The Patience of an Atheist: Update

First of all thanks to all those who have commented on and socially bookmarked the previous article. Thanks also to the FriendlyAtheist for writing a blog post about the ridiculous lengths the local authorities have taken to action our names being removed from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints membership records.

After sending the second letter there have been several more interesting developments. One way of looking at the events is that it is tragic that they feel duty bound to not to execute our wishes within the parameters of our request. The other way of looking at it is that it is so funny that they would spend so much time and energy wasted in pointless exercises.

So what’s happened?

As commented on the original post, the bishop called to say that he is surprised that we hadn’t received official confirmation from the church headquarters in Salt Lake. He told me he would contact me within a week to tell me an update. This was on 17th August.

More than a week went by and on 29th August I decided to ring up the church headquarters myself. I found the number (1-800-453-3860, ext 22053) of the relevant department on a website called Mormon No More. After following the prompts and being transfered twice I was put onto an analyst. He was polite. He asked from my full name and date of birth. He then said that it had been done on the 16th July 2007. I asked if we could get written confirmation. He said that they would be happy to send a letter of confirmation that it has been done. I then proceeded to ask how long and what information was stored about my wife and I. He said that the information would be our full names, date of birth and current address and they would hold this information indefinitely.

Why could I ring up Salt Lake and get an answer quickly and not a priesthood leader? (Bearing in mind that the telephone line was designed for leaders in mind as the prompts suggested.) He set his deadline for one week. He could have found out that evening if he really tried.

The next day I noticed some hits to this website from interesting search phrases on Google. One was andrew chalkey mormon and the other andrew chalkley mormon. How bizarre. Why would someone type my name and attach mormon to the end of it? That is actually really bizarre when you think about it, who am I in the context of mormonism? I’m no mormon prophet, apostle or an individual of fame. It turns out that the network location of the individuals were from the company owned by the Stake President and his brother. The Stake President often called me Chalkey instead of Chalkley. From these simple facts it’s obvious that the Stake President has been looking at the article. On the way home that evening I received a phone call to my mobile phone. It was the Bishop. I was driving so I couldn’t answer. He left a voice mail saying that he needed to talk to me as soon as possible and if I didn’t call him back he would try again.

It’s now more than a month on from when I rang up the church headquarters and the Bishop ringing. Do we have written confirmation? Did the Bishop ring back? No.

My intention of writing this post was to say “Yes! We have our written confirmation”. I finally thought I would be able to close this story arc and get on with posting on a variety topics. One reason I haven’t posted anything else so far is that I wanted to have written confirmation that we had resigned and not been disciplined and that there would be no chance in disciplinary action - even though the Bishop did say we were absolved from any action taken against us because of our first letter - for the things I would post on this site. Another reason is for credibility purposes for those mormons who would come across my story, to show I did make my choice of my own free will and not because of some upset with the church due to any disciplinary action. Well, I have had only verbal confirmation from church headquarters that the removal has been done so I will regularly post now. I will keep chasing them up every month until we have a written confirmation. You will know once we are in receipt of it.

Once again thank you for your subscriptions, comments, stumbles and diggs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, 4th October 2007 at 4:00 pm 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.