Download Print-Friendly Version

Sometimes a controversy can be smaller than it first appears, but still worth taking seriously. The recent brouhaha over the Pentagon’s religious-affiliation codes fits into that category. 

You may have heard of this controversy from Latter-day Saint lawmakers pushing back against the new categorization. 

The Department of Defense revised an administrative list of religious-affiliation codes. These are codes used in personnel records and to help plan how many chaplains of each type they need. 

The new list went from more than 200 different religions down to 31. Of those 31, many were listed as “Christian – ” with the name of the faith group appended after the title Christian. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was listed as one of the 31 groups, but it did not have the label “Christian” appended to the front.

That’s certainly reasonable. And the new list should include broad enough categories that almost every service member should find something that suits them.

But it’s that “Christian” label that has caused some of the frustration. Latter-day Saints do not believe that the question of our Christianity is a secondary concern. We view our entire faith as centered on the life, ministry, and divinity of Jesus Christ. 

And this is not merely a bureaucratic question for Latter-day Saints.

Latter-day Saints affirm the Christianity articulated in the New Testament by Christ Himself and His apostles. They reject the later creedal formulations. But in those traditions, it was those creeds that helped define their faith and allowed it to survive. The majority of Christian faiths have grown out of the movements of the leaders who formed those creeds.

The Church of Jesus Christ, however, is a restorationist faith. Meaning it attempts to go around the creedal Christianity and back to a more original form. 

That’s a real religious difference, and not one that we should easily pass over. Most people who are acting in good faith describe it as either creedal Christianity or other/non-creedal Christianity. But many attempt to say that anyone who does not conform to the creeds is not a Christian. This is obviously a spurious argument. By this definition, early Church fathers such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Origen of Alexandria, not to mention Jesus and His apostles, would all be excluded as Christians. But it is also a real issue that Latter-day Saints continue to face in their day-to-day life as they are excluded from schools, service organizations, and interfaith groups while being told they are not Christian. So it is natural that these new Department of Defense religious-affiliation codes would evoke strong feelings.

Here is what is important to note about these codes. They are not a theological determination. There are other non-creedal Christian groups that have been listed with the “Christian” label, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists. 

One of the functions of chaplains in the U.S. Military is to provide religious rites and ordinances for members as needed. For Latter-day Saints, these ordinances require priesthood authority that, according to the teachings of the Church, chaplains of other faiths would not have. So, distinguishing between Latter-day Saints and other Christians was already happening. Of course, it also happened between Protestants and Catholics, but that did not appear on the list. 

But it was also a good reminder for Latter-day Saints that there remain certain fundamentalist and Christian nationalist voices that exclude Latter-day Saints. And we would do well to continue to heed the advice of Church leaders in pursuing religious freedom, rather than aligning ourselves with Christian nationalist causes that, among other shortcomings, would likely exclude us from their definitions.

And it’s in that light that we should probably best respond to the Pentagon controversy. The issue for Latter-day Saints was largely symbolic. But for many faiths, including Rosicrucianism, Wicca, and Unitarian Universalism, recognition has gone away altogether by being omitted from the list. 

A Wiccan sailor may have ritual needs, seasonal observance, or community ties that are not obvious to a generic chaplain in “other.” Unitarian Universalists have very distinct beliefs that can be complicated for even well-meaning individuals to understand. A small tradition can still hold existential importance to the person who belongs to it.

This list does not remove the religious freedom rights of these service members. Religious accommodations are still protected by law and policy. This list cannot change that. This does not change the religion that can appear on a dog tag, or the practices that must be allowed. But for people who are often away from home for the first time, this change can mean they may be left adrift without important spiritual support. In my opinion, properly responding to the spiritual needs of our troops should be a high priority, and perhaps even worth a bit of bureaucratic confusion. 

The post Christianity by Administrative Code appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

A common approach to this kind of animus is to portray the problem at the group level rather than the individual level. It praises the individual, indicts the group. It admires the neighbor, while distrusting the beliefs. It insists that the people are good, kind, neighborly, hardworking—but then tries to separate the people from the ideas and groups they support so that the ideas and groups can be mocked.

Latter-day Saints are familiar with this trope. It has lasted nearly as long as the Church itself. As one article in Charles Dickens’ Household Words famously put it, “What the Mormons do, seems to be excellent; what they say is mostly nonsense.” Dickens was hardly the last. 

That sentiment does a tremendous amount of cultural work. It allows speakers to acknowledge what is obvious to anyone who has met Latter-day Saints—that on average, we’re pretty good folks—while avoiding engagement with any of the beliefs that make us that way. The coworker, quarterback, senator, dentist, babysitter, or in-law may even be exceptional. But the faith itself is framed as a strange defect. It’s something to be smiled at, mocked, or psychoanalyzed.

A new version of this trope is becoming increasingly common and may be worth noticing: Latter-day Saints are great people, but their leaders/church/organization are deeply corrupt.

This can sound sophisticated. It allows speakers to sound like they are supporting people, not institutions. It can even sound compassionate, trying to defend ordinary Latter-day Saints against whatever shadowy authority the story requires. It manages to launder the old bigotries through the language of accountability.

Criticism Is Not the Problem

Latter-day Saints and their institutions should not be exempt from scrutiny. If a business mistreats a customer, investigate. If the police overreach, hold them accountable. If local officials abuse power, expose it. 

Latter-day Saints may be pretty good on average, but we have our fair share of ego, corruption, defensiveness, thievery, and all other types of sins.

There is a difference between criticism and religious profiling. In 2019, I covered the media response to a voyeurism arrest in Tennessee. I read the coverage of all voyeurism arrests over the previous 18 months; almost none of them made national news. And none of them mentioned the religion of the perpetrator. 

But as you might imagine, the Associated Press, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, and even the local newspaper not only mentioned the perpetrator’s religion, but also put it in the title. Why? Well, he was a Latter-day Saint. 

This issue has once again reared its head in a story that’s received major national attention. And suddenly many commentators have concluded that because someone is a Latter-day Saint, the problem must stem from corruption of the Church.

A Complicated LEGO Story

The underlying story here is complicated enough without inventing a religious conspiracy. 

Bricks & Minifigs has its corporate headquarters in Utah County. It is a second-hand retailer for LEGO bricks.

According to the reporting on the story, an Oregon franchise store, not run by the corporate office, accepted a consignment of Star Wars LEGO sets alleged by supporters to be worth around $200,000, with the agreement that it would sell them and give a portion of the proceeds to the sets’ owners.

While this Oregon store was in possession of these sets, the corporate office took control of the franchise store. When the owners of the LEGO sets returned to get their LEGOs because they had not been sold, the new corporate management said that the consignment had not been authorized. They said they are willing to resolve the matter through proper documentation and lawful channels, but they have not yet done so.

A YouTuber known as “Reckless Ben” decided to investigate the story. He went to American Fork to confront corporate management, then to the local police. The local police declined to intervene, saying it was a civil matter (i.e. the family who consigned the LEGO sets should sue).

Eventually, it was “Reckless Ben” who was charged with a misdemeanor for trying to confront the corporate management. 

From my non-lawyer point of view, it seems like the solution is pretty obvious, and from my communications point of view, hanging on to the sets is definitely not worth the legal and PR troubles. 

For a company based in Utah County, it may not surprise you to learn that some members of the management are Latter-day Saints.

And pretty soon, because of an implication “Reckless Ben” made in one of his videos, a narrative soon developed that the story was about religious corruption. 

The Comments Tell the Story

The language used around the YouTube videos has not been subtle. 

One commenter wrote, “The average person that’s LDS have no fault of what’s going on and I do not fault them. But this sect of religion in utah has a literal stranglehold on employment, culture, reputation, and lots of capital.”

Unsurprisingly, this structured complaint quickly returned. 

Other commenters complained about “the Mormon mafia” and suggested that Latter-day Saints have the power to silence people. Another claimed that the situation proved “that the Mormon church is now involved with the police department.”

A Reddit commenter concluded that “they’re protecting their own and would probably do this for any other crime they commit.”

“Reckless Ben” is not a professional journalist. But it’s also clear that sloppy coverage resulted in sloppy conclusions that have gone well beyond what he ever intended or implied. 

An Old Pattern

Latter-day Saints are not the first group to face this kind of suspicion and bias in the United States. Anti-Catholics did this for generations: Catholics could be good neighbors, but their institutions were suspicious because they were loyal to Rome.

Anti-Mormonism has its own version of this logic. In the nineteenth century, critics would portray Latter-day Saints as mysterious and secretive under the domination of an authoritarian prophet. Latter-day Saint belief was not merely doctrinally distinct from other groups; Latter-day Saint institutions were a threat to the American way of life.

And this current trope is a tired descendant of that older suspicion. It might be shined up with modern language. It might use the language of institutions and accountability. But the underlying dynamic, the basic argument, is the same. Latter-day Saints may be good, but when they’re bad it’s their religion’s fault because they are part of a group that is manipulative, corrupt, and dangerous. 

Legacy Media Coverage

The blame for this kind of coverage does not end merely with the YouTuber who posted it. These narratives become established because they are nurtured between the lines of news media that should know better.

When the Chicago Sun-Times puts its organized crime reporter on a story about an individual, when the AP assigns its political reporter to cover general conference, when the Washington Post and New York Times do not quote faithful Latter-day Saints in their articles but only church spokespeople, they create a vision of what the Church is.

And it’s all in pursuit of views. 

The voyeur story used the name of the Church in the title because that’s what people will click on. They create the prejudice and then profit from it. 

The headline, “Possible Police Overreach in Complicated Business Dispute in a Utah-Headquartered Franchise” dies before it hits the newsfeed. The story “Mormon Cops Cover for Mormon Criminals”—well, that sells. 

The bottom line is that there is no reason to believe this LEGO story has anything to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every Utah criminal is not, in fact, a window into Latter-day Saint corruption.

The post LEGO, YouTube, and the Latter-day Saint Mafia appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

But Professor Lindholm also came to research why his co-author, Professor W. Cole Durham Jr. so tirelessly promoted religious freedom. At bottom, he wanted to know the motives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the founding sponsor of BYU. 

To his delight, and perhaps surprise, he learned that The Church of Jesus Christ promotes the doctrine of religious freedom to bless everyone. In his own words, “You really believe this.”

Indeed, we do. But what is the doctrine of religious freedom, and why is it so important?

This two-part series will explore these questions. In this article, I discuss the importance of the doctrine of religious freedom in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the fundamental rights that facilitate it, the blessings it confers, and the prophetic invitations for Latter-day Saints to teach and promote it. In the next installment, I will discuss the history and constitutional protections of religious freedom and explore our responsibilities as church members to ensure the doctrine of religious freedom endures to bless all God’s children. 

Religious Freedom is Important Church Doctrine

President D. Todd Christofferson has taught that church doctrine does not come through “a statement made by one leader on a single occasion.” Rather, as Elder Neil L. Andersen explained, Church “doctrine is taught by all 15 members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve.”

By that definition, religious freedom is unquestionably an important doctrine of the Church.  Indeed, members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have frequently taught the principles of religious freedom. 

In particular, President Dallin H. Oaks, president of the Church, has defended religious freedom throughout his apostolic ministry. This is significant because, as President Christofferson has noted, the President of the Church has a “preeminent role” in promulgating church doctrine.

To make that ultimate choice, religious freedom is required. Without religious freedom, we cannot choose “to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience” nor, as stated in the eleventh article of faith, can others choose to worship “how, where, or what they may.”

As a Church, we celebrate the Constitution of the United States that the Lord “suffered to be established” for the “rights and protection of all flesh” precisely because it sets forth “just and holy principles” allowing “every man” to “act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I [the Lord] have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.” Thus, the Church champions the universal doctrine of religious freedom not merely for its own benefit, but because it is key to accomplishing God’s purpose in allowing everyone to exercise their moral agency.

The importance of this doctrine of religious freedom is now on full display as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of America. Earlier this year, the First Presidency issued a letter instructing all church wards and branches to hold a fifth Sunday discussion on May 31, 2026, on how the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution “support religious freedom and our God-given agency.” In addition, for the Church’s scheduled fast on July 5, 2026, the First Presidency invited all “to participate in a unified fast to express gratitude for religious liberty and to pray that it be strengthened throughout the world.” 

In support of these worldwide initiatives, the Church has created a specialized curriculum on religious freedom available on Gospel Library. This curriculum emphasizes the doctrine of religious freedom as taught by the Lord and His servants.

In addition to these resources, church members can find a repository of addresses given by Church leaders available at the Religious Freedom Library. 

Rights of Religious Freedom

Given the importance of the doctrine of religious freedom, it is appropriate to ask which legal rights are most important for enabling the moral agency it aims to protect. President Oaks and Elder Wickman, a former general counsel of the Church and General Authority Seventy, suggested an answer by identifying the following rights as necessary protections for individuals and religious organizations:

1.   The right of freedom of conscience
2.   The right of worship
3.   The right to assembly
4.   The right to self-government
5.   The right to communicate with church members
6.   The right to legal entity status and action for religious organizations
7.   The right to declare religious beliefs publicly
8.   The right to travel freely
9.   The right to full participation in society
10.   The right to freedom from retaliation.

These protections are examples of what Elder Wickman terms the “innermost core” of rights that should be available under our doctrine of religious liberty. Because there is little room for compromise on this core, they form the highest priority in our hierarchy of religious rights. 

Elder Wickman also explained that near this core is “the right not to be punished, retaliated against, or excluded from one’s employment based solely on one’s faith.” In addition, “freedoms related to religiously important nonprofit functions carried on by religious organizations and religious schools, colleges, and universities” are near the core rights that should be protected. These rights include “the freedom to hire based on religious criteria” and to “establish honor codes that reflect religious teachings.” These “near core” rights have occasionally been threatened in recent years. Examples includfe repercussions to religious believers for morally objecting to same-sex marriage and threats to BYU because its Honor Code requires traditional chastity and virtue.

Beyond this core are rights in commercial settings in which “our expectations of unfettered religious freedom must be tempered.” In such settings, we “must be willing to make prudential compromises.” This is an area of churning dispute. The Supreme Court has recently supported a variety of religious freedom claims in commercial settings, exempting cake makers and website owners from having to provide artistic services to same-sex weddings, and permitting counselors to provide counseling consistent with a patient’s biological sex in accordance with their religious convictions. On the other hand, many other courts have denied religious claims in commercial settings. For example, many courts have upheld employers’ COVID-19 vaccination requirements even though employees have sought exemptions for religious reasons. Additionally, a public school teacher was recently required to remove a private crucifix from her classroom when a student objected. 

The lowest level in this hierarchy consists of religious rights that conflict with others’ rights, including those of government. “In these areas, religious beliefs should be reasonably accommodated, but other governmental interests may significantly limit the degree of accommodation.” As an illustration, Elder Wickman suggested that if your government job is to issue marriage licenses, your freedom to refuse to issue “licenses for marriage that are contrary to your religious beliefs may be very limited.”

Thus, while religious liberty is ultimately intended to protect our rights, properly understood the doctrine of religious freedom recognizes that not all rights have equal weight. We acknowledge that we must be willing to temper our expectations based on the circumstances, according to the hierarchy of the religious rights involved. 

Blessings of Religious Freedom

President Christofferson began his argument by acknowledging:

It is becoming increasingly common for people to think that religion and religious freedom are some kind of burden on society. That is simply not true. Religion is fundamental to societal well-being, and freedom of religion benefits not only believers but all of society, whether they know it or not. Therefore, all have an interest in protecting this freedom, whether they are believers or not.

President Christofferson then noted that some of the many universal benefits that religion and religious freedom provide include protection for other fundamental rights and increased societal goods. He noted that “rich scholarship” suggests that “[c]ountries with strong religious freedom tend to be more stable and prosperous,” have increased moral virtues and habits of good citizenship, have less crime and violence, have increased civic involvement, give more time and resources to humanitarian causes, have increased marital stability, and have healthier children with lower rates of depression and suicide and less “anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, sadness, delinquent or illegal behavior, pornography, drug and alcohol abuse, and other addictive behaviors.”

At a subsequent international conference, President Christofferson enumerated additional social benefits derived from the doctrine of religious freedom. He noted:

1.  “Religious liberty is the oldest and most deeply rooted freedom in international human rights law and is essential to the entire structure of human rights.”
2.  “Religious liberty is essential for protecting human dignity.”
3.  “Religious liberty promotes pluralism and peace.”
4.  “Religious liberty facilitates a proper separation of church and state that avoids any justification for secular hostility toward religion.”
5.  “Religious liberty allows diverse faith communities to continue providing critical services to society and its most disadvantaged members.”
6.  “Religious liberty enables all of us—whether religious or not—freely to pursue truth and the meaning of life, and to live accordingly.”

This impressive list of benefits accrues because those who enjoy religious freedom can freely choose to follow their faith, allowing them to be “blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual.”

To secure such blessings for ourselves and others, the Lord has encouraged the Church and its members to “befriend[] that law which is the constitutional law of the land.” In doing so, the Church and its members increasingly engage with others in “supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges.”

Examples of this engagement include BYU’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS), which hosts the Annual International Law and Religion Symposium. Now in its 33rd year, the Symposium has hosted over 1,500 government, academic, and religious leaders from 138 countries to learn more about religious freedom principles applicable in all countries. Additionally, ICLRS and the Wheatley Institute at BYU co-host the Religious Freedom Annual Review, in which academic and government leaders from many faith traditions, as well as members of the public, gather to learn about religious freedom within the United States. Similarly, the Church acts with others in supporting the G20 Interfaith Forum, which brings together scholars, faith leaders, and government officials to ensure public policy appropriately supports religious freedom principles.

All these efforts, and many more, are intended to bless mankind. As Joseph Smith emphatically stated in 1843:

If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing to die for a ‘Mormon,’ I am bold to declare before Heaven that I am just as ready to die in defending the rights of a Presbyterian, a Baptist, or a good man of any denomination; for the same principle which would trample upon the rights of the Latter-day Saints would trample upon the rights of the Roman Catholics, or of any other denomination who may be unpopular and too weak to defend themselves. It is a love of liberty which inspires my soul—civil and religious liberty to the whole of the human race.

Invitation to Teach and Promote the Doctrine of Religious Freedom

The living prophets and apostles have abundantly taught us the doctrine of religious freedom, the rights needed to facilitate it, and the great blessings it bestows. President Oaks has invited us to learn this doctrine and promote its principles. Speaking to an audience at BYU–Idaho, he said:

I invite you to march with me as I speak about religious freedom under the United States Constitution. There is a battle over the meaning of that freedom. The contest is of eternal importance, and it is your generation that must understand the issues and make the efforts to prevail.

Fortunately, we have a unique capacity to promote religious freedom. Years ago, when I began working on religious freedom issues, I invited a former professor not of our faith to visit the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at BYU. After spending several hours learning about the Center’s work, he looked at me and said, to the best of my recollection, “What your church is doing to protect religious freedom is amazing. You must continue because your people are in the best position to carry forward the message of religious freedom to the world. Because of your history of religious persecution and because you sincerely advocate religious freedom for everyone, you speak from a position of tremendous credibility and authority.” His encouragement to me applies to all Latter-day Saints because we share a common heritage and responsibility to promote the doctrine of religious freedom.

As part of our country’s 250th anniversary celebration, I hope we all feel renewed motivation to learn and promote the doctrine of religious freedom as we heed the First Presidency’s invitation to unitedly fast and pray that religious freedom “be strengthened throughout the world.”

The post The Importance of Religious Freedom appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

God does not leave His children to navigate mortality without help.

This idea practically screams from the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

We are given commandments. We are given the gift of the Holy Ghost. We are given scripture. We are given prophets and covenants and ordinances. We are given bishops and other leaders. 

There are also the gifts of the Spirit. In particular helping with this task is the gift of discernment. Discernment can loom large in Latter-day Saint culture. 

Discernment is a gift that helps us perceive reality in the light of the Spirit. Jesus demonstrated it frequently when he was able to perceive the true thoughts of those he came in contact with. 

It helps those it is given to distinguish truth from error, sincerity from performance, wisdom from impulse, and spiritual influence from counterfeit. It is not simply a gift for detecting danger; it can help us minister better, helping us perceive burdens, possibilities, and hidden goodness. 

Spiritual Gifts Are for the Body of Christ

Doctrine and Covenants 46 places discernment within a broader theology of spiritual gifts. The Lord teaches that gifts come from God “for the benefit of the children of God.” It is listed broadly among the gifts that can be given.

The same section also specifically includes that this gift is given to bishops so the Saints are not misled by false claims of spiritual gifts. 

Discernment is not introduced as a private superpower. It is part of the Lord’s effort to bless, order, protect, and edify the Church.

Paul teaches a similar principle in 1 Corinthians 12. Spiritual gifts are distributed across the body of Christ. No single member possesses the whole body’s wisdom, and no single gift exhausts the Spirit’s work. That means discernment is best understood not as an isolated talent possessed by a few, but as one part of a larger divine economy in which God blesses His people through many members, many gifts, and many forms of inspired service.

Discernment is framed to be about service in building the kingdom of God. It is given so the body of Christ can be protected, guided, humbled, and healed.

Discernment Is Broader Than Detecting Evil

Elder David A. Bednar, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has offered one of the most helpful modern explanations of the gift. Drawing on earlier teachings, he describes discernment as operating in four major ways. 1) It can help us detect hidden error or evil in others. 2) More importantly, it can help us detect hidden error or evil in ourselves. 3) It can help us find concealed good in others. 4) And it can help us find concealed good in ourselves.

That four-part framework is crucial.

Many cultural conversations about discernment focus almost entirely on the first function: detecting what is wrong with someone else. But Elder Bednar’s description gives us a much richer and more Christian account.

Discernment may help a parent sense that a child’s anger is really fear. It may help a Relief Society president recognize that a sister’s distance is not indifference but exhaustion. It may help a bishop perceive that a confession needs less interrogation and more mercy. It may help a missionary see spiritual hunger beneath defensiveness. It may help a disciple recognize that his own “righteous concern” is actually pride.

The highest form of discernment may not be the ability to expose people. It may be the ability to see them truthfully enough to call forth their better selves.

That is a profoundly Christlike gift.

Christ saw hypocrisy, but He also saw faith. He saw sin, but He also saw repentance. He saw Peter’s denial, but He also saw Peter’s future. He saw Zacchaeus in a tree and called him into a transformed life. He saw the woman taken in adultery as a soul to be rescued.

Discernment, in this sense, is not merely suspicion sharpened by religion. It is perception purified by charity.

Discernment and Judgment

The classic biblical image of discernment may be Solomon’s prayer for “an understanding heart.” Solomon did not ask to become omniscient. He asked for wisdom to judge rightly between good and bad. Discernment is tied to judgment, humility, and stewardship.

The Church’s current Handbook uses similar language when speaking of bishops and stake presidents. It says that, in their role helping members repent, these leaders are blessed with the spiritual gift of discernment, which helps them “discern truth, understand a member’s heart, and identify his or her needs.”

That is a meaningful promise. Bishops and stake presidents are not merely administrators. They are called and set apart to serve as judges in Israel. In that role, they may receive spiritual help beyond their own natural insight.

A bishop who discerns well may be better able to answer the question “What does this child of God need to come closer to Christ?”

Discernment Can Grow

Discernment is a spiritual gift, but like most spiritual gifts, that does not mean it bypasses ordinary faithful effort.

Bednar connects discernment with being “quick to observe”—the capacity to notice and obey. In another teaching on revelation, he explains that some revelation comes suddenly, like light filling a dark room, while the more common pattern is gradual, like the slow increase of light at sunrise.

In my experience, that is often how discernment works in real life. 

Sometimes a bishop, parent, missionary, or friend may receive a sudden prompting. A question comes to mind. A name appears in prayer. A warning feeling interrupts an ordinary moment. These experiences of direct and sudden discernment are real, but are not universal or to be expected at every moment. 

Discernment often develops more quietly. It comes through listening over time. It comes through knowing the scriptures, asking better questions, noticing patterns, and learning from prior mistakes. For leaders, it can grow through studying the Handbook or honoring confidences.

A leader who listens carefully is not relying less on revelation than one who waits for an unexpected impression. A ward council that gathers information, counsels together, and prays over real people is not replacing revelation with process. It may be creating the conditions in which revelation, or spiritual discernment, can be recognized.

Discernment Belongs to Councils

One of the most important correctives to an overly narrow view of discernment is the doctrine of councils.

In a worldwide leadership training discussion, fellow apostle Elder M. Russell Ballard taught that no one person knows all the answers to every question and that councils allow leaders to draw on inspiration from various members. Bednar added that it is a mistaken notion that every element of ward revelation must come through the bishop. By virtue of his keys, the bishop directs and affirms, but he does not need to receive “every jot and tittle” of revelation himself. He also observed that discernment operates more effectively when a presiding officer listens rather than dominates.

The doctrine of discernment taught by these leaders is a mature and deeply grounded one. The gift of discernment works best when joined to humility, councils, and the gifts of others.

The Myth of the Magical Bishop

In some Latter-day Saint conversations, discernment has been imagined in a way that is much narrower, more automatic, and more dramatic than the scriptures require or even imply. This expectation shows up both among some believing members and among some critics of the Church.

The assumption goes like this: if bishops and other leaders have the gift of discernment, then they should be able to detect hidden sin, deception, danger, or unworthiness with perfect reliability. Under that assumption, every missed warning sign becomes evidence that the gift is not real.

There is an assumption that the only way for the Church to be true is for no bishop to ever miss anything. This is not a straw man. It is a recognizable criticism that proliferates in spaces where people have become disillusioned with the Church, perhaps in part because they expected something more like the magic of Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth or Professor X’s telepathy than the spiritual gifts of the New Testament. 

Similar questions arise in pastoral and abuse contexts. If God can provide discernment in some cases, why doesn’t he provide it every time it could help alleviate pain or prevent deception?

These concerns deserve empathy. They often come from pain. But they also reveal a misunderstanding of the gift.

A grounded Christian understanding of discernment does not require bishops to be miraculously perfect. It does not treat a calling as a guarantee of constant supernatural detection. It does not make revelation a substitute for confession, evidence, councils, law, policy, or the moral responsibility to speak and act.

The magical version says, “If God is involved, the bishop should just know.”

The Christian version says, “Because God is involved, the bishop should pray, listen, counsel, study, ask, follow the Handbook, protect the vulnerable, receive correction, and seek the Spirit.”

Those are very different models.

A Better Practice

A better doctrine of discernment leads to better practice.

For members, it means we should not outsource honesty to a leader’s supposed ability to detect truth. A person confessing sin should tell the truth because discipleship requires truthfulness, not because the bishop might catch him. A person who needs help should not assume, “If God wanted the bishop to know, he would know.” Sometimes the Spirit prompts a leader. Sometimes the Lord expects us to speak.

For bishops and stake presidents, it means spiritual impressions should be received humbly. The Handbook itself makes this clear. In matters involving serious sin, a bishop or stake president may receive promptings, but if a member denies an accusation, “a spiritual impression alone is not sufficient” to hold a membership council. Leaders are instructed to gather appropriate information and avoid unlawful or inappropriate methods.

That is not a lack of faith in discernment. It is disciplined faith in discernment. It is realizing that when you learned in third grade that multiplication makes numbers bigger, and then learned in fifth grade that you can multiply by fractions, no one was lying to you; the full reality is just more nuanced than you learned on the first pass. 

If there was an example where you wish the gift of discernment had been present, but it wasn’t, that does disprove a simplistic version of the gift of discernment, but it can help you move to a more mature, fuller understanding of how gifts of the Spirit work. 

Seeing as Christ Sees

The gift of discernment is one of the great gifts of the Spirit because discipleship requires more than eyesight.

We need to distinguish spiritual light from counterfeit light. We need to recognize our own self-deception. We need to see hidden goodness in people we are tempted to dismiss. We need to understand when correction is needed and when mercy is needed. We need to know when to speak, when to listen, when to wait, and when to act.

Bishops need that gift. So do parents. So do all of us. But we need discernment not because leaders are flawless, but because none of us are. Discernment is not merely the power to see what is wrong. It is the grace to see more nearly as Christ sees.

The post The Discipline of Spiritual Sight appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints find themselves in a most unusual position. We believe in God, the Eternal Father. We believe in Jesus Christ, accept his gospel, acknowledge him as Savior, Lord, God, and King. We look to him for forgiveness of our sins and declare that salvation comes in and through his name and in no other way (Philippians 2:9-11). We strive to live our lives according to his example and teachings and are committed to the fact that the depth of our Christianity is most evident, not in theological gymnastics, nor in a received vocabulary, but rather in the way we treat other men and women. We exercise hope in the immortality of the soul, a belief that we will live again after death, because Jesus himself rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). And yet, interestingly, many in Christendom declare that the Latter-day Saints are not Christian.

Reasons for Exclusion

Non-acceptance of the Doctrine of the Trinity

Perhaps more than any other reason, Latter-day Saints aren’t considered to be Christian because of our non-acceptance of the post-New Testament creeds and theological formulations concerning Christ and the Godhead, beginning with the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. Latter-day Saints do believe there are three members of the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; that each of the members of the Godhead possesses all of the attributes of Godliness in perfection; and that the love and unity that exist among these three Persons is of such magnitude that they constitute a divine community that is often referred to in the Book of Mormon as “one eternal God” (see 2 Nephi 31:21; Alma 11:44; 3 Nephi 11:27, 36; 28:10; Mormon 7:7). 

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland stated: 

We believe these three divine persons constituting a single Godhead are united in purpose, in manner, in testimony, in mission. We believe Them to be filled with the same godly sense of mercy and love, justice and grace, patience, forgiveness, and redemption. I think it is accurate to say we believe They are one in every significant and eternal aspect imaginable except believing Them to be three persons combined in one substance, a Trinitarian notion never set forth in the scriptures because it is not true …

It is not our purpose to demean any person’s belief,” Elder Holland affirmed, “nor the doctrine of any religion. We extend to all the same respect to their doctrine that we are asking for ours. (That, too, is an article of our faith.) But if one says we are not Christians because we do not hold a fourth- or fifth-century view of the Godhead, then what of those first Christian Saints, many of whom were eyewitnesses of the living Christ, who did not hold such a view either?

Were they not Christians?

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pray to God the Eternal Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost; we acknowledge the Father as the ultimate object of our worship (John 5:19, 26; 7:16; 14:28; D&C 20:19) and confess the Son of God as our Lord and Redeemer, our one and only hope for deliverance from sin and death in this world, as well as our glorious hope for  eternal life in the world to come. We teach of the Holy Spirit as the Messenger of the Father and the Son, the Revealer of the mind and will of God, and the Sanctifier, the means by which filth and dross are burned out of the human soul as though by fire. We are encouraged and charged by our leaders to seek the constant companionship of the Spirit, to attend to its promptings, to follow its lead.

We baptize people “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (3 Nephi 11:23-26; D&C 20:73-74). And, for that matter, the highest ordinance or sacrament within our Church, eternal marriage, received only in the temple, is performed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In short, the Latter-day Saints live and move and have their being by and through the members of the Godhead; ours is a lived rather than a spoken or creedal connection to these holy beings. 

Scripture Beyond the Bible

Another reason for the exclusion of Latter-day Saints from the category of Christian is because we do not believe in the sufficiency of the Bible. In point of fact, to state that the Bible is the final word of God—more specifically, the final written word of God—is to claim more for the Bible than it claims for itself. We are nowhere given to understand that after the ascension of Jesus and the ministry and writings of those first century apostles, that revelations from God that would eventually take the form of written scripture and thus be added to the canon, would cease. As Joseph Smith taught, one would need to have received a modern revelation in order to know for certain that there will be no more revelation beyond the Bible.

So why was the canon of scripture closed? Emeritus Professor Lee M. McDonald, an Evangelical Christian scholar, posed some fascinating questions relative to the present closed canon of scripture. “The first question,” he writes, “and the most important one, is whether the church was right in perceiving the need for a closed canon of scriptures.” McDonald also asks: 

Did such a move toward a closed canon of scriptures ultimately (and unconsciously) limit the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the church? More precisely, does the recognition of absoluteness of the biblical canon minimize the presence and activity of God in the church today? … On what biblical or historical grounds has the inspiration of God been limited to the written documents that the church now calls its Bible?

While McDonald poses other issues, let me refer to his final question: “If the Spirit inspired only the written documents of the first century, does that mean that the same Spirit does not speak today in the church about matters that are of significant concern?”

Indeed, we might ask: Who authorized the canon to be closed? Who decided that the Bible was and forevermore would be the final written word of God?  Why would one suppose that the closing words of the Apocalypse represented the “end of the prophets”? Latter-day Saints find themselves today in a hauntingly reminiscent position relative to the continuing and ongoing mind and will of God. Is ours not the same basic message that Jesus and Peter and Paul and John delivered to the unbelieving Jews of their day—that the heavens had once again been opened, that new light and knowledge had burst upon the earth, and that God had chosen to reveal himself through the ministry of his Beloved Son and his ordained apostles?

Let’s be clear on this matter: no branch of Christianity limits itself entirely to the biblical text in making doctrinal decisions and in applying biblical principles. Roman Catholics turn to scripture, to church tradition, and to the magisterium or teaching office in the church for answers. Protestants, particularly Evangelicals, turn to linguists and scripture scholars for their answers, as well as to post-New Testament church councils and creeds. This seems, at least in my view, to be in violation of Sola Scriptura, the clarion call of the Reformation to rely solely upon scripture itself. In fact, there is no final authority on scriptural interpretation when differences arise, which of course they do regularly.

 “When [traditional Christians] accuse Mormons of not believing the Bible,” Professor Stephen Robinson has written, “they usually mean that we do not believe interpretations formulated by postbiblical councils. If [traditional Christians] are going to insist on the doctrine of sola scriptura [scripture alone] … then they ought to stop ascribing scriptural authority to postbiblical traditions.”

Would the early Christians who had for decades had access only to the Gospel of Mark (considered by most Biblical scholars to be the first Gospel written) have considered the deeper spiritual realities set forth later in the Gospel of John to be a portrait of “a different Jesus”?  Hardly. Thus the current mantra of “Latter-day Saints worship a different Jesus” is a sad, misguided, and too often malicious misrepresentation of the way things really are. Latter-day Saints clearly worship the historical Jesus, the Christ of the New Testament—the man who was born in Bethlehem, lived and ministered during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, functioned under the oversight of Caiaphas (Jews) and Pilate (Romans), gave his life as a sacrificial offering to atone for the sins of humankind, and rose from the grave in glorious resurrected immortality. That there may be differences on certain points of theology is not unimportant, but it does not merit the misleading concept that Latter-day Saints somehow worship a “different Jesus.” Supplementation of the Bible is clearly not the same as contradiction of the Bible.

One wonders whether modern conservative Christianity may unwittingly have created a type of double standard in terms of (a) what is required to be saved, and (b) what it takes to be a Christian. 

In the New Testament and at the time of Paul’s and Silas’s miraculous release from prison, the Philippian jailer asked the question of questions: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And [the apostles] said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Paul wrote to the Roman Saints that “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation … For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 

Could it be, then, that a Latter-day Saint who professes total faith in and reliance upon Jesus Christ and who seeks in gratitude to keep his commandments, can be saved but at the same time not qualify to be called a Christian? That seems strange at best.

What Kind of a Christian?

Sadly enough, the one feature and facet of Christianity with which too few seem to concern themselves is what might be called orthopraxy—how we act, how we live out our Christian faith. Jesus charged his disciples: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” In assessing whether a man or woman is a true follower of the Savior, a Christian, we might ask: How does this person treat others, especially those who believe or act differently? Is the manner in which a person presents the gospel message such that the gospel may be perceived as “good news”?

Is this person’s speech and interpersonal relations such that people feel welcomed and appreciated, rather than spurned and rejected? To what extent does this person’s faith community feed the hungry, care for the poor, respond swiftly to natural disaster, or otherwise involve itself and its members in extending and disbursing Christian charity? This is how the first century saints were known and identified, and it is today a pretty persuasive evidence of the depth of one’s Christianity. The age-old question is still poignant and haunting: “If you were arrested and were to be tried for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

The fact is, no mortal man or woman is in a position to judge, to discern and perceive the depths of another human soul. No one of us has within his or her grasp the data, the delicate details, to so determine. C. S. Lewis, the beloved Christian writer and defender of the faith, a man whose focus on “mere Christianity” has made him a favorite of millions, declared: “It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and indeed are forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense … When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.” 

What Exactly is a Christian?

A Christian is one who is a follower of Jesus. No one of us has the power or right to look into the hearts of men and women and discern the reality of their Christianity or the depths of their commitment to the Son of God. Faith is a personal matter and is really between that person and God. What then are some standard definitions of a Christian, put forward by more traditional Christians?

From the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary: “A believer in the religion of Christ; professor of his belief in the religion of Christ; one who … studies to follow the example, and obey the precepts, of Christ.”

From The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: “A member of a particular sect using this name”; a civilized human being; a decent, respectable person.”

From the Harper’s Bible Dictionary: “Christian’ is the term that was increasingly applied to Jesus’s followers in the late first and early second centuries.”

From the Holman Bible Dictionary: “an adherent of Christ; one committed to Christ; a follower of Christ.”

In the Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms: “a name applied originally in Antioch to followers of Jesus Christ (Acts 11:26) and now used to designate those who believe in Jesus Christ and seek to live in the ways he taught.”

From The Amsterdam Declaration (2000): “The word Christian should not be equated with any particular cultural, ethnic, political, or ideological tradition or group. Those who know and love Jesus are also called Christ-followers, believers and disciples.”

Some friends of other faiths have suggested to me that it appears that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is seeking to move into “the mainstream of Christianity.” To be sure, Latter-day Saint leaders have encouraged members of the Church to get to know their neighbors better; to be more involved in community, civic, and political affairs; to show greater love, acceptance, and tolerance for those of other faiths; and, in general, help the world to better understand us. In addition, our Church is seeking to be better understood, to teach our doctrine in a manner that would (a) allow others to see clearly where we stand on important issues, and (b) eliminate misperceptions and avoid misrepresentations.

To be honest, it would be foolish for Latter-day Saints to stray from their moorings and seek to blend in with everyone else in the Christian world. People are joining our Church in ever-increasing numbers, not because we are just like the Roman Catholics or the Greek Orthodox or the Baptists or the Methodists or the Presbyterians or the Anglicans down the street. These people choose to leave their former faith and be baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because of our distinctives; our strength lies in our distinctive teachings and lifestyle. In that spirit, President Gordon B. Hinckley said:

 Those who observe us say that we are moving into the mainstream of religion. We are not changing. The world’s perception of us is changing. We teach the same doctrine. We have the same organization. We labor to perform the same good works … They are coming to realize what we stand for and what we do.

Joseph Smith once observed: 

If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

 There is too much at stake in the world today for God-fearing people to spend their time and energies attacking, belittling, or misrepresenting those who choose to believe differently. Jesus certainly called us all to a higher standard than that. What was his plea in prayer for his followers only hours before his sufferings and death? “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”  

The post Latter-day Saints and the Christian World appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

Dear Mayor Hubbard,

We write to you not as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor on behalf of it, but as members of that church scattered across the country who have watched the Fairview temple controversy with growing concern. We know municipal leadership is hard. We know neighbors can disagree in good faith. We have often worked with our neighbors to get temples approved in our communities. We know growth can bring friction, and that public officials often inherit tensions they did not create. We also know that the language leaders use can either heal a community or quietly inflame it.

That is why your renewed request that the Church voluntarily lower the Fairview Texas Temple steeple deserves a candid response, not from the Church, but from its people. The town approved a 120-foot steeple more than a year ago; construction is now underway; and your latest appeal asks the Church to reopen what had already been mediated, compromised, approved, and begun.

The Church could have made this a courtroom fight from the beginning. It could have pressed for the original plan, with a steeple reported at roughly 174 feet—nearly 50% taller than the design now approved. Instead, after mediation, it reduced the project to the 120-foot steeple now under construction. The Church also accepted a slew of other concessions as part of a “neighborly” agreement. The concessions were not trivial. They were attempts to recognize your priorities and work with you. 

So when, after all that, you suggest that the “neighborly” thing would be still another reduction, many of us hear something more troubling than a plea for harmony. We hear a public official redefining neighborliness as surrender. We hear an approved agreement treated as merely the latest opening bid. We hear a handshake being turned into a pressure campaign.

That is not a compromise. It is a way of poisoning the well. It says to the public: if the Church builds what your town approved, then the Church has chosen legalism over love, rights over respect, height over harmony. But the Church already compromised. Fairview already approved. Construction already began. At some point, “please compromise” stops sounding like reconciliation and starts sounding like bad faith.

Nor is it serious to argue that because the Church has built smaller temples or steeples elsewhere, it must therefore build this temple smaller too. A smaller building in one city is not a perpetual promise never to build a larger one. Fairview’s own records show that religious-facility heights have historically been handled case by case, including approval of a 154-foot bell tower for Creekwood United Methodist Church. We noticed that distinct treatment. 

We understand that change is hard. Fairview sits in a region that is changing quickly. The Census Bureau reports that Dallas-Fort Worth grew 11% since 2020, with especially significant growth on the metro’s outer edges. Four of the country’s five fastest-growing cities are small cities in the DFW area. Latter-day Saints are part of that growth, too. The Church has tens of thousands of members in North Texas, and we need temples to serve them. Perhaps the character of Fairview that needs to be preserved is how you treat everyone in your city. Perhaps treating your neighbors of different faiths like they belong is the character that should be preserved. We’re not intruders. We’re neighbors. 

You can still be the neighborly one here. You can say, “We disagreed. We debated. We mediated. We both gave a little. We approved. And now we will honor what was approved.” That’s the neighborly thing to do. And mayor, if you don’t stop this passive-aggressive campaign, perhaps it’s you who’s chosen not to be neighborly. 

The Church is building the temple Fairview approved. It is not unneighborly for us to ask you to honor that.

Respectfully,

C.D. Cunningham

The post An Open Letter to the Mayor of Fairview, Texas appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

But today it has taken on a more bureaucratic feel. The old “UFO” has become the “UAP,” an unidentified anomalous phenomenon. The phrase feels less theatrical, but the fascination is the same. Americans still want to know whether the strange lights in the sky are drones, balloons, sensor errors, secret aircraft, or something stranger.

But while these conversations have historically been sidelined as conspiracy theories that serious people don’t engage in, that has changed. Former President Barack Obama recently made headlines for saying he believes aliens are real. Congress held public hearings on UAPs, including a 2024 hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” followed by continued congressional requests for records and video files in 2026. NASA convened an independent UAP study team and concluded that the subject deserves a rigorous, evidence-based scientific approach. Since 2010, up to 70 planets have been discovered that are in the “habitable zones” of their star systems. The 2025 documentary “The Age of Disclosure” included interviews from military pilots, Department of Defense officials, Congressional Representatives and Senators, a Former Director of National Intelligence, and the Secretary of State. And the Pentagon began its release of UFO files. 

The sudden official sheen to this conversation has intensified the cultural imagination. While there have been no likely or definitive conclusions that extra-terrestrials have visited Earth, the question is being taken seriously in a way it never has before.

Aliens and Religion

A 2021 Pew survey found that just over half of Americans said military reports of UFOs were probably or definitely evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. Religious Americans were somewhat less likely than the unaffiliated to say intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. 

For many, the religious question is obvious: What would happen to faith if we discovered we are not alone?

At the same time, the most careful surveys complicate the popular assumption that religion would collapse under the weight of alien life. Ted Peters’ “ETI Religious Crisis Survey” tested the idea that contact with extraterrestrial intelligence would produce a religious crisis, and found that most religious respondents did not expect their own tradition to collapse. Interestingly, religious people were often less worried about their own faith than secular respondents were about religion in general. In other words, the people most confident that aliens would destroy religion were often people outside religion looking in.

But if intelligent life exists elsewhere, how could aliens and religion fit together? How would faith survive this change to our paradigm of life and creation?

I want to explore that question within the context of my own tradition, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In my view, Latter-day Saints are unusually well-suited to think about the possibility of alien life. That does not mean we should credulously accept every sensational claim or canonize every blurry Pentagon video. Our faith does not depend on crashed saucers, whistleblower testimony, or the latest congressional hearing. But, if extraterrestrial life were discovered—microbial, animal, or intelligent—it would not require Latter-day Saints to rebuild their theology from the foundation up. In many ways, the foundation is already there.

Latter-day Saint scripture has never pictured creation as a small, sealed human stage with Earth alone under the eye of God. It teaches “worlds without number,” heavenly parents, faraway stars, and an infinite atonement. The Restoration certainly did not shrink the Christian cosmos. 

A Cosmos That is Already Full

The first reason Latter-day Saints need not panic over the possibility of extraterrestrial life is simple: our scriptures already teach that God’s creations extend far beyond this earth.

In the Book of Moses, Moses is shown a vision of the earth and its inhabitants and then learns that God has created “worlds without number” through the Only Begotten. The scripture does not explicitly state, but heavily implies, that many of these worlds were inhabited by children of God (and the chapter summary states that). It implies that these many worlds are part of God’s plan to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of His children.

Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) section 76 is even more direct. In Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon’s vision of the degrees of glory, they testify that by Jesus Christ “the worlds are and were created,” and that “the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” This is the most direct reference in Latter-day Saint scripture to inhabitants of multiple worlds. It does not merely say that God made stars, planets, or matter. He made inhabitants. And it places those inhabitants in a familial relationship to God. D&C 93 similarly teaches that worlds were made by Christ. 

D&C 88 describes that Christ is the light that is the sun, moon, stars, and earth, and the light that “fills the immensity of space.” Scripture then teaches that God created other worlds, they have inhabitants, those inhabitants are children of God, and it is Christ’s light that is on all of them.

It doesn’t say what our relationship is or will be with those inhabitants of other worlds. 

Modern Church leaders have repeatedly returned to this theme. Late Church President Russell M. Nelson taught that the earth is only one of many creations over which God presides, and he cautioned that our knowledge of the Creation is limited and will be augmented in the future. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has used the vastness of the universe to emphasize not human insignificance, but divine love; the God who created worlds without number still knows and values His children.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who also served in the Quorum of the Twelve, made the same point. He taught that the Restoration explicitly affirms a plurality of worlds and that God’s universal majesty does not make Him less personally involved in our individual lives. He said, “How many planets are there with people on them? We don’t know. There appears to be none in our own solar system, but we are not alone in the universe. … God is not the God of only one planet!”

These scriptural statements, and the interpretation from Church leaders, establish a basic theological posture. Latter-day Saints do not approach the universe assuming that human beings on Earth are the only rational creatures God has ever loved.

Creation is Not Random 

Latter-day Saint theology does not treat these worlds as mere divine trophies. The God of Moses creating these many worlds does not do so merely to display his power. He creates because He is a Father. This is the center of Moses 1. The scale of creation makes divine parenthood feel inexhaustible.

This is crucial for thinking about alien life. If there are living organisms elsewhere, they are not theological clutter. They are part of creation. If there are intelligent, morally accountable beings elsewhere, they are not an embarrassment to Christian doctrine. They would be evidence that God’s family is as large as we imagined.

Abraham 3 gives Latter-day Saints a distinctive vocabulary for this question. It speaks of intelligences, of differing degrees of intelligence, and of God as greater than them all. Whatever else this passage means, it resists the idea that human life is a late accidental spark in a meaningless universe. Intelligence, agency, hierarchy, progression, and divine governance are built into reality. 

But none of these possibilities would make God smaller. 

Are They Children of God?

The hard theological question is not whether extraterrestrial life could exist. In Latter-day Saint thought, it clearly can. The harder question is what kind of life it would be. 

Latter-day Saint theology distinguishes between different forms of life. Plants, animals, mortals, and resurrected beings do not occupy the same moral or salvific category. So if life exists elsewhere, the first theological question would not be “Are they aliens?” It would be, “Are they God’s spirit children?”

D&C 76 provides the strongest reason to believe that at least some inhabitants of other worlds are indeed sons and daughters of God. President Joseph Fielding Smith, a former prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ, similarly taught that the Father, through His Only Begotten, created worlds without number and that these worlds are peopled by His spirit children. 

That does not require us to assume that every organism in the cosmos is spiritually equivalent to human beings, but it implies we should be open to the idea that some are. It also doesn’t answer whether other worlds are populated now, were populated in the past, or will be populated in the future. But it does mean that Latter-day Saints already have a category for non-earthly persons who belong to the family of God. 

This is where Latter-day Saint theology differs from a thin human exceptionalism. We do believe human beings are made in the image of God. We do believe this earth has sacred significance. We do believe Jesus Christ was born, died, and rose here. But we do not believe God’s love is provincial. The fact that He is our Father does not prevent Him from being Fathers to others. 

As anyone who is not an only child knows, a sibling does not reduce the love you receive from a parent. 

One Savior, Many Sheep

One of the more difficult questions about extra-terrestrials and traditional Christianity has often been the Incarnation. If Christ was born on this Earth, does that make Earth cosmically unique? Would He need to be incarnate, suffer, die, and rise again on every inhabited world? Are there multiple falls, multiple redemptions, multiple atonements? 

Latter-day Saint leaders have generally answered by affirming both the local reality of Christ’s mortal ministry and the cosmic scope of His redeeming work. 

Nelson taught that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is infinite, not merely in duration, but in scope, extending to all humankind and to the infinite number of worlds created by Him. This gives Latter-day Saints a powerful doctrinal framework. We do not need to imagine a weak, local Christ whose saving power stops at the atmosphere. Nor do we need to multiply incarnations beyond what has been revealed. We can affirm what scripture and prophetic teaching affirm: Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten of the Father in the flesh, the Creator of worlds, the Redeemer, and the Lord of the universe.

That does not resolve every mechanics-of-salvation question. But questions remain even without the addition of extraterrestrial life. If intelligent beings on other worlds fall, how is Christ revealed to them? What ordinances do they receive? Do they have prophets? Do they have scriptures? We don’t know.

The Book of Mormon prepares Latter-day Saints for the idea that God’s dealings with one people are never the whole story.

In 3 Nephi, Jesus tells the Nephites that He has “other sheep” who are not of Jerusalem and not of the Nephite land, and that He must go show Himself to them. I’m not suggesting Jesus was implying he was visiting other worlds, but underlining the idea that there are always more children of God for Christ to minister to. 

Christ’s self-disclosure is not limited to the records we presently possess. There are divine visits not recorded in our canon. Latter-day Saints have an open canon. If God has had dealings with other worlds, that would not offend the structure of our faith. 

Do we know? No, but not being told is not the same as being trapped. Latter-day Saints are comfortable with revealed patterns and unrevealed details. We know enough.

What If They Are More Righteous Than We Are?

Latter-day Saints should be cautious about imagining ourselves as cosmic tourists or missionaries. We have been given commandments, covenants, priesthood keys, and missionary obligations for this world. We do not possess a revealed commission to carry ordinances to hypothetical civilizations in another solar system. If God has children elsewhere, He is capable of revealing Himself to them, calling prophets among them, appointing ordinances suited to His law, and gathering them in His own order.

The aliens say that they love Jesus, and that He comes to visit every few years.

The pope is shocked. “Every few years, but He hasn’t even come a second time yet?”

The aliens feel bad, and try to help, “Maybe He doesn’t like your chocolate.”

The pope confused asks, “Chocolate? What does chocolate have to do with anything?”

“Well,” the aliens explain, “every time he comes we give him a big basket of chocolate. Why, what did you give to Him?”

Jokes aside, another possibility is exactly what the joke posits, that intelligent extraterrestrial beings do exist, and they are not invaders or monsters or lost pagans waiting for us to teach them about God. They might be more obedient, unified, humble or righteous than we are. 

Again, Latter-day Saint scripture leaves room for such a possibility. Abraham 3 teaches that intelligence differ and that God is greater than them all. This should help discipline our imaginations. Much of our alien fiction is really human self-projection. Sometimes aliens are our fears, sometimes our aspirations. Latter-day Saint theology gives as a less sentimental and more serious possibility. Other beings could simply be God’s children. Some wicked, some innocent, some righteous. 

What if There is No Alien Life?

A sound theology must also account for the other possibility: that we may never discover intelligent extraterrestrial life. The current evidence certainly does not prove alien existence, let alone alien visitation. Serious Latter-day Saint thinking should not build spiritual excitement around speculation that may collapse under scrutiny.

If no alien civilization is ever found, however, Latter-day Saint theology remains untouched. “Worlds without number” does not need to mean that human scientists in 2026 can identify, contact, or verify those worlds. God’s creations may be distant in space, separated by time, hidden by limits of observation, or simply beyond our stewardship. 

This helps protect us from two opposite errors. If the skeptic says, “If aliens exist, religion is false,” and enthusiasts say “If UAPs are real, my religion is confirmed,” Latter-day Saints should reject both. Our faith is grounded in Jesus Christ, his covenants, and the witness of the Holy Ghost—not in the newest unidentified object.  

The Restoration gives us a capacious cosmos, but it does not require gullibility. 

A Theology Big Enough for Discovery

So where does that leave us?

No matter what we discover, or don’t discover, the theological center holds. The Latter-day Saint doctrine of creation is already cosmic. The doctrine of God is already parental. The atonement of Christ is already infinite. And our understanding of revelation is already open. 

Not every speculation has, or even needs, an answer. We do not know whether any UAP represents extraterrestrial intelligence. We do not know what they look like, we do not know what their history is, or what their relationship is like to Christ. 

But we know enough that we do not need to fear that a discovery of aliens will upend our theology or understanding of the cosmos. We already know our Earth is small, but important eternally.

The discovery of alien life would not make the gospel any less true. It might just remind us that God’s household is larger than we suppose. That wouldn’t upend our beliefs. In fact, it sounds quite familiar. 

The post Aliens and Latter-day Saint Theology appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

They talk as though “Mormonism” were an ethnicity. As though there were something in the blood. As though having the right grandparents, the right zip code, the right memories of casseroles and church basketball and trek and EFY and green Jell-O and dirty sodas and ward culture means you retain some inherited authority to define what the Church is, what it should preserve, and what it owes the world.

The Church of Jesus Christ is not an aesthetic, it’s not an ethnicity, it’s not a regional brand, it’s not even a culture. It is a church.

It has doctrine, commandments, ordinances, priesthood keys, and covenants. It has admission requirements, and it has boundaries.

“Mormon” Isn’t a Culture

Beginning in the early- to mid-2010s, there was a tendency among online Latter-day Saint malcontents to claim they had a special say over what happened in the Church by listing their Latter-day Saint bona fides before they launched into whatever complaint they had.

It started to become an embarrassing cliche, but these critics would usually talk about callings in which they served, people they knew, and their heritage in the Church, as though this gave them some special authority to critique.

Perhaps the most groan-worthy example of this was when The Washington Post described James Huntsman, who at that point was no longer a member of The Church of Jesus Christ, as “Mormon royalty” because of who his family was. 

At the time, these complaints were usually focused on tensions between the critics’ progressive American beliefs and the positions of a worldwide church. And the attitude was imported from Reddit, a social media site that is designed to encourage groupthink, and condescension against those outside its own orthodoxy. 

At the same time, a trend began of conceptualizing a Latter-day Saint culture that was severable from the doctrine and practice of the Church, led by many of the mommy bloggers and eventual influencers. They showed their lives online, but often with the religious portions omitted or left on the edges to make the lifestyle content more broadly accessible. 

Increasingly, those who were in the space, but not faithful Latter-day Saints themselves, would use the word “Mormon” to describe themselves, their spaces, or their movement. In fact, on Reddit, they called the “subreddit” dedicated to criticizing The Church of Jesus Christ and its members “r/mormon.” 

This trend has continued as the Church’s actual membership increasingly lives outside Utah and the United States, among people who would be quite confused by carrots in Jell-O.

Why Would They Still Want the Name?

I understand why so many people want to associate themselves with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the “Mormon” name. 

For the purposes of marketing, “Mormon” clearly interests people. Latter-day Saints have incredible reputations worldwide. I can understand why those who don’t choose to support The Church of Jesus Christ or live by its covenants and doctrines still want to participate in the sense of community and identity it provided. I would also love it if I could keep getting paychecks from my employer without doing any of the work. 

But just because their desire to stay associated with the Church makes sense doesn’t mean that reasonable people need to abide by it. 

John Dehlin, for example, criticized the Church with false information for so long and so consistently that he was excommunicated over a decade ago. His podcast, “Mormon Stories,” is not about “Mormon stories,” nor has it been for a very long time. The podcast is, by all rights, about “Ex-Mormon Stories” or “Anti-Mormon Stories.”

So when he recently described himself in a podcast as “Mormon,” it makes sense, it’s just not true, not in any meaningful way. 

And we would do well to look at such claims the same way Europeans do when Americans claim European identity—with cringe. 

“You’re not Irish. Maybe your great grandparents were Irish, but then they left, and you’ve been in America for a very long time.” 

Names have incredible power, which is why they are protected under trademark law. I understand faith transitions can be difficult, and they implicate identity in difficult ways. But if you apostasize from your faith, you don’t get to keep claiming it. Or at least people should ignore you when you try to. 

The process of leaving a faith fundamentally changes the way you think about it, the way you talk about it, and the way you remember it. This is why the Washington Post’s reporting on James Huntsman was so harmful. If he were in fact a “Mormon” who chose to sue the Church, that would communicate something very different about what was happening than the fact that he was an ex-Mormon and chose to sue the Church. 

And that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of his point. But for someone on the inside to make certain kinds of claims is just different than when someone on the outside does the same. People understand this instinctively. 

So when someone uses “Mormon” to describe themselves or their community after they’ve actually left, they are trying to appropriate credibility they haven’t earned. 

I understand that many people desire to discuss their experience growing up within The Church of Jesus Christ even if they’ve left the Church. There is a simple, easy-to-understand way to describe this: “Ex-Latter-day Saint” or “Ex-Mormon.”

Didn’t You Give Up on the Name “Mormon”?

Let’s talk about the word “Mormon” for a minute. Latter-day Saints no longer choose to describe themselves this way. We choose to find every opportunity we can to refer to Jesus Christ and our membership in His Church. 

Some have attempted to argue that because Latter-day Saints no longer use the description “Mormon” for themselves, it is free for others to use. 

It’s not. 

Kentucky Fried Chicken has recently decided to no longer use that name for its restaurants; it is now called just KFC. 

When The Church of Jesus Christ announced a reprioritization of its name, there were several simple short plugins for existing nomenclature. For example:

• “Mormons” could be replaced with “Latter-day Saints”
• “Mormon Church” could be replaced with “The Church of Jesus Christ”
• “Mormon Tabernacle Choir” could be replaced with the “Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square”

But there was one common phrase that did not have an easy replacement: “Mormonism.” And as a writer who has had to deal with this limitation, the more I’ve worked through it, the more obvious it has become to me that this was not an oversight. 

In today’s Church, there is no single “Mormonism”; there are hundreds of cultures around the world as people live the gospel in their own countries and settings.

That thing we call “Mormonism” doesn’t actually do a good job of explaining the culture of all the people who believe in The Book of Mormon. There are lots of smaller cultures within it, and being left without an obvious word I’ve had to think more carefully about what I actually mean. Do I mean Word of Wisdom culture, or do I simply mean Utah culture. 

There is a culture, and it’s probably the culture you think of when I say “Mormonism,” but it is increasingly niche, and we need to find ways to describe it that do not implicate nearly 18 million people worldwide. It is a contemporary Utah-descended lifestyle culture that is downstream from an older pioneer world. It’s an evolved pioneer culture. It could be called “Utah culture” or “Intermountain West culture.” But it’s not “Mormon” culture, it’s not the culture of The Church of Jesus Christ, it’s one of many cultures within a worldwide gathering.

There’s nothing wrong with this evolved pioneer culture. I love funeral potatoes. But to suggest that Taylor Frankie Paul, the star of “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” is part of “Mormonism” because she drinks dirty sodas, even after she chose to leave, is offensive. 

So I, for one, greeted the news that The Church of Jesus Christ was suing “Mormon Stories” for trademark infringement with gratitude. 

Why Do You Care Who Calls Themselves “Mormon”?

I should be clear: the Church isn’t suing John Dehlin simply because he’s using the word “Mormon” to describe his podcast. The Church is suing him because he uses the word in conjunction with visual imagery specifically to trick people into listening to his podcast, and he refuses to include a disclaimer. 

The fact that most people will quickly be able to tell, after clicking on his podcast, that he is a malcontent doesn’t change the underlying lie. I still couldn’t start a restaurant called “Kentucky Fried Chicken” even if it sold hamburgers to prevent confusion. Trading on that company’s identity to get people in the front door is a problem in itself.

But just because The Church of Jesus Christ is not going after Dehlin solely for using the word “Mormon” doesn’t mean that people of good faith shouldn’t.

This is especially important because it causes incredulous media to turn to these folks as experts on The Church of Jesus Christ, and it can impact members and investigators who are not frequently online. 

Mormon may not be the name we call ourselves, but it is still an important part of who we are. The nickname comes from a record of Jesus Christ visiting people on another continent. That matters to us. Imagine an ex-Muslim starting a podcast about “Quran Stories” and saying that this isn’t a problem because they don’t call themselves “Qurans,” they call themselves “Muslims.”

But that’s not what has happened. Those who have left the faith have not joined these other churches in good faith to continue describing themselves as “Mormon.” This also isn’t about well-meaning Latter-day Saints who may be struggling with a testimony or with standards but who still see themselves as within the community. This is about those who leave, and who, in many cases, are actively seeking to tear down the work done by people who actually love The Book of Mormon, continuing to use the word because it helps them generate more web traffic than an honest name would. 

The Subtle Racism of “Cultural Mormonism”

For a church community that is increasingly populated and run by people from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the idea that people get special say over what happens within the community because of who their grandparents were brings up unfortunate racial problems.

You gain membership through baptism, and you maintain that membership through covenant keeping. 

If you don’t do those two things, then you don’t have a seat at the table; you’ve decided to leave the table. That spot is for new converts learning to leave their own culture for the gospel way, who are trying every day to live in faith and honesty. Trying to freeze Mormon identity to a past time based on what our ancestors were doing dismisses the real work of those all over the world who don’t have that background, but who are doing the work. 

It is their voices that need to be heard, not the person whose grandfather worked with a Romney, or who was a district leader on a foreign language-speaking mission, or who served as second counselor in a bishopric but then decided to leave because the Church’s position on some social issue just wasn’t popular enough for him and his Instagram followers. That person isn’t “Mormon Royalty,” that person isn’t “Culturally Mormon,” that person doesn’t have “Mormon stories,” that person isn’t Mormon. He left. And I wish him the best. But we’re busy trying to build Zion, and you can’t steal our name to help tear it down. 

The post Who is a Mormon? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

I still remember pulling out the VHS of “God’s Army” in my parents’ living room. As a socially anxious high school sophomore, this was, in many ways, the first time I felt seen. These were my people, my quirks, my culture, packaged the same way as “The Prince of Egypt” or “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”

By my senior year, with the release of “The Singles Ward,” it was clear that not only could we portray ourselves, but we could laugh at ourselves, too. 

For many in my generation, the idea of “Latter-day Saint cinema” still calls up that very specific world: missionaries with comic timing, ward basketball, Utah County social codes, and the peculiar thrill of hearing one’s own subculture reflected back from a movie screen. That world was real. It mattered. It was commercially surprising while it lasted. And then, almost as suddenly as it arrived, it seemed to disappear. 

The feeling many people carry is not just that those movies ended, but that Latter-day Saint filmmaking itself somehow went quiet. 

But the story is much more varied and interesting than that. In many ways those early aughts productions set the stage for a burgeoning Latter-day Saint cinema today, best embodied by the new release “The Angel,” which may be bigger and more interesting than anything we’ve seen before. 

The Beginnings

Latter-day Saint cinema developed in fragments for nearly a century. Film was first used to disparage the faith. Movies like “A Trip to Salt Lake City” satirized the faith, while “A Victim of the Mormons” was more straightforward propaganda. 

In response, the Utah Moving Picture Company produced the film “One Hundred Years of Mormonism” in 1913. It was a monumental feature for its time and was shown for several years. In 1915, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints funded the film “The Life of Nephi,” though its projected sequels never materialized. 

By midcentury, institutions like the BYU Motion Picture Studio trained talent and produced hundreds of films for the Church’s use, while later decades expanded that world through visitors’ center films, pageant-style historical productions, television, and VHS. 

By the 1980s and 1990s, Latter-day Saints were not only appearing in and making mainstream entertainment, but were also building the technical skills, professional networks, and imaginative confidence that would make independent feature filmmaking possible. 

So while the modern story begins when “God’s Army” appeared in 2000, it did not come out of nowhere. It was a breakthrough—but it was a breakthrough built on generations. 

Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army” opened in March 2000 and proved that a movie made by a Latter-day Saint about recognizable Latter-day Saint life, and marketed primarily to Latter-day Saint viewers, could actually make money. It proved there was a profitable niche market and marked the beginning of a period in which filmmakers began to portray the tradition from the inside.

Sadly, a storyline in Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army 2” prompted a public feud between Dutcher and HaleStorm’s Kurt Hale, prompting the father of this period of Latter-day Saint cinema to leave the Church within a few years.

Novelty also proved not to be a permanent business model. By the middle of the decade, even people inside the movement were saying so out loud. In 2006, as “Church Ball” was being released, Hale was already describing a diminishing box office, an oversaturated market, and an audience that seemed tired of the cycle. He even suggested that “Church Ball” might be the last comedy of its kind and said the company was looking beyond the narrow niche toward a broader family audience. With uncertain returns, investors dried up, and audience interest began to evaporate. 

The old wave did not end because Latter-day Saints lost interest in seeing themselves onscreen. But eventually the movies had to offer something besides familiarity. In a 2014 reflection on the earlier boom, Jim Bennet said the “hunger” was still there but the novelty had worn off, and that now the movie had to actually be good. 

There was also a broader industrial change working against niche cinema. The old independent-film economy had long relied on the possibility that a modest theatrical run could be followed by meaningful life on DVD, where niche audiences often compensated for limited box-office reach. As DVD revenue collapsed in the late 2000s, that safety net deteriorated across the industry. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2009 that DVD sales, once a critical profit cushion for many films, had fallen sharply. 

The small, regionally concentrated Latter-day Saint film industry was especially vulnerable to that shift. Purchasing a DVD for the whole family to watch over and over again was a very different kind of investment than taking everyone out to the theater. And most of the Latter-day Saint film market was not in areas concentrated enough for theatrical runs. A market already strained by repetition suddenly lost one of the economic mechanisms that had made repetition survivable.

So yes, something ended. But what ended was a particular format: the local theatrical Latter-day Saint niche comedy and indie machine, dependent on insider recognition and modest expectations. 

The Middle

What followed has been harder to name because it is not one thing. There is no single banner under which all contemporary Latter-day Saint filmmaking began to march.

Once the first wave of niche comedies and insider-culture films began to lose steam, Latter-day Saint filmmaking stopped looking like a single movement and started breaking into distinct lanes. When that broader economic model weakened, the old “modest theatrical run, then long tail on home video” pattern became much harder to sustain. At the same time, scholars were already observing that filmmakers were experimenting with very different business models: some built their own mini-studios, some went straight to DVD or online sales, and some chased genuine crossover distribution. In other words, the industry did not die. It fragmented.

One of those fragments was the historical-devotional lane, and no figure matters more here than T.C. Christensen. If the HaleStorm comedies captured Mormon culture as social recognition, Christensen kept alive a very different idea of what Latter-day Saint cinema could be: memory, sacrifice, pioneer endurance, conversion, rescue. In the 2010s especially, films like “17 Miracles” and “Ephraim’s Rescue” showed that there was still a substantial audience for explicitly Latter-day Saint stories told with seriousness and reverence rather than irony. Christensen was not merely preserving an older form. He was proving that sincerity could still draw viewers, and that overtly Mormon material did not have to disappear simply because the joke-driven boom had cooled.

His 2025 release “Raising the Bar: The Alma Richards Story” demonstrates that the line of continuity is still alive. Every artistic ecosystem needs not only innovators but custodians: people who keep faith with inherited stories long enough for a later generation to rediscover their value under new conditions. Christensen has done that work. He has kept a flame alive that flashier players sometimes overlook.

A second fragment moved in almost the opposite direction. These films had unmistakable Latter-day Saint DNA, but were no longer primarily selling themselves as “Mormon movies.” This trend began with HaleStorm’s attempt at “Pride and Prejudice.” But while that thread didn’t stick in comedy, Ryan Little’s “Saints and Soldiers” created the look and style of film that did. Made on a reported $780,000 budget, it grossed about $1.31 million domestically, and the Los Angeles Times noted that while initiated viewers would catch its Latter-day Saint origins, those elements were never overt and the film could be easily appreciated by people with no particular background with the faith. The movie was not asking audiences to care because of its religion. It was asking them to care because it was a solid war drama that happened to be shaped by Latter-day Saint moral sensibilities.

That lane became even clearer in the 2010s with Garrett Batty’s work. “The Saratov Approach” grossed about $2.15 million domestically. Batty followed it with “Freetown,” a Liberian civil-war thriller based on the experience of Latter-day Saint missionaries (an artistic improvement in my estimation), but it did not recover its investment. 

Batty explicitly said he hoped “Freetown,” like “Saratov,” would appeal beyond Latter-day Saint audiences. These films still drew from Latter-day Saint experience, missionary life, faith under pressure, providence in danger, but they were being framed as thrillers, war stories, and survival dramas rather than as niche cultural products. That is one of the most important developments in the whole middle period: Latter-day Saint filmmakers were learning how to let their faith shape the story without requiring the audience to share all the background knowledge in advance.

But the market did not support that vision. While DVD sales had begun to sink, streaming had not yet started to acquire independent films. That meant the primary place for these films to find an audience was in theaters, and it was largely in Utah where there was enough audience to support them. 

There was a third fragment too, less visible to audiences but hugely important for what came next: infrastructure. In 2005, just as the HaleStorm peak began to fall, the state of Utah passed its first tax incentive for filming. These incentives successfully enticed Disney to film 27 movies in Utah through the mid-2000s, most famously the High School Musical franchise.

By the end of the 2010s, the New York Times was describing northern Utah as a kind of “mini-Hollywood,” built not only around independent faith-oriented films but around The Church of Jesus Christ’s own motion picture operations, BYUtv productions, local crews, and a growing freelance workforce. That meant Latter-day Saint-adjacent filmmaking did not simply survive as a market; it survived as a craft community. Crews kept working. Actors kept training. Editors, cinematographers, composers, and producers kept building experience.

These post-HaleStorm years saw some talented filmmakers keep the space alive, as key new artistic ideas emerged and the talent pool grew and matured.

What has begun to happen over the last few years is an evolution of the threads that came out of that heyday. Today’s filmmakers have inherited an audience trained by these experiments, and a filmmaking culture that had already spent years learning how to move beyond novelty toward craft, confidence, and authentic crossover. 

Today

By the time we arrive at the present, those fragments have begun to recombine. What had been separate lanes in the aftermath of the early aughts Mormon-cinema wave—historical drama, crossover genre work, local craft infrastructure, and festival culture—are now starting to feed one another. 

But as always, the story starts with the money. The old model depended on a Utah theatrical audience and then a healthy DVD afterlife. The current one is more layered: owned streaming platforms, licensing deals, audience memberships, eventized theatrical runs, festival exposure, and state incentives. For the first time since the early 2000s, Latter-day Saint filmmaking once again has an economic logic. It is not one logic, but several, and that may be exactly why this moment feels more durable.

No company better represents that new reality than Angel Studios. Angel is not simply the new HaleStorm. It is not primarily a Latter-day Saint movie studio making Latter-day Saint movies. It has a broader impact on the market: a Utah-rooted, values-branded distribution and audience-formation machine that has figured out how to turn moral affinity into a scalable business. Angel’s own 2025 annual report shows where the center of gravity now lies. The company reported roughly 2.0 million paying Angel Guild members by the end of 2025, and said those memberships accounted for 65.2% of its total revenue. Its licensing revenue, notably, includes deals with platforms such as Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. Angel also runs its own streaming platform. 

That is why Angel’s outsized role matters so much. The company says the Guild helps choose what it will market and distribute, that its theatrical strategy can crowd-fund prints and advertising, and that its “Pay it Forward” system lets viewers subsidize tickets for others. Traditional Hollywood separates greenlighting, marketing, and audience response into different silos. Angel has tried to collapse them into a single loop. It does not simply ask its audience to buy a ticket; it asks them to join, vote, fund, evangelize, and return. It’s almost like community organizing with a balance sheet. 

The scale of that model is real. Angel reported that it released eight films theatrically in 2025 and was ranked the No. 10 domestic distributor that year. Its reported grosses included $83.2 million for “The King of Kings,” $83.9 million for “David,” $15.2 million for “The Last Rodeo,” and $6 million for “Truth & Treason.” Even more revealing than any single title is the shape of the company itself: by the end of 2025 Angel said it had 137 titles under exclusive worldwide distribution, including 101 films and 36 television series. That is not a boutique religious sideline. It is a fully functioning media ecosystem with Utah roots and national reach.

But Angel is only one part of this era’s story. The broader Utah film scene has begun acting as though it no longer needs to choose between Latter-day Saint identity and indie legitimacy. Zions Indie Film Fest says that aloud. 

I spoke with Michell Moore, the festival co-director, who told me that they want Latter-day Saints to have a home at their film festival, but they want to unite with others of good faith and good artistic instincts. 

Today, the festival presents itself instead as a celebration of independent film “from filmmakers worldwide,” with a “sophisticated and diverse audience,” and Moore describes the event as “inviting everyone,” bridging the gap between filmmakers and audiences. 

Zions Indie Film Fest has come to the same instincts as Angel. It might seem like Latter-day Saint filmmaking is getting short shrift in this model. But Zions premiered T.C. Christensen’s latest film, and held a reading for a script about sister missionaries kidnapped by the cartel. They have managed to create a space that is broad and welcoming, rather than parochial, but where Latter-day Saint cinema can thrive and be represented.

The audience and participants have grown, and the courage to tell Latter-day Saint specific stories in that space is starting to burgeon.

When I spoke to filmmakers at the 2025 Zions Indie Film Fest, they were often concerned about the status of Utah’s tax incentives, as they feared work in the state might dry up if they went away. But in March 2026, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced a robust new round of initiatives allowing the industry to continue thriving in the state. 

In the last year of the previous program, it enabled 36 productions across 14 counties, generating more than $136 million in production spending and over 2,600 jobs, with more than 40% of those productions created by homegrown talent and local companies.

When there is a steady source of work for Latter-day Saint filmmakers in commercial work, it allows them the freedom to also tell and finance more personal stories. 

And while these filmmakers were sad that Sundance Film Festival was leaving the state, they didn’t predict any big consequences, describing it as less connected to the broader Utah-film ecosystem than you might imagine. 

Seen in that light, the current moment also feels like the first one in a long time that makes the artistic vision of 80s-era President of The Church of Jesus Christ, Spencer W. Kimball, sound plausible.

In 1977, he wrote, “Our writers, our motion picture specialists, with the inspiration of heaven, should tomorrow be able to produce a masterpiece which would live forever.”

For Latter-day Saint specialists, this nearly fifty-year-old call still lives near their hearts. And we’re beginning to see some talented auteurs who could take advantage of this new moment.

If Angel Studios represents industrial crossover, Burgin may represent artistic crossover. He is not simply another promising Utah filmmaker. He is one of the first younger directors in this space to show signs of understanding both the cultural inheritance and the formal challenge. 

Burgin began his career outside of Utah, and had to learn early on how to curate his religious impulses so they would be both authentic and appealing to newcomers to the tradition. From what he saw, he predicted in a 2017 essay the renaissance in interest in Latter-day Saints in film. This interest mostly happened with Latter-day Saints as the subjects, not the participants, of mocking portrayals in projects such as “Under the Banner of Heaven,” “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and “Heretic.” The interest in Latter-day Saints has skyrocketed, and the infrastructure for Latter-day Saints to supply that interest themselves may have finally arrived. Perhaps through Burgin himself.

Burgin’s premiere was his student film “Cryo.” “Cryo” follows five scientists who awake from a cryogenic sleep without memory and slowly realize there may be a murderer among them. You can tell that “Cryo” is a student film. The budget shows on screen. But it’s also a film full of ideas that come from his Latter-day Saint perspective. The film starts with a reference to Lazarus, and continually returns to themes of rebirth and resurrection. It quotes The Book of Mormon, references the veil of forgetfulness, and the protagonists slowly learn to place their salvific impulse outside of themselves. 

In an essay marketing the film, he argued that Latter-day Saint filmmakers need to “put story before sermon,” and expressed his belief that “we’ve barely scratched the surface of the narrative potential in our history, doctrine, culture and lore.” Perhaps more importantly, he sold the film to a national distributor, had a multi-city theatrical run, and turned a profit—practically unheard of for a student film.

Burgin has then proved that in a series of short films. “The Next Door” a thriller about two missionaries who go on the search when someone they’re teaching goes missing. “Java Jive” a comedy about a Latter-day Saint teen, who was hiding his faith, and then gets trapped trying to avoid drinking coffee. “A Scout is Kind” a talky coming-of-age film. These films premiered at important festivals, and won notable awards—including the top award for “A Scout is Kind” at Regal’s film festival in Tennessee. The outsider interest is sincere and real. 

His most critically successful film to date, “The Angel,” is a horror film about a mysterious figure arriving in 19th-century Southern Utah. He co-directed it with his wife Jessica, marking her directorial debut.

Each of these shorts is deeply Latter-day Saint, enjoyable, accessible to a broad audience, and at least as entertaining as the average night on television. (Usually much more.) 

This is a serious artistic program that is similar to the trajectories of many successful working directors. 

“The Angel” does something earlier Latter-day Saint cinema rarely trusted itself to do. It does not flatten Latter-day Saint culture into a set of jokes, nor reduce it to generic uplift. It fulfills the idea of moving past novelty from the aughts, but in an environment that may finally be able to support it. It treats Latter-day Saint history as aesthetically strange, symbolically rich, and cinematically potent. I am not a fan of horror films, and there are certainly horror beats that may not be for everyone, but this is neither gross-out or jump-scare horror. The fear comes from the sensation that it might just be a little bit real. 

The short has been included in Cannes’ Short Film Corner, screened widely on the festival circuit, and received a U.K. premiere at Soho Horror Fest. Doug Jones—one of modern genre cinema’s great creature actors—plays the title role. This is not an obscure or parochial project. It is a work of genre filmmaking that speaks in a cinematic language outsiders can understand while drawing directly on materials that feel unmistakably ours. After its successful festival run, the film was picked up by Alter, the largest and most prestigious dedicated horror short platform, and premiered last week to a wide audience. It is available to view online.  

While the cinematic community has clearly latched on, it also really struck a chord for me within the Latter-day Saint culture. I’m far from the only cultural critic to think so. Stephen Smoot, a Latter-day Saint commentator, wrote for The Interpreter Foundation:

The Angel … shows how horror, handled with restraint and reverence, can speak powerfully to Latter-day Saint audiences. Instead of relying on gore or cheap shocks, the Burgins build their story through atmosphere, psychological unease, and moral confrontation. The horror here is never gratuitous; it unsettles the viewer to reveal deeper truths about choice, faith, and unseen realities.

If the short generates enough interest, Burgin hopes to expand it into a feature called “The Third Wife,” which they say has drawn industry interest and the attention of the Sundance Institute.

That is why “The Angel” deserves to be praised in stronger terms than one usually uses for a promising short. It feels like a reclaiming. A reclaiming of authority over the stories themselves. 

When Barrett spoke to me, he was most excited about how interested individuals from outside the tradition are. “[Latter-day Saints] have made a concerted effort to fit in and even assimilate. That generational impulse is not without cause. But when telling our own stories, we have an opportunity to reclaim our peculiarity.”

In that sense, perhaps the most hopeful thing one can say about the current state of Latter-day Saint filmmaking is that it no longer needs to choose between exile and self-parody. It no longer needs to survive on insider jokes, nor disappear into vague inspirational branding. It can remember where it came from, learn from what Angel Studios has built, honor the faithfulness of T.C. Christensen, and build toward that future imagined by Spencer W. Kimball. 

The post The Future of Latter-day Saint Cinema appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

• Who do the Ward Building Representatives report to and get assistance from?
• Who do the Music people report to and get assistance from?
• Who does the Ward Technology Specialist report to and get assistance from?
• Who do the Young Single and Single Adult reps report to and get assistance from?
• Who do the Self-Reliance people report to and get assistance from?
• Who does the Email Communication Specialist report to and get assistance from?
• Who does the Disability Specialist report to and get assistance from?

Elder Holland: Almost always. In fact, if it’s not divulging too much, the secretary to the First Presidency once said that roughly 80 percent of the questions that come even to the First Presidency are answered in the handbook. We just don’t know the books well enough.

 

Elder Ballard: Then, we’re going to follow the policy along the line that you’re talking about, Elder Bednar. We’re not going to wander off. We’re going to keep anchored to where the basic policies of the Church are. Elder González, is that a good idea or not?

Elder González: Oh, it’s an excellent idea. We need to know the handbook very well. Someone said that if you want to have a secret well kept, put it in a handbook. So we hope that that will not be the case with these handbooks.

Over the years, we’ve had to correct many attempts by well-meaning leaders to change some of the programs of the Church. We’ve dealt with lighted candles on sacrament tables, with locally determined changes in the length of Church meetings, with elimination of Sunday School from the Sunday block meetings. We’ve created methods for providing visiting teaching to women gathered in large groups. The list goes on and is fairly long. I would not try to mention all the many changes, errors, and problems which can occur.

The point, however, is that in almost all cases, if the leaders would only read, understand, and follow the handbook, such problems would not occur. Whether you’ve been a lifelong member of the Church or are a relatively new member, consult the handbook when you are uncertain about a policy or procedure. You may think you know how to handle the situation when, in fact, you may be on the wrong track. There is safety in the handbooks.

As a handful of students and I neared an apartment building to deliver the meals, we were surprised by the next-door Eugene O’Neill Theatre with its loud and brash signs promoting “The Book of Mormon” musical. The marquee featured photos mocking missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The students—many of whom had served missions—were quick to note the irony of our situation: Broadway presented a caricature of our faith while we were performing the quiet service that actually defines it. 

A dubious anniversary brought back those memories. The irreverent, bawdy, vulgar, and mocking “The Book of Mormon” musical opened on Broadway 15 years ago. According to the New York Times, the show has reached 6,000 performances for six million theatergoers, with box office sales now heading toward $1 billion on Broadway. The anniversary sparked a media circuit for creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, resulting in a wave of recent coverage.  

Jesse Green, the New York Times culture correspondent, penned an anniversary story titled “‘The Book of Mormon’ Is Sorry if You Were Offended for 15 Years.” The piece would have you believe that all is hunky-dory with the play and that it’s just been a 15-year run of good fun. No humans were harmed—including Latter-day Saints—in the creation of this Broadway hit, Green decides. 

I disagree. 

I have not seen the show, but I have read enough of the script, heard the music, and followed enough reviews to recognize its crassness and inherent bigotry.

When I reached out to Green via email, he declined to be interviewed, stating, “I don’t have more to say than I said in the article.” I wish he did, because his coverage reveals significant ethical and journalistic gaps. 

Most notably, Green didn’t ask any “real Latter-day Saints” about their reaction to the musical. Instead, he gave creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone a pass on possible tough questions about misrepresentation or harm caused by the show. It shouldn’t be that hard. With 42,000 Church members who live in the New York region, finding a local perspective from a member of the Church wouldn’t have been difficult. 

Since the Times was derelict in its journalistic duty, I’ll ask this question: Has “The Book of Mormon” contributed to an American culture where demeaning Latter-day Saints is socially sanctioned? As BYU athletic teams play games around the country, opposing fans often chant “F— the Mormons,” reminiscent of a scene where Ugandans say “F— God” in the play. Take this example of a family supporting BYU at a basketball game in Providence, Rhode Island. It has happened at numerous other venues across the country. Is it coincidental that there’s some similarity to “The Book of Mormon” musical chants and the game chants? 

In the end, Parker and Stone will collect their millions and say their show is a “love letter to Mormons,” kind of like “Fiddler on the Roof” was to Jews. But this show is not “Fiddler on the Roof” for Latter-day Saints. Instead, Parker and Stone’s work misrepresents, hurts, harms, and is meant to offend. Communication and psychological research has shown that humor often helps erode society’s normal boundaries of respect, compassion, and good faith to groups that are “othered.” That’s what this musical does.

Although Green’s bio says he abides by the New York Times Ethics Code and is “basically no use to anyone” who wants to influence him, Green sounds like a member of the New York elite theater club. He quotes whatever falls from the lips of Parker and Stone as gospel truth.

Instead of tough questions you get this about Green’s first time seeing the show.

The night I saw it, no less a dignified eminence than Angela Lansbury, seated directly in front of me, laughed her head off. I laughed too, all the time wondering: How did they dare put this on? Those laughs were half gasp.

The real gasp should come as Green gives Parker and Stone easy passes throughout the 15-year recap article with statements like this:

The authors had not meant “Mormon” to be offensive, let alone controversial.

Really? The Times just published that without questioning it? The Times would never let a politician get away with such nonsense. Parker and Stone knew exactly what they were doing and how bigoted it was. This next quote is just as damning: 

Still, Stone and Parker, having grown up around church members in Colorado, did not want to make fun of them or their religion.

So, if someone grows up around Jews in Brooklyn and they think of them as great neighbors, they have the right to be anti-semitic? If Angela Lansbury were to laugh at an Islamophobic joke, that would make it OK? The Times then piles on with another anti-Latter-day Saint trope. 

Taking precautions against a potentially hostile response, the production hired extra security for a few weeks around opening. And if some cast members worried that an army of the offended might sooner or later run them out of town, the authors were more worried about running at all. 

If Green had bothered to talk to any New York Latter-day Saints, 15 years ago or today, he would have quickly discounted any violent stereotype that this was meant to portray. A visit to any number of Latter-day Saint Sunday services only blocks from the New York Times building would have quickly provided a much different picture. 

Green’s bias toward Latter-day Saints also bleeds through again when he suggests that Latter-day Saints are inherently folksy, simple-minded people with no theological depth.

“They believe goofy stuff, but they’re really nice,” Parker said. “If you have one as a neighbor, you have a great neighbor.” That was the seed for a gentle lesson: Faith need not be logical to be meaningful; in fact, the opposite might be true.

Granted, the Times does give a nod to a 15-year-old official statement of the Church about the show, but it’s lazy, outdated reporting. The Times missed this statement from a Church spokesman at the time, which opposed the show’s content. At the same time, the ever-innocent Parker and Stone joked to Green and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that the Church was just really “nice” about all of this. 

True, when the show opened, the Church turned the other cheek through a statement and then took out ads in the playbill declaring: “You’ve seen the play… now read the book.” That was a masterstroke marketing move, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the production—filled with misrepresentations, stereotypes, racism, and vulgarity—helps mold public opinion and disrespect for Latter-day Saints and religion generally. It also gets Latter-day Saint theology wrong. The Church’s savvy response does not equate to agreement with Parker and Stone’s bigotry, although the pair keeps implying as much.

It’s also ironic how Parker and Stone live by a double standard. When “The Book of Mormon” musical was challenged about its racism after the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter movements, the show changed the script. But never has it been changed for its religious bigotry.

Unfortunately, as prominent writers Jonah Goldberg and Simon Critchley have observed, while expressions of racism or xenophobia are normally looked down upon in polite social circles, “anti-Mormonism is another matter.” Goldberg has written about how Mormonism is America’s last acceptable prejudice. Of course, it’s not just anti-Mormonism in the show; the central message is anti-religious.

While asking if such a show as “The Book of Mormon” musical could be pulled off today, the Times does acknowledge the sensitivities of demeaning people.

That’s because “Mormon” in 2026 is in some ways more gasp-inducing than it was when it opened. In the intervening years, sensitivities once barely acknowledged about racial, religious and sexual identity have become mandatory articles of theatrical faith.

Let’s hope that American society, with its purported standards of equality and fair play, rejects another mockery of faith groups, ethnic origin, or racial background. But our current culture of incivility and polarization doesn’t bode well for the future of culture and entertainment. Unfortunately, the Times is likely to be there cheering from the audience when another such show denigrates, misrepresents and, yes, offends. It seems that, in reality, no one is actually sorry at all. 

The post Broadway’s Last Acceptable Bigotry appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the fight over abortion’s legal status in each state has raged on. For the pro-life movement, it’s not going well. The movement has lost nearly all of the state ballots and referendums aimed at restricting abortion. In Florida, abortion restrictions only survived because the state failed to reach the the 60% supermajority required to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, demonstrating the unpopularity of abortion restrictions among even nominally conservative voters.

Radical abortion policies that would allow abortion late in pregnancy are being implemented across the country as secular feminists and the governments they control go for broke, leaving the pro-life movement in the dust. For example, abortion has been enshrined as a right in the Colorado state constitution, making near-unlimited abortion part of the state’s highest law. In 2024, pro-life measures were outspent approximately 14  to 1.

It is time for a candid assessment of our role as Latter-day Saints in the pro-life movement. Latter-day Saints have a special duty to oppose abortion and to stand for life through activism, legislation, and volunteering. The movement against abortion needs all the help it can get, and now is the time to act.

I cannot exceed Terryl Givens in eloquence or force of argument, which he articulated against abortion in these pages. In particular, he highlighted the fallacy of being personally opposed to abortion but pro-choice politically. He said: 

There is no more ethical or logical sense in being “personally opposed, but pro-choice” than in being personally opposed to sex trafficking, slavery, or child abuse, “but” pro-choice regarding the adult’s prerogatives in those cases. Abortion is not like heavy drinking or pornography or blaspheming, where one deplores the action but accords another the right to act immorally. Abortion is of that class of wrongs that entails the willful infliction of pain or killing on another human being. Ultimately, the pro-life position is not a commitment predicated on sectarian values or God’s precepts. It is the fruit of a more universal commitment to protect the most vulnerable and voiceless. It is a commitment to the most fundamental obligation we have as part of the human family: to defend the defenseless.

It struck me how little presence Latter-day Saints had at this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C. I saw no signs identifying participants as members of the Church, though I understand Latter-day Saints for Life were there. I also recently attended a pro-life event hosted by the David Network for Ivy League students. Of the 400 participants, only four were members of their school’s Latter-day Saint Student Associations. 

Some of our distinguished members have lost sight of the grave evil of abortion. Indeed, the only Latter-day Saint billionaire who has commented publicly on abortion did so to assure members and staff of a new sports team in Utah that they would be refunded for any out-of-state abortion they received. Such lacunae disappoint me, as we as a people generally punch above our weight. We’re often educated, intelligent, organized, and capable. Most importantly, we have priesthood power and the gift of the Holy Ghost. So why are we hesitating to stand for life? 

Why Do We Hesitate? 

Some Latter-day Saints may shy away from opposing abortion because the issue is viewed as too political or partisan. By virtue of standing for life, they believe they may signal association with a political party with which they do not necessarily agree.  Yet lately, neither political party seriously supports the pro-life movement. The Trumpian GOP increasingly substitutes radical nationalism (and, in some cases, white ethnonationalism) for serious pro-life social policy. The Democrats have not supported unborn children for a long time, and that has accelerated with the fall of Roe. Now is the time to depoliticize and to show that the desire to protect the life of a child cuts across all political and social categories. 

Others are concerned that women will suffer from abortion bans due to uncertainty about the legality of abortion in medical emergencies. This concern is over-stated. Even in the most stringent states, such as Texas, abortion is allowed in the case of medical emergencies. Pro-life supporters care about protecting emergency care for women. To emphasize the point, Texas recently amended its law to ensure that doctors know they can provide abortion when a woman’s health is gravely threatened. The claim that women will die en masse because of abortion bans simply is not true and ignores the real threat to life: the killing of the unborn by abortion.

Some Latter-day Saints might hide behind the idea of being a peacemaker. Of course, we should be peacemakers. Those who support abortion are human beings, too, deserving the love and respect that are inherent in our shared identity as children of God. There is no need to add to the screaming match on the internet to defend the right of a child to life. However, merely emphasizing our role in peacemaking ignores the Savior’s own example. He fearlessly confronted those who taught evil and did not back down, even at the cost of His own life. As disciples, we have a dual mandate to fight for the truth and to love our fellow man. We cannot sacrifice one for the other.

Some might hesitate to stand for life because it is difficult to fully align the Church’s position with pro-life groups or policies, given that the Church contemplates exceptions for the health and life of the mother, rape and incest, and fetal inviability. Yet over 95 percent of abortions are elective or have no reason specified for the abortion. Latter-day Saints and other Christian groups agree far more than they disagree on abortion. However, occasionally these differences can cause tensions and friction. I think the Church is wise, morally and politically, to acknowledge some possible exceptions (though not automatic dispensations) to its general opposition to abortion. And politically, many women will not support pro-life legislation that does not include rape exceptions, making it necessary to advance such legislation. In many states that ban abortion or ban it after six weeks, laws make allowances for the exceptions that the Church advocates. For example, Idaho, North Dakota, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, West Virginia, Mississippi, Iowa, and Indiana all provide exceptions for rape, as will Utah if its law is implemented after the current legal battle. There is ample room for the Church’s position within the pro-life movement.

I think the final reason why many Latter-day Saints don’t want to get involved is simpler and more embarrassing. The pro-life cause is gauche. It is unpopular with the rich and the powerful, the beautiful and charismatic. It feels embarrassing to be involved in, and it is a movement that higher minds scorn. It interferes with the unmitigated rights of adults to unlimited sexual pleasure. The cries of the great and spacious building are amplified by the high levels of education that many Latter-day Saints attain and their deep craving for acceptance. For a century, we have tried to assimilate into the mainstream and to be accepted. I will be blunt: that project is over. We cannot serve two masters, and we cannot assimilate to the ideology of secularism. The secular church that Elder Neal A. Maxwell foresaw has formed, and it will brook no opposition. It is time to stop worrying about what other people think, like an anxious teenager looking around at the popular kids, and stride forward out of adolescence and into maturity. 

Current Ballot Initiatives

There are three states with significant Latter-day Saint populations where abortion will likely be on the ballot this fall: Missouri, Virginia, and Nevada. In Missouri, voters will be asked to repeal the current abortion regime that allows elective abortion up to fetal viability and replace it with one that prohibits elective abortion, while leaving exceptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother or serious health risks, and fetal inviability. This aligns strongly, though not perfectly, with the position of The Church of Jesus Christ. The referendum that legalized elective abortion in Missouri succeeded narrowly. Organizing for this new referendum is crucial. The growing Latter-day Saint population in Missouri has an opportunity to stand for life. 

In Virginia, an amendment that would enshrine elective abortion up to birth in the Virginia Constitution will be on the ballot. Defeating it would be a pro-life win, though, unfortunately, elective abortion is already allowed up to 26 weeks. Regardless, a large Latter-day Saint population exists in the D.C. suburbs of Virginia, allowing for serious and substantive action to stop this monstrous assault on life from passing. 

In Nevada, another amendment would enshrine the right to elective abortion in the Nevada Constitution up to fetal viability. It already passed overwhelmingly in 2024, but it needs to pass again this year. With the large Latter-day Saint population in Nevada, I hope we can tip the scales and prevent this dark and disturbing practice from being enshrined in yet another state constitution.

Of course, even in states like Massachusetts and New York, the pro-life movement still needs volunteers and support. And in all states, young, scared single mothers still need support. Latter-day Saints have a role to play no matter where they live in the quest to protect unborn life.

Putting Our Shoulder to the Wheel

There are many evils in America, but abortion is unique. No matter how anyone tries to spin it, abortion is the intentional destruction of a real human being. In later stages of pregnancy, it is murder, though even early on, it is a grievous sin. It has no other parallel in modern America. 

Above all, abortion strikes at the heart of the plan of salvation and the heart of the Church’s task. It exists to enable the abuse of the sacred powers of procreation, and it turns the most loving of relationships—between mother and child—into violence and terror. We cannot accept our sacred priesthood responsibilities as a people without standing for the unborn. The temple, the pinnacle of the priesthood, binds families together. Abortion exists to destroy the family unit through violence, making it the antithesis of priesthood power.

As then Elder Russell M. Nelson taught about abortion, “It is a war on the defenseless—and the voiceless.” Abortion is frequently implemented to protect individuals from the consequences of their sexual promiscuity, men as well as women. Many who have the nerve to celebrate abortion see it as a triumph of liberation—a child sacrifice to my “freedom.” As David Bentley Hart has stated: 

For me, it is enough to consider that, in America alone, more than forty million babies have been aborted since the Supreme Court invented the ‘right’ that allows for this, and that there are many for whom this is viewed not even as a tragic ‘necessity,’ but as a triumph of moral truth. When the Carthaginians were prevailed upon to cease sacrificing their babies, at least the place vacated by Baal reminded them that they should seek the divine above themselves; we offer up our babies to ‘my’ freedom of choice, to ‘me.’ No society’s moral vision has ever, surely, been more degenerate than that.

The current state of abortion’s legality is discouraging for those who prize life. But that is not an excuse for disengagement. Let us “do what is right, let the consequence follow.” Let us bid farewell to Babylon and stand strong against its temptations and seductions. And let us “put our shoulder to the wheel.” The battle will be long and hard, but it will be worth it to save the lives of the unborn and to frustrate Satan’s plans. “Come, come ye saints, no toil nor labor fear.” 

The post Carrying Our Weight in the Pro-Life Movement appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Although the two groups share historical roots dating back to early Latter-day Saint history, they are not at all the same. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was formed by former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were excommunicated for their continued practice of polygamy. The two churches have developed in significantly different directions. 

The Church of Jesus Christ is approaching 18 million members, with members living in approximately 150 countries. FLDS members mostly live in isolated communities in Utah, Arizona, Texas, and British Columbia. FLDS membership estimates are limited, though Reuters reported approximately 7,500 in 2007. Many members have abandoned the FLDS communities since the faith’s leader was imprisoned in 2011.

Despite the stark differences between the two faith groups, mainstream media continues to portray the FLDS members as part of “Mormonism” generally, perpetuating confusion and deeply inaccurate stereotypes about members of The Church of Jesus Christ. 

One of the most visible distinctions between the groups is the practice of plural marriage. The FLDS Church continues to teach and practice polygamy as a religious requirement. In contrast, The Church of Jesus Christ officially discontinued the practice of plural marriage in 1890 and strictly prohibits it today. Yet because of the way the two groups are sometimes portrayed and conflated by media, many people erroneously think members of The Church of Jesus Christ practice polygamy.

The two groups also differ in leadership structure and governance. The FLDS Church has historically been associated with a highly centralized leadership model in which a single individual holds extensive authority over members’ lives. The Church of Jesus Christ, in contrast, is governed by a First Presidency and a Quorum of the Twelve Apostles within a structured, global ecclesiastical organization. 

Differences are also evident in marriage practices and engagement with broader society. The FLDS Church and its members have been the subject of public reporting and legal cases involving coercive and underage marriages, as well as patterns of isolation from broader civic and educational systems. By contrast, The Church of Jesus Christ requires legal, consenting adult marriage and explicitly condemns abuse in all its forms. It also encourages education, civic participation, and active engagement with the wider world.

The experiences and allegations associated with the FLDS Church, as portrayed in recent media, do not reflect the doctrines, governance, or practices of The Church of Jesus Christ today. Clear distinctions between religious groups are essential for accurate public understanding, particularly when sensitive or serious topics are being discussed.

The post Trust Me, They’re Not the Same appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Danny Frost

President Dallin H. Oaks again turned to the topic of peacemaking—a key part of his teachings, as well as those of President Russell M. Nelson. The repeated prophetic calls for peacemaking suggest that this is one of the key issues of our time. Christians should know better than to indulge in the contempt and hostility that are all around us. 

I appreciated how President Oaks indicated that peacemaking often means doing several things well at once: showing love and compassion for those who are different from us even as we stand up for the truth as we understand it. President Oaks also emphasized that personal virtue must be at the core of enduring peace. He noted that missionaries act as peacemakers when they “preach repentance from personal corruption, greed, and oppression, because only by individual reformation can an entire society eventually rise above such evils.” 

Peacemaking can include many other things such as bishops’ efforts to help marriages and resolve personal conflicts, service to others, reducing suffering, increasing understanding between groups, and raising children (including foster children). Peacemakers heal and uplift. President Oaks’ closing words are a powerful invitation to be better peacemakers: “Let us follow Him by forgoing contention and by using the language and methods of peacemakers. In our families and other personal relationships, let us avoid what is harsh and hateful. Let us seek to be holy, like our Savior.” 

Charity and Enduring to the End

Anna Bryner

Elder David A. Bednar delivered a great insight about how “enduring to the end is linked inextricably to the spiritual gift of charity.” He taught that “charity is the very essence of the end toward which we are enduring: becoming new creatures in Christ.” In other words, charity is not only a spiritual gift that will help us endure to the end, but the very substance of the kind of person we are to become: one who “suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”

I thought Elder Bednar’s talk paired well with President Dallin H. Oaks’ talk about relating to one another as children of God. This is the practical work of charity—to allow Christ’s love and righteous desires to fill our hearts and transform the way we interact with others. Peacemaking can start in each of our hearts as we seek the spiritual gift of charity from the Father.

Faith Through the Highs and Lows

Lauren Yarro

President Emily Belle Freeman shared a powerful perspective that both our good days and our hard days are part of God’s plan. In her talk, she uses Peter’s story to show that faith isn’t built in one defining moment, but over time through both the highs and the lows of life. Peter had moments of bold testimony and moments of fear and failure, and he still became who the Lord needed him to be. President Freeman reminds us that Christ is not distant in our hardest moments. He is right there with us, strengthening us and reminding us that our worst days are not the end of our story.

I needed the reminder that both the best days and the worst days are shaping us into who the Lord needs us to become. She taught that holding onto the eternal truths and the promised blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ allows us to draw upon the power of God in our lives. Her closing reminder was that “joy is not the absence of sorrow in your life. It is the presence of Jesus Christ in your life.” 

Ministering in the Savior’s Way

Amanda Freebairn

This general conference was a reminder to me of the many storms the people around us are facing. Elder Ronald A. Rasband shared about the short life of his grandson who was born with chromosomal abnormalities. President Emily Belle Freeman explained that recently, during the excitement of planning her daughter’s wedding, her beloved husband found out his cancer had returned. Elder Thierry K. Motumbo told the story of losing four children. 

But along with these heartbreaking stories emerged a theme of love and ministering, and the impact ministering can have on the lives of those we minister to. 

Sister Kristen Yee shared that her father, who had been at one point emotionally abusive, began to heal through the Savior when a ministering couple invited him to attend the temple weekly. She also explained that “ministering by the Spirit invites the Spirit into our lives and the lives of those we minister to. I often find peace, clarity, healing and purpose when I minister. I find the Savior when I minister. This is by divine design.” 

Both President Dallin H. Oaks and Sister Yee testified that through the Savior, we can come to love in ways that we never thought possible. Elder Patrick Kearon said since his calling to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “I’ve learned that I can love even more…We don’t serve people we really love, rather, we come to love people as we serve them.” 

President D. Todd Christofferson taught that as we cultivate the pure love of Christ, lift and minister to others, and exercise devotion to the will of God, we can little by little enact change in the world.

“We tend to underestimate the influence of Christlike individuals in the world. But working one by one has always been Jesus’ approach to a changing society and establishing his kingdom. It is the aggregation of individual choices over time that forms and changes societies for good or ill. No one of us alone can change the world but each of us can have an influence in the world.”

The post Enduring in Charity: General Conference Round-Up appeared first on Public Square Magazine.