Tens of thousands of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathered over the weekend in Salt Lake City for a twice-annual event that some liken to a family meeting. This one happened to fall at a heavy moment for that family, which has more than 17 million members around the world.
Its president, Russell M. Nelson, died on Sept. 27. The next day, a gunman in Michigan crashed a pickup truck into a Latter-day Saints church and opened fire. The attack killed four congregants, and a blaze later consumed the church building. People who knew the gunman, who was shot and killed by the police, said he had held an angry grudge against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the painful end to a relationship with a woman in Utah.
Just weeks earlier, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus less than an hour from Salt Lake City, putting the church’s home region at the epicenter of the national story of cultural polarization and political violence.
Multiple speakers, who are drawn from the highest levels of leadership in the church, welled up with tears as they spoke onstage and in interviews this weekend.
Elder Gary E. Stevenson was one of several speakers to refer directly to the attack in Grand Blanc, Mich., from the stage. “Our hearts are mourning loss,” Mr. Stevenson, who belongs to the second-highest leadership body in the church, told attendees on Saturday morning in a talk urging the necessity of peacemaking even in an atmosphere of violence.
The church has endured the period of mourning without an official leader. At the conference, Dallin H. Oaks, the church’s presumed next president, signaled a familiar priority for the church’s future, telling members in the final address on Sunday that they should resist national trends of declining marriage and birth rates.
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The post As Latter-Day Saints Convene, ‘Our Hearts Are Mourning Loss’ appeared first on New York Times.
