The Mormon church was recently charged with fraud and reached a settlement with the SEC agreeing to pay five million dollars. Their chief infraction was failing to properly file and misstating in filings they did submit about the church investments with the church-owned investment company Ensign Peak Advisors. The fraud reached all the way to …
Continue reading “Why the Mormon Church Hid Billions of Dollars of Investments?”
James Huntsman filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the church claiming that he was duped into believing that his tithing contributions were going to charitable work, while in fact, they are used to pad the coffers of the church investment accounts. He filed the fraud complaint against the church and states that “this is not …
Continue reading “Mixing Tithing Funds and Investments Maybe Legal But Doesn’t Mean Its Right”
Hinckley made it clear that the church doesn’t share financial statements because the information belongs to those who made the contribution. Since 1959, Church finances have not been disclosed to the public, and we can see that church leaders have actively tried to hide finances from the public. Even so, there are disclosures that can …
Continue reading “Church Finances: Follow the Prophet, He has the Money”
Irrefutable scientific evidence clearly shows that horses did not co-exist with Nephites or Lamanites during the Book of Mormon times. Mormon apologists stretch to come up with any explanation. their leading theory agrees with science on the one hand, that the horses in the Book of Mormon weren’t horses, but on the other hand, the …
Continue reading “Book of Mormon Horses: Real or Myth? Or Tapirs?”
A recent episode of the Mormon Book Reviews podcast features an interview with Evan, the creator of wasmormon.org, and his brother Garrett. Evan shares the story of how he came to create the website and why he chose to share his experience of leaving the Mormon church. The interview includes the personal stories of faith …
Continue reading “Explore the Origin Story of wasmormon.org – A Mormon Book Reviews Podcast Episode”
Tax time in the US and as people are leaving the church, they are receiving real blessings. In many countries, donating money to a charitable organization is tax deductible, meaning this decreases your taxable income. This is a perk to tithing for some people, it can save you some money on your taxes, though not …
Continue reading “Stop Paying Tithing and Challenge the Tax Exemption Status of the Mormon Church”
BYU–Hawaii presented an international concert and devotional by recording artist, Dr. David Glen Hatch, on Thursday, April 4, 2023, in the McKay Auditorium. Brother Hatch, who has published sheet music as well as recordings at church-owned Deseret Book, performed some piano pieces and spoke to the audience in this devotional. Brother Hatch warns of the …
Continue reading “Mormon Fearmongering & Marginalizing Liberal Agenda at BYU Devotional”
Mormon Church President, Russell M Nelson is being honored by the Martin Luther King Jr International Chapel on Morehouse College Campus in Atlanta, Georgia. He is to receive a new award, the first recipient, which is to be called the Gandhi-King-Mandela Peace Prize. This is in coordination with the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Institute at the chapel. What …
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Before M Russell Ballard was an apostle, he is praised as a successful businessman. He was involved in various business pursuits in Utah. He was the top-selling salesman for his father’s Nash car dealership, which he left and in the late 1950s put his efforts into being the first Edsel car dealer in Salt Lake City. Sadly, …
Continue reading “Elder M Russell Ballard’s Colorful History With the SEC”
Elder Dallin H. Oaks, previous Justice of the State of Utah Supreme Court, but currently in the First Presidency of the Mormon church, submitted a “testimony” to the Senate Finance Committee Hearing in 2011 regarding the debate on whether charitable deductions should be considered when calculating taxes. In other words, he’s talking about the tax-exempt …
Continue reading “Dallin Oaks Lectures Senate Committee regarding Honesty”
Do you have exmormon trauma? Try writing your story. Write about your faith deconstruction or crisis. wasmormon.org gives you a place to do this important and healing writing. Consider contributing your story to the site so others can read it and find community and validation as well! Suppressing the trauma is bad for us and …
Continue reading “Writing Your Traumatic Faith Crisis Experience is Healthy and Healing”
A master’s student studying human rights in Sweden is writing his thesis on LGBTQ Rights and Religion Based on Mormonism. The research aims to see if religion has an impact on LGBTQ rights based on Mormonism and how Mormonism impacts LGBTQ people’s lives. Purpose of the project The purpose of the research project is to …
Continue reading “Research on Human Rights And Mormonism Seeking LGBTQ ExMormon Volunteers”
After receiving the Faith Crisis Report, the church leaders commissioned and started quietly publishing what they call Gospel Topic Essays. These essays, for the most part, are the first time the church has published an official stance on many of the topics. They were published quietly and buried deep within the church site of materials. …
Continue reading “The Mormon Church Published The Gospel Topic Essays”
David Nielsen, a former Ensign Peak portfolio manager, shared with his twin brother Lars about the shady practices and massive amounts of money the Mormon church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have in investments. Together the brothers compiled information and reported it to the authorities at the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) …
Continue reading “Whistleblowing On the Mormon 100 Billion “Rainy-Day Fund””
For the past week, the church has been all over the news. Not for something they will want to draw publicity. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that the Church has been fined $5 Million for using shell companies to obscure the size of its investment portfolio. On February 21st, the SEC issued a …
Continue reading “LDS Church’s Misstated Filings to SEC Approved by First Presidency”
This site is dedicated to hosting mormon faith transition stories. These stories are told by real people with real lives. You can create an account and tell your own story. We’ve found that writing our story is cathartic as well as reading the stories of others is therapeutic. It is validating to find similarities in …
While the church continues to grow, the number of baptisms has been declining. Here are some charts created from the publicly available membership records. LDS Church Membership in Millions. Just over 13 millions in 2007 and up to 16.5 million in 2020. Looks like growth, but let’s look at the actual growth. LDS Church Missionary …
The honest investigator must be prepared to follow wherever the search of truth may lead. Truth is often found in the most unexpected places. He must, with fearless and open mind insist that facts are more important than any cherished, mistaken beliefs, no matter how unpleasant the facts or how delightful the beliefs. Hugh B …
Continue reading “Facts More Important than Cherished, Mistaken Beliefs”
The church that is traditionally known as the mormon church, the same church that ran a global campaign about their mormon.org website full of member profiles saying “I’m a Mormon” now discourages (by way of its leaders) the use of the very terms mormon or mormonism. This preference is now codified in the latest General …
Continue reading “The Mormon Church Now Discourages Mormonism”
The church struggles to understand the exmormon community. That is, if they even have the intention of understanding. They are quick to vilify and dismiss those who have chosen to leave. Church leaders have even resorted to calling exmormons names. They try to control the narrative about those who leave. They try to “tell our …
The Correlated Word of Wisdom Origin Story The story of how the word of wisdom came to be is commonly told by the church and fairly simple (see this video), Emma was tired of cleaning up the tobacco after the School of the Prophets met together in her house. Apparently, the chew and spittle would …
Continue reading “Evolution of the Word of Wisdom – The Origin Story”
It’s not that mormons are suffering from a faith crises, but rather, it’s the church that is suffering from a truth crisis. As members are learning actual truth rather than the faith promoting narrative taught by the church their faith ends up being dismantled and/or deconstructed. The truth, as it were, is found to destroy …
Continue reading “That Which Can Be Destroyed By The Truth Should Be”
The Book of Mormon is purportedly “translated” from the gold plates which Joseph Smith discovered in the hill Cumorah. These writings of the gold plates were in “Reformed Egyptian”. At the time no Egyptian language was translatable, but Joseph could translate them with his seer stone in a hat. In order to prove that the …
The Word of Wisdom is a distinct part of the mormon church, it details the do’s and don’ts of what members can and can’t eat or drink. Yet it wasn’t always so. As it’s written, the “commandment” is not really what is focused on, but since, church leaders have come up with their own list …
Continue reading “Evolution of the Word of Wisdom – Barley Drinks and Imbibing Pioneers”
The Word of Wisdom is the health code that today is required for full participation in the church. Filled mainly with restrictions on what latter-day saints should eat or drink: no alcohol, tobacco, tea or coffee as every primary child learns. The church uses many stories to encourage members to live this word of wisdom, …
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The latest Mormon-related Netflix hit is live and trending. Murder among the Mormons discusses Mark Hofmann and his selling of forged historical documents. The documentary also covers Hofmann being guilty of making pipe bombs and using them to murder Steve Christensen and Kathy Sheets in 1985. Hofmann feels trapped by his own forgeries and is …
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Must there be a purpose to have a meaningful life? Some of us find purpose and meaning in a faith transition after navigating groundlessness of a faith crisis and stages of grief. Others still debate whether this purpose is objective or subjective to each of us. Can we have different purposes? Is there one universally …
In a faith transition many face feelings of groundlessness akin to crisis level vertigo. They may feel that their life is completely falling apart; that nothing is what it seemed and they struggle to cope with such a huge shift. They face reprocessing every principle, every value and potentially every reason for every thing in …
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Do you remember the mormon.org website? Members were pestered relentlessly to create a profile online to share their testimony and answer gospel questions. Everyone was encouraged to share their personal url on social media too! Here are some example profiles: Some profiles even backfired and brave disaffected members posted what they actually thought until the …
The church has made much self-congratulation and self-promotion PR regarding its new relationship with the NAACP in the past couple of years. They are speaking words of unity and shared vision, which is great, but there is a backstory. The Backstory of Blacks and the church The race relations between the church and blacks is …
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