The founding claims
The CES Letter
The document that broke it for a generation, with its ten strongest points ranked.
What it is
In 2013 Jeremy Runnells, then a struggling but active member, was asked by a CES director to write down his doubts. He wrote 84 pages. The director never substantively answered. He posted it, and it became the most-read document of the modern faith crisis. He resigned during his own disciplinary council in 2016.
Read it section by section or the full PDF.
This is a personal essay by someone who left, built to persuade. It is not a neutral history. That is the honest reading, and it belongs on the record first.
Then point out what matters: a large share of its strongest material comes from the Church's own Gospel Topics Essays, published 2013 to 2015 specifically to get ahead of these issues.
A large share of the letter’s strongest material is sourced to the Church’s own Gospel Topics Essays.
Which is why it does not behave like an attack document. The most damaging pages in it are footnoted to churchofjesuschrist.org.
The ten strongest, ranked
1. The Book of Abraham. The Church's own essay concedes the characters do not match. See that topic.
2. Kinderhook. He translated a forgery. See that topic.
3. Seven words from 1611 in a 34 AD text. The cleanest item in the whole letter. Malachi 3:10 in the King James Bible has seven words in italics, meaning the translators added them because they are not in the Hebrew. Those same seven words appear in 3 Nephi 24:10.
4. DNA, and the 2006 change from "principal ancestors" to "among the ancestors."
5. No contemporary record of the priesthood restoration. The angelic ordinations of 1829 appear in no document from 1829 or 1830. David Whitmer: "I never heard that an Angel had ordained Joseph and Oliver to the Aaronic Priesthood until the year 1834[,]5, or [183]6." The 1833 Book of Commandments has no account; the language appears when it became the 1835 D&C. Be fair: FAIR notes we only know when Oliver first put it in print, and that he reaffirmed it in 1846 after excommunication. That is a genuinely strong reply.
6. Polygamy, in the Church's own numbers.
7. Four First Vision accounts. Rank this for emotional impact, not evidentiary weight.
8. Mark Hofmann fooled the prophets. From 1980 to 1985 a forger sold the Church fabricated documents which leaders bought and defended. Gordon B. Hinckley: "I frankly admit that Hofmann tricked us." He was exposed only when he started killing people. It does not disprove any doctrine. What it corrects is the widely held informal belief that a true prophet cannot be fooled.
9. B.H. Roberts's suppressed study. In the 1920s a sitting General Authority was assigned by the First Presidency to examine Book of Mormon problems. His manuscript catalogued parallels with Ethan Smith's 1823 View of the Hebrews and concluded "there are many things in the former book that might well have suggested many major things in the other." It went unpublished for 52 years.
10. Masonry and the temple. See the doctrines topic.
Where the strongest items actually come from
Rank is by how well each item survives a prepared response, not by shock value.
| The item | Whose source settles it |
|---|---|
| The Book of Abraham characters do not match | The Church’s own Gospel Topics Essay |
| Joseph translated the Kinderhook forgery | Joseph Smith Papers, plus the Ensign, 1981 |
| Seven 1611 italicized words inside a 34 AD text | The King James Bible and 3 Nephi 24, side by side |
| DNA, and the 2006 wording change | The Book of Mormon introduction, before and after |
| No 1829 record of the priesthood restoration | The 1833 Book of Commandments |
| Polygamy, including the fourteen-year-old | The Church’s own Gospel Topics Essay |
| Hofmann fooled the leadership for five years | Gordon B. Hinckley, in his own words |
Every row is checkable without leaving Church-published material
A strong runner-up
A 1949 First Presidency statement called the priesthood ban "a direct commandment from the Lord." The 2013 header to Official Declaration 2 says "Church records offer no clear insights into the origins" of it. Both are the Church's own words, and they cannot both be true.
The Late War parallels. The statistical method has been credibly criticized, most flagged parallels are generic King James prose or boilerplate, and the same method reportedly flagged Jane Austen. A prepared member will dismantle it.
"There was no revival in Palmyra in 1820." Overstated. The honest version is that the precise revival Joseph describes is not independently corroborated.
Quoting the Journal of Discourses as current doctrine. Adam-God and blood atonement were taught and have been explicitly disavowed. Present them as taught then, repudiated now, which is the stronger point anyway.
If you are going to read it
Eighty-four pages at once reads as an attack, and it will feel like one. One section at a time, starting with whatever you already privately wondered about, is the way through it. Read FAIR's responses to that same section alongside it. Anything that only survives when you refuse to read the other side was never worth believing in the first place.