There’s been something of a storm in on-line LDS groups over the course of the last week, centred on a message from emeritus Seventy Lawrence Corbridge¹. There is a suspicion that Elder Corbridge was responding to the new book by Jeff Strong, Torn, in which Jeff discusses research into why more than 40% of people who were fully active and participating members of the Church twenty years ago have since left the religion.

Elder Corbridge’s contentious statement came in a video produced with Scripture Central, an organisation funded by the LDS Church to the tune of millions of dollars, so there is also the suspicion that his message is at least approved by the Church, although I’m also sure that a great many of the General Authorities of the Church would disagree with him – at least in private².

This is what he said, ‘Darth Vader could be your bishop. The culture could be like Alcatraz and it will not drive you away.’

His underlying premise, which he states later in the video, is that if the Church really is ‘true’, and if it really is the ‘Kingdom of God’, then nothing will drive you away no matter how bad it is.

I get that. If it really is the one and only true Church approved by God and Jesus Christ upon the earth, then it is worth a great deal of sacrifice to support and be a part of. However, there are so many problems with both the premise and the ‘Darth Vader’ statement that it makes a shockingly poor analogy.

Contained within the premise are a few things that are accepted within LDS culture that I don’t think are actually supported by scripture, and I thought it worthwhile having a brief discussion about that.

FIRST, the ‘true’ church and kingdom of God on the earth – if it really is directed personally by Jesus Christ – will absolutely not ever choose Darth Vader to serve as a Bishop. True followers of Christ will never make the congregational culture like Alcatraz. I could stop there, because this really should be self-evident.

Truth provides fruits, and the fruits of Darth Vader and Alcatraz would prove that the truth is absent. Truth leads with love; it doesn’t use the force to squeeze the life out of you and rule with fear. Truth makes you free; it doesn’t lock you up in prison cells with no hope of escape.

It’s undoubtedly the case that the LDS Church has become much more authoritarian over the last few years. The change in the official definition of apostasy to include even disagreement with the leaders of the Church or even with Church policy, with accompanying examples of excommunications taking place for exactly those reasons, are evidence of that. Personally, I see no evidence of Jesus displaying or teaching anything like this in His ministry, but each person will have to make up their own mind about whether this trend is in keeping with truth and the gospel of Christ.

SECOND, the conflation of the ‘Church’ and the ‘Kingdom of God’ isn’t what was taught by Joseph Smith. This is what Joseph taught publicly:

‘The literal kingdom of God, and the church of God are two distinct things. The gifts of prophets, evangelists etc never were designed to govern men in civil matters. The kingdom of God has nothing to do with giving commandments to damn a man spiritually. It only has power to make a man amenable to his fellow man.’³

Joseph is here teaching that the Kingdom of God is one that will rule the world in civil matters, while the Church of God is what governs in spiritual things. So, if you believe the founder of Mormonism, the Church is NOT the Kingdom of God. It never has been and it never will be⁴.

It was Brigham Young who changed this around and began conflating the two. He was pushing Joseph to take the Church into the Rocky Mountains to establish a theocracy before Joseph’s death, but Joseph always refused. This is important. Joseph was adamant that they remain a part of mainstream society and he never changed his mind about that. The LDS Church today has continued with Brigham’s teachings, but it’s not what Joseph Smith taught.

The THIRD and final point I want to make here is about faith. You might think this is tangential to the point, but I believe this is central to the whole argument. Elder Corbridge is essentially stating that if you ‘know the Church is true’, then nothing else matters. Every active Latter-day Saint knows this phrase because it is repeated countlessly every week in church meetings. From the age of four or five, children go to the pulpit on the first Sunday of the month and are taught by their parents to say, ‘I know the Church is true. I know we have a true prophet. I know the Book of Mormon is true.’

I must have heard that phrase hundreds of thousands of times through my life. I’ve said it myself a great many times. But I’ve recently come to believe that the scriptures teach us something different.

In the Book of Mormon, the prophet Alma teaches, ‘… faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things …’ (Alma 32:21, emphasis added)

In a podcast about his book, Torn, that I referenced above, Jeff Strong said something that hit me and has stuck with me. He said, ‘True faith is born when certitude dies.’

I can’t tell you how much I love that statement. There are countless religions on the earth today, where followers say they ‘know’ their faith is ‘true’ with as much conviction as we routinely hear in the LDS church. Often, they ‘know’ their church is the only true church – just like us. We can’t all be right.

But as Alma taught, faith is not knowledge. To know is to not have faith.

That’s not to say there is no evidence for the things you believe. ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ (Hebrews 11:1) But it’s not knowledge. This suggests that if I’m to have true faith, I have to acknowledge some doubt, some uncertainty.

When Jesus was approached by the father who had a son experiencing violent fits, he said, ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.’ (Mark 9:24) This is imperfect belief. The man hoped it was true. He believed enough to make the petition. But he wasn’t certain. And his son was healed. That’s true faith. To believe enough. Enough to make a choice. Enough to plant the seed. (Alma 32)

So if someone says, ‘If you know the Church is the Kingdom of God, you won’t leave even if your Bishop is Darth Vader’, you can be assured that the person making the statement either doesn’t know or is ignoring: 1) the meaning of faith, 2) the difference between the kingdom and church of God, and 3) the fruits that truth always produces. Ignore what that man is saying, because it’s not in harmony with truth and is harmful.

When the religious leaders of Jerusalem became tyrants and were hunting down those who called them out, God told Lehi to leave, not to ‘stay in the old ship Zion’. (See 1 Nephi 1-2) Latter-day Saints should understand this principle better than anyone.

If feel very fortunate that my local Bishop and Stake President are the very opposite of Darth Vader. They are wonderful and truly Christlike men. Whatever your current situation, I hope you can find somewhere the same.

© Copyright Jeffrey Collyer 2026

1. In the LDS hierarchy, below the Apostles sit the Seventy. Some of these men are given these positions for life, but at age 70, they are effectively retired; the term used is that they are made emeritus. Whether through their own choice or from prodding by the Church some of the emeritus Seventy continue to teach publicly. Elder Corbridge has remained very active, especially on the on-line ‘Scripture Central’ platform, an organisation funded by the LDS church. 
2. The fact that Scripture Central isn’t an official part of the Church – despite being funded by them – gives the Church ‘plausible deniability’ over the statement. If this sounds a little too cynical to some members, my apologies.
3. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-18-april-1844/4
4. Note also, that it is the ‘Kingdom’ of God that in prophecy would roll forth and fill the whole world, not the Church