The LDS church requires people who no longer want to be a member of its cult to write a letter asking to be please be taken off their membership rolls. Do other religions also require this act? If I was a Methodist or a Baptist or whatever and no longer wanted to attend, would I be required to write a letter asking them to please remove my name?

Why should anyone be required to write a letter?

No, they don't.

You do not have to notify the LDS church that you've resigned. Some people like to, but it's not a requirement, and they won't really stop counting you as a member anyway..

From reports I have read on this board, many churches will stop counting you as a member once you have gone inactive for a certain period of time (which varies with the church). If the Mormon church stopped counting people as members after a reasonable period of inactivity, they would only be able to claim about a third as many members as they do now. Don't expect them to start counting members differently, though; remember, for the Mormon church, it's all about numbers and appearances.

As far as resignation ... formally notifying a church that you are no longer a member gives you certain legal rights and status. For instance, once you've formally resigned (at least in the U.S.), they can no longer legally excommunicate you. This fact may or may not be important to any given member. But it's worth considering.

The word is considered archaic and most churches don't do it unless they're extremist cults.

Does anyone know of another church that is formally excommunicating its members? Do Catholics still get ex'd?

He was sexually abusing children.

Another priest in my area was secretly married for 20 years. They didn't ex him, but they did take away his church position.

Here's the wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication


And here's a link to a precedent-setting legal case (and another one involving the Mormon church) regarding excommunication:

http://www.mormonnomore.com/legal-precedent

mexprof Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Does anyone know of another church that is
> formally excommunicating its members? Do Catholics
> still get ex'd?


Catholics can be excommunicated for various reasons. But they can be reinstated by going to confession.

There is no public shunning, they are still expected to go to Mass but do not receive the Eucharist until they have regularized their situation.

Unlike the Mormon church many Catholics will not receive at a particular Mass and it could be for any number of reasons. They may have broken the 1 hour fast, or not gone to confession for a mortal sin, or just feel unworthy to receive that day.

No one notices or cares.

It is not necessarily a "cult" or "extremist" move.

But excommunication is in some cases reserved as a punishment for very severe crimes (like murder, child or sex abuse) to keep the criminals out for the safety of the congregation, or as a very strong rebuke of seriously out of line behaviour.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), the largest Hare Krishna group, very rarely excommunicates anyone, and certainly doesn't throw people out just for inactivity or lack of belief; but those who have been dismissed included convicted committers of very serious crimes. They don't believe excommunication bars one from salvation, as that is between the person and God, but that step could protect the community.

It is not always done just for apostasy, although the LDS Church is not alone in that. The Catholic Church advocates that mere disbelief results in automatic excommunication - but nof neccessarily officially, by the order of the Church or a court of law. Other churches may have similar policies.

Not in the Hare Krishna movement.

You can be as active as you choose to be. Your presence is always welcome and encouraged, but even as a fully committed member, you are still free to attend and participate when you want to, where you want to, as often as you want to do so.

Donations and service are always appreciated, but there are no tithing requirements or mandatory service obligations for the lay members. And you are free to attend any temple or service in any location as you like, without the need to register first.

If you really decide to leave later on, you don't have to formally disassociate yourself at all. There might be loving concern from others if you decide to leave, and they might check on you to see how you're doing or if you're okay, but there must be absolutely no harassment or threatening you to come back.

And of course, if you change your mind, you're absolutely welcome to come back. Many of our former ex-members do return. :-) Faith and love must be given not by force, but by choice. So for those who do return, it must be their own voluntary decision to do so.

Generally, no, you don't require a letter to resign from a faith. But some churches do keep records of membership, sacraments, or ordinances, and a formal letter of resignation may be required to officially withdraw those records.

You may also resign to prevent being formally excommunicated by the Church's decision (or where a religious court of law is established, by the verdict of the religious court).

But for some faiths, you are simply a member if you believe, and a non-member if you don't believe. Even in some faiths where sacraments or ordinances are given (such as initiation, baptism, or confirmation), you are allowed to simply voluntarily leave if you desire to do so, and then to retun again if you decide to change your mind in the future.

The Guinn v. Church of Christ case, which forced the LDS Church to change their resignation process (though the defendant was a non-LDS church), involved the attempted excommunication of a member who resigned in writing before the church elders could ex her. The court held that she ceased to be a member at the moment the church received her written resignation.

While a letter of resignation may not have been 100% necessary, the fact that she did so, and documented the action, helped pinpoint the exact date of her resignation. The church went and ex'd her anyway, and announced the action from the pulpit. The court held that once resignation was received, she had withdrawn her consent to be disciplined by the church, and that the church's attempted discipline was actionable (she could sue for damages, and did, to the tune of $350K).

Here is a Mormon leader that was in Mexico that admits it is Church policy to keep people on their membership records that verbally reject Mormonism and ask for no contact. He confirms that it is Church policy not to tell them to send a letter in requesting removal of their name and that it is Church policy to keep them as members even if they verbally reject Mormonism or are known to have joined another Church or rejoin their original faith.

It's creepy, very PR oriented culture right now that espouses personal integrity while modeling corporate corruption.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,989256,990259#msg-990259

I'm a convert. I didn't write a letter. I just stopped attending, but the members that knew me, knew why.

Depending on the situation, I might write a note to a minister if I was no longer going to be serving and attending a different church.

Most of the time, people in other denominations just go inactive. Since there is no harassment of those who leave, it's often considered a non-issue.

In Catholocism, whenever you move, you are supposed to register with your new parish. If you don't register, they have no idea that you are there. There is no such thing as hunting people down, making phone calls, automatically transferring records, etc.

In Methodism you can just leave and you might get a phone call or letter once in a blue moon asking if you've left or if you want to update your information. Our church pretty much keeps people on the list until we find out they've transferred their membership to another church, they die, or the contact the church asking to be removed from the rolls (which happens very rarely). But we don't harass people who have gone inactive the way the Mormons seem to. And you don't have to write a letter to leave.

To be come an "official" member you have to either be baptised in the church, make a declaration of faith or transfer membership from another church or denomination. Basically you stand in front of the congregation with the preacher and promise to be faithful to God and the church. But you don't have to be an "official" member to come to church. The only difference is that you have to be an official member to serve on a few of the church committees, like the Board of Trustees. We had one person who had been attending our church for 20+ years but he never joined. For all intents and purposes, he was a member. But he wanted to join the Board of Trustees, so he had to make it official before he could serve on that committee. It was a running joke that Jack finally became a member of the church after attending for 2 decades.

The flipside is you can float around like a butterfly if you want. You can join multiple churches if you want. No one really cares until you want to do something official, like be on a committee...they usually reserve that for people who are on the member rolls.

If you move from one church to another in the same denomination (I did this from my old Methodist church to my new one), all I had to do was tell the reverend at my new church and he had his office staff take care of the paperwork. The change had to be confirmed with HQ before I was formally recognized as a member of the new church (including introduced in front of the entire congregation).

But as far as leaving goes, no they don't hunt you down...people come & go all the time.

Oh crap I just read the post above mine and we say the same thing - sorry for my laziness!

In our UU congregation, you have to re-commit every year if you want to STAY a member. During pledge drive month, they contact each person who was a member the previous year. We are asked to fill out a form stating we want to continue our membership for the coming year and pledge "time, talent and/or treasure." They ask us, at minimum to at least pledge enough to cover what we have to pay each year to the UU Association for each member, which comes out to about $8 month. Of course, they hope we'll pledge more and we're given guidelines of what might be a fair pledge. However, no one would be denied membership due to financial considerations and there is no pressure on anyone personally to pledge more. If we are not meeting our pledge goal, the stewardship committee will let us know where we're at an might ask us to consider increasing our pledge if we can.

Some people don't care about being members and prefer to have the status "friend of the church." I was that way for several years, vowing never to officially join a church again. But finally did because I WANTED to be known as a member. Many of those people make plate offerings during services or even still make a yearly pledge.

If you want to leave, you can just leave and not re-commit the next year. Or if you want to be nice, you can write a letter stating that you are giving up your membership. You will probably receive a confirmation back wishing you good luck in your journey.

It is sad when someone leaves our congregation who we enjoyed so much, but often we stay close friends. Some join another UU church that they think is a better fit for them (congregations can be quite different). I really can only think of a couple of people who have left because they got their feelings hurt or were mad. There is always a turnover when we get a new minister, but there are also people who join because of that too.

We attended two other churches after leaving the morg. One was Methodist and the other a Church of Christ. Everyone was very friendly and we felt welcome in both places. When we stopped attending, we received one phone call from the pastor of each church asking if we were okay and letting us know we were always welcome if we chose to return. There were no letters, no threats, no attempts at coercion.

That's pretty much the norm in Christian churches (I'm presbyterian, and it's the same). If you haven't attended services in a while, we might call to see if you're okay, but no one will put any pressure on you.

One of the benefits of having your name on the church rolls is the historical records. Our church has been around for over 50 years, and we have several fire proof filing cabinets with all kinds of trivia from the last 5 decades.

The Mormon resignation thing is just another power-play in order to make it difficult to leave. We weren't going to bother with it at all, because the whole thing is just arbitrary, man-invented rules, that have nothing to do with God.

The Mormon harassment and "love-bombing" became so out-of-control, that we were forced to officially resign. It worked! The groups of Mormon men stopped ringing our doorbell late at night, and stopped asking for my children's phone numbers.

Most of my Christian friends have changed religions a few times. They will go to a different church, because someone has recommended it, they will switch churches when their pastor switches. They will even switch between Christian denominations. We are Lutherans, but we go to the Methodist church on Christmas Eve, or when friends are performing. Up in the mountains, we like a little non-denominational church there. When we moved to Utah, our Lutheran church didn't ask us to transfer our records, or anything like that. If we sleep in, we go to a later service, and no one attacks us for being late or lazy. There are always plenty of charity projects to work on, and no one asks you if you are a regular member. They are happy for your help. Whatever other (real) churches we have attended, we have always felt free, and we have always come home from the services UPLIFTED, instead of depressed. Other religions don't try to trap you and hijack your children. Only a CULT does that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2013 05:46AM by forestpal.

People who read RfM need to know how "normal" non-cultish churches operate. Their thrust is to support and enrich participants, not to guilt them or drain them dry for the sake of building the organization and glorifying the leaders.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2013 07:30AM by Cheryl.

I called the Catholic Church when I join the LDS Church and asked them if I needed to resign or do anything. The priest told me that I will always be Catholic and that I can not leave. He said "We love you and you are always welcome back as an active Catholic."

Yes, that's the Catholic attitude -- you can always come back if you wish without missing a beat. But they won't chase after you.

Mormons baptize anyone, no matter which religion, without any exit letters.

But guess what.
If you want to join another church you had better jump through all the hoops the morg sets up as an obstacle course.

Mormonism is the roach motel of religions - you can check in but you can't check out.

I know one other. Leaving the swedish church kinda requires formal resignation. But usually in another way, you don't write a letter, you fill out a form. It is a very simple form, basically your name, social security number, current adress and your signature. It's to be sent to your local congreation. But you can write your own letter or do it face-to-face too if you want. Also, since most people were baptized as infants they nowdays send out letters to everyone that are turning 18 and asking them if they want to remain members in the church.

If I'm not mistaken, in Sweden some pre-tax income is withheld and sent to the church to which you belong. Several percentage points, but a lot of money if you look at all the nominal Lutherans in the country. I believe de-registering oneself via the process you describe stops your pre-tax contributions to the church you are leaving. THat would explain why the tax number is required.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax#Sweden

ps if you leave Svenska Evangelska Kyrkan, are you excused from eating lutfisk in December? ;)

I know leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses is a big deal, but I don't know if you have to write a letter.

The thing that gets me is that the Mormons inform you that if you resign, you lose a bunch of "blessings" that were received supposedly from God. They place themselves as God's henchmen and claim to be the gatekeepers of all your so-called blessings and covenants. That's culty, and they use it as a threat to get you to stay. It seems to me that churches who don't make these intercessionary claims are less coercive and cult-like.