Back in late 2010, I began a seven-year stint of freelancing for the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine to help fill a gap in coverage of conservative religion. I wrote about Pentecostal serpent handlers, a female Jewish ambassador from Bahrain and the Orthodox Church of America’s rather controversial metropolitan, among other things.

Then sometime in 2017, a new editor came onboard and, after running my story on Paula White (which made quite a splash I might add), simply refused to respond to any more of my emails. “There goes in-depth religion coverage,” I thought, and turned to other markets.

But lo and behold, the magazine just ran a piece about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about a “battle for the future of Mormonism.”

Basically this article makes the case that the Mormons are veering left on gay issues. The reporter visits a very liberal congregation in Berkeley, Calif., and some conservatives in Rexburg, Idaho, considered a traditional Latter-day Saint bastion.

Not to my surprise, the reporter, in support of this thesis, only cites people in both locations who are gay or gay-friendly.

It felt like the reporter had a predetermined goal for the story that just needed the right quotes to scaffold it. Why? I see all the interviews going in one direction: Committed, serious believers who have come to the conclusion that many Mormons are secretly quite liberal. Here at GetReligion, we call this “Kellerism,” a nod to the teachings of a former New York Times editor.

Part of the story is based on an amazing — and inaccurate — assumption.

More so than in other conservative religious institutions, liberals — or at least those disaffected from conservatism — are making their presence known inside and on the perimeters of the church, provoking something of a Latter-day Saint identity crisis.