One of those things is not like the others.

Religion is, of course, not exempt from corruption or crime. But this combination can also create a temptation to read every religious controversy as though it were a mob file waiting to be cracked open.

That seems to be part of what happened in the Sun-Times’ two recent pieces on Wade Christofferson, the brother of President D. Todd Christofferson. This case is horrifying and newsworthy. The Justice Department says Wade Christofferson was federally charged in late 2025 with attempting to sexually exploit a minor and with coercion and enticement. Prosecutors allege repeated hands-on abuse of an Ohio child, plus separate exploitation and hands-on abuse involving a second child in Utah. The Sun-Times also reported that the alleged abuse underlying the current criminal case did not occur on church property and was not directly tied to church activities. That does not make the case less awful. But it does matter when deciding what kind of story this is.

The outline of the Church’s response, as reported by the Sun-Times itself, is not the outline of an established institutional cover-up. According to the Church’s statement, Wade Christofferson was excommunicated in the mid-1990s over abuse allegations, readmitted in 1997, and D. Todd Christofferson did not learn the specific nature of his brother’s abuse history until around 2020, through family disclosure. The Church also told the Sun-Times that when those older allegations were discussed, the adult victims did not want law enforcement involved, and that when President Christofferson later learned of a recent allegation involving a minor, he immediately reported it to legal authorities. Those facts may still leave room for criticism and painful moral questions. But they do not suggest corruption, cover-up, or scandal. The framing and analogies used by Herguth do the suggesting that the facts do not.

Herguth’s coverage did not mention the research suggesting that The Church of Jesus Christ’s policies, or the research showing their low sexual abuse rates compared to other youth organizations. But he did find time to mention LGBT+ issues and Joseph Smith’s polygamy.

In other words, his coverage treats The Church of Jesus Christ not as a major religious body that helps facilitate faith for millions around the world, but treats it like a mob that should be taken down no matter how relevant or supported the accusations.

But what else would you expect when you assign your organized crime journalist to your religion stories?

Latter-day Saints should not ask to be shielded from scrutiny when children are harmed. This case deserved coverage just as other crime beat stories do. But it also deserves journalistic discipline. The Sun-Times missed the boat here in a way that was predictable and avoidable if they had just assigned the correct reporter.

The post Media Framing in the Wade Christofferson Case appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Like—spiritual felt clean. No committees. No awkward handshakes. No side-eyes. No church drama. Just me, God, a little sunrise, maybe some music that makes your chest feel bigger than your problems. And if I’m being honest, that idea appealed to me for a reason: I learned early how to survive people, not trust them. I learned the value of a guarded heart. I could talk smooth, move careful, keep my circle tight. And when you’ve been burned enough times, anything that says “you don’t need anybody” starts sounding like freedom.

So yeah. Spirituality can seem better because it doesn’t require anyone but yourself.

It’s you and your thoughts. You and your intentions. You and your version of God—custom fit, no annoying humans included. Nothing messy. Nothing disappointing. Nothing to suggest anything is short of perfect. No one to hurt you. No one to do the unforgivable. 

But let me say this plain: religion is people. 

The difference between organized religion and spirituality is people. 

Saying we don’t agree with organized religion, but believe in a higher power, feels safe because it can never disappoint us. It suggests that our standards are too good, too pure to associate with the disaster of other people trying to connect with God. 

That part used to offend me, because I wanted my faith to feel pristine. I wanted God without the mess. I wanted the mountaintop without the climb. I wanted “the Spirit” without Sister So-and-So being petty, without Brother What’s-His-Name talking like he’s the CEO of righteousness, without somebody acting like their calling gives them the right to treat people like furniture. And I don’t want to undersell the problems of people. They aren’t just delightfully messy in a cute way you could still show on your Insta. This is pride, racism, abuse. Being around these people caused me real wounds. 

I wanted a relationship with God that didn’t come with… humans and the pain they cause.

But spirituality without others—if we’re keeping it all the way real—can turn kind of pointless.

Not because your inner life doesn’t matter. It matters. Deeply. Your private prayers, your healing, your introspection, the quiet work nobody claps for—that’s sacred.

Who cares if something feels pristine and perfect in your own brain if it never becomes love in the real world?

Because God—at least the God I’m trying to know—doesn’t just show up in the perfect parts of me. He pulls up in the spaces between people. In the friction. In the gap between your intentions and somebody else’s misunderstanding. In the moment you want to clap back but you choose peace. In the moment you could hate somebody, but you don’t. In the moment you could walk away, but you stay and you try again.

God often appears in the spaces made between people’s imperfections.

That’s why that scripture hits so hard. It’s basically a spiritual gut-check: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

People quote that like it’s a description—like, “Oh, if you don’t love everybody perfectly, you must not love God.” And that’s not how I hear it anymore. I hear it as a challenge. A mirror. A direction.

Because it’s so easy to love abstractions.

I can love “humanity.” I can love “the world.” I can love “people” in general. I can love “community” as a concept. I can love “God” in a poetic way—big, cosmic, clean, untouchable.

But loving real, flawed people? 

People who are rude. People who ignore you and judge you. People who switch up when they get a little authority. People who act holy but move sweaty. People who talk about grace and show none. People who are needy. People who are loud. People who are insecure and make you pay for it. People who remind you of the stuff you’re trying to outgrow. 

That’s where the work is.

So what the verse is saying—at least how it lands in me—is this: you can’t really claim love for God while refusing love for God’s kids. Not because God needs you to be fake-nice, but because love has to become practical or it’s just poetry.

If your love never leaves your mouth or your journal and touches another person’s life, it’s not love yet. It’s rehearsal.

And that’s why I respect the bluntness of Mosiah 2:17. It doesn’t romanticize it. It doesn’t leave it vague. It just puts it on the ground where we actually live: “When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”

That’s the whole thing. You want to love God? Love the people around you. It’s easy to love the thing you can’t see. But it’s not real, it’s not authentic, until you’re doing the work of loving the people you can.

And yes, it’s hard.

Not “hard” like a puzzle. Hard like weights. Hard like rehab. Hard like unlearning. Hard like swallowing your pride. Hard like choosing not to become the same kind of person who hurt you. Hard like doing kindness while your feelings are still catching up.

Because community will show you who you are.

Spirituality alone can let you curate yourself. Religion—with actual people—will expose you. It will bring out your impatience. Your need to be right. Your craving for recognition. Your tendency to withdraw. Your tendency to control. Your fear of being seen. Your old temper that’s “under control” until somebody disrespects you in a meeting. Your old mouth that’s “sanctified” until someone says something absolutely out of line. 

I’m saying this as someone who’s cleaned up a lot of my worst tendencies, but I still know exactly where they live. I know what version of me shows up when I feel dismissed. I know what version of me shows up when somebody tries to son me. I know what version of me shows up when I’m tired, underappreciated, and surrounded by people acting like their imperfections don’t stink.

And here’s the thing: the goal of religion was never to provide me a perfect experience.

Religion is not a luxury spa for the soul.

It’s a workshop.

It’s a space where God takes a bunch of broken, brilliant, annoying, beautiful humans and says, “Okay. Now learn to be family.”

That’s why the vision of “Zion” matters so much. Zion isn’t just a vibe. It’s not just “good energy.” Zion is a community reality—people becoming one, not by pretending they’re perfect, but by practicing love until it’s real. It’s the long, stubborn project of building a place where God can dwell because the people are learning to dwell together.

And you can’t build Zion alone.

Even if you’re the most spiritually advanced person on your block, you can’t build a community by yourself. You can’t practice “one another” in a mirror. You can’t “bear burdens” when you refuse to be burdened with people. You can’t learn forgiveness without somebody needing it from you. You can’t become gentle without having to handle sharp edges—yours and theirs.

So yeah, I get why folks bounce from religion to spirituality. I get why they say, “It’s just me and God.” I get why you think you’re too good, too pure, too smart for “organized religion.” Because people are exhausting. Church hurt is real. Hypocrisy is loud. Control shows up wearing a tie. Judgment can hide behind scripture. 

But I am here to say: don’t confuse the mess of people with the absence of God.

Sometimes, the mess is exactly where God is working.

Sometimes the whole point is that you learn to find Him there—inside the awkward conversations, the forgiveness you didn’t want to offer, the apology you didn’t want to make, the patience you didn’t think you had, the service you did quietly, the love you gave when you didn’t get love back.

Because anybody can love God when God stays an idea.

The question is: can you love God when God shows up as the person who annoys you? Or who disrespects the culture? Or who doesn’t know the norms? Or who wants you to stay in your place? 

That’s the challenge. Not a condemnation—an invitation.

And love does require contact with reality.

It requires other faces, other stories, other tempers, other needs.

It requires a “we.”

That’s what religion gives you—when it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. Not perfection. Practice. Not a flawless room. A refining fire.

And I’m starting to believe this: God doesn’t just save individuals. He builds a people.

So when I’m tempted to choose the clean version of faith—the version where it’s just me, my thoughts, my private peace—I try to remember: that’s not the whole assignment.

The whole assignment is to pursue God in the middle of the trouble.

In the middle of the awkward small talk.
In the middle of the misunderstood moments.
In the middle of the personalities.
In the middle of the inconvenient needs.
In the middle of my own ego getting exposed.

Because that’s where love becomes more than a concept.

That’s where spirituality becomes flesh and bone.

That’s where God—often quiet, often humble—shows up in the space between our imperfections and teaches us to call it holy.

The post The Problem With “Just Me and God” appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Heretic is a horror film distributed by A24. It arrives in theaters this fall. It stars Hugh Grant, as well as relative newcomers Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East.

What is Heretic About?

Heretic is about two sister missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes. Hugh Grant plays Mr. Reed, who requests a visit from the missionaries. Reed kidnaps the sister missionaries.

Who is involved in creating Heretic?

The film was written, directed, and produced by childhood friends Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. They are known for writing the script for the popular film series A Quiet Place. This is the largest production Beck and Woods have directed themselves. In a Q&A at the film’s world premiere, they described themselves as lapsed evangelicals.

Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, both former Latter-day Saints, portray the sister missionaries. Hugh Grant describes himself as not a believer.

Heretic hasn’t come out yet. How do you have details about it?

While the film has not been released nationwide, it has had its premiere. The Q&A below is spoiler-heavy based on previous screenings of the film. While most Latter-day Saints will not want to watch the film, we felt that it was important to discuss the portrayal of sister missionaries in an open and honest way so members can participate in and be aware of the dialogue surrounding the film. 

How does the film begin?

The film opens with the two sister missionaries sitting on a bus bench with a condom advertisement. They discuss condom sizes and which sizes Sister Barnes’ ex-brother-in-law wears, which leads Sister Paxton to describe watching pornography. She describes watching a video where the performers were interrupted by the person in the next room. One performer looked aghast “like her spirit left her.” Paxton says that this helped her testimony.

We learn that the senior companion, Sister Barnes, has taught many people who have been baptized, while Sister Paxton hasn’t taught anyone who was then baptized. Sister Barnes commits that they are going to get Paxton a baptism.

We are then shown a montage of them doing unsuccessful street contacting. 

They then approach a group of teenage girls because Paxton says she has “a good feeling about them.” Those girls then ask Paxton about her “magic underwear” and then pull her skirt down, revealing her temple garments before she can answer. Paxton is very embarrassed.

How do the missionaries meet Mr. Reed?

The missionaries had received a referral for Mr. Reed, but someone in their ward warned them not to go. They go anyway because Barnes wants to get Paxton a convert. Mr. Reed is very friendly and invites the missionaries in. 

They inform him that they cannot come in if there is not another woman present. Reed says his wife is in the kitchen cooking a blueberry pie. 

The missionaries walk in and start a conversation. Reed says he thinks people should have some belief and the conversation begins on a friendly basis. Sister Barnes shares a story of her father’s illness, and Mr. Reed uses this as a reason to question her faith. Barnes says when she dies she wants to come back as a butterfly. He then begins to lecture them about what he sees as the weaknesses of their religion.

When his wife does not appear within a few minutes, the missionaries press that she needs to come out or they need to leave. Mr. Reed goes into the kitchen to get her, and the sister missionaries realize that the blueberry pie they smell is actually from a candle. 

While Mr. Reed says he’s getting his wife, he’s actually stealing the missionaries’ bikes from the front so no one will know they’re there. 

They decide to leave, but the door is locked. The windows are too small to escape from, and their cell phone doesn’t have reception.

How does Reed begin to mistreat the missionaries?

The missionaries ask him to let them go, but he tells them that his locks are automatic and cannot be unlocked until the morning. 

Mr. Reed is obsessed with the idea of control, so at this point, he never physically hurts the missionaries but rather tells them they can make their own decisions. He tells them they must go into the back room if they want to get their coats and that the house exit is out the back. When they get their coats, they realize that the key to their bike lock has changed pockets.

Reed continues to insist they can leave at any time they’d like through two doors from that backroom.

Worried about being harmed, Barnes convinces Paxton to stay and listen to a lecture Mr. Reed wants to give them about religion. 

What is Reed’s Theory of Religion?

Reed begins to tell the missionaries that religion is about iterations. He claims that the story of Jesus Christ is merely a reworked myth of previous cultures like the Persian Mithras or the Egyptian Ra.

He compares Judaism to “The Landlord’s Game ” and Christianity to “Monopoly,” which is substantially similar but better marketed. He compares Islam to “Monopoly: Ultimate Banking Edition” and the Church of Jesus Christ to “Monopoly: Bob Ross Edition.”

He also plays the songs “The Air I Breathe” and “Creep” by Radiohead, which share similar melodies and chord progressions.

While in this room, Sister Barnes sees a letter opener which she gives to Paxton to put in her pocket. Barnes tells Paxton that if she says the phrase “magic underwear,” that means to stab Mr. Reed with the letter opener.

Is there any way for the missionaries to get out?

Mr. Reed insists throughout that the missionaries are not locked in the house but that there is an exit through the back, and they just need to go that way. 

There are two doors out the back, and when he finishes his lecture, he tells them to leave either through a door representing belief or disbelief. Sister Barnes convinces Paxton that they should go through the belief door, and they proceed even though it clearly leads to a basement. Reed immediately locks the door behind them. 

When they get into the basement Barnes notices a loose floorboard with nails in it. Soon, they see a woman walking across the room with a blueberry pie. They hear Reed through a speaker. He lectures them about miracles and says that he brought them here to witness a miracle. The woman is going to eat the pie, which has been poisoned, and she will then come back to life. Reed calls her “the prophet.” She is elderly and in rags. Her eyes have thick cataracts, and she doesn’t speak. She scoops the pie with her hand, eats it, begins to spasm, and then dies in front of the missionaries. Reed forces them to check for a pulse, which she does not have.

Does anyone come to check on Sisters Barnes and Paxton?

Yes, there are occasional scenes with Elder Kennedy. He is a single, middle-aged man played by Topher Grace. He wears a missionary tag, and we see him cleaning the local chapel. When he notices that the missionaries aren’t back at the chapel by the usual time, he goes out into the snowstorm to find them. 

He stops by several homes, including Mr. Reed’s. Reed insists that the missionaries have never come, and Elder Kennedy leaves before returning for a brief second to pass along a pamphlet to Mr. Reed.

While Mr. Reed is at the door, the missionaries are screaming and getting a set of matches. They use them to try to create smoke that Elder Kennedy might see, but it doesn’t work.

Has Mr. Reed planned this encounter?

Yes. We see Reed in a study where he has created a model of his house and has planned in detail how he expected the sister missionaries to act throughout his plan. The entire architecture of his house, including metal roofs to block cell phone signals, has been built with this abduction in mind.

What happens to the woman who ate the pie?

When Sister Barnes and Paxton go back down, Paxton notes that it appears like the woman has moved. Eventually, she sits up and, in bursts of words, describes a vision of a train in the clouds, ending with the words, “It’s Not Real.”

Mr. Reed then comes into the basement. He lectures the missionaries, insisting they call what happened a miracle. Barnes argues with him, saying that it’s an illusion. She calls it “magic—” and in suspense, we see Paxton is ready to stab Reed if Barnes says “underwear,” but instead, Reed stabs Barnes, killing her. 

He then insists that when the prophet said, “It is not real,” she meant that life is actually a simulation. To illustrate this, Reed recounts a Daoist thought experiment where a man had a dream of being a butterfly but wondered if he was really a butterfly having a dream of being a man. Reed says Barnes was not a real person but part of the simulation. He then cuts open her upper arm and pulls out what is clearly subcutaneous birth control, claiming it is actually evidence of the simulation. 

Paxton then says it’s birth control and (inaccurately) says Barnes would have faced church discipline if anyone knew she had it. 

How does the movie end?

Reed then tries to convince Sister Paxton of the miracle, but Paxton says that what happened is that the old woman actually died, and a second woman was brought into the room to replace her. Paxton tells Reed that she doesn’t believe his trick went according to plan. She believes that when the second woman said, “It’s not real,” it was a warning to the missionaries.

Reed is skeptical, saying if that is true, there must be a door underneath the basement. 

Paxton immediately finds the door and discovers the dead body of the woman she saw before and cages filled with women dressed exactly the same as the one who had died eating the poison pie.

Paxton then says Mr. Reed actually believes “the one true church is control” and that he had been controlling them the entire time. Reed then lectures Paxton about how much she is controlled, cutting off a finger of one of the women to demonstrate. He then uses the example that Paxton has even been told she has to wear “magic underwear.” At this, Paxton stabs Reed with the letter opener and runs back up into the cellar, but she’s still locked in. 

Reed follows and then stabs Paxton. She then admits that she doesn’t believe that prayer works, but she thinks it’s nice anyway. 

Sister Barnes, who had been presumed dead, stands up and impales Reed with the loose floorboard, and he dies. Barnes immediately collapses again. Paxton then goes back into the sub-basement, finds the bicycle lock, which she unlocks, and then goes outside. She briefly hallucinates a butterfly landing on her finger before passing out in the snow, presumably dead.  

Is the movie good?

It is suspenseful. The set design is above average. There are some moments of great cinematography and other moments where it’s poor. The dialogue is not written very well. Hugh Grant is a strong actor, but both Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, who play the sister missionaries, feel like amateurs who can’t communicate with much nuance or carry the weight of the narrative. 

Because of its heavy emphasis on lecturing about atheism, the plot often feels weighed down and dull. In that way, it’s kind of like overly preachy religious cinema like “Saturday’s Warrior,” but for atheists.

In terms of its artistic merit, it’s average, certainly not great or even good. It also doesn’t have the makings of a cult horror movie, nor is it good enough to be an award contender. It’s unlikely to be remembered in a year by anyone except academics who study Latter-day Saint depictions in movies or horror movie buffs.

Who is the Heretic?

A heretic is someone who believes the wrong thing. The title is likely intended to make its audience wonder if the missionaries are heretics because Reed “proves them wrong” or whether he, as the non-believer predator, is the heretic.

Does Heretic have an agenda?

The creators say they want the movie to spark conversations about religion. Mr. Reed is portrayed far and away as the most intelligent character in the movie. Paxton’s vision of the butterfly at the end is portrayed as a hallucination. Barnes briefly coming back to life to kill Mr. Reed could be seen as a miracle.

In the Q&A, the directors said that they were influenced by the “new atheist” movement’s writers, such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.

Could this result in missionaries getting hurt?

A copycat attempt is one of the worst possible outcomes here. The creators don’t seem to be trying to create them, though. It is shown that Reed has spent years planning this, including building the very architecture of the home to enable it. It also requires strong manipulation from Reed to work around the missionaries’ safety standards. 

What criticisms could Latter-day Saints face as a result of the film?

While Mr. Reed mocks Latter-day Saints generally throughout the film, there are only three cogent criticisms that he makes:

1. Joseph Smith instituted polygamy for his own sexual satisfaction. This is an old criticism, and recent research into the timeline of Smith’s polygamous marriages is making this claim feel more out of touch with reality. 

2. The story of Jesus Christ is a reworked myth from other ancient cultures. Interestingly, the screenwriters have Reed, who otherwise seems well-read, repeat easily debunked claims about mythological Gods to make this point. 

3. Religion is all about control. This is Reed’s main conclusion in the film, so it may be picked up on by others as well. 

How does Heretic make Latter-day Saints and the Church of Jesus Christ look?

Different viewers will have different takeaways, but a group of those who have seen the film reported having, on average, more positive feelings about missionaries but worse feelings about the Church of Jesus Christ as a result of the movie.

Is Heretic Insulting to Latter-day Saints?

Those who feel insulted will likely notice that the film spends a lot of time implying that all faith is unintelligent. In the end, Sister Paxton reveals the reality of her lack of faith. The missionaries are sexualized in ways most missionaries would be uncomfortable with. The film also seems to revel in embarrassing the sister missionaries, such as pulling down their pants, comparing their religion to Bob Ross Monopoly, and repeating “magic underwear” ad nauseam.

One person who watched the film said, “Whoever wrote that was really angry that a sister missionary said no when he tried to hit on her.”

Those who feel the film respects Latter-day Saints will likely focus on the fact that the missionaries are the protagonists and that, in the end, Sister Paxton outwits Mr. Reed. 

In our assessment, however, the creators of the film wanted audiences to take the message that religion is obviously wrong but might make you a better person anyway. Different viewers will certainly make their own interpretations.

The post Heretic Movie: All Your Questions Answered 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.

But we also have in common leadership structures that have long been very hierarchical, a situation that always carries a combination of strengths and challenges. For decades, social scientists have pointed to hierarchical leadership as having the advantages of efficiency and clarity, while non-hierarchical leadership is generally thought to have the advantage of effectiveness. The notion of effectiveness is often hard to define in a concrete way, but it is commonly expressed in terms of taking into account the maximum amount of available information and enabling the maximum number of stakeholders to feel personally involved and invested in the decision. The logic goes that more information leads to decisions of higher quality, and more stakeholder involvement means that members of the organization will transition from being passive recipients to being advocates for the outcome of the decision-making process.

The synod is a process that speaks to the yearnings of progressive-leaning reformers, who carry a common personality trait of aversion to hierarchies in general. Synods function like distributed councils, giving the Vatican a “listening ear” to the ways God may be trying to influence the church through the experiences and insights of the lay faithful. This process carries a lot of sentimental appeal, especially in Western societies where therapeutic religion gives primacy to experiences of being horizontally seen and heard by other people, versus the value of living a life guided by an ideal of vertical alignment with God’s will.

The stated focus of the current synod is on synodality itself, asking questions about both the ecclesial validity and the practical feasibility of transitioning to a less hierarchical model of church governance. Again, in theory, the benefits of this transition would be found in the inclusion of more voices in decision-making, leading to better decisions. In practice, however, what may have been intended to be an exercise in “listening” and inclusion has morphed into something resembling reality TV. Factions have emerged in debates over the Synod, with campaigning and public messaging designed to sway the thinking of participants and observers. There has been a proliferation of online gossip over Synod attendees, with speculation over their influence in steering the future of Catholicism. The idea of schism, normally thought to be an extreme possibility, is being invoked ever more frequently in Catholic commentary.

A notion that animates the synodal process—that God’s purposes are visible in the actions of humanity—is a long-standing Catholic teaching. As early as the 6th century, St Gregory the Great taught the principle viva lectio est vita bonorum: the life of a saintly person is a living manifestation of the word of God. This is a lofty principle, and as with many lofty principles, the devil emerges in the details of its implementation. Any honest synodality will acknowledge that in a Western religious climate where saintliness has become redefined in intersectional terms and sexual perversion is openly celebrated in terms like “sacred” and “holy,” church pews are as much a deadly spiritual minefield as they are a revelatory guide to God’s purposes in the world. Exercises framed in terms of “listening” can become a vehicle for introducing and then embracing spiritual poison.

And this speaks to the core of conservative and traditionalist objections to the synodal process that is underway. Yes, it’s possible to frame the synod on synodality in terms of sketching out a transition to more distributed church governance, a move from hierarchical governance that is efficient to a more “empathetic” and “inclusive” form of governance that is more effective. But conservative and traditionalist Catholics are seeing a fundamental dishonesty in the process, decrying what they perceive as a unilateral exercise of papal authority to structure the synod to amplify a particular subset of stakeholder voices that are neutral or agnostic on questions of both sin and church authority. For some American Catholics in particular, Pope Francis’ regular disparagement of American Catholicism is seen as an ominous indicator of his ultimate designs for synodality as a means of reducing the influence of those in the church he views as standing in the way of progress.

When social scientists promote pluralistic and inclusive decision-making as holding the advantage of effectiveness, it is important to temper this insight with the realistic view that empathetic inclusion needs to be principled or it will become a destructive force. Conservative and traditionalist Catholics lament that Pope Francis seems to be guided by a particularly focused empathy for the kinds of people whose approach to faith has decimated wide swathes of Catholicism and all of mainline protestant Christianity.

For Latter-day Saints, there are lessons to learn from the present Catholic experience. In our own hierarchical religious system, interpretation of scripture, promulgation of doctrine, and development of policy are all top-down processes flowing from church headquarters in Salt Lake City. Bristling against this system, numerous individuals and groups have splintered and developed Latter-day Saint equivalents to heretical sedevacantism and also what we might call a more pervasive “functional sedevacantism” we observe in numerous Catholic factions and offshoot groups. Our own recent pace of change has been such that any Latter-day Saint over thirty probably carries some nostalgia for the way things used to be. Even among believing Latter-day Saints who sustain our church leadership, there are constant calls for more transparency and more awareness at church headquarters of the lived realities in our local congregations.

As Latter-day Saints and others observe the Catholic experience, we are presented in the Synod a choice of whether to adopt the perspective of some of the more ugly online commentary. But we would do well to apply the golden rule and not play along. Our differences in doctrine do not relieve us of the obligation to view our Catholic friends with sympathy as they navigate a very challenging point in their history. And whatever else is happening in Catholicism, our collaborations with Catholic organizations in humanitarian and other efforts point to the validity of Gregory the Great’s profound observation: in so many of our Catholic friends, we do indeed see goodness and holiness that manifest the word of God. As we consider the religion of our Catholic friends, we would do well to focus relentlessly on Catholicism’s best, people who demonstrate the profound love of God and neighbor that many Catholics have developed by living the best principles in that tradition.

The post What Latter-day Saints Can Learn from the Catholic Synod appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

This religion has fundamentally different ideas about the nature of the self, the purpose of life, and how to define and achieve transcendence. It includes the major markers of religion, such as its own rituals, mythology, and metaphysics.

Much of the tension we are facing today in our public discourse comes from the ascension of this new religion and negotiating what place it should have in our public life.

The largest challenge is that almost none of the adherents of this religion recognize it as religion. In our recent past, religion has almost always existed in mature deistic sectarian forms. And while this new religion doesn’t have those features, that’s not what defines religion.

Many are seeking to answer important, fundamentally religious, questions, such as who we are, how we should treat others, and what our place is, in what—they believe—are areligious ways. Their explorations are often rooted in philosophical and academic disciplines, such as the Frankfurt School. As a result, even though their answers to these religious questions are just as ineffable and unfalsifiable as any other religion, they believe their conclusions should be able to take an outsized role in public life that other religions cannot take because of our constitutional limitations on the establishment of religion.

Most of us in the pluralistic West would be less concerned about ensuring the Catholics in the class see themselves in the curriculum than we would be about those who aren’t Catholic feeling excluded or proselyted to.

If a Muslim or Latter-day Saint family complained about such a curriculum, could you imagine a school administrator dismissing those with concerns because they are complaining about “inclusive materials?” I certainly hope not. Frankly, most American Catholics would agree that public schools aren’t the right place.

This powder keg of factors has ignited in Montgomery County, Maryland. Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) recently revised its curriculum to include books such as “Pride Puppy” about a family celebrating at a pride parade, and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” about a same-sex marriage. It includes word searches with words such as “intersex,” “drag queen,” and “leather.” This curriculum is aimed at children as young as preschoolers.

Many families tried to opt out of the materials, but the district rejected the request describing it as “language arts” material, not “human sexuality,” and dismissed their concerns as complaining about “inclusive materials.” Later they announced that they would not even inform families when these materials were presented in classrooms. As a result, a religiously diverse group of parents have sued MCPS, including Catholics, Muslims, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, and Latter-day Saints. 

As Latter-day Saints, we have always existed on the frontier of religious freedom in the United States. Our robust theology and worship are only possible because of these protections. So when we see government agencies imposing religion on others, we are naturally concerned.

For example, now-President Dallin H. Oaks, the second-most presiding leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said first in 1963 that the rulings on prayer in school were reasonable, a position he continued to hold while serving in church leadership while much of the religious right was fighting to reinstate it. During these fights, Latter-day Saint and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch was advocating instead for silent prayers that could respect the diversity of students’ religions.

However, it is the diversity of religious parents opposed to this curriculum that has been so often noted in media coverage of the matter. Many religious groups not normally affiliated with freedom of religion causes have shown up with concerns, confusing some political commentators. 

And if this were merely a matter of supporting everyone’s civil rights, that reaction would make sense. But what if, instead, these ideas about the nature of self and identity were, in fact, part of a unique religious worldview? I expect that we would see something exactly like we’re seeing now, where those from diverse religions come out in mass, confused and indignant, that their children are being proselyted into a new faith—even if they don’t quite have those exact words to describe it.

Many critics have described this as the parents trying to push their religion on the school district. Given the diversity of religions and the fact that they are merely requesting an opt-out, this claim simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

The school district has argued that they are not interfering with parents’ religious freedom rights because parents can still teach their children what they want at home. 

And they’re right. That’s not the problem. The parents are still free to exercise their religion. There’s a much larger and more trenchant problem: the school district is establishing a new and distinct religion. 

In the above examples, no one would be concerned that putting out the Catholic word search would constitute violating the free exercise of the other parents; they’d be rightfully worried that it constitutes establishing a religion.

Some might object that celebrating pride or same-sex marriage is not establishing religion but merely celebrating who those people are. But defining who we are is a religious question. And this curriculum teaches children answers to that question that are foreign to many other religious answers to that same question.

Christian Smith, in his book, The Sacred Project of American Sociology, noticed this religiosity in his field of sociology. He wrote that “Sociology misrecognizes its very own project.” Why not merely admit the religiosity, he wonders? Smith proposes that making the religious nature public would threaten the “authority” and “legitimacy” on which it “depends for its success.” The pattern Smith identified in sociology is the same basic pattern found repeated by this religious movement across its areas of influence. 

The MCPS can violate the religious freedom of the families it serves without preventing them from teaching their children at home. If teachers led a prayer to Allah, passed out Rosary beads before lunch, or read from the Book of Mormon, they would be violating the basic pluralistic contract that has allowed our nation to survive. 

The same is true if the teachers are passing out “Drag Queen” word searches, reading from “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” or reciting the sing-songy lyrics of “Puppy Pride.”

So, yes, parents are free to teach their children their religious approach to defining themselves at home, but they shouldn’t have to compete with teachers telling them a different, no less, religious approach to defining themselves at school.

As I noted in my piece analyzing this new religious movement, its adherents often seek to transmit it through existing institutions—schools primary among them. And they often use the authority and legitimacy Smith observes them clinging to in order to do so. What is happening in Montgomery County is a microcosm of a much larger and more salient conflict. 

Let me be clear, I’m not objecting to this new religion. I believe its adherents have the right to their beliefs. There are many places where our unique worldviews overlap, and we can work toward solutions together. But just because I respect this religion does not mean it is appropriate for it to become the official religion of the MCPS or any other public entity. These are not neutral answers just because those who believe them can’t see that they’re religious.

The Anti-Defamation League, no stranger to preserving and safeguarding religiously neutral civic spaces, has written:

Not endorsing or not appearing to endorse religion is especially important in the public school setting. This is due to a number of considerations unique to the public schools: the specific sensitivities of school-age children; the fact that public schools are public institutions; and the profound influence of school officials and teachers over students. … Moreover, children are highly susceptible to coercion. … These factors create a significant danger when religion is introduced into the public schools in circumstances evincing the apparent endorsement of teachers.

I couldn’t agree more. And while many have tried to paint this as religious individuals fighting for their free exercise of religion, it’s not how the parents see it. They see it as their local government sponsoring a belief system in direct opposition to theirs.

In coverage by The Free Press, a woman who would only identify herself as Hiwot described it as “a state-sponsored campaign to shame us into a corner.”

Another of the local parents, Raef Haggag, explained that one of the reasons he came to the United States was “because it was a safe and welcoming place.” He praised the diversity and inclusiveness, saying, “There are many families like mine that came from different parts of the world.” How could such a diverse place have such an iconoclastic school system? 

Public institutions must be neutral in their missions and policies to the many different religious viewpoints in their community, even those religious viewpoints that don’t see themselves as one. As big and intractable as these conflicts may seem, we have navigated religious disputes in the past. And if we have the clarity to see this the same way, we can find sustainable solutions.

The post When Schools Preach: Dogma and Doctrine in the Modern Classroom appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Evangelical communities distinguish between the saved and unsaved, with seeker sensitivity creating a transitional space for the unsaved to explore Christian doctrine. This approach acknowledges that people are in different places spiritually and otherwise and invites them to participate and belong before making firm commitments like baptism. Seeker status, distinct from being saved, shows spiritual potential that can be nurtured.

For Latter-day Saints, the tools for a seeker-sensitive church environment are readily available. There is support in messaging from church leadership: think, for example, of Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s reassuring statement in general conference, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a place for people with all kinds of testimonies. … The Church is a home for all to come together … I know of no sign on the doors of our meetinghouses that says, ‘Your testimony must be this tall to enter.’”

In this dilemma, the stakes are high. As Latter-day Saints, we know the problems that come when people make commitments too far beyond their actual convictions, and whenever our former members boast publicly of their earlier compliance and high participation in the Church, we are reminded that belonging has never been a substitute for real conversion.

Some groups among Latter-day Saints are attempting to develop a seeker-sensitive approach to our faith, in contrast with traditional agonistic (debate-oriented) apologetics aimed at defending the faith against skeptics. The search for alternatives to traditional apologetics is sometimes driven by an awareness that traditional apologetics is often a predominantly male endeavor, utilizing public debates and rational counterarguments to reinforce faith through intellectual contests that seek academic respectability. In 2016, Alastair Roberts described formerly male-dominated academia as a realm of “ritual combat and competition.”

In academia, the insistence upon a contest of ideas has indeed benefited many fields, as it has required participants to raise the bar of their research with the understanding that they would likely need to defend it against attack. When applied to religious apologetics, the agonistic academic framework has resulted in formidable answers to the claims of skeptics, and for many, it has indeed created intellectual soil conditions for successfully planting the seed of faith. But Roberts points to real pitfalls in this kind of engagement that extend to the realm of religious apologetics: “If not well tamed,” Roberts warned, male styles of discourse lead to “tiresome games of one-upmanship. … A concern for the truth has on many occasions been eclipsed by the pursuit of ego.”

Those of us involved in various forms of apologetics recognize these tendencies and how agonistic frameworks seem to often bring out the worst in our instincts. But when it comes to apologetics, we sometimes see deeper problems emerge. First, agonistic discourse often operates with an assumption of objectivity: I and my champion are bias-free, whereas the opponent’s thinking is clouded by subjective judgments and motivated reasoning. These are self-serving perspectives, and they are not true: numerous studies demonstrate that we all employ our rational thinking in service of our non-rational feelings and intuitions and not the other way around. The second of the deeper problems is that convincing is not conversion. A cerebral process of intellectual assent to ideas about God is not the same as coming to know God personally and experiencing inner transformation as a result. If apologists are not careful, we can mistakenly deprecate conversion or even ignore it in our pursuit of an idol of intellectual vindication.

If there have long been problems in male-dominated academic discourse, Heather Mac Donald points to different problems that have recently arisen in predominantly female academic spaces.  In a recent article titled “The Great Feminization of the American University,” she offers an alarming commentary:

Female students and administrators often exist in a co-dependent relationship, united by the concepts of victim identity and of trauma. For university females, there is not, apparently, strength in numbers. The more females’ ranks increase, the more we hear about a mass nervous breakdown on campus. Female students disproportionately patronize the burgeoning university wellness centers, massage therapies, relaxation oases, calming corners, and healing circles …

Female dominance of the campus population is intimately tied to the rhetoric of unsafety and victimhood. Females, on average, score higher than males on the personality trait of neuroticism, defined as anxiety, emotional volatility, and susceptibility to depression…

When students claim to be felled by ideas that they disagree with, the feminized bureaucracy does not tell them to grow up and get a grip. It validates their self-pity.

The gendered tendency toward validation over empowerment was discussed in a Psychology Today article by Dr. Steven Stosny, who noted a clear tendency toward over-validating among female therapists-in-training, while male trainees tend toward under-validation, skipping ahead to discussion of solutions. Validation is often a critical step in helping people to come to a receptive frame of heart and mind, but when taken to excess, it can reinforce false and harmful narratives of reality, as well as poor cognitive behavior. Heather Mac Donald is right to point to codependency as the dynamic at play; a validating friend can feel like they are behaving with kindness while enabling a person’s downward spiral into mental and emotional misery.

This problem illustrates many people’s frustrations with the seeker-sensitive church, and Paul Carter’s writing for The Gospel Coalition offers a case study. He tells of a church that promised to evolve from a lightweight, inclusive doctrine to a more substantial one but never did. As he describes, seeker churches become trapped in offering “Christianity Lite,” a superficial experience that trades genuine spiritual growth for continual entertainment and therapy.

As Paul Carter’s story indicates, any movement toward seeker sensitivity among Latter-day Saints should be honest, or it will repeat these and many other failures experienced elsewhere. And honesty requires a reckoning with the history and results of progressive religion, which has often formed the ideological basis for seeker-sensitive messaging. Progressive religion’s attempts to “keep people in the church” involve abandoning doctrinal clarity in the name of inclusion. Yet its ultimate result is the opposite of keeping people in the church. David Deavel wrote of the impact of the transition to progressive religion in the church of his youth, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC):

If progressive Christianity leads to ecclesial death is the first lesson, the second is that its parasitical nature means there are limits if enough people keep fighting for the host’s body. … This summer, at the CRC’s annual denominational meeting, known as Synod, the delegates voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm … much of traditional Christian morality. Not only did the delegates reaffirm it; they raised it to the level of “confessional status.” In Catholic terms, it went from doctrine to dogma. 

Deavel’s account is striking: As CRC adopted progressive reforms, conservatives left the denomination. But progressives left as well, causing the CRC pendulum to swing back to more conservative leanings. It might seem counterintuitive that progressive reforms cause progressives to leave their churches, but it is true. The relativism that characterizes so much of progressive religion turns the church experience into, paraphrasing Seinfeld, a show about nothing. And even progressives won’t roll out of bed early on Sunday mornings for that.

Those who, in the name of seeker sensitivity, imagine a progressive alternative vision for the church are faced with a hard dilemma: progressive religion does indeed offer a sense of relief for people who experience traditional faith as stifling or intellectually unpalatable. But as Ian Harber’s experience indicates, progressive religion and progressive political ideology share some basic assumptions, and progressive political ideology has a powerful gravitational pull. When the Christian story of inside-out redemption is replaced by a political story of outside-in activism, congregations soon find that political ideology cannot abide any rivals in theology or other areas. And the relief of progressive religion can only ever be temporary because its relativism opens the abyss of nihilism in the souls of the formerly believing. Political ideology deceptively offers to fill that abyss or sometimes offers a welcome distraction from it. But in the end, political religion turns out to be a much more harsh and jealous taskmaster than traditional religious faith.

The final point of honesty is to plainly acknowledge the importance of developing our own Latter-day Saint model of seeker sensitivity. The process of faith development looks very different for different people, and among some souls, the branches of commitment are too lofty, stretching beyond the strength of the roots of personal conversion. We can teach and testify; we can improve our assumptions and epistemology, but gospel-seeking is a process that will always vary among people who differ in their wiring, their culture, and their life experiences. Seeker sensitivity in the early restoration allowed Brigham Young to investigate the restored gospel for two years before making a firm commitment and for the great Eliza R. Snow, that process of seeking lasted four years. If we want more members whose conversions share the durability of those of Brigham Young and Eliza R. Snow, we should promote a church culture that is able to accommodate people’s individual processes of seeking while also maintaining clarity about the problems that have plagued the movement for seeker-sensitivity in broader Christianity.

The post Christianity Lite: The Seeker-Sensitive Church appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Recently, a horrific incident of family abuse perpetrated by a less active member of the Church of Jesus Christ caught headlines around the world. This case, however brutal and undeniable, fueled a belief that the Church harbored an endemic abuse problem. The crucial point is that such extreme instances, while distressing, can cast a disproportionately long shadow, distorting the perception of an entire community.

The Power of Narratives and Cognitive Biases in Shaping Perceptions

Media narratives wield considerable power in shaping public perceptions, often by simplifying complex realities. Roach’s research, which contradicts a widespread belief that religious institutions are rife with hidden abuse, may invite skepticism. This disbelief, however, does not necessarily stem from the data’s validity but rather from its divergence from prevailing narratives. In fact, her findings align with other smaller analyses. In our quest for a nuanced understanding, it’s paramount to challenge our assumptions and examine the facts closely. In fact, in an environment where no real quantitative research had been done on this question previously, it’s even more important to challenge our assumptions that were likely developed without regard for the prevalence of the problem. 

The previous absence of data did permit some dramatic conclusions. Jana Riess, for example, wrote in the Salt Lake Tribune, “I have not seen any credible evidence that the incidence of sexual abuse is higher in Latter-day Saint communities than anywhere else,” but somehow uses that as a springboard to criticize what she believes are ways the Church mishandles abuse. 

Now that credible evidence exists that the incidence of sexual abuse is much lower in Latter-day Saint communities, will she be willing to re-evaluate her criticisms? And even if she does, will her readers who absorbed her narrative re-evaluate? All this is based on an assumption that proved to be contrary to the evidence.

In my background in media criticism, the concept of “disequilibrium” often emerges, suggesting that stories involving conflict and controversy draw audiences. This theory sheds light on the persistent focus on abuse scandals within the Catholic Church and high-profile cases like the Penn State scandal. While these stories deserve attention, media bias towards controversy can distort understanding and inflame public perception of abuse rates in religious institutions. For example, female teachers who sexually assault students make the news much more frequently even though they are much less likely to sexually assault students.

And nothing is as effective at generating traffic as making your readers feel angry. So anything that can intersect with the culture war is more likely to be noted as newsworthy by journalists and their editors. This includes religious institutions.

The reality is that what we talk about deeply influences how frequently we think that happens. This is why we consistently believe terrorism, ebola, and shark attacks are much more likely than they are, in fact. And this conclusion can prevent us from recognizing good solutions where they exist.

Religious institutions are often caught up in this distortion, caught in the crossfire of a culture war where the negative stories that do exist about them are amplified because there is an appetite to feel angry at religion, which in turn creates the misunderstanding of how frequent these problems actually are. The continual focus on child abuse within these groups, while not entirely unfounded, disproportionately magnifies the issue, perpetuating the perception that religious institutions are predisposed to such misconduct when the best available data seems to suggest that they reduce such misconduct in general and that the Church of Jesus Christ is especially effective in reducing abuse. 

Cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias and the availability heuristic, further exacerbate this distortion. They prompt us to interpret information that aligns with our beliefs and overestimate the prevalence of readily available events, distorting our understanding of the true abuse rates within religious institutions. This results in a kind of fallacy sometimes referred to as a special pleading, and this kind of response was common to those whose pre-existing ideas were challenged by Roach’s research. They often suggested that individuals may have been abused by the Church outside of BSA or that abuse was underreported. Both of these could be true, but there is no evidence to suggest these issues appear disproportionately among Latter-day Saints. But critics insist on this special critique of the Church of Jesus Christ in order to dismiss the findings and avoid challenging their preconceived notions. 

Towards a More Nuanced Understanding of Abuse Within Religious Institutions

These established narratives then become self-reinforcing. These preconceived notions are likely why journalists such as Cara Kelly at the Washington Post report that there are more claims against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than any other organization, without even thinking to check that the Church had overwhelmingly more scouts than any other organization. Or, perhaps because this matched her preconceived notion, that led her to claim that more than half didn’t report their charter when simply opening up the claims would have shown that not to be the case. But why go through that additional work when your preconceived notion is already confirmed? 

It’s essential to resist generalizations based on isolated cases and acknowledge the potential for their disproportionate influence on our perception. 

Obtaining reliable data on abuse rates within religious organizations has been historically challenging due to data limitations. Anecdotal evidence, while emotionally compelling, often amplifies extreme cases, leading to skewed perceptions. With the first real introduction of comprehensive data, we move beyond the confines of individual narratives, advancing our understanding of the issue.

It is a difficult challenge. No case of abuse is ever okay. Yet when identifying how to reduce abuse on an institutional scale, we need to look at what works—what reduces abuse. And since no one has been able to eradicate abuse, we will need to look at communities that do a good job reducing overall harm. If we resist the approaches that reduce harm because of our righteous desire to eradicate all harm, we aren’t fixing the problem.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ successful strategy in combatting abuse offers a beacon of hope, presenting a case study that merits further examination. It underscores the importance of focusing not just on eradicating the bad but also on promoting the good.

This isn’t about winning an argument but safeguarding our children. We owe it to them to welcome solutions that shield them from harm, even those from unexpected quarters. It is our shared societal duty to protect children and in doing so, challenge our preconceptions and strive to build a safer world.

The post Confronting Pre-conceived Illusions: Latter-day Saints and the Abuse Narrative appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Systemic or Soul Change.”

In every community of every kind, there are values, commitments, and ideas that unite them. And for this reason, every community must grapple with the question of what to do with those among them who decline and reject these offerings. 

Religious history is filled with tragic examples of the worst offenders in this regard, from crusades and inquisitions to martyrdoms and crucifixions. But it was the most famous of these violent rejections that ultimately highlights another “father-forgive-them” alternative. At the heart of the Christian message, in particular, is an aspiration to regard even our enemies with love. 

For most Christian communities, this remains the standard: grace, forgiveness, gentleness, and compassion to those who have gone astray, including the apostate and the heretic. While it’s true most faiths have boundaries that can be crossed to the point of various stages of disfellowship, most believers still regard those rejecting these community norms as former brothers and sisters to be reclaimed.  

Sinners of all kinds, in this view, are to be met with compassion and a hand of fellowship always outstretched. As many observers have noted, this is a noticeable contrast to how the unorthodox are regarded by those fervently committed to the popular ideology of social justice.  

Problematic people. Although it’s hard for anyone to see loved ones rejecting beliefs they themselves cherish, a long view of the future can encourage patience and compassion. “Religion, in part, is about distancing yourself from the temporal world, with all its imperfection,” Shadi Hamid writes of monotheistic religion today. “At its best, religion confers relief by withholding final judgments until another time—perhaps until eternity.”

By contrast, Hamid continues, “The new secular religions unleash dissatisfaction. … If matters of good and evil are not to be resolved by an omniscient God in the future, then Americans will judge and render punishment now.”

Much like religious leaders wielding judgment from a place of unique callings,  John McWhorter tells Helen Lewis, “The hyper-woke—who were firing people right and left, and shaming people right and left—think that they’re seeing further than most people, that they understand the grand nature of things better than the ordinary person can”—adding, “To them, they’re elect.” In his book, McWhorter identifies this as a “priestly class” of influential writers and politicians who dictate the rules of what can and cannot be said.

Compared with mere “sinners,” of course, apostates and heretics bring up other issues, like what religious communities should do if somebody actually is undermining the community with false preaching—or not embracing some of these brave new teachings. 

For instance, McWhorter suggests that teachings around privilege (white privilege or male privilege being inherited problems) are versions of original sin—a stain that humans are born with, no matter their individual circumstances. 

With any strong dogma, of course, people can become animated and passionate in their agreements and disagreements. And Helen Lewis points out how established religions have developed strategies for dealing with enthusiasm that shades into zealotry—quoting Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, of the Bromley Reform synagogue in south London, who said, “In religious life, or Jewish life, the person you sit next to in synagogue may drive you completely potty, they may be so annoying and have different views, and you must still go to their family’s funeral.”

This kind of geographical networking has a way of mediating and dampening conflict. As Lewis continues: 

In real life, churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples force together, in their congregations, a random assortment of people who just happen to live close to them. But today’s social activism is often mediated through the internet, where dissenting voices can easily be excluded. We have taken religion, with its innate possibility for sectarian conflict, and fed it through a polarization machine. No wonder that today’s politics can feel like a wasteland of anguished ranting—and like we are in hell already.

The stigma of being on the wrong side. No wonder those on the other side can feel like they’re in such  a tight and uncomfortable place indeed. Helen Lewis describes a conversation with Alex Clare-Young, a nonbinary minister in the United Reformed Church, about whether expressing faith or gender was more surprising to Generation Z acquaintances. Clare-Young responded that admitting religious commitments was “probably” harder—adding, “I know a lot of LGBTQ+ young people who say it’s harder to come out as Christian in an LGBT space than LGBT in a Christian space.”

Noting that “politics has now crept into every aspect of our lives,” the Atlantic journalist Helen Lewis recounts, “In countries where racial and religious intermarriage have become commonplace, dating across political lines is the new taboo”—with more and more dating profiles now insisting, “no conservatives.” Lewis cites Victoria Turner, the editor of an anthology titled Young, Woke and Christian, as saying she could happily date someone from another faith or no faith at all. But a conservative? 

“Absolutely not. No.” 

Certainly, there are plenty of conservatives who would feel the same way about dating a hard-core progressive—and religious parents who would agonize over their children dating someone from a different tradition, especially if they have left their own faith.

In the absence of common ground appreciation of a gracious God with future possibilities of redemption, how else can we encourage more compassion and patience with some of these differences?

Perhaps simply by talking about these differences more openly.  

Taking social justice for granted as universal—the pressure this prompts. As mentioned earlier, almost no one talks about social justice as a religion. John McWhorter notes this is not unusual historically: 

In 1500, nobody in Europe considered themselves religious. It was just in the water. If there was such a thing as an atheist, they kept that to themselves … that’s where we are now. And so many of the people now who are religious would resist the label because especially a modern, secular, educated person often won’t like the idea of being told that they have a religion. But that doesn’t mean that the analysis isn’t accurate. There’s a religion.

If social justice ideology is so much in the air that people aren’t even paying attention to it, that would apply to people who are participating in other religious systems too. And referring to these new social justice commitments, Tom Stringham writes, “In most cases, believers simply do not know they are a part of it. Even most non-believers don’t see the religion for what it is.” As a result, these new beliefs and convictions can get passed along as basic decency, goodness, and love—rather than a particular philosophy any of us can simply disagree with. 

This underscores the danger when people see something as universal—and, therefore, not to be questioned. Compared with Catholicism which Stringham remarks is “contextualized in our society as a religion, and people are thus entitled not to believe in it,” contemporary American progressivism is not contextualized as a religion or even as a worldview—to believers, it’s understood as “literally just being a decent person.” 

Accordingly, adherents tend to expect everyone to live as if their beliefs are true. At best, he continues, this will lead others to “come to (mistakenly) believe our religion to be consistent with theirs. At worst, the Christian believer converts himself to the other religion by unwittingly participating in it.”

Calling social justice a “religion” creates new space. All this helps explain why calling this other system of thinking a new religion could be so helpful. As Tom Stringham explains further, this would give this ideological approach the “same social status” as other religions: “Specifically, you don’t have to convert to it, the same way other people don’t have to join our church. You can respect the religion, see what is good about it, and still decline to participate in its customs or adopt its worldview.” 

He goes on to explain more of the practical benefits: 

Many of us have been asked at some point why we don’t use a symbol or term when it “just means” equality, kindness, or respect. We may find it difficult to answer. But Latter-day Saints could just as well ask others why they don’t wear, say, CTR rings, which, after all, “just mean” that we should choose the right. But we know why: other people don’t wear CTR rings because they are not part of our religion. They may not object to the nominal meaning of a CTR ring, but that doesn’t mean they need to wear one. Neither should church members feel obligated to participate in the customs of religions we aren’t a part of, let alone customs that may cause tension with our own religious beliefs.

Among other things, this “reminds us that believers in the other religion deserve respect, the way Muslims or Catholics or Hindus do. It also permits us to identify the truths that exist within the religion.”

This, furthermore, can help us navigate conflicts that arise, especially the degree to which these center on ideological combat between traditional religions as this insurgent ideology. 

Greater awareness can thus generate greater space and recognition that “the unique teachings of contemporary American wokism should not be simply accepted.” For instance, Stringham points out that within social justice ideology, “maleness and femaleness, qua the social categories we are all familiar with, are, in fact, categories of gender identity, a gnostic sense of one’s identity that is perfectly knowable by the individual but not verifiable or falsifiable by others, even in principle.” 

Yet like distinctive teachings of other faiths, “This is a strong, arguably supernatural teaching which should not be simply accepted unless it is part of a conscious, deliberate conversion to the woke religion.”

More than simply guarding against undue pressure, this kind of transparent acknowledgment can also help “avoid accidental conversion.”

The need for redemption. Thus we see that important things are being left behind in secular religion when it comes to how to approach those rejecting its dogmas. When asked about how social-justice movements might adopt some of the “good bits” of religion, Helen Lewis says, “As somebody who was raised in the Catholic Church, I did see the way that it made sure that people were looked after. There were bonds between people, a sense of community, and also a sense of shared values.”

“Can religiosity be effectively channeled into political belief without the structures of actual religion to temper and postpone judgment?” Shadi Hamid asks, before answering his own question: “There is little sign, so far, that it can.” He then added, “If only Americans could begin believing in politics less fervently, realizing instead that life is elsewhere.”

In addition to seeking a deeper source of meaning and value, Lewis added, “I think if we want people to genuinely own their mistakes, then you have to offer the possibility of redemption.” She continues, “I think what we have now with social-justice movements is a range of sins, but we don’t yet have a good idea of what the mechanism is for confessing, repenting, and being absolved.”

Could that still be developed in the social justice future? There is little evidence of this on the horizon of this new system of thought. In the absence, as John McWhorter laments, “We seek change in the world, but for the duration will have to do so while encountering bearers of a gospel, itching to smoke out heretics, and ready on a moment’s notice to tar us as moral perverts.”

No wonder so many of us are watching our backs these days! Indeed, by many accounts, a new inquisition is afoot. But in this case, it’s an inquisition that doesn’t even admit it’s taking place. 

So, how will you be judged in this new religious regime? Even more importantly, how willing are you to be patient and compassionate with those who see you as a dangerous threat to their vision of the ideal society?

The post Renounce or Redeem: What’s to Be Done about the Rebels? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

While the percentage of those questioned who consider themselves religious or spiritual is quite high, the number of those who belong to any kind of religion is low.  Could the loss of meaning and community associated with organized religion be partially responsible for our present mental health crisis? Could organized religion be a key component to our well being? And how can church leaders, help the young recognize the mental health benefits of ongoing faithfulness?

The post How the Loss of Organized Religion is Harming our Youth appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The extent to which human beings have agency has been a major philosophical question throughout history.  In an effort to grant a fresh perspective on this age-old question, we believe it would be worthwhile to examine some aspects of agency that are not often articulated in discussing a Latter-day Saint perspective. Some content has already been written by experts in the field, Dr. Richard Williams and Dr. Edwin Gantt, on an understanding of agency specific to the Church of Jesus Christ, some of which has been published in Public Square Magazine. Indeed, we draw on their work for our conceptualization of agency throughout this article in an effort to expound upon and facilitate a greater understanding of their original ideas and work.  Beyond their efforts, more has been written on agency, generally, than we could ever hope to cover in this brief analysis. Therefore, this article will be focusing exclusively on a particular aspect of agency that we believe is frequently overlooked. This aspect, simply put, is that agency involves and encompasses more than just the ability to choose things consciously. In other words, human action that is not conscious and deliberate can still be agentic. 

Free will as one part of agency

Regardless of the numerous and competing positions philosophers have taken in regard to agency, it seems to be the case that most people generally assume they have agency. That is, most people believe that as human beings, we have the ability to choose things of our own will and accord. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints certainly believe this to be the case. Agency is one of the core essentials of our doctrine. We believe that the reason a war was fought in heaven and a “son of the morning” was cast down from on high was over the issue of agency. Additionally, prophets and apostles have regularly emphasized the importance of agency through the years.

While philosophically, there may be some problems with the overall concept of free will, it’s still important to acknowledge that being able to make deliberate, conscious decisions is certainly an important part of agency. The reason we label this decision-making ability as “free will” and not agency in of itself is that, from a Latter-day Saint perspective, “agency” is much broader than mere decision-making—encompassing a whole host of agentic human actions and experiences. 

Persuaded away from agency

The reason we believe this distinction matters is that free will is a surprisingly limited view of agency. If we consider agency to be constrained by only what we can consciously choose, then any human action that we do not perceive or understand as a conscious choice naturally falls outside of the realm of agency. These human actions must then be accounted for by other things besides agency, things that are beyond our control. 

For example, there is an old question in psychology as to whether human nature and behavior are primarily a product of genetic heritage or social upbringing—known as the “nature vs. nurture debate.” The problem with this debate is that it’s a lose-lose situation: human behavior is either determined by nature or by nurture or some combination of the two, but either way, it’s ultimately non-agentic. Psychologists still like to make some allowances for conscious choice; it is too obvious that people have free will, or at least the appearance of it, in some regard. Even so, everything else that makes us human—our personalities, desires, tastes, emotions, inclinations, motivations, beliefs, preferences—all of those building blocks of our identity are not necessarily things we consciously choose and are ultimately not agentic. 

What a small consolation it would be to be able to choose what shirt to wear when the core of our being, the really important parts that define who we are, are totally beyond the scope of our agentic capabilities. Is this really what God had in mind when he revealed the Plan of Salvation to us? We learn from the scriptures that the purpose of this life is to become a new creature in Christ. Christ doesn’t just want us to choose the right; He wants us to have our very natures changed so that we become different kinds of human beings—more full of light, love, and goodness—more like Him. But how can we do that if our inner natures are predetermined by our genes or our upbringing, or anything else for that matter? Are repentance and change even possible under this paradigm? Can we actually cultivate Christlike emotions, desires, inclinations, or personalities if we believe that none of those things are up for agentic possibility?

Meaning in possibility

Too often, our understanding of human nature can take us to a place of meaninglessness. Having predetermined intrinsic human features deflates the value and importance we place on those features and, in turn, can create a sort of existential crisis when we do not truly feel like we are acting as engaged agents in our own lives. Meaning arises out of possibility, the possibility for something to be other than what it is. For example, it is meaningful that we treat our spouse and kids with love, care, and respect because it could have been otherwise; we do not have to do that. We can recognize that patterns of domestic abuse can be difficult to break, and it is meaningful when it does happen because a person did not have to break those patterns. Hence, meaning arises out of possibility, and when there is a lack of this possibility, it can again create feelings of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and purposelessness.

Therefore, if the core of our being arises simply out of happenstance or because we were ‘born this way,’ then just how much do the experiences really mean? Additionally, if there was no opportunity for us to be anything other than what we are, then what opportunity is there for us to change what we are? Once again, how would repentance and progression be possible in this paradigm? President Nelson has taught that “when Jesus said ‘repent,’ He asked us to change—to change our mind, knowledge, and spirit—even our breath.” Minds, spirits, and even the way we breathe—these are pretty fundamental things. But we cannot change our core being if our core was never negotiable in the first place.

Invitations of Meaning

We learn from Lehi that there is “opposition in all things” or, in other words, possibility in all things. We exist in a world of possibilities. These possibilities include things like choosing what shirt to wear in the morning, but there are naturally also many possibilities that go well beyond the mundane. There are possibilities in how we encounter, engage, and interact with other people and the world as a whole. There are possibilities of meaning. That’s because, as human beings, things simply mean stuff to us. Things matter. And things can matter to us in different ways. To one person, a book may mean nothing more than a collection of words printed on pages. To another, a book may mean an excellent and convenient paperweight. To yet another person, a book may mean a doorway through which they can escape into another world—whether fantasy or celestial. A book can mean all of those things and more depending on how a person encounters and “takes it up.” 

Furthermore, a person could engage with a book one way and then engage with it a different way in a different moment. While I am reading a book, it means something other than when I use the same book as a flyswatter. You could say that those different possibilities of meaning are all contained within the book, waiting for someone to engage with them. You could even say further that the book invites people to engage with it in a certain way. For example, a book invites people to read it; it doesn’t really invite people to swing it wildly through the air to smash a bug (granted, books don’t actually do anything in of themselves; they are inanimate objects. We find we must speak somewhat metaphorically here to make our point).

Of course, that isn’t to say that people can’t use a book as a fly swatter, just like they don’t have to read it. The key word is invite. One meaning of a book invites people to read, to ‘take on’ the book in that way. Another meaning of the book invites people to use it as a flyswatter, to ‘take on’ the book in a very different way. Nonetheless, it is the case that reading a book seems to fulfill its purpose in a way that using it to kill bugs does not. Most people would agree that there is something fundamental to the nature of a book that we end up missing if we don’t engage with it in a certain way (that way being to read the book). You might say that reading a book is a more truthful way to engage and take up a book, and using it like a fly swatter is, while still a possibility, a somewhat less truthful possibility that suggests we are fundamentally missing something about the book’s nature. When we are interacting with the book in the way that was intended, we have more access to truth, and there is more meaning and purpose in that use. By yielding to the intended purpose, we then have a more fruitful engagement with the book.

Yielding to Invitations

The idea of yielding, or “giving oneself over to” a particular meaning may seem unusual. We often think of choice and choosing in terms of asserting our power or authority over something, not giving up our power to that thing, especially something as mundane as a book. Nevertheless, it seems that one way of exercising agency, the non-deliberate, non-conscious way, involves a degree of yielding to an invitation. King Benjamin taught us that:

The natural man is an enemy unto God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord …

King Benjamin defines the natural man not as a fundamental part of human nature but as “an enemy unto God,” or somebody who is rebelling against God, and he defines a saint as the opposite. In other words, the natural man is one who resists the invitation of the Holy Spirit and instead yields to invitations that are against God. A saint is one who yields, or “gives oneself up,” to the Holy Spirit’s invitation and resists the contrary invitations.

This language of yielding and resisting is helpful in understanding what is going on when we are engaging with different meanings on the non-deliberate level, that is, meanings we are not fully attentive to or cognizant of. Obviously, we can deliberately choose how we take things up, whether truthfully or not. We can choose to engage with a book truthfully and read it or engage with it less truthfully and do something else with it.

The Agentic Unintentionality of Liturgies

We can witness a similar, non-deliberate, yet still agentic process happening within liturgies. In the most basic sense, liturgy is a type of ritual, one that incorporates a physical act that is imbued with meaning. In a religious context, liturgies are often a type of worship. Because of the meaning inherent in a liturgical act and because the act is typically repeated throughout the life of a person, a liturgy can be very formative. In his book on liturgies, James Smith states that liturgies “shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people.” Additionally, liturgies are typically not something one does alone; they are often performed with other people. 

A common example of liturgy would be a Catholic mass. Throughout a mass, the congregation is led in standing, kneeling, praying, singing, and chanting, all done as a group under the direction of the leading priest. All of the actions taken in a Catholic mass, from the reading of the scriptures to the administration of the eucharist, are imbued with meaning and intention. By participating on a regular basis in mass, an attendee begins “taking up” the meaning that is inherent in the actions he or she is performing, even if that meaning is not always being thought of in conscious, deliberate ways.

We have our own set of liturgies in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our weekly partaking of the sacrament is one; our temple ordinances consist of many. In fact, an endowment ceremony is a good example of taking up meanings non-deliberately. When I (Jacob) was preparing to enter the temple for the first time, one thing I was often told was that I would learn a lot: the temple was a place of teaching and learning, and my knowledge of the Gospel would be expanded by going through the temple. This led me to have the false expectation that I would be receiving new and unknown educational exposition on deep and mysterious Gospel doctrine and that the temple was something like a celestial institute class. After going through the temple my first time, I was mostly just confused because I didn’t feel like I had learned anything at all about Gospel doctrine, let alone anything new. 

Now that I am older and somewhat wiser, I realize that what I was originally told was true: the temple truly is a place of great learning. But the kind of learning that goes on in it is not the kind that can be fully understood on the rational, conscious level. Rather, we learn things in the temple through participation in the liturgies. The temple ordinances are incredibly meaningful and ‘meaning-filled,’ reflected in meanings that invite us to ‘take them up,’ not through consciously deciding to but through participating in the meaning. Through regular participation in the temple ordinances (participation of all kinds: physical, social, mental, spiritual, etc.), we gradually yield or give ourselves over to the inherent meanings until they become a part of us. 

People often attend the temple with specific questions that they then find answers to, yet at no time during the ordinances were those questions ever specifically, consciously addressed. People go in with concerns and worries and afterward leave with a heart of peace, yet rarely if ever, can people deliberately decide to simply be at peace. Rather, we are invited to partake of the peace that Christ offers us through the temple ceremonies. By participating in the liturgies of the temple, we ‘give ourselves over’ and yield to the invitation to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and all the heavenly meanings that come with that. 

Taking up Righteousness

Liturgies are a great example of taking up and giving ourselves over to certain ways of being. However, we do that outside of more symbolic and religious environments as well. Take, for example, someone who is incredibly kind and genuine. We all know one of those people whose sincerity you can just feel in your soul. They have a specific way of being in the world, a specific light.  And perhaps one reason we can recognize that this is meaningful is that they do not have to be that way. Not because they are machines that have been conditioned to be that way but because they are choosing to live truthfully in the world by genuinely loving other people. I (Brianna) can personally witness to my sister-in-law’s genuine kindness and goodness as something that has been ‘taken up’ and gently cultivated. She is genuinely one of the best people I know, but it is deeper than simply an innate characteristic—“oh well, that’s just who she is.” Do not cheapen the experience and inherent meaningfulness of such kind and genuine engagement by attributing those characteristics to forces that are outside of our control and ability. At root, we are witnessing here something more: a light and truth cultivated through agentic engagement and action.

As we heed God’s invitations and take up Christ-like meanings in our lives, we take on the light of Christ and the “disposition to do good” (while losing the “disposition to do evil.”) The word disposition can be understood as an inclination or tendency to act or respond to something in a certain way. This is generally not seen as something agentic; dispositions are typically understood as being part of our internal, unalterable nature—not to mention that our tendencies to act in certain ways are usually non-deliberative and non-rational. In fact, it seems our dispositions seem to be what inform our reflexive and spontaneous actions. Nonetheless, the example of ancient people such as King Benjamin’s (and the teachings of many other scriptures and prophets) make it clear that dispositions can change. Our spontaneous reactions can change. 

We posit that this is what we, as disciples of Christ, are trying to cultivate: to have our first unconscious, non-deliberated response to other people always be in the direction of goodness and truth—a “spontaneous righteousness,” if you will, where our first inclination is to do what is right. 

Eventually, “[our] whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in [us].” We shall be like the people of King Benjamin, who had “no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.”  This disposition, in turn, comes about through agentic (both conscious and unconscious) engagement in the world. We are more than the sum of our choices; we are the sum of our being in the world. In the end, our understanding of what it means to be agentic beings can directly impact our attitudes around change and create different meanings around what it means to become a ‘new creature’ in Christ.

The post Is Our Exercise of Agency Always Intentional? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In low-trust communities and societies, life is a little harder. You keep your doors locked and never leave your kids unaccompanied. You get your guard up when someone asks you for something. You take fewer risks and spend more energy protecting what you already have. You check and recheck, ask for references, and investigate, rather than simply trusting. People in low-trust communities even tend to have fewer kids, because of the vulnerability that is involved in bringing new life into the world.

High social trust is easier to maintain in communities where everyone “thinks the same,” in the sense of having a high degree of agreement on core values and beliefs. This is one reason Utah has tended to score highly on measures of social trust: most people in the state share a core worldview. When you know someone is a fellow church member, you feel you already know a lot about them because of the beliefs you expect they share with you. And when you feel you know someone, you tend to trust them more.

While there are substantial benefits to being part of a high trust community, there is a downside too, which is vulnerability to cheaters and liars, who can use high levels of trust to take advantage of community members. From the point of view of a conman, trust is just gullibility. Communities whose social trust is built on shared belief, in particular, are vulnerable to bad actors who exploit trust by pretending to share community beliefs.

This vulnerability makes high-trust communities unstable in one important sense. When bad actors insinuate themselves into a community, the level of trust diminishes. Community members become warier when they realize someone has taken advantage of them or their friends. Members of faith communities who repeatedly encounter bad actors realize they cannot assume that fellow members are also fellow believers. Social trust takes a long time to develop but can unravel quickly in the presence of bad actors.

It’s not so much like that anymore. Divisions in the Church increasingly resemble those outside of it. We have less in common than we used to—members who nominally share religious beliefs often seem to have wildly different worldviews. There is a diminishing sense of solidarity: we support each other less in keeping church standards, especially when keeping those standards involves a social cost. Other changes fit a pattern of declining trust: we are slipping in our ministering (formerly home/visiting teaching). Marriage rates are falling. We are having fewer children—the rate of decline in Utah specifically is striking. In general, we seem to be acting more and more like a low-trust community.

What explains this unraveling of social trust in the Church, if, in fact, it is happening?

Maybe the Saints have spontaneously become more jaded and untrusting. Or maybe we have become less worthy of trust. But it is hard to see why this would be the case, or, if it is, why the shift has been so rapid. It seems to me the presence of bad actors in our communities is part of the explanation. We have, unfortunately, been exposed to a growing number of them, coinciding with the emergence of a new religion and near-universal adoption of social media by our members.

Meaning, that there are now a lot of very vocal people, especially in English-speaking online spaces, who pretend to be loyal to the Church and to believe in its teachings but are not, and do not. They keep up a pretense of belief, at least in front of fellow members, because it gives them credibility when they criticize the Church.

This credibility is an underrated ingredient in successful efforts to pull people away from the Church. When someone outside the Church criticizes it, we correctly contextualize what they say as criticism and respond accordingly. When someone who appears to be a faithful member criticizes the Church, we assume they share our loyalties and try hard to integrate what they say into our mental model of what it means to be faithful, which causes confusion if the person does not, in fact, share our loyalties. A Latter-day Saint student at a secular university hearing something that challenges her beliefs usually meets the challenge, while a student at BYU hearing the same thing from a deceptive instructor will often simply become confused and discouraged—or worse.

In old-school online forums, the tactic of posing as a member of a high-trust community in order to criticize or sabotage it is called “concern trolling,” and is typically banned because of the poisonous effect it has on discourse. Jesus gave us the vivid metaphor of a wolf wearing sheep’s clothing. As much as we hate to admit it, deceit often works. The wolf’s teeth are not his only weapon, nor are “ideas” the critic’s.

Concern trolling, in the context of the Church, works on two levels. On the first level, bad actors simply trick many members into thinking they are fellow believers. On the second, they rely on members who see through the ruse not to say anything. In high-trust communities where everyone tends to be honest, there is usually a norm against accusing others of bad faith. And for good reason—false accusations of bad faith can themselves be very damaging to social trust. So church members feel compelled to assume good faith, or at least not to openly question it. When someone in our community says they are just as faithful as anyone, we tend to nod and take them at their word, even if they spend most of their time trying to discredit the prophets and introduce tension with church teachings.

Our group ethic of assuming everyone is being honest works wonderfully when everyone really is being honest. The price of engagement goes way down. Life is easier. But when bad actors exploit this tendency, the same ethic means they can do a lot more damage than they otherwise could. When a nontrivial number of people in the community are taking advantage of others by acting in bad faith, an unconditional assumption of good faith becomes untenable. When you become aware of burglars hitting houses nightly in your neighborhood, you lock your doors and install a security system. When violent criminals start posing as hitchhikers, you stop picking people up. When sheep are getting eaten, you start watching for wolf snouts poking through the mask.

But while they seek attention, these influential bad actors do not do what they do primarily for money or even for power, though money and power are often part of the story (defectors tend to lose followers and even funding when they are excommunicated or admit they do not believe in their faith). Rather, they honestly believe in what they are doing, despite the deception involved, because they think it advances a greater good. They are motivated mainly by the missionary urge, felt zealously in converts to any religion, to convert one’s friends and peers to a newfound faith. Such an urge in itself is healthy, but to hide one’s motive in some kind of missionary work is … cheating. It’s as if we sent former Catholics into Catholic communities as covert missionaries, where their job was to pretend they were still Catholic to retain trust and credibility with the people they tried to indoctrinate into our teachings. That might well work, but if it did, it would be at the expense of our souls. It would also be at the expense of considerable social trust in the communities we preyed upon.

Maybe the idea that influential bad-faith actors are contributing to an unraveling of social trust in the North American church is a stretch. Most problems we experience in the Church can be explained by our own flaws and sins, not by nefarious bad actors.

But social trust isn’t like individual righteousness—a thing no one but yourself can deprive you of. It’s not even like a collective virtue, comparable to our tendency to deal honestly with each other as Saints. Social trust is a public good; a social phenomenon. It cannot be sustained at a high level in the presence of dissembling and trickery. Nor should it be: insisting on an assumption of good faith when bad actors abound is like insisting on leaving your doors unlocked at night when crime is at high levels. You might be fine in doing it, but you also might be putting your kids or others in your stewardship at undue risk.

The good news is the situation is not hopeless. Something can be done about bad actors, and social trust can be rebuilt over time.

The bad news is there is no pleasant way to start the process. Criminals must be arrested. Conmen have to be publicly shamed or run out of town. The wolves must be recognized, in the open, as wolves. It’s no good if many of us privately know who the defectors are if we participate in the pretense that enables them to keep deceiving.

Jesus told us we must love our enemies. I think we often fail at this for a basic reason: we decline to admit that we have enemies in any specificity. We assume everyone is our friend and has good intentions for us, then we love them on that condition. But “do not even the publicans the same”? It was in this context Jesus told us to be perfect: to love even those who despitefully use us and persecute us. Such injurious people do exist, both within and outside the Church. They are our neighbors and our enemies, and once we accept this fact we can finally love and forgive them despite it. More than that, we can tell the truth that will free them and us both from the deception that continues to poison our relations with each other and to weaken the bonds of trust among the Saints.

The post Unraveling Trust in the North American Church appeared first on Public Square Magazine.