership will also
> be null and void.
>
> If that is true, there is no need to resign, that
> only legitimises the fact you are a member. Also,
> if it is true, the TSCC membership is nil, not 15
> million+.
>
> What do you think?


I agree with this (above); it's ridiculous that 8-year-olds can make such a decision, although not sure how this would hold up under legal scrutiny.

I think any legal claim based on the above argument would fail. If anyone brought a legal claim based on the argument that the LDS church has zero members most courts, at least in the United States, would find it to be a frivolous argument and would likely impose sanctions for bringing a frivolous case.

If you brought a claim (unsure of what damages you would argue) that an 8 yo can't join the church, you might have a case IF the person never behaved as a member above the age of 18.

For example, family joins when Jimmy is 8. Five years later, entire family drifts away. Jimmy violates church law years later when he is 25 and church attempts to discipline him. Possibly, not probably but possibly, you would have the makings of a successful suit.

Unfortunately, your legal parent or guardian signed you up for a lifetime membership. An 8 year old may not be able to make such a "contract", but a parent certainly is.

Parents sign their kids up for school, daycare and all kinds of programs that have lasting impacts on kids. They can even create monetary funds in their kids name that will be transferred to them at a certain age or when an action is completed. While not the same as these examples, I think this would be considered similar.

Like it or not, when you were baptised you were made a member.

Again... there is no "contract".

the idea of "membership" has zero legal meaning in this context.

You are a "member" for as long as you choose to be a "member" and not a moment longer.

There is more legality behind your Smith's rewards card membership than there is behind membership to a church... stop giving them power that they don't have.

If members have a legal responsibility to the church, why are 60% of members inactive? Why doesn't LDS, Inc. just use this alleged legal authority to execute this supposed contract?

Because they have no legal power over you, that's why, even in Utah.

:^)

Let's clarify something, it doesn't matter to *you*.

For others here it matters a great deal. It mattered enough in the past that someone took the church to court to gain to force them to have a method to resign membership outside of excommunication.

There are many reasons why people resign from the church. To most of those it does matter. There are just as many reasons not to resign (You seem to think that it's simply pointless, others don't want to give the church the satisfaction.) Each person makes their own choice to resign or not.

It's not up to you to tell other people what they should or shouldn't do or that their actions don't matter. Their reasons for doing things are not your reasons and they do not have to justify them to you.

The church used to call resignation "voluntary excommunication". They just changed the name and made it more transparent. From the church's perspective, you still just asked to be exed. That's why they send that frightening letter warning of the eternal peril to your soul.

The courts made them take out the word "excommunication" from a liable perspective, but it substantively is still the same church procedure.

Why does everyone keep throwing "legally" around like there is some kind of magic "legal" membership to TSCC.



You stopped being a member of TSCC when you decided to stop being a member;

Now what TSCC considers a member is different. TSCC says you are a member until you either notify them that you resign, are excommunicated, notify them that you are dead, or reach 110 years of age at which point the assume that you are dead.

NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE LAW, it is all a matter of TSCC's own policies. If you choose to follow their policies and inform them that you are nolonger a member then do what you feel is right, but for fucks sake stop pretending that the policies of TSCC has anything to do with the law.

thedesertrat1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you stop attending or associating with the
> organization you have quit.

You and I and normal people see it that way, but the point of resigning is to get the CHURCH to acknowledge we are no longer answerable to it.

+1

It used to be that most people viewed resignation as a necessary step. More and more of us are seeing that jumping through their administrative hoops does nothing for you and just continues to give them power over your life that they simply do not have.

They have no legal authority over you. If they did, they wouldn't have nearly 2/3 of their membership inactive.

Under U.S. case law, a person who is a member of a church (no matter how they got to be one) is a member until they actively notify the church that they have resigned.

Until then, they are ACCORDING TO U.S. CASE LAW legally subject to that church's rules for discipline.

Most churches do not apply that strictly, and simply let people drift off into the sunset. But that does not change the law.

See Guinn v. Church of Christ, 775 P 2d 766 (1989) ( http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?citeid=10494 ) , Hadnot v. Shaw, 826 P 2d 978 (1992), and Serbian East Orthodox Church v. Milivojevich 426 US 696, 96 SCt 2372, 49 LEd 2d 151 (1976), as well as the discussion of the Hancock case at http://www.mormonalliance.org/casereports/volume3/part1/v3p1c05.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2015 06:39PM by RPackham.

They call you into their kangaroo court. You refuse the summons. They excommunicate you in absentia, and you don't give 3 fucks because you quit going already.

It's like your boss firing you after you quit showing up. BFD.

Mormon church courts have no legal meaning unless you give a damn about your membership.