In a recent book by Bruce and Marie Hafen, Faith is Not Blind, there is a recognition that the Church and its member need to do a better job at educating Latter-day Saints and that the, at times pitiful, knowledge many members (e.g., those who fall prey to the nonsense in the CES Letter) are, in part, the result of the watered down, appealing to the lowest common denominator approach of Church curriculum and correlation which is often anti-intellectual (see the hair-brained comments from Denis Horne here and here, for instance, which exemplifies such a fundamentalist, anti-intellectual attitude one finds all too often).
. . . in this day of both the internet and the international Church, we need to do a better job of introducing our children, young people, new converts, and others to the process of learning how to deal productively with complexity.
During the recent decades of international growth, the Church has needed to simplify its curriculum, magazines, and other materials so that inexperienced Church members in many cultures can understand them. Because that approach can limit the availability of more advanced information, many people cheered in 1992 when the world-renowned Macmillan Company copublished with BYU the Encylopedia of Mormonism. This four-volume work contains scores of careful, readable articles by qualified LDS authors on all the topics [many troubled Church members raise]. It has since been available on the internet and elsewhere. In addition, access to original Church documents has never been more open than in recent years, as witnessed by ongoing publications from the massive, Church-sponsored Joseph Smith Papers project that began in 2008.
The “gospel topics essays” more recently posted on lds.org are more visible than the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. They also reflect more recent research and provide extensive additional reference material. Hopefully these essays will help people notice some of what [troubled Church members] regrettably missed seeing. That increased visibility also sends a message about the value, in today’s world, of having open minds and open hearts based on a prepared stance that is as wise as a serpent yet as harmless as a dove (see Matthew 10:16).
Such resources can help us work our way through complexity to mature simplicity. At that point, we are not just optimists and not just pessimists. We are open-minded believers who know that history and life are not always clear-cut and tidy, but we desire to keep learning and to improve the status quo, not just to criticize it. (Bruce C. Hafen and Marie K. Hafen, Faith is Not Blind [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018], comments in square bracket added for clarification)
