Scott Woodward: Hi, everyone. This is Scott from Church History Matters. Before we jump into today’s episode, we’re excited to announce that for the entirety of 2025, Church History Matters is doing a deep dive into the Doctrine and Covenants. That’s right: Each week, Casey and I will be digging into those sections of the Doctrine and Covenants that align with the church’s Come, Follow Me curriculum. We’re doing this for a couple reasons: I mean, for one, we’re big fans of the revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants. They play a major foundational role in our church’s history, after all. And second, well, the whole church is now shifting their focus to studying this book, so we feel like we want to jump on this moment when our interests are so perfectly aligned. And, of course, Casey and I being who we are, we can’t just walk through the revelations themselves and call it a day. We’re going to also explore the important historical context for every section and what impact that revelation had on the church’s trajectory. And, of course, it wouldn’t be Church History Matters if we didn’t probe into the controversies connected to most of these revelations, right? So, of course, we’ll do a lot of that, too. Now, our first episode for 2025 actually dropped today, Christmas Eve 2024, and we’ll typically drop them early like this in case any teachers out there want to draw from any of the material we cover for their lessons or whatnot. You can continue to listen to the audio version here on this podcast channel, or, if you’d prefer, we’re now also offering a video version that you can watch on Scripture Central’s YouTube channel. So however you want to join us, we look forward to studying the Doctrine and Covenants with you. All right. Now on to the episode. Throughout this series on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint history, we’ve looked at how church members have been the victims of violence, how they’ve engaged in defensive violence, and how they’ve even been the aggressors and perpetrators of inexcusable violence. In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we sit down with our friend Patrick Mason, a Latter-day Saint historian, scholar on peace studies, and author of several books on violence and peace in Latter-day Saint history, and together we’re going to take a step back and try to think deeply about how each of us can more intentionally participate in bringing peace on Earth and goodwill to all. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our ninth and last episode in this series on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint history. Now, let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hi, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: We’re back, and it’s almost Christmas!

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Merry Christmas Eve.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. We did it. We built up—what has this been? Is this episode 9 or 10? Anyway, we are wrapping up. Today’s the final episode on our peace and violence series we’ve been working on, and what better day than Christmas Eve, Casey, to land the plane on this one?

Casey Griffiths: I did not anticipate that I would spend my holidays talking about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and other things that are decidedly not in the spirit of Christmas, but . . .

Scott Woodward: But what better day to talk about peace on earth and goodwill toward men?

Casey Griffiths: True. True. And I think our guest today is going to help us stick the landing.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Because like we said, it’s not the sort of thing that you associate with Christmas, but, again, I want to emphasize the title of the series is peace and violence, and we want to emphasize peace. That’s been the whole purpose of this is to explain that Latter-day Saints don’t have a spotless record when it comes to peace and violence, but we do have a great theology that we hope leads people towards peace and helps them understand the importance of being peacemakers in our homes, in our communities, and in the wider world.

Scott Woodward: Yes, and so we have invited on the show today—let’s call him an early Christmas gift for all of our listeners here: We have with us Brother Patrick Mason. Patrick, say hi.

Patrick Mason: Hey, everybody. Merry Christmas.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Merry Christmas to you, too, Patrick. Thanks for joining us, and let me give you a little bit of background on Patrick. So Patrick is the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. We also want to point out that Patrick is the co-host of a great podcast that we really enjoy. He co-hosts the Proclaim Peace podcast with Jennifer Thomas. She’s the co-executive director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government. Tell us a little bit about your podcast, Patrick, and what the aim is.

Patrick Mason: Well, it’s great to be with you guys. Thanks for the invitation, and, yeah, Proclaim Peace, it really—I can’t take much credit for it in terms of the genesis of it. Jen and everybody else at Mormon Women for Ethical Government have been doing amazing work for the past few years, trying to build peace in the civil sphere, especially around democracy promotion and things like that, and so they do tons of work, like in Washington and state capitals and all that, but coming into this year, when we were studying the Book of Mormon as a people in Come, Follow Me, they said, we really need—and knowing that it would be a contentious election season and everything, they said, we really want to do something to highlight the distinctive contributions and messages of the Book of Mormon to what it tells us and teaches us about how to be peacemakers. So Jen approached me, I said yes immediately, and so we have sort of semi-systematically and a little haphazardly been going through the Book of Mormon pulling out principles and tools and lessons about what that inspired text, what that book of scripture teaches us about how to be better peacemakers.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and the podcast is a collaboration between Mormon Women for Ethical Government and Faith Matters, correct?

Patrick Mason: Yeah. That’s right, yeah—both organizations that I think are doing great work out there.

Casey Griffiths: And we talked about this before we hit record, but it’s called Mormon Women for Ethical Government, Patrick, but tell us why you were selected to be there. This is kind of a cool story.

Patrick Mason: I don’t think I want to actually share that because some people might think I’m complicated.

Casey Griffiths: I’ll share so you don’t come across as, you know, tootin’ your own horn, which would—there’s plenty there and plenty of justification to do so. Mormon Women for Ethical Government approached you and said you were a non-problematic male, which—wow. I mean . . .

Patrick Mason: Yeah, I mean, obviously they did not talk to my wife or to any number of people who have ever actually spent time with me, but I accepted the compliment. Mostly I was just happy because it is Mormon Women for Ethical Government. I was happy just to be brought in to offer what my Y chromosome could.

Casey Griffiths: I remember when you told that story, and I was there thinking, wait a minute, am I problematic? They didn’t ask me, but then I realized, yeah, I probably am. Probably am, so.

Scott Woodward: Just go ask Liz, and she’ll let you know.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah, my wife could give you a whole dissertation on why I should not host a peacemaking podcast, but that is a major compliment to you, and I know—I knew that you wouldn’t tell that story yourself. I did want to throw it in here.

Patrick Mason: Well, thank you. Thank you. It’s a great compliment of my life. I’m just not sure that I actually live up to it, so.

Casey Griffiths: Hey, well, I mean, if you were there for thirty seconds, that’s better than most of us, so that’s pretty good.

Scott Woodward: You’ve arrived.

Casey Griffiths: I also want to add, too, that you have a book coming out with a couple of our dear friends from the podcast. Andrew Bolton and Taunalyn Ford are your co-authors, co-editors on a book called A Radical Spirit: The History and Potential of Latter-day Saints, which is coming out next year. Tell us a little bit about that, too.

Patrick Mason: Yeah, it’s an amazing group of authors. I’m just grateful for the collaboration. It’s a lot of both Latter-day Saint and Community of Christ scholars, and I think at least one scholar who’s neither. We’re really looking at what are some really maybe surprising ways that the Latter-day Saint tradition kind of shows up in ways that are kind of countercultural and that speak prophetically to major issues, whether it be around economic justice; I have an essay on nonviolence; whether it be around gender and the role of women, we have great essays on the Relief Society and just what a remarkable organization it has been throughout its history; on climate change, and so it’s mostly a historical take, but we’re also looking at what resources are there within our own tradition, within the Latter-day Saint tradition to address—both the way that it has addressed and to continue to address some of the most important issues of our time.

Casey Griffiths: I’m looking forward to that, and not just because Andrew Bolton is my dear friend, and so is Taunalyn Ford: I just love the idea that, you know, we’re rediscovering all the time these radical ideas in the early restoration that still are resonant in the 21st century. We’re coming up on two centuries.

Patrick Mason: Yeah, and I—if I can put it in a plug, I mean, I think that’s part of the ongoing restoration is actually rediscovering our own history, right? Rediscovering our own resources, that we have all of this amazing scripture, we have this amazing history, we have lots of things where we sort of tried things for a while, and for various reasons it didn’t work out at the time, but I think we can go back to those things and always be plumbing the depths of our own tradition to see: are there things that we used to do or tried to do that maybe with a little bit of juice, a little bit of re-imagining, we can bring into the 21st century? I think it’s a pretty good project, and at least I think it’s a good model for us to be thinking broadly about how do we apply this 200-year-old tradition to the most current issues in front of us.

Scott Woodward: I love it. I love how bold and exploratory it is. Look forward to the book. This is exciting.

Patrick Mason: Yeah, I will say there’s a line in there that—we have a great essay in there about socialism. Actually, some of the earliest church leaders in Europe were socialists. Karl Marx thought that we, like, were too religious. We were too pious. So, he wasn’t into—

Scott Woodward: Guilty as charged.

Patrick Mason: Exactly. So, yeah, so maybe Karl Marx’s critique becomes one of the great letters of recommendation for the Latter-day Saint tradition.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Because I can’t decide: if you’re a socialist, but Karl Marx hates you, does that make you problematic, or . . . ?

Patrick Mason: Yeah. Right. Right. Maybe you can make everybody mad.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. That definitely sounds intriguing. So you’re here with us on our Christmas Eve episode because we want to talk about peace on earth. The field that you’re a leading light in is called peace studies, but I don’t know if a lot of people understand what that means and what it’s meant to do. So could we just start maybe by doing a broad overview of what is meant by peace studies and what you do and what the aims are there?

Patrick Mason: Yeah, I’m not sure I’m a leading light in peace studies, but maybe in terms of trying to apply some of those, some of that knowledge, to the Latter-day Saint tradition, to the restoration tradition and see where we fit into it. Yeah, I didn’t know there was a thing called peace studies either until I encountered it in graduate school, but I’d been prepared before that in a couple of different ways. So when I was an undergraduate at BYU, got my bachelor’s in history there, every—at least at the time, everybody had to take kind of a world history, or they called it “History of Civilization” class, and I just happened to sort of stumble into one. It was an honor section that was being taught by a pair of professors, Alan Keel and Wilfred Griggs, and some of the listeners may know one or both of those names. And the whole theme of it—and, you know, they went—we literally started with the pre-existence and the Garden of Eden and came all the way up to the present over the space of two semesters, but their whole theme was around war and peace. They actually called it the pen and the sword, and they said basically the question is, how is it that all human beings in every culture have always said they want peace, they love peace, but they always end up, you know, fighting each other and end up in war and destruction and horrible things, and so we looked at that throughout all of history, and it was really inspiring, and I read a lot of things that I’d never thought about and thought about a lot of things that were new to me as a 18-year-old freshman at BYU. But then, kind of fast forward a few years, I went to the University of Notre Dame for graduate school, and again, I went to do history, but the very last class I ever took as a doctoral student, it was a kind of a comparative religion class. It was on comparative religious fundamentalisms. And I went into the class, and almost everybody in the class, almost all the students, were in this program in international peace studies. And, again, I didn’t know there was such a thing as peace studies, but it turns out that Notre Dame has one of the oldest and most prestigious institutes for peace studies in all of North America, and these students were incredible. They were from all over the world, from all different religions, and these were people who had dedicated their lives to peace. There was an imam, a Muslim imam from South Africa who had marched with Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Patrick Mason: He was basically, like, the Muslim Mandela or Tutu. There was a husband and wife team who were part of an organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams, that they would literally go into sites of active violence, of active conflict, and put their bodies in between warring parties, literally risking their lives to stand in between and protect innocent victims, and just on and on and on, people like this. And I said, like, that’s—those are my people. Like, that’s—I want to be like that when I grow up. And so I learned more about this peace studies thing and realized that actually you could get a master’s degree in it, so I actually took a leave of absence from my doctoral program, applied to the university again, got into this peace studies program, and spent time getting a master’s degree in peace studies. It was one of the most transformative years of my life, learning all about this, learning about peace in a really rigorous way, you know, at a graduate school level. So I’ve spent the rest of my life, the past twenty, twenty-five years trying to apply all those things, and the kind of insight that I had while I was doing all of that work is that we have all these principles in the Restoration. I learned all these basic principles—maybe not all the technical terms, maybe not all the applications and all those kinds of things—but the basic principles I knew because I had read the scriptures. I knew this stuff because I’d read the Book of Mormon. I’d read the New Testament. And so peace studies kind of crystallized it. It gave me language. It gave me applications, but the basic principles I had because I’m a Christian.

Scott Woodward: Wow. Wow. That’s incredible, man. That’s how you got into and interested in peace studies. You almost stumbled into it, and it turned out to be a life changer.

Patrick Mason: Yeah, it was—whether you want to call it an accident or serendipity or providence—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: —I’ll take any of those. And I’ve done other things, too. You know—so actually, while I was in that program, I wrote an article kind of exploring—it was called “The Possibilities of Mormon Peace-building,” and it was one of the first articles—a few people had done some earlier work. Hugh Nibley had written about this a little bit. Eugene England had written about this some. He actually has a beautiful book called Making Peace. But in terms of trying—again, graduate school gave me the kind of rigor that I needed to think, you know, not just in kind of naive, idealistic terms, but actually what does this look like in the 21st century? So I wrote an article, again, as a grad student, and it got published, and it kind of made the rounds and helped inspire some conversations, and so for the past twenty years, I’ve really been thinking and collaborating with other people and writing and teaching what is the Restoration’s contribution to this broader conversation about peace. Every religion is doing this, right? There are Muslim peace builders and Jewish peace builders and Hindu peace builders and Catholic peace builders, and, of course, you know, secular peace builders, but what is it the Latter-day Saints have to offer? How can we join the conversation, and what do we have to add to the conversation?

Casey Griffiths: One of the things that compelled us to do this series was the charges made by Jon Krakauer and a few others that the faith of the Latter-day Saints is just inherently violent. It sounds like you would argue, no, that it’s not. But what are the principles within our Latter-day Saints faith that you think kind of lead us towards peace that help us to construct this theology?

Patrick Mason: So when I came here to Utah State University, I came here a little over five years ago, and I created a course called Religion, Violence and Peace. It’s kind of my version of a world religions class. We march through all of the big world religions. So we do Hinduism and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity, Islam. Then I add the Latter-day Saint tradition, and we do Indigenous traditions, so we do these seven traditions throughout the course of the semester. And we do it—you know, I introduce students to the basic principles and concepts and language of each of these traditions, but then we really focus on this question of violence and peace, and for me, it’s not about that question: Are these religions inherently violent or inherently peaceful? Because the answer to both of those questions is yes and no at the same time.

Scott Woodward: What do you mean?

Patrick Mason: Well, what I mean is that every single religion—I really don’t know of one that would be an exception—every religion has resources that can lead a person or a group to practice and exercise violence, and they also have tremendous resources that can lead people and inspire them to be peacemakers. We go through each of these traditions, and we look at sacred texts. We look at history. We look at teachings of leaders. We look at other kinds of things. And in every single one of these cases, and this would include secular traditions as well, there have been horrific examples of violence in the name of that religion. So not just conducted by members of that religion, right? We can always say, oh, there’s, like, a few bad apples in every, you know, bushel, but conducted in the name of, you know, justified by the scriptures of, justified by the teachings of, a prophet, a guru, you know, whatever the leader of that religion is.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: But there’s also—it’s precisely that religion, its scriptures, its history, its tradition, its leadership, that has inspired some of the greatest acts of peacemaking in world history. And so for me it’s always a both-and. The lesson I want students to learn is that you get to choose, right? And the practitioners of every religion, they do have both things laid out in front of them. It’s true for Latter-day Saints. It’s true for every other religion. If you want to find justifications for violence in your scriptures and in your history, you can find it, but it’s your choice. If you want to find the resources to become a powerful force for peace, for justice, for solidarity, for reconciliation in the world, you can find that, too. In some ways, that’s a harder answer, right? Because it’s an answer about complexity. It’s an answer that requires people to lean in. When people ask the question, is Islam inherently violent? Is Mormonism inherently violent? That’s kind of a lazy question because it’s ignoring the complexity that’s at the heart of every single religious and philosophical tradition.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I’ve had great discussions with some of my students here at the university who are Muslim to basically say, you know what? You’ve been characterized as being violent. So have we. How do you find peace within your own faith? And like you said, it’s more complicated than just saying, hey, all people from this faith are violent, but there is, like you said, the tools and the resources there to construct some beautiful things, some ways to resolve conflict that have existed for a really long time.

Patrick Mason: Yeah, speaking of Islam, it’s funny: one of the—one of the class sessions I do, or one of the exercises we do, I have a bunch of quotes from the Bible and from the Quran, and I pull them straight out, just put them on a PowerPoint slide without the reference, and we go through a series out of, like, ten or twelve of these, and the students have to guess, is that from the Bible or from the Quran, right? And these are, like, very violent verses. They’re, like, calling for genocide or for killing unbelievers or, you know, other kinds of things, and the students can’t tell the difference between the two. So sometimes there is: it’s easier to point the finger at a different tradition, right? And I think those of us especially who lived through 9/11, you know, we remember all of that discourse about violent Islam and so forth—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: —but it’s much easier to point the finger at somebody else than to look deep into your own tradition and say, are there verses, are there passages, are there problematic things that we have to wrestle with in my tradition before I start pointing the finger at somebody else’s.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and I guess I have questions about all of that. Like, I—

Patrick Mason: Come take the class, Scott. It’s a great class.

Scott Woodward: Seriously. I teach a—I teach a world religion course here as well, and I don’t do that angle, but, like I’m thinking of the Bhagavad Gita. Like, the whole context is war between these two groups that are—Arjuna’s thinking about whether or not this would be ethical to kill his cousins, and Krishna’s there trying to walk him through the thinking through it, and, yeah, the Bible, I’m thinking of verses that can easily be used to justify that. I’m thinking Old Testament with Book of Joshua is horrific when it comes to this.

Patrick Mason: Yep!

Scott Woodward: Is that truly divinely commanded genocide, or is there some human in there? Is there problems with the text, or is that literally what he said? And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess I’m just asking, why do you think each sacred tradition actually has in their text justifications for violence? Is this God meeting us where we’re at? Is this human putting that in there? Is there other options? Like, I’m sure you’ve thought about this way more than me. What are your thoughts about why that’s in sacred text?

Patrick Mason: Yeah, we could easily spend an hour just on that question. My short answer is that it’s all of the above. Everything you mentioned. I personally believe, yeah, that scripture of all types, it’s human authors working under divine inspiration. It’s people working in their own cultural contexts with their own understanding of things. I also think that one of the reasons why these scriptures, again, whether it’s ours or other religious traditions, that they’ve stuck around for so long and are read by so many people is because they actually speak in real ways to the human condition, right? If these were totally scrubbed, sanitized texts that seemed like that they just operated, like, on a different plane of reality where everybody’s perfect and there’s never any arguments or blemishes or let alone war or anything like that, we would say, like, that text has nothing to do with me and the world I live in.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: So I think it’s precisely because—I mean, for us as Christians, of course, we believe that Jesus enters history in order to redeem history, and so we’re not afraid of history. We’re not afraid of a fallen world and in showing—I always say, like, don’t hand the Old Testament to, like, anybody under 18. Like, I mean, it should have, like, some kind of rating system on there. It is a—it’s a tough book, but that is what’s been handed down.

Scott Woodward: And you don’t need to go very far in the Book of Mormon to—

Patrick Mason: No.

Scott Woodward: —come across the justified murder, right? With Laban.

Patrick Mason: Yep.

Scott Woodward: What are we, chapter four in the book, and . . .

Patrick Mason: Yeah, that’s—and we tell that story, and we—because it’s so early, and we’ve read it to our kids since the time that they were, you know, 3 years old or whatever, there’s a way in which you can tell stories so many times that you don’t even notice the story anymore, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: That should—every time we read that story or tell that story, like, it should bring us up short. Like, I mean, here is the Spirit inspiring Nephi to cut a guy’s head off, right? And offering justifications and rationales, but we just breeze through it because it’s so familiar to us at this point.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: Yeah. I think, why is it in there? For me, the bottom line is it’s God revealing us to us. It’s God revealing ourselves to us and then inviting us into something better. For me, it’s Moroni in Mormon chapter 9 saying, I’ve shown you all of our imperfections so that you can be better. I think that’s kind of the way that I read scripture, especially along these lines.

Scott Woodward: And tell me about the mechanism of salvation itself. You mentioned that Jesus entered into history in order to redeem it, and at the beating heart of that redemption story is a violent murder of Jesus Christ.

Patrick Mason: That’s right.

Scott Woodward: Is that the revelation of mankind to itself?

Patrick Mason: You put your finger on it. I think that’s exactly right. I think lots of things are going on with the atonement and in Gethsemane and Golgotha, but I think one of the crucial things that is going on is that Jesus, the ultimate, innocent victim, allows himself to be lifted up on the cross, and he invites us—in fact, for those of us who believe in him, he compels us—to gaze on his bloodied, broken, tortured body on the cross.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: And that should force us to say, is this the world that I want to live in? Do I want to live in a world where we crucify, either literally or metaphorically, innocent victims? And so Jesus on the cross, we can talk about him atoning for our sins in a kind of abstract way, but actually that is a very literal culmination of all of the hate and violence and exclusion and all of the barbarity that we’ve developed since Cain and have multiplied a billion times over, that all of that gets absorbed by Jesus hanging on the cross.

Casey Griffiths: See, and as you guys were talking, I’m sitting here—I guess I’m kind of a sunny optimist, but I’m thinking, you know, the central story of Christianity and the faith of the Latter-day Saints is the death of this innocent person. Compare the power of that story to something like The Iliad.

Patrick Mason: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Or The Song of Roland where—Achilles kills hundreds of people, and that makes him awesome. Christ comes and gives up his life, and that makes him more than just awesome. It makes him transcendent. It makes him infinite. I do believe—you know, again, maybe I’m a sunny optimist—that we’ve made progress, at least, that the stories that hold our societies together are based around considering the power of a single death as opposed to those stories told where, you know, being a great person meant that you were a great warrior, which meant you could take life and take it in graphic means on a grand scale, and that’s what made you great. I mean, there’s a nice inversion there that I really appreciate in Christianity.

Patrick Mason: Totally. It’s a complete inversion, and that’s what makes it—I mean, I’d say this is why Jesus is God, right? Is that if this were a kind of Homeric tale, right, that at the moment in the garden when the temple guards come, right? And he’s confronted, that’s the moment where he goes all Marvel superhero.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah!

Patrick Mason: Right? And he even says, like, I could command all these legions to come down, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: So we know how that story goes. We’ve read that story. We’ve seen that movie 100 times, 1,000 times, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: And Jesus does something totally different. He confounds all of our expectations. And what makes Jesus God is that he chooses to suffer and die rather than to kill and to inflict pain, and that didn’t make him God—he was God, right? I mean, he didn’t become God in that moment. So, you know—

Scott Woodward: He’s revealing his divinity, his clear transcendence above the common human tropes of violence and retaliation, and he does the counterintuitive thing, which was even more superheroic or superhuman than to retaliate and beat the whole band barehanded or whatever. Yeah.

Patrick Mason: Exactly right. Exactly.

Scott Woodward: How would you respond to people who say that peaceful means are not a realistic way of existing in the world? And on a religious basis, like, it’s not a realistic way to, like, defend your beliefs. I mean, you’ve got to stand up for what you believe, right? So how would you push back against that kind of thinking? Like, that’s not realistic: that’s kind of idealistic gas, but in real life, you kind of have to fight for what you want.

Patrick Mason: I’ll answer this in a couple of different ways. So this semester I’ve been teaching a course on African American history. And we recently covered the Civil Rights movement. I think one of the great insights that Martin Luther King made, especially after the Montgomery boycott—you know, he wrote about the power of nonviolence, and he says nonviolence resistance is not the same as passive non-resistance to evil: that nonviolence resistance is resistance to evil. It’s active resistance to evil. It just refuses to enter into the logic and the cycle of violence. It chooses a different way, but do not confuse it for just passively rolling over and accepting injustice and accepting evil in the world. I think that’s one of the key insights. There’s excellent scholarly research that actually shows the supremacy of nonviolence and peaceful ways. So there was a book published a few years ago that did a really rigorous, detailed study of every social movement around the world from 1900 to 2006. This is a book called Why Civil Resistance Works, and they showed statistically that groups that remain peaceful and nonviolence were twice as likely to succeed in their goals than movements that resorted to violence. So it’s not just that it’s some kind of moral idealism, or it’s not just some kind of pie in the sky: it actually is more effective. And we say sometimes, oh, well, you know, people get beat up, and people get killed and so forth: Well, that happens in war, too.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: We have whole cemeteries for veterans and those who did make that ultimate sacrifice, you know, while fighting for their country, and in nonviolent movements, they do ask for sacrifice, and people do get beat up, and sometimes, in some movements, they get killed, but actually casualty rates are much lower. I think about even about the Book of Mormon, right, with the anti-Nephi-Lehies, who are, like, the ultimate example of the way that nonviolence works. So a thousand of them die, right? It’s tragic. But compare that to the body counts in all of Captain Moroni’s battles or Teancum’s battles or others. So even though there’s a body count, it’s much lower, and the fact of the matter is it works. They defended their families. These nonviolent social movements actually work. The entire country of India was liberated nonviolently. The Civil Rights movement was done nonviolently, so these things actually work. I think there is a kind of hard, practical answer to that question, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: But I also think as Christians. I think we want to avoid living only in a world of kind of moral realism or utilitarianism, where we measure the value of an idea simply on its utility, its immediate utility. Again, we worship a God who chose to die. Now, he rose three days later, but at the time, nobody knew that that was going to happen, right? He had prophesied it, but—Martin Luther King says the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. As Christians, we believe in hope, right? And we look forward, but we know that sometimes these things take a very long time to work themselves out. But I think as Christians, we have to ask ourselves, do we actually believe Jesus when he calls himself the Prince of Peace; when he tells Peter to put away the sword, and those who live by the sword will die by the sword; when he says, blessed are the peacemakers, you know, all those things: Do we actually believe him? Or do we think that he was a naive idealist, or not actually talking about politics, like, oh, well, I’ll be Christian in church on Sundays, but that doesn’t apply to the world of politics. That doesn’t apply to other things. Like, do we think actually that Jesus is Lord over all the areas of our life, or only some of the areas of our life? So I think that’s what we have to ask ourselves and then work out what that looks like. I mean, we’ve spent billions, trillions of dollars learning the art of war. Have we exercised the same—have we dedicated the same amount of research, of time and energy and creativity, to learning the art of peace?

Casey Griffiths: And when you were bringing that up, I mean, the example that came to my mind was Edward Partridge.

Patrick Mason: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: In Jackson County, where he was tarred and feathered and publicly humiliated, but he said, I bore my sufferings with such resignation and meekness and then told them that they were doing what had been done to Christ that the mob just kind of wandered away.

Patrick Mason: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Versus 1838, when the Danites, you know, say it’s going to be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and there’s no doubt—

Scott Woodward: That just escalates it, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It just escalates it, that it just got worse and worse. In fact, Patrick, I want to give you a story problem from church history.

Patrick Mason: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Scott and I went over Zion’s Camp.

Patrick Mason: All right.

Casey Griffiths: I know you’ve presented on that before, and so you know a little bit about it, but we kept going back and forth between, is this violent, or is this supposed to be a peace movement? And what was the message, and what was the purpose of Zion’s Camp? I know you’ve done some deep thinking about that, but could you use that as kind of a story problem to explain Latter-day Saint approaches to resolving conflict?

Patrick Mason: Yeah, it is such an interesting case study, isn’t it? Because it—that there aren’t shots fired, right? I mean, there’s the terrible—you know, there’s all the storms, and they find out that the governor actually isn’t going to support their cause, so they end up turning back. I do think all indications are that they were willing to fight, or at least a significant number of men in Zion’s Camp were willing to fight.

Scott Woodward: And the rhetoric of the revelation seems to condone that, right?

Patrick Mason: Yeah, I’m actually not so sure.

Scott Woodward: Ah, okay. Good. This is good. We want to hear. We want to hear you push back.

Patrick Mason: I think that’s the way we’ve read the revelations.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: I think that might have even been the way that at the time they read and understood the revelations, but if you read them very carefully—and this is, like, section 98, section 101, section 103, if I’m getting my numbers right—that the Lord does command them to go and redeem the land of Zion, and he does authorize them to put together this group to do so.

Scott Woodward: Like, I’m thinking of, like, verse 25 of section 103 where he says, whoever you curse, “I will curse, and ye shall avenge me of mine enemies. And my presence shall be with you even in avenging me of mine enemies, unto the third and fourth generation,” and “Let no man be afraid to lay down his life for my sake,” etc., right? And Casey and I—Casey and I already sparred on this a little bit, so I want to hear your thoughts, yeah.

Patrick Mason: Okay, that last phrase is really key.

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay.

Patrick Mason: What does it say? “Let no man be afraid to lay down his life.”

Scott Woodward: Yes. It sounds like you might fight and then die in this cause, right?

Patrick Mason: Exactly. It does not say let no man be afraid of killing somebody else. Right? That’s what Jesus says. This is invoking John, right? Greater love has no man than he lays down his life for his friend. This is the ethic of nonviolence. This is the anti-Nephi-Lehies, right? Are they willing to fight for their friends? Yes. Are they willing to resist evil? Yes. But they’ll fight with the weapons of love. They’ll fight with the weapons of nonviolent resistance to evil. And so I think if you read those sections carefully, I don’t see any verse where the Lord authorizes his servants to inflict violence on others.

Scott Woodward: What do you think he means by “avenge me of mine enemies”?

Patrick Mason: I think there’s an alternative world, right, not the world we live in, but there’s an alternate universe where they could have gone in nonviolently through moral suasion, and through a kind of Gandhian set of techniques they could have redeemed and reclaimed the land of Zion and therefore avenged in that sense. I don’t think—you know, we normally associate vengeance or avenging with violence—

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.

Patrick Mason: —but there’s a way in which they could have avenged or gotten back what they had lost, sort of gotten justice against those who had persecuted the saints in a way that you could say that Gandhi avenged all those Indians who had suffered at the hands of British colonialism, but he did so nonviolently. And so there’s a way that Zion’s Camp might have nonviolently avenged and therefore redeemed the land of Zion.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, that’s an interesting thought, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: See, there’s this great quote from Amasa Lyman that was shared in the wake of Mountain Meadows, where he was rebuking them, and he said this: the best way to avenge the blood of the prophets was to take a course to diminish the power of the devil, and I think that even language that uses words like avenge or vengeance doesn’t necessarily have to condone violence. The Lord’s interested in, like Amasa Lyman said, lessening the power of the adversary, and violence increases his power.

Scott Woodward: And that seems to be, like, the Christ way, right? That, like, Christ was actively defeating the powers of darkness by the techniques that he employed of submitting and dying. That actually breaks the powers of darkness—as Jacob would say in the Book of Mormon, overcomes the powers of death, hell, and the devil, and that’s so non-intuitive, but what a great way to take vengeance on evil, to diminish its power, right? I’m getting there. I’m trying to catch up with you guys. I’m getting into this head space of, like, the way that you avenge evil is by bringing more light and more peace. Is that what you’re saying? Am I under . . .

Patrick Mason: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, Martin Luther King has this great quote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” So what Jesus does is he breaks this cycle of violence, right, that began with Cain. He says, this is the way that it’s typically been done, and he does this in the temptations in the wilderness, right? He refuses the logic of the devil. He refuses it when the crowd offers him the kingship, because that’s not the way the kingdom will actually be won, through force. You know, he says the kingdom of God will not be gained by force, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: He tells James and John that their leadership will adopt a different kind of way: It’ll be servant leadership, and so at every point, he actually rejects the—essentially the logic of Caesar. He rejects the logic of Cain, that goes all the way back. And he’s not rejecting the world: he’s redeeming the world, right? That the world is something that God loves, the people of the world, even those who have done evil, which is all of us.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: He wants to come in and redeem us, and so he shows us a different way. I love 3 Nephi 27, when he comes and he interprets the cross to the Nephites in a way we don’t even have in the New Testament, and he says, the Father lifted me up on a cross so then all men could be drawn to me and be lifted up, right? That wasn’t an exact quote.

Scott Woodward: So I can draw all men unto me, yeah.

Patrick Mason: Exactly, and so there’s an attractive quality. The cross kind of works like a magnet. We should both be repelled by the violence of it, but attracted by the infinite love that Jesus displays in that moment. And when he says, this should be the great and last sacrifice, I think he’s talking not just about ritual sacrifice, like we’re going to stop sacrificing each other on the altar of violence, right? This is where we get. This is the world you get, and so, like, stop it. Just stop it, right? I’m showing you a different way, and instead follow the Prince of Peace.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, he just refuses to play the game that people play.

Patrick Mason: He does that with Caiaphas. He does that with Pilate. He refuses to play their game.

Scott Woodward: And you see that in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, right? He’s saying that this is going to be the kingdom of God, but we’re doing things a very different way here. This is inverting. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, and mustard seeds do eventually, like, take over everything. Like, they grow, like, a nasty weed that, like, chokes everything out. But we’re not doing this with hand grenades. We’re not doing this with police brutality. This is not how the kingdom of God will be conducted. It’s by people turning the other cheek, by people who are loving their neighbors, people who are being peacemakers, even being persecuted, right?

Patrick Mason: Can I read a quote from President Kimball?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: And this is one that Latter-day Saint peace-builders love, but it’s amazing. It’s from 1976 in the Ensign. He says, “We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel, ships, planes, missiles, fortifications, and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro–Kingdom of God. We train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot. Thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching to love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to [hate] them . . . and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” So, I mean, that is just so prophetic, right? That we become anti-enemy instead of pro–Kingdom of God. And we forget that that prayer of love your enemies is not to reinforce the fact that they’re your enemies, but it’s actually to change your heart so that you no longer see them as enemies, because they’re not. They’re sisters and brothers. Praying for them may not do very much to change their hearts. It might, but as much as anything, it’ll change your heart and change the dynamics of the conflict.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, going back to Zion’s Camp, Scott and I went three or four rounds on, is this violent language? And then there was a passage in section 105, which is the last revelation given to them, that I think just struck us both like lightning, where the last thing he says to them, this is verse 38 of section 105, “Again I say unto you, sue for peace, not only to the people that have smitten you, but also to all people; And lift up an ensign of peace, and make a proclamation of peace unto the ends of the earth; And make proposals for peace unto those who have smitten you according to the voice of the Spirit which is in you, and all things shall work together for your good.” It’s clear that what he was aiming for there wasn’t violent retribution: It was a peaceful resolution that everybody could feel good about, that, like the anti-Nephi-Lehies, may have resulted in some people losing their lives, but far more if both sides were trying to kill each other.

Patrick Mason: Yeah, and I look at verse 14 of section 105, “For behold,” and, again, this is the Lord’s—as you said, it’s the Lord’s final word to these folks, and he says, “For behold, I do not require at their hands to fight the battles of Zion; for, as I said in a former commandment, even so will I fulfil—I will fight your battles.” I think he’s going back to section 98, “renounce war and proclaim peace,” and so forth, and, again, he’s not asking for passive non-resistance to evil. “Renounce war and proclaim peace.” Proclaim peace is a proactive, active, anxiously engaged type things, and of all of the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, most of them talk about the condition of your heart, the condition of your soul. The one that directly calls on us to do action in the world is “blessed are the peacemakers,” so that’s the active thing we do in the world.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So I’m still chewing on verse 14. At the very end, he says, “I will fight your battles.” Can we talk about, just for a second, Jesus as a punisher of the wicked? I don’t want to get too far off into the weeds here, but it seems like He takes that upon Himself to decide whether or not violence should be done. I mean, section 133, it’s hard to get around when he says, my garments will be red when I come because of the blood of my enemies that will be, you know, destroyed. Or thinking about 3 Nephi, when—the voice in the darkness in chapter 8 and 9 of 3 Nephi, where he says, I did that. I am the one who sunk that city into the sea, and I’m the one who brought the whirlwind, and I’m the one who brought the fire because of the blood of the prophets that was spilled, and it seems like there is some times in which Jesus literally does fight and actually does, like—there is some killing. And, again, maybe I’m reading this at a certain superficial level here, and you could take me deeper and say, actually, that’s not true. Or maybe you’ll agree. I don’t know. I’m curious your thoughts on Jesus as an active fighter of the wicked here.

Patrick Mason: I think it’s—that’s such a good question, Scott. I think it’s such an important question. In the book that I wrote with David Pulsipher called Proclaim Peace, we have a whole chapter that wrestles with that question of basically, is God violent?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: And I think you just pointed out probably the most difficult passage. There’s a lot of passages in the Bible that point to this, but I think they can be—especially in the Old Testament, there’s ways that you can kind of get around them because of authorship, because of, you know, various kinds of things. I think 3 Nephi 8 and 9 just absolutely put a point on this that make it really hard for us to wriggle out of in any kind of fancy, you know, academic ways that we might want to, because you’re exactly right: It’s the voice of Jesus that we’ll hear, like, two chapters later, you know, when, when he comes down to visit the people, it’s the voice of Jesus saying, I did that. I did that. I did that. I did that. The best explanation that I can—now some people, and I appreciate the sentiment, they just want to completely rule out of hand any possibility that God could ever be violent, because how can a loving God be violent?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: And I appreciate the sentiment behind that, but it’s simply not what the scriptural record points to, and maybe I’m not smart enough to find some other way out of this, but the way that David Pulsipher and I thought about this, especially with 3 Nephi 8 and 9, is that God’s different than you and me.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Yeah.

Patrick Mason: And even if he’s not ontologically different, he’s perfected in a way that you and I are not. He has perspective that you and I don’t.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: He also has power that you and I don’t. The—one of the reasons why “Thou shalt not kill” is so important because you and I don’t have any power to take that back.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Patrick Mason: I have no ability to take back if I do violence to other people, especially lethal violence. God does. He can make that wrong right, and he offers that universally through the resurrection. The other thing is that when Jesus comes, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as a Christian, I am bound and covenanted to follow Jesus.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: And when he comes to the people, he says, do the works that you’ve seen me do.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: So maybe—I don’t know if this is going to be satisfactory to everybody, but I’m not commanded to do all the things that Jesus does in heaven. I don’t have the power to do all the things that Jesus does in heaven as a glorified, perfected God. But he says, do the works which you have seen me do. I think it’s the kinds of works that he did here on earth as a mortal in the same state that you and I are in right now. Sinless, but in the same state that you and I are in. So those are the works that I’m commanded to do, right? Whatever happens with exaltation and all those kinds of things, I just think that’s, like, so far removed from my experience right now. That’s not my pattern right now. My pattern is the mortal Jesus who came and lived in a sinful, violent world and encountered it as the Prince of Peace. That’s what I’m commanded to follow. So is God violent? Sometimes, maybe, yes. Scriptures seem to point that way, but does God want me to be violent? I don’t think so. I think He wants me to follow the mortal Jesus, who was perfectly nonviolent.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, I think that’s a fair reconciling of the differences we see in the text, right? As mortals, He’s modeling how mortals ought to do the mortal condition.

Patrick Mason: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Now, given, you know, Patrick Mason 2.0, resurrected, exalted, Patrick Mason—

Patrick Mason: 2,000,000,000.0, right?

Scott Woodward: Well, that’s a different playbook, right?

Patrick Mason: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: There’s a different playbook for those in that echelon, but I think that’s a really profound thought that you just shared, that we are commanded to follow the mortal Jesus in which he interacted with evil and violence. That’s—I’m going to be thinking about that for a few days.

Casey Griffiths: Patrick, let me bring up something else. It seems like there’s been a lot of emphasis from leaders of the church in recent years asking us to be peacemakers, sometimes in specific ways—President Nelson asked us to root out racism among ourselves—but even more recently, it feels like every time there’s a general conference and I ask my students, what was the theme, it comes back to making peace and reducing contention. Why do you think that is? What’s going on right now that’s causing the leaders of the church to be led by the Spirit in that direction?

Patrick Mason: Yeah, I think it’s because they’re prophets. I think it’s because the role of the prophet, one of the roles of the prophet—there are many, but one of the roles of the prophet is to see the present condition that we find ourselves in as humanity, the holes that we’ve dug ourselves in, and to point us to a better way, to give us a rope ladder to help us come out of those holes, and my sense is that as they look around, not just the United States, but around the world, we live in an incredibly contentious and fractious time, and you can say there’ve always been wars, there’ve always been—and that’s absolutely true, but I don’t live in some past age. I live now. And right now I live in an era of fracture, of contention, where family members can’t even talk to each other because of politics, where there are wars and rumors of wars in every corner of the world. I see it as nothing less than prophetic for apostles of the Prince of Peace to point us to a better way and to say that if we’re going to be followers of the Prince of Peace, then that’s what it should look like. I can point to statements from church leaders throughout church history where they’ve talked about peace: incredible, powerful statements. I would agree with you and with your students that there does seem to be a kind of concentration of messages that we’ve heard in these recent years. I think President Nelson, when we look back on his presidency a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, one of the things we’re going to—we’ll remember him for temples, but I think we’re also going to remember him as a prophet of peacemaking. That I think one of the signal messages that he’s given us, both as an Apostle—this predates. He gave some very powerful talks about this before he became President of the Church. I think he sees the world that we live in, all of the contention inside the Church, outside the Church, in families, in politics, between nations, and he says, no, followers of Jesus should follow a different way.

Scott Woodward: I’m curious: you’re a student of history, you’re a professor. I’m wondering what grade you would give Latter-day Saints right now as a whole, as you step back. Like, how are we doing at peacemaking? In church history, there’s some spots you might flunk us, like Mountain Meadows, that’s an F. The Missouri War, 1838, you know, we’re kind of hitting back to—I don’t know what grade we are there. How are we doing now? The arc of history, the arc of church history, in this present moment, like, what do you see that encourages you? What do you see that could, you know, maybe some room for improvement?

Patrick Mason: Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe we’re, like, a solid, like, B-.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Patrick Mason: Like, a student who, like, really cares and is trying but maybe doesn’t quite yet have the tools of how to do it, right? So that’s where I would assess where we’re at as a people right now, collectively. I genuinely see, among Latter-day Saints in lots of places, in every corner that I talk to, a genuine desire to be peacemakers. I think, though, most people don’t know how, and that’s maybe what’s lacking. So, again, a lot of desire, sincere desire, but we haven’t yet developed the tools, the systems, the programs to implement what that looks like as a church and as a people and as individuals. I don’t know—maybe B- is a little too harsh, but we’re not at A level yet. We have other sisters and brothers in other Christian churches and in other religions who are ahead of us, actually have some things to teach us. They’ve been at this longer than us, so I think we can learn some things from them, but, again, we have so many resources in our own scriptures and in our own tradition, and I think we just haven’t spent the time and energy really plumbing those. I’m confident we can get there, and we will get there, but we need a few extra study sessions and lab sessions to get there.

Scott Woodward: So for Latter-day Saints who want to go to lab, how would you encourage them to get involved in learning the tools, getting involved in peace movements? Like, where would you point them, you know? They’re that hungry student who just wants to learn. They just don’t have the tools. Where do they go?

Patrick Mason: I think a few different places. So, first of all, I would say study the scriptures with an eye towards peace. Read them this way. What do the scriptures—whatever you’re reading: Book of Mormon, New Testament, Doctrine and Covenants, whatever—what does this sacred scripture have to teach me about how to be a better peacemaker? I promise you, because I’ve done it this year with the Book of Mormon, if you read the scriptures with that question in mind, they will come alive in ways that you’ve just never, never expected or ever seen. So I think they are our main handbook and playbook.

Casey Griffiths: I had the same experience with the Doctrine and Covenants. Had to read through it intensely and write a commentary during the pandemic, and I was so impressed at how many times the Lord said Zion can’t be built on a foundation of violence, that you should purchase these lands, not redeem them by blood. Raise up the banner of peace, that—I think that the themes in the Book of Mormon continue on in the Doctrine and Covenants and are maybe even more powerful, so this year, as we go in to study the Doctrine and Covenants, use that lens. What is the Lord telling us about peacemaking in the revelations that are found in the Doctrine and Covenants?

Patrick Mason: I agree 100%. There’s so much powerful stuff in there, so I think that’s the main thing, and then I think there are some great organizations that Latter-day Saints are running. We mentioned earlier Mormon Women for Ethical Government. I think that’s a really powerful organization, and if you look on their website, they actually have six principles of peacemaking. I think if you want, like, a basic primer on peacemaking, that is a fantastic place to go just to learn some of those basic principles, and they’re all scripturally grounded.

Scott Woodward: And that organization is pretty well split Democrat-Republican.

Patrick Mason: Yes.

Scott Woodward: This is not Mormon Women for One Party or the Other. This is a pretty cool model of people from both political parties coming together based on these scriptural principles and actually making it work.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Patrick Mason: Yeah, they’re incredible. If you—their color scheme is purple, right, so it’s not red or blue: it’s both, and they really try hard to be nonpartisan, which means that people on either side sometimes get mad at them, right? Cause they’re not sufficiently partisan. Only women can join, but men can go to the website and learn a lot from the resources that they have there. I also think there’s just so much going on. Peacemaking is really big and capacious. It’s not just going in and, like, solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It’s not creating peace in Ukraine. It can start in your family. It can start in your community—like, join the PTA, right? Get involved in local politics and be a peacemaker there. Work with local refugees, right—oftentimes the people who are victims of violence, right? So welcoming them into our communities, into our homes, healing trauma that they have. Work with the local homeless population. Work with victims of trauma and violence in your community, whether from domestic abuse, sexual abuse, whatever that might be. So sometimes we think of peacemaking just as, like, that’s what people do who sign peace treaties. No. The vast majority of peacemaking is going to happen in your immediate context. I think, frankly, the Latter-day Saint ward becomes one of the great laboratories for being peacemakers, because we’re thrown in with a bunch of people that we disagree with that we might not choose to associate with otherwise. There are arguments. I do think Latter-day Saints are oftentimes, like, A+ conflict avoiders.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, which is not the same thing as peacemaking, right? That’s not the same.

Patrick Mason: It’s not the same thing, right? So learning how to engage a conflict more constructively—but the ward is a great site not only to learn those skills, but then to apply those skills into the community. Can you imagine what it would be like to mobilize a ward wherever you live around bringing greater peace to your community, whatever that looks like? Again, working with refugees, working with victims of violence. I think the ward is just an absolutely inspired laboratory where we can actually get to work.

Casey Griffiths: So maybe, Patrick, one more question: you’ve tried to serve as a peacemaker, and I’ve heard you share some powerful experiences where you’ve seen peacemaking happen or participated in it. Could you maybe share one or two experiences where you saw this kind of peace and reconciliation happen?

Patrick Mason: Yeah. Well, maybe I’ll share one recently that I witnessed. It was less that I was a participant and more that I was a witness, and it just affected me so deeply. So this past summer, I had the opportunity to travel to Rwanda, which is a country in Central Africa, kind of Central East Africa. Thirty years ago there was a horrific genocide there by one group called the Hutus against another group called the Tutsis. A million people were killed in the space of 100 days.

Scott Woodward: Oh my word.

Patrick Mason: It’s unimaginable, right, in terms of the pace of killing, the scope of killing in this really small, little African country. So I went with a group of students and faculty, and we went to go and learn about this, and we visited a lot of the sites of the genocide. It was some of the hardest things I’ve ever seen. I’m just openly weeping, visiting with a lot of survivors of the genocide, visiting actually with perpetrators as well.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Patrick Mason: And one of the most powerful places we went was a community—so afterwards the government recognized like, hey, we’re a small little country. We can’t separate all the perpetrators on one side and the victims and survivors on the other side, right? Like, we have to learn to live together. And so they’ve—the government and other groups have sponsored tons of forgiveness and reconciliation efforts over the past thirty years, and one of the things they did was create these communities, these villages—because a lot of the survivors, their homes had been burned or destroyed. A lot of the perpetrators who were thrown in prison or other thing, that they came out, and now they needed a place to live, so the government, with some international funding, they’ve created these new villages. They call them reconciliation villages, where survivors and former perpetrators live side by side. They get housing and other things with the promise that, basically, they’ll try to learn to get along and live next to each other.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Patrick Mason: And so when we went and visited one of these villages, we heard a presentation from this man who was a former perpetrator. He didn’t tell us exactly what he did, but based on his prison sentence and some other kind of clues that we heard, he killed a lot of people. A lot of people. And then we had a woman who was there whose entire family, husband and children, had been killed in the genocide—lost her house: lost everything. They lived in this community. They were both placed in this reconciliation village, and you could tell they are genuine friends, and they had learned over the space of many, many years, the art of forgiveness, the art of reconciliation. And she said, like, it wasn’t immediate. Like, when the government offered to put her here, she wasn’t sure if she could live alongside former perpetrators. He wasn’t sure when he came out of prison that he could ever be forgiven. But to see these two people and this entire community that is literally based on the principle of reconciliation, it’s actually working. It’s real. It’s not easy. It’s not that there’s not ongoing trauma, but, like, forgiveness is real. Reconciliation is real. It’s possible. I came away from that, of course—now, I hope to never witness anything like what the Rwandans experienced in 1994, but we have our own serious contentions here at home in the United States. Sometimes it can seem like the forces of division are so overwhelming that they can’t be countered, that we can’t do anything about it. I’ll just never forget what I saw in Rwanda. In the face of unspeakable genocide and horror and trauma, the reconciliation is happening. I think that has to be our hope as Christians. You talked about the mustard seed. Jesus talks about the leaven in the loaf, right? Salt and light. These are all tiny little things that are transformative in their effect, and I think our hope as Christians has to be that God will multiply our peacemaking efforts: that whatever small things we do for peace and reconciliation in our families, in our communities, in our wards, in our country, that God will magnify those things, like the loaves and the fishes, and he’ll make more of our efforts than we can make of them ourselves.

Casey Griffiths: Boy, and it feels like if they can get past genocide, our problems seem small in comparison.

Patrick Mason: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: We can overcome the issues that we have, and we can heal the divides that we’ve experienced, and there is a way for us to come together, especially with the grace of Christ.

Patrick Mason: Yeah. Amen.

Scott Woodward: Wow. Well, thank you so much, Patrick. It’s been wonderful to have you on the show today, and what a fitting conclusion to this series on peace and violence, emphasis on the peace, please.

Patrick Mason: Yeah. Remember: peace on earth, right? That’s what the angel said.

Casey Griffiths: That’s right. And I couldn’t think of a better way for us to give you a Christmas present than to have this discussion, and hopefully over the holidays you think a little bit about that it’s a new year and what things you can do differently to bring peace, so thanks, Patrick. You set a great tone for us, and I think you helped us stick the landing on a difficult topic to cover.

Patrick Mason: Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, 100%. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. We’d like to again thank Dr. Patrick Mason for joining us today and for his remarkable scholarship on peace and violence, and maybe more importantly for his active personal engagement in helping there be just a little more peace on earth and goodwill toward all. We again invite you to roll up your sleeves and continue with us as we now mentally shift gears toward dissecting the contexts, content, controversies, and consequences of each section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout 2025. If you’re enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it, or by taking a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. Again, all of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. So if you’re in a position where you’re both willing and able to make a one-time or ongoing donation, be assured that your contribution will help us here at Scripture Central to produce and disseminate more quality content to combat false and faith-eroding material out there in the digital marketplace of ideas. And while Casey and I try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us, and Merry Christmas.