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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Many former mormons, like myself, are distanced by their "friends" as soon as they leave. It's a two way street and all the responsibility isn't on a single party.
Often times that "friendship" is contingent on church attendance and belief.
Have you ever asked a former member why they left? What did they say?
I helped a person rejoin the Church when I was a missionary. It was obviously not a representative experience, but he had left at a time in his life when he was angry at members of his ward for not supporting him the way he felt he should have been supported. At the time it seemed he had felt a bit more entitled to special attention than was reasonable (keeping in mind the Church has a lay ministry and we're all just regular people with regular lives outside of church), and he had also tried to have an affair with someone's wife, IIRC. He had requested his records to be withdrawn because he wanted members to stop contacting him. He was a lot different when I met him than when he left the Church, and had a lot of rough life experiences that emphasized the value it brought to his life.
I have not had any close friends or family leave the Church, so I haven't had any opportunities to actually have a discussion about it with anyone else other than online. Those online interactions have been mostly hate-filled and vitriolic by the former members.
Like most members of the Church, where I live I am a religious minority. It's far more common for people to ask me questions about my faith than for me to interact with former members.
Consider why you made the statement that former members distance themselves and that church members just want to be friends. You haven't actually experienced or seen that right? So what made you assume that is what is going on?
One of the more difficult parts about being a former member is the assumptions about why we left. Obviously, everyone is unique, but rarely have I heard an active member actually say the reasons I've most heard from my family and friends and online that have left.
It would be a bit like me spouting off the lies from an evangelical anti-mormon tract as if they were fact.
To be clear, I really do appreciate that you are being open and honest here. I'm not trying to be a dick or to deconvert you. I'm mostly just pushing for understanding of people that have different views from you. After all, to the root of this conversation and why I'm so against trump, it's that the politics he represents is ultimately that of intolerance. The best way to fight intolerance is to foster understanding.