Download Print-Friendly Version

Canada just dodged a religious freedom bullet, at least temporarily.

My decision to move to Canada from Brazil to pursue a Master of Laws and continue my legal career was influenced by the fact that Canada both respects individual freedoms and provides a strong social safety net.

But that defining balance was recently challenged by Canada’s Bill C-9, the “Combatting Hate Act.” The proposed federal legislation was presented in response to purported rising intolerance, including a rise in reported hate crimes, ongoing hostility online, and social polarization. 

Bill C-9 was recently put on hold after much public outcry against it. On its face, the bill sounds like a good thing. But its mechanics would have jeopardized freedom of expression and freedom of religion in significant ways.

What Bill C-9 Would Have Done to Religious Expression

Bill C-9 would have altered Canada’s Criminal Code relating to hate-motivated behavior and intimidation, including by adding new criminal offenses. While these measures are presented as protective—aimed at preventing threats before they escalate—the broad scope of the offenses raises concerns that ordinarily lawful speech or protest could unintentionally become unlawful. Some of the most concerning provisions of the bill are as follows.

The law also would have removed the “good faith” religious defense in Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which is particularly concerning. This defense previously allowed individuals to express views based on religious texts without fear of prosecution, provided they acted sincerely. Removing it risks placing the state in the position of judging theology as hateful. This is not about protecting extremists; it is about maintaining constitutional space for conscience and preventing the inadvertent criminalization of sincere belief.

Further, the law would also have enhanced penalties for existing offenses if those offenses were motivated by hatred against protected grounds such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity. The motivation of the speaker would be determined not by the speaker, but by the listener’s reaction—a switch from an objective legal standard to a subjective one. Fear is personal and variable, so under the new law, the most sensitive observer could determine the legality of speech.

By narrowing what is lawful speech and making a listener’s subjective reaction to speech legally significant, Bill C-9 creates legal uncertainty for individuals expressing sincere beliefs grounded in religious conscience. The law could pressure people to self-censor, not because their actions are harmful, but because their words or presence might be interpreted as intimidating to listeners who disagree with them, subjecting them to the criminal law’s reach. Ordinary expressions of faith, such as reading from scripture or teaching traditional views on sexuality, family, or moral guidance, could potentially be interpreted as hateful under the bill, creating uncertainty for individuals trying to sincerely live according to their religious beliefs. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, teaching the Family Proclamation could potentially be interpreted as hateful under the proposed law. While such prosecution is unlikely, the mere possibility creates a concerning sense of legal uncertainty for Latter-day Saints and others trying to express their faith.

The consequences extend beyond religious communities. Labor groups have warned that picket lines or protests could be affected if someone claims to feel intimidated. When law measures emotion rather than action, criminal behavior becomes unpredictable. These concerns with Bill C-9 are about protecting sincere expression rather than defending harmful speech.

Context for the Bill

Some context may help explain why Canada would propose Bill C-9. The province of Quebec has a strong secular tradition inherited from France known as laïcité, which prioritizes strict separation between religion and state in public life. This worldview influences Canadian debates on freedom of religion and expression. Although Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees fundamental rights, including freedom of expression and religion, the French–Quebec view holds that these rights should be significantly limited in the public square, allowing secularism to prevail.

While these numbers provide context for why the government frames Bill C-9 as necessary, statistics alone do not determine how the law is debated or applied. The way the bill is named and discussed can influence public perception, shaping the conversation around hate and safety before questions about its scope, limits, and impact on fundamental freedoms are even considered. In this sense, the political framing of the legislation plays a role almost as significant as the underlying data.

When legislation is presented in a way that equates questioning its scope with tolerating hate, it can chill open discussion, debate, and lawful expression. Even the name of the legislation does significant political work. By calling it the Combatting Hate Act, the debate is framed so that raising legitimate concerns about its scope can be interpreted as tolerating hatred. Those questioning the bill’s impact on freedom of expression, religious conscience, or lawful speech risk being seen as opposing justice rather than defending constitutional protections or advocating for careful, balanced lawmaking. This framing risks shutting down meaningful discussion before it can begin.

Moving Forward

Even in democracies that value freedom, governments may, at times, push the limits of civil liberties in the name of public order. This is not to suggest that overreach is inevitable, but rather that expanded legal powers always carry a risk that warrants careful scrutiny. While these powers are typically subject to judicial review, vigilance is important whenever new laws, like Bill C-9, would grant authorities broader discretion over what constitutes “intimidating” or “hateful” speech. 

Canada’s legal system has long managed to accommodate disagreement while maintaining public order. Bill C-9, as currently drafted, raises serious questions about procedural fairness, clarity in the law, and the protection of fundamental freedoms. From my perspective as an international lawyer, Bill C-9 highlights the fragility of liberty when legal systems evaluate emotions over intentions. True tolerance is not the absence of offense; it is the careful balance of safety, justice, and conscience. Freedom of expression and freedom of religion are cornerstones of Canadian law, enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and they protect both offensive and minority viewpoints, provided they do not incite violence. Canada now faces the challenge of preserving that balance while addressing perceived threats of hate and intimidation.

The post How Canada’s Bill C-9 Would Have Reimagined Religious Liberty appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

This question is swirling around the internet in light of recent actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in Minnesota. Among the most troubling of those actions is the killing of two U.S. citizens by ICE agents in recent weeks, which has sparked protests across the country. Many are deeply concerned about the humanity of ICE’s tactics—and some are questioning the agency’s very existence.

Amid the deaths and pervasive fear and upheaval in Minnesota, many are asking where the Church’s response is. The Church has significant membership in Minnesota and even a temple near St. Paul. Are the Minnesotan Saints forgotten?

But still, why nothing from Headquarters?

A Global Church

As the Church becomes increasingly global, it appears to be pursuing a kind of institutional federalism, in which announcements are made locally on matters pertaining to those regions. We saw this recently when an area presidency member announced to a congregation of members of the Portland Maine Stake that a new temple would be built near them. President Oaks later stated that he received a strong impression after he assumed leadership of the Church that temples should be announced where they will be built.

The pattern of local announcement recently followed in Canada, when leaders of the Canada Area issued a statement on a proposed Canadian bill that would have jeopardized religious freedom.

And in Minnesota, the pattern followed suit: area leadership communicated messages to the local congregations pertaining to the situation there.

In many ways, this emerging local approach makes much more sense for a global church. As Elder Gong pointed out in the most recent General Conference, “Every Sabbath, members and friends from 195 birth countries and territories gather in 31,916 Church congregations.” Expecting Church Headquarters to comment on every issue facing congregants with ties to 195 countries is simply unrealistic. But the lack of a formal statement does not mean that the leaders do not deeply care. Their care tends to be shown, however, through ministry and ecclesiastical teaching, rather than PR.

The local approach also helps to avoid a form of parochialism, where American Latter-day Saints see their most pressing issues addressed by Church Headquarters, but members from other countries do not. It is true that, in the past, the Church has spoken more frequently on domestic issues, including a statement on immigration as recent as last year. This has made us think of the Church as an American institution, and we expect it to speak to our American issues. While it may seem strange, even wrong, not to have a statement on Minnesota, you could say the same for any number of situations in other countries. For example, should the Church have made a statement about the Iranian protests? About the Sudanese Civil War? About the ongoing oppression of minorities in China? 

Many Latter-day Saints live in countries with rampant government corruption and state-perpetrated injustices. If Headquarters comments on American issues, but says nothing about the pressing issues in other countries, what message does it send to non-American Saints? Are their challenges not as important? While American issues are real and significant, we must not assume that they command more attention or concern than the issues of our brothers and sisters in other countries simply because Church Headquarters are in the U.S. As we shift our understanding of the Church as an American institution to a global one, we will likely face the reality, however uncomfortable, that fewer American issues are addressed by Church Headquarters. 

On Speaking Out Generally

We often want the Church to be an espouser of moral clarity in our troubled political climate. We want the Church to do it all—save us from this life, and from the next.

Was his silence complicity? Or was His mission altogether something else?

To say that Jesus did not speak out is not to say that He was passive. Nor is it to say that He did not care about injustice. Indeed, He gave His life to redeem the injustices of this life in the next. And where justice and law would condemn us, He gave his life to give us another chance.

Jesus cared deeply for those affected by the Roman rule. He cared deeply for the poor. He ministered individually to those that the oppressive systems had neglected—or shunned. He taught the worth of every person to God, restoring to them their dignity. His teachings empowered everyone to make this world better, no matter their station.  

But His Kingdom was “not of this world.”

If this is His Church, should we expect an approach that does more or less than this?

The world would have the Church to be a more powerful arbiter of social justice. And there is no doubt that religious institutional power is real. For example, the role of Black churches in advancing the civil rights movement was monumental. And many other religious groups have played a powerful role—both good and bad—in shaping the political challenges of the day.

But the Church of Jesus Christ is trying to accomplish something different. The Church is not trying to save the world, however much we want it to, but rather the people of it. Its mission is building disciples who have the discernment to engage in the matters of the day with Christlike principles and resolve.

The Church could thrust its institutional power in many directions, and it may achieve some desirable results. But it stays focused on its mission to prepare the people of this world—living and deceased—for eternal life through Christ. That mission calls for different priorities.

The Church’s political neutrality approach is admittedly dissatisfying to some. With so much wrong in this world, an institution with power has a moral responsibility to do everything it can to change this world, right?

And yet the Church is changing this world for better—through one moral person at a time. But instead of seeking a radical change in systems, it seeks a radical change of heart in individuals. 

Sharon Eubank said it best:

I will never discount the one thing this Church does that lifts entire communities in rapid development. It invites men and women of all social classes and backgrounds to enter sacred buildings and make the most binding and important promises of their mortal lives. In those buildings, they promise not to steal or lie, they promise to be faithful to their spouse and children. They vow they will seek the interest of their neighbors and be peacemakers and become devoted to the idea that we are all one family—all valued and alike unto God. If those promises made in holy temples are kept, it transforms society faster than any aid or development project ever could. The greatest charitable development on the planet is for people to bind themselves to their God and mean it. 

To the chagrin of some, the Church’s approach to the world’s problems isn’t a top-down, system-dismantling operation. Instead, it seeks to form the character of individuals who can then speak out with moral clarity—who can pursue just causes because they, in their hearts, love what is true and good. 

We must recognize that the Church faces a number of challenges any time it contemplates speaking out. In rapidly developing situations, collecting the facts is essential. Rushing to hasty judgments can lead to mischaracterizations of situations. The Church must be careful not to damage its credibility by commenting too soon.

It is also very easy for a statement about injustice to be conflated with entire movements or unlawful protest methods that the Church does not wish to endorse. The Church is also careful not to paint targets on the backs of its members, particularly those who live in politically tense areas. And the more the Church is seen like an activist organization instead of a religious one, the more wary other countries are of opening their doors to it. These realities mean that, even when the Church may feel it is necessary to speak up, it has to be extra measured in its response. Responses crafted under these parameters often come out simple and principle-focused, sometimes causing more frustration by members that the response was not more direct or pointed.

Church Activism

Like any institution, the Church also occasionally speaks up on issues that might implicate its mission or operations. For instance, it has sometimes spoken up on issues pertaining to religious freedom, human dignity, or core religious doctrine. 

Some fault the Church for doing this, as if institutions should not speak up about the core things for which they stand. The Church’s political neutrality statement explicitly states that “as an institution, it reserves the right to address issues it believes have significant moral consequences or that directly affect the mission, teachings or operations of the Church.” These statements should not come as a surprise, nor is the Church somehow immoral for making these statements and not others. Rather, it merely reflects a mission-aligned organization.   

The Church’s political neutrality statement acknowledges that “the application of these principles of political neutrality and participation in an ever-changing and complex world.” It reserves the right of the First Presidency to “seek prophetic wisdom and revelation on these matters.” While the current approach remains, there is always the possibility it could change.

But for now, the task remains for us to become the moral people that the Gospel of Jesus Christ inspires us to become. We must seek to apply the principles Church leaders have taught to the complex real-life situations we face, including in Minnesota. This means more than virtue signaling on social media; it means actually becoming virtuous. In reality, the best response the Church can give is when its members, whose hearts have been changed to love what is just, good, and true, choose to apply those teachings in pursuit of a better world.  

The post Church Communications in Times of Crisis appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

On Sunday morning, January 18, 2026, roughly three dozen anti–immigration-enforcement protesters walked into a worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Some moved all the way up toward the pulpit while others chanted “ICE out” and “Renée Good,” invoking the woman fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

The protesters’ stated reason for choosing that congregation was personal: multiple outlets reported that one of Cities Church’s pastors, David Easterwood, leads the local ICE field office.

Whatever one thinks about ICE, about the pastor’s role, or about the protesters’ cause, the method matters. There is a moral difference between showing up outside a building to make a public argument and walking into a sanctuary to stop people from worshipping.

But even those groups whose protests we find offensive have always maintained the line: protest outside, worship inside. 

The inside–outside line is more than mere preference. It’s a recognition that religious spaces matter, and a social agreement that keeps people safe and allows worship to be possible.

This is a bright line that Latter-day Saints understand intuitively and should be willing to stand up for. 

Protecting this boundary is more than theater. Worship spaces have been under attack—including others in Minnesota. Just last summer in Minneapolis, neighboring St. Paul, worshippers were attacked in a mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church during an all-school Mass. And Latter-day Saints, too, have recently experienced violence at places of worship.

When outsiders burst into a place of worship without the intention to worship, the outcome can turn violent. Protesting in places of worship poses all kinds of risks to congregants, who want to protect themselves and their families. Such trespass is simply not safe for any involved, no matter how peacefully the interruption is managed.

To be clear, sanctuaries have never been perfectly safe. Scripture and history are full of sacred spaces violated by violence or contempt.

But the point of a sanctuary is not that nothing bad can happen there. It’s that we collectively agree it shouldn’t—and that agreement restrains the worst impulses in all of us.

Interrupting a worship service is a bad idea regardless of the intent. It inflicts collateral damage on the wrong people. It swaps moral clarity for spectacle. It invites escalation and copycat behavior. It risks legal consequences while muddying constitutional principles. 

It may be tempting for Latter-day Saints to not concern themselves with this violation. After all, the Church has long supported the immigrant community, and its support for constitutional principles likely means it will not be the focus of ire for these protesters. And more largely, Latter-day Saints are not the most natural target for the kind of inside-the-service disruption we saw at Cities Church. Our congregations are politically diverse, our official posture is not partisan, and our public messaging on immigration is neither “open borders” nor “enforcement-only.”

But here’s the sober second thought: we should not assume we’re safe from becoming a target anyway.

The U.S. Department of Justice has said it opened an investigation, with officials publicly referencing potential violations of the federal FACE Act, a 1994 law that (among other things) prohibits using force, threat of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with someone “exercising or seeking to exercise” religious freedom at a place of worship—while also clarifying it does not prohibit First Amendment–protected peaceful picketing and demonstration. We believe this is a wise and justifiable instance for utilizing this law, and we encourage law enforcement to take a stand in reinforcing the norms of places of worship as sanctuaries. 

Regardless of where Latter-day Saints as individuals or as a group reside on the political spectrum, weakening norms around chapels as sanctuaries should concern each of us. We should defend the norm of sanctuary for everyone—because once it’s gone, it will be our youth, our converts, and our visitors who suffer alongside those of our neighbors. 

The post Protest Outside, Worship Inside: A Truce Worth Keeping appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

The Supreme Court tackled some significant religious freedom issues in its most recently concluded term. 

Parental Rights

The most publicized religious freedom case asked this question: What rights do parents have for their children’s education when public schools insist on teaching things that are contrary to the religious teachings the children are taught at home? 

The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, arose when a Maryland school district told parents they no longer had the right to opt their children out of book readings that promoted views of sexuality and gender that conflicted with the religious beliefs of many families in the district. The Mahmouds, a Muslim couple for whom the case is named, joined with two Christian couples to ask the Court to restore their rights as parents to opt their children out of the book readings.

The Court said yes: Parents have the right under the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution to direct the religious upbringing of their children—and not just in their own homes. The right also extends to public education.

The Yoder Court allowed the Amish to withdraw their children and declared that parents have a First Amendment right to direct the religious education of their children. But the extent of that right remained unclear. Many lower courts downplayed Yoder, emphasizing the unique nature of the Amish faith and its unusual religious command that necessitated the outcome in that case. As a result, Yoder’s broader principle—that parents have First Amendment rights to direct the educational upbringing of their children—became a casualty. 

But post-Mahmoud, the right can no longer be downplayed. The Court affirmed that parents’ right to direct their children’s religious education receives a “generous measure of protection from our Constitution,” including “choices that parents wish to make for their children outside the home.” Although the extent of the right remains dependent on the facts of each situation, Mahmoud shows that Yoder was not a one-off decision; rather, it espoused a core principle of Free Exercise law.

Disputes like the one in Mahmoud are likely to continue, and the answers are not always easy. Public schools have to be able to function, and they cannot cater to every possible religious objection. Often, the best solutions may involve accommodations to objectors. For example, the Court has protected the right of those who object to participating in the Pledge of Allegiance rather than removing the Pledge from schools. The situation in Mahmoud was similar. The parents did not ask the school district to remove the books from the curriculum—merely to allow their children to sit out for their reading. 

As the nation navigates future tensions in this area, Mahmoud makes clear that just because parents send their children to public school does not mean they relinquish all of their rights to direct their children’s upbringing. 

“Religious” Organizations

Another important victory for religious freedom this term came in a case where a Wisconsin law ran into a religious liberty problem. 

In Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, Wisconsin law granted certain religious organizations an exemption from paying unemployment compensation taxes. But Wisconsin told Catholic Charities it didn’t qualify because it wasn’t “religious” under the Wisconsin law. Why? Because Catholic Charities serves non-Catholics and doesn’t engage in proselytization. 

If that sounds wrong, the Supreme Court agreed. Why does the government get to determine that a group that serves people outside of its own faith is nonreligious? Or that a religion must proselytize to be a religion? Indeed, for many religions, serving those outside of the faith or abstaining from proselytizing are religious tenets themselves. It is constitutionally precarious for the government to be too prescriptive in defining what’s “religious.”

Here, the Court said, there was no reasonable justification for Wisconsin to impose theological guardrails—such as only serving those of your own faith—to determine whether an organization was religious for the purpose of a tax break. As a result, Wisconsin’s law was religiously discriminatory because it preferred some types of faith over others (e.g., those that proselytize)—a violation of the Establishment Clause. The law could not be enforced to prevent Catholic Charities from being considered religious under the statute. 

While tax exemptions might not seem exciting, the implications of the case are significant. Ensuring that the government stays out of overly defining what counts as “religious”—unless it can meet the high bar of strict scrutiny—is vital for protecting religious freedom in all contexts where the government makes law affecting religious organizations. Because religious freedom by nature implies the protection of diverse beliefs and practices, serious Establishment Clause concerns emerge when the state gets too prescriptive about what is religious.

The issue is not a new one. Just a few years ago, Yeshiva University in New York City did not recognize a number of applicant clubs that it found inconsistent with its religious mission, including a fraternity, a gambling club, and a pride club. As a religious organization, Yeshiva is constitutionally entitled to recognize only the clubs that align with its religious mission, including its interpretation of Torah and Jewish law. 

However, the pride club argued that Yeshiva could not reject its approval because Yeshiva failed to meet the strictures imposed by New York City law for religious corporate form. Therefore, the argument went, Yeshiva was not religious and did not have an exemption from a New York City human rights law to make decisions consistent with its doctrine.

That theory, if it had prevailed, would have achieved a strange result: Yeshiva University would have been deemed not religious and would have been compelled by the government to take actions inconsistent with its religious doctrine. 

The ruling in Catholic Charities is likely to help in such situations. The Court made clear that it doesn’t fly for the government to consider obviously religious groups nonreligious absent a compelling reason and a narrowly tailored policy scheme for doing so. 

To be fair, it’s true that the government often has to impose some guidance on what counts as religious under a statute to distinguish plainly non-religious actors from the religious. But nobody doubts that organizations like Catholic Charities or Yeshiva University are religious. When the effect of a government’s law is to call the plainly religious non-religious, that’s a problem. Because of Catholic Charities, governments know that their attempts to define what’s religious must avoid becoming religiously discriminatory by getting too specific about what it means to be religious. 

On What the Court Didn’t Say: Religious Charter Schools

The Court also heard a second case about religious freedom and education in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummon. The case involved a novel situation in Oklahoma where the state contracted with St. Isidore to form a first-of-its-kind Catholic charter school. As such, the school would receive some amount of public funding and be subject to certain governmental requirements, yet still operate as a religious school.

The Court did not decide the case due to a 4-4 tie, a result of Justice Barrett’s recusal. Justice Barrett declined to participate in the case due to a conflict of interest—perhaps due to her personal ties to the faculty at the Notre Dame Law School, who represented the Catholic charter school. 

Because a tie goes to the winner at the court below, the Oklahoma Catholic charter school remains blocked from coming into existence. It’s possible the Court may have more to say if a similar scenario makes it back to the Court and no justice has to recuse. Clearly, the Court is quite split on the issue, though the reasons why remain unknown. Because the religious charter school model is quite novel, it’s not clear that others will follow suit in light of this ruling. For now, Oklahoma’s almost-first religious charter school remains a no-go. 

Religious Freedom’s Trajectory at the Court

The Court’s recent docket of religious freedom cases seems to signal an emerging appetite to address religious freedom cases again. Although the Court has heard a few cases touching on religious liberty issues in the past few years, it has been relatively quiet after the blockbuster religious liberty term that concluded in the summer of 2022. The Court has several cases petitioning to be heard in the term that begins in October. 

For now, religious parents can celebrate that the Court has protected their constitutional right to direct the religious upbringing of their children—and the right is not limited to the confines of the home. Religious organizations can celebrate that the government cannot impose arbitrary definitions of what is “religious” when defining religious exemptions. For religious people and organizations, these are key religious liberty wins to celebrate.

The post Religious Liberty at the Court in 2025 appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

It has been thrilling times for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States. The deepening polarization in US politics has shone a spotlight on efforts made by leaders of the Church to reduce the intensity of political conflicts. It is into this moment that Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute invited Jonathan Rauch to speak about his new book, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy.

The invitation should not be surprising given the book’s generous engagement with Latter-day Saint politics, history, and doctrine. Few books and authors by non-Latter-day Saints have sought to understand the faith and its political journey in the US with such kindhearted interest. And this interest comes despite the chasm between the author and the LDS faith on “culture war issues.” This sort of engagement should prompt some thoughtful reflection by Latter-day Saints regarding the ways in which their faith intersects with today’s political environment, and Rauch’s visit should inspire efforts to establish a distinct civic theology that uplifts people and supports the republic.

The crux of Hancock’s critique seems to be that Rauch’s olive branch is really a poisoned apple—that Rauch’s proposed liberal/Christian synthesis will undermine Christian witness in general and Latter-day Saint beliefs in particular. Though “liberalism” does a good deal of heavy lifting in Hancock’s argument, he does not define it with enough precision to know whether it actually poses a threat to Christian beliefs. His argument seems to have three steps: liberalism undermines Christianity; Rauch is a liberal; therefore, Rauch’s thinking undermines Christianity. But one could accept the first and second steps without accepting the third. “Liberalism” means many things to many people, but for Hancock’s argument to work, we are simply supposed to accept on faith that liberalism carries within itself a moral framework that poses a threat to Christian belief and practices. QED. 

While Hancock does not provide his own definition of liberalism, he assigns one to Rauch. The definition that Hancock saddles Rauch with involves being “governed by rules and not by rulers.” The definition places emphasis on the procedures and processes by which citizens of a polity arbitrate their differences. Hancock further garnishes the definition with negative moral implications. He writes that ‘[we] are thus asked to believe that the “rules” we must follow favor no class of persons and are absolutely neutral with respect to contending views of human flourishing, as if a regime of laws, institutions, and regulations could somehow equally honor all possible priorities of the governed.’ That characterization of liberalism reduces politics to a static zero-sum game.

And yet Rauch himself does not make those claims for liberalism. Rauch already concedes that the application of rules and the outcome of processes will not, if ever, be equal. For that reason, politics will always be necessary to sort out the competing claims made by citizens and groups. Rauch’s interest in Christianity is that the process itself might be less bitter and divisive if a process that is ongoing is fortified by values that only Christianity can impart to the political process.

Hancock casts doubt on the sincerity of such a project by arguing that Rauch once believed that the only way for the religious and the non-religious to exist was by creating a strict separation between the practices of the two. Hancock says “[w]hereas he [Rauch] once thought the best way to deal with the religion and politics question was to require a strict ‘separation between church and state,’ he now sees this approach as simplistic and inadequate. The problem today is that religion (the former majority belief, which Rauch labels ‘white Protestantism’) is bound up with politics in the wrong way.” The outreach that Rauch makes is not to be received because his original position somehow taints the current effort to work with religions.

This is why Hancock’s attack on Rauch for his scientific framework is puzzling. Early on, Rauch writes, “My claim is not just that secular liberalism and religious faith are instrumentally interdependent but that each is intrinsically reliant on the other to build a morally and epistemically complete and coherent account of the world.” This does not sound like a rationalist project to replace religion. Rather, it sounds like the project described by Charles Taylor in his tome A Secular Age. Taylor writes that we have moved on from a condition “in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others … Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives.” Rauch seems to be doing what believers and non-believers have done ever since: explore the borderlands between two powerful modes of thought and see whether a society composed of multiple moral claims can cohere. But Hancock will have none of it. He does not want to engage, writing dismissively that “Rauch seeks a Christianity that will somehow complete liberalism in practice, but without interfering in any substantial way with its ‘scientific’ epistemology or with its ‘progressive’ understanding of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality.’”

Rather than disparaging Christianity’s contribution, Rauch is highlighting it as part of a moral foundation that can make meaningful democratic deliberation possible. In these sorts of interactions, the parties must not dominate each other or seek to always have their position prevail. Once again, President Oaks acknowledges the possibility of such a dynamic when he writes, “[on] a broader front, what if the conflicting demands of civil and religious law are such that they cannot be resolved by negotiation? Such circumstances rarely exist. If they do, the experience of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints suggests that a way can be found to reconcile divine and human law — through patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation, without judicial fiat or other official coercion.” This is a message of hope that Hancock’s pessimistic view of liberalism impulsively forecloses.

Hancock also disapproves of those who use the language of modern liberalism to seek compromise. For Hancock, the liberal framework flattens the moral terrain by demanding that people must “respect” all opinions and treat all people with “fairness.” He claims that it would be “wrong” to respect a particular practice even when we are required to live with it as a feature of a nation’s legal and social practices. The challenge for Christianity is to avoid “losing its vertical orientation, its moral and religious substance.” Indeed, from Hancock’s perspective, it would be impossible to extend real “respect” to such practices because their violation of a moral law is not something that can be respected. Latter-day Saints may be able to accommodate the practices, but they can never respect them. Thus, when they use such terms as “respect and “fairness,” they have unwittingly adopted the individualistic and relativistic frameworks that reduce all morality to a contest of opinions.

There is a contradiction, though, in this argument. Hancock cites President Oaks’ 2011 essay as support for the faith’s values: “Our tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs does not cause us to abandon our commitment to the truths we understand and the covenants we have made. We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them.” But earlier, Hancock asserts that, “If the metaphysical demand for human autonomy that underlies the radical redefinition of marriage is wrong, even evil, then it would be wrong to ‘respect’ it, even when we must accommodate it legally and politically.” So, which is it? Is respect possible when there are fundamental disagreements, or is President Oaks wrong to suppose that some form of respect is possible with others who believe differently?

What is the alternative to Rauch that Hancock is proposing? Ultimately, Hancock’s view of politics seems to be a pessimistic one. His formulation of the problem does not require much in the way of new efforts from Latter-day Saints. Indeed, it seems to parrot the approach of those elements of modern Christianity who fervently embrace fear. “Sharp” Christianity is a Christianity that approaches politics out of fear. A fear of having its tenets undermined or its congregants corrupted. The fear originates in the lack of or ineffective ways in which Christians learn and practice their faith. This is the “thin” version of Christianity Rauch describes. It is a version of Christianity that is “too thin to provide meaning and morals to the culture and thus reliably support democratic society.” And it does not seem to be able to generate versions of “respect” and “love” that can provide more stable foundations for a republic. Is this effort dangerous for Latter-day Saints? Only if you accept Hancock’s papering over of the differences between “thick” and “thin” Christianity.

A further concerning aspect of Hancock’s critique is the rhetorical strategies he uses to sow doubt about the desirability of engaging somebody who makes arguments like Rauch’s. Hancock’s argument invokes a form of psychologizing, speculating that the interest expressed by Latter-day Saints in such endeavors must be rooted in some “psychological and sociological need felt by many Christians.” Thus, people who would want to engage Rauch must suffer from some inferiority complex.

But if we are going to allow speculation about the motives of the Latter-day Saints who listened attentively to Rauch, why not also consider in those speculations the stated motives of the people who organized the event and who were there? Apparently, those motivations cannot explain the interest. For Hancock, the only people who can show interest in these ideas have some subconscious need to be liked by a representative of the “liberal” establishment.

Hancock’s rhetoric also “poisons the well,” a logical fallacy meant to demean a person or group and to distract the reader. Rauch confesses he does not share in the faith practiced by the religious. But Hancock asserts that arguments or efforts that originate from such a place cannot be taken seriously. He writes, “It is from this standpoint that [Rauch] proposes to instruct the reader on the true, operative meaning of Christianity in American society today.” Well, yes. We know that Rauch is an atheist. But what is it about atheism that disqualifies Rauch from talking about Christ-like values?  Hancock never really says. Apparently, a different set of cosmological assumptions means that Rauch can no longer engage the dynamic between Christian belief and questions of good government. And the tactic of labeling Rauch as an “atheist” only seems intended to inhibit engagement. If we want to foster engagement that can help alleviate the rancor in politics, we might consider following the counsel of President Oaks in his Virginia speech when he said that “[a] basic step is to avoid labeling our adversaries with epithets such as “godless” or “bigots.” 

Latter-day Saints, and presumably others, must find a way to extend more than a cursory respect to people on the other side of the disputes. It is a tall task and requires Latter-day Saints to find a way to truly love people while disagreeing with them about the most fundamental issues. When the stakes seem existential, as they often do in a two-party system, both the winner and the loser in these contests must act even better by recognizing the challenge. This is where the “thick” form of Christianity practiced by Latter-day Saints can come in handy. President Oaks writes, “What I have described as necessary to going forward—namely, seeking harmony by finding practical solutions to our differences, with love and respect for all people—does not require any compromise of core principles.” 

Latter-day Saints, with their access to the resources of the restored gospel, can accomplish more than what Hancock thinks possible. We can engage in politics with love and respect. In the Virginia address, President Oaks hints at where we might begin by telling the story of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. “When he [the rabbi] agreed to meet with a staunch atheist who detested everything he held sacred, the Rabbi was asked whether he would try to convert him. “No,” he answered, “I’m going to do something much better than that. I’m going to listen to him.” So, what are we, as Latter-day Saints, going to do that is “much better?”

The post Latter-day Saints at Liberalism’s Crossroads: A Response to Hancock appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

That is unfortunate—not only because it is a significant historical omission but because of the lessons it holds for our current political moment. However, to understand the political lessons from Joseph Smith Jr.’s assassination, we must first understand why he was running for president in the first place.

While trying to build Zion in Missouri, stark religious, political, social (particularly the Saints’ more positive views of Blacks and American Indians), and economic differences between the Saints and Missourians led to conflict. In 1833, mobs extralegally drove the Saints out of Jackson County. Five years later, militia/mobs murdered two dozen Saints and terrorized the remainder with indiscriminate rape, theft, and destruction of property, this time with the protection of the law. The majority had spoken, depriving the minority’s rights of life, liberty, property, and freedom of worship under both the federal United States and Missouri state constitutions. 

Nauvoo’s city charter and militia gave Joseph Smith and the Saints in Illinois the legal protection they sought. Their majority in Hancock County ensured that they could elect candidates favorable to them. To many outsiders, however, Nauvoo and its prophet-mayor seemed a threatening theocracy, similar to contemporary views of Catholics’ “subservience” to the Pope. Thus, religious freedom seemingly did not apply to Saints, and tensions mounted again.

Smith was stepping into the most partisan era the nation had yet experienced. The Democratic and Whig parties had recently popularized politics. They organized millions, not just to vote but to attend partisan conventions, meetings, and rallies. Partisan newspapers stoked political fires daily rather than at the end of the election cycle. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, popular politics was the American religion. In the 1840s, as the Second Great Awakening ended, voter enrollment was ten times that of church enrollment. In western Illinois, that zealously partisan Whig/Democrat dynamic overlapped with an Anti-Mormon/Mormon one.

Following Joseph Smith’s campaign announcement, enemies inside and outside of the Church plotted his murder. They would not accept his legally gained influence or his right to run for president. For them, he was an existential danger to be eliminated by extralegal means. They tried to drag him away from the safety of Nauvoo using trumped-up charges issued from the county seat. Smith simply traveled in force to Carthage, made bail, and returned home. The conspirators needed something more to incite the passions of the people to destroy Smith and a way to strip him of protection.

William Law led Smith’s enemies inside the Church. He and Smith had split over plural marriage and the Church’s voting power. An ardent Whig, Law was furious that at the last hour, Smith had influenced the Saints to vote Democratic in 1843. The Nauvoo dissidents procured a printing press from a Whig politician to print the Nauvoo Expositor. The paper’s only issue made accusations against Smith using distorted truths and outright falsehoods wrapped in inflammatory language, such as:

Joseph and his accomplices [are] specimens of injustice of the most pernicious and diabolical character that ever stained the pages of the historian. …[If you vote for Joseph Smith] you are voting for an enemy to your government…. You are voting for a man who stands indicted, and is now held to bail, for the crimes of adultery and perjury…. [he] is…one of the blackest and basest scoundrels that has appeared upon the stage of human existence since the days of Nero, and Caligula.

Leading the conspiracy outside of Nauvoo was Thomas Sharp, owner of the Warsaw Signal. He spent 1841-1842 publishing his opposition to the Saints’ political power. Sharp, a Whig, ran in 1842 for state representative but lost to Democrat William Smith (Joseph Smith’s younger brother) due to the Saints’ voting majority in Hancock County. Financial setbacks also forced him to sell the Warsaw Signal. Stewing, he spent 1843 strengthening the Anti-Mormon Party he had created. 

Just days after Joseph Smith announced his candidacy, Sharp regained control of the Warsaw Signal. Consequently, his attacks against the Saints intensified. He was particularly angered that Hyrum Smith was running for state representative, once again blocking his personal ambitions. Surreptitiously, Sharp and his associates did some blocking of their own. They began intercepting Nauvoo newspapers to ensure that only their newspapers reached the wider public. 

Sharp knew of the Nauvoo dissidents’ plans to use the Nauvoo Expositor to destroy the Smiths. He was not afraid to admit it openly. Just a week before the Expositor’s only issue, Sharp published in the Signal, 

We have seen and heard enough to convince us that Joe Smith is not safe out of Nauvoo, and we would not be surprised to hear of his death by violent means in a short time. He has deadly enemies…. The feeling of this country is now lashed to its utmost pitch and will break forth in fury upon the slightest provocation…

Mayor Joseph Smith and the city council gave the conspirators the needed provocation when they destroyed the Expositor. Four days later, Sharp called for political violence.

 We have only to state, that this is sufficient! War and extermination is inevitable! Citizens ARISE, ONE and ALL!!! — Can you stand by, and suffer such INFERNAL DEVILS!! to ROB men of their property and RIGHTS, without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. LET IT BE MADE WITH POWDER AND BALL!!!

Eleven days later, Joseph and Hyrum Smith arrived in Carthage, under the protection of Governor Thomas Ford, to face arraignment on charges of riot. This time, when the Smiths posted bail, authorities immediately rearrested them on a charge of treason, a non-bailable offense. They had 18 separate charges ready to ensure that the Smiths could not leave Carthage. The judge, also one of the conspirators, twisted the law and the defendants’ rights to ensure their prey was “secure” in jail. During the evening of June 26th, the Carthage Anti-Mormon Committee of Safety met and finalized its plans to deliver “summary execution” on the Smiths in the name of the people.

The next morning, Governor Ford disbanded the militias (except for a small contingent to guard the jail) and left Carthage for Nauvoo. He did not take Joseph and Hyrum Smith with him as he had promised. William Law also departed Carthage, now safe with an alibi. Thomas Sharp led the disbanded Warsaw militia to the jail, where they first killed Hyrum and then Joseph. Lifeless and lying alongside the well outside Carthage Jail, Joseph Smith became the first assassinated candidate for President of the United States. 

As a lawyer, Dallin H. Oaks and historian Marvin Hill wrote almost fifty years ago, 

The murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage, Illinois, was not a spontaneous, impulsive act by a few personal enemies of the Mormon leaders, but a deliberate political assassination, committed or condoned by some of the leading citizens in Hancock County.

When those leading citizens stood trial for the murders, the judge and jurors ensured justice was not served. 

The first assassination of a presidential candidate is a cautionary tale about our current political environment. William Law, Thomas Sharp, and the other conspirators of 1844 felt justified in twisting truth and telling falsehoods using inflammatory language through their newspapers, controlling the narrative by intercepting their opponents’ newspapers, bringing questionable lawsuits to endanger their opponents, bending the law to their own ends, inciting and leading destructive mobs intent on political intimidation, and in using the ultimate political violence—assassination. 

So, let’s step back and look around today. Do the factors involved in the assassination of Joseph Smith exist today?

Twisting truth and pushing falsehoods in pursuit of political ends? Check. Two examples are particularly instructive. While one side declared, and some continue to believe, that the 2020 election was rigged, the other side, for at least two years, hid the fact that the President of the United States was in cognitive decline. Willing accomplices in the media pushed both of their agendas. No wonder the country is suffering from a crisis of political and institutional trustworthiness.

Censuring others’ views to control the narrative? Check. The past five years have seen institutional and governmental restrictions on free speech on social media, the town square of today. Furthermore, online mobs “cancel” persons who deviate from their narrative, creating a toxic culture where citizens are afraid to express their views openly. 

Stretching or abusing the law to hurt political opponents? Check. “Lawfare” against political opponents is incredibly dangerous. It started with the chants at Trump rallies in 2016 to “Lock her [Senator Hillary Clinton] up!” Now, we’ve clearly passed the Rubicon in the openly partisan civil and criminal suits against former President Trump that the majority of Americans acknowledge as political persecution. Trump has already promised revenge if elected, and the crowd at Kamala Harris’ first speech as a presidential candidate chanted, “Lock him up!”

Incited, destructive mobs for political intimidation? Check. The “mostly peaceful” riots in the summer of 2020 caused 1-2 billion dollars of damage and saw at least 25 people murdered. Donald Trump supporters rioted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, with many intent on stopping the final certification of the 2020 election. Also, see online mobs above in the previous point. 

Not accepting the results of an election? Check. In 2016, Democrats pronounced Trump’s election illegitimate and hampered his presidency with investigations founded on falsehoods and half-truths. In 2020, Trump and many of his supporters declared the election was rigged, which culminated in the January 6th  riot. Now, one wonders if either side will accept the results this year.

Politics as religion? Check. Research has shown that, like the 1840s and 1850s, personal religion is increasingly mediated by politics as religious identity weakens. On both sides, politics becomes the chief driver of one’s beliefs about reality. For many Americans and Latter-day Saints, their politics is their religion—the real god they worship. Zealous service to that god gives one a feeling of moral superiority, of being “the good guys.” In such an apocalyptic, good versus evil political environment, some feel that they can and even must take extralegal action, subtle or direct, to defeat the existential threat of “the bad guys.” 

If our problems echo the atmosphere surrounding Smith’s assassination, what is the solution, especially as the arena is national? Others on this platform have given wise suggestions. I would only point back to what Joseph Smith wrote in his campaign pamphlet.

Unity is power, and when I reflect on the importance of it to the stability of all governments, I am astounded at the silly moves of persons and parties, to foment discord in order to ride into power on the current of popular excitement.

Smith was trying to create a non-partisan solution to extend the rights of the Constitution to himself, his people, and all Americans rather than pit them against each other. As a people, Latter-day Saints have a doctrinal directive to “befriend” the political process and a prophetic priority to “build, lift, encourage, persuade, and inspire—no matter how difficult the situation.” That will take moral courage and open minds. We, like the prophet Joseph Smith, must be willing to sacrifice in the “good cause…of maintaining the laws and Constitution of the United States…for the general good of mankind.”

The post The First Presidential Candidate Assassination Ignored by History appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Both Christian nationalism and the secular nationalism that opposes it represent threats to Latter-day Saints. It is important that we talk about the intersection of faith and country to avoid the excesses of either side.

In that spirit, let’s look at how our religious faith inspires our celebration of both days. 

The ratification of the U.S. Constitution created an environment in which (over time) the basic rights of all people could be protected, and the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ could take place. Indeed, we know from sacred scripture that this country was divinely inspired to bring about God’s purposes. It reads: 

According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles; 

That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment. 

Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another. 

And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood. 

As President Dallin H. Oaks emphasizes, this revelation does not confine the importance of the Constitution to the United States alone but states that the principles of the Constitution should be “maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles.” The inclusion of religious freedom was particularly important in providing the freedom for a new religious movement to blossom.

Because the right to religious freedom was guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, it created an environment that allowed Joseph Smith to establish the gospel of Jesus Christ once again upon the Earth. But as many groups have learned the hard way, the guarantees of the Constitution are not always distributed equally. Violent persecution of the Saints in New York, Missouri, Ohio, and finally, Illinois made a mockery of the ideal of religious freedom.

Not many years after the creation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members of the Church left to seek refuge from the very country that allowed for its establishment due to the severe persecution they faced. 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, Brigham Young said those famous words: “This is the right place,” which filtered throughout the wagon train to other Saints as the more well-known phrase: “This is the place.”  

For the next two decades, more than 60,000 saints would migrate to Utah. Here, the Saints were allowed to grow and flourish, creating a community that provided the very first foundations for the gospel to go to the world. Pioneer Day was proclaimed as a holiday to remember these migrants and the difficulties they faced to get to the Salt Lake Valley. By 1896, Utah was admitted to the Union, and the Saints were again citizens of the United States.

Despite the difficulties that arose from persecution, God’s work continued to move forward in miraculous ways. Without both the religious freedoms enjoyed in the United States and the lost ‘ideal’ of those very promises that resulted in the flight west, the Church would not be where it is today. Thus, both Independence Day and Pioneer Day can serve as important reminders of God’s assurance: “I am able to do my own work.”

The post Star Spangled Saints appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Today the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a fine against Ensign Peak Advisors (EPA) and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which the EPA fund is an integrated auxiliary. 

This news story has been widely shared and could be misrepresented by Church critics. To better understand the case, we reached out to several knowledgeable securities attorneys, including one of the top securities legal experts in the West, who agreed to speak about the case.  

Below is a quick Q&A for those curious about the story and its broader implications:

What is Ensign Peak Advisors?

EPA is an investment management firm that manages the investment portfolio of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The firm was founded in 1997 and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. EPA manages a diverse investment portfolio that includes publicly traded stocks, bonds, and other assets. EPA was reorganized in 2000 and split into several subsidiary LLCs. 

Why does a Church need an investment management firm?

Like any organization, a church has expenses and income that need to be managed. This firm helps to manage its financial resources and ensure the long-term sustainability of its mission and programs—helping the Church create and manage an investment portfolio that maximizes its financial resources and to help it ultimately further its charitable and exempt purposes. 

EPA has been effective in helping the Church of Jesus Christ maintain a high degree of financial independence and self-sufficiency while planning ahead toward long-term goals. This approach has allowed the Church to support its members and communities around the world while maintaining a strong financial position for the future.

How much money is invested in Ensign Peak?

In its most recent filing (Q4 2022), EPA reported having $44.4 billion invested in stocks and bonds. EPA holds other investments as well, and the total value has been claimed to be more than $100 billion.

What do Ensign Peak Advisors invest in?

EPA has a reputation for sound, conservative investment practices. It invests largely in blue-chip stocks. In its most recent filings, some of its largest investments were in companies such as Apple, UnitedHealth, and Johnson & Johnson. 

Tony Semerad reports for the Salt Lake Tribune that “they (EPA) eschew debt in keeping with the faith’s tenets and steer clear of investments Latter-day Saints consider objectionable, such as tobacco or gambling stocks.”

What is the role of the SEC?

The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) is a US federal government agency that is tasked with overseeing the financial markets, including stocks, bonds, and other similar investments. Their role is to ensure fair, orderly, and efficient markets in order to protect investors. 

Why was the SEC investigating Ensign Peak Advisors?

In 2019, the SEC contacted EPA with concerns over EPA’s disclosure reporting practices. Based on the advice of its attorneys, between 2000-2019, each subsidiary LLC had been filing its own form 13F rather than filing one aggregate form. The SEC’s investigation focused on this previous practice of separate reporting.

Based on the SEC’s direction, EPA started reporting through one aggregate report in 2020.

What is form 13F, and why is it important to disclose?

Form 13F is a quarterly report that must be filed by institutional investment managers with more than $100 million in stocks, bonds, and other securities. The information disclosed in form 13F is used by regulators and other market participants to monitor market activities.

Is it unusual for the SEC to investigate an investment management firm?

No. Investigations of this type are quite common, especially for large investment funds. 

Did Ensign Peak Advisors ever hide its stock holdings?

There are no allegations that they did. Each of EPA’s subsidiaries reported their holdings. So all of the fund’s holdings were disclosed through form 13F reports for each individual affiliated entity. EPA and the Church have stated that they believe all of their holdings were reported. 

Were the “shell companies” the EPA used illegal?

There’s no allegation that they were. These companies are the subsidiary LLCs that EPA used to reorganize in 2000. Most shell companies are used for legitimate purposes, particularly in the financial sector. They can be used to legitimately maintain the privacy of investors or better organize financial assets. The SEC’s claim is not that EPA’s organizational scheme was fraudulent, but that using that organization, EPA should have reported differently than they did.

If nothing was hidden and the organization was legal, why was the SEC concerned?

Because the subsidiaries were all under the control of EPA the SEC believed they needed to file one joint form 13F.

No accusations have been made that EPA abused the separate filings to gain advantage, but the separate filings could in theory have made it possible to do so.

Did Ensign Peak Advisors benefit financially from filing separate reports in any other way?

There have been no allegations by the SEC of insider trading, accounting fraud, market manipulation, or other practices relating to the Church’s investment management firm. 

What was the conclusion of the investigation?

The SEC fined EPA and the Church $5 million. 

How does that penalty compare to other penalties? Was it too high or too low?

In the fiscal year 2022, the SEC recovered $4.19 billion in penalties. The average penalty was $5.51 million. 

Is getting fined by the SEC a big problem for an investment fund or relatively common?

Obviously, a fund never wants to be fined. But fines like this are common. About 5% of investment funds are fined by the SEC each year. Experts compare it to a traffic ticket.

These kinds of investigations are also especially common when multiple entities are involved, such as in the case of the EPA. 

Did senior Church leaders know about this reporting approach? 

This question was answered via the Church’s statement and FAQs.  “The Church’s senior leadership received and relied upon legal counsel when it approved of the use of the external companies to make the filings. Ensign Peak handled the mechanics of the filing process. The Church’s senior leadership never prepared or filed the specific reports at issue.”

Is it unusual for a non-profit or religious organization to be penalized by the SEC?

Nonprofit organizations, like for-profit organizations, come in many different varieties. It is not unusual for the SEC to monitor fund activity, whether that fund is ultimately managed by a for-profit or not-for-profit entity. 

Is the Church contesting the penalty?

No. The Church of Jesus Christ has repeatedly stated its desire to work with regulators to ensure they are in compliance with the law and cooperate with the investigation. They jointly came to a negotiated settlement with the SEC.

Does the evidence suggest that Ensign Peak Advisors purposely violated the SEC’s disclosure requirements? Are Ensign Peak Advisors and/or the Church of Jesus Christ culpable for breaking the law?

The SEC’s announcement included nothing of the sort. And these regulations don’t really work that way. As this same lawyer said, “Yes, there are rules that dictate how money managers disclose the existence of funds. But there is no culpability requirement to trigger a penalty or a violation of these rules. Sometimes mistakes are made, and often inadvertently are, but that doesn’t mean there was any intention in the violation and certainly does not mean a crime has been committed. Most penalties imposed by the SEC are the result of unintentional violations.”

The regulatory systems in place by the SEC are very complex—according to one lawyer, “some of the most complex disclosure regimes found anywhere on the planet.” Even very sophisticated financial professionals don’t always fully understand the nuances of those regulations. A large number of fines take place simply because of a misunderstanding of various overlapping rules.  

The Church and EPA obviously hire experts and have to rely upon those experts to give advice regarding compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, including SEC regulations. 

Will this harm the Church’s non-profit status?

No. Non-profit status is based on the mission of the organization and related factors. 

Should Latter-day Saints be worried that the fund is not being managed well?

EPA has a reputation for strong money management. While any fine is obviously disappointing for those involved, experts note that it is more surprising that the SEC hasn’t audited and found errors in the EPA’s reporting practices until now. This suggests a strong history of compliance.

Will tithing money be used to pay the penalty?

No. The penalty will be paid from investment returns.

Will this penalty impact the ability of the Church to fund its mission?

No. Because these funds are coming from investment returns, they won’t have any effect on the Church’s ability to fund its mission.

Should we expect further investigations of Ensign Peak Advisors?

It’s certainly possible. The EPA fund at issue is a large fund. As such, it will continue to be held under scrutiny.

In addition, there have been efforts by detractors to have EPA investigated by both the IRS and the Senate Finance Committee. But experts suggest that these complaints lack legal merit and are not likely to be acted on. 

The current SEC matter against EPA is completely resolved, and EPA’s current reporting practice is considered by the SEC to be in complete compliance.

If these kinds of fines are so common, why has there been so much media coverage?

We can only speculate why individual newsrooms have decided to report on the story, but as media professionals, we see that this story has several elements that would be attractive to journalists that have nothing to do with the severity or unusualness of the matter.

The Church of Jesus Christ is still a curiosity for many Americans, and as a result, articles that can refer to the Church in their headlines generate more traffic. And because of the Church’s position on moral issues, it can be used as a lightning rod in culture war debates, which can motivate both journalists and their readers. Moreover, EPA is considered a large fund and manages a large sum of money.  All these reasons taken together could generate sufficient newsworthiness. 

What changes have Ensign Peak Advisors made to avoid these issues in the future?

This was a narrow issue. And the narrow issue has been fixed for more than three years now. While it is unfortunate that there was ever a misunderstanding about disclosure requirements based on the advice of counsel, it’s also probably unavoidable that in its more than 25-year history EPA would make some mistake on its disclosure requirements. Once again, its overall record on compliance is impeccable.

What do this investigation and penalty say about the Church’s priorities and values? 

Not much. The Church invests in its fund to fulfill its mission, which in addition to its religious mission, includes humanitarian aid that totaled nearly a billion dollars last year. 

While it’s appropriate that the Church expressed regrets for mistakes made, these kinds of fines are commonplace even among organizations doing their best to be in compliance because of the extraordinarily complicated nature of the regulations.

The post Ensign Peak: Clarifying the SEC Announcement appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As one example, Andy Stanley, pastor of one of the nation’s largest megachurches, states in his recent 2022 book “Not In It To Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church” said that he was embarrassed by how certain church leaders acted in the aftermath of the 2020 election and during the COVID-19 pandemic. His frustrations lie with how Christian leaders twisted scriptures to support political agendas and demonize differing groups. Although Easter has long passed, I believe the Biblical story of how the chief priests, Sadducees, and Pharisees handed Jesus Christ to Pontius Pilate can help Christians reflect on how their own hypocrisy may be causing people to question and leave Christian intuitions. In this story from the New Testament, Jesus Christ calls out the hypocrisy in the churches.

Let me begin by drawing an analogy related to couples therapy, as I have worked as a licensed mental health counselor with many people trying to improve their relationships. Oftentimes when a couple embarks on relationship therapy, they are keenly aware of their partner’s weakness and struggles but rarely can they use this same critical eye on their own behaviors or cognitive distortions. Occasionally, I will engage with a couple where each partner is able to critique themselves—demonstrating an awareness that their relationship can become better by focusing on changing their own behaviors and attitudes. For instance, they may recognize a lack of compassion in themselves instead of telling their partner they are too sensitive. 

To other Christians reading this, I hope you can likewise be reflective about the values and principles you’ve committed yourself to—as well as those of your current Christian affiliations and associations. In the past five years, I have been shocked at how certain (not all) Christian associations have treated people during the COVID-19 pandemic and the messages they have sent people during the administration of former President Donald Trump. I personally know over a dozen Christians who have stopped coming to church because of this. I hope what I share about the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus Christ can cause some Christian readers to reflect deeply if they, and their church affiliations, are living Christian values or are engaging in hypocrisy. A scripture that rests at the foundational aspects of this essay is in the later chapters of Matthew: 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto white sepulchers which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of uncleanness. Even so, ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 

First and foremost, I want to reassure readers, especially Christians, I am a deeply Christian man. In the past 30 years, I have rarely missed going to church on Sunday, have been a faith-based leader in my church for 15 plus years, and have taught in nonprofit leadership at a university, which includes supervising faith-based leaders completing master’s degrees. Although I am a full-time professor at a public university, I also work 10 hours a week as a licensed mental health counselor at a private faith-based institution and volunteer in an interfaith council in my community. I have spent years studying the social context that led to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and have found the most important sources to be the four Gospels, the writings of Josephus (a first-century Romano-Jewish historian who wrote about Jesus Christ, New Testaments documents, and Roman culture in The Jewish War [75 CE] and Antiquities of the Jews [95 CE]) and the Biblical scholar and Professor of Roman historical law, Aldo Schiavone’s, book Pontius Pilate: Deciphering a memory. I want to share these ideas by purposefully not sharing my own religious affiliations nor the affiliations of differing Christian associations. I do not want to call out any particular Christian faith group, and instead am trying to create a pause for reflection. I want the reader—especially Christian readers—to reflect more upon contemporary religious leaders and associations, especially when it comes to their core values and actions. In the process, I hope you may begin to reflect more on yourself and your (Christian) loyalties and commitments. There is so much good that comes from following Christ, but, as outlined throughout history and in John and the synoptic Gospels, so much individual and societal harm can come from religious leaders who use the name of Christ for self-centeredness, manipulation of others, political agendas, and violence or for status, power, and wealth.

Angry agitators of a previous era. The chief priests (including Joseph Caiaphas, who presided over the Sanhedrin Council that handed Jesus to Pontius Pilate), Sadducees, and Pharisees were the dominant religious groups when Jesus Christ lived on Earth, and they had a transactional political alliance with Pontius Pilate (26-37 C.E.). In addition, these religious leaders used an immense Temple economy to profit themselves and gain social control as they manipulated the poor and less educated, all in the name of God. In short, these religious heads wanted Jesus killed after the Only Begotten Son condemned the activities taking place in the Temple in Jerusalem—turning it into a vehicle of big business that sustained the religious elite’s hierarchical way of life while they polluted foundational teachings of God.

Holy hypocrisy in our day. Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Professor of History at Calvin University—a private, Christian-based school) reported that she did not recognize members of her church laughing at insults and cruelty at a Donald Trump rally at her past Christian-based school in Iowa. I have had a similar experience, witnessing Christian people I have known for over 20 years cheering on Donald Trump as he bragged about sexually insulting and abusing women, physically mocking a reporter who had a disability, showing no compassion and rather downright cruelty to a gold-star mother who lost a son in war, celebrating the fact the John McCain was dying from cancer and calling him a loser for being a POW, and leading chants about violence. The Christian adage “What would Jesus do” seemed to have been lost by people I knew who taught this reflective reframing technique in Sunday School. 

I heard various leaders from current dominant religious groups speak and write on how Trump’s behavior was “okay” as it was needed to win supreme court justices in a war against liberalism and abortion. (As an aside, although both extreme left and right want to portray President Trump as the architect of the recent Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, ending the right to abortion, I have a hard time believing that past conservative leaders such as Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz would have nominated pro-choice Justices). 

To me, these modern-day religious leaders justifying such behavior were not very different than the chief priests, Sadducees, and Pharisees—leaders of dominant religious groups who had a political alliance with the President, who voted for Donald Trump for favors and then turned a blind eye to violence, violent rhetoric, and the normalization of abuse and mental pathology (e.g. no compassion and empathy, regularization of violence and abuse).

To this end, some (not all) American Christian associations of today are similar to the Sadducees and Pharisees of the past through the pursuits of business and political agendas that sustain the religious elite’s way of life (power, status, and wealth), and which runs counter to Jesus of the Gospels. These religious elites from dominant religions turned the message of Christ into a big money business, but instead of a vast Temple money-making structure, they leverage popular culture and a militant or warrior Jesus scheme, undergirded with violent rhetoric and political alliances with certain Government leaders. Historical research by Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez in her book Jesus and John Wayne suggests that in the 1970s, a tough-talking and military-type Jesus was manifested by some dominant American Christian associations, and the money-making was directed toward consumer-based Christianity and products: Christian books and magazines, contemporary Christian music and concerts, Christian radio and television, feature films, conferences, blogs, family vacations and so forth. The warrior Jesus was front and center, so very different from the Jesus of the Gospel, that raked in millions and millions of dollars.

Pride and pandemics. Then COVID-19 happened, and I was just as shocked to hear some (not all) Christian leaders condemn different public health strategies as some type of government takeover of churches. This slippery slope fallacy was led by too many (but not all) Christian associations that were too cognitively rigid and hell-bent on fighting for religious freedom and demonetizing government leaders rather than making personal and structural adjustments to prevent a terrible virus from spreading.  I felt that wearing a mask was not only a sensible request but arguably even a true Christian principle since such an action begins and ends with thinking of another person and trying to prevent harm to others, especially the most vulnerable (e.g. people with cancer or autoimmune disorders). I was fortunate, as in the church I attended, at both the highest and local leadership, the focus was on wearing masks as a Christ-like attribute. However, there were too many Christian churches and leaders who opposed it, pitting God and religious freedom against the government, with a militant Jesus as a metaphor. These religious leaders were quick to underscore the faults of government leaders but had far less to say about their own potential failings. Even while calling for more critical thinking in public leaders before them, I would have liked to see more critical thinking about their own actions and perspectives. 

For instance, instead of partnering with government leaders and offering fair-minded criticism with better ideas, they insisted that wearing a mask was an intrusion on religious freedom. But even in my own denomination, despite leaders modeling mask-wearing behavior, I was surprised at how many members came to church without masks, singing praises to the Lord in hymns while potentially spreading a deadly virus. In my view, they were harming others as they were proclaiming their love for Jesus Christ. Some were condemning government leaders who advocated for mask-wearing while renewing promises to be like Jesus; they could not bother to wear a mask for an hour at church, seemingly fine that the less vulnerable did not attend church for fear of catching COVID-19. These were people who I had heard express that they would give their life for the Savior but could not make a small adjustment to wear a mask for an hour to help the “least among us.” (Even if they had honest questions about the effectiveness of masks, the reality is that many who stayed away from church had no such questions—and would have experienced such a gesture as a welcoming act of kindness.) 

Preserving Christian community in a spiraling society.  As a mental health counselor, I always hope that a reflective pause leads to behavioral change. So, what are we to do? Here are a few ideas. 

• Churches need to be politically neutral and focus attention on teaching gospel principles and serving people and communities. (Although there is a fine line to walk, I believe churches can address social justice issues to some degree while maintaining political neutrality.)
• Religious leaders need to stop endorsing political leaders. Faith-based churches, colleges, and schools also need to stop being places for political rallies. 
• Church leaders need to stop making money and fattening their own financial pockets through an alliance with government and big business, similar to what occurred between the chief priests, Sadducees, Pharisees, and Pontius Pilate. The machinery of big business—consumer-based Christianity—that turns church leaders into millionaires (sustaining the religious elite’s way of life, like the dominant religious leaders who aligned with Pontius Pilate) should be stopped. 
• Christian leaders also need to stop presenting a warrior-type Jesus fighting for religious freedom and pitted against the evil-doing government. Instead, I would hope to see more drawing on the Jesus of the Gospel, who does not instruct his disciples to be self-centered or money-focused warriors—but instead encourages his followers to engage in acts of self-transcendence and sacrifice for other people. 
• I believe religious freedom can be achieved from dialogue and partnership far better than through condemning the government from the pulpit as a means to create contention against government leaders. There is a long history of government leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—that were awful people spreading harm, but there are also decent and good government leaders in both parties, and Christian leaders need to spend more time partnering with the good side of government. 

Learning from the past—Christian churches in the 1950s—might be a good start to re-imagine a non-consumer-based Christianity, and that can start by reading books that explain the history of Christianity in America and by talking to people you might know who were active Church members 50, 60 or 70 years ago (e.g., older church members). For years I have found the older members of my church to be some of the wisest, and they have so many fascinating stories to tell about how Christianity was so much different than it is today.

The post How Partisan Passions Are Undermining Christian Community appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

While there are a number of other effective responses to this challenge to some peoples’ faith, both in this magazine (see Aaron Miller’s essay here) and elsewhere (such as Kathleen Flake’s recent commentary), there are two economically ignorant assumptions that critics of the Church’s finances have often made which have not been challenged but which should be. 

Is Lack of Spending Really Why So Many Suffer?

The first unexamined and problematic assumption is this: The Church has vast resources which they are greedily hoarding or misspending. If it were not for the Church’s greed, they could alleviate a lot of suffering and poverty. If the Church would just write a check, poverty, disease, and a lot of suffering could be greatly reduced.

The first question this raises is who would the Church write a check to? Is there some institution that has the expertise, capacity, and capability to alleviate all the suffering in the world, yet merely lacks sufficient resources? Obviously, there is no such worldly institution. The Church searches far and wide for well-run, effective organizations, and it partners with them anytime that’s possible.

 Resources Follow Solutions—Effective Solutions Attract Resources

You see, lack of money is usually a symptom, not the core problem. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the problem, it just means we need to think carefully about how to solve it; hardly ever is it as simple as writing a check! When it is free to do so, capital chases success and flees failure. This means that lack of resources is rarely the cause of the problem and more often simply a signal pointing to a deeper underlying problem. But because it’s the most simple and obvious one, it’s easy to assume that poverty is the cause rather than an effect.

Nineteenth-century economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote about the key difference between money and wealth (or as he calls it, “riches”). He says confounding the two “is the cause of errors and calamities without number.”

For wealth, according to Bastiat, is not “a little more or a little less money.” Instead, it’s “bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, fuel to warm you, oil to lengthen the day, a career open to your son, a certain portion for your daughter, a day of rest after fatigue … instruction, independence, dignity, confidence, charity … progress and civilization.” Money, therefore, is the store and symbol of wealth, but not wealth itself.

We are all alarmed at the growing problem of homelessness in many cities across the United States right now.  Many cities have devoted ever-increasing funds to this problem. For example, San Francisco now spends one billion dollars a year on homelessness, and that is on top of all the state and federal programs also devoted to this problem. It’s easy to walk down the street of a wealthy city like San Francisco and shake your head, appalled that there is such poverty among such wealth. You wouldn’t be wrong, but if you assume that homelessness is because of greedy people hoarding their wealth at the expense of the poor, you have missed the point. As journalist Erica Sandberg said, “If our problems could be solved with money, our problems would have been solved a long time ago. It’s not the funding, it’s policy.”

In fact, as Michael Shellenberger has documented, the money spent on solving the problem has actually made it worse, because it misdiagnosed the problem. While housing costs in San Francisco are outrageous, most of the people living on the streets are dealing with drug addiction and other mental illnesses, and no amount of cheap housing can solve that problem. He agrees with Sandberg, claiming that the homelessness problem does not stem from a lack of money or social programs. 

 Oprah Winfrey was deservedly praised for her generosity when she started a lavishly funded all-girls boarding school in South Africa, but she was recently heartbroken to learn of a series of sex scandals in the school. This is not to say that she shouldn’t have opened this school, only to say that even large amounts of money cannot guarantee success. Perhaps even more important than money are accountability, identifying effective solutions, properly implementing them, and diligent follow-through, while being willing to make adjustments as time goes on. This means you will very often start small and then expand from there—while recognizing this hard truth:  The bigger the initial investment, the more likely it is to fail. It is likely for this reason that the Church’s Humanitarian Services continues to grow and expand its reach slowly and surely, rather than quickly-but-ineffectively.

Spending is About the Future, Problems are About the Past

It’s hard to know if an investment will bear fruit. In hindsight, what seems inevitable seemed at the time like something else—perhaps a hugely risky bet worth taking. Apple’s decision to enter an already saturated mobile phone space was controversial at the time, and understandably so. They couldn’t know if they would make any money on their iPhone until after they spent all the money developing it and manufacturing the first production run of their first model. The same thing goes with their next product—if they gave away all their profits as increased salaries or bonuses, they wouldn’t have any money to develop and manufacture their next product. Some companies are too profligate in their spending, and some are too penurious, but since they do not know the future with any certainty, investments are often a difficult decision to make beforehand.

Most of the criticism towards the Church is that it has been too conservative with its spending, but that seems even more difficult to second-guess when we shift from capitalist profits to Christian prophets. If we believe that the leaders of the Church are prophets, seers, and revelators, and we sustain them as such, perhaps it would also be fair to assume that they know more about what is coming, and how best to prepare for it, than we do?

Beyond a Certain Point, It’s Hard to Spend Money Faster than You Earn It

Because most of us are not billionaires, we do not understand how wealth works. (Oddly, sometimes this includes even wealthy people like Utah billionaire Jeff Green who complained that the Church wasn’t doing enough “to alleviate human suffering.” If he and others are sincere in this complaint, then comments like these also betray a misunderstanding of how wealth works.) At some point not only are your daily cares more than adequately supplied, but it becomes very difficult to spend more money than you earn. This is something very few of us can comprehend, since so much of our physical effort, time, and mental energy is consumed by providing for ourselves and our families. We naturally assume that much wealthier people and organizations have similar troubles, but they don’t. 

Jennifer Risher writes about this shift in her own thinking when she and her husband, ground floor investors in both Amazon and Microsoft, suddenly became wealthy. As a friend explained to her:

“Moira likened the experience of sudden wealth to mentioning your love of beef to a friend, then having two thousand head of cattle arrive as a gift to your door. ‘What the hell do you do with two thousand steers?’ she said. ‘You need to know how to deal with them and that’s very different than eating a steak.’”

We also know the opposite example, where lottery winners with no experience managing wealth suddenly get a great deal of money. It’s disheartening how many of them go broke and ruin their lives as well. Their problem was never lack of money, it was the skills to manage the resources they were given.

Before we look at the Church, let’s look at a secular example of an organization devoted to improving the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, despite spending $60 billion on grants, has nevertheless more than doubled in size. (Their financial information is disclosed on their website here, but I have distilled that information onto a spreadsheet you can access here, along with some other calculations I make in this article so you can check my math.)

This graph charts the total value of the assets in the Gates foundation. While it does bounce around a bit year to year based on market performance, over time the assets of the foundation have steadily grown. And remember, this growth includes the $60 billion in grants and other expenses that the foundation spent.

Despite a full-time staff devoted to handing out grants, a mandate to spend money, and no shortage of problems in the world, the Gates Foundation has been unable to spend more money than it earns through its investments. They have no need for a “rainy day” fund, but their assets are still growing. They certainly could spend more money, for example by converting their assets to cash and then lighting it on fire, but that would set a poor example with their grantees, whom they expect to actually do some good with the money they give them.

Capital Expenditures are Distinct from Operating Expenses

The second economically ignorant error is thinking of capital expenditures the same way you think of operating expenses.

Our daily bread is the most obvious example of an operating expense. It is spent, and then it is gone. Like the manna in Ancient Israel, you could eat the manna for today, but you could not keep the manna for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s manna had to come tomorrow. No amount of manna today will alleviate the need for manna tomorrow. Food, water consumption, medicine, are all examples of ongoing operating expenses.

Because the same money can be spent on just about anything, you can spend it on operating expenses, or you can spend it on capital expenses. Imagine you are a farmer, but you also have to eat. You can eat your seed corn (operating expenses), or you can plant it (capital expenses). Each bears very different results. One will keep you alive in the near term (operating expenses), but potentially at the expense of starving in the long term (planting that seed for the harvest later in the year.) You have to have a balance, but you absolutely can’t neglect capital expenses or you soon won’t have any resources to spend on operating expenses.

Unlike operating expenses, capital expenses amortize. That means that while you spend the money upfront and once, you can keep using the asset long after you incurred the cost. The farming equivalent is a farmer buying a more efficient tractor. While he has to spend that money upfront, he can use that new tractor for many years, and in many ways, it pays for itself in improved operational efficiencies. In the case of buildings, like temples and even shopping malls, the expense can be spread out over the decades (and even sometimes centuries) of the usable life of the asset, and these assets, in turn, pay spiritual and temporal dividends over that same time period. This is not the case with operating expenses, which recur regularly.

A while ago I visited Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and I was awed at its grandeur and beauty, not to mention the craftsmanship and courage it took to construct. But I couldn’t fail to wonder if all that wealth could have been used to better effect—especially because there were many indigent people nearby begging for alms.

Yet it has stood for 405 years as a testament to the faith of the largest Christian denomination, inspiring and uplifting several lifetimes worth of Catholics worldwide. Constructed over a period of 109 years, it cost 50,000 ducats to build, or about seven billion in today’s dollars, which works out to just over seventeen million per year. With an estimated 1.2 billion Catholics, that works out to less than 1.5 cents per year per currently living Catholic, or if paid in one lump sum for each Catholic, $1.08 per currently living Catholic. (We’re assuming all Catholics who lived before now contribute nothing to its construction.) 

 Or to think of it in reverse, if the Vatican sold off Saint Peter’s Basilica for what it cost, dismantled it and sold off the scrap, then distributed the proceeds to each Catholic, it would give each of them a one-time payment of $5.83.  And what about next year? The building is no longer there to inspire and lift, and the $5.83 would be long gone as well.

City Creek

We can do the same thing with the assets of the Church of Jesus Christ. While there is really no comparison to Saint Peter’s, we can still use math to estimate City Creek shopping center’s financial impact on the average member, as it seems to be the most common financial asset the disaffected currently complain about. 

 It was built for an estimated $1.2 billion. But remember, this is an amortizing capital expense. It opened in 2012 and should easily have a life span of at least 50 years. That means that even if City Creek never recovered that expense through its rents, and even if these funds came from tithing funds (which they did not), the total cost of the project to each member works out to be $72.02, or amortized over its expected useful life, $1.44 per year. Based on the average US salary and a member paying 10% to the Church, withholding your own share of that would mean you pay 9.97% on your increase instead. While you would be disobeying the spirit of the law, and I doubt receive the full blessings of tithing, you would be close enough to 10% that no one else would notice. This makes it seem even more foolish to withhold that 9.97% because you object to the way the 0.03% was spent. 

Put another way, if you have shopped at City Creek and parked at a nearby parking meter, you spent more on parking than your share of the cost of the entire development. And if you bought a pair of shoes while you were there, that would exceed your lifetime share of the cost.

Of course, back in the real world, I am confident that City Creek is earning the Church a healthy return on its investment. At an eight percent average return for most investments, that means your “investment” in City Creek will earn the Church $5.76 a year or $288.06 over the amortized lifetime of the project, or four times the initial expense. And this assumes that the rents do not appreciate and the asset lasts no longer than 50 years, both of which are unlikely.

Two Parables Apply: The Widow’s Mite and the Talents

I am grateful that our church leaders take seriously their sacred responsibility to carefully steward the sacred tithing funds. The widow’s mite is an important parable for all Christian believers, and the Church’s attitude is so refreshing compared to the way governments spend tax dollars that are collected by the force of law, and so often wasted. In comparison, church leaders are careful and trustworthy.

While the widow’s mite is certainly important, the critics of the Church’s finances forget an equally important parable, which is the parable of the talents. The same Monday Morning Money Managers who feel City Creek is wasteful and a poor investment then turn around and criticize the Church for making too much money with their public investment manager, Ensign Peak Advisors. We have already discussed how it is not as simple as it might appear to wisely spend extremely large sums of money, and so then the question becomes, what should the Church do with those excess funds? 

I think everyone agrees that the Church ought to save some portion of its contributions and profits for a rainy day, it’s just some dispute how much they may have set aside. (I expect the impact of COVID-19, and now the war in Ukraine has altered many peoples’ calculations of what is a reasonable reserve.) 

But let’s set that point aside. If the Church should save some of its excess funds against a rainy day, then what should it do with those funds? Should it just keep funds as cash, where it earns barely anything in actual terms, and when corrected for inflation, actually loses money? To do so would correspond to the slothful servant who buried the single talent he was given. The Lord rightfully condemns those who, like the slothful and fearful servant, do not wisely invest what they have been entrusted with to earn the best possible returns. 

By the standard of the parable of the talents, church leaders are wise stewards. By coincidence, the same year that Ensign Peak Advisors was founded is also about when I started working at my first “grown-up” job which included a 401(k) with an employer match. So it’s rather easy for me to compare the performance of my investments with the Church’s over similar time periods. And it’s somewhat depressing for me to admit that this particular Monday Morning Quarterback has been sacked, way behind the line of scrimmage. The Church has earned far better returns on my tithing funds than I could have if I had kept that money and invested it myself.

The Church has always been careful to collect as much income as it can from these sacred tithing funds. When I started as a freshman at BYU in 1988, I was called to be an assistant financial clerk. We still used typewriters to send in tithing reports and used handwritten receipts. Right after we reconciled the financial batch, we would place a phone call and report to the bank the amount of the deposit just before one of the members of the Bishopric went to the bank to make the deposit. Why? I was never told, but in addition to the accountability check on the Bishopric entrusted with those sacred funds, it was also probably because the Church could begin earning interest on those sacred donations within minutes of it being collected. If the Church took that much care to collect a few hours’ worth of interest, they are careful stewards indeed.

 Much of the financial criticism of the Church comes from naïve individuals who do not understand wealth or investing, and who second-guess our inspired leadership’s stewardship of the assets and income the Church has. From my own work in real estate and finance, and working with extremely wealthy people, I reach a very different conclusion. As reflected above, I believe there is a strong and unappreciated rationale confirming that our Church leaders have been good and faithful stewards of the sacred funds with which they have been entrusted.

The post You Can’t Spend Your Way Out of Poverty appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Both parties knew this and recognized that shifting the Latter-day Saint vote ten points in either direction could make the difference. So both political machines went into overdrive to politicize and divide Latter-day Saints. 

In our lifetimes the only real politicization we had experienced as American Latter-day Saints was being mobilized by Republican causes since we so often reliably voted that way as a people. This more recent election changed many Latter-day Saints’ relationship to politics from being pushed politically in one direction, to being pulled apart.

In many ways, this isn’t unique. Many commentators have noted increased politicization across many parts of our lives. And this divisiveness has not been kind to churches. Anglicans and now Methodists are seeing major schisms based on politics. And many others have simply begun to choose their church based on their politics.

We had hoped that with the election’s passing, the politicization would pass as well. Unfortunately, it seems that the election has merely served as a springboard to even more division.

The January 6th conflict, the ongoing pandemic and related policies, new abortion laws, and LGBT+ issues have kept the political flames hot and continued to divide Latter-day Saints. In many ways, we are seeing signs of a “balkanization” similar to what M. David Huston predicted in our magazine earlier this year.

Reaching for this elusive unity can be difficult. In a recent essay for Deseret News, Daniel Frost, a professor of politics and religion at BYU, spoke about belonging. He concluded that there must ultimately be a basis for belonging, and he advocates for the continuing importance of a shared vision of truth. He writes, “Belonging based on truth assumes that truth can be known and shared, and that dedication to the truth is edifying for us as individuals and unifying for us as a people.”

For Latter-day Saints, this shared sense of truth is most often articulated in the unified statements of prophet leaders. And resistance to these statements from one or more of these politicized factions can create intense discomfort among other Church members.

As much as we possibly can, we hope all Latter-day Saints can stand behind the inspired counsel of our Church leaders across the variety of issues facing us today. As Frost points out, this is a critical part of our path to creating durable belonging in any community, including our own.

We must also, however, be able to endure deviations in vision from those that we simultaneously accept as part of our community and part of the body of Christ.

The Church endured.

Today this pattern is particularly acute among those challenging Church leaders on issues of sexual morality. Many Latter-day Saints are aspiring for more ways to promote love and belonging. Those efforts should be met with appreciation and understanding.

Yes, there are reasons for concern. We certainly do not need to capitulate on important matters of principles and doctrine. But we recognize those sincere believers advancing these aspirations as part of the whole body of Christ, even when they struggle to align fully with prophetic counsel.  

A similar pattern appears in matters of strident anti-vaccine advocacy. Those who push back on prophetic counsel on these matters harbor their own sincere questions and concerns. Yet, to the degree they undermine confidence in prophetic authority or stir up division in the body of Christ, they should also be challenged. As before, we must recognize that those resisting norms being encouraged are also fellow brothers and sisters, and we can hold space for a deeper unity of heart notwithstanding their grappling to be aligned with prophetic counsel.  

Doctrinal and behavioral lines are legitimate. Maintaining boundaries is important in creating belonging so that we can maintain clarity on what precisely we belong to—and what we are about in our shared work. And those shared beliefs ultimately define what exactly we’re being united together in. But those lines do not need to be red, bold, neon, and instantaneous. As participants in a world that is more politicized today than ever, we hope that the Latter-day Saint people can simultaneously hold space for individual believers to wrestle and disagree, while still holding firm in our commitment towards and aspiration for a shared vision of truth.

Even so, that larger aspiration for a common commitment to truth remains foundational. Unity and belonging do require on at least some level shared truth, shared vision, and shared purpose. But in pursuit of those shared ideals, we can welcome and seek to foster belonging among our fellow Saints even when we disagree.

The post Not Giving Up on a Shared Vision of Truth appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Too often, we conflate policies with values, and thereby reject the values we hold because we have attached them too strongly to policy. For example, some reject the immorality of aborting a child, due to resistance to specific policy efforts on the right. In the other direction, wholly rejecting anything related to equal justice, due to certain policy efforts on the left is another illustration.  By contrast, I find myself imagining a social justice not so quickly rejected, but instead reflecting an extension of Latter-day Saint values, which includes a plurality of political views. By self-consciously operating from a Latter-day Saint framework, we can creatively reimagine social justice in an inclusive and expansive way without shoehorning political positions into principles; presently, though, it does seem like an all-or-nothing debate. 

In the midst of this all-or-nothing debate, Public Square editors put out an article last fall entitled Does Social Justice Really Have to Divide Us? where they asked, “What if we got a little more curious about how we might legitimately embrace certain elements of social justice without ‘wresting’ the scriptures and deforming the teachings of Christ in any way?”

I became curious about this possibility: What could it really mean to articulate a social justice ideology that comports with Latter-day Saint teachings and beliefs? My journey in preparing this piece led me to connect deeply with the words of then-Elder Oaks at a Latter-day Saint Student Association Fireside back in May of 1986: “I find some wisdom in liberalism, some wisdom in conservatism, and much truth in intellectualism—but find no salvation in any of them.”

Instead of exploring how our unique Latter-day Saint identity can influence social justice, many have heavily, and hastily condemned all related activism to the point where we inadvertently forsake Christ’s teachings around ministering to the poor, needy, hungry, sick, and afflicted.

Here, I will not directly criticize social justice ideology, but instead attempt to make my own contribution towards articulating a broader, more positive form of it, grounded in Latter-day Saint scripture and teachings. Rather than attempting to stretch our teaching beyond recognition and extrapolate far beyond core doctrines of our faith, I’m intrigued at the extent to which some of the core doctrines of the restoration provide a potential foundation on which common ground on social justice-related issues might be found.  

I summarize six possible underpinnings below:

1. Priority concern and service for the vulnerable. It’s clear, especially from the New Testament, that Christ expects us to take steps in our own spheres towards a more just society. In the Lord’s powerful parable of the sheep and the goats, we read, “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison and ye came unto me.” 

All Christians agree on the importance of reaching out to the vulnerable.  Indeed, Jesus goes on to note that it’s precisely on this point that He will ultimately separate out the nations and judge them from one another. But how exactly to go about this?  

While our commitment to social welfare and justice should not be in dispute, we definitely need caution when exploring the methods used to pursue that aim. As Latter-day Saints, the most obvious way we pursue this is through meaningful service, as well as collective efforts through tithes and offerings that fill the bishop’s storehouse, and provide funds to be shared with the needy among us—and in other nations.  

These are not secondary matters for us. As Amulek warns, “if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need—I say unto you, if ye do not any of these things, behold, your prayer is vain and availeth you nothing, and ye are as hypocrites who do deny the faith.” 

We have a scriptural mandate to move towards a time when there is “no poor among [us],” even if it means real personal sacrifice. Elder Holland recounts a story of President Monson, who had given away his second suit, his shirts, and even the shoes off his feet while he visited East Germany. 

Latter-day Saints seek to minister to families around us and find ways to give of our time, talents, and resources in other ways. Tutoring those seeking to learn more, or donating more to charity—all this reflects ways to contribute to social justice on an individual level.

2. Support that builds greater capacity in those who are vulnerable. Food, clothing, and medical care are a starting point, but the substance God calls us to share with others must go beyond that—with an aim to build spiritual and emotional capacity in recipients. In a message where he also spoke of not turning away the needy, hungry, sick, or afflicted, Elder Jeffrey Holland reassured his audience, “now, lest I be accused of proposing quixotic global social programs or of endorsing panhandling as a growth industry, I reassure you that my reverence for principles of industry, thrift, self-reliance, and ambition is as strong as that of any man or woman alive.”

That doesn’t mean telling people to “buck up.”  While people are receiving an education,  applying for jobs, or receiving medical care, they do still often need ongoing help before they get back on their feet. 

3. Taking seriously the need to abandon prejudice and hatred of any kind. President Nelson has taught: “The Creator calls on all to abandon attitudes of prejudice against any group of God’s children. Any of us who has prejudice toward another race needs to repent.” He has also asked the saints “to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice.”

Consistently, updated historical writing states: “Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavour or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present in any form.” 

Other types of prejudice condemned by the Church include sexism and nationalism, all of which betray our core conviction that “all are alike unto God.” 

The Church is very serious about these efforts, issuing strong condemnations of white supremacy and adding the goal of eradicating racism to the handbook.  President Oaks specifically reminded us that racism includes “the police brutality and other systemic discrimination and housing publicized recently.”  That encourages us to step outside our comfort zones and explore broader definitions of racism—considering ways that racism has been perpetuated through the historic wealth gap, redlining, etc., so that we can address systemic inequality. 

Rooting out these attitudes involves gaining exposure to those of different races and building bridges because we tend to hate that which we do not understand. In addition to appreciating racial dynamics in Latter-day Saint history more deeply, we can study the inspiring examples of faithful Black Latter-day Saints in our history, as well as reading works by Black Latter-day Saints now. As we listen and learn more, we can allow for grace, understanding, and repentance as we fall short and experience discomfort for past mistakes. 

Yet this can be motivation for looking forward and making changes. By opposing all forms of hatred, we become more like our Savior Jesus Christ. And in all this, we can be united in seeing the restored gospel of Jesus Christ as providing the best impetus and ideas for alleviating those evils. 

4. Advocating for protecting all life, including the most vulnerable. The Church’s position on abortion is that except in cases of rape, incest, or health, abortion is contrary to the will of God, but that those circumstances do not automatically justify an abortion. Similar to allowing birth control, while encouraging a couple to not delay having children within a marriage, abortion is never encouraged and has been “consistently opposed” by the Church. 

While some have attempted to construe a pro-choice position from Church teaching,  President Oaks has clarified: “My young brothers and sisters, in today’s world we are not true to our teachings if we are merely pro-choice. We must stand up for the right choice.” 

The idea that pro-choice policies produce fewer abortions has been challenged by a left-wing fact-checker recently. That is not to say that Democratic policies generally cannot lower abortion rates because certainly, they can, but this fact-check applies specifically to pro-choice policies.  And Terryl Givens has written: “At a minimum, Saints should deplore the current amoral regime in which even the most minimal appeals to humanity have been obliterated in the name of “reproductive freedom.” 

The eradication of abortion comes both through seeking it to be abolished and finding ways to make it less necessary. That means looking beyond only the act of abortion alone to the broader dynamics that lead women in that direction. For instance, since abortion disproportionally impacts women of color and women of lower socioeconomic status, it could rightfully be considered an example of systemic discrimination. 

Advocating life goes beyond abortion as well.  The protection of life should be womb to tomb. The Church’s position on capital punishment is, “we neither promote nor oppose capital punishment.” Patrick Mason’s case against capital punishment provides a scriptural imperative to oppose it. Research shows that around 4% of inmates were killed despite their innocence, an issue disproportionately impacting Black people as well. Given the high rates of incarceration and negative outcomes for those released, perhaps it’s also time to follow the lead of Joseph Smith, who suggested prisons be reformed with “reason and friendship.”

5. Welcoming strangers, refugees, and immigrants. Another issue that we must speak about is related to the family as well and it is refugees. The Church developed an initiative called “I Was a Stranger” in order to encourage members to find ways to involve themselves with bringing refugees into the community and integrating them. This provides a great model for helping refugees and immigrants alike adjust to American life while actively working to understand the cultural customs and practices that they are accustomed to having. Since we believe in strong families, we also do oppose the separation of families at the border as made clear with multiple statements. We need to ensure that immigrants are able to safely enter the country, remain with their families, and integrate into society in a way that makes them feel loved and welcome. 

While our imperative to accept refugees and immigrants with open arms is a scriptural one, we are still counseled to make informed choices about laws around the border. The Church has encouraged legislation that “will properly balance love for neighbors, family cohesion, and the observance of just and enforceable laws.” Walker Wright has argued for underrecognized benefits of “welcoming migrants with open arms and advocating for far less restrictive immigration policies.” Latter-day Saints should absolutely support safe immigration and streamlining this process as a way to show our neighbors that we will willingly accept them, while still maintaining border security.

6. Raising our voices to advocate for truth and love. Testimony encompasses a wide range of activities that might be defined as witnessing that Jesus is the Christ. Channeling Joseph Smith, one could argue that sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ through testimony is an act of social justice because it empowers individuals to align themselves with the law of love more.

I find that Latter-day Saint critiques of social justice often err on the side of self-reliance in a way that does not encapsulate the Lord’s commandment to “feed my sheep.” In the pursuit of becoming like Jesus Christ, we become love personified, like He is and was love personified. If love becomes part of our persons, we see that all commandments, laws, and righteous activities from giving to the poor to reading scriptures to education prepare us for and help us fulfill the law of love, thereby contributing to our social justice efforts. 

That love will be important to explore differences that remain.  Elder Uchtdorf reminded us that, “the gospel of Jesus Christ transcends politics, prejudices, and personal grudges.” As we develop an explicitly Latter-day Saint social justice ethic, we can allow ourselves grace and forgiveness as we do our best to relieve the burdens of the marginalized and seek to carry out Christ’s work. 

By articulating a Latter-day Saints social justice ethic through values rather than through policies, we can perhaps better establish unity as Latter-day Saints as we confront social issues. Instead of allowing political opinions to divide us, my hope is that we can link arms together and collaborate based on our perception of common problems in our society. Whether Democrat or Republican or a third party, we can unite over our shared values and creatively work together to create a more just society. 

This piece does not come close to being a comprehensive approach to social justice on every issue, but that can be a shared project of exploring ways to follow the example of the Savior Jesus Christ, whose calling is to “preach good tidings unto the meek … to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

We have covenanted to follow Him in this work. Whether that is eradicating stereotypes etched deep in our minds, or trading our Netflix for volunteering the community, let’s do it!  If taken seriously, this will raise all of us out of our comfort zones and require our commitment, but this commitment is an extension of our covenants, not anything apart from it. 

The post A Gospel Foundation for Common Ground on Social Justice appeared first on Public Square Magazine.