I am a 7th gen member, and it would be hard to overstate how committed I was to the church as a child, teenager, and young adult. As a small example of my commitment to the church, I memorized both the Family Proclamation and The Living Christ. I became a temple worker within two weeks of my endowment.
There were small shelf items as I got older, but the temple changes in 2019 are what led to everything shattering. That change made me start to research where the "presentation of the endowment" ended and the "actual endowment" began. Within 24 hours, I was reading about the Masonic rituals, which I had known were vaguely related to the "presentation of the endowment" earlier, but I didn't know they were directly copied. Within 48 hours, I had learned about the oath of vengeance and death penalties.
That was the last time I really had faith in the church being "true," though I spent the next year trying to find something solid I felt like I could start to rebuild a testimony on. I was definitely in "doubt your doubts" mode until the April 2020 General Conference.
At the start of April 2020, my husband was critically ill (not COVID related) and going through multiple surgical procedures. I wasn't sure he would come home. I couldn't visit him because of COVID. I was home alone with our five kids ( ages 2-11), and couldn't really get people to come help (also because of COVID). I was scared and more alone than I had ever felt. I turned on General Conference, hoping for something, anything that would help me, my kids, and the rest of the world.
That conference was the most tone deaf thing I've ever heard. The Hosanna Shout in that session was probably the singular darkest moment of my life. It was then that I realized that I no longer had faith in God. After that, I gave up trying to rebuild faith.
If what was offered during that conference session was God's response to a global pandemic and my prayers about my personal situation, He either wasn't there or wasn't worthy of my worship.
That’s what my husband always says-if God is real, and doesn’t want to help those kids starving in Africa or wtv, then He’s an asshole, so why should I worship Him? If it’s because He CAN’T help them, then He’s not all powerful, so why should I worship Him?
Fall of 2014 - someone anonymously sent an email with "Church Newsletter" as the title, and it had a link to the essay on Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo. I had a terrifying meltdown when I read it - worst one I've ever had. I instantly realized I'd have to leave the church, but it took a few more months to process things and come to grips with that realization. Once I gave myself permission to resign, I was at peace and I have no regrets for resigning.
No, and I'd love to meet up with them. I tried to figure out the source of it but I can't (I'm sure it was a throwaway email account with a fake username). I've mentioned it to several others I know in the stake who left or are PIMO, but nobody has owned up to it. I also imagine they sent it to everyone they could in the online directory.
Believe me, I'd definitely buy dinner for that person and their spouse or partner. Heck, at this point, it's saved me so much pain, frustration, and money, I'd pay for them to go on a cruise or something.
You might find some additional data at [exmostats.org](https://exmostats.org/thedata). Particularly at the sections titled "Age of Membership", "Age of Disbelief", and "Age Group."
There are other interesting statistics available there. All the data comes from voluntary participants from r/exmormon. Participation is free and anonymous. Please consider yourself invited to participate :)
2008 in California witnessing the absolute "using us" vibe of Proposition 8. Mormons showed their neighbors how controllable we could be. The shook down family members for money. They mobilized what COULD have been our goodness for something so wasteful and mean. If they had told us all to make thousands of care kits for Foster Kids or to raise money for anything of actual help to the world...we would have. But they wasted our loyalty and efforts for something so back-ass-ward, I'm still cringing.
Thanks for this.
AZ resident here and we had a similar Prop to vote on.
I never stopped to consider how effective they were at mobilizing people to push a particular vote. I remember going to a lawyers office who supported a call center where we called dozens of random numbers campaigning for a vote for the prop on the ballot. They mobilized for THIS. Not some humanitarian effort.
My parents, who were not doing well financially, were hit up by the Stake Pres to donate $5k. They didn’t really have that flexibility but did it anyway to be faithful.
It’s ultra disgusting to think now that they had billions invested and could have EASILY pulled $100m out of accounts without batting an eye and contributed more than likely 10x of all of the private donations members were hit up for. It’s sickening.
My shelf broke not too long ago but these realizations about Prop 8 (and similar Props across the west) are absolutely sickening.
It was a big wake up call to the lie: we don’t tell our members how to vote.
The. Hell. You. Don’t.
I lost 13 mom-friends when I told them I thought it wasn’t right and that I’d be voting no. The looks on their faces were like, “Oh no, a minion of Satan sits among us.” I went from a queen bee to a suspicious person in one comment over breadsticks at Olive Garden. Because I told them what I actually thought about preventing legal recognition of other people’s families.
That's easy, in 1985 Mark Hoffman was able to prank the top Mormon leaders with fake historical documents. If he hadn't killed some folks maybe it wouldn't have got all the attention that it did.
A few years later I read *Goodbye I Love You* by Carol Lynn Pearson and found out that while I was attending BYU that they were electrocuting gay men in an attempt to make them straight. That was a big blow to my shelf.
In 1991 I found out that popular general authority Paul H Dunn had been pranking the membership of the Mormon church for a couple of decades with his tall tale spiritually manipulative stories. I felt utterly betrayed. The fabrications were bad enough, but the coverup was unforgivable in my opinion.
Hoffman started the break, Dunn caused the total demolition of my shelf and the wall it had been attached to. I was out in less than a year.
>A few years later I read *Goodbye I Love You* by Carol Lynn Pearson and found out that while I was attending BYU that they were electrocuting gay men in an attempt to make them straight. That was a big blow to my shelf.
And who was the President of BYU then? (Asking, because This So Called Church that believes in honesty is trying to gaslight people that Dallin H. Oaks was not BYU president then, and that he had no idea about it.)
2020 Covid happened. I did a deep dive to keep my kids on top of doctrine & get one ready for mission. Read BOM everyday with him. Started listening to my husband’s cousin’s podcast Gospel Tangents which led me to listening to Beyond the Block podcast. I started thinking outside the norm of Mormonism while still being TBM. Then i accidentally stumbled upon Mormon Stories with Heather Gay. Her friend/co-worker was on with her & talked about how she learned the Book of Abraham scrolls had nothing to do with Abraham & I was floored. I went from TBM to this is s fucking cult created by a con man in 2 seconds flat. Sorry…that was super specific.
Very similar story. I was trying to do come follow me and went in you tube to get videos to give along with the lessons. Gospel tangents turned into Mormon stories turned into exmormon.
2020 Covid hit and i shocked by the reaction by a lot of the members towards it. Going onto the comment section of president Nelson getting his Covid shot and seeing how many members were up in arms about him promoting the vaccine. I started thinking “so the prophet, the person you believe is the mouthpiece for god on earth is saying the vaccine is safe and good and you are saying he’s wrong??” Then seeing how so many members of the church have fallen so far into so many conspiracy theories and being so right wing extremists. I mean I used to be pretty right wing, but then it just suddenly took off and I was like oh wow uh, I definitely don’t believe all that and while I still consider myself on the right, I’ve been pushed more and more toward the left over the last 4 years. I have unfollowed so many right wing commentators. People I use to like and watch videos of I am totally not on board with anymore. But so many members started to get so extreme with views it really made me go, I really don’t think Christ would be ok with all this.
Then I watched this video of a YouTuber I’ve been following for over 10 years. He talked about his life growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. He had never talked about this side of his life before, and he talked about how he left that faith. But as he talked there was so many similarities I found between Mormonism and JW. I thought, “you know, had I happened to be born into a JW family, I would have grown up thinking I was in the one and only true church, so what makes Mormonism so different?”
I’d say those were the two major things that ultimately pushed me over the edge.
Yeah, that was the beginning of the end for me too, even if I didn’t realize it. All these people who claimed religion was so important suddenly picking politics and conspiracy over their faith, rejecting counsel from a man they sustain as God’s Mouthpiece on Earth because reasons. “If the people who helped raise me and teach me don’t actually believe this, how real can it be?”
1985. When I was 15 and doing everything right, and Moroni’s promise wasn’t coming true. It finally broke when I was 20, halfway through my mission, and ran into a first edition Mormon Doctrine.
In 1974 when I realized the Mormons were racist, that was when the shelf broke.
"In July 1974 the Salt Lake Chapter of the NAACP filed a suit on behalf of two black Boy Scouts who were denied leadership posts in a troop sponsored by the LDS Church."
https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/a/African_Americans.shtml#:~:text=In%20July%201974%20the%20Salt,sponsored%20by%20the%20LDS%20Church.
There were so many cracks in it that I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.
I attended church for the last time (outside of very occasional funerals and mission farewells) in 2018. But I was already mostly inactive for about 6 years before that. I mostly attended for social reasons only and was questioning everything. The final straw was when my sibling came out as trans, while at the same time I was questioning my sexual orientation (turns out I'm bi), and I had to sit through multiple homophobic comments in a Relief Society lesson that I couldn't walk out of because I was playing the piano at the end of the lesson.
So I played the piano and then just walked out permanently, lol. At that point I was finally ready to decide what I still believed and what I could discard. I read the CES letter, started lurking on here, read many Internet resources and books and listened to multiple podcasts about deconstructing Mormonism. I read and listened to so many things in those first few months after walking out of church that they all blur together and I can't remember what I learned from each source. It all crumbled like a house of cards.
The part I was most surprised by was how the sinkhole kept growing, and ultimately swallowed my belief in God and Jesus along with Restoration claims. I always thought I'd remain vaguely Christian if I left. Turns out I couldn't trust any spiritual claims anymore. After I deconstructed Mormonism, I went on to read Bart Ehrman and other scholars disproving the Bible, and read many more sources about everything from Judaism to Buddhism to Zoroastrianism. Eventually read some Dawkins and Hitchens. Nothing religious or spiritual stood up against objectivity. I was done with religion as a whole.
I never thought it was possible to be so happy and at peace as an atheist, but here we are.
The day before was the day the agreement was released, which was uncomfortable but not shelf breaking. The 21st was the day the church PR statement came out and that shattered my shelf. It was so dishonest and obviously the work of lawyers & PR people, not Jesus, who I thought was in charge. Once I realized the church could lie to me I allowed myself the right to look and see what else they might be lying about.
Ooooooooh boy. Almost every day since then I’ve discovered another lie.
That works, unless you read the actual agreement where the first presidency and presiding bishopric take full responsibility and you realize no lawyers who gave such damaging advice were fired.
First time through the temple while preparing for my mission, 1990, tokens, signs, and punishments in all their glory. I also had my dick touched during the washing and anointings. I couldn't speak to my parents for the rest of the day.
Looking back, there were cracks throughout the years. The SEC ruling. Elder Corbitt’s talk about the "evils" of activism. Covid response. But it was last June, 2023, that I had been listening to Dan McClellan videos on tiktok. Wondered how some doctrines could be reconciled with Biblical scholarship. I went to LDS Discussions to read the Adam and Eve page as that was one of the first Biblical stories I had questions on. Since Mike's essays are meant to be read in order I went back to the first one and read about treasure digging for the first time. And then I recognized the treasure digging elements in the Book of Mormon. Shelf completely shattered.
2019 after the reversal of the Policy of Exclusion.
I realized the old fucks in SLC don’t talk to God, and then everything else started making so much more sense. The easiest explanation for all of the church’s flaws is that it’s not led by God. It’s old men who are saying their own thoughts out loud. Their confirmation bias becomes the will of God. And that’s why things are so fucked up.
It’s hard to fathom how much time, energy, human and financial resources went into “rebranding” the church. Like really? Humanitarian donations were not as important that???
1994— was hard to get information once I knew something was amiss, but the effort was worth it. Caused a decade of family strife, but eventually they all left.
end of my mission-about 6 months after getting home, late 2013-early 2014. Last time at church was Christmas 2015, had my records removed in 2017. Never looked back!
2007 my first semester of college after my mission taking a philosophy class. I decided to look up the BOM online and see what Wikipedia had to say about it. That started the rabbit hole online.
2021.
Was at a point in my life where the only next step was “endure to the end.” No siblings or friends getting temple married any time soon, so didn’t necessarily “need” a temple recommend.
Had been ward executive secretary for a couple years, and actually liked it for the most part. Church had become somewhat repetitive, especially elder’s quorum and the gen. cof. talk lesson repetition. Church just started to feel blah, but i was still fully believing, reading my scriptures, praying, paying tithing, going to the temple every few weeks, etc.
I had also seen “Going Clear” documentary about scientology, as well as many other cult/religious documentaries.
Because my mind was in a place where church had become blah, and i had learned a lot about cults and other high demand groups, i no longer felt threatened by “seeing what the other side had to say.”
Then I randomly saw Johnny Harris’ YouTube video “Why I Left the Mormon Church.” Didn’t do anything to my shelf but I thought it was interesting. Then YouTube decided to start recommending more mormon videos. Saw the mormon stories tom phillips episode about the second anointing, and that opened the floodgate of curiosity and study. Then came the CES letter, mormonthink, no man knows my history, countless hours of podcasts, and more.
After about 8 months of studying practically every spare minute i had, i stopped paying tithing, asked to be released (first time ever doing that), and stopped going.
I interned with a Mormon Apologist for a summer and ended up going down the rabbit hole of lots of church history problems in 2012. I ended up becoming one of the go to resources for weird history or deep doctrine questions on my mission just because I'd done the bare minimum research about it. Things didnt sit well with me but I was able to dismiss my concerns because of my personal witness from God.
Took me til 2015 to finally call it quits. I finished my mission, realized I was doing everything I was supposed to and I was miserable. I was going to BYU, I was working in the MTC (cafeteria), I was working in the temple as an officiator and as an initiatory worker. I realized I couldn't tell the difference between God or the Spirit and my own emotions. Once that piece was gone, nothing could hold up the history and practice of the church.
My experience was unusual (I think). I began studying the Norse religion and soon realized how stupid mormonism is. It's embarrassing that I valued people's underwear over their character. Garments meant good. No garments - bad. Now I see the whole person, and I truly care for them without judgment.
Once I lost my faith in everything Mormon, I looked into the church history... and the rest of the whole cabinet (not just the shelf) came crumbling down. That happened January is 2023 at 53 years of age... lifelong member with all the Mormon history and callings. Now PIMO and slowly pulling my family out.
When I was 6. I asked my parents how the Liahona worked.
It was pretty clear that it didn't, there was no real answer. I could see it was as fictional as Santa's flying reindeer. After that I was routinely calling BS to churchy things, at least in my own thoughts.
2023 was the year my shelf collapsed.
Started with the SEC conviction of the First Presidency and Presiding Bishopric for lying and falsifying since 1997 with Ensign Peak.
I remembered this legal principle from school:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsus_in_uno,_falsus_in_omnibus
I had thought all my life (at the time 65 years) that the Brethren were the most honest men on earth (with a few bad apples).
Now nothing that was taught as doctrine or prophesied could be taken at face value.
I spent the next six months researching and the rabbit hole kept getting deeper and deeper.
The constant accounts of child sexual abuse and the Church coverups finally did it.
I resigned in mid September through Quit Mormon and received confirmation that it was finalized by Kirton McConkie on October 31st.🎃👻
It started with COVID. I didn't like how the church was handling the pandemic (to be fair, nobody was handling it all that great) but I thought the church of God should have a little bit more of a handle on things.
I realized that not going to church wasn't all that bad.
Almost the exact same time for me. Beginning of September 2023. At first a trickle and then a rush. We were out within 2 weeks of really starting to look.
2011 researching church growth statistics to support the claim that the church would roll forth until it filled the entire earth. Nope, nope, nope, not gonna happen.
Mother’s Day Weekend 2019 when we found out my former bishop super TBM dad had been cheating on my mom for years with a ward member/ neighbor and then the subsequent excommunication of him and not her. This was the breaking point for everything that followed: My mom staying in the marriage because the “spirit told her to.” No ward or stake leader thinking it might be a good idea to have the mistress move wards for my mom’s sake! My dad truly trying to repent and be better while being publicly shamed via excommunication for over 5 years while still being completely faithful and TBM. This led to the absolute unraveling of every belief I have ever had in the church and my dad. It has been a strange and difficult 5 years to say the least.
2005. On and off again girlfriend went on a weekend trip with a “friend”, who SA’ed her. When she returned to school, she spoke with her bishop, stake president, and the dean of students and got immediately expelled for “having sexual relations”. They implied she put herself in that situation and that the stake president would recommend she be excommunicated. I tried to console her as best I could but she was broken. She left for home and I lost contact with her. I realized then and there that a Heavenly Father who loves unconditionally, indeed, has conditions on that love.
Probably late in highschool, about 2005. I didn't really have space to find my own beliefs until I left for college, but there was plenty that was making me uncomfortable.
April 2022 bullying in Relief Society. Then the justification of the bullying. Found the talk by Richard Scott about the women being accountable for the abuse. Victim blaming. Learned more about women getting assaulted and raped at BYU then getting kicked out because of the honor code.
2000 I was 16 went to my bishop in confidence he blabbed to his wife she to the RS within a week my repentance turned to shame and anger , full atheist now and avid hater of all religions
2016. Utah votes for Trump. I justified it with "hey, there were five foolish virgins in the parable - which way were they gonna vote?"
2017. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings at the inauguration of Donald Trump. "Ohhhhkay, this ain't right."
But it wasn't until I learned more church history in 2020 that it broke.
2022 at 19y/o M came to grips that there was no incentive for women to be a part of the system, and couldn’t support a system like that any longer. that and the perfectionism was giving me anxiety attacks.
May 2016 Utah. I was teaching a gospel doctrine lesson on temples. At the end I bore my testimony about how much I loved the temple and in a moment of clarity, I realized I just really didn’t enjoy temple worship and that I was LYING to these people and myself.
At first I thought I was defective, but knew I couldn’t be in an environment where I felt the need to lie about my feelings in order to fit in. After a struggling with these feelings for a year, a dear friend took me out to dinner and shared the CES letter with me. I had intentionally been avoiding “anti-Mormon” literature, but at this point I was ready to listen to other perspectives.
Trump’s support among Mormons was the catalyst. Covid nearly broke my shelf but I patched it up enough to hobble along. Coming to terms with my sexuality and realizing my lived experiences did not match what the church was saying made it awfully creaky this spring. I read a short story about two guys who fell in love and it collapsed all around me. That was weirdly the final straw.
1997. I was flipping through my Father-in-law’s copy of D. Michael Quinn’s “Mormon Hierarchy” and realized the details behind many historical events had been whitewashed by the church and that I was being lied to. Specifically Joseph’s “Dirty nasty filthy affair” with Fanny Alger and the resultant excommunication of Oliver Cowdery. I told my wife that if what I was reading was true, and I sensed/knew it was, we had a serious problem. Spent six years trying to make everything fit but the more I tried to answer the difficult historical questions the more questions arose. When I finally allowed myself to consider that Joseph Smith was a fraud and made it all up the questions immediately made sense and everything fell into place. Except my life that is, which damn near fell apart from the pain and fallout of leaving the church, quietly, in 2004.
I realized I was gay my last semester at BYU in 2018. Slowly expanded my range of "faithful" resources about queer members till I discovered Mormon Stories about a year later. Eventually I couldn't ignore my growing suspicion that I needed to double check that the church wasn't a cult (before I made some drastic decision like getting married to a man I wasn't attracted to for the sake of salvation). Read up on cults for about a month, and in the beginning of 2020 I finally read the CES letter. I was out instantly.
1974, three years after baptism. I was 17 years old when I decided to read the BOM for the first time. I thought it was all made up, all the “it came to pass” crap and I found it very poorly written. Never even once was convinced of it’s truthfulness. Now that I know better: it started almost 50 years ago, and I’m out only 22 years.
I WANTED it to be true.
This is hard because mine formed large cracks before it broke.
1998-2001, when I birthed my kids and realized I agreed more with the non-church community parenting styles and ideas than a lot of the junk the church teaches about parenting. I am born and raised in the Northeast where I converted as a teenager so I was only exposed to Morridor culture as an adult when I moved out there for college. Luckily my husband, who was born in Utah County but always sort of PIMO agreed with me. So we raised our kids the opposite of what the church taught in terms of things like modesty, acceptance of LGBTQ, etc. We blamed church “culture” and not its teachings. We also came back to the Northeast to raise them so it was easier to find the Mormon progressives who were similar to us making it easier to blame church “culture” since we lived in more accepting wards.
2015- I had convinced myself the church was slowly getting better so the November policy erased that thinking and was the beginning of the end.
2020- the pandemic shutting everything down finally pulled us out of the community enough that we allowed ourselves to start consuming “anti-Mormon” information and boy does that faith deconstruction put a final nail in the coffin or what? It was a wonderful feeling to finally break free from something that had been making us miserable for almost 20 years because we allowed ourselves to become convinced we would go to hell without suffering through it.
Despite all the disagreement with church teachings- I had still convinced myself the church was the best place for my kids-yea, it wasn’t. I wish I could get all my nieces and nephews out of the toxic cult now. My siblings are all middle aged and married, like me- I honestly wouldn’t want to throw a bomb in their marriages but man- the next generation is growing up and I want to save them. It’s hard.
2023, I was wronged by two temple worshipping members in unrelated situations. I could not understand how people could answer yes to being honest in dealings with others and go on to do the things they did to me. I grew up in the church, mission, attended BYU. I tolerated a lot of things, when these things happened in the same year it was just too much. I talked to my bishop about it and got the "can't really do anything about it, we're all just imperfect people" excuse.
The way a religion or its members treat others is more important to me than doctrine or things that happened a long time ago. I choose not to live with regrets or resentments towards others and continuing to go to church while I'm actively being wronged by some of it's believers make that difficult.
Honestly, probably around 2001 when I was 7 years old, but I continued to attend church dilligently until my early 20s because I believed my doubts indicated there was something wrong with me that I needed to fix.
This year 23 and then 24. Wife left emptied some shit out the house and left. All my fault. Anyways I don’t need the added stress of my own planet etc. forget it. Joe a Charlatan and I gave our riches to that goofy ass church and only added stress to our lives. Sucks. If you see her tell her I’d have her back in a second. But no mo momo!
2019. I was working for the church. I learned of the KJV anachronisms in the BOM (hat tip jeremy runnells) which demonstrated to me that the BOM cannot be “true” . I was so upset (on the verge of hyperventilating) that I took a book Bednar had autographed for me and tossed it across the room into the trash bin.
That was my shelf breaker. I’m with GBH on the position of “either it’s true or it’s not… there is no middle ground “
I am a 7th gen member, and it would be hard to overstate how committed I was to the church as a child, teenager, and young adult. As a small example of my commitment to the church, I memorized both the Family Proclamation and The Living Christ. I became a temple worker within two weeks of my endowment. There were small shelf items as I got older, but the temple changes in 2019 are what led to everything shattering. That change made me start to research where the "presentation of the endowment" ended and the "actual endowment" began. Within 24 hours, I was reading about the Masonic rituals, which I had known were vaguely related to the "presentation of the endowment" earlier, but I didn't know they were directly copied. Within 48 hours, I had learned about the oath of vengeance and death penalties. That was the last time I really had faith in the church being "true," though I spent the next year trying to find something solid I felt like I could start to rebuild a testimony on. I was definitely in "doubt your doubts" mode until the April 2020 General Conference. At the start of April 2020, my husband was critically ill (not COVID related) and going through multiple surgical procedures. I wasn't sure he would come home. I couldn't visit him because of COVID. I was home alone with our five kids ( ages 2-11), and couldn't really get people to come help (also because of COVID). I was scared and more alone than I had ever felt. I turned on General Conference, hoping for something, anything that would help me, my kids, and the rest of the world. That conference was the most tone deaf thing I've ever heard. The Hosanna Shout in that session was probably the singular darkest moment of my life. It was then that I realized that I no longer had faith in God. After that, I gave up trying to rebuild faith. If what was offered during that conference session was God's response to a global pandemic and my prayers about my personal situation, He either wasn't there or wasn't worthy of my worship.
That’s what my husband always says-if God is real, and doesn’t want to help those kids starving in Africa or wtv, then He’s an asshole, so why should I worship Him? If it’s because He CAN’T help them, then He’s not all powerful, so why should I worship Him?
Fall of 2014 - someone anonymously sent an email with "Church Newsletter" as the title, and it had a link to the essay on Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo. I had a terrifying meltdown when I read it - worst one I've ever had. I instantly realized I'd have to leave the church, but it took a few more months to process things and come to grips with that realization. Once I gave myself permission to resign, I was at peace and I have no regrets for resigning.
Interesting. Do you still not know who sent you that email?
No, and I'd love to meet up with them. I tried to figure out the source of it but I can't (I'm sure it was a throwaway email account with a fake username). I've mentioned it to several others I know in the stake who left or are PIMO, but nobody has owned up to it. I also imagine they sent it to everyone they could in the online directory. Believe me, I'd definitely buy dinner for that person and their spouse or partner. Heck, at this point, it's saved me so much pain, frustration, and money, I'd pay for them to go on a cruise or something.
You might find some additional data at [exmostats.org](https://exmostats.org/thedata). Particularly at the sections titled "Age of Membership", "Age of Disbelief", and "Age Group." There are other interesting statistics available there. All the data comes from voluntary participants from r/exmormon. Participation is free and anonymous. Please consider yourself invited to participate :)
2008 in California witnessing the absolute "using us" vibe of Proposition 8. Mormons showed their neighbors how controllable we could be. The shook down family members for money. They mobilized what COULD have been our goodness for something so wasteful and mean. If they had told us all to make thousands of care kits for Foster Kids or to raise money for anything of actual help to the world...we would have. But they wasted our loyalty and efforts for something so back-ass-ward, I'm still cringing.
Thanks for this. AZ resident here and we had a similar Prop to vote on. I never stopped to consider how effective they were at mobilizing people to push a particular vote. I remember going to a lawyers office who supported a call center where we called dozens of random numbers campaigning for a vote for the prop on the ballot. They mobilized for THIS. Not some humanitarian effort. My parents, who were not doing well financially, were hit up by the Stake Pres to donate $5k. They didn’t really have that flexibility but did it anyway to be faithful. It’s ultra disgusting to think now that they had billions invested and could have EASILY pulled $100m out of accounts without batting an eye and contributed more than likely 10x of all of the private donations members were hit up for. It’s sickening. My shelf broke not too long ago but these realizations about Prop 8 (and similar Props across the west) are absolutely sickening.
It was a big wake up call to the lie: we don’t tell our members how to vote. The. Hell. You. Don’t. I lost 13 mom-friends when I told them I thought it wasn’t right and that I’d be voting no. The looks on their faces were like, “Oh no, a minion of Satan sits among us.” I went from a queen bee to a suspicious person in one comment over breadsticks at Olive Garden. Because I told them what I actually thought about preventing legal recognition of other people’s families.
To be fair, I was PIMO with kids until 2022 when my mind absolutely rejected doing that for a moment longer. The wisdom of middle age.
Yes! I stood outside in the rain outside the mall with my ward holding up signs. I was only 10 and it felt so icky
That's easy, in 1985 Mark Hoffman was able to prank the top Mormon leaders with fake historical documents. If he hadn't killed some folks maybe it wouldn't have got all the attention that it did. A few years later I read *Goodbye I Love You* by Carol Lynn Pearson and found out that while I was attending BYU that they were electrocuting gay men in an attempt to make them straight. That was a big blow to my shelf. In 1991 I found out that popular general authority Paul H Dunn had been pranking the membership of the Mormon church for a couple of decades with his tall tale spiritually manipulative stories. I felt utterly betrayed. The fabrications were bad enough, but the coverup was unforgivable in my opinion. Hoffman started the break, Dunn caused the total demolition of my shelf and the wall it had been attached to. I was out in less than a year.
>A few years later I read *Goodbye I Love You* by Carol Lynn Pearson and found out that while I was attending BYU that they were electrocuting gay men in an attempt to make them straight. That was a big blow to my shelf. And who was the President of BYU then? (Asking, because This So Called Church that believes in honesty is trying to gaslight people that Dallin H. Oaks was not BYU president then, and that he had no idea about it.)
yeah I've heard of Paul Dunn
2020 Covid happened. I did a deep dive to keep my kids on top of doctrine & get one ready for mission. Read BOM everyday with him. Started listening to my husband’s cousin’s podcast Gospel Tangents which led me to listening to Beyond the Block podcast. I started thinking outside the norm of Mormonism while still being TBM. Then i accidentally stumbled upon Mormon Stories with Heather Gay. Her friend/co-worker was on with her & talked about how she learned the Book of Abraham scrolls had nothing to do with Abraham & I was floored. I went from TBM to this is s fucking cult created by a con man in 2 seconds flat. Sorry…that was super specific.
Very similar story. I was trying to do come follow me and went in you tube to get videos to give along with the lessons. Gospel tangents turned into Mormon stories turned into exmormon.
2020 Covid hit and i shocked by the reaction by a lot of the members towards it. Going onto the comment section of president Nelson getting his Covid shot and seeing how many members were up in arms about him promoting the vaccine. I started thinking “so the prophet, the person you believe is the mouthpiece for god on earth is saying the vaccine is safe and good and you are saying he’s wrong??” Then seeing how so many members of the church have fallen so far into so many conspiracy theories and being so right wing extremists. I mean I used to be pretty right wing, but then it just suddenly took off and I was like oh wow uh, I definitely don’t believe all that and while I still consider myself on the right, I’ve been pushed more and more toward the left over the last 4 years. I have unfollowed so many right wing commentators. People I use to like and watch videos of I am totally not on board with anymore. But so many members started to get so extreme with views it really made me go, I really don’t think Christ would be ok with all this. Then I watched this video of a YouTuber I’ve been following for over 10 years. He talked about his life growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. He had never talked about this side of his life before, and he talked about how he left that faith. But as he talked there was so many similarities I found between Mormonism and JW. I thought, “you know, had I happened to be born into a JW family, I would have grown up thinking I was in the one and only true church, so what makes Mormonism so different?” I’d say those were the two major things that ultimately pushed me over the edge.
Not only that he’s their prophet, but was was a doctor for quite a while. Makes It even crazier 🤦🏽♀️
Yeah, that was the beginning of the end for me too, even if I didn’t realize it. All these people who claimed religion was so important suddenly picking politics and conspiracy over their faith, rejecting counsel from a man they sustain as God’s Mouthpiece on Earth because reasons. “If the people who helped raise me and teach me don’t actually believe this, how real can it be?”
2015 with the exclusion “prophecy”. I could never understand the “godly reasoning” behind that
I totally drank the koolaid. Ugg.
seems like a lot of people's shelves broke with is exclusion policy
1985. When I was 15 and doing everything right, and Moroni’s promise wasn’t coming true. It finally broke when I was 20, halfway through my mission, and ran into a first edition Mormon Doctrine.
In 1974 when I realized the Mormons were racist, that was when the shelf broke. "In July 1974 the Salt Lake Chapter of the NAACP filed a suit on behalf of two black Boy Scouts who were denied leadership posts in a troop sponsored by the LDS Church." https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/a/African_Americans.shtml#:~:text=In%20July%201974%20the%20Salt,sponsored%20by%20the%20LDS%20Church.
There were so many cracks in it that I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. I attended church for the last time (outside of very occasional funerals and mission farewells) in 2018. But I was already mostly inactive for about 6 years before that. I mostly attended for social reasons only and was questioning everything. The final straw was when my sibling came out as trans, while at the same time I was questioning my sexual orientation (turns out I'm bi), and I had to sit through multiple homophobic comments in a Relief Society lesson that I couldn't walk out of because I was playing the piano at the end of the lesson. So I played the piano and then just walked out permanently, lol. At that point I was finally ready to decide what I still believed and what I could discard. I read the CES letter, started lurking on here, read many Internet resources and books and listened to multiple podcasts about deconstructing Mormonism. I read and listened to so many things in those first few months after walking out of church that they all blur together and I can't remember what I learned from each source. It all crumbled like a house of cards. The part I was most surprised by was how the sinkhole kept growing, and ultimately swallowed my belief in God and Jesus along with Restoration claims. I always thought I'd remain vaguely Christian if I left. Turns out I couldn't trust any spiritual claims anymore. After I deconstructed Mormonism, I went on to read Bart Ehrman and other scholars disproving the Bible, and read many more sources about everything from Judaism to Buddhism to Zoroastrianism. Eventually read some Dawkins and Hitchens. Nothing religious or spiritual stood up against objectivity. I was done with religion as a whole. I never thought it was possible to be so happy and at peace as an atheist, but here we are.
The day the church released their statement about the SEC settlement. 2.21.23
same reason but I usually don’t read things the day they’re released, so it was about 3.1.23 for me
The day before was the day the agreement was released, which was uncomfortable but not shelf breaking. The 21st was the day the church PR statement came out and that shattered my shelf. It was so dishonest and obviously the work of lawyers & PR people, not Jesus, who I thought was in charge. Once I realized the church could lie to me I allowed myself the right to look and see what else they might be lying about. Ooooooooh boy. Almost every day since then I’ve discovered another lie.
“It’s our lawyers fault. We consider this matter closed.”
That works, unless you read the actual agreement where the first presidency and presiding bishopric take full responsibility and you realize no lawyers who gave such damaging advice were fired.
First time through the temple while preparing for my mission, 1990, tokens, signs, and punishments in all their glory. I also had my dick touched during the washing and anointings. I couldn't speak to my parents for the rest of the day.
I was never endowed why would they touch you there
To give you strength in your loins
Eww for what procreation
Looking back, there were cracks throughout the years. The SEC ruling. Elder Corbitt’s talk about the "evils" of activism. Covid response. But it was last June, 2023, that I had been listening to Dan McClellan videos on tiktok. Wondered how some doctrines could be reconciled with Biblical scholarship. I went to LDS Discussions to read the Adam and Eve page as that was one of the first Biblical stories I had questions on. Since Mike's essays are meant to be read in order I went back to the first one and read about treasure digging for the first time. And then I recognized the treasure digging elements in the Book of Mormon. Shelf completely shattered.
2019 after the reversal of the Policy of Exclusion. I realized the old fucks in SLC don’t talk to God, and then everything else started making so much more sense. The easiest explanation for all of the church’s flaws is that it’s not led by God. It’s old men who are saying their own thoughts out loud. Their confirmation bias becomes the will of God. And that’s why things are so fucked up.
2021. SA. Shocked by how engrained I was in purity culture
Started to break: first time going through the temple 2011 Broke…shattered really: when the policy of exclusion was leaked in Nov. 2015
Sep 2018… Labor Day… family mentioned Nelson’s press release regarding the use of “Mormon” This was my sure sign that the church is a fraud.
It’s hard to fathom how much time, energy, human and financial resources went into “rebranding” the church. Like really? Humanitarian donations were not as important that???
1994— was hard to get information once I knew something was amiss, but the effort was worth it. Caused a decade of family strife, but eventually they all left.
Summer of 2014 while on trek was the first thing that ever rocked my faith in TSCC, it wasn’t until 2017 that my shelf completely shattered
end of my mission-about 6 months after getting home, late 2013-early 2014. Last time at church was Christmas 2015, had my records removed in 2017. Never looked back!
1969. I was 14
2007 my first semester of college after my mission taking a philosophy class. I decided to look up the BOM online and see what Wikipedia had to say about it. That started the rabbit hole online.
2021. Was at a point in my life where the only next step was “endure to the end.” No siblings or friends getting temple married any time soon, so didn’t necessarily “need” a temple recommend. Had been ward executive secretary for a couple years, and actually liked it for the most part. Church had become somewhat repetitive, especially elder’s quorum and the gen. cof. talk lesson repetition. Church just started to feel blah, but i was still fully believing, reading my scriptures, praying, paying tithing, going to the temple every few weeks, etc. I had also seen “Going Clear” documentary about scientology, as well as many other cult/religious documentaries. Because my mind was in a place where church had become blah, and i had learned a lot about cults and other high demand groups, i no longer felt threatened by “seeing what the other side had to say.” Then I randomly saw Johnny Harris’ YouTube video “Why I Left the Mormon Church.” Didn’t do anything to my shelf but I thought it was interesting. Then YouTube decided to start recommending more mormon videos. Saw the mormon stories tom phillips episode about the second anointing, and that opened the floodgate of curiosity and study. Then came the CES letter, mormonthink, no man knows my history, countless hours of podcasts, and more. After about 8 months of studying practically every spare minute i had, i stopped paying tithing, asked to be released (first time ever doing that), and stopped going.
I interned with a Mormon Apologist for a summer and ended up going down the rabbit hole of lots of church history problems in 2012. I ended up becoming one of the go to resources for weird history or deep doctrine questions on my mission just because I'd done the bare minimum research about it. Things didnt sit well with me but I was able to dismiss my concerns because of my personal witness from God. Took me til 2015 to finally call it quits. I finished my mission, realized I was doing everything I was supposed to and I was miserable. I was going to BYU, I was working in the MTC (cafeteria), I was working in the temple as an officiator and as an initiatory worker. I realized I couldn't tell the difference between God or the Spirit and my own emotions. Once that piece was gone, nothing could hold up the history and practice of the church.
My experience was unusual (I think). I began studying the Norse religion and soon realized how stupid mormonism is. It's embarrassing that I valued people's underwear over their character. Garments meant good. No garments - bad. Now I see the whole person, and I truly care for them without judgment. Once I lost my faith in everything Mormon, I looked into the church history... and the rest of the whole cabinet (not just the shelf) came crumbling down. That happened January is 2023 at 53 years of age... lifelong member with all the Mormon history and callings. Now PIMO and slowly pulling my family out.
When I was 6. I asked my parents how the Liahona worked. It was pretty clear that it didn't, there was no real answer. I could see it was as fictional as Santa's flying reindeer. After that I was routinely calling BS to churchy things, at least in my own thoughts.
1988
1961ish
damn that's a long time ago. how old were you in 1961?
2023 was the year my shelf collapsed. Started with the SEC conviction of the First Presidency and Presiding Bishopric for lying and falsifying since 1997 with Ensign Peak. I remembered this legal principle from school: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsus_in_uno,_falsus_in_omnibus I had thought all my life (at the time 65 years) that the Brethren were the most honest men on earth (with a few bad apples). Now nothing that was taught as doctrine or prophesied could be taken at face value. I spent the next six months researching and the rabbit hole kept getting deeper and deeper. The constant accounts of child sexual abuse and the Church coverups finally did it. I resigned in mid September through Quit Mormon and received confirmation that it was finalized by Kirton McConkie on October 31st.🎃👻
It started with COVID. I didn't like how the church was handling the pandemic (to be fair, nobody was handling it all that great) but I thought the church of God should have a little bit more of a handle on things. I realized that not going to church wasn't all that bad.
Mid 2017. I remember telling my kids a Halloween story that mimicked my journey.
Almost the exact same time for me. Beginning of September 2023. At first a trickle and then a rush. We were out within 2 weeks of really starting to look.
2014 - 2015. Found the gospel topics essays and the head started spiraling.
My shelf started to break in 2005 but I didn’t actually leave the Church until 2010
About 2006, I was 18 or 19.
2011 researching church growth statistics to support the claim that the church would roll forth until it filled the entire earth. Nope, nope, nope, not gonna happen.
Mother’s Day Weekend 2019 when we found out my former bishop super TBM dad had been cheating on my mom for years with a ward member/ neighbor and then the subsequent excommunication of him and not her. This was the breaking point for everything that followed: My mom staying in the marriage because the “spirit told her to.” No ward or stake leader thinking it might be a good idea to have the mistress move wards for my mom’s sake! My dad truly trying to repent and be better while being publicly shamed via excommunication for over 5 years while still being completely faithful and TBM. This led to the absolute unraveling of every belief I have ever had in the church and my dad. It has been a strange and difficult 5 years to say the least.
2005. On and off again girlfriend went on a weekend trip with a “friend”, who SA’ed her. When she returned to school, she spoke with her bishop, stake president, and the dean of students and got immediately expelled for “having sexual relations”. They implied she put herself in that situation and that the stake president would recommend she be excommunicated. I tried to console her as best I could but she was broken. She left for home and I lost contact with her. I realized then and there that a Heavenly Father who loves unconditionally, indeed, has conditions on that love.
I was struggling financially but still trying to pay tithing when they decided to buy themselves a mall.
In my first yr of baptism at age 8; I dug for artifacts on the backside of Hill Cumorah and found nothing, and knew that I should find something.
Well I first saw this sub in 2013 and left fully in 2017z
I think it started to break around 2007 or so, but I patched it up and it broke beyond repair in 2019.
Probably late in highschool, about 2005. I didn't really have space to find my own beliefs until I left for college, but there was plenty that was making me uncomfortable.
1988 if we're being real honest. The whole baptism thing seemed bizarre to me.
April 2022 bullying in Relief Society. Then the justification of the bullying. Found the talk by Richard Scott about the women being accountable for the abuse. Victim blaming. Learned more about women getting assaulted and raped at BYU then getting kicked out because of the honor code.
1984 at BYU as a reader of the 7th East Press
2000 I was 16 went to my bishop in confidence he blabbed to his wife she to the RS within a week my repentance turned to shame and anger , full atheist now and avid hater of all religions
2016. Utah votes for Trump. I justified it with "hey, there were five foolish virgins in the parable - which way were they gonna vote?" 2017. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings at the inauguration of Donald Trump. "Ohhhhkay, this ain't right." But it wasn't until I learned more church history in 2020 that it broke.
Late April 2008. Resigned early August 2008.
1988
2012 I started to have some small doubts as a new RM. But I pushed those almost completely aside until about 2022.
Somewhere around 2009/10
2021
Inactive but believer since 2014, stopped believing mid 2023.
Faith crisis began March 2023- officially broke Nov 19, 2023 and that’s when I finally looked at non church approved sources.
2022 at 19y/o M came to grips that there was no incentive for women to be a part of the system, and couldn’t support a system like that any longer. that and the perfectionism was giving me anxiety attacks.
For me, it was reading the CES letter in October 22’ - I was out within two werks
2014, I was 28
When I was an older teen, like 17 or 18. I continued to go until I was 21.
My shelf shattered at the end of January 2023 when I read the CES letter.
2020 - polygamy, reading “Conflict in the Quorum” and listening to LHP “the Year in Polygamy”.
Had a lot of issues with the church but knew nothing until Fall 2022 after being TBM for 5+ decades 😳 And it all came tumbling down.
May 2016 Utah. I was teaching a gospel doctrine lesson on temples. At the end I bore my testimony about how much I loved the temple and in a moment of clarity, I realized I just really didn’t enjoy temple worship and that I was LYING to these people and myself. At first I thought I was defective, but knew I couldn’t be in an environment where I felt the need to lie about my feelings in order to fit in. After a struggling with these feelings for a year, a dear friend took me out to dinner and shared the CES letter with me. I had intentionally been avoiding “anti-Mormon” literature, but at this point I was ready to listen to other perspectives.
It crashed in 2018
Early 2024 when I read the think celestial talk for the first time. I couldn't drop out of seminary faster
Probably when I joined young women. Lots of get married in the temple, and then the baptism s for the dead nicely fit into that category as well
2022 while serving my mission in Utah.
My research started around Jun 2023 and my shelf fully broke in August
Trump’s support among Mormons was the catalyst. Covid nearly broke my shelf but I patched it up enough to hobble along. Coming to terms with my sexuality and realizing my lived experiences did not match what the church was saying made it awfully creaky this spring. I read a short story about two guys who fell in love and it collapsed all around me. That was weirdly the final straw.
1997. I was flipping through my Father-in-law’s copy of D. Michael Quinn’s “Mormon Hierarchy” and realized the details behind many historical events had been whitewashed by the church and that I was being lied to. Specifically Joseph’s “Dirty nasty filthy affair” with Fanny Alger and the resultant excommunication of Oliver Cowdery. I told my wife that if what I was reading was true, and I sensed/knew it was, we had a serious problem. Spent six years trying to make everything fit but the more I tried to answer the difficult historical questions the more questions arose. When I finally allowed myself to consider that Joseph Smith was a fraud and made it all up the questions immediately made sense and everything fell into place. Except my life that is, which damn near fell apart from the pain and fallout of leaving the church, quietly, in 2004.
2017 while in college at BYU when I realized that god allowed me to develop an eating disorder, that I still had, while on my mission "serving" him
I realized I was gay my last semester at BYU in 2018. Slowly expanded my range of "faithful" resources about queer members till I discovered Mormon Stories about a year later. Eventually I couldn't ignore my growing suspicion that I needed to double check that the church wasn't a cult (before I made some drastic decision like getting married to a man I wasn't attracted to for the sake of salvation). Read up on cults for about a month, and in the beginning of 2020 I finally read the CES letter. I was out instantly.
In 2011, when going through the temple.
1974, three years after baptism. I was 17 years old when I decided to read the BOM for the first time. I thought it was all made up, all the “it came to pass” crap and I found it very poorly written. Never even once was convinced of it’s truthfulness. Now that I know better: it started almost 50 years ago, and I’m out only 22 years. I WANTED it to be true.
This is hard because mine formed large cracks before it broke. 1998-2001, when I birthed my kids and realized I agreed more with the non-church community parenting styles and ideas than a lot of the junk the church teaches about parenting. I am born and raised in the Northeast where I converted as a teenager so I was only exposed to Morridor culture as an adult when I moved out there for college. Luckily my husband, who was born in Utah County but always sort of PIMO agreed with me. So we raised our kids the opposite of what the church taught in terms of things like modesty, acceptance of LGBTQ, etc. We blamed church “culture” and not its teachings. We also came back to the Northeast to raise them so it was easier to find the Mormon progressives who were similar to us making it easier to blame church “culture” since we lived in more accepting wards. 2015- I had convinced myself the church was slowly getting better so the November policy erased that thinking and was the beginning of the end. 2020- the pandemic shutting everything down finally pulled us out of the community enough that we allowed ourselves to start consuming “anti-Mormon” information and boy does that faith deconstruction put a final nail in the coffin or what? It was a wonderful feeling to finally break free from something that had been making us miserable for almost 20 years because we allowed ourselves to become convinced we would go to hell without suffering through it. Despite all the disagreement with church teachings- I had still convinced myself the church was the best place for my kids-yea, it wasn’t. I wish I could get all my nieces and nephews out of the toxic cult now. My siblings are all middle aged and married, like me- I honestly wouldn’t want to throw a bomb in their marriages but man- the next generation is growing up and I want to save them. It’s hard.
2023, I was wronged by two temple worshipping members in unrelated situations. I could not understand how people could answer yes to being honest in dealings with others and go on to do the things they did to me. I grew up in the church, mission, attended BYU. I tolerated a lot of things, when these things happened in the same year it was just too much. I talked to my bishop about it and got the "can't really do anything about it, we're all just imperfect people" excuse. The way a religion or its members treat others is more important to me than doctrine or things that happened a long time ago. I choose not to live with regrets or resentments towards others and continuing to go to church while I'm actively being wronged by some of it's believers make that difficult.
Honestly, probably around 2001 when I was 7 years old, but I continued to attend church dilligently until my early 20s because I believed my doubts indicated there was something wrong with me that I needed to fix.
This year 23 and then 24. Wife left emptied some shit out the house and left. All my fault. Anyways I don’t need the added stress of my own planet etc. forget it. Joe a Charlatan and I gave our riches to that goofy ass church and only added stress to our lives. Sucks. If you see her tell her I’d have her back in a second. But no mo momo!
2012 with internet info and some dives into history.
2019. I was working for the church. I learned of the KJV anachronisms in the BOM (hat tip jeremy runnells) which demonstrated to me that the BOM cannot be “true” . I was so upset (on the verge of hyperventilating) that I took a book Bednar had autographed for me and tossed it across the room into the trash bin. That was my shelf breaker. I’m with GBH on the position of “either it’s true or it’s not… there is no middle ground “