In 2014 there were a few things that happened in my life that caused me to question the church in a way that I never had before, including my experience watching the series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I’ve always been uncomfortable with some aspects of being a member of the church, even back to when I was a little kid, but I always assumed I should just go along with it all because it was obviously all just as factually true as parents, teachers, and leaders had taught. I graduated from early-morning seminary, served a Spanish speaking mission in Boston (1999-2000), got married and sealed to my high school sweetheart _ in the temple in 2002, and have had a variety of callings and experiences serving in the church since then. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family is a member and we have pioneer roots back to John D. I think my wife _ and my kids _ and _ would all agree with that statement, and now I’ll add some more details but will speak mostly just for myself, even though they may also agree with some or all of the rest of the things I write: Our beliefs have changed, and we don’t feel like we can be ourselves at church anymore without making conservative, faithful members feel uncomfortable or offended, and without risking being demoted to second class citizens. I’ll start with a simple statement to explain why we haven’t been to church (Zoom or in-person) for over a year and half: I enjoy writing, and I especially enjoy writing about religion, science, and philosophy, but I will try to be relatively concise and not go on for twenty pages or anything like that, even though part of me wants to. I’ve been debating about the best way to respond to you, and decided it felt best to write an email to give you some details about our history and current situation in regards to the church so you can have the information you need to decide if it’s worth continuing to reach out to us or not. I do want to point out that on the voicemail you said you wanted to introduce yourselves, and I believe we already met when you stopped by our house awhile back – not sure if you forgot that you met us already or if it was just a figure of speech. Hopefully you got my text response last night. Thanks again for your voicemail yesterday and for reaching out. Since religion is their full-time job I felt it would be okay to go into some detail, but for a different audience I would probably shorten this down to a few sentences or a paragraph: In case any of you find this interesting or useful in some way, here is the text of the email I sent them today (with the subject line “My Mormon Story, Condensed”).
I sent them a text in response saying we have COVID at our house right now but that I would send them an email in the next day or so to explain a little about our current situation in regards to the church.
(I posted the following to r/exmormon reddit on 12-28-21:)Įarlier this week our ward missionaries left me a voicemail saying they hoped we had a Merry Christmas and that they’d like to come by and introduce themselves and share a spiritual thought with us.
0 kommentar(er)
