[toc]There has recently been a public disclosure of a sub rosa recording of the Disciplinary Council held against Jeremy Runnells for the reason of Apostasy. While the court was initially held against Runnells with the anticipated outcome of excommunication, Jeremy’s exit from the church was very different from what anyone had in mind. This post explores what actually happened and why every person who decides to leave for reasons of church history should understand the rationale for the very specific way that Jeremy did it.

Background

In 2012 lifelong LDS member Jeremy Runnells went through a faith transition after learning things about Mormon church history, leaders and doctrine which he believed contradicted the truth claims about the religion. A Church Education System (CES) director invited Jeremy to compose a letter summarizing his difficulties. In response, Jeremy composed an 84-page document which he shared with the CES director and the public, known as “Letter to a CES director” or simply “The CES Letter”.

The Court of Love

The church ultimately responded to Jeremy’s letter and his actions and statements by holding a disciplinary council against him on 17 April, 2016. The council started as they usually do. The procedures are described in the Church Handbook of Instructions (Book 1, section 6.10.4, archive.org).

The stake president stated the charge of apostasy, asked for Jeremy’s plea, and proceeded to state the evidence against him. After reading the charges, the Stake President bore his testimony of the church and then gave Runnells 45 minutes in which to make a statement.

What was supposed to have happened was that Jeremy was going to rale against the church in his bitter apostate way for 45 minutes, and then the leaders would dismiss Jeremy while they prayed and then the Stake Presidency would withdraw and confer and the Stake President himself would make the decision and then return and get the unanimous sustaining vote of the High Council. There is little doubt that the decision would be excommunication. Jeremy would have been called back into the room and informed that he had been excommunicated from the church.

Flipping the script

Instead of that deplorable sequence of events, what actually happened was this. When Jeremy was invited to make a statement, he spent several minutes summarizing his faith transition and then laying out some of the most significant issues that affected his ability to accept the truth claims of the church. He asked several questions of the president, which were not answered. He asked any of the high council members themselves to declare if they had read the CES letter or even any of the Church Essays which confirmed the facts of the CES letter. None did.

Finally, Jeremy made the following statement:

I’ve done nothing wrong. I stand today with my head held high. I’m morally clean. I have a clear conscience that I have done nothing wrong. So, because you guys are not answering my questions, and you guys have not answered my questions the last three years. It is very clear to me that the church does not have answers to its truth crisis. The church does not like individuals asking questions about it’s truth claims. So, this is a kangaroo court. I’m done with this court. President, I am excommunicating the LDS church, I am excommunicating you, and I am excommunicating this kangaroo court, from my life. Here is my resignation letter. Goodbye.

He handed them the letter, stood up and walked out. The Disciplinary Council was over.

The How and Why

What Jeremy did is unprecedented and important for a number of reasons. To summarize, here are the key aspects of Jeremy’s departure from the church which are critical to consider:

1. He did not resign instead of being subject to a disciplinary council.
2. He attended the council and listened to all the charges against him.
3. He documented his council by recording it.
4. He submitted a resignation letter to the Stake President after the charges against him, but before they dismissed him to deliberate.
5. He immediately left the hearing.

Let’s take a look at each of these aspects of his resignation and see why they are individually so important. When you yourself are faced with a disciplinary council for the reasons of apostasy because you have been vocal about your conscience regarding the church, keep these things in mind.

Don’t resign – attend the council

A person who commits some grievous sin in Mormon culture will be called to a disciplinary council and have that sin exposed to a group of 12 men plus the Stake Presidency. People who have gone through the process describe it as one of the most embarrassing and shameful experiences of their life – having their most intimate details laid bare to men whose very purpose is to pass judgment, even if done with lip-service about “love.”

If you hear that a person is being called to a disciplinary hearing, chances are that only a handful of sins that require such procedures will jump to your mind. Adultery or fornication would be probably the foremost. These sins deal with temptations and transgressions that are among the most common and worthy of the rumor-mill that inevitably exists in any close social circle such as an LDS ward or stake. If the issue comes up, church leaders will cite pastoral confidentiality and only state that the reasons for a disciplinary hearing are private and that sins which require that level of attention are serious and so the importance of keeping the confidence of the member is paramount. If you were in a council with the bishop and he responded with that statement when asked about why a certain member couldn’t participate in a ward activity – would you assume it was because the member had a faith crisis after learning church history or that they had gotten their freaky on? Be honest.

Even if you have been very public about your disaffection being the result of Church History and Doctrine – the rumors will leave the question open. Mormons already assume that if you leave the faith, then you have no moral compass and your human appetites and desire for carnal pleasures will lead you to the depths of hedonistic debauchery. This will be the unspoken narrative of your exit.

Furthermore, the culture of works based salvation that exists within the church places a great deal of importance on the appearance of righteousness and the concept of accountability. If you resign rather than attend a disciplinary hearing against you, then the unspoken narrative will be further that you wanted to avoid accountability for your transgressions. Since minor sins like raising your voice or drinking tea don’t require that level of discipline then the rumor that will circulate is that you committed something as grievous as adultery and that rather than face the men of the High Council and be subject to the humiliation and shame of the repentance process, you chose to resign.

Then all of your statements, Facebook posts, and conversations about your problems with church history will be interpreted as someone who is just trying to cover their own sins by pointing the finger and finding fault with the church and its leaders rather than facing the consequences of your own sin.

By attending the disciplinary hearing Jeremy could prove that he was not trying to avoid accountability for anything he had done. This is an important defense of your reputation and standing in your community, no matter where you are.

Listen to all the charges against you

Once you are called to a disciplinary council, any number of charges may be made against you. People who are not in attendance at the hearing will not be told what those charges are and so if the Stake Presidency and all of the High Council are 100% good at keeping confidences, even from their own spouses, then chances are that no one else will know why you are at the council. If you are being disciplined for something like adultery, then there is no big deal because everyone is going to assume something like that anyway. If your reasons for being there are simply due to your problems with church history, however, then the silence from the leadership about your reasons for discipline simply feeds a false narrative that you are there for some heinous moral transgression as we discussed in the prior section.

If you show up to your hearing and then resign at the start of the process rather than waiting till after the charges have all been made, then you won’t be able to document the actual reasons for being called to the hearing (important in the next section).

By waiting until all the charges had been made against him, Jeremy was able to be certain that no false narrative about some major moral transgression would be intentionally or inadvertently circulated within the ward or stake.

Record the hearing

First of all, become familiar with your state’s recording laws. Here is an excellent reference. Once you have determined that you are in a “one party consent” state and recording is a legal possibility, then find some way to record at least the audio of the proceedings. There are many options available.

Chances are that your leaders will try to get you to commit to swear or sign a contract indicating that you will not record the procedures in any way – their ultimate interest is protecting the reputation and interests of the church, without any regard for your own reputation. They will want you to sign a statement promising not to record and they hold you to a high standard of honesty. Chances are that if you are subject to church discipline in part because of discovering the dishonesty of past church leaders, then you probably place a premium on your own character of honesty.  They use this fact to compel you to keep your word and make no recording.

Remember that the church has a long history of making misleading statements to its members and government authorities in order to protect the reputation of the church and its leaders. The most recent and famous of these denials is contained in the Gospel Topic essay on “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo.” There we learned that Joseph Smith had in fact been marrying multiple women (including other men’s wives and 14-year-old girls) and yet, when news of this leaked, “the rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated “celestial” plural marriage.” Any honest person would call those statements outright lies. The associated footnote #22, however, explains that the reason these “carefully worded denials” were not lies is because they had come up with a secret definition of polygamy which meant marriage of one man to more than one woman but without Church sanction.

If the church can come up with a secret definition to protect its reputation and also shield itself from accusations of outright lying, then so can you.

Recording the hearing is essential. By recording the proceedings, including the list of charges him, Jeremy was able to document that the reasons his church discipline were not due to moral transgression, but because his knowledge of and vocal opposition to the deplorable and contradictory parts of church history and its implications for the truth claims of the church. He was able to document his side of the story in his statement to the High Council.

A second valuable aspect of recording is that it captures the degree to which Church Disciplinary Hearings are one sided, barbaric and the worst sort of spiritual and ecclesiastical abuse. Jeremy’s council was all of these things and if more of these types of recordings are released, then it increased the pressure on the church leadership to consider revising the process and hopefully will improve the experience for the next generation of members who will certainly have a much higher percentage of individuals undergoing vocal faith crises.

Submit your resignation before being dismissed

If you are excommunicated from the church, then you are allowing the church to control your narrative for the rest of your life. They will always be able to say that they excommunicated you. They looked at your character and judged you unworthy of fellowship in good standing among the saints. This will color how every other person in your life who is a member of the church will view you. The degree of influence that the church holds over the hearts and minds of the members means that even your close family and loved ones will have to place you in a certain “box” in their life. It may mean that they feel more compelled to help you or reach out to you or it may mean they feel a need to avoid you or have their children avoid yours. Until they themselves distance themselves from the control of the church it is almost inescapable.

Even with your own knowledge of the problems of the church and its absent foundation, the process of being rejected and expelled from the tribe which you grew up in and with whom you once felt acceptance can take a silent toll on your psychology. You couldn’t keep the faith. You didn’t measure up to the standard of faith. When the church is the one who rejects you, it is you who were subordinate and who were acted upon. It is a power over you which lingers, even when its tendrils of influence seem far removed.

If you have studied church history and doctrine to the extent that you are aware of their absent foundation of truth, lack of divine sanction and authority – then you have no basis upon which to submit yourself to their authority at the final act of separation. To allow yourself to be rejected by them is to continue to give them a power for which they have no legitimate claim.

Don’t give them that power. It is vitally important that you do not give them that power.

The procedure of a disciplinary council is outlined in the Church Handbook of Instructions. There is an order of events. It is only after the charges are presented and you have had a chance to make a statement that the Stake President will dissmiss you and deliberate. You are not officially excommunicated until that deliberation takes place – but as soon as you are out of their presence, they can claim to have excommunicated you before having received your notice of resignation if they haven’t received it yet. You must submit your letter of resignation before you are dismissed and before they deliberate. While it can be verbal or a simple as the words “I resign” scribbled on a napkin, it must be given before they confer.

Remember, your membership in the church is terminated the moment you declare your resignation. The written letter is really only so there is a document to demonstrate it, but your verbal declaration is sufficient as well. There is no waiting period, no secondary meetings that have to take place – nothing like that. All those things are simply the paperwork and red tape that the Church does on its side to clear you from their databases to update the fact that you have already removed yourself from their authority and jurisdiction.

The moment you resign, you remove your consent to being subject to any further disciplinary actions. On the off chance that a misguided Stake President goes ahead and excommunicates you anyway, then you are justified taking legal action against the church for invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress. The church is aware of this and Church due to legal precedent, the church stopped post-resignation excommunication some years ago. ((see example of legal precedent at MormonNoMore.com))

You don’t have to make a statement or a defense as Jeremy did if that is not your thing. You can simply resign. Just make sure to do it after the charges have all been stated and before you are dismissed.

Leave Immediately

Once you resign, you are no longer subject to their discipline. If you stay in the hearing, they may misconstrue it as consent to continue with discipline. Don’t be ambiguous. By leaving the minute he declared his resignation, Jeremy avoided any further debate or discussion because none was justified. His resignation transformed the room from a group of men seated on thrones of pretended priesthood power drunk on their own hubris into a group of blue and white collar workmen who had no business knowing or having a say about anything in Jeremy’s life at all. Just the fact that they think they are entitled to weave their tendrils of authority into your life is reason enough to get the heck out of there.

Conclusion

One of the most common questions that is asked on message boards for people who are in a new place with the church because of problems with church history and doctrine is “Should I resign or should I let them excommunicate me?” Many reasons have been given for both approaches. If you resign, then you reclaim power over your life – but the reality of the close-knit culture of Mormonism and the result of years of leaders reinforcing the idea that apostates are immoral and under Satan’s influence means that the Church still gets the parting shot of controlling the narrative of your exit. It will be assumed that sin led to your departure. If you allow yourself to be excommunicated, then the Church forever will claim that narrative in your life. It’s the mortal wound they give you on the way out. You might not understand how deep the wound cuts.

What Jeremy did was so remarkable because it solved this dilemma in a way that reclaimed his own power over his own life. “I excommunicate the church from my life” – That statement is so potent because it asserts real authority. You are the owner of your life and your identity. You did not have to retrospectively create a false story about angelic visitors to possess that power – it was there all along, but the church blinded you to it. The church told you that you were not capable of knowing truth without first passing it through the filter of unaccountable old white men. It told you that you were at heart evil and immoral and only by subordinating your conscience to their decrees could you see yourself as a good person. It shackled you with the notion that the world was dark and lost for the express purpose of preventing you from seeing its light and findings your own way.

“I excommunicate the church from my life.” Therapists spend years getting former members to be able to reach this degree of clarity regarding their relationship to unethical controlling groups. Let that statement be the one that starts you out on a life which is determined by your own conscience, will and judgment. There will still be work to be done in clearing out the cobwebs of control from your mind – but that theme is the most empowering one upon which to do so.