The Man Behind the CES Letter - Jeremy Runnells (Rebroadcast) | Ep. 2033
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2025
⏱️ 186 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Join us today as we rebroadcast the story of the man behind the famous CES Letter: Jeremy Runnells.In February 2012, Jeremy Runnels experienced a crisis of faith, which subsequently led to a faith transition in the summer of 2012. In the spring of 2013, Jeremy was approached and asked by a Church Education System (CES) Director to share his concerns and questions about the LDS Church’s origins, history, and current practices. In response, Jeremy wrote what later became publicly known as Letter to a CES Director.Letter to a CES Director very quickly went viral on the internet. The CES Director responded that he read the “very well written” letter and that he would provide Jeremy with a response. No response ever came.From then on, hundreds of Mormons have stumbled across the CES Letter and it has caused them to question their faith. Other believing sites have attacked Jeremy Runnells over the years, saying that he was insincere or that he never believed the church was true. His story clears up all doubt that he was a true-believing Mormon.___________________
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to a very special edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. |
| 0:04.7 | I'm your host, Dr. John DeLinn. |
| 0:06.4 | And today we are rebroadcasting for sure, one of the most important series of episodes ever released on Mormon Stories Podcast. |
| 0:14.1 | We are going to be rebroadcasting and integrating our multi-part series with Jeremy Runnels, |
| 0:21.8 | the author of the letter to a CES director |
| 0:25.3 | or the CES letter as it's now known. |
| 0:28.2 | For those of you don't know, the CES letter is, |
| 0:31.3 | by 2025, probably the most widely read, widely downloaded, |
| 0:36.7 | most impactful document ever created in the |
| 0:41.2 | history of the Mormon Church that attempts to express the concerns with the Mormon Church's |
| 0:48.2 | truth claims. It's probably impacted more Mormon testimonies than any other thing, any other podcast, any other |
| 0:57.0 | YouTube channel, any other book, any other person, any other single thing. To give you just |
| 1:03.4 | a little bit of background, Jeremy Runnels is an amazing human. He was born and raised in the church. |
| 1:10.0 | In February of 2012, he started having a faith |
| 1:13.3 | crisis. And between 2012 and 2013, a high-level church educator director in the church education |
| 1:20.9 | system reached out to Jeremy. And they started to have a dialogue where Jeremy wrote to the |
| 1:26.8 | CES director his questions and concerns |
| 1:29.9 | with the Church's truth claims. And basically, Jeremy never got a response to this letter |
| 1:35.6 | that he wrote the CES director. So eventually, this CES letter made it onto the internet. It was |
| 1:43.6 | spread through the ex-Morman Reddit, |
| 1:46.1 | and by the fall of 2013, Mormon Church Apologists started attacking the CES letter, |
| 1:52.1 | and most importantly, attacking Jeremy just for expressing sincere and honest concerns |
... |
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