Mormon Land

Taylor Kerby persistently feared he would fall short of God’s love — no matter how many prayers he offered, no matter how often he read or recited scriptures and no matter how pure he kept his thoughts.

Growing up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kerby fixated on living every commandment, avoiding a hint of anything that could be termed a sin. Righteousness was not a desire or a goal or a pursuit. It was life, and it was crippling him.

He suffered from “scrupulosity,” an obsessive-compulsive disorder that focuses on moral rectitude and brings with it pathological guilt.

As a teenager, this religious mania “was all-encompassing, flowing into every aspect of my life and informing the most insignificant decision,” Kerby writes in his new book, “Scrupulous: My Obsessive Compulsion for God.”

On this week’s show, he talks about what that was like, how he learned to deal with it and where his faith is today.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints across the United States overwhelmingly lean Republican, vote Republican and identify as Republican.

This week’s guest is not one of them.

As national director of Latter-day Saints for Biden-Harris, Robert Taber strives to swing more members toward a different direction by campaigning for the victorious Democratic ticket before the election and lobbying for the administration’s proposals afterward.

He recently endorsed Judge Katanji Brown Jackson’s historic nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, for instance, and urged the Senate to confirm her as the country’s first Black female justice.

On this week’s show, Taber discuss his partisan preferences, the issues of the day, the intersection of politics and faith, and his hopes for converting more Latter-day Saints to a new way of viewing the governmental landscape.

The world watched last week as Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Caught in the crosshairs were more than 11,000 Ukrainian members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In this special episode, Salt Lake Tribune journalists spoke with Latter-day Saints across Ukraine — and some fleeing the Eastern European nation — to learn about how they were faring, as well as how their congregations have banded together before and after the bombs started to drop.

Coming into 2022, Brigham Young University faced a federal investigation about its discrimination against LGBTQ students, allowing heterosexual couples to exhibit “romantic behavior,” while forbidding the same for same-sex couples.

Eventually, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed the investigation, saying the Provo school, owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is exempt from federal laws prohibiting gender-based discrimination. These exemptions began in 1976 under then-BYU President Dallin Oaks.

Other issues have since surfaced at the faith’s flagship campus — such as canceling gender-affirming voice therapy for transgender clients, placing stricter limits on protests, and dealing with fallout from a controversial speech by religion professor Brad Wilcox.

On this week’s show, Michael Austin, a BYU alumnus and executive vice president of academic affairs at the University of Evansville, a Methodist school in Indiana, talks about the challenges facing BYU and its academic standing.

Race is a fraught topic in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For more than 125 years, the Utah-based faith denied Black members access to its priesthood and temples. That exclusion ended in 1978, but discrimination and racism have persisted. And, though the church has formed an alliance with the NAACP, and church leaders have strongly condemned all forms of racism and bigotry, some members continue to resist change.

In a recent speech, a Brigham Young University professor and high-ranking church leader defended the former priesthood/temple ban as part of God’s timing.

On this week’s show, Black Latter-day Saint scholar Janan Graham-Russell, a graduate student at Harvard University who is spending the year at the University of Utah as a Mormon studies fellow, discusses that speech by Brad Wilcox — who has apologized twice for his remarks — and the ongoing issue of racism among church members.

Today’s world seems more divided than ever on political solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and some such rifts have seeped into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Many members have entrenched themselves in their own partisan positions, choosing derision over dialogue by refusing to talk or even listen to other viewpoints. Others have chosen to eschew politics altogether, believing that it is impossible for policymakers to get anything right and that politics has no place with faith.

Retired federal Judge Thomas Griffith, a Latter-day Saint convert who stepped down from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2020, argues just the opposite — that politics is actually a “religious activity.”

On this week’s show, he discusses how to practice politics without “losing your soul.”

Eugene England, a popular professor at Brigham Young University who died 20 years ago, probably is best known as the founder of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.

Last summer, Terryl Givens published the first full-length biography of England, titled “Stretching the Heavens: The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern Mormonism,” detailing his life as a devout but controversial member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A second volume, called “Eugene England: A Mormon Liberal” by Kristine Haglund, now explores the scholar’s work and thought. A respected essayist, England was one of the most influential intellectuals in the modern church.

On this week’s show, Haglund examines England’s important contributions to Mormonism, how he was both liberal and conservative, his embrace of church founder Joseph Smith and successor Brigham Young, his friendships and fights with Latter-day Saint apostles, his political views, his theological musings and more.

On Jan. 15, after an undersea volcano showered the kingdom of Tonga with tsunami waves, flooding, rocks and ash, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sprang into action.

The Utah-based faith provided tons of food, clothes, water and other household goods to the devastated islands. Church-owned Liahona High School became a welcome refuge for some 1,250 people seeking emergency housing. The governing First Presidency sent a letter of support and consolation to Tonga’s king and queen as well as Latter-day Saints throughout the nation.

The church’s imprint on the country is undeniable — Tonga has the highest percentage of Latter-day Saints of any country in the world (nearly 63%; about the same as Utah’s).

On this week’s show, Verna Tukuafu, a Tongan native and international area manager at BYU-Pathway Worldwide, discusses the relief efforts in her homeland and what life is like there for members of the majority faith.

For more than a dozen years, Devery Anderson, a white Latter-day Saint studying history at the University of Utah, was obsessed with the 1955 killing of a 14-year-old Black youth, Emmett Till.

Anderson’s quest for details culminated in 2015, with publication of his book-length exploration, “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement.”

Now, nearly seven years later, Anderson’s book is the basis of a new miniseries, titled “Women of the Movement,” airing this month on ABC.

Anderson, who consulted on the show, is deeply aware of his own faith’s past involvement in a racist policy denying Black males ordination to the priesthood and Black females access to temple ceremonies. That practice ended in 1978, but racism in the church remains a problem to this day.

On this week’s podcast, Anderson talks about his groundbreaking work on the Till biography and his church’s racial history.

This season’s University of Utah football team was stocked with stars en route to its historic run to a Pac-12 title and the school’s first-ever Rose Bowl appearance.

But the heart and soul of the squad was found in an unlikely, undersized, overaged Latter-day Saint receiver-return specialist whose affable, gregarious and lighthearted nature seemed to belie the violent sport he so clearly loved.

After a standout freshman season, Britain Covey, all 5 feet 8 inches and 170 pounds of him, served a mission to Chile for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then returned to the Salt Lake City campus, where he proceeded to catch passes, juke tacklers and tally touchdowns to chants from fans of “Covey, Covey, Covey.”

But how did this 24-year-old Provo native — who dreamed of playing for Brigham Young University and whose famous grandfather (Stephen R. Covey of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” fame) though a U. graduate, boasted deep BYU ties — end up at rival Utah, a place Britain once thought only a “bad person” would attend?

On this week’s show, Covey explains why he chose the U. over the Y.; how his mission helps him on and off the field; how his college coach, fellow Latter-day Saint Kyle Whittingham, became a role model; how he remembers his Rose Bowl experience; and how he is preparing for a shot at the NFL.