Support

No, and not by a wide margin. Pew finds that 54% of Americans raised Latter-day Saint still identify that way, down from about 70% in 2007. A 2026 study by a former mission president puts the number who have stepped away in the past 25 years at about 40%. The numbers.

Almost certainly not. Of twenty-one reasons the 2011 survey asked about, being offended and wanting to sin came last, each named as a major factor by about 4%. The people answering had served missions and led wards. The myths.

What most people read was primary material: Joseph Smith's own 1832 First Vision account, the Egyptian papyri, the affidavits of his plural wives, and since 2013 the Church's own Gospel Topics essays, which confirm most of it. How the history was told.

Because it is not just information. A temple-recommend-holding life is a worldview, a community, a family plan and an identity at once. More than half of the 2011 respondents rated at least one cost of their disbelief as high or extremely high, and the costs landed mostly on relationships. What happens after.

Longer than you expect. The 2026 study found people wrestle for about a decade before stepping away. There is no schedule you are behind on.

With whatever broke your shelf, then with the Church's own account of it. Every reason page links the relevant Gospel Topics essay or Church History Topic beside the problem, so you can read both.

Both, in a sense, and this was the single most common theme in the survey's written comments. Much of the difficult history was not in the manuals and is now on the Church's own website, published quietly between 2013 and 2015 without being announced from the pulpit. Studying the history.

That Joseph Smith translated with a seer stone in a hat, that he married women already married to living men and a bride not yet fifteen, that the papyri do not contain the Book of Abraham, and that the priesthood ban rested on theories the Church now disavows. The essays.

Read them, and read them properly. FAIR and Mormonr are the main defences, and the Joseph Smith Papers publish the primary documents. Most people in the survey had read the apologetics before they left. Resources.

You could. So could we. That is why every figure on this site names its source and its limits, and why the Church's own account is linked next to every problem. Read both sides and decide for yourself; nobody else's certainty is evidence.

No. Most people who kept attending told almost nobody: 72% of their bishops and 92% of their ward members knew little or nothing. It is your information and your timing.

Carefully, and not all at once. The most common mistake is what one interviewee called vomiting all the information. The single most requested topic in the whole survey was how to keep a marriage through this; Mormon Stories 157 to 159 is about exactly that, and mormonfaithcrisis.com has scripts.

Be prepared for it to go badly, through no fault of yours. The 2026 study found conversations with church leaders about four and a half times more likely to go badly than the same conversation with a sibling, because leaders tend to try to correct or contain rather than listen.

Whatever you and your spouse can agree on, together, before either of you tells them separately. The survey's worst outcomes came from children used as the battleground. For believing family and the sister site's family pages.

Some do and many do not, and the difference is usually whether belief is made a condition of belonging. That is the single clearest ask the 3,086 respondents made of the people who stayed. For believing family.

No. In the 2011 survey 44% of people who no longer believed were still attending at least sometimes, and 20% weekly. Losing belief and leaving are two different decisions. Staying or leaving.

That is a personal decision with practical consequences and no deadline. Two thirds of former members in a 2023 survey had never formally resigned. If you want to, QuitMormon handles it without cost.

Sealings, callings and Church employment each work differently, and the answers are practical rather than doctrinal. The sister site's your options page walks through them.

Many do. They tend to be the people with the most years invested and a believing spouse, and they report a higher mental and spiritual cost than those who leave. Know that going in. Staying or leaving.

Mostly not in another church. In 2011, 53% called themselves agnostic, atheist or humanist and 22% still called themselves Mormon in some sense; by 2023 nearly 90% of former members had no religious affiliation. What happens after.

Nothing in any of these surveys supports that. The people answering described leaving because of their values, not in spite of them, and most kept the life they had built. It is the most common fear and the least supported.

Few. About 24% of those who had left said they would consider it under some conditions, and more than half of those gave a condition that could not be met. By 2023 fewer than 8% expressed any interest in returning.

Somebody who understands religious transition, which is a specialty. The sister site keeps a therapist directory, and THRIVE runs peer groups and events.