Mormon Mission Spin-Out

John K. Williams is a professional writer and editor and worked for two years as curriculum editor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also blogs at Runtu.wordpress.com and recently released a memoir, Heaven Up Here, about the church mission he served in Bolivia. He’ll be speaking Saturday at the annual Sunstone Symposium (July 25-28, University of Utah Union, 200 S. Central Campus Drive), which brings together traditional and non-traditional church members to discuss faith and social issues. Williams will be on a panel discussing the topic “Who gets to say what former Mormons are like?” and will also be presenting a paper on “Sins of Omission: Spinning the Missionary Experience.”

What does the church say about people who have left the church?

If you ever leave, your life is going to go to hell in a handbasket. You’re going to lose your family, everything is going to go wrong, you’ll become an alcoholic. ... What bothers me is, people tell me there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way, and usually the right way is to shut up and move on. If you talk about it at all, you’re “bitter and angry; you can leave the church but you can’t leave it alone.” You can be as nice as you want to and you still can be seen as that. People act like if you don’t believe in the church anymore, suddenly you don’t know anything about it. You have no memory of the doctrines, and you don’t know what it’s like to be a Mormon. It’s like you have this amnesia all of a sudden.