Dan addressed an important topic recently. His approach probably represents the "mainstream" view among LDS apologists and maybe even leaders; i.e., he concludes that the ex-mo movement on social media is a "unique subculture."
Some LDS think the ex-mo "subculture" is nothing new, that critics have always been complaining and attacking, that their objections pale against the doctrines of the Restoration, etc. Thus, the ex-mo "subculture" can be dismissed without further argument. And that's true for many faithful Latter-day Saints, particularly those who have been members for a long time. They've heard/seen it all, they think, so they are impervious to the claims of the critics.
I've had many such "seasoned" members ask me why their kids, grandkids, other relatives, friends, former missionary companions, etc., are leaving. I ask if they've heard of the CES Letter or MormonStories. Almost always, they say they have never heard of these critics or their arguments. It's no wonder they are perplexed at the exodus. But ignoring the issues is not an effective response.
Neither are the convoluted apologetics from the SITH/M2C citation cartel, who spend much of their time (i) rationalizing why they repudiate the teachings of the prophets about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon, and (ii) attacking Latter-day Saints who still accept and seek to corroborate the teachings of the prophets on these issues.
An alternative perspective sees the social media ex-mo community as modeling behavior to convince LDS youth that it's not only "okay" to leave the Church, but that it's "cool" to leave the Church. The ex-mo community seeks to create a narrative that the Church is at a tipping point; i.e., they have generated a widespread sense that the truth claims of the Restoration cannot be defended, particularly regarding the Book of Mormon.
Dan himself is a major contributor to this through his promotion of SITH and M2C. By parroting the SITH narrative from Mormonism Unvailed, Dan's film Witnesses established SITH in the minds of viewers because Dan purports to present the "faithful" version of events.
There can hardly be any more precision attack on the Restoration than an attack on the origin of the Book of Mormon. We all know what happens when the keystone is removed from an arch. And SITH is a precision missile aimed directly at they keystone.
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As usual, Dan demonstrates one of the reasons why people find LDS apologists unappealing, right in his first paragraph on this topic.
Why do people fall out of activity in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? In a highly predictable place elsewhere, I see that my views on this topic are being misrepresented. Again. (Color me astonished!) Apparently, it seems, I believe that people only leave the Church because they want to sin. They want to commit adultery, drink coffee, and commit other such devilish acts. I’m a very mean-spirited and vicious person, and I am, of course, wickedly slandering those who disagree with me.
Dan doth protest too much. "Of course" is the tell here. Dan and his fellow "Interpreters" have a long history of this type of rhetoric and slander. Wasn't that why he was given the boot from FARMS years ago?
Also, note the difference between "leave the church" in the title and "fall out of activity in the church" which is more than a semantic difference.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m aware of people who have left the Church quite deliberately because they wanted to do something that the Church counsels them not to do. It happens. People do leave marriages, abandoning spouses and children, in order to sleep with somebody else, so why would such folks draw the line at leaving the Church?
Still, there are presumably as many permutations and combinations of reasons for living as there are people. Likewise, there are people — I know a fair number of them and have heard from many others — who, so far as I’m aware, leave for purely or at least largely “intellectual” reasons. Which is to say that they leave because of historical concerns (e.g., doubts about the historicity of the Book of Mormon and/or the Book of Abraham, dislike for what they know or think they know about early Latter-day Saint plural marriage, etc.), because of theological issues (e.g., seeming conflicts between faith and science), or, increasingly, because of socio-cultural tensions (e.g., regarding the status of women or controversies involved with LGBTQIA+ matters).
Dan, like other apologists, denies any contribution to the exodus. Yet social media, polls, and innumerable anecdotes from the ex-mo community show that SITH is one of the principal reasons people cite for leaving. Long-time members are astonished to see LDS apologists side with the critics by repudiating the teachings of the prophets, starting with Joseph and Oliver, that Joseph translated the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.
Dan and his followers seek to persuade even Latter-day Saints that Joseph never even used the plates or the Urim and Thummim. Instead, they insist that the entire Book of Mormon we have today came from words that appeared on a stone in the hat, and that Joseph and Oliver were ignorant speculators who misled everyone about the Hill Cumorah in New York. But those apologetic arguments have nothing to do with the exodus, according to Dan and the rest of the citation cartel.
Next he addresses apathy, a separate problem.
At least historically, though — it may be changing somewhat in the past decade or so — I’m convinced by admittedly anecdotal but very wide personal experience and broad reading that the large majority of “inactives” haven’t fallen away from the Church because, after considerable study and research and struggle, they’ve come to the decisive conclusion that the claims of the Restoration are false. (They may eventually reach that conclusion, of course, simply because, the longer they’re away, the less attraction they feel for their one-time affiliation and involvement with the Church, the more distant it all seems, and the more they come to assimilate to the surrounding cultural and religious environment. It’s perhaps rather like a long-ago former marriage.)
Most, I think, drift away from attendance out of indifference, enjoying Sundays not taken up with church activities, enjoying a morning coffee, disliking church services, lack of interest in the issues at the forefront of the Gospel, and so forth. Not necessarily very dramatic. Usually, I think, not. The sudden decision to “exit” is, I think, relatively rare. Overwhelmingly, I think, most who once fellowshipped with the Saints but no longer do are still members of the Church. They haven’t asked for their names to be removed.
Is apathy and indifference really a separate problem? For many, apathy is a way for people to cope with the cognitive dissonance of trying to sort out which teachings of the prophets are merely incorrect opinions (according to Dan) and which are legitimate and true.
I draw on my experience with a large and often long-time inactive or semi-active family on my maternal side. (My paternal family are almost entirely, so far as I’m aware, inactive Lutherans.). In more than a few cases, I think, if you were to ask them, they would probably concede that “the Church is true.” They might even say that, yes, they probably ought to be reading the scriptures and praying. They just don’t. They have other interests and other things to do, and their lives are, in their opinion, going pretty well without being “churchy.”
My sense is that ideological ex-Mormons who are active in online fora where they continually reinforce each other’s conviction that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is false, evil, oppressive, laughable, and etc. form a unique subculture (as do, frankly, those of us who spend a significant proportion of our time countering such claims and arguing that the Church is true and good, that its leaders are sincere and good people who are attempting to serve God and to receive revelation and inspiration).
Rather than countering the claims of the critics, Dan's SITH and M2C teachings directly support those claims. That message of support for critics undermines Dan's otherwise thoughtful and helpful defense of the Church's positive impact in the world.
Most people don’t live in that world, just as most people aren’t addicted to news and politics (as I can easily be). It’s easy, living in a subculture, to take that fish tank for the entirety of the sea. It’s easy, living inside the Capital Beltway or with cable news on 24/7, to imagine that everybody out there cares just as much as you do about the latest events involving Kevin McCarthy, Ilhan Omar, Hunter Biden, and the political ambitions of Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. But most don’t.
