I was a convert myself and I'm curious to hear from you all. What made you decide to join the church? What made you decide to leave it?

I've given this a lot of thought over the years. I was only 14 or 15 when I was receiving the first discussions. It shocks me now that my parents allowed me to be baptized, but that's another story.

When the missionaries taught me the story of the First Vision, I may have been young, but I remember my eyebrow shot up and I was like, "Oh, yeah?" I thought they were crazy. They didn't really believe that stuff, did they?

But the thing is that I was a timid, bullied teen. The teens I met at church didn't bully me, and I had a peer group for the first time in my life. I think that's why my parents allowed me to be baptized as well, because they were so happy that their shy daughter was getting involved with some really nice kids.

I think it was the social group which did it for me. Of course I was under constant pressure to be baptized. It still took them a year and a half to get me into the water. But my best friend had been baptized 6 months before me, and I was loved and accepted there.

So I think I somehow managed to put aside my misgivings about the Church's origins and just think to myself, "Well, it could happen. Right?" And I was baptized.

Of course those same people, who were so friendly back then, aren't so friendly once you leave. A few of them are and I appreciate them, but I always wonder what they say about me when I'm not there. They're probably just sad, which makes me sad, because they don't need to be. They probably think it's a tragedy that I left. The ole, "She used to be so strong," stuff. But I'm so much happier now, and free. I'm gradually trying to get that across to them.

My best friend is as TBM as they come, so I still do run into those folks every now and then. So yep. I think it was the social aspect of it which got me into the water.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2011 10:28AM by Greyfort.

I was baptized in the army when I was nineteen. My drill sargent was a chaplin's assistant, that was his MOS and he told us we had to go to church on Sundays. There was a mormon solider in my company, and she would take the bus off base to the church, and I tagged along with her one week. To get off base was a treat. I went back the next week and explained that I was being medically discharged and they said they would baptize me that week and I was. I got over half the lessons in one day!

I got home, and missionaries came to greet the new memeber. They taught two friends of mine and in the course of that I realized I had never got the after baptism lessons. It was all downhill from there. Hell, I didn't really understand the pre-baptism lessons.

I tried to hang on for a few years, but in the end I just stopped going. Then returned to the religion of my youth.. Last year I left the mormon chruch offically, and I ain't looking back!

Congrats to you. That was quite a ride. And it amazes me how Mormons rush people into their fold....so why the hurry? We all know it is for the numbers and then to pile on the guilt.

I was also a teen. I had a decent circle of friends at school and a loving extended family although I lived with a single mom in poverty. My father visited, but he was a little bit paranoid schizophrenic.

I wanted a family that held high expectations for me and my potential. The social network was great although I had to travel 45 miles one way to get to church - that added a sort of pride to it as well.

Then I went to BYU and got married right away to the first RM who showed an interest. We were good little obedient sheep, and produced 3 sons by the time I was 24, but it wasn't working for either of us and we left together before our 10th anniversary. It will be our 34th anniversary in 2012.

I was a teenager at the time, & it gave me an identity which after a few years it then robbed me of.
I did enjoy the social side of it & the friendships I had with other members in the early years.
Married, DH still TBM, I finally found the confidence to leave 3 years ago, since when I've found out the truth about a lot of things in TSCC & haven't looked back!
Stuck it out for over 30 years though in all.

Received the first discussion when I was 15 and went to F&T meeting with my friend's family. That freaked me out, so i stopped going.

A year later my boyfriend was Mormon, so I tried again and took all of the discussions. My mom wouldn't let me get baptized at age 16, so I had to wait until my 18th b-day. I think rebelling against my mom by becoming a zealous mormon was what did it for me. Her restriction on not getting baptized made me want it more. Too bad she never gave me a good reason why the Mormon church was bad. She let me go to church on Sunday's, mutual, and seminary.

Also, my parents were divorced, we watch tv while we ate dinner that we made for ourselves, and overall The Simpsons looked like a good model family from what I grew up in. We didn't have any abuse, buyer lack of quality time and relationships. The Mormon church and my boyfriends family provided all those things for me that I didn't have - dinner on real plate at the table, home cooked food, cultural entertainment, etc.

My boyfriend broke up with me, but I was so involved with the ward as the "golden contact" that I kept going. I had a lot of pride that I was so "righteous" and I wasn't even baptized yet!

I went to BYU in January 2000 and was married by June. According to Mormon standards, I've had the perfect life - homemaker, children, homemade dinners, etc. I became a Stepford wife.

Now that I have seen the truth for what it is, I am now in school and volunteer in the local community (homeless work). My life is so much more fulfilling, but it causes my husband great concern since he's TBM. He thinks I'm spending too much time away from home. I still take care of the kids, cook, and clean - so he's the one with the problem. I involve the kids with me when I do what I do, so I know it's not taking away from them.


I left the church because I learned history that I had never been taught - polyandry, 14 year old brides, Joseph Smith's criminal record was real and not fake. Also, the Book of Abraham and the First Vision accounts were a HUGE factor!

I joined the church when I was 14. My sis was a senior in high school at the time, and she had been a Mo since converting at the age of 12 through one of her friends at school. I was part of her missionary campaign. I kept asking her questions, and she kept on inviting me to listen to the missionaries. I said no maybe 5 or 6 times before I finally agreed.
I think at the time, I needed a sense of belonging to something greater than myself. Our home life left much to be desired. Our father wasn't around much. He was too busy living a double life at his out-of-town job during the week, and only being a father/husband on the weekends, and even then he was distracted with his pet projects. My mom was just trying to cope with it all. I think the church gave me some sense of what a family was supposed to be. I'd go to church, and hear about family values, and that was something missing in my life that I wanted.

Why I left is a long story. But, short and simple, I decided that the Book of Mormon was fiction. Therefore, the church wasn't true. And if the church wasn't true, then it wasn't worth the time and money and resources that I was dumping into the church. And it wasn't worth sitting through 3 boring hours every week to listen to reasons why I should go to the temple and be reminded of promises I made to give everything I have and ever will have to the church. It wasn't worth listening to reasons why I should convert my friends. Why would i want my friends to come to church if I hated it? So I stopped going to church because it wasn't true and it just wasn't worth my time. So what if I'm not with my family for 3 hours a week. I still have them the rest of the week.

nicely said!

Wow. Thanks! I was going to write something much longer about my exit, but I just don't have the patience to write long posts. So I just tried to keep things succinct.

I joined the church when I was a 28 year old single mom with four little boys.

I was desperate to have some help raising the kids and they described their programs in glowing terms. I was pretty much uninterested in what they believed. I asked them if they had any weird beliefs. They glanced at each other and said, "No." So I said, "You are pretty much just a protestant religion, Father/Son/Holy Ghost?" They said yes.

I was so excited about Boy Scouts. After they grew up, one of my boys told me of being molested at scouts. And, of course, after joining, I married a Mormon who invited me to have inappropriate contact with his teenage boys!!!!!!

Not weird, not weird at all.


Anagrammy

I was 19, deeply dissatisfied with the faith I had grown up in (Catholicism) searching for definite, concrete answers to questions about my existence, life, death, etc. And I was estranged from my family at the time. There was a major void in my life. A Mormon friend, seeing my struggle (and vulnerability), suggested meeting with the missionaries......I was their proverbial "golden convert". I had a lot of personal characteristics at the time that fitted the 'passive, subservient' Mormon female ideal, and I was very naive for my age with little life experience. That soon changed when I married an RM 4 months after I met him at the age of 20. I thought I had found a place and purpose, and that it was within the Mormon church.
It took 22 years, 3 children, a divorce, a disfellowshipment over a subsequent relationship, a gradual mental, spiritual, and emotional drifting away, and finally, Prop H8, to wake me up and get me out of it. Now, at 43, I'm finally coming into my own life, my own person. My almost 19 year old daughter is mentally already on her way out but NOMish TBM; my boys are younger and still part of the groupthink.......for now.
It's been quite a journey, but it's made me who I am, and for that, I'm grateful.

I was a teen who joined for YA.

without the YA group - and the activities and socials - I would not have been around after the first fortnight.....literally - the missionaries (my great friends) dropped me almost immediately after baptism

I was bic but went inactive at 20

Received a letter telling me they x'd me at age 25

Age 35 Married had 3 small kids. My nevermo DH and I decided we needed to take out kids to church. Long story short. We joined LDS.

20 years later us and 2 kids have left. 3rd child will probably leave when he's out of school and has some time to look into it.

I was basically a hormonal convert, and only joined because of pressure from my TBM ex. I divorced him after a brief marriage because he was abusive, and quit going to church the Sunday after I filed the paperwork, then resigned shortly before the divorce was finalized. The reason I resigned was because my ex was still sending people to my doorstep from the church, and I also realized that if he knew I was an evil apostate, he would avoid me. It worked as I saw him at a mutual friend's funeral after the divorce and resignation were final, and he avoided me completely.

"Gentiles" convert to Mormonism for one or more reasons:
1) peer or family pressure.
2) Can't say "No" to the missionaries.
3) feeling of being wanted and appreciated in a new group.
4) compensation for a "messed up life" or loneliness.
5) acceptance of the LDS story without question.
6) attraction of the apparent wholesomeness of LDS culture
7) social opportunities ( dates, marriage partner, etc.)

In my case, it was #2 and #7 even though I had serious questions about the whole story and theology of Mo'ism.

Add one more to your useful list Veritas:

Independent cultural conservatives looking for community.

I don't know if I would call us completely conservative at that time in our lives. We were interested in Catholic ideas about family planning and sanctity of reproduction.

We were not exactly hippies--but we were into organics and vegetarian DIY types, but not strict about it the vegetarianism.

We weren't exactly socialists but studied socialism quite a bit and were attracted to some socialist and communitarian ideas.

We were also attracted to libertarian ideas. We homeschooled and refused vaccinations, seeking homebirth through midwives.

We were family oriented. Kids often make one step back from the pellmell radicalism of one's younger days. We wanted community and something more solid than New Age spiritualism for them. Unfortunately we knew three other young families that shared many of our values and non-mainstream practices, and what do you know, they were all LDS.

Since leaving the church I have found much to appreciate in progressive, liberal, and libertarian positions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2011 03:34PM by derrida.

I'd say #5 and #6 pretty much describe my reasons for converting. I grew up in the Methodist Church, converted at age 21 then left at 50 (on my birthday!). I converted because the doctrines just seemed to make sense. I soaked it all up and immersed myself in Mormonism reading everything I could.

But it was science, pure and simple, the lead me out of Mormonism. Once again, it was all that reading I was doing about cosmology, evolution, astronomy and archaeology that was my undoing.

No regrets!

3,6,and 7 for my daughter.

Dated a morg; it got serious way too fast in hindsight.
Met the fam; they pushed "Marvelous Work & Wonder".
Read it, didn't recognize the bs that it is at the time, just took it at face value.
Married the morg; left the morg.
Went to church by myself, and it struck me that old Joe was too messed up, not a "prophet of God", too much of an idiot and letch for that.
If a then b...
If Old Joe wasn't a prophet, the church couldn't be of God.
Left that day, never went back.

Ok, the ex wasn't technically "a morg" but it sure felt like I was marrying a church rather than just a person.

parents, mainly my mom, made the choice. My dad went a long to please her and was inactive in about a year.It took my younger brother and I much longer and my mom is now a jack-mo.

But because of our conversion... on my moms side her parents and her sisters (and their families) all joined. All participate in varying levels with the church right now.

I'm sure glad my family never joined. My sister almost did, but a pushy sister missionary turned her off of the idea, gratefully.

A cousin went to the Church several times, because a friend of hers was Mormon. But being a single Mom, she felt that she didn't fit in, so she abandoned that idea as well.

I used to be so sad that I was alone in the Church. I even had a blessing which said that I had a mission in the Church concerning my family, and that some members of the family would be baptized.

It used to confuse me as to why this never happened. Of course I figured it was my fault - that I'd done something wrong, or not enough.

Now I'm so happy that I was the lone Mormon in the family. My family members are happy that I'm out. They were very supportive while I was in, but now they feel free to let me know what they really thought of the Church.

I never even knew they felt that way, about how weird it was. I give them kudos for being so supportive, both as I entered and exited Mormonism.

went inactive and I turned 12 and could go to YM/YW break the fast things at the bishops house, he told me and my brother during the testimony portion that if he and I would be ever faithful, my dad would come back. So it was up to us to reactivate him. That was a lot of pressure, and honestly I could have cared less. I tried and tried for years to put my all in the church and ignore things that made NO sense to me as a young girl and teenager... and finally a few years ago the shelf broke and I got a clue.

Unfortunately my brother now feels it is on him and his families head to bring us back and be oh so righteous. Thankfully for the most part he has stopped being so vocal about trying to reactivate us all and let us live our own lives. But I do know that he hasn't given up.... but for our relationship as a family he realized it wasn't helping... I can't say that for my inlaws side of the family