Taylor Christensen is making a splash in the Mormon world this week, publishing a video on his Facebook page which as of writing this Thursday afternoon has over 140K views and over 1,000 shares (according to FB–not sure how accurate these FB stats are). I wrote a blog post (Taylor Christensen Anti Mormon Video) on this on my personal site earlier this week. I wanted to share this here at Wheat and Tares to see what kind of discussion we could have.
The gist of the video is that Taylor hopes to communicate to other Mormons that many of the “anti-Mormon lies” we hear about are actually true, so we shouldn’t judge those that leave the Church over them, but he still believes in the Church and will stay, placing his faith in Jesus Christ. He is inviting everyone to be more empathetic to each other.
Watch the video on his public facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/taylor.christensen.94
Here are some of the comments I’ve seen in various forums.
On the narrow minded LDS side of things:
Those who dearly desire to find reasons to disbelieve will be able to do so.
I did not feel the spirit during this video. This is just stirring up things that don’t need to be stirred. The information in its entirety is there and it’s okay to have questions but let’s not air our dirty laundry out to dry. Have respect for our first leaders… Yes they were imperfect but let’s move on. The only thing we should be worried about is how to grow closer to Christ and this doesn’t help. All these “issues” can be addressed on fairmormon.org
I would argue that HE was addressing LOCAL leaders and NOT Joseph Smith JR. Concerns over JS JR come from those who STOP reading the BOM daily like President Monson counseled
In my humble opinion, Brother Taylor Christensen overstepped his bounds by broadcasting such a video. His video will undoubtedly lead to even more people leaving the Church by pointing them into the direction of sensational anti-LDS sources that address these issues in a non-faith saving manner. In my opinion, he should have referred his viewers to their local Priesthood leadership and the following links to the essays located on lds.org. I testify to you that Joseph Smith, although flawed, was and is the Prophet of the Restoration…
Most people don’t leave the church over history, they do over particular incidents with members past and present.
This in not an anti Mormon message – I stopped after 2 minutes when I found out Joseph just copied the BOM from other books he easily had access to – but I reiterate, it’s not an anti Mormon message! Haha. Good one
He does the same mistake many does. You cannot judge what happened so long ago by the standards of today.
This is an anti-Mormon video. You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to discredit God’s chosen leaders. You are making accusations and implying things that are hearsay and are untrue. You are young and uninformed.
On the narrow minded Exmormon side of things:
Read the CES Letter. It’s all a fraud.
Man, indoctrination is running real deep here. My problem is the fact that after everything he read and knows, he still cannot figure out that JS was NOT a prophet, he was a CON and it is very worrying that these people cannot distinguish between good and evil, that everything is grey for them.
Taylor you are living in a fantasy that the Mormon church culture will change from a culture of exclusion to inclusion. It will always be an us and them culture.
Of course it’s “not an anti-Mormon video.” It’s an apologist video. It’s great that you are asking people to accept those who have left the LDS church, but your justifications for racism, bigotry, etc is sad.
I put a magic rock in a magic hat and it predicted a church disciplinary council in this guys future.
Immense courage to call out the corruption, dishonesty and white washing of a billion dollar tax exempt corporation
And on the more thoughtful side:
Seems like a pretty reasonable approach, trying to understand each other’s different paths and respecting those paths. I’ve thought that this is the way that the church needs to go for a while now. I even wrote a letter about this to Elder Uchtdorf a couple years ago, but didn’t get a response unfortunately.
I think he did well. I agree he went on a little too in depth about polygamy since there still are some unanswered questions, but I think you have to take it all the way down at least mentally before you can see the beauty.
I have been saying that the history is totally irrelevant to the faith forever and Taylor says it well and in a way which will communicate to millennials and others as well.
I’ve been having a really hard time with some of the facts presented in this video for the past several months. I wasn’t going to go to church today until I watched this video. Thank you.
This is very powerful and brave. Thank you for sharing and trying to build a bridge between current and former believers.
Beautiful. Fingers crossed that discussions like this can become more common in the church and that more people can have the empathy you’ve developed. Thanks for sharing!
So, what do you think?
Wheat & Tares 
He seems to think that facts don’t really matter, that somehow a Mormon testimony depends on feelings and experience but is entirely independent of facts. LDS leaders see things rather differently — which is why they limit access to a variety of sensitive documents in the LDS Archives, take liberties with the official telling of LDS history, and constantly tell Mormons to read only correlated sources. I think on this particular point LDS leaders have a better grasp of reality (of how people think and how testimonies are retained) than young Taylor.
I love this video. History is ugly and men act ugly. You have to look at the evidence for yourself and ask “what am willing to accept and what is too much for me?”
“How much doubt is acceptable?”
Just as he asks us for tolerance towards those leaving the faith, we should include have tolerance for him and that he still accept the faith instead of chiding him for not being rational enough.
Dave. I love the video. I think your point is fair. And his logic is off. He’s very young, but what I sense is that he understands two concepts 1) the facts are off 2) regardless of the facts, there’s something true and good about my Mormon experience. He’s not expressing it logically in the video. But I think those two points are very valid for many people, myself included. He doesn’t know how to reconcile the two yet, but he’s got a decent first attempt at it, imho. There aren’t very many working models of how to make sense of those two concepts. It’s a great starting place, and I love that it’s on fire through the LDS millennial social media, putting out the idea that it need not be black and white. All perfect >> stay. Not all perfect >> leave.
I have some qualms over how Taylor presented some of his facts, however, upon a few days of reflection, I think it works (except for that blasted camera work). He covered a lot of ground incredibly quickly, hitting pretty much all the big topics (most of which have gospel topics essays available, aside from the normal apologetic fare). The video is relatively short (about 7 minutes), so more people will likely see it, and I suspect that’s why it’s spreading so quickly (pretty sure it’s spreading faster than the 80+page original CES Letter file).
It’ll be shocking, but it’s a quick hit that then is softened by the second half of the video. I don’t think the argument is logically convincing in the video, but it can still be reassuring to a lot of members (“I’ve never heard this shocking stuff before, but apparently the people who know about it don’t necessarily lose their testimonies”).
So, yes, I think there was room for improvement, but I have to give props for what it is. I think it’ll push necessary conversations about historical topics forward faster, and that’s a good thing in my book.
Unfortunately, “logically convincing” is not a decision criterion for many of the people likely to be watching the video.
When I read the CES letter initially, my first thought was that there was nothing new or shocking in it, and nothing that hadn’t basically been addressed numerous times since 1830. The same is true of the issues in the video. The “shockers” are only shockers if you actually expected a human institution not to be run by humans. That might be an oversimplification, but ultimately, most of what Taylor Christensen (and Runnells) have come up with is a basket of nothingburger with faux shock sauce.
Am I missing something? Where are the people the ages of Runnell and Christensen who are producing a strong defense for the church? Where are their videos? How about those who have successfully navigated the faith crisis this generation is experiencing by finding answers from Heavenly Father and relating their stories?
We’re in the early history of this trial by internet. We need some valiant followers of Christ who have found God in their extremities to raise their voices up testifying of the miracles God is providing those who are willing to pay the price.
Jared, I absolutely agree with you. We need more outspoken survivors that have already run the faith gamut and come out the other side to stand up and tell their stories. The challenge, I think, is that they can’t side pass the difficult issues or they won’t be taken seriously. ” It just doesn’t bother me” as a solution to discrepancies between the official narrative and scholarly history can be a real turn off.
I get the frustration on both sides. But I love that he’s willing to accept messy truth, is willing to put himself out there, and has started conversations about things that can help people reconcile. This is all good.
I hope this speeds up the discussion. When an early-40s, recently-released bishop turned seminary teacher tells my kid that blacks weren’t valiant in the pre-existence, we’ve got a problem. There’s no top-down urgency or requirement to read the essays and include them in lessons.
And I hope more people can believe what he said, that leaving is *heartbreaking* – it was for my daughter.
Jared, Lecardjht, the problem is it’s never finished. There need s to be a greater validation of a faith journey, rather than a completed process, that’s not a narrative for which I’ve experienced too much room, other than Uchtdorf’s more process driven approach. We seem to always have to offer resolution.
Jared, yes, you are missing something. Christensen and most people his age view his video as PRO-church. He started a gofundme page last summer to fund a video series to talk about these difficult issues within a “faith perspective.” Although he’s promoting tolerance and understanding among members and those who choose to leave, based on what I’ve seen on his previous social media statements, his aim is to get people to NOT leave over this stuff.
As far as younger members addressing controversial issues with apologetics, off the top of my head I can think of Jaxon Washburn (about 18 years old) and the 3 Mormons YouTubers.
Though both Christensen and Runnells are technically Millennials, they are on either end of that distinction. Runnells is on that Gen X/Millennial line, and Christensen is on the Millennial/Gen Z line. That represents a pretty significant change in technique and perspective. Christensen is purposefully echoing Runnells’ CES Letter style because that’s how he and most members now hear these issues phrased/presented. That’s why he’s so matter-of-fact about it, while it’s like nails on a chalkboard to older apologists.
Ruth: thank you for posting that. And that is indeed the problem. If an issue were settled completely across the board and no old skeletons poked out of their closet, maybe I could handwave some things away. But in my recent memory I’ve heard similar things (fortunately not from anyone in authority, so I could at least quote the essays at them publicly) and there is NO PLACE for that in the church of 2018. People like that don’t get to dismiss the essays and then wonder aloud why anyone has a problem.
Since Jared asked, “Where are the people the ages of Runnell and Christensen who are producing a strong defense for the church? Where are their videos? How about those who have successfully navigated the faith crisis this generation is experiencing by finding answers from Heavenly Father and relating their stories?”
At the risk of self-promotion, I’ve been trying to post videos about church history without being salacious. See http://www.GospelTangents.com
Problem for me is a big collective yawn (at least on this blog.) Salacious sells. Good history doesn’t. I will say that I’ve gotten some nice shout-outs among some academics in the Mormon history community as being fair, and I’m trying to do good history without dodging the tough issues and being too apologetic. I’m getting traction, but Jared, if you could send people my way, I think I can help. I just got notice that I was added to a “faith crisis” resources list, so that’s nice, but it would be nice for others, such as yourself, to let people know that they can have a testimony and study the “hard stuff.”
Of course, I’m not official LDS, nor do I intend to be, nor am I defensive in nature. I’ll talk pros and cons and try to be fair to everyone, and I don’t limit myself to LDS, but explore RLDS and other Restoration traditions (Bickertonite, Strangite, etc.) I want to be fair to everyone I talk to, and I’ve already hit most of the topics in Christensen’s video from a variety of angles.
Jared, Mary Ann, others. How are what Christensen and Runnells doing anything related?
He really forgot that the most “hits in common” with the Book of Mormon is “Leaves of Grass.”
If he had only read: https://www.jefflindsay.com/bomsource.shtml he would have been far ahead of the “truths” he was trying to share.
Which sums up my general thoughts about videos like this.
To Rick B’s point: Is there an argument that sincere belief in sensational claims gives one status in a post-truth world? I mean, it seems like the more ridiculous the claim/speech/tweet, the more popular it becomes. And then when the speaker defends it, even though it’s indefensible, it gets even more popular. Christensen isn’t Trump, but is he playing the same game?
Stephen, I think you and the narrow-minded exmo who was quoted anonymously are both kind of missing the boat. This isn’t a matter of, there’s some secret knowledge that if only people found it they’d obviously agree with you (Jeff / CES Letter). There are a lot of emotional factors that come into play before someone even considers looking at things like that, and that determine how much of it gets filtered out.
Like, for me personally I’d had run-ins with evangelical anti-Mormons, and just assumed all criticism of the church was the same kind of bigotry? I was really against bigotry; hating people just because they were weird, warning your kids not to play with or date them or listen to them just because they do religion wrong. I stayed away from it not because I was afraid of it, but because it was super-depressing since I lost a girlfriend to it.
Of course, being against that kind of bigotry meant that my time in the church would be limited. ^^;;; And once I realized it would be wrong to continue to support it, regardless of gods or salvation, that’s when I looked at CES Letter style materials just to confirm, and had everything dashed for me in a matter of hours.
It would have been nice if someone had looked at this video and been a bit more supportive, instead of my dad waking me up in the morning with a phone call to yell at me for an hour about how stupid I am. ^^;
Or, you know, posting in some discussion somewhere about how “if only she’d realized she should have read my favourite apologist first!” Hint hint. >_>
To start positive, I admire Taylor’s willingness to say he doesn’t “know that the Church is true.” He frames his testimony with the words “believe” and “faith.” That may be the most valuable thing he offers up in the video. But his generally kind and optimistic approach is commendable.
This video is really for active LDS Mormons, not agnostics like me. Taylor still characterizes me as “lost.” But he doesn’t know that I am lost. He just believes and has faith that I am lost. And that, though it comes across as vaguely condescending, is a more reasonable context in which devout Mormons can attempt to engage skeptics like me in discussion.
My gripe with the video is what seems to be a sort of “I’ve arrived” subtext to Taylor’s message. As if he’s done his homework, and now he’s where he needs to be. Transition over. Time to be a thought leader (shepherd as he puts it). Mormons, believing and not, keep looking for a Promised Land–or for many people, a healthy stage of faith from which no further painful transitioning will be necessary. That strikes me as impractical and emotionally risky.