After my total spiritual departure from Mormonism in the Spring of 1983, it took five years before I felt any desire to even consider going to any church, except to occasionally play music when asked to do so. Eventually, though, I did start to miss having a church family, and in the summer of 1988 I started visiting a few other churches. In my visiting, I suddenly realized there was one particular, and huge, difference between the Mormon Church and all of these other churches I was visiting. I realized that Mormon Church members are burdened with feelings of guilt and unworthiness that members of other churches simply do not feel. Members of at least mainstream Christian churches are also not controlled by authority figures like believing Mormons are. This was a great epiphany for me, and because of it, I continued to visit churches until I found a church home that seemed to fit my personality, a home among many good church homes for other searching people like myself, and composed of extended families of like minded people, all belonging to a greater universal church that is dedicated to help all people on earth without bias of any kind, and without entrance and participation requirements. The realization that a true “Church of God” is not a particular human organization or church denomination, it made the "we're the only true church" attitude of believing Mormons all the more reason for me to leave.
Everything I talk about in this writing has what I believe to be a strong tie with Mormonism, that the religion itself, and especially the way it has affected certain people within my own family, lies at the source of some of my own greatest trials in life. Over the years I have come to know many other former Mormons that have had similar experiences with the religion and their families, and many of us have had to go through a very emotion laden recovery process in order to get away from it, and then go on with our lives. For those living within the Mormon Corridor (the state of Utah and closely surrounding areas), getting fully away from it is, of course, impossible. It isn't that I found the doctrines themselves all that offensive, though I eventually came to see most of them as just plain silly, what I came to dislike so much was the self-righteousness and intolerance I found in so many Mormons, including some in my own family.
By early 1983 the only remnants of Mormonism still in me were just a few remaining doctrinal and historical issues that hadn't been fully researched. I decided to finally do the research necessary to either prove or disprove their validity by looking at the documented evidence within the Mormon Church itself, much of it hidden up for many years by the Church in an effort to whitewash its history, or simply discovered in old diaries and other documents such as court records and newspaper articles of the times. This is when the Tanner's entered the picture with their Lighthouse Ministry work, which is nearly all based on Mormon documents themselves. By late spring of that year, my belief in anything uniquely Mormon totally died. Not too far into the future the Mark Hoffman bombings and the Mormon connection with that event would shed further light on the true nature and deceitfulness of the Mormon leadership, and in the years following all of that, I would come to know just how cold, how uncaring, and how unforgiving the heart of some Mormons can be, and in January of 1999 I would finally and fully close the door to Mormonism and walk away from it for good.
With that introduction, here is the April 1997 writing.
I decided tonight to begin my own life's story of my experience with the Mormon church; I say life story because my nearly 53 years of walking this earth is truly and intimately intertwined with Mormonism, even in my complete separation from it for several years now. I am married and live in Salt Lake City. I come from several generations of Mormons whose ancestors on both my father and mother's side came to Utah in the early days of the Utah church. My father's side came from England, and my mother's side of the family goes back into Denmark. I have decided to write this because: 1) I never have put my experience on paper, and I need to do this for my family, for my friends, and for my posterity; 2) By doing so I will most certainly learn a number of things about myself that I don't know yet; and 3) It will hopefully help me get even more "out of the Mormon woods" than I am already.
I was born literally in the shadow of the Manti Mormon temple. For anyone who has been to Manti, especially to the annual "Mormon Miracle" pageant, there is a roadway which climbs up the south side of the temple hill to the temple itself. Facing the temple, the audience at the performance sits on the grassy area on the left side of the road. On the right side of the road, right next to the hill itself, is where my birthplace used to stand, a small adobe house that was removed when the upper parking area was constructed, pushing the surplus rocks and dirt down the side of the hill onto the lot where the house used to stand. The year was 1944, and my parents and older brother had recently moved from the mining communities of eastern Utah in Carbon County. My father had avoided the family line of coal mine workers by graduating from BYU with a teaching degree and by accepting a teaching position in Manti in 1943. I was the second and last child born to the family, though in later years three additional children, all girls, were adopted into the family and raised along with us boys.
During the years in Manti, until the family moved to Provo in 1956, my father became the bishop of one of the three wards in town, and in religious as well as in many other civic areas, he was a very respected citizen of the town. Through my first 12 years of life in this little town of Manti I lived a troublefree and carefree life as a good little Mormon boy, but as we moved to the big city of Provo (then about 40,000) and I began to form associations with people who were not Mormon, or who were inactive Mormons, I slowly began to experience some confusion over some of the things I heard about my church. The few times I innocently brought up some of these subjects in Sunday School classes, or to my more scripturally knowledgeable friends, I was simply cut short, put down for even asking the questions, told they were ridiculous, and refused me the answers. The obedient young priesthood holder that I was, I did like I was told and put them out of my mind. I ended up moving on through my teenage years to age 19 when I received the inevitable call and went on my mission to Austria. My arrival in Austria in 1963 was the beginning of the transition in my life that eventually would move me away from belief in the Mormon church, though this wouldn't be completed until 1983, twenty difficult years later.
Arriving on my mission I immediately found that I felt very uncomfortable telling people that my church that was the "only true church on the face of the earth." Maybe it was just the new language I was having to learn, or maybe it was because I had never come to fully believe it yet. Over the next two and a half years there were only a few times when I felt that the "spirit" had loosened my tongue in the German language where I could tell the contact what was really on my heart, and in thinking back, the only times that this did happen was when I was speaking of Jesus and of His love for us in what He did for us. I met many people who impressed me as being equally, if not more happy than I was, and much more self assured in their lives and in their beliefs, living their lives with much more freedom of thought and action that I could even conceive of. I ended up making many friends, both young and old, who did not accept my missionary message, and some of these friendships endured beyond my mission time and, in later years were renewed and deepened when I was able to return to the country many times during my tour in Germany with the US Army (1967-1971).
I returned from my mission having had some experiences that made me question even more of the teachings of the church and also some of the motives and agendas of fellow mission workers, specifically the mission president himself and a particularly uninspired assistant to the president from my peer missionary group, and within a year I had all but completely quit going to church. The distinct impression formed during my mission was that I had met many, many people in Austria that had achieved a level of happiness and contentment, as non-members of "God's" church, that far exceeded anything that I had seen so far in my own life, and I had begun to realize that it was because these people were truly free from the authoritarian control by a church organization that had been controlling my own life. I wanted this freedom for myself, and it wasn't long before I began to resent church "leaders" telling me what to believe without questioning nor researching both sides of the issue. After all, isn't this what free agency should really be about? The only way I could pursue this freedom was to remove myself from those places where it happened, namely the church meetings. Surprisingly, I found skipping church very easy and spiritually refreshing. I didn't miss it at all, especially in the summer of 1966, when the rest of my family was spending the summer in Indiana, where my father was attending a summer college course for teachers. I was alone at home, no one to monitor what I was doing or not doing, except the friends that didn't like church much either. I loved it, this new freedom. I even started to enjoy the knowledge that the people in my ward were beginning to recognize that I had become somewhat inactive, this formerly model member of the ward and recently returned missionary.
Of course, most really good things don't last long. At summer's end my family returned, and I was now faced with the dilemma of either reverting back to playing the good Mormon, recently returned missionary, example for the young men in the ward, 100% church attender -- or, disgracing my family by being honest. I chose the former, and the next few months were very difficult for me. College (BYU, of course) was the pits again, and I quickly became more and more depressed and lost. By the end of the summer of 1967 I simply couldn't take it any more. I told my parents that the draft board was beginning to breathe down my back, and I joined the Army to have some choice of army jobs, thereby avoid going to Vietnam, and, of course mainly, to get away from the Utah culture. I had gone through several girl friends during the year but had ended up with no one special. The few my parents liked were good Mormon girls that never guessed that I was losing it with the church they were so devoted to, and I couldn't bear to reveal this part of me to them. It was easier to break up with them. The one girl friend that I could be honest with my parents strongly disliked. Her name was Irene, and I mention her because she will come back into my story for a brief time. Anyway, by the time I left for my basic training I was an emotional mess, but at least now I was out of the "Mormon" element, where I was going crazy.
Ahead of me now were four years of very adventurous living for me. Many of the rebellious experiences that most youths have during their teenage years and into their twenties I finally made up for. I began to have the time of my life, at least after basic and advanced army training was over with. However, about halfway through my term with the military, I started writing to Irene. Soon we started talking marriage, then church, then temple; and before I knew it, I had thrown my newly acquired emotional freedom to the wind and was being sucked back into that which I had gone through hell to escape from. My parents were not very happy about my choice in marriage partners, but the temple marriage thing kind of balanced that out. After much planning, all via letters, Irene printed up and sent out all the announcements and made the final arrangements at home. I reserved my flight home for the wedding and rented an off-post apartment for when I returned with my new bride. You can sense what is coming now, of course. One week before the wedding Irene called me and told me she couldn't go through with it. I believe reality hit her before it hit me, and she had the courage to put a stop to it. It was, for me, however, a great shock, and I kind of went off the deep end. Thinking back, I'm quite sure the overwhelming reason we wanted to get married in the first place was to do what was right for our parents, to "follow the plan" and put aside our non-conformist ideas and attitudes. The hard part for me was losing the one person I felt a true love for, and a person that I probably would have enjoyed being around for many years into the future. After Irene's call, I soon, and once more, retreated from the influence of the Mormon Church, and in my depression over my loss of Irene, I fell into some occasional drug use and other worldly behaviors, most of which will be described in another part of my history.
I finished my time with the military in Germany, and though I contemplated very strongly remaining in Germany and making my life there, mainly to keep myself removed from the Mormon influences in my life, I decided to move back to Utah to see if I could find a way to happily exist there, pick up some of my old pieces, kind of start all over again, and still be true to myself. After several months of working in Salt Lake City and going through a huge transition back into some kind of a normal life that included the strong and family influence of Mormonism, I decided to make one last attempt at conforming to the lifestyle dictated by the Mormon church. In other words, I very unwisely let myself get sucked back in once again. I enrolled at BYU again and met a nice Mormon girl from Pennsylvania. In 1973, at 29 years old, I finally married for the first time -- in the Mormon temple. The marriage was a total disaster. I was a failure at being the family breadwinner, the patriarch exercising the power of the priesthood, commanding the divine forces with wisdom and religious faith, and all those good Mormon things. A total failure, and no one knew it better than my wife! Two years into the marriage I fell back out of the church and, back into the occasional drug scene. After five years of mostly utter hell, the marriage ended. The only really "good" things that came out of that union were two children that I loved to be with when they were young. Though both of my children would eventually disown me as their father, mainly through the subtle help of their mother and a sister of mine, I would always cherish the many memories I have of my children when they were young. I think about my two children each and every day of my life, and the sorrow I feel from losing them never goes away. Nevertheless, I learned to go on living and loving without them in my life. I got to know other children that loved me in their stead, and this all but completely compensated for my loss.
A little over a year before the divorce I started working as the pinsetter mechanic in an east side bowling alley. This atmosphere became a second home for me, totally removed from the rest of the Mormon world I was living in. It was my refuge, and I could be who I wanted to be, and do what I wanted to do. Nevertheless, there were a few occasions when the atmosphere would be shattered momentarily, like the time my father came into the bowling alley looking for me, and caught me smoking. It was the only time he ever saw me do this, and this simple event hit me like a brick. It made me realize that staying away from Mormon guilt is simply not always possible. The memory still haunts me, and I always wish my dad hadn't seen me do that. In any case, all of my closest friends were non-Mormon people, and after the divorce I ended up living with some of them. Those years were probably equally happy, if not happier, for me as most of my army years were. It was wonderful feeling free and alive, not allowing any organization or anyone to dictate to me how to live and how to think. I did some pretty bad and some pretty stupid things during this time in my life, but the memories of doing them are priceless, and I'm glad I did all of them.
By the summer of 1983, the bowling alley was three years behind me, and I had gained and lost a job with Western Electric (laid off because of the divestiture of the Bell companies). During this time, especially during the unemployed months, I decided it was high time for me to, once and for all, do the necessary research, to fully resolve, one way or another, the remaining questions and doubts I still had about the Mormon Church. Naturally, my parents were strongly urging me to return to the religion, and I still found myself occasionally wavering about what I should do. I decided to study other religions, as well as look for scholarly material that was objective, and not in support of the beliefs of Mormonism. I talked with a Catholic priest and found him surprisingly unbiased, and full of good advice. I even confessed many of my flaws (sins) to him, and left his presence feeling uplifted and very forgiven. I ordered a correspondence course in Catholic catechism, did the first lesson, sent it in, received back a nice letter from the teacher telling me he was impressed with my answers, and sent me the rest of the whole course, feeling I was ready to get it all and not just piece by piece. I found the material stimulating and very uplifting. I also found the Catholic approach to families and marriage much more fulfilling and realistic than that of the Mormons, and at the time I truly wished that I had been born a Catholic. Though I was still not ready to become involved with any organized religion, I did have many thoughts about possibly becoming a Catholic if and when I ever did feel ready.
As for my studies in Mormonism, I disregarded all the negative things I constantly heard about Jerald and Sandra Tanner, of course from Mormon people, stopped my car one day, and sheepishly went into their home/bookstore on West Temple, across from the baseball field. I had a short conversation with Sandra, all the time looking for the horns I just knew had to be in those curly locks of hair she wore. She recommended their newest book called The Changing World of Mormonism: A Behind-The-Scenes Look at Changes in Mormon Doctrine and Practice. Reading the book bowled me over, and the documents from the Mormon camp itself finally put to rest any remnant of belief I was retaining in the religion. The many different versions of the First Vision were increased in the number I knew about, with more current documentation, and explained better than the much earlier Brodie book. It was truly eye opening for me. The last holdout for me regarding the validity of the Church, The Book of Mormon, was shown clearly to me what it truly was, and what it was meant to be by Joseph Smith and his conspiring cohorts -- a way to make money. It fit perfectly with the documented personality and lifestyle of its creator, Smith himself. That did it for me. I was totally disgusted with what the Mormon leaders had done with lies and deceit. For me to go back now would be tantamount to committing intellectual or mental suicide, no matter what might happen in the future.
After my divorce, during the bowling alley years and beyond, I lived unattached for eleven years. In the summer of 1983 I was hired by a local bank in the operation center where I began 18 years of work with the bank's computer systems. During this time I worked with mainly Mormon people, but I had become a new person just a few months previous to my hiring. I even enjoyed talking, almost debating, religion with one friend, who became the bishop of his ward during the time we shared the same two-man office. He thought most lightly of the Methodists, who he said believed anything and everything. His comments stuck in my mind, and a few years in the future, as I starting looking for a church home, I ended up liking the Methodists for the very reasons he made fun of them. In any case, everyone knew me as an apostate of Mormonism, but no one really cared, especially since there were also many others working there who were either non-Mormon or non-believing Mormons. I was impressed very much by the apparent fact that friends can be more like families should be by supporting you no matter what you believe and no matter how you want to live your life.
In the fall of 1988 I began to miss some church-type friends, so I started visiting a few different churches. I went to several Catholic masses, then to a couple Presbyterian services, an Assembly of God service (good music -- uncomfortable alter calls, with all the "speaking in tongues"), and a few others, the names of which I have forgotten, though they were of the non- denominational type. One Sunday I attended the lightly spoken of Methodist Church. Christ United Methodist Church is located quite far east on 3300 South in Salt Lake City, and the moment I walked in and sat down in the sanctuary I felt at home. It was my long lost "burning in the bosom" that I stopped feeling while I was still quite young in the Mormon Church. The sermon was excellent, and I knew I would definitely visit there again soon. In a few days the "parish visitor," an elderly lady named Emily Brunner, called me, using the contact information I had written into the attendance folder passed down the aisle during the service. She explained other things about the church to me, and because of my comments about attending, she invited me to attend the membership classes, telling me that many people attend them just to learn more about the United Methodist Church, and that there was no pressure to join. I agreed, and the next Sunday I started the classes. I loved every one of them, and I was deeply impressed with the words the pastor, Tom English, said to us the Sunday he came in. He told us to always remember that the church was for the people, not the other way around. He told us never to let the church push us into doing anything we didn't want to do, that the church was there only to support and minister to us in any way that we would want it to. It was so refreshing to me to hear things like this, and in succeeding years, after I joined the church, I never felt any pressure to do or be anything that I didn't want to do, or be. My basic life- long agnosticism took on another title, one that came from a wonderful book that I read while I was in the army. It was called The Christian Agnostic, and this is what I suddenly had become myself. A Christian agnostic. One who doesn't know, but one who believes it is good to follow and try to be more like the Jesus of the Bible
[This is where I still am today. My appreciation and enjoyment of being a United Methodist is still part of my life today; yet I recognize other churches as being equal within the greater Church of God, or in Protestant terminology, the Body of Christ. I presently play the service music for most Sunday services at a west side United Methodist Church, playing keyboard with the praise team for the contemporary service, incorporating the wonderful music I experienced at the Assembly of God services with the freedom of thought and being with the Methodists.]
At CUMC I became a member of the Chancel Choir, and involved in other aspects of the music ministry of the church, playing the organ when the main organist was gone, performing as a soloist, both on the piano and as a vocalist, and giving solo and ensemble concerts at the church -- in that beautiful, banner draped sanctuary. I was finally home, church wise, and I couldn't have been happier. My family had pretty much stopped pressuring me, mainly because they didn't know of my association with the Methodist church, other than my doing music with and for them. The next spring my dad died, and one late evening a couple months later, as I had just finished some music, I arose from the piano, walked into the living area, and had the distinct impression that Dad was standing there by the front door. I looked there and saw nothing, but I had this strong feeling come over me that he was standing there, smiling and giving me a nod of approval, in essence telling me that my life was going right, that I was doing okay, and that he was proud of me. A few weeks before this happened, my mother had told me that my nephew David had spoken of a similar "visit" from my dad. According to my mother, who I believe was told this story by David's mother Jeriann, but I'm not sure, Dad appeared to, and told David that there are a lot of heavens, but there is no hell. I don't know what that may have meant for David, but for me it was very comforting to hear, not only because it was something that I had always believed, it also told me that my very Mormon-in-life dad now knew that reality was different than what he thought it was during his mortal life; and he had come back to us somehow to tell us this. If this was a real, and not imaginary occurrence, it seemed to me that my dad now knew not only about my becoming a Methodist, but he also knew ALL of my secrets, and ALL of the "bad" things I had ever done. And he still was telling me I was okay, that my life had worth and value. I hardly slept that night because of the wonderful feeling I went to bed with that night, and I'll never ever forget it.
In the spring of 1989 I was working with a Cub Scout chorus when one of the single-with- children mothers asked me to help her with a cub scout music program at her ward. I agreed to do this, and she and I ended up getting married. Many years before this second marriage (eleven years to be exact), I had promised myself never to become involved with another Mormon lady. However, she convinced me that my apostasy from the Mormon Church and subsequent membership in the United Methodist Church was not an issue for her in any way.
[Later, as the marriage was heading for divorce, she told me she had lied about this, thinking that I would eventually change my mind and go back to her church. I choose to not use her name because I feel I should give her some desired anonymity.]
We ended up getting married the following November, with hardly any dating or getting to know each other, both of us feeling that we were just following our destiny, that our getting married was simply meant to be. She even joined the Chancel Choir with me, and her three children seem to really like attending Christ Church with us. All this time she was still active in her own ward, but her children, especially the two boys, showed little interest in furthering their Mormon association, mainly because of their apostate dad, not so much because of me. Anyway, I started attending some of her ward meetings, feeling that it should be a give and take thing, and slowly I started to get sucked into that environment again. It became somewhat difficult at times to assert myself successfully, but in time the people in her ward accepted the fact that I simply was not going back. Presently, I live in this fairly strong Mormon community. Most of my friends are Mormons, and some of them are truly and thoroughly brainwashed. I'm surprised that they treat me as kindly as they do. Seldom do any of them speak to me of church or religious matters, probably because they all know that I am an apostate and a member of another denomination. To my knowledge, I am still on the church records as a member, not really caring about it being there. No one ever asks me what I do believe; nor do they seem to care. I guess that this really is okay with me, and since my wife comes from a family that is also Mormon only on record, she hasn't come into my life with a lot of religious baggage. I'm very happy just living my life from day to day.
I feel no need in my life to debate anyone about these things. I enjoy sharing my own feelings and experiences when asked about them (and this rarely happens, and never with most of my own family members). I am the black sheep of the family, and I truly like my color. I do not claim to have any special insight into the cosmic reality. There is a slowly emerging picture of it as I occasionally find what appears to be another small piece to the puzzle, and I move it around until the piece seems to fit. The picture is still very blurry and rather indistinct, but one thing I can easily tell already is that it is definitely not a picture of Mormonism.
We sometimes hear that each of us has our one special purpose in life and that we must each seek out that purpose in our own lives until we find it and magnify it. I'm not sure if this is true in my case, or if my special purpose is still waiting for me to find it or be revealed to me at some later time in my life. But I do know that my life, after putting aside those influences that take away my individuality and my inherent freedom of choice, is full and worthwhile. I am happy to be alive. I enjoy living my life and being who I am. If my life were to end tomorrow I would leave this existence fulfilled, satisfied, and with few, if any, regrets.
Richard Stevenson
Salt Lake City, Utah
[At the end of this 1997 writing I edited out further comments about my second wife. The marriage didn't last much past this writing, and this is covered in that particular section of my chronological history; and because the marriage ended, some of my feelings expressed in the final paragraphs of this writing were invalidated so much that I decided to omit them. And, as this April 1997 writing ends here, mostly because of the impending wind down and subsequent break up of the marriage, I will now pick up and finish the story.]
About midway through the marriage I had slowly discontinued my active involvement with my church. The rest of my family had tired of going there, and I didn't want to go up there alone anymore. After the divorce in 1998 I didn't return either, except for the occasional visit. However, a good friend of mine that was attending and doing music at a Methodist church quite close to where I was now living kept inviting me to visit there. I finally did visit a couple years later, and I immediately found that I felt the same warmth and enjoyment in this new, and much smaller, congregation, and in time I became very involved with the music ministry in this church. My renewed active involvement has continued to this day, and I value the contribution I have been able to make in this new setting. However, though I had my church records transferred from the church I officially joined back in 1988 to the church I presently attend, I never did officially join this new congregation. Realizing that my philosophical life stance is agnosticism, I felt that maybe joining and committing to a church organization might not be the best, and most honest, thing to do. And, remembering the wise council given in the membership classes I attended, I decided to simply establish a good relationship with the church, rather than commit myself to some things that would be uncomfortable for me. In my three years of renewed activity with this new congregation I have never felt pressured to be or become anything I haven't specifically asked for myself, and I appreciate this very much. It is such a joy for me to be associated with an organization that doesn't elevate itself above me or anyone else and try to control a person's life, or lifestyle.
As a "born in the Mormon covenant" person, living within the Mormon Corridor (Utah/Idaho), I will always find it impossible to fully extract myself from the influence of the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church claims to be uniquely positioned to keep families together in the afterlife, flying their "Families are Forever" banner high and wide; yet the very cult like Mormon temple "endowment" and "sealing" rites and other doctrines of the church regarding eternal family relationships are, in fact, responsible for breaking up and destroying countless families, thrusting many Mormon parents into deep pits of depression and guilt when one or more of their children choose other ways of living and other ways of worshiping God in their own lives.
In early December of 1998, in an effort to extricate myself as much as possible from the Mormon Church, as well as to assuage the feelings of a particular family member of mine that felt that I should have been excommunicated many years ago because of my sins, I started the process of having my name officially removed from the member records of the Mormon Church. I received the official letter confirming that I was no longer a member on January 31, 1999. It read:
Dear Richard,Officially leaving Mormonism was the right thing for me to do. Though the presence of the Mormon Church will remain in my life because of my family, and although I will always support and respect other people's right to believe as they choose, the Mormon institution itself no longer has any part of me in its grasp. I now recognize the Mormon Church as just another man made church. It is not completely bad, as it does some good in the world. There are many very good LDS people who recognize their place within the framework of the collective body of churches that believe in God, and strive to follow the teachings of Jesus the Christ. For them it is a good church. As for me, I will always agree to share my reasons for leaving the church in order to help others see the Mormon Church for what it truly is, and thereby help them avoid becoming entrapped in the more cult like aspects of the organization that give seed to the self- righteous bigotry exemplified by Mormons who, inwardly or outwardly, elevate themselves above those who choose to live and believe outside the Mormon box. Beyond that, I have left Mormonism behind and have moved on with my life. When new people ask me if I am a Mormon, I simply say, "No, I'm not." The End November 2003As you have requested, your name has been removed from the records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints...
