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.
The Bushman quote that doesn't say what you think
The section opens with a quote from Richard Bushman: "The dominant narrative is not true. It can't be sustained."[2] The CES Letter deploys this to suggest a faithful LDS historian admitted the Church is false.
Bushman — a temple-attending Latter-day Saint and Columbia emeritus professor — was diagnosing the oversimplified Sunday School version of Church history. Not declaring the truth claims false. He has spent his career demonstrating that a more complete narrative strengthens faith, not destroys it.[3]
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) and released 13 Gospel Topics Essays on its most sensitive topics. It published Saints in four volumes openly discussing seer stones, polygamy, the priesthood ban, and Mountain Meadows. It opened a public Church History Library.[4][5]
That's a coordinated, multi-decade, multi-million-dollar commitment to publishing difficult history under the Church's own name. 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.[6][7]
Multiple First Vision accounts appeared in BYU Studies (1969), the Improvement Era (1970), and the Ensign (1985, 1996).[8]
"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."[9]
North Korea starves, imprisons, and executes its citizens. Comparing it to a voluntary religious organization — one you can leave at any time — 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.
The Church's actual investment in the life of the mind
The anti-intellectualism charge runs headfirst into the Church's own record. Four universities. BYU ranked in the top 110 nationally and third in the country for Fulbright Scholars. The Joseph Smith Papers published to National Archives standards.[10]
BYU Studies, the Maxwell Institute, the Interpreter Foundation, Scripture Central — all part of the Church's broader intellectual ecosystem.
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.[11]
The September Six — the CES Letter's strongest anti-intellectualism evidence — involved six cases over thirty years. Several have since been reversed: Gileadi rebaptized in 1996, Hanks in 2012, Anderson's membership restored posthumously in 2024.[12]
Honest about 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.
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. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Other Concerns," p. 112. ↩︎
Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). Bushman's biography is the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of Joseph Smith's life, written from a faithful perspective. ↩︎
"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. ↩︎
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 rebaptized 1996; Hanks rebaptized 2012; Anderson's membership restored posthumously 2024. ↩︎