Download Print-Friendly Version

Seeing Critics of the Church with a Pure Love

Outside the theater after a performance of the musical “The Book of Mormon,” two young women serving as missionaries laugh with a line of theatergoers who had just spent two hours chuckling at their faith. One man teased them, using a phone recording, fishing for a cringeworthy sound bite. Instead of debating, one sister offered him a copy of the book with a smile: “If you liked the parody, you might like the source.” He took it, still smirking. A week later, he messaged them to say he had read a few chapters and—more surprisingly—he apologized for trying to embarrass them. “I didn’t expect you to be kind,” he wrote. Kindness didn’t convert him (conversion comes by the Spirit), but it converted the moment. That impulse—answer a jab with generosity—has quietly become one of our most reliable instincts.

Our critics (and even our enemies) can refine our courage, our clarity, and our hospitality—charity without capitulation.

We do not concede doctrine, outsource discernment, or grant a heckler’s veto to critics. We listen because people are precious, not because scorn is persuasive, and we keep the “pure love of Christ” as both our motive and method. Learning from our enemies, in this sense, means learning how to love them better. Yes, as necessary, we must answer with facts, with consistency and safeguards; those looking for Jesus Christ and His Church deserve that from us. And when waves of attention build, the posture still holds.

#SurvivingMormonism

The upcoming documentary series “Surviving Mormonism” is generating a fresh crest of negative attention toward The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Another entry in the well-worn exposé genre of Latter-day Saints, the show purports to reveal the “dark history” of the Church through interviews with “abuse survivors, ex-Mormons and former LDS church leaders.” The show will be hosted by reality TV star Heather Gay, whose exodus story from the Church has been published as a New York Times best-seller.

And, if that guess turns out to be true, then part of an appropriate response to such scornful content is to “heed not.” However, engaging in loving and productive ways can also be appropriate, and may provide different benefits.

Many Latter-day Saints online modeled this in a viral response to the show’s title. In a short period of time, many Latter-day Saint creators have used the hashtag #SurvivingMormonism to poke fun at themselves for the often mild annoyances and idiosyncrasies of church members and culture. Examples included: “Surviving Mormonism, but it’s just me carrying a bunch of chairs to impress girls at my ward,” “Surviving Mormonism and it’s just me having to play basketball on carpet,” or “Surviving Mormonism and its High Council Sunday.”

These examples come in the same spirit as the outreach after the offensive Broadway play, which mocked Latter-day Saints and their faith: disarm hostility with humor, neighborliness, and confidence in the gospel rather than defensiveness.

Under normal circumstances, this kind of response softens hearts and builds goodwill. But because Latter-day Saints remain an out-group in many attention markets, these are not normal circumstances, and goodwill is not always reciprocated. The duty remains the same either way: meet caricature with Christlike love without ceding truth.

In the same spirit of not reacting defensively, we can go even further to recognize that every incoming volley is being fired by a human being—a fellow brother or sister in the family of God. The Savior’s example and modern apostolic counsel make clear that accusations and sensationalized personal apostasies sometimes merit our response as directed by the promptings of the Holy Ghost. But when we are called to defend truth, virtue, and the Kingdom of God, we should ensure that we are defending it in the Savior’s way, which means that our responses should always be motivated and shaped by what the Book of Mormon calls “the pure love of Christ.”

Old Bigotries, New Veneers

To understand why this pattern keeps resurfacing, zoom out from one show to the longer storyline. Across two centuries, Americans have recycled the same basic image of Latter‑day Saints with different lighting. In the 19th century, the Saints were cast as a wicked cult—socially alien, politically suspect, theologically off. That caricature licensed extraordinary measures and mob violence. From the mid‑20th century through the early 2010s, the image softened to false religion; good neighbors: Scout troops and service projects, civic leadership, and the 2002 Olympics—the so‑called “Mormon Moment.” For many, the Church read as rigorous but ordinary.

Over roughly the last decade, the mood darkened again—not because the Church pivoted into menace, but because the storytellers and their incentives changed. Prestige docudramas and true‑crime packaging blurred a fundamentalist offshoot into the main body; algorithms prized moral threat; headlines chased sharper edges. The label did the work that the evidence did not. Put simply: the attention markets transformed; the Church didn’t.

That is why yesterday’s bigotries can return in new veneers. Where 19th‑century broadsheets warned of polygamy and “secret oaths,” today’s packages spotlight weird underwear, money, and abuse. The old charge was alien. The contemporary brand is algorithmic alien. And conflation does the rest.

Meanwhile, what actually changed inside the Church in the last twenty years? Not a lurch into danger, but a remarkably steady picture: mission service and global humanitarian work; lay leadership; a plea for accurate naming; a familiar drumbeat on family, chastity, and service. 

So why did the temperature rise now? Several gears meshed at once. From 2012 to 2016, social feeds became the front page; the content that thrived honed villain arcs and moral bite with faster payoff loops. 

Streaming fought for differentiation with “based on a true story” limited series that collapsed an offshoot into the whole or an era into the present because simplicity binge‑watches better than footnotes. Investigations—sometimes vital—fed advocacy appeals, which seeded more coverage, which kept the story hot. 

And as national institutions lost trust, local communities with strong norms looked suspect by contrast; what used to read as civic virtue now reads as control to audiences trained to equate restraint with repression.

Put bluntly: the villain economy found a familiar mask. 

Ministering to Deep and Unmet Needs

That context can help us be less defensive. The people sharing their stories are not attacking Latter-day Saints or their way of life; they are being used by entertainment producers to maximize attention by exploiting their stories to fit into the package that sells today. If attention markets reward heat over light, disciples must choose the Savior’s incentives instead. 

In his 1977 talk, “Jesus: The Perfect Leader,” President Spencer W. Kimball taught that “Jesus saw sin as wrong but also was able to see sin as springing from deep and unmet needs on the part of the sinner … We need to be able to look deeply enough into the lives of others to see the basic causes for their failures and shortcomings.” 

This counsel to “look deeply into the lives of others” stands in a constructive sort of tension with the Book of Mormon’s depiction of giving no “heed” to mockery and scorn. In the day of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the word heed meant partly “to regard with care.” Then, Latter-day Saints must learn to carefully regard every soul who points the finger of scorn while disregarding the offensiveness of scornful language itself. This can be a difficult line to walk, but it is also the one encouraged by those who seek to follow Jesus Christ. 

One practical help here is that our perception machinery is biased by availability cascades (what we keep seeing feels typical) and out-group homogeneity (we infer “that’s how they are” from one vivid case). Knowing that these are human tendencies—not personal attacks—lets us choose slow empathy over quick certainty. And because familiarity often breeds warmth, not contempt, it is good discipleship (and good social science) to actually know the neighbors we’re tempted to reduce to headlines.

To put this another way, we must learn not to be fragile conflict-avoiders who passively stay out of trouble, but Christlike, antifragile peacemakers who actively strive to bring peace to troubled souls. President Russell M. Nelson reiterated his prophetic call for us to become peacemakers until, as it were, his dying breath, highlighting the significance of our efforts while recognizing our ongoing need for improvement. As we recognize both our own parochial concerns with public sentiment against Latter-day Saints and our broader sociopolitical environment of divisiveness and extremism, it is easy to see why peacemakers are needed and will continue to be needed.

Learning from Our “Enemies”

That posture doesn’t just restrain us; it teaches us. The host and individuals who will appear on the screen are children of God. Their stories matter. Our task is to keep clarity and charity together—refusing caricature, refusing contempt, and refusing to let the market’s heat stand in for moral light.

Latter‑day Saints in general are renowned for being enthusiastically kind people, both to outsiders as well as to each other. Yet we, like all faith communities, have our blind spots, and those blind spots tend to enlarge when we are in the majority. And who better to help us learn how to better prevent the lapses that sometimes happen in our policies than those who previously fell victim to them?

The landmark book “The Anatomy of Peace” explains that the individuals and groups we consider our most bitter enemies can also teach us about some of our largest moral blind spots. In one of the book’s exercises for “recovering inner clarity and peace,” the authors invite us to ask ourselves a series of introspection questions such as how we, or a group with whom we identify, have made our enemies’ lives more difficult, and how progress toward peace with them might be hindered by our own pride, our feelings of victimization and entitlement, and our desires for validation, status, or belonging. Conducting this kind of searching inventory of our attitudes and behaviors and of those in our faith community is difficult soul‑work, but it yields hearts and congregations that are kinder, more inclusive, and more unified in our quest to build Zion. The alternative is to be damned to continue with our moral blind spots—talking past one another, disregarding or downplaying each other’s needs and pains, and grieving in the gridlock of our seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Because “the pure love of Christ” is so far above and beyond mere human capacity to obtain, we are exhorted to “pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart” to receive this love. We know we are receiving His love as we begin to “look deeply” into the lives of others and see their divine worth, hear the cries of their hearts, and offer them our peaceful presence and care without mixed feelings and motivations. Through faithfully living by the doctrine of Christ and practicing “diligence unto prayer,” Christ’s pure love may endure with us.

When criticism comes: (1) Heed not the mockery—don’t amplify heat. We know why this happens. (2) Regard the person with care—see “a blessed being of light, the spirit child of an infinite God.” (3) Respond in the Savior’s way—facts with fairness, humor with humility, love without capitulation. As we pray “with all the energy of heart,” His pure love will reshape both our moments and our ministries.

The post Attention Is Cheap. Love Is Expensive. It’s Worth It appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

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.

Download Print-Friendly Version

In recent years, it’s become increasingly common to hear Latter-day Saints acknowledge—sometimes with real sorrow—that family relationships are getting more complicated. My family, like many others, is fractured by a variety of pressures, some relational, some religious, some political. We frankly don’t talk much anymore. For all intents and purposes, we’ve scattered. And yet, through it all, I remain active in my faith, trying to live and teach the gospel while navigating family dynamics that are often more painful than edifying.

I know I’m not alone. Pew Research has noted the sharp rise in both political polarization and religious disaffiliation in American life over the past 20 years. According to 2023 data from PRRI, about 27 percent of Americans now claim no religious affiliation at all. Gallup reported in 2021 that church membership in the U.S. fell below 50 percent for the first time since they began tracking it. Among young adults, those numbers are even more stark. Add to that a steady climb in family estrangement, and it becomes clear that the pressures on faith-filled families are immense.

Of course, this isn’t just an external cultural problem. Within the Church, the old social glue that once held extended families together—mission service, marriage, and weekly sacrament meeting attendance—no longer binds with the same universality it once did. Gospel living has become, in some sense, more intentional and more home-centered and church-supported. Faithful Latter-day Saints today are often raising children, ministering, and serving in callings alongside people they love who no longer believe. Sometimes those people are in their own homes.

So, how can someone in a situation like mine live the gospel without retreating into either isolation or bitterness? How can we pursue a life of conviction that is still open-hearted and gracious in divided circumstances?

First, it helps to acknowledge the emotional toll that fractured families take. A great deal of writing about faith crises focuses on those who leave. But those who stay often feel displaced in a different way. Many live with grief, confusion, or quiet shame, unsure of what they did wrong. It is not uncommon to feel spiritually alone, even when active in the Church. For some, a kind of survivor’s guilt creeps in. For others, fear about saying the wrong thing leads to chronic anxiety. These are real struggles that deserve compassion and care.

Second, we need a framework for understanding these divisions—one that recognizes not only personal pain, but deeper moral and epistemological divergence. While some separations arise from trauma or offense, many reflect fundamentally different assumptions about truth, authority, and what it means to live a meaningful life. As the apostle Paul asked, “What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). Paul’s point is not to vilify ex-believers, but to emphasize that meaningful communion depends on shared foundations. Without them, even sincere efforts at connections can falter.

This divergence doesn’t remain abstract. It plays out in families, friendships, and communities. In our time, moral disagreement is often mistaken for personal rejection. Thus, when a believing parent expresses concern about a child’s choices, it is often interpreted not as loving guidance but as judgment or control. Likewise, when an ex-member critiques church teachings, faithful relatives may hear it as betrayal rather than sincere conviction. This cycle of hurt and misinterpretation creates a relational impasse.

Here, the principle of charity becomes essential—not the therapeutic empathy of modern discourse, but the scriptural virtue of love grounded in truth. Charity “rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). It refuses to lie about what is right and wrong, but also refuses to give up on people. It allows us to keep our hearts open without compromising our convictions. In practice, this means listening without needing to agree, showing up without needing to fix, and loving without needing to control. It means resisting the urge to “win” conversations instead of making space for relationships to breathe. Latter-day Saint thinkers like Terryl Givens and Ralph Hancock offer helpful resources here. Givens describes faith as a chosen, relational trust rather than mere intellectual assent, and Hancock emphasizes the sacred role of moral authority in a fragmented age. Together, these perspectives help us understand not only why these divisions run so deep but also how we might navigate them with both clarity and compassion.

But knowing these things doesn’t automatically fix family estrangement. Faithfulness does not guarantee relational harmony. In fact, Christ Himself warned that loyalty to the kingdom might set “a man at variance against his father” and “the daughter against her mother” (Matthew 10:35). These words are difficult, but they remind us that division is sometimes the price of discipleship.

The point is not to force unity where it cannot exist. Rather, it is to live with integrity, trusting that the Lord sees the efforts we make and honors the covenants we keep. The family is not only central to the Plan of Salvation—it is also the arena in which we often experience our greatest mortal trials. But these trials, painful as they are, can shape us into more faithful disciples.

If I could speak to a younger version of myself, or to anyone just beginning to navigate these kinds of family fractures, I would say this: it’s okay to feel disoriented. It’s okay to grieve. You’re not failing because your family doesn’t look like the ideal. You’re not weak for feeling torn between loyalty to your faith and love for those who no longer share it. 

You may find yourself in situations where you don’t know what to say. A sibling makes a snide comment about the Church in a social media post. A parent quietly withdraws at the mere mention of the Church. A child rolls their eyes when you call for prayer. These moments sting — not just because of what’s said, but because of what’s lost: the ease, the shared language, and the sense of spiritual intimacy that once came so naturally. 

Practicing compassionate orthodoxy in these moments doesn’t mean pretending those differences don’t matter. It means choosing to stay soft-hearted anyway. It might look like biting your tongue when you want to defend the Church, not out of fear, but out of love. It might mean sending a birthday text even when you haven’t spoken in months. It might mean praying for someone who thinks prayer is meaningless. It might mean setting a boundary, not to punish, but to protect your peace.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, remember: you’re not alone. Many faithful Saints are walking this same road. And while the path may be narrow, it’s not empty. The Savior walks with you. He knows what it is to be misunderstood, to be rejected, and to love without being loved in return. And He will strengthen you to love as He loves—with truth, tenderness, and hope. 

I’ve come to think of my own situation not as a personal failure, but as part of the cost of discipleship in a fractured world. I hope for healing, but I do not expect perfection. I pray for reunion, but I try not to demand it. Instead, I seek to live in a way that honors both truth and kinship, conviction and kindness. This is what I mean by compassionate orthodoxy—not a softening of doctrine, but a deepening of love rooted in fidelity to Christ.

The post When Loved Ones Leave the Church: Holding to Faith in a Fractured Family appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Would finding that out—that your partner has needed ongoing assistance to be able to “stay with you”—be gratifying to you? Would you come away from the discovery feeling reassured and excited?

Of course, you wouldn’t. Because ‘til that point, you probably assumed your spouse had actually wanted to stay with you—and maybe even enjoyed it—independent from any active assistance.

But now you know the truth: that companion of so many years has not only been relying upon extra support but also requiring it … just to be able to endure life-with-you. 

Well, shoot! How did you miss that? And when exactly did your relationship start to hurt so badly?  

If this imagined marital relationship had been all you had ever hoped and imagined it to be, it’s fair to say there would have been no need for additional outside intervention to nurse along your spouse’s desire to stay. Right?

This is what I think about every time I hear someone else declare on social media that they are working to “keep people in the Church” and “help them stay.” 

Hmmmm, okay. That’s good … I guess? I can see why anyone could be encouraged by that. On the face, it seems clearly positive—at least compared with dishearteningly obvious efforts to undermine faith or simply watching someone’s faith fall apart.

Yet, like the marriage analogy, I still find myself wondering what’s missing in those strained relationships with the Church of Jesus Christ that require so much outside help. Because again, the idea that someone needs this or that Influencer’s singular guidance in order to save their relationship with the Body of Christ, well … it begs some bigger questions about what’s actually going on with that faith connection in the first place.

Hope, healing, and humility

There’s a lot to talk about here. I’ve written in the past about seeing faith ruptures through a lens of “attachment injury” (which takes for granted the likelihood of healing) rather than the more common language of a “faith crisis” (which implies a kind of inescapable emergency that justifies any number of ways to allay personal discomfort, including straight up “faith transition”). 

Over the last couple of months, I’ve also had a chance to report on patterns across a growing number of people healing some kind of rupture with the Church—be that over questions about sexuality, church history, or an addiction consuming their lives. In each case, these individuals experienced something new in their life from God and took small steps, moment by moment, back into sweet (not angsty) communion with fellow believers. 

Given all the many ways our precious faith can be affected by a darkening world around us, it’s clear there will always be a crucial need for this kind of fellowship and ministry among believers—what Paul called “lifting up the hands that hang down.” Since 2018, President Russell Nelson has underscored how central this kind of ministering is within the Church of Christ. 

None of what I’m raising here is to deny that. But when someone is flailing in their faith, how can any of us really be sure that we—our voice, our arguments, our “brand”—are the inspired remedy for what’s truly ailing people? 

“The things of God are of deep import, and time and experience and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out,” Joseph Smith wrote after five cold months in the dungeon of Liberty Jail. 

“Thy mind,” he continued, “if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost Heavens, and search into and contemplate the lowest considerations of the darkest abyss, and expand upon the broad considerations of eternal expanse.”

A profound level of humility is a prerequisite for anyone seeking to draw (and keep) people close to Christ and the Church that bears His name. All the marketing budget, charisma, and cultural cache in the world won’t be enough without that. 

A few honest questions for faith influencers

In my view, insisting that people need some major, intensive help from external sources in order to “stay in the Church” can come across as a veiled criticism that there is something fundamentally wrong, not just in someone’s relationship-to-the-Church, but with the Church itself. 

For me, at least, this is what hangs unspoken in the air with another online insistence on how well someone is doing with “keeping people in the Church.”

As John Dehlin used to do. And many Latter-day Saint influencers are wont to say today. 

To any who might find themselves declaring the same thing—“Hey, I’m doing critical work helping people stay in the Church”—I would pose a few sincere questions, starting with:

(1) What does that actually mean—that you’re helping people “stay in the Church”?

(2) Also, why is it that people need to hear from you personally in order to be reassured about the Church of Christ? 

(3) If you are clearly helping people stay in the Church, wouldn’t that be obvious? Would there really be any reason for onlookers to wonder and be concerned if the positive fruits of your work were that evident? 

(4) If, in fact, continuing concerns exist about the content you’re creating, should any of that give you momentary pause and make you wonder what you are actually accomplishing? 

One reason many influencers insist they’re doing so much great good—even in the face of sincere questions and concerns from other members—is because they are deluged by hearts, rainbows, and emotive thank-you notes from their many “followers” online. 

This phenomenon of being mentally and emotionally captivated by one’s audience is so pervasive it even has an official name: “audience capture.”  

“It can become all too easy for creatives of all kinds to become ensnared in a feedback loop with their audiences,” writes Dr. Matt Johnson—hinting at a kind of blindness that can set in when content creators take validation from their True Fans as the most reliable marker of truth, while dismissing honest questions and concerns raised by others as less valid. 

All of which leads to three more questions: 

(5) What if those raising concerns are actually right about your work, at least in part? If so, what could be gained from taking these questions more seriously? 

(6) How focused are you on the long-term impact of your work, compared with short-term expressions from people reading, listening to, or watching your content? Given the history of people who once claimed to do great good for people ultimately undermining faith in the long term, how can you be sure you’re not doing the same?

(7) In your work trying to support people who may be grappling with their faith in the Church and prophets, how much are you helping them return to that faith, compared with inadvertently providing an alternative to the covenant path? 

If you are, in any way, creating an alternative way of thinking and living—one that is distinct from the path prophets are encouraging—please, please think again and resist audience appreciation as a marker of truth. 

Even if—get this—people are thanking you effusively for “helping you stay.” Like your spouse barely-convinced to stay a few more weeks, this may or may not be a great sign. 

Some historical caution

My friend Dan Ellsworth has been writing and speaking about some of the overlooked blind spots in what’s been called the “seeker-sensitive church”—a protestant movement in the 1970s that provided coffee and doughnuts, pyrotechnics, and hipster Christian rock services in hopes of keeping young people involved in the faith. Good intentions notwithstanding, the effort famously failed to promote deeper religious conversion among its audience. To understand why, Dan cites the following fascinating observation from one pastor’s deeper dive on the topic: 

I honestly don’t recall a single true success story from the entire 5 years that I spent inside the seeker church movement. I don’t remember encountering anyone who had been previously unchurched, who came to one of our accessible and relevant Sunday services, who became a true follower of Jesus Christ, who transitioned into a supportive Small Group, and who then became a multiplying and ministering disciple. I do, however, remember meeting lots of previously churched people who had left their more traditional church fellowships because we had better music, lower expectations, and shorter services. In my experience, the seeker movement was less of a front door and more of a backdoor. It was a soft landing for nominal Christians on their way out of the evangelical church.

The uncomfortable possibility being raised here is whether the “helping people stay in the Church” project could—at times, almost always unintentionally—be a way of obscuring something unfortunate, even tragic, taking place. 

Even with all the best intentions, could pleasant-sounding rhetoric around “keeping people in the Church” sometimes distract from an inadvertent validation taking place for faith relationships that have become cynical, jaded, and more or less empty and hollow … perhaps simply running on fumes (and needing a great deal more than mere validation)?

A deeper diagnosis

In the modern vernacular, these kinds of challenging faith experiences are most often characterized using therapeutic language like “your needs aren’t being met.” But scriptural vernacular points to a deeper solution in the way it portrays these same important personal struggles.  

Instead of drawing so much attention to a presumed failure of the Church itself to fulfill needs and passions, a more ancient framing would inquire a bit more into the other side of the equation. The prophet-poet Isaiah channeled the Lord’s concerns about a people who “draw nigh unto me with their mouth and lips, but their heart is far from me.” 

Why? Because these believers had embraced popular “precepts” or “commandments of men” as “doctrine”—teaching people they were one and the same. 

This was the same verse Moroni referenced and elaborated on for the young Joseph Smith, cautioning him against organizations’ tendency to have “a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” 

Is your favorite Latter-day Saint influencer hesitant to say anything definitive about porn or extra-marital sex? Are they squeamish about the clear prophetic emphasis on marriage and family? Are references to covenants, ordinances, and temples secondary in their content, more of an aside or afterthought? 

Then, pay attention. 

Drawn away from repentance

Maybe you’re starting to see the real danger I’m highlighting here—that in repeating to ourselves, “My, how wonderful that we’re helping people stay in the Church,” we may be inadvertently distracting from something else taking place.

All of which leave people soothed, assured, and validated … in the very moment they are starving inside spiritually. And primarily needing one thing and one thing alone: a whole lot more of the light, truth, and love of the Savior Himself. 

Jesus Christ is the One anointed and authorized to succor us all in salvatory ways. And who stands ready to lead us to the learning (revelation) and adjustments of heart and life (repentance) that are prerequisites for real healing to come. 

“And I say unto you again that he cannot save them in their sins,” Amulek said, pushing back on a major influencer of his day. “For I cannot deny his word, and he hath said that no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

He’s enough

As long as we’re open to all the Great Physician prescribes, He is enough. He really is. 

And there really is a “special kind of rest” and a “special kind of love” available in fully embracing our covenants with Him—something President Nelson has been all but pleading for us on his hands and knees to seek after. 

These are blessings available to everyone—no matter how you look, no matter how you feel inside, and no matter how many loud voices insist otherwise. 

 “Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay,” Nephi taught. “But he saith: “Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price.”

 No better podcast or fireside has ever been given to Americans grappling over whether they belong anymore in the true faith of Christ than the questions this mighty prophet asked: 

• “Hath [God] commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but he hath given it free for all men; and he hath commanded his people that they should persuade all men to repentance.”
• “Behold, hath the Lord commanded any that they should not partake of his goodness? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but all men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden.”
• “He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.”

Has he been clear enough yet? Nephi just can’t stop talking about this! “Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation.”

Bottom line: The feast is open to everyone. And if you don’t understand that—really know it for yourself—then keep seeking until you do. In the meanwhile, be careful not to allow your own personal dissatisfaction to become multiplied many times over in the lives you’re trying to reach.  

Led into the ditch

You see, many a dissatisfied person—across many charged and contested issues—has decided the solution to their own personal angst is to launch a podcast or Instagram page to “be the change they wish to see” and work towards “systemic” shifts they are convinced need to happen in order to be more comfortable as a member themselves.

“Disregard them … ignore them … Let them alone,” Jesus would surely warn us again today—calling these well-intentioned people “blind guides” (“blind leaders of the blind”) and stating clearly, “And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” or “pit.” 

Whatever it takes

Whatever it takes, no matter how long it takes, we all need to find a living, embodied, special, covenantal relationship with the living, embodied Rescuer of men and women everywhere. There is an urgency to doing so (including for those “not feeling it” in the fellowship of His faith for various reasons—including potentially due to past trauma in their families). 

As Dan Ellsworth has been saying for years now, “Our goal should not simply be to keep people in the Church. It should be to help them find conversion.”

Yes, let’s keep doing all we can to minister, soothe, and fellowship. But in doing so, let’s do something more than merely helping struggling friends, neighbors, and family stay in an otherwise difficult relationship. 

Let’s do what we can to help those around us come to love and relish that relationship—to the point that it would be inconceivable for them to ever want to leave.

And to the point where they’d never really need any extra supplement to stay around for a very long time. 

If we do not—and if we instead present another kind of path, similar but distinct from the one outlined plainly by the Lord and His prophets—then let’s be upfront with people about what we’re offering: an alternative spiritual path.

The biggest question

To some, all this might seem a subtle, even subjective distinction I’m making here—but it’s not really small at all: Are you bringing people into a deepening covenantal relationship with God and His people? Or are you doing something else—perhaps bringing them into a deeper relationship with you? 

Could you inadvertently be presenting yourself as “the place” or “the community” where people can find their spiritual needs met … finally! (“So nice to find somewhere that gets it.”)

A place to go if “you’re not finding the connection, support, and answers” that you might have with your plain, ole’ membership—that is, in your covenantal relationship with the body of Christ. 

My friends Ty and Jeff, who set up North Star (a gathering of covenant-loving brothers and sisters who experience same-sex attraction), were extremely careful about this—so as to avoid becoming an alternative to church fellowship. 

My friends Bill and Zach, Patrick, and Terryl at Faith Matters share the same genuine desire. As Bill told me, “We don’t want to become a movement!” 

I believe him. And I know that their team is also working hard to build faith. Yet there’s always a risk of drifting from that wonderful aspiration for any of us trying to influence people online (myself included). And it’s this caution and care—especially when accompanied by the Spirit of discernment—that can help any organization and effort trying to build the Kingdom actually do that. 

Instead of building something else. Another option if the Church of Jesus Christ “just isn’t working for you,” let’s not be a soft landing place for people leaving their “first love.”

And let’s not forget that the rebirth Jesus invites us to experience is open to every one of us—if we keep waiting and watching. Praying and trusting. Loving and yielding. 

That’s my own witness. Let’s do our best to help our dear brothers and sisters regain their own rich communion and sweet fellowship among us—to happily stay and “go no more out.”

The post What Does it Mean to “Help People Stay in the Church?” appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In 2021, a Redditor wrote, “The CES Letter inspired me to change my entire life for the better.” 

Jeremy Runnells, the letter’s author, was an online marketer. He grew up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and said that in his youth he read only faithful Church sources. Yet as an adult he came across things that led him to a number of questions about the scriptures and leaders of his church. By his telling, however, when he sought to get these genuine concerns answered, he was only met with silence.

After Runnells shared this tale with the world, he became a popular figure on church-antagonistic podcasts and an online celebrity. His journey took off so far that his work even appeared in Spider-Man comic art. 

Most of the people who were attracted to Runnells responded to this story, and only after to the specific questions. As YouTube commenter Miss Syrinxie explained to her audience, Runnells didn’t intend to write an exposé of the Church. He “had legitimate questions that he was seeking answers to. Why couldn’t anyone just honestly answer his questions? Obviously, it’s because no one has the answers.”

There was only one problem. That story isn’t true. Runnells made almost the entire thing up. 

This is confirmed by a new analysis that Michael Peterson and Jacob Hess published last week: “Were these ever the sincere questions of an earnest truth seeker?” The investigation outlines ten different lines of evidence demonstrating the true origin of the letter.

When the CES letter was first published in April 2013, Runnells wrote that it was a list of sincere religious questions that originated from reading Church-approved sources, and which he sent to a director of a Latter-day Saint institute in the hope of finding answers to his questions to restore his faith. Yet, as demonstrated in this review of the available evidence, Runnells wasn’t sincere in posing these questions at all. This was a pretense intended to manipulate his audience into giving him more credence than he deserved. 

In fact, in July of 2012—many months prior to the letter being published—Runnells created a new Reddit account with the username u/kolobot that openly attacked the faith. The engagement of this user over the nine months before the first publication of the CES Letter tells a very different story about the origin of the letter.

By October 2012, Runnells was attempting through this anonymous profile to generate viral content with a letter to to a senior church leader. This letter, published on October 10, 2012, was titled “An Open Letter to Quentin L. Cook.” However, it was not widely read. In it, however, he runs down many of the matters he addresses in his future CES Letter. But in this letter, he stated the issues as assertions rather than questions. 

He also stated in this letter that by this point, he considered himself an “apostate soul” and that this came about because of what he had “found on the evil internet.”According to his own account, Runnells’ disaffection from his faith began back in February 2012, when he began to read the Church-hostile apologetics of Grant Palmer, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, and material on the website MormonThink—all influential critics of Latter-day Saint beliefs. 

It was primarily these sources that seeded his concerns. He even lifted language directly from Palmer’s book “Insiders Guide to Mormon Origins.”  In November of 2012, Runnells’s anonymous u/kolobot username admitted that he had “left the church a few months ago.”

Runnells also added a “flair” to his Reddit username that read, “I’m on a tapir.” The tapir is a deeply embedded meme in anti-Latter-day Saint circles. His use of the tapir meme meant that by this time, he was familiar with questions about the authenticity of The Book of Mormon and had rejected the answers already provided by the Church and many faithful scholars to those questions. 

After being out of the Church for at least six months, Runnells reached out to the r/exmormon community, asking for rebuttals to an argument that The Book of Abraham, a volume of Latter-day Saint scripture, was historical.

In January 2013, Runnells began advocating for people to leave his former faith on Reddit.

By March of 2013, Jeremy Runnells was not asking sincere questions he wanted an answer to—if he ever was. He had made a determination about his beliefs, had declared he had left, and was looking for help in undermining arguments that addressed his concerns so he could persuade others to leave.

Runnells’ path is certainly his own. Many people leave the faith traditions they grew up in, a trend that was prominent during Runnells’ departure from the faith but that has begun to decline. But as a professional marketer, and after his October letter didn’t gain traction, he likely knew that the familiar beats of his actual story didn’t have the pizzazz to go viral and encourage others to leave the Church as he wanted.

In March, his grandfather, a Latter-day Saint, had grown concerned about the status of Runnells’ faith. By this point, Runnells had already publicly disavowed his faith, but only under the online pseudonym.

His grandfather had a friend of his reach out to Runnells, a man who happened to be a Church institute director. He emailed him to ask about his disaffection. This circumstance provided Runnells with his opportunity. He could leverage the situation by using his communication with the CES director to give his essay a cloak of credibility, while creating a uniquely sympathetic narrative about his disaffiliation distinct from the actual timeline. 

So Runnells, still under his pseudonym, reached out again to the r/exmormon community with a first draft, asking them for feedback and advice about the letter. When confronted about this public discrepancy later, Runnells claimed that he was only looking for “grammar” and “fact” correction. The record of these conversations, however, suggests more substantive suggestions that he integrated into his work. 

Before the letter was released, it was already recognized in this online community of dissidents as a ruse. One Church-antagonistic Redditor responded, “This is a mini-thesis,” but added, “I love how this reads as a legit letter.” Runnells thanked the commenter.

The letter he wrote had a biting, dismissive tone, and he knew before publication that he was engaging in “machine-gunning,” a rhetorical technique of overwhelming the listener with accusations.

In writing the letter, Runnells knew the CES director would read it, but just days after release, he admitted to friendly sources that he “didn’t write this for the CES guy.” Later that year, again to a friendly audience, he admitted the letter was written for TBMs—an acronym meaning either True Believing Mormons or Totally Brainwashed Mormons. And in 2015, after formally withdrawing his membership to avoid excommunication, he said, “The target audience is the fence-sitters.”

After finishing the letter, he published it first on Reddit with instructions “to give to your TBM loved ones” before even sending it to the CES director. 

Whatever you believe about the substance of Runnells’ accusations, the history of the letter is clear—this was not a sincere search for answers but a savvy, calculated effort to undermine faith. 

Simply put, the popular narrative that Runnells has promoted, both in the letter and on the website devoted to distributing it, that the letter to the CES director was written by someone who still identified as a church member, had discovered these questions largely through sources Latter-day Saints accept, and was only shared publicly after he failed to receive answers to his questions is a fabrication.

Only days after sending the letter, Runnells personally coordinated with Tom Phillips to publish the letter on Phillips’ Church-antagonistic website, MormonThink.

In the days after the publication of his letter, many Latter-day Saints taken in by his narrative began to answer his questions since his story appeared to be sincere. In writing answers to the questions, Michael Ash wrote, “I don’t doubt that the author of the CES Letter is sincere … with sincere hopes of helping other people get out of the same situation.”

Similarly, Jonathan Cannon wrote that the essay came from Runnells’ “real, lived experience.” And Jim Bennett said, “I think Jeremy Runnells is an honorable, good guy … And I think [he] came to his position from a place of integrity.”

Each of these respondents gave Runnells the benefit of the doubt that the story around the letter was true. He misled them—as he did so many others. 

Despite Runnells claiming he was looking for answers, and despite the fact that those providing them were giving him the benefit of the doubt, doing so in good faith, Runnells responded with personal attacks and threats, in one case deriding their “pompous arrogance” and threatening to kick their “a**.” 

In the years since, Runnells has continued to promote his letter. While today it is still titled and formatted as a letter, 43% of the material in it today was never sent to the CES director to see or respond to. He continues to display high-quality designs and a logo and has even translated the letter into several other languages after claiming that he never intended to disseminate it.  

Much time and attention have been given to addressing the questions that Runnells poses. But something else was never addressed, because it wasn’t even in people’s awareness. As this investigation confirmed, the foundational story of the letter itself, the story that has so effectively convinced readers to give serious attention to what this man insisted were his sincere “questions,” was simply never true. 

In an August 9, 2024, presentation examining the new evidence, acclaimed historian Steven C. Harper concluded, “The author was not an honest truth seeker. As many many people have done, I took for granted that he was who he said he was. … I was one of many, who knows how many thousands, who read the CES letter and wanted to wrap my arms around Jeremy Runnels and say, ‘man that sucks, I wish that stupid CES guy had been better to you.’ And that’s just not what happened. That’s not the truth.”

Michael Peterson and Jacob Hess’s in-depth investigation into the history of the CES Letter is available linking here to the substack Publishing Peace. An updated version was released August 13.

Editor’s Note: The article has been updated to reflect an update to reference the publication date of the latest version of the article. 

The post The True Origins of the CES Letter appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The groups where these individuals often congregate frequently operate under the pretense of following the “true” restored gospel, even while their doctrines significantly deviate from its essential and basic tenets. In doing so they almost inevitably oppose prophetic counsel and introduce new deities, unorthodox scriptures, and questionable practices that bear little resemblance to the teachings of the faith they sprung from.

These groups do not neatly align with conservative or liberal ideologies. Instead, they draw elements from both extremes. What unites them is some degree of departure from the more essential doctrine and leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints even while still purporting to remain faithful. 

Tens of thousands congregate in conference center sanctuaries bringing with them a cacophony of curiosities. But the larger question looms: how do they arrive at these different places?

First, “they” are “us.” We all grapple with questions and doubts, fall short, feel isolated, and carry personal pain. In a conversation with a mother whose daughter embraced one of these ideologies, her insights offered a valuable perspective. She remarked, “I had overestimated her faith and underestimated her pain. I’ve come to understand that the adversary exploits both.”

The vulnerabilities that lead individuals down these paths are things we might all experience at one time or another. Although confronting the question may be challenging, it’s valuable to consider how we could potentially be vulnerable to such exploitation.

Do we try to steady the ark?

One vulnerability is the desire to “steady the ark.” While transporting the ark of the covenant, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah, not wanting the arc to fall, reached out to steady the ark. He was struck dead by God.

The desire to “steady the ark” comes from the godly desire to help. But is limited by our prideful conclusion that we are the best person to do so. Certain influencers and charismatic leaders position themselves as guardians of specialized knowledge and insights. These leaders assert that they possess a superior understanding of scripture compared to the sustained leaders of the Church. They tend to present themselves and are supported by those around them as being out ahead of the mainstream, the essential interpreters.

We can find ourselves drawn to such charismatic leaders because of a desire for “further light and knowledge.” A quest for a deeper understanding of doctrine and personal enlightenment can be a positive motivator. However, an intense fixation on this quest can lead us to seek out figures who claim to possess advanced knowledge and see it as their mission to “right the ship.”

This lesson was repeated using the steadying of the arc as an example in a letter from Joseph Smith to William W. Phelps that has been canonized as D&C 85. 

David O. McKay, a former President of the Church of Jesus Christ, shared this story again before concluding, “Let us look around us and see how quickly men who attempt non-authoritatively to steady the ark die spiritually. Their souls become embittered, their minds distorted, their judgments faulty, and their spirits depressed.”

Another former Church President, John Taylor, taught, “Do not think you are wise and that you can manage and manipulate the priesthood, for you cannot do it. God must manage, regulate, dictate, and stand at the head, and every man in his place. The ark of God does not need steadying.”

Even a positive motivation, like that of Uzzah, can ultimately lead us into trouble. 

FOMO for Zion

FOMO relates to more than an exotic vacation or excursion with friends you wish you could be part of. A factor that may contribute to our vulnerability is the “fear of missing out” on a perceived spiritual utopia we didn’t get a ticket to. Perhaps such feelings help us sympathize with Nephi’s longing to live in a different time or Alma’s expressed desire for angelic power. But in this wish, they recognize the sin of dismissive discontentment. “I ought to be content,” Alma concludes, “with the things the Lord has allotted me.”

This passage was a favorite of Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who taught that “faith, hope, and charity qualify one for the work, not a craving for clout.” On another occasion, he devoted an entire address to the subject when he taught, “Contentment awaits us if our own desires can be worked through and aligned.” Similarly, Paul cautioned about the tendency to always search out “some new thing.”

It is possible that even the righteous yearning for a spiritual homeland and longing for something more significant than the mundane can drive us to take alternative journeys to avoid feeling left behind and ultimately lead us, like those in Lehi’s dream, down “strange roads.” 

Exceptionalism

It’s a common human tendency to justify our actions and beliefs as exceptions to the rules that apply to others. In many ways, our brains are wired to seek exceptions and act selfishly, believing that we are better, smarter, wiser, or more loving than others. This sense of exceptionalism can be especially seductive in religious contexts, where it may manifest as pride, a belief that one has a superior understanding of divine will, or a more profound spiritual connection. The story of Saul, Israel’s first king, provides a cautionary tale from the Bible about the dangers of exceptionalism. Saul began his kingship with humility, “Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin?”  However, as his rule progressed, Saul’s insecurities translated into a need to assert his exceptionalism, which led to actions that were contrary to God’s commandments. Significantly, these actions, such as saving livestock to sacrifice to God or performing religious rites on his own, on their surface appeared to be more righteous than what the prophet Samuel asked him to do. Nevertheless, Saul’s exceptionalistic view of his own superior spirituality led him away from God.

Collective systems, such as the US Constitution, that require accountability and ground us to moral codes can benefit all if we choose to be accountable to this mutually beneficial structure. In practice, something as seemingly simple as a willingness to stand in line contributes to order and helps us transcend our innate exceptionalism. 

If we feel mainstream religious affiliation doesn’t fully align with our personal beliefs or desires, holding valorized space for doubt sets us apart, maybe in some eyes, above the collective, and a sense of entitlement can develop. This entitlement inevitably leads us to justify indulging our favorite sins, pulling us strongly toward counterfeits that promote such indulgence.

Seeking Meaning and Control

In an anxious and ambiguous world, many of us seek ways to provide a sense of meaning and control over our lives. 

Many of these religious movements offer organized systems, supplements, workbooks, and rituals regarding diet or daily habits that promise to bring order to chaos, and often for a high price.

Narratives also provide order from a bombardment of information. Stories help us organize and compartmentalize the data we encounter daily. The sheer volume of data underscores the importance of our cognitive abilities and storytelling to provide meaning for it all. The narratives we adopt matter because they shape our perception, behavior, relationships, and emotional well-being. Harmful movements benefit from narratives that encourage participants to coddle doubt, fear, disconnectedness, and grievance. 

In our pursuit to comprehend what attracts individuals to these radicalized religious movements, we encounter a complex landscape as nuanced as the movements themselves. These are, of course, far from the only human longings that drive us away from God and toward alternative fringe movements. Sometimes our trusting natures allow us to be taken advantage of. Sometimes the reality of loneliness pushes us to do things we otherwise never would. And many other normal tendencies can cause us to become attracted to these kinds of movements. The themes we explore are universal, and while these vulnerabilities may not inherently lead to pathological paths, recent headlines serve as a stark reminder that, occasionally, they do.

In part two of this series, we will delve deeper into a pathology that can develop as exhibited by fallen heroes and fringe factions, shedding light on the complexities of these individuals and groups, ultimately striving to better understand the allure of radical religious movements.

The post How Susceptible Are You to the Allure of Divergent Doctrine? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

But the Latter-day Saint story, like any narrative worth its divine salt, is rich and multi-dimensional. Truth is not a popularity contest, and changes in membership (positive or negative) are not by themselves a barometer of God’s approval. This piece aims to explore these membership trends, not with a sense of denial or desperation but with a clear-eyed recognition of the complexity and with faith in the Church’s divine mandate. We’ll delve into a fuller context, one that sustains the truthfulness of Latter-day Saint teachings while offering insight into how we might navigate these changes positively. For in the grand mosaic of the unfolding restoration, these shifts may be less of an end and more of a vital, transformative beginning.

Examining the numbers

Before we delve deeper into this narrative, it is essential to examine the numerical dynamics at play in a more nuanced way. The recent conversation has centered around an article published in the Washington Post. 

The article was focused on politics, so it didn’t give much attention to the underlying data. The article reported that the number of self-reported Latter-day Saints in the United States has dropped by one million adult members over 15 years. Though this number may be imprecise, trusted demographer and data analyst Stephen Cranney writes that the trend is real.

The larger consideration is that while there may be fewer US-based Latter-day Saints, the Church is still continuing to grow. 

The framing of the issue demands a more global perspective. The Church’s presence extends beyond American borders, and it is essential to understand the international growth in this context. The Church is experiencing growth in regions such as Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. It is a global body of believers, and the flow of numbers in one region or another does not encapsulate the entirety of its growth narrative.

What, then, does this international growth mean for the church community? First and foremost, it reflects the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise that the gospel shall be preached “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” and perhaps another manifestation of the Lord’s vision that “the last shall be first, and the first last.”  The Church’s expanding international footprint should inspire us with a sense of progress and purpose. We are participating in the unfolding of a divine plan, and that plan is not predicated on maintaining a specific percentage of believers in one nation but on the spread of truth and light to every corner of the earth.

Reframing Church Health: Beyond Numbers

Perhaps, more importantly, however, the tendency to view church health through the singular lens of numerical strength is, while understandable, to some extent, misleading. After all, we live in a world that worships quantifiable metrics, and numbers, in their stark absolutism, offer a tantalizing illusion of unambiguous objectivity. Yet, as Latter-day Saints, we understand that the most significant truths elude simplistic measurements.

In our modern society, it’s all too common to measure success in terms of grandiosity, volume, and viral potential. We may unconsciously transfer these metrics onto our understanding of God’s kingdom, equating numeric growth with divine approval. But such a metric becomes deeply flawed when viewed through the lens of the Gospel and the historical record of God’s dealings with His children.

Take, for example, the prophet Noah. By the world’s standards, his 120-year-long preaching effort would seem a dismal failure, persuading only his immediate family to join him in the ark. But in the heavenly ledger, Noah’s faithfulness, not the number of his followers, defined his success. Abinadi’s story offers a similar message. 

And let’s not forget Elijah, who felt alone in his prophetic calling until God revealed that seven thousand faithful individuals were yet in Israel.

This principle underscores the broader divine mandate that Latter-day Saints believe they are entrusted with. We don’t merely belong to an organization seeking to increase its membership but to a divinely commissioned Church with the mission to “invite all to come unto Christ.” This commission is ours to fulfill, no matter how many of those accept that invitation along the way.

Alongside numerical growth, we must value the quality of fellowship, the depth of scriptural understanding, and the impact of service and outreach programs. The strength of a Church is more meaningfully gauged by the spiritual resilience of its members, the integrity of its families, and the intensity of its light in an often dim world. These factors, perhaps summarized as “conversion,” are left out of the social science research on these questions. 

And if we use these metrics, we may find that the Church of Jesus Christ is more robust and radiant than we ever imagined.

Scriptural Perspectives

To truly understand these membership shifts within the Church, we need to draw on the wisdom offered in the ancient scriptures. This is far from the only period in history where the Church has faced significant cultural headwinds. 

The prophecy that the stone would fill the whole earth did not include that it would do so at an exponential or consistent growth rate. A testimony of the restored gospel has never been predicated on its worldly popularity. Nor does the prophecy that the kingdom shall not be destroyed promise it will never ebb. 

Much to the contrary, scripture is replete with suggestions that even the final dispensation will not be an uninterrupted period of growth.

The allegory of the olive tree from Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon covers a broad sweep of history, from the House of Israel’s earliest days to the end times. One of the critical themes is that of periods of growth and decay. Throughout the allegory, the master of the vineyard and his servants diligently work to preserve and nourish the trees, but despite their best efforts, there are times when branches wither, decay, and fall away.

In verses sixty-nine and seventy-three, we see that even in the final season of restoring the tree, there is a plan that bad fruit will grow and need to be cast off, and it occurs precisely as planned. The lord of the vineyard says that the final season included both a time of nourishment and a time of pruning.

Meaningfully, when Gideon prepared to fight the Midianites, God reduced his army to a mere 300 men to demonstrate that victory was not dependent on numbers but on divine power. A period of winnowing can be a period of great strengthening of faith and courage amid those that remain. Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 with only a few loaves and fish.

Smaller numbers do not imply a lack of divine favor or power, nor are they contrary to God’s plan. Rather, they often set the stage for divine manifestations, resilience, steadfastness, and faith in times of adversity. The history of God’s dealings with His people is not a story of unimpeded growth but of oscillations, each pruning serving as a prelude to a new flow of spiritual power and enlightenment.

Even amid changing numbers, Latter-day Saints can see this period not as a setback but as an invitation to profound spiritual growth and renewal.

In these ways, a changing landscape need not erode our faith but can instead galvanize it. Just as precious metals are refined in the furnace, our collective faith can emerge stronger, more resilient, and more vibrant than before. Through this transformative process, we remain true to our divine mandate as Latter-day Saints, ever ready to serve, uplift, and illuminate the world.

The truth and vitality of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not rest on numbers. They are rooted in the individual and collective faithfulness, resilience, and spiritual growth of its members. We are reminded of Christ’s teaching “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” For those of us in this portion of the Lord’s vineyard, population trends do not define nor diminish the Savior’s presence among His followers.

The post Divine Tides: Understanding Latter-day Saint Membership Demographics appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

I was raised watching boundaries in action. I recall one Christmas when a large box arrived filled with gifts from my grandma. Standing there next to my mom, I watched with excitement as she took each package out and read the name of the recipient. When she paused and pursed her lips toward the end, I knew none of them would be opened. All of the packages went back into the box to be returned with a note: 

“Mom, thank you for thinking of us. You forgot someone very important to us.”

The “someone” being my dad. My Southern Baptist grandma didn’t like him. Not because he was unkind. Dad treated her daughter like a queen and provided tenderly for her grandchildren. But he was a “Mormon boy,” and grandma simply couldn’t abide that.

I don’t know how many times other boundaries were drawn. And I don’t know all the conversations that took place—or those that didn’t. She and my grandma were gone long before talk of “boundaries” began to dominate our cultural landscape. 

Dr. Brene Brown began popularizing boundary talk over a decade ago. I can see that much of what she and others have subsequently taught would have blessed the matriarchs of my family—especially when paired with balancing reminders to keep prioritizing deeper connection. As Dr. Brown has written wisely:  

“Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people … and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends.”

It’s clear that boundaries can be a valuable tool for our emotional health and especially crucial in abusive situations. Yet could there be times that boundaries may be overapplied and misapplied in ways that can potentially estrange and isolate otherwise beneficial relationships?

• “You can make sure you let them know, ‘My choices are not up for discussion; please don’t mention it again.’”
• “Please do not have discussions with our children about church-related things or take them to church without our permission. I know you’re doing what you think is best and that you have loving intentions, and we are asking you clearly to stop doing this. Thanks, Mom, for respecting this boundary.”​​​​​​​​ ⠀

This is stated quite respectfully. And yet the interactions these kinds of suggestions likely prompt are the moments that break a mother’s (or grandmother’s) heart. I have some very sweet memories of attending church with my grandma and her friends in our fancy polyester pantsuits—with her buying me sparkly birthstone “cross” necklaces and teaching me some pretty cute Bible-belt Baptist “primary” songs. My grandma loved Jesus, and that didn’t feel threatening to my mom and dad or the faith and covenants they lovingly lived in our home; I cherish them to this day. My grandma added to that love for my Savior, and I’m grateful my mom had the wisdom and confidence to not draw a boundary around that.

With a particular focus on “boundaries with the Church” for women with a Latter-day Saint background, Dr. Julie Hanks occupies an important place in the larger discussion. She has elsewhere recommended, “it is helpful to set really clear boundaries if communication between you and your orthodox parents is a pain point. What topics are you willing to discuss with them? What are you not comfortable hearing or talking about?” And in her public teaching and writing, Dr. Hanks encourages responding to questions that feel uncomfortable by saying, “That’s a personal decision, and I’m not interested in discussing it with you.”

There are times in all of our lives when we need to draw some lines. But unbalanced against other aspirations and principles, such boundary advice may effectively harden and estrange relationships with loved ones—suggesting language that shuts down meaningful conversation and encourages family members to essentially cut themselves off from relationships as a whole.

‘Your pain is not my problem.’ This same therapist has also said, “If you choose to communicate your change in faith, it’s okay to let your family be uncomfortable or shocked or feel whatever they feel. You are not the cause of it. You can let them feel what they need to feel.”

An invitation to make space for present feelings can be helpful; however, it excludes the impact we have on others, especially because some expect active members to openly validate the experience of someone walking away. One woman described the difficulty she experienced when a loved one left the Church and let her know she wasn’t allowed to express feelings of dismay:

“The implication that I shouldn’t be sad was hurtful even. To not be sad means I don’t think a choice to leave the Church and step away from promises made matters. It suggests I don’t believe the ramifications are significant and impact generations. It implies I don’t really believe everything I try to live in regard to my testimony. As pleasant as it might make things for them if I weren’t sad, it’s kind of [unfair] to expect me not to be.”

Once again, not taking responsibility for others’ emotions is a healthy psychological principle—especially when emotions are intense. But so also is feeling some of what others are feeling. And that’s where an attitude of “your pain is not my problem” can distract from natural empathy that could otherwise be felt for family members.  

Hearts of the children turned against their fathers + mothers? The depth of love and concern parents have for their children is well-known and central to so much of life. Yet we all know what it’s like to feel undue pressure or lack of space in relation to a parent or other authority figure. When this happens, some guidance around appropriate boundaries can again be helpful. And Dr. Hanks has said: “Part of being an adult is claiming your life as yours instead of trying to fill the mold your parents imagined for you. It’s okay for you to have different expectations and thoughts than they have. They did their job of raising you, and now you get to decide what you want for your life⁠.”  Elsewhere, Dr. Hanks suggested that “Part of maturity is disappointing your parents. It’s about letting go of trying to control how they see you​​​​​​​​.”

However helpful a reminder about healthy parent-child boundaries can be, an overdone emphasis in this direction can start to feel like a contrast with inspired counsel such as, “honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.” 

My parents weren’t perfect; my husband and I are not, nor will our children be. That’s not an indictment; simply, none are. Yet maybe that’s one reason that the Father of us all provides us with such reminders to not give up on the honor they are due.

What we’re bringing attention to here is the extent to which inadvertent distance might arise from overly aggressive boundary-setting—the kind that can prompt family interactions that are fairly callous and lacking in empathy. In this case, it seems important to balance boundary-setting with sympathy for others’ perspectives.

For instance, none of us likes to hear repeated advice we’re not in a good place to hear—another sensible time for a boundary. Can that be done without insinuating ill motives on the part of people encouraging us in another direction? 

Too often, people are jumping to conclusions that such encouragement is an attempt to “manipulate,” or pressure or “control” others. Dr. Hanks goes on to encourage people in these situations to “ask your family member to not share their spiritual impressions with you”:

“Whether it be ‘dreams’ or ‘spiritual feelings,’ you’re giving their spiritual feelings too much power over you. Your life isn’t their stewardship anymore; it’s yours. Don’t give your family’s spiritual feelings more power over your own. Set those boundaries!” 

We wonder again if this kind of advice—without any further qualification—can inadvertently end up creating not simply space in a relationship, but a chasm, as respect for parental stewardship and sincere inspiration by other family members is hollowed out and replaced with automatic resistance and even contempt. If so, this may help explain why some of these teachings have prompted pain and contention online and offline between former brothers and sisters in the gospel and within families. 

Is some of this boundary advice, then, having unintended effects—essentially giving people an excuse (and professional permission) to close themselves off to their family’s understandable and legitimate feelings? 

Holding onto the possibility of reconciliation. In the most recent season of The Chosen, we see Matthew’s father setting a clear boundary, telling him, “don’t call me Abba … I have no son.” But then Matthew hears the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus—among other things—encourages followers to proactively seek reconciliation where possible.  

Matthew decides to try just that—returning home with humility and anxiety, wondering if his father will reject him once more. Instead, however, a miracle happens: father and son return to a warm relationship again.  

Do we give up too quickly on this same miracle happening in some of our own relationships?  One friend shared a story of his mother grappling with an invitation from her birth mother to refer to her as “mom.” Though at first it felt awkward, and even in opposition to the advice of a family therapist, she chose to honor the heartfelt request. She did so, not out of a begrudging sense of duty or dismissive of her own feelings, but because, as she said, “Were my feelings more important than the potential of this relationship?” Today she is grateful for the warm mother/daughter relationship they share, built on mutual sacrifice and respect. 

Like many other families, we’ve experienced profound blessings from forgiveness—in what Elder Jeffrey Holland has called the “ministry of reconciliation.” If that was the priority of Jesus in his ministry, should it not be ours as well?  

Once again, there’s no question boundaries can be needful, and we have a responsibility and accountability to these aspects of emotional and relational health. The ancient prophet Nephi felt prompted to draw a clear boundary after his father’s death when it became clear Laman and Lemuel would continue to be a threat to his life and family. And Christ Himself requested mocking and disruptive people to leave and went alone to the mountains to pray. 

As we approach this season and the start of a new year, we simply encourage a balanced emphasis on boundaries that build rather than estrange. When somebody matters, seek reconciliation and forge paths toward forgiveness.

In those efforts, God can meet our deepest needs. A modern-day apostle has taught us how to refortify at such times. “Whenever we struggle or feel exhausted, we can always turn to Heavenly Father and the Savior. They can rescue us and support us because Their capacity is infinite. There are no boundaries to Their healing power.”

Their gifts are eternal and the best protective influence for us all.

The post It’s Time to Rethink Boundaries appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

How are we to understand the estrangement and woundedness between current and former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Why does it so often hurt so bad, and are there any ways to soften the pain and our hearts toward each other? 

One story. One Sabbath afternoon, a Sunday School teacher introduced an important conversation about different trials facing members of the Church. After several classic examples were listed on the chalkboard—cancer, mental illness, divorce—one individual in the class raised her hand and suggested another addition: “How about people struggling with their faith due to challenging questions?” 

“Oh, let’s not go there today …” said the teacher. 

The woman raising the possibility felt deflated. This kind of hesitance and fear to “go there” certainly goes in both directions, with some who have stepped away similarly hesitant to talk openly with believing members about weighty questions. Even when outright hostility isn’t present, the awkward silence and distance often involved can be wearying for all of us.  

That’s why we’re raising some ideas below we hope will make a difference—reflecting a framework of sorts to help us work towards some softening, some healing, and maybe even some reconciliation together. 

The trauma of stepping away—in two parts. It’s no great revelation to acknowledge the significant—even excruciating—pain often involved in stepping away from the Church of Jesus Christ. Many people who leave the Church report it as being one of the most emotionally wrenching things they have ever experienced. There is also real pain of believing members witnessing the change in people who may now consider themselves “former” brothers and sisters. 

The pain, then, flows in both directions. On one hand, those stepping away from the faith often experience a sharp loss of connection, closeness, and harmony with people they genuinely love—along with a removal of the larger security, meaning, and purpose their prior worldview once provided. On the other hand, believing members likewise experience a profound loss of connection, closeness, and harmony with individuals they genuinely love—alongside the loss of shared meaning and purpose they once felt together. 

The sources and drivers of this kind of pain are varied and clearly not widely agreed upon. Many of the explanations available only resonate if you share either a believing or non-believing worldview. What seems clearest is that the pain involved by all parties is real and often agonizing. 

Hypothetically imagine Mary and Jenny, who grew up in the same ward as close friends where they shared many years of spiritual and social experiences together. When Jenny confides in Mary that she’s no longer attending church and considering stepping away for good, it’s a blow to the relationship on both sides. Their friendship is strong enough to weather it, but the storm is pretty fierce. Where they once could rely upon a shared understanding of the world, the future, and God, now they are relying on a sense of personal affection and respect from their long history together.  

Even in the best of circumstances, that’s quite a transition. Mary’s and Jenny’s pain is not the same, and it may not even be equal, but it’s real for both of them.    

What this looks and feels like will depend on the nature of the relationship, with effects often compounded for family members, especially parents and children. Perhaps the highest stakes are for spouses when one person seems to be unilaterally changing the set of terms that the marriage was built upon and with which they’ve raised their kids thus far.

Let’s further imagine a different conversation, when Mary’s husband Steve announces to her that he no longer believes the Church is true. He says things implying that her faith is founded on lies. Mary, who is a lifelong member and a returned missionary, is gutted. This is harder than the conversation with Jenny. Not only have their four children been raised in the Church, but she and Steve have also both held various callings and (she thought) found mutual fulfillment and meaning in their faith. In response, she says things that accuse him of betraying the promises they made when they got married.

Can their marriage survive this?  

Especially when it comes to these most intimate of relationships, we believe the intensity of emotions and experience on both sides may be well deserving of the “trauma” label.  

A two-part trauma response. Have you ever been in a bad car accident or know someone who has faced severe abuse? In recent decades, we’ve grown in our understanding as a society about the emotional and physiological “trauma response” that occurs when anyone faces severe trauma, from war to aggression to catastrophic accidents. 

Compared to a more normative response to even difficult experiences, a trauma response differs in many ways and levels—involving every part of ourselves, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Whereas normal experiences are integrated into our memory in a way that designates them as “the past,” expert Bessel Van der Kolk confirms how true trauma defies such natural memory integration in a way that ensures it intrudes into our present again and again. Thus, a war survivor at a 4th of July fireworks show might experience in their body again right now what they witnessed and endured long ago in the field of battle.  

That helps explain some of the excruciating physical, emotional, and mental aspects of a trauma response: the nightmares, the panic, the emotional instability, the hair triggers, and hyper-reactions to otherwise non-threatening situations, along with ongoing hypervigilance and a sense of continual threat. Each new event in the fast-moving news cycle can likewise be experienced as recurring instigators of fresh turmoil inside—from the various public accusations being made against the church, to the horrific killings in Colorado Spring this weekend.  

The emotional tumult of it all can be wearying and overwhelming. Books like Van der Kolk’s groundbreaking text, “The Body Keeps the Score,” have helped many of us better appreciate the reality of associated trauma responses—and how this is all definitely not “just in your head.” 

We have come to believe that what we often witness at the agonizing emotional intersection between believing and former members of the Church—however else we might describe it—represents a mutual trauma response flowing in both directions. If both parties have indeed experienced real trauma in the transition and faith separation, we shouldn’t be surprised to see an emotional and physiological response that reflects that.   

Trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry notes that communication “is about getting some idea, concept, or story from your cortex to another person’s cortex. From the smart part of your brain to the smart part of their brain.” Yet he adds, “The problem is that we don’t communicate directly from cortex to cortex. We have to go through the lower parts of the brain.” He continues:

All the rational thoughts from our cortex have to get through the emotional filters of the lower brain. Our facial expressions, tone of voice, and words are turned into neural activity by the other person’s senses, and then the sequential process of matching, interpreting, and passing up to their cortex takes place. Along the way, there are many opportunities for the meaning of any communication to be distilled, distorted, magnified, minimized, or lost.

Perry goes on to explain what happens when an internal stress response is activated (which is often part of a trauma response): “Frustration, anger, and fear can shut down parts of the cortex. When someone is dysregulated, they simply cannot use the smartest part of their brain.” This is what Daniel Goleman calls an “amygdala hijack” in his book Emotional Intelligence—reflecting a sort of relational blinding and deafening that can happen when our more intense emotions take hold. 

This is the physiological and emotional reality we’re often dealing with in our embattled relationships. Nonetheless, we often press through with trying to drive points home conceptually and logically instead of prioritizing emotional regulation and relational connection—not recognizing that we may simply not be able to reach each other with our words and ideas without that step of settling our bodies and hearts in a way that allows us to connect first. 

What if we could reverse the emphasis and begin with more priority attention to the emotional and relational elements involved? 

Returning to Mary and Steve, their marriage after his announcement immediately feels different. There is a level of volatility and reactivity they’ve never known before. Whereas they have largely felt comfortable and at ease together through the years, there is a new sense of threat and vigilance between them. They often feel like they’re walking on eggshells, especially on Sunday mornings. 

Similar things, of course, can also show up between friends. Jenny’s and Mary’s friendship, which had always felt so comfortable and easy, now feels noticeably charged. Depending on the moment, one or both now regularly feels uncertain or on edge—worried about saying something that will trigger a negative response.  

And sometimes that’s exactly what happens. As we all perhaps know by experience, a conversation we may have assumed would be doable goes south—leaving both persons unsettled and unsure. On both sides and in both directions, we may find ourselves overreacting and reading into the relationship an emotional threat where none was honestly intended. 

If and when that happens, it’s inevitably shocking to both people—if only for how new and strange it feels to a relationship that had never experienced it before. But maybe it would be less surprising if we could recognize the predictable signs of trauma response. 

A mutual need for compassion and empathy. What could an awareness of these kinds of emotional dynamics mean for our day-to-day relationships together? 

Consider how different this framework is compared with others often shared among either believers or non-believers (focused on presumed failings within individuals or leaders). Whatever truth may still legitimately exist in these other explanations, they most often invoke in both sides a deepening sense of frustration, fear, and sorrow.  

By contrast, we believe a recognition of the reality of shared trauma and its associated trauma response might open up new reservoirs of positive feelings towards each other—the very thing we are in such a dearth of these days. 

None of this is to deny the seriousness of the questions and issues at stake. Nor does it deny the right of people on each side to believe that their position is right. But even in the presence of such jarring juxtapositions mentally, we believe a concrete sense of greater compassion for the legitimate trauma and trauma response happening in both directions might be a leavening and softening influence on everyone involved.  

In the case of Jenny and Mary, although conversation has quickly become more fraught and uncomfortable, and while that’s not a happy development for either, both are committed enough to their friendship that they’re not willing just to walk away. They want their friendship to survive and are willing to put in the work necessary to make that happen. 

Steve and Mary likewise navigate the new contours of their marriage, in part, by returning to a more fundamental recognition that each is emotionally hurting and, frankly, scared. On that basis, they find ways to come together to show compassion, while reaching for each other on that more basic relationship level. Indeed, they ultimately decide that the preservation of their family relationship is worth fighting for, and not losing over these otherwise important disagreements. 

This isn’t how things usually go. It sometimes seems that people who come to see things so differently have no choice but to part ways. Their respective friends may even tell them that they are justified in their anger toward the other party and that it would be easier simply to step away. We are suggesting that while separation is a possible outcome, it is not a necessary one. Many people have shown how these relationships can endure and even be strengthened as both parties grow in empathy and compassion for one another. If they no longer feel the same closeness around their relationship to God and the church, maybe they can find fresh reserves of understanding and love that stitch their hearts together in new ways – including, as we are emphasizing here, an appreciation of the pain that they each have experienced and felt.

The courage to stay with a relationship. The question still remains: Why should we keep trying to interact with each other when it’s hard? 

As we have discussed, the trauma of a faith exodus can make normal relationships and conversation especially hard—as both people might overreact to even the slightest indication of threat from others around them. And we’ve acknowledged where this usually leads a relationship.  

But it doesn’t have to. Because, think about it: what if you knew someone was on hair trigger about certain matters? Would it not lead you—if you truly loved this individual—to be more sensitive, careful, and tender in how you talk and what you say? If your spouse or friend were the traumatized war veteran mentioned above, wouldn’t you avoid setting off fireworks around them—not because fireworks are inherently bad, but because your care for the person matters more? 

Don’t underestimate what this kind of awareness could mean for a relationship. We’re intrigued at how all this could become a backdrop nudging people on both sides to do something challenging—but very rewarding. Rather than fleeing the discomfort, we’ve seen positive things emerge when people learn to sit with the discomfort. That’s what happens on an individual level in mindfulness meditation. And within relationships, this practically means hanging with a conversation and working to show compassion and kindness, humility and patience, even and especially when things get awkward. 

Once again, the pain and trauma that different people feel are not being equated since they differ so widely between situations and positions—with a scale of trauma that escalates for various reasons and details. But what if we could acknowledge whatever pain there is while still moving towards each other? 

Why bother, again? What would the motivation be to sit in such challenging emotions, especially when we have plenty of outlets to avoid them and feel good being among “my people” (from ex-member forums and barbecues on one side to ward parties and ongoing gospel discussions on the other)? 

This is a difficult question to answer because accepting more discomfort is never an easy sell. Nonetheless, we see people making just that choice every day when they go out on a run, meditate, eat their vegetables—or, let’s be honest, continue being a devoted parent or spouse, even when it’s boring or challenging. 

We close with an example that may not be persuasive to everyone, but for us, embodies a perfect reason to lean into this hard work of reconciliation together.  

In His steps. Why would anyone stay in a place of ache or pain when we have the option to escape it?  Maybe because that’s what Jesus did.  

When Christ neared the final moments of his life, he had other options than to undergo the brutality of torture. He had the option of turning away from what was most uncomfortable. We know he was tempted to do so, even asking the Father, “if it was possible, let this pass from me.” 

But the only way to escape that pain would have been to abandon his relationships with the people that he so deeply loved—you, me, and all of us. And so, he chose not to turn away from the pain … even at its worst. As he hung on the cross, at the very moment when he would have been completely justified in lashing out at the brutal injustice and extreme violence he was experiencing; he showed humanity another way.  

Even in the middle of torture, his words, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” demonstrate a different possibility.  

That image of Jesus on the cross—extending grace even to those slaying him—could perhaps give believers and nonbelievers alike a bit more courage in the difficult work of reconciliation ahead. In the midst of very real and very deep pain, there is a way forward other than the way of recrimination and gaping separation. 

In the end, compassion beats condemnation. If Jesus came not “into the world to condemn the world,” why would we?  

Let’s practice more compassion with the agony being experienced on both sides of the faith exodus. This would mean taking seriously what it would mean to live out Martin Luther King’s words, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Even if we can’t—and may never—agree on the issues and the facts, perhaps an empathetic awareness of our mutual suffering can become another pathway to draw our hearts together again. 

The post Softening the Trauma Response Between Current and Former Members appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

It’s that distinction between the peace of the world and the peace of the Lord I’d like to explore here, along the way to clarifying what constitutes genuine revelation compared with something else. I will be proposing here that the critical difference to which we ought to pay more attention is whether peace is reduced to a mere feeling of relief or something more holistic that draws us into alignment with God and greater divine power in our lives. 

Peace as a feeling of relief. It’s become common for people to declare that they know leaving the Church or embracing beliefs and practices contrary to church doctrines are the right things to do because when they make the decision, they “finally feel peace.” I have heard this in accounts of “coming out” as gay, quitting school, concluding God isn’t real, and decisions to leave marriages and the Church. I’ve also had clients insist that they needed to stop judging themselves as doing something wrong in compulsively viewing pornography and masturbating after what they took as a spiritual feeling of peaceful affirmation that this wasn’t that big of a deal after all. In other words, many of those who decide to leave the Church or live against doctrinal teachings characterize their decision process in a language of having received revelation. Some of these people further affirm that this “revelation” is accurate because of the feeling of “peace” that comes after making the decision. 

This peace-of-the-world paradigm involves three interrelated features: 

First, while all paradigms of peace involve some lifting of the ongoing burdens that life brings, this one pays special attention to any potential feeling of relief that can sometimes come from finding ways to escape the ongoing struggle with the vicissitudes of mortality and deep questions of the soul. This feeling of relief—however it comes and whatever its source—becomes the central qualifier for determining whether revelation is a genuine direction from God.

This popular paradigm of peace is secondly characterized by a release of people from their moral and covenant obligations and responsibilities. As many of us know, staying dedicated to moral obligations towards family, God, and work brings with it a certain measure of intrinsic wrestle with and acceptance of the vicissitudes that life naturally imposes. Yet many who subscribe to a relief-as-peace-that-confirms-revelation model see themselves as being absolved from those obligations once they’ve committed themselves to rejecting any of the larger commitments described earlier. In doing so, they often no longer seem to be bothered by hard questions about how they should live their lives within the moral responsibilities placed upon them and how answering such questions would require them to change and grow. Instead, they adopt a stance of feeling personally “free” (i.e., released) to pursue what they want and avoid the problems and responsibilities they no longer wish to be burdened by. Rather than engaging in the inevitably challenging and stretching work of reconciling with others (or God) or seeking to find peace with both, they can completely abandon these “burdensome” efforts as part of what they have been “freed” from. In short, peace-of-the-world revelation often seems to almost inevitably lead people to see themselves as being released from the personal responsibility to seek the repentance intrinsic to fulfilling moral and covenant responsibilities.

The last characteristic of the peace-of-the-world paradigm is an attempt to refute covenantal obligations entirely by virtue of feeling emboldened to adopt a lifestyle that stands as a seemingly trustworthy refutation of previously endorsed eternal truths and moral commitments. The thinking here seems to be something along the lines of: “After wrestling for a long time with some struggle, I decided to do X, which is contrary to what the gospel teaches. I felt peace after making the decision, so it must be right. Therefore, what the Gospel teaches about X must be wrong because the spirit would never confirm that I do X if it was wrong.”

This is the kind of reasoning that can lead you to feel profoundly justified in embracing a lifestyle not in line with the central doctrines of the gospel. It’s that ultimate feeling of relief, once again, that leads to a belief that you are no longer required to observe moral and covenant obligations. In the wake of such an experience, some cease to ask if what they’re doing is right; as soon as some kind of relief comes, they run with the convenient confirmation that they’re now free to do as they please.

Given all of this, we might rightly consider this first peace-of-the-world paradigm as essentially reductionistic because genuine revelation is reduced to a mere feeling of relief, a relaxation of emotional tension or conflict, following which no further questions need to be asked. That is, all that is required to justify some thought or course of action as genuine revelation, in this case, is a feeling of relief that comes after laying aside any covenantal commitment (even though such abandonment of any serious obligation would bring temporary relief to anyone). 

In this way, people need no longer consider if they are living in accordance with gospel standards that make it easier or harder to receive true revelation. There is also no need to question whether the revelation is in line with scripture, both modern and old, whether it leads them further down the covenant path, or whether it leads them to fulfill their covenant obligations towards their family and others. All that matters is that they felt relief after making their decision (at least initially), which surely means they are free to pursue their decision and that God must be on board, too, right? 

This highlights another sense of the word reductionistic, wherein the eternal potential of the person is dramatically reduced because revelation in this paradigm frequently leads away from aspirations of eternal growth in favor of temporary relief from the concerns of mortality. 

Peace as alignment with God. I once had a client come into my office who recounted a very different experience with peace, one that embodies well what we might call the peace-of-the-Lord paradigm. I have received permission from him to share this story, though I have changed his name. Jason came into therapy for two main reasons—he was seeking freedom from his compulsive pornography use, and he was grieving from losing his job due to being falsely accused of sexual harassment. After a year of us working together, he came to my office for a session, and I asked him how he was doing. 

His response was profound. Jason looked at me and said something to the effect of, “Sam, I do not understand it. None of my problems have really gone away. I’m still having to struggle with temptation. I’m still having to work hard at my healing and doing what I know I need to do better. Yet, I feel at peace. Everything is going to be okay.”

He went on to share new enthusiasm, “I want to do better with my scripture study and go back to the temple again.” I was witnessing here what Paul describes as “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” It was clear to me that Jason had a very different way of understanding peace and revelation than the prevailing peace-of-the-world paradigm. 

In the Church of Jesus Christ’s gospel topics entry on peace, it states:

 Many people think of peace as the absence of war. But we can feel peace even in times of war, and we can lack peace even when no war is raging. Peace comes through the gospel—through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the ministration of the Holy Ghost, and our own righteousness, sincere repentance, and diligent service.

In this text, like with the proceeding account, there are several attributes of this other peace-of-the-Lord paradigm that are apparent:    

First and foremost, the peace-of-the-Lord paradigm is characterized by an understanding that revelation is a process that invites people to do that which will redeem them from the painful path of sin through making and keeping sacred covenants. That is accepted as foundational to what the gospel is about and what centrally defines conversion—with redemption and repentance embraced as inescapable parts of the peace offered by the Lord. There is no way to find that peace, from this view, except in following Him and His ways and by doing as He commands in order to be among His covenant people. And the true spirit of revelation is recognized as something inviting people to align themselves with covenantal and moral obligations rather than abandoning them. Ultimately, it’s when people are in line with their eternal purpose and the covenant path that God’s peace truly comes—all of which depends on repentance that brings about redemption through Christ’s name. 

This path and the paradigm that encourages it involves a profound level of reassurance. As Elder Bednar has said, “Your repentance and the resulting forgiveness will bring a peace of mind that will enable you to serve with great faith and diligence and inspiration. You deserve the spiritual assurance and confidence that come from true repentance.” As we repent and seek redemption through the Lord, a deeper and more profound reassurance comes than could ever be felt otherwise. With this soul-stretching invitation to repentance, the Lord has promised that we do not have to carry our crosses alone, and comforts us with these priceless words:

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

This Holy Ghost is promised to help not only guide us through whatever trouble we may need to pass through—but also to provide precious comfort, reassurance, and strength, especially to those who commit to the covenant path. This revelation and peace are not simply about being relieved from burdens, though that relief may still often come—but are instead primarily about knowing  Christ will walk with us in fulfilling our covenants. 

Lastly, this kind of peace-of-the-Lord is characterized by genuine revelation. Elder Renlund has outlined 14 principles of revelation that must be followed for revelation to count as genuine and trustworthy—including the understanding that learning to receive revelation takes work, preparation is needed to receive revelation, worthiness is needed to receive revelation, revelation comes within the limits God has set, and revelation will not be contrary to revealed word. In order for any particular thought or direction to count as genuinely inspired, people need to go beyond merely the feeling that accompanies it to seriously consider their own personal preparation to receive revelation and if the impression is in line with revealed doctrine and scripture. 

As you can see, from this paradigm, the peace of the Lord can never be reduced to just the feeling of relief that we point toward to confirm any revelation as true. Rather, we must consider all of the principles of revelation that are necessary for the feeling to be considered legitimately inspired confirmation. 

These characteristics of the peace-of-the-Lord paradigm could be summarized as peace as atonement and conversion. It is those willing to follow Him and be converted to His ways who receive His peace. That peace is inextricably bound up in being “at one” with Christ—His mind, His heart, His life.

Some clarification. Before I conclude, some clarification is needed for what I have argued. First, I must be clear that not all revelation is a question of being aligned with core doctrines, per se. There are many questions that people take to the Lord that are not eternal in nature, at least, in the sense that covenant obligations and eternal worthiness are not always on the line (e.g., should I go to BYU or the U? or should I take this job?). That being said, this does not mean these same principles of revelation do not apply to such questions.

Being yoked with Christ. I close with my favorite image that represents the peace-of-the-Lord. As all believers know well, the Lord invites, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” 

I believe the Lord desires to bring peace and rest into our lives. But this sacred text does not invoke an image of peace that is merely relief in which we can be released to go do as we please. Instead, these verses invoke an image in which we are called upon to work the fields of the Kingdom of God, to plow them and take care of them—knowing there is a great work to be done. There are things the Lord would have us do, and there is a plan for what our lives should become.

Surely there is still a field to be plowed in each of our lives. However, we are not called upon to plow them alone. We are reassured that if we are willing to carry the right yoke, there is someone very capable of carrying the yoke with us—and making it much lighter than it would otherwise be.  As we take up our own cross or yoke, look to the side every once in a while to see if you are accompanied by the greatest source of strength—the Savior. If so, he will encourage us, “Go to, and labor in the vineyard, with your might,” and reassure us “the Lord of the vineyard” will “[labor also with us].” 

This is where rest and peace are found. It’s not just a feeling, it is an act of being converted to the enormous and mighty work of Christ—and joining Him in bringing it to pass.

The post Are You Feeling Peace or Just Relief? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

This of course must come as some disappointment to critics of the Church who had hoped the series would prompt more conversations around the issues they deem problematic such as how the Church promotes violence.

Into this void comes a new argument made most prominently by Taylor Petrey, but also echoed by a student columnist at the University of Utah, and now promoted on Twitter by Benjamin Park—namely, that because there has been some violence done by some Latter-day Saints who use the language of their culture in perpetrating it, Latter-day Saints should watch the series with the intent to learn how to make their Church less violent. Both Petrey and Park had previously criticized the series for its poor job in portraying Latter-day Saints, but have since shifted.

We don’t want to attack the Daily Utah Chronicle piece because it’s a student article. But Petrey and Park should know better.

Some of us have been on the record defending Petrey as a serious scholar, despite the fact that his conclusions don’t often derive well from the available evidence. But Petrey seems to suggest in his article that any violence that uses the language of religion must have been inspired by that religion.

We understand the temptation of this point of view. What else could we blame violence on if not the culture it arose in?

But Petrey’s position assumes that human beings are naturally non-violent, and only become violent as a result of their culture. This is a major assumption in the Robert Orsi essay that Petrey relies on extensively. Parks’ tweets similarly assume that any conversation about Latter-day Saints and violence must concede that the faith contributes to the violence in some way.

But the causes of violence are often complicated. Because of the importance of our innate nature in creating violence, even the most peaceful society would still produce fringe examples of extreme violence. Having a Latter-day Saint who becomes violent isn’t proof that the faith contributes to that violence, even if the perpetrator uses the language of their culture in perpetuating that violence.

Cultural contexts can then increase or decrease the likelihood of that emerging, but no culture has discovered how to remove it altogether. And because Under the Banner of Heaven fails to present a clear picture of what most experience as Latter-day Saint culture, it doesn’t do much to establish whether a Latter-day Saint context is more prone to cause violence than others. Those who use Latter-day Saint or another religious language and context to perpetuate violence weren’t necessarily made violent by those cultures. But rather, violent individuals will leverage anything around them to perpetrate their violence.

We’re aware of many other similar examples—of abusers, for instance, who used the language of therapy to perpetuate abuse. But it would be absurd to suggest that therapeutic culture caused that abuse. Even pacifist language has been known to be used to perpetuate violence by shaming survivors into silence. An abusive person will draw upon the most powerful language available within their given cultural context and weaponize that. This is not coincidentally the conclusion made by prosecutors in the Lafferty case, that the murder was about power and relationships and that religion was merely the pretext.

Does the Church of Jesus Christ disproportionately create violent offenders? We’d be interested in reading any definitive social science research on the question, but unfortunately, those promoting this point of view or hoping to have this conversation have not yet presented any. And rather than attempt to answer this question clearly itself, Under the Banner of Heaven skips the question and takes it as a given.

A study of this sort could start the conversation Petrey, Parks, and the student author hope for. Instead, we get a story about a 38-year-old murder that was notable mainly for how unusual it was among the Latter-day Saint community and perpetrated by someone who had recently been kicked out of the Church for their extremist views. It should not surprise anyone that it hasn’t prompted anyone to conclude there’s a problem with violence among Latter-day Saints.

The post Demanding Conversations About Violence appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The television program is based on a sensationalized book about a Latter-day Saint detective, that includes substantial themes around his faith.

While the depiction of sacred ceremonies of the Church are clearly inappropriate, Latter-day Saints are stuck wondering if they should simply ignore the program, or highlight the offensive nature of it, giving the show the attention such a provocation was clearly designed to elicit.

The post FX to Broadcast Temple Ceremonies appeared first on Public Square Magazine.