Mormon Land

How, where and why LDS membership is booming in some places and shrinking in others | Episode 234

Growth in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bounced back a bit last year after taking a pandemic plunge in 2020. The global faith saw its overall membership rise by 0.8% during 2021 to top 16.8 million.
Africa has led the way, accounting for 10 of the 14 fastest-growing nations in terms of Latter-day Saint growth the past two years.
In the United States, from the start of 2020 to the end of 2021, membership increased 0.6% to exceed 6.7 million. South Dakota, Arkansas and Tennessee grew the fastest, while California, North Dakota and Washington were the biggest percentage losers. In fact, 21 states plus the District Columbia actually saw their membership tallies shrink.
On this week’s show, Matt Martinich, an independent researcher who dutifully tracks these statistics and more for the websites cumorah.com and ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com, discusses the ups and downs and ins and outs of church growth and how the membership is booming in some places and dwindling in others.

How Orrin Hatch transformed the political loyalties of Latter-day Saints | Episode 233

He defeated a popular Democratic senator, arguing that three terms were enough, and then proceeded to serve more than twice as long (seven terms) — longer than any Republican in Senate history.
During those 42 years, this conservative loyalist teamed up with a liberal lion, Sen. Ted Kennedy, to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Americans with Disability Act.
He eventually became among the staunchest defenders of Donald Trump, shepherding through a major tax overhaul and helping to shape the conservative majority of today’s Supreme Court. These justices appear poised to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which gave women a constitutional right to abortion.
Through it all, Orrin Hatch, who died April 23 at age 88, often touted his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and championed the cause of religious liberty.
In fact, historian Benjamin Park says in a recent Washington Post piece, Hatch helped transform the nation’s Latter-day Saints into one of the most reliably red voting blocs.
On this week’s show, Park discusses the late senator, his influence, his politics, his piety and his place in history.

Is ‘Under the Banner’ over the top? Religion scholars weigh in. | Episode 232

The FX/Hulu television series “Under the Banner of Heaven” has generated a social media storm among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as former members and religion observers.
It tells the story of the gruesome 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica, at the hands of her husband’s two brothers. The story is built on a bestselling book of the same name by journalist Jon Krakauer, whose thesis is that religion — all religion and especially Mormonism — leads inevitably to violence.
Viewers of the first two episodes are debating whether the depictions are true to the faith of the 1980s and whether the actions of the investigators make sense — especially those of the fictional detective, played by Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield, whose faith journey is at the center of the show.
Mormon studies scholars, however, may be less concerned with artistic license than with the series’ conclusions.
On this week’s podcast, three religion experts offer their views of the show, the book, the history, the premise, the portrayals — what the filmmakers get right and what they get wrong — and how Latter-day Saints themselves can learn from all of this.
Join us to hear from Patrick Mason, chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University; writer and researcher Jana Riess of Religion News Service; and Janan Graham-Russell, who recently completed a fellowship in Mormon studies at the University of Utah.

LDS leaders talk a lot about religious liberty, but is it really at risk? | Episode 231

To say that leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints often talk about religious freedom would be, well, an understatement.
It is a common theme from the top apostles on down and appears to be a favorite topic of Dallin Oaks, first counselor in the governing First Presidency and a former Utah Supreme Court justice. Recently, President Camille Johnson, global head of the children’s Primary organization and herself a high-powered attorney, picked up on the theme as well in an address in Iowa.
The church has been calling for a balancing of religious liberty and LGBTQ protections. It succeeded in passing such legislation in Utah and has pushed for similar measures in Arizona and Georgia.
It also backs the proposed federal Fairness for All Act, which a number of prominent LGBTQ and civil rights groups oppose.
So why all the attention on religious freedoms? Are they really under threat? If so, from where or whom? And is compromise not only possible but also preferable?
On this week’s show, Sarah Barringer Gordon, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on religious liberty who has written notably about Mormon history, explores those questions and more. She notes, among other points, that the issue has been politicized in the legislative arena and states that while some perceived risks to faith freedoms may be more imagined than real.

The co-founders of MormonLeaks discuss their four-year ride exposing secrets | Episode 230

After bursting onto the scene in 2016 by releasing leaked videos of apostles for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints privately discussing a range of topics — from politics and piracy to same-sex marriage and marijuana — Ryan McKnight, with help from his colleague Ethan Gregory Dodge, set up a website called MormonLeaks, which gave way to the Truth & Transparency Foundation, and began exposing the inner workings of the Utah-based faith and, eventually, other religions.
Their goal: Push churches to be more open and honest about their practices.
They revealed how much top Latter-day Saint leaders were paid. They uncovered headline-grabbing abuse allegations. And they showed slices of how much wealth the LDS Church was accumulating. Now, they’re shutting down but with one last big scoop: the widest and deepest look ever at the church’s vast U.S. real estate holdings, totaling 1.7 million acres and making the faith the nation’s fifth largest private landowner.
On this week’s show, McKnight and Dodge discuss their latest findings, the work of their foundation, what it accomplished, why they’re closing shop and whether they achieved what they set out to do.
We want to hear from you! Take our survey here: bit.ly/mormonland

Interview from the Holy Land with the director of BYU’s Jerusalem Center | Episode 229

It’s Holy Week for Western Christians, which culminates Sunday with Easter.
The Holy Land is awash with pilgrims and tourists — including members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — who are soaking in the sites of Jesus’ last days.
It also signals the reopening of Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem Center for Near East Studies after a two-year pandemic pause.
In this special edition of “Mormon Land,” The Salt Lake Tribune’s senior religion reporter, Peggy Fletcher Stack, who is on assignment in the Middle East, talks with Eric D. Huntsman, a religious studies expert and the center’s new academic director, about the coming days, how the facility can deepen spirituality and much more.
We want to hear from you! Take our survey here: bit.ly/mormonland

Sonia Johnson and Kate Kelly on their excommunications and the long fight for the ERA | Episode 228

To Sonia Johnson, the effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and ‘80s was more than merely a single political cause. It was a turning point in her life.
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Virginia excommunicated Johnson from the Utah-based faith in 1979 for allegedly spreading false doctrine and working against them but she always maintained it was for exposing details of the church’s national campaign against the proposed constitutional amendment.
The discipline prompted her to evaluate all aspects of Mormonism. It also ended her marriage. At the same time, it propelled her onto the national stage, where the iconic feminist ran for the White House and used her newfound fame on behalf of women’s equality.
Some 35 years later, Kate Kelly, a Washington, D.C., activist also was excommunicated — at the same Virginia meetinghouse as Johnson — for her advocacy in pushing to ordain women to the faith’s all-male priesthood. She, too, is fighting for ratification of the ERA and has written a new book, “Ordinary Equality,” about the continuing quest to enshrine women’s rights in the Constitution.
On this week’s show, Johnson and Kelly discuss their ousters from their former faith, their current feelings toward the church, their advocacy for the ERA and its prospects, along with other women who have battled for the cause of equality.

Gordon Monson shifts gears, discusses what he likes about the LDS Church | Episode 227

In January, Salt Lake Tribune columnist Gordon Monson stepped away from writing about the WNBA, NBA, NFL, NCAA, MLS, MLB and the alphabet soup of the sports world to comment on another acronym: LDS.
A practicing and believing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he rattled off 20 reforms he’d like to see his faith undertake.
Now, Monson again departs from the Utah Jazz stretch drive, college football spring drills and March Madness matchups to offer, in a sort of journalistic makeup call, 20 things he likes about his church — from its lay clergy and meetinghouse basketball courts to its opportunities for service and its emphasis on Jesus.
On this week’s show, Monson discusses the positives he sees in the church today.

A look back at scholar D. Michael Quinn and his devotion to honest LDS history | Episode 226

Almost a year ago, noted Latter-day Saint historian and prodigious researcher D. Michael Quinn died at age 77.
Quinn, who retained his belief in the founding events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until his death, was pressured to resign from Brigham Young University and subsequently excommunicated from the faith in 1993 as part of the famed “September Six” for his writings about women and the priesthood, as well as about post-Manifesto polygamy.
For the past 11 months, friends and fellow academics have discussed the scholar’s legacy. On March 25, many of them will gather at the University of Utah for a one-day conference to examine and celebrate Quinn’s life.
In addition, Signature Books recently published a new biography of Quinn by historian and archivist Gary Topping. Titled simply “D. Michael Quinn: Mormon Historian,” the book helps flesh out the multiple aspects of Quinn’s identity as queer, Chicano and fiercely independent.
Meanwhile, Barbara Jones Brown, Signature’s new director, is researching Quinn’s unpublished memoirs, discovered by his children after his death.
On this week’s show, Topping and Brown examine Quinn’s life and legacy, his battles with the faith’s hierarchy and with his own identity, as well as his unwavering commitment to an honest telling of Mormon history and how he was ahead of his time.

When righteousness becomes a debilitating obsession | Episode 225

Taylor Kerby persistently feared he would fall short of God’s love — no matter how many prayers he offered, no matter how often he read or recited scriptures and no matter how pure he kept his thoughts.
Growing up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kerby fixated on living every commandment, avoiding a hint of anything that could be termed a sin. Righteousness was not a desire or a goal or a pursuit. It was life, and it was crippling him.
He suffered from “scrupulosity,” an obsessive-compulsive disorder that focuses on moral rectitude and brings with it pathological guilt.
As a teenager, this religious mania “was all-encompassing, flowing into every aspect of my life and informing the most insignificant decision,” Kerby writes in his new book, “Scrupulous: My Obsessive Compulsion for God.”
On this week’s show, he talks about what that was like, how he learned to deal with it and where his faith is today.