What broke your shelf?

The SEC charges filed against the church in February of 2023.

For those unaware, the church collects tithing and other forms of charitable donations throughout the year to accommodate operating expenses and humanitarian aid throughout the world. According to the SEC filing, surplus tithes and offerings had been collected between the years of 1997 and 2019. These surplus tithes, when received, were invested through the investment entity of the church, Ensign Peak Advisors. Ensign Peak Advisors is owned by the church. The oversight of Ensign Peak Advisors and all financial decisions made occurred under the direction of the First Presidency of the Church and the Presiding Bishopric.

The following men held positions in the First Presidency or Presiding Bishopric during that time:

- Gordon B. Hinckley (Late Prophet)

- Thomas S. Monson (Late Apostle and Late Prophet)

- James E. Faust (Late Apostle)

- Henry B. Eyering (Current Apostle)

- Deiter F. Uchtdorf (Current Apostle)

- Russell M. Nelson (Current Apostle and Current Prophet)

- Dallin H. Oaks (Current Apostle and next in line to be Prophet)

- H. David Burton

- Richard C. Edgley

- Keith B. McMullin

- Gary E. Stevenson (Current Apostle)

- Gerald Jean Causse

- Dean Myron Davies

- W. Christopher Waddell

- L. Todd Budge

For clarification, I do not fault the church for being wealthy. The church is an international entity with resources and assets located around the world. It would be foolish to assume the church wasn't wealthy.

Rather, I find fault with the fact that in order to mislead faithful tithe payers, the church created 13 different shell companies to obfuscate the amount of their holdings and either failed to file federal forms or blatantly lied on federal forms.

The SEC asserts that as early as 1998, the church was properly informed and aware of the federal requirements to legally operate within the Security and Exchange Act of 1934. In other words, the church was clearly aware of the law that preceded the formation of Ensign Peak Advisors by ~63 years, and intentionally chose to break the law.

According to Roger Clarke, the head of Ensign Peak Advisors, "[tithing] is more of a sense of commitment than it is the church needing the money. So [the church] never wanted to be in a position where people felt like, you know, they shouldn't make a contribution."

Following the investigation, and subsequent fine of $4 million to Ensign Peak Advisors and $1 million to the church, the following statement was made by the church's public relations department, "Since 2000, Ensign Peak received and relied upon legal counsel regarding how to comply with its reporting obligations while attempting to maintain the privacy of the portfolio.... We affirm our commitment to comply with the law, regret mistakes made, and now consider this matter closed."

So why does all of this matter?

To begin with, as a Mormon, I was taught that sin is knowing what's right, but doing the wrong thing anyways. The church knew what they were doing was wrong, but did it anyways, so why should they be pardoned for their sin? A sin, for which, they never apologized. Furthermore, the Mormon church claims to have the one and only prophet of God on the earth who speaks directly with Christ and is directed in all things by the almighty. By this logic, either God doesn't speak to these men, and they aren't prophets, or Mormon god instructed these men to proactively break the law for ~22 years and lie about it.

I do not believe that lying in the name of god is ever ok. No one is above the law, and anyone who claims divine authority to break the law is a danger and not to be trusted in things temporal or spiritual.

curtishartley

When the prophets and apostles didn't warn the people away from Trump, and then took half a year to even say anything about the pandemic. I feel like that kind of shit is supposed to be their main thing and they kind of dropped the ball on both of those.

layhandsondeez

Learning the true history of Joseph Smith. It started when I read a biography about Emma Smith that my orthodox parents owned. I was horrified by what I learned in that book. The evidence is overwhelming that he was a fraud, a liar and a sexual predator. He wasn’t who he claimed to be therefore the Book of Mormon is fraudulent and the entire foundation of the church and my testimony crumbled. 

bethlundgreen

For me, it was the evidence (or rather lack of evidence) of the book of Mormon. It tells of giant civilizations in pre-columbian america, that had massive cities and metal tools. However, not a single bit of evidence has ever been found to support this, even though there are records of different, much older civilizations, in places like England and the middle East.

alex

The church is man-made. In my experience, it was harder and harder to ignore as time went on. The BoM was complied by a "prophet," one of many in his area in his time, the church is led by men who are constantly changing its course, the promises of the church are so selfish, and the tactics used to keep people in are such that no god would ever employ them. The mormon church is not ran by the god the scriptures describe, it is run by men who only care about membership and tithing.

Anonymous

There were three big shelf breakers. The first was the story behind and the translation of the Book of Abraham. When I was studying this, I mentioned to my wife many times that I wished the church would just come clean about it, rather than try so hard to find various apologetics theories to rationalize a truth claim. The Kinderhook Plates was another brief, but catastrophic shelf breaker for me. But the shelf came crashing down when I learned about Chris and Duane Johnson's big data research into the Book of Mormon. After that, it was clear to me that Joseph Smith did not have the gift of translation, everything was a lie, and the whole church is a fraud. This is when I entered my angry phase.

atoponce

It all started when I began a deeper study of Joseph Smith's revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. I was Young Men's President at the time and our quorum had some discussion about the Word of Wisdom. I noticed a reference to "barley for all useful animals, and for mild drinks" which I had never noticed. I was curious about what a "mild drink" containing barley was and started to study the historical context surrounding this revelation, how it was interpreted and implemented early on, and how it has since evolved into a distinguishing doctrine of our faith. This process brought several questions about how the doctrines of the church can evolve and how the personal preferences of church leaders can shape our understanding of right vs. wrong. I was introduced to Dialogue and Sunstone (journals of Mormon history) and inadvertently was exposed to the story of Fanny Alger. As more questions came up, I felt I had to drill down into church history to save my faith from crumbling. I was hesitant and made it a matter of serious prayer for weeks. It was all I could think about, until I had a spiritual experience. I felt God prompting me, just like I had countless times before, to seek truth. I felt assured that if the church was true, if the restoration was real, I would find the answers and rebuild my "all-in" faith. That's when it all began to come unglued. The issues seemed never-ending. I am not sure what the final straw was that broke my shelf. I've always thought it was more the sheer magnitude of sound evidence that invalidated the whole story. Some significant shelf items for me were:

1. Book of Abraham
2. Evidence of Fraud/cover-up/sensationalizing of events in Mormon history throughout time (e.g. priesthood restoration accounts, first vision accounts, Moroni/spirit visitations, etc.).
3. Treasure digging and folk-magic culture, and how it's influence is seen in the Mormon story (Moroni, Gold Plates, Indian lore, etc.)
4. Book of Mormon issues: translation mechanics, anachronisms, 19th century sources and influence, DNA evidence, and credibility of the witnesses.
5. Kinderhook plates, Zelph, and lots in this same category.
6. Polyandry and the often gruesome details of early polygamy.
7. The evolution of church doctrine vs. culture, including race and the priesthood, Adam-God and blood atonement doctrines, the Word of Wisdom, and many others.
8. How different the story really is from how I learned and taught it. Exploring the story within the historical context is an eye-opening, but gut-wrenching, experience. So many details included in this that it's daunting to even begin to summarize.
9. How the church has adamantly controlled/denied the information until forced into transparency. This includes the church's marginalization of those willing to talk about and publish the history of the early church.
10. Many modern issues that came to light for me are :the conditional love paradigm, fear indoctrination (perpetuates the idea that it is impossible for anyone to be happy or good outside of the organization), patriarchy, LGBTQ issues, correlated curriculum, tribal shaming, all-or-none ideology, and more.
11. Etc. etc. etc. Once you get into the material it seems like there is no end.

The shelf breaking is a demoralizing, crushing experience. What hurt the most was the feeling that I had no-where to turn at first. Looking back I see the extreme cultural pressure on people to stay active, to "stay in the boat", to stay away from "anti-mormon" influences. This builds an unhealthy community of fear, judgement (of self and others), and shame for anyone who feels on the fringes. What's worse is this is the community that I had given everything to. Feeling betrayed about the control of information was hard, but feeling like the community I gave my life to had no place for me was even worse. 

grmullins

I was always perhaps an unorthodox member and wasn't super concerned with the letter of the law. But over time, life experiences led me to question my faith. I'd always had things on my shelf like polygamy and race, but more and more as I studied topics to examine them in order to understand them and remove them from my shelf, I ended up with more on the shelf than I started with. The church's mistreatment of outspoken members was a big part of my shelf breaking. Watching members I agreed with, like Sam Young and Bill Reel and John Dehlin face excommunication for talking about my "shelf issues" made me see the church more as a human organization bent on self preservation than The kingdom of God. Studying church history specifically around Joseph Smith also was a catalyst when I learned more about his polygamy/polyandry, scripture translation with a peep stone, multiple accounts of the first vision story, and late introductions of the first vision and priesthood restoration, along with the temple ceremonies were all devastating for my faith in the church.

I still remember the moment when I was pulling weeds and realized that the most likely and really only explanation for all of it was that the church was not true. I realized that the first vision didn't happen and the pillars of my testimony and all the things I'd taught people on my mission and my own children during family night lessons was not real. That for me, God is love. Love is all you need.

evan-mullins