SALT LAKE CITY— In a bold stand against the encroaching forces of empathy, President David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has officially declared that the Liahona, the Church’s current flagship magazine, has gone “full woke” and is no longer suitable for consumption by the faithful. Instead, he has announced that he will exclusively read pre-2000s issues of the Ensign, when things were “simpler” and “nobody was talking about racism all the time.”
The statement came during a closed-door meeting with senior Church leaders, where Bednar reportedly sighed heavily while flipping through a recent issue of Liahona featuring a cover story titled “Confronting Bias in Ourselves and Our Ward Potlucks.” Sources report he muttered, “I don’t recognize this Church anymore” before shoving the magazine aside and pulling out a 1996 Ensign featuring an article about how “diversity means mixing vanilla and chocolate ice cream without getting sweaty palms.”
“This Church used to be about real gospel topics—like tithing and the dangers of alternative rock music,” Bednar lamented, shaking his head as he scrolled through recent Liahona articles encouraging members to actively identify and call out racist comments in their congregations. “Now every month it’s just ‘Jesus Says Be Nice to Black People’ this, ‘Maybe Don’t Ignore Systemic Inequality’ that. What happened to good old-fashioned, non-racially-charged messages like ‘God hates your tattoos’?”
Bednar’s stance has won widespread support among older Latter-day Saints, many of whom have also expressed concern over the Church’s “sudden” focus on racism, likely due to the Church having blocked ‘saving ordinances’ because of an individual’s darker skin for the vast majority of the church’s existence. Sister Marlene Jorgensen, a lifelong Relief Society president and self-described “not racist, but,” said she also no longer reads the Liahona because it “just keeps making everything about love and caring.”
“Back in my day, we just didn’t see color in the Church,” Jorgensen insisted while ignoring the copy of Liahona in her hands featuring token individuals of other ethnicities. “Everyone was treated equally. The Irish, English, French, even Norwegians. And witholding temple ordinances from people of African heritage? That wasn’t racism, that was just… God’s timing or something.”
Some members have started a movement to bring back “good, wholesome” Ensign-style articles, calling the current Liahona too focused on “woke buzzwords” like the communist practice of “thinking of others” or for supporting revolutionary ideas such as “social safety nets.”
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In response, the Church’s PR department has issued a carefully worded statement reassuring members that Liahona is still “safe and outdated” and “definitely not caving to political pressure from the world of 2006.” However, an anonymous source close to the Brethren admitted that Church leaders are struggling to balance their efforts to combat racism while not upsetting older members who still refer to the priesthood ban as “an unsuccessful way of getting some lucky people out of helping a member move.”
Meanwhile, Bednar has reportedly instructed his staff to bind all pre-2000 Ensign magazines into a leather-bound volume labeled The Good News Before Social Justice Ruined Everything. When asked if he would consider updating his views to reflect the Church’s modern push for racial equality, he simply scoffed and said, “Next, you’ll be telling me they let women pray in General Conference now.”
At press time, Bednar was seen carefully highlighting passages in an October 1981 Ensign article titled “Why Talking About Race Makes You the Real Racist.”
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