Brandon Was a Mormon, an Exmormon Profile Spotlight

Brandon dug into church history to help a friend resolve concerns and ended up finding concerns of his own. He was disheartened not that no one had answers, but the marginalization he found in even asking the questions!

I had a close friend leave the church and I decided to learn more about my own faith to try to help answer his questions and resolve his doubts. As I began my own study of church history using uncorrelated but still faithful sources I was quickly surrounded by new things which troubled me. I found ways to make things work for years as I continued trying to learn all that I could about our history and probably would have made it work too but the biggest issue that I found was that when I tried to have conversations with members about the new things I had learned, they either didn’t want to know, didn’t want to talk about it or worse, tried to engage and ended up passing on troubling responses which caused me to have more concerns than before. More than any specific issue it was the general response to questions and doubts that began to feel very cultish and half-examined. – Brandon

when I tried to have conversations with members about the new things I had learned, they either didn't want to know, didn't want to talk about it or worse, tried to engage and ended up passing on troubling responses which caused me to have more concerns than before. More than any specific issue it was the general response to questions and doubts that began to feel very cultish and half-examined. — I had a close friend leave the church and I decided to learn more about my own faith to try to help answer his questions and resolve his doubts. As I began my own study of church history using uncorrelated but still faithful sources I was quickly surrounded by new things which troubled me. I found ways to make things work for years as I continued trying to learn all that I could about our history and probably would have made it work too but the biggest issue that I found was that when I tried to have conversations with members about the new things I had learned, they either didn’t want to know, didn’t want to talk about it or worse, tried to engage and ended up passing on troubling responses which caused me to have more concerns than before. More than any specific issue it was the general response to questions and doubts that began to feel very cultish and half-examined. – Brandon

“I had a close friend leave the church and I decided to learn more about my own faith to try to help answer his questions and resolve his doubts. As I began my own study of church history using uncorrelated but still faithful sources I was quickly surrounded by new things which troubled me. I found ways to make things work for years as I continued trying to learn all that I could about our history and probably would have made it work too but the biggest issue that I found was that when I tried to have conversations with members about the new things I had learned, they either didn’t want to know, didn’t want to talk about it or worse, tried to engage and ended up passing on troubling responses which caused me to have more concerns than before. More than any specific issue it was the general response to questions and doubts that began to feel very cultish and half-examined.”
Brandon

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