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Problems with the Modern Church

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is one of the largest and wealthiest religious organizations in the world, with an estimated 16+ million members and a financial portfolio in the range of $236–293 billion. For most of its history, the church operated with a level of insulation from public scrutiny that made systematic criticism difficult. In recent years, that insulation has eroded. A combination of legal cases, investigative journalism, leaked documents, academic research, and candid testimony from former members has produced a body of evidence that has led many people — both inside and outside the faith — to raise serious concerns about how the institution operates.

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This article is not a polemic. It is an organized overview of the most prominent and well-documented criticisms, with a focus on the evidence that supports each one. Where the evidence is strong, it is presented directly. Where the evidence is more contested or structural rather than documented, that distinction is noted.

A Summary of this Section

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the largest and wealthiest religious organizations in the world, with an estimated 16+ million members and a financial portfolio in the range of $236–293 billion. In recent years, a combination of legal cases, investigative journalism, leaked documents, academic research, and testimony from former members has produced a body of evidence that has led many people to raise serious concerns about how the institution operates.

The major areas of criticism include:
1. The Sexual Abuse Crisis

Sexual abuse handling — A culture of silence, a "risk management" helpline, and a preference for private settlements over public accountability.

2. Financial Opacity

Financial opacity — No audited financial statements, no independent board, and a 2023 SEC settlement involving shell companies used to hide church ties to investments.

3. The Disproportion Between Wealth and Charitable Giving

Wealth-to-giving disparity — A $236–293 billion institution giving less than 1% of its wealth to the poor, while counting member fast offerings and volunteer labor in its reported charitable totals.

4. Leader Compensation and the "No Paid Ministry" Framing

 General Authorities receiving ~$200,000–250,000 in total compensation while local leaders receive nothing, all under a public messaging of "no paid ministry."

5. The Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMC)

Internal surveillance — The Strengthening Church Members Committee, which has maintained files on members regarded as critical or "too liberal" for over 40 years, with no member access to their own files.

1. The Sexual Abuse Crisis

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The single most prominent problem facing the modern LDS Church is its handling of sexual abuse. The core complaint is not simply that abuse occurred — it occurs in every institution — but how the institution handled it.

A culture of silence. For decades, survivors and their families were reportedly encouraged to deal with clergy abuse privately within the church community, without involving law enforcement. Survivors allege this culture of silence was a key component of a broader strategy to protect the church's reputation and avoid scandal.

The "helpline." The church maintained an internal helpline for local leaders (bishops, stake presidents) to call when they learned of sexual abuse allegations. In lawsuits and journalistic investigations, this helpline has been described as functioning more like a "risk management playbook" designed to insulate the church from liability than a tool for protecting survivors.

The legal fallout. State laws in California (the Child Victims Act), Maryland (2023), and Utah eliminated or extended statutes of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims, leading to hundreds of lawsuits in 2025–2026. The church has largely opted for private settlements rather than public trials. As of 2026, the church is reportedly steering survivors into a confidential claims resolution process coordinated directly with select plaintiffs' firms, offering above-market settlements in exchange for silence.

Notable cases:

  • In 2018, a Utah woman, Kristy Johnson, publicly accused the church of having knowledge of child sexual abuse carried out by her father against her four siblings and of maintaining "a culture of protecting sexual predators."

  • In 2026, an Arizona appeals court ruled that a lawsuit accusing the LDS Church of failing to report a confessed abuser can proceed, finding that clergy-penitent privilege does not always prevent reporting to authorities.

  • A 2026 federal lawsuit in Illinois alleges the church allowed a former church leader and registered sex offender to remain around children despite prior abuse allegations.

The church has not filed for bankruptcy to resolve these claims, unlike the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts, instead opting to manage them through individual or coordinated settlements. This demonstrates the church's considerable financial capacity but also its preference for private resolution over public accountability.

1. The Sexual Abuse Crisis
1. The Sexual Abuse Crisis
1. The Sexual Abuse Crisis
1. The Sexual Abuse Crisis
1. The Sexual Abuse Crisis

The major areas of criticism include:

  1. Sexual abuse handling — A culture of silence, a "risk management" helpline, and a preference for private settlements over public accountability.

  2. Financial opacity — No audited financial statements, no independent board, and a 2023 SEC settlement involving shell companies used to hide church ties to investments.

  3. Wealth-to-giving disparity — A $236–293 billion institution giving less than 1% of its wealth to the poor, while counting member fast offerings and volunteer labor in its reported charitable totals.

  4. Leader compensation — General Authorities receiving ~$200,000–250,000 in total compensation while local leaders receive nothing, all under a public messaging of "no paid ministry."

  5. Internal surveillance — The Strengthening Church Members Committee, which has maintained files on members regarded as critical or "too liberal" for over 40 years, with no member access to their own files.

  6. Opaque construction contracts — No competitive bidding requirement, no public transparency, and anecdotal reports of contracts awarded to companies with ties to church leadership.

  7. Changing doctrine without revelation — A consistent pattern of leaders declaring doctrines eternal and revealed, then changing them without publishing the revelation that supposedly authorized the change or retracting the earlier declaration. This includes the temple garment, the temple endowment, the priesthood race ban, the stance on homosexuality, and the stance on internationalism.

  8. Historical integrity — A pattern of suppressing, delaying, or revising parts of church history, with the polygamy attribution question as the most dramatic example.

  9. The polygamy attribution problem — The LDS Church and anti-Mormons are on the same side of the question of whether Joseph Smith was a polygamist, both with institutional incentives for the same narrative, while the people questioning the narrative are attacked by both.

  10. Membership trends — Dipping retention rates, declining birthrate among active members, and a possible new challenge of members emigrating.

The overarching pattern that ties all of these together: an institution of extraordinary wealth, extraordinary opacity, and extraordinary institutional self-protection, operating under a theological framework — the living prophet who receives direct revelation from God — that its own documented history makes increasingly difficult to sustain.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the largest and wealthiest religious organizations in the world, with an estimated 16+ million members and a financial portfolio in the range of $236–293 billion. In recent years, a combination of legal cases, investigative journalism, leaked documents, academic research, and testimony from former members has produced a body of evidence that has led many people to raise serious concerns about how the institution operates.

2. Financial Opacity

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The LDS Church is one of the wealthiest religious institutions on earth, and it is one of the least transparent.

  • The church does not publish audited financial statements.

  • It does not have an independent board of directors overseeing its finances.

  • Its only public financial reporting is an annual statement read at General Conference by the managing director of its internal Auditing Department, which typically concludes that funds have been "recorded and administered in accordance with appropriate accounting practices."

  • The Dialogue Journal has noted that "disclosure, standing alone, is meaningless" without genuine independent oversight, and that the church "appears to be content with the amount of revenue it can raise without being financially transparent."

The church's 2023 SEC settlement (approximately $6 million in combined penalties) was triggered by an insider whistleblower and involved allegations that senior church leadership used shell companies to illegally hide church ties to investments. Civil litigation relying on those findings has continued into 2026.

This opacity is not merely a matter of institutional preference. It directly affects every other criticism in this article, because it makes it impossible for members, former members, or the public to independently verify how the church's vast resources are allocated, who benefits from its contracts, and what proportion of its wealth is actually directed toward the people it claims to serve.

3. The Disproportion Between Wealth and Charitable Giving

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The church's estimated wealth of $236–293 billion stands in stark contrast to its charitable output.

  • In 2023, the church disbursed roughly $906 million in humanitarian aid — less than one-third of one percent of its total estimated wealth.

  • In 2025, the church announced $1.58 billion in humanitarian and welfare assistance, which it called "record-level." Even that number is less than 0.6% of its total wealth.

  • Research by The Widow's Mite group has noted that at just a 4.25% annual return on its investments, the church could cover all its current expenses forever without ever collecting another dollar in tithing.

The accounting problem. The church's reported charitable giving numbers are not transparent about what's included. At least three streams get mixed together:

  1. Central church funds — money from the church's own investment portfolio and general fund. This appears to be a small slice of the total.

  2. Fast offerings — member donations made in addition to tithing, allocated locally by bishops. These flow directly from the member to the local need and are never "tapped" from the church's central funds, but they are included in the church's reported humanitarian totals.

  3. Volunteer labor — LDS Charities reports more than one million man-days of volunteer labor yearly. This is genuinely valuable work, but it is not "money the church gave."

By bundling these together under a single "humanitarian assistance" headline, the church presents a picture of itself as a major philanthropic institution when, in fact, the actual cash it deploys from its own wealth to help the poor is a small percentage of what its resources would allow. The lack of financial transparency makes it impossible to independently verify the breakdown.

The theological dimension sharpens the criticism. The church requires members to tithe 10% of their income as a condition of full standing, and teaches that caring for the poor is a biblical priority. The irony that the institution demands 10% from members but gives less than 1% of its own returns to the same cause is one that is frequently raised by members and former members alike.

4. Leader Compensation and the "No Paid Ministry" Framing

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The church's public messaging has repeatedly and officially stated that "there is no paid ministry, no professional clergy" and that "all of the work in the Church is voluntary. No one is paid for such service." This framing creates a significant gap between what is publicly communicated and what is actually happening.

General Authorities (senior leaders):

  • 2023: ~$251,000 in total compensation per General Authority (living allowance, benefits, and ~$30k/year in interest-free loans to consolidate debt and household mortgages). Total senior leadership compensation: ~$30 million.

  • 2024: ~$178,746 in living allowance alone.

  • 2026 estimate: ~$200,000 in direct equivalent taxable compensation, plus retirement and healthcare benefits, a free vehicle, per-child allowance, and 0% interest loans.

Local leaders (bishops, stake presidents, etc.):

  • Receive no compensation whatsoever for their time. They cover their own costs, including travel and time off work.

The church's website FAQ acknowledges that General Authorities receive a "living allowance," but the repeated public messaging of "no paid ministry" omits this fact. The additional benefits — health and insurance, a free vehicle, per-child allowance, 0% interest loans (average ~$30k/year in assumed value), retirement benefits, and all travel expenses reimbursed — are not publicly disclosed.

General Authorities and former General Authorities also have access to book deals with major publishers and board memberships at various organizations, enabled by the platform and visibility that comes with their church position. A random bishop would not have access to these opportunities.

The criticism is not that leaders should be compensated. The criticism is that the public messaging of "no paid ministry" is misleading, that the disparity between top and local leaders is extreme, and that calling $200,000+ in total compensation "modest" while simultaneously requiring members to tithe 10% of their income (and disciplining them for not doing so) is, at minimum, tone-deaf.

5. The Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMC)

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One of the most documented and disturbing criticisms involves an internal committee that has operated with essentially no external accountability for over 40 years.

The SCMC was established in the mid-1980s during the Ezra Taft Benson presidency. In 1992, the First Presidency publicly acknowledged its existence and named James E. Faust and Russell M. Nelson (now the current church president) as members at that time.

What it does:

  • Elder Dallin H. Oaks (1993) acknowledged the committee "may have monitored speeches, writings and activities of those suspected of apostasy and passed on material to church officials."

  • The church spokesman at the time said it "provides local church leadership with information designed to help them counsel with members who, however well-meaning, may hinder the progress of the church through public criticism."

  • Historian D. Michael Quinn documented that the committee maintains files on every member regarded as critical of LDS policies or "too liberal" and receives surveillance reports from the Correlation Department, the Public Affairs Department, the Church Security Department, security officers at ZCMI (the church's own department store), and BYU's security.

The most striking documented case: A history professor at Utah State University was informed during a meeting at LDS headquarters in 1990 that his surveillance file contained an anti-war statement he had made as an undergraduate in college. The church has not explained how it obtained that or what the full scope of the file contained.

How it's used: When the committee identifies criticism, it forwards information to local church leaders (bishops, stake presidents), who can then initiate church discipline proceedings. Members are not allowed to see their own files, even if they know the file exists. The committee was reportedly involved in the 2004 discipline of scholar Grant H. Palmer, where a dossier was sent to his stake president. A 2014 KUTV (CBS Salt Lake City) investigation found it was involved when several LDS bloggers and activists were summoned for church discipline.

The church has always called it a "clipping service" — i.e., it simply collects and tracks public statements and media criticism. The problem with that framing is that "clipping public statements" doesn't explain why it receives intelligence from the Church Security Department and BYU security, why it maintains files on members who were never publicly critical, why it has operatives who obtain tape recordings of members who give presentations at public forums, or why members cannot access their own files.

Even if the church's benign framing is partially accurate, the existence of a system where the church maintains files on members for holding views it considers "too liberal" or critical, draws on multiple internal security and intelligence channels, cannot be accessed or contested by the members themselves, and is used to trigger church discipline is a legitimate and serious concern about institutional surveillance.

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6. Construction Contracts and the Absence of Transparency

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The church's procurement process for temple and meetinghouse construction is not publicly transparent. There is no public bidding requirement, no published list of contracts, and no independent oversight.

The church's own newsroom states: "Because of the high standards for building its temples, the Church sends representatives across the world to search out the best contractors." There is no public criteria for how "best" is determined, and no mechanism for external review.

Multiple contractors in the industry have described:

  • A contractor who had already built two temples and was "very qualified" but "wasn't even allowed to bid."

  • A contractor who worked closely with three companies whose main client is the church, and one of them — well paid by the church and keen to keep its business — had hired a family member of the church employee who managed his contract.

  • The dynamic described as a power structure: "Building temples and awarding contracts gives the Q15 [Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency] power as they award and spend money because the people who win these contracts would do almost anything to keep that gravy train running."

  • Claims that the biggest Utah construction companies (Layton, Zwick, Okland, etc.) are LDS-connected and that the church is one of their largest clients.

Some contractors have pushed back, saying the church is actually "miserly" and that they "barely broke even" on temple work. The honest assessment is that the structural conditions for favoritism are clearly present — no competitive bidding, no transparency, no oversight, and a single entity that controls all sides of the transaction — but a rigorous, verified investigation mapping specific contracts to specific family connections has not yet been conducted. The related SEC case, in which the church was found to have used shell companies to hide church ties to investments, demonstrates a pattern of using opaque financial structures, which makes the procurement opacity concern more credible by context.

7. Changing Doctrine Without Revelation or Explanation

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This is the most structurally significant criticism and the one that cuts across nearly every other topic in this article. The pattern is consistent:

  1. A leader declares a doctrine, policy, or ceremony to be eternal, unchangeable, and revealed.

  2. The First Presidency confirms it is "given by revelation."

  3. A later leader changes it.

  4. No revelation is published or cited.

  5. The earlier statement is never formally retracted.

  6. The member is told not to discuss the change.

A. The Absence of Joseph Smith–Style Revelations

The most recent new revelatory content in the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 138, 1918) is Joseph F. Smith's personal vision of the spirit world — a first-person account of his experience, not a direct dictation of God's words establishing doctrine. The Official Declarations (1890, 1978) are official announcements, not revelatory dictations in the same style. No revelation matching the type, format, or style of Joseph Smith's canonized revelations — direct, first-person divine communication establishing doctrine — has been received and canonized by any later prophet.

The church's own apologetic framing concedes the point by saying later revelations have only been "foundational enough to necessitate canonization" in rare cases — which is a way of acknowledging that the kind of revelation has changed.

B. The Temple Garment

This is the clearest example of the pattern because the church's own words directly contradict its actions.

  • 1906: President Joseph F. Smith taught: "The pattern of the temple garment was revealed from heaven, and that the blessings promised in connection with wearing them will not be realized if any unauthorized change is made in their form, or in the manner of wearing them." He characterized any attempt to modify the garment as a "grievous sin."

  • 1915: The First Presidency wrote: "The pattern of the temple garment was given by revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith."

  • 1923 (eight years later): Heber J. Grant's letter announced that after "careful and prayerful consideration," the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve had "unanimously decided" to permit sleeves ending at the elbow, legs shortened to just below the knee, and buttons instead of strings. No revelation was cited.

  • 2018: A new "modern garment" with built-in briefs was introduced. No revelation cited.

  • 2024: Additional garment style changes, including options that don't require shoulders to be covered and a "shift" option for women. No revelation cited.

The sequence: "This is revealed and unchangeable" → "This is a grievous sin to modify" → "We've confirmed it was given by revelation" → "We've changed it" → "We've changed it again." No explanation for why the "grievous sin" determination was reversed. No revelation. No doctrinal explanation. Just a policy decision.

C. The Temple Endowment

The endowment — the core temple ceremony — has been changed multiple times:

  • 1840s–early 1900s: Included graphic, violent descriptions of what would happen to someone who broke the covenants: beheading with a sword, disembowelment, strangulation, being burned with fire. These were administered as binding covenants with literal consequences.

  • 1927: The penalties were progressively softened and made less graphic. The Oath of Vengeance — in which the member covenanted to "avenge the blood of the prophets" and to "destroy all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people who will not keep the commandments" — was removed. No revelation cited. The church's explanation was that these elements were "symbolic" and "spiritual" rather than literal, but for decades they had been administered and taught as literal. The Smoot hearings (1904–1906) had already exposed the oath and caused significant political damage. The removal appears to have been motivated by political pressure and public exposure.

  • 1990: Significant changes made. The LA Times quoted officials: "We are a church that believes in modern and continuous revelation, and the changes that were recently made in our temple ceremony are reflective of that process."

  • 2019: Ceremony shortened from ~1 hr 40 min to ~1 hr 20 min. Changes to the family-related portions. No published revelation.

  • 2024: ~20% of the ritual cut. No published revelation.

Each time, the church says the changes were "by revelation." No revelation has ever been published or cited. Members are told "this came by revelation" and then told not to discuss the changes.

D. The "Jesus Problem" in the Endowment

The 2023–2024 endowment changes added more images of Jesus, more spoken references to Jesus, explicit linking of the covenants to Christ, and announcements that the symbolism "points to Jesus." As Radio Free Mormon noted: "Well, this is something new, because up to this point, there has been scarcely any reference at all to Jesus in the endowment."

This is a major doctrinal shift in the core temple ceremony — adding a Christ-centric emphasis that was essentially absent for over a century — and it was done without any published revelation or doctrinal explanation for why the emphasis was added now.

E. The Priesthood Race Ban (1849–1978)

129 years of teaching that Black members could not hold the priesthood, taught as eternal and unchangeable. Reversed in 1978. "By revelation" — but the actual revelation was never published. What was published was Official Declaration 2, a statement about the change, not the revelation itself. The 1849 statement that it was eternal was never formally retracted.

F. The Book of Mormon and D&C Texts

The Book of Mormon has gone through multiple editions (1830, 1837, 1840, 1867, 1879, 1892, 1920, 1983) with textual differences. No revelation cited for any of the changes. The 1983 edition was a "complete revision" that included thousands of small changes. The D&C text has also been altered over time, with the 1979 edition including changes and the addition of D&C 137 (a Joseph Smith revelation that had gone uncanonized).

G. The Softening Stance on LGBTQ+ Members

The church's stance on homosexuality has shifted dramatically over roughly 40 years, and every significant shift happened without any new canonized revelation.

  • 1976–1989: The Church Handbook explicitly called for church discipline (including excommunication) for members who were attracted to the same sex — even celibate gay people. Being gay was treated as seriously as adultery.

  • 1981: An Elder on the Quorum of the Twelve called homosexuality an "addiction." The prevailing framing was that it was a curable disease.

  • 2010: The Church Handbook was updated. Boyd K. Packer's address was edited after delivery to remove harsher language.

  • 2013: The Richmond Times-Dispatch headlined "Mormon stance on gays softening." The church moved toward the "inborn/celibacy" framework.

  • 2015: Same-sex marriage was classified as apostasy, meaning children couldn't be baptized and parents faced excommunication.

  • 2019: That policy was reversed. Same-sex marriage was reclassified as a "serious transgression" rather than apostasy. Children of same-sex couples can now be baptized.

Every one of these shifts happened without a new canonized revelation. No D&C section was added. No prophet stood up and said "the Lord has revealed to me that his position on this matter has changed." The changes came through handbook edits, policy reversals, and shifts in tone from one generation of leaders to the next.

The church's response has been to say the doctrine hasn't changed (homosexual behavior is still forbidden), but the application and compassion have evolved. Critics point out that the shift from "curable disease" to "inborn and not your fault" is not a minor distinction — it is a fundamental change in how the church understands the nature of the condition.

The BYU dimension. A 2020 study by Dr. Jared Klundt and Dr. David Erekson surveyed more than 7,600 undergraduate students at BYU and found that 13.2% identified as LGBTQ+ — nearly one in seven students at a church-run university whose formal doctrine still teaches that same-sex relationships are sinful. The same study found that LGBTQ+ students at BYU were more than 2x as likely to report suicidal ideation compared to their straight peers. BYU's Honor Code still states: "Any same-sex romantic behavior is a violation of the principles of the Honor Code." The situation is one in which the university hosts a substantial LGBTQ+ population while maintaining a formal policy that condemns their relationships — a contradiction that the church has not resolved through any doctrinal or revelatory explanation.

Gay members can and do serve missions, and there is no screening for same-sex attraction. This is consistent with the church's modern framing that same-sex attraction itself is not a sin — only acting on it is — but it means a significant number of gay missionaries are serving, often in small communities, under the supervision of local leaders who have been taught that same-sex attraction is not sinful but must be "overcome."

H. The Shift from Anti-Internationalism to Global Engagement

Ezra Taft Benson gave multiple talks in the 1980s explicitly warning about the United Nations. In his 1981 talk "The Godless Revolution," he warned that the nations of the world were being drawn into a "new world order" and that the UN was a vehicle for a "godless" international structure. Other early leaders similarly warned against international organizations that could supersede national and religious authority.

The modern LDS Church has increasingly engaged with the UN and international institutions. The church has sent representatives to UN events, participated in UN-adjacent humanitarian forums, and its humanitarian work has intersected with UN programs. The church's global expansion — building temples in 70+ countries, operating in nearly every nation — represents a level of international presence that would have been unrecognizable to Benson's generation.

The documented shift in posture is real. The "one world religion" framing goes beyond what the evidence supports — the LDS Church has not announced a plan to merge with other religions — but the underlying concern is well-founded: the church has drifted from the explicit warnings of its earlier leaders without doctrinal justification, and the new posture was never formally reconciled with the old warnings.

I. The "Safe and Effective" Statement on the COVID-19 Vaccine

In August 2021, the First Presidency — President Russell M. Nelson, a former heart surgeon and medical researcher, and his counselors — issued a statement that the available COVID-19 vaccines were "safe, effective and provide protection against severe infections." Nelson had earlier called the vaccines a "literal godsend."

The criticism is multi-layered:

  1. The First Presidency made a definitive, unqualified statement on a specific medical matter on the authority of the prophetic office.

  2. Nelson was a former heart surgeon and medical researcher — the expectation was that he would have had the independent medical judgment to assess the evidence himself, not simply delegate to "medical experts and government leaders," which is exactly what the statement told members to do.

  3. The evidence base at the time was incomplete. Waning effectiveness against infection was documented as variants emerged. A 2022 NEJM study found 17 deaths in the vaccine group vs. 16 in the placebo group in Phase 3 trials.

  4. The FDA is actively reviewing VAERS reports (24,324 deaths associated with Pfizer, 11,509 with Moderna as of July 2026) and is presenting findings about possible links to a CDC committee. The question of whether there is a real causal signal in the data is still being investigated, not settled.

  5. A prophet's words are supposed to be divinely guided and therefore durable, not provisional. When they don't hold up, it creates a real tension with the living prophet doctrine.

The church's response has generally been to say the statement was based on the best available evidence at the time — which effectively concedes the statement was provisional, undermining the prophetic framing.

The church also required missionaries serving outside their home country to be vaccinated (otherwise they'd be reassigned to a domestic mission) and explicitly refused to grant religious exemptions to vaccine mandates, telling local leaders: "No church official can sign any kind of document supporting the notion that church doctrine/teaching is opposed to vaccination or that the church is opposed to vaccination mandates."

8. Historical Integrity

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A 2023 survey of over 1,000 former church members found the top three reasons for disaffiliation were:

  1. Church history related to Joseph Smith

  2. The Book of Mormon

  3. Race issues (the historical priesthood ban on Black men)

Brigham Young and polygamy is a major component of the first category. Young married at least 55–56 women and fathered roughly 57 children. Under his leadership, an estimated 20–25% of adult members in Utah were part of polygamist households for about 40 years. The 1835/1844 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants (Section 101/109) explicitly stated that marriage was between one man and one woman and that polygamy was akin to fornication. Despite this, Young and his associates began secretly taking plural wives in the early 1840s while publicly denying the practice. The 1856 Republican Party platform paired polygamy with slavery as the "Twin Relics of Barbarism." The church only officially ended the practice in 1890 under enormous legal and economic pressure, then definitively in 1905.

There is a longstanding debate over whether Young and his successors attempted to rewrite or suppress parts of church history related to the origins of polygamy. Some scholars and former members argue the church has been slow to transparently acknowledge the full extent of the practice, including cases involving very young brides and marriages to women who were already married to other men (polyandry).

9. The Polygamy Attribution Problem: When Both Sides Have a Vested Interest in the Same Narrative

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One of the most structurally interesting criticisms of the modern LDS Church involves a question where the institution and its most vocal critics are on the same side — and where the people actually questioning the narrative face pressure from both directions.

The Shared Narrative

The standard narrative in both the LDS Church and the anti-Mormon community is that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. The LDS Church maintains this narrative because it legitimizes Brigham Young's decision to continue and expand the practice after Joseph's death. If Joseph had not practiced polygamy, then Brigham Young — not the prophet — would have been the one who introduced it, which would be a far more damaging admission for the church's continuity of divine authority. Anti-Mormons maintain the same narrative because it discredits the faith at its foundation, portraying the founder as morally compromised from the start.

Both sides have an institutional incentive for the same historical conclusion. The people who actually question the narrative — a group of current and former LDS members sometimes called "polygamy deniers" — are being attacked by both the LDS Church and anti-Mormons for doing so.

The Polygamy Denier Argument

The core claim is that the attribution of polygamy to Joseph Smith is a fabrication by Brigham Young and his successors, motivated by the need to legitimize their own polygamous practice, and that anti-Mormons have simply adopted the same narrative because it serves their purposes. The specific arguments:

1. The original D&C 101 condemned polygamy. The 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants (Section 101, later renumbered as Section 109) explicitly stated: "Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy: we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife; and one woman but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again." This was in the church's own published scripture, read and "accepted and adopted and ordered to be printed" by unanimous vote of the Church. This section was quietly removed from later editions without explanation.

2. The 1842 affidavit. In October 1842, 31 people signed a public affidavit published in the Times and Seasonsstating they "know of no other rule or system of marriage than the one published from the Book of Doctrine and Covenants" — i.e., monogamy only. Polygamy deniers point to this as evidence that Joseph publicly denied polygamy to the whole Church. (Mainstream historians counter that some signatories were themselves secret polygamists or had reason to protect Joseph, which weakens but does not eliminate the document's significance.)

3. Joseph publicly called polygamy a sin. Polygamy deniers point to Joseph's public statements condemning polygamy and contrast this with the claim that he was secretly practicing it. The public record of Joseph — a man who was constantly in the public eye, giving sermons, publishing declarations, and engaging in political and legal battles — does not contain public acknowledgments of polygamous practice.

4. The DNA evidence. Children claimed to have been fathered by Joseph Smith have, in some cases, been tested and do not have his matching DNA. This complicates some of the most dramatic paternity claims and raises questions about how the narrative was constructed. (It should be noted that not all claimed children have been tested, and the results are mixed rather than uniformly negative.)

5. The evidence is largely from interested parties, often posthumous. A significant portion of the evidence for Joseph's polygamy consists of affidavits and testimonies collected after Joseph's death by the Brighamite church — an institution with a direct vested interest in the claim. Many of the accusers were themselves practicing polygamy at the time or were dependent on the polygamous church for financial survival. The posthumous timing and the institutional interest of the collectors are significant problems for the reliability of this evidence.

6. The "prominent figure" argument. Joseph Smith was one of the most prominent and controversial figures in 19th-century America. He was loved by some and actively sought to be destroyed by others. If he had been a publicly known polygamist, polygamy deniers argue, it is remarkable that no contemporary who loved him bragged about it publicly, and no contemporary who hated him used it as a weapon against him in real time. The accusations that did emerge were largely posthumous, which is consistent with a narrative constructed after the fact by people with a vested interest.

7. The William Clayton journal problem. The most commonly cited "primary source" for Joseph's polygamy is the journal of William Clayton, Joseph's secretary and scribe. However, the Clayton diaries were in the possession of the Brighamite church for decades, were not published in their entirety until recently, and the church has acknowledged that it "kept a lid on" them "because of the discomfort about the faith's former practice of polygamy in general." This raises legitimate questions about editorial control over the source.

8. Brigham Young's own journal entries. Young noted in his 1845 journal that they were "rewriting and altering church documents and history." While this does not prove specific alterations about polygamy, it is a striking admission from a man who was, at that time, in the process of consolidating his claim to prophetic succession on the basis of Joseph's alleged polygamous practice.

The Contested Nature of the Historical Question

It is important to note that this is a contested historical question. The mainstream academic consensus — including the church's own funded Joseph Smith Papers project — is that Joseph Smith did practice polygamy. The evidence cited by mainstream historians includes temple sealing records from the Nauvoo era, D&C 132 (which the church itself canonizes), and the fact that multiple subsequent church presidents (John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow) all taught that Joseph practiced polygamy.

However, the mainstream consensus is produced by institutions that have their own institutional interests. The Joseph Smith Papers project is funded by the LDS Church. The subsequent church presidents who taught that Joseph practiced polygamy were all leaders of the same institution that had a vested interest in the claim. The canonization of D&C 132 is itself an act by the church, not an independent verification. Furthermore, D&C 132 was not published until 1876 — over 30 years after Joseph's death — and was introduced by Brigham Young as coming from "his locked desk drawer." The question of its authorship is genuinely contested, and the church has not fully addressed it.

The polygamy denier position is a minority view even within the LDS community, and the mainstream historical consensus is not without serious problems. But the structural criticism stands regardless of how the historical question is ultimately resolved.

The Structural Criticism

The core criticism of the LDS Church here is not simply "Joseph Smith was not a polygamist." The core criticism is:

The LDS Church has an institutional incentive to maintain the narrative that Joseph Smith was a polygamist, because that narrative serves to legitimize Brigham Young's polygamous succession. That incentive makes the church's official history on this question unreliable, regardless of what the ultimate historical answer is.

This is a form of historical manipulation that fits the broader pattern described earlier in this article: the church controls the narrative about its own history, suppresses or downplays evidence that contradicts the standard framing, disciplines or marginalizes members who question the standard narrative, and has never published a transparent, evidence-based accounting of what it actually knows about Joseph Smith's personal life.

The church has excommunicated members who publicly deny that Joseph Smith practiced or taught polygamy, treating such positions as "contrary to established church history and doctrine." This means that a member who takes the 1835 D&C 101, the 1842 affidavit, and Joseph's public statements at face value — and concludes that the "Joseph was a polygamist" narrative is a Brigham Young fabrication — is subject to excommunication for taking the church's own earliest published scripture seriously.

The fact that the church and its most vocal critics are on the same side of this question — and that the people actually doing the historical work are being attacked by both — is itself a red flag. It suggests that the question is not being pursued in the interest of truth, but in the interest of institutional self-protection and institutional discredit.

10. Membership Trends

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Despite some positive growth in 2025, persistent structural concerns remain:

  • Medium- and long-term retention rates continuing to dip.

  • A declining birthrate among active members.

  • A possible new challenge of members emigrating from the U.S.

These trends are not yet catastrophic, but they represent a slow erosion that, combined with the other factors in this article, suggests an institution that is losing credibility at the margins even as it continues to grow at the center.

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