Amulek

When I was on my mission, we participated in a pilot program that involved having the missionaries visit inactive members and invite them to come meet with the bishop to start the process of either (1) renewing their temple recommend; or (2) having their name removed from the records of the church. I was actually kind of surprised at how many people did not want to have their names removed. They weren't interested in participating at all, but they firmly did not want to be out of the church either. Nowadays, it's even easier - a couple of clicks, a sprinkling of auto-fill, and you can be out without any fuss. Still, a signification number of people chose to just never bother with it. Maybe they are indifferent, but unless we have some kind of constructive knowledge that says they want out, I don't see the need in proactively trying to remove them (potentially against their will).

Were you ever an Eagle Scout? If so, then you are recognized as a lifelong member of BSA, regardless of participation. I bet the same holds true for whatever university alumni association you are part of too - once graduated, you typically remain an alumnus/alumna forever. And let's not forget about civic and political organizations. If you ever registered with a political party, you get to remain registered with them for years even if you never vote. Now, obviously I don't know every org you may have ever been a part of, but these are a few that I suspect are pretty likely candidates that would be exceptions to your assertion. Of course, none of that really matters because religious organizations are fundamentally different from secular organizations in ways that make roll-keeping more about identity than about transactions or participation. Churches don’t view membership the way Netflix does, as a subscription you cancel for lack of payment. It’s more akin to family or heritage, something you remain part of unless you actively choose to leave.

If that question is supposed to be standard, then every bishop and priesthood leader I’ve ever had must have been heretics - because not a single one of them has ever asked me that. I'm not denying your experience - just pointing out that it isn't universal. I get the impression that such used to be more common in the Mormon Corridor though, especially back in the 90's / early 'oughts, but the guidance today is more centered on gospel principles (e.g., avoid arousal of lustful thoughts / feelings) and doesn't focus on specific behaviors.

[...] I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that if the Church actually followed your advice and purged the rolls of all known inactives, and that led to your family “shunning and othering” you and yours, you’d be right back here complaining about the Church anyway. Sounds less like you want a solution and more like you just want something to complain about. You’re giving way too much credit to the idea that ex-ing people would solve the PR problem. The reason these stories get traction isn’t because some journalist dug through church records and confirmed membership status - it’s because it’s scandalous whenever someone associated with Mormonism does something heinous. If the perpetrators weren’t officially members, the story would (as we saw in this very case) just be reworded as “raised Mormon,” “former Mormon," "[fill-in-the-relationship status] to prominent Mormon," etc. Purging the rolls wouldn’t make the headlines disappear; at best it just changes the headlines a little, and not in a way that would keep us out of them. I suspect that most of the orgs you’ve been part of were either clubs or businesses. The Church is neither. It’s a family, and you don’t get “purged” from a family just because you stopped showing up to dinner. At least, I'm pretty sure that's not how the story of the prodigal son ended...

So you won’t resign because it’s inconvenient and/or might cause some awkward family conversations, but you’ll gripe that the Church won’t do it for you. That's like refusing to break up with someone and then being mad about them still calling you their boyfriend. Oh, and spare me the hand-wringing about proxy ordinances after you’re gone - if you don’t believe, why care?

Isn't that a two-way street? I mean, if you wanted us to stop counting you as a member, maybe you would put forth the (minimal) effort to have your name removed from the records of the church. But if you don't care either, that is fine.

You’re basically arguing that the Church should kick people out who stop showing up, stop paying, or embarrass the faith. Okay, but that’s not how covenants, agency, or accountability work. Membership isn’t a fan club where the admins prune inactive users - it’s a covenant people. If someone wants out, they can ask. Until then, their standing in the church is between them and God, not you.

@Navidad, I appreciate you sharing your experiences. I don’t doubt that those words were said to you, and I can understand how painful or dismissive they must have sounded. At the same time, I think some of the tension comes from a deeper difference in theology. In LDS belief, God organizes His work through an institutional church with priesthood authority, ordinances, and covenants. For someone who doesn’t see church in that way, statements about “authority” or “valid baptism” can understandably feel like invalidations of their faith, when in fact they’re really expressions of how we understand our own framework. That doesn’t excuse insensitivity, of course - people should always be careful about how they communicate across belief lines. But I also wouldn’t assume that such statements always come out of nowhere. Often they emerge when someone asks why Latter-day Saints believe what they do, or when differences in authority and ordinances become the focus of the conversation. In those contexts, the answers can sound harsher than they are meant. For me, I try to share in terms of what’s brought me peace and direction. At the same time, I wouldn’t be in this church if I didn’t believe it offered something unique and essential. That doesn’t mean I think other faiths are worthless - far from it - just that I’ve found something here I feel is worth inviting others to consider too.

For me, I’ve come to think of it less as “what I believe is what you should believe” and more along the lines of “this is what I believe, and here’s why it matters to me.” The church definitely encourages us to share, but I don’t think that has to mean pushing. When something has brought me peace, hope, or joy, it feels natural to want to talk about it - just like I would talk about anything else that’s been a blessing in my life. Honestly, it’s the same impulse that makes me want to tell everyone about that new authentic Italian restaurant I ran across the other day that makes its noodles from scratch daily. To me, that’s just part of being a good friend. I’ve noticed that leaders in recent years put more emphasis on inviting and testifying rather than pressuring. An invitation can be freely accepted or declined, but the act of sharing still communicates care. So, I see proselytizing less as “this is what you must do” and more as “this has blessed me so much that I want you to know it exists - if you ever want it for yourself.”

You can hear the current mayor's explanation for why he voted against the proposal here (note: if I messed up the link, it's at the 5:07:04 mark). For those who don't want to listen, my rough transcript of his comments are as follows: I was involved in the mediated agreement back in November. When we had that mediated agreement, one of the provisions of the agreement was that we would go back to the town and have a public hearing, which we did. In that public hearing we heard citizen after citizen, resident after resident say they did not like the height of the building. It was my hope, and I think it was the mayors hope too, that the LDS church hearing that you know – and I hear so many times from Melissa McNeely that we want to be good neighbors – that we thought after hearing these pleas after saying that and reading it this in the newspaper that they would on their own accord lower the the the size of the steeple and they did not. And again, I just keep thinking of this being good neighbors. And I'm not going to tell the story about me growing up in Oak Park. But the one thing I will say about it is we lived in a non-Jewish neighborhood. And we out of respect, we may have had the right to do it, but we didn't do any we didn't do any activities on Saturday this Sabbath because my dad said, "Be a good neighbor." Um, this council as a team is wiser than one person. And I disagree with my council members on this, the way I'm going to vote, but I support the process and I can tell you they did not do this um this vote out of fear. They did it out of concern for the best interest of the town. But with that, I'm voting against the ordinance. Basically, he's saying (without technically saying) that his original vote to approve the mediated version of the temple was really a conditional vote based on public reception of the mediated agreement. I suppose that's how he justifies not having entered into mediation in bad faith, but it feels more like political cover than genuine principle. If mediation only “counts” until the crowd reacts, then what exactly is the point of the process? It starts to look less like leadership and more like hedging bets. And frankly, the “good neighbor” framing only highlights the contradiction. On one hand, he invokes personal anecdotes about respect and compromise, but on the other, he punts on making a clear decision when it actually matters. It’s as if the responsibility to compromise should rest entirely with the other side while the council reserves the right to walk away whenever the optics get tough. If that’s how agreements are going to be treated, then mediation becomes less about resolving disputes and more about staging another round of politics.

Last week the Town Council voted to approve the final plat: https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/collin-county/fairview-votes-finalize-lds-temple-lawsuit-stall-construction/287-7627e8a0-cc7f-4c44-ab18-3720bb59eeff Now, approving the final plat is mostly just a formality. In fact, the town's statutes state that unless there is a material defect, the plans are automatically approved after 30 days following their submission, even if no vote is held. The planning and zoning board voted unanimously to accept the place, and the Town Council did the same. However, as indicated in the article, the (new) mayor included the following as a prelude to his proposal to accept the plat: The Fairview Temple should be a symbol of love and community, a place where neighbors come together in mutual respect. Instead, the Fairview Temple has become a symbol of division, bullying, and a refusal to be good neighbors…When the conditional use permit was approved, the council inadvertently left out the removal of two parking lot lights on the north side of the property. These lights shined directly into the homes of families living on Forest Oaks. The town reached out and asked the LDS Church if they would, out of the kindness and consideration for the people living next door, their neighbors, take the poles down. The church answered no. With the approved CUP, the LDS Church has every legal right to keep those lights, just as they have every legal right to build a 120-foot steeple. But having the legal right doesn't make it the right thing to do. A true neighbor doesn't ask, ‘What can I get away with?’ A true neighbor asks, ‘How can I live in harmony with the people around me?’ That’s what makes this process for me so disappointing. Unfortunately, the mayor’s comments mischaracterize both the process and the facts regarding the Fairview Temple’s lighting. The town council did not “inadvertently” leave out this issue; the council explicitly reviewed the lighting plan as part of the conditional use permit process, and the two lights in question were discussed during the meeting. For safety reasons, the Church (understandably) wants to have visibility its parking lot during operational hours. The Church accommodated the town's request that all parking fixtures be shielded to prevent glare, and they happily agreed to use only color temperatures specified by the town's lighting ordinances. In complying with these requests, the Church anticipates producing zero foot-candles of light on adjacent properties. And let's not forget that (1) the Church already exceeds the minimum setback requirements from the homes in question to begin with, and (2) these properties will be further shielded by foliage which currently exists and which the Church will be adding as part of its landscape design plans. The claim that the lights "shine directly into the homes of families" is factually incorrect, and the mayor's effort to portray the Church's adherence to an approved, code-compliant plan as "bullying" or a refusal to be a good neighbor is not only unfair - it undermines the integrity of the council's own process. Rights and relationships are not mutually exclusive. But moving the goalposts after the council already approved a code-compliant plan - and then claiming you “forgot” to include a condition that was specifically discussed on the record - isn’t fairness, it’s politics.

After listening to over two and a half hours worth of comments, the planning and zoning commission for the town of Fairview recommended to deny the Church's application for a conditional use permit. Here's a short news clip on the results: link I watched the entire meeting and will try to remember to come back and update this post with a link to the audio recording when it becomes available. It's somewhere around three hours long so it makes for a pretty boring listen. I know that some of you are into podcasts though, so there might be a few masochists out there who would be willing to suffer through it. There were a couple of things that stood out to me. I was pleasantly surprised to see formal support from other religious groups in the area. There was woman there representing the Salvation Army (from the McKinney location) who spoke in favor of the Church and a regional Muslim leader who did the same. I felt like those who were in opposition to the current proposal did their best, with varying degrees of success, to express that they merely take issue with the size / design of the temple and not with it's existence. There was a lot of commentary about building heights, church heights, and how they just want the Church to follow the zoning rules, and not one inch more. One of the Church's representatives made a comment about that very sentiment and indicated how the Church more or less agrees with them. The Church isn't asking for anything that is inconsistent with what has been allowed historically. While it is true that other religious structures aren't comparably large, it is also true that the town has granted variances to other religious groups for comparably tall religious structures situated in similar areas (i.e., exact same zoning, on the exact same street). The town is perfectly within their rights to regulate the construction of new buildings (even religious buildings) in a neutral manner. However, if they are going to grant an exception to those codes for the Methodists down the street to build a bell tower in excess of 150', then they don't get to turn around and tell the Mormons to pound sand. And no, it doesn't matter that the Methodists ultimately abandoned constructing their building. The fact that the variance was given to one needs it needs to be given here as well. Ultimately, I got kind of fed up with hearing so many people harp on how the Church doesn't need to have a steeple and how we should be good neighbors and compromise. I can only imagine someone saying to Rosa Parks, 'I'm sorry ma'am, but do you really need to sit in the font row of the bus? Couldn't you just be a good neighbor and move a little more toward the back?' Sorry, that's simply not how freedom works.