Enjoying free-thought and discovering truth. Feeling truly connected to other human beings for the first time in my life. Inclining towards scientific naturalism, and humanism.
Just eleven months ago, in January 2011, I resigned as a Mormon Bishop after discovering uncomfortable facts about its origins which I had not been taught in 47 years as a member.
Having resigned as bishop I agreed, under threat of excommunication, to avoid speaking about the difficult issues for the Church. Since either resignation from the Church or excommunication would have hurt my extended family, who are members too, I agreed to keep quiet.
However, the time is right for me to unseal my lips which the Church forcefully closed several months ago.
My personal blog, which recounts my discovery & struggle with uncomfortable facts about Church history and origins, and my resignation as bishop because of coming to terms with the truth, is now public.
Last April 2011 it was viewed over 14,000 times in a week & had to be password protected to safeguard family members feelings.
There is a tremendous need in the Church for honesty & candid talking, and my resignation letter as bishop seemed to resonate with thousands of members hearts & minds as they desperately look for the courage to face their own epiphanies.
Time has healed hurts & allows me to open my lips once more.
I am also a Musculo-skeletal Podiatrist who accepts the uncomfortable truth that humans have evolved without the need for shoes and therefore function better when barefoot.
My professional epiphany preceeded my religious one.
The do say, “When you free your feet, you also free your mind!”
Please feel free to publicise wherever you feel would be helpful.
Best regards,
Steve
bloorsteve@gmail.com
https://stevebloor.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/resignation-letter-as-bishop/
https://stevebloor.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/compassion-for-those-who-leave
Recovering from Mormonism. Enjoying free-thought and discovering truth. Feeling connected to other human beings for the first time in my life. Inclining towards athiesm, naturalism, pantheism and humanism.
Mr. Bloor,
I see by the grace of G0d you have found your way out of the LDS faith. What a gift He gave you. He did not abandon you, so please do not abandon Him. If you have to hang by a tread in your believe in God, do so. The God of this Universe is not the LDS god.
Test and study the Word of God!
Respectfully,
Jim
I don’t know you from Adam, but I just felt that I needed to let you know that I know the Church is true. I’m a convert of 16 years and I know for myself that through my study and prayer that God told me the Book of Mormon was true and Joseph Smith is and was a prophet. I’m grateful for my knowledge of this and my life is blessed every day by my loving Heavenly Father. I pray that you can happy with your decision and that your family can still be strong. I wasn’t going to comment but I felt it important to stand up for the truth too.
Kate.
Hi Kate. I appreciate your defence of what you believe. Only a few months ago I was just like you. I KNEW the Church was true!
I still know what that feels like so would not want to influence you to change your mind.
Just check your reasons for belief. Make sure your testimony is based on a sure foundation of truth.
Just because you think, feel and believe something is true doesn’t make it true.
Feelings are not a good indicator of truth. As I have found out for myself very painfully!
I am more concerned about basing my life on truth than on what feels good.
Check out psychology of belief, epistimology, and how superstition and bias influence our perception of reality.
All the best on your journey.
I have nothing but compassion for you, and wish you well.
Steve
Hi Steve
Just to say that I was a member of the Helston Ward when your father was Bishop there. You would have been in young men. I left the area after serving a mission. Three years ago I made the same discoveries that you have and have never looked back. Life is so much better. Knowing the real truth really does set you free.
Best wishes for the future
Steve,
It is refreshing to know that there are other people out there experiencing the same thing I did. It makes you go a little crazy when everyone you love won’t listen. During my most trying times, after learning some of the more disturbing facts of LDS Church history, I contemplated suicide. I thought my dear wife and children would be better off without me. Maybe my wife could find someone that believed like her and start all over.
I’m BIC, RM, married in the temple and still I couldn’t handle the truth when I found it. It shocked me. I searched and prayed and searched hoping to find something that explained what I was learning in a faithful context. Instead I was given unfulfilling platitudes and no answers. I finally concluded I could no longer believe. This was so difficult and hard, but believing was even harder. I still attend church almost weekly but have absolutely no belief in it anymore. I go for my wife, who still chooses to believe.
Five years have past and I’m still working through everything. I hope someday to live openly as a non-Mormon with all my friends and family. Until then I endure the best I can, trying to see what positive the LDS faith has to offer my family. Good luck to you. I hope you find peace.
Hey Steve,
What a crazy journey some of us find ourselves on. I was baptized at eight, married in the temple, mother of six adult children, a grandmother of 16, and a great grandmother to one…and always a believing active adult member when my husband and I discovered that we had been kept in the dark about the religion that we also thought we ‘knew’.
My husband is a BYU educated retired Air Force Lt. Colonel…he could not believe he took all those religion classes at BYU, spent a life time in church meetings, teaching and learning…yet in the end only knew a fairy tale version of the LDS church.
Anyway, we both resigned three years ago this coming spring. We are doing well although leaving the LDS church caused us to pretty much commit social suicide. We were backed away from like rotten meat!
We have rebuilt our social structure in the ex/post mormon community. There are a lot of folks out there just like us….and the numbers are growing.
Good luck on your personal journey!
Jenny
Thank you for your empathetic comments Jenny.
I am astounded at the vast numbers of people who have gone through a similar epiphany with regards to the Church!
So glad you & your husband came through it okay.
We’re enjoying our new authentic lives outside the Church.
Life really is so full of colour!
All the best on your journey too!
Best regards,
Steve
Thank You Steve for your blog. I was born and raised in the belt buckle of the Bible belt, (middle Tennessee). I am a former preacher’s kid, and was raised Nazarene, Baptist, Assemblies of God, My Dad was a preacher. His Dad was religious. His Dad was religious. You see the connection. Then I met that special someone. We got married and I joined the church. My family all but disowned me. They thought the LDS church was a cult, but I knew better. I was a member of the LDS church for 12 years. I held several offices, had my Temple recommend, married and sealed in the Temple with my 4 daughters, the whole nine yards as they say. But, all through my life, I had questions that “faith” just could not answer. 40+ years in several different brands of religion, and I still did not feel right. Sure, I convinced myself that I did. I used to say that “I could play church better than anybody else” because of the way I was brought up. When I had enough of being told by many LDS members, (including a few of my former Bishops) that I was not “good enough” that I wasn’t providing for my family enough, (working 2 jobs at a time) I really started to pull away. The marriage failed, and I hit rock bottom. I will admit that much of it was my fault, but I knew I was a better person than I had come to believe I was. Long story short, I have remarried (a Baptist), but I am an atheist. I just came out to my wife this year. I have never been so free in my entire life than I am now. I am the only atheist in my entire family. No one else knows, and my wife still accepts me for who and what I am. She told me, “you have not changed. You are still the man that I love.” I have known my beliefs for a few years now, and as I told my wife, I prefer facts over faith. I miss a few of my old friends. Like you, I really did have great friendships with people that had known me the entire time I was in the church. I know what it feels like to be alone. I have no one to talk to about my thoughts except strangers on the internet. Thank you for letting me vent and get that off of my chest. I feel better just getting it out of my system. I am a good person, that treats people the way I like to be treated. My moral compass comes from my ancestors who have evolved over 100,000 to 200,000 years, and not from any religious book of any brand of religion. I don’t need Jesus or Santa Claus to tell me how to live. Thank you again for your story.
WOW! What a story!
Thanks for sharing.
It’s amazing how good it feels doesn’t it, once your mind is freed from a superstitious belief system!
To overcome all the guilt, fear, phobias, biases & prejudices!
I’m still trying to overcome all mine, but slowly succeeding.
I love the realisation I have just ‘one life’. It makes it even more special & deserves to be lived to the full!
All the best on your authentic journey through your ‘one life’!
Best wishes from one athiest to another.
Steve
I appreciate your blog. I appreciate what you have gone through. I so love that the truth shall make you free. I feel free in my heart and mind but still suffer upset when I experience that some of my children experience hurt by my NOT BELIEVING it anymore.
I heard today that you are being excommunicated at this late date. I guess they took their time to get a story together that made sense to them as to why you must be excommunicated. THE TRUTH is NOT allowed in the LDS church only the LDS feely truth. Little do they know that the feely truth is everywhere OUTSIDE the church as well. It is kind of like they are blind, but they are so happy, so who wants to tell them they are blind, Not me. As long as they are happy then it is OK with me. I will be there if and when they are NOT happy AND they are willing to SEE what there is to see and KNOW what there is to know. So far, even when they are unhappy they cannot look outside the teachings and the meanings that have been placed for them on their own experiences.
Anyway, thanks. I love your pictures here. Have a great Christmas season!
Hi Gail, thanks for your comments.
Just to clarify, I’m not being excommunicated.
They threatened me with it several months ago, but decided to leave me alone if I kept quiet.
The Truth shall indeed make us free!
Long live the Truth!
Best wishes,
Steve
Thanks, Steve for your story. My wife and I came out to our families six months ago. We were very faithful even through abuses by LDS clergy for many years. When we learned that the history had been sanitized, we lost our faith. Especially when we learned that the foundational events (first vision, priesthood restoration) did not happen as the church presents them, we ended up resigning our membership.
Our families are in disbelief, and the level of loss you describe is spot on. I wouldn’t do it differently though. The loss of Mormon guilt for every little imperfection is possibly the greatest gift of having left. Thanks for hating your story.
Steve, What an inspiring blog! It feels rather familar to the feelings I had of devastation to find the church I so deeply defended was based on so many lies. I was a super faithful temple going member (in SLC, Utah) who suddenly left in 2010 to the horror of my family and friends. I was led to several books that caused me to look within and think for myself. One in particular you might find of interest for it speaks of all the historical coverups and lies of the early church. No other book has truthfully answered and explained things so clearly to me. It gave me peace of mind to help me fit the pieces together regarding Joseph, the BOM and the early church with tons of footnotes to back it up. Here is the link (free to download) if you would like http://marvelousworkandawonder.com/js/index.htm . Peace to you in your journey- you are definately not alone! Many “elect” are leaving the church (just as Lehi, Alma and others who were members of a corrupted “church” were called out of it.) Free at last! Peace&Love, Natalee
Natalee… from one adulation cult to another? The evidence? What can we know from our five senses…. read what Steve has said… trusting your feelings about the hidden portion of the bom is not evidence… I think you see something in common between these “religious” leaders and it is this…. they started out as con men… and they have charisma and attract many women with their power and charisma… liberation in all forms is a worthwhile goal… self authorship and self identity is a freeing and noble end…. thanks Steve for your great courage and your compassion for those you served.
really grateful for your support Steve xx
Steve, do you have an immediate family with a wife and children? I do, and I have discovered the same things that maybe you have. I don’t believe the LDS church is what it claims to be, and I have lost faith in its history and teachings. But my wife is TBM, and it really hurts her when I tell her my thoughts. How did you handle this in your life? What was the result of sharing your beliefs with your wife and family?
Hi,
I’m very grateful that my wife & four children all came with me.
My wife had looked previously at Chris Tolworthy’s Websites debating whether the Church is true, about 2 years previous. http://www.exmormon.org.uk/tol_arch/atozelph/twosides.htm
She was very disturbed by what she read. She asked me to take a look because Chris was a personal friend of ours & had been a Branch President before resigning from the Church.
I wouldn’t look at it myself, but instead reassured her it was the devil’s work!
After I took a look years later & realising it was well researched, I then set to work trying to prove Chris wrong. This led to my epiphany.
When I spoke to my wife about it, though initially very shocked by my change in attitude, she decided to join me in our research for truth. Eventually leading to us both becoming non-believers, & stopping our Church attendance.
When we approached our three teenage children about it the oldest (18 years old) was relieved his parents had finally seen the light, as he had come to that determination a few years earlier after secret extensive study.
Our 14 year old was happy because she had been feeling like a social outcast at school & now gained immediate confidence in her social interactions.
Our 16 year old daughter found the change difficult because of Aspergers, but had hated Church for years anyway, so eventually came to feel more relaxed about it.
And our youngest son, of 10 years had hated Church too, but had never objected, so he is ecstatic we no longer force him to be bored for 3 hours.
The worse challenge for us has been the reaction of our extended family & friends in the Church.
It’s almost been like a death for some of them. In fact my father has said, “I’d rather you be dead than leave the Church!”
We endeavour to provide reassurance we’re still the same people, just with different beliefs.
Slowly it’s working. We’re rebuilding our relationships.
It’s the hardest part for most people I think. Keeping relationships strong which have been hijacked & sometimes held to ransom by the Church belief system.
I think the best plan is to keep loving them & be honest & authentic.
As a couple we’ve found our relationship is much stronger than ever, & we are more authentic with each other without the feeling of judging each other as Church members. There’s a risk as Church members to always be trying to live up to a standard set by the Church, rather than being ourselves & enjoying each other!
Best wishes,
Steve