Mormon Land

Gordon Monson talks tithing, politics, patriotism and his new beat: religion | Episode 295

Paying tithing at a time when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has tens of millions of dollars in surplus assets. Lauding the faith’s explicit neutrality stance in U.S. partisan politics — along with its implicit call for more Democrats in the pews — and then seeing the church’s Utah Area Presidency embrace an effort to celebrate the Constitution by endorsing a group with multiple far-right ties.
Add to that senior apostle Dallin Oaks’ plea for young members to stop delaying marriage and child rearing while acknowledging the sometimes-crippling barrier of housing costs.
Yes, there has been no shortage of topics of late to which Salt Lake Tribune columnist Gordon Monson could add his voice and views.
On today’s show, a little more than year since he became a regular faith columnist, Monson discusses his latest pieces on tithing, politics, patriotism and marriage — and shares what has been most rewarding and most distressing about his new assignment.

Should an ‘inspired’ but imperfect Constitution be celebrated? | Episode 294

The Utah Area Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent a memo last month to the faith’s lay leaders in the Beehive State, urging their congregations to join a September celebration of the U.S. Constitution.
Nothing remarkable about that. Church teachings and culture have long embraced America’s founding and the role its governing document plays. But the missive also endorsed a grassroots group with ties to conservative — some say extremist — causes.
This seemed to run counter to the governing First Presidency’s recently updated commitment to political neutrality and its warning against straight-ticket partisan loyalties.
So what’s happening here? Were these dual directives or dueling directives? Can the church and its members honor the Constitution in some formal way without drifting into partisan polarization?
Discussing those questions and more on this week’s show are two Latter-day Saints with extensive public service backgrounds: Stewart Tuttle, a career diplomat who recently served as chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Panama, and Lew Cramer, who helped found World Trade Center Utah, served as an assistant commerce secretary in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and works as director general of the U.S. Commercial Service.

How British Latter-day Saints swayed their church on background checks | Episode 293

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints repeatedly has proclaimed that it has zero tolerance for abuse of any kind. That’s all well and good, some British Latter-day Saints reasoned, but not enough.
They wanted their faith to do more, to undertake concrete reforms that could help prevent abuse from happening in the first place. So they launched a widespread public and private lobbying effort. They surveyed members. They wrote to their church leaders. They contacted national lawmakers.
All that praying, pleading and prodding finally paid off when, starting this month, the church adopted a new policy mandating, among other measures, background checks for any church volunteers in the United Kingdom who work with children, youths or vulnerable adults.
On this week’s show, Sara Delaney and Jane Christie, who together began the “21st Century Saints” podcast, along with Douglas Stilgoe, host of the “Nemo the Mormon” podcast, discuss their campaign — when they started it, how they structured it, and why it succeeded.

Voice and views of LDS historian Kate Holbook live on after death | Episode 292

Barely a month after Kate Holbrook died, her widowed husband, Dr. Samuel Brown, heard her voice.
He was walking around New York and listening to the Maxwell Institute’s interview with Holbrook, a professional historian with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
During her five decades of life, Holbrook connected to hundreds of Latter-day Saint women in the present and elevated the lives of scores of women from the past.
Now Holbrook’s voice is speaking to a new, even wider audience in a new book, titled “Both Things Are True.”
“My dead beloved,” Brown writes about that Manhattan moment in the book’s epilogue, “reached … all the way to the center of me.”
And at least one of these five essays touches her husband in his grief. The piece on housework “is beautiful and thoughtful and provocative and does really important things for thinking about the shape of relationships with men and women,” he says in this deeply personal and poignant podcast. “But it was also, I think, her making sure I knew she forgave me for having been a pain…for the first 10 years of our marriage.…I had been a busy academic and had not really shown up for housework.”
Though Brown changed and became more involved in helping at home, the essay was his wife’s way of assuring him.
These five essays together “chart a path through the heart of Kate’s faith,” Rosalynde Frandsen Welch writes in the prologue. The pieces speak to history, belief, spirituality, community and the beauty of housework and cooking.
On this week’s show, Brown, an intensive care unit physician and writer, along with Welch, a senior research fellow at BYU’s Maxwell Institute and host of its podcast, discuss Holbrook’s book, their memories and how her words live on.

Deconstructing Carthage — Why Joseph was slain and why it was about more than religion | Episode 291

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints learn early on about the murder of their faith’s founder, Joseph Smith.
They know that, on June 27, 1844 (179 years ago this month), he and his brother Hyrum were gunned down by a mob at a jail in Carthage, Ill. They know that no one was ever convicted of the killings. And they know that the ugliness that took place outside their “City Beautiful” marked the beginning of the end to the Saints’ stay in nearby Nauvoo.
What many insiders and outsiders alike either don’t know or fail to recognize, however, is that Smith’s slaying was not only a religious martyrdom but also a political assassination. They forget that the church leader was a candidate for the U.S. presidency at the time of his death and was the first American to be assassinated while running for the White House.
On this week’s show, with the help of Benjamin Park, author of the acclaimed “Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier,” we revisit the mystique surrounding Carthage, how it happened, why it happened, what can be learned from it.

Ben McAdams’ high hopes but low expectations for a politically balanced LDS electorate | Episode 290

For years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has proclaimed its neutrality in partisan politics, a position reaffirmed in the faith’s recently updated policy on the matter.
But in a strongly worded letter to U.S. members, the governing First Presidency added a new wrinkle, denouncing strict party-line voting.
“Merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues,” the top leaders warned, “is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards.” They reminded Latter-day Saints that “principles compatible with the gospel may be found in various political parties” and urged them to “vote for those who have demonstrated integrity, compassion and service to others, regardless of party affiliation.”
For decades, Latter-day Saints have been among the most reliably Republican voting blocs with a number of members either overtly casting a straight GOP ticket or, in essence, doing so by simply backing the candidates with an “R” after their names.
Could this blunt message from the First Presidency begin to change that voting dynamic? Will more members, especially in red states like Utah, start to back Democrats or office seekers from other parties? Would a more balanced Latter-day Saint electorate be helpful or harmful for the global church?
On this week’s show, a prominent Latter-day Saint Democrat, Ben McAdams, a former congressman and Salt Lake County mayor, discusses those questions and more.

How temple garments affect LDS women spiritually, physically, socially | Episode 289

Many faiths feature clothing they consider part of their religious identity or obligation. Muslim women don headscarves. Jewish men wear yarmulkes. Sikh men cover their hair with turbans. Married Hindu couples sport sacred threads. These are all visible symbols of commitment.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have adopted religious clothing known as “temple garments” to remind them of covenants they have made. But they are worn under street clothes — and are meant to be invisible to others.
This spring, Larissa Kindred, a former Latter-day Saint and recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, created an online “snowball survey” to reach out to Latter-day Saint women about what they like — and dislike — about wearing garments.
On this week’s show, Kindred discusses her research, the responses and conclusions. She also focuses on the challenges Latter-day Saint women face spiritually, physically, emotionally and socially in wearing the garments — and how the apparel affects their body image.

Why LDS couples should — or shouldn’t — marry ‘younger’ or ‘older’ - Episode 288

Young Latter-day Saint couples are delaying marriage and having fewer children nowadays, according to recent statistics cited by Dallin H. Oaks, a top leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
While acknowledging that the financial climate can be difficult for this generation, Oaks, first counselor in the faith’s governing First Presidency, nonetheless urged a global gathering of 18- to 30-year-old members to fight those trends.
“Marriage is central to the purpose of mortal life and what follows,” he said. “We are children of a loving Heavenly Father who created us with the capacity to follow his commandment to multiply and replenish the earth.”
On this week’s show Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, a Latter-day Saint marriage and sex therapist and contributor to “In the Image of Our Heavenly Parents: A Couples Guide to Creating a More Divine Marriage,” discusses Oaks’ speech, the pluses and minuses of marrying “early” or “late,” what children bring to the mix, and how the faith can help members make wise marital choices.

LDS growth — where it’s up, down and how many are actually active | Episode 287

With the COVID-19 pandemic increasingly in the rearview mirror, worldwide membership for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints topped 17 million by the end of 2022, a 1.17% increase from the previous year.
But that growth was hardly wall to wall. Some places grew much faster, some much slower, and some saw their rolls shrink.
There were encouraging signs. Africa, for instance, led the way — again — boasting eight of the 10 nations with the fastest rates of membership growth.
There were troubling stats, too. Ukraine, not surprisingly, saw its Latter-day Saint totals fall as members fled the war-scarred nation, and Russia’s ranks — reported for the first time in years — cratered, plunging by nearly 80% since 2017.
In the United States, Southern states enjoyed the quickest gains, while the Northwest’s numbers continued to slide. And Utah, home to the faith’s headquarters, experienced stunningly anemic growth.
On this week’s show, we dig into these figures — the whats, whys and wherefores — with Matt Martinich, an independent researcher who tracks church movements for the websites cumorah.com and ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com. We also discuss post-pandemic expansion, how church growth aligns with temple building, and just how many members can be considered “active.”

Mountain Meadows Massacre — What did Brigham Young know and when did he know it? | Episode 286

The infamous and inexcusable Mountain Meadows Massacre lives on as the bloodiest stain on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The 2008 book “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” offered modern readers the most complete look to date at the atrocity, when, on Sept. 11, 1857, Mormon settlers deceived a wagon train of emigrants on their way to California through southern Utah and then slaughtered about a hundred men, women and children.
Now comes the eagerly anticipated follow-up volume, titled “Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath.”
On this week’s show, co-authors Richard E. Turley and Barbara Jones Brown explain how church leaders in southern Utah tried to cover up the crime, how investigations were thwarted, and how justice was delayed and denied. (In then end, only one perpetrator, John D. Lee, was executed.)
They also explore a key Watergate-like question: What did church prophet-president Brigham Young know and when did he know it?