By his own admission, in his latest blog post: On Renarin and Rlain. He says the post is addressed “toward my more conservative readership.” However, he also calls himself “an ally to LGBT+ people” and boasts about writing the “first openly gay men [in] the Wheel of Time.” When discussing Christianity and his own Latter-day Saint faith, he makes repeated appeals to “empathy” and “respect,” without addressing the Bible’s clear condemnation of sexual sin. He also does not mention the Family Proclamation, which clearly lays out his own church’s position on homosexuality, transgenderism, and gay marriage.
In other words, Brandon basically told his conservative readers “I hear you, but you’re wrong.” He implies that any conservative Christian who has concerns with the gay romance in Wind and Truth is lacking in empathy and respect. He also implies that by voicing their concerns, they are dividing the world into “us” vs. “them” and betraying a key tenet of their own Christian faith.
If Brandon genuinely wanted to allay the concerns of his conservative readers, he would have acknowledged the Family Proclamation and Biblical standards of sexual morality. He would have discussed the gay romance of his latest book in the context of such standards. Then, he would have presented an argument similar to Andrew Klavan’s: that conservative art is not the same as conservative life. Good art must provide an honest and truthful representation of life. It should not glorify or promote those aspects of life that are evil. Brandon starts to make the first half of that argument, in discussing how Tracy Hickman portrayed gay characters in his books, but he fails to follow it up. He doesn’t explain how making a gay romance essential to the plot of Wind and Truth serves the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Brandon doesn’t seem to trust his conservative Christian readers to be able to separate the sin from the sinner. He also refuses to acknowledge the lived experience of his gay and lesbian readers who have chosen to live morally pure and faithful Christian lives. Like Brandon, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of the most inspiring members of the church for me are those who struggle with same-gender attraction but still live true to their testimonies. I imagine it must feel pretty lonely at times like this, when their brother in Christ has chosen to side with those who preach the false gospel of pride, equity, and self-worship, instead of the gospel of the One who declared “Father, Thy will be done, and the glory be Thine forever.”
Has Brandon denied his faith? I’m not Brandon’s bishop, nor am I his eternal judge. It’s important to remember that the church is not a place for perfect people. I do think there ought to be a place in the church for self-described LGBT+ allies, so long as they sustain the leaders—and the doctrine—of the church. But if he hasn’t crossed the line, he’s certainly standing a lot closer to it than I ever would.
My personal testimony is that the Family Proclamation is inspired of God, and that the men who wrote and signed their names to it are prophets, seers, and revelators. It teaches true principles about the family and sexual morality. We are all children of God, gays and lesbians included, and that makes us all brothers and sisters regardless of how we choose to live. At the same time, Christ didn’t suffer and die for us so that we could continue in our sins. If the Family Proclamation is true, affirming homosexuality is not an act of love, no matter how empathetic it may be. Christ had empathy for the woman caught in adultery, but because He loved her, He also commanded her to “go, and sin no more.”
On a personal level, I feel frustrated and disappointed by Brandon’s recent turn. I count Brandon as an early mentor—in fact, it was Brandon’s class that inspired me to pursue writing as a career. I haven’t spoken with Brandon in years, but I do still count him as a friend. If I could sit down with him I would ask him about the people he’s surrounded himself with. They seem to be leading him in a bad direction, since he seems to have grown out of touch.
Has he betrayed his conservative readers? Yes, I think he has, and that he’s making a big mistake by doing so. One of the things that set him apart until now was the fact that his books are very clean. His fans may argue that Renarin and Rlain’s romance is also clean, but as a conservative reader, it feels more like a camel’s nose peeking under the tent. In a world of drag queen story hour, pornographic gay pride parades, and genital mutilation of children, is it even possible to have a clean gay romance? I think not. To paraphrase Brandon, as much as we may long for the days where there was no slippery slope, maybe that world never existed. Maybe there will always be an instinct to divide the world into the “clean” and the “queer.”
So let me just say this: whatever the stories that Brandon wants to tell, I can no longer trust that they’ll be the kind I’ll want to read. He could still turn around, of course, and I genuinely hope that he does. But reading between the lines, it seems that this turn toward the woke is not a new direction from him. It seems to be something that he’s contemplated for some time. I’ll still read the rest of his secret projects and keep my signed copies of the original Mistborn trilogy. But I’m going to DNF the Stormlight Archive, and probably won’t buy his future books.
Brandon ends his blog post by saying that one of his primary goals in life is to be more empathetic. This is what motivates him to write: because it’s how he explores the world. I, too, feel compelled to explore the world through my stories, but my primary goal is to pursue the truth. Those two goals aren’t always in conflict, but when they are, I think the pursuit of truth should be higher. The pursuit of truth ultimately leads us to love one another more fully and more meaningfully than the pursuit of empathy does. It saddens me that Brandon disagrees.
Thanks for the info, but sorry to hear it 🙁
Well, I guess he’s gone the way of the Wasatch Front – from what I have observed in the last 10 years, Salt Lake City and its satellite cities have become oppressively woke and progressive, especially the ExMos and the ProgMos. This does not surprise me; Brigham Young prophesied as much. The sad thing is, the rot doesn’t stop at the borders of the cities, because people keep pouring in to the state from California and other progressive areas.
So at this point, I think one more local(ish) author ‘going woke’ is probably at some level caused by cultural drift.
Brandon lives a couple of towns over from us, in American Fork (we’re actually in north Orem, near the Lindon temple—about a fifteen minute drive from Brandon’s house). I wish I could say that you’re wrong about the way the Wasatch Front is going, but you’ve got a point there—though there is a sizeable pushback among local authors. After all, Brad Torgersen and Dave Butler are also local, and Larry Correia is not too far away either (he lives way out in the boonies, but if we aren’t his closest contact with civilization, we’re not more than half an hour further from that). And there is a lot of pushback against woke-ism here in the local writing scene. That’s basically how Writer’s Cantina got started, and IHOP-con sees a lot of us get together to discuss how to push back against these woke cultural trends. So even though LTUE, FanX, and now Brandon have gone woke, there is a lot of pushback against that, and a growing exodus of local authors from all of this.
I won’t yuck someone else’s yum, but I never got into the dense prose and doorstopper books that Brandon puts out. As for his relationship with your church, I am not sure where that stands. What he really needs to do is serve his readers. Where are the majority of them? Are they the hardcore LDS faithful or more middle of the road. If he wants to be a full time professional, and he does, then like a good capitalist he needs to serve those customers. Writing is both an art AND a business and sometimes we forget the need for it to be both.
Personally this is all a shock. I can’t even finish the book because of my hemophilia… but really my Faith. Every time I have ran into portrayal of this Gay relationship I feel like the author is asking me to imagine what’s going on. In my faith even that is a sin. So Brandan are asking everyone to sin while reading your book?
I know, Harold. It’s a shock to me too, since I took Brandon’s class and count him as an early mentor. I’ve only read the first book of the Stormlight Archive, so I can’t speak to the gay romance that he puts in the later books, but from you it sounds like it’s not the sort of thing I could read in good conscience. Thanks for sharing.
Are you saying that it’s impossible for you to think of a gay couple without imagining them having sex? That seems like your issue, not Sanderson’s. Do you imagine straight couples having sex every time you think of one?
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Before I get into the bandwagon of giving a person opinion on woke content being added to a Sanderson book, I will as a very tenured reader, an alpha and beta reader of other books, and big fan of Sanderson’s works give a perspective of the actual writing itself.
The woke sections of this book were very forced. It felt as if the sections were written into the novel to “meet a quota” or because “he felt like they had to be so made them fit like a circular block in a elliptical hole” except for the wind runners first comments at the beginning of the book. I know he specifically commented on, not doing this, but the truth is More evident and how the sections were written, and it is obvious that that is exactly what he did. Normally and in the other sections of this novel, Sanderson’s words flow on a page like art and these sections did not live up to the excellence and paint the picture he so eloquently paints in words. As he wrote in one section (paraphrased here) A painter captures a perception in their painting, but a person is so much more complex than any painting could show. His words often capture so much more Than a picture could capture (basically the inverse of a picture is worth 1000 words) And in Sanderson’s words (Again paraphrase) “The novel itself becomes alive when the reader reads it.” The way he writes becomes alive for the reader and that’s what makes him such a generational (or in more honesty a multi-generational) talent (Even with the overuse of the word undulating). However, these sections did not do that. They did not live to his standard, and they were very forced.
As a pronounced Christian, I don’t feel like he could put the woke content in this book, the way that he did and support many of the things that he does in parallel with a Christian belief. Sadly, I believe that comes from putting yourself as lord in your life than from putting God as lord in your life because it’s in direct conflict with what the word of God says. My personal hope is that he finds conviction of this at some point in time (not condemnation or shame Because that is not from God, but Conviction from the Holy Spirit).
While I didn’t find the sections of the book is eloquently written as stated before I’m also not surprised to see them there. Sanderson also made the decision to not use audible for secret projects (at least at first) because of the Money that they Require from authors to have their service used. As a multimillionaire complaining about this It speaks to a desire of greed vs Accessibility to his readers. He has also shown this from putting projects and Kickstarter when he has a multimillion dollar dollar Company specifically designed around writing and publishing books. It was 100% greedy on his behalf. So adding a whole lot of woke content and even donating funds to woke causes garners him an additional base of people to buy his novels ultimately making him more money in the long run. It is great marketing to expand/diversify this reader base. It is in line with previous greedy decisions and behaviors from Sanderson.
Overall as a Christian reader, I am very disappointed to see woke content so prevalently in wind and truth and really hope there is conviction from the Holy Spirit so that the next novel sanderson puts out does not have woke content in it. I also hope this will allow his to write content in a less forced nature to allow him to seamlessly write to the level of exceptional that he has so aptly shown in the past.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and reaction to the book, Micah. I haven’t read Wind and Truth, and probably never will (I only ever finished the first Stormlight book), so it’s good to get a reader’s perspective.
Regarding Brandon’s reasons for pulling out of Audible, I have to come to his defense. Until just recently, Audible had some terrible terms that basically forced the authors to take the loss whenever a reader decides to return a book for a credit refund. This policy was especially hard on self-published authors, because human-narrated audiobooks are very expensive to produce, and self-published authors have to pay those costs upfront. The reason Brandon pulled out of Audible was to pressure Audible to change its policy, which they did… sort of. It’s an ongoing issue. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that his motivations were 100% greed: I do think he genuinely wanted to use his big name status to push for changes that benefit other authors.
I do hope that the Spirit moves on him to re-evaluate both the content of his books, and the company that he’s been keeping these past couple of decades. I do genuinely like Brandon as a person, so it’s very disappointing that he’s chosen to go down this path.
Thank you for this. I feel deeply, deeply saddened and betrayed by this book, thay we had been reading as a family. I also feel alone in my convictions, so thank you for writing this.
Thank you, Jenny.
Wow! As a member of the LDS faith I find the amount of homophobia and bigotry on this page astounding. Gay people are everywhere. Should we pretend they don’t exist? Maybe we should put them in camps and keep them segregated from the “normal” population. How can anybody call themselves a Christian and then be offended and upset when others want to be compassionate towards and love their neighbors no matter their situation? I shouldn’t be surprised as so many of you throw around the term “woke” as if it is an epithet. Having characters that many different types of people can relate to is aspirational and to be lauded. I am embarrassed for you all.
Jay, I am going to take your comment at face value, and not assume you are a paid (or unpaid) troll, or that you are lying about being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, even though I have no way of verifying that.
You have, however, demonstrated that you have been thoroughly infected by the “woke mind virus,” a shorthand term for the mass formation psychosis that has driven large segments of our society to bend the knee to the extreme leftist ideology that demands we castrate our children, turn our libraries and our public schools into places of sexual grooming, and force our daughters to change naked in locker rooms in front of men who pretend to be women. That is why I use “woke” as an epithet, and why I will not “show compassion” and bend the knee to those who are seeking to destroy my family and indoctrinate my children into their wicked cult.
My brother in law is gay. He is also an active and practicing member of the church. He has decided that his testimony of Christ and the Restored Gospel is more important to him than his personal sexuality. We love him, and he knows that we love him. We would also love him if he decided to leave the church, but we would also do all that we could to persuade him to come back. He gets a lot more hatred and bigotry from people like you than he does from any of us. So I really don’t care if you call me “bigoted” or “homophobic,” because I know how you think. Accusation is projection is confession. It takes one to know one, buddy.
All my adult life, I have been called all sorts of things for standing up the church’s teachings regarding the law of chastity: that all sexual relations are to be kept within the bounds of marriage, and that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. I am sure I will be called a “homophobe” many more times for standing up for my testimony of the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Restored church.
I want you to know that your calling me a “homophobe” and accusing me of being incompassionate does nothing to embarrass me. It does nothing to change my position, or to diminish the fervency with which I will continue to stand up for my beliefs. In fact, I thank you for your opposition and persecution, because it helps me to stand stronger. After all, the servant is not better than his Master. My Savior and Redeemer has suffered many worse things than this.
Well, I am not a troll. I am a temple recommend carrying member in good standing who happens to be appalled at the level of hypocrisy exhibited by church members who have embraced far right ideology. You fit this group perfectly with this paragraph:
“You have, however, demonstrated that you have been thoroughly infected by the “woke mind virus,” a shorthand term for the mass formation psychosis that has driven large segments of our society to bend the knee to the extreme leftist ideology that demands we castrate our children, turn our libraries and our public schools into places of sexual grooming, and force our daughters to change naked in locker rooms in front of men who pretend to be women. That is why I use “woke” as an epithet, and why I will not “show compassion” and bend the knee to those who are seeking to destroy my family and indoctrinate my children into their wicked cult.”
There are so many outright falsehoods and twisting of truth in the above I won’t even bother to unpack it as you won’t listen anyway. Apparently, trying to love my neighbor, and understand them, and empathize with them, and fight for them to have equal rights and protections is “woke”. That is fine with me. Fortunately, there are people like Brandon who still try to apply these Christ-like attributes in their lives. I am far from perfect but I am doing my best to follow the example Jesus set and that includes calling out the pharisees and the sheep in wolf’s clothing when necessary to try and protect the more vulnerable elements of our society even when they do not live as I do.
Nobody is trying to destroy you or your family. You are not under attack. Nobody is demanding you do anything other than let other people simply live the way they want to live. Nobody is saying you can’t teach your family whatever you wish or impose whatever rules and guidelines you desire, on YOUR family. The irony of you referring to “mass delusions” on the left when you harbor mass delusions of persecution and being attacked because that is the constant message the right wing propaganda machine utilizes to foster fear in its consumers and fear is what sits at the core of the current right wing apparatus. I used to be there. I used to believe these things. Fortunately, I have found a better way.
Jay, it is ironic that you should bring up the “vast right-wing conspiracy” talking point in the same week that we learned the Biden administration was funneling tens of millions of taxpayer dollars through USAID and other federal agencies to so-called “independent media” like Politico and the New York Times that parroted regime talking points regarding January 6th and the Covid pandemic. They did all this while at the same time putting tremendous pressure on conservative media outlets, all in the name of protectig us from “misinformation.” Indeed, the Overton window has effectively been shut on the darker and seedier aspects of the pandemic, right-wing conspiracies notwithstanding. As it turns out, the “vast right-wing conspiracy” was always confession through projection.
I know for a fact that the radical woke left is attacking my family because that is exactly what they have done. I have a lovely niece who has been deceived into believing that she is a man in a woman’s body, and the very same people who convinced her of this falsehood (which, I should add, directly contradicts the doctrine taught in the Family Proclamation) have also convinced her to cut off all her ties with her loving family, because they refuse to affirm “her truth.” It was not her family that cut her off—indeed, her family wants to continue to have a loving relationship with her, regardless of which path she chooses. They simply refuse to affirm that she is a man.
Only the worst kind of cult would encourage a vulnerable youth to cut off all ties with her family for lovingly seeking to reclaim her from a delusion propagated by the cult itself. You should be ashamed of yourself for carrying water for these evil and conspiring men.
The thing that really gets to me, though, is how you and Brandon equate bending the knee to “showing empathy and compassion.” If we see someone who is mired in sin, is it truly loving to encourage them to follow that path even deeper? Is that the most compassionate thing we can do? God forbid! Rather, we show true love when we reach out to that person and help them forsake their sins and come to Christ.
Likewise, when we see evil and conspiring men seeking to promote these false ideologies and bring all people under their yoke, there is nothing loving or compassionate about bending the knee. The same Christ who told us to turn the other cheek also said that He was come into the world, not to bring peace, but a sword. He expects us to stand up to evil and to share our testimonies of truth, with boldness and with meekness.
Brandon has either lost his testimony of these things, or he has chosen the coward’s path. There is nothing “loving or compassionate” about refusing to stand up for what you believe. If you are kind to the cruel, then you will inevitably be cruel to the kind.
When you say “I imagine it must feel pretty lonely at times like this, when their brother in Christ has chosen to side with those who preach the false gospel of pride, equity, and self-worship, instead of the gospel of the One who declared “Father, Thy will be done, and the glory be Thine forever.” it hits hard. To have same-sex attraction, and repented of past mistakes, having a testimony of the family proclamation, is quite difficult. The great and spacious building does all it can to make you let go of the rod. It is a great disservice when someone, holding the rod next to you, is also “being your ally” by supporting you leaving. They think God is going to install a new path that cuts over the cliff, takes a trip through the building’s gift shop, and land you back at the tree of life, but with slightly different fruit. You’re lying to either God or everyone around you. Either you think that God is wrong, the plan of salvation will change, and lying that you follow him, or you are lying to everyone else. You being an “ally” is two-faced and half-hearted virtue signaling, that you don’t actually believe. I guess there’s actually a 3rd category: lying to yourself. If you declare you don’t know where you stand. Regardless, it’s a lonely path to walk when those on the right don’t understand, and those on the left are supporting “leading you careful down to hell”.
While the inclusion of a gay relationship causes the conflicts within me, there’s another problem. Micah pointed it out above. It’s hamfisted. What makes his books so good is the telling of the story that you can immerse yourself in. You can see the scene play in your mind. Moments of his book are impactful. The excitement, dread, glory, thrill, wonder, all flow that make you crave for what’s next. This book barely has any of that. Instead I’m presented with character assassination, and forced woke plots. I’m not sure if I can continue to listen to “Ooh, he’s gay. Isn’t that unique and interesting?”, or “Ooh, he’s autistic” or “Ooh, their relationship is (for all intents and purposes) mixed-race”, for the 50th time. Show don’t tell is rule #1 for a reason. Experienced writers can supercede the rules, but in this book, it’s just the character’s direct thoughts, outlining the direct problem, repeatedly. I’m 90% through the book, but I had to stop and find a post that talked some sense. I do hope Branden finds his path. I just wished I didn’t spend hundred of hours on listening to the wrong one.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jonathan. I get what you’re saying about the right not understanding, and the left leading you carefully down to hell. I grew up in western Massachusetts, which is extremely liberal when it comes to LGBTQ, so I grew up wrestling with a lot of these issues and had to decide where I stood. But for most on the religious right, it’s not something they’ve ever had to confront directly (unless, of course, they’ve struggled with same-gender attraction themselves).
I want to believe that Brandon has simply been deceived by his left-leaning friends that being an “ally” is the compassionate path, and that he’s not simply virtue signalling. At the same time, what you say is right: the people who say this are either lying to God or lying to the people they are trying to help, by leading them off toward the great and spacious building with the expectation that God will make an exception for them. Which of course makes all this talk of “allyship” so much hypocrisy.
Stay strong, brother! The culture is changing, and people are beginning to see this hypocrisy for what it is, and reject it. That, at least, is a very encouraging sign.
It’s honestly hilarious that some of the first words you write on this topic are “I’ve only read the first book in the Stormlight Archives, not the one I’m writing several hundred words about, and here is my measured take based on what I’ve heard second, third and fourth-hand, free of any context, plus a handful of excerpts.”
For someone who is not particularly informed of the structure of the story or the plot progression, you sure seem to have a black-and-white, absolutist take on things. That’s not surprising, but it is ironic.
I’m also a Utah resident (though not a native, nor a member of the LDS Church) and have lived in both Utah and Salt Lake counties, and I’ll only say this: the third and fourth words in the church’s official name is “Jesus Christ.” You are picking and choosing (based on a false dichotomy) Christ’s teachings to better fit the infrastructure through which your faith instructs you. My opinion on LDS philosophy and/or the organization leading it is immaterial; I only mean to comment that you are incredibly eager to judge quickly, harshly and decisively while admitting openly that you have little to no context for the situation you’re condemning.
Finally, I’m not even a huge Sanderson fan. I have only read a handful of books he’s written and they’re not my cup of tea, though I do recognize that he is a talented author. But he shows a distinct talent for nuance and context that your article loudly states that you are immune to.
My post was not a response to Wind and Truth, but to Brandon’s blog post, which I read in full. Did you read my post? I think not.
The same Jesus who forgave the woman caught in adultery also rained hellfire on Sodom and Gomorrha to wipe their sins from the face of the Earth. Does your understanding of Jesus allow for such nuance, or are you “picking and choosing (based on a false dichotomy) Christ’s teachings to better fit the infrastructure through which your faith instructs you”?
Accusation is projection is confession, friend. Don’t try to flog me with your teddy bear Jesus.
I’m not sure if you are familiar at all with the Bible, but Jesus, in Christian canon, wasn’t involved in the razing of Sodom and Gomorrah, as that appears in the Book of Genesis prior to the introduction of Jesus, or, as you may point out, the concept of the Holy Trinity and the fact that Jesus and God are one.
Dozens of Jesus’ teachings are about loving and attempting to understand your neighbor while forgiving them for their sins or misguided decisions. I know the LDS Church is much firmer in their guidelines on reactions towards “apostates,” but that’s outside of the scope in which you presented your blog post. Most of the citations you’ve made leading to a condemnation of gay relationships (which, again, you freely admit you aren’t sure of the context in which Sanderson presents one in his most recent book) are from the Old Testament, and as mentioned above you are retroactively applying Jesus’ agreement to a more “vengeful” God’s actions despite the contradictions inherent in the lessons in the Old and New Testaments.
I’m all for labeling the “woke movement” in its extremes as a net negative for society: cancel culture, pressuring minors to question their gender, influence over politics and media to the point where reasonable debate becomes unacceptable, etc. There’s no shortage of issues there to condemn, and I only named a few. But it doesn’t mean that the very presence of a gay relationship in a book (which, once again, you admit you haven’t made the effort to understand the within the context of the novel) is a sign that Sanderson has been infected with the “woke mind virus,” as you phrased it.
According to Latter-day Saint theology (and many other Christian churches, including most evangelicals), Jesus Christ is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. In both the Old and New Testaments, He is the same God.
Having not read Wind and Truth, I was willing to give Sanderson the benefit of the doubt, until he came out with his blog post where he very politely told his conservative readers that they are wrong and not practicing their religion properly if they have any issue with his inclusion of a gay romance in the book. Which is one hell of a way to gaslight your readers while letting the camel’s nose slip under the tent. Since then, I have read enough of Sanderson’s more recent work to confirm for myself that he has indeed been infected with the woke mind virus. I hope he comes around and sees the light, but I don’t hold out much hope that he will.
Alright. You see that as enough research to reach your verdict and you are entitled to that opinion. Fair enough.
You also firmly stick to the contradictory definition of “Old Testament God” being the same as “New Testament God/Jesus,” as follows the tenants of your faith. That also makes sense.
I hold it as irresponsible, impulsive and irrational to view something as polarizing (seemingly) as this topic in a vacuum, without challenge, and decry one of the most popular authors in the country (based on demand) as being infected with a “woke mind virus,” regardless of scale of the so-called offense.
Thankfully, it is the policy of this country that we can hold these competing views and neither of us are amoral for simply disagreeing – which is, ironically, one of the tenants that the far-left “woke” movement seems so firmly set against.
I’d encourage you to at least take the time to source research from as many of different points-of-view as possible and form a complete picture before levying such a verdict on someone whom you named as such a strong influence on your own decisions and career, but, as we both know, antagonism best thrives in an echo chamber of our own making, so I very much doubt that you will, as much as it may behoove you to comprehend nuance. Good luck, though.