Hi, I'm Jim.
I was a mormon. I am the author of 'The Mormon Delusion' series and 'The Bible Delusion.' This is my website. https://www.themormondelusion.com/
About me
I joined the Mormon Church, along with my mother, in 1960 at age 14. Mission, temple marriage, 11 children, 8 still living (six are active members, along with their families) and nearly thirty grandchikldren and a dozen great-grandchildren across the globe. Two children left the fold in their late teens - one half way through his mission when I left. I served in several Ward, Stake and Regional callongs as well as a Temple worker over the years. My first wife died from the effects of breast cancer in 2001. Later, I remarried and now live with my wife in Surrey, England.
# Why I left More stories of 'Why I left' the Mormon church
After forty-three years of clinging to the faith, I resigned my membership of the Church in 2003 for no other reason than I could no longer hold to a belief in God. I retired in February of 2006 and on the day following our move to a smaller home, I came across a one-hundred-year-old booklet that I had owned since the nineteen-sixties. It was written by Joseph Fielding Smith Jr., (who later became the tenth Mormon prophet) entitled “Blood Atonement and the Origin of Plural Marriage.” Essentially, it is a series of published letters between Smith and Mr. Evans, who was at the time Second Counsellor in the Presidency of the ‘Reorganised’ or RLDS Church (now Community of Christ). It contains the affidavits of several wives of Joseph Smith, confirming his polygamy.
Although I had resigned membership of the Mormon Church three years earlier, due only to the fact I could not hold on to a belief in God, I had never considered why the Mormon Church was not actually true. It had never even occurred to me to look. I assumed Joseph Smith to have been a good, albeit deluded man. Out of idle curiosity, I decided to check how many wives Joseph Smith actually did have, as I was only aware of about a dozen from the booklet and the Mormon Church keeps very quiet about polygamy. I located thirty-three plural wives and confirmed that they were accepted by Church historians. Then, to my horror, I discovered that several of the women already had husbands when Smith married them. This conflicted with everything I had been taught about Church polygamy.
I was no longer a Mormon, but I contacted a friend who is an Apostle in the Mormon Church and also had discussions with a friend in the First Quorum of Seventy. The Church confirmed to me that polyandry (a word I had never even heard of before) is contrary to Mormon theology, yet I had evidence that Joseph Smith practiced it and thus contravened doctrine. Something was seriously and alarmingly wrong. My research continued and the nightmare started to unfold. Day after devastating day, I discovered more and more of the truth. I somehow had to face and accept and then deal with the fact that Joseph Smith was a fraud who deliberately created a hoax to satisfy his own ambitions. Every single Mormon claim that I investigated was demonstrably not true. What hurts the most is that the truth behind the hoax of the Mormon Church is still deliberately and knowingly hidden from rank and file members even today, through falsified history and selective teachings.
I sent my evidence to the Church leaders and they promised a response. Later, they asked for more time to research my findings. As the evidence mounted in so many areas in addition to the polyandry that I had accidentally stumbled across, I advised Church leaders that I felt an obligation to publish my findings. I offered to send full details for them to comment on. To date I have not had any further replies to my letters. I can only do what I can to share my findings and writing has been my therapy. My devastating journey has at least provided a series of five books which I hope may help a few others to more fully understand and appreciate the facts that the Mormon Church continues to conspire to hide from the faithful.
My present state of mind is encapsulated in the following comments:
themormondelusion.wordpress.com/2006/11/26/today-and-tomorrow/
themormondelusion.wordpress.com/2006/11/24/my-story/
themormondelusion.wordpress.com/2006/11/25/the-journey-through-my-nightmare/