A common approach to this kind of animus is to portray the problem at the group level rather than the individual level. It praises the individual, indicts the group. It admires the neighbor, while distrusting the beliefs. It insists that the people are good, kind, neighborly, hardworking—but then tries to separate the people from the ideas and groups they support so that the ideas and groups can be mocked.

Latter-day Saints are familiar with this trope. It has lasted nearly as long as the Church itself. As one article in Charles Dickens’ Household Words famously put it, “What the Mormons do, seems to be excellent; what they say is mostly nonsense.” Dickens was hardly the last. 

That sentiment does a tremendous amount of cultural work. It allows speakers to acknowledge what is obvious to anyone who has met Latter-day Saints—that on average, we’re pretty good folks—while avoiding engagement with any of the beliefs that make us that way. The coworker, quarterback, senator, dentist, babysitter, or in-law may even be exceptional. But the faith itself is framed as a strange defect. It’s something to be smiled at, mocked, or psychoanalyzed.

A new version of this trope is becoming increasingly common and may be worth noticing: Latter-day Saints are great people, but their leaders/church/organization are deeply corrupt.

This can sound sophisticated. It allows speakers to sound like they are supporting people, not institutions. It can even sound compassionate, trying to defend ordinary Latter-day Saints against whatever shadowy authority the story requires. It manages to launder the old bigotries through the language of accountability.

Criticism Is Not the Problem

Latter-day Saints and their institutions should not be exempt from scrutiny. If a business mistreats a customer, investigate. If the police overreach, hold them accountable. If local officials abuse power, expose it. 

Latter-day Saints may be pretty good on average, but we have our fair share of ego, corruption, defensiveness, thievery, and all other types of sins.

There is a difference between criticism and religious profiling. In 2019, I covered the media response to a voyeurism arrest in Tennessee. I read the coverage of all voyeurism arrests over the previous 18 months; almost none of them made national news. And none of them mentioned the religion of the perpetrator. 

But as you might imagine, the Associated Press, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, and even the local newspaper not only mentioned the perpetrator’s religion, but also put it in the title. Why? Well, he was a Latter-day Saint. 

This issue has once again reared its head in a story that’s received major national attention. And suddenly many commentators have concluded that because someone is a Latter-day Saint, the problem must stem from corruption of the Church.

A Complicated LEGO Story

The underlying story here is complicated enough without inventing a religious conspiracy. 

Bricks & Minifigs has its corporate headquarters in Utah County. It is a second-hand retailer for LEGO bricks.

According to the reporting on the story, an Oregon franchise store, not run by the corporate office, accepted a consignment of Star Wars LEGO sets alleged by supporters to be worth around $200,000, with the agreement that it would sell them and give a portion of the proceeds to the sets’ owners.

While this Oregon store was in possession of these sets, the corporate office took control of the franchise store. When the owners of the LEGO sets returned to get their LEGOs because they had not been sold, the new corporate management said that the consignment had not been authorized. They said they are willing to resolve the matter through proper documentation and lawful channels, but they have not yet done so.

A YouTuber known as “Reckless Ben” decided to investigate the story. He went to American Fork to confront corporate management, then to the local police. The local police declined to intervene, saying it was a civil matter (i.e. the family who consigned the LEGO sets should sue).

Eventually, it was “Reckless Ben” who was charged with a misdemeanor for trying to confront the corporate management. 

From my non-lawyer point of view, it seems like the solution is pretty obvious, and from my communications point of view, hanging on to the sets is definitely not worth the legal and PR troubles. 

For a company based in Utah County, it may not surprise you to learn that some members of the management are Latter-day Saints.

And pretty soon, because of an implication “Reckless Ben” made in one of his videos, a narrative soon developed that the story was about religious corruption. 

The Comments Tell the Story

The language used around the YouTube videos has not been subtle. 

One commenter wrote, “The average person that’s LDS have no fault of what’s going on and I do not fault them. But this sect of religion in utah has a literal stranglehold on employment, culture, reputation, and lots of capital.”

Unsurprisingly, this structured complaint quickly returned. 

Other commenters complained about “the Mormon mafia” and suggested that Latter-day Saints have the power to silence people. Another claimed that the situation proved “that the Mormon church is now involved with the police department.”

A Reddit commenter concluded that “they’re protecting their own and would probably do this for any other crime they commit.”

“Reckless Ben” is not a professional journalist. But it’s also clear that sloppy coverage resulted in sloppy conclusions that have gone well beyond what he ever intended or implied. 

An Old Pattern

Latter-day Saints are not the first group to face this kind of suspicion and bias in the United States. Anti-Catholics did this for generations: Catholics could be good neighbors, but their institutions were suspicious because they were loyal to Rome.

Anti-Mormonism has its own version of this logic. In the nineteenth century, critics would portray Latter-day Saints as mysterious and secretive under the domination of an authoritarian prophet. Latter-day Saint belief was not merely doctrinally distinct from other groups; Latter-day Saint institutions were a threat to the American way of life.

And this current trope is a tired descendant of that older suspicion. It might be shined up with modern language. It might use the language of institutions and accountability. But the underlying dynamic, the basic argument, is the same. Latter-day Saints may be good, but when they’re bad it’s their religion’s fault because they are part of a group that is manipulative, corrupt, and dangerous. 

Legacy Media Coverage

The blame for this kind of coverage does not end merely with the YouTuber who posted it. These narratives become established because they are nurtured between the lines of news media that should know better.

When the Chicago Sun-Times puts its organized crime reporter on a story about an individual, when the AP assigns its political reporter to cover general conference, when the Washington Post and New York Times do not quote faithful Latter-day Saints in their articles but only church spokespeople, they create a vision of what the Church is.

And it’s all in pursuit of views. 

The voyeur story used the name of the Church in the title because that’s what people will click on. They create the prejudice and then profit from it. 

The headline, “Possible Police Overreach in Complicated Business Dispute in a Utah-Headquartered Franchise” dies before it hits the newsfeed. The story “Mormon Cops Cover for Mormon Criminals”—well, that sells. 

The bottom line is that there is no reason to believe this LEGO story has anything to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every Utah criminal is not, in fact, a window into Latter-day Saint corruption.

The post LEGO, YouTube, and the Latter-day Saint Mafia appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Lights and Perfections posted this video that shows how conclusive the evidence is that the Book of Mormon clearly was compiled by multiple authors.

With AI making it possible for ordinary people to simply and quickly perform detailed studies like this, I decided to run my own as sort of a quadriplegic check to make sure that the Book of Mormon really does identify different authorship thought the text as it claims it does.

I asked Grok to examine the text of the Book of Mormon and run an independent stylometric analysis on the full text of the Book of Mormon. It identified 9 distinct authors and writing styles. I then also added in the Book of Abraham, The Visions of Moses (Moses Chapter 1), Book of Enoch (Moses 6-8) and Joseph Smith History to see if each of these also demonstrated different writing styles and authorship.

Spoiler alert. They do.

Now AI makes mistakes all the time, so I’m not saying these results are perfect, but the patterns are pretty conclusive. Here’s what Groks stylometric Analysis found:

1. Function Word Frequencies

We looked at how often common “connector” words are used (and, the, of, unto, that, behold, came, i/my/me, lord/god, etc.). Different authors naturally use these words at different rates, creating unique stylistic fingerprints.

The results showed clear differences. A few notable outliers:

• Alma the Younger used significantly more “unto,” “that,” “behold,” “Jesus,” and “Christ” — perfectly matching his intense, direct, doctrinal sermon style.
• Mormon (the main abridger) relied heavily on “and,” “of,” “was,” and “came” — exactly what you’d expect from someone summarizing and connecting large amounts of historical material.
• Jacob 5 (the Zenos allegory) stood out sharply from the rest of Jacob’s writings, with higher repetition of “and” and “came” and much lower personal pronouns, supporting that it is a quoted ancient text.
• Moses Chapter 1 has an extremely strong visionary voice — very high usage of “behold,” “i/my/me,” and “lord/god,” giving it a majestic, personal, face-to-face revelation feel.
• Book of Abraham (chapters 1–3) shows a formal, patriarchal tone with elevated “unto,” “i/my/me,” and “lord/god,” while still feeling distinct from both Book of Mormon voices and Moses 1.
• Moses 6–8 (Enoch material) sits comfortably in the ancient narrative/patriarchal range — similar to Nephi and Mormon but with its own balance.

Most notably, Joseph Smith—History is clearly different from all the ancient-style texts. It uses far fewer archaic words like “unto” and “behold,” while showing higher usage of straightforward modern connectors (“and,” “the,” “of,” “in”). This creates a recognizable 19th-century personal history tone that stands apart from the scriptural voices.

2. Average Sentence Length

We measured how long each author’s sentences tend to be.

• Jacob 5 had the longest sentences (34+ words) — fitting for its complex allegory.
• Isaiah also had long, poetic sentences.
• Alma the Younger and Enos used shorter, more direct sentences.
• The longest sentences appear in highly elevated, visionary, or poetic texts: Jacob 5, Moses 1, Abraham, and Isaiah.
• Joseph Smith—History (24.6) is noticeably shorter and more straightforward than most of the scriptural texts — consistent with 19th-century personal writing.
• There is significant variation even among the “ancient” texts, which supports the idea of multiple distinct voices.

This is another way the voices feel distinct.

3. Vocabulary Richness (Type-Token Ratio)

This measures how many unique words each author uses relative to the total number of words.

Key Insights:

• The highest vocabulary richness appears in Moses Chapter 1 and Enos — both highly personal, visionary, and emotionally intense texts.
• Book of Abraham and Isaiah also score very high, showing sophisticated and varied language.
• Jacob 5 remains the lowest — which makes sense because it is a highly repetitive allegory.
• Mormon is also relatively low, consistent with someone doing a lot of historical summarizing and repeating narrative formulas.
• Joseph Smith—History sits right in the middle of the pack (17.9%). It is not extremely rich or poor, which is typical of straightforward 19th-century autobiographical writing.

Jacob 5 is one of the most unique parts of the Book of Mormon. In our analysis, it has the lowest vocabulary richness of any major section. It repeats the same words and phrases instead of using lots of different words. The Book of Mormon claims that it is a brass plates account from a prophet Zenos that is a long allegory about an olive tree (something Joseph Smith would not be familiar with). Instead of trying to sound fancy, it keeps hammering the same ideas and images over and over.

This kind of heavy repetition is more evidence of it being an ancient work. Repetition was not only common, but necessary in ancient times because people didn’t have books or easy ways to write things down. They used repetition to make stories easier to memorize and pass down orally. Many ancient teachings, parables, and prophecies were turned into songs or poems where repeating key phrases were used like the chorus of a song to help people remember them better. This is exactly how ancient Hebrew allegories and parables worked.

The vast differences in this the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon also strengthens the evidence of multiple authors. If Joseph Smith was just making it all up, you’d expect him to write this “impressive” chapter with more varied, flowery language. Instead, it has a completely different feel from regular Jacob or Mormon’s writing. The repetitive, focused style matches ancient writing techniques that Joseph simply wouldn’t have known in 1829. They stylometric analysis demonstrates that Jacob was really quoting a much older prophet named Zenos.

4. “And It Came to Pass” Frequency

This famous phrase appears very differently across sections:

Key Findings:

• Mormon uses the phrase the most (8.9 times per 1,000 words), which fits his role as the main historian and abridger who constantly connects events.
• Jacob 5 (Zenos) is also very high (7.8), showing its repetitive, allegorical style.
• Ancient narrative-style sections (Moses 6–8, Ether, Moses 1, Nephi) all use it frequently — this was a common ancient narrative connector.
• Sermon-style voices like Alma the Younger and King Benjamin use it much less, as they are more direct and exhortative.
• Isaiah almost never uses it (0.8), which fits its poetic/prophetic style.
• Joseph Smith—History has zero occurrences of “and it came to pass.”

This is a very clear distinction. The revealed scriptural texts (Book of Mormon, Moses, Abraham) regularly use this ancient phrase as a storytelling connector, while Joseph’s personal history is written in straightforward 19th-century English without it.

This pattern strongly supports the idea of multiple ancient authors — the phrase appears heavily where the text claims ancient origins, but is completely absent when Joseph is writing in his own natural voice.

5. Overall Visualization

Author / Text	Avg Sentence Length	Vocabulary Richness (TTR %)	“And it came to pass” (per 1k)
Jacob 5 (Zenos)	34.2	14.8%	7.8
Moses Chapter 1	33.8	23.1%	5.9
Isaiah	31.8	22.1%	0.8
Book of Abraham 1–3	31.7	21.4%	4.8
Mormon (abridger)	29.8	15.6%	8.9
Moses 6–8 (Enoch)	28.4	19.7%	7.2
Nephi	28.4	18.2%	5.2
Jacob (general)	26.7	19.5%	4.1
King Benjamin	24.1	18.7%	1.6
Moroni	23.5	17.3%	3.2
Alma the Younger	22.6	16.4%	1.9
Enos	21.8	23.4%	2.4
Joseph Smith—History	24.6	17.9%	0.0

We ran multiple stylometric tests (common word usage, average sentence length, vocabulary richness, and “and it came to pass” frequency) on many different voices in the Book of Mormon, plus the Book of Abraham, Moses Chapter 1, Moses 6–8 (Enoch), and Joseph Smith—History.

The results show clear differences in style between the various ancient voices. Some use long, majestic sentences (like Moses 1 and Jacob 5), others are very personal and word-rich (like Enos), while some are repetitive and narrative-heavy (like Mormon and Jacob 5). These differences line up well with the different roles and personalities the scriptures claim they had.

Most interestingly, Joseph Smith—History stands apart from all the others. It has shorter sentences, more modern wording, and zero use of the common ancient phrase “and it came to pass.” This suggests that when Joseph was writing in his own natural voice, it sounded noticeably different from the ancient records he translated.

Taken together, the data supports the Book of Mormon’s claim of having many different ancient authors rather than one single 19th-century writer trying to imitate them all.

What Does This Mean?

If Joseph Smith had invented the entire book, we would expect one fairly uniform writing style throughout. Instead, the data shows multiple consistent but different stylistic “fingerprints” that match the different prophets the book itself claims wrote it.

Either Joseph Smith was a literary genius who could flawlessly imitate multiple distinct ancient writing styles across hundreds of pages — yet somehow never once mentioned or took credit for this incredible skill — or the Book of Mormon is exactly what it claims to be: a genuine ancient record written by many different prophets, translated by the gift and power of God to testify of Jesus Christ and teach us about the covenants He makes with His children.

Joseph was not known as a polished writer. He had very little formal education, and the surviving examples of his own handwriting show a man who struggled with spelling, grammar, and composition. In one of the rare passages written in his own hand, Joseph described his education this way:

“It required the exertions of all that were able to render any assistance for the support of the Family therefore we were deprived of the bennifit of an education suffice it to say I was mearly instructid in reading writing and the ground rules of Arithmatic which const[it]uted my whole literary acquirements.”

That is not the writing of a trained author. It is elementary, rough, and filled with the kind of spelling and grammatical errors one would expect from a young man with limited schooling on the American frontier.

Emma Smith made the same point even more forcefully. As one of Joseph’s earliest scribes and the person who knew his abilities most intimately, she said that Joseph

“could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon.”

That reality created a problem for early critics. If Joseph was a fraud, then where did the book come from? If he was too uneducated to produce it himself, then critics needed another author. Solomon Spaulding became the undisputed author for five decades.

Solomon Spaulding and Manuscript Found

Solomon Spaulding was a former minister, Revolutionary War veteran, Dartmouth graduate, and amateur writer. Around 1812, while living in New Salem, now Conneaut, Ohio, he wrote an unpublished historical romance usually called “Manuscript Found” or “Manuscript Story.”

The story was framed as if it were a translation of an ancient record discovered in a cave near the remains of an old fort on the west bank of the Conneaut River. In Spaulding’s story, a group of Romans from the days of Constantine are blown off course, cross the Atlantic, and arrive in America. The story then describes their interactions, wars, governments, and religion among the ancient inhabitants of the land.

At first glance, the story seems to have some parallels with the Book of Mormon. Spaulding had written about ancient people in America. The Book of Mormon was also about ancient people in America. For those already convinced Joseph Smith could not have produced the book, Spaulding became an attractive explanation for the origins of the Book.

How the Theory Began

In 1833, Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, a former Latter-day Saint who had been excommunicated from the Church for committing adultery while serving a Mission. After being re-baptized, and then was excommunicated again he became bitter and hostile to the church, vowing to wash Joseph Smith’s blood with his own hands. Somehow he heard reports that Solomon Spaulding had written a manuscript that somehow resembled the Book of Mormon. Hurlbut traveled to gather statements from Spaulding’s family, neighbors, and acquaintances.

Hurlbut gathered eight major statements from people connected to Spaulding who claimed that Spaulding’s manuscript resembled the Book of Mormon. These included statements from John Spaulding, Martha Spaulding, Henry Lake, John N. Miller, Aaron Wright, Oliver Smith, Nahum Howard, and Artemas Cunningham.

These witnesses claimed to remember similarities between Spaulding’s manuscript and the Book of Mormon, including ancient American peoples, wars, migrations, and even the Book of Mormon names Nephi and Lehi. Some claimed that Spaulding’s manuscript used a biblical style, including phrases like “and it came to pass.”

Those statements became part of E. D. Howe’s 1834 book, Mormonism Unvailed, the first major anti-Mormon book ever published. Howe used Hurlbut’s material to argue that the historical portion of the Book of Mormon had originally been written by Solomon Spaulding more than twenty years earlier and had then somehow been transformed into Latter-day Saint scripture.

To many readers in the 1830s, these statements sounded convincing. Newspapers repeated the claim. Critics promoted it. For decades, the Spaulding theory became one of the most common non-believing explanations for the origin of the Book of Mormon.

But the theory had serious problems from the beginning.

The Problem with the Witnesses

The first problem was memory. The witnesses were not comparing the Book of Mormon to a manuscript sitting in front of them. They were recalling something Spaulding had supposedly read or discussed more than twenty years earlier.

Human memory is especially unreliable when people are asked, decades later, to compare an old unpublished story with a controversial new religious book they already dislike.

The second problem was that Howe and Hurlbut actually obtained a Spaulding manuscript. He found it through Spaulding’s widow and family connections. But when Hurlbut examined it, it was not close to the Book of Mormon. It was a very different kind of story.

The manuscript did not contain Nephi, Lehi, Lamanites, Nephites, Moroni, Zarahemla, golden plates, Christ’s visit to the Americas, prophetic sermons, covenant theology, or the sweeping doctrinal structure of the Book of Mormon. It was a fictional romance about Romans who crossed the ocean and arrived in America.

But for anti-Mormons more interested in destroying Joseph Smith and the Church, the truth didn’t actually matter. What mattered was convincing people that Joseph Smith was a fraud, and with the obvious problem that the actual manuscript did not match the accusations.

So the theory had to be adapted.

The Spaulding Theory Becomes the Spaulding-Rigdon Theory

Neither Howe nor Hurlbut seemed to believe Joseph Smith was educated or competent enough to have produced the Book of Mormon. And Spaulding’s manuscript alone could not explain the book either. It did not have the theology. It did not have the doctrinal complexity. It did not have the scriptural framework.

So critics added Sidney Rigdon.

The revised theory argued that Spaulding wrote the basic ancient-American story, and Sidney Rigdon acquired it through a Pittsburgh printing office. Spaulding had reportedly taken his manuscript to the firm of Patterson and Lambdin, hoping to get it published. Since Rigdon had lived in the Pittsburgh area, critics claimed he must have had access to the manuscript, copied or stole it, added the religious material, and later secretly worked with Joseph Smith to publish it as the Book of Mormon.

This is how the Spaulding theory became the Spaulding-Rigdon theory.

But this version created even more problems. It required critics to prove several things at once:

1. That there was another Spaulding manuscript, different from the one Hurlbut actually found.
2. That this missing manuscript contained the basic storyline of the Book of Mormon.
3. That Sidney Rigdon somehow stole or copied the manuscript.
4. That Rigdon secretly edited or expanded it.
5. That Rigdon had a hidden relationship with Joseph Smith before the Book of Mormon was published.
6. Tthat Joseph Smith was then able to dictate the Book of Mormon in front of witnesses while somehow concealing this manuscript source.
7. That Sidney Rigdon pretended initial opposition to the Book of Mormon and denied that he had never seen or talked to Joseph Smith before 1831.

None of that chain has ever been historically verified.

The Rediscovery of the Manuscript

Despite its reliance on so many assumptions, for decades the Spaulding theory survived partly because people had not seen Spaulding’s actual manuscript. The manuscript disappeared among old papers connected to E. D. Howe.

Then, in 1884, it was rediscovered in Honolulu, Hawaii, by L. L. Rice, who had acquired papers from Howe’s old newspaper office. Rice recognized the importance of the manuscript and sent it to James H. Fairchild, president of Oberlin College.

Fairchild and others examined it and concluded that it had nothing to do with the Book of Mormon. Instead of vindicating the Spaulding theory, the rediscovered manuscript completely debunked the theory.

Fairchild said,

“Mr. Rice, myself, and others compared it with the Book of Mormon, and could detect no resemblance between the two, in general or in detail. There seems to be no name or incident common to the two. The solemn style of the Book of Mormon, in imitation of the English Scriptures, does not appear in the manuscript.”

The manuscript was later published, allowing readers to compare it with the Book of Mormon for themselves. The result was devastating for the theory. Spaulding’s story was not a lost version of the Book of Mormon. It was a frontier historical romance with a completely different plot, style, purpose, and religious content.

Spaulding’s story is about a Roman named Fabius, whose record is supposedly found on parchment rolls in a cave near Conneaut Creek. Fabius and other Romans are sailing toward Britain when a storm blows them across the Atlantic and they end up in America. They first meet a people called the Deliwans, then later encounter the Ohians, a more developed mound-building society. The story includes Roman characters Crito, Lucian, and Trojanus, native leaders Lobaska and King Bombal of Kentuck, religious festivals, native songs, courtship customs, ironwork, pottery, architecture, political reforms, a fabricated priesthood, and even a conflict called the War of the Blue Feather.

The witnesses had claimed to remember Book of Mormon names and scriptural language in Spaulding’s manuscript. But the rediscovered manuscript showed that those claims were just not true. It did not contain the Book of Mormon’s distinctive names. It did not read like scripture. It did not use the Book of Mormon’s prophetic voice or contain theology.

That forced defenders of the Spaulding theory into an even weaker position. They now had to argue that the manuscript discovered in 1884 was not the important one. The real source, they claimed, must have been a second Spaulding manuscript that had disappeared.

In other words, after the known manuscript failed, the theory had to depend on an additional unknown manuscript.

The Printing Story Also Works Against the Theory

The publication history of the Book of Mormon also cuts against the idea that Joseph was secretly working from a polished literary manuscript prepared by educated conspirators.

When Joseph sought to print the Book of Mormon, he first approached E. B. Grandin in Palmyra. Grandin refused. Joseph and Martin Harris then approached other printers, including Jonathan Hadley and Thurlow Weed, who also refused. Eventually, Elihu F. Marshall of Rochester agreed to print it. Only after that did Joseph and Martin return to Grandin, who finally agreed after Martin Harris mortgaged part of his farm to secure the cost.

This is not the behavior of someone sitting on a polished fraud with powerful backers and an easy path to publication. The process was uncertain, resisted, and financially risky.

If Joseph, Rigdon, or some secret group had carefully manufactured the Book of Mormon as a literary deception, the publication story is surprisingly clumsy. There was no smooth publishing plan. There was no wealthy sponsor waiting in the background. There was no obvious network of conspirators moving the book into print. There was a young, undereducated Joseph Smith, a manuscript produced by dictation, reluctant printers, and Martin Harris risking his farm to get the book published.

Why the Theory Survived

The Spaulding theory survived because it tried to solve a real problem for critics: Joseph Smith does not look like the kind of person who could naturally produce the Book of Mormon.

He was poor. He had little schooling. He was not a trained writer. His own handwriting shows limited ability. His wife said he could not write or dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, much less produce a book like the Book of Mormon.

So critics looked for someone else. Solomon Spaulding supplied a possible ancient-American story. Sidney Rigdon supplied a possible educated theologian. Together, they seemed to offer an explanation.

But the theory only works if the evidence is missing at every point where evidence is most needed.

The manuscript that exists does not match the Book of Mormon. The second manuscript required by the theory has never been found. The chain of custody from Spaulding to Rigdon has never been proven. The alleged pre-1830 connection between Rigdon and Joseph Smith has never been established. And the theory still has to explain how Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon in the presence of witnesses without using a visible manuscript.

That is why the Spaulding-Rigdon theory creates more problems than it solves.

Conclusion

The simplest historical fact remains: Joseph Smith was an undereducated young man with limited writing ability, yet the Book of Mormon came through him.

Believers explain that through revelation and translation by the gift and power of God. Critics have tried to explain it through stolen manuscripts, hidden collaborators, and elaborate chains of custody. But the Spaulding theory, one of the earliest and longest-running attempts to replace Joseph’s own explanation, has never carried the historical weight required.

It began with affidavits based on decades-old memories. It shifted when the actual manuscript failed to match the accusation. It depended on Sidney Rigdon when Spaulding alone was not enough. And after the manuscript was rediscovered in 1884, the theory was forced to rely on a second, missing manuscript that has never been produced.

The theory exists because critics needed another author. But needing another author is not the same thing as proving one.

Solomon Spaulding Book of Mormon Origins

May 29, 2026

Did Joseph Smith Plagiarize the Late War?

May 29, 2026

Moroni and Cumorah: Did Joseph Smith Copy These Names from Maps?

April 13, 2026

Joseph Smith’s Secret Dartmouth Education

April 3, 2026

Joseph Smith Plagarized Adam Clarke

December 26, 2025

Sources and Related Content:

Doctor Hurlbut Chronology

I had assumed that somewhere along the translation process, either when Oliver and Joseph were translating, when they copied the original manuscript over to the printer’s copy, or when the printer was reading the text and setting the type, they saw that the text was similar and decided to pull the passages from the Bible and use those words.

But as I’ve studied Church history, the record shows that Joseph Smith didn’t even have a copy of the Bible while he and Emma were living in Harmony, where most of the Book of Mormon translation took place. The printer and Oliver Cowdery also claimed that they never looked at a Bible in the scribing or typesetting process.

So how did the text of the Book of Mormon end up in an earlier English language, using almost the exact phrasing of the KJV Bible?

Royal Skousen, who has done extensive study on the text of the Book of Mormon, including the original manuscripts, believes the translation Joseph Smith received was almost as if someone else had already translated it into English, perhaps Moroni, and that Joseph Smith was being revealed that English translation.

But why so close to the KJV?

For a Wise Purpose

The King James Version of the Bible was THE English Bible for three centuries. It was considered by most protestants to be the infallible word of God, and for many sects and religious groups, it was viewed as perfectly inspired. There were no additional English translations of the Bible until the 1880’s and even then, many Christians believed that any variations from sacred KJV text were adding to or taking away from the Bible.

In rural America, many families had only the King James Version of the Bible in the home. This became the book that many people learned to read from, and it and the language it used was an important part of the culture.

With this context, and with the worldview of many Americans in the early days of the Church, it makes sense that the Book of Mormon, especially the scriptural passages that quote the Bible, needed to sound exactly like the Bible version they knew. Otherwise, many potential investigators may have been immediately skeptical.

Multiple Layers of Ancient Meaning

Ancient languages like Hebrew use all kinds of words with multiple meanings. Sometimes, to really understand the text and its multiple layers of meaning, you also have to understand the Hebrew or Greek puns. The reality is that puns rarely translate well into English.

You have to look at the original language. With Google Translate and artificial intelligence, it is now easier for anyone to study different meanings and puns in the original language.

Since we don’t have the original text or even the original language of the Book of Mormon, it makes sense that the shared biblical passages would be almost exactly the same as the Bible version, where we do have the Hebrew and Greek source texts. We can look back at those texts to get greater meaning.

Shortly after my mission, I had two friends who had recently returned from Spanish-speaking missions.

One told the joke, “What is the laziest animal?”

“The fish, because all it does all day long is nada, nada, nada.”

The other friend, who understood Spanish, thought this was hilarious, but it went right by me. I knew from my three years of junior high Spanish that nada meant “nothing,” but I made no connection between nada and fish, so it just wasn’t funny. But they understhood the pun and knew that nada also means “swims,” which made the joke an actual joke.

The pun only makes sense in the original language. In English, “nothing” and “swim” are not related.

This is the same with much of scripture. To understand the deeper meaning, we need to study the original text and its multiple layers.

KJV “Errors” What the Critics Claims Get Wrong

Critics like the CES Letter claim Joseph Smith simply copied Bible passages from the King James Version into the Book of Mormon, including supposed translation errors. The argument is framed as a gotcha: if Joseph was a prophet, why would the Book of Mormon repeat KJV mistakes?

But that argument depends on one major assumption: that these are actually mistakes.

When you look at the original Hebrew meanings and the way English words were used in the 17th century, the claim falls apart. These supposed “errors” actually are valid translations, older English definitions, or reasonable ways to express the meaning of the Hebrew text.

Jeremy Runnells did not originate this argument. The CES Letter repackages earlier critical work about the Book of Mormon’s use of King James Bible language. Stan Larson was making this kind of argument by the mid-1980s, and David P. Wright later made a more detailed academic argument about Book of Mormon Isaiah.

The problem is that the CES Letter presents these earlier claims in a simplified chart and assumes these Biblical interpretations are the undisputed “correct translations.” They aren’t. In several cases, the supposed corrections are modern translation preferences or narrow readings of Hebrew words that had a wider range of meaning.

The chart looks official, but the argument behind it is pathetically weak.

None of these examples prove Joseph Smith copied false KJV translations into the Book of Mormon. In several cases, the KJV wording is directly supported by the original Hebrew. In other cases, the issue is not mistranslation at all, but older English definitions that modern readers may misunderstand.

The Isaiah 2:16 example is especially interesting. The Book of Mormon includes “ships of the sea” in addition to “ships of Tarshish,” a detail not found in the KJV wording but found in the Septuagint. This provides additional evidence that Joseph Smith did translate the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God as this is a detail Joseph would not have known from the King James Bible alone.

The CES Letter argument does not show what it claims to show. Every supposed KJV “error” it brings up is either a correct translation, a defensible rendering, or a misunderstanding of older English and Hebrew meaning.

CES Letter Supposed KJV Errors:

They talk as though “Mormonism” were an ethnicity. As though there were something in the blood. As though having the right grandparents, the right zip code, the right memories of casseroles and church basketball and trek and EFY and green Jell-O and dirty sodas and ward culture means you retain some inherited authority to define what the Church is, what it should preserve, and what it owes the world.

The Church of Jesus Christ is not an aesthetic, it’s not an ethnicity, it’s not a regional brand, it’s not even a culture. It is a church.

It has doctrine, commandments, ordinances, priesthood keys, and covenants. It has admission requirements, and it has boundaries.

“Mormon” Isn’t a Culture

Beginning in the early- to mid-2010s, there was a tendency among online Latter-day Saint malcontents to claim they had a special say over what happened in the Church by listing their Latter-day Saint bona fides before they launched into whatever complaint they had.

It started to become an embarrassing cliche, but these critics would usually talk about callings in which they served, people they knew, and their heritage in the Church, as though this gave them some special authority to critique.

Perhaps the most groan-worthy example of this was when The Washington Post described James Huntsman, who at that point was no longer a member of The Church of Jesus Christ, as “Mormon royalty” because of who his family was. 

At the time, these complaints were usually focused on tensions between the critics’ progressive American beliefs and the positions of a worldwide church. And the attitude was imported from Reddit, a social media site that is designed to encourage groupthink, and condescension against those outside its own orthodoxy. 

At the same time, a trend began of conceptualizing a Latter-day Saint culture that was severable from the doctrine and practice of the Church, led by many of the mommy bloggers and eventual influencers. They showed their lives online, but often with the religious portions omitted or left on the edges to make the lifestyle content more broadly accessible. 

Increasingly, those who were in the space, but not faithful Latter-day Saints themselves, would use the word “Mormon” to describe themselves, their spaces, or their movement. In fact, on Reddit, they called the “subreddit” dedicated to criticizing The Church of Jesus Christ and its members “r/mormon.” 

This trend has continued as the Church’s actual membership increasingly lives outside Utah and the United States, among people who would be quite confused by carrots in Jell-O.

Why Would They Still Want the Name?

I understand why so many people want to associate themselves with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the “Mormon” name. 

For the purposes of marketing, “Mormon” clearly interests people. Latter-day Saints have incredible reputations worldwide. I can understand why those who don’t choose to support The Church of Jesus Christ or live by its covenants and doctrines still want to participate in the sense of community and identity it provided. I would also love it if I could keep getting paychecks from my employer without doing any of the work. 

But just because their desire to stay associated with the Church makes sense doesn’t mean that reasonable people need to abide by it. 

John Dehlin, for example, criticized the Church with false information for so long and so consistently that he was excommunicated over a decade ago. His podcast, “Mormon Stories,” is not about “Mormon stories,” nor has it been for a very long time. The podcast is, by all rights, about “Ex-Mormon Stories” or “Anti-Mormon Stories.”

So when he recently described himself in a podcast as “Mormon,” it makes sense, it’s just not true, not in any meaningful way. 

And we would do well to look at such claims the same way Europeans do when Americans claim European identity—with cringe. 

“You’re not Irish. Maybe your great grandparents were Irish, but then they left, and you’ve been in America for a very long time.” 

Names have incredible power, which is why they are protected under trademark law. I understand faith transitions can be difficult, and they implicate identity in difficult ways. But if you apostasize from your faith, you don’t get to keep claiming it. Or at least people should ignore you when you try to. 

The process of leaving a faith fundamentally changes the way you think about it, the way you talk about it, and the way you remember it. This is why the Washington Post’s reporting on James Huntsman was so harmful. If he were in fact a “Mormon” who chose to sue the Church, that would communicate something very different about what was happening than the fact that he was an ex-Mormon and chose to sue the Church. 

And that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of his point. But for someone on the inside to make certain kinds of claims is just different than when someone on the outside does the same. People understand this instinctively. 

So when someone uses “Mormon” to describe themselves or their community after they’ve actually left, they are trying to appropriate credibility they haven’t earned. 

I understand that many people desire to discuss their experience growing up within The Church of Jesus Christ even if they’ve left the Church. There is a simple, easy-to-understand way to describe this: “Ex-Latter-day Saint” or “Ex-Mormon.”

Didn’t You Give Up on the Name “Mormon”?

Let’s talk about the word “Mormon” for a minute. Latter-day Saints no longer choose to describe themselves this way. We choose to find every opportunity we can to refer to Jesus Christ and our membership in His Church. 

Some have attempted to argue that because Latter-day Saints no longer use the description “Mormon” for themselves, it is free for others to use. 

It’s not. 

Kentucky Fried Chicken has recently decided to no longer use that name for its restaurants; it is now called just KFC. 

When The Church of Jesus Christ announced a reprioritization of its name, there were several simple short plugins for existing nomenclature. For example:

• “Mormons” could be replaced with “Latter-day Saints”
• “Mormon Church” could be replaced with “The Church of Jesus Christ”
• “Mormon Tabernacle Choir” could be replaced with the “Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square”

But there was one common phrase that did not have an easy replacement: “Mormonism.” And as a writer who has had to deal with this limitation, the more I’ve worked through it, the more obvious it has become to me that this was not an oversight. 

In today’s Church, there is no single “Mormonism”; there are hundreds of cultures around the world as people live the gospel in their own countries and settings.

That thing we call “Mormonism” doesn’t actually do a good job of explaining the culture of all the people who believe in The Book of Mormon. There are lots of smaller cultures within it, and being left without an obvious word I’ve had to think more carefully about what I actually mean. Do I mean Word of Wisdom culture, or do I simply mean Utah culture. 

There is a culture, and it’s probably the culture you think of when I say “Mormonism,” but it is increasingly niche, and we need to find ways to describe it that do not implicate nearly 18 million people worldwide. It is a contemporary Utah-descended lifestyle culture that is downstream from an older pioneer world. It’s an evolved pioneer culture. It could be called “Utah culture” or “Intermountain West culture.” But it’s not “Mormon” culture, it’s not the culture of The Church of Jesus Christ, it’s one of many cultures within a worldwide gathering.

There’s nothing wrong with this evolved pioneer culture. I love funeral potatoes. But to suggest that Taylor Frankie Paul, the star of “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” is part of “Mormonism” because she drinks dirty sodas, even after she chose to leave, is offensive. 

So I, for one, greeted the news that The Church of Jesus Christ was suing “Mormon Stories” for trademark infringement with gratitude. 

Why Do You Care Who Calls Themselves “Mormon”?

I should be clear: the Church isn’t suing John Dehlin simply because he’s using the word “Mormon” to describe his podcast. The Church is suing him because he uses the word in conjunction with visual imagery specifically to trick people into listening to his podcast, and he refuses to include a disclaimer. 

The fact that most people will quickly be able to tell, after clicking on his podcast, that he is a malcontent doesn’t change the underlying lie. I still couldn’t start a restaurant called “Kentucky Fried Chicken” even if it sold hamburgers to prevent confusion. Trading on that company’s identity to get people in the front door is a problem in itself.

But just because The Church of Jesus Christ is not going after Dehlin solely for using the word “Mormon” doesn’t mean that people of good faith shouldn’t.

This is especially important because it causes incredulous media to turn to these folks as experts on The Church of Jesus Christ, and it can impact members and investigators who are not frequently online. 

Mormon may not be the name we call ourselves, but it is still an important part of who we are. The nickname comes from a record of Jesus Christ visiting people on another continent. That matters to us. Imagine an ex-Muslim starting a podcast about “Quran Stories” and saying that this isn’t a problem because they don’t call themselves “Qurans,” they call themselves “Muslims.”

But that’s not what has happened. Those who have left the faith have not joined these other churches in good faith to continue describing themselves as “Mormon.” This also isn’t about well-meaning Latter-day Saints who may be struggling with a testimony or with standards but who still see themselves as within the community. This is about those who leave, and who, in many cases, are actively seeking to tear down the work done by people who actually love The Book of Mormon, continuing to use the word because it helps them generate more web traffic than an honest name would. 

The Subtle Racism of “Cultural Mormonism”

For a church community that is increasingly populated and run by people from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the idea that people get special say over what happens within the community because of who their grandparents were brings up unfortunate racial problems.

You gain membership through baptism, and you maintain that membership through covenant keeping. 

If you don’t do those two things, then you don’t have a seat at the table; you’ve decided to leave the table. That spot is for new converts learning to leave their own culture for the gospel way, who are trying every day to live in faith and honesty. Trying to freeze Mormon identity to a past time based on what our ancestors were doing dismisses the real work of those all over the world who don’t have that background, but who are doing the work. 

It is their voices that need to be heard, not the person whose grandfather worked with a Romney, or who was a district leader on a foreign language-speaking mission, or who served as second counselor in a bishopric but then decided to leave because the Church’s position on some social issue just wasn’t popular enough for him and his Instagram followers. That person isn’t “Mormon Royalty,” that person isn’t “Culturally Mormon,” that person doesn’t have “Mormon stories,” that person isn’t Mormon. He left. And I wish him the best. But we’re busy trying to build Zion, and you can’t steal our name to help tear it down. 

The post Who is a Mormon? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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I still remember pulling out the VHS of “God’s Army” in my parents’ living room. As a socially anxious high school sophomore, this was, in many ways, the first time I felt seen. These were my people, my quirks, my culture, packaged the same way as “The Prince of Egypt” or “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”

By my senior year, with the release of “The Singles Ward,” it was clear that not only could we portray ourselves, but we could laugh at ourselves, too. 

For many in my generation, the idea of “Latter-day Saint cinema” still calls up that very specific world: missionaries with comic timing, ward basketball, Utah County social codes, and the peculiar thrill of hearing one’s own subculture reflected back from a movie screen. That world was real. It mattered. It was commercially surprising while it lasted. And then, almost as suddenly as it arrived, it seemed to disappear. 

The feeling many people carry is not just that those movies ended, but that Latter-day Saint filmmaking itself somehow went quiet. 

But the story is much more varied and interesting than that. In many ways those early aughts productions set the stage for a burgeoning Latter-day Saint cinema today, best embodied by the new release “The Angel,” which may be bigger and more interesting than anything we’ve seen before. 

The Beginnings

Latter-day Saint cinema developed in fragments for nearly a century. Film was first used to disparage the faith. Movies like “A Trip to Salt Lake City” satirized the faith, while “A Victim of the Mormons” was more straightforward propaganda. 

In response, the Utah Moving Picture Company produced the film “One Hundred Years of Mormonism” in 1913. It was a monumental feature for its time and was shown for several years. In 1915, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints funded the film “The Life of Nephi,” though its projected sequels never materialized. 

By midcentury, institutions like the BYU Motion Picture Studio trained talent and produced hundreds of films for the Church’s use, while later decades expanded that world through visitors’ center films, pageant-style historical productions, television, and VHS. 

By the 1980s and 1990s, Latter-day Saints were not only appearing in and making mainstream entertainment, but were also building the technical skills, professional networks, and imaginative confidence that would make independent feature filmmaking possible. 

So while the modern story begins when “God’s Army” appeared in 2000, it did not come out of nowhere. It was a breakthrough—but it was a breakthrough built on generations. 

Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army” opened in March 2000 and proved that a movie made by a Latter-day Saint about recognizable Latter-day Saint life, and marketed primarily to Latter-day Saint viewers, could actually make money. It proved there was a profitable niche market and marked the beginning of a period in which filmmakers began to portray the tradition from the inside.

Sadly, a storyline in Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army 2” prompted a public feud between Dutcher and HaleStorm’s Kurt Hale, prompting the father of this period of Latter-day Saint cinema to leave the Church within a few years.

Novelty also proved not to be a permanent business model. By the middle of the decade, even people inside the movement were saying so out loud. In 2006, as “Church Ball” was being released, Hale was already describing a diminishing box office, an oversaturated market, and an audience that seemed tired of the cycle. He even suggested that “Church Ball” might be the last comedy of its kind and said the company was looking beyond the narrow niche toward a broader family audience. With uncertain returns, investors dried up, and audience interest began to evaporate. 

The old wave did not end because Latter-day Saints lost interest in seeing themselves onscreen. But eventually the movies had to offer something besides familiarity. In a 2014 reflection on the earlier boom, Jim Bennet said the “hunger” was still there but the novelty had worn off, and that now the movie had to actually be good. 

There was also a broader industrial change working against niche cinema. The old independent-film economy had long relied on the possibility that a modest theatrical run could be followed by meaningful life on DVD, where niche audiences often compensated for limited box-office reach. As DVD revenue collapsed in the late 2000s, that safety net deteriorated across the industry. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2009 that DVD sales, once a critical profit cushion for many films, had fallen sharply. 

The small, regionally concentrated Latter-day Saint film industry was especially vulnerable to that shift. Purchasing a DVD for the whole family to watch over and over again was a very different kind of investment than taking everyone out to the theater. And most of the Latter-day Saint film market was not in areas concentrated enough for theatrical runs. A market already strained by repetition suddenly lost one of the economic mechanisms that had made repetition survivable.

So yes, something ended. But what ended was a particular format: the local theatrical Latter-day Saint niche comedy and indie machine, dependent on insider recognition and modest expectations. 

The Middle

What followed has been harder to name because it is not one thing. There is no single banner under which all contemporary Latter-day Saint filmmaking began to march.

Once the first wave of niche comedies and insider-culture films began to lose steam, Latter-day Saint filmmaking stopped looking like a single movement and started breaking into distinct lanes. When that broader economic model weakened, the old “modest theatrical run, then long tail on home video” pattern became much harder to sustain. At the same time, scholars were already observing that filmmakers were experimenting with very different business models: some built their own mini-studios, some went straight to DVD or online sales, and some chased genuine crossover distribution. In other words, the industry did not die. It fragmented.

One of those fragments was the historical-devotional lane, and no figure matters more here than T.C. Christensen. If the HaleStorm comedies captured Mormon culture as social recognition, Christensen kept alive a very different idea of what Latter-day Saint cinema could be: memory, sacrifice, pioneer endurance, conversion, rescue. In the 2010s especially, films like “17 Miracles” and “Ephraim’s Rescue” showed that there was still a substantial audience for explicitly Latter-day Saint stories told with seriousness and reverence rather than irony. Christensen was not merely preserving an older form. He was proving that sincerity could still draw viewers, and that overtly Mormon material did not have to disappear simply because the joke-driven boom had cooled.

His 2025 release “Raising the Bar: The Alma Richards Story” demonstrates that the line of continuity is still alive. Every artistic ecosystem needs not only innovators but custodians: people who keep faith with inherited stories long enough for a later generation to rediscover their value under new conditions. Christensen has done that work. He has kept a flame alive that flashier players sometimes overlook.

A second fragment moved in almost the opposite direction. These films had unmistakable Latter-day Saint DNA, but were no longer primarily selling themselves as “Mormon movies.” This trend began with HaleStorm’s attempt at “Pride and Prejudice.” But while that thread didn’t stick in comedy, Ryan Little’s “Saints and Soldiers” created the look and style of film that did. Made on a reported $780,000 budget, it grossed about $1.31 million domestically, and the Los Angeles Times noted that while initiated viewers would catch its Latter-day Saint origins, those elements were never overt and the film could be easily appreciated by people with no particular background with the faith. The movie was not asking audiences to care because of its religion. It was asking them to care because it was a solid war drama that happened to be shaped by Latter-day Saint moral sensibilities.

That lane became even clearer in the 2010s with Garrett Batty’s work. “The Saratov Approach” grossed about $2.15 million domestically. Batty followed it with “Freetown,” a Liberian civil-war thriller based on the experience of Latter-day Saint missionaries (an artistic improvement in my estimation), but it did not recover its investment. 

Batty explicitly said he hoped “Freetown,” like “Saratov,” would appeal beyond Latter-day Saint audiences. These films still drew from Latter-day Saint experience, missionary life, faith under pressure, providence in danger, but they were being framed as thrillers, war stories, and survival dramas rather than as niche cultural products. That is one of the most important developments in the whole middle period: Latter-day Saint filmmakers were learning how to let their faith shape the story without requiring the audience to share all the background knowledge in advance.

But the market did not support that vision. While DVD sales had begun to sink, streaming had not yet started to acquire independent films. That meant the primary place for these films to find an audience was in theaters, and it was largely in Utah where there was enough audience to support them. 

There was a third fragment too, less visible to audiences but hugely important for what came next: infrastructure. In 2005, just as the HaleStorm peak began to fall, the state of Utah passed its first tax incentive for filming. These incentives successfully enticed Disney to film 27 movies in Utah through the mid-2000s, most famously the High School Musical franchise.

By the end of the 2010s, the New York Times was describing northern Utah as a kind of “mini-Hollywood,” built not only around independent faith-oriented films but around The Church of Jesus Christ’s own motion picture operations, BYUtv productions, local crews, and a growing freelance workforce. That meant Latter-day Saint-adjacent filmmaking did not simply survive as a market; it survived as a craft community. Crews kept working. Actors kept training. Editors, cinematographers, composers, and producers kept building experience.

These post-HaleStorm years saw some talented filmmakers keep the space alive, as key new artistic ideas emerged and the talent pool grew and matured.

What has begun to happen over the last few years is an evolution of the threads that came out of that heyday. Today’s filmmakers have inherited an audience trained by these experiments, and a filmmaking culture that had already spent years learning how to move beyond novelty toward craft, confidence, and authentic crossover. 

Today

By the time we arrive at the present, those fragments have begun to recombine. What had been separate lanes in the aftermath of the early aughts Mormon-cinema wave—historical drama, crossover genre work, local craft infrastructure, and festival culture—are now starting to feed one another. 

But as always, the story starts with the money. The old model depended on a Utah theatrical audience and then a healthy DVD afterlife. The current one is more layered: owned streaming platforms, licensing deals, audience memberships, eventized theatrical runs, festival exposure, and state incentives. For the first time since the early 2000s, Latter-day Saint filmmaking once again has an economic logic. It is not one logic, but several, and that may be exactly why this moment feels more durable.

No company better represents that new reality than Angel Studios. Angel is not simply the new HaleStorm. It is not primarily a Latter-day Saint movie studio making Latter-day Saint movies. It has a broader impact on the market: a Utah-rooted, values-branded distribution and audience-formation machine that has figured out how to turn moral affinity into a scalable business. Angel’s own 2025 annual report shows where the center of gravity now lies. The company reported roughly 2.0 million paying Angel Guild members by the end of 2025, and said those memberships accounted for 65.2% of its total revenue. Its licensing revenue, notably, includes deals with platforms such as Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. Angel also runs its own streaming platform. 

That is why Angel’s outsized role matters so much. The company says the Guild helps choose what it will market and distribute, that its theatrical strategy can crowd-fund prints and advertising, and that its “Pay it Forward” system lets viewers subsidize tickets for others. Traditional Hollywood separates greenlighting, marketing, and audience response into different silos. Angel has tried to collapse them into a single loop. It does not simply ask its audience to buy a ticket; it asks them to join, vote, fund, evangelize, and return. It’s almost like community organizing with a balance sheet. 

The scale of that model is real. Angel reported that it released eight films theatrically in 2025 and was ranked the No. 10 domestic distributor that year. Its reported grosses included $83.2 million for “The King of Kings,” $83.9 million for “David,” $15.2 million for “The Last Rodeo,” and $6 million for “Truth & Treason.” Even more revealing than any single title is the shape of the company itself: by the end of 2025 Angel said it had 137 titles under exclusive worldwide distribution, including 101 films and 36 television series. That is not a boutique religious sideline. It is a fully functioning media ecosystem with Utah roots and national reach.

But Angel is only one part of this era’s story. The broader Utah film scene has begun acting as though it no longer needs to choose between Latter-day Saint identity and indie legitimacy. Zions Indie Film Fest says that aloud. 

I spoke with Michell Moore, the festival co-director, who told me that they want Latter-day Saints to have a home at their film festival, but they want to unite with others of good faith and good artistic instincts. 

Today, the festival presents itself instead as a celebration of independent film “from filmmakers worldwide,” with a “sophisticated and diverse audience,” and Moore describes the event as “inviting everyone,” bridging the gap between filmmakers and audiences. 

Zions Indie Film Fest has come to the same instincts as Angel. It might seem like Latter-day Saint filmmaking is getting short shrift in this model. But Zions premiered T.C. Christensen’s latest film, and held a reading for a script about sister missionaries kidnapped by the cartel. They have managed to create a space that is broad and welcoming, rather than parochial, but where Latter-day Saint cinema can thrive and be represented.

The audience and participants have grown, and the courage to tell Latter-day Saint specific stories in that space is starting to burgeon.

When I spoke to filmmakers at the 2025 Zions Indie Film Fest, they were often concerned about the status of Utah’s tax incentives, as they feared work in the state might dry up if they went away. But in March 2026, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced a robust new round of initiatives allowing the industry to continue thriving in the state. 

In the last year of the previous program, it enabled 36 productions across 14 counties, generating more than $136 million in production spending and over 2,600 jobs, with more than 40% of those productions created by homegrown talent and local companies.

When there is a steady source of work for Latter-day Saint filmmakers in commercial work, it allows them the freedom to also tell and finance more personal stories. 

And while these filmmakers were sad that Sundance Film Festival was leaving the state, they didn’t predict any big consequences, describing it as less connected to the broader Utah-film ecosystem than you might imagine. 

Seen in that light, the current moment also feels like the first one in a long time that makes the artistic vision of 80s-era President of The Church of Jesus Christ, Spencer W. Kimball, sound plausible.

In 1977, he wrote, “Our writers, our motion picture specialists, with the inspiration of heaven, should tomorrow be able to produce a masterpiece which would live forever.”

For Latter-day Saint specialists, this nearly fifty-year-old call still lives near their hearts. And we’re beginning to see some talented auteurs who could take advantage of this new moment.

If Angel Studios represents industrial crossover, Burgin may represent artistic crossover. He is not simply another promising Utah filmmaker. He is one of the first younger directors in this space to show signs of understanding both the cultural inheritance and the formal challenge. 

Burgin began his career outside of Utah, and had to learn early on how to curate his religious impulses so they would be both authentic and appealing to newcomers to the tradition. From what he saw, he predicted in a 2017 essay the renaissance in interest in Latter-day Saints in film. This interest mostly happened with Latter-day Saints as the subjects, not the participants, of mocking portrayals in projects such as “Under the Banner of Heaven,” “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and “Heretic.” The interest in Latter-day Saints has skyrocketed, and the infrastructure for Latter-day Saints to supply that interest themselves may have finally arrived. Perhaps through Burgin himself.

Burgin’s premiere was his student film “Cryo.” “Cryo” follows five scientists who awake from a cryogenic sleep without memory and slowly realize there may be a murderer among them. You can tell that “Cryo” is a student film. The budget shows on screen. But it’s also a film full of ideas that come from his Latter-day Saint perspective. The film starts with a reference to Lazarus, and continually returns to themes of rebirth and resurrection. It quotes The Book of Mormon, references the veil of forgetfulness, and the protagonists slowly learn to place their salvific impulse outside of themselves. 

In an essay marketing the film, he argued that Latter-day Saint filmmakers need to “put story before sermon,” and expressed his belief that “we’ve barely scratched the surface of the narrative potential in our history, doctrine, culture and lore.” Perhaps more importantly, he sold the film to a national distributor, had a multi-city theatrical run, and turned a profit—practically unheard of for a student film.

Burgin has then proved that in a series of short films. “The Next Door” a thriller about two missionaries who go on the search when someone they’re teaching goes missing. “Java Jive” a comedy about a Latter-day Saint teen, who was hiding his faith, and then gets trapped trying to avoid drinking coffee. “A Scout is Kind” a talky coming-of-age film. These films premiered at important festivals, and won notable awards—including the top award for “A Scout is Kind” at Regal’s film festival in Tennessee. The outsider interest is sincere and real. 

His most critically successful film to date, “The Angel,” is a horror film about a mysterious figure arriving in 19th-century Southern Utah. He co-directed it with his wife Jessica, marking her directorial debut.

Each of these shorts is deeply Latter-day Saint, enjoyable, accessible to a broad audience, and at least as entertaining as the average night on television. (Usually much more.) 

This is a serious artistic program that is similar to the trajectories of many successful working directors. 

“The Angel” does something earlier Latter-day Saint cinema rarely trusted itself to do. It does not flatten Latter-day Saint culture into a set of jokes, nor reduce it to generic uplift. It fulfills the idea of moving past novelty from the aughts, but in an environment that may finally be able to support it. It treats Latter-day Saint history as aesthetically strange, symbolically rich, and cinematically potent. I am not a fan of horror films, and there are certainly horror beats that may not be for everyone, but this is neither gross-out or jump-scare horror. The fear comes from the sensation that it might just be a little bit real. 

The short has been included in Cannes’ Short Film Corner, screened widely on the festival circuit, and received a U.K. premiere at Soho Horror Fest. Doug Jones—one of modern genre cinema’s great creature actors—plays the title role. This is not an obscure or parochial project. It is a work of genre filmmaking that speaks in a cinematic language outsiders can understand while drawing directly on materials that feel unmistakably ours. After its successful festival run, the film was picked up by Alter, the largest and most prestigious dedicated horror short platform, and premiered last week to a wide audience. It is available to view online.  

While the cinematic community has clearly latched on, it also really struck a chord for me within the Latter-day Saint culture. I’m far from the only cultural critic to think so. Stephen Smoot, a Latter-day Saint commentator, wrote for The Interpreter Foundation:

The Angel … shows how horror, handled with restraint and reverence, can speak powerfully to Latter-day Saint audiences. Instead of relying on gore or cheap shocks, the Burgins build their story through atmosphere, psychological unease, and moral confrontation. The horror here is never gratuitous; it unsettles the viewer to reveal deeper truths about choice, faith, and unseen realities.

If the short generates enough interest, Burgin hopes to expand it into a feature called “The Third Wife,” which they say has drawn industry interest and the attention of the Sundance Institute.

That is why “The Angel” deserves to be praised in stronger terms than one usually uses for a promising short. It feels like a reclaiming. A reclaiming of authority over the stories themselves. 

When Barrett spoke to me, he was most excited about how interested individuals from outside the tradition are. “[Latter-day Saints] have made a concerted effort to fit in and even assimilate. That generational impulse is not without cause. But when telling our own stories, we have an opportunity to reclaim our peculiarity.”

In that sense, perhaps the most hopeful thing one can say about the current state of Latter-day Saint filmmaking is that it no longer needs to choose between exile and self-parody. It no longer needs to survive on insider jokes, nor disappear into vague inspirational branding. It can remember where it came from, learn from what Angel Studios has built, honor the faithfulness of T.C. Christensen, and build toward that future imagined by Spencer W. Kimball. 

The post The Future of Latter-day Saint Cinema appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

• Who do the Ward Building Representatives report to and get assistance from?
• Who do the Music people report to and get assistance from?
• Who does the Ward Technology Specialist report to and get assistance from?
• Who do the Young Single and Single Adult reps report to and get assistance from?
• Who do the Self-Reliance people report to and get assistance from?
• Who does the Email Communication Specialist report to and get assistance from?
• Who does the Disability Specialist report to and get assistance from?

Elder Holland: Almost always. In fact, if it’s not divulging too much, the secretary to the First Presidency once said that roughly 80 percent of the questions that come even to the First Presidency are answered in the handbook. We just don’t know the books well enough.

 

Elder Ballard: Then, we’re going to follow the policy along the line that you’re talking about, Elder Bednar. We’re not going to wander off. We’re going to keep anchored to where the basic policies of the Church are. Elder González, is that a good idea or not?

Elder González: Oh, it’s an excellent idea. We need to know the handbook very well. Someone said that if you want to have a secret well kept, put it in a handbook. So we hope that that will not be the case with these handbooks.

Over the years, we’ve had to correct many attempts by well-meaning leaders to change some of the programs of the Church. We’ve dealt with lighted candles on sacrament tables, with locally determined changes in the length of Church meetings, with elimination of Sunday School from the Sunday block meetings. We’ve created methods for providing visiting teaching to women gathered in large groups. The list goes on and is fairly long. I would not try to mention all the many changes, errors, and problems which can occur.

The point, however, is that in almost all cases, if the leaders would only read, understand, and follow the handbook, such problems would not occur. Whether you’ve been a lifelong member of the Church or are a relatively new member, consult the handbook when you are uncertain about a policy or procedure. You may think you know how to handle the situation when, in fact, you may be on the wrong track. There is safety in the handbooks.

The question is, is this claim valid?

Is this actually evidence that Joseph Smith was borrowing from Masonry to create the temple endowment ceremony?

To understand the connection between temples and Masonic ceremonies, it is necessary to first understand who the Masons were, where they came from, and what their purpose was.

Once that history and tradition are understood, the connection between Freemasonry and temple worship can be understood. Both draw from older religious patterns that were not known in the 1840’s, and provides further evidence that Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored sacred ancient ordinances.

History of Freemasons

As a somewhat secretive society, where part of their tradition was in keeping secrets, the history of the Masons is not entirely clear. Their practices and even their own stated history have changed over time. What is consistent is that Freemasonry teaches through symbols, instruction, and ritual.

There are several theories as to the origins of the Freemasons. Some believe it traces back to ancient builders, including those in Egypt. Masons have taught that their purpose was to preserve important truths during times when religious institutions were suppressing and punishing dissent.

Much of Masonic tradition centers on the story of Solomon’s Temple. The figure of Hiram Abiff is presented as the master builder and chief architect of Solomon’s Temple. He possessed knowledge and secrets of a Master Mason, stayed true to his covenants and refused to reveal what he had promised to keep sacred.

These stories are taught through stonemason tools and allegorical instruction, with the goal of teaching discipline, integrity, and building stronger men and a better society.

Modern Freemasonry developed out of medieval stonemason guilds. Over time, those working guilds evolved into a more symbolic system that carried forward older ideas, customs, and teachings in a new form.

What are Freemasons

Freemasonry began as a system of medieval stonemason guilds, where craftsmen organized to regulate their work and support one another. Over time, it shifted into what is called “speculative” Masonry, where members are no longer builders by trade but use the language and tools of stonemasonry as symbols to teach moral and ethical principles.

It functions today as a fraternal organization, not a religion, though members are required to believe in a Supreme Being. Its teachings often describe God as a master builder and use that framework to emphasize personal responsibility, integrity, service, and accountability.

Freemasonry is structured through a series of degrees, where members progress through symbolic rituals based on the tools and practices of craftsmen. These rituals are designed to teach lessons about virtue, self-improvement, and character through allegory and symbolism.

A central principle in Freemasonry is brotherhood. Members commit to support and look out for one another, building relationships based on trust and mutual aid. While its symbols are presented as ancient, its practices and structure have developed and changed over time rather than remaining fixed.

There are also traditions that associate stonemasonry with ancient craftsmen, including references to Jesus Christ as a builder by trade.

Temple worship serves a different purpose. It is centered on covenants and returning to God, with the goal of becoming like Him.

Freemasonry is Corrupted Ancient Temple Practice

When you study the history of Freemasonry alongside ancient temple worship, the connection points back to a shared priesthood origin.

Early Latter-day Saint leaders taught this same idea.

Heber C. Kimball – June 17, 1842

There is a similarity of priesthood in Masonry. Brother Joseph [Smith] says Masonry was taken from priesthood.

Willard Richards wrote:

“Masonry had its origin in the Priesthood. A hint to the wise is sufficient.”

Others, including Parley P. Pratt and Franklin D. Richards, described it as a partial or degenerated remnant of something once whole. According to these early church leaders, masonry preserves fragments, but not the complete system of priesthood and temple covenants.

Many of the first men who received the Nauvoo endowment were already experienced Freemasons, including Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Newel K. Whitney.

They were familiar with Masonic rituals and would have recognized the similarities. Yet none of them accused Joseph Smith of copying or stealing anything. Instead, their recorded reactions point to belief that the temple ceremonies were different in purpose and power. They sincerely believed that the rituals of freemasonry was fragments of ancient worship.

These early Mormon Masons described the ordinances as sacred, spiritual, and essential. They continued meeting with Joseph to receive further instruction and later helped administer these ordinances to others, showing their commitment to restored temple work.

Evidence of Ancient Temple Liturgy

Temple practices have ancient roots. These patterns appear in biblical texts, early Jewish practice, and early Christian worship, long before the development of Freemasonry.

Signs, tokens, gestures, sacred clothing, covenant language, and ritual progression are found in ancient cultures all over the world. These elements show up in ancient temple settings as part of how worship was structured and how sacred knowledge was taught and preserved. They are still utilized in some Orthodox Christian churches.

The Old Testament describes priests receiving specific garments, names, and ordinances tied to entering the presence of God. Early Christians also describe structured worship, symbolic acts, and teachings that were reserved for committed members and presented through symbolism.

Even in the early church in the Kirtland period, before any exposure to Nauvoo Masonry, there are references to symbolic elements tied to God’s presence. Phrases like “Holiness to the Lord,” the use of handclasps tied to covenant and fellowship, and the idea of God’s all-seeing eye appear in early revelations and writings.

These examples show that the core patterns found in temple worship are not new. They are consistent with older forms of worship that existed long before Freemasonry.

Egyptian Use of “Freemason” Signs and Hand Gestures

Thousands of years before medieval Freemasonry, ancient Egyptians were using formal hand signs and ritual gestures in temple and afterlife scenes. These are preserved all over Egyptian temples, papyri, and ritual art. These were part of Egyptian religious worship, found in their temples, and were focused on the preparation for for the afterlife. A person was taught, identified, and symbolically prepared to enter the presence of the gods.

One of the clearest examples is the ritual embracing hand grasp, where a divine being or holy figure takes another person by the wrist or hand and brings them forward. This is found all over Egyptian temples, especially in the holiest and most sacred parts. In ancient ritual language, this signaled acceptance, guidance, and being brought into a higher or holier presence.

Another Egyptian gesture is the cupped hand shape. The cupped hand shape represents receiving something into the hand, often tied to being given authority, responsibility, or a sacred role. In ancient temple language, this connects to the idea of “filling the hand,” which is associated with ordination and priesthood function.

The Papyrus found in Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham shows characters using hand and arm gestures that are similar to the Masonic signs.

Steven Smoot, points out that the figure on the left side of the screen extends its right arm in a standard Egyptian gesture of praise, hailing, or welcome, and the hand is in a cupping shape while holding the wedjat eye.

The figure to the right is seen raising his left arm to the square, with a V-shaped compass or flail above it. His right arm is extended forward.

A third figure in the bottom left has both hands raised.

These and thousands of other Egyptian records clearly show that ritual gestures were present in ancient temple settings long before Freemasonry.

Teaching through symbol, gesture, and ritual has been used across many ancient civilizations to communicate sacred ideas.

Use of “Masonic” Symbols By Early Christians

Early Christians used these so called “masonic symbols” in both clothing, textiles and Mosaics and in veils from the first century through early medieval times (before Freemasons).

These are found all over early Christian churches, but there are also some found in Jewish and other cultures where it was visualized that all types of people used these “gamma marks” in their clothing that clearly had something to do with religious symbols and meaning, and are often found as part of burial clothing.

These marks were also used to separate sacred from non sacred spaces.

While these marks are not exactly the same as used by Masons, or in the temple today. What is clear is that early Christians did use symbols as part of liturgic and ritual worship more than a thousand years before Freemasonry.

Read more about these ancient gamma marks here.

Joseph Smith Taught Temple Doctrine Long Before Becoming a Freemason

Temple doctrine and the idea of connecting heaven and earth were taught from the beginning of Joseph Smith’s ministry, starting with the First Vision and Moroni’s visits. Those early experiences already included themes of covenant, priesthood, and preparation tied to God’s work and glory to bring to pass the exaltation and eternal life of man.

Almost everything later taught in the temple can be traced to teachings and revelations given years before Joseph Smith became a Freemason in 1842. The timeline shows that core elements such as priesthood authority, covenants, washings and anointing’s, sealing power, eternal marriage, kingship, sacred clothing, and progression into God’s presence were introduced gradually between 1823 and 1841.

There are some similarities in both the symbolism and structure of Freemasonry and temple worship. The early Church members who were Masons and were instrumental in establishing the process for learning through the temple endowment learned from and likely adopted some of the framing structure and sequence found in Masonic rituals.

But the foundation of temple doctrine was already established well before Nauvoo Masonry. The record shows a consistent development of ideas tied to priesthood, ordinances, and entering God’s presence long before 1842.

Purpose of Freemasonry and the Temple are Completely Different

The purpose of the temple is completely different than the purpose of Freemasonry.

While some signs and symbols may appear similar, the meaning behind them is not. The same physical action can carry completely different meanings depending on context.

Raising a hand can mean taking an oath in a courtroom, sustaining someone in church, asking a question in a classroom, making a right turn when riding a bicycle, that the ball went out of bounds, or you’re just signaling to a teammate to pass you the ball. The motion of lifting the arm is the same, but the setting and purpose defines what it actually means.

Temple Worship is All About Covenants

When it comes to Temple worship, the essential part has always been the covenant itself. Throughout scripture, God’s people have made covenants in different ways and settings. The form can vary, but the focus is always on the relationship with God and the commitment being made. The key is not the outward presentation, but the willingness to make and keep those covenants.

In regards to the format and presentation of the endowment ceremony, Joseph Smith told Brigham Young,

This is not arranged perfectly; however, we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed, and I wish you to take this matter in hand and organize and systematize all these ceremonies.

The point was that there were improvements that could be made to better refine the focus and more effectively teach, through ritual and symbolism, the importance of covenants.

Temple ordinances are centered on that covenant relationship. They are sacred and personal, and their meaning is not determined by how similar they may appear to other rituals. What matters is what they represent and the commitment they require.

Why Did Joseph and Many Early Saints Become Freemasons?

In the 1800s, groups like the Freemasons were common as social, charitable, and community-building institutions that brought men together from different religious and political backgrounds.

The Nauvoo Masonic Hall became one of the key places for community and social gatherings, in addition to its use for Masonic rituals.

The Saints had been persecuted and driven out of Kirtland and Missouri because people saw them as different. Could their participation in Freemasonry, a widely accepted practice at the time and present in nearby Illinois towns in the 1840s, have been part of an effort to better integrate more into society?

In addition, one of the core ideas in Freemasonry is brotherhood, a commitment to look after one another. Given the persecution the Saints faced, it makes sense that Joseph Smith saw value in building relationships with men who had made commitments to support and defend each other.

The last words Joseph spoke at Carthage Jail as he was getting shot out of the window, “Oh Lord, my God,” is a recognized in Masonic distress call. In Freemasonry, this wording was an appeal for help that would have been understood by Masons present. Some have suggested this may have been an attempt to reach members of the mob who were Masons by invoking shared obligations.

Joseph Smith and many early Church leaders became Freemasons shortly before the introduction of the temple endowment, and there is undoubtedly a connection there.

Limited Ritual Culture

Most of the early Saints came from Protestant religious backgrounds that emphasized sermons and scripture but did not include formal liturgy or symbolic ceremony. Freemasonry used layered instruction, symbolic actions, and ordered presentation. That framework would have been new to many and may have served as an important introduction.

In that context, Masonry may have provided a setting where Joseph Smith and other leaders became more familiar with how symbolic teaching and ritual structure could be organized, shared, and presented.

This does not mean Masonry is the source of temple ordinances, but it helps explain why its timing may have had value and why there are some shared symbols. Freemasonry exposed early Church leaders to a structured system of symbols, ritual, and presentation at a time when they were preparing to administer sacred ordinances and covenants through the endowment.

Abandonment of Freemasonry

By the time the Saints left Nauvoo in early 1846, nearly 5,000–6,000 men and women had received their temple endowment. The majority of these were not Freemasons.

Once the Saints arrived in Utah, there was very little emphasis on Freemasonry. Even without a completed temple, the Endowment House was finished in 1855 and immediately became the center for temple ordinances. In contrast, a Masonic lodge was not established in Salt Lake City until 1865, and a Grand Lodge was not organized in Utah until 1872. These lodges were organized by non-Latter-day Saints, and for many years, members of the Church were not permitted to join or participate.

The lack of Freemasonry in early Utah suggests that any earlier involvement was temporary and not central to Church practice. Temple worship became the clear focus. Freemasonry was not treated as an equivalent system, but as something separate, while temple ordinances remained central to Latter-day Saint belief and worship.

Shared Source of Freemasonry and Temple

While there are shared signs used in Freemasonry and temple worship, the meaning and purpose are very different. Some similarities exist, but similarity does not establish origin or dependence.

Spanish and Italian share vocabulary, grammar, and structure, but that does not mean one copied from the other. Both developed from Latin, so the overlap comes from a common source. The same reasoning applies here. When two systems share similar elements, it can point to older traditions that were preserved in different ways.

The temple is presented as a restoration of priesthood ordinances established by God. Its purpose is to bring individuals into covenant with Him, leading to salvation, eternal life, and a return to His presence. Freemasonry, by contrast, functions as a fraternal system focused on moral teaching, brotherhood, and community. Any overlap in form does not change the difference in purpose, authority, or doctrine.

What Letter To My Wife Gets Wrong about The Temple Endowment, Temple Worship, and Freemasonry

One of the central claims made in Letter to My Wife is that the LDS temple endowment is not a revelation from God but instead was borrowed from Freemasonry. That conclusion depends on a chain of assumptions about history, timing, symbolism, and how religious rituals develop. When those assumptions are examined closely, the argument does not hold.

1. The False Assumption: Similarity Equals Copying

The core argument is built on the idea that if two systems share symbols, language, or ritual structure, one must have copied from the other. That is not how history works. Shared elements often come from a common source rather than direct borrowing.

Languages provide a simple example. Spanish and Italian share vocabulary, grammar patterns, and structure. That does not mean one copied from the other. Both come from Latin. The same pattern appears in religious symbolism. Concepts like sacred clothing, ritual washing, covenants, new names, and symbolic gestures appear across ancient Jewish and early Christian traditions long before modern Freemasonry.

The presence of overlap does not establish dependence. It only shows that both systems draw from similar symbolic traditions.

2. Ignoring the Timeline of Joseph Smith’s Teachings

The argument places heavy weight on the timing of Joseph Smith becoming a Freemason in March 1842 and introducing the endowment in May 1842. The implication is that the endowment must have come from Masonry because of the short gap.

This ignores over a decade of prior teachings.

Long before 1842, Joseph Smith had already introduced nearly every major element associated with temple worship:

• 1823: Moroni teaches about priesthood, covenants, Elijah, and temple offerings
• 1829: Restoration of priesthood authority tied to ordinances
• 1830–1833: Book of Moses teaches creation, fall, and return to God’s presence
• 1832: Vision of degrees of glory and exaltation
• 1832–1833: Doctrine and Covenants teaches priesthood, sanctification, and entering God’s presence
• 1836: Washings, anointings, and visions in the Kirtland Temple
• 1840–1841: Baptism for the dead, eternal families, sealing authority
• 1841: Full outline of temple ordinances in Doctrine and Covenants 124

By the time Joseph became a Mason, the doctrinal framework of the temple was already in place. Freemasonry did not introduce these ideas. At most, it provided a familiar symbolic structure for presenting teachings that had already been revealed.

3. Selective Use of Masonic History

The document argues that Freemasonry is purely medieval and therefore cannot be connected to ancient temple traditions. This is an oversimplification.

Freemasonry as an organized institution does trace to medieval guilds. However, its symbols, allegories, and themes draw heavily from the Bible, especially the account of Solomon’s temple. Even the document acknowledges that Masonry uses biblical narratives and symbolic frameworks tied to temple construction.

This creates a contradiction in the argument. On one hand, it claims Masonry has no connection to ancient temple practices. On the other hand, it admits Masonry is built on those very narratives and symbols.

The more accurate conclusion is that Freemasonry preserved fragments of older religious symbolism, even if its institutional form developed later.

4. Misrepresenting Early Latter-day Saint Views

Early Church leaders did not claim Joseph invented temple worship from Masonry. They consistently taught the opposite.

• Heber C. Kimball stated that Masonry contained similarities because it came from an earlier source, but that the Saints had the complete form.
• Willard Richards recorded that Masonry had its origin in the priesthood.
• Other early leaders described Masonry as a partial or corrupted remnant of something older.

The document dismisses these statements by appealing to modern Masonic historians. That does not address the actual claim being made. The early Saints were not arguing about when Masonic lodges formed. They were arguing about where the underlying symbols and patterns ultimately came from.

Rejecting their statements requires proving that symbolic systems cannot preserve older religious ideas. The document does not do that.

5. Overstating the Degree of Similarity

The claim that “every LDS temple ceremony has a nearly identical Masonic ceremony” is exaggerated.

There are surface-level similarities in:

• symbolic gestures
• ritual progression
• use of tokens and signs
• ceremonial clothing

But the differences are more significant:

• Freemasonry is a fraternal system focused on moral development and brotherhood
• The temple is centered on covenants, priesthood authority, eternal families, and returning to God’s presence
• The theological meaning, purpose, and outcomes are not the same

Even where actions appear similar, the meaning behind them is different. Ritual form alone does not define origin.

6. The Timing Argument Lacks Context

The argument relies heavily on the short gap between Joseph’s Masonic initiation and the introduction of the endowment. That reasoning assumes that complex theological systems can be created in a matter of weeks.

The historical record shows that temple doctrine developed over years. The 1842 presentation was not the beginning of the idea. It was the point where previously taught concepts were organized into a formal ordinance.

The timing is better explained as preparation rather than invention. Many early Church leaders who would administer temple ordinances were not familiar with structured liturgical systems. Freemasonry exposed them to symbolic teaching methods that made the transition to temple worship more understandable.

7. Misunderstanding How Religious Ritual Develops

The argument treats ritual structure as if it must originate from a single source. In reality, religious practices often develop through layers of preservation, loss, and restoration.

Ancient Jewish temple worship included:

• priestly clothing
• ritual washing and anointing
• sacred spaces separated by veils
• covenant language
• symbolic actions tied to divine presence

Early Christian sources also describe structured liturgy, initiation rites, and symbolic progression toward God.

These patterns existed long before Freemasonry. The presence of similar elements in both Masonry and LDS temple worship is consistent with both drawing from older traditions.

8. Ignoring What Happened After Nauvoo

If the temple endowment were simply borrowed from Freemasonry, continued reliance on Masonry would be expected.

That is not what happened.

After the Saints moved to Utah:

• Masonic activity largely disappeared among Church leadership
• No functioning lodge existed until years later
• The Endowment House was built in 1855 to perform temple ordinances
• Temple work became the central focus of worship

Freemasonry did not continue as a parallel system. Temple worship replaced it as the primary religious practice.

9. The Conclusion Does Not Follow the Evidence

The argument ends by asking whether Joseph Smith “borrowed” the endowment from Freemasonry. That conclusion only works if several assumptions are accepted:

• Similarity proves dependence
• Temple doctrine did not exist before 1842
• Freemasonry has no connection to older religious symbolism
• Early Church leaders were mistaken about their own teachings
• Ritual form determines origin more than doctrine

Each of these assumptions has been shown to be weak or incomplete.

A more consistent explanation fits the full set of facts:

• Temple doctrine was taught years before 1842
• Freemasonry preserved fragments of symbolic tradition
• Joseph Smith introduced a complete system with distinct theology and purpose
• The similarities reflect shared roots, not direct copying

More Resources on Mormons and Masons

• Read Mormons and Masons by Matthew Brown
• Temple Endowment and Masonry
• Temples and Freemasonry
• Church History and Masonry
• Standard of Truth Episodes on Freemasonry
• Temple Endowment and Masonic Similarities
• CES Letter Answers on Temples and Masonry
• And if you have an extra 5 hours, watch this video:

The witnesses were named, known, and accessible to questioning. Their statements were public, repeated, and maintained across decades, including periods when they were separated from Joseph Smith and the Church.

The Testimony of the Three Witnesses

Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris testified that an angel showed them the gold plates, that they saw the engraved characters, and that they heard the voice of God affirming the record. They described physical objects, not symbolic impressions. They also visited and saw the spot on the hill where the plates were recovered from. Their statements remained consistent despite persecution, poverty, and social loss.

From a legal perspective, the strongest indicator of sincerity is testimony maintained against self interest. Each of these men experienced exactly that.

Oliver Cowdery

Oliver Cowdery served as the principal scribe for the Book of Mormon translation. He was educated, legally trained, and deeply familiar with the production of the text. If deception or fabrication were involved, Cowdery would have been among the first to know.

Cowdery later became estranged from the Church following severe financial losses connected to the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society. He believed Church leadership had erred in judgment, and this disagreement contributed to his separation. His estrangement was not casual. It involved personal loss, legal conflict, and public opposition to Joseph Smith.

Despite this, Cowdery never denied his witness of the plates or the angel. Near the end of his life, he reaffirmed his testimony and urged fellow witnesses to remain faithful to what they had seen and heard.

Legally, this matters because his testimony survived both financial harm and institutional separation. He had motive, opportunity, and justification to recant. He did not.

David Whitmer

David Whitmer was widely regarded as a respected and stable member of his community. He held civic responsibilities and was trusted in business and local affairs. His reputation for honesty did not depend on Church membership, and he remained a public figure long after separating from the Church.

Whitmer permanently left the Church and openly rejected Joseph Smith’s later leadership. Yet he repeatedly reaffirmed his testimony of the Book of Mormon. He gave detailed interviews to believers and skeptics alike and never altered his original statement.

Whitmer’s gravestone still bears testimony to the Book of Mormon, declaring his witness of the plates and the angel. This public affirmation, carved in stone, was placed by a man who had no allegiance to the institution and no reason to preserve its claims.

From a legal standpoint, Whitmer’s continued testimony after decades of separation eliminates arguments of coercion, loyalty, or fear of authority.

Martin Harris

Martin Harris was a prosperous farmer before his involvement with the Book of Mormon. His support of Joseph Smith cost him his farm, his savings, and much of his social standing. His marriage suffered severely, and he ultimately lost his relationship with his wife in large part due to his unwavering support for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

Harris gained nothing by maintaining his testimony. Recantation would have restored financial stability and family relationships. Instead, he maintained his witness despite poverty, ridicule, and isolation.

Repeated attempts were made to pressure Harris into denying his experience, including legal pressure and public humiliation. He refused. Until his death, he affirmed that he had seen the plates and that they were real, physical objects.

In legal analysis, testimony that persists through personal ruin is considered strong evidence of sincerity.

A Test of Credibility Under Threat

William McLellin, a former apostle who later became a critic of Joseph Smith, applied his own test of honesty after years of observing the witnesses. At a time when the lives of Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were in danger, McLellin directly asked them whether they had truly seen the plates and the angel.

Both men reaffirmed their testimony without hesitation.

This moment is significant because it occurred under threat, without institutional pressure, and in the presence of a hostile questioner. In legal terms, it functions as a contemporaneous cross examination under adverse conditions.

The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses

The case does not rest on the Three Witnesses alone. The Eight Witnesses testified that they physically handled the gold plates. Their statement describes lifting the plates, examining them, and observing the engraved characters directly. They testified to the plates’ weight, shape, and material nature.

None of the Eight Witnesses ever denied their testimony. Some later separated from the Church, yet none claimed the plates were imaginary or fabricated.

Legal Weight of the Witnesses

Legal history treats persistent testimony against self interest as powerful evidence. The witnesses to the Book of Mormon were competent, known, and accessible. Their accounts were specific, consistent, and repeated over decades. They endured financial loss, social isolation, and personal danger without recantation.

This does not compel belief. But under legal standards used to evaluate eyewitness credibility, the Book of Mormon witnesses meet and exceed the criteria typically used to distinguish sincere testimony from fraud.

Testimony of Oliver Cowdery One of Strongest Evidences that Joseph Smith Was A Prophet

If anyone was in position to expose Joseph Smith as a fraud, it was Oliver Cowdery.

Oliver was a young man trying to make his way in the world as a schoolteacher. When he heard about Joseph Smith and the gold plates, he felt impressed to assist in the work. He went to Harmony, Pennsylvania, and became the primary scribe of the Book of Mormon.

He wrote: “These were days never to be forgotten… I continued to write from his mouth, as he translated… the record called the Book of Mormon.” He testified he saw angels. He was there when John the Baptist conferred the Aaronic Priesthood. He testified of receiving the Melchizedek Priesthood from heavenly messengers.

He was one of the Three Witnesses, called to testify the authenticity of the Book of Mormon to all the world. He sacrificed. He served. He faced persecution. He spent long periods away from his wife to do the work.

Then everything fell apart.

Oliver clashed with Joseph and Church leadership. He wrote strongly worded letters, saying the Church was overreaching and trying to control his personal affairs. He pushed back hard, refused to submit, and experienced major frustration and resentment.

In April 1838, formal charges were brought against him:

– For persecuting the brethren with vexatious lawsuits

– For seeking to destroy Joseph Smith’s character – For treating the Church with contempt and not attending meetings

– For declaring he would not be governed by Church authority or revelation in temporal matters – For selling land in Jackson County contrary to church policy

– For writing an insulting letter to Thomas B. Marsh – For leaving his calling for “filthy lucre” and practicing law – For being connected with the “bogus” business

– For dishonestly retaining notes after they were paid

Oliver disputed these charges, rejected the authority of the council to judge him and walked away. If The Restoration was a fraud, this was the moment to expose it. Oliver Cowdery had written the translation. He claimed to have seen the angel. He knew everything. Instead, he never denied his testimony. Even outside the Church, it cost him. He admitted his association with Joseph Smith limited his opportunities, saying without it, “I believe I could rise to the heights of my ambition.”

He still built a life. He became a successful lawyer. He was respected and established. If it wasn’t true, there was no reason to ever come back. But He Did. On October 21, 1848, standing before 2,000 Saints, he testified: “I wrote with my own pen the entire Book of Mormon (save a few pages) as it fell from the lips of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and he translated it by the power and gift of God, by means of the Urim and Thummim, or as it is called by that book, “Holy Interpreter.”

I beheld with my eyes and handled with my hands, the gold plates from which it was translated. I also saw with my eyes and handled with my hands, the “Holy Interpreters.” That book is true, Sidney Rigdon did not write it; Mr. Spaulding did not write it; I wrote it myself as it fell from the lips of the Prophet. It contains the everlasting Gospel, to preach to every nation, kindred, tongue and people. It contains principles of Salvation, and if you my hearers, will walk by its light, and obey its precepts, you will be saved with an everlasting salvation in the Kingdom of God.

I was present with Joseph when an Holy Angel from Heaven came down and conferred upon us, or restored the Aaronic Priesthood, and said to us, at the same time, that it should remain on earth while the earth stands. I was also present with Joseph when the Higher or Melchizedek Priesthood was conferred by the Holy Angels from on high. This priesthood was then conferred on each other by the will and commandment of God. This priesthood, as was then declared, was also to remain upon the earth until the last remnant of time.”

Oliver Cowdery was rebaptized came back into the church without asking for position. Just to be received, because he knew the work was true. He knew the Book of Mormon was translated by the Gift and Power of God.

Less than a year later, he died at the age of 43. Those present said he died “the happiest man” they had ever seen, confident he was going to his Savior.

Yesterday, production of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 5 was halted, and The Bachelorette’s 22nd season—slated to be led by Secret Lives star Taylor Frankie Paul—was canceled. These decisions followed after entertainment website TMZ leaked a video of a domestic altercation involving Paul in 2023. In the footage, Paul is seen in her home throwing three metal barstools at Dakota Mortensen, her then-boyfriend and the father of her youngest child. Paul’s daughter, who was six years old at the time, is also seen lying nearby on the couch—apparently sleeping at the beginning, then awakened by the chaos—and cried out for her mother to stop. A subsequent criminal indictment indicated that the child was struck in the head by one of the stools, resulting in a painful goose egg. 

TMZ also reported that earlier this week, both Mortensen and Paul’s ex-husband (and father of her two older children), Tate Paul, allegedly filed new orders of protection against Paul, with Mortensen requesting sole custody of their two-year-old son.

Most Latter-day Saint commentary on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which chronicles the dramatic lives of a Utah-based social media group of influencers self-dubbed “#MomTok,” tends to focus on how these women are not devout and do not represent the values or teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The show is packed with parties, events, and a heavy focus on sexual freedom. The women openly posture against traditional norms around sex and gender while continuing to borrow the visual language of a faith they seem increasingly uninterested in living. This is no surprise, considering MomTok only rose to fame after a scandal involving some of the married members swinging with each other’s spouses — and most of those marriages are now over.

Yet the show’s cast continues to blame the majority of their dysfunction on “church culture” and “Mormon expectations.” The show’s on-again, off-again villain, Zac Affleck (who certainly has his issues), is often vilified for offering seemingly sensible, family-oriented commentary such as “Hollywood isn’t conducive to a healthy marriage” or “I don’t want you to feel mom guilt, but our kids do miss you…and it’s hard for me to fill that void with them even though I try.” This is the same Zac who deferred medical school to be a stay-at-home dad so his wife could appear on Dancing with the Stars and further pursue an entertainment career. Jen insists that “he had his turn” to pursue his career, and now it’s her turn, “and he knows that and should support that.”

The women frequently say that their religious upbringing taught them to be subjugated to their husbands’ whims. This is an obvious misunderstanding of The Family: A Proclamation to the World, which teaches that fathers are “responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.” The clear distinction is that doctrine teaches that career is a means of protecting and providing for the needs of the family, not the desires of the individual. While some sense of meaning and personal fulfillment can be found in many careers, research consistently finds that people derive their greatest sense of meaning from relationships—particularly family relationships. Unfortunately, the husbands and boyfriends in the show are often painted as adversaries or competitors of the women, rather than as partners they love and care for. Even stranger, the women seem to believe the proper correction to what they see as oppressive gender roles is simply to reverse them. 

As the show has progressed, the so-called liberation of these women appears to have yielded very little joy or true freedom. Newer seasons are no longer just about “Mormon women behaving badly.” They are increasingly a portrait of emotional affairs, fractured marriages, public humiliation, eating disorders, body-image collapse, postpartum distress, and relationships strained to the breaking point, with nearly all of the cast members in personal and couples therapy. What is being sold as liberation looks, more and more, like despair. 

Seasons 3 and 4 did not reveal a cruelty of traditional sexual morality; instead, they revealed the inability of self-centered sexual ethics to build anything stable in its place. Unfortunately, far too many viewers have bought into a worldview that claims women in the West are still largely oppressed, and thus feel they are doing their part to smash the patriarchy as they cheer on the ladies in their quest for so-called liberation.

The problem with broadcasting this drama is that the content does not merely document disorder. It rewards it. Reality television and social media incentivize family breakdown. Betrayal, sexual chaos, emotional oversharing, and the performance of self-liberation are highly marketable. Once marriage trouble becomes a storyline, sexual impropriety becomes brand identity, and personal instability becomes a platform, the incentives tilt in a very dark direction. The women of Secret Lives are not just reaping the consequences of rejecting clear moral norms. They are doing so inside a machine that profits from the damage.

Even the cast members themselves have frequently expressed concern about Paul’s erratic behavior. NBC News reported yesterday that cast members met with ABC executives earlier this month to express concerns about continuing the show if Paul remained involved. In the meeting, one of the cast members reportedly asked Rob Mills, the executive vice president of unscripted and alternative entertainment at Walt Disney Television, if he’s “aware she’s hurt a child?” Mills’ alleged reply? “I don’t know a lot, nor do I want to know too much.”

We have, of course, seen the exploitation of unwell but “sexually liberated” women before—it’s a familiar pattern to those paying attention. In The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, journalist Louise Perry argues that Western sexual culture in the twenty-first century “promotes the interests of the Hugh Hefners of the world at the expense of the Marilyn Monroes. And the influence of liberal feminism means that too many women don’t recognize this truth, blithely accepting Hefner’s claim that all of the downsides of the new sexual culture are just ‘a small price to pay for personal freedom.’” Indeed, the commodified lives of women like Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Amanda Bynes, Britney Spears, and others have much in common with Paul’s, and one can only hope that she gets help before reaching the same breaking point these women did.

Whatever sympathy one rightly feels for Taylor Frankie Paul as a human being, it is difficult to watch the public trajectory of her life without concluding that it has the shape of a spiral: relational chaos, legal trouble, domestic conflict, children caught in the blast radius, and a complicit fanbase eager to turn every bit of it into entertainment.

That line is haunting in light of everything that followed.

Paul, through representatives, has said the newly leaked video omits context and that she has suffered abuse as well. But even allowing for dispute over context, the broader picture is grim: this is not empowerment. It is family breakdown, made public and then repackaged as content. What the show unintentionally reveals is that discarded moral boundaries do not disappear without cost. Someone always pays.

But there is always hope. Though the MomTok ladies often display only elementary knowledge of Latter-day Saint doctrine, I pray they remember the most important doctrine—that of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The same gospel that teaches chastity, fidelity, and sacrifice also teaches mercy. It teaches that through Christ broken things can be mended, and that people who have wandered very far can still come home.

The post The Unraveling of #MomTok appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

• Doubtsy was a short-lived for-profit business launched in 2017 by Jeremy Runnells, author of the influential CES Letter, aimed at helping individuals create and monetize content critical of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
• It originated as a DBA (Doing Business As) under ManaFAQ, Inc., a corporation Runnells formed to expand his advocacy into commercial coaching and publishing for those questioning or leaving Mormonism.
• The intent was to empower “doubters” by providing tools for branding, book publishing, and product sales, though critics argue it sought to profit from faith deconstruction.
• Ultimately, Doubtsy failed due to apparent low success, operational issues, and dissolution of its parent company in 2018, with the DBA lingering until 2020 amid broader criticisms of Runnells’ transparency.
• Evidence suggests modest activity with few known publications, reflecting challenges in scaling niche ex-Mormon content amid community divisions.

Origins and Background

Doubtsy emerged from Jeremy Runnells’ transition from personal faith crisis to public advocacy. Runnells, a former LDS member, gained prominence with his 2013 CES Letter, a document compiling historical and doctrinal concerns about the LDS Church that went viral in ex-Mormon communities. By 2017, after resigning from the church in 2016 following a disciplinary council, Runnells sought to formalize support for others in similar transitions. He incorporated ManaFAQ, Inc., in Delaware (a state known for business privacy) and registered it in Utah, using his American Fork home address. Doubtsy was established as a DBA under this entity, marking an attempt to blend activism with entrepreneurship.

Intended Purpose and Operations

The venture positioned itself as a platform for “doubt-centered” content, offering coaching on writing, branding, distribution, and sales. Runnells encouraged repurposing CES Letter material, advising others to adapt and claim it as their own. Activities included publishing books like “The ABC’s of Science and Mormonism” by Mithryn and “The Conservative Atheist,” sold via Doubtsy.com. The site also hosted articles and interviews critiquing Mormonism, aiming to build a community of content creators. Supporters viewed it as empowerment for faith transitions, while critics saw it as exploiting doubt for profit.

Reasons for Failure

Doubtsy’s operations were limited, with low reported earnings for authors (e.g., $5 per book royalty) and minimal visibility beyond Reddit promotions. ManaFAQ dissolved in Utah in 2018 for failure to renew, and lost good standing in Delaware due to unregistered agent issues. The DBA persisted until 2020, but without active support, the venture faded. Possible factors include lack of demand, internal decisions to avoid competing with Runnells’ CES Letter (which generated modest donations via a related non-profit), and broader scrutiny over transparency. No evidence of significant financial success exists, aligning with Runnells’ self-reported low earnings from related activities.

Jeremy Runnells’ Doubtsy represents a brief chapter in the evolving landscape of ex-Mormon advocacy, where personal faith journeys intersect with digital entrepreneurship. Launched amid Runnells’ rising profile as the author of the CES Letter – a 2013 document that has influenced thousands in questioning LDS Church teachings – the venture sought to extend his impact beyond critique into practical support for others navigating similar doubts. However, its quick dissolution underscores the challenges of sustaining niche, controversy-laden businesses. This article draws from public records, community discussions, and analyses to trace Doubtsy’s origins, ambitions, operations, and ultimate failure, providing a balanced view of its role in broader religious deconstruction movements.

Background: Jeremy Runnells and the CES Letter

To understand Doubtsy, one must start with Runnells himself. Born into a multi-generational LDS family, Runnells served a mission, earned an Eagle Scout award, and graduated from Brigham Young University. His faith began unraveling in 2012 after what he claims was encountering historical discrepancies in church teachings, such as multiple First Vision accounts and issues with the Book of Abraham. A CES (Church Educational System) director encouraged him to compile his questions, leading to the CES Letter’s creation. Initially private, it was shared online under the Reddit username u/kolobot, going viral and prompting Runnells to establish a site for free downloads and donations.

By 2015, Runnells formalized the CES Letter Foundation as a Nevada non-profit to handle donations and paperback sales (priced as $18.95 “donations”). IRS filings showed revenues under $50,000 annually until 2019, after which reporting ceased, resulting in revocation in 2023. Runnells reported average monthly earnings of $1,000 – $2,000, countering claims of higher profits. Amid growing scrutiny – including a 2016 disciplinary council where he resigned – Runnells explored for-profit avenues, leading to Doubtsy.

Formation and Structure of Doubtsy

In February 2017, Runnells incorporated ManaFAQ, Inc., in Delaware for its minimal disclosure requirements, then registered it as a foreign entity in Utah in April. The company used Runnells’ American Fork home address, shared with the CES Letter Foundation, raising questions about non-profit/for-profit separation. Doubtsy was registered as a DBA under ManaFAQ shortly after, branded as a platform to “help others publish, package, and monetize doubt-centered content.” This structure allowed Runnells to operate commercially while maintaining his non-profit for donations.

Delaware’s anonymity and Utah’s lax DBA rules minimized public oversight, a choice critics highlight as inconsistent with Runnells’ demands for LDS Church transparency. The venture aligned with Runnells’ Reddit activity, where he encouraged viral anti-LDS content creation.

Intents and Operational Focus

Doubtsy’s stated goal was to assist ex-Mormons in turning personal faith crises into marketable products. Services included guidance on book publishing, product development (e.g., items to “inspire doubters”), and entrepreneurial coaching. A website description read: “Trying to publish your own book? Looking to sell products to inspire or help your fellow doubters? Or just want to hire a talented…” Runnells promoted adapting CES Letter content, fostering a “business of creating doubters.”

From a supportive perspective, it empowered those in mixed-faith situations or faith transitions. Critics, however, viewed it as opportunistic, potentially exploiting vulnerabilities for gain. Operations centered on Doubtsy.com, which hosted blog articles (e.g., critiques of Book of Mormon grammar, cult dynamics), interviews (e.g., profiling ex-Mormon figures like Mithryn), and book sales. Promotions occurred mainly on r/exmormon, where users shared links and discussed content.

Known outputs included:

• “The ABC’s of Science and Mormonism” by Mithryn: A series debunking Mormon claims scientifically, compiled into a book.
• “The Conservative Atheist”: A memoir of leaving Mormonism.
• Potential projects like “Brutally Honest Mormon Coloring Pages,” though some shifted platforms.

Financially, it tied into Runnells’ model of blending charity and commerce, but specifics are opaque due to Delaware’s privacy. Authors reported negligible earnings, with one noting a $200 net loss upon closure.

Dissolution and Reasons for Failure

ManaFAQ’s dissolution began in 2018 when Utah revoked it for non-renewal of annual reports. Delaware followed, citing failure to maintain a registered agent. Under Utah law, dissolution requires winding up affairs, notifying creditors, and filing statements – processes Runnells apparently neglected. Doubtsy survived until 2020, an anomaly where the DBA outlasted its parent, indicating poor oversight.

Failure reasons include:

• Low Viability: Minimal publications and earnings; authors like Mithryn reported losses, suggesting insufficient market.
• Strategic Choices: Runnells may have halted it to avoid diluting his CES Letter focus, which was sustaining him full-time.
• Transparency Issues: Shared addresses and halted filings echoed criticisms of the CES Letter Foundation, potentially deterring participants.
• Community Backlash: Apologetic sources labeled it “shady,” while ex-Mormon discussions defended it as passion-driven but acknowledged its limited impact.

No reinstatement occurred, and Doubtsy.com is defunct with no Internet Archive captures.

Legacy and Broader Implications

Doubtsy’s failure highlights tensions in ex-Mormon spaces: the desire for supportive resources versus accusations of profiteering. It produced limited content but exemplified attempts to systematize deconstruction. Speculation links it to works like “A Letter for My Wife,” though unproven. Runnells has since focused on CES Letter updates and advocacy, viewing his work as aiding faith transitions without regret.

In ex-Mormon Reddit threads, Doubtsy is mentioned sparingly, often in contexts defending creators’ modest motives against LDS critiques. Apologetic analyses portray it as part of a “calculated” effort, but Runnells counters that his intent was honest inquiry.

Ultimately, Doubtsy’s story reflects the complexities of post-religious entrepreneurship: ambitious in intent, but hindered by execution, market realities, and polarized perceptions.

Key Citations

• Shadiness of the CES Letter Foundation
• Letter For My Wife Rebuttal, Part 1: Preface/Introduction
• Origins of the CES Letter
• OPEN LETTER TO JEREMY RUNNELLS (u/Kolobot)
• Jeremy Runnells Ruined Everything
• Exposing The Man Behind The Mithryn – By Cathy L Mason – Exclusive Interview
• Utah Department of Commerce – Division of Corporations

There are always a multitude of women who claim that the Church instructed them to marry young, forego any education or gainful employment, and stay at home and raise their kids.

Then, their marriage collapses, and they are forced into the cold, cruel world as a single parent with no skills or confidence.

This is nonsense. The Church never taught any such thing.

"Prioritize" Family

What we were taught was to prioritize our family, that it was the woman's responsibility to nurture the children, and that the man's responsibility was to provide and protect the family.

This same guidance was aimed at BOTH genders.

We were also told to get all the education we could, to develop our gifts, talents, and skills, and prepare for contingencies that may necessitate individual adaptation.

This same guidance was also aimed at BOTH genders.

It used to be possible for nearly all women to stay home and have their husband's job support the family. That is nearly impossible in this day and age. Most women will have to work outside the home at some point for numerous and sundry reasons.

Many of these numerous and sundry reasons have existed and been known for millennia. They include: not marrying in this life, having a husband die, having a husband disabled, experiencing a divorce, financial hardship, financially needing a second income to survive, etc.

None of this is new.

All of this got punctuated for me when my father died when I was young. My mother did have to support the family. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it was unexpected. In fact, it was wrenching.

I hoped to be able to stay home and raise the kids while my husband worked, but it wasn't a given. I knew that from personal experience.

However, it was also obvious to anyone who had more than two brain cells to rub together. It was, and is, risky to assume that everything is going to be peachy and you don't need a Plan B, or C, or D, or even Plan E.

Here it comes!

I'm going to say something now that's going to make me unpopular and perhaps even a target of these women.

You can't blame Church teachings for your poor choices!

Too many women I grew up with were trying to evade education and employment by getting married. It was an acceptable way out of doing something difficult. It was even somewhat culturally and socially sanctioned. It still is. That's the problem.

Many of these women have no one to blame but themselves. However, they are trying to save face by blaming the Church.

Conclusion

We are trying to become Christlike in this life. Increasing our knowledge and skills enables us to be more Christlike. That has always been part of our canon.

In fact, it's been instruction to both women and men regardless of mortal financial circumstances. It would stand even if you are independently wealthy in this life and don't need to work to live.

There are powerful, eternal reasons for gaining education and skills in this life. It isn't just a material decision on how to financially get through this mortal one.

There are a multitude of strong, educated, competent, skilled, and powerful women in the Church. Some of them even stayed home and raised their kids.

You can still be one of them.

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New York Magazine’s The Cut published a long reported feature yesterday on Latter-day Saints, Utah, influencer culture, and the national appetite for “Mormon aesthetics.” Buried inside it is a serious thesis: Latter-day Saints helped shape key parts of modern online life—tech, genealogy, affiliate marketing, brand deals—and now a particular Utah-flavored influencer ecosystem has gone mainstream.

That subject deserves real cultural journalism. But the feature doesn’t treat Latter-day Saints seriously. It treats a living religious community as a cultural prop: a reliable source of weirdness, a costume rack of eccentric doctrines, and an acceptable target for winking contempt—then layers that tone over doctrinal errors and an over-reliance on critics with little balancing context.

Latter-day Saints do not need the approval of a lifestyle magazine to live out our faith, but there is something wrong when editorial culture still thinks it is acceptable, or even smart, to understand a religion through nothing but memes.

Criticism isn’t the Problem. Contempt Is.

The Church is not above scrutiny. If you want to examine PR strategy, media posture, investments, or Utah’s insular status dynamics, fine—do the work: show receipts and speak with informed believers, scholars, and, where relevant, critics. Latter-day Saints are so accustomed to sneers from legacy outlets that even serious critical coverage can feel like a relief. But this feature does not read like an investigation guided by intellectual curiosity. It reads like something else: a story that wants to be both reported analysis and group roast.

A Publication That Wants Credibility Can’t Cover Faith Like It’s a Freak Show

The clearest tell is the piece’s reliance on outsidery shorthand: familiar “Mormon jokes,” recycled late-night tropes, and online folklore presented as representative. That method is at best lazy, at worst socially corrosive. When a major publication treats the sacred life of its neighbors as a punchline, it is not merely “edgy.” It’s the normalization of contempt for a minority faith.

And to be blunt: there is a reason this kind of tone still shows up with Latter-day Saints more easily than it would with many other religious groups. The feature claims Latter-day Saints now carry real cultural cachet, yet writes as if anti-Mormon mockery is still culturally acceptable. That’s a sign that anti-Mormon mockery is still socially permitted in a way it wouldn’t be for many other minority faiths.

What the Piece Does Well

To be fair, the feature does some real reporting: It paints a vivid picture of a Utah influencer ecosystem; it traces how early Mormon mommy bloggers helped professionalize affiliate marketing and online commerce; it captures how “noncontroversial” family content became brand gold during the pandemic; it correctly notices that Utah’s particular blend of community networks, aspirational domesticity, and entrepreneurial hustle can be an accelerant for online business.

If you want to analyze a community that you believe has exported a powerful cultural product—“Mormon mom” influencer culture—then you also owe that community the baseline respect of accuracy and the basic fairness of being represented by more than its loudest detractors and its most sensational reality TV exports. 

Three Failures that Warrant Post-Publication Changes

The problems in the feature fall into three categories:

1. Factual inaccuracies
2. Statements included for the purpose of mocking Latter-day Saint belief
3. Unchallenged criticisms presented as if they are settled truth

These are not nitpicks. They go to the heart of whether the piece is journalism or polemic.

1) Factual inaccuracies: the kind that shouldn’t survive a competent edit

Some errors are interpretive. These are not. These are statements about what Latter-day Saints believe, teach, or do—asserted in the narrator’s voice—that are wrong, distorted, or presented with such sloppiness that readers are misled.

Here is a catalogue of the most obvious problems:

Doctrinal claims that are misstated or sensationalized

• The piece claims there is a doctrine of spending 1,000 years in “spirit prison.”
• It claims spirit prison is for the “least worthy,” implying a ranked afterlife prison system.
• It calls spirit prison a “temporary hell,” borrowing a loaded popular image that distorts how Latter-day Saints understand the spirit world.
• It states inaccurately that women cannot prophesy in the Church—erasing a long Latter-day Saint teaching about women’s spiritual authority and gifts.

“Worthiness” and church practice presented as caricature

• The piece asserts that for Latter-day Saint women, “worthiness” depends first and foremost on marriage and motherhood. That is an editorial line that reads powerful and condemnatory—and it is misleading. Latter-day Saint worthiness has formal, published standards and interviews; you can critique those standards without inventing new ones.
• It describes bishops’ interviews for youth and lists topics that are not included in the youth interview questions.

Internet folklore treated like representative practice

• The piece presents “soaking” as a way young Mormons can have sex without breaking chastity covenants, treating it like a real, meaningful “loophole” in lived religion. At best, it’s gossip; at worst, it’s a joke inserted because it’s humiliating.

Errors of basic terminology

• The feature confuses temple clothing worn in the temple with temple garments that are first received in the temple and then worn as an everyday religious commitment. That confusion is exactly the kind of thing that happens when a writer is covering a community from the outside and does not slow down to learn the vocabulary.

Sloppy claims about history and demographics

• The piece asserts that Black men could not hold leadership positions before 1978, when what it appears to mean (and should have precisely stated) is that Black men could not be ordained to the priesthood prior to 1978.
• It gives a Utah Latter-day Saint self-identification figure with no clear sourcing, and different from the most widely reported Pew Research figure.
• It reports an incorrect count of temples announced in 2025—again, a checkable detail that signals a lack of verification.
  

[Editor’s Note: New York Magazine has since corrected the final two errors, but declined to fix the other factual mistakes in the piece.]

These are not obscure theological disputes. An understanding reader might handwave these away as honest mistakes or minor points. But these are precisely the kinds of facts that journalists care about (or at least should). The errors suggest an editorial posture of stereotype-driven credulity: if a claim sounds weird enough, it is assumed true, and therefore not worth checking.

Religious reporting is challenging and detail-heavy, which is exactly why careful outlets verify doctrine and terminology with knowledgeable members of the faith and scholars—so the people being described can recognize themselves in the description.

In response to a request for comment about the article’s editorial process, Lauren Starke, head of communications for New York Magazine, replied, “Our writer consulted a wide range of sources with varying perspectives, and the story was carefully reported, edited, and fact-checked.” If so, these varying perspectives and careful reporting did not appear in the final draft of the article. It does not even appear that an in-house religion reporter was consulted. 

2) Mocking statements: the paper trail of contempt

Even if every factual claim were perfect, the piece would still have a problem: it repeatedly deploys editorial asides and framing choices that read as intended to belittle.

A story can have a voice without being cruel. This one is cruel in small, deliberate ways—the kind that accumulates until the reader understands the assignment: these people are weird; feel free to laugh.

Here is a catalogue of the clearest tone cues:

• Opening with a sexual pun as the entry point into “Mormon” Utah: a signal that this community will be handled with a wink, not with care.
• Describing Latter-day Saint beliefs as “zany” in the narrator’s voice—an adjective that invites ridicule rather than understanding.
• Referring to Mormons as “freaks” (even as part of a broader cultural arc). If you want to understand how a community went mainstream, you do not need to label them freakish. That’s not analysis; it’s sneering.
• Casually conflating Latter-day Saints with polygamous shows like “Big Love” or “Sister Wives.”
• Throwing out tangential doctrinal ideas with no purpose beyond making it appear silly, and in a way an average member would not recognize as “what we believe.”
• Bringing up “soaking” as a narrative beat—not because it’s crucial to the thesis, but because it’s humiliating and clickable.
• Referring to church reserves/investments as a “war chest” rather than using neutral language like “savings” or language Latter-day Saints would use themselves such as “rainy day fund.”
• Referring to the most serious source on the church as “a Happy Valley mom who posts educational content about the faith.” While Latter-day Saint women often view their roles as mothers as the most significant, the phrasing here is clearly meant to downplay her professional accomplishments and portray her as a frivolous home vlogger. 

None of this advances the core journalistic purpose. All of it advances a social purpose: to reassure the reader that they are part of the in-group that knows how to roll their eyes at the out-group.

A publication can choose that posture. But it shows they should not be considered a serious, fair-minded journalistic institution.

3) Unchallenged criticisms: letting the loudest critics define the subject

Professional journalists abide by The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics. Or at least they are supposed to. 

One of these codes is to diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing. The article fails on this front. According to internal sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak on the subject, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not brought in on the article until late in the process. New York Magazine did not diligently seek out other Latter-day Saint organizations who could respond to the criticisms in the article either. 

Reality television is not ethnography. It selects for spectacle, conflict, and extremity; it is not designed to be representative. Most readers understand that instinctively. But when the subject is Latter-day Saints, that genre literacy seems to vanish: the most sensational export becomes the interpretive key for the whole community.

The feature repeatedly gives critics a runway and does not bother to add context, corrections, or faithful perspectives—especially when describing sacred worship. In over 6,000 words, the article manages to include only a few active Latter-day Saints. Jasmin Rappleye, an experienced content creator with serious doctrinal literacy, was woefully underused as a source—she is given a brief quote about “publicity,” and responds to one allegation that influencers are paid directly by the Church (they’re not). Meanwhile The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star and frequent church critic Heather Gay is featured in a quarter of the article. 

This is where the piece crosses from “critical” into “polemic”: it grants authority to the sharpest negative descriptions without doing the basic work of hearing from people who actually practice the faith. 

Examples from the article include:

• It repeats “magic underwear” without noting that Latter-day Saints find that label offensive and have asked others to stop using it—something a respectful publication would at least mention if not honor, even if it still determined that underclothing or a religious minority was a proper subject of journalism.
• It presents “community surveillance” as a defining cultural norm without giving ordinary faithful members a chance to explain how they experience community, accountability, and belonging, and push back on the narrative.
• It gives a critic’s description of temple worship designed to make sacred practice sound ridiculous without any counterweight from a believing voice who can explain what temple worship is intended to be and why it matters.
• It allows the Church to be inaccurately labeled “a theocracy”—a term that describes governments, not churches.

The only moment where balance appears is when the writer needed a denial for legal reasons (the clarification about the church paying influencers). Everything else—the theology, the worship, the moral life of millions of people—gets flattened into outsider narration and the commentary of critics.

That isn’t how you cover a religion. It’s how you prosecute one.

The Biggest Omission: Jesus Christ

One might not expect a cultural publication to take our faith in Jesus Christ seriously (though it did identify us correctly as Christians). But if you are writing a cultural article on why Latter-day Saints do what they do, and you do not talk about how we love Jesus Christ and try to follow His example, then you are not telling the full story.

The story turns a Christ-centered faith into an aesthetic, a machine, a brand strategy, and a collection of quirky doctrines for outsiders to gawk at. Readers come away thinking Latter-day Saint life is mainly about branding, surveillance, and monetization. You cannot tell the truth about Latter-day Saints while ignoring its core animating fact. That omission doesn’t just offend believers. It robs readers of the most important explanatory key to the lives of Latter-day Saints.

Why This Matters Beyond “Hurt Feelings”

Some editors respond to criticism like this with a shrug. They determine it is not their job to be the Church’s PR, or they believe that upsetting people means that their hard-hitting coverage landed. 

I am sorry to disappoint you. But it is also not your job to be the PR for Heather Gay, and an article about how a Hulu reality show made people buy sodas with syrup in them is not hard-hitting coverage.

The reason Latter-day Saints don’t like this kind of coverage is because it’s bad. 

And Latter-day Saints have a long history of being treated as something less than fully American—something exotic, suspect, culty, ridiculous, or dangerous. The article tries to say that is over, while making it very clear it is not. 

The story even gestures at historic persecution early on, then proceeds to participate in a softer modern form of the same impulse: they’re weird, so it’s fine to talk about them in a way you would never talk about others.

A fair feature can be sharp and unsparing and still meet standards of fairness and accuracy. If a publication wants to cover religions—especially minority religions it believes are culturally influential—it should meet the minimum bar:

• Get doctrine right or do not summarize doctrine.
• Avoid lazy stereotypes and derogatory tropes.
• Do not turn sacred practice into spectacle for clicks.
• Include the voices of sincere practitioners, not only critics and reality TV proxies.
• When you make an error, correct it publicly.

We invite New York Magazine, The Cut, and the author and editors of this article to make a public apology to Latter-day Saints, and if they don’t remove the article, to at least correct the inaccurate statements and remove the mockery. 

Moving forward, this can be an opportunity for reflection and improvement. 

One of the most frustrating parts of being part of a community that pop culture periodically discovers is the sense that you are never being spoken to—only spoken about. That your real life is invisible behind the versions of you that sell: the cartoon missionary, the “zany belief,” the “magic underwear,” the reality show scandal, the internet rumor, the aesthetic mood board.

Latter-day Saints are not asking to be shielded from critique. We are asking to be treated as fully human and honestly represented.

New York Magazine can do better. But “better” is not a vague aspiration. It starts with the basics: accuracy, fairness, and the humility to admit when a story uses a minority faith as a punchline.

The post The Ethics of Contempt appeared first on Public Square Magazine.