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"Is the church still true?"

No. It never was and it never will be. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can't be "true." On the other hand, it can't be "false," either. Whatever else one might say about the LDS Church, it's obvious that we're talking about a "thing," a "noun." Nouns can't be "true" or "false," except in terms of authenticity. We can speak of whether this is a "true" Ming vase or "true" key lime pie, but it's incoherent gibberish to otherwise state, "This pie is true" or "That vase is true."

In fact, the use of "true" in phrases like "true friend" and "true" love has been called meaningless, redundant and rhetorical. I prefer to think of it as emphatic. If you take the word out of a typical sentence using it, there's no change in denotation but a detectable shift in connotation. "He is a true friend" makes just as much sense if you say, "He is a friend," except that "true friend" implies the existence of "false friends," in which case, the speaker isn't simply making a statement as making a comparison. He or she is emphasizing the truth of the statement and perhaps emphasizing the degree to which the connection is valid. In the Gospels, Jesus does something like this when he begins a sentence with, "Verily, verily," that generation's version of "truly, truly" or "I swear, 'X is true.'"

But even this use of the term doesn't quite fit when speaking about the church. A statement like, "The Church is true" lacks the coherence of the statement, "This is the one 'true' church of Jesus Christ." At least in the latter case, it's clear that the person uttering the statement is trying to distinguish the LDS Church from all other churches - in effect arguing that the LDS Church is the only authentic "Church of Jesus Christ," making all others counterfeits or amateur jobs.

But if "The Church is true" is the same as "This is the one true church of Jesus Christ," one wonders why people don't simply drop the former and adopt the latter. Maybe it's because of how politically incorrect it is to announce that your church is the only "true" church. It's possible that all those people who say such things are simply hiding their full intent (an ironically shady thing to do when speaking of "truth") - so that "The Church is true" is shorthand for that other, obnoxiously dismissive, narcissistic and dominionist statement.

I don't think so. Skepticism is one thing. Cynicism is quite another. I'm not so jaded as to think that all those people cheerfully exclaiming that "The Church is true" are like right-wing Catholics who think Protestants are going to burn in Hell - or that their ideas, because they're so obviously true, should be legislated and shoved down the throats of everybody else.

Experience tells me that when people bear their testimony, they're sharing a connection. Many of them are beaming, not so much with pride as joy, that something taught to them actually panned out. Some of them are almost beside themselves with emotion, most of it positive and full of love.

What they really mean is THE GOSPEL is true.

True to form, you can only drink a liquid, you can only say a word, you can only sing a song and the only things that can be "true" or "false" are statements, descriptions and what logicians refer to as "propositions."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a legal entity, a non-profit corporation that owns and controls real and intellectual property (with Intellectual Reserve named as the owner of the latter, probably to keep the Church's name out of litigation, where possible). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cannot be "true" or "false" because it isn't a proposition. It can only be "true" or "false" in the sense of qualifying as part of a larger class.

The Gospel, on the other hand, is a cluster of interrelated beliefs. While the term gets bounced around a lot, it's ironic to find no precise definition of what actually constitutes "the Gospel." One person's "Gospel" is another person's garbage, nor is it just an issue of authority (some General Authority's talk versus some passage of canonized scripture). There are beliefs held sacred and beyond doubt by devout and prominent members of the LDS Church, including GAs at the highest levels, but which may not be "Gospel" because they're not required of every member. The belief in a Heavenly Mother, for example, is not "Gospel doctrine," in part because the revelatory basis for such a belief is sketchy but also because it's not required of new members.

Quite often, when people say, "The Church is true," what they're really saying is, "The Gospel is true." Even then, what they mean by "the Gospel" is a loosely overlapping assortment of beliefs that a consensus of Latter-day Saints consider good doctrine. In fact, most of the time I've heard it, "The Church is true" has been more of a Mormon motto, a rallying cry, an indication that some part of the belief system has been found to be true.

Every now and then, you'll hear a discerning member say, with prudence and care, that "tithing is true" or "prayer is true." By that, they mean, "the principle of tithing (or of prayer) is true." When people specify a principle, belief or teaching, they are almost always saying that they've acquired a testimony of its truthfulness.

When people just say, "The Gospel is true," or "The Church is true," they're making a much more generalized statement but one that's most likely based on a set of principles they've found to work in their lives.

Mok wrote:When people just say, "The Gospel is true," or "The Church is true," they're making a much more generalized statement but one that's most likely based on a set of principles they've found to work in their lives.