From 'you can know' to 'choose to believe'

As historical claims became harder to defend, official rhetoric moved from certainty by revelation toward belief as a choice, effort and loyalty.

What the Church claims

By the power of the Holy Ghost members can know - not merely believe - that the Church is true.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Contested. The claim is still taught and still believed, so it has not been given up. But the Church's own recent language has moved toward choosing to believe and acting on hope, which sits awkwardly beside a promise of knowledge. Contested because the shift is documented while the underlying claim is untestable either way.

The record

  • Moroni 10:5 promises that one 'may know the truth of all things'.
  • Holland (April 2013): 'hold the ground you have already won, even if that ground is limited'; belief is honored where knowledge is lacking.
  • Uchtdorf (October 2013): 'first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith', alongside the admission that leaders 'have simply made mistakes'.
  • Andersen's October 2015 talk is titled 'Faith Is Not by Chance, but by Choice' and advises 'For now, give Brother Joseph a break!', deferring answers to a future day.
  • Ballard (October 2016): 'Sometimes we can learn, study, and know, and sometimes we have to believe, trust, and hope'.
  • Bednar (2008) frames asking in faith as requiring action: 'Meaningful prayer requires both holy communication and consecrated work'; Nelson told children 'The Lord loves effort' (April 2020).
  • Nelson (April 2021): 'Choose to believe and stay faithful'; 'Stop increasing your doubts by rehearsing them with other doubters'; 'Lazy learners and lax disciples will always struggle to muster even a particle of faith'.
  • The April 2026 conference, the first under President Oaks, consisted overwhelmingly of Christ- and Easter-centered talks; no talk title engages history or doubt directly.

The moving target

  • 2013-04: Belief is enough; lead with faith, not doubts.
  • 2013-10: Doubt your doubts.
  • 2015-10: Faith is a choice; give Joseph a break for now.
  • 2016-10: Sometimes we must 'believe, trust, and hope' rather than know.
  • 2021-04: Choose to believe; do not rehearse doubts with doubters.

The exchange

common LDS response

There is no shift: scripture has always distinguished the gift 'to know' from the gift 'to believe on their words' (D&C 46), and Alma 32 has always made faith a matter of desire and experiment.

The answer: The scriptural distinction is real, so 'the Church used to teach certainty and now teaches choice' is too simple. But the emphasis has measurably moved since 2013 - the year the essays began and the CES Letter appeared - and the newer talks pair 'choose to believe' with instructions about information sources (avoid doubters, anonymous internet sources). Choosing a belief and then restricting the evidence one looks at is not how anyone behaves when they think the evidence is on their side.

What they get right: Fair point: doxastic voluntarism in a weak sense (choosing what to attend to, whom to trust) is a real feature of all human belief.

A standard Latter-day Saint response; Alma 32

Alma 32 has taught the experiment on the word since 1830: desire, plant the seed, act, and let the fruit be the evidence. Leaders who emphasize action are quoting the Book of Mormon, not retreating from it.

The answer: Alma 32 is genuinely there, and this is the strongest form of the answer. What has changed is which passage gets preached, and to whom. For most of the twentieth century the standard invitation was Moroni 10:4, with an answer promised 'by the power of the Holy Ghost' that a member could then stand and testify to knowing. Since about 2013 the emphasis has moved to doubting your doubts, choosing to believe, and faith as a choice. Both texts were always in the canon. A church selects the one it needs, and this selection tracks the retention data rather than any new reading of Alma.

What they get right: Meeting people in crisis with 'stay and act' rather than 'you must already know' is more pastorally honest than the older rhetoric, and members who could never honestly say they knew were badly served by it.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

Between 2013 and 2021 the senior leadership's message to doubters changed register: from 'you can know' to 'hold what ground you have', 'doubt your doubts', 'give Brother Joseph a break', 'believe, trust, and hope' and finally 'choose to believe' coupled with a warning against 'lazy learners' and against discussing doubts with other doubters. Each is pastoral and individually unobjectionable. Together they reframe belief as an act of will and loyalty, which is a tacit concession that the promised knowledge is not arriving for many sincere askers and that the historical evidence will not carry the load. If belief is chosen, the resulting testimony is no longer evidence for anything.

The apologetic case

Faith has always been a principle of action (Alma 32; James 2). Leaders are meeting a generation in crisis with pastoral realism instead of triumphalism; acknowledging that not everyone 'knows' is more honest than the older rhetoric, and Uchtdorf's talk in particular made real concessions about leaders' mistakes and the sincerity of those who leave.

What would change this

Systematic content analysis showing no change in know/believe/choose language in conference talks before and after 2013.

Closely related

Sources

An independent project. Not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with any organization cited here. Summaries are written here; short quotations are attributed and linked. Every page names its sources so that it can be corrected, and every page can be challenged.