Were these ever the sincere questions of an earnest truth seeker?
Were these ever the sincere questions of an earnest truth seeker?
Ten lines of evidence that document the true origins and purpose of the “CES Letter.”
Click on the download button below to access a 68-page investigative report Michael and I are publishing today after a year and a half of work:
Executive Summary
“I love how this reads as a legit letter.”—BigMikeSRT, Reddit fan of the CES Letter
Brought to the world eleven years ago, something called “the CES Letter” went viral, in part, due to its intriguing tale of a perplexed man seeking answers to questions about a faith he once loved. On the website dedicated to his essay’s dissemination, the author Jeremy Runnells describes the essay as “one Latter-day Saint’s honest quest to get official answers from the LDS Church on its troubling origins, history, and practices.”
This is how it was presented. And this is how it has been passed along and widely promoted over the last decade. From beginning to end, however, the essay is nothing that it claims to be. Rather, the document is an all-out, aggressive assault on the foundational truth claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This naturally led to many responses to the content of the essay from devoted members defending the gospel of Christ. This includes: FAIR (2013-2023), Dan Peterson (2014), Michael R. Ash (2015), Brian Hales (2016), Jim Bennett (2018), René Krywult (2019), Scott Gordon (2019), Sarah Allen (2021-2022), Gregory L. Smith (2023), and Mormonr (2023). There were also collections of videos addressing specific topics raised in the letter organized by Brian Hales, FAIR, and Saints Unscripted.
These responses to the essay were important, timely, and helpful to so many. And understandably, most of them focused on the many questions the author raised within its pages.
Far less attention has gone over the last decade to the persuasive wrapping around these same questions—including the taken-for granted origin story and declared purpose of the letter, which were often presumed to be legitimate even among those publishing effective responses.
“I don’t doubt that the author of the CES Letter is sincere,” Michael Ash writes, “hurt by feelings of betrayal, and believing that the Church had lied.” Likewise, Jonathan Cannon said Mr. Runnells’ essay reflects his “real, lived experience” which he “came by…honestly.” Jim Bennett goes further, calling the author “honorable” and coming from a “place of integrity.”
Much of this is understandable. We believers like to trust people’s hearts and presume goodness. But when a veritable mountain of clear, contradictory evidence points beyond stated “questions” to the larger storyline serving them up to the world, it would seem shortsighted, even unwise, to overlook that evidence.
This is especially true in this situation, given the sizable impact of the essay—with some describing it as playing a significant role in their life-altering decision to step away from the Church of Jesus Christ (though many continue to return).
Mass buy-in to the story
One YouTube poster from 2021, “Miss Syrinxie,” is emblematic of so many of the reactions to the essay—with her near-reflexive acceptance of the essay’s widely promoted background, saying: “From my understanding, the letter wasn’t intended to be this big exposure of the church; Jeremy Runnells had legitimate questions that he was seeking answers to. Why couldn’t anyone just honestly answer his questions? Obviously, it’s because no one has the answers.”
“It came from a place of sincere inquiry,” wrote another anonymous YouTube commentator about the letter in 2015.
“The man who wrote it,” Jordan Schaffer said on Quora in 2019, “designed it as a list of questions that were concerning him while he was still a believing member of the church, when he was hoping a Church Educational System instructor might be able to provide a scholarly clarification.”
There are hundreds of similar online comments reflecting how the essay’s poignant story went on to have its far reaching, persuasive effect among so many—despite skilled responses to its internal arguments against the faith. Each time another person accepted the essay's just-asking-honest-questions narrative, they would often end up engrossed in its contents and promote them to others wrapped in the same provocative tale …
Without ever asking, but is this background and origin story even true?
A closer look at the evidence
In 2021, Sarah Allen began the most comprehensive analysis and refutation of this voluminous essay. Over 16 months, in 70 Weekly Reddit postings (the equivalent of 800 pages), this incisive public intellectual brought close attention to each page and paragraph of Runnells’ now 137-page text, complete with her own exhaustive citations, cross-references and links.
What originally caught our attention was her much-discussed initial posting, titled: “The Dishonest Origins of the CES Letter.” That prompted Michael’s own investigation over the last year and a half into the foundational storylines surrounding the letter. In addition to examining various iterations of the oft-expanded document, he sorted through all publicly-available evidence together, including the author’s online interactions before and after the essay’s release. This provided a more comprehensive picture of where the letter came from, what prompted its creation, and how it was used over time.
Jacob later joined Michael in thematizing and preparing this full report we’re making available today, summarizing 10 lines of definitive evidence that the CES Letter’s “sincere questions from a searching heart” storyline was always far from the truth. That includes:
1. Adversarial Church-bashing long before the letter was written. Over a six-month period prior to the essay ever being created, Runnells repeatedly attacked the Church of Jesus Christ from an online persona he later openly acknowledged was his own.
2. Disinterest in available and established channels for member questions. Neither before nor after the letter was created was there any indication (in extensive documentation of all interactions with Church leadership) of sincere interest in receiving answers from local leaders to the concerns being promoted publicly.
3. Seeking feedback from church antagonists prior to publication. In the weeks before publishing the essay, Runnells actively solicited feedback and advice from some of the most hardened and hostile critics of the Church.
4. Public statements revealing a much broader intended audience. In various interviews and online interactions, the author’s own words revealed a clear intent that extended beyond merely “getting answers to my own questions.”
5. Textual similarities mirroring other published dissidents. Before sending the letter, Runnells aligned himself with some of the most prominent and antagonistic detractors of the faith, even lifting significant portions of the original CES Letter text from well-known anti-Latter-day Saint writings.
6. Taking a hostile, disparaging tone in the original essay. Compared with the curiosity one might expect in a list of genuine questions, the essay (especially in its original, less polished form) displays an unmistakable contempt towards the faith.
7. Immediately promoting and personally disseminating the letter online. Instead of a waiting period that anticipated a personal response, the author almost immediately began marketing the letter to a broad audience.
8. Disparaging attitudes and manipulative actions toward local Church leaders. Once asked to answer for his attempts to persuade others to leave the faith, the author used these occasions with pastoral leaders not to seek resolution of any real questions about the faith, but instead, to further attack the Church and promote this same I’ve-got-these-questions-no-one-will-answer persona.
9. Extensive and ongoing branding expansion efforts over subsequent years. The marketing and promotion of the essay didn’t ever stop—continuing with an enormous investment over subsequent years and continuing to this day.
10. Malicious personal attacks upon many who dared to disagree. When concerns were raised about some of these very points, rather than taking seriously the objections being raised, Runnells would often employ mean-spirited attacks on the messengers (including those not of the faith).
Referenced and detailed summaries of all these themes are available in the linked PDF above, representing the culmination of an estimated 7000 hours of work between the two of us over the last 18 months, on nights, weekends, and early mornings.
The why of the analysis
This intensive inquiry was motivated by the hurt and heartache we have seen among people we love—provoked by this very essay. Our goal has been to document the full truth surrounding its background story and stated purposes—in hopes of better supporting the many people we care about impacted by its misleading contents.
We conclude from this investigation that what we call the “shiny wrapper”—the storylines and rhetorical packaging around the letter’s contents—played an oversized role in influencing many precious brothers and sisters of faith to grant the author unique credibility—opening themselves and trusting him to influence their most cherished feelings and beliefs about the faith.
If this essay sparked some kind of crisis in your own faith in the restored gospel, the Church of Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Joseph Smith, we hope this study will catalyze a very different kind of crisis of trust—one focused squarely on the author of this letter in question.
The many who have effectively addressed the essay’s incendiary contents previously, once again, have played an important role in helping people return to faith. We hope that better understanding this full story surrounding the essay’s origin and background—the complete facts—will further support the many innocent seekers who have encountered this heavily-promoted letter in the past, and who may still in the future.
While completing this investigation, we were heartened to hear more and more stories about Latter-day Saints who were negatively influenced by Runnells’ essay re-embracing their former faith—reinforcing our sense that our faith community as a whole is more than ready to move on from this sad saga (many have already done so).
This investigation is our work alone—done with complete independence. The ideas and perspectives contained in the report are our own, and not those of our employers or of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The bulk of the project was done prior to Jacob joining the Deseret News full-time and always took place on our own personal time.
In addition to the time spent on the investigation, we've invested $8000 of personal funds in the lengthy process of design layout and preparation. If you see value in what we've created here, and would like to make a donation to help recoup costs and support more research like this, any contributions are welcome on Venmo @michael-peterson-66 or via Zelle or PayPal using: michaelpeterson268@gmail.com.
You can also sign up to get updates from this Publish Peace substack, which will always be free to everyone. If you opt for a paid subscription, your financial support will support more projects like this. This platform will continue to be a place for long-form content like this and other specialty material from multiple authors about faith, mindfulness, mental health and dialogue—always aimed at fostering deeper peace in the many hearts and homes still struggling to find that.
Note: This article was emailed out to Publish Peace readers accompanied by the following prefatory note:
The investigative report we release below represents something a little different than what we normally publish here. However challenging the subject is, what Michael and I are sharing below falls squarely within the realm of “publishing peace.” That’s because deception always remove peace. And truth can help bring it back—“setting us free” if we let it.
It’s worth pointing out here that one reason so many think peacemaking dialogue is “soft” these days is because people assume civility is synonymous with making sure everyone feels good. Even when something wrong is happening, the thinking goes, we’re not supposed to say anything that would make someone uncomfortable. No wonder the number of Americans who self-censor has tripled over the last 60 years - with majorities of people across the political spectrum scared to share what they know to be right and true.
Thank you for checking out this important report, especially if you have a connection to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you or someone you love has been affected by the CES Letter, please consider forwarding this along.
Michael Peterson is an entrepreneur, writer, and lyricist living in Lehi, Utah. He has written for Public Square Magazine and is the author of “To Call Us By Our Name (A Reasonable Request in the Age of Authenticity)” and “Why a Belief Crisis Need Never Be Fatal to Faith.” Michael works in financial services, previously attending both the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.
Jacob Hess is a writer, researcher and mindfulness teacher, who joined The Deseret News in December 2023 as a full-time editor and staff writer. Publish Peace gathers past efforts over the years to promote liberal-conservative understanding, since Jacob’s book with Phil Neisser, "You're Not As Crazy As I Thought (But You're Still Wrong).” This substack aims to be a place for other writing that promotes truth and goodness, faith and peace. His most recent book with Carrie Skarda, Kyle Anderson, and Ty Mansfield, is "The Power of Stillness: Mindful Living for Latter-day Saints."