Appearance
Other Concerns
The CES Letter spends 111 pages attacking the Church's foundational truth claims. Then it pivots.
"These concerns are secondary to all of the above. These concerns do not matter if the foundational truth claims (Book of Mormon, First Vision, Prophets, Book of Abraham, Witnesses, Priesthood, Temples, etc.) are not true."[1]
That's Runnells himself. A remarkable concession — and the correct framing. The "Other Concerns" section isn't about whether the Church is true. It's about whether the Church is trustworthy.
So is the institution behaving the way you'd expect if it had something to hide?
A snapshot frozen as an indictment
The CES Letter captures real institutional growing pains — correlation-era manuals that oversimplified, financial opacity, a handful of disciplinary cases — and presents them as permanent features of a fundamentally dishonest organization.
But institutions change. The relevant question is trajectory.
Since the early 2000s, the Church has published the Joseph Smith Papers (27 volumes, National Archives standard), released 13 Gospel Topics Essays on its most sensitive historical topics, published Saints in four volumes openly discussing seer stones, polygamy, the priesthood ban, and Mountain Meadows, opened a public Church History Library, and released the first photograph of the seer stone in 2015.[2][3]
This is a coordinated, multi-decade, multi-million-dollar commitment to publishing difficult history under the Church's own name. Not a reluctant concession forced by critics. The CES Letter was written in 2013 — the same year this transparency revolution was accelerating.
"Hidden history" that wasn't hidden
The seer stone translation method was described in the Ensign by Elder Russell M. Nelson in 1993. Richard Lloyd Anderson published on it in 1977. The Friend children's magazine mentioned it in 1974.[4][5]
Multiple First Vision accounts were published in BYU Studies (1969), the Improvement Era (1970), and the Ensign (1985, 1996). Joseph Smith's polygamy was discussed in the Improvement Era in 1946.[6]
"The Church hid its history" often means "I didn't know about it." The gap between those two things is real — but it isn't institutional conspiracy.
North Korea is not a serious comparison
The CES Letter builds to this:
"Policies and practices you'd expect to find in a totalitarian system such as North Korea or George Orwell's 1984; not from the gospel of Jesus Christ."[7]
North Korea starves, imprisons, and executes its citizens. Comparing it to a voluntary religious organization — one you can leave at any time, one that operates four universities and funds dozens of scholarly journals — is not serious argumentation.
The CES Letter raises some legitimate institutional concerns. But it wraps them in rhetoric so overheated that it discredits the valid points alongside the invalid ones.
An institution that builds, not buries
The anti-intellectualism charge runs headfirst into the Church's own institutional record. Four universities. BYU ranked in the top 110 nationally, third in the country for Fulbright Scholars. The Joseph Smith Papers published to National Archives standards. BYU Studies, the Maxwell Institute, the Interpreter Foundation, Scripture Central, Pearl of Great Price Central — all funded or supported by the Church's broader intellectual ecosystem.[8]
Education among Latter-day Saints correlates with higher Church activity — the opposite of what you'd expect from an institution hostile to the life of the mind.[9]
The September Six — the CES Letter's strongest anti-intellectualism evidence — involved six cases over thirty years. Avraham Gileadi was rebaptized in 1996. Maxine Hanks was rebaptized in 2012. Lavina Fielding Anderson's membership was restored posthumously in 2024. The Church now publishes openly the very findings that made some of these scholars controversial.[10]
What's fair
Some of these concerns are legitimate. Greater financial transparency would build trust. The Lorenzo Snow tithing quote alteration was a meaningful omission. The September Six had a real chilling effect on faithful scholarship for a generation.
Honest engagement means acknowledging what's fair while correcting what's misleading. Pretending every criticism is baseless would be as dishonest as pretending every criticism is valid.
Bottom line: The CES Letter's "Other Concerns" are institutional complaints, not truth-claim arguments — and Runnells says so himself. The Church's trajectory since the early 2000s is unambiguously toward greater transparency, greater scholarly engagement, and greater honesty about its own difficult history. That trajectory matters more than a frozen snapshot.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Other Concerns," p. 112. ↩︎
"The Joseph Smith Papers," Church Historian's Press. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/ ↩︎
"Gospel Topics Essays," The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/ ↩︎
Russell M. Nelson, "A Treasured Testament," Ensign, July 1993. Nelson described the seer stone translation process in a general conference setting. ↩︎
Richard Lloyd Anderson, "By the Gift and Power of God," Ensign, September 1977. ↩︎
Dean C. Jessee, "The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision," BYU Studies 9, no. 3 (1969): 275-294. https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/the-early-accounts-of-joseph-smiths-first-vision/ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Other Concerns," p. 125. ↩︎
"BYU Rankings," U.S. News & World Report. BYU has ranked third nationally in Fulbright Scholars multiple years running. ↩︎
"U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey," Pew Research Center. Latter-day Saints consistently rank among the most religiously knowledgeable groups in the United States, and education correlates with higher, not lower, activity rates. ↩︎
Lavina Fielding Anderson, "The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26, no. 1 (1993). Gileadi was rebaptized 1996; Hanks rebaptized 2012; Anderson's membership restored posthumously 2024. ↩︎