If a bishop told me to give him a temple recommend, I'd say, "No, I'll be keeping it as a memento of my journey."

The document belongs to the person whose name is on it. There's no need to turn it in upon leaving the organization. If they want it, I'd let them sue or try to get an order to search my body and my home.

An easy way to avoid saying no for those who have a problem would be to say, "I'm not sure where it is." or "I think it's lost."

Members who lose or misplace TRs are not in trouble nor should those who have left be hounded for not having the TR handy.

Using a computer it's easy to shut off credit on an old credit card or shut off access to the temple using an exmo's TR.

The only reason a bish would ask for a TR is to demean someone. We've already put up with that for long enough.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2018 06:57PM by Cheryl.

Tell him "I burned it with my garments".

Cheryl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> The document belongs to the person whose name is on it.

I haven't seen a recommend recently, but a few years ago they always had this printed on them: "This recommend is the property of the [church]"

Just because something is in print doesn't make it so.

But in this case, it is, in fact, "so". It is their property.

They don't really need it back, but it is their property. Just like credit cards are the property of the bank that issued them, passports are the property of the State Department, etc. That's why they have the right to cancel them without your permission.

A police officer with a warrant would have to do it. Bishops don't have that authority and the mormon church is only playing a game in demanding this.

True. A bishop has the authority to demand it, but not to physically take it from you. Technically, he could get a warrant, though practically, it would be way more trouble than it was worth just to win what is essentially a grade school pissing contest. Besides, a judge would probably refuse the request for a warrant because she wouldn't want to be dragged into enabling said pissing contest, where there is really nothing else at stake.

Of course, lying to win the pissing contest seems a little short on integrity. No worse than what the bishop was doing in trying to pull rank. No better either.

But, the original point was the claim that it is your property because it has your name on it. That is not correct. Lots of things with your name on them are not your property and can be taken away from you (or, more likely, cancelled or revoked).

If one’s signature is on it, doesn’t one get to have a copy?

Possession still means something under the law. I am not a liar to say that's how I see it. If a company shuts off a credit card, the bearer is not required to take it to an official of the company and turn it in. They just stop using it. Anyone who would try to use a defunct card would not get far.

I don't like being demeaned as untruthful. I have a right to shred, keep or give back a TR as I see fit.

I think my first duty is to do what I think is best under the circumstances and I don't think former cult members owe defference to an organization they have left.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2018 03:55PM by Cheryl.

If you try to use a bank card and are not authorized to use it, it can be confiscated. If at an ATM, it will keep the card. If used at a merchant, they are instructed to confiscated it an return it to the bank.

Even so, I don't think the church has any power except to issue a demand. But how a person responds to that demand is up to them. There is no right or wrong way to respond.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But in this case, it is, in fact, "so". It is
> their property.
>
> They don't really need it back, but it is their
> property. Just like credit cards are the property
> of the bank that issued them, passports are the
> property of the State Department, etc. That's why
> they have the right to cancel them without your
> permission.

They can cancel or invalidate mine until the 2nd Coming, but I'm still not giving it back to them without some sort of legal imperative to do so, and even then I would claim it was lost or misplaced.

When I was asked to return my TR, I replied truthfully that I had already shredded it and it was gone.

Sorry bish, I sold it on eBay.

I only got two dollars for it.

I felt good giving it to him like taking off my shackles.

I don't think anyone even knows I gave it to him when he asked for it. And during my meeting with him, he was red in the face, sweating profusely, angry beyond reason, and looking for anything to counter all my information.

He demanded I give him my temple recommend. I told him coolly that I would gladly give it to him as I would never have need of one again and that he was saving it from the trash.


He told me to get out of his office and that we were finished.


It felt good. I didn't feel demeaned or controlled but free. The truth had freed my wallet.

It's up to the individual. I wouldn't feel that way.

In my opinion I would have liked it if he had asked for my scriptures. I don't know why I held onto those for so long. Just Mormon printed paper worth the value of....wait for it....paper.

Recycle it if you refuse to give it to the bishop. I don't know where he is going with it?

Is it true that one can get a 10% discount by flashing it at Kmart when purchasing Ty-D-Bol?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2018 02:35PM by messygoop.

No. That's just a rumor started by bishops trying to get more people to come clean ward bathrooms.

I found it in the old suitcase that my temple clothes were in. I find it to be a souvenir. It is in my wallet. It is one of the paper ones with the plastic cover over it.

I was actually getting a layaway at Wal-mart once and I opened my wallet and the worker said, "I don't need your ID as I can see you have a TR." He DID NOT look like he attended church.

The last temple recommend I had was in the mid 1980s. It was a folded piece of paper form with the Bishop's signature at the bottom, slid in to a plastic sleeve. The plastic sleeve had a magnetic strip on it like a credit card has. When you went to the temple, they slid your recommend through the card reader like a credit card. If you were authorized in their system, they let you in. Your Bishop could revoke that electronic authorization at any time.

I would guess that by now,they would give you a custom-made card that looks like an ATM card. Is that what they do now, or do they still use the paper recommend in the plastic sleeve still?

Bishop : "I'll be needing your temple recommend right now."

DtA : "Get off my property right now or I'm calling the police."

I can very much understand Elder Berry's point that turning in his TR gave him satisfaction which would help his recovery.

He also said he would have liked to turn in his so-called scriptures which set me thinking. If it would give someone satisfaction, they could turn in a crate of mormon materials with their recommend tucked between the pages of scripture or folded and hidden in the toe of a white satin temple slipper. Other items to give the bish might include old magazines, lesson books, garments, bandalos, samplers, certificates, rotten wheat and other food storage items, CTR rings, Moroni tree toppers, white hosanna hankies, and ties with mormon messages.

"Here you go, Bishop. The TR is in this crate and I brought along other appropriate items as well. Keep them or pass them on. Goodbye."

I love that mental image and idea. Thanks for brightening my day!


I'm just cracking up.


How about all those years of Ensign with the TR hidden in the pages of one.


Bishop you will have to come to my home and retrieve my boxes of church magazines. I've placed it in the pages of one of them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2018 11:00AM by Elder Berry.

It seems like a final power play of a bishop who knows they're losing control of a member.

It reminds me of the debates we've had about whether to keep temple clothes/garb.I feel possessive of mine. Some people burn them.

I totally trashed the undies--yuck. To my hubby, they're just undies that he's used to. I did insist on snipping the bottoms by 6 inches--no garmies hanging out of long shorts thank you.

“Bishop, here’s my temple recommend. Please be careful with it, I intentionally soiled it in the most foul ways possible. I recommend you wear gloves. Your obedient servant and wanker, The Boner.”

“It took me a few sessions of porn use. Here’s the baggie.”

Taking your temple recommend is a power play by the authority figure intended to demean you. Don't turn it over.

I think they really believe it's sacred. Like it's holy or something...they don't have a grip on reality that it's just a piece of paper. Or they are scared that you might actually want to waste time (or anyone else you give it to) going to the temple for a boring, Masonic-inspired fraud.

They are deluded.

Yesterday, two kidnappers grabbed a woman at our local BART train commuter station. They tried to drag her into their car. She screamed and fought back and barely escaped their clutch. If she'd grabbed their gun or gag in the escape, would she owe it to them to go to the police station and see that they received it back?

The mormon church claims to "own" TRs they issue to members by name. Does a former member owe it to them to give it back when they leave?

I don't think anyone who is abused owes their abusers a TR. This is ridiculous since the recommend is deactivated and defunct. It's of no use to a mormon bishop or anyone else.

It might be of use to the person named on it if they get satisfaction from shredding it or stashing it with other items they own.

Going back to a former cult to give them a token of cultism is as worthless as tracking down a kidnapper to give him back a gagging rag.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2018 05:23AM by Cheryl.

Temple recommends have barcodes now.

So even if you don't return it to your bishop if he asks, your recommend can be canceled by the stake president with a click.

(So if you try to enter a temple, your barcode will not work.)

Techonology at the service of the Lard.

What is the value of the card? It's how the mormon church says a person is "worthy." Taking the card is an act of proclaiming they are no longer worthy human beings.

It's a self incrimination game no one must play.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2018 07:21AM by Cheryl.

Yep. That's why God allowed technology like barcodes- to manage the vast masses of people going to the temples. (Snicker)

You know, like how God let us invent computers so the church can do genealogy.


I would simply say the card was lost (my dog ate it). What are they gonna do, sue you? Search your house? I have my old ones squirrelled away somewhere.


How about this: Tell him you don't have your recommend but instead hand him some dirty yellow and poo stained garments. "I'd be happy to return my garments!"

My bishop was a sociopath. He had failed in several different jobs, and was given a job in the COB, and was a former mission president. His wife called him "President", when she mentioned him in her talks or RS lessons. His wife was beautiful, nice, and talented, and she asked if she could join me and another lady in our ward on our hikes. She also asked me to accompany her and help her with her singing, as she had given that up, for many years. She lost weight, and sang solos with our ward and stake choirs. Her husband the bishop did not like her performing, and made her stop. He also made her stop hiking with us. He and the stake president ordered our neighborhood book club to read ONLY LDS-written Deseret books. I was an independent single woman, and he thought I was a bad influence on his wife, because I helped bring her out of her shell.

I lost my temple recommend at the temple, and almost had to miss my niece's wedding, but the temple worker called the bishop, and he verified that I really did have a recommend.

A few months later, the bishop made an appointment for me to go into his office, and he would not tell me why, and he made a big deal out of it. IN his office, he acted arrogant, like he had all the power, and he asked me if I had been attending the temple regularly. He thought he had backed me into a corner, but I answered honestly that I had lost my temple recommend, and had not gone to the temple for several months. He gave me a smug grin, and pulled my recommend out of his drawer, telling me he had had it the whole time. Someone had found it in the temple that day, and had turned it in. I said, "Thank you, and reached for it, and he pulled it away, and said, "I think I'll keep this in my drawer for a while. You haven't been paying a full tithing." I said that I thought the recommend was good for one year, but he said he had the authority to judge my worthiness, and he was not going to give my recommend back to me. I said, "Well, I guess I can't go to the temple, then, right? So, what's the point in paying tithing."

I think that bishop was angry at me, because I had no respect for him. We had been in the same line of work, and I (a lowly female) made a whole lot more money than he did, all on my own, with no husband to help support me and my kids. His kids were having bad problems. He was in debt, borrowing money from church members. Our house was much nicer than his, and we had lived here longer than he had. I'm sure it shook his faith that my family was so much more "blessed" than his family. After all, they were so much more "temple worthy".

Three years after we resigned, the bishop's wife fell into a deep depression, and she had to be hospitalized, and put onto heavy medication. He lost his house in foreclosure, and moved away.

Sorry to digress--but a TR can definitely be used as a weapon in a power struggle!

Your bishop was well and truly a jerk on a power trip. I think bishops that bad are rare, but not nearly as rare as they ought to be. He sounds like he was a total toxic person. Too bad his wife didn't have the strength of character to divorce him. Not that I blame her. The LDS culture goes to some pains to discourage women in particular from standing up for themselves.

Before scannable TRs, there actually was a reason for asking for the return of the TR. There was no easy way to verify at the temple entrance if a TR had been cancelled or not. There may well have been a list of people who should not be allowed it, but it was likely only local, so if the person went to another temple, they could get in.

Side note: those of us of a certain age remember the days when businesses had to check in a booklet with extremely small print of page after page of cancelled credit card numbers, to see if your card was valid. I think the booklet was published every two weeks. Glad those days are gone.

Now, with scannable TRs, it is an easy matter to cancel it automatically and verifiable at all temples. They have no need to retrieve the TR. Maybe (probably, in my opinion) the bishop is merely trying to assert dominance. I suspect he might also just be "following orders". I bet the Church Handbook of Instructions (CHI) instructs him to ask for the TR back, in which case it is LDS Inc that is trying to assert dominance. They know damn well they don't need it back.


One final quirk. When LDS Inc first changed to scannable TRs, they briefly returned to standard paper TRs for a while, then went back to scannable. I always wondered if they were having technical problems with the scanning equipment, or if they were appalled by the expense of scannable TRs, but then finally decided they were even more appalled at "unworthy" people getting into temples, and returned to the electronic system. I doubt we will ever find out, but I will assume it was the cost. With LDS Inc it is usually about the money. :)

Why have the power of a hall monitor if you can’t use it?

TRs are very serious documents to official mormon leaders. They're weapons against anyone they dislike and rewards for those they favor.

Just have all TR ready members get a tattoo of the current profit on their arm. Good until the profit dies.

In my opinion making a big deal of a TR and whose it is and whether you are empowered with it is much the same as whether resignation has anything to do with "power plays" with the Mormon Church.

Playing with the Mormon Church isn't a good idea for myself.

If informing them of your intent to leave, or keeping your TR after leaving empowers you - good deal!

simply ignoring the insulting demand and watching the birds peck for seed in the garden.

I thought it was an insulting demand to continue questioning me after I told him I didn't believe. All you have to do to join is pass an interview but to leave it seems required as well?

I applaud people who told The Mormons that they wanted no contact and no longer considered themselves Mormons at their doorstep, on the phone, or now some sort of email, text, or post.

Or you could just tell them you put it through a shredder.

Actually, I think the best suggestion was from Cheryl, up thread:

"[Elder Berry] also said he would have liked to turn in his so-called scriptures which set me thinking. If it would give someone satisfaction, they could turn in a crate of mormon materials with their recommend tucked between the pages of scripture or folded and hidden in the toe of a white satin temple slipper. Other items to give the bish might include old magazines, lesson books, garments, bandalos, samplers, certificates, rotten wheat and other food storage items, CTR rings, Moroni tree toppers, white hosanna hankies, and ties with mormon messages."

"Here you go, Bishop. The TR is in this crate and I brought along other appropriate items as well. Keep them or pass them on. Goodbye."

If you want to be snarky with the bishop, I'm fully in favor of snark with panache! Seriously. If he is going to pull a horsesh*t stunt like demanding your TR back, dumping all the Mormon trash on him would be a perfect rebuttal.

Bandalos! Ah, the good old days.

Way up-thread, I made the following comments, which I am afraid caused some confusion.

"True. A bishop has the authority to demand it, but not to physically take it from you. Technically, he could get a warrant, though practically, it would be way more trouble than it was worth just to win what is essentially a grade school pissing contest. Besides, a judge would probably refuse the request for a warrant because she wouldn't want to be dragged into enabling said pissing contest, where there is really nothing else at stake.

Of course, lying to win the pissing contest seems a little short on integrity. No worse than what the bishop was doing in trying to pull rank. No better either."
--------------------------------------------

By 'pissing contest' I meant that there was no real benefit to LDS Inc to getting the TR back, and there was no real benefit to the exMo to keeping it. This was purely about spite, on both sides.

The second paragraph is where the confusion resulted. "...lying to win the pissing contest seems a little short on integrity." There are quite a few posts in this thread that have variations of "I would tell the bishop I lost the card." That's the lie I was referring to. Sure, it is a lie of vanishingly small consequence. But the entire argument is of vanishingly small consequence.

I remember a discussion with Bob McCue (one of our articulate posters from years past) where he was lamenting how often the advice on RFM boils down to "lie about it". It is usually small lies (I lost the TR) or even lies by implication (I won't answer the door and make them think I am not home) or partial lies ('I don't have time to accept a calling right now', which may well be true, but you have no intention of accepting the calling ever).

He works in corporate mergers, so there are often billions of dollars in the process of changing corporate hands, and he said that in that field, even the tiniest hint of being willing to bend the truth would be fatal to your career. He joked that golf is so popular among people in the field because if a the person you are working with cheats at golf (a form of "inconsequential" lying) you knew to be very wary of that person, and avoid working with them if at all possible.

I'm sure the golfers on the board could give their opinion of people who cheat at golf!


The second word in my statement that caused some concern for Cheryl was "integrity". Let me show what I mean by that.

Simply refusing to give the bishop the TR is kind of a spiteful thing to do. You are showing contempt for his authority, after all. But it does have integrity. You said exactly what you meant. You were "a single thing" which is what the root of the word means.

Telling the bishop that he doesn't need your TR, he can cancel it electronically, also has integrity. The "No, I won't return it" is very clearly implied, and your statement shows that you know he is just trying to pull rank.

Saying "I lost it" (unless you did lose it), while not awful, falls short on the integrity scale. It's like cheating at golf. Worse in a way. Cheating at golf, at least you are trying to win the game. Arguing with your bishop about a TR is pointless, of no consequence other than dominance, and you can't possibly lose. He has no way to enforce his demand. Just say no, or ignore him.

Accusing former mormons of lacking integrity for not turning in defunct temple recommends makes no sense.

I do have integrity.

Those who accuse me of lacking it are suspect at best.

No. I would not not save a recommend for a bishop. That's a worthless exercise. Pandering to the mormon cult does not appeal to me. They haven't enriched my life. They're not my friends. Nor is anyone who claims I am lack integrity.

After reading everyone's posts, I think it would be funny to tell the B you would go home to retrieve it, garb your garmies and other churchie stuff you did not want, and give the box to him.

Make sure you did not wash the garmies and tell him the recommend is lovingly wrapped in your garmies

or burn the darned thing and give him the ashes.

lots of ideas on how to return the recommend

you mean just like there is No need to go to the (stupid) LDS temple ???? even though MORmONISM says that it is ultra important

My dad passed away in April 2000 and a couple of days after his funeral, my sister and I (and his wife) were going through boxes of his stuff, including canceled checks going back many years. Among other things in the boxes of checks, we found a business type envelope with all of his Temple Recommends from the time he and my mom went through the temple for the first time, 1965 onward. I was already out but my TBM sister seemed to want them. I assume she still has them but who knows.

I also found a business type envelope with all the canceled checks that he'd written while I was on my mission, 1968- 1970, 32 years earlier. I tossed them. There was about 30 checks

The social security people claimed he needed them to retire and he came up with them which meant added income for the rest of his life. Good for him for saving them.