I am curious. What prompted you to leave the LDS religion and become anti Mormon? I am mostly curious about the bitterness aspect.
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You make an interesting assumption. I am not bitter and I am not anti-MORMON, I am anti-MormonISM (and I do make a distinction). I can see how many LDS would think that all “anti’s” are angry, bitter, and or hateful, I thought so as well when I was LDS. Any animosity I may feel is directed at the leadership and those who deliberately mislead the rank and file members about LDS church history and past teachings. Those who know there are issues yet cover them up, say “we never taught that” when the sources say otherwise, and those who deliberately mislead investigators.
I do not know what you are looking for when you say “intelligible answer” and I suspect that my answer will not satisfy you either, however I will be forthright about my leaving the LDS.
Since you were LDS, (I may be wrong, but I suspect LeGrande may have been a reference to LeGrand Richards although spelled differently) and left, it now makes sense you are an atheist. That is very common (over 50%).
I was a convert to the LDS (rather than BIC), and I believe that was a factor in my becoming a Christian rather than an atheist. About 85-90% of the ex-LDS I know who are agnostics/atheists were BIC. I did not grow up having “either the LDS church is true or NO church is” drilled into me and I never seriously doubted the existence of God. I was always a seeker.
I am asked this question so often I really should do a formal one on my profile page.
There were many factors in my leaving. Quick list of some things that were NOT factors.
I did not leave the LDS becuase someone offended me, becuase I wanted to sin, because I never had a testimony, or becuase I couldn’t live up to the standards. I was a great Mormon. But there came a time, when confronted about the truth of the the LDS church history and doctrines and the changes that I could no longer defend them in good conscience.
I set out to be an LDS apologist. I HATED the “anti-Mormons” like Jerald and Sandra Tanner. I LOVED Hugh Nibley. I was TBM and wanted to defend “the Church” and take down the Tanners.
I set out to prove that the “anti’s” were taking things out of context or misusing sources or making things up. I spent almost a year researching both at BYU and the LDS Church History library. I poured over journals, sources, read the full JoD, and old Church manuals. In a way, that experience is what led me into a career as a historian. I also did the same to some of Hugh Nibley’s works and the Brown’s series “They lie in wait to deceive”.
I was shocked to find out that, more often than not, it was the LDS apologists that did not properly cite sources, made up sources, took things out of context and had poor scholarship.
By this point, I already had a background in Latin, Koine Greek and Hebrew and was able to “undo” quite a bit of Nibley’s footnotes.
During this time I also took Egyptian Hieroglyphs classes at UCLA in order to better “prove” the Book of Abraham “true”. You can imagine the failure that turned out to be.
The final straw, in many ways, came about this time while I was preparing for an LDS mission. I was enrolled in a “Mission Preparation” class at BYU. One of our first sessions, we were given a list of doctrines NOT to teach investigators such as: Mother in Heaven, Godhood, Adam/God (which was still widely accepted on campus), Jesus was married and a polygamist, etc.
It bothered me because I believed the LDS was the only true church and we had all truth. I asked the professor, why, if we had the truth, could we not just be honest with investigators. His response was “If we told the truth, no one would ever join”. I was not going to spend my money to go out and not be completely honest.
There are other factors as to why I became an Evangelical Christian, but the above is much of the reason I left.
I have many loved ones in the LDS still and their freedom from deliberate Church deception is what I fight for. I love them, not hate them.
I am sure you will disagree with me, but my hope is that the LDS question their faith and history the way I did and see there is a better way, faith in Jesus alone, not any “church” or denomination.
