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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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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.

The post Consent not Curiosity: WSJ’s Double Standard on the Sacred appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Hulu’s recent series Devil in the Family tells the tragic story of Ruby Franke, a Latter-day Saint family vlogger who seemed to have it all until she was sent to jail for child abuse. Franke amassed millions of followers and more than a billion views on YouTube with fun and relatable videos of her family. But Hulu, armed with more than 1000 hours of Franke’s unseen footage, showed what was happening between the picture-perfect takes that made it to YouTube. It is painful to watch in more ways than one. 

There are things we could quibble with about how Latter-day Saints are portrayed in the series, such as the emphasis on Christ’s Second Coming and statements from church leaders and members, which are taken out of context. But in our conversations with Latter-day Saints, one of the most common themes we’ve heard is how relatable the Franke family seems. It’s easy to imagine Ruby, her (now) ex-husband Kevin, and their six children living on your street, attending your ward. We recognize the neighborhoods, the faith, the cultural pressures. More disturbingly, many Latter-day Saints see Ruby and Kevin in themselves. The resemblance, for some, is uncanny and unnerving. The series raises a troubling question: If this can happen in the Franke family, what can happen in mine? 

We do not think that Ruby’s story is somehow “representative” of Latter-day Saints in Utah or elsewhere. Few Latter-day Saints will go as far as Ruby did. But Ruby’s story provides a useful opportunity for self-reflection and self-evaluation.  As part of that reflection, we explore a few pressures and temptations which are relevant to the Franke case but which also apply to many others, both in the Church and out. Our observations and insights are limited by the information available, and our goal is not to pass judgment but to learn from this cautionary tale.

Perfectionism

One of the most relatable and disturbing aspects of the Franke story is not just the pursuit of perfection but the obsession with the image of looking perfect—happy, fulfilled, wholesome, airbrushed, aesthetic, and flawless. Even a ten-year-old knows the right angle to hold the camera for a selfie. This is not an issue found only in church culture. Western culture breeds it. We just happen to marinate in it in a way that confuses “be ye therefore perfect” with “be ye therefore polished.”

That distinction–seen as perfect rather than being good—matters. 

In a world where so much is being broadcast, or at minimum documented, there can be great pressure to want to look as if “all is well in Zion.” As a public-facing family with a broad audience, the pressure to maintain the image of perfection could feel even more extreme. But we should not let the desire to look perfect overpower our commitment to doing good. 

Perfectionism tends to conflate being righteous with being flawless, an impossible standard that sets us up for unhealthy self-criticism and disappointment. The emphasis on avoiding all mistakes (or at least the appearance of mistakes) can lead us to shame-based coping or discipline strategies. Jodi Hildebrant, Ruby’s friend, therapist, and later business partner, unfortunately, employed many shame-based tactics for behavior change within the Franke family. Despite the pretense that such strategies take misbehavior “seriously,” recent research shows that shame is not very motivating. If we really want to change ourselves or others, we should reach for other strategies. 

There tends to be very little forgiveness or grace in perfectionism. Any minor mistake, any flaw, is magnified to the point where we can no longer see the good in ourselves or others. And when we extend the expectation of perfection to our children, we overestimate our ability to control their behavior as well as their ability to live flawlessly. For example, most parents can relate to the experience of having a child throw a tantrum in a store. We may worry and think, “What do other people think of my parenting?” We mistakenly believe that good parents would not have children who act out in such public displays. However, the truth is that … kids are kids. All humans are imperfect and in a state of becoming. We all make mistakes, we all fall short. But our mistakes and shortcomings do not define us. 

As Dieter F. Uchtdorf has taught, God is not surprised by our mistakes, nor does he relish the thought of punishing us for our fallen nature. He wants us to learn and grow, and that process will include many mistakes: 

“We have all seen a toddler learn to walk. He takes a small step and totters. He falls. Do we scold such an attempt? Of course not. What father would punish a toddler for stumbling? We encourage, we applaud, and we praise because with every small step, the child is becoming more like his parents.” 

He continues:

“I believe in a Heavenly Father who is loving and caring and who rejoices in our every effort to stand tall and walk toward Him. Even when we stumble, He urges us not to be discouraged—never to give up or flee our allotted field of service—but to take courage, find our faith, and keep trying.”

Hildebrant’s counseling approach, which Ruby evidently adopted, distorted religious principles as she taught that “truth” required complete control, rigidity, and perfection. Further, when people fell short, Hildebrant thought the result should be extreme discipline (which became life-threatening in the case of the two youngest Franke children) or cutting off relationships. This is clearly a distortion of Latter-day Saint teaching and practice.

Perfectionism doesn’t allow for inevitable struggles, mistakes, and vulnerability of humanity. It hollows us out, leaving us empty and exhausted in our relentless pursuit of an impossible standard. But Christ does not demand that we be flawless—He invites us to come to Him. His perfection is not a measuring stick for our failure but a gift that bridges the gap between us and our Heavenly Father. Where perfectionism isolates us, Christ’s wholeness connects us. Where perfectionism shames, Christ redeems. When we let perfectionism go, we open the possibility of truly connecting with Him and others. 

Outsourcing Moral Responsibility

A challenge Kevin faced was different, nonetheless just as relatable for many. Early in the series, Kevin says he was very insecure.  He said he was “willing to do anything to keep” his relationship with Ruby, even when this meant leaving home and not contacting his wife or children for an unspecified amount of time. (From what we can gather, it seems that Kevin needed to prove to Jodi that he had changed in order to be let back into the family.)

This, tragically, opened the door to the worst abuse that the Franke children suffered. With Kevin out of the picture, Ruby and Jodi resorted to more extreme methods of discipline and punishment. When Kevin received a call from Ruby on the day the police raided Jodi’s house, Kevin said it was the first time he had talked to his wife in a year.

“A lot of people will look at me and say, ‘How could he ever do that?’ but for those who respectfully ask me about it and say, ‘How could you?’ my response to that is ‘Who do you love more than anybody?’ And I say, ‘Well, what would happen if that individual that you love more than anybody started to go another way and started inviting you and encouraging you to go with them?’ Would you be able to easily say, ‘Goodbye, you’re out of my life?’” 

No doubt, it is a difficult dilemma. Many of us probably would have responded the same way that Kevin did. But it seems that Kevin’s desire to stay connected with his wife overrode his best judgment about his family’s needs and moral responsibility. At one point Kevin said he was “1000% compliant” to what Ruby and Jodi told him to do with the hope that he could save his marriage. This willingness to do anything to preserve a relationship (or what’s left of it) is a dangerous place to be.

In 2 Nephi 2:14, Lehi teaches that God “created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.” When we outsource moral responsibility to other people in the hopes of gaining or keeping their approval, we give up our birthright as beings who are free to act. As painful as it may sometimes be, there should be lines that we are not willing to cross—not for our friends, not for our family members, not for people who threaten us with rejection for following our conscience.

This can be difficult because belonging and connection are innate, natural human needs. Family and friends can form the fabric of our lives. We need each other to thrive. At the same time, we must remember the first great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). All other desires or goals are secondary. The desire for approval must not lead us to outsource our moral responsibility.

Following Flawed Influencers 

Finally, it seems that Ruby and Kevin allowed themselves to be unduly influenced by Jodi. The Franke’s (and many others) saw her as special, chosen—someone who had rare access to spiritual wisdom and knowledge. Jodi provided a kind of certainty and “answers” to issues that the Frankes were facing with parenting and life in general. (We note, in passing, that Jodi’s professional license had been suspended beginning in 2012 for unethical conduct. She was not a therapist in good standing when she began to advise the Franke’s.) Tragically, the more the Frankes let Jodi in, the more their lives fell apart.

Reflecting these broader cultural trends, Latter-day Saint influencers have also expanded their reach, amassing millions of followers and using these platforms to share content (hopefully positive) ranging from therapy to homesteading—all through a faith-centric lens. Their growing influence even led to 2024 being dubbed ‘the year of the Mormon women.’

President Russell M. Nelson has addressed the importance of managing our digital consumption and being mindful of online influences. Addressing the youth in June 2018, he challenged them to embark on a seven-day social media fast. He encouraged them to observe how this hiatus could affect their priorities and deepen their relationship with the Savior. Later, he extended a similar invitation to the women of the Church asking them to participate in a ten-day social media fast, emphasizing the need to reduce distractions and focus on spiritual matters. He also invited men to review their online habits in an inspirational call to do and “be better”. The message is clear: the world is full of competing voices vying for our attention, but we can be intentional about what we allow to shape us. We don’t have to be slaves to the algorithms.

It’s also worth remembering the non-digital ways we can influence others. Carol reflects on her own mother’s impact:

She wasn’t famous. Seeking attention wasn’t her way. But she had a unique gift for finding those in need of friendship, welcoming them into our family circle, and right up to our dinner table. In later years, I’ve come to understand more clearly the sadness she carried and the insecurities she battled. She struggled with her image, yet she continued to offer herself—first to bring me and my siblings into the world and then to care for us through a lifetime of devotion.

I can’t begin to count the hours she spent giving us rides to activities, wrangling younger siblings while watching me perform in a play, or with my shaky, squeaky violin in a school orchestra. Then, hurrying home to make dinner (which, to my shame, we often complained about), only to still manage to pull us into folding clothes and keeping the house clean—ensuring it was always comfortable enough for friends to drop by unannounced.

She had one driving passion—one she shared with us, imbuing us with a love for family history. As the only child and only member of the Church in her ancient family line, she breathed life into our ancestral past and inspired me to consider my own legacy.

She fought her battle with cancer to her last ragged breath, not in defiant resistance, but in love.

She didn’t curate a “feed” or seek validation through likes and shares. She simply lived—a life of sacrifice, service, and steadfast love. She wasn’t perfect, and she would be frustrated by any attempt to paint her that way. But somehow, her unseen efforts—those small, daily acts—shaped me more than any algorithm ever could.

My mom built something real, something lasting—she built me.

In a world obsessed with platforms and personas, algorithms may decide what appears on our screens, but we decide whether or not to look. We can seek out influences (digital and otherwise) that are quiet, unpolished, unseen by the masses—but real. We each have agency.

At the very end of Devil in the Family, Kevin reflects on the meaning of his story. He concludes by saying, “Ultimately, it’s a story of faith. If you put your faith in the wrong hands, you can lose everything.” As he says these words, the viewer is flown over a statue of the angel Moroni on the top of an LDS temple. The producers’ implication seems clear: the Frankes trusted their religion too much, and this led to their downfall.

That is not how we would sum up these lessons. What stands out is not just the cautionary tale of a family unraveling under pressure but the deeply personal challenge of self-examination. It is easy to watch someone else’s story and opine about where they veered from their values. It is far more difficult to be honest about where we might be doing the same.

If we care more about reflecting God’s image than curating our own, we will be less tempted to mask our struggles with a performance of perfection. If we have the integrity to act in ways that align with our values—even when it’s inconvenient or unpopular—we will be less likely to hand over our moral responsibility to others. And if Christ and His teachings are our greatest influence, we will be less susceptible to the voices that would distort, manipulate, or diminish our ability to truly love and lead.

The devil gets in where there is pretense, where there is self-deception, and where there is fear. But where there is truth, integrity, and divine influence, he has no foothold. That is the lesson worth taking from this story—and it is one of faith.

The post Influenced: The Troubling Familiarity of Ruby Franke’s Story appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Book-length fulfillment of this prophecy began a decade later as Eber D. Howe published Mormonism Unveiled (1), followed by hundreds of antagonistic broadsides, pamphlets, and publications by others containing basically similar messages—across 190-plus years. 

Among all these Church-hostile publications, it appears that none experienced a more rapid or broader public distribution and impact than what is now known as The CES Letter, authored by Jeremy Runnells—which soared across the Internet in 2013. Scholars familiar with its content, however, immediately recognized that few, if any, of its accusations were new, and most had already been repeatedly refuted. In fact, a large part of the essay, further analysis confirms, reflects a condensed version of writings and concepts that the author borrowed or rephrased from other long-time, prominent anti-Latter-day Saint writers.

We observe at least four forces that converged in 2013 to create an ideal atmosphere and opportunity for such an antagonistic 75-page publication to easily fill cyberspace with its anti-Christ, anti-Restoration allegations. This perfect storm resulted from:

1. The expanding popularity of the Internet and the establishment of PDF as a document standard—within a society still naive to its full implications. 

2. The disbanding at Brigham Young University (BYU) of the Foundation of Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) in 2010 and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s subsequent pivot away from the day-to-day defense of the Church. 

3. The lack of easily accessible and comprehensive discussions of subjects like those raised in The CES Letter, now available in the Gospel Topic Essays, that thoughtfully explain many complicated and sometimes controversial issues. 

4. The CES Letter’s clever wrapping of a set of concise arguments against the faith in a personal story—that being a supposed search for truth and subsequent betrayal by the Church—all contained within a compact, easy-to-distribute PDF document. (This fourth dynamic was discovered to be false and documented at length in Michael Peterson and Jacob Hess’s Were These Ever the Sincere Questions of an Earnest Truth Seeker?)

1. The Expanding Popularity of the Internet and the Establishment of PDF as a Document Standard.

The World Wide Web rapidly expanded in popularity and accessibility during the 2000s. By 2013, nearly three-fourths of the inhabitants in developed countries had access. 

During this same period, electronic publishing technology also expanded, thus allowing for the rapid distribution of electronic books and articles in ways previously unimaginable. Critical to this development was a computer program that produced a fixed-page-layout file format that could be opened in a variety of computer operating systems without losing its book-like qualities—including pagination.

In 1993, Adobe Systems led the programming competition with its Portable Document Format (PDF). After guarding it as intellectual property for fifteen years, Adobe displayed shrewd business logic in 2008 by offering the PDF as an open format (PDF 1.7)—allowing software developers worldwide to develop and provide tools for the creation, modification, viewing, and printing of PDF files if they adhered to Adobe’s original PDF specifications. 

Also, in 2008, Adobe offered its Reader 2.0 as a free download. This enabled web designers and authors to offer their publications as PDF downloads with an accompanying link to the free PDF viewer. Readers could easily download both the app and the book or article and view the original text as it was designed to be read.

Advanced distribution capability. Soon other free PDF viewers became available, and popular Internet search engines incorporated them into their browsers (2).

A new world began to emerge, empowering individual authors and content creators to distribute their views instantly, in increasingly persuasive ways, across a mammoth distribution channel: the World Wide Web. 

The reality is that before the early 2010s, it would have been difficult to widely distribute any computerized books or extensive articles such as The CES Letter. Documents circulated as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect files would have been susceptible to formatting changes when the files were opened, as well as alteration from other readers.  

Facebook and Reddit as catalysts. Another online dynamic occurred simultaneously with the PDF expansion: the increasing popularity of Facebook. The year he introduced his CES Letter, Jeremy Runnells expanded his online footprint by creating a “CESLetter” Facebook page. Begun in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook social networking service had over 1.3 billion users by 2014. It was a natural fit for Runnells since people familiar with Facebook would likely understand how to download a PDF file and viewer. So, he advertised his essay on the platform, with a link to a separate location where a PDF version of the document could be downloaded. He also used Reddit, another forum social network, to provide updates regarding his personal saga with the Church.

The rapid growth of Reddit contributed to the spread of Runnells’ letter. By the 2010s, Reddit was expanding its footprint on the internet—with 46 million users by 2012 and 90 million by 2013—exceeding 174 million users in 2014. Through a Church-hostile Reddit pseudonym —Kolobot—the author attached drafts of his essay, promoted it, attacked critics, crowdsourced material for responses to rebuttals of his essay, and advertised his website.

2. The disbanding at Brigham Young University of The Foundation of Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) in 2010 and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s subsequent pivot away from the day-to-day defense of the Church. 

The second factor catalyzing this perfect storm involved the dissolution of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) at BYU. Organized by Dr. John W. Welch in 1979, FARMS consisted of an informal collaboration of academics devoted to Latter-day Saint historical scholarship. 

But this foundation later became more institutional. In 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints formally invited FARMS to join Brigham Young University—stating: “FARMS represents the efforts of sincere and dedicated scholars. It has grown to provide strong support and defense of the Church on a professional basis.”(3) Yet less than a decade afterward, there was a significant change, as the entity was subsumed by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship (NAMI) and effectively disbanded.  

“Those guys were warriors.” Prior to this, FARMS’ association with BYU (sponsored and funded by the Church, during the 2000s) gave these advocates of the faith much-needed backing and resources that contributed to an ever more effective defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Those guys were warriors,” remarked one prominent Church defender—a common sentiment. It seemed that whenever any new book or conspicuous article appeared on the scene attacking the Church, FARMS was there, with effective and credible scholarship, sourcing, and writings to document and defend the truth.

The effectiveness of this concentrated defense of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a strong professional, academic, and faith foundation was powerfully illustrated in the aftermath of Grant Palmer’s 2003 anti-Latter-day Saint book: An Insiders View of Mormon Origins. This volume was released on the market with great fanfare by Signature Books (known for its longtime publication of works that criticize the core doctrines and principles of the Church, the policies revealed through modern prophets, and the history of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ).

The FARMS Review—a twice-yearly journal comprised of peer-reviewed articles from many faithful scholars defending the Church—took notice.  

On June 1, 2004, four separate reviews of Mr. Palmer’s book were simultaneously published in the journal’s “Review of Books.” All of these “heavy hitter” reviewers possessed PhDs, several of them in history. All had significant academic experience and fluency with the subject material and the specific areas of attack Palmer made upon the Church of Jesus Christ—demonstrated by the strength of their reviews: 

• Dr. Stephen C. Harper’s Trustworthy History? incisively demonstrated the manipulation of data and evidence Mr. Palmer engaged in to support his Church-hostile thesis while highlighting significant scholars, topics, and sources the critic had selectively ignored. In his well-referenced critique, this historian summarized Palmer’s book as “a pitiful failure to write credible history” through a failure to “obey rules of historical methodology,” concluding that the work was “not trustworthy history.”
• Dr. Davis Bitton’s The Charge of a Man with a Broken Lance (But Look What He Doesn’t Tell Us) remarked on Palmer’s claim to be an “insider” in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While “wearing the toga of a retired institute director” Palmer had “lived a life of deceit for many years” by remaining affiliated with the Church’s education system while he was a closet doubter. Bitton also revealed that Palmer “presents information as his own that is straight out of previous anti-[Latter-day Saint] works” (including Jerald and Sandra Tanner), “publish[es] them within the covers of a newly minted book,” and thereby “tries to shock the reader”—while ignoring incredible amounts of scholarly work disproving his claims. 
• Prying into Palmer by Dr. Louis C. Midgley focused on evidence that “Insider’s Guide” is actually based on a previous work from Palmer written over a decade earlier under the pseudonym “Paul Pry Jr” and titled New York Mormonism—a work that was not “the product of original research, but instead, a compendium of anti-[Latter-day Saint] arguments … infatuated with … many of the affidavits in E.D. Howe’s notorious Mormonism Unveiled (1834), all of which [Palmer] wove together with opinions drawn from some marginal contemporary critics of the faith.” Midgley’s review then laid waste Palmer’s bizarre theories about the origin of the Book of Mormon.  
• A One-sided View of Mormon Origins by Dr. Mark Ashurst-McGee effectively refutes every major section of Palmer’s book and summarizes it as “a piece of disingenuous advertising.” The book, he argues, “intends to present Palmer as a seasoned gospel teacher who will shepherd those who wish to learn more about the origins of their faith” but then seeks to “discredit the integrity of the foundational claims upon which the faith of the Saints rests.” McGee again reveals that the book “fails to follow the basic standards for historical methodology.”

Six months later, on January 1, 2005, the FARMS Review released a fifth review of Palmer’s book: Asked and Answered: A Response to Grant H. Palmer, by Dr. James B. Allen—focusing on Palmer’s individual criticisms of the Book of Mormon. Allen references several scholarly studies that counter much of the author’s attack while demonstrating the ancient text’s truthfulness. He also effectively takes apart the author’s odd theories surrounding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. 

This barrage of academic artillery in five separate academic reviews effectively illustrated the shallowness of one anti-Latter-day Saint book—leaving it essentially impotent. Over subsequent years, Grant Palmer’s book was generally ineffective in persuading others to leave the faith or remain away from it—except among some of the more uninformed or already hardened detractors of the Church. Its faith-draining influence, over time, became a blip. 

What if FARMS had been around when The CES Letter was written? Imagine what likely would have happened with the 75-page CES Letter had the same FARMS weaponry still been in place in the spring of 2013. We can easily see each of the essay’s seven or eight areas of attack upon the faith answered by a separate academic scholar—all released simultaneously. Then each of these potential refutations would likely be followed by its author’s comments or interviews, online discussions, and further dissemination. 

The impact of such FARMS activity might have been substantial in reducing the widespread and corrosive effects of Jeremy Runnells’ writings.

In the years following the release of Runnells’ letter, it’s true that several major refutations were eventually published, including FAIR’s initial online response in 2013, (4) Bamboozled by the CES Letter by Michael R. Ash (2015), A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter by Jim Bennet (2018), and Sarah Allen’s The CES Letter Rebuttal (2021-2022). Allen’s voluminous work not only painstakingly refuted the entire contents of Runnells’ writings but also exposed the manipulation techniques and background deception of the essay. Yet this series of responses was sporadic and irregular—lacking the concentrated efficiency and cohesion for which FARMS was known.  

Different emphasis from scholars. Clearly, not every Latter-day Saint scholar has an appetite for raising their voice in a defensive posture concerning the faith—with some scholars feeling little interest in defending the Church generally or at all. Among those who do show such a willingness, there are varying levels of engagement—ranging from those who write things about the faith while mainly leaving it to others to repackage them to be of use to everyday members, to those scholars who identify current, specific claims against the Church from specific authors and refute those particular claims on a day-to-day or real-time basis.

Never shying away from controversial subjects or defending the Church’s official and unofficial positions, scholars at FARMS were consistently among the most actively engaged in the most relevant issues and conflicts.

A vacuum begins. Nevertheless, in the years after disbanding FARMS in 2010, BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute (NAMI) unfortunately also chose to discontinue this level of day-to-day Church defense—even taking the step of removing archived FARMS articles from its website.

Yet among all the podcast notes, titles, and publications of the Maxwell Institute available between 2013 and 2015—right when the popularity of The CES Letter ballooned—we could not identify any addressing the specific issues raised in Runnells’ essay.   

Hesitation among some believing academics. The reluctance of any believing scholar to actively defend the Church is perhaps understandable. Religious authors who write for a religious audience can explore ideas in the relative comfort of a mutually accepted paradigm regarding the supernatural. But when religious authors advance narratives that defend the reality of the supernatural before a more pluralistic audience, they risk professional disrespect, ad hominem attacks from activist naturalists, and public notoriety (positive from believers and negative from secularists). 

In short, defending the Church’s truth claims positions the scholarly defender against critical voices who, for the most part, have received broad popularity and society-wide endorsement. Even at Church-owned universities, performing extensive apologetic work may be less advantageous to tenure advancement than publishing articles in respected secular peer-review journals or authoring books printed by prestigious university presses.

More recently, scholars at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute have expanded the definition of “apologetics” to include scholarship that anticipates believers’ questions and responds accordingly. “Good traditional apologetics,” according to this expanded definition, “leaves neither the Book of Mormon nor ancient history in the state it found them. It transforms both in the name of faith, seeking insight and understanding.”

While good things are afoot at Maxwell and other faith defense organizations like Scripture Central, and FAIR, this relative vacuum during the early 2010’s may have contributed to some unfortunate effects. 

Over subsequent years, youth and young adults oftentimes starkly confronted the claims of The CES Letter, along with other online church attacks contained in the writings and podcasts of other prominent church critics—absent the scholarly strength FARMS could have provided. Soon after FARMS was dissolved, the Church of Jesus Christ essentially lost its primary institutionally-supported defense organization—leaving FAIR and other good organizations, such as The Interpreter Foundation (begun in 2012), to soldier on to try to make up the difference.

3. The lack of easily accessible and comprehensive discussions of subjects like those raised in The CES Letter, now available in the Gospel Topic Essays, that thoughtfully explain many complicated and sometimes controversial issues.

During the first 170 years of the existence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, leaders largely led the Church’s narrative. When most members learned religious teachings and doctrines from official sources like the scriptures, manuals, and books written by believers, critics often struggled to obtain an audience among the Latter-day Saints using the media of the times.

By the 2000s, the rise of the Internet impacted the Church’s communications with its members and conveyance of its message—with critics’ vigorous criticisms and negative evaluations over the web impacting the faith and necessitating an adjustment in educational efforts.

General caution and care. There are at least two good reasons for care and caution in how Church history is shared: 

• Milk before meat. Even before the Church was organized, the Lord Jesus Christ warned Joseph Smith not to give “meaty” doctrines to those who could only tolerate milk, “lest they perish” (D&C 19:22; see also 1 Cor. 3:2). Due to the fledgling faith of some learners, the revelation emphasized that certain more complicated principles and practices should only be taught under the right conditions. Members’ natural hesitancy on complex and controversial matters was exploited by some online, who accused the faith of a lack of transparency.    
• Limited teaching time. A second factor is the limited amount of time and opportunities the Church has to teach the membership the core gospel of Jesus Christ. Within relatively short Sunday meetings, there is an understandable prioritizing of core doctrine that results in a curriculum of scripture, doctrine, and history that builds faith yet naturally makes the controversies and other complex subjects secondary.

Gradual release of additional resources. During this rise of critical voices on the Internet, many documents in the Church’s vast archives had yet to be cataloged, analyzed, and used to clarify various aspects of Church history. 

The Joseph Smith Papers project (formalized in 2008 and completed in 2023) provided additional human resources to inventory pertinent archival data, and voluminous numbers of new documents were added to the official catalog. However, for some time, such content remained largely unknown to researchers, church leaders, and members. For example, as independent scholar Don Bradley researched the subject of plural marriage in 2009, Church historians occasionally directed him to recently cataloged manuscripts dealing with that sensitive subject. In several cases, Bradley appeared to be the first external researcher to evaluate their contents. Today the Church’s documentary holdings are freely offered to the public and often as digital downloads. Josephsmithpapers.org is a treasure trove of easily accessible historical information. 

Years before The CES Letter was released, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognized the need to expand the Church’s resources to members, specifically to produce “straightforward, in-depth essays” on a number of more complicated topics. So the Church commissioned historians and other scholars to gather accurate information from many different sources and publications and place it in the Gospel Topics section of ChurchofJesusChrist.org. The first of these essays was released in the fall of 2013, just six months after Runnells’ letter was made public. Between 2013 and 2015, thirteen Gospel Topic Essays were added to the Church’s official website. Surely this was an inspired development, coinciding with Runnells’ aggressive marketing of his writings during those same years.

Certainly, an earlier introduction to the Church’s essays may have inoculated members of the Church from the antagonistic “CES Letter”—with adequate time to absorb their contents well before Runnells’ essay’ first became public. Lacking such prior understanding, it’s easier for a believer to be unsettled by an antagonist’s ‘gotcha’ question—“Did you know X…” “Why do you think Y happened?”—in a way that leads to doubt.    

4. The CES Letter’s clever wrapping of a set of concise arguments against the faith in a personal story—a supposed search for truth and subsequent Church betrayal—all contained within a compact, easy-to-distribute PDF document.  

As already noted, this fourth dynamic that contributed to the wide dissemination of Runnells’ essay—the false nature of the origin and purpose of his letter—was outlined in detail in Michael Peterson’s analysis with Jacob Hess, “Were These Ever the Sincere Questions of an Earnest Truth Seeker?”

After reviewing the overwhelming evidence documented there, they concluded: 

“Unmistakably, across thousands of affected readers, it was this shiny wrapper of an “earnest questioner” that gave the so-called letter its broadcastable power, functioning as a compelling personal and online brand. For many, it was simply too hard to resist the allure of Runnells’ professed need to get “faith crisis” questions answered by the Church, followed by the presumed heartbreak of official Church silence in response.

From the scope of the actual online record, it is patently obvious that Jeremy Runnells constructed his so-called “CES Letter” not to get personal “questions” and “concerns” answered—his pretense—but as a device to rocket ship his carefully planned, full-throated public attack upon the faith of those who believe in Jesus Christ and His restored Church. 

While intentionally preparing his faith-attacking essay to be disseminated over the web and through email (from its beginning), he was long past any sincere inquiry stage of religious doubt.”  

The Improbability of Another Perfect Storm

In the years following the release of The CES Letter, additional copycat letters followed and became available online. These authors may have expected their refined antagonistic offerings to supplant, or at least replicate, The CES Letter’s reach. Yet additional technology shifts and more easily available faithful resources caused the perfect storm to lift—The CES Letter’s homemade rocket launch to stratospheric levels, its dominance and widespread notoriety not only faded but now increasingly looks unlikely to recur. 

Moreover, the information technologies employed to defend the Church’s truth claims have dramatically diversified and expanded. For example, the Church’s history is open to anyone to research using literally tens of thousands of pages of full-text primary sources available at the Church History Library and Joseph Smith Papers Project websites. How’s that for transparency?

Independent Defenders

There is still more positive change in the air. Although no institutionally sponsored organization has adopted FARMS’s comprehensive everyday efforts to defend the Church regarding specific accusations, several independent 501(c)(3) corporations have appeared or expanded their efforts to fill the gap. Their work not only defends the faith but tends to be devotional and inoculative. 

Specifically, at least five organizations have demonstrated a willingness to actively defend the Church’s teachings and doctrines: FAIR, the Interpreter Foundation, the More Good Foundation (including Saints Unscripted and Public Square Magazine), Scripture Central (including Book of Mormon Central and Pearl of Great Price Central), and the B. H. Roberts Foundation (Mormonr). In particular, Saints Unscripted and B. H. Roberts Foundation give youth and young adults interesting and concise material and persuasive advocacy in defense of the Church. 

Besides these organizations, increasing numbers of other websites, podcasts, and YouTube channels provide useful dialogue and insights for those encountering The CES Letter and other anti-Latter-day Saint claims, including The Stick of Joseph, Thoughtful Faith, Ward Radio, and Let’s Get Real with Stephen Jones.  Within the Church, hundreds, if not thousands, of believers have taken to heart the instruction, “It becometh every man [and woman] who hath been warned to warn his neighbor” (D&C 88:81). As these members of the Church recognize the deceptions, half-truths, and misrepresentations promoted by critics, they share their own cautions and witness of Jesus Christ with those who will listen. 

Other channels and podcasts strengthen faith by profiling inspiring stories of those who have returned to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after stepping away for a season, such as the Comeback Podcast, Called to Share, and Faith Matters.

The good news is this: the days are largely over when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and defenders of the faith need ever be caught again in a reactive state or behind their quick-footed online adversaries. There is far too much current, easy access to voluminous, reliable sources defending the faith of Christ for that to happen. 

Though the claims in Runnells’ essay, as noted, have now been exhaustively and directly refuted many times—with content largely echoing accusations that had been repeatedly addressed in the past by Latter-day Saint scholars. Upon its initial release, however, that alluring doubt bomb just happened to be in the right place at the right time, where random but synergistic forces increased its impact far beyond the significance of its message. 

The internet “icon” ultimately faded. By rising in popularity so quickly, The CES Letter morphed into the world of antagonistic iconography, becoming, for some detractors a symbol of imagined anti-Latter-day Saint domination. One of the stranger things we witness even today is some who still stubbornly cling to Runnells’ essay and the background storylines behind it, fruitlessly attempting its defense—perhaps partly because upon that shaky foundation, they based or reinforced their decision to step away from the faith.  

Our observation, in summary, is that the “perfect storm” dynamics that enabled Runnells’ “CES letter” to go viral have changed fundamentally. The Church defense community today is better positioned than ever to truly fulfill the charge given to us all by President Jeffery R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: “to define, document, and defend the faith.” (7)

Then one day in the future, when the truth of God has indeed “penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear,” the world will know that Joseph Smith spoke the truth when despite the ominous possibilities he foresaw (“persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame”), he nonetheless testified that “no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing” and declared that “the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent … till the purposes of God shall be accomplished.”

Resources:

1. The term “Mormonism,” employed by antagonists as a substitute name for the restored Church of Jesus Christ, was “invented in the 1830’s by bitter detractors, as Michael wrote earlier, and “used in the same way the word ‘Nazarenes’ labeled the members of the ancient church of Christ—hurled forth as an epithet, a denigration, a sometime demonization, and consistently employed for the same purposes by their successor critics for over 190 years, even to this day.”

2. For example, the Google Chrome browser added a PDF viewer in late 2010. Microsoft Internet Explorer (final version 11 released in 2013) never included a PDF viewer, but add-on viewers were allowed. Microsoft Edge’s first release in 2015 included its own PDF viewer. Google Chrome version 6.0.472 was released September 2, 2010 (https://google.fandom.com/wiki/Chrome_version_history)—though the PDF reader needed to be manually chosen as the default position or it would not load on startup.

3. See “Farms Joins BYU Community,” Y Magazine, Spring 1998 Issue.

4. FAIR stands for “Faithful Answers, Informed Response, and is a nonprofit organization devoted to sharing the gospel and defending the restored Church of Jesus Christ, through its websites, books, and conferences. FAIR’s writers have accomplished remarkable work, considering they are all volunteers. Most are not academic historians with advanced degrees, but lay writers. These church defenders might be characterized as a modestly funded, scattered collection of researchers who all have day jobs, church callings, and families. They use their precious discretionary hours refuting attacks against both the Church and believers.

5. “Seven Questions for MSR editor Spencer Fluhman,” (March 27, 2013) at https://mi.byu.edu/seven-questions-for-spencer-fluhman/.

6. For instance, they discuss at least three helpful factors in considering the Church’s early practice of plural marriage. First, it has scriptural and biblical roots. Second, it is a spiritual principle. Third, it has been initiated or discontinued at the Lord Jesus Christ’s discretion. When these elements are understood, as well as its true history and practice, along with the family solidarity and other benefits within the early modern Church, then the topic need not be a stumbling block to faith and testimony.

7. The Second Half of the Second Century Address,” BYU, August 23, 2021.

The post Doubt in the Digital Age: How a Perfect Storm of Random Forces Inflated the CES Letter Beyond Its Merits appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

At the core of Reiss’s argument is the assumption that Trump equates to Nazism. However, while many scholars recognize the problematic aspects of Trump’s rhetoric and policies, there is a broad consensus that he does not fit the definition of a fascist, much less a Nazi (and yes, there are distinctions between Italian Fascism and the racialized National Socialism of Nazi Germany, both of which differ substantially from Trump’s crude mix of conservative nationalism and populism). If experts don’t agree on Trump’s classification within the broader spectrum of generic fascism, it is irresponsible to label him specifically as a Nazi and imply that Latter-day Saints are guilty by association simply for voting for him.

Further, focusing on this one data point lacks nuance and fails to consider the broader attitudes of Latter-day Saints toward immigration, which tend to be favorable, particularly among those who have served missions. 

Put simply, the survey results do not reflect the complete picture. Utah has been designated a sanctuary state by the Salt Lake City Field Office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), largely due to the cultural and political influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scholars note that while Utah is a very conservative state, its approach to immigration differs from national trends. Voters in Utah (and Latter-day Saint voters in general) often support strong federal border policies while advocating for a more compassionate stance at the state and local levels toward long-term illegal immigrants, reflecting a desire to balance the Church’s teachings on immigration which state that “every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders,” while also stating that “Families are meant to be together. Forced separation of working parents from their children weakens families and damages society.” A specific example of this in Utah was in 2011 when the Church lobbied for HB 116, a compassionate alternative immigration bill to more punitive bills being passed in states like Arizona. Evidence from voter polls suggests the Church’s lobbying efforts and public statements were effective in swaying the attitudes of Utah voters who identified as “very active” in the Church.

Lastly, Reiss references David Conley Nelson’s controversial book, Moroni and the Swastika, to argue that Latter-day Saints “accommodated” the Nazi regime. However, relying solely on this source is problematic; Nelson’s work has been taken to task for its polemical approach and sloppy scholarship. German Studies scholar Jonathan Green wrote a devastating two part review of the book pointing out gaping holes showing that Nelson misrepresents the research he cites and he makes audacious claims where the historical record is simply silent. Grant Harward is also critical, agreeing with Green that Nelson is overly polemical and that he overstates his case when he argues that German Latter-day Saints were uniquely accommodating to the Nazis compared to other religious groups. To be clear, neither scholar denies that there were Latter-day Saints who were Nazis or that the Church made mistakes in how they dealt with the Nazis. They only take issue with Nelson’s attempt to paint church leaders and German saints during WWII in the worst possible light when the historical data does not merit that conclusion. 

Additionally, newly discovered documents from the B.H. Roberts Foundation challenge Nelson’s conclusions. These records reveal that only 5% of German Latter-day Saints were members of the Nazi Party, compared to 10% of the general population. Joseph Goebbels banned James E. Talmage’s Articles of Faith for being too pro-Jewish, and Gestapo officials categorized Latter-day Saints as a “Sekte”—a designation that framed them as a cult to be monitored for anti-state activities. Some Nazis even believed President Heber J. Grant was a “Jewish millionaire” who controlled the banks in Utah. Gestapo officials were also aware of church leaders’ many statements condemning fascism and Nazism and categorized the Church’s teachings as subversive to the Nazi state. Their internal correspondences show that officials seriously considered banning the Church entirely but thought it unfeasible at the time due to the Church’s international connections.

In conclusion, Jana Reiss’s article misrepresents the motivations of Latter-day Saint conservatives, American conservatives, and the historical context of German Latter-day Saints under Nazi rule. Our political discourse is already fraught with polarization, and labeling those with whom we disagree as Nazis is unproductive. It is my hope that Reiss’s future discussions will embrace greater empathy and understanding toward those with differing views, especially toward her fellow co-religionists. Conservative Latter-day Saints are not going away, and she needs to learn to live with them without grossly misrepresenting their values and motivations.

The post How The Media’s Nazi Comparisons Fan the Flames of Division appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The Associated Press has written another story that highlights criticisms of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while misleading its readers and omitting the most important facts. 

This latest article was written by Hannah Schoenbaum. This is the same Hannah Schoenbaum who, in response to the April 2024 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ, wrote an article about the political issues that weren’t covered. 

That’s right, she wrote about what wasn’t talked about. 

But somehow, the AP’s editors assigned this same reporter to another story about the Church of Jesus Christ, and both she and her editors once again failed even basic journalistic standards.

Not to get too much into the weeds of sentence diagramming. But the article headline is that the temple had a “cool reception in Las Vegas.” The only way to read the “thousands of supporters and vocal opponents” sentence that fits with the headline is that there were at least similar numbers of supporters and opponents. But in fact, while there were thousands of supporters, there were only a few dozen opponents who came to the city’s planning commission meeting. 

The phrasing used here is purposefully misleading. 

City Council Member Francis Allen-Palenske, in whose district the temple will be built, reported that letters she got in favor of the temple outnumbered the opposition 5 to 1. The only other city council member to report was Nancy Brune, who said more than 90% of the mail she got was in favor of the temple. 

In other words, for those who voiced their opinion,  Las Vegas is overwhelmingly in favor of having a second temple of the Church of Jesus Christ in its boundaries.

But the AP’s article goes out of its way to ensure its readers don’t know these facts.

This pattern repeats itself throughout the story. The article reports that those who want to sue to stop the project “insist their concerns have nothing to do with the religious teachings” of the Church, but it fails to report on the frequent online abuse that was directed at Latter-day Saints in the lead-up to the temple. 

In fact, the same people who are now threatening to sue the city had put up an online petition against the temple. In that petition, those leading this opposition movement published “reasons to sign” that included:

• “I’m tired of taxpayer money going to creepy sexist cults.” 
• “WAKE-UP, YOU IGNORANT SO CALLED WORSHIPERS there are a lot better ways to spend your money.”
• “F*** building anything that supports their cause.”
• “The temples of this lunatic cult are an abomination.”
• “LDS are pagans. … They are not Christian in the sense of Christ’s Church.” 

This flagrant religious-based animus was a part of the public advocacy against the temple by those who now claim their concerns aren’t religious in nature. They never removed or repudiated these reasons to oppose the temple. But the AP report fails to include any of them. Reporting the claim that opponents aren’t biased against the Church while withholding this ample and easily available evidence to the contrary is journalistic malpractice. 

But this failure of basic due diligence continues. Perhaps the biggest problem with the article is how many complaints the author of the AP piece gave space for the opponents to make without any factual pushback or context. For example, the report included complaints that the temple will bring traffic without referencing the study completed before approval, which shows traffic will not be negatively affected. 

The report includes concerns that opposition locals are worried the temple will “change the dark-sky environment” but doesn’t mention that the closest designated dark-sky area to the proposed temple is more than two hours away. Nor does the article mention that the new temple’s location already has as much light pollution as downtown San Francisco.

The article reports that neighbors are complaining that the temple will block the view of Lone Mountain without reporting that this complaint is objectively untrue. Because opponents photoshopped misleading images of the temple covering the mountain, city officials went to the trouble of creating elaborate 3-D mockups, which demonstrated that no one’s view of the mountain would be blocked. These mockups are available for inspection but were evidently not consulted by the AP editors who approved this article for publication. 

And look at this deceptive phrasing. The author writes that the temple will be “Larger in size than the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.” But to anyone in the neighborhood who looks at the temple, it will be much smaller than the Notre Dame Cathedral. Its on-the-ground footprint will be less than half the size of Notre Dame, and the temple will be more than 100 feet shorter. So, how could the AP justify publishing this claim? Because Notre Dame is one story, and the temple will have three stories, the temple has more usable square feet, the type of measurement a real estate agent would use in selling a house—but an outright misleading claim in the context of how the building will impact the neighborhood. Again, the AP’s editors never bothered to fact-check this spurious claim. 

In a particularly duplicitous turn of phrase, the article’s author describes the area where opponents of the temple come from as “the rural foothills” without providing the context that this rural area is an island within suburban neighborhoods. By saying that the “opponents” of the temple are in the rural neighborhood, the article avoids having to report that the temple itself is outside of the rural zoning area. Why leave that out?

The author cited one homeowner saying he felt “steamrolled” but never mentioned that the Church announced the project’s location years in advance, opened up their own chapel for the homeowners to have a townhall meeting about it, and that according to Allen-Palenske the city had more additional townhall meetings about this project than they’ve had for any other building project. By any objective measure, it’s not the few opposition homeowners who have been steamrolled. Rather, it’s the article’s weak preconceived narrative that is steamrolling the facts on the ground. 

Evidently, the Associated Press believed that each of these complaints was worth reporting on but somehow didn’t believe that any of the context or facts regarding those complaints were worth reporting. I wonder why that is.

The conflict in Las Vegas is not the only part of the story where the AP conspicuously leaves out important context. For example, in Fairview, Texas, the mayor says the town will not be “bullied” by the temple’s proposed height of 159 feet, without mentioning that Fairview had approved a bell tower of 154 feet for the Methodist Church where the mayor’s son is a pastor. (Despite being approved, that tower has not yet been built.) 

To the article’s credit, it does quote leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ, but only in broad terms, never in response to the factually inaccurate or context-free claims it quotes from opposition leaders. In fact, despite the overwhelming majority of local Las Vegas homeowners wanting the temple, the article never quotes one.

When a journalist has a demonstrated inability to objectively cover a religious minority, any responsible outlet would find someone else.

Even if this article was written as an editorial, it would still not meet journalistic standards because of its purposefully misleading statements, but it isn’t even an editorial. It’s pretending to be news—and news for the Associated Press, which holds itself as a standard for objective reporting. Perhaps it’s time for the AP to find a reporter who is capable of upholding their standards in reporting about the Church of Jesus Christ—this isn’t it.

In the meantime, they would do well to retract the misleading report they filed and apologize for the lapses in their editorial process. The 80%+ of engaged Vegas residents who support the temple deserve that much.

The post The Associated Press’ Misleading Narrative on Las Vegas Latter-day Saint Temple appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Changes to the Temple Endowment

In January, the Church of Jesus Christ introduced significant changes to its temple endowment ceremonies, marking a continued evolution in these sacred rituals. These modifications are part of the Church’s continuous effort to refine and enhance these sacred rituals, making them more meaningful and accessible to its members.

New Abuse Research

In June, the most extensive research to date was conducted on abuse rates within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compared to other religious organizations. The recent Boy Scout of America abuse settlement provided a trove of data for researchers to scour. The Church of Jesus Christ had a 75% lower abuse rate than average, leading to an increase in attention to the effective solutions the Church has implemented in this area.

New Apostle Called

In December, Patrick Kearon was called to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second most senior leadership body in the Church of Jesus Christ. Kearon will be the second current quorum member to be born in Europe after German-born Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He will also be the only quorum member without a college degree. Kearon is an adult convert to the Church and speaks Arabic.

Kearon replaces M. Russell Ballard, who passed away in November after serving as an apostle since 1985.

Humanitarian Aid

The Church of Jesus Christ continued its massive outlays in Humanitarian Aid spending. In March, a report was released stating the Church spent more than $1 billion in expenditures related to humanitarian aid in 2022—more than the governments of countries such as Great Britain, France, Canada, and Norway. Humanitarian aid in 2023 included relief for the conflict in the Middle East, funds to help solve malnutrition, improving schools’ electricity infrastructure in Uganda, and disaster relief efforts in countries such as Mexico and Turkey.

SEC Investigation Ends

In 2019, much news was written about the investment arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This year, the matter was resolved with the Securities and Exchange Commission levying a below-average fine for a filing error. The SEC fines about 5% of funds in its jurisdiction each year. This is the first fine in the fund’s twenty-three-year history.

Opposition to SUU Jeffrey Holland Commencement

In March, Southern Utah University invited Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ, to deliver its commencement address. Many students protested the invitation because of Holland’s perceived bigotry against the LGBT+ community. SUU never rescinded the invitation, but Holland ultimately declined because of health concerns.

Abuse Investigation Sputters

An extensive AP report in 2022 alleged the Church of Jesus Christ acted improperly in regard to an Arizona abuse case. In November of this year, the Arizona court cleared the Church of all wrongdoing. After continuing to investigate abuse related to the church for more than a year,  the author of the AP piece released his second story about abuse, which occurred more than twenty years ago and resulted in the perpetrator’s excommunication. 

Tim Ballard Falls from Grace

Popular Latter-day Saint influencer and founder of anti-trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad, Tim Ballard, faced multiple accusations over several months this year. He was accused of fraudulently representing the work of his organization, falsely claiming support from the Church of Jesus Christ, and sexually assaulting women in his organization. In September, the Church took the unusual step of releasing a statement that Tim Ballard was involved in “activity regarded as morally unacceptable.” It was later reported Ballard was excommunicated.

Gandhi-King-Mandella Peace Prize

Morehouse College, a historically black college, instituted the Ghandi-King-Mandella Peace Prize in 2023 to recognize extraordinary efforts in helping establish peace. Russell M. Nelson, the President of the Church of Jesus Christ, received the inaugural award in April. The citation praised Nelson for continuing the legacy of Joseph Smith in “affirming racial and ethnic equality” and working “tirelessly to build bridges of understanding rather than create walls of segregation.”

Missionary Growth

This year, it was announced that the total number of missionaries serving for the Church of Jesus Christ had reached 72,000, the most missionaries serving since the COVID-19 pandemic limited opportunities for missionary service. In conjunction with this, 36 new “missions” or geographic organizational units for missionaries were announced, meaning there are now 450 missions across the world, the most in the Church’s history. The Church’s tenth Missionary Training Center campus will open next month in Bangkok, Thailand.

The post Top 10 Latter-day Saint News Stories of 2023 appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

How could each of us seek to better understand the world so that we can fulfill our moral responsibilities to neighbors, strangers, and the needy through a more abundant, engaged civic life?

This piece addresses a small but necessary part of that puzzle: The news we trust matters.

1. Pay for the news, for not all news is alike.

2. Subscribe first to the local newspaper (or a suitable local nonprofit news outlet), then read internationally.

3. Subscribe to two or more print news sources that check each other and triangulate your biases.

4. Read news that corrects itself.

5. Read, don’t watch the news.

6. Don’t skip but do read the news in small doses.

7. Extend trust to professional news outlets independent of their politics.

8. Turn off triggering social media accounts and seek sources of sane correction instead.

9. Don’t be a fool or a cynic.

Pay for news

You’ve heard the phrase about social media platforms: “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” Well, the same could apply to other forms of information, including news: If we’re not buying it, our news is selling us, not the news.

Professional news outlets that trade in expensive, fact-checked reporting want our money or our taxes. If that sounds bad, just wait: The free news outlets want your brains. 

Free headlines are selling our attention to the highest bidder (whether advertiser or philanthropist). Zombie news sources include a wide range of free-to-read online sites with little apparent commitment to longstanding journalistic principles of fairness and facticity. Examples include sites like Newsmax, Breitbart, and Zerohedge aimed at Republicans, as well as the likes of Raw Story, Daily Kos, and Tony Michaels catering to Democrats, although, as many stress elsewhere, there is no political spectrum symmetry. Though their size and longevity protect them from some excesses, big broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable news both rely on the same basic business model.

So, avoid the zombie news sources that give us free stories and then eat our brains (so to speak) by profiting off of our cognitive patterns.

A healthy media diet starts with Reuters and the Associated Press. These are reliable, fact-checked sources that are supported by subscribing newspapers and broadcasters that use their content, so they are not pressured to traffic in attention-seeking. 

Expand your scope

U.S. national news takes up a disproportionate amount of our news attention. So subscribe to your local newspaper, and read internationally. 

Keep in mind that in many U.S. communities today, there are so-called “news deserts,” where sources for regular, professional news coverage have vanished. So you may find that some of the most energetic reporting on your community (or region) is being done by nonprofit digital startups. You can find a list of these nonprofits via FindYourNews.org. 

At the same time, read an international news source or two. Most of these fine international sources have a free subscription option: BBC, Al-Jazeera, Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Central Europe), Africa News, Kyiv Independent, Johnson’s Russia List, and the Sinocism Substack newsletter, among many others. 

Triangulate across your biases

Pay for two or more sources from opposing perspectives. The goal is not to zero out the headlines to political centrism. The goal is to understand reality in full light of its many asymmetries.

Do more than just reach across the political aisle. Subscribe to more than one professional source for regular reminders that reality has more than two sides.

Read news that corrects itself

What does one do with errors? When our news sources publish error corrections and coverage reflections, they are signaling their seriousness, not sloppiness or carelessness.

Here’s a recent NPR story, for example, where NPR covers its own coverage, acknowledging it, too, had boosted a story that turned out poorly, even tragically. By contrast, Newsmax apologized to Eric Coomer for falsely accusing him of messing with 2020 election results only after legal pressure forced it to do so — and then Newsmax dropped the retraction from its website.

The best bets are NPR, PBS, and the BBC. These fact-based reporting outlets include addendums, corrections, and discussions of previous mistakes. News sources that cover or deny their errors, their liability, or shift the blame are objectively worse because their pretense to credibility is their greater deceit. 

Read, don’t watch the news

On average, reading quality print news sources will leave us better informed than watching its equivalent on a screen.

Reading actively transforms visual symbols into interiorized voices. This process interrupts our reaction cycle and invites slow, careful processing that precedes interpretation. All news (including television news scripts) starts as a piece of writing. Cut out the middlemen and read higher-quality scripts yourself.

The average 10 words of fact-based print news are worth more than the average 10 minutes of free YouTube news commentary. Arguably far more. The first has to keep smart readers subscribed month after month for new insights. The second only has to keep us angry or entertained enough to sit through the next commercial break.

Read the news in small doses

If we find ourselves feeling stressed while on social media or thinking too much about the news, take a planned hiatus for a few weeks. When we come back, we can use a time-blocker app (like one of these) that lets us receive our news only once a day, say, for half an hour in the morning or evening.

Or, consider the “Slow News” movement. It encourages people to detox from news addiction — or limit ourselves to getting news just once a week.

News, after all, is a necessary ingredient in an informed citizen’s diet, but only a part. Remember this maxim? “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” That was how Michael Pollan famously cut through the complexity of what humans should eat to offer a simple prescription for maximal health. We think a similar injunction can work for news consumption: “Read news. Not too much. Mostly from fact-based professional sources that you pay for.”

Understand News Bias

News sources naturally have biases of many kinds. These biases influence how facts are presented and interpreted. But whether or not you can trust the facts themselves depends much more on how professional the news outlet is than its bias. 

 For example, Tim Ballard, a prospective candidate for the Utah Senate, continues to deny that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a statement denouncing him for “activity regarded as morally unacceptable,” despite the fact that the denunciation has been credibly and repeatedly confirmed by multiple sources.

His denial relies on attacking the messenger, Vice. Because Vice has a left-wing bias and a history of attacks on the Church, some falsely suggest the statement likely has been fabricated. This is wrong. Multiple sources have verified the denunciation. 

News organizations face liability and defamation suits for fabricating or falsely attributing statements. Professionals offer checkable slants and necessary facts at the same time. Not all criticisms may be dismissed as politically motivated, and indeed, so long as they are grounded in factual reality, not all politically motivated criticisms should be dismissed. (Pro tip: consider a newsletter like Tangle that summarizes the best arguments from left, right, and center on a big topic each day.) Especially consider those criticisms that correct our own politics: this is the way to sustainable civics. Don’t blame or dismiss serious news for having bias; expect it, observe it, and use that bias to improve and correct our own. 

Turn off social media

Social media springs traps in both extremes: Perhaps the only thing worse than a forum overrun by trolls is a univocal forum without any dissent at all. Social media companies profit off the ruinous fact that if they nudge us all into echo chambers, we have no grounds for realizing when our self-evident truths are neither self-evident nor true.

Unless one happens to be an expert or follow other experts on highly specific topics, log off of social media, get print news through subscriptions, and, at the least, heavily curate the social media feed to follow experts promoted for correcting themselves. Use restraint before we farm out our minds to algorithms that profit from leading us to bar-fight forums where our rage generates clicks or to unchecked echo chambers where the algorithm profits off our endless scroll. 

Be neither the cynic nor the fool

The cynic refuses to trust no matter what, and the fool trusts no matter what. Can we start by admitting our own biases and then working to check them? By working to correct these biases with self-correcting stories about reality, we might just build out a mental worldview to become better citizens.

The cynic believes that all news sources are bad. So anytime a cynic hears a claim that might correct their worldview that came through a news medium, they conclude that the information inconvenient to them is, therefore, wrong or suspect. 

Cynicism shuts our eyes to the simple fact that there must be better and worse ways to make sense of the world and that some news brands are empirically preferable to others. The quality of news cannot be reduced to my ideological convenience if I am to know its quality. 

Trust is fragile, self-reproducing, and essential to any functioning modern society. Undifferentiated news cynicism (which throws away the trustworthy stuff because something that calls itself “news” is a free brain-sucking zombie brand) frays our broader social fabric of trust, which is slow to mend itself once lost.

Get prepared

It’s early November 2023. Prepare today for what’s coming in the next twelve months. 

We can anticipate waves of wild claims about monstrous evils and utopian promises to fix society “nowadays.” These arguments will intensify the ongoing tornado of unnecessary negative partisanship. It’s coming. Buckle up, but don’t panic, and don’t react. Unsubscribe today from all the free toxic flotsam. Subscribe to a few politically complex fact-based news sources (especially the local paper).

We must take responsibility for our thoughts by seeking the sources and the methods worthy of trust by which we can self-correct and inform ourselves about “the world outside of our heads,” as Walter Lippmann quipped in his masterwork Public Opinion just over a century ago. 

There’s nothing easy about remaining curious enough to keep learning, confident enough to act responsibly and humbly in the face of uncertainty, and continuously watering the ground from which springs our commitment to try to use what we know and do to serve others.

What higher standard could exist for the maturing good citizen than self-correction?

To read the full version of the article: How To Make Sense of the World: The Case For Reading the News

The post Don’t Lose Your Head(Line): Making Sense of News in an Election Year appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The author quotes John Dehlin, a former member and frequent critic of the Church, as well as regular critic Sam Brunson. The only space she gives to voices on the other side is the official church spokesman and an area authority seventy. 

Who she doesn’t quote or interview are everyday Latter-day Saints in good standing like us who love and support the Church. Rather, our positions are guessed at or implied by the others quoted. Dehlin claims he knows that the Church’s supporters believe the claims are credible; Brunson says that members are no longer “giving the Church the benefit of the doubt,” and Huntsman says that his lawsuit isn’t for him but for remaining members of the Church.

Dear Michelle, we’re not difficult to find. And if you wanted to know how we feel, you didn’t have to rely on these critics’ guesses. You could have just asked.

But since you didn’t, we thought we would share to help round out your reporting.

The Broader Context 

Since the Nielsen and Huntsman cases have come to light, much information has become available and has helped shape the thinking of Latter-day Saints on these important issues.

The best estimates put the Church’s annual spending at about 4-5% of its savings. That level of spending of a fund’s principal may sound small to nonexperts, but it’s actually in line with what’s needed to continue to maintain the principal through inflation so that spending can stay consistent over time. It’s also precisely the level of spending most universities engage in relative to their endowments.

Nate Oman, a law professor at the College of William and Mary, writes:

The Church [of Jesus Christ] spends at exactly the rate it needs to spend in order to operate indefinitely. … It’s basically behaving exactly the way that we would expect that a large non-profit would behave. By the numbers, it’s normal.

We’ve also learned that Huntsman’s lawsuit has little legal merit and is little more than a publicity stunt. 

So while the Washington Post interviewees guessed that members of the Church were no longer giving the Church the benefit of the doubt, all of this additional information has had the opposite effect on many card-carrying members. 

A closer review of the available evidence has led many of us to conclude that the Church has been managing its finances spectacularly well. It continues to fulfill its religious mission, as evidenced by temple growth. And it continues to fulfill its charitable mission, evidenced by its more than $1 billion donation to humanitarian causes last year alone.

We’ve also learned a lot about the context of these matters. Yes, the Church’s fund is large, but on a per-person basis, it still pales in comparison to funds for non-profits like Harvard and Yale. We’ve learned hints about how wealthy other worldwide faiths are. And we’ve learned just how common honest filing mistakes in complex situations like this can be, along with how average this particular SEC fine was for an investment fund the size of Ensign Peak.

While we didn’t learn any of this from reporting in legacy media, they are readily available facts, and they could and should exert a significant influence on how the public views these matters.

Bona Fides?

Latter-day Saints don’t usually talk about “bona fides.” But church critics talk about it a lot as a way to seemingly give their complaints more credibility. 

In the same way, many have missed the anti-Mormon tropes in the Nielsen “whistleblower” report, such as “tapirs” that revealed the religious animus that motivated the complaint, Boorstein has missed this “bona fide” trope in her reporting this time. 

Everyday faithful Latter-day Saints don’t see our church membership in those terms. Sure, the Church has leaders, but we define ourselves not by the callings we’ve had or the callings our family members have had but by our faith and willingness to strive to keep the Lord’s commandments. 

There is a tremendous egalitarian spirit in the Church, where leaders who are the equivalents of Catholic priests and bishops one week are released and serve as Sunday School teachers or youth leaders the next. 

And in the pinnacle of our worship in the temple, we symbolize that egalitarian spirit by literally wearing the same clothing no matter the cachet of our worldly achievements. This helps explain why the idea that there is any kind of “royalty” in the Church is tremendously off-putting to faithful Latter-day Saints. 

Furthermore, decisions about how church resources are spent are made by prophets and apostles called of God, not self-appointed “Mormon Kennedys” who feel entitled to make those decisions because of their family connections.

How Loud Are Calls for Reform

You wrote that calls for reform are getting louder—and saying you based this on what you’ve seen in blogs and podcasts.

It should go without saying that this is simply not a reliable place to find information about how everyday Latter-day Saints are feeling—another reason why we wish you had just asked us. 

An article we published nine months ago explained:

The Latter-day Saint space online is an interesting one. The Church of Jesus Christ is hierarchical, and so the draw to a space with less institutional oversight was strong for those whose beliefs and behaviors put them on the fringes or outside of Latter-day Saint life, while those who felt well integrated felt no similar push to find emotional and religious validation in online communities. As a result, for nearly twenty years, the most prominent Latter-day Saint spaces online were in tension with the beliefs and practices of the church they sprung from. 

This phenomenon is well known by most practicing, faithful Latter-day Saints in the United States. Noting that Latter-day Saint podcasts and blogs are pushing for reform says little about how in-the-pew Latter-day Saints are feeling on the matter.

And ultimately, it’s reporting like yours that amplifies these voices and makes these calls for reform sound louder than they really are. If, instead, you spoke directly to supportive practicing Latter-day Saints and amplified our voices, these isolated calls for “reform” would not appear so notable. 

We Believe in Privacy

Jesus Christ, on whom we try to model our behavior, was always honest, but He was not transparent in the way the modern word is used. 

On the contrary, Jesus was careful about when, where, and to whom He told certain truths. When he healed, he often instructed those he healed to not tell anyone. 

And when Thomas pushed Jesus to explain where He was going away to, Jesus refused to answer, knowing that it was neither the time nor place to reveal that information.

Scholars have suggested that Christ sought to protect this information in order to prevent needless persecution of His ministry. 

There are many examples in scripture of the importance of sharing information at the right time and place: Abram’s relationship with Sara, Esther’s nationality, and the source of Samson’s strength.

Letting the wrong people know the wrong information can prove disastrous.

Even so, when organizations have arisen specifically to attempt to generate leaks about the Church, the information they’ve found has been pretty ho-hum. 

As everyday members, we are very comfortable with the Church having the flexibility to share the appropriate information at the appropriate time. 

A Historic Mission

Our conviction is that the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth and will need to continue its work until the end of the world.

Honestly, a common response from the kinds of Latter-day Saints you’re most likely to find at church on Sunday to the news about the Church’s resources has been relief or joy. Senator Mitt Romney typified this when he said he felt “Happy that [the Church of Jesus Christ] not only saved for a rainy day but for a rainy decade.”

This new phase of the Church’s growth has blessed us financially. We can attend a top-20 university for a price that doesn’t put our children into life-long debt. We have storehouses of food and welfare programs we can rely on in our lowest moments. And the financial burden on individual Latter-day Saints for items such as ward-budget has disappeared. The only financial requests left are those mandated by scripture, including tithes and offerings to the poor. 

The Church we love has cared well for its money and teaches us to do the same, and now it can fulfill the mission we want it to with less ongoing financial need from us. 

Old Tropes

We are mindful of the long history of anti-semites utilizing those who deconvert from Judaism in their efforts to marginalize and persecute the Jewish people. From Donin of Paris to Johannes Pfefferkorn to Otto Weininger. 

After his deconversion, Weininger wrote quite negatively about Judaism. His writings were later exploited by Nazis because of the fact that Weininger shared their anti-semitism despite having been Jewish himself. Adolph Hitler once referred to Weininger as one of the only “good Jews” he knew. Dietrich Eckart pointed to Weininger as one of the few Jews who recognized the “problem” of Jewishness. This pattern continues today as anti-semites weaponize the critiques of Jewish intellectuals like Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.

Latter-day Saints have their own history of deconverts being utilized by the powers that be to harm those who remain. John C. Bennett, Thomas Marsh, and William Law all provided the gristle of anti-Mormon persecution after their deconversions.

A powerful publication like the Washington Post seizing on former Latter-day Saints to criticize our faith for being too rich and powerful feels all too familiar for comfort. 

We understand that not every Latter-day Saint sees things in exactly the same way. And you are certainly free to tell the stories of anyone you choose. But when you are seeking to tell a story that genuinely represents what everyday Latter-day Saints are thinking, sure, ask our critics to guess, but please, ask us too.

The post The Latter-day Saints The Washington Post Forgot appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In the face of opposition and antagonism, it can be easy to feel alone. We want Latter-day Saint creators around the world to know that you are not alone. We are here, and we invite you to join us in advancing the cause of Zion by striving to create content guided by the following ideals: 

• Love. The Savior Jesus Christ outlined in no uncertain terms what it means to be one of his disciples: “By this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” We echo President Russell M. Nelson’s counsel that “Anger never persuades. Hostility builds no one. Contention never leads to inspired solutions. … [Christ’s] true disciples build, lift, encourage, persuade, and inspire—no matter how difficult the situation.” We strive to meet opposition with patience and respect instead of disdain and mockery. We recognize that discipleship is contingent, first and foremost, on loving others as Jesus loves us.
• Truth. We strive to create content that is accurate, honest, and in alignment with the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ. We feel not only a desire but also a responsibility to share accurate information about our religion while also challenging misinformation in kind and productive ways. We believe in seeking knowledge and guidance through a range of epistemological tools, including academic scholarship and also divine revelation (see Doctrine and Covenants 88:118, Matthew 16:17).
• Unity. We seek conversations that foster mutual understanding and edification. Where disagreement arises, we aim to disagree well without seeking to compromise the dignity of those we disagree with. When we perceive we’ve been mistreated by others, we strive to respond with patience and with an attitude of reconciliation (see Matthew 18:15). This applies to interactions with nonmembers, former members, and our fellow members of the Church. We stand for the ethical treatment of all of God’s children and recognize that our wrestle is not against flesh and blood, “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. …” 
• Boldness. We strive to create content that lives up to the advice found in Alma 38:11-12, “See that ye are not lifted up unto pride; yea, see that ye do not boast in your own wisdom, nor of your much strength. Use boldness, but not overbearance; and also see that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love. …” We do not believe that peacemaking and boldly standing up for what we believe to be right are mutually exclusive ideals. We strive to embody both.
• Faithfulness. We believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. We strive to create content that reflects faith in, and faithfulness to, Jesus Christ. We strive to follow His example and keep His commandments because we love Him (see John 14:15). We also believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Christ’s restored church in these latter days. We believe in the foundational truth claims of the Church. Our highest priority is to seek after and follow Jesus Christ, and we believe that the Church of Jesus Christ helps us to accomplish that.

This is not a list of attributes we pretend to have already mastered but rather a view of what we each aspire to work towards and become. We do not expect perfection of ourselves in this endeavor, but we do pledge sincere, repeated, and concerted effort until we might be made perfect in Christ. We are not official representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ, but we have covenanted at baptism to take upon ourselves the name of Christ. Thus, we will strive to humbly and confidently share the good news of the gospel far and wide, waiting for that fateful day when we hope to hear our Savior say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

If you are a Latter-day Saint content creator and wish to add your name to this document, please visit this link.

David Snell                           C. D. Cunningham                        Ryan Robb

Dan Ellsworth                      BJ Spurlock                                   Bekka McLawhorn

Bridger Coburn                   Jennifer Roach                              Michael Bendall

Nathaniel Givens                 Ryan Sorensen                              Shima Baughman

Mimi Bascom                       Becky Squire                                  Christian McOmber

Kurt Francom                      Jeffrey Thayne                               Sara Phelps

Kyle Smith                           Michael Peterson                           Lynnette Sheppard

Kempe Nicoll                       Ashly Stone                                     Rachel Rhien Tucker

Carol Rice                            Daniel Smith                                  Ashley Getz

Pam Peebles                        Jasmin Rappleye                           Rachel Cushing

Kai Elkins                            Brian Arnett                                   Skyler Sorensen

Guy Johnson        *             Fred Zundel                                    Jennie Moss

Ari Coleman                        Jeff Roundy                                   Shannon Jones

Jacob Ryder                        Greg Matsen                                   Beth Martineau

Evan D. Wirig                     Sonrisa Hasselbach                       Lydia J. Wadsworth

Beth Martineau                  Greg Matsen                                    Kamden Hainsworth

Jeff Roundy                         Jennie Moss                                    Fred Zundel

Jessica Spackman               Derek Crimin                                 Matthew Sailors

Elissa Nysetvold                 Daniel Sorensen                            Priscilla Davis

Dawn Anderson                  Jenny Panemeno                          Rachel Snider

Shelbi Stanfill                      Todd Bruce                                    Megan Dahl

Nate Russell                         Mandy Davis                                 Austin Smoot

Kjersti Christensen             Jacob Roundy                              Jacob Crapo

Benjamin Pacini                  Christie Hurst                              Amanda Anderson

Amber Pearce                      Tyler Mercer                                 Kaari Lines

Tyler Mercer                        Abby Watson                                 Madison C. Packer

Samuel Serrano                  Linsie Draper                                 Joey Vogl

Bryan Dorman                    Eliza Sewell                                    Richard  Durrant

Sean & M’Shelle Dixon       Kyle Jacobs                                    Jackson Howell

Ryan Mercer                        Mike D. House                              Jeffrey Law

Dustin Moore                      Kary Ann Hoopes                         Marianne Pierce

Charles Neal                       Lauren Draney                             Shima B. Baughman

Ashli Carnicelli                   Sarah Cook                                    Sonrisa Hasselbach

Jerald Simon                       Carrie Yost                                     Dawn Anderson

Brandon Brooks                 Crystal Minnick                             Shannon Andrews

Elisabeth Child                  Mandy Davis                                  Alysha Collier

Erin Guy                              Charles Stanford                          Melissa Draper

Leticia Dada                      Lynnette Sheppard                        Lita Merrill

Arianna Mortensen          Rhonda Steed                                Javier P. Potzsch

The post A Clarion Call For Cyber-Disciples appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Several states away, Utah’s quiet settlements tell a contrasting tale. Influenced by the press-driven moral panic against them and their faith, recently enacted federal laws are starting to take effect. Property held by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is confiscated, its leaders driven into hiding, and its men are imprisoned. 

The sensationalistic coverage a continent away caused real harm to Latter-day Saints.

This stereotype of Latter-day Saints as dangerous and sexually deviant continues to linger. One might hope that, over time, this style of sensational journalism would have diminished, and national outlets would have recognized Latter-day Saints as a part of the diverse spectrum of American faith. But this bias bares its head in press coverage even today. 

On May 14, 2023, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a story highlighting allegations of financial misconduct within the Church, reviving old unsubstantiated allegations, repackaged in a sensational narrative, providing an enticing spectacle for its millions of viewers.

A History of Media Gawking

From its inception in the early 19th century, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faced intense scrutiny and ridicule from the mainstream press. Founder Joseph Smith’s revelation of the Book of Mormon was dismissed as a fraudulent ‘Gold Bible’ scheme, and his visionary claims were met with skepticism. This hostile media portrayal seeded public suspicion toward the Church, setting a precedent for future depictions.

This trend of sensationalist coverage persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries. A notable instance is the Mark Hofmann forgery scandal in the 1980s, where the media fixated on the Church’s supposed gullibility, overshadowing Hofmann’s crimes. More recently, unverified rumors about sexual practices at Brigham Young University (BYU) were uncritically reported in a major national publication, painting Latter-day Saints as sexual deviants in a manner normally reserved for tabloids.

The media has also disproportionately emphasized the religious affiliation of Latter-day Saints involved in criminal cases. In 2019, when Steven Murdock, a local high councilor, was found guilty of voyeurism, his religious affiliation was highlighted in almost all coverage, even though no other article written about a voyeurism case mentioned the religion of the perpetrator for at least eighteen months prior. Even as victims, Latter-day Saints’ faith is gratuitously discussed, such as an Associated Press report on a tragic cartel ambush involving members of an off-shoot sect, that still managed to name-drop the Church in its title. Or perhaps even more galling is the upcoming “comedy” about the Latter-day Saint missionary who was kidnapped and repeatedly raped. These instances underscore the media’s enduring fascination with the Church and its supposed practices, leading to the sensationalism that continues to manifest today.

What is the Baseline?

What should The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints expect in terms of media scrutiny and respect? Accountability for misconduct or harmful practices is a given for any religious or non-profit organization. However, —standards often missed in the sensationalized coverage the Church receives.

Take, for example, media portrayals of Latter-day Saint teachings on sexuality. Stories often depict Latter-day Saints as prudish, repressed, or deviant. In contrast, teachings on sexuality in other religious groups, like Catholicism’s celibacy or Islam’s modesty laws, are typically presented with more nuance and less sensationalism.

A stark discrepancy exists in how media treats controversies within various religious groups. Consider the sexual abuse scandals within the Southern Baptist Convention—systemic issues that receive comparable media attention to isolated incidents involving Latter-day Saints outside leadership. This disparity amplifies minor incidents while often romanticizing unique practices of other religious groups, such as the Amish’s rejection of modern technology or Jainism’s asceticism.

Media coverage often respects doctrines and rituals of other religions more than those of the Latter-day Saints. Islamic rituals during Eid al-Fitr or Hinduism’s Kumbh Mela, for instance, are typically portrayed with reverence, avoiding any portrayal of these practices as strange or outlandish—courtesy Latter-day Saints can only wish for when it comes to their temple endowments.

The media’s role in scrutinizing powerful organizations is essential, but it can’t be assumed that their critical focus is always warranted. Existing biases that amplify a group’s otherness can prove to be a major motivation in how much coverage exists and how that coverage is framed.

Where 60 Minutes Fails

In a world where money now often parallels sexuality as taboo, it’s hardly surprising that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ finances have become the new horizon for media gawking. A recent “60 Minutes” story explored claims made by David A. Nielsen, a former church investment manager. Nielsen’s allegations, known for three years, were steeped in esoteric anti-Mormon references, like tapirs, largely overlooked by the media. After years of his claims stagnating, Nielsen’s “60 Minutes” interview added nothing new, mostly expressing his disagreement with the Church’s approach to financial management. His only claim of substance that the Church should lose its non-profit status for the way it manages its finances has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. 

Some have taken the “60 Minutes” report seriously and responded in kind. But frankly, unserious journalism does not warrant a serious response. “60 Minutes” did not press Nielsen on how many years’ savings he believed the Church should be allowed to have. They did not ask Nielsen why he believed certain investments were problematic. They did not ask him how he would responsibly scale up long-term humanitarian aid to avoid the detrimental check and dump practice. They didn’t even push him on his internal inconsistencies. They gave him a platform to say he could have done a better job than his old bosses, without even pushing him to explain how. If that constitutes news, I have a certain grocery store chain I worked at when I was 17 that could use a real talking to.

The Church does maintain financial privacy, aligning with best practices, such as using shell companies for real estate development. These privacy practices are in line with the example of Jesus Christ. And the Church does invest wisely in line with Jesus’ teachings. And yes, the Church does have $45 Billion (less than Harvard) even though the Church runs five colleges and universities, not to mention a 17-million member church. “60 Minutes” also couldn’t be bothered to mention, that even if the Church of Jesus Christ did have the spending requirements of non-religious non-profits, they would still be spending more than enough to meet federal requirements. The reality is simply unremarkable. But this unremarkable reality simply doesn’t draw the attention “60 Minutes” hoped for.  

So much like The New York Times gawked at the outsiders for their weird sexual practices, CBS now gawks at the outsiders for their weird financial practices. In a consumeristic, spend-first world, the only people who get a pass are glitzy organizations like Harvard or Gates Foundation. But Latter-day Saints having money? Those polygamists in Utah? That’s weird. We don’t trust them. So they gawk and develop thin pretexts to justify doing so. In the case of “60 Minutes,” they don’t even go to the courtesy of crafting a pretext, but regurgitate old and debunked claims, just because it’s sweeps season, I assume. 

Church leaders certainly make mistakes, including in the financial arena. The most notable recent example was a minor SEC fine for a reporting error, which the Church acknowledged and rectified. And journalists should report on that in its appropriate context. But evidently the actual news wasn’t enough.   

While financial accountability is crucial for all organizations, including religious institutions, justified coverage requires new revelations or substantiated accusations of wrongdoing. Absent these, just like the “Mormon Question” before it, “60 Minutes” charged ahead anyway.

Why Sensationalized Coverage

Several contributing factors emerge when scrutinizing media sensationalism surrounding The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which include societal misconceptions, historical anti-Latter-day Saint sentiment, and the lucrative nature of sensationalism in the media industry.

It’s important to recognize that the Church isn’t unique in receiving such sensationalist media attention. Certain topics inherently attract readers, and the term “Mormon” in a headline, akin to “Kim Kardashian” or “Nick Cannon,” does generate more pageviews. The objective here is not merely to chastise media outlets for their sensationalist formulas, but rather to identify the discriminatory factors that have put Latter-day Saints in this media predicament. 

The lingering anti-Latter-day Saint sentiment also likely contributes to this issue. The Church, since its inception, has encountered intense scrutiny and opposition. These historical biases which spring from the unfamiliarity and misconceptions of the Church play a significant role in this sensationalism. The Church’s distinctive doctrines, its relatively recent origin compared to other major religions, and its position as an American-founded religion may give journalists the implicit latitude to undermine Latter-day Saint faith in a way they would never consider for other world religions. 

Furthermore, the Church’s stringent moral and sexual codes often put it in conflict with broader societal norms, potentially giving journalists justification to take shortcuts if it could help undermine a church they view as problematic. 

In essence, sensationalism is lucrative; it magnetizes clicks, elevates ratings, and boosts ad revenue. But the reason the Church of Jesus Christ gets caught in the sensationalistic cross hairs in a way few other religions do springs from lingering biases. 

Impact of Sensationalism

In attempting to grab attention, sensationalist media coverage often reduces complex realities to simple, easily digestible narratives. However, these narratives can distort the truth, perpetuating stereotypes and misconceptions about the Church and its adherents. They may frame the Church as secretive, its practices as strange, or its members as blind followers. What should by any objective measure be a largely positive story of a frontier church that has saved responsibly in line with Jesus Christ’s teachings and can now donate more than one billion dollars a year in humanitarian aid is still somehow twisted into a negative story.

Sensationalism in media, although commercially beneficial, can cause significant harm to those targeted by such coverage. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its followers are among those adversely affected, facing resultant prejudice, misunderstanding, and potential discrimination. Specifically, such portrayals can have real consequences for Latter-day Saints. Recent studies indicate that public opinion about the Church is lower than for any other faith in the U.S. Numerous Church members have reported experiences of suspicion, bias, or outright hostility due to these pervasive narratives.

The Persecution Complex

The phrase “persecution complex” is often flippantly thrown at Latter-day Saints who express concerns about media bias, misrepresentation, or general disrespect towards their faith. This dismissive label, frequently used by individuals from marginalized groups who wish to maintain social standing within high-status groups, insinuates that any protest of ill-treatment is merely an overreaction or an effort to play the victim.

This dynamic, wherein certain individuals are offered conditional acceptance or privilege on the expectation that they dissociate from their group, endorse dominant values, and possibly even criticize their own group, plays out often and appears to be in play here. The charge of a “persecution complex” allows these individuals to signal their loyalty to those in power, thereby safeguarding their privileged position.

This “persecution complex” accusation, however, neglects the substantial evidence of bias against the Church and its followers. Numerous academic studies reveal that Latter-day Saints encounter tangible prejudice in personal dealings and media depictions. For instance, a Pew Research Center study in 2012 reported that Latter-day Saints face greater discrimination than many other religious groups in the US.

It’s apparent that the narrative concerning The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is frequently more influenced by media sensationalism than by the Church’s own actions or teachings, with the recent ’60 Minutes’ report serving as a clear case in point. 

In the end, the task of countering these distortions falls to all of us. As consumers of news, we must cultivate an informed skepticism, seek out multiple sources, and question narratives that seem designed to shock or titillate. Our collective ability to rise to the challenge will say a lot about us, and perhaps not so much about the subjects of the next sensationalized news story.

The post The “Mormon” Headline: Media’s Lucrative Obsession with Latter-day Saints appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

They ogled and leered
‘cause they thought we were weird

While the rest of us just stop and ask, “Why?”

Rolling Stone recently published an article detailing TikTok rumors of a crabs outbreak at Brigham Young University due to alleged armpit sex. Even though Andrea Marks, the author, says in the first paragraph that the claims are completely unverified, the story was published anyway. This isn’t the only recent article ostracizing Latter-day Saints over purported sexual deviance. 

The New York Post insisted “soaking” was a “Mormon teen sex act” in another viral article too. Practicing Latter-day Saints usually think these rumors are ridiculous at best. When asked for comment, one long-time member of the Church replied, “Is that a Babylon Bee article?” 

But many others absorb the impression and take what they are hearing for granted—concluding that Latter-day Saints are absolutely weird sexual deviants. 

It’s not abnormal, of course, to have national media outlets obsessed with anything sexual.  But when it comes to minority groups in America, generally speaking, there are very clear lines they will not cross—particularly when something contributes to negative bias and harsh judgment.  

These rules don’t seem to apply, however, to national media’s relationship with our faith community—which clearly is fair game. Voyeuristic peering into the sex lives of Latter-day Saints isn’t new, it’s just changed forms. 

Take, for example, what mainstream media outlets wrote historically about the Latter-day Saint practice of plural marriage. The New York Times ran dozens of articles about polygamy in the nineteenth century, many with lurid headlines that portrayed the practice as sexually deviant and cartoonishly outrageous. For instance, on February 14, 1852, they ran an “expose” by an ex-Mormon named John Hardy. Hardy called polygamy “licentiousness run mad” and referred to the practice as “the demoralization of young women.” This and other journalists clearly believed they knew better than Latter-day Saint women who vigorously and publicly defended plural marriage. 

Much like the name “Mormon,” this rhetoric functioned in predictable ways to make members of the Church of Jesus Christ seem strange, foreign, and even dangerous.  The Times later wrote an article titled “What Shall we do with the Mormons?” which  described the Latter-day Saints as manifesting “absurdities, usurpations, indecencies, and villainies.” 

It wasn’t just national journalists using inflammatory rhetoric like this to describe the marital practices of a religious minority. J. H. Beadle, in The Salt Lake Tribune on Oct. 6, 1875, wrote, “He [McLellin] also informed me of the spot where the first well-authenticated case of polygamy took place, in which Joseph Smith was ‘sealed’ to the hired girl.”

Much of this seems more like National Enquirer territory rather than topics for respectable journalists. But that hasn’t stopped them from going there—repeatedly. Only a decade ago, several prominent outlets ran stories about the kinds of underwear that Latter-day Saints wear, including Esquire and NBC News.

The pattern is similar: the newspapers draw their sources from the disaffected or excommunicated and extrapolate the rumors to all Latter-day Saints. The effect of this is to place those in the Church of Jesus Christ in a metaphorical zoo for the general public to leer at with condescending confusion, if not outright scorn. 

And while it would be natural for any neutral observer to note that a media complex obsessing about the (unverified) consensual sexual practices of a bunch of undergrads is creepy, most Latter-day Saints have resigned themselves to their place near the bottom of the cultural pecking order. Meanwhile, the Latter-day Saints who need to curry favor with the cultural elite because of their career ambitions feel forced to join the mocking themselves and dismiss any pushback on the leering as a “persecution complex.”

Could Rolling Stone potentially justify this coverage as a warning to BYU students of this (unverified) epidemic? Not likely. Nationwide 1 in 4 college students has an STD. And while STD rates aren’t available for BYU, Utah has among the lowest STD rates in the country. 

Among the most common STDs for nationwide college students are HPV and chlamydia, two diseases that have much worse consequences than crabs. Of sub-groups that are catching STDs at unusually high rates, gay and bisexual men experience two-thirds of all new HIV infections each year. Yet, Rolling Stone, in its exceeding prudence, has managed to avoid reporting on each and every one of these issues. 

No, the reason for this reporting is clear, Rolling Stone thinks Latter-day Saints are weird and worthy objects of ridicule. Therefore, they are willing to use the flimsiest of (unverified) pretexts to gawk at us. 

One can’t help but wonder if the rumor was that gay BYU students had a crab epidemic if Rolling Stone would cheekily report on it or decry the rumor as bigoted.

It’s true that Latter-day Saints operate under a different sexual moral code than a lot of America does at this point. Church members commit—and do their best—to refrain from sexual relations before marriage and consider sex a holy, sacred act. The media’s insistence on encouraging the public to ogle at members’ rumored sexual habits is even more bigoted when someone understands how Saints view and treat sex. 

The unexpressed bias that undergirds articles like Rolling Stone’s is that refraining from sex before marriage is repressive, if it’s even possible at all. And it’s this bias that allows them to give unwarranted credence to the (unverified) rumor. Such moralistic preening then justifies their non-consensual leering. 

The reality, however, is that many Latter-day Saints don’t find refraining from sex before marriage repressive but liberating. Research on hookup culture has shown it is associated with a long list of negative emotional, health, and social consequences—consequences that the Latter-day Saint sexual ethic helps prevent. 

Many, including myself, know what it feels like to be personally dehumanized and undervalued by potential partners who see us only in terms of sexual availability. And far too many have also been stung by infidelity inspired by the popular self-focused sexual ethic. In my experience and the experience of millions of religious people, seeing sex as sacred does not lead to unhealthy sexual expression; it dramatically improves life.

Latter-day Saint apostle Jeffrey R. Holland said in a BYU speech a few years ago, “Human life—that is the greatest of God’s powers, the most mysterious and magnificent chemistry of it all—and you and I have been given it, but under the most serious and sacred of restrictions.” 

Latter-day Saints do not have a haphazard approach to sexuality. On the contrary, church doctrine considers chastity precious and intimacy one of the most sacred acts of humanity. It’s part of Godliness to Latter-day Saints. 

If you want to gawk at that, I suppose no one will stop you. But the truth is doing so says more about the gawkers than it does about the people being ridiculed—who are doing not just better than most.  They’re doing well—and enjoying the fruits of gospel living in their relationships.  

You can too.

The post Why is National Media Obsessed with Latter-day Saint Sexuality? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.