Hi, My name is Francis 'Nelson' Henderson
I was a Mormon, Missionary, Married in the Temple, Father, Teacher, Engineer. Wanting to be the author of my own life, I could not make Mormonism work for me. Then I discovered the willful, intentional deception about Church history by Church leaders.
About me
I was born into the church where my father was a founding church leader in the Raleigh, North Carolina area and served in the first ever Stake Presidency in Raleigh. My parents were good people which encouraged me to trust their belief in the Church. My church attendance was near perfect. I remember being stunned as a teenager by a few good church talks by NC State graduate students. For example, the idea that self-governance is a fundamental condition of moral agency.
I graduated BA Physics, BYU. I am a founding member of Comtel, a California satellite communications company where I led development of embedded real-time computer firmware.
My resignation from the Church is an act of Conscience. I do not sustain its leadership who are, in my opinion, manipulative, intellectually dishonest, self-aggrandizing, delusional, homophobic, erotophobic, unapologetic, unrepentant, and secretive. Not once in my lifetime has there ever been any apology or any public act of repentance acknowledging their mistakes. Not when denying the priesthood to black males was rescinded; not when making racism a central tenant in the Book of Mormon (Lamanite dark skin curse); not when hiding church history; not when Book of Abraham papyri was found, dated, and translated; not when being so wrong about homosexual attraction or affection.
Officially resigning from the Church was better for me than just walking away which I did in the beginning. The big difference could be because I do not feel an ownership anymore. For example, visiting Utah for more than three (3) days does not make me want to get out-of-town as fast as I can, anymore
Mormonism divides families as it did mine with the two of us going in different directions. It is a condition created by the Church that many Mormon marriages cannot survive. Uninvited by me, Church leaders intervened by climbing into my marriage bed (so to speak), harming my marriage in ways that were important to me. The ghost of polyandry continues as the voices of 15 geriatric Apostles whispered Obedience into my wife's ear. The sin of prudery is her right that I would not, nor should not violate.
# Why I left More stories of 'Why I left' the Mormon church
My Exit Statement is posted on my site here: fnhenderson.us/… I hope someone will read and comment because I worked hard and long on them.
More than anything else, I object to the Temple Covenants of Obedience, Sacrifice, and Consecration because individual sovereignty means that it is evil for any other person or Church to interfere with one's honest and peaceful choices. This criterion means the Law of Obedience is an attempt to control. The Temple Covenants result in inauthenticity because the Laws are disregarding that one must be a free and sovereign person having purity of motive, being free of coercion, and having the capacity to give informed consent, are all necessary pre-conditions to any judgement of one’s morality.
In our law which is just, self-ownership (personal sovereignty) must exist if one is to be free, hence subject to judgement under the law. Contracts, similar to Covenants, are nullified in law when the person is 1.) Uninformed. 2.) Deceived. 3.) pressured or coerced. Temple Covenants are invalidated for any one or all of those same reasons:
1.) The Covenants are invalidated by being kept secret. In other words, one must know what are the Covenants that one will be required to make before considering a Church mission or Temple marriage.
2.) The Covenants are invalidated when pressure of any kind exist. The Church has an incentive to require the Covenants be taken because it is a beneficiary of each new Covenant faithfully lived. It gains for itself the promise that one’s time, labor, and life choices shall satisfy whatever it may require of the inductee.
3.) When the Church Misrepresents itself to the Temple candidate, the Covenants are invalidated. The Church is a party to the Covenants, it benefits from them, it creates and administers them. It therefore has an obligation to the other party, the Temple candidate, who is trusting the Church’s representation to be honest. Unfortunately, the Church is manipulating the Candidate, hiding information about itself, giving false and deceptive and misleading and incomplete information, thereby invalidating the Covenants because consent is uninformed.