How Not to Treat Believing Members Once You Leave the Church

Between the most zealous active members of the Church and ex-Mormons is a secret third group: the ones who are in an active state of deconstruction. In that group is a mixture of church members all across the spectrum who have such a wide variety of thoughts and beliefs, the only thing they all truly having in common is being adjacent to Mormonism and a willingness to sit in community in that state of difference.

I've been in that space for many years now. It's the closest thing to "come as you are" Mormonism as I've ever seen. No matter your proximity to the institutional church, we all do a kind of play therapy together with the materials from it that we've carried with us. It's great... until someone too far to the end of either spectrum shows up and starts evangelizing to their particular flavor of belief or non-belief.

I've posted previously my response to those who advocate too aggressively for their versions of active Mormonism, linked below. I'm feeling the need for a similar post to exist for those in the ex-Mormon camp as well, especially those whose approach is to remind me that the Church doesn't value liberal or progressive members. As if there's any liberal or progressive member who doesn't already know that.

I know the Church doesn't want me as I am. I know they think my values aren't useful to them. I know that better than many former church members do because I was there. I was there at 16 years old when many of them were still active. I was reading the writing on the wall before many of them even knew it was there.

Here's the thing: I don't care.

I don't care that they don't want me. I don't care that they don't respect me. I don't care that my very presence irks them to the very core. I don't care what they think about me. Caring about their opinion of me is the only power they have ever had over me, the only way they can hurt me, and I took that away from them a long time ago.

I'm not here to get their approval. And in case you needed the addendum to that post for me to spell it out, I'm not here to get the approval of ex-Mormons either.

So many ex-Mormons have this notion that the only way to engage with my authentic self is to leave the Church. The idea that someone could spend years away from the institution, as I did, and choose to go back is incomprehensible to them. They cannot process the fact that my authentic self is a believer, a disciple of Jesus Christ, and a Mormon—deconstructed, wiser, and prepared to rebuild, but ultimately still a Mormon.

The fact is, the Church needs me. They need me to deconstruct and destroy the false idols and apostasy that they've brought into the restored church of Jesus Christ from the Republican party, evangelical Christianity, and white nationalism.

They need me to be there, and so do you.

 

You need someone on the inside saying that racism is sinful, is present in the Church, and destroys everything it touches. You need someone on the inside saying that praying the gay away is harmful, incoherent nonsense. You need someone to say the things you needed to hear as a teenager in the Church. You need someone with the skill set, the language, and the institutional presence to do that work, to break the cycles of intergenerational trauma and abuse, in a setting where the people who need it most are most likely to receive it.

I'm saying this with no degree of sarcasm or insincerity. Do what serves you and your happiness. If that means leaving the Church, I don't respect you any less for it. Do what you must for you and your family. I will honor that choice because I now fully understand what goes into making it.

Do not, however, think your position makes you morally or intellectually superior to those who stay, who have done the work to realize that they can do more good by staying than by leaving. And as always, do not use random active members as punching bags for your scruples, religious trauma, and grievances. Criticism without consent is not only ineffective, it's straight up abusive. It's the example of the classic adage that "hurt people hurt people."

I don't believe church leadership when they say that you all got lost in the gray matter of moral relativism, that your motivations were selfish and rooted in sin. Do not believe them when they tell you to mistrust me because my presence at Church is somehow a betrayal both to them and to you simultaneously.

Be smarter than that.