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Leaving the LDS (Mormon) Church
18/F
As a child my parents made me go to the church and as I grew older I grew to dislike the church, I don't believe in the religion and I decided to resign my membership from the LDS church, well a while back I sent in a resignation letter, It stated that I was resigning my name and all records and no longer wanted to be a member of the church, I also stated that they were not to contact my family members or other members of the church in this matter, I told them to no longer contact me either, saying this letter was my official resignation.
Well I received a letter today, it stated they were contacting my stake president, and my bishop, who would then contact me. I told them I didn't want anymore contact which they disregarded, in the letter they stated that I would suffer eternal consequences and said they would circulate the letter to the church leaders. They want me to go in and negotiate with my bishop, who I already spoke to on the matter. I am eighteen almost nineteen, I no longer live with my family and I feel like it is no one in the church's business or my family's business. I worry the bishop will contact my parents because my church is notorious for being blabber mouths, I want to know what actions I should take before I get to deep into this. If I were to take legal action if they keep contacting me or they contact my family how should I go about it. I want to do this as professionally and as quickly as possible and I don't want my family to know. I feel like they're making me jump through hoops. What should I do??
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Maybe you should tell your parents?
I understand why you wouldn't want them to know, and I completely respect that, however, if the core problem here is that your church is trying to blackmail you and bully you by threatening to inform your family, then the easiest way to remove the churches power, is to tell your family you've left the church.
Once you've done that, you can simply ignore anything the bishops send to you. They will no longer have any power over you.
You stopped being a member the moment they received your letter. You don't have to contact anyone else, or meet with anyone. You can get the police involved if they continue to contact you.
The only real problem here is that you don't want your family to know you've left, and honestly, the ship has probably sailed on that one. Even if it is illegal for the Church to tell them (and I doubt it is) someone will probably tell your family. Maybe even already has. That is how most religions operate, and the LDS is particularly notorious for abusing and 'outing' ex-members in this way.
You might be best off connecting to a group that supports ex-Mormons when it comes the legal questions. Google will bring up a bunch of ex-moron support groups and information. I suspect there is no legal way prevent the Church from contacting your parents about your membership. Churches have a lot of ways to circumvent normal privacy and confidentiality laws.
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As to the questions of your legal options you need to speak to a lawyer on this. It appears the Church is most definitely breaching your confidentiality. I do not know enough about the Mormon Church and its inner working to say to what degree it has breached your confidentiality.
For instance if you sent your resignation letter to the head of the church in Utah? It may be necessary in order to process you resignation that your state and local church officials be notified of your resignation.
What was written in the letter they sent to you including that you would be contacted by your state president and Bishop I think is a given and pretty much a boiler plated response. Fact is if you are contact by them you have no obligation to respond to them.
As for circulating the letter to church leaders that could be where the confidentiality breech begins, I really don't know. I see no reason for circulation of your letter though the church could have valid reasons that are in the operational guide lines of the church.
Even though the Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state. Taking a church to court over something like this could be fraught with problems. You really need to speak with a lawyer and get a legal opinion
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I've never heard of a church needing a resignation letter to leave them... I, however, grew up Catholic, not Mormon. i just stopped going.
If I were you, I would ignore any further attempts for them to contact you, at all. You've said your peace. For all intents and purposes, you no longer belong to the church.
If you pursue this legally, for harassment or something, it's just going to drag everything out. It won't really prevent anything or resolve anything... you'll also be out a good amount of money for seeking and using legal council... they're not cheap.
As for them contacting your family, you're probably not going to be able to avoid that one. Even if you get legal help, they're probably going to try and drag your family in to guilt you into going back to the church. Religions based on a community, like Mormonism, are notorious for that sort of thing.
You are, however, an adult now. What you do with your life is your business. Don't let them pressure you into associating any longer. You don't have to.
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