Okay, so maybe they aren’t necessarily joining QAnon—or they can go to their megachurches and believe Trump is Jesus at the same time—but some are also joining liberal churches or just plain secular liberalism instead. I keep an eye on the exmormon subreddit and sometimes even listen to the Mormon Stories podcast—not because I’m a Mormon (or ever have been), but because I’m fascinated with people leaving one belief system and joining another. So many posts on that subreddit are just like people photographing themselves drinking coffee. I mean, I love coffee, and I think life would probably be less cool without coffee, and I understand that coffee is probably a symbol for these people of embarking on a new stage in their lives free from the Mormon Church, but I also have to wonder if that much has really changed about them. Like, if they could drink coffee, and if the women were allowed to bare their shoulders, how many of them would remain within Mormonism? I think that moving from Mormonism to liberalism (or more liberal churches) has also got to be pretty dissatisfying. I went on their subreddit a few months ago and (politely) said they should check out Marxism, and I think every comment I received was hostile.

But many of them also say that the hypocrisy of the church (which you mention) led them to do research and ask questions, and then within a few months they were finished. That’s pretty much the same reason I left liberalism. It seemed hypocritical to me, and could no longer explain the world in a satisfying way. At the same time, fascism was even dumber, which meant that I gravitated further toward the left.

Another random thought: I remember that in the Class Struggle board game, if large numbers of people leave organized religion, that counts as like some kind of bonus or boon for the workers. So although this issue is complex, we have at least one Official Marxist ™ claiming that this is a positive development.