Mormon Land

Longtime Salt Lake Tribune sports columnist Gordon Monson usually writes about first downs, double-faults, 3-pointers and four-baggers. He is at home commenting on what takes place on basketball courts, football fields and baseball diamonds.

Occasionally, though, he enters another arena — that of religion. A practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he has opined about Sabbath observance, BYU’s Honor Code, even how Jesus might behave at a ballgame.

In that spirit this past weekend, he offered 20 reforms he would like to see his church undertake. On this week’s show, he discusses those suggestions on topics ranging from missions to money, Word of Wisdom to Sunday sports, tithing to temple recommends, women’s equality to General Conference talks.

Most people know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practiced polygamy in the 19th century, but the Utah-based faith eventually abandoned it, beginning with a pronouncement in 1890 by church President Wilford Woodruff known as “the Manifesto.”

Even most members, however, are unaware of Woodruff’s 1894 announcement, termed a “revelation,” which ended a teaching known as “the law of adoption,” under which adult members were sealed to church leaders.

In General Conference of that year, Woodruff announced that hereafter temple sealings should proceed strictly along family lines, thereby replacing the earlier “kingdom theology” with what became the modern Latter-day Saint understanding of eternal families.

“Without an understanding of kingdom theology and the law of adoption, it’s not possible to fully grasp how 19th-century Latter-day Saints understood polygamy,” writes scholar Nate Oman, who teaches at William & Mary Law School in Virginia.

On this week’s show, Oman discusses this often-overlooked but highly important piece of Mormon history.

Some members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that their church has become staid, legalistic and bureaucratic. They yearn for more of the mystical encounters espoused by church founder Joseph Smith and his early followers.

In 2006, Utah attorney Denver Snuffer published “The Second Comforter: Conversing With the Lord Through the Veil.” It became an overnight sensation with those Latter-day Saints who wanted more spiritual experiences.

That book and the volumes that followed attracted the attention of church authorities and, in 2013, Snuffer was excommunicated.

Hundreds of other members joined him at gatherings and in small groups and thus was born the Remnant movement, which today touts thousands of adherents.

On this week’s show, Snuffer discusses the movement — its past, present and future — and his views of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, pioneer-prophet Brigham Young and current church President Russell M. Nelson, along with his experiences with deity, expanding scripture and more.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments about a Mississippi law banning virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Anti-abortion activists are cheering the possibility that the court could overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which granted women a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has aligned itself on several social issues with conservative religions, but its position on abortion is more complicated than that. The Utah-based faith condemns “elective abortion for personal or social convenience” but permits the procedure in cases of rape or incest, severe fetal defects, or when the life or health of the mother is in “serious jeopardy.”

On this week’s show, Christine Durham, a former justice and chief justice of Utah’s Supreme Court and herself a Latter-day Saint, discusses the possible monumental shift in abortion policy and practices, and how the high court’s decision may impact the nation, states, Utah’s most dominant faith, its members and women overall — warning that women cannot truly be equal without control of their own bodies.

Leaders of nearly 200 nations met in Glasgow, Scotland, recently to discuss how to limit climate change.

The Washington Post reports that they agreed to ramp up their carbon-cutting commitments, phase out some fossil fuels, and increase aid to poor countries on the front lines of global warming.

To many Latter-day Saints, these are urgent, even religious, concerns.

On this week’s show, George Handley, who teaches humanities at Brigham Young University and has written extensively about environmental issues, talks about how these eco-challenges connect with church teachings.

Temple work may have slowed due to the pandemic, but temple-building is moving forward at an unprecedented pace.

With The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announcing multiple new temples at each General Conference, architects are busy designing these holy edifices for locales ranging from Argentina to Zimbabwe and scores of places in between.

Besides creating new temples, the Utah-based faith is also renovating 10 existing ones, including the iconic Salt Lake Temple. Just last week, the church unveiled a new look for the 1970s-era Provo Temple and its Space Age design, one members have had a sort of love-hate relationship with through the years.

On this week’s show, Allen Roberts — a Utah architect who specializes in preservation and has worked on Latter-day Saint chapels, tabernacles and temples — discusses designs for these sacred structures, each of which members view as a “House of the Lord.”

He talks about how these temples are designed, the architectural styles that are employed, and reveals some of his favorites (19th-century temples like Manti and Logan top his list along with the ones in Cardston, Alberta, and Washington, D.C.) and some of his least favorites (the current Provo Temple, for instance).

This month marks religion reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack’s 30th anniversary of covering The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for The Salt Lake Tribune.

During that time, she has traveled the globe, journeying with prophets and interviewing apostles. She has written about divisive doctrines and inclusive gatherings, emerging trends and groundbreaking shifts, religious eras and “Mormon moments.”

Mostly, though, she has written about people — people cherishing faith, people questioning faith, people rejecting faith.

On this week’s show, she shares highlights from her remarkable career and answers questions from our Patreon supporters.

Listeners will get the scoop on her travels with Gordon Hinckley — including how she got into a meeting with the Latter-day Saint prophet and Ghana’s president — her behind-the-scenes conversations with Marjorie Hinckley and apostle Dallin H. Oaks. They’ll also get her take on what prompted church President Russell Nelson’s remark about knowing her family, how she learned about apostle David Bednar’s hair gel and many other stories.

Six years ago this month, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints instituted a policy labeling same-sex married couples “apostates” and barring their kids from baptism.

The policy later was abandoned, but the pain persisted. Since then, there have been highs and lows with the Utah-based faith and its LGBTQ members: an Honor Code about-face at Brigham Young University, the Y lit up in rainbow colors, BYU’s mascot coming out as gay, and apostle Jeffrey R. Holland calling out a college’s valedictorian for announcing his sexual orientation at graduation.

On this week’s show Tom Christofferson, a prominent LGBTQ member and author of “That We My Be One: A Gay Mormon’s Perspective on Faith and Family,” discusses the November 2015 policy — how it shook the church, why it was implemented and later scrapped, where the faith sits now on LGBTQ issues and his hopes for the future on the topic.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints considers itself the “restoration” of a complete Christianity that was lost centuries ago after the death of the biblical apostles.

Several years ago, Denver Snuffer, a former Latter-day Saint, launched his Remnant movement, preaching that the Utah-based faith fell away from the truth after founder Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 and Brigham Young led his followers West.

Now, yet another faction, called The Doctrine of Christ, has emerged. Phil Davis, a Latter-day Saint in Provo, asserts that Young murdered Smith and that Mormonism’s first prophet recently returned to re-restore the church with Davis at its helm.

On this week’s show, Cristina Rosetti, a religious studies scholar at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, discusses these groups, why some Latter-day Saints are joining them, how conspiracy theories play a role, and whether they pose any threat to the mainstream church.

After Mormonism founder Joseph Smith was killed in 1844, the largest body of the fledgling faith went west with Brigham Young. But a sizable group, including Smith’s widow, Emma, and her children, stayed in the Midwest and, in 1860, founded another church known then as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, with Smith’s eldest son as president.

In 2001, the church changed its name to the Community of Christ to reflect a more mainline approach than their Latter-day Saint cousins.

As of 2018, it was reported to have 250,000 members in 1,100 congregations in 59 countries.

On this week’s show, Bishop Carla Long, who leads a Utah congregation in Millcreek, talks about her church’s past, present and future. She also discusses how her faith differs from that of the much-larger, Utah-based church, how it views scriptures (including the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants), priesthood, polygamy, the godhead, the afterlife, and why Community of Christ members shy away from the “Mormon” moniker as well.