As Evangelicalism grows increasingly unhinged, where is Mormonism going?

Episode Summary 

Over the years on this program, I’ve often said that the political differences dividing Americans are really just artifacts of much deeper epistemic divides. In the episode before this one, we explored how those differences manifest psychologically—but psychology alone cannot explain why so many people feel so alienated that they willingly support political leaders like Donald Trump whom they acknowledge to be deceptive and chaotic.

The truth is that most of Donald Trump’s supporters back him because they feel like their religious viewpoints are being shunted aside by scientific and educational progress that they cannot refute or even understand.

The tension between recalcitrant belief and modernity has always been the core conflict motive of Christian fundamentalism, but how this works specifically in terms of doctrines varies widely across epistemic communities. That’s why in this episode, we’re going to focus on just one faith tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormons.

Our guide to Mormon epistemology is going to be Luna Corbden, the author of a book called “Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control,” which discussed various cultural and linguistic methods that the church used on its members to keep them coming back for more.

In a lot of ways, not much has changed within LDS Mormonism since Corbden published in 2014, but some things have—and they’re revealing some deeper divisions between the institutions of the Latter-Day Saint Movement and its longtime rival of Evangelical Protestantism.

The transcript of this audio-only conversation is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.

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Related Content

—The long and tangled history of Mormonism and Evangelical Protestantism

—Religious authoritarians have always been at war with democracy, regardless of whether anyone else realized it

—The Christian right was a theological rebellion against modernity before it became a political movement

—How Mormons, evangelicals, Native Americans, and tourists mix in the state of Idaho

—Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley on politics, Utah, and being an ‘emeritus Mormon’

—Luna Corbden on the Mormon Stories Podcast

Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

04:06 — Challenges of free will and information control

14:08 — Mormo