In the 1980s, sociologist Rodney Stark projected the LDS Church would reach somewhere between 63 and 265 million members by 2080. Today, it has just 17.8 million—and only four in ten Gen Z women raised in the faith still identify with it.

Everyone has a theory about why. The culture got worse. The church did this. Jana Riess names three P's—politics, purity culture, powerlessness.

This episode proposes a fourth: pressure. Pew's data shows certainty declining far faster than belief, which means a religion that demands certainty is asking for something a whole generation can no longer produce.

So what would a community look like with real claims, real expectations, and room to say you don't know?

To support Faith After Faith, visit faithafterfaith.com. A recurring donation of any amount will give you access to exclusive bonus content and full, unedited conversations.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: Why Women Are Leaving Mormonism

04:10 Cultural Explanations and Critiques

06:08 The Three Ps: Politics, Purity Culture, Powerlessness

13:58 The Fourth P: Pressure

17:57 Reimagining Faith: Support and Challenge in Communities

29:55 The Future of Faith Communities and Belief

• Jana Riess, "Why are so many young women leaving the LDS Church?"
• Tamarra Kemsley, "For Latter-day Saints, the retention decline is more than a people problem"
• Barbara Morgan Gardner, "Why are young Latter-day Saint women struggling?"
• W. Justin Dyer, Jenet Jacob Erickson, Sam A. Hardy, Barbara Morgan Gardner, and David C. Dollahite, Latter-day Saint Trends in the United States: Religiousness, Well-Being, and Retention
• Ryan Burge, "Belief Isn't Dying, It's Just Getting Less Certain"
• Ryan Burge, "The LDS Church Has a Retention Problem"
• Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study
• Jana Riess, The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Jana Riess and Benjamin Knoll, Leaving Mormonism: Who Is Exiting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—and Why. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• Rodney Stark, "The Rise of a New World Faith," Review of Religious Research 26, no. 1 (1984): 18–27.

• Dallin H. Oaks, "Pornography"
• Katie L., "Breathing Room"

Katie Langston talks with Jana Reiss, senior columnist at Religion News Service and historian of American religion, about spiritual authority after a faith crisis, why so many people leave high-demand traditions, and what healthy reconstruction can actually look like. Jana also shares findings from her research on Latter-day Saints, including generational shifts, women’s religious practice, and the emotional cost of trying to make sense of change inside a tradition that keeps moving.

To support Faith After Faith, visit katielangston.com/support. A recurring donation of any amount will give you access to exclusive bonus content and full, unedited conversations.

Chapters:

(00:30) Opening on high-demand religion and not trusting yourself
(03:29) Mormonism as an American religious tradition
(05:07) Jana’s research with people who left, stayed, or studied trauma
(06:27) External demands versus internal demands
(08:48) The scaffolding metaphor for faith shifts
(11:55) The Christmas lights analogy and all-or-nothing thinking
(12:51) The church as a moving target
(17:03) Heather’s story and spiritual bypassing
(19:22) Jana on disagreeing publicly while staying active
(22:44) How to start trusting your own conscience again
(24:39) Hilary McBride, spiritual trauma, and first vs. second-order change
(31:59) Why former Latter-day Saints often don’t join another church
(34:16) What to look for in a healthy spiritual community
(37:09) Loneliness, isolation, and the role of religion
(37:53) Holy Week, suffering, and a more realistic Christian message
(41:38) Reconstruction as meaning, hope, and resources
(43:24) Faith after faith as a series of crises, not one big break

Resources:

• Jana Riess's RNS column, Flunking Sainthood.
• Leaving Mormonism: Who Is Exiting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and Why, with Benjamin Knoll (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027)
• Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye, "Mormonism isn't like a string of Christmas lights," Religion News Service, June 18, 2012.
• Hillary L. McBride, Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing (Brazos Press, 2025)
• Jana Riess, "More about Jesus, less about coffee: Seven LDS Church trends, according to data," Religion News Service, July 16, 2026.
• Kara Stevenson, "Why this White, American, LDS Couple was Civilly Married (then Sealed) in Tijuana, Mexico," Exponent II Blog, April 2026:
• Martin E. Marty, A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart (Harper & Row, 1983; rev. HarperCollins, 1993)

What happens to your sense of spiritual authority when your worldview crumbles?

High-control religions want you to externalize your authority by handing it to them. After a deconstruction, it's healthy to reclaim that authority. Yet total internal control runs you into blind spots—which are, by definition, things you can't see.

Is there a middle ground? A way to discern trustworthy sources of authority from untrustworthy sources? To balance individual needs with group demands?

This episode works through Chesterton's fence, Tara Isabella Burton's Strange Rites, and a set of questions worth asking of any community before you trust it (including: what happens to the people who leave?)

To support Faith After Faith, visit katielangston.com/support. A recurring donation of any amount will give you access to exclusive bonus content and full, unedited conversations.

00:00 Where does spiritual authority go after a faith crisis?
02:03 Before the separation of church and state
05:59 The age of association and the age of authenticity
07:53 Coercion, idolatry, and the closed loop of high-demand religious
09:49 Nauvoo, Nancy Rigdon, and the Happiness Letter
12:02 Internal authority, blind spots, and "do your own research"
16:02 The gospel critiques both: idolatry and the self curved inward
17:48 Chesterton's fence and questions to ask before you trust
25:57 Sin boldly, course correct, and your belovedness as bedrock

• Dwight Zscheile, "From the Age of Association to Authenticity" — Faith+Lead. https://faithlead.org/blog/from-the-age-of-association-to-authenticity/
• Ted A. Smith, The End of Theological Education — Eerdmans, 2023.
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age — Belknap/Harvard, 2007.
• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America — 1835 and 1840.
• Joseph Smith, letter to Nancy Rigdon ("the Happiness Letter"), circa mid-April 1842 — Full text and historical introduction at the Joseph Smith Papers: https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/appendix-letter-to-nancy-rigdon-circa-mid-april-1842/1
• Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World — PublicAffairs, 2020.
• Zoe Alderton, "'Snapewives' and 'Snapeism': A Fiction-Based Religion within the Harry Potter Fandom" — Religions 5, no. 1 (2014): 219–267. Open access, and yes, it's peer-reviewed: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/5/1/219
• G. K. Chesterton, "The Drift from Domesticity," in The Thing — 1929. Full text: https://catholiclibrary.org/library/view?docId=/Contemporary-EN/XCT.165.html&chunk.id=00000011
• Martin Luther, letter to Philip Melanchthon, August 1, 1521 — Luther's Works vol. 48, 281–82.
• Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — 1979. Forty-two. We still don't know the question.

Katie talks with historian Lindsay Hansen Park—executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation, host of Year of Polygamy, and a friend since they were both Mormon feminist bloggers in the early 2010s—about why one person's deconstruction sets off so much anxiety in a family and culture.

Lindsay's research into Mormon fundamentalism has helped her trace those patterns back to where they come from—from frontier survivalism to deep sexual shame—and explore how they're still operative in people's lives.

Whether you come from Mormonism or other high-demand, fundamentalist traditions, Lindsay offers insights that are both compassionate and challenging for everyone whose gone through a faith deconstruction.

The full unedited conversation with Lindsay is available to subscribers at katielangston.com/podcast.

Lindsay Hansen Park

• Sunstone Education Foundation — sunstone.org
• Year of Polygamy podcast — yearofpolygamy.com
• The Ballad of Juanita Brooks — balladofjuanita.com. Lindsay's forthcoming biography, on sale December 30, 2026.
• Historical consultant, Under the Banner of Heaven (FX) and American Primeval (Netflix)

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Lindsay Hansen Park's journey

00:28 The influence of rural Mormon communities and fundamentalism

06:01 The role of shame and control in Mormon culture

07:59 Disruption of faith and the path to personal growth

11:52 The similarities between fundamentalist and mainstream Mormonism

15:05 The use of shame as a control mechanism

17:52 The impact of purity culture and temple system

21:07 Leaving Mormonism and the emotional upheaval

24:57 The importance of boundaries and therapy in healing

29:59 Reframing shame and embracing personal resilience

35:01 The future of Mormon culture and language around leaving

37:15 Final thoughts on growth, resilience, and self-trust

Of everything that comes with a faith crisis, the relationships are usually the hardest part. Your mom. Your spouse. The sibling who keeps texting you their testimony at 11pm.

In this solo episode, Pastor Katie Langston takes Amanda Ripley's framework from High Conflict and uses it as a lens to examine families in the middle of a faith transition—including the difference between good conflict and high conflict, why a fight is almost never about what it's about, and the four "understories" running underneath just about every conflict.

• 00:00 — Welcome
• 00:19 — Why family is the hardest part of a faith crisis
• 01:46 — "It's never about what it's about": Amanda Ripley's High Conflict
• 02:55 — Good conflict vs. high conflict
• 05:02 — The paradox: wanting it to end and wanting it to continue
• 05:53 — What's an "understory"?
• 07:30 — Understory one: power and control
• 08:52 — Understory two: respect and recognition
• 09:50 — Understory three: care and concern
• 10:14 — Understory four: stress and overwhelm
• 12:23 — Why faith conflict runs so deep
• 14:25 — Four things that help
• 16:15 — Grace, blame, and the limits of reconciliation
• 17:42 — The deepest understory

• Amanda Ripley, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out (Simon & Schuster, 2021) — amandaripley.com/high-conflict
• Support the show: katielangston.com/support — bonus content, early releases, and full unedited interviews

Natasha Helfer says that a faith deconstruction is an entire identity makeover.

Which sounds dramatic until you start counting. Who am I. Who am I to my spouse. What kind of parent am I. What do I want in bed. Who are my people now. Natasha breaks identity into five buckets, and a faith crisis kicks over all five at once.

Natasha is a licensed marriage and family therapist and a certified sex therapist. She spent decades as a devout Latter-day Saint, started writing publicly about what she was seeing in her clients—teenagers self-harming over masturbation, LGBTQ+ kids dying at higher rates, women drowning in perfectionism—and in 2021 was excommunicated for taking public stands that contradicted church leadership.

In this conversation, Natasha and Katie explore identity formation in high-demand religious traditions, what happens when that formation is disrupted, and how to begin to put the pieces back together again (even when it's messy).

Content note: This episode includes candid discussion of sexuality and sexual shame, and references to teen self-harm and suicidality in the context of purity culture.

Get full unedited episodes, early releases, bonus episodes, and more by supporting Faith After Faith at https://katielangston.com/support

• 00:00 — Welcome, and meet Natasha Helfer
• 02:05 — Converted at five: an identity formed entirely through the LDS lens
• 09:48 — By their fruits: perfectionism, LGBTQ kids, secrecy, sexual shame
• 14:34 — Starting her "Ask a Mormon Therapist" blog
• 21:40 — Off the referral list, and then out of the church
• 32:23 — The five buckets of identity and why a deconstruction is an entire identity makeover
• 39:06 — Pendulum swings, interrupted development, and doing teenager work in your forties
• 50:04 — Rebuilding a worldview: the tension between me and we
• 57:03 — Belovedness, isolation, and what faith after faith looks like

Natasha Helfer, LMFT, CST-S, is an AASECT-certified sex therapist and licensed marriage and family therapist who has spent three decades helping people untangle sexuality from shame, silence, and stigma — much of it rooted in religious trauma and purity culture. She sees clients through Symmetry Counseling, trains other clinicians, and hosts The Natasha Helfer Podcast.

• Website: https://www.natashahelfer.com/

• "My Official Stance on Masturbation" — the 2012 post at Natasha's Patheos blog The Mormon Therapist (published under Natasha Helfer Parker): https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mormontherapist/2012/08/my-official-stance-on-masturbation.html
• Natasha's Faith Transitions Group: https://www.natashahelfer.com/faith-transitions-group

This episode with Pastor Katie Langston explores the challenges of faith crisis and deconstruction, the impact on personal identity, and the process of reconstructing a new sense of self. It delves into the concept of vocation and the assurance of belovedness, offering hope and encouragement to those navigating identity exploration.

To support this channel, subscribe or become a friend of Promise Studio at katielangston.com/podcast

Links mentioned:

• Is there a real you? (TEDXYouth talk by Julian Baggini)

Chapters

• 00:00 The Crisis of Faith
• 02:03 Identity Makeover
• 03:02 The Conveyor Belt of Identity
• 05:19 The Five Categories of Identity
• 13:48 Conforming vs. Performing
• 16:38 Exploring Vocation
• 21:59 Belovedness and Self-Discovery