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Speaking out against violence
After the shooting death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and the arrest of a suspect, the church issued two news releases over three days condemning violence and pleading for greater kindness and love.
Neither statement mentioned firearms or called for government action.
While the Utah-based faith has taken no public position on gun legislation, church President Russell Nelson has broached the issue.
In the wake of the deadly 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and barely a month after taking the faith’s helm, Nelson, who has made peacemaking a hallmark of his presidency, lamented U.S. laws — or the lack thereof — governing guns.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) President Russell M. Nelson addresses young adults at a fireside in Las Vegas in 2018. He briefly talked about the availability of guns in his speech.
“How could God allow things like that to happen?” he told a congregation of Latter-day Saint millennials in Las Vegas. “Well, God allows us to have our agency, and men have passed laws that allow guns to go to people who shouldn’t have them.”
The global church itself has banned guns — unless carried by law enforcement officers — in its meetinghouses and temples.
A PUSH against hunger
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) General authority Seventy Steven D. Shumway, left, shakes hands with the Rev. Jesse Jackson at the Rainbow Push Coalition headquarters in Chicago on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025.
• Latter-day Saint volunteers, with two semitrucks full of food from the church and uniting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, helped distribute food to more than 1,000 souls in Chicago earlier this month.
Slowed by Parkinson’s disease, Jackson, the 83-year-old civil rights activist and former Democratic presidential candidate, attended the service project in a wheelchair.
It “brightened his face. It put a smile in his heart,” his son Yusef, who oversees the nonprofit organization his father founded, said in a news release. “Feeding the hungry — the mission directly from Jesus Christ — is important to us.”
African outreach
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Primary General President Susan H. Porter visits the St. Louis Primary School near Maseru, Lesotho, on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. The church donated 300 pairs of shoes to three schools in the area.
• President Susan Porter, worldwide head of the children’s Primary, visited recently in four southeastern African nations with government, interfaith and humanitarian leaders — and, of course, multitudes of Latter-day Saint kids.
“You can feel God’s love for this whole continent of Africa,” Porter said in a news release, “because the people here are humble, and they’re open to feel God’s love.”
Two emeritus G.A.s die
A pair of high-level emeritus Latter-day Saint leaders have died:
Gene R. Cook — a general authority Seventy for more than three decades whose church service took him and his family to Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Germany and Atlanta — died Sept. 8. He was 84.
“Even in his later years, Gene remained a missionary at heart,” his family’s obituary said, “cherishing moments like ‘investigator firesides’ and contacting everyone in his daily path where he could bear witness of Christ’s love.”
David S. Baxter, a Scottish general authority Seventy from 2006 to August 2025 who joined the church as a youth and battled brain cancer as an adult, died Sept. 9. He was 70.
“Despite experiencing a tumultuous childhood, financial trials and serious health challenges,” the Church News reported, “Elder Baxter credited the gospel of Jesus Christ as providing him hope and happiness.
From The Tribune
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sharon Eubank, director of Humanitarian Services for the church, joins a panel discussion in May about how the faith is working to improve the health of women and children around the world.
• Religion News Service columnist Jana Riess interviews Sharon Eubank, who directs the church’s humanitarian efforts.
• In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Latter-day Saint, calls for “every American — Republican, Democrat, liberal, progressive, conservative, MAGA, all of us” — to treat others with “love and respect and dignity.’ BYU’s president, meanwhile, urges students to turn darkness into light.
• The Mormon Meteor III, the land-speed racer of Bonneville Salt Flats fame, will join other artifacts at a new Utah museum.
• Historians believe even the church’s sometimes-thorny past can foster faith — if taught correctly.