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The 1911 Salt Lake Temple Photographs

In September 1911, President Joseph F. Smith received eight unauthorized photographs of the Salt Lake Temple interior and a letter from Salt Lake theater promoter Max Florence. Florence said his associates controlled sixty-eight negatives and suggested that, unless the Church bought them, the images could be sold to magazines, postcard makers, or lecture bureaus. Smith refused. “I will make no bargain with thieves or traffickers in stolen goods,” he replied. Within days, the Church published seven of the photographs itself. What had begun as a secret photography project inside the temple had become a public contest over who would control the images and what the public would be allowed to see. [1] , [3] , [4] How Bossard got inside Bossard was twenty-one years old when his name became public in September 1911. He had emigrated to Utah after converting to Mormonism, had been baptized in 1907, and had received an Aaronic Priesthood ordination in 1908. By 1911, however, he had b...
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A Girl's Letters from Nauvoo.

On January 3, 1843, Charlotte Haven sat down in a small cottage overlooking the Mississippi and wrote to her parents in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She had arrived in Nauvoo only days earlier to spend the winter with her brother Henderson and his wife, Elizabeth. Haven was not a Latter-day Saint. Her skepticism appears in the opening lines: [1] As I write Nauvoo, I look at the word with perfect amazement, and almost doubt my own senses when I find myself an inhabitant of this city of fanatics, for never did I expect to see the place, far less to indite letters to my dear parents from it. [1] Haven's letters appeared nearly forty-eight years later in the Overland Monthly under the title "A Girl's Letters from Nauvoo." They are openly critical and should be read as one outsider's testimony, not as a neutral transcript. Still, she recorded small details that official histories often leave out: the bitter cold, muddy streets, unfinished homes, crowded worship services,...
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If Mormon Leaders Know the Church Is False, Why Do They Stay?

A recent r/exmormon post asked a question that comes up often in discussions of Mormonism: if senior leaders know about the historical problems surrounding Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, polygamy, translation, and other controversial subjects, why would they spend the rest of their lives defending the Church? [1] If these leaders know the Church is false, why would they dedicate their entire finite lives to it? by u/ImportantPerformer16 in exmormon The question is valid because the men at the top of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not generally isolated from the institution they lead. Apostles serve full-time for the remainder of their lives, and the Church describes the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve as prophets, seers, revelators, and the body authorized to declare doctrine and establish policy. [2] But the question contains an assumption that should be separated from the evidence. We have good reason to believe senior leaders know that many ...
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