FAIR Conference Marks 27 Years of Latter-day Saint Apologetics With Lehi Return

Twenty-seven years ago, a small group of Latter-day Saint volunteers who had been defending their faith on AOL message boards gathered in a chapel's Relief Society room in Ben Lomond, California. The audience barely outnumbered the speakers. Today, that same annual gathering draws crowds in the hundreds to a Show Barn at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah — and streams to viewers around the world.

The FAIR Conference, hosted by the nonprofit FAIR (Faithful Answers, Informed Response), has become the flagship event in Latter-day Saint apologetics — the scholarly discipline of defending religious claims through reasoned argument. According to latterdaysaintmag.com, this year's conference is the twenty-seventh consecutive annual gathering, with an evening session on Wednesday, August 6, opening proceedings at Thanksgiving Point (2975 Thanksgiving Way, Lehi, UT 84043), followed by sessions Thursday and Friday.

The opening evening will feature Aaron Sherinian, who currently serves as Managing Director of the Church Communication Department for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivering remarks titled 'Fluent in Our Faith: Identifying Evidence of the Glad Tidings of the Gospel in Our Everyday Reality,' according to latterdaysaintmag.com. The 2026 conference is scheduled for August 5–7, according to fairlatterdaysaints.org, with both in-person and livestream options available.

The organization's journey to this point is itself a study in institutional reinvention. Founded in November 1997 — originally as the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research — FAIR began as a volunteer effort to counter criticism of the LDS Church on early internet forums, according to Wikipedia. It later rebranded as FairMormon in 2013 to sidestep confusion over the word 'apologetics,' then pivoted again in February 2021 at the request of Church president Russell M. Nelson to drop the colloquial term 'Mormon' entirely, settling on its current name while repurposing its original acronym to mean 'Faithful Answers, Informed Response.'

That word — apologetics — remains a sticking point for some members of the faith, and latterdaysaintmag.com addressed it directly in its conference preview. The term carries no connotation of apology in its original sense: it derives from the Greek 'apologia,' meaning a speech in defense, as in Plato's account of Socrates defending himself before his Athenian accusers. The New Testament's 1 Peter 3:15 uses the same Greek root when urging believers to 'be ready always to give a defense' of their faith.

That intellectual tradition was on full display at a recent FAIR conference session covered by the Deseret News, where a panel on the lived experience of Latter-day Saint women drew on Pew Research data, personal testimony, and academic scholarship. BYU Marriott School Dean Brigitte C. Madrian, BYU law professor Shima Baradaran Baughman, and BYU professor Jenet Erickson joined Deseret News editor Sarah Jane Weaver on a panel moderated by BYU professor Barbara Morgan Gardner, according to deseret.com.

Many of them don't know where to find the truth, because the voices on social media are so loud ... and they don't know where to find the grounded, solid women.— Barbara Morgan Gardner, professor of Church History and Doctrine, BYU

Weaver anchored the panel with a story from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, recounting how a branch president rode a scooter over a mountain for two days to check on two female church members in the coastal city of Kesennuma after the disaster knocked out cell service and electricity, according to deseret.com.

That's what the church does. It lifts and strengthens everyone, men and women alike, as we serve and care for one another.— Sarah Jane Weaver, editor, Deseret News

For longtime attendees, the conference's growth from a living-room gathering to a multi-day event with a national speaker lineup represents something more than organizational success. As one attendee quoted on fairlatterdaysaints.org put it: 'The last nine years I have attended, this conference has been the highlight of my year.' The arc from AOL message boards to a Thanksgiving Point show barn, it turns out, is also a story about how a faith community learned to meet its critics — and its own doubters — with something more than silence.

Why it matters — For the hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saints who encounter faith challenges — or know someone who does — the FAIR Conference represents one of the few venues where credentialed scholars and everyday members gather specifically to work through those questions in a faith-affirming setting.

Reported by fairlatterdaysaints.org, en.wikipedia.org, deseret.com, latterdaysaintmag.com