We are non-Mormons who have observed that the LDS Church seems to be divided into essentially two camps, loyalists and dissidents, the blindly devoted and the brutally critical. Each seems to champion the Church’s well-being. But if the Church’s effectiveness in serving its members and the community declines, we think, ironically, it will because of these two groups, who are united in effect if not in method. We believe the LDS Church brings perspectives into social discourse that contribute to individual and community viability. We value LDS presence in our familial, social, and political lives. We would like to share with the Sunstone audience our positive observations about this LDS presence and open a conversation that might undermine the rampant objectifying of others that seems to be accepted in Utah as a matter of course. In so doing, we hope to stimulate thinking and identify positive ways Mormon and non-Mormon might relate constructively to one of Utah’s most powerful authority structures, the LDS Church.

David Pace, Cheryl Pace,