This is a more personal post than usual for me. It’s been an extremely violent 3 weeks that has hit much closer to home than I’m used to. It makes me sad.
3 weeks ago, I was complaining to a co-worker about needing to get a sub for my math classes at Utah Valley University because my other employer asked me to go to Atlanta. I am now happy I wasn’t on campus that fateful day Charlie Kirk was killed. My phone was blowing up with text messages about a shooting on campus, and I realized that it happened during my 2nd class. Apparently someone ran into my classroom to announce the shooting 20 min into class and told everyone to evacuate. I’m glad they did. Some who didn’t evacuate immediately were stuck on campus for 4 hours, cowering in their rooms. I was glued to the tv like everyone else wondering if they would catch the shooter, which they did a few days later. Classes were canceled for a week, and yes, it was hard to start them back up.
Charlie was killed Sept 10. I had previously planned a video for my podcast for the 168th commemoration (anniversary feels like the wrong word) of the Sept 11, 1857 attack that killed about a hundred Arkansas immigrants. I went to the monuments last year following the JWHA meetings in St George last year, and just got around to doing the video. It was a somber visit. (And let’s not forget that awful day of the 9/11 attacks 24 years ago.)
Then late Saturday night, I learned of President Nelson’s passing. We shouldn’t be too surprised. A news article earlier in the week noted he had lost his eyesight. He was 101 years old, so we all knew his time was short.
A protestant friend of mine kindly reached out to me Sunday morning. “Hey Rick, I wanted to express my condolences regarding President Nelson’s passing last night. Mike and I are so sorry and are praying for you and your family to have peace and comfort. Even at 101, it’s a loss.”
My response: “Yes, thank you. Honestly, I’m more upset about the shooting and fire at an LDS Church in Michigan. It’s reprehensible.”
I think of the Christmas song,
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
As the not-so-great Rodney King said following the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “Can’t we all just get along?” Seriously, what is wrong with us?
Wheat & Tares 
Just to let you know.Charlie Kirk made the news here, as did the chapel shooting/burning. Pres Nelson did not
Likewise Geoff. The attack at church made the news, the death of president Nelson was added into those reports as an afterthought… ie congregants were mourning the loss of… when…
The last three weeks have indeed been hard. I wonder where the answers are. I think they are a lot more hidden than we care to admit, as evidenced by your last sentence. You could have just mentioned Rodney King, but you added a descriptor/label when you said “not-so-great. There are too many labels and descriptors in our conversations where we inadvertently color things. In a world where we receive our news in 15-30 second snippets, with quotes from individuals limited to 5 seconds and a single sentence, words have been weaponized with subconscious meanings. They ignore the complexity of any given event or person. Imagine being pulled out of your car and beaten during a traffic stop, even if you were drinking, just because you were black, Mexican, or whatever. We are all imperfect, and this imperfection becomes more apparent under the scrutiny of full media coverage.
I’m sure you didn’t mean any disrespect. I’m just mentioning this to lower the temperature of our words for all of us. I also acknowledge how hard it is to do when we are bombarded with leaders and followers communicating like this every day. Yes, the last three weeks have been hard. You’re also right that we should just all get along.
Well said, Instereo.
I’m very sad to say that this is not the first time I’ve experienced an LDS church set on fire. From the BYU archives:
Fire at the St. Joseph Boulevard Chapel
On 10 January 1979, a man and his teenage son entered the Latter-day Saint meetinghouse on St. Joseph Boulevard in Montreal, carrying a can of gasoline. The man emptied the contents of the can onto the floor of the main hall in the building and ignited it. A large explosion resulted, which caused injuries to the perpetrator as well as to several Church members who were in the building at the time. Some of the injured were hospitalized with serious burns. Though no lives were lost, the meetinghouse was considerably damaged. The arsonist apparently acted out of revenge because he did not approve of his wife’s recent conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[135]
I was 18 at the time. I was not there that night but I had friends who were. Fortunately there was no loss of life. The perpetrator went to prison. We lost our building and had to move to a series of temporary locations.
Recent events have of course stirred memories of that long ago time.
I saw a YouTube video of an interview with a local political candidate (I will try to link) who had been canvassing the neighbourhood in Michigan a few days ago. He met the perpetrator who expressed hatred toward the LDS church and hinted at a possible relationship with an LDS woman that had gone sour. Of course his actual motives are known only to himself.
I think we need to be really careful when we attribute political motives to these kinds of crimes, especially in this very sensitive political climate. In 1979 someone acted out of petty revenge. Today could be similar. We just don’t know. People who are messed up will do what they will do. Injecting politics into it only serves to enflame (sorry I tried but couldn’t find a better word) the situation.
I was also a teen when a former member set our church building on fire. It smelled like smoke for weeks while repairs took place, although the fire was mostly contained to the library and one bishop’s office where he mistakenly thought his “church records” were kept. I really hate the persecution complex that runs among Mormons, but I grudgingly admit that there is some reason for it. That incident was probably just an unhinged guy angry at the church.
The church demands a lot from members, so it’s polarizing, but the hatred coming from outside the church, from competing religions (particularly Evangelicals) is truly awful. Once a year they would show the Godmakers, and the next day at school I would have to defend the Church from a mix of truths told in the most preposterous way ever, and slanderous falsehoods that beggared belief. A few of my friends told me that these anti-Mormon events were where they lost their faith altogether because if that was how their churches behaved toward other churches, then they weren’t what they said they were. They were skeptical of their pastors’ motives. One of them said to me, “364 days of the year they have nothing nice to say about any of the other churches in town, but one day a year, everyone gets together to gang up on the Mormons? Seems suspicious.” Nobody actually thought I believed the things they said I did or that I had horns on my head or was the anti-Christ. But this is 2025, and all it takes is one “second amendment person” as Trump euphemistically put it in his debate with Hillary Clinton to take matters into his (it’s always his) hands and destroy lives.
I don’t personally understand if people are mourning for Pres. Nelson. He lived a full life to age 101, accomplished everything he wanted to and more, and had two devoted wives and many children and grandchildren around him. I disagree with many of his views and changes he made, and dislike Oaks’ anti-LGBT (and trans in particular) stances, but nothing there has changed. There’s a fine line between mourning and celebrating a life, but anyone who dies at 101 at the height of his personal power doesn’t feel like a “mourning” situation to me. Obviously his family will mourn. My own father turns 100 next year, and that’s remarkable, right? But as to who the Church president is, I’ve never understood the concept of mourning for them. The king is dead, long live the king, as they say. There’s always another really old white guy ready to take the reins, and in this case, Oaks is very similar to Nelson.
Oh, yes. There is nothing tragic about a 101 year old man dying. It’s amazing anyone lives that long. He was in a wheelchair and blind. I hope I don’t live so long to get in that kind of shape. But young people getting gunned down in church: that is really sad. I have pity for them and for the crazy veteran who killed them and left his own wife and kid. But only disgust for the politicians and Supreme Court that maintain the environment that facilitates such things.
My thoughts and prayers (for whatever they’re worth) are with the people suffering because of the attack on the Church in Michigan. I can’t even imagine the horror of the attack during Church services. The pictures are staggering — the entire building is gone except for the outer shell. People died. Others have wounds that need to heal. I’m horrified for all of them.
I’ve avoided all speculation and gossip about the man arrested for Kirk’s death. But I’m sure his (former?) Mormonism is causing some discussion, angst, and persecution.
Regarding President Nelson, I know some will grieve for him. I think at age 101, death is more of a relief than a tragedy. I know I don’t have any desire to live so long. He’s the first and only prophet who made me sob brokenheartedly during a Gen Conf talk so I’m not actually going to miss him. I do feel some trepidation about what Oaks might try to do to move the Church even further right.
Up until very recently a part of me believed that the church would eventually have to change to keep up with our changing (improving, imo) culture. I thought that, like the temple and priesthood ban, some changes would be forthcoming that would be beneficial to the queer members of the church, if not a few decades too late. I did not foresee—and, perhaps to their credit, the church did foresee—a slide back toward right-wing authoritarianism. I am now officially the parent of a queer child (my oldest came out this past weekend, and I expect that this will not be the last coming-out in my family) making all of this, but especially the seemingly global trend back toward religious conservative authoritarianism, more troubling than ever.
The Michigan attack has me floored. Very hard to wrap my head around. 6% of the US population are veterans. 26% of mass killers are veterans. 20% of the male homeless population are veterans. We’re asking these people for service to the country, extol them as heroes with our lips, but then leave them in the cold. Beyond, there is something just really wrong happening in the US that just doesn’t seem to be happening in other parts of the developed world.
Honestly I don’t really care about the death of Nelson. If anything, I find it slightly annoying. It is just another excuse for hero-worship among the masses. I read the New York Times obituary of Nelson. It was less critical than the obituary of Monson, which induced a mass wave of victimhood complex among the believing Mormon community, but it still made some observations that I know will rub believers the wrong way. It quoted Nelson as saying, “eat your vitamins” as if to point out that it was rather silly advice, especially of a heart surgeon. They pointed out that Nelson noted that saying “Mormon” was a victory for Satan, casting him as rather overreactive. They cast Nelson as anti-LGBTQ, noting that he pulled out of Boy Scouts for their acceptance of the community. They did mention that Nelson urged the vaccine during COVID and helped diversify the apostleship. I haven’t noticed much hyperventilating among the believing community over this obituary, but then again, I’m no longer on social media. The one thing I will say about the NYTimes obit is that they said that Nelson ushered in major changes to the church. No. All the changes were extremely subtle and were mostly unremarkable. Mormonism is still rather the same that it used to be. Still no women in significant leadership positions. Still the same old nonsensical historicity claims. Still rampant political reactionaryism in the pews. I found Nelson unremarkable.
Interestingly, the mass media reporting on the Michigan tragedy frequently uses the word “Mormon”, as well as politicians and public figures reacting to it, and there has been no apparent attempt by the Church to correct that usage or reign it in, nor have I seen any outcry from the haughty members who would normally police that sort of thing (probably still in shock over the whole event, as many of us are). RMN isn’t even in the ground yet and “Mormon” is already making its well-deserved comeback.
For what it’s worth, NPR is the only media outlet I’ve seen that used the full, unabbreviated name of the Church in its reporting, while painstakingly avoiding using “Mormon” in subsequent references.
I’ve seen several Detroit news broadcasts that use the full name first and then the term Mormon Church. It seems so clunky but you can tell they are trying to use the full name to be respectful. Some abbreviate it to Church of Latter-day Saints. The police chief mispronounced it Later-day.
Like other commenters, I’m intrigued by the use of the word “Mormon” in the media this week. The NY Times obituary used it fairly unapologetically in the title, mentioned Nelson’s crusade against the term, and then mentioned that “some” media outlets continue to use the term Mormon. The reality is, news media need to communicate in a way their audience will understand, and it’s a reasonable conclusion that some continued use of the term Mormon will help them accomplish that. Meanwhile, I’ve seen multiple comment threads on social media in which Mormons are lecturing other Mormons about how derogatory the word Mormon is. Whatever. What I wonder is whether anyone will care about any of this 10 years from now, given that this was a highly Nelson-driven initiative. The rest of the leadership respectfully tried to go along, but I doubt they care as much.
I had thought targeted violence against Mormons was a phenomenon of the distant past, so it’s just a little unsettling to realize it can still happen now. I had perceived (maybe wrongly) a certain level of mainstream acceptance in our era. Was it all a facade? A marriage of convenience to help people reach their political goals? Is the highly political and tribal nature of contemporary American Christianity exposing something that has been there all along, or is it reviving the demons of the past?
I’m not very worried about antipathy directed at Mormons when Catholic and Protestant churches, synagogues and mosques have also been violently attacked. Not to mention theaters and, god help us!, schools — multiple schools for years and years and years!
I’m concerned about the number of mentally ill, angry and desperate people who are armed and out of control. And the increasing pressures, worries and sense of impotency to meet needs average Americans are having to encounter.
And no one is doing anything about improving opportunity, honest and representative political representation, living & economic conditions and sensible & effective gun control.
Expect more — not less — of it.
My daughter commented about now Christian churches are being attacked. We both chuckled over the LDS church being labeled as Christian when it adds to a certain narrative. Then I gave her something to think about when I mentioned Christian churches being attacked isn’t really new – just ask black Christians.