Steven Avery
Administrator
Sanctioned Hatred
Oct 2, 2025
https://azadams.com/sanctioned-hatred/
One man, a talented attorney and former elder who chaired our church’s oversight board and finances, once raised his family here and signed the church’s checks. He loved our teaching, our precision, our covenant. But then came a convergence of crises—personal, midlife, and institutional. Instead of owning his part, he began to externalize blame: the board, the covenant, the leaders. If he had belonged to a mainstream church, there would have been no exotic target to project onto. But because we were distinct, we became the villain, the scapegoat that let him avoid his own failures.
He left in 2018 over what he claimed was a single doctrinal issue about swearing oaths. Seven years later, he accuses us of child abuse and links arms with a radical journalist to smear us. Bizarre, laughable—if it weren’t so dangerous. This is exactly what the Mormon Church has suffered for over a century: Christians turning theological disagreements into hatred and then acting shocked when someone follows that rhetoric to its logical conclusion.
Oct 2, 2025
https://azadams.com/sanctioned-hatred/
One man, a talented attorney and former elder who chaired our church’s oversight board and finances, once raised his family here and signed the church’s checks. He loved our teaching, our precision, our covenant. But then came a convergence of crises—personal, midlife, and institutional. Instead of owning his part, he began to externalize blame: the board, the covenant, the leaders. If he had belonged to a mainstream church, there would have been no exotic target to project onto. But because we were distinct, we became the villain, the scapegoat that let him avoid his own failures.
He left in 2018 over what he claimed was a single doctrinal issue about swearing oaths. Seven years later, he accuses us of child abuse and links arms with a radical journalist to smear us. Bizarre, laughable—if it weren’t so dangerous. This is exactly what the Mormon Church has suffered for over a century: Christians turning theological disagreements into hatred and then acting shocked when someone follows that rhetoric to its logical conclusion.
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