There is a new website up, which looks to rise to the top of google searches for CES letter. It’s called “CES Letters”
They take a much softer tone, even though it’s very likely the same group of hostile Mormons running it:
To Whom it Concerns,
Jeremy Runnells, a dedicated member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a "fully believing" returned missionary, encountered a pivotal moment in early 2012. Upon reading an online article, he was startled to discover that individuals were departing from the Church due to historical discrepancies. This revelation propelled him into a fervent, year-long research journey, primarily centered around the community's founder, Joseph Smith. His extensive investigation led to the creation of a letter in April 2013, directed to a director in the Church Educational System (CES), a contact of Jeremy's grandfather. They both hoped that this director could provide clarity on Jeremy's escalating queries. Prior to sending his letter to the CES director, Jeremy shared it online, where it rapidly gained widespread attention. This document is now famously known as the CES Letter.
We aim to answer the concerns found within that Letter in an intellectual and faithful way with the help of historians and experts who have spent their life studying these topics.
Somebody must have jumped the gun, because very few links go to an "intellectual and faithful" response. Many links just go to this:
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Under the Book of Mormon, every topic including geography, DNA anachronisms and archaeology, biblical errors, and even "additional questions and concerns" all go to a page with a link to this:
jack Welsh
The Miraculous Translation of the Book of Mormon
Mormon apologetics in 2024 is all about shotgunning as much information on your screen as possible. Creating as much room for doubt about criticism as possible. Doesn’t matter if the arguments are poorly supported, conflict with other arguments, disagree with the prophets, just throw them out there as fast as possible. Any piece of jetsam for the faithful to cling to.
I’ve lost count of the number of informal LDS apologist outlets. You have the clowns at Midnight Mormons. You have Boylan’s secret Facebook group. You had Mike Parker, until he got exposed. MormonR, Book of Mormon Central, FAIR… none of them are endorsed by the prophets on the earth. And some of them are taking in millions of dollars.
Is this shotgun approach really helping Mormons stay faithful? Why can’t the LDS church put out these arguments on its own? Why is the best they can do a handful of 10 year old anonymous essays?
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a more pilloried critic of the church. His story about being a questioning Mormon and not getting answers from his church absolutely infuriates MoPologists.
The have a seething hatred for Jeremy Runnels, because he is the ultimate apostate.
Actually, he is the ultimate source of light showing the church is apostate from truth. That is where their fury comes from.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a more pilloried critic of the church. His story about being a questioning Mormon and not getting answers from his church absolutely infuriates MoPologists.
The have a seething hatred for Jeremy Runnels, because he is the ultimate apostate.
Actually, he is the ultimate source of light showing the church is apostate from truth. That is where their fury comes from.
Yes. I remember a GA being interviewed about the CES letter and he was asked what motivation Jeremy might have and he said, because he wants people to join the church of Jeremy Runnells.
Actually, he is the ultimate source of light showing the church is apostate from truth. That is where their fury comes from.
Yes. I remember a GA being interviewed about the CES letter and he was asked what motivation Jeremy might have and he said, because he wants people to join the church of Jeremy Runnells.
A really dumb response since Runnells didn't start a church. It shows their ignorance.
To contrast DCP and Jacob Hansen with a Mopologist who actually sat down and talked with Jeremy Runnels:
“Jim Bennett on Mormon Stories in 2021” wrote:
I’ve sort of stumbled into this whole world when i decided to respond to the ces letter but it's introduced me to a number of wonderful people including you (John Dehlin) and including jeremy reynolds.
it really surprises people when i tell people that i think jeremy reynolds is a great guy and when we met up uh we spent three hours together and it was just delightful i just thought this guy's a great guy and he he came and had a very similar experience to my own experience but you know he reached out to somebody who didn't respond he reached out to the ces director who didn't respond to him and you can confirm that he did and i can confirm i know tell the audience what we did yeah so jeremy a couple of weeks ago asked us to get together and confirm that there really was a ces director
so i sat in this room and i looked at his emails and read the whole exchange i can identify the ces letter ces director he's asked me not to say who it is out of kindness out of kind to respect the guy and that that's what's amazing to me is is that is that jeremy doesn't gain anything by not yeah throwing this guy under the bus right but he gets skewered for but he gets skewered
“oh there really wasn't a ces director” and “this was all just this big fake” i mean one of the reasons why i felt so strongly when i met with him when i identified with him when i felt like we had this connection is because i think his experience was very much like my 18 year old experience reading the god makers but he ended up you know not getting the kind of support that he would have needed to to stay in the church and decided that he couldn't stay and i respect that decision it's not my decision and i hope it's not the decision of other people but i respect people who arrive at different conclusions than i do.
so so yeah that was a really remarkable remarkable experience he we we had we had a great conversation if you can't if you can't refute what jeremy reynolds is arguing then you attack him personally and say he's a terrible person and don't even bother reading him because he's the worst person that ever lived uh that's that's not just the actions of a cult i mean that i see that in politics all the time.
"Jack Welsh", eh? LOL! Looks like it's Amateur Hour all over again in Mopologetics World. Maybe at the next Interpreter Celebration party, they'll serve large helpings of Jack Welch Rarebit? You know how much those Mopologists like their cheese....
The thing is: the CES Letter is not the fundamental problem. One day it's the CES Letter; five years from now it'll be something else. A few decades ago it was The Godmakers. Before that, it was Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?. The criticisms, and the holes that one can poke in the Church's basic narrative remain the same: they are just getting re-packaged in various ways, and the CES Letter is merely the most accessible version that has been put together so far.
The Church refuses to tell people about these controversial issues in an "up front" way. Partly this is understandable: the Mopologists have pointed out that Sunday Schools isn't for "history lessons"--instead, it's for worship. That is fine, but the problem is that the Church *never* addresses controversial topics in an open and "up-front" way, and so people wind up feeling like they've been lied to. All of the embarrassing stuff: Kinderhook, polygamy, Mountain Meadows, Zelph, Kolob, drinking wine in Carthage, the Kirtland banking fiasco--none of this ever gets mentioned. Meanwhile, the Church demands 10% of your income and never tells you what they're doing with the money, and so....
The point being: the Mopologists can go after Runnells and the CES Letter all they want, but until they fix the basic problems re: addressing all these problematic issues (which is, admittedly, probably impossible to do), this will continue to be a fool's errand.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
"Jack Welsh", eh? LOL! Looks like it's Amateur Hour all over again in Mopologetics World. Maybe at the next Interpreter Celebration party, they'll serve large helpings of Jack Welch Rarebit? You know how much those Mopologists like their cheese....
The thing is: the CES Letter is not the fundamental problem. One day it's the CES Letter; five years from now it'll be something else. A few decades ago it was The Godmakers. Before that, it was Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?. The criticisms, and the holes that one can poke in the Church's basic narrative remain the same: they are just getting re-packaged in various ways, and the CES Letter is merely the most accessible version that has been put together so far.
The Church refuses to tell people about these controversial issues in an "up front" way. Partly this is understandable: the Mopologists have pointed out that Sunday Schools isn't for "history lessons"--instead, it's for worship. That is fine, but the problem is that the Church *never* addresses controversial topics in an open and "up-front" way, and so people wind up feeling like they've been lied to. All of the embarrassing stuff: Kinderhook, polygamy, Mountain Meadows, Zelph, Kolob, drinking wine in Carthage, the Kirtland banking fiasco--none of this ever gets mentioned. Meanwhile, the Church demands 10% of your income and never tells you what they're doing with the money, and so....
The point being: the Mopologists can go after Runnells and the CES Letter all they want, but until they fix the basic problems re: addressing all these problematic issues (which is, admittedly, probably impossible to do), this will continue to be a fool's errand.
Good succinct view. And the church nor its apologists never really want dialogue with anyone, such as Jim Bennett had with Jeremy Runnells, learning who he actually is. Of course not. They don't give a rat's a$$ about people. They want money.
A frequent poster at The Afore’s comment section offers a great example of a perfect unquestioning member:
“A clueless SeN poster” wrote:I find it fascinating that whenever I have to deal with anything regarding the CES letter, I come away from the experience feeling "dirtied" somehow. I, personally, have never read the letter, but I come away from any experience, no matter how peripheral or trivial, feeling a sense of disturbance, personal inadequacy and disquietude. For me personally, this is a very disrupting, dark and disturbing experience. Even reading Maurine Proctor's recent explanation over on Meridian Magazine tended to cast this cloud over me (see my previous comment for the link,) and I spent a lot of time at Church today, analyzing the experience.
When the Lord told Oliver Cowdery how to understand and translate ancient records, I do believe that the description was a great method on how to "translate" or understand our natural feelings as apart from the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. For instance, the Lord was quick to show Oliver that whenever there were feelings of confusion, darkness or "imbalance," that he was to then recognize that he hadn't come to that meeting of spirit where the Spirit of the Lord and our own internal spirit coincide and find harmony or true and pure "balance."
If just reading about or discussing the CES letter has such a disruptive and dark experience upon me, then imagine those unfortunate individuals who are subjectively kidnapped or "corralled" into reading the actual document as created by the dark mind of its author and others like him. From my perspective, the experience would be damaging, dark, destructive and difficult to endure. No wonder, so many of our brothers and sisters, once reading it are bewitched and made captive by it.
“I don’t know Jeremy, I don’t know what he wrote, but I know I’m supposed to feel bad about it.”
That poster’s remark is par for the course at SeN, where the Proprietor used to say over and over and over that he “never read” anything that Jonathan Neville wrote. That certainly didn’t seem to affect the animosity, though! Who needs understanding when you can wallow in hate?
As for that Bennett video: it’s remarkable, as was the “olive branch” that was extended to the Heartlanders by Scripture Central. It is literally impossible to imagine the Afore, or Gee, or Midgley, or any of the hardcore Mopologists being kind towards a critic like Runnells. An act of kindness like that would be more of a surprise than learning that the Book of Mormon really did take place in MesoAmerica.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
