Should
you believe the faithful members of the Church or its critics?
Are the differences
significant?
Why
would faithful Latter-day Saints want to look at this information?
A growing movement in the
Church.
The purpose of this site is to generate discussion and get
people to think about issues involving the history of the
Should you believe the faithful members
of the Church or its critics?
Critics of the
On the other hand, faithful LDS members -- and especially LDS apologists -- will generally never consider that the Church is not what it claims to be. They have already concluded that the Church is true and any contradictory evidence that shows up must be wrong, and they try to “back into” an explanation (any explanation) so as not to upset their faith. Many faithful LDS, upon hearing of some adverse claim against Mormonism, often say it is a lie when in fact it may not really be or they simply ignore it with the belief that there must be some explanation.
With both sides of the LDS faith issue being labeled as
biased, why should you trust us? The
group of people that contributed to this website is in a unique position. We are members of the
Since many of us are still very active in the Church, we have no wish to make it look bad and make ourselves look foolish for being members of a Church that may not be entirely true. But we believe in total honesty, so we will not sugarcoat anything just to spread the gospel. We think that only the truth is good enough for the members. Whether or not that strengthens a member’s testimony or hurts it doesn’t matter – truth is truth.
Who are we?
All of us have been active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have held positions ranging from gospel doctrine teachers to members of bishoprics. Some of us have written faith-promoting articles that have been published in The Ensign and other Church publications. Most of us have served missions and almost all of us have been married in the temple. We’re just average everyday members that have a real interest in learning about Church History without all the sugarcoating. Many of us still attend church regularly, do our home-teaching every month, and perform callings and service. Others of us have found the issues identified on this website to be too troubling to allow us to remain active in the Church.
A former bishop and LDS Church Education System (CES) teacher has also joined our group and has been very helpful in using his decades of teaching LDS history to help ensure historical accuracy and doctrinal correctness of numerous LDS issues we’ve identified.
Are the differences significant?
Most faithful LDS acknowledge that not everything taught in Sunday School is historically accurate. Every group writes its own history in order to make itself appear in the best light and often minor embellishments or even falsehoods occur.
Maybe Joseph Smith did not win every wrestling match or stick-pulling contest, maybe not everything that the prophets have said was 100% accurate, maybe the members of the early Church were to blame for some of the Church’s problems, maybe there are some apparent conflicts between science and the religion, but what does this mean? Does the Church have to be error-free in order to be true?
This site attempts to evaluate several significant items brought up by critics of the church. We present a summary of the relevant issues from both sides of each issue and give our own opinion as to how significant we think each item is. Are these things, when taken as a whole, enough to invalidate the Church’s claims of divine origins or are they, as Gordon B. Hinckley has said, just ‘flecks in history’? Evaluate the research that has been done by both sides and decide for yourself.
We would ask the faithful to look at all of the arguments and then ask themselves honestly which side seems to be dealing most fairly with the issues and what makes the most sense.
Why would faithful Latter-day Saints
want to look at this information?
You can become a better missionary by understanding the viewpoints of critics. You can really understand where they are coming from and why they believe something different than you do. You can be more knowledgeable about controversial and historical events.
There are times when you may meet up with someone that knows more about a particular subject than you do, and that person will never join the Church if you present false information and he knows it. For example, many LDS believe that Brigham Young started polygamy. If you say that to an investigator or critic of the Church who knows that Joseph Smith started polygamy, you will look foolish and very naive about your own Church in his eyes.
More importantly, there is also the possibility that you may
alter some of your beliefs, which may affect how you view the
What would our leaders say about us
examining information that may question the
·
Gordon
B.
Many of these issues came to light when LDS historians started doing an in-depth study of LDS historical documents over the last 30 years or so. These included such things as diaries, letters, and early official church documents that were either unknown or safeguarded in the Church’s vaults. Many of these historians wrote books on the things they uncovered. As a result, the LDS public that read these books now had some knowledge of what kinds of documents are in the vaults of the Church. Many of these Church historians were excommunicated for writing books about what they had uncovered because they were damaging members’ testimonies.
Six Church historians and activists were excommunicated in the same month (September 1993). The Church officials did not dispute the accuracy of what the historians wrote in their books, just that it was causing people to leave the church. Much of this information would never have even come to light had it not been for inside LDS members leaking this information to the outside. These historians did not seek to damage the Church when they started investigating its history, but they could not remain silent after what they discovered.
One of the first researchers was Fawn Brodie, the niece of President David O. McKay. She had access to documents that other researchers did not and wrote a book that revealed many startling things about the early days of the Church. The following was from an interview with Ms. Brodie that was conducted on Nov. 30, 1975 that reveals the current status of the LDS historical archives:
o Q: Are those Church archives
open now? I read a comment indicating that it was believed that your book would
open archival material.
o A: It had the reverse effect. The archives were largely closed to scholars
after my book came out…...
http://www.salamandersociety.com/interviews/fawnbrodie/
Also, the second largest Mormon Church--The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS), now called Community of Christ--recently started questioning the historical nature of the Book of Mormon. For over 150 years the RLDS church supported the Book of Mormon as a historical record just as the LDS still do today. Its prophet, however, said that the BOM might not be historical, e.g. there may never have been a civilization of Nephites, Lamanites, Jaredites, etc, in the Americas 2000 years ago.
This declaration caused quite an uprising in the RLDS church and many thousands of members split from the main body and formed other groups. The RLDS church now makes it optional to believe in the validity of the BOM. Some people in the RLDS church still believe in the BOM as a historical as well as religious document, but many others believe it to simply be an “inspired work” that has religious value but is not literal history.
Some people believe the
LDS Historian Michael Quinn
"The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials. Elder Packer and others would justify this because "we are at war with the adversary" and must also protect any Latter-day Saint whose "testimony [is] in seedling stage." But such a public-relations defense of the Church is actually a Maginot Line of sandy fortifications which "the enemy" can easily breach and which has been built up by digging lethal pits into which the Saints will stumble. A so-called "faith-promoting" Church history which conceals controversies and difficulties of the Mormon past actually undermines the faith of Latter- day Saints who eventually learn about the problems from other sources." - Michael Quinn
Here’s an interesting article from the Boston Globe on Mormon historians talking about Mormon history:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2007/12/09/making_mormon_history/
A growing movement in the Church.
Thousands of LDS people are getting together and talking about these issues informally in wards and branches all over the world. We have talked to many of them. They gather in small groups at members’ homes and discuss these perceived historical problems with the Church. Due to the nature of conformity that our Church requires, these discussions are without local leaders’ knowledge.
These discussions are more prevalent now than in the past
because of the Internet. A decade or two
ago, you had to go to some obscure bookstore in
With this kind of information, chat rooms and discussion websites have sprung up that allow members to openly and anonymously discuss these issues. Some websites take a strong stance defending the Church; others adamantly seek to refute the Church. The Church’s official website is very silent on these issues.
Some people call the people involved in this phenomenon “New Order Mormons” or “New History Mormons.” Whatever you wish to call them, one thing is clear: this movement is only getting bigger and much more widespread. We think it’s better to know about this information as it gets more commonly known rather than shy away from it and pretend it doesn’t exist.
Some LDS come across these sites while researching information for a talk they have to give in sacrament meeting or help in preparing a lesson for Sunday School. At first, many faithful members can’t believe what they are reading and question the accuracy of the information; but upon further review of the evidence, they discover that, for the most part, the newly acquired information is true. Their next step is to try to understand what this new information really means to them.
A bigger problem for some people is not so much the disturbing nature of the information, but why they didn’t know about it before. People wonder why they never heard about this information in church or perhaps even when they were investigating the Church.
Many people leave the Church over the new information they discover. We would suggest that you not jump to any conclusions when you first examine the information, and instead carefully study all the relevant issues from all sides and then make an informed decision on what this all means.
We listened to a call-in radio program that featured Grant
Palmer, LDS author of “An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins.” An active LDS sister from
We think this is the approach we should take in the Church – absolute total honesty, no sugarcoating. This way, we don’t worry that some investigator is going to find out about polygamy or blacks being denied the priesthood. Don’t act like we have something to hide by simply not hiding anything. We just freely teach everything we know upfront, and if they can’t accept it, so be it. We would rather have a somewhat smaller church full of knowledgeable, loyal, full-believing members than a large church full of inactive, semi-believing members. Many people disagree with this idea, but we think what we were taught as little children still applies – lying is wrong.
First, we tried to ascertain what most active LDS believe about particular Church-related topics. The contributors to this website have lived in numerous wards throughout the world and we’ve been LDS for most of our lives, so we know what most people believe and we used that as our basis.
Next, we brought out the critics’ issues that we believe have the most merit. For the most part, we avoided truly religious issues like “men can become gods” or “did God have sex with Mary to create Jesus,” etc. because frankly no one can prove them right or wrong. We are only interested in examining historical issues about which there is some evidence to examine.
We tried to avoid the extremes. On the critics’ side, we did not use people
like Ed Decker, the creator of the movie and book “The Godmakers.” Although much of what he says is likely true,
he does lie about some things such as saying that the
Church practices witchcraft in the temple or that child abuse is running
rampant in the
We wanted to use all
official
Next, we looked at information from people that most LDS respect as near doctrinal responses, such as General Authority talks, The Ensign articles and other Church magazine articles, and the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), which is an organization funded by the LDS church and is located on BYU’s campus. The FARMS researchers are not General Authorities of the Church and are only giving their personal opinions based on their knowledge and unique scholarly approach, as they are both members of the Church and generally hold some academic credentials.
We tried to use as references people that most LDS know (such as Hugh Nibley or General Authorities). We also tried to avoid the extremes on the LDS side and avoid referencing certain Mormon Apologists who, by their own admission, have absolutely no authority to speak for the Church and are merely giving their opinions, which mean nothing more than any other member’s opinions. Also, many LDS people are not comfortable with what many of the LDS apologists have said and regard them as somewhat “out there” regarding their interpretations of Church issues. However, when no one else can give an adequate response, we will cite responses from LDS apologists.
We’ve done our best to be error-free. If there are any errors (supporting any viewpoint), please contact the administrator of this site at truthseeker@mormonthink.com
We do not vouch for the information relayed on any other website to which mormonthink may link. Links from other sites change daily and may not support our views.
Every day, thousands of LDS missionaries and well-meaning Latter-day Saints try to convince friends and total strangers that their religions are not entirely true and that many of the beliefs that these people have had all their lives are wrong. The missionaries offer to provide evidence in the form of books, testimonies and historical events that the non-members may not be aware of. Mormons think nothing about doing this. If the person responds “my pastor says the Mormon Church is full of lies” or “I know I’m right” or “any church that used to practice polygamy can’t be true” or “I’ve seen this all before,” we say to them “you’ve only heard one side of the story, let us tell you our side and you can decide for yourself if what we say is true or not,” or “be open-minded and just look at our information before you dismiss it.” If the person is unwilling to even listen to the missionary present his evidence, he is labeled ‘close-minded’ or unreceptive to the truth.
Yet if someone that doesn’t believe in the LDS Church offers to show an LDS member that the LDS faith may be in error and wishes to provide evidence in the form of books, testimony and historical events that the member may not be aware of, he or she is met with a resounding “not interested” and we dismiss the evidence as false without ever examining it. We say the same thing we accuse the “close-minded” nonmembers of, saying “I know I’m right” and “I’ve seen this all before.”
We would ask that in this same manner of open-mindedness, we as Latter-day Saints provide others with the same courtesy of listening to what they have to say and truly examine their evidence just as we would want an investigator to give us a chance to present arguments and really consider the information before dismissing it.
"Am I therefore
become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" (Galatians 4:16)