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

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

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

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

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

CLICK HERE to download your copy

The post Announcing Our New Anthology: What God Hath Joined 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.

Like many psychologists, I have been increasingly concerned with the rising tide of narcissism. I am also aware of God’s use of terms like “chosen” and “special” in scriptures to designate individuals and groups. As I am always interested in the interface of psychology and faith, I wrote this book to examine the confluence of narcissism and being chosen and to help members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and other Chrisitan faiths, understand the truth and the lie at play in being God’s “chosen people.” 

The Truth

The truth is that we are special because we are all children of a Heavenly Father who loves us and with whom we enjoyed a special, personal relationship prior to coming to earth. Having left his presence we feel a void or a kind of homesickness that reminds us that we are more than merely mortal beings and inclines us toward our Father and his love.

The Lie

The lie is that we are special and others are not. We are uniquely set above others for greatness in this life and/or the next. The void we feel signifies our personal destiny for glory and inclines us toward the fame, prestige, wealth, and superiority over others we deserve. 

The Quadrants

Each of us is enticed by the truth and by the lie throughout our lives. I have identified  quadrants in my book to represent the ways in which we can be enticed. Whenever we accept both the truth and the lie we behave like ‘the Pharisee’ who is lifted up in self-righteous pride. At those times when we disregard the truth and embrace the lie, we become as ‘the Egoist’ who focuses on self-gratification, always wanting more. Hopelessness and alienation mark those moments when we, like ‘the Nihilist,’ deny the truth and the lie and feel worthless. However, there are also times when we are filled with the love of God and, like ‘the Disciple,’ we accept the truth and deny the lie. As we learn to practice discipleship more regularly the feeling of the void diminishes, we are filled with charity, and we reach out to bless the lives of all those around us.

Fluidity

The concept of fluid quadrants is unlike traditional personality texts that tend to stereotype and classify people into a particular type. The quadrants apply to everyone because we all respond to the truth and the lie in each of these four ways at different times and with some regularity. 

Discipline

The book provides a very practical and achievable method of gaining discipline over the fluidity with which we move through the quadrants. Regular application of the psychological practices of hindsight evaluation, mindfulness, letting go, and vigilance, combined with the resources God has provided us to fill the void such as the influence of the Holy Spirit and participation in the atonement through repentance and forgiveness, will steadily move the reader toward an increased amount of time spent in the quadrant of discipleship and a decreased amount of time spent in the other three quadrants.

Questions for the Reader to consider:

1. Have you ever had the feeling that you might be special? Do you feel like you might have a special mission or destiny? Do you read books like Harry Potter and wonder if you might be chosen for greatness? If so, how have you typically interpreted these feelings?

2. Have you ever felt a kind of void or lack inside of you, something unfulfilled, or a longing for something more than a mundane mortal existence? What have you understood that to mean? How have you tried to fill that void in the past?

3. If you are a child of a divine king, a prince or princess endowed with remarkable gifts, talents, and qualities, how does or should that feel?

4. Have you ever felt more special or superior to another person or other people? What did that feeling do for you? What, if anything, did it satisfy in you or say about you?

5. Think about times you have believed both the truth and the lie. What did you have in common with the Pharisees and Scribes of Christ’s time while you dwelled in this quadrant? Did this offer any fulfillment or relief of any sense of a void or a lack in your life? Did it last?

6. Think about times when you have denied the truth and accepted the lie. What did you have in common with the egoist while you dwelled in this quadrant. Did the pursuit of selfish pride and pleasure give you any relief or fulfillment of a void or a lack in your life? Did it last?

7. Think about times you have denied both the truth and the lie. What did you have in common with the nihilist while you dwelled in this quadrant? Did the hopelessness and despair of self-deprecation offer any fulfillment or relief of any sense of a void or a lack in your life? Did it last?

8. Think about times you have believed the truth and denied the lie. What did you have in common with the disciples of Christ time while you dwelled in this quadrant? Did this offer any fulfillment or relief of any sense of a void or a lack in your life? Did it last?

9. What small and incremental steps can you take today to increase how often you dwell in the disciple quadrant and how long you stay there? What barriers are there to entering this quadrant and how can they be overcome?

10. How can you more fully embrace and apply the practice of losing yourself in the will of Christ in your life?

The post Book Club: Are We Special? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

distinctively and uniquely salvific about Jesus the Christ, 

then the entire enterprise adds little more than some marginalia 

and footnotes to the Christian plan of salvation.”

The public has long been fascinated with Mormonism’s gold plates, 19th-century practice of polygamy, and cultural distinctives (tithing, no alcohol, and lots of white shirts). Theologically, Restoration thought recuperates a number of distinctive teachings found among prominent early Christian voices but seldom heard today: mortality as a school for souls, Eden as educative immersion rather than catastrophe, human premortality, and an eternal progression toward theosis. When it comes to the author and finisher of our faith, however, missionaries and members generally invoke Jesus Christ as that foundation which unites us most essentially with other Christians. We share a worldwide faith in Jesus Christ as the pivotal and essential figure in our salvation. In authoring this book, we began with the premise that we cannot—or should not—consider the array of our beliefs and practices as details that are separate and apart from how we understand Christ and His role in the plan of happiness. We cannot simply transpose Christ from inherited tradition(s) into a new set of doctrinal positions.  What we have to say about Christ must be the most important thing we teach in the Restoration, and if we are assigning the parts their due place in the whole, then “truth restored” must begin with a fresh and inspired understanding of Christ and radiate outward to generate the balance of Restoration teachings.

 We did the research for this book during a sabbatical term at Oxford. The magnificent libraries (and a favorite bookstore particularly rich in early Christian studies) allowed us the resources, and the months of respite from life and work’s usual demands provided the ideal space for study and reflection. Fiona was the first to fasten onto the centrality of healing in the life and ministry of Christ, but also in the ways that early Christians spoke and wrote of Him.  

Scholars have long recognized that Christianity was not a monolithic, well-defined entity in the first Christian centuries. The long-standing picture of a unitary “true church” suddenly corrupted and veering into apostasy is not accurate. However, some of the major developments in the fourth and fifth centuries were undoubtedly incompatible with Restoration understandings of God’s nature, the nature of His justice, and the scope of His love. At the same time, through our studies, we have time and time again encountered those figures that the Lord told Joseph were “holy men [and women]” that he “knew not of.” As the Book of Revelation foretold, the church did not disappear utterly from the earth. It retreated into the wilderness, where it was “nurtured for a time.”  Our approach to church history has been an attempt to blend rigor and charity: we think it is useful for disciples to know where we Christians came from, how we got here, and what went wrong along the way. We also think it is imperative to take seriously the proposition that God has never ceased to inspire good-hearted women and men with the capacity to speak His truths in all times and places.

 We hope our work will accomplish at least two things. We hope it will help students of the gospel see Jesus Christ and His work in new ways—shorn of much of inherited traditions that we believe can obscure the incomparable beauty and healing power He brings to a wounded world. And we hope our writing encourages others to “seek out of the best books” and out of the records of the past, truths to inspire and uplift and enhance a Restoration still very much in process.

The post October Book Club: The Christ Who Heals appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Broadening Our Understanding of Pornography

It was not uncommon during my adolescence for a prophet, an apostle, or a general authority to give a talk on the pervasiveness of pornography. Usually, it was within the context of addressing men, but not universally so. As evidenced by the earlier Elder Holland statement, pornography discussions were usually within the context of visual stimuli like movies or pictures. Research has noted that men are typically more invested in visual pornography, so it would make sense to discuss such topics within that context. Huge movements like Fight The New Drug particularly emphasize video and online pornography and their effects on relationships. Typically, the arguments against this form of pornography entail points on sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, and other forms of abuse and mischaracterization. While this is a worthwhile movement, it does emphasize visual stimuli instead of the other forms of pornography available.

With this in mind, it is important for us to denote what pornographic content actually includes. More generally,  pornography refers to “sexually explicit media that are primarily intended to sexually arouse the audience,” in which literature and audio forms are included. So, when we discuss the detrimental effects of pornography on an individual, we are referring to an all-encompassing definition of pornography and not just more common conceptualizations. Notably, women are less visually stimulated than men and usually require more “mental mapping,” which is to say that women typically appreciate more storytelling and “set-up” than men do. Forbes noted that 90% of women use this sort of mental framing to get sexually aroused. Thus, erotic books and forms of audio pornography (including but not exclusive to audiobooks) tend to be more appealing to the feminine demographic and are still detrimental to the listener/reader. 

Romance Novels and “Sexual Empowerment”

In current society, romance fiction has been one of the fastest-growing media markets over the last several years. Unsurprisingly, some reports indicate that 82% of romance readers are women. It is interesting that this noted increase corresponds with the normalization of erotic fiction in the public sphere. With the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, pop culture started to shift to the social acceptance of literary erotica. Notably, this book sold over 150 million copies worldwide and created a movie franchise that produced additional millions in revenue. While not all sexually explicit books are as widely known or in the same romance genre, the rise in acceptability of such content is alarming. The promotion and normalization of sexual content also seem to correspond to parts of the feminist movements focused on sexual empowerment and sex positivity.

Some arguments for sexually explicit content in books note that women have learned new things that have brought enjoyment into their sex lives with their partners. Additionally, women (and men) from a secular perspective can learn more about consent, safe sexual practices, and healthy sexuality. Having access to this sort of content has had ‘positive’ effects. In fact, while pornography usually decreases sexual drive in men, reports have indicated that it increases sexual drive in women. Indeed, many Instagram reels and female influencers have joked that their husbands and partners are the ones buying them their books for those very reasons. This “educational” purpose of fictional erotica can be compelling; however, in a study among women reading sexual content, it was noted that the number one reason women wanted to read such material was for the distraction it provided for them. While noting that this is not necessarily generalizable, it does bring forth the notion that, truly, at the core, pornography is a numbing agent similar to other materials that can be addicting. Further, the type of sex life promoted within these stories can pervade our understanding of human sexuality as a whole. Reading sexually explicit material, especially when those perspectives are grounded solely in secular understanding, can distort the meaning of sex. Using these sources as an authority would concede that we view sex as purely transactional for personal pleasure. Therefore, it’s not just sexual education, it is bad sexual education rooted in ideas that are incredibly deteriorative in nature. However important a healthy sexual relationship is with a spouse, it is not the sole purpose. We can lose sight of that when we consume material that promotes a sex life at odds with what we believe. After all, it is a well known fact that what media we consume influences our perceptions and understanding. Even if we know that sex should go beyond simple pleasure and transaction, if we read content that focuses on sex as just that, eventually, it can influence how we understand sex and, consequently, lead us away from the truth. 

What Then? 

Perceived improvements in some areas of sex life do not necessarily mean that the same results and excitement could not happen with other forms of sexual education more in line with the gospel. There is a difference between reading or looking at imagery like diagrams, stick figures, and so forth for educational purposes with one’s spouse rather than using such material to incite pleasure alone. This area is where using righteous discernment is of the utmost importance. The intent in which we engage with sexual materials matters, but pure intent does not absolve wrongdoing. 

I will concede to the fact that there are not great resources (or at least not very well known) that help couples learn about the mechanics of sex within a Christian perspective. While I understand the need to keep sacred things sacred, when you have Christian couples that have not engaged in such activities before marriage, we need to find ways to help them feel more prepared for sexual intimacy in a way that also promotes an accurate gospel perspective on human sexuality. If we do not provide education, it will be searched out elsewhere for worse or better. But here are some available resources that are a starting point to fill this gap: 

Replenish: Creating Sexual Fulfillment in Marriage, A Guide for LDS Couples by Tammy Hill

Sexual Wholeness in Marriage — Busby, Carrol and Leavitt

Between Husband and Wife

You, me, and We by Anthony Hughes

The post How “Sex Positivity” Harms Women appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Much has been written about the fractious consequences of this loss. But anyone concerned about the ability of our democracy to survive should want to prevent the loss of another shared, trusted civic space: The Public Library.

The public library is a deeply American institution. While libraries have existed in some form for thousands of years, what we think of as a library today was invented in New Hampshire. Publicly available knowledge to a voting populace was important for democracy to thrive.

Today there are nearly 17,500 public libraries in the United States—more libraries than McDonalds.

Many librarians are frustrated by this and place the blame on opportunistic politicians and upstart right-wing media, while others embrace the political dynamics and cast themselves as the defenders of open discourse.

Both of these narratives are natural. But if adopted and stuck to, both narratives have the power to erode trust in our public libraries and consign them to the many institutions Americans can no longer share because they are not trusted to serve those across worldview differences.

Here’s the bottom line: Librarians aren’t neutral. In 2020, employees of the American Library Association (ALA) donated to democratic candidates and causes 100% of the time. And in the previous election cycle, all librarians donated to Democrats at a rate of 419:1.

This disparity in those who are attracted to the library as a career need not be fatal on its own. Many careers, such as pediatricians, have large partisan disparities but are nevertheless trusted to do their jobs. Librarians are, by and large, committed public servants with a strong ethic of neutrality. However, the lack of ideological diversity among the ranks of librarians can create groupthink that prevents librarians from recognizing what it means to be neutral. 

Today there is a comprehensive ideology that adopts premises from psychoanalysis and critical theory that many Americans largely accept, particularly on the political left. This ideology (or religion as I’ve previously described it) is largely viewed as self-evidently true, similar to how Jains view their faith, so the idea that it is an independent world-view that should not be given default preference is often difficult to conceptualize for those who adhere to this belief-system, especially those where there is not a significant amount of ideological diversity. 

Among the ideas of this ideology is that neutrality is impossible. The thinking here is that society represses marginalized groups (an ideology the new religion doubles down on with its Rogerian humanism) and that because attempting to be neutral allows that harm to continue, it is not, in fact, neutral. Librarians, who adhere to this worldview, replace neutrality in their ethical imagination with inclusiveness. Inclusiveness can feel as though it meets the ethical burden of neutrality because it welcomes everyone (as long as they hold the same worldview). 

While inclusiveness is a legitimate and important goal for public spaces, inclusiveness cannot replace neutrality without risking the legitimacy of the space.

This ethic of inclusiveness over neutrality can be found in the books that librarians have sought to remove from libraries. In addition, the books acquired for and weeded from library collections are often ignored in conversations about book banning. The end result can be a library that privileges certain worldviews and their criteria for which books to carry while decrying members of the public they serve for doing the same thing.

This ideological worldview not only informs library decisions on a sub-conscious level, but many voices are specifically calling for acquisitions and weeding to include these ideological considerations in these processes. 

This has led to a situation where members of one political party have near complete control over what appears on the shelves of local libraries and have functionally abandoned neutrality as a premise for those decisions. This is while those with concerns are being told they are the ones politicizing the library.

This naturally precludes those whose concerns were disparaged from seeing the library as a space where their ideas will be given an equal hearing.

This death cycle has a likely end that we have seen many times before, complete and total loss of institutional trust. And if you think your political opponent is an idiot now, just wait until they don’t go to their library for the same reason they won’t watch ABC News.

I imagine pointing out the reality of this cycle is frustrating for those pushing for libraries to replace neutrality with inclusivity. They likely conclude that it isn’t fair that those people on the other side will simply opt-out rather than continue to engage with an institution that they deem antagonistic. They likely see their views not as a distinct ideology, as I have framed them, but self-evidently true, and they should be able to pursue them in public institutions like libraries without dealing with the threat of losing even more trusted civic spaces.

I certainly sympathize with these concerns. Those who want a better world often seek out institutions they can use to help create that world. And I certainly don’t begrudge their desire to do so. Frankly, I hope they do create institutions where they can promote their ideas and work toward their solutions. But our few remaining neutral civic spaces are not the place. 

Neutrality may be difficult for an individual to create on their own. We all have our own biases. I certainly do. Librarians certainly do too. But regardless of your worldview about whether neutrality can be achieved, neutrality does exist as an ideal. Striving toward that ideal rather than being perfect at achieving it produces the conditions of trust that allow our shared civic spaces to thrive. 

So this is my plea. Librarians, we need you. You preside over one of the few areas still trusted by those on the right and left in our increasingly divided society. I understand that many of you have deep and strong concerns about how some in your community would choose books, events, and decorations for your library. The way forward is not to reject these community members in pursuit of a vapid “inclusiveness” that leaves half of Americans feeling unincluded. 

The answer instead is to recognize this new and predominant worldview as a distinct ideology that you must be neutral toward rather than a default. Our civic history is replete with examples of people setting aside their biases in pursuit of neutrality. If librarians can recognize the ideological pull at the heart of this conflict, they can also make efforts to correct this in how they conduct their work and create a library that is truly welcoming for all Americans.

The post A Plea to Librarians appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Photo of Dorothy Day

From the beginning, The Catholic Worker was hostile to militarism. Early editions attacked the international arms race and criticized such related phenomena as German anti-Semitism. In October 1933, Dorothy Day announced that Catholic Workers, as “representatives of Catholic pacifism,” would attend a meeting of the communist-linked Congress Against War, and this spark, it has been suggested, ignited a meaningful Catholic pacifism in America. There were many other such sparks within the pages of Day’s newspaper, which increasingly reflected her view that war was a forbidden abomination.

In October 1934, an unsigned article, “The Mystical Body of Christ,” probably by Day herself, asserted that humans are all part of Christ and that war is a disease that weakens this collective body. In 1935, the paper condemned the use of poison gas in war and talked about conscientious objection. In March of that year, The Catholic Worker published a curious little article by a radical priest named Paul Hanley Furfey entitled “Christ and the Patriot,” which took the form of a dialogue between Jesus and a nationalist defender of a just war. Again and again, Jesus repeats, in different ways, that we must turn the other cheek and resist violence. “Publication of the dialogue,” says Day biographer Jim Forest, “is the first clear indication in The Catholic Worker of Dorothy’s conviction that following Jesus required the renunciation of hatred and killing.” 

In May of 1936, on its third birthday, the newspaper came right out with it, publishing a dramatic editorial by Day called “Pacifism” that began: “The Catholic Worker is sincerely a pacifist paper.” It takes heroism to be a pacifist, Day asserted, and those who would tread that road should study and prepare. “A pacifist even now,” she wrote, “must be prepared for the opposition of the next mob who thinks violence is bravery.” The editorial reflects Day’s evolution; like her radical friends, she opposed the Great War because she imagined it was nothing more than a struggle over profits—or a scam to create them. Now, as a Catholic since 1926, her objections to war were religious: “My absolute pacifism stems purely from the gospel.”

The early church’s pacifism long past, Catholic theologians over the centuries developed a doctrine of “just war” to provide a moral and intellectual framework, in the light of the Gospel, for when Catholics should fight. St. Augustine, for example, recognized that war was horrible but sometimes necessary and “justified only by the injustice of the aggressor.” Thomas Aquinas laid out three criteria for a just war: it has to be waged by a legitimate authority, the cause must be just, and it must be fought with the right intentions (to advance good and prevent evil).

The Catholic conception of the just war has evolved since then and is expressed in the Catechism, which lays out four conditions:

— the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
— all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
— there must be serious prospects of success;
— the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The Catechism goes on to say that authorities “have the right and duty to impose on citizens the obligations necessary for national defense” but should also “make equitable provision for those who for reasons of conscience refuse to bear arms; these are nonetheless obliged to serve the human community in some other way.” Nor does war mean anything goes; civilians and prisoners should be respected, and “the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man.” In addition, “the legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent.”

Day and her newspaper departed radically from this ancient and pragmatic tradition. In the years leading up to the Second World War, they developed nothing less than a theology of Catholic pacifism. It’s noteworthy that in the Great War, there were only four Catholics among the nation’s four-thousand-some-odd conscientious objectors. It was in the pages of Dorothy Day’s newspaper that pacifism in America became Catholic. Furfey, for example, “urged abandonment of the ‘Constantinian compromise’ with the war-making state and a return to the eschatological pacifist vision of the early saints and church fathers.” Other writers tackled the problem as well, some with scholastic logic and others in more accessible terms, as with stories about saints who bucked the state in the cause of non-violence. Saint Telemachus is said to have been stoned to death around 400 c.e. by spectators when he interrupted a fight to the death between Roman gladiators; his martyrdom is supposed to have contributed to the end of gladiatorial combat. Thus were theory and metaphor recruited in support of action. “The long, dogged insistence,” wrote Dwight Macdonald, “of the Workers on practicing what other Christians preach has been a major factor in radicalizing many American Catholics.”

In April 1934, The Catholic Worker carried a favorable review of a book called The Church and War, in which a German Dominican named Franziskus Stratmann (later jailed and exiled under Hitler) argued that modern war couldn’t meet the church’s “just war” standard. Day and other writers for the newspaper used and expanded on this argument over the years, contending that the horrors of modern combat (exemplified in the massive killing of the Great War) meant that wars could no longer meet the church’s definition of “just.” Some people even called themselves “just war pacifists.” In December 1936, Day wrote: “The Catholic Worker does not condemn any and all war, but believes the conditions necessary for a ‘just war’ will not be fulfilled today.”

The post From Just War to Catholic Pacifism appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In their new book, Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard―and Still Is (Eerdman’s Publishing), Terryl and Nathaniel Givens recount a story about a friend who was sincerely convinced the Second Coming would take place within twenty years. Yet, why was he actively contributing to a retirement fund that would not be accessible until some twenty years after he believed the world, as we know it, would end? The Givenses make a strong case for an unsettling possibility: many of us sincerely profess beliefs we don’t actually hold, and we can’t recognize the hollowness of those beliefs until they cost us something.

Drawing on the work of moral psychologists and economists, the Givenses argue that belief formation is often driven more by utility than accuracy; in other words, we unwittingly adopt beliefs because they satisfy certain needs rather than because they reflect an impartial review of available evidence. Some beliefs carry an immediate cost if we get them wrong, such as beliefs about which plants are safe to eat. Perhaps by design, there’s no such immediate urgency for some of the most important questions. In the authors’ words, “Delusional practical beliefs are expensive. But if you’re fundamentally mistaken in your belief about seeming abstractions like the nature of God or the reality of heaven or hell, no immediate real-world repercussions will reshape those beliefs.”

Writing for the Atlantic, he described how even though he had preached about faith and death and just completed a book about the subject called On Death, he was “still caught unprepared.” “I found myself thinking, What? No! I can’t die,” he wrote … Hearing himself say these words, he realized the following: “This delusion had been the actual operating principle of my heart.”

Keller found himself unable to accept his own mortality because convictions about the afterlife had been more philosophical abstractions than concrete reality. Despite being a kind of expert on death and dying, his actual belief had been in a false sense of his own immortality. 

According to the Givenses, the way to know what we really believe is to evaluate the costs we are willing to pay, as revealed by our choices, for those beliefs. “Asking a person to tithe … is the kind of choice that cuts through superficial professions to discover the beating heart behind belief” because “only through a lifetime of making searing choices among variously priced alternatives can we differentiate—even to ourselves—fictitious beliefs from real beliefs, values we think we embrace from values that are the real engine behind our actions and life commitments.” For belief to be something more than a product of our upbringing, our culture, or some other social or emotional necessity, it has to cost us something within those spheres.

The Givenses, therefore, assert that secularism is not the cause of waning Christian belief and values; rather, it is revealing to us the real-life costs we’re willing to pay for them. Because Christianity has been the default worldview in the west for some time, those beliefs and values carried relatively less risk—they were, in a sense, cheap. Secularism and other cultural shifts mean that our cultural momentum no longer favors Christian belief and the “high costs of belief select for true believers.” 

Herein lies one of Into the Headwinds’  most valuable contributions: it draws our focus away from threats to Christian belief and towards the opportunities of swimming against the cultural current.

All believers will eventually find themselves holding convictions that have become costly to maintain in the face of cultural and personal headwinds, but there’s good news: this is when the real work of discipleship can begin. Especially in such testing times, in order to maintain those convictions, they have to be internalized, and that’s where we will find ourselves sincerely reaching for Heaven. This is where faith stops being a set of mental abstractions and becomes a living process that draws out our sincerity, humility, commitment, and courage. When belief requires behavior, God-like characteristics are formed.

The hopeful message of Into the Headwinds is that when belief becomes hard, it also becomes meaningful.

The post Thank Goodness for Headwinds appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Ernest Hemingway is one of the more enigmatic historical figures. He loved a great fight and a great cigar.

But what would he be like after he dies?

Scott Hales’ new book “Hemingway in Paradise” is a collection of poems about historical figures and what their lives now look like in the Latter-day Saint conception of the Spirit World.

In Hales’ take, Hemingway tries to change and gives it his best go—he even attends Elders Quorum. But ultimately, Hemingway is drawn in by the romance of his vices and his love of the flawed.

Change isn’t easy—and is sometimes downright hard. And it is this reality that motivates much of Hales’ latest book. “Progress, not stasis,” he writes in a poem about Dale Carnegie, “was the object and design of existence in heaven.”

Change is also at the heart of most of our cultural conversation. The self-help boon of the nineties has started to fade. In its place, a therapeutic worldview has become explicit and nearly universal.

This worldview and its associated language of disorder, self-esteem, trauma, addiction, validation, vulnerability, and the like have been ascendant in the United States over the last sixty years. And with this psychological worldview firmly in place, this generation has seen a destigmatization of all things therapeutic—reflected and resulting in people attending therapy more often, discussing it with others, and even seeing heroes appreciating it in our pop culture.

The sociologist Eva Illouz observed that a “therapeutic ethos” can now be found across national and regional differences. She says that no other worldview has had as much of an influence on the way we view the individual today (other than, perhaps, political and market liberalism).

I Am Who I Am

Not all of the characters in Scott Hales’ conception of the afterlife are doing their best to change. “The King,” a poem about the Marvel comic artist and writer Jack Kirby, tells a story about a man who may be intrigued by growth but ultimately has a self-assured identity. “He is not keen on changing” because he feels “content.”

But the how of Kirby’s feelings is much less interesting than the why. 

As Hales sets to creating a character uninterested in change, he relies on identity and circumstance. Kirby does not want to change in this telling because “he’s a Jewish kid from NYC” and served in wars both literal and literary. If that’s who he is, why would he ever need to be anything else? 

Kirby’s position is at home within the therapeutic ethos. One of the key “simplifying assumptions” in social science research is “determinism”—the theory that what we do is the result of our circumstances and that we don’t truly have free choice. Many have long assumed that without invoking determinism in one way or another, social scientific research would be impossible, despite many having convincingly argued this is not the case. As a result, the research and discourse mental health clinicians are educated in are steeped in this assumption. It’s natural to wonder how much of this assumption gets carried into the therapy room.

As part of my research for my upcoming book on the intersection of faith and mental health, I sat down with Bonnie (name changed). Bonnie’s family has deep ties in a mainline protestant denomination, though her beliefs have started to shift more toward evangelicalism. 

Bonnie had four children in their teens and early twenties. Three of them still live at home. And she described to me starting to observe them make choices that frustrated her. Her youngest, a freshman in high school, had recently been caught drunk—while her college-aged son had just failed several classes.

Bonnie admitted that her temper had begun to rage. She would shout and guilt her kids. At one point, she even broke a plate. And while she felt bad for doing that, she couldn’t help but feel even worse about the lower-level temper she had when her children were younger. 

If her temper hadn’t been quite so quick when her children were younger, would she be dealing with the same difficulties today? 

These questions began to cause her some deal of anxiety and depression, so she visited a Christian therapist.

There is, of course, no way to know what Bonnie’s therapist told her exactly, but when she spoke to me, she described the process as one of discovery. “I used to think that I was the one hurting my children,” she said—“That it was my fault. But I didn’t realize that it was because my dad had abused me. My friends were never there for me. And my husband was too busy with other things.” 

She paused to clarify, “My husband is a good man, but when it’s come to parenting, he’s always left me on a limb.” Bonnie recounted how session after session, she discovered more of the presumed causes of her behavior.

“I thought I was sinning,” she told me over a zoom call, quilts hanging on her wall in the background, but in her estimation, “that was only because I didn’t have enough faith.”

I asked her to tell me more, and she began to get choked up, her already rosy cheeks spilling over. “Jesus overcame sin. He did it. He did it all. It’s not my sin. It’s the circumstances of the world. And Jesus overcame the world. I literally can’t sin.”

Just like Hales’ fictional Jack Kirby, Bonnie had arrived at the point where personal change was no longer so relevant or crucial because, after all, her own behavior was largely arising from her unchosen identity and circumstances.

My own interest in the topic was first piqued by failings of my own—including times when I lost my own temper at home. And when I sought out other advice about these issues, both my own therapist and therapeutically aligned online communities focused on the circumstances that precipitated my failings. Instead of considering my own actions, I found it all too easy to get caught up in focusing on actions and choices my former spouse was making. I was able to console myself that my responses were warranted by her behavior. And thus, through this rationalization, I could place the fault for my own behavior outside of myself.

My therapeutically-minded support network, including professionals and friends, was all too happy to apply clinical language to my circumstances—positioning me as a victim of painful circumstance that explained everything I was feeling and doing.

This narrative seduced me. Blame shifting brought definite relief to my psychic pain, especially with the authoritative imprimatur of the therapeutic community. 

Trauma Made Me Do It

At one point, Scott Hales turns his attention to Christopher Columbus’ after-life fate. In this retelling, Columbus has been condemned to spirit prison and is rather upset about it. He spends most of the poem rationalizing. He had been inspired by God. His travels aided in the spread of Christianity. Nobody he knew would have done anything differently. At one point, he goes so far as to ask himself, “What were rape, slavery, conquest, and genocide when … life in this round world was cheaper than accountability?”

But all of Columbus’ rationalizing not only failed to save him from spirit prison but prevented him from finding peace, “why was he still tormented, racked with the anguish of the damned?” As a result of Columbus rationalizing his past, he demonstrates no change or forward momentum. He doesn’t even consider it. 

Rationalizing our pasts can have the effect of preventing us from changing, or using the religious vernacular, “repenting.”

I asked Bonnie if she still yelled at her kids, “Of course,” she said, “but only like everyone else.”

One common tool that contemporary therapists use to help understand their clients’ behavior is looking at someone’s past and examining potential trauma. The assent of such careful attention to trauma began in trying to explain the response of soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. In so many instances, such awareness of the past has undoubtedly benefited someone’s healing process.  

But over the last twenty years, there has been a push in psychology to expand and dilute this definition. Today more than 80% of therapy clients are said to have experienced trauma. The sociologist Frank Furedi has written that “today, trauma means little more than people’s response to an unpleasant situation.” The trend has resulted in a popular meme of the fictional next volume of therapists’ diagnostic tool subtitled “Oops all Trauma.”

In the deterministic model, this kind of trauma—especially its diluted definition—acts as the causal circumstance that clients can use to justify present behavior. In doing so, they are applying this therapeutic ethos that more deeply understanding our psychological mechanisms is enough to be liberated from them. This can create a legion of Columbuses complaining that they only did what anyone else would have done in their circumstance.

Validation No Matter What

To Latter-day Saints and many other people of faith, this rationalization butts up against the conception of sin or that certain behaviors are wrong regardless of the circumstances.

The therapeutic worldview not only provides the ballast for this kind of circumstantial rationalization but validates the rationalization as well. Validation is a key component of contemporary therapy—wherein clinicians not only understand their clients’ behaviors and feelings but recognize them as “valid.”

When clients present rationalizations to their therapists, who are then professionally compelled to validate them, we end up with a situation where people may feel supremely justified in their rationalizations—thanks to this authoritative stamp of approval. To resolve client issues, therapists are then left with two paths. First, they can help the person remove any doubts about their rationalizations—making them less psychologically distressed since they’d be more confident in their own lack of guilt. Second, they can help their client address the circumstances which are producing this behavior.

So Diane’s therapist also helped her along the second path—coming to be trained in a process where she was more assertive in telling her husband how she wanted him to act. That kind of confrontation may eventually result in some of her behavior changing as well, but only as part of changing the circumstances that created it.

Not all theorists have moved entirely away from an accountability model. C. Terry Warner and James L. Ferrell, for example, have written extensively on the subject. But notably, their work often gets adopted in business and religious studies more often than therapeutic ones.  And these trends hold up when looking at the therapeutic field as a whole. 

Rediscovering the Whole Soul

Perhaps the apex of Hales’ book comes in an exploration of Joseph Merrick. After death, his circumstances dramatically change now that he no longer has the body that caused so many to mock him as the “elephant man.”

But when he meets Michael Jackson at the grocery store, we learn how long he had resented him (the late pop star had purchased Merrick’s remains and used them distastefully in a music video).  

But Merrick is able to change at this moment, not because his circumstances had changed, but by extending to Jackson the same grace he wished others had extended to him, recognizing that they had both spent mortality behind a mask.

For Latter-day Saints, peace comes from positive change, which change is catalyzed by accountability. 

I met Tasha in her home in southern Utah. She smiled and then sighed. “I haven’t talked about counseling in a long, long time.”

She told me a story of totally destroying her life. As a teenager, she hated her parents for enforcing what she saw as backward and needlessly strict rules. So she broke them out of spite. By the time she was twenty, she was struggling. She still lived at home, but her parents were ready to kick her out. And they gave her an ultimatum: meet with the bishop or get out.

She no longer considered herself religious and negotiated a compromise to see a counselor instead. During her first session, Tasha says that she was defiant and dismissive of the process. She enjoyed her vices and saw the professional meeting as something of a con to keep her parents supporting her as long as possible.

It was after only a few sessions that Tasha says she discovered how much her counselor enjoyed her complaining about her parents. She told me that while her counselor never said she liked it, she always perked up, asked more questions, and ended by saying they had done good work.

“In some ways, you could even say it worked. I was relieved. It was wonderful to think that everything I did that my parents didn’t like was actually their fault. It didn’t change anything I did, but my parents stopped asking me about it as much because every time they did, I just told them how it was really all their fault.”

After going to therapy for a little over a year, Tasha’s behavior hadn’t changed. And while drunk driving, she hit a light pole. She tells me that, in retrospect, it wasn’t all that serious. She only spent a week in the hospital. But at the time, it changed everything. “None of the work figuring out why I did the things changed that I did them. The only thing that worked was realizing that I was the one doing them, so I would have to be the one to stop them.”

Tasha told me that she tried to tell her therapist about her change of heart. But her therapist was hesitant and discouraged her from trying to do too much too fast. So she quit therapy. By the end of that year, she was sober and going to school.

My experience in counseling was similar. None of the work interrogating and blaming my circumstances brought me peace. But simply recognizing that I was the one who made my choices and taking proactive steps of repentance to make different ones changed how I felt substantially.  

Repentance brings peace because we can be totally honest with ourselves, not worry about indicting anyone else, and can still move on forgiven.

It is not always easy. The most heart-wrenching poem in Hales’ book comes in an exploration of the afterlife of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a Confederate army general in the American Civil War and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. 

He is also in spirit prison. At first, he lies about his past, thinking that there was no point in trying to improve because had always believed that people didn’t change. But he discovers that “heaven was all about changing.” And so he does. At first, he finds other things to do with his curtains and bed sheets, then he begins to volunteer, to listen, and to open up about “the terrors he inflicted.” Forrest spends “centuries trying to make amends” but still feels like he’s wearing cement slippers at the poem’s end.

Yet in Hales’ telling, there remains more hope for Forrest than for other characters who refuse to improve. Yes, he may still be in the middle of complete sorrow at the poem’s end, but it’s only because in learning to listen, he’s developed a conscience, and it’s that forward momentum that gives the poem its unexpected hope.

We may be losing that hope as a therapeutic circumstance explanation for sin replaces a model of accountability and repentance. None of that, once again, is to suggest that there aren’t tragic adverse circumstances that deserve the “trauma” label—or the fact that real burdens sometimes do indeed predispose certain people to negative behaviors.

But all too often, we continue to see situations where those who seek out therapeutic help leave feeling that their circumstances create emotions that can’t be changed and are, therefore, necessarily valid—reflecting behaviors that are contextually determined. And this therapy ends up helping clients feel increasingly justified in their choices and more powerless to make positive changes. And it’s this recipe that, left unchecked, could ultimately prevent so many suffering souls from finding the peace that can only be found through repentance.

The post When Therapy Subverts Change appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Those are all names I’ve been called, thanks to a narrative being promoted about parents like me.  I am the creator of “Laverna in the Library,” a Facebook page that I started with the purpose of showing parents excerpts of sexually explicit passages from books in public school libraries.  I rarely read the vitriol, and when I do, my reaction is one of amusement, fascination, and curiosity about a charlatan’s trick I’m mildly interested in dismantling. 

We’re used to being portrayed unfairly in national, secular media. But when the same narrative shows up in journalists working for Church-owned media, it feels important to make direct clarification.    

A tale of two surveys. On October 3rd, 2022, Rasmussen Reports published a nationwide poll with the commentary, “Voters overwhelmingly oppose sexually explicit books in public school libraries. … Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters believe books containing explicit sexual depictions of sex acts. … should not be present in public high school libraries.”

One day later, on October 4th, Deseret News published a poll that they had conducted with a social media post declaring that “just 12% of Americans agree that books should be removed from libraries if a parent objects.”

The Deseret News poll asked respondents if they agree with the following statement: “If any parent objects to a book in the public school library, that book should be removed, even if other parents like the book.” Some may consider that question leading or possibly neglectful of the issue of sexually explicit materials, but I’ll be gracious and just call it vague.  

 Given the unspecific nature of their question, it’s hard to understand how anyone taking the survey answered: “agree.”  What book are we talking about?  Is it “Clifford, the Big Red Dog”? Is it “Catch 22”? Is it “The Great Gatsby”? What if it’s a book that I like?! If I took this poll, I would be forced to answer this question in line with the majority of respondents—“strongly disagree.” (Otherwise, the implication is that any book could be removed if anyone merely asks for it. We must have standards for book challenges. If we remove anything and everything, the library will be empty within the year!)

 In contrast, the Rasmussen poll is very specific. It does not ask about just any parent or any book. The survey asks, “Should books containing explicit sexual depictions of sex acts be present in public high school libraries?” It makes perfect sense that respondents would respond to this question much differently than the broader query. Once again, I would personally come down on the side of the majority because I do not think minors should be offered obscene or explicit material at a public school.

 An honest conversation about what is happening. Can you see why the difference in question matters?  When it comes to this issue, the specific details about books being discussed mean everything. Most Americans don’t want to remove Dr. Seuss from schools, but they do believe that books in schools should be age appropriate in regards to content and not just reading level.

 Instead of drawing these logical conclusions from the data, it was disappointing to see a journalist at the Deseret News proceed to tie their poll result directly to the efforts of Utah Parents United and others that are focused on removing sexually explicit books from schools. 

Jeremy C. Pope, co-investigator for the survey, likewise draws this overly broad conclusion about these efforts: “The public really doesn’t like book banning.” Perhaps unwittingly, this professor’s statement unfairly conflates book banning with removing sexually explicit books from schools. Yet to be very clear, the polls have shown that most people disapprove of book banning while they approve of removing sexually explicit books. These are two distinct efforts.

 The Deseret News poll is not a fair representation of public opinion on sexually explicit books in school libraries simply because that’s not the question they asked. Nevertheless, Marjorie Cortez’s article on the topic was written as if they asked that question.  Furthermore, a centerpiece of the commentary is the claim that most of the challenged books have LGBT+ themes. Yet, when one reviews the books being challenged, it is obvious that this is simply false.

Look at the numbers. You can uncover the ratio of explicit homosexual and explicit heterosexual books by looking at the rated reviews yourself.  Ratedbooks.org lists many books that have been rated on a scale from 0 through 5 based largely on the MPAA rating system for movies.

Books rated 4 and 5 should be thought of earning an NC-17 rating or above. The website lists 90 reviewed books with a 4/5 rating, but only 13 of those books (14%) have LGBT+ characters and themes. Parents that are concerned about explicit books are not “silencing minority voices.” The facts show that the public is against any sexually explicit content being served up to children, regardless of orientation. We can maintain school libraries reflective of diverse viewpoints, including LGBT+ authors and stories, without stories involving explicit sex. 

Let’s not pretend there aren’t consequences. One woman we know has a daughter whose pornography struggles started from what she read in her own school library. Another family paid upwards of 12k per month for residential treatment for their child due to a pornography addiction that included books found in public school libraries. There are many other stories like these. 

This is where we need journalists to help shine a light on what’s happening. Yet when news media like the Deseret News emphasize language such as “book banning” in a discussion this important, they invite the public to conjure up fascist history and provoke an emotional response to something that simply doesn’t exist in America. After all, even the most controversial books are widely available in public libraries and from booksellers.

While there is no comprehensive list of every book that has been challenged in Utah thus far, I will offer here a sample of code violations from 10 books challenged within the Alpine School District.  (Warning.  This content is sexually explicit) According to the law, these books are indecent and do not belong in schools.  But it’s best to look at the material and decide for yourself.  

Thankfully, we have seen other voices featured in the Deseret News—albeit less prominently—pushing back on these claims and setting the record straight, including a helpful commentary from Representative Ken Ivory (“It’s not discrimination—we are protecting children from pornography”) and Suzanne Bates, (“Parents are right to be concerned about what kids read”; see also “Stop Calling Concerned Parents Haters” in this magazine). 

Yet a host of questions remain. If activists (and activist journalists) really believe that children should have no warnings or limits on what they access, then why aren’t they protesting ratings in movie theaters, music, video games, and TV? 

And if they truly believe in the First Amendment, then why are parents publicly shamed for exercising the freedom of speech to say that sexually explicit and, ofttimes, pornographic books are even more harmful to children than controlled, addictive stimulants like alcohol and drugs? 

Instead of addressing the real issue, which is giving unlabeled sexually explicit books to children, we continue to witness a popular yet misleading narrative that turns our attention away from a unifying issue (protecting kids from sexually explicit material) to one that is deeply divisive (these people are just racists! And bigots!).  

For a topic of such importance, and about which parents could unite to work together, it’s disappointing to see journalists confusing the matter. The lack of clarity in that leading Deseret News article seems to intentionally undermine the reasonable efforts of citizens to protect children from obscene content that violates the existing standards of decency under the law.

The post Protecting Kids From Explicit Material Shouldn’t Be Controversial appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

What was it that made that attempted inquiry different? Despite the equally honest critique we got in response, the legitimate inspiration and force behind the entire initiative was how much work we put into clarifying (for ourselves) what our real questions were about CRT, etc.

Why is it that honest curiosities have such an influence and power?

The power of honest curiosity. Essential Partners, the ground-breaking Massachusetts-based dialogue group (formerly called “Public Conversation Project”), regularly spends half their time with participants trying to ascertain the right question. Referring to her long experience facilitating dialogues on abortion and sexuality, one of their founders, the remarkable Laura Chasin, once suggested that “questions have an impact even before they are answered. They can close a door or turn on a light. They can intensify conflict or deepen mutual understanding. Asking the right questions now could build bridges across old divides and prevent the digging of new trenches at a time when we can ill afford further damage to our national landscape.”

As Chasin continued, “Questions have unsung power. They focus our attention. … They call upon one dimension of us rather than another … They can point us toward a path of understanding and action. … Every question harbors an assumption that is often hidden,” and consequently, “by answering a question, most of us unwittingly support its hidden assumptions.”

In the wake of the jarring destructions of 9/11, Chasin rightly argued, “It will matter greatly which questions we choose to address” and went on to encourage careful deliberation to  identify the “right questions for these harrowing times” (equally relevant today). In order to seek out “the most constructive and catalytic questions we can ask,” Chasin suggested we reach for:  

• Questions that promote recovery, minimize risks, and strengthen us for the marathon that lies ahead. 
• Questions that can galvanize our loyalty to our precious, if flawed, nation—without accelerating a worldwide spiral of violence that [can] become even more catastrophic 

As part of this deliberation, she encouraged people to “notice the impact on ourselves and others of the questions we hear or read” and be “thoughtful about the purposes of the questions we ask.” Then she also cautioned against “answer[ing] questions likely to steer talk in destructive directions” and “restrain” ourselves from asking questions that invite others “to utter simplistic and inflammatory soundbites”—while being aware of our tendency to lurch toward “dread-filled questions that shuffle, half-formed, through the dark hallways of our minds.” 

All of this explains why question design occupies such a central place in the work of this organization.  Maybe it should in our efforts as well? 

A new Public Square initiative.  In their experience, once you identify the right question— many other things follow, including hopefully, a more productive conversation.  That simple hope underlies our own attempt to do more of the same, in distilling down and raising some honest questions to various important figures in the discourse about faith—not from a place of adversarial attack, but as brothers and sisters of faith. 

Several weeks ago, we introduced our plan for roundtable discussions on especially sensitive and contested issues—drawing together left, and right-leaning disciples in open-hearted exchange that we hope might model and encourage similar conversations for others.  

At the time, we wrote that a more “complete truth is ultimately what we want to be aimed at as a magazine”: 

Not only tightly advancing a particular socio-political narrative of the truth—but reaching for the full picture of reality over time, no matter what it is and no matter where it comes from. Doesn’t that sound just a little bit fun? Actually, learning something new—rather than just constantly generating more fodder to confirm our own sense of rightness and righteousness?  

In that same spirit, we will be launching a weekly “Public Square Conversation” with one or two—or a group—of people doing influential work in the discussion about faith. Ideally, this other person or group will agree to an interactive conversation within the same text. In other cases, they might choose to respond in a separate piece we publish—or that they share on their own platform. It’s possible someone chooses to not engage, but we still share our questions anyway—with the same intent to invite a more productive exchange. 

Everyone participating in our own question design process has received the same prompt:  “If you were able to sit in this person’s living room—invited in for a heart-to-heart, and accompanied by the power of the Spirit, what would you really ask?  What would you want to pose to him/her?”

Each of the questions you will see in the weeks ahead arises from that place—a place of pondering, searching, and sitting, even some prayer. The final list of questions comes from various people reflecting a range of curiosities. Although some of these questions may be direct and even piercing—we will stay far away from “gotcha,” lawyer-style questions (what Charles Taylor once called “pseudo-questions”). 

As a way to be transparent about where the questions are coming from, we plan to frequently include some background context for the question, along with some of our own preliminary thoughts about the issue. Rather than preemptively trying to answer the question ourselves, we hope this level of transparency will make a productive exchange most likely.  As brothers and sisters who share a common foundation of faith, we will be genuinely interested in your take on these framing thoughts as well. How close—or far—away are we from each other in this?

In that same spirit of transparency and desire to build trust, we will share in advance our question lists with enough time for them to consider their level of engagement—at a minimum, giving them a chance to provide feedback on the questions themselves and help us refine them. We hope they will take us up on our offer to engage directly—either in the same document (as a Q/A) or a separate response we publish. In this process, we will welcome good-faith critiques and suggestions on points you believe we misunderstand. We want to keep learning and anticipate deeper understanding coming from this back-and-forth.

Starting this summer, our aim will be to publish regular Public Square Conversations—aiming for one each month.  To reiterate, these conversations and lists of questions are addressed not to enemies—but to people who identify as among us, our brothers and sisters. It’s in that spirit we write—and anticipate a response.  Thank you for taking our intentions seriously.  

As we wrote last year, we reiterate again today: “Too often allied thinkers largely talk amongst themselves about those who disagree with them, rather than engaging their differences together openly with grace, civility, and trust”—before adding: 

We believe Christ would want His followers to not give up on each other. We are inspired to write today in part by the Savior’s command, “Be one; and if ye are not one, ye are not mine.” We believe Christ would want his followers to not give up on each other, even if they harbor serious disagreements. In hopes of transcending the rancor standing in the way of more productive engagement, we write directly to fellow brothers and sisters who see these issues differently—raising a series of questions reflecting some of our own honest concerns. … We propose these questions out of a sincere desire to further understanding and—if possible—to ease tensions and promote reconciliation across some of these divides.

It was Jesus Himself who—when confronted with a barrage of comments or questions—would often raise brand new questions for consideration.  With humility, in our own attempt to be his disciples, we seek the inspiration to do something similar here.  

In Night, Elie Wiesel’s memoir about the Holocaust, he recounts his early spiritual mentor teaching him that every question possesses a power that does not lie in its answer. “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,” the mentor adds, before encouraging Wiesel (and all of us) to pray that God will give us “the strength to ask Him the right questions.”

The post Good Questions as a Pathway to Peace appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In his first essay, Alan tackles what he sees as an implied “either/or” between woundedness (which is emphasized in All Things New) and sin or guilt (which he wishes to stress). I understand where he’s coming from in this regard. The subheading for the relevant chapter in All Things New is “from sin to woundedness” which certainly suggests leaving one behind for the other, as do other examples in the text. However, an explicit disclaimer in the book also rejects the either/or position and advances the same both/and position Alan defends. In that same chapter, Terryl and Fiona write that “none of this is to say that we are not capable of sin in the sense of deliberately chosen action that is wrong and harmful. We clearly are.”

So, although I found Alan’s discussion of the natural man compelling and persuasive, the primary issue here seems to be less either/or vs. both/and (since Alan and Terryl and Fiona are all in the both/and camp) and more a matter of emphasis.

I relate to this on a personal level. As a young child of 7 or 8 years old, I suffered from guilt-fueled, repetitive religious compulsions. Every night for a certain period of my childhood, I went through the same pattern. First, I knelt down by my bed to say my night-time prayers. Second, I got into bed and started to drift off. Third, I was seized with guilt that my prayer had not been good enough. Had I let weariness curtail my prayer? Had I skimped on my list of things to be grateful for? Were there people I could have prayed for by name, but hadn’t? If something happened to them, wouldn’t it then be my fault? Fourth, I wrestled against these feelings of guilt and inadequacy, trying to rationalize that my prayer had been good enough. Fifth, I inevitably lost this battle of rationalization, climbed back out of bed, knelt down, and began to pray again. The cycle repeated multiple times every night until I was reduced to an exhausted, desperate wreck, sobbing quietly on my knees by the side of my bed, completely overwhelmed by self-recrimination for my total inability to say a perfect prayer.

I have still never said a perfect prayer. I’ve never done a perfect thing in my life. But I was lucky enough to escape from this dark place more or less on my own. By the time I was 12 or 13, I recognized myself immediately in the depiction of a woman who obsessively traced woodgrains on a floor as a form of religious compulsion in Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide. That had been me, but by the time I read the book, it wasn’t me anymore.

The route to my escape was simple reasoning. Surely a kind, wise Heavenly Father would have better ways of tutoring His children. Therefore the feelings of crippling guilt—as opposed to the ordinary, well-deserved variety I was also familiar with—must come from some other source. Satan? My own defective mind? It didn’t matter. I set my jaw, did my best to do a good job on the one prayer I allowed myself per night, and then refused to get out of bed. The voice calling me wasn’t God’s, and I wasn’t going to heed it.

As a result, I’m no longer in the target audience for All Things New. I fall much closer to Alan in my theological leanings and emphasis. Nevertheless, the memories of these childhood struggles with scrupulosity, or “pathological guilt/anxiety about moral or religious issues,” give me a window into the struggles that particular audience and subset of believers face.

That’s not to say I think that he’s wrong. On the contrary, I know that at least in my case the emphasis on guilt was strongly tied to my own pride. The only reason for me to be so gobsmacked by evidence of personal imperfection is if that evidence contradicts an absurdly high overestimation of my own goodness. Pride goeth indeed before the fall. As a secondary consideration, there’s a definite arrogance in telling God you know better than Him who He should love and treat kindly.

So it’s not that I think Alan’s diagnosis is wrong. He hit the nail on the head, at least in my case. But being right isn’t always the same thing as being helpful, and what his argument has going for it in terms of accuracy it may lack in terms of pastoral efficacy. Just think about someone having a panic attack. It’s true that they’re irrationally overreacting, but telling them so is not the best approach to helping them out of the situation. There’s what is true, and then there’s what is true and helpful.

Unfortunately, I also find that Alan indulges in excesses like those he critiques. For instance, it is simply not the case that all forms of eating are a variety of lethal violence. The whole point of fruit is to entice organisms to eat and subsequently spread the seeds within. That’s not robbing plants; it’s doing them a favor. And what about husbanding bees for their honey, cows for their milk, or chickens for their eggs? Couldn’t one at least argue that’s a form of cooperative exchange or symbiosis rather than naked exploitation? Yuval Harari went even farther, declaring in Sapiens that “these plants [wheat] domesticated homo sapiens rather than vice versa.” Is Alan right that eating bread depends on the mass murder of wheat, or is Hariri right that wheat has enslaved the entire human race? You can look at it either way, I suppose, but at the end of the day I would question any framework that characterizes enjoying a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with words like “killing,” “scorched corpses,” and “victims.”

Similarly, I don’t believe “humility is liberating” would have been a useful message for someone to whisper in my ear when I was a 7-year-old boy with a tear-streaked face falling asleep on my knees by the bed. I don’t see it helping me very much as a 19-year-old missionary wandering in circles around my first apartment at night hitting myself over and over and hissing “Worthless. Worthless. Worthless,” in an endless litany. My trainer gave me a hug, which was decidedly more effective.

Then I get to the last two paragraphs of Alan’s first piece and I want to stand up and cheer. Now he’s speaking my language! I have come a long way since I was 7 years old, or since I was 19. I have learned the “humility is liberating” message (although I still struggle with the application). And I love both his assertion that “It is all me, I own it all” and—even more—his declaration that “although I own it all, I do not own myself.” 

That’s where I’ve arrived myself as well. I no longer doubt that Christ’s grace is sufficient to save even a wretch like me, which significantly lightens the burden of being a wretch. And yet, it has been a long process to get there, which is what Alan’s response seems to underestimate. By countering the woundedness emphasis with an even more extreme wretchedness emphasis, his rejoinder seems to focus exclusively on the lessons I was only ready for in my 20s and 30s, without adequate attention to the formative and difficult lessons I had to learn first at 7 and 19. And to me, that feels a little like kicking away the very ladder that I used to get where I am before others have a chance to climb it.

In his second piece, Alan tackles the critique of retributive justice in All Things New. This is where it seems to me that Alan and Terryl and Fiona are talking past each other. My own entry point into the discussion starts with Alma’s teachings to his son Corianton where his depiction of justice is thoroughly karmic. He teaches his son that “the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish—good for that which is good; righteous for that which is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful.” He concludes that “that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored.” For him, justice is what you get when the larger principle of restoration operates in the absence of mercy afforded by the atonement. You always get what you send out (restoration is unavoidable) and without the intervention of Christ, there’s no recourse for all that evil we inevitably send out. What goes around comes around.

Most of Alan’s second piece is a defense of this karmic form of justice: the punishment must fit the crime. I strongly agree with it. But is it a rebuttal to Terryl and Fiona’s critique of “retributive justice”? Not necessarily. The core of their critique of retributive notions of justice seems to be about the why rather than the what. Alan cites my parents as saying retributive justice “often conceals a human thirst for redemption,” but notions of “thirst” are orthogonal to debates about proportionality or fairness and speak only to motive, and specifically a motive to hurt.

To me, it seems All Things New is taking aim at one extreme position: namely, a tyrannical God who indulges in revenge with malicious intent. This is strengthened by some of the descriptions from the book’s Introduction about Latter-day Saints laboring under precisely that glowering threat. Extreme the position may be, clearly some people hold it, and are injured thereby. Meanwhile, Alan is taking aim at an opposite extreme: namely, a non-judgmental God who never exacts justice at all. Alan’s extreme is just as real and injurious in practice and generally goes under the term Moral Therapeutic Deism. Although both of these extremes warrant a response, it shouldn’t be the case that a response to one is confused with a tacit endorsement of the other.

What’s more, the truly complicated difficulties lie not at either of these extremes, but in the middle. How do we reconcile a loving God with the explicit references to anger and wrath in the scripture, not to mention the depiction of Christ burying, burning, or drowning entire cities? And how do we approach the tensions of this seeming paradox in light of Alma’s karmic notions of justice where it seems that the consequences of sin are less like a penalty imposed at a judge’s discretion and more like the natural consequence of evil? These are the questions that most intrigue me, but we’ll need to step away from the extremes to conduct that investigation.

This provides a nice segue into Alan’s third piece, where we take up the question of how we are to relate to our open canon of scripture. The fundamental thesis of All Things New is that our Latter-day Saint culture is far more burdened than we realize with the debris of the apostasy, starting with Augustine and continuing on through prominent figures of the Reformation such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. As Alan summarizes the case:

The Restoration was supposed to heal the souls this false Augustinian story had wounded—in fact, the Givenses suggest, Joseph Smith’s attacks on creeds were aimed at Augustine-inspired Protestant creeds like Augsburg and Westminster and not at the Nicene Creed as Latter-day Saints often imagine.

This thesis is the most important one in the book. My chief complaint with Alan’s rejoinder is that he spends more time addressing the corollaries of this thesis and not enough time addressing—either favorably or disfavorably—the thesis itself. 

So, for example, Terryl and Fiona cite the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy stating that “Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching” and that “the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.” In other words, the Old and New Testaments are word-for-word perfect. Terryl and Fiona then make two observations about Latter-day Saint approaches to scripture. The first is that, culturally, we tend to act as if we were scriptural inerrantists and the second is that this tendency flies in the face of the whole Restoration project. Not only does the Book of Mormon discuss its own errors and those of the Bible, but Latter-day Saint leaders like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and George Q. Cannon (all cited in All Things New) propound a view of scripture and revelation that is incompatible with the Chicago Statement.

Alan essentially passes all this by in his review, more or less without comment. Instead, what he challenges is the remedy proposed by Terryl and Fiona. They cite C. S. Lewis’s view that in any conflict between “the doctrine of the goodness of God [and] that of the inerrancy of Scriptures” it is the goodness of God that “is the more certain of the two.” This strikes Alan as too hasty in its willingness to cast off scripture that offends our preconceptions, and that is the approach he rejects. 

This gives the unfortunate and mistaken impression that Alan is defending inerrantism. Terryl and Fiona have identified a problem and proposed a solution. Alan has rejected the proposed solution without proferring an alternative or sufficiently addressing the underlying problem. I say this impression is mistaken because I’ve had an opportunity to discuss this with Alan, and so—based on conversation outside his essay—I no longer consider his position inerrantist. But it is what I took from the essay.

Consider Judges 11 and the story of Jephthah, which Terryl and Fiona call out as an egregious example of the conflict between God’s love and the text. They do not explicitly say so, but I can see why a reader would view their treatment as rejection. The story causes us problems, so get rid of it.

Alan takes up the same story in his response and provides an example of reinterpretation. Instead of just chucking the story, might there be ways for us to reconsider what it is actually saying? He points out, for example, that God never shows up to validate or accept Jephthah’s rash promise and even cites an interpretation where Jephthah sacrifices his daughter by giving her up for religious service rather than literal human sacrifice. Alan is exemplifying a reinterpretation approach. 

A key difference between rejection and reinterpretation is that rejection distances us from the scripture and reinterpretation draws us deeper in. That call to deeper engagement with the scripture is why I believe that—had they delved into the topic in greater detail—it would have been apparent that Terryl and Fiona were actually inclined towards reinterpretation rather than rejection. 

I deduce this from the pages that follow, where Terryl and Fiona emphasize more work on our part, stating that “bearing the cross of discipleship involves the strenuous effort of the mind, as well as that of the body and the heart,” and then citing B. H. Roberts:

Mental laziness is the vice of men, especially with reference to divine things. Men seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah’s ravens and feed us without effort on our part. … “Why then should man strive and trouble himself to understand? Much study is still a weariness of the flesh.” So men reason; and just now it is much in fashion to laud “the simple faith;” which is content to believe without understanding, or even without much effort to understand.

None of this painstaking effort is required by or even compatible with a lazy approach to just throw away whatever troubles us in the scriptures, which I believe is the perception that Alan took away from All Things New. (Just as, prior to conversing with him, I read his essay as a flat-out defense of inerrantism.)

My own view is that the whole conversation around inerrantism can be a red herring. There’s a sense in which the perfection or lack of perfection in scripture is quite beside the point. How so? 

The reality is that human beings never have direct, unmediated access to the world around us. This is true of something as simple as vision. The world we see is the result of a dizzyingly complex system of visual perception that is constantly making inferences and hypotheses about the world and presenting the results of this ongoing, creative, biased process to us as if it were just “the world.” But it’s not “the world.” It’s the world as processed through our visual system. This is why optical illusions exist: because the various subroutines running in our visual system are prone to error and deception. 

The same is true of texts. Suppose for a moment that the King James Version of the Bible (used by Latter-day Saints) was a word-for-word transcript dictated by God himself. Were that true—the strongest possible inerrantism imaginable—it wouldn’t matter nearly as much as one might at first think. Because we would then have to read that text and the act of reading—like the act of visual perception—contaminates the raw data with our assumptions, presuppositions, and biases.

The real danger of scriptural inerrancy is not that it makes an idol out of the scriptures, but that it makes an idol out of our interpretation of the scriptures. Which, after all, is the only thing we have. And that would really just be a shorthand for making an idol out of ourselves, the interpreters. Scriptural inerrancy thus veers perilously in the direction of idolatry but it does so not because of what it says about scripture but because of what it assumes (but does not say) about us. 

Alan begins this third essay with the example of the Heliand. This serves as a template for what it looks like to fall short of being scripture: “even a brief perusal … turns up flaws, from the predictable anti-Semitism to, perhaps, a slight lack of emphasis on ‘Blessed are the meek.’” Alan goes on to say that All Things New is, like the Heliand, “an incomplete and imperfect expression of the Gospel in the inevitably misleading terms and concepts of a particular culture.” 

But, as we’ve just discussed, our conception of scripture must be “incomplete and imperfect” and subject to “a particular culture” because we are incomplete and imperfect and the products of our particular culture. And wouldn’t that also be true of many authors within scripture itself?  Does the Genesis account not spring from a particular culture, and include terms and concepts that mislead us when we are unfamiliar with that culture? Of course it does, as do all scriptures, which is why prophets themselves often approach scripture with the best scholarship of faithful academics: as perhaps another way to overcome those cultural particularities. 

Incomplete, imperfect, and culturally contingent: these are not defects that distinguish scripture from non-scripture, they’re just the universal attributes of all human-touched texts. Even so, the question remains:  If the scriptures—or, even our interpretation of them—contain error then what are we to do when we encounter problematic contradictions in the text? The Canaanites are exterminated to the last in one book, but suddenly are present again in another, later book. God is love, but God is also angry and jealous and annihilates whole cities. The examples are too numerous to list. What shall we do with them? The peril of hastily discarding one side or the other of every apparent paradox is obvious.

And to reiterate, Terryl and Fiona’s recommendation is not to just set aside whatever causes problems. Their first resort is not that “scriptures are just corruptions” but that scriptures are revealed within a particular cultural and personal context. This implies not setting aside things willy-nilly, but rather a flexible and epistemically humble approach to understanding what the scriptures say, including a willingness to try and make allowances for cultural differences and personal foibles.

Once we dispense with scriptural inerrancy and accept that scriptures are incomplete, imperfect, and culturally contingent (and maybe sometimes, although this is rarer, flat out wrong), we are left with the very difficult task of figuring out what part of the canonized text is also inspired and—more commonly—how to read it. So the project Terryl and Fiona are proposing relies a lot less on snipping sections out of the scripture and much more on subjecting our naive interpretations of scripture to faithful scrutiny.

The tough realization is that there is not a guaranteed, no-risk path to understanding scripture. The text on the page has to get into our brains, and that is an active process where we inevitably impose our own assumptions, both cultural and individual. No matter where you go: there you are. Humans can always mess up anything. It’s our superpower. Just as we can’t read the scriptures without a cultural lens, we also can’t read the scriptures without imposing our own flawed human paradigms and assumptions. We’re never going to read the scriptures perfectly because we never do anything perfectly, so the inerrancy question is probably best set aside.

If we do that, then we can return to the most important thesis in All Things New: that the work of the ongoing Restoration is not done, and that at least some of the remaining labor is the difficult, error-prone work of sifting through the traditions of our fathers to separate the good from the bad. I think there is a very real dispositional gap between Alan and Terryl and Fiona on this issue, with Terryl and Fiona much more eager to leap forward and embrace this reinterpretation and Alan much more oriented on preserving the authority of the scripture as a means of strengthening unity. This is a genuine tension, not just a misunderstanding, and one that merits further exploration. 

I am pleased with how that conversation is progressing thus far. I believe Alan’s critique of some of the tentative steps my parents have taken to undertake this sifting contains useful correctives and refinements. (Those steps were tentative, after all!) I also fundamentally agree with Terryl and Fiona’s project, however. Although they certainly didn’t get the answers to such huge questions right the first time—and nowhere claimed to do so—they are taking the Restoration seriously enough to take on the difficult questions. As we all should. Moving forward is always risky, but if there’s one thing the Restoration should have taught us, it’s that the Lord wants us to take that risk, even though He knows very well we will fall and need rescue when we do. My hope is that as we move forward, we will find ways to incorporate our different perspectives in a way compatible with the unity of Zion. That task is one of the great quests of the Restoration. To the extent that we are successful, even our differences—such as we’ve explored in this exchange—will only contribute to hastening the work of the ongoing Restoration.

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