Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn from Them

Torn.

That is how many faithful Latter-day Saints feel today.

Torn between love for the Church and love for someone who has stepped away.

Torn between deep faith and difficult questions.

Torn between the traditions they cherish and the tensions they can no longer ignore.

Across the Church, this struggle is unfolding quietly but powerfully. Parents ache over children who have left. Friends and families strain to understand one another. Leaders and teachers try to help. And many faithful members who remain devoted to the Church find themselves wrestling with tensions of their own as they try to reconcile deep faith with the complicated realities they see around them.

Torn was written for them.

Featuring a foreword by NFL Hall of Fame quarterback and faithful Latter-day Saint Steve Young, Torn explores one of the defining challenges facing the Latter-day Saint community today: why so many sincere, thoughtful, once-devoted members are stepping away from the Church—and what faithful members can learn from their experiences.

Drawing on one of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted on Latter-day Saint disaffiliation—including surveys of more than 20,000 current and former members—along with interviews, personal experience, and national research, author Jeff Strong—a former bishop, mission president, BYU faculty member, and advisor to the Church—offers rare clarity into a painful and often misunderstood reality. The research suggests that nearly 40 percent of once-active Latter-day Saints in the United States have stepped away from Church participation over the past twenty-five years.

But this book is about far more than statistics.

It is about sons and daughters. Husbands and wives. Friends and ward members. It is about thoughtful, sincere people striving to live with integrity—and the many believers who remain in the Church yet feel increasingly torn themselves.

Inside this book you will discover:
• why many sincere believers step away from the Church
• the deeper cultural tensions shaping faith today
• what faithful members can learn from those who leave
• how families can navigate these experiences with greater understanding
• how a more Christ-centered culture can strengthen faith and belonging

Readers often describe three powerful outcomes after reading Torn:
Validation — realizing they are not alone in the tensions they feel.
Understanding — new insight into the experiences of loved ones who have stepped away.
Hope — a renewed vision for a more Christ-centered community.

As one reader wrote: “Finally, someone gets it.”

Rooted in faith and written with deep love for the Church and its people, Torn does not ask readers to choose sides. Instead, it invites them to see more clearly, listen more deeply, and respond more like Jesus Christ.

If someone you love has stepped away from the Church—or if you yourself feel caught between faith, love, belonging, and conscience—this book will help you feel seen, informed, and hopeful.

Because being torn does not have to be the end of faith.

It can be the beginning of deeper understanding, stronger relationships, and a more Christlike way forward.

Jeff Strong spent nearly three decades in the global consumer prod-

ucts industry, serving in senior executive roles at Procter & ­ Gamble

and Johnson & Johnson, including as global president and chief cus-

tomer officer. His professional experience in general management,

research, strategy, and organizational leadership shaped both the

rigorous national study behind this book and his insights into how

culture forms, flourishes, and sometimes falters.

In addition to his corporate leadership, Jeff has served as a bishop

and mission president in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­ day

Saints and as a faculty member at Brigham Young University. He also

worked for a time as an advisor to the Church. Drawing from both

executive and pastoral experience, he brings a rare combination of

deep research experience, analytical depth, and lived faith to one of the

most consequential and personal questions facing the Church today.

Jeff and his wife, Sara, live in Midway, Utah. They are the parents

of five children and grandparents to six.