Hello, RFM,

It's been a while. I hope everyone is doing well. I hope those of you who are new, are getting the support that you need, especially if your exit is/has been rough and raw. For those of you who haven't left the board, I hope things are going well for you as you give your support to others.

I don't have much to do with Mormonism lately unless I'm visiting "home," or when I choose to since I haven't stopped researching religions and world mythologies - because I like doing unto that.

With that being said, I do have a few posts in me because this summer was unusually Mormon heavy, and I thought that some of you might be interested.

I decided to go to a class reunion a few weeks ago even though I was originally not interested at all about attending. The school I went to was about 90% Mormon, and I've only stayed in touch with a scant handful of people since graduation, all of whom have left the church, or weren't Mormon to begin with.

As the reunion was announced a few months ago, a social media group was formed in order to invite us to the event as well as discuss said thing. The admins of the group encouraged people who would be attending to post updates of their lives as they felt comfortable, in order for us to re-get to know each other before the event, since more time has passed from graduation than we'd been alive at the time of our schooling.

Pretty much all of the posts originally were laden with Mormon signifiers. People talked about missions and temple marriages and having so many children as to need an entire world for their brood. My best friend from school (who has also left the church) and I discussed these posts privately, and we both agreed that this event was a hard pass at the time.

However, something unexpected happened. As more people started posting updates on their lives, there were posts creeping in that lacked any Mormon signifiers from people whom I had known were true believers as I had been during school. Further, a few people were openly discussing drinking meetups if no alcohol was going to be served at the event.

I started to get tempted to go. The writer in me was becoming curious as to what this would be like if there were more ex-Mormons than myself and a few others I knew. I talked to my friend, and we both were kind of like unto, "I'll go if you'll go," kicking it back and forth for a week, until I realized that it was now half the people in this social media group that weren't Mormon anymore, and then I was definitely going. And I wanted to see if I could sneak an informal poll.

My friend informed me that his mother offered to host us and a small group to "pre-game" at her house, near the school. And that was immensely funny to me. We got booze and snacks to my friend's mom's house because she's cool like unto that, and partied a bit before a school reunion.

My friend and I went to the event. Everyone was nice, and I was able to probe some groups of people, and got some help with a few other people who had also left the church which really surprised me.

Returning and reporting to each other, we all came up with an informal number of like unto 50% of people we had known in school had left the church. And we were all struck by the significance of that figure. Most everyone had had kids. I don't because I eat mine. But that's a separate issue.

Our school, having been one of the highest Mormon concentrations, (we had one of the largest seminary programs on the planet) has now been devastated by apostasy. And they are parents whose children will also most likely stay away from the church.

Of course, as people move around, I couldn't say what my former school's current religious demographics are now. That would be interesting to know, but this mass apostasy has significant ripple effects. One of which being, my peers can't be vicious about apostasy, without getting ripped apart themselves. There are too many of us. If half a population leaves a religion, every person knows at least one person who has left the church, but most likely knows several people who have left. That puts real pressure on an organization to have a cultural shift.

It also allows for people who are unhappy to see in person what real people are like who leave the church. My seminary experience was riddled with apostasy propaganda where Brother Fakename Realguy was a happy Mormon who first started peeking at women's bare shoulders which lead him to questioning god's perfect morality, causing him to become addicted to sniffing markers before finally cursing the heavens as he died in the gutter from an acute lack of the holy spirit.

Which maybe happened ONE TIME.

The rest of us left the church, had some stuff to work through - which takes time and effort - but then are eventually much happier.

The second coming of Jesus: I feel enraptured! Or should I say enraptored?

My high school had a reunion recently, too, in a heavily Mormon area. I couldn't attend--it was a galaxy long ago and far, far away--but the Mormon signals were rife in the advertisements, Facebook group, etc., and a non-Mo friend who went reported a high concentration of Mormons with nary a non-white to be seen.

I know that the core of the class was, and remains, stridently Mormon. But I suspect a lot of the heretics simply did not attend. It seems that the reunions have, at this point, devolved into unofficial seminary events convened under the high school banner.

There must be dozens of different patterns for how these reunions evolve in various areas.

>>stridently Mormon<<

What a perfect description!

Misfiled post



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2019 07:17PM by 3X.

Raptor Jesus! Holy cow, that is a blast from the past. Good to see you back.

I'm glad your reunion went well. I don't think it's a good thing when any one religion predominates. It's good to have a mix of people and beliefs (or non-beliefs) so that no one group gets too full of themselves.

What happened in your school is also happening in Salt Lake City, which is now majority non-Mormon. It's happening to a lesser extent in some other parts of the Moridor as well. The Mormon church is slowly losing its grip.

Quite amazing in its own way. But since there were only two of us who were Mormons at my high school, I guess it's not too amazing. IIRC, the other one pretty much gave up on the church as soon as she moved away from home to go to college. I stuck it out to do a mission and go to YBU, but was through with it all before my senior year at YBU. (It was a weird experience being an apostate for an entire school year at BYU. Fortunately, that was before they started proactively kicking people out for being insufficiently active and stuff.)

Hey RJ, how lovely to see you again - and bringing such good news too!

Best wishes to you

Tom in Paris

Raptor Jesus, it's nice to hear from you again-I always liked your posts. Thank you for the interesting information!

You should stop by more often RJ. We could start some markers, er, drinking threads for you. Well, I won't because I have a gazillion others to start. Did I mention I come from polygamists? Must be something about our inbreeding. I'm a different breed. I don't think I have any Neanderthal in me at all! It got inbred out.

OMG! I did hear that rumor about you. LOL! I'd like to hear about your various cousins. Hahahaha!

Raptor Jesus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It also allows for people who are unhappy to see
> in person what real people are like who leave the
> church.

I think that's why the church has always tried to fill up members' time with church-focused stuff. Don't give them time to socialize outside the fold of active believers, don't let them get up close and personal with apostates or even slackers.

What a hopeful, optimistic post! Great report.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the power dynamic has flipped. When I left, pre-social media, it felt like the isolated ex-mo didn’t stand a chance. Now it seems the elderly gatekeepers tasked with keeping LDSinc rolling forward don’t stand a chance.

Thanks for stopping in, RJ.

to make sure it was NOW! You are one of my favorite posters of all time!

50%--WOW! That is amazing.

There is no way in hell I'd go to a class reunion in little Brigham City, Utah. I went when I was pregnant with twins and left after 10 minutes. My kids are almost 34.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2019 02:52PM by cl2.

Good to hear from you, Raptor Jesus!

Thank God for the "Lost Generation."

My SLC neighborhood is made up mostly of the parents of the "Lost Generation," In my experience, many of those young adults have helped their parents escape the cult. For example, the bishop's son married a never-mo who is black, and their daughter decided to be a career girl, with no children. when another neighbors' son announced that he was gay, both parents and his sister resigned from the cult. Many of their kids left Utah to pursue a career or education elsewhere, and most of them have left Mormonism, too. I think it's because the outside world gives them a more expansive, accurate perspective. Anyway, as a result, fewer of the older Mormons have grandchildren who are still Mormon.

The generation in the middle is also influencing their siblings and relatives to NOT go on missions. The younger ones are witnessing this increased happiness and success that results from freedom from the cult, and they want to follow that. They want facts, reality, proof, and scientific evidence. These days, lies are more quickly detected than they ever were.

I like this trend. If we're patient, maybe, in time, the Mormon church will be nothing but a shadow religion of crazy old geezers, like the Big 15, a rotting off-shoot of a big business corporation that is spending itself into bankruptcy.

RJ, another point is that the number of early-return missionaries is increasing. It's currently over 25% (and I want to say that it's about 27-28%, but I can't remember the exact figure.) Those are early returns for all reasons including medical, but it's also getting more and more common for missionaries to simply nope their way out of there.

I really enjoyed reading this post! And I’m glad you had this positive experience, especially when you initially thought it would be an awful no-go. 50% is a lot more than I’d ever expect too. I hope this becomes an ever increasingly trend - It’s so hard to know for sure once you’re out of it. One thing I did notice post-mormonism is that mormons were not *that* shocked - either that someone else had left, or for my reasons for doing so. But that’s another topic, just as you eating your kids is. Later...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2019 01:02PM by LJ12.

Raptor Jesus, good to know you are doing well. Your hilarious posts were one of the main reasons I kept checking in on RfM after I'd first posted years ago.

This is Raptor Jesus' book found on Amazon. I hope it is okay to post it here.


The Passion of Raptor Jesus and the Road to Mormon Apostasy (Raptor Jesus Series Book 1) Kindle Edition
by Raptor Jesus (Author)

Thanks for the drop-by. Much appreciated and shared.

BcE

I doubt there were many TBMs at the reunion pretending to be exMo, but there were likely some people hanging on to Mormonism by a thread yet pretending to be TBM.

So RJ's 50% figure may be a bit low. The upper local leadership of LDS Inc is still the Boomers, but over the next 30 years they will completely die off, and the ranks of the younger generations are looking pretty thin.

I'm just glad I'm not in charge of rearranging deck chairs on this doomed cruise.

Thanks for the "return and report", RJ

Morbidism never was HAPPINESS.

People are seeking REAL happiness.

And finding it.

Yeah!

I graduated a long time ago from a High School in Utah, our reunion committee is about 50% nevermo and exmo and 50% tolerant mos.

The last reunion I guessed about 50% of my former friends were still active, garment wearing, mos. A large number of former TBM classmates were now obviously ex-TBMs and not afraid to show it.

We have a classmate who is an apostle. He did not come.

A friend of mine brought his husband who he introduced to the group and got a very sincere and warm reception from many TBMs. This was one of the best things I have ever seen at a high school reunion and gave me faith that maybe humans will be alright after all.

I actually thought about you recently and wondered how you were. Glad to know you still eat children.

What? De-raptured Jesus is slumming? Sounds like you're doing OK, RJ.

Hey RJ !


Missed my reunion this year in the midwest. My sis and I were the only Mormons in the school except for a brother and sister who were Reorganized LDS. Nobody knew the difference so we were lumped into the same category. Since Sis (I think but not sure) and I are out, I guess that's a 100% decline for us.

I have no idea if the reorganized bro and sis are still in the Community of Christ but I know that nobody in our high school cares or would probably even know.

There are about two or three deaths every year in my HS class. Most are from cancer but one was a gun shot wound.