Almost a year ago, Sept 2013, I disclosed on blog that the More Good Foundation received money directly from LDS owned organizations and apparently funneled money to the apologetic organization FAIR. The charter at FAIR states that they are a separate, unaffiliated organization from the LDS church and corporations.

However, some new evidence comes to light showing links. In an email sent by Steve Densley, VP at FAIR, in July to advertise their upcoming FAIRMormon conference (Held the first week in Aug), he explained:

"The Church will also be creating a webpage for seminary and institute teachers that includes a link to the FairMormon website. Furthermore, the Church has notified all seminary and institute teachers of the FairMormon conference, the Church is giving them a vacation day in order to attend and FairMormon is waiving the fee for seminary and institute teachers."
This appears a fairly substantial backing by the LDS church of the FAIR organization and their apologetic conference. While they didn't directly fund FAIR, they support FAIR to waive conference fees for their employees. And even more, the LDS Church is paying the educators on church salary for a day's time to attend.


To wit, here is the email FAIR sent out.


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From: Steve Densley <sdensley@g***.com>
Sent: Sunday, Jul 6, 2014, at 9:02 AM
Subject: FairMormon Conference


As most of you all know, I am the vice president of FairMormon, a group that exists in order to respond to criticisms of the Church and to help people to resolve their doubts. As I have been involved in FairMormon, one of the most frustrating things is to find people who have left the Church due to questions or concerns they had about Church history or doctrine, when there are good answers to those questions. However, once they have committed themselves to leaving, they are not as open to considering the answer we offer. It seems that we would be much more effective if people were aware of us earlier.

The Church has started to address some of the big issues that cause concern for many people by posting articles on LDS.org in the Gospel Topics section. The Church will also be creating a webpage for seminary and institute teachers that includes a link to the FairMormon website. Furthermore, the Church has notified all seminary and institute teachers of the FairMormon conference, the Church is giving them a vacation day in order to attend and FairMormon is waiving the fee for seminary and institute teachers.

Bishops, stake presidents and relief society presidents also sometimes find themselves in circumstances where they are counseling with members who have questions, concerns and doubts. Therefore, we at FairMormon also want to extend an invitation to stake presidents, bishops and relief society presidents to attend the FairMormon Conference for free.

The conference is on August 7 & 8 at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo. If you are unable to attend in person, you can also listen to a live steam of the conference over the internet, and the stream will be available for a few weeks afterward, so you can still listen even if you were not able to on August 7 & 8.

We have a special link for Church leaders to use to sign up: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12HsX8kZfDuW1dF1bSvjKfDQYHocw32f_QeSvnE9QoaQ/viewform

For more information about the conference, you can contact me, or visit this page: http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2014-fairmormon-conference

For more information about FairMormon in general, you can review the following article in the Church News and the subsequent links to the FairMormon website:

https://www.lds.org/church/news/2013-fair-conference-defending-the-faith

http://www.fairmormon.org/

http://www.fairmormon.org/about-fairmormon

http://www.fairmormon.org/about-fairmormon/testimonials

I hope you can join us in Provo on August 7 & 8, and if not, I hope you will find time to listen to the conference on line and explore the resources FairMormon has to offer.

Steve Densley
Vice President
FairMormon


---

Some background. Scott Gordon, Pres of FAIR has been on record, and posted on their website that they are unaffiliated with the LDS church, do not receive any funds from them, do not receive instruction or direction from the LDS church and that their activity is not sponsored by, condoned by or approved by the LDS church.

Why does that matter? Because any crazy mistakes or doctrinal mishaps or other historical issues they screw up at FAIR cannot be (and do not want to be) traced back officially or even unofficially to the LDS church leaders.

It's about plausible deniability for the LDS general authorities.

FAIR are the hit men doing ad-hominem and other slash and burn apologetics that would dirty the hands of Monson's corporation.

However revelations about LDS CES and church supporting FAIR through this, and previous money-funneling (see the other blog referenced in the blog link) show that there are links.

And if they are linked, then it dirties the apostles.


Unfortunately, I received this email after the conference and was unable to directly access the google doc to acquire the form the LDS church leaders used to pay for their attendance fees at FAIR. I would ask Steve Densley to confirm or deny this is accurate.

What does this mean? FAIR seems to get more direct support from the LDS Church than either the church or the apologists would like to admit.

Also, a lot of you have seen Steve Benson post about the strengthening church members committee that outs critics and gets them thrown into church disciplinary court. Two of us at Mormonthink have had that happened. Scott Gordon sent my name to SLC when my identity was found connected to mormonthink.

The reason this stuff is important is that it shows gestapo like connections to the church.

I wonder how many people will be saved by FAIR versus those who find out more through FAIR and leave because of FAIR. This tighter relationship could be a good thing (although I understand your point here on calling out a lie).

I was thinking the same thing.

"Bishops, stake presidents and relief society presidents also sometimes find themselves in circumstances where they are counseling with members who have questions, concerns and doubts. Therefore, we at FairMormon also want to extend an invitation to stake presidents, bishops and relief society presidents to attend the FairMormon Conference for free."

Hopefully they can deconvert all of the leadership at once.

. . . in setting you up for your excommunciation trial. FAIR is the Cult's carrier pigeon and water boy. Try doing both at the same time. It's a miracle.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2014 12:33PM by steve benson.

Ok Steve, since you asked.

In mid 2012 I took the reigns as managing editor at Mormonthink when the previous managing editor had been pushed into resigning or face church disciplinary court when his identity was uncovered through cyber-sleuthing.

In my case, Scott Gordon, President of FAIR, implied that I had in fact pointed the finger at him to the NY Times saying he was the one that outed me. Scott wrote on his newsletter ( http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fairmormon-journal/fj201209-html ):

"I forwarded the links of that public blog to some of my friends. The New York Times reporter who called said my email was forwarded to Twede’s stake president. I have no way of knowing if that is true or not. I did not speak with any of his local leaders, nor did I send an email to them. I told the reporter it was more likely one of his local ward members had read his public blog and told the stake president, but she insisted I was the source as she heard that from David Twede himself."

On the contrary, however, Scott Gordon affirmed to the SLtrib ( http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54979428-78/twede-lds-church-mormon.html.csp ) basically the same as he told the NYtimes ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/us/web-site-editor-may-face-mormon-excommunication.html?_r=1&; )--that he was communicating about me with "a list of friends, including some who work in the LDS Church Office Building." The Trib also reports that none of Gordon’s contacts were a Mormon general authority, according to the FAIR president’s own claims.

Reporters push you. They want to get you upset or make you believe that the story is already clear and that you better come clean. They're just probing, but that's how they do it. They get all the quotes they can from you and then choose the ones that emphasize the single point they need while ignoring the rest. I suspect that's what Gordon experienced. Believe me, I had my share of this distasteful practice over and over in Sept-Oct 2012.

As such, I do not know specifically how I was outed. There is a great deal of mystery about how Scott got my name in the first place to circulate it to other friends at the COB. No matter, my name did go to the higher ups in SLC along the elongated chain of events from Scott Gordon through several steps before it landed at my local stake president’s doorstop. I had never once met the stake president or even my bishop before the day they hauled me in to interrogate me about my MT activities and to hand me the letter informing me that I was “reported to have been in apostasy”. They did not witness my apostasy. It was reported to them. When I asked who reported me, the counselor in the stake presidency said, “Maybe we are inspired to know these things.”

Previous editors at MT have been outed by something akin to the Strengthening Church Members Committee, and cyber-sleuthing, when general authorities reported to the SP and asked him to inform them of MT editors' activities. The MT founder reports his experience here: http://mormonthink.com/resignation_letter.htm.


In any event, at the Exmo Foundation Conf, I will report and play an audio of the "interview" (interrogation) I received from the SP, Stake counselors and bishop who I never met until my name was sent to them from SLC. It will be interesting to hear them attempt gestapo techniques to make me divulge more information about critics...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2014 01:05PM by Jesus Smith.

“Maybe we are inspired to know these things.”

What an ass! He obviously isn't inspired to know these things. Seems like an admission that there is no "inspired" leadership.

Exactly. No inspiration here...unless getting an email is considered inspiration. If that's the case, I'm God 1000000x already

FAIR are the modern-day Danites.
They do their character assassinations on the internet.
The rabid attack dogs of the LDS Hierarchy that the leaders can insist aren't acting officially for the church, when they are.

The LDS Church's claim that organizations in which it obviously plays a large role are "independent" and/or "unaffiliated" is for PR purposes and for legal purposes.

Lawyers draw up some papers and then defend a claim that is, in reality, false. TSSC gets away with a lot of unethical, illegal and quasi-legal sh*t as a result.

Glad to see the lie being revealed concerning FAIR. The same lie has been used to distance the LDS Church from Evergreen, from "the Mormon Gulag" West Ridge Academy/Utah Boys Ranch, other boy's ranches, other anti-gay organizations, and even Utah Transit Authority.

http://www.examiner.com/article/byu-mormon-lawyer-defends-sex-abuse-at-lds-boot-camp

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/01/07/chris-buttars-and-the-mormon-g/

My point is that this is normal operating procedure for mormon leaders. They put one thin veil between themselves and anything that might cause a PR problem, or a legal problem, and then they pull the strings from behind the curtain. Lets' tear all those curtains down.

It is obvious that they are using the Terryl and Fiona Givens in the same way--putting them out there to do the dirty work and pulling the strings behind the curtain. How someone as intelligent as Mr. Givens allows this boggles my mind--but everyone has a price I guess. They will all be thrown under the bus at some point anyway, after they have sold their souls!

Mr. Givens... would you like to sell more books? Work with us and we'll continue to help each other out. Keep those doubters in the church paying their tithing, while you run the circuit and say it's OK to believe in the church with new eyes of understanding the nuances AND we'll (TSCC) help you any way we can...if you know what we mean. Diabolical laugh...

The church is certainly signalling to FAIR that they are approved.

In hindsight, it looks like the DCP shakeup at FARMS/Maxwell was really just a step in getting apologetics out of the church's school and into private hands with that greater veil of separation.

"As I have been involved in FairMormon, one of the most frustrating things is to find people who have left the Church due to questions or concerns they had about Church history or doctrine, when there are good answers to those questions."

It was FAIR, FARMS, and whatever else they like to call themselves, that expedited my exit from TSCC. I read their 'answers' and they were not good. In fact, every time they addressed one issue, they would create two new issues for me.

Anyone reading this, who is on the fence about leaving this dishonest and fraudulent religion because you think it is 'still a good place to raise your kids': LEAVE NOW! They are starting to inoculate the next generation to these issues, so they keep 'feeling good' about staying in the fraud.

I heard one teen say, "Yeah, I realize the Book of Abraham doesn't match the papyri, but, it was only a means for Joseph to receive revelation. So that doesn't bother me."

Yep, inoculation.

Help?? Is this the same Steve Densley who was the President of the Chamber of Commerce in Utah Valley? OMG--bad dude!

Yep, I've yet to find an answer from FAIR that I would classify as "good", more like piss-poor. If there are good answers, FAIR isn't providing them, and the leadership of the church has largely remained silent. So, where are those "good" answers?

That was true of my wife as well. I was inactive and mentioned to her that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. She said that was impossible. She had spent her entire life in the church and had never heard such a thing. She asked the Bishop and he confidently told her about the (old) FARMS organization.

She went to the site, but instead of calming and reassuring her, it just tried to justify WHY Smith had so many wives!

Then the issue of polyandry came up! And tons of other things. FARMS was trying to answer questions that she didn't even know existed before!

Instead of getting answers - she was just getting more and more QUESTIONS -- all with POOR answers.

I just let FARMS do the work for me.

The more the church struggles in a quick sand of lies -- the deeper it finds itself mired in those lies!

Someone's got to defend the church. Lord only knows that the GAs are afraid to do it and have no clue.