Famine in Zion
Chapter 5: Dwindling in Unbelief (part 1)
In response to the concerns raised regarding the decline in scriptural literacy and the shift toward simplified curriculum models, there are many faithful and well-meaning Latter-day Saints who might respond with a sense of reassurance: If things were really going wrong, the Lord would intervene. This sentiment, though grounded in faith, reflects a dangerous form of theological presumption. It reveals a subtle yet critical misunderstanding of the role of divine stewardship and of the patterns by which the Lord operates among his covenant people.
The Restoration affirms that God has called the Saints not to passive belief, but to active stewardship over the revealed word, sacred ordinances, and the covenants of the gospel. Christ himself taught explicitly on the weight of such stewardship through parables—the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30) and the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1–13) both emphasize personal accountability in spiritual preparation and fidelity to entrusted truth. Likewise, his warning that “If the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing” (Matthew 5:13) is a direct indictment of covenant holders who abandon their distinctive mission and cease to act as preserving agents in a decaying world.
These teachings underscore a vital theological reality that God does not intervene to preserve what His people have been commissioned to safeguard. The scriptures are replete with examples in which divine truth was lost, corrupted, or neglected, not because God failed, but because His stewards did. The Restoration was itself necessitated by such apostasy.
One of the most striking biblical examples of this dynamic is found in the account of King Josiah’s reforms. In 2 Kings 22, during temple renovations in the seventh century BCE, the high priest Hilkiah discovered “the book of the law”—most scholars interpret this as an early form of Deuteronomy—that had been lost or forgotten for generations. When it was read aloud to Josiah, he tore his garments in grief, realizing that Israel had been living in deep violation of God’s commandments. The discovery prompted sweeping national repentance, covenant renewal, and reformation. But the tragedy lies in the premise—how could such a central text have been lost in the very house of the Lord?
The loss of scripture within a covenant community is not a theoretical danger. It has happened. And it happened not in Babylon or Egypt, but in the temple precincts of Jerusalem, among the priests, the rulers, and the chosen people.
The Book of Mormon reinforces this pattern. The people of Zarahemla, identified as descendants of Mulek, are explicitly described as having lost their scriptural records and, as a consequence, their cultural memory, religious identity, and linguistic clarity (Omni 1:17). Mosiah’s discovery of these people, and the subsequent teaching of the Nephite language and gospel to them, serves as a sobering cautionary tale that when scripture is lost, identity collapses, and apostasy sets in silently but swiftly.
Apostasy, then, is not something that occurs only “out there.” It is not reserved for secular society or hostile nations. It occurs within the house of Israel. To assume that because the priesthood remains on the earth, we are somehow immune from communal spiritual decline is, at best, naive, and at worst, spiritually arrogant. The priesthood authority may indeed remain unrevoked in this final dispensation, but the fruits of that priesthood (doctrinal clarity, revelatory power, scriptural fidelity, etc.) are not guaranteed without active stewardship.
The Book of Mormon illustrates that priesthood legitimacy does not automatically equate to righteousness. For one example, the textual and historical breadcrumbs suggest that the priests of King Noah may have originally inherited legitimate priesthood authority through the line of Nephite kings and religious offices. Yet even with that authority, they distorted the scriptures, justified sin, and ultimately led a generation into apostasy (Mosiah 11–17). Their descent was not due to external persecution or theological assault from outsiders, but due to internal corruption, complacency, and scriptural ignorance.
This is the warning we must heed. The covenant community is always at risk of forgetting its charge, not through overt rebellion, but through a “dwindling.” When scriptural study is reduced, when doctrinal depth is traded for sentimentality, and when spiritual stewardship is presumed rather than practiced, apostasy does not erupt. It simply seeps in.
To suggest that the Lord would unilaterally prevent such a decline is to abdicate responsibility under the guise of faith. God does not forcibly preserve what He has asked His people to protect. If we do not cherish the word, we risk repeating the sorrowful pattern of Josiah’s generation—rediscovering, too late, what was once entrusted to our care.
It is significant that within the sacred context of the modern temple endowment, arguably the most theologically concentrated and symbolically rich ordinance in contemporary Latter-day Saint practice, participants covenant to uphold the law of the gospel as found in the holy scriptures and are specifically charged to avoid “lightmindedness.” This term, while rarely defined in contemporary discourse, carries considerable spiritual weight. It suggests a disposition of casualness toward sacred things, a failure to appreciate the gravity of covenantal truth, and a tendency to substitute ease for earnestness.
In this light, the widespread simplification of gospel instruction and curriculum in recent decades deserves careful scrutiny. The Correlation movement brought undeniable administrative benefits and enabled the global Church to operate with a shared instructional foundation. However, as with any institutional reform, its fruits have included both gains and losses.
One unintended consequence of Correlation, especially as carried forward into the Come, Follow Me era, has been a form of cultural over-homogenization. Gospel discussions, lesson materials, and even testimonies have increasingly gravitated toward emotionally affirming and intellectually unchallenging patterns. Over time, this has cultivated not only theological passivity, but a kind of performative orthodoxy—Saints say the “right” things and feel the “right” emotions, but often struggle to articulate scriptural doctrines, engage with complexity, or sustain a testimony under the pressure of contradiction, nuance, or adversity.
This condition is not merely cultural, but spiritual. Lightmindedness, in a modern context, may not take the form of open mockery or casual irreverence. It may instead appear as chronic superficiality, where the things of God are regularly spoken of, but rarely wrestled with. When difficult doctrines are sidestepped, when sacred texts are cherry-picked for slogans, and when gospel teaching becomes a parade of platitudes rather than a feast of truth, the soul is left undernourished, even if outward participation remains high.
The temple’s inclusion of lightmindedness as a spiritual danger is thus not peripheral, but prophetic. In covenantal worship, God signals that the manner in which we engage with His word matters. When we reduce the gospel to sentiment, when we flatten its narrative into cheerful generalities, we risk more than boredom—we risk estrangement from the revelatory power that scripture is meant to mediate.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a covenant people, entrusted with divine truth. But that stewardship comes with expectation. And the warning embedded in the temple is not purely symbolic. If we treat divine things lightly—if we are content with a culture that prizes correlation over contemplation—we may find that the light we claim to carry is dimming. The covenantal charge is not to preserve familiarity, but to seek depth, reverence, and the transformative power of God’s word.
The ongoing decline of scriptural literacy within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presents a growing concern whose consequences, though not entirely predictable, fall within a historically recognizable spectrum. It is impossible to say with precision how this trend will ultimately unfold. In the best-case scenario, the present crisis could serve as a catalyst for a spiritual awakening or doctrinal reformation, what might be described as a “corrective” movement that calls the Saints back to the scriptures with renewed fervor and covenantal integrity. A middle-ground possibility, perhaps the one most visible in the present moment, is prolonged institutional stagnation—a slow drift toward cultural and theological irrelevance, where core doctrines are retained in name but no longer animated by lived conviction or scriptural depth.
However, the worst-case scenario, and the one that appears most consistent with historical precedent, is that a continued departure from scriptural engagement will lead to widespread disaffection, doctrinal confusion, and internal fracture. History demonstrates with striking consistency that when institutions—religious, philosophical, or political—lose connection to their foundational identities, a collapse or transformation typically follows within three to five generations. Importantly, the initial signs are almost never public crises. They manifest first as internal erosion.
The scriptures themselves are filled with such warnings. Prophets in the Book of Mormon consistently exhort their people to “remember, remember,” precisely because forgetting—especially forgetting God’s word—leads rapidly to apostasy and collapse. This pattern plays out repeatedly in the historical record:
- In ancient Israel, the discovery of the lost book of the law during the reign of Josiah initiated a short-lived spiritual revival, but this was not enough to halt the nation’s downward trajectory. Within a century, the kingdom fell to Babylon.
- The transition from Second Temple Judaism to Rabbinic Judaism took little more than 150 years following the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 CE. That transformation arose from internal spiritual fragmentation as much as it did from external pressure.
- The Great Apostasy, as understood in Restoration thought, began not centuries but decades after the ascension of Christ and death of the apostles. As apostolic authority was lost and scripture neglected, the early Church drifted toward creeds and councils, replacing covenant with hierarchy.
- Even our Restoration cousins in the Community of Christ (formerly RLDS) offer a sobering example—within 80 years of foundational doctrinal detachment from the Book of Mormon, the denomination underwent a theological realignment so extensive that it now identifies with progressive Protestant Christianity more than with Restoration theology.
- The Protestant Reformation itself, sparked by Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517, gave way to doctrinal fragmentation within about 3–4 generations, as sola scriptura ideals were interpreted in increasingly divergent ways without a unifying interpretive tradition.
These patterns consistently affirm that a community’s theological memory is never self-sustaining. It must be preserved through deliberate engagement with scripture, active teaching, and covenant renewal. When this is neglected, the outcome is relatively predictable.
