Postmormon Postmortem

How the Mormon Church Turns Institutional Policy Into Divine Revelation — With Receipts   When the church shortened sacrament meeting for Palm Sunday 2026, they called it inspired. When they reversed the LGBTQ policy in 2019, also revelation. The mechanism has five steps. Here they are.   Jess and Hannah trace the five-step mechanism by which LDS institutional policy becomes divine revelation: ide...

Why Your Body Stays Stuck in Fear After Leaving Mormonism — And What Actually Helps   You've left intellectually. Done the reading. So why does your body still brace when you disappoint an authority figure? Religious trauma doesn't live in your beliefs — it lives in your nervous system.   Drawing on Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score, Jess and Hannah explain why insight alo...

At 17, Jess sat in sacrament meeting hiding bruises on her neck and did the math. She knew she would have to leave. This is the episode she and Hannah wish someone had handed them on the way out the door.    Leaving Mormonism isn't a swap of one belief system for another — it's the collapse of an entire existential architecture. The identity work that follows isn't recovery of a self that existed...

Why Leaving Mormonism Is So Hard — The Psychology of Identity, Belonging, Cognitive Dissonance, and Sunk Costs   Intelligent, thoughtful people stay in the Mormon church long after encountering evidence that should have sent them running. This is not a failure of intelligence. It's how belief architecture works.   This research-dense episode applies the psychology of belief directly to LDS ins...

Elder James E. Christensen was beaten for months and scalded to death in his bathtub by his mission companion in 1977. His killer, Douglas Beiger, served zero days in prison.   The case that made Hannah angry enough to start a podcast. James Christensen had permanent neurological damage from a childhood accident and desperately wanted to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day...

Your Mormon family isn't ignoring you because they don't love you. The church built three specific mechanisms that make hearing you institutionally impossible.   Jess and Hannah break down the architecture of institutional deafness in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The obedience-equals-morality framework means anyone reporting harm becomes the problem before they finish t...

The Mormon Psychiatrist Who Declared a Child Killer Cured — Then Visited a Sadistic Canadian Cult Leader   In 1985, Dr. C. Jess Grosbeck declared Rodney Lundberg — who had stabbed his 11-month-old son as a test of faith — cured and ready for release. Then he flew to visit Moses Thériault's compound.   Hannah's solo bonus episode follows the Rodney Lundberg case into territory as disturbing...

The New York Times Called Mormon Women "The Church's Best Export" — Here's Everything Wrong With That   The New York Times published a trend piece on Mormon women in reality TV. A podcast host called them "the church's best export." The Times printed it. This episode is the follow-up they didn't do.    An export is something you produce, brand, and send out for...

On November 23, 1981, Rodney Lundberg placed his 11-month-old son on a table, gripped a butcher knife, and waited for God to intervene the way God intervened for Abraham. God didn't stop him.   This is not a story about one man's mental breakdown. It's a story about how an entire religious culture enabled, validated, and then returned a child killer to society in three years. The Abrah...

How does one religion consume so much of its members' time, money, mental energy, and social life? This episode answers that question systematically — and shows that every piece of it was deliberate.    The Mormon church is what sociologists call a totalizing institution. The calling system assigns — not asks — members to volunteer positions framed as divine appointment: you cannot say no to G...

In Mormon theology, gender is eternal — it existed before birth and continues after death. Women were foreordained to be mothers. An 11-year-old boy holds more religious authority than your grandmother.    Jess and Hannah trace the theology, the history, and the real-world consequences. The motherhood doctrine intensified in the 1950s when leaders explicitly taught that mothers working outside the...

If someone in your life is Mormon — or post-Mormon — and you're not sure what that actually means, this is where to start. Golden plates, seer stones, three degrees of heaven, and the only true church on earth.    If someone in your life is Mormon or post-Mormon and you're not sure what that actually means, this is where to start. The Foundations series is built for never-Mormons who want...

Why your Mormon coworker drinks Red Bull but won't touch coffee. Why Utah has dirty soda shops with cult followings among devout members. Why Mitt Romney's Diet Coke became a doctrinal crisis in 2012.   In 1833, Joseph Smith received a health revelation he explicitly said was "not by commandment or constraint" — while his own church stores sold coffee and tea, and while he smoked...

Dr. Gina Colvin's "Ordinary Mormon Trauma" — The Framework That Finally Names What Happened to You   "Ordinary Mormon trauma" is not the dramatic incidents. It's the daily, invisible harm of growing up trained to be nice but not kind, obedient but not teachable, disciplined but not emotionally regulated.    Dr. Gina Colvin — former Mormon academic and host of A Thoughtf...

The LDS Church paid $350,000 to hide historical documents — and every single one was fake. Meet the returned missionary who forged Mormon history and built pipe bombs when the bills came due. Mark Hofmann spent five years selling forged documents to the highest levels of LDS leadership — the Anthon Transcript, the Salamander Letter, the Joseph Smith III Blessing — exploiting the Mormon Church'...

We're diving into Abducted in Plain Sight—the Netflix documentary. On the surface, it's a story about a child predator who kidnapped the same girl twice. But underneath? It's a devastating exposé of how religious trust, toxic niceness, and institutional denial create the perfect storm for abuse. We'll talk about grooming, the Mormon obsession with appearances, and why "He's such a good member of t...

When Mormon teenagers come of age, an elderly man delivers a personal prophecy — their tribe from ancient Israel, blessings and life calling, all conditional on remaining faithful.   When Mormon teenagers come of age, an elderly man places his hands on their head and delivers a personal prophecy about their eternal future. Almost everyone gets assigned to the tribe of Ephraim. Even the Korean conv...

Hundreds of thousands of young Mormons leave home for up to two years to knock on strangers' doors. Never alone. Can't call home most days. Sixteen-hour days.   Hundreds of thousands of young Mormons leave home for up to two years to knock on strangers' doors, never alone, rarely able to call home, working sixteen-hour days in whatever city headquarters assigns them. The companion syst...

Every religion has official doctrine and folk religion. Mormon folklore is particularly rich — and understanding it explains a great deal about the culture that official manuals never will.    Jess and Hannah cover the major examples: the Three Nephites, three immortal disciples who wander the earth rescuing stranded motorists and then vanishing without a trace — no official church verification, b...

Your worthiness to enter God's house is determined by a volunteer with zero professional training asking you detailed personal questions in a private room. He might be your dentist. He has a handbook.   The Mormon bishop interview system assesses members on sexual purity, tithing compliance, testimony, and sustaining church leaders — but in practice, questions about masturbation and pornograph...

Your Mormon friends disappear inside for hours doing ceremonies they can't describe to you. Non-members can't attend their own children's weddings. There's special underwear involved. This explains all of it. Your Mormon friends disappear inside the temple for hours doing ceremonies they cannot describe to you. Non-members — including parents — cannot attend their own children'...