This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

George Pyle revealed, in his Nov. 15 commentary entitled: "LDS Church should reverse itself," that he misunderstands the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the unchanging nature of the moral standards it maintains and what is best for the church's wellbeing.

Pyle exposes his first misunderstanding by suggesting that Mormon pioneers chose the 1,300 mile migration from the Mississippi River to the Salt Lake valleys because "in a way it was easier" than enduring the American culture of 1847. Suggesting further that the Mormon exodus "was very much in the American tradition of young men going west."

Many are familiar with how their pioneer forbearers, fleeing the persecution they faced at that time, including from the press and government, viewed this lamentable episode in their lives. They know their family surrender to their forced odyssey was anything but "the American tradition of young men going west." Mormon refugees did not abandon their homes and livelihoods as a young man's flighty fancy for the wilderness. They were exiled en masse out of America under a reign of mob terror.

Highlighting his second misunderstanding, Pyle declares that the church should reverse its enforcement of moral standards within its own faith because it "smacks of nothing less than an attempt by church leaders to draw themselves apart from the wider culture. And to do it by behavior, because it is no longer possible to do it by distance."

LDS Church leaders implementing the moral standards handed down through their ancient predecessors is not "an attempt to draw themselves apart from the wider culture." Instead, it is their dutiful attempt to perpetuate moral standards not of their making, but which are ever-enduring. The division of the church from the wider culture is not because the church has changed, but because the wider culture has mutated morally into something less than it was.

Because of his third misunderstanding, Pyle admonishes the church "to walk back this unforced error to regain its voice of moral authority" on some social issues he highlighted — immigration and health care policy. In other words, for its own good, he advocates that the church should supplant its enforcement of moral standards for moral authority over a social justice agenda. Through it all, Pyle implies that following his admonitions the church can avert the increasing number of people that "have no use for organized religion."

Contrary to Pyle's observations, it is no coincidence that for generations the LDS Church has been one of the fastest growing religions in the United States, according to the same Pew Research Center Pyle cites in his commentary, while it has faithfully enforced traditional moral standards within its religious practice and discipline. Go figure!

Likewise, it is no coincidence that the churches resolutely applying the Pyle prescription for the LDS Church are in rapid decline, and it's their disaffected members that make up many in the Pew research reporting they "have no use for organized religion." These churches have abandoned the moral standards they once enforced to accommodate the changing culture, substituting those standards with a dominating social justice agenda that briefly beguiles their adherents into a fuddled faith that the record indicates is unsustainable.

Unfortunately, all Pyle has accomplished is adding his voice to the chorus that continually calls on religion to "go along to get along." History demonstrates that those religions that listen to this familiar siren call by becoming permissive decline, while those that enforce the enduring moral standards grow. That is the accurate history between religion and culture that no one should misunderstand.

Stuart C. Reid is a former Utah state senator from Ogden.