Church leaders’ view of why members leave versus reality.

To be honest, I don’t see what was so special about this document compared to other leaks like the leadership videos, GA salary, etc.

This is what I keep wondering. It’s like they’re afraid of being called out on the actual reasons vs. their lackeys doctoring up reports confirming what they want to hear.

Of course, many disaffected members and ex-Mormons find this characterization absurd and/or offensive because it makes it sound like they were just looking for an excuse or easy way out when in reality many of them took the Church’s claims very seriously and basically studied their way out of a traditional testimony before disregarding some of the Church’s demands, not after.

And they seem to overlook that not every inactive/resigned member becomes an atheist or satanist. Some just go find churches that they feel far more welcome at.

To be fair, all those things do contribute to members becoming inactive or leaving. Of course, there are more, but it isn’t like the ones listed are bogus.

It’s important to discuss these issues, but it’s important to do so as fairly as possible. Laughing at legitimate reasons doesn’t do that.

If we want to have a discussion it would help to know what was on the slide but it’s kind of a gray area for me. The church asked that the slide deck not be shared due to copyright claims, I won’t share the actual slides but I think it’s okay to talk about some of the content?

The first slide included the words “Meeting of the Twelve” and was dated December 8, 2015.

The slide enumerating reasons why people leave did not include any information about sources. The source could be an unattributed study or someone shooting from the hip. The slide was called:

Issues and Ideas Leading People Away from the Gospel

For those playing at home, if you parse the language it says “gospel” not “church.” What’s unknown is whether there’s a distinction in the mind of the person/people that put the slides together.

The slide had a series of circles, each with a different thing that leads someone away from the gospel, each circle a different size, presumably to show how large of an issue it is. Below I’ll list the contents of the circles, in descending order of circle size (largest issues first?).

Circles placed in a category called “Far Left”:

1) Disagree with current policies

2) Incredulity over Church history

3) Ordain Women

4) Secular

5) John Dehlin

Circles placed in a category called “Far Right”:

1) Church has lost its way or is deficient

2) False prophets

3) Last days/end of world predictions

4) Denver Snuffer

5) Need “something more”

6) Robert Norman

Circles in the middle, between Far Left and Far Right:

1) Pornography

2) Lack of righteousness

3) Lack of commitment

4) Sabbath

5) Chasity

In a category to itself, about the same size as the pornography bubble:

1) Language and cultural problems “-ites”

My two cents on the slide from the post that Mary Ann did at W&T (you can also see the slide there): https://wheatandtares.org/2017/03/01/mormonleaks-do-the-ends-justify-the-means/

That slide about “Issues & Ideas Leading People Away from the Gospel” (that should say “The Church” not “The Gospel”) isn’t great. I think the continuum is interesting, although also problematic in some ways (is “the gospel” really on a political right / left spectrum? Or is it just being run like US politics?). It looks like it should be a bubble chart but doesn’t show any real justification for the size of each of the bubbles. Does the bubble size reflect the percent of people “led away” from the church for each of these things or something else? It can’t be comprehensive, but these bubbles don’t look right either. The labeling is also strange. Rather than an actual graph, I suspect it’s a brainstormed list put in bubbles to make it look more like an infographic when it’s not one. The slides before and after it also demonstrate a lack of powerpoint and data crunching skills.

So, given that this is a leak with no context, the real question is what we can safely conclude. Not a whole lot, and that’s the general problem with the leaks. We don’t know if this slide is anything more than some random dude’s rambling presentation in the COB. We don’t know if they thought he was a genius or an idiot or somewhere in between. We don’t know if anyone agreed or disagreed or what the point of the presentation was or what their take-aways were. But I tend to agree with Mary Ann that it’s valuable to start the discussion with the leaks.

I find it interesting to think that the church is as concerned with fanaticism on the right (the way I view Snuffer’s ilk and the Doomsday Prepper types as they are with social criticism on the left. And the issues with laxity / sin in the middle are interesting if oddly worded and vague. Here are some of my questions after reading this slide:

– Why is “pornography” not lumped in with “chastity”? Is that evidence of poor social skills among the pornography set (pornography doesn’t require you to hold a conversation)?

– The utter obsession with pornography is just not good. I’m not a fan of it either, but sheesh, are we even talking about the same thing? I’ve heard folks in Utah County refer to a billboard for Victoria’s Secret as “pornography.” Is the pornography-meter so heightened that there are hyper-sensitive people out there trashing their marriages over minor human weakness?

– What on earth does “-ites” even mean?? That’s a weird thing to put in here. And what kinds of language and cultural problems are creating issues with people leaving the church?

– What’s the difference between Lack of righteousness and lack of commitment? Why would “lack of righteousness” lead people out of the church? I would think we’re all there and nobody is truly righteous, so would it be our lack of tolerance for human weakness that’s driving some of the sinners out while making others feel smugly superior?

– I have to point out that “incredulity over church history” implies that those who are “credulous” (meaning gullible) are not driven out by it. Odd word choice.

– People disagreeing with “current policies” is absolutely the definition of “church” vs. “gospel” unless the discussion was “do we have some current policies that people feel conflict with the gospel?” And we definitely do. People on the right AND the left might feel this way, though.

– Likewise, wanting “more” could be on either the right or the left. The manuals are water thin as we all know. Milk before meat that never comes.

Anyway, lots of weird stuff on that slide, and while I’m not sure the ends justify the means, that’s largely because I suspect the ends will not be affected. Maybe, though. I usually don’t think anybody in COB cares what we think. They don’t act like they do.

My final comment on this slide is that I don’t see why the church made a stink about it being proprietary. It’s a crap slide. Sorry, Ray, but even if these are “legit” reasons, the slide is not well done. It is designed to look like an infographic or bubble chart without any data to back it up. Even the terms are not defined. It’s really just a brainstormed list masquerading as something “legit” but without the data to back it. So, again, why not simply say “Hey, people present their theories and ideas to the Q12 all the time. This is just one effort. It’s not official. It’s just one person’s attempt to help make sense of why people leave.” That’s all they had to say. Making it out like MormonLeaks stole the secret recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken just makes the church look bad because they are essentially saying they think this slide is good. It’s not great.

The other question I have after seeing the leaked videos a few months ago is whether church leaders are really getting presented anything that doesn’t confirm their existing worldview. None of the leaked videos seemed to show this from what I saw & heard. On the contrary, it was like a series of meetings in which their confirmation biases were presented back to them with pseudo-scientific justification. Gerrit Gong was, IMO, a refreshing exception to this, although he was distilling hundreds of pages of research down to 2-3 slides.

– What on earth does “-ites” even mean?? That’s a weird thing to put in here. And what kinds of language and cultural problems are creating issues with people leaving the church?

I’m sure it was a reference to 4 Nephi 1:17, so what does that mean.

My stake is in the USA. My stake also has a Spanish unit. The recent divisive election in the USA showed me that people are generally more loyal to their political leanings than they are to their religious leanings. I saw many members from my stake fire shots at immigrants via social media, some people firing shots were even in leadership positions. I found myself wondering how members in the Spanish unit, where I’m guessing there’s some percentage of illegals and nearly 100% immigrant, felt about some of the comments that were being made by other saints in their stake.

So -ites.

Liberalites

Conservativeites

Wealthyites

Middleclassites

Poorites

Blackites

Whiteites

Straightites

Gayites

Far Leftites

Far Rightites

Etc.

Toss them all together in a ward and you’d expect there to be some issues as people try to learn to get along with one another.

Nibbler – God Bless You. Perfect.

KFC uses grease???? I never would have known. Nice new avatar.

Only now they use healthier grease. They thought I wouldn’t notice but I did.