why don't I stay and try to change the church?

The same friend who asked me why I don't leave church issues alone also asked me why I don't stay and try to positively change the church from within. My reply:

Any impact I could make would be very small, and only at the local level. Knowing we'll move around doesn't help us want to invest a lot into a ward only to leave it. I've never really been highly invested socially in any ward; I went because that was where I was supposed to go, not because I liked that particular community. And people don't listen. People don't go to the Mormon church to have doubts and questions thrown at them; they go for reassurance and easy answers.

To stay and work from within would require being a wolf in sheep's clothing. I'd have to make waves, but only small enough to hardly be felt so I don't get rooted out as a heretic. To have a bigger impact, I'd have to be in a leadership position (most of which are barred to me personally as a woman), but I'd really have to hide and pretend in order to achieve that position. I'd have to fake it really well, get a high position, then come out of my unbeliever's closet--causing me to loose the position, and compromise my integrity in the process. The hierarchy is set up so that changes are top-down. There are rare exceptions, i.e., when it was obvious lots of people were using birth control, the brethren cooled down about saying how evil it was; the policy change to let people have their names removed came after a lawsuit from a man who would not accept excommunication as his only way out. But mostly there is nothing I can do.

In the end of our “activity,” attendance actually made me physically ill. Nearly everything I heard make me think, “I can’t believe he/she just said that!…I don’t belong here….I don’t agree with that….That’s some serious compartmentalizing on his part.” I’d have to put up with a whole lot to stay.

Do you think people haven't tried changing the church, and have given up for many valid reasons? I desperately wanted to stay in order to help. I saw a "brain drain" where all the people actually educated about the church were leaving, so how could we ever improve it? For some people it's not worth the fight; there is just too much baggage and too much compromise of integrity and conscience to stay and support such an institution. The church just doesn't allow for a grassroots approach; it quashes "arc-steadiers," it excommunicates; it correlates.

Perhaps the very biggest reason was my child (and any future children). We just didn’t want him to be raised Mormon like we were. Getting out gives him a better chance at life. If we decide to take him to a Sunday school, it will be where he can learn love, friendship, justice, the marvels of the world, how to ask questions, how to make decisions for himself, how to define morality and make moral decisions, how to define and find his own spiritual (or non-spiritual) path, and how to help others.

We don’t want him learning obedience to authority is the first law of heaven; that people who ask questions and follow their own paths are bad; that Bible stories are literal despite major scientific and common sense knowledge to the contrary; that boys can be leaders and girls can’t; that his role in life is to bring in enough money to support his family, even if it means neglecting them; that there is a checklist for salvation; that some people (however good) are not “good enough” to see their children or siblings get married; that personal relationships are of secondary importance to church; that there is only one right way to worship; that everyone who doesn’t worship that way is wrong, misguided, or even bad; that helping others means bearing his testimony and bringing them cookies, etc. I could go on.

Being outside, I am more free to talk and say what’s on my mind, without fear of reprisal. I am free to be myself, and to find myself.