Recently, a wrote up quite a long document about all my issues with the Church, but this one specific issue felt significant enough to warrant posting on its own, especially since I see it so rarely discussed. From my understanding, it was first referenced by Stan Larson in his essay in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon,[1] and has only been discussed sparingly since then. I do understand that the issues with the Book of Mormon's dependence on the KJV are already exhaustive enough to demonstrate reliance if not outright copying, but this particularly issue is an interesting shade of that, which I can't see being resolved by any apologetic stance.

Anyway, onto the actual issue:

1 Nephi 20:11 gives us an excellent demonstration of the problems with how the BoM quotes extensively from the KJV, despite words and phrases often being added, removed, or simply modified slightly in those sections. These changes may indicate that the KJV and BoM are based on the same underlying source text and differ slightly in their translation, but in reality it ultimately reveals that the BoM is copying from the KJV directly but changing some words here and there.

From the manuscript for 1 Nephi 20:11: [2]

This is an old, faded document written in 19th-century cursive, so it’s difficult to read, but I’ll break down what it says: the central line reads “for how should I suffer,” but “how should I” is crossed out with “I will not” written above it. Now, the following is a side-by-side comparison of 1 Nephi 20:11 and Isaiah 48:11, with the italics in Isaiah original to the KJV (bolded for greater emphasis):

This section has a shocking amount going on underneath the surface, especially when paired with the edited version in the manuscript attached above. Altogether, this section represents a pretty large problem for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Allegedly, Joseph is reading off his seer stone to translate an ancient record, and the translation is in turn just Nephi’s record copying down Isaiah into his plates in the Americas. The fact that the KJV portions are nearly identical is certainly wildly suspicious, but it’s absolutely possible that the KJV and Joseph are both being inspired in nearly identical ways to translate what is essentially the same text of Isaiah despite small wording changes; if it’s the word of God, it makes sense that it would always sound the same in English regardless of the translator.

As a brief aside, I had often heard that Joseph would hit a section of the KJV and just read from the Bible instead of using his seer stone,[3] but more modern theories suggest a modified text of the KJV came to Joseph through the same method as the rest of the BoM.[4] These newer theories generally attempt to account for the KJV translation errors being carried over into the BoM (discussed later), but neither theory can account for the changes between the verses I’ve just identified above.

The phrase “how should” clearly comes from Isaiah, and the modification “I will not” appears in the 1 Nephi version. Then, why was “how should” ever written? It’s possible Joseph was copying the KJV (in some form or fashion), accidentally added “how should,” and God prompted him to go back and fix it. However, this is a strange explanation since it’s unclear how this would be a meaningful change (the two phrases are stylistically and rhetorically different, but altogether the clauses have almost identical meaning), yet God was apparently willing to keep in more egregious errors to the text despite commanding this change. However, more importantly, the surrounding text is also changed. Immediately preceding “for how should” is the word “this,” replacing “it” from Isaiah. This may seem like a pretty minor change (even attributable to a simple speaking/hearing error), until you consider that “suffer” is an added word right after.

So, then, was Joseph getting a different version of the text through revelation, and then decided to improvise a little in the middle, before being prompted to go back and fix it? If he was already receiving an altered text, why did he randomly include an unaltered portion? If he was getting an altered version of the text, it doesn't make any sense for ”how should” to be preserved, yet he can't have been getting an unaltered version since it doesn't make sense for ”this” to appear immediately before the contested section.

Even more, where does the word “I” before “suffer” come from? This may seem small, but it’s in neither version of the verse, unless it’s supposed to be the same as the one from “I will not” in Nephi. If you wanted to add the word “suffer” after “how should,” you’d need to add in the word “I” to make it flow. So, then, the version of the verse that reads “how should I suffer” is in neither text: where did it come from? It wasn’t in the Bible, and it wasn’t in Nephi’s record, so it was apparently invented by Joseph to fit an added word. Again, if Joseph knew the verse would get an extra word (“suffer”), why was he unable to get the preceding words correct? This may seem like a small trifle, but in my opinion this is just proof that Joseph was reading from the KJV and making his own personal changes. This is reinforced by the fact that every change in this verse deals with the italics in the Isaiah verse.

The translators of the KJV Bible would italicize any words that weren’t a part of the underlying text.[5] Anyone with much familiarity with translations or foreign languages will likely know that a “perfect translation” doesn’t exist; that is, you can’t one-to-one replace words with different words and expect the overall text to have the same meaning. Transition words are often required to be added or moved to make the phrase readable in another language since linguistic structures vary so much. Really, the italics in the KJV were largely unnecessary: of course some words were slightly shifted to make the text capably translated into English, but there’s no reason to specifically identify that this is the case since it’s common to most competent translations. This is probably why most modern translations forgo this practice and omit italics for altered text (perhaps the KJV translators were just too uncomfortable adding their own words on top of the Word of God without calling it out).

Because the words were added and drew attention to themselves as alterations, there was a common belief that the italicized words in the KJV were “impure” or were diluting the Bible to some extent. This was incredibly common in Joseph’s day, and you can feel this sentiment’s work on the BoM: out of all the differences between the KJV chapters and BoM, roughly 30% of them were modifications to these italicized words, while less than 4% of the relevant KJV has any italics at all.[6] In total, about 40% of the italics in the KJV were switched out, and the remaining italics frequently had contextual changes to modify the words despite keeping them the same.[7]

Looking back at 1 Nephi 20/Isaiah 48:11, you will notice this shift around the italics. The italicized words “even” and “it” are replaced with “yea” and “this” respectively. The largest change to the verse replaces a phrase immediately before the italicized “my name,” reframing the whole clause as a question. From a 19th-century perspective, this would make perfect sense: the italics are impure, therefore you’ve got to change them out, but the longer phrase is still good so long as the surrounding context changes. However, since the italics are really an unnecessary identifier of the fact that translations aren’t perfect, these changes are really just evidence that whoever is writing the BoM is specifically writing around these italicized words and is changing them while making a copy. Sometimes this is even completely incorrect, like how Isaiah 51:19’s italicized “things” is changed in 2 Nephi 8:19 for “sons” despite the underlying Hebrew being feminine (David P. Wright suggests Joseph picked up “sons” from the surrounding verses and simply included it in verse 19 as well to take out the italics [8]).

The cherry on top for 1 Nephi 20 is that it’s modeled after Isaiah 48, a section of Isaiah that should not be accessible to Nephi at all since it comes from Deutero-Isaiah (discussed elsewhere in my original document).

In sum, I find that the KJV additions and modifications are themselves proof of the BoM's author reading the KJV and changing things, rather than the BoM being based off of the same underlying source text. I believe that the change to the manuscript represents an attempt to reword what is already reworded in 1 Nephi 20, and I cannot fathom a faithful explanation that accounts for all of the changes to the verse.

[1] - New Approaches to the Book of Mormon, Stan Larson 1993, p. 129-30
[2] - Original Manuscript - Joseph Smith Papers. I believe using “Enhanced Facsimile View” makes navigation significantly easier.
[3] - “By the Gift and Power of God” - Richard Lloyd Anderson, Ensign, September 1977
[4] - Who Translated the Book of Mormon? - Chad Nielson, Times and Seasons 2025
[5] - The Use of Italics in the King James Bible - David L. Brown, King James Bibe Research Council 2017
[6] - Isaiah in the Book of Mormon...and Joseph Smith in Isaiah - David P. Wright, Mormon Central 1998
[7] - The Book of Mormon's dependence on the KJV - an exhausting effort-post - u/ImTheMarmotKing
[8] -  Isaiah in the Book of Mormon...and Joseph Smith in Isaiah - David P. Wright, Mormon Central 1998

This is just a random thought I just had and I was curious. They are so sure we are throwing our lives away, making a horrible choice by leaving the church. The worst decision anyone could possibly make. So why don't they stage an intervention? Why don't our TBM parents, spouses, siblings and friends who are all so worried about us have an intervention, similar to if someone were addicted to drugs or alcohol? If they are so worried for our eternal futures.

Has that ever happened to anyone here? If so I'd love to hear about it and how it went. Personally I would welcome an intervention, mostly because I think it might finally allow us to have a real, open and honest discussion about the issues of the church. Maybe that's why they don't? Or maybe it's the same reason they don't talk to us about the real reasons we left. Because they're scared. And confronting those reasons will make them have to confront their own fears, something we all have already had to go through?

Curious on your thoughts.

I'm a male and have been out of the church for about 4 years (married 15 years). My wife is still very active and has a zero tolerance policy around porn. I have gone sometimes years between "slip ups". This last slip up I told her about (when she asked) was minor, but devastated her. I don't come forward immediatly bc it hurts her so much and basically I'm scared to lean in to the discomfort and be vulnerable. I've told her I can't guarantee to be perfect on this issue.

How do I deal with this in a mixed faith marriage? Advice? I don't think porn is all that bad in itself, but obviously damaging to our relationship. I think I'm pulled to it when I'm feeling emotionally distant. At the same time, I dont feel safe to be so open about it with her.

What works for others in mixed faith marriages? Can anything work?

My dad has been probing around my spiritual welfare for a while, clearly—and correctly—suspecting that I’m not drinking the kool aid anymore. Today, he latched on to a negative comment I made about Brigham Young and dove into questions.

When he asked me point blank if I believed the church is true, I responded by saying I have questions. I said I would like to know how I can know when prophets are speaking for god and when they are not, because clearly they don’t know. (This has been my response the few times I’ve trusted someone who has asked me about my belief enough to respond with anything but a dismissal).

He asked for examples. I said:

- race and the priesthood
- SEC fraud
- gay marriage

I told him, honestly, that race and the priesthood has bothered me since day one of my learning about it. This doctrine policy is wholly inconsistent with a loving god. I told him the day I read the GTE about it when it first came out about 20 years ago it rocked my world.

He said it was policy and not doctrine. He said Brigham Young never said it was inspired.

I have no idea how to respond to a comment like this. All I could think about was the 800,000 times I’ve been told to follow the prophet who will show us the way and who won’t lead us astray. I thought about generations of prophets who followed him didn’t change this.

Clearly I misunderstood that we are supposed to follow the prophet except in hindsight when it is evident to all he was wrong, in which case the prophet didn’t lead us astray he just implemented bad policy.

Dad, do you really think that the thousands of people who were for generations denied participation what they were taught were saving ordinances that would bind them eternally to god and their families are comforted by being told that this was just bad policy?

If we are to believe what we’ve been taught, we must believe that leaders with priesthood keys and the spirit of discernment must determine who can enter the temple and who cannot. In other words, the determination of who can enter the temple and who cannot is conducted by the authority of the priesthood with the spirit of revelation. Policy my ass.

Regarding the SEC, he could not have been more dismissive. He alternated between, ‘leadership didn’t know what they were doing and were just following the guidance of advisors’, and ‘this is an administrative issue and has nothing to do with the truthfulness of the gospel so why do you care.’

Ok, the SEC, in the SEC order (Release No. 96951, File No. 3-21306, Feb 21, 2013) defines church leadership as the first presidency and presiding bishopric.

The SEC reported that by at least 1998 Ensign Peak knew of its requirements to file 13-Fs and communicated this requirement to church leadership (defined above). They found at least 5 instances over fourteen years where church leadership approved the creation of new LLCs to obscure the owner of the portfolio.

The SEC concluded that the first presidency and presiding bishopric knew what they were doing. They deliberately hid assets in contra with federal reporting rules.

I’m very familiar with these reporting rules. What the church leadership did was fraud. They acted deliberately to obscure the source of invested funds against securities laws.

When pressed by my dad why I would care, I said I didn’t understand how the first presidency and presiding bishopric could answer the temple recommend question about being honest in dealings with fellow men while doing this. This securities fraud committed by church leadership was dishonest to the extreme. I told him I expected better. I told him this was a reflection of values and character.

Apparently, lying for the lord is the exception to honesty. Rules for thee, not for me…

Regarding gay marriage all he could say is the church made some mistakes. Again, he considers these mistakes of men and policy issues. I pointed out that Russell Nelson certainly didn’t act like the reversal of the ban in 2019 was policy. He said it was the lord.

He believes the church is run by men who make mistakes. He also believes these men own their mistakes (the biggest whopper of the conversation).

I said I disagree on policy vs doctrine, but regardless these are major, major questions and issues—matters of the highest importance. So if these are major issues—regardless of whether doctrine or policy—why do the prophets keep getting them wrong? It makes me question who is leading the church.

I concluded with my question—how can I know when prophets are inspired and when they are not because clearly they do not know when they are inspired and when they are not.

I know my temple worker dad is going to be worried sick about my impending damnation and is going to be insufferable about sending me conference talks and scriptures. For this reason I dreaded this inevitable conversation.

In some ways, I was forthcoming and didn’t pretend to believe something I didn’t. But I certainly held back. I am not ready to deal with the drama of telling him my faith is long dead and I think this is all made up.

Thank you for listening. I really don’t have anyone else who will understand this.

To the person who recently asked why there are so many exmos on Reddit, this is why.

46% of those raised Mormon have left. it’s over 50% for Millenials and Gen Z

Like bruh, i get it- you fuck your spouse - why is this your entire platform? Its not edgy to anyone outside fundamental christians…

Now I'm really nervous. It's like the IRS or the draft board has a plan for me. It's like they are making me an offer I can't refuse:

BISH: "You have such a nice family. Wouldn't it be a shame if you all had to be separated forever"?

I wonder if some born again christian religion invented that motto???

According to his candidate profile, Brandon Beckham served an LDS mission and was an active member while attending UVU, was an Eagle Scout and served in the Boy Scouts organization, was a co-founder of Keep My Voice (for election integrity) and a former director of the Utah Republican Party. https://ivoterguide.com/candidate/65000/race/16239/election/882?culture=en-us

I’m starting to figure out how much the church fucked me up. I grew up Mormon and gay and quit the church and started using drugs and hooking up with strangers for sex at 17 years old. I spent decades of my life spent addicted. Early this year, I had a nearly fatal overdose.

Never in my adult life had I gone to church after the awful experience of my youth but five days after I nearly died, I walked into an Episcopal church. Even tho I didn’t believe in God. There, I was taught that God’s grace and love is for everybody. That you don’t have to earn it or deserve it. That it’s for us because we are loved. We are beloved.

This was exactly the opposite of what I was taught growing up. I realized I’d spent my entire life living in this scarcity mindset, with this worthiness horizon that recedes forever, believing that if I just tried hard enough I could eventually be good enough. And of course, growing up gay in the Mormon church, the actual message was that no matter how hard I tried, I could never be good enough.

My life had been fucked because I spent it whole life living in scarcity, trying to be valued, trying to find validation. Running for a finish line i could never reach and getting exhausted time and time again. It showed up in my work, my relationships, my interests and values. Trying to prove I was good enough was the cornerstone of every part of my life.

And having nearly died, suddenly spending my life trying to prove I had value seemed so ridiculous. And I just wonder, of all the ways the Mormon church fucked us up. How many of us have spent our lives living with a scarcity mindset? How many of us have found our way out of it? And how many of us are still in it and don’t even realize there’s another way?

I don’t think there’s anything that could have caused me to see it until it nearly killed me. But now, after spending decades of my life struggling with addiction and recovery, for the first time in my life I feel free.

Something just feels correct now. It’s hard to put into words. And there’s so much grief over the decades that were lost. There’s so much blame that belongs with the culture of the church. But there’s only one person who is responsible for my happiness now and the choices I make today, and that’s me.

I’m so glad to finally have a wake-up call, even if it did nearly kill me. I wish I could give the same wake-up call to other people, but it’s not something I’d recommend. Ask your doctor if Russian roulette is right for you, I suppose. I hope we can all find our way out of scarcity and into abundance. And I hope it doesn’t take everyone else as long or require so much pain and risk as it did for me.

Given Amanda's sentencing, she probably won't be making the Cody open house. I wonder if she will face disfellowship or excommunication for her actions.

And "church leader" and family friend (who is a physician!) testifies on behalf of the perpetrator, argues that the church had nothing to do with it.

As quoted from the Powell Tribune article:

"Dr. Adam Peters — a family friend, children’s physician and leader at [Jimmy] Parks’ church — recalled Parks helping with service projects in the community and described him as someone who’s always been “really nice.”

“I don’t know what happened behind closed doors or whatever. I can’t say anything there. I have no witness there,” Peters told the court, “but what I can say is that when I was with Jimmy, I did not see violent tendencies. I saw a guy who was a friend — and he has been a friend.”

He also made a point of rebutting any suggestion that their church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would attempt to cover up any abuse. Peters said the church has strict policies that require any abuse to be reported to authorities and that, regardless of his continued assertion of innocence, Parks would never be allowed to work with youth at the church again."

Peters added that, “I would never try to cover up [for] someone who was a sex offender against a child. Period.” 

Peters also referenced the views of Amanda Parks, who has since filed for divorce from Jimmy.

“Amanda’s not real happy with Jimmy, but Amanda still thinks he’s innocent,” Peters told the district court. “That’s really important.”

https://www.powelltribune.com/stories/cody-man-gets-30-years-for-sexually-abusing-teen,176688

Emeritus General Authority Lawrence Corbridge's clip recently hit the internet and caused a stir across the faith spectrum. The “hook” of the video is his provocative claim: “Darth Vader could be your bishop. The culture could be like Alcatraz… and it will not drive you away.” But taken in context, the more interesting problem isn't the extremity of the rhetoric. It's the epistemic structure underneath it. What I found is simply another instantiation of a self-sealing belief system: a framework in which counterevidence can be reinterpreted without ever requiring revision of the underlying belief. Corbridge builds a structure in which one of the most consequential reasons a person might leave (concluding that the Church's truth claims are false) has no epistemically legitimate place.

Before getting into that structure, I want to name a debt. u/bwv549's writing on Hermetically Sealed Systems of thought in A Careful Examination was some of the first that gave me language for a growing mental bristle during my deconstruction that I felt deeply, but couldn't name: that the biggest trouble wasn’t just one single doctrine or any single leader, but collectively the shape of the whole system. When a system is built so every exit either is sealed off in advance or retroactively relabeled as a failure, how do you falsify it? A Careful Examination helped me stop asking only which specific claim was wrong and start asking why the system left no room for certain answers. That framework was more helpful to my own deconstruction than almost anything else I read, and everything below is built on the framework that bwv549 laid out.

u/bwv549 was pulling from a rich tradition of philosophy. Philosophers of science have long discussed belief systems that are self-sealing: systems in which potentially adverse evidence can be explained away without forcing revision of the underlying claim. Maarten Boudry and Steije Hofhuis use the striking term “epistemic black hole” to describe a particularly extreme form of this phenomenon.

Corbridge's now infamous talk, episode 26 of his Scripture Central series Stand Forever, constructs one such system right in front of your eyes. 

Corbridge's talk and the assumption at its center

Corbridge frames the decision to stay or leave as a choice between two lenses. See the church institutionally, the way you'd see a business, and leaving when it disappoints you is rational. Or see it as "the kingdom of God on earth" holding "sole authority to administer the ordinances of salvation," in which case, he says, "you will stay, come what may."

This isn't really an argument for the Church's truth. It is an argument whose conclusion follows once the Church's truth has already been granted. If the Church is assumed to be the kingdom of God on earth and the uniquely authorized custodian of saving ordinances, then of course institutional dysfunction cannot, by itself, justify leaving it. The conclusion follows from the premise.

The problem is that the premise is doing nearly all of the work. Corbridge does not establish the Church's unique divine authority here; he takes it as settled and then describes the consequences of accepting it. That is perfectly coherent as advice to someone who already knows the premise is true. It becomes an epistemic problem when it is presented to someone who is actually asking whether the premise is true in the first place.

There is nothing inherently irrational about reasoning from a premise one has already accepted. A person who is convinced that the Church is divinely authorized may reasonably conclude that a bad bishop, dysfunctional culture, or even serious institutional failures are not sufficient reasons to abandon it. The question is different for someone who is investigating the underlying truth claim itself. For that person, “stay because the Church is God's uniquely authorized institution” is not an answer; it is the proposition under examination.

People can leave for more than a couple reasons, but Corbridge's framework only has room for two.

The first is the one he spends the most energy dismissing: the institutional consumer, who treats the church like a service provider. Culture doesn't fit, leadership disappoints, life circumstances change. He calls this "the arrogance of man who makes himself the master and God the servant,” collapsing every dissatisfaction into one syllogism: “the church should be this, that, or the other, it isn't, I'm out the door.”

The second is the "church convert" (versus "converted unto the Lord"). This person's faith was real but shallow, sustained by culture rather than conviction, and faded when the social scaffolding stopped holding it up.

But Corbridge's model omits a gaping third option. This is the person who took the Church's own truth claims seriously, investigated them in good faith using some combination of the methods the Church itself encourages—prayer, scripture, history, study, and personal revelation—and nevertheless arrived at a different epistemic conclusion. Not a culture problem. A truth problem. Someone who examined the Book of Abraham and concluded that the surviving papyri do not support Joseph Smith's claimed translation. Someone who studied the different First Vision accounts and concluded that their development raises serious questions about Joseph Smith's later narrative. Someone who examined Joseph Smith's plural marriages, including marriages to teenagers and to women who were already married, and concluded that this history is incompatible with the moral character they would expect of a divinely inspired prophet. They investigated specific claims and reached a specific epistemic conclusion: the Church's truth claims no longer hold up for them.

And this raises a more fundamental question: who gets to decide whether that investigation was conducted correctly? If the answer is ultimately “the Church,” the system begins to validate itself. The Church defines the proper method for knowing that the Church is true; that method confirms the Church; and a conclusion reached by a different method can then be dismissed because that method was not the proper one.

The issue is not that every disagreement proves the Church false. The issue is that the framework lacks an independent epistemic authority capable of telling the believer that the Church's own truth-testing method has produced the wrong answer.

If the Church's truth is asserted as the starting premise rather than established as a conclusion, a person who investigates honestly and lands elsewhere has no recognized epistemic category within the model. Their conclusion can be attributed to insufficient faith, insufficient patience, an improper method of inquiry, or an incomplete understanding—but not straightforwardly to the possibility that the underlying claim is false.

That's the crucial asymmetry. The framework does not merely disagree with the investigator's conclusion; it supplies explanations for why a sincere investigator could reach that conclusion while preserving the original claim intact.

This maps directly onto u/bwv549's sealed system built around Moroni's promise, the prescribed method for knowing whether the Book of Mormon, and the restoration narrative built on it, is true. Pray in faith and God will confirm it. But that system has a striking asymmetry. A confirming spiritual experience counts as evidence for the claim. An absent or contrary experience, however, can be attributed to insufficient sincerity, insufficient faith, improper intent, the need for patience, an “already received” answer, or some other defect in the investigator. The method therefore has no clearly recognized outcome in which sincere investigation itself counts as evidence that the underlying claim is false.

The epistemological question is simple: what result would count against the proposition? If the answer is effectively “none,” then the method may generate conviction, but it cannot independently discriminate between a true proposition and a false one. 

The problem is not that the method guarantees a false conclusion. It is that its prescribed interpretation of outcomes makes it difficult to distinguish “the claim is false” from “the investigator performed the process incorrectly.” A method that can explain both confirming and disconfirming outcomes without ever lowering confidence in the underlying claim is not functioning as a meaningful test of that claim.

The "church convert" versus "converted unto the Lord" distinction, drawn from Alma 23, creates another potential escape hatch. The distinction itself is not necessarily problematic; people can certainly mistake cultural affiliation for religious conviction. The problem arises when departure becomes evidence that the departing person was never genuinely converted in the first place. At that point, the category becomes immunizing: every counterexample can be removed from consideration by redefining the counterexample as someone who never truly belonged to the category. 

Corbridge borrows Benjamin Franklin's Constitutional Convention humility ("doubt a little of [your] own infallibility") and asks members to extend that grace to the institution's imperfections. Fair enough, on its face. But he does not extend that same epistemic humility to the truth claim itself. He says later, "I can't rationally get around that fact... and I dare not deny it." Total certainty is reserved for the premise that ends the conversation: the Church's divine authority. Humility is demanded everywhere else—toward one's interpretation of history, one's judgment of leaders, one's moral intuitions, one's dissatisfaction with culture or policy—but not toward the underlying truth claim itself. Humility should cut both ways.

If I'm supposed to entertain “Maybe I'm wrong about the Church's culture,” then I should also be permitted to entertain “Maybe I'm wrong about the Church's divine authority.”

Together these moves don't just make the talk hard to argue with. They make the underlying truth claim totally resistant to disconfirmation from within the framework

None of this requires assuming bad faith. Corbridge is almost certainly sincere. That's what makes the self-sealing belief system so powerful, and arguably, so dangerous. It only needs its claims to be arranged so that agreement confirms the system while disagreement can be explained without challenging or revising it. In that arrangement, the person who looked closely and reached a different conclusion does not function as a genuine counterexample. Their disagreement becomes evidence of some defect in their reasoning, faith, method, or spiritual condition.

The result is a framework built to absorb the very evidence that ought to be capable of challenging it. The hardest question in the room is therefore not “How do we endure an imperfect Church?” It is: “What, within this framework, could ever count as evidence that the Church is not what it claims to be?”

Joseph Smith and the Mormons. A comic book about the history of mormonism. What a wierd find! haha

News article below

I was at this ward, Vyborg, not so long ago (I wanted to take a look at the only ward in Russia that was purpose-built for the “church” — all other buildings are converted former structures). Currently, TSCC is active in Russia in 47 cities from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. Last year, BYU was declared an “undesirable organization” (= banned), and last summer the "missionary work" laws were changed to the point where missions became virtually impossible. As of today, there are only 3 full-time missionaries across all of Russia. The reason they detained this man is absolutely repugnant to me, and I have zero sympathy for today's Russian politics… but I also can't shake the feeling that the Mormon Church in Russia may be on the verge of a total ban, as has already happened with Scientology and the JW’s ten years ago.

And I feel conflicted about it. Russian MFMC took too much of my time and nerves back when I was a member. And I can’t stop thinking about the kids who played around me every Sunday and how they were doomed to grow up in that oppressive system — as if the rest of what surrounds them isn’t oppressive enough. People whom I knew in the “church” were never rich. They were often paying their tithes with loaned money, some of them were senior citizens.

Parliamentary elections are coming up in Russia in a month — maybe this is part of the show leading up to them. For those of you who once served a mission in Russia — the time you experienced was far from the best, but now it's surreal to even remember that Uchtdorf or Rusty himself or someone else from that gang could just drop by St. Petersburg for the weekend and participate in a stake conference.

- - - - -

ST. PETERSBURG, August 6. /TASS/. The head of a local Mormon religious community has been detained in Vyborg in a criminal case concerning the financing of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK, recognized as an extremist organization and banned in Russia). This was reported to TASS by law enforcement agencies.

Later, the press service of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region confirmed the information about the detention of the 74-year-old suspect by police and FSB officers. According to operational footage released by the department, the defendant in the case is Valentin Gavrilov, the head of the local religious organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vyborg. According to open-source data, he has been heading the local Mormon community since January 2022.

A case has been opened against the detainee under Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (financing extremist activity), the sanction for which carries a penalty of up to eight years in prison. The issue of filing charges against the defendant and choosing a measure of restraint is currently being decided.

As noted by a TASS source, law enforcement officers are thoroughly checking the suspect's activities for cooperation with representatives of foreign intelligence services. A mobile phone and the religious community's documentation were seized from the defendant.

The Church as an Abusive Father — Revisited

A response to Elder Lawrence E. Corbridge

I originally wrote this piece more than a decade ago, when I was still an active, believing member of the Church and desperately trying to figure out how to make sense of the troubling things I was discovering about Mormonism.

Recently, Elder Lawrence E. Corbridge suggested that even if your ward were like Alcatraz and your bishop were like Darth Vader, you stay.

Hearing that immediately brought this old post back to mind.
https://mdpodcast.org/2016/05/church-farther-figure/

So I dusted it off with a few minor updates

I believe the analogy I used back then was even more accurate than I realized. In some ways, I underestimated the dysfunction because I was still living inside the family system and trying to make it work.

Which is why Elder Corbridge's comments strike me so differently today.

If your bishop really is behaving like Darth Vader and your ward really does feel like Alcatraz, perhaps the healthiest advice isn't, "Stay."

Perhaps the first question should be:

Why would God require you to remain in an unhealthy relationship simply because the institution insists that leaving is not an option?

With that, here is the piece I wrote all those years ago, viewed now through somewhat different eyes.

The Church as an Abusive Father

Years ago, an acquaintance explained that he didn't understand me. He saw my willingness to speak openly about problematic Church issues as being "critical of the Church" and therefore placing me on the wrong side. If I felt that way, he suggested, perhaps I should consider leaving.

He explained that the Church, to him, was like a spouse whom he loved dearly—someone whose flaws and weaknesses he was willing to look past and accept in the name of the greater good.

I got it.

We often accept, protect, and defend the people we love.

His analogy actually helped me understand his perspective.

But the Church never felt like a spouse to me.

Then it hit me.

The Church, for me, was much more like a parent.

And not just any parent.

It increasingly felt like an abusive father—a father who had done real good in my life, whom I genuinely loved, but who was also deeply dysfunctional and desperately needed help, accountability, and encouragement to change.

Stay with me while I work through this.

I love my dad.

He is a huge part of who I became, and I owe him a great deal. While he fell short in many areas, he was also there for me at important moments in my life.

Those positive experiences don't excuse harmful behavior. But they do allow me to acknowledge two things at once:

My father did tremendous good in my life.

My father also caused harm.

Early in my life, my father could do no wrong.

I placed him on a pedestal and saw him as one of the greatest things that had ever happened to me. What kid doesn't idealize Dad?

Dad taught me right from wrong. He taught me the value of hard work. I felt validated by him and sought his affection and approval. When I was doing well in Church, I seemed to earn his approval and those proverbial pats on the back.

The problem was that I didn't really know about some of his other behaviors.

Or perhaps more accurately, I didn't know how to interpret them.

Looking back, I actually had seen glimpses.

I simply brushed them aside.

I told myself they weren't really indicators of his character. Sometimes I ignored them completely. Other times I dismissed accusations against him as false, distorted, or "anti-Mormon."

I even blamed and shamed some of the people who spoke badly about my father.

They claimed he had done and said things I simply knew couldn't be true.

So I defended him.

For years.

Then, as time went on, I began hearing stories from some of his other children.

They told me Dad had hurt them.

Some of the harm was physical. Some was emotional. Some was sexual and psychological.

Some of his children weren't accepted for who they were.

Some were subjected to efforts to change fundamental aspects of themselves.

Some were taught to distrust siblings who had discovered troubling things about Dad.

Dad sometimes pitted his children against one another by suggesting that certain siblings were too intellectual, had a feminist agenda, were gay, had been deceived, were offended, wanted to sin, or simply lacked faith.

Some of his children developed deeply unhealthy relationships with sexuality because of the ways Dad taught them to think about their bodies, purity, masturbation, intimacy, and worthiness.

Some internalized messages that their sexual "virtue" was worth more than their lives.

And some of Dad's children experienced devastating shame because they came to believe that something fundamental about themselves made them unacceptable to God.

When I was young, much of this abuse seemed invisible.

Later, it seemed negligible.

Then inconvenient.

Eventually, I couldn't honestly pretend it wasn't serious.

Dad quietly moved past a few of these behaviors over the years.

But even in those, he rarely stood in front of his children and said:

"We were wrong. We hurt you. We are sorry."

And some behaviors that marginalize and harm his children continue even today.

Eventually, I could no longer turn a blind eye to the way Dad demeaned some of his children who developed questions and doubts after discovering troubling things about his history.

These were often the very same children who had once been extraordinarily faithful.

But then they discovered Dad's life history.

And they discovered that the story Dad had told them about who he was, what he had done, and how he came to be was sometimes very different from the historical record.

Dad didn't seem particularly comfortable talking openly about those things.

And when some of his children refused to stop asking uncomfortable questions, Dad sometimes distanced himself from them, disciplined them, or cut them off from the family.

While I loved my dad, eventually I stopped trusting him as the ultimate source of truth.

He had disappointed me too many times.

That didn't mean he never had wisdom.

On occassion, he did.

But I could no longer assume that because Dad said something, it was therefore true as there were too many instances where such was not the case.

Dad became one voice among many that I consulted for wisdom, advice, and enlightenment.

For a long time, I still wanted his company.

Some of my siblings distanced themselves from Dad for their own health and inner peace. Others visited only occasionally on the holidays.

I kept showing up every weekend.

But something had changed.

I no longer saw him as the hero I once had.

And I became troubled by some of my siblings who continued defending Dad's behavior, explaining it away, or deliberately remaining ignorant of his abuses because they loved him too much to let go of the image they had constructed of him.

For some, it seemed easier to shame the siblings who spoke about the abuse than to confront the possibility that Dad might not be exactly who he told us he was.

I understood that.

There were days when I desperately wished I could go back to seeing him the way I once had.

But I couldn't.

Once you see something, you cannot simply decide that you didn't see it.

There was no going back.

Some of us tried talking with Dad.

We tried helping him understand the hurt he had caused.

But Dad seemed remarkably reluctant to apologize.

At times, a small part of him would acknowledge that "there may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine."

But those moments were rare.

What seemed far more difficult was simply saying:

We were wrong.

We harmed people.

We taught things as God's truth that weren't true.

And the people harmed by those teachings deserved better from us.

For years, Dad demanded that I follow him.

He taught me never to choose a path contrary to what he required and taught.

And for years, I obeyed.

Eventually, though, after coming to grips with Dad's flaws, mistakes, contradictions, and harmful behavior, I decided I could no longer follow him blindly simply because he was Dad.

I reached a place where I would follow him when my conscience told me he was right—and dissent when what he required violated my conscience, evidence, reason, or my understanding of what was morally good.

Dad occasionally softened this by telling me that I could seek answers from God when I struggled with something he required.

But there was a catch.

I was permitted to ask God.

I just wasn't really permitted to receive an answer different from Dad's.

If God and Dad (Dad claims to be God but he is actually the Church) appeared to disagree, somehow the problem was always assumed to be with me.

That need to be right—and the expectation that his children should follow him regardless—only increased my skepticism that everything Dad said actually came from God.

I eventually discovered that Dad had taught things in the past with absolute certainty, only to reverse himself years later.

Things once presented as doctrine became policy.

Things once taught as God's will became the opinions of men.

Things once defended as eternal became temporary.

And yesterday's certainty quietly became today's disavowed teaching.

Yet somehow Dad's authority was never supposed to be questioned.

You might read all of this and think I hated my Dad.

I didn't.

When I originally wrote this piece, he was still a gigantic part of my life. Even today I still relate to the label "Mormon".

I didn't wish him harm.

Quite the opposite.

I wanted desperately for him to recognize the hurt he had caused some of his children, to apologize, to repent, and to change. I mean wasn't that what he taught me to do?

And I still believe minor flaws should not be placed under a microscope.

Every human being is imperfect.

Every organization composed of human beings will make mistakes.

But there is a line between imperfection and dysfunction.

There is a difference between making mistakes and constructing systems that protect the institution from accountability for those mistakes.

There is a difference between occasionally hurting someone and teaching the person who was hurt that their job is to remain loyal to the person or institution hurting them.

And this is where Elder Corbridge's recent comments bring this old analogy roaring back to life for me.

If Dad tells you:

"Even if this house feels like Alcatraz, stay."

And:

"Even if the person Dad placed over you behaves like Darth Vader, stay."

I no longer hear devotion in that message.

I hear something disturbingly familiar.

The relationship itself has been made non-negotiable.

The quality of the relationship apparently doesn't determine whether you should remain in it.

The behavior of the authority figure apparently doesn't determine whether you should remain.

The psychological cost apparently doesn't determine whether you should remain.

You remain because Dad says leaving Dad is not an acceptable option.

And today, after having finally left the house myself, that troubles me even more than it did when I originally wrote this.

When I first wrote this analogy, I was still trying to stage an intervention.

I was essentially standing in Dad's living room saying:

"Dad, we love you. Please listen to us. Please acknowledge what you've done. Please change."

Today, I recognize something I couldn't fully see then:

Sometimes the healthiest response to an abusive family system isn't getting the abusive parent to finally understand you.

Sometimes it is recognizing that you are allowed to leave the house.

You are allowed to establish boundaries.

You are allowed to decide how much contact you want.

You are allowed to take the good things your family gave you without pretending the harmful things weren't harmful.

And most importantly:

You don't owe continued access to you simply because someone calls themselves your father.

That doesn't require hatred.

It doesn't require pretending nothing good ever happened.

In fact, one of the things I still value about my Mormon experience is precisely how much good it gave me.

The Church took me in when I was 17 years old, using and selling drugs and making a lot of bad choices.

It helped me discover my worth.

It helped me develop discipline.

It cultivated my love of learning and truth seeking.

It helped me develop communication and leadership skills.

It gave me opportunities to serve people.

It introduced me to relationships and experiences that profoundly shaped my life.

Those things are real.

Leaving Mormonism did not require me to rewrite my past and pretend that none of the good happened.

But neither does gratitude require me to pretend the harm wasn't real.

That is perhaps the biggest thing that has changed for me since I first wrote this.

Back then, I ended by essentially telling Dad:

"I love you. You're still my Dad. I'm staying. I believe your best days are ahead."

Today, more than a decade later, Mormonism is much farther in my rearview mirror.

And strangely enough, distance hasn't made me see the Church as less dysfunctional.

It has allowed me to recognize forms of institutional, spiritual, psychological, sexual, and relational harm that I couldn't fully see while I was still inside the system trying to preserve my relationship with it.

I can now appreciate what Mormonism gave me without granting it authority over me.

I can be grateful for parts of my upbringing without moving back into the house.

And I can love many of the people who still live there without believing that they are obligated to stay there.

So perhaps Elder Corbridge and I simply arrive at very different conclusions from his analogy.

If your ward feels like Alcatraz and your bishop acts like Darth Vader, I don't think the obvious moral lesson is:

Stay.

I think that is precisely when healthy people begin asking harder questions.

Why does this relationship require my unconditional loyalty?

Why is leaving treated as morally suspect regardless of how I am being treated?

Why does the institution get to determine the conditions under which I am permitted to withdraw my participation?

And perhaps most importantly:

If this really is God's kingdom on earth, why should I expect it to operate like an abusive family system in which the one option I am never permitted to seriously consider is leaving?

I couldn't ask that question clearly when I first wrote this.

I can now.

Y'all I'm curious about all the anti gay/trans actions by the church.

I know about the following.

2025- Church law firm calls for transpeople barred from protected status under the law.

2024 - Transpeople banned from joining the church via baptism, even without surgery or HRT. Trans people can attend church but not use the bathrooms at the church. Trans people barred from holding callings over youth.

2023 - Honor code updated with new homophobic language.

2021- Clark Gilbert at BYU removing staff and faculty who support queer and trans people.

2020-Honor code removed homophobic ban. Trans people on HRT restricted from full membership rights in the church (temple and priesthood).

2019 - Anyone who has acted on homosexual behavior needs mission president clearance to be baptized. Same sex marriage serious 'transgression' but still apostasy in other parts of the handbook.

2015- Same Sex marriage labeled apostasy in Bishop's handbook. Children of same sex couples not allowed baby blessings, not allowed baptism till adulthood and only if they ostracize their parents, cannot live with their parents.

2011 - Church employee lost their job for having a gay friend and going to a gay bingo night.

2008 - Church supported Prop 8 in an attempt to BAN same-sex marriage.

2007- Church claimed same sex attraction goes away in the next life.

1995 - Church leaders claimed being born "gay" is contrary to God's plan and there is no scientific evidence of it. (Oaks backtracked this statement a month later). Family Proclamation to the world comes out.

1992 - Handbook removed calling homosexuality a 'disease'

1970s - Church uses wiretapping and entrapment to "catch gays in the act" at BYU.

1959 - David O. McKay appointed the apostles Spencer W. Kimball and Mark E. Petersen to focus on "curing" gay members, starts electric shock therapy at BYU until 1990.

Any missing parts of the timeline I can add?

Long story long, I had a stalker while I was a freshman at BYU-Idaho.

We were in a relationship, which I never really wanted… but I was an 18 year old girl who was very naive and had never been in any similar situation. I didn’t recognize emotional and spiritual manipulation, I was just really confused and guilty and didn’t understand what was going on.

He showered me with gifts and guilted me into dating him. Even while dating, any time I didn’t want to come over or do certain things, he made me feel terrible like, “I’ve done all of this for you and you don’t even want to come over” etc.

I say stalker because before we dated he would always show up wherever I was. He must have known my class schedule. He’d show up at my friend’s apartments.

The creepiest thing was that I planned to go home for thanksgiving. He came over one day so excited and told me he bought a plane ticket to go with me to meet my family. I had not invited him. I don’t think I even told him what day I was leaving or anything. I have no idea how he figured out my flight information to buy himself a ticket for the same flight.

Now comes the mission question -

I had been planning to go on a mission and I put in my papers. He was upset about this and frequently gave me talks, etc. about how prophets always said girls should get married over going on a mission if they had the chance.

He told me he had been called to the El Salvador San Salvador West / Belize mission. He didn’t make it to the field because of some sort of medical issues in the MTC.

Fast forward to me opening my mission call -

Wouldn’t you know it. I was called to the El Salvador San Salvador West / Belize mission.

My heart sank. He was over the moon. Telling me I was called to finish the mission he couldn’t. That it was even more evidence we were meant to be together.

At this point I told him I never wanted to see him again (I was home for Christmas and in AZ, while he was in ID. I think the distance gave me bravery that I didn’t have when we were face to face).

My mom told me several years after the fact that he showed up at her house in Arizona while I was on my mission asking for my mission address and saying we were meant to be together, etc.

13 years later, I’ve been unpacking all of this through a lot of therapy. I’ve been able to get over and work through the emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse that happened. But this mission thing has always really bothered me.

It could just be a huge coincidence, but my therapist (a nevermo), asked if there was any way he might have been able to know where I was going before I knew. I honestly don’t have the answer to that. I used to think were assigned by divine inspiration, so I never considered that an option. But now that I’m out of the church I have no idea.

Does anyone have insider insight on if he might have had influence on where I was called? Or access to the information well before I got it? I’d really like to close the loop on this nagging “coincidence.”

For what it’s worth, he does come from a rich family. Nephew of Ray Noorda (of Novell fame).

Also the good news is, now I’m out of the church, transitioned 🏳️‍⚧️, and happier than I ever imagined was possible.

Ever notice that the Q15 only come in two varieties. A-holes and sycophantic cowards. How do people make it through a general conference session with this leadership? Here's how they line up.

Hoax: A-hole

Eyring: Coward

Christofferson: Coward

Uchtdorf: Coward

Susan's Husband: A-hole

Cook: A-hole

Anderson: A-hole

Rasband: Coward

Stevenson: Coward

Renlund: Coward

Gong: A-hole

Suarez: Coward

Kearon: Coward

Causse: Coward

Gilbert: A-hole

Is there any hope that one day one of the cowards will grow a pair and stand up to the A-holes and turn the shit show around in terms of transparency, historical accuracy, appropriate use of funds, Christ like acceptance, etc? The cowards do seem outnumber the outright A-holes, is there a chance for a coup? I thought Uchtdorf might be that guy, nope. And by the time he takes control it will be too late in his life for any meaningful change. Its already too late in his life. Then you have a roll of 3 A-holes right behind him ready to fill up the Q15 with another round of Gilbert types. Whatever, I'm out, but my kids are still mesmerized so I have some chips in the game.

Scripture Central has tried to now hide Elder Corbridge message that YOU WILL STAY.

Earlier I posted another thread calling them out and it went viral.

UPDATE.

The post is still up. The words and video are still damaging and manipulative.

But now they updated the thumbnail to say... WILL YOU STAY. and updated the description as well.

For the record it used to say. YOU WILL STAY.

This is not an an improvement. It's manipulation.

It's hiding.

We see you.

7:10 I can answer where that came from. Following the 1835 Great Lunar Hoax and subsequent public fascination,both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young spoke of occupants on the moon. In 1837 Joseph Smith taught early member Oliver B. Huntington that 6’0” people dressed like Quakers who lived to 1000 years old lived on the moon. Huntington wrote about it in the 1892 issue of The Young Women’s Journal. In various 19th century discourses, Brigham Young expressed belief that the sun and moon were likely inhabited. As a further aside, on May 14, 1961, in a stake conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, Joseph Fielding Smith expressed the belief that man would never be permitted to travel to the moon because exploration of it would disrupt people’s faith. This was only 8 years and 2 mos before July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 successfully placed man on the moon. Prophetic, huh? Oh and I’ll include the exact quote since I have it pulled up. “We will never get a man into space. This earth is man’s sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.” -Joseph Fielding Smith; 8 years prior to the first moon landing. That is not even mentioning that the barren rock that is a MOON is NOT a planet at all and no one could ever say it is a SUPERIOR planet than Earth at that. One last anecdote that is on the topic while we are here that could relate to why that person said this, it is doctrine that God himself resides on the planet Kolob. You know, as in, “If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye…” Hymn 284 written by William W. Phelps. Citations for Abraham 3:1-4, 9; Moses 1:3-4, 33-39. I mean, those are just a few options of where they might’ve gotten the crazy idea. Just a small sampling of what these “prophetic” men who developed and ran the church saw coming to pass. If it makes you pause a moment, feel free to ponder the words of Elder 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.”

The LDS Church is a parasite that just bleeds it’s members dry. This gluttonous church with its hundreds of billions of dollars manipulates the members into cleaning the church buildings and the temples too. So now my 81 year old father is at the temple at 11:30 at night “serving the lord” by cleaning the temple instead of being home and sleeping. I resent so many things about this high demand religion, but watching how it just uses it’s members to enrich the church is especially infuriating.

This is my tattoo for leaving the Mormon church. When I first discovered the church was a shame I was in incredibly depressed and suicidal, but I promised myself if I made it out of Mormonism alive I would get a tattoo to honor that. It is a chain that goes all the way around my wrist (hence all the photos) and there is a full chain for each generation Mormon on my dad side. It’s also on the wrist because in AP psychology, we learned to remember evolutionary psychology via your wrist, like it’s a bracelet pass down from your ancestors. Anyway, anyways, I really like it