What Do You Think are the main reasons people leave the LDS church?

[Anonymous]

Cnsl1 wrote:

Maybe a better question for this forum would be why do people stop believing what they believed before?

At its core, external events as perceived/projected by the individual are a catalyst for a fundamental shift in belief.

Sometimes this external “trigger” is more obvious – historical/doctrinal issues for example.

Sometimes the internal “trigger” is a larger catalyst – Losing a belief in God for example.

Cnsl1 wrote:

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.

Our church culture teaches faith-changing to a minimum level of faith, and then it focuses on maintaining faith in specific, authorized channels rather then expanding faith in any channel. Our church culture teaches Fear about faith transitions and mixed-faith marriages (loosely defined by me as any change in belief between partners instead of specifically defined as mixed religions), rather then humanizing faith transitions and mixed-faith marriage – because faith transitions are very common (and good), and EVERY MARRIAGE is essentially a mixed-faith marriage because it is a union between different levels of belief based on the individual.

There are degrees of “leaving church-edness” that are described here as individuals evaluate and put boundaries on their relationships with God, the church organization, their church unit culture and their family system(s) (extended family and immediate family). Whether it is physically leaving the church (putting DNC on records, removing records), rarely showing up, or emotionally leaving the church – there are a diverse collection of actions – and most of the people on this forum I think have acted in a variety of ways in these areas and wrote about it.

Cnsl1 wrote:

Also, any desire for behavioral changes for me came well after the change in belief.

The interesting thing about faith transitions is the thoughtful shift in authority – an individual defines and acts on the decisions they made about who has authority to make value calls for that person’s life. The church, the community, and the family views this uneasily at best, and as fodder for the individual becoming a “loose cannon” of sorts. To me, this was the most rewarding aspect of the faith transition – to thoughtfully set up boundaries on my behaviors based on my different belief system.

[Anonymous]

Cnsl1 wrote:

(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.

Brief tangent on the difficulty of narrowing down “doctrinal.” I find Polygamy to be a fascinating case study in this regard. There does not seem to be any consensus for why it happened. It was a case of God saying “Do the thing” and then later saying “Don’t do the thing.” That makes it an odd fit for a doctrine.

And I think this leads directly into something that Amy said.

AmyJ wrote:

Our church culture teaches faith-changing to a minimum level of faith, and then it focuses on maintaining faith in specific, authorized channels rather then expanding faith in any channel.

If God can command something through His prophets without explanation (from the sender) and without understanding (from the recipient) and expect that thing to be followed then it becomes exceedingly important to know that commands one is receiving do indeed come from God.

I belief this is part of the reason why we have developed this sense of infallibility of what the Prophet teaches.

[Anonymous]

Because we live in a fallen and secular world. Apostasy in the later days has been predicted by prophetic teachings.

Every man rather follows his own teachings and create their own good. Even on this subreddit people denigrate the church. The attack on faithful members are relentless from every part of society, and people that are religious are portrayed as idiots, and people that don’t promote moral and religious relativism are depicted as fools in a world with many churches and political trends.

Quote:

https://youtu.be/ER1ic_oKgLs

[Anonymous]

SwedishLDS wrote:

Because we live in a fallen and secular world. Apostasy in the later days has been predicted by prophetic teachings.

Every man rather follows his own teachings and create their own good. Even on this subreddit people denigrate the church. The attack on faithful members are relentless from every part of society, and people that are religious are portrayed as idiots, and people that don’t promote moral and religious relativism are depicted as fools in a world with many churches and political trends.

Quote:

https://youtu.be/ER1ic_oKgLs

I don’t believe apostacy and leaving the church are the same thing, just like the gospel and the church are not the same thing. The gospel has always existed (at least since the council/war in heaven) while the church has existed a little less than 200 years. Likewise, the Church of God/Church of the Firstborn (and a few other names) also is not the same thing as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There were always believers, even during the mischaracterized (by us) “great apostacy.” There is no doubt all churches are losing membership/adherence to one extent or another, our church included.

For questioning members reconciling what they have long been taught and believed in light of new understandings and truths is a struggle we see played out here constantly and something that most of us have struggled with. Some come to the conclusion that if the church is not true (or at least parts of it are not) then no church is true and they abandon religion altogether. But because many in the church tend to conflate the gospel and the church, they forget the gospel is much bigger (and much more simple) than the church. Some who leave the church do come to that recognition and still believe in Jesus Christ and Him Crucified – and thus are not in a state of apostasy if that is defined as a state of unbelief. And that is all that Jesus really asked of us – believe. It should also be noted that some do join/attend other churches.

To the original question, living in a fallen world is an answer as to why people leave the church but it’s very generic. And for the record, the fall is an important part of the plan without which we would have limited agency.

(I did not watch the video. Were it church produced I may have.)

[Anonymous]

To be fair, many religious people do the same thing to non-religious people. It is a human issue, not just or uniquely a religious issue.

Broad brushes serve a useful purpose in painting, but they also are the wrong brush when trying to paint fine detail – and the fine detail usually is what makes a painting uniquely beautiful.

[Author]

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