About Our Approach

Who runs this site, what it is and is not, and the standard every page on it is held to.

There are times in a person’s life when what they believe to be true is put to the question. During those times a choice has to be made. Has one been lied to? Is one being deceived now? Those are not idle questions, and the people asking them are not asking in bad faith.

In the CES Letter an individual has set out a long list of concerns about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Very few of them are new. Most have been raised, in one form or another, since the 1830s — by Abner Cole and E. D. Howe in Joseph Smith’s lifetime, by the Tanners in the twentieth century, by Grant Palmer and MormonThink more recently. That is worth knowing, because it means there is a long record of answers to consult, not merely a long record of complaints. Where the CES Letter Came From traces that chain.

This site is a point-by-point response to the concerns the letter raises, plus supporting material on how the letter is built and who else has answered it.

To debunk or expose the concerns of an individual is not the desire here. It is to answer them — because to the people who hold them, they are entirely valid concerns. This site does not attempt to judge anyone’s sincerity, and it does not speculate about anyone’s motives. Motive is unknowable and irrelevant; an argument is right or wrong regardless of why it was made. Where you find language on these pages that reads as an accusation of bad faith rather than an assessment of an argument, that is a defect in the writing and I would like to hear about it.

Instead of debunking, the goal is to provide information, sources, and another point of view — one that shows how a given issue rests on a misreading of the record, or a misrepresentation of the doctrine, or a real historical difficulty that is smaller than the conclusion drawn from it.

People are not stupid. If they have questions and concerns, it is because they do not presently have the evidence to weigh them. The goal of this site is to put that evidence in front of them so they can decide for themselves.

Six rules, and they are testable against any page on this site:

• State the claim at its strongest. Not the weakest version, not a version nobody holds. If the letter’s argument is better than the version being answered, the answer is worthless.

• Label quotations honestly. A block presented as a quotation is verbatim. A block that summarizes an argument in our own words says so on its face. There is no third category.

• Cite the document, not the rumor. Author, title, venue, date, page — and a link to the source where one exists. The pages here lean on the Joseph Smith Papers, Dialogue, BYU Studies, the Interpreter, Church magazines and published scholarship, and they name which.

• Concede what is true. Some of the letter’s facts are simply correct. Saying so costs nothing and is the only way the rest of the page earns any credit.

• End with a verdict in two parts. What is established and what remains open. Questions that are genuinely unresolved get listed under the second heading, not smoothed over.

• Argue about claims, not people. See above.

If a page on this site breaks one of those rules, it is broken and should be fixed. Corrections are welcome at the address below, and pages have been rewritten because of them.

Crises of faith are not without precedent in the scriptures. Even the disciples of Jesus Christ had them. When Jesus taught that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, many could not receive it:

Notice what Peter does not say. He does not say the hard saying has stopped being hard, or that he now understands it. He says he has nowhere better to go, because he has already been given something he cannot unknow. That is a different kind of answer than the one the CES Letter is asking for — and it is not a substitute for evidence, which is why this site bothers with evidence at all.

A testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not gained by empirical means alone. It comes by the revelations of the Spirit, given according to faith and prayer. But we do have logical, plausible, and reasonable grounds for what we believe, and putting those grounds where a wavering member can find them is the entire purpose of a site like this. (See Moroni 10:3–7 and James 1:5–6.)

My name is Theron Bird. I have been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all my life. I grew up on a small farm in eastern Washington. My interest in the Gospel began with being taught in my youth by my parents, and continued through high school in early morning seminary.

I served a mission in Japan, and afterward continued my studies at Brigham Young University, where I met my wife Laureen — the love of my life. We have been married for over 30 years and have four children. Over the years I have served in many callings, including Bishopric Counselor, Seminary Teacher, Scout Master, and Primary Teacher.

I claim no special authority, save being a man with a testimony of Jesus Christ, a holder of the priesthood, and one ready at all times to give an answer to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in me. I am an avid learner who seeks truth in everything I study, secular or religious. I do not shy away from difficult questions, and I believe that even where we do not know the answer now, eventually we will — and it will make sense. Truth really can and will be circumscribed into one great whole.

This site is dedicated to everyone who has been through, or is presently in, a crisis of faith. Those questions deserve to be answered in a logical and reasonable manner, by someone who has actually read the other side.

I claim all responsibility for the content on this site. It is, to the best of my understanding, an accurate representation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This website is not an official site of the Church, and I do not claim to represent the Church in any way.

I would ask you to follow the admonition of Paul: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:21

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