In 2012, Jeremy Runnells was struggling with questions about LDS history that he couldn’t reconcile with what he had learned growing up. He had served a mission, gone to BYU, and lived his life inside of Mormonism, but the sources he was reading didn’t line up with the version he’d been taught.
When he spoke with a Church Educational System director about it, he was asked to write his concerns in one place so they could review them together. He sat down and did exactly that. He pulled notes, checked references, and laid out the issues in a document that ended up more than eighty pages long. He sent it back expecting a follow-up. The follow-up never came. That unanswered list of questions eventually became known online as the CES Letter.
In April 2013, he shared his document to reddit on r/exmormon under the title “Letter to a CES Director.” The file spread fast because it pulled together problems that members usually encounter one at a time. Runnells later said he wrote it to understand why official narratives never matched the sources. The format made it easy to share which resulted in the document going viral in ex-Mormon circles because it organized all the pain points of the church in one shot.
While the letter serves as a compilation of criticisms about the church’s origins and foundational claims. Church-friendly outlets argue it reads more like a list of accusations than a sincere request for answers. Either way, it forced thousands of members to confront issues that most had never studied in depth.
What does the CES Letter contain?
The CES Letter doesn't focus on just one issue. It moves through a wide range of problems that members usually hear about in isolation. When you see them lined up side by side, the scope feels different. The document hits history, doctrine, translation claims, and the church’s own internal timelines.
Some of the issues discussed
Book of Mormon Translation: The material on translation contrasts the church’s long-taught imagery with what historical sources actually describe. For generations, members have seen artwork of Joseph sitting at a table with the gold plates open in front of him. Runnells argues that this depiction is inaccurate and misleading. Eyewitness accounts (including those from Emma Smith, David Whitmer, and others) describe a process in which Joseph placed a seer stone in a hat, pressed his face into the hat to block out light, and dictated English words that appeared to him. The plates were usually covered with a cloth, set aside, or not present at all.
He cites LDS historian Richard Bushman, who has said publicly that the church should stop using images of Joseph translating directly from uncovered plates because no historian believes that version. Bushman notes that the hat-and-stone method raises obvious questions about why the plates were needed if Joseph was not looking at them. Runnells also points to the church’s official Book of Mormon Translation essay and the 2015 Ensign article, where the church acknowledged the stone-in-hat method and published photographs of the actual stone Joseph used.
He argues that the seer-stone method matches the techniques Joseph reportedly used in treasure-seeking years before producing the Book of Mormon. The plates, he says, played no functional role in creating the text we have today. Runnells further notes that even faithful BYU religion professors once rejected the stone-in-hat accounts as inconsistent with the logic of the Restoration, asking why God would preserve the plates for centuries, orchestrate angelic tutoring, and stage multiple witness events if the translation happened through a device Joseph found in a well.
The Book of Abraham: Runnells points to the 1960s discovery that the surviving papyri are standard Egyptian funerary texts. They don’t mention Abraham, and translations by Egyptologists show nothing that aligns with Joseph Smith’s narrative. He notes that the facsimiles raise the same issue. Joseph’s explanations do not match the established meanings of the figures or symbols in Egyptian. Runnells presents this as evidence that Joseph was not translating an ancient record but offering his own interpretations as scripture. He also argues that the alternative explanations for the Book of Abraham appeared only after scholars translated the papyri and the linguistic evidence failed to support Joseph’s claims.
Anachronisms: The section on anachronisms highlights animals and technologies that archaeology does not support for pre-Columbian America, such as horses, chariots, steel, and wheat. Older LDS manuals treated these details as literal history, but modern scholarship finds no evidence for any of them in the relevant time periods. The discrepancy is presented as a major problem for the Book of Mormon’s historical claims, with more than a century of archaeological research offering no support for items the narrative assumes were present.
The Kinderhook Plates: In 1843, six small plates were presented to Joseph as an ancient discovery. William Clayton’s journal records Joseph saying they contained the history of a descendant of Ham. Modern testing later showed the plates were a nineteenth-century hoax etched with acid. The incident stands out because Joseph accepted the plates as authentic and began offering interpretations before any analysis had been done. The contrast between his confidence and the later confirmation of forgery is the core issue raised in this section.
Polygamy: The section on polygamy lists marriages to teenagers and to women who were already married to other men, including Helen Mar Kimball’s own statements about being sealed to Joseph at fourteen. Critics argue that these details undermine the claim that polygamy was a divine commandment. They point to the secrecy surrounding the practice, the public denials given at the same time the marriages were occurring, and the later doctrinal shifts that attempted to reinterpret it. The combination of underage sealings, polyandrous relationships, and inconsistent public explanations is presented as evidence of deliberate concealment rather than revelation.
Treasure-digging: This part quotes court records and eyewitness accounts describing Joseph using a seer stone to search for buried treasure. The same stone later appears in accounts of the Book of Mormon translation process. Critics highlight the continuity between these practices, noting that the method used to produce scripture closely resembles the techniques used in folk-magic treasure seeking. That overlap is presented as a challenge to the reliability of Joseph’s translation claims and the origins of his prophetic authority.
The letter also takes on questions about the First Vision, priesthood restoration timelines, changes in doctrine, alterations to temple ceremonies, the priesthood ban for people of African descent, and the difference between public teachings and private practice. The tone is relentless. It moves from point to point with citations that many members have never seen. For people raised in the church, the cumulative effect can feel disorienting.
Rebuttals
Rebuttals come from a range of sources. FairLDS publishes long, point-by-point responses to almost every claim. Latter-day Saint Magazine says the CES Letter uses what they call a "gish-gallop" approach. They argue that it overwhelms readers with volume instead of walking through arguments carefully. The Interpreter Foundation makes a similar claim. Its writers argue that the CES Letter relies on selective framing and that many of the quoted sources appear more damaging because they are separated from their historical setting. They say that if readers saw the full context, most of the issues would look less severe or would resolve. Several Interpreter pieces also question Runnells’ intentions, suggesting that the letter reflects a predetermined conclusion rather than an honest engagement with the material.
However, a noticeable number of responses to the CES Letter focus on Jeremy Runnells rather than the historical claims he cites. Some say he never had a testimony. Others say he is anti Mormon, that he wrote the letter for attention, or that he pretended to be a sincere believer looking for answers. There are also claims that the CES Director never existed, that the letter was crowdsourced on Reddit, or that Runnells wants to destroy the church. Certain accusations go even further, including rumors about his personal life, criminal behavior, or secret religious beliefs. His excommunication is sometimes used as a way to dismiss the document without reading it. (Jeremy responds to these criticisms here)
The larger issue is that personal attacks do not address the evidence he presents. The sources behind the Book of Abraham, the translation accounts, the Kinderhook Plates, or the anachronisms stand or fall on their own. If the response centers on Jeremy’s motives or character, the historical material remains untouched. The accuracy of his citations does not depend on whether he is liked, disliked, believed, distrusted, active, or excommunicated.
Personal accusations do not answer questions about how the Book of Mormon was translated, why the papyri do not match the Book of Abraham, why the Kinderhook Plates episode matters, or why certain historical claims conflict with archaeology. These points need evidence-based responses that character attacks simply do not provide.
Check Your Understanding:
Test how well you remember the key points from this CES Letter overview.
1. Why did Jeremy Runnells first write the document that became the CES Letter?
2. How was the CES Letter first shared widely online?
3. How does the CES Letter organize each issue it discusses?
4. How does the article say historical sources describe Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon translation method?
5. What key problem does the CES Letter raise about the Book of Abraham papyri?
6. Which set of items is used in the article as an example of Book of Mormon anachronisms?
7. Why are the Kinderhook Plates important in the CES Letter’s argument?
8. Which details about polygamy does the article say the CES Letter emphasizes?
9. What connection does the article say the CES Letter makes between treasure digging and revelation?
10. Which set lists sources named in the article as publishing rebuttals to the CES Letter?
11. What major concern does the article raise about many responses to the CES Letter?
12. According to the article, why does the CES Letter remain so influential?
Excellent overview.
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