Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/Critical websites initially claiming to be run by active or believing Church members

FAIR Answers—back to home page

Critical websites initially presenting themselves as being run by active or believing Church members

Summary: These articles respond to websites that initially presented themselves as being run by active or believing Church members. The authors of these sites wrote as if they were simply believing members who were interested in researching the "truth" about Mormonism. Over time, it has become apparent that these sites are run by ex-Mormons who are hostile to the Church.

FutureMissionary.com

Summary: The website futuremissionary.com is designed to shake the faith of prospective missionaries by blindsiding them with troubling issues related to Church history. The site's anonymous authors claim to be returned missionaries. At the time that the site first went "live," the authors initially wrote as though they were "believing" members who naively accepted controversial statements and ideas without question. Eventually, over time, they finally admitted in their "Who are We?" section of the website that they are ex-Mormons. The most prominent and detailed page on the website is "A Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony." The authors claim that such blatant materials will help to prepare missionaries for questions and challenges they will face. In reality, the letter and other material on the site only introduce attacks on the church without discussing crucial context and explanations that would help readers fully understand the material. The approach and tone of the FutureMissionary site resembles that of MormonThink.com before MormonThink became openly antagonistic toward the Church in late 2012.

MormonThink.com

Summary: The web site MormonThink.com claims to be operated by active members of the Church with an interest in objectively presenting the "truth" about Mormonism. In reality, only the webmaster retains his membership in order to retain credibility in his efforts to subtly influence other members to investigate his claims. The remaining website contributors are either ex-Mormons or secretly non-believing members who frequently post on anti-Mormon message boards. The founding webmaster was, by his own admission, pretending to be semi-active in order to destroy members' and missionaries' testimonies from within the social structure of the Church. The site pretends to be "balanced" by presenting information and links to apologetic sites, however, the conclusions reached by the site consistently reflect negatively on the Church's truth claims. The site also sometimes contains a large amount of Temple content.