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Looking at the front page of the Deseret News website on Sunday afternoon felt surreal. The cover article mourned President Russell M. Nelson, the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who died at age 101, after a lifetime devoted to peace and bridge-building.
Just below it ran the coverage of a violent attack in Grand Blanc, Michigan, where a 40-year-old man drove a truck into a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse and opened fire, killing four people and injuring many others. The shooter was shot and killed by law enforcement.
The church’s spokesman called the attack a “tragic act of violence” and said that “places of worship are meant to be sanctuaries of peacemaking, prayer and connection,” according to a statement.
For Latter-day Saints, also my own faith community, the convergence of these losses is devastating. And it has also brought national spotlight on the faith, drawing both an outpouring of solidarity from many and exposing the misunderstandings that surround the faith.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, Latter-day Saints are one of the least liked religious groups in the U.S. Twenty-five percent of Americans express unfavorable views of the members of the faith, while just 15% hold favorable opinions; 59% are neutral or say they don’t know enough.
The survey also found that most Latter-day Saints hold favorable views of other faiths, including Muslims and atheists.
Some of those views have surfaced in the past few weeks. After Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10 in Utah, evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll had some offensive words for Latter-day Saints and called the faith ”not the same as Christianity," a persistent mischaracterization of the central focus on Christ in Latter-day Saint faith and theology.
Some have stepped in to defend Latter-day Saints as Christians. Utah Sen. Mike Lee declared himself a Christian and outlined his beliefs.
Yet, what stood out were the moments of solidarity and mourning together. Personal and public messages of support poured in from Jewish, Muslim, Evangelical and Catholic friends and different civic organizations.
“Praying for you guys and for all the LDS folks affected!” a Catholic friend wrote to me. A Catholic priest from my son’s school sent our family “prayers and deepest sympathies regarding the horrific attack on your church community.”
Public figures, too, were prompt to offer support words. David French, New York Times columnist and Evangelical Christian, posted on X: “In my experience, the LDS folks I know are among the kindest, most Christlike people I’ve ever met. And now they’ve endured the loss of their president and a deadly attack on a church.”
The Jewish Federations of North America also put out a message of solidarity: “People of every faith must be free to gather and pray in safety. As Jews, we know too well the devastation of hate-fueled violence gathering our houses of worship.”
Public perception is often shaped by how we speak about, and with, people of other faiths. President Nelson urged believers to steer those conversations toward peace, consensus and understanding. He pointed to the individual choice each one of us faces: “Contention is a choice. Peacemaking is a choice. You have your agency to choose contention or reconciliation. I urge you to choose to be a peacemaker, now and always.”
Fresh off the press
- One of my favorite bits from this comprehensive story about President Nelson‘s legacy is his comment about his reluctance to being “comfortably situated in my home.” While on a tour in London in 2018 he told this publication: “This is a global work. Whenever I’m comfortably situated in my home, I’m in the wrong place. I need to be where the people are. We need to bring them the message of the Savior.”
- Deseret News reporters are closely investigating the story about the Michigan shooting, both from Grand Blanc and Salt Lake City. Read the latest: A day of tragedy and heroism at a Latter-day Saint church in Michigan.
- What do Christians believe about the Rapture?
- Why states now fund homeschooling: this is a close look at the renaissance of homeschooling currently underway and the growing involvement of the state government to help fund homeschooling programs.
Peacekeeping in practice:
This weekend, I attended a conference on the campus of the Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was killed two weeks ago. One of the speakers, Patrick Mason, professor of religious studies and history at Utah State University who also studies peace and conflict, urged the audience to “move beyond labels” and resist the temptation to reduce others to categories.
“(We say): he’s a conservative, she’s a progressive. She’s a Charlie Kirk person, he’s a Rachel Maddow person,” Mason said. “That might be descriptively true, but what I’ve often done is reduce them to that label. As soon as that’s the label that I assigned to them now, I’m not even interested in them anymore. I’m not curious about them. I don’t have compassion towards them because I’ve already decided where they are.”
Here are some every-day practical tips Mason shared everyone can implement to reverse this kind “labeling” and keep inching toward peace.
- Smile rather than scowl at someone wearing hat or T-shirt that marks them as a member of another political tribe.
- Invite a neighbor you disagree with to lunch. Ask them why they believe what they believe — and then listen without judgement.
- Get involved in a group that isn’t organized along tribal or political lines.
- Read speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. or Russell M. Nelson.
- Write a letter to an elected official thanking them for their service to our democracy and promising to have their back against those who make threats against them.
- Call an estranged relative or friend and reconnect over the things you share, not the things that drove you apart.
More resources can be found at www.turntoward.us
What I’m reading:
- The relics of St. Thérèse return to the U.S. after 25 years, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the saint’s canonization. The relics will travel to 11 states, starting with the National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica in Royal Oak in Michigan. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as “The Little Flower,” was a 19th-century French Carmelite nun whose “little way” of faith significantly influenced Catholic spirituality. - A ‘Pilgrimage of Hope’: Relics of St. Thérèse Return to the US After 25 Years, National Catholic Register.
- A fascinating trend has emerged since Charlie Kirk’s assassination — his supporters are bringing back their role model with the help of AI image creation. - Charlie Kirk’s AI resurrection ushers in a new era of digital grief, RNS.
- More on mourning in the age of AI. One writer tried to bring back his father by feeding the large language model facts about his father’s life and teaching it to respond back to him. — ChatGPT Resurrected My Dead Father, The Atlantic.
End notes:
This week, I’ll leave you with a quote by author and Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast, that stuck with me from this weekend.
“Every religion seems to begin with mysticism and end in politics. If we could understand the inner workings of this process, maybe we could deal with the tension between mystical religion and religious establishment in a new way. Maybe we could transform the polarization into a mutually vitalizing polarity.”