Christian Missionary Deconverted by Tribe

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Daniel Everett wasn't really religious until he met his ex-wife and became a missionary.

Pretty much this. Painting him as primarily a missionary is misleading - he grew up godless, met a religious chick and converted, became a linguist, and found a way to study the language he was most interested in.

I guess the issue that comes to my mind is that I know that Christians will often go to lengths to deny that anybody who leaves their faith could have truly been an adherent, so my worry is that this is partly an outgrowth of that mindset. Is your position on Daniel Everett one where you're unusually skeptical of his beliefs relative to other deconverts, or do you recognize some deconversions as legitimately involving a Christian who leaves the faith?

I'm a former christian who denies having ever been truly an adherent. I am pretty sure that i just engaged in a lot of magical thinking and said a lot of crap i didn't truly mean because i needed to fit in.

I feel bad about lying to various and sundry middle managers of mormonism. All i can ask at this point is that they understand that, on the face of it, christianity is a lot to take on faith, and if someone just can't, they just can't.

I guess there's a question of what it means to deconvert. I recall when the bishop of Canterbury had a crisis of faith following the boxing day tsunami. something horrifying happened and he just had trouble reconciling it with his faith. i dunno if that particular bishop of Canterbury was ever able to come to terms with it.

I had no such crisis.

In the mormon faith, positions of lesser clergy (such as bishop) do not require more training in the tenets of faith than the average member-in-good-standing has. All of the lower end, local level positions are part-time limited-term unpaid engagements.

I understand that this is considerably different from faiths such as the episcopalians, who require something like a bachelor's degree in their faith to become a pastor, or whatever they call it.

Anyhow, when i was 20, i worked for this slimy as*hole named John. I had no respect for the man. His M.O. was to hire people and train them up, and then convince them that he had done them such a favor by letting them work for him that they should just accept that they are woefully underpaid. And a lot of people stuck with him for a very long time. There were people there who had never worked for anyone else, and had been there a decade or more.

And then i moved into my first apartment where i was living out on my own, and it turned out that if i started attending church within the ward boundaries i was in, he would be the 1st councilor to my bishop.

And there was no way that i could sit in that congregation and support him.

Frankly, there are a lot of mormons who i wonder how they get through their annual interview with their bishop. Mitt Romney among 'em.

So i didn't go.

And after putting some distance between myself and the mormon ward subculture, i was able to analyze what my own feelings and needs and beliefs were. And it could be said that i deconverted myself, but i think of myself as having never truly undergone conversion.

And it's easy for me to conceive of other people being in the same situation.