'Hoo boy': Pete Hegseth slammed by both sides after 'huge own goal' offends Christian sect

David McAfee
June 6, 2026 

RAW STORY



Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (not pictured) in the Cabinet Room at the White House, in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 20, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Pete Hegseth's decision to strip the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of its Christian designation in the Pentagon's new religion classification system has ignited a rare cross-aisle pile-on, with Republican lawmakers, conservative commentators and Democratic senators lining up to call it a mistake.

As Raw Story reported, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) moved quickly Saturday to condemn the change as "unacceptable," saying he was working to reverse it. He wasn't alone.

Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT) — a Utah Republican congresswoman — stopped short of criticizing Hegseth directly but made clear where she stood on the underlying question. "Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are Christians," she wrote on X. "We worship Jesus Christ, strive to follow His teachings, and His name is even in the name of our Church. Just last year, President Trump himself recognized Latter-day Saints as Christians." She said she looked forward to "conversations that will ensure all service members receive the religious support and First Amendment protections they deserve."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), whose handle is @BasedMikeLee, kept it simple: "Can anyone tell me why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was left out of the list of Christian churches?"

The answer, based on the list published by Hegseth's office, is that the Pentagon placed LDS in its own standalone category — "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)" — separate from the two dozen denominations listed under the "Christian" umbrella.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a prominent conservative commentator, said Hegseth shot himself in the foot: "Failing to characterize Mormons as Christians is a huge own goal by Hegseth."

The backlash wasn't limited to the right. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) — an Arizona Democrat whose state has a significant LDS population — replied directly to Lee: "I don't know why but I am with you. This needs to be fixed ASAP."

Not everyone was displeased. Milo Yiannopoulos, the far-right provocateur who goes by @Nero on X, used the moment to attack the LDS church itself. "It's not a religion. It's certainly not Christian," he wrote. "LDS is referred to by academics as a 'new religious movement,' polite sociological jargon for cult." RedState writer Bonchie offered a more succinct assessment of the situation: "Hoo boy."

The classification overhaul was announced by Sean Parnell, Hegseth's assistant for public affairs, who framed the reduction from more than 200 categories to 31 as a streamlining effort to help "religious support personnel" provide "spiritual care to our warfighters." Whether it accomplishes that — or simply hands Hegseth's critics a gift — is now a matter of bipartisan consensus.

Hegseth hammered for his 'disrespectful' D-Day speech in Normandy: 'Shameless'

"Why did he construct an analogy in which he is on the side of the Nazis?"

David McAfee
June 7, 2026

RAW STORY

WILDROOT OR BRYLCREME?!

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Department of Defense's FY27 budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the 82nd anniversary of D-Day to compare migrants crossing the Mediterranean to the Nazi invasion of Europe — and the backlash was immediate and bipartisan.

Speaking at the Normandy ceremony, Hegseth departed from solemn remembrance to deliver an anti-immigration political statement. "Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies," he said. "In Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?"

Greg Bagwell, a retired British Air Marshal and former senior RAF commander, was among the first to respond. "The commemoration of the bravery, tragedy and importance of D-Day is not ever the place to try and score cheap political points. What an ignorant and disrespectful dumba--."

Tom Nichols, a national security expert and staff writer at The Atlantic, noted a glaring historical problem with Hegseth's framing — one that multiple people picked up on. "Making an analogy where the West is the defender of the beaches — you know, where the Nazis were — is not the smartest speechifying," Nichols wrote, "even for the man some inside the Pentagon refer to as 'Dumb McNamara.'" His post was reposted by former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock.

Reed Galen, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, was less clinical about it. "If you've been to the American Military Cemetery in Normandy, and you've looked out over those rows of crosses and stars of David, you'll know how odious this man is," he wrote. "Those men didn't die for this ideology or a------- like Pete Hegseth."

British attorney Jessica Simor pointed to Hegseth's "Deus Vult" tattoo — the 1095 Crusader rallying cry of Pope Urban II to expel Muslims from Jerusalem, which has since been adopted as a symbol by far-right extremists. "As a far-right Christian nationalist, likely of the kind that favoured the Final Solution, he should have been banned," she wrote.

Political commentator Anna Neumann put it plainly: "The heroes of Normandy deserve remembrance, gratitude and humility. Using D-Day commemorations as a platform for culture-war politics is shameless."

Occupy Democrats noted the core absurdity: Hegseth had compared migrant boats to the Allied invasion — placing Europe's governments in the rhetorical position of the forces that were trying to stop it.

Tim Kaine also weighed in, saying, "Apparently our nitwit Secretary of War(drobe) thinks a D-Day commemoration is an appropriate time to push his far right ideology in Europe."

Podcast host Matthew Yglesias chimed in with a question:

"Why did he construct an analogy in which he is on the side of the Nazis?"

AN AMERIKAN KULT

For 2 centuries, Latter-day Saints have revered religious freedom – but their definition is evolving

(The Conversation) — Latter-day Saints have long valued the US Constitution’s promise of religious freedom – but the church has also tested its boundaries.

Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have called for a fast on July 5, 2026, to give thanks for religious liberty. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Nicholas Shrum and Benjamin Park
June 2, 2026 at 1:48 p.m. ET


(The Conversation) — On July 5, 2026, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is encouraging its American members to participate in a special fast: a day to “express gratitude for religious liberty and to pray that it be strengthened throughout the world,” in the words of its top three leaders.

The fast will coincide with the United States’ semiquincentennial celebrations. For Latter-day Saints, the 250th anniversary commemorations are not merely a historic milestone for the country, but an opportunity to reflect on their faith’s relationship to the American experiment. In the church’s early decades, that relationship often tested the boundaries of religious liberty – and the church’s own understanding of that principle has been evolving ever since.
Divine plan

From the faith’s beginnings in the 1830s, founder Joseph Smith frequently emphasized the significance of religious liberty. In one 1843 sermon, for example, Smith explained that “civil and religious liberty … were diffused into my soul by my grandfathers,” both of whom had fought in the war of independence.




Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon in 1830.
Wikimedia Commons

Smith’s personal connection to the Revolution and the nation’s founding documents were central to the faith’s developing theology. Latter-day Saints believe that their church is a restoration of Jesus’ “only true and living church,” and that America’s founding helped make that possible. In other words, Mormonism exists because of the United States, specifically its tradition of religious freedom enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment.

According to this logic, America’s founding was a crucial part of God’s divine plan, accomplished by chosen servants. Its founding documents are treated with reverence, especially the Constitution.

One of Smith’s own revelations declared that God “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose,” suggesting divine intervention.

‘Kingdom of God’

However, Latter-day Saints soon came to doubt whether the United States was truly a land of religious freedom.

Early on, the small Mormon church faced persecution – especially in Missouri and Illinois, where state-sanctioned mobs forced members to flee. After Smith was killed by a mob in 1844, his successor, Brigham Young, decided to lead Latter-day Saints outside the country’s borders into present-day Utah, which was then northern Mexico.

Yet on their path to the Great Basin region, the federal government enlisted a group of church members to serve in the Mexican-American War. Known as the Mormon Battalion, they marched into Mexican territory under an American flag with only 13 stars. It was a symbolic protest: the U.S. they hoped to represent was the one that existed during the American Revolution, not the one with 28 states that had chased them out. They saw their own church, not the current government, as the revolutionaries’ true inheritor.




An 1863 depiction of Salt Lake City, which had been founded about 15 years earlier.
Wikimedia Commons

Once the war was over, the U.S. annexed much of Mexico’s land, including the Utah region. For about two decades the church had latitude to establish what it called its “Kingdom of God” in the West, in line with church doctrine. But the federal government soon cracked down, particularly on the church’s commitment at the time to polygamy and theocracy: beliefs that Mormons insisted were protected by the First Amendment.

The ensuing legal and political battles lasted for four decades, testing the boundaries of American religious liberty. Only after the Supreme Court ruled against a church member with two wives in 1879, and Congress passed legislation to further enforce anti-polygamy laws, did the church publicly forfeit the practice in 1890.

Yet even amid these struggles, Latter-day Saint devotion to the founding generation continued. In 1877, for example, Wilford Woodruff, who later became president of the church, declared that he had received a vision of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The signers “gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them” by offering them Latter-day Saint ordinances for the deceased.

An American flag draped over the Salt Lake Temple in 1896, the year Utah became a state.
Charles Ellis Johnson/Wikimedia Commons

Though Woodruff’s vision has become the subject of Mormon folklore, it represents how deeply a certain strain of Americanism became woven into church culture in the 19th century. Just as Smith’s revelations had done a generation before, this vision and the sentiments behind it elevated the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to quasi-scripture.

Shifting focus

During the 20th century the church continued to “Americanize,” such as by embracing U.S. capitalism and participating in the two-party system. Talk about religious freedom shifted away from primarily seeking protection for religious minorities toward protection for their own theological commitments as part of a Christian mainstream.


Ezra Taft Benson, then president of the church, delivered an address in 1987 on the Constitution’s sacred significance.

By the mid-1900s, church leaders had embraced a conservative view of politics and law that championed limited government. Paralleling broader American attitudes during the Cold War, which pitted “godless” Soviet communism against American democracy and freedom of religion, Latter-day Saints used the language of religious freedom to advocate for their own interpretations of religion’s role in the public square.

Latter-day Saint leaders’ list of perceived threats evolved from New Deal legislation and civil rights protections to abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and, finally, homosexuality – similar to other conservative Christian groups’ concerns. The church got involved in a number of legal cases and campaigns opposing same-sex unions.

Since the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the United States, the church’s public policy stance has focused on compromise, balancing protection of religious liberties with protection against discrimination for LGBTQ+ people in housing and employment.



Dallin Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice who is now president of the church, delivered a landmark speech on religious liberty at the University of Virginia in 2021.




A global church

What becomes clear across the past two centuries is that definitions of religious freedom have substantially changed, including for Latter-day Saints. In the 19th century, church members focused on protecting all minority religious groups like themselves against the Protestant majority. Today, the church’s messaging on religious freedom, at least in the United States, usually concerns protecting beliefs that clash with secular progressivism and LGBTQ+ protections. Overall, its approach has largely aligned with the religious right.

Equally significant, a majority of the church’s members now live outside the United States, and it is eager to present an image that is less American and more universal. Instead of elevating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as quasi-scripture, leaders tend to highlight principles of religious freedom that are applicable across the globe.

The July fast will highlight “the importance of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how these documents support religious freedom,” but it will also call for expanding liberty around the world. The day will be an opportunity for Latter-day Saints to reflect on their own place in the American story – a place that is still being defined.

This article has been updated to clarify how Joseph Smith was killed.

(Benjamin Park, Associate Professor of History, Sam Houston State University. Nicholas Shrum, Doctoral Student in Religious Studies, University of Virginia. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

LDS just launched the most 'quintessentially Mormon' rebuke of Trump

REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Adam Lynch

May 23, 2026

ALTERNET

On May 17 thousands of President Donald Trump’s faithful supporters (and many right-wing Christians), assembled in Washington, D.C. for “Rededicate 250”— a celebration that some critics called a “taxpayer funded white Christian nationalist rally.”

But while some were celebrating the festivities, at least one conservative Christian voice was noticeably absent from the White House-backed “jubilee” to rededicate America to God and conservative Christian values.

“No Latter-day Saint or ‘Mormon’ leaders were on the stage addressing the thousands in attendance,” said Religion News Service writer Jana Riess. “To me, that absence speaks volumes — especially since the majority of Latter-day Saints in the United States are Republicans.”


It’s not that the LDS Church hasn’t preached many of the same ideals that were being lauded “from the MAGA pulpit,” said Riess.

“The idea that America is a special nation, uniquely chosen by God for a role in salvation history? We Mormons have embraced that for a long time now. It’s in the Book of Mormon, one of our primary works of Scripture. … So, when Trump-endorsed evangelical leaders on Sunday doubled down on America’s holy destiny, that message would have resonated with many U.S. Latter-day Saints.”

But not only were Latter-day Saint leaders not part of Sunday’s Rededicate 250 exhibition, Riess said the church’s actions in the past year “have signaled a widening divide between its priorities and those of the second Trump administration.”

Just this week, for example, the church made a $25 million donation to UNICEF to feed mothers and children around the world. UNICEF’s executive director, Catherine Russell, said the donation arrived “at a critical time,” particularly because after taking office in early 2025, the Trump administration gutted the USAID program, reversing funds Congress had already allocated for food and healthcare.

“The result has been devastating,” said Riess. “According to UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, the sudden withdrawal of lifesaving help is expected to result in more than 14 million additional deaths in the next four years, more than 4 million of them of children under age 5.”

Additionally, Riess said the church gave $1.58 billion to relief efforts around the world in 2025 and sent truckloads of donations to 250 different food banks from coast to coast

“This pointed emphasis on charitable giving feels like the politest and most quintessentially Mormon ‘eff you’ ever to the administration,” said Riess, adding that “in an age of chaotic cruelty, where public figures who call themselves Christian have actually claimed that empathy is a sin, the church keeps calling for, and practicing, compassion.”

Why conservative Mormon women derailed Republicans in Utah

Shutterstock Asset id: 1918280681

Adam Lynch

January 28, 2026 

ALTERNET

The Guardian reports it was largely the work of a hyper-conservative group of Mormon women who derailed Republican efforts to gerrymander a new Republican district in Utah this year.

The Pew Research Center reveals that Mormons, also known as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were among Trump’s strongest supporters in 2016, with about 61 percent of church members backing him, making the group his second-largest religious support base.

But in 2018, the Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) helped gather enough signatures to pass Utah’s Proposition 4, with 50.34 percent of the vote. This created an independent state commission to draw state and congressional maps using nonpartisan criteria, rather than let legislators cherry-pick their own voters.

But in 2020, state Republican lawmakers told MWEG to take a hike and repealed Proposition 4. Then they redrew maps that split Salt Lake County – Utah’s youngest, most diverse and bluest region – into four districts. This packed urban Democratic votes into red outlying regions and entrenched GOP dominance for the next election. The MWEG group sued their state government along, arguing that the Republican-led legislature violated the state constitution when it altered a legitimate voter-approved proposition.

“Last summer, the women’s groups won,” reports the Guardian. “Now state lawmakers must draw new maps that could pave the way for a Democratic congressional seat in the 2026 midterm elections.”

“I live in a district that’s likely going to become Democratic,” said MWEG Founder Emma Petty Addams. “I’ll lose a Republican representative I respect, and I’m 100 percent OK with that if it means my neighbors get representative government.”

Defying lawmakers was not easy, said Addams, a mother of three and a piano teacher. But the legal battle was necessary to deal with “an overreach of power” that Utah voters opted to protect with “guardrails”.

“People want to see Mormon women as either the secret wives or as a trad wife,” Addams said. “We’re neither of those.”

The organization’s is already saddling up for its next fight, however, as the Utah Republican Party pushes to repeal Proposition 4. In an effort to gerrymander Utah to protect Trump’s narrow House GOP majority, the party is seeking 141,000 signatures by February to place the repeal on the November ballot.

Trump posted on Truth Social, urging Utah residents to repeal the proposition and let politicians pick their own voters. This follow his nationwide effort to restructure districts to enshrine his majority for the foreseeable future — some with more success than others.

“Organizers had gathered around 56,000 signatures as of 26 January,” reports the Guardian. “The Utah Republican party did not respond to a request for comment about its repeal efforts.”

Read the Guardian report at this link

Republican politics is killing the modern-day church: analysis

Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash

Sarah K. Burris

January 22, 2026 

ALTERNET

Over the years, traditional religious practice has declined in both the United States and globally, according to one political scientist.

Speaking to The New York Times' "Interesting Times" podcast, Ryan Burge, an ordained Christian minister who became a professor, analyzed data trends for his new book, "The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us."

The number of people declaring they aren't affiliated with any church appears to have stalled, Burge said, but this has not benefited traditional Christian churches.

Burge argues that polarization and sorting are central to the trend, with moderate, mainline Protestant churches hollowing out while more intense, ideologically defined communities remain. White evangelical congregations on the right remain comparatively stable.

Burge emphasizes that "nones" are not secretly spiritual seekers in disguise. Many are neither religious nor particularly spiritual. Instead, they reject the institutions themselves, reflecting a broader anti-establishment sentiment in the U.S.

"I think education, social trust, and institutional trust are all locked together in this matrix of things that make you either more willing to engage in polite society, or less willing to engage in polite society. Educated people have a level of trust that less educated people do not," Burge said on the podcast.

One consistent theme is that "dropping out begets dropping out." Those who drop out of church also have lower educational attainment rates. Only about 25 percent have four-year college degrees.

"So they're dropping out of education, they're dropping out of religion, and they're dropping out of politics. They're basically isolating themselves from American society," Burge said.

Unlike in previous decades, politics is shaping the religious mindset of those who do not return to the churches in which they were raised. While churches were once places where Democrats and Republicans could sit in the same pews, today people seek out others who are largely similar to themselves. Families are seeking out churches based on political alignment rather than other factors.

"What's happened in America, especially with white Christianity, is that it is coded as Republican — and that's not always been the case," Burge said. "I think this is a point that people forget: Even in the 1980s, among the white evangelical church, the share who were Republicans and the share who were Democrats was the same."

The sorting of people by similar beliefs has increased the decline of politically mixed, moderate congregations, while reinforcing the perception that white evangelical churches are an extension of the Republican Party.

"So what we're seeing here is a unique moment. The number one predictor of whether you're going to be religious or not in America — besides the religion question itself — is: What is your political ideology? If you're a liberal, there's a 50-50 chance you're a nonreligious person. If you're a conservative, it's about a 12 percent chance that you're a nonreligious person," Burge said.

Young people are most affected by political ideologies in determining religious behavior.

"Young people think, 'I'm a liberal, so I'm going to be irreligious,'" Burge said. "They don't even accept the possibility that you can be a liberal Christian anymore."

Burge noted that responses to right-wing churches have included setting up left-wing alternatives. However, mainline church members want a completely non-political space. While the Covid lockdown brought many people to watch services online, once it ended, Burge said people wanted in-person attendance. He has observed this with young people as well: only 15 percent preferred online learning, and 15 percent had no preference. The rest preferred to meet in person.

Burge concluded by saying, "Listen, religion's endured for all of Western civilization because it works for lots and lots of people. And no matter how much we try to remake it with technology and A.I. and the internet, showing up on an average Sunday with a bunch of people and singing some songs and saying some creeds and hearing a sermon is transformative and will be for all of human history, as far as I can tell."

Read or listen to the full interview here.

Bondi Beach Massacre

Keeping the deaths alive

by Dan Lieberman / January 22nd, 2026

The aftermath of a crime has five objectives — define the crime and its extent, find out who did it, learn the motive, convict the assailant(s), and ascertain a method to prevent similar crimes. The Bondi Beach massacre has been defined and the assailants identified. Similar to other instances when Jews are victims, speculation replaces actuality, and the motive, which is usually a complex mixture of economic, political, psychological, and emotional, is replaced by one word ─ anti-Semitism, and with one objective ─ stifle dissent to Israel’s genocidal policies.

A segment of the public is aware of the exploitation of the killings of Jews to shape minds and favor Israel’s extermination policies, but the exploitation is not sufficiently recognized and not well attended. Israel’s military demolishes those who confront it at its doors; Israel’s worldwide army of dedicated followers demolishes those who confront Israel at external public and government levels. Inciting hatred of the Jewish people and using the expressions of hatred to rationalize Zionist policies and convince others of their necessity is the principal tool in the toolbox of those who advocate Israel above all. In order to subdue the criminal enterprise known as Israel and prevent the genocide portrayed as defense of the Israel state, highest priority should be given to a careful study of the terrifying “hatred” tactic and determine how to combat it. Start with examination of the latest atrocity to Jews and the compounding of atrocity to the victims ─ keeping their deaths alive to satisfy Zionist plans.

The perpetrators of the Bond Beach massacre have been linked to supporters of the notorious ISIS, equal haters of all peoples — Christians, Shi’a, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Zoroastrians, Atheists, Jews, and all non-believers. As heirs to al-Qaeda, ISIS members reflect Osama bin Laden’s’ trenchant views on Israel, expressed in his Letter to the American People, where he explains, “Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: (a) You attacked us in Palestine.” This significant piece of history has been ardently suppressed, disappearing from original Internet sources and only available from those who maintain copies of the original.

Israel has identified itself as the spokesperson for Jewish people and linked world Jewry to its genocide of the Palestinians. Unable to attack the Israel mainland directly, ISIS extremists, who have no relation to or contact with those who endeavor to prevent Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, attacked what it perceived as Israel’s external population.

Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, immediately claimed, “there was an obvious link (ED: Obvious link????) between Bondi and the three hundred thousand people who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge against the genocide in Gaza.” The Premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns, said his state, “is moving to block mass protests from going ahead in the wake of the Bondi massacre.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with these words, “”You took no action. You let the disease (ED: anti-Semitism) spread and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today.” A less gracious Anthony Albanese would have responded, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the horrific attack on Jews worldwide, and not only on Bondi Beach, are directly due to your genocidal policies and incorrect efforts of linking all Jews with your apartheid state, which provoke hatred of Jews.”

What happens in Australia and elsewhere deserves mention in the United States, but the happenings should remain in Australia and elsewhere. When Jewish life is involved, the usual course of events is misappropriated. Happenings to Jews all over the word, especially unfortunate occurrences, become everyday reading in America, adding to a recurring list of victimhood, as if the happenings were to neighbors. They remain in the public conscience forever. The Holocaust, which occurred in Europe, by Europeans, and to Europeans, is a daily part of American life. This does not occur for the Armenian genocide, the Rohingya genocide, the Rwanda genocide, and the many other atrocities committed upon ethnicities. Their victimhood barely enters the extensive U.S. media’s attention. How many Americans are aware of the atrocities committed by ISIS against Americans and their religious institutions?

NEW ORLEANS (AP), Jan1, 2025: “Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Street, plowing into crowds celebrating New Year’s Day, killing 14 people and injuring dozens of others. Police shot and killed Jabbar, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who had proclaimed his support for the Islamic State militant group on social media.

Homeland Security News Wire:

On Sept. 28, 2025, at least four people were killed and eight others injured during a Sunday service at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Just a month earlier, two people died and 21 were injured during a Mass for students at the Catholic Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis….From 2000 to 2024, the dataset records 379 incidents and 487 deaths at religious congregations and religious community centers

American Faith

A report from the Family Research Council found that there have been at least 915 attacks against churches in the United States since 2018. More than 436 hostile acts occurred against churches between January and November 2023, a number more than double the hostilities against churches in 2020 and eight times greater than in 2018. The hostile actions covered in the report included vandalism, arson, bomb threats, gun-related instances, and other deeds.

While researching attacks on religious institutions in the United States, the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where eleven Jews attending services were fatally shot, constantly appeared. Its prominence bothered me, and more rattling was the date – seven years ago. From the number of times, this atrocity is voiced in the media, my mind kept assuming it happened recently, two or three years ago. Haven’t read anything concerning the 10-year old shootings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., where nine worshippers were shot.

Violations of Jewish life are given prominence over violations of other lives, and, no matter the cause — animosity to Israel or Zionism, severe hatred of Jews, triviality, accident, or misinterpretation — the violation is given a special designation ─ anti-Semitism. The word anti-Semitism daily bombards the senses, carries with it images of pogroms, holocaust, and Jew-hatred, and enters the psyche similar to the word Jihadist, provoking a Pavlovian response that immediately protects the supposed victim and lashes out at the designated accused. Hopefully, times are changing.

After organizers of an Adelaide Writers’ Festival announced it was “removing from its program Randa Abdel-Fattah, a lawyer, academic and writer who has been a fervent critic of Israel,” saying, “her presence was not ‘culturally sensitive’ after a mass shooting that targeted Jewish Australians,” almost 200 writers protested and withdrew from the festival. Soon, half of the festival’s eight-member board, including its chair, resigned. Later, the board cancelled the event and apologized for its decision to disinvite Ms. Abdel-Fattah.

This noteworthy response, numero uno priority for defeating Israel among our midst, is encouraging. Knowing that the movement to dislodge the Zionists from their grips on the cultural, political, and information institutions is growing and is active should encourage mass desertions from events that exclude those who express aversion to Israel and its extermination policies. Extending the desertions to all groups and persons that hint at support for apartheid Israel, so that these groups and persons are sidetracked, left to dwell alone in their fantasies, has rewards. Shunning, effective with Amish communities, can be effective with the worldwide community; why should the inhuman, those who approve tanks rolling over Palestinians lying in their tents and soldiers shooting children in their heads, be allowed to spread inhumanity? This might satisfy the fifth objective that appears after a crime; ascertain the method to prevent similar crimes and enable the Jews who faithfully follow the Ten Commandments to lead the other Jews out of their slavish devotion to the demented Zionists.

All well and good, but Israel’s supporters principal and most effective strategy has been, as explained previously, “have the word anti-Semitism daily bombard the senses, carry with it the images of pogroms, holocaust, and Jew-hatred, and enter the psyche similar to the word Jihadist, provoking a Pavlovian response that immediately protects the supposed victim and lashes out at the designated accused.” Defeating that strategy is essential to defeating genocidal Israel. One effective means is to use a similar strategy.

The Zionists capture contemporary generations by using incidents of “anti-Semitism” from past generations, you know — Captain Dreyfuss, Russian pogroms, False Protocols of the Elders of Zion (ED: Not so sure if it was false.), Holocaust, Leo Frank, etc. The latter person is still being well played and is an example of the manner in which a spurious charge of anti-Semitism is used to advance a cause. A short study reveals a lot.

Although convicted in 1913 by a jury of his peers for murder of a thirteen year old girl, after indictment by a Grand Jury that contained four Jews, Leo Frank has been portrayed as a wrongfully convicted victim of anti-Semitism. Not unique that defendants might be wrongfully convicted, thousands of examples; not unique that prejudice may drive the conviction, thousands of examples. In this case, we have one Jewish person in centuries of U.S. history, who has not been definitely proven to be either innocent or convicted by a prejudiced jury. Compare Frank’s case to hundreds of African Americans, who were proven not guilty and convicted solely by prejudice. Does the case warrant attention the person is still receiving in the year 2025?

We learn of the centuries old Leo Frank trial through the testimony of Leo Frank’s contemporary supporters and not from those who participated in the events of the era, Many legal experts at the trial, and many of those who have read the newspapers and records of the trial, agree with the jury verdict. One person’s well-researched opinion, who concluded Leo Frank was guilty, can be found at Leo Frank Papers, edited by a descendant relation of the murdered Mary Phagan, who, coincidentally, has the same name. It might be true that Frank was unfairly convicted; it is not true that evidence, mostly circumstantial, did not tend to a guilty verdict. Frank was one of the only persons in the factory where Mary Phagan was killed and was in position to commit the crime. It is true that Frank was unjustly lynched by a mob that believed his commuted death sentence was due to bribery. It is not authenticated that hostility to his Jewish religion played any role in the conviction — Jews, as the chosen people, have never been persecuted in the bible thumping South and no credible evidence of hostility to Jews among the jury has been proven.

The manner in which diabolical Zionists use a disputable past to capture each generation is apparent. A 1999 lugubrious opera, Parade, staged 86 years after Frank’s conviction (ED: Why was this event important in 1999?), eerily uses the murder of a young girl, the real victim, to portray the innocence of her convicted murderer. Twenty five years after its premiere, and 112 years after the trial, the play was revived at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Why? To capture the present generation in the contrived world of the anti-Semites who have spanned history and caused Jews continuous pain and sorrow, almost infinitesimal in the fifty states when compared to the afflicted Native Americans, Asiatic, Blacks, Amish, Mennonites, Catholics, Mormons, and gays.

Turn it around, take charge of the brainwashing, and instead of having the word anti-Semite conjure images of brutal gentiles lashing innocent Jews, have it portrayed as a Zionist lashing out at the Semitic Arab. Aren’t Arabs Semites? The image shows and the caption reads, “Anti-Semitic Israelis oppressing the Semitic Palestinians.” Making a mockery of anti-Semitism does not have to be done in a specific manner; stories, articles and press releases can display the anti-Semitic Zionists harming the Semitic Palestinians. New generations will be confused and the word anti-Semite will be diffused. It will lose its meaning and become superfluous.

Attach a group, an institution, or a person to a blasphemous word and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and soon the group, institution, or person will be automatically identified with the blasphemous word. This has been the modus operandi of the Zionists and their followers — terrorist Hamas, terrorist Hezbollah, Nazi Mufti and tens of others, anti-Semite Martin Luther and hundreds of others, self-hating Jew George Soros and tens of others. Demagogues make use of this technique to manipulate audiences, and for the Zionists, it has worked effectively. Why permit them to gain advantage with lies; why not gain advantage with truths?

The word Israel does not stand alone. Either of the adjectives genocidal, apartheid or oppressive should always precede the country word, forming a new name for the state without borders. Organizations, such as AIPAC and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are now “apartheid Israel’s AIPAC” and “apartheid Israel’s ADL.” Individuals who support Israel are, as one example, “Israel above all Miriam Adelson.”

These recommendations to counter the brainwashing performed by Zionists on the entire world might appear rash, simple minded, and disorderly. I’ll be blunt. Nothing has advanced the genocidal Zionist cause as much as creating a Pavlovian response in the innocents who favor Israel. Nothing has been more detrimental to the Palestinian cause than incompletely recognizing the power of this brainwashing and inadequately responding to it. Revelations of the horrific genocide committed upon the Palestinians are meaningful, prominent and widely distributed. Revelations of strategies to halt the genocide are meaningful, not sufficiently prominent, and not widely distributed. The unending and daily toll of the helpless Palestinians tells the story.

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Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

US Gen Zers and millennials are leaving the LDS church, data confirms

 Flunking Sainthood

US Gen Zers and millennials are leaving the LDS church, data confirms

(RNS) — LDS church leaders have said it is merely a ‘narrative’ that more young adults are leaving the faith. But in the US at least, it’s a narrative driven by data.

Conference attendees pause and observe the artwork inside the Conference Center prior to the Sunday morning session of General Conference on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, on Oct. 5, 2025. (Photo © 2025 by Intellectual Reserve Inc. All rights reserved.)

Jana RiessDecember 10, 2025

RNS) — The research question I get asked more than any other nowadays concerns young adults who grew up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Are more of them leaving the church now than in the past?

I hear it from parents, bishops and other LDS members who are deeply concerned as they observe more young adults abandoning Mormonism — including their own kids. But high-ranking church leaders have countered that this is just a “narrative” and that if anything, young people are “flocking” to the church in record numbers.

As evidence, they point to rising numbers of students enrolled in the church’s seminary and institute programs, an expanding global missionary force and a rebounding spate of new converts worldwide.

So, in a two-part series, I’ll share data trends about young Mormons in the United States. Today’s column focuses on how many people have left the church, while the next will look at the religiosity of young adult members who stay.

My research is limited to the U.S., so I can’t speak to the way the church is or is not growing abroad. But we can confirm from nationally representative data sets that the LDS church is indeed losing more members in the U.S. and that this disaffiliation is primarily driven by younger adults.

Alex Bass, as part of his Mormon Metrics Substack, has analyzed data from several national surveys while helping me and Benjamin Knoll with the quantitative research for our forthcoming book on the Mormon faith crisis. As always, when we’re looking at data about a small minority, we need to be mindful that the margin of error can be high. With this in mind, each of our graphs includes the error bars to show the range of possible findings.

But you can see that over the long term, there’s little question that more people are leaving the church now in the U.S. compared with in the past. The first graph from the General Social Survey, which asked about childhood religion as well as current religion, shows we’ve gone from retaining over three-quarters of childhood LDS members through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, to keeping around 40% in the 2020s — a statistically significant drop. 

General Social Survey data from 1973 to 2022, showing LDS retention rates of childhood members in the United States. (Analysis and graph by Alex Bass of Mormon Metrics)

Note that for those early years measured by the GSS, that 77% figure could be anywhere between 72% and 82%, since the subsample size, or n, is 247 respondents in the weighted data. And the error bars are spread even further apart for the 2020s crowd (with a sample size of only 105), meaning that the range could be as low as 29% or as high as 46%.

The GSS is a well-respected survey that has more than half a century of data to allow for long-term trend comparisons, but its LDS respondent numbers are still small. Also, it changed its methodology during the COVID-19 pandemic, so those 2020s numbers should be regarded with caution. This means that it’s good to look at other sources, such as Pew Research Center’s three Religious Landscape studies.

Pew Religious Landscape Study, LDS retention over time. 

(Data analysis and graph by Benjamin Knoll)

In 2007, according to Pew, the LDS church retained 70% of childhood members in the U.S. (n = 581) In 2014, that was 64% (n = 661), and in 2023–24 it had declined still further to 54% (n = 525).

That 54% current retention rate looks better than the GSS’ 38%, so that’s potentially good news for LDS leaders. But once again, we’re witnessing a clear drop from the fairly recent past. Both major U.S. surveys that track childhood affiliation are saying that more people are leaving than used to.

What’s more, this is being driven by younger adults. In the general population, younger adults are noticeably more likely to have no religious affiliation than older adults — either because they’ve left religion or they grew up without one. It shouldn’t surprise us that it’s true in Mormonism as well.

But it often does surprise us, especially since other religions used to envy our retention of youth. As sociologist Christian Smith put it in his recent book “Why Religion Went Obsolete,” the LDS church was once “legendary for its impressive retention rates among young people.”

Smith was the lead researcher 20 years ago for the National Study of Youth and Religion. That longitudinal study’s findings were so positive for the LDS church that they were written up in the Church News and trumpeted by the church’s official newsroom in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2013. 

But the data isn’t so sunny anymore, according to Smith’s research. “While Mormon retention looked solid in the early 2000s, in the years since, as Millennial Mormons moved through emerging adulthood, they began exiting the LDS church in dramatic, unprecedented numbers,” he wrote. 

To demonstrate, here is Alex’s analysis of GSS data again, this time broken out by generation.

 

General Social Survey showing LDS retention by generation.

 (Data analysis and graph by Alex Bass of Mormon Metrics)

According to the GSS, only 29% of Greatest and Silent generation members left the church in the U.S. That increased slightly to 33% for the baby boomers and 37% for Generation X. Then it shot up to 55% for millennials and Gen Z. And the difference between the oldest and youngest respondents is large enough that we can be confident it’s not just a statistical blip.

Ben’s analysis of Pew’s most recent data tells a similar story. The next graph shows a drop in retention between those born before 1960 (where 70% stayed LDS) and those born since 1980 (where only 49% stayed). The precise percentages aren’t the same as those of GSS, but the generational trajectory is.

Pew Religious Landscape Study from 2023–24, showing LDS 

retention by birth decade. (Data analysis and graph by Benjamin Knoll)

To recap: Both studies show that more people are leaving the LDS church in the United States, and that disaffiliation is higher for younger Saints than for older ones. And both of these studies are respected enough by the church that it has cited other findings from them in its own media stories and press releases, whether it’s noting recent GSS results that married parents are happier than other people or reporting Pew’s research about how Americans feel about Latter-day Saints.

I want to make one final observation. Both of these same surveys clearly show that those Mormons who remain identified with the church are often deeply religious. That’s true of LDS Gen Zers and millennials too: The ones who stay in the church are far more religiously devout than other Americans their age.

I’ll explore that more in the next column, but for now let me just say that more than one story can be true, even in the same data set.

It’s clear that at least in this country, many young people who grew up LDS are exiting the doors. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true that the church’s Institute program offering religious education and community for young adults is growing numerically across the globe. (Though Institute has also expanded its program parameters to include people up to age 35, which makes more people eligible, and has required students in the popular BYU-Pathway college-degree program to attend Institute.)

That also doesn’t mean it isn’t true that the missionary program is growing. Thousands of young people appear excited to serve, which is great news for the church. And as I’ve stated elsewhere, last month’s decision to lower the missionary age to 18 for women is a long-overdue genius move. In the sociology of religion, the most vulnerable time for people to leave religion is still the period of late adolescence and their early 20s. Our Next Mormons Survey research confirms that’s true in the LDS context. In the 2016 NMS, the median age for people to leave the church was 19, and in the 2022–23 NMS it was 18.

So, anything the church can do to keep young women in the religion’s pipeline, without a critical gap after high school, could be beneficial.

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My follow-up column will look more closely at young adults who stay LDS and how they compare to other Americans their own age religiously and to previous generations of LDS young adults. Spoiler alert: Although the data is clear that more young adults are leaving Mormonism than in the past in the U.S., what we know about the ones who stay is a bit murkier. In some ways, those who stay look quite religious, and in other ways, they are giving church leaders a lot to worry about.

Alex Bass and Benjamin Knoll contributed data analysis to this report.