Sanford appeared to be motivated by anti-Latter-day Saint bigotry, potentially exacerbated by mental illness and drug use. Four congregants were killed in the attack—two from gunshot wounds and two from the fire—and eight more were wounded. The meetinghouse itself was destroyed. Many victims were lauded as heroes, including two young congregants, both fourth-year emergency medicine resident physicians from nearby Henry Ford Genesys Hospital, who ran back into the burning building multiple times to help others escape. 

Within 48 hours of the attack, Utah resident and Latter-day Saint author Dave Butler, who has no connection to Grand Blanc, started a GiveSendGo fundraiser—not for the victims of the attack (there were already several of those), but for the shooter’s family. You see, Sanford left behind a wife and a young son with a rare genetic disorder that had required multiple surgeries and careful, expensive medical care. Donations flooded in, with many donors indicating that they were Latter-day Saints and that their faith inspired their donations. 

It would have been an extraordinary response to religious hatred even if the story ended there. It didn’t.

Eight weeks later, the BYU football team was scheduled to play the University of Cincinnati. As part of its Cougs Care initiative, which organizes service projects at each of the BYU football away game locations, the BYU Alumni Association held a coat drive with the NAACP that collected more than 600 coats for local children. In addition, The Church of Jesus Christ donated 27,000 pounds of food to Cincinnati’s on-campus Bearcats Pantry to support students facing food insecurity.

Jared Hicken, one of the heroic medical residents in Grand Blanc, and his wife Brandi attended the BYU football game at the University of Cincinnati. Brandi later recalled that after the attack, in which she, Jared, and their 5-year-old had all been wounded by gunshots or shrapnel, she was nervous to be publicly identified as a member of the Church. But she was excited for a “much-needed date night” with her husband, and wanted to “move on from the attack on our church.” She wrote, “We came. We smiled. We cheered. We enjoyed ourselves.” Until what has since become a familiar chant rang out from the student section: “F— the Mormons!” 

Twenty-seven thousand pounds of food. Hundreds of winter coats. Only two months and a few hundred miles away from a mass shooting and arson attack. And still, “F— the Mormons.”

In a 2022 survey conducted by Pew Research Center, only 15% percent of American respondents reported having a favorable view of Latter-day Saints, making them the lowest-rated religious group. Twenty-five percent of respondents reported an unfavorable view, with the remaining 59% indicating either a neutral rating or that they “[didn’t] know enough to say.”

Conversely, Latter-day Saints tend to view members of other faiths quite favorably. Fifty-four percent of Latter-day Saints expressed a favorable view of evangelical Christians, for example, while only 15% of Evangelicals expressed a favorable view of Latter-day Saints (and 27% viewed Latter-day Saints unfavorably). 

The bigotry that members of The Church of Jesus Christ face is nothing like what early Latter-day Saint ancestors faced. And many religious groups, both in the United States and abroad, still presently face serious safety threats and religious persecution. Fortunately, the horrific Michigan shooting was an anomaly, and the football chants, as nasty as they seem—well, we can probably just keep rolling our eyes. 

On the other hand, many Latter-day Saints may look at these events and wonder how we are supposed to respond. We could lament our neighbors’ misunderstanding. We could work harder to correct misconceptions. We could point to the 27,000 pounds of food and ask, What, exactly, can we do more?

But a year after Grand Blanc, here’s a different question to consider. What does our faith ask us when our neighbors don’t seem to like us very much?

A decade before the brutal Michigan attack, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, taught us about the cost—and blessings—of discipleship:

If you haven’t already, you will one day find yourself called upon to defend your faith or perhaps even endure some personal abuse simply because you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Such moments will require both courage and courtesy on your part.

Elder Holland did not counsel us to be passive. “Defend your beliefs with courtesy and compassion, but defend them,” he said. Religious bigotry isn’t harmless, and we can respond with more than niceness when it happens. We can correct falsehoods about our beliefs, insist that universities that host Latter-day Saints not allow their students to hurl profanities at us, and defend ourselves when we become targets of religious hatred. 

But even still, none of this releases us from the Christian obligation to love the people reviling us. Jesus Christ was unequivocal on this point: “Love your enemies … do good to them that hate you.” Why?

Sharon Eubank, director of Latter-day Saint Charities, once said of the Church’s humanitarian work, “We do this out of our faith in the love of Jesus Christ. We want to give evidence that we love God by loving our neighbors.” The good we are doing is not a transaction. We love the Lord our God, and that is enough. 

We do not stock a Catholic food pantry so that Catholics will think better of Latter-day Saints. Nor do we partner with Muslims on disaster relief efforts so they will defend us when someone attacks our faith. We do not give 27,000 pounds of food to university students in exchange for respectful behavior from their student section. We feed people because they are hungry. And if they don’t like us afterward? We feed them anyway. 

Religious service can easily become tangled up with our desire to be liked and understood. Latter-day Saints are human—we want to be liked, we want to be included. But Christian charity is not public relations work. The person receiving our love does not need to return it for that love to have been worth giving. 

But sometimes something interesting happens anyway.

Last year, Emma Simon, a Jewish student at Princeton University and a fellow with the American Jewish Committee, traveled to Salt Lake City as part of AJC’s Interreligious Mission. Simon came to Salt Lake knowing a little bit about our faith. She had spent weeks researching Church history, beliefs, and practices in preparation for the trip. In an article about her trip, she later explained that her feelings about our religious beliefs were “not simple. I am challenged by some of the political and social policy positions they take.”

But then she visited Welfare Square and the Church’s Humanitarian Center. And there, she encountered a religious community at work. “The amount of good the Church does is undeniable,” she later wrote. After her visit, she did not join the Church, nor did she change her beliefs on the conservative policy positions that the Church takes. But she did leave knowing us a little better.

I think sometimes we expect interfaith relationships to develop in one sort of way—we talk, we understand each other, we trust each other, and if all goes well, we cooperate. But sometimes that process goes backward. Sometimes we cooperate first. Catholic Charities of Oregon, for example, operates nine food pantries stocked with food from the Latter-day Saint bishops’ storehouse. Those pantries serve nearly 400 people each week. Latter-day Saint volunteers also work with Catholic Charities to resettle refugees, meeting newly arrived families at airports and helping prepare their apartments. Catholic Charities calls the two organizations “close partners.”

The Church has been working with Islamic Relief USA for more than two decades. In 2004 alone, the two organizations worked together to send millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to Iraq, Sudan, and Bangladesh. They partnered again after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Islamic Relief later described the Church not merely as its oldest interfaith partner, but as its “oldest partnership.”

In Albuquerque, Catholic Charities runs a summer program for refugee families from Arab, Afghan, and African communities. Many of the families are Muslim. The program takes place in a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse, with church members volunteering alongside Catholics. On many summer days, the building fills with cooking workshops, sewing classes, art classes, and people speaking different languages and practicing different faiths.

And in my favorite example: the Christmas before the Grand Blanc shooting, Detroit received its first Giving Machine. Using the machine, visitors could donate money toward:

• Zaman International, a Michigan-based Muslim nonprofit organization that supports women and children in extreme poverty. Money donated to Zaman went to healthy halal meals for local Muslim families in need, ESL instruction, winter coats for single mothers and their children, and refugee housewarming kits.
• Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan. Giving Machine donations funded their Walking with Moms in Need program, providing critical resources, clothing, and basic necessities for mothers and infants. 
• Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County. Donations funded kosher meals for local Jewish families in need, emergency overnight shelter services, and gas cards for people who are newly employed after a period of unemployment.
• The Pope Francis Center, a support center in Detroit for the chronically homeless. Donations went to warm winter socks and boots, clean clothes and bedding, and warm shoes and bus passes. 

Nobody has to settle the nature of the Trinity before unloading a truck or agree about prophets before packing a box of food. It is actually liberating to have a problem outside of ourselves to solve together. Maybe we are approaching interfaith understanding backward. We assume that understanding must precede cooperation. But often cooperation produces familiarity, familiarity produces trust, and trust makes true understanding possible. It doesn’t always work. But sometimes.

After the Grand Blanc attack, we as Latter-day Saints truly had many friends who mourned with us as we mourned. Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, and other religious communities condemned the violence and reached out with a hand of support. 

And then about six months later, another Michigan house of worship was attacked—Temple Israel in West Bloomfield. The FBI director described it as targeted violence against the Jewish community. 

Now it was our turn to mourn with them. At an interfaith Seder later shortly after the attack, Amy Sapeika of the American Jewish Committee’s Detroit office said that interfaith partners immediately reached out to her with calls, texts and emails expressing solidarity and condemning the attack, and she specifically identified Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc among those who reached out with comfort and offers to help. “We’re really grateful for their friendship,” she said.

No theological disagreements had disappeared, but instead of seeing each other as organizations with competing religious claims, they recognized each other as neighbors. 

Elder Holland said that “pure Christlike love flowing from true righteousness can change the world.” And sometimes we get to see that change. A Jewish college student comes to Utah skeptical of our beliefs and leaves with something new to think about. Catholics and Latter-day Saints with very different doctrines spend years side by side feeding hungry families. Muslims and Latter-day Saints find common ground as they support refugees coming to the United States to start a new life. 

And sometimes we will still get “F— the Mormons.” The Christlike love we give should not depend on what response we get. Because the better measure of interfaith service is not whether our neighbors understand us better when we are finished. It is whether we have loved them better. Sometimes understanding and friendship follow. Sometimes they don’t. 

Keep serving anyway.

The post Feed Them Anyway appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Kellie Leavitt and Lacey West share a lot in common. They’re both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Southeast Idaho, they’re both raising young children, and they both moved to Grand Blanc, Michigan, in 2023 for their husbands’ residency trainings.

They were also both attending church with their young families one year ago in Grand Blanc when an attacker rammed a truck into the building, set it on fire, and shot at church members as they fled the burning building. 

In the year since, they have worked hard to process and move on from the horrifying events of that day. In this interview, they share what healing through Christ has looked like for them and their close-knit congregation since the attack.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length, clarity, and style, and Kellie Leavitt and Lacey West have approved the edits.

Anna Bryner: Your families were both there with you that day. What were those next few weeks like as you tried to pull the pieces back together for your families and also for the ward?

Kellie Leavitt: So the first couple of weeks kind of felt like we were in limbo. Everybody taking time off work, trying to figure out our new normal, figuring out next steps—where we were going to meet again, what plans were going forward. And then we had four funerals in the next couple of weeks. So it was kind of this weird limbo time where we weren’t doing our normal thing, kids weren’t doing their normal things.

But we all would find each other at every little meeting that we had. I think we ended up at somebody’s work doing food and coloring pictures for the first responders, and there were little gatherings like that over the next few weeks. Every time we would end up there, it was like hugs all around. You hugged every person you saw.

One particular phrase you’d say or someone else would say to you is “I’m so glad to see you.” And it took on this whole other meaning. It was a time of really coming together and getting closer to each other, for sure.

Lacey West: Yeah, I would definitely agree. Lots of very heartfelt and sincere, “I’m so glad to see you,” or, “I’m so grateful you’re here.”

Everything that Kellie said—that weird limbo. Kids weren’t really going to school because they were scared, and as a parent, I was scared to send my daughter to school. We weren’t really going to church because we didn’t have a building anymore, and people were taking work off. So limbo is a really, really good way to describe it.

There were meetups at parks, and people saying, “Hey, these wards from all across the U.S. have sent toys for the Primary kids—coloring books, crayons, busy boards, and all this stuff.” So we’d go to the park and walk away with a ton of new toys and things for the kids. The outpouring of love was amazing. Even now, our Primary especially is still getting sent gifts from other wards, hand-drawn cards, and pictures. There were tons of little get-togethers for, “Hey, a ward sent this for the Relief Society,” or, “Hey, all the youth meet here, because there was a gift sent to you from this ward.” Just so much service and so much was being done to try to provide comfort to all of us in such a difficult time.

Kellie: I would even say, within our ward itself, we were trying to find ways to serve each other. Obviously it wasn’t necessary, but I went to a sister’s house who had just had a baby, and I took her dinner because I wanted to—it was a way for me to help serve and try to provide comfort. In that short time I stopped by, there were three other people there checking on them, too! It was like that with everybody. So much love and outpouring from everyone, including members of our ward, which is part of what made us draw so much closer.

Anna: How would you say that you and your families have worked through the fear that came after this?

Lacey: I think for me, it mostly came down to trying to be brave enough to do it and to go out, reminding ourselves that this is not the norm. There’s definitely people out there who hate the church, sure. There are people who don’t like it or have really strong opinions about us. But at the end of the day, most of those people would never act the way that the attacker did. Reminding myself of that helped. While there is a lot of hatred out there, that was not the norm and that’s not something that’s going to happen all the time.

There were lots of prayers said:  just asking to have the bravery to go out and face the world and do things again. At the end of the day, the world keeps turning and life keeps happening. So it’s either hunker down and sit in your house and be scared because you had a bad experience, or you stand tall, “be strong and of good courage,” and walk outside. You say, “Okay, we’re going to keep living life. I’m not going to let this person who did something horrible win by making me afraid to go out, live my life, share the gospel, and let people know I am a member of the Church and I’m proud of that.” If I were to go hide away in my house, then he wins, or people like that win.

So just lots of prayers to have that bravery and courage to go out. And I say that, but I am still a little scared sometimes. It’s not like I just decided to be brave and now I am. I’m still scared, and there are still lots of things that are hard to do and hard to approach after an experience like that. We’re a year away from that event, and there are still lots of prayers being said for bravery and courage. I’m sure there will be even more.

Or silly things—I was sitting in church one week, probably like three months ago, and I had a diaper bag next to me blocking the end of the aisle. In my mind, I’m like, That bag is in my way if I need to run. Things like that do still come up, but you kind of have to force yourself to do these things so you can get back into it, be comfortable, and be confident going back to church again.

That first Sunday that we went back to church was hard, but we knew that was something that we wanted to continue to have in our lives because it was important. So you have to give yourself this push to get there, to make yourself used to it again, and to know that—like Lacey said—it’s not the norm to have something like that happen. Millions of people go to church every week and it never happens to them. It just so happened that it happened to us. So you have to realize that it’s going to be okay most of the time.

We’ve just had to lean on people, lean on God, and trust that we’re going to be okay again. It takes time, but it’s getting there.

Anna: In the last year, as you’ve worked through all the emotions of this, what have you learned about Christ?

Kellie: We had a devotional Tuesday night after the attack, and Elder Bednar came. He said a lot of wonderful things, but what I remember most specifically is he told us he wanted us to sing “Gethsemane,” and we were going to sing it two times. He gave us his apostolic blessing that as we sang, we would find something in the song to help us start healing. Specifically in the song, it talks about Jesus dragging His feet—His steps were heavy and slow—and He took all that was bad, wicked or sad, all the pain we would ever know.

To me, during that song, it solidified that Christ knows all of our pain—not just what we do to ourselves, but things that other people do to us. It wasn’t easy for Him, but He chose to do it. That’s what I think makes it so powerful. Being able to give Him the fear, the pain, and the sadness has made a world of difference. It’s probably made the difference between being where I am now and being in complete depression and utter fear.

Lacey: Yeah, I definitely agree with all that. For me, a big one is that healing—even healing through Christ—takes time.

At the beginning, within the first few weeks after everything, there were some people who had these rock-solid testimonies and all this faith, and were in such a peaceful place. I remember thinking, Wow, I must not have enough faith, because I just don’t feel that way at all. I don’t feel like I’m in a good place. I’m scared. I’m still having such a hard time. Maybe I’m just not faithful enough.

I’ve come to know through my own journey of healing that it’s not a lack of faith, and it’s definitely not a lack of God in my life. It’s just that sometimes healing takes time. You see the scripture stories where people touch Christ’s garment or say they have faith, and He heals them instantly. Sometimes we think that’s how it’s supposed to be: I have faith, so I should just be healed from this. The reality is that’s not always the case. Healing takes time, even when you have Christ as your constant companion through that healing.

Like Kellie said, I know Jesus Christ suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane not only for my sins, but also for all the pain I would ever feel—so that when I went through this, He could look at me and understand perfectly how I felt. He knows that bone-deep fear. He knows that feeling in your gut of, I don’t know what to do next, I’m scared. He felt it with me through the whole experience and through this whole healing process. He is still very much by my side.

The scriptures teach us to endure to the end. If the end was supposed to be just a few faithful prayers and a good night’s sleep away, then there wouldn’t be much enduring happening. Enduring means long-term sometimes. That means healing is going to take a while, and that doesn’t mean that the Lord’s not there with you. It just means that maybe you need some time, and that’s okay. He’s going to be with you that whole time, guide you through it, and be your constant companion. He is going to walk that road with you patiently, go at your pace, and help you through it—no matter how long it takes.

Anna: Those are both such beautiful experiences. I’m curious: Based on what you’ve learned, if you could go back a year and tell yourself something right after this happened, what would it be?

Lacey: I think I would just want to remind myself to be patient with the process of healing, not try to rush it, and just have faith. They say “have faith in the Lord’s timing,” and I think that’s so much easier said than done when you’re actually waiting on the Lord’s timing! But the Lord is with you through that whole healing process, no matter how long it takes.

You have to be patient with yourself, be patient with the Lord, and understand that through this, you are becoming stronger. Through this pain and sorrow, you are growing. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. You’re not going to be afraid of the world forever. You’re not going to be afraid to go to church forever. You’re not going to be afraid every time you hear a loud noise forever. It’s going to stop, it’s going to go away, and it’s going to be okay. You just have to be patient with yourself, with your faith, with your healing, and with the Lord.

Kellie: Those are great points. Healing is not perfectly linear, that’s the big thing. I think I would tell myself to be patient on those days that it’s hard again. 

Anna: Now that we’re a year out from the attack, where would you say the ward is at? I’m sure everybody is individually at a different place with how they’re healing, but where do you feel like the ward has landed in terms of recovery? 

Lacey: I would say there’s a wide range of emotions. There are people who are feeling rock solid—bearing their testimonies, feeling strengthened, feeling good, and having fully forgiven the things that happened. And there are people on the other side of that too, who are still angry or sad. There are people still grieving, of course, and grief is one of those emotions that you carry for your whole life in different ways.

So there’s a wide variety of emotions, but the thing you see as a constant with everyone is that there is just a desire to take care of each other. Even the ones who I think are struggling the most just want to take care of people and help each other through this. That speaks volumes of what our Church stands for in general—that we don’t just show up and go through the motions of sacrament meeting and second hour and then go home. We show up and we are a family. We’re a community. We’re going to look out for each other, provide meals, and sit with each other and listen when you need someone to listen.

I always think about how Christ is the one who does the work and changes hearts, but as members of the church, we get to be His hands when it comes to serving others. Regardless of where members of the ward are in terms of healing from the pain, grief, sorrow, or anger, one thing we all have in common is that everyone just wants to really take care of the ward family and look out for each other. That was an attribute that was already in our ward before, but it has doubled since the event.

Kellie: Adding to that, there has been no lack of faith in God and faith in Christ. I think we all kind of expected there to be a few people that quit coming to church, but that was not something that I noticed. Everybody still came every week that they could. Everybody still has a strong testimony of Christ. There were so many things that happened following the attack that strengthened everybody’s testimony in Christ and faith in God in some small way. There was no wavering, no lack of faith in that way.

I do feel like we felt displaced, and I’m sure everyone still is feeling displaced just because the ward started going to the Flint building, which is a smaller building. It doesn’t quite fit all of us, so it feels tight, and we know it’s a temporary thing. But we are grateful that the Flint Ward was so accommodating and willing to move over, make room for us, and bring us in. It has become our second home, but it’s a little rocky while we wait to get back to normal, if that makes sense.

Anna: You mentioned that so many things happened after that strengthened faith. Are there any stories or experiences that stand out from that?

Kellie: There were so many people who felt so compelled and called to serve, and you’d feel them reach out to you at the right moment. On days that felt so much harder, I’d get a letter in the mail from somebody I hadn’t spoken to in eight years expressing their love, or I’d get a call on a random night when I was having a hard time. It always felt like there was somebody reaching out and lifting you up right when you needed it.

There were a lot of stories coming from others in our ward—and I won’t share names for their privacy—who described doing something that day they wouldn’t usually do. They thought, Huh, that’s weird, why did I do that? Then looking back later, you realize God put you there for that reason to help somebody, or God put a person in a certain spot so they could avoid the attacker.

Lacey and I left together. We had our cars parked right next to each other, and that day, my husband parked backwards from how we usually do. Usually we would pull in facing the building behind somebody, so when we left, we would have to back out. But instead, he backed in, so all we had to do was hop in and drive!

So we got out to our car, and Lacey was right next to us in her car. We hopped in the car and started driving out. It’s little things like that where I know God guided us so that we would be out of harm’s way.

Lacey: 100%! That day, I wore pants to church. I don’t think I’ve ever worn pants to church a day in my life, but randomly I was just like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good outfit.” I wore flats—I never wear flats! I always wear heels, I’m a heels girlie, but I wore flats that day.

My son was only eight weeks old. Usually I would get to church and nurse him in the mother’s lounge before going into sacrament meeting, but that day I decided to nurse him before leaving the house. Because of that, I was in the chapel, meaning I was much more aware of what was happening than if I had been in the mother’s lounge, which is closed off and hidden away in the bathroom. We very likely would have been trapped in the building while it was burning.

Just those little different decisions! The fact that Kellie and I parked next to each other. When the attacker rammed his truck into the building and I realized something was wrong, I grabbed my five-year-old daughter in one arm and my eight-week-old in the other and ran out. In the chaos of grabbing both kids, I forgot to grab my keys out of the diaper bag. If I hadn’t been parked next to Kellie and Chase, I don’t know what we would have done! I got to my car, told my daughter to hide on the floor, and thought, We’re just going to have to hide in the car, I don’t have a way to get out.

The fact that we happened to park next to Kellie and Chase—I happened to be out of the building before them so I could see them running to their car and realize, Oh, they’re right next to me, they’ve got their keys, I’m going to get my kids and hop in with them! Every little detail about the timing was so—it seemed like such little nothing things at the time, but afterwards I realized: If I had worn a dress or heels, would I have been able to run as fast? If I had parked anywhere else, what would I have done?

I lost my dad a year before the shooting. We were close—like talking on the phone every day close. He was my best friend. After the shooting, I just wanted to call him and talk to him so bad, and obviously I couldn’t. A few days later, my kids were in bed, it was late, and I was saying a prayer: “Could You just tell my dad what happened? I’m sure he saw, but can You let him know what happened and tell me, was he worried about me? What was he thinking?”

I got one of the strongest promptings I’ve had in my whole life: Lacey, he was there, and he held you. I got this image in my head of me running down the hall with my kids, and my dad behind me pushing my kids in tight to me. When I was running, I remember feeling like my kids were being squeezed into me, but I hadn’t put together what that really meant until that spiritual moment. Of course there were angels there!

I’ve heard other members of the ward say the same thing—that they felt like there were angels that helped them run faster, or told them, “Go out this door, not this door,” guiding them to take the path that got them out of harm’s way. It makes me realize how thin the veil really is. There’s no doubt in my mind that there were heavenly presences there that day guiding our steps to protect everyone.

Anna: Wow. That’s amazing. Is there anything else that you wanted to share about this last year or that experience that you haven’t had a chance to yet?

When I think of my own journey, He is the Good Shepherd leading me through this field of grief, sorrow, pain, and fear. It’s still a big field and a big journey ahead. Just because He’s our Shepherd doesn’t mean the field or threats disappear. There are still going to be hardships, pain, and days that PTSD flares up worse than others. But the Shepherd never leaves. He’s still guiding His flock.

For those who maybe struggled the way I did—feeling like a lack of fast healing was a lack of faith—I cannot stress enough that is just not the case. The Lord did not abandon us that day. He was there. Just because that didn’t stop the attack from happening doesn’t mean He wasn’t there protecting us, just as a good shepherd should. We will never understand why everything happened as it did, or why some people were hurt or lost their lives, and others didn’t, but we can understand that the Lord still sought to protect us and help us.

Psalm 23:4 talks about, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Sometimes you have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. That’s just reality. Having faith doesn’t mean you will never walk through that valley, but you don’t have to be afraid, because He is right there with you.

If right now you are in that valley or in the trenches, you are not alone. Keep looking to Him. He knows your pain so perfectly; He would never leave you in that valley alone. He is going to guide you through it and walk with you the whole way.

Kellie: That’s so beautiful. Right after it happened, one of our friends’ little girls said, “Mom, we’re supposed to be safe at church.” That absolutely broke my heart, because I agree with that. We assume we go to church and we’re safe.

It happened because people have agency. The man that attacked us had his agency, and God had to let him do what he was going to do. But like Lacey said, we were not abandoned, and we were not alone. As long as we remember that He is there for us, you’re going to feel His presence.

The other thing I would say coming out of this whole experience: It is so important to record your strong spiritual experiences and your testimony. A week or two after the attack, I made a voice memo talking myself through the timeline, the devotional, and all the spiritual experiences we had. There were so many little details I had already forgotten that reaffirmed everything and made it so much more powerful. I firmly believe in writing down those things as they happen so that when you’re having those tougher days, you can look back on it and let it boost you again.

Anna: I have been so touched by everything you both shared. Thank you both.

The post Healing After the Michigan Attack appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As an eight-hour weekend event, General Conference can feel both joyful and overwhelming. On the one hand, our hearts can feel full of joy as the Spirit touches our hearts during hours of messages. But with so many messages and invitations, it may also feel like we’re being told an infinite number of things to do and become, sometimes leaving us discouraged.

I don’t believe that this is what Heavenly Father wants us to feel. Although we should take the counsel given seriously and honestly identify how we can improve, I believe that General Conference is meant to give us instruction to help us become who God knows we can become, not to shame us for our shortcomings.

In seeking to keep General Conference a joyful experience rather than an overwhelming one, I try to focus on what the prophet teaches and make it my top priority to follow his counsel. Beyond that, I have found some other principles that have helped me approach General Conference in a healthier, happier way.

1. Remember that spiritual progress in one area reinforces progress in others.

When I was younger, I used to listen to General Conference and make myself a very long list of things to change. I’d plaster my room with note cards of inspirational quotes and hope that I’d be able to become all of these things. 

Sometimes I made good progress on a few things. But many of my goals went unmet because I couldn’t focus on so many goals at once. I finally admitted that my approach wasn’t working. 

The late apostle Robert D. Hales taught that developing one Christlike attribute actually helps us develop others. “The attributes of the Savior … are interwoven characteristics, added one to another, which develop in us in interactive ways,” he said. “In other words, we cannot obtain one Christlike characteristic without also obtaining and influencing others. As one characteristic becomes strong, so do many more.”

For instance, in my efforts to follow President Nelson and President Oaks’ call for us to develop the gift of charity and become peacemakers, I have noticed that I have been growing in the spiritual gift of patience (which I desperately needed!). And as I feel Christ’s love for others, my faith in Christ grows, leading me to want to better follow Him. 

Scripture frequently teaches about how spiritual gifts, the doctrine of Christ, and Christlike attributes are all interrelated. “Faith unto repentance.” “If a man have faith he must needs have hope.” These phrases show that focusing on one area will inadvertently lead to improvement in another.

2. Pace your progress.

Imagine listening to 1 Nephi through early Alma in a weekend, then trying to implement everything you learned from the stories, teachings, and invitations.

That is roughly the same amount of time that we spend listening to four sessions of General Conference. Sure, we have music and prayers mixed in to break up the talks. But it is still a lot of information!

We don’t have to change everything at once. Although we tend to think of General Conference as a one-weekend event, it can be helpful to view it as the start of a six-month study period. The talks are delivered all at once initially, but we can then give each talk its own study and focus in the coming months.

The Lord does not expect us to “run faster than we are able.” He does ask us to identify what is “needful.”

If we focus on studying 1-2 talks per week, we can realistically work through all of them before the next conference. That is a slow enough pace to make progress on understanding each talk and applying at least some of its principles. 

The new Sunday schedule provides increased opportunity to study each of these talks and learn from our ward members about their insights. We can also study talks in the order we feel we need them in our lives at a particular time. The progress is expected to be gradual, not all at once after Conference Weekend.

3. Find hope in the stories.

Sometimes the stories in General Conference may feel like they would never happen to us. We often hear stories that have reached a resolution, while our own might not have yet. Or we may hear of someone handling a challenge better than we think we would. While the stories are true, the limited time in which they are told may not account for all the patient waiting, complexity, and emotional difficulty that were part of them.

Sometimes, when we hear the stories in General Conference, we imagine they are only happening to people who meet an impossible standard of righteousness we will never attain. But this is not true. Over time, I have come to know a few of the people in General Conference stories. This has given me a more realistic view; the people in them are sincere and good Latter-day Saints, but they are not perfect, either. They are usually just ordinary people trying to follow Christ. This reminds me that the Lord can work miraculous things in my life, despite my shortcomings.

I am grateful that General Conference contains inspiring stories. If it didn’t, how encouraging would that be? But rather than comparing our stories to others’, we can take strength and inspiration in seeing that God works for the good of His children. I sometimes find myself in circumstances where these stories inspire me to handle a challenge a little more like Christ, even when it feels much easier to let the natural (wo)man rule.  

4. Be open to messages affecting you later.

Sometimes, because of where we are in life when we watch General Conference, certain messages might not immediately touch us. Some might even upset us. I have had to learn that my emotional reaction to a talk doesn’t determine its truth or its relevance. 

We may hear the true principle that God answers prayers but feel frustrated because we are still waiting. We may hear the principle that God’s plan is a plan of happiness but feel angry that we are experiencing grief. We may hear messages about eternal families but feel disappointed that this goal feels out of reach.

Receiving the messages from General Conference in our hearts takes humility. In his first worldwide address as prophet, President Dallin H. Oaks taught, “[Humility] will help us overcome questions about the Lord’s doctrine. When we are humble, we can more clearly hear the Lord’s voice.” I often need to pray for a softened heart before the Lord will let a spiritual truth sink into my spiritual understanding. 

We should also remember that although General Conference talks are intended to help us as individuals, they are also directed to the entire Church. With so many different circumstances that Church members face across the world, some talks may feel more or less naturally relevant to us. In addition, General Conference talks in more recent years have often focused more on broadly applicable principles of following Jesus Christ than providing highly specific direction. This is probably also due to the Church’s internationalization and to the effort to find higher and holier ways of teaching. Instruction is often more principle-based and less application-based, similar to the approach to the new For the Strength of Youth manual. Sometimes I feel disappointed that the talks are not more directed to my personal challenges. Yet I have come to realize that, often, they are: I just need to do the spiritual work of understanding the principles well enough to apply them to my particular circumstances. 

Approaching General Conference with Joy

I am looking forward to General Conference with great anticipation. I hope that, by applying these strategies, we can avoid General Conference overwhelm and instead feel the simple joy that following the Gospel of Jesus Christ provides.

The post Conference Without the Checklist appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In Disney’s “Up,” the quiet love story of Carl and Ellie captures the essence of fidelity and integrity within marriage. Their journey—from childhood friendship to lifelong partnership—is a testament to enduring love, mutual commitment, and shared values.

Integrity and fidelity are central to flourishing marriages. In fact, the virtues of integrity and fidelity were recently described by one research team as the “twin virtues” of marital commitment that represent not only sexual exclusivity but also emotional devotion, honesty, and accountability. The American Families of Faith project—a qualitative study exploring exemplary Christian, Jewish, and Muslim married couples across diverse races—sheds light on how these values are cultivated, sustained, and lived out in everyday life. 

Drawing on findings from this study, the present article explores how these racially and religiously diverse couples define and practice integrity and fidelity, offering four insights into how these principles strengthen their marriages.   

Integrity and Fidelity Matter in Marriage

For many American Families of Faith participants, fidelity involved more than refraining from extramarital relationships—it included emotional and spiritual unity. In “Up,” Carl and Ellie’s life together showed that fidelity encompasses more than sexual exclusivity—it also includes emotional devotion, honesty, and alignment in life’s core vision and goals. Their shared dream of visiting Paradise Falls, while never realized in the way they envisioned, symbolized their mutual commitment to one another.

 Similarly, Ron (pseudonyms are used to protect participant’s identity), a white Jewish husband from the American Families of Faith study, reflected on how honesty shaped his marriage:

I don’t hide anything from her, and that means that I can’t do anything that I need to hide from her, ’cause I won’t hide anything from her. … That influences every moment of my marriage. How many times a day [do I think], “Is this something I would not want to tell her?” … It’s really part of my consciousness all the time.

Sebastian, a Hispanic Christian husband, similarly emphasized the ripple effect of fidelity:

[One] thing that is very important in marriage is fidelity. When you’re not faithful, it doesn’t matter what [else] you can do or how sweet you can be or how loving you can be. … [If you are] cheating on your wife or vice versa, no matter what you do, it’s hard to put the pieces back together. For me, I have to know how to be faithful [while I’m] … at home and [when I am] not … at home. So, fidelity, integrity has a lot to do in the relationship of the couple. Also, in the relationship of the children, if they see [your faithfulness to each other], they will want to emulate the example, they will want to live it—because they will see that regardless of the challenges and problems, there was fidelity.

Integrity as a Core Marital Value

In their in-depth interviews, American Families of Faith participants repeatedly described integrity as essential to the health of their marriages. Beatriz, a Hispanic Christian wife, succinctly stated, “Loyalty, fidelity, integrity are key.”

Couples discussed a wide array of challenges related to stress in their work or personal lives, in-laws, conflict, parenting, illness, and even family deaths. However, their ability to navigate these hardships together demonstrated the resilience that fidelity helps foster. Idris, an African American Christian husband, said:

Character and integrity in a marriage is everything. [They are] … the most important source of strength [to our marriage]. ’Cause if you really don’t have that, you don’t really have a relationship. … You [could] just be an aimless wanderer [and] be blown in the wind anywhere when something comes along. When you have character and integrity in a relationship, then you’re trustworthy. Then your mate, your spouse, has no worries, no hang-ups about where you’re at, what you’re doing. …[T]rust is crucial in a relationship.

The Role of Religion in Teaching Fidelity and Integrity

For most of the wives and husbands interviewed, religious faith reportedly played a critical role in shaping their understanding of fidelity and integrity. Many couples, for example, emphasized that their religious beliefs and practices motivated them to remain faithful and honest with each other. Tanner, a white Orthodox Christian husband, explained how his faith helped him resist temptation. Discussing his job, he said, “I spend two weeks a month on the road. There are temptations out there that I’ve never succumbed to, and one of the reasons is my faith gives me the strength not to do that.”

Enoch, a white Presbyterian husband, elaborated on the promises he made with his wife:

We made vows to be a couple, to be true to each other, so I have a commitment to monogamy and fidelity. I think it would be easy to rationalize out of that if a person didn’t have some beliefs to base that on.

For other participants, fidelity was tied directly to accountability to God. Fu, a Chinese Christian husband, shared, “To keep your marriage holy is your responsibility to God; otherwise you are ashamed to face God. Betray[ing] your spouse is betraying God.”​

One white Latter-day Saint couple described the role of a covenant with God and each other as follows:

Evan: When we were married, we covenanted with each other that we would be faithful to each other and that we would also look to God … and remember Him, and so a covenant is a very vital part of our relationship.

Tara: It’s … a three-way partnership, with God being … a party to making this marriage work.

Coming together by remembering the promises that they made to each other before God reportedly put fidelity and integrity at the forefront of these couples’ relationships. 

Challenges to Integrity and Fidelity

While the majority of participants described fidelity as a source of strength, some acknowledged challenges. Orlando, an African American Christian husband, noted the pressures of living up to marital vows in a world filled with distractions and said:

This world … has a way of testing if you mean what you said [when you got married] or were you just sitting up there ’cause everything was rosy that day … Are you going to hold your sacred vows [when it gets hard]?

The question posed by Orlando does stimulate reflection within marriage—including (and especially) when the challenges come. If marital fidelity is defined by one question, perhaps Orlando nails it with Are you going to hold to your sacred vows when it gets hard?

Imperfect But Striving

The animated story of Carl and Ellie in “Up” illustrates how integrity and fidelity create a foundation for enduring love. However, the American Families of Faith project documents the experience of hundreds of couples who view these virtues as essential for marital stability and satisfaction in their own marriages. These couples have been married for an average of more than 20 years.

In a touching moment from the film, Carl says, “You’re my best friend, Ellie.” Similarly, a father in our project said of his wife’s integrity and fidelity, “She was married to marriage long before she was married to me.” The same father also wrote of his wife of more than four decades, “I can imagine no heaven without her … and with her, even hell would be tolerable.” 

The insights from the imperfect but exemplary marriages studied in the American Families of Faith project reveal that fidelity and integrity are not just ideals but lived virtues that sustain many strong marriages through a sacred sense of shared purpose. For many couples, these virtues are deeply intertwined with their religious beliefs and practices, which provide both motivation and practical tools for navigating challenges.

 The imperfect but striving women and men in the American Families of Faith project underscore that fidelity and integrity are more than individual actions; they are the cornerstone of enduring, meaningful partnerships. By striving to live out these ideals, couples create relationships that not only withstand life’s trials but thrive in their shared commitment to each other.

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In the 2015 movie “Cinderella,” Ella’s mother tells her to “have courage and be kind.” Ella, later known as Cinderella, endures cruelty yet responds with kindness and forgiveness, inviting us to reflect on our own capacity to find the courage to forgive. Her struggle to forgive her stepmother and stepsisters might be more dramatic than most family conflicts, but it still speaks to even the most ordinary family relationships. 

Adapting the counsel in “Cinderella,” we focus on a related invitation that helps families thrive:  “have courage and forgive.” In religious families, forgiveness is both a demand and a blessing. Drawing on interviews with members of about 200 families from diverse racial and religious backgrounds, we uncover why forgiveness remains central to reconciliation and relational healing, despite how challenging it can be.

The findings come from a study of relational reconciliation in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim families in the American Families of Faith project. We consider both why families choose to reconcile and the processes through which they do so.

Why Families Reconciled

Participants described three key reasons for reconciliation: (1) their religious beliefs, (2) their ability to see a “bigger picture,” and (3) their own experiences of God’s love and forgiveness. 

Religious Beliefs

Many participants said their faith created an expectation that they would forgive and reconcile, shaping their responses to conflicts. Briana, an African-American Christian wife, reflected on how scripture motivated her during disagreements with her husband:

Scripture tells us, you may get angry, but sin not. Because we are different, we’re not going to always agree, but being in the church, that’s a benefit for us. We’re able to hear something in Bible study or Sunday service … . God is always going to bring a word back to our memory that makes us realize and ask Him for forgiveness. Then we come back and ask each other for forgiveness.

Cynthia, a teenage daughter of Latino and Caucasian Latter-day Saint parents, shared:

Through the hard times … we’re all kind of going our separate ways, but then I know that each of us think about [our] religion and we’re all like, ‘Yeah, we’re supposed to make up—that’s what we’re supposed to do.’ That’s what we do, and we feel better about it.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

Participants frequently described how their faith helped them see beyond immediate conflicts to a “bigger picture” or a “long-term perspective.” Saul, a Caucasian Jewish husband, highlighted how religious observances like Yom Kippur encouraged him and his wife to reflect on their relationship:

Both of us always have something [in our Yom Kippur goals] about being a better spouse—stop yelling at each other or whatever we do. There is some sense that a religious observance helps us to keep our focus on the big picture and reminds us of things we want to change. If we didn’t do that ritual, I don’t think we would have the opportunity to say, ‘These are things I want to do better.’

An adolescent daughter named Alecia, a Caucasian member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, explained her perspective:

If we fight here, it’s like we fight and get over it in like an hour. Most people in our family don’t stay mad at each other for weeks and weeks. Knowing that our scriptures say we are going to be together forever … that we are bound forever, that we have that bond, fighting here seems trivial when you think about it.

God’s Love and Forgiveness

Participants also described experiencing God’s forgiveness as another powerful reason to reconcile within their families. Many said that recognizing God’s grace in their lives inspired them to extend forgiveness to others. Chen, an Asian-American Christian husband, reflected: “I am a forgiven sinner by God—and if God can forgive me, I can forgive her.”

Similarly, Shawn, a Black Baptist husband, connected God’s forgiveness with his approach to marital conflict:

We intend that God … be the center of our marriage, so that our commitment to each other is an outgrowth of our commitment to Him. Also, in the practicalities of living together, needing to exercise forgiveness and grace toward each other, because we receive grace and forgiveness from God—we can extend that to each other.

Having discussed three reasons why families forgave, we now turn to four processes that reflect how they forgave.

How Families Reconciled

Reconciliation involved four interconnected processes: spiritual, personal, relational, and practical. These processes often overlapped, reflecting a dynamic approach to resolving conflicts.

Spiritual Processes

Prayer emerged as a foundational spiritual practice that guided families toward reconciliation. Participants often turned to prayer to seek clarity and guidance and to regain calm. Angela, an Italian-American Catholic wife, described resolving conflicts with her husband as follows:

In times when we have conflict about anything … we both are always open to either one of us saying, ‘Let’s just pray about this.’ … That ability to come together in prayer and ask for each other’s forgiveness or God’s forgiveness and discernment and direction is something that, again, I don’t know how people can get through without having that.

Prayer also helped individuals acknowledge their own mistakes. Yul, an Asian-American Christian husband, said, “Prayer is very helpful. When we have conflicts and arguments, prayer can calm us down … . God leads us through prayer to recognize our sin and to improve our marriage.”

Personal Processes

Participants described self-examination and admitting mistakes as additional personal steps toward reconciliation. These actions often required humility and introspection. Bekah, a Caucasian Jewish wife, emphasized the importance of personal responsibility:

I think one of the strong points of Judaism is the sense of personal responsibility and certainly in any conflict we’ve had, it’s been really important to own up to whatever part we have in the conflict. And that’s something that comes straight from Judaism.

Apologizing was another key practice. Brent, a Caucasian Jehovah’s Witness husband, described how saying “I’m sorry” often helped resolve conflict in his marriage:

I’ll have regrets afterward and say, ‘Why am I making such a big deal of such a little thing?’ And she’s having the same feelings of regret. And then we’re like, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ And then it’s over.

Relational Processes

Participants frequently described forgiving and being forgiven as relational acts that fostered understanding and acceptance. A Caucasian Latter-Day Saint husband named Stewart shared:

I think one of the basic teachings of the Savior is forgiveness. So … if you want to be forgiven, the Bible teaches that you need to forgive other people. And obviously, we’re imperfect and we want to be forgiven, so I think both of us bring that idea or that principle into our marriage relationship. We see that we have to be willing to forgive the other person. I think that influences our ability to … forgive a little bit sooner than we normally would have, because we know and we believe that forgiving is a good thing.

Parents also modeled forgiveness for their children. Shawn, a Black Baptist father, said:

Our kids … see Emily and I not always get it right and we have to hash things out, but then extend forgiveness to each other. I’ve had to ask my kids for forgiveness. So I hope they see that we’re real people, we haven’t got it all together, but we can accept and love each other because we extend forgiveness of God and the grace of God to each other. And we each know that we need it desperately. 

Practical Processes

Families often took practical steps to repair relationships and prevent conflicts from escalating. These steps included communicating thoughtfully, using strategies to de-escalate conflict, and making amends. Aashif, an Arab-American Muslim husband, described how he and his wife approached disagreements:

At the beginning of our marriage, we had so much more conflict. The religion part is that we say, “It is okay, let’s stop here and discuss it later. Let’s go to pray or leave things for later.” We control ourselves by the faith … so we do not exaggerate the problem and make it like a snowball and make it bigger and bigger and reach the point of disagreement that makes us two parts. We definitely say, “We need to stop, we need to think about it.” We have this limit that we do not cross.

For others, practical action meant repairing ruptures quickly. Jeffrey, a Caucasian Christian husband, explained:

While I am quick to explode, I’m also quick to try and heal that explosion. … I think that a lot of that has been key in our relationship because a lot of times things boil over. Being quick to try and come back and fix the rift is important.

Together, these overlapping processes illustrate the dynamic and multifaceted nature of reconciliation in families. Each step, whether spiritual or practical, contributes to repairing and strengthening relationships.

Our adaptation of the counsel in “Cinderella” to “have courage and forgive” echoes the experiences described by participants in the American Families of Faith project. Motivated by faith, a focus on the bigger picture, and the experience of divine grace, these families seek to make forgiveness a core part of their family dynamics. Through prayer, personal accountability, relational repair, and practical action, participants described forgiveness as fostering healing and deeper connections. Just as Cinderella chose kindness over resentment, these families show that the courage to forgive ultimately strengthens relationships and brings peace. 

The post The Courage to Forgive appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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One of my earliest memories at a chapel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is of walking around its exterior. The building had a detached steeple. I stood at its brick base, looking up to the tip of its spire. The sun was high, and I squinted at how bright it was. 

Growing up, my closest temple was in Los Angeles. My sister once got down on the grass to take a picture. The bottom of the picture was dark and shadowed. Toward the top of the photo, near the peak of the steeple, it brightened. She turned it into a painting I keep in my house to this day.

No one ever told me the steeple was important. It wasn’t addressed in lessons. No one asked about it in temple recommend interviews, but since those earliest days, I have associated it with lifting my eyes, light, and the Church. 

And I didn’t just associate the steeple with my own faith’s houses of worship. I came to instinctively feel a sense of peace and hope whenever I saw a steeple, as it represented people in my community seeking their God.

Where Do Steeples Come From?

My experience with steeples is not revolutionary. In fact, for hundreds of years, religious architects have understood the steeple’s symbolism and used it to create experiences like mine. 

As a result, Christians have learned to read the vertical line of a church as an invitation to look beyond.

The steeple developed from several distinct elements of medieval architecture. The first was the bell tower. Bell towers were built tall so their bells could be heard across the town. Over time, those bell towers were incorporated into the church building, and many eventually received roofs topped by increasingly slender spires. As that silhouette became associated with worship spaces, it was integrated even in the absence of a bell tower.

In 12th-century France, Abbot Suger oversaw the rebuilding of the church at Saint-Denis. The project included what he called “high and noble towers” and helped establish what became known as Gothic architecture.

On one of the church doors, Suger inscribed a poem:

Marvel not at the gold and the expense,
but at the craftsmanship of the work.

Bright is the noble work;
but, being nobly bright, the work
Should brighten the minds,
so that they may travel through the true lights
To the True Light where Christ is the true door.
In what manner it be inherent in this world
the golden door defines:
The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material.

Suger understood his work to be explicitly symbolic. He saw the material forms he used as a means of directing congregants’ minds to the truth.

It was a century later that the bishop of Mende, William Durandus, wrote an extensive treatise on church architecture and its connection to Christian worship. He wrote of the steeple, “The pinnacles of the towers signify the life or the mind of a prelate which aspireth heavenwards.” Durandus saw the vertical architecture as a symbol of spiritual ascent.

The symbol became ingrained through repetition. No declaration was needed: for generations, the appearance of the steeple was the first visible marker of what the building was. 

St. Paul’s Church in Harlow, Essex, England, was built in the 1950s. It included a low, detached bell tower, but the main building also bore a spire that the architects described as a “symbol for the church.”

The tower’s practical and symbolic functions had become fully separate. 

Latter-day Saint Architecture

The steeple was an early feature of Latter-day Saint architecture.

Despite the Church and many of the early Saints experiencing poverty, the Kirtland Temple, the first temple built by Latter-day Saints, featured a white tower spire and weather vane. Similarly, the Nauvoo Temple’s steeple was finished in the midst of the exodus. The decorative element was finished just five days before the early Saints left the city. 

President George A. Smith, who served in the First Presidency, said of the Salt Lake Temple’s spires, “Every one points to a moral lesson, and all point to the celestial world.”

Folk stories have also developed around the importance of steeples. As the St. George Utah Temple neared completion, Brigham Young Jr. wrote that his father was unhappy with the tower because he believed it was too short. Soon after Young Sr.’s death, lightning struck the steeple. And when the workers rebuilt it, they made it taller. The folk interpretation has long been that Young Sr. directed the lightning after his death. 

Every temple completed by The Church of Jesus Christ in the first 89 years of its history included a steeple. Then, between 1919 and 1927, three temples were built without steeples. 

Every temple once again included a steeple for 90 years until the 156th temple was dedicated in Paris, France, in 2017. Today, 97% of temples include a steeple.

The exceptions are also illustrative. The three temples in the early 20th century were each built to suggest Solomon’s temple in ancient Jerusalem. Hyrum Pope, one of the architects of the Cardston Alberta Temple, explained that the architects wanted to evoke a sense that the design was “ancient as well as modern.”

At the time, a new movement in sacred architecture was emerging, typified by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple. 

Pope drew on this language to communicate the power of God. But the symbolism of ascent remained within the structure. Each ordinance room was placed half a story higher than the previous one. The temple was also precisely aligned with the four cardinal directions, symbolizing spiritual orientation. The other early 20th-century temples without spires followed similar designs, communicating religious symbolism in a language appreciated by the people worshipping there. 

While Wright’s design style for churches eventually faded, the longer tradition of the steeple has remained. And according to some estimates, about 80% of Christian churches in the United States have steeples. 

Steeples and Worship

As a small child, I had the kind of experience that generations of architects sought to create. I saw a steeple, I looked up, and I saw light.

But it is more than just decoration.

Worship has never been limited to the minimum physical actions required to make an ordinance valid. Worship forms our attention, memories, and imaginations. 

The steeple encapsulates a temple’s teaching and purpose. It transforms the temple’s work of bringing us closer to the divine into a material form, a visible movement. 

There is a reason why steeples appear in drawings, wedding announcements, flyers in the foyers, family photographs, and in the memories of millions of Latter-day Saints. They are a part of how we imagine our interaction with God. 

We don’t talk about them because we don’t have to. A church has pews so we can sit, and it has a steeple so we will look up. 

Today, there are occasional conflicts about the steeples on our temples. And we should work to make sure our temples fit into their communities. But steeples are worth defending. And we should be grateful for the legal protections that enable us to build them. 

The post Steeples Are Worth Defending appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

No one likes feeling negatively judged. For a few years, I ran a website called LDS.net. We had a robust internship program. Three semesters a year, I would welcome between four and ten college juniors and seniors and teach them how to write at a professional level. 

About a week into the semester, the interns would begin brainstorming their first article. In their first batch of proposals, about 90% wanted to write about how their coreligionists should stop judging them.

In the beginning, I was curious about these experiences and what had happened. The interns usually told me about something they felt defensive about—often, a lifestyle choice that was within the bounds of Latter-day Saint doctrine but outside the norm. 

I asked them how this judgment played out in their lives. There were two main sources of these young authors’ certainty that they were being judged. One was nonverbal signals. They would notice another person’s eye movements or hear an unusual breathing pattern. 

The other came from things that didn’t happen. They were certain that they were not asked on dates, or given certain callings, or included in friend groups, because they were being judged.

Here are a few examples I heard over the years. 

One writer complained that a group of women in her ward regularly judged her body. As an example, she recalled a conversation at a ward activity in which one of the women mentioned going on a morning run. My writer was sure the woman meant the comment as an implied criticism.

Another told a story about going to church with an older sister. This older sister had decided to wait to have children. A friend from their childhood, who was the younger sister’s age, was at church that day and mentioned she was “finally” expecting. My writer said that the friend’s emphasis on “finally” conveyed judgment about the older sister’s decision to delay having children.

One writer told me that he was judged by a young woman in his ward for having facial hair. He based this conclusion on an encounter after church. When he approached her to chat, she spoke abruptly and then left, but only after her eyes fell on his scruff. He assured me that her downward glance was “pointed.”

What interested me was that these stories were aggregated and presented to me as a common experience. My writers felt judged, or more often, believed that the people around them were judgmental. The details were subsumed in that description of the experience.

I know inappropriate judgment exists. People are fallible, even the ones I go to church with. But I also noticed that many of the specifics my writers used felt thin to me. I admit I didn’t know the context or the nonverbals, but most of these interactions seemed innocent to me as an outsider. Yet in the minds and hearts of these interns, these incidents amounted to such a strong and persistent problem that they warranted an essay directed to the general church membership. 

My purpose in approaching this subject is not to tell my former interns that I think they were wrong. Honestly, I don’t know. Negative sentiment is often communicated subtly. People can be cruel, status-conscious, self-righteous, gossipy, and exclusionary. Latter-day Saints are not exempt from these behaviors. And I’ve witnessed instances of pervasive and inappropriate judgment.

But part of me wonders if, in addition to the many real cases of judgment, something broader is happening that makes the experience feel more pervasive than perhaps it is. 

What if much of what we experience as “feeling judged” arises from the interaction between another person’s ordinary effort toward a goal we share and our own unresolved insecurity? 

For example, if I feel insecure because I know I can be thoughtless, and I assume other people recognize this about me, then, when someone thoughtfully offers me a kind favor, I may begin to interpret the person’s tone or volume as a signal that their offer was actually a form of judgment for my own shortcomings. 

Or if I feel defensive because I am not shaving as often as I believe I should while a student at BYU, and someone doesn’t want to talk to me, I may begin looking for signs that my shaving is the reason. 

Because we are intensely aware of ourselves, we assume others are intensely aware of us, too. And because our coreligionists share so many of our aspirations, it is common for us to encounter people we judge to be doing better than we are. And we project our own judgments onto their sighs, comments, and eye movements. 

Our Own Judgment

Insecurity is unreliable. It can interpret difference as disdain. It can interpret excellence as accusation, silence as contempt, and conviction as diagnosis.

I felt this keenly in the wake of my divorce. Although the cause of my divorce was rather obvious and entirely beyond my control, I felt like a massive failure. My children suffered daily as a result of my failure to keep my family together. And I was certain that the many happy families and successful husbands in my new ward would note this failure in their assessment of me. 

And one truly thoughtless comment, such as “Divorce is usually two-sided,” would then take on a life of its own, confirming in my mind that whenever people walked into the chapel and sat somewhere else, they must have been thinking about my failures. 

I interpreted everyone’s behavior in relation to me. 

In many ways, I was fortunate. I determined early on that Jesus could not be taken away from me by anyone. So I decided to try to ignore what I saw as everyone else’s judgments, because, in my case, they weren’t going to affect my behavior.

As a result, I became less hyperaware of others’ judgments. And soon it began to seem that there was much less judgment. Many of the acts (or lack of acts) that I had previously attributed to judgment, I now ascribed to people being busy, or self-consumed, or any of a million other reasons that had nothing to do with me. It soon seemed that almost no one was really judging me in a sustained, cruel, or unfair way. 

I still think there was some judgment. There are a few people whose patterns of statements make me think they still see me as less than. But once I had learned to limit the problem, it didn’t seem very big. What did I care if a couple of people in a ward of two hundred people didn’t like me? 

My feeling of being judged was real and pervasive. But within about a year, I felt the judgment was largely in my head. 

The feeling of being judged is internal, but it attempts to explain the external world. When I felt shame, my mind searched for the cause. And there were lots of sighs and eye twitches I could point to as signs of judgment.

I don’t think every instance of feeling judged is imagined or self-imposed. But in my case, I eventually concluded that was most of what had happened. 

Social Spotlight

Feeling more judged than we are is actually a pretty well-known phenomenon in social psychology.

Researchers use the term “spotlight effect” to describe the tendency to overestimate how much other people notice our appearance and behavior. Relatedly, researchers have identified what they call a “liking gap,” in which people underestimate how much their conversation partners enjoyed their company. We tend to remember our awkward pause or failed joke more vividly than others do. Adults readily recognize an exaggerated form of this tendency in teens, but it continues into adulthood. 

This doesn’t mean every fear of judgment is misplaced. Genuine cruelty, self-righteousness, exclusion, and gossip exist. I’ve witnessed instances of pervasive and inappropriate judgment. But it does mean our social perceptions are not nearly as neutral or accurate as we think. We may be poor judges of just how often others judge us negatively.

The therapeutic tendency to validate others’ observations can create a cycle. It starts when we feel judged, and others in our circles then validate that observation in their efforts to make us feel better. In turn, we double down on the narrative our circle has validated, which can make us even more certain that we were judged. 

This tendency is a form of self-focus, but not necessarily selfishness. We each live within our own consciousness. Our anxieties are loud to us, while other people’s anxieties are mostly hidden. When we enter a room, we are preoccupied with what people are thinking about us, while they are also thinking about what people are thinking about them. We can interpret this distraction as disapproval, while they may be concluding the same. And a room full of people worried about being judged may well be a room full of people too busy to judge anyone else.

Leaving the Imaginary Courtroom

Latter-day Saints are in many ways yoked together in a great work. We are not adversaries trying to outdo one another. 

Just as judgment can be corrosive, so too can the rhetoric around judgment.

The next time we feel judged, perhaps we can start by wondering whether the source of that judgment is internal. What insecurity do we have—what in our own lives do we feel defensive about—that we are putting into the minds of others without their permission?

This does not mean our experiences of judgment aren’t real, but given how many pressures there are to see judgment where it doesn’t exist, perhaps an honest gut check in the other direction can help us see things as they really are.

I am unaware of any comparative evidence suggesting that Latter-day Saints are any more judgmental than any other group. But there are reasons why we might feel that they are. Part of the project of The Church of Jesus Christ is personal improvement, which gives us many opportunities to recognize the gap between where we are and where we strive to be. 

Ultimately, I succeeded in pushing through my own feelings of judgment in my new ward by redirecting my attention. Rather than being concerned about what they thought of me, I started thinking about who in my ward needed my friendship and attention—who was lonely or in need of help. I stopped complaining that I was the one lost sheep, wondering why no one was coming to minister to me as Jesus would, and I started looking for the other lost sheep around me. I started inviting other rather than wondering why no one was inviting me. 

One of the greatest freedoms Jesus offers is a secure identity. We no longer have to appoint everyone around us as judges that we have to please. Human approval matters, especially within relationships, but it does not create or destroy our divine identity. 

That understanding releases us from the impossible task of managing and worrying about every opinion in every room. 

Most people aren’t judging us. They are worrying about their own lives. Their own groceries, deadlines, bodies, disappointments, and families. 

And once we can grasp that, we realize that we’re not going to church with a jury, but a congregation. A bunch of imperfect people, trying their best. Just like you.

The post Maybe They’re Not Judging You appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Drawing on a study from the American Families of Faith Project, we explore how women from Abrahamic faiths navigate marital challenges. The study consisted of 113 wives from highly religious Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities across the United States. Based on this study, we identified two ways faith in God shapes their responses to conflict. 

Theme 1: God Is Central to The Marriage

Our participants shared that a central focus on God in their lives contributed to positive outcomes in their marriages. Like Ruth, who chose loyalty and faith in God over familiarity and personal security, Halimah, a Muslim wife, emphasized that religion guided her toward wise and compassionate decisions in marriage. She explained, “Religion encourages both partners to take decisions wisely and not degrade the other person. That’s how I think religion helps us not to have conflict.” Other women of faith in the study said that God helped them to work through difficulties. Yi, a Christian who had been married for more than two decades, said:

Now, our conflicts are fewer and fewer. There were more conflicts before … much more, before we came to believe God. We always thought of ourselves and tried to argue, even if we were wrong. After we came to know God, our life has been different. We have fewer and fewer conflicts now because … we think in a similar way. Sometimes we have different opinions … okay, no problem, but we let it go, and we don’t want to argue.

Wachiwi, a Protestant woman, explained that God held her marriage together: “I don’t think you can hold a marriage together alone because there are times we hit a hard spot … and God was our salvation. He was always the way to work through things. Without Him we would fall apart.”

Similar to Ruth, who chose God even when it meant stepping into the unknown, these women showed that placing God at the center of their lives made a difference in their marriages. Their stories, whether of hard conversations, quiet sacrifices, or decisions to stay when it was difficult, point to the same source of strength. In moments of tension or uncertainty, they turned to God.

 Theme 2: Belief in God Leads to Internal Changes That Benefit The Marriage

Many of the women we interviewed described faith-inspired changes—sometimes significant transformations—in themselves, their partners, and their marriages across time. Joelle, a Christian said:

I think you have to trust God. You have to be able to hear His voice and practice that above anything else. Practice that [even] more than praying, practice that more than going to church, practice that more than singing [and] praising. Learn to hear His voice so He can always talk to you and tell you what He really wants you to do.

Learning to understand God and hear His voice was a focus for many of these women. Belief in God also seemed to deepen the women’s commitment to their marriages. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints named Sarah said:

Well, the fact that we were committed from the outset to make it work was, I think, an important factor. Obviously, all couples have conflict in their marriage, and that’s part of the package. You cannot expect to have a marriage free of conflict, or any relationship free of conflict. But the commitment we had for each other, and believing that we had an eternal marriage if we abided by the contracts we’ve made, I think helped a great deal in overcoming any conflict that we had. Being able to discuss any conflict that we had certainly was helpful to us as a couple.

These women also emphasized the importance of covenants and vows made in marriage. An Orthodox Christian named Alisia said,

For me, my religious beliefs … it reminds me of my commitment with my husband that I married in the Church. And of the blessings God blessed us with. It helps me to think about the meaning of our relationship and our commitment to one another. What did we say on that day that we were going to do, regardless of the health and illness and the good and bad? We do all of this just to obtain, to try to solve conflict, with the idea of maintaining and preserving this family together.

These women viewed marriage through a lens of faith and saw it as a divine gift. Li-Fen, a Christian wife, shared her perspective that:

God created marriage, let no man separate. We would not think about divorce, no matter how big the difficulties are. We must work out and resolve the difficulties in the Lord. We would not address divorce easily. This idea [of divorce] cannot emerge into my mind.

Other participants echoed the belief that divorce is typically not an option to overcome marital hardships. Their faith also inspired these women to willingly work on their shortcomings and to cultivate virtues. Charlotte, a Christian wife, recognized that marital growth takes significant time and effort. She reflected:

One of the deepest things that has come to me as I’ve struggled with developing a relationship into a better relationship is … not to be discouraged with what your spouse isn’t, but to realize that they have eternity to develop into who you know that they could be and who you want. Nobody is going to have every quality. You don’t have every quality, so be patient with your spouse and be patient with yourself.

This mindset also led women to realize their need for self-improvement. They viewed personal flaws as opportunities to develop humility and to become more faithful. Jennifer, a Jehovah’s Witness, said,

If I had a problem with temper, and I got married, and I found myself getting irritated with my husband, part of handling that would be, God doesn’t want me to have temper tantrums. You know? In fact, I should have been working on that. I would have been having to work on that as a single Witness, right?

These internal changes led to outward actions, such as deliberately forgiving their husbands, repenting to God, and saying, “I’m sorry.” A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Consuella, said:

I just feel like the Lord comes to me and tells me, “You gotta at least say, ‘I’m sorry.’ You cannot be good with me,” the Savior will say, “if you are not good with your husband.” It is better to solve those confrontations … God has taught me that it’s okay to say, “I’m sorry,” and it’s okay to change.

        A Catholic woman named Amy also shared her view that her relationship with her husband was dependent on her relationship with God. She said:

If my relationship with God isn’t right or if I don’t keep trying to make that better, then I’m not as good with my husband. There’s times … when I’m not being [my best], I’m not focused, I’m not centered. My relationship with God is very important to be able to be a good spouse.

Like Amy, Consuella, Charlotte, and Jennifer, many other women we interviewed in exemplary long-term marriages similarly attributed their marital success not to an easy path but to divine guidance as they faced ongoing challenges.

Ruth chose to follow God amid difficult circumstances and eventually built a new life in Bethlehem. Likewise, the highly religious women interviewed for the American Families of Faith Project looked to God for direction, comfort, support, and strength as they navigated hardships in their marriages. In both ancient Bethlehem and in modern homes across diverse faith traditions, a recurring pattern emerges: when women center their lives on God, they find strength to serve, courage to grow, and grace to endure the inevitable struggles of married life.

The post What Faith Changes in Marriage appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Employees typically feel comfortable discussing fitness routines, cultural heritage, family traditions, or even political causes, but conversations about faith often carry a unique tension. Consequently, workers who wear visible religious clothing, request schedule adjustments for holy days, pray during breaks, or decline to participate in certain activities for reasons of conscience can feel isolated or misunderstood.

Employers, meanwhile, often avoid engaging with religion altogether for fear that any discussion will produce conflict.

That instinct is understandable. Religion touches deep convictions, and Americans disagree profoundly about theology, morality, and political applications of religion. In recent years, many corporate leaders have concluded that the safest approach is to privatize religious identity entirely.

Yet this strategy frequently backfires.

When workplaces treat religion as unwelcome or invisible, employees do not become less religious. Instead, many simply feel pressured to compartmentalize core aspects of themselves. That pressure can produce resentment, disengagement, and mistrust. Increasingly, large American corporations are discovering a different path: rather than suppressing religious identity, they are building structures that allow people of faith—and people of no faith—to work together respectfully.

One of the most important developments in this movement has been the rise of faith-oriented employee resource groups, commonly known as ERGs.

These groups are quietly reshaping workplace culture in some of America’s largest companies.

Why Religion At Work Matters Again

For years, diversity initiatives in corporate America focused primarily on race, gender, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation. Religion was often missing from the conversation.

But the workforce itself has changed.

Employees increasingly expect to bring their “whole selves” to work, including their moral and spiritual commitments. Younger workers especially want employers to recognize identity in holistic ways—rather than asking employees to fragment themselves into separate public and private personas.

At the same time, globalization has transformed and diversified the religious makeup of many corporations. Teams now regularly include Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists, agnostics, and others working side by side across national and cultural boundaries.

As a result, religion has reemerged as a significant workplace issue.

Religious discrimination complaints remain a recurring feature of American employment law. Questions surrounding Sabbath observance, prayer breaks, religious clothing, dietary requirements, and conscience protections continue to appear in litigation and public controversy.

Recent legal developments have reinforced employers’ obligations. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Groff v. DeJoy, which strengthened protections for religious accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The Court clarified that to establish “undue hardship,” an employer must show that a proposed accommodation would impose substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business—not merely an inconvenience.In practical terms, this means employers must take religious needs more seriously than many employers previously did.

Yet legal compliance alone cannot create a healthy workplace culture. A company may technically satisfy laws against discrimination while still fostering an environment in which religious employees feel unwelcome, stereotyped, or silenced.

This gap between formal legal protections and lived experience is precisely why faith-oriented ERGs have become so influential.

What Faith-Oriented ERGs Actually Do

Employee resource groups are voluntary, employee-led organizations formally recognized by companies. Most corporations already host ERGs built around shared identities or experiences, including groups for women, veterans, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ employees, or workers with disabilities.

Faith-oriented ERGs apply the same model to religion.

Some are centered on a single tradition, such as Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu employee groups. Others are intentionally interfaith, bringing together employees from multiple traditions alongside secular allies.

Critics sometimes assume these groups encourage proselytizing or create ideological division. In practice, successful faith-oriented ERGs usually operate according to very different principles.

Most such groups prohibit coercive proselytizing. Participation is voluntary, and the emphasis is typically on inclusion, education, dialogue, and accommodation rather than theological debate.

The work of these ERGs tends to be remarkably practical. Some help human resources departments understand religious accommodation needs before conflicts arise. Others organize educational events explaining major religious holidays or traditions. Some advocate for prayer or meditation spaces, flexible scheduling during holy days, or dietary accommodations at corporate events.

Perhaps most importantly, these groups create relationships.

Religious misunderstanding often flourishes in environments where employees rarely interact meaningfully across lines of difference. Faith-oriented ERGs reduce that distance. A Muslim employee explaining Ramadan to coworkers, a Jewish employee discussing Passover traditions, or a Christian employee describing Sabbath observance can humanize practices that might otherwise seem unfamiliar or threatening.

This matters more than many executives initially realize. Research suggests that religious literacy reduces prejudice and workplace tension. Employees who understand one another’s beliefs are less likely to interpret religious behavior as strange, hostile, or exclusionary. Simple familiarity can lower social friction.

In this sense, faith-oriented ERGs function less like advocacy groups and more like cultural translators.

The Corporate Shift Toward Faith-Friendly Workplaces

The growth of faith-oriented ERGs inside major corporations has been significant. Recent reporting and research by the World Economic Forum and the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation show that although only a small percentage of Fortune 100 companies had faith-oriented ERGs a decade ago, religion is far more likely to be included in corporate diversity strategies today.

Major companies, including Salesforce, Texas Instruments, American Airlines, and Dell, have publicly embraced faith-friendly initiatives.

Salesforce offers one of the clearest examples.

This collaboration challenged the assumption that religious inclusion would conflict with other inclusion goals. Instead of treating differing convictions as irreconcilable, the company encouraged dialogue rooted in mutual respect, and employees learned how to navigate disagreement without demanding ideological uniformity.

Texas Instruments, which has supported faith-oriented employee groups for more than two decades, provides another notable example.

Christian, Jewish, and Muslim ERGs all operate alongside other affinity groups within the organization. And rather than producing fragmentation, these networks have largely strengthened cohesion. Employees report feeling more respected when their beliefs are acknowledged rather than ignored. Managers gain a better understanding of accommodation needs. Conflicts are often resolved informally before escalating into formal complaints.

Importantly, these companies are not adopting faith-oriented ERGs merely out of altruism but because they increasingly view religious inclusion as strategically beneficial.

Retention improves when employees feel respected; recruitment from diverse talent pools becomes easier; and global business operations benefit from stronger cultural literacy. Companies serving international markets recognize that understanding religious diversity is valuable not only psychologically but also commercially. In other words, making workplaces faith-friendly is not just a moral project but also a good organizational strategy.

The Deeper Cultural Question

The rise of faith-oriented ERGs reflects a broader cultural debate unfolding far beyond corporate America.

Can institutions sustain genuine pluralism in an era of deep moral disagreement?

Modern workplaces bring together people who hold profoundly different views about truth, identity, sexuality, politics, and human purpose. Many organizations struggle to determine whether peaceful coexistence requires suppressing these differences or learning to navigate them openly.

Faith-oriented ERGs represent one answer to that challenge.

At their best, they reject two extremes simultaneously.

On one side lies aggressive secularism, which treats religion as inherently divisive and therefore inappropriate in public institutional life. On the other side lies sectarianism, which seeks dominance rather than coexistence. Healthy faith-oriented ERGs instead operate on a pluralistic model: employees may disagree deeply while still working together respectfully.

This principle sounds simple. In practice, however, it requires institutional habits that many Americans have lost.

Pluralism is not relativism, and employees do not abandon their convictions to participate. Nor does pluralism require pretending that moral disagreements are unimportant. Rather, pluralism requires learning how to live and work alongside people whose convictions differ from our own without treating disagreement itself as hostility.

That is increasingly difficult in American society.

Public discourse often rewards outrage, ideological sorting, and suspicion. Social media amplifies conflict. Many institutions have become uncomfortable with substantive moral disagreement.

Against that backdrop, faith-friendly workplaces may provide an unexpected civic benefit. They create environments where individuals practice the ordinary disciplines of democratic coexistence: listening, accommodation, restraint, compromise, and mutual respect. Employees who learn to navigate religious diversity constructively at work may carry those habits into families, congregations, neighborhoods, and civic life.

In this sense, corporate culture can influence broader social culture.

Legitimate Concerns—and Necessary Safeguards

None of this means faith-oriented ERGs are without risks.

Poorly managed groups can become exclusionary, politically polarized, or dominated by a single ideological perspective. Religious employees may sometimes fear that participation could affect their professional advancement. Others worry that companies could privilege certain beliefs over others. These concerns are real.

Companies must maintain strong nondiscrimination protections for all employees, and participation in religious groups should remain voluntary. No employee should feel pressured to engage in religious activity—or pressured to hide sincere beliefs.

Leadership also matters. The healthiest faith-oriented ERGs tend to emphasize humility, service, and relationship-building rather than activism or culture-war confrontation. Many deliberately include interfaith dialogue and collaboration with secular colleagues.

Importantly, protecting religious freedom in the workplace must also protect employees who are not religious. A genuinely pluralistic workplace recognizes conscience broadly. The goal is not religious dominance but institutional fairness.

That balance can be difficult. But it is achievable.

Why This Matters For Religious Freedom

Americans often think about religious liberty primarily in constitutional or political terms. We debate Supreme Court decisions, public-school controversies, and government regulation.

But most people experience religious freedom daily in ordinary institutions such as schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

Employment is especially significant because work occupies such a large portion of adult life. When employees feel forced to suppress their religious identities in professional settings, religious freedom can become an abstract concept rather than a lived reality.

Faith-oriented ERGs help bridge that gap. They translate legal protections into everyday organizational practice. They create channels for accommodation before conflict escalates. They normalize respectful discussion of religion within institutions that shape millions of lives.

And most importantly, faith-oriented ERGs remind corporations that human beings are not merely economic units.

People bring moral convictions, spiritual commitments, rituals, traditions, and community ties to work, and attempts to erase those realities rarely produce neutrality. More often, such attempts create environments in which only people with certain identities feel safe expressing themselves openly.

The ideal solution is not religious uniformity but principled pluralism. American corporations and society more broadly are still learning what that looks like in practice. Some efforts will fail, and others will become politicized or superficial. But the broader movement toward faith-friendly workplaces reflects an important insight: durable institutions cannot be built by demanding that employees abandon core dimensions of identity at the office door.

Healthy workplaces do not require employees to become less religious—or less secular—to cooperate. They require learning how to disagree without exclusion.

At a moment when American society often seems unable to sustain that balance, the quiet rise of faith-oriented ERGs inside major corporations offers a surprisingly hopeful model.

The post The Faith-Friendly Workplace appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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For many religious individuals, faith plays a central role in their lives. In many faith traditions, members are required or encouraged to freely contribute their time, effort, and money, a concept known as religious giving.

But how do individuals actually feel about religious giving? How does religious giving affect their marriages and families? An in-depth qualitative study from the American Families of Faith Project addressed that question by interviewing 184 highly religious families about their beliefs. We will review four insights that emerged. 

Reframing Sacrifice as Giving

Financial contributions to religion are not a sacrifice, but a gift. This is what many participants in the study said about their giving.

Participants tended to reframe sacrifice as giving or charity. They saw their giving as deeply and inherently relational, strengthening their connection with God and with their sisters and brothers in the human family. 

Building Faith Community Bonds

Giving also increased many participants’ sense of meaning. They felt better about life for having given. 

But the benefits didn’t stop there. The act of giving also tended to form a stronger bond between givers and their faith communities, leading them to feel more fully supported by their faith communities. A Christian woman named Joyce, said, “When I was going through a really—I mean a really, really—bad financial time, I never ever had to want for anything, because someone from my church family was always there helping out, giving me something.” A father from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints added another story of profound help. He explained,

There was a time in the 1970s when we had three kids in cloth diapers that had to be washed daily and our washing machine gave out … and I didn’t even have money to have the thing fixed, and I certainly didn’t have money for a new one… My wife came home from running the errands… and there was a washing machine sitting on the porch with a hundred dollar bill in an envelope taped to the lid, and boxes of laundry detergent from church…. Somebody obviously understood the principle of charity where you don’t let the right hand know what the left hand is doing…. God bless them!

Adjusting for inflation, that $100 in the mid-1970s would be the equivalent of more than $600 today. The experience left this couple with a burning desire to give in similar ways to others, and they have done so across the decades since as they try to “pay it forward.” 

Many participants shared similar feelings and stories about the financial support they received from their faith communities. Sarah, a Jewish mother of two, is a great example of being a support to others. She shared, “It’s a real comfort to feel like you’ve provided a meal for someone or given money for a good cause. You walk away from that feeling that all is right with your little part of the world, that you did your piece. It may be stressful, but the majority of the time you walk away feeling comforted.” 

Effects on the Marital Relationship

Many participants reported that their marriages also benefited from their financial giving, but others emphasized that religious (and other) giving can strain the marital relationship if it is not a shared financial goal. A Latter-day Saint father named Todd said, “Sometimes money can be divisive but through our religious faith we know that the money’s not ours and we know that it’s a tool.” When couples share this vision, they do well. This concept was explained thoroughly by Doug, a Christian husband and marriage counselor, who reported, 

I think the number one reason we have a strong marriage is God. The number two reason is the ability to agree financially on issues, because finances are the number one killer of relationships. Many married people disagree about money…. The fact is, we have the same financial goals and priorities. Money is the number one fight—money—and if you can navigate that particular obstacle, you will do well in marriage. 

For couples like Doug and his wife, shared commitments to giving and serving can become a strength for the marriage. However, the ideal of selflessness is difficult to attain, and many participant couples admitted to arguing about money. 

Religious Giving and Children

Takeaways 

As believers, these findings can help us navigate the blessings and challenges of religious giving in our own financial situations. Key insights include:

Reframe sacrifice as giving. Highly religious individuals viewed their financial contributions not as sacrifices but as gifts and priorities rooted in faith, which reinforced their sense of purpose and moral identity. As believers, we can also strive to elevate our perspective and reframe faith-based financial sacrifices as opportunities to put God and others first.

Avoid letting money become divisive. We can be aware of how money can potentially divide relationships and cause stress, and ultimately remember that money may not be what matters most. When we focus on our connection with the divine and serving others, financial giving can be a source of relational strengthening for all involved, instead of a source of division. This awareness can remind us of what truly lasts.

Grow in service and faith. We can consider how we might invite more faith, unity, and purpose into our financial decisions. Whether we are giving time, money, or support, we can try to view these acts not as burdens but rather as sacred opportunities to grow closer to God, strengthen our relationships, and to serve others with love.

The post What Faithful Giving Builds appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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On July 20, 1969—almost exactly fifty-seven years ago—the Eagle landed on the moon, crossing the threshold of worlds and placing feet on ground that, for nearly all of history, had seemed permanently beyond our reach.

On July 20, 2026, my children and I are going to eat moon pies, carve the phases of the moon into Oreo cookies, and watch an Apollo 11 documentary, just as we have for more than a decade. We call it Moon Day.

It’s not a holy day. It’s a family day. It’s an occasion to reflect on what inspired human beings can accomplish and to turn my children’s attention upward.

And it’s that upward turn that causes me to continue celebrating. Children spend so much time looking down—at desks, assignments, devices, and anxieties. Moon Day has come to interrupt that. It reframes the moon as not just a light in the night sky, but as a physical world—a place of mountains, craters, dust, gravity, and darkness. A place that is distant but not unreachable, mysterious but not inscrutable. 

It gives my children an opportunity to merge their physical world and their theological one. Science does not drain the holiness from the moon, nor does our understanding of God’s majesty absolve us of our obligation to learn and investigate. The facts enlarge the majesty, and the majesty inspires us to learn.

Faith Big Enough for the Universe

I’ve written a fair amount recently about the implications of the vastness of the universe for religious belief and how the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accommodates this expansiveness.

The restored gospel may not give us an astronomy textbook, but it does give the immensity of creation a remarkably prominent place. In the opening chapter of Moses, God does not merely tell Moses that He is powerful; He demonstrates it by showing the workmanship of His hands. Moses beholds the earth and learns of innumerable worlds.

Moses collapses after the experience, concluding that “man is nothing.” But God teaches him a better lesson, explaining that Moses is also the son of God. The massive universe does not push God further away. 

Doctrine and Covenants 76 expands on this vision, testifying that worlds were created through Jesus Christ and that their inhabitants are children of God. Doctrine and Covenants 88 speaks of the Light of Christ filling “the immensity of space” and powering the sun, moon, and stars. 

And Latter-day Saint belief about creation means that there is no reason for God to be embarrassed by the physicality of creation. Matter, embodiment, and resurrection are all central to our understanding of creation.

None of this tells us whether Europa’s ice covers microbial life or which propulsion system Congress should fund. But it does give us a posture toward curiosity. 

There is a reason that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both speculated about life beyond our world. The majestic theology they were receiving whetted their curiosity. 

I have seen that same kind of curiosity power my own children’s imaginations. It joins wonder to discipline. All the mathematics in the world could not get a rocket off Earth if someone hadn’t first imagined it. And all the inspiration we can muster accounts for nothing without a mastery of the physics that powers it. In my experience, space is the perfect early vehicle to help children see how their imaginations can be powered. 

So for us, Moon Day is not nostalgia for 1969; it’s a promise for how we see the world and intend to work toward the future. 

Would Zion Look Up?

In my opinion, Zion will include a budget for space exploration. 

This is not to say every appropriations bill is wise, nor that every rocket is inherently righteous. But when we think of the perfect future society, that society represents more than the elimination of suffering. 

Imagination is a public good. Those who defend space exploration often focus on its practical benefits and the many ways it has benefited life on Earth. And those are certainly real.

But just as real is an orientation toward the future that lifts up everyone. A sense of purpose and progress. Much of contemporary life trains us to view the future as a collection of approaching catastrophes. Without reducing the importance of any of those, space exploration adds a message on top: the future will contain discovery, wonder, and growth. There are still things to learn, places to reach, projects to build, and questions to answer. Life is more than just dodging one doomsday after the next. 

Zion would not need to choose between compassion and wonder. It would instruct everyone in “things both in heaven and in the earth.” Peaceful, cooperative, truth-seeking exploration belongs naturally within a Zion imagination. 

How I Celebrate Moon Day

The best Moon Day activities make space tangible, invite wonder, and connect that wonder to our Heavenly Father.

Here are some of the things I do to celebrate:

Look at the moon. Pull out the binoculars or a small telescope, take a drive outside the city, and simply look at the moon. I like to point out specific features to my kids and wonder what it would be like to walk on or around them.

Watch the Eagle landing. This year we’re going to watch a full documentary, but even in years we don’t, we’ll usually watch a five-minute clip of the first humans walking on the moon. It never fails to inspire some awe. 

Build a moon, lander, or rocket craft. We’ve made papier-mâché moons, built popsicle-stick-and-aluminum-foil landers, drawn pictures of an imagined world, and simply made rocket ships out of LEGO bricks to show how we would go to Mars, or Europa, or another location in space.

Learn about moon phases. We’ve used basketballs, tennis balls, and flashlights to show how the moon phases work. Sometimes we’ll draw the moon phases, or this year we’re carving them out of the icing inside an Oreo.

Go to the museum, observatory, or planetarium. Look up where you can go with your kids to learn more about space. My family often goes to our local community college planetarium to watch a show for Moon Day. 

Moon dinner. Our family does our scripture study at dinnertime, so I usually focus on verses like those I shared above for that day’s study. We also usually eat something like pizzas, meatballs, or crescent rolls for dinner. One year, we set up a picture of the moon and made pancakes, and then the children used various toppings to decorate their pancakes to look like the moon. 

Turning Our Eyes Up

Human beings are not only problems to be solved. We are minds that seek wonder and truth. We are creators and explorers. Our quest for space honors and trains those intuitions. 

On Moon Day, I think about my children. I want them to understand that our theology pushes us upward and outward and that each new discovery can help us learn more about the God who made it all. 

So on July 20, we remember that human beings once looked up to the moon and learned how to cross the distance. I hope you and your families find wonderful ways to celebrate! Happy Moon Day!

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Social media has taught Christians a dangerous half-truth: if you are not using your platform to publicly denounce evil, you are complicit in evil.

I understand that instinct. But in many ways the demand for denunciation does more harm than good.

Sometimes disciples must speak, fight, draw boundaries, protect victims, and use lawful power against corruption. And in some cases, it may even be appropriate to do this on social media.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has boundaries, beliefs, and practices. Members must adhere to them in order to remain in full fellowship. For example, when Alma established the Church, he received those who repented and removed those who would not. 

But notice who did the removing.

The Lord gives pruning shears to gardeners, not spectators. The internet is not a bishop’s office. A pile-on is not a membership council. And public humiliation is not church discipline. The loudest person in the room is rarely the person with stewardship.

We see this sometimes when Latter-day Saints confuse the Church’s public communications with the Church itself. Imagine the Church is a house. There is certainly a door, represented by baptismal interview questions. And those inside the house can be escorted out. But digital communications is the porch. Its role is to be inviting and welcoming. That should not be the entire function of the house, but that is the function of the porch. 

And in the ministry of Christ, the function of the porch is clear: to welcome everyone. Yes, He also called people to repentance, and yes, not everyone was fit to be counted among His disciples. But first, everyone was invited. 

So how should we use our voices in social media spaces when we feel like boundaries of faithfulness are being broken? 

The scriptures present two different paths. I discussed this in some detail in a 2022 essay. 

Christ taught the parable of the wheat and tares, teaching that we don’t need to pluck out the tares from the wheat. Rather, we should let them grow together until a final reckoning. This aligns with Paul’s later instructions suggesting that the Lord’s servants should not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone. And the faithful in Lehi’s vision did not engage with those in the great and spacious building, but “heeded them not.”

But in another parable, Christ taught that His servants are blessed for remaining watchful at night to stop a potential thief. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ also told His followers to watch for wolves in sheep’s clothing. Paul similarly taught that members of the Church should “mark” those who use “smooth talk” to create division. And the Anti-Nephi-Lehies were praised as “more wise” for expelling Korihor from Jershon.

The distinction appears to be whether the individual is merely present or attempting to influence others. The tares do not directly harm the growth of the wheat when they mingle together in the field. But the thief does harm the home. And the distinction for Paul appears to be whether the individual is harming the body of Christ or not. 

The question, then, is not whether we should fight or be complicit. The better question is: What action is faithful in a given circumstance?

If time and resources were unlimited, fighting every injustice and wrongdoing we come across might have merit. But they’re not. And often, the more fruitful work is disengaging from online controversy and focusing on building our families and our wards.

This calculus can become complicated for people who are themselves building platforms and seeking audience engagement and buy-in. In that space, “stirring up” people is the bread and butter of algorithm bait.

In the Book of Mormon, Satan is forever stirring people up—stirring them up to anger, fear, pride, and resentment. Prophets, on the other hand, spent much less time telling the faithful to panic about enemies and boundaries.

In our social media spaces, we can oppose evil and still become useful to it. We can drive feelings of grievance, division, fear, and anger. Confident disciples can be fierce without being frantic. We can choose our ground where we can make a real difference in the world. We can understand our role and our sphere of influence. And we can refuse to let our enemies dictate the disposition of our spirits.

Roles are important here. The gospel commands mercy and justice, but not always from the same person. When I am insulted, my role is to turn the other cheek, and Christ’s is to provide justice. But when I’m responsible for someone’s safety, my role may require more direct and immediate intervention. Parents, bishops, congregants, social media influencers, apostles, and Church communications specialists each play different roles in the kingdom of God’s larger mission. When we demand that communications specialists act like apostles, or when social media influencers take it upon themselves to act like bishops, we are ultimately making it more difficult for the work of God to move forward.

Paul teaches a similar principle to the Corinthians in his extended metaphor comparing the church to a body. He says that if eyes were trying to be ears the body wouldn’t function. And in his follow-up epistle he explains that we should remain, “within the limits of the sphere which God appointed us.”

Evil, for all its swagger, is parasitic. It creates nothing. It steals, corrupts, and consumes. The Gadianton robbers survived only while there were productive Nephites to steal from. Once good Nephites disappeared, so did the robbers. 

Goodness works differently. It generates. It feeds, heals, teaches, builds, shelters, ministers, and multiplies. Its most important work is quiet. But it produces the kind of durable realities that evil simply cannot manufacture. 

That doesn’t mean evil is bound to disappear any time soon. In fact, we know it will disappear only in the end times. And in the meantime, it crushes people. Protection, law, boundaries, and discipline are necessary. 

But to come back to our initial metaphor, pruning should be done by a gardener. A wise gardener understands the importance of pruning, but also doesn’t overreact and harm the overall integrity of the plant. Most gardening isn’t pruning, after all; it’s watering, feeding, strengthening, and waiting. 

Building the Church is the same. 

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