_______________________________________________________________
 |
 |  http://xmo.lege.net/xit/erlingsson/sweden/
 |
 |
 |  <Our full names, dates of birth, address, email>
 |
 |  Date: Mar 15, 2004
 |
 |  Bishop First Lastname
 |  Streetaddress
 |  Zip and City
 |  Sweden
 |
 |  Stake President First Lastname
 |  Streetaddress
 |  Zip and City
 |  Sweden
 |
 |
 |
 |  RE: Resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of
 |  Latter-day Saints
 |
 |  Dear friends, because you are our friends.  Due to
 |  circumstances we touch upon further down in this letter we
 |  feel morally and ethically constrained to take this
 |  immensely difficult and painful decision.  It is not with
 |  joy we write this letter and make this decision, but we are
 |  fully convinced that it is the only righteous decision we
 |  can take.
 |
 |  This letter constitutes our formal resignations from the
 |  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and they are
 |  effective immediately.  We hereby withdraw our consent to
 |  being treated as members of the church and we withdraw our
 |  consent to being subject to church rules, policies, beliefs
 |  and discipline.  As we are no longer members of the church,
 |  we are therefore not liable nor subject to excommunication
 |  or any similar proceeding in the courts of the church. 
 |  Therefore we request that you send us official written
 |  notification that none of us have been excommunicated or
 |  disfellowshipped from The Church of Jesus Christ of
 |  Latter-day Saints, but that we are no longer members of said
 |  church by our own free will and choice, and that the sole
 |  reason for removing our names from the membership records is
 |  our request.
 |
 |  We have given this matter considerable thought.  We
 |  understand what you consider the seriousness and the
 |  consequences of our actions.  We are aware that the church
 |  handbook says that our resignation "cancels the effects of
 |  baptism and confirmation, withdraws the priesthood held by a
 |  male member and revokes temple blessings".  We also
 |  understand that any one of us will be "readmitted to the
 |  church by baptism only after a thorough interview".  (Quotes
 |  from the 1999 Church Handbook of Instructions.)
 |
 |  Our resignations should be processed immediately, without
 |  any waiting periods.  We are not going to be dissuaded and
 |  we are not going to change our minds.
 |
 |  We are asking for a simple administrative procedure under
 |  our legal right to practice freedom of religion as defined
 |  by Swedish law 1998:1593 "om trossamfund" issued Nov, 26,
 |  1998, "Allmänna bestämmelser om trossamfund", paragraph 3 §,
 |  that states "Ingen är skyldig att tillhöra något
 |  trossamfund.  Ett avtal eller löfte som strider mot denna
 |  bestämmelse är ogiltigt."  This is Swedish for exactly the
 |  same rights offered to Americans through the constitutional
 |  right to practice freedom of religion.  We have the exact
 |  same legal protection, in this regard.  We therefore expect
 |  this matter to be handled promptly and with full
 |  confidentiality.  If our friends, family or neighbors learn
 |  of our resignation through anyone but ourselves, we will
 |  consider it an invasion of privacy and we will consider
 |  taking legal action against the church.  Likewise if the
 |  church initiates or starts rumors of any kind of
 |  disciplinary actions against any one of us.  Remember, we
 |  are no longer members.
 |
 |  BACKGROUND
 |
 |  First we want to say that it grieves us to have to express
 |  ourselves so sternly and legal to our friends as we do
 |  above, but we see this as a necessary precaution in light of
 |  the experiences of many other former members with the
 |  disciplinary actions of the church.  It is thus a pure
 |  precaution on our side, we have not in any way yet
 |  experienced anything negative in our own relationship with
 |  the church, and we feel that there is not really any reason
 |  why we should have to expect anything like that from our
 |  friends, but we simply dare not chance it.  Other members
 |  have had the best friendly relationships with both their
 |  stake president, their bishop and sometimes even with one or
 |  several general authorities, and still gotten in trouble. 
 |  Thus we take no chances.
 |
 |  Friends, because you are really our friends.  We love all
 |  brothers and sisters in the church.  We are all children of
 |  Heavenly Father.  And we love you all.  In our own ward, we
 |  have only the best relationships with all members, and we
 |  especially want to emphasize what a wonderful ward it is. 
 |  We have always had a special love and felt a special warmth
 |  especially to the Hägersten ward.  There is a special
 |  wonderful familiar love there, that cannot be denied.
 |
 |  This big love that we feel and receive makes this decision
 |  all the more painful, but absolutely necessary.  None of us
 |  have through sin made ourselves unworthy of the temple.  The
 |  only "sin" we have committed is that we have started to
 |  think independently.  It was Leif that first started to
 |  think, but a number of weeks ago Ylva also discovered the
 |  circumstances that Leif had uncovered.  Later the whole
 |  family have discussed these.
 |
 |  Independent thinking started for Leif with the realization
 |  that the leaders of the church has made it into a virtue for
 |  us, not to know, not to hear and not to understand any of
 |  the political processes of evil, in the world.  In April
 |  2003 the spiritual leader of the church had expressed
 |  himself in disparaging terms about those who protests
 |  against war and against the political leaders, while at the
 |  same time his homeland was in serious breach of
 |  international law and had also abolished basic human and
 |  civic rights in breach of international law.  And on April
 |  21, 2003, our stake president warned us all, in our stake,
 |  in very strong words against criticizing the leaders of the
 |  church, and said that they will never lead us astray.  Our
 |  stake president also said that we should not spend so much
 |  time on the world, but rather worry more about our own
 |  conversion.
 |
 |  Later Leif's missionary, whom we always kept in contact
 |  with, compared Leif's warnings with anti-Mormon literature
 |  and Leif with Satan himself when he deceives Eve with
 |  knowledge.  The background was that Leif among other
 |  information had pointed at a Human Rights Watch report about
 |  serious human rights violations especially conducted by
 |  certain American units, because the former missionary have
 |  many contacts in the U.S. military.  Leif had pointed out
 |  how no American are obliged to obey illegal orders.  As an
 |  American soldier you even hade the protection of American
 |  law if you for example disobey an order to kill an innocent
 |  family.  Also many other members reacted extremely
 |  powerfully and more or less ceased to be friends with Leif
 |  after Leif had voiced warnings concerning extremely serious
 |  human rights violations performed by the regime they
 |  themselves perceived as the proverbial champion of good on
 |  earth.  It should be admitted that Leif felt an extreme
 |  sense of frustration concerning the fact that nobody
 |  understood what really happened and is happening.  And he
 |  expressed this frustration.  But never did he compare any
 |  member to the Devil or anything any member wrote to
 |  anti-Mormon literature.
 |
 |  Near the end of last year, 2003, Leif decides that he must
 |  get to grips with where such an enormously emotionally
 |  charged resistance to truth telling even among Swedish
 |  Latter-day Saints stems from.  A very old item of
 |  information searches it way up through his consciousness,
 |  something he read in a footnote 14 years previously. 
 |  Something about a conflict between the spiritual leaders of
 |  the church and it's historians.
 |
 |  On the political plane, Leif has taught himself to see
 |  straight through propaganda.  He becomes disgusted every
 |  time he sees it.  He can see what it does to the minds of
 |  people.  It turns off intelligence, it makes people not see
 |  the evil.  Consider Hitler-Germany.  And now he discovers
 |  that the church itself practices an even more stringent
 |  propaganda.  In 1985, Dallin H. Oaks explained at a
 |  conference for Church educators that balance is telling both
 |  sides and that this is not the mission of the official
 |  Church literature or avowedly anti-Mormon literature. 
 |  Neither has any responsibility to present both sides, he
 |  said.  Boyd K. Packer had already 1981 at the conference for
 |  Church educators said that the church is not neutral, that
 |  the church is one-sided.  And already in 1976 he explained
 |  privately to an historian at the church's university that he
 |  have a hard time with historians because the truth is so
 |  important for them.  He said that the truth is not uplifting
 |  but that it destroys.  And that historians should tell only
 |  that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.
 |
 |  Since the church propaganda want to stop us from discovering
 |  the whole truth, Leif felt that he must perform a renewed
 |  investigation of the church's basic history.  And realizing
 |  that the church manipulates and hides unpleasant
 |  information, such an investigation must needs be performed
 |  using sources also wholly outside the control of the church
 |  and it's apologetics.  Leif has for many years been a member
 |  of FARMS; Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon
 |  Studies, now at BYU.  Through it's writings Leif already
 |  have a thorough knowledge of how the church and it's
 |  apologetics defend the positions of the church.  But since
 |  he hasn't read the viewpoints of the critic's since 1992 he
 |  really has a very dim understanding for why some positions
 |  at all need defending.  This understanding soon becomes
 |  abundantly clear.  Together with the realization that the
 |  defense of FARMS and others are too weak.  Doesn't hold up.
 |
 |  Leif also  discovers that the church can be very
 |  insensitive.  Perhaps especially this applies to Apostles. 
 |  Lavina Fielding Anderson, who herself was excommunicated
 |  because she wrote about these cases of spiritual abuse from
 |  the church, runs Mormon Alliance, whose stated purpose is to
 |  promote healing and closure for its survivors, to build more
 |  sensitive leadership, to empower LDS members to participate
 |  with more authenticity in Mormonism, and to foster a
 |  healthier religious community.  Through the Internet Leif
 |  has taken part of a large number of Case Reports concerning
 |  spiritual abuse within the church, that often, very often,
 |  involves Apostles.  Apparently it is also quite common that
 |  sexual abuse in the church is hidden and covered up, and
 |  that one blames the victims.  [
 |  http://mormonalliance.org/SiteMap.htm ]  There's even been
 |  statements in general conference saying that the victims may
 |  share part of the responsibility for the abuse.  And that
 |  it's best just to forget and go on.  There's even been a
 |  case where sexual abuse in the family of a general authority
 |  have been hidden and covered up.
 |
 |  In 1992 Leif wrote a warm defense for his spiritual
 |  testimony irrespective of worldly proof in his diary.
 |
 |  In 2004 Leif finally felt that he no longer must defend
 |  faith against the truth.  Rather he felt like J. Reuben
 |  Clark, First Presidency member, who once said that ``If we
 |  have the truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation.  If
 |  we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.''
 |
 |  Leif at last let go of his dogmatic spasmodic effort to
 |  interpret everything according to a given pattern.  And he
 |  started a very extensive study, that resulted in thousands
 |  of printed out pages of text in half a dozen thick covers
 |  and a number of important books ordered and read.  Books
 |  that hadn't been censored by the church.  Books by
 |  professional historians.  Books with sources not cleared by
 |  the church.  Because through the Elders Ezra Taft Benson and
 |  Boyd K. Packer, the church closed their archives from open
 |  research from June 1986, and after that it became necessary
 |  to permit the church to freely censor in that which one was
 |  planning to publish, in order to be granted continuous
 |  access to the archives.  Happily a small number or
 |  historians had managed to do extensive research in the
 |  archives before this date, and have been able to publish
 |  uncensored real history books, despite church censorship. 
 |  There are also sources completely outside the church's
 |  control.  And once one has let go of the thought that
 |  everything must be cleared by the church in order for one to
 |  dare to take part of it, there is of course nothing stopping
 |  one from taking part of the fruit of knowledge of good and
 |  evil.
 |
 |  In the course of all these intense studies, Ylva realized
 |  what it was that Leif was studying.  She had not reacted
 |  earlier because Leif's political interest had in a similar
 |  fashion generated huge amounts of paper, etc.
 |
 |  Leif therefore performed an oral presentation of what he had
 |  concluded so far.  Leif and Ylva continued the intense
 |  studies together.  After another few weeks of these studies
 |  it was quite clear to us that the church isn't what it
 |  purports to be.  That the church for one thing doesn't only
 |  stand for good.  And for another thing, the early leaders
 |  was everything but morally impeccable, with "spiritual
 |  wifes" already married to other men, with marriages with
 |  minors, etc, etc.  And it wasn't platonic love.  One can
 |  find out about some of the details using FamilySearch, if
 |  one removes ones blinders.  Not everything is there, some
 |  marriages was kept secret.  But there are independent
 |  historians who have written uncensored about this subject. 
 |  A system of lies and fraud was also put into system in the
 |  church in order to cover up things that would not stand
 |  scrutiny of daylight.  Which by the way continued during the
 |  time between the first and second polygamy manifesto, when
 |  the leaders of the church secretly continued to wed
 |  polygamously, and lied about it in public.  Of this our
 |  opinion is with Dallin H. Oaks at the last general
 |  conference (October 2003) that ``Some cultures allow lying,
 |  stealing, and other dishonest practices.  But dishonesty in
 |  any form -- whether to appease, to save face, or to get gain
 |  -- is in direct conflict with gospel commandments and
 |  culture.  God is a God of truth, and God does not change. 
 |  We are the ones who must change.  And that will be a big
 |  change for all whose traditions accustom them to thinking
 |  that they can lie a little, cheat a little, or engage in
 |  deceit whenever it brings personal advantage and is not
 |  likely to be detected.''
 |
 |  But everything so far enumerated are human faults and
 |  weaknesses -- including all the racists that have been
 |  leaders of the church from Brigham Young to Ezra Taft
 |  Benson.  We might even be able to swallow that the leaders
 |  of the church obviously lack any particular spiritual
 |  discernment over and above what humans generally have.
 |
 |  What finally makes it morally and ethically impossible to
 |  stay are the barn-door-sized holes in the church's
 |  historical justifications for it's theology at the same time
 |  as it is regularly preached from the general conference
 |  pulpits that independent thinking is a sin (you then sin by
 |  pride, ex. Ezra Taft Benson, ``Beware of Pride,'', April 1,
 |  1989, where we find that we are enemies to God when we
 |  assert our own powers of comprehension against the leaders
 |  of the church, which has later been repeated in many
 |  contexts).  With David O. McKay we maintain that ``Ours is
 |  the responsibility ... to proclaim the truth that each
 |  individual is a child of God and important in his sight;
 |  that he is entitled to freedom of thought, freedom of
 |  speech, freedom of assembly; that he has the right to
 |  worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.  In
 |  this positive declaration, we imply that organizations or
 |  churches which deprive the individual of these inherent
 |  rights are not in harmony with God's will nor with his
 |  revealed word.'' [124th Annual Conference, p. 24.]  But by
 |  wanting to bring up difficult subjects to discussion with
 |  other Latter-day Saints one is today viewed as a
 |  trouble-maker, and runs the risk of becoming subject to
 |  disciplinary punishments and excommunication.  Quite a
 |  number of former Latter-day Saints testify of this.  We have
 |  ourselves since a short time contact with some of them, a
 |  contact that we to be on the safe side have kept secret
 |  since it is yet another thing that the church wants to
 |  prohibit (see item 7 in Temple Recommend Questions; "Do you
 |  support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or
 |  individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or
 |  oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of
 |  Latter-day Saints?").  And finally, our stake president has
 |  warned everyone in our stake in very strong words not to
 |  criticize the leaders of the church.
 |
 |  We cannot be part of an organization that consciously lies,
 |  and consciously misleads it's members, if we are not allowed
 |  to voice a dissenting view without risking spiritual
 |  persecution and disciplinary actions.  The leaders of the
 |  church have at least since January 4, 1922, when B. H.
 |  Roberts presented a detailed summary of textual and
 |  historical problems with the Book of Mormon before a
 |  combined meeting of the First Presidency, apostles, and
 |  Seventy's presidents, been aware that there are serious
 |  objections against the historicity of the Book of Mormon. 
 |  Even if they perhaps later have repressed this knowledge. 
 |  (In 1992 these manuscripts and more was published as B. H.
 |  Roberts "Studies of the Book of Mormon", also see
 |  http://mormonstudies.com/).  One knows that there are far
 |  too many internally contradicting versions of the First
 |  Vision (detailed explanation:
 |  http://irr.org/mit/fvision.html).   One knows that the
 |  scientific proofs doesn't exactly indicate that Joseph Smith
 |  had any particular gift to translate when it comes to e.g.
 |  The Book of Abraham (video: http://bookofabraham.info/ and
 |  book: http://irr.org/mit/Book-of-Abraham-page.html).  Smith
 |  also was trapped in a trap when he "translated" the so
 |  called Kinderhook plates.  The tricksters said all along
 |  that it was a hoax, but Joseph Smith and the church claimed
 |  for 130 years that the plates really was ancient, until
 |  modern testing showed them to be from the 1800's.  Then one
 |  instead claimed that Joseph Smith's scribe had made a
 |  mistake (detailed explanation:
 |  http://irr.org/mit/kinderhook-plates.html).  Finally one are
 |  painting a rosy image of Joseph Smith's character, without
 |  openly accounting for neither his promiscuity (see ex.
 |  http://irr.org/mit/enigma.html), nor his plans for world
 |  dominion and treason (see ex.
 |  http://signaturebooks.com/hier1.htm).
 |
 |  A tangible example of information that the church
 |  consciously is misleading members about:  With the words of
 |  Lavina Fielding Anderson, editor for the Journal of Mormon
 |  History, ``the [Newell and Avery] biography of Emma Hale
 |  Smith was deeply disturbing to me for the documentation it
 |  provided about Joseph Smith and the origins of polygamy . .
 |  . . Let me be specific.  I was shocked and disgusted to
 |  discover that Joseph Smith married a fourteen-year-old girl,
 |  fully consummated that marriage, and concealed it from Emma.
 |  My image of "prophet" did not accommodate this kind of
 |  behavior.  I could not begin to find holy motives for such
 |  behavior ("The Garden God Hath Planted: Explorations Toward
 |  a Maturing Faith," in Sunstone, October 1990, 26-27).''
 |
 |  The example is also interesting in that the above enumerated
 |  names are more or less a list of excommunicated members.  It
 |  is not possible to say or write the truth about the church's
 |  history without running the risk of disciplinary measures.
 |
 |  Now we want you to understand that despite everything we
 |  still retain our spiritual testimonies.  Neither do we deny
 |  anything of these testimonies.  We have felt and still do
 |  feel all those feelings.  The church have been a very big
 |  blessing in our lives, and we feel a big gratitude.  But a
 |  spiritual testimony of the spiritual truths in the gospel --
 |  and these spiritual truths are largely true because Joseph
 |  Smith had a lot of inspiration from God and other inspired
 |  men when he was putting together his own version of the
 |  gospel -- a spiritual testimony of all these truths cannot
 |  erase the reality that the leaders of the church are
 |  hypocrites when they on the one hand are saying from the
 |  pulpit that ``dishonesty in any form -- whether to appease,
 |  to save face, or to get gain -- is in direct conflict with
 |  gospel commandments and culture'', but on the other side
 |  teach that the church has no responsibility to present a
 |  balanced view of itself, and through threats and
 |  intimidation propaganda frighten members to obedience and
 |  silence.
 |
 |  We cannot in honesty have our names associated with any kind
 |  of society with this moral view.  Not even should it be God
 |  himself preaching this message of hypocrisy, etc.  An
 |  already married woman who rejected Joseph Smith's proposal
 |  are supposed to have said to the prophet that she'd rather
 |  be a chaste woman in hell than a whore in the celestial
 |  kingdom.  In that case, we would prefer to receive a
 |  telestial glory with honest and decent people rather than a
 |  possible celestial glory with hypocrites and liars.
 |
 |  We have had a family home evening and several conversations
 |  with our children Jared and Josefine where we in a simple
 |  manner have explained about some of the church's lies, and
 |  how it doesn't want us to find out the truth.
 |
 |  We do all feel a great grief over the fact that the church
 |  wasn't what we thought it was, what we have tried to "endure
 |  to the end" for.  It is an immensely heavy work of mourning.
 |  We also understand that this will result in a big work of
 |  mourning for many other very good people.  And perhaps angry
 |  and hard feelings.  More dogmatically inclined persons will
 |  no doubt decide that we were bad people at the core, and
 |  that we never really had any testimony.  They are of course
 |  wrong, but that isn't something anyone can do anything
 |  about.  Some will tell themselves that we really were
 |  sinners or that we deep-down wanted to sin.  They are also
 |  wrong.  We want nothing more than that the church should be
 |  true and good in all respects.  But once Pandora's box have
 |  been opened, there is no closing it again.  Once one has
 |  judged the evidence without mental blinders, there is no
 |  turning back again without oneself becoming a hypocrite  We
 |  feel that we cannot do that, irrespective all the love we
 |  feel to the members of the ward and toward all other sisters
 |  and brothers in the church.
 |
 |  Therefore we are no longer members of the church.
 |
 |
 |  With all Love,
 |
 |  <Our Signatures>
 |
 |
 |  The above signatures have been witnessed by us, the
 |  hereunder undersigned:
 |
 |  <Signatures of witnesses>
 |
 |
 |
 |  An English language version of this letter [the original is
 |  in Swedish] have been sent to:
 |
 |  Greg Dodge, Supervisor, Confidential Records Section
 |  Member and Statistical Records Division
 |  Thirteenth Floor
 |  50 East North Temple Street
 |  Salt Lake City, Utah 84150-3684
 |  United States of America
 |  +1 801-240-2053
 |______________________________________________________________