Episode #67: Defending the Restored Gospel From The C.E.S. Letter W/Sarah Allen

0:04 Back in 2015, there was a letter that was published That Shook many people's testimony of the restored gospel, that letter was authored by a man named Jeremy Reynolds and was addressed to an employee of the church educational system. It became known as the CES letter in the letter mr. Reynolds attacks foundational, truth claims of the restored gospel and Joseph Smith on this episode I have on Sarah Allen. Sarah is a lifelong develop. Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the volunteer for fair Mormon, which is a group dedicated. Hated to providing, well, informed and well-documented answers to gospel questions in our conversation. Sarah provides well-documented. Accurate historical data to refuse some of the letters. Most well-known accusations stick around to get equipped defends. Has restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. On this episode of the Mormon Renegade podcast, There is no doubt as a general rule, Mormons are a real social people and there's no better place to connect with other people than at conferences devoted to Mormonism with that said, there's one coming up that I can't recommend highly enough and that is the restoration tour conference. It is happening this year on May 26th and 27th and wind in Utah. Many speakers.

1:18 You will hear. There have been on this podcast. They include Jacob adrene Hannah, Stoddard Taylor, Smith Joshua Erickson, Kimberly Smith, myself and more. Go to Restoration Torah conference dot-org, or click on the link in this episode page notes to find out how you can attend. Here's the unfortunate truth right now as fundamentalists and traditional LDS folks, we can't expect to have accurate history told by others because true history and scholarship is problematic for certain people. And organizations, we're going to have to do this work ourselves and to do that, we will have to support each other in this kind of work. Now, anybody who's anybody in fundamentalist, circles knows who drew Briny is, he is perhaps the most prolific author within Mormon.

2:06 Fundamentalism. Drew's newest project is something. I think all Mormons can benefit from he is in the process of creating an annotated version of the Doctrine and Covenants. Once you have a copy of this, you'll be able to compare current sections with previous versions. And also what early LDS leaders had to say about that particular section as fundamentalists and traditional LDS. Folks, we are constantly trying to get back into the minds of the early Brethren. This project that Drew is engaged in, right? I was going to be the ultimate tool to help us do that now because this annotated version of the Doctrine and Covenants is such a massive undertaking, Drew needs some help from others, Drew's plan for getting this annotated version of the Doctrine and Covenants out is through crowdfunding the link for that will be out April 4th if you want more details sooner, go to Drew's Facebook page and messaging from there and he'll give you all the details further on Saturday.

3:02 April 8, I'll be releasing an episode that talks about this project in Greater detail. So please if you feel impressed to do so and have the means I'd humbly ask that you reach out to Drew and support this project, that will help Advance the scholarship and true doctrine of the restored gospel. Look, we live in some pretty challenging times. Instability is all around us and it can feel pretty overwhelming in order to not just survive, but to thrive in this time, we all need to strengthen our relationship with God. Then maximize and engage every promising gift. God has given us in his Book energy unveiled, Derek Peterson lays out some important principles, which will give you the tools and practices to strengthen your relationship with God and help you maximize your own potential to get through these trying times. Head over to Mormon Renegade.com, click on the link in this episode page and get your copy today because of your generosity last year, I was able to buy better audio equipment and software.

3:59 I can't tell you how much it meant to me. That not only did you spend your time here with me on the podcast but also that, You found enough value and what I'm doing that, you donated the podcast upgraded this year, I want to continue to grow. Now I want to add video to the podcast, continue to help you my guests, a myself, connect better through the show the other feature. I'm working on for this podcast, is something I have to remain vague about for now. But what I can say is that it's something that will help us better connect as fundamentalist and traditional LDS. Folks, now to get that equipment for the video, Content. I want to do and to build the infrastructure for the other project with this podcast donations would certainly be welcome or you can go to Mormon Renegade.com. Click that supply store button and get some new swag. New stuff will be out soon as well. Now if you can't afford to you either of those two things, I totally get it.

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5:36 Sarah, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. So real quick, I always like to just get a little background so people know who it is. I'm talking to, right? I never want to just be like here's this expert. Take her word for it or my word. I always say you need to go do your own research, but part of that is getting to know people. We're you raised LDS Sarah? Yes. I'm okay. Were you raised like here around Utah? Or were you all over the place? Or I was born in Washington state. But A when I was pretty young. So I lived here most of my life as an adult. I lived for a little while in Ireland but that was only for a few months. Wow, I'll bet you.

6:18 That was an experience Mia. So what part of Washington were you born in? I was born in Bellevue which is a suburb of Seattle. I know exactly where it's at. So I have I have like a lot of connections up there. My wife was born in Longview. My mom lived in Kennewick up by, you know, Tri-Cities area. And then I spent Summers with my grandparents up in Port Orchard. So I'm, I'm pretty familiar with that neck of the woods. Yeah, it's beautiful up there too much rain for me. I enjoy seeing. I enjoy being able to see for a ways and felt a little pendant at times. But so, what time?

6:59 What's that? Okay? I don't mind the rain, obviously, you know, going to Ireland. It rained every day, I was there Elmo. What took you to Ireland? There is something called the be unac Visa that you can get. If you are a single adult under the age of 30 and you take eight college credit hours, that semester, you can just apply for a work visa to go off for 4 to 6 months in a different country and work and so I did that now. It's would you do while you're up there for work? And I worked at a bank. Okay. Yeah. But I didn't mortgage kind of Junior and writing for mortgages, nice. So I'll bet you. That was fun. Being up there is last loved every minute of it. What's the restored gospel?

7:45 Like up up that way. The people there are fantastic, they're incredibly friendly. They just opened up a brand new board there in Dublin. When I was there, it was very close to my house before that there was only one. And so they split into two down one on each half of the city's kind of dissected right through the middle by a river. Okay. And the one that they had before was on the north side, And I lived on the South Side, so it was nice to have one right by my house. They actually the website wouldn't do the, the world locator thing. I don't know if you're familiar with that but yeah, I remember that.

8:30 Yeah, yeah, it wasn't working and so I had to call them and ask them. And the name of my street is very similar to a suburb of Dublin. So they sent me like four hours away the first couple weeks until I figured out there. We want about 10 minutes from my house Yeah, I know it's funny when even when you just go back East to the United States right out in the west were kind of spoiled because everything just runs north-south East-West for the most part, right? But you get on the East Coast. You get in Europe. Nothing is straight, it all, wines somewhere, and we'll throw you into a circle and then you're like, where am I? And it takes a minute to wrap your head around that. That is very true.

9:14 Dublin is not too hard to to get around once you're familiar with it because it's a small City but it does take a little while to learn your way around a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's once you get used to it. It's not too bad but it does take a minute to get your mind wrapped around a lot of that. But so for my listeners here I reached out to Sarah because for a while I've been wanting to have someone on who's kind of been able. Well to kind of take to task the CES letter. Now for those of you who don't know what the CES letter, I'm going to have Sarah, explain exactly what it is. What its history is and that sort of stuff.

9:54 And then we'll move into kind of some of her rebuttals for it because this letter has done Untold damage to so many Mormons of every stripe, Sarah's an active LDS woman. But it in this Instance, it's one of those places where I feel like we should really be standing together, both fundamentalists and and traditional LDS folks because I feel like again, this is something where we're like, we should have each other's backs on this because this is a Mormon problem. This isn't just an LDS church problem or a fundamentalist problem. So, Sarah real quick. What was the CES letter?

10:35 First of all, I do completely agree with you. I think we need to build bridges on this and that's why I'm happy to be here. Here. So the CES letter was a document that was written by a man named Jeremy Runnells. He posted it on Reddit back in late, March of 2013. He provided a download link, and ask everybody to pass it around and share it and to tweak it. So it fit their circumstances a little bit better, kind of personalize it, and he wrote it to a siesta. After that, his grandfather knew that he had asked him to talk to you. After Jeremy was leaving the church, he was still technically a member but he didn't believe in the gospel at all. He was at that point, a proclaimed atheist. He was writing angry letters to some of the Apostles that aren't you can find online.

11:36 He was very angry and bitter at that point. And so he did. Say in a comment that he has since deleted on Reddit, that he did not write the letter, specifically for the CES director, he addressed it to him, but he didn't write it to him because nothing that the guy said would have changed his mind at all, or made any difference. He was already mentally out of the church to that point, but he wanted to pacify his grandfather and keep the family peace. So he wrote the quiz, he wrote the letter out and that I never responded to him after that, like he had agreed to read through. It and everything and then he never responded. And so, that was kind of a big story of it. Oh, you know, the church can answer these questions. So it got passed around like crazy and they posted it up on Mormon stories.

12:25 And I think, Norman, think, Norman think was the first one just within weeks of his posting it on the ex-mormon subreddit and then it just took off like crazy from there, right? Real quick. What what is Mormon? Think, Norman think is an anti-mormon website where they, they did. The same thing that Jeremy did where they initially, pretended to be members of the church who were active in their Awards, and then it came out later that they weren't. So they all eventually left the church, but for a while they were they were doing its what is called on Reddit as Pi Mo P MO. Physically and mentally out.

13:13 And so they are still active for various reasons that they don't believe in the church. Anymore gospel at all and some mormonthink was run by a bunch of those people and it is very similar to the CES letter where it lists a bunch of questions and then goes through and list a bunch of things that they claim are true but are kind of Twisted and aren't actually What is right? So real quick do we know why that CES director not that it would have mattered right? Because Jeremy said you know hey it wouldn't Change My Mind One Way or Another, which I think can speak to the idea of being an honest Seeker, right? At least at least get out there and say, there's nothing that's going to change my mind here, you know, I'm I'm out. So I find it a little bit disingenuous that he did he you know, wrote that letter to him anyway but do we have any idea why the CES director didn't didn't respond back and nothing that I know for sure I would assume is because the first version of the letter was very hostile. Like I mean, it's still hostile now but the original one was even worse and it was very angry and tone. And once you've been doing this for a little while, you kind of start to Realize when people are genuinely looking for answers and when they're just venting and it was very clear that Jeremy was just venting.

14:42 So I think he was like well it's probably not going to do any good at this point because I think you're just expecting like a couple of questions and he wasn't expecting like a hundred page document of what accusation after another. So my opinion is that he probably looked at it and went he you know he's Beyond That at this point, he's too angry to listen, right? You know, I did watch the, the Mormon stories episode with Jeremy and and I want to be careful here that these aren't ad hominem attacks, right? That's not what I'm out for. I'm out for actually dissecting the letter, but I did find Jeremy to be somewhat approachable, right? I want to give give him a proper do there, you get the sense that he had a?

15:32 Or at least this was my takeaway. He's hearing impaired and he had a blessing us at his hearing would be restored and it didn't. And, and to me just as an outsider looking in, it seemed like there was maybe a little bit of heartbreak, they're mixed in with that. And so I kind of felt for him that way, however, that doesn't take away from from some of the things that was in that letter and again, that letters toll done just Untold damage. Hood to Mormons of all Stripes. So what what kind of accusations was he leveling in that letter? Sarah? That God was schizophrenic and psychotic and that you couldn't trust the spirit and that Joseph Smith was a prod.

16:22 And that the Book of Mormon in the book of Abraham weren't historical. He went through every single pillar that somebody who believes in the The Gospel or any of like even at all remotely connected to it, through history, or through the leaf and the event. He just knocked down every single pillar of, of a testimony that he could end of, right? Um, specifically, in the Book of Mormon, he raised things like anachronisms. He raised things like, you know, there were no horses in the Book of Mormon, which now, I have to be, like, haha, because we View, We felt, we found some of those. So so we know those are there.

17:07 But what, when he's knocking those pillars down, do is it okay if I mentioned? And because I can edit this later, is it okay? If I mentioned that you work for fair or work with their okay? All right. Don't get paid. But yes. Okay, so so in were you a member of fare during those days when that flutter first came out? No, I did not come to fare until Laughter, I started writing those posts. Okay, good writing my rebuttal to it on Reddit and one of my co-moderators is the fair board and he took them to the president of fair behind my back. And did that tell me that he was doing that until after he had done it and the fair board liked them and wanting to post them on delete their website. And so that is how I came to be affiliated with Fair. Okay, perfect.

18:01 What was your first Just what was your first impression as you first read through the letter. I read through it the first time, several years ago, not when it first came out, but probably around two thousand fifteen or so. And my first impression, when I read through, it was, oh, here we go again, just because there wasn't much in it, that was knew a lot of it was things that you had just seen come up over and over and over again, in anti LDS literature before. And they were things that because I like to read and I like history and so I have read a lot of lbs history.

18:41 So a lot of them are things that I was comfortable responding to like oh well that's not exactly true. That strong, you know, when I was going through. And so none of it really bothered me but the tone of it bothered me because it was so angry. And that is what initially a lot of people responded to right, I think in some ways, it may be, this is an unfair characterization, but I feel like Jeremy writes that thing from a place of sincerity right there because because the it comes across that, he's really struggling, he's angry, I get all those feelings, right? I get them. 100%, But I almost feel like the anti-mormon crowd got around him and said, here's our champion. Right?

19:32 Here's, here's the guy, we're going to put forward and at least on my end, maybe you've heard something different, cause you're in different circles than I am. I haven't heard too much out of him since then. There's been a few revisions to the letter if I'm not mistaken, but to me, he seemed kind of quiet now. What is that, the case? Not really no, okay. So Franklin presents, he's still comments on the exponent subreddit he still writes rebuttals to everyone. He wrote several to me that I have not read, but I read some of his previous ones like to jump in it and a Anderson and things. So I knew what sort of things would be in it and I didn't want to read them because I knew I would still over it and take it personally and and I believe you just turned into like a big argument back and forth and I didn't want to do that. So I haven't read them, I've heard, what is in them? He is from what I understand writing, a master rebuttal to everybody.

20:35 That's going to just include every single possible thing that anybody has ever said in defensive, the restored Church. Wow out. But apparently that's in the works from what I've here? Holy cow at what point. Do you decide that? You know what someone has to say something about this letter? Because I'll admit when I first saw it you know I first see it and at this point I'm still an active member of the LDS church and I'm just like whatever. Right. I got other things to worry about, you know, you could tell he was angry and I was like, maybe it's just a Enter whatever.

21:16 At what point do you feel like? Okay, Somebody's gotta Gotta Give a rebuttal to this? It wouldn't die. Basically, it just kept going. Like I said, I'm a moderator at the LDS subreddit on Reddit and I am also fairly active in the Latter Day Saints subreddit as well. So we would get get questions about it with the trolling comments. Coming through all the time, saying, we CES letter, that artist who worked for Marvel, put it in one of the spots. Iron Man Comics, he was wearing a CES letter patch in one of the comics they had tracked it and edit that out so like it just wouldn't die.

22:02 It just kept coming up over and over again. We kept getting questions from it, people quote it to us, like we don't know what's in it. You know, and they think they're being clever and saying, well what about this? And they phrase it in a word-for-word the way that he phrases it. Like, we would have noticed that the other Emmett, just things like that. And so, it just kept coming up and There are a bunch of other rebuttals to it and they all were really good at certain things but none of them were really comprehensive that we're really good at everything and so I thought so we should probably somebody should probably do that. Was my first my first thought about it and then have my father went well why don't you? And I went I'm not qualified to do that when he's no, I can't do that but that Meeting would not leave. The first thing that made me think of doing that was Scott Gordon.

22:58 He was the president of fair gave a presentation a couple years ago at one of the fair conferences where he went through the first chapter, you know, it was so long. He didn't have time to do anything else, but he's so, you went through the Book of Mormon section and you showed all of the things that were wrong with it, and I went, so maybe to be that for the whole thing because, like, he went really comprehensive, he had graphics and showing all of it and everything. I was like, somebody really needs to go through that. Just point by point. Point. And Put the same level of detail into it that Scott did. So that's kind of where it started and the prompting wouldn't leave. So after a couple of months I finally reached out on Reddit was like, would anybody be interested in this?

23:39 And people said, yes. So I started writing them and they got way more attention than I was anticipating and I was expecting, you know, maybe five to 10, people would read through them and it would die out after a couple of weeks and that would be that and then that's not what happened. And it just snowballed and then one of my, my co-moderators who was very well-meaning went and started advertising it around Reddit to other places that I was not advertising it to kind of trolls on the first couple of posts. And I was like, okay, so then they were aware that it was happening. And so then they kept an eye on it and they kept trying to, to comment on it and to Badger me Go ahead and kept, we were flooded with trolls for a couple of weeks and then they got, they got bored and lost interest.

24:32 But other people weren't bored and weren't losing interest and they wanted to read them. So I kept writing them and then it just went forever. You know, there's so much of that part that I can relate to this. This whole podcast was born out of me going, you know, someone should really do this and then you know, I could tell you where I was I was I was away from for work. And I like, I never sleep good when I'm away from my family, especially for work, because I'm in a strange place and my, I know my family's always away, but I was in West Texas and just thought about my journey. How I got here to fundamentalism? I thought, you know, I wish I would have had someone, that would have showed me how to do this, someone should really do that.

25:15 And then it snowballs and then the part where you say, you know, maybe five to 10 people, I think I had the same number when I started this podcast. It's, I often joke, I It would be me and eight other listeners, and that would be it. And it took on a life of its own. And then you're like, you start seeing your stuff posted by other people on Facebook and you're like, oh crap, right? Like that was not supposed to happen, so I can totally identify with that. And then the, and then the trolls is well, right? That's the other thing, the trolls come out and force, right? So you better have some thick skin if you're going to drop your hat in the public Arena because people are ruthless So but so when you when did were you guys seeing people come out of the woodwork saying, you know, last week I was a strong member of the LDS church or I was a strong Mormon and then all of a sudden there on the other side of that Spectrum now where they're like, I just read this and now I'm doubting everything was at that dramatic of a shift where you seeing that sort of thing. Yeah.

26:21 And I have had people message me like Message me in the middle of the night saying I was just reading my scriptures and I came across this roast and now I'm spiraling and I don't know what to do and like it was that kind of thing. But more. So with the CES letter like people be like I was just, you know, my friend had some questions I was trying to answer them and I came across, you know, they showed me what they were reading and I what do I do now? I have no idea what to do and you just complete Panic. They don't know what you don't know. They don't know how to answer any of it. They don't know what to Say or do they don't even know where to begin to start researching it. So that's why we felt, you know, maybe it'd be good idea to point people to where they can go to find those answers that they need. Yeah, I can identify with that too. I started this podcast last April and literally within weeks under the banner of Heaven came out and then and then a couple months after that the the Netflix special on Warren Jeffs came out, right?

27:24 So I Like I was like backpedaling a little bit, right plot. Trying to play defense a little bit because I mean, especially those two films. I mean they had a lot to do with fundamentalism, right? And so all the sudden and not only that, the one thing I wasn't prepared for was the crossover, right? So I would have active LDS people reach out to me. Be like what's this Blood atonement thing, right? Or what's this? Adam God thing and they're freaked out and I think one of the major misconceptions I deal with here on the podcast is, oh, you must have an awful axe to grind with the LDS church and I'm like, not really. No, I enjoyed my time there, I really did.

28:05 I don't, I don't have an axe to grind, so I wasn't prepared for that. Just the people who were like, we're about stopped going to church and all that other stuff. I'm like, whoa, whoa. Before you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's break this down a little bit. And so we, yeah. It It's a weird way, how the Lord works, because one minute you're pretty comfortable in the next minute. You're right in the fire, but so there's a lot there. I can identify with Sarah. So you decide you're going to sit down, you're going to write this rebuttal. Did you have this idea that would be one big rebuttal or did you think you were going to take it in sections and what you ultimately end up settling on No, very, very early on.

28:54 I was thinking it would be cool to have, you know, I would post my thoughts and then have other people post their resources and their thoughts and just kind of create a big library of stuff that people could be a point people to, and that's not really what happened. And then I was not planning on doing like a line-by-line thing. And if you go look at some of the earlier, post that they're not line by line. I'm just, you know, referencing at this point, he said this and you know, here he was talking about this, and I don't really go through and and post it word for word or anything, because I wasn't planning on doing that. I was just going to do an overview of each section. And I wasn't thinking it would take very long and then that it kind of turned into people were asking more specific questions about specific things that he said that I kind of skimmed over and so I was like, okay I guess we better, you know, start going through it a little bit more.

29:49 Or and, you know, at first, I was intending to just focus on like the big issues, like the major lies and distortions that I could see in it. But then, as I was going through some of it, it was like, every single sentence was wrong, and he did a response of some kind and I just kind of went from there. And so, Gotcha. This is supposed to be a series of like ten to twelve posts just going over to like the major highlights and stuff and then it ended up being like 70 post long and it took over a year and it was insane. So, wow. Wow, so you talk in there, you just said real quick, you know, excuse me, that that the more you read, the more lies and distortions you found, what were some of the biggest Ones that you found in there, I found things like he was plagiarizing entire passages out of town Palmer's book without citing them. Grandpa Palmer is an Annex member of the LDS church who used to work in the church educational system and then retired wrote an anti moment book and left. And so that was it's an Insider's view of Mormon origins or something.

31:11 Yep. It's fairly popular and I experiment circles and there are several plagiarize passages of that. That I was seeing there were things like he he was like, isn't it so convenient that the Book of Mormon was first published in Sharon Vermont, when you know, Oliver cowdery lived right next door over in this? Whatever counties, right next door to Rutledge County, and you're like the Book of Mormon, it wasn't first published in Sharing Vermont, has published in Palmyra. Everybody knows that, you know, so the little things like that and then there were other things where I noticed, he would say something and not back it up, and then he would just keep repeating it over and over again. Like, it was a fact when he hadn't said anything to support it and it was something that I knew Was not true, but I had plenty of sources.

32:08 I could point to that said, the exact opposite of what he was saying. So they're a little things like that. And then there were other things where it was just the wording where he was using. Like the most inflammatory language he could think of. And so I was pointing out some of those tactics like the phrase that he was using and like some of the fallacies that he was coming from and things like that. And people responded to that as well. They wanted to know more of what was being distorted and how it was being distorted and what to spot for when they were reading that kind of material. Gotcha, gotcha.

32:49 So, how about specific issues, what kind of specific issues can you look back on and go, okay? That's just patently false. Whether whether he intended to lie or whether he was just mistaken, whatever it is, I always like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but, It's what were some of the biggest just out-and-out? wrong ideas that were contained within the in his letter there, there was a big one on the book of Abraham where he he, he just kept saying over and over again, that the book of Abraham was based on the Papyrus one which is what is now called the fragments that were near facsimile 1, on the fragments that we have, No lbs scholar actually believes that. That is something that non-lds collars, really push, but it's not something that any LDS scholar, the particularly the egyptologists, believe it all because there was a lot more papyri than what we still exist today. We know that from the records.

34:01 There were records that were lost in the Great Chicago Fire, right? So know where the book of Abraham came from. We can't say, oh He took it from those characters, right there because there's nothing that says that they came from those characters. By their Joseph Smith, we have record of him saying in a speech in Nauvoo, right before his death that he translated the the roles of papyri that were in his house at the time. Yeah, something. That was a big one. The enactment Holmes was another big one. Before we move on to the anachronisms, I want to go ahead and talk about. Book Abraham because that seems to be a big focal point now on, which all the experts are coming hard for and and you're exactly right if I'm not mistaken and I could be wrong. You probably know better than I think. Someone said that some of those Scrolls were were in the excess of 10 feet long, right?

35:01 I mean these were these were big Scrolls and they are correct. And the terms that that some of the characters that are referenced within the Act similes are from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, But we would expect to find that because if we know anything about Egyptian culture, it's that you wanted that Book of the Dead as you passed when you were Egyptian because that was your guidebook, the idea was you take that with you. That would be your guide book to get through to the other side and it wasn't nearly as long as what all these other accounts are that Joseph Smith had and then you have the fire. So it's really convenient to point to these one fact, similes that that In my estimation put into our scriptures as at least being like look this is what we found right? I mean doing honest historical work, I while I'm not a trained historian, I did do a little bit of work when I lived on the Eastern Shore where we would, I'm land surveyor by profession. So we would go and do some mapping mapping on the digs, they were doing.

36:06 And I remember this professor told me once. No one can ever called you a liar for show. On what you found, right? And so in this effort to be transparent, at least in my estimation, those get put into the scriptures and then all the sudden because people make assumptions we conclude, oh, he must this must have been the whole document, and that's just not the case. As you said, a lot of it was burnt up in that Chicago Fire. Yes, yeah, chunky put out a formula. He is like the standard formula that To be charged us will use to determine scroll length and he estimated that it would the missing portion would have been somewhere between like 12 to 20 additional feet. Something like that.

36:54 I could be way off. I haven't read that article in a while, but there's also a story that got passed around like fourth hand. I think, by the time, we finally came out to be public but it was Joseph. Joseph F Smith as a child. He remembered scienza roll unraveled in his family home. You know, his his father was Hyrum Smith, his grandfather's Hyrum Smith and he remembered like having that unraveled in his house and it went from one end of the room, clear to the other end of the house, like it was a week l. And we don't have anything like that. We don't have a couple of loose pages and scraps. You know?

37:43 And we know there's stuff that we don't have because we don't have the originals of effect similes two or three Right. Also have characters that Oliver cowdery wrote down in a book that we don't have any trace of that. Scroll left, it's completely gone. So we know that stuff that businessing that we don't have. Wow, well, okay, let's move on to the anachronisms real quick for anyone who doesn't know, explain what in anachronism is please. Okay, sure. So the Book of Mormon mentioned things like barley, and And horses and things. Where, for a while it looked like those did not exist in the Americas during that time.

38:26 So there historically inaccurate, but more evidence has come out over time. That shows that most of those things actually were in the Americas particularly in the Mesoamerican region during the time period that many fights would have lived. So a lot of the stuff that he claimed his anachronisms have now been found. Including her forms. Yep. Yep. That was a big one. I remember when that came out I want say it was just two or three months ago if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah. They just put out two different papers in a couple of scientific journals, talking all about it. So when you had to go try to debunk those in anachronisms. Did you were they hard to find where they fairly easy to find that sort of thing?

39:13 We're pretty easy, like for wheat. Wheat was one of them that was mentioned as being inaccurate. But if you look at in the Mesoamerican area in particular, there's a grain called amarant that looks like red wheat. That the Aztecs would grind down and use as we will be that we use weed and it was going to staple grains and it had been there for generations and it looks just like red weed. There are other things like swine and, you know, you have little javelinas and peccaries and you know, whatever you want to help them. They look like little furry pigs. And there were things like barley, for a long time. Barley was thought, not to exist in the Americas before before Columbus came, but they have found 10 plus sites of what they calls, small barley, or little barley, that was native to the Americas.

40:12 As prior to European colonization. So Because they had read some of that stuff before I knew, where some of it was, but I did have to go digging for others and, you know, I just Google the bunch of stuff and I came up with a bunch of things, you really just need to know where to look. I read a couple of papers on Fair and some of the old Farms research Farms was another group that eventually became the Maxwell Institute for those who don't know, right? So he, if I remember correctly from the letter, he he takes after Joseph Smith pretty hard, right? He goes after him really hard on issues like, plural marriage, things like, you know, hit the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, he just really tears into him. What were some of you?

41:04 What were some of his major criticisms? And then how did you defend those, what was your ideas? So for marriage, was obviously a big one and so I went through a lot of history and northern Maine thing. I pointed out was that there is no evidence of any kind of sexual relations for the wives that were civilly, married to other men or for the, the younger teenagers. In fact, we have evidence from several of them saying that, there were no sexual relations at all. In those another one that he talked about a lot again, I'll so back in those days ceilings and marriages were two completely different things. You know, today, normally but historically they weren't, they were two completely separate things. So when Joseph would refer to them as His wives, most of the time they were ceilings and they were ceilings for the next life. Some of them were obviously marriages for time and for eternity but most of them were ceilings for the next life only, As far as we can tell by any of the records but that have been left behind so that is something to point out because, you know, he gets called a pedophile.

42:18 Like, it's called a pervert. Like he has called all kinds of things and you know, the evidence just doesn't support any of that. No, sorry. I just wanted to explore this a little more. I had a buddy who and this was just a couple months ago who's a an active member of the LDS church and he was he was really struggling. This idea that Joseph Smith was a pedophile that he was stealing other men's wives, that sort of thing. Right now, I'm a convert to Mormonism period, right? Like, there's nobody else on either side of my family, it's just me. So, I have to rely a lot on my own personal studies write my own in, you know, diving into history and you're right.

43:02 We know, Joseph Smith was capable of having children, right? His marriage to Emma points that out. I find it interesting that we really can't at all. Find any evidence that he had children with another man's wife. Right. We would expect to see that the other thing that that he was really freaked out about was his marriage to this 14 year old girl, right? Yep. And I was like, okay let's just assume the worst. Let's say there was a marital activity that happened there. For that time period. While yes on the younger side, it wasn't uncommon.

43:43 It was up to ten percent. Right. So this idea that we're going to judge him based on our 21st Century Century values, that doesn't hold water in history period, because we're dealing with a different time, a different people, and that has to be accounted for. And it's one of those things that's just infuriating to me, that it's not. The other thing I would say is that, if there was relations are again with, with the married women and Helen Mark, Kimball we should expect to see children, and we just don't And Helen Campbell in her autobiography, she actually said that it was for eternity alone.

44:27 So she said I mean you could probably read that a different way if you were really strained into but she said it that it was a ceiling for the next life but you're absolutely right about the marriage age is particularly on the frontier and Kirtland and Nabu. And Salt Lake were absolutely on the American frontier during different times in our country's history. And particularly when the saints were living there. So you are absolutely right. That younger marriage is on. The Frontiers were common. They weren't as comment on the east coast in the big cities, but on the frontier they were very common. Yeah, yeah. Perfect.

45:07 I just all of his wives were of legal marriageable age during that time period, right, right? Yeah, it's, I find it, to be honest with you, it's one of two things, either, your you're intellectually dishonest when you make that, claim of Joseph Smith, being a pedophile, or your woefully ignorant of cultural norms of that time given the time and place and and That's one where where? I took exception to a little more because I didn't feel it was a fair critique. And what I mean by fair is that no research went into that whatsoever. That was just that was just pure garbage, being spewed. Yeah, yeah, I get that studying history isn't everybody's favorite thing?

46:01 So I completely understand you know not being up to date on historical research and not really understanding what life was like in the mid-1800s. Totally get that. I personally love history. I'm, I'm pretty nerdy. Absolutely love history. So for me, that was stuff I already kind of knew and I just had to build on that a little bit. But I completely understand, not knowing that. The thing is though, that is a logical fallacy called presentism where you judge societies and cultures and people of the past by today's standards and today's Tanager completely different.

46:42 If we had lived back then or Sanders will be completely different to, right, right. Yeah. And when I, when I phrase that to my buddy, I was like, look, let's just say Emma died. Let's say Joseph never introduced. Look at me, plural. Marriage. And then he married a 14 year old girl, how would you feel? Well, that's a little different, exactly, right. Let's let's put this all into context. Let's let's play a little. Let's play a few mind games. So to speak and say, well, what if this, what if that and then find out really where you're where you're biased lies? Because I think that speaks volumes. So, I completely agree with you on that. So, um, what else did he level, as criticisms. Against Joseph Smith, what were some of his other big ones and the different accounts of the first Vision with the big one? He was very upset about that.

47:40 The biggest thing though was the Book of Mormon translation using his personal Seer stone for relation. Jeremy had a big problem with that. And it came up over and over and over and over and over and over, and over again throughout the whole letter. He just kept referring back to the Rock and the hat as he calls it. And how You know why were they the nephite interpreters even there if he wasn't going to use them, that kind of thing. So those who baby what was your rebuttal to that one? The the rock in the Hat and that sort of thing. Well I first came across that when I was about 12 years old, I was reading a cut, my parents copy the Ensign and president Nelson who is the leader of the LDS church, right now was an apostle at the time and he gave a speech to some Mission presidents about 100 of them and ask them to spread the information out to their missionaries and in that speech which was reprinted in the Ensign a few months later. So, he went through and he talked about how Joseph Smith used his personal Caesarstone and how it was in possession of the church at, like they had it in the archives right then. And that Joseph, he used it and put it in his hat and looked at his hat to block out the light.

49:00 And I went I never heard that before. So that was and at first I was I was really surprised and confused and then it immediately. It was like, within five minutes the spirit just said does it matter And I thought about it and I meant, no guess not because you know, either way he's using a Seer Stone. Either way, he's translated by Revelation doesn't really matter what Stony used. You know, if you used one and a half versus to in the spectacles I mean they work the same way so doesn't have her. Now it didn't matter to me. Right, it does to other people. So I think that so I have a buddy who, who's not Mormon at all.

49:49 And I remember we were talking about this. He's like, I just gotta say, I think it's one of the most metal stories out of all of Mormonism. I think it's cool, right? And I was like, okay, alright, good on you but so, So did this he ever attack modern-day leaders of the LDS church does? He attacked that movement? Yeah. Yeah. He has a whole section on profits and he does in that one. He avoids Joseph Smith so much but he goes from Brigham Young onwards and goes after all of them including the our president and apostles today, he went after a bunch of them from the 90s 80s, president Hinckley human, after when after present hoax but after President Packer that boy a packer and be like an axe while he went after a whole bunch of them. So in that it was mostly you know pointing out that some of them have made mistakes in the past like he was talking about Adam God and blood atonement and things like that and he brought up the the priesthood restriction and just you know today he So for that one the priest of restriction is obviously a complicated difficult topic to us. So I don't know how deep you

51:22 want to go into that but you know, Jeremy went after it pretty hard and you know, you just have to point out First of all, the Journal of discourses where all of those sermons are from that, he was quoting, you know, those have been edited over the year, the the transcriptionists and the reporters. They copied them down word for word and then they edited them completely and added their own thoughts and edited like changed. All the wordings got huge portions of it and everything when they were preparing them for publication. And so Original one that we have are completely different from the sermons that were given. And we can prove that because we have a small group of them that have been since the original transcripts, have since been transcribed from shorthand into readable English and they are completely different.

52:23 So we didn't know that for the longest time, but now we do and you can't really base things off of what may not have actually been said. So that is something to keep in mind and another thing to keep in mind is, you know, profits are human too. And we all make mistakes and make tons of mistakes, I'm not going to hold them up as being perfect and expect them to not make mistakes that I would make. All right. But you know that is a common criticism that they do expect profits to be pretty infallible and I don't know why. Yeah, it to me that that one boggles my mind that you would You would put a you would describe a level of godliness to a mortal, right?

53:14 And that's, that's essentially what you're doing. When you say they should be infallible, you are basically saying, look, here's the thing, you know, they're, they're men at the end of the day, they're dudes, right? And they're dudes with a calling, right? Because because in my church, we have a prophet and a leader. I think he's a great guy, but I don't, you know, I would never try to have my expectations be to Perfection, right? That's not fair to my testimony and that's certainly not fair to my leader, right? That's not fair to him. He doesn't deserve that he's doing the best he can in his calling just like I'm doing the best I can in mind.

53:56 And I'm often surprised at the lack of Grace that's extended to people. The other thing I'll say is if you're looking for perfection in a prophet, good luck because it's not Up there, it's not there in the Old Testament. It's not there in the New Testament, right? You have Moses, it kills a dude, you got Jonah that runs from God, you've got, you know, you've got Peter who denies Christ and all of them, the Lord continues till you to use, right? But for whatever reason. And again, I think some of its presentism, right? We tend to be way harder on on Latter-Day leaders, whether that's Joseph Smith and members of the LDS Church.

54:36 Church or leaders of the LDS church or Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and fundamentalist leaders. We tend to be way harder on them and I think it's because they're this close so to speak in history, right there? Right here. And and we tend to to look past the the errors of of older profits in the scriptures and I find that an interesting to cottam, so do I? And that is something that comes up in the scriptures to like, they There are a couple of verses throughout the scriptures that talk about how people look at past profits and and they ignore the present ones. And several of our leaders have said that, I think it was President, Kimball who said, you know, they they praised the the prophets of the past will be mentally, Stone, the living ones, you know, and that happens over and over and over again throughout the the scriptures and throughout our history. And I agree, I think it is a lack of Grace and Truth. Charity, and I think that it is very strange too. Hold them to a different standard than you'd hold yourself to right, right, yeah.

55:48 No, I absolutely agree. So, you kind of collect all this data, right? And you're like, okay, I'm ready to go. You sit down your keyboard and you you type it up. What are you thinking before? You publish that first one? Because because that's always a different thing, right? Because by now, the CES letter is called fire. It is moving white like a wildfire, in a grassland. There's it seems like there's no way to contain it. What's your first thought? As you're getting ready to hit the post button, so, to speak, when I prayed real hard first, I prayed before writing, all of them, and I was like, I don't even have any idea how best to start this. So, how do you want me to start it? And the first thing that came to my mind was to point out, you know, that the discrepancies between what Jeremy was saying publicly.

56:39 And what he was saying, on the ex moment, subreddit was friends because there were a lot of discussions. Currencies. And I think and that wasn't so much to attack Journey, but it was to point out that this thing that you are holding up as scripture in the sky, you're holding up as your ex Mormon prophet or not. Actually, What you think they are and if he's lying about that or he's being dishonest or he shading the truth or however you want to say it you know, he's making himself look better than his whatever you know. I mean everybody does that to some degree. So you know what, whatever face he's putting on it, if that is not true.

57:19 How can you trust the content of it? So that was my pointless to say, you know, this isn't necessarily what it comes across as And when I posted it, I did not advertise it. I just posted it in my subreddit and I was not aware that one of my other moderator friends was passing it around to all of the different lbs related, communities on Reddit and saying, hey come, come read, this, come comment and I was like, oh look, don't do that. That brought a ton of of fire down on us.

58:00 I was a little nervous about it, but I figured, you know, five to ten people would comment, it might bring out a couple of extra trolls just because of the topic because, you know, it's the CES letter. I was not expecting more than 100 trolls to come attack us, and like, it was bad, it was just a nightmare thinking for a couple of weeks and there was tons of recreating, you know, where it would. Post it around to others subs, and then encourage everybody to come flood. Our sub with trolling comments and stuff and I got a couple of DM's and all kinds of stuff and I was like, I have, this is kind of what I was hoping to avoid. But okay, so for the first poster to I came to argue back and then I was like that's a bad idea.

58:45 I need to stop doing that. I only went because I've been there. I Get it right? That that's a laugh of experience where you're like these days. I'm like posting ghost. That's my go-to, right? Because there's no change in anybody's mind. My hope is my stuff gets to somebody who's on the fence. Right? Well yeah, I will respond to people who are neutral or positive. I will not respond to trolls anymore. I've learned my lesson real fast so that was kind of a bunch of trepidation on that one. I was hoping it would go, mostly unnoticed. Except for, by the members of our subreddit and it didn't.

59:26 And and there were just as many on the next one. And they all kept saying, you know, Well, why are you talking about Jeremy? Why aren't you talking about the content of the CES letter? Because you can't write and I was like it's a very first thing I said was this is going to be a series. This is the first post in the series that we're going to do and that you know, we would talk about that in a week or two and they just completely missed it and they so he had to just keep pointing it out. This is the first one be patient, we will address the content in full as we go along. but yeah, mostly it was just a lot of nerves that Thankfully there was enough good commentary as well. That I felt like it was beneficial to keep going and pretty quick that the trolls did lose interest and drop off pretty fast.

1:00:26 There's only one time. Shouldn't say this. What I've noticed is that if you don't feed the trolls, they stop coming, right? If you feed them by, you know, engaging with them, they're just right there. But the second you just are like And you don't post back and you just post and ghost. They go away. They go away very frustrated, but they go away. Yeah, the Mormon subreddit. Yeah, there are a bunch of very similar names, but the Mormon subreddit for a while was posting weekly rebuttals to my rebuttals because they were people who had previously been banned on our sub for bad behavior. So they weren't allowed to post on ourselves and so that was really the only place that they could do it was on their side. And I was like, that's fine but you know, more power to you if you want to talk about it that's fine. I just didn't want to participate in their conversation so they kept trying to drag me into and they did that for a while.

1:01:33 It was like go through the Couple of sections out of they would post and I was and I still get random. They still do random posts against my stuff now. And that's why, you know, they can do what they want, but for the most part, the trolls died off very fast when once we stopped engaging with them. What did your family have to deal with any of that blowback from you posting on there at all? No, they don't really know about it for the first like, six months or so, until it started when they started posting them on Fair, they were under my real name and they have my picture on it.

1:02:14 And so I had to tell them that that was coming and mostly they got good commentary. There were some threats made against me and against some members of my family but my name is super generic. So unless you have more information, I'm very hard to Google so that is good. But mostly most of the attacks were over social media. They tried to Doc's me on the Mormon subreddit. She had they failed miserably, does the for my name was on it but they thought I was my glass actually and I was like I got a good laugh out of that. He's a rider for fair.

1:02:55 He wrote the Bamboozled by the CES letter documented, got you. So they thought it was him which I thought was pretty funny, but yeah, they tried to dogs need shaundalyn on his Facebook on his Mormon stories. Facebook, sent a thing telling. Everybody to flood my social media with Jeremy's first rebuttal to me. Jeremy was encouraging everybody to flood my social media. I had locked it all down when I started writing for fair, because I knew that it would be under my real name. So I just locked, everything down as private, so nobody was able to do that. But I still got well-meaning friends and family taking screenshots and sending them to me.

1:03:37 So I saw it all is like I'm okay, not knowing sorry really but they just want to make sure that I was okay. And I wasn't like getting really upset and everything and so I appreciate the concern but I didn't want to read it was so right. Right. I remember when I started this podcast that was my main fear was my family, right? You take shots all day long at me? I'm fine. I got thick skin. Yep, none of that concerns me, right? It's my family. I was most concerned about thankfully, most people have been pretty respectful but I've gotten my sure hate from the same crowd that you got yours from right?

1:04:22 And and they are They are vicious and it caused me for a while to sit back and look. And here's what I've discovered through this, especially with, with, folks, on the the anti-mormon side. And especially those who have left Mormonism is that they're still religious Sarah, but they're, you know, whether they want to admit it or not. They are still religious, they have their scripture, the CES letter, no man knows my history. Take your pick, right? An Insider's view, view of Mormon Origins, they still have scripture, they still have their profits, right, Jeremy Reynolds, John Doyle in those sorts of people.

1:05:07 So this idea that that, oh, no, we're just, you know, know, know, you know, we're done with that. No, you're not. You're really not because you've just set up a different structure, right? Let's just call it what it is and so I and they will defend that. Just like any other religious person will defend their belief system and in some ways, it's even more vicious than anything I've ever seen come out of any Mormons mouth. I've had certainly had my share of threats, right? And And that's okay, I'm good with that. But let's recognize for a second. You are approaching this with a certain amount of religiosity that may be of a more rabid brand than than Mormonism or Catholicism or anything else.

1:06:02 And I completely agree. And I have actually made that same comparison, many times before about them, having scriptures and Prophets and things because they do they proselytize. They pass them out, like their scripture, they quote them, and say like they spread them around just like we would conference talks or something. Well, they and they are very vicious like I just a couple months ago in fact, I cobbled together, a list of about 70 direct insults made it against me that were still active and visible on the Mormon subreddit. They had never taken any of them down even though we all have a rule against insulting, the moderators of other subreddits in the Mormon sub Reddit community. And they were vicious saying they're calling me, Edith, every single name you can think of what's on their everyday insult. Every single thing about me and I was like, that kind of sucks, you know, most of the time, I just ignored it. Rolls right off me, but seeing it all cobbled together, this big huge paragraph of one until after another. I was like that is horrendous.

1:07:16 I can't even believe that's kind of stuff. Comes out of somebody's mouth. Yeah. Like I would never say that kind of stuff about anybody, right? Yeah, no, the yeah. First off. Let me say, I never, I'm glad to see that somebody else recognize that as well and to I think you probably recognize it before I did. So we're going to call that your idea. But I don't want to take credit for that but so yeah, it was, it's interesting to see how that side of the Mormon Spectrum. So to speak, still organizes itself with those same. Ideas.

1:07:57 Scriptures prophets the whole ball of wax so you publish it and it did your stuff. Take take off right away. Did you immediately see like oh crap. This isn't just five to ten people. It was pretty quick. Yeah, the first couple of posts. Got a lot of common snotty not just from trolls. I mean they were really supportive comments to and then he started seeing other people. So I'm read it when when somebody references you, they can pin you or tag you or something. And so, it pops up in your mentions and I started noticing it, a lot of people were spreading around and sharing them.

1:08:43 And that caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting that at all. And then I was, you know, people started recommending them on other subs, like, I would go to comment and there would be like, five to ten comments saying, oh, going to these posts, and I was like, oh, that's cool. And then when they went up on fares, when they really started getting traction, I started having people in my ward come up to me. And in my parents word, where I, grown up, my parents still live, where you going up? And says some of the old-timers in the word know me and they would go out to my mom and be like a red, your daughter's stuff on Fair. That's so cool. And so that's when I started to really notice it was people started recognizing me in, you know, I wasn't just that quiet sister in the back road.

1:09:33 Church anymore, you know, this are recognizing me and talking to me about it and that was really a surprise and then people started sharing them on Facebook which was kind of weird. The only time I ever mentioned them on Facebook was just to say, hey, fares reposting. This, if anybody's interested, I've been writing this for the past six months, and that's all that I said about it, but then people started sharing them every week and I was like, That is so weird scrolling through Facebook and see my face. They're very weird just cause I don't comment on social media very much. And then I started scrolling, I'd be scrolling on Reddit and they be reposted on the fair subreddit. And so my face is sitting there.

1:10:17 My name is on it, I'm like so bizarre. So that's when it really took off was was when I started getting posted on them Fair. Was there a moment? I think I know the answer this already. Was there a moment at which you said, okay, this is I have some responsibility now, this is no longer just A hobby or anything else? I know I had my moment. What was yours when? What was it that you were like, oh no, this this is a responsibility. Now, people are kind of count on this. It was the first time I got a letter from a convert and a very young very recent convert to the church whose family was all kinds of anti-mormon material and he wrote me this really beautiful letter. I still have a copy of it.

1:11:13 He just said, you know, I've been struggling so much. I didn't know how to respond to any of this. I am brand new to the church. I don't know any of the stuff yet. I'm still learning it. I, you know, I can feel when I read the book of Mormon, I can feel that It's true. I can feel that, you know, so the Lord did restore the church but I don't know how to respond to any of this. I don't know how to react to my family, but reading these helped me so much and that just totally humbled, me and blew me away and I didn't even know how to respond to that. I was like, and what do you say to something like that? You know, but that's when I realized that people were reading them and they were using them and they were relying on them, to help them learn the stuff. I remember it was that couple I told you about that, had sat down watched under the banner of heaven when I got that email from that LDS couple and he just kind of said thank you. We can go back to church now and that meant a ton but it also it is humbling, right?

1:12:10 Because look, I've said it before on the podcast and I really mean I'm a clown with a microphone, right? This was born out of either prompting from the spirit or a bad slice of pizza the night before. In time will tell what which is, which right. But I all of a sudden, when there's people that's counting on it takes on a different feeling, right? Takes on drastically different feeling and you kind of feel like you're on the hook a little bit and so that that but every once in a while, you get one of those letters, right? Or one of those emails where you're like, well, we're going to keep going, whatever this, this takes, we're just going to keep plugging away at it and see where it leads.

1:12:51 One. Yeah, it is very humbling because I know I would not have been able to do it without having found yourself, and I leaned on him a lot. And I leaned on the spare, I was praying all the time, like, help me find sources for this, you know, how do I respond to this and then light bulb moment, you know, it would just come. And I know that wasn't for me, that was from him, so I know that that was something that he was directing and That helped a lot too to know that, okay, I don't know why he wants to use me to do this, but if he does I will let him. You know. I'll go with it and I'll do what he wants me to do and I hope I won't mess it up too badly.

1:13:33 You know. So It's very humbling to but that's one of the things that I appreciate about, you know, learning about the prophets and their flaws and things is, you know, heavenly father found a way to use them and that means that he can find a way to use me too, because I am way more clouds than they are. But if he was able to use them, then he needs me to. Absolutely, I've had those same conversations with myself and with God and and I don't know about you, but when I first did my undertaking, I was coming up with every reason in the book. Look, I shouldn't, right? I'm like I say things that piss people off all the time.

1:14:14 You don't want me. He wants somebody else. You know? I mean gosh I wish I was more Joseph Smith but I can identify more with Brigham because I'm more direct and more blunt. And and so, I'm like, you need somebody different and he's like, nope. Nope. You're you know, we're going, you do this. I'm giving this to you, so I can totally identify with those feelings of unworthiness, and, and being an unqualified and all those other things. Like I totally can dig on that and respect that totally. So when it gets to Fair, how does fair reach out to you? And what was that? Like, because I mean, within the LDS community fairs big, right? I mean, this, this is a collection of Scholars and and people who put the work in so to speak. They are.

1:14:59 Yeah, I don't think so as well known maybe as some of the other the other big sites. But yeah, they a lot of people are aware of them and they do have a reputation for being more scholarly and academic and that is not really me. So they reached out through The guy am I mod team? Who is on the fair board? I'm not going to talk to him in real life, but hasn't his handle is Atari guy and he is a longtime volunteer with Fair. He is pretty high up in the organization and they're all, they're all volunteers so he doesn't get paid for it or anything, but he, he is pretty high up on the board and he took them to Scott Gordon, who is the president, and I didn't know any of this was going.

1:15:53 Going on, but he proposed for a couple of weeks and Scott really liked him. And like I said, this a few months has about six months into it when they he approached me but he just sent me a direct message on Reddit and was like, Hey, so I've been doing, you know, I've been sharing all your stuff with Scott and he loves them and he wants to post them on their fair board. A Blog, is it okay you know we'd have to put your real name on it. Would put your picture on it all this time I would like the whole wow. Okay, because I thought about it for a little while but I had promised heavenly father that if he helped me I would say yes to whatever else he wanted me to do. And that's how we get you.

1:16:37 That's how we get you every time. So because I said that I went, you want me to do this and he said yeah. But I said, okay. All right, I will dogs myself and I will put my name and face on all of these and I will let you post them and so then they just started posting them when. So half of my mod team is affiliated with fares. Pretty much. Is it all of them? But one now on our little six-person team, but one of the other volunteers with fair was the guy who Posted them on the site for me. So I wasn't even that affiliated with him at that point. and then, I went to the conference and they gave me a really pretty award that I wasn't expecting either.

1:17:31 But Atari had reached out in was like, we want to make sure that you're coming and I was like, oh yeah, I'm coming. I already bought a ticket. I'll be there and he goes, okay, good. We have some really cool things planned and they asked me to do it like a little lunchtime panel for people who were there. So I thought that's what he meant. I don't realize he had also put me up for that award. So that was a surprise. I had been intending to officially volunteer with fair. I hadn't yet. At that point, it was just reposting them. I wanted to get finished with it all first before I started doing other things for fair because it was such a lot of reading and writing and it was just a big undertaking and so I hadn't joined and so, Atari signed me up as a volunteer Anyway, which I, he knew, I wanted to, he was just like, you know, we've asked you five or six times and you haven't done it yet so we'll just do it.

1:18:32 And when you're ready, you can, you can step into it, but you'll be signed up. So they got me a T-shirt and they got me like an email address and everything and added me to the email lists. And after I was done, they asked me to turn it into a book which we started doing, and then they asked me to do the other a series that I'm doing now and so that kind of took the place of the book for a while, but It kind of snowballed from there got you. God, you're so Do you think the CES letter is still having the kind of impact? It did back in 2013, 2015 or do you think it's kind of fizzled out?

1:19:16 I don't think it's fizzled out. I don't know that it has the same dramatic level of impact that did when it first came out, but it is still pretty influential. Like we still get people all the time who are just stumbling across, all them who are just hearing about it for the first time and just spiraling. And, you know, it's still getting passed around like crazy book by, it's mostly that use that. I've noticed that are passing it around to there. ends of family members who are older and you know, it's the first time that they're hearing about it and I'm not sure how it's the first time you're hearing about it but I guess, you know, everybody knows different things.

1:20:02 I don't think it it's quite as big as it was when it first came out, but it is, it's still pretty big. It still takes some defending to to get through that. Um, What, what kind of things are? Are we seeing now within, because Mormonism as a whole. I really feel like is that this this place of just kind of being used as a theological pinata, right? It feels like right now, everyone's taking a swing, right? What other things are you guys seeing coming out now that are the that's really damaging people and their testimonies from from the anti-mormon side of things. the day Bell case Lori Bala that one is getting a lot of traction right now under the banner of Heaven did The there are a couple of high-profile sexual abuse cases against the LDS church right now that are doing a fair bit of damage, there are a gazillion copycat letters that are coming out but interestingly we are also seeing a lot of people who left because of that material. We're now coming back.

1:21:33 Yeah. Yep. I feel like sometimes at least my experience. I get a ton of email from this and fortunately, I have a family who's gotten really good at answering a lot of those because a lot of times, it's just asking for resources. Where did you see this? Where did you find this? And, and so now we can almost, I literally have just kind of a small library on my laptop with different names where it's just, you know. Okay, here you go, click click, but every once in a while, my family knows, okay. This dude, really struggling or this lady's really struggling and you're Going to need to talk to them.

1:22:13 And panic is the exact word I would use, right? I mean, there are times that I will, you know, if they leave me a phone number, I'll call him. I'll be like, okay, first breathe that. Your first thing you need to do is just breathe. Just relax, you'll get through this, but I do think that because it is, it is aimed at your core pillar, right? Your mormonism's unique and it's of the things I love about it. The restored gospel is unique in the sense that It's not just a Sunday thing, right? This is something you build an entire identity around. It is very much a subculture or counterculture within mainstream America and so it's God's own language, its own Customs, its own dialect in some ways. I mean, it's a different ball of wax, right? And so when someone takes aim at something like that and then start eroding those, those those foundations, there is a A very large sense of panic that ensues. And so, yeah, just, it doesn't surprise me that people are coming back because I think, once they are gone and then they're like, oh look, it I'm really not happier here. And, and look they found horses, or, you know, they found iron or whatever.

1:23:34 The case is, I think that knee-jerk reaction is where we have to catch people. The most right before they make a decision based off of fear and off of Of sadness and uncertainty and all those things. Let's just bring this back, right? And one of the things that surprised me in being LDS and being a fundamentalist is we're all dealing with the same stuff, right? All of us are. Yeah, I just talked to a young man who just got back serving a mission from our church, and we were just talking, and he talks about, you know, at 15. He's not sure he wants to do this anymore. This is boring.

1:24:15 I want to do this, I want to move with my friends and and so I'm like yeah, we're just like everybody else, right? We really are. We all have to have that conversion moment. So I and that's why I reach out to you because there really is we're not that different in a lot of ways and and sometimes the same attacks that are meant for the LDS church are absolutely going to be attacked on our theology. Where do you see? That valo case really doing the most damage because as I reach ad and Lori's theology, it's as bad as Mormon as and I'm a fundamentalist. So, if I have to look and be like, bro, that is not Mormon at.

1:25:04 All right. I I have a hard time. Calling them Mormon, you know, when some of their theology is. So radically different almost the exact opposite of what Joseph and Brigham and John Taylor taught, what kind of things are you dealing with off of that? I mean, how is this hurting people? The biggest thing that we're seeing right now is the whole energy healing thing that the the riky stuff that they kind of got into as well. It is not just a Mormon and problem like it is very popular. Like if you look on Etsy and you look up the the riky term, I mean there are thousands and thousands and thousands of websites little shops, selling, crystals and oils and like all kinds of Little things to help you Channel your energy and do these hellions.

1:25:59 Like, they have little wands and all kinds of stuff, like it is a big, big business and that is the kind of stuff that led to like the zombie thing. And you know, that they're all kind of connected through the energy healing as opposed to, to some of the more bringe doctrines and that is kind of taken over. A lot of people are doing that, they see him as being similar to Still blessings and so not, it works in a completely different way, and it is clearly, you know, has some weird, weird background attached to it and some weird French beliefs and stuff.

1:26:42 But that is the thing that like a lot of people don't see that as being something that they shouldn't engage in because they think, oh, I was just using the preset in a different way. And, you know, I'm not the one he doing any of the healing. I'm I'm letting God heal them through me then, things like that and you're like, no that's not quite right, right? No, I get it. Yeah, it surprised me when you said that because after reading some of the stuff that Chad and Laurie had said, I mean, look, even even The Reincarnation thing, right? And fundamentalism.

1:27:25 It's called multiple mortal probations. And that's even somewhat friends even for fundamentalist, right? I mean, most of us are like, I don't think so right. But so the fact that that they're, they're seeing that and that's what's doing the damage is somewhat surprising. Do you have any idea on why that is so appealing to some folks? so something that I have come to learn over the years is that Satan often creates counterfeits to things of God that I am Pages Maxie or stone or You know, I mean there are all kinds of things like you could say, you know, people who are living together as opposed to getting married things like that.

1:28:18 Where I mean you can find it in any area you could think of just about if Heavenly Father uses something for his purposes, Satan will find a way to use something similar. For his purposes. And so I think that this is one of those cases where it kind of mimics me. So blessings in a way and it kind of mimics priesthood power in a way. And so Satan is using that, like, it could be perfectly benign and you know, if somebody is not using it for religious purposes, I mean I personally wouldn't I would avoid that but you know, if somebody who is not religious is doing it, you know, they're probably going to be fine. But when Satan is actively trying to use that for his purposes, it will do a lot of damage. And I think that one of the things that he was doing here Perfect Limit.

1:29:14 Let me ask you this question. Someone, you know, and love. And this is for you know, you answering any of my, my listeners, someone they know, and love comes to him. You know, let's say it's a father and his son approach is a more a mother and her daughter approaches her and says, I found the CES letter and I'm shook. How should they respond? I mean, what's what's the appropriate response? Empathy for sure because there's some reason in our church, even though both of our churches were.

1:29:55 Founded it on Joseph Smith asking questions because he had, you know, he was hearing things that were weird to him to you, and so, he had questions and he went to God and ask questions and the gospel was restored, you know, but for some reason, Questions are seen as something negative in our society today, and they shouldn't be, you know, everybody has questions. I have questions. You have questions, we all do. And that should be something to be looked down on her judged for. And I think that is probably one of the things that does damage is, first of all, the people who are reading that are scared that, you know, the they're going to be judged for reading it and for believing it and for having those questions in the first place.

1:30:40 So it's really hard for them, too. Ask those questions to begin with and once they do ask them, the reaction is a big part of it too. If people aren't supportive and they're like, well, okay, I don't know how to answer that, but let me help you find it. You know, if they're just like they'll start by going to do what way are you wasting your time with that? Don't do that. You know, avoid it. Then they're like, well, I didn't get any answers to my questions. Those questions are still there even if I put it away. So I think empathy and understanding go a long way and I think a willingness to look at the questions and to look at what it says and to start looking where you can find answers.

1:31:24 Because you know, I mean, Jeremy does provide sources for a lot of this stuff that He talks about, but you have to learn how to weigh in evaluate sources. And you have to learn how to figure out, where, to go to find answers and you have to be able to, to ask Heavenly Father, until being on the spirit lawyers, saying those things. And a lot of people don't, really, some reason we don't really put a lot of emphasis on that when you grow up in the church, it tends to be more of You know get your testimony and you know listen to the spirit and stuff but it's not really. If you have questions, there are thousands of resources out there for you to use to find them and here's how you can do it. Yeah, no, I think that's huge.

1:32:11 The empathy thing is huge. Again again, the same young, man. I talk to you. He talks about going to his dad and his grandfather and telling them. Hey, you know, I think I'm Splitsville as soon as I'm 18 and I'm out of here. And They both were just, I think his dad says, look, you got to make your own decision, but no, I'm always going to love you and I'm always going to be here, right? His grandfather said something really profound. He's he said, don't throw something out, that's totally untested. And I think that, that is, is a beautiful sentiment. Because so, often, what I see is that these issues come up right? Whether it's Jeremy's letter, whether it's from Van, Brody, whether you know, whatever it is, it's going to come up and there's going to be more, I can guarantee there will be more, someone's going to get pissed and they're going to write more crap and will be debunking this.

1:33:15 And on the surface, it will seem like a real slick argument. But that idea of just, don't throw it out until you've tested it thoroughly. I think has a lot of Merit and, and be patient with it, be willing to sit with that. And then I think as parents and as leaders and, and maybe people who've had a little more time to digest. This just be patient with that too. And I think the other thing is, is don't make our answer there, answer, right? Let's, let's help them find it themselves, because if we just try to Spit something out them. It's not going to stick if they find it. It's a different story or if they read it and they begin to digest it. So that to me that was that was huge. But Sarah.

1:34:01 Is there anything we didn't cover that you want to cover? I mean, I would just say going in line with what you were just saying. I think that is something that that that's another point that I have made before. And I think it's something that people need to recognize and understand is, you know, you can. So they need a lot of people don't read anymore. They just expect people to hand just everything, you know, with the Internet. It's so easy to just people something and you have the answer and like 10 seconds. And so they expect that from the church. And that's not how heavenly father works.

1:34:42 And he expects us to put in the effort and he expects us to go through that refiners fire and to go through those trials and those struggles and seek out the answers to the questions like that scripture to Oliver cowdery in the Doctrine and Covenants you know study it out first before you come to me and ask and that's what he expects us to do. And So many people don't expect that, but you have to find your own answers. You can't rely on. Anybody else to do it and the whole point of those posts were supposed to say. These are some places where you can go to find answers, but don't take my word for it. Don't take care of his word for it, listen to Heavenly Father and find your own. So I think that is something that's very important to remember and to focus on.

1:35:29 Awesome. All right, Sarah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This is fun. I enjoyed it. Yeah, let's let's do this again because there's plenty out there for us to discuss. So Perfect. All right. Well, good enough. All right, stick around for just a few minutes Sarah. Everyone else. We'll we'll talk to you next time. Bye.

1:36:15 You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast. You're listening to the Mormon Renegade podcast.