Ex-LDS Church Member Launches 'Mormon Wikileaks' Website
A former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has launched a "Mormon Wikileaks" site with the intention of releasing LDS Church documents to the public to advance transparency.
Ryan McKnight, founder of the website who now identifies as an atheist, launched the website MormonWikiLeaks on Monday.
"Many charitable organizations and other religious institutions operate in a fully transparent manner," states the site's home page. "We feel that an organization that purports to be 'the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth' should operate in the same way."
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In an interview with The Christian Post, McKnight said that while the idea for the site "was born approximately six months ago," interest in a transparency site increased in October when he posted videos on YouTube showing private LDS Church leadership meetings.
"I was bombarded with people, you know, employees of the church that leaked some things to me after that. Nothing that was really newsworthy," said McKnight.
"I really saw that there was a need for people to maintain their anonymity. That was what was holding a lot of people back. So I ramped up efforts, put a team together. We worked hard on it for the last two-and-a-half months and the site we launched on Monday is the result of that."
McKnight also told CP that at present "we haven't actually gotten any documents yet," noting that he was "actively engaged with some potential leakers."
"Since the launch of the website, we don't have anything that's ready to be released," said McKnight, adding that "it's a slow process, the whole thing."
"But I am in contact with several people who have reached out to us since the launch of the website and lines of communication have been opened and we're working on that."
In recent years, the LDS Church has engaged in efforts to become more transparent about its history, including some of the controversial practices of its founder, Joseph Smith.
For example, in 2014 the LDS Church published an essay acknowledging that one of Smith's wives, Helen Mar Kimball, was under-aged at the time of their marriage.
"The essay posted this week on the church's website marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based religion has officially acknowledged those facts, though it also has not denied them," reported The Associated Press at the time.
"The new article about Smith's wives during the 1830s and 1840s in Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo, Illinois, comes about 10 months after the LDS Church acknowledged polygamy was widely practiced among its members in the late 19th century."
The Christian Post reached out to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, however, a church spokesperson declined to provide comment on this story.
