Howdy y’ll. As someone who benefitted from and appreciated the exMormon subreddit, I wanted to provide a place for those coming here.
With that, fuck the church. And fuck RMN.
Nice, I never could seem to get into the reddit version of this community.
I’ve been stalwartly inactive for many years now, though I was lucky enough to have a fantastic upbringing in a very chill ward with amazing people and some friends I retain to this day. It was one of the smaller wards in the area and a tight-knit group of genuinely kind people. I went AWOL on my mission and dreaded being ostracized when I got home only to find nothing but support from my ward (including my parents), so it looks like I won the lottery there somehow. It was a really powerful moment when the stake president tried to convince me to go back out to a local mission instead and my mom immediately said no on my behalf. That proved that I was more important to her than this religious tradition/obligation.
All that said, I got exposed to more “traditional” wards and church members after I left the nest. Various things the church was doing, the “I’m more spiritual than you are” contests of members, and certain doctrines kept not jiving until I finally decided I was completely done with it. I learned about a lot of the weirder stuff about the church later and that made me glad I decided to seek my own path for spirituality while remaining agnostic religiously. I was really fortunate to grow up in the environment I did, but I’m glad I’m out of that scene now even if I miss the social aspect of that ward I grew up in.
Figured I’d share a story from a staunch exmo who actually had a very positive experience with the church growing up, but still eventually found reason to leave. It’s too bad, because it seems like there’s so much potential for genuine good and community if they dropped a bunch of the hypocritical judgment, prejudice, and cultish control practices. I’m still hoping to find a spiritual (but not necessarily religious) community someday that feels like that ward from my youth.
Thank you for sharing. Growing up in the 90s, I can say that over all my experience was ok. Sure things could have been better, but I recognize that people were trying. My reasons for leaving are nuanced.
Whether this Lemmy instance success or not, I hope it can be a place of understanding, conversation and deconstruction instead of memes or selfies. If it becomes that, so be it, especially if it helps someone.
r/exmormon helped me a lot, but there was another site, postmormon.org that I miss: those people were leaving when it was hard and shameful to do so. I left with the likes of John Larsen (Mormon Expression podcast) and I long for the honest, heart wrenching, nuanced and conflicted discussion. Regardless, I know the times have changed and that the needs of those in their faith transitions are necessarily different.
So I guess, as the benevolent overlord of this Lemmy community, I hope we can be the better, more honest, more uncomfortable, more whatever community of exMormonism.
Ex-mo, returned missionary here. I’ve excepted that I’ll never quite be right as a result of my upbringing, however I live on the East Coast US so I really don’t have to deal with it! I look forward to not recognizing the current prophet from earlier rosters.
Missionaries still come to my door every few years even though I’ve told them not to. The last pair that came did it during a rainstorm so my wife let them in just in the door. She thought I was mean for not inviting them in further, since they “seemed nice”. Afterwards, I told my wife next time she thinks these people are nice, think about them in the voting booth when it comes to access to women’s reproductive healthcare, or gay/trans rights.
I know I could probably stop the visits if I got my membership removed, but I won’t do that until my mom dies, because I don’t want to deal with any of that.
Upvoting and joining the community for visibility ;)
I stopped going when Monson was in charge, so I haven’t experienced what RMN has done, thankfully. I just have noticed the hard right turn in my family. It took me about 5 or 6 years to lose touch with who the current leadership is.
I also have accepted that the Mormon upbringing does impact a lot about me. I had to work really hard to move away from the binary us versus them, right and wrong, black and white thinking. But the hardest part was coming to accept and embrace the idea that I could, and most likely, be wrong about a lot of things. That has been liberating.
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Very cool to see an exmormon community right off the bat.
There is another community on lemmy.ml that seems to be bigger. And, as far as I am concerned, I could care less where the exMormon diaspora lands so long as there is a home. If it’s here, or there, who cares.
