Mormon Land

A look at the Kirtland Temple’s past and its future under a new owner | Episode 329

The recent acquisition by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of Mormonism’s first temple — in Kirtland, Ohio — along with historic buildings in Nauvoo, Ill., similarly tied to founder Joseph Smith and his band of believers thrilled the global faith’s members.
For followers of the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the longtime diligent, devoted caretakers of these properties, the sale, which that faith’s top leaders acknowledged was “painful,” brought sadness, heartache and tears.
While grateful for the good the $192 million purchase price will do for the Community of Christ’s future, they lament losing ownership of these cherished pieces of their past.
On this week’s show to discuss that past and that future is David Howlett, a Community of Christ historian, visiting religion professor at Smith College in Massachusetts and author of “Kirtland Temple: The Biography of a Shared Mormon Sacred Space.”

The Huntsman case, ‘copycat’ tithing lawsuits and expanding LDS Church wealth | Episode 328

Money talks. It makes headlines, too. Just ask The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Utah-based faith’s finances have become a source of discussion, debate and, yes, dissent among insiders and outsiders.
In recent weeks, the church’s chief investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, has seen its publicly reported stock portfolio shoot past $50 billion, helping to propel the global faith’s total wealth to an estimated $265 billion.
Days ago, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed the church a mini-victory, agreeing to rehear the fraud lawsuit brought against it by a prominent Utahn, James Huntsman, who has accused Latter-day Saint leaders of misleading members about how the faith spends tithing funds.
In addition, the church has been targeted in at least five states by a string of what it has called “copycat” tithing lawsuits seeking class-action status.
On this week’s show, Salt Lake Tribune reporter Tony Semerad, who has been tracking the church’s finances and legal entanglements for a number of years, helps sort out all this money maneuvering and courtroom drama.

BYU’s racial history | Episode 327

Even in the 19th century, Brigham Young Academy (later Brigham Young University) welcomed students of both sexes, all nationalities, religions, races and colors.
Nearly from the start, it included women, which made it distinctive among other American higher-education institutions. And the school — owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — had a small but consistent nonwhite student population.
That included the school’s first Black graduate, Norman Wilson (not a Latter-day Saint), who earned his degree in 1939.
Grace Ann Soelberg curated a BYU exhibit honoring Wilson. She also explored how Black students were treated at the school, and how they were depicted, including examples of blackface, in its yearbooks from 1911 to 1985.
On this week’s show, Soelberg, now a graduate student at the University of Utah, discusses her findings.

The life and legacy of historian D. Michael Quinn | Episode 326

What most Latter-day Saint historians and other scholars know about D. Michael Quinn is that he was, by all accounts, a remarkable researcher who could assemble disparate dots into a colorful mosaic.
They may know that he was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as part of the “September Six” for his discussion of post-Manifesto polygamy and other controversial topics or that he was an expert in the faith’s financial dealings and hierarchy. But now, nearly three years after his death at age 77, the public will hear for the first time of his inner struggles as a gay man in the church that for most of his life preached that homosexuality was a sin.
Signature Books has now published Quinn’s heartbreaking autobiography, titled “Chosen Path: A Memoir,” described as a “relentlessly episodic” look at the deeply personal agonies and ecstasies of his life and work, while offering his perspective on significant church events that occurred while he was writing about Mormonism. Three themes are thread through his entries: his relationship with himself as a closeted gay man, with his oft-absent and secretive father, and with his church.
On this week’s show, Moshe Quinn, his son, who wrote a foreword, and Barbara Jones Brown, who edited the volume Quinn gleaned from his multiple journals, discuss the revelations in his memoir.

Finding love in today’s Latter-day Saint dating scene | Episode 325

Ah, Valentine’s Day, a holiday full of hearts and hopes, cards and candy, roses and romance. It’s a time couples seek their favorite table at their favorite restaurant and view their favorite rom-com from their favorite couch.
What does it mean, though, for young members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Are they on the lookout for more than gestures — indeed, eternal marriage — or do they just want to have a good time?
On this week’s show, two young single adult Latter-day Saints, Sara Sumsion, who is working on a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy at Northwestern University, and Matt Judd, a health statistics consultant, discuss what the Latter-day Saint dating scene is REALLY like.

How Latter-day Saints can add other Christian traditions to Easter | Episode 324

Easter is the most significant holiday on the Christian calendar, celebrated in solemnity and song, pageantry and prayer, rituals and rejoicing, “hosannas and hallelujahs.”
While members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe deeply in Christ’s resurrection, they have not participated as a church with the rest of Christendom in immersive traditions like waving palms on Palm Sunday, washing feet on Maundy Thursday or carrying a large cross for Good Friday. So, many Latter-day Saints have joined with other Christians on these holy practices.
Last year, though, top Latter-day Saint leaders encouraged members to find ways to better commemorate the sacred moment when they believe Jesus rose from the dead.
Eric Huntsman, a Brigham Young University professor of ancient scripture, has spent his career reading biblical texts in their original languages. Last year, Huntsman, who is currently on hiatus from his position as academic director at BYU’s Jerusalem Center, co-wrote a book with Trevan Hatch, “Greater Love Hath No Man: A Latter-day Saint Guide to Celebrating the Easter Season.”
As many Christians prepare for next week’s Lent, Huntsman offers other tips on how Latter-day Saint individuals and families can better remember the “climax of the gospel story.”

Abuse and forgiveness — How gender imbalances sometimes protect LDS predators | Episode 323

Chelsea Goodrich was a returned missionary pursuing a graduate degree in California when she came forward with allegations that her father, John Goodrich, had molested her throughout her childhood.
(In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, John Goodrich has denied the accusations of sexual assault.)
The alleged abuse, the subject of a recent Associated Press investigation, is not the reason, however, that Chelsea, now a 38-year-old licensed counselor, no longer identifies as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She attributes that shift to the response she received when she tried to protect children.
Friends and family, many from the tightknit Latter-day Saint community of Mountain Home, Idaho, where she grew up, discouraged her from continuing to press the matter, urging her instead to forgive her father.
In this week’s episode, she joins Deidre Nicole Green, a Latter-day Saint and theologian at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., to discuss how church leaders, members and others sometimes “weaponize” forgiveness, silencing survivors and preventing justice.

Why can’t Latter-day Saint girls pass the sacrament? | Episode 322

Every year, a new crop of young Latter-day Saints turning 12 by December will graduate from Primary, the faith’s program for children. The boys will get a new title — “deacon” — and start passing the bread and water of the sacrament (known as Communion in other Christian faiths and mostly distributed by priests and pastors), while the girls will start attending the Young Women’s program and get no new identity.
Why is there such a gender difference around the sacrament in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Tradition, says Sam Brunson, a Latter-day Saint tax attorney in Chicago who often writes about church issues on the blog By Common Consent. Or, in other words, “policy choices that church leaders made decades ago.”
Yes, the church has an all-male priesthood, but is passing the sacrament really a priesthood function? And if the Utah-based faith allows young women to carry those trays, does that mean they have to open up the priesthood to women?
On this week’s show, Brunson talks about how such differences came to be in the church and why he thinks some of them could be revised — without formally giving women the priesthood.

Benjamin Park on a fresh take of 200 years of Mormon history | Episode 321

Scholar Benjamin Park’s new book, “American Zion: A New History of Mormonism,” tells the sweeping saga of the rise, rifts and resilience of the nation’s most successful homegrown religion.
“The Mormon story,” he writes, “is the American story.”
Under the guidance of founder Joseph Smith, this new movement was cradled in upstate New York and nurtured in the heartland. But mounting persecutions and prosecutions left leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints feeling so abandoned by the country that gave the faith birth that they abandoned the country itself.
Out West, Brigham Young and his band of beleaguered believers built a remote religious empire. In the decades that followed, though, successive generations of Latter-day Saints slowly but surely returned to the arms of the American fold, eventually becoming among the nation’s most passionate, even partisan, patriots.
But like the country it once battled and now embraces, this global faith of 17 million members finds itself caught up in polarizing culture wars. Former frictions — between church and state, faith and intellect, obedience and dissent, patriarchy and feminism — regularly resurface even as new conflicts emerge.
On this week’s show, Park talks about some key players and moments in Latter-day Saint history, along with the tensions that persist to this day.

Why believers and critics miss the complexities of the Book of Mormon | Episode 320

Grant Hardy is among the preeminent scholars of the Book of Mormon.
The North Carolina history professor has produced two volumes on Mormonism’s sacred text: a study edition from Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute, and a reader’s edition from the University of Illinois Press — and now, from Oxford University Press, a third, The Annotated Book of Mormon.
His latest effort is hailed as “the world’s first fully annotated, academic edition of the Book of Mormon.” Indeed, its 900 pages have almost as many footnotes and commentary as the text itself.
Hardy lays out the narrative like a series of stories, not as short verses, with extensive commentary and analysis about important themes, biblical connections and symbolic meanings. At the end, he adds essays to explore various ways of thinking about the Book of Mormon — as literature, ancient history, fiction, revealed scripture and world scripture.
On this week’s show, he talks about this massive undertaking; what Latter-day Saints often get wrong about their foundational text; why context matters when reading it; how the Book of Mormon compares and complements the Bible; and why, as a believer in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as a scholar, he finds the book “amazingly coherent and consistent.”