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In a recent letter to The Salt Lake Tribune, Latter-day Saint writer David Ostler argues that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports religious liberty only halfheartedly. According to Ostler, the Church supports its own priorities and those of other Christians but is “far less willing to defend the religious rights of people outside the LDS faith when those rights conflict with church policies or values.” 

We strongly agree with Ostler “that religious freedom is strongest when it protects people of every faith—including those with no faith at all.” But we disagree with his assessment of the Church’s record on religious liberty. 

Setting the Record Straight

To begin, Ostler makes misleading statements about the Church’s efforts to protect religious liberty. He says that the Church did not “intervene” in the case of Damon Landor, a Rastafarian whose case recently came before the Supreme Court. But while the Church could not legally intervene as a party, it did become involved. It filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Landor, clearly and publicly supporting Mr. Landor’s case through the only legal avenue it had.

Ostler also argues that the Church should have “filed opposition” to the Texas abortion ban to protect its members’ religious freedom. But this conflates an allowance with an obligation. Just because the Church allows abortion in exceptional cases does not mean members have a religious obligation to obtain abortions, nor that getting an abortion is an exercise of religious belief. 

The case involving Hoosier Jews for Choice, in which several plaintiffs in Indiana claim a right to abortion under the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) law, is more complex. However, it’s also not as simple as “you supported religious liberty in other cases, so you have to support it here.” RFRA laws have several standards that must be met, and there are good reasons to believe that those standards have not been met in this case. 

Promoting Religious Freedom Through Legal Action

Beyond these cases, Ostler raises an important question that he never really answers: What does it mean to consistently support religious liberty as a universal principle? If, as he seems to suggest, it means supporting religious groups and beliefs other than one’s own, the Church clearly does. 

There are many, many cases in which the Church has filed briefs in support of religious communities and individuals with significantly different beliefs. Most religious freedom cases to reach the Supreme Court in recent decades have involved Christian litigants. However, the Church has also supported non-Christian groups and individuals. In recent years, it has filed in support of the Rastafarian prisoner previously mentioned; Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Catholic parents; Catholic entities; Lutheran churches; nondenominational Christians; and an evangelical Christian, among several others. 

What’s more, the Church frequently joins religiously diverse coalitions to file these amicus briefs. This practice indicates its interest in securing religious freedom for all, not only for itself. 

The Church also has a longstanding relationship with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The Becket Fund is the leading national law firm that defends the religious freedom of people of all faiths, not just Christians. It has represented Sikhs, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and members of other minority faiths.

And while religious liberty is a fundamental right, it’s not an unlimited right. The state can restrict religious liberty for legitimate reasons, and the Church understands this. For instance, the state’s interest in promoting health and safety led to restrictions on houses of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the proportionality of these restrictions compared to those imposed on other institutions has been debated, the Church willingly complied to promote health and safety, despite the way these restrictions limited religious exercise. Further, President Oaks has said that religious government officials cannot use religious liberty as a justification to avoid fulfilling their duties under the law, such as providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples when the law recognizes these marriages. 

Promoting Religious Freedom Through Dialogue

We also think it’s important to look at global religious liberty. After all, the focus of the Church’s recent fast for religious liberty was specifically to promote this freedom worldwide.

The Church has also financially supported the annual International Religious Freedom Summit, which brings together key religious freedom organizations to champion religious freedom worldwide. Summit participants come from diverse faith backgrounds and from around the world to work together to improve religious freedom for all people everywhere, especially for the world’s most persecuted groups.

The Church’s flagship legal institution, BYU Law School, also hosts an annual International Law and Religion Symposium that convenes people of different faith backgrounds (or none) to discuss challenges to religious freedom and learn about best-practice solutions. And BYU Law School also boasts some of the world’s leading scholars of law and religion, who travel the globe teaching the principle of religious freedom for everyone, everywhere.

None of this captures the Church’s extensive humanitarian efforts, many of which help people persecuted for their beliefs. Consider, for example, the Church’s assistance to the Yazidis, a religious minority in Iraq who faced genocide at the hands of ISIS, or the Church’s efforts to help refugees, including many who are fleeing religious persecution. Countless other examples exist.

It’s true that the Church does not get involved in every single case or with every bill with religious liberty implications. The Church has consistently emphasized that certain core spheres of religious freedom are most important to protect, and it prioritizes them. As critics of the Church would agree, not every purported exercise of religious belief can or should be accommodated. But within appropriate limits, religious belief deserves special recognition and support. The Church has long supported religious liberty as a broad principle, one that applies to religious believers and nonbelievers alike. 

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For many religious individuals, faith plays a central role in their lives. In many faith traditions, members are required or encouraged to freely contribute their time, effort, and money, a concept known as religious giving.

But how do individuals actually feel about religious giving? How does religious giving affect their marriages and families? An in-depth qualitative study from the American Families of Faith Project addressed that question by interviewing 184 highly religious families about their beliefs. We will review four insights that emerged. 

Reframing Sacrifice as Giving

Financial contributions to religion are not a sacrifice, but a gift. This is what many participants in the study said about their giving.

Participants tended to reframe sacrifice as giving or charity. They saw their giving as deeply and inherently relational, strengthening their connection with God and with their sisters and brothers in the human family. 

Building Faith Community Bonds

Giving also increased many participants’ sense of meaning. They felt better about life for having given. 

But the benefits didn’t stop there. The act of giving also tended to form a stronger bond between givers and their faith communities, leading them to feel more fully supported by their faith communities. A Christian woman named Joyce, said, “When I was going through a really—I mean a really, really—bad financial time, I never ever had to want for anything, because someone from my church family was always there helping out, giving me something.” A father from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints added another story of profound help. He explained,

There was a time in the 1970s when we had three kids in cloth diapers that had to be washed daily and our washing machine gave out … and I didn’t even have money to have the thing fixed, and I certainly didn’t have money for a new one… My wife came home from running the errands… and there was a washing machine sitting on the porch with a hundred dollar bill in an envelope taped to the lid, and boxes of laundry detergent from church…. Somebody obviously understood the principle of charity where you don’t let the right hand know what the left hand is doing…. God bless them!

Adjusting for inflation, that $100 in the mid-1970s would be the equivalent of more than $600 today. The experience left this couple with a burning desire to give in similar ways to others, and they have done so across the decades since as they try to “pay it forward.” 

Many participants shared similar feelings and stories about the financial support they received from their faith communities. Sarah, a Jewish mother of two, is a great example of being a support to others. She shared, “It’s a real comfort to feel like you’ve provided a meal for someone or given money for a good cause. You walk away from that feeling that all is right with your little part of the world, that you did your piece. It may be stressful, but the majority of the time you walk away feeling comforted.” 

Effects on the Marital Relationship

Many participants reported that their marriages also benefited from their financial giving, but others emphasized that religious (and other) giving can strain the marital relationship if it is not a shared financial goal. A Latter-day Saint father named Todd said, “Sometimes money can be divisive but through our religious faith we know that the money’s not ours and we know that it’s a tool.” When couples share this vision, they do well. This concept was explained thoroughly by Doug, a Christian husband and marriage counselor, who reported, 

I think the number one reason we have a strong marriage is God. The number two reason is the ability to agree financially on issues, because finances are the number one killer of relationships. Many married people disagree about money…. The fact is, we have the same financial goals and priorities. Money is the number one fight—money—and if you can navigate that particular obstacle, you will do well in marriage. 

For couples like Doug and his wife, shared commitments to giving and serving can become a strength for the marriage. However, the ideal of selflessness is difficult to attain, and many participant couples admitted to arguing about money. 

Religious Giving and Children

Takeaways 

As believers, these findings can help us navigate the blessings and challenges of religious giving in our own financial situations. Key insights include:

Reframe sacrifice as giving. Highly religious individuals viewed their financial contributions not as sacrifices but as gifts and priorities rooted in faith, which reinforced their sense of purpose and moral identity. As believers, we can also strive to elevate our perspective and reframe faith-based financial sacrifices as opportunities to put God and others first.

Avoid letting money become divisive. We can be aware of how money can potentially divide relationships and cause stress, and ultimately remember that money may not be what matters most. When we focus on our connection with the divine and serving others, financial giving can be a source of relational strengthening for all involved, instead of a source of division. This awareness can remind us of what truly lasts.

Grow in service and faith. We can consider how we might invite more faith, unity, and purpose into our financial decisions. Whether we are giving time, money, or support, we can try to view these acts not as burdens but rather as sacred opportunities to grow closer to God, strengthen our relationships, and to serve others with love.

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Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is about a warrior trying to leave war behind. And perhaps the movie’s reception suggests that many of us are ready to do the same. 

When the movie opens, the Trojan War is already over. Odysseus remains a warrior, and much of his survival depends on his warrior instincts. But despite the monsters, storms, and stratagems he faces, the central question of the tale is not whether he can win another battle. It’s whether he can make it home. 

One of the major thematic differences between Nolan’s new treatment of the story and the tale it is based on is how Odysseus feels about war. In the original, Odysseus leaves the war as a braggadocious victor. 

In Nolan’s adaptation, the background to Odysseus’ travels is his desire to distance himself from the war, reckon with the choices he made, and prepare to return home—a place where he will be asked to be a husband, father, king, and community member. At home he will not only need his warrior virtues but also tenderness, patience, fidelity, and mercy. 

In this telling, “The Odyssey” is not just the continuing adventures of Odysseus; it is a metaphor for his struggle to leave war and return home psychologically and emotionally. For all its spectacle, the film is preoccupied with the aftermath of war. Reviewers have recognized this antiwar current and its interest in postwar trauma, guilt, and moral transformation.

That theme may also explain why the public response to “The Odyssey” feels more significant than that of a mere commercially successful summer blockbuster. Before the movie was ever released, it had been drafted into another war, a cultural war. And then, much to the surprise of the people who live and breathe that war, the public largely declined the fight.

A Movie and a Battlefield

Long before anyone had seen “The Odyssey,” the culture warriors were dissecting it. Some commentators complained about the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. Others complained about Elliot Page’s casting. Some critics complained that the film was ignoring historical coherence in exchange for progressive signaling. Others sought to boycott the film because it was not sufficiently deferential to the concerns of Morocco, Western Sahara, and Dakhla—a conflict described, depending on whom you ask, as either an occupation or a border dispute. 

Then audiences saw it. 

“The Odyssey” earned $264.1 million worldwide during its opening weekend. It’s the largest live-action opening of the year, the largest nominal-dollar opening of Christopher Nolan’s career, and a break in what had seemed like a very down summer for the movie industry.

Audiences gave the film an A CinemaScore, and its Rotten Tomatoes audience score stood at 97 percent at the time of writing. Demand was so strong that some theaters added overnight and early-morning screenings.

Obviously, there were still dissenters. Many of the people who profit from our continued outrage doubled down. But most of the actual audience just watched a movie. The controversy stopped being the main story, and the movie started to be. 

The Culture War

This is not to say that culture-war issues are unimportant. Many of the disputes involve issues of real importance. 

And maybe it’s OK that Christopher Nolan asked his old friend to be in his movie, regardless of whether we agree with the decisions that friend has made. 

Maybe we can feel real concern for the current situation of the Sahrawi people without making this film bear the weight of the entire controversy just because of its filming locations.

These concerns, along with the hundreds of others, should not simply be wished away. And I’m certainly not calling for us to surrender on them in the hope that doing so will create peace. The tragedy was that the method of war began to consume the very things we were trying to protect. The conflict stopped being about whether ideas were right or wrong and became about whether people were good or bad. Every casting choice was framed as existential. It divided families, friendships, congregations, communities, and nations. Having the wrong opinion was not a conflict to work through, but a danger to be squashed. Our ideological opponents were reduced to avatars to humiliate.

And because war needs soldiers, first our news media and then our social media began using propaganda to enlist us. And many of us have. We’ve fought about Dr. Seuss, gas stoves, Mr. Potato Head, the OK symbol, the green M&M, the Cracker Barrel menu, the Little Mermaid’s hair, elves’ skin tone, Gillette razors, Looney Tunes, Keurig coffee makers, the Chinese word for “that,” the police dog in “PAW Patrol,” and dozens and dozens more. 

“The Odyssey” was shaping up to be the next battlefield. The battle lines had been drawn. And then we just didn’t. We let it go. We went and watched a fun movie. And we probably watched it while sitting in a theater with someone who believed some of the wrong things. 

Toward Ithaca

But it’s not nothing. 

Maybe it’s just a temporary “Christmas Day truce” because the movie really is that good. Or maybe “The Odyssey” is revealing a change in appetite, a change of heart.

Perhaps we are tired of being told what we are allowed to enjoy. Perhaps we are sick of so many of the things that make life worth living becoming another test of tribal allegiance. And maybe we’re tired of living in a world where nothing can simply be. 

Our culture did not resolve the disputes surrounding the movie. One side did not emerge victorious. It did something smaller. It didn’t give the final word to the culture war. 

Odysseus’ journey reminds us that wars end before warriors learn how to live in peace. Coming home is its own discipline. It requires us to lay aside identities formed entirely through opposition and recover the relationships that conflict pushed to the margins.

We have not reached Ithaca. Our disagreements remain. Many of them matter, some deeply.

But perhaps we are beginning to understand that a meaningful life cannot be built entirely around fighting them.

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See amid these rocky mountains,
Zion’s standard wide unfurled,
Far above Missouri’s fountain,
Lo! it waves for all the world.

Freedom, peace, and full salvation,
Are the blessings guaranteed;
Liberty to every nation,
Every tongue and every creed.

“The Mountain Standard,” by P.P. Pratt

On July 24, 1849, two years after the first company of Latter-day Saint pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah settlers gathered to celebrate Utah’s first formal Pioneer Day. 

Among the speakers was Thomas Bullock, a pioneer himself. After a reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, Bullock read Parley P. Pratt’s poem.

The stanzas present Deseret as a place of religious liberty and extend that promise beyond the Saints. In Deseret, sect would not divide, for all were united with “shackles burst asunder.” There would be no “foreigner” in Deseret—only “a friend, a brother.”

Pratt’s invitation also served an immediate practical purpose. Emigration was central to the future of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the West. The journey from bondage to liberty was as physical as it was spiritual. Zion needed Saints; the Saints needed Zion.

Two short months later, Pratt’s invitation took institutional form. On October 6, 1849, The Church of Jesus Christ organized the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company. Bullock served as the company’s clerk, meticulously arranging passage for thousands of Latter-day Saints from around the world. Many soon followed in his footsteps and found freedom in the valleys of Deseret. The fund continued to finance this sacred migration for nearly forty years, until its forced disincorporation by the federal government in 1887.

That history offers Latter-day Saints a useful lens for considering the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The two programs are not the same. But they address related questions, and they call on similar spiritual instincts. How can a community help people fleeing persecution begin again? 

Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company 

The Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company (PEF) was a loan program through which the Church paid in advance for Latter-day Saints’ travel to Utah. During the mid-1800s, The Church of Jesus Christ maintained a religious mandate that members migrate to Utah. The PEF provided the material means.

The General Assembly of the State of Deseret formally incorporated the PEF in September 1850. The legislation stated that “the general business of the Company” was to be “devoted…to promote, facilitate, and accomplish the Emigration of the Poor.” Stated motivations were both economic and religious. The state of Deseret needed laborers; Latter-day Saints needed liberty. The PEF offered both. 

The Church was keenly aware that many of these good and worthy people were fleeing very real persecution. The day before the ordinance was adopted, Elder George A. Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke “in behalf of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund” and recalled this experience: 

We were surrounded by mobs and our 150 houses lighting the heavens with their lurid flames, at midnight, and when rapine, robbery, and violence ruled supreme in Illinois. At that time this people were defenceless; every liberty was taken from them.

Elder Smith said Latter-day Saints then resolved to leave Illinois. They covenanted to use their property and influence until every Latter-day Saint who wished to leave had reached safety.

The fund successfully accomplished both its economic and spiritual aims. From 1854 until the fund’s forcible federal dissolution in 1887, around 30 percent of all Latter-day Saint emigrants used PEF loans. That amounted to approximately 30,000 people.

Congress dissolved the PEF with the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887. Congress hoped to end The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by undermining its source of growth and prosperity. 

Today’s Perpetual Emigration Fund: The Refugee Program

Nearly a century after the federal government dismantled the PEF, Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980 with bipartisan support. The law established the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, through which people facing persecution abroad—including many facing religious persecution—may seek resettlement in the United States. 

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is distinct from the U.S. asylum process, though both were established via the Refugee Act and serve individuals fleeing persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Asylum seekers request safety at or within the U.S. border; refugees request safety while outside the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports both refugees and asylum seekers who enter the United States through employment, education, and other partner programs.

The modern refugee program no doubt differs structurally from its nineteenth-century predecessor. The historical PEF was a distinctly religious endeavor, organized by church leadership to gather a religiously homogeneous group to a small but growing community. The modern refugee program, by contrast, is secular and federally administered. It welcomes individuals of every background and belief across the country.

Yet while they belong to different eras and operate under different authorities, these two programs share profound moral and functional parallels. 

Economic Similarities

The refugee program is literally a perpetual emigration fund and functions similarly to the Perpetual Emigrating Fund. 

Many refugees finance their travel to the United States through a travel loan serviced by the International Organization for Migration. Refugees begin repaying these loans after they become financially self-sufficient. Their repayments help finance future refugee travel, making the program—like the PEF—a fund by and for refugees. On the eve of their journeys, refugees today sign a promissory note similar to the note signed by early Latter-day Saint pioneers. 

The Refugee Program is also economically self-sustaining. Research conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2024 found that refugees and asylees contribute more to the American economy than they cost to resettle. Over a 15-year period, net fiscal benefits—primarily contributed through income and taxes—were estimated at over $123 billion. 

Utah’s 14,400 refugees generate over $572 million in household income and hold over $425 million in spending power, according to the American Immigration Council. They also pay over $50 million in state and local taxes. As births decline and Utah’s existing population ages, migration will only increase in importance—becoming a significant driver of Utah’s population growth. Just as the PEF was intended to bring “a great army of laborers” to “help here, on the farm and in the Shop, building and on the public works,” the refugee program is a critical contributor to Utah’s economic future. 

Religious & Spiritual Similarities

But the similarities between the PEF and the refugee program are not simply economic; they are also spiritual. By law, all refugees have fled persecution of some kind; many have fled religious persecution. The Lautenberg Program is reserved for people fleeing religious persecution. It has resettled tens of thousands of religious refugees. Christians made up at least half of the refugees resettled in the United States over the past ten years. Many refugees of other faiths have also been resettled.

Life-threatening, religiously motivated persecution is no longer a reality for most Latter-day Saints. However, it remains a reality for our brothers and sisters in faith throughout the world. In 1853, President Brigham Young encouraged Latter-day Saints to allow their past to guide their future: 

We might ask you to reflect upon the days that you have spent in yonder distant land, where you could seldom walk the streets or enter a shop, like another citizen, without the finger of scorn being pointed at you, without suffering the malignant taunts and sneers of the ungodly, for the sake of your ‘religion.’ 

President Young’s urgent call could just as easily describe the persecution faced by refugees of faith today. According to tracking data compiled by Global Christian Relief, 4,849 Christians were killed for their faith during its latest reporting period. Over that same time frame, 67,843 Christians were physically or mentally abused worldwide for faith-related reasons. Religious minorities around the world face a rising tide of persecution. They include members of underground churches in North Korea and people fleeing hostile regimes in Iran or Afghanistan. Tragically, just as their need for sanctuary has grown, America’s doors are closing.

The persecution of modern-day refugees reinforces the purpose of Pioneer Day: to remember the struggle of our pioneer ancestors, remain grateful for the grace—material and spiritual—that enabled our contemporary religious and economic prosperity, and retain compassion for those currently enduring similar plights. While Latter-day Saints today can no longer contribute to the PEF, they can support the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

The Refugee Program Is At Risk

Unfortunately, the similarities between the modern U.S. refugee admissions program and the PEF also extend to their detractors. Just as the federal government forcibly disbanded the PEF to prevent the continued immigration of Latter-day Saints, the federal government is now attempting to halt the resettlement of refugees fleeing persecution through the refugee program.  

The forced dissolution of the PEF was the culmination of a decades-long federal campaign. In 1885, two years before the dissolution of the PEF, President Grover Cleveland made an extraordinary request to Congress. He asked for a law to “prevent the importation of Mormons into the country.” His words echoed a hostile 1879 State Department circular issued by Secretary William M. Evarts. The circular directed U.S. diplomatic and consular officers in Europe to enlist foreign governments in halting the emigration of Latter-day Saint converts. In addition to dissolving the PEF, the Edmunds-Tucker Act barred the territorial legislature from passing any law intended to bring people into the territory.

Just as the federal government disbanded the PEF, the current federal government is attempting to dismantle the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. In January 2025, it suspended refugee admissions, freezing funding for essential infrastructure and services. Admissions resumed in October 2025, but the federal government set a historically low refugee admissions goal for fiscal year 2026 and adopted unprecedentedly narrow admissions priorities. As of May 31, 2026, only 6,668 refugees have been admitted to the U.S. this fiscal year. Of those, 6,665 were from South Africa; only three were from Afghanistan, a country with well-substantiated refugee claims. Before 2016, the United States admitted an average of 95,000 refugees per year. 

As a result, the refugee program’s infrastructure is shrinking. Historically low funding has accompanied historically low admissions; many local resettlement agencies have been forced to close their doors due to financial uncertainty. Financial and operational volatility forced two of America’s longest-standing resettlement agencies, those run by the Catholic and Episcopal churches, to withdraw from the refugee program in the spring of 2025. 

In 1889, federal judge Thomas J. Anderson used a similar tactic to halt Latter-day Saint migration, famously refusing to naturalize Latter-day Saint immigrants.

While Utah’s support for refugees largely continues, the state has not escaped the negative impacts of federal disinvestment. Utah regularly welcomes over 1,000 refugees per year. This year, Utah has only welcomed 70—all South Afrikaners. Catholic Community Services of Utah, one of the state’s four refugee resettlement agencies, initially announced that its resettlement program would end. After an outpouring of private donations, the agency reversed course and temporarily continued services for resettled refugees. But many of Utah’s refugee families remain in limbo, unable to receive green cards and at risk of the federal government rescinding their refugee status.

Our state’s ability to continue its pioneer tradition of offering refuge to those fleeing religious and other forms of persecution is at risk. 

A Perpetual Refugee Program: Building Bipartisan Support For A Refugee Bottom Line

Latter-day Saints’ history does not settle every question of public policy related to refugees. But that history can inspire Latter-day Saints to honor their pioneer heritage by ensuring the United States remains a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution. As proposed by Governor Herbert in celebration of Pioneer Day, a statutory admissions floor is one proposal worth serious consideration. Such a floor would help communities sustain their economies with a more predictable flow of refugees. 

Latter-day Saints can help by writing to their city council members, mayors, state legislators, and governor, to encourage them to call for a robust refugee admissions floor. 

Immigration debates are polarizing; supporting the refugee program doesn’t have to be. Refugee programming cannot survive without predictability. The PEF arose in a similarly polarizing environment within the Church, yet church leaders considered it a “a subject worthy of consideration and encouragement, fraught, as it is, with the best interest of society.” 

This Pioneer Day could be an ideal opportunity to carry forward Pratt’s promise. 

As Brigham Young urged Latter-day Saints, it is their obligation to remember the pioneers of their faith and their path to freedom and ensure this path remains available in perpetuity. 

The author wishes to thank Sophie Huttner for her editorial assistance with this article.

The post A Refuge for Modern Pioneers appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

While this question is legally significant, it is the wrong question for improving educational outcomes and fostering upward mobility and civic engagement for American students.

By focusing on control—who governs schools, who receives public funding, and where the line should be drawn between church and state—the current debate obscures an urgent matter: how religion can be a resource that enables public schools to expand opportunity and bridge social divides.

Since their founding, US public schools have aspired to provide children of all backgrounds with an equal opportunity to learn. Horace Mann, credited with expanding tax-supported, universal schooling in the 19th century, wrote that public schooling in America would become “the great equalizer of the conditions of men.” Though we’ve made important progress, our public education system is failing to meet this promise. Gaps in learning opportunities persist across lines of students’ race and family income, and many teachers leave the profession they love because of poor working conditions and limited support.

Our recent report, “Faith in Educational Renewal,” from the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Leadership Initiative for Faith and Education at Harvard University, finds that religious participation is linked to higher academic achievement, school completion, and college aspirations—especially for students from working-class families. These benefits often flow through the moral values, study skills, and social networks that students gain from participating in religious life. Of course, students can develop values, skills, and networks elsewhere, but it is difficult to replicate the stable communities that religious organizations sustain.

Faith-based organizations also improve student learning outcomes through partnerships with public schools. These partnerships provide tutoring, mentoring, and college preparation, all of which can improve student literacy, social-emotional development, and family engagement with the school.

The faith of teachers also matters. Teachers are more likely than other professionals to be religious. Many describe their work with students as a calling. According to research, when teachers sense a calling to their profession, it deepens their professional commitments and amplifies their unique professional talents. Teachers often draw on their spirituality to stay committed and effective in challenging classrooms. Religious faith can strengthen teachers’ belief in their ability to reach even the most disengaged students.

How can we support more of these voluntary partnerships? How can we expand their impact without inhibiting or promoting religion? How can we help public school educators draw on their faith and spirituality to be more effective and find greater meaning in their work with students and other educators? How can religion contribute to—rather than control—public schooling? These are the questions we should be asking.

Skeptics of this work will raise legitimate concerns. Some secularists want no entanglement between faith and public education. But decades of evidence show that public schools alone are not closing opportunity gaps. When we exclude faith communities from partnerships, we ignore a valuable resource in our battle against educational inequality.

Our choice is not limited to sectarian education or the exclusion of religion from public education. We recommend a third way for schools to partner with faith communities. The question is not whether religion should run public schools—or even whether faith communities should partner with them. They already do. The right question is how to expand and deepen partnerships that draw on community, human, material, and moral resources available through religious pluralism to provide every student with a fair chance.

 States can highlight promising partnerships that already exist. School leaders can identify specific student needs and invite faith-based volunteers to offer tutoring, mentoring, family support, or other resources. Faith communities can approach schools to offer services that benefit all students, regardless of their beliefs. School leaders and educational authorities can help teachers draw on their spirituality to navigate thorny challenges and find greater fulfillment in their classrooms. By focusing on collaboration rather than control, public schools can tap religious faith as an underused resource to transform learning opportunities for all students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The post What Faith Can Give Public Schools appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Years ago, I sat on a bench reading as my children were at a nearby playground. I was absorbed in The Hand of God—Bernard Nathanson’s autobiographical account of his transformation from an abortion doctor into a pro-life activist. Nathanson’s description of his contributing role in the American abortion industry was disturbing, but there was one sentence that sent chills down my spine.

He warned, “It is no accident that the next step in the perverse mutation of medical skills is to be … where physicians are endowed by the state to assist, always in the name of compassion, in the act of suicide.”

I remember putting the book down and looking over at my kids. What future would they face if euthanasia became legal here in Canada? I wanted to resist Nathanson’s words, but the pit in my stomach indicated I wasn’t successful. What he said made sense. If we sanction doctors ending life in the womb—beyond rare and extenuating circumstances—is it not easier to also accept doctors ending life in its later stages, when age and infirmity have taken their toll?

Abortion and suicide are not identical. But they do ask a similar question of us. Who can be helped to die, and what does society become when we treat that as medical care?

How Canada Arrived Here

At the time I read Nathanson, Canada had held the distinction for nearly a decade of being the only democratic nation in the world without an abortion law. This distinction still holds true today, decades later.

In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the 1969 abortion law as “manifestly unfair” due to inconsistent decisions made by hospital review committees. The intent of the decision wasn’t for Canada to be left without a law, but that has been the result as no other law has replaced it. Marge Berer, an abortion-rights activist describes Canada as “stand(ing) out as the only country to date that…effectively decriminalized abortion altogether.”

On February 6, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that the Criminal Code provisions prohibiting assisted suicide were unconstitutional. On June 17 of the following year, the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) Act was brought in through the passage of Bill C-14. Individuals, who were eighteen years or older, could now seek out euthanasia if they had a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” that is in an “advanced state of irreversible decline” and in which “natural death has become reasonably foreseeable.”  

More expansive steps soon followed. In March 2021, Bill C-7 passed. The significant requirement of natural death being reasonably foreseeable was dropped and individuals could opt for “Track 2”. And in 2024, Bill C-62 passed which allowed MAID for individuals whose sole underlying condition is a mental disorder. Parliament has pushed back this bill’s implementation, but it is currently planned for March 17, 2027.

What We Mean by MAID

Vague language is often used in the discussion of MAID—including in the acronym itself—so clear definitions are needed to figure out what is happening.

In Canadian law, MAID includes both the administration of a substance by a practitioner and the prescription of a substance for self-administration. The first is euthanasia, when a medical professional takes the action that causes death. The second is assisted suicide, in which a medical practitioner knowingly aids in an effort to end one’s own life. 

Even though the term euthanasia is rarely used in Canadian messaging, 99.9 of assisted deaths in Canada, accomplished through MAID, are in fact euthanasia. The official government website often refers to this as “Method 1.”

Euthanasia Is No Longer Rare

As we recently reached the 10th anniversary of MAID in Canada, we are speeding ahead and hitting numbers that surpass jurisdictions that legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide many years earlier. By the fall of 2025, approximately 90,000 Canadians had been euthanized (other than the 0.1 percent who chose assisted suicide) since MAID was implemented. 

Dr. Sonu Gaind, the chief of psychiatry at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, observed, “We’ve gone in a trajectory that no other country on the planet has gone.” With the current pace of growth, Canada is poised to soon be the world leader in the percentage of its deaths that occur through euthanasia.

In 2024, there were an estimated 16,499 deaths through MAID which represented 5.1 percent of all deaths for the year. This rate placed Canada second only to the Netherlands which legalized both euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2001. The province of Quebec, however, had the highest proportion of assisted deaths anywhere accounting for 7.9 percent of deaths in 2024.

Closer to home, consider how we compare to the United States where euthanasia is against the law, but assisted suicide is legal in thirteen states. For example, California legalized medically assisted suicide the same year that MAID came to Canada. The two jurisdictions have similarly sized populations but there were only 853 medically assisted deaths in California versus 13,241 in Canada in 2022. In Oregon, medically assisted suicide has been available for much longer—since 1997—but accounted for only 0.8 percent of all deaths in 2023, whereas Canada’s rate was 4.7 percent  of deaths through MAID that year.

When looking at these numbers, it’s not surprising that Alex Raikin, from the Ethics and Public Policy Center, describes Canada as becoming a “spectre (that) is haunting the global debate on euthanasia.” He says, “No other Canadian public policy has ever been as influential as MAID. For both supporters and critics of euthanasia, Canada remains both a model and the most dangerous canary in the coal mine…The backlash to the Canada MAID program is so intense that supporters of assisted suicide globally have begun to backtrack.”

Our Shared Story of Life

In her book, Death Talk, Somerville describes that we are living at a time of “unusually intense activity with respect to the evolution of a new cultural paradigm.”  With this rapid societal change, we are losing our shared story that includes our values, attitudes, beliefs, commitments, and myths. We have moved toward “intense individualism” and have become increasingly focused on individual autonomy rather than the responsibilities of belonging to a community.

Somerville argues that there are times when the community must be prioritized over individual needs so that vulnerable people are protected. Respect for human life must be demonstrated not only at the individual level but also at the societal level. When someone claims a right to euthanasia out of a belief in individual autonomy, this stands in conflict with the respect that must be held for human life in general society. Somerville explains—

Euthanasia…is one of the situations where the needs of the community—society—must take priority over the claims of the individual. We cannot afford to routinize and institutionalize, let alone, legalize killing…In considering the legalization and institutionalization of euthanasia, we are considering an alteration to the fundamental presumption against killing each other on which the morality and law of civilized society are based.

Euthanasia fractures our shared story, and we are left with competing worldviews. For some, human dignity is believed to be maintained through autonomy and control. For others, dignity is inherent in each human life regardless of circumstance. These differences in belief come to a head when facing the “two great marker events of human life”—birth and death. Somerville argues that the stance adopted toward one is likely to be the stance taken toward the other. She echoes Nathanson in linking abortion with euthanasia, and their ability to fundamentally alter society. Abortion leads the way and euthanasia follows.

As Canadians, we’d be wise to pause and consider where euthanasia could lead us. Will those who are sick or elderly begin to feel they should die rather than be a burden when MAID seems like such a reasonable and accessible option? Could the individual right to euthanasia possibly morph into a duty to die—particularly with our strained health care system—and ironically turn autonomy into a communal obligation? And, specifically in the case of MAID for mental illness, could suicide prevention be viewed as something that stands in the way of a person’s right to choose, rather than as community support?

Where the Church Clarifies

To push back on the Canadian expansion of MAID in 2020, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endorsed an ecumenical Declaration Against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide initiated by the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops and Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. The church was added as a signatory, and it reissued its statement on Euthanasia and Prolonging Life. It’s worth quoting this in full because clarity is necessary due to the normalization of euthanasia through MAID.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes in the sanctity of human life, and is therefore opposed to euthanasia. Euthanasia is defined as deliberately putting to death a person who is suffering from an incurable condition or disease. Such a deliberate act ends life immediately through, for example, so-called assisted suicide. Ending a life in such a manner is a violation of the commandments of God.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not believe that allowing a person to die from natural causes by removing a patient from artificial means of life support, as in the case of a long-term illness, falls within the definition of euthanasia. When dying from such an illness or an accident becomes inevitable, it should be seen as a blessing and a purposeful part of eternal existence. Members of the Church should not feel obligated to extend mortal life by means that are unreasonable. These judgments are best made by family members after receiving wise and competent medical advice and seeking divine guidance through fasting and prayer.

The Church wisely differentiated euthanasia from prolonging life in this statement because many advocates conflate the two and this adds confusion for the public. Non-specific language is commonly used by those advocating for euthanasia and assisted death. This needs to be pointed out.  

A Needed Pause

MAID in Canada has recently been making international headlines. As Canadians, we benefit from this because it puts a needed spotlight on us. The most recent story to capture attention is about a doctor, Dr. James MacLean, who counseled his 45-year-old patient outside a Tim Hortons restaurant. Later that day, he personally drove the man, who had Crohn’s disease and depression, to the morgue and administered the lethal injection. This could be the punchline to a joke about Canadian-style euthanasia if it wasn’t so morbid. It also highlights an important fact of human nature—there are individuals who cannot be trusted, even among doctors. Dr. Bernard Nathanson would agree, and it is worth reading The Hand of God to warn us of the parallels to the practice of abortion.

Canadians are known for their politeness, and we don’t like to step on each other’s toes, but we must speak out. Individual stories of human suffering swayed people’s opinions toward the legalization of euthanasia. The disturbing stories we’re now hearing may have the power to convince people of the danger MAID presents to vulnerable members of our community. As Canadians, we don’t need to accept being legal outliers on life issues.

Many medical practitioners, groups representing people with disabilities, and faith organizations have been sounding the alarm to our government for years. The province of Alberta recently passed Bill 18—the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act. Among other safeguards, it limits MAID to Track 1 individuals, that is,. those whose natural death is foreseeable within a year, and it permanently prohibits mental illness as a sole condition to qualify for MAID. At the federal level, the Special Joint Committee of Medical Assistance in Dying tabled its final report June 17, 2026 and recommended that the government amend the Criminal code to “indefinitely exclude” mental illness as a sole underlying condition for individuals applying for MAID.

Many people are pushing back, and we need to add our voices to theirs.

It’s been almost 30 years since that day at the playground, and my concern now extends to my grandchildren. I wish the chill I’d felt long ago had been unfounded, but Nathanson was correct about where we were headed.

I just wish my beloved Canada wasn’t the country that decided to prove him so right.

The post What MAID Has Made Normal appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In 2008, my parents lived in the California North Hollywood Stake, an ecclesiastical unit of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While attending church services that summer, the bishop read an important letter from the First Presidency of the Church. It noted that Californians would vote on a proposed amendment to the California state constitution in November that, if passed, would specify “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” 

The letter explained that the Church would participate in a coalition of other churches and organizations and urged church members to “do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment.”

My parents understood the difficulties that the First Presidency’s request could impose on Church members. Their stake was in the heart of the U.S. film and entertainment industry. Many within the Hollywood community strongly advocated for same-sex marriage. Yet my parents, along with many other Latter-day Saints, began knocking on doors and making calls at phone banks to urge fellow Californians to vote yes. 

Despite challenges, the combined contributions of Church members were impressive. While Roman Catholic archbishops and lay organizations contributed an estimated $3 million to the cause, Latter-day Saints are estimated to have contributed over $20 million and provided an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the volunteers who conducted door-to-door canvassing. These efforts made a big difference. Despite polls showing that Proposition 8 would be defeated handily, it passed by nearly 600,000 votes, retaining the traditional definition of marriage, at least temporarily. 

For their participation the Church and its members faced immediate backlash. The Church faced demonstrations outside its temples and meetinghouses, with demonstrators chanting epithets and slurs. The names of donors to Proposition 8 were published, leading to harassment, intimidation, and the loss of work. My parents, like many other Church members, felt this was a defining moment.

Then, fourteen years later, in November 2022, the Church surprised many observers by announcing its support for the federal Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA). The Act would codify same-sex marriage under federal law while upholding important religious freedom protections for religious people and organizations. 

Same-sex marriage was already considered a constitutional right under the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. But same-sex marriage supporters had become nervous about Obergefell’s viability after Justice Clarence Thomas indicated interest in reconsidering it. Meanwhile, religious organizations wanted statutory religious freedom protections to uphold their doctrine about marriage. This new law attempted to meet both needs. 

In this third installment of a three-part series, I will explore how the Church continues to vigorously defend traditional marriage as divine doctrine while simultaneously teaching the importance of “fairness for all” as part of its deep commitment to religious freedom. 

When Civil and Divine Laws are in Tension

The Church’s approach to religious freedom fosters societal harmony by honoring moral agency, while holding firm to its own doctrine. 

President Dallin H. Oaks has taught an important framework that the Church has followed since its earliest days for instances when civil law and divine law seem to be in conflict. First, religious believers must try to harmonize civil and divine law or seek to change the offending civil law. When change becomes impossible, then, in almost all cases, believers must submit to the law even though they disagree. Believers should do all they can to show respect and civility toward those with whom they disagree and work with them on the best ways to harmonize their fundamental beliefs. 

The Church’s support for Proposition 8 was consistent with this approach to religious freedom. The Church encouraged its members to seek changes to California’s laws to conform to its understanding of the divine law of marriage. It supported that same definition when the question went before the U.S. Supreme Court. When that effort failed at the highest court in the land, the Church supported the Respect for Marriage Act with its religious freedom protections as the best way to harmonize its views with the offending law, all while striving for civility and respect for others. 

Religious Freedom Includes Fairness for All

Religious freedom is not just about asserting our rights. It also imposes a responsibility to protect others in theirs. As President Oaks stated, “At a time when most of our public discourse concerns rights, it may seem strange to speak of responsibilities. But a democratic republic needs patriotic citizens who are fulfilling their responsibilities as well as claiming their rights.” 

The Church’s conduct following Proposition 8 illustrates this principle. In November 2009, after Proposition 8 passed, the Church supported Salt Lake City ordinances protecting LGBT+ individuals in housing and employment discrimination. At that time Church spokesman Michael Otterson said, “I represent a church that believes in human dignity, in treating others with respect even when we disagree—in fact, especially when we disagree.” 

In January 2015, months before the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell legalized same-sex marriage, the Church held a rare news conference to express public support for legislation protecting LGBT+ rights. Sister Neill Marriott, a counselor in the Young Women General Presidency, framed the issue as one of coexistence, “This nation is engaged in a great debate about marriage, family, individual conscience and collective rights and the place of religious freedom in our society. The eventual outcome of this debate will influence to a large extent whether millions of people with diverse backgrounds and different views and values will live together in relative harmony in the foreseeable future.”  

National experts were called in to meet with legislators, many of whom were not naturally disposed to support LGBT+ rights. Church representatives and community stakeholders participated in “intense negotiations” designed to help everyone involved better understand and trust each other. Legislators needed to understand that, in addition to protecting essential LGBT+ rights, the bill also provided numerous essential religious freedom protections to both religious individuals and organizations. 

The Utah bill was signed into law in March 2015 and was widely hailed as a model of cooperation. While the law is often called the “Utah Compromise,” it did not compromise any of the Church’s beliefs or doctrines. It was a win for both sides of a contested debate. Elder Ronald A. Rasband, now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, explained, “We believe in creating a space for everyone to live their conscience without infringing on the rights and safety of others. When the rights of one group collide against the rights of another, we must follow the principle of being as fair and sensitive to as many people as possible. The Church believes in and teaches ‘fairness for all.’”

Applying Fairness for All After Obergefell

Three months after the “Utah Compromise,” the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that same-sex marriage was a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. 

While many conservative Christians denounced the Court’s decision, the Church of Jesus Christ took a different tack. Even though the Church, with others, filed an amicus brief arguing against same-sex marriage, it acknowledged the legal finality of the Court’s decision, while continuing to teach its doctrinal beliefs about the purpose of marriage. 

A few months later, President Oaks delivered an important speech at the Court/Clergy Conference in Sacramento, California. Instead of criticizing the Supreme Court’s holding, President Oaks praised the majority opinion for not grounding its decision on claims of animus by supporters of traditional marriage laws, and for acknowledging the reasonableness of religious and philosophical arguments for marriage between a man and woman. He continued by arguing that there are two systems of law: divine and civil. Jesus taught us to respect both: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” President Oaks added, “we must, to the extent possible, obey both systems of law. When there are apparent conflicts, we must seek to harmonize them.”

He counseled believers to not invoke religious freedom to override every law they dislike, and to “acknowledge the validity of constitutional laws.” Ultimately, he argued, there comes a point when, for the sake of our pluralistic democracy and the rule of law, the political and legal battles must come to an end.

This framework explains how the Church could both vigorously advocate for traditional marriage, while later supporting legislation that acknowledged the legal reality of same-sex marriage and the need to protect churches and believers’ vital interests. 

This framework also explains why President Oaks criticized the efforts of a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, just as he criticized California government officials who refused to enforce Proposition 8. In both instances, he asserted that personal convictions, religious or otherwise, cannot be used to avoid the rule of law, and that people with conscientious convictions on either side should instead recuse themselves. 

President Oaks has continued to lead by teaching the principle of fairness for all. At the University of Virginia in 2021, President Oaks delivered what he called “the most difficult address I have ever undertaken.” He acknowledged the continuing conflicts between religious freedom and protections against LGBT+ discrimination but hoped to provide a “feasible path forward.” He called on individuals not to seek “total dominance” for their own position, but instead “accept the reality that we are fellow citizens who need each other.”  We should resolve differences through “mutual respect, shared understanding, and good faith negotiations.” Doing so, he added, “does not require any compromise of core principles.”

That sentiment, in short, explains how the Church could support the federal Respect for Marriage Act, while still holding to its doctrinal belief in traditional marriage. 

Support for The Respect for Marriage Act

The Respect for Marriage Act did not arise in the same legal world as Proposition 8. In 2008, the legal definition of marriage remained unsettled. By 2022, Obergefell was the law of the land. And while President Oaks acknowledged that the Act “did restate” same-sex marriage as the law, this restatement “added little,” he said, beyond the rights granted in Obergefell. The Church’s focus was on religious freedom protections. 

While this position is entirely consistent with the Church’s longstanding approach to divine and civil laws in tension, it nevertheless received significant backlash both from the right and, for different reasons, from the left.  

But others, perhaps initially skeptical of the Church’s position, have come to defend its approach. After studying President Oaks’s teachings, Joshua Topham dismissed as uninformed the argument that the Church’s “civic theology” toward the LGBT+ community compromises Christian moral values. He wrote: 

I suspect that some readers will view the LDS Church’s emphasis on civic charity and mutual accommodation as a sort of betrayal. But to dismiss Oaks’s civic theology as a surrender to secularism is to misunderstand it. He is not urging the dilution of Christian teaching on matters of moral importance but the application of Christian charity to political life. His civic theology is rooted in the conviction that building a harmonious pluralistic society will entail the hard work—and the Christian virtues—of persuasion, compassion, and love unfeigned. Perhaps rather than revealing a weakness of resolve, this civic theology of peacemaking offers precisely what is needed to restore our rupturing social fabric.

Similarly, Jonathan Rauch, an openly gay, married Jew, lauded the Church’s efforts to emphasize the responsibilities of religious freedom in his article “How Latter-day Saints Can Save American Democracy.” Rauch concluded:

Why might the church support the Utah compromise and the Respect for Marriage Act? Because those measures protect the church’s ability to teach and practice its doctrines about marriage and sexuality within its own institutions, while also protecting, in the larger society, people’s ability to make their own choices about marriage and sexuality. Thus can ‘patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation’ advance religious freedom and personal freedom in tandem.

Promoting Religious Freedom and Fairness for All

What can we do as individuals to promote an understanding of religious freedom that includes fairness for all? 

Recently, Amy Andrus, an associate director at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU, provided numerous additional suggestions of ways we can promote and protect religious freedom. 

To these excellent suggestions, I would emphasize three principles.

Be examples of disciples of Jesus Christ. The Lord taught, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” If others do not see religious people as happy, kind contributors to their communities, why would they value the religion they espouse? As President Oaks once noted, “If one does not value religion, one usually does not put a high value on religious freedom.”

Teach your children (or grandchildren) the principles of religious freedom and fairness for all. Each semester I ask my religious freedom students at BYU to share what they learned in their elementary and high schools about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding of our country. Their responses suggest that schools teach less about these subjects than in prior generations. As Camille Smith recently noted, it is up to parents, rather than schools, to teach the rising generation about constitutional principles. 

Get involved. Whether it is participating in the PTA, volunteering at your local school, or attending political caucus meetings, your involvement makes a difference. As you get involved, remember that religious freedom allows you to advocate your opinions freely, even if grounded in religious belief. While dropping off our children, my wife began to notice the lack of adherence to the school dress code. Motivated in part by religious beliefs, she reached out to the high school principal and made presentations to the school board. In the end, they reaffirmed the dress policy to the students and parents. Religious voices do make a difference. 

Strengthening religious liberty begins with us. As discussed in this three-part series, we should understand the rights and blessings of religious freedom, its history and laws, and our responsibility to protect the moral choices of others while we advocate for our own. Then we should teach these principles to the rising generation so they, too, may continue to enjoy the blessings of religious liberty. 

Read the first article in this series, “The Doctrine of Religious Freedom,” here.

Read the second article in this series, “The Legal Framework of Religious Liberty,” here. 

The post Religious Freedom Includes Fairness For All appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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On July 20, 1969—almost exactly fifty-seven years ago—the Eagle landed on the moon, crossing the threshold of worlds and placing feet on ground that, for nearly all of history, had seemed permanently beyond our reach.

On July 20, 2026, my children and I are going to eat moon pies, carve the phases of the moon into Oreo cookies, and watch an Apollo 11 documentary, just as we have for more than a decade. We call it Moon Day.

It’s not a holy day. It’s a family day. It’s an occasion to reflect on what inspired human beings can accomplish and to turn my children’s attention upward.

And it’s that upward turn that causes me to continue celebrating. Children spend so much time looking down—at desks, assignments, devices, and anxieties. Moon Day has come to interrupt that. It reframes the moon as not just a light in the night sky, but as a physical world—a place of mountains, craters, dust, gravity, and darkness. A place that is distant but not unreachable, mysterious but not inscrutable. 

It gives my children an opportunity to merge their physical world and their theological one. Science does not drain the holiness from the moon, nor does our understanding of God’s majesty absolve us of our obligation to learn and investigate. The facts enlarge the majesty, and the majesty inspires us to learn.

Faith Big Enough for the Universe

I’ve written a fair amount recently about the implications of the vastness of the universe for religious belief and how the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accommodates this expansiveness.

The restored gospel may not give us an astronomy textbook, but it does give the immensity of creation a remarkably prominent place. In the opening chapter of Moses, God does not merely tell Moses that He is powerful; He demonstrates it by showing the workmanship of His hands. Moses beholds the earth and learns of innumerable worlds.

Moses collapses after the experience, concluding that “man is nothing.” But God teaches him a better lesson, explaining that Moses is also the son of God. The massive universe does not push God further away. 

Doctrine and Covenants 76 expands on this vision, testifying that worlds were created through Jesus Christ and that their inhabitants are children of God. Doctrine and Covenants 88 speaks of the Light of Christ filling “the immensity of space” and powering the sun, moon, and stars. 

And Latter-day Saint belief about creation means that there is no reason for God to be embarrassed by the physicality of creation. Matter, embodiment, and resurrection are all central to our understanding of creation.

None of this tells us whether Europa’s ice covers microbial life or which propulsion system Congress should fund. But it does give us a posture toward curiosity. 

There is a reason that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both speculated about life beyond our world. The majestic theology they were receiving whetted their curiosity. 

I have seen that same kind of curiosity power my own children’s imaginations. It joins wonder to discipline. All the mathematics in the world could not get a rocket off Earth if someone hadn’t first imagined it. And all the inspiration we can muster accounts for nothing without a mastery of the physics that powers it. In my experience, space is the perfect early vehicle to help children see how their imaginations can be powered. 

So for us, Moon Day is not nostalgia for 1969; it’s a promise for how we see the world and intend to work toward the future. 

Would Zion Look Up?

In my opinion, Zion will include a budget for space exploration. 

This is not to say every appropriations bill is wise, nor that every rocket is inherently righteous. But when we think of the perfect future society, that society represents more than the elimination of suffering. 

Imagination is a public good. Those who defend space exploration often focus on its practical benefits and the many ways it has benefited life on Earth. And those are certainly real.

But just as real is an orientation toward the future that lifts up everyone. A sense of purpose and progress. Much of contemporary life trains us to view the future as a collection of approaching catastrophes. Without reducing the importance of any of those, space exploration adds a message on top: the future will contain discovery, wonder, and growth. There are still things to learn, places to reach, projects to build, and questions to answer. Life is more than just dodging one doomsday after the next. 

Zion would not need to choose between compassion and wonder. It would instruct everyone in “things both in heaven and in the earth.” Peaceful, cooperative, truth-seeking exploration belongs naturally within a Zion imagination. 

How I Celebrate Moon Day

The best Moon Day activities make space tangible, invite wonder, and connect that wonder to our Heavenly Father.

Here are some of the things I do to celebrate:

Look at the moon. Pull out the binoculars or a small telescope, take a drive outside the city, and simply look at the moon. I like to point out specific features to my kids and wonder what it would be like to walk on or around them.

Watch the Eagle landing. This year we’re going to watch a full documentary, but even in years we don’t, we’ll usually watch a five-minute clip of the first humans walking on the moon. It never fails to inspire some awe. 

Build a moon, lander, or rocket craft. We’ve made papier-mâché moons, built popsicle-stick-and-aluminum-foil landers, drawn pictures of an imagined world, and simply made rocket ships out of LEGO bricks to show how we would go to Mars, or Europa, or another location in space.

Learn about moon phases. We’ve used basketballs, tennis balls, and flashlights to show how the moon phases work. Sometimes we’ll draw the moon phases, or this year we’re carving them out of the icing inside an Oreo.

Go to the museum, observatory, or planetarium. Look up where you can go with your kids to learn more about space. My family often goes to our local community college planetarium to watch a show for Moon Day. 

Moon dinner. Our family does our scripture study at dinnertime, so I usually focus on verses like those I shared above for that day’s study. We also usually eat something like pizzas, meatballs, or crescent rolls for dinner. One year, we set up a picture of the moon and made pancakes, and then the children used various toppings to decorate their pancakes to look like the moon. 

Turning Our Eyes Up

Human beings are not only problems to be solved. We are minds that seek wonder and truth. We are creators and explorers. Our quest for space honors and trains those intuitions. 

On Moon Day, I think about my children. I want them to understand that our theology pushes us upward and outward and that each new discovery can help us learn more about the God who made it all. 

So on July 20, we remember that human beings once looked up to the moon and learned how to cross the distance. I hope you and your families find wonderful ways to celebrate! Happy Moon Day!

The post Zion’s Gaze: Upward and Outward appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Social media has taught Christians a dangerous half-truth: if you are not using your platform to publicly denounce evil, you are complicit in evil.

I understand that instinct. But in many ways the demand for denunciation does more harm than good.

Sometimes disciples must speak, fight, draw boundaries, protect victims, and use lawful power against corruption. And in some cases, it may even be appropriate to do this on social media.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has boundaries, beliefs, and practices. Members must adhere to them in order to remain in full fellowship. For example, when Alma established the Church, he received those who repented and removed those who would not. 

But notice who did the removing.

The Lord gives pruning shears to gardeners, not spectators. The internet is not a bishop’s office. A pile-on is not a membership council. And public humiliation is not church discipline. The loudest person in the room is rarely the person with stewardship.

We see this sometimes when Latter-day Saints confuse the Church’s public communications with the Church itself. Imagine the Church is a house. There is certainly a door, represented by baptismal interview questions. And those inside the house can be escorted out. But digital communications is the porch. Its role is to be inviting and welcoming. That should not be the entire function of the house, but that is the function of the porch. 

And in the ministry of Christ, the function of the porch is clear: to welcome everyone. Yes, He also called people to repentance, and yes, not everyone was fit to be counted among His disciples. But first, everyone was invited. 

So how should we use our voices in social media spaces when we feel like boundaries of faithfulness are being broken? 

The scriptures present two different paths. I discussed this in some detail in a 2022 essay. 

Christ taught the parable of the wheat and tares, teaching that we don’t need to pluck out the tares from the wheat. Rather, we should let them grow together until a final reckoning. This aligns with Paul’s later instructions suggesting that the Lord’s servants should not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone. And the faithful in Lehi’s vision did not engage with those in the great and spacious building, but “heeded them not.”

But in another parable, Christ taught that His servants are blessed for remaining watchful at night to stop a potential thief. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ also told His followers to watch for wolves in sheep’s clothing. Paul similarly taught that members of the Church should “mark” those who use “smooth talk” to create division. And the Anti-Nephi-Lehies were praised as “more wise” for expelling Korihor from Jershon.

The distinction appears to be whether the individual is merely present or attempting to influence others. The tares do not directly harm the growth of the wheat when they mingle together in the field. But the thief does harm the home. And the distinction for Paul appears to be whether the individual is harming the body of Christ or not. 

The question, then, is not whether we should fight or be complicit. The better question is: What action is faithful in a given circumstance?

If time and resources were unlimited, fighting every injustice and wrongdoing we come across might have merit. But they’re not. And often, the more fruitful work is disengaging from online controversy and focusing on building our families and our wards.

This calculus can become complicated for people who are themselves building platforms and seeking audience engagement and buy-in. In that space, “stirring up” people is the bread and butter of algorithm bait.

In the Book of Mormon, Satan is forever stirring people up—stirring them up to anger, fear, pride, and resentment. Prophets, on the other hand, spent much less time telling the faithful to panic about enemies and boundaries.

In our social media spaces, we can oppose evil and still become useful to it. We can drive feelings of grievance, division, fear, and anger. Confident disciples can be fierce without being frantic. We can choose our ground where we can make a real difference in the world. We can understand our role and our sphere of influence. And we can refuse to let our enemies dictate the disposition of our spirits.

Roles are important here. The gospel commands mercy and justice, but not always from the same person. When I am insulted, my role is to turn the other cheek, and Christ’s is to provide justice. But when I’m responsible for someone’s safety, my role may require more direct and immediate intervention. Parents, bishops, congregants, social media influencers, apostles, and Church communications specialists each play different roles in the kingdom of God’s larger mission. When we demand that communications specialists act like apostles, or when social media influencers take it upon themselves to act like bishops, we are ultimately making it more difficult for the work of God to move forward.

Paul teaches a similar principle to the Corinthians in his extended metaphor comparing the church to a body. He says that if eyes were trying to be ears the body wouldn’t function. And in his follow-up epistle he explains that we should remain, “within the limits of the sphere which God appointed us.”

Evil, for all its swagger, is parasitic. It creates nothing. It steals, corrupts, and consumes. The Gadianton robbers survived only while there were productive Nephites to steal from. Once good Nephites disappeared, so did the robbers. 

Goodness works differently. It generates. It feeds, heals, teaches, builds, shelters, ministers, and multiplies. Its most important work is quiet. But it produces the kind of durable realities that evil simply cannot manufacture. 

That doesn’t mean evil is bound to disappear any time soon. In fact, we know it will disappear only in the end times. And in the meantime, it crushes people. Protection, law, boundaries, and discipline are necessary. 

But to come back to our initial metaphor, pruning should be done by a gardener. A wise gardener understands the importance of pruning, but also doesn’t overreact and harm the overall integrity of the plant. Most gardening isn’t pruning, after all; it’s watering, feeding, strengthening, and waiting. 

Building the Church is the same. 

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Foster care, at its core, is meant to protect children. But it only comes into play after something has already started to fall apart.

In other words, foster care is an intervention, not a preventive measure, and the foster system steps in when families can no longer safely stay together. Understanding foster care this way changes the questions we should ask. Instead of considering only how we can improve the foster care system, we should also ask how families and communities can help ensure fewer children ever need it.

National data show that neglect is by far the top reason children enter foster care. In 2024, neglect accounted for 55% of U.S. child removals. While every family’s circumstances are different, this trend often reflects more than the failures of individual parents. In many cases, it also reveals the absence of the extended family, trusted neighbors, and community support that can help struggling families before crises escalate.

For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that absence isn’t just a social concern, but a spiritual one. It reveals a gap in the kind of covenant responsibility that calls people to notice and care for one another before a crisis begins. This gap can be an uncomfortable truth to face, especially when children are involved, but it is not a problem we should ignore.

Safety vs. Continuity

Removing a child from an unsafe home can save a life. But the act of removing a child can itself cause trauma. Children develop their sense of safety and identity through steady, consistent relationships. When even short separations occur, children’s emotional development and sense of security can suffer. For many foster youth, the loss of family means lost history and belonging too. Imagine a child who only knows a series of foster homes. No “hometown” and no consistent siblings around the dinner table. To this child, a new foster house is just another stop, which cannot truly feel like a home.  

Foster parents frequently provide extraordinary care, offering children patience, structure, and real stability—often more than the child has ever encountered. These efforts genuinely matter, and foster parents’ willingness to open their homes and create placements that make kids who land there feel safe should be celebrated.

While foster care provides physical safety and opportunities for healing, it often cannot act as a complete substitute for the continuity of family, history, and community that children need to thrive. Even in the best placements, the child’s life is unavoidably interrupted in some way, which doesn’t always resolve when a child grows up.​

The Echoes Into Adulthood

Many adults who grew up in foster care carry effects of separation throughout their lives. While unique to each individual who experiences the foster system, questions about origin often remain years later—not all of which are about pain. Some are quieter than that, more about identity than injury, because understanding where we come from is part of understanding who we are. 

Who do I look like?

Why did this happen the way it did?

Do I have siblings somewhere who don’t know I exist?

​For some, these questions lead to years of searching for their biological family—trying to put together their story, just to confirm that they came from somewhere real, that there were people who knew them before the system did. And, with all they have faced, adults in this position may not know where to begin, nor have the tools or resources to go about a search like this.

There are entire organizations, networks, and services that help former foster youth reconnect with biological relatives: DNA testing kits, reunion registries, people-search databases, and even internet groups where adults search for siblings they were separated from in childhood.

That should tell us something about the lack of identity foster alumni face. They’re not only looking for information, but are trying to recover a perception of identity, find belonging, and looking for a bond that was never replaced, and often can’t be replaced—at least, not fully. But answers can help. 

Kinship Care

As of 2024, over 40% of foster children in the United States are placed with relatives or close family friends. These placements, referred to as kinship care, are no longer a marginal alternative. Kinship placements often preserve something the system itself cannot duplicate, as children placed with relatives experience greater placement stability, fewer school disruptions, and better educational results than those placed with non-relative foster families. They are also more likely to maintain connections to siblings, cultural heritage, and extended family networks.

These outcomes show that children benefit not simply from being cared for, but from remaining connected to people who already know them. 

Kinship care reveals both the strength and the limits of the system. When aspects of family networks remain, children are often buffered from some of the worst disruptions that accompany removal. And when those networks are unsupported, even kinship placements strain under pressure.

This shifts the conversation in an important direction. Improving foster care will always matter, but so will strengthening the relationships that make kinship care possible before families reach a breaking point.

Systems vs. Relationships

Unfortunately, any system large enough to make an impact must function at scale, which changes what care looks like in practice. Decisions must be documented, legal standards consistently applied, and thousands of cases managed across communities with very different circumstances, sometimes by people who have never met each other or the families they’re deciding about. Children can become part of a process, and families can become case files. That framework is necessary, but often it is too far removed to resolve all issues at hand.

The people within that system often do remarkable work. Caseworkers regularly carry overwhelming caseloads while navigating heartbreaking situations, and foster parents open their homes to children they have never met. Their compassion and sacrifice deserve recognition, and without the structure, the inconsistency would cause different harm.

Even so, caseworkers are still operating inside a framework that wasn’t designed to center relationships and personalize outcomes. It was designed to manage risk. Those aren’t the same goal, and the gap between them shows up in ways that are hard to measure but easier to feel.

No public institution can build the kind of lifelong relationships that children need to flourish. Systems, by design, cannot replace relationships, or create a sense of belonging that a human needs. This limitation is not a failure of foster care, but reflects the reality that the foster care system is designed to respond to broken relationships, not to replace them.

And that raises a more difficult question.

What is the Goal?

If relationships are what children ultimately need, why are they so often missing before the system has to intervene? When a family starts to fall apart, there are often few people close enough to notice. And fewer still who feel like it’s their place to say anything.

Perhaps that is the harder challenge foster care exposes. The child welfare system exists because some relationships have already broken down. 

The goal isn’t to get rid of foster care, or to diminish the extraordinary work of foster parents or caseworkers, who often step into unimaginably difficult circumstances with compassion and sacrifice. Rather, it recognizes that they are being asked to repair losses that began long before they arrived. The foster system is necessary, and when homes become unsafe, it can save children’s lives. But we can appreciate the foster system while still understanding its limits— foster care was never meant to bear the full weight of meaningful, personal family connection. That work belongs to families, neighbors, and communities willing to know one another well enough to notice hardship before it becomes tragedy. 

We are stewards of one another, called to notice and act in the ordinary moments of life. 

For Latter-day Saints, this idea should feel familiar: people are responsible for one another not just in principle, but through everyday care and paying attention to each other’s struggles. It starts with whether we’re willing to be the kind of families, neighbors, and communities that don’t disappear when things get hard.

Because once relationships get replaced by systems, you can manage the outcome. But you can’t recover what was lost. And the people who know that best are the ones still looking.

Ultimately, the goal isn’t to eliminate foster care but to create communities in which fewer children ever need it. Gospel teachings compel us to act early. This might include mentoring a child, noticing neighbors in need, supporting grandma raising grandkids, or becoming a licensed foster parent. By supporting at-risk youth, we can help ensure that the day a caseworker knocks on a door never comes. 

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Everyone says children come first.

Courts say it. Legislatures say it. Divorce lawyers say it. Parents say it. Spend any time in or around family law or family courts, and you cannot avoid hearing people talk about “the best interests of the child.”

But in practice, children only matter after the adults have already made all the decisions that matter most.

I thought this reality was aptly summed up in a statement by a local candidate for a family court judgeship. The candidate wrote that she would support the rights of mothers and fathers, and parenthetically added, “of course, children come first.” 

We say children come first, but as in this candidate’s statement, the phrase is used like an incantation: If we say it enough, it will absolve us of the fact that we don’t truly believe or practice it.

In the current no-fault divorce legal regime, a court can dissolve a child’s intact legal family even if there is no damage being done to anyone. The child does not need to be found unsafe. No parent needs to be found unfit. There doesn’t need to be abuse, abandonment, adultery, cruelty, addiction, or family dysfunction. A child’s family, on which the child depends, can be taken from the child merely because a parent feels like it. And no one else in that child’s life can protect the child from the consequences of that choice: not the other parent, nor the current legal system.

That legal structure makes sense when the only interest at stake is adult autonomy. But when minor children are involved, the legal act is not merely an adult exiting a private romantic relationship; it is a state decree that restructures the child’s family, home, time, finances, identity, and access to the child’s parents. 

How can the state strip so much from a citizen, without that citizen having any legal pathway to help fight for him or herself? Doesn’t a child have any rights?

The Fourteenth Amendment and Family-Integrity Doctrine

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is the constitutional principle that a state cannot take something from you (whether that’s freedom or a fine) unless there is a process in place for you to try to defend yourself.

But while it’s usually thought of in terms of protecting property or courtroom procedure, due process has long been read to protect the substance of fundamental liberty interests, including family relationships. 

But family integrity is not only a parental right. The child is also a person who has the right to family integrity as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Perhaps the clearest description of this principle appears in a 1982 case. The State of New York had terminated a parent’s parental rights to a child. The Supreme Court found that New York acted improperly because it did not recognize “the child and his parents shared a vital interest” in preventing the destruction of their family.

The American Bar Association recently described the child’s constitutional right to family integrity as a fundamental right rooted primarily in the Fourteenth Amendment, though some courts locate it in the First Amendment’s freedom of association. 

Divorce Is State Action

If a child has a constitutional interest in preserving family relationships when the state acts through child welfare law, why should that interest disappear when the state acts through divorce law?

The bottom line is that there is no good reason.

No-fault divorce is not a private act. It is the state intervening in a private relationship to allow one spouse’s preferences to affect the entire family unit.

A marriage is not dissolved by private act, but by court order. The state changes the legal status, divides marital property, and allocates how children will be shuttled back and forth between homes.

When a court uses public authority to dismantle the legal structure of a child’s intact family, the Fourteenth Amendment should have something to say about the process and the justification required. 

This does not mean that the Constitution must forbid divorce in families with children, nor that an individual should be required to stay in a marriage he or she wishes to leave. It does mean that when states choose how they will dissolve marriages where minor children are involved, they should not be able to treat that dissolution as purely an adult entitlement.

Custody as a Secondary Determination

Modern divorce law claims to protect children through custody and “best interest” determinations. But that application of children’s rights arrives too late.

At this stage, the courts do not consider what happens when the child no longer has a primary residence, nor do they consider the negative academic or behavioral outcomes. 

In my opinion, that is a constitutional error. 

Custody law asks: After divorce, where should the children go?

A Fourteenth Amendment family-integrity analysis would ask a prior question: What must the state prove before it allows the dissolution of the child’s intact legal family in the first place?

The child’s interests are considered, but only after the decisive constitutional injury has been allowed.

Parental Autonomy and Children’s Rights

Children should not get to decide whether their parents stay married. That is obviously true. They do not get to command their parents’ emotions. They do not get to force marital affection or fidelity. 

Children should not be able to imprison their parents in miserable or dangerous relationships.

That is not what this argument claims or attempts to implement. 

Recognizing a child’s right to family integrity does not give any control over the parent at all, only the state. It means the state must justify its legal act before dissolving something the child depends on. Constitutional rights often limit what the government may do without giving the rights-holder total control. A criminal defendant’s due process rights do not mean he controls the prosecutor. 

A child’s right to family integrity would not mean the child controls the marriage. Just that when we say children come first, we actually consider them first, not last.

There is an irony in the “children should not decide” objection. In no-fault divorce, the child is also not deciding. But no-fault divorce allows it without requiring both parents to agree. In some cases, one parent is deciding singlehandedly, while the children and the other parent are left helpless.

The parent who wishes to preserve the best arrangement for the child is left with no additional rights or resources to provide the child with ongoing stability. That parent is instead treated as no different from the parent who chose to dissolve the child’s family.

The Effect of Miserable Marriages on Children

Another important objection is that children are not helped by forcing parents who hate each other to remain married. Again, recognizing a child’s Fourteenth Amendment rights does not require this.

If the family environment is indeed harmful, the law can say so. If the children are being hurt by their current family system, then let that be proven, not assumed.

And again, recognizing children’s rights does not prevent a parent from exercising a new preference; it only determines how the law treats the parent who does. 

No-fault divorce treats grave harm, ordinary unhappiness, boredom, domestic violence, personal reinvention, and adultery the same. That is administratively efficient. But constitutional rights are often inconvenient. The Due Process Clause exists precisely to prevent efficiency from overcoming important individual rights.

The law already knows how to make these kinds of distinctions. 

Why Has Divorce Law Not Integrated This Right?

There are several reasons why this constitutional principle has, to date, not been integrated into divorce law.

First, divorce has historically been framed as a dispute between adults. The only listed parties are the spouses. The pleadings are filed by adults; the adults have the lawyers. Children only enter the case as subjects for custodial findings, not as independent constitutional persons. 

Second, the family-integrity doctrine has been developed within the context of child welfare cases, not divorce cases. Courts use the Fourteenth Amendment when the state removes a child from one parent or terminates parental rights. While divorce does functionally remove a child from at least one parent at least some of the time, no-fault divorces have never been held to the same standard.

Third, courts can mistake the “best interests of the child” analysis for the application of the child’s constitutional rights. But the “best interests” standard is usually a statutory standard. It gives judges discretion, but only after the family is already divided. 

Fourth, the law treats parental autonomy as asymmetrical. In non-divorce contexts, the state presumes that fit parents will act in their children’s best interests. But in no-fault divorce, the state effectively allows one parent to singlehandedly override the family-integrity interests of the child, while the parent acting in the child’s interests is effectively sidelined. 

Fifth, legislatures and judges fear the alternative. They worry, reasonably, that requiring a higher standard for divorce will revive ugly fault litigation, trap abused spouses, or invite children to be weaponized. Those are real concerns, and they should be addressed. But they are reasons to design better procedures, not reasons to pretend the child has no constitutional interests.

What the Law Could Require

An approach to divorce law that recognizes children’s Fourteenth Amendment rights would not abolish divorce. It would create a separate track for divorces involving minor children.

The law could still permit immediate separation, protective orders, emergency custody orders, and expedited divorce where abuse, violence, abandonment, or serious danger is shown. And it should. 

But there are many ways that states could reorganize their divorce laws to structurally protect children’s families and encourage parents to choose to stay within their marriage.

I’ve outlined one option I describe as “abandonment divorce.” In this structure, a parent could always choose to abandon the marriage, respecting that parent’s autonomy, if there is no other cause for the divorce, but that choice would be determinative in distributing marital assets and determining child custody, providing the children with the support and stability that they currently lack in the wake of this decision. It would also include a channel for filing for a divorce when it is in fact in the children’s best interests.

At a minimum, any solution should require a restructuring of incentives so that parents are legally incentivized to try to preserve a happy marriage. And it should recognize the child’s rights before a divorce is granted, not merely after. 

The Core Constitutional Error

The mistake in no-fault divorce is not that it lets people leave marriages they are unhappy in. It’s that it provides no legal incentive not to. 

It treats a child’s family as something that the child has no constitutional interest in preserving. 

But whatever divorce laws states create, they should require courts to see the child before they act. 

If family integrity is a constitutional right, then divorce law cannot treat children as merely a downstream custody problem. They are more than passengers in their parents’ litigation. They are whole persons with distinct rights, whose lives are being reordered by a state power that didn’t even think about them first.

Everyone says children come first. Let’s create a divorce regime that actually believes it. 

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I sometimes wonder if some Latter-day Saints—myself included—are a little too casual about the truth of eternal families. Perhaps we are a little too comfortable with this doctrine, taking it for granted and rarely feeling the awe it should inspire. Is it possible that sometimes we are even under condemnation for treating this sacred doctrine too lightly?

“The Family: A Proclamation to the World” boldly articulates the doctrine that the family is an eternal and divine unit originating with a divine heritage:

Each [of us] is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. … The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for . . . families to be united eternally.

The fact that our families can be eternal, not just mortal, is one of God’s greatest gifts to those who choose the covenant path. One reason for this is that difficult life circumstances, both historically and in the present, have often made it hard to fully realize our aspirations for our marital and family relationships in this life. Eternity can give us the “time” and “space” we lacked in mortality to build the deep and loving bonds we yearn for. 

When Mortal Life Ends Too Soon

For most of human history, the specter of death haunted family relationships. The very act of bringing life into the world was fraught with mortal danger; the risk of death for women from multiple pregnancies was much higher than it is today. I see this phenomenon reflected in my own genealogical records. I have great-great-grandparents who lost each of their first four children within a few days of birth. The promise of eternal family relationships must be especially sweet to our ancestors who often had precious little time together in this mortal life.

And it’s not just children who leave us early. My ancestor Lydia lost a beloved husband. After Lydia’s conversion in the early days of the restored Church, she met Newel Knight in Kirtland, where he was laboring to build the temple. Lydia married Newel, and their marriage helped to bring her out of a deep depression from the early death of her first child and abandonment by her abusive first husband. Before leaving Nauvoo in that cold winter of 1846, Lydia and Newel were sealed as an eternal family in the half-finished Nauvoo Temple. But a year later, in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, Newel became deathly ill while living in a dugout hillside shelter. Lydia pleaded with the Lord to heal her beloved husband, as He had raised her from her deathbed on two previous occasions. But no miraculous healing was granted, and Newel begged Lydia to let him go. She relented, and Newel soon died, leaving Lydia, who was pregnant with their seventh child, and six children. The hope of an eternal reunion for Newel and Lydia after a mortal marriage cut short is another reason we can appreciate the gift that our families can continue in eternity.

These experiences remind me that I don’t want family relationships to be reduced to memories. Memories are mechanisms to bridge the time until we can experience those relationships again, coupled with eternal glory.

What Eternity Still May Repair

In my studies of the social history of families, the concept of romantic marriage, although present in many cultures throughout history, was not a pervasive cultural expectation until the 19th century, when Lydia and Newel married. The conditions of marriage and family life throughout much of human history gave many couples little chance of becoming one as we understand it today. Will their eternal lives be a continuation of the relational austerity of their mortal circumstances? I don’t think so. I sense that beyond mortality they will enjoy the blessing of building the warmth, affection, and oneness with one another that too often had to remain a distant priority in their mortal lives. As I perform proxy ordinance work on behalf of ancestors, I can better appreciate what this work could mean to them, and how it can facilitate building exalted family relationships.

I remember a comment my father made many years ago upon the death of my grandmother, a few years after my grandfather had passed away. He said he hoped they would now find the intimacy and warmth that eluded them in the difficult circumstances of their mortal life together.

In our modern times, too, life’s circumstances can make it difficult to become fully one in marriage. I have met spouses who, having discovered that they did not marry Prince or Princess Charming, still choose each day to treat each other as a person of divine heritage and destiny. Out of such actions come the blessings of heaven and deeper feelings of love. Mortality for us—and for our ancestors—is fragile and hard. Marriage is hard, too. I believe this is by design. Our greatest growth comes from gaining the Christlike virtues demanded by the intimacy and constancy of living with the imperfect person we are bound to. I am grateful that we, like our ancestors, will have eternity to overcome imperfections and deepen our marital love. With such hope in mind, I don’t want to be casual about my faith in eternal family relationships.

Binding the Generations

A few years ago, my wife, Lisa, and I went to the temple to seal her father to her mother and herself to both parents. Lisa’s parents divorced when she was young, and she had a very strained relationship with her father. But Lisa was elated to do this temple work. She wasn’t focused on her parents, however, who are unlikely to accept the marriage sealing ordinance offered to them. Instead, she was thrilled to complete the links of the chain of her family’s generations, to be linked as an eternal family to her ancestors. As a convert to the faith, Lisa had, from her earliest years as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, faithfully devoted herself to family history research and temple work for as many of her ancestors as she could find. Now, she is connected to them in an eternal family unit. This has brought tangible joy to her soul.

A brief caveat as I conclude: I know that some feel ambivalent about eternal family relationships. Perhaps you have experienced neglect or serious abuse from a spouse, parent, or sibling, and you don’t yearn for an eternal connection. I don’t pretend that I have the perfect helping words to say. But maybe I can just offer this perspective. First, agency is an eternal, overriding doctrine. All family relationships in eternity will be freely chosen. And I also believe that the healing powers of heaven are powerful and can bring sincere understanding, repentance, forgiveness, and healing, leading to an eternal, perfected love that is hard to achieve in our mortal lives.

Eternal family relationships are a beautiful truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Even in a time when fewer children die in infancy, and many married couples enjoy prosperous circumstances that facilitate intimacy, we can all be more grateful for the blessings of eternal family relationships and exalted love.

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