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On July 5, 2026, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States will join in a unified fast of gratitude for religious freedom and pray that religious freedom will spread throughout the world. In anticipation, our team at Public Square is highlighting one international religious freedom crisis for readers to remember as they fast and pray. 

We spoke with with Nury Turkel, a Uyghur American lawyer, author, and human rights advocate opposing China’s genocide of the Uyghur people. Born in a communist-run re-education camp in China, Mr. Turkel came to the United States, where he became an attorney and a religious freedom advocate, even as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued to persecute his family and other Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. As the first Uyghur American to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Mr. Turkel has been profiled by Foreign Policy and other major outlets. Our interview focuses on the stark realities of the repression of religious freedom in China, the role of U.S. leadership in advocating for international religious freedom, and what Latter-day Saints can do to remember and stand up for the Uyghurs.

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length, clarity, and style, and Mr. Turkel has approved the edits.

Remembering the Individual Victims of Genocide

Anna Bryner: Let’s start with China’s genocide of the Uyghurs. In your 2022 book, “No Escape,” you describe the system of surveillance, forced sterilization, sexual violence, detention, re-education, forced labor, family separation, and cultural erasure. You explain the genocide through stories of individuals in your book. What was it like for you to write this book about your people? How can we always remember the individuals affected by genocide? 

Nury Turkel: Thank you very much, Anna. It’s so nice to speak with you again and to share some thoughts.

Writing this book was a therapeutic process for me. It made me feel as if I finally had an opportunity to unload much of the pain and suffering that I experienced, both in China and later in the United States.

I never thought that I would end up talking about the way that my mother brought me into this world in such a horrific way. But I decided to use my story, starting with the title “No Escape,” to illustrate that people like myself—who are disfavored and disliked by a ruling regime—have been suffering, whether under the thumb of the Communist Party or as free Americans. Even as a senior member of the U.S. government, I was still affected by the regime.

So I was trying to use my story to tell the stories of those who are similarly situated and those who have not had the type of privilege I have—being a lawyer in the United States’ capital, having extensive professional and personal support—who are eager to have their voices heard.

Individuals in “No Escape” are not just data points. They are flesh-and-blood human beings who had dreams, families, careers, faith, and desires as simple as meeting their future wives and husbands to get married and build families.

When I think about the challenge of keeping individuals at the center, after interviewing all of the camp survivors, I’m reminded of a sentiment often attributed to this horrific individual, Joseph Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, and a million deaths are a statistic.”

When you hear the media and the advocates saying upwards of 1 million, that’s a lot of people. That’s more than the population of the District of Columbia. But those people, as I noted, have had lives, aspirations, and desires. They’re real people with names, with families, careers, and aspirations. 

The Chinese government has weaponized our psychological tendencies to reduce people to statistics, essentially saying, “Once I lock you up, you disappear. No one cares.” So I focus heavily on the Uyghur women to make the case that this is not only a mass atrocity, but there’s orchestrated, systematic sexual violence being committed against the most vulnerable women. I have some graphic accounts in my book, including their names. 

I also have a chapter called “Cultural Erasure” that specifically talks about the systematic and deliberate attempts to debase the Uyghur religion and just completely wipe it out. We have seen it already in society. For example, when my dad passed away, people who expressed condolences over the phone could not say, “Rest in peace. May Allah preserve a place in heaven for your father.” I mean, that kind of Quranic language is not even permitted.

Some of the things that I’ve seen done are erasing the names from the headstones, removing family photographs from homes, and banning the Uyghur language in schools. Because when you erase the people’s names, you erase the people. This was in the ugly chapters of the Nazi playbook.

My approach during the time that I wrote this book, and also afterward, was just to keep naming individual names. Just keep reminding them that those names need to be read and mentioned.

I had the fortune of meeting the incredible diplomat Ambassador Nick Burns during the confirmation process, and he said something that still sticks with me. When he was working for then-Secretary George Shultz, every time they met with the Soviet leadership, they brought in names, and they said the names, repeated the names, regardless of whether they listened or not.

Ambassador Burns did exactly that, going to the meetings with the Chinese and mentioning my parents’ names, my mom’s name. I think we have seen some really good, happy endings in that endeavor. So my approach is to keep naming the names.

And also, in the book, I wrote about scholars, musicians, and ordinary farmers whose children don’t know where their parents are. Based on the credible investigative journalists’ work, 800,000 to 1 million Uyghur kids have been locked up in children’s detention facilities. You don’t have to be a parent; you don’t have to be a sister; you don’t have to be a brother to be able to appreciate what that would do to you if somebody took your children away. That’s not only breaking the spirit. It’s breaking the family, the roots, the connection. That will have a generational effect.

So, to conclude the question, this is to the general public, this is to the advocates, this is, of course, to the diplomats who have access to the jailers of the prisoners of conscience and prisoners of religious freedom: Just say the name. Learn the name, say the name, repeat the name in every meeting that you have. I’ve done it. It annoys the counterparts. But in the end, that’s what they do, and that’s what they will continue to do: imprison and keep repeating the line that no one cares about the prisoners—unless you repeat their names.

Patterns of Repression

AB: What have you learned about patterns of repression from writing this book? 

NT: The CCP does not allow people to have dignified final days, funerals, or burials. The Uyghur people are not only not allowed to practice their religion, but the CCP is also changing the religious text. 

This is also happening to the Christian community. They have specifically targeted the Uyghur Muslims and the Catholics. There are a large number of Chinese Catholics. They went underground. During my time at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), I specifically advocated for their rights when I was engaging with the Vatican because what the CCP is doing is horrific.

The CCP changed the text, both in the Quran and the Bible, to make it in line with its policy of Sinicization. That’s a state project. This project was articulated in Xi Jinping’s speech from 2013 in an infamous document called the Number 9 Document, which is available on Wikipedia. This once-secret document was leaked and essentially argued that the Chinese government must do everything possible to prevent the spread of what it called the “thought viruses” of religious belief that are metastasizing the whole human soul and human body. I’m paraphrasing it, but that’s the essence of it, the doctrine that they strictly believe and continue to follow. They see these faith groups as carriers of the Western ideology or the Abrahamic faith, which they believe are antithetical to the communist ideology.

This is their state program and policy to Sinicize the faith groups, specifically those who follow the Abrahamic tradition. So when our government officials—those of us in the space of advocacy, foreign policy, and national security—mention that the CCP leadership has a plan to reshape the world, that’s not hyperbolic. It’s based on the Chinese leadership’s own speeches and policy documents.

And whenever the Chinese leadership delivers a speech, it becomes a blueprint for policy pronouncements and implementation. So, once Xi Jinping said, the year after he became the leader of China, that Western ideology is a threat to the existence of the Communist Party, people did not take it seriously. But now we’re seeing all of it—you know, it’s even in the broader national security space, specifically in technology.

I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about technology, particularly its misuse. That’s how it started. They used technology to surveil places of worship and the devices that exchange religious texts. And then they also look at who’s purchasing what, using all the online purchase history. They also look at using technology to see who they’re talking to, what ideological leanings or spiritual teachings they’re leaning towards or more receptive to, or what countries they want to visit. These are all AI-powered tools of repression targeting ethno-religious groups in China.

U.S. Legislative Responses to the Uyghur Genocide

AB: Can you talk about what it was like to lobby for the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021?

NT: It was a privilege to be involved in this legislative advocacy work. We call it lobbying. In the United States, it is perfectly legitimate, constitutional, and legal. Some people make a living as lobbyists in Washington. But what is remarkable about this whole process is that it was done without a single penny spent on professional lobbyists. No professional lobbying effort, no massive advertisement campaign, or expensive fundraising, or that sort of stuff was ever part of this process.

It is so satisfying that good people in the U.S. Congress, specifically on a staff level, recognized early on that this is something that had to be done.

I got involved, starting from my very first congressional testimony in 2018 that paved the way for the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (UHRP Act). And this was also publicly documented. In October 2019, I testified before then-Senator Marco Rubio specifically on forced labor. That one hearing, based on what I heard from the staffers who put it together and advised congressional leadership, was the catalyst for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).

So it was a humbling and instructive experience in my career. I’ve done legislative advocacy for my corporate clients, but this was the most meaningful because we are a country of laws, and it’s a capitalist market economy. And it’s perfectly okay and legitimate that companies make money. But what we were advocating was providing guidelines and guardrails on how to engage in ethical business, specifically for those with a business presence or business dealings in China.

In the UHRP Act, the most important aspect is to utilize the tools in our toolbox, for example, the Global Magnitsky Act. That is one of the most powerful legal tools we have for going after entities and individuals responsible for human rights abuses. That hadn’t been utilized against those who are responsible for mass atrocities and egregious human rights abuses in China.

So we wanted to have a legislative mandate for that to be utilized. As a result, for the first time, sitting Chinese officials were sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, in the spirit of, under the mandate of, the UHRP Act.

As for the UFLPA, this is arguably one of the most important legislative mandates that the United States Congress put in place to address modern-day slavery or lingering trade issues in our country’s dealings with China on economic and trade fronts.

For years, the U.S. government had urged governments around the world–including China–to end the use of forced labor and stop enslaving fellow human beings. I mean, anti-slavery is deeply embedded in our national values as Americans. We have a history of our own. And with such a large consumer base, we have a responsibility as a country and as a society to say no to forced-labor products.

And most importantly, this was something that could be a potent weapon to stop, or respond to stop, or interrupt, or disrupt the ongoing genocide. The Uyghur genocide, religious persecution, mass atrocities, and collective punishment—all of these go hand in hand with the enslavement of the Uyghurs.

So the brilliance of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Senator Marco Rubio, the congressional leaders who spearheaded this process, recognized that this menace, this cancer of forced labor, needs to be eradicated from the global supply chain by way of helping the Uyghur people.

And I have to underscore this. I mentioned that we didn’t hire professional lobbying firms to help, but we had tremendous support from the faith community. The Catholic community, the Latter-day Saint community, and the Southern Baptist community were advocating and using their influence to lobby.

This whole effort to draft, advance, and pass the UFLPA started in early 2020. This was the time that the country was suffering and losing thousands of lives during the pandemic. And this pandemic, the shortage of supply chain supplies, critical supplies, ventilators, PPEs, and medicine, all were connected to the Uyghur forced labor.

So it was a historical movement, a moment, that brought in a lot of people from all walks of life, all faith communities, to address something that is in line with our national interest and also a part of American values.

It was not a hard sell, to say the least. That experience taught me the power of persistence and persuasion. It also demonstrated that a compelling moral argument can ultimately prevail. That’s one important thing to keep in mind: what we were doing was against the entire global supply chain. And we’re talking about more than 80 global brands that are affected. I don’t want to name the names because some of them stopped that practice. But virtually every major brand we know—as consumers of the things we eat, wear, drive, and use–was touched in some way by Uyghur forced labor.

So it was very satisfying to pass this legislation. It could be used as a case study for other communities to successfully build bipartisan support and get something done meaningfully in Congress.

Founding Ideals and Preventing Modern Slavery

AB: You’ve talked before about how the world’s response to the Uyghur genocide has been morally inadequate. As we’re approaching America’s 250th anniversary and thinking about our founding ideals, what would a morally responsible response look like from Americans and also from the world?

NT: This is an important moment for me to reflect. I live in Washington, D.C. I think the whole city is getting ready for this 250th anniversary. You’re seeing some new monuments and exhibits going up, many reflecting on different chapters of American history, including the Civil War. That makes this conversation especially meaningful and timely.

When America was founded and in its early decades, economic interests—particularly slavery and the cotton economy—made it politically convenient to look away from profound injustice. Today, the economic incentives are different, but the moral dilemma is strictly similar. Critical minerals, manufactured goods, and global supply chains have created powerful incentives to ignore forced labor. The United States is now investigating forced labor in dozens of countries, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative has initiated a Section 301 investigation. Yet it can still be politically and economically convenient to look away from what’s happening in Xinjiang. 

In other words, economic stakes are enormous. If you look at our government’s tone, publicly calling out those abusers has been almost nonexistent today because economic interest is still at the top of the priorities. And history will not be kind to us if we follow the same path.

We’ve seen this movie before. In the early 2000s, when China joined the WTO, American companies moved to China because there were incentives—tax incentives, cheap labor and all the rest—and a mindset that doing business in China, helping to build the Chinese economy, would eventually encourage political liberation and bring China closer to the international rules-based order. It didn’t happen.

So there’s a lesson to learn. And I don’t want to get too deeply into my other work on international trade, export controls, and global compliance. China has identified and exploited strategic choke points in critical minerals, some of which, according to documented evidence, are linked to forced labor. That presents a serious strategic challenge, and I believe the U.S. government should be doing more to address it. 

So a morally responsible response has several components that we need to keep talking about, even though this is not a very popular topic these days.

First, it requires that we actually enforce the laws that we have passed. We have so many good laws. I’m a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) lawyer by training, and I’ve worked extensively on global regulatory compliance. The FCPA matters because corruption and human rights abuses often go hand in hand. Companies that ignore corruption risks frequently ignore forced labor, repression, and other human rights abuses as well. The same commitment to corporate accountability underlies the UFLPA, which, like the FCPA, is landmark legislation. But enforcement requires resources, political will, and a willingness to confront powerful corporate interests.

Second, it requires diplomatic courage. I mentioned a 301 investigation.  I know it’s too much trade talk here, but it has significant diplomatic implications as well. Forced labor and genocide should be treated merely as bilateral trade disputes. They should be treated as moral and diplomatic red lines that shape every aspect of our engagement with the Chinese government. That principle should guide U.S. diplomacy at every level. It’s so important.

And third, it requires a supporting accountability mechanism, documentation of crimes. The State Department used to have a global war crimes office and had done some documentation of crimes. I don’t know if that is still the case under the current leadership. And also, the U.S. government should be pushing for accountability. Without accountability, perpetrators will continue committing these atrocities with impunity. 

So as America approaches its 250th anniversary, we should ask a simple question: Do we still believe in the universal ideals on which this country was founded? 

Another question we need to ask ourselves: What did the founders mean when they wrote about liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Are we living up to those ideals?

So if you believe in all that, then we cannot be silent when the government is systematically destroying a vulnerable population, their faith, their language, their families, their lives. The measure of American leadership is not what we say about ourselves. It’s about what we do. Actions speak louder than words.

American Leadership in Promoting International Religious Freedom

AB: Related to that, what is the role of American leadership in promoting international religious freedom, and how would you assess our current efforts?

NT: It’s sad to see that our leadership in the international religious freedom space has not been as visible as during my time in the U.S. government. During the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, international religious freedom was an important aspect of our foreign policy and diplomatic engagements. Today, it has been pushed to the sidelines, and that leadership is no longer as visible.

But when Congress put in place IRFA, the International Religious Freedom Act, in 1998, it had a very simple but powerful intention, which was to make sure that we don’t forget about who we are. Religious freedom is enshrined in the Bill of Rights. It’s an older concept than human rights. The UN Declaration of Human Rights drew heavily from principles reflected in our constitutional tradition, including religious freedom.

So this is not about the United States going out and telling people how they should be free of political repression and religious persecution, but this is a way of magnifying and presenting ourselves based on the foundational concept of the United States, based on the ideal.

So this was the most effective message that I deployed during my time in the U.S. government: 

We’re not here to impose our values on you. We’re simply saying that your country will be stronger if people are free to practice their faith without fear. If there are no prisoners of conscience or prisoners imprisoned because of their religion, your society will be more peaceful, more prosperous, and more stable. You won’t need thousands of police officers or pervasive surveillance systems to control your own people. The more freedom people enjoy, the less resentment and resistance governments create. So this is less constant monitoring and relatively easy for you to do. 

That was the kind of message that I delivered and sent as a USCIRF representative.

So it resonated. We were able to secure the release of some political prisoners. We were also able to engage with some governments to modify some of their laws and regulations. But in the end, what we do, what we did, and what USCIRF does, what IRFA does or intends to do, is good for humanity, good for the country.

By advocating for international religious freedom, we also advance U.S. national security interests. Societies that protect religious freedom are generally more stable and less susceptible to violent extremism. Radicalization has a lot to do with religious persecution.

So there are multiple benefits to recommitting ourselves to the vision Congress established in IRFA and supporting USCIRF’s mission. And disturbingly, USCIRF has to fight for adequate funding almost every year. Given America’s economic strength and the scale of federal spending, USCIRF should not be worrying about whether it has sufficient resources to carry out its mission. Those are the things that really concern me.

We need more people showing up, especially in Congress, speaking about the importance, or talking about the importance of religious freedom, both at home and abroad. The political will is so important. We have the legislative mandate. We have the culture. We have the willingness to help those who have been suppressed and repressed because of their faith. We can do a lot better.

AB: Can you talk more about how, when you were at USCIRF, you had opportunities to not only advocate for the Uyghurs but also for people of many other faiths? I know you personally adopted a prisoner of conscience, Shamila Kakimov, a Jehovah’s Witness. Can you talk about what it was like to stand for people of other faiths when your own group had been suffering so much? And why does religious freedom mean religious freedom for everyone? Why should we stand for each other?

NT: For me, this question gets to the very heart of religious freedom.

When I had that platform, I knew there were many others whose voices also deserve to be heard. So at the time, when my people were suffering on a scale that is hard to comprehend—we talked about millions, when the mosques were demolished, when the children were separated from parents—it would be natural, perhaps, even expected that I would focus exclusively on the Uyghur suffering.

But I believed, and still do, that it is both a moral and a strategic mistake to focus only on one group. Because the bad actors use the same method. They vilify not only one religion, but all religions. So the people who have problems with religion and faith are generally about more or less the same people with the same idea and the same playbook.

So I decided to use my time and platform to advocate for those who have not had enough voice in this arena.

I picked up a few cases, specifically those from Central Asia. They have a cultural, historical, and linguistic connection that is convenient. So that’s why I advocated the rights of the Latter-day Saint community, Jehovah’s Witness community, Catholic community, and Jewish communities living in predominantly Muslim societies.

I did that because when my people were desperate to be heard, those same communities stood with the Uyghurs. They spoke up for us when it mattered most. 

Supporting them wasn’t only an expression of gratitude–it was also a reflection of my belief that religious freedom is universal. And if we defend it only for people who share our own faith, then we aren’t really defending religious freedom at all. 

The Personal Toll of Advocacy

AB: And you’ve paid a personal price for your advocacy. In 2024, you were reunited with your mother after 20 years of separation. How do you carry the grief of this work without losing hope? And how do you measure success when so much remains outside of your control?

NT: Anna, as you know, I was born in a re-education camp. That was my beginning, and I’ve been dealing with this as long as I’ve been breathing.

A long time ago, my mother was pregnant with me during her third trimester. And she sustained physical injuries because of the physical abuse in the camp. She ended up giving birth to me while her body was in casts, chest down. So that fact—that brutal way that I was brought into this world—shaped everything about how I understand persecution, everything about why I do this work.

For more than 20 years, my mother was separated from me. She was not allowed to leave town. She was under both domestic and international travel bans. She was not even allowed to go to Beijing to meet with our ambassador. She lived under watchful eyes every day. So it’s no different from being locked up.

And this was the time when I was building a life and career in America, and I could have just said, “Okay, I have a life here. Don’t worry about it. Forget it. They’re not going to change. They’re not going to do anything humanly possible. I’d be better off just being a lawyer in Washington and enjoying my life.”

I decided to take the other way. I started writing, testifying, speaking, educating, and advocating. In some instances, I found myself involved in some of the controversial political and geopolitical issues.

When I reunited with my mother, cinematically, miraculously, at an Air Force base in Texas on Thanksgiving in 2024, it was one of the most joyful and heartbreaking moments of my life. She was alive. As soon as she got off the plane, she said, “I’m glad I won’t be dying alone.”

That was so moving. It was the first hug in 20 years that we had on the tarmac. But those years of suffering taught me a lot of things in life that otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to learn by reading or from real professional experience. Pain and suffering sometimes make you value and appreciate life more. That’s how I feel.

And also, I believe in fairness. I believe that being persistent and staying hopeful in this kind of advocacy work—being factual, not hyperbolic—and just people will respond. I cannot say—I cannot thank those people in cross-administrations enough. We’re talking about the U.S. presidential administration, starting from George Bush, Obama, first Trump, Biden, now Trump.

So from the previous four administrations, I’ve made so many friends and contacts, and I have nothing to give them. But I earned their respect, earned their support, secured their support. In the end, they become an advocate for me.

So those wonderful people made Trump hand in my parents’ names on his first trip in November 2017, and then that same work continued in the Biden administration. President Biden himself asked Xi Jinping twice, in person, to allow my mom be able to travel to the United States to be with her American children and grandchildren.

So it was the endurance, the perseverance, staying hopeful. I was looking at some of my email communications with the officials that I communicated with over the years, letters I’ve written, and I sent essentially the same message: “I am a free American. I testified. I spoke out against human rights abuses. I served in the U.S. government. I volunteered my time. And my government should not tolerate another government punishing my parents, my family, for what I do in America as a free person. We should not have a foreign government reaching out to me through a long arm and making me feel that I cannot escape from their persecution.”

So it was a happy ending, but the reunion is not the same. It’s not the same as restoration. You may have seen my public messages. My family and I lost a time that can never be brought back to us. So this regime essentially stole 20 years of my life and family time from me.

So, how do I carry this? Honestly, I’m not sure if I can carry it as much as I have learned to walk alongside it. And I don’t try to put it down or put it away. I let it remind me that this work is not abstract. The person who benefits from this, from the next piece of legislation or the next diplomatic intervention, is real.

I wrote about this in my latest piece for Fox News. Like me, they have a mother, they have family, they have faith. It took almost 20 years for my mom’s name to be said to the person who was holding her. And there are many others who are waiting for their names to be said to their jailers.

So that’s the type of thing that I always mention when I meet with people who are in power.

But as for measuring my success in that one-family advocacy, I have to radically define what it looks like.

I cannot feel free from all of the people who are still there. And the current political environment is not ideal for that. And I cannot undo the years of suffering. What I can do is to make the next violation more costly, amplify the next survivor’s testimony, help one person to feel less alone in their suffering.

Some days, that is enough. Some days it’s not. In the latter days, I return to the faces of the people that I’m fighting for, that I profiled in the book, and that I interviewed. And I remember that to stop would be abandoning them.

I know that when you look around today in the political environment, it sounds impossible. I’ve been there. I’ve been in impossible situations and rather hopeless situations as well. But hope is not something I wait to feel. It’s a discipline. Hope is a discipline.

And late Senator John McCain once said—and this is very applicable to a community that faces repression: “Hope is the best weapon against oppression.” So that’s the kind of thing that keeps me going every day.

Picturing the Individuals Persecuted When We Fast for Religious Freedom

AB: As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints participate on July 5th in fasting and prayer for worldwide religious freedom, what would you want them to picture when they’re thinking about the Uyghurs and others who are persecuted for their beliefs?

NT: First of all, I want to begin by acknowledging something very important. I find The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints deeply meaningful. It has profoundly moved and touched me with the level of support I received from it, including the opportunity to meet with the Church leadership during a lunch in Salt Lake City a few years ago.

So the Latter-day Saint community knows something about what it means for the government to turn against your faith. I think that commonality, the common experience, is where something built a really strong bond between my way of seeing the world, seeing religious repression, and the Latter-day Saint community.

The Missouri extermination order comes to mind, the forced migration. I was a tour guide in San Francisco before I moved here. I took tour groups to Temple Square countless times. I’ve been to Latter-day Saint communities in Idaho, in Nevada, in Arizona, and, of course, in southern Utah, countless times. Fascinating history: a long history of being told that your beliefs made you dangerous or unacceptable. That memory is not merely historical. It’s part of the Latter-day Saint community’s memory identity.

So when you close your eyes and fast and pray on July 5th, I want you, as the Latter-day Saint community, to draw on that memory, and then I want you to imagine this:

Imagine a grandmother in Kashgar, my place of birth, who can no longer teach her grandchildren to pray. Not because she has lost her faith, but because the government has taken her grandchildren to boarding school, where they will be raised to forget who they are. She knows their faces, but she does not know if they still know hers.

Imagine a father who has been in a detention camp for three years or more. His only “crime” was having too many contacts in a foreign country, or going to the place of worship too often, or owning a copy of the Quran. He does not know if his wife is still waiting for him. He does not know if his children still say his name.

Imagine a young woman who was taught to be proud of her language, her music, and her faith, and who now lives in a world where all three have effectively been erased from public life.

When you pray for the Uyghurs, pray for those individuals. Not the abstract statistic of a million, but the grandmother, the father, and the young woman. And pray, knowing that your prayers are not empty. They sustain the ones who are fighting. They signal to governments that people of conscience are watching. And they testify that in God’s eyes, these lives matter, and they’re not forgotten.

And July 5 is significant. In 2009, in the streets of Urumqi, the Uyghur capital, Chinese security forces violently suppressed peaceful demonstrations, resulting in the death of many Uyghurs. So July 5 holds profound historical significance for the Uyghur community.

What Can the Average American Do? 

AB: Finally, what are some concrete steps that individuals can take? How do supply chains fit in?

NT: As a corporate lawyer who advises companies, I know business leaders care about consumer concerns. So we don’t have to be in a position of power to make a difference. We have tremendous influence as consumers.

So one of the most direct actions people can take is to look at the labels on their clothing and other consumer goods. Many everyday products — from groceries and tires to sporting goods and school supplies—have been linked to forced-labor risks.

So check the label. For cotton products, roughly 85% of China’s cotton is sourced from the Uyghur homeland. Many of the garments hanging in closets across America and around the world were made with cotton picked by people who had no choice or no right to say no. And those cotton products are made by vulnerable modern-day slaves. So the cotton is the thread connecting your wardrobe to the camp system. Don’t forget about that. That’s really important.

And also, contact your representatives and urge them to continue funding the enforcement of the seminal Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Support Uyghur advocacy groups. They’re easy to find online.

And then when you go to the church, just share what you heard, what you read about the Uyghurs. Again, there’s so much relevance and connection between the Latter-day Saint community and the Uyghur community’s historical suffering or facing religious persecution. The fact that you’re interviewing me today speaks to that fact. We met several years ago. You still remember. You read my book. And that speaks volumes about your caring about these issues.

And then the other thing is to stay hopeful. This pendulum will swing back. When we look around today, it may seem as though people no longer care about human rights or religious liberty. I don’t believe that’s permanent. I don’t know exactly how things will change, but I do believe we cannot remain a healthy society if we stop caring about these fundamental values. 

So my message is simple: stay hopeful. Pray, and act. And do both together. 

And the Uyghur people—I know this might be a little bit provocative—but I often say the Uyghurs ask for partnership and support, not pity.

The post International Religious Freedom with Nury Turkel appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

We recently sat down with Professor George to talk about what Fidelity Month is all about. This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and Professor George has approved the edits.

Public Square Magazine: For readers who may not be familiar with Fidelity Month, what is it and how did it start?

Robert George: Back in the spring of 2023, I happened to read a report in the Wall Street Journal. It included polling data showing that the belief of Americans in certain core values—values that had traditionally been sources of unity and strength for Americans—had very considerably diminished over the past decade or decade and a half. I’m talking about values such as religion, family, and patriotism. And these values have indeed been sources of our unity and strength in the United States of America because we are not a nation who can look to a common racial heritage or ethnic heritage, or even a common religious tradition or cultural heritage for our unity and strength. We Americans come from many, many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. We come from different traditions of faith. Our cultural histories are very different. So what do we have in common? What binds us together? Especially when times get tough—what are our sources of unity and strength?

Historically, they’ve been a shared commitment to the principles of our civic order, the principles of our Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. But also, very critically, they’ve been a shared belief in the importance of fidelity to God. Whether we’re Jewish or Christian, whether we’re Protestant or Catholic, Orthodox, LDS, we share, at least historically have shared, a commitment to the idea that there is a superintending deity: a God who creates us, indeed creates us equal, and endows us with certain unalienable rights. These rights don’t come from government; they don’t come from kings or parliaments or presidents or congresses; they come from a more than merely human source. And therefore, no merely human authority can legitimately violate those rights or take them away. So we’ve had that in common historically.

In fact, the polling showed that one value had increased in importance in the minds of Americans, and that was money. Religion went down, family went down, country went down, but the belief in the importance of money went up. Now, I’m all for people being prosperous. I want everybody to be financially secure. I want people to have enough money to take care of themselves and their families, and have a few luxuries, and all that. But money, as important as it is, is not on the same scale of importance with God, family, and country.

So, I really was concerned. And I thought, “How can we go about the business of reviving and restoring our fellow citizens’ commitment to the principles that once were the sources of our unity and strength that once bound us together?” How do we rebuild faith in God, a deeper commitment to spouses and families, a sense of the importance of patriotism and love of country? So, I said, initially to myself, well, we have a day for this, and a week for that, and a month for the other thing. How about having a month that’s dedicated to fidelity? To fidelity to God, fidelity to spouses and families, and fidelity to our country and communities.

And so I did what you do these days. I went online. I went to my Facebook account and my Twitter account, and I announced: “By the power vested in me by absolutely no one, henceforth the month of June will be Fidelity Month.” And that’s how it all began. And then, fortunately, people read the social media posts, and a number of people said, this is a great idea. We want to get behind this. And the next thing you know, we had Fidelity Month up and going. It’s entirely a grassroots movement. It’s not a top-down directed thing. There’s no budget, there’s no staff, there’s no administrative structure, there’s no president. I guess I’m the founder, since it was my idea, and I floated it on social media, but there’s no official structure for Fidelity Month. But it’s grown as a grassroots movement.

And I was really delighted, that for this month, for June of 2026, the governors of both Utah and Arkansas have proclaimed, officially, their states’ recognition of Fidelity Month, as has Michigan’s House of Representatives. So, it’s a growing movement.

PSM: This seems to be catching on. Why are people interested in this idea?

Robert George: Because at the end of the day, there are some things that money can’t buy. And there are some things that are more important than money. That’s not to deprecate the importance of material things. As I say, I really do want everyone to prosper financially. I want everyone to have a materially good life. But that’s a secondary consideration, or should be a secondary consideration. And I think even if things have gotten a bit out of whack, and people are tending to value material things over the more-than-merely-material things, people feel the want or the need for something greater, something beyond ourselves, something beyond the material.

And that’s when faith in God, the importance of fidelity to the family, the importance of patriotism and love of country and community come to the fore. Of course, people sometimes just need reminding. There’s an old saying that people more often need reminding than instruction. And I think that’s true in this case. People know in their hearts that there are some things that money can’t buy, there are some things that are more important than the material things of life, and they have a pretty good idea of what those things are. But sometimes, folks need to be reminded. So Fidelity Month is a reminder for all of us.

PSM: For you, is there an important distinction between “fidelity” and related concepts like “commitment” or “loyalty”? Was it important for you for this to be Fidelity Month?

Robert George: Well, there are certainly related concepts that are very important, and that are aspects of fidelity in some cases, but I think the term fidelity is the right term. What we need to revive is faith. Now, part of that is what we usually mean by faith, namely, faith in God. But we also need greater (and richer) fidelity in marriage and in the family. And we also need a revival of patriotism—fidelity to our country and communities. Being faithful involves being grateful—and that is another related concept. We’re faithful when we’re grateful. And fidelity does require gratitude, and gratitude does prompt fidelity, or reinforces fidelity. We should be grateful to live in this country, where we have, by the standards of history and cultures, an almost unique measure of liberty, opportunity, and security. Most people, in most places, at most times, would give their right arm for the opportunity to live in a place like the United States of America. And we don’t often appreciate enough what our country makes available to us and makes possible for us. Therefore, sometimes we’re not grateful; but we should be.

PSM: I think many people can easily get on board with the idea of fidelity to God and fidelity to family, but fidelity to country might be harder for some people. When many people hear patriotism, they immediately link it to nationalism. Could you walk us through how you think about patriotism?

Robert George: When some people hear the word “patriotism,” what they think is being evoked is a kind of chauvinism. But patriotism is not that. Patriotism is not thinking, because I’m an American, I’m better than you because you’re Japanese, or Indonesian, or French, or whatever. Even the concept of American exceptionalism, which I think is an important concept that I’ll talk about in a minute, is not a matter of beating on our chests and saying how wonderful we are and how much better we are than other people. That’s not it at all. Patriotism is simply a matter of being grateful and therefore being loyal. In other words, faithful to the country.

And patriotism itself is concern for one’s community—recognizing that one is not an island or an atomistic individual. So that’s the respect in which America is an exceptional place. No, it’s not that other people don’t believe in God, or think the family is very important, or believe in patriotism. People, wherever they are, should love their country for the gifts that their country gives them and makes available to them. They might not love their regime, they might not love their government. But patriotism is not love of your government. And it does not require us to adopt the position, “my government right or wrong.” Patriotism is love of one’s country.

Now, for those of us who are religious believers, certainly for those of us who are Christians, we recognize that love of country is secondary. Our first loyalty is to God. And our second loyalty is to our family. But to recognize that our first loyalty is to God and our second loyalty is our family is in no way to suggest that we don’t also need to be grateful to, and loyal to, our country and our community. It’s true that love of country can go haywire. And the nation can become an idol. But anything can become an idol. Anything can replace God. We have to be careful of that, no matter what the other thing is. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t properly contribute to, believe in, uphold, and be loyal to our country and our family.

PSM: I’m curious what threats you see to fidelity both in culture and in the ways that laws are changing. Where are these threats coming from, in your view?

Robert George: There are plenty of threats; there are always plenty of threats. As I said, anything can become an idol. The human condition is such that human beings—we frail, fallen, fallible creatures—are always vulnerable to the temptation to put something in God’s place, to put something first above God. Those of us who are Christians, of course, believe that there is nothing that comes above God or before God. The trouble is, we can put other things first. We can put money first. We can put fulfilling or satisfying our desires ahead of God—making our desires into idols. We can put fame or celebrity first, replacing God with those idols. Power, wealth, status, all of those things can become idols.

And we today, in 2026, here in the United States and throughout the world, are as vulnerable to those temptations to idol worship as anybody has ever been in the history of the human race. We are as prone to idol worship as were the people who bowed down before stone outcroppings or worshiped golden calves in ancient times. So that’s number one.

Now, what are the threats? Well, the threats are everywhere. Promiscuity. The divorce culture. Everything that came out of the sexual revolution. You can date the sexual revolution in different ways. You know, once you start trying to trace these things back, the next thing you know you’re in the Garden of Eden with the serpent and the apple and Adam and Eve. But certainly in the 1940s Alfred Kinsey’s widely hyped and quite phony and fraudulent so-called sexuality “science” became a kind of justifying theory for breaking traditional norms of sexual morality. And then in the 1950s, we had the mainstreaming of pornography, so-called softcore pornography, beginning with Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine and his whole empire. Then the 1960s counterculture normalized promiscuity and made it socially acceptable. With that came the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and massive fatherlessness, especially in some of the most vulnerable communities, or sub-communities of our country. And then the sexual revolution continued to the point at which you now have people claiming that being male or female is not an objective biological reality. Instead, it’s said to be a matter of some subjective alleged “gender identity” that you have invisibly somewhere inside you. So, there are very significant threats to the family today.

And then with patriotism and love of country, it’s so easy to fall into thinking, well, my country owes me, or my community owes me, but I owe nothing back. I’m here for them to serve. And I need to just focus on getting everything I can from the common stock or the common pool. And, I don’t have any responsibility to give back, to serve, to do my part, to be a contributing member of the community. And I think, again, we have to fight back and push back against such attitudes. We need to remind people of the importance of being contributors and not just takers.

PSM: I’m curious, if you could have this grassroots movement grow in an ideal fashion, which institutions would be the most important for this to take hold? I know it’s exciting to see some states adopting it, but what about families, religious groups, or other groups? How do we spread it to those who maybe aren’t already inclined toward faithfulness?

Robert George: I like grassroots building. I want this to be a grassroots movement. I don’t want to try to direct everything from the top. So, I’d like to see it begin in the family, with Mom and Dad teaching the kids—not just by precept, but by example too. Precept is important. It’s important for parents and teachers and pastors to preach a little bit, to talk. But even more important is setting an example. So, Mom and Dad, set the example for your children of worshiping God and putting God first. That’s what my parents did for me. It’s the greatest gift they gave to me and my brothers.

Second, parents should model fidelity in their love and concern for each other. And by fidelity, I want to make clear, I mean more than merely avoiding having adulterous affairs. That’s important, obviously. But that’s only the beginning of fidelity, not the whole of fidelity in marriage. The whole of fidelity in marriage means serving your husband or wife. Serving your spouse. That’s why we think of marriage, rightly, as a vocation. Vocation is not a career; vocation is not a job. Vocation is a way of serving, and in marriage, husband serves wife and wife serves husband. Marriage is a way of serving. And of course, husband and wife, as father and mother, serve their children. So, I think it’s important for men and women as husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, to model fidelity in its richest sense in marriage.

Third, parents, again, by precept and example, can model patriotism. They can take their civic responsibilities seriously and thereby encourage and teach their children to take their civic responsibilities seriously. Vote. Contribute to campaigns. Get behind the causes you believe in. Contribute time as well as money to serving the civic interest. Be willing to run for office. It doesn’t have to be President of the United States. How about the local school board? How about the county commission? Or support friends and neighbors who you think would be good office holders in their efforts to be a county commissioner, or a school board member, or mayor, or whatever it is.  I think those are some of the ways, and they all involve teaching by both precept and example. People can begin in the family to promote fidelity.

Then, what’s next? Churches and synagogues and mosques and other houses of worship all over the country should be promoting these values. I would love the churches—all denominations and traditions, because they basically share the same set of principles—I’d love to see them get behind Fidelity Month, recognize Fidelity Month. The pastor should preach a sermon about fidelity at least once during the month. Preach on fidelity. Maybe you could do three Fidelity Month sermons: One on faithfulness to God, one on faithfulness in marriage, one on patriotism and love of country, and why that’s legitimate and not idolatrous, unless you go about it in an idolatrous way.

And remember, this is all about reminding people of what they already know. We’re not teaching something new. This is not some new ideology. It’s not some new philosophy, it’s not some new theory. It’s just reminding people that there are some things that really matter, that ultimately matter.

You know, I sometimes say to my students, and to my kids (and to myself, to be honest with you) that there are some things that matter, but at the end of the day, not all that much. And then there are other things that really matter. So, what are the things that matter, but at the end of the day, not all that much? Things like wealth, power, influence, status, prestige, celebrity. Those aren’t bad things. It’s not bad to want those things. In fact, they can be good things because you can use them for good. You can use money for lots of good things. You can use power, if you have it, in a good way, for good things, to do good things. You can use influence for good. You can use celebrity for good.

But those things, though they matter, are not, at the end of the day the things that really matter, because things like wealth, power, status, influence, prestige, and celebrity are not ends in themselves. They’re not things that we want just for their own sake. They’re things that are means to other ends, and they have their value only as means to other ends. And they need to be contrasted with the things that really matter, the things that are not mere means to other ends but are desirable for their own sakes—things like faith, family, friendship, knowledge, beauty, integrity, honesty, decency, and compassion. Those are the things we want, not just as extrinsic instruments to get something else that they will make it possible for us to obtain or attain. They are the things you want for their own sakes. They are the things that really matter. They’re the things that ultimately matter.

David Brooks has a good way of illustrating the difference. He asks, what do you want on your tombstone someday? We all have just a short period of time on this earth. If you live 100 years, that’s a really old age, but it’s a blink of an eye in the history of the cosmos. What do you want on your tombstone for whatever number of years you have? Do you want it to say something like, Summa Cum Laude, Princeton? Goldman Sachs partner? No. What you want is something like “faithful husband, loving father and grandfather, loyal friend.” From the perspective of death, we can see more clearly the difference between the things that really matter, such as family, friendship, faith, knowledge, beauty, integrity, from the things that matter but not all that much.

PSM: Are there other ways that people can get involved if they are interested in doing more?

Robert George: Yes. I’d like everybody to go to the Fidelity Month website, www.fidelitymonth.com, because there at the website, you’ll be able to see what you personally can do to be part of this grassroots movement. There aren’t going be people upstairs who are doing stuff. Everything about Fidelity Month is grassroots, so if you go to the website, you can see what you can do to promote Fidelity Month.

Number one, you can say the Fidelity Month Prayer, which is a prayer that people in all traditions of faith can, in good conscience, say to ask God’s blessing on us, that we may be truly faithful to Him, faithful to our spouses and families, loyal and faithful to our country. Number two, you’ll be able to access the Fidelity Month logo for free. Use it for the month of June for your social media accounts. Use it on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever social media accounts you have. Number three, it has suggestions about what you can do in your local community, like hosting a speaker for Fidelity Month, maybe at your church, maybe at your community center, or having a panel discussion. You can also go to the merch section of the website, and you can buy at cost (we don’t make any money on it, it’s just sold at cost) the Fidelity Month flag, or a Fidelity Month cap or tee-shirt. Those things help to get the message out. People see the cap, they see the shirt, they see the flag, and they ask, hey, what’s that about? And boy, there’s your opportunity to witness to the importance of fidelity. And there are many other suggestions about how just everyday people, just ordinary folks, in every walk of life, from every tradition of faith, with every background, can spread the word about fidelity and be part of this movement to remind people about the things that really matter.

The post Robert P. George on Fidelity Month appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The innovations are fascinating: stackable certificates. Fully-online education. Lowered costs and scholarships for all students. BYU-Pathway Worldwide is doing groundbreaking work in higher education. It is, very seriously, living up to words like “innovative,” “disruptive,” and “transformative.”

But my interview with Brian Ashton, President of BYU-Pathway Worldwide, suggests something more than just differences in methods. Yes, BYU-Pathway is doing something distinct, but the different methods are also for very different reasons. These innovations come from a mission about theology and telos and foretold promises. This is about prophecy, not profits. Religious institutions like BYU-Pathway are different in their DNA.

To Latter-day Saints, Zion is the Holy City—the just society, prophesied in scripture, in which there would be a righteous people of one heart, with “no poor among them.” BYU-Pathway Worldwide has as its mission to “develop disciples of Jesus Christ who are leaders in their homes, the Church, and their communities,” but there’s a strong sense that it is doing something more ambitious still: building the foundations for a better world—one in which everyone has access to the life of abundance. 

In other words, a world with “no poor among them.”

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length. This is part II of a two-part interview. Find the first part here. 

Public Square Magazine: President Ashton, I wonder if we could start by having you tell me about yourself, about [BYU-Pathway], and a bit of the history of how you wound up getting involved. What is your role, your background, and what drives you in this work? What do you bring? What do you hope you bring?

President Brian K. Ashton: When I was in the Sunday School General Presidency, Clark Gilbert called me up. We had been friends since we were students together at BYU. He called me a few days after a meeting—they’d decided to spin out Pathway from BYU-Idaho. I joined as the vice president of field operations. Then I was asked to take this role.

In terms of BYU-Pathway, this was all incubated in Rexburg, and it was well-shepherded there and established as its own institution in Salt Lake. My role has been to make it a fully scalable organization to let it become whatever the Lord and the Brethren want it to be. 

PSM: I work at BYU-Idaho and love this place. I didn’t realize that the stories of the two organizations were so deeply tied together.

BA: This is all just an extension of Jacob Spori’s vision. This place (gestures at BYU-Pathway) would not exist if it were not for BYU-Idaho. It doesn’t exist without Kim Clark. It doesn’t exist without Clark Gilbert, or Henry J. Eyring, or … (pauses).

PSM: I’ll bet there are a lot of names.

BA: Yes, but that’s not it. It’s the Lord’s program. He is leading us. Do we stand on the shoulders of giants? Yes. But let’s not water down the message: we are led by the Lord. There are some smart people here, and they are giving their all to make this work. But this is the Lord’s effort.

I show up, and miracles occur. For us to take any credit—and for me, in particular? That would be totally inappropriate.

It is successful because Jesus Christ is guiding us.

PSM: Imagine a prospective student comes to you and asks for advice on how to be successful. What would you say?

BA: I tried to learn Mandarin in college. I had a very hard time because I have a hard time hearing tones. So I started saying that I wasn’t good with languages.

Then I get called to a mission to Peru. It’s not like I can tell God He made a mistake, right? So I go, I try, I learn. My Spanish was passable, but I was probably the worst Spanish speaker in my cohort of missionaries. But now I can hear tones—certainly better than I could in the past!

Here’s the lesson: You know what learning isn’t? It’s not about smarts. You know what it’s about? Three things: desire, discipline, and learning from the Holy Ghost.

I hear students say, “I can’t learn math” or “I’m not a math person.” But you know what? They have the desire, they have the discipline, and they ask God for help, and all of a sudden, they’re learning the math.

PSM: What challenges do you—that is, does BYU-Pathway Worldwide—face? What keeps you up at night?

BA: I sleep very well at night. It’s the Lord’s work, so I let Him worry about it.

But opportunities? We have a few of those. Growth. Scalability. Making sure that our students have had enough to eat.

34% of our students don’t get two meals a day. In Africa, that’s 69% of students who struggle to get two meals a day. 60% don’t have access to reliable housing. 68% it’s internet and computers.

Some of our students must fast so that they can afford data to submit assignments on their cell phones. 90% of our international students who drop out do so with passing grades on the assignments they’ve submitted. When we ask them, the top three reasons they cite for dropping out are all related to finances.

I’m not sure there’s an institution of higher learning that works with students who face so many hurdles—even though we get really, really good students. Helping them stay in? Helping them find ways to get access to the internet? Helping them get jobs? That’s critical to the work we do.

PSM: You said that you lose students due to finances. What is your success rate?

BA: In the US, in the lowest income quartile, the graduation rate varies from year to year but almost always is lower than 20%. Among the same population, our graduation rate is roughly double that. It’s a bit lower overseas, but we have students getting two or three better-paying jobs just during the course of their classes. Students get a certificate, and suddenly they’ve got more credentials than anyone in their village. They can get all the jobs now—and many do. We also have a significant chunk of our international students who have local degrees but come to BYU-Pathway to learn English or other skills that help them get jobs, and many of those only complete one certificate, or PathwayConnect, or EnglishConnect.

PSM: Someone might say that you are successful only because of subsidies from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tuition is low, but only because of those subsidies.

BA: No. It’s not just that tuition is low. The fundamental cost is low. The structure is sustainably low-cost. We’ve built a model that works. There’s a subsidy, but it’s not all subsidy.

PSM: A critic might say, hey—you’re only serving yourselves. This is only for members of your church.

BA: 30% of our students aren’t members of our faith. You don’t have to be a member of our church to join.

PSM: How do you guarantee quality? How do you make sure classes are good across the board?

BA: In traditional education, you have a wide spread of teaching quality. (Draws a large bell curve with his fingers.) In [BYU-Pathway], we have a lot less spread. Our results are focused around a tighter mean. (Draws a second bell curve that is tighter.) Traditional universities have rockstar teachers who probably outperform what we do every once in a while, but our numbers are stronger on average compared to traditional settings.

In traditional education, the professor just writes their own curriculum. There’s some ability to see how students internalize it, but it’s pretty tough—you have to train teachers on gathering formative feedback, setting up quizzes, and all that stuff. The quality of the professor varies considerably.

We’ve actually productized the curriculum: it’s presented identically every time. There’s no deviation in the curriculum. 

So when you ask about quality—when you ask students—what you find is that satisfaction rates and learning rates are a much tighter curve and a higher curve. You get better results. In a traditional classroom, you have a bigger tail—there are some amazing professors who are phenomenal. But you also have a spread and a tail on the lower end too.

Now, we have another benefit. We’re online, so we can see how students are interacting with the curriculum. We can see if they’re clicking and following, and you can intervene if they’re not doing well. Everything becomes a formative assessment. We have an army of people improving each course to make it accessible, to improve quality, and to keep the content top-notch—and when we make one class better, we’ve just improved the experience for every student involved.

We’ve also centralized the grading. Professors probably spend a ton of their time lecturing and grading, and that’s not us. Our folks work with students. That’s their job. They can intervene and work one-on-one.

PSM: (Laughing) If only traditional instruction were so easy to improve! It reminds me of some research I read on class-size findings: class size is not a good way to improve instructional quality. You’re telling me that you have this vastly scalable enterprise that is actually more effective—almost like bigger class sizes.

BA: That may be, but class size is imperative for us. You need a class size that is small enough that the teacher can know every name. Students need role models. They need someone who loves them and cares about them.

What do traditional faculty do? They spend much of their time doing research, lecturing,  or grading. Not our instructors. They spend 100% of their time working with students. We’re all about relationships. Our faculty are to be context experts—but most importantly, legendary relationship builders.

PSM: What about engagement? Online education is notorious for being less engaging than traditional classroom settings. How do you manage?

BA: There are certainly advantages to in-person education, but one advantage to an online system is that everything is a formative assessment. Every click, every hover, and every practice question is a chance for our team to gather data and improve the quality of the course.

PSM: What are your plans for the near future?

BA: Interview me again in six months.

I can’t wait to tell you what we’re going to be doing. I just got back from Eastern Europe—Armenia, Georgia, and Albania. I’ve been all over the world. In so many places, there just aren’t jobs. The labor markets just don’t work. Not always, but often, it’s corruption. You just aren’t going to get a lot of direct foreign investment. How do you grow when your population is mostly underemployed? Unemployed?

Companies in developed economies can hire these people to work remotely because they have the skill sets needed for our economies. We can use these folks. Those jobs are a huge blessing to our students. And these students are capable. They’re capable of doing the job. These good people deserve a shot, and we intend to give them one. When you interview me in six months, the big news will be about jobs—not just graduation, but how we can transform lives with more career options.

PSM: How will you evaluate your success as president? Now, in 10, 25, 50 years?

BA: I mean, look. We’re here to do what the CES board wants us to do. Doing what they ask us to do is really important to us. We need to follow their guidance and their direction. Elder Holland said once, “BYU-Pathway is an answer to my 50-year prayer that we could find an equitable way to serve the entire church with the blessings of education.”

So I suppose that my metric is, are we aligned with our leaders? Are we taking education to the whole world?

Then next, we want to evaluate the lives of our students. I want to know that students who went through this program are faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, who are following the Savior, and raising families. It’s not just about graduation; it’s about thriving—jobs, relationships, discipleship. We’re aiming deeper than just completion.

Finally, [BYU-Pathway] has a role in building Zion. Moses 7:18 says that the people were of one heart and one mind. They dwelt in righteousness. There were no poor among them. BYU-Pathway has a special role in making that happen.

My wife has said that no other Church institution has the worldwide reach and access to spiritually-based, job-ready certificates and degrees like BYU-Pathway. [BYU-Pathway] can provide relief from spiritual and temporal poverty, and those students can, in turn, help others until there are no poor among us.

The US and Canada have been served well by CES. And some overspill has occurred! But to serve the whole world? We needed something else for that big of a vision.

Can we build a world in which there are no poor among us?

Well, we’d like to try.

*****

When I spoke with President Ashton, I figured we’d talk pedagogy and disruption and innovation and governance—graduations and certifications, and all that. What I did not expect, however, was his intense focus on lives changed. The purpose of BYU-Pathway isn’t to produce graduates; it’s to give them opportunities—and President Ashton is laser-focused on the transformative power of education. How many of them are getting jobs? How many of them are seeing their career path change? How many of them are meaningfully better off?

I wrap up my interview and see a notification on social media. There he is again, this time announcing a new series of scholarships for students. And then, the news that BYU-Pathway will start offering access to 90-credit bachelor’s degrees from BYU-Idaho and Ensign College. The innovations don’t stop. I’m sure there are more in the offing.

But the purpose isn’t to try new things or make the press. The purpose is always about the people involved—and giving them the best possible shot at life. 

To make—one life at a time—a people of one heart and one mind. A people who dwell in righteousness. A people with no poor among them.

The post Brian K. Ashton on Building the Zion Classroom appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is not unique to Latter-day Saints, with every world religion pointing in some way to the divine feminine. Even so, this is one element of our teaching that does differentiate us from other Christian faiths. As summarized in an official essay, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that all human beings, male and female, are beloved spirit children of heavenly parents, a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.” 

It’s that essay that has bounded the work of McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding, authors of the bestselling series “Girls Who Choose God” (Deseret Book, 2014), and Our Heavenly Family, Our Earthly Families (Deseret Book, 2016). More recently, McArthur and Bethany collaborated on a two-part children’s book, “A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother” and “A Boy’s Guide to Heavenly Mother.”  

Having spent several hours with Bethany and McArthur recently, our editor Jacob was struck by not only their love for the gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ—but also by the tangible peace and joy you feel in their presence. Most of us on the Public Square team admittedly felt reservations about their work initially, based on experiences with others on the topic. This can be a difficult topic to know how to discuss in a faithful way. But we’ve been consistently struck by how intently these two women have been seeking to respect the line that Elder Dale Renlund underscored in his recent address: relishing revealed truth without getting drawn away by other potentially distracting possibilities.   

In short, we’ve sensed Bethany and McArthur represent a welcome departure from some of the anger witnessed in online discourse about this sacred subject, along with some of the recent media treatments about what this doctrine means for Latter-day Saint women. We wanted to know more about their experiences and how they would respond to some of the concerns lingering for people who are witnessing the acrimony online. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity.  

Jacob Hess: What is it that has motivated you to do so much on this topic?  

Bethany Brady Spalding: McArthur and I have both found tremendous joy, meaning, and purpose in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The restored gospel is bursting with truths that empower women, including the knowledge of a Heavenly Mother that reinforces for girls and women a clearer vision of their potential and eternal destiny. McArthur and I are each now raising girls, and we want to share with our daughters—and all daughters of God—these truths that have illuminated our lives.  

From the beginning of our writing career almost a decade ago, McArthur and I have been very deliberate about creating books that are faith-affirming and in alignment with current church teachings and doctrine. And that firm commitment has enabled all of our books to be published by or carried by Deseret Book. We want to be known as women who draw upon the restored gospel to inspire and celebrate women. 

We’ve been focusing our writing on the revealed truths about Heavenly Mother for a few different reasons. When the Young Women’s theme was changed in 2019 to include the phrase, “I am a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents,” we felt that it was an exciting time to help young women learn more about what prophets, apostles, and female church leaders have taught about Heavenly Mother.  

But we want to be clear that this emphasis in our work on Heavenly Mother is not meant to elevate her or this doctrine above Heavenly Father or any other gospel truth. We are simply striving to shine more light on this “cherished and distinctive belief” that has still been in the shadows for some. When something has been neglected or disregarded, or misunderstood for a period, it is often necessary to pay additional attention to it to restore balance. And that’s the aim of our work, to help others celebrate the partnership of our Heavenly Parents who “work together for the salvation of the human family.”

McArthur Krishna: Isn’t that a particularly joyous idea? It’s joy that honestly got me interested in writing about Heavenly Mother. I’ve learned in my own life how the gospel is a message of joy—in all its many aspects. And the knowledge of Heavenly Mother has so much potential to reinforce and accentuate that joy. 

And yet, I’ve been struck by the distinct lack of joy—both among Instagram advocates of Heavenly Mother and among some others who have concerns around this teaching. The advocates online are not always joyful because they think they need to fight for Heavenly Mother and sometimes fear judgment for doing so. It is hard to celebrate when you worry about being attacked and feel the need to defend. The concerned side also can worry excessively that any additional focus on this doctrine is going to entice women out of the church … so much so that they may end up missing the joy this truth might add.  

The reality is that a Mother in Heaven is joyous! And yes, both sides seem to risk missing out on that blessing. We hope to uplift hearts with both of these concerns (or wherever else on the spectrum of belief you might be).

We sometimes hear, more often than you might think, something along the lines of “It’s great we have a doctrine of Heavenly Mother; we just don’t need to talk about it.” That’s simply not what the prophets have taught. Heavenly Mother matters. If we want to talk about premortal life, being born to this world, eternal families, divine progression, exaltation—they all need Heavenly Mother. 

For anyone who was taught she was too sacred to talk about and that doing so is somehow disrespectful, again, that is not doctrine (see footnote #2 of the Church’s Gospel Topics Essay and the article it references, A Mother There). All this is good news! Knowing we have a Mother in Heaven is expansive, magnificent, and inspiring. Families are the fullness of our doctrine. And Heavenly Mother represents the divine destiny for women on the covenant path … to me, all of that adds up to a respectful gospel conversation we can be excited about and not fearfully avoid.  

JH: What has the response to your books been—especially among active members of the Church? Is there anything that stood out to you about that response?   

BBS: We’ve honestly been humbly blown away by the response to our Girl’s and Boy’s Guides to Heavenly Mother. There has been such an outpouring of joy, elation, celebration, awe, and gratitude—thanking us for compiling the teachings of prophets, apostles, and female church leaders about Heavenly Mother and sharing them in a faith-affirming and accessible way. Over and over, young women have told us how valuable our book has been for them as they recite the new Young Women theme and desire to know more about being a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents. And many parents have expressed appreciation for giving them another tool to teach their children about this extraordinary Latter-day Saint doctrine. Youth leaders have also commented on how helpful our books have been in lessons, class discussions, camps, and activities. 

MK: Bethany’s right—the response has been overwhelmingly encouraging. Our books have sold out twice; I think that clearly speaks to the yearning desire there is to know of this doctrine. But, we should be clear, this landscape is not about us or our books. We offer our talents, but the point is this joyous gospel truth (that we don’t always treasure), and the reaction to THAT has been amazing.

In the Gospel Topics Essay, Elder Oaks says, “Our theology begins with Heavenly Parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.” In sharing this with so many women around the world, we’ve watched them light up with joy when they learn more about the Mother they will be like—it is literally awe-inspiring. 

JH: You’ve spoken about women in other countries appreciating this reminder due to some of the intense cultural challenges some of them face. Can you say a little more about that? 

MK: Both Bethany and I have lived and traveled extensively abroad. I lived in India for eight years. And these experiences have reinforced for both of us that there are many intense issues that women face around the world that can be solved, or at least helped, by a deeper appreciation for the revolutionary message that Jesus Christ taught, summarized by Nephi, that “all are alike unto God.”

The reality is that some cultures teach that women are less than men. Some cultures accept domestic violence. Some cultures don’t encourage men and women to be united and work together to support their families. The knowledge outlined in that Gospel Topics Essay about Heavenly Mother can help eradicate harmful cultural perspectives and open hearts even more to the truth that women and men are equally-valued children of God.

BBS:  Yes, I was recently chatting with a dear friend of mine from South Africa, who serves as the Relief Society President in her Cape Town ward, and is the Executor Director of an organization that empowers female survivors of domestic violence.  Witnessing up-close on a daily basis the abuse of women, my friend commented on how much an understanding of Heavenly Mother like we have in the Church—a divine being, working harmoniously side-by-side with Heavenly Father—could change lives in her community. 

MK: In the process of translating our Girls Guide to Heavenly Mother book into Spanish, however, our translator told us that very few people in her country of Ecuador even knew that we have the doctrine of a Mother in Heaven. Before Elder Renlund’s talk in General Conference, many simply had no idea. For us, this seemed tragic. We have the doctrine … so we don’t want people to go through life without this knowledge. 

So we felt inspired to make a short video to celebrate the doctrine in the Gospel Topics Essay. The Church has shown how powerfully uplifting videos can be. They also can be spread more easily than books, be translated into more languages much more easily than a book, and be watched for free. 

BBS: Another reason we felt compelled to create a video was that we were troubled by the tone of the news coverage and social media after Elder Renlund’s talk. We wanted to shift the conversation from one of gloom and doom to one of joy, as McArthur emphasized earlier.

If you listen to the people who speak in that video, you can see they are faithful Latter-day Saints who love the gospel of Jesus Christ and who have been blessed by this additional understanding of Heavenly Mother—much like many other gospel doctrines bless our lives when we embrace them more. Simply applying the rich teaching within that essay could do so much good across cultures.

Both McArthur and I have had countless meaningful missionary experiences where people outside of our faith have found the concept of Heavenly Mother within the restored gospel of Christ to be exhilarating and delicious. Many had felt a void in their own lives and faith traditions that the centrality of family and equal partnerships in marriage—reflected in the valued place of Heavenly Mother—helped to fill.

JH: I’m understanding this awareness you’re wanting to celebrate as part of the gospel panorama and something you hope will strengthen people on the covenant path rather than providing some kind of alternative enlightenment. I also don’t hear you advocating for any particulars of what this looks like in practice, or even claiming to know. We can trust prophet leaders to continue to lead out on this. Can you say a little more about how exactly you’ve seen an appreciation of this gospel teaching strengthen people’s faith—perhaps especially the women?  

MK: President Monson used to encourage us to “look up” when we need encouragement—something President Nelson has also emphasized, once stating: 

Trees reach up for the light and grow in the process. So do we as sons and daughters of heavenly parents. Facing upward provides a loftier perspective than facing right or facing left. Looking up in search of holiness builds strength and dignity as disciples of Deity.

When invited to speak at firesides, we only quote from the Gospel Topics Essay. One of my favorite lines says that Heavenly Mother is the “eternal prototype” for women. Especially in our world today, looking up to this model can expand women’s richness of purpose and dignity of spirit.

When women get reminded of the truths our gospel teaches—the bold and beautiful idea that their destiny is Godhood, that they are made in their Mother’s image, that this earth life is time to practice our embryonic divinity, that they are to create and work as partners with men—they have even more reason to rise up in faith and power. I’m consistently surprised at how enlivening these doctrinal discussions are with members. The Spirit is so strong. 

We often get notes of follow-up from people sharing how this doctrine helped them embrace the call from President Nelson to “step forward” and “take your rightful and needful place in your home, in your community, and in the kingdom of God—more than you ever have before.”

I’ve also seen how this model of Heavenly Mother reminds women that their souls need investment … that it’s not wrong to want that (something we sometimes forget as mothers). While there is beauty and growth in sacrifice and service, it’s possible to overdo it. One friend of mine said that while her mothering muscles were super strong, it sometimes feels like she has shelved her other god-given talents for the last twenty years. But if we are truly on the developmental trajectory to become like our Mother, then our own souls need investment too. 

And, let’s be clear, while women can certainly grow up to be like our Father in Heaven, I will not be a Father in Heaven. That’s why a clear awareness of Heavenly Mother helps me learn about my eternal destiny and divine development as a woman. 

None of this replaces Jesus, who, as the Savior of the World, is playing a role no one else can. But in our experience, women wrestling with mental health, personal worth, feeling overwhelmed, feeling consumed by their many demanding roles, feeling alienated—all have told us how much this additional truth has helped them receive even more of the purpose and power available in the gospel of Christ. 

JH: This makes sense for women especially. Would you say the same is true for boys and men too? 

BBS: Last year, I was invited by the Branch President of a Spanish-speaking branch to come and speak to the youth about Heavenly Mother. While discussing quotes from the Gospel Topics Essay about how “the divine Mother, [is] side by side with the divine Father,” the young men instantly made the connection that machismo—a prevalent sentiment in many of their traditional cultures that encourages men’s dominance over women—is not aligned with the restored gospel and our enlightened understanding of men and women working as equal partners. 

More recently, I met a father who had been on a backpacking trip with his college-age sons, and they had been using our Guides to Heavenly Mother to discuss what qualities they hope to find in the women they want to date and eventually marry. My own 80-year-old father, who tragically lost his own mother when he was only six years old, has found deep comfort in the teaching from Harold B. Lee that he has a Heavenly Mother who is “even more concerned, probably, than our earthly father and mother, and that influences from beyond are constantly working to try to help us when we do all we can.” He has hung artwork of Heavenly Mother from our book in his home. I honestly marvel at the profound meaning young men and men in the Church find in this gospel teaching. 

MK: I’ve been struck by how often men express confusion on this point, asking something like, “Why does this doctrine of Heavenly Mother matter to me?” My response is usually to point out that the Gospel Topics Essay teaches that our Heavenly Parents are the “divine pattern”—“work[ing] together” and “side-by-side” for the salvation of their children. If we’re not recognizing half the pattern, then how can we build families, faith communities, and even the world?  Applying this principle of divine equality in our relationships is vital. And the doctrine of Heavenly Mother gives men and boys the clear injunction that working together unitedly with women is the model we need to practice. In our sexualized and objectifying world, that’s something boys in every country need, including in the USA.  

JH: Despite these heartening benefits, there remains some honest concern among some about how this might potentially disrupt people’s faith and discipleship. For instance, we hear of concerns about an overdone focus on Heavenly Mother interfering with our faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. What do you think about that? 

MK: I have not met anyone who has become more aware of Heavenly Mother who somehow thinks that she replaces Christ in His role of the Atonement. I have not met anyone who thinks Heavenly Mother negates Heavenly Father. Instead, they seem to appreciate better how united they are in working together for our salvation. As President Nelson has said recently, “My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ invites us to take the covenant path back home to our Heavenly Parents and be with those we love.”

My experience is that reminding people of our doctrine regarding Heavenly Mother actually reinforces their commitment to why following Christ matters. In the Gospel Topics Essay, Elder Oaks says, “Our theology begins with Heavenly Parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them.” The reason Christ’s Atonement matters is because it is the bridge that gets us back to be like and be with our Heavenly Parents. 

The path to Christ ultimately returns us to the presence of our Parents in one united path. I am not saying that people’s paths look all the same. I am saying that we are all trying to get home. I love these recent words by Elder M. Russell Ballard: 

I testify there is no greater goal in mortality than to live eternally with our Heavenly Parents and our beloved Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is more than just our goal—it is also Their goal. They have a perfect love for us, more powerful than we can even begin to comprehend. They are totally, completely, [and] eternally aligned with us. We are Their work. Our glory is Their glory. More than anything else, They want us to come home—to return and receive eternal happiness in Their presence.” 

We are Their work and Their glory—isn’t that stunning? They all want us to grow, develop, and become like Them. 

And no, a divine Mother takes nothing away from our Father in Heaven or Jesus Christ. The Gospel Essay quotes Elder Clawson as saying: “We honor woman when we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal prototype.” In that same talk, he says, “It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal Mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mothers in our affections.” 

So, while there is no competition among Deity, what we do see is women anxious to understand better how this unity and inclusion can work. So in that sense, a reminder of this larger divine pattern of working together is a really good thing. 

JH: I lost my mother a few years ago, and like anyone who’s lost their Mom, know how much you feel her absence. Even though I can’t have a direct relationship with her right now, it has felt important to stay aware of her and cherish her memory. That’s kind of what I’m hearing from you both here—encouraging this kind of sweet awareness while respecting lines we’ve been encouraged to respect (e.g., not praying to Heavenly Mother). 

BSS: Absolutely yes. People can be humbly aware and appreciative of the presence of the Father and the Son in their lives and still long for a sense of a Mother too. That’s partly because of what we know in The Family Proclamation about gender as “an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” That means mothers are different from fathers and have unique traits that reach and bless their children in different ways. 

About five years ago, my own mother started experiencing dementia and now is officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s—and is no longer able to connect and communicate with me in meaningful ways.  Although I still have my father and brothers in my life, I have a great sense of loss and a profound longing for a vibrant relationship with my mother.

MK: Even when we feel the love of others around us, we all recognize the love of a mother as unique. Like a beautiful story of a Marine who shared in sacrament meeting about his earthly mother dying when he was young—and always feeling that lack. Learning more about his Heavenly Mother brought him comfort. With all of the other family who loved him, he still felt the need for his mothers. 

We often hear of people with complicated relationships with a childhood father finding healing in finally appreciating the reality of a Father who loves them. For people who have complicated relationships with their earthly mothers or even their own mothering, Heavenly Mother can be a way to still celebrate the glory of motherhood without angst. And no, that doesn’t have to cross any lines we’ve been encouraged to respect.

JH: Thank you. Just to be clear, it sounds like you don’t have major concerns that discussions about Heavenly Mother have the potential to distract and pull people away from the plain and simple gospel truths that build faith day-to-day? 

BBS: What could be more plain and simple than a Mother’s love?! Young Women are taught in lesson after lesson that earthly mothers are essential for their children’s spiritual and physical well-being. Can we use the Gospel Topics Essay to illuminate the truth that Heavenly Mother is essential for her children too? She’s not a distraction!

I also find it a bit ironic that all during my growing up years (and still today), I’ve been admonished by church leaders to not adopt the ways of the world … to not set my hearts on the fleeting glimmer of worldly glory… to set our sights higher than the latest magazine model, pop singer, or movie star.  But now that we’re appreciating more our Heavenly Mother as an eternal prototype for women, that’s dangerous too?

It’s valuable to remind people of Sister Patricia Holland’s charge:

I have heard it said by some that the reason women in the Church struggle to know themselves is because they don’t have a divine female role model. But we do. We believe we have a mother in heaven. … Furthermore, I believe we know much more about our eternal nature than we think we do; and it is our sacred obligation to express our knowledge, to teach it to our young sisters and daughters.

If Sister Holland feels that we have a sacred obligation to discuss what we know about our Heavenly Mother, then I don’t think we should automatically put those conversations in the camp of dangerous distractions.

All that being said, through conversations with some impressive women in the Public Square community, I am beginning to understand their worry that too much focus on Heavenly Mother can create imbalance or bitterness. I can see that. And my response is, let’s focus on balance (embracing Heavenly Parents together) and gratitude for the truths that have already been revealed about Heavenly Mother. Those two approaches––balance and gratitude—really ground me in my faith and discipleship as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  

MK: We do understand the concern people have for how this is being talked about online. That concern has prompted us to just launch a new Instagram page called “cherished doctrine” (referencing a line from the Gospel Topics Essay that calls Heavenly Mother a cherished doctrine). Originally just a place to keep people updated about our books, we looked around and saw the need for a welcoming online space on this topic that is aligned with the Church. 

We hope this page can cross boundaries of concern and help us all grow in knowledge. We know there are people who want to learn more after the Young Women Theme changed to include Heavenly Mother or after Elder Renlund’s General Conference talk but who are worried about doing it respectfully. And we really don’t want to draw lines between Heavenly Mother and the Church. Like our other efforts, we hope this can become a church-focused landing place for those who want to appreciate this aspect of the beautiful restored gospel and how it connects to the full picture of God’s plan for us.  

JH: That’s great that you’re modeling another kind of conversation online. I think some of this social media drama may be what leads to the kind of fatigue you hear from some faithful members when they come across encouragement to pay more attention to this topic. It’s like, “this again? You really think we need to talk about this more…like right now?”

When you’re used to seeing so much hostility online and watching loved ones step away, this may be an understandable weariness and wariness. But from what you’ve said, it strikes me that maybe it’s precisely because of how difficult things have become around us that this discussion you’re encouraging (done the right way, with the right spirit) could be a timely blessing for heavy hearts out there, and another tender mercy to help bolster spirits. 

MK: Oh yes, I am not weary-ing of talking of my “divine destiny” as a woman. To me, that is not heavy, but lifting!

It’s honestly the opposite concern I have compared with many people. My concern is that without celebrating the doctrine we have about Heavenly Mother, we will miss out on this gospel truth that could strengthen and bless women while also missing out on the fullest understanding of what it means to build towards the eternities with one another.

Our goals are healthy women, thriving couples, and strong families. And ultimately, I think the best way to judge something is by its fruits. The fact is that many women are reporting that the fruits of their experience of becoming more aware and appreciative of the doctrine of Heavenly Mother are rich and good. They are more invested in their families and feel more joy, energy, and hope for their own future.  

In a church where over half the membership of the Church is female, I hope we could see more talk of our divine destiny not as a distraction but as a motivation. Let’s not forget that The Proclamation on the Family states, “Each [person] is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.” 

Once again, the doctrine of Heavenly Mother reinforces for women a more expansive vision of who they can be in the eternities. As then Elder Nelson once said, “As begotten children of heavenly parents, we are endowed with the potential to become like them, just as mortal children may become like their mortal parents.”

If we are to become like Them, we must learn of both of them—while appreciating how our Savior makes all of this possible.  Jesus is The Way … our Parents are the goal.

All this helps explain why I believe a deeper appreciation of this doctrine of Heavenly Mother can actually help nurture and expand faith in the Church … because it highlights such an expansive, magnificent place for women.  

BBS: That’s the kind of positive spiritual momentum we hope to encourage. I so desperately want my girls to hear in church that as they follow Christ on a journey home towards heaven that there is a Mother there side by side with the Father to welcome and embrace them. That my girls can see themselves in God—a perfected man and woman sealed together. 

That’s why I don’t feel like we should fear members of the Church coming to understand more about Heavenly Mother. I’m also drawn to the scripture in the New Testament that states, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.” Our Heavenly Parents embody perfect love. Knowing about them should cast out fear, not create fear.  

JH: Thanks for these answers. I know we’re really digging into this, but it’s helpful because of the legitimate reasons for concern. We’re all familiar with the Book of Mormon warning against “looking beyond the mark”—which Elder Quentin Cook explained is “when we elevate any one principle, no matter how worthwhile it may be, to a prominence that lessens our commitment to other equally important principles or when we take a position that is contrary to the teachings of the Brethren.” In that same discussion, Elder Cook cautioned against focusing on “certain gospel principles” or pursuit of “’gospel hobbies’ with excess zeal”—adding “Almost any virtue taken to excess can become a vice.”  

I know you’re working hard to shape a conversation that avoids these extremes, and precisely for that reason, I’d like to ask you to speak and elaborate on how we can bring meaningful attention to Heavenly Mother without falling into these other traps.  

MK: You bet, Jacob, we can go too far on anything—food storage, word of wisdom, the last days’ signs from the book of Revelation. That’s something we all need to be personally and individually watchful of. At the same time, we might also examine the situation more closely. Are there any unmet needs in the women who are being “swept away” by a seeming hyper-focus on Heavenly Mother? Instead of being quick to assume an emphasis on this doctrine is largely to blame, I wish we could look more deeply at these many needs. 

I don’t believe the doctrine around our Mother in Heaven is to blame for people leaving the Church. Is there any fear in me of people going off the rails? Not even close to the amount of fear I have of members of the Church not gaining the blessings that are possible.

So, while we can talk about the dangers of going too far … I think we also need to acknowledge a very real danger of not even being aware of our doctrine at all, much less applying it! 

BBS: I certainly see the wisdom in Elder Cook’s counsel not to approach gospel principles with excess zeal. I have witnessed up close the detrimental outcomes of doing so in lots of different areas.  So overzealousness is real. And it’s fair to say there’s been some overzealousness on both sides of the Heavenly Mother conversation. Some people may have gone too far in their explorations of Heavenly Mother, and at the same time, some bishops and stake presidents have been overzealous by telling members of their wards and stakes that they aren’t allowed to even talk about a Heavenly Mother. One ward I know of here in Virginia decided that their members were allowed to speak of Heavenly Mother only at home and not at church. And that kind of overzealousness can also be dangerous.

We feel that the best way to address overzealousness (on both sides of the spectrum) is to create more balance. And that is what Elder Renlund did with his April 2022 General Conference. He affirmed that the balance can be found by sticking to the doctrine taught about Heavenly Mother in the Gospel Topics Essay. 

Not everyone has enjoyed that same balance in the past—and not even today. That’s why it’s been wonderful to see more references to Heavenly Parents in General Conference and why more discussion about Heavenly Mother could bless us too. To be clear, we’re not demanding more doctrine (like Elder Renlund warned against); we’re hoping for more discussion and application of the truths found in the Gospel Topics Essay, so we can find that beautiful balance! 

If some people have arrived at a place of estrangement or frustration with this doctrine, we recognize how that can be influenced by the kinds of hostility that arises online. But let’s also recognize that some may sincerely feel discouraged that we have such a cherished and distinctive doctrine of Heavenly Mother but don’t often perhaps apply that doctrine as fully as we could. And that disconnect can be disheartening—including to me.  

JH: Since meeting you both and learning more of your work and writing, I confess that I find myself almost inadvertently inclined to edit out direct references in our communications together to “Him”—our Lord Jesus—or to “Father,” as in Heavenly Father. I don’t like that. And I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you’re hoping for, right—a hesitancy to ever refer to the Father and Son alone, or the generalizing of our language to Heavenly Parents exclusively? 

BBS: We certainly do not want to eliminate or discourage the use of the titles Father and Christ—or our profound appreciation for their distinct roles.  We simply want to encourage more space for the title of Mother to be appreciated in our sacred language. 

To me, spiritual growth comes as we change our thoughts, words, and actions to more fully align with gospel truths.  If the restored gospel teaches us that God is not just Heavenly Father but also a Heavenly Mother, then I feel that it is important to shift my language to reflect that knowledge.  Martin Pulido, one of the scholars that wrote the BYU Studies article, A Mother There (a text the Gospel Topics Essay cites), encouraged Latter-day Saints to develop a “mother tongue”… the ability to speak of Heavenly Mother comfortably and naturally wherever and whenever it is doctrinally accurate. 

As I have studied and learned about the “divine pattern” set by our Heavenly Parents and how Heavenly Father works together in perfect partnership with Heavenly Mother for the salvation of the human family, my admiration and appreciation for Heavenly Father has deepened in important ways. And as a mother myself—who would do absolutely anything to protect and care for my children—I have a new and heightened awareness of the sacrifice Heavenly Mother made as well to give the gift of her Son to the world. This adds to my understanding of how vital Jesus Christ’s life, mission, and example was and is to the human family. So I would say that my faith in Heavenly Father and in the Savior has been strengthened through my study of Heavenly Mother.

MK: No need to police your language in talking with us, Jacob! Our concern is more that our thinking and language can expand where it makes sense. Jesus’ divine mission to overcome sin and death so that the entire human family has the opportunity to become at one with God again is even richer to me, knowing that reuniting and reunion includes a Heavenly Mother.  It reminds me of a quote we have in our book by Elder Glenn L. Pace: 

Sisters, I testify that when you stand in front of your heavenly parents in those royal courts on high, and you look into her eyes and behold her countenance, any question you ever had about the role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into the rich celestial air because at that moment you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny.

It is very clear to me that the doctrine of Heavenly Mother draws me closer to Christ and the gospel. When I have a vision for who I can become, then I feel like rejoicing! I can GLORY in the gospel plan—because it includes me. 

Now, I know people will say I was included before coming to such awareness. In a sense, they’re right. But let me give a tangible example of what we sometimes miss. When I searched the term Godhood on the Church’s website, this is what came up: “Godhood See Eternal Life; Exaltation; Man, Men—Man, potential to become like Heavenly Father.” 

As you can see, women are not explicitly included in that reference to a very basic—but absolutely vital—theological question. Yes, I can become like Heavenly Father, but I will not become a father in the heavens. If I reach my highest potential, I will become a mother in the heavens. It is important to be reminded of this “divine destiny.”

None of this, to be clear, means we are demanding to go beyond what has been revealed. People often say we don’t know enough to teach or that very little has been revealed. But we have already received in prophetic teaching incredibly rich doctrines that can—and should!—inspire and guide our life choices. Elder Holland has said, “I want you to … know who you truly are. You are literally a spirit daughter of heavenly parents with a divine nature and eternal destiny. That surpassing truth should be fixed deep in your soul and be fundamental to every decision you make as you grow into mature womanhood.” This knowledge makes me rejoice in my membership in the Church. 

BBS: Well said, McArthur. As I have witnessed how empowering the doctrine of Heavenly Mother is for girls and women—members of the Church and beyond—I am increasingly grateful for the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ that has given us this profound, life-changing knowledge that is not known to so, so many. And it makes me want to shout for joy!

JH: As a final question, if you could say one thing to the women who have been frustrated about this conversation —or who want more understanding about Heavenly Mother—what would that be?  

MK: First of all, while not policing you or anyone else, I would remind us that sticking strictly with the Gospel Topics Essay offers us plenty of information to teach about Heavenly Mother: We know She loves us. She is concerned about us. She and Heavenly Father designed the plan for our lives. We know Heavenly Mother “works together” with Heavenly Father for the salvation of Their family. We know Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother would not be exalted beings without each other. And that’s just a few tidbits—there’s more! 

Beyond that, someone told me recently that the most common word in the scriptures is “ask.” I don’t know if that is true … but we certainly have the model of Joseph Smith asking. So, I would tell them to “ask.” If a person is feeling frustrated about this in any way and wants to better understand the truth of this doctrine or why it matters, or how to apply it, I would ask God—the ultimate source of all truth and wisdom.

 And I would also say my personal philosophy is to work. Jesus taught a lot of analogies about working in the vineyard. In a faith community, everything takes work. If we believe in the gospel doctrine of having a Heavenly Mother, then we work to enact that truth in our faith community. If you are frustrated about this topic (or any other), find a way to bless others’ lives in that arena.

BBS: I would say what I said to the Salt Lake Tribune:

Even if we focused only on what is taught in the Gospel Topics Essay on Heavenly Mother, it would be revolutionary for girls and women.  The essay affirms these truths: our understanding of Heavenly Mother is rooted in scripture; She stands side by side with Heavenly Father; She helped design the Plan of Salvation and works together with Heavenly Father for the salvation of the human family; Heavenly Mother is concerned about her children, can influence us, and is constantly trying to help us. Those are big, beautiful, bold truths that can transform the way women see themselves now and in the eternities.

Help us usher in the ongoing restoration … good things are sure to come. In a recent interview with Latter-day Saint scholars, Harvard professor of law and religion Noah Feldman said that the reality of a Heavenly Mother is one of the greatest gems Latter-day Saints can give to the wider world.  I want to be a part of that!

JH: I’ve appreciated how responsive you’ve both been to the questions and concerns our community and team have raised. I’ve personally found this exchange with you edifying and encouraging. Is there anything else you’d like to share?  

BBS: Girls, Young Women, and Women need to know that their eternal progression leads to a designing, creating, loving, involved, influencing co-equal partner God!  This is all doctrine from the Gospel Topics Essay. Heavenly Mother is not an invisible, secondary sidekick. This knowledge, this vision is essential, and it is beautiful.

I also just have to say how much we’ve both learned from our ongoing dialogue with the Public Square community over the past few months.  We’ve gained more empathy for some of the concerns people have and created some mutual respect and bonds of affection.   

MK: Agreed! We have learned a lot and have been able to incorporate those learnings into future work. It feels like a lot of the concerns are about going “too far.” And, I guess that makes sense in our agitated American society prone to polarizing. However, I would also like to offer a re-framing of the situation. 

This doctrine is JOYOUS! In addition to a Father and a Brother—we have a Mother! 

If you don’t feel that yet, pause … get still. Tune in. How do you feel? Doesn’t that reality just make your heart dance? Ok, I’m a dancer, so maybe that’s just me. But doesn’t the truth of Heavenly Mother make your heart sing or glory or at least swell!?!

I want to be sure that in all the concerns, we don’t take away the sheer joy of a Mother in Heaven.

The post Heavenly Mother Should Be Joyful, Not Another Cultural Battle appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Expressive individualism centers our personal identity on what Philip Rief refers to as the “psychological man.”  In this view, our identities are defined by the contents of our minds—by our thoughts, desires, inclinations, preferences, etc. Carl Trueman explains, “The modern self assumes the authority of inner feelings and sees authenticity as defined by the ability to give social expression to the same.” Our identity, in this perspective, comes from within us, and self-discovery is a process of peering into our own souls. Trueman explains how we have come to see our personal identity as infinitely malleable—how we have become “plastic people”—and in the process, we have become disenchanted with traditional institutions and authorities. The sacred order has lost its shine to those in the thralls of these new perspectives on self and identity.

In a more primordial view of identity—which I think is more amenable to the worldviews we find in our sacred texts—we are defined at least in part by our relationships and responsibilities. In other words, our identity is found in that shared space between ourselves and others: I am a son of God, my children’s father, my wife’s husband, my students’ teacher, and a disciple of Christ by virtue of covenants I have made with Him. My identity is found not by looking inwards, but by looking outward and upwards—towards those in my life with whom I am in relation, towards whom I have a responsibility, and to Whom I am accountable. Some of these aspects of myself I have chosen, others I have not. Extending Trueman’s argument in the book, I would add that I am not infinitely malleable—the stubborn facts of heritage, sex, and other aspects of myself are constraints upon my attempts at self-redefinition. But I do have a choice as to which of my various relationships and community allegiances I elevate to the level of my core identity.

I first met Carl Trueman in person in August of 2021, where we both presented at the FAIR conference in Provo. Our two presentations dovetailed with each other in surprising ways, as we both share interests in exploring the history and consequences of expressive individualism in our respective communities. I was subsequently thrilled to have the opportunity to interview Carl Trueman this week and to share some more of his perspectives with a broader Latter-day Saint audience. 

Carl spoke to me from his home in Grove City, Pennsylvania. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

_________________________

JT: First off, I’m wondering if you can tell our readers and listeners a little bit about yourself. Who is Carl Trueman, and specifically, why have you become so interested in exploring the issues addressed in your book?

CT:  Well I’m a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania, which is an undergraduate Christian Liberal Arts College.  Prior to that, I was a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia which is a Presbyterian Seminary and I was also a Presbyterian pastor.  It was while pastoring part-time as a seminary professor I became aware that issues surrounding what I call broadly the sexual revolution were starting to encroach in a dramatic way on the life of myself as a pastor but other pastors as well.

Things such as internet pornography, for example, and questions raised about sexual identity—these things were becoming pressing issues.  So, part of my interest in the stuff I write on identity and particularly sexual identity politics arose out of a pastoral concern of wanting to try to get to the bottom of what was going on in the culture so as to be able to address it all in a responsible pastoral fashion.  I was also just struck as a historian that a sentence as dramatic and counter-intuitive and as repudiating of tradition as “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” had not only become plausible but was rapidly becoming a kind of political orthodoxy—the assent to which is being demanded of us all in such a very short period of time.  

It seemed to me that if a sentence that is so iconoclastic in many ways and so counterintuitive can so come to grip the popular and political imagination in a short period of time that there has to be a bigger backstory. There has to be something going on much deeper and much broader in the culture that has prepared the ground for what I would regard as something that 10 years ago would have been seen as craziness. And furthermore, the thing that motivated my interest was my friend Rod Dreher—a conservative journalist on the editorial staff at the American Conservative—was getting very very concerned about the way sexual politics was playing out in our broader culture. He wanted someone to write a book on a guy called Phillip Rieff who was really a Freudian sociologist but really helpful in understanding the nature of modern culture.  Rod wanted someone to write a book that would open Rieff up to a more broad popular market. That was how my first big book started while working trying to do this introduction to Rieff but it morphed into a much bigger social and cultural history because of the prior two concerns, the pastoral concern and that historical interest in why [these new ideas about identity] become so powerfully plausible in such a comparatively short period of time.  

JT: Wonderful. Thank you so much.  I confess I’ve harbored similar thoughts and asked some similar questions.  Like, how can our culture have shifted so dramatically that things that were once seen as common sense, right or wrong, or once seen as common sense are now, even over a short period of a decade, seen as anathema—and impossible to even conceive even for many. Let’s talk more about the book now. This book explores the historical development of expressive individualism, and the consequences of expressive individualism in our current “social imaginary,” as you put it. For those who haven’t read this book, could you briefly—in just a few sentences—summarize for our readers and listeners what the worldview of expressive individualism is?

When you think about what that language implies or what it carries with it, is this idea that all along Jenner was this person hidden inside the body desperate to get out and is now able to do that even though it contradicts the body that Jenner has. And that is sort of an extreme example of expressive individualism.  But most of us can sympathize with that in a less radical way.  Most of us have this idea that the person we really are equals the feelings inside us.  And to the extent that we aren’t able to act out those feelings or express those feelings … or have those feelings acknowledged by other people … to that extent we are not able to truly be ourselves.  So that is expressive individualism. It has ramifications.  One of the ramifications of that is personal-psychological happiness moves to the center of what it means to be fulfilled.  And that, of course, means that we tend towards seeing the world around us, and particularly other people, as good to the extent that they are able to facilitate our personal psychological happiness—and as problems to be overcome to the extent that they don’t do that.  

I could illustrate that with a fairly extreme example.  Think about abortion for example. How a woman who’s having an abortion thinks about the baby in her womb. She thinks of it as an alien presence. A “something” that’s encroaching on her life. It’s something that’s going to stop her from flourishing in the way she wants to flourish. That’s an extreme example but it captures something of that notion that “I am free, autonomous, and unencumbered and everybody else to the extent that they impinge or infringe on my ability to be psychologically happy, to that extent they are a problem that I need to get rid of or overcome in some way.” 

JT: Thank you so much.  You’ve already alluded to this a little bit but you explore in your book how expressive individualism poses deep challenges for Christians in our new secular society. Of course, this is one of the focuses of your entire book. However, if you could summarize those challenges in just a few sentences, what would they be?

CT: I think for religious people in general, expressive individualism poses a significant challenge. When you think about how to be a member of a Presbyterian Church, it traditionally requires a certain code of behavior. I’m sure it’s the same in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s the same in synagogues with Jewish friends I have. You have to behave in a certain way. There are certain things intrinsic to your religious beliefs that touch directly upon the way one behaves. The problem with expressive individualism is it is starting to take many of those behaviors which would have traditionally been anathema, say, to a Presbyterian and it’s making those points of identity. So traditionally, Presbyterians would have said homosexual behavior is off-limits—you can’t engage in homosexual behavior and consistently claim to be a Presbyterian.  Once, of course, that behavior gets tied to an identity then what the Presbyterian Church is really [perceived to be] saying is you’re not allowed to be a certain kind of person as a Presbyterian. And if that kind of person is a person who has been valorized, lionized, promoted by the wider culture …  if accepting that kind of person is made a condition of good citizenship, then those of us who belong to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, you name it, belong to religions that repudiate the behaviors connected to that identity.  

To that extent, we’re placing ourselves in a position where somebody could point to us and say, “You’re seditious.  You no longer think and behave in a way that good members of our society behave.”  That’s why you preach on Romans 1 and somebody is going to claim that you are endangering people because you’re preaching against homosexuality, for example. They don’t hear you as preaching against behavior, they hear you as dehumanizing and delegitimizing a particular identity, a particular person. I think the sexual revolution—precisely because it strikes at the sexual codes that Christianity, Islam, Judaism place right at their center—puts traditional religions in a very difficult and invidious position at this point in time. 

JT:  In the final chapter of the book, you invite Christians to examine their own complicity in the rise of expressive individualism. Could you clarify what you mean by that? And why is it important to be humble as religious people as we approach these issues?

I think it’s important we acknowledge that because it shapes how we respond to what many of us would see as the excesses of expressive individualism. If I’m correct, the sexual revolution represents an excessive expressive individualism and a particularly sexually charged one.  It’s important to realize that the advocates of the sexual revolution might be quantitatively different than me, but they may not be qualitatively different than me.  I was listening this morning to a young New Testament scholar who spoke about a section of the gospel of John where the woman caught in adultery is brought before Jesus. He noted that the first thing Jesus does is point to the complicity of the crowd and said, “he who has no sin cast the first stone.”  The second thing He does is tell the woman “go away and stop what you are doing. Go away and sin no more.”  That was an interesting ordering.  He, first of all, humbled the crowd, and then He rebuked the woman.  I think anybody addressing the LGBT+ movement who wants to have a clean conscience about doing it has to, first of all, acknowledge their own complicity in the kinds of expressive individualist’s sins of which the LGBT+ community is perhaps only the most controversial and highest-profile example. 

JT: I really appreciate that. In other words, it’s important to examine the ways in which we as a community might be indulging expressive individualism in less noticeable ways but still help to feed that social imaginary from which so many are drawing on the issues. 

CT:  Yeah.  Another good example would be gay marriage.  Most conservatives would say that marriage was redefined in 2015, via Obergefell v. Hodges. In actual fact, gay marriage simply builds upon the logic of no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce is the real redefinition of marriage—when marriage became something that now exists for the mutual psychological happiness of the contracting parties. As soon as it ceases to do that they can go their separate ways and the children, for example, are just so much collateral damage. This is really an expressive individualist’s conception of marriage. Well, that was introduced in 1970 in the state of California by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. Again I can’t speak to the practice of the Latter-day Saint community on this but certainly, in Protestant and Evangelical circles nobody really bothered protesting no-fault divorce.  Nobody really took it seriously within our own ranks. So the logic of gay marriage was something we accepted as perfectly reasonable when it was a heterosexual couple.  It’s become problematic now that gay couples are on the scene.  But I want to say yeah the Church has really hamstrung itself because of the issue because of the easy way we accepted no-fault divorce in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. 

JT: That’s a fascinating example. Basically what you are saying is in this past decade we really have been taking to the logical conclusion world views we might have embraced several decades ago. I know for a fact that many Latter-day Saint leaders at the time were critical of these new developments such as no-fault divorce. If I talked to many of my peers today I would be hard-pressed to get people to strongly criticize some of those movements, perhaps not realizing what they’ve led to down the road.  

JT: You traced the history of this worldview in an earlier book—“The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.” Since the release of that earlier book, have events caused you to refine or reconsider your analysis?

CT:  Not in any fundamental substantial way. I have a little short book just coming out this week (“Strange New World”)—a shorter version that summarizes the bones of the argument of the big book but also moves into a couple of other areas.  I’ve been very struck with how these ideas surrounding expressive individualism have become plausible? You can trace the intellectual genealogy. Most people don’t read Rousseau. Most people don’t read Freud.  Most people don’t read Nietz​​sche. So why do they think like them? Why do they behave in a manner consistent with their thinking? One of the strands that I think needs to be addressed is the weakening of traditional institutions and the transformation of traditional institutions. We live in a world where the old markers of identity we might broadly say were family, church, and nation—certainly for the last 150 years. Family, church, and nation have been significant components of how people have thought of themselves. They provided that external, relatively stable framework by which we can navigate our own identities. All three of those, if not in crisis, have certainly become rather unstable if not “liquid” at this point in time. If you got a dozen young people in a room and you ask them to define family you’ll get a dozen different definitions. 

We know from the power of the internet that events overseas, for good or for ill, often grip our imagination more powerfully than events down the road.  It was very interesting in the middle years of the decade how many young men (and some women) from good middle-class homes in London where they want for nothing, “pledged allegiance to ISIS online.” They felt more identity with something seen on a screen from thousands of miles away than with their own families and neighbors. That indicates to me that traditional institutions are no longer gripping the imagination as they once did.

What you have there, I think, when old communities die away, old identities get thrown into crisis.  And that’s where new strong communities can fill the vacuum. Why do so many young kids want to join the LGBT+ movement? Because it does give a sense of belonging. A sense of value. A sense of identity. And we have failed to provide them with a stronger alternative.  Because the institutions that you and I grew up with have become very very weak in the last 10-15 years.

JT:  This new book, “Strange New World,” is written for a broader audience. In your view, what does this book offer beyond your previous book? What made this new book necessary?

CT: I’m a reformation historian. So I had to write the earlier, bigger book with all of the footnotes to establish my credibility—also to get the deep, broad narrative clear in my own mind. The shorter book is really designed for a broader audience.  It was prompted by  Ryan Anderson, who is a colleague of mine at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in D.C. and famous for being banned from Amazon for his book on transgenderism, “When Harry became Sally.” Ryan had read the big book and dropped me a note, “I really enjoy your big book but there is a huge problem.” I said, “What’s the problem?”  He said, “Nobody is going to read it. I’ve got to give a book to DC staffers. I want to give books to policy wonks.  They aren’t going to read a 400-page book. They might read a shorter 200-page book.”  

And my publisher, Crossway, at the same time, was thinking we need to turn the big book into something that could be used in Sunday School (something in Presbyterianism where a book can be read together as a church and studied with discussion). So the book is designed to be much more amenable to that kind of thing, with youth leaders, Sunday School teachers, etc.  I spoke to so many parents, including at the FAIR conference when I spoke, who are confused and lives are being torn apart because their kids think differently about this stuff than the way they do.  They don’t know why. They want some kind of map that helps them understand this tremendous gulf that exists between the older generation and the younger generation. Between parents and children, this gives some way to find some kind of common ground for engaging in discussion. So, the book is designed to meet that kind of need. 

JT:  You are absolutely right.  I’m talking to people left and right who are just bewildered by these changes in cultural attitudes. They are searching for a road map which I think your book does very well, which is why I’m going to recommend it to everyone. 

Carl, to zoom out a little now, we are watching our nation polarize over a host of cultural issues. This new book spends a great deal of time exploring philosophies and perspectives we might associate with the political and cultural left. Do you see similarly dangerous trends on the right?

So, if I were presenting a positive vision of the way forward, I think it would be a vision that would upset both right and left—on the grounds that I would want to talk first and foremost about responsibilities. Not about rights. I would want to talk about obligations. Not about rights. I would want to talk about how we are only ourselves when we are serving other people. I think that is something that is an anathema to the radical libertarian rights and to the radical progressive left at this particular point in time. 

JT: I absolutely agree with you on that. From my own perspective, I really think that who we are is kind of bound up in the relationships of duty and responsibility that we have with those around us. Which is a kind of contradiction of the ideology we’re seeing on both sides of that spectrum. Could we end with some recommendations for parents and church leaders?

CT:  Yeah that’s a tough question because the causes of the problem are so complex that it’s difficult to say, “here’s the silver bullet. Put this in your gun and pull the trigger. Problem solved. Here’s the vaccine.  Just stick it in their arm and they’re okay.”

I think constant vigilance is very important. I would say this, one piece of practical advice: Don’t give kids smartphones. I think if you give kids smartphones it’s game over at that point. The evidence that’s emerging at the moment, it’s anecdotal but highly plausible as it stands, and I think it will be confirmed. Namely this: For children immersed in smartphones, the most important influential people in kids’ lives are not their parents and not their teachers. That means being a good parent and making sure your kids are put in good schools or homeschooling your kids is not going to solve the problem in and of itself. 

It’s the TikTok influencers. It’s the YouTube influencers.  These are the people who are shaping the minds of the young at the moment. If you give your children untrammeled, unhindered access to those people, then you are giving them unhindered and untrammeled access to your kids’ minds. So, I would say as hard as it is—and I sit here as a father whose kids thankfully reached adulthood before smartphones became an issue (so I can’t sit here and lecture everybody else and say I did this, “yes it’s tough. I did it so you can do the same.”)  But I hope that if I was a parent of younger children I would have the strength to do it. I think if you want to keep your children as inoculated to this stuff as you possibly can then you have to police their access to the internet and the kind of stuff they can get to via the internet.  There’s just no way around that.  I understand how that can be hard because increasingly we all have to have these gadgets, and so much is done on a smartphone. It’s difficult to do this but I think we have to try to resist it as much as we can.

JT: Thank you. I agree. I teach psychology and I actually do a unit in my psychology class on social media. The truth is they are detecting definite correlations between social media use and a whole host of other similar negative factors.

CT:  Yes it does not surprise me.  I would recommend to your listeners to get hold of Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage. It’s an incredibly depressing read.  It’s about the trans craze among young teenage girls. One of the things that comes through so clearly is when she talks to these girls who think they’re trans, time and again it’s the internet that triggered it for them. She’s a liberal Jewish figure—not a figure of the political right or religious right at all. But I would strongly recommend that book as a  must-read if you want to understand the world that your teenagers are living in at the moment.

CT:  Yes. There’s a reason why the tech gurus in Silicon Valley don’t allow their own kids to use technology. They know what it does to kids’ minds.

JT: Okay, one final question. If you could convey a single message to a broadly Latter-day Saint audience who are grappling with the consequences of expressive individualism, what might that message be?

CT:  Don’t give up. Particularly when it comes to your children. There’s a temptation to be overwhelmed by what’s going on and just abandon everything we hold dear in the face of the wall of water that’s heading towards us. I’m admittedly resigned to not winning any of the significant cultural battles of the west in my own lifetime.  I’m in my mid 50’s. I’m going to lose every single battle I engage in in the next 20 years if I live that long. 30 years. But I’m not engaging in those battles for me and my generation. I’m engaging in those battles to make sure there’s something left for the next generation to fight on and the next generation after that. I don’t know how often Tolkien is cited in Latter-day Saint circles.  He’s very trendy in the circles that I mix in. Theoden of Rohan, at one point of the story, tells one of his bodyguards, “I know we are going to lose but still we’re going to meet them on the field of battle.”

I would say our generation has the responsibility to future generations to fight the fight even though we are going to lose many battles in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.  But we still have the responsibility to fight those battles no matter what the cost because we are laying a foundation for our great-grandchildren and their children. 

JT: That’s actually an excellent example partly because we’re still finding strength and inspiration today from them J.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and others who were writing a couple of generations ago. They were planting seeds that are still bearing fruit today in the lives of people who read them. 

CT: Yes, who doesn’t love Tolkien? Wonderful stuff and inspiring as well as entertaining. 

JT: Well thank you so much for your time.  I am thrilled to have been able to talk to you.

The post A Conversation with Carl R. Trueman appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

I had the opportunity to speak with Laycock about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on LGBT+ employment rights, and its implications for religious liberty. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Christopher Cunningham: The Supreme Court’s recent Title VII ruling was about employment protections for gay and transgender individuals. But many people are talking about religious freedom. Why? How does this case have anything to do with churches or religion?

Douglas Laycock: All the cases decided involved commercial employers, none of whom were making religious liberty arguments in the Supreme Court. So the Court had no occasion to decide anything about religious liberty, and it didn’t.

But of course, many of the employers who resist hiring from the LGBT+ community are religious institutions acting for religious reasons. A few are small commercial employers acting for religious reasons. Most of these religiously motivated employers are subject to Title VII, the federal employment-discrimination law that the case did interpret. You are seeing the alarmist reaction of advocacy groups speaking on behalf of these religiously motivated employers.

These employers will offer religious liberty defenses to Title VII claims by LGBT+ employees. The employers have several legal theories available to them, and the Court will sooner or later have to decide all the resulting issues. The alarmism is overdone; protecting religious liberty for these employers does not require permitting all other employers to also discriminate against the LGBT+ community.

CC: You described many of the religious liberty concerns as “alarmist.” In what ways do you feel that concerns are overwrought? And where do you see legitimate religious liberty concerns arising in response to this case?

DL: Much of the early reaction is alarmist because it’s premature. None of the religious liberty issues have been decided in the Supreme Court yet, except for Masterpiece Cakeshop two years ago, which protected the wedding baker from a public accommodations law.

The alarmist reaction is coming from people who seem to believe that the only way to protect religious minorities (they may be large minorities, but they are minorities on this issue) is to deny legal protection to sexual minorities. This is the mirror image of people on the gay-rights side who think the only way to protect the LGBT+ community is to deny all protections for religious liberty.

The Court is capable of protecting both sides. Whether it will do so remains to be seen. But I am cautiously optimistic.

The Court has several tools to work with. There is the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which is what they relied on in Masterpiece Cakeshop. It is at issue in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which will be decided next year. 

Whatever happens with free exercise, there is also the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). It applies to all federal law, including Title VII. And depending on what happens in Fulton, it may be a simpler and more straightforward source of protection than the Free Exercise Clause.

And then Title VII itself has an exception for religious employers hiring on the basis of religion.

There are at least three different ways for the Court to protect religious employers, all remaining to be decided.

CC: What are the protections you mentioned within Title VII itself that might limit Monday’s ruling?

DL: Title VII has an exception that allows religious institutions to hire members of a particular religion. This has been sensibly interpreted to permit hiring on the basis of religion more generally. If an LDS charity hires other Christians, or other conservative Christians, it does not forfeit its right to refuse to hire outspoken atheists.

There is an issue in the lower courts about whether this just means the employee’s self-professed religious identity, or whether it also means adherence to basic tenets of the faith. There is a Supreme Court case from the 80s where an employee was fired because he lost his temple recommend (Bishop v. Amos). The temple-recommend practice, as I understand it, gives the Church some control over who identifies as LDS.

But suppose I tell my employer that I’m Catholic. Does the employer just have to take my word for it? Or can it say that I’m in a same-sex marriage and I’m moonlighting in an abortion clinic, so I’m obviously not Catholic in any meaningful sense? In other words, can a religious institution fire employees who publicly flout church teachings? The Court will have to resolve that issue in the religious institutions’ favor for the Title VII exception to provide meaningful protection in the gay-rights context.

The exception says that this section of the statute shall not apply to hiring decisions within the exception. So it shouldn’t matter that the employer is discriminating on the basis of some other protected category. If the decision is based on religion, it should be protected.

If the Court gets that right, then the protection from the Title VII exception is absolute. You don’t have to argue about whether there’s a compelling government interest in nondiscrimination within religious institutions.

The Title VII exception is broader than the ministerial exception in one way, because it applies to all employees at the organization, not just those doing religious functions or in leadership roles. It is narrower in another way; it protects only those employment decisions [that are] based on religion. The ministerial exception, where it applies, protects any employment decision on any basis, because we don’t want courts second-guessing decisions about the employment of the people who count as ministers.

The Title VII exception probably does not protect religiously motivated for-profit employers. It is a protection for religious organizations only, and only when their decision is based on religion.

CC: The Supreme Court has recently heard a pair of cases about teachers being fired by Catholic Schools, where the Catholic Schools are claiming the “ministerial exception” you mentioned. Justice Gorsuch also mentions a ministerial exception near the end of his opinion. What is a ministerial exception, how does it relate to this case, and how could it help resolve some of the questions this case opens?

DL: The ministerial exception is a constitutional rule that protects religious employers. Because it is constitutional, it protects against state law as well as federal law. It is very strong where it applies, but its scope of application is narrow.

The rule is that a person in a position of religious leadership cannot sue to get his job back or to get back pay for having lost that job. “Ministerial” is a misnomer; the rule is not confined to people who are ministers in ordinary language. It obviously also applies to priests, rabbis, and imams.

And it applies to other key personnel who speak for a religious organization or teach the faith. A few years ago, the Court unanimously applied the ministerial exception to a fourth-grade teacher who taught a religion class every day, led the children in prayer, and took her turn leading the school’s chapel service. The school could fire her for any reason or no reason, including reasons that would otherwise be illegal, because she was responsible for transmitting the faith to the next generation. That case was called Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The issue in the cases you ask about is how many teachers the ministerial exception covers. The plaintiffs were also elementary school teachers who taught the secular curriculum, taught a religion class, and led the children in prayer.

I think the schools are likely to win those cases. But either way, the ministerial exception will protect religious organizations only against suits from a small part of their workforce. It provides absolute protection; even if the church fires you because it doesn’t like your race. That is unusually strong protection, and it can’t be generalized to the whole workforce. It applies to clergy, to people like organists who play an essential role in worship services, to spokespersons, and I hope, to religion teachers.

But it will never apply to middle school or high school teachers who teach only secular subjects, or to clerical staff or custodians. It is unlikely to ever apply to social workers or the staff at homeless shelters or soup kitchens or other religious charities. 

The other sources of protection that I mentioned are more complicated, but they are of much broader scope; they potentially apply to the whole workforce.

CC: One of those other protections you mentioned is the RFRA. In his opinion, Justice Gorsuch mentioned this law, and described it as a “super-statute.” What does that mean and how might that provide comfort to those with remaining religious liberty concerns? 

DL: “Super-statute” is not a legal category. It’s an expression, but a pretty meaningful one. RFRA expressly applies to “all federal law, and the implementation of that law.” So every federal statute, including Title VII, is subject to RFRA unless Congress expressly enacts an exception. That hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to happen.

RFRA says that federal law cannot be applied in a way that substantially burdens a person’s exercise of religion unless that burden is the least restrictive means to serve a compelling government interest. A religious institution or a religiously-motivated employer is a person. If that institution has religious reasons to refuse to hire an LGBT+ person in a certain position, requiring it to do so substantially burdens its religious exercise.

If the person in that job is a role model, or represents the church to the public, the religious reason and the burden on religious exercise is pretty clear—although plaintiffs will dispute that. The computer teacher doesn’t have to be allowed to publicly flout church teaching. It is far less apparent that the janitor can’t be gay, or that a retail sales clerk can’t be gay. Some claims may look like simple bigotry instead of sincere exercises of religion.

Once the religious employer shows a burden on religious exercise, the plaintiff has to prove compelling government interest and least restrictive means. That will probably be the principal litigation fight. The gay-rights movement argues that there is a compelling government interest in stamping out every single instance of discrimination, even inside the church. I don’t think that makes much sense, and I don’t think that there are five votes for that position on the Supreme Court. But we will see when they decide.

There may be compelling interests in some cases—quite possibly in commercial employment, or in commercial employment by large businesses or in local areas where many employers want to discriminate. But the Court is much less likely to find a compelling interest when government regulation and plaintiffs reach inside religious organizations. 

CC: You mentioned Fulton v. City of Philadelphia and that it might affect the interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause. What is the case about and what are its implications?

DL: The issue in Fulton is whether religious child-welfare agencies have to place children for foster care with same-sex couples. And at the invitation of four justices, the litigants have briefed (written a legal argument) whether to expand free-exercise protection back to its historic scope.

Employment Division v. Smith is a Scalia opinion from 1990. It says that the Free Exercise Clause simply doesn’t apply to laws that are neutral and generally applicable. Even if the law bans a worship service, there is no free exercise issue.

The Court did not have any clear idea of what it meant by neutral and generally applicable law, and thirty years later, it still hasn’t explained. Government lawyers claim that nearly all laws are neutral and generally applicable. If that’s right, then the Free Exercise Clause prohibits outright discrimination against religion, and nothing more.

Religious liberty lawyers say that if a law has exceptions or gaps in coverage that permit secular activities that cause the same harms as those the government attributes to the burdened religious exercise, then the law is not generally applicable. On that reading, many laws are not generally applicable. But as that complicated sentence may illustrate, this reading makes every free exercise claim enormously complicated. The litigants have to fight at the threshold over whether the law is generally applicable, before they ever get to the burden on religion and whether that burden is justified.

The litigants are fighting in Fulton over whether the law is neutral and generally applicable, and that fight is complicated and hard to summarize. But the Court in Fulton also granted review on whether Employment Division v. Smith should be reconsidered. The issue is now being briefed for the first time; the Court in Smith just did it, without warning and without briefing or argument.

CC: Justices Kagan and Breyer have been very open to expanding religious freedoms in the recent past (Masterpiece, Trinity Lutheran). Would you be willing to speculate on how receptive the court might be to reconsidering the limits to religious liberty that Employment Division v. Smith put in place?

DL: Predictions are always dangerous, but I am optimistic that the Court will overrule Smith. Smith is inconsistent with the constitutional text, and Monday’s opinion was all about the importance of legal texts. And Smith is inconsistent with how the founding generation understood religious liberty. All or nearly all the colonies exempted Quakers from serving in the military and swearing oaths. Rhode Island exempted Jews from the Christian marriage laws. All the colonies with taxes to support the established church exempted religious dissenters from paying those taxes. In colonies that had deliberately oppressed or excluded their religious minorities, once they changed their mind and tried to protect religious liberty, they soon discovered that religious liberty was meaningless without exemptions for important religious practices.

Judicial personnel also matters, as your question suggests. Four of the five Justices who decided Smith were conservatives who defined judicial conservatism in terms of deference to the other branches. Today’s judicial conservatives are much more inclined to judicial activism. The plaintiffs in Smith were Native Americans using a traditional and naturally occurring hallucinogenic drug in a worship service; I think the Court did not imagine that large conservative churches would someday be frequent victims of its decision in Smith. Justices Breyer and Kagan have both suggested that they think Smith was wrongly decided, although those writings are many years ago now. And you should not assume that Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor are votes for Smith.

Religious liberty claims have actually won in the Supreme Court far more often than they have lost in the thirty years since Smith. The cases have turned on Smith‘s multiple exceptions, on statutes like RFRA, and on other constitutional provisions like the Free Speech Clause. And several of these decisions have been unanimous. The liberal Justices are not hostile to religious liberty. They think that other interests they care about, including gay rights, override religious liberty more often than I would override religious liberty. But many religious liberty cases do not involve gay rights or other liberal causes. Any Justice might vote to overrule Smith, to provide better religious protection for cases where they think that is appropriate, knowing that they can vote to find a compelling government interest where they think that is appropriate.

On the other hand, they could find that the law in Fulton is not neutral, or not generally applicable, and that they can postpone any reconsideration of Smith. Or they could find a compelling government interest so that the church loses whether or not Smith is overruled. I think that they are more likely to not reach the issue than to reach it and reaffirm Smith. Any outcome is possible here, but I am optimistic about an overruling of Smith.

CC: Besides Fulton, what other religious freedom cases or issues are on the horizon that those who are interested or concerned should keep an eye on?

DL: They took an unusual number of religion cases this year. There are the two ministerial exception cases you asked about, which will be decided this year. Fulton will not be decided until next year.

Then there is Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania and Trump v. Pennsylvania, about the Trump contraception regulations. Recall that the Obama Administration exempted religious organizations from providing free contraception on condition that their secular insurers provide it instead. Most religious organizations accepted that solution; some did not; and the Supreme Court kicked the cases back to the lower courts and to hoped-for settlement negotiations.

Trump gave the remaining objectors everything they asked for. They don’t have to provide free contraception, their insurers don’t have to provide it either, and there is no mechanism to help female employees get free contraception. They did this by issuing new regulations, and the court of appeals held those regulations invalid.

This case may or may not be decided on religious liberty grounds. The principal religious liberty issue is this: Can executive-branch agencies issue regulations to implement, or comply with, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act? And if so, can those regulations go further to protect religious liberty than the courts might have required?

The court of appeals said no to those questions. And that would mean that no agency should ever make any effort to comply with RFRA. It will just get sued by whomever it disappoints. So it may as well wait to get sued by religious objectors, and let the courts sort it out. So this is an important issue going forward. I am optimistic that the Court will uphold these regulations, or if it strikes them down, do so in a way that doesn’t harm RFRA. The Trump people took short cuts with the Administrative Procedure Act, as they often do, and the case may be decided on that ground.

Then there is Espinoza v. Montana, where the issue is this: If a state has a program to help fund private schools, can it exclude or discriminate against religious private schools? The Court reserved that question two years ago, when it said that a state funding program for playgrounds could not discriminate against a church daycare center (Trinity Lutheran v. Comer). I think the majority is going to say no, the state cannot discriminate against religious schools. But that is a pretty uncertain prediction.

Fully briefed but put over to next year is Tanzin v. Tanvir, about whether the victims of an RFRA violation can recover money damages from the federal official who violated RFRA. This is tangled up with the Court’s terrible rules on qualified immunity and suits against governments and government officials. RFRA says “appropriate relief,” and the model Congress appeared to have in mind was a federal civil rights statute where damages are an available remedy.

Tanzin is less important than the other cases, because the most important issue in RFRA cases is usually fixing the government policy going forward. There is no dispute that the courts can order that. But the FBI allegedly did serious damages to the Muslim plaintiffs in Tanzin, and when they got caught, said OK, we won’t do it again. So damages are the only possible remedy here.

Finally, there is a very important cert petition, just filed, in Small v. Memphis Light Gas & Water, asking the Court to consider overruling TWA v. Hardison. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of religion, and it defines religion to include religious practice. It says employers must reasonably accommodate their employees’ religious practices unless doing so would impose undue hardship on the employer. The intention was to protect employees with religious holidays, Sabbath observances, modest dress requirements, and other religious practices that might complicate scheduling or upset a conformity-minded employer.

Hardison, in 1977, defined “undue hardship” to mean “more than de minimis cost.” That took all the teeth out of the statute. TWA was still a large and successful company back then, but the Court said it would be an undue hardship for TWA to accommodate Hardison’s Sabbath observance. Many employers have ignored the accommodation requirement for decades now.

In 2019, when four Justices invited litigants to ask the Court to overrule Smith, they also invited litigants to ask the Court to overrule Hardison. They now have the request. But they have not agreed to hear the case; this is still at the petition stage.

This set of religious liberty protections gives the Court the tools to create something like the Utah compromise on a national scale—to protect the LGBT+ community from discrimination and also protect religious liberty. Neither side really wants that, but that’s the solution that protects the most liberty for the most Americans. And I think the votes may be there to actually do it.

CC: Thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise!

DL: You are very welcome.

The post Douglas Laycock: How Will New LGBT+ Rules Affect Religious Liberty? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

His latest book, Deep Conviction, takes religious freedom out of the abstract and brings it to life using four important cases: A revolutionary-era Catholic priest who would not reveal what was said during confession. A 1950s atheist who would not sign an oath that he believed in God. A Klamath Indian man fighting for the right to practice a rite central to his faith. And a Christian baker that could not facilitate the celebration of a same-sex marriage.

While focused on religious freedom cases, the book is really about the shared human experience of pursuing our best visions of ourselves. I had the opportunity to sit down with Collis to discuss his book and the current state of religious freedom law. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Christopher Cunningham: I really enjoyed the book. [Editor’s Note: He really did, and he can’t stop talking about it]. What inspired you to write it?

Steven Collis: I wanted to help people understand religious freedom better. I originally pitched a book that was a treatise for laypeople. But it evolved, with the help of Shadow Mountain, into a series of stories. If you can write stories in a compelling way, people will read and can learn about religious freedom.

I generally see religious freedom mischaracterized across the spectrum from both the right and the left. This is an area I’ve taught and spent a lot of time thinking about, and I really wanted people to understand it better.

When I speak about religious freedom here, and in the book, what I’m meaning is free exercise of religion. The other side is the establishment of religion (where we get the idea of separation of church and state—and that’s a crucial component of religious freedom), but I’m not dealing with those cases here. 

CC: There are hundreds of stories in the religious freedom area. What drew you to these four in particular?

SC: I wanted to show how religious freedom has operated—and could operate—both over time and across religious beliefs. I wanted people to understand that people of very different religious beliefs are making the same argument. They’re all asking for the same treatment under the law. That’s true whether you’re an atheist or whether you’re a Christian baker.

Those two groups tend to look at each other and think they’re so different, but in terms of how the law should treat them, they’re not different at all. That’s what I was going for. I wanted people to come to that understanding a little better than they have.

Some of that has been instigated by reporters asking me questions about these more modern cases. They’ve asked me questions like, “Is the argument this person making even legitimate?” And it made me realize people don’t understand these are the same arguments people have been making all the way back before the country was even founded. It’s important for people to understand that.

Finally, I wanted the book to be a page-turner, to read with the pace of a novel even though it’s all nonfiction. These stories allowed that in a way that perhaps others might not have.

CC: I was familiar with these four cases to varying degrees, but every time I had read about them before, it was from a legal or historical or journalistic lens—but now I was learning about the people. How does that add to the dialogue?

SC: I think it’s really important to understand that all of the people in these cases on both sides of the dispute are real human beings. Most of them have good intentions. 

They are not these caricatures that often get painted in the media. And too often the caricatures that get painted depend solely on the viewpoint of the journalist. 

I wanted to bring all of it to life, to help people understand how these disputes affect real people on the ground. I hope that adds something to the dialogue.

I also wanted to show people that we think of as so different: an atheist versus a Klamath Indian man versus a Christian cake baker. We think of them as being so different, but at the root, they’re really not that different at all. They’ve got these core beliefs that are absolutely precious to them, and they’re willing to go to the mat for them.

When we all have these beliefs that we’re willing to stand up for, how are we going to handle that as a society?

CC: Why risk turning off readers by including the very controversial Masterpiece case rather than use, for example, the less-in-the-spotlight Mary Stinemetz story you used in your introduction? 

SC: The simple answer is I want the book to be relevant. That debate, the LGBT rights vs. religious freedom debate, is what’s driving everything right now.

Mary Stinemetz died not because people don’t value religious freedom, but because there’s a conflict right now between the sexual revolution and traditional religious mores. 

So, I felt like it would be very difficult to address these issues without dealing with one of these more modern cases that are driving everything right now.

The intense culture war cases like abortion rights and LGBT rights are actually no different than the arguments in many other cases that don’t seem to be so intense. 

And I suppose my feeling is that if someone feels so strongly about the topic that they would be turned off, they should read the book to better understand what was actually happening in the Masterpiece case. One of the things I’ve been pleased with is that professional reviewers have almost universally praised the fairness of my approach. Whatever view someone takes, I think this book will help them understand the issues better.

Finally, it’s important to realize that many of the stories in the book may not seem controversial today, but they were certainly controversial at the time. For the people living in the moment dealing with these cases, they can be very controversial. It’s only through the lens of time and historical perspective that we begin to realize that perhaps they shouldn’t have been.   

CC: In legal terms, Masterpiece is very recent. We likely don’t yet understand all the ramifications. Was that limiting?

SC: I had intended the fourth story in the book to be a case out of Washington of a pharmacist being forced to dispense drugs that they had religious qualms with. [Stormans v. Wiesman]

But as I was finishing up, the court granted cert in [decided to review] the cake-maker case. So I thought, “This is live right now. I’m in Colorado. I can learn everything, or as much as possible, about these people.”

So I actually reached out to the publisher and we extended the deadline to wait for the Supreme Court to rule and then change the story. 

I should tell you this: I was teaching my religious liberty law course at the University of Denver while the cake-maker case was going through the courts. That case has within it the entire history of religious freedom law all wrapped up into one. It’s really hard to find a better case to flesh out all these issues.

Everything we talked about as a class, we constantly found ourselves coming back to that case to apply those things to it. In fact, one of the questions I asked on the final exam was “Put yourself in the shoes of the justices and tell me how you would rule in Masterpiece.”

At the end of the day, it was almost the perfect vehicle to explore the modern conflict and how all the historical things come to play.

CC: I hadn’t put it together that you were in Denver while this case was happening. I’m curious, how did the local legal community respond since in a lot of ways the ruling was a repudiation of your local Civil Rights Commission?

SC: It’s unfortunate, but in my view, the response is what you’d expect. Even though the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of the baker, the folks on one side felt like the Supreme Court screwed up, and they dismissed it with “Next time the Civil Rights Commission won’t say anything negative.” They were trying to downplay it. I felt they were understating what the court did.

[Editor’s Note: The Supreme Court ruling in Masterpiece said that states had to treat religious reasons for withholding services no worse than non-religious reasons. Since some members of Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission had used derogatory language in reference to Jack Phillips’ faith, some interpreted the case narrowly to mean that Phillips would not have won if the derogatory language had not been used.]

And the folks on the other side thought it was a great result and championed it as the greatest win in history. They were overstating what the court did. 

The reality is there were very few people who stepped back and looked at it in a balanced way. It’s unfortunate. I feel that the court tried to encourage a more positive dialogue about these issues, and I did not see that happen. 

But as I’ve gone and spoken about this book, the audiences I’ve spoken to have been able to frame this as “How can we protect both sides?” So there’s been some positive in it, but unfortunately, that’s not something that a lot of people have been pushing.

CC: One of the cases you profiled is Employment Division v. Smith. But unlike in the other cases you profiled, Al Smith lost his case. What led you to include that story anyway?

SC: The Smith case is the seminal moment in free exercise law in the United States, at least in the twentieth century. That is the fulcrum point on which everything bends. That case changed the law and is why it was necessary that everything happened the way it did in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

[Editor’s Note: The ruling in Employment Division v. Smith made it much more difficult to win a case based on a “freedom of religion” claim by changing the legal standard required to win a case on those grounds. The ruling is controversial enough that both the United States and 21 states have passed laws to reverse it.]

I felt that within any book dealing with the free exercise of religion in modern times, I couldn’t not talk about the Smith case.

But it was also a case I was not originally going to include. I was writing a different story, and as I progressed through I reached out to my editor and said, “Look, I’m writing about this other situation, but all I’m doing is talking about the Smith case,” because it was such a landmark opinion. I said, “I think it’s time to just tell Al’s story.”

CC: With Justice Gorsuch replacing Justice Scalia (who wrote the Smith decision), do you think there’s an appetite on the court to find a vehicle to overturn Smith?

SC: Four justices actually published an opinion where they hinted they might want to overturn Smith. Chief Justice Roberts didn’t join that, but that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to look at it. It’s not like they came out and said, “We’d overturn Smith.” They’d never be that explicit.

But there was a case that came up and the Supreme Court refused to hear it. Four of the justices essentially said, “We note that the petitioner did not ask us to revisit Smith, so we’re not going to do that here.” 

But a lot of scholars in the free exercise law community saw that as a sign that they might actually be willing to look at Smith and potentially overturn it. So it’s possible.

If it got to the court, I don’t know how it would break down, how the justices would treat it. Chief Justice Roberts especially has grave concerns about how the court is perceived by the public and whether or not it will continue to have influence and legitimacy over time. An overruling of Smith could potentially do a lot of harm to that because it would be seen as anti-LGBT rights. It isn’t anti-LGBT rights—not by a long shot (the vast, vast, vast majority of religious freedom cases have nothing to do with LGBT rights)—but I think it’s possible that is how it would be portrayed by some. 

It’s something that a lot of people are watching from both sides. It’ll be very interesting how the court handles it when the right case comes up.

CC: What do you think about Justices Kagan and Breyer who have broken with other liberals on the court in recent religious freedom cases? (e.g., Masterpiece v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and Trinity Lutheran v. Comer)

SC: I think Justices Kagan and Breyer both understand and value religious freedom in a way that I think many in the media and popular culture do not today. 

They both understand that this is a core freedom, and it needs to be protected. If you go back and look at the Supreme Court over the last twenty years, what you’ll see is, more often than not, Kagan and Breyer ruling for religious freedom and especially religious minorities. 

When they rule in a way where the religious claimant might lose, it’s generally where the case has to do with human sexuality, such as abortion or LGBT rights. But even then, such as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, they felt the religious claimant should win there. 

So they understand religious freedom in a way that popular media does not, but they also recognize that there are other compelling interests out there, and sometimes religious freedom claims may need to step aside for other interests they hold in high regard.  

CC: Steven, I really appreciate your time. Getting to pick your brain on these issues has been a ton of fun, and I hope our readers will enjoy your book as much as I have. 

SC: Thank you.

The post Steven Collis on Liberal Justices Who Keep Defending Religious Freedom appeared first on Public Square Magazine.