Yesterday, production of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 5 was halted, and The Bachelorette’s 22nd season—slated to be led by Secret Lives star Taylor Frankie Paul—was canceled. These decisions followed after entertainment website TMZ leaked a video of a domestic altercation involving Paul in 2023. In the footage, Paul is seen in her home throwing three metal barstools at Dakota Mortensen, her then-boyfriend and the father of her youngest child. Paul’s daughter, who was six years old at the time, is also seen lying nearby on the couch—apparently sleeping at the beginning, then awakened by the chaos—and cried out for her mother to stop. A subsequent criminal indictment indicated that the child was struck in the head by one of the stools, resulting in a painful goose egg. 

TMZ also reported that earlier this week, both Mortensen and Paul’s ex-husband (and father of her two older children), Tate Paul, allegedly filed new orders of protection against Paul, with Mortensen requesting sole custody of their two-year-old son.

Most Latter-day Saint commentary on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which chronicles the dramatic lives of a Utah-based social media group of influencers self-dubbed “#MomTok,” tends to focus on how these women are not devout and do not represent the values or teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The show is packed with parties, events, and a heavy focus on sexual freedom. The women openly posture against traditional norms around sex and gender while continuing to borrow the visual language of a faith they seem increasingly uninterested in living. This is no surprise, considering MomTok only rose to fame after a scandal involving some of the married members swinging with each other’s spouses — and most of those marriages are now over.

Yet the show’s cast continues to blame the majority of their dysfunction on “church culture” and “Mormon expectations.” The show’s on-again, off-again villain, Zac Affleck (who certainly has his issues), is often vilified for offering seemingly sensible, family-oriented commentary such as “Hollywood isn’t conducive to a healthy marriage” or “I don’t want you to feel mom guilt, but our kids do miss you…and it’s hard for me to fill that void with them even though I try.” This is the same Zac who deferred medical school to be a stay-at-home dad so his wife could appear on Dancing with the Stars and further pursue an entertainment career. Jen insists that “he had his turn” to pursue his career, and now it’s her turn, “and he knows that and should support that.”

The women frequently say that their religious upbringing taught them to be subjugated to their husbands’ whims. This is an obvious misunderstanding of The Family: A Proclamation to the World, which teaches that fathers are “responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.” The clear distinction is that doctrine teaches that career is a means of protecting and providing for the needs of the family, not the desires of the individual. While some sense of meaning and personal fulfillment can be found in many careers, research consistently finds that people derive their greatest sense of meaning from relationships—particularly family relationships. Unfortunately, the husbands and boyfriends in the show are often painted as adversaries or competitors of the women, rather than as partners they love and care for. Even stranger, the women seem to believe the proper correction to what they see as oppressive gender roles is simply to reverse them. 

As the show has progressed, the so-called liberation of these women appears to have yielded very little joy or true freedom. Newer seasons are no longer just about “Mormon women behaving badly.” They are increasingly a portrait of emotional affairs, fractured marriages, public humiliation, eating disorders, body-image collapse, postpartum distress, and relationships strained to the breaking point, with nearly all of the cast members in personal and couples therapy. What is being sold as liberation looks, more and more, like despair. 

Seasons 3 and 4 did not reveal a cruelty of traditional sexual morality; instead, they revealed the inability of self-centered sexual ethics to build anything stable in its place. Unfortunately, far too many viewers have bought into a worldview that claims women in the West are still largely oppressed, and thus feel they are doing their part to smash the patriarchy as they cheer on the ladies in their quest for so-called liberation.

The problem with broadcasting this drama is that the content does not merely document disorder. It rewards it. Reality television and social media incentivize family breakdown. Betrayal, sexual chaos, emotional oversharing, and the performance of self-liberation are highly marketable. Once marriage trouble becomes a storyline, sexual impropriety becomes brand identity, and personal instability becomes a platform, the incentives tilt in a very dark direction. The women of Secret Lives are not just reaping the consequences of rejecting clear moral norms. They are doing so inside a machine that profits from the damage.

Even the cast members themselves have frequently expressed concern about Paul’s erratic behavior. NBC News reported yesterday that cast members met with ABC executives earlier this month to express concerns about continuing the show if Paul remained involved. In the meeting, one of the cast members reportedly asked Rob Mills, the executive vice president of unscripted and alternative entertainment at Walt Disney Television, if he’s “aware she’s hurt a child?” Mills’ alleged reply? “I don’t know a lot, nor do I want to know too much.”

We have, of course, seen the exploitation of unwell but “sexually liberated” women before—it’s a familiar pattern to those paying attention. In The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, journalist Louise Perry argues that Western sexual culture in the twenty-first century “promotes the interests of the Hugh Hefners of the world at the expense of the Marilyn Monroes. And the influence of liberal feminism means that too many women don’t recognize this truth, blithely accepting Hefner’s claim that all of the downsides of the new sexual culture are just ‘a small price to pay for personal freedom.’” Indeed, the commodified lives of women like Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Amanda Bynes, Britney Spears, and others have much in common with Paul’s, and one can only hope that she gets help before reaching the same breaking point these women did.

Whatever sympathy one rightly feels for Taylor Frankie Paul as a human being, it is difficult to watch the public trajectory of her life without concluding that it has the shape of a spiral: relational chaos, legal trouble, domestic conflict, children caught in the blast radius, and a complicit fanbase eager to turn every bit of it into entertainment.

That line is haunting in light of everything that followed.

Paul, through representatives, has said the newly leaked video omits context and that she has suffered abuse as well. But even allowing for dispute over context, the broader picture is grim: this is not empowerment. It is family breakdown, made public and then repackaged as content. What the show unintentionally reveals is that discarded moral boundaries do not disappear without cost. Someone always pays.

But there is always hope. Though the MomTok ladies often display only elementary knowledge of Latter-day Saint doctrine, I pray they remember the most important doctrine—that of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The same gospel that teaches chastity, fidelity, and sacrifice also teaches mercy. It teaches that through Christ broken things can be mended, and that people who have wandered very far can still come home.

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By most measures, today’s media-literacy boom has been a public good. Charts from Ad Fontes, ratings from AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check, “nutrition labels” from NewsGuard, and “blindspot” dashboards from Ground News give ordinary readers quick heuristics for what’s trustworthy and how coverage breaks across left–right lines. In a chaotic information environment, that’s helpful. But these tools also flatten the very thing they’re trying to measure. Bias is not just a point on a horizontal spectrum—often it’s embedded in what gets covered, who gets quoted, and how complexity is collapsed into a single line of copy. When rating services only score overt partisanship and headline-level reliability, they risk missing the blind spots that most shape public understanding. 

A recent essay in the Milwaukee Independent makes a similar point: rating platforms intended to counter spin can end up penalizing outlets that refuse false equivalence, confusing “moral clarity” with “partisan bias.” That critique should ring a bell for anyone who’s ever read a nuanced beat story reduced to a pin on a bias chart. 

Case Study: The AP, a Temple, and the Meaning of “Bigger”

Consider Associated Press coverage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Lone Mountain Nevada Temple in Las Vegas. An AP dispatch about temple growth asserted that the Lone Mountain temple would be “larger in size than the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris,” with a steeple nearly 200 feet tall. The phrase “larger in size” landed with neighbors—and readers—like a bomb. Larger than Notre Dame? The problem is that the temple is about one-third the size of Notre Dame and one hundred feet shorter. The error comes from a misunderstanding of square footage.  That’s framing bias, not partisan bias—and you won’t find a category for it on most ratings sites.

Case Study: What Wasn’t Said at General Conference

In 2024, AP ran a story on the conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under the headline “Latter-day Saints leader addresses congregants without a word on racial or LGBTQ+ issues.” That piece treated omission—what didn’t happen—as the news. That isn’t a left-right bias, but it is quite obviously a bias nonetheless. 

The author, Hannah Schoenbaum, has no background in religion reporting, but instead covers government, politics, and LGBT+ rights. Six months later, she was still on the same beat, and her coverage of the conference mostly covered political angles. Despite these two incidents, AP still assigned Schoenbaum to the same article for the most recent conference. She was also responsible for the inaccurate Las Vegas Temple coverage.

The bias here isn’t a partisan one; it’s a worldview one. When you assign a political and LGBT+ rights reporter to do religious reporting, what you get are only stories that fit into the narrow lens of the reporter. This headline imports the author’s opinion about what should have been spoken about into a story that was in fact about something entirely different. The headline “Latter-day Saints leader addresses congregants without a word on environmental issues in Asia” is equally as accurate, but manages to convey an entirely different story.

Case Study: Larger than Life Abuse Findings

Similarly, the AP had investigative reporter Michael Rezendes devote significant resources to sex abuse cases within the Church of Jesus Christ.  

Rezendes received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting about the sex abuse scandals inside the Catholic Church, systemic issues of offending priests being known, covered up, and moved to a new diocese to continue causing harm.

Rezendes’ selection for the assignment communicates certain ideas to the readers: There is a sex abuse problem in the Church of Jesus Christ; it is a problem of significant size and a serious institutional error.

But what Rezendes actually found over the course of several years was that there are some Latter-day Saints who commit sexual abuse (he found three stories), including some of our leaders. They are excommunicated when they are discovered. The Church has a helpline so that local leaders know how to follow complicated disclosure laws. And the Church also tries to provide financial restitution to the victims.

It’s a tragic story, but one about the inevitable tragedy of human frailty rather than institutional cover-ups. 

But by choosing to write long features for stories that would normally be reserved for page-seven crime beats, it communicates that this is news worth paying attention to, which communicates a nefariousness, pervasiveness, or culpability that doesn’t in fact exist in any of the reported cases.

The lasting impression left with many readers was of a sweeping institutional cover-up, even though the stories were ultimately about distinct criminal acts by individuals. That’s a classic scale problem: to what extent does a set of horrific cases justify institutional generalization? Bias checkers don’t score how disciplined news outlets are in attributing scale—but it’s central to how audiences come away thinking about an institution.

And the effects of this bias are serious. The best available evidence suggests that Latter-day Saints commit sexual abuse at rates significantly lower than those of many other faiths or the general population. Our protective factors should be a lesson to others. Instead, a recent survey by YouGov had more people believing that abuse is a “very big problem” in the Church of Jesus Christ, more than in the Southern Baptist churches, despite the fact that Southern Baptist churches had been involved in a systemic controversy covering up sexual abuse, dwarfing in severity the problems in the Church of Jesus Christ.

Is that unfortunate misunderstanding a result of the editorial choices of the Associated Press? Do Americans know less about sexual abuse and where kids are safest because of the Associated Press’ coverage? It’s certainly possible, but it’s not a kind of bias you would be able to identify in the media literacy tools currently available. 

The Bias You’re More Likely to Encounter: Access and Sourcing

Here’s a quieter example. I recently had a wonderful experience with Maggie Penman of The Washington Post. Penman runs “The Optimist,” a column about positive things in the world. 

After the Michigan attack on an LDS chapel, Penman ran a feature about Latter-day Saints raising money for the attacker’s family—an act of grace that surprised many readers. It was a beautiful and generous story. This is why I was surprised to find a quote by a religion scholar at the end of the article attacking Latter-day Saints: he disagreed with them on a doctrinal point. For those within the Latter-day Saint sphere, this attack from this commentator, who is a frequent critic, is unsurprising. What was surprising was that he was included.

What the Checkers Miss

Most popular rating systems do some things well: They reward corrections, penalize serial fabricators, and map partisan lean. However, several endemic newsroom behaviors, including those discussed above, fall outside their frameworks.

None of these is chiefly about “left vs. right.” They’re about habits, networks, and time. 

My intention here is not to call out the media checkers. These are still emerging projects. And media checkers have done incredible work, shining light on real issues and helping to improve media literacy. My hope is to encourage their work. As they are continuing to grow, here are some suggestions of practical metrics that might be tracked and could add to our understanding of media bias:

• Source Diversity Index: Track whether coverage of a community consistently quotes the same one or two academics/activists, or shows range (rank-and-file members, leaders, critics, independent scholars).
• Correction Transparency & Latency: Not just “did they correct,” but how long did it take, and was the core ambiguity addressed?
• Scale Discipline Score: When a story makes institutional claims from individual cases, does it disclose sample size, scope, and limits?
• Beat Maturity Indicator: Tag when a reporter is new to a complex beat and flag when framing changes as literacy improves.

Whatever their flaws, biased tools are still better than the invisible curation of our social feeds, which reward engagement over understanding and routinely amplify the most polarizing takes. And they’re certainly better than the reflexive dismissal of all journalism because of a monolithic, misunderstood “bias.” We want readers to be able to recognize the kinds of bias they actually encounter in the checkers describing them. That work—however halting—beats a world where the only algorithm that matters is the one designed to keep us scrolling.

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We live, increasingly, in two places at once.

Our bodies sit at a dinner table while our minds hover in an open browser tab. Our hands fold for prayer while our thumbs remember the muscle memory of scrolling. We attend a child’s story, a spouse’s worry, a friend’s quiet confession—and yet some part of us remains tethered to the possibility that something else, somewhere else, is happening.

This is not merely a productivity problem, nor only a “kids these days” technology complaint. It is, at its core, an attention problem—and attention is not a neutral resource. It is one of the most consequential forms of agency we exercise all day long.

Whatever captures your attention quietly shapes your discipleship.

The Attention Crisis We Don’t Like to Name

There are obvious culprits—busy schedules, social media, the breakneck speed of modern life. But those are surface-level symptoms of something deeper: what we might call the tyranny of elsewhere.

The tyranny of elsewhere is the subtle assumption that real life is happening somewhere other than where you are right now—in the next message, the next headline, the next update, the next comparison, the next microdose of novelty. It is a form of spiritual displacement. You are always near your life, but not quite inside it.

And because it’s socially normalized, it rarely feels like rebellion. It feels like being informed. Being connected. Being responsive. Being “on top of things.”

However, the gospel’s vision of a holy life is not primarily about being “on top of things.” It is about being in things—fully, faithfully, consecratedly present.

“An Eye Single”: Attention as a Spiritual Faculty

In Doctrine and Covenants 88, the Lord gives an arresting promise: “If your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light.” That promise is recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 88:67. He then adds the kind of line we might read quickly, even though it should stop us: “Sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God.” That instruction appears in Doctrine and Covenants 88:68. This echoes Matthew 6:22 and Doctrine and Covenants 82:19.

Notice what’s happening doctrinally.

1. “Single” is not merely “serious.”  It is not just intensity. It is integrity—wholeness. A mind that is not fragmented into ten anxious windows, a heart that is not constantly split between reverence and restlessness.
   
2. Light is not only a reward; it is a capacity.  The promise is not merely that God will be pleased. The promise is that you will become the kind of person who can receive, discern, and “comprehend.” Attention is the mechanism that God gives us for receiving that growth from Him.
   
3. Sanctification includes attention training. Sanctification comes through the Holy Ghost as we repent and keep covenants. When the Lord says, “sanctify yourselves,” He does not only mean “stop doing bad things.” He also means “become the kind of person whose inner life is ordered toward God” so we live in a way that the Holy Ghost can dwell with us. 

In that sense, presence is not cosmetic. It is covenantal.

Mindfulness, but With a Name and a Direction

It’s worth acknowledging: the modern mindfulness movement has rediscovered something true. Purposeful attention in the present moment—focus, concentration, awareness—really does change us. Many people feel, correctly, that distraction is costly.

In fact, research has repeatedly found that when our minds wander away from what we’re doing, our happiness tends to drop—even when we wander to “pleasant” thoughts. And intriguingly, other research suggests that many of us find it so uncomfortable to be alone with our own thoughts—even for a few minutes—that we will choose almost any stimulation rather than simply sit, reflect, and attend to the interior world.

So yes, mindfulness is real.

But the gospel adds something essential: mindfulness is not only attention to the present; it is attention consecrated toward God and toward people. It is presence with purpose—awareness shaped by love, gratitude, worship, and covenant loyalty. Or to say it plainly: disciples don’t just “live in the moment.” They learn to live in the moment with God.

Distraction as a Form of Spiritual Avoidance

If presence is the practice, what is distraction—spiritually speaking?

Often, distraction is not primarily laziness. It is avoidance.

• Avoidance of silence—because silence reveals what we’ve been carrying.
  
• Avoidance of weakness—because stillness makes us honest.
  
• Avoidance of other people—because deep attention requires vulnerability.
  
• Avoidance of God—because God, more often than not, speaks in what we rush past.
  

This is why phones are such a uniquely modern test of discipleship. They aren’t only tools; they are portable exit doors. With a tiny gesture, you can leave the room without leaving the room. You can opt out of the emotional demand of the present moment and relocate to something easier, shinier, safer.

This is also why “just use your phone less” rarely works as a long-term solution. The deeper work is to ask: What am I trying not to feel? What am I trying not to face? What am I trying not to hear?

Because the gospel is remarkably patient, but it is not casual about this: the life of faith is a life of turning toward—toward God, toward neighbor, toward responsibility, toward revelation.

The Covenant Verb We Keep Skimming: Observe

One of the most quietly illuminating patterns in scripture is how often the language of obedience is tied to attention.

Consider Mosiah 4:30: King Benjamin pairs a stern warning with a very practical diagnosis—“watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God.” That is not only about rule-keeping. It is about awareness. It is about living awake to your inner life, your outer impact, and your spiritual drift.

Similarly, the New Testament repeatedly pairs prayer with watchfulness: “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving” in Colossians 4:2.

We could call this the tragedy of unattended grace—when blessings arrive, warnings are given, invitations are extended, and we remain too distracted to recognize what is happening. The scriptures do not treat that as a minor inconvenience. They treat it as spiritual peril.

A Brief Note on Phones: It’s Not Only About Content

When people talk about phone distraction, the conversation usually fixates on content—bad content, frivolous content, addictive content. That matters. But there is another layer that is arguably more insidious: even “neutral” phone presence can fragment attention.

Some research suggests that the mere presence of your smartphone can subtly draw on limited cognitive resources—what some scholars have called a “brain drain” effect. At the same time, it’s also worth noting that not every study replicates these findings perfectly, which is a good reminder that human attention is complex and context-sensitive.

Still, most of us don’t need a laboratory to confirm what our souls already know: when our attention is perpetually split, our relationships thin out. Our prayers become more performative than present. Our worship becomes more distracted than devoted.

And perhaps most importantly, our capacity to love people well diminishes—not because we stop caring, but because we stop noticing.

Step 1: Pay Attention

So what do we do?

Let’s begin with the simplest, hardest, most foundational discipline: Purposefully pay attention in the present moment. Focus. Concentration. Awareness. This can sound like a self-help slogan until we connect it to the heart of restored doctrine: the Lord’s invitation to live with an “eye single” and a “mind…single to God.”

To “pay attention,” in a gospel key, means at least three things:

1. Attend to what is real. Not what is curated. Not what is imagined. Not what is feared. What is here.
   
2. Attend to what is holy. The Lord’s hand in the ordinary, the needs in the room, the promptings that arrive quietly.
   
3. Attend to what is forming you. Because your attention does not merely follow your desires; over time, what we give heed to shapes our desires.

This is why the command to “watch” yourself in Mosiah 4:30 is so psychologically astute and spiritually mature. It assumes that sanctification is not accidental. It is practiced.

Step 2: Narrow the Eye

A scattered life is not usually healed by dramatic overhauls. It is healed by small, repeated acts of singleness—micro-choices that train the soul to stay. Here are three “eye-single” practices that are simple enough to try and meaningful enough to matter:

1) Consecrate the first look

Many of us begin the day with a reflex: eyes open, hand reaches, feed loads. Consider a different liturgy: prayer before phone. Scripture before scroll. A few minutes of quiet before input. Not because phones are evil, but because the first thing you look at often becomes the first thing that organizes your mind.

If you want your mind to become “single to God,” it helps to begin the day by letting God be real before the world is loud.

2) Build phone-free “altars”

Altars are places where we offer something to God. In modern life, one of the most meaningful offerings might simply be undivided attention.

A few practical examples:

• Meals: phones away—not face-down on the table, but gone.
  
• Bedtime: the last five minutes belong to gratitude, not content.
  
• Church: treat sacrament meeting as attention training, not background audio.
  
• Ministering: let the visit be a human encounter, not a multitasked event.
  

These are not rules; they are rituals. They are ways of saying, “This moment is sacred enough to deserve my full self.”

3) Practice “holy noticing”

Once a day, choose to notice one person more carefully than usual.

• Ask a real question and wait for the real answer.
  
• Remember a detail and follow up later.
  
• Offer a sincere compliment that is specific—not flattering, but seeing.

This is presence as charity: to love is to attend.

Step 3: Witness the Life You’re Actually Living

There is a reason “witness” language runs through covenant life—baptismal promises, sacramental renewal, temple ordinances. Witnessing is not only what we do in courtrooms; it is what we do with our lives.

To witness, spiritually, is to be able to say: I was there. I saw. I remembered. I did not miss what mattered.

This is one of the quiet gifts of being present: you begin to accumulate a life that feels cohesive rather than scattered—because you were actually in it. And in a subtle but real way, this is where gospel presence differs from mere serenity: we are not practicing attention simply to feel calmer; we are practicing attention to become more faithful.

“Forever Is Composed of Nows”

In a First Presidency message, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, then second counselor in the First Presidency, quoted the line “Forever—is composed of Nows,” and then reflected on the spiritual significance of living in the middle—where real life, real growth, and real discipleship actually happen.

That is not just poetic. It is doctrinally provocative.

Because if forever is composed of nows, then the question is not only whether we will be faithful in the grand arc of our lives, but whether we will be faithful today—in this conversation, this ordinance, this irritation, this child’s question, this prompting, this quiet moment when the Spirit tries to get our attention and we are tempted to escape.

Holiness rarely announces itself with fireworks. More often, it arrives like a still, small knock. Presence is how you answer the door.

A More Luminous Ordinary

Imagine, for a moment, what it would feel like if a ward, a family, a friendship network quietly committed to being more present—not in an intense, performative way, but in a steady, covenant-shaped way. Sacrament meeting would become less about enduring and more about receiving. Ministering would feel less like an assignment and more like belonging practiced—seeing and naming one another, showing up with love, walking each other toward Christ. Homes would sound different, too. Fewer keyboard clicks and notification chimes. More laughter. More unhurried conversation. More silence that isn’t empty, but spacious—silence where prayer can actually land.

And perhaps, over time, we would discover something hopeful: that attention is not only a scarce resource being stolen from us; it is a gift we can still offer, intentionally, to God and to one another.

Not perfectly. Not constantly. But sincerely—and increasingly.

Because in the gospel, being present is not merely a wellness technique. It helps us keep commandments, practice gratitude, notice grace, and live with an eye single to the glory of God.

And that kind of singleness does something beautiful: it fills the ordinary with light.

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If you want critical movie acclaim, there’s a reliable formula: tell a love story backward.

Start in the wreckage. Someone has cheated. Someone has checked out. The husband drinks too much, the wife works too much, and there’s a dead-eyed distance until one of them says something like, “I don’t think I’m in love anymore.”

Then cut to an earlier version of the same couple—young, magnetic, and unmistakably “in love.” They have a meet-cute, an immediate connection, a spontaneous slow dance. Cue the sweeping wedding montage, the surprise pregnancy, the tiny apartment made romantic with twinkle lights. We’re asked to believe this is what good married love is: intensity, spontaneity, romance.

Cut forward again, and we get the discovery, the confession, the paperwork, the sad soundtrack. The same question hangs over every scene, “How did we get from there to here?”

Outside the prestige marriage-in-freefall genre, the state of marriage on screen isn’t exactly hopeful. In early 2025, Millers in Marriage arrived as a relationship drama about three adult siblings orbiting dissatisfaction, infidelity, and divorce-adjacent choices. Later that year, Splitsville took the modern “maybe monogamy is the problem” premise and detonated it into chaos: a dissolving marriage collides with a supposedly successful open relationship, and it works out for no one. 

Isn’t it time for a new marriage story?

The thing about the marriage-falling-apart stories is that they’re often very good. The best of them are relatable in some small way to even the happiest of married couples. They treat the couple with a thoughtfulness and nuance that’s usually left out of the lighthearted rom-com genre. 

Marriage isn’t easy, and storytellers shouldn’t pretend it is. But something has gone very wrong when the most talented writers, directors, and actors are exclusively drawn to the most melancholic stories, while stories about strong and happy marriages and families are left to the realm of low-budget holiday made-for-TV movies.  Hollywood has gotten very good at depicting marital conflict and very bad at depicting marital repair. This repair is so often possible when marriage is viewed as a sacred covenant rather than a means of amusement and pleasure, something to be discarded when it ceases to serve that purpose.’

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Not long ago, a mainstream network drama gave viewers a marriage with real stress but no contempt and conflict without the constant threat of betrayal. Friday Night Lights wasn’t a story about perfect people. It was a story about people under pressure—career pressure, parenting pressure, community pressure—and a marriage that didn’t evaporate the moment it stopped feeling effortless.

Why does it matter if healthy marriages are portrayed on screen? It matters because we are formed by the stories we binge, quote, and internalize. Young people, who increasingly spend their waking hours on screens, have decreasing interest in marriage and family. This is great cause for concern, especially for people of faith who believe that marriage and family are central to God’s plan. Proverbs teaches, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Who are we shaping ourselves and our children to be if so much of our media sows cynicism and discontent about marriage? 

My favorite movie about love—a true bright spot for marriage in movies—is Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally…. What makes it quietly profound isn’t only the central story of two friends falling in love. It’s the way the film is stitched together with documentary-style interviews of elderly couples telling the stories of how they met.

The couples on screen are actors. But the stories are drawn from interviews gathered during the writing process—real people’s memories shaped into monologues, then performed with ordinary tenderness. The movie opens with a sweet elderly couple sitting on a couch, with the husband relaying this story: 

I was sitting with my friend Arthur Kornblum, in a restaurant … And this beautiful girl walked in and I turned to Arthur, and I said Arthur, you see that girl? I’m going to marry her. And two weeks later we were married. And it’s over fifty years later and we are still married.

Later in the movie, another husband shares:

A man came to me and say, “I find a nice girl for you. She lives in the next village, and she is ready for marriage.” We were not supposed to meet until the wedding. But I wanted to make sure. So I sneak into her village, hid behind a tree, watch her washing the clothes. I think if I don’t like the way she looks, I don’t marry her. But she look really nice to me. So I say okay to the man. We get married. We married for 55 years.

These vignettes are not “prestige tragedy.” They don’t build toward an award-worthy implosion. They’re small and human, sometimes funny, and improbable. They’re often surprisingly plain. 

Perhaps we are beginning to see a correction. Chloé Zhao, one of the best working directors today, crafts one of the year’s best movies around the theme of marriage repair and reconciliation in her Oscar-nominated film “Hamnet.” Other Best Picture-nominated films, such as “Train Dreams” and “Sinners” also show marriages strained and repaired. These films are showing a better, more interesting way forward. We have plenty of conflict, realism, and cynicism. What we need is repair.

If you can only imagine love as a feeling you either have or don’t, then the moment the feeling dips, the story is basically over. But if love is also a practice—something you learn, fail at, return to, choose over and over again, and grow into—then marriage doesn’t have to be filmed as either a fairy tale or a tragedy.

Which brings me back to Valentine’s Day. We need better marriage stories that are honest about difficulty and honest about endurance: depictions of husbands and wives who don’t merely “stay together” but learn how to turn back toward each other again and again until the ordinary becomes, in its own way, extraordinary.

The post A New Marriage Story appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Here is the uncomfortable fact: most Americans now get their news from social and video platforms. More than TV. More than news sites and apps. Our public square has been quietly subcontracted to feeds tuned for time‑on‑platform, not truth‑seeking or neighborliness. We feel the cost in our bones—sharper extremism, thinner civility, cultural tribes that shout past each other, rumors that outrun corrections, and a steady undertow of loneliness. Especially for the young, the scroll isn’t just a pastime; it’s the water they swim in.

And the research is stubborn. When people use less social media, they hurt less. In randomized trials, trimming use to about thirty minutes a day lowers loneliness and depression; a one‑week break nudges anxiety down and well‑being up. The gains are modest, yes—but they’re real. Which means the real question isn’t whether less is better. It’s how to make “less” the easy choice for millions of people at once.

If the system is shaping us, then we have to reshape the incentives, its defaults, its hours, its business model. What follows are a few practical legal and social ideas that may help address the raft of negative consequences of social media. 

Refit Section 230: A safe harbor you keep only if you sail safely

Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act was built to keep platforms from being sued as the publisher for what users post, and to let the platforms moderate in good faith. Over time the shield has stretched to cover not just hosting speech, but how platforms distribute and rank it. That wasn’t carved into the Constitution; Congress wrote 230, and much of the expansion has come at the hands of well-meaning court rulings. But those court interpretations don’t have the broader picture that a legislature can. Congress can and should update Section 230.

The fix isn’t necessarily to blow up 230. That could invite chaos. But we could make the Section 230 shield conditional on predictable, speech-neutral design choices:

• No immunity for paid placement. Ads and paid “boosts” should live under ordinary tort and consumer protection law, not inside 230’s blanket.
• Narrow protection for risky amplification. When a recommender system actively pushes content, immunity shouldn’t apply. That’s an editorial decision, regardless of whether it is made by an algorithm or not. 
• Reasonable design and transparency to keep the shield. Think chronological feeds and overnight quiet hours for minors by default, documented age assurance, and researcher access to basic risk metrics.

Why this matters: today’s largest platforms depend on two things—paid targeting and opaque, engagement‑maximizing ranking. If paid boosts lose 230’s protection, and if default friction becomes the price of immunity, the business math changes. Lawsuits won’t swallow the internet; the First Amendment still limits claims. But the near‑automatic shield over product design would no longer be unconditional.

Section 230 was created specifically to give internet platforms legal protections that don’t apply to other publishers. And without those additional protections, the social media regime that exists today could not survive, all without implicating the First Amendment even a little bit. 

Starve the Surveillance Ad Engine

Engagement‑hungry design exists because surveillance targeting is so profitable. If we limit the precision and persistence of tracking, then time on social media becomes less lucrative, and the perverse incentives drop. 

Europe is already proving the point: the Digital Services Act bans targeted ads to minors and profiling‑based ads that use sensitive data. Enforcement has forced real product changes (LinkedIn has already disabled a targeting tool in Europe). A U.S. version can go further while staying speech‑neutral.

A clean U.S. starting point is already on the books in California. The 2023 Delete Act (SB 362) requires the state to launch a single portal—DROP—by Jan. 1, 2026. Beginning Aug. 1, 2026, data brokers must check the portal at least every 45 days and purge the personal data of anyone who files a deletion request. If we were to adopt that same one-click ease to delete data across US states, we could start to see a big change.

Pairing data deletion with federal bans on both targeted ads to minors and the use of sensitive data for ad targeting, you drain much of the oxygen from engagement‑hungry feeds without restricting anyone’s speech.

When the ROI on hyper‑personalized ads falls, investors and product teams shift: calmer, subscription‑leaning models look better; contextual ads regain ground; feeds lose pressure to maximize time‑on‑platform at all hours. 

It’s not the advertising that is causing social media’s problems; it is the advertising that provides the funding that incentivizes social media platforms to cause problems and drag their consumers back over and over again, profiting off our worst instincts. 

Make Healthy Design the Default

Certain default settings make it extraordinarily easy to draw people back in. And without limiting individuals’ ability to use those settings if they prefer, we can pass simple laws requiring that interface defaults be high friction. For example: 

• Forwarding limits. WhatsApp’s cap on forwarding already‑viral messages to a single chat produced a 70% drop in “highly forwarded” messages. 
• Autoplay off. A randomized study of Netflix users found that disabling autoplay reduced session length and total watching. Autoplay is a sticky design pattern; switching it off by default trims use without banning anything.
• Default chronological feeds and overnight quiet hours for minors. New York’s SAFE for Kids Act now bars algorithmic feeds for minors unless parents opt in, and blocks notifications between midnight and 6 a.m. The proposed rules detail how to verify age and consent. 

States could experiment with these rules, or Congress could nationalize these defaults by giving the FTC clear authority—building on its consumer protection powers—to set baseline attention‑safety standards for large platforms, especially for minors. This is still a far cry from having a large Surgeon General’s Warning each time you log into Instagram that says, “Social Media has been shown to lead to anxiety, depression, and loneliness.” But if we can’t make smaller changes to reverse this trend, that might be precisely what is needed.

These small design decisions bend millions of daily personal choices, without taking the choices away from the consumers. 

Make “Offline” the Default

There’s a fourth way to curb our dependence on social media that doesn’t require a single new statute: change what our institutions expect of us. When schools, workplaces, congregations, and community spaces set better defaults, people spend less time in the feed—because the offline choice becomes the easy choice. It’s culture. And culture often moves faster than law.

Schools can reclaim the school day with phone‑free policies—pouches or lockers, with clear exceptions for emergencies. Pair that with analog alternatives (board‑game tables, open gyms, music rooms, maker spaces) so lunch provides the engagement without the screen time.

What is more durable than individual resolve is rituals. Congregations and faith groups can play a key role in helping de-escalate. For example, in 2018, President Russell M. Nelson invited Latter‑day Saint youth to a seven‑day social‑media fast, and later invited women to try ten days—framing abstention as a joyful reset of attention and purpose. Any congregation, club, or neighborhood can copy the pattern: announce a time‑bound fast, fill the gap with service and fellowship. These groups can also fill in the desire for connection that so often feeds the most unhealthy social media habits. 

“Third places”—places where you are allowed to exist without paying money—have seen a precipitous drop off. Often the easiest and most comfortable of these places are online. Not only can more congregational connection help this, other groups such as libraries and parks can find ways to engage, especially young people. And might I suggest the ancient and still relevant practice of breaking bread with one another face-to-face.

Less social media won’t come from one heroic law. It will come from a hundred ordinary decisions—repeated until they feel like the way things have always been. That’s culture, and ultimately it is what will help us turn around. 

Hard questions, honest answers

Skeptics will argue that these proposals flirt with censorship, invite doomed lawsuits, or amount to cosmetic fixes. It’s true that free speech doctrine sharply limits what states can do, and that even without Section 230, many claims will still fail on First Amendment or causation grounds. It’s also true that warning labels and nudges alone rarely change behavior. Those cautions matter.

But the core of my suggestions are different. It doesn’t tell platforms what they must carry or suppress. It focuses on distribution mechanics, ads, data, and design—areas where Congress clearly has authority to condition immunity or regulate trade practices in content‑neutral ways. And the record shows that friction rules do more than signal: forwarding caps have slashed virality, autoplay‑off trims viewing time, and randomized trials confirm that short breaks improve well‑being. These changes may not solve everything, but they move the needle in measurable, constitutional ways.

If we want less misinformation, fewer extremism incentives, better privacy, and less loneliness, we should stop pretending a perfectly disciplined thumb is the answer. Make healthier design the default. Our social media death spiral was created by our culture. And if we want to address it, we need to find a way to change that culture. Perhaps that will happen through laws to change the incentives. Perhaps it will take going after the culture itself. Now is not the time to wait for perfect answers. It’s time to start trying things. 

The post Less Feed, More Life appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In an era marked by rapid information flow, deep polarization, and an often shallow engagement with religion in the media, the year 2025 finds members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at a crossroads of faith and public discourse. Members of the Church believe truths that are not only foundational to our eternal salvation but also deeply relevant to how we interact with our neighbors and society at large.

Yet as digital platforms expand and multiply, the representation of our faith in the public square often lags behind reality, too frequently reduced to caricatures or superficial narratives. In this context, publications like Public Square Magazine—which expressly seek “to convene, encourage, and support voices of conscience and conviction”—play an important role in elevating discourse and correcting widespread misunderstandings about the Church.  

The Challenge to Journalism

Too much of today’s journalism treats religion as a fringe footnote—a subject for stereotype rather than serious engagement, especially when covering faiths that fall outside the mainstream Christian tradition. In 2025, this problem persists. Many news outlets repeat sensational claims about Latter-day Saint culture or internal governance without providing historical context, doctrinal clarity, or the lived reality of millions of believing Saints.

This is not an occasional problem—it’s a pattern with depictions of religion in the media. Headlines about Latter-day Saint temples, doctrinal practice, or cultural norms frequently prioritize spectacle over substance. This journalism feeds misunderstanding. It substitutes caricature for context and leaves readers—both Latter-day Saints and those not as familiar—with a distorted sense of who we are. We must demand better: journalism that illuminates rather than obscures.

Interest in Latter-day Saints in Streaming and Public Culture

Another notable phenomenon of 2025 is the significant interest among Latter-day Saints in streaming media and cultural content that bears on faith and identity. From documentaries exploring religious history to series that touch on moral complexity, many Latter-day Saints—especially younger generations—are engaging with visual media as a primary window on the world.

This trend presents both opportunity and risk. On one hand, engaging with culture through streaming services allows members to see diverse perspectives and draw connections between gospel principles and contemporary issues. On the other hand, without discernment, it’s easy to absorb narratives that are sensational, misleading, or simply indifferent to spiritual realities.

As Latter-day Saints, our engagement should be thoughtful. We should seek media that challenge us to grow in compassion, strengthen our testimony of Christ, and equip us to serve others rather than fostering cynicism or division. In this, we can borrow from the aims of Public Square Magazine: to promote dialogue that is “persuasive, honest, and research-based,” and not merely provocative.  

Toward a Better Public Conversation

What does better journalism look like? It begins with curiosity rather than assumption. It respects believers as whole persons, not caricatures. It treats doctrine with attention to official sources and authentic voices, not secondhand interpretation. And it acknowledges the complexity of human experience, including the sincere devotion and enduring faith of millions of Latter-day Saints worldwide.

Faith Calls Us to Engagement

Ultimately, our faith doesn’t retreat from the world—it engages it with hope. In a world hungry for meaning, the gospel of Jesus Christ offers answers that resonate across boundaries: forgiveness, purpose, community, and eternal perspective.

For those who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ, our calling is twofold:

1. Live with integrity. Let our actions reflect our beliefs, showing Christlike love in every setting.
2. Speak with clarity and charity. When we see incorrect or incomplete information about our faith, we should correct it gently but confidently, rooted in truth and humility.

In doing so, we contribute to a public square where faith is not marginalized but understood, where journalism does not sacrifice accuracy for sensationalism, and where every reader—Latter-day Saint or not—can walk away with a clearer picture of one of the most dynamic religious movements in the world.

In 2026 and beyond, let us strive for a public discourse that honors both truth and dignity—for in Christ’s gospel, both are inseparable.

The post A Clarion Call to Truth: Faith, Journalism, and the Public Square in 2025 appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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2024 was one of the best years in recent memory for family films. 2025 didn’t have as much to offer, but there were certainly plenty of great films to watch as a family—you just had to know where to look. Many of the best were under the radar or had small releases, which means many families still have the opportunity to experience them together. 

A few films didn’t quite make the cut, but are worth mentioning: Zootopia 2 — more beautiful but less creative and morally sound than Zootopia 1, Unbreakable Boy — a heartwarming based-on-a-true-story film that goes a bit too sappy, and The Colors Within — a beautiful piece of visual poetry with a metaphor a bit too on the nose.

But here, in my opinion, are the ten best movies of the year and where to find them.

9 & 10. ‘Minecraft’ & ‘Dog Man’

I wanted to include both films here to round out the list. Neither is particularly memorable, and certainly they aren’t trying to be important. But they do prove that silliness is its own kind of virtue and that you can genuinely entertain without trying to import ideology to children. Sometimes something that can make you giggle and cheer for 90 minutes is precisely good enough. 

How to watch Minecraft: Streaming on HBO Max 

How to watch Dog Man: Streaming on Netflix

8. ‘Paddington in Peru’

Paddington the bear embodies kindness, manners, and goodness. So whether you’re the grown-up laughing at the misadventures of the adorable cub, or a kid learning from his example, the franchise is a gold mine for families. The latest adventure doesn’t quite reach the peaks of the previous two installments, but the delightful additions of Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas keep the film a lively adventure.

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix

7. ‘The Legend of Ochi’

The Legend of Ochi invites kids and adults into a hand-crafted fairy tale where courage looks like listening to the creatures everyone else is afraid of. With the old-school puppetry and throwback plot, the film feels like an 80s adventure. There is some distrust of authority that comes with the genre, but overall, the film gently nudges viewers toward curiosity, compassion, and making the big, hard choices.

How to watch: Streaming on HBO Max

6. ‘KPop Demon Hunters’

The surprise hit of 2025 KPop Demon Hunters has proven its entertainment chops for kids. This is not a film that can stand on its own; there are a few mixed moral messages about identity formation and shame that you’ll want to talk through with kids. But the thrust of the film about fighting real evil and self-sacrifice as a weighty moral good is worth cheering for. And it even has some meaningful things to say about redemptive vs. toxic empathy, an important counter-cultural lesson. 

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix

5. ‘In Your Dreams’ 

In Your Dreams uses its wild, anything-can-happen dream world to tell a surprisingly grounded story about kids learning they can’t wish their family into perfection. The movie keeps turning the fun imagery and gags back toward a deeper lesson about choosing real, imperfect love over fantasy and control. The villain isn’t just a monster but the temptation to live in a world where nothing is hard and no one ever disappoints you, and the film clearly labels that as a trap rather than a goal. This is a rare contemporary film about divorce that, in the end, rejects divorce and pursues forgiveness and hard work instead. 

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix

4. ‘The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie’

The first fully hand-drawn Looney Tunes feature gives Daffy and Porky a world-saving alien-invasion plot that stays gloriously zany while quietly celebrating friendship and responsibility. Amid the bubblegum-factory chaos and a few genuinely creepy B-movie-style moments, the heart of the story is two screw-ups learning to have each other’s backs and to use their oddball gifts for something bigger than themselves. For families who miss old-school cartoons that are silly first and never push the boundaries, this is a blast.

How to watch: Streaming on HBO Max

3. ‘Ne Zha 2’

Ne Zha 2 takes all its record-breaking hype and actually delivers a mythic family story about courage, costly love, and refusing to treat whole peoples as disposable. With Ne Zha and his dragon friend Ao Bing literally sharing one fragile body, the movie keeps turning its huge battles and wild visuals back toward loyalty, repentance, and parents who are willing to suffer rather than abandon their son. It is intense and unapologetically rooted in Chinese mythology, but for families willing to go big and talk afterward, this is one of the richest animated adventures of the year. 

How to watch: Streaming on HBO Max

2. ‘Arco’

Arco begins with a rainbow-suited boy falling out of a peaceful far future into a battered 2075, and turns that simple sci-fi hook into a quietly moving story about friendship, responsibility, and the kind of world we are handing to our children. Iris and her robot caretaker Mikki take this stranger in and, as they race to send him home, the film keeps tying its gorgeous future-shock imagery back to small acts of hospitality, courage, and care for a damaged Earth instead of despair or blame. It is hopeful without being naïve, warning kids about what might come while insisting that love of neighbor and creation can still bend the story in a better direction.

How to watch: Limited Release in Theaters

1. ‘Little Amélie or the Character of Rain’

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain quietly follows a little girl in 1960s Japan as she slowly wakes up to the world around her. We see everything from her small point of view as she tastes new foods, plays by the water, and tries to make sense of big things like war, loss, and God with the help of the adults who love her. (The answers are grounded in Japanese spiritualism, not Christian theology.) The film is gentle, slow, and often very funny in tiny ways, but it treats a young child’s heart and questions with real respect, showing how family love and simple daily joys can teach humility and gratitude. It is one of the year’s rare animated films that truly honors childhood as a sacred season rather than a marketing demographic, which is why it tops this year’s list.

How to watch: Limited Release in Theaters

The post The Best Family Movies of 2025 Came From the Margins, Not the Mainstream appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Bravo’s three‑part limited series Surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay leans into difficult personal stories and pointed criticism of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints. Episode one premiered Nov. 11, with all three parts streaming on Peacock the next day; the trailer and network page frame the project as revealing the religion’s “dark history.” The hook is effective: the testimonies are raw, the stakes high. So how do we address these problems? 

Lessons From Other Institutions’ Hard Lessons

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is far from the first organization to have three or more troubling incidents occur among its membership. Across faith, civic, and community settings, major investigations have revealed troubling stories that have led to the implementation of harm-reducing best practices. 

1) Clear Pathways to Civil Authorities
Every credible blueprint insists on uncomplicated routes to law enforcement. The painful proof came into focus in the USA Gymnastics scandal. For years, athletes reported Larry Nassar’s abuse to coaches, trainers, and officials, only to see their disclosures trapped in internal channels, bounced between organizations, or delayed while leaders worried about reputations and jurisdiction. Congressional investigations concluded that this web of overlapping responsibilities and in‑house handling helped enable his crimes.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in England and Wales—after seven years of studying abuse in churches, schools, care homes, local authorities, and youth organizations—reached a similar conclusion: confusing internal routes and deference to institutional reputation repeatedly left children unprotected. Both SafeSport and IICSA’s recommendations are built on the same insight. When allegations are routed through slow, internal channels, cases stall and perpetrators move on; when pathways to civil authorities and independent safeguarding bodies are direct, simple, and well‑trained, reports increase, patterns are detected earlier, and children are safer. 

2) “Two‑Deep” (No One‑on‑One) Supervision—Everywhere Youth Are Present
The clearest example of why one‑on‑one contact is so dangerous came in the Boy Scouts of America abuse scandal. As lawsuits and internal “ineligible volunteer” files became public, they showed how serial offenders had repeatedly used solo hikes, tenting arrangements, and car rides to isolate and groom youth with little or no immediate oversight. Part of what made the problem so intractable was structural: the program still allowed adults to be alone with non‑family youth in ways that created predictable opportunities for abuse.

In response, Scouting tightened its rules into a strict “two‑deep leadership” and “no one‑on‑one contact” standard. No adult is to be alone with a child who is not their own in any program setting—at meetings, on campouts, or in transit—with electronic communications governed by the same spirit. The point is not to question leaders’ sincerity but to design the system so that temptation and opportunity are sharply reduced.

Over time, youth‑serving organizations across the country—sports leagues, camps, community programs, and churches—have copied this approach because insurers, risk managers, and child‑safety experts all converge on the same conclusion: when adults are never alone with unrelated children, grooming becomes harder, disclosures are more likely to be observed by a second adult, and overall risk drops. Two‑deep supervision is not a cure‑all, but it is one of the simplest structural safeguards to duplicate anywhere children are present. 

3) Mandatory, Role‑Specific Training and Renewal
At Minnesota’s Anoka‑Hennepin School District, nine students died by suicide in less than two years, at least four of whom were gay or perceived to be gay. Investigations and a civil‑rights lawsuit documented a climate of anti‑gay bullying: students were shoved, spat on, urinated on, and told to kill themselves, while staff often minimized or failed to respond. The net effect was a system where harassment flourished, and adults lacked both clarity and skills.

In 2012, the district agreed to a comprehensive, court‑enforced settlement that forced a systemic overhaul. Among other changes, Anoka‑Hennepin hired a Title IX coordinator, strengthened mental‑health support, and—crucially—committed to mandatory annual training for all staff who interact with students, the revised policies, and their duty to act. Peer‑leadership programs and annual student meetings were also required to address harassment and explain how to get help.

The lesson travels well. In a large system with many well‑intentioned adults, problems don’t persist because people are uniquely cruel, but because they are untrained, unclear about their authority, and afraid of “getting in trouble” for speaking up. When training is optional or generic, many adults remain passive bystanders; when every teacher, coach, bus driver, and aide is required to complete targeted, recurring training, the culture shifts, students are more likely to be believed, and dangerous patterns are interrupted earlier.

4) Centralized Records and Portability of Warnings
For years, the Southern Baptist Convention assumed that because each congregation was autonomous, the national body could do little more than issue statements. Survivors who tried to warn denominational leaders were often told nothing more could be done, even as reports accumulated about the same individuals. The 2022 independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions exposed the cost of that “loose polity” model: there was no maintained, denomination‑wide database, no consistent escalation process, and no one charged with seeing patterns across churches. Allegations sat in private files, internal lists documented names that local search committees never saw, and known offenders were able to move from congregation to congregation undetected.

The scandal spurred a shift. In the wake of the report, Southern Baptists created an Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, began work on a public “Ministry Check” database of pastors and leaders credibly accused or convicted of abuse, and started debating stronger, convention‑wide expectations for background checks and information‑sharing. The goal is simple: when a church considers calling a pastor or staff member, it should be able to check a central resource rather than relying only on informal references or word of mouth.

Although the reforms are still developing and remain the subject of intense internal debate, the underlying logic is sound and widely echoed in other sectors: when credible warnings are captured in one place and made available to decision‑makers, it becomes much harder for abusers to outrun their history by simply changing employers or congregations. Even decentralized systems need centralized tracking and escalation if they want to stop perpetrators from starting over in a new community. 

5) Survivor Support and Redress
In Australia, decades of revelations about institutional abuse—especially in Catholic parishes and schools, Salvation Army boys’ homes, and state‑run care—showed a common pattern: when children finally disclosed what had happened, institutions quietly moved abusers on, fought civil claims aggressively, and offered only limited pastoral support. The mounting evidence that clergy and other carers had been shuffled from place to place instead of being reported to police led the federal government in 2013 to establish the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

After five years of public hearings and thousands of survivor accounts, the Royal Commission concluded that such a history could not be addressed by apologies alone. One of its key recommendations was the creation of a National Redress Scheme, funded by government and participating institutions, to provide survivors with a package that includes counseling, a direct personal response from the responsible institution, and a monetary payment as tangible acknowledgment of harm. Many major churches and charities have joined the scheme; institutions that refuse to participate can now be publicly identified and pressured to do so.

Whatever its limits and delays, the scheme embodies a hard‑won consensus: institutions that failed children must contribute to their healing in concrete, material ways—not just in words. These frameworks are sobering reminders that apologies must be joined to tangible care. 

6) Culture and Communications: Humility Beats Reputation Management
Chicago Public Schools is one vivid example of how “reputation first” thinking harms children. A 2018 newspaper investigation and a scathing federal Title IX review documented cases in which students’ allegations of sexual violence were mishandled or ignored, staff failed to notify police, and the system’s main instinct was to protect the district rather than victims.

While no large district can claim perfection, watchdog reports and follow‑up coverage now focus less on cover‑ups and more on whether the new office has enough staff and resources to do its work. Similar cultural critiques appear in IICSA’s Anglican case studies and in U.S. Senate hearings on the Nassar scandal in Olympic sport: institutions minimized or deflected to protect their brand, and only when that instinct was repudiated—and replaced with clear structures and accountability—did real reform begin. In all these arenas, the shift from reputation first to safety first is measured not in slogans but in whether disclosures reach police quickly, victims receive services, and leaders welcome independent scrutiny.

How the Church of Jesus Christ Has Performed on These Six Lessons

With decades of sad lessons learned, how is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doing in implementing these best practices?

1) Clear Pathways to Civil Authorities and Outside Help

As early as the mid‑1990s, the Church created a confidential ecclesiastical abuse help line for bishops and stake presidents. Long before SafeSport or CPS‑style offices existed, local lay leaders had 24/7 access to legal and clinical professionals whose explicit mandate was to help victims and ensure compliance with reporting laws.

By the mid‑2010s, member‑facing resources on ChurchofJesusChrist.org were already teaching ordinary members that if they know or suspect abuse, they should report to civil authorities first and then seek additional spiritual and practical support from Church leaders and professional counselors.

The current Abuse Help Line and “Abuse—How to Help” pages now make this even more explicit: leaders are instructed to call the help line every time they learn of abuse, and members are told to contact legal authorities immediately and then work with their bishop or stake president, who in turn is required to use the help line. The help line is utilized to ensure that proper reports are made directly to the appropriate authorities in line with local privacy laws. Recent updates to the General Handbook and the “Protecting Children and Youth” page in 2024–25 again reinforce that reporting to civil authorities is not optional and that no leader should ever discourage or block a report.

2) Two‑Deep Supervision and No One‑on‑One Settings

Well before many school districts or community programs embraced two‑adult standards, the Church began strengthening its expectations around supervision. By 2006, the Church Handbook of Instructions required two adult supervisors for activities, a policy that continued to be iterated and tightened to cover children’s Sunday School (primary) classes, women and men, and ecclesiastical interviews, among others.  

These principles were built into the 2020 General Handbook and then expanded in the 2025 updates under headings such as “Safeguarding Children,” “Classes for Youth,” and “Adult Supervision.” Region‑specific safeguarding pages (for example, in the United Kingdom) repeat the same standards and adapt them to local legal requirements.

By the time other systems were being forced into similar standards through lawsuits or consent decrees, Latter‑day Saints had already received global, written instructions embedding two‑adult supervision into ordinary ward life. Those standards continue to be reiterated in new training and safety pages, making the Church one of the more structurally safe environments for one‑on‑one adult–youth contact in the congregational world.

3) Mandatory, Role‑Specific Training and Renewal

In 1995, The Church of Jesus Christ had produced training materials for bishops on how to understand and recognize abuse, and then provided step-by-step guidance on how to respond. 

This publication was quoted in later manuals as an early training, though implementation was not mandatory or systematic. The Church provided similar materials for all members in two 1997 publications: “Preventing and Responding to Spouse Abuse” and “Child Abuse: Helps for Members.”

In the early aughts, the Church produced a DVD Responding to Child Abuse to be played at ward and branch council meetings with an associated pamphlet. In 2008, the First Presidency wrote a letter to be read in leadership trainings explaining to leaders how to protect victims. 

Continuing and incremental improvements were made through the 2010s. In 2019, the Church moved to a more formal system with the launch of Children and Youth Protection Training for leaders and volunteers in the United States and Canada, accompanied by a directive from the Priesthood and Family Department that those in relevant callings must complete the training, formally systematizing best practices training.

4) Centralized Records and Portability of Warnings

Long before the current wave of abuse reporting, the Church built its ecclesiastical life around centralized membership records rather than purely local rolls. That meant that serious concerns raised in a membership council did not simply disappear when someone moved; there was a mechanism to mark records, restrict transfers, and ensure that new leaders received needed background.

In the current General Handbook, those instincts are made explicit. Instructions on membership councils and move restrictions explain how a bishop or stake president can place a hold on a membership record when serious concerns are pending, and how decisions from councils are reported centrally.

The Handbook’s policies on abuse specify that when a person has sexually abused a child or youth—or seriously abused a child physically or emotionally—their membership record is annotated. Members with such annotations are not to receive callings or assignments involving children or youth, are not to be assigned as ministering companions to youth, and are not to be given ministering assignments to households with children or youth. These restrictions follow the member wherever they move because the annotation is part of the central record. In a world where many congregational networks are only now building abuse databases after devastating investigations, Latter‑day Saints have the advantage of a long‑standing global membership system and clear written policies about annotations and move restrictions. 

5)Survivor Support and Redress

For decades, Church leaders have been instructed that their first responsibility when abuse occurs is to help the victim and protect the vulnerable. Gospel Topics essays and counseling resources emphasize that victims are not at fault, that abuse is a serious sin, and that leaders should help survivors access both spiritual care and professional counseling.

Handbook instructions have long allowed bishops to use fast‑offering funds to help members pay for professional counseling when they cannot do so themselves. That principle—combining pastoral care with tangible financial assistance—has been part of Latter‑day Saint welfare practice for years, even if it was not framed in the language of “redress schemes.”

Recent materials have made this more visible and explicit. A 2018 Ensign article and subsequent online lessons on recognizing and healing from abuse gave members and leaders concrete steps for support. A more recent newsroom article, “How Latter‑day Saints Approach Abuse,” states plainly that the Church offers and often covers the cost of professional counseling for victims, regardless of their ability to pay, and directs leaders again to use fast offerings where needed. International safeguarding pages, such as those in the United Kingdom and in responses to national inquiries in New Zealand, repeat similar commitments.

Unlike Australia’s government‑run National Redress Scheme, the Church’s approach is ecclesiastical rather than statutory; it works through bishops, welfare funds, and, where appropriate, legal settlements. But measured against the core survivor‑centric lesson—words must be joined to concrete care—the Church has for many years combined clear doctrinal condemnation of abuse with structured access to counseling and material help. 

6) Culture and Communications: From Reputation Management to Safety‑First

As early as 1978, there was direct condemnation of child abuse during the Church’s general conference. And in 1979, domestic abuse was a consideration in giving a temple recommend.

In perhaps the strongest possible cultural signal within the Latter-day Saint context, questions about abuse of family members were added to the temple recommend questions in 1989, alongside other major cultural and doctrinal signifiers such as chastity and dietary restrictions. 

Between 1976 and 2013, more than 50 news and magazine articles appeared in Church publications condemning child abuse in unequivocal terms and encouraging members to seek help rather than suffer in silence. 

That cultural messaging has remained consistent. Since 2018, that cultural messaging has accelerated. Articles like “Hope and Healing for Victims of Abuse,” online lessons on recognizing abuse, the consolidation of the General Handbook (with entire subsections titled “Safeguarding Children” and “Safeguarding Youth”), and newsroom explainers on how the Church approaches abuse have all pushed in the same direction: make expectations public, normalize reporting, and center the needs of victims rather than the reputation of the institution.

Culture is the hardest thing to measure. There will continue to be local leaders who respond poorly, and media stories will rightly scrutinize those failures. But if we apply the same standard we used for Chicago Public Schools and other systems—Are there clear structures? Are expectations written down? Are leaders being told in public documents that protection comes before reputation?—the answer for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints today is yes. The Church was well ahead of the curve in addressing this tragic issue.

Are We Actually Doing Poorly?

Part of the answer is simply mathematical. In a global church with millions of members, hundreds of thousands of local leaders, and decades of weekly contact with children and youth, even an exceptionally small failure rate produces more than enough heartbreak to fill a docuseries. A system can be comparatively safe and still have real, grievous failures. The stories in Surviving Mormonism are painful precisely because they are exceptions in a people who know, instinctively and doctrinally, that children ought to be protected.

The best available research suggests that on both child abuse and the well-being of LGBT+ members, the Church of Jesus Christ performs well above the average. Docuseries such as Surviving Mormonism tell important stories that can help continual improvement, but they can paint a misleading picture by picking exceptional rather than representative cases. This treatment is applied to the Church of Jesus Christ simply because, as a religious minority, there is curiosity. And frankly, the word “Mormon” when combined with scandal sells. 

It is tragic that any of the stories featured in Surviving Mormonism happened at all. Latter‑day Saints should continue to improve training, to enforce the two‑adult rule without exception, to post reporting steps, and to support survivors with compassion and concrete help, always working toward the goal of eliminating abuse. Perhaps the Church can be at the forefront of developing even better policies than we are currently imagining. That said, when we step back and compare reforms across churches, schools, Scouts, and sports, the evidence suggests that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints has built the right safeguards and, in key areas, has been ahead of broader societal trends in implementing them, and has the results you would expect from such forward thinking.

Related Articles

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• Netflix’s American Primeval: The Prejudiced Fiction of Brigham Young

The post “Surviving Mormonism” and the Real Story of Institutional Harm appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Seeing Critics of the Church with a Pure Love

Outside the theater after a performance of the musical “The Book of Mormon,” two young women serving as missionaries laugh with a line of theatergoers who had just spent two hours chuckling at their faith. One man teased them, using a phone recording, fishing for a cringeworthy sound bite. Instead of debating, one sister offered him a copy of the book with a smile: “If you liked the parody, you might like the source.” He took it, still smirking. A week later, he messaged them to say he had read a few chapters and—more surprisingly—he apologized for trying to embarrass them. “I didn’t expect you to be kind,” he wrote. Kindness didn’t convert him (conversion comes by the Spirit), but it converted the moment. That impulse—answer a jab with generosity—has quietly become one of our most reliable instincts.

Our critics (and even our enemies) can refine our courage, our clarity, and our hospitality—charity without capitulation.

We do not concede doctrine, outsource discernment, or grant a heckler’s veto to critics. We listen because people are precious, not because scorn is persuasive, and we keep the “pure love of Christ” as both our motive and method. Learning from our enemies, in this sense, means learning how to love them better. Yes, as necessary, we must answer with facts, with consistency and safeguards; those looking for Jesus Christ and His Church deserve that from us. And when waves of attention build, the posture still holds.

#SurvivingMormonism

The upcoming documentary series “Surviving Mormonism” is generating a fresh crest of negative attention toward The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Another entry in the well-worn exposé genre of Latter-day Saints, the show purports to reveal the “dark history” of the Church through interviews with “abuse survivors, ex-Mormons and former LDS church leaders.” The show will be hosted by reality TV star Heather Gay, whose exodus story from the Church has been published as a New York Times best-seller.

And, if that guess turns out to be true, then part of an appropriate response to such scornful content is to “heed not.” However, engaging in loving and productive ways can also be appropriate, and may provide different benefits.

Many Latter-day Saints online modeled this in a viral response to the show’s title. In a short period of time, many Latter-day Saint creators have used the hashtag #SurvivingMormonism to poke fun at themselves for the often mild annoyances and idiosyncrasies of church members and culture. Examples included: “Surviving Mormonism, but it’s just me carrying a bunch of chairs to impress girls at my ward,” “Surviving Mormonism and it’s just me having to play basketball on carpet,” or “Surviving Mormonism and its High Council Sunday.”

These examples come in the same spirit as the outreach after the offensive Broadway play, which mocked Latter-day Saints and their faith: disarm hostility with humor, neighborliness, and confidence in the gospel rather than defensiveness.

Under normal circumstances, this kind of response softens hearts and builds goodwill. But because Latter-day Saints remain an out-group in many attention markets, these are not normal circumstances, and goodwill is not always reciprocated. The duty remains the same either way: meet caricature with Christlike love without ceding truth.

In the same spirit of not reacting defensively, we can go even further to recognize that every incoming volley is being fired by a human being—a fellow brother or sister in the family of God. The Savior’s example and modern apostolic counsel make clear that accusations and sensationalized personal apostasies sometimes merit our response as directed by the promptings of the Holy Ghost. But when we are called to defend truth, virtue, and the Kingdom of God, we should ensure that we are defending it in the Savior’s way, which means that our responses should always be motivated and shaped by what the Book of Mormon calls “the pure love of Christ.”

Old Bigotries, New Veneers

To understand why this pattern keeps resurfacing, zoom out from one show to the longer storyline. Across two centuries, Americans have recycled the same basic image of Latter‑day Saints with different lighting. In the 19th century, the Saints were cast as a wicked cult—socially alien, politically suspect, theologically off. That caricature licensed extraordinary measures and mob violence. From the mid‑20th century through the early 2010s, the image softened to false religion; good neighbors: Scout troops and service projects, civic leadership, and the 2002 Olympics—the so‑called “Mormon Moment.” For many, the Church read as rigorous but ordinary.

Over roughly the last decade, the mood darkened again—not because the Church pivoted into menace, but because the storytellers and their incentives changed. Prestige docudramas and true‑crime packaging blurred a fundamentalist offshoot into the main body; algorithms prized moral threat; headlines chased sharper edges. The label did the work that the evidence did not. Put simply: the attention markets transformed; the Church didn’t.

That is why yesterday’s bigotries can return in new veneers. Where 19th‑century broadsheets warned of polygamy and “secret oaths,” today’s packages spotlight weird underwear, money, and abuse. The old charge was alien. The contemporary brand is algorithmic alien. And conflation does the rest.

Meanwhile, what actually changed inside the Church in the last twenty years? Not a lurch into danger, but a remarkably steady picture: mission service and global humanitarian work; lay leadership; a plea for accurate naming; a familiar drumbeat on family, chastity, and service. 

So why did the temperature rise now? Several gears meshed at once. From 2012 to 2016, social feeds became the front page; the content that thrived honed villain arcs and moral bite with faster payoff loops. 

Streaming fought for differentiation with “based on a true story” limited series that collapsed an offshoot into the whole or an era into the present because simplicity binge‑watches better than footnotes. Investigations—sometimes vital—fed advocacy appeals, which seeded more coverage, which kept the story hot. 

And as national institutions lost trust, local communities with strong norms looked suspect by contrast; what used to read as civic virtue now reads as control to audiences trained to equate restraint with repression.

Put bluntly: the villain economy found a familiar mask. 

Ministering to Deep and Unmet Needs

That context can help us be less defensive. The people sharing their stories are not attacking Latter-day Saints or their way of life; they are being used by entertainment producers to maximize attention by exploiting their stories to fit into the package that sells today. If attention markets reward heat over light, disciples must choose the Savior’s incentives instead. 

In his 1977 talk, “Jesus: The Perfect Leader,” President Spencer W. Kimball taught that “Jesus saw sin as wrong but also was able to see sin as springing from deep and unmet needs on the part of the sinner … We need to be able to look deeply enough into the lives of others to see the basic causes for their failures and shortcomings.” 

This counsel to “look deeply into the lives of others” stands in a constructive sort of tension with the Book of Mormon’s depiction of giving no “heed” to mockery and scorn. In the day of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the word heed meant partly “to regard with care.” Then, Latter-day Saints must learn to carefully regard every soul who points the finger of scorn while disregarding the offensiveness of scornful language itself. This can be a difficult line to walk, but it is also the one encouraged by those who seek to follow Jesus Christ. 

One practical help here is that our perception machinery is biased by availability cascades (what we keep seeing feels typical) and out-group homogeneity (we infer “that’s how they are” from one vivid case). Knowing that these are human tendencies—not personal attacks—lets us choose slow empathy over quick certainty. And because familiarity often breeds warmth, not contempt, it is good discipleship (and good social science) to actually know the neighbors we’re tempted to reduce to headlines.

To put this another way, we must learn not to be fragile conflict-avoiders who passively stay out of trouble, but Christlike, antifragile peacemakers who actively strive to bring peace to troubled souls. President Russell M. Nelson reiterated his prophetic call for us to become peacemakers until, as it were, his dying breath, highlighting the significance of our efforts while recognizing our ongoing need for improvement. As we recognize both our own parochial concerns with public sentiment against Latter-day Saints and our broader sociopolitical environment of divisiveness and extremism, it is easy to see why peacemakers are needed and will continue to be needed.

Learning from Our “Enemies”

That posture doesn’t just restrain us; it teaches us. The host and individuals who will appear on the screen are children of God. Their stories matter. Our task is to keep clarity and charity together—refusing caricature, refusing contempt, and refusing to let the market’s heat stand in for moral light.

Latter‑day Saints in general are renowned for being enthusiastically kind people, both to outsiders as well as to each other. Yet we, like all faith communities, have our blind spots, and those blind spots tend to enlarge when we are in the majority. And who better to help us learn how to better prevent the lapses that sometimes happen in our policies than those who previously fell victim to them?

The landmark book “The Anatomy of Peace” explains that the individuals and groups we consider our most bitter enemies can also teach us about some of our largest moral blind spots. In one of the book’s exercises for “recovering inner clarity and peace,” the authors invite us to ask ourselves a series of introspection questions such as how we, or a group with whom we identify, have made our enemies’ lives more difficult, and how progress toward peace with them might be hindered by our own pride, our feelings of victimization and entitlement, and our desires for validation, status, or belonging. Conducting this kind of searching inventory of our attitudes and behaviors and of those in our faith community is difficult soul‑work, but it yields hearts and congregations that are kinder, more inclusive, and more unified in our quest to build Zion. The alternative is to be damned to continue with our moral blind spots—talking past one another, disregarding or downplaying each other’s needs and pains, and grieving in the gridlock of our seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Because “the pure love of Christ” is so far above and beyond mere human capacity to obtain, we are exhorted to “pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart” to receive this love. We know we are receiving His love as we begin to “look deeply” into the lives of others and see their divine worth, hear the cries of their hearts, and offer them our peaceful presence and care without mixed feelings and motivations. Through faithfully living by the doctrine of Christ and practicing “diligence unto prayer,” Christ’s pure love may endure with us.

When criticism comes: (1) Heed not the mockery—don’t amplify heat. We know why this happens. (2) Regard the person with care—see “a blessed being of light, the spirit child of an infinite God.” (3) Respond in the Savior’s way—facts with fairness, humor with humility, love without capitulation. As we pray “with all the energy of heart,” His pure love will reshape both our moments and our ministries.

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We are thrilled to introduce our first-ever anthology, What God Hath Joined: Reflections on The Family Proclamation. This landmark collection has been a year in the making, as we published articles month by month in anticipation of this special opportunity, the 30th anniversary of The Family: A Proclamation to the World.

When the Proclamation was first read by President Gordon B. Hinckley in 1995, it set forth bold, prophetic truths about marriage, family, and divine identity. Over the past thirty years, its voice has only grown stronger. The Proclamation continues to stand as a prophetic guidepost, offering clarity and hope in a world where definitions of family and morality are shifting. Its words remind us that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, that family relationships are eternal, and that happiness in this life and the next is deeply connected to how we live those truths.

What God Hath Joined brings together thoughtful essays and reflections from inspired contributors, each offering a unique perspective on the enduring relevance of principles of the Proclamation. From personal testimonies to cultural observations, this anthology celebrates the beauty of family as part of God’s divine design.

This collection is more than a book—it is a milestone. It represents collaboration, faith, and a shared desire to honor and strengthen families in every setting.

We are pleased to make this anthology freely available as part of this historic celebration. 

CLICK HERE to download your copy

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The Wall Street Journal used to know the difference between covering a faith and staging it. In “‘Exmo’ Influencers Mount a TikTok War Against the Mormon Church,” that line isn’t blurred—it’s crossed. The piece does more than report on critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints; it puts their reenactments front and center, including a posed photo of an ex‑member wearing sacred temple clothing and descriptions that turn baptisms, initiations, and other temple rites into shareable spectacle. What is sacred is not content. And when a national newspaper treats it that way, it isn’t tough reporting—it’s trespass dressed up as journalism.

The Journal even said so when a boundary was breached elsewhere. In 2022, an Israeli TV reporter snuck into Mecca, a city non‑Muslims are forbidden to enter. The Journal’s opinion page ran the headline “Mecca Rules Are Up to Muslims” with the sub‑line that a “reckless Israeli journalist” had put others at risk. Another column debated whether Mecca should ever be opened to non‑Muslims (“Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Should Open Mecca”), and a third reflected on rare, leadership‑sanctioned exceptions (“The Secret Mission to Sneak Into Mecca”). The throughline wasn’t hard to miss: Mecca’s boundary is real, and crossing it isn’t a media stunt—it’s a violation. Respect for sacred limits isn’t a parochial ask; it’s a newsroom norm.

Now look back at the Journal’s Latter‑day Saint story. It spotlights ex‑members who re‑create or display elements from temple worship that practicing Latter‑day Saints treat as sacred and private. A decade ago, when the Church itself chose to explain its temple clothing and asked that the press treat it as other faiths’ vestments are treated, responsible coverage did exactly that—embedding the Church’s own explainer and letting the institution’s visuals carry the story (Church Newsroom; Washington Post story and video). The Journal chose the opposite: a promotional image of an ex‑member in sacred clothing, plus social‑video reenactments. If even HBO—a profit‑minded entertainment brand—apologized for offending believers when Big Love dramatized a temple scene in 2009 (LAT; Reuters), why is a flagship newsroom now lowering the bar?

When reached for comment, a Wall Street Journal spokesperson replied,

“The Journal’s reporting is accurate, fair and meets its established and trusted high standards. The Journal practices ‘no surprises’ journalism. As noted in the article, our reporter was in touch with the church, which declined to comment. We took great care in preparing this story and stand by our reporting.”

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics is unambiguous: provide context; avoid pandering to lurid curiosity; consider cultural differences; minimize harm (SPJ Code). It also cautions that legal access to information is not the same as an ethical justification to publish. You don’t earn trust by telling believers to brace themselves while you stage their sacraments. “No surprises” is not “no standards.”

The Journal insists its story is “accurate, fair,” that it practices “no‑surprises” journalism, that it contacted the Church, and that it “stands by” the reporting. But fairness isn’t a phone call. (Especially one that the Journal reporter has mischaracterized as “no comment.”) It’s the package: headline, art, framing, context. On all four, this piece comes up short. The Journal’s own public standards promise to “fairly present all sides of the story through rigorous, fact‑based reporting” and to uphold “appropriate professional conduct” (WSJ standards overview; Dow Jones Code of Conduct). By any normal test—especially the one the Journal applied when a reporter snuck into Mecca—this isn’t it.

The Wall Street Journal may stand behind their reporting. But they didn’t meet the accepted journalistic standards. They didn’t even meet their own journalistic standards. They acted less like reporters and more like a carnival barker telling the passersby that for the cost of a pageview they can come gawk at a secret religion. 

The Journal once set the curve on restraint. Yesterday it flunked it. On matters of worship, judgment—not just facts—is the test. Here, the Journal didn’t just miss the mark. It moved the line. Pull the piece. Apologize. And then do what the best newsrooms do next: be better than your worst day.

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During the summer of 2025, we’ve seen a notable shift in the narrative style of superhero films. 

Since 2002, superhero films have centered on origin stories—plots that trace heroes from ordinary individuals to extraordinary agents of justice and good. But James Gunn’s rebooted film Superman and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s introduction of the Fantastic Four both notably start in the middle of their characters’ stories. These characters are fully formed, and their backstories are assumed and deemphasized. 

This shift reflects more than just storytelling evolution; rather, it reflects a deeper cultural transformation in how we are responding to the crises around us, how we conceive of agency, and how we imagine heroism.

In the same way the origin story rose as a response to our cultural processing of 9/11, this shift away from them reflects the breakdown of shared national narratives and a desperate search for safety in an age of uncertainty. 

Pre-9/11: Action Without Introspection

Before the events of September 11, 2001, American action cinema largely operated within a confident moral framework. The genre thrived on spectacle, propulsion, and clarity, rather than introspection or psychological depth. Heroes were rarely burdened with complexity; they were good simply because they were good. Audiences accepted this simplicity not as a narrative deficiency, but as a feature of the genre’s moral architecture. The focus was on what the hero would do, not why they felt compelled to do it.

Similarly, in Independence Day (1996), Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) is a hotshot fighter pilot who defends the planet from extraterrestrial annihilation. The film offers no biographical backstory to explain Hiller’s courage; it simply presents him as the kind of American who rises to meet the moment. 

In addition, Top Gun (1986), with its swaggering fighter jocks and Cold War subtext, gives us Maverick (Tom Cruise), a thrill-seeking pilot who competes to be the best. Top Gun is notable because it does nod to the mysterious death of Maverick’s father, but it does so without mining the event for psychological motivation. It presents it not as formative for our character, but as part of his formed character. We never ask what made Maverick crave speed. 

These characters are fully formed at their introductions. There is no demand for narrative justification or psychological realism.

Even in the emerging superhero genre of the era—where one might expect more elaborate treatments of identity and origin, in line with their comic book form—this tendency persisted. The villain was often the one with a backstory, not the hero. Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) gives Jack Nicholson’s Joker an origin as a mob enforcer named Jack Napier, whose disfigurement and descent into madness offer a form of explanation for his violence. Batman, in contrast, is defined primarily through action and mystique. In X-Men (2000), the audience is given a haunting origin for Magneto, who, as a child, survives Auschwitz and emerges with a militant view of mutant survival. The heroes—Cyclops, Storm, Jean Grey—are just there. Even Wolverine, the film’s breakout antihero, is more defined by his amnesia than a deeply explored past.

In places where we do see origin-like elements, they are treated as flashbacks after which we catch up with our heroes mid-story. We see this approach in the brief flashback to the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in the 1989 film. Perhaps the clearest example of this narrative economy can be found in Superman: The Movie (1978). The film opens with the destruction of Krypton and young Kal-El’s escape to Earth. But these sequences are delivered in brisk montage and are more interested in Zod, the villain. We quickly skip ahead to a point where Superman is already the embodiment of American virtue.

Post-9/11: Origins as Ontology

In the years following 9/11, that changed. As American society absorbed the trauma of watching its symbols of power collapse live on television, it entered what we might call a hermeneutic age—an era defined by interpretation, inquiry, and a pervasive sense that nothing can be taken at face value. The cultural response was a desperate turn toward explanation, particularly in cinema.

The turn toward psychological realism and its expression—the origin story, arguably began with Spider-Man (2002). Released less than a year after 9/11, Sam Raimi’s film offered a superhero origin story steeped in trauma, guilt, and reluctant responsibility. Peter Parker isn’t simply bitten by a radioactive spider; he wrestles with the moral implications of power, the weight of his uncle’s death, and the crushing burden of his double life. The story insists on the interiority of its hero. And for the first time, where our superhero came from wasn’t a footnote; it was the story itself.

Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) exemplifies this shift. Rather than drop us into the action, the film spends nearly an hour exploring Bruce Wayne’s childhood fears, the trauma of losing his parents, and his training with the League of Shadows. The film doesn’t hint at his backstory; it is his backstory. Batman becomes not merely a symbol of justice but a complex psychological case study. And while the latter two films don’t repeat his origin, they continue to build on the themes of what caused him to be who he is. In The Dark Knight (2008), the Joker is terrifying precisely because he is inexplicable.

This trend wasn’t confined to traditional superheroes. Consider Casino Royale (2006), which reboots James Bond not for the next adventure, as he had been rebooted four times before, but at the beginning of his story. Here, he doesn’t begin as the suave, infallible operative of earlier films, but as a man learning the emotional and moral costs of espionage. Even Sonic the Hedgehog got an origin story!

Iron Man (2008) launches the Marvel Cinematic Universe not with world-saving action, but with Tony Stark’s reckoning with the consequences of his own weapons empire. Every character must be wounded, conflicted, and from somewhere. It is no mistake that Tony Stark’s origin focuses more on his alcoholism and troubled romantic life, which could resonate with the audience, than on his extreme wealth.

As audiences, we wanted to feel like anyone could rise up and become the hero, and by seeing these heroes begin as people like us, we felt empowered, putting ourselves into their shoes. 9/11 showed that our external heroes could fail, and the intimate experience of seeing the tragedy in our own living rooms made each of us want to feel empowered. For all the fantasy special effects, these films were at their heart a playbook for how each audience member could become a hero. It’s no surprise that during this period, it was our least human superheroes that struggled to resonate with audiences, Superman Returns, Man of Steel, the first two Thor films, and Eternals. These characters didn’t become heroes; they were born as heroes, so audiences didn’t need them.

A New Kind of Hero Post-COVID

Today, we are no longer reeling from a singular, unifying trauma like 9/11. Instead, we inhabit an age of chronic disillusionment. The COVID-19 pandemic became not a rallying point but a breaking point—exposing fractures in our civic trust, political institutions, and even basic consensus about reality. Where the post-9/11 era yearned for heroes we could become, the pandemic era has left us longing for something else entirely: the comfort that someone, anyone, in a position of responsibility will simply do their job.

We can see this anxiety in the fractured multi-verse style stories that began to take hold. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022) captured this feeling in the prestige market, while it took over in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). The progenitor of this trope, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), went from novelty project to cultural behemoth post-COVID in 2023’s Across the Spider-Verse.

But while this reflected the moment in a way that clearly intrigued audiences, it didn’t speak to their desire for something soothing. Consequently, the appetite for the 9/11 generation of superheroes has waned. While the studio system kept producing more of the same, it was the throwback exceptions like Top Gun: Maverick (2022) that captured attention and rose to the top. This film succeeds precisely because it returns us to a world where competent people lead, where moral clarity is possible, and where action matters more than angst. Rooster doesn’t need an origin story; he needs to hit the target. And he does.

Audiences seem tired of watching characters endlessly become. They want to see them do their jobs.

This brings us to the superhero season of 2025. Although Marvel released Thunderbolts*, widely regarded as their best film in years, the reveal that it was another origin story about a superhero team ultimately turned off audiences, who then didn’t show up.

Audiences instead have shown up on the superhero front for Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Both stories drop us into the action in media res, asking us to keep up with the characters who are already competent and decisive. We meet our newest Superman after a fight. 

Superman is notable here because his story does hint at his origin, but the film’s plot involves how he manages and subverts that in the present moment. One of the film’s major themes is how his origin does not define him. 

Both Clark Kent and Reed Richards have extreme powers—they have been entrusted by the people of their universes to protect them. Both of them fail and then [spoiler-alert] ultimately emerge victorious as they combine their deeply moral hearts with their advanced competences.

They care about people, so they protect them, and that’s a good enough reason. 

Today, America wishes our leaders and institutions would do the same. In the absence of that, we go to the cinema to see our fantasies and salve our wounds.

The post-9/11 era transformed not just geopolitics but the grammar of our storytelling. American films, once comfortable in moral simplicity, turned inward, seeking explanations, origins, and ontological justifications for every mask, every motive. That desire was understandable. In times of trauma, we reach for coherence. But as our culture has moved into its next phase, it has grown weary of explanation and demands action. We do not always need to know why someone became a hero. Sometimes, it is enough that they are one.

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