The Downside of Fitness

 

Comedian/actor Red Foxx once said, “Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.” If it were only so easy. I’ve written in a previous post about my dad. He is now pushing 97 and has been lying in bed for over a year, not dying of nothing but trying to die and failing to find the door out of this mortal probation.

Genetically speaking, he shouldn’t be here. His father died at age 85, his mother at age 80. He came from a large family—ten children. One sister died before reaching her first birthday. His older brother, Amos, was murdered in California during World War II at age 25, his body left in Death Valley to decompose. The army was too busy prosecuting a war to investigate his death, so my grandfather traveled from southern Utah to California to try to find out what had happened to his son. After talking to some soldiers from Amos’s outfit, he came away convinced that Amos’s commanding officer had taken him out into the desert and put a bullet in his brain, likely over a girl. A local kid out hunting jackrabbits found his skeleton several months later. The army had just labeled him AWOL. My dad was number eight of his parents’ ten children. He is the only one left. Of his remaining seven siblings, six of them died of natural causes (old age), none of them reaching age 88. His oldest sister died in her mid-fifties of kidney disease. So how can we explain his 96-plus years?

Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw, but my own belief is that he is still here because he kept himself in such good shape. He was, hands down, the hardest worker I have ever known. At age 94, he was still taking care of a large, labor-intensive yard—and we couldn’t keep him out of his neighbors’ yards. He couldn’t sit still. He was always out and about, raking people’s leaves, pruning their trees, cleaning snow off their driveways, or fixing their sprinkling systems. When he was 75, he came down to help me move a couple of dump truck loads of topsoil from the street into my backyard. By the time I got home from work, he had moved a whole truckload by himself. When he was 81, he and his best friend, who was only 73, came down and took a large tree out of my yard, because they “knew how” and had the equipment. He golfed regularly until he was 88. Even when his balance got bad and he had fallen a few times, he was still putting in a few miles each day on the stationary bike in the basement. Toward the end of his independence, I joked with him that he drove better than he walked, and it was true. We never had to take the car keys away.

He didn’t just breeze through his later years, though. He had four heart procedures, the first when he was 79. He had a heart attack while he was out on the golf course with my oldest son. He didn’t want to worry Matt, so he just crouched down to catch his breath whenever Matt was hitting. He made it through the round, and they weren’t using a golf cart; they walked the whole course. He then drove 80 miles home to Ogden and went to the hospital the next day, where they put three stents in his coronary arteries. A few years later he had bypass surgery on a Thursday in January. The next Monday he was discharged and was walking around the house, frustrated because it had snowed and the neighbors were cleaning the snow off his driveway. They owed him, but it still drove him crazy. Two more times he had blockages that required angioplasty, so it’s not like he was without health issues. But he worked so hard he kept himself in great shape.

My mom had had poor health since I was young. She told me when I was a teenager that she wouldn’t make it to 60. She finally succumbed to pulmonary hypertension in 2013, just short of 84, and my dad wore himself out taking care of her. I was worried for a while that he would die first—from exhaustion. He would lie awake at night, listening to his sweetheart breathe, wondering at times if a particular labored breath would be her last. But he survived her, and he recovered after she died, and kept on working. He found great satisfaction in serving his neighbors, and he lived for the little kids in the neighborhood. They would come and visit him because he would give them ice cream treats.

His memory started going in his nineties, but he was still able to take care of himself, his big yard, and his neighbors. In the end, it was his legs that failed him. When he was 94, he started losing his balance. He fell several times over the winter. Once he landed face first on the pavement and needed stitches in his forehead. Another time, he fell in the house, hit his back on the corner of a wall, and cracked a vertebra. This really slowed him down, but by his 95th birthday, in April of 2020, the pain was pretty much gone. His birthday fell on general conference Sunday, and we were there to celebrate. During the final session, a neighbor called to make sure he was home. They said they had something planned for his birthday. Because of the pandemic, we couldn’t have anyone in the house, so they set up a chair for him on his front lawn, and the entire ward drove by in decorated cars, with balloons and signs. I was amazed. The line of cars seemed to never end. There must have been 70 drive past, with families hanging out the windows yelling birthday greetings to their favorite nonagenarian neighbor.

The last day of May, he was out on his back driveway with a cane in one hand and a leaf blower in the other. There had been a big wind, and he was trying to blow the twigs off his driveway. His yard was filled with scrub oak, which can get pretty messy after a wind. From what he told me later, there was a branch that was too big for the leaf blower, so he bent down to pick it up. When he stood up straight, he lost his balance and fell over backward. He landed hard and broke his left hip. We had told him “No more yardwork,” but we knew he wouldn’t mind. His back driveway is somewhat secluded, so he lay there for 40 minutes in agony. Finally, a neighbor heard him yelling and found him lying on the cement. He called the paramedics, and they came and took Dad to the hospital. He never went home again.

Dad’s best friend, who lived across the street, called me, and I drove up to Ogden and found Dad in the emergency room. Because he was otherwise in such good health, the doctors advised us it would be best to do surgery to relieve the pain. So they put a metal rod inside his femur and held it in place with a couple of large screws. He spent a month in rehab, and he worked hard to regain his mobility, but although he could move around a bit with a walker, there was no way he could live alone. His memory was also getting very bad. He insisted, though, that he didn’t want to be a burden on anyone, so I brought him to Provo and placed him in an assisted living facility that I drove past every weekday on my way to work. This was difficult, though; I couldn’t visit him because of the pandemic. I could call him on the phone, and we could visit with him through a door at the end of one of the hallways, but his hearing was also getting bad, so our visits were not ideal.

He worked hard to improve his mobility for a couple of months, determined to become well enough to go home again, and for a while I thought he might succeed. The facility was on lockdown, so he was confined to his room. He would do “laps” in the room, pushing the walker back and forth, doing sets of twenty several times a day. But sciatic pain set in, and he ended up in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, at his age, once you lose mobility, it just doesn’t come back.

On Thanksgiving night 2020, he was trying to move from the bed to the wheelchair and didn’t have the wheels locked. It rolled away, and he fell again, this time breaking his right hip. I again met him in the emergency room, and because he was still in such good shape, the doctors again convinced us that surgery would be best to relieve his intense pain. They performed a partial hip replacement, and again he went to rehab. After a couple of days, he started going downhill fast. They did some tests and discovered that he was experiencing kidney failure, which often happens in the elderly after a physical trauma.

Because he was now expected to die within a few days, they let me in to see him. He was still somewhat responsive. I told him that he was in kidney failure and that they didn’t expect him to live long. He said, “That’s the best news I’ve had in a long time.” He was ready to go after my mom died, but he was just too healthy. Now he thought he was going to get his wish.

I had a decision to make, though, and I’m glad I made the right one. Since he was no longer doing rehab, Medicare wouldn’t pay for him to stay at the rehab center. They would charge $500 a day to care for him until he died, which we assumed would happen quite soon. Or we could transfer him back to the assisted living facility, where they said they could also care for him until he died. My sister and I discussed this and decided to transfer him. We felt it would be more like home to have him back in his room with his furniture and the other few belongings I had brought from his house. Besides, he was already paying rent for that room.

By the time we had made this decision and transferred him, on December 4, he was almost completely unresponsive. His body was shutting down fast. He could neither speak nor eat, and he was basically just skin and bones. I expected him to go soon, so we planned his funeral. But he somehow kept hanging on. One day, his hospice nurse called me and said that when she came into his room that morning, he looked up at her and said, “Well, hi there.” That was a surprise.

From that day, he started to recover. He started talking a little and eating apple sauce, yogurt, and other soft foods. They did a blood test and discovered that his kidneys had somehow started working again. He kept getting stronger, started eating solid food, and actually put on more weight than he has ever carried in his life (due to three meals a day and no exercise). But he has not left his bed for over a year now, except for one day when one of the CNAs and I tried to move him five feet from the bed to his recliner. We found it was like trying to move a big bag of bowling balls. He had no strength in his legs to support his weight.

Since he was considered to be dying when he was transferred back to assisted living, they allowed me to make “end of life” visits, even though the pandemic still had the facility on lockdown. When he revived, they never stopped me from coming, so I have visited him almost every day since last December 4. I generally shave him, help him with breakfast, and help him brush his teeth. I also read a page to him from, first, his own short personal history and, next, from my mom’s (which is 80 pages long). I do this to try to help him remember his long life. We are now to page 78.

My dad’s quality of life is near zero. His memory is pretty much gone. On normal days, he has some idea of where he is (Provo), and he knows who I am. He will also remember a few of his old friends and neighbors. On days like today, he does not recognize me or know his own name. On his worst days, he hallucinates. He sees things that aren’t there and imagines crazy scenarios that are pure products of dementia. His hearing is not good, and his eyesight is compromised by macular degeneration, so he cannot read or see the TV very well. He just lies in bed and mostly sleeps now. But his body won’t stop. In his more lucid moments, he just wants to go and be with his wife. On bad days, he says she doesn’t want him; that’s why he can’t die. But that is definitely not true, and I tell him so. Some time ago, on a day when he was very lucid, he requested that we take him off any medication that would prolong his life. We did this, but it has not made any noticeable difference.

I wonder at times if there is a grand timetable for each of us that determines when we depart this mortal existence. If so, I wonder why my dad’s time has not come. Why, for instance, did his oldest grandchild die of cancer at age 8, but he can’t die at age 96? The only positive from his lingering is that I have been able to visit him every day, but that is certainly a mixed blessing. If there is no such timetable, and nothing more than a host of random factors determines our day of departure, I still wonder how on earth he is still here. He had his ticket out of here more than a year ago, but he somehow misplaced it. Based on his family history and his personal history of heart problems, there is no way he should have outlived all of his immediate family by more than eight years. As I said before, my only explanation is that he worked so hard he kept himself in prime physical shape. Now he’s paying the price of fitness.

And it makes me wonder about my own future. Anything could happen, of course, but I’ve started wondering about my own life twenty or thirty years from now. I don’t want to end up like my dad, but I’m 65, and I run up stairs (I’m impatient) and still play basketball three mornings a week with guys 10, 20, 30, and even 40 years younger than I am and can still hold my own. I had a scare a couple of years ago. I’d had borderline high cholesterol for years, but the numbers jumped up, so I went and had a coronary calcium scan. It showed significant plaque buildup in my coronary arteries. I visited a cardiologist, and he told me I was a good candidate for a heart attack within the next ten years. He said if I could drop my LDL from over 140 to 70, the plaque buildup would not just stop but reverse. So I changed my diet, started taking Lipitor, and lost ten pounds without starving myself (I wasn’t overweight anyway). My LDL dropped to 75, then 72, and recently to 65. My triglycerides were very high but have dropped like my LDL.

I’m hoping to avoid the heart problems my dad experienced, but I don’t want to end up like he is, lying in bed and, my apologies to Redd Foxx, not “dying of nothing.” I’ve joked that if I reach 90, I will start eating ice cream for every meal. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

Exciting News about the Annual BYU Studies Poetry and Personal Essay Contests

 

Increase in Prize Money

To continue the tradition of outstanding poetry and personal essays that have appeared in BYU Studies Quarterly in the past, and in recognition of the growing excellence of Latter-day Saint creative writers, beginning in 2022, the Clinton F. Larson Poetry Contest and the Richard H. Cracroft Personal Essay Contest, both sponsored by BYU Studies, will offer the following awards: 

 

            First Prize                  $1,500

            Second Prize             $1,000

            Third Prize                $   500

 

Contest winners and finalists will generally be published in issues of BYU Studies Quarterly during the subsequent year.

 

Eligibility

Beginning in 2022, these contests are open to all writers except employees of BYU Studies, their immediate families, and members of the editorial board. Authors who receive an award are not eligible to compete in that category for the next year but may enter the other category.

 

Right of First Refusal

Entering either contest indicates that you agree to give BYU Studies the right of first refusal to publish your poem or essay. We do not accept work that has been published online or in print or is under consideration elsewhere, that has previously won any award from another contest, or that may be the property of another publisher. Do not simultaneously submit your poem or essay to our contests and to any other periodical or writing contest. Authors may not submit contest entries for consideration by any other contest or publication until BYU Studies contest results are announced. In most cases, poems and personal essays published in BYU Studies Quarterly are chosen from contest entries.

 

Deadline

The deadline for entering is January 31, 2022. Instructions for submitting entries are available on the BYU Studies website (byustudies.byu.edu).

When You Can’t Trust Your Fellow Latter-day Saints

 

My relationship with the Church has been complicated for a long time now. I’ve worked at Church headquarters and suffered the effects of bureaucratic burnout. I deal on a daily basis in my current job at BYU Studies with the complexities and contradictions of LDS history, doctrine, and culture. I’ve learned to navigate these turbulent waters with some degree of equanimity, largely because in the background I’ve always had my ward family, in whose company I’ve felt both accepted and comfortable. Until this summer.

I endured the first part of the pandemic quite well. At work, it was almost as if there was no pandemic at all, except that the parking was fantastic. I went in to BYU every day, with two other colleagues, each of us in a different room, so we felt quite safe. The rest of the staff worked remotely, which worked out just fine. The faculty and students were doing the distance learning thing, so the large Joseph F. Smith Building, where our offices are, was quite empty.

On Sunday, attendance at sacrament meeting was very limited, and my wife and I watched the service at home on the TV, where it was streamed on YouTube. Those who attended, which we did very occasionally, wore masks and practiced social distancing. Second-hour classes were held on Zoom, although Primary was suspended for obvious reasons.

We also practiced great care when we shopped in retail stores, and although we patronized restaurants regularly to support this struggling industry, we did so through takeout, not in-person dining. This was inconvenient, but necessary to preserve public health.

Then things began to open up as the vaccines became available and case numbers dropped significantly. My two colleagues and I continued to go to work, but now others came to the office, although we still held staff meetings on Zoom. My wife and I shopped without masks and even dined inside at a few restaurants and attended a movie theater. At Church, things changed too. The social-distancing guidelines were relaxed, and second-hour classes (including Primary) resumed in person. Things were looking up.

But then the delta variant arrived, and all the numbers went south, for the state of Utah and especially for Utah County, where I live. Why? Because Utah County is heavily LDS and so many Latter-day Saints are Republican, which means they were getting their information from questionable right-wing sources, and they were taught to doubt both science and common sense. They were also taught that their personal freedom was the most important value in the universe. The percentage of the population vaccinated in Utah County, and especially in north Orem, where I live, was abysmally low, and many of the unvaccinated were also anti-maskers. My wife and I still attended sacrament meeting, but we were among just a handful of members who wore masks, even though we had been vaccinated. Some friends of ours who had been vaccinated came down with COVID. Then our elders quorum president and his wife also experienced breakthrough cases. These were not mild cases, although neither couple was hospitalized. Obviously, this delta variant is not something to take lightly. We figured we were doing our part to help stop the spread, especially to the vulnerable children who were too young to be vaccinated. And we felt that even if we weren’t contagious, we were setting the correct example. There was nothing political about this. Our actions were all based on public health guidelines and the statistics that were growing increasingly more alarming.

We were tremendously relieved when on August 12, 2021, the First Presidency finally sent this email to every member:

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

We find ourselves fighting a war against the ravages of COVID-19 and its variants, an unrelenting pandemic. We want to do all we can to limit the spread of these viruses. We know that protection from the diseases they cause can only be achieved by immunizing a very high percentage of the population.

To limit exposure to these viruses, we urge the use of face masks in public meetings whenever social distancing is not possible. To provide personal protection from such severe infections, we urge individuals to be vaccinated. Available vaccines have proven to be both safe and effective.

We can win this war if everyone will follow the wise and thoughtful recommendations of medical experts and government leaders. Please know of our sincere love and great concern for all of God’s children.

The First Presidency

Russell M. Nelson
Dallin H. Oaks
Henry B. Eyring

We thought, surely our fellow ward members will see the wisdom in this and, as the Primary song goes, “follow the prophet.” We were expecting to see a similar email from both our stake president and our bishop, urging members to get vaccinated and resume wearing masks at church meetings. No such messages appeared. So we were curious about what sacrament meeting would look like. We were both pleased and disappointed. Instead of just a handful of members wearing masks, about 50 percent were masked that first Sunday. The great disappointment came when our new bishop, who is a Church employee, appeared on the stand without a mask. At the beginning of the meeting, he came to the pulpit and said, in effect, “You all received an email from the First Presidency this week. We just want to assure you that you have your freedom of choice.” That was it. No encouragement to follow the prophet. No leading by example. Later that week, I sent him an email. He’s a good friend whom we’ve known for many years, so I feel comfortable giving him a piece of my mind. The piece I gave him was this: Never in my life did I expect to see a priesthood leader stand at the pulpit and tell the members, in word and by example, that following the prophet is optional. Sure, we all have our agency, but in the Church we don’t tell people that smoking is just a personal choice, or paying tithing, or being chaste. We encourage people to use their agency to do what is right.

To his credit, he did start wearing a mask to sacrament meeting the next week, but there was no encouragement from the pulpit to follow the guidance of the First Presidency. And in the weeks since that first Sunday after the August 12 email, the numbers wearing masks have decreased even as the numbers of COVID cases in Utah have increased and the ICUs have filled up.

The percentage of Utah County residents who have been fully vaccinated is 44.4. The percentage of north Orem residents who have been fully vaccinated is 42.7. I have no illusions that my ward is an outlier. I think my fellow ward members are pretty average for north Orem. Which means that a large number of them are both unvaccinated and unmasked. I don’t find church to be a very safe place. With the aerosol spread of this virus, any indoor gathering with the unmasked is a potentially dangerous event. The last time I attended Sunday School was shortly before the First Presidency email came. We sat in a poorly ventilated Relief Society room with dozens of unmasked ward members. I didn’t feel safe, even though I’ve been vaccinated and was wearing a mask. I haven’t attended Sunday School since, and I don’t attend elders quorum anymore either, even though it is held in the much larger cultural hall. Part of the reason is that I struggle now being around my fellow ward members.

When I go to church now, I can’t help judging. We all judge. We really can’t help it, and we need to do so for a variety of reasons, one of them being our personal safety. But I look around at all the people who received the same email I did, and I wonder what arguments they use for ignoring both the prophet and the medical professionals who advise them to behave differently than they are. Now, when I see my fellow ward members, I don’t see friends and fellow Saints. I see people I can’t trust. This is difficult for me. No matter what bureaucratic, doctrinal, or historical stumbling blocks I’ve encountered in Mormonism, I’ve always had my ward. But not anymore. What do you do when you can no longer trust your fellow ward members? I still attend sacrament meeting, but it depresses me. Not because of anything said from the pulpit, but because I am surrounded by people I can’t trust.

Some people say that trust has to be earned. They are wrong. Unless we trust each other implicitly, our society doesn’t work. Our economic and social relationships are all based on trust. No, trust doesn’t have to be earned. We generally trust others, within reason, until they prove to us that they cannot be trusted. Unfortunately, I’ve reached that point with my ward. I’ve learned this summer that I can’t trust the majority of them to do the right thing, and when you can’t trust someone to do the right thing, the relationship with that person is broken. I feel broken. My ward has disappointed me in such a fundamental way that I doubt I will ever feel the same toward most members.

I’ve said it before, but it’s still true: many Mormons are more Republican than they are Mormon. The pandemic has only made this more obvious. When a political party goes off the rails to the degree that it encourages its constituents to disbelieve facts and believe instead all sorts of nonsense and lies, it should be abandoned rather than embraced. But this is not happening. The disinformation is too prevalent on the right and too tribal. Ignorance and selfishness have carried the day in the Republican Party and, hence, in many LDS wards. I now am sad when I attend church, and I don’t see this changing anytime soon.

When Selfishness Masquerades as Freedom

 

Sometime in the past 40 years or so, the Republican Party became myopically focused on one particular value and elevated it above everything else. That value is freedom. Now, freedom is a good thing. It certainly beats bondage or autocracy or any other condition that is the opposite of freedom. But freedom to the exclusion of every other consideration is nothing more than selfishness. I have freedom of speech, but of course that freedom is not unrestricted. I can say lots of things, but some of them are prohibited, if not by law then by etiquette and respect and proper decorum. Freedom is also restricted by other values, such as generosity, compassion, duty, and love.

I’ll be up front. I’m talking about the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers here. There may be some valid reasons for certain individuals to have not worn a mask during the height of the pandemic or to not receive the vaccine right now. But these are rare. The reason I hear trotted out most often by those who argue against either masks or vaccines is that “the government can’t tell me what to do. They can’t infringe upon my freedom.” This is abject nonsense. Telling citizens what they can or can’t do is actually one of the primary functions of government. If I were to list all the things government has every right to tell me not to do, I could go on for hundreds of pages. I won’t do that, but let’s look at a handful of examples.

The government has the right to tell me not to

• light campfires on public lands in times of drought,

• dump raw sewage in the city’s water supply,

• drive 50 miles per hour in a school zone,

• spray graffiti on private or public property,

• stop my car in the middle of an intersection for no reason,

• yell “fire” in a crowded theater,

• set up a Ponzi scheme, or

• erect a 20-foot-high billboard in my front yard.

You get the idea. Each of these examples pits personal freedom against someone else’s well-being. Freedom does not mean that I can do anything I want to. It also does not mean that government can’t tell me what to do or not to do. Freedom is one value among many competing values. And freedom isn’t always something that government restricts. That false notion probably got planted by Ronald Reagan and his quip that government is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Often government involvement in our lives increases our freedoms. A good example is health care. What we learn from almost every other country is that government involvement in health care actually increases individual freedom rather than restricting it. My friends in Germany, for instance, have much more freedom regarding their health care than I do, and I have excellent insurance provided by the LDS Church. The difference is that government in Germany has stepped in and prevented the idiocy we have allowed by insisting that the almighty “market” and the profit motive can provide better health care than some form of government-industry cooperation. There are many similar examples. I would argue, for instance, that I am more free because of public libraries and police departments.

Freedom has to be balanced with many other values. One of them is what we call the public good. In a dictatorship, government may force people to sacrifice certain freedoms to promote what it views as the good of the country (or at least its leaders). In a republic, however, citizens often need to sacrifice their own personal desires and freedoms to promote the public good. And if they refuse to do this of their own free will, then government is sometimes obligated to step in and enforce certain behaviors in order to preserve the life and health of the citizenry at large. Public health, of course, is perhaps the most common example. Wearing masks is shown to curtail the spread of COVID-19. The vaccines are also very effective in drastically reducing transmission of the virus. Ideally, citizens in the United States would understand this and willingly sacrifice their personal freedom (or just convenience) to benefit not just themselves but also their friends and neighbors. Unfortunately, this has not happened to the degree it should. Government had to step in and implement mask requirements. There is a good argument for government to also require vaccination. Yes, this may infringe upon your personal freedom, but it may be necessary to preserve public health, which is one of the primary responsibilities of government.

This is almost exclusively a Republican problem. A recent Washington Post–ABC News survey showed that 86 percent of Democrats have received at least one vaccine dose, while only 45 percent of Republicans have. This is the result of doubt about the vaccines sowed by conservative media (thanks, Fox News) and Republican politicians, who combine disinformation about the science with not-so-subtle suggestions that government is out to take people’s freedoms away. The propaganda has been so effective that political activists at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) cheered because the government has fallen short of President Biden’s goal vaccinating 70 percent of Americans by July 4. This whole scenario caused conservative columnist Michael Gerson to write the following:

“For years, I’ve been saying to myself that GOP politics can’t go lower. I am perpetually wrong. Americans should never forget this moment—or let guilty Republicans forget it. When Republican activists cheered for death at CPAC, they were cheering for disproportionately Republican deaths. When elected Republicans feed doubts about safe, effective vaccines, they are making it more physically dangerous to be a Republican in America.”¹

Why is this so? Because statistics show that 99.5 percent of COVID deaths are now occurring among the unvaccinated. I could be cynical about this and suggest that this year’s Darwin Award should be given to the entire group of anti-vaxxers for improving the collective gene pool, but this isn’t just about those who refuse to get vaccinated. This isn’t just a personal choice. It is a public-health issue. We know what viruses do. They mutate in order to survive. And it is just a matter of time before the novel coronavirus mutates enough to produce a variant that is both highly contagious and resistant to the vaccines. At that point, we will be back to square one, with an out-of-control virus, but also with a bunch of conservatives who will simply refuse to wear masks this time around. Republican state legislatures have already passed laws making it impossible to impose mask mandates.

So, you anti-vaxxers, your choice will eventually affect me, and I don’t appreciate your selfishness. I was vaccinated as early as was possible. I had a mild reaction to the vaccine for less than 24 hours. Other than that, nothing, except that I am very likely protected from the current strains of the virus. For now. But maybe not in a few months.

These vaccines have been tested. They are far, far safer than the coronavirus. And they are very effective. They are our only hope to get society back to “normal,” whatever that is in this post-Trump world that is still haunted by the damage he did to our country and the world. The one good thing he did regarding the pandemic was to support the development of the vaccines. But even though he himself is vaccinated, he has done an incredibly poor job in convincing his followers to get vaccinated. For such a loudmouth, he has been strangely mute in promoting the reception of the vaccines. Perhaps this is because he knows that conservatives are motivated by conspiracy theories and anger at government and suspicion of science, and promoting vaccination would run contrary to all three of these motivations. Whatever the case, Trump, who has of course boasted about how he gave us these vaccines, seems strangely content to let his followers die in far larger numbers than their political opponents. This goes beyond selfishness. It goes beyond partisan politics. I don’t know that I even have a word for it.

But Michael Gerson is right. This is certainly a new low for the Republican Party. But unlike Gerson, I will not be at all surprised when they somehow find a way to go even lower.

What about Latter-day Saints? The numbers for Utah are mediocre. Indeed, Governor Cox keeps begging Utahns to get vaccinated. But many, many refuse. Most of them are Republican, and most of those Republicans are Mormon. What is the Church’s stand? Let me quote from a statement recently added to the Handbook: “Vaccinations administered by competent medical professionals protect health and preserve life. Members of the Church are encouraged to safeguard themselves, their children, and their communities through vaccination.” Of course, the Handbook includes a nod to that notion of personal choice: “Ultimately, individuals are responsible to make their own decisions about vaccination. If members have concerns, they should counsel with competent medical professionals and also seek the guidance of the Holy Ghost.”² As I mentioned above, there are rare instances where a “competent medical professional” would advise against a vaccine, but in almost all cases the advice would be the same as the Church’s: get vaccinated. And I suspect the Holy Ghost is also almost always going to tell people to get vaccinated. But people often hear what they want to, and some have been very vocal in criticizing both the Church and President Nelson for promoting vaccination. I’ve said this many times, but it’s still true: There are many Latter-day Saints who are more Republican than they are Mormon.

Even though I am vaccinated, I am very uneasy attending church with my fellow ward members. I’ve seen the statistics for Utah County, and I figure my ward is pretty average. Which means that there are quite a few members attending church unvaccinated and not wearing masks. It’s hard to not judge people. But I have now read from two reliable sources that the General Authorities are very disappointed in how Church members have responded to the call to sacrifice personal freedom and convenience for the public good. It doesn’t speak well of us as a church. But, unfortunately, it is what it is.

_______________

1. Michael Gerson, “GOP Anti-Vaxxers Are Sacrificing Citizens’ Lives for Political Gain,” Washington Post, July 12, 2021.

2. “Vaccinations,” section 38.7.13, General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/38-church-policies-and-guidelines?lang=eng#title_number124.

Thoughts on a Pandemic Year

 

It has certainly been a year to remember. I have to go back a few months before the official start of the pandemic (March 11, 2020), however, to capture the complete picture of how very different the first year of the pandemic was for me. Until late fall 2019, BYU Studies had three full-time editors. We publish a quarterly journal, of course, but we also publish books, now limited more or less to the BYU New Testament Commentary and Royal Skousen’s Book of Mormon Critical Text. We kept busy, but the pace was not stressful. Then, one of our editors decided to drop from full-time status to very part-time. A few months later, another full-time editor, who had been commuting to Provo from Salt Lake Valley, decided to take a job closer to home. That left me as the only full-time editor. Shortly after this, the pandemic hit, and the university decided not to replace either editor, at least for a while. The editor who had stayed on part time was focused mainly on book projects, so that left me to handle the journal with the help of three very capable student interns. Little did I know what was coming my way.

Normally, each journal is 192 pages (6 full signatures). With three full-time editors, I would generally have maybe three articles and a personal essay to edit for each issue, as well as proofreading Skousen’s books, dealing with inventory matters, and handling various administrative duties. But in 2020, we published a regular journal that was 240 pages and then three lengthy special issues with 320, 224, and 208 pages. For the first two special issues, that meant I had fourteen articles and essays in each to edit and shepherd through the publication process. And at BYU Studies, we are sort of OCD. We (primarily the interns) source check everything and do an initial copy edit, we do two full edits (by different editors), and then we complete what we call a final format, which means going through a long checklist of typographical items to make sure that the final copy not only reads well but also looks good and is friendly to the eye. With my workload tripled, I relied heavily on our interns, who did great work. But at times, with fourteen articles in various stages of completion and communicating back and forth with all the authors, I felt like an air traffic controller with too many planes in the sky. Somehow, we survived, and the special issues actually turned out very well.

If this had been the only change during the COVID year, it wouldn’t have been all that memorable. Busy, yes, but not unmanageable. I was one of the lucky ones regarding work, I suppose. All through the pandemic, I have driven in to BYU and worked in my office. There were only three of us who came to the BYU Studies office every day, and we were in separate rooms, so we felt safe. It was eerie, though, because our office is in the massive Joseph F. Smith Building that houses many faculty offices and classrooms. As soon as the university moved all class instruction online, the building was like a ghost town. We felt like we were the only ones in that huge building. But the parking was great. So, work, other than being a little quiet and a bit busier than usual, was more of less normal.

It was one other little matter that made the past year memorable. My mom passed away in 2013. Since then, my dad had been living alone in the house where I grew up in North Ogden. It has a big, beautiful, high-maintenance yard, and my dad had always worked hard at keeping it in shape (as well as raking his neighbors autumn leaves, pruning their trees, and snow-blowing their driveways. He’s a man who just couldn’t sit still. But after he turned 94, he started to slow down, and his balance got shaky. He was still driving (quite well, I might add), but over the winter of 2019–2020, he fell a couple of times, once banging his forehead on the sidewalk (resulting in stitches) and once hitting the corner of a wall and cracking a vertebra in his back. His back was just starting to feel better when he reached a significant milestone. A year ago tomorrow (April 5), he turned 95. He had wonderful neighbors. Because the pandemic was in full swing, his ward organized a drive-by birthday party. It was general conference Sunday, and they put a big sign in his front yard, then, after the afternoon session, had him sit in a chair on his front lawn while they all drove by with signs and balloons to wish him a happy birthday. We were there, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. At least 70 cars drove by. It took forever, but this was a man who was very loved. As well as spending his hours working in other people’s yards, since my mom’s death my dad had become the neighborhood ice cream shop. The little kids would come to his door every day, and he would give them popsicles and other ice cream treats. It was what he lived for. The neighbors visited him often and looked out for him.

Then, on May 31, I got a phone call from Dad’s best friend, who has lived across the street for over 50 years. Ray told me my dad had fallen out on the driveway and had been taken to the emergency room at McKay-Dee in Ogden. I drove up and learned that he had broken his left hip. Now, I know what that usually means for anyone over 90, but this was a man who was still putting in three to four miles a day on the stationary bike in the basement. The surgeon felt that he was nowhere near death and that to ease the pain, which was rather extreme, it would be best to do surgery. My dad and I agreed, so they put a metal rod in his femur and fixed it in place with two large pins (screws). He spent a month in rehab and made reasonable progress, but there was no way he could go back home. He could barely walk with a walker. We could also not take care of him in our house, and he insisted he didn’t want to be a burden on anyone. So I brought him down to Provo and found him a room in an assisted living facility that was on my way to work. I hated taking him away from his neighbors, but there really was no other option.

For about a month, it appeared that he might be able to progress to the point where he could go home again, and this was his goal. He worked so hard, doing laps in his room with the walker. But there was sciatic pain as well as the broken hip, and his body started getting weaker. By late summer, he was pretty much confined to a wheelchair. And even if his body had healed enough for him to go home, his mind was deteriorating. His memory had been going for years, but the physical stress must have taken a mental toll as well. He couldn’t remember things that had just happened. And he started getting delusional. It would come in two-week waves. He would be fine for a while, and then he would sort of detach from his surroundings. It became clear that it would be dangerous for him to ever live alone.

So, at that point, we started getting his house ready to sell. I had been driving up to North Ogden every other weekend to take care of his big yard. We were paying a neighbor kid to mow the lawn, but there was a lot of other work to do. It made for a busy summer. In September, we cleaned all personal items out of the house and had an estate-sale company sell most of his furniture and other belongings. The house sold very quickly, and we closed on the sale in late October. This was a piece of property that had been in my family since the 1870s, when my great-great-grandmother and her children had settled the area, so it was not an easy thing to do. But it was necessary, and it was a big relief when I could finally turn the work over to someone else.

We had a relatively quiet November, until the night of Thanksgiving. When the phone rang at 2:00 a.m., I knew there was trouble. Apparently, my dad had been trying to get up to go to the bathroom. The wheelchair wheels were not locked, and when he tried to transfer, it rolled away, and he fell and broke his right hip. I met him at Utah Valley Hospital and, once again, the surgeon recommended surgery to relieve the intense pain. This resulted in a partial hip replacement, which seemed to bring much better results than the previous surgery. My dad once again went to rehab, but within a day or two, blood tests revealed that he was suffering kidney failure. He was not eating and became unresponsive and unable to speak. It appeared his body was finally shutting down.

The nurse practitioner who had ordered the blood tests said he had seen this happen many times. While he couldn’t be sure about how things would unfold, he guessed that my dad probably had two days to two weeks to live. So we transported him back to the assisted living facility and started preparing for a funeral. By this time, he was just skin and bones. I didn’t see how he could live long. Then, one day, quite unexpectedly, he started speaking a little. And he started eating a little applesauce and yogurt. A few weeks passed, and we became suspicious, so his nurse requested another blood test. It was obvious that his kidneys had started working again. It has now been five months today since he returned to the assisted living facility. He is bedridden, but he is alert and eating a healthy diet. And he wants to die. Because of macular degeneration, he cannot read much. He has little interest in TV. So his days are endlessly long and boring. Since he can no longer serve anyone, he sees no purpose in living any longer. And he misses my mom.

I have visited my dad every day since December 4. Once they determined that he was on his way out of this life, despite the pandemic restrictions they allowed me “end of life” visits. Now, even though the end is not as near as we once thought, they still allow me to visit. They also made accommodation for me to get vaccinated with their staff and residents. I appreciate this. And it has been a blessing for me. Because he lived 80 miles away, I have not been able to visit him as often as I would have liked. Now I visit often, but it is not under the circumstances either of us would like.

Tomorrow is my dad’s 96th birthday. I have only one sibling, a sister who now lives in southern Utah and whose husband is bedridden, so she cannot get away very often. But she is coming tomorrow for the birthday we never thought he would live to see. We have no idea how long he can last, but I wouldn’t place any bets against a man who has survived two broken hips and kidney failure in the past ten months. The day of his departure will surely come, as it does for all of us, but his adventures since his last birthday have made this year of pandemic a year to remember.

What's New at BYU Studies?

 

The quick answer is, “A lot.” The longer answer is, of course, what you’re going to get next. Otherwise, this would be a very short post. Last year, 2020, was a crazy year for pretty much everyone on earth, but for BYU Studies it was a significant year. We kept the office open through the pandemic, with three or four of us showing up every day, social distancing in different rooms. At times we felt like we were the only ones in the spacious Joseph F. Smith Building, since the students and faculty were pretty much gone from March through August. And since September, BYU has not been anything close to normal. But we learned how to keep our students employed remotely, and we kept churning out good material. After publishing a more-or-less regular issue of BYU Studies Quarterly before the pandemic hit, we proceeded to publish three straight special issues, something I’m not sure we’ve ever done before.

Issue 59:2 contains the proceedings of a conference held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, last January. The presenters, a collection of LDS and non-LDS scholars, addressed various aspects of Joseph Smith’s First Vision. The conference was, of course, a 200-year celebration of the Vision and barely squeaked in before the novel coronavirus shut down all such events. The LDS presenters included David Holland (Harvard Divinity School), our illustrious editor in chief Steve Harper (BYU), Church Historian Elder LeGrand R. Curtis, Richard Bushman (Columbia University and Claremont Graduate University), Kathleen Flake (University of Virginia), Richard Bennett (BYU), and Rachel Cope (BYU). The non-LDS presenters included Ann Taves (UC Santa Barbara), George Marsden (Notre Dame), Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary), John Wigger (University of Missouri), and Peter Blodgett (Huntington Library). This issue also included a lengthy survey of First Vision art (with color images) by BYU Church history professor Anthony Sweat; an introduction to the sermon notes of Jesse Townsend, a Palmyra, New York, Presbyterian minister, by Brigham Young biographer John Turner; and an article by former BYU Studies editor in chief Jack Welch on the tangible bodies of the Father and Son. Issue 59:2 weighed in at an impressive 320 pages. So, if you are interested in seeing the First Vision from a variety of fresh angles, this issue is for you.

Our next issue, 59:3, commemorates the centenary of the nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the 150th anniversary of Mormon women gaining the right to vote. This issue was guest edited by Susan Howe and Katherine Kitterman and included a variety of articles on women’s suffrage and some of the personalities who made the women’s vote possible, in the United States and in Utah. Authors in this issue include Katherine Kitterman, Rebekah Ryan Clark, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Cherry B. Silver, Melinda Evans, Connie Lamb, and Anne Snyder. The issue also includes three splendid personal essays: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s “Why Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History”; Claudia L. Bushman’s “Courtship,” a surprising and entertaining account of her romance with the young and serious-minded Dick Bushman; and Richard’s “My Life in Art” (he gets the final word here but uses it to discuss his involvement in the LDS arts rather than telling his side of the courtship story).

Issue 59:4 contains the proceedings of a conference celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the dedication of the BYU Jerusalem Center. I’ll be honest. I have two sons who each spent a summer at the Jerusalem Center, so I have a personal interest in this topic, but I was surprised at how utterly fascinating this issue was to read. It features articles on the Church’s history in the Holy Land, outside perspectives on the Center, the lead-up to the dedication, and scholarly collaboration between Israeli scholars and Jerusalem Center faculty, as well as two panel discussions—one featuring faculty members who have taught at the Center and one featuring students who studied there. But the highlight of this issue, in my opinion, shines in three presentations that give fascinating background information on the difficulties the Church and BYU faced in building a “Mormon university” on Mount Scopus and the challenges the administrators still face in its day-to-day operation. These presentations are by Eran Hayet, the non-LDS Israeli executive director of the Jerusalem Center; Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, who was BYU president during the negotiations preceding and construction of the Center; and James R. Kearl, assistant to the BYU president, who has been responsible for the Jerusalem Center since June 1989. The behind-the-scenes descriptions by these three are priceless.

To say the least, it’s been a fun year at BYU Studies, even though I found myself the lone full-time editor for most of the year. Thanks to three very capable student interns, we managed to pull off these three lengthy special issues on time. And we are anxiously awaiting copies of issue 60:1, which is at press right now. It is another regular issue, but it contains several interesting articles, including one on the ethics of care that I believe is one of the most important and timely articles BYU Studies has ever published.

And that’s not all. We’re planning a special issue on the theory of evolution, another on good government, and we have many wonderful articles just waiting to see the light of day. So why don’t you go to our website and check us out. We have made all our content free online. That’s sixty-two years of great articles, essays, and book reviews.

Dark Waters, Endocrine Disruptors, and Self-Regulating Corporations

 

During the pandemic, since we don’t eat out at restaurants or go to movie theaters, we have fallen into new weekend patterns. We order takeout on Saturdays to support local restaurants, and we find movies, through either a streaming service or our Xfinity on-demand library, and watch them on Friday evenings. Last month, we found a movie with solid ratings from both the popcorn eaters and the critics, that ended up being a sobering reminder of a topic I have written about from time to time.

The movie is Dark Waters, a surprisingly accurate, based-on-real-events legal thriller about Rob Bilott (played by Mark Ruffalo), a corporate defense attorney who takes on the case of Wilbur Tenant, a farmer and friend of his mother’s, whose cows have been dying of horrible illnesses. The farmer suspects—and as Bilott investigates, he confirms—that the problem stems from chemical waste being dumped into a stream that runs through Tenant’s property. The odd twist in this tale is that Bilott and the law firm he works for end up suing one of their biggest corporate clients, DuPont.

The chemical waste being dumped was a substance identified in corporate documents as PFOA, short for perfluorooctanoic acid, a chemical DuPont used in the production of Teflon and that turns up in all sorts of other products, such as stain-resistant carpet. Through court-ordered discovery, Bilott learned that DuPont had hidden four decades of internal studies that showed PFOAs caused all sorts of diseases in both animals and humans, including various types of cancer. Why hide this evidence? Money, of course. Teflon was a huge cash cow for DuPont. And why did the government not regulate this dangerous chemical? Well, for many reasons, but one is that there are an estimated 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies have released into the world without any regulatory oversight. The government can’t keep up, and lobbyists often make it worthwhile for lawmakers to bind the EPA’s hands. How many of these 60,000 unregulated chemicals, we might ask, are as dangerous as PFOAs? The answer is unknown. According to a New York Times article about Bilott and DuPont, “Under the 1976 Toxic Sub­stances Control Act, the E.P.A. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. This arrangement, which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, is the reason that the E.P.A. has restricted only five chemicals, out of tens of thousands on the market, in the last 40 years.”¹ And while PFOAs may be more dangerous than many of these unregulated chemicals, this one example should cause us to question the whole idea of deregulating corporations and trusting them to self-regulate.

The movie shows how Bilott won an initial slap on the wrist for DuPont, a fine of $16.5 million, which is peanuts when you consider that this amount represented less than 2 percent of the profits DuPont earned on PFOAs in the year the fine was levied. But Bilott didn’t stop there. First, he filed a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of the 70,000 people in the vicinity of the PFOA plant whose drinking water had been contaminated. Dupont eventually settled for $70 million and an agreement to install filtration plants in six affected water districts and to fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a ‘‘probable link’’ between the chemical waste and any diseases.

Bilott and his team of lawyers received fees of $21.7 million in this settlement. One might expect them to have patted themselves on the back and deposited the money in their bank accounts. But that isn’t what they did. Bilott offered the 70,000 affected people the option of trading a blood sample for a $400 check. “The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire population’s personal data and infinite resources available to study them. The scientists designed 12 studies, including one that, using sophisticated environmental modeling technology, determined exactly how much PFOA each individual class member had ingested.”² The study took seven years to complete, but at the end the results showed probable cause that PFOA caused kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia, and ulcerative colitis. Thousands of victims filed lawsuits, and after losing several cases in court, DuPont settled in 2017 for $671 million.

That is a large pile of cash, but it is nothing compared to the lives lost, the impaired health of thousands of people, and the sheer amount of PFOA that has been released into the environment. PFOA is one of several chemicals in the larger PFAS (per- or polyfluoroalkyl substances) family. The problem with PFAS chemicals, aside from their toxic qualities, is that they do not break down and therefore remain in the human body (and the bodies of animals) for decades. Studies indicate that 99 percent of Americans have PFAS chemicals in their bodies.

Remember, PFOA was only one of some 60,000 unregulated synthetic chemicals that have been released into our environment. Think about this when you cheer government efforts to deregulate corporations. Big business is in business for one primary reason—to make a profit. This motive encourages behavior such as DuPont exhibited: hiding evidence that one of their products caused serious diseases in those who were exposed to it, especially DuPont employees. Nonstick pans are a great invention. But at what cost?

PFOA happens to also fall into a broader category of chemicals that have been designated as endocrine disruptors. This morning, I came across an interesting column by Nicholas Kristof about the long-term effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals.³ One study Kristof cites calculated that the sperm count of average men in Western nations had fallen by 59 percent between 1973 and 2011. Girls are increasingly experiencing early puberty, and adult women are seeing a decline in egg quality and an increase in miscarriages. Endocrine disruptors are suspected as the cause, and they are almost everywhere: in plastics, shampoos, cushions, pesticides, canned foods, and even in ATM receipts. The effects appear to compound over generations. When mice are exposed to these chemicals, after three generations 20 percent are infertile. This doesn’t mean the extinction of the human race, but it could severely affect population replacement, as well as human health in a number of ways.

Europe and Canada have taken steps to regulate endocrine disruptors, but chemical companies are lobbying against even safety testing in the United States. So, we’re the guinea pigs, and it may take decades for us to learn all the consequences of the widespread use of these chemicals. As Kristof points out, “Most issues won’t matter much in a decade, let alone a century. Climate change is one exception, and another may be the risks to our capacity to reproduce.”

Republicans have become defenders of deregulation and oppose government interference in business. But quite often the costs of government inaction are high. In short, if government does not investigate and regulate these dangerous manmade chemicals, who will?

________________________________

1. Nathaniel Rich, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” New York Times, January 6, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html.

2. Rich, “Lawyer Who Became Dupont’s Worst Nightmare.”

3. Nicholas Kristof, “What Are Sperm Telling Us?” New York Times, February 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/opinion/sunday/endocrine-disruptors-sperm.html.

Finding Reliable Sources of Information

 The following is a priesthood lesson I presented on January 10, the Sunday after the seditious attack on the U.S. Capitol. Because of the events of the week, I felt strongly the need to share some insights into how I choose reliable sources of information, drawing three parallels between my job as editorial director at BYU Studies and my responsibility as a citizen to be informed on important issues. Because of the nature of the topic, this was not a discussion; it was a presentation. Afterward, some members of my elders quorum asked for a copy. I figured others might also benefit, so I've decided to post it here.

The lesson I was asked to prepare was based on a conference talk about prayer by President Ballard. It included the following statement: “On Sunday, October 20, I spoke to a large gathering near Boston, Massachusetts. As I was speaking, I was prompted to say, ‘I plead with you . . . to pray for this country, for our leaders, for our people, and for the families that live in this great nation.’” Considering what has happened since October 20, I think President Ballard was inspired in making this plea.

So, early in the week I was planning on leading a discussion on prayer. Then Wednesday came along, and I felt strongly that a lesson on prayer was not very urgent. Instead, I felt that we need to talk about some issues that lie behind the disturbing events of Wednesday. One of the main causes of the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol this past week is the spread of disinformation. We might ask ourselves why so many people, in the face of overwhelming evidence, including testimony from those who know best, insist on believing unfounded claims. I think it has a great deal to do with where people choose to get their information, and this is a problem we can and must address.

The Church is aware of this problem among Latter-day Saints. As [elders quorum president] Justin’s email yesterday indicated, the Church recently made some significant additions to the Handbook. One of them reads as follows: “In today’s world, information is easy to access and share. This can be a great blessing for those seeking to be educated and informed. However, many sources of information are unreliable and do not edify. Some sources seek to promote anger, contention, fear, or baseless conspiracy theories. Therefore, it is important that Church members be wise as they seek truth. Members of the Church should seek out and share only credible, reliable, and factual sources of information. They should avoid sources that are speculative or founded on rumor.”

There is a distinction we need to make, between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is simply inaccurate information. It can be harmless, or it can be harmful, but it is usually unintentional. Disinformation, on the other hand, is false information that is spread with the intent to deceive. Generally, its purpose is to inflame rather than inform, and those who spread it usually have ulterior motives. We have seen a marked increase in both kinds of false information the past few years.

Finding and identifying reliable sources of information is something I know a bit about.

For the past fourteen and a half years, I have been the editorial director at BYU Studies. Most of you don’t know what BYU Studies is, but it is an office at BYU that publishes the oldest Mormon studies journal, now called BYU Studies Quarterly. It has been published since 1959. It is a scholarly journal, so most of the content is written by professors, but it is not written to a scholarly readership. It is written for a general, college-educated audience. Because we represent the university and the Church, we have to be careful about what we publish, so we rely on double-blind peer review. Double-blind means that the author of an article doesn’t know who the reviewers are, and the reviewers don’t know who the author is. We are also one of the few remaining scholarly journals that source check everything. We hire student interns and train them well, and they check all the sources and quotes and facts in every article. BYU Studies is also multidisciplinary, so, although it is a Mormon studies journal, we publish material from a variety of disciplines, everything from physics and engineering to music and literature. We also publish a lot of LDS history. I’d say that almost half of what we publish is Church history. In my position as editorial director, I’m a sort of gatekeeper. I have to make sure that what we publish is reliable and also that it does not embarrass or harm the university or the Church. So, as part of my job, I feel it is necessary to stay informed and keep up to date on Mormon studies, a field that is expanding rapidly. That means I read a lot. I read Dialogue and the Journal of Mormon History and Mormon Historical Studies. I look at the Religious Educator. I check in daily to see what’s new in the “bloggernacle” (the LDS blogs). And I read a lot of books. I counted the other day, and in the past 15 years, I’ve read 75 books in Mormon studies. These aren’t “Church books.” These are books about Mormonism, written by scholars and published mostly by reputable university presses like Oxford University Press or the University of Illinois.

So, let me draw some parallels between how I deal with Church history and how we ought to deal with current events, especially politics. I’ll make three points.

1. LDS history is very messy. This is because life is complex, and real people are flawed, even prophets. Over the years, the Church has produced a lot of sugar-coated, sanitized history. It’s not very helpful, and indeed, it can cause problems for members when they encounter complexity and real-life messiness. Fortunately, the Church is doing better today, especially through projects such as the Joseph Smith Papers and Saints. But let me share something that has helped me in my effort to grapple with the difficult aspects of Mormon history. It’s a very simple idea, but I find it profound: “Events do not tell their own stories.” People tell stories, and people are biased. They have agendas. They are selective in which information they include and what they leave out. This means that all history is interpretation. This also means that in our search for truth we somehow need to find ways to recognize the biases and agendas of historians and to see behind the curtain, as it were, so that we can filter out as many impurities as we can. And the only way I know to accomplish this is to simply read a lot of history. When you see events through the eyes of many interpreters, you start to get a more complete picture; you become aware of which sources historians are using, how reliable those sources are, and how the historians are employing them. You also come to recognize the spin historians put on their accounts, or the choices they made in deciding what to emphasize and what to leave out, and this helps you sort out what rings true from what doesn’t. If you do this long enough, you develop a sort of sixth sense that allows you to recognize questionable conclusions or flimsy arguments. You sense that something isn’t quite right, so you dig into sources to figure out what’s off and why.

2. I’m not a fan of apologetics. Apologetics is the undeviating defense of a person or institution, come hell or high water. The problem with apologists is that they arrive at a conclusion first, and then look for evidence to support it. This is backward from the way good scholarship works. But it means that apologists inevitably cherry-pick information. They use what they like and discard anything that might disprove their preformed conclusions. Let me be blunt about this. I reached a point many years ago where I realized that it is not my responsibility to defend everything Joseph Smith said or did, nor is it my responsibility to defend everything the Church says or does. It is my responsibility to defend truth, whatever form it may take. Patrick Mason, director of the Mormon Studies program at Utah State University, said this about apologetics: “For too many years we refused to yield to dissenters and critics even an inch of territory—including some pretty rocky, barren outposts that should never have fallen within our borders and definitely weren’t worth defending.”

3. The world of scholarly publications has guardrails. One of the most important is peer review. We ask experts in various fields to review articles that come in. Quite often they point out flaws in the author’s argument that we editors, being nonspecialists, would not be aware of. Sometimes peer reviewers are wrong. Sometimes they disagree with each other. After all, they are human and are biased too. But usually they are right or at least have valuable insights, and they keep us from publishing material that is irresponsible or just plain wrong.

These points about scholarship in general and history in particular have parallels to current events. If you think about it, current events are also history, just very recent.

1. Remember, “Events do not tell their own stories,” even current events. Someone needs to interpret them to show us what they mean. So, how do we know which interpretations to trust? My answer is the same as for history. We have to put in a lot of work and tap many sources. Some sources, however, we should ignore from the outset. If a source is known to play fast and loose with facts, ignore it. If a source seeks to inflame rather than inform, be very suspicious. I use the same approach with current events that I do with LDS history. I’m sort of a news junkie. I look at the Deseret News online every morning; I subscribe to the Salt Lake Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post, and, for more in-depth reporting, New Yorker magazine; I listen to NPR in the shower every morning and sometimes while I drive; I watch NBC News most evenings and check in on CNN. I also read books about current events and important issues. Let me say something about mainstream media. It may tilt one way or the other, but reputable news sources follow a code of journalistic ethics. They also have editors and producers who act as gatekeepers. Websites and extremist media outlets do not. One thing I appreciate about the Washington Post and New York Times is that they publish columnists from across the political spectrum. Even though I lean left, I regularly read at least eight conservative columnists: George Will, David Brooks, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens, Michael Gerson, Max Boot, Ross Douthat, Kathleen Parker. I don’t always agree with them, but I find them insightful and informative. The mainstream media has recently been called the enemy of the people, but please understand that the free press has always been indispensable in maintaining our freedoms and holding government accountable. That’s why freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment. And it’s why I worry about the trend of newspapers being replaced by untethered online media.

2. On apologetics: If you read or watch or listen to sources that defend only one person or one side, you can be sure that they are cherry-picking information and feeding you a preformed conclusion that may tell only half of the story. Be wary of extremist views that seek to inflame rather than inform. Be aware that everyone has biases. So, read and watch and listen with that in mind. And please be cautious of the all-or-nothing mentality that treats politics as a team sport. If you find yourself defending the indefensible, ask yourself why.

3. Look for guardrails. Pay attention to which media outlets have credible fact checkers. This is a valuable service. The other day Mitt Romney published a fine editorial in the Deseret News. I have never voted for Romney and probably never will. He and I disagree about most policy questions. But we inhabit the same reality most of the time and could have a rational discussion about most issues. This is not true, however, of people who inhabit a universe built on disinformation and conspiracy theories. Let me quote Senator Romney: “I believe that we should watch and read, not just sources we tend to agree with but also sources we disagree with. If Fox is your regular diet, watch NBC, CNN or ABC now and then. Conversely, if MSNBC is your regular, don’t make it exclusive. We need to broaden our reading as well. I note that news organizations like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times make an effort to get the facts and when they make a mistake, they acknowledge it. Social media has no fact-checkers, no editors and often doesn’t even disclose who actually wrote a post.” I endorse Romney’s wisdom wholeheartedly.

I’ll close by quoting again the Church’s Handbook: “Many sources of information are unreliable and do not edify. Some sources seek to promote anger, contention, fear, or baseless conspiracy theories. Therefore, it is important that Church members be wise as they seek truth. Members of the Church should seek out and share only credible, reliable, and factual sources of information. They should avoid sources that are speculative or founded on rumor.”

The Future of the GOP and the Decisions Facing LDS Republicans

 

The Republican Party is at a difficult crossroads, especially after the insurrection of January 6. The party has already split into at least four factions:

1. The first group we can call Principled Republicans Who Stayed. This is a rather small group. It includes politicians such as Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, and John Kasich, as well as a few Republicans such as George Conway (husband of Kellyanne) and some members of the Lincoln Project who strenuously opposed Donald Trump. These individuals live in the real world of facts and laws and conservative principles, such as they are. They have endured Trump but have spoken out against at least his most extreme outrages, all while trying to remain loyal to what they consider true conservatism.

2. The second group would then be Principled Republicans Who Left. This is also a relatively small group. It includes such individuals as Steve Schmidt, longtime GOP strategist who is now registered as a Democrat; columnists George Will and Max Boot; and Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. These people believe the Republican Party no longer exists, so they are politically homeless.

3. The third group is what we might call the Unprincipled Conservative Opportunists. This faction includes Senate Minority Leader (my, that sounds good!) Mitch McConnell and a whole host of Republicans in Congress who know full well how corrupt Donald Trump is but opposed certifying the Electoral College vote because of either fear of getting primaried by someone in group 4 or fear of having Trump tweet at them (there is much overlap here, but the level of cowardice is the same). These people have no moral core but simply blow with the wind and try to take advantage of it for personal benefit.

4. The fourth group is the largest. I’ll call these people Disinformed Trump Supporters. (We should recognize the difference here between misinformation, which is simply inaccurate information that is generally unintentional, and disinformation, which is inaccurate information spread with the intent to deceive, such as the claim that there was widespread election fraud.) This group is massive and includes not just Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, but also Burgess Owens, Chris Stewart, and Mike Lee of Utah, as well as the roughly 70 percent of the Republican Party who still believe, despite no evidence to support this belief, that Trump actually won the election and that there was widespread fraud. (“It’s out there somewhere, we know, even though Trump’s lawyers couldn’t present a shred of it in court.”) These people either believed the lies or intentionally used them to try to keep Trump in office. The Constitution and our democratic republic are collateral damage in their war against reality.

Somewhere in the past four years, this fourth group became by far the largest, and at that point, the Republican Party transformed itself from an anti-Democratic party, which it has always been, to an antidemocratic party, meaning that it was willing to throw democracy under the bus in order to retain power.

Because of the divisions listed above (with possibly dozens of smaller fractures), I believe the GOP may be on the verge of splitting asunder. The upcoming impeachment trial of private citizen Donald John Trump will tell us a lot about the future of the Republican Party. Rumor has it that Mitch McConnell is finished with Trump and would like to convict him and thus expel him from the party. McConnell has always been about one thing: power. He has changed positions on various issues over the years and even enabled Trump in his worst offenses, in order to keep himself in power in the Senate. But the attack on the Capitol was a bridge too far, as was Trump’s behavior leading up to the Georgia Senate runoff elections, which took the Senate leadership out of McConnell’s hands. The questions now are: (1) Can Mitch find sixteen other Republican senators who are willing to risk the anger of Trump’s mob? and (2) Even if he can, will he be able to maintain his position as minority leader? I’ve seen both the courage and the moral compass of the majority of Senate Republicans, so I’m dubious about answering either of these questions in the affirmative.

From all appearances, the largest segment of the Republican Party is trapped in the right-wing media bubble, angry, irrational, delusional, and determined to win by any means available, even if that means embracing absurd lies, throwing the Constitution out the window, and following a self-absorbed madman on whatever destructive crusade he dreams up. So, where does this leave the other three groups?

I keep hoping that a few of the Principled Republicans will leave the GOP to the insane mob and form a new center-right party, draw in some of the Unprincipled Conservative Opportunists and even a few moderate Democrats or unaffiliated voters, and give battle to the GOP for the soul of conservatism. I’m not sure they could prevail. Social media is all on the side of lunacy and extremism, after all, but at least they could prevent the corrupted GOP from winning elections. Over time, as failure sets in, this might eventually lead a few of the less wacko group 4 members to come to their senses and flee to the new party.

If my hope is ill-placed, then there is only one future for the GOP, and that is to become a party of angry grievance, white supremacy, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and antidemocratic demagoguery. It will eventually shrivel and die. But the damage it will do on the path to political perdition will be immense.

These possibilities present a difficult decision for many Latter-day Saints (since most Mormons are Republican). If the party splits, this may make the decision easier. If LDS Republicans are principled, they would of course leave the GOP and join with other principled conservatives in forming a new party, much as the original Republicans did when they said goodbye to Whigdom over slavery. If they are not principled—in other words, if they want to live in an alternate reality where facts are flexible and they can chase after crazy conspiracy theories and drink the Kool-Aid of disinformation being concocted in the right-wing media bubble—then they may eventually find themselves bumping up against Church guidance and prophetic counsel. The Church has already started trying to rein in the extremists, with warnings in the Handbook about unreliable sources of information and conspiracy theories, and public statements supporting such responsible notions as getting vaccinated. It is already obvious that many Latter-day Saints are going to choose their alternate reality over their religion. This could create contention in the Church as reality-based Latter-day Saints find it impossible to communicate with Church members who inhabit a different universe.

If the GOP doesn’t split, then things become even more difficult for principled Latter-day Saint Republicans. If the party stays together, it appears that the dominant faction will be the Disinformed Trump Supporters. Mitch McConnell will be pushed aside, replaced perhaps by Ted Cruz or someone similar, who will push all the Trump buttons in an attempt to keep the “base” riled up over nonexistent crises and petty grievances. Those Church members who choose to stay in this party will find themselves supporting not a political party but a cult with no real policy positions, driven by disinformation, inflamed by increasingly irrational conspiracy theories, and open to an increasing wave of white supremacy. Some Latter-day Saints will feel comfortable in such a cult, but others will find themselves feeling increasingly alienated. They may still vote “R” on election day, but they will find it harder and harder to get excited about supporting the types of candidates who will rise to the top in such a party.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. A lot will be revealed the second week of February, when Donald Trump goes on trial in the Senate for instigating an attempted overthrow of democracy.