Resources for the Reader

This site isn’t a catalog of everything wrong with the church. Other people have done that work, and done it thoroughly. When someone asks me where to read more, these are the places I point them.

A fair warning first, especially if you’re a believer. Some of this material is true and is still corrosive to faith and testimony. I don’t much care for writing that only tries to tear faith down. I prefer material that leads to a more open, honest understanding of where our faith and community came from. But I won’t pretend these are gentle. Read them when you’re ready, not because someone dared you.

If you’re new, start here

If you want the whole case in one place, start with the CES Letter. If you’d rather start with one specific question, start with A Documented History of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, which walks through how the accounts of the First Vision changed over time. It argues a side, but it quotes its sources, and you can check them.

Church history

These dig into specific episodes, usually by quoting the original documents. Most of them argue a side, so pay the most attention to the sources they quote. The Nauvoo Expositor is the original 1844 newspaper itself, hosted by a faithful apologetics site.

• The Book of Abraham Revisited by Richard Packham
• The Nauvoo Expositor by Various Authors
• Joseph Smith’s Bainbridge, N.Y., Court Trials by Wesley P. Walters
• A Documented History of Joseph Smith’s First Vision by Various Authors
• Early Mormonism and the Magic World View by D. Michael Quinn

The case in one place

• CES Letter: My Search for Answers to Mormon Doubts by Jeremy Runnells

The bigger questions

Questions about Joseph Smith often lead to questions about God and religion in general. These take those on from very different angles.

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
• A History of God by Karen Armstrong
• The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Dawkins is the best-known case against religion in general. I’m not anti-God, and I don’t subscribe to the kind of atheism that tries to be the opposite of theism, so read him alongside Armstrong, who traces how people have understood God across thousands of years.

Reading is only one way in. If you’d rather watch or listen, try the viewer and listener lists. And if you haven’t yet, read why this site exists.