{"id":47310,"date":"2024-06-01T08:51:49","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T14:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=47310"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:27:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T02:27:02","slug":"how-literally-do-members-take-the-churchs-truth-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/06\/how-literally-do-members-take-the-churchs-truth-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"How Literally Do Members Take the Church\u2019s Truth Claims?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Cranney and Josh Coates<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This is one of a series of posts discussing results from a recent survey of current and former Latter-day Saints conducted by the BH Roberts Foundation. The technical details are in the full methodology report <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Occasionally in Latter-day Saint discourse people that have lost their testimonies of the Church\u2019s truth claims float the idea that perhaps they could salvage their belief in the Church if it was made to be more allegorical and less literal.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the outset we admit our own perspective that, while we respect people\u2019s different beliefs and ways of making the Church work for them, this wouldn\u2019t really work at scale, and that for the Church to actual continuing functioning as a living, breathing, growing faith, and not just a cultural relic of a bygone sociocultural movement of a kind of \u201cdescendents of the Mormon pioneers\u201d lineage-based service organization, it has to not only hold to its literal truth claims, but to actively promote and defend them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Community of Christ, for example, does not have a position on the historicity of the Book of Mormon (or of many historical questions in general). The ambivalence of leadership towards actively promoting literal truth claims is undoubtedly sensed by the membership, who follow suit. (And as an aside, contrary to widespread missionary folklore, they did not \u201crenounce\u201d the Book of Mormon to be accepted by mainstream Protestants.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, how common the allegorical view of Latter-day Saint belief is, is an open question, and there is a very real chance that the influence of this group is biased by their being overrepresented in the scholarly Latter-day Saint and Very Online Mormon community. And so we decided to ask about two very central truth claims that the Church makes: Book of Mormon historicity and the First Vision.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Which of the following best describes your belief?<\/span><\/i><\/i><\/p>\n