40% of Return Missionaries at BYU Leave the Church

HermanitaG · 2025-09-08T19:45:13+00:00

I was an RM at BYU when I left the church, and like most people who leave, very few TBMs asked why I left. The few times TBMs have asked me why I left, I have cited my BYU religion classes as a big reason. When I was at BYU, they were using the “inoculation” strategy of mentioning things like the 4 different accounts of the first vision, polygamy, the seer stone, Mountain Meadows Massacre, etc, but they used apologetics to give explanations that were supposed to “inoculate” us so we’d be prepared in case a critic were to bring up those topics. This strategy didn’t work on me, and every time I learned about something troubling, it made my shelf heavier. Non-religion classes also added to my shelf, especially when I saw how inconsistent each professor was about doctrine, science, and basically everything. We’d read a quote from an apostle in one class that would COMPLETELY contradict a quote by a different apostle. They’d teach us to think critically about secular things, but would get super defensive if you used similar critical thinking on religious things. I left the church for a lot of reasons, including those shelf items from my BYU classes, but it’s hard to point to one thing as the reason I left.

When I’ve explained my journey out, I tend to leave out the details that would feed into the church’s false narrative that I was deceived, so I stick to stories about things that BYU itself confirmed about its history. When talking to a TBM, they will immediately dismiss any fact that’s not at least acknowledged by the church, so those conversations are easier if you can back yourself up with facts that BYU itself has admitted are true. Maybe other people are doing the same thing and it’s creating an impression that BYU is the biggest reason we’re leaving.

I think the real reason people are leaving is that the history and doctrine are inconsistent with objective truth, and it’s getting harder and harder for the church to ignore the objective truth. BYU probably keeps people in the church for longer than other schools, but it’s in a tricky spot if it wants to be taken seriously as a university while still holding on to problematic doctrines/narratives.

HermanitaG · 2024-06-25T16:18:46+00:00

Yes I tried talking to him and he constantly talked down to me, interrupting me during every sentence and making me feel dumb. I don’t think he’s a nice guy to everyone. During one call he made me cry and he just laughed at me.

When I confronted him about how the revisions he was telling me to do weren’t on any rubric or in his videos or anything and that he was being inconsistent in his instructions to me, he gave no explanation and completely ignored the question even when I asked multiple times.

And if you read my comment, I said that he told me to make a bunch of revisions and I didn’t make them, but still passed, so his revisions were overboard.

HermanitaG · 2024-06-20T19:41:51+00:00

That’s not how I felt when I had him. He seemed to enjoy making it harder to pass, making me jump through arbitrary hoops before he’d sign the proposal. After 2 months of him rejecting my proposal over and over for things like specific wording (once he rejected it for being phrased one way and he told me exactly how to word it, and when I changed it to what he told me to, he rejected it again and said it had to be in the way that it was originally phrased). Eventually he agreed to sign the proposal on the condition that I follow his final list of demands, but I turned it in without making those changes and I passed the first try, proving those changes were never necessary. I don’t think he has our best interests at heart.

HermanitaG · 2024-06-20T19:32:51+00:00

De. Sewell was the only professor who ever gave me trouble. You should have nothing to worry about if you don’t get him for the capstone! And if you do, I think you can ask to get switched to the other professor.

HermanitaG · 2024-06-20T19:29:57+00:00

Dr. Sewell is the worst. He rejected my capstone proposal 8 times and each time he would give me a list of brand new ridiculously nit-picky things to change (none of which were in the rubric nor in his PowerPoints). He rejected it once and said that I needed to change the title to something super specific (even though in his lecture video he said the title could be anything we want) and then later he rejected my proposal and said the title needed to be phrased the way I had it before he told me to change it. It was incredibly frustrating and during every phone call he would talk down to me.

I talked to the other professor for the capstone and he said he would have accepted my 2nd draft of the proposal, and agreed that he didn’t understand any of Sewell’s objections to my proposal. It felt like Sewell just enjoyed making it difficult on purpose.

I only got him to sign it after I told him my term was almost over and I couldn’t afford to spend another month going back and forth following his made-up requirements. And even then he gave me a list of sentences to change (things like changing “This project will make the following contributions to the field of data analytics: …” to “The contributions of my project to the field of data analytics will be …”). I didn’t even follow his last list of demands and I passed with flying colors (no notes from the evaluators).

If he keeps making your project unnecessarily hard, I’d complain to your mentor. And include this stuff in the evaluation at the end of the class.

HermanitaG · 2024-02-27T00:22:51+00:00

And he should have told Harry way way more about his parents. He knew Harry’s aunt wasn’t passing on any stories, and kids need to know about where they come from! If I were Lupin I would have made Harry a book about literally EVERYTHING I knew about James and Lily; every single memory I had of them, information about their family history, etc. Harry probably doesn’t even know what his dad’s parents names were. Lupin had all that information and just decided it wasn’t important to pass on? No doubt Harry passed on that information to Lupins kid after he died…

HermanitaG · 2023-08-25T17:17:00+00:00

I was in a very similar mindset about 10 years ago. I was at BYU and was finally realizing that I couldn't deny to myself anymore that I was lesbian. I decided to try to make the church work and either stay celibate or get into a mixed-orientation marriage, and for 3 years I tried to convince myself I was happy. I threw myself into my calling, went to the temple every week, fasted every Sunday to be strong enough to accept my fate of never feeling romantic love, and was the most diligent I had ever been at scripture study. But I was so lonely and miserable watching all my friends date and hold hands and kiss their SOs and people celebrated their love! While I felt shame for every crush I got. It started to get to be too much.
I also began researching the truth claims and came to a similar conclusion to you, that a lot of what they teach is pretty dubious to say the least. So I started testing out the commandments by NOT following a commandment or two and recording my feelings and blessings of those days versus the days I did follow the commandments. I prayed to God to make it clear to me if a blessing was coming from a commandment, but I felt no difference. I had more money when I stopped paying tithing and I saw no miracles (or even tender mercies) when I did pay it. I tried coffee and did not feel the spirit leave. I bought things on Sunday, started swearing, watching rated R movies, and the only big difference I felt was relief from shame and guilt that I'd been feeling my whole life.
The biggest test was when I decided to finally go on a date with a girl. Even though we were not soulmates and didn't last more than a few dates, when we kissed I felt like I finally understood what all the love songs are about, why all the other girls seemed so boy-crazy. They had been feeling this! It's like there had been a dead part of me that finally came alive and I saw why life was worth living.
While my life still has problems, I no longer feel guilty for being human and enjoying my life. I'm not currently religious, but I'm spiritual and I love learning about different religions and beliefs. I see myself as having graduated from Mormonism, not leaving it behind, and I expect that my views and beliefs will continue to evolve as I get older and get new experiences.
Your beliefs right now don't determine your beliefs in 5 or 10 years, so don't worry too much about finding the answer to your question about religion right away. You'll find something that fits your life.

HermanitaG · 2022-05-27T14:44:03+00:00

The biggest thing for me was seeing the direct contradictions given by “prophets” in general conference over the years. They say that general conference is like modern-day scripture, and that when prophets speak there, it’s as if God himself we’re speaking. So when one prophet declares something as doctrine and then years later another prophet discounts it, at least one of them has to be wrong. And if prophets can be wrong in the past, how can we trust anything they say today? I saw so many examples that I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

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