Mormon Land
Mormon Land explores the contours and complexities of LDS news. It's hosted by award-winning religion writer Peggy Fletcher Stack and Salt Lake Tribune managing editor David Noyce.
Episodes
September 18, 2024 • 24 mins
Latter-day Saint Jenna Carson, who became the first member ever to serve as a chaplain in the federal prison system, was a student at Harvard Divinity School when, she said, God called her to become a military chaplain.
That was 2015. And although Carson did not yet know it, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not at that time grant women the all-important endorsement required by the Defense Department. Female Latt...
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September 11, 2024 • 44 mins
In 2014, Neylan McBaine wrote a groundbreaking book, “Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact.” Even given the patriarchal structure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, McBaine argued that there was much more the global faith could do to see, hear and include women.
“At that time, there were many who felt discussing these facts was unfaithful or dangerous,” McBaine told an audience of 4,000 at last wee...
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September 4, 2024 • 29 mins
Like Salt Lake City’s mayor, he oversees a major Western municipality founded by 19th-century Mormon pioneers. Like Salt Lake City’s mayor, the heart of his diverse, dynamic and growing city features a historic temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint bounded by a sparkling mixed-use development built by the Utah-based faith. And like Salt Lake City’s mayor, he supports Kamala Harris for president.
But unlike Salt ...
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August 28, 2024 • 22 mins
In 2017, a Utah family began discussing some of the challenging questions facing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From those modest beginnings, a multidimensional platform emerged called Faith Matters, which defines itself as a “space in which an expansive, radiant approach to the restored gospel can be considered.”
The effort now includes a popular podcast, book publishing, online courses, and, coming next week, i...
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August 21, 2024 • 47 mins
The occasional updates to the online General Handbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are often routine, addressing relatively mundane policies, practices and procedures within the global faith of 17.2 million members.
Not so this week.
The new guidelines spelled out for local lay leaders and their approach to transgender individuals have created a firestorm among LGBTQ members and their allies not seen, perhap...
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August 15, 2024 • 43 mins
A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wants to invite her daughter’s friend to join them for their congregation’s annual Halloween trunk-or-treat. But it’s being held in the parking lot of the church, and she worries the parents will think the invitation carries ulterior motives.
Across the street, a couple plan a neighborhood dinner party. They want to throw the invite open to everyone, but there will be alc...
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August 7, 2024 • 31 mins
Religion, in general, has prompted believers to have a more positive view of their bodies, and Mormonism specifically teaches that Heavenly Parents are embodied, that humans are created in their divine image, and that the body is a temple.
Why, then, do some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struggle with their body image? Why do many turn to cosmetic surgery to “improve” their bodies?
Two researchers fro...
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July 31, 2024 • 34 mins
Last August, nearly 20,000 Latter-day Saint young single adults came together to sing, dance, play, pray, run and worship over three weekends. By all accounts, it was a smashing success.
They’re back again this weekend for a three-day festival to celebrate their membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to strengthen their faith, and to feel a sense of belonging.
And, they say, to try to break a mark recogniz...
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July 23, 2024 • 53 mins
For many Latter-day Saints, church is a place of solace, service and spirituality.
Some folks, though, find their participation in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be painful, a source of inner conflict.
These days some members, especially younger ones, feel betrayed to discover that the faith’s history is not as pure as the simplistic narrative they were taught as children. Or they wonder about men called to be...
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July 17, 2024 • 32 mins
Claudia Bushman was 40 years old, a mother of six and working on an advanced history degree when she, essentially, was volunteered to become the first editor-in-chief of Exponent II, an independent feminist magazine for Latter-day Saint women. That was 1974.
Rachel Rueckert, a 30-something novelist, career woman and the magazine’s current top editor, wasn’t even born then. Despite the age difference, the two share an important pas...
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July 12, 2024 • 38 mins
Few groups exist in the world like missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
They may be assigned to different countries or speak different languages, but for 18 months to two years, tens of thousands of these mostly young proselytizers share the same strict schedule, routine, identity and purpose: namely, to share the good news of — and seek converts to — their religion.
More than a million have served in ...
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July 3, 2024 • 36 mins
In 2014, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published an official essay detailing Joseph Smith’s marriages to multiple women. After decades of insisting otherwise, the Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, has since conceded that the faith founder did participate in polygamy. Highly regarded scholarly works have documented Smith had at least 33 wives, and most histor...
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June 26, 2024 • 40 mins
Janette Petersen, a lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had been attending Sunday services with her wife, Tammy, as faithfully as her job would allow for nearly five years when her membership was withdrawn. Although the letter she received informing her of the decision did not state a reason, Janette told The Tribune her local lay leader, known as a stake president, had pinned it on her marriage.
Th...
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June 18, 2024 • 34 mins
For 115 years, the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, has been advancing the cause of justice for Black Americans. For 111 years, the Anti-Defamation League has been doing much the same for Jewish Americans. And for 104 years, the American Civil Liberties Union has been safeguarding the constitutional rights of everyone in the United States.
So which group is protecting, advocating and advancing the rights of La...
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June 12, 2024 • 32 mins
Jeff McCullough took a trip to Utah in 2020, and it changed his life.
No, the evangelical pastor didn’t convert to the state’s predominant religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he didn’t launch a virulent campaign to explore what some have seen as Mormonism’s heresies. Instead, he felt a divine call to launch a YouTube channel, titled Hello Saints, to, as he put it, “fight criticism with curiosity.”
“Most...
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Forty-six years ago this month, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, under then-President Spencer W. Kimball, lifted its prohibition preventing Black men from entering the all-male priesthood and Black women and men from participating in temple rites.
This historic shift, the most significant since the faith stopped practicing polygamy, abruptly ended this racist ban, but it hardly ended racism within the church. After...
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May 29, 2024 • 30 mins
For The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is much to celebrate in its latest statistical report: The worldwide growth rate in the 17.2 million-member faith is growing. The expansion of congregations is expanding. And the number of U.S. states with declining membership is, well, declining.
East Africa, meanwhile, is booming, the U.S. is rebounding, and many growth measures have met or surpassed pre-pandemic levels....
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Since shortening its Sunday services and refocusing its curriculum more than five years ago, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has trumpeted a home-centered, church-supported approach with an emphasis on covenant-making and covenant-keeping.
This shift has some members worried about a loss of community.
Gone are roadshows, pageants, sports leagues, cultural celebrations and more. While there has been an explosion of...
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May 15, 2024 • 31 mins
Born in West Germany, Ralf Grünke has been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for most of his life. But it was complicated. And, among his Catholic and Lutheran peers, that meant he sometimes keenly felt his “otherness.”
Still, being “an ugly duckling between the swans,” Grunke has written, was a “blessing in disguise.”
He studied his own faith deeply, reading everything he could find, pro or con, as well...
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Without a doubt, says writer and scholar Caroline Kline, Latter-day Saint leader President Camille Johnson would have heard former church presidents telling working mothers to “come home” and focus on their families.
Instead, she pursued a 30-year career as a corporate lawyer.
In this episode of “Mormon Land,” Kline, assistant director of the Center for Global Mormon Studies at Southern California’s Claremont Graduate University,...
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