How did information described as “hidden” remain openly discussed, taught, and passed down in families long before it was labeled a secret?
Dear CES Letter,
One claim you return to repeatedly is that important parts of Church history were hidden, suppressed, or intentionally kept from members. Much of your argument depends on that framing. If these things were truly concealed, then discovering them later would understandably feel like exposure.
What troubles me is how confidently that assumption gets applied.
Many of the issues you describe as hidden were not outside the narratives I grew up with. They were things I learned in Family Home Evening, discussed by my parents, and encountered in Church settings long before they became framed as scandals. They may not have been emphasized every week, but they were not unknown, forbidden, or inaccessible.
That distinction matters.
Your Letter repeatedly treats unfamiliarity as evidence of concealment. If something was new to you, the assumption seems to be that it must have been hidden from everyone else. That leap does a lot of work in your argument, but it does not reflect the range of lived experience among members.
This was especially surprising given that you served a mission. Many of the points you present as shocking were openly discussed and explained by missionaries long before your Letter was written. During my own missionary service in the 1990s, several of these topics came up regularly in study, preparation, and conversations with investigators. They were not treated as dangerous knowledge. They were part of a broader historical picture that serious questions naturally led to.
As I looked at the pattern more closely, several things became difficult to ignore:
- Information labeled as hidden had often been published, taught, or discussed publicly for generations.
- Issues framed as newly uncovered were familiar to many members decades earlier.
- Differences in personal exposure were treated as proof of institutional suppression.
- Simplified teaching settings were assumed to reflect the totality of what was known.
- Individual discovery was repeatedly equated with historical revelation.
History is not encountered the same way by everyone. Families teach differently. Leaders emphasize different things. Callings, interests, and circumstances shape what people learn and when they learn it. That unevenness does not require a conspiracy to explain it.
Your Letter rarely allows for that possibility.
Instead, it collapses diverse experiences into a single narrative of concealment, assuming a universal ignorance that did not exist. In doing so, it reframes ordinary differences in exposure as evidence of intent.
I am not denying that many people were surprised by details they had not encountered before. I am questioning why that surprise is treated as proof that the information was hidden, especially when so many members encountered those same details openly, early, and without scandal.
So I will leave you with one question:
If these historical details were taught in homes, discussed in Church settings, and addressed by missionaries long before they were called “hidden,” what justifies treating personal unfamiliarity as evidence of institutional concealment?