Seeking Interviewees for the THRIVING after Mormonism Project

Thriving After Mormonism: A Research Project Asks Hard Questions About Life Beyond Belief

Thousands of people leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints each year. Most accounts of what happens next focus on the struggle: the identity crisis, the family fracture, the spiritual vertigo. But what if the real story isn't about the exit, but about what people build afterward? That's the central question animating a new documentary research project launched during the 2020 pandemic, documented on the Mormon Stories Podcast, which seeks to capture narratives of those who report thriving in the years after their faith transitions.

The initiative matters because it shifts how we talk about religious departure. For decades, the dominant narrative in Mormon circles presented post-faith life as either tragic loss or quiet apostate resentment. This project proposes a third frame: that many former believers have constructed meaningful, purposeful, and genuinely satisfying lives. That's not a claim the Church makes about its defectors. And it's not one that church critics always foreground either.

The Genesis of a Pandemic-Era Documentation Project

In April 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced much of the world into isolation, podcast host John Dehlin announced what he called the Thriving after Mormonism project. Lockdowns had given him time to think. What emerged was not another critique of Mormon doctrine or history, but a structured attempt to gather and publish the reflections of people who had left the faith and found their way to stable, flourishing lives.

The methodology is simple and deliberate. Dehlin was recruiting approximately one hundred participants, both former members and progressive Mormons who remain in the church, to answer a detailed twenty-question survey. The prompt list was designed not to produce sound bites about what went wrong, but to extract usable wisdom about what comes next. What kept you grounded? Who supported you through the transition? What would you tell someone else in the thick of doubt right now?