“Silence is not neutrality; it is complicity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve seen several posts by people who are alarmed by the murder of American citizens in Minneapolis by masked ICE agents, followed by lies from the administration and retribution on widows and state government who oppose these actions and support the citizens using their First Amendment rights to protest, film, and publish the criminal actions of these enforcement agencies. Some of this alarm, at least among church members, is that the Church continues to say nothing about the violence and injustice.

In response, some have correctly pointed out that the Church has never spoken out against injustice, or at least not in a specific actionable way, and that they have been on the wrong side of all of these major events:

  • Civil Rights. Church leaders’ statements of that time were so deeply racist they are really hard to read.
  • Women’s Equality. The Church is widely credited (including in the excellent series Mrs. America) with single-handedly causing the ERA to fail. Pres. Oaks today likes to talk about the importance of women receiving equal pay for equal work, but that was not a position the church held when this fight was underway.
  • Slavery. While Joseph Smith went back and forth on this topic (which the Church loves to focus on in how it describes its own history), Brigham Young legalized slavery for black Americans and Native Americans in Utah from 1852-1862, and Utah did not participate in the Civil War to end slavery. Only after the Union prevailed did Utah finally decide abolition was the right cause.
  • Naziism. The Church did not oppose the Nazi regime, instead focusing on staying “apolitical.” Many German church members who were Nazis were embraced when they moved to Utah, and their loyalties to the Nazi regime were never an issue.

There are other social issues I could add here (LGBTQ issues, prohibition, polygamy), but you get the point. The Church can claim it is politically neutral, but it has used plenty of funds fighting against equal rights and against “progressive” issues, that it later finally accepted as necessary. Pres. Oaks has both overseen electro-shock used as conversion therapy on gay BYU students, and has also supported the concept of “legal unions” for gay couples as an alternative to gay marriage.

You may recall the Church’s milquetoast statement after the George Floyd murder that Dave B blogged about here, and then Andrew S also blogged about here. The church used very anodine language to decry both racism and the looting that resulted from it, as Andrew pointed out using even stronger language to condemn the unrest than was used to condemn the injustice that led to it. Likewise, when leaders condemn “violence” without specifying who is being violent, they are getting both sides to become emotional for completely opposite reasons. A few years ago, there was an ad during the Superbowl that showed political violence being committed by mostly white people on January 6, then violence committed during protests against the murder of George Floyd. Conservative viewers tensed up during the George Floyd riots then relaxed during the January 6th storming of the capital.

Just for fun, I went back to the statement that both Dave B and Andrew S blogged about, a call against racism made by Pres Nelson after George Floyd’s murder, and I ran it through ChatGPT to suss out whether the statement was using any of these tactics. Here was the original statement:

We join with many throughout this nation and around the world who are deeply saddened at recent evidences of racism and a blatant disregard for human life. We abhor the reality that some would deny others respect and the most basic of freedoms because of the color of his or her skin. We are also saddened when these assaults on human dignity lead to escalating violence and unrest. The Creator of us all calls on each of us to abandon attitudes of prejudice against any group of God’s children. Any of us who has prejudice toward another race needs to repent!

During the Savior’s earthly mission, He constantly ministered to those who were excluded, marginalized, judged, overlooked, abused, and discounted. As His followers, can we do anything less? The answer is no! We believe in freedom, kindness, and fairness for all of God’s children!

Let us be clear. We are brothers and sisters, each of us the child of a loving Father in Heaven. His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, invites all to come unto Him—“black and white, bond and free, male and female,” (2 Nephi 26:33). It behooves each of us to do whatever we can in our spheres of influence to preserve the dignity and respect every son and daughter of God deserves. Any nation can only be as great as its people. That requires citizens to cultivate a moral compass that helps them distinguish between right and wrong.

Illegal acts such as looting, defacing, or destroying public or private property cannot be tolerated. Never has one wrong been corrected by a second wrong. Evil has never been resolved by more evil. We need to foster our faith in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. We need to foster a fundamental respect for the human dignity of every human soul, regardless of their color, creed, or cause. And we need to work tirelessly to build bridges of understanding rather than creating walls of segregation.

I plead with us to work together for peace, for mutual respect, and for an outpouring of love for all of God’s children.

So, how did the statement hold up? There were a few things that didn’t pass muster which Andrew S already identified in his excellent OP:

  • Equivalence framing that redirects focus. “We are also saddened when these assaults on human dignity lead to escalating violence and unrest.” This shifts the focus away from causes of unrest to the consequences of those causes, creating an equivalence between condemning racism and condemning the protesting of racism. This soothes those who are uncomfortable with protest and reasserts the institutional order which allowed for the racism to flourish.
  • Undefined authority claims. “Any nation can only be as great as its people. That requires citizens to cultivate a moral compass…” This frames social problems as primarily the failure of individuals, making structural or institutional critique a secondary or absent concern. It also presents this concept as a self-evident truism.
  • Clear Behavioral Limits, No Obligation to Act. “Illegal acts such as looting… cannot be tolerated.” This is clear injunction against unwanted anti-institutional behaviors. “Do whatever we can in our spheres of influence…” This is so vague that it can mean anything or nothing at all. The listener is under no specific obligation to do anything at all. The focus is on maintaining the existing order, while individuals can do things like being civil or kind to other individuals and somehow that’s enough. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. Let us do our jobs (while murdering and beating citizens who try to hold them accountable).

So why does the Church not speak out when American citizens are being murdered openly and then slandered as domestic terrorists when the video clearly contradicts the claims of the regime? Why did they wait 6 days to congratulate Biden on his win? Why did they say nothing about the January 6 insurrection that the current administration is rewriting before our eyes, when we all watched it happen?

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” George Orwell, 1984

I’m astounded by how many of my LDS friends are defending these murders committed by ICE agents. I can’t imagine they would do so if the Church took a real stand. At least these so-called “saints” would stop being so full-throated in their defense of these unlawful actions. One friend (not LDS) who posted “I like my country like I like my drinks. Full of ICE” within a few hours did a second post that was much more humble and chagrined in tone, saying that she wasn’t political or well informed, that everyone should wait to find out more as investigations unfold (of course, these are investigations that the regime immediately said they wouldn’t do, smearing the victims, hiding evidence from state officials by barring them from the crime scene, and trying to use the operation as a bargaining chip to get access to voter files). I haven’t seen any of my LDS friends dial down their rhetoric. Of course my Facebook feed is so full of ads, I barely see human posts anymore anyway.

I can only conclude that the Church (or some of the leaders), like these LDS people I know, agrees with these actions, that they think state-sanctioned violence and murder are acceptable when the victims are Democrats. The first and second amendments only apply to January 6 rioters, not to protestors of state-sanctioned violence. There are three factors that turn silence into complicity:

  • Moral authority. For church members, the church definitely has moral authority. They certainly exert it when they want to, such as in opposing LGBTQ allyship at BYU or trans rights and dignity in LDS churches. Any church that claims the ability to define right and wrong for its members qualifies as having “moral authority.”
  • Credible knowledge. While this is the area where they may be able to claim they have the least weight, in the case of Alex Pretti’s murder, the video is clear. We saw it with our own eyes. He was murdered after several agents beat him on the ground. He posed no threat to anyone and only approached them with his phone in his hand, filming their brutality as they pushed a hispanic woman to the ground. (She wasn’t even their intended target). If church leaders are only consuming a steady diet of Fox news, they might be less informed, but even some of the Fox news people found this most recent murder of a VA nurse concerning. It’s bad enough that it’s apparently shifting Trump’s focus away from waging terror on the city of Minneapolis.
  • Real influence. I suppose we learned during Covid that there were some limits on this among the membership, that some refused to follow mandates from HQ, but that doesn’t mean that overall the church leaders’ moral stances have no influence. On the contrary, those LDS people I know who are defending the murders are using talking points from conservative sources. They are certainly willing to repeat talking points are they are given. They just aren’t being given any by the church.

The church might not see the injustice and murders as harmful or in need of being addressed. After all, there aren’t that many Mormons in Minnesota, the victims so far haven’t been Mormons, and the church supports immigration crackdowns as legal, even if they are being done in ways that are not legal (eliminating due process, using state-sanctioned violence, giving officers carte blanche, assaulting non-violent protestors, and entering homes without judicial warrants). They might fear retribution from the Trump regime. Perhaps fear of retribution overrides morality now, including for churches. Pres. Oaks, a constitutionalist who absolutely knows that this is wrong, may be too feeble to handle it right now. There may be disagreement among the remaining apostles.

What silence communicates is:

  • This does not rise to the level of concern.
  • Maintaining unity is more important than confronting harm.
  • Those affected are on their own.
  • Order is more important than justice.

This stands in contrast to the church’s stronger stances on things like sexual morality, family structure or personal behavior. When they are quiet about racial injustice, abuse, economic exploitation and state violence, they are demonstrating that they value hierarchy and order over individual freedom, lives and justice.

When churches choose not to use their influence to speak out against injustice, it’s often because of one or more of these reasons:

  • Fear of internal division. Unfortunately, there are many MAGA church members. Oaks doesn’t seem to be one of them, but it has to give him pause to know that many of them are more loyal to Donald Trump than they are to him or the church. They certainly feel comfortable sharing their views openly in LDS pews.
  • Desire to protect the institution’s reputation. The Church wants acceptance from other conservative churches and doesn’t care about broader influence. It’s settled into a kind of “pick me” mentality over the last few decades, trying really hard to be accepted by those (Evangelicals and conservative Catholics) who are most strongly convinced it’s a cult.
  • Alignment with political power. By not opposing the Trump regime openly, or even letting a whiff of criticism leak out, leaders may think (rightly?) that they are staying out of the retribution cross-hairs, and that they have power within the party. They also see themselves as completely committed to conservatism.
  • Theological frameworks that individualize sin. Most church leaders talk about sin in terms of individual behavior, not systems that oppress or commit violence. If only the masked ICE agents could be more civil, maybe they wouldn’t murder citizens.[1] Or as in the George Floyd murder, many were content to say that the officer was just “one bad apple,” ignoring the litany of prior complaints for excessive force that were on his record and went unchecked.
  • Belief that the church should stay out of politics. This one is rich. The church’s neutrality is conveniently pulled out when they don’t want to act, but they are happy to pay Kirton-McConkie big bucks to write amicus briefs opposing gay rights and trans rights and women’s equality and churches’ rights to prevail in abuse cases. Those are also “political” issues. They apparently just oppose civil rights and progressive causes.

Speaking out against injustice and state-sponsored violence doesn’t require endorsing a party or providing a detailed policy. It just involves naming the harm clearly, centering the victims, aligning the words with the church’s moral stance, and being willing to risk discomfort as an institution. I suspect this is a failure of courage. The stakes under the Trump regime are high. Any criticism is seen as grounds to be targeted, stripped of rights and wealth, barred from power, vilified and slandered.

One question to consider is “If the injustice were happening to the Church itself, would silence be considered faithful?” I am reminded of a misguided social media post that went around during the George Floyd protests that tried to claim Mormons were much more persecuted than black people ever were because of the extermination order and being forced out of Missouri. Yikes. 100 points from Griffindor for that nonsense.

If the church knows better, claims authority, has influence and chooses stability over justice, then silence is participation through omission.

Are there any harms from the church not taking a stand when public opinion is not yet settled (because some people are willing to go along with the regime’s lies)? Here are the harms I can think of:

  • Church members who are poorly informed or willing to defend anything done by their political team will continue to spread propaganda, misinformation and slander against victims.
  • Church members who are ICE agents are part of immoral and illegal acts that are not being prosecuted by this administration.
  • Some Church members may compound these moral errors by working with ICE or informing on others, leading to violence against those individuals or unrelated bystanders.
  • Church members will continue to feel that a lack of empathy is a virtue. Given Oaks’ and Nelson’s statements that pitted the second great commandment against the first, this might be their desired outcome. While I personally always have believed that we show our love of God through our love of our neighbor, they have taught that loving one’s neighbor is secondary to loving God (which usually means fighting gay rights in the context of what they have said).

Those are all moral arguments, but I suppose what the church would care more about is new converts and continued commitment from existing members who pay tithing and fill callings. Does the lack of a moral stance affect these? It probably does only in terms of continuing to make it clear that the Church is politically conservative and will not be a welcome place to those who are not.

By contrast, other churches have made statements to their flocks:

  • Catholic leaders called for prayer, respect for life, dialogue and peace. They specifically called for prayers for the victims of shootings.
  • A significant number of Protestants and Universal Unitarians have participated directly in anti-ICE protests, peacefully demonstrating against the violence tactics used. Some have been arrested.
  • Jewish groups have condemned the state violence, called for justice (linked to “tikkun olam”–a value in their theology that refers to a foundational Jewish concept emphasizing the responsibility to fix, improve, and heal the world through actions that promote social justice, equity, and environmental stewardship).
  • Other Protestant leaders have focused on protecting religious spaces from intrusion from protestors or conversely from ICE agents performing raids.

Let’s see what our readers think.

  • Why do you think the church was mostly silent about the state-sanctioned violence being committed by ICE? Do you think it’s because they are waiting for the dust to settle, don’t see this issue as important, Oaks is not in good enough health to truly lead, or something else?
  • Do you think a Pres. Uchtdorf would have made a statement? What kind of statement?
  • Would the church taking a stand influence church members or are their political influences stronger than their religious views?
  • Is it important for churches to take a stand on issues of injustice? Why or why not?
  • Which of the stands other churches have taken do you think strikes the right tone?

Discuss.

[1] The soon to be booted Bovino even claimed that the ICE agents were the only real victims in their brutal murder of Alex Pretti.