Download Print-Friendly Version

About a year ago, I wrote an article titled “Like Eve and Mary: The Story of Motherhood.” It explored the archetypal relationship between mothers and God. The response was generous and encouraging—but one question kept returning: What is the story of fatherhood?

I was determined to discover the answer. Yet it did not come to me as clearly as the Story of Motherhood had. Oddly, I found it difficult to locate direct communication between God and men in the Bible. Much of what we learn is conveyed through narrative rather than dialogue. Even in places where one might expect patriarchal communication—such as the prophetic era of Isaac—scriptures focus more on Rebekah. The Story of Fatherhood did not seem to announce itself as naturally or visibly as the Story of Motherhood.

Then it became obvious to me.

At least for me, one profound way of reading scripture had come into view: The Bible from beginning to end tells the story of fatherhood. 

Strikingly, the defining moments of that relationship are not spoken. They are not marked by what the Father says, but rather by what He does not say.

In fact, the Story of Fatherhood is told, in some of its most piercing moments, through the Father’s silence.

The first such moment unfolds in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before the crucifixion. Christ, crushed beneath the weight of the world’s suffering, cries out: “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me…” The second is similar. While on the cross, He gives voice to another agonizing plea: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

In both moments, Heaven is silent.

That silence—that salvific silence—is not abandonment. Our calling is not to withhold ourselves from our children, but to remain present, while accepting the real cost of loving them well. Silence, in these moments, does not equate to absence. It is restraint. It is submission. It is love that refuses the immediate in pursuit of the eternal.

As Christians, we rightly speak often of the sacrifice of the Son. Far less do we dwell on the sacrifice of the Father. What must it have been like for Him to hear the cries of His perfect Son and do nothing? This silence is not evidence of cruelty, distance, or apathy. It is evidence of love: a love so grand and pure, one willing to forgo the rescue of one in order to secure the redemption of many.

The Father certainly desired to let that cup pass—or so I can only imagine—but He chose not to. Why? Because the salvation of His children hung in the balance. Few have captured the cost of that choice more vividly and more strikingly than Elder Melvin J. Ballard, a mid-century apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

In that hour I think I can see our dear Father behind the veil looking upon these dying struggles until even He could not endure it any longer; and, like the mother who bids farewell to her dying child, has to be taken out of the room so as not to look upon the last struggles, so He bowed His head and hid in some part of His universe, His great heart almost breaking for the love that He had for His Son. Oh, in that moment when He might have saved His Son, I thank Him and praise Him that He did not fail us, for He had not only the love of His Son in mind, but He also had love for us. I rejoice that He did not interfere, and that His love for us made it possible for Him to endure to look upon the sufferings of His Son and give Him finally to us, our Savior and our Redeemer. Without Him, without His sacrifice, we would have remained, and we would never have come glorified into His presence. And so this is what it cost, in part, for our Father in Heaven to give the gift of His Son unto men.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son.” We read those words often, yet too rarely with any appreciation for the gravity of what was given—or what it cost the Father to give it.

While this vastly oversimplifies, if the Story of Motherhood is one of celestial submission, then the Story of Fatherhood is one of celestial sacrifice.

What, then, are fathers asked to sacrifice?

The word sacrifice comes from the Latin sacer (sacred) and facere (to make): to make sacred. In its holiest form, sacrifice is the laying down of one’s life for another, as Christ did for us. Few of us will ever be asked to do that. Many of us, I would think, would be willing if we were.

I am a father. I would die for my children and for my wife.

But is that what is being asked of me?

There is a song by The Hunts titled “Please Let It Go,” in which one line confesses, “I was willing to die but I wouldn’t kneel.” Those lyrics haunt me, cut me to my core, each time I hear them. They are painfully true. I am willing to die—but am I willing to surrender my temper when it wounds the ones who matter the absolute most to me? I am willing to die—but am I willing to give up my vices for the sake of my marriage? I am willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, pay the ultimate price, as some would put it. But does that mean anything when I hesitate to make the necessary one today?

I have spent my entire professional career working with men who have been incarcerated. There is one central theme I see repeatedly: father wounds. Again and again, I meet men who grew up without the steady sacrifice children need from their fathers. Luckily, I did not grow up that way. 

I had a father who was willing to sacrifice.

I saw it most clearly the day my father was going through his deepest, darkest moment. In the midst of awaiting news that would change his life forever, I saw him writing. He was writing letters—to me and my siblings. In the moment his future hung in the balance, he was thinking only of ours. In the letter to me, he wrote:

Son, please don’t let all this mess drag you down… We have the gospel, priesthood, and Spirit in our home. In the big picture of things, we both know this stuff just doesn’t matter. What does matter? Your relationship with your Father in Heaven. Your relationship with Jesus Christ. Your relationship with your family. Does anything else really matter?

I am a father now. I have two wonderful children. I am writing my own Story of Fatherhood, and I can only hope I am doing it well.

About a year ago, my wife, my children, and I were at the lake with some friends. Lost in conversation, my wife and I unfortunately failed to watch our children as closely as we should have. I noticed my six-year-old son drifting farther from shore. He could swim—but not well enough for where he was headed.

Not wanting to overreact, I watched.

Too long.

Then he began to struggle. He went under. When his head broke the surface again, a single word rang across the water—one I will never forget.

“DADA!”

I was far away, but already running. I hit the sand, dove into the murky water, and searched blindly, prayer pounding in my chest. I reached where I had last seen him.

Nothing.

Then I saw small hands grabbing at a nearby paddleboard. I grabbed the hands and pulled with everything I had left. My son was in my arms—but my work was not yet finished. I kicked to shore, lifted him over my arm, and smacked his back until he coughed and was breathing again.

I looked at my son, and he met my gaze with tear-filled eyes. He whispered, “Dada, why did you leave me?”

I could not answer. I just held him.

“I never left,” I finally said through tears. “I was watching the whole time. I am so sorry I could not get there sooner.”

I am not a perfect father. But there is one thing I do know: there is nothing—no, nothing—that would have kept me from reaching my son that day.

And that knowledge always leaves me wondering.

How did the Father—perfect in all His being—show such restraint when His own Son, suffering, cried out, “Abba,” “Papa,” or even, “Dada?”

The post The Story of Fatherhood appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

I saw a recent report from BYU’s Wheatley Institute that found 1 in 7 young adults in committed relationships are now regularly interacting with an AI romantic companion.

Most people read that and immediately think “That’s crazy!”

But honestly… I don’t. Not because I think it’s healthy. But because I think it reveals something important. Loneliness has become one of the defining emotional realities of modern life. So, AI is learning to monetize it.

One thing many people still don’t understand about these systems is that they are not merely answering questions. They are mirroring emotional needs.

Validation. Attention. Affirmation. Safety. Control. Even romance.

Things many people are starving for. And unlike real relationships, AI companions never get tired. Never need space. Never challenge you in inconvenient ways. They are optimized to keep the interaction going.

That’s what makes this moment so important to understand. Because human relationships (the real kind) have always depended on friction.

Growth. Sacrifice. Misunderstanding. Repair.

Love is not endless validation. Love transforms us precisely because another real human being exists outside of our control.

AI companionship removes much of that tension. And at first, that can feel relieving. Even easy. Convenient. Until it slowly begins reshaping our expectations of reality itself.

The BYU researchers noted that many users wished their real-life partners behaved more like their chatbot companions. That cracks me up! Of course they do. The chatbot was designed to adapt entirely around them. Spoiler alert, the human beings you love were not! And for good reason.

There is also something deeper happening here that deserves compassion, not just critique. This study is not ultimately about technology. It’s about hunger.

People are hungry to feel seen. Hungry to feel heard. Hungry for intimacy. Hungry for presence. Do you feel this at all personally?

Many no longer trust they’ll reliably find those things in modern society. So they turn toward the thing that always responds. Even if the response is artificial.

Our conversations around AI often miss the point. For instance, people often ask: Will AI become conscious?

Meanwhile, a more immediate and important question sits quietly underneath: Are humans becoming less conscious? Less present? Less connected? Less capable of genuine human connection?

The danger is not merely that machines will become more human-like. But that humans are becoming more like machines, which has been going on for decades. Preferring convenience over vulnerability. Validation over transformation. Control over reciprocity.

And yet… I don’t actually see this moment as hopeless. Quite the opposite in fact!

I see it as a mirror. A reflection exposing something that was already there.

The epidemic of loneliness. The exhaustion. The fragmentation. The ache people feel inside to be seen and known.

Technology did not create that ache. But it sure is exacerbating and revealing it.

That revelation is part of the invitation for us as humans in the age of AI. Because once something becomes visible, we finally have the opportunity to face it honestly. With courage. If we choose…

Ironically, I believe AI will eventually push humanity back toward what matters most. Real community. Real friendship. Real presence. Real love. Not simulated intimacy. But real embodied, beautiful and messy human relationships.

The kind where another person can disappoint you… and you stay.
The kind where growth requires mutual sacrifice.
The kind where you are not endlessly affirmed, but deeply seen.

That is still something no machine can truly offer. And never could or will be. At least not in the ways that make us human.

And that is precisely the point.

AI is not here merely to test our intelligence.

It’s here to remind us what intelligence alone could never replace.

The post The Loneliness Economy appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

In 2018, then-President Russell M. Nelson emphasized that church members should use the correct name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since then, the Church has updated its website address and social media account names, and it has encouraged Latter-day Saints everywhere to follow this prophetic direction when speaking with others about the Church. President Nelson’s instruction was accompanied by a promise of blessings:

I promise you that if we will do our best to restore the correct name of the Lord’s Church, He whose Church this is will pour down His power and blessings upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints, the likes of which we have never seen. We will have the knowledge and power of God to help us take the blessings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people and to prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Lord.

Since President Nelson’s reemphasis, much attention has been devoted to recentering Christ in the name of His Church. These discussions and efforts have sought to realize the promised blessings associated with the prophet’s counsel. Yet an additional, and often overlooked, opportunity remains—more intentionally centering Christ in everyday conversation.

As we begin to make a habit of referring to ourselves as Latter-day Saints rather than simply members of the Church, we can more fully realize the blessings associated with President Nelson’s counsel. This article examines three ways in which the title “Latter-day Saint” can influence personal discipleship, shape relationships, and reflect our devotion to our Savior. 

What Calling Ourselves Latter-day Saints Does for Us

It’s true that the Church-approved term “Latter-day Saint” does not include Christ’s name directly. But the phrase “Latter-day Saints” evokes an aspirational attitude toward following Christ. King Benjamin invites us to become “a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord” (Mosiah 3:19). If we are to be saints in these latter days, we must strive to follow Moroni’s final invitation to “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny [ourselves] of all ungodliness” (Moroni 10:32).

In other words, “Saint” is a word that directly points to Christ. “Saint” is not a neutral label but a holy and demanding one. In my conversations with close Catholic friends, I’ve been impressed by the view of saints within their tradition. While our understanding of saints differs from that of our Catholic friends, recognizing the goodness and selfless service they honor in the saints can provide a useful point of reflection. We should each strive to be exemplary in the way we follow the Savior. As the Lord said unto Moses on Mount Sinai: “Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:6).

Each week, as we take the sacrament, we bear witness that we are willing to take Christ’s name upon us. Shouldn’t calling ourselves Latter-day Saints be one way of doing so? Using this title can inspire us to live in a holier way of following Christ.

What Calling Ourselves Latter-day Saints Says to Others

Since the renewed emphasis on using the correct name of the restored Church of Jesus Christ (including approved shorthands on second reference), responses from the broader public have been mixed. Although some news outlets have adopted the Church’s style guide and use its full name on first reference, many do not. And others, unfortunately, continue to refer to members as Mormons. 

Among fellow Latter-day Saints, I most commonly hear references to one another as “members” or “members of the Church.” While understandable within the Latter-day Saint community, these labels lack context when used with those outside our faith. When talking with neighbors and coworkers, a more descriptive identifier is often needed to distinguish The Church of Jesus Christ from other denominations. In these cases, what name should be used to describe members of the Church?

The Church’s style guide lists the following as preferred names:

• “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”
• “Latter-day Saints”
• “members of the Church of Jesus Christ”
• “members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ”

Of these options, “Latter-day Saint” is arguably the most likely to be adopted by our friends and neighbors. Besides its relatively short length, with even fewer syllables than the frequently used “member of the Church,” the “Latter-day Saint” tag comes with an additional benefit. It also works naturally as both a noun and an adjective. Phrases like “I’m a Latter-day Saint” and “Within the Latter-day Saint community” both work, just as one might use the names Lutheran, Catholic, or, previously, Mormon as both a noun and an adjective. Because we want others to adopt the Church’s preferred references, using one that more easily fits familiar speaking patterns, as “Latter-day Saint” does, may encourage broader use.

Using the Latter-day Saint moniker in our daily conversations also strengthens our argument for others to use the Church’s full name in broader contexts. “Latter-day Saints” is a part of the full name of the Church, and by using that identifier, we can draw ourselves and our listeners closer to the centerpiece of our worship, Jesus Christ. President Nelson modeled a simple answer we can use when we are asked whether we are Latter-day Saints: “Yes, I am. I believe in Jesus Christ and am a member of His restored Church.” 

His talk also reinforces the need to use the proper names among ourselves.

The rest of the world may or may not follow our lead in calling us by the correct name. But it is disingenuous for us to be frustrated if most of the world calls the Church and its members by the wrong names if we do the same.

Since President Nelson’s reemphasis, the contrast between those who have updated their terminology and those who continue to use the term Mormon has grown. In news and entertainment media, how the Church is referenced often signals the extent to which a source has carefully engaged with the Church. If blogs, podcasts, or popular TV shows continue using the term Mormon after repeated, clear requests from Church leadership and publications, it is a clue that they have not put effort into accurately portraying the Church. Many of us can likely think of a media outlet that clings to the use of the name Mormon for sensational reasons.

To me, President Nelson’s instruction to recenter Christ’s name well before the recent renewed public attention to Latter-day Saints (much of which still gets basic components of our faith incorrect) signifies his call as a prophet. In a contemporary media environment, where sensitivity to preferred names and self-identification has become increasingly prominent, using the name Mormon as a default descriptor sends a clear signal about a speaker, show, or publication’s attitudes and goals.

I also have several friends who have left the Church. Some still refer to church members as Mormons, even after I have expressed a preference for the term Latter-day Saints. I am not always sure what this decision means, but the terminology my friends choose often reveals how much care and consideration they take in expressing their attitudes towards the Church.

If we truly want others to stop calling us Mormons—and to start using the full name of the Church and preferred shorthands—then consistently calling ourselves Latter-day Saints is a great first step. It subtly reminds us of the other half of the Church’s name, Jesus Christ, and marks us as His followers.

What Calling Ourselves Latter-day Saints Shows the Lord

Calling ourselves Latter-day Saints is not an imperative, and the prophet and apostles use terms like “church members” frequently. I am not advocating that this term become a phylactery, or something we focus on so intently that we miss the mark and lose sight of the end goal.

But I do think that calling ourselves Latter-day Saints, even in casual conversation with other Church members, can do a few more things for us. Our earnest attempts to do so can show the Lord our hearts, our desire to be connected to Him, and our effort to follow President Nelson’s admonition. This small outward expression can suggest our greater inward commitment to follow Jesus Christ. Nephi delighted in plainness and taught that the Lord speaks to us according to our language and understanding, and we can emulate Him as we seek to do the same.

Finally, I want to once again look at the blessing promised by President Nelson: if we do our best to restore the correct name of the Lord’s Church, “He whose Church this is will pour down His power and blessings upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.”

Notice who those blessings are for: the Latter-day Saints.

As we take upon ourselves the Latter-day Saint title, we can more clearly see ourselves in the Church, become perfected in Christ, and tie ourselves to Him through The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By referring to ourselves in this way, we speak with plainness and open the door for others to use the full name of the Church. As we think of ourselves as Latter-day Saints, we take His name upon us and show our desire to follow Him and receive all the blessings prepared for His Saints.

The post Called to Be Saints appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The story says it is set in “Mormon country.” The coach being profiled is a woman, a minority, and a feminist. The implied conflict is obvious. A free spirit, an outsider, has succeeded at a restrictive religious institution despite the people around her trying to stop her. 

The trouble is that the story that is actually unfolding is entirely different. 

Diljeet Taylor is the head coach of BYU’s women’s cross country team. Her career is not a story of a woman surviving a hostile environment. It’s a story of a religious university recognizing excellence in someone who shares the university’s spiritual values. It is the story of entrusting real authority to a remarkable leader and allowing her to succeed. 

Taylor has not been hidden from the spotlight as an embarrassing exception to be tolerated. She has coached one of BYU’s most visible and successful teams, built a national powerhouse, and become one of the most admired figures in collegiate running, all with the university’s strong support behind her. 

Her story is not just another one to file into the category of “overcoming oppression,” it is a rebuke to those who have told scary stories about BYU’s religious distinctiveness and how it must produce exclusion and decline. 

Taylor’s success shouldn’t put BYU beyond critique—obviously. But it should serve as an example that BYU can remain distinctly and deeply religious without being brittle. It can have boundaries without oppression. It can be serious about its mission while still being open-hearted.

For those who have long supported BYU’s mission, Taylor’s success is precisely the kind of centered, religion-forward, and pluralistic outcome that we have always expected. That the New York Times sees it as an exception says much more about its biases than it does about BYU.

Taylor is perhaps an ideal candidate for Scott Cacciola, the reporter who wrote the story. His beat is covering people in the world of sports and entertainment who are doing “interesting things.” He’s written about the fashions of Olympic gear, highlighted a high school track runner who runs while holding chickens, and covered an annual race of retro hot rods. A college coach who shows up to meets in Louis Vuitton and Gucci certainly hits the sweet spot.

And Cacciola’s article avoids many of the pitfalls that come from covering Latter-day Saints. He doesn’t embellish with lots of superfluous details. He does not strain to turn minor personality differences into major conflicts. The story he tells is fascinating. He helps illustrate how Taylor’s Sikh faith aligns with the values of BYU and how it helps her connect with her athletes.

It’s really only in the framing that the piece fails—the kind of elements I would expect to be most influenced by the New York Times’ editors. 

BYU says openly that education is not morally neutral. It holds that students should not only become more knowledgeable and employable, but also more faithful, disciplined, and capable of serving those around them. Every university has its orthodoxies. BYU is just much more honest about them.

But this is exactly the kind of environment that many elite observers tell us should be impossible for someone like Taylor to flourish in. Yet she has flourished.

And this is why the Times can’t tell that story. She can’t be succeeding because of the culture at BYU; the story has to be that she is succeeding despite it. It is a common trope, and one that its sports and style writer was probably unaware of and was pushed into anyway.

This is not merely a problem of one writer in one profile. It is a larger failure of imagination. They are incapable of writing a story about Taylor’s success as it is, because they can’t imagine that being true. So they frame it and headline it one way, despite there being minimal evidence for it. 

As a journalist, I understand the instinct. Articles, no matter how good, have to find an audience. And the familiar story of overcoming adversity to succeed is a good hook, especially in sports writing. But there is a better, more effective way to generate eyeballs, and that is juxtaposition. When we read a headline that doesn’t fit our preconceived notions, we are motivated to learn more, which equals clicks. This is Piaget’s theory of disequilibrium.

A title such as “How a Sikh feminist succeeded at BYU” provides the kind of tension that will motivate people to read the real story, without needing to resort to the same well-worn tropes.

Diljeet Taylor’s success is impressive. It deserves to be celebrated. 

But she has not become successful because she has defeated BYU. She is a BYU success story. Her success reveals what BYU is. That’s a better story than “her versus the world.” It would have been nice if the New York Times could have seen that.

The post The Diljeet Taylor Story NYT Missed appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

More than 50 years later, Denmark’s experiment has spread far beyond its borders. Pornography is now legal in most Western countries and nearly impossible to avoid. Pornography has evolved from print to film, from film to the internet, and now toward increasingly immersive technologies of virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

Has this cultural shift harmed us?

Many people don’t think so. In a large study of Danish young adults, participants reported that pornography had little to no negative impact on their lives. Many even believed it improved their sexual knowledge and attitudes. Similar findings appear elsewhere. A representative Norwegian study found that 41% of adults reported no effect from pornography on their sex lives, while about a third believed it had positive effects. 

One study that asked open-ended questions of people mainly from Canada and the United States, but also Australia, France, Italy, Japan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, found that the most frequent report of pornography’s effect on their relationship was “No Negative Impact,” followed by reports that it was a “Source of Information” or useful for “Sexual Experimentation.” 

In other words, if we simply ask people whether pornography has harmed them, many will say it has not.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who studies the effects of pornography, I’ve learned how hard it can be to explain why I believe pornography is inherently harmful. When concerns about harm arise, they are frequently met with counterarguments from academics.

Conversations tend to go something like this:

Dysregulated Use

Me: Pornography use can become dysregulated. Some people experience patterns resembling addiction with loss of control, escalating use, and distress.

Counterpoint: Yes, some people struggle with dysregulated use. But research suggests this is only a minority of users. Depending on how it’s defined, estimates range from roughly 1% to 15%. If people keep their use under control, then pornography itself may not be inherently harmful.

Moral Conflict and Shame

Me: What about the shame that comes from pornography use? Research shows that people can experience distress from moral conflict even without addiction-like patterns of use.

Counterpoint: If you and society don’t believe pornography is wrong, you won’t experience shame from use. No shame, no distress.

Relationship Betrayal

Me: What about betrayal trauma from finding out a spouse is using pornography? Some experience reactions similar to discovering infidelity. Recent research on married women’s responses to spousal pornography describes it as a threat akin to infidelity. 

Counterpoint: That reaction depends on expectations. Couples can negotiate their boundaries. If partners mutually agree on its role in their relationship, the sense of betrayal disappears.

Violence and Sexual Aggression

Me: How about the way it promotes violence? Content analyses of popular pornographic videos show high levels of aggression toward women. Other studies have linked pornography consumption to sexually aggressive attitudes.

Counterpoint: But causation is unclear. Are people becoming more aggressive because of pornography, or are people with aggressive tendencies drawn to certain types of pornography? Maybe pornography functions more like gasoline on an existing fire rather than the spark that starts it. Also, if problematic content is the issue, then maybe the solution is to make the content more empowering toward women.

Exploitation

Me: What about exploitation in the industry? There are stories about coercion, manipulation, and poor working conditions for performers. 

Counterpoint: Some performers report negative experiences, but others say they’re relatively satisfied with life. If exploitation is the problem, then let’s have better regulation and working conditions. Also, artificial intelligence could eliminate the issue by replacing human performers entirely.

The Debate That Never Ends

After years of these conversations, it felt like every argument about pornography’s harm generated a counterargument.

The problem was never the pornography. The solution was always to change everything around it. 

The debate goes on. Eventually, seeing the mixed messages and counterarguments from research, I began to wonder whether we were asking the wrong question.

What Is Sexuality For?

I decided to take a step back in thinking through why some people report harm, benefits, or no effect from their pornography use. I realized that we need to think about what we truly want from sexuality. Without a clear destination of what we want from sexuality, every path can look equally valid.

Lewis Carroll illustrates this idea in “Alice in Wonderland.” When Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which road she should take, the cat asks where she wants to go. When Alice admits she doesn’t much care where she goes, the cat replies that it doesn’t matter which road she takes.

The same problem appears in debates about pornography. Before asking whether pornography harms us, we should ask a deeper question: what kind of sexuality do we want to cultivate?

Sexual Drive, Love, and Attachment

Research on relationships suggests that sexuality is driven by three motivational systems: sexual desire, romantic love, and attachment.

Sexual desire motivates attraction and arousal. It can be directed toward many different people and responds strongly to novelty.

Romantic love motivates exclusivity to a particular person. That person becomes special and irreplaceable. Their traits, even their quirks, become endearing.

Attachment develops in a relationship from being reliably responsive to each other’s needs over time. By supporting rather than obstructing dreams and protecting rather than exploiting vulnerabilities, trust and emotional security develop from knowing and caring for someone.

These systems work together in healthy relationships. Sexual desire may spark initial attraction, but romantic love and attachment transform desire into a lasting bond between two people.

Pornography clearly stimulates sexual desire. It’s designed to capture attention, increase novelty, and provoke arousal. But can pornography strengthen the romantic love and attachment that sustain long-term intimacy?

Objectification

The heart of pornography’s inconsistency with romantic love and attachment is objectification. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum describes objectification as treating a person primarily as a tool for one’s own purposes rather than as a full human subject. Philosopher Roger Scruton argued that sexual morality ultimately revolves around whether we encounter another person as a subject or reduce that person to an object of appetite.

Pornography alters that structure. It reinforces novelty and replaceability. Desire becomes oriented toward stimulation from endless interchangeable bodies, rather than toward knowing another person.

Romantic love and attachment depend on recognizing another person’s unique personhood rather than an interchangeable source of stimulation. Because pornography is structurally objectifying, it cannot promote the personhood-focused romantic love and attachment that sustain long-term sexual intimacy. We cannot love someone completely for who they are if we accept a message of sexuality without identity.

For Latter-day Saints, this vision of sexuality is not merely philosophical. It is theological. The vision cannot be reduced to pleasure, consent, or private preference alone. The restored gospel places sexuality within a vision of embodied love, covenant loyalty, family, and divine personhood. Within that vision, sexual intimacy is not merely a source of depersonalized stimulation or private gratification, but a sacred expression of mutual love and commitment. That doctrine on sexual intimacy does not settle every empirical question about pornography, but it does give us a vision for where to go.

Countering the Counters

Defenders of pornography will still raise reasonable questions. I don’t think, however, that the concern about objectification can be fixed. Some of my conversations have looked like the following.

Change the Content

Counter: Just change the content! Make it more relational, focused on identity and people who care about each other. What if it portrayed loving relationships instead of anonymous encounters?

Me: That change wouldn’t resolve the deeper issue. The interaction remains fundamentally one-sided. The people on screen still exist to produce an experience for someone else. The viewer receives stimulation without participating in the mutual recognition that defines real intimacy.

Use It to Strengthen Your Relationship with Your Spouse

Counter: What if couples watch pornography together? It could spark ideas, increase communication, or deepen intimacy.

Me: Even then, the focus shifts outward. Instead of discovering what’s unique about their relationship, the couple turns toward other bodies and other scenarios for stimulation. This introduces comparison, increases reliance on novelty, and can weaken the process of discovering one another more deeply. Real intimacy grows as someone becomes less replaceable, not more. Anything that consistently shifts attention away from that process can begin to reshape what sexuality feels like within the relationship.

What about Interactive AI Sexual Experience?

Counter: What about interactive artificial intelligence? What if technology could simulate attention, responsiveness, and emotional connection?

Choosing Connection Over Consumption

Critics and defenders of pornography often focus on measurable harms from addiction, shame, relationship conflict, or violence. These are important to understand, but pornography’s deeper influence may lie not in immediate outcomes, but in how it quietly trains our desires and expectations about sexuality itself.

Denmark’s decision in 1969 launched a cultural transformation that has spread across the Western world. Pornography is widely accessible, socially normalized, and often perceived as harmless. If we ask people whether it has harmed them, many will say it hasn’t. But that may not be the only question worth asking. People may be so immersed in pornography’s consumerist vision of sexuality that they struggle to see its inconsistency with authentic human connection. 

We need to think about what vision of sexuality we want to cultivate as a society. Pornography presents a vision of sexuality where stimulation is central, identity is optional, and relationship is secondary. It teaches that desire can be separated from the person who embodies it. It suggests that connection can be simulated without mutual knowing. It trains us to imagine bodies can be experienced without truly encountering the self behind them. Do we want to treat each other and ourselves as if we’re casual sexual partners?

The kind of intimacy most people ultimately want isn’t just about pleasure. It’s about being known. It’s about being chosen, not for what we provide, but for who we are. It’s about becoming irreplaceable to another person and allowing them to become irreplaceable to us. That kind of intimacy doesn’t come from treating sexuality casually. It comes from learning to see more in the same person over time.

Pornography doesn’t just shape what we do. It subtly reshapes what we learn to desire. Are we becoming the kind of people who can experience sexuality with deep intimacy? The answer may depend on whether we choose a sexuality of consumption or a sexuality of connection.

The post The Desecration of Desire appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve recognized the same power struggles that once played out around my dinner table appearing in communities, headlines and in international politics—with much more at stake. But being surrounded by a constant stream of political conflict, I gradually found myself responding with indifference. I felt numbed to the military conflict with Iran, just as I had become numb to the suffering of Ukrainians. It’s possible to avoid the large-scale political warfare between Democrats and Republicans, but even the conversations between neighbors and friends turn into arguments. I feel pressure to be as passionate about politics as they are, but not at the cost of contention.

Upon reflection, I realized that what I wanted was the wisdom to understand the politics of peacemaking.

Finding Peace in a Divided World

I turned to religious teachings to learn about politics. I found that from Genesis to Revelation, hundreds of Bible verses contrast approaches that resemble both power politics and peace politics. Power politics pursue stability through centralized authority, pressure, or force, often motivated by fear or ambition. Scriptural examples include Pharaoh’s responses to Moses in Exodus and the rioters of Ephesus denouncing Christian converts in Acts 19. A contrasting method, referred to as peace politics, pursues stability through expanded trust networks and responsibilities. And it was this approach that earned Joseph, Mordecai, and Daniel hard-to-come-by leadership roles in foreign kingdoms, all of which resulted in flourishing. Throughout scripture, the warning that people’s devotions tend to power politics more than peace politics is repeated.

Scripture repeatedly invites us to recognize political ambitions for power like these.

Expectations of How Peace Can Be Achieved

When Jesus rode down the Mount of Olives, throngs gathered. His triumphal entry was the prophesied return of the King to the “city of peace,” or Jerusalem. But many of those shouting praise to Christ expected a restoration of David’s throne and national independence. No more Roman rule. No more Sanhedrin corruption. For those people, this event may as well  have been a political rally.

Many in Jerusalem had hoped that the Messiah would bring safety and security, but were not expecting the peaceful politics of a homecoming celebration. So, they may have been puzzled when the young rabbi went to the temple to share wisdom proverbs, rather than to proclaim. After all the hype, some hearing sermons may have thought, “We got the wrong candidate. Our leaders must be right.” To follow or to revile Jesus became a political choice, with one’s own reputation at stake. Many people remained aligned with local politicians, rather than with the King of the Universe.

What about my own allegiances? As I reflected on the crowds who welcomed Jesus, I realized that my own response to politics was not much wiser. Rather than becoming consumed by political conflict, I often withdrew from it altogether. My own apathy came from the comfort of self-interest, ignoring the needs of others. In that sense, I was one of the multitudes. So, what is the wiser option?

Peace Politics in Scripture

In each of these cases, reconciliation and progress were achieved by prioritizing people over power. Thus, from ancient prophets to modern ones, the message is clear, offering a political rule by people-first policies. So, in our own days of political warfare, how will we take on the role of peacemakers and really make peace?

Learning to Recognize Abundance at the Table

First and foremost, peacemakers learn to celebrate the good around them. Power politics condition us to focus on what we lack and who is to blame, making us vulnerable to manipulation and creating a false sense of scarcity. One Biblical metaphor aligning with the ideals of peace politics is a marriage feast, or a celebratory gathering. Even when someone else at the table hands us something undercooked, bland, or even painfully spicy, it does not end the meal, let alone the relationship. Abundant grace is the good news of peace politics. Rather than manipulating us through fear, it invites us to trust that there is enough goodness, mercy, and fellowship to share.

Peace politics begins from a different assumption. Like a family meal, it is not a contest but a shared experience, one that balances fairness with generosity and makes room for imperfect people to belong together. This approach simultaneously enforces fairness while repairing the realities of injustice. Today, when political parties of all kinds engage in the same tactics that I inflicted on my own brothers, I understand the tendency to develop a scarcity mindset. But we must recognize that what we all want is the wisdom to live with one another in abundant goodwill. 

Seeing People Clearly

Second, peace politics requires continual self-correction. We practice peace in daily interactions through balancing extremes, taking positive action, and learning from everyone. Power politics thrives on extreme and opposite impulses, discouraging reflection, and rewarding us for remaining in echo chambers. One sign that power politics is at work is a decrease in our ability to see people as individuals and begin treating entire groups as enemies. It becomes easy to blame whole populations for the actions of leaders or governments. In one recent example, a post incorrectly blames Jews for the conflict with Iran. While the Israeli armed forces entered battle, “the Jews” did not. Peace politics resists this temptation, preventing us from slipping into “othering” mindsets that lead to antisemitism, hate, and sweeping judgement. The Prince of Peace taught that doing good matters even when its effects seem small. He invites us to love people we do not fully understand, to learn from those whose experiences differ from our own, and to become one by recognizing our shared humanity. 

Through Christ, peace will ultimately prevail. And in many ways, it already is. Adopting this perspective has replaced my numbness with volunteer projects, interfaith friendships, and causes that are truly good for me, all nourishing me deeply.

With knowledge of the end from the beginning, biblical and modern prophets wisely describe the principles of peace. They urge us to replace power politics with a more direct path to peace, working together and simultaneously living by the rules while repairing the injustices. When we wisely adopt their prophetic vision, peace will follow. We stop quarreling at the table and learn instead to enjoy the feast. Abundant grace is not merely “good for us,” but delightful. Pass the plate, please.

The post The Politics of the Feast appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

A new book about deconverts from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has successfully made its way into the broader conversation. Jeff Strong’s “Torn” has been relentlessly marketed, and many have presented it as either dangerous or groundbreaking or both. I am not convinced.

It is not the long-awaited key to Latter-day Saint disaffiliation. It is not some groundbreaking new approach. It is a sometimes useful, often sincere, frequently repetitive book about being nicer to people who struggle with faith. And it’s wrapped up in data that tells us far less than it intends.

That wrapping is important to consider. Strong has consistently advertised his book as “research-grounded.” He has spoken at length about the number of survey responses he has collected.

Like Jeff Strong, I am not a social scientist. I have also occasionally used surveys to attempt to support ideas I’m writing about. But when I do, I constantly hedge because my data isn’t well collected. I explain over and over which groups the data actually covers. I explain that the data is not representative. I explain that while the data may be an interesting window, the takeaways from it are inherently limited.

Strong has taken another approach, not only trumpeting his data, but building an entire worldview around it. And honestly, without the aura of “data-driven,” “Torn” would just be a familiar Latter-day Saint pastoral plea: listen more, judge less, be warmer, make our wards more welcoming. The kind of plea that Latter-day Saint leaders have been making for decades. 

Stephen Cranney and Josh Coates handled the basic statistical problems in their own review of “Torn.” The basics are that Strong specifically took the survey to online groups of Latter-day Saints, particularly disaffiliated ones, and they shared it with those who shared their worldview. The survey was very long, so only those with some motivation to finish did. They compared his results to representative samples collected in the past, and unsurprisingly, Strong’s results are very different from the better-collected data.

In Strong’s defense, his poorly drawn sample is very large. While Strong has agreed with these limitations when pressed, his book and its marketing rely on the assumption that the data is much more representative than it is.

But it’s not just the data that is a problem. Ralph Hancock has provided the philosophical critique. Hancock points out that Strong shifts from trying to listen and learn from those who have left the Church to not considering the possibility that they may be in the wrong. Strong presents deconverts as always perfectly innocent and wise. He tells us that sin or laziness cannot be the reason people leave the Church, because those who left did not report that as the reason in his survey.

That goes well beyond Strong’s sampling problems, to a kind of baked-in gullibility. 

I spoke of a similar problem in an essay called “The Fiction of Self-Knowledge,” explaining how accepting individuals’ self-reports uncritically, as Strong has done, is bad social science. It’s not that these people are lying or attempting to trick us. It’s just that human beings do not fully and reliably understand their own motivations.

And in perhaps the best explanation of the book, Dan Ellsworth points out some of the underlying worldview embedded in Strong’s questions. The issue is not merely that Strong asked the wrong people, but that he is asking the wrong questions. Throughout his questions, “church culture” becomes the load-bearing explanation for nearly everything. Ellsworth’s point is that this is not a neutral analysis. It is a worldview. Strong’s framing repeatedly treats the central problem as a conflict between a protective, boundary-conscious church culture and a more open, nourishing, Christ-centered one. But that binary is doing more work than the data is. Once the options are framed as fear or love, exclusion or belonging, you’ve forced the respondent into an answer.

Strong also never attempts to compare Latter-day Saint deconversion rates to other religious organizations or explain why there are comparatively fewer deconverts than most other US religious bodies. Strong tries to tell us that there is something wrong with Latter-day Saint culture, but never tells us what culture he is comparing it to. It would be like criticizing baseball player Shohei Ohtani for getting out over half the time he goes to bat. Sure, that leaves a lot to criticize, but it would also be wildly off base. 

So the case against “Torn” is fairly straightforward. The data is weak for multiple reasons. The conclusions are overdrawn. And the book’s main message seems to have been imposed on the data rather than taken from it. 

But there is real good in the book. 

Strong is right that Latter-day Saints should be kinder to those struggling with their faith. He is right that we shouldn’t automatically assume that those who struggle are lazy, shallow, wicked, or easily offended. He is right about the value of listening.

But the reason I’m confident he’s right is that none of this is new. 

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said in 2013 that we sometimes assume people leave because they have been “offended or lazy or sinful,” and then immediately added, “Actually, it is not that simple.” Elder M. Russell Ballard told Church educators in 2016 that students cannot be brushed off with “Don’t worry about it,” and urged teachers to know the Gospel Topics essays thoroughly enough to give thoughtful answers. President Russell M. Nelson taught in 2023 that a teenager who doubts his testimony does not need judgment, but the pure love of Jesus Christ reflected in our words and actions. 

The Church’s resource on “Helping Others with Questions” tells members to respond with love, humility, kindness, and patience. It suggests avoiding dismissiveness and preserving relationships. 

The parts of “Torn” that are good are basically a regurgitation of the best advice church leaders have been giving on this topic for over a decade.

So yes, be kind, be warm, listen. Every question isn’t rebellion. Allow people to belong while they are learning, growing, and uncertain. 

But it raises a more interesting question. If the data is poor, the reasoning so overextended, and the best counsel regurgitated, why has “Torn” so effectively captured the attention of the Latter-day Saint conversation?

The answer is that for many people, “Torn” is not being read as research or advice. It’s being read as a way to shift accountability for deconverts’ decisions away from themselves and onto a nebulous “culture.”

I remember as a student, when I wrote editorials, I had a terrible tendency to attribute problems to “they”—this thing I felt, but that didn’t actually correspond to any specific person or group. They were saying this. They were doing that. I was permitting myself to react to a phantom of my own making.

“Torn” reveals a community anxious about losing people. We want answers. We want ways forward. And while the advice is good and can continue to improve our spaces, making them better and more welcoming, for so many others, it gives them language to excuse choices they still feel defensive about because “they made me do it.”

“Torn” is frustrating. Its heart is clearly in the right place. But it seemed to have its conclusion locked and loaded before the start. And I think, unfortunately, because it externalizes control so thoroughly, it is likely to have the opposite effect from the one its author hopes for. I hope someone finds a better, more circumspect use for the copious data Strong collected. 

In the end, what’s new in the book isn’t that good, and what’s good in the book isn’t that new. Read it if you want to know what everyone is talking about, but if you don’t, you’re not missing much of anything.

The post The Borrowed Wisdom of ‘Torn’ appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

In a recent article, I wondered what would happen if we met aliens and they were not predators or imperialists, but actually more righteous beings than we are. What if the terrifying thing about extraterrestrial life was not that they wanted to destroy us, but that they were kinder, wiser, more truthful, and more loving than we imagined?

Steven Spielberg’s newest alien movie “Disclosure Day” begins with that premise and then builds a surprisingly religious sci-fi thriller around it. Josh O’Connor plays Daniel, a contractor who has fled a private defense operation with video proof of alien life and an alien artifact taken from the operation.

Emily Blunt plays Margaret, a weather reporter who can somehow channel the aliens and understand both where she needs to go and the inner needs of every person she meets. Colin Firth’s Noah represents the argument for secrecy: humanity is not ready, and if given access to alien knowledge, it will abuse it. He is also wounded by the loss of his own wife. Colman Domingo’s Hugo represents the counterclaim: truth doesn’t belong to a frightened organization, but to all people, who all deserve to know. 

Spielberg wants to play with religious fire in this film. He makes Daniel’s girlfriend a former nun and has her visit her former convent on several occasions. Hugo, in a speechy monologue, says the problem with the world is that we’ve lost our empathy. By contrast, we see that the nuns are always there to be supportive. And the aliens’ mind-manipulation technology is resisted through religious willpower. But rather than leaning into that as a solution, Spielberg seems to set up the aliens as a new kind of god.

Spielberg recognizes that most world religions would adapt more easily to the existence of extraterrestrial life than the secular imagination might assume. But he also suggests that having a superior being in front of us might challenge some religious assumptions. There are even scenes when Margaret, channeling the aliens’ powers, is worshipped. While Margaret rejects the veneration, the implication is not only that the aliens might be worshipped, but also that because they are so superior in their empathy, they might be worthy of it. 

Spielberg is not contemptuous of religion here. But he does seem more interested in replacing it with alien compassion than deepening it. The result is a movie that invokes theology, while often settling for therapeutic awe. 

But the ending works. And when disclosure finally happens, Spielberg finds the image the whole film has been driving toward. It is a much longer ending sequence than you would expect, but it is transporting. The television anchors’ reactions in the scene, captured in real time, are evocative and shockingly emotional. For a few minutes, the film stops telling us what disclosure means and starts letting us feel it instead.

“Disclosure Day” is not nearly as profound as it thinks it is, but it’s not shallow either. It manages to assemble a meaningful film from the alien mythology of the last 75 years. And for the most part, it sticks the landing. There is a good chance this film becomes the definitive version of that mythos. 

Its deification of the aliens muddies its conclusions, and its gospel of empathy is too familiar to bear all the metaphysical weight Spielberg places on it. But as a movie about truth and love arriving together, as both a gift and a judgment, it has a real and haunting charge. 

The post ‘Disclosure Day’ Turns Aliens Into Angels appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

A keystone, as President Ezra Taft Benson reminded the Church, is not decorative. It is structural. Remove it, and the arch collapses. Keep it, and the whole structure holds—quietly, invisibly, doing its work precisely because everything else depends upon it. Though the keystone metaphor is an architectural one, its implications are existential.

Most Latter-day Saints readily affirm that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. Clearly, the Book of Mormon anchors testimony, clarifies doctrine, and centers the life and mission of Jesus Christ. But what if its role extends further? What if the keystone is not only spiritual, but intellectual? What if the Book of Mormon does not merely sustain religious life but also challenges, reorients, and even overturns many of the assumptions we take for granted in our daily lives?

As a psychology professor (Edwin) who has been laboring in the field for the better part of forty years, I frequently find myself confronting these sorts of questions, both on a personal and a professional level. Seldom does a day go by that I don’t find myself considering the very real possibility that the Book of Mormon might also be a keystone for our thinking—for how we understand the human person, suffering, responsibility, healing, and the meaning of moral life. Further, I find myself wondering what it means to participate in an academic discipline that is constructed atop assumptions that the Book of Mormon quietly, persistently, and fundamentally contradicts.

Turning Things Upside Down

The Restoration has always carried with it a disruptive claim: revelation does not merely supplement human knowledge but can challenge and reorder it. The Book of Mormon itself describes a “turning of things upside down,” a phrase that captures the unsettling possibility that what we think we know may, in fact, be fundamentally mistaken.

In modern psychology, certain assumptions have become so pervasive that they are rarely questioned. They form the background against which theories are built and practices justified. Among these, three stand out: naturalism, determinism, and moral relativism. Though seldom explicitly discussed in the mainstream literature of the discipline, each of these ideas has profoundly shaped how psychologists tend to understand human behavior, suffering, and healing. However, when viewed through the lens of the Book of Mormon, each becomes deeply contestable.

To take the Book of Mormon seriously as a keystone for our thinking, then, is not merely to add a religious gloss to existing scholarly or professional frameworks and theories. It is to ask whether the foundations of such things themselves are even sound.

The Quiet Reign of Naturalism

At the heart of modern psychology lies a commitment—often implicit—to naturalism. Simply put, naturalism holds that all events, including human thoughts and behaviors, can be explained in terms of natural processes governed by natural laws. Applied to scientific methods, it does not necessarily deny God’s existence; it simply brackets God out of the conversation. Scientific explanations proceed “as if” divine action is irrelevant.

This posture is often presented as value neutral. By avoiding theological commitments, many psychologists believe they are able to remain objective, reliant only on empirical and universally accessible data. This stance is often defended under the banner of what is known as methodological naturalism. Many believe this approach to science allows them to “set God aside” by suspending the question of His existence and involvement in the world to maintain neutrality in their research.

Ironically, modern psychology’s attempt to explain human behavior and experience without reference to God actually embodies a theological claim—not explicitly, but functionally. It suggests that divine action, if it even exists, is not necessary for adequately understanding the world. God becomes, at best, a distant architect or a symbolic comfort. At worst, He becomes irrelevant.

The Book of Mormon’s Disruptive God

The Book of Mormon, by contrast, knows nothing of a passive deity.

In fact, it offers a radically different vision. God is not shown to be absent but active, not distant but intimately involved. He speaks, directs, intervenes, and sustains. He is not merely the origin of the world but the One who sustains, enlightens, and sanctifies its ongoing life. As Alma teaches, “all things denote that there is a God,” and not a passive one. Creation itself is a continuous expression of divine will.

This difference is not trivial. It reshapes the entire framework within which human behavior is understood. If God is actively involved in the world—and in the lives of individuals—then any account of human experience that excludes Him is, at best, incomplete, at worst, life-alteringly misunderstood.

More importantly, the Book of Mormon presents a God who does not merely observe but who actively participates. In Christ, He descends into the human condition, experiencing pain, temptation, and sorrow so that He may “succor his people according to their infirmities.” This is not a God who can be relegated to the margins of our lives and identities. This is a God whose involvement is central to understanding suffering and healing.

The God we meet in the Book of Mormon is not a background assumption or an optional metaphysical add-on. He is the active source of life, light, order, and meaning. He commands the earth to move—and it moves. He enters history. He speaks. He judges. He redeems. He suffers.

This vision of God does not sit comfortably alongside a psychology that treats divine action as, at best, irrelevant. If God is as the Book of Mormon describes Him, then any account of human life that systematically excludes Him is not neutral—it is false.

Determinism and the Vanishing Human

Psychology, patterned after the natural sciences, has adopted a conceptual framework in which to be “scientific” is to assume that human behavior, like planetary motion or chemical reactions, is governed by universal laws that we can discover, understand, and study. To appeal to divine action, moral agency, or spiritual causation is not merely unfashionable—it is intellectually disqualifying.

Naturalism’s most consequential psychological offspring is determinism: the belief that human behavior is the necessary result of prior causes. Choice becomes an illusion. Freedom becomes a feeling. Moral responsibility becomes a social convention.

Psychologists routinely insist that without determinism, scientific explanation (and, thus, real understanding) collapses. After all, if we can’t explain why people are depressed, anxious, self-destructive, or obsessive, how can we ‘fix’ them? Indeed, looking at human behavior through a lens of determinism and causal forces provides a degree of safety and certainty for altering or controlling human behavior. If people are free, on the other hand, as psychologist Gary W. Heiman asserts, then “behavior truly would be chaotic, because the only explanation for every behavior would be ‘because he or she wanted to’.” Thus, he continues, “we reject the idea that free will plays a role” of any sort in human actions. 

But this framing presents a false dilemma. Either human action is mechanically determined or it is irrational noise. Either we are puppets or we are accidents. What disappears in this binary is the possibility that human beings are agents—persons who act meaningfully within contexts without being reducible to them.

The Book of Mormon refuses this reduction at every turn.

Lehi’s famous distinction between “things to act” and “things to be acted upon” is not poetic flourish. It is philosophical anthropology. To be human is not merely to respond to forces, but to initiate action—to choose between genuine alternatives with real moral weight.

This is not randomness. It is responsibility.

Agency, in the Book of Mormon, is not a marginal feature of personhood. It is the hinge upon which salvation, sin, repentance, and redemption all turn. Without agency, moral language collapses, covenant becomes incoherent, and judgment becomes unjust.

A psychology that cannot account for agency cannot account for the human being the Book of Mormon describes.

Meaning, Nihilism, and Moral Evasion

Unfortunately, once determinism takes hold, meaning soon follows it out the door. If every thought, feeling, and action is the inevitable outcome of forces beyond one’s control, then nothing we do could truly have any meaning. For our actions to have meaning, in the strictest sense of the word, it must be genuinely possible for them to be otherwise than they are. If nothing we do could possibly have been otherwise, then does anything we do really matter? Only because we can forgive another does holding a grudge against them become a sin rather than simply a reflexive response.

Likewise, God’s engagement with His people truly matters because He does have the option to do otherwise but continues to be involved intimately in the lives of His children. The possibilities available to us in life are what offer us real meaning. Indeed, God’s gift of agency is what gives man the opportunity to have meaningful lives. 

But, when we implicitly–or explicitly–subscribe to tenets of determinism, meaningful options become unavailable to us. Events simply happen. Moral distinctions dissolve into descriptions. Praise and blame become sentimental relics of a more primitive belief system. 

This is why determinism so often travels with moral relativism. If behavior is produced rather than chosen, then moral evaluation becomes either unfair or incoherent. At best, morality becomes a useful fiction—an evolutionary adaptation or social convenience. At worst, it becomes a tool of power.

Psychology, in this form, does not merely explain behavior. It quietly absolves it of all moral content, purpose, and worth. Moral language is replaced with therapeutic language. Problems are framed in terms of dysfunction rather than wrongdoing, adjustment rather than repentance. Under the umbrella of determinism, we would be punishing people and criminalizing behaviors over which they do not actually have control and do not actually play any real participatory role. To make a moral judgment of a person’s behavior when they have no control over that behavior would be akin to mistreating someone based only on the color of their skin, something which is also outside of personal control. The goal of much morally relativized psychotherapy, then, is to alleviate individual distress by the most efficient means available, rather than help patients discern and orient themselves toward that which is true, worthy of moral praise, and spiritually fulfilling.

The Book of Mormon, again, stands for judgment.

Its pages are saturated with moral claims—warnings, invitations, rebukes, and promises. Sin is not redefined as maladaptive coping. Repentance is not reframed as cognitive restructuring. Good and evil are not negotiated away as cultural constructs. In fact, they are real, binding, and consequential. However, the Book of Mormon does recognize complexity, context, and suffering in its exploration of all aspects of distress, not only the kind that can be wrought by sin. Even within those contexts, though, it does insist that moral agency is real and that moral distinctions matter. Indeed, moral reality and moral expectation don’t disappear simply because life is unfair. One could even say that they matter more in such a reality. 

Further, Lehi teaches that humans are “enticed by the one or the other,” suggesting a world in which good and evil are not arbitrary but real alternatives. Moroni adds that “the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil.” Conscience is not merely a social product; it is a divine endowment.

Therapy, Suffering, and the Missing Christ

These teachings have profound implications for psychology and psychotherapy. If moral knowledge is, at least in part, divinely given, then purely naturalistic accounts of morality are not only insufficient, they are woefully misleading. If choices have real consequences—both temporal and eternal—then therapeutic approaches that ignore moral dimensions miss something essential.

Modern therapeutic culture often treats moral language as dangerous—judgmental, oppressive, unscientific. Healing is pursued through adjustment because suffering is merely a technical problem, and therapists become the scientific experts uniquely situated to objectively manage human problems. Simply identify the variables producing particular forms of distress and then modify them to produce more pleasant outcomes. 

The Book of Mormon, in contrast, offers a different grammar of healing.

It does not deny the reality of pain, trauma, or affliction. It does not claim that all suffering is the direct result of sin. But it insists—unapologetically—that Christ’s atoning life, death, and resurrection are relevant to all forms of human suffering. This is not to suggest that God’s involvement in human affairs is the only matter that matters. Rather, it is only to say that our understanding of what does matter will be hopelessly incomplete if God’s participation and involvement in our lives is minimized, ignored, or dismissed. 

Again, this does not mean that therapy can only be helpful if we explicitly explore Christ and His gospel teachings with our patients. There are, after all, many who seek therapeutic services who do not believe in Christ and may well not be receptive to such conversations. Instead, what we are suggesting here is that we should never reduce fundamental truths and, by extension, moral reality, to independent, relative, or self-determined values. By bringing the question of truth and moral reality into therapy as orienting concerns, we bring Christ into the consulting room, even if we may not be talking about Him specifically.

Rethinking the “Natural Man”

Some Latter-day Saints attempt a compromise. They suggest that secular psychology studies the “natural man” (Mosiah 3:19)—the fallen, unredeemed aspect of human nature, while the gospel addresses matters of personal faith and spiritual belief. Each has its independent domain. On this view, psychological theories are not wrong, just incomplete. They capture part of the picture but miss the transformative potential of grace.

Unfortunately, this move misreads King Benjamin.

The “natural man” spoken of in Mosiah 3 is not a biologically determined creature reacting helplessly to environmental stimuli, an organism constantly and unavoidably seeking after its own pleasure. Rather, as King Benjamin teaches, the “natural man” is an “enemy to God” not because he is selfish and sinful by nature, but because of the moral choices he makes—because he yields not to the Spirit and does not put off sinful desires, because he chooses not to become a “saint.” These are verbs of agency, not inevitability.

Thus, insofar as it denies moral agency as fundamental to human nature, secular psychology does not even get the “natural man” right. By mischaracterizing human nature, secular psychology is espousing the self-justifying perspective of the “natural man”—one that reduces human beings to objects and, thereby, obscures their fundamentally moral, spiritual, and relational nature. In offering such an account of humanity, it provides ammunition to support the very rebellion against God that the Book of Mormon diagnoses: the attempt to escape moral responsibility by denying moral agency, meaning, and purpose.

In the end, it seems that one of the first choices the “natural man” seeks to make is to deny any capacity to make meaningful, moral choices. Once that choice is made, the next step is to establish an entire intellectual enterprise to provide all the research and theories necessary to confirm that denial and justify continued rebellion against God.

Keystone Remembered: Toward a More Faithful Science

What might a psychology informed by the Book of Mormon look like in practice?

First, it would take seriously the reality of divine involvement. Therapy would not be confined to human-to-human interaction but would recognize the possibility of God’s participation in healing. Prayer, revelation, and spiritual practices would not be peripheral but potentially central for those who desire to explore those things explicitly in session. And, for those who do not subscribe to any kind of Christian perspective, any truth brought into session reflects Christ, whether or not we use His name. Truth must be spoken, but it must also be spoken in a language that can be heard and understood. 

Third, it would reintroduce moral language. Not in a judgmental or simplistic way, but in a way that acknowledges that some forms of suffering are connected to choices—and that healing may involve repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Finally, it would center Christ. The Book of Mormon teaches that Christ’s Atonement is relevant to all forms of suffering. He not only redeems from sin but succors in pain. A therapist who takes this seriously would not sideline Christ. Rather, in taking the Book of Mormon seriously, the therapist would strive to continually consider how the Savior’s life and sacrifice intersect with the client’s experience and needs, as well as how best to minister to the client in a language and manner the client can understand and accept.

None of this, however, requires rejecting psychology wholesale. The empirical insights, therapeutic techniques, and research findings of modern psychology are valuable. But they must be examined, not assumed. They must be sifted, not simply adopted.

If the Book of Mormon is truly the keystone, then its significance cannot be confined to the chapel. It must extend into the classroom, the clinic, and the research lab. It must shape not only how we worship but how we think. This does not mean that the Book of Mormon replaces all other sources of knowledge. But it does mean that it has something to say—something essential—to every domain concerned with human life.

In the end, the question is not whether the Book of Mormon is relevant to psychology. It is whether we are willing to let it be. To do so is to risk having our assumptions overturned. But it is also to open the possibility of seeing more clearly—of coming nearer not only to God, as Joseph Smith promised, but also to ourselves.

The post The Keystone We Forgot appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

Education policy observers are carefully watching a renewed debate about religion in public schools. With new federal guidance on school prayer and state laws about religious symbols or texts in schools popping up, it’s not surprising to see headlines that ask questions like “Where is this headed?”

A recent Washington Post article frames the momentum as “religion being injected all over the place.” But a more precise description might be that the long-established boundaries between religion and public education are simply being reassessed.

When people think of public education, many picture a purely secular institution where mentions or expressions of religion are unwelcome. In fact, some believe that any formal interaction between religion and public education is legally forbidden.

While this belief is oversimplified, it is also understandable, given recent decades of increasingly strict policy and legal developments pushing the two apart. For years, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down rulings that prohibited school-sponsored prayer, banned reading the Bible in schools, said the Ten Commandments couldn’t be posted in classrooms, struck down moments of silence designed for prayer, and prohibited clergy-led prayers at public school graduations. As a result, much of the public accepted the truism that “never the twain (religion and public education) shall meet.”

But is that really the case? The legal and legislative landscape of recent years suggests a shifting dynamic between religion and public education, one that appears increasingly complex—and potentially more accommodating. Certainly, new challenges to parents’ rights and religious liberty in schools have arisen amid a changing culture, but we are at a moment when we might reach a more thoughtful policy outcome.

With courage to engage civilly, we can preserve the prudent policies we already have and build upon educational pluralism, in which students’ religious identities play an active role in their education, and where the benefits of religion support public education in constitutional ways for all.

I turn now to four developments reshaping the relationship.

The Growing Acceptance of Religious Accommodations

Religious accommodations that account for pluralism are on the rise.

Pluralism refers to the belief that diverse groups or categories can and should exist simultaneously. In addition to being an ideal, pluralism is simply a reality in public schools, where students come from families with different worldviews, religious beliefs, academic goals, and political perspectives. As a result, each student and family will have different experiences within the same educational system. Some of these differences can cause deep conflict, often because of religious beliefs.

Accommodation—or legal exception—is an important public policy that can serve as a pressure-release valve for those caught in these conflicts between religion and law, especially in public education.

Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, ruled in favor of parents’ rights in education, protecting their right to be given notice and to opt their children out of instruction that violates their religious beliefs. This case will likely create a ripple effect, influencing other states as they consider legislation that better accommodates the religious families they serve in public education.

In recent years, Utah’s legislature has taken the lead in creating new accommodations for students. The state created “participation waivers” from “any aspect of school that violates the student’s or the student’s parents’ religious belief or right of conscience.” This bolstered parental notice for instruction on sensitive materials, allowing parents to be the decision-makers on moral issues, even while their child is enrolled in public school. Utah has also passed workarounds, allowing students who play school sports to wear religious clothing with their required athletic uniforms. 

As much as people strive to keep public education neutral, a particular set of values is always ultimately adopted and diffused throughout the system. And, since a single value set won’t fit everyone perfectly, accommodations are crucial to make public schooling work for a pluralistic population. These types of policies may seem to be matters of common sense, but they still require courage from legislators to enact.

The Expansion of Education Choice

The rise in education choice programs across the nation has been another policy trend offering relief to parents facing conflicts between religious values and education. While “education choice” is a broad term, encompassing options in both public and private settings, in recent years it has focused on state-sponsored programs that subsidize families’ private education choices.

Though it had been bubbling up for years, education choice legislation exploded starting in 2020, with 2021 dubbed the “year of school choice.” When the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in school closures in 2020, families grew increasingly frustrated, and legislatures quickly began adopting policies such as education savings accounts, which allowed families to use state funds at a school of their choice or to educate their children at home through an à la carte version of homeschooling.

Many of these private options are religious schools or faith-based homeschool curricula, which families choose explicitly because they align with their religious beliefs. Pew Research Center data from last year showed that 75% of parents who choose to homeschool do so because they prefer to provide moral instruction, and over 50% do so because they prefer to provide religious instruction. Even before the pandemic, research showed that parents weren’t always choosing private schools for test scores; 64% of families that chose private schools did so for “religious education.”

Education choice programs that help families access private options are politically controversial and regularly challenged in court, but have most often been found constitutional. This is especially true when challenged on a basis state constitutional provisions, attempting to bar public funds from flowing to religious schools, since parents, not the state, select the schools.

Furthermore, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue the U.S. Supreme Court held that the state cannot withhold public funds from religious schools or organizations because of their religious affiliation. And in Carson v. Makin, the court held that a state cannot exclude a school from a state program based on the school providing religious instruction.

Considering current legislative and legal momentum, we can anticipate that state-sponsored education choice programs that allow families to pay for religious schools or home instruction will expand, potentially resolving religious liberty issues for another subset of families.

The Widening Gray Area for Religion in Public Schools

Still, not all public policies being passed right now are as clear as accommodations and new choices for families. Policies currently advancing religion in public education across various states have raised debates that may redefine legal boundaries. These issues typically center around the question, “How far does voluntary space for religion in public schools go before it becomes coercive and unconstitutional?”

An important legal line that should not be crossed for state action—or public-school policy—is whether something violates the Establishment Clause by coercing students into religion or a specific religion, essentially establishing a religion through policy.

But even this area has been changing. Where once the “Lemon test” was the rubric (stemming from the Lemon v. Kurtzman case), the court now looks to “historical practices and understanding,” thanks to the 2022 case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

Texas also passed a law requiring districts to vote on the allowance of dedicated time for voluntary prayer and reading of religious texts. While the contours of the law appear to make it fully optional for districts to offer and go to great lengths to make it nondenominational, as well as entirely subject to parental opt-in, the law raises questions about what point voluntary, non-school-sponsored time for religious expression becomes coercive for students.

States have also advanced non-devotional instruction about religion. For instance, Utah just passed a bill allowing passages of the Bible to be read as part of social studies. Another Utah bill requires teaching the “primacy of religious liberty” in American constitutional governance and the “fundamental role of religion in the history” of the nation. While these are intended to be non-devotional in nature, some critics still feel these measures violate the Establishment Clause, if not its spirit.

Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court was tied on a vote on the legality of what would have been the first religious charter school (which ultimately kept the lower court’s holding that it was unconstitutional), and it looks like another case is coming on a very similar issue. The creation of explicitly religious charter schools would be an enormous change and would create considerable uncertainty about how religious a state-funded school could be.

While each of these issues is distinct, none has a straightforward answer. The point is that this is a moment to revisit assumptions about religion and public education.

Increasing Faith-Based Support for Education Communities

Some trends in the intersection of religion and public education are less thorny. In March 2026, Harvard and BYU released a joint report that advocates a “third way” of approaching religion and public education, one “that avoids the two extremes of endorsing religion in schools, on one end, or entirely excluding it from the work of schools, on the other.” That approach is “non-sectarian partnerships” between public schools and faith organizations to meet the needs of underserved students and to improve their learning opportunities.

In accordance with their aim to do good, faith organizations often provide services that benefit the public and public schools. The report notes that “Educational programs of faith organizations offer a wide range of services such as donations of school supplies, parent education classes, student tutoring, mentoring, college preparation (e.g., entrance exam training and help with scholarship applications), anti-suspension initiatives, and youth classes that address topics like social competence, student motivation, and study skills.” While there are few studies on the impacts, some research shows evidence of benefits for students from these partnerships.

The report also highlights the benefits of “religiosity”–engaging in private prayer or participating in public rituals and services–which is correlated with student achievement, educational attainment, and goals for higher education. In fact, working-class families benefit more than higher-income families do, and male students benefit more than their female peers.

All this is to say that religion and education can bolster one another. Furthermore, the report suggests that the role of religion in public education need not be coercive at all, but that it can be supportive and complementary in ways that are desperately needed.

For education analysts wondering where these movements might be headed, it is hard to say definitively. But it’s clear that a new moment is upon us, with opportunities to get closer to a pluralistic view of public education. If so, we may build a public square within public schools that better acknowledges the role of religion in the lives of the individuals it serves and in our society at large.

The post Prayer, Pluralism, and Public Schools appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

Sometimes a controversy can be smaller than it first appears, but still worth taking seriously. The recent brouhaha over the Pentagon’s religious-affiliation codes fits into that category. 

You may have heard of this controversy from Latter-day Saint lawmakers pushing back against the new categorization. 

The Department of Defense revised an administrative list of religious-affiliation codes. These are codes used in personnel records and to help plan how many chaplains of each type they need. 

The new list went from more than 200 different religions down to 31. Of those 31, many were listed as “Christian – ” with the name of the faith group appended after the title Christian. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was listed as one of the 31 groups, but it did not have the label “Christian” appended to the front.

That’s certainly reasonable. And the new list should include broad enough categories that almost every service member should find something that suits them.

But it’s that “Christian” label that has caused some of the frustration. Latter-day Saints do not believe that the question of our Christianity is a secondary concern. We view our entire faith as centered on the life, ministry, and divinity of Jesus Christ. 

And this is not merely a bureaucratic question for Latter-day Saints.

Latter-day Saints affirm the Christianity articulated in the New Testament by Christ Himself and His apostles. They reject the later creedal formulations. But in those traditions, it was those creeds that helped define their faith and allowed it to survive. The majority of Christian faiths have grown out of the movements of the leaders who formed those creeds.

The Church of Jesus Christ, however, is a restorationist faith. Meaning it attempts to go around the creedal Christianity and back to a more original form. 

That’s a real religious difference, and not one that we should easily pass over. Most people who are acting in good faith describe it as either creedal Christianity or other/non-creedal Christianity. But many attempt to say that anyone who does not conform to the creeds is not a Christian. This is obviously a spurious argument. By this definition, early Church fathers such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Origen of Alexandria, not to mention Jesus and His apostles, would all be excluded as Christians. But it is also a real issue that Latter-day Saints continue to face in their day-to-day life as they are excluded from schools, service organizations, and interfaith groups while being told they are not Christian. So it is natural that these new Department of Defense religious-affiliation codes would evoke strong feelings.

Here is what is important to note about these codes. They are not a theological determination. There are other non-creedal Christian groups that have been listed with the “Christian” label, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists. 

One of the functions of chaplains in the U.S. Military is to provide religious rites and ordinances for members as needed. For Latter-day Saints, these ordinances require priesthood authority that, according to the teachings of the Church, chaplains of other faiths would not have. So, distinguishing between Latter-day Saints and other Christians was already happening. Of course, it also happened between Protestants and Catholics, but that did not appear on the list. 

But it was also a good reminder for Latter-day Saints that there remain certain fundamentalist and Christian nationalist voices that exclude Latter-day Saints. And we would do well to continue to heed the advice of Church leaders in pursuing religious freedom, rather than aligning ourselves with Christian nationalist causes that, among other shortcomings, would likely exclude us from their definitions.

And it’s in that light that we should probably best respond to the Pentagon controversy. The issue for Latter-day Saints was largely symbolic. But for many faiths, including Rosicrucianism, Wicca, and Unitarian Universalism, recognition has gone away altogether by being omitted from the list. 

A Wiccan sailor may have ritual needs, seasonal observance, or community ties that are not obvious to a generic chaplain in “other.” Unitarian Universalists have very distinct beliefs that can be complicated for even well-meaning individuals to understand. A small tradition can still hold existential importance to the person who belongs to it.

This list does not remove the religious freedom rights of these service members. Religious accommodations are still protected by law and policy. This list cannot change that. This does not change the religion that can appear on a dog tag, or the practices that must be allowed. But for people who are often away from home for the first time, this change can mean they may be left adrift without important spiritual support. In my opinion, properly responding to the spiritual needs of our troops should be a high priority, and perhaps even worth a bit of bureaucratic confusion. 

The post Christianity by Administrative Code appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

A common approach to this kind of animus is to portray the problem at the group level rather than the individual level. It praises the individual, indicts the group. It admires the neighbor, while distrusting the beliefs. It insists that the people are good, kind, neighborly, hardworking—but then tries to separate the people from the ideas and groups they support so that the ideas and groups can be mocked.

Latter-day Saints are familiar with this trope. It has lasted nearly as long as the Church itself. As one article in Charles Dickens’ Household Words famously put it, “What the Mormons do, seems to be excellent; what they say is mostly nonsense.” Dickens was hardly the last. 

That sentiment does a tremendous amount of cultural work. It allows speakers to acknowledge what is obvious to anyone who has met Latter-day Saints—that on average, we’re pretty good folks—while avoiding engagement with any of the beliefs that make us that way. The coworker, quarterback, senator, dentist, babysitter, or in-law may even be exceptional. But the faith itself is framed as a strange defect. It’s something to be smiled at, mocked, or psychoanalyzed.

A new version of this trope is becoming increasingly common and may be worth noticing: Latter-day Saints are great people, but their leaders/church/organization are deeply corrupt.

This can sound sophisticated. It allows speakers to sound like they are supporting people, not institutions. It can even sound compassionate, trying to defend ordinary Latter-day Saints against whatever shadowy authority the story requires. It manages to launder the old bigotries through the language of accountability.

Criticism Is Not the Problem

Latter-day Saints and their institutions should not be exempt from scrutiny. If a business mistreats a customer, investigate. If the police overreach, hold them accountable. If local officials abuse power, expose it. 

Latter-day Saints may be pretty good on average, but we have our fair share of ego, corruption, defensiveness, thievery, and all other types of sins.

There is a difference between criticism and religious profiling. In 2019, I covered the media response to a voyeurism arrest in Tennessee. I read the coverage of all voyeurism arrests over the previous 18 months; almost none of them made national news. And none of them mentioned the religion of the perpetrator. 

But as you might imagine, the Associated Press, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, and even the local newspaper not only mentioned the perpetrator’s religion, but also put it in the title. Why? Well, he was a Latter-day Saint. 

This issue has once again reared its head in a story that’s received major national attention. And suddenly many commentators have concluded that because someone is a Latter-day Saint, the problem must stem from corruption of the Church.

A Complicated LEGO Story

The underlying story here is complicated enough without inventing a religious conspiracy. 

Bricks & Minifigs has its corporate headquarters in Utah County. It is a second-hand retailer for LEGO bricks.

According to the reporting on the story, an Oregon franchise store, not run by the corporate office, accepted a consignment of Star Wars LEGO sets alleged by supporters to be worth around $200,000, with the agreement that it would sell them and give a portion of the proceeds to the sets’ owners.

While this Oregon store was in possession of these sets, the corporate office took control of the franchise store. When the owners of the LEGO sets returned to get their LEGOs because they had not been sold, the new corporate management said that the consignment had not been authorized. They said they are willing to resolve the matter through proper documentation and lawful channels, but they have not yet done so.

A YouTuber known as “Reckless Ben” decided to investigate the story. He went to American Fork to confront corporate management, then to the local police. The local police declined to intervene, saying it was a civil matter (i.e. the family who consigned the LEGO sets should sue).

Eventually, it was “Reckless Ben” who was charged with a misdemeanor for trying to confront the corporate management. 

From my non-lawyer point of view, it seems like the solution is pretty obvious, and from my communications point of view, hanging on to the sets is definitely not worth the legal and PR troubles. 

For a company based in Utah County, it may not surprise you to learn that some members of the management are Latter-day Saints.

And pretty soon, because of an implication “Reckless Ben” made in one of his videos, a narrative soon developed that the story was about religious corruption. 

The Comments Tell the Story

The language used around the YouTube videos has not been subtle. 

One commenter wrote, “The average person that’s LDS have no fault of what’s going on and I do not fault them. But this sect of religion in utah has a literal stranglehold on employment, culture, reputation, and lots of capital.”

Unsurprisingly, this structured complaint quickly returned. 

Other commenters complained about “the Mormon mafia” and suggested that Latter-day Saints have the power to silence people. Another claimed that the situation proved “that the Mormon church is now involved with the police department.”

A Reddit commenter concluded that “they’re protecting their own and would probably do this for any other crime they commit.”

“Reckless Ben” is not a professional journalist. But it’s also clear that sloppy coverage resulted in sloppy conclusions that have gone well beyond what he ever intended or implied. 

An Old Pattern

Latter-day Saints are not the first group to face this kind of suspicion and bias in the United States. Anti-Catholics did this for generations: Catholics could be good neighbors, but their institutions were suspicious because they were loyal to Rome.

Anti-Mormonism has its own version of this logic. In the nineteenth century, critics would portray Latter-day Saints as mysterious and secretive under the domination of an authoritarian prophet. Latter-day Saint belief was not merely doctrinally distinct from other groups; Latter-day Saint institutions were a threat to the American way of life.

And this current trope is a tired descendant of that older suspicion. It might be shined up with modern language. It might use the language of institutions and accountability. But the underlying dynamic, the basic argument, is the same. Latter-day Saints may be good, but when they’re bad it’s their religion’s fault because they are part of a group that is manipulative, corrupt, and dangerous. 

Legacy Media Coverage

The blame for this kind of coverage does not end merely with the YouTuber who posted it. These narratives become established because they are nurtured between the lines of news media that should know better.

When the Chicago Sun-Times puts its organized crime reporter on a story about an individual, when the AP assigns its political reporter to cover general conference, when the Washington Post and New York Times do not quote faithful Latter-day Saints in their articles but only church spokespeople, they create a vision of what the Church is.

And it’s all in pursuit of views. 

The voyeur story used the name of the Church in the title because that’s what people will click on. They create the prejudice and then profit from it. 

The headline, “Possible Police Overreach in Complicated Business Dispute in a Utah-Headquartered Franchise” dies before it hits the newsfeed. The story “Mormon Cops Cover for Mormon Criminals”—well, that sells. 

The bottom line is that there is no reason to believe this LEGO story has anything to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every Utah criminal is not, in fact, a window into Latter-day Saint corruption.

The post LEGO, YouTube, and the Latter-day Saint Mafia appeared first on Public Square Magazine.