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Allegedly secret LDS Church documents leaked

Posted at 7:48 PM, Sep 22, 2016
and last updated 2016-09-22 22:12:09-04

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn’t confirming the authenticity of thousands of pages of business documents that suddenly showed up on Reddit, but they’re so long and boring it’s hard to imagine someone forged them.

Still, long and boring can reveal interesting information about one of the most influential organizations in Utah.

Documents reveal things like a list of all of the things purchased for newly built LDS Temples, which includes books like the management classic, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", the religious piece "A Marvelous Work and a Wonder" and the more mundane "American Electrician's Handbook."

Another document gives details on what those who are serving as mission presidents should expect when it comes to their housing.

A budget line entry in the documents indicates "Mormon Messages", a social media campaign, was set to cost about $2.5 million over five years.

Several documents used terminology relating to "segments A-D", which is an apparent letter-grade system used to categorize a member's relative commitment to the LDS Church.

The documents have been leaked by a Reddit user posting as "mormondocuments" on various subreddits, including one devoted to atheism and another titled "exmormon". A subreddit is a forum within Reddit dedicated to a particular topic and created and moderated by Reddit users.

That user appeared to offer a glimpse into their motivation for the alleged document leak, as shortly after this article's publication they posted on Reddit with the title: "Fox 13, They're not Secret Anymore. This Information Belongs to the People who Paid for the Church to Become the Corrupt Juggernaut that It Is."

Take a look at what we found interesting in the video above with Max Roth, and let us know on Facebook what you think.