LDS Discussions — A Faithful Response

FAIR Mormon: “Homewreckers for Profit”

Responding to ldsdiscussions.com’s claim that FAIR Mormon’s critique of the CES Letter and Mormon Stories is dishonest, ad hominem, and intellectually bankrupt.

Overview of the Charge

The ldsdiscussions.com blog post titled “FAIR Mormon’s Dishonest Approach to Church Problems” criticizes FAIR (Faithful Answers, Informed Response) for labeling John Dehlin and Jeremy Runnells “homewreckers for profit” in their “This Is The Show” (TITS) video series. The author argues that this characterization is “stupid, misguided, and dishonest,” that it constitutes an ad hominem attack rather than substantive rebuttal, and that it amounts to a deliberate campaign to poison the well against honest historical inquiry.

This page examines each of those claims carefully, distinguishing what is legitimate in the critique from what is rhetorically inflated, factually selective, or self-refuting. A fair-minded reader will find that while FAIR’s TITS videos were genuinely problematic — and FAIR itself has since acknowledged this by removing them — the ldsdiscussions.com author’s argument proves far less than it claims. The underlying factual disputes about LDS truth claims are entirely separate from whether the “homewreckers for profit” charge is defensible, and separating those two questions is essential to clear analysis.

It is also worth noting at the outset that the ldsdiscussions.com post is itself a blog entry written by an anonymous author who acknowledges no credentials, speaks from personal experience, and explicitly states he “didn’t have time” for a more thorough treatment. That context matters when evaluating the piece’s claims to definitive authority.

What ldsdiscussions.com Actually Claims

The blog post advances several distinct arguments, which can be enumerated as follows:

Claims Made by ldsdiscussions.com

  • Claim 1 — FAIR’s “homewreckers for profit” label is an ad hominem attack designed to discourage members from researching the CES Letter and Mormon Stories.
  • Claim 2 — The content of the CES Letter and Mormon Stories is not about Jeremy Runnells or John Dehlin personally; the messenger is irrelevant to the truth of the message.
  • Claim 3 — FAIR’s scholarship in the TITS videos is “terrible,” “sloppy,” and “dishonest.”
  • Claim 4 — The “for profit” charge is hypocritical because LDS educators, General Authorities, and apologetic authors also receive compensation.
  • Claim 5 — The church “funnels money to FAIR Mormon” to produce these attacks.
  • Claim 6 — The LDS Church is definitively proven false; the Book of Abraham, DNA, and Book of Mormon are not historical.
  • Claim 7 — FAIR Mormon and the church use fear to suppress inquiry by demonizing critics.

We address each claim in turn below.

Claim 1: The “Homewreckers for Profit” Label Was an Ad Hominem Attack

This is the claim where ldsdiscussions.com is most clearly correct — and it is also the one FAIR itself has since conceded. The “This Is The Show” video series, featuring Kwaku El (Cardon Ellis) and Brad Witbeck, was widely criticized even within faithful LDS circles for substituting mockery for scholarship. The series culminated in Kwaku El retweeting a modified scene from Inglorious Basterds depicting John Dehlin and Jeremy Runnells as Nazis being violently beaten to death — a stunt so obviously beyond the pale that both men filed FBI reports. FAIR subsequently removed the TITS videos from its website and, in its 2021 rebranding to “Faithful Answers, Informed Response,” explicitly committed to “avoiding personal attacks or derogatory language.”

The irony here is significant: FAIR recognized and corrected this problem largely on its own. An organization that self-corrects — removing offending material, rebranding with a stated new standard — deserves credit for that, not permanent condemnation for the worst moments of a single video series.

It is also important to distinguish the TITS videos (produced by particular individuals at a particular moment) from FAIR as a whole. FAIR’s library spans thousands of pages of detailed, sourced engagement with LDS historical and doctrinal questions — the work of credentialed volunteers in Egyptology, Near Eastern languages, biblical studies, and LDS history. That body of work cannot be fairly judged by the low point of a YouTube series that was subsequently repudiated.

Claim 2: The Messenger Is Irrelevant — Examine the Message

The ldsdiscussions.com author argues that the CES Letter and Mormon Stories are not “about” Jeremy Runnells or John Dehlin personally, and therefore attacking them personally fails to address the substance. Philosophically, this is correct: the validity of an argument is independent of the character of the person making it.

But this principle cuts in both directions. The author of ldsdiscussions.com is himself anonymous, lists no credentials, and admits the CES Letter contains errors — specifically on maps and the plagiarism argument — while conceding that Mormon Stories is “not perfect” and that Dehlin himself sometimes says things “that aren’t 100% correct.” If the messenger is truly irrelevant, then FAIR’s arguments must be evaluated on their merits rather than dismissed because some of its members once produced bad videos.

Furthermore, while logical validity is messenger-independent, credibility is not wholly irrelevant when an organization presents itself as a disinterested guide to truth. Documented financial conflicts of interest are legitimately relevant to how audiences calibrate trust — though the question is whether such interests are noted in measured scholarly fashion or wielded as a rhetorical cudgel to pre-empt engagement. The TITS videos were clearly the latter, which is exactly why they deserved the criticism they received.

Claim 3: FAIR’s Scholarship Is “Terrible” and “Willfully Deceptive”

This is the most sweeping claim in the ldsdiscussions.com piece, and the least substantiated. The author gestures at future articles that will prove FAIR’s dishonesty, but the blog post itself contains no specific refutation of any FAIR argument. Calling scholarship “terrible” is not the same as demonstrating it.

FAIR’s contributors include individuals with genuine academic credentials. John Gee holds a doctorate from Yale and is a working Egyptologist whose work on the Book of Abraham has been published in peer-reviewed venues. Daniel Peterson is a professor of Islamic studies at Brigham Young University and a former editor of the FARMS Review. Gregory Smith holds a medical doctorate and has published extensively on LDS historical topics. These are not hobbyists spinning church propaganda — they are scholars whose arguments deserve substantive engagement.

FAIR’s own philosophy of apologetics, stated on its website, acknowledges that all scholars possess biases and that this does not invalidate careful research. The organization’s mission is explicitly modest: “Apologetics does not aim to create belief: It aims only to dispense with the poor reasons given by critics for disbelief.” This is a far weaker and more defensible claim than the ldsdiscussions.com author’s assertion that the church is “definitively proven false.”

Critically, the CES Letter itself has been subject to extensive factual critique. FAIR, Jim Bennett, and others have identified specific errors of fact, misrepresentation of sources, and outdated claims in the Letter. The author of ldsdiscussions.com acknowledges some of these corrections are valid. A work that requires ongoing correction is not the unassailable document its admirers sometimes present it as — and a scholarly organization that documents those errors is performing a legitimate intellectual service.

Claim 4: The “For Profit” Charge Is Hypocritical

The author argues that if financial compensation disqualifies critics, it equally disqualifies LDS educators, General Authorities, and apologetic authors. This is the strongest logical argument in the piece — but it requires examining the actual documented facts of compensation on both sides.

FAIR is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. With limited exceptions for administrative staff, FAIR’s contributors are unpaid volunteers. This is documented and public record. The TITS videos were produced by individual content creators, not FAIR’s paid staff.

By contrast, John Dehlin’s Open Stories Foundation paid Dehlin a salary of $236,021 in 2019 — representing approximately 60% of the foundation’s total donor revenues of $464,339 that year. This is documented public record, reported by the Salt Lake Tribune in February 2022. Former foundation employees raised formal governance concerns, alleging that Dehlin managed board composition to influence his own compensation and blurred organizational and personal expenses. These are documented claims in the public record, not FAIR fabrications.

Jeremy Runnells similarly founded the CES Letter Foundation, which grew into a full-time career. The organization subsequently failed to file legally required nonprofit disclosures after 2019 and was revoked by the IRS in 2023 — while continuing to solicit donations and present itself as a charity. This is documented IRS records, not apologetic spin.

None of this means Dehlin’s or Runnells’ arguments are wrong. But the “for profit” observation had a more specific factual basis than ldsdiscussions.com acknowledges, and the author’s comparison to General Authorities receiving “six figure stipends” relies on unverified claims while the critics’ compensation is publicly documented. Intellectual consistency demands the same evidentiary standard be applied in both directions.

Claim 5: The Church “Funnels Money” to FAIR Mormon

The ldsdiscussions.com author asks: “Why are they funneling so much money to FAIR Mormon to produce videos like this?” This is stated as if established fact. It is not. There is no documented evidence that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides financial support to FAIR. FAIR is an independent organization, explicitly not affiliated with the LDS Church, and funded by member donations. The church has no editorial control over FAIR’s content — which is one reason FAIR occasionally takes positions the institutional church has not endorsed.

An author who writes extensively about the importance of evidence and honest engagement with facts has here invented a financial conspiracy without a single documentary source. This is precisely the kind of rhetorical move — asserting a damaging claim in the form of a question while implying the answer — that the author accuses FAIR of engaging in. It undermines his credibility as a guide to careful, evidence-based inquiry.

Claim 6: The Church Is Definitively Proven False

The ldsdiscussions.com author states plainly: “You can prove that the Mormon church is not true.” This categorical claim is asserted as a conclusion rather than argued. That matters.

The specific issues cited — Book of Abraham, DNA, Book of Mormon historicity — are topics on which genuine scholarly debate continues. Dr. Robert Ritner was a distinguished Egyptologist and his concerns about the Book of Abraham are serious. But John Gee and other Egyptologists have offered competing interpretations of the same facsimiles. “Serious scholarly debate exists” is not the same as “definitively proven false.” The author conflates contested scholarly questions with settled ones.

The DNA and Book of Mormon archaeology questions similarly involve genuine complexity that both critics and defenders sometimes oversimplify. Population genetics can show that Native American founding populations did not originate primarily from Near Eastern migrations in the relevant period — but that is a probabilistic statement about population percentages, not a falsification of a limited geography model in which a small Lehite group intermarried with existing populations leaving a minimal genomic trace. Whether that model is theologically satisfying is a separate question from whether the DNA evidence alone “proves” the Book of Mormon false.

FAIR’s stated mission is specifically not to prove the church true, but to demonstrate that critics have not proven it false. That epistemological standard — showing that reasonable belief remains defensible — is substantially more modest and more honest than claiming definitive proof of falsity. It is worth recognizing which side is making the more defensible epistemological claim.

Claim 7: FAIR and the Church Use Fear to Suppress Inquiry

The ldsdiscussions.com author argues that FAIR’s strategy is to make members “afraid” to encounter critical sources by demonizing their producers. This is a real phenomenon that deserves acknowledgment, and the TITS videos exemplified this impulse at its worst. FAIR acknowledged this and corrected course.

However, the author’s own rhetoric mirrors the dynamic he criticizes. His site presents a comprehensive case for one conclusion — the church is not true — and characterizes any engagement with FAIR’s arguments as engagement with sources that are “willfully deceptive,” “sloppy,” and motivated by financial or institutional self-interest. He tells readers that after reading both the CES Letter and FAIR’s response, “you could see the games apologists play.” This pre-emptive discrediting of an entire body of literature — before readers have independently evaluated it — is structurally identical to what he accuses FAIR of doing.

Genuine intellectual courage does not mean only being willing to read critics of the church. It also means being willing to engage seriously with the best apologetic responses, update your views when those responses identify genuine errors (as the author admits they do on some CES Letter claims), and resist the pull of any community — whether faithful or post-faithful — that has already decided the answer and asks you to stop thinking at the point where their preferred conclusion becomes clear.

What FAIR Is and What It Is Not

FAIR was founded in 1997 as an independent volunteer organization of Latter-day Saints committed to honest engagement with criticisms of their faith. It operates as a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is not affiliated with the institutional church, and does not speak for it. Its contributors include scholars in Egyptology, Islamic studies, biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern languages, and LDS history. The organization publishes an annual peer-reviewed conference, maintains an extensive online resource library, and has produced nearly three decades of scholarship engaging directly with critical arguments rather than ignoring them.

FAIR is not perfect. The TITS videos were an embarrassment. The Inglorious Basterds retweet was indefensible. FAIR acknowledged this, removed the offending material, rebranded, and recommitted to substantive engagement. A single bad production run by individual content creators does not define an organization with nearly thirty years of published scholarly work.

The ldsdiscussions.com argument depends on a selective framing: cite FAIR at its worst, present critics of the church at their best. Honest inquiry applies the same standard in both directions: engage with FAIR’s strongest arguments, acknowledge when critics’ claims have been revised or found in error, and resist the temptation to treat either side’s narrative as the simple, obvious truth.

Conclusion: Where the Argument Stands

The ldsdiscussions.com blog post is partly right and mostly overreaching. It is right that the TITS videos were ad hominem, rhetorically inflammatory, and a poor substitute for substantive argument — and FAIR’s own subsequent behavior confirms this judgment. It is wrong to extend that critique to FAIR as a whole, to assert a church-funding conspiracy without evidence, to dismiss decades of credentialed scholarship as “willfully deceptive,” and to present genuinely contested historical and scientific questions as “definitively proven.”

The “homewreckers for profit” phrase was a rhetorical excess that deserved to be called out. But the response to rhetorical excess is not more rhetorical excess — it is the kind of careful, evidence-based engagement that ldsdiscussions.com claims to champion but does not consistently practice.

Honest inquiry is demanding precisely because it requires following evidence even when inconvenient — acknowledging FAIR’s genuine scholarly contributions even while criticizing its worst moments, acknowledging the CES Letter’s errors even while crediting its accessible synthesis, and resisting the pull of any community that asks you to stop thinking at the point where their preferred conclusion becomes clear. That is the standard this site holds itself to, and the standard to which we hold ldsdiscussions.com here.

Sources and Further Reading

Primary Sources Cited

  • ldsdiscussions.com — “FAIR Mormon’s Dishonest Approach to Church Problems” — source article being critiqued
  • FAIR: About — fairlatterdaysaints.org/about — mission, volunteer structure, 501(c)(3) status
  • FAIR: Mormonism and Apologetics — fairlatterdaysaints.org — stated philosophy of apologetic scholarship
  • Wikipedia: FAIR — en.wikipedia.org — organizational history, founding, contributors
  • Salt Lake Tribune — “Mormon Stories podcaster John Dehlin makes $236K a year from his nonprofit” (Feb. 27, 2022)
  • CES Letter: Debunking FAIR TITS — cesletter.org — documents Inglorious Basterds incident and video removal
  • Wheat & Tares: FAIR Turns the Page — wheatandtares.org — FAIR’s 2021 rebranding and stated new direction