Download Print-Friendly Version

“I feel so sorry for you.”

My relative’s words took me by surprise. We were enjoying an afternoon together at a big family gathering, immersed in a conversation completely unrelated to her abrupt and pitying sentence.

“Oh?”

“You must be so bored,” she said with compassion. “You’ve spent so many years on your education—reading the most difficult texts, solving complex legal problems. I can’t imagine how monotonous taking care of babies must feel compared to that. Do you ever miss the intellectual stimulation?”

Her tone was sincere. She genuinely worried I might not be enjoying my decision to put my legal career on hold—my decision to dedicate all my time and energy to my children. She wanted to make space for me to voice any frustrations or regrets.

But I had to tell her the truth: “Actually, parenting is the most intellectually stimulating thing I’ve ever done.”

And I meant it.

My relative’s words could have been my own five years earlier, when I assumed that life as a stay-at-home mother would be mundane, a waste of my potential, something I was too “smart” for.

At the conclusion of my bachelor’s degree, I dove headfirst into LSAT study, then entered law school, and then enrolled in every possible extracurricular. I set the stage for an illustrious legal career.

When my husband and I decided to welcome our first baby into our family halfway through law school, I didn’t expect much to change. Sure, I would have a child to take care of, but there was no way this little person would derail me from my ambitions.

Or so I thought.

Nothing could have prepared me for how wildly my first daughter would take over my heart and soul. As her birth approached, my legal career started to look less like the burning flame I thought it was and more like a meager candle—dim compared to the roaring sun of my daughter’s existence.

These feelings only escalated after Brea’s birth. The sacred trust of introducing another human into this world enveloped me. When I should have been studying for law school, I immersed myself in parenting books, striving to refine my personal parenting philosophy. The insights I gained lit up my mind and heart more than any legal text ever could.

I hung onto my career as long as I could. I graduated from law school, studied for and passed the bar exam, and worked part-time for a year. But from the moment Brea took her first breath, almost any time spent away from her was maddening. Listening to her cry for me while I worked—even though I knew she was safe with my husband—tore me to pieces.

When our second daughter, Scottie, was born, I quit my job as an attorney and changed my legal license to “inactive” status. And I haven’t looked back. Yes, legal work was incredibly intellectually challenging, but I haven’t lacked for intellectual stimulation one bit. If anything, stay-at-home motherhood feels more intellectually engaging than my career ever did.

In the months since my well-meaning relative suggested motherhood might bore me, I’ve reflected continually on why my answer was such an emphatic “not at all.” These reflections have turned into a list of all the ways motherhood fills my intellectual cup. I made this list for myself as a reminder of all the ways my mind can expand, even when my days might look outwardly mundane. But I’ve also felt compelled to share this list with other parents, especially parents wondering whether stepping away from paid work will mean stepping away from intellectual life.

My goal is not to tell any family what to do. I firmly believe that every family should pursue a life that aligns with their talents, interests, and values, in consultation with the Lord, regardless of societal or cultural norms. But I hope this list excites those who have chosen to parent full time: I hope it helps them revel in the opportunities that childrearing provides. And to anyone else, I hope it offers a different view of stay-at-home parenthood—the unveiling of a dimension beyond  dirty diapers and dino nuggets.

Motherhood Engages the Mind through Interpretation

Consider Your Child’s Perspective

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Matthew 7:12

One of the most challenging yet rewarding intellectual opportunities parenting provides is the chance to grow in compassion.

It isn’t easy, especially when your child is acting in a way that you could never imagine yourself acting. But asking yourself the right questions can get the gears turning:

• If I were acting the way my child is, why would I be doing it?
• If I were the child in this situation, how would I want an adult to respond to my behavior?
• What might be the good intentions behind this behavior?
• What unmet need might be driving this behavior?

As I have asked myself these questions, even some of my toddler’s most confusing behaviors have become understandable. Perhaps hitting the baby is her attempt to get attention and connection. Sometimes “pushing my buttons” is really just her trying to find a way to play.

Compassion doesn’t make harmful behavior acceptable. But it does help me understand and address the root causes of that behavior. And often, it turns down the emotional volume of the situation. It puts me into a collaborative, solution-oriented mindset rather than a defensive one.

Get Curious About Your Own Behavior

“But let a man examine himself.” 1 Corinthians 11:28

As a parent, I’ve taken a page out of my toddler’s book and am constantly asking myself the age-old question:

Why?

I’ve come to question everything that I do, especially when it’s impulsive or reactive. I don’t do this in a condemning way, but rather with curiosity and compassion. Where did I learn this response to a child’s behavior? When did I learn that this is what a “good” parent does, says, or looks like? If I were to treat an adult this way, would that go over well? If I were treated this way, would I feel inclined to trust and cooperate—or to resist and shut down?

As Roslyn Ross, author of “A Theory of Objectivist Parenting,” put it well: “Raising children is an act of philosophy.” When we become conscious of why and how we do the things we do, childcare can become an intentional expression of our most deeply cherished values.

Motherhood Engages the Mind through Attention

Journal

“I will remember the deeds of the Lord.” Psalm 77:11

A journal has the power to romanticize the mundane. I use mine to catalog the moments that make each day sparkle: the hilarious things that Brea says, the way “mama” was Scottie’s first word, the memories of pen pal–ing, fort building, and flower picking—all collected into my own little whimsical volume.

A journal is also a tool for mental rehearsal. In mine, I reflect on my most challenging moments as a parent and write out how I intend to respond to similar moments in the future. Writing out a game plan makes it easier to act in a way that I’m proud of once I meet the heat of the moment.

Indulge in a Sense of Awe

“O how great the goodness of our God.” 2 Nephi 9:10

Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.” Nothing is more mysterious or beautiful than a newborn baby. When my first daughter was born, I was constantly awestruck by the miracle of her existence and the mystery of who she was and who she would become. Even the tiniest developmental steps felt like magic.

As our kids get older and our families grow, it can be easy to lose this sense of awe. But the truth is that every child at every age is just as worthy of wonder. Our kids are constantly changing, each day unveiling another piece of their unique spirits. Reminding myself of this truth helps me see beyond whatever the stresses of the day are and instead bask in the blessing of watching my children unfold right in front of me.

And often it is my children’s examples that remind me how else I might indulge in the awe and wonder of life. Hearing my kids point out all the wonders they notice as we go on walks or drive through town reminds me how much I’ve been taking for granted, and how much I could be using my brain to celebrate beauty instead of lamenting inconvenience.

Practice Presence

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” Matthew 6:34

Amidst the modern world’s accelerating pace, parents have the opportunity to slow to the (literal) crawl of brand-new people. Our children show us the pace that humans are biologically wired for.

I enjoy practicing the art of being present without preoccupation. Finding moments to be with my children without any ulterior motives—no desire to teach, distract, entertain, or manipulate. Just taking them in; learning their hearts.

Motherhood Engages the Mind through Growth

Make Talent Development a Family Affair

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 5:16

As parents, we sometimes obsess over stuffing our kids with a toolbox of talents. We simultaneously enroll them in ceramics, violin, gymnastics, and lacrosse, hoping our children grow into prodigies or Olympians.

But what if talent development were more of a team effort? What if it were less about parents managing their children’s careers and more about spending quality time together—time that is genuinely enjoyable and talent-enhancing for both parent and child?

For me, this looks like letting Brea measure and stir, sharing my passion for cooking delicious, healthy food. It’s challenging myself to improve my own lackluster drawing skills while Brea hones her mastery of the crayon. It’s reading a novel while nursing Scottie, with Brea nearby, flipping through picture books. It’s my husband taking Brea to the skate park in the evenings, letting her zoom around on her scooter while he practices skateboard tricks.

Set Flexible Goals

“Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope.” 2 Nephi 31:20

In our efforts to help our children “become something,” it’s easy to forget that we, too, are still in the process of becoming. Setting personal goals has been integral to my own sense that I am still “myself” as a parent.

Yet parenting requires flexibility, and one of the biggest learning curves for me has been learning to pursue my goals and plans even when they inevitably get derailed. Sometimes, a dirty diaper demands to be changed before a podcast episode can be recorded or a 5K can be run. The good news is that flexibility is a hallmark of mental health. While goals can foster self-improvement, learning to navigate unpredictability also boosts self-efficacy.

Strengthen the Muscles of Your Character

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” Galatians 5:22–23

I have grown to enjoy practicing all the traits I want to embody—patience, kindness, confidence—especially when they are tested. I have come to see each tantrum, “power struggle,” and milk spill as a workout for my character: an opportunity to dig deep and be the person I want to be, even when resistance is high. Although none of us will be perfect when we do this, each challenge is an opportunity to get stronger.

And when we are not in the midst of a “character workout,” we can work to cultivate our internal dialogue. I am learning to speak to myself with compassion and empowerment—the exact same way you would want your kids to speak to themselves.

See Through the Savior’s Eyes

Most poignant to me is how parenthood has driven me to the Savior. I’ve gone beyond asking, “What would Jesus do?” and now contemplate, “How would Jesus see, think, and feel in this situation?” I can think of nothing more intellectually engaging than trying to mirror the mind and heart of Jesus Christ.

I am only two and a half years into my journey as a parent. I don’t have it all figured out.

But this is why parenting is so intellectually fulfilling for me. Each day meets me with an abundance of lessons to learn. I get to figure life out, all over again, alongside my children. Teaching my kids what it means to be human is cracking me open and forcing me to learn the same lessons. It is challenging, humbling, and more rewarding than I could have ever imagined.

And while I am confident I’ll one day return to the legal career that once filled my intellectual cup, I’m more than satisfied with the overflow God is pouring in during this crayon-filled season.

The post The Intellectual Life of A Stay-at-Home Mother appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

The story of Queen Esther focuses on a terrifying extermination order in Ancient Persia to eliminate the Jewish population—and a high-stakes marital challenge. Queen Esther, a Jew, was married to the Persian King Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes). The king had permitted his highest-ranking official, Haman, to pass the extermination order without knowing its consequences to the Jewish people—or the Jewish identity of his own wife. 

Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, urged Esther to approach the king to plead for her people’s lives. But Persian law dictated that anyone who approached the king in his inner court without being specifically summoned would be put to death. The only exception was if the king extended his golden scepter to spare the person’s life.

Faced with the threat of her people’s destruction, Esther called her community to fast and pray before she approached the king:

Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.

Esther then stepped forward with courage to do what was right despite immense danger. 

She expressed her strength not only inwardly, but in an outward act of faith. Through her religious actions and the united actions of her faith community, she successfully persuaded her husband, the king, to spare her people—and her own life. 

Esther’s inspiring story is retold once a year in the Jewish community, and her courageous spirit lives on in the daily lives of highly religious women. For highly religious women, Esther is not just a historical figure but a functional model for navigating challenging situations, including in the home. In this article, we will discuss the findings from a recent study we conducted about the religious actions that women of faith, like Esther, take to overcome their marital challenges and hardships.

Belief in God Leads to External Resources That Strengthen Marriage

Esther’s unwavering faith in God gave her the strength to face the king, even if it meant she might die. In our study, while the lives of believers were not on the line, family happiness was. We found a recurring theme of what religious women do to call down the power of God into their family life. Gwen, an African American Christian, called it the “big three” and said this:

If you are doing the big three: prayer, being in the word, and fellowshipping with those of like faith then it helps you, and you can encourage other people when they do see that you’re still happy in your marriage after umpteen years.

So how do prayer, scripture, and fellowshipping contribute to happy marriages and families? We turn now to insights from our study participants.

Prayer

Our study participants commonly expressed a connection between their relationship with God and the way they chose to act in their marriages and families. They reported that they built strong bonds with God through prayer. Anne, a Catholic, said:

My faith has had its ups and downs. During the lowest downs where I’ve really been kind of far from God, I haven’t been a very good wife, and I haven’t been a very good mother. But when I’ve come back to God and been closer and been more faithful and more active in my own personal prayer life, then I’ve been better: a nicer person and a better wife and a better mother. So, they just, they’re totally hand in hand. I can’t really separate prayer and my family relationships.

Not only did prayer help participants improve their relationships, but it also fostered spiritual and personal growth. Alyshia, an African American Christian, offered this:

Having a solid relationship with the Lord … He will tell you when you are out of line. The Lord will change you and say, ‘Look at thy selfishness; … and then we can see a little more clearly. Definitely, a solid relationship with God helps with my marriage and family relationships.

In addition, husbands and wives used prayer as a means of resolving disagreements. Yui, a Chinese Christian, said, “When we had some disagreements, we prayed together, confessed our sins before God, and learned to forgive each other.” For many of the women we interviewed, prayer was not merely a religious practice—it involved a sacred connection to get closer to God and closer to family.

Scripture Study

Reading sacred texts or scriptures emerged as another key resource for the women we interviewed. Moriah, a Jewish wife, said that reading the Torah brought her and her spouse closer together:

So often you just stop talking. You don’t communicate, and so I think when we read Torah together, which we really try to do pretty often, it does create conversation and more understanding, and I think certainly that reduces conflict. It prevents conflict. It also helps remedy conflict once it’s there.

Cassandra, an African American Christian wife, also commented:

I get all of my inspiration and all of my guidance from the Bible. That’s how I learned how to treat others. How to treat people and how to be in my marriage with my relationship with my husband. And that is what puts things in priority, in order. That’s where I get it from. And when I make decisions, I always say, ‘I don’t make decisions just based on what I think. It’s coming from scripture.’ It’s gonna be scripture-based or it’s gonna be something on that ground.

Not only did scripture study reportedly influence couple communication and personal decision-making, but it also enhanced participants’ relationships with both God and with their spouse—reflecting similar benefits to prayer. Mercy, a Baptist wife, relayed this about God’s word:

When two people are married, what’s wrong in you really influences the other person. But for me, I find the only way that I grow very effectively is through God’s touch in my life. So I study in scripture and learn more about who God is and what His heart is for our relationship, for His world that He’s made. It helps me to be able to grow myself so that I can better apply what I learn into my relationships.

Participating in a Faith Community

Just as Esther drew support from her uncle and the Jewish community, the women we interviewed drew vital support from their faith communities. Emily, a Baptist wife and mother, highlighted how her congregation gave her needed support:

So, faith helps me because I realize that there is a different way to do [life]. And I can actually learn how to do it differently, with other people who are also learning too. Some people I know are much further along, and I can learn from them. And I find that I can actually share experiences with other people that help them. I think being in a faith community is helpful that way, because we realize that we’re not alone.

Sometimes I’ll go to Bible study and I’ll realize: ‘Boy, the kinds of things that my husband Michael and I maybe are facing or dealing with are nothing compared to what someone else might be experiencing.’ Or I can learn from other people and bring it back into our marriage and say: ‘Hey, this is something somebody shared with me; and what do you think?’ So it’s a dynamic thing. There’s all these relationships that affect us and we have those relationships because we have the same faith.

Similarly, Noor, an Arab American Muslim wife and mother, commented on how her masjid (mosque) and its faith-based classes have offered her direction in her marriage:

Basically, I need to learn more about Islam to strengthen our marriage, even make it stronger. I think that by getting more in depth in Islam, which I’m trying to do now, I’m going to classes and everything. So, it’s helping me understand a lot more; and I think that it makes me understand more my role in our marriage and how I’m supposed to act.

Many of these women of faith drew marital support from their faith communities.  These supportive relationships were often so strong that many women referred to “sisters” and “brothers” in their “church family” who had helped their marriages to grow spiritually, temporally, and relationally. Many of the women of faith emphasized that growing alongside others helped them navigate their marriages and parenting with greater wisdom and perspective than they would have found on their own.

A Legacy of Courage

Our study participants’ words echo the legacy of Esther: courage is born not only from within, but from a life rooted in faith and the relationships it enriches. Like Esther, these women found strength not in their circumstances but in their devotion to God and in the support of a covenant community. 

By turning to the “big three” of prayer, studying sacred texts, and engaging in marriage-strengthening fellowship with others, their faith shaped how they navigated marital hardship in myriad ways. The sacred practices of these women did more than comfort them; these relational efforts empowered them. Prayer, study, and covenant community worked together to foster clarity, compassion, and resilience in the face of difficulties and challenges in family life. Ultimately, the perspective of these women was that active faith in God can help provide not only a set of coping tools, but a deeper sense of strength, purpose, and connection within their marriages.

The post Women of Faith, Action, and Power appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

Would you prefer to be treated by a physician who follows her conscience or one who does not?

Most, if not all, of us would prefer a physician who follows her conscience. But the pressure is increasing for Christian health care professionals to choose between their careers and consciences. 

Whether it is a medical student being forced to train to perform abortions, a pharmacist being asked to fill lethal prescriptions for assisted suicide, or a physician asked to administer anesthesia to a minor patient undergoing a sex-rejecting procedure, many Christian health care professionals are leaving the field of medicine, taking with them countless years of training. 

This leaves fewer ethical, morally grounded health care professionals—a trend that is dangerous for both health care systems and patients. With the growing departure of ethical health care professionals from the field of medicine, and the field of medicine increasingly untethered from ethics, conscience protections are necessary to sustain the participation of faith-based health care professionals. 

The Tradition of Hippocratic Medicine

Our culture is rapidly shifting away from the longstanding foundation of Western health care. For those who espouse the Hippocratic tradition—to not kill the patient, to not give a pregnant woman an abortifacient, and to do no harm—there remains a real threat of being made complicit in actions that they deem evil. Sometimes it may not be possible for health care professionals to separate themselves from these situations. 

Unfortunately, ideologies that reject the Hippocratic tradition have become pervasive. Society has elevated autonomy as a primary good: what the patient wants is presumed best, regardless of whether it harms the patient. There is little pushback against the ideas that prenatal life is inferior or that we should hasten death for those who have given up on life. This same rejection of the Hippocratic tradition is evident in transgender medical interventions, where subjective desires are allowed to override biological sex, resulting in the destruction of healthy, God-given bodies. Furthermore, the structure of our modern health system, like our broader culture, often pursues efficiency for its own sake, subjugating patient well-being. 

Conscience in the Clinic

Many Christian health care professionals are pressured to capitulate to patient whims, bureaucratic mandates, profit-first business models, academic requirements, or laws that challenge their moral compasses, driving them out of the field. Patient autonomy, in particular, has become a key component of today’s health care. But not every “treatment” a patient seeks leads to human flourishing. Some patients seek providers who will serve as personal vending machines, dispensing whatever is requested, regardless of its ethical or medical soundness. This dynamic subverts the role of the health care professional, who is supposed to exercise expertise in providing ethical, scientifically backed care to the patient—not simply be the patient’s puppet. 

Our ethics, faith, and values should not be compartmentalized within our places of worship. They should be embodied within us wherever we go, including our workplaces. Health care professionals and students who follow Christ carry within them the gospel of truth that transforms patient care. They see both the immediate suffering and the eternal significance of the person. They see the patient as a person deserving compassionate care, whereas in the profit-first, secular care setting, the tendency is to see the patient as a problem to be solved with a checklist. Christian health care professionals also see and treat their patients as image bearers of God, worthy of treatment in accordance with the highest ethical standards. 

The Protections Needed

So when should health care professionals be able to say “no” to requests that would violate their conscience?

For one, they must have the right to refuse to participate in specific procedures or treatments that conflict with their professional conscience, such as treating the patient contrary to the Hippocratic standard. This includes being protected from having to perform or assist with abortions or help a patient end her life through assisted suicide. 

Ultimately, no health care professional should be forced to choose between their life’s vocational calling and their ethical, moral, or religious values. The Christian health care professional enters the profession to serve patients and provide care according to the highest ethical standards—qualities that should be promoted, not punished. 

Legislative Protections

Legislation is vital to securing the conscience rights of health care professionals. Codifying conscience protections helps the health care field to retain ethical professionals who might otherwise leave or relocate to more conscience-protective jurisdictions. 

Supporting the moral integrity of our health care profession is in everyone’s best interest. Whether they are medical students or physicians with decades of experience, CMDA members report that they are often mandated to refer for procedures that violate their consciences, becoming cash registers rather than caring health care professionals. Some of them have been discriminated against in the workplace for their beliefs, or they know other health care professionals who have faced discrimination for declining to participate in activities or medical procedures to which they had moral or religious objections. This is occurring to such a degree in multiple states and specialties of practice that some of our members are considering walking away from the field of medicine altogether rather than be compelled to violate their consciences. 

Our 2019 survey of 1,732 health care professionals revealed the depth of this crisis: 

• 76 percent of those surveyed in certain specialties noticed or had experienced increased pressure to compromise their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs in their practices.
• 33 percent of health care professionals had been pressured, forced, or punished to refer a patient for a procedure to which they had moral, ethical, or religious objections. 
• 91 percent of respondents reported they “would rather stop practicing medicine altogether than be forced to violate [their] conscience.”

We applaud the passage of health care conscience protection bills in state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress. Before the 2026 legislative session, nine states (Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee) had passed health care conscience laws known as the Medical Ethics Defense (MED) Act or similar legislation. In the 2026 legislative session, similar bills were considered in Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Utah. As of this writing, the MED Act has passed in the Iowa and Utah legislatures.

These bills, while varying by state, aim to protect the freedom of health care professionals to practice according to their consciences. They allow health care professionals to decline to perform procedures that violate their ethical standards and religious beliefs. And they shield health care professionals from losing their jobs or facing criminal charges for practicing conscientiously. 

These bills are procedure-specific; for example, they provide statutory protection for health care professionals who decline to perform, assist in, or train for abortions, as well as those who refuse to refer for or provide lethal prescriptions for assisted suicide. The bills do not allow discrimination against individual patients. Health care professionals cannot refuse to care for a patient. In fact, these laws are intended to protect those who seek to provide only the best care for their patients by avoiding the infliction of harm to patients. 

These bills are necessary to address the current lack of federal enforcement. Moreover, while some states have outlawed certain procedures, technology is advancing at such a pace that new unethical services will inevitably arise. We need protections to safeguard the practice of ethical medicine against challenges we have yet to encounter. 

At the federal level, protections currently exist through the Church, Coats-Snowe, and Weldon Amendments. 

• The Church Amendment ensures health care professionals and hospitals are not required to assist in abortions or sterilizations that violate their moral or religious beliefs. It is one of the most important federal protections on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions.
• The Coats-Snowe Amendment protects physicians and health care entities from being forced to perform, refer for, or make arrangements to refer for abortions. Crucially, it applies to any government entity that receives federal financial assistance, so students and residents at federally funded medical institutions cannot be forced to be involved in abortions. 
• The Weldon Amendment prohibits federal agencies and programs, and state and local governments, from discriminating against any health care entity, professional, or insurance plan for refusing to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions. 

While not yet law, the Conscience Protections for Medical Residents Act would provide another essential federal protection. By replacing the current abortion training “opt-out” system—which often subjects residents who opt out to discrimination—with an “opt-in-only” system, the bill would better protect the rights of residents with conscientious objections. 

Although existing federal laws provide strong protections, their efficacy depends on enforcement, and that is a problem. Each administration at the Department of Health and Human Services prioritizes different protections, often redefining the concept of conscience to align with its larger policy goals. Consequently, states have been stepping up efforts with their respective MED Act legislation to provide the safeguards that the federal government fails to guarantee. These persistent gaps make bills such as the Conscience Protections for Medical Residents Act a critical priority for our mission.

But What About …

Some are concerned that if physicians have conscience protections, patients will be unable to receive care. 

The CMDA agrees that if a procedure is legal, a patient has the right to seek it out. But a patient does not have the right to conscript a specific, unwilling physician into violating their deeply held beliefs to provide it. 

Conscience freedom laws are procedure-based, not patient- or person-based. Physicians are to provide the best medical treatment in any given situation. Professionals with conscience objections to certain courses of treatment will refuse anti-Hippocratic treatment for any patient requesting it. They do not discriminate against individuals; they simply choose to not engage in certain procedures that they believe are harmful to patients. 

Notably, the medical interventions that prompt these conscience-based refusals are elective in nature. If a patient believes a treatment that a conscientious provider will not provide is the best course of action, the patient can seek that treatment elsewhere. 

Health care providers must not be mere machines deployed by their employers in the service of every desire of their patients, according to ideologies that are constantly in flux. A health care professional must have the ability to refuse what they know is wrong.

A Duty to the Truth

What do we lose when we don’t protect conscience? 

Most certainly, we lose the trust that is so essential in a health care system. Violation of conscience creates distrust. Because trust is essential in a patient-health care professional relationship, we must respect the fundamental ethical right and freedom of clinicians to follow their consciences and to resist pressures that would undermine their integrity. 

For example, if the right of professionals to conscientiously abstain is not protected, what prevents health systems from requiring their employees to provide services that are good for the system’s bottom line but that harm the patient’s health and flourishing?

Conscience protections also allow for pushback against today’s popular consensus that could very well change tomorrow. (For example, look at the Cass Review, an independent report commissioned by the U.K. that concluded the evidence for treating minors with gender dysphoria with puberty blockers and sex hormones was “remarkably weak”). These are protections for the patient as much as they are for the physician. Conscience protections allow for physicians to remain genuine expert professionals rather than becoming vending machines that cater to their patients’ every desire. 

If elective abortion or assisted suicide is more cost-effective for hospitals than treating a difficult diagnosis, ensuring your physician chooses the highest standards of care over the path of least resistance is vital. These are the kinds of professionals we want to retain.

When we don’t protect conscience, we also lose out on many professionals whose conscience drives their desire to emulate the health care and Christlike role of healer. We miss the virtue these physicians cultivate when they can live by their highest ethical standards. 

Christianity and Health Care Working Together

The Christian church community and the health care professions can work in tandem. Those in the health care profession can help the church to understand the truth about complex bioethical issues, while the church can serve as the guardrails and remind those in health care to be compassionate and courageous without compromise. As Dr. Brick Lantz, CMDA Vice President of Advocacy and Bioethics notes, “It is a two-way street, as we in health care also need the church’s help to encourage and empower us to do good.”

In the book “How Now Shall We Live,” Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey argue that the world is divided by two worldviews: secular and biblical. Bridging the gap between them begins by acknowledging the Fall and the need for transformation by the Holy Spirit. As Colson writes, “The secular view has been tried and found wanting, and its failure opens a wonderful opportunity for Christians to make a case for a biblical worldview of human nature and community.” 

We do not want a gospel of accommodation that allows a secular world to reject God’s terms and His design. The consequences of such accommodation and departure from the truth are already producing devastating effects on men, women, children, families, and society, not to mention their pervasive distortion of health care. The gospel and the church are the solution to stem this decay and distortion by protecting what God says is good.

As Nicole wrote previously in “The Right to Believe: The New Struggle for Religious Liberty in America,”:

America heralds itself as a free society committed to not impede the free exercise of religion per our First Amendment rights. … However, those who show restraint from engaging in things that would be considered “progress,” or “compassionate” but rather they are evil, we are looked upon with disdain. It seems that America’s pursuit of progress is to liberate those who wish to trespass the moral boundary lines that our holy God has established.

We need to protect the conscience freedoms of health care professionals who object to participating in procedures under the guise of “autonomy” and “progress” that disregard our inherent dignity. By protecting conscience and religious freedoms in health care, we are protecting health care professionals and patients from being subjected to the “enhancements” that a secular worldview may contemplate. Patients deserve health care professionals who are conscientious and humbled by the fact that we are all created in the image of God. Conscience should always be motivated by a love for God and our neighbor. By demonstrating a better way, conscientious refusal enables the Christian health care professional to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

The post Protecting Conscience Rights of Physicians appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

Forgive the provocative title. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints certainly should care for the poor and needy as modeled by the head of the Church, Jesus Christ Himself.

There is, however, a consistent thread of criticism whenever the cost of a Church-involved project becomes public, that all of that cost should have been spent helping the poor instead. 

The argument has even been extended to time, with critics arguing that spending time in worship is a waste when it could be spent in soup kitchens.

I disagree. Worship is not an alternative to doing good. It’s the engine that makes doing good last.

And this isn’t a new argument. A home crowded with people. A dinner. A sense that Something Big is about to happen. Then a woman—Mary of Bethany, in the telling of the Gospel of John—breaks open a jar of costly ointment and pours it on the feet of Jesus Christ. The room fills with fragrance. It’s extravagantly impractical. It looks, from a certain perspective, like waste.

And right on cue, a voice rises with the sensible objection—the ethical objection:

Why wasn’t this sold and given to the poor?

It comes from Judas Iscariot. And if you’re honest, the line sounds persuasive. It sounds like moral clarity. It sounds like priorities. It sounds like what an enlightened, modern faith should say.

But Jesus doesn’t nod along. He doesn’t say, “Great point—let’s liquidate the perfume and put together a hunger-relief budget.” He defends the act. 

Jesus’ action should break the false spell that says devotion and discipleship are only real when they are immediately convertible into measurable “impact.” It reminds us that worship—direct, reverent, God-facing worship—can look inefficient to anyone who thinks humanitarian deliverables are the only ledger that matters.

And it’s not the only time Jesus refuses to reduce the life of faith into a single social program. He commands His followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, lift the heavy burden. But He also commands love of God with heart, might, mind, and strength. He commands prayer. He retreats to commune with the Father. He institutes ordinances. He receives honor. He welcomes adoration.

In other words, worship and service both matter enormously. The Christian life is not either/or.

Let’s take that critique seriously, because the best versions of it come from a good instinct: people are suffering, and we should not be casual about it. If you believe in Christ, you should feel a holy discomfort when you see hunger, war, displacement, addiction, loneliness, and abuse. If your faith never pulls you outward into sacrifice and service, then it’s not discipleship.

But the critique collapses when it assumes something that sounds compassionate yet ends up being corrosive: Worship is basically overhead, and the “real work” begins only when worship ends.

That assumption is not just spiritually mistaken. It’s historically naïve and psychologically backward. In practice, it’s one of the fastest ways to kill the very humanitarian impulse it claims to maximize.

Worship is the foundation of sustainable humanitarian good.

Not because worship is a loophole to avoid helping people. But because worship is how you make a people who keep helping people when it’s hard, when it’s boring, when it’s thankless, when it’s politically inconvenient, when the cameras are gone, when your own life is falling apart, when you’re tempted to turn cynical.

And if—hypothetically—humanitarian aid were the ultimate end goal, you would still want a church to stay fiercely centered on its religious mission. Because that mission is what grows the community, strengthens the moral muscles, and keeps the generosity from becoming a short-lived mood.

Even if the only goal was to maximize humanitarian efforts, a religious mission is a wise investment. 

The Trap of Turning a Church Into an NGO

The world already has many institutions whose job description is “make material life better.”

Some are incredible: disaster responders, hospitals, development orgs, refugee agencies, food systems, governments running safety nets. Many of them do heroic work, and believers should often be their most loyal partners and supporters.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: if a church becomes just another version of those institutions, it loses its reason to exist.

Not because humanitarian work isn’t holy. It is. But because a church’s unique contribution is not merely relief—it is redemption. It exists to reconcile people to God, shape souls, bind communities through covenant, preach repentance and hope, administer ordinances, and teach a way of life anchored in the living Christ.

When a church quietly trades that identity for the safer, more broadly applauded identity of “a values-based service club,” it doesn’t become more relevant. It becomes replaceable.

And replaceable institutions tend to shrink.

That isn’t an abstract theory; it’s one of the storylines of modern Western Christianity. Beginning in the mid‑20th century, many churches in Europe and North America leaned hard into social and political engagement, sometimes explicitly downplaying doctrine, miracles, and distinctive worship as embarrassments from a pre-modern past. On the far edge, you even had “Death of God” theology in the 1960s, arguing that belief in God had become meaningless in modern life.

At the same time, older currents like the “Social Gospel”—a movement that interpreted the kingdom of God as demanding social reform as well as personal conversion—became newly influential in modern form.

These movements that built on the foundation of faith and religious strength produced real good. Civil rights advances, anti-poverty efforts, humanitarian advocacy, not to mention the millions of individuals given a hand up—many believers gave their lives to these causes. That deserves sincere admiration.

The sociological details are debated, but the broad fact of mainline decline is not. Pew Research Center has documented significant declines in mainline Protestant identification and retention in the United States in recent decades. And these losses have been localized in the congregations that went all in on a modern social gospel emphasis. When social action becomes the main product and worship becomes a mild preface, churches tend to lose the very people who would have fueled the action.

A church that abandons worship does not become a better charity. It becomes a worse church and, eventually, a weaker charity too. Because the deepest engines of durable compassion—repentance, gratitude, covenant, awe, accountability, forgiveness, hope, spiritual discipline—are cultivated primarily through worship.

Learning From Our Catholic Friends

It’s worth noticing: even traditions that have built enormous global service institutions still insist that worship is primary.

The Church of Jesus Christ has focused most of its humanitarian efforts in assisting other organizations. Two of the most prominent are Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services.

In Sacrosanctum Concilium (the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), the Church describes itself as “eager to act and yet intent on contemplation,” and explicitly orders “action to contemplation,” not the reverse. And it says the liturgy is an “outstanding means” by which the faithful express the mystery of Christ and the nature of the Church.

You don’t have to be Catholic to see the wisdom of this approach. Worship is neither a waste nor a reward after the work; it’s the source that motivates the work, and connects the work to identity, rather than mere philanthropy. 

What Worship Actually Does

People sometimes talk about worship like it’s a little more than a cultural habit, a vibe if you will.

But biblically (and in Latter-day Saint practice), worship is much more like alignment.

Worship is what happens when you stop treating yourself as the center of the universe—and deliberately, repeatedly, bodily re‑center on God. That sounds “spiritual,” and it is. But it has very practical effects:

• Worship builds a different kind of person

Humanitarian service requires more than empathy. Empathy is a spark; it flares and fades. Service that persists needs character: patience, chastity, honesty, restraint, long‑suffering, courage, meekness, integrity when you’re not being watched.

Worship is where these virtues are named, demanded, practiced, and—over time—formed into muscle memory.

• Worship builds a different kind of community

A congregation isn’t just a crowd of like-minded individuals. At its best, it’s a covenant community with thick relationships. You notice when someone disappears; you show up when a baby is born or a parent dies; you bring soup; you sit through awkward conversations; you forgive; you get forgiven.

That kind of community is a miracle. It’s also a logistics machine for mercy.

• Worship builds time horizons long enough for real good

Some problems yield to a burst of attention. Most don’t.

Addiction. Poverty. Education. Conflict. Cycles of abuse. Trauma. Refugee resettlement. Loneliness. Generational hopelessness.

If your only fuel is outrage, you burn out. If your only fuel is applause, you quit when the applause stops.

Worship trains people to act from a longer story. It makes sacrifice rational because it places sacrifice inside eternity.

• Worship protects service from becoming ego

Humanitarianism can become vanity. Service can become a way to be seen, to feel superior, to justify contempt for others (“I help people; why can’t you?”), to build a brand, to control.

Worship is where the ego gets humbled. Where you remember you’re not the savior. Where you’re reminded that you, too, are poor in spirit and desperately in need of grace.

The Data Says Worship Grows Generosity

The argument is not only theological, but empirical. 

In the United States, religious participation—especially regular attendance—has repeatedly shown up as one of the strongest predictors of charitable giving and volunteering.

• Gallup reports that Christians (and especially those who attend church regularly) are more likely than the nonreligious to say they donated and volunteered in the past year.
• A widely circulated analysis hosted by the Hoover Institution (drawing on the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey) found large gaps between weekly attenders and secular respondents in both donating and volunteering—differences measured in double-digit percentage points.
• The Generosity Commission summarizes the broader pattern bluntly: declining religious participation is frequently cited as part of the donor-participation decline, and there’s “substantial evidence” that religious Americans are more likely to give and volunteer—including to secular causes, not only religious ones.

Some of these benefits likely come from the fact that believers tend to be part of strong communities. Worship, however, doesn’t just create community; it rehearses a moral story where generosity is expected. It normalizes sacrifice. It turns giving from “extra credit” into “this is what we do.”

And psychologists have tried to probe causation more directly. Experiments have found that subtly priming religious concepts can increase prosocial behavior in anonymous economic games. Meta-analytic work reviewing many studies finds religious priming shows a reliable positive effect on prosocial measures.

You don’t need to overclaim this research to see the headline: religious practice isn’t merely “private meaning-making.” It measurably shapes how people behave toward others.

Which means the critique “Stop worshiping and start serving” is not only spiritually misguided. It’s practically self-defeating. Because the evidence suggests worship is part of what produces servers.

You can say, why do you waste time and money worshipping instead of serving, but in practice those who spend their time and money worshipping are also the ones spending the most time and money serving. 

So What About The Church of Jesus Christ Specifically?

Let’s talk directly. The Church’s religious mission costs money. Meetinghouses, temples, missionary work, youth programs, education, publications, administration, welfare logistics.

Critics sometimes frame this as theft from the poor, as if every dollar spent on worship is a dollar stolen from a hungry child.

That’s a powerful emotional frame. It’s also simplistic in a way that would get laughed out of any serious discussion of how organizations work.

Low overhead is not proof of effectiveness. Some of the biggest organizations in non-profit accountability went to bat to combat this myth in 2013. It remains true today. And the problems that need to be solved won’t be solved by pouring money into them. They require infrastructure, training, and longevity. Looking at just welfare for low-income countries, between 2020 and 2023, nearly $700 billion was spent, and the problem remains far from solved. 

The real question is not, “Could we spend this dollar on something else?” Of course, we could. You can always redirect dollars. The real question is what is the best way to spend that dollar. What system produces the most good for the most time? 

And research suggests that churches that focus on worship and doctrine do a better long-term job of addressing those problems. 

For example, in its “Caring for Those in Need” report for 2025, the Church says it supported thousands of humanitarian projects across nearly the whole world and reports $1.58 billion in expenditures and millions of volunteer hours. In 2024, it was $1.45 billion, in 2023 it was $1.36 billion, and in 2022 it was $1.02 billion. And the projects they choose to spend on are those that will produce a virtuous cycle of improvement in the communities where they take place. Consider the self-reliance push of the Church’s welfare system. Consider BYU-Pathway and the Perpetual Education Fund. When it came to serving in the community, the Church didn’t just have members show up, they created JustServe, to create an engine to help local non-profits find volunteers. And the Church has focused on improving neonatal care by training nurses, and training nurse trainers, creating generations of healthy babies.

As we’ve seen in recent history, a church that forgets worship forgets why it serves. It may still do good for a while. But it begins to hollow out—spiritually, culturally, demographically—and eventually it loses the very capacity it once had to mobilize good.

So when critics say, “Stop spending on worship and spend it all on humanitarian aid,” they are—ironically—advocating to dismantle one of the most powerful known engines of mass voluntary generosity.

Worship is how God turns ordinary people into a durable community capable of extraordinary service.

So yes—celebrate humanitarian giving. Expand it. Partner widely. Be transparent where appropriate. Improve effectiveness. Learn from everyone.

And also: do not let anyone shame you into believing worship is wasted time. 

Mary’s ointment filled a house with fragrance. A room full of people could smell her devotion.

The modern world is hungry for that fragrance—devotion that doesn’t flee from suffering, but also doesn’t pretend that suffering is the only thing worth talking about.

A relationship with Christ is not a side quest. It is the center.

And from that center—when it is real—flows a river of service that can outlast outrage, outlast politics, outlast the news cycle, outlast your own energy.

That’s not an argument against humanitarian work. It’s an argument for why the Church should keep being unapologetically a church.

The post The Church Is More Than A Charity appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The Church’s soft power is built on credibility through collaboration—pairing a global volunteer culture and substantial resources with trusted partners who already have expertise, reach, and on-the-ground legitimacy. In a world hungry for trust, this posture multiplies humanitarian impact—and it quietly teaches the rest of us how to lead with humility, stewardship, and shared purpose.

For the Church, the aim is covenant discipleship and Christlike love; any “soft power” that follows is a byproduct of that faithfulness. In other words, credibility is fruit, not the vine.

Soft power is earned, not asserted.

Soft Power, Reframed as the Fruit of Discipleship

Here I use “soft power” descriptively, not normatively—the Church serves because it follows Jesus Christ; trust accrues because it serves consistently. Humanitarian service is an outgrowth of that discipleship. 

To understand the Church’s “soft power,” we first need to clarify what we mean by the term. In Joseph Nye’s framework, soft power is the ability to shape outcomes through attraction and persuasion rather than force or payment. In practice, it runs on one scarce resource: credibility—earned over time through consistent values and reliable action.

Historically, the Church has maintained both an inward-facing welfare system and an outward-facing humanitarian effort—tracing its formal welfare program to 1936 and its broader humanitarian outreach to 1984. The existence of both streams is important: it signals that partnership is not a substitute for institutional capacity. It is, instead, a strategic and moral decision about how to deploy capacity for the widest good.

Why Partnership Is the Strategy—Not the Exception

The Church’s own public framing is revealing. It speaks of a desire to “maximize” impact so that help blesses not only individuals but families and communities—and it explicitly acknowledges “trusted organizations” as part of the ecosystem that makes the work possible.

In this context, partnership becomes more than a practical convenience. It becomes a posture:

• Stewardship: directing resources where they will do the most good.
• Humility: letting others lead when they hold the expertise.
• Unity: working across lines of faith, nationality, and institutional identity.
• Fidelity: cooperating widely without compromising revealed doctrine, standards, or church governance

And just as notably, the Church’s model often aims to serve people regardless of religious affiliation—an approach it states openly in its humanitarian descriptions.

Partnership is not a compromise. Partnership is a multiplier.

Creating a new program from scratch is not always the most compassionate option—especially in global humanitarian work. Building a parallel infrastructure can mean duplicating supply chains, duplicating local relationships, duplicating compliance systems, and, unintentionally, competing with the very organizations already trusted on the ground.

For example, organizations like the World Food Programme have global distribution systems and emergency operations that can be activated rapidly. The Church can amplify those systems faster than it could replicate them.

By contrast, partnering lets the Church contribute what it can uniquely offer—funding, commodities, volunteers, convening power—while relying on others for what they uniquely offer: specialized public health capacity, emergency logistics, refugee systems, school feeding programs, and long-developed accountability frameworks.

The Church’s own communications sometimes name this directly: long-standing work with organizations “recognized for their effectiveness and integrity,” including World Food Program USA, UNICEF, and CARE, is presented as part of how its projects are carried out.

What looks like “outsourcing” can, when done ethically, be a form of respect.

Case Study One: A Logistics Hub in Barbados

Consider a moment that is easy to miss if we only look for dramatic headlines: the Church and World Food Program USA jointly funded an emergency response logistics hub in the Caribbean, supporting construction and operations in Barbados with a combined $4.3 million, including an initial $2 million grant from the Church.

That is not merely a donation. It is an investment in readiness—the kind of capacity that makes the difference between good intentions and timely food, shelter, and supplies when disaster strikes.

Context: influence grows where reliability lives

And that choice keeps compounding. The World Food Programme identifies Latter-day Saint Charities as a partner since 2014, emphasizing measurable progress toward hunger relief.

Implication: soft power that doesn’t need the spotlight

Soft power, at its healthiest, doesn’t demand center stage. It chooses impact over branding, durability over applause, and coalition over control. A logistics hub is, in many ways, the perfect symbol: unglamorous, essential, and quietly decisive.

Case Study Two: Eight Organizations, One Women and Children Initiative

Now widen the lens from logistics to public health.

In a Relief Society–led global effort to improve maternal and child health, the Church announced $55.8 million in support. It is collaborating with eight internationally recognized nonprofit organizations—including CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Helen Keller International, iDE, MAP International, Save the Children, The Hunger Project, and Vitamin Angels—to strengthen health and nutrition programs in 12 high-need countries.

This is a partnership built not as a one-off, but as a deliberate coalition

Context: the Church as a convener, not just a funder

Furthermore, convening is its own kind of power. When a large institution chooses to collaborate across multiple NGOs—rather than selecting one “favorite” or building an in-house global health apparatus—it signals that the goal is not institutional dominance. The goal is reach.

In Helen Keller International’s own public statement about the collaboration, the logic is explicit: scaling “proven” nutrition services, with multiple peer organizations working together, to create lasting change.

Implication: the soft power of “shared credit”

There is a subtle leadership lesson here: the Church’s influence increases when it refuses to hoard ownership. It strengthens other institutions—and in doing so, it becomes the kind of partner other institutions want nearby.

That desire—to collaborate, to coordinate, to trust—is the heart of soft power.

Case Study Three: Feeding the Hungry Through Systems Already in Place

The Church’s partnership approach is not limited to international NGOs. It also shows up in the way it feeds neighbors close to home.

On its own “Feeding the Hungry” summary page, the Church describes a three-part approach: donate to immediate needs, collaborate with organizations focused on long-term food security, and run its own child nutrition program.

The Church reports operating 122 bishops’ storehouses across six countries, using them to care for members in need, and where storehouses are unavailable, it sometimes works with local grocery store chains.

But perhaps most notably, the storehouse system is not treated as a closed loop. The Church states that food and supplies from bishops’ storehouses are distributed to charitable organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada—and that in 2024, more than 32 million pounds of food were donated through humanitarian organizations and food banks (about 32 million meals).

It even offers concrete local examples, including support to Catholic Community Services in Salt Lake City and assistance to El Hogar Buen Samaritano in Spain.

This is one of the clearest answers to the question, ‘Why partner rather than build everything internally?’ Because hunger is not solved by a single pipeline. It is solved by networks—food banks, shelters, grocery chains, local ministries, civic agencies—each doing what they do best.

The Church’s soft power here is the power to strengthen the network without demanding the network become the Church.

Case Study Four: Trust Across Lines—The NAACP and the Red Cross

Soft power is not only global. It is also social: the ability to lower defensiveness and raise cooperation in places where history, misunderstanding, or suspicion might otherwise block progress.

The NAACP partnership

The Church’s relationship with the NAACP, as described in Church Newsroom coverage, began with a joint call for greater civility and racial harmony in May 2018, later developing into education and humanitarian initiatives.

Local and national outlets described scholarship support and related initiatives tied to the partnership. Later, Church News summarized additional education and humanitarian commitments, including scholarships and related efforts.

Whatever one’s perspective on institutional history, the partnership model here communicates a clear principle: we do not wait for perfect alignment before we begin building shared good. Such collaboration proceeds under prophetic direction and clear boundaries. Partnership does not equal endorsement of every position; we work together where concrete objectives align with the gospel and established Church policies.

The Red Cross collaboration

Similarly, the Church’s collaboration with the American Red Cross is framed—on the Church’s own regional humanitarian summary page—as having “staying power” because of shared values like humanitarian spirit and trust.

And the Red Cross itself publicly describes Church donations supporting Red Cross efforts, situating them as part of a longer pattern of giving.

The Personal Lessons: How to Practice “Soft Power” Without Losing Your Soul

Institutional examples matter because they give us patterns to imitate—not in scale, but in spirit.

Here are the takeaways that translate most directly into ordinary life. Our influence grows when our service is dependable.

Lesson 1: Choose contribution over control

In families, workplaces, wards, and neighborhoods, we are often tempted to help in ways that keep us central. The Church’s partnership posture suggests a different path: support what already works, and let others lead where they’re strongest.

Lesson 2: Let “shared credit” be your leadership style

Soft power in personal life is rarely about charisma. It is about trust—built through consistency, humility, and credit-sharing. The Church’s collaborations—from global NGOs to local food banks—model a way of doing good that doesn’t require ownership.

Lesson 3: Build ecosystems, not just moments

A single act of service can be beautiful. But durable influence comes from strengthening systems: the food pantry, the school, the shelter, the community volunteer network.

In this light, platforms like JustServe become more than a scheduling tool. They become an institutional habit of connecting people to organizations that can sustain service beyond one weekend.

Lesson 4: Measure what matters—then tell the truth about it

The Church’s annual summaries are not perfect proxies for every form of generosity, but they reflect a principle: service should be reportable, accountable, and visible enough to build trust. We count to improve care, transparency, and wise use of sacred funds—not to keep score. And we remember that many of the most important outcomes—conversion, dignity, belonging—resist quantification.

In our lives, that can look like simple clarity: following through, closing loops, showing receipts (sometimes literally), and making outcomes legible.

Lesson 5: Keep the moral center clear

Finally, partnership only works when your values travel intact. The Church repeatedly frames its humanitarian collaborations as rooted in Christlike love and a desire to bless communities broadly.

For us, the equivalent is straightforward: serve in ways that are clean, respectful, and non-transactional—without turning people into props for our identity.

Soft power is often misunderstood as image management. But at its best, it is something far more demanding: the disciplined practice of becoming trustworthy.

The Church of Jesus Christ demonstrates a version of that discipline through its partnership-centered humanitarian work—mobilizing volunteers, funding, and commodities, while collaborating with organizations that bring specialized expertise, local legitimacy, and global reach.

And the institutional example returns to us as a personal invitation: to live in a way that multiplies good—through humility, collaboration, and a steady willingness to build trust.

The post The Quiet Multiplier appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

When I was thirteen, my father and I would watch Saturday morning cartoons. It was like a comforting ritual. It was on one of those quiet, gentle mornings that my world was shattered. There was a pound on the door. I opened it and was surprised to find officers with weapons drawn, the air thick with confusion and accusation. Together we woke the rest of the family. Together we watched strangers go through our home. It was not long after that my father was arrested.

For four long years, the courthouse became my second home. Week after week I sat on wooden benches, praying my father would not be swallowed by a witch hunt of lies. And then, one summer afternoon, the world became still. The jury declared him guilty of a crime he did not commit. I left the courtroom without saying goodbye.

A few weeks later, I sat in church, trying to do anything to fill the void in my heart. A teenage girl—about my age—was speaking to the congregation about the power of God to answer prayers. She spoke about how she lost her keys, searched everywhere, and finally prayed to know where her keys were. “As soon as I prayed,” she said, “I knew exactly where they were.” 

I remember sitting there absolutely stunned. My father had been convicted and sentenced just days before, after years of prayers. Why had heaven opened for her but not for me? Surely a set of keys was not more deserving than a boy in need of a father. Was her need somehow greater than mine? 

Why does God answer some prayers and not others? Why did Christ heal one soul but walk past another? Why does relief come to some but not to me, even when I know He can give it? These are mysteries I do not pretend to solve. 

Could it be, however, that the mystery itself is a whisper of grace—the quiet grace that sustains us while we wait for the answer to such questions? As we wait for our own “miracle”?

She waited twelve years. Joseph waited thirteen years in slavery and prison. Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. Moses waited forty years to reach the promised land—and died before entering. Adam waited one hundred and thirty years for Seth after losing Abel by the hand of Cain. The woman at the well waited through five husbands before meeting the Messiah and finally feeling seen. I waited four years for my father.

It seems that the Lord has always asked His children to wait. Why would we be an exception? 

Hebrew has a beautiful way of providing new insights into words and meanings. I am no linguist, just a student, but one Hebrew word for “wait” is qavah. It appears in the psalmist’s cry, “Let none that wait on thee be ashamed.” The same root word can also mean “expect” and is often associated with tension-filled waiting for the expected promises of the Lord to be fulfilled. For example, Isaiah uses qavah to foreshadow the long-awaited gathering of Israel, “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob, and I will put my trust in Him.” (Isaiah 8:17). The word is derived from a concept of binding two things together in a cord, pulled tight with expectation and anticipation. We are able to wait on the Lord for salvation, or healing, or redemption, or whatever it is we are waiting for because those specific concepts are concomitant with the promises of God. We cannot have healing without the Healer, or salvation without the Savior, or redemption without the Redeemer. Qavah is not the uncertainty of wondering if something will happen, but the quiet assurance that it will. 

Another Hebrew word for “wait” is yachal—often translated to “hope.” It is the word used by Job in his famous lament, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” (Job 13:15). The connection between waiting and hoping amidst suffering paints a picture of responsibility. Hope is not merely the denial of suffering, but the denial of despair amidst suffering. We must guard the sacred time we spend waiting, protecting the heart from bitterness and bolstering our faith until the dawn of our miracle comes. One’s integrity does not shine until it is tested. The time to shine is in the waiting. So, what are we doing to protect the sacred time we are given while waiting?

The woman with the issue of blood waited in this way. She took responsibility for her waiting. She did not let resentment in, like poison. She protected the fragile place between promise and fulfillment, and when the Savior walked by, she was ready. Waiting, then, mustn’t be a passive suspension of time but a deliberate intention of the soul. Whether we think of qavah—the expectation of God’s promises—or yachal—hope amidst suffering—we discover that waiting is itself a form of discipleship. It is the space where character is shaped, where trust is tested, and where our deepest commitments are revealed. We wait not because we are uncertain, but because we are tethered to something sure, the sure foundation of a promise made by Christ. In the quiet stretch between promise and fulfillment, we learn who we are becoming. And perhaps that is the quiet miracle of waiting: it gathers us, guards us, and prepares us to become the person we were always meant to become.

The post Miracles in the Waiting appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The post appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

When I was a teenager, I competed in a track meet and made it to the finals. Events ran later than anticipated and my dad, who was serving as a bishop, had interviews scheduled for that evening. He went searching for a pay phone, but couldn’t get hold of everyone he needed to, so he called a family that lived close to the church and asked them to tape a note on the door explaining his absence. 

This is a small story, and one that loses some of its impact in the age of cell phones, but it was significant to me as a fifteen-year-old. My dad was very conscientious in his church work, but he had cancelled interviews to see me run. This incident spoke to my teenage heart, and it has continued to inform me through the years. 

Something struck me recently, though. I didn’t know the details of this story from my dad. It was my mom who later told me of the missed interviews. Mom was the narrator of much of what occurred in our home, and this was just one example of many. It was Mom’s voice that often provided the tone of the plot points in our family story. She was an optimistic narrator who expressed reverence for the characters involved even when addressing complexity.  

Much gets said about women’s emotional labor on social media. It’s argued that mothers carry the burden of the emotional needs of the family. As I look back on my parents’ marriage, I recognize that my more talkative mom did carry the responsibility of being the communication hub in our family, and by extension much of the emotional climate as well. But was it a burden for her? I hadn’t sensed that and she was a strong, confident woman who shared her thoughts. 

My dad was a reserved man, and he didn’t talk as much as my mom. This difference in my parents’ personalities underscored to me that the way in which a wife approaches her husband’s strengths and weaknesses has a profound effect on a family. The healthy dialogue my mom encouraged invited a synergy of their strengths.

In 2006, Elder James E. Faust counseled:

There are some voices in our society who would demean some of the attributes of masculinity. A few of these are women who mistakenly believe that they build their own feminine causes by tearing down the image of manhood. This has serious social overtones because a primary problem in the insecurity of sons and daughters can be the diminution of the role of the father image.

Let every mother understand that if she does anything to diminish her children’s father or the father’s image in the eyes of the children, it may injure and do irreparable damage to the self-worth and personal security of the children themselves. How infinitely more productive and satisfying it is for a woman to build up her husband rather than tear him down.

The dialogue in our homes affects all family members and we are shaped by the conversations we are exposed to and participate in. The Canadian philosopher, Ralph Heintzman, describes how each of us is born into an ongoing conversation that began before our birth and will continue after our death. It is in a conversational context that “we develop our sense of ourselves and of the world…and it is by joining the conversation that we become who we are.” 

But, Heintzman warns, we aren’t just individuals. We need to “give a full account of humanity…which reflects our necessary involvement in a greater whole.” Heintzman argues for language that addresses the relational nature of what it means to be human and provides balance for the language of self-assertion. The name that he gives to this is a “language of reverence.” He describes reverence as conveying “a human attitude of respect and deference for something larger or higher in priority than our own individual selves; something that commands our admiration and our loyalty, and may imply obligations or duties on our part.” “The virtues of self-assertion and the virtues of reverence are the two sides of the human paradox.” 

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ, we are often taught in ways that remind us of the virtues of reverence, but we are immersed in a culture that speaks the language of self-assertion. Sometimes we are tempted to look at the gospel primarily through the self-asserted lens and as a result, we distort prophetic counsel or push against it. This is particularly true of teachings about the relationship between men and women because the virtues of reverence are so necessary for bringing feminine and masculine strength together. When focusing only on the self, without the tempering virtues of reverence, men use their strength against women to get what they want, as I’ve written about previously, and women weaponize their innate abilities to gain leverage over men. The results are a tragic loss of potential and some of the greatest human suffering. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, “In the work of the Kingdom, men and women are not without each other, but do not envy each other, lest by reversals and renunciations of role we make a wasteland of both womanhood and manhood.” 

I feel very secure as a woman. I know that women are recognized, valued and loved by the Lord. I feel confident that this is truth…I also recognize that this regard for womanhood that is held by the Lord is the model for all who seek to be like Him…for those who are His disciples… and for those who bear His priesthood and act in His name. I appreciate the noble men of the church for the many responsibilities that they shoulder; for the service and respect that they give to women.

Mom had a confident voice full of reverence, and she used it to strengthen relationships. There were distinct themes in Mom’s life, and an appreciation for how men and women complement one another, both in the family and in church service, was one of them. 

All those years ago on that track field, she had wanted me to know that Dad had cancelled his appointments to see me run, so I would understand how much he loved me. I’m so grateful for that.

The post The Reverent Conversation Between Men and Women appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

They talk as though “Mormonism” were an ethnicity. As though there were something in the blood. As though having the right grandparents, the right zip code, the right memories of casseroles and church basketball and trek and EFY and green Jell-O and dirty sodas and ward culture means you retain some inherited authority to define what the Church is, what it should preserve, and what it owes the world.

The Church of Jesus Christ is not an aesthetic, it’s not an ethnicity, it’s not a regional brand, it’s not even a culture. It is a church.

It has doctrine, commandments, ordinances, priesthood keys, and covenants. It has admission requirements, and it has boundaries.

“Mormon” Isn’t a Culture

Beginning in the early- to mid-2010s, there was a tendency among online Latter-day Saint malcontents to claim they had a special say over what happened in the Church by listing their Latter-day Saint bona fides before they launched into whatever complaint they had.

It started to become an embarrassing cliche, but these critics would usually talk about callings in which they served, people they knew, and their heritage in the Church, as though this gave them some special authority to critique.

Perhaps the most groan-worthy example of this was when The Washington Post described James Huntsman, who at that point was no longer a member of The Church of Jesus Christ, as “Mormon royalty” because of who his family was. 

At the time, these complaints were usually focused on tensions between the critics’ progressive American beliefs and the positions of a worldwide church. And the attitude was imported from Reddit, a social media site that is designed to encourage groupthink, and condescension against those outside its own orthodoxy. 

At the same time, a trend began of conceptualizing a Latter-day Saint culture that was severable from the doctrine and practice of the Church, led by many of the mommy bloggers and eventual influencers. They showed their lives online, but often with the religious portions omitted or left on the edges to make the lifestyle content more broadly accessible. 

Increasingly, those who were in the space, but not faithful Latter-day Saints themselves, would use the word “Mormon” to describe themselves, their spaces, or their movement. In fact, on Reddit, they called the “subreddit” dedicated to criticizing The Church of Jesus Christ and its members “r/mormon.” 

This trend has continued as the Church’s actual membership increasingly lives outside Utah and the United States, among people who would be quite confused by carrots in Jell-O.

Why Would They Still Want the Name?

I understand why so many people want to associate themselves with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the “Mormon” name. 

For the purposes of marketing, “Mormon” clearly interests people. Latter-day Saints have incredible reputations worldwide. I can understand why those who don’t choose to support The Church of Jesus Christ or live by its covenants and doctrines still want to participate in the sense of community and identity it provided. I would also love it if I could keep getting paychecks from my employer without doing any of the work. 

But just because their desire to stay associated with the Church makes sense doesn’t mean that reasonable people need to abide by it. 

John Dehlin, for example, criticized the Church with false information for so long and so consistently that he was excommunicated over a decade ago. His podcast, “Mormon Stories,” is not about “Mormon stories,” nor has it been for a very long time. The podcast is, by all rights, about “Ex-Mormon Stories” or “Anti-Mormon Stories.”

So when he recently described himself in a podcast as “Mormon,” it makes sense, it’s just not true, not in any meaningful way. 

And we would do well to look at such claims the same way Europeans do when Americans claim European identity—with cringe. 

“You’re not Irish. Maybe your great grandparents were Irish, but then they left, and you’ve been in America for a very long time.” 

Names have incredible power, which is why they are protected under trademark law. I understand faith transitions can be difficult, and they implicate identity in difficult ways. But if you apostasize from your faith, you don’t get to keep claiming it. Or at least people should ignore you when you try to. 

The process of leaving a faith fundamentally changes the way you think about it, the way you talk about it, and the way you remember it. This is why the Washington Post’s reporting on James Huntsman was so harmful. If he were in fact a “Mormon” who chose to sue the Church, that would communicate something very different about what was happening than the fact that he was an ex-Mormon and chose to sue the Church. 

And that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of his point. But for someone on the inside to make certain kinds of claims is just different than when someone on the outside does the same. People understand this instinctively. 

So when someone uses “Mormon” to describe themselves or their community after they’ve actually left, they are trying to appropriate credibility they haven’t earned. 

I understand that many people desire to discuss their experience growing up within The Church of Jesus Christ even if they’ve left the Church. There is a simple, easy-to-understand way to describe this: “Ex-Latter-day Saint” or “Ex-Mormon.”

Didn’t You Give Up on the Name “Mormon”?

Let’s talk about the word “Mormon” for a minute. Latter-day Saints no longer choose to describe themselves this way. We choose to find every opportunity we can to refer to Jesus Christ and our membership in His Church. 

Some have attempted to argue that because Latter-day Saints no longer use the description “Mormon” for themselves, it is free for others to use. 

It’s not. 

Kentucky Fried Chicken has recently decided to no longer use that name for its restaurants; it is now called just KFC. 

When The Church of Jesus Christ announced a reprioritization of its name, there were several simple short plugins for existing nomenclature. For example:

• “Mormons” could be replaced with “Latter-day Saints”
• “Mormon Church” could be replaced with “The Church of Jesus Christ”
• “Mormon Tabernacle Choir” could be replaced with the “Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square”

But there was one common phrase that did not have an easy replacement: “Mormonism.” And as a writer who has had to deal with this limitation, the more I’ve worked through it, the more obvious it has become to me that this was not an oversight. 

In today’s Church, there is no single “Mormonism”; there are hundreds of cultures around the world as people live the gospel in their own countries and settings.

That thing we call “Mormonism” doesn’t actually do a good job of explaining the culture of all the people who believe in The Book of Mormon. There are lots of smaller cultures within it, and being left without an obvious word I’ve had to think more carefully about what I actually mean. Do I mean Word of Wisdom culture, or do I simply mean Utah culture. 

There is a culture, and it’s probably the culture you think of when I say “Mormonism,” but it is increasingly niche, and we need to find ways to describe it that do not implicate nearly 18 million people worldwide. It is a contemporary Utah-descended lifestyle culture that is downstream from an older pioneer world. It’s an evolved pioneer culture. It could be called “Utah culture” or “Intermountain West culture.” But it’s not “Mormon” culture, it’s not the culture of The Church of Jesus Christ, it’s one of many cultures within a worldwide gathering.

There’s nothing wrong with this evolved pioneer culture. I love funeral potatoes. But to suggest that Taylor Frankie Paul, the star of “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” is part of “Mormonism” because she drinks dirty sodas, even after she chose to leave, is offensive. 

So I, for one, greeted the news that The Church of Jesus Christ was suing “Mormon Stories” for trademark infringement with gratitude. 

Why Do You Care Who Calls Themselves “Mormon”?

I should be clear: the Church isn’t suing John Dehlin simply because he’s using the word “Mormon” to describe his podcast. The Church is suing him because he uses the word in conjunction with visual imagery specifically to trick people into listening to his podcast, and he refuses to include a disclaimer. 

The fact that most people will quickly be able to tell, after clicking on his podcast, that he is a malcontent doesn’t change the underlying lie. I still couldn’t start a restaurant called “Kentucky Fried Chicken” even if it sold hamburgers to prevent confusion. Trading on that company’s identity to get people in the front door is a problem in itself.

But just because The Church of Jesus Christ is not going after Dehlin solely for using the word “Mormon” doesn’t mean that people of good faith shouldn’t.

This is especially important because it causes incredulous media to turn to these folks as experts on The Church of Jesus Christ, and it can impact members and investigators who are not frequently online. 

Mormon may not be the name we call ourselves, but it is still an important part of who we are. The nickname comes from a record of Jesus Christ visiting people on another continent. That matters to us. Imagine an ex-Muslim starting a podcast about “Quran Stories” and saying that this isn’t a problem because they don’t call themselves “Qurans,” they call themselves “Muslims.”

But that’s not what has happened. Those who have left the faith have not joined these other churches in good faith to continue describing themselves as “Mormon.” This also isn’t about well-meaning Latter-day Saints who may be struggling with a testimony or with standards but who still see themselves as within the community. This is about those who leave, and who, in many cases, are actively seeking to tear down the work done by people who actually love The Book of Mormon, continuing to use the word because it helps them generate more web traffic than an honest name would. 

The Subtle Racism of “Cultural Mormonism”

For a church community that is increasingly populated and run by people from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the idea that people get special say over what happens within the community because of who their grandparents were brings up unfortunate racial problems.

You gain membership through baptism, and you maintain that membership through covenant keeping. 

If you don’t do those two things, then you don’t have a seat at the table; you’ve decided to leave the table. That spot is for new converts learning to leave their own culture for the gospel way, who are trying every day to live in faith and honesty. Trying to freeze Mormon identity to a past time based on what our ancestors were doing dismisses the real work of those all over the world who don’t have that background, but who are doing the work. 

It is their voices that need to be heard, not the person whose grandfather worked with a Romney, or who was a district leader on a foreign language-speaking mission, or who served as second counselor in a bishopric but then decided to leave because the Church’s position on some social issue just wasn’t popular enough for him and his Instagram followers. That person isn’t “Mormon Royalty,” that person isn’t “Culturally Mormon,” that person doesn’t have “Mormon stories,” that person isn’t Mormon. He left. And I wish him the best. But we’re busy trying to build Zion, and you can’t steal our name to help tear it down. 

The post Who is a Mormon? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

I still remember pulling out the VHS of “God’s Army” in my parents’ living room. As a socially anxious high school sophomore, this was, in many ways, the first time I felt seen. These were my people, my quirks, my culture, packaged the same way as “The Prince of Egypt” or “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”

By my senior year, with the release of “The Singles Ward,” it was clear that not only could we portray ourselves, but we could laugh at ourselves, too. 

For many in my generation, the idea of “Latter-day Saint cinema” still calls up that very specific world: missionaries with comic timing, ward basketball, Utah County social codes, and the peculiar thrill of hearing one’s own subculture reflected back from a movie screen. That world was real. It mattered. It was commercially surprising while it lasted. And then, almost as suddenly as it arrived, it seemed to disappear. 

The feeling many people carry is not just that those movies ended, but that Latter-day Saint filmmaking itself somehow went quiet. 

But the story is much more varied and interesting than that. In many ways those early aughts productions set the stage for a burgeoning Latter-day Saint cinema today, best embodied by the new release “The Angel,” which may be bigger and more interesting than anything we’ve seen before. 

The Beginnings

Latter-day Saint cinema developed in fragments for nearly a century. Film was first used to disparage the faith. Movies like “A Trip to Salt Lake City” satirized the faith, while “A Victim of the Mormons” was more straightforward propaganda. 

In response, the Utah Moving Picture Company produced the film “One Hundred Years of Mormonism” in 1913. It was a monumental feature for its time and was shown for several years. In 1915, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints funded the film “The Life of Nephi,” though its projected sequels never materialized. 

By midcentury, institutions like the BYU Motion Picture Studio trained talent and produced hundreds of films for the Church’s use, while later decades expanded that world through visitors’ center films, pageant-style historical productions, television, and VHS. 

By the 1980s and 1990s, Latter-day Saints were not only appearing in and making mainstream entertainment, but were also building the technical skills, professional networks, and imaginative confidence that would make independent feature filmmaking possible. 

So while the modern story begins when “God’s Army” appeared in 2000, it did not come out of nowhere. It was a breakthrough—but it was a breakthrough built on generations. 

Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army” opened in March 2000 and proved that a movie made by a Latter-day Saint about recognizable Latter-day Saint life, and marketed primarily to Latter-day Saint viewers, could actually make money. It proved there was a profitable niche market and marked the beginning of a period in which filmmakers began to portray the tradition from the inside.

Sadly, a storyline in Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army 2” prompted a public feud between Dutcher and HaleStorm’s Kurt Hale, prompting the father of this period of Latter-day Saint cinema to leave the Church within a few years.

Novelty also proved not to be a permanent business model. By the middle of the decade, even people inside the movement were saying so out loud. In 2006, as “Church Ball” was being released, Hale was already describing a diminishing box office, an oversaturated market, and an audience that seemed tired of the cycle. He even suggested that “Church Ball” might be the last comedy of its kind and said the company was looking beyond the narrow niche toward a broader family audience. With uncertain returns, investors dried up, and audience interest began to evaporate. 

The old wave did not end because Latter-day Saints lost interest in seeing themselves onscreen. But eventually the movies had to offer something besides familiarity. In a 2014 reflection on the earlier boom, Jim Bennet said the “hunger” was still there but the novelty had worn off, and that now the movie had to actually be good. 

There was also a broader industrial change working against niche cinema. The old independent-film economy had long relied on the possibility that a modest theatrical run could be followed by meaningful life on DVD, where niche audiences often compensated for limited box-office reach. As DVD revenue collapsed in the late 2000s, that safety net deteriorated across the industry. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2009 that DVD sales, once a critical profit cushion for many films, had fallen sharply. 

The small, regionally concentrated Latter-day Saint film industry was especially vulnerable to that shift. Purchasing a DVD for the whole family to watch over and over again was a very different kind of investment than taking everyone out to the theater. And most of the Latter-day Saint film market was not in areas concentrated enough for theatrical runs. A market already strained by repetition suddenly lost one of the economic mechanisms that had made repetition survivable.

So yes, something ended. But what ended was a particular format: the local theatrical Latter-day Saint niche comedy and indie machine, dependent on insider recognition and modest expectations. 

The Middle

What followed has been harder to name because it is not one thing. There is no single banner under which all contemporary Latter-day Saint filmmaking began to march.

Once the first wave of niche comedies and insider-culture films began to lose steam, Latter-day Saint filmmaking stopped looking like a single movement and started breaking into distinct lanes. When that broader economic model weakened, the old “modest theatrical run, then long tail on home video” pattern became much harder to sustain. At the same time, scholars were already observing that filmmakers were experimenting with very different business models: some built their own mini-studios, some went straight to DVD or online sales, and some chased genuine crossover distribution. In other words, the industry did not die. It fragmented.

One of those fragments was the historical-devotional lane, and no figure matters more here than T.C. Christensen. If the HaleStorm comedies captured Mormon culture as social recognition, Christensen kept alive a very different idea of what Latter-day Saint cinema could be: memory, sacrifice, pioneer endurance, conversion, rescue. In the 2010s especially, films like “17 Miracles” and “Ephraim’s Rescue” showed that there was still a substantial audience for explicitly Latter-day Saint stories told with seriousness and reverence rather than irony. Christensen was not merely preserving an older form. He was proving that sincerity could still draw viewers, and that overtly Mormon material did not have to disappear simply because the joke-driven boom had cooled.

His 2025 release “Raising the Bar: The Alma Richards Story” demonstrates that the line of continuity is still alive. Every artistic ecosystem needs not only innovators but custodians: people who keep faith with inherited stories long enough for a later generation to rediscover their value under new conditions. Christensen has done that work. He has kept a flame alive that flashier players sometimes overlook.

A second fragment moved in almost the opposite direction. These films had unmistakable Latter-day Saint DNA, but were no longer primarily selling themselves as “Mormon movies.” This trend began with HaleStorm’s attempt at “Pride and Prejudice.” But while that thread didn’t stick in comedy, Ryan Little’s “Saints and Soldiers” created the look and style of film that did. Made on a reported $780,000 budget, it grossed about $1.31 million domestically, and the Los Angeles Times noted that while initiated viewers would catch its Latter-day Saint origins, those elements were never overt and the film could be easily appreciated by people with no particular background with the faith. The movie was not asking audiences to care because of its religion. It was asking them to care because it was a solid war drama that happened to be shaped by Latter-day Saint moral sensibilities.

That lane became even clearer in the 2010s with Garrett Batty’s work. “The Saratov Approach” grossed about $2.15 million domestically. Batty followed it with “Freetown,” a Liberian civil-war thriller based on the experience of Latter-day Saint missionaries (an artistic improvement in my estimation), but it did not recover its investment. 

Batty explicitly said he hoped “Freetown,” like “Saratov,” would appeal beyond Latter-day Saint audiences. These films still drew from Latter-day Saint experience, missionary life, faith under pressure, providence in danger, but they were being framed as thrillers, war stories, and survival dramas rather than as niche cultural products. That is one of the most important developments in the whole middle period: Latter-day Saint filmmakers were learning how to let their faith shape the story without requiring the audience to share all the background knowledge in advance.

But the market did not support that vision. While DVD sales had begun to sink, streaming had not yet started to acquire independent films. That meant the primary place for these films to find an audience was in theaters, and it was largely in Utah where there was enough audience to support them. 

There was a third fragment too, less visible to audiences but hugely important for what came next: infrastructure. In 2005, just as the HaleStorm peak began to fall, the state of Utah passed its first tax incentive for filming. These incentives successfully enticed Disney to film 27 movies in Utah through the mid-2000s, most famously the High School Musical franchise.

By the end of the 2010s, the New York Times was describing northern Utah as a kind of “mini-Hollywood,” built not only around independent faith-oriented films but around The Church of Jesus Christ’s own motion picture operations, BYUtv productions, local crews, and a growing freelance workforce. That meant Latter-day Saint-adjacent filmmaking did not simply survive as a market; it survived as a craft community. Crews kept working. Actors kept training. Editors, cinematographers, composers, and producers kept building experience.

These post-HaleStorm years saw some talented filmmakers keep the space alive, as key new artistic ideas emerged and the talent pool grew and matured.

What has begun to happen over the last few years is an evolution of the threads that came out of that heyday. Today’s filmmakers have inherited an audience trained by these experiments, and a filmmaking culture that had already spent years learning how to move beyond novelty toward craft, confidence, and authentic crossover. 

Today

By the time we arrive at the present, those fragments have begun to recombine. What had been separate lanes in the aftermath of the early aughts Mormon-cinema wave—historical drama, crossover genre work, local craft infrastructure, and festival culture—are now starting to feed one another. 

But as always, the story starts with the money. The old model depended on a Utah theatrical audience and then a healthy DVD afterlife. The current one is more layered: owned streaming platforms, licensing deals, audience memberships, eventized theatrical runs, festival exposure, and state incentives. For the first time since the early 2000s, Latter-day Saint filmmaking once again has an economic logic. It is not one logic, but several, and that may be exactly why this moment feels more durable.

No company better represents that new reality than Angel Studios. Angel is not simply the new HaleStorm. It is not primarily a Latter-day Saint movie studio making Latter-day Saint movies. It has a broader impact on the market: a Utah-rooted, values-branded distribution and audience-formation machine that has figured out how to turn moral affinity into a scalable business. Angel’s own 2025 annual report shows where the center of gravity now lies. The company reported roughly 2.0 million paying Angel Guild members by the end of 2025, and said those memberships accounted for 65.2% of its total revenue. Its licensing revenue, notably, includes deals with platforms such as Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. Angel also runs its own streaming platform. 

That is why Angel’s outsized role matters so much. The company says the Guild helps choose what it will market and distribute, that its theatrical strategy can crowd-fund prints and advertising, and that its “Pay it Forward” system lets viewers subsidize tickets for others. Traditional Hollywood separates greenlighting, marketing, and audience response into different silos. Angel has tried to collapse them into a single loop. It does not simply ask its audience to buy a ticket; it asks them to join, vote, fund, evangelize, and return. It’s almost like community organizing with a balance sheet. 

The scale of that model is real. Angel reported that it released eight films theatrically in 2025 and was ranked the No. 10 domestic distributor that year. Its reported grosses included $83.2 million for “The King of Kings,” $83.9 million for “David,” $15.2 million for “The Last Rodeo,” and $6 million for “Truth & Treason.” Even more revealing than any single title is the shape of the company itself: by the end of 2025 Angel said it had 137 titles under exclusive worldwide distribution, including 101 films and 36 television series. That is not a boutique religious sideline. It is a fully functioning media ecosystem with Utah roots and national reach.

But Angel is only one part of this era’s story. The broader Utah film scene has begun acting as though it no longer needs to choose between Latter-day Saint identity and indie legitimacy. Zions Indie Film Fest says that aloud. 

I spoke with Michell Moore, the festival co-director, who told me that they want Latter-day Saints to have a home at their film festival, but they want to unite with others of good faith and good artistic instincts. 

Today, the festival presents itself instead as a celebration of independent film “from filmmakers worldwide,” with a “sophisticated and diverse audience,” and Moore describes the event as “inviting everyone,” bridging the gap between filmmakers and audiences. 

Zions Indie Film Fest has come to the same instincts as Angel. It might seem like Latter-day Saint filmmaking is getting short shrift in this model. But Zions premiered T.C. Christensen’s latest film, and held a reading for a script about sister missionaries kidnapped by the cartel. They have managed to create a space that is broad and welcoming, rather than parochial, but where Latter-day Saint cinema can thrive and be represented.

The audience and participants have grown, and the courage to tell Latter-day Saint specific stories in that space is starting to burgeon.

When I spoke to filmmakers at the 2025 Zions Indie Film Fest, they were often concerned about the status of Utah’s tax incentives, as they feared work in the state might dry up if they went away. But in March 2026, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced a robust new round of initiatives allowing the industry to continue thriving in the state. 

In the last year of the previous program, it enabled 36 productions across 14 counties, generating more than $136 million in production spending and over 2,600 jobs, with more than 40% of those productions created by homegrown talent and local companies.

When there is a steady source of work for Latter-day Saint filmmakers in commercial work, it allows them the freedom to also tell and finance more personal stories. 

And while these filmmakers were sad that Sundance Film Festival was leaving the state, they didn’t predict any big consequences, describing it as less connected to the broader Utah-film ecosystem than you might imagine. 

Seen in that light, the current moment also feels like the first one in a long time that makes the artistic vision of 80s-era President of The Church of Jesus Christ, Spencer W. Kimball, sound plausible.

In 1977, he wrote, “Our writers, our motion picture specialists, with the inspiration of heaven, should tomorrow be able to produce a masterpiece which would live forever.”

For Latter-day Saint specialists, this nearly fifty-year-old call still lives near their hearts. And we’re beginning to see some talented auteurs who could take advantage of this new moment.

If Angel Studios represents industrial crossover, Burgin may represent artistic crossover. He is not simply another promising Utah filmmaker. He is one of the first younger directors in this space to show signs of understanding both the cultural inheritance and the formal challenge. 

Burgin began his career outside of Utah, and had to learn early on how to curate his religious impulses so they would be both authentic and appealing to newcomers to the tradition. From what he saw, he predicted in a 2017 essay the renaissance in interest in Latter-day Saints in film. This interest mostly happened with Latter-day Saints as the subjects, not the participants, of mocking portrayals in projects such as “Under the Banner of Heaven,” “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and “Heretic.” The interest in Latter-day Saints has skyrocketed, and the infrastructure for Latter-day Saints to supply that interest themselves may have finally arrived. Perhaps through Burgin himself.

Burgin’s premiere was his student film “Cryo.” “Cryo” follows five scientists who awake from a cryogenic sleep without memory and slowly realize there may be a murderer among them. You can tell that “Cryo” is a student film. The budget shows on screen. But it’s also a film full of ideas that come from his Latter-day Saint perspective. The film starts with a reference to Lazarus, and continually returns to themes of rebirth and resurrection. It quotes The Book of Mormon, references the veil of forgetfulness, and the protagonists slowly learn to place their salvific impulse outside of themselves. 

In an essay marketing the film, he argued that Latter-day Saint filmmakers need to “put story before sermon,” and expressed his belief that “we’ve barely scratched the surface of the narrative potential in our history, doctrine, culture and lore.” Perhaps more importantly, he sold the film to a national distributor, had a multi-city theatrical run, and turned a profit—practically unheard of for a student film.

Burgin has then proved that in a series of short films. “The Next Door” a thriller about two missionaries who go on the search when someone they’re teaching goes missing. “Java Jive” a comedy about a Latter-day Saint teen, who was hiding his faith, and then gets trapped trying to avoid drinking coffee. “A Scout is Kind” a talky coming-of-age film. These films premiered at important festivals, and won notable awards—including the top award for “A Scout is Kind” at Regal’s film festival in Tennessee. The outsider interest is sincere and real. 

His most critically successful film to date, “The Angel,” is a horror film about a mysterious figure arriving in 19th-century Southern Utah. He co-directed it with his wife Jessica, marking her directorial debut.

Each of these shorts is deeply Latter-day Saint, enjoyable, accessible to a broad audience, and at least as entertaining as the average night on television. (Usually much more.) 

This is a serious artistic program that is similar to the trajectories of many successful working directors. 

“The Angel” does something earlier Latter-day Saint cinema rarely trusted itself to do. It does not flatten Latter-day Saint culture into a set of jokes, nor reduce it to generic uplift. It fulfills the idea of moving past novelty from the aughts, but in an environment that may finally be able to support it. It treats Latter-day Saint history as aesthetically strange, symbolically rich, and cinematically potent. I am not a fan of horror films, and there are certainly horror beats that may not be for everyone, but this is neither gross-out or jump-scare horror. The fear comes from the sensation that it might just be a little bit real. 

The short has been included in Cannes’ Short Film Corner, screened widely on the festival circuit, and received a U.K. premiere at Soho Horror Fest. Doug Jones—one of modern genre cinema’s great creature actors—plays the title role. This is not an obscure or parochial project. It is a work of genre filmmaking that speaks in a cinematic language outsiders can understand while drawing directly on materials that feel unmistakably ours. After its successful festival run, the film was picked up by Alter, the largest and most prestigious dedicated horror short platform, and premiered last week to a wide audience. It is available to view online.  

While the cinematic community has clearly latched on, it also really struck a chord for me within the Latter-day Saint culture. I’m far from the only cultural critic to think so. Stephen Smoot, a Latter-day Saint commentator, wrote for The Interpreter Foundation:

The Angel … shows how horror, handled with restraint and reverence, can speak powerfully to Latter-day Saint audiences. Instead of relying on gore or cheap shocks, the Burgins build their story through atmosphere, psychological unease, and moral confrontation. The horror here is never gratuitous; it unsettles the viewer to reveal deeper truths about choice, faith, and unseen realities.

If the short generates enough interest, Burgin hopes to expand it into a feature called “The Third Wife,” which they say has drawn industry interest and the attention of the Sundance Institute.

That is why “The Angel” deserves to be praised in stronger terms than one usually uses for a promising short. It feels like a reclaiming. A reclaiming of authority over the stories themselves. 

When Barrett spoke to me, he was most excited about how interested individuals from outside the tradition are. “[Latter-day Saints] have made a concerted effort to fit in and even assimilate. That generational impulse is not without cause. But when telling our own stories, we have an opportunity to reclaim our peculiarity.”

In that sense, perhaps the most hopeful thing one can say about the current state of Latter-day Saint filmmaking is that it no longer needs to choose between exile and self-parody. It no longer needs to survive on insider jokes, nor disappear into vague inspirational branding. It can remember where it came from, learn from what Angel Studios has built, honor the faithfulness of T.C. Christensen, and build toward that future imagined by Spencer W. Kimball. 

The post The Future of Latter-day Saint Cinema appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

For years, living in Iran, I heard the same explanation repeated with certainty: the people in power were incompetent. Corrupt, shortsighted, incapable of governing a country with this much talent, history, and natural wealth. If outcomes fell short—if industry stagnated, if the economy destabilized—the conclusion seemed obvious. It was mismanagement.

That explanation endured not only because it was plausible, but because it was comfortable. Incompetence suggests error. It implies that the system has deviated from its purpose, and that with better decisions—or better people—it could still produce a livable future. It leaves intact a deeper assumption that is rarely examined: that the system is meant to work for those living within it.

Questioning the Assumption of Incompetence

As an engineer and entrepreneur, I tried to place myself outside politics. My work was technical. My goals were practical. I thought that if I focused on building something real, something useful, I could remain at a safe distance from the machinery around me.

That assumption did not survive contact with reality.

Over time, it became impossible to reconcile the logic I understood with the logic of the system I was living under. Cause and effect no longer aligned. Outcomes did not seem to matter. Decisions that produced damage were repeated without correction. What appeared inconsistent at first revealed itself as something more durable: a system operating by a different logic altogether.

At first, I relied on the same explanation everyone else used. The people in power are incompetent.

But that interpretation began to erode under observation. I remember laying out, in precise operational terms, the long-term cost of certain policies—economic degradation, institutional decay, loss of future capacity. These were not ideological arguments. They were straightforward projections. Yet they were met with indifference, as if the criteria being applied were entirely different from the ones being discussed.

That was the first real fracture in the narrative.

I stopped analyzing decisions individually and began looking at the structure itself.

My company changed with me. I no longer organized it for growth in the conventional sense. I organized it for endurance. The goal was not optimization, but shock absorption. Not scale, but survival. Resilience became the business model because volatility had become the governing condition.

Even then, I resisted abandoning the explanation of incompetence. It is a durable idea because it protects a deeper assumption: that the system has deviated from its purpose, rather than forcing us to confront the possibility that its purpose was never what we believed it to be.

I did not arrive at this conclusion through theory, but because politics became inseparable from daily life—professional constraint, private anxiety, ambient uncertainty—leaving no choice but to study it, as the economy itself had become political.

The more unsettling explanation was also the more coherent one: the system was not failing. It was operating according to a logic many of us had refused to name.

A Matter of Ideology, Not Execution

To see that logic requires abandoning a central assumption of modern political life—that governments are primarily organized around improving the material conditions of their populations. Many are not. Some systems are organized around ideological continuity, strategic positioning, internal control, or elite preservation, and they will accept broad social cost if those objectives require it.

Recognizing this is not only an analytical shift. It is a civic one. It forces a reconsideration of how individuals, communities, and societies interpret what they are seeing—and what they choose to do with that understanding.

Iran is not an anomaly in this regard, but a particularly visible instance of a broader class of systems in which stated objectives and operating priorities diverge in systematic ways.

In Iran, power cannot be understood apart from ideology.

The Iranian regime is not merely authoritarian; it is political-theological. Authority is not justified through performance, but through doctrine and continuity. Legitimacy is anchored not in outcomes, but in preservation.

In this sense, ideology does not replace geopolitics; it structures it—defining which strategic objectives are pursued, and which costs are considered acceptable.

That orientation extends beyond national borders. For decades, the state has invested in regional influence, strategic depth and ideological alignment. Whatever language is used—deterrence, projection, expansion—the implication is the same: domestic welfare has never been the primary constraint on decision-making.

Once that becomes visible, much of what appeared irrational becomes internally consistent.

Resources are not misallocated by accident. They are directed elsewhere. Economically viable activity is sidelined not because it is misunderstood, but because it is secondary. Public exhaustion is not necessarily evidence of failure. It is evidence of where the system is willing to place the burden.

This is the distinction many people resist. Incompetence implies correctable error. Intent implies structural alignment.

It is more comfortable to believe that the system I grew up inside was broken than to accept that it was functioning—just not for me, not for people like me, not for the population it claimed to serve. That reorientation did not happen all at once. It required setting aside an explanation I had once found genuinely consoling.

Once that shift occurred, the pattern became difficult to ignore. I began to recognize the same structure in places that had nothing to do with Iran.

Confronting the Real Objectives

In contemporary political discourse, incompetence has become the default explanation for systemic outcomes. When wars expand, when economic strain deepens, when instability spreads, the reflex is to assume failure in execution.

Sometimes that is true. But its repetition across fundamentally different systems should raise a harder question: what if the outcomes are not mistakes, but expressions of underlying priorities?

A system cannot be evaluated if its objectives are misidentified. Yet this misidentification persists because it is easier—and because it is useful. It preserves the assumption that stated goals remain aligned with public expectations, and that deviation is accidental rather than embedded.

At the level of public life, this has consequences beyond policy. It shapes how people assign blame, where they direct their attention, and whether they see themselves as observers or participants in the systems around them.

I remember the moment that realization shifted from analysis to recognition. What followed was a kind of disappointment that does not fade, only settles.

For years, I watched world powers—despite access to intelligence—either refuse to confront this reality or avoid it altogether, as acknowledging it would require action and carry real cost. Instead, they responded in familiar terms, treating the system as if it were malfunctioning: applying pressure, offering incentives, pursuing negotiation.

But if the system is operating as designed, those strategies begin from a false premise. They attempt to correct behavior that is structurally reinforced. What appears as failed diplomacy or ineffective pressure is often something else entirely—a mismatch between reality and the assumptions used to interpret it.

If a system is structurally aligned against the outcomes external actors seek, then strategies built on inducing alignment are not just ineffective—they are misdirected from the outset.

Over time, that mismatch produces consequences of its own. What is not understood is not contained. Pressure accumulates, conditions harden, and the system adapts without changing direction.

At that point, instability is no longer episodic. It is structural.

Iran has lived within that accumulation for years. What was once assumed to be contained is no longer contained. Conflict, economic disruption, and strategic instability now extend outward, shaping risks far beyond its borders. This is no longer a distant system under strain. It is part of the environment others must now operate within. It is no longer somewhere else. It is at everyone’s doorstep.

For years, that trajectory remained visible but unaddressed—not because it was misunderstood, but because confronting it carried a different kind of cost. Treating the system as if it could be corrected allowed for continuity: of policy, of expectation, of response. It preserved the assumption that pressure would eventually produce alignment, even as evidence suggested otherwise. What was deferred was not recognition, but consequence. And over time, that deferral became its own pattern—one that allowed the system to persist without interruption, while the cost accumulated beyond it.

And so, the pattern held.

Pressure accumulated. Adjustments were made at the margins. Each cycle resolved nothing and carried forward more instability than the one before it.

The Cost of Misreading Intentions

What is different now is not the pattern, but the cost of continuing to misread it.

Yet the instinct remains unchanged. Even now, the dominant response is to identify visible actors, assign failure, and move on. It is a form of understanding quick enough to avoid recognition: that repeated outcomes are rarely the product of repeated mistakes. They are the product of stable structures operating as designed.

What follows is less intuitive and more demanding. At the level of policy, it requires abandoning the expectation of alignment and proceeding from sustained divergence. At the level of public judgment, it requires something more difficult than outrage: discipline. The refusal to collapse structural dynamics into familiar language. The willingness to sit with conclusions that offer no immediate resolution.

This is where the failure extends beyond the halls of power and into the streets. The instinct to explain away systemic outcomes as mere incompetence is not just an analytical error; it is participatory. It functions as a psychological safety valve, allowing societies to remain loud and ‘engaged’ without ever being truly unsettled. We trade the terrifying clarity of intent for the comfortable noise of outrage—filling the air with demands for better ‘management’ while the structure itself continues its work, unexamined and undisturbed. It produces a theater of certainty in place of the discipline of understanding.

Repeated outcomes are rarely the product of repeated mistakes. They are the product of stable structures operating as designed.

To recognize that is not to endorse those structures, nor to accept their permanence. But it does remove a particular illusion: that escalation of the same responses will eventually produce a different result.

The more uncomfortable implication is this: misreading is not neutral. It carries a cost. It delays adaptation, distorts decision-making, and extends the lifespan of the very dynamics it fails to understand.

This is not only a question of governments or policy. It is a question of how societies see, interpret, and respond to power—and of the limits they place, often unconsciously, on what they are willing to confront.

If there is a point of departure, it is not in speaking more loudly, or more frequently. It is in seeing more clearly—and accepting what that clarity demands.

Not all systems are meant to correct themselves. Some persist precisely because the expectations placed upon them were never aligned with what they were built to sustain.

The post The Logic Behind Iran appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As a handful of students and I neared an apartment building to deliver the meals, we were surprised by the next-door Eugene O’Neill Theatre with its loud and brash signs promoting “The Book of Mormon” musical. The marquee featured photos mocking missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The students—many of whom had served missions—were quick to note the irony of our situation: Broadway presented a caricature of our faith while we were performing the quiet service that actually defines it. 

A dubious anniversary brought back those memories. The irreverent, bawdy, vulgar, and mocking “The Book of Mormon” musical opened on Broadway 15 years ago. According to the New York Times, the show has reached 6,000 performances for six million theatergoers, with box office sales now heading toward $1 billion on Broadway. The anniversary sparked a media circuit for creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, resulting in a wave of recent coverage.  

Jesse Green, the New York Times culture correspondent, penned an anniversary story titled “‘The Book of Mormon’ Is Sorry if You Were Offended for 15 Years.” The piece would have you believe that all is hunky-dory with the play and that it’s just been a 15-year run of good fun. No humans were harmed—including Latter-day Saints—in the creation of this Broadway hit, Green decides. 

I disagree. 

I have not seen the show, but I have read enough of the script, heard the music, and followed enough reviews to recognize its crassness and inherent bigotry.

When I reached out to Green via email, he declined to be interviewed, stating, “I don’t have more to say than I said in the article.” I wish he did, because his coverage reveals significant ethical and journalistic gaps. 

Most notably, Green didn’t ask any “real Latter-day Saints” about their reaction to the musical. Instead, he gave creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone a pass on possible tough questions about misrepresentation or harm caused by the show. It shouldn’t be that hard. With 42,000 Church members who live in the New York region, finding a local perspective from a member of the Church wouldn’t have been difficult. 

Since the Times was derelict in its journalistic duty, I’ll ask this question: Has “The Book of Mormon” contributed to an American culture where demeaning Latter-day Saints is socially sanctioned? As BYU athletic teams play games around the country, opposing fans often chant “F— the Mormons,” reminiscent of a scene where Ugandans say “F— God” in the play. Take this example of a family supporting BYU at a basketball game in Providence, Rhode Island. It has happened at numerous other venues across the country. Is it coincidental that there’s some similarity to “The Book of Mormon” musical chants and the game chants? 

In the end, Parker and Stone will collect their millions and say their show is a “love letter to Mormons,” kind of like “Fiddler on the Roof” was to Jews. But this show is not “Fiddler on the Roof” for Latter-day Saints. Instead, Parker and Stone’s work misrepresents, hurts, harms, and is meant to offend. Communication and psychological research has shown that humor often helps erode society’s normal boundaries of respect, compassion, and good faith to groups that are “othered.” That’s what this musical does.

Although Green’s bio says he abides by the New York Times Ethics Code and is “basically no use to anyone” who wants to influence him, Green sounds like a member of the New York elite theater club. He quotes whatever falls from the lips of Parker and Stone as gospel truth.

Instead of tough questions you get this about Green’s first time seeing the show.

The night I saw it, no less a dignified eminence than Angela Lansbury, seated directly in front of me, laughed her head off. I laughed too, all the time wondering: How did they dare put this on? Those laughs were half gasp.

The real gasp should come as Green gives Parker and Stone easy passes throughout the 15-year recap article with statements like this:

The authors had not meant “Mormon” to be offensive, let alone controversial.

Really? The Times just published that without questioning it? The Times would never let a politician get away with such nonsense. Parker and Stone knew exactly what they were doing and how bigoted it was. This next quote is just as damning: 

Still, Stone and Parker, having grown up around church members in Colorado, did not want to make fun of them or their religion.

So, if someone grows up around Jews in Brooklyn and they think of them as great neighbors, they have the right to be anti-semitic? If Angela Lansbury were to laugh at an Islamophobic joke, that would make it OK? The Times then piles on with another anti-Latter-day Saint trope. 

Taking precautions against a potentially hostile response, the production hired extra security for a few weeks around opening. And if some cast members worried that an army of the offended might sooner or later run them out of town, the authors were more worried about running at all. 

If Green had bothered to talk to any New York Latter-day Saints, 15 years ago or today, he would have quickly discounted any violent stereotype that this was meant to portray. A visit to any number of Latter-day Saint Sunday services only blocks from the New York Times building would have quickly provided a much different picture. 

Green’s bias toward Latter-day Saints also bleeds through again when he suggests that Latter-day Saints are inherently folksy, simple-minded people with no theological depth.

“They believe goofy stuff, but they’re really nice,” Parker said. “If you have one as a neighbor, you have a great neighbor.” That was the seed for a gentle lesson: Faith need not be logical to be meaningful; in fact, the opposite might be true.

Granted, the Times does give a nod to a 15-year-old official statement of the Church about the show, but it’s lazy, outdated reporting. The Times missed this statement from a Church spokesman at the time, which opposed the show’s content. At the same time, the ever-innocent Parker and Stone joked to Green and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that the Church was just really “nice” about all of this. 

True, when the show opened, the Church turned the other cheek through a statement and then took out ads in the playbill declaring: “You’ve seen the play… now read the book.” That was a masterstroke marketing move, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the production—filled with misrepresentations, stereotypes, racism, and vulgarity—helps mold public opinion and disrespect for Latter-day Saints and religion generally. It also gets Latter-day Saint theology wrong. The Church’s savvy response does not equate to agreement with Parker and Stone’s bigotry, although the pair keeps implying as much.

It’s also ironic how Parker and Stone live by a double standard. When “The Book of Mormon” musical was challenged about its racism after the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter movements, the show changed the script. But never has it been changed for its religious bigotry.

Unfortunately, as prominent writers Jonah Goldberg and Simon Critchley have observed, while expressions of racism or xenophobia are normally looked down upon in polite social circles, “anti-Mormonism is another matter.” Goldberg has written about how Mormonism is America’s last acceptable prejudice. Of course, it’s not just anti-Mormonism in the show; the central message is anti-religious.

While asking if such a show as “The Book of Mormon” musical could be pulled off today, the Times does acknowledge the sensitivities of demeaning people.

That’s because “Mormon” in 2026 is in some ways more gasp-inducing than it was when it opened. In the intervening years, sensitivities once barely acknowledged about racial, religious and sexual identity have become mandatory articles of theatrical faith.

Let’s hope that American society, with its purported standards of equality and fair play, rejects another mockery of faith groups, ethnic origin, or racial background. But our current culture of incivility and polarization doesn’t bode well for the future of culture and entertainment. Unfortunately, the Times is likely to be there cheering from the audience when another such show denigrates, misrepresents and, yes, offends. It seems that, in reality, no one is actually sorry at all. 

The post Broadway’s Last Acceptable Bigotry appeared first on Public Square Magazine.