Mormon Church contradiction: fallible or not?

Written on September 24, 2025

As I’ve left the church and viewed things with hindsight, I’ve given a lot of thought to this idea that I have been struggling to get out of my head: if the church and its leadership actually reinforced it was fallible, many of my concerns would have been neutralized. The current state of things is that the church says it is fallible but doesn’t actually behave that way.

None of this post is a criticism of everyday church members. This is a criticism of inconsistent messaging of around fallibility of the systemic/corporate church, such as its leadership and church policy/doctrine.

Faithful sources reinforce infallibility

I’ve heard a straw-man argument that critics expect the church to be infallible – but I believe the opposite is true – faithful members and leaders of the church are taught and believe the leadership church is infallible.

Below are some examples of faithful sources which reinforce this idea that the church leadership is infallible.

Example 1: criticism is apostasy

The General Handbook as of 2025 states the following as an act of apostasy:

Repeatedly acting in clear and deliberate public opposition to the church, its doctrine, its policies, or its leaders

The Temple Recommend interview questions more directly reinforce the narrative that you must not oppose the church and its teachings:

Do you support or promote any teachings, practices, or doctrine contrary to those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

- Church Updates Temple Recommend Interview Questions

If opposition to the church is not permitted, does that not reinforce that the organization is infallible and should not be subject to critique?

Example 2: prophets would be “removed” by God before leading people astray

A more direct example of infallibility is in the teaching that God would kill the prophet before they taught anything wrong, i.e. in a 2020 video:

Joy D. Jones (General Primary President): “President Nelson, would you ever lead anyone astray?”

Russell M. Nelson: “Oh no.”

Joy D. Jones (General Primary President): “That’s not what prophets do is it?”

Russell M. Nelson: “Some of them have said if the President of the Church should ever lead people astray God would take him away. So I’d like to stay here and I won’t lead you astray.”

- Follow Prophets—They Speak for God

This idea isn’t just Russell M. Nelson’s opinion, it’s currently the doctrine of the church as stated by Wilford Woodruff:

The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty.

- Official Declaration 1 Doctrine and Covenants

What is most frustrating to me about this teaching is that due to being a limited human there is no conclusive way for anyone to verify this and therefore has no bearing other than for faithful folk who are willing to “take their word” at face value. From my perspective, Brigham Young’s extremely racist perspectives are a perfect example of a prophet leading people astray but wasn’t conveniently killed off before doing damage – as the governor of Utah Mormon prophet Brigham Young made Utah a slave state (for a few years before slavery in the US was abolished).

Acknowledging mistakes neutralizes (many) concerns

In 2023 – when I still considered myself a faithful member – I stumbled across coverage of the church’s debacle with the SEC where it knowingly committed tax fraud out of fear of negative consequences. This initially didn’t bother me, I thought, it was probably a perfect opportunity for the church to acknowledge it in its financial report in general conference – for wasn’t that the entire point of that report?

The church did not mention it in its financial report in subsequent general conferences.

Note: In a press release the church weakly acknowledged it “[regretted] mistakes made, and now [considered] this matter closed”

- Church Issues Statement on SEC Settlement

Had the church wanted to neutralize my issues surrounding this situation the only thing the it would have had to do was something like the following:

Maybe God’s one true church could show at least toddler-level emotional maturity?

Dallin H. Oaks sums up the mentality well:

‘The church doesn’t “seek apologies … and we don’t give them.”’

- We all can be more civil on LGBT issues, Mormon leader says

My perspective is that if the church were more forward with its mistakes and directly addressed them it would neutralize many concerns. For example, the church could acknowledge Brigham Young’s racist perspectives like so:

“We are aware of the views President Young held regarding race and want to clarify that this does not align with our current values and we strongly reinforce that all people should be treated equally and as children of God – we acknowledge and regret that views like this held among church members and leadership caused great harm.”

An approach like this would have neutralized the majority of my concerns. Instead, the church continues to keep its universities named after Brigham Young and pretends that his slave-state speech was actually him being not racist.

“Policy” vs. “doctrine” vs. “good advice”

Over the past 100 years the church seemingly avoids codifying anything as “scripture” nowadays. Instead it gives membership what I’ll call “pseudo-scripture” – or the more faithful term: “ongoing revelation”.

This lack of definitive new scripture plays into the selective, inconsistent handling of fallibility that leadership and membership are subject to.

“Ongoing revelation” as a scapegoat

With ongoing revelation that is not explicitly scripture, faithful members are left to fend for themselves in a free-for-all of “inspired counsel” given every General Conference. If things don’t align with your perspective, you have a few options if you’re a faithful member:

  1. Strong-arm yourself into getting aligned with it
  2. Write it off as insignificant, i.e. “not crucial to my testimony”, or “the perspective of a flawed man”
  3. Silently disagree and hope that God will change the minds of leadership to align with your perspective

I have found that the idea of “ongoing revelation” that never is explicitly labeled as scripture or doctrine provides very little to anchor to. For example, in the years leading up to my departure from the church, there were many things said in conference that I did not agree with (but, also, many things I did agree with, too). When talking to faithful members about my concerns, they would often redirect with “that’s not how I interpreted it”. Which – that’s fine for you – but clearly I didn’t take it the same way and does that mean that my subjective interpretation is wrong?

Subjective interpretation and inspiration is a good thing – but there is far less functionality when you disagree on how things are being interpreted.

Revelation is always behind the times, never ahead of the curve

Another fracture in my faithful shelf was when I realized that nothing was being revealed in General Conference. I noticed it a few years before leaving. Upon reflection, there is very little said in General Conference that has any meaning if you are not a faithful member of the church. Church leadership does not call the world to repentance. General Conference does not directly address specific real-world problems, instead it gives you a fortune cookie with some generic advice you can apply.

That doesn’t mean I think General Conference does not contain good advice – but good advice can be found everywhere and is not exclusive to the church.

Most troubling to me was when I posed this question to myself: what specific revelation has come from church leadership since I’ve been alive that isn’t an undoing of former revelation?

The only thing I can think of in my lifetime that is a unique revelation is The Family: A Proclamation to the World – but I think it has aged poorly because nobody in the present can afford to live in a nuclear family and many people do not share the same archaic views around gender roles as the older general authorities.

Additionally, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and other church leadership seemed far less afraid to reveal specific “truths” at the beginning of the church’s conception. At this point in the church’s history, the mentality seems to have shifted to one where we don’t need to hear new doctrine and instead need to continuously re-hash similar ideas endlessly.

Note: one real-world deviation I’ve noticed that’s really interesting is all the talks the church leadership has been giving on AI – they seem to have lots of very specific views on how to use ChatGPT 😂

The pipeline of “phased-out” revelation

I’ve noticed a cycle that happens when a revelation doesn’t age well:

Revelation -> policy -> old-fashioned opinion

For example, the ban on members of the church of African descent and priesthood used to be revelation, but then was eventually downgraded to a policy, and now is not a pressing issue because it was all just a misunderstanding.

Any of the following “former” revelations from my perspective have gone through this cycle:

With all of these issues, there is never an acknowledgment that the church leadership at the time was wrong. Revelation appears to be mostly short-sighted as very little revelation unique to the church has stood the test of time.

Reducing critical attack surface

Ultimately, lack of any definitive scripture or stances on anything in the real world by church leadership reduces the church’s potential attack surface while also serving members who are eager to receive vague fortune-cookie guidance. If it boils down to these men in church leadership being fallible – that’s fine! The contents of their General Conference talks should be subject to normal criticism without it being apostasy.

Members should not be left to drown in ambiguous messaging that these career church leaders are either more connected to God than they are but are “fallible” in no meaningful sense of the word.

How I wish things would have changed earlier

The church is a human organization run by humans. Mistakes aren’t wrong – humans making mistakes doesn’t make the church not true. Actively hiding mistakes makes me struggle to believe it’s true.