“I don’t know any little old ladies,” Chris Hanna observes about stepping away from religious participation 20 years ago. “And I don’t know kids or teenagers whose lives I can celebrate and contribute to as they grow.”
Lack of what he calls “the forced familial relationships of a ward” doesn’t mean he’s without friends. “But it leaves a community gap when I only hang out with who I want,” he says, “not people who differ in interests, ages and in other ways.”
Not everyone who leaves behind their faith in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does so with the confidence described in a recent Wall Street Journal piece about former church members waging “a TikTok war against the Mormon Church.” While the article offers up the trope of the devout clinging to simplistic belief, the ex-member side also comes across as simplistic in their unbelief. No more questions or wrestling with doubt. Just the relief of a deconstructed religious worldview.
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