The LDS Church denied this committee existed for years. Then it admitted the committee tracks members' speech, feeds files to bishops, and — the church says — never judges or punishes anyone itself.
Jess and Hannah trace the Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMC) from its 1985 founding to 2023: the 1992 First Presidency statement confirming it, Doctrine and Covenants 123 as its scriptural citation, Boyd K. Packer's 1993 address naming scholars, feminists, and gay members as threats, the September Six disciplinary councils, Jeffrey R. Holland's on-camera BBC interview, and Lavina Fielding Anderson's excommunication, thirty years attending her ward as a non-member, and the restoration the First Presidency blocked until after her death. The committee was built so no one at the top would ever answer for what happened at the bottom.
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