In the “culture wars” being waged in the United States these days, one of the rhetorical weapons is the term “woke.” Many of the left are proudly woke. Many on the right decry wokeness. Many others—perhaps the majority—may not be sure what the term means. 

So, let’s start with definitions.

Or does “woke” describe the attempt by people on the left to impose their ideology on everyone else, either through public policy or pressure on private institutions and businesses? That’s how conservatives have redefined the term, usually with some contempt and derision toward those they accuse of “virtue signaling,” a public displaying of wokeness to demonstrate one’s presumed moral superiority.

Both definitions can be accurate, depending on the situation.

We can understand wokeness in a positive sense, following Lead Belly. Should people who are at the bottom of various social hierarchies stay woke? That certainly seems sensible, given the way people in power so often work to maintain those hierarchies, even though they may publicly pledge to pursue the goal of equity. Should a black driver who gets stopped by a police officer be awake to patterns of the disproportionate use of force against African Americans? That seems like good advice, not because all cops are abusive in every encounter but because some people are at greater risk. And if vulnerable people should stay woke out of self-interest, it would be appropriate for people in dominant positions in the hierarchies to strive to be woke out of solidarity.

Here’s an example of the complexity that will be familiar to many readers. During a meeting, some participants will preface a statement with phrases such as “As an indigenous man” or “As a black woman.” Sometimes, those details help others understand their comment, but some speakers use their identity to suggest that critique from white people or men, or both, is out of bounds and that their analysis is beyond challenge. 

Experience matters in how we understand the world, but it doesn’t guarantee one has the best argument. As I repeatedly told students, their experience may be the starting point for an analysis, but simply recounting their experience isn’t an analysis. If those kinds of identity invocations shut down a conversation, everyone loses. That doesn’t mean that hierarchies don’t exist or that oppression is acceptable. It simply recognizes that some people can derail important conversations by implicitly claiming that some other people cannot challenge their statements.

If this critique seems suspect coming from me, an older white guy, consider the analysis of Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, which describes him as “a nationally recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice.” In an essay widely circulated on the left, Mitchell was blunt: “Identity and position are misused to create a doom loop that can lead to unnecessary ruptures of our political vehicles and the shuttering of vital movement spaces.” On a podcast after the essay was published, he said he has seen identity “being weaponized in ways that were not useful for the work.” He elaborated:

As a black person, it does no favors to me for me to say, “As a black son of immigrants,” and then for white people to sit on their hands and shut up. I need to be sharpened by debate. I might, at the end of the day, think you’re wrong. But I need the back and forth in order to sharpen my position or change my mind.

Where does this leave us? Let’s take the case of race. Some on the right say that racism is no longer a powerful force shaping people’s options. Most on the left argue that racist practices continue, albeit in different forms than in previous eras, and must be addressed in public policy. (I say “most” because some leftists argue that class divisions in capitalism are primary, both in terms of analysis and action.)

Let’s start with potential points of agreement. Everyone should be able to agree that the United States, both in legal and informal ways, has made progress in confronting white supremacy and changing racist practices. Would anyone argue that the United States in 2024 is no different than it was in the pre-civil rights 20th century? I think of this in concrete terms, about the year I was born. Does anyone—anyone who isn’t an overt racist, that is—want to return to the racial dynamics of 1958? 

Yet it’s also true that racialized disparities in measures of wealth and well-being—the statistics that tell us roughly how well people are doing—continue even after changes in law and policy. Given the racist history of the United States and the recent resurgence of openly white supremacist rhetoric, would anyone argue that we have transcended white supremacy in the few decades since the end of legal apartheid? Does anyone want to freeze racial dynamics at this moment in history because it can’t get any better than this? 

How do we sort this out? Too often, too many white people want to deny the lingering racist patterns in virtually every aspect of American life. When those white people are quick to label antiracist activists as overly zealous, that might be part of a denial strategy. It’s fair to ask whether critiques of wokeness might sometimes be a way to divert attention from the enduring nature of white supremacy. 

Yet it’s also reasonable to worry that such zealousness sometimes undermines the difficult work of building coalitions that can advance an antiracist agenda. People with a perceptive critique of white supremacy are people, and people can be arrogant in all sorts of ways. For example, the line between holding someone accountable for a racist comment and berating a well-intentioned person who may not be up-to-date on the latest trends in progressive terminology can be pretty thin. Even the director of a university’s Africana studies program can find himself undermined by a self-righteous student who feels the professor isn’t taking the correct position.

Vincent Lloyd, the Africana studies professor who saw that the seminar he was teaching undermined, offers a perceptive analysis of the situation:

I worry that left political discourse today takes social movements, or even just an individual who has suffered, as conversation stoppers rather than conversation starters. That frustrates me because I firmly believe these movements are the key to our collective liberation. Justice struggles always involve a back-and-forth between movement participants making demands for radical transformation and those in power trying to manage those demands so that they can keep their grip on power. … Those of us who care about justice have to be willing to ask critical questions about these dynamics rather than blindly deferring to the activist language.

I’ll conclude by making the question personal: Am I woke? 

Because I’ve written critically about white supremacy, I have been described as part of the woke mob on racial justice, one of those people who allegedly is ashamed to be white. But I’ve also been shunned in left spaces for my writing on patriarchy, especially my challenges to transgender ideology. 

I have spent my adult life working in journalism and university teaching, endeavors that have provided me a fair amount of freedom to explore a complex world without worrying (for the most part) about who might attack me. I don’t have to worry about how I am labeled.

My concern is that framing intellectual debates as a culture war has been politically corrosive, limiting people’s capacity for democratic engagement. In war, the goal is victory, not deeper understanding. And given how complex the modern world is, we all need to deepen our understanding.

I’m not naïve. I’m not asking, “Can’t we all just get along?” I am suggesting we have an obligation to work at understanding why we don’t always get along.

The post What is Woke? Navigating the Polarization of Social Justice appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

I was somewhat familiar with disorders or differences in sex development, often called intersex conditions. But did these conditions invalidate the assertion that there are only two sexes, as this therapist and many others have claimed? Did they illustrate that sex is far more complicated than most people have believed across cultures and throughout the centuries? Is sex really a social construct that can be altered at will? How could I explain a basic concept that most of us have intuitively understood for as long as we can remember?

 “Over time, people have looked at genitalia, they’ve looked at chromosomes, they look for a specific gene, they’ve looked at testosterone. And what we end up with is the understanding that there’s really no clear-cut definition of sex, because each of these iterations of testing has kind of collapsed under its own weight,” said Jaime Schultz, a professor with Penn State University’s Department of Kinesiology….

“It becomes tricky, because we were so locked into this binary, of either being a man or a woman, that we don’t often appreciate all the nuances within this continuum of sex and gender,” Schultz said.

Amid such confusing, conflicting messages about biological sex, what does science actually tell us? 

Reproductive Roles

The human body is indeed extraordinarily complex. However, the definition of biological sex is not. Biological sex is defined by reproductive roles. A female is someone whose body is organized to produce large gametes; a male is someone whose body is organized to produce small gametes.  There are only two gamete types, eggs (ova) and sperm; therefore, only two reproductive roles and only two sexes. People may have a variety of sex characteristics—some men may have breast development, some women may have facial hair, and so on—but these varieties exist within the two categories of male and female. No one human body is equally organized to produce both eggs and sperm, even if they have some characteristics associated with the opposite sex.

The genetics and developmental pathways that determine sex may be complicated, just as almost all human systems are. However,  the definition and purpose of biological sex are simple, and almost all humans fit neatly into one of the two sex categories. A person’s sex cannot be changed, regardless of surgical procedures and hormone treatments. In other words, the reproductive pathway cannot be shifted in the direction of the other sex.

Disorders of Sexual Development

In rare cases, some individuals have certain disorders of sex development, or DSDs, that make it difficult to determine which sex they are. These conditions have received increased media attention recently because some have suggested that Khelif and Yu-ting, the Olympic boxers, have DSDs. But only .018% of the population are born with an ambiguous sex. These conditions are medical anomalies that do not invalidate the sex binary—just as people born with one or no legs do not invalidate the fact that humans are a two-legged species.

Further, most people with DSDs are still clearly male or female because their bodies are organized to perform one of the two reproductive roles—whether or not they are able to do so successfully. In fact, many DSDs are sex-specific; that is, certain DSDs happen only to females, and others happen only to males. Put another way, DSDs are disruptions to either a male or female developmental pathway, not evidence for separate pathways. For example, individuals with Turner syndrome are female despite having one missing or altered X chromosome instead of XX chromosomes. Individuals with Klinefelter syndrome are male despite having XXY chromosomes instead of XY. 

Let’s look more closely at two rare conditions: 5-alpha reductase deficiency, or 5-ARD, and Swyer syndrome. People born with 5-ARD—the condition that former Olympic runner Caster Semenya has—are born with XY chromosomes and have internal testes. Their bodies lack the ability to convert testosterone to DHT, a hormone that directs the development of male genitalia, and therefore, they often appear female or ambiguous at birth. They are usually deemed female as babies and are raised accordingly. During puberty, their testes release high levels of testosterone, which leads them to develop along a male pathway–with all the advantages in heart and lung capacity and musculoskeletal strength that this confers. Because their bodies are organized to produce small gametes, they are male.

Swyer syndrome leads individuals with XY chromosomes to be born with female genitalia; they appear female throughout their lives. They do not have functional ovaries or testes and, therefore, do not produce ova, sperm, or sex hormones. As most have uteruses, some individuals with Swyer have been able to gestate through assisted reproduction involving donated fertilized eggs. Because their bodies are organized to produce eggs, even though they are functionally unable to do so, individuals with this disorder are female. 

DSDs are real and complicated medical anomalies in sexual development. However, 99.98% of the population are clearly male or female, with XY or XX chromosomes that align with their sex and with anatomy that develops accordingly. 

People have appropriated individuals with DSDs to support the idea that sex is not binary and is complicated for everyone. They claim that since sex isn’t binary, various and multiplying gender identities reflect that underlying biological complexity. But these are two different concepts. DSDs are observable, objective medical conditions, while gender identities are based on feelings that may be strong but are subjective and have no discernible biological cause. Most people with DSDs do not identify as transgender, and most trans-identifying people do not have DSDs. And if a trans-identifying person has ever conceived, gestated, or fathered a child, we know, without a doubt, what his or her biological sex is.

Biological Sex Matters 

Why is an accurate understanding of biological sex so crucial? Blurring the meaning of biological sex has many ramifications. 

Physical and emotional safety. In general, males have significantly more physical strength than women do; this is even true for males before puberty. This physical difference is an important reason women and men need separate categories and spaces in some contexts. Males who compete against females in many sports may put females at risk of grave injury, in addition to taking opportunities away from females.

Both physical and emotional safety need to be protected, particularly when girls and women are in vulnerable situations such as sleeping or in states of undress. A 12-year-old girl who has just started menstruating will not feel comfortable addressing that while a male, who will never have that experience,  is in the next bathroom stall. Similarly, many women will not feel safe in changing rooms with males, particularly if they have experienced sexual assault in the past.

Health care. Clearly, understanding sex differences has implications for health care. Because males and females have different bodies, they have different needs. They metabolize certain drugs differently, may have different dietary needs, and are at different risks for some medical conditions.

Further, individuals who take opposite-sex hormones face risks to their health. For males, these risks include cerebrovascular disease (such as stroke) and decreased bone density. For females, risks include vaginal atrophy and possibly type 2 diabetes. Both males and females are at risk of infertility and cardiovascular events. Their bodies are not made for the hormone levels they are taking.

Family formation and reproduction. Knowing what it means to be male or female affects our understanding of families and relationships. The union of a male and a female—whether naturally or through reproductive technology—is required for the conception of every human being on the planet. Indeed, males and females form the foundation for families, the basic unit of society. Male and female differentiation is required for civilization to continue. 

Finally, at the most fundamental level, understanding biological sex keeps us grounded in reality. This is particularly true for children. Increasingly, children and young people are taught ideas that come from queer theory, which posits that norms should be dismantled, categories such as “male” and “female” are oppressive, and feelings are more important than material reality. They are told that truth is relative; there is “my truth” and “your truth” rather than “the truth.” All of this can be confusing and destabilizing for impressionable young people.

Biological sex is real; it is not subjective, and its purpose is connected to our role as parents—whether we live those roles now or in the future. Disorders of sex development do not disprove the sex binary, nor do transgender identities. We should respond with compassion and sensitivity to those who experience challenges in these areas, recognizing that adults have the right to make choices for their lives. But sex exists regardless of whether it is recognized as such. If we reject reality, “we become hostages to chaos,” as evolutionary biologist Colin Wright has said. To engage productively with the world as it is and to preserve our own emotional health as well as the stability of society in general, we must be able to clearly discern what is real—including the reality of biological sex.

The post The Simple Truth about Biological Sex appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Public Square Magazine: I would really love to hear a bit about your backstory and how you came to form this organization as well as its mission and purpose. 

Brian Grim: I was working at the PEW research center and developed measures for religious freedom for countries around the world. PEW has carried that on for the last few years since I started it in 2006 or something like that. Once I measured religious freedom or restrictions on religious freedom coming from either governments or social constructs, then I could see how it relates to other things like sustainable development, global competitiveness, and GDP growth. What I found was that where you have more religious freedom, you have more of the good things. You have more of other kinds of freedoms, fewer conflicts, more peace, more economic progress, sustainable development, and so forth. As a person of faith, I looked at that and thought, “This is a good argument for religious freedom.” Not just for people of faith, but people without a religion or faith. Religious freedom covers everyone’s right to believe, change their belief, or have no belief at all. I thought that someone should be working on this and I felt like it was a call from God for me to leave PEW and start the foundation to start making that case. We look for ways for businesses to be an ally in a culture where everyone is respected, everyone belongs, and their beliefs and faiths are included just like other identities. 

PSM: It seems like you are noticing that there is a lot of talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, specifically within business. What I’m hearing you say is, “Yes, diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and religion is included in that, and if so, how can we create an environment for all of these things to coexist, which promotes better business? Do I have that right? 

Brian: Yeah, that’s right. Diversity is just a fact. You are either diverse or not diverse. Equity is something that you work towards. Inclusion you have to work towards. All of those things are aimed so people belong. Many people call it DEIB—diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. That’s really the objective. It’s not just a ‘tick-box’ phenomenon and saying, “Okay, we have this many of that kind of person,” or “Make sure we have that group covered.” It’s nothing like that; it’s making sure everyone belongs. Religion is one of those protected categories by law that needs to be accommodated.

However, many companies for many years said that they would not do religion or politics. There are things that you don’t talk about at the dinner table. They thought that the separation of church and state also applied at a business level. That does not actually make sense, though, if you are trying to create an environment where people feel like they can bring their whole ‘self’ to work. It used to be that you had to leave your faith and your belief at the door, but you come in and feel like you don’t belong. That is a business cost. If you have an environment where people of faith feel like they can’t be themselves, they are going to look for a workplace where they can. 

Companies are realizing they are losing people because there are some companies that have embraced faith as part of their diversity. There are companies that have excluded religion from their DEI initiatives, and they only have to lose a few important people before they realize this is a business cost. But it can actually be a business benefit. It’s attractive; you can recruit people because they want to work in a space where they can belong. It’s good, not only for recruitment but for retention as well. If you are in a place where you feel valued, you are going to want to stay. It not only increases motivation and commitment but it creates an understanding and networks which the business can benefit from. If you have a company that is in India and you have no idea what Hinduism is about, you are at a business disadvantage. Or if you are going to work in Utah, but you know nothing about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you will be at a business disadvantage because that is a big part of the culture. It is hard to do if you are denying that religion has any importance or anything to do with what it means to bring your whole self to work. 

PSM: Yeah, I really appreciate that perspective. Could you tell me a bit about what that looks like on your end of things? How do you approach businesses? What are they looking for from you? How do you help educate them on this? 

Brian: Really our goal at the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation is to shine a light on the work that has already been done in best practices. I don’t view myself as the person coming up with the ideas or creating this. There has been real pioneering work done by companies around this concept, like American Airlines, Intel, Ford, American Express, Texas Instruments, and a number of other companies. They have been including religion as a part of their diversity for over 20 years. 

So, really, what we are trying to do is to start recognizing this and sharing their stories and what they are doing. Additionally, we also have a benchmarking index we created called the religious, equity, diversity, and inclusion index or the REDI index, which allows companies to benchmark their progress. Here, we give awards to companies that are on that journey, and it gives voice and visibility to what is going on within the companies. Of course, when I work with these companies, I learn a lot, and I can see what best practices are so that I get a good knowledge base. But the knowledge base that is the most important is the people in these companies and connecting them. It’s really a movement now. That’s how it spreads from one company to another. American Express has helped more than 50 other companies to start including religion as a part of their diversity. 

You wouldn’t think that companies would share it with other companies, but the people who are involved in the inner workings of the company believe so much in this concept that they want to spread this knowledge around. So that is what our foundation does, it provides a venue for people to meet and get to know one another from different companies, share best practices, recognize them through awards, and collect information to share and make that available to as wide an audience as possible. 

PSM: That is cool. I didn’t know that American Express and some of these other companies have been doing that for so long. It’s so cool that you are trying to bring this in. My other question is, a lot of companies now have seen some negative side effects of DEIs, and some companies have stepped away from that, have you noticed that as well? Or how has it impacted your work? 

Brian: I have seen the exact opposite in the category of faith. So, in addition to the REDI index, we also do the REDI monitor, where we monitor Fortune 500 companies’ diversity web pages. Every year for the past five years, we have gone in and coded up their web pages in terms of mentioning or illustrating religion, and if so, do they give additional details of what they are doing to include religion as part of diversity and can you click down and find more information. The more things they disclose on their diversity web page in the area of religion then the more points they get. What we have found in the last 2 years is that the number of companies that do this in the Fortune 500 companies has increased from 202 to more than 400. So it has doubled in the number of companies that are including religion as part of their diversity inclusion. Now, the majority of Fortune 500 companies are including this. 

Your next question should be, “Well, why is that?” I can’t say exactly, but there are two things. One, not only those companies that have been doing it for more than 20 years, but other companies like Google, PayPal, and Salesforce, have really stepped in and been really active in the last 5-7 years, and other companies are noticing. Once you have name-brand companies, then these newer companies are coming in and it creates a movement. Now, it’s not impossible to implement. Some have thought that it would be illegal or impossible to include religious diversity because they have assumed that diversity is about making sure that you have X amount of women, people of color, and so on. Saying that you need X number of Christians or Muslims or people of other religions does not make any sense and is actually discrimination. Religious inclusion is about making people feel that their faith and identity are welcome. 

PSM: What I’m hearing you say is that instead of stepping away from DEI, it is becoming even more all-encompassing. Like how can we broaden our horizons even more? My follow-up question is that many of these different groups that a person can identify with have differing beliefs and ways of living life. How have you noticed that within a work setting? Do you find that with more acceptance and more inclusion, they are able to navigate those different beliefs within a company? Or does it feel more difficult in different ways to manage? 

Brian: What happens inside a company is a beautiful model for what could happen to our society. What happens is that they talk about making space so that we can celebrate the uniqueness of each of our identities without having to water down what we believe. So they provide some guardrails. One is that it is not about proselytizing, this is not about dogma, but it is about celebrating the holidays and the religious events or commemorating other events that are important. It is about helping people understand what a Muslim believes, what Zoroastrians believe and practice, and what’s the difference between a Seventh-day Adventist and a Jehovah’s Witness, they are very different. It’s about understanding these differences and providing community so people can feel like they belong and then working together in ways that make sense. 

For example, Dell has an interfaith employee resource group, but they have faith pillars like Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and so forth that are like chapters. But, they had an idea to do a global freedom initiative to combat human trafficking. As they had that idea as an interfaith group, they realized it was not just for people of faith. Every community is affected by human trafficking. So they reached out to the black group, the LGBT+ group, the veterans group, the abilities group, and all the different groups in Dell to collaborate, and they did a global initiative to train all Dell employees where they learned how to spot human trafficking and what to do. So right there is an example of how when you bring faith in, it’s like living the golden rule, “do unto others what they should do unto you,” is being put to practice. We should do something about human trafficking and global hunger; these issues unite groups. We don’t see this resulting in conflict; we see it resulting in collaboration and joint service. 

PSM: That seems to be a beautiful thing. 

Brian: It is! It’s very encouraging. I, of course, go around and speak about this in different settings. Especially when you get to religious freedom, people are so surprised because they are so used to hearing about all the problems in the world. There are, but this is a very bright light because it is opening a space where faith is welcome, and then these companies engage and people in the companies are set free to do good. Really, that’s religious freedom in practice.

The post Rethinking DEI: The Crucial Role of Religion in Workplace Belonging appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Recently, the Church of Jesus Christ released a Relief Society broadcast to the membership of the Church. The overall intent of the broadcast seemed to be focused on how women are essential to the work of the gospel. President Nelson said, “Women have been at the center of our Heavenly Father’s plan from the beginning… [and] if the world should ever lose the moral rectitude of its women, the world would never recover.” Despite these touching words, there are some women who have felt the message from the broadcast did not place women on equal footing with men and, additionally, that the Church is keeping women out of positions of power. This has led other news sources to announce that the majority of LDS women feel this sense of disempowerment when it comes to the Church. Our hearts go out to these women who have felt unheard, unlistened to, and underrepresented. We do not deny their personal experience; however, we feel this widely broadcasted message is not giving fair credence to women who have also felt empowered, loved, and valued within the Church.   

We are a mosaic of narratives, not a monolith.

This is the exception taken with the recent article published by The New York Times, which demonstrates a lack of professionalism, sensitivity, and respect towards our community. Our experiences cannot be constrained within cultural constructs. We recognize it is difficult to fathom our feelings without a lens of faith. However, to answer your question, we feel elevated and empowered in our efforts. While an extensive review of the claims made about women’s religious experience could be necessary, it goes beyond the scope of this letter. However, we choose not to view all human relationships through the lens of ‘power differentials.’ Quite simply, we believe it is inaccurate to paint all individuals as inherently self-interested. Power, as described in certain ideologies as a measure of control, is not an unimportant concept, but it does not have a place within the gospel of Jesus Christ. We see ourselves and our place in the church beyond the dichotomy of ‘privileged’ and ‘oppressed.’

While not every woman would articulate these thoughts in identical terms, in our collective voice, we ask that The New York Times editors and its readership please hear this:

We choose to follow Him.

Our religious conviction and membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reflect a resolute commitment that is not merely a convenient affiliation; it is rooted in profound reverence for Jesus Christ, His priesthood, His plan, His redemption, and His church. He is the source of our joy; the God of our fathers—and our mothers.

Our belief rests on the assurance of a very personal Savior who can and does heal our individual pains because we do not expect perfection from our leaders or claim it of ourselves. 

Protesting against His prophets and criticism against His church is not our way.

Nothing holy is born out of grievance. Nor is sustainable testimony fueled by anger.

It is our hope that discussions regarding our community be approached with greater consideration for the deeply held convictions that guide us. We seek conversations rooted in understanding and mutual respect. Sadly, it is you—while posing questions about our empowerment—that we feel unheard by.

Signed,

(If you would like to include your name on this letter, please email us at bholmes@publicsquaremag.org)

Carol Rice

Brianna Holmes

Shaleice Bartholomew

Taylor Jensen

Lauren Jensen 

Brenda Andrewsen

Ashlynn Fletcher

Kaitlynn Geddes

Jacquelynn Andrewsen

Lisa Bartholomew

Amanda Freebairn

Taylor Wilkes

Hannah Rice

Liz Busby

Rachel Teran

Cassandra Hedelius

Dominique Christoffersen

Linda Hill

Abrianna Rice

Jennifer Roach

Lela Hill

Becky Thomas

Kristin Williams

Danielle Olsen

Suzanne Floyd

Cambria Tubbs

Lynnette Sheppard

Gale Boyd

Emily Rosenbalm 

Brooke Hall

Courtney Davis

Margo Janus

Lora Schillemat

Kari Ward

Christy Jensen

Kim Cannon

Lauren Jensen

Becky Squire

Lara Roetto

Meagan Kohler

Sherstin Rice

Shalie Hancock

Krystal Sanders

Kyrsten Snyder

Erin Holmes

Lisa Pack 

Marne Pack

Kristin Williams

Tiesha Anderson

Natalie Clark

Alaina Olinger

Leslie Shannon Rabon

Dianna Tomlinson

Cindy Oswald

Emily James

Catherine Hoffman

Trina Burdge

Kylie Burdge

Pam Warren

Dilene Pulsipher

Linda Nelson

Janae Wahnschaffe

Emily James 

Lisa Dickson

Pam Peebles

Melanie Hansen

Krystie Jensen

Melissa Kendall

April Cline Jones

Thalia Mansfield

Charlotte Cline

Kristine Stringham

Sara Christensen

Josie Parsons

Stephanie Umland

Ellan Christiansen

Nancy Hamblin

Erica Low

Rindy Heslop

Leslie Headrick

Tianna Shaw

Camille Knecht

Madison Brakey

Jacque Brown

Megan Miller

Andrea Diaz-Giovani

Ann C. Biada

Lisa Erickson

Laruen Dranwy

Carolyn Gelder 

Nina Dayton 

Aimee Mallory

Amanda Griffin

Charli Fraughton

Abby Tanner 

Rachel Woodbury

Valerie Broyles

Adrian Cohen

Meg Marie johnson

Emily Perry 

Rebecca Richardson

Jeanine Crane

Rachel Noble 

Abigail Blanchard

Laura Hudson

Tammie Reber

Laura Davis

Brandi Draney

Adrian Groth

Drexel Guzy

April Cook 

Jennifer Stafford

Kari Whittier

Shelley Miner

Karissa Bagley

Tiffany Houston

Ann Keys

Angela Walker

Jan Oliver

Adriann Goodwine

Ramona Andrus

Raquel Thomas

Jessica Jorgensen

Michelle Glass 

Teresa Curtis

Mercedes Moretti

Teressa Howell Moulton

Carrie Horejs

Kathryn Kelly Madson

Erika LeSueur

Kaylee Jones

Kellie Buckner

Alora Smith

Susan Wilson

Erin Butler

Melissa Sanders

Sydney Otto

Melanie Pratt

Jessica Brown

Brandi Hogan

Narissara Tarazon

Jennie Moss

Sarah Ipson

Keli Capel

Caitlin Justiniano

Melanie Gallini Pratt

Hannah Rizzuto

Darla Gaylor

Sheena Wilson

Marilee Johnson

Lois Brown

Sandee Spencer

Rachel Thompson

Kimberly Smith

Tiffany Seavy

McKenzie Archibald

Lori Thoman

Alysha Collier

Laura Sims

Tamara Snow

Margie Stringam

Kelsee Boyer

Keri Stewart

Lezlie Fitts

Cammy Rasmussen

Gayle Lewis

Cindy Johnson

Rachel Snider

Kristin Frey

Charly Parkinson

Sharla Nethercott

Shayla Egan

Kelly Boyle

Kimber Jessop

Melissa Winegar

Catherine Brandt

Brecklyn Kershaw

Catherine Watkins

Mary Lynn Johnson

Loree Zito

Nina Wigginton

Wende Tate

Natalie Wilson

Mikelle Iva Latimer Cummock

Deana Steed

Shaustia Brown

Julee Swanson

Angela Turley

Marlee Brown

Gabby Fletcher

Layna Matthews

Christina Johnson

Amy Day

Erica Smith

Michelle Abbott

Cherie Tait

Amber Pearce

Mandy Davis

Hayley Clark

Emily Ann Adams

Tiana Barker

Jamie Barkdull 

Angela King

Shannon Jones

Dawn Anderson

Becky Ward

Hannah Carter

Alisha Pehrson

Robyn Jones

Kathryn Skaggs

Kim Abish Wise

Lyndee Wright

Tara James

Melissa Ostler

Kathleen Julian

Jen Mortensen

Beth Gawthrop

Rachael Burnham

Katherine Resse

Ashley Zimmerman

Keri Stewart

Adrian Groth

Julie Cawley Hanson

Erica Wilker

Marcy Leonard

Kim Evans

Barbara Wanlass

Suzanne Stokes

Janene Bijou

Merian Johnson

Debbie Gale

Marla Kim Morrill

Krista M. Isaacson

Alisa Johnson

Tricia Andersen

Hallie Roberts

Maree Wilson

Gabby Fletcher

Erica Coleman

Cerani Whitehurst

Shelly Norton

Britta Thunell Gross

Nicole Sampson

Alexandra Chamberlain

Carlean Tubbs

Aubree Owens

Kadee Powell

Kristine Douglass

Nancy Brown 

Lori Campbell

Rebecca Carcer

Helga Freeman

Cambrai Pike

Kristie Kerr

Denise Huber

Shannon Warner

The post An Open Letter to the New York Times appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

His remarks remain both poignant and relevant today. 

Perhaps the most quotable words from his remarks were simple, “Of course, Black lives matter! That is an eternal truth.” His remarks came on the heels of a summer marked by protests over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. The organization Black Lives Matter, which was founded in 2013, rose to national prominence, with its name becoming a rallying cry for racial justice. By echoing those same lines, he connected the political moment to theological teachings.

Many prophetic statements only have their complete meaning fully understood with the passage of time. More than three years later, the political conflicts that backgrounded Oaks’ original remarks no longer provide the same context. This separation may allow us to start the process of understanding the fuller theological ramifications of his remarks. 

Oaks is a former lawyer and judge and has a reputation as a very careful speaker. So, our analysis takes for granted that his word choice was quite intentional. And we intend to focus on his remarks about the phrase “Black lives matter.”

Perhaps an understated element of his remarks was the legitimization of a thing that could be described as a “Black life.” 

By saying that “Black lives matter,” Oaks establishes as a first principle that Black lives exist. These lives are marked by challenges specific to their set of circumstances. Oaks quoted Russell M. Nelson, the President of the Church of Jesus Christ, as saying, “I grieve that our Black brothers and sisters the world over are enduring the pains of racism.” Just three weeks prior, in the faith’s General Conference, Oaks had said, “We must do better to help root out racism.” His formulation here seems to suggest that the necessary a priori understanding is that Black lives exist and experience the racism that is to be rooted out.

Once Oaks has identified Black lives as a matter worthy of consideration, he states that these lives “matter.” Matter, in this context, is fairly amorphous. That something “matters” is ultimately a pretty low bar and demands very little of the acknowledger. So, Oaks is sure to expand on this in his remarks. 

He explains that we should not believe that different races qualify as “first-class” or “second-class.” He concludes, “We condemn racism by any group toward any other group worldwide.” While his remarks were clearly influenced by the political circumstances in the United States, where Oaks and other senior leaders of the Church are headquartered, their ramifications expand to multiple similar conflicts in many nations across the globe.

For Oaks, “Black lives matter” appears to mean that the quality of being Black does not affect importance in the eyes of God, nor should it in the eyes of others.

Oaks also positions his remarks within the larger tradition of racial equality within the Church of Jesus Christ. He does not address the Church’s race-based priesthood ban directly. However, his statement that “Any … official practices of racism involve one group whom God created exercising authority or advantage over another group God created” demonstrates a separation from those policies. He describes official policies that create first and second-class races as “outlawed” by the Lord in D&C 101. Rather than focus on that history, Oaks seeks to connect with the progressive racial policies of the faith’s founder Joseph Smith, who strongly advocated against slavery and did ordain Black men to the priesthood.

Latter-day Saints believe in an ongoing process of revelation from prophets and apostles who guide the Church in the here and now. Declaring that these statements against racism are authoritative, Oaks communicated to his Latter-day Saint listeners that they should be treated with the same respect and deference as scripture.

Each of these remarks was given in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Oaks’ remarks clearly indicate his belief that our faith should impact how we behave as political actors. As a new election season begins, their teachings ought to become foundational to our own process in choosing the leaders who will create the kind of society where people of all races are free from racism.

The post How Latter-day Saint Doctrine Confronts America’s Racial Divide appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

You’ve probably heard humorous stories about mistakes people make when learning a new language. For example, an English speaker learning Spanish might say, “Estoy embarazada.” This sounds like “I’m embarrassed,” but it actually means, “I’m pregnant.” Or they might intend to say, “Tengo hambre” (“I am hungry”; literally, “I have hunger”). But they end up saying, “Tengo hombre” (“I have a man”). What we mean to say is not always what we do say or what others hear.

Those stories are entertaining, but sometimes the stakes are higher when language difficulties occur. We faithful Latter-day Saints may use popular language or symbols to send well-intentioned messages, often unaware of how those messages are received by others. As Carol Rice wrote in a recent Public Square article, “We find ourselves, not unlike the masses wandering at the base of the Babel tower, with the same vocabulary but very different dictionaries.”

If we intend to communicate clearly with others regarding important and sensitive issues of our day, it is essential that we understand how others may interpret the words and symbols we use. While our friends and associates may be of a similar mindset regarding these words and symbols, the broader community may perceive our messaging in ways we don’t intend. Our understandings may overlap or be entirely different.

Here are a few examples of discrepancies that can occur between what we intend to communicate and what others may hear.

“I am an LGBT+ ally.”

What I may mean: “As one who does not identify as LGBT+ myself, I love and support those who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria or who identify as LGBT+. I want them to feel valued and to know they are of worth.”

What others may hear: “I advocate for the right of LGBT+ people to express their sexuality and gender in whatever form they choose, as long as it works for them. If I am a Latter-day Saint, I am skeptical of the Proclamation on the Family, or I disavow it altogether.”

“I was assigned female (or male) at birth.”

What I may mean: “I am a biological female (or male).”

What others may hear: “When I was born, a doctor assigned me my sex based on my external characteristics. It’s possible the doctor got it wrong, even if I have been pregnant or fathered children. Nobody knows what sex one really is without extensive tests.”

“I fly the pride flag or wear a rainbow.”

What I may mean: “I want LGBT+ people to feel loved and supported. I am an emotionally safe person to talk to.”

What others may hear: “I celebrate others’ full expression of their sexual and gender identities. I support the ideology underlying the Pride movement rather than traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of sexual morality and gender, which I consider too restrictive. I don’t support portions or all of the Proclamation on the Family issued by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whether I personally believe in and live the law of chastity, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people choosing to express their sexuality and gender in whatever way they choose. What matters most is that individuals are able to be authentic, however they define that, not what will benefit society at large.”

“I am happy to state my pronouns or use others’ pronouns.”

What I may mean: “I want transgender and nonbinary people to feel included and respected. It’s no big deal to say a few words to help everyone feel more comfortable.”

What others may hear: “I believe people can’t know what sex or gender other people are unless they declare it. I believe that gender is based upon how one feels and is not grounded in objective, empirical evidence. I believe that the binary categories of women and men are inaccurate or oppressive and that sex is on a spectrum. I also believe it is oppressive to uphold cisnormativity (the belief that society should view cisgender identities—which align with the sex they were assigned at birth—as the standard or default identity).” 

“I am cisgender (or “cis”).”

What I may mean: “I am not transgender or nonbinary.”

What others may hear: “My gender identity aligns with the sex I was assigned at birth. There are two types of women: cisgender women (assigned female at birth) and transwomen (assigned male at birth but presenting now as women). Both are equally valid. Being a woman is based on how one feels inside and is something that one can identify in or out of; it is not based on observable, objective evidence. The same applies to men.”

“I am (or the Church is) sex-positive.”

What I may mean: “I support healthy sexuality in marriage. The Church supports this also. I believe that a respectful and loving sexual relationship is an important part of marriage.”

What others may hear: “I support sexuality in all its many forms and expressions. Anything that brings pleasure, even mild harm, can be acceptable as long as it is between consenting adults. (Also, I’m misguided if I think my repressive church is sex-positive.)”

“I value diversity.”

What I may mean: “I value people of various races, cultures, abilities, identities, ideologies, and religions.”

What others may hear: “I value people of various races, cultures, abilities, and identities, but they should have similar left-leaning political beliefs. If they are Christians, they should keep their religious beliefs to themselves.”

“I believe in equity.”

What I may mean: “I believe everyone is of equal worth and should have equal opportunities.”

What others may hear: “I believe there should be systemic changes to ensure equal outcomes among all identity groups. That may mean anything from redistributing resources to eliminating meritocracy (the practice of awarding opportunities based on skill or ability).”

“I am an antiracist.”

What I may mean: “I am against the beliefs and actions that indicate some races are inferior to others.”

What others may hear: “I subscribe to the belief system of Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist. Like him, I believe racism is any policy or practice that results in disparities between racial groups and that any disparity between groups is due to racism. Like other proponents of critical race theory, I believe racism is normal and ordinary in the United States and that all U.S. systems work to uphold white supremacy. As Kendi put it well, ‘the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.’”

“I am against white supremacy.”

What I may mean: “I am against the abhorrent belief that whites are superior to those of other races. This belief is associated with individuals and groups such as white nationalists and the Ku Klux Klan.”

What others may hear: “I oppose the way in which all western systems, including laws, policies, culture, and so on, are established to benefit white people. All white people continually benefit from white supremacy.”

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course. But as George Orwell declared, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Are we sometimes speaking past each other? Are our words and symbols indicating support for causes that we do not, in fact, support and beliefs we do not believe? Could our use of words and symbols that we don’t fully understand, at least not in the way they are widely understood today, pave the way toward our acceptance and eventual celebration of these popular causes and beliefs? Perhaps it’s worth considering.

The post What I Mean May Not Be What Others Hear appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

That good-hearted member’s attempt to show solidarity with me seems a perfect illustration in miniature of what the good-hearted writers at Church-owned media are doing with many of their LGBT-affirming stories. In the last three months, a flurry of different articles in Deseret Digital Media outlets (owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) have focused on LGBT+ topics and political concerns (see list at bottom). The overarching message is clear: hate is still prevalent in the state, what parents (and leaders) keep sharing with their kids is making things harder, and it would be really helpful—the loving, Christlike thing to do, in fact—for Latter-day Saint families to attend Pride festivities and join the cause of LGBT+ celebration.

Two different articles encouraged readers to come to Pride festivities—with one quoting a former Latter-day Saint who claims attending the event “changed his life forever” and channeling his hope that “everyone, gay or straight, attends festivities this weekend.” Then earlier this week, live coverage of the Pride flag raising at Salt Lake City Hall showed up on KSL Twitter:

Pride flag is being raised in SLC @KSL5TV pic.twitter.com/zWRJ1WkQu7

— Karah Brackin (@karah_on_ksl) June 1, 2022

Of course, there are many other articles and books produced by these same entities dating back years that have encouraged and strengthened all of our faith and families. That has included essays last year exploring the difficulty of loving both people and truth, pushing back on activist-skewed sexuality statistics, and ongoing efforts to counter simplistic narratives around LGBTQ+ suicide and religion. But especially recently, I have wondered if reporters understand how confusing articles which take for granted popular sexual ideology can be for people like me? There are hundreds of people living the gospel who have not only endured some occasional ostracism at church but who face pointed opposition and isolation from the gay community. And yet what we read at KSL and Deseret News is often the same thing we read in the SL Tribune, Washington Post, ABC, or CNN. What is the point of having church-owned media if it’s going to reflect so much of the messaging and values of the surrounding dominant culture? 

Like my priesthood leader friend, I’m sure these writers believe they are showing support to the Church and its members, perhaps especially faithful Latter-day Saints like me, by giving me “representation” in their coverage. But in so many ways, they are actually demonstrating that they don’t actually understand active members who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, or who identity as LGBTQ+. Though well-meaning, they don’t seem to know how to effectively support us and the church teachings we are striving to follow. And in my own long experience, these kinds of rainbow-centered efforts end up making us feel less understood, less supported, and less strengthened in living and standing up for gospel truths that we love. 

As Preston Jenkins recently said on his podcast, “I remember seeing members of the Church with rainbow flags or doing things that were supporting … behavior [contrary to prophetic teaching], and I remember distinctly losing trust in them … I was like, ‘I don’t know where you stand anymore. You’ve adopted a symbol that implies that you don’t agree with some of the basic teachings of the Church, so I can’t trust you as a source of gospel foundation and community.”

Following the larger currents. In fairness, it’s not hard to understand why these kinds of messages and emphases might show up. After all, they are everywhere. From universities to corporate spaces and from social media to popular sitcoms (and even kids’ TV), the same assumptions, ideas, and messages are virtually everywhere you look.  

So, why wouldn’t they show up in our own media too? In so many ways, of course, Christians must “stand athwart” many cultural tides (no thanks polyamory, sorry). This is right and proper. Why, in this case, and on these issues, have we decided to allow ourselves to be carried along with the prevailing cultural tides?

It certainly doesn’t help that people like me are completely invisible in mainstream news, movies, and TV shows—and hardly ever featured in popular discourse, except by way of critique and ridicule. In the absence of more attention to the real possibility of a vibrant reconciliation between committed discipleship and LGBT+ questions, many believers have embraced the idea that these popular societal currents represent a distillation of God’s higher will. That translates into accepting without question the thesis that the LGBT+ movement is a logical extension of the 1960s’ civil rights efforts, and that the achievement of an (ever-expanding) list of political objectives will lead to improved mental health and personal fulfillment of all LGBT-identifying individuals. 

These kinds of assumptions are taken for granted—and sometimes made explicit—in virtually all of the recent offerings on the topic at Desert Book, another church-owned entity. That includes Charlie Bird’s “Without the Mask: Coming Out and Coming Into God’s Light” (2020), Ben Schilaty’s “A Walk in My Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint” (2021), and Steve Young’s “The Law of Love” (2022). There are also two different publications by Tom Christofferson, a personal friend whom I greatly admire—which hold similar presuppositions.

There are certainly virtues in each of these texts and something meaningful each offers. But it’s important for people to recognize that they are all taking as an unquestioned starting point the same essential narrative of sexuality—one that Princeton University professor Robert George recently called “identitarian” in a commentary encouraging Latter-day Saints to take more seriously the clear conflicts between this popular narrative and the plain teaching of our own prophet leaders.  

How many thousands—even tens of thousands—of families have been directly influenced by these many books and news articles, alongside all the interviews, podcasts, and publicity associated with each of them?

No doubt, this enormous impact is one the authors and publication managers hope is overwhelmingly positive, for both people’s faith and relationships. I don’t question their intent at all.  

The question I am raising is this: Is it really working? Is all this writing and publishing  accomplishing what we hope it will accomplish? To say it more plainly, are those reading and influenced by these offerings being encouraged to stay on the covenant path and aspire for its higher blessings?  

Taking more seriously the downstream consequences. Despite assurances and witnesses to the contrary, my experience is this narrative—especially when adopted uncritically, and especially when a faithful counterpoint is nowhere presented—sweeps formerly faithful people away from the Church and the safety of their covenants, with almost irrevocable force.  The metaphor which comes to mind is a calm river. From the outside, it looks like a peaceful, lazily flowing river. But once you get in the water, you find the powerful current is impossible to resist, it inexorably and irresistibly pulls you downstream along with all the other flotsam and jetsam.

Former Studio C actor Stacey Harkey, who was likewise promoted in LDS Living as a model for youth, also started dating his boyfriend within months after the article appeared. And Tom Christofferson has announced intentions to pursue the same, though with the anticipation of keeping his temple covenants.

None of this is about overwrought quibbling or niggling judgmentalism. After all, we can’t hold Deseret Book and LDS Living responsible for Charlie Bird and Stacey Harkey’s choices after publication. What I’m talking about is something that was or should have been discernible before publication. Remember my metaphor about those deceptively strong currents? The best way to resist them and keep from getting swept away is not to get in the river in the first place. And in this metaphor, the strong current is the popular identarian LGBTQ+ worldview implicit in so many of these messages widely promoted within our faith community.

When we hold them up as models for so many families to follow, we essentially invite these others into the river. However encouraging some of their witnesses of Christ feel in the moment they are published and the immediate celebratory aftermath, I am suggesting that the larger and more long-term trajectory their witness is setting them upon is not a safe one. (Another case in point: newly-minted gay identitarian David Archuleta who now publicly speaks of giving up on covenant marriage as he preaches the gospel of “be you”). The only reason I mention these peoples’ subsequent life choices (I respect their agency and do not wish to condemn them) is because I think that is evidence for what I am arguing here. Once they adopted these worldviews, combined with all the praise and accolades heaped upon them for adopting them (because that’s what loving Christlike people are supposed to do, right?), the outcome was all but foreordained. Can we really claim to be blindsided by their subsequent decisions when, by many measures, an uncritical embrace of this narrative of self creates natural estrangement in their relationship with the gospel and Church?

Of course nothing is inevitable, people always have choices and can make changes no matter when. But I do think this is a negative example of the “spiritual momentum” President Nelson recently taught us about. We need to consider not just where people are at in the moment they are “coming out,” but what course and direction we are setting them up to follow (along with those who follow their example). That is discernible beforehand for those tuned into the currents flowing underneath these deceptively calm waters.

My issue with these LGBTQ+ celebrities and writers specifically isn’t so much what they’ve been saying at the time they are published and interviewed in Church media, which is largely unobjectionable. It’s what they aren’t saying that concerns me most. What they aren’t saying is how the gospel represents the solution to what ails all of us individually and as a society.  They aren’t saying that they take the blessings and warnings foretold in the Proclamation on the Family seriously. Most of the time the principles in the Proclamation aren’t mentioned at all, leaving discerning readers wondering where exactly these people stand on this important and foundational teaching. And that matters because the world is uniformly hostile to it. If we adopt the world’s LGBTQ+ constructs, but say nothing to strengthen or affirm the Proclamation, we are effectively playing a game of Jenga with our spiritual foundations—pulling out some important buttresses without doing any backfill reinforcement elsewhere. If you object, saying perhaps that none of that matters and all we should care about is keeping our focus on these individuals’ immediate witness of a broad, non-specific, non-demanding Christ, then I have one word for you: myopic.

The unique burdens of Pride Month.  Many of these people, no doubt, assume Pride Month is a boon to our spirits—and a time we feel especially encouraged.  For those seeking to live the gospel, it’s often quite the opposite. It definitely is for me. I never feel more estranged and more unwelcome, in the products I purchase, in the news media I consume, in the streets I walk and drive down than I do during Pride Month. I think this is how many of those who are remaining faithful to the Church feel. And this goes double for those of us who have publicly defended prophetic teachings because we are regularly in the crosshairs of activists who see us as obstacles to their objectives. Many of those most wedded to gay pride and the rainbow flag have been most vocal in their wish for people like me to be miserable, disappear, and even die. (My recent articles defending Elder Jeffrey Holland and therapists who support traditional sexual morality have made me even less popular in that camp).

Whether it’s David Archuleta casting doubt on the possibility of happiness in traditional marriage to more overtly hostile attacks on the Church because of its stances, all of this can and does discourage us and make us feel more besieged. Meanwhile, those who have forsaken their covenants and turned their backs on their testimonies are often validated—and even celebrated. In an ultimate inversion, the betrayal of sacred teaching is praised as a liberating virtue. Despite the endlessly proliferating variations of the Pride flag, there is still no color on there for those choosing to be faithful to traditional morality.  There is no parade for the diamond marriages and the sapphire singles.

This is as it should be. These stalwarts seek a reward that is not of this world, and one that lasts longer than a month. Rather than celebrating as others do all around us, they look forward to the day when all who have overcome the world will sit down with saints of all ages at the wedding feast of the Lamb at a celebration that stretches into eternity. Pride month is a helpful reminder to them that they are strangers and pilgrims here, and that they cannot fully be at home in any earthly city. They have learned that any embrace of a contingent, temporary, and worldly identity like LGBTQ+ labels must be cautious and arm’s length if adopted at all, lest they fall prey to the many spiritually perilous assumptions that undergird these identity constructs and be swept along on those deceptively strong currents of our popular culture.

If we feel like foreigners to the world, we do expect to feel more at home in the Church. So again, it is jarring to read many of these same assumptions and identity constructs not just wholeheartedly adopted, but eagerly promoted in Church-owned media. And it’s disheartening to regularly read stories and interviews which demonstrate that even there, people do not “get” where we are coming from and what we are committed to. My understanding is that the Church (I dearly love) operates media efforts like these so that it can articulate its vision and values to the world. But if church-owned media merely popularizes among Latter-day Saints an already dominant worldly wisdom, what again is the point of having church-owned media?

It’s not just sexuality where this happens, of course. So often, we read articles simply echoing reigning orthodoxies in the national discourse, whether that’s imminent catastrophic man-made climate change or mechanistic, atheistic worldviews that undergird so much of biology and medicine.  (To pick just two among many examples.) In this sense and on this level, church-owned media becomes indistinguishable from everywhere else.

Ed Gantt and Richard Williams have raised similar questions to social science faculty over the years at Brigham Young University—encouraging not only more careful attention to underlying assumptions being embraced uncritically, but bigger imaginations of what could be possible in a psychology that takes the radical message of Jesus (and His restored gospel and Church) seriously.   

Of course, people don’t want to go back to silence, and disappear sexual minorities—and none of us are asking them to.  There is more than one way to foster inclusion and compassion, and help people work through shame or self-doubt—and there are many hundreds of people who can attest to ways of navigating these questions, albeit less popular, that align perfectly with the gospel.  

If it’s marginalized communities you really want to support, maybe you could pay a little more attention to those who are faithful to the gospel and LGBT+ —including by attending the upcoming North Star conference, which is sure to present a cornucopia of spiritual feasting and a cavalcade of inspiring personal examples of devotion to the gospel. That cavalcade includes a glorious diversity. My fellow leaders and participants don’t all agree with me on these topics. You’ll see people wearing rainbow-themed items there, and several of my colleagues have felt moved to participate in Pride over the years. Some loved these books that I didn’t. We continue to disagree about some of these things, and that’s okay: we come together under the “big tent” of our love of the restored gospel.

I personally believe the way the world conceives of LGBTQ+ identity is fundamentally at odds with gospel discipleship. We cannot serve two masters, Jesus Christ and the Mammon of LGBTQ+ identarianism. The Church media examples I am questioning here seem to imply that you can. By failing to interrogate and explain the components of the worldly conception of LGBTQ+ identarianism, the effect in Church media is to give a superficial impression that these differences can just be papered over with more “love” and “inclusion.” Most of them cannot. Certainly there are some deeply devoted disciples who use these labels, but when they are used in Church media with these people it’s worth taking the time to examine which elements they are adopting and which they are rejecting. In this article on David Archuleta at an earlier point in his journey, Archuleta says he “goes out with guys in the same way he went out with women—not in a sexual way.”

What exactly does this mean? Are these romantic or just social outings? Is it exclusive with one person, and towards what goal? Especially on the heels of the controversy about the revisions to BYU’s Honor Code, it would have been so helpful to drill in a bit further as to what kind of relationships with the same sex are helpful to our discipleship and which are not. Yet this article doesn’t broach the tension and potential peril of “non-sexual” gay dating, whatever that may even mean. All that we read is that more “love” and “acceptance” and “compassion” will solve it! Perhaps that article wasn’t the place to examine my questions, but the way it was treated seemed to give an imprimatur to romantic same-sex behavior so long as it’s not sexual, and that seems in conflict with the guidance given to BYU students. My own feelings on this aside, Archuleta’s further steps on his personal journey suggest these choices might not be as helpful to staying on the covenant path as he once believed. And if that’s the case, perhaps Church-owned media could consider highlighting some other role models and positive approaches to same-sex friendships, which I do agree are vital to our spiritual and emotional well-being?

It sometimes feels like we are trying so hard at wanting to be seen as loving—and to acquire the social advantages of the same—that we are pushing away some contradictions and inadvertently compromising in some important areas. It reminds me a bit of our intensive effort in recent decades to say “No, we really are Christian” in our interfaith engagement with other Christian denominations. Sometimes, with so much force, we inadvertently swept under the rug some differences deserving not only attention but emphasis and celebration. 

Some practical suggestions. No one likes a crank—and my intention here is to raise awareness, not condemn or merely complain. In fairness, it’s difficult for any believer to know what to say in our current environment. For journalists and publishers, this challenge is especially fraught. To help others trying to navigate these media environments, I close with a few more actionable suggestions of my own: 

1. Think more critically about dominant narratives of sexuality and identity. The take-away from most of the recent material cited above is that popular understandings of LGBT+ issues are something to be wholly embraced and celebrated—and that those who push back are reflecting hatred and a desire to oppress. It shouldn’t be too much to ask journalists at church-owned media to do more than simply uncritically repeat this public rhetoric. Maybe it’s time we all considered more carefully Robert George’s cautions about conflicts with rhetoric and prophetic teachings—and, in particular, what it means when we encourage people to adopt a new grand narrative of identity (a conflict that President Nelson seems especially attuned to as well). What I’m encouraging is deeper reading—well beyond the popular commentaries about sexuality in social media influencers and popular culture. Here are three identity explorations that might help, the first which I wrote with Meagan Koehler (Visible Identities & Invisible People) the second by Dan Ellsworth (Our Deepening Divide Over Identity), and the third by me (Whose Image Are You Seeking In Your Countenance?) Beyond identity, here’s a good overall summary of current conflicts between Latter-day Saint teachings and perceptions of the same: Seven Ways Latter-day Saint Teachings about Sexuality Have Been Misrepresented. 

2. Listen more deeply to those with concerns.  In old-style journalism, you used to have two sides. It shouldn’t be too much to expect faith-oriented journalists to seek out those with concerns about what’s happening at Pride parades—including all the speedo-clad yoga dancing boys, or the “un-baptisms” being offered by Satanists. A balanced article might also feature someone advising against bringing family members—or at least think twice about a blanket endorsement of these activities. This simply isn’t happening in these aforementioned articles.

3. Use prophetic frameworks as the infrastructure for balancing competing tensions. Prophet leaders have not been silent about how to navigate these matters. In recent years, Presidents Nelson, Oaks, and Ballard have spoken extensively on them all, with several extremely practical frameworks to help us navigate this:  Love and Law help us appreciate the balance between justice and mercy implicit in the gospel. Fairness for All helps us appreciate the balance between our freedom to share this religion and working to honor others’ concerns. And lastly, the inspired recent focus by President Nelson on three fundamental identities—and cautions against allowing them to be obscured—represents a uniquely practical rubric to help people think through appropriate balances in discussions of identity. I can’t help but think if these local journalist efforts modeled the same tensions, they would be more helpful to everyone. For instance, if you’re going to interview activists expressing concerns about discrimination, do the work to bring into the article the balancing voices of religious folks sharing their own concerns. And if you’re going to highlight someone embracing their identity as gay—ask some questions about what this has meant for other core identities as a person of faith (notice how that could have made a difference in this KSL article, where the implications for faith of an embrace of the popular narrative remain unexamined).

4. Pay more attention to the diversity within LGBT-identifying voices. Watch out for the trap of current tribal politics—painting groups as a monolith. Be more explicit about recognizing real and meaningful diversity among those identifying as LGBTQ+ —especially when it comes to faith. Rather than only interviewing “a gay person, ” consider interviewing a gay person outside the Church, and also someone who is actively a part of it. And work harder to feature the voices of faithful members in your reporting (in fairness, Deseret News did publish one recently—Skyler Sorenson’s I’m a devout Latter-day Saint gay man. I’m married to a woman. (This is my story, April 21). It’s also with noting, as Blake Fisher did recently, how often those living faithfully are incentivized to stay quiet in this current climate. Yes, faithful voices are often harder to find. But when they read article after article which ignores them or doesn’t speak to them, that only makes them more likely to withdraw further. 

This will all take some additional effort, but I plead with you to expand your Rolodex! There is such a rich variety of voices out there that could make your articles so much more vibrant and interesting, and that would increase engagement and sharing when people read things that surprise or cause them to think about things in new ways, rather than recycling the same pablum over and over again.

5. Deepen your personal and professional connections with the many LGBT+ folks on the covenant path. There are a lot more faithful members of the Church out there who experience same-sex attraction than you might realize! (See, again, Why “All-in” LGBT+/SSA Saints Are So Reluctant to Speak Up.) If you’d like to hear and learn more—or if you know a family who could benefit from seeing this example—check here to sign-up to attend or listen in to sessions at the upcoming North Star Conference, June 10-11.

In doing so, you might also consider topics uniquely interesting to active Latter-day Saints, especially those who experience same-sex attraction: How do they find happiness in marriage on the covenant path—and in raising children?  How are they serving in the Church? And how do they reconcile their faith and sexuality to lead vibrant lives? How can their fellow members of the Church help them feel more welcome and included? How do they navigate friendship and heterosexual dating? How do they handle the pressure to date and marry when that might not be a part of their path right now? Where do they go for support? Has therapy been helpful, and if so, what kind and how? What do they wish therapists understood more about them? What kinds of questions would be good questions that members could ask that could help them better get to know their fellow Latter-day Saints who experience these feelings?  How can same-sex friendships bless us, heal feelings of estrangement we might feel from others, and strengthen our resolve to live the gospel–and are there any pitfalls to avoid in those friendships? All these topics and many more will be featured at the aforementioned North Star Conference.

A direct appeal to the management of Deseret Digital Media. I recognize I have been speaking to harried writers who are expected to have subject matter competence in a bewildering variety of topics, and Deseret Book product managers who might not be aware of the landmines around this topic. You all have a harder job than I do; I just write occasionally, part-time, and exclusively on topics that interest me. You are writing and editing on deadline, and are often paid by the word and by the click, and the pressure to produce stories and products is relentless. In an atmosphere like this, you have few incentives to dig deeper, challenge conventional wisdom, or reach out for more than a few quotes from the most popular voices and readily-accessible sources (including pre-written press releases that make your job so much easier). So I conclude my piece with a direct appeal to the management of Deseret Digital Media: please consider additional steps that might re-align the management incentives you have your writers and editors working under. Do whatever it takes to make sure those incentives align with the larger goals of the institution which sponsors your media companies. From my perspective, additional training and an adjustment of the performance standards by which you measure your employees are overdue. And finally, I repeat for a third and final time my invitation to attend the North Star Conference. There you can meet personally a multitude of new sources who can teach you a lot about what kind of content you can produce that will better support and strengthen your fellow members as they seek to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Thank you for listening.

Notes. Some of the recent articles:

• Marjorie Cortez’s “What Utah’s higher education board did to affirm support for LGBTQ college community” (March 25) cheered the Utah Board of Higher Education unanimous support for a resolution to affirm and support the Utah System of Higher Education’s LGBTQ+ community in Utah’s universities—presented as a clear contrast to the Utah legislature’s efforts which have been lamented by the paper. Cortez quoted the leader of Utah’s Encircle as claiming that “a lot of self-destructive behavior” witnessed in young people comes “because of the messages that they receive throughout their lives about who they are.”
• Logan Stefanich’s “East High School students hold walkout in protest of HB11” (April 15) cited local gay politician Derek Kitchen saying “It’s time for the youth to take over this state and show the Legislature what we’re made of” and high school freshman saying “We are so much better than a set of transphobic laws put in place by people we do not agree with.”
• Bridger Beal-Cvetko’s “Will young Utahns’ protests against the Legislature’s transgender athletes ban have an impact?” (April 28) showcasing 13-year-old middle-schooler Caroline Drake as an inspiring model for condemning the Utah legislature’s “crazy” legislation on high school sports, “We could not believe that our Legislature just doesn’t support so many kids”—adding “I feel embarrassed for the Legislature, because they’re adults” and [we as kids] are “showing that we are more supportive than the people that are supposed to be supporting us.” The school was also portrayed as a model, with her mother Katie saying, “We actually have quite a few trans kids here who are out at Clayton, which I think is awesome.” The article goes on to cite a leader at the Utah Pride Center as agreeing Utah legislators have furthered “oppression and continued dehumanization of people” and hinting that consistent faith teaching may be part of the problem: “When you’re told you’re supposed to fit in a cookie-cutter shape, and you don’t actually fit there, there’s not true belonging” but that there is hope in seeing youth increasingly “understanding people’s humanity without gender” and willing to “determine for themselves what to believe.”
• Mike Anderson’s “Spike in hate crimes targets Utah’s LGBTQ community” (June 1) which portrays a steep rise in hatred (most commonly flags getting taken down) and insisting there is a “lot more needs to be done to help people feel safer,” before quoting an ally encouraging people to come to Pride parades and celebrations: “Come to Davis County Pride. Go to Utah Pride and see how much love there is and see if you even still hate those people because you can’t.”
• Carter William’s “’The work’s not done’: Salt Lake leaders celebrate LGBTQ advancements, seek further inclusion” (June 1) that quotes former Latter-day Saint Darin Mano as saying his first time at the Utah Pride Festival “changed his life forever”—channeling his hope that “everyone, gay or straight, attends festivities this weekend.”
• Matt Rascon’s “Transgender students say school got their names wrong in senior yearbook” (June 2) sharing the heartache and outrage of two transgender-identifying students whose preferred names were (accidentally) not used in the yearbook—which instead used their “dead name”—aka, of “someone who does not exist anymore or maybe never has” in the words of one student. That same student interviewed for the headline story said dramatically “what’s done is done” but that it “felt like a punch in the face for sure.” The article’s climax was the principal’s own apology in behalf of the two mistakes (other trans-identified students had their names right)—while expressing her “love and support for the queer and trans students at the school.”
• Ashley Imlay’s “LGBT group decries Utah lawmaker’s letter over ‘transgender phenomenon’ in schools” (June 3) framed Rep Kera Birkeland’s sharing of a pamphlet with Utah school leaders on navigating the transgender concerns of students as an outrage—channeling Troy Williams’ indignation in insisting her views stand “in stark opposition” to medical and educational experts.” (The article shared this background explanation about the pamphlet: “Until now, school leaders trying to implement policies to address this phenomenon have only had one-sided resources with the agenda of affirming a child’s belief that he or she was ‘born in the wrong body.’ These ideologically driven materials omit important scientifically accurate information about the serious mental health and medical concerns raised by this phenomenon and fail to address the rights of other students and of parents”). Although attempting to reach out to Birkeland for comment, Imlay’s article was indistinguishable in tone and conclusion from other condemnatory commentaries—ending with William’s stirring declaration, “Rep. Birkeland’s ongoing attacks on transgender youth and public school educators will not stand. This Pride Month, we are reminded that there are craven politicians who can only build power by persecuting those who can’t fight back. But transgender youth are not alone in Utah. We see you, we love you and we stand with you. We will never stop fighting for you.”

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Obscuring something meaningful. I don’t see color. I don’t see color. I don’t see color. I don’t see color. As I let the phrase roll over my tongue, I couldn’t help but pull it apart and wonder if it wasn’t saying something else that wasn’t readily apparent. Although meant to say “I see everyone the same,” an image popped into my head of horses with blinders on. While intended to block the horse’s peripheral vision to distractions that could compromise their performance or demeanor, what this essentially means is the horse is prevented from seeing the whole truth of its surroundings. Could saying “I don’t see color” be kind of like putting on blinders—obscuring meaningful ways we are different, in an attempt to blur out the full nuance of our surroundings?

Or maybe “I don’t see color” was supposed to mean “differences don’t matter.” Yet I can’t help but think of the many times in my own life when differences definitely did matter, and it was obvious that the thing that made me different was altering my life experiences. It’s hard not to notice when the car salesman that you’re trying to negotiate with is constantly looking over your shoulder and asking if you brought your husband with you. It’s hard not to notice that I got asked different questions in a job interview that never even came up with my male friends—like:  “So what are your family plans for the future?” And sometimes these differences are more glaringly obvious, like when a male leader told me I’m too pretty to be in leadership with him. If someone were to tell me, “I don’t see gender,” they would be denying something real and consequential—reflecting various experiences and treatment that I and many women receive, and which have a real influence on our lives (and clearly not always in a good way). Yet you can’t fix something if you don’t realize it’s broken or, worse, refuse to recognize it’s broken. This train of thought helped me to see why someone would be upset by the phrase “I don’t see color” because no matter how you slice it, saying that either denies the truth that differences do exist or suggests that differences don’t matter.

Differences all the way back. Most of us learn early on that we’re all different. Some of us also go on to learn that it’s okay to be different. However, not everyone is given a chance to appreciate what our differences can mean for our individual lives. To illustrate, I was running alongside my daughter one day, who was in training for a Cross Country meet. I had some long-distance running in my history, and so I thought I’d “help her train.” At the time, she was a good eight inches shorter than I with much shorter legs. I ran at a very easy pace. My stride was even, my breathing flowed effortlessly, and I was enjoying myself. My daughter’s stride, by contrast, was chaotic as she tried to keep up with me, her breathing heavy, almost gasping. She was not enjoying herself. Two people, going the same direction, doing the same thing but having two wildly different experiences and outcomes.

If, after the run, I had looked into her beet-red face as she winced from a side-stitch and said, “You and I are the same. I don’t see any difference between my run and yours,” how could she not be confused—or even upset?  Of course, her run was different than mine. Yes, we both went the same distance. Yes, we both moved our bodies in a similar fashion. Yes, we both wore running shoes and stylish headbands. But because my daughter’s shorter legs simply can’t produce the gait that mine can, her run was never going to be the same as mine. And how could I forget a similar run I had with my husband, a man whose legs are much longer than my own? As I tried to keep up with him, I struggled to match his stride, and I was the one with the beet-red face at the end of the run. Differences matter. Differences might change outcomes. And differences should be recognized.

When we take for granted unrecognized racial bias and stereotypes, we inadvertently produce a whole host of differences in our life experiences. At any moment, simply for the color of our skin, we can be treated better or worse than others. To my knowledge, I have not experienced unfair treatment because of my race. I am aware, however, of having been treated better than others due to my skin color.

Not denying meaningful privilege. As a kid living in California, I was the lone white kid in my friend group, which included one black boy, and several Hispanic girls and boys. While I noticed I didn’t look like my friends, kids were kids and friends were friends—and together, we generally represented the full spectrum of skin tones. I remember one recess, our group did something the teachers didn’t like. Time has erased the memory of what exactly we did, but I’ve not forgotten the displeasure of the attending adults.

My friends were the ones reprimanded for whatever we did, but I was never called over and reprimanded even though I was playing with them at the time and doing everything they were doing. At the time, I think I was just mostly glad not to get in trouble. But I imagine my friends might have wondered, “So, why didn’t Anna get in trouble?” None of us would have ever conceived it was about our skin color—and I admittedly don’t really know what was in the minds of the adults that day. But skin color seemed to be the most salient difference between us. Whether I was treated better, or my friends worse, because of the hue of our skin, of course—both would be wrong. And so also would be not recognizing the differences between our experiences—and how an unconscious bias may be contributing.

Anyone can experience discrimination in many forms, of course, no matter their skin color. However, it’s worth recognizing that statistically, I as a white woman am far less likely to ever be a target of a hate crime compared with my black neighbors and friends. There’s also evidence that the tone of skin inside the same ethnic group can impact our experience—with 2021 statistics confirming that Hispanics with a darker skin tone reported more discrimination than Hispanics of a lighter skin tone. (Discrimination ranged from being told to go back to their own country, verbal or physical threats, or being called offensive names.) So while I and my darker-skinned friends will both go to the grocery store, send our kids to school, cross streets, travel on airplanes, apply for jobs and loans, and do other things we all do, this one variable, skin color, means their experience and outcomes may be significantly different than mine.

Non-hostile differences still matter. One could argue that if we can all stop treating each other differently because of our skin color, then we could say “I don’t see color.” But even if we all ended up evolving past this illogical notion that something as uncontrollable as skin color can determine someone’s perceived worth, we still wouldn’t experience life the same way.

I recall one sunny afternoon hanging out with my best friend at her pool, sometime around 2nd grade. As we sat there with our feet in the water, she turned to me and said, “You know, if we melted right here in the sun, you’d turn into vanilla pudding and I’d turn into chocolate pudding.” The absurdity of us melting into pudding made us both giggle. She then slightly amended that statement, “Actually, you’d probably be more of a strawberry pudding because you’d get all burned first before you melted.” We laughed harder. I was the white kid who was more likely to burn under the sun than my black friend who had much darker skin. (Yes, we both wore sunscreen by the pool, as her mother insisted.) Skin is skin and it needs protecting, but my friend knew that if one of us turned red by the end of the day, it was most likely going to be me.

The differences in our skin tone mean we won’t all interact with our environments in the same way, and it also means we have to take care of our bodies differently. We could all be living in a utopia with racial equality where “we don’t see color,” yet we would still have to take note of our differences and what they mean for each of us. Everyday life is altered for each of us by all of the things that make us different from someone else.

“I don’t see color” goes beyond just desperately trying to equate the masses; it ignores the fact that it’s just not possible to look at someone and not see color or any other differences. And by denying what we actually see, we can blind ourselves to subconscious judgments we make based on what we do see. And those subconscious judgments, if not well understood and recognized, can alter the way we make decisions and how we treat each other.

Our brains seem to do a lot when we first see someone. Researchers Johnathan Freeman and Kerri Johnson have explored what happens in the brain when viewing someone. They write, “Initial social perceptions are, in fact, hardly ‘initial.’ They reflect a dynamic cascade of interactive influences, wherein factors that were long presumed to be ‘downstream’ products of social perception, such as stereotypes, attitudes, and goals, constrain initial perceptions.”

Essentially, as we lay eyes on someone, we move through a thought process riddled with preconceived ideas and stereotypes we’ve been exposed to. During this process, our brain is also calculating the similarities and differences between us and the person who captured our attention. Since we tend to prefer and gravitate toward people we perceive as being similar to us, (and are, in fact, wired to find similarities), it may be physiologically impossible to ever not “see color.”  Since all of our brains will inevitably make judgments upon similarities and differences, to consciously ignore meaningful distinctions may conceal unfair or flawed judgments we’ve made about people; judgments we need to reconcile.

But the opposite is also true: we can gain more power over our thinking if we simply pay more attention to it. Bringing more awareness to our thought process would mean paying attention to the differences we see each day.  This can cause us to better understand what a difference in skin tone, gender, age, or other factors can make.

Proactively socializing children in the right direction. Another video circulated around social media for a time that showed a parent pointing to pictures of mixed-race children, asking their own child what they saw.  The child said something like “kids” or “friends” but never pointed out any of the differences between the kids.  That video, very reasonably, touched a lot of hearts, and the message attached to that video was “Racism has to be taught.” I agree. However, what also has to be taught is how to guard against racist views we can all pick up and absorb.

The way we help our kids remain loving towards all types of people is not to encourage them to ignore differences. I’d rather help my child see differences and consciously reject racist views and stereotypes they are definitely going to encounter throughout their lives. I need my children to be conscious of their thoughts. I need my children to view and understand differences so they can better empathize with others, rather than pretending to “not see color” in their interactions throughout the day.

Maybe the more precise way to communicate the feeling and principle we’re trying to convey is “I will not treat you differently because of something like your skin color.  At the same time, I recognize this may mean we have experienced life differently.”

Reading clearly our aspirational texts.  In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” I no longer believe he meant for anyone to not see or recognize the color of his skin or his children’s skin as he asked not to be judged for it. The color of his skin was part of who he was.  It was one of many variables that shaped how he experienced life.  He wasn’t ashamed of his skin color.  He didn’t want people to pretend that he wasn’t different from them.  He asked that if he was to be judged by others, it would be for his character or, one could say, the sum total of his choices. This also brings to mind the New Testament scripture that reads, “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.”

God focuses on our choices, our use of the agency He bestowed upon us.  That doesn’t mean He doesn’t see our differences. On the contrary, to be a perfect and compassionate judge, God would have to be very aware of all the factors that may influence us here on earth. So I believe God sees exactly what makes us different.  The variety of creations on this earth is witness to God’s recognition of differences, and even the need for and love of differences.  Seeing us as we are (and are not), He then chooses to pay attention to our characters, our choices.

If that’s true, then would not the same God have us learn to see and understand differences as well—perhaps even as the only real way to be someone acting with eyes wide open to the realities of this life and not be acted upon by the consequences related to the denial of meaningful difference? We don’t need to try and deny our differences in order to be free of bias.  Rather, we need to get better at seeing differences and understanding what they mean and do not mean.   Instead of refusing to see people as they are in all their varieties in order to declare ourselves at peace and harmony with all our brothers and sisters, let’s become more mindful of how our differences shape our experiences—and learn more about how others experience the same existence we occupy.  At the same time, let’s gladly become more conscious of how we make judgments and whether those judgments are unfair.

My parting encouragement. In the end, if we think that when we say “I don’t see color,” we actually mean, “I don’t see color,” please know that we do see color.  You can’t help but see your own color and someone else’s color.  You can’t help but see that you’re short and they are tall.  You can’t help but see that they are female and you are male, etc. You can’t, in my estimation, really mean it when you say “I don’t see color.” And I hope you don’t want to actually mean “I don’t see color,” which translates into ignoring the life-altering force of differences.

Yet giving people the benefit of the doubt, let’s also appreciate that when someone says “I don’t see color,” they are most likely trying to demonstrate that they don’t want to be biased.  They want to treat people equally. And those are good things—and good thoughts, which can hopefully translate into good actions.  However, for the sake of better communication, better thinking, better understanding, and even faster growth toward a more equitable future, we need to learn what we actually mean—or want to mean—and say that instead.

The post What I Hope You Mean When You Say “I Don’t See Color.” appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

No More Strangers and Foreigners

“Yet oftimes a secret something || Whispered, ‘you’re a stranger here,’

And I felt that I had wandered || From a more exalted sphere.”

Oh My Father, Lyrics by Eliza R. Snow

Eliza R. Snow’s poetic words speak to a deep sense that we are—all of us—out-of-place; in the words of an unknown poet, we’re merely “poor wayfarin’ stranger(s), traveling through this world of woe.” 

I feel this. Most days, and in most places, I feel like I do not quite belong. I also feel, though, a sense that there is a belonging yet to come. Paul wrote of our identity as members of the family of God, “Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” Isaac Watts expanded on the theme, tenderly prophesying of the day to come when each of us will be “no more a stranger, nor a guest, but like a child at home.”

It surprises me how often others confide that they feel the same melancholy—a sense that this earth is not our home. Paradoxically, this sense of estrangement from our true origins seems a common bond of humanity. From a Christian perspective, we are strangers and vagabonds on this earth—which helps explain so many of us feeling a hint of divine homesickness. United by our existence in a lone and dreary world, we often feel the absence of “our former friends and birth.” As Elder Bruce C. Hafen put it, “This earth is not our home. We are away at school, trying to master the lessons of ‘the great plan of happiness’ so we can return home and know what it means to be there.” 

We also have in common a deep need to thrive in a community, to truly commune—and a pretty good track record of not pulling it off. Connection is precious; true friendship, true brotherhood, true unity are commodities to be treasured, recognizing how cheap the knock-offs are. Those rare specks of meaningful connection and unity—little drops here and there—are as close an approximation as we can get to heavenly, holy union.

What does a pure drop of belonging feel like to you?

For me, it’s being around my dad. An embrace. The familiarity of someone who loves you profoundly, and understands you fiercely. Someone who just wants to be with you. To hear what you have been doing. I feel that magic in the familiar foods my dad cooks, the jokes he tells. He’s always interested in what’s going on in my life, always asking about my job. He always takes pride in even mundane successes—“You’ve always been good at that” or “I’m not surprised, you’ve had a knack for that since you were a little one.” When people misunderstand me, he reminds me that he knows me: “Your heart is good. They’ll see that in time.” I’m lucky to have such a treasured relationship with him. I cherish it—and try to drink it in each time I’m around him; not because he is old or ill, but because I am wise enough to cherish something that will be, at least temporarily, finite.  gations which prioritize community over common goals will get a good deal of neither.

We do not travel alone, but like the pioneers, we move forward in companies—and the company is essential to the experience. More than just individuals, we are made to be a part of a group, like sheep in a flock, or cells in an organ. 

For members of the Church of Jesus Christ, the intermediate goal is Zion, where we will all be “of one heart.” There we will learn to love as God loves, and to mimic the eventual ideal of embracing each other in heaven—where that “same sociality that exists among us here shall exist among us there.” In this way, we see Zion as a training ground preparing us for something even greater. 

To brass tacks, then: the duty is ours to build toward, and not merely look forward to this belonging in Zion. 

More than Mingling: Belonging and Eternal Law

“There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” 

~Doctrine and Covenants 130:20-21

Some friends of mine did some analysis of data recently that found that those in their church community who are most likely to step away from the faith are also those who feel like they least belong. So what is the remedy to this feeling? My usual mental toolkit is pretty limited. Mix-n-mingles. Linger-longers. Dinner rotations. Although all good, I write in part because I feel the Spirit whispering that such things will not, by themselves, help—and may even hurt. 

Joseph Smith taught that all blessings are predicated on eternal law—and if we do not obey the law, we will not get the blessing. Could this be true of healthy community building as well? As author Parker Palmer notes, “Belonging is not a set of feelings we depend on but a set of practices we enact.​”​

Our efforts at building community can be cheap and hollow like that—sounding brass and tinkling cymbals—if they are not based on the right principles. Elder Maxwell—ever with his gift of turning a phrase–used two metaphors in two different talks to mean similar things: citing C.S. Lewis, he described those who “hurried about with fire extinguishers in times of flood.” Second, he described those who were anxiously “straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.” In both cases, he was not merely describing their efforts as merely ineffective, but also doomed: utterly inadequate, and perhaps even counterproductive. 

I worked at a school once where we tried every possible “inclusion” strategy—all to no effect. In fact, the school was so focused on unity that we were constantly afraid that we had offended someone else—and began to look for subtle indications that others bore us ill will, too. Obsessed with others’ perceived slights—and constantly worried about offending others with our own—our focus increasingly turned away from the students we served, and turned to our own petty dramas.

In contrast, at another school we rolled up our sleeves and got to work—with our collective focus on students, our problems just seemed to fade away. I felt like part of a team. We lost ourselves in the work. We took criticism gladly. We tolerated minor slights, knowing we’d done the same to others—and hoping that they would give us some grace in return. 

Another example: In conversation recently, some dear friends of ours told us that moving from an area with few Latter-day Saints to an area with many has left them surprised. “Our friends out there became our family. Our friends out here are nice, but it’s clear that we are mostly just ‘church friends.’” I’ve contrariwise been in wards and branches with groups of members working together in a calling who are able to have a rich and vibrant feeling of togetherness and unity—in part, I think, because of a simple commitment to discipleship. We become dear friends—like family—because we are members of Jesus’ flock. We had a common cause.

In a similar way, I’ve long believed the best marriages aren’t those in which the couple is most infatuated, but rather in which they are most committed to building something together.

There’s an interesting bit of very early social science research that finds an association between those who attend church for internal reasons (a desire for transcendence, or communion with the divine) and improved mental health outcomes. On the other hand, those who go for primarily external reasons (like social expectations or keeping up with the Joneses) experience negative mental health outcomes. I suspect the same is true of our desire for community and friendship: if we put friendship first, we will have sacrificed discipleship. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, those congregations which prioritize community over common goals will get a good deal of neither. And those congregations which prioritize discipleship over community will get a good deal of both. Our cause—what builds our community—is “the cause of Christ,” as Joseph Smith called it.

To any who are looking to improve the community and belongingness of any group—I say that we will only make progress insofar as our solutions come in conformity to the eternal laws that govern healthy, thriving, heart-knit communities.

Diversity and Fellowship

“There were no… Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.” ~4th Nephi 1:17

Recently, I enjoyed a testimony meeting in which there were representatives from four continents. One of the speakers said something striking: “I feel united with you more than I do out there,” she said, motioning to the outside windows. She does not look like the congregation. Her English is accented. She has different cultural norms. She eats different foods. And yet, in this place, she is united with her brothers and sisters in Christ–most of whom she did not even know personally. 

The same has happened to me: when I was young my family moved to Italy. I was 13. I expected to feel alone as I walked the foreign city, in church, and at community events; gratefully I would attend an international school where the language was English. In fact, however, I found that I felt more alone in school than I did at a humble little branch of fellow saints. We did not speak the same language. We did not have the same customs. But these were my familiar community, because of our common bond around a man from Nazareth.

One of the more obvious principles of the scriptures is that Zion is a place of unity, but importantly, not homogeneity. Latter-day Saints conform to principles of the gospel and defy conformity on nearly any other principles. 

Even our differences, however, can become additional sources of connection. As Parker Palmer adds, “the demands and vexations of life together are not the death knell of community—they are doorways into deeper relationship as we work through our disillusionments.”

The people following Christ’s visit to the ancient Americas became as one because they lost their appetite for contention; because of the love of God in their hearts; and because they were all converted to the Lord. That unity did not appear to arise from their having spoken at length about their differences, or about unity and inclusion either.  Instead, they gave everything they were to Jesus. In consecration, they offered their whole souls as an offering to Him.

As a result, there were “no manner of -ites.” 

Shared suffering is another way we draw closer together and feel belonging. At an especially challenging school, my colleagues became my closest friends. We went through days of being cursed at by children who were also throwing desks, and trying to get all of the tears out during our planning breaks so the students couldn’t tell we’d been weeping. I wish there was a way to become as close to others without the hardship, but the friends I have gained through hardship are uniquely special to me. You cannot imitate such a bond. 

The scriptures say that the meek are blessed to “inherit the earth”—with one footnote explaining that the humble are characterized as “those who have suffered.” Perhaps this is why Paul spoke of those who come to know “the fellowship of his sufferings.” 

None of this is to minimize the value of friendship alone, which Joseph Smith taught as one of the “grand fundamental principles” of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In President Ballard’s new biography by Susan Easton Black and Joseph Walker, there is a story of a young Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, who worried what the new apostle, Elder M. Russell Ballard, might say to him as he visited. He prayed to know that he would do well—only to have the surprising revelation that Russ Ballard would become one of his greatest and lifelong friends. I believe God tenderly cares for our friendships and nurtures them—and that we should be all-the-more eager to shake a hand, give an invite to dinner, or get to know a new face at church. In a world of disconnection and fragmentation, we all ought to #chooseconnection. As I’ve said, one of the great blessings of the gospel is finding friends who become like family. We all need more of that, not less. 

But the path to a community isn’t built one friendship at a time, but one prayer and one principle at a time. The suffering of the repentant soul and the triumph of the meek heart are key to unlocking that deeper kind of belonging—not unrelated endeavors, but thoroughly conjoined.

Where Belonging and Purpose Meet

“And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.” ~Moses 7:18

A friend described the feeling of rowing with a professional team. The rhythm must be perfectly matched, the movement totally in sync—but it’s more than that. The desire to win, the emphasis on giving one’s all to the cause, and the rush of being surrounded by top-notch colleagues all give you a synergy that reaches far past your own individual contribution. 

Emily Esfahani Smith has written that meaning is more important than happiness—and meaning is built on four pillars: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. I require my students to watch her TED talk, after which one student thoughtfully wondered “what would it look like to combine belonging and purpose.?”

Another student said, without prompting, “would that be consecration?”

In our theology, consecration is the giving of something to God in a holy offering—we might say that we consecrate our time to Him, or our tithes or offerings to the poor. We similarly consecrate our hearts and wills to Him. But once again, we always travel in companies: consecration is a unique restorationist doctrine that has been practiced at various times throughout the history of God’s family, and always in communities. Consecration cannot be truly accomplished individually: it is fundamentally a community endeavor. This is synergy—like what my friend describes in rowing—but aimed at loftier, holier goals.

There are at least two implications here. First, to the extent that we are obedient to the commandment to build Zion, we must learn how to forge the kind of unity that defines a Zion community. Second, to the extent that we are commanded to be one, it is a commandment to be one in a far deeper sense than merely “getting along.” Zion is not just about defining a quantity of belongingness, but also a quality of it.

True Belonging

In thy holy habitation || Did my spirit once reside?
In my first primeval childhood ||Was I nurtured near thy side?

Then, at length, when I’ve completed ||All you sent me forth to do,

With your mutual approbation || Let me come and dwell with you.

Oh My Father, Lyrics by Eliza R. Snow

I love the gospel in part because it takes the plain virtue and exalts it beyond infinity. You think you have love here? There you shall have it at all heights and depths, from infinity to infinity. You think you are important here? If you humble yourself, you will have kingdoms, powers, dominions, and exaltations. You think you have joy here? You cannot even comprehend what awaits the faithful. The gospel magnifies any virtue to its highest ideal.

Likewise, do you think you have belonging here?  Just wait. You and I hardly know what kind of belonging awaits us.  

In the meanwhile, I like to remember that the loneliness of earth life—the heart pangs of divine homesickness—point towards what is to come. And this project of building Zion is a sandbox where we get to play at heaven. It gets us close. It lets us learn how to get closer, even if not all the way.  

There is something further up and further in. An embrace from Father. The familiarity of someone who loves you profoundly, and understands you fiercely. Someone who just wants to be with you. To hear what you have been doing. 

When I return to my heavenly home, the embraces will be pure, and the holes in my heart will be filled. I will be among friends again. I will be home again.

The post Belonging at Church appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

We are witnessing an ever greater movement toward polarity. The middle-ground options will be removed from us as Latter-day Saints. The middle of the road will be withdrawn. 

If you are treading water in the current of a river, you will go somewhere. You simply will go wherever the current takes you. Going with the stream, following the tide, drifting in the current will not do. 

Choices have to be made. Not making a choice is a choice. Learn to choose now. 

–Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

This is an ominous statement from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, and when looking at this statement through a partisan mindset, we might imagine people being pulled to the left or the right. Among people whose politics and religion have become intertwined, there is a perception that God wants us to be either on the partisan left or the partisan right, and “learning to choose” entails learning to choose the side — either the right or the left — that God favors.

That diagram, and that interpretation, are wrong.  In fact, what Elder Holland is saying in that quote is better diagrammed like this:

Here we see that the middle ground is not between the political polarities of left and right; rather, it is an area of indecision between gospel principles and the adversary’s inducements to apostasy offered by voices on both the left and right. The issues pulling people into apostasy are not inherently problematic; they can each be explored and addressed in ways that do not result in disillusionment and deconversion.  But presently, popular culture is rewarding the opposite of thoughtful engagement with challenging ideas. The advent of social media has resulted in an amplification of voices that make increasing numbers of issues into fuel for apostasy, and many of these voices have the added dimension of being very sentimentally appealing.

Expectations that the future church will become relativist or just more accommodating toward doctrinal compromise are not expectations grounded in reality.  As far back as 1988, Church President Ezra Taft Benson said of the last days: “As the issues become clearer and more obvious, all mankind will eventually be required to align themselves either for the kingdom of God or for the kingdom of the devil. As these conflicts rage, either secretly or openly, the righteous will be tested.” More recently, President Russell M. Nelson said plainly, “The time is coming when those who do not obey the Lord will be separated from those who do.”

In April 2020, all of the living apostles spoke with a united voice to affirm the founding historical narratives of the restoration, and President Nelson reiterated in the 2021 New Mission Presidents’ training that “this is God’s work, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that Joseph Smith is the prophet of this last dispensation. A testimony of the Prophet Joseph’s pivotal role in the Restoration is crucial for all of us who are preaching the Lord’s gospel.”  He further said of the Restoration Proclamation:

There is power in its declarations. It proclaims truths concerning the Godhead, the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the First Vision, the organization of the Lord’s Church, the restoration of priesthood authority, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and modern-day prophets.  

Far from a move in the direction of relativism, the prophets are doubling down on core restoration doctrines and narratives, even as those doctrines and narratives fit less and less within popular paradigms that are typical in Western societies.

With these realities in mind, it is also important to note that the prophets well recognize and appreciate the extent to which Church members are living their experiences with different capacities, and in different stages in their faith.  This was summarized well in Elder Uchtdorf’s statement:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a place for people with all kinds of testimonies. There are some members of the Church whose testimony is sure and burns brightly within them. Others are still striving to know for themselves. The Church is a home for all to come together, regardless of the depth or the height of our testimony. I know of no sign on the doors of our meetinghouses that says, “Your testimony must be this tall to enter.”

Moreover, given the diversity of culture and life experience in the Church, it is unlikely that the Church will ever insist that members maintain complete uniformity in worldview.  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland uses the metaphor of a choir to illustrate how diverse personalities and life experiences can come together and contribute their unique voices to the furthering of God’s purposes:

On those days when we feel a little out of tune, a little less than what we think we see or hear in others, I would ask us, especially the youth of the Church, to remember it is by divine design that not all the voices in God’s choir are the same. It takes variety—sopranos and altos, baritones and basses—to make rich music. To borrow a line quoted in the cheery correspondence of two remarkable Latter-day Saint women, “All God’s critters got a place in the choir.” When we disparage our uniqueness or try to conform to fictitious stereotypes—stereotypes driven by an insatiable consumer culture and idealized beyond any possible realization by social media—we lose the richness of tone and timbre that God intended when He created a world of diversity. Now, this is not to say that everyone in this divine chorus can simply start shouting his or her own personal oratorio! Diversity is not cacophony, and choirs do require discipline…

This diversity of experience and perspective is an asset to the Church, helping members to develop the supreme virtue of charity as we interact with different people, and feel a constant sense of awe and wonder at how God is working in the lives of people who experience the world in different ways than we do. Diversity becomes a problem when it leads to relativism and pantheism, two ideological commitments that combine to obliterate real understanding of the revealed Christ and His gospel.  

Relativism is ultimately the basis for Israel’s most persistent sin, idolatry: the fashioning of false gods and the projection of our worldview onto these gods of our own making. Ironically, one of our most persistent idolatries is the refashioning of the divinely revealed Christ into a sentimentally-appealing false Christ named “Jesus,” who exists to make us all feel loved and happy—essentially answering white Westerners’ longings for therapeutic religion.  This is not a new phenomenon; from the time of the earliest Christian communities, there has been a constant tendency among believers and observers to fashion a Jesus in our own image.  Indeed, this form of idolatry was identified as a primary impetus for the restoration:

…the day cometh that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people;

For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant; 

They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol…

Received several years before the restoration of the priesthood office of apostle, this revelation makes a general statement about what follows the abandonment of the witness testimony of prophets and apostles: namely, an abandonment of God’s ordinances and covenants, and a rejection of authentic revelation of God in favor of idols fashioned in the image of the world.  When responding to His disciples’ questions regarding the timing of His return, Christ was quick to warn about the many false Christs that would appear and deceive many. Presently, our false idols—many named “Jesus”—certainly reflect the various images of the world: political, nationalistic, hedonistic, consumerist, antinomian, provincial, self-centered, and invariably affirming of all of our inner narratives.

This idolatrous impulse even extends to the world of scripture scholarship.  As New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson tartly observed of his academic discipline:

When scholars, all using the same methods and studying the same materials, derive such a variety of “historical” Jesuses—a revolutionary zealot, a cynic radical, an agrarian reformer, a gay magician, a charismatic cult reformer, a peasant, a guru of oceanic bliss —then one may well wonder whether anything more than a sophisticated and elaborate form of projection has taken place.

The pull toward idolatry is strong among those who once believed, and it has always been thus.  See, for example, the story of Almon Babbit, of whom the Lord said “behold, he aspireth to establish his counsel instead of the counsel which I have ordained, even that of the Presidency of my Church; and he setteth up a golden calf for the worship of my people.” 

Hence the urgency of President Ballard’s message that “Today we warn you that there are false prophets and false teachers arising; and if we are not careful, even those who are among the faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will fall victim to their deception.”  In their denunciations of idolatrous false teachers, modern prophets echo the Lord’s pleadings through Jeremiah, whose emotive and provocative railings against idolatry stand even now as timeless rebukes to pantheism and antinomian relativism.

It was through Jeremiah that the Lord described the defining feature of imaginary idol-gods: they are not personally known. This is echoed later in Jesus’ anticipated harsh answer to some who profess faith:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, and in your name cast out spirits, and in your name done many miracles?’ I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you lawbreakers.”

Why do we prefer unknowable gods?  The answer is that unknowable gods offer no resistance to being fashioned in our own image. And we learn from the prophetic record that the world simply does not like the God who is authentically revealed to them. In Jeremiah’s ministry, the authentically-known God of Israel rebukes the people’s favorite sins: their nationalism, their oppression toward the vulnerable in society, their Sabbath-breaking, and their embrace of the sins of their neighbors.  We are told that by contrast, people prefer false prophets, as they offer a god who only ever conveys divine affirmation and approval, and never warns of divine judgment.  As Jeremiah’s spiritual progeny, Samuel the Lamanite explained it,

But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet. Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.

The logic of idolatry is that if humanity does not the like the true God who is revealed through a combination of scripture, prophets, and personal and communal experience, then humanity is able and entitled to create new gods, more to our liking, who are affirmed by new prophets, new sacred texts, and new forms of testimony. QAnon, critical theory, religious nationalism, new age religion, and much of the more strident LGBT ally movement have divergent views on many things, but they all have in common this basic idolatrous impulse and premise.  It is often phrased in declarations that my god would never allow ____, or my god would never require me to _____.  These and similar statements are not wrong—they are indeed factually correct, as they are describing the views of imaginary gods created in our own image.

Despite our popular language of diversity and “holding space,” our impulse to idolatry cannot coexist with revelation, which fact is the driving force behind the stoning of the prophets in ages past, and the current verbal stoning of prophets in the present. Recently, conservative Latter-day Saint commentator Eric Moutsos published a Facebook post where he talked about coming to his spiritual senses on the road to apostasy:

Every speaker and message is different in General Conference for each individual, usually to what they need to hear, but after yesterday I do have a guilty conscience on a few things. But I realized I have been feeling this for a few months now, little by little, but in my mind I’ve chalked it up to “politics” and the conflict it naturally brings between people who believe differently how our country should run…I really didn’t like the way I felt yesterday watching some of general conference. I found my mind drifting around each talk looking for certain political undertones (which yes, they were there) vs. looking for Jesus in each talk. I kept hearing my mind saying “Lord, is it I?” During each talk when I would hear a political MSM buzzword, I would think, “Is he a liberal too?” Or “Does he care or realize that without America, we wouldn’t even have a church, or a TV, or the internet to even be watching conference all together?” Or “Does this person know Joseph Smith was born 13 years after the Bill of Rights [was] ratified?” One person even spoke about “what if Jesus was in the room with you?” …. All I could think and say is, “Yep, and everyone would take off their stupid masks and go up and touch him.”These are the thoughts I was having towards leaders of my church, and though I don’t believe it’s necessarily wrong to allow your mind to wander and simply think, after Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk about division and where our hearts are to one another, especially some of our families, I knew God was speaking to me. And I know I need to repent.

Without authentic revelation of God, religion becomes a matter of coming together as a community and applying our thoughts and feelings to a set of ideas and narratives provided by a thing called “church.”  We are seeing around us more and more demonstration of why this horizontal religion is so appealing in the self-centered white Western world: it tends to serve primarily as a mechanism for validating our perceptions of self.  “The church” in this sense exists to make us think and feel certain ways, and when our thoughts and feelings form the basis for our identity, the Church’s inability to validate our thoughts and feelings becomes the substance of an identity crisis.  It is no surprise, then, that so many who apostatize describe their experience of thinking and feeling new things in terms of selfhood: “I’m discovering my true self!”

This narrative is especially prevalent in consumerist America.  In a recent conversation with a friend, we lamented the Americanization of foreign cuisine, and specifically, the way restaurants in America load foreign dishes with sweeteners in order to increase their appeal to the American sugar-hungry palate.  The effect is to decrease subtle nuances of flavor, and essentially make every dish into a dessert.  Consumerist, therapeutic American religion follows the same model, transforming challenging elements of theology, scripture, and worship into celebratory and undemanding experiences that deliver a constant sugar high of validation.  In perverse irony, American commentators often regard the humble, consecrated, believing, religious frameworks of people in Africa and other areas of the Majority World as somehow inferior to the soulless religious dessert table of the wealthy, “enlightened” West.

This tendency to idolatry is common to both ideological right and left, and it is causing what Elder Holland described as the disappearance of our middle ground of indecision.  And the options facing Latter-day Saints are no different from the options faced by the audience of Jeremiah: we can turn to imaginary gods forged in our politics, our academic training, our cultural trends, and other things that we love and crave; or we can turn to the true God known to us through the combined witness of scripture, living prophets, and the collective testimony of believers in our midst.

The post The Middle Ground is Disappearing appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Our friend and colleague Yaxin (yah-SHEEN) Lu was born and raised in mainland China and hit young adulthood during the era of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. It served as a stark reminder that freedom—political, religious, or ideological—was severely constrained. Yaxin converted to Christianity and a combination of faith, family, hope, and opportunity for her and her husband—also a Christian convert—led them to the United States. Their decision to act on the belief that God had more than one child for her and her husband burned the bridge between her and her native land, given the one-child policy of the time.  

In spite of needed improvements with her English, Yaxin’s stellar math scores and skills helped yield an opportunity to pursue graduate education in family studies at Louisiana State University. Her desire was to capture and convey, through research, the influence of Christian faith in Asian American immigrant families like her own. 

As a part of the American Families of Faith research project—a 20-year effort to interview nearly 300 racially, regionally, and religiously diverse families in healthy long-term marriages—Yaxin took nearly three years and conducted in-depth interviews with 18 Chinese families. Most of these interviews were done in Mandarin. Yaxin painstakingly transcribed and translated each one (families from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were later interviewed as well).

In these interviews, Yaxin asked about how faith influenced the marriages, parenting, and coping of exemplary Asian American Christian families. She asked about their journey of faith—with the attendant joys and pains. We are pleased to share a few of the key findings with you, as part of our ongoing American Families of Faith series, focused on fostering deep respect and even a little “holy envy” across religious and ethnic communities. 

In overview, we note that in a 2012 national poll by Pew Research Center, 42% of Asian Americans reported an affiliation with a Christian religion. In fact, more Asian Americans reported ties with Christianity than with Eastern religions, such as Buddhism. 

Many Asian families encounter challenges after U.S. immigration that may result in loneliness, anxiety, and maladjustment. Common negative experiences include racial discrimination, intergenerational conflict, and acculturation obstacles. However, recent research has demonstrated positive correlations between religious involvement and higher levels of mental health among Asian Americans. Indeed, researchers have repeatedly noted that for Asian immigrants, religious groups can offer a sense of community that supplements but does not replace family, while also providing opportunities for Asian American families to participate in cultural preservation and acculturation programs, as well as multi-faceted relational support.

 Conversely, conversion can also bring familial pain and relational strain due to interfaith conflicts that arise when only one person or one generation converts to the Christian faith—especially given the importance of intergenerational ties and elder respect in Asian cultures. 

We present our participants’ own experiences in their own voices. One theme that permeated many participants’ discussions of faith was the phenomenon of identifying meaning and purpose in life. A father named Shing (all participant names are pseudonyms) said, 

We have faith and [our] faith lets us have special meaning in our life. We know where we come from, where we are going—we know the purpose of life. We are created by God. We know the road … we will [take]. We … give testimony for this special meaning. 

Shuang, a father who experienced financial difficulties, said,

 When we had low salaries, when we were poor, we gave according to God’s will. God never let us suffer. He is always giving to us … we have lacked nothing. He is the giving God, and it is always He who gives [to] us first. 

When asked if her faith has helped her through challenges, a mother named Wan said,

 When we lost our first child, I believe it was God’s almightiness that helped us to pass through [it]. In fact, in our daily life, we need peace … from God. … We deliver our burden to God. 

These and many other families reported how trust in God offered them a sense of peace in their lives and helped them find comfort during challenges, challenges as profound as enduring a child’s death. Another reported benefit for these families was the teaching, opportunity, and structure their respective churches offered for reaching out and serving others. One husband said,

 We are living for glorifying God and benefiting others. We live not for ourselves only—[we do] not focus on our family only. May God bless the others through us. … We will live a life not only for ourselves … but also for others …

Vera, a mother, referred to these acts of being “kind” and “treat[ing] everyone with dignity and respect” as the “Christian values.” Another mother stated that, “The Bible says that giving is better blessed than receiving,” while a third mother emphasized, “The Bible says [to] love one another. Love your neighbors.”

Many referred to their fellow congregational members as “brothers and sisters.” For example, Chongming said, “Church has become a necessary and very important part of our life. [Our] church is a big family. Brothers and sisters are actually in one family. [The] church’s things are our own family’s things.” 

In discussing their faith in connection with their marriages, many participants expressed the importance of the scriptural charge to “become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24) and discussed the influence of this teaching. When asked what some of her deepest spiritual beliefs were in relation to marriage, Jiao, said that the Bible teaches:

‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24, Ephesians 5:31). In this ‘one flesh’ or oneness the boundaries between ‘you’ and ‘I’ should be fused together, and there shouldn’t be the distinction of ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ between a husband and a wife. 

Wei, a husband, said, “If you regard your spouse as a part of your body, you will treasure her more and will not regard her as outsider. This is a very important belief.” 

A couple named Yue and Kuang explained how they were able to achieve oneness in their marriage by mutually working to be closer to God:

 Kuang (husband): Look up [to God]. Just like a triangle, both of us look up to the Lord; the distance between us is more and more narrow [as we draw closer to Him] . . .

Yue (wife): I think God wants us [to] be one. God’s words remind me … the husband and the wife are different individuals, [but] now we have God. [Before our conversion], we were usually unpleasant with each other for some little things such as shopping or education. But now God is above. [My husband] said, “[We should] look up to the Lord. Let God be the Lord of our family.” We have distance, [but] we are closer when we look upon the Lord. There are differences between a man and a woman [but] we will become closer and closer and meet on the spot [where] God is the common center of our life. 

While discussing religious beliefs or practices that help reduce marital conflict, Bik, a wife, explained that

The most important lesson I [have] learned is to come to God directly and ask God why we had these problems. God lets me know the faults of mine and where the key problem[s are]. We may have conflicts [still, after our conversion], but how to deal with it is different from before, because our character[s] have been transformed. 

Several participants directly referenced the Bible (often via memorized scriptural references) but some also alluded to Jesus’ command to forgive. Zhou and Ping, a Chinese couple said: 

Zhou (husband): A lot of people give up [on their] marriages as they get discouraged. … We have to depend on God when we are feeling discouraged, and … not give up. 

Ping (wife): [We] really need to practice forgiveness. Jesus said we have to forgive unlimited time[s]. 

Faith was also a salient influence in parenting. Mei-Fen, a mother, said of her son,

There were several times this year, he said he felt bad when he came back home from school. He wanted me to pray with him hand in hand in his room, and then he felt better. … Prayer has become his practice. [When] he met serious problems, he asked me to pray for him. I asked him what’s wrong when I noticed his depression. [Again], he told me why [he was down] and asked me to pray with him hand in hand. When we pray, he always [has] asked [for] us [to pray together] hand in hand. It seems that he [has] found answers through prayer. I don’t know how to do [this] if we had not believed in God. 

One father said, 

We know what God wants us to be. We have a goal that we want to be a person that pleases God. We hope our children [will also] … please God. When they grow up, they will glorify God and benefit others. This is [our] central and only [hope for our children]. 

Asian American Christian immigrant parents’ responses featured at least two variations in parenting style. One group of parents regarded their parent-child relationships to be “equal” and horizontal while another group of parents perceived them to be more vertical/hierarchical. In speaking about their horizontal parent-child relationship, Wei, a father noted, “In our family, I am the father of my son, but we are also brothers. This is very important, and we are equal. I regard him as a little brother, and we grow up together in Christ.” 

The second group of parents indicated hierarchical parent-child relationships that emphasize children’s responsibilities to obey and respect their parents. In speaking of obedience, one father said, “Obedience is an important lesson. … Children obey.” 

Another father reported that they “teach [their children] to obey and respect” and “explain to [their child] why he should listen to [them].” 

One mother referred to “teachings in the Bible” that indicate the need for children to “respect your parents.” She explained that if she does this now, then “my children would learn and know how to treat their parents later.” These latter accounts captured a parental focus on more “vertical” ideals of obedience, respect, and honor of parental authority.

Ultimately, whether parents were more horizontal and egalitarian or more vertical and authority-centered, both groups emphasized their responsibilities to teach their children by setting positive examples for them. A mother named Wan said, “Teaching children is teaching myself. I learn lessons by [obeying God] myself.” A husband named Deshi said, 

Parents are the best teacher for their kids. Kids like to imitate parents. Parents have [a] big influence on kids about how to be a human. [If] I said to them do not lie, then I should not lie. … Kids will learn from the model of parents. 

Deshi’s comment regarding parenting, faith, and behavior calls to mind Emerson’s statement, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” 

In connection with both parenting and marriage, the purpose of this study was to provide greater understanding of how Christian faith influences relationships within Asian American immigrant families. In sum, we see multi-faceted influences of faith on personal, community, marital, and parental levels. 

With the increase of the population of Asian American immigrants in the United States, insight regarding how this significant minority adapts, assimilates, accommodates, and engages in religious and familial transformations is an important topic. 

For some Asian American families, like the 24 interviewed in our study, their lived religion and family relationships reportedly formed “the center of our lives.”

Two unique features of our sample were that these families were (a) all immigrants to the United States (from mainland China, Japan, Korea, or Taiwan) and (b) adult converts to Christianity (about 20% in their native land, about 80% after immigration to the United States). 

Accordingly, one admirable feature of this religious-ethnic community that elicited holy envy from us was their courage to embrace change. These individuals and families literally crossed the globe and entered a new sociocultural world in search of their own vision and version of a better life. Most sought advanced education and/or employment that was rooted in a second or third language. 

Further, of these participant individuals and families who converted to Christianity, many made profound and often uncomfortable changes as they adopted a new worldview and way of life. 

The costs were, and some cases continue to be, substantial. Having embraced Christianity, however, these families have vigorously held to what they professed to hold dear. The sincerity of their conversions and their convictions was unquestionable. 

No other Christian group we interviewed directly cited the Bible with more precision and accuracy. Further, few other groups manifested the level of pragmatic collectivism evident among Asian Christian churches. Examples of this included church members who literally met newly immigrating families at the docks and made extensive efforts to help them to culturally, religiously, and economically adapt to life in a new land. Perhaps no interview captured this collectivism and willingness to serve others than the following explanation from the Choi family:

Haesun (wife):  I enjoyed the church in San Diego much better than the one here [on the East Coast]. 

Interviewer: Why was it special?

Oui (husband): She served a LOT. If someone was coming from Korea and [the person] didn’t have a car or anything, usually my wife would help the person with riding and shopping and with all kinds of stuff. She was kind of busy in San Diego…she was not usually in the house….

Haesun (wife):  I had two Bible studies a week and every Friday I served my group dinner in my home .

Oui (husband): 10-20 in the group so it was not easy. We didn’t have enough money but she liked it very much.

Haesun (wife):  …We did a lot together. Walks together on the beach. I was very happy there. They needed me and I needed them.

Interviewer:  You were happy serving others?

Haesun (wife):  Yes, they were happy so I was happy. 

We honor this other-centered and service-oriented approach to life reflected by Haesun.

Finally, in spite of their high levels of education and learning, surpassed only by the Jewish families we interviewed, there was a humility among the Asian Christian families that moved us. This humility often included a profound gratitude to be living on American soil. 

Each of the different religious-ethnic communities in the American Families of Faith research project features valued additions via differences in perspective and lived experience. This may be especially true with our Asian American Christian families. When one realizes that in 1989, nearly half of the individuals we interviewed were still living in China during the tragic massacre of the June Fourth Incident at Tiananmen Square, we are reminded of the precious nature of religious and political liberty that Asian Christian immigrants to the United States embody.

About the Authors:

In our increasingly diverse (and too often divisive) culture, it can be challenging to have enjoyable conversations or relationships with people with different beliefs and commitments than our own. We hope that the ideas and experiences shared in this special section of Public Square Magazine may help us all to treat others with whom we differ with respect, appreciation, and even admiration.

While we ourselves are active (devoted) members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in our work in the American Families of Faith project, we seek to highlight the strengths of our friends of various faiths. We have developed a sense of deep respect and even holy envy for these families and their faiths. Additionally, the book chapters from which these articles are adapted included two coauthors who are devoted members of those faiths.

If you like listening to audiobooks and podcasts, we have recorded a set of conversations about the families we interviewed that includes additional quotes from mothers, fathers, and youth, more of our experiences in attending their services, as well as personal experiences with friends of other faiths. These podcasts are available at the sites below.

PodBean

Spotify

Stitcher

Apple

iHeart Radio

Podchaser

TuneIn

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The post Living a New Faith in a New Land appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

One of the challenges with the critique of Critical Race Theory (CRT) stems from approaching it as a unidimensional body of knowledge. CRT begins in legal studies recognizing how race has impacted the passing of laws. Anderson (2016) and Ortiz (2018) have published significant historical research that documents how race has been used to support White-centeredness and further Caucasian interests at the expense of all others. If one focuses on historical events—all events, not just those that are palatable—it ought to be simple to recognize that race has been an issue from the beginning of the modern history of this country. Let’s start by acknowledging that this country has been organized and geographically expanded at the expense of taking away land that was not up for grabs. Taking land to implement the pioneer’s dream is the most straightforward imagery to illustrate how racism and a value system based on White superiority have led to prioritizing White needs.

While CRT does point out the unpleasant reality of how race relations and racism directly, significantly, and markedly impact individuals, it also focuses on the formulation of policies and practices to remedy the impact. Thus, CRT is not just in the business of raising a wave of contention. Instead, it is specifically and unequivocally focused on the solutions—the transformative policies that support transformative actions to attempt to right the wrongs of racism. Without this appreciation of its focus on solutions, CRT can be misunderstood to be just critical and divisive.

To leverage a comparison, some aspects of the gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by Latter-day Saints today are very troubling and confusing for other people. Does that mean that the Church of Jesus Christ is inherently contentious and critical of Christian religions that do not believe in The Book of Mormon and the other scriptures? I do not think so. The existence of the Book of Mormon is itself evidence of how the God we believe in values multiple perspectives. In my experience as a missionary and a Latter-day Saint for my entire life, people who are willing to allow themselves to learn about the Book of Mormon can understand its purpose, whether they believe it or accept it as scripture.

CRT is not faith-based. It is evidence-based. There are unending historical facts, legal evidence, and educational statistics documenting how systemic racism has persisted in the U.S. until today. I would propose that talking about race and the historical events that have created the racial divide in the country is vital to the strategy of educating our children. It is crucial to community strengthening and healing. It is integral to solving the challenges that may come from positions rooted in not knowing. Talking about race and looking at history from all points of view also helps differentiate between microaggressions and sincere ignorance. Rather than the censure of CRT, let’s move to implement policies and practices based on CRT that help paint an accurate picture of who the United States is as a nation and its organizational structure as a country. Talking about race can be and should be framed as part of becoming aware and mindful about issues related to race. The purpose of this exercise is to facilitate understanding, transformation, and healing.

Positionality. I am a Latinx woman from Puerto Rico. I am a Brigham Young University (BYU) alumnus. While at BYU, I had a series of experiences that motivated me to take time from dissertating to write this response to the open letter published on June 4th, 2021. I have over 40 years of experience being in a brown body; I have lived in Utah for almost half of my life. I have been an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all my life—well, except the first year and a half of my life. I am a church member in good standing with all the bells and whistles that come with it—including “returned missionary” (welfare missionary) status and divorcee having to face how married church members perceive my kind. Coincidentally, I am also an educator, having worked with people from all over the world in different capacities for more than 20 years, and I am a doctoral student dissertating. My work includes the integration of the tenets of CRT. I am not only a student of CRT, but I am also very familiar with its methodology. In a sense, CRT and the Church of Jesus Christ is an intersection that I am intimately familiar with because of professional experience, experiential background, and study. I believe my perspective and experience are pretty close to a 360-degree view from a theoretical, practical, and experiential sense. It is not a perfect perspective, but it is broader than most.

Second, recognizing other groups’ contributions is a matter of equality and social justice. No sector of the U.S. population should be excluded, yet, we are. The methods and methodology do not magically denigrate Whites. The attempt is one of equalization and combating invisibility. I am often invisible. People like me are invisible throughout history. For example, we are too often perceived as a burden to society because people do not realize the impact Latinx people and other marginalized groups have had in developing efficient unions that highly impact poor Whites’ rights. CRT advocates for balance and working towards allowing others to tell their stories. Two methods CRT uses are testimonios and counterstorytelling. I love these two methods the most because they are compatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ and Judeo-Christian traditions.

Testimonios (Testimonies in English) are vital in documenting lived experiences at the individual level repeated in larger groups. The Latter-day Saint community has a strong tradition and belief in testimonies. They are so important that we dedicate one Sunday a month to share our individual experiences to strengthen our faith as a community. The Bible is full of doctrine and teachings confirmed through testimonies of those that saw and felt. Counterstorytelling is about sharing narratives from different perspectives to document how different people experience the same events. The Book of Mormon is an embodiment of what counterstorytelling is about. It documents the gospel as experienced by a different group than those in the Bible. Their stories increase our belief in the gospel and give us a different, sacred perspective of what we believe Jesus Christ wanted us to know. Joining together the stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph (Ezekiel 37:16) is an example of counterstorytelling. We, as Latter-day Saints, have strong ties to these methods to learn truths.

Third, those actively working to exclude diverse experiences are most likely reflecting discomfort with some challenging facts. Disparities and disadvantages are extensively and clearly documented. Most of those statistical facts uphold White advantage. As a civilized society (and responsible citizens), we should not claim that contention is a reason to discard valuable facts and social processes. Pausing for a moment, I submit that contention and discomfort are signals that come from emotional responses when one has not yet developed the skill of processing data outside the echo chamber. This is a critical but basic communication skill for civilized societies.

Lastly, the passing of laws to settle uncomfortable issues related to race is not a new strategy. The Black Codes were a series of laws passed all over the South during Reconstruction to retain limitations and criminalize behavior to protect some aspects of slavery. Like the CRT bans, the Black Codes were established almost verbatim across states. The current situation with laws banning CRT is similar to the Black Codes—alleged solutions looking for problems.

It is important to highlight that, at its core, CRT is about critical analysis to deepen awareness leading to equality. Critical analysis, as an educational process, is not intended nor designed to cause contention. (Let’s remember that contention is a reaction, not an action.) CRT is focused on learning. What can we learn from the egregious mistakes of the past? An essential part of that analysis is data processing and open communication. How else can we obtain a new, enlightening perspective of how others experience humanity without courageous conversations and humble inquiry? It is pretty impossible to infer the human experience. Therefore, my White brothers and sisters are not the best source of knowledge regarding the Latinx human experience. I graduated from BYU in 2001. Twenty years later, I am still watching the Latinx perspective described and portrayed by non-Latinx people.

Moving forward. How can society improve and develop comprehension and communication skills that support positive socio-emotional processing? How can we, as a society, be more open-minded? How can we discontinue jumping to quick conclusions about what people are thinking or feeling? How can we reduce how much we do not know about each other?

These challenges will not fix themselves. We are here because what we have done at home, in schools, and as a community has not worked well enough. Courageous conversations will help us develop the skills and character traits that result in improved understanding. We progress toward an accurate understanding of others’ experiences through interaction and connection with others.

The authors posed the question, “How can we better differentiate between the evil of genuine racism versus mistakes based on provincial thinking, social awkwardness, poor communication skills, or interpersonal cluelessness?” This educational process, one of communication and increased awareness, is key to eradicate the mistakes that can come from ignorance. Indeed, BYU is not full of incapable, naive, ignorant students. BYU alumni are regarded as capable, informed individuals who can communicate appropriately. As an instructional setting, BYU is an appropriate forum to communicate about challenging topics of great consequence.

Faux pas vs. microaggression. Part of the purpose of education is transformation to remove fundamental ignorance from the individual. To remove responsibility from the individual by labeling behavior as accidental or faux pas, one would have to accept that the education offered is insufficient. That education must lack sufficient experiences and data to promote introspection and communication skills that teach individuals to think before speaking and to listen without preconceived response strategies. It is unlikely that students will learn what they are not exposed to. Therefore, sustaining comfort by avoiding confrontation of true history and current social challenges will replicate more ignorance. Additionally, while intent is a dangerous realm to enter, the obscurity of the unknown is insufficient to label a comment or act as faux pas instead of a microaggression. As a brown body that has also had to deal with microaggressions for more than 20 years here in Utah, I know many are not aware of the implications of their acts. Their lack of awareness reflects an individual need to improve, rather than a mere lack of unawareness. There are others whose commentary and actions are purposeful and blatantly intended to offend.

Microaggressions are not microaggressions because of intentionality but because of the damage they cause. For example, the lady in the ice cream aisle may not have meant to discriminate against me when she asked about the alleged accent she could hear through my mask. Her ability to sense an accent through a mask because I said ‘hi’ to her toddler almost seemed ultra-human. Her response was a microaggression. She insisted that my accent was not from New York City when I told her I was not from Utah and had grown up in New York. It was not ignorance because, as I explained the difference between accents from one coast to another, she insisted that it was not a coast thing. Once I told her I was born in Puerto Rico, she found the evidence she was looking for. The color of my skin screams louder than my bright green eyes. It must be because I am not just from New York City. Of course, she did not know the difference between Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. That explained why she dared to ask me how I got here. Ignorance? Faux pas? Microaggression? Maybe a combination of all three? Who knows and, frankly, who cares? She made me feel like I did not belong … in the ice cream aisle! She attempted to redefine my identity and my history, questioned my belonging here and my citizenship.

The complex moving parts that are put into motion once a phrase comes out of someone’s mouth cannot be halted because it sounds ignorant or because the person did not mean it. Accordingly, making the recipient of the microaggression responsible for the feeling by calling us all hyper-sensitive is another strategy to dislocate responsibility. Did she wake up that morning thinking she was going to denigrate a Latina woman in the store? I am sure she did not. Did she denigrate and devalue me? Absolutely. Did it hurt? It did. Did I sit in my car to cry out of anger? I sure did. That is what makes an action a microaggression. The trauma that comes after one human being decides they have the power, right, and knowledge to define another.

White fragility (the discomfort of addressing Whiteness), can often turn into deflection. The attention is turned to how Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOCs) respond. White fragility projects the fragility to BIPOCs. The projection proposes that White people are not uncomfortable, but that BIPOCs are hypersensitive. This assumption devalues one human experience to attribute to another group the power to determine hypersensitivity and hyperbole. Accusing BIPOCs as hypersensitive displaces responsibility. Inclusion and respect are not stepping around BIPOC’s feelings. It is recognizing and giving credence to a human experience.

Definition of racism. The authors also mention the issue of how racism is defined. There are three levels of racism—individual, social group context, and systemic. How can we agree on what constitutes racism at these different levels if there is no conversation and no experiential evidence offered up to clarify this? To define racism, we need to go through a collective negotiation based on history, current events, and experiential background. The most significant issue is the refusal to recognize the extent and reach of racism. Without this, it is tough to begin an effective conversation. For example, the authors mention the satisfaction of Black students with their BYU experience. The problem with this is that racism is not binary. Racism affects Latinx students, Asian students, American Indian students, Biracial students, and other individuals with other racial and pan-ethnic identities. When put into perspective, it is clear that one group’s satisfaction does not equate to appropriateness.

Racism is not a White vs. Black issue. It is fundamental to point out that racism in this country is heavily associated with slavery and our Black brothers and sisters. Yet, the first group to be racialized and discriminated against on this land was the multiethnic native tribes whose land was taken. The Mexicans who lived in the Southwest were also targets of racialization and land-grabbing impacted by racism. Racism has been conveniently depicted as a binary issue because the us vis a vis them discourse is easier than a multifaceted, multiethnic dilemma. This discourse increases the difficulty of the social solution to racism because, by design, it is exclusive. The distribution of power and participation still keeps the other racial and ethnic groups out of the conversation. They are still positioned as less relevant.

The work of healing. To understand what will help heal us, we must look at the wound and formulate how not to let that happen again. Forgiveness is essential, but reconciliation does not come without recognizing the trespass. At this point, it is too much. It has been going on for too long. Therefore, it is impossible to reconstruct more than 200 years of sins against the “Others.” Yet, just as specific examples and strategies are necessary to improve communication, particular events need to be dealt with to achieve balance.

Healing the racial divide is not a lost cause. It is not impossible. It is worthy of our best efforts. While imperfect, CRT can contribute to healing. The following suggestions may be helpful to begin a mindset shift. These are all at the individual level since the issues related to social context are best addressed by healing individuals coming together in communities. Systemic racism is best addressed through different healing policies:

1. “Be of good cheer” (D&C 61:36) as you dare to step out of your comfort zone to converse with different people. Whether you are open-minded or just seeking to appear to be trying, it will show in your exchange with the other individual.
2. Do not assume or decide for the other person how they should feel. Recognize that feelings are individual responses. Every human being has the right to experience life their way. Learn to make space for that, even when you do not understand or agree.
3. Humbly ask questions and listen. As a rule of thumb, ask questions you genuinely do not know the answer to. Even if you think you do, accept that you may find new perspectives or new information that may indicate you are wrong. Please do not listen to respond; listen to think of further questions according to what that person is stating, without making it a contest.
4. Let courageous conversations happen often. The courageous conversation compass is a great tool to guide effective communication. The more uncomfortable you feel, the more courage it will take to sustain the conversation instead of shutting it down. Have the courage to stick with it and lead with ‘I statements’ and statements that reflect what you have believed until that moment. Be brave enough to be vulnerable in accepting what you have learned from the other person. In cases where you have been in error, acknowledge that what you believed was wrong and that you still have more to learn.
5. Be teachable. No one in this world knows everything, but we can all learn an impressive amount of information with a good attitude. We can also strive to develop better skills every day. No one is ever done learning. It is OK to say out loud that you do not know or understand something or someone’s experience. Being teachable yields incredible power to know, understand, and love others.
6. Recognize and accept the limits of your understanding and perspective. Remember that the human experience is unique for every person. We must appreciate the limitations of our knowledge. We will never fully understand because we are not that other person experiencing ‘x’ event or feeling. Yielding expertise to the other person by recognizing that they are the primary expert in their life builds strong relationships. In a safe environment within a safe relationship, it is possible to ask questions that may help increase awareness or propose a different perspective. In doing so, however, we need to be careful not to do so in a manner that could be interpreted as correction or invalidating important feelings. Reframing experiences should promote different perspectives and thought processes, not an undermining of experiences.
7. Support and promote diverse voices by creating safe spaces. These spaces should be deemed safe by those who habitually feel left out, not by the people that already have a platform. Look around. If the space is not diverse and all are not participating or demonstrating they feel free to participate, then it is not likely safe for some person or group. You may be supporting an echo chamber. Remember that safety is not the same as comfort. Safe spaces for growth, by design, require tensions that keep us reaching out to others. Dialogue is not the absence of tension. It is primarily the action of persisting in exchanging information, experiences, and perspectives respectfully, with intent and humility, despite discomfort and tension.

I do not know how it feels to be White because I am not White. Even after learning from a Eurocentric curriculum for secondary school, an undergraduate program, and two master’s programs, I cannot with exactness and integrity state that I can fully understand how the mainstream population of the United States experiences life. Not even all my doctoral coursework and research on Whiteness equips me for that. Racial identity and how one is racialized cannot be understood fully and adequately without experiencing it.

I do know how it feels to be rejected because I am not often valued as an equal. I do hear people challenge my value despite my ‘resume.’ I do know how it feels to have the self-checkout suspended because I am speaking Spanish to my daughter and she happens to be carrying a mini backpack—we must be trying to steal something if we are Latinx, right? I know how it feels for someone to insist they can hear a Spanish accent through my mask after only uttering “hi” to a toddler. I also know how it feels to be invisible. My perspective has, at times, been deemed irrelevant because I am labeled the affirmative action student in the program (Why else would a Latina be admitted to a White conservative school?).

I have experiential-based knowledge that only comes from being in a brown body. That cannot be taught in a classroom—it can be better understood through conversations and respectful exchanges seeking to understand. This is why CRT can be such a transformative tool for all. It opens the door for my human experience to be heard and understood. Without this opportunity, people like me continue to be who White people decide we are. Invisibility and external definition continues. Does this reflect the contention-free community that “had all things common among them” (4 Nephi 1:3) of the Book of Mormon? I believe we do not have contention-free communities because all things are different, and we live amid a growing disparity in all things. Through racial consciousness, we can make significant progress as individuals and communities.

Due to the limited nature of this response and the forum for which it is written, I choose to conclude here. Yet, I will leave you with these final questions: How much of the current discussion and disagreement in the United States about Critical Race Theory, the mechanics of racism, and the conservative values in question are based on naïve misunderstanding and lack of education? How much of the alleged contention is related to pride and valuing more being right rather than being kind? What would happen if we chose to listen to understand without mental reservations? What kinds of social synergy would occur among groups that practice humble inquiry mediated by courageous conversation processes? In my more than 20 years of experience working with people from all over the world, I have learned that profound growth comes in silent moments when we suspend what we think we know to operate in learning mode only. This does not require abandoning gospel beliefs or values. Nor does it mean we cannot have sincere questions. It just requires a strong desire to follow the Savior’s example to focus on people first—whether we agree or not. I hope that we make the individual decisions that create the type of community where we’re willing to step away from the ‘ninety-nine’ to understand ‘the one.’

The post A Latina’s Response to ‘Honest Questions about CRT’ appeared first on Public Square Magazine.