How To Remove Name From Lds Church Records

The Mormon Church vs. the internet

By Jul 1, 2022, xi:00am EDT

Photography by Kim Raff | Illustration by William Joel

To be a Mormon amongst Mormons is to realize the American fantasy of skilful neighbors. They're the kind of neighbors from whom yous infringe a loving cup of sugar and whom you trust to option upward your children from school when you're stuck in a meeting. They invite you over on summer evenings for lemonade at the table in the backyard next to the hydrangeas. You eat their Clot-O salad at picnics. (Lime Jell-O is and then popular amid Mormons that the corridor of Mormon communities from Utah to Idaho is often called "the Jell-O Chugalug.") And, of form, you lot see them every Sunday at church.

Joseph, 27, lives just west of Salt Lake City in a Mormon ward that spans a couple of streets. His church is just down the road, and the bishop, who presides over the ward, lives around the corner. Most of his neighbors are active within the Church building, and when Joseph first moved in, he was, too. Afterward he and his wife began trying to offset a family, they became peculiarly close to their neighbors beyond the street who were older and had children of their own. The couple included them in all of their entertaining. The neighbors didn't take an ice maker, so, often, ane of them would swing past to pillage Joseph's ice and chat. Their friendship was a paradigm of neighbordom, which inspires envy in this writer, whose interactions with her neighbors are express to whacking the wall with a Swiffer when their music is too loud.

In an commodity written for the Church's official newsroom, titled "Why Mormons Make Practiced Neighbors," Elder Larry Y. Wilson extols his boyfriend "church-attention Latter-day Saints" for their neighborliness. He begins with a quote fatigued from a letter Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Winston Churchill: "I have a very loftier opinion of the Mormons—for they are excellent citizens." (Wilson does non include the rest of Roosevelt's quote, which ends in a barrel-bellied jab about polyamory.) He goes on to cite a survey showing that Mormons feel warmer toward their own members than any other religious group. "Practicing Latter-solar day Saints tend to be healthier, happier, better educated, and more than committed to family values," Wilson writes. "The Latter-day Saint community functions like an extended family."

Depending on your experiences with extended family, Wilson'due south comparison is either a soothing affirmation or a grim alert. A family unit can be very warm — particularly when that family unit is tied together by proximity, faith, a sweeping shared value system, a history of persecution, and the belief that "the disintegration of the family unit will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by aboriginal and mod prophets." A family can too be very petty, especially when one of its own begins to drift abroad.

Concluding summertime, Joseph chose to stop attention church services. He made his decision in the wake of a protest past Sam Young, a businessman and former bishop from Texas. Young had been fasting for weeks to heighten awareness about a policy that allowed bishops to conduct ane-on-one interviews with minors, often about sexual matters. His crusade struck a chord with Joseph, who was sexually abused when he was younger. Joseph attended several events Young held, and after one of them, he never went back to church again.

Joseph photographed at his home in West Valley Urban center, Utah.

Joseph and his married woman also appear their determination to their neighbors. "Nosotros nevertheless hang out with them," he says, "but it merely seems like, recently, they're more than afar. We don't get invited over very often." They still talk sometimes, but the friendship has chilled a chip, if you will: Joseph's friend doesn't swing by for ice anymore. "He doesn't come up over at all or check in on united states to see how we're doing. It'south only kind of distressing. Not but are we leaving the Church, but nosotros're leaving our friends. We're leaving our life. We're leaving everything."

Joseph hasn't attended church building services in about a year. He canceled the automated payments that withdrew a ten percent tithe from his income each month. When he's out mowing his front backyard, his neighbors don't greet him. Some don't even look at him, and when they practice, they stare pointedly at the tattoos he's gotten in the past yr.

Just Joseph has joined a new community, ane built of former Mormons who have found each other on the internet and who are committed to helping each other navigate the logistical and existential difficulties of leaving the Church building.

In recent years, the Church has been embattled by the efficiency of the internet. It's never been easier to stumble across data that contradicts the pillars of faith. That'due south true for many religions but particularly Mormonism, which has a very recent history. Where the unsavory specifics of an older organized religion's origins may have been eroded by time, reduced to a handful of too-old-to-question texts and some shriveled relics, the early years of Mormonism are well-documented and easily examined online. The internet has also given Mormons new platforms, from forums to podcasts, where they tin can share their findings. The result has been a mass undoctrination.

Merely even when Mormons who choose to leave the Church can exercise so with the click of a button, it'south not that simple.

The LDS Salt Lake Temple.

During a Q&A at Utah State Academy in 2022, Elderberry Marlin K. Jensen, who was then the official Church historian, fielded a polite hardball question from a woman in the audition. She asked when the Church's manuals would begin reflecting what she'd learned about the Church building through her ain research. "It's interesting, in several of the scriptures that give u.s. the data near what the Church historian should do, information technology's 'speak to the rising generation,'" Jensen said. "So our hope is to equip them, in a knowledgeable way — to give reason for the hope that is in them, and to do it in age-specific ways."

The woman then asked Jensen whether he was aware that many Mormons were leaving the Church considering of what they'd learned nigh Church history on Google.

"We are aware," Jensen said, sounding defeated. "We exercise accept another initiative that we've called 'Answers to Gospel Questions.' We're trying to figure out exactly what channel to evangelize it in, and exactly what format to put information technology in, simply we want to have a place where people can go. We have hired someone that's in accuse of search engine optimization." Salvation was suddenly a matter of clicks: it was upward to Google's algorithms whether a Mormon seeking answers found them on LDS.org or on an ex-Mormon blog. The Church building began a 21st century crusade for its members' attending.

LDS.org is now ChurchofJesusChrist.org, recently inverse to encourage the use of the Church's proper name: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-mean solar day Saints. (The update appears to have temporarily hindered the Church's search engine optimization. Until June, the Church's SEO was so good that LDS.org generally outranked Wikipedia in whatsoever Google search that included the term "Mormon.")

Mormons struggling with questions almost their faith can either seek help from their bishop or, says Church spokesman Daniel Woodruff, they tin discover scriptures, articles from Church leaders, and video libraries on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Woodruff also points me to the Gospel Topics Essays, a series on divisive points in the Church'south history ("Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah") and its present ("Book of Mormon and DNA Studies"). The Church began releasing the Gospel Topics Essays in 2022. They are the "Answers to Gospel Questions" that Jensen teased in 2022.

Merely the Gospel Topics Essays don't always validate beliefs. One former Mormon tells me she began to have questions about Church history when she was helping her daughter report scripture ahead of her baptism. When she read that the Book of Mormon said Christopher Columbus would discover America, her mind snagged on a loose thread: she knew there'd been people in America before Columbus. "I started reading the Church building essays that they've recently released — on blacks and the priesthood, homosexuals, stuff like that — and everything I read simply made me more and more than certain it was wrong."

Evan Lloyd, a 41-year-old lawyer in Arizona who left the Church terminal year, speculates that near Mormons don't even know the Gospel Topics Essays exist. "They are really hard to find, even on their website. You actually almost have to become through Google to get to the role of the website where they are," he says. "But when you go to your bishop'south function and you're similar, 'I read about Joseph Smith having xxx wives, and one of them was 14, and he was marrying married women' — that freaked me out — and then the bishop tin go, 'But we've had information technology on the website. We never hid information technology from anybody. It's merely not something we talk about.'"

A personal photo of Joseph on his mission in Republic of bolivia for the LDS Church building.

An article in a buried 2022 dorsum issue of the Church's magazine, Ensign, called "When Doubts and Questions Arise" draws a distinction between questions and doubts. "Largely because of the internet," writer Adam Kotter begins, "it is non uncommon for members of the Church to run into ideas that challenge their beliefs. Some members find the questions raised to exist disconcerting and wonder whether it is acceptable to have a question about their faith." But where questions are asked in the promise of affirming one's beliefs, Kotter writes, a doubter withholds his obedience until his doubts have been satisfactorily addressed.

Joseph started out equally a questioner. He read the Essays in depth and studied the resources on FairMormon, a nonprofit providing "Faithful Answers to Criticisms of the LDS Church." Merely he says that questioning the Church without suspending his faith made him feel like he was doing "mental gymnastics." Like many doubting Mormons, he made his mode to Reddit. In particular, he began to haunt the "exmormon" subreddit, a haven for Mormons scrutinizing the Church's teachings. The subreddit has over 123,000 members and is perhaps the purest expression of the net equally a "resource." Members come to mail service questions (logistical and philosophical), to share beer recommendations for first-timers (most active Mormons don't drinkable alcohol, tea, and coffee), and to vent ("I suppose to her, families are forever, unless someone comes out as trans.")

Many come up only to read. A few originally joined every bit "downvoters," faithful Mormons who lurk in the subreddit solely to vote downward posts. Moderator vh65 tells me that some of those downvoters are now regular posters themselves. "After a month, they're like, 'Expect a infinitesimal—that can't be right,' and they start researching. Now some of them are very well-known, pop posters who completely swing the other manner."

vh65 began researching Church building history after someone in the subreddit linked to a New York Times interview in which she read that Joseph Smith had married a xiv-year-old. vh65 says that the cyberspace's existent impact on her faith was not in assuasive her to stumble across information that disturbed her, but in the way she was able to deeply research that information and verify its accurateness using sources she trusted. She began a reverse catechism, starting with main documents from Church history: the Joseph Smith Papers Project, Smith'south 14-twelvemonth-one-time wife Helen Mar Kimball's recollections, and problems of The Evening and the Morn Star, a Mormon newspaper published in the 1830s.

Most importantly, vh65 explains, conducting her research on the internet didn't require vh65 to engage with anyone. While unvarnished accounts of Church history have always been available — Fawn M. Brodie's 1945 biography of Joseph Smith, for instance — information technology used to be much harder to access them discreetly.

"When you lot wanted to research, you had to go to Sanders' bookstore," says vh65, referring to Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake Urban center, "and that was kind of like a woman going to a liquor shop in a small boondocks in Utah — everybody's going to know, right?"

None of that social queasiness exists on Reddit. Sometimes users even include their real names in screenshots from QuitMormon.com, showing that they've submitted their resignations. QuitMormon is a pro bono service run by an unassuming T-shirt-and-jeans Utah immigration attorney named Mark Naugle. The 34-year-old has streamlined the process of resigning from the Church. When users are ready to have their names removed from Church records, they simply submit a request to Naugle that includes their name, appointment of birth, address, membership number, and whether they're a minor. Naugle takes it from there, sending a course letter to the Church that requests the removal of the customer'due south information from all records. Crucially, the letter likewise forbids further contact between the Church and his client. Mormons never have to reach out to their bishops to explain their conclusion to get out, and they won't receive well-meaning visits from their onetime peers.

Mark Naugle photographed in his rented role space in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

Naugle showtime began helping friends and family with their name removal requests in 2010 after graduating from law school in Utah in 2009. He lived out of state for a while before moving back to Utah in 2022. He'd begun to frequent r/exmormon, and in the spring of 2022, he began offer his services to strangers. That November, at that place was a surge of requests after Mormons learned, through a leak to the media, that children of LGBTQ couples could not become baptized. In April, Church president Dallin H. Oaks announced that LDS leadership had rolled dorsum the policy, but r/exmormon was alive with criticisms for what some viewed as a as well-little-besides-late gesture: "'Nosotros want to reduce the hate and contention so mutual today,' says Oaks, every bit if he wasn't the i about prolifically supporting information technology," one Redditor wrote. "Fuck bigoted former men!" said another.

"When the LGBT policy leak came out, I was enraged by information technology," Naugle says of the initial leak. "A lot of people were. I went onto Reddit and just said, 'Hey, I've offered this before. I'thousand willing to do information technology at present. Here's my email address.'" Until November 2022, he'd received no more than than 200 requests for his services. Afterwards that mean solar day, he received 2,000 emails in 48 hours. (r/exmormon likewise saw an enormous spike in membership then.) People offered to help him build the website and automate the procedure, and QuitMormon.com was born.

Naugle has seen more leaps in requests since and then. His inbox is like a seismometer for Mormon discontent. When, for instance, a then-Mormon named Jeremy Runnells published a letter he'd written to Church Educational Organization (CES) outlining his doubts about the Church building's teachings, it tore through communities. Almost every former Mormon I spoke to cited Runnells' letter of the alphabet as a catalyst for their departure. Then, at that place was Sunday, September 16th, 2022, the twenty-four hour period Sam Young, whose protest had motivated Joseph'due south break with the Church, read his excommunication alphabetic character aloud in Common salt Lake Metropolis.

The next forenoon, Naugle arrived at work. "I pulled upwards the queue, and realized something had happened over the weekend," Naugle recalls. Over the next ii weeks, he received almost 2,500 more resignation requests.

An LDS ward meeting house in West Jordan, Utah.

Similar any popular online customs — and whatever offline customs, really — r/exmormon has a spectrum of tone. vh65 says that r/exmormon used to look a lot more like r/mormon, which has fewer members and fewer memes. Some users on r/exmormon are more radical than others in their resentment for the Church.

"Any visitor to this subreddit looking to confirm the 'angry bitter resentful ex-Mormon' stereotype could do so pretty rapidly," i Redditor wrote in a postal service for r/exmormon newcomers. "It'southward besides worth mentioning that the 'aroused bitter resentful ex-Mormons' are probably overrepresented here, as many who exit the Church building completely move on and don't even requite it a 2d idea anymore."

For case, where more aggressive r/exmormon contributors employ the word "cult" to draw the Church, many avoid it. It's a bitter give-and-take for people who have recently emerged from a community renowned for its Stepford politeness. "I hate using the word cult, only it'south and so hard not to call it that," ane old Mormon says. "I don't want to exist nasty."

Naugle has no reservations about the term.

"Any organization that tells you lot what to eat, what to do with your body, what to do on specific days of the calendar week, and and then ostracizes y'all when you actively disavow them, I call up is a cult," he says. "Any organization that requires a lawyer's help to leave it so that they stop harassing you and stop hunting you down worldwide I also recollect is a cult. Having experienced information technology myself, having been in the organization and knowing the psychological impairment it can cause, they're a cult."

Naugle went through the procedure of resigning from the Church in 1999 when he was fourteen. He grew upward in Orem, Utah. Orem is a town south of Salt Lake Urban center, bordered by the same chapped mountains, only it's much more than conservative.

Initially, I thought of Naugle as the Pied Piper of doubters, merrily guiding Mormons into digital sin. Simply Naugle doesn't feel that it'south his responsibility to convince — or fifty-fifty gently encourage — Mormons to leave the Church. He says he leaves that drape to other former Mormons, like Jeremy Runnells, the author of the CES Letter, and John Dehlin, who mans the popular podcast Mormon Stories. Naugle says he largely refrains from posting on r/exmormon, except to give updates on changes to the QuitMormon process.

I'd also expected someone who spends forty hours a week helping other people exit the Church to depict his experiences with more vitriol, but Naugle talks about his time as a Mormon with the calm detachment of someone describing being under anesthesia.

Interface of QuitMormon.com, which helps people exist officially removed from LDS records.

The Boy Scouts are a sore spot. In Utah, the Boy Scouts used to be intertwined with the Church building to the extent that Naugle's troop met in church buildings, and meetings were led by men from his church building. He recalls one incident when he and several co-Scouts were playing Go Fish on a camping trip. One of the particularly devout troop leaders, in an apparent geyser of reverence, blustered into their tent. He told the boys that by playing with face cards, they were summoning Satan and told them to become pray for an 60 minutes. (President Joseph F. Smith said that the immoderate repetition of card games leads to "an infatuation for take a chance schemes" and ends in "the complete destruction of religious feeling.") When his family left the Church, Naugle says, he knew he couldn't go back to the Boy Scouts.

Naugle's extended family unit is divided on the subject area of his work. His parents, having left the Church building themselves, are supportive. "Mom takes every chance to brag," he says. She is skilled at finding subtle segues into conversations nigh faith so that she can bring up her son: "Every time she gets in an Uber, she'll ask someone what their faith is." Some members of his extended family disapprove — "they think I'thousand Satan incarnate" — but they never mention it, and they tell their children non to mention information technology.

When Naugle's family was finally removed from the records, it seemed similar everyone in his community was suddenly aware of their decision. "Our neighbors all knew. Our teachers, our family unit, our extended family, our friends," Naugle recalls dispassionately. The family felt shunned. "Information technology was a pretty terrible procedure, to the point that every bit soon every bit my parents got the hazard to get out Utah, they were gone. I basically did the aforementioned, and my younger brother as well. He would rather never return. It was a really bad experience, so that'due south kind of why I practise this: to let people leave without having to get through that."

Naugle estimates that he has processed over 40,000 requests so far. At that place are sites that provide instructions for Mormons to submit their own letters — many sometime Mormons in r/exmormon have had success doing so — and Church spokesman Daniel Woodruff says the simplest mode for a person to remove their name from Church records is to write to their bishop with their request to exit. But just every bit vh65 didn't desire to take a chance anyone from her community seeing her leaving Ken Sanders Rare Books in the '80s, many Mormons fear the social repercussions of approaching their bishops with their requests. Naugle'southward involvement adds a layer of legal authority between users and the Church, preventing the battery of outreach attempts that upset Naugle every bit a teenager.

Sometimes the Church does contact loved ones of people who take put in resignation requests. Evan Lloyd left the Church building last yr, and he says that after he'd submitted his resignation request through QuitMormon, the Church began contacting his wife instead.

"They were kind of circling effectually her, making sure that she was adept and she was still gonna be an active member of the Church," Lloyd says. He had told his married woman he wanted to leave the Church, but he hadn't told her that he planned to remove his records. "She was caught past surprise when the Church started calling her. I probably should have communicated that a little bit amend."

Lloyd's remorse suddenly gives style to conviction: "Only at the time, I was only done, and needed it to be done."

Joseph photographed at his home in W Valley City, Utah.

Not everyone in the ex-Mormon community has requested name removal. When we first speak, Joseph still hasn't. He says he refrained at first because his wife wasn't gear up, so considering he heard that removing your name from Church records tin can brand it difficult to get your transcripts from Church building-affiliated schools like Brigham Young Academy. (Joseph spent a semester at Brigham Immature University-Idaho. A few years subsequently, he got his associate degree at LDS Business organisation Higher.) Having now earned a available's degree and a master's degree from the University of Utah, which is secular, Joseph is less concerned near accessing his transcripts, simply at that place'due south still something keeping him from submitting his request. "I think there's really nothing holding me back other than merely a little bit of... I judge you could call them butterflies."

vh65 still hasn't removed her name, though she did request "no contact" from her bishop. ("I had moved, and I hadn't had annihilation to do with Mormonism for well-nigh a decade, and somehow people from my work showed upwardly at my door.") She worries that by removing her proper name from Church records, she would upset her mother. When I ask her if she ever feels disingenuous, moderating r/exmormon without being, officially, an ex-Mormon, she pauses for a 2d before answering. "Originally I just wanted to resign," she says. "I want to be separated completely, but how can I practice this without hurting my mom, who I actually intendance deeply about? And and then I realized that I spend all my time on this subreddit, and I'chiliad fascinated with Mormon history. It's my culture, information technology'southward my tribe, and even if I resign, it'd all the same be role of who I am."

Almost of the one-time Mormons I spoke to craved immediate cathartic closure, like Evan Lloyd. Sometimes, even with Naugle'southward streamlined procedure, they weren't able to go information technology.

One couple in Missouri, Josh and Jaimie, decided to get out the Church last year after they both read Runnells' CES letter. By the time Jaimie read it, Josh had been ready to leave the Church for some time. He had reached out to a friend of theirs whom they suspected had already left the Church. (Jaimie had noticed that the man's wife was wearing tank tops and showing "porn shoulders" on Facebook.) The man had pointed Josh to QuitMormon, so he was ready to put in their requests as shortly every bit Jaimie wanted to go out.

Josh and Jaimie had resigned themselves to helping their children remain in the Church if they wanted to, and they explained their decision to their children in turn. Their eldest girl, then 11, had already been baptized, and she chose to leave with them. They put in another QuitMormon.com request. Their youngest two children didn't care much one way or another merely were glad to have their Sundays free. When they asked their 8-year-sometime daughter whether she wanted to remain in the Church building, she told her parents that she wanted to experience what her older sis had experienced during her baptism. Josh and Jaimie froze somewhere betwixt puzzlement and support. The eight-year-onetime went on. "I wanna run into what it'south like to be dunked," she said. He and Jaimie unfroze, relieved.

Jaimie and Josh began to motion on from the Church. They no longer went to church or tithed. They watched Game of Thrones — porn shoulders everywhere — without shame. They had never clicked with the majority of their ward, which Jaimie says is "very Molly Mormon." Some of the friends they had made began to drift abroad, and they let them.

Josh and Jaimie assumed their unbaptized children'southward names had been removed from Church building records when their own QuitMormon requests were candy. Then Jaimie got a call from a sympathetic friend who is nonetheless active in the Church. The friend told her that their unbaptized eight-year-former daughter was listed equally the head of household in Church records, along with a "membership record number" issued to babies when they're blessed. The Church had removed Josh and Jaimie's names, as well as their older, baptized daughter'south names, but their other two unbaptized children'due south membership record numbers were still listed, as was the family'due south contact information.

Joseph's Volume of Mormon and tie in a breast full of belongings from his mission for the LDS Church.

The Church building calls records of unbaptized children whose parents have requested name removal "canceled records." Church spokesman Woodruff says that while the names of children who are immediately related to a member of the Church will however appear in Church records every bit part of that fellow member'south family unit unit, they will non have private membership records. He as well says that canceled records are non accessible to bishops.

Naugle says the Church has merely recently begun removing the names of unbaptized children. For a while, he was considering a grade action lawsuit. "They've told my clients that a child on the record, who is not baptized, is removed when their parents are removed. But we know that'south not the case because people, at the local level, notwithstanding continue showing up for these kids, bringing them cookies, asking them to come to church." The good neighbor becomes tiresome.

Josh and Jaimie say they were able to reach out to their bishop, with whom they're on friendly terms, to ask him to remove their contact information. The bishop said he couldn't remove their children'south names. They turned to Reddit and saw that some other couple had sent the Church a letter threatening legal action if their children's membership numbers were not removed. They received confirmation that the certified letter they sent to the Church had been received, but they all the same don't know whether their children'south names accept been removed.

"It's my kids' data. They're minors. This cannot be legal. I feel like they're counting those kids as members," Jaimie says. "At conference, they don't say whether they're simply counting baptized members, or whether they're counting people with record numbers too, which would be these little kids." (Woodruff says that neither name removals records nor canceled records are included in membership counts.)

Naugle has encountered other specious bureaucratic roadblocks in his work. Final year, the Church building claimed that fraudulent requests for resignation were existence submitted to QuitMormon, and Naugle was required to add together an identity verification step to his process. Now clients submit government-issued identification along with their requests. "I don't retrieve information technology was an invalid concern," Naugle says serenely. "Technically, anyone probably could've gone on, if they have enough data about a person, and asked to remove their name, and faked their signature. I doubt that it happened. At that place was one instance where someone submitted a false request for the Prophet of the Church, which I caught." The culprit had confessed to Naugle, and Naugle had alerted the Church himself.

Late last year, the Church building asked that all resignation requests from QuitMormon go directly through Kirton McConkie, the law house that represents the Church building. Previously, Naugle had sent requests to the Membership Records section. Now he emails resignation letters direct to Daniel McConkie, a shareholder in the business firm. "They received over vi,000 emails in a six-week time period. I don't remember they realized that was what was going to happen," Naugle says, not without entertainment.

Last calendar week he received a letter from Daniel McConkie. "We regret to inform y'all that our current arrangement with you for processing of requests to remove names from the membership records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not working and will therefore be discontinued," the letter began. McConkie admonished Naugle for submitting duplicate requests, requests from people whose names have already been removed, requests from deceased or faithful members, and incomplete requests. "The problem is that your automated, largely impersonal system does not truly screen for fraudulent or erroneous submissions," the letter continued. QuitMormon users will at present have to upload notarized, written requests as well.

When we discuss the new requirement on the phone, Naugle sounds copacetic, if a little tired. This latest hurdle will necessitate an open call for notaries nationwide on r/exmormon. Naugle is not a notary, and even if he was, he would not be able to notarize requests for his ain clients. Many people have volunteered to help him manage the site in the by: Evan Lloyd says he'southward reached out and offered his services, and in that location are legions of Redditors prepare to volunteer. But Naugle rarely deploys helpers.

"No 1's as reliable equally yourself," he says, "and this is very sensitive, confidential stuff, too, so I don't actually feel comfortable simply sending an electronic mail to a random person that I met on the internet."

It's equally though QuitMormon is Naugle'southward answer to the occupational callings Mormons receive from the Church. I ask Naugle when he plans to movement on from QuitMormon. "I guess when I'g dead," he says. "I've always felt that as long as I'k alive and have a police force license and tin can practise this, I will."

A personal photo of Joseph outside an LDS temple during his mission in Bolivia for the LDS Church building.

The time since Joseph left the Church building has been marked by pocket-size milestones. He deleted his social media accounts, not wanting to take a chance getting sucked back into his one-time circles. He worried about "coming out" equally an ex-Mormon on social media. He was especially concerned that the people he met on his mission, the long trips Mormons take to share the gospel, would reach out to him.

"It's actually kind of liberating, knowing that I don't accept to be worried near what Sister Smith has to say about my tattoo," he says. "If I want to prove somebody, I can prove the anonymous friends on Reddit."

In April, Joseph tells me that while he notwithstanding wasn't gear up to remove his name from Church records yet, he was getting closer to submitting his QuitMormon asking. "I think it'll happen when I'one thousand at peace with myself and the decision to leave. I think that'southward too when I'll unsubscribe from r/exmormon."

A month afterwards, Joseph emails me to tell me that he's decided to submit his proper name removal asking. He says he's been spending a lot less time on the r/exmormon subreddit. "I went from looking at it daily, probably every few hours — and spending a long fourth dimension in the chats — to a coincidental curl through every few days," he says. "I just went on vacation with my family, and information technology felt good to be there with them, and not speak a word virtually the Church or captivate over who has what calling."

An LDS ward coming together house in W Jordan, Utah.

Many one-time Mormons wean themselves off r/exmormon later a fourth dimension. vh65 tells me that the subreddit's founder, Measure76, now rarely posts. Jaimie and Josh continue to plough to r/exmormon for support. Jaimie recalls how accommodating their commencement ward was when she was a new mother and Josh was busy with work. "I don't know what I would have washed without that community, from the first 2d we got there. Even though they didn't know usa, that community was so wonderful," she says, a piffling wistfully. "Just it's nice to at least accept a community online that'south kind of akin to it, where you tin have each other'due south backs, and cheer each other on."

"I'yard on that subreddit a lot because it sucks. Information technology sucks so bad," Josh says of leaving the Church. He often tells Jaimie he wants to spend less time on the subreddit — they've wondered whether the subreddit is its own sort of religion — but and so he'll run across a message from someone struggling with the decision to leave.

"Every twenty-four hour period at that place's a new person on there like, 'What do I do? How do I handle this?' I served a mission for three months for the Church, finished, had fun for three months, and got sent home. I've done more missionary piece of work against the Church building in the nine months nosotros've been out."

In his article in Ensign magazine, Adam Kotter wrote that the internet leads to questions and doubts by exposing Mormons to "ideas that claiming their beliefs." But if the internet is inherently threatening to the Church, or to any faith, it's maybe not because of the way it affirms doubts. Rather, it's in the community it opens upwardly — a community that can be just equally close-knit and supportive as a ward. Where ChurchofJesusChrist.org offers scripture, the net across the Church building's domain shines light into what has historically been a blackness box: the lives of the people who have left.

How To Remove Name From Lds Church Records,

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/1/18759587/mormon-church-quitmormon-exmormon-jesus-christ-internet-seo-lds

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