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What Is Letter For My Wife? Who Is Thomas Faulk?

Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence

Episode 1 | Hosted by Alma the Defender

In July 2009, an article appeared in the Ensign magazine written by Elder Marlin K. Jensen, the Church Historian and Recorder for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The article was titled The Joseph Smith Papers: The Manuscript Revelation Books.

It explained an ambitious Church history project designed to collect, transcribe, and publish the surviving writings, revelations, correspondence, and other historical documents associated with Joseph Smith.

The project would give scholars and ordinary Church members unprecedented access to original historical records.

For a Latter-day Saint named Thomas Faulk, that article supposedly began a process that would eventually change his religious beliefs.

Faulk had grown up in the Church. He participated in its youth programs, served a full-time mission, married in the temple, and was raising a family in the faith.

According to his account, he had always enjoyed researching subjects that interested him. After discovering the Joseph Smith Papers project, he began studying Church history more extensively.

He claimed to have read Joseph Smith’s journals, early Church publications, and sermons by nineteenth-century Church leaders.

Occasionally, he encountered information that seemed “inconsistent” with what he remembered being taught.

He began collecting questions.

Over the following years, that collection grew to include subjects such as the First Vision, Book of Mormon translation, polygamy, the Book of Abraham, and controversial statements by early Church leaders.

By October 2013, Faulk had lost confidence in the Church’s truth claims and shared his doubts with his wife, who remained a believing member.

She wasn’t interested in reading his growing collection of concerns.

So over the next three years, Thomas put his research into the form of a personal letter, expressing his love for his wife and explaining why he could no longer believe.

In 2016, he shared that letter publicly on the ex-Mormon Reddit community under the title For My Wife and Children.

The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic among ExMormons.

Other former members began sharing the document with believing family members. By 2017, Faulk had put his name on it and established a dedicated website.

The document became known as Letter For My Wife.

At more than 150 pages, it presented hundreds of historical quotations, references, and accusations against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And because it was written as a personal letter from a husband to his wife, many readers found it more approachable than some of the openly confrontational literature criticizing the Church, or even the CES Letter that had a pretty bad reputation among active church members by 2017.

Letter For My Wife was the emotional story of a husband who had studied his religion, discovered troubling information, lost his testimony, and wanted the woman he loved to understand why.

It sounded sincere.

But there’s considerably more to the story.

And some of the information I’ve discovered about Thomas Faulk, the development of his letter, and the people who subsequently promoted it has caused me to question how honestly the document represents its own origins and his actual intent.

I’m Alma the Defender, and this is Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence.

When My Wife Shared Letter For My Wife With Me

The reason I’ve spent hundreds of hours studying Letter For My Wife is because it is a document that my own wife shared with me, as a way to try and explain the reasons for her own loss of faith.

When I first began reading it, I felt compassion for Thomas Faulk, and compassion for my wife as I know how hard it is to feel doubt for those things that you see as eternal truths, that make up the core of your identity and purpose.

Faulk’s introduction sounded personal. He was describing the pain of losing faith in something he had believed throughout his life, while his wife continued believing.

What affected me even more was recognizing the similarities between his circumstances and what my wife was experiencing.

She was struggling with religious questions that challenged beliefs she had held her entire life.

By sharing this letter with me, she was trying to communicate some of those concerns and help me understand the changes in her thinking.

As I read, I felt compassion for her and for the internal struggles that can accompany a change in religious belief.

I wanted to help resolve her questions. Immediately after she shared the document, I promised her that I would go through it and answer every one.

I love church history and have studied it far more than the average church member and was already familiar with many anti-Mormon arguments against Joseph Smith and the Restoration.

But there were also accusations like the Kinderhook plates that I had never encountered before.

So I began researching.

Why I Was Skeptical of Faulk’s Research Story

As I read Thomas Faulk’s introduction, several things immediately set off the “I don’t trust this guy bells.”

First, Faulk claimed his research began with a 2009 Ensign article about the Joseph Smith Papers. But he immediately followed that claim by stating, “I pored over Joseph Smith’s journals, the Journal of Discourses, The History of the Church and early Mormon periodicals.” Most of these materials had been publicly available for decades, some for more than a century, and were not new discoveries associated with the Joseph Smith Papers project.

Joseph Smith’s journals had already been published in collections during the 1970s and 1980s. I owned those books growing up and had one with me on my mission in the ’90’s.

The Journal of Discourses was published between 1854 and 1886. It’s a privately published collection of sermons, originally recorded using Pitman shorthand by reporters such as George D. Watt. Those shorthand notes were later transcribed, edited, and rewritten for publication. Modern comparisons with surviving shorthand records have revealed significant differences, including changes to the actual words spoken by Church leaders. It’s not an official Church publication or a newly discovered source from the Joseph Smith Papers project. Critics of the Church have been mining these volumes for controversial quotations for decades, frequently presenting edited nineteenth-century sermons as authoritative statements of Church doctrine.

Second, Faulk specifically emphasizes studying “Church-approved historical resources.” That’s an expression you only ever hear in critical literature, including the CES Letter. There isn’t some exclusive Church-approved list of historical books members are permitted to read. It’s part of the narrative anti-Mormons like to use to make their claim of brainwashing and withholding “the real history”

And if Tom was studying official Church curriculum, why did he emphasize the Journal of Discourses rather than the Church’s published Teachings of Presidents of the Church manuals that was the official church curriculum we were studying in 2009?

Third, he claimed he was studying these documents to “strengthen my testimony.” That’s possible, but the phrasing seems really strange for someone who already has a strong testimony. I study Church History because it’s interesting, because I love it. I have never thought of studying History to strengthen my testimony. It seems like he was trying to establish that he was a believer who accidentally discovered information that destroyed his faith, but at the same time accidentally admitted that his Testimony was struggling at the time. And if you’re reading anti-Mormon materials, that’s actually pretty easy to do.

Fourth, many of the accusations he supposedly discovered through his testimony seeking church history study are the same arguments critics have been circulating for decades. His Journal of Discourses quotations repeatedly concerned the exact same controversial subjects found in the CES Letter and other anti-Mormon publications. The probability of finding so many exact same conclusions by doing your own independent research seems unlikely.

Finally, he immediately instructs his wife to reinterpret the uncomfortable feelings she might experience while reading his accusations, before she’s even examined the evidence.

My suspicion was that Faulk hadn’t independently stumbled upon all these problems while casually studying Church history. It seemed more likely that he had encountered criticisms through anti-Mormon publications and online communities, then consulted the original historical documents to investigate and reinforce conclusions he was already considering.

And as I investigated, I found so many examples where the accusations sounded convincing, but as soon as you examine the context and original sources — they lose all credibility. I don’t think that Thomas was ever looking for the actual History. I think that he was mining sources to validate the outcome he already desired.

Who was Thomas Faulk?

Was he credible? What were his motives? and where had his information actually come from?

Most of the information gleaned on Thomas Faulk the author of the original Letter For My Wife comes from the work of Sarah Allen.

Sarah Allen’s Investigation

Sarah Allen is a Latter-day Saint researcher who wrote an extensive response to Letter For My Wife.

She examined archived Reddit discussions, earlier versions of the letter, comments associated with Faulk’s online accounts, and statements he made about his research.

Her work revealed a history that was considerably more complicated than the emotional account presented in the letter’s introduction.

She found that most of the content from Letter For My Wife uses the same arguments and framing as the CES letter. And in a Reddit comment,

Thomas Faulk admitted that he had used material from Jeremy Runnells’s CES Letter to expand his collection of historical concerns.

That raises an important question about the origins of his research. Was it really the Joseph Smith Papers that led to his loss of faith, or had he already been influenced by anti-Mormon publications and online communities?

Did the Joseph Smith Papers Really Start His Faith Crisis?

I believe Elder Jensen’s 2009 Ensign article probably did lead Faulk to investigate some original historical documents. For example, Jensen discussed the attempted sale of the Book of Mormon’s Canadian copyright, something Faulk later used as evidence that Joseph Smith was motivated by money.

But that seems like a strange conclusion for someone familiar with the history of the Book of Mormon’s publication. Joseph Smith had already secured an American copyright, and in January 1830, Abner Cole began publishing unauthorized excerpts from the manuscript in his Palmyra newspaper. Joseph personally confronted Cole to protect his publishing rights. Meanwhile, Martin Harris had mortgaged his farm to finance the printing.

Attempting to secure copyright protection and raise money for publication is a pretty weak case that Joseph invented the Book of Mormon for personal profit.

Perhaps Faulk did independently arrived at that conclusion. But the financial-motive accusation was already well established in critical literature. Hiram Page discussed the financial expectations of the Canadian mission in 1848. David Whitmer criticized the incident in 1887, and Fawn Brodie included it in her 1945 book No Man Knows My History.

So was Faulk independently discovering historical problems, or was he investigating accusations that critics had already been making for generations?

His own statements give us some clues.

Faulk claimed that he discovered the ex-Mormon Reddit community when it had approximately 6,000 subscribers. which was 2012, nearly a year before he told his wife he was questioning his faith.

Then, in April 2013, Jeremy Runnells released the CES Letter, six months before Faulk’s October announcement to his wife.

By 2016, Faulk had published a substantial document containing many of the same arguments, historical quotations, and interpretations already circulating in the CES Letter and other critical publications.

I don’t doubt that Faulk studied original historical documents. What I question is how independently he discovered these supposed problems. The evidence suggests that his investigation developed alongside exposure to an ex-Mormon community and established critical literature, rather than simply stumbling across one troubling discovery after another while reading Church history.

The Influence of the CES Letter

Faulk did include sources beyond those cited in the CES Letter, but his finished document also incorporated many of Runnells’s arguments and interpretations. There’s a difference between independently discovering historical problems and looking up original documents after reading accusations that already tell you what conclusions to draw.

Take the Kinderhook Plates. Finding William Clayton’s journal entry claiming Joseph Smith translated part of the plates doesn’t establish that Joseph actually produced a fraudulent translation. That requires examining what Clayton knew, the absence of a translation manuscript, and the similarities to Joseph’s earlier Egyptian-language documents.

This is a recurring problem with Letter For My Wife. It Cites authentic historical documents, but that doesn’t make the accusation based on it accurate, especially when the framing and interpretation has been repeated in critical literature for generations.

What About Faulk’s Other Sources?

I compared the historical sources in Letter For My Wife with those in the CES Letter and identified 17 sources used in Letter for my wife that are not cited by Runnells.

None were found in documents discussed in Elder Jensen’s 2009 article, and only one had a connection to the Joseph Smith Papers project.

Faulk’s finished letter drew heavily on existing critical arguments, especially those found in the CES Letter.

The Power of a Personal Letter

The title Letter For My Wife makes the document seem like a sincere husband’s attempt to explain his doubts to the woman he loves, rather than a collection of accusations against the Church. Faulk opens with expressions of love and understanding before overwhelming the reader with hundreds of claims and historical citations, many of which require considerable research to properly evaluate.

He also prepares readers for how they should interpret their feelings. Before presenting any evidence, he suggests that the discomfort they may experience is simply a natural reaction to having their worldview challenged, rather than a possible spiritual warning.

Throughout the letter, Faulk frequently presents historical quotations alongside critical interpretations without providing the full context or reasonable alternative explanations. The combination of an emotional introduction, a large volume of accusations, and seemingly authoritative citations can be persuasive, even when the underlying arguments aren’t actually sound.

When a Historical Source Becomes an Accusation

Faulk’s introduction provides a good example of how he uses legitimate historical quotations to support conclusions that go beyond what the sources actually say.

He quotes Church Historian Elder Steven E. Snow

“My view is that being open about our history solves a whole lot more problems than it creates. We might not have all the answers, but if we are open – and we now have pretty remarkable transparency – then I think in the long run that will serve us well. I think in the past there was a tendency to keep a lot of the records closed or at least not give access to information. But the world has changed in the last generation—with the access to information on the Internet, we can’t continue that pattern; I think we need to continue to be more open.”

But Faulk then interprets those remarks as an admission that Church leaders had deliberately suppressed embarrassing history and were only becoming honest because of the internet.

He also quotes historian D. Michael Quinn’s recollection of a private conversation with President Boyd K. Packer, presenting Quinn’s secondhand account as evidence that Church leaders intentionally concealed historical information. There is no evidence verifying the conversation as Quinn described it.

Sarah Allen examines both examples in her FAIR rebuttal. In each case, Faulk takes a historical statement and uses it to support a broader accusation of dishonesty and concealment. Providing a citation doesn’t make his additional conclusions accurate.

The Ex-Mormon Reddit Community

Faulk’s Reddit History and the Ex-Mormon Community

Sarah Allen documented Faulk’s involvement in the ex-Mormon Reddit community, where his tone was considerably different from the loving husband portrayed in Letter For My Wife. He used the username JeffreyArrrHolland2 to mock Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, created satirical artwork featuring Reddit’s mascot riding a tapir while holding a beer, and referred to his believing wife as a “fingers-in-her-ears TBM (Totally Brainwashed Mormon).”

The ex-Mormon subreddit can be an incredibly hostile and toxic environment. Church leaders are routinely mocked, sacred beliefs are ridiculed, and faithful members are characterized as brainwashed, gullible, or incapable of independent thought. Community culture rewards the harshest accusations and reinforce the assumption that anyone who continues believing must be ignorant or indoctrinated.

The reaction to Faulk’s January 2020 divorce announcement provides a particularly telling example. When he revealed that his wife had never read his letter, commenters immediately attacked her character. Another highly upvoted comment used her refusal to read the letter as evidence that Mormonism was a cult and that believing members had surrendered their ability to think for themselves.

This was the environment in which Faulk participated and promoted his letter. His own mocking comments and derogatory remarks about his wife received praise in the reddit community but stand in sharp contrast to the compassionate presentation and the ultimate love he shares for her in his published document.

Did Thomas Really Want His Wife to Read It?

One detail Sarah Allen documented is that Faulk made statements expressing concern about the possibility of his wife reading the material and still remaining convinced that the Church was true.

That raises an interesting question.

Was his objective really to explain his own change in belief, or was it actually to persuade her to reach the same conclusion?

There’s a difference between explaining why you’ve lost your faith and trying to convince someone else to abandon theirs. That distinction becomes especially interesting in light of Faulk’s January 7, 2020 Reddit announcement. He revealed that he and his wife were divorcing after almost twenty years together, describing their relationship as nearly ideal until he told her in October 2013 that he was questioning his faith.

He also confirmed that his wife had never read the letter written for her and never intended to.

Think about that.

Faulk may have been sincere when he originally wrote the letter. But what began as an explanation of his personal doubts had become a widely circulated document intended to challenge the faith of other Latter-day Saints, a purpose that continued long after Faulk abandoned the project.

Thomas Walks Away From the Project

In his January 2020 Reddit announcement, Faulk explained that after years of researching Church history, publishing his letter, and participating in ex-Mormon discussions, he was stepping away from both Mormonism and ex-Mormonism to focus on rebuilding his life.

By then, volunteers had already produced an audiobook of the letter and in September 2019, a podcast version was created.

But, the man who had written Letter For My Wife was walking away from the very religious controversy he had spent years promoting. But the website, audiobook, and podcast remained, and another exMormon took over the Letter For My Wife Brand.

The Friend Who Took Over

After Faulk walked away from the project in 2020, another former member of the Church took over maintaining the website. The site continued distributing the PDF and audiobook, but also featured a prominent donation button.

It seems as if the friend wanted to follow the CES Letter Model and make money off the business of creating doubt. After publishing the CES Letter in 2013, Jeremy Runnells began accepting donations, and selling printed copies. For a time he attempted to go all in on the CES Letter business and claimed to make as much as $6,000 in a single month.

There’s clearly an audience willing to financially support material criticizing the Church. That creates a potential financial incentive to keep producing and distributing accusations

Letter For My Wife operated on a smaller scale, but apparently the donations weren’t significant enough to pay off because after six years of operation the friend stopped paying for the hosting of the website.

The Website Goes Offline in 2026

In May 2026, LetterForMyWife.com stopped working.

On August 29, 2026, a Reddit commenter identifying himself as Thomas Faulk explained that he had turned over the website’s passwords and payment responsibilities to an ex-Mormon friend after losing interest in the project. According to this account, the friend maintained the site for several years before deciding to stop paying for hosting.

Interestingly, the same commenter claimed he had written the entire letter before 2010. That conflicts with the documented development of the letter, particularly the material incorporated from the CES Letter, which wasn’t published until 2013.

By September 2026, another former member announced that he had reconstructed the website using archived material.

So even after Faulk abandoned the project, and the friend who took it over stopped maintaining the website, other former members continued preserving and distributing the letter even without financial incentive.

The document written for a wife who never read it was now being maintained and promoted by strangers, years after its author had walked away.

But Why Keep the Letter Alive and Active?

But why? Why are former members so passionate about preserving and distributing documents like Letter For My Wife, even after so many of their claims have been challenged or debunked?

Perhaps these documents help reassure people that their decision to leave the Church was justified. They are something they can have faith in. Perhaps it is simply the work of the adversary doing what he can to lead people away from the family and destroy families.

Whatever the motivations, the accusations used in documents like Letter for My Wife continue circulating, and influencing people who may not know that there is another side of the narrative and will never take the time to investigate the original sources.

That’s why I believe it’s important to provide the other side of the story. Not just quotations taken from historical documents, but the full context, the actual evidence, and the reasonable explanations that anti Mormon arguments leave out. The way a story is told can completely change how someone understands it. When historical events are presented through a misleading narrative, they can create unnecessary doubt and cause people to lose faith in the restored Church of Jesus Christ, and in God altogether.

I believe faith in God is worth defending. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the plan of Salvation provides purpose, happiness, hope, and greater satisfaction with life. It strengthens marriages, families, and communities, and provides support through life’s difficulties. These are things I believe are worth preserving, especially when someone’s faith is being challenged by inaccurate or incomplete information.

For me, this is also very personal. I’ve watched the pain that losing faith has caused my wife, me, and our entire family. I believe much of that pain could have been avoided if the historical information had been presented accurately, with the proper context and a fair examination of the evidence.

I firmly believe the historical evidence supporting the Restoration is far stronger than the accusations made against it. We have firsthand accounts from people who personally knew Joseph Smith, witnessed the events of the Restoration, handled the gold plates, and testified of their experiences, even when doing so came at great personal cost. These are not simply stories invented generations later. They are accounts from people who were actually there.

In contrast, so many of the accusations against Joseph Smith rely on secondhand rumors, statements made decades after the events, and testimony from people with questionable credibility or documented dishonesty. Yet critics frequently treat these accusations as established facts while dismissing the firsthand witnesses who support the Restoration.

I reject the idea that these sources deserve equal credibility simply because they appear in historical records. A hostile newspaper accusation is not equivalent to firsthand testimony. A rumor repeated decades later does not outweigh the consistent accounts of contemporary accounts of dozens actual witnesses. And the fact that something was published in the 1800s does not make it true.

Having examined the evidence, and scene the dishonest tactics used by the opposition, I am more convinced than ever that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that the Restoration is real. Studying the historical record and the evidence behind the anti-Mormon accounts has strengthened my testimony.

That’s why I’ve invested months researching Letter For My Wife, examining the accusations, and identifying the misleading interpretations, omitted details, and manipulative framing throughout the document. I want people to have easy access to the evidence that wasn’t provided when they first encountered these claims.

I don’t know if my wife will ever believe again. But if the research I’ve done can help even one person see the facts more clearly and avoid losing their faith over misleading historical claims, then every hour I’ve spent on this project will have been worth it.

I believe Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I believe the Book of Mormon is an authentic ancient record, and I believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Christ’s restored Church. Jesus Christ is our Savior. His power is real, and He will come again.

Thanks for listening. And I hope that by examining the evidence carefully, you’ll have a better understanding of the truth in regards to the claims made by Letter For My Wife.

I’m Alma the Defender.

Thanks for listening to Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence.

Introduction 01: What is Letter For My Wife? Who is Thomas Faulk