Sheri Dew: The Intersection of Faith, Media, and Wellness

and I'm going to ask our president seane Reese if he might just step forward and welcome folks here and say a few words as we get underway president [Applause] ree uh welcome thank you Paul for giving me the opportunity to say welcome to everyone uh it it is with a great honor that uh we welcome Sher du uh a distinguished alumnus of BYU and and as I think about this event which we all have to gather together to to hear from wisdom and uh experience that Sherry brings as uh a worldclass communicator and as a

tremendous disciple of Jesus Christ I I'm reminded of what we at BYU are really about which is trying to become the Christ centered prophetically directed University of Prophecy and and and we talk about seven things that are that are that are surrounding the ideas of becoming that University and sherd exemplifies two of those in such important and fundamental ways and I think you're going to hear that tonight she has mastered what it means to be bilingual someone who can speak so definitively and expertly in her discipline as a communicator but also to talk so eloquently

and beautifully as a disciple of Jesus Christ that double Heritage that President Kimble talked about so amazingly in the second century address sherid du is one of the brilliant star s that he spoke about and I love that she's here with us on this campus she also has such an amazing ability when we talk about the courage to be different we're talking about someone who will stand up and be a champion for Faith someone who will be a a representative the of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in all of the various places and to

stand up with a voice bold and courageous and sherd has done that and so I can't imagine another person that I would be more uh excited and thrilled to have back Sherry back on our campus to represent what it means to become BYU so to each one of you I extend a warm welcome and thank you for being here with us this evening and especially to you Sherry we thank you and welcome you to being here on this campus I thank you so much president ree such a pleasure to have you with us I've asked

Mark Callister collister who is the director of the School of Communications at BYU uh if he would introduce Sherry and uh just a few words about Mark Prior to coming to BYU in uh 2005 Mark was teaching at Western Illinois University University he received his borate degrees here at Brigham Young University in international relations and in English an MBA here at BYU and then went on to earn his PhD in communication at the University of Arizona his research interests include adolescence and the media family and the media visual imagery and advertising um the role of

persuasion in nonprofit fund fundraising and as a specialist in all those fields has been called upon by Fortune 500 companies and National nonprofits to help consult them he teaches courses in research methods media effects persuasion and very relevant to tonight's lecture media and religion so will you please join me in providing a warm welcome to Dr Mark collister [Applause] thank you Paul it is a privilege to be able to introduce our speaker this evening I have to tell you that in doing some research for this introduction I learned that Sherry likes very short introductions so

I'm excited that this may be her favorite introduction ever as I give this um first of all Sherry thanks for being with us we're so excited to have you Sher du is a native of ulses Kansas and a graduate of Brigham Y Young University she has authored several books including the biographies of Ezra TAF Benson and Gordon B hinley as well as a book insights from a prophet's life Russell M Nelson her most recent book is entitled prophets see around corners Sherry served as a second counselor in the general presidency of the Relief Society from

2000 199 97 to 2002 she's currently the Executive Vice President and chief content officer at Desert Management Corporation and if we could give her a warm welcome tonight good evening it's a treat to be with you I'm uh I'm a little overwhelmed actually of because there's some so many people in the room for whom I have profound respect starting with elder Gilbert we used to have offices side by side I pretty much drove him crazy learned a lot from him before he became Elder Gilbert and uh asked him what in the world he was doing

here on conference week and week but grateful that you and Christine would be here uh president ree I I I'm going to try I have now a new standard to try to live up to thank you I also have a lot of respect for the wheatle Institute and for the way it's expanding and trying to absolutely have profound influence uh Paul Edwards I had the chance to work with Paul some years ago as well and know how talented and skilled that he is and then Governor uh I'm I'm a fan Governor Mrs Herbert for sure

and and to all of you here thank you so much for coming so let's dive in and let me tell you what they've asked me to do is spend a few minutes talking about faith in media and then I think we're going to have a conversation that Paul and I will have in and take some of your questions but let me set the stage for this and give you a little background to start with before we start looking at a few slides and maybe a few statistics so it was mentioned that I uh work for

Desert Management corporation which in essence operates many not all but many of the for-profit businesses that the Church of Jesus Christ of larity saints owns DMC operates all of the for-profit media businesses that the church owns um it's Bonville International it's radio and TV it's Deseret News Deseret magazine it's deser book and all that it entails it's and a number of other companies it also operates the radiant foundation and about two and a half years ago through the radiant Foundation we started exploring the issue of faith and how it's treated by media how our faith

and people of faith and religion itself how are they represented in in the media and we started by saying well we have suppositions about this we think we're not treated very well but let's go do some research so what I'm going to show you is what we have UNC covered through various bodies of research that we have done about faith and its treatment in by news media and also faith and its treatment by entertainment media now surely you're having going through your mind already images of the kinds of things and headlines that you've seen or

the kinds of movies you've seen and how they represent people of Faith or religion itself but I want show you what some of these Global Studies show but before I do that if I could a quick story to begin in um June of 2020 my my mother passed away now the pandemic was just really in full on you know just it had captured all of us we were doing social distancing we weren't yet going back to church uh all kinds of things were happening and mom passed away we I was raised in in Kansas and

so my mother and father had lived there for 60 years she was living out here with us at the time but we managed to get her home to Kansas and we're able to have a very small memorial again we were lucky that the State president in our little Kansas town even allowed us to use the building because Church wasn't back in session yet in person but the State president allowed us to use the building just for our family and a few friends we probably had 70 people there 55 of whom were family members we held

a little memorial for mother now the little town I'm from is a has a roaring population of 4,500 so we come out of the little chapel and there is a policeman waiting to give us an escort to the little country Cemetery four or five miles away like we need an escort in a four stop light town right but there he was and he was we went over to talk to him and thank him and he said oh we would never think of your mother being laid to rest without having an escort so the cortage got

behind the the uh uh policeman and we start making our way out to the cemetery partway there you you know you're going kind of slow partway there we look over at a side street and there is a woman who's gotten out of her pickup Kansas farm country she's gotten out of her pickup she has this hand on the hood of the pickup and her head is bowed like this and I'm telling you there was something about the side of that woman with her head bowed as we drove by I just burst into tears it touched

all of us so deeply I'm sure that woman has no idea who was in The Hearse I have no idea who she was I don't know if she's religious I don't know anything about her but in that little moment I saw profound reverence and respect demonstrated by this unknown woman I I have her image emblazened in my mind and heart ever since because number one it was a tender day here's a woman paying respect to my mother even though I'm sure she didn't know who it was but I also have said to myself how often

when you read the paper not a paper anymore how often when you read news online or how often when you go and Sample any kind of media do you see that kind of a depiction of that kind of person in the country I'll bet you there are way more of that women in this country than we think but that's probably not what we see a lot in how people and I would assume she's a person of Faith because of her bowed head I'm not sure we always see them represented and given their full due now

with that in mind let's let's just look at a few things things that may put this in context for decades now I have collected I've got files of cover stories and articles and I it's going to look like I'm picking on Time Magazine which I'm not really picking on Time Magazine but it was just easier to make them all from time to say I've got files and files of Articles where the national press has tried to talk about some facet about God or religion or faith or something and it has always felt distorted to me

now with that as a background let me show you a short video to to kind of ceue up what we tried to do when we set out to try to say could we make a difference could our little company make a difference in how faith and people of faith and religion are treated by various forms of media I think that should be playing there we go it's one of the most natural most instinctive things we humans do reaching upward to our god since the dawn of time in every corner of the world we have prayed

chanted meditated and danced to connect with that source of love and joy and peace but this spirit ritual connection is in danger cultural taboos silence Voices of Faith media algorithms perpetuate misinformation defensiveness sees distrust cynicism snuffs out spirituality but we can turn the tide by engaging individuals and institutions in discussions of faith amplifying stories of those who believe and empowering people in their spiritual journey we can Elevate faith in culture and help each person experience how beautiful it is how fundamentally human it is to connect with God now what this next U slide says is

basically that uh the faith in media initiative which is the initiative that uh that we launched that has been trying to improve collaboration and an understanding between faith and media so Pew several years ago released this statistic that 84% of humankind is affiliated with a religion is that what you would have guessed based upon what you see in the press and elsewhere would you believe 84% is still affiliated with the religion I didn't believe it when I saw that I said where's the source it's Pew pretty great source so why then does a preponderance of

today's stories about faith in news media and entertainment lack accuracy truth you lack the Prof the profundity the profound nature of faith and why does it lack hope that's one of the questions we've asked ourselves so one of the things we did we done several Global Studies and one of the studies that we did was basically a third-party expert AI research that we uh study that we gathered from over 30 million sources basically went out and scraped 30 million sources that represent the thoughts and attitudes from across the sociopolitical Spectrum included clergy journalists consumers and

others so that's what we did this is the first study we did then we also uh hired harrisx globally renowned to survey about 10,000 people across 18 countries in various languages who try to include all the world's major religions we did 30 in-depth media interviews with senior media Executives now let me show you what we learned from these studies we've also done harrisx just finished a major study on how faith and people of Faith are treated by the entertainment media we just released those results uh in a partnership with variety magazine in Hollywood a few

week weeks ago probably won't have time to go into that but but the results are very similar to these studies which really scraped news media so what we learned is this that 59% of those uh surveyed said that it's important for news to cover diversity in faith and religion that it should be covered 63% said that too much Faith related content is rooted in controversy happy to report on what there's some trauma that happens when there's something really unfortunate happens in a religion or with religious figures but not willing to tell the real stories of

regular people they said 61% believe the media perpetuates faith-based stereotypes rather than protecting against them 63% said that high quality content on faith and religion is in fact needed 53% say the media actively ignores religion as an aspect of society and culture 78% believe Faith stereotypes need to be addressed as much or more than stereotypes regarding race and gender 43% say feel the media's current approach to religious coverage creates unease and anxiety 56% said they would be more likely to engage with media that offers high quality faith and religious reporting 56% media should provide more

more coverage on complex religious issues 84% faith and religious groups need to provide this is an interesting one need to provide the media with spokespeople particularly people with lived religious experience so the question we've asked ourselves is how can we help how can we Elevate people of faith faith people of faith and religion religion because we're dealing with a vicious cycle where if faith is muted it means that we don't become literate about faith which means that Faith practices practice diminishes which causes us to mute Faith further and so forth could we instead shift to

a virtuous cycle where we Champion Faith where we model Faith where faith is practiced what if we could shift into a mode of educating modeling and even activating these are some of the questions we have asked ourselves now another quick video religion is a very important part of my upbringing the backbone of my development I don't think I've ever seen anything in the media that depicted the type of experience that I had growing up and what the media gets wrong is they don't see the full person people's understanding of religion is really shaped by media

we have really well documented evidence that that when the show 24 which was a terrorism related show was on air the next day you would see a spike in reports of islamophobic hate crimes growing up you can't help but internalize a lot of those narratives that you're going to look like the other and you're going to be discriminated against one of the knock on effects of the these portrayals is I think it probably fragments our culture our society more if someone is other then it's very easy to to uh number one you don't want to

learn from them number two you don't want to be around them and number three it's very easy then to hurt them yeah anytime someone becomes the other it's it's a very dangerous thing one of the things that I've learned in in my lifetime is that facts and information doesn't actually change people's behavior right like the way that we actually create empathy in people's hearts is through storytelling faith and media are both really important to society they're storytellers they bring Community together they provide tremendous support and insight the biggest worry is when the two sides aren't

at the table When Faith feels that it can trust media and when media feels it's not allowed in the room to talk about faith that's where a problem persists it's not just that journalists often lack the training to cover religion it's also that they they don't know where to go to find the information that they need right the resources are really lacking a major goal for Faith and media initiative is not to demonize villainize or point fingers but to understand why things are the way they are are there opportunities for us to provide tools resources

training research support so that both groups can do a better job to ultimately serve their readers and their members the reality is all of us here are human and there's a lot in common a lot more in common between all of us than there is different as we need to keep pushing to keep growing to keep evolving right we don't understand everything we won't ever but if you think you do then you're going to stop growing people around the world are saying that they would consume more media if it had more faith in it people

crave these stories and I wish we heard more stories about people of deep Faith who are actually trying to bring hope and healing and connection to others and not just trying to you know push people away or you know condemn others um there's a lot more hope out there in faith than I think we often here it's can we go to this mic is it on one of the things that we've learned in the last two and a half years is that it's surprising how many individuals there are uh in working for major brands or

people of influence who resonate with the message of saying we've got to do better better we can do better we can use our voices to be more fair and more uh more believable and more honest about what faith does in PE in the lives of people uh and what religion can do for individuals now there are challenges one of the challenges is that religion is tends to be marginalized in The Newsroom and there are different reasons first of all Newsroom economics today has taken away a lot of Specialists including religion Specialists there's a fear of

getting it wrong and Rel relig has become politicized in many settings and so that causes people uh concern especially though journalists and reporters and otherwise Newsroom tend newsrooms tend to lack diverse religious perspectives and in both in both Hollywood in both um the producing of different kinds of of uh movies and other kinds of programs and in news newsrooms uh those jobs tend to appeal to a more secular audience and so you can go into a new room and have a hard time finding someone who's a person of Faith so when a person who doesn't

believe in faith tries to write about faith that's just foreign territory completely to them editors they there are clicks for controversy editors don't believe religion div drives engagement unless you're talking about the latest trauma involving some religious figure and and I think this is a crucial one for all of us to pay attention to there are a lack of really credible spokespeople inside of religions or from people of Faith who are willing to speak up and say no no no let me tell you what let me tell you the difference that makes in my life

because I believe in God let me tell you the difference it makes because I pray and so forth the the bottom line is that when faith and media misunderstand each other it's what that little diagram showed faith is muted literacy understanding knowledge about faith diminishes those considering the importance of Faith may be dissuaded and then here's a big one those looking for Hope or peace or guidance may not even consider that religion or faith or God can make a difference in their lives because they're not seeing it anywhere they don't see it in what they

read they don't see it in what's online they don't see it in the theater so just as a recap over the last 30 months or so the faith and media initiative has conducted these studies which I've mentioned and then we've said what can we do we've trained more than 1300 journalists about faith at the Columbia School of Journalism and at the USC School of Journalism also at the Harvard Divinity School at the national Press Club at the Google News lab in Mexico City at the National Association of Black and Hispanic journalists and more so we

started to try to train journalists but that's like a drop in the ocean and it's really slowo because it's a few journalists at a time a few other things that we've done we've participated in some major Gatherings of business and media Executives at the Vatican at The Shard in London at the Lou in Abu Dhabi and at Concordia in New York City we've built a coalition of about 75 organizations and people of influence to Champion a more accurate treatment of faith in all media sectors and we've entered into an agreement with Forbes and you'll see

forthcoming before long they're going to do their first ever list of Faith Centric organizations and influencers who have who incorporate faith in their business and that's the first um an interesting experience we we hosted Seth Cohen who is the let's see he is the uh Chief impact officer at Forbes I have that right Arin Chief impact officer at Forbes he runs the Forbes impact lab and he was here in Salt Lake City with us uh last fall we hosted a luncheon for him and we're able to ask him some questions during this luncheon for all

to hear and one of the things we said said to him is why is why does Forbes care about faith faith and how it's treated by the media and he said well you've made us care some of our team wasn't me I can't take a lick of of credit but some of our team had spent enough time with him and some others at forbs to convince them that this ought to be one of the things they build lists around they're famous for their lists this ought to be something they should include now let me um

I want to show you just a couple more slides and then and make a conclusion if I could uh the radiant Foundation also teamed up with Gallup at an event in London last fall and here are just a few other findings so think about the news or other forms of media that are saying no no no faith is Faith is for a blind sheep faith will do you no good faith religion is dangerous in contrast to that Gallup has done some studies that say that globally those with a greater commitment to spirituality or religion have

higher Community engagement so this says that religion's more important to them that have significantly higher that those who say religion is important to them have significantly higher scores on gallup's Civic engagement index globally the difference is 4.8 points in North America the difference is 10.3 points um in North America globally the difference is 4.8 sorry I read that wrong and in North America the difference is 10.3 points that's a pretty big difference statistically in their study globally those with a greater commitment to spirituality or religion have better social connections so approximately a 100 million more

people who identify as religious have others they can turn to in times of need than do those who are not religious so think of it think of having no one to turn to in a time of need globally Studies have found links between spirituality and lower rates of depression suicide addiction and isolation now look at this second Bullet at least 444 Studies have now examined relationships between religion and spirituality and depression dating back to the early 1960s of those 61% reported significant inverse relationships with depression so let me conclude this portion by um by saying

a couple of things uh one more experience and then maybe a concluding thought couple summers ago uh we were at the Vatican um meeting some of the individuals there who have responsibility for for-profit businesses that the Vatican owns and so they were willing to meet with us because we represent for-profit businesses that the Church of Jesus Christ Al L Saints owns as part of that whole trip I had a chance to sit at a dinner one of those 87 course Italian dinners That Never Ends but I had the chance to sit next to a woman

by the name of Patricia Murray everybody in the Catholic Church calls her sister Pat some say that she's the most influential woman in the Catholic church because she has the ear of Pope Francis and she is the head Mother Superior so she's the Mother Superior over all Mother Superiors which means that the well-being of their nuns their millions of nuns Falls under her Direction she was absolutely adorable an Irish woman uh 70 in70s probably and as this dinner drove uh wore on we just had an absolutely delightful conversation we talked about all kinds of things

our families and our interests and what she was Finding as she went around the world trying to help those under her care it was it was a fabulous conversation and toward the end of our dinner she turned to me and she said who would have thought we would have so much in common she said why do you think that is because we're not alike at all and I thought about that for a minute and I said well sister Pat I said I'm I'm kind of guessing that you're probably not going to be baptized as a

member of the Church of Jesus Christ of larity saints and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to convert to Catholicism we so we kind of see religion a little bit differently and I said but there's something we have in common that's really really bigger than that and that is we both feel accountable to God and we believe God and and for both of us we believe that Jesus Christ makes all the difference in our lives that's a huge point we have in common and we just kind of hugged each other and got to see each

other again last summer and looking to more forward to more opportunities to do that don't we sort of wish that when we went online we went to our favorite news source or our favorite our our favorite we go that when we went to the theater that when we went anywhere in consumed media don't we wish that that were depicted number one respect for each other and what we believe but also a profound willingness to talk about what really matters which is something greater than ourselves I think that one of the great challenges we have as

members of the Church of Jesus Christ All larity Saints or as students here at BYU is to try to learn to speak bilingual president ree talked about speaking bilingual yes we need to learn to tell the story of the restoration and do it compellingly but we also need to learn to talk about what we what really makes a difference in our lives and do it in a way that we can do it with anybody the person in the seat next to us on the plane sister Pat at dinner or whomever it is to just talk

about what a difference it makes to be a believer how profound that difference is what a source of comfort it is when we get on our knees and pray and know that there's help for us because we pray what a comfort our beliefs beliefs bring to us in a world that has some chaos in it and whether it's whether it's our little organization trying to influence Forbes or any of us trying to influence others by the way we by what we Post online and how we talk about it or by what we do in our

circle of influence it seems to me that it behooves all of us in the time in which we're living with the covenants which many of us have made that it behooves us to figure out how to talk about this in a way that is natural and inviting and so my my invitation BYU as far as I'm concerned should lead the charge in developing journalists and broadcasters and communicators and and storytellers and script writers who can speak in a way about faith that invites everybody to sample Faith religion and everything that goes with it and I

think each of us having made covenants can do more than we could ever believe we can do if we just learn how to talk about it and are open about talking about it in whatever circumstances we find ourselves I feel deeply that this is a commitment that each of us probably made portally and can make now to do better in expressing what we believe I hope some of this has been interesting to you giving you food for thought and particularly Food For Thought to say what can I do what can I do in my sphere

of influence however big it is and wherever it goes to make a difference in championing the fact that we know we have a heavenly father we believe in Jesus Christ and we believe following them makes all the difference thank you Sher let's uh take a few minutes here and chat about what you've just shared and I want to begin where you ended actually is when we think about about you know students in this audience uh wanting to participate in exactly what you talked about what's the kind of portfolio of training and experience that they should

be putting together that they can be effective um who would you hire who would I hire yeah I mean I'd hire you from you know what as you look out here what what do they need to bring to the table to to engage in this uh boy that's a good question so so maybe I answer it by giving this experience uh in 2003 the White House appointed me as a delegate to the commission on status of women at the United Nations I didn't have a clue what that meant to tell you the honest truth I

had never stepped foot in the United United Nations before and it was a completely foreign environment that commission goes on for several weeks I spent a good part of the time figuring out what it actually did and how it worked and how to have influence but here's what I started doing because I realized really fast like day one oh you got to learn you got to figure out how to say what you believe without it sounding like Sunday school a lot of the groups there at the UN are very very liberal very secular and there

are some groups that are that line up with uh my beliefs quite a lot but I realized I was grossly underprepared so my hotel was about a 20 minute walk from the UN this was in the spring that commission is held every year in March and every night what I did was as I walked back to the hotel I started practicing answers okay if you were being interviewed and asked this how would you answer it and then when I got back to my hotel I if I didn't have an evening event I would order up

a salad or something pull out my laptop and start asking myself hard questions and trying to answer them I still have that notebook I've never thrown away because for however long that that thing went like two or three weeks every night I was practicing and it was foreign territory for me I think part of this is practicing whatever your discipline is going to be if you're going into nursing great if you're going into Communications great but PR practice how you would talk about it and not over the pulpit at church talk about learn to talk

about it differently sitting to the guy next in the plane okay so so you're saying you need to get hard questions from Sherry do in order to be trained no we all know the hard questions right we can all we can anticipate I'm going to push on that do we all know the hard questions so you know what if I'm again think of our undergrads grads out here who is they're engaging in the world where should they get those hard questions okay so I'm going to preach back on that you and I just had dinner

with how many really smart Stu uh students here what 30 of them or something or whatever the number and they asked questions and and I said you afterwards what you said they were brilliant yeah and I said I wasn't asking that kind of questions when I was a student here they were smart thoughtful probing questions and and by the way we'll get to some of those because they have here they're hard but let me let me pick up on this just a little bit I mean so you've talked about being at the Vatican you've talked

about being at the UN I mean you started in Ulisses Kansas it's ulyses ulysis okay everybody mispronounces it like yeah and that's the way they know whether you belong there right that's right you show up in town and okay it's not Frisco it's San Francisco right same did okay so where where did you find that hood spot to step into these places like you said it's uncomfortable right scary really scary and and how how did you step in and survive and thrive I don't think I always survived and I certainly didn't always Thrive um I

I started finding myself in situations that were uncomfortable where I was completely tongue tied and I would drive home from whatever the setting was thinking that was so dumb how did you not know how to answer that question and and I will admit I've had a kind of an interest in this since I was little like if you could I grew up on a large large grain form Farm thousands and thousands of Acres with lots of space and even when I was little I would find myself walking and pretending like I was being interviewed how

weird is that but I just went up going okay I'm out here with the cows it's me and the cows and I'm talk I'm being interviewed and thinking that's nuts so I kind of have had an interest in it but I suppose it was a lot of embarrassing situations where my answers weren't very good that caused me to start to practice so the UN is an example of practicing for that environment but I've had a lot of occasions when I've I'll be driving somewhere I'll thinking okay how would you answer this question or we're being

attacked for this how should I talk about that what would make sense about that so it's practice I think it's practice Yeah and then I have friends that are smarter than me that I'll sometimes try out my answers and I'll say yeah go back to the drawing board on that and and what's your tolerance for that discomfort in those settings you know I somebody told me years ago and I hate this statement that you never grow until you get outside your comfort zone and I just think there's some truth to that yeah you tend to

grow because you struggle more than you struggle when you're in your comfort zone and every time I say that something the bottom falls out of my life and I have to struggle again so if something bad happens to me it's your [Laughter] fault um I I guess one thing I want to emphasize maybe with the students here is that this is where you're going to find yourselves in a very short time you are going to be stepping into places where it feels like how did I end up here you know um and yet this is

exactly where the Lord wants you to be sometimes is in those in those places I mean and so you look to stories like the story of Esther you know for such a time as this to step into the breach and um I think sometimes as latterday Saints we can have a little bit of an inferiority complex have you have you felt that sometimes that sometimes we feel like I mean to this day uhhuh yeah to this day I'll drive home saying oh that was so dumb you said this and Elder Gilbert was sitting there that

is so dumb he already knows how dumb I am but nonetheless no I I've struggled with my self-image my whole life yeah we there's not have it as a culture in the church uhhuh in my opinion yes but look we could look around the room I'm just looking at at Governor Mrs Herbert and thinking okay when they were students they probably didn't see themselves occupying the governor's mansion when you were first married and starting a family and so forth but again they had to figure out how to step into the breach and at some point

you just you just do it and you either do it because you felt compelled or because somebody invites you and then you just kind of have to practice you just try it and after a while with some experience and help from mentors uhuh you start figuring out a little bit more how to handle what do I do and I don't know the answer how do I handle that how do I handle a tough question that I can't really say everything I want to say but I can say enough it's practice I think it's practice okay

let me um and school is a great place to get practice this moment in time let me pull up some questions here from our students here here is Tanner McKay uh Tanner McKay it doesn't say where Tanner's from but he says I'm interested in working in film and television in the future Maybe I'm Wrong about this but I feel like going through Hollywood would help me have the biggest impact however Hollywood isn't particularly friendly to people of faith and I wonder if I'll be snuffed out how do you respond to Tanner in the lunch in

the dinner we had before this there was a question almost like that uh from from a young student who wanted to go to La oh right here there she is and I'm going to give kind of the same answer um uh it's for starters I don't know but the second thing I would say is yeah Hollywood is an environment that is an environment and uh fill in what whatever adjectives come to mind that suit you and uh but if you keep your covenants if you'll keep your covenants then you'll have access to the power that

flows through those covenants and I think as long as you're willing to keep your covenants and have a spiritual impression that you are where the Lord wants you he'll protect you and help you I really believe that and if it gets to a point where you can see that it's threatening your ability to keep your covenants get out out of the environment uh no no kind of a claim no kind of Fame no kind of success or even money is worth breaking your covenants because your covenants are the greatest protection you have because power flows

through those those covenants so to me you can compete and participate and refine your skills in a lot of environments as long as you remain a covenant keeper have you um you you talked about trying to see a change in this cycle of where faith is muted ignored uh and then diminished in the media and you talked about wanting to see that flipped so that Faith could be appreciated emulated practiced in different ways have you seen that flip somewhere have you seen instances of where we've seen that turn I mean we're we're seeing little pieces

here but has that virtuous cycle started somewhere I would say that I've seen it with individual reporters and journalists with IND individual creatives and and maybe I could can I just frame that slightly different I've seen it uh what here's what I've seen even more the more we've started to now develop individuals of influence and some organizations with influence and presented this notion of faith in media the more we're starting to see it give permission to people to say well I've kind of I've always believe that too if I didn't know anybody else didn't I

didn't know how to talk about it or I was afraid to speak about it so what I've really I think what we really started to see is that by championing this others are saying okay I feel just like that uhuh but it took somebody a group of people again I can't take much of any credit at all but it took a group of people starting to have these conversations it's like Seth Cohen at Forbes yeah when I asked him why does Forbes care because you made us care we didn't know we should be thinking about

this but when you started talking about it and showing us the research we said we should care so what I'm seeing more is people coming out and saying okay it's okay to talk about this and you know what if we if we're going to be really respectful of various elements of a person's identity nationality language ethnicity so forth sexual preference name whatever then we should also say faith is an important element of our identity that we should care about first and foremost and when people hear that they go yeah that's right we should be as

respectful of Faith as we are of ethnicity culture race background beautiful so I have seen that let me uh share from Easton KF a civil engineering major from anti Utah who notes that you've had the opportunity to work with multiple Prophets writing biographies and he asks what is your biggest personal takeaway from working with the prophets um who wow there's so many um that they are called by God and they're prepared by him I I am absolutely persuaded when you look at the life of a prophecy and Revelator you can see the Lord's fingerprints all

over them you can see the Lord designing their tutorial their Earthly tutorial so that when the time comes that they're called as a prophet SAR and Revelator they are ready to bring with them their their life experience and the depth of their testimony and then you see him continuing to refine them as they serve in the Quorum of the 12 and and and allow them to continue to grow so I'd say for me number one is the Lord identifies them and prepares them and calls them and they are his I absolutely know that's true what

are you doing to prepare for General Conference I have been listening to every talk from a prophet San Revelator for the last several conferences and then I always take a question to conference and I'm trying to figure out what the question is and I've got two more days to figure out what the question is um yeah but I but I prepare yeah one of the ways one of the ways I prepare is to make sure I've reviewed what they just said not that I haven't in the last six months but a more fresh review okay

Emma Butler asks in a church that is very focused on converting others to what we know is the truth how can we as Latter-Day Saints avoid an Us Versus Them mindset when communicating with others boy isn't that a great question I think we have to start instantly and immediately from a position of respect in the world in which we're living today my goodness Believers Believers need to link arms and be respectful of each other so let's start with just saying how grateful we are it's sister Pat how grateful we are to link arms with another

believer I don't have to convince her that it's important to believe in God or in Jesus she already believes that and and for me it's look I was raised I was the only little LDS girl in my high school all my friends were of other faiths and we all went to church with each other they came with me I went with them and um and so it's very comfortable to me to be with those not of the faith but I think it starts with respect and with a trth deep sincere appreciation that there are other

people of faith in the world and then the more we interact sometimes not always but sometimes the chance comes to share what we believe and to let them know more but I think it starts with profound respect for for all believers you had an interesting thing here you noted a an AI study that was done and we have a question here from Alara de oos a student in uh pre- advertising from Enterprise Alabama um how do you see the church using AI in the future boy that's above my pay grade uh way above but there

was just uh a report about some of the senior Brethren talking about all the work they've been doing to know how to incorporate AI just starting with Church employees and uh the desert news reported on that the church news reported on that um and talking about how to use it so I I I don't feel qualified to answer that because I would never presume to speak for the church but they are thinking about it and have for a long long time and I think we'll be saying more and more from some of the meetings I've

said and they'll say more and more and help us know how to look at it how the church the church will be able to use it for sure and we'll have to be careful too it's all it's all those things you don't think anyone's used this yet for a sacrament meeting talk of course I do we've we have but not a very good talk not a very good talk hey we we have a number of questions that are kind of along this line here uh this is from Natalie alus a Communications uh major from Nampa

Idaho how do you handle interactions with those who feel alienated by our belie your beliefs based on their past experience es with religion for example lgbtq former members of the church if they're hurt is valid how do you share your faith without discrediting their experience every situation is different I've uh I've had to learn a lot about this and how I handle it individually uh if I go back some years I can think of some things that I said that I'm really sorry I said and so I've had to learn better how to think about

this but I can tell you where I've come on it regardless of what the issue is and I'm going to use um without identifying anyone without identifying the person involved I'll just say uh share an experience with a member of my family so I'm thinking of a member of my family who I adore adore this person and uh have known since the day she was born and I can tell you all the great things about her and uh at the moment she's um completely disaffected from the church and a little bit mad about everything and

I think one day uh she was really nervous I started feeling like she was distancing herself from me and so one day I just asked her about it and uh and she said well I know what you believe and I just don't believe that and I said okay I said so let me tell you what else I believe yeah I said yes I do you know how deeply I feel about the gospel but I said here's what I also believe I don't believe you have to believe what I believe we actually believe in agency I

believe you get to choose what you believe and I love you because you're who you are and I will love you every day of my life and Beyond because of who you because I just adore you but I said you don't have to believe what I believe now if at anytime you want to talk to me about the gospel I'll talk to you about it all day long but if you don't want to talk about it I won't talk about it I am not your judge I am your and then I listed what I am

to her and I do believe that I so I try in situations oneon-one in particular and again I've had to learn because I made some missteps some years ago that I've really regretted and had to figure out how to do better and I really try to let somebody know I'm not your judge I believe what I believe but I just care about you or interested in you or love you for who you are but I had to come to that it took me some practice it took some time to think through how to navigate not

backing away from I what I believe but giving someone else space and if they want to talk about how they think the church is wrong them I'll let them talk as long as they want to talk and then I'll I'll share whatever I I'll ask them do you want me to tell you what I think or not do you just want me to listen or do you want me to talk and they it seems to put everybody at ease to say okay she's not going to lecture us and she's not going to judge me and

I don't I just don't but I had to learn that lesson the hard way honestly yeah no thank you and and one thing we've always appreciated is just how Frank and honest you've been it's that farm girl thing it is you can't get rid of it and that probably takes us to our last question here tonight you're G to love this one this is Haley Jones and I don't know where Haley's from but Haley asks why don't you have a a biography published yet I love your lectures and talks and would love to learn more

about how your life experiences helped you to reach this point will never happen no that just sounds like pure torture who who would you have write your biography no no no come on this isn't a conversation we're not we're not having this conversation it sounds just horrible I'm I said to somebody that I did the before I said this is awful isn't he he said Yep this is awful I'm so sorry I'm going to make this as painless as it can be but no it just looks horrible and I'm sorry I've inflicted that pain on

anybody well Sherry this has been an absolute Delight to have you back at BYU we hope you'll come often thank you Paul and uh thanks for the invitation and we'll have the opportunity to enjoy a reception out here and I think the weather's nice enough if you want to pour out onto the pth this evening you can do that as well let's provide a big round of applause for Sher dud thank thank you thank you thank you thank you so much is great I think we just okay I'll follow you I'm going to walk down

[Applause] behind come join us