Why does the mormon church not let former mormons get their records off? —Tinkerbelle2007

I have sent three letters to the mormon church one to the bishop and two to the church office building why the big run around

There is at least supposed to be a smooth process in place now for name removal, described in detail at the site http://mormonnomore.com/

But in your case it sounds like you followed the process and are still having trouble. Sometimes bishops don't know what to do with the letter or they sit on it and don't pass it on to the stake president. Whatever the reason, a phone call to Greg Dodge (801-240-2053) in Member Records will usually get things moving.

Anna wrote: "They refuse to acknowledge when you leave because they don't want to lose numbers on the membership rolls. Yes, it's a cheat, but that's the way it is. Just ignore it. If you have informed them by letter (registered is best), go on and live your life like they never existed. That's what I did."

Actually you really should be able to get this done nowadays through the process mentioned. The Mormon church was sued in 1985 for not honoring a resignation letter, which is the only reason they accommodate these requests.

You may be right though, anna, about not wanting to lose numbers on the membership rolls. The ex-Mormon community tries every year to make sense of the membership counts given in General Conference, and they don't make any sense. It appears that not only are inactive members being counted, but so are myriad ex-members and deceased members.

Is it a conspiracy? Probably not, but somewhere along the way they apparently decided to deal with ex-members and lost members a particular way, and the numbers have since spiraled out of control. Correcting the problem now would be embarrassing, so I don't expect an announcement anytime soon.