PROVO — Leaders of the LDS Church face a delicate balancing act when deciding if and when to talk about the humanitarian aid the church provides to disaster victims and others in need worldwide.
Sharon Eubank told students at Brigham Young University's Kennedy Center recently that while The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is committed to helping those in need, leaders don't want to allow media coverage to "drive the effort" or to link the church with other organizations in the public mind.
Eubank manages the wheelchair program for the church's Humanitarian Services division. She said leaders look at potential news coverage of their efforts as a "byproduct" of their humanitarian work and not the reason for it.
"We will do it regardless ... but we do have to delicately manage the attention that comes. We want to make sure it's the right kind of attention," she said.
In her lecture, titled "Please Don't Tell This Story: LDS Humanitarian Aid and the Media," Eubank said there are some touching stories that can't be told because they can convey the wrong impression about the church and its mission.
An example is one about a local family whose soldier was killed in a roadside bombing while serving in Iraq. They wanted to do something positive in his memory, so they collected relief supplies that were distributed in the neighborhood where the bomb went off. One of the things they provided was a wheelchair.
Someone took a photo of a U.S. soldier smiling at a young Iraqi boy who lost his leg to a bomb and received the wheelchair that had been donated by the family. "There are so many good things that happened in those two communities, and it's a great story. But I can't use this photo anywhere because visually, it could tie humanitarian aid (provided through the church) to the U.S. military" members who were distributing it.
"The church has to remain neutral politically," she said, referencing its efforts in many nations where opposing political factions operate.
Leaders also have to be careful to keep missionary work separate from humanitarian efforts, she said. Tying them together results not only in a loss of credibility with those being served, but it misconstrues the reason for the aid in the first place.
The church provides humanitarian aid because that is what Jesus Christ would do, she said. "We believe our salvation is inextricably tied to (our care of) the poor and the needy. ... We hope we do it in a way that shows our belief in Christian principles."
Historically, leaders have simply not discussed much of the humanitarian effort the church provides. She said during Christ's ministry as recorded in scripture, he healed some people and asked them to keep it quiet. Other times, he performed miracles before large crowds of people.
"We look at what were the principles that were guiding those decisions," as church leaders look into being more open in the future with some information about the church's humanitarian work.
The late President Gordon B. Hinckley was a master at talking with the media and forging relationships with leaders around the world. It was during his administration that church members "began to feel a part of the mainstream culture.
"But recent events have shown perhaps we're not as mainstream as we thought," she said, referencing negative reaction to Mitt Romney's presidential run, the public confusion between the LDS Church and a polygamist group in Texas, and the recent campaign against Proposition 8 in California.
She said she sees the church in the future "making a bigger effort to define its story and tell about some of the things we do. In the past, we've not talked about it and we've allowed detractors to define us in the media."
The church has six major initiatives in addition to being "first responders" in disaster relief situations, she said. It helps to provide: clean water; wheelchairs; vision treatment; neo-natal resuscitation training; measles vaccination; and the Benson Agricultural Institute, which helps farmers around the world increase crop production and efficiency.
Those are programs most people don't know the church provides, she said, adding there are many stories that should be told about how those efforts help build communities by providing resources that bring local people together to learn how to help themselves.
"The greatest story being written here is in the hearts of the people who participate," both those who work to provide the aid and those who receive it. From the church's vantage point, "there are no victims and no benefactors," only people working together to solve problems and build communities, she said.
While there are great stories to tell, she said, "I hope we don't ever allow the story to get in the way of acknowledging when we make mistakes. We don't have to edit everything so tightly that we don't learn from things that don't go well.
"When we are able to acknowledge some of the hard things, then we can talk about the realities. If we don't take the opportunity to do those things, we allow the media image to drive the work rather than the other way around."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com