(This post is derived from the podcast Latter Day Struggles, episode 3 by Valerie Haymaker. Some of the thoughts below are from the podcast)
When dealing with cheating in a marriage, how the offended party (the one cheated on) finds out makes a huge difference in the healing process. Therapist will refer to this as “discovery vs disclosure”
Discovery occurs when the cheating partner gets caught or his behaviors are unintentionally discovered and made known to the betrayed partner. Discovery is shocking, unplanned, overwhelming, and usually only a portion of the betrayal is revealed and acknowledged.
Disclosure is the exact opposite. In disclosure, the cheating partner voluntarily tells the betrayed partner the full scope and details about his behavior. Discovery is part of the betrayal, part of the addiction, part of the trauma. Disclosure is part of recovery.
Partner Hope website
It is pretty obvious how this relates to the Church. Trauma is so much worse when it is discovered vs disclosure (in a cheating spouse or the church) The betrayal trauma is worse than the original sin. This is how my son-in-law felt when he learned about the truth of the Book of Abraham and Book of Mormon translation. He told me it wasn’t the actual facts, but that he was lied to by the Church. If they were lying about this, what else were they lying about?
The church realized that they had a problem about 12 years ago, and tried their hand at disclosure. The Essays are trying to “disclose”, but it is only part way, like a spouse admitting infidelity, but only claiming it happened once, when it went on for a year.
Should the church come out with the ugly truth ( e.g BY was raciest, polygamy was driven by power hungry men, etc), and take the fallout? Is more damage done by hiding it? Which is worse, a faith crises caused by the truth, or a trust crises caused when the members find out the truth?
Which would lose the most members; Coming clean with all the dirt, or keep it hidden like they have tried for hundreds of years. I think that for the short term, keeping it hidden, not admitting the dirty past will keep more members, but in the long term it is not sustainable. The Church should take the short term loss with long term viability.
The pathway out is going to cause pain and discomfort. Should the institution hold on to the members that need the lies to believe? Is that the kind of members they want? Or do we want an institution that has leaders that can tell the truth, and with members that can handle the truth? Will the truth harm the simple believers? I blogged about this last year, where I talked about Elder Packer believing that we needed to protect “the little people”. I quoted from Richard Bushman where he said:
Elder Packer had the sense of “protecting the little people.” He felt like the scholars were an enemy to his faith, and that we should protect the grandmothers living in Sanpete County. That was a very lovely pastoral image. But the price of protecting the grandmothers was a loss of the grandsons. They got a story that didn’t work. So we’ve just had to change our narrative.”
Bushman Fireside 2016
I’ll leave with this quote from the podcast
No people, agency, institution, nation or culture entity can resist idolatry, self-idolization, unless there is pressure and motive to engage in constant self-examination. I cannot point to an institution in the world today, or in the world’s history, that renews its self unless there is a build in mechanism for calling things into question. I don’t think such pressure comes from without, because that brings about defensiveness in the institution. This mechanism must come from within from those that share the presuppositions of the larger group.
Latter Day Struggles #3
What are your thoughts?
Wheat & Tares 
I think the original posting uncharitably assumes a degree of intentional animus and bad faith by the church and its members that may not be congruent with truth or reality. There may be differing perspectives.
Good morning.
People are staying in the LDS church because of 2 reasons: they really believe in the doctrine or enjoy the social environment. Someone will continue to stay active for even 1 of these categories, but not a loss of both. Some members are nuanced with the doctrine, but attend as a PIMO (for a variety of reasons). However, for members who do not enjoy the social extrovert environment and then discover the whole truth of LDS history, that is a game changer. How long can the information remain hidden?
You can also see with a partial disclosure of “new truth” with the Gospel topics, which was is hidden on a obscure web page; some truth knowledge seekers discovered it and have left the church. The LDS church is on the verge of loosing 1/3 of its active multi-generational members. They can decide which 1/3 it is by their approach. Do they keep the liberals, the SanPete grandmas, or continue to bleed along the entire spectrum? Some of the best and brightest are disassociating themselves the LDS church, is true. Telling missionaries not to read the LDS sanctioned book Saints is problematic. Telling members to not read non-church sanctioned web sites and that it is the work of Satan is an issue. As we know the prior generations apostasy, is today’s apologetic response. The ones staying in the church, whom I know, at present are oblivious to the current facts of church history and eventually when the church has zero social value (which it is achieving by eliminating all fun or activities) and they discover it prior to disclosure or more inoculation; they will speak with their feet walking out the door.
It seems now every 3-4 days the church has a new problem coming to light, which makes national/international news. Too many more of these stories will crack the remaining shelves. Unless you like to sit on the stand for the attention and titles, and you go to church for other reasons than worshiping God and self improvement.
JI. Thanks for the opinion, however I wholeheartedly disagree with the comment. There is ample evidence that the LDS institution and many of its leaders have been intently deceitful. I appreciate differing perspectives, however on this particular topic, perspectives will be enhanced with more facts and history.
The church has partially disclosed some things, though in a manner that too many are unaware of. For many of us, we have learned through discovery and it definitely is a betrayal from all the “restored truths” and mantras of “the only true church” that have been drilled into us for decades. It is a harsh reality to discover that the church you have been loyal to is just as flawed and imperfect as every other religion out there – particularly when it is so unnecessarily high-demand.
The thing with lies is they eventually come out. Just when I think I’ve heard it all and can’t be surprised again, something new and disturbing emerges. It would be overwhelming to come clean on everything at once (for both the members and leadership), but they could start small and work through the long list. I think the church does its members no favor by hiding its’ truths because those truths are already oozing out and cannot be contained. By reveling actual truth, the church could control of the narrative and perhaps minimize the losses. Unfortunately we generally see the defensive posture, so it would not appear that the current administration is open to disclosing anything at this point, which is sad.
You can fool all of the people some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Do what is right let the consequence follow.
Honesty is the best policy.
The church taught me these things. I try to live by them. But their actions show that they think they are exempt. They aren’t interested in doing what is right but in doing what is right for them. They think honesty is just an ok policy. As a result, I’m skeptical of basically everything they say and do now. That’s not a healthy organization. Trust is paramount. And the thing is, trust can be rebuilt, one truth at a time. The ball is in their court.
@ji: BH Roberts met with the brethren and told them about the historicity problems with the Book of Mormon. It’s on record that a prophet hid the multiple first vision narratives by tearing them out of a journal.. The church had the seer stone in their possession yet no artwork in my formative years supported this. Elder Holland tried to lie to BBC about temple oaths and penalties and was caught. One apostle, claiming not to know the details of the Ensign Peak fund mentioned that only the prophet knew. I could go on. They know stuff.
Watergate 101: the coverup was worse than the crime.
But for some of us (validity Mormons), once the truth claims were no longer valid, we were out. The Gospel Topics Essays were too little too late.
We have a tendency to talk about the church as if it is a single entity, a monolith, or an individual. While an individual can cheat and either hide or disclose the behavior, the church is comprised of a vast number of individuals, committees, and subcommittees.
The church feels like a person in our lives, and when we find it has hidden things we feel betrayed. But a large number of people in the church didn’t betray us. If a prophet hid an account of the first vision, and most of the other prophets / leaders didn’t know about it, so they bear responsibility? I don’t know who knew what, or when they found out. Even if they didn’t know about it, I still feel betrayed by church.
Great post. Where there has been dishonesty, disclosure must be accompanied by contrition to be effective. In other words, it’s not enough to tell the truth, you have to apologize too. It’s not enough to publish some essays and the Saints books and make steps to telling the history right. You have to own up to hiding the truth and admit you were wrong. Otherwise it feels like doublespeak. That’s why the gospel topics essays broke people’s testimonies instead of inoculating them (like mine).
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only way for the church to survive its legitimacy crisis long term is to admit their lack of legitimacy. They have to loosen their stranglehold on the members’ beliefs and behaviors and admit they don’t have any special claim to supernatural authority. Until then, we will only see more and more scandal from the leadership, more depression and familial division among the members, and of course more defections from those who’ve had enough.
Kirkstall makes an excellent point.
The church’s approach to disclosure compared to a cheating spouse would be like:
The cheating spouse leaves some information in a difficult to find in place. If you try to talk to him or anyone else about it, you’re met with awkward silent stares or just plain shut down and told you’re crazy and that you are unreasonable anti-your spouse. And then when you finally do understand what’s been going on, your spouse tells you the information was there all along, that it was your fault for not discovering it sooner, and that you’re faithless if it bothers you because he’s still perfect and has done nothing wrong. Except occasionally he will admit to having made mistakes – a long time ago – but refuses to get into specifics or apologize.
Super healthy relationship.
@ji the church intentionally covers unpleasant history you. See eg the salamander letter as well as other examples. It’s not a matter of opinion it’s factually what’s happened.
I appreciate the strides the church has made in this area. However much more effort is needed. I think the church should clearly and honestly address issues one by one. And it shouldn’t just be one comment in a general conference talk, this should be upfront in every ward. We should be having full honest discussion of the many issues going on, at church, in every ward. This is the only way forward but it isn’t happening.
When we sin we are asked to confess and forsake. The institution should do no less. It’s hard to face the consequences of revealing a sin to the bishop. There will naturally be consequences for the church’s mistakes. Again, the only trustworthy way forward is for the church to be honest about it’s mistakes and bring these issues forward in every congregation.
Instead we are hearing things that put pressure and demands upon us. In Nevada Wendy Nelson spoke and basically told us to go to the temple weekly even it means we don’t have time to organize our homes. Building more and more temples puts so much pressure on members. It also could prevent us from connecting with people outside the church. It tends to make us more and more an exclusive organization that has no view of how things appear to those of God’s family that have different situations than their own.
In Sunday school today someone said she was saying we can do both. In my opinion this is a statement from great privilege with
no knowledge of the difficult situations many members are in. I enjoy occasional temple attendance. It’s peaceful and uplifting for me. But talks pushing attendance at this level will backfire with me.
It feels like they are saying don’t think, study, pray or get to know others. Fill your life with constant temple attendance so you don’t have time for other things.
If this helps some people, good for them. But is their still room in the church for people carrying true burdens?
It somewhat astounds me that our leadership are still so caught up in their own hype of this being the one true church and humanity’s only way back to God when all I see is a house of cards. For those that still believe it I think it creates a lot of angst when everyone in their family circle aren’t all in. There’s no denying there are many good people that are part of this movement but there is also a tremendous amount of harm being done in the name of ‘doctrine’. A few years ago in a TR interview I actually told my then bishop that when I see a picture of DHO I have a distinct desire to punch him in the face. Not too dissimilar reaction with RMN and others. I often feel so betrayed and hurt for the hurting but I continue PIMO for my spouse’s sake.
@ Bishop Bill Thank you for the post
I really have very little reason to doubt that the motivations of the Q15 have always been good. Some of them thought they were preserving the faith of members when they chose to hide and obfuscate the truth. However good their intentions, they were wrong to do this, the Church is now suffering because they did this/ They need to repent of this practice.
The Church needs to become a model of honesty and transparency. I can live with a staged approach to this over time to give the Church time to adjust its message, and its members some time to adjust, but it shouldn’t be too long–20 years? Seminary and institute lessons should immediately move to the new approach of complete transparency and honesty since teenagers and young adults need the truth *now*.
Here are some of the things that I thought of in the 5 minutes I devoted to this exercise that I’d like to see the Church do to become more honest and transparent:
1. Open the vault and the archives. There are documents there from the past that the Church refuses to release. Release everything. After opening up, the Q15 should continue to keep meticulous notes of all meetings. I’m open to discussion concerning keeping certain things confidential while the people involved are still alive (notes from Q15 meetings, for example), but once they have passed, everything should be completely open for all to see.
2. My understanding is that the Q15 are discouraged from keeping journals, and if they do keep them, they have to assign ownership of them to the Church (their families don’t keep them when they die). Instead, the Q15 should be encouraged to keep journals that will be made open as soon as they (and possibly everyone else mentioned in the journals) pass away.
3. The Church should be a model of financial transparency. Open the books for all to see.
4. Instead of 5th Sunday lessons on GC talks, assign the Gospel Topics essays as lesson topics instead. Devote an entire lesson to each topic. Publish more of these essays since there are a number of other problematic issues that the Church hasn’t (started to) come clean on yet.
5. Stop excommunicating people for publishing Church history, no matter how awful it makes the Church look.
6. Assign local leaders to be “mandatory reporters” of sexual crimes, even if local laws don’t require it.
7. The week after any 2nd hour lesson on prophets must be a lesson on prophetic fallibility. Specific examples of when the prophets were wrong in Church history must be included in these lessons. These examples can’t all be from Brigham Young, either–we need to call out mistakes made in the last 50 years. The negative impact of members blindly following prophets when they made these mistakes should also be covered (the stress experienced by families who had more children than they really wanted because they followed the prophets and didn’t use birth control, for example). You might think that such lessons would be terribly negative, but it doesn’t need to be that way. The ultimate message should be that while prophets are doing their best to provide guidance, seeking personal inspiration and following one’s own conscience and values is what God expects of us.
8. Make a high quality video showing all of the temple ordinances, including washing and anointing and the endowment. Make the video public for all–members and non-members alike–can see it. The secrecy of the whole thing was inherited from the mandatory secrecy surrounding the masonic ceremony, so I don’t believe there’s any need to be secret at all (so, yeah, removed the secrecy oaths from the endowment, too).
9. Either stop performing second anointings or give them to all endowed people (perhaps some amount of time after the endowment since I guess it’s weird to get the second anointing on the same day as the first). The hubris surrounding this ordinance, its meaning, and how individuals are selected to receive it is off the charts.
10. Allow the targets of Church disciplinary councils to record and publish the recordings of their councils at their discretion (unless the council involves other individuals besides the accused whose privacy should be protected). The subjects of the councils have a right to privacy–the Church, on other other hand, should have nothing to hide. Yes, this will probably significantly reduce the number of disciplinary councils. Good.
11. The Q15 needs to take its own #HearHim campaign to heart and stop claiming inspiration for rules/policies/doctrines they issue when none exists. Only impose rules/policies/doctrines when they do actually “Hear Him”! The current process, which appears to be just study, ponder, and pray until they all feel good about it, is apparently pretty error prone (Policy of Exclusion, birth control, homosexuality is a choice, etc.). Unless they really, actually #HearHim (and yes, I’m saying that they haven’t been hearing Him so well when they’ve reacted to many issues by enacting more unnecessary and damaging rules/policies on many issues), the default action on any controversial issue should be to counsel members to seek for personal inspiration on how to best follow Christ’s teachings on the matter. Some members will have a lot of heartburn trying to figure out how to make important life decisions on their own. Good.
I remember as a child and a youth in the Provo-Orem area, that in church and seminary, they would always tell us that tithing and donations go to X, Y, and Z and nobody actually “gets” the money or gets paid from it or anything.
And then sometime later when I was older, maybe in seminary as a teen, institute, or in a religion class at BYU, the instructor was was talking about how the Brethren do draw a salary from church funds, and he must’ve seen our faces, because he got kind of defensive and said something along the lines of “everyone knows this, you should’ve known this, if you’re surprised by this, it’s on you”
felt kind of like gaslighting, and I feel like it’s gonna go like this for a lot admissions of past/present problems (if we even ever get to that point). They teach and disseminate a particular narrative for decades but when they can’t keep the lid on on certain facts that were left out of the narrative anymore; they pretend like it’s not a big deal, and it is in fact your fault for not knowing about this in the first place
“what? you didn’t know JS had X number of wives, including one who was 14? everyone knows that, it’s not a big deal, you should not be shocked by this, everyone has gotten over this already”
I’ll re-post my comment that I made the other day on Dave B.’s post “Half In, Half Out” because it seems relevant to this conversation too.
When I told my daughter about how as a youth they didn’t teach us a true history of the church because they didn’t want it to damage our testimonies. But now, a lot of people my age are finding the true history, feeling lied to, and leaving the church.
Her response was “Wow. Hadn’t church leaders watched ANY super-hero movies? Withholding the truth or lying to people ‘for their own good’ is like ‘How to create a villain 101.’ It never works out well.”
This post could only have been written by a Mormon. Telling the truth and exemplifying moral rigor is not what religion’s all about, Bishop B, otherwise the Catholic Church would not have survived, oh let’s see, somewhat more than two-thousand years now. The members of my Midwestern ward could not give a flying fig about any of the issues you mention. They don’t like LDS liberals but they don’t want their gay kids ex’d, that’s as complex as it gets.
Seems to me a lot of people are blissfully ignorant. Wife knows I have major doubts but I don’t think she is ready to hear them.
We were on drive this morning and were listening to a come follow me podcast by two institute teachers at U of Utah – they were saying all this stuff comparing Amos to the Book of Mormon, redemption of Israel etc. I kept thinking of the “Case for Mesoamerica” post at W&T this week.
@p
I agree, I think even if the church was to come clean and make apologize for everything and admit that leaders have committed errors, and can still commit errors; I don’t think that would actually stem the tide of people leaving the church. Nor, necessarily, would becoming LGBTQ friendly. People care more about their spiritual needs, which often comes through community. People care less about theology and past and present issues with leadership and organization. But since these things are more concrete and observable, it’s easier to fixate on them as reasons for which people leave the church, when underlyingly, it’s really about feeling incompatible with the community of the church.
Generally, I think it’s more about how the model of religion that the church offers is just spiritually unfulfilling, and this true of organized religion at large these days. They just don’t seem well suited to addressing people’s spiritual needs in these times.
@ mountainclimber 479
I agree with everything you suggested but if the church followed through on those suggestions I wonder if there would be anyone left in the pews? Where would be the reason to?
Faith: ” …or enjoy the social environment. ”
Good God, why?!
The example of the CofC springs to mind–they reformed, and shrank. Nice people, but come on, what’s the point? Singing songs? (What percentage of your income is *that* worth?)
@Di, good question. I think there would be a sizable exodus, but some of us stubborn ones would still be in the pews, and with a lot more enthusiasm.
@mountainclimber479, thank you. Leadership has told us that they’re as transparent as they know how to be. That may well be true. Maybe the culture of secrecy is so deeply ingrained that they’re honestly unable to see where improvements could be made. If so, then reading your comment would be a mind-twisting experience for them.
And speaking of mind-twisting experiences, the whole “we’re as transparent as we know how to be” presentation was as bizarre as any I’ve ever seen. It was claimed, in all seriousness, that they’ve never hidden anything from anyone, and this leader held up the 1832 account of the first vision as an example of the church NOT hiding something.
@Di–Those are good questions! Your guess is probably better than mine. I do think that the Church should be open and transparent and just let the consequences follow. If honesty means that no one is left in the pews, then I’m completely fine with that. While I personally would like to see all this honesty happen yesterday, I can live with phasing it in over the next 20 years, which might help give some people time to adjust.
There is a large group of Church members who love the community the Church provides. They might not care at all about the change to be more open and transparent. In fact, they might view it as a big improvement.
For members who care about the doctrine, just being honest and transparent doesn’t necessarily mean that everything the Church has now just disappears. There can still be Christ, prophets, the Book of Mormon, Word of Wisdom, priesthood, etc. However, I agree that if the Church truly did the things I listed that many members would view at least some of those things much, much differently. It’s possible that the older generations might hear the new messages, but still mostly believe as they did in the past while the younger generations might make the full transition to the new way of thinking, and being young and flexible, they might not think it’s a big deal. If that were to happen, then maybe a lot of people stick around. Then again, maybe a lot of people leave like you suggested. I don’t know.
We had the “prophet lesson” today in SS (the reading was Amos and Obadiah). The focus of the lesson was, of course, Amos 3;7, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” There were a lot of comments about how if your own thinking doesn’t align perfectly with the prophet, then you need to change your thinking. Sigh. I do wonder how these people would fare if the Q15 stop making so many rules and telling people exactly how to think and what to do. Perhaps if the Q15 were to just switch to exclusively preaching sermons about Christ’s teachings (I’m talking, actually Christ’s teachings: the beatitudes, the prodigal son, the two great commandments, etc., *not* “covenant path”, temple attendance, anything to do with LGBTQ, etc.) instead of what they’re doing now, everyone would be the better for it and still appreciate the prophets’ messages?
I’m just speculating wildly here. Like I said, your guess is probably better than mine. As far as retaining more people, I do have (very speculative) ideas for that as well, but those require changes to the Church beyond increased honesty and transparency (so out of scope for this post). In just one sentence, though, I’d focus more on Christ’s teachings (which, again, is not covenant path, prophet worship, discrimination against women and LGBTQ, etc.), *trust* people to create their own personal spirituality from these teachings, and build community through massive investment and involvement in humanitarian efforts.
I agree that disclosure v. discovery is huge for whether or not a person continues to trust any organization or person, especially one with such high claims of truth and importance as the Church. I can trace the start of my own dissolution of the trust that I had in the Church to a post and comment on this very blog. I was raised in the church by very devout parents, I attended four years of seminary and only missed two days the entire time–which weren’t during the church history year, I’d rarely ever missed attending all of my church meetings, I served a mission, and I prided myself in thinking I had a thorough knowledge of church history and doctrine. And yet, josh h’s comment from August 10, 2021’s article “Talking About Polygamy at Church” was the first I’d heard about the extended truth of Joseph Smith’s practice of polygamy. I’d previously been taught and believed that he only restored polygamy and reluctantly practiced it with a few still-single women since it was a commandment.
This discovery was shocking to me and felt like betrayal. I spent many of the following months searching and learning what else had been left out by the Church’s narrative of history and doctrine. As a feminist I was already primed to reject the misogyny of the Church and had been waiting impatiently for years for the Church to make changes to the balance of gender equality of the Church. So this betrayal and the discovery of many more covered truths was more than enough for me to call it quits with Mormonism. Had the Church actually been more forthcoming in owning the truth and openly disclosing it, I’m sure I wouldn’t be worried now about my parents’ devastation when they find out that I’ve left the “faith of my fathers.”
This discussion is over, I know. I wanted to join it but remained on the fence too long because my contribution is so bleak. But if you’re going to apply disclosure/discovery of infidelity as a metaphor to church leadership, there are some discouraging things to be aware of.
The lies/cover ups are equal to the offending behavior as betrayal that brings trauma. At least, because that betrayal is ongoing and very often covert. The covert cheater puts on a very practiced and effective mask of a nice guy, and very few people see them without their mask. Those who do see behind the mask are maligned and marginalized as not able to testify truthfully.
They may act as if they are remorseful or they may be defensive, or any other ploy, but it’s all for the purpose of covering their a** and ‘hoovering’ their prey back into service.
So how can you tell these guys from someone who’s sincere? They refuse accountability. They never admit the truth about what they’ve done, or they may own up to the least possible measure of accountability and fake apologize. Real apologies have a clear marker — changed behavior and out in the open. Anything else is false.
Real apologizers also show empathy for those they’ve wronged. They do things to repair damaged relationships. They don’t manipulate their target any further into doing all the service and relationship maintenance. They openly care about the trauma they’ve caused. (See changed behavior) They actively work on their own recovery and behavior, in large part for the benefit of those who’ve been harmed.
The percentage of offenders in these discovery/disclosure circumstances who actually do the work of changing is very small. Dismally few. The percentage who learn new ways to pretend and gaslight is much larger. Exponentially much more.
Mountainclimber’s list upthread is magnificent— what changed behavior by leaders towards honesty might actually look like for membership in crisis. IF they were sincerely working towards our collective recovery, that’s exactly what they would do. If they wanted to continue the status quo and groom members into believing in change, hoping for better, they would cherry pick from that list, and that’s exactly what they would do.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of this iceberg. It’s exhausting and that works in their favor. But now you know.
@mountainclimber479 you are right about many things, but you do well to start at the beginning. Open the archives. Per many conversations with R. Bushman quite awhile back, historian/scholar to historian/scholar (although in my case medieval Arabic historiography, but similar disciplinary concerns), any good history begins with primary source analysis, in the original language. So good news for Mormon history, most of us are dang near fluent in American English. The bad news–of course access to the archives, where the thousands of primary source documents are–unarchived. Medieval archives, or even ancient ones, are indexed in some form already, but they also didn’t have to worry about mass literacy/publication. They range from the mundane to the earth shattering 4 versions of the First Vision. Most of those documents are not what we call autograph manuscripts. Handwritten by an original witness/participant to the events described. and then you have to account for bias and a paucity of sources. So there are complicated manuscript transmission issues. Leonard Arrington attempted this and look where it got him. And bad historians (most) and good historians (few) would have equal access to write bad and good history or theology, which are quite separate, but often overlapping disciplines.
But realize that the institutional church past or present, does not have a dust speck of understanding about the historiographical underpinnings of Mormon history/theology, along with the general church membership.. Does their lying for the Lord make us feel betrayed–of course. I’m pretty sure they operate more out of fear than malice. Take GBH and the Salamander letters. Not turning them over to credible scholars who could have instantly said “Fake. Handwriting is wrong. Looks like they were back in an oven a month ago on 350 with lemon juice,” proved deadly. Inexcusable. Do you think that GBH KNEW what was in the archives, would know what to do with a primary source if the Lord Himself explained it to him, and then deemed these to be a credible threat to the Church, thanks to his erudite scholarship? Just fear and stupidity.
Going back to sending BH Roberts to Harvard to prove the Church/BofM was true (oops he found out–it’s not) to Nibley or whoever, they frankly don’t have the skills for a mass conspiracy. Bad unholy intentions. Often. Blood on their hands Breaks my heart. And a lot of food for thought.