A Man Shot Up a Mormon Church. Then, Mormons Raised Thousands to Care for His Family.

Mormons around America are responding to an act of anti-Mormon prejudice with characteristic big-heartedness.

Photo by Bailey Burton on Unsplash

This past Sunday, a man named Thomas Jacob Sanford rammed his truck into a Mormon church in Michigan. He then proceeded to fire his gun into the building while setting fire to it.

Four people died and an additional eight were injured by his shooting. Many others also suffered from smoke inhalation, a deadly threat that emerges whenever there’s a fire. Sanford was killed shortly after the attack by police officers who responded to the crisis.

Initial investigations point to a number of factors that may have led him to attack the church. He was an Iraq war veteran, and he was struggling with substance abuse. Friends of his suggested that he had animus towards the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, once referring to Mormons’ faith as the “Antichrist.”

Anti-Mormon prejudice is not rare in the United States. One Pew survey from 2023 found them to be the only religious group more disliked than Muslims.

(Maybe we should start a club together — no beer, and we’ll have to compromise on the coffee, maybe we can all agree on Spindrift?)

You could hardly blame Mormons for recoiling in horror at the attack. For many, it was the culmination of their fears: widespread anti-Mormon prejudice had finally come to a head in a terrifying act of murder in a hallowed space.

But one Mormon looked at the attack and thought about his obligation to help those who were reeling from its aftermath — specifically, Sanford’s surviving family.

David Butler of Provo, Utah. Photo credit: David Butler

David Butler, who lives in Provo, Utah, is a lapsed lawyer who now spends his days writing novels (his 20th book is coming out shortly). When he heard about the attack, he was shocked. But he was relieved to see some politicians like President Donald Trump describe the attack as anti-Christian at a time when some Christians work so hard to exclude Mormons.

“I was frankly grateful not to be Othered as we so often are by sort of the evangelical part of the conservative right,” he told me in an interview. “So I thought that was nice.”

But he also ran across a Tweet pointing out the condition of Sanford’s family. They had been struggling financially since before the attack in Michigan; they have a son who deals with an insulin condition that is so expensive to treat that they had sought crowdfunding in the past to make ends meet. Without their father and husband, they would suffer even more.

"I took my dogs for a walk, tried to sort of straighten out in my head, kind of what I was thinking about all this stuff,” he explained.

After his walk, he decided to set up a GiveSendGo (a Christian crowdfunding site) fundraiser to help the Sanfords through their trying time.

As you might expect, Butler received some backlash for setting up the fundraising account.

“About half dozen times someone has said now you’re giving people incentive to kill Mormons. Because they think we’ll crowdfund for the family,” he acknowledged.

But to a religious man like Butler, these criticisms left him unphased.

“Look, I’m Mormon, and to the chagrin of the greater Christian community, we share their Bible. The Epistle of James says care for the widows and orphans. Jesus said turn the other cheek and mourn with those who mourn,” he told me.

What heartened him the most was the outpouring of support the fundraiser received. As of this writing, it has raised $226,400. Much of that funding was from fellow Mormons.

“What was done cannot be undone. The only choice we have now is to forgive and lift up—'to mourn with those that mourn… and comfort those that stand in need of comfort,’” wrote one donor who gave $100, quoting from the Book of Mosiah, which is part of the Book of Mormon.

Others wrote directly to the Sanfords along with their donation.

“As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we mourn with you and your family. Please know that we do not hold you responsible for this tragedy. And may God give you the strength to carry on,” wrote one donor who gave $200.

The outpouring of generosity and mercy that Butler’s fundraiser produced helped demonstrate to him that he did the right thing.

“In a sense, it has been put to a vote now. And I think I won that vote overwhelmingly,” he told me.