Mormon Land

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.”

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.