I just watched “The Rise and Fall of B.H. Roberts“, and was harrowed by it.
In short, B.H. Roberts was asked by a church leader to answer some anachronistic questions regarding the Book of Mormon. He fell down the rabbit hole and found a ton of problems with the Book of Mormon.
In the early 1900’s he ended up having the Q70, Q12, and 1P all meet with him as he detailed how the BoM had some fundamental problems. He said that these problems weren’t going away and needed to come up with a way to address them. Towards the end of his life, Roberts came to see it essentially as a pious fraud.
The church didn’t take him seriously. Many of the church leaders simply bore their testimony to him. He called another meeting to discuss the problems, and in fact found more. He wanted to show them the urgency of these things, because they could be the cause of the fall of Mormonism. He said that the young people would leave when they found out the truth. He was met with apologetics.
He realized that the church likely wasn’t going to listen to reason, so he met secretly with some folks to talk about it.
He may or may not have been given one more chance to talk to the leadership, but it also didn’t go anywhere.
Roberts spent years thinking about how he could fix the Mormon narrative. He wrote “The Truth, the Way, the Life”, which he considered the most important work of his life.
Then, he was forgotten. None of his papers were seen until the mid 1980’s and the church even denied their existence. Any biographies that people wanted to wrote about him were whitewashed and suppressed. The church institutionally wanted to double down in response to Roberts’s proposed liberal direction. McConkie is the jewel of that hyper-conservative reaction.
It wasn’t until the mid-1980’s when the Roberts family finally decided to have his writings published – they were threatened with lawsuits by the LDS church.
The LDS church has ignored Roberts’s research, and now that the internet has allowed everyone to have access to those problems, Mormonism is facing a crisis.
I would like to liken Roberts’s experience to a familiar story: Abinadai.
Roberts came to the church and called the LDS church to repentance by acknowledging the truth. The LDS church refused to do so and instead tried to erase him and his work from history. These problems didn’t go away, and those that found these same issues troubling and also started asking the LDS church to acknowledge these things (Like Jeremy Runnells) became Almas. The LDS church refused to do what is right and now the consequences are following them. Like Noah, the LDS church is suffering because they refused to listen to the person who called them to repentance.
I don’t really believe in a church falling into apostasy; I think its a side effect of the “one true church” narrative. However, The LDS church drew a line in the sand in the early 1900’s that they didn’t want to be intellectually honest, and suppressed those who were. They knew about the problems that have caused tens of thousands indescribable anguish, but they chose to do less than nothing. They suppressed the information and went on a crusade to vilify anyone who talked about them. If I HAD to pick a point where the LDS church fell into apostasy, this would be a top candidate.
Your beliefs can change when you learn new information. That’s not a bad thing; it shows integrity. It shows that you are more concerned with finding truth than hubristically being right. I think Mormonism is in a unique position to even theologically incorporate this with “continuing revelation”. However, the LDS church clings to its pride instead of letting the truth into their heart.
BH Roberts’s “The Truth, the Way, the Life” is absolutely on my reading list now. I want to see what his recommendations for fixing the Mormon narrative are, and how it differs from how non-LDS Mormons have addressed the problems.