Mormon Land

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.”

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 on the battle over civil rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, as well as the issues of patriarchy and polygamy in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Her first book of poetry, “Beginnings,” sold an astounding 150,000 copies, making her one of Mormonism’s earliest celebrities. The feisty writer went on to produce several more bestsellers, including “The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy” and “No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones.”

Pearson is a lively storyteller as she recounts conversations with top Latter-day Saint leaders, including church President Dallin Oaks (whom she knew when he led Brigham Young University) and longtime Relief Society General President Belle Spafford. And she movingly describes in “Goodbye, I Love You,” falling in love with Gerald Pearson, having children with him, letting him go to live as a gay man, and welcoming him back to care for him as he died of AIDS.

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 Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn From Them,” is more than instructive and insightful; it’s personal.

The volume includes a sweeping study on Latter-day Saint disaffiliation, revealing that about 40% of active members in the United States have stopped participating over the past quarter century.

Why is that? Is it church doctrine, policy or culture? Is it, for instance, the faith’s opposition to same-sex marriage or the occasionally cruel comments about the LGBTQ+ community that may spring up in Sunday school? Does the tension come from the racist remarks Brigham Young made about Black people or from diminished trust in the church for not sharing that part of the faith’s history?

On this week’s show, Strong discusses the church’s disaffiliation “crisis,” why so many Latter-day Saints are abandoning the faith, what the stayers get wrong about the leavers, and how members of every stripe can better find belonging no matter where they are in their spiritual journeys.

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 of stories from other members of his Black congregation, who told him that racism has been on the rise due to the current political climate in the country as well as in Utah, where The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the dominant religious institution.

On this week’s show, Hugh, a Latter-day Saint convert and marketing executive who most recently worked for church-owned Deseret Book, discusses the increase in racial tension, what top church leaders have said about it and how Latter-day Saints can counter the sin of racism.

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 and other opportunities within the religion.

These policies and practices created friction for a number of working women in the church. But rather than leave the fold, a number of talented trailblazers chose instead to turn to Christ and seek personal answers to private prayers to carve their own paths and not only stay true to the faith — and their ambitions — but also emerge even stronger.

On this week’s show, Robin Ritch discusses their journeys, which she documents in her newly released book, “Using Friction to Grow.”