“We have discovered a great many very flagrant errors in doctrine,” a panicked William Seegmiller, president of the Brazilian Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote to the governing First Presidency in July of 1943. In the throes of the Second World War, missionaries anticipating their eventual evacuation from Brazil had begun to study the seldomly-used Portuguese translation of the Book of Mormon. To their horror, they noticed numerous instances of “false doctrine” that taught “the wrong conception of Deity and the Godhead.” Placing the blame on the alleged translators, a rumored apostate and an unknown native, Seegmiller reported that they had intentionally “injected some Catholic doctrine” into the Book of Mormon.1 This news startled church authorities. In their haste to spread the message of the restored gospel globally, they now feared errors might have crept into their sacred scripture. More concerning, they worried other...

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