I was told by a non Mormon friend that to resign from The Mormon church you have to write a letter I never heard of having to write a letter to leave a church what happens if one doesn’t can one just not go go to another church or no other church at all is joining the church a legal contract I don’t remember signing anything when I got baptized My friends roommate used to be Mormon and he had to write a letter to the church to get out so I don’t wanna be a member of the church I have to write a letter. What will they do to me? If I don’t will I face legal consequences.

    I think that, on a practical basis, you're on the right track.  Leaving a religion mostly depends on what you did to 'sign up' for the religion...  It's kind of like being a fan of a sports team!  If all you did was sit in front of a TV and root for them, you don't have to write them a letter to tell them you're done with them.  But if you signed up for season tickets, and then comes a year when you don't to root for them anymore, you may have to write that letter in order not to be subject to whatever rules you agreed to when you became a fan.

    The "write a letter to my church" thing is pretty much an offshoot result of a lawsuit titled:

    Marian GUINN, Plaintiff-Appellee,
                v.
    The CHURCH OF CHRIST OF COLLINSVILLE, Oklahoma, a non-profit corporation; Allen Cash, Ted Moody and Ron Witten, Defendants-Appellants. (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14957090786981708632&q=guinn+v.+church+of+christ+of+collinsville&hl=en&as_sdt=2006&as_vis=1)

    I think it's a fun read and I hope you agree...

    I quit attending the mormon church many years ago and never wrote a letter.  It doesn't bother me at all to politely tell messengers from the church that I don't attend because I don't believe mormonism is what it touts itself to be: inerrant!  Yeah, like that's possible!!

    But some people enjoy cutting the cord formally, and that's fine.  If you visit r/exmormon (on Reddit.com), you'll likely come across a post from someone posting a copy of their return letter from the church, acknowledging their request to be "removed" from the church rolls.

    But all that 'resigning' from the church does is move your computer records into a category where they pretend to ignore you so that they don't give you grounds for suing me like Ms. Guinn sued her old church.

    If writing the letter makes you feel good, go for it!  I take the point of view that I didn't leave the church; it left me!  I'm still mormon, and they claim they no longer want to be identified as such, so who left whom?

The big question is can the church legally do something to me if I don’t resign? Ie take legal action of some kind I don’t think they have legal custody over a person, right

    I bet they wish they could sue you for back tithing...!!

    The only "power" they have, absent any contract you might have signed, is the power of the pulpit.  This means they could tell your fellow members that you did something naughty and that they shouldn't talk to you or spit on your shadow, etc.  This was at one time a powerful action, but pretty much it has become meaningless.

    The Deseret News used to publish the names of people who'd been excommunicated and from what ward and this had some effect, but now, not so much.

    Guinn v. Church of Christ gives you, once you write up and hand in your resignation, specific power over them.  But "Truth" is always a defense, so if you peed in the baptismal font and they have it on film, resigning isn't going to prevent them from trying to shame you.

No, they cannot take any legal action against you.

The worst they can do is excommunicate you.

But as noted below by BoJ, you can resign by email.

You can leave the church anytime you feel like it. You can join another church anytime you feel like it. No letter required.

What the letter is required for is terminating your membership. You basically have to tell them you are terminating your membership. Otherwise, as far as they (and the law) are concerned, you are still a member. Most churches don't really care - you don't show up for a few years, and they drop you from the membership rolls. The LDS Church has a stick up their butts, so they insist on a formal resignation to end your membership. They used to insist that they had to excommunicate you to end your membership, until the courts slapped them down and said they could not require that.

As for what you signed when you were baptized, if you were a minor, your parents signed for you, as they are legally empowered to do. You get to live with their decision until you are 18. After that, you can undo it by resigning. You don't get to just say "it doesn't count because I was a child". Your parents signing for you counts.

If you don't resign there are no legal consequences, other than (1) they will still count your as a member, which means you will be on some ward roster, and they may try to "reactivate" you from time to time, which is their right to do with their members. (2) They can excommunicate you.

If you resign, you will no longer be on any ward membership list, though it may take them awhile to get their paperwork up to date. You won't be on the official roster. And once you've resigned, they can no longer excommunicate you.

You may not care about either of those things, in which case, there is no real need to resign. Nothing wrong with that. For some people, officially terminating their membership is important to them, and the courts have guaranteed them that right.

It's not that big a burden. Look up Richard M Nixon's resignation letter. I think it is all of two sentences long. All you have to do is clearly identify yourself, and tell them you are resigning your membership. They are required by law to honor your demand. You can actually do it by email.

See: https://www.exmormon.org/remove.htm

> Look up Richard M. Nixon's
> resignation letter.  I think
> it's ... two sentences long.


    As ghawd is my witness, I never knew Nixon was once a mormon!!!

No, he requested name removal from the White House.

    ... I'm giggling!!!  Thanks!

Ah yes, back in the day when presidents could get through two sentences with no spelling errors. . .

And no ALL CAPS either.

AND NO COVFEFES EITHER!!!

All right, no hamberders for you.

As a last resort, you could live to be 111 years old. If the church can't locate you then, they will take you off the active list.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > Look up Richard M. Nixon's
> > resignation letter.  I think
> > it's ... two sentences long.
>
>
>     As ghawd is my witness, I never knew Nixon
> was once a mormon!!!

I should get a prize for thinking in my head that EOD was going to say this exact thing!!!

Three exclamation points back atcha. :P

(I did do a double take on that sentence I must confess but I figured it out without having to query it).

> I should get a prize for
> thinking in my head that
> EOD was going to say this
> exact thing!!!


    A prize or a diagnosis?

As fate would have it, my written resignation was received by LDS Inc on July 5, 2004. Happy 20th Anniversary to me! :)

I deliberately mailed it so that it would arrive as close to Independence Day as I could manage. I'm not above a little symbolism.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As fate would have it, my written resignation was
> received by LDS Inc on July 5, 2004. Happy 20th
> Anniversary to me! :)

Yes, indeed!

20 years. Is that all it's been? :)

I live in the United States I have no family in the church so I think everyone is saying, I could just walk away if I choose

Yes.

Bad Mormon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I live in the United States I have no family in
> the church so I think everyone is saying, I could
> just walk away if I choose

I have no family in the church. I met some Mormons who became friends (or so I thought at the time). I accepted their invitation to go to church with them and succumbed to pressure (from others, not so much them) to get baptized. I had no idea what the church was about. Made a big assumption that it was just another Christian church.

After a series of unfortunate incidents, most especially my idiotic impulse to let them baptize me, I left in short order. I never heard from any official church people, never formally resigned and nobody's bugged me either to return or to formally quit.

If you don't want to make a big deal out of withdrawing your membership it's not a requirement. If they keep trying to draw you back in or if any other negative encounters or events occur you may want to make it formal, asking them to consider you a non-member and to stop contacting you.

You can do it any time - there's no rush or time limit on it.

Most people (in the US and worldwide) who leave the mormon church don't resign, they just stop attending.

The only thing that resigning does is to remove you as an official member. The worst that happens is you don't resign is that they may send missionaries around to try to reactivate you.
If they do, you are under no obligation to talk to them.

So yes, you can jusy walk away.

You can walk away any time. However, the church tends to look for something you did to "sin" so they might try to excommunicate you. It looks better to the members if someone got kicked out instead of choosing to leave. You can ignore whatever clubhouse crap rules they want to do if you want. Joining another church is probably something to cause an excommunication, but I'm not sure anymore.

I officially resigned by sending in a letter because I wanted it to be clear that I broke up with them, and not the other way around. I don't want them counting me on their rolls. I don't want to be lying when I say I am NOT Mormon. If none of that matters to you, there is no need to do anything.

If you are still on their rolls, they will periodically keep trying to find you, and will probably contact your relatives to keep track of you.

All the authority they have is what you give them. Their special status with God is all in their heads. Did they burn the midnight oil in divinity school? No, they were appointed by friends who themselves received insufficient training for the job. They consider themselves members of a heavenly ruling class by virtue of learning secret handshakes in their special clubhouse, the temple.

I am done humoring other people's madness. I have my own madness to worry about. You don't owe them jack shiz.

Resigning is not doing the church some sort of favor. It is not something you do for them. It is something you do to them. It is a notice that you are firing them.

It is also the one time that you give them an order and they have to comply. That really frosts their corn flakes. In their worldview, they never take orders, they give them. That’s why they still call it “requesting name removal”. That makes it sound like they get to decide whether to “remove” your name. That’s not true.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is a notice that you are firing them.


Yes, that's how I thought of it.

Could someone submitted resignation letters for some of your ward?

My junior high mentality kicked in and thought such a crank would be funny as an April Fools joke.

That’s known as forgery or false representation, or something like that. Courts take an extremely negative view of actions like that. No sense of humor whatsoever.

You don't have to write anything. It's a personal thing. For me, it was about making a statement. It was about letting them know that I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with them, and that I did not want my name associated with their organization.

It was also about not wanting to be on their list of inactive members, where they would always be responsible for trying to bring me back again.

In the 19 years that I've lived in this home, I've only ever seen missionaries on my street once. They went to the house next door, skipped my house, and went to the next house. I said, "Yes!"

I enjoyed resigning. For me it was like divorce. I am done with you. I was tired of people showing up at my door. I had to have something notarized so I got two things one at once.

They have shown up a couple of times and I enjoy watching their jaws drop when I tell them I legally resigned :)

Mormons consider God's law to be above secular law, so your legal resignation is a mere formality. It means you need some space, not that you're no longer a member. The way they see it, you're still kinda their wife but they don't get to stalk you.

I haven't resigned and they haven't excommunicated me. I'm still a mormon priest.

If you stop attending but don't resign they can still hassle you: phone calls, show up at your door, etc.

A key benefit of resigning is you can shut that down.

So it could come down to who gives better “hassle”!

I never resigned and simply do not care if my name is on the records or not.

If they did excommunicate me, then I would consider it a gift.

In the meantime I have fun from time to time. My TBM co-worker asked me a couple of weeks ago what I thought of the new apostle.

I stared blankly at him and said I do not follow news from the church and had no idea there was a new one. I then finished it up with a "and I simply do not care."

He fumbled about with his reply, got that Mormon look on his face and went back to his work.

Being an apostle is rock stardom for guys who can't play a musical instrument.