“Belonging, with my eyes wide open, is actually fun, less expensive than formerly, and no strain at all. I am now very selective in the meetings I attend, the functions I attend, the amounts I contribute etc. etc. and I have a perfectly happy time. I never get up and bear testimony—but I don’t mind listening to others who do. I am much more tolerant of other religions and other thinking and feel fine about things in general. You might give my suggestions a trial run – and if you find you have to burn all the bridges between yourselves and the Church, then go ahead and ask for excommunication. The day will probably come—but it is far off—when the leadership of the Church will change the excommunication rules and delete as ground non-belief in the 2 books mentioned [the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon] and in Joseph Smith as a prophet etc … but if you wait for that day, you probably will have died. It is a long way off —tithing would drop too much for one thing.”

^{Thomas Ferguson letter to Mr. and Mrs. Harold W. Lawrence, Ferguson Collection (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah, 9 February 1976) Unverified.}