Over the summer in a social media group, a woman commented that most ex-Mormons leave the faith because they have read the so-called CES letter, begun exploring the underside of their religion’s history, and become convinced that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn’t true.
I responded that statistically, such people are actually in the minority. Most people who leave the church do so when they are quite young; the median age for leaving in the Next Mormons research, for example, was 19. The CES-letter model of the temple-married returned missionary who leaves the faith later in adulthood is rare, and the one who does so primarily because of church history is even rarer.