As I began studying Christianity from a secular and academic perspective, I couldn’t help but periodically think back to my time as an LDS member. What if removing my membership from the LDS Church was the wrong decision? Sure, I had prayed about the decision and felt peace when I officially left the Church, but how could I be sure that I had made the right decision? My decision to leave the LDS Church was largely subjective and based on my experience. However, I still didn’t feel that I had closure with my previous life as a devout Mormon, so I decided to investigate Mormonism’s truth claims critically and objectively, from a fresh perspective.
Going into this investigation, I already had two questions that I did not believe the LDS Church had adequate answers for: why was polygamy practiced as part of the Restoration, and did evidence exist to support the claim of a Great Apostasy?
Questioning the Restoration of Polygamy
First, I was always taught in the LDS Church that polygamy had to be practiced as part of the Restoration of Christ’s Church. This claim is defended by the LDS interpretation of Acts 3:20-21, which states “And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (emphasis added). According to an LDS New Testament study guide, “The phrase ‘the times of restitution of all things’ in Acts 3:21 refers to the Restoration of the gospel in the latter days.” Several passages of the LDS Church’s Doctrine and Covenants also refer to the “restoration of all things.” Growing up as a Mormon, I was always taught that as part of the Restoration of the gospel, gospel truths from previous dispensations needed to be restored in the latter days. But thinking about this more deeply now as an adult outside of Mormonism troubled me.
In Luke 24:44, Jesus taught that he fulfilled the Law of Moses: “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me” (emphasis added). The LDS Church recognizes that other Old Testament practices and observances were not part of the Restoration because Jesus Christ fulfilled the Law of Moses. Then why did polygamy specifically need to be restored? Growing up, I was given some explanations for why polygamy in the early days of the LDS Church was justified. These explanations included caring for widows to help them survive the brutal conditions in nineteenth-century frontier settlements and enabling Mormons to have more children to build up the Church. But these explanations did not satisfy my doctrinal concerns. In my opinion, the strongest LDS claim for plural marriage, if true, is that it is revelation from God, but that claim depends on whether Joseph Smith was a true prophet. At this point in my journey, I no longer believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, but little did I know that later on I would discover more information that would make me conclude definitively that Joseph Smith was not a true prophet.
Was There a Great Apostasy?
The other LDS claim that I began to challenge was that there was a Great Apostasy. If the ancient Christian church did indeed completely apostatize, then the need for a restoration of the church Christ established made sense. But why should I assume that there was a Great Apostasy?
The LDS narrative of the Great Apostasy is typically explained in the following way. When Jesus Christ established his Church, he ordained the twelve apostles and gave them priesthood authority to teach his gospel. After Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, the Church was persecuted, eventually leading to the apostles being killed and the priesthood authority being taken from the earth. The LDS Church claims that since the priesthood authority was lost, Jesus Christ’s gospel was also lost and needed to be restored.
In all my years as a member of the LDS Church, the concept of the Great Apostasy was always glossed over and not explained in depth. Sure, there are the claims of Bible teachings being distorted over time either intentionally or due to translation errors, the death of the apostles resulting in lost priesthood authority, and a few obscure Bible verses that the LDS Church uses to indicate that the Great Apostasy was foretold. But when exactly did the supposed Great Apostasy actually occur? Was it right after the apostles died? It is widely accepted that John was the last surviving apostle. A writing from Irenaeus of Lyons helps to date John’s death to about 100 AD: “Then, again, the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles.” Does this imply that within just a few decades after Christ’s death and resurrection, the original Christian Church was lost due to apostasy? At this point in my journey, I had not yet researched the arguments for or against the Great Apostasy in depth. But I was beginning to think that the Church assumed there was a Great Apostasy only because it fit neatly into the restoration narrative, even though it lacked historical evidence.
Encountering the CES Letter
In light of these doubts, I still wanted to investigate Mormonism more deeply and see how its other truth claims held up to criticism. After some research, I came across the CES Letter. I began to read it and quickly came across a lot of arguments and facts that I had not been aware of during my time as a lifelong member. I did remember, though, when the LDS Church began publishing its Gospel Topics Essays. Now I realized that the Church began publishing those essays not due to new historical information that was available, but in order to do damage control since there was now so much information available on the internet that was critical of the Church. I was angry that the Church I trusted for so long failed to be transparent to its members. From reading the CES Letter, some of my biggest concerns were directly related to Joseph Smith: his “translation” of the Book of Abraham, the method of “translating” the Book of Mormon, and his marriages to multiple underage women.
Examining the Book of Abraham Translation
Growing up in the Church, I always took it for granted that the Book of Abraham was actually translated from ancient papyrus. For decades, Joseph Smith’s claim that the text was written by Abraham himself could not be examined because the papyri were believed to have been lost in a fire. Once the original papyri were found in 1967, Egyptologists translated the surviving fragments and identified their contents as ancient funerary texts, which the LDS Church now admits in its essay:
“None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham, though there is not unanimity, even among non-Latter-day Saint scholars, about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments. Scholars have identified the papyrus fragments as parts of standard funerary texts that were deposited with mummified bodies. These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived.”
If Joseph Smith had indeed been a true prophet of God, how could he have been so wrong with his “translation” of the papyrus? The LDS Church’s explanation is that Joseph Smith’s study of the papyri may have led to a “revelation” about Abraham’s teaching and life. But that is a very loose interpretation of the word “translation” which is difficult for me to accept, especially knowing that Joseph Smith claimed he was translating Abraham’s own writing. Was the Church simply creating a story that fit its narrative rather than confronting evidence that contradicted its claims?
The Book of Mormon Translation and Historical Claims
Another concern of mine was the changing narrative of how the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith. Growing up, LDS artwork depicting Joseph Smith’s translation process always showed him actually looking at the gold plates that supposedly contained the original Book of Mormon text. But the historical account I encountered described Joseph Smith placing a stone in a hat and putting his face into the hat to block out the light. He would then read aloud the words that appeared, and a scribe would write them down. The LDS Church has also confirmed this translation process of the Book of Mormon in its essay. If Joseph Smith “translated” the Book of Mormon by using a rock in a hat, then why were the gold plates even necessary? And why did the Church knowingly omit those important details of how the Book of Mormon was actually translated?
There are also other questionable aspects of the Book of Mormon. For example, the lack of DNA evidence connecting Native American ancestors to the Middle East undermines the Book of Mormon claim that the Native Americans are descendants of a family that left Jerusalem around the year 600 BC. The existence of the following anachronisms in the Book of Mormon was also troubling: horses, cattle, oxen, swine, goats, elephants, wheels, chariots, silk, steel, and iron. Those animals and commodities simply did not exist in the pre-Columbian Americas. And if the Book of Mormon was translated through “divine inspiration” during the 19th century, then why was it written in the style of the 17th-century King James Bible? Each of these points raises a concern for me about the Book of Mormon. Considered together, however, they make a strong case against the claim that the Book of Mormon is true. How can anyone justify so many inconsistencies with the Book of Mormon if it is indeed God’s word and “the most correct of any book on earth”?
Joseph Smith’s Plural Marriages
During my time as an LDS member, it was not a surprise to me that Joseph Smith had multiple wives, as I knew that plural marriage was practiced in the early days of the Church. However, what shocked me is just how many wives he had and the nature of many of his marriages. According to conservative estimates, Joseph Smith had at least 33 wives, including 11 women who were already married to other living men at the time and 6 girls under eighteen years old. The Church even admits that Joseph Smith was sealed to Helen Mar Kimball “several months before her 15th birthday” implying that marrying an almost 15-year-old girl is better than marrying a 14-year-old girl. The Church justifies this behavior by stating that marrying at such a young age was legal in the United States at the time. That may be true, but does that mean it is acceptable for a prophet of God to marry underage women? It’s hard to believe that an unchanging God would allow such a practice, especially when it involves serious moral standards.
What These Discoveries Meant for My Faith
At this point I believed that there was more evidence contradicting the claim that Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored Christ’s true church than there was evidence supporting it. Uncovering these facts and evidence about Joseph Smith and early Church history made me feel angry. I felt betrayed. How could the Church that I had trusted all my life have hidden uncomfortable truths from its faithful members all these years? After discovering these facts, I felt that my experience of losing faith in the LDS Church finally made sense. But I was still struggling with bitter resentment and anger over the Church’s dishonesty — or, at a minimum, its intentional lack of transparency.
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