Appearance
Anti-Intellectualism
The claim:
The CES Letter argues that the Church discourages independent thinking and punishes intellectuals. It cites Boyd K. Packer's statement that "some things that are true are not very useful," Dallin H. Oaks' comment that "it is wrong to criticize the leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true," the September Six excommunications, the Strengthening Church Members Committee, and the phrase "when the prophet speaks the debate is over."[1]
The CES Letter also cites Oaks' 1985 statement to CES educators: "The fact that something is true is not always a justification for communicating it."[1:1]
The picture painted is a church hostile to the life of the mind. An institution that punishes questions, silences scholars, and demands blind obedience.
Is that what the evidence shows?
"Some things that are true are not very useful"
This is the line that does the most work in the CES Letter's anti-intellectualism case. It comes from Elder Boyd K. Packer's 1981 address, "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect."[2]
The CES Letter quotes it and then asks: Is Joseph Smith's polyandry not a useful truth? Is the rock in the hat not a useful truth?
Fair questions. But they depend on reading the quote as a blanket prohibition against discussing uncomfortable history. That's not what Packer was saying.
Who was in the room
Packer was speaking to Church Educational System employees at a CES symposium — seminary teachers, institute instructors, and BYU religion faculty. He was not addressing academic historians at a professional conference. He was talking to people whose job description was teaching faith to teenagers and young adults.[2:1]
He opened by telling his audience: "You seminary teachers and some of you institute and BYU men will be teaching the history of the Church this school year." His concern was pedagogical, not academic.
The full paragraph
Here is the passage with the sentence restored to its context:
"There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful."[2:2]
Packer then illustrated what he meant: a historian had recently given a lecture that presented disconnected facts about a Church president "in a very unfavorable light, particularly when they were taken out of the context of the historical period."[2:3]
His point was about framing, not suppression. A fact ripped from its historical context and presented without that context can mislead even when technically accurate. That principle operates in every discipline. Attorneys have privileged communications. Doctors don't publish patient records. Historians distinguish between what happened and what it meant.
The stronger objection
The CES Letter has a sharper quote from the same talk:
"That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith."[1:2]
The key word is "delights." Packer was describing a disposition — the scholar who takes pleasure in tearing down — not serious historical work that acknowledges human imperfection. There's a difference between a historian documenting difficult facts and one who relishes them.
That said, this talk did real damage. Whatever Packer intended, the language gave cover to local leaders who used it to discourage legitimate questions. The talk's legacy is more complicated than either side admits.
The Dallin H. Oaks quotes
The CES Letter cites two Oaks statements. First, from the PBS documentary The Mormons: "It is wrong to criticize the leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true."[1:3] Second, from a 1985 CES Symposium: "The fact that something is true is not always a justification for communicating it."[1:4]
In the full PBS interview, Oaks explained he was addressing the motive behind criticism, not the factual accuracy of it — distinguishing between constructive engagement and public attacks designed to undermine confidence in Church leadership.[3]
The 1985 CES statement follows the same logic as Packer's: Oaks was speaking to religious educators about their professional responsibilities, not issuing a policy for all scholarship. The principle itself is mundane. Therapists don't repeat everything clients tell them. Professors don't share every student's grade publicly. "True but not always appropriate to share in this context" is a principle every profession recognizes.
You can disagree with where Church leaders draw that line. But "true things sometimes require discretion" and "never investigate truth" are different claims.
"When the prophet speaks, the debate is over"
This line appears in the CES Letter as evidence that the Church demands unquestioning obedience.[1:5]
It originates with Elaine Cannon, then Young Women General President, who said it at a 1978 fireside. N. Eldon Tanner, First Counselor in the First Presidency, repeated it approvingly in an August 1979 Ensign article.[4]
But there's an older and more revealing version of this idea.
The quote the Church rejected
In June 1945, the Improvement Era published a Ward Teachers' Message that stated: "When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done."[5]
A Unitarian minister in Salt Lake City wrote to President George Albert Smith expressing concern. Smith's reply was unambiguous:
"The passage quoted does not express the true position of the Church."[6]
Smith said the statement "grossly misrepresents the true ideal of the Church" and that every member is "personally responsible to His Maker."[6:1]
Elder Albert E. Bowen of the Quorum of the Twelve later revealed that the message had been written by a young clerk in the Presiding Bishop's office and sent out without anyone in authority having approved it.[7]
The Church's prophet explicitly rejected the idea that members should stop thinking when leaders speak. That happened in 1945 — decades before the CES Letter cited the idea as Church doctrine.
The September Six
In September 1993, six members of the Church were excommunicated or disfellowshipped: Lavina Fielding Anderson, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks, Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, and Avraham Gileadi.[8]
The CES Letter presents this as the Church punishing scholars for scholarly work.[1:6]
The CES Letter also cites Packer's May 1993 statement identifying "the three enemies of the Church" as "the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement, and the ever present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals."[9] That language is indefensible as a description of scholarship. It's worth acknowledging directly.
What actually happened
The cases were not identical, and treating them as a single event obscures important differences.
Avraham Gileadi, an Isaiah scholar, was excommunicated and then rebaptized approximately three years later — suggesting his case was reconsidered and reversed.[10] Maxine Hanks was rebaptized in 2012.[11] Lavina Fielding Anderson continued attending her ward faithfully for thirty years after her excommunication; her membership was restored posthumously in 2024.[12]
D. Michael Quinn's case is the most substantive. He was a gifted historian whose work on post-Manifesto polygamy and early Mormon folk magic was groundbreaking. His excommunication was a genuine loss to the scholarly community. But Quinn himself stated that his disciplinary council focused on his public statements contradicting Church teachings, not on his published historical research.[13]
Paul Toscano was excommunicated after publicly calling Church leaders "ichneumon flies" and comparing the Church to "a great and spacious building." His case was about rhetoric, not research.[14]
The honest assessment
The September Six happened. Some of the actions were heavy-handed. The episode created a chilling effect on Mormon studies that lasted years. Acknowledging this matters.
But six disciplinary actions over thirty years of prolific LDS scholarship is not a pattern of systematic anti-intellectualism. It's a handful of difficult cases — several of which the Church itself reversed — in a tradition that simultaneously funds more religious scholarship than virtually any other church in the world.
"Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith"
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said this in his October 2013 General Conference talk, "Come, Join with Us."[15] The CES Letter implies this is anti-intellectual — a command to stop thinking.
Here's the paragraph that precedes the famous line:
"It's natural to have questions — the acorn of honest inquiry has often sprouted and matured into a great oak of understanding. There are few members of the Church who, at one time or another, have not wrestled with serious or sensitive questions."[15:1]
And earlier in the same talk:
"In this Church that honors personal agency so strongly, that was restored by a young man who asked questions and sought answers, we respect those who honestly search for truth."[15:2]
Uchtdorf explicitly affirmed that questions are natural, that wrestling with difficult issues is normal, and that honest inquiry is respected. "Doubt your doubts" was not a call to stop thinking. It was a call to apply the same critical scrutiny to your doubts that you apply to your faith — which is, by definition, an intellectual exercise.
The Strengthening Church Members Committee
The CES Letter describes the SCMC as "the spying and monitoring arm of the Church" created in 1985.[1:7]
The committee's stated purpose is to monitor public statements by members that may oppose Church teachings. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland acknowledged its existence in 2012.[16]
This is a fair criticism to raise. Institutional monitoring of members' public statements understandably makes people uncomfortable.
But the CES Letter's framing implies a vast surveillance apparatus. In practice, the committee's function — tracking publicly available speeches and publications — is now performed by anyone with a Google search. The committee predates the internet. Its purpose has been largely overtaken by the open nature of modern public discourse.
The positive case: a church that builds universities
The anti-intellectualism case depends on quotes. The counterevidence is institutional — measured in buildings, budgets, volumes, and enrollment figures.
The Joseph Smith Papers
The Joseph Smith Papers Project is one of the most ambitious documentary editing projects in American history. Over 22 years (2001-2023), the Church published 27 volumes containing 18,822 pages, 7,452,072 words, and 49,687 footnotes of primary source documents — with full scholarly apparatus, peer review, and open access.[17]
The National Archives endorsed the project as meeting "the most rigorous criteria for documentary editing" and called it "the gold standard in the field of historical documentary editing."[18]
This is not an institution hiding its history. This is an institution publishing its history at a scale and scholarly rigor that few organizations in the world can match.
BYU and Church universities
Brigham Young University is ranked among the top 110 national universities by U.S. News, No. 36 on the Forbes Top 100 list, and No. 3 among doctoral research institutions for Fulbright Scholars.[19] Its scholarly archive contains over 60,000 academic publications with more than 1.6 million citations.[20]
The Church operates four institutions of higher education — BYU (Provo), BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, and Ensign College — with a combined record enrollment of over 117,000 students in 2024.[21] BYU-Pathway Worldwide serves 70,000 additional students in over 180 countries.[21:1]
Seminaries and Institutes
The Church Educational System enrolled nearly 1 million students in 2024, including 427,642 seminary students and 384,095 institute students — both all-time highs.[21:2]
No anti-intellectual institution builds this.
Education correlates with faith, not against it
In most religious traditions, higher education correlates with lower church attendance. Among Latter-day Saints, the opposite is true. Studies have consistently shown that higher levels of education among Church members correlate with higher levels of Church activity — with attendance rates reaching 70-80% among those with sixteen or more years of education.[22] The Pew Research Center confirmed this pattern: Latter-day Saints with a college degree attend church more frequently than those without one.[23]
If the Church were anti-intellectual, you would expect educated members to leave. Instead, they stay — and at higher rates than their less-educated peers.
Scholarly journals and research organizations
The Church funds or sponsors an ecosystem of scholarship unmatched by any religious tradition of comparable size:
- BYU Studies — the oldest continuously published Mormon studies journal, founded 1959[24]
- The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship — successor to FARMS (the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies), producing academic monographs and the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies[25]
- The Interpreter Foundation — a peer-reviewed journal publishing dozens of articles annually on Latter-day Saint scripture and history, freely available online[26]
- Scripture Central — producing KnoWhys, evidence summaries, and maintaining a vast digital archive of LDS scholarship[27]
- Pearl of Great Price Central — dedicated scholarly resource on the Book of Abraham and Pearl of Great Price[28]
- BYU's Religious Studies Center — publishing academic books, the Religious Educator journal, and hosting scholarly symposia[29]
D&C 88:118 — a doctrinal commitment
The anti-intellectualism charge ignores what Latter-day Saint scripture actually says about learning:
"Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith." (D&C 88:118)
"The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth." (D&C 93:36)
"If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things." (Articles of Faith 1:13)
These aren't obscure proof texts. They are among the most-quoted passages in the tradition. A religion that makes intelligence a divine attribute and commands its members to seek learning from "the best books" is not anti-intellectual by design.
Leaders who championed the life of the mind
The CES Letter quotes leaders who sound anti-intellectual. Here are some it doesn't quote.
Brigham Young:
"I exhort you to think for yourselves, and read your Bibles for yourselves, get the Holy Spirit for yourselves, and pray for yourselves."[30]
Joseph Smith:
"All have the privilege of thinking for themselves upon all matters relative to conscience."[31]
James E. Talmage:
"God has not established His Church to make of its members irresponsible automatons, nor to exact from them blind obedience."[32]
Hugh B. Brown (First Counselor in the First Presidency, speaking at BYU in 1969):
"One of the most important things in the world is freedom of the mind; from this all other freedoms spring."[33]
"We call upon you students to exercise your God-given right to think through every proposition that is submitted to you. We are not so much concerned with whether your thoughts are orthodox or heterodox as we are that you shall have thoughts."[33:1]
That last quote was delivered at a BYU devotional by a member of the First Presidency. It is the opposite of anti-intellectualism.
The real pattern
The CES Letter selects a handful of quotes from leaders who cautioned against a particular kind of scholarship and presents them as the Church's position on intellectual inquiry. It ignores the far larger body of evidence running in the other direction.
| Evidence the CES Letter cites | Evidence the CES Letter ignores |
|---|---|
| Packer's 1981 CES talk | The Joseph Smith Papers (27 volumes, National Archives standard) |
| Oaks' PBS interview clip | BYU — top-110 research university, No. 3 in Fulbright Scholars |
| September Six (6 cases over 30 years) | 1 million students enrolled in CES programs (2024) |
| "When the prophet speaks, the debate is over" | George Albert Smith rejecting "the thinking has been done" (1945) |
| Strengthening Church Members Committee | Interpreter Foundation, Maxwell Institute, BYU Studies, Scripture Central |
| Uchtdorf's "doubt your doubts" (out of context) | Uchtdorf in the same talk: "we respect those who honestly search for truth" |
Six data points on one side. An entire educational and scholarly infrastructure on the other.
Both mind and spirit
There is a genuine tension in Latter-day Saint culture between faith and scholarship. That tension is real and worth discussing honestly. Some local leaders have discouraged hard questions. Some members have felt punished for thinking critically. Those experiences matter.
But a tension between faith and intellect is not the same thing as anti-intellectualism. Every religious tradition that takes both God and reason seriously navigates this tension. Catholicism has Thomas Aquinas and the Index of Forbidden Books. Judaism has centuries of rigorous Talmudic scholarship and community boundaries around heresy. Protestantism produced the Reformation and creationism.
The Latter-day Saint tradition navigates the same territory — and it does so while funding more religious scholarship per capita than virtually any other faith community on earth.
Historian Davis Bitton, who in 1966 wrote the foundational Dialogue article on "Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History," revisited his own thesis 35 years later. He concluded that his younger self's analysis had been "selective" and that the result was "a caricature." The relationship between faith and intellect, the mature Bitton wrote, "is not a question of either/or... it is both/and."[34]
Bottom line: The Church operates four universities, enrolls nearly a million students, publishes 27 volumes of primary-source documents to National Archives standards, funds multiple peer-reviewed journals, and has canonized scripture declaring "the glory of God is intelligence." A handful of cautionary quotes from leaders do not outweigh the institutional reality. The CES Letter's anti-intellectualism case depends entirely on ignoring the Church's actual investment in the life of the mind.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Other Concerns," pp. 120-125. The anti-intellectualism section cites Packer's "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect," Oaks' PBS interview, the September Six, the Strengthening Church Members Committee, and the Tanner "debate is over" quote. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Boyd K. Packer, "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect," address to CES Religious Educators' Symposium, Brigham Young University, August 22, 1981. Published in BYU Studies 21, no. 3 (1981). https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol21/iss3/2/. Also available at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teaching-seminary-preservice-readings-religion-370-471-and-475/the-mantle-is-far-far-greater-than-the-intellect ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Dallin H. Oaks, interview in The Mormons, PBS documentary, 2007. Oaks clarified that his statement about criticizing leaders addressed destructive intent, not factual accuracy. The CES Letter quotes only the brief clip. See also "Packer's Talk: 'The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect,'" FAIR. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Mormonism_and_history/Boyd_K._Packer's_talk:_"The_Mantle_is_Far,_Far_Greater_Than_the_Intellect" ↩︎
N. Eldon Tanner, "The Debate Is Over," Ensign, August 1979. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1979/08/the-debate-is-over. The phrase originated with Elaine Cannon at a 1978 churchwide fireside for women (Ensign, November 1978, p. 108). ↩︎
"Sustaining the General Authorities of the Church," Ward Teachers' Message, Improvement Era 48, no. 6 (June 1945): 354. ↩︎
George Albert Smith, letter to J. Raymond Cope, December 7, 1945. Smith wrote that the statement "grossly misrepresents the true ideal of the Church." See "When the Prophet Speaks, Is the Thinking Done?," FAIR. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/archive/publications/when-the-prophet-speaks-is-the-thinking-done ↩︎ ↩︎
Albert E. Bowen, letter to Dean Brimhall, 1946. Bowen explained the Ward Teachers' Message had been written by a young clerk in the Presiding Bishop's office and sent out without authorization. See "When the Prophet Speaks, Is the Thinking Done?," FAIR. ↩︎
The September Six were disciplined in September 1993: Lavina Fielding Anderson (excommunicated), D. Michael Quinn (excommunicated), Paul Toscano (excommunicated), Maxine Hanks (excommunicated), Lynne Kanavel Whitesides (disfellowshipped), and Avraham Gileadi (excommunicated). See "September Six," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Six ↩︎
Boyd K. Packer, All-Church Coordinating Council, May 18, 1993. Packer identified "the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement (both of which are relatively new), and the ever present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals." Runnells cites this in CES Letter (2017), "Other Concerns," p. 124. ↩︎
Avraham Gileadi was rebaptized approximately three years after his 1993 excommunication, reportedly around 1996. ↩︎
Maxine Hanks was rebaptized in February 2012. See Peggy Fletcher Stack, "Maxine Hanks, One of the 'September Six,' Rebaptized into LDS Church," Salt Lake Tribune, February 3, 2012. ↩︎
Lavina Fielding Anderson died October 29, 2023. Her Church membership was restored posthumously in 2024. She had continued attending her ward faithfully for thirty years after her excommunication. See Peggy Fletcher Stack, "Writer excommunicated during LDS Church's 'September Six' purge is 'rebaptized' — with a twist," Salt Lake Tribune, November 21, 2024. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/11/21/september-six-writer-readmitted/ ↩︎
D. Michael Quinn stated that his disciplinary council focused on public statements contradicting Church teachings rather than his published historical research. See "The September Six and the Lost Generation of Mormon Studies," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-september-six-and-the-lost-generation-of-mormon-studies/ ↩︎
Paul Toscano's public rhetoric included comparing Church leadership to "ichneumon flies" and the institutional Church to "a great and spacious building" — a deliberately provocative use of Book of Mormon imagery. His excommunication followed escalating public confrontation, not private scholarly inquiry. ↩︎
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Come, Join with Us," General Conference, October 2013. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2013/10/come-join-with-us ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Jeffrey R. Holland acknowledged the Strengthening Church Members Committee's existence in March 2012. The committee's function is to monitor publicly available statements by Church members that may oppose Church teachings. ↩︎
"Final Volume of Joseph Smith Papers Published, Completing Monumental Historical Work," Church Historian's Press, 2023. https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/news/final-volume-of-joseph-smith-papers-published-completing-monumental-historical-work. The project comprises 27 volumes with 18,822 pages, 7,452,072 words, and 49,687 footnotes. ↩︎
The National Archives endorsed the Joseph Smith Papers as meeting the most rigorous criteria for documentary editing. See "Church leaders, historians reflect on Joseph Smith Papers as project nears its end," Church News, March 30, 2023. https://www.thechurchnews.com/history/2023/3/30/23632836/joseph-smith-papers-project-church-history-lds-faith ↩︎
"Rankings," BYU News. https://news.byu.edu/rankings. BYU is ranked No. 110 in National Universities (U.S. News, 2026), No. 36 on the Forbes Top 100 list (2025), and No. 3 among doctoral research institutions for Fulbright Scholars. ↩︎
BYU's scholarly output includes over 60,000 academic publications with more than 1.6 million citations. See "Brigham Young University - Provo Rankings," EduRank. https://edurank.org/uni/brigham-young-university-provo/rankings/ ↩︎
"The Growth and Momentum of the Church Educational System," Church Newsroom. https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/growth-momentum-church-educational-system. For 2023-24: 427,642 seminary students, 384,095 institute students, 117,204 students enrolled in higher education, and 70,000 BYU-Pathway Worldwide students in 180+ countries. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"Education, Scholarship, and Mormonism," FAIR. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/archive/publications/education-scholarship-and-mormonism. Studies show Church attendance rates reaching 70-80% among Latter-day Saints with sixteen or more years of education. ↩︎
"Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/. Latter-day Saints with college degrees attend church at higher rates than those without. ↩︎
BYU Studies Quarterly, founded 1959. The oldest continuously published journal devoted to Latter-day Saint scholarship. https://byustudies.byu.edu ↩︎
The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University. Successor to FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, founded 1979). Publishes the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies and academic monographs. https://mi.byu.edu ↩︎
The Interpreter Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization publishing Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship — a peer-reviewed, open-access journal. https://interpreterfoundation.org ↩︎
Scripture Central (formerly Book of Mormon Central), producing KnoWhys, evidence summaries, and a comprehensive digital archive of LDS scholarship. https://scripturecentral.org ↩︎
Pearl of Great Price Central, a scholarly resource dedicated to the Book of Abraham and Pearl of Great Price. https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org ↩︎
BYU Religious Studies Center, publishing academic books, the Religious Educator journal, and hosting scholarly symposia since 1975. https://rsc.byu.edu ↩︎
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 1:312. ↩︎
Joseph Smith, from the Kirtland Council Minute Book. See also Joseph Fielding Smith, ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976), 49. ↩︎
James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1899), ch. 2. ↩︎
Hugh B. Brown, "An Eternal Quest — Freedom of the Mind," BYU devotional address, May 13, 1969. https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/hugh-b-brown/eternal-quest/ ↩︎ ↩︎
Davis Bitton, "Mormon Anti-Intellectualism: A Reply," FARMS Review 13, no. 2 (2001): 59-62. Bitton revisited his 1966 Dialogue article "Anti-Intellectualism in Mormon History" (Dialogue 1, no. 3 [1966]: 111-134) and concluded his earlier thesis was oversimplified. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol13/iss2/8/ ↩︎