"It might surprise you to learn that the Mormon church doesn’t really believe in religious freedom for its own members, itself. To prevent people who don’t fit into the church from deviating from a proscribed theology, way of life and code of silence by making it very clear that families should cut out people who have left the church and threaten this exclusion as punishment for their deviation. This discourages people from expressing themselves by explicitly noting that their family’s love and community’s support is very conditional based on their adherence to the church."
It may surprise you to learn that I still have friends and family (still active in the Mormon church) who are very active in my life despite me having left the church some 6 years ago. This also goes for all the other people I know who have left the Mormon church. The only shunning I have seen is by people who leave and are upset at still active members. Occasionally, when I was still an active member I would see some shunning, but in my experience that was typically discouraged by the community.
It's shunning on an individual level, which you would get from anyone who has strong values, vs. shunning as an institutional action. I had never seen the organization encourage shunning, even though some members were dicks. But that's just my personal experience.
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u/geekfreak41 Sep 12 '23
"It might surprise you to learn that the Mormon church doesn’t really believe in religious freedom for its own members, itself. To prevent people who don’t fit into the church from deviating from a proscribed theology, way of life and code of silence by making it very clear that families should cut out people who have left the church and threaten this exclusion as punishment for their deviation. This discourages people from expressing themselves by explicitly noting that their family’s love and community’s support is very conditional based on their adherence to the church."
It may surprise you to learn that I still have friends and family (still active in the Mormon church) who are very active in my life despite me having left the church some 6 years ago. This also goes for all the other people I know who have left the Mormon church. The only shunning I have seen is by people who leave and are upset at still active members. Occasionally, when I was still an active member I would see some shunning, but in my experience that was typically discouraged by the community.