I grew up in Logan, Utah, a predominately Mormon community. My father was Presbyterian, my mother was a lapsed Mormon. In spite of the decidedly non-Mormon environment at home, I was raised as a Mormon, in effect, by the community: baptized at 8, priesthood at 12, etc. I participated in church activities, attended all the meetings went home teaching and was generally accepted into the culture.

Over the years in Logan, I witnesses/experienced some bizarre behavior that contributed to my desire to leave Utah as soon as possible. One event in particular involved the church basketball program. I played basketball and was a tall kid (for the time). I wasn’t good enough to make the high school team, but was good enough to play well in the church league. In my first year of college, I was still eligible to play in the “junior” league and our ward team was doing fairly well (the year before, our team had been good enough to qualify for the “All Church Tournament” in Salt Lake City). We were tied for first place in our stake. When we played the team we were tied with, I had an unusually good game. The guy they assigned to guard me was too short and so I scored easily. But, we lost the game and fell into a tie for second place with a team that we were to play the next week. I had a late exam the night of the game and the earliest I could get there was just after the scheduled start of the game. The plan was for me to poke my head into the gym, get the coach’s attention and he would call time out. I would then quickly dress for the game and be ready to play when the time out was over. When I arrived and stuck my head through the door of the gym, everything got quiet. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t pay much attention. As I was getting dressed, the stake athletic director came into the locker room and told me that a charge had been leveled against me that would make me ineligible to play: someone on the other team had seen me smoking! It turns out, it was not true, I didn’t smoke, so I told him it was a lie. The game was suspended while we traded accusations and it was determined that I could play, but it would be under protest and that if we won, a further investigation would be held. Needless to say, I was pretty shook up and didn’t play well as a result. We lost and fell out of contention to play in the end of season tournament. The ploy had worked. A week later, I was on my way to school and saw one of my accusers walking along the side of the road. I slowed down to offer him a ride and noticed…..he was smoking! That was pretty typical of the hypocrisy of the culture and was representative of the “lying for the Lord” attitude that made truth a relative concept for the society.

After completing my first year in college, my bishop approached me and said he wanted to call me on a mission. Since I didn’t have a Mormon connection at home, I went to my girlfriend’s father to get advice. He told me that I should go (ulterior motive on his part?). I went back to the bishop and accepted the call and then went home to tell my parents. My father just stared at me for what seemed like a very long time and then he said, “No!” “You’re going to finish school, to hell with the Mormon Church; you’re not going on a mission.” He called the bishop and that was that. But, that pushed me a little more toward the church; I decided to get more serious about it and accepted a calling teaching kids in Sunday School.

I graduated from college, got married (civilly) and went off to graduate school in Ithaca, NY. That was about as far away as I could get from Logan and that was part of the plan. In spite of my Mormon connections, I didn’t like the parochial nature of the culture in Logan and longed to see the rest of the country. A member of the Ithaca ward helped us find housing and so I felt like we should go to church (once, at least) and thank him. He grabbed onto me and wouldn’t let go. Soon, we were pretty active in the church. The “mission field” was very different as far as the church culture is concerned, much more open and accepting. Plus, the members were mostly professors and grad students, all of whom approached the church intellectually. There seemed to be much more depth and thoughtfulness in the culture of the church in the mission field.

One incident that happened a few months after our arrival in Ithaca had a profound effect on me. Paul Dunn was the visiting GA for stake conference. He stayed after the last session and gave a fireside at our ward. It was a very intimate gathering, only about 30 people were there. He told his baseball and war stories (that are now known to be “parables”) and the “spirit” was present to witness to the “truthfulness of the gospel.” I walked away from the meeting with a “testimony.” That incident loomed large in my life because when it happened it brought me into an active role in the church and then later in life, it helped me understand what “feeling the spirit” actually meant as I tried to figure out what a “witnessing of the spirit” was all about. When Dunn was exposed for telling tall tales, it was clear to me that at that fireside, the spirit wasn’t testifying of the truthfulness of the gospel, it was merely a human-generated emotional response to a moving story, a response that was easily manipulated and used for emotional control of church members.

We helped to build a new chapel and got heavily involved in the ward: I was in the YM presidency and taught teenagers in Sunday School. I was impressed by the Institute director and a few of the other ward members who were deep into the philosophy and history of the church. I dove in myself and started reading everything I could get my hands on. I was all in, the church had the answer for everything and was going to be the basis of my life going forward. All of this culminated in my wife and me going back to Utah for a visit and to be sealed in the temple.

That was the beginning of an interesting up and down journey.
The temple wasn’t what I expected. There was no “higher spiritual teaching,” only ritual with blood oaths, masonic symbols and a weak creation story (with an actor—Gordon Jump—that I recognized in the film that was part of the ceremony). I left the temple not knowing what to think, but I was so invested in the church that I just put my concerns “on the shelf,” thinking that there was just something that I didn’t understand. I would figure it out later because the church was true, it just me that was missing something. I doubled down on my commitment and got even deeper into my studies of the gospel.
In retrospect, I was studying the wrong things. All of my material was “church approved.” There were no controversial books that I was reading. I was falling for the propaganda, and in the process, becoming an eloquent spokesman for the party line of the church.

Late in our stay in Ithaca, a disturbing thing happened. The wife of one of the graduate students in the ward committed suicide by hanging herself in the bathroom of their home. Her young son (one of two children) discovered her. The problem was that her depression was well known among the local church leaders. They felt that they could “pray away” the problem so they didn’t advise that she get professional help. The problem kind of got away from them with devastating results. Wouldn’t true men of God know better? Wouldn’t they have the discernment to get her the help she needed? One of the other wives in the ward said that she had a vision; the deceased mother appeared to her to tell her that everything was ok. Here was one more thing to put on the shelf.

Once I finished grad school, I accepted a job in New Jersey. My wife and I moved there and shortly after our arrival, we had our first child (BIC, lucky him!). We moved into a ward that was pretty small and was losing some key Utah-based members because they were moving away. That gave me a chance to quickly rise in the ranks. I became the doctrinal authority in the ward, taught the Gospel Doctrine class and, in general, took it upon myself to teach the gospel to this convert dominated ward.

Within two years, I was a counselor in the Bishopric.

Then, things started to change. First, one of the less active members, a well to do, Utah born, woman with an inactive husband, gave me a book, Nightfall At Nauvoo by Samuel Taylor. She basically said, “You’re smart, you should expand your horizons, learn more from outside sources, and maybe you can answer some questions I have.” I read the book; it was a fascinating semi-historical account of the saints in Nauvoo, warts and all. Before I could get back to her, another sister (wife of the High Priest Group Leader) came to me with the book Mormonism, Shadow or Reality by the Tanners. It had been given to one of the local missionaries by a minister and he promptly gave it to her. Both were afraid of what it might say so they brought it to me. They were sure that I could debunk the claims made in the book.

I took the Tanner’s book to work with me and started reading it on my lunch breaks. Two things immediately jumped out: problems with the first vision story and problems with the Book of Abraham. The papyrus had only recently been found but enough analysis had been done to allow a devastating understanding of Joseph’s alleged translation; the BOA was a fraud. The inconsistency of the first vision accounts also exposed a fundamental problem; the church itself could be a fraud.

This information obviously had a profound effect on my belief. I started a much broader study program to learn what I could and hopefully shore up my testimony. I read all of the Nibley books (a lot of words that said nothing, what a waste of time), I read No Man Knows My History, I started looking around for intellectuals in the church that could shed some light on my dilemma (Dialog, Sunstone, etc.), but nothing really helped.

In the meantime, I took a job in Florida and prepared to leave behind my callings in New Jersey (and most of my testimony). The Stake President in NJ, who I had gotten to know and respect, wanted to “interview” me before I left. He asked, “What have you learned in your time here in NJ?” My answer, “I’ve learned that there are fewer absolute truths than I thought.” He said he understood. I didn’t really know what to say and I didn’t want to disappoint him by saying what I feared.

The move to Florida started my long and slow departure from the church. I taught the Gospel Doctrine class but tried to stay away from the topics that would expose my concerns. I often tried to provide a broader prospective than the lesson plan, I tried to get the members to think outside the narrow confines of the church doctrine. Needless to say, I wasn’t very successful.

I worked with some pretty amazing people who were not members of the church. I learned that Mormons didn’t have the exclusive hold on spiritual and mental happiness that I was taught. I found out that people could be happy (perhaps even happier) without the church. I grew to admire and respect my friends outside of the church and understood that the church would bring nothing to their lives.

On the other hand, a future General Authority was my Bishop for a while. He was an arrogant, “holier than thou” type of person, who was regarded as “Mormon Royalty.” He was the Bishop when the Equal Rights Amendment was being opposed by the church (Florida was a key state where ratification had to be stopped) and he was the one who organized the local efforts. I was disgusted watching him in action. I thought to myself, “If this is the best we’ve got, we’re in trouble.”

While in Florida, I met an interesting ex-Mormon. He was an African-American man who had famously written about being a member of the church in the 1960s. He was held up as a “poster boy” for how a black man could be happy in the church without the priesthood. I believe his story was published in the Improvement Era. I had a chance to visit with him about a year after the “revelation” was received that granted full membership rights to “blacks.” He was very bitter and felt exploited by the church, even after he had left. Local authorities had given the media his name after the revelation was announced and he was put off by having to answer questions about a church he was no longer a member of.

After four years, I was transferred to California (talk about culture shock!) and settled into a large ward in the Bay Area. I guess you could say that I stayed in the church for my family, thinking that they would benefit from church attendance. Not much happened in CA, except that our family was asked to host a pregnant teenage girl and to look after her until she had the baby and it was put up for adoption. She was from a ward about 40 miles from our house and sent away from home so her “disgrace” wasn’t public for her family. She spent four months or so with us, just at a time when my wife was also pregnant with our fourth child. The two bonded and the teenager was well taken care of. There was no contact between us and her family during her stay. Then came the birth of the baby. I took her to the hospital and waited for her parents to arrive and then went home after they got there. Then all hell broke loose. She decided to keep the baby which wasn’t the plan the church had for her. My wife and I were blamed by her family for convincing her to do that. It turns out, we never talked to her about it and never tried to encourage her in that direction. All interactions on that subject I assume were with her LDS counselor. Everyone was angry but her, she loved that baby and couldn’t see giving it up. I walked away from that incident wondering what the church was thinking. Why would they handle such a difficult situation the way they did? Why did they think they knew best?

A year and a half in CA was enough so I took a job in North Carolina and moved the family there. My wife and I decided that we had had enough and didn’t bother to go to church. But, they found us after a year. So we went back and became “social” Mormons. We took callings and participated socially but down deep didn’t believe. We wouldn’t take leadership callings or callings that otherwise required belief. I did teach the Gospel Doctrine class and the High Priest’s quorum. I felt like I could broaden the perspective of the members and so I thought I had something to offer. People heard what they wanted to hear so I don’t think any of my “outside” views actually got through. I stopped taking the sacrament, and when I blessed our fifth child, I only spoke about a “father’s blessing” and didn’t mention the authority of the priesthood. Nobody noticed.

I continued to study religion in general and Mormonism in particular, learning more about the problems with history and doctrine for all religions. It was particularly amusing to watch the church authorities “jump through their armpit” to explain the documents that Mark Hoffman had discovered before he was determined to be a fraud. Oaks explanation of the white salamander as the equivalent of an angel was particularly amusing.

A new bishop was called and he began to take notice of my actions. He called me into his office one Sunday and confronted me. I explained that I had no testimony but that I participated because of the fellowship and social activities and I felt that my combination of a deep understanding of the church and the gospel plus my perspective of the outside world (I was a well-traveled and respected high tech engineer, well known in my field of expertise) gave me something to offer the saints. I could help them put their beliefs in the context of the world around them and hopefully broaden them out of a strictly parochial view. He would have none of that. He said, “You’re either in or you’re out. You can’t be a participating member and not have a strong testimony, so you need to get on a path to getting one.” Rather than focusing on the path to getting a testimony, I paid more attention to his statement about not being able to participate without a strong testimony. So, he basically gave me my way out. I knew too much to get on the path to a testimony, that just wasn’t going to happen. So, I needed to get out for good.

It turns out that at that time, I got involved as a co-founder of a high tech, venture capital financed startup company. There wasn’t going to be any extra time for the church, plus, I was gone on weekends often enough that attendance wasn’t possible. In addition, my wife had had enough too, so we just walked away and haven’t been back since. It’s been more than 20 years. No one has regretted the decision to leave, all of my children, now grown, thank me for it. My oldest, who figured out the scam of Mormonism as a teenager, wonders how we stayed in as long as we did.

There have been attempts to bring me back. An ex-Stake President took me on as a project. He was assigned as my home teacher and when he couldn’t set up an appointment, he sent me a letter. You can guess what it said. “Did someone offend you?” “Is there a sin that is keeping you from the church?” I wrote back and said that I’m not coming back. Citing a few examples, I pointed out that the church is not what it claims to be and that an emotional experience cannot overcome the facts of the matter. I guess he believed me because the follow up attempts have been few and far between.

I have continued to study the church and religion. Once you see the flaws in the Mormon Church, it’s not hard to see the flaws in religion in general. I’ve read many of the great books that have been published in the last few years including those about the philosophy of atheism by such authors as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Several books by Bart Ehrman have illuminated the problems with Christianity. I have also kept up with the problems in the Mormon Church through the many sites on the internet and have read books by Michael Quinn, Charles Larson, Michael Marquardt, Grant Palmer and others. In fact I keep a copy of Palmer’s book handy to give as a gift if a pesky church member comes around hoping to convince me to come back.