Mormon.ish

On this groundbreaking episode of Mormonish Podcast, John Knight Lundwall (PhD, comparative myth and religion) evaluates claims that the Book of Mormon contains colophons—ancient paratextual scribal features used to identify and classify texts. He concludes instead that the book employs an unusual first‑person narrative and speech structure absent from both ancient and modern historical writings....

On this episode of Mormonish, Rebecca and Unoriginal Jim are joined by Dr. Thomas Murphy to discuss his new article "White is an Ite: The Book of Mormon's Misappropriation of the Iroquois Great Law of Peace Open Access" byThomas W Murphy (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (2025) 58 (4): 47–72.) https://doi.org/10.5406/15549399.58.4.03 "The Book of Mormon's portrayal of a great peace that follo...

The Good Book Club held a Q&A with acclaimed author and historian John G. Turner to discuss his book "Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet." The discussion was so awesome we had to share it with a wider community! Our book club members asked a wide range of in depth questions and in his answers, John weighs in on the life, teachings, and controversies surrounding the founder...

Tune into Mormon podcast on Tuesday, March 3rd at 6 PM MT. In this episode, Rebecca and Landon are joined by Patrick Bertch and Dr. John Lundwall to explore the idea that Sidney Rigdon not only founded Mormonism but was the primary author of the Book of Mormon. Patrick shares ground breaking information on the 3 unique voices of the Book of Mormon and takes us through a review of the 7 wordprint s...

While the Church reported over 17.5 million members by the end of 2024, researchers and analysts—often relying on congregation counts, surveys, and academic analysis—frequently estimate the number of active, attending members to be significantly lower, sometimes suggesting it is closer to 4–5 million worldwide. This gap exists because the official figures include anyone with a baptismal record who...

Students at Morehouse College recently raised concerns over a newly unveiled painting of Joseph Smith to be displayed in the Martin Luther King International Chapel gallery on campus. The artwork, intended as part of an interfaith partnership highlighting individuals who champion racial equality, quickly became the center of a student-led pushback and dialogue about representation, historical memo...

At a recent painting unveiling at Morehouse College, a provocative phrase caught everyone’s attention when the dean of the college stated that Joseph Smith was “Lincoln before Lincoln.” What did that mean? Was it poetic praise, historical argument, or symbolic comparison? And the even bigger question, did Joseph Smith actually ever express or exhibit anti-slavery views? In this episode, Rebecca Bi...

Mormonish Podcast's Landon and Rebecca report back on their recent trip to Missouri. Hitting many of the LDS church history sites like Independence, Far West, Liberty Jail, The Garden of Eden, etc was a revelatory experience that we can't wait to share with all of you! We are calling this new subseries, "Where Will You Go?" This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn...

So excited to celebrate our 300th episode of Mormonish Podcast! Thank you everyone for your amazing support through all the episodes! In a previous Mormonish episode with Ganesh, he mentioned that there are compelling reasons to believe that Joseph and Emma conceived their first child that night at the Hill Cumorah when Joseph was retrieving the golden plates. We didn't explore this topic fully on...

Are lines between church and state blurring even further in today's social, cultural, and political climate? Mormonish Podcast is joined by Dan Hardy, Co President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Douglas Hendricks, President of the SLC Chapter of the FFRF, to discuss the topic of church v. state and all the nuance in between. According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the histo...

Mormonish is joined by Rebecca Williamson, director of tourism in Nauvoo Illinois, to discuss the history OTHER than Mormon history that makes Nauvoo what it is today. Nauvoo’s history is a rich tapestry that existed long before the Mormons arrived and continued long after. Join us as we walk through the landmarks, stories, and legacies that shaped Nauvoo into the historic destination it is today....

Isaac Hale, Emma Smith’s father, was one of the very first people to observe Joseph Smith during the early Book of Mormon translation period. While Joseph and Emma lived in Hale’s home in Harmony, Pennsylvania, Hale saw Joseph working long before any official witnesses were called. This gave him a rare inside view of the process while it was still private and unconfirmed. Hale later said Joseph wa...

Now that the KJV version of the bible is not the only version sanctioned by the LDS church, this opens the door to dropping the Shakespearean language of the Book of Mormon too. Many of us wonder if we will see a new version of The Book of Mormon soon. Other versions of The Book of Mormon already exist and on this episode of Mormonish Podcast, Rebecca and Landon are joined by the guy behind a uniq...

Do Mormons have special revealed knowledge about the actual date Jesus was actually born? We just celebrated Christmas, but like the rest of Christianity, do members of the LDS church really think December 25th is Jesus’s birthday? On this episode of Mormonish Podcast, Rebecca and Landon are joined by the wonderful Charles Harrell to discuss his new research into the history of the LDS belief that...

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Brigham Young and other LDS church leaders taught that Jesus was begotten by God the Father in a literal sense, in the same way everyone is physically conceived. This is consistent with the broader view that God possesses a tangible, physical body. And that eternal sex and child bearing is part of the next life for those in the highest levels of the Celestial Kingdo...

On this episode of Mormonish Podcast, Rebecca and Landon explore the birth of Jesus narrative found in Matthew and Luke. Is the Christmas story just a story? What is true and what isn't true about both Matthew and Luke's accounts of the virgin birth. This episode will change the way you think about the beloved nativity story. This episode was originally aired in December 2024. ***How to DONATE to...

Reclaiming your sense of "Awe" after a high demand / high control religion is important. For decades, many of us were told our feelings and transcendent experiences were tied directly to the LDS church and were confirmation that the church was true. Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner is a book that explores how experiences of awe—moments th...

On this episode of Mormonish, Landon and Rebecca are joined by Kolby and Cami Reddish to discuss post Mormon parenting, especially regarding holiday traditions. Kolby and Cami have a lot of insight when it comes to children and magical thinking and talk about many creative ways to foster critical thinking in children. Whether you have children or grandchildren, this is a must see episode! This epi...

Latter-day Saints hold a variety of views about how the Book of Mormon was translated, often shaped by personal belief, historical study, and spiritual interpretation. The most traditional view is that Joseph Smith translated the record directly by the “gift and power of God,” using tools such as the Urim and Thummim. Others emphasize accounts describing Joseph placing a seer stone in a hat and re...

In recent years, many observers have noted a quiet shift within Mormon communities: a decline in strictly orthodox adherence and a rise in what some call “cultural Mormons.” While orthodox members continue to ground their identity in traditional doctrine and practice, growing numbers of people maintain a connection to Mormon heritage, values, and community without fully embracing institutional exp...

The new movie Truth & Treason (released October 17, 2025) brings to life the courageous story of Helmuth Hübener, a 16-year-old Latter-day Saint in Nazi Germany who used a secret shortwave radio and a typewriter to distribute anti-Hitler pamphlets. The movie doesn't deal with Hübener's excommunication from the LDS church for his activities and eventual posthumous reinstatement into the LDS chu...

On this special Halloween episode of Mormonish Podcast, Rebecca and Landon are joined by Dr. John Lundwall to discuss the custom of taking of heads in ancient cultures and the correlation, if any to The Book of Mormon. Dr. Lundwall has clearly demonstrated in previous episodes the predominant cultures that existed before, during, and after the stories in The Book of Mormon took place. These cultur...

The Covenant Path narrative has become a major way to track the milestone that members of the LDS must reach or attain to fully participate in the LDS church. A new app lets multiple people from the ward and mission watch and track stats on new converts as they attend meetings, get temple recommends, pay tithing, etc. It also identifies friends in the ward who can step in to encourage the new memb...

Does the LDS church still make the claim that they are the "one true church?" Or has that rhetoric taken a backseat as they move to be more closely aligned with mainstream Christianity? What do faithful LDS think about this claim and how do they explain it when other people pray and get a confirmation that a religion other than Mormonism is true. Rebecca and Landon delve into the "one true church"...

The LDS church makes a big effort to find people who are on the membership roles that are not attending the congregation where their membership records are. Ward, clerks and other auxiliary leaders are tasked with finding the whereabouts of these wayward members and either moving their membership records to their new location or sending the records to sort of a dead letter file in Salt Lake. Just...