Mormon Civil War

In this presentation from the recent 2025 Sunstone UK symposium I review my version of the journey hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saints have walked from passionate enthusiasm for this religion to astonished disillusionment, yet still not able to entirely walk away. I talk about some of the amazing, forward thinking and potentially world changing yet simple ideas in the best of Mormon thought...

After 5 years of the Mormon Civil War podcast, I team up with Gene Judson and Randy Watts of Latter Daily Digest to make infallible prophecies about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will continue to change over the next 5 years.

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this final conversation Paul shares his conclusions about the Godhead that the text of the Book of Mormon actually describes, and it’s nothing like the ‘Fullness of the Gospel’ deity the LDS Church thinks it is telling us to believe in.  We also talk about the what a final judgement may involve when administered by a mercifu...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this penultimate episode we try to make some sense of 5 of the biggest conundrums in Mormon theology:   1 - How is God male and female? 2 - Who actually is Jehovah in the Temple Endowment? 3 - Disentangling who is what in the several different Mormon Godheads 4 - Who exactly is who in the world planning scene in the Book of...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues As we continue to ponderize how to integrate the religiously ideal with the real in our normal lives, Paul and I discuss what it means to base a religion on the glory described in Mormon scriptures of truth, light and freedom to think for yourself rather than Lucifer’s religion of militaristic acclaim for conquering and control...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this meaty episode we explore all kinds of aspects of what taking the LDS temple endowment’s promises seriously can unlock for autonomous, ordained men and women empowered to free themselves from authoritarian control by General Authorities and instead replace them as the democratic, equal ‘Quorum of the Anointed’ Joseph Smi...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In the first of a 2-parter we start to learn what Paul Toscano means by ‘Chapel Priesthoods’ and ‘Temple Priesthoods’.  After a much more sophisticated beginning, how did the LDS leaders establish a male-only, correlated bureaucracy that tightly controls every expression of priesthood authority and blessing? And is there any wa...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues How do you solve a problem like Joseph Smith?  Can a master manipulator, con artist, skilful storyteller, sexual predator, financial fraudster, and destroyer of printing presses also be a prophet of God?  The Apologists for the LDS Church have had to concede enormous amounts of territory in recent decades to acknowledge his man...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this episode we wrestle with the conflicting qualities required of the leaders of a religion.  Ideally they need to balance a mystical sensitivity for the divine, a calling to challenge society to do better and champion the interests of the poor and oppressed as social justice warriors, a duty to protect and pass on sacred r...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this episode we dive into the challenges and frustrations of interacting with a religious text.   If it is not accurate, literal history, why should we still bother with the Book of Mormon as metaphorically or religiously useful literature? After all, we can learn dozens of profoundly helpful and ‘true’ life lessons about se...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this episode, with reference to powerful visionary experiences of his own and his ancestors, Paul explores the simultaneous relationship between the real and the figurative in the visions and encounters with the divine that lead people to begin or believe in religions.  We may struggle to tell the difference between dreams a...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this third of 12 conversations we discuss how to have a rational faith.  What is the difference between using our intellectual reasoning and imagination rooted in all available evidence and lived experience to construct and evolve a belief system personally or collectively, and a much less credible religion based on fantasie...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this second of 12 conversations we explore the ultimate theological conundrum:  If religion and Gods are real rather than a human invention to help us cope with our own inevitable deaths, how are we to bridge the gap between our existence as limited mortal animals trapped in a brief space-time continuum or timeline with a be...

Peter, Paul and Mormonism – The 12 Days of Christmas Toscano Dialogues In this first of 12 conversations we explore some of Paul's journey to excommunicated September Sixer and beyond as one of the very few people even trying to be a proper theologian in Mormonism. We start to chew on what Mormonism has to offer Christians who have been wrestling with the nature of God and humans for 2000 yea...

I grew up in an LDS Mormonism ready to take on the world, fill the world and rescue mainstream Christianity from its fundamental doctrinal flaws. Fearless about an intellectually defendable thoughtful faith and fizzing with big ideas about people, Gods, and our destiny in the stars of a vast universe that could keep up with the expanding realms of everything that science and science fiction could...

With April 2024 General Conference looming in a few days, the Church haemorrhaging members and facing extinction in the coming decade, and a First Presidency in their 90’s and on their very last legs, how about a different kind of General Conference Predictions show? Rather than being hopeful but realistic in our predictions for what the General Authorities will actually announce from their velvet...

What if there was a General Conference of the leading LDS Loonbats selling dangerous brutal parenting, energy healing mumbo jumbo, porn addiction paranoia, anti-science propaganda, child rescuing fraud with celebrity donors, thought-stopping Blind Faith and end time prepper visions of imminent apocalypse?  All curated by notorious ‘Visions of Glory’ Mentor-To-The-Maniacs Thom Harrison… with a Gene...

As I continue to map out a pathway for radically reforming the LDS Church to avoid its imminent self-destruction that is already authorised by its scriptures and written constitution, things just got wild! This episode will begin to guide you through the astonishing parade of scammers and lunatics with their own visions for the rescue and future of the Church who have been infiltrating every level...

The 11A 'Take Back Control' miniseries will resume soon, but here is a special treat.  Maven crossed the world to join me in the Sceptred Isles and review an extraordinary and rare encounter in Online Mormon World.  Brian Hales, regarded as the leading expert on Joseph Smith's Polygamy having published a trilogy about it, went on Michelle Stone's podcast '132 Problems:  Re...

As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints falls into its final self-inflicted spiral to destruction here in the UK, around the world, and even in its American heartlands, it's time to get real.  After 5 years of exploring the causes and solutions for this crisis, in this miniseries I will make the strongest case I can for what has gone wrong and how we have to bring about significant...

As we conclude the Bradgate Episodes 10 series things get truly crazy. Imagine if despite the Church officially disavowing all racism in and out of the Church, past and present, in its 2012 statement and 2013 Race and the Priesthood Gospel Topics Essay, and everything President Nelson has been saying to the Mormons and the NAACP about moving on from every trace of the Church's racist past, an...

In this episode Bradgate reaches the day of reconning.  Brad Wilcox's fellow Young Men General Presidency member Ahmad Corbitt is quickly brought in to rehabilitate him in his next youth fireside. It should have been perfect - Brad sort of apologises without being specific about much, and his token black friend spins a yarn about how cosmopolitan Brad is, and how he actually lived in Ethiopia...

In this episode we experience and discuss the very best and very worst of Brad Wilcox - a fantastic General Conference talk that would have transformed by experience as a youth but came 3 decades too late, and his nosedive into weak apologetics, sexism and racism in his infamous Alpine Tri-Stake Youth Broadcast.  We also have some serious thoughts and fun with superstar Mormon historian Patrick Ma...

In this episode we finish analysing what Brad Wilcox said in his online fireside Sunderland, England Stake hosted before launching into his Alpine Tri-Stake Disaster, and the rehabilitation that made everything worse, in the following episodes.  I also do my best to keep up with developments in the shocking exposure by Associated Press reporter Michael Rezendes, whose 'Spotlight' investi...

In this episode we spend some time dipping into the Covid Lockdown online fireside Sunderland, England Stake hosted with my favourite kosher LDS apologist, historian Patrick Mason, as a contrast to the approach of Brad Wilcox and other General Authorities and apologists like him.  Patrick talked a lot of sense, addressing directly the trust-threatening issues that drive people out of the LDS Churc...