Taylor Frankie Paul’s distress exposes the limits of a cultural script that mistakes religious rebellion for freedom.
The choice between pride and shame is a false binary—transcending both enables a growth mindset more conducive to durable Christian discipleship.
It’s understandable why we take for granted that our national conversations about all sorts of things are orienting us towards the truth of the matter. But what if they’re not?
Despite the reality of overwhelmingly peaceful Latter-day Saints, an odd cultural relic continues to portray members of the Church of Jesus Christ as violent. This is the main thesis in the recent series Under the Banner of Heaven. Riding the wave, a new film Sinner v. Saint has just been announced, which has a Latter-day Saint main character and plenty of violence. In perhaps a welcome relief, this story doesn’t portray the Latter-day Saints as the perpetrators of violence, but rather as the victims. The story recounts the true story of a missionary who was kidnapped, tied up, and repeatedly raped before escaping. You might expect this story to be a somber account of the vestiges of anti-religious fervor, or the marginalization of Latter-day Saints in our popular imagination painting us as little more than pawns to be used. But who are we kidding? The director, Tim Kirby has almost exclusively worked in comedies such as Fleabag, Veep, and Brockmire. Kirby describes the story as featuring “zany twists” and “quirky characters.” And ultimately he says the story is all about “obsessive first love.”
The Christian Virtue approach emphasizes moral development and social relationships in overcoming challenges related to compulsive pornography use.
Lutheran demographer Lyman Stone wrote for the Institute of Family Studies today a fascinating article about fertility rates between religious groups. His main takeaway is that the religious have much higher fertility rates: But in the back half of his article, he discusses if the fertility rate of different religious groups is high enough to maintain stability. While Stone lumps Latter-day Saints in with many other groups, so doesn’t dig into his numbers in this article, but his article suggests that if current trends remain, Latter-day Saints should expect to see decreases between 10%-40%.
