Resign, Withdraw Your Comments, or Face Church Court

Many of you read my post on An Insider's View of Mormon Origins by Grant Palmer. In that post, I detailed some of the amazing misconceptions of the history of the church. That post appears to have been my undoing. On Thursday, I met with my Bishop to discuss that post, and my apostasy. The church's handbook describes apostasy as follows:

1. Repeatedly act in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the Church or its leaders.
2. Persist in teaching as Church doctrine information that is not Church doctrine after they have been corrected by their bishops or higher authority.
3. Continue to follow the teachings of apostate sects (such as those that advocate plural marriage) after being corrected by their bishop or higher authority.

My Bishop pointed out to me that the last paragraph is considered apostasy. He brought a highlighted copy for reference and read it to me aloud with a bit of strain in his voice. I include it here for reference:

It matters to me. I think the truth should will out, and no matter how much Mr. Smiths 'works' draw people to Christ, they were built on complete falsehood. Like former President Bush was wrong to go into Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein under false pretenses, even though Saddam was bad man, Mr. Smith was wrong to invent this wonderful fairy tale to bring people to Christ. Seems like a good goal, but completely unjustified.

In his opinion, this followed point 1 from the manual. I.e. it 'Repeatedly act[ed] in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the Church or its leaders.'

The key phrase here, I believe, must have been the Mr. Smith was wrong to invent this wonderful fairy tale.

Anyways then, I have resigned. Below follows my resignation letter:

To Whom It May Concern:

With this letter, I hereby submit my resignation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, effective immediately. Please remove my name from membership records.

Last week, my bishop explained to me that I could stop publishing apostate thoughts about church history, resign, or risk enduring church court proceedings. In considering the aspect of censoring my thoughts about this church and its history, I was reminded of Joseph Smith’s attempts at censoring the truth about the sordid details of his polygamous philandering published in the Expositor by his second counselor, William Law. Mr. Law tried to keep quiet as long as possible, but then found he no longer could keep quiet upon learning of the prophet’s indecent proposals to his own wife. Upon publishing the Expositor, the prophet ordered the former friend’s printing press destroyed and all copies of the Expositor destroyed.
I believe that the truth about Mr. Smith can no longer be suppressed, and should be spoken of openly by members of the church and the public. I fear for the morality of the members of this church, that are expected to profess knowledge of the divinity and veracity of both the Book of Mormon, and its prophet, when at most, members have only a strong faith generally based on faith promoting versions of the past.

This decision has come as a result of much study and heartfelt sorrow discovering the shady past of this church that has for so long been such a big part of my life.

I look forward to the day when this church openly and honestly discusses the past and lets the consequences follow as they may.

Sincerely,


Brent Fisher