BYU Professor Brings CES Letter To Life | Ep. 1985

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2025

⏱️ 158 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of LDS Discussions, we explore how BYU Professor Anthony Sweat’s artwork reflects the troubling aspects of church history found in the CES Letter by Jeremy Runnells. Despite being excommunicated for questioning the church, Runnells’ CES Letter, published in 2013, exposes discrepancies in the official narrative. Meanwhile, Sweat’s art, starting in 2014, delves into controversial topics like Joseph Smith's treasure digging, the use of a seer stone, and polygamy. We compare Sweat's paintings to the CES Letter's criticisms, highlighting how the church’s history is often presented inaccurately. Join us as we discuss these bold portrayals and the ongoing tension between church teachings and historical truth.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition.
0:06.2	I'm John Dillon, one of your hosts for today.
0:09.1	It is January 16th, 2025, and today we are covering, here's the thumbnail,
0:16.9	BYU Professor's Art brings CES letter to life.
0:22.5	And Julia remind me, is the name of that guy, Anthony Sweat?
0:25.4	Is that his name?
0:26.5	Yeah, Swet, Anthony Sweat, yeah.
0:27.9	Okay, yeah.
0:29.2	So the short version is there's a BYU professor who I think he's both an artist
0:35.5	and a religion professor, if I'm not mistaken.
0:38.3	Yes.
0:38.7	His name is Anthony Sweat.
0:40.3	And he has painted a bunch of images of the LDS Restoration that are actually renditions of
0:52.1	aspects of Mormon church history that for, I don't know,
0:56.2	150, 200 years, the Mormon church has actively sought to deny or avoid talking about.
1:03.8	And, um, and, uh, we stumbled upon his artwork at some point last year, I believe.
1:10.5	And, uh, we thought it was really fun to acknowledge that a lot of his art basically confirms
1:19.1	what Jeremy Runnels published in his famous PDF called a letter to a CES director
1:27.0	that can be found at cESletter.org. And because in the
1:30.7	past year, the Mormon church apologists have started attacking Jeremy, trying to undermine his
1:38.3	credibility, trying to undermine the credibility of CES letter. We have been committed this year to advertising and
1:48.3	promoting the CES letter as much as possible, if for no other reason, then that we're sick of
	...

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