Skip to main content
Some links on this page are Amazon affiliate links. We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.

[Satire] Local Ex-Mormon Suprised by Lack of Reaction After Leaving the Church

PROVO, UT — After officially resigning from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, local resident Jared Simmons expected a significant shift in his relationships. Instead, he was surprised to find that most of his friends seemed largely indifferent to the news.

Simmons, 32, had spent months mentally preparing for the fallout. “I assumed there would be some tough conversations, maybe even a few strained relationships,” he said. “I was prepared to lose some friends over this.”

However, the reaction was far more muted than expected. When he told his close friend Josh about his decision, the response was underwhelming. “He just said, ‘Oh, okay,’ and moved on,” Simmons said. “I thought he’d want to know more, or at least ask why.”

Simmons shared similar experiences with other friends. “I told a friend I’d officially left the Church, and she just said, ‘That makes sense,’ and kept talking about her weekend plans,” he said. “It felt like they barely registered what I was saying.”

Even after making a social media post explaining his reasons for leaving, Simmons received minimal engagement. “A few people liked it, but nobody really asked questions or showed much interest,” he said. “It’s like they just didn’t care.”

Simmons admitted that he had anticipated more pushback, or at least curiosity, from his social circle. “I’ve read about people losing lifelong friendships over leaving the Church,” he said. “I thought I’d be making some kind of statement. But it seems like everyone has already moved on.”

Despite the lack of reaction, Simmons said his friendships remain intact. “We’re still hanging out like nothing happened,” he said. “It’s not that I wanted people to be upset, but I guess I expected it to matter more.”

_____
#mormon #lds #Utah #satire

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Where Did Joseph Smith Dig for Treasure?

Before Joseph Smith was known as a prophet, he was known locally for treasure digging. An article written by Dan Vogel   mapped out the physical locations connected to that earlier phase of Smith’s life. Drawing from court records, affidavits, neighbor testimony, and later reminiscences, Vogel was able to place Smith on specific hillsides, farms, and riverbanks across western New York and northern Pennsylvania. Show Dan Vogel's Full Article (If you have issues on mobile, you can read the full document  here ) The article itself is a valuable asset to anybody who wants to understand the treasure digging activities of Joseph Smith. However, due to the design of the maps provided it may be difficult to immediate tell where the digs took place. Which in my opinion, may limit the sharing of his research. As such, I took it upon myself to update the map in Google Earth using Dan Vogel's research as my guide. This gives us a bit of clearer idea of w...

The Peacemaker Summit and an Attempt to Silence Mormonism's Critics

 An upcoming event called the Peacemaker Summit , organized by The Holy Rebellion , is being promoted as a gathering for faithful LDS creators. The organizing vision for this event is explicitly about displacing critics of the faith by flooding social media platforms with coordinated, high-volume pro-Mormon content. That goal deserves scrutiny. My initial reaction to the original video The Stated Aim: Outnumber the Critics Travis Lish and Christian Williams from The Holy Rebellion have been clear about their motivation. They believe critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominate online spaces and that faithful voices need to overwhelm that presence. The solution being proposed is to create enough volume to hide criticisms from search results.  ... our goal is 1 billion views per month  collectively  as Latter Day Saint creators. Imagine a world where when you search Mormon or LDS or Joseph Smith  across any platform, what you would see...

The "Mormon" Trademark is About to Expire

 The request for Mormon Stories to rebrand has spread quickly through Mormon spaces. Followers learned that om November 14th 2025, the LDS Church had reached out with claims that the podcast was infringing on the “Mormon” trademark. The demand leaned on the legal idea that the Church owns the word.  The request was shared on social media by @mormstories, but those posts seem to have been removed. Fortunately, copies of the email were  shared on reddit. But there is a significant detail sitting behind this entire dispute. The Church will have to renew the "Mormon" trademark in the 2026 to 2027 window.  Source: USPTO database When that time comes, they must prove that they still use the word “Mormon” in active commerce. USPTO rules are clear on this point. A trademark only survives if the owner can show that it is still printed on actual goods or services that are still being sold or distributed. The official guidelines spell it out at uspto.gov under “ Keeping your r...

Full Text - Mormons Taking Oaths of the Temple House (1904)

  This article appeared in 1904, during the height of national scrutiny surrounding the LDS Church and the U.S. Senate investigation into whether Apostle Reed Smoot should be seated as a senator. At the center of that inquiry were questions the public had debated for decades but rarely heard addressed in sworn testimony.  What actually happened inside the Endowment House ?  What oaths were required?  Do the oaths conflict with civic loyalty, democratic norms, and basic transparency? The reporting below relies on testimony given under oath to the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections and presents the claims exactly as they were reported to a national audience. This was not written as theology or internal instruction. It was written as political journalism, aimed at informing a non-Mormon public that largely had no access to temple ceremonies and relied on secondhand descriptions. THE WASHINGTON TIMES DECEMBER 14, 1904 MORMONS TAKING OATHS OF ENDOWMENT HOUS...

How Does the Mormon Church Keep Finding Me?

The “Locating Members” page on the church’s Tech Wiki, now removed from the public site, explains that when a member moves without providing a new address, local leaders are expected to try to find out where that person went. The responsibility usually falls to the ward clerk, working under the direction of the bishop. The record isn’t automatically dropped just because attendance stops.  The full set of instructions is found below, but first, here are some points you need to consider about the religion systematically tracking down "lost" members. Form provided by the wiki First, the system does not recognize disengagement as a valid outcome. The wiki makes clear that when someone stops attending or moves without updating records, the organization treats this as missing data, not a personal decision. Silence is interpreted as a problem to solve. That alone creates an unhealthy dynamic because it removes a person’s ability to quietly exit. Second, the responsibility is instit...

There Is No Curse, Part 5: Then What Is It?

We need to talk about the current apologetics attempting to downplay the Lamanite curse. Nephi Sees Our Day In preparation for my next topic, I was reading 1 Nephi 13:15 , where Nephi sees a vision of the future for his own civilization and the European conquest of America. This passage stuck out to me: And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain. This is in direct contrast to 1 Nephi 12:23 : And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations. You might notice that there is ample ambiguity in both passages, but in juxtaposing these two peoples, we see a contrast that I just can’t reconcile if the curse is only “symbolic” or “spiritual.” In comparing Gentiles to Lam...

LDS Apologists Try to Beat a Dead Horse

It looks like the topic of horses and the Book of Mormon is going to crop up every few months like a nasty case of eczema, so I feel it’s worthwhile to summarize the debate as it currently stands. There's another post on this blog  about more recent research, but it always goes back to the (in)famous analysis done by Matthew Roper and his colleagues at BYU, John Clark and Wade Ardern, all the way back to 2005. But first, let's look even further back.  What the Book of Mormon Said The word “horse” appears 14 total times in the Book of Mormon in the context of domesticated livestock, with half of those references being connected with pulling chariots of war. Both Lamanite and Nephite peoples equated these horses with those described in Isaiah 2:7 and 5:28, which Nephi expressly quotes in his own record (compare 2 Nephi 12:7 and 15:28), with no distinction made between them. The horses of the Americas, per the Book of Mormon, are intended to be the same in form and function to ...

Early Mormon Criticisms - 3: Delusions

 This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a historical excerpt and some brief context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding.  -The full series can be found here - In 1831 Alexander Campbell published An Analysis of the Book of Mormon , one of the earliest full-length critiques of Joseph Smith’s new scripture. The piece first appeared as a review in Campbell’s periodical The Millennial Harbinger and was republished the following year, in 1832, as a standalone pamphlet for wider circulation. Campbell was a prominent religious leader and editor, and he approached the Book of Mormon as a text that needed to be tested, line by line, against the Bible it claimed to supplement. Unlike satirical responses such as Abner Cole’s Book of Pukei , Campbell did not parody Mormonism. He treated it as a serious theologica...

With Apologies: Did Nephites Celebrate Christmas?

  Disclaimer: the following is entirely satire. Aaron: Did Nephites really practice Christmas? The answer might be less straightforward than you think, because critics of the LDS church have pointed out that the Book of Mormon says that Nephites were separated from the Old World centuries prior to the rise of not only Christmas as a holiday but the Christian religion as a whole. But that's what we're going to talk about today, especially because this actually turns into kind of a surprising evidence in favor  of the Book of Mormon when you actually get to the bottom of the criticism and what the actual evidence says. So Mason, did Nephites celebrate Christmas? Mason:  Uh, well, obviously, they're Christians, they don't just practice "happy holidays." Aaron, Mason, Dean: *laughing* Mason: Only joking, and it's important to note that we aren't going to know for sure what festivals developed in the Nephite civilization. Dean: We do have a good idea abo...

Early Mormon Criticisms - 4: Fanaticism

 This series looks back at how early critics of the church reacted to the rise of Mormonism. Some mocked it, others warned against it, and a few tried to make sense of it. Each post features a historical excerpt and some brief context to show how critics viewed the new faith as it was unfolding.  -The full series can be found  here - The article titled “Fanaticism” was published on February 11, 1831, in the United States Gazette , a Philadelphia paper with national circulation. It reprints material from the Painesville Gazette , reflecting local reports from northeastern Ohio rather than direct investigation by the Gazette itself. The author is unnamed, consistent with early-19th-century newspaper practice, and the tone reflects mainstream Protestant skepticism toward emerging religious movements. The piece focuses on Kirtland and nearby areas in Geauga and Cuyahoga counties at a very early stage in Mormon development, less than a year after the Book of Mormon’s publica...
e
Link copied!