The Patience of an Atheist

I really didn’t want to post an article like this. But too much time and too many events have transpired so this post is necessary.

On April 4th 2007 Lauren and I wrote a letter to the local Mormon bishop to request our names to be removed from the membership records. We specifically asked the following:

The church has no right to carry our names in it’s membership records. We therefore request that you send us official written notification that our names have been removed from the records of the church, and that such notification includes specific acknowledgement that:

We have not been excommunicated or disfellowshipped from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but we are no longer members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by our own free will and choice, and therefore our names have been removed from the membership records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the sole reason for removing our names from the membership records the church is by our request.

Please understand that we are not requesting permission to leave The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are not members of the church right now, by our own choice and action as stated above.

Later in the letter we go on to say:

Please know that the time for you to influence us even by persuasion is past. Our decision was taken only after thorough study. Our decision is final. Any efforts by priesthood home teachers, Relief Society visiting teachers, or any other representatives on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to contact us either by letter (other than that requested herein), by telephone, or in person will be a very unwelcome invasion of our privacy, and will be considered as harassment and an infringement on our free agency.

And finally:

We trust that your response will be swift (30 days should be more than enough time) and to the point as described above.

All that being said the church has done the opposite of our requests.The contact which we specifically requested not to have started almost immediately.

Mid-April
Call to Lauren
The bishop rang Lauren and asked her if the letter was a hoax. He also asked if it was also her decision to leave. Often people say “Are you just doing it because Andrew is?”, this can be insulting to presume that Lauren cannot make her decisions for herself. To be fair they maybe looking out for her that she hasn’t been forced into the decision but doctrinally and policy-wise what the man says goes (I am not of that patriarchal school of thought). Considering the letter was signed by both Lauren and I and having our date of births under the signature to verify the validity of who we are should be clear indicators that this was not a hoax and Lauren and I have both made the choice ourselves.

Monday 7th May 2007 approx. 30 days since letter was received
Call to Andrew
The bishop asked to come around that evening. As this was around 30 days after the letter we assumed that this would be to finalise the removal process as the bishop said that there were some forms to fill in and said the ward mission leader would be coming around with him as it was official church business. We agreed to this as we did not want to frustrate things for them with us being friends with in our social life. This was made clear to them both upon arrival that evening as we said “We don’t want to frustrate things for you as long as you don’t frustrate things for us”.

Evening of Monday 7th May 2007
Visit from the bishop and ward mission leader
The bishop said they were both sent officially by the stake president. The stake president specifically asked for the ward mission leader to come with the bishop as the ward mission leader and his wife are very good friends with us. We were invited to take some more time before making a final decision, even though the bishop did say we weren’t members since the receipt of the letter. We declined individually. We asked what forms we needed to complete, and the bishop produced a blank piece of paper to sign to verify our signatures saying there were no forms. The bishop said there was more administration he had to complete and said it would be completed within the next 30 days. We are deeply concerned by the fact we signed a blank piece of paper and that any thing could have been written on it at a later date and that we were told some forms needed to be filled in and their weren’t any. The fact was this visit wasn’t even in our interests it was just a ploy to keep us from leaving.

Tuesday 8th May 2007
Another call to Andrew
The bishop called and asked for the reasons why we left to fill in a form to send away. I said that I didn’t want to prolong the process, and he said that if I complied in answering his questions it would make the process quicker. In short I said that I have a problem with faith which is the first principle of the gospel in Mormonism so everything falls apart. I also said that I support the scientific method at which point he surprisingly agreed that Mormonism and science don’t mix. I went on to say that as a bishop why do you think that the church requires reasons and the names of any literature that we have read to process our information for resignation. He replied that it is to analyse why people leave. If the church is full of spirit of revelation why does it need data to analyse? Since there is no spirit I’d guess to censor and distort truth! Some individuals have accused me of censoring from the church from knowing my reasons but the fact is they would have used that information, as I am sure they do others’ reasons, to formulate more wishy-washy answers like “We don’t know yet, the Lords hasn’t revealed it to us yet” and other unfulfilling answers. He also asked me things regarding any outstanding transgressions that I would need to confess for readmission. Although there aren’t, didn’t he read the letter we wrote? We are no longer subject to church courts. I also asked if he wanted to ask Lauren the same questions pertaining to any outstanding transgressions or doctrinal issues but he didn’t. I am confused as to why they would need to ask about any transgressions or information for leaving other than to be kept for readmission. We want our details removing completely.

Sunday 27th May 2007 Around 6PM
Surprise Visit by a member of the stake presidency and a member stake high council
When friends visit they tend to ring up and politely ask if it’s convenient to come around. This was not the case with these official representatives. They turned up unannounced. I asked what it was about, the member of the stake high council said “Church of course” then they asked to come in for 10 minutes but as we were on our way out we declined. The member of the high council asked if they could come around again to which I hesitated due to the nature of letter sent. Before my response the high councillor said “Come on we’re not twisting your arm” I swiftly replied “I think you are.” I suggested that they should come around Monday. The high councillor seemed put out and replied, “Come on, you know we can’t. It’s Monday.” I assume he was talking about family home evening allegedly observed by Mormons. I said that it wasn’t a problem for the bishop and ward mission leader to come around on a Monday evening. By this time I felt somewhat pressured to permit them to come on Tuesday as they weren’t standing down.I texted the bishop to ask why two official representatives had turned up on our doorstep unannounced. I received no reply.

Tuesday 29th May 2007
Visit by a member of the stake presidency and a member stake high council
They arrived and asked more probing questions to rationalise their beliefs. The high councillor seemed smug and asked “So have you read anti-mormon literature?” I replied “If the Origin of Species or the Selfish Gene is anti-mormon literature then yes”. They said they weren’t however I presented reasons why they were opposed to Mormon doctrine. It became clear to us that they only came around for their own piece of mind to find holes or chinks in our amour for our reasons for leaving. The stake presidency member said that we hope you have lost hope in Christ. I replied that I didn’t need hope in Christ. Atheism or having an educated viewpoint on life requires no hope in the supernatural. The high councillor then went on to say that when we had the baby we may change our minds. At several points Lauren wanted to laugh. We both replied saying we’re absolutely positive that we will not be coming back even when the child is born. The view of new life or children in the sight of religion seems invoke the divine. When divine view of it diminishes the true beauty of life that some outside force caused it to be this way instead of looking at it’s inherent majesty. Plus there’s no way we would want to paint a faith based belief system on the blank canvas of an infants mind. Thankfully due to the short, concise and possibly disheartening (to them) answers to the questions their visit was over in 20 minutes.

Friday 6th July 2007
Letter from the Bishop
An unsigned letter dated the 6th July arrived late in the evening. However oddly scrawled on the outside in silver ink was an incomplete message stating that it had been “emailest” to us “many moons ago” prior to the 6th but the letter was dated the 6th. This was clearly not the case as we didn’t find it in either of our email accounts and on this note he said that he had a read receipt attached to the email. He didn’t receive one. Not the vague term “many moons ago” and no signature. This was confusing since the bishop, on his visit on 7th May , said he would hand deliver the letter personally once our names “had been removed”, the letter stated that our names were “being removed” in the next 30 days, which was not our original request and what the bishop committed to.

We have given them over four months. We have given them over a week since the 30 day period they set themselves in the unsigned letter - probably not worth the paper it’s written on - to see if they would have sent a confirmation in the post. Have they? No.

On Monday I finished off a letter outlining the events above. This is how I closed the letter:

This experience has been very stressful and upsetting. The church is no different to any other organisation or religion under the law. Church policy and administration should not frustrate the legal rights of members or non members on their records.

Please remove our records completely and write a signed letter to confirm that it has been done not that the process is still being carried out. Given the amount of time that has already elapsed, one week from the receipt of this letter should be more than adequate to execute the request originally received at the beginning of April.

If our request isn’t granted swiftly we will have no choice but to seek professional advice on the matter. Since the church is registered with the Information Commissioner it is obligated by law to fulfill these requests professionally and within a considerably shorter period than has elapsed.

The church has two (1, 2) Data Protection Register entries. On the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website I found references to the time an organisation “has” to respond to your objection. It’s 21 days. Here are two references to this period under the section Preventing processing of information and Preventing automated decision making. This 21 days seems to be the norm on the site.

The letter should get to bishop by Thursday. If there is no response by next Thursday I will be seeking advice on how to resolve this situation promptly. I will keep you posted on the progress.

Since coming out proclaiming my atheism ex-Mormons (over the whole UK, not localised to my area) have told me about their experiences with asking for their names removed. They said that their requests have not been granted because it doesn’t seem to have persisted with contacting the church for official confirmation that it has been done. This needs to stop! We shouldn’t need to pester, one letter signed should be enough.

If anyone can give me advice regarding the situation please comment on this post as it would be a great help to others and myself wanting disassociate themselves from religion.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, 15th August 2007 at 2:20 am and is filed under Atheism, Mormonism, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.