It is a breathy and panicked handwringing/warm hug for anyone worried that there might be something on the other side of Mormonism that looks vaguely enough like the Jesus they know to grasp on to if they ever decided to leave the church.

I encountered the article when one of my Mormon friends posted it on Facebook and considered responding there, but I value my friends that are still in the Church, and my bone to pick isn’t with them. But I did want to respond on the source article and so wrote the following novella :).

Unfortunately, the length of my response triggered a “suspected bot” redirect (I’ll give the benefit of the doubt that this was the cause) and sadly it looked like my response would be forever unread by the tens of thousands of people convinced that this self insulating piece of happiness propaganda is, in fact, an apologetic masterpiece.

I don’t feel particularly called to Mormon evangelism, even though my time with the church and study since have convinced me that there is no Gospel message more confused that the one promulgated by the LDS church. I chose to respond to this mostly because it constitutes one of the most egregious attacks on logic, reason, and fair handling of facts I’ve ever encountered online. The fact that it’s being shared and lauded as an insightful and astute explanation of the underlying causes of Mormon disaffection is quite simply astonishing to me.

And so, my response:

TL;DR Nuh uh, Dustin. Nuh uh.

Hi Dustin, A friend of mine shared this article on Facebook the other day, captioning it “A very good read.” I was going to let it pass without comment but I realized that, just as you feel the need to reach those you feel are lost, I can do no less and feel comfortable calling myself a follower of Christ. I spent a couple of years in the LDS Church during my faith journey, and ultimately left because (among other reasons) I could not reconcile LDS theology with that presented in the Bible. My friends in the Church know that I tried, exhaustively, but to no avail. The deeper I went into Church history and into exegetical study of the Old and New Testaments, the more certain I became that the truth claims of the Church are simply not rooted in the faith demanded by God’s word in the Bible. Because I’m still friends with several members of the Church, I did not want to respond to the share of this article on Facebook; I have a great deal of love and respect for the person who labeled this “a very good article” and do not want to cause public contention between he and I. That said, this article demands a critical response. Given the high volume of shares (congrats!) and the fact that none of the direct responses on this page seem all that critical (even though this article has been circulating in decidedly unfriendly waters as well) I can only assume you’re applying a heavy filter to commenting; I hope that I’m wrong and you’ve simply lucked out :) If my response is filtered in the same way, I’ll understand, but I will find a way to share my response to you with those who need to hear it. The reason your article demands a response is that it is a very old argument, couched as a new one. Given that the argument in question isn’t particularly good, it would be a shame to see it regain prominence because of some new window dressing. In fact, the history of statements by former Church presidents is littered with the kind of black and white propositions that you proclaim here, propositions which almost always result in people losing all faith rather than looking for viable alternatives.



When you say: “So, for LDS members (particularly RMs and life-long members), Christianity itself hinges upon the question, “Was Joseph Smith really a prophet?” When Joseph Smith’s role as prophet is called into question, so is Christ’s role as the Redeemer.” you’re merely echoing the same all-or-nothing stance on Christian truth that has lain at the center of LDS thought since the inception of the Church. Before I tackle the meat of your argument, I’d like to pose a thought I truly hope you’ll consider. By linking Joseph’s place in history to Christ’s, the Church itself is directly responsible when its members decide to leave and, instead of seeking a true representation of Christ in another church, find that total unbelief is the only stance left to them. I’d prefer an outcome derived from this take by President J. Reuben Clark:

“If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”

If the Church adopted that stance to truth today, you might find a very different story when it comes to the spiritual lives of those who leave the church than what is currently experienced. Let’s begin. 1. There’s Only One Credible Alternative to the Restored Gospel. Since the remainder of your thesis depends on this proposition being true, I’m going to spend most of my time here.

“It is simply impossible to leave the Restored Gospel for another version of Christianity without realizing that you have lost so many of its essential elements. What happened to prophets, revelation, temples, priesthood authority, the plan of salvation, the doctrine of Eternal Man, etc.? And how could the God of the Bible suddenly decide that everyone should be free to interpret scripture as they wish, creating a church for every opinion?”

It’s interesting that every doctrine you outline here is one that either doesn’t exist in the Bible, or has a Biblical understanding that flies directly in the face of LDS understanding. If a person is adhering to a truly biblical understanding of Christianity, the questions of prophets, revelation, temples, priesthood, and salvation are perfectly answered in the Bible, without need for any kind of restoration. One needs only to study, and to do so without eisegeting the text to fit one’s own preconceptions inside. You speak of these doctrinal differences as positives. But if they are not true, than liking them, or missing them when they are gone, is not a measure of their worth.

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”- Mat 16–26

It’s also interesting to me that you ask the question “how could the God of the Bible…” in that context. You clearly (and rightly) delineate between the Biblical understanding of who God is versus who the LDS Church says He is. But you then ask a question that underscores a wildly false understanding of Christianity proper. In asking “And how could the God of the Bible suddenly decide that everyone should be free to interpret scripture as they wish, creating a church for every opinion?” what you’re assuming is that all of those different churches are, in fact, different religions, all formed from fallible interpretations of scripture. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, broader Christianity, with some exceptions within more puritanical Protestant circles, tends to view members of all the denominational churches as members of the Church proper, or the Body of Christ. If there is a division of actual religion, it is between the Cathorthodox churches and Protestantism, but that still leaves you with two religions that can both affirm the core doctrines of Christianity and differ primarily in questions of authority. To borrow a common term from my time in the LDS Church, these differences are mostly questions “not essential to salvation.” To be sure, there are real differences between the major traditions, and neither recognize the other group as Christians; however this leaves you with basically two different religions claiming the title of “True Christianity” with various sub groups under those two large umbrellas. Absent from this division is the idea that “everyone should be free to interpret scripture as they wish.” Both major religious traditions have clear exegetical systems when dealing with the Scriptures. When a person reading the Bible comes up with their own interpretation that contradict the readings of others, especially when it comes down to Gospel truths, it’s very easy to gently correct them and help them to understand their error. The reason for that ease is that, while there may be massive schism between the two large branches of Christendom, all Christians belonging to these branches are approaching the Bible from the same basic foundation. When a Baptist and a Catholic say the words God, Jesus, Fall, Salvation, Grace, Faith, Trinity, etc, they all mean the same thing. It is in the peripherals where disagreement happens, and there we have history and context and evidence with which to back up opinion. TL;DR There is a correct path of interpretation when it comes to the Bible and that correct path can be explained, analyzed, and backed up.

“Perhaps even more important, however, is that basically every reason to doubt Mormonism is a good reason to doubt Christianity.”

Nope. Sorry, but everything that follows from this thought is riddled with false equivalence or straw man arguments. To wit: “Not enough archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon? Feel like some of the archaeological evidence might contradict the Book of Mormon? The same is true of the Bible.” You know what we’ve never found? Another copy of the Gold Plates that Joseph allegedly translated the BOM from. You know what we almost trip over daily any time someone rests a shovel in the ground anywhere near Jerusalem? Another page or parchment scrap of the New Testament. We have never, not once, dug up anything anywhere resembling physical evidence for the historicity of the BOM. We are almost literally bathing in evidence supporting the historicity of the New Testament and much of the Old. Are there times when we find something that contradicts the historical narrative of the Old Testament? Absolutely. But we also find mountains of evidence (whole cities, churches, texts, tombs etc.) that support those texts. If we’re weighing the validity of two historical tracks it is absurd to give equal weight between one that gets some things wrong against one that gets nothing right. Following through to your argument based on equivalence between Joseph Smith and the prophets of old:

“And so we find that arguments against Joseph Smith are really arguments against all the prophets — the messengers from whom we learn of Christ and of whom Christ testified.”

Again, nope. You’re basically saying, ‘if Joseph was a sinner (as all men are) then disqualifying him as a prophet on those grounds, when all the other prophets were also sinners (as all men are), means you have to throw out all the prophets as well. Which means you have to throw out the prophetic record up to and including Jesus.’ This is a nonsensical argument. If I claim to be a prophet, and then spout a bunch of new proclamations which disagree with the old prophetic record, and then say, “but I have a beard, just like the prophets of old, if you throw me out, you have to throw them out!” have I made a cogent argument? Of course not. When people make moral complaints about Joseph, that isn’t their primary reason for his disqualification as a prophet (it isn’t mine, anyway) but an additional reason why he shouldn’t be labeled as such. It’s more of a “your prophecies are wrong and contradictory, and also your beard sucks.” if we’re using my example above. Joseph doesn’t qualify as a prophet under two scriptural standards: a) Prophetic Accuracy: Deuteronomy 18:22. Remind me again which church has a temple where Joseph prophesied that he’d build his? b) Faithfulness to God: Deuteronomy 13: 1–4 (this one I’ll actually copy out)

“If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,

And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.

This one is important when considering Joseph Smith. If we look at, in particular, how God has described Himself through all other prophets (see Isaiah 43:10 for one particularly on point example) and then line that up with Joseph’s teachings about God (see the King Follet funeral sermon as a particularly egregious example of non-biblical teaching) Joseph was quite obviously leading the people to follow and worship a God not known to the Israelites and by his own words contradicts the prophets of old directly:

“We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did, and I will show it from the Bible” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp.345–346.”

In the above passage, when Joseph says “we have imagined and supposed,” who is the “we” he’s referring to? Why, everyone who has ever believed that God was God from all eternity with no peers, of course. Which includes the Biblical prophets. That’s what disqualifies Joseph, and that is a brush you cannot use to paint the biblical prophets with. There’s no need whatsoever to throw out all the revelation of the Bible with Joseph, because Joseph simply does not belong to that lineage. Instead he’s more accurately described by Paul, in Galatians 1:8:

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

You go on to say that:

“Anti-Mormonism isn’t just about getting people to lose faith in our Church, it’s about getting people to lose faith in God, in Christ, in revelation, in religion. Once you’ve tasted the sweetest and most perfect form of Christianity, where else will you go when you leave? If you really understand the teachings of the Restored Gospel, deciding that Mormonism is false means accepting some form of Atheism (including Agnosticism, Humanism, and Non-religious spiritualism).

But this, once again, is riddled with falsehood. The vast majority of external ministry to have people leave the Church is just that, ministry. It comes from Christians, who want Mormons to encounter the real Jesus and experience true grace and salvation. Atheists don’t care what church you belong to, they just want everyone to be unchurched. Mormon-facing Christian ministries want Mormons to find Christ. The effect of that ministry might be to cause Mormons to reject all forms of religious belief, but again, that is only because Mormonism has painted an all or nothing proposition at the heart of the faith. It’s difficult for people to escape that kind of thinking if it’s all they’ve known. In refutation of this point, I thoroughly understood the teachings of Mormonism. I had no frame of reference for orthodox Christianity prior to my joining the LDS church as I was an atheist immediately before my conversion and a Jew before that. Research and honest study caused me to understand that the LDS church was the restoration of nothing and had no claims to being the “sweetest and most perfect form of Christianity” but was rather something entirely different than the faith espoused in the Bible. Once I realized that I disagreed fundamentally with that difference in faith, I joined one that matched what the Bible described; not, as you can imagine, retreating back to atheism or anything like it. A simple search on Google or YouTube will find countless similar stories; ex-Mormons who, after reflection and study, couldn’t abide by the differences between the God that the Bible describes and the one described by Joseph and who have gone on to fulfilling lives in a Christian denomination somewhere. To assert that this doesn’t happen or that the overwhelming majority just turn to atheism out of a lack of spiritual satisfaction elsewhere is nonsense. It’s like pretending your ex-wife, who is dating and happy and moving on with her life, isn’t doing any of those things because ‘how could she, when you’re so awesome?’ 2. Crises of Faith in LDS Communities Are Really Just a Symptom of a Larger Problem Agreed, just not the problem you want to claim. This is, again, a false equivalence, as we’re dealing with two very different groups of people. I’m going to zero in on your stats about Millenials:

“Across the board (in LDS and other Christian Churches), approximately 1 in 3 Millennials are leaving the faith they were raised in for something else. For Mormon Millennials, that something else is generally a form of Atheism, and for other Millennials it is largely a mix of Atheism and Non-Denominationalism (what you might call a gateway to Atheism).”

First, to lump these two groups in like this is wildly misleading. As discussed above, Mormons become atheists in higher numbers than other groups when they leave the faith of their birth specifically because of the framing of LDS theology. This framing doesn’t exist in Protestantism (which is where far more of the lateral movement occurs, when compared to the Cathorthodox churches) and so the movement is far more often to simply a different denomination than their parents. But again, those moves aren’t perceived as an abandonment of Christianity in the way that leaving the Mormon church is, because Christians universally recognize the body of Christ in any creed affirming congregation (with exception being the Cathorthodox/Protestant divide). When you look at this data and reduce non-Denominationalism to “a gateway to atheism” you’re merely highlighting your ignorance of the Christian worldview outside the narrow borders of Mormon orthodoxy. Non-denominational churches are, for the most part, simply churches for whom liturgy is replaced by emotional worship. They tend to skew younger in demographic (which would explain why Millenials tend to flock in that direction) because of their abandonment of traditional liturgical ritual. They’re still creed affirming, and are recognized by all the Protestant denominations as being Christian in ways that can never apply to the LDS church. So what that data is actually highlighting is a move on the part of Millenial Christians away from the heavily liturgical denominations of their parents towards churches that seem more vital and focused on ministering to them specifically. How can you compare that to Mormon Millenials leaving the Church for atheism and assume that there’s a common cause? If we look at just the atheist defectors for both groups, we do find common cause, and it is due to the weakening of faith in general in Western society. But the thing causing that weakening of faith is, frankly, access to more information. The age of the internet has posed two problems for all religions:

a) Free access to a vast amount of information; factual, false, and everything in between.

b) Exposure to communities beyond the reach of culture and geographic borders. Christianity has never had a particularly great track record of transparency. Neither has Mormonism. When young people start doing their own research into the truth claims of their traditions they’ll typically find things that their elders had thought swept under the rug. The difference is that, when young Christians go into research mode and find things they don’t like, they also run into 1900 years or so of solid apologetics, real archeological evidence, and online communities of similarly disaffected believers that have wrestled with the same issues and found or founded church homes where they can deal with these issues faithfully, together. When Mormon youth go the same route, they don’t find that same type of support system. Instead they find out that all the things their parents and grandparents tried to pass off as anti-Mormon propaganda are actually true (or at least look incredibly convincing). Not only do they learn that they can’t trust their church or family, but that there is no church out there that believes what they’ve believed and which also wrestles with these issues in a way that allows them an alternative faith home. If we’re going to be brutally honest about why Mormon youth become atheists instead of simply joining a Christian denomination, again you have to look at Mormon discourse itself. These kids have grown up being told that everything they read or hear about the Church from non-approved sources is a lie. They hear that either all the claims of Mormonism are true, or none of it is true. So when they encounter, unguided on the internet, overwhelming evidence that the things they believed are wrong, they have nowhere and nothing to turn to. I wonder if the people who leave the LDS church by way of a Christian ministry have anywhere near the rate of atheist defections that the unguided youth leaving the church by way of Google do. The person walking someone out of one church is usually walking them towards another. A search engine just gives raw data with no advice or comfort. 3. Post-Modern Atheism Is Paving the Way for a New and Destructive Moral Order-and beyond. I don’t really disagree with you from this point forward. I think your attitudes towards atheism (having been an atheist for most of my life) are uncharitable without being wrong in their conclusions. But I reject on its face your assertion that post-modern atheism is the only viable alternate worldview to LDS theology for the departing Mormon. Your arguments don’t earn that conclusion and so I don’t have much to say about your discourse on the effects of such atheism on our society, except to say that I mostly agree with you. Atheism=bad, and leads to bad things for everyone in the name of fairness and respect with no objective moral consideration attached. I won’t touch on your comments regarding the Book of Mormon’s take on this phenomenon, except to say that it’s an excellent example of what I was talking about earlier with respect to LDS theology standing in direct contrast to what the Bible teaches. Dustin, I believe that you are sincere in your faith, and that you genuinely believe that the LDS church is the true path to Christ and through Him salvation. I have no doubt that your intentions are good. But the Gospel you cling to can not be justified with the Bible or with what God revealed about Himself therein. And to argue that those leaving the church have no refuge aside from atheism and that unbelief is the aim of all ministry that opposes the unbiblical gospel found in Mormonism, is to obfuscate the purpose of that ministry. No Christian you encounter wants you to leave God and faith in the dust in favour of some nebulous secular agnosticism. They all (me included) want you to have a right relationship with God, and to have a saving faith in Jesus Christ. When Christians argue with your conclusions, we aren’t arguing with you but rather with your ideas. We want you to exchange bad ideas for good ones. Your article has certainly gotten a lot of attention and spread which is why I felt it important to correct you where you erred. I hope you’ll realize that I’ve dealt with your arguments fairly and take my comments in the spirit with which I’ve given them.

I imagine Dustin won’t ever read this, or if he does, he’ll just assume I’m part of his ‘Alarming Truth’. But man, it would be great if people treated arguments like his with the respect that they deserve.

None.