Mormon Land

A special dispatch from Spain: How religious freedom is at risk around the world | Episode 252

The International Center for Law and Religion Studies is a global academic leader in the field of religious freedom. Founded in 2000, the center is part of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, the flagship campus of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Religious freedom has long been a key concern of the Utah-based faith. So the BYU-affiliated center’s mission is to “help secure the blessings of religious liberty for all,” through scholarship, networking, educational activities and legal reforms.
Scholars at the center who specialize in comparative and international law concerning religion have provided advice to dozens of civil and governmental bodies in more than 50 countries, eager to implement safeguards on religious freedom.
Brett Scharffs, the Rex E. Lee Chair and professor of law at J. Reuben Clark Law School, is the center’s current director.
In this special “Mormon Land”, Scharffs speaks from Cordoba, Spain with Peggy Fletcher Stack, where he is presenting several papers at a European meeting of legal scholars on the topic “Human Dignity, Law and Religious Diversity: Designing the Future of Intercultural Society.”

All about Brigham Young’s most famous daughter — writer, suffragist, dynamo | Episode 251

Susa Young Gates, the daughter of one of Brigham Young’s many plural wives, may have been just one child among the Mormon pioneer-prophet’s vast brood, but she eventually would stand out among all his offspring.
Although gifted at music, she made her name as a writer and editor. She founded the Young Woman’s Journal, became the first editor of the Relief Society Magazine and published a biography of her famous father.
A go-getter, she labored for women’s suffrage and rubbed shoulders with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other leading feminists of the day. She suffered through a painful first marriage and rejoiced in a happy second one. She delighted in doing genealogy but also endured the deaths of eight of her 13 children.
Even though her name appears prominently in the pages of Mormon history, few Latter-day Saints know much about her.
Romney Burke, hopes to change that with his new book, “Susa Young Gates: Daughter of Mormonism” — an exploration of her personal, professional and religious life.
On this week’s show, Burke notes, among other things, that Susa Young Gates had notable clashes with her distinguished dad but remained devoted to him and spent much of her life trying to please him. She defended the faith’s — and her father’s — practice of polygamy but never entered a plural marriage herself. Though she pushed for women’s right to vote, she was less keen on women running for office. She opposed birth control and was an early proponent of a concept that lives on in some Latter-day Saint cultural circles — that women have motherhood and men have priesthood.

Why a racist past haunts BYU and the LDS Church — and what can be done about it | Episode 250

The effects of a reported racist outburst at a Brigham Young University women’s volleyball match continue to ripple across the country.
A week after a Duke player said she was repeatedly called a racist slur at the match with the flagship school of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the coach of South Carolina’s defending champion women’s basketball team pulled out of a home-and-home series with the university.
BYU officials say they believe the Duke player and continue to investigate the incident but have so far been unable to find the culprit.
Other schools and teams have had racist episodes at athletic events, so why has the Provo incident touched so many nerves?
On this week’s show, BYU alum Darron Smith, who teaches sociology at the University of Memphis and is the author of “When Race, Religion & Sports Collide: Black Athletes at BYU and Beyond,” talks about the volleyball match episode, the resulting fallout, the school’s history with Black athletes, and why BYU and Latter-day Saint leaders need to do much more to combat racism on campus and within the faith — starting with an apology for the church’s former priesthood/temple ban for Black members.

BYU’s rough week: what does it mean now and what might it portend for the future? | Episode 249

An administrator at Brigham Young University removes thousands of LGBTQ resource pamphlets from welcome bags intended to go to new students. Faculty and staff recoil as the school adds language explicitly requiring new hires to waive clergy confidentiality on matters related to employment standards. And, finally, an investigation continues after reports that a Cougar fan repeatedly hurled racist slurs at a visiting Duke volleyball player, igniting a media firestorm.
The flagship university of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has found itself at the center of a number of unwelcome headlines in recent days — surrounding topics ranging from race and LGBTQ issues to religious freedom — prompting many to ask: What’s going on in Provo? How has this spate of news affected BYU’s reputation? Are these isolated occurrences or part of a larger movement? If the latter, who or what is driving this trend? And what might be the ultimate aim?
Address those questions and more on this week’s show are Patrick Mason, a BYU alum and chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University, and LaShawn Williams, a Duke graduate and faculty member in social work at Salt Lake Community College.

Expert sees a better approach than the church’s abuse ‘help line’ | Episode 248

Ever since The Associated Press published its explosive account of an egregious case in Arizona — where a Latter-day Saint father sexually abused his young daughters for years, even after counseling with his bishop — social media has been lit up by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, asking one another how this could have happened and what, if anything, the church could do to ensure it never happens again.
Many commenters have focused on the faith’s “help line,” which bishops can call to find out how to safeguard the victims and what legal obligations the lay leaders must consider. Critics say the help line should focus more on the victims and not legality management. Some members, though, see other areas that could be improved to help victims.
On this week’s show, Laura Brignone, a Latter-day Saint visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studies technology and interventions for domestic violence and sexual assault, discusses how the church could partner with existing help lines to assist abuse victims and offers suggestions for enlarging the group of helpers and the way they are trained.

The reporter of ‘Spotlight’ fame discusses his exposé on sex abuse in the LDS Church | Episode 247

Earlier this month, an Associated Press investigation of several child sex abuse cases, including a particularly horrific one in Arizona, revealed that the much-debated “help line” supplied by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its lay leaders failed to protect the victims.
The exposé brought responses of dismay, disgust and anger from insiders and outsiders alike — and the reverberations are still being felt.
On this week’s show, AP journalist Michael Rezendes, who previously earned a Pulitzer Prize with The Boston Globe for uncovering the Roman Catholic Church’s pattern of covering up clergy sex abuse while part of the team dramatized in the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight,” to talk about his latest story, how came upon it, how he reported it and how it compares to his previous reporting on this sensitive subject.
Rezendes also talks about an astonishing amount of document shredding on sexual abuse — for instance, all records of calls to the help line, he reports, are routinely destroyed — within the Utah-based faith and points to a lack of transparency surrounding its handling of these cases.

A law professor explains “temple divorces,” and how they changed through the years | Episode 246

Marriage in a Latter-day Saint temple is called a “sealing,” which is believed to stretch beyond death into the eternities. So what happens when a couple split up? Well, for devout members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that’s much more complicated than a governmental divorce. In today’s world, that is something called a “sealing cancellation.” But there are different rules for women and men. Men can be sealed to more than one woman without any cancellation, but women can be sealed only to one man so must obtain a cancellation. And rules about who can be sealed to whom in the hereafter via proxy rituals are different from living couples. Many believe this confusion reflects remnants of polygamy. But does it?
On this week’s podcast, Nathan Oman, a Latter-day Saint law professor in William & Mary in Virginia, who has been researching the history of the faith’s modern sealing rules, tells how he discovered some startling facts. In fact, sealing cancellations and their gender differences arose in the early 20th century, well after the church officially had abandoned the practice. And Oman speculates about why it happened.

What a cartoonist learned about Joseph Smith and his own childhood faith | Episode 245

Joseph Smith once famously said, “No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it.” But Noah Van Sciver did, and the result is his new graphic novel, “Joseph Smith and the Mormons.”
In it, the acclaimed cartoonist aims to tell “a more complete story” of the enigmatic religious leader — from his early days as a so-called treasure seeker to his reports of angelic visitations, the unearthing of gold plates, the founding a restorationist faith and his ultimate assassination at the hands of a mob.
And while completing the project took more years — and pages — than he originally intended, Van Sciver, who grew up as a Latter-day Saint, said conducting the research for his latest opus helped him come to terms with his religious roots.
On this week’s “Mormon Land,” he discusses his work, what he learned, how he feels about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now, and what he hopes members and others take away from his book.

Historian explains why he is convinced the Joseph Smith photo is for real | Episode 244

Historians with the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) recently made a stunning announcement: Daniel Larsen, a descendant of Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, had discovered the only known daguerreotype of his famous ancestor in a locket passed down in the Smith family.
The emerging image was startling to many, who know Smith only from a portrait that was painted of him in 1842, and the photo appeared distinctly different from that.
The finding led to a nationwide conversation among members of the larger, Utah-based, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and those in the Community of Christ, which was launched in the 1860s by the founder’s family.
Viewers were asking: How do they know it is really him?
Lachlan Mackay, a Community of Christ apostle who directs that church’s historic sites in Nauvoo, Ill., and another descendant of Smith, helped analyze the locket, trace its ownership, and research the daguerreotype’s likely history.
On this week’s show, Mackay answer questions about the photo, the process historians used to authenticate it and why is convinced it is an image of Joseph Smith.

Why kids leave the faith and how parents can respond with less guilt | Episode 243

Few Latter-day Saint families remain untouched by the experience of a loved one who chooses to step away from participation in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And many parents blame themselves for their kids’ choices, asking themselves what they could have done better, how many more trips to the temple they should have made, how many more prayers they should have offered, or how much more they should have read the scriptures.
“Feeling like we have failed as parents, that our families should feel ashamed of those who left, or that the very idea of someone leaving the church means we refuse to have openhearted conversations about it and instead cast blame, is fear, plain and simple,” Emily Jensen writes in a recent post on By Common Consent.
The web editor for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and her 17-year-old daughter, Cecily, join this week’s show to discuss the issue of parents and their children’s church choices, including: Why young Latter-day Saints leave the faith, how parents should react, and what the church is or could be doing to help.