When DNA tests find skeletons in your family’s closet, these researchers want to know about it

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(RNS) — When Joseph Stuart was two weeks into his new job at Brigham Young University as an assistant professor of history, a student came into his office for advice. She sat down to talk but didn’t make eye contact, instead looking past Stuart to stare out his office window.

“I found out something about my family,” she began.

Through DNA testing, she’d recently learned she had a half-sibling she never knew existed. This discovery rocked the certainty of what she thought she knew about her parents and their family’s history. She also wondered what this meant for the afterlife in a religion that teaches that families can be together forever if they’ve been sealed in a Latter-day Saint, or Mormon, temple.

Stuart was uniquely positioned to help, as he teaches courses on genealogy and the family at BYU, the only university in the world that offers an undergraduate degree in family history. He’s also a committed Latter-day Saint who believes in eternal families, but he sensed his explanation about how complicated family relationships could be worked out in heaven was “not as comforting as I…