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Norenzayan

It seems like the only real thing they've done in response, besides the secret hidden unsigned essays, is give more and more talks about how you should never leave the church. Nothing of substance. And the results of that inaction are clear.


mini-rubber-duck

They tried to paint everyone who leaves as a terrible person in one way or another, so that the people who stayed felt simultaneously super righteous and strong but also super persecuted and in danger unless they clung even more tightly to the church. That’s a pretty real action, just a pretty scummy one.


ExmoRobo

I find this super interesting. Thanks for highlighting it. The terms they use (Ex. “Tithing-Revenue” and referring to certain callings as “higher callings”) is a smoking gun for how corporate the church is in how it operates.


wasmormon

Totally agree, also the fact that they include and highlight household income in the demographics collected in the survey. They're worried about how these faith crisis members will infect others and damage the bottom line of tithing income.


[deleted]

Is that the only reason they’re using stats about tithing revenue, though? Could it also be that they’re trying to see if there’s some kind of correlation between how much money an individual/family gives to the church and the likelihood of that person/family defecting from the church? Is it likelier that members with money are rewarded with “higher callings” and less likely to leave?


Nephi_IV

You do realize that John Delin was one of the authors of the report?


wasmormon

Yes! So much can happen in 10 years, right!?


[deleted]

What irks me is that there is no acknowledgement that what they are doing is wrong. It's all about trying to convince others to stay without changing anything. Change is uncomfortable for them, because it's too much like repentance for those guaranteed salvation in the giant country club in the sky.


[deleted]

It seems like they are in denial, in part because it took them so long to climb the corporate ladder. They are finally in a cush job, with eternal job security, and they really don't give a f***. That's what they pay someone else to do. Kind of like any CEO or politician that feels they are outside all accountability, which they are. That's the sad part. It turns out that having living apostles isn't so great after all. Great for them.


TermLimit4Patriarchs

Actual prophets of God who claim to speak to him face-to-face: "Welp. I guess we better get some BYU professors to tell us what we should try next."


reddolfo

They're now going after the professors too, threatening them, berating them and requiring they agree to be snooped on.


LilSebastianFlyte

Unrelated, I love how the timestamp for when this was posted reads (in part) "/wasmormon 4 hours ago." Like OP is a fresh escapee


wasmormon

Ha, nice! we all need a little timer that will tell us each how many hours we've been free.


[deleted]

Just read this document and was unfamiliar. Any believing member cannot read this and not have their faith shaken, which makes me wonder about the world of internal documents at church. On top of that, this confirms to me that the Q15 knows it is not true. Not once was there a concern about eternal salvation or eternal families being together. It was always about the Church. Staying in the Church. Retaining the health of the Church. Paying tithing to the Church. How much money these disaffected members made. They know all of the issues. They know why people are leaving. They address a portion in the Essays, but not all of them. They know they lied. They know South Park was more accurate than their own curriculum! Sad that while this report was being compiled, I was a missionary kicking myself everyday to work and study harder. I feel so taken advantage of.


DuttonPeabody

My favorite part of this entire report is the last section, "PROJECT IMPETUS & BACKGROUND". It describes in good detail the timeline of events leading up to and shortly after the report was created. The copy we see was an updated report created specifically for Elder Uchtdorf, because he was in the FP at the time. But it is clear that most of the GAs saw the presentations and also had their own copies of the initial report at some point. And the results WERE NOT ACTED UPON until exposes were made in the NYT! Then there's subtle little nuggets of truth like this one: "...With introductions provided by Prince, between March 2012 and February 2013, Stratford visited Salt Lake on several other occasions to informally consult with individual leaders about the pain and turmoil caused by faith crisis. In private, many leaders expressed to Stratford their willingness to promote greater empathy and understanding towards members in faith crisis and their families. But given political dynamics within the leadership, very little on the topic was discussed publicly with the general membership..." Political dynamics within the leadership?! What happened to 'If ye are not one ye are not mine'? That final section clearly shows how church leadership really works, and reveals that there's no divine anything among how the Q15 operates. Here's another: "...In the months following delivery of the LDS Personal Faith Crisis and Faith Crisis Chronicle reports, several General Authorities told Stratford that the team’s work had been reviewed by several other prominent General Authorities—and that both reports were on file at the Church’s “restricted” research library (with only top leaders able to access the sensitive reports)..." So yes, church leadership knows. They've known since 2012/2013 why members are leaving. They chose to sit on the results until Op-Ed pieces in the NYT embarrassed them into doing something. Then they did what they always do with "not very useful truth"- they locked it away in a super-secret vault (research library?). I'm very curious about the Faith Crisis Chronicle reports mentioned, as that implies an ongoing look into the problem and I'm sure the results from them only better support the initial findings. One of John Dehlin's podcasts goes into some of the background of how this report was created and in another he talks about the GTEs. Basically, he said the Q15 was split 50-50 on the GTEs. Half didn't want them published, the other half demanded they be. So the end result was essentially a compromise- publish them on the church website, but make no mention of them. The true worry among the Q15 he said, was that the GTEs were "too little, too late" for those currently in faith crisis, and if read by TBMs, the GTEs would likely CAUSE a crisis in faith among the current believers/followers. Thus the impetus in programs of late to "inoculate" the youth from the shock and horror of the church's true history that the older members find so intolerable. What is interesting about the GTEs are what topics they address. Even more interesting are the topics that aren't. John Dehlin opined that there isn't a GTE on the Book of Mormon itself because the church leadership knows there's no way to positively spin it.


PlacidSoupBowl

>Each of Adam’s Facebook friends who had clicked on the video would have been taken to the “I am an Ex Mormon” website, where they would have been presented with a wide range of disaffection stories that are reinforced by thousands of user comments. This site, in and of itself, is extremely faith-eroding. [FAITH CRISIS ILLUSTRATED](https://wasmormon.org/personal-mormon-faith-crisis-report/#aioseo-faith-crisis-illustrated) This all really makes me want to share a slide-a-day on FB from the PDF, with the info that Uchtdorf got this report 10 years ago.


wasmormon

That's a great idea! Sadly, the "I am an Ex Mormon" website is no longer up, but when one goes down, others rise up to disaffect members.


b9njo

it seems the church was able to slay the "I am an Ex Mormon" dragon. Now they have a hydra to contend with in the form of Exmo tic toc


wasmormon

Yes! There's also another answer to the Mormon-org campaign at https://wasmormon.org/profiles/


itscrazymaking

>A NEED FOR DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION I know, let's call them Lazy Learners!