Postmormon Postmortem

In 1922, Mormon Church president Heber J. Grant pointed to a box of records and told his new secretary, “You won’t be needing those.” Inside: the Council of Fifty.

The Council of Fifty was Joseph Smith’s secret 1844 political body in Nauvoo, Illinois, and its members voted to accept him as “Prophet, Priest & King.” Jess and Hannah go through the minutes: the secrecy vow, the April 25 revelation “ye are my constitution,” Smith’s presidential campaign, William Clayton burying the records in his garden, and Brigham Young’s move west. The records stayed in church custody, including a 1981 look during the church’s dealings with Mark Hofmann’s documents, until the Joseph Smith Papers published them in 2016. Historians call the theory theodemocracy. Religious liberty sounds different when the people guaranteeing it believe revelation outranks the rules meant to restrain them.

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

In April 2005, Raven Abaroa called 911 from his Durham, North Carolina home and told the operator his wife had been shot. Janet Abaroa, 25 and pregnant, had been stabbed three times while their six-month-old son slept in the next room.

Hannah and Jess follow the case from a temple marriage in Washington, D.C., through embezzlement charges, a $500,000 life insurance policy, an exhumation that recovered a contact lens from Janet’s eye, an 11-to-1 hung jury, and the Alford plea that let Raven maintain his innocence. The episode closes with Doctrine and Covenants 132 and the eternal marriage Janet was determined to keep.

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

Jess explains Church Correlation to Hannah, and the closest comparison she could find is McDonald's.

Correlation solved real logistical problems for a church going global. It also moved decisions about curriculum, publications, and programs toward the center. In 1970, Relief Society reported about 338,000 members and roughly 301,000 magazine subscriptions. The Relief Society Magazine ended that year anyway. Five years later, Belle Spafford said women were still writing to ask for it back.

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

On September 16, the Mormon Church sent a letter to all 1,300 congregations in Idaho telling members to oppose the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, an abortion ballot measure. Five days later, 339 congregations in Nevada got a letter with the same instruction and the same wording about voicing opposition "in a respectful manner." Missouri and Virginia also have abortion measures on the November ballot. The Church has not weighed in on either one.

This Mormon Monday, Jess and Hannah go through both letters, including the Idaho sentence that cites the Church's own 2024 neutrality statement. Then they go back to October 2016, when First Presidency letters told members in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Colorado how to vote on recreational marijuana and physician-assisted suicide, and set each one beside the Republican Party position on the same issue.

You'll also hear about Prop 8: the 2010 California FPPC finding that the Church reported $36,928 in non-monetary contributions late, and the $5,539 fine that followed. Plus the legal line between the Johnson Amendment (candidates) and IRS lobbying limits (ballot measures), and what changes when one letter is read from the pulpit in 1,300 congregations.

Is the Mormon Church politically neutral? Jess and Hannah leave that one with you.

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

Brigham Young said God revealed that Adam is our Father and God. In 1976, Mormon president Spencer W. Kimball denounced the Adam-God theory as false doctrine. How do you know which prophet to trust?

In April 1852, Brigham Young told General Conference that Adam is "our Father and our God." Wilford Woodruff and Hosea Stout both recorded it in their diaries, and Heber C. Kimball and apostle Franklin D. Richards backed it up. Orson Pratt told the Twelve it contradicted scripture, and the pressure to defer followed. In 1873 Brigham said God had revealed the doctrine to him, and related teaching appeared in the St. George temple's Lecture at the Veil. Then Mormon theology changed, Mark E. Petersen said Adam was not our God, and Spencer W. Kimball denounced the idea in 1976. This episode traces the Adam-God theory from the Journal of Discourses to General Conference and asks what happens when a prophet is wrong about whether something came from God.

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

Former Mormon MTC president Joseph Bishop became the subject of a sex scandal after a former sister missionary, McKenna Denson, secretly recorded him in 2017. Denson has accused Bishop of raping her at the Provo Missionary Training Center in 1984.

We follow her reports to Mormon leaders, the recording, the police investigation, and the lawsuit that ended without a trial.

SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

Jen Shah showed viewers a huge house, designer clothes, expensive parties, and the Shah Squad. Then came the fraud charges. Hannah introduces Jess to the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star, her Mormon upbringing, and the scam behind her business.

SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

Around 2011, a bishop in Bisbee, Arizona heard a man confess to sexually abusing his daughter. He didn't call the police or child protective services. He called a helpline the Mormon Church set up for bishops, and the person who answered worked for a law firm.

On July 30, 2026, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the bishops in the Paul Adams case had no duty to report what they learned through confession. This Mormon Monday goes through the opinion, Arizona's mandatory-reporting statute and its clergy exception, and the Church's response, including what its General Handbook says about the duty to protect others.

SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem

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Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick

If you've ever posted something about the church — a question, something from your own deconstruction — and had someone show up in your comments who just seemed ready for you... that feeling was accurate. They did know something you didn't. And it wasn't because they were smarter, better prepared, or more faithful. It's because someone built infrastructure so they could be.

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In 1897, a theatrical Holy Land lecturer named Lydia von Finkelstein Mountford arrived in Salt Lake City — and then appeared 67 times in Wilford Woodruff's diary. No person appeared more often. He corresponded with her using only the initial "M." He traveled to the Pacific Coast under an assumed name while she was there. D. Michael Quinn argued Woodruff probably married her as a post-Manifesto plural wife. Woodruff's biographer disagreed. In 1920, she was posthumously sealed to him by proxy — even though she was never baptized.

Postmormon Postmortem's What Do You Know Wednesday puts one host on the spot with a topic the other picked. This week: the story the diary tells, and what it doesn't say outright.