Mormon Land

Tim Ballard uproar reveals divisions between LDS Church and its far-right members | Episode 305

When a spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offered a stinging rebuke of Tim Ballard, a fellow member and the charismatic founder of Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-human-trafficking organization, his defenders went ballistic.
They were especially incensed when the statement said M. Russell Ballard, acting president of the faith’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, disavowed Tim Ballard, who is no relation, and condemned the activist for using the senior apostle’s name in his fundraising.
It couldn’t have come from the church they love, these Tim Ballard devotees reasoned. They had to believe that it was some kind of fake news, or worse, a deep conspiracy.
Latter-day Saint historian Benjamin Park, though, had no trouble believing the church’s condemnation of OUR’s founder. He sees in Tim Ballard’s impressive following a link to many other far-right causes and conspiracy theories — and even possible schism.
Park, whose new book, “American Zion: A New History of Mormonism,” is due out in January, explores the larger issues he has observed within Tim Ballard’s movement and the implications of extreme conservative politics for the church.

Live with eminent scholars Richard and Claudia Bushman | Episode 304

In his new book, “Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History,” historian Richard Bushman calls the Book of Mormon, the signature scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a “book about the importance of books.”
One could also say that this book, which church founder Joseph Smith said he translated, sprang from plates that were about the importance of plates.
In this special live episode, celebrating the more than 300 “Mormon Land” shows, we talk about the “important” role these plates played in the rise of a global religion with the author, who also wrote the highly acclaimed “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.”
Joining him is his wife, scholar Claudia Bushman, the founding editor of Exponent II who edited “Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah” and wrote “Contemporary Mormonism: Latter-day Saints in Modern America.”
Together, the Bushmans discuss their research on Mormonism, church founder Joseph Smith, the evolution of women’s rights, the threats to Latter-day Saint community, the challenges and opportunities facing the global faith, why they think art is vital in the church, and a range of other topics.

‘September Six’ ousters were in the past, but the tug of war isn’t over | Episode 303

Tickets for Mormon Land Live can be found here: givebutter.com/Vl1q3T
In September 1993, six Latter-day Saint scholars and activists were disciplined for their critical writings about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
It was an extraordinary confluence of events, one that has echoed down through the decades. The censures had a chilling effect on a generation of would-be Latter-day Saint scholars but within 10 years or so the church felt the impact of the internet, with its widespread distribution and democratization of information.
Now, 30 years later, many observers are assessing what happened that month and what its legacy has been in the global faith of 17 million members.
In her new book, “The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism,” Sara M. Patterson, a professor of theology and gender studies at Indiana’s Hanover College, puts the episode within a much broader, decadeslong cultural and theological debate over the nature of the Utah-based faith and its evolving narrative.
In this week’s episode, she shares her findings about those past events, how they continue to affect the present, and what they may portend for the future.

‘E.T.’ meets Joseph Smith? A new book shows the intersection between religion and UFOs | Episode 302

Tickets for Mormon Land Live can be found here: https://givebutter.com/Vl1q3T
Kolob, the star “nearest” to where God dwells. “Worlds without number.” And “worlds [plural] are and were created.” Yes, these Latter-day Saint scriptures seem to affirm that, in Mormonism, we are not alone in the universe.
Given that theology, it appears there is space, so to speak, for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to believe or have an interest in alien beings, intergalactic travelers, extraterrestrial visitors and, well, UFOs.
Add to that the fascination, curiosity and intrigue surrounding such unidentified anomalous phenomena that have swelled in recent weeks since Congress staged hearings in July on the subject.
All of this makes Latter-day Saint historian Matthew Bowman’s new book all the more timely, topical and telling. Titled “The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America,” the volume explores the beginning of the UFO phenomenon, its intersection with U.S. society and its implications for religion, particularly Mormonism.
On this week’s show, Bowman talks about how these otherworldly encounters affect our world.

LDS singles sing, dance and rock out. Will such connections keep them in the church? | Episode 301

Tickets for Mormon Land Live can be found here: https://givebutter.com/Vl1q3T
Nearly 20,000 young single adult members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sang, danced, played, prayed, served, ran and worshipped over three weekends in August for a Utah YSA Conference.
Events, all under the theme “Together in Christ,” included a concert at Salt Lake City’s Delta Center, a dance at a Sandy convention hall, a 5K run at the new Saratoga Springs Temple, devotionals, games and other activities at Salt Lake City’s Salt Palace and Brigham Young University’s Marriott Center in Provo.
The conference came at a time when many millennials and younger generations are leaving the church and even religion altogether. Can events like this one help reduce that exodus?
On this week’s show, University of Utah student Carly Clark, who was a co-chair of the planning committee, and BYU student Josh Newman, who attended, discuss the conference, its purpose, appeal and success as well as whether such gatherings should be duplicated and repeated.

All about the tithing lawsuit facing the church | Episode 300

A multimillion-dollar fraud lawsuit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appeared dead and buried nearly two years ago after a federal judge threw out the case.
But a divided appeals court revived part of James Huntsman’s suit this month, flatly stating that “a reasonable juror” could conclude that the faith’s top leaders, including then-President Gordon B. Hinckley, misrepresented how they spent $1.4 billion in church funds to build the for-profit City Creek Center mall in downtown Salt Lake City.
Did the money come from members’ tithing — intended for church and charitable operations — as alleged? Or did it come from the faith’s commercial enterprises and “earnings” of invested reserves — as the church has maintained? Or are those arguments, in the end, “distinctions without a difference.”
Where does the case go from here? What are its chances? What’s at stake for the global faith of 17 million members? And how does it fit into the ballooning media attention on the church’s wealth?
Salt Lake Tribune reporter Tony Semerad — who has reported on this lawsuit since it was first filed, along with a multitude of other stories about the church’s finances — answers those questions and more on this week’s show.

Fighting hunger among Latter-day Saints in developing nations. Can the church do it? | Ep. 299

Last week, officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a combined donation of $44 million to a number of nonprofit organizations dealing with global hunger.
“No humanitarian effort is more foundational to Christ’s church than feeding the hungry,” Relief Society President Camille Johnson, head of the faith’s global women’s organization, said in a news release. “We are grateful to have the means to collaborate with wonderful organizations and provide relief to children and young mothers in dire need.”
But what about starving Latter-day Saint children, specifically, in developing countries?
After seeing hungry kids at church during his Latter-day Saint mission to Ecuador, Las Vegas physician Brad Walker returned decades later and launched the Liahona Children’s Foundation to provide a “caloric and vitamin supplement” to those suffering from malnutrition.
It began small but now his nonprofit — which changed its name two years ago to the Bountiful Children’s Foundation — actively serves “nearly 20,000 children and many of their mothers in 16 countries,” according to its website, and is working with the church’s division over humanitarian services for members. Walker says church brass also asked Johnson, the women’s leader, to tackle the problem worldwide — without giving her a staff, budget or direction on how to do so.
So those needs remain great. Walker says, with emotion, that some six children a day die of starvation somewhere in the world.
On this week’s show, he explains those needs and how this new collaboration with the church is working — and sometimes not working.

Is ‘Barbie’ an allegory of Mother Eve in LDS theology? | Episode 298

On the face of it, the blockbuster “Barbie” film seems like a light romp through gender-swapping universes — the first where women rule (Astronaut Barbie, Nobel Prize winner Barbie, President Barbie) in perfect harmony and the second where men dominate.
But some, including an author at Christianity Today, see it as a reverse allegory of the Christian Garden of Eden story with Barbieland as the world untouched by human tragedy. The heroine must commit “original sin” to travel to the “real world” to discover the knowledge of “good and evil.”
This telling echoes Mormon theology of a “happy fall,” in which Eve makes the right choice, even though she disobeys God, and persuades Adam to follow her. “In addition to introducing physical and spiritual death,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints explains, “[the fall] gave us the opportunity to be born on the earth and to learn and progress.”
So what does the movie, which has attracted Latter-day Saints and millions and millions of other theatergoers, have to say about women and men, the need for choices, the all-male priesthood, patriarchy and perfectionism?
On this week’s podcast, Rachel Rueckert, an award-winning author and editor-in-chief of Exponent II, a magazine for and about Latter-day Saint women, discusses those questions and more.

From temple divorce to a thriving interfaith marriage | Episode 297

Carolyn Homer, a Latter-day Saint attorney in Washington D.C., expected her life to be the epitome of Mormonism’s teachings on marriage and family. She planned for a temple wedding and didn’t expect to work outside the home after children were born. But that marriage failed (“It was just a disaster”) and thrust her into an all new spiritual journey, since “everything that supposed to happen wasn’t happening.”
Now married to a Catholic and a relatively new mother, Caroyln and her husband, Brad are charting a rich path with both faiths as they rear their young son as 66% Catholic and 33% LDS. In this week’s podcast, Homer talks about her experience with marriage, divorce and interfaith parenting — and how they negotiate complex theological issues like the Book of Mormon and the LDS sacrament versus the Eucharist.

Meet Eli McCann — lawyer, writer and humorist on LDS culture | Episode 296

You might know Eli McCann as The Salt Lake Tribune’s guest humor columnist and storyteller. But there’s a lot you probably don’t know.
Eli, let’s just call him that, is an attorney who discusses religious freedom cases while teaching at the University of Utah’s law school. He served a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ukraine and became a vocal supporter of helping that country after Russia attacked it last year. He’s an LGBTQ advocate and a board member of Equality Utah.
He is married to Skylar Westerdahl and lives in Salt Lake City with, as he puts it, their “two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs.”
Eli McCann joins us today in studio to explain how he puts all that together with his love of canning, knitting and marathon running.