M. David Huston lives and works in the Washington DC metro area. He is a husband and father of four who has previously written for poetry, international affairs, and LDS-related publications.

Hymn number 272 in the LDS hymn book poses one of the most important questions around: “Oh say, what is truth?” Interestingly, the song never answers the question it poses—it describes truth (a gem, a prize, the first and last) but never offers a definition for the term. The Doctrine and Covenants calls truth the “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come (D&C 93:24), which (if I’m honest) isn’t much help either given our limited understanding of the past and the future (and, really, of the present).  And since I’m not a philosopher by training, I’m not well equipped to survey the thousands of years of thinking on the subject (though Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers a fabulous starting point).[1]

All that to say, the phrase “I know the church is true”—which is ubiquitous in most LDS Wards and Stakes and is common fare in General Conference addresses—is phrase I’ve always struggled to understand. You see, common usage of the term “truth” seems to be tied to claims/statements. Generally speaking, what most people seem to mean when they say a thing is “true” is that a given claim/statement aligns with facts on the ground (or in heaven!).  Yet “the church” is not a claim/statement; church is a social group. How can a social group be “true”?