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I’m curious because I had even family seem to draw their own conclusions which happened to be the wrong ones. But what do you think the top or main reasons are? NOTE: this isn’t a right or wrong answer question. I am simply curious as to what people think
LCWalker wrote:
…draw their own conclusions which happened to be the wrong ones…
This portion of the discussion borders on being against the rules of forum etiquette.
Quote:
The List of Don’tsPlease do not start discussions that lead to a debate with the results of finding the one correct answer to a problem. Topics like this will probably be moderated.
Personally, I feel there are no wrong reasons for someone to leave the church. It’s their life, it’s their decision. Invalidating others and denying their experience is a form of abuse.
To answer the question… this sounds general or dismissive but it’s my answer. I think the main reason people leave the church is that the church is no longer working for them. The cons have outweighed the pros. What constitutes working, what constitutes a pro, and what constitutes a con will vary from person to person.
I think the study/book The Next Mormons took a fairly close look at this and Jana Riess has commented fairly extensively on the topic. There seems to be no one reason and reasons do vary somewhat by generation. The overall top reasons were 1. No longer being able to reconcile personal values and priorities with those of the Church
2. Stopped believing there was one true Church
3. Not trusting the Church’s leadership to tell the truth surrounding controversial or historical issues
Among Millennials (the focus of the study) the top reasons were:
1. Feeling judged or misunderstood
2. Not trusting the Church’s leadership to tell the truth surrounding controversial or historical issues
3. The Church’s position on LGBT issues
Quoting Dieter Uchtdorf (Oct. 2013):
Quote:One might ask, “If the gospel is so wonderful, why would anyone leave?” Sometimes we assume it is because they have been offended or lazy or sinful. Actually, it is not that simple. In fact, there is not just one reason that applies to the variety of situations.
I do believe in Riess’s study and the results, I buy into all the reasons stated in the above top 3 reasons (and there are more in the study). I also believe DFU – there is no one reason, and it’s none of the three he mentioned. And I agree with Nibbler – there are no wrong reasons.CONNECTED CAVEAT: If a person manages to end up in a faith transition where the belief in God is diminished, that situation is likely a deciding factor for a person leaving churches in general – including the LDS church.
Other factors:
History and Trust Narrative– sets the foundation for church culture and teachings. History post-internet is murky because the internet brings up various narrative-jarring instances that collectively can lead to the individual mistrusting the teachings they were taught about the church by the church. Culture/Community– this is actually closely tied to history to define the rules and expectations of the individuals against those of the organization and community. I know that the church leaders teach there is the “individual” and there is the “church” – but in reality, there are 3 parties involved; the “individual”, the “community” (usually ward/branch leadership and fellowship) and the “church” (the administration side of things in Utah). NOTE: Correlation has weakened community ties throughout different programs. My experience in America has been that these community efforts have been shifted into different groups: recreation activities run by the city, meals on wheels run by a non-profit, and social services training/guidance in Utah that was practiced in that 1920’s has shifted into paid positions run by local groups starting in the 1950’s or so.
Value Systems– if a person walks away from the church, it is because there comes a point where the main values the individual espouses are not in line with the values being practiced by the “church” or the “community” or the value priority is a gapping mismatch. Final Thought:A person can leave easier now then previously. It is easier to move and still be connected to family members. More diverse values are being talked about and people are organizing about. Information is freely available to analyze and utilize.
nibbler wrote:To answer the question… this sounds general or dismissive but it’s my answer. I think the main reason people leave the church is that the church is no longer working for them. The cons have outweighed the pros. What constitutes working, what constitutes a pro, and what constitutes a con will vary from person to person.
If there was an answer that was “right”, I would say this would be it. The reasons for why someone leaves are going to be all over the place. When boiled down though, every reason comes down to the negatives outweighing the positives.
nibbler wrote:
I think the main reason people leave the church is that the church is no longer working for them. The cons have outweighed the pros. What constitutes working, what constitutes a pro, and what constitutes a con will vary from person to person.
Yes, I suppose there can be multiple ways to answer this question. I think that the reason that most (as in the largest number by percentage) people go inactive is that the church experience is not relevant enough to the lives of these individuals. I’m picturing young people that stop going once they move out of their parents’ home or go off to college. I’m thinking new converts that stop attending within a few months of their baptism. etc. etc.
I sometimes say that the church offers 19th century solutions in a 21st century environment. IOW, the church seems to be structured in such a way as to answer the question of “Which church is the true church?” and the entire premise of that question just does not seem to be a burning or relevant issue anymore. I also say that the church model is very duty oriented. IOW, we do lots of things that we would probably not want to do but we do them anyway out of duty and obligation and sacrifice. We balance that duty with our way being the only “true” way. For those that are less interested/engaged with the “one true church” concept then the church experience can feel onerous.
I feel that most of the people that leave in this way do not come to internet boards like this one to discuss their reasons for leaving/going inactive. They just move on.
On the home page of staylds.com, the bottom left panel provides a list of reasons people leave the LDS. John Dehlin did it with a rather huge sample size with apparently decent research. Sadly, he didn’t appear to calculate the percent of respondents who picked which reason. Perhaps that is found somewhere else. I don’t know the main reasons people leave. I know my reason(s) for lackluster, using John Dehlin’s categories are mainly due church experiences with members and leadership. After that crept in, then historical and policy reasons started getting to me.
It is what it is. I don’t mean that flippantly. It is my comprehensive answer. We have voluminous responses to the question, in one way or another, in our archived posts.
The same is true of why people stay.
Also, just for transparency, as has been said already, this post is on a fine line. No problem as long as the rule is not broken; problem if that happens.
Below is a link to a Youtube presentation by John Dehlin. I found it interesting how he addressed this topic.
His presentation is titled:
Quote:Top 5 Myths and Truths about why Committed Mormons Leave the Church
If anyone thinks it is inappropriate or a duplicate in another post, please delete.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP3GJeYIN3s The material maybe a little old or dated. Be prepared, it is almost an hour long.
I like the way John discusses this topic. He is very thoughtful & a very good teacher.
Thank you all very much for your answers. I noticed that nobody mentioned doctrine. It’s interesting but then, where doctrine used to be a driving force in so many world religions those distinctions that come from doctrine seem to be getting blurred these days, so maybe its not part of the matrix. Again, thank you all!
I think that doctrine comes into play depending on either church culture (General Conference/Timeout for Women as well as politics) and/or ward culture/community (inclusive vs excusive, demographics, etc.) and/or historical teachings and an individual’s personal values. There are people who drift away from the church because of historical teachings counter to that individual’s values that are driving them out of the community and away from church culture. It can happen that way. But you can insert “current church culture as teachings” and/or “ward culture/community” actively going against an individual’s personal values and have those be stronger drivers, I think.
There is a little more leeway in “historical interpretation” and “water under the bridge” and the fact that our church culture does give some credence to individual religious autonomy in thought. Plus, people get that history is changing and open to interpretation, where an individual’s place in the community and the current teachings and church culture impact an individual more directly.
Doctrine is included in multiple responses. They just say “pretty much anything” and don’t get specific. One reason it isn’t mentioned explicitly in more comments is because it is a given – and a post with a generic question tends to get generic responses.
Also, we don’t discuss doctrines solely to discuss doctrines. We do it in context of our mission. There are many threads about specific doctrines here – with thousands of comments. If you are interested in those conversations, search the Doctrine category, in particular.
Many of my early posts when I first started coming here referenced doctrine. My frustration before I stumbled on this site was that most faith crisis sites/discussion have to do with historical issues and mine was not. Looking through my 20/20 hindsight glasses and from my current perspective, I can see two things: 1. My own issues were not actually doctrinal, they had to do with widely held teachings and beliefs that are not necessarily doctrine (with the caveat here being that my current definition of doctrine is very narrow).
2. Many issues people consider to be historical, such as polygamy, are really “doctrinal” (see 1. above).
I do not think that the main reason people leave the LDS church is because of doctrine. 1) Would this mean that someone is a member of the church and knows the doctrine and is somewhat at peace with it but then later it becomes an ever bigger sticking point? Yes, I suppose that can happen but I do not think it is the main reason people leave the church.
2) A second example is of a fairly new convert that did not know all the doctrine and then after learning it decided that he or she did not like it. I have heard of cases like this but again I do not think that they are overly common.
As a side note, the word doctrine is one of those things that can be interpreted very widely or very narrowly. The following link is to a StayLDS article that makes the case for Official Church Doctrine to be much more narrow than what most members might suppose.
https://www.staylds.com/docs/WhatIsOfficialMormonDoctrine.html Just for clarity, i interpreted the OP question as being more about statistics and not about what are good or valid, right or wrong, or the best reasons, which might suggest other reasons might be less valid or wrong. I didn’t read it that way. So, if interpreted correctly, I found the warning odd. Did I misinterpret?
I know of the Dehlin study, and i think there was another two or three. I’m not familiar enough with the Dehlin study to remember if his surveys were open ended or forced choice questions. What I do remember is that while many members might assume the reasons people leave the church are because they were offended or have a desire to “sin”, these reasons were very very rarely given by those who left. Rather, the reasons were more related to historical or doctrinal issues (and I understand that it’s often hard to agree on what is really “doctrinal”). If I remember correctly. Dehlin listed some pretty specific things, such as the Book of Abraham authenticity, DNA, polygamy, etc–some of the common issues of difficulty people often report.
Maybe a better question for this forum would be why do people stop believing what they believed before? It seems that lots of people stop believing this or that, or believe differently than they did before, but still do not leave the church. I’ve assumed this forum is basically about supporting those who don’t believe the same as they did before, but still want or feel they need to maintain connection with the church in some capacity.
I would suspect the reasons would be similar. I can only speak for myself but the reason I no longer believe what i used to believe is mostly because I studied the issues more thoroughly than I’d ever done before, and found evidence that overwhelmed my previous beliefs, which led to significant differences in my world view and church view. The vast majority of my study involved what most would consider Church sources or sometimes neutral sources. Were these doctrinal issues? I think many would say definitely yes. But I agree that we have a hard time agreeing on what is doctrinal and what is policy or tradition. For me, tradition and culture had nothing to do with my change of belief or disaffection. Sometimes the traditions annoy me, but they kind of always did, so that was not a factor for me.
Also, any desire for behavioral changes for me came well after the change in belief.
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