Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
)
Date: October 24, 2015 01:15AM
Quitting the church is like a divorce in the sense that just walking away from a marriage does not dissolve the marriage in the eyes of the law. Similarly, just walking away from a church, any church, does not dissolve the membership. They may drop you from the local congregation roster, but if you show up twenty years later, you will still be considered a Catholic or whatever.
BTW, a fair percentage of divorces don't involve alimony these days. A fair number don't have children, so no support or custody issues. Sometimes there is no property that needs to be formally divide up in the divorce. None of that is relevant. The marriage is not technically over until one spouse files for and is granted a divorce.
Resigning is simpler, and you don't need to involve a judge unless the other party refuses to recognize the resignation, but the principle is the same. Once the membership is established, either party can terminate the membership, but they are required to tell the other party the membership is over. If the church excommunicates you, they are obligated to tell you, and LDS Inc is quite fastidious about that. And if you want the membership legally terminated, you are obligated by the courts to tell the church. If you don't do that, as far as the legal system is concerned, you are still a member.
All that really means is that as long as you are a member, the church can sanction or terminate your membership. You may not care about that in the least, but it is the one right they have as long as you are a member.
Cheryl, in your particular case, you had what I believe is known in the legal trade as a "constructive resignation". That's where you don't actually write a letter to resign, but make it so abundantly clear by your actions that you want no part of them, that they did the resignation paperwork for you. That kind of makes you the proof of concept case. It's possible to resign without writing a letter or email, but it takes a lot of work to accomplish it that way. Me, I took the easy way out.