Mormon Land

Editor's note: Due to an error in postproduction, we've replaced a previous version of this episode.

Late in 1843, top leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent letters to the five leading candidates for the U.S. presidency, asking each what he would do, if elected, to address the persecution the faith had suffered and to protect it from future repression.

Unsatisfied with the responses, they turned to a new candidate: their own prophet, Joseph Smith.

Thus began the church founder’s quixotic quest for the highest political office in the land that ended with his assassination five months later.

While Smith’s short-lived, long-shot bid for the White House focused on securing the constitutional rights of religious minorities, he campaigned on a host of other issues as well, including the abolition of slavery, the expansion of the nation’s borders, the reestablishment a national bank and the elimination of prisons.

Spencer McBride, associate managing historian of the Joseph Smith Papers project, explores that 1844 campaign, including the tug of war between federal power and states’ rights, on this week’s show and in his new book, “Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sprang from a young boy’s quest for religious truth, so it may seem strange that sizable numbers of its members are falling for political claims that stretch so far from the truth.

A recent survey shows, for instance, that 46% of Latter-day Saints believe the “big lie” — that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Another poll lists Latter-day Saints — along with white evangelicals and Hispanic Protestants — as the most likely to believe in the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, alleging that the world is run by a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

Why are so many members and others embracing these outlandish tales? What’s the appeal of such conspiracy theories? Are these strictly about politics or could more be at play?

Matthew Bowman, head of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University who will be teaching a class on conspiracy theory in America this fall and who just completed a book about UFO belief for Yale University Press, discusses those questions and more.

As we approach the third anniversary of President Russell M. Nelson’s plea for members, media, academics and all others to start using the full name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and stop using the term “Mormon,” an outside religious scholar is suggesting a, shall we say, different approach. In fact, an opposite approach.

Peter Thuesen, in a recent blog post, says the church should instead lean into the Mormon moniker. Use it. Admire it. Embrace it.

A religious studies professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Thuesen explains his reasoning and why the church should reconsider its well-known nickname.

Proselytizing has been a hallmark of Mormonism since its founding. It has become common to see pairs of young men, called “elders,” or young women, dubbed “sisters,” sporting black nametags and talking to people about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In recent years, however, the faith’s global evangelizing program has shifted in tactics, especially during the pandemic, with less emphasis on so-called tracting (spreading the word from door to door) and more on technology (seeking and teaching converts online).

On this week’s show, David and Kathleen Cook of Rochester, N.Y., talk about innovations they enacted as mission presidents in Chile from 2013 to 2016, their work today as service missionary leaders and the ever-evolving nature of proselytizing and humanitarian service.

For 34 years, the Rev. Tom Goldsmith of Salt Lake City’s First Unitarian Church has been a prominent presence on Utah’s religious landscape.

At the helm of his left-leaning congregation, Goldsmith championed social justice causes like immigration reform and climate change.

He has shaped his congregation into a refuge for believers who do not feel at home in more conservative faiths, including the LDS Church.

Now he is retiring and will give his final sermon Sunday.

On this week’s show, he reflects on his ministry, including his dispute with Salt Lake City after it sold a chunk of Main Street to the LDS Church, congregant Tim DeChristopher’s monkey-wrenching of an oil and gas lease auction, and his church providing sanctuary to a Honduran immigrant.

In recent years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more fully embraced its teachings about Heavenly Mother, but she has been a part of the faith since virtually the beginning.

She has long been celebrated in song and verse, but now members and leaders have begun to openly discuss her and debate her qualities.

Two Latter-day Saint women, McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding, have written a handful of children’s books about women in scriptures — poets, priestesses and prophets as well as judges and generals — but their most recent works are about Heavenly Mother herself.

On this week’s show, Krishna and Spalding discuss their two latest books, “A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother” and “A Boy’s Guide to Heavenly Mother.”

D. Michael Quinn, the noted historian who died last week at 77, had an outsized impact on academic explorations of the church’s past.

He was a prodigious researcher, who wrote 10 books and numerous essays. Though a believer in the faith’s founding events, Quinn resigned from church-owned Brigham Young University under pressure and subsequently was excommunicated from the faith in 1993 as part of the famed “September Six” for his writings about women and the priesthood, as well as about post-Manifesto polygamy.

On this week’s show, Ross Peterson, retired professor of history at Utah State University and former editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, discusses Quinn’s life and work.

Natasha Helfer, a licensed sex therapist and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, faced a disciplinary hearing Sunday on her membership status.

She was accused of apostasy for her public stances on masturbation, same-sex marriage and pornography, positions she says are consistent with the consensus in the mental health community.

Due to procedural differences, Helfer wound up not attending the hearing, so the council took place without her.

On this week’s show, Latter-day Saint sex therapist Jennifer Finlayson-Fife and a friend of Helfer, discusses those topics and the effect this move by church leaders may have on mental health professionals and their Latter-day Saint patients.

His father died when he was 7 years old. Raised by his mother and his maternal grandparents, he committed himself to hard work and diligent scholarship.

He became a star student, earned a degree at one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools and launched a legal career that would see him rise to the Utah Supreme Court with whispers that he someday could land a seat on the country’s highest court.

Then, virtually overnight, Dallin H. Oaks changed his life’s trajectory, trading his career in the law for a commitment to his Lord. He accepted a call to be an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a lifetime appointment in which he now stands as the top counselor to President Russell M. Nelson and next in line to assume leadership of the global faith.

On this week’s show, historian Richard Turley, talks about his recently released biography, “In the Hands of the Lord: The Life Story of Dallin H. Oaks,” which documents the personal journey of a church leader known for his devotion to religious liberty, his doctrinal dissections and his pointed preaching from the pulpit.

General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was, for the third straight time, all-virtual due to the pandemic. That didn’t stop it from being timely and topical.

Those who tuned in heard about Christ and the resurrection (especially on Easter Sunday), the faith’s international footprint, repeated recognitions that most of the 16.6 million members are single, condemnations of cyberbullying and racist attacks, and an extensive exploration of the Constitution and the bounds of partisan politics.

And only two women spoke.

On this week’s podcast, Religion News Service columnist Jana Riess, author of “The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church,” looks back at the highlights, lowlights and memorable moments from conference and what some of them may portend the church’s future.