Mormon Land

Are Latter-day Saints Christians? It’s not an uncommon question. Members respond with an emphatic “yes” and point to the signs outside their chapels and temples: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “You see,” they say, “It’s right there in the church’s name.” Jesus is indeed present and central in the faith’s sermons and teachings. But is he present and central when the faithful speak...

The U.S. Central Area Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued an official statement last month opposing the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, better known as Proposition 1 . The memo was brief. Its signers, all men, did not get into the debates swirling around the ballot measure widely seen as having a decent shot at passing this November. Instead, it read: “...

The explosion in gambling — especially through the emergence of online sports betting and so-called prediction markets — has been debated in the courts, Congress and now Latter-day Saint living rooms. The latter comes after President D. Todd Christofferson’s blistering broadside against all types of wagering in this past weekend’s General Conference . While the church’s anti-gambling stance is har...

Six years ago, the book “ Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation ” hit shelves. A 75-year history of evangelical masculinity, The New York Times bestseller laid out the forces that, according to author Kristin Kobes Du Mez , turned President Donald Trump into a hero of the religious right. Now the professor of history at Calvin University is out with...

President Dallin H. Oaks, leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a landmark address recently in a soaring cathedral at the nation’s capital to a packed audience of Washington politicos and insiders. The former lawyer, law professor and Utah Supreme Court justice schooled his audience on how the U.S. Constitution offers a clear-cut manual for how to deal with profound diffe...

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is opposed to gambling. … [It] is motivated by a desire to get something for nothing. This desire is spiritually destructive. It leads participants away from the Savior’s teachings.” With those words, the faith’s position is clear. No gambling — of any type. So when The Atlantic staked staff writer McKay Coppins, a practicing Latter-day Saint, $10,0...

Scott Howell is a well-known figure among Utah Democrats. He served for a decade in the state Senate and was twice the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. During the past dozen years, though, Howell donned a different mantle: service missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and his wife, Linda, spent their days teaching workshops on self-reliance, addressing the probl...

Sexual standards set by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seem clear — no sex before marriage, total fidelity during marriage. Guidelines for sexual activity are set out for young Latter-day Saints in publications like “ For the Strength of Youth .” But what about older singles who have never wed or those whose marriages end in divorce or death? How do they then navigate the possibil...

Starting in September, the Sabbath experience will change for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the world. Services each Sunday  will feature all of the faith’s traditional classes for adults and youths, rather than every other week. That means an hourlong sacrament meeting, the faith’s main worship gathering, followed by 25 minutes of Sunday school for adults and t...

The on-again, off-again debate about retention in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is, most definitely, on — again. And in a big way. The latest round began with a  report by BYU Studies , which found a number of positive signs of high religiosity among members. But it also noted that retention among U.S. Latter-day Saints has plunged from 82% in the heady 1980s to about 50% today....

After a failed attempt at a mediation, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  sued the influential podcast “Mormon Stories ,” known for its criticism of the faith and its leaders. In their complaint, church attorneys alleged trademark infringement. They argued that the show’s use of the term “Mormon,” combined with church-trademarked visuals as well as copyright images, could lead some l...

On this crossover episode between ‘Mormon Land’ and ‘Mormons in Media, ’ Rebbie and Nicole are joined by Meg Walter, host of the ‘Hive Mind’ podcast. There is a new season of a Provo "dating show" that the three of them watch and discuss. This is truly an act of public service, so you can cringe with us about not only the new generation of dating, but the new generation of dating in Provo without...

Jeff McLean grew up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Heber City. As the son of renowned Latter-day Saint composer and playwright Michael McLean, faith and music were large parts of Jeff’s life. From his earliest memories, Jeff recalls his father’s stardom and the expectations of being his son. But he never anticipated the struggle of trying to reconcile his faith a...

In her new book, “After Happiness: Living with Faith in a Time of Crisis,” Natalie Brown, a Salt Lake Tribune guest columnist, calls on readers to develop a deeper, richer, more resilient faith amid life’s trials and uncertainties. 

William Clayton is likely known to most members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the author of the beloved pioneer hymn, “ Come, Come, Ye Saints .” To historians, though, Clayton was a key figure in Mormonism’s beginnings, especially during the years in Nauvoo, Illinois. He served as secretary and scribe for church founder Joseph Smith, keeping a detailed diary of all the happ...

Brazilian Helvécio Martins was the first Black general authority in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was named a dozen years after the Utah-based faith ended its 126-year priesthood/temple ban in 1978. His son Marcus Martins had just turned 19 and thus, by most accounts, became the church’s first Black missionary after the change. The younger Martins went on to earn a master’s d...

“As a Latter-day Saint artist, Joseph Brickey had painted church founder Joseph Smith dozens of times. So he was naturally skeptical in 2022, when he first saw headlines about a recently discovered daguerreotype that was reported to be the only known photo of Smith. He had studied extensively the human form, including facial structures. He had seen other photos making similar claims that were easi...

There was a time in the 1960s when W. Cleon Skousen, who died in 2006 at 92, was a widely known and controversial conservative figure in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Skousen was a popular speaker, teacher and writer, whose books about scriptures reflected a literal, nonmodernist approach to the Bible. He was a zealous anti-communist who freely mixed his Mormonism with his polit...

Earlier this month, general authority Seventy historian  Kyle McKay apologized  for remarks he made at a regional worship service in Oklahoma. In his controversial comments, McKay, the  official historian  for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, briefly reenacted a racist rendition of the African American spiritual “ This Little Light of Mine ,” which he described as “a song where whi...

There was a time in the 1960s and ’70s, when Marion Duff Hanks was better known than almost any other Latter-day Saint leader. The boyish, handsome, charismatic and deeply literate Hanks was tapped in 1953 at age 31 as a general authority in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was not released from full-time service in the faith until 1992. “Duff” (as his friends called him) was be...

For about a decade, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been in a costly rebrand aimed in part at shoring up its bona fides as a Christian denomination. Not everyone is convinced, including, it appears, inside the federal government. Late last week, the U.S. Department of Defense, helmed by conservative evangelical Pete Hegseth, issued a new, vastly pared down list of codes for rel...

Carol Lynn Pearson, renowned Latter-day Saint poet, playwright and activist, began keeping a nearly daily diary when she was a senior at Brigham Young High School in 1956. And she never stopped. The first of her four volumes , which is out now, reads like a chronicle of Mormonism’s intellectual history from the 1960s through 1980s. Pearson, who grew up in Utah and now lives in California, comments...

Jeff Strong, a former bishop, mission president and BYU faculty member, finds himself in a similar position to an increasing number of parents in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While he remains a believing, practicing and devout member, he has loved ones (including three of his five children) who have left the faith. Thus, his new book, titled “ Torn: Why People We Love Are Leavi...

Ronell Hugh says he was recently hiking a trail in Highland, Utah, when a white man in a gray truck leaned out his window and  shouted a racist threat . It was a moment both startling and deeply troubling for the president of the  Genesis Group , a support organization for Black Latter-day Saints. Hugh hadn’t been threatened like that before since living in the Beehive State. But he had heard lots...

It’s the late 1960s to mid-1970s. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues a century-old priesthood and temple ban against its Black members. It takes a high-profile public stance against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment . And a persistent patriarchy urges women to abandon careers and return home to care for their children and husbands — all the while limiting their leadership...