I’ve never really come out strongly for or against the CES letter and it’s not my intention to do so. I have folks on both sides of the issue whose opinions I deeply respect and I can see validity in arguments all around. I also adore Jeremy Runnells, think he’s a lovely guy, and know he’s put a lot of work into the project. (In fact, I checked with him to make sure he was fine with me posting a critique during a potentially vulnerable time for him).

That said, I want to offer a critique of the CES letter, one that I don’t think that Jeremy needs to answer for.

Many people critique the letter saying it is feeding folks from a fire-hose. Too much info to digest at one time. I’m not sure that is the problem, but it might be digging near the right spot.

For me, I think the CES letter is a good compilation of the inaccuracies and problems with the LDS church. It’s a great place to go for a bullet list of issues. What it lacks is analysis. I don’t mean Runnells’ analysis, because I think that exists in the text a bit. What it lacks, I mean, is analysis from the reader.

Think of it this way:

You spend however many years in the church (30 for me) processing the culture, theology, doctrine, and more culture, and thousands of messages subtle and oblique, others more direct. You process this with your mind, heart, and soul. Mormonism is all-encompassing. I think of the time I was a little kid in primary taught to FEEL the words of the Holy Ghost. I wasn’t just taught to understand them on an intellectual level. I was taught to feel Mormonism. In a hundred different ways. From the hands of my grandfather on my head for a blessing, to the fear of the devil when a thought entered my mind, to the comfort of camping in the mountains and know I am being protected.

So when you are deconstructing the church you grew up with, vs. the church with a critical lens- I think the best analysis is done with using tools to deconstruct all the various ways Mormonism permeates your experiences.

I am in the second series of a huge, comprehensive podcast project. I have deconstructed Mormon history through the lens of polygamy and now I’m doing it with race. I’ve been doing this for six years, and I find myself STILL decolonizing Mormonism. There are parts of my faith I am still deconstructing and probably 3,000 more ways to unpack that I don’t even realize are there.

This is the issue with those who leave the church after reading the CES letter, fire-hose and all. You are sore and sopping wet and forget what dry feels like.

This is not critiquing that folks leave the church. Good heavens, anyone who knows me know that I legitimately do not care if folks stay active, lose their faith, or leave altogether. Truly, I really don’t. ExMo’s are my homegirlz.

My thing is about the work and about personal peace. If you take information, bullet points, or a list of issues and say, “That’s it! I’m done”– that is only part of the work. It might be the starting line for you, but it would be foolish to think it’s a finish line.

That doesn’t mean you need to keep attending your meetings or reading your scriptures or contribute to the institution after you unveil the church in all it’s flawed glory. That’s a personal decision. All I’m saying is try to be patient with yourself and get real with the fact that you are allowed to take time to feel things about this. Maybe for a long, long time. And that’s okay.

People wonder why some “can leave the church but can’t leave it alone.” Those folks need to think things through a bit more.

Leaving the church (ie, not attending) is only stopping one ritual in Mormonism (usually Sunday attendance). It barely begins to touch on all the ways Mormonism surrounds your life. It’s called “full-immersion” for a reason. It takes years and years and years to unpack. I wish it weren’t so, but that’s life. (This might also might explain why you can’t just spew a barrage of issues and fallacies at family members and change their mind.)

This process can hurt like hell. It can be embarrassing. Often times reading about the issues the CES letter addresses makes readers feel duped, betrayed, or lied to. It hurts, believe me, I know it does. For me it’s left a void I don’t know will ever be filled. I’ve chosen to interpret that pain as a gift. The gift of being wrong, as John Larsen calls it. What a gift to not know everything. The CES can give that to you in one sitting. That’s pretty powerful!

The CES letter also, validates many painful and abusive situations people experience. Critics of the letter don’t understand this. If you are in pain, but never felt like you could either articulate or claim your pain, the CES letter tells you that yes, in fact your pain is real, the church isn’t perfect, in fact- it’s far from it. It can incredibly empowering in that respect. Validating this process is critical, especially because all-encompassing Mormonism relies heavily on validation and it’s a language we Mormons are fluent in.

This isn’t blaming the victim. This is saying, if you take the CES letter as an authoritative source, believe it with your whole heart, and live accordingly, that is recreating the Mormon pattern or paradigm. Making it a new prophet instead of a resource. This is what I call faithful exMormoning.

The CES letter can break apart your “one true narrative” (and my goodness, that can hurt!) and that is such a gift. You should be grateful for anything that can disrupt that sort of thinking for you. And yet you should use it as a tool to disrupt that thinking, rather than a tool for reinforcing black and white thinking.

Think of the thousands of messages you have received (positive and negative) from the church throughout your relationship with it. Moments and memories that no one can know but you. If you’re in the process of trying to understand yourself in relationship to Mormonism, I believe the best way is to deconstruct, deconstruct, deconstruct. And for many that means reconstructing their own Mormonisms, or replacing it with something else.

It’s all a big, huge, gigantic process. Only you can know how long of a process it is. But if you read the CES letter and say, “Okay, that’s it! I know all I need to know!” I think there’s a high probability that you are cheating your heart, mind, and soul a teensy bit. You’re asking your body to trust one part of the process, the intellectual or logical part. Which is fine, and I get why we do this. But the full work is trying to recognize all the ways Mormonism has affected you, and decolonizing that. Your muscle memory, your experiences, your world view.

Mormonism isn’t just about history, or “true” translations. (Testimony meetings do us a disservice by confusing the word “true” with “important” and “meaningful.”)

Mormonism is a lived experience and “leaving” it should be treated as such. This is where the CES letter falls short, and I can’t imagine how it could possibly address this.

It can’t, which is why the critique is with the reader, not the author.

Good luck to all the peeps out there doing the work, wherever you may land.