When I stopped attending my Latter-day Saint ward in 2014, I never really had any intention of going through the formal process of coordinating with corporate to cancel my relationship with God. Having my church membership records removed seemed like a pain, and I wasn’t particularly motivated to do this.
There was a time when I would fantasize about being excommunicated in a tribunal of neighborhood volunteer dads. I had a speech prepared and everything. The vision involved at least two members of my jury being moved to tears and walking out with me. But it turned out I wasn’t interesting or important enough to prosecute for my hooliganism, so instead of being hunted down for persecution, I was sought out for reactivation.
At one point I had moved to a new neighborhood, and my membership records somehow followed me. One Sunday afternoon, two timid men knocked on my front door to invite me to start attending the ward. I politely declined. (It has always been my personal policy to never be rude to the door knockers in these situations because I remember what it was like to be on the other side of the exchange.)
A week later, I received a card in the mail from one of those men, notifying me that he had informed the other congregation members I wasn’t interested in contact. He concluded the note, “Please know I’m not just a member of the ward. I’m also your neighbor, if you ever need one. I hope you’ll consider this sincere fellowship.” I never did contact him, but it’s been 11 years, and I confess I still have that card.
Eventually whoever is in charge of this sort of thing (Moses?) transferred my membership records to my parents’ ward. I discovered this when I began receiving an onslaught of emails from the ward activities committee, elders quorum, and whatever poor soul had been assigned to beg people to clean meetinghouse toilets every Saturday. I responded to these emails, asking to be removed from the list. Nevertheless, the emails continued. I wasn’t too annoyed with this because, again, I had been on the other side of this type of outreach, and I knew what I was experiencing was probably more a matter of disorganization than targeted harassment.
To resign or not to resign?
(Image courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" was unveiled in September 1995.
My attitude about all this finally changed after several years of receiving these emails when one evening a new bishop, whom I did not know, sent out a ward newsletter praising the family proclamation as divinely inspired. By this time, I was happily married to another man, wondering why, after years of requesting to be left alone, I was being sent propaganda that denounced my family.
In a moment I now recognize as rage, I hit reply to the email and typed, “I have been asking to be taken off this list for years. Do I have to have my church membership records removed to get you people to leave me alone?”
I wrote other things as well, but the absolute tyrants who run this publication won’t let me swear so I can’t share the rest of it here. The point is, it was the most impolite email I had ever sent, and for that I would like to publicly apologize to my mother who raised me to leave five-star customer reviews even when the experience was bad because “we don’t know what kind of day that man was having so let’s not make it worse.”
The bishop responded quickly, apologizing, and explaining he wasn’t aware of my prior requests. He promised there would be no contact going forward and offered to assist with my record removal, if I wanted, by either having me send him a notarized letter or by meeting with him to sign a letter in his presence.
Once my temper subsided, I debated ardently with myself about whether I cared enough about this to go through the steps. And thus began a two-year period wherein I delivered a daily monologue to my husband, who had never been religious and whose eyes would glaze over as I spoke because he could not possibly understand why I was treating any of this as more momentous than canceling a Netflix subscription.
The monologue: “Maybe I should just remove my records. Sometimes the church does things I find morally offensive, and I don’t want to be counted among their ranks. And by having my records removed, I would be informing them I don’t approve. Or would that communicate that I think it matters whether they consider me a member? Maybe that would be a way of giving them power over me. Also having my records removed might make my parents sad. Or maybe my parents don’t care at all, and I’m overthinking it. Or am I underthinking it? Should I go back to therapy?”
My husband would then yell “yes” to that last question and change the subject.
I eventually became exhausted with having this weigh on me, so one evening I reached out to this bishop and asked if I could come by and get this over with. I informed my parents and they were supportive and wished me luck, confirming that I had overthought at least some of this.
Visiting the bishop
A few days later, I knocked on this bishop’s door. He was friendly, if not a little nervous, and he invited me into his living room, plastered with pictures of temples. We engaged in several minutes of small talk.
“Your parents sure are great.”
“Yes, they sure are great.”
“They’re the backbone of the ward.”
“They’re the backbone of my family.” Etc.
It felt like a parent-teacher conference.
After 20 minutes, I had the old urge to pull out an Ensign magazine and share a home teaching message, but it was at this point the bishop handed me a laptop so I could write my resignation letter.
As I placed my hands on the keyboard, it suddenly occurred to me I had no idea what this letter was supposed to say. I asked for help, but he confessed he also didn’t know. It was then that this poor bishop began Googling anti-Mormon websites for instructions on how to resign from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I hope they’re paying him enough.
While he did some research, I decided to take a crack at it, and, to my surprise, the most formal 19th-century religious language buried deep down began pouring out of me, and I found myself typing something like “Dear The Church, I hereby forevermore relinquish unto you my everlasting covenants, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
I showed the bishop my draft and asked if what I had written would work. He looked at it, puzzled, and then muttered, “I think they’ll get the point.”
A moment later, the letter was printed, and the bishop handed it and a pen to me. Sitting on his couch, I asked if he had a book or something I could use for the signing. Habitually, he reached for something on a side table, and I noticed he froze. I looked over and saw that he had begun to grab the largest copy of the Book of Mormon I had ever seen, before realizing it might not be appropriate to use that as the desk for my resignation.
(Rick Bowmer | AP) A large copy of the Book of Mormon, signature scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, provided a somehow fitting makeshift desk for Eli McCann to sign his resignation letter.
We looked at each other, and he appeared ready to apologize.
The irony then hit me. Here was the book that started it all. The book that caused my pioneer ancestors to trek. The book that raised me. The book that led my dad to take my 8-year-old hand and guide me into a baptismal font. The book that sent me to Ukraine for two years. The book that had caused me anguish, the same anguish that finally led me out of the closet and to a new identity, separate from this religious life that had guided every part of who I had been. And this was now the book this bishop nearly gave me to formalize my rejection of what I felt had already rejected me.
It all seemed so poetic, and hilarious in a way, and suddenly I smiled at him, pointed to the book, and said, somewhat bluntly, “Well, actually, that’s perfect.”
The bishop smirked and handed me the book. I began to sign just as I started to laugh. He started laughing as well. In the next room, I could hear snickers from his family members, who no doubt had been briefed on our awkward meeting and could probably hear every word of it. And the laughing from everyone only amused me more, to the point that my shaky signature looked nothing like my own.
I handed the letter to the bishop. He walked me to the door and wished me well. As I shook his hand, it occurred to me my experience of leaving the church was consistent with most of my key experiences with Mormonism: painful and conflicted, sometimes confusing, but nonetheless surrounded by a community I love, often despite itself.
My grand exit didn’t include a speech or a juicy tribunal. And it certainly didn’t prompt any tears — but instead, laughter.
In short, it was perfect.
(Eli McCann) Tribune humor columnist Eli McCann.
Eli McCann is an attorney, writer and podcaster in Salt Lake City, where he lives with his husband, new child and their two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs. You can find Eli on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @EliMcCann or at his personal website, www.itjustgetsstranger.com, where he tries to keep the swearing to a minimum so as not to upset his mother.
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