On March 21, 2017, Mormon Leaks released a draft document that outlines recommendations for keeping young single adults active as the majority of them stop attending church when they leave home. In 2004, they report

there were 851,000 young single adults (YSAs), ages 18-30 years, in the United States and Canada. Best estimates suggest that 550,000 of these individuals were less active.

That is 65%! The rest of the document is an attempt to understand why it happens, and how to fix it.

One section in particular caught my attention. “Little Accountability”.

Few YSAs can definitively answer two important questions: “Who is your bishop?” and “Do you feel accountable to him?”

Do you feel accountable to him?! Really?! The bishop should feel accountable to the members of his congregation. The leaders of the church should feel accountable to the members, not the other way around? Churches should be there to help people become better, and to provide opportunities to serve others, not to determine every aspect of a member’s life. Millennials don’t respond well to claims of authority because they have seen time and time again how authority is abused and used to manipulate people. Technology has exposed these violations at a level not seen by previous generations.

Look, if you want to claim authority and expect me to respect it, you’d damn well better act in a respectable way. Show me how your doctrines and policies help people and are not harmful. Respect the fact that people have the right to choose to affiliate with a church or not (and that includes your own church). If someone decides to no longer participate in the Mormon church, respect their decision. Quit infantilizing your members. Quit berating and demeaning the LGBTQA+ community with messages like this:

The devil has been called “the great deceiver.” He attempts to counterfeit every true principle the Lord presents. Remember, counterfeits are not the same as opposites. The opposite of white is black, but a counterfeit for white might be off-white or gray. Counterfeits bear a resemblance to the real thing in order to deceive unsuspecting people. They are a twisted version of something good, and just like counterfeit money, they are worthless. Let me illustrate. One of Satan’s counterfeits for faith is superstition. His counterfeit for love is lust. He counterfeits the priesthood by introducing priestcraft, and he imitates God’s miracles by means of sorcery. Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, but same-sex marriage is only a counterfeit. It brings neither posterity nor exaltation. Although his imitations deceive many people, they are not the real thing. They cannot bring lasting happiness. God warned us about counterfeits in the Doctrine and Covenants. He said, “That which doth not edify is not of God, and is darkness” (D&C 50:23). https://www.lds.org/ensign/2017/04/the-war-goes-on?lang=eng

Mormons need to learn they are not accountable to their bishop or any church leader. If they believe in God, then God alone is who they are accountable to. The church leadership is really accountable to the membership even though they don’t show it. The answer to “Do you feel accountable to him?” should be an emphatic “Hell no!”