We love hearing from our readers and feel a sense of responsibility to serve each of you well. If you have questions or comments, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at contact@PublicSquareMag.org. It’s the easiest, most direct way to speak to our editors.

We are Growing a Community

In 2024 Public Square has begun to blossom beyond our articles. We launched our book club and have featured books from some preeminent Latter-day Saint voices. This book club has given our readers the opportunity to better dialogue and to grow our mission of elevating Latter-day Saint voices. Those voices are no longer just found on our editorial pages but in the social media conversations around them.

As our community has grown we’ve had an increased need for approaching moderation. And we’ve received some criticism from those who suggest that we’ve moderated too lightly, allowing content that is critical and factually inaccurate to remain on our pages. For example, after helping to break a major story that the origins of the CES letter, an influential anti-Mormon document, had been substantially misrepresented by its author, some commented on our stories that we were motivated to break this story because the accusations in the letter had never been answered. Though this claim is inaccurate—the substance of the CES letter has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked—we allowed these claims to stand on our pages. We believe that as our communities have grown, we benefit from the opportunity to recognize and confront these kinds of claims rather than simply moderate them away.

We hope that as we continue to grow, we will be better able to maintain this kind of self-sustaining conversation, which doesn’t require the degree of moderation that is sometimes necessary to prevent smaller communities from being co-opted by outside bad actors.

Ecumenicalism

For the second year in a row we participated with a broad coalition of faiths to celebrate Fidelity Month. Fidelity Month is the vision of Robert George, an occasional contributor to Public Square Magazine.

We also sought inspiration from the larger evangelical movement in comparing our own tradition’s approach trajectory to projects they’ve previously embarked on, such as the seeker-sensitive movement or the no-hell movement.

We have also begun a series celebrating the principles taught in The Family Proclamation in preparation for its thirtieth anniversary. These principles continue to serve as a beacon to those across faiths looking for simple articulations of important truths, and we’ve found enthusiasm among our many religious friends for this series.

Politics and Unity

This year was Public Square Magazine’s second presidential election year. We attempted to build on our work in 2020 while applying the lessons we learned then.

We largely tried to hit this goal by publishing editorials that focused on principles to consider leading up to the election rather than candidates. We strived to promote principles such as temperance, respect for democratic norms, and respect for women and families, among others. Our only article about candidates was a reported piece on how different Latter-day Saints are voting and why, not an editorial urging any direction.

We did receive some criticism for our late decision not to publish any editorials for or against candidates, but we ultimately felt that modeling the kind of unity we would need to find quickly in our wards and Sunday School classes was a better path forward.

Major Controversies

Among the largest stories we covered this year was the film Heretic, a film about a madman torturing two sister missionaries by making them listen to his lectures about atheism, in addition to the psychological and physical abuse they endured at his hands. 

We are particularly proud of our reporting on the story. We secured the script more than five months before its release and had our reporters at the premiere to observe the finished film and gauge reactions to it. 

Our comprehensive coverage of the film and its controversies were among our most widely read articles of the year. 

We also followed a slowly breaking story about the Associated Press’ failure to cover The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints according to their journalistic standards. These failures first appeared in 2023 when usually reliable reporter Michael Rezendes began including sloppy, slapdash conclusions in his articles about the Church. But these failures really revealed themselves in an April article about the subjects church leaders didn’t discuss in the recent General Conference.

They followed this up with an error-ridden article about new temples the Church is working to build in Las Vegas and the Dallas metro area. Despite these mistakes being plain, factual, and repeatedly brought to the attention of AP editors, the article still remains uncorrected.

We expect that this story will continue to develop in 2025.

Perhaps our most controversial story of this year concerned religious garments. The social media reaction to this story was broad and cut in many different directions. We are proud of our authors who helped articulate their faith and decisions, and we are glad that we are able to provide them with an alternative platform since they have been cut out of other coverage on this issue. We are also pleased with how our new moderation approaches have allowed those conversations to flourish on our social media.

Looking Forward

As Public Square Magazine looks forward to its sixth year, we remain committed to fostering a vibrant, respectful, and engaging community for our readers. Our focus will add collaborative projects that amplify meaningful dialogue, strengthen shared values, and build bridges of understanding. We are especially excited to expand our efforts in accessibility, ensuring that our content reaches broader audiences while maintaining the depth and integrity our readers value. From further refining our book club and community initiatives to deepening our partnerships with other contributors, we aim to make our platform even more impactful.

Faithful civil discourse remains at the heart of our mission. In a time of polarization and division, we will continue to strive to model and encourage conversations rooted in mutual respect, curiosity, and a commitment to truth. Inspired by prophetic counsel and guided by enduring principles, we hope to continue creating a space where the complexity of modern issues can be met with compassion and clarity. Thank you for being part of our journey. Here’s to another year of growth and meaningful engagement!

The post Our Year in Review: When Moderation Sparks the Loudest Debate appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

This year saw a transition in how Public Square interacts with its readers and critics. Our contact@PublicSquareMag.org email is available and provides a direct way to contact our editors. But with the policy transitions on X, formerly Twitter, our editors are no longer present on the platform. As a result, we needed to find other means to provide public accountability.

As part of this new approach, we hope to publish an annual report of the feedback we’ve received, the mistakes we’ve made, and how well we’ve fulfilled our mission.

Over the past years, Public Square Magazine has developed a reputation for editorial content that doesn’t oversimplify and looks at matters of importance from the perspective of Latter-day Saints. We are proud of the work we’ve done to continue to advance our mission of amplifying voices of faith and helping to improve the quality of our dialogue.

We’ve continued this path in 2023. We published several articles talking about how to reduce the passion of the culture war, pursue peace, and interact with one another in more meaningful ways. We also ran a long series on an ascendant religious movement in the United States and how understanding it as a religious movement could have a powerful effect in reducing the acrimony in our contemporary public discourse. 

In addition, we’ve continued to heed the call of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to “lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice.” In particular, continuing to argue against white nationalism. We worked with the Archdiocese of Salt Lake City in an interfaith effort this year to publish an article to increase understanding of Catholic lent. And we participated with a broad coalition of faiths in celebrating the first annual Fidelity Month. 

We’ve continued our tradition of publishing articles from top writers, including Daniel Akst, Robert P. George, and Melody Warnick. 

Our coverage that received the most attention this year involved the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ. We’ve been very proud of our ability to provide additional insights into these stories from our unique perspective as Latter-day Saints. In addition, the experts who weighed in for us were able to provide context about these financial issues missing from almost all other coverage. We also were the first to publish the most robust research to date about sexual abuse rates in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compared to other faiths—answering important questions that have been at the forefront of public discourse about the Church in recent years. 

This has also been a year of growth for our content. We launched our Public Square Media project, helping to highlight some of the best podcasts in our space. We began publishing original cartoons by talented artist Nathan Shumate. And began to receive screeners of films to review. We launched a new version of our website, and while the rollout wasn’t as smooth as we had hoped, the new design should better meet our needs for the next several years.

Our work this year was certainly not immune from criticism. Public Square Bulletin, a short-form blog associated with the magazine, shared some research we believed would interest our readers. We were later informed that while the research itself was not about race or pornography in any way, those who did the research had a history closely tied to white supremacist movements and the legalization of child pornography. As a result, we rescinded the article and left an editor’s note in its place. 

And while we are proud of the interfaith publications we did this year, there were fewer than in years past, a trend we hope to reverse next year.

One of our most persistent criticisms is our background as members of the Church of Jesus Christ. We always find it amusing when we are criticized for secretly being Latter-day Saints, and their evidence is a link to our “About” page. We continue to believe that being Latter-day Saints should not disqualify us from participating in the public square.

We also faced much criticism for an article about Tim Ballard, a public figure who has faced many varied accusations. Though our article called for caution and patience as accusations and evidence continued to come forth, it was primarily about how those who were fond of Ballard could process his public fall from grace. Many accused us of being credulous regarding the accusations and not being sufficiently skeptical of the sources. However, we believe time has validated our editorial work on the article.

We continue, however, to take such feedback seriously as we strive to make the best editorial decisions. 

In 2024 we look forward to continuing our mission of providing sober, thoughtful, fact-based editorials on the issues of most importance. As it’s a presidential election year, we expect the rhetoric to be heightened, and while we certainly intend to engage, we hope always to be a source that helps lower the temperature as we seek to continue to try to build a better nation and world.

The post A Year in The Public Square: Accountability to Our Readers appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

A new report from the Associated Press critically explores guidelines in how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints handles abuse accusations, looking particularly at a current case in Arizona. What follows is a Q&A of some of the questions that have come up since the release of the report. 

What has newly been revealed in this report?

The case at the center of the new report has had its details known for some time. What is new is that Associated Press reporters gained access to records in another case that discusses the Church’s abuse helpline. Those records shine new light on this case.

Are the documents the AP used in this report available to confirm their reporting?

They are not. The documents are sealed and were presumably leaked to the reporters involved. The leaker is currently unknown, and the documents are not available for independent verification. Amidst 12,000 pages, there is undoubtedly a great deal of context and detail that is being missed. 

What’s the purpose of the Church’s abuse helpline?

The Church’s abuse helpline is there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to assist volunteer leaders in responding appropriately when they learn about cases of abuse. Leaders are encouraged to “call the helpline about every situation in which a person may have been abused—or is at risk of being abused.” The stated aims are to: 

• Assist victims and help protect them from further abuse.
• Help protect potential victims.
• Comply with legal requirements for reporting abuse.

Is it true that the helpline exists primarily to prevent bishops from calling the police and somehow protect the church?

No. Clergy are often instructed by the helpline to call law enforcement. But laws in this area are complicated and vary from country to country and state to state, which means a single policy can’t apply to all bishops, and they will need individualized advice.

To suggest the primary aim is to help avoid liability is a transparently cynical framing of the Church trying to sincerely obey the law in the states and countries where they operate. By all honest measures, the Church’s primary concern is helping victims of abuse.  To reiterate, the current guidelines state, “When abuse occurs, the first and immediate responsibility of Church leaders is to help those who have been abused and to protect vulnerable persons from future abuse.”

How do mandatory reporter laws differ across locations?

There are basically three classes of laws on mandatory reporting of child abuse for clergy. 1) Clergy are required to report with no exceptions; 2) Clergy are required to report, but there are religious exceptions; 3) Clergy are required to not break clergy-penitent privilege.

Laws of type one and three are mutually exclusive. If the Church were to adopt a single policy,  some bishops in some locations would be breaking the law.

Wait, in some places, it’s illegal to report child abuse?

Yes, if you’re clergy. In fact, the Church was recently involved in a lawsuit in Oregon from the wife of a man whose bishop reported his sexual abuse of children to authorities.

Which type of law did Arizona have, where the primary case in the report took place?

Arizona had a type two law. Clergy are required to report abuse unless maintaining confidence is “reasonable and necessary” under the beliefs of the faith.

Outside legal concerns, isn’t reporting abuse the obvious ethical choice?

Reporting abuse in any individual case will most often be best for the child involved. But the answer may not be as clear-cut as some think. There may be some inadvertent consequences of eliminating all prohibitions on reporting. For instance, according to one clinical psychologist, “As the boundaries of confidentiality decrease, people who need help are less likely to seek it out. Instead, they will suffer along in silence and isolation.”

Confessing instances of abuse to a clergy member can often set abusers on the path to deep changes in their behavior. Whereas if they don’t go to see a clergy member because they’re worried about being reported, their abuse will continue without anyone knowing. 

Clearly, the victims need to be our top priority. But there are many victims. And some of those victims will only be helped if their abuser comes forward. And those abusers might only come forward if they trust clergy confidentiality. Some recent research suggests that mandatory reporting laws don’t always work and, in fact, can make the problem worse. A reasonable argument can be made that, in the aggregate, maintaining some degree of clergy confidentiality helps reduce child abuse over the long term.

Are there other reasons for clergy sometimes not to report abuse?

Two years ago, Queensland adopted a law that would require Catholic priests to break the seal of confession in some instances. Carl Herstein, a Michigan-based lawyer and practicing Catholic, argued at the time that the law was a serious violation of religious freedom and that, on a practical level, the law would ultimately backfire. 

In the two years since the law was passed, most crimes went down in Australia, but domestic violence and sexual abuse rates began to increase at a higher rate and continue to rise.

Did The Church of Jesus Christ attempt to conceal the abuse in this case?

Not by any reasonable definition of the word. The bishop encouraged both the perpetrator and his wife to report the abuse. The Church chose to maintain clergy confidentiality in this case but took no proactive steps to hide it from anyone else and, in fact, encouraged reports to be made. 

While some might equate not directly reporting themselves to “burying” the abuse, there is good reason to believe, once again, that if abusers could not trust clergy to maintain confidence, many more cases of abuse would remain entirely buried—not just from the police, but from anyone who could help.

Did the Church support the abuser?

In some ways, yes—but only similar to the way they support all members. This man’s bishop certainly helped him try to change his behavior. The bishop also invited the wife in to try and help address the serious problem. The Church offered to help get them counseling. But in the end, when no change was made, the Church excommunicated him in 2013.

Does sexual abuse occur more among the Church of Jesus Christ than the public at large?

There is no evidence of that, with the available evidence to the contrary. As Jana Riess noted, “I have not seen any credible evidence that the incidence of sexual abuse is higher in Latter-day Saint communities than anywhere else. I’ve certainly seen allegations to that effect.”

According to documents leaked in 2018, the rate of abuse among missionaries and church leaders is considerably lower than those found among general demographics. In one month, out of 170,000 mission presidents, stake presidents, missionaries, and bishops, only seven were accused of abuse. This rate suggests that if all the accusations were accurate, church leaders and missionaries commit sexual abuse at about 1/66th the frequency of men in the same age groups. 

Recently Jennifer Roach, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, now working as a licensed clinical therapist, wrote for Public Square Magazine about ways the Church of Jesus Christ has developed policies that prevent the kind of abuse she experienced.

How does the Church of Jesus Christ compare with other faith communities when it comes to abuse?  

While there have been isolated incidents of abuse, The Church of Jesus Christ is now the largest denomination in the United States to have not been implicated in a systemic sexual abuse scandal.

Does the helpline ever help the abused?

Absolutely. Often, the helpline will ensure that bishops or stake presidents move forward in reporting directly to authorities. The Church confirms that in Arizona alone, this has happened hundreds of times. The helpline also alerts bishops about resources available to them to support the families.

Why did the bishops appear to stand idly by while the abuse continued?

They didn’t. First, they provided counseling for the family—while encouraging them to report the abuse. They also eventually excommunicated the abuser, the most serious ecclesiastical step they could take to convince the man that his behavior must stop. 

Did the AP miss anything in their article?  

The AP report suggests in several places that the Church engaged in an effort to conceal the abuse. There has been no evidence of any effort to cover up. What the bishops were advised to do was maintain clergy-penitent privilege in this case according to Arizona law. The article also fails to mention that bishops are volunteer leaders, which necessitates the kind of professional advice the helpline provides.

In addition, the article regularly mentions seven years of abuse, without clarifying that the abuser was only a member of the Church for three of those years and then was kicked out of the Church likely because of the abuse. And the article also implies the Church’s current policy is to discourage bishops from disclosing abuse to local authorities. 

Has the Church made mistakes in this or other cases? 

The Church is not perfect in this area. By making decisions on a case-by-case basis, there will always likely be cases where the Church errs on one side or the other on this issue—both in supporting members and in leader behavior. A recent case of an Elder’s Quorum president with a past of sexual abuse comes to mind. And there were clearly some tragic errors made in this case as well.

There are conflicting reports—some reports say that the Church hotline said “don’t report it” and others sources say “it’s optional to report it.” Either way, the two bishops involved clearly didn’t do what the Church Handbook said, which is most importantly to stop the abuse. No doubt, both former bishops—along with senior leaders—feel deep sorrow that more was not done in these two cases to ensure the children were safe. 

In the end, does the helpline prevent or cause more harm?

There’s no way to quantify a question like this. But it seems likely that balancing competing concerns in each individual case is likely to produce better results than a blanket policy that has to be instituted by volunteers.

Research shows that volunteers who are also mandatory reporters create many of the problems that make these laws ineffective. Professionals, like the therapists and lawyers who staff the helpline, often make better determinations of when to report.

Roach also explains, “Churches who operate as independent entities get no oversight. They mess this stuff up far worse than groups like The Church of Jesus Christ that are willing to take consultation outside of the immediate local context. In a closed system, the temptation to bow to strong personalities is just too strong—and many of the independent churches without oversight are so personality-driven that this is destined to happen.”

The post Are Publicized Abuse Cases Exceptional or Representative of Our Faith? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.