Mormon Land

“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 easily dismissed as frauds. So he cautiously delved into more research about the new find and now, after four years of careful study comparing it to Smith’s death mask and reading primary documents describing Mormonism’s most famous leader, he is convinced it is the real Joseph.

And he has crafted a new sculpture and painted a new portrait based not on the old images but on the daguerreotype.

On this week’s show, Brickey, co-author of the forthcoming book and documentary “Brother Joseph Again: Restoring the Visual Image of Joseph Smith Jr.,” talks about his research of the daguerreotype, his latest artwork of Smith, and how it better reflects his view of the Mormon prophet.

He is joined by art historian Jenny Champoux, who explains the human fascination with faces and why it matters to believers what Smith looked like.

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 political views. He worked for a time as a special agent for the FBI and later as Salt Lake City’s police chief. His books — including “The First 2,000 Years” and “The Naked Communist” — became ubiquitous in Latter-day Saint homes as members grappled with the Cold War and predictions of an imminent apocalypse.

On this week’s show, Latter-day Saint historian Benjamin Park, who is working on a biography of Skousen, discusses the man’s early beginnings and why his works are finding an unexpected audience among President Donald Trump’s supporters today.

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 white people try to sing like Black people.”

In his apology, he said, “My words have caused offense and injury, and put a blight on an otherwise wonderful weekend.”

This episode raises larger questions about how Latter-day Saint congregations can or should respectfully incorporate not only this song but also other African American songs recently added to the church’s official hymnbook.

These week’s show features two Black Latter-day Saint musicians: Kimberly Applewhite Teitter, a clinical psychologist and the assistant director for the Debra Bonner Unity Gospel Choir, and Krispin Banks, a musician, songwriter and podcaster who believes music can unite believers across cultures and bring people closer to Jesus Christ.

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 beloved for his winning ways as a speaker and teacher, his rapport with teens, and his ability to discuss Shakespeare, popular television shows, the scriptures, newspaper stories, ancient history and contemporary issues. Members also smiled at the light-colored suits he sometimes donned for General Conferences amid a sea of black.

He was the mission president to two future apostles (Jeffrey R. Holland and Quentin L. Cook) and a groundbreaking historian (D. Michael Quinn) — and loved all his charges.

At the same time, Hanks, who died in 2011, was a “progressive” before many Latter-day Saints even knew what the word meant. He spoke of Christ and social justice, for example, and reached out to those on the margins of the church — which made him a hero and mentor to writers like Carol Lynn Pearson and activists like Warner Woodworth.

Yet few modern members know of Hanks’ extraordinary life.

Last year, Hanks’ son, Richard Hanks, wrote a biography of his father, “To Be a Friend of Christ: The Life of Marion D. Hanks,” drawing on otherwise unavailable primary sources — journals, correspondence, notebooks and recordings. And the Utah-based faith recently made a ton of Hanks’ papers publicly available.

On this week’s show, Richard Hanks discusses his father’s life, and what his work meant for the church and future generations.

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 religions recognized by its Chaplain Corps.

The Utah-based faith made the cut but with a catch. As the all-Republican and Latter-day Saint delegation from the Beehive State complained on social media, the church was not tagged as “Christian.” Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant denominations, yes. Not Latter-day Saints.

The government, it seemed, had weighed in on a long-standing theological debate, and not in Temple Square’s favor.

The department has since reissued the list, removing the “Christian” tag entirely. But the debate continues to whirl.

Joseph DuWors is a retired Army major and chaplain, Latter-day Saint convert and doctoral candidate in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University. Nathaniel Wiewora is an associate professor of history at Harding University in Arkansas, and the author of the 2024 book “Sins of Christendom: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Antebellum Evangelicalism.”

They unpacked the controversy — its historical roots and implications — in the latest episode of “Mormon Land.”