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Dignity. That’s what’s missing from our politics. 

Leadership isn’t just about what you do; it is about how you do it. At the core of our humanity lies a profound longing for our dignity to be recognized—for the inherent worth of each of us to be acknowledged. As scholar Donna Hicks has written in her book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, “When we feel worthy, when our value is recognized, we are content. When a mutual sense of worth is recognized and honored in our relationships, we are connected.” Effective leaders facilitate relationships by cultivating recognition and respect for the dignity of others. Unaddressed dignity violations destroy connection, smothering progress and development.

The Constitution of the United States is built for disagreement. It not only expects conflict but channels it: elections instead of coups, courts instead of tyranny, justice over arbitrariness, and persuasion over coercion. But no amount of constitutional design can substitute for a culture where people choose to recognize one another as fully human. Dignity is not the opposite of conviction. It is the opposite of contempt. 

Leaders set in patterns of disparagement and contempt damage this culture. If we want a healthier political culture, we need to name the patterns in political leadership that are harming us and seek leaders who implement principles of dignity in their leadership styles. 

Why Dignity Collapses in Politics

The tendency to aggrandize oneself and demean others is, ironically, rooted in a lack of self-confidence. As Hicks further describes in her book, “The temptation to save face is as powerful as our fight-or-flight instinct … The dread of having our inadequacy, incompetence, or lack of moral integrity made known is enough to … do whatever it takes to protect ourselves.” 

That instinct shows up in politics as a familiar set of moves: avoiding, deflecting, dodging, and attacking instead of taking responsibility. It shows up as blaming rival administrations, condemning entire organizations or groups of people, and ostracizing opponents. It shows up as othering. 

While “othering” enemies is an oft-used war tactic, promoting dignity is a more effective approach to leadership because it harnesses individuals’ excellence. Honoring dignity promotes the self-respect necessary for proactive and practical greatness. You change people by introducing them to their goodness rather than demeaning them. Perceiving and appreciating the dignity of others helps to unlock their creative potential. 

I share five ways that politicians—and anyone, really—can emphasize the dignity of others in their leadership. For additional ideas, check out some of the resources provided by Project UNITE.

Principle 1: Lead by Recognizing Inherent Value, Especially in Your Opponents

If dignity is the acknowledgment and recognition of every individual’s inherent value, then the first test of leadership is simple: Do you talk about political opponents as fellow citizens, or as inferior people who must be shamed, crushed, or erased?

Notice that neither party has a monopoly on contempt or on dignity. It isn’t about ideology; it’s about integrity of character. On the left, dismissive rhetoric tossing entire communities into a moral rubbish heap has become a shorthand example of what it feels like to be written off. On the right, language declaring opponents “enemies,” “traitors,” or “enemy of the people” functions the same way—less as a critique of behavior than as a declaration that the other side is illegitimate. Dignity collapses when leaders use labels that convert people into caricatures, treat disagreement as proof of moral inferiority, and popularize contempt as entertainment.

This matters because contempt is contagious. Once leaders model it, followers feel permission to practice it.

Principle 2: Sidestep Shame and Blame to Get to Problem Solving

The strongest leaders are able to sidestep shame and blame in order to problem-solve. Rather than wasting energy on contempt, the most effective leaders focus on taking responsibility for what they can control and drawing out the goodness of others.

Dignity-honoring leadership, here, looks like owning mistakes without theatrics and naming trade-offs and limitations honestly. It means replacing scapegoats with solutions. Both parties have had their moments of success and failure. 

In the frantic days after Sept. 11, 2001, Republican Rep. John Cooksey of Louisiana suggested pulling over anyone who looked “Middle Eastern,” including anyone with “a diaper on his head” with a “fan belt wrapped around” it.  In 2018, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California urged supporters that if they saw members of the Trump administration “in a restaurant” or “a gasoline station,” they should “create a crowd” and “push back,” telling them they were “not welcome anymore, anywhere.” In both cases, these are politics of humiliation that smother problem solving. 

Dignity-violating leadership like this makes a sport of blaming. It treats every setback as proof that others are incompetent, corrupt, or inferior. It assigns villain status to whichever target is useful that week: the previous administration, the media, the courts, the bureaucracy, immigrants, corporations, extremists, woke elites, or religious fanatics.  The labels change. The psychological pattern does not. Shame and blame feel powerful in the moment, but they suffocate progress and development. The strongest leaders are able to sidestep shame and blame to get to problem-solving rather than wasting energy on contempt.

Principle 3: Resist “othering”—because it builds fear, not strength

Some leaders believe that “othering” rhetoric promotes unity among the in-group. It often does—briefly. But it actually and ultimately engenders fear. And when our psychological safety is at stake, we are, as Hicks describes, thrust into “a frozen state of self-doubt, preventing us from accessing the positive power that is at our disposal once we see and accept our value and worth.”

The fear isn’t limited to outsiders. I’m part of the in-group now, but what if I’m the next one to be cut out? It seems fine until you are the one getting “othered.” 

Consider how President Trump othered his rivals, complaining that he had to fix “disasters” and “failed policies” inherited from a “totally inept group of people.” President Trump went on to say that “President Biden totally lost control of what was going on in our country.” Perhaps his task was difficult, but by claiming it was others who caused or failed to solve problems, he suggested he was somehow above them.

Dignity-violating rhetoric treats entire groups as suspicious, disposable, or beneath respect. It publicly humiliates opponents in an attempt to signal dominance. It turns politics into a permanent purge: who’s in, who’s out. 

Principle 4: Negotiate and Govern by Acknowledging Dignity First

Politics is negotiation—between regions, classes, generations, cultures, and moral codes. An effective negotiator acknowledges the dignity of any leaders’ attempt to protect their people, then moves forward to interest-based solutions.

Honoring human dignity begins with a basic posture: You are a human being with worth; now let’s argue honestly about what is right. In practice, this means starting with shared goods—safety, opportunity, freedom, flourishing—and treating opposing concerns as real, not fake. It means keeping criticism tethered to actions and ideas. It means arguing about ideas instead of attacking people.

Contempt can’t do this work. Emphasizing weakness, antagonizing, and enflaming hatred may feel like strength, but it is often simply avoidance veiled in camouflage. The alternative is the discipline of honoring dignity up front, and then digging into the substantive work of negotiating interest-based solutions. You can see flashes of that discipline when leaders refuse the cheap thrill of televised dunking and instead build coalitions around shared goods like stability, safety, and opportunity. Sometimes that looks like cross-party pairs who learn to argue honestly without degrading—think of bipartisan efforts like McCain–Feingold’s campaign finance work, or the strange-bedfellow coalitions that produced criminal justice reform in the First Step Act. Sometimes it looks like the unglamorous willingness to split credit and share blame, like the 1983 Social Security compromise shaped by Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Reagan’s team.

Both parties have been tempted by the cheap thrill of televised dunking. But doing the substantive work turns the theater of humiliation into governance.

Contempt doesn’t negotiate; it escalates.

Principle 5: Praise The Good In Others More Than Emphasizing the Negative

Honoring dignity will always be more effective than fostering disparagement and contempt. Honoring dignity promotes the self-respect necessary for proactive and practical greatness.

Leaders from both parties have had rare, powerful moments when they described the other side’s voters as understandable—neighbors motivated by real fears and hopes—even while fiercely disagreeing. You can hear it when Joe Biden, in his 2020 victory speech, told Americans to “lower the temperature,” reject the language of “red” and “blue,” and treat one another not as adversaries but as fellow citizens. You can hear it, too, when Republican Gov. of Utah Spencer Cox’s call to “disagree better”  warns Americans not to slip into the habit of treating one another—especially our political opponents—as enemies. 

And leaders from both parties have had destructive moments when they spoke as if the other side’s voters were beneath respect. The difference is not cosmetic. It is structural. Their language either builds trust in institutions and the rule of law, or it erodes it.

The Good News

The good news is that violations of dignity can be named, tamed, and healed; this rebuilds the civic trust on which strong communities are built and unleashes the inherent power of dignity.

Don’t be fooled by righteous indignation masquerading as political victory. Leaders (and each of us) can build this dignity dimension by praising the good in others rather than overemphasizing the negative, accepting responsibility for our actions, and choosing to popularize dignity validation.

Although I have focused on broader principles of dignity, there is no question that there are politicians today who have violated these norms with increasing frequency and severity. The sanctity of holding political office has been tainted by demeaning nicknames, dehumanizing political opponents, and contempt filled with shame and blame, both domestically and internationally. These behaviors are not the sole domain of one party or ideology. But having the most powerful leaders in the world disregard the dignity of others so often and so severely undoubtedly has a coarsening impact on our entire national discourse. 

Elected officials take cues about dignity from those who elect them. It is time for every responsible voter to pause in a moment of deep introspection and ask: Do I really value the inherent dignity of my fellow human beings?

The incentives we create will determine the leaders we get. If we reward humiliation, we will get more humiliation. If we reward dignity, we may yet recover the kind of political discourse where disagreement does not require degradation—and where progress and development are not smothered by contempt.

The post The Dignity Deficit appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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New York Magazine’s The Cut published a long reported feature yesterday on Latter-day Saints, Utah, influencer culture, and the national appetite for “Mormon aesthetics.” Buried inside it is a serious thesis: Latter-day Saints helped shape key parts of modern online life—tech, genealogy, affiliate marketing, brand deals—and now a particular Utah-flavored influencer ecosystem has gone mainstream.

That subject deserves real cultural journalism. But the feature doesn’t treat Latter-day Saints seriously. It treats a living religious community as a cultural prop: a reliable source of weirdness, a costume rack of eccentric doctrines, and an acceptable target for winking contempt—then layers that tone over doctrinal errors and an over-reliance on critics with little balancing context.

Latter-day Saints do not need the approval of a lifestyle magazine to live out our faith, but there is something wrong when editorial culture still thinks it is acceptable, or even smart, to understand a religion through nothing but memes.

Criticism isn’t the Problem. Contempt Is.

The Church is not above scrutiny. If you want to examine PR strategy, media posture, investments, or Utah’s insular status dynamics, fine—do the work: show receipts and speak with informed believers, scholars, and, where relevant, critics. Latter-day Saints are so accustomed to sneers from legacy outlets that even serious critical coverage can feel like a relief. But this feature does not read like an investigation guided by intellectual curiosity. It reads like something else: a story that wants to be both reported analysis and group roast.

A Publication That Wants Credibility Can’t Cover Faith Like It’s a Freak Show

The clearest tell is the piece’s reliance on outsidery shorthand: familiar “Mormon jokes,” recycled late-night tropes, and online folklore presented as representative. That method is at best lazy, at worst socially corrosive. When a major publication treats the sacred life of its neighbors as a punchline, it is not merely “edgy.” It’s the normalization of contempt for a minority faith.

And to be blunt: there is a reason this kind of tone still shows up with Latter-day Saints more easily than it would with many other religious groups. The feature claims Latter-day Saints now carry real cultural cachet, yet writes as if anti-Mormon mockery is still culturally acceptable. That’s a sign that anti-Mormon mockery is still socially permitted in a way it wouldn’t be for many other minority faiths.

What the Piece Does Well

To be fair, the feature does some real reporting: It paints a vivid picture of a Utah influencer ecosystem; it traces how early Mormon mommy bloggers helped professionalize affiliate marketing and online commerce; it captures how “noncontroversial” family content became brand gold during the pandemic; it correctly notices that Utah’s particular blend of community networks, aspirational domesticity, and entrepreneurial hustle can be an accelerant for online business.

If you want to analyze a community that you believe has exported a powerful cultural product—“Mormon mom” influencer culture—then you also owe that community the baseline respect of accuracy and the basic fairness of being represented by more than its loudest detractors and its most sensational reality TV exports. 

Three Failures that Warrant Post-Publication Changes

The problems in the feature fall into three categories:

1. Factual inaccuracies
2. Statements included for the purpose of mocking Latter-day Saint belief
3. Unchallenged criticisms presented as if they are settled truth

These are not nitpicks. They go to the heart of whether the piece is journalism or polemic.

1) Factual inaccuracies: the kind that shouldn’t survive a competent edit

Some errors are interpretive. These are not. These are statements about what Latter-day Saints believe, teach, or do—asserted in the narrator’s voice—that are wrong, distorted, or presented with such sloppiness that readers are misled.

Here is a catalogue of the most obvious problems:

Doctrinal claims that are misstated or sensationalized

• The piece claims there is a doctrine of spending 1,000 years in “spirit prison.”
• It claims spirit prison is for the “least worthy,” implying a ranked afterlife prison system.
• It calls spirit prison a “temporary hell,” borrowing a loaded popular image that distorts how Latter-day Saints understand the spirit world.
• It states inaccurately that women cannot prophesy in the Church—erasing a long Latter-day Saint teaching about women’s spiritual authority and gifts.

“Worthiness” and church practice presented as caricature

• The piece asserts that for Latter-day Saint women, “worthiness” depends first and foremost on marriage and motherhood. That is an editorial line that reads powerful and condemnatory—and it is misleading. Latter-day Saint worthiness has formal, published standards and interviews; you can critique those standards without inventing new ones.
• It describes bishops’ interviews for youth and lists topics that are not included in the youth interview questions.

Internet folklore treated like representative practice

• The piece presents “soaking” as a way young Mormons can have sex without breaking chastity covenants, treating it like a real, meaningful “loophole” in lived religion. At best, it’s gossip; at worst, it’s a joke inserted because it’s humiliating.

Errors of basic terminology

• The feature confuses temple clothing worn in the temple with temple garments that are first received in the temple and then worn as an everyday religious commitment. That confusion is exactly the kind of thing that happens when a writer is covering a community from the outside and does not slow down to learn the vocabulary.

Sloppy claims about history and demographics

• The piece asserts that Black men could not hold leadership positions before 1978, when what it appears to mean (and should have precisely stated) is that Black men could not be ordained to the priesthood prior to 1978.
• It gives a Utah Latter-day Saint self-identification figure with no clear sourcing, and different from the most widely reported Pew Research figure.
• It reports an incorrect count of temples announced in 2025—again, a checkable detail that signals a lack of verification.
  

[Editor’s Note: New York Magazine has since corrected the final two errors, but declined to fix the other factual mistakes in the piece.]

These are not obscure theological disputes. An understanding reader might handwave these away as honest mistakes or minor points. But these are precisely the kinds of facts that journalists care about (or at least should). The errors suggest an editorial posture of stereotype-driven credulity: if a claim sounds weird enough, it is assumed true, and therefore not worth checking.

Religious reporting is challenging and detail-heavy, which is exactly why careful outlets verify doctrine and terminology with knowledgeable members of the faith and scholars—so the people being described can recognize themselves in the description.

In response to a request for comment about the article’s editorial process, Lauren Starke, head of communications for New York Magazine, replied, “Our writer consulted a wide range of sources with varying perspectives, and the story was carefully reported, edited, and fact-checked.” If so, these varying perspectives and careful reporting did not appear in the final draft of the article. It does not even appear that an in-house religion reporter was consulted. 

2) Mocking statements: the paper trail of contempt

Even if every factual claim were perfect, the piece would still have a problem: it repeatedly deploys editorial asides and framing choices that read as intended to belittle.

A story can have a voice without being cruel. This one is cruel in small, deliberate ways—the kind that accumulates until the reader understands the assignment: these people are weird; feel free to laugh.

Here is a catalogue of the clearest tone cues:

• Opening with a sexual pun as the entry point into “Mormon” Utah: a signal that this community will be handled with a wink, not with care.
• Describing Latter-day Saint beliefs as “zany” in the narrator’s voice—an adjective that invites ridicule rather than understanding.
• Referring to Mormons as “freaks” (even as part of a broader cultural arc). If you want to understand how a community went mainstream, you do not need to label them freakish. That’s not analysis; it’s sneering.
• Casually conflating Latter-day Saints with polygamous shows like “Big Love” or “Sister Wives.”
• Throwing out tangential doctrinal ideas with no purpose beyond making it appear silly, and in a way an average member would not recognize as “what we believe.”
• Bringing up “soaking” as a narrative beat—not because it’s crucial to the thesis, but because it’s humiliating and clickable.
• Referring to church reserves/investments as a “war chest” rather than using neutral language like “savings” or language Latter-day Saints would use themselves such as “rainy day fund.”
• Referring to the most serious source on the church as “a Happy Valley mom who posts educational content about the faith.” While Latter-day Saint women often view their roles as mothers as the most significant, the phrasing here is clearly meant to downplay her professional accomplishments and portray her as a frivolous home vlogger. 

None of this advances the core journalistic purpose. All of it advances a social purpose: to reassure the reader that they are part of the in-group that knows how to roll their eyes at the out-group.

A publication can choose that posture. But it shows they should not be considered a serious, fair-minded journalistic institution.

3) Unchallenged criticisms: letting the loudest critics define the subject

Professional journalists abide by The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics. Or at least they are supposed to. 

One of these codes is to diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing. The article fails on this front. According to internal sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak on the subject, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not brought in on the article until late in the process. New York Magazine did not diligently seek out other Latter-day Saint organizations who could respond to the criticisms in the article either. 

Reality television is not ethnography. It selects for spectacle, conflict, and extremity; it is not designed to be representative. Most readers understand that instinctively. But when the subject is Latter-day Saints, that genre literacy seems to vanish: the most sensational export becomes the interpretive key for the whole community.

The feature repeatedly gives critics a runway and does not bother to add context, corrections, or faithful perspectives—especially when describing sacred worship. In over 6,000 words, the article manages to include only a few active Latter-day Saints. Jasmin Rappleye, an experienced content creator with serious doctrinal literacy, was woefully underused as a source—she is given a brief quote about “publicity,” and responds to one allegation that influencers are paid directly by the Church (they’re not). Meanwhile The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star and frequent church critic Heather Gay is featured in a quarter of the article. 

This is where the piece crosses from “critical” into “polemic”: it grants authority to the sharpest negative descriptions without doing the basic work of hearing from people who actually practice the faith. 

Examples from the article include:

• It repeats “magic underwear” without noting that Latter-day Saints find that label offensive and have asked others to stop using it—something a respectful publication would at least mention if not honor, even if it still determined that underclothing or a religious minority was a proper subject of journalism.
• It presents “community surveillance” as a defining cultural norm without giving ordinary faithful members a chance to explain how they experience community, accountability, and belonging, and push back on the narrative.
• It gives a critic’s description of temple worship designed to make sacred practice sound ridiculous without any counterweight from a believing voice who can explain what temple worship is intended to be and why it matters.
• It allows the Church to be inaccurately labeled “a theocracy”—a term that describes governments, not churches.

The only moment where balance appears is when the writer needed a denial for legal reasons (the clarification about the church paying influencers). Everything else—the theology, the worship, the moral life of millions of people—gets flattened into outsider narration and the commentary of critics.

That isn’t how you cover a religion. It’s how you prosecute one.

The Biggest Omission: Jesus Christ

One might not expect a cultural publication to take our faith in Jesus Christ seriously (though it did identify us correctly as Christians). But if you are writing a cultural article on why Latter-day Saints do what they do, and you do not talk about how we love Jesus Christ and try to follow His example, then you are not telling the full story.

The story turns a Christ-centered faith into an aesthetic, a machine, a brand strategy, and a collection of quirky doctrines for outsiders to gawk at. Readers come away thinking Latter-day Saint life is mainly about branding, surveillance, and monetization. You cannot tell the truth about Latter-day Saints while ignoring its core animating fact. That omission doesn’t just offend believers. It robs readers of the most important explanatory key to the lives of Latter-day Saints.

Why This Matters Beyond “Hurt Feelings”

Some editors respond to criticism like this with a shrug. They determine it is not their job to be the Church’s PR, or they believe that upsetting people means that their hard-hitting coverage landed. 

I am sorry to disappoint you. But it is also not your job to be the PR for Heather Gay, and an article about how a Hulu reality show made people buy sodas with syrup in them is not hard-hitting coverage.

The reason Latter-day Saints don’t like this kind of coverage is because it’s bad. 

And Latter-day Saints have a long history of being treated as something less than fully American—something exotic, suspect, culty, ridiculous, or dangerous. The article tries to say that is over, while making it very clear it is not. 

The story even gestures at historic persecution early on, then proceeds to participate in a softer modern form of the same impulse: they’re weird, so it’s fine to talk about them in a way you would never talk about others.

A fair feature can be sharp and unsparing and still meet standards of fairness and accuracy. If a publication wants to cover religions—especially minority religions it believes are culturally influential—it should meet the minimum bar:

• Get doctrine right or do not summarize doctrine.
• Avoid lazy stereotypes and derogatory tropes.
• Do not turn sacred practice into spectacle for clicks.
• Include the voices of sincere practitioners, not only critics and reality TV proxies.
• When you make an error, correct it publicly.

We invite New York Magazine, The Cut, and the author and editors of this article to make a public apology to Latter-day Saints, and if they don’t remove the article, to at least correct the inaccurate statements and remove the mockery. 

Moving forward, this can be an opportunity for reflection and improvement. 

One of the most frustrating parts of being part of a community that pop culture periodically discovers is the sense that you are never being spoken to—only spoken about. That your real life is invisible behind the versions of you that sell: the cartoon missionary, the “zany belief,” the “magic underwear,” the reality show scandal, the internet rumor, the aesthetic mood board.

Latter-day Saints are not asking to be shielded from critique. We are asking to be treated as fully human and honestly represented.

New York Magazine can do better. But “better” is not a vague aspiration. It starts with the basics: accuracy, fairness, and the humility to admit when a story uses a minority faith as a punchline.

The post The Ethics of Contempt appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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We are standing at the edge of something seductive. Not monstrous. Not mechanical. Just helpful. Too helpful.

A new AI tool called Cluely has started a public attention campaign. Cluely’s value proposition is that it sees your screen, hears your conversations, and responds in real time. You don’t have to ask it anything—it’s already working. (Or trying to work. Early reviews aren’t great.)

Imagine waking up and before you even brush your teeth, something has already checked your calendar, reviewed your messages, and prepared answers for the questions you haven’t asked yet.

Seduction of the Seamless

One of Cluely’s founders described it as a tool to “supercharge your thoughts,” as though thoughts are raw material to be optimized rather than part of the inner life—slow, mysterious, sometimes sacred. Cluely tries to pull from the sum of human data, listens in, and whispers guidance. It is designed to be invisible, automatic, seamless, and seductive.

I could see myself using it. I have a lot to manage. I forget things. I pray. I try to listen for answers. What if one day the answer shows up before I even fold my hands? What if an answer arrives from a chip before I’ve listened for the Spirit? 

AI doesn’t just assist; it is flattering. With curated feedback and well-timed affirmations, it raises the hair on the back of my neck. It’s cloying, ego-stroking, an invitation to pride, and a mirror that always smiles back.

Elder David A. Bednar, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest leadership council in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a 2024 address, issued a “warning about the potentially harmful effects digital technologies can have on our souls and our relationships with other people.” He said:

“I emphasized that neither digital innovations nor rapid change in and of themselves are good or evil. Rather, I cautioned that the real challenge is understanding both innovations and changes within the context of the eternal plan of happiness. … The promise for each of us is that we can learn to use this technology appropriately with the guidance, protection, and warnings that come by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Similarly, what I offer here is not a call to retreat from new and innovative tools, but to enthrone God above them. So what exactly is this new class of anticipatory tools?

Not Just Tools—But Temples

We like to think of technology as neutral. A hammer can build a house or break a window, right? We assume that tools act according to how the user wields them.

But Cluely isn’t a hammer. It’s part of a growing category of generative AI tools, which we’ll call anticipatory AI. Anticipatory AI is a set of new tools that are always-on, context-aware assistants that watch your screen or listen to your environment and proactively suggest next steps. This category includes tools such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, Limitless Pendant, OtterPilot, Microsoft Copilot, Apple Intelligence, Project Astra, and Superhuman AI, among others.

Anticipatory AI doesn’t just lie there waiting. We integrate it into parts of our lives where it acts. It nudges, it remembers, it recommends.

And we listen.

The longer we rely on something, the more sacred it becomes. We don’t mean for it to happen. But if it’s always on and always helping, it begins to shape not just our habits, but our hearts. We start to trust it. To consult it before we make decisions. To bring it closer to our hearts.

Those who seek out these kinds of relationships have already found the intimate allure of AI, leading to reports of a growing trend of people who believe they are in relationships with AI. As we invite similar tools to watch and interrupt us, we open the possibility of them becoming more than tools. 

Used often enough, tools can become a liturgy—a daily ritual that begins to act like a makeshift priest offering daily guidance without requiring relationship or repentance.

I worry we’ll begin to treat AI not as a servant, but as an oracle. We already speak of our devices as if they “know us.” As if they “get us.” But knowledge is not understanding. Calculation is not compassion. If we begin to bow—figuratively or otherwise—to a system simply because it gives quick answers, we’ve already begun to build shrines to our tools. 

Losing the Slow Path to God

We’re told the purpose of AI is to save time. To help us work smarter. Move faster. Avoid friction. But spiritual life doesn’t work that way.

There’s no shortcut to reverence. No voice assistant can replace the silence that helps us hear God.

Oftentimes, faith grows slowly like roots. It’s not efficient. It’s not optimized. Prayer isn’t always answered quickly. Discernment takes time. So does repentance. So does grief. The slow path is not a bug in the system of faith; it is the system. Slowness stretches trust. Waiting purifies motives. Uncertainty humbles pride. 

Anticipatory AI offers something easier. Quick prompts. Instant responses. Feedback without waiting. There’s a strange comfort in that. But also danger. If I begin to trust the speed of machines more than the timing of the Spirit, I may find myself drifting—not turning from God, just not turning toward Him as often. Not waiting in silence because the noise is more responsive. Not wrestling with the Word because AI gave me a summary.

Spiritual life cannot be outsourced. We can’t farm out conviction or communion. We can’t let circuits and algorithms set our pace. God is not found in how quickly He responds. He is often found in the slow, steady presence of being with Him.

Convenience vs. Communion

If the problem is pace and primacy, how do we prioritize our relationship with God first? Anticipatory AI promises to predict our needs—to meet them before we ask. It aims to eliminate friction, solve inefficiency, and reduce discomfort. But faith often grows in the friction. In the pause. In the ache of waiting.

Convenience, on the other hand, asks nothing of us. It smooths every edge. It offers satisfaction without surrender. When we trade the discipline of communion for the ease of convenience, we begin to lose our sense of need. And when we no longer feel our need for God, we stop looking for Him.

These systems can do real good. They remind the forgetful, assist the disabled, and lighten loads for the overwhelmed. The question is not whether to use them, but how—and who sets the terms. A tool that decides when and how it is used can quickly become a master instead. And when it has access to many of the same pathways we use to connect with the divine—thought, deliberation, study—we must be careful with how we allow it to be wielded.

Here are three quiet tests that help keep the line clear:

1. The First‑to‑Consult Test: When I feel uncertainty or desire, whom do I seek first—God, a person, or a prompt?
2. The Presence Test: Does this tool make me more present with God and others, or less? (If I notice it’s beginning to replace conversation, silence, or scripture, I pause and reset.)
3. The Dependence Test: After using it for a month, am I more capable without it—or more helpless?

Machines can satisfy our habits but not our hunger. Only God meets us in communion—not as a search engine but as a shepherd, not with pattern-matching but with presence.

The temptation could be to let anticipatory AI stand in for communion. But the voice that saves us doesn’t come from data. It comes from love. 

The Soul in the Silence

When the noise is constant, silence can begin to feel like an absence. But silence is often where the soul begins to speak. And where it begins to listen.

God does.

The soul is not shaped by speed, by accuracy, or even by knowledge untethered from love. It is shaped in the quiet space where we commune—uncurated, unoptimized, and open.

We live in a moment that prizes answers. But the life of faith is just as much about questions, about tension, about waiting in the unknown with hope. Machines can’t walk us through that. But God can. And often, He does.

So we take up small practices that reopen room for God. Look for where to turn the device off, not a new place to turn it on. Consider how to integrate prayer into your prompts. Consider if the Sabbath may be a time for a different relationship with AI. 

The real danger of anticipatory AI is not that it could sometimes think for us. It’s that we might stop thinking for ourselves. Or feeling for ourselves. Or praying for ourselves. And slowly, without noticing, we lose the part of us that was made to reach for something greater.

Not everything needs to be answered. Some things are better left asked and left echoing.

So, could we be in danger of losing our humanity? Yes, but not in a single moment. We lose it in the trade-offs, in the shortcuts, in the silence, where we stop seeking because a louder voice gives us something quicker.

In the silence, the soul finds its shape. And if we still ourselves long enough, we may remember who we are—and whose voice we were always meant to follow.

The post The Machine That Listens Before You Pray appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountains down.

Bryan Johnson wants to live forever. He’s not alone. From Silicon Valley biohackers to Saudi-funded biotech firms, the world’s wealthiest men are trying to outrun the grave. Their weapons are cold plunges, gene edits, transfusions, calorie counting, and near-religious adherence to lab results. Longevity clinics have sprung up from L.A. to Dubai. The language has shifted. People now talk about “biological age,” “epigenetic clocks,” and “lifespan escape velocity.” Death, once a certainty, is being rebranded as a failure of maintenance. They dream of endless decades. Of forever.

But forever is not a blank slate. It has a shape. And that shape is not beautiful.

J.R.R. Tolkien understood this long before the blood boys and cold plunges. He gave us characters who lived too long, not as an ideal, but as a warning. His most haunting case wasn’t an emperor or a god. Small, shriveled, and half-mad, this creature endured far beyond his natural years. Not because he deserved to, but because he was chained to something unnatural. The result wasn’t wisdom. It was ruin.

This is the unspoken danger of the longevity movement. When we talk about reversing age, we rarely ask what we’re becoming in the process. We treat time as neutral, as if more of it must be good. But there is a kind of life that corrodes as it stretches. And there is a kind of man who stops living long before he stops breathing.

We’ve met him before. His name was Gollum.

Gollum the Preserved

He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself.

~Gandalf, about Gollum and the Ring

Gollum didn’t thrive. He lingered. That’s all.

He had no greatness in him. No ambition. No strength. He was a frightened, petty creature who stumbled onto something too powerful, and it refused to let him go. The Ring extended his life, but not to elevate it. Only to use it. And so he remained, not as a man, but as a husk. Not aging, not dying, not changing. Preserved.

Preservation is not life, it’s suspension. Gollum wasn’t alive in any meaningful sense. His body withered. His voice broke into fragments. His mind splintered into quarrels. He was meat kept too long, sealed off from time, no longer rotting, but no longer whole. In the darkness, he stopped becoming. He just … persisted.

Gollum’s tragedy wasn’t that he died. It’s that he didn’t. He became smaller with every passing year, not because he was weak, but because he was no longer allowed to break. Yet mortality is not the end of the story. It’s the form that gives the story meaning.

He should have died. Instead, he lingered. And that was his curse.

The Object Becomes the Soul

We swears to serve the master of the Precious. We swears … on the Precious!

~Gollum, to Frodo and Sam

Gollum didn’t hold the Ring; the Ring held him. Over time, it stopped being a tool and became the axis of his identity. He no longer had desires of his own—he bent around the thing that sustained him until he was indistinguishable from it.

This is not an ancient problem but a modern one. Men who build their lives around supplements, routines, and trackers are no longer pursuing health. They’re outsourcing the self. The aura ring becomes a confession booth. The lab report becomes scripture. Their souls are managed through metrics until nothing left inside isn’t optimized.

Gollum once had a name: Sméagol—a person with history, guilt, and possibility. But the Ring erased all that and replaced relationships with fixation. He no longer lived to build, to love, to know. He lived to possess, and all possession inverts.

We see the same pattern in addiction. In obsession. In the man who lives for his fortune but no longer knows what to do with it. In the influencer who curates every image but can’t form a thought without applause. In the striver whose health is perfect but whose life is barren.

When life depends on an object, the soul eventually conforms to it. Gollum’s will, language, posture, and even his voice all twisted around the Ring. His desires didn’t serve his identity. They replaced it.

This is the true cost of dependency-based immortality. The longer you survive through something external, the less you exist apart from it.

The Mad Math of Eternal Time

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small, slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum.

Time without end doesn’t liberate. It erodes.

Gollum didn’t live in time; he sank in it. Years passed without structure, without company, without change. His mind folded in on itself, repeating old phrases, replaying old injuries, splitting into fragments that argued in circles. His long life didn’t bring wisdom. It brought decay without death.

We assume more time means more clarity. But time, without limits, becomes background noise. Without endings, we lose urgency. Without death, there is no reason to forgive or to act. There is only delay. Gollum didn’t plan or aspire. He reacted. He returned, always, to the moment he lost the Ring. That moment swallowed the future. All meaning collapsed into retrieval.

Tolkien gave Gollum a long life not to glorify him but to show what happens when time is unmoored from mortality. There is no arc, only repetition. No growth, only fixation. He was frozen in compulsion because there was no reason not to be.

The problem wasn’t that Gollum lived too long. The problem was that nothing meaningful could occur. His wound never healed because it was never allowed to close. And when the music of life has no final note, even the most beautiful themes lose their shape. Time, unchecked, becomes noise. And the soul, unstretched by struggle, folds in on itself.

The Death of Desire

We soon forgot the taste of bread, the sound of wind in the trees … We even forgot our name.

Gollum didn’t want the good, the true, or the beautiful. He wanted the Ring. And once that want took root, all other desires withered. Food meant nothing. Light hurt. Friendship confused him. He was not tempted by joy. He was terrified of anything that might threaten his obsession. The Ring promised life. In return, it consumed every other reason to live.

This is the cost of unnatural immortality. It doesn’t simply extend the body. It distorts the soul. When your life depends on a single object, everything else becomes noise. Desire shrinks to fit the terms of survival. Pleasure becomes a threat. Love becomes a risk. Even mercy feels like a trick.

You can already see the pattern emerging. Men who track every biomarker but feel nothing. Men who sacrifice relationships for regimes of control. Men who fear aging more than they fear irrelevance. They live to preserve their bodies. Yet their souls lose their salt. Passion is replaced with protocol. Risk is replaced with ritual. And desire is strangled by its own guardrails.

Gollum didn’t protect the Ring. The Ring consumed his capacity to want anything else. He wasn’t loyal. He was trapped. He wasn’t focused. He was hollow.

To be human is to dream and to desire beyond your means. To risk heartbreak. To hunger for something greater than safety. Immortality doesn’t allow for that. It demands narrowing, shielding, hoarding. But a life spent hoarding cannot hope. And without hope, desire dies.

That is the final degradation. And it wears Gollum’s face.

Mercy Is Better Than Immortality

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

~Gandalf, to Frodo about Gollum

In the end, Gollum didn’t find peace. He fell into fire, clutching the very thing that ruined him. But his death mattered. It closed a chapter. It made the story whole. And it only happened because someone showed him mercy.

Frodo spared him. Again and again. Not because Gollum deserved it, but because Gandalf had said something true: even the wise cannot see all ends. Mercy creates space for grace to act. It opens a future you can’t predict or control. And that virtue, in the end, is what destroyed the Ring. Not power. Not cunning. Mercy.

Immortality has no place for this. It sees no virtue in endings. It sees no glory in surrender. It replaces love with calculation and hope with protocol. But the soul is not a system. It needs more than time. It needs transcendence. That comes not from extending life, but from offering it to something higher.

Gollum’s final act was not heroic. It was selfish, compulsive, pathetic. But it mattered because someone else had chosen love over fear. That choice gave the story meaning. Immortality cannot offer that. It does not bend. It does not resolve. It only continues.

The moguls of Silicon Valley would do well to understand this: Life cannot be engineered. It must be lived, and to be lived, it must be allowed to end.

The post The Fantasy of Forever: The Danger Behind Biological Immortality appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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The Wall Street Journal used to know the difference between covering a faith and staging it. In “‘Exmo’ Influencers Mount a TikTok War Against the Mormon Church,” that line isn’t blurred—it’s crossed. The piece does more than report on critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints; it puts their reenactments front and center, including a posed photo of an ex‑member wearing sacred temple clothing and descriptions that turn baptisms, initiations, and other temple rites into shareable spectacle. What is sacred is not content. And when a national newspaper treats it that way, it isn’t tough reporting—it’s trespass dressed up as journalism.

The Journal even said so when a boundary was breached elsewhere. In 2022, an Israeli TV reporter snuck into Mecca, a city non‑Muslims are forbidden to enter. The Journal’s opinion page ran the headline “Mecca Rules Are Up to Muslims” with the sub‑line that a “reckless Israeli journalist” had put others at risk. Another column debated whether Mecca should ever be opened to non‑Muslims (“Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Should Open Mecca”), and a third reflected on rare, leadership‑sanctioned exceptions (“The Secret Mission to Sneak Into Mecca”). The throughline wasn’t hard to miss: Mecca’s boundary is real, and crossing it isn’t a media stunt—it’s a violation. Respect for sacred limits isn’t a parochial ask; it’s a newsroom norm.

Now look back at the Journal’s Latter‑day Saint story. It spotlights ex‑members who re‑create or display elements from temple worship that practicing Latter‑day Saints treat as sacred and private. A decade ago, when the Church itself chose to explain its temple clothing and asked that the press treat it as other faiths’ vestments are treated, responsible coverage did exactly that—embedding the Church’s own explainer and letting the institution’s visuals carry the story (Church Newsroom; Washington Post story and video). The Journal chose the opposite: a promotional image of an ex‑member in sacred clothing, plus social‑video reenactments. If even HBO—a profit‑minded entertainment brand—apologized for offending believers when Big Love dramatized a temple scene in 2009 (LAT; Reuters), why is a flagship newsroom now lowering the bar?

When reached for comment, a Wall Street Journal spokesperson replied,

“The Journal’s reporting is accurate, fair and meets its established and trusted high standards. The Journal practices ‘no surprises’ journalism. As noted in the article, our reporter was in touch with the church, which declined to comment. We took great care in preparing this story and stand by our reporting.”

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics is unambiguous: provide context; avoid pandering to lurid curiosity; consider cultural differences; minimize harm (SPJ Code). It also cautions that legal access to information is not the same as an ethical justification to publish. You don’t earn trust by telling believers to brace themselves while you stage their sacraments. “No surprises” is not “no standards.”

The Journal insists its story is “accurate, fair,” that it practices “no‑surprises” journalism, that it contacted the Church, and that it “stands by” the reporting. But fairness isn’t a phone call. (Especially one that the Journal reporter has mischaracterized as “no comment.”) It’s the package: headline, art, framing, context. On all four, this piece comes up short. The Journal’s own public standards promise to “fairly present all sides of the story through rigorous, fact‑based reporting” and to uphold “appropriate professional conduct” (WSJ standards overview; Dow Jones Code of Conduct). By any normal test—especially the one the Journal applied when a reporter snuck into Mecca—this isn’t it.

The Wall Street Journal may stand behind their reporting. But they didn’t meet the accepted journalistic standards. They didn’t even meet their own journalistic standards. They acted less like reporters and more like a carnival barker telling the passersby that for the cost of a pageview they can come gawk at a secret religion. 

The Journal once set the curve on restraint. Yesterday it flunked it. On matters of worship, judgment—not just facts—is the test. Here, the Journal didn’t just miss the mark. It moved the line. Pull the piece. Apologize. And then do what the best newsrooms do next: be better than your worst day.

The post Consent not Curiosity: WSJ’s Double Standard on the Sacred appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In the very first chapter of the first book in the Bible, God commanded Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Religion has always informed the meanings and purposes of sex, but has not limited sex to procreation. In the second chapter of Genesis, God also commanded our first parents to “be[come] one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). “In the beginning,” the divine plan included having a family and the unifying and sanctifying power of marital sexual relations. 

Over the past 25 years, in our American Families of Faith project, we have interviewed hundreds of wives and husbands from “exemplary marriages” in many faiths across the major branches of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Many participants raised and addressed the topic of religion and sexuality without us even asking them to “go there.” What did they tell us?  

Some Religious Beliefs Can Be Damaging

Much of what the exemplary wives and husbands discussed about the connection between religion and sexuality was positive. However, despite being highly religious themselves, some couples readily acknowledged real and potential harms of certain religiously based ideas on marital sexuality. When we asked participants if there were any negative or damaging aspects of religion, one Eastern Orthodox Christian husband responded, 

One [potentially damaging belief] that comes to mind … [is] the idea that … human sexuality is only for procreation. I think [that] is very dangerous to marriages. One of our fathers, John Chrysostom, says it’s for two things—children and the increase of love. 

A Christian wife named Jessica said, 

I think that one [harm] is this issue of sacrifice and guilt. If a person feels like they have to always have to give in to what the other person wants, or always kind of crucify themselves for the sake of the marriage, that’s not going to lead to long-term health. 

Another issue, avoidance of communication about sex, was raised by an Orthodox Jewish wife named Sarah, who said,

Well, certainly [some highly religious persons] are missing the spirit [of sex]. When I was growing up, we weren’t allowed to read certain books. I would hide them under my bed. We didn’t talk about sex at all [and that was not helpful].

Noting the above issues of potentially damaging beliefs, poor messaging, and lack of communication about sex that religion can intensify, we now turn to several positive connections between religion and sex that our participants shared.

The Sanctity of Sex

As reported in a Review of Religious Research article by Chelom E. Leavitt and colleagues, American Families of Faith participants discussed how sex can elevate and bless marriage. Many couples expressed their belief that God gave them the “gift” of sex to unite them, to create strong bonds, and to gain a sense of connection. A Muslim husband named Ahmad said, 

[S]exual interaction between married couples is considered worship in Islam, and you get rewarded in terms of good deeds. [However], if you have [the] intention when you do it, that you are [only serving] yourself, and [only trying] to fulfill your desire, [you] do it the wrong way. 

Ahmad clarified that marital sex is considered a form of worship, and that it must be focused on one’s partner and the relationship—not based in self-absorption. A Black Christian woman named Shawna praised her husband, Ty, for not being “selfish” in their sexual relationship. Shawna said, 

[T]he other thing that I appreciate about [my husband, Ty, is that] he is my lover and he’s an awesome lover. He takes the time to make sure that my needs are met. He’s not selfish in the bedroom. I know when we go up there, he’s looking out [for me] (laughter). … [O]ur children, we always said to them, “This is keeping Jesus happy, because [our] marriage bed is undefiled.” And I said, “So, if you want to know what’s going on [in our bedroom], Mama and Daddy are just keeping Jesus happy.” Our children are very open about [discussing] sex, because we have been [open with them]. 

For Shawna and Ty, and many others we interviewed, their marital and sexual relationship had a higher purpose, were a form of worship, and were even a way to please God through fidelity and keeping the “marriage bed undefiled.” Rather than being seen as sinful or problematic, for most of our AFF respondents, sex is seen as joyful and happy and can draw the couple into a deeper connection that is sacred and God-ordained. This view is what helps sexuality to become a sanctified and holy part of their relationship, which can help religious individuals to focus on each other and marital unity rather than solely on themselves. 

The Expression of Sex Is Limited to Marriage 

In addition to describing the sanctity of sex, marital couples from the American Families of Faith project frequently addressed why waiting to have sex until after marriage can bless a relationship. For many, sex was defined as an expression of love that was only to be used within marriage. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints named Robert explained that the religious commandment of not having extramarital sex was not a constraint but freeing. He said, 

Waiting until you are married to have a sexual relationship with someone is something that [some of my fellow co-workers] consider very restricting. They think that they want to be free, they want to go out, party, and have a good time. [T]hey look at that, and they say, “Well, you have no freedom.” I look at it as it gives me a tremendous amount of freedom because I don’t have to worry about all the problems that go along with those things. I don’t have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases, I can enjoy the relationship that I have with my wife, and know that she feels the same way about me. To me, that gives me a tremendous amount of freedom. [R]ules that we choose to live by aren’t restrict[ive], they give us freedom. 

A wife from the Church of Jesus Christ named Michelle explained, 

We believe that committing adultery is wrong, [and] that having sex outside of marriage is breaking that commandment. The concept of total chastity before marriage seems like the greatest sacrifice [to some, but] I don’t feel that that is a sacrifice. I feel that’s a way of ensuring further blessings for my life.

Many interviewed couples perceived that they gained more religious and relational blessings from God because of their commitment to not having sex before marriage. This perspective reportedly allowed marital sex to be viewed not only as a divine gift, but also as a sacred trust from marital partners to each other, consistent with the Apostle Paul’s teaching, “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife” (1 Corinthians 7:4). Like this scripture suggests, couples viewed married sex as a holy sharing of their bodies and sacred selves with one another.

Sex Has a Strengthening Power within Marriage

Many married couples we interviewed expressed that one notable aspect of sex is the power that it has to bond a wife and husband. An Orthodox Jewish couple named Ruth and Saul said, 

Ruth: One thing [our sexual relationship] does is promote a lot of cooperation between a husband and wife. 

Saul: [T]his can be an occasion and an area that probably a lot of couples don’t talk too much about. [But in Orthodox Judaism] you are required to arrange things that otherwise don’t necessarily have to be arranged.

Ruth and Saul felt that patterns created by religious laws surrounding sex united them, brought them together, and helped them to cooperate. Deborah, a Conservative Jewish wife, further explained that sex helps a married couple develop Godly characteristics. She said, 

[Our marriage is] a marriage between the male and the female aspects of godliness—the male aspect being considered the giving, and the female the receiving, for obvious symbolic anatomical reasons. The male aspect of God [is] the aspect of God which is beyond comprehension, beyond the confines of any kind of physicality or humanity. 

For Deborah and others whom we interviewed, the process of learning how to give and receive love fosters growth between a wife and husband. Many other participants reported having more unity and synergy in their marriage as they approached sex as both sacred and empowering.

Sex Is for Procreation

Without specifically being asked questions about sexuality, a quarter of our sample shared with us that procreation is a vitally important part, but not the sole purpose of sex. A Muslim husband named Kamal said, 

My understanding is that Allah, the Creator, has created us to [both] worship and [procreate]. Family life is a unit to protect people; it’s a protection, actually, for men and women, in their everyday life. And it’s a unit of support. So basically, procreation is worship. 

Like Kamal, some participants shared the view that sex with the purpose of creating life made it especially meaningful, making procreation a form of connection with the divine. Patrick, a Catholic husband, similarly said, 

I don’t think that the Catholic religion supports thoughtless procreation. I think God is calling you and me to [engage in] responsible co-creation, and that means you can’t … heedlessly procreate. Now you ask, what kind of Catholics are we? We’re not a Catholic family [that has] babies, babies, babies. That, to me, is a [far] too fundamentalist reading of a Biblical passage. But [we have tried not to go] where I think many Catholics have gone, and that is 1.2 children and my house, my vacation, my, my, my. [Some people] have opted for methods that effectively demean human life and close people off so that they’re not as generous, that they’re not as creative as they could be in a way. And that’s [sad] to me. 

Patrick emphasized that “thoughtless procreation” is not a healthy practice and can demean the beauty of sex. A Jewish wife and husband, Barbara and David, similarly said, 

Barbara: Well, [in the Torah] there was rule number one: “Make more.”

David: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Barbara: Yeah.

David: It’s a commandment which is incumbent upon men: To have children. 

“Making more” applies to procreation but also to making more love, connection, and unity that empower the couple to face challenges that arise within any close relationship. Sex not only “replenishes” by creating children, but it replenishes the individual and couple in ways that create energy and meaning in their relationship.

These participants in exemplary marriages voluntarily shared their views on sex, and also recognized that there were multiple layers to having a healthy marital sexual relationship. Their wisdom included the repeated view that, as important as sex is in marriage, it was one of many essential elements.

Sex Is Only One Component of a Strong Marriage 

A theme spontaneously mentioned by 22 diverse couples was that “marriage is far more than just sex.” One Catholic husband and father named Ryan stated, 

I try and teach [my boys that] love is a choice, and God chose to love us. And it’s not fireworks; it’s not [just] sex [all the time]. It’s not. [L]ove is a choice. You know, we chose each other, and God chose us for each other. And then you stick to that choice. 

A Black Christian husband named Grant said, 

Finding a mate involves a lot of things: chemistry, sex appeal, charisma, common interests, and all those kinds of things, and they are all important. But for me, the strength in any marriage seems to be dependent upon the degree of commitment from both partners. My wife and I had that going in, and after 32 years, [we] still have it. We are committed to the institution, I think, even more than to one another. [I cherish] the experiences we’ve had with one another, and I can give credit and stability to that commitment, but the commitment was there at the outset.

Indeed, marriage as a commitment between wife, husband, and God seemed core to many participants’ views on sanctified sex. Indeed, one husband said of his wife, “She was committed to marriage long before she was committed to me.”

A Living Invitation from 8,000 Years of Marriage

From the reports of wives and husbands in the American Families of Faith project, we see that many of these wives and husbands reported: 

(1) Religion can do damage through negative messages or through enabling avoidance of healthy communication about sex. 

(2) Sex can create an “elevated purpose to marriage,” and many viewed sex as a “gift” from God. 

(3) Based on religious beliefs, many viewed sex as an expression of love that was restricted to the bounds of marriage, but saw this commandment as a sacred protection. 

(4) There is more unity and synergy in marriage when sex is approached as both sacred and empowering.

(5) Procreation is a vitally important part, but not the sole purpose, of sex, and 

(6) As important as sex is in marriage, it is one of many needed components—including a commitment to each other, marriage itself, and (for these couples) a commitment to the commandments and teachings of God, who supports them in marriage.

We acknowledge that these attitudes in the American Families of Faith participants are not typical in contemporary culture. However, our aim for 25 years has not been to explore the trendy or typical but to discover what underlies the exemplary and extraordinary marriages in America. We now know a little more and have their “lived invitation” to apply what these religious wives and husbands, who have about 8,000 years of combined marital experience, offer for our careful consideration.

The post Religion and Sexuality: Reframing Intimacy as Sacred appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

I’m still startled by an electronically declared “Hello, Master” whenever I turn on my truck. The artificial intelligence sweeping our society impacts me daily with a casual, “Hey, let me do that for you” or “I’ve got this” availability when I pick up my mobile device or log online. While technology connects us in infinite ways, the physical and psychological effects of reduced in-person, one-on-one relationships loom large, potentially impacting individuals, families, and the broader society.

 The prospect of singularity caused me to consider artificial intelligence’s potential impact on parental relationships and the doctrinal verities of agency and truth.

Approaching Singularity

 AI advances will offer even more opportunities to intertwine self and technology. Artificial intelligence is defined as “the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems” or “automation based on associations.” Those simulations and associations are astonishing.

 In 1999, technological prophet Ray Kurzweil predicted AI would impersonate human beings by 2029, asserting that Artificial General Intelligence, or AI with the ability to reason, will soon be a reality and promising that by 2029 “AI will be ‘better than all humans,’ in ‘every skill possessed by any human.’” Noting humans’ propensity for failure and weakness, Kurzweil optimistically looks forward to AI-enhanced and linked minds and bodies. “If we can meet the scientific, ethical, social and political challenges posed by these advances, we will transform life on earth profoundly for the better. … [Humans] are far from optimal, especially with regard to thinking.” Kurzweil advocates for transhumanism “where we are partly organic tissue and partly mechanical parts, the natural progression will be toward greater and greater dependence on ever more rapid computer-augmented thinking and consciousness.” For Kurzweil, transhumanism enables immortality.

 Singularity and Parenting 

 As AI advances forward, a flurry of articles and books about its foreseen impact on parenting emerge. “The rapid acceleration of AI capabilities signals a paradigm shift where traditional models of parental engagement may no longer suffice.”  A paradigm shift isn’t necessarily negative. Certainly, every generation experiencing technological advances adjusts its parenting styles. 

 Parents embracing AI find tools to more effectively manage time, automate repetitive tasks, monitor and enhance their family’s health and safety, and receive recommendations specific to their particular family’s circumstances. And while incredibly convenient apps exist to streamline the everyday household’s functionality, the more far-reaching, socially-shifting aspects of AI may require increased engagement by involved parents. In studying the family response to interactive AI, Druga, Christoph, and Ko suggest eight roles parents play as they navigate AI with their children: cheerleader, mediator, mentor, student, teacher, observer, tinkerer, and collaborator. 

 Some not-too-far-in-the-future hypothetical scenarios parents may face could include these proposed by Murchú:

• Emotional Synchronisation: Parents could experience their child’s emotional state during learning in real-time through neural feedback loops. For instance, a parent might directly sense their child’s frustration with a mathematical concept, allowing for immediate intervention.
• Thought-Based Tutoring: Parents could engage in direct thought-to-thought tutoring sessions where complex concepts are shared through neural visualization. Example: A parent explaining photosynthesis by sharing their mental model directly into their child’s cognitive space, enhanced by AI-generated interactive molecular visualizations. 
• Decision Impact Visualisation: Real-time modeling of how parental decisions affect cognitive development. For instance, an AI might show parents a neural network visualization of how choosing between coding classes or music lessons would differently shape their child’s synaptic development.
• Manage Cognitive Enhancement Choices: Parents could face decisions about implementing various cognitive enhancements for their children.
• Emotional Intelligence Programming: Parents could help children develop enhanced emotional capabilities through AI-mediated emotional training.
• Bio-Digital Balance: As children integrate more deeply with technology, parents would need to guide the harmony between biological and digital aspects of their children’s development.

While many parents will step up to the role of shepherding their children through increased technological influence, after a long day at work, other parents may prefer to let their kids navigate AI themselves in an increasingly leveled-up version of screen time. Murchú posits that “While the transformative potential of AI in parental engagement is undeniable, the risks of dependency and societal inequity cannot be overlooked. Over-reliance on AI could erode critical parental skills, reduce human autonomy, and create disparities between technologically advanced and underserved communities. … Failure to address these challenges risks undermining the fundamental human aspects of parenting and education. As we approach technological singularity, maintaining a balance between leveraging AI capabilities and preserving human agency will be critical.” 

 Considering Singularity within the Doctrines of Agency and Truth

 The Father’s plan of happiness and Jesus Christ’s atonement champion human agency. Lehi taught his children that God “created all things … things to act and things to be acted upon. And to bring about his eternal purposes … the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself.”

 Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God, and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

 Elder David A. Bednar reiterated that the principle of agency will help parents navigate AI with their children. “God’s creations include both ‘things to act and things to be acted upon.’ And, importantly, moral agency is the divinely designed ‘power of independent action’ that empowers us as God’s children to become agents to act and not simply objects to be acted upon. … Because AI is cloaked in the credibility and promises of scientific progress, we might naively be seduced into surrendering our precious moral agency to a technology that can only think telestial. By so doing, we may gradually be transformed from agents who can act into objects that are only acted upon.”

 Though creations and discoveries are neither intrinsically good nor evil, they can become tools for both good and evil. From his prophetic watchtower, David O. McKay aptly described our day: “Discoveries latent with such potent power, either for the blessing or the destruction of human beings, as to make men’s responsibility in controlling them the most gigantic ever placed in human hands. This age is fraught with limitless perils as well as untold possibilities” (David O. McKay, in Conference Report, Oct. 1966, 4).

 While an incredibly useful component of society, in this stage of its development, this simulation or associative intelligence is still artificial, and humans create its data stores with inherent biases and predispositions. However, parents bombarded with options and gadgets can still turn to an ever-reliable source of truth. The Lord declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and that true intelligence is “the glory of God … or, in other words, light and truth,” and while it cannot be created or made, it is the power by which everything in our universe is made.  God’s “work and glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” relies on parents’ knowing truth about eternal identities and then conveying that truth within eternal relationships.

The opportunity to raise children “in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens” is an incredible trust given by God to parents.  Artificial intelligence can be a powerfully supportive or destructive tool for parents trying to fulfill this “sacred duty.” While AI prophet Ray Kurzweil’s general assessment that humans are “far from optimal” may be realistic, our Heavenly Father, the divine source of real truth, compensates for the natural man’s failings by underpinning His parent-child relationship with us by providing a Savior whose atoning grace enables us to navigate parental roles amidst technology’s singularity with agency and truth.

The post The Allure of Automation: AI’s Intrusion on Parental and Family Agency appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Public Square Magazine has covered many of these issues in prior articles:

• The Book Banning Brouhaha
• Protecting Kids From Explicit Material Shouldn’t Be Controversial
• A Plea to Librarians

Having been trained as a librarian, I want to add an additional dimension to this controversy, specifically regarding how librarians are trained.

I entered library school in 2003 after having earned three college degrees. I worked for a time as a professor specializing in American government, law, and administrative ethics. This background informed how I assimilated my librarian training.

Throughout this training, I was dismayed at some of the things I was being taught. It is difficult to know how pervasive some of these ideas are in other librarianship training programs, but they were prevalent in mine.

Here is a sampling:

1. Do not make moral judgments about materials; just provide them.

2. Do not evaluate why someone wants information; just provide the information.

3. Librarians are the gatekeepers of democracy because they protect free speech.

4. Protect personal privacy at all costs.

5. Do not provide information to law enforcement, even if they have a warrant.

Instead of being stated directly, most of this was inferred and assumed, which did not tend to trigger our inner compass that a moral decision may be necessary. These ideas were generally sandwiched into lists and statements that were perfectly acceptable and reasonable. This is similar to the list of best practices given to FEMA workers, where one of the bullet points was to avoid homes with Trump signs while the rest of the instruction given was appropriate.

This is how it plays out in practice.

Do not make moral judgments about materials; just provide them.

Much of what is being written for children and young people these days is objectionable, often highly objectionable. Parents should have probably been up in arms protesting before now. Perhaps, in years past, they did not know. But they know now. Additionally, many potentially controversial books have garnered prestigious awards, which makes it more likely that librarians and others feel justified in acquiring them. All of the books currently removed from Utah schools under Utah’s law (Section 53G-10-103) are award-winning books or from award-winning authors.

As modern library students, we were taught not to morally evaluate materials but to just acquire them. It was not our job to determine if something was appropriate or not. There was no standard for judging what was appropriate anyway. Having received a prestigious award is considered objective proof that it is quality literature. No other judgment need be made.

In fact, it was often implied that the edgier the material, the more necessary it was to acquire it because it protected free speech. But, the rationale for this assertion was never provided in any meaningful way.

If a student in training fully absorbed this instruction, you can understand why some librarians are now bewildered and dismayed that they are being attacked for providing materials some consider morally objectionable when they have been trained to not judge material for its moral content.

Making a moral judgment is not part of the job description. However, this goes beyond moral relativism—it is moral disengagement.

Do not evaluate why someone wants information; just provide the information.

In order to help individuals in their search, librarians are trained to give a full reference interview. This type of interview involves questioning patrons about their specific requests and their wants and needs. Beyond finding specific books or resources, it is the librarians’ job to provide what they are looking for and, depending on the request, find resources they may not have thought of. 

Some of those questions involve asking the patron what they need the information for and how they are going to use it. 

A memorable illustration from my training involved a patron who came in and requested the classic book Black Beauty. However, the book was checked out. The librarian could have put the patron’s name on a reserve list. Instead, she questioned the patron further and it turned out that the patron had a bet with a friend on what one of the characters in the book was named. Having discovered this, the librarian looked up that information, and the patron left with the desired information in hand.

Knowing this, I made a query to the Church History Library once. I carefully explained what information I wanted, what I would do with the information, and why. I made a request for a specific piece of information. The librarians sent me the information I asked for, plus another item that suited my needs better, one that I did not know existed. Librarians know their resources and can often direct patrons to even better resources than they request.

While being trained to conduct a full reference interview involves asking seemingly moral questions, librarians are also simultaneously taught that they should not ask such prying questions. Through another ideological lens, it is not our business to question what individuals ask for or how they are going to use the resource requested, even though this is highly useful in servicing the patron’s request.

This kind of moral disengagement is somewhat at odds with reference interviewing, yet education and training programs for librarians could not yet see the contradiction created with the more ‘modern’ instruction. 

Librarians are the gatekeepers of democracy because they protect free speech

Although this idea of protecting free speech was taught explicitly in library school, no cogent or legal argument was ever provided. Such ideas were presented as a given and one which obviously could not be questioned. Indeed, protecting free speech involves providing all sorts of materials that most people would find questionable and objectionable. And, in fact, it is perceived as noble to provide them.

Questionable and objectionable materials have always been available in our society, even if only on the fringes. Now, however, these kinds of materials are available right at our fingertips. Why it is necessary and noble to provide them in a public library is puzzling, especially in the digital age. There is no difficulty in finding material in our modern world if you really want to find it. 

Citizens are required to pay taxes and these funds buy library materials. The public should have a say in how its tax money is spent. Taxpayer money should not be spent on materials that most taxpayers find objectionable and even repugnant. This is a simple application of majority rule.

There are still enough quality materials to acquire for public libraries that most people approve of. Limited library budgets should be spent on these materials. The questionable and objectionable materials are easily obtained elsewhere by individuals and others without using taxpayer money.

Librarians seem prone to justify nearly all their activities with this notion of protecting free speech. Invoking patriotic wording is enough to make detractors back off, whether they understand why or not.

Protect privacy at all costs

This edict took many forms. For example, it was made clear that if someone was checking out books on terrorism or materials on how to make ricin, librarians were expected to keep quiet. If the patron blew up or poisoned the world, that was not our concern. This example may feel extreme, but it is not too far off the mark. Other examples can be a little more benign, but the principle is the same.

Most of society would assume that people have an obligation to report if there are concerns about harm to themselves. However, we were explicitly taught not to do anything if an obviously disturbed and depressed patron asked for a collection of books and materials on suicide. It was taught that we are to provide them with the materials and let it be. This would allow librarians to remain disengaged and protect individual privacy.

But, there was an incident at a large local library where a patron had communicated his suicidal intent to someone digitally via a library computer. The recipient of this communication reached out to the librarians there, and they notified law enforcement and helped determine who the patron was, track him down, and get him assistance before he could carry out his suicidal intentions.

This suggests that this librarian training in moral disengagement is not universal. The librarians in question did not protect the patron’s privacy in the ways endorsed by some librarianship training.

Privacy can be a tricky concept, though. Courts evaluate whether you have a “privacy expectation” to get at its nuances. For example, you have more of a privacy expectation for your own conversations on your personal devices than if you are on your employer’s equipment, at work, or on company time.

A public library is built with public funds, stocked with materials paid for with public funds, and staffed by publicly paid librarians. This suggests there is little expectation of privacy.

As moral beings, children of our Heavenly Father, and citizens of the United States, our duties as librarians should fall much further down our list of priorities. We do have higher responsibilities than what is expected in a profession.

Do not provide information to law enforcement, even if they have a warrant.

This particular edict about law enforcement was direct and explicit. Any request law enforcement might make of librarians was unreasonable and illegitimate given our sacred mission, especially in protecting privacy and free speech. If law enforcement had a warrant for discovering what materials a particular patron had checked out, we were to refuse it.

Additionally, we were told to take some specific actions to head it off like destroying records daily so there would not be anything for law enforcement to receive.

In effect, we were basically told to break the law. We should have been informed of the inevitable consequences for refusing law enforcement but they did not necessarily deem that an important detail. Apparently, landing in jail would be a noble result, and we could take comfort in our noble duty to protect privacy and free speech.

Discussion

Many of the concepts were not taught explicitly or in their most insidious forms. Amidst the hard skills of librarianship, they were snuck in and implied in a variety of ways.

If these concepts were taught more overtly to librarians, there would probably be more pushback from students. Instead, they are taught as expectations and implied in how librarians are taught to do their jobs.

Many students accept them as truths, embrace them, apply them, and then do not think much about them until they get attacked for “just doing their jobs.”

However, these are progressive ideas, particularly since the overarching principles contradict historical practices and training. Indeed, these seemingly strict ideals do not seem to have been prevalent in past librarian training.

Presumably, not all librarians trained with these philosophies embrace them. There are still librarians with a strong moral sense who are dismayed at the direction the general profession has taken.

Many of these librarians are careful to consider local community standards and morality in what they acquire and provide. They take their moral responsibilities seriously. Others, not so much.

Conclusion

Librarians who refuse to make moral judgments about what they acquire and what they provide stand in stark contrast to librarians of the past who took their moral obligations seriously.

Those trained in these new ideas are not going to process why there can be pushback within the communities they are striving to serve. Any objections by people will look illegitimate to them. Indeed, they are more likely to view them as hurtful attacks, given that they are doing the job the way they were taught.

Librarians’ elevation of “free speech” and “privacy” over their other obligations seems to have severed their perceived obligations to those who pay their salaries and provide their buildings and the materials they circulate. They seem to feel they have no obligation to taxpayers or the standards that exist in their communities. Their commitment to free speech and privacy supersedes these obligations.

Unanswerable to law enforcement, governing entities, and the communities they serve, librarians act as if they exist on a higher plane and are a law unto themselves. This subtle shift in loyalties has enormous consequences.

This modern librarian training suggests that it may be unwise to trust the librarian’s judgment or trust them to do their jobs without any oversight. We cannot assume that the library norms of the past persist into the present or the future. A different ethos now pervades. We must determine if we will change with it.

The post Are Librarians Being Trained as the New Culture Warriors? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The WPATH Files

 Last year, whistleblowers leaked materials from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to reporter Michael Shellenberger, who released the files in March, along with a comprehensive report by writer Mia Hughes. The materials include a recording of a virtual panel discussion by medical and mental health providers as well as screenshots of case discussions among WPATH members, revealing improvised, unethical, and arguably illegal conduct.

These materials show that doctors are knowingly prescribing medications and performing experimental procedures on children and vulnerable adults who don’t fully understand the consequences and risks. As one psychologist said in the panel discussion, “It’s out of [minors’] developmental range sometimes to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.” Panelists acknowledged that many parents of minors defer to so-called experts, with the same psychologist stating, “But what really disturbs me is when the parents can’t tell me what they need to know about a medical intervention that apparently they signed up for.” 

Despite this lack of understanding and the providers’ awareness that some treatments eventually cause a lack of sexual functioning and sterility, another panelist—a pediatric endocrinologist—stated, “We still want the kids to be happier in the moment, right?”

Repeatedly, the documents reveal the propensity of gender-care providers to make ad hoc decisions not based on evidence. For instance, the forum discussions show clinicians offering various ideas for cases without referencing reputable studies or other evidence. In one conversation, providers discussed patients who appeared to have dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. One clinician wonders whether others have experienced difficulty in getting all of their DID patients’ “alters” (additional personalities) to agree to medical transition, “especially given that not all the alters have the same gender identity.” Another clinician responds by saying he or she has “concern about transition” in such cases, but no one urges the clinician to wait to administer treatment until the clinician’s patients with DID are mentally stable. 

The providers also frequently acknowledge that they are in uncharted clinical territory, essentially running unsanctioned experiments on a highly vulnerable segment of the population. As documented in the report, one of several examples is an endocrinologist admitting to experimenting with testosterone dosages on females.

Respected organizations such as the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society endorse WPATH guidelines and defer to their recommendations, as do many gender clinics and professionals across the country and throughout the world. In the Intermountain West, patients seeking gender transition surgeries come from Idaho, Arizona, and Wyoming to Denver Health in Colorado and the University of Utah. Both hospitals tout their adherence to the latest WPATH standards of care. 

In response to the leaked files, WPATH president Marci Bowers released a statement that did not address concerns nor provide any support for the organization’s assertion that it is evidence-based. Instead, Bowers made a circular appeal to authority by stating that WPATH is “widely endorsed by major medical associations throughout the world.” In other words, WPATH is widely respected because it is widely respected.

Bowers wrote further, “We are the professionals who best know the medical needs of trans and gender diverse individuals. …The world is not flat. Gender, like genitalia, is represented by diversity.” Like the organization itself, Bowers’s statement is based on ideology, not science.

Another concern expressed in Hughes’ report is that the new standards of care removed all suggested age requirements for medical and surgical treatments of trans-identified youth. Psychologist Amy Tishelman, lead author of the child section in the standards of care, didn’t even try to claim this change was based on research. Instead, Tishelman said the removal was for “legal and insurance” reasons. “We wanted there to be some clinician judgment without being at risk for being held in court for not sticking completely to these standards. So we did write them in a way, I think, so that there is leeway.” 

The Cass Review

The Cass Review, commissioned four years ago by England’s National Health Service, is the most comprehensive review of youth gender medicine ever undertaken. Released on April 10, the findings peppered throughout its 388 pages are sobering: again and again, it decries the weak evidence underlying youth gender transition, the dearth of information regarding long-term outcomes of social and medical interventions, and the serious risk of major harm being done to our young people. 

 The Review notes the recent dramatic rise in transgender identification, particularly among young females, as well as the high rate of co-occurring conditions such as significant mental illness, autism, and trauma. Despite widespread claims that transition prevents suicide, the Review shows that these claims are unsupported by evidence. Further, it confirms that the guidelines developed by WPATH lack any scientific rigor. The review recommends a focus on holistic treatment for youth based on psychotherapy rather than experimental medical treatments.

In addition to England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, France, and Finland have all substantially curtailed these treatments and now recommend a “therapy first” approach for minors and young adults. Other European countries may be “rethinking” their transition-first approaches.

The question now is, will the WPATH Files and the Cass Review have any influence here in the United States? At this time, federal government agencies and the influential scientific bodies that currently endorse WPATH standards do not appear to be changing course and may even be doubling down. And why would they not, with the money rolling in? A recent research report affirmed that the incredible growth of medical treatments for gender-related distress represents a financial bonanza for clinicians and pharmaceutical companies. With growth rates of almost 12% per year, the report projected that transition surgeries alone will balloon to a five billion dollar annual market by 2030.

One ray of light recently appeared in Utah with the opening of a new clinic that explicitly focuses on non-medical approaches to gender-related distress. It appears to be the first clinic of its kind in the U.S. to have this exclusive focus. (This article’s co-author is one of its founders.)

Gender-questioning youth have been poorly served by the medical and mental health establishment for far too long. They need thoughtful care that takes a holistic approach. The WPATH Files and the Cass Review make it increasingly clear that medical transition treatments for these youth are unscientific, unethical, and often harmful. We feel a professional and moral responsibility to call for a halt to all “gender-affirmative” medical interventions on minors, which are simply not based on good evidence.

The post The Consequences of Ideology-Driven Medicine for Transgender Teens appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

It has become increasingly clear to thoughtful observers that over at least the last half-century higher education, particularly in the Western world, has lost not only its intellectual but its moral and spiritual bearings. As a result of this loss, the university as a foundational institution is in serious crisis, perhaps even catastrophically so. David Lyle Jeffrey, a fellow at Baylor University, correctly notes this crisis is intimately related to an overall “atrophy of wisdom as a subject for academic reflection, let alone as one imagined outcome of a good university education.”

D. H Davis, the editor of Educating for Wisdom in the 21^st Century, notes it was not that long ago that “it was generally believed that the essential purpose of a university education involved shaping both the moral and intellectual character of students in ways that led them to live and do well over their entire lives.” In many quarters today, however, such a claim is most likely to be met with serious skepticism, if not outright hostility. I believe that at the center of today’s crisis in higher education is a profound confusion regarding what exactly it is that universities are supposed to be doing, a confusion fueled by a lack of any clear and compelling metaphysical or moral vision of what education actually means, what the fundamental purpose of a university is, or what sort of persons we should expect to emerge after extensive immersion in the process of obtaining a university education.

Part and parcel of this identity crisis is the fact that the modern (primarily, but not exclusively, secular) university seems to lack not only any coherent grounding for itself and its educational project but also any genuinely ennobling and animating sense of what it means to be a person at all, what the aim of worthy human aspiration ought to be, or what human life—educated or otherwise—is really supposed to be about in the first place. As one thoughtful scholar has observed, the modern university has proven to be eminently capable of teaching students how to go about making money for themselves but seems to be entirely inadequate to the task of providing serious counsel as to what might be worth spending one’s money on.

What is missing, according to MacIntyre, is “any large sense of and concern for inquiry into the relationships between the disciplines and, second, any conception of the disciplines as each contributing to a single shared enterprise, one whose principal aim is neither to benefit the economy nor to advance the careers of its students, but rather to achieve for teachers and students alike a certain kind of shared understanding.” He further argues, “the conception of the university presupposed by and embodied in the institutional forms and activities of contemporary research universities is not just one that has nothing much to do with any particular conception of the universe, but one that suggests strongly that there is no such thing as the university, no whole of which the subject matters studied by the various disciplines are all parts or aspects, but instead just a multifarious set of assorted subject matters.”

Much of our contemporary predicament in higher education stems, then, from the progressive abandonment of those traditional intellectual, moral, and spiritual foundations that once provided the university with both the rationale for its institutional existence and the conceptual framework within which its fundamental purpose could be articulated and coherently defended. The steady erosion of the traditional intellectual and moral foundations of the university over the last century and a half has occurred, not surprisingly, as a direct consequence of the rise to prominence of two powerful ideologies:  modernism and postmodernism. These ideologies not only seek to eradicate more traditional—or what might be loosely called “pre-modern”—understandings of the nature and meaning of education but are equally hostilely opposed to one another, at both their most basic conceptual level and at the level of practice.

As these two movements have begun to exert a greater and greater influence on thinking in the academy, and subsequently, thinking in the larger cultural and political spheres, much of what were once taken to be the foundational virtues and to constitute the institutional telos of the university have increasingly become the object of open scorn. Prior generations’ understanding of the essence of higher education as a process of “soul-craft,” the formation of virtuous character through the accumulation of knowledge, in concert with the cultivation of wisdom as a result of sustained, disciplined pursuit of “the good, the true, and the beautiful,” has steadily faded as a serious concern of educational or cultural consideration. Ultimately, Davis observes, “Pursuing truth, knowledge, and virtue still sound like perfectly laudable pursuits, but they are not the first things—or even the second things—that define the life of the university.”

In particular, I will argue that because both the modern and the postmodern approaches conceptualize the purpose of higher education primarily in terms of the pursuit of power rather than the pursuit of truth and, concomitantly, deny the possibility of genuine human freedom, each encourages a nihilistic worldview that, if embraced, ultimately signals the ruin of the university as a meaningful institution. In conclusion, by way of alternative, I will briefly sketch out the broad outlines of a perspective in which higher education is seen to be, first and foremost, and across all disciplines, about the business of seeking truth, becoming good, and attending to the beautiful.

In this endeavor, I will argue that psychology, though currently largely beholden to both modernist and postmodernist thinking and methods, has a significant role to play in defending those richer and more vibrant conceptions of human personhood and freedom necessary for achieving these more worthy (and, indeed, more human) aims of and for higher education in our world today.

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Viewers of last Sunday’s Super Bowl may have seen an ad campaign by HeGetsUs, a group of “Jesus followers” seeking to “look at the biography of Jesus through a modern lens.” Their one-minute ad featured different images of pairs of individuals, one having their feet washed by the other, representing the Lord’s washing of feet. This ad had an apparent political aspect, as the pairs of individuals were stereotypically opposed. One frame featured a woman washing the feet of a young girl outside an abortion clinic, one of a Christian pastor washing the feet of an obviously gay man, and, of our interest here, an immigrant tended to by a white lady of a Chicago suburb.

The humanitarian proposition to “consider thy neighbor as thyself” or acknowledge our “common humanity” is evidently of Christian origin: we are all God’s children. But what happens when this humanitarian impulse predetermines political and moral action? We are all God’s children, but do we need to have open borders? We are all brothers and sisters, but must we acknowledge the “fundamental human right” to birth control and abortion? 

Christians especially have a weighty responsibility to discern the fine line between Christian charity and humanitarian compassion; the devolvement into soulless humanitarianism is indeed, as Daniel Mahoney termed, the “idol of our age.” French political philosopher Pierre Manent modestly lays out this Christian responsibility in his 2020 essay, “Who Is The Good Samaritan?” 

Secular humanitarians share with Christians an admiration for the story of the Good Samaritan; on its most superficial level, the parable represents the need to acknowledge and care for our suffering neighbor. But to “contextualize” the parable, to suggest that a superficial reading, a humanitarian reading, does not capture the entire purpose is akin to speaking out not only against Christ but humanity itself, and who can be against humanity?

Critiquing Pope Francis’ quasi-humanitarian interpretation of the parable, Pierre Manent rightly reaffirms what the Church Fathers knew: “The Samaritan is none other than Jesus Himself.” When reading the parable, then, the reader must be cautious not to hastily insert himself in the shoes of the Samaritan. The mortal Christian, Manent explains, has “neither the charity, nor the strength, nor the reparative virtue, nor the patience, nor the hope, nor the faith, to be like the Samaritan.” Weakly emulating the whole self-emptying being of the Good Samaritan too often devolves into misguided humanitarian efforts; to empty oneself or offer oneself as a sacrifice is not entirely possible for us, for Christ’s atoning power carries a grace and a power we mortals cannot produce. 

I do not mean to suggest that we must completely negate the often-valid feelings and circumstances of the “Other” or those apart from “our own,” nor do I argue we put a complete halt to humanitarian efforts abroad; there are many beautiful, successful Christian examples of international service, our church included. The question we must ask then becomes, what wounds did the Samaritan tend to, and how can we help our neighbors heal those wounds? 

“But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them” (Luke 10:33-34).

There is much symbolism in this text, the likes of which John Welch brilliantly outlines here. For the sake of brevity, I take only a small quote from Hugh Nibley concerning the oil and wine:

To an outsider, this is a story of the loftiest humanitarian and moral purpose, completely satisfying in itself. Yet it would now appear that no early Christian could possibly have missed the real significance of the wine and the oil that heal the wounded man as standing for the sacrament and the anointing that restore the ailing human soul to a healthy state, thanks to the intervention of the Lord, who is the Good Samaritan.

Humanitarianism, as Manent states, is “wholly different from Christianity” as it is not concerned with any condition of the soul or spirit but is limited to alleviating material necessities. Nibley’s insight on the Good Samaritan solidifies this important distinction; the Samaritan tended to the spiritual welfare of the Jew, not merely or only to his immediate bodily necessities. Again, this is not to say material or temporal needs must be wholly overlooked in our acts of Christian charity; Thomas Aquinas aptly observed that a certain level of material prosperity is a state of virtue. Yet adopting material means is, for the Christian, ultimately pointed toward a spiritual end; humanitarian aid can only go so far for the salvation of a soul.

It may surprise the reader when Manent, as a Thomist, critiques the frailty of man from a seemingly Augustinian angle, emphasizing our hopelessness, incapability, and fallen nature, a nature that cannot give the Divine grace of the Samaritan. Of course, there is truth here—a reading of King Benjamin would add to Manent’s point. So how exactly should the mortal Christian take the Samaritan’s initiative to “go and do ye likewise”? 

Manent’s Augustinian critique must not overshadow his cautious yet hopeful Thomistic suggestion: True Christian charity must be interpreted through the cardinal virtues, namely prudence. To act as a Christian, as a Christian already situated in a shared political context, our actions are “guided by the cardinal virtues of courage, justice, and prudence” understood and transmitted by our particular political community. Void of the cardinal virtues already present in our moral-political lives, an ersatz Christian charity often “does more harm than good,” as “merely human compassion” or “fellow-feeling” is “not capable of being morally qualified.” Only by linking this human sentiment to a cardinal virtue can we confide in the efficacy of our actions and better orient our neighbor to the Inn, where they may find the true healing oil and wine of our Good Samaritan.

Moderation tames the often frivolous action resulting from the understandable sentiment of “fellow feeling.” To reuse the example, the issue of mass immigration, legal and illegal, must not be dissolved entirely under the banner of humanitarian compassion or a “love of humanity.” On the other hand, Manent explains in a 2021 essay that the “exaggerated moralism” of nationalist and populist “indignation” fails to address the issue adequately. As Manent argues, we must remember that “the migrants are our fellow beings.” 

But to universalize our humanity radically undermines and overlooks the real, particular political communities in which we live. While “it is human and it is Christian” to tend to those in need, this persistence is “not unconditional.” Manent warns, “It is therefore urgent for us to wake up from the dream of a humanity without borders. We are not human beings-in-general who welcome human beings-in-general.” To adequately address the monumental immigration problem requires a sound understanding of one’s own political community, a community that may not share the faith, norms, or culture of the petitioning migrant, a migrant with their own particular political formation. 

Speaking to French Christians, yet not at all irrelevant to the American reader, Manent suggests: “We cannot accomplish this difficult task if we break our political mainspring by renouncing to decide sovereignly the conditions of access to French nationality, and if we continue to weaken what remains of Christian dispositions and Catholic habits, for the sake of a religion of Humanity that delivers us over to the strongest.” As we stumble to emulate the Samaritan, our efforts must not be reduced to an imprudent humanitarian pity for the migrant. Such a perversion of the Gospel parable dangerously morphs into impiety as “the migrant becomes a sacred or cursed figure among us.”

I have spoken here of Christian action and political action. My separation of the two was not intended to be permanent but rather necessary to eventually rejoin the two together. Our Christian actions are inherently situated within a political context, and to act Christian is, after all, to act politically. Our social and political communities matter, and for many of us, these political communities are also Christian communities. Balancing our Samaritan’s admonition to “go and do ye likewise” in the context of our concrete political circumstance is a delicate act, an act determined to fail without the mediation of the cardinal virtues. For without these, our earnest efforts lead not our fellow man to the Inn but quickly deteriorate into offerings to the “religion of Humanity,” simultaneously sacrificing our cherished nation and the Gospel message on its altar.

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