Pastor Jeff

Jeff McCullough is an Evangelical pastor who has spent the last year learning everything there is to know about Latter-day Saints and the Church. (Sarah Griffin, LDS Living)

Pastor Jeff created a YouTube channel to chronicle his journal called Hello Saints.  On his YouTube page, Jeff says that his channel is devoted to fighting criticism with curiosity as he invites dialogue between Christians and Mormons.  Are Mormons Christians? What do Christians and Latter-day Saints agree and disagree about? (YouTube.com/hellosaints)

Pastor Jeff released his first video in March of 2022. To his surprise (but not his wife’s) his videos now receive hundreds of thousands of views. To continue his journey, Jeff and his family have moved to Utah, and feels that his work is far from done. “Until and unless I feel that more people are getting in the game to maintain this space and to build bridges, I want to remain here. . . . I really feel that the ability to courageously and patiently stand in tension is so critical for truly meaningful relationships and a pursuit of truth,” Jeff says. “I think that’s where God works.” (LDS Living)

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McKay Coppins

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic where he covers politics, religion, and national affairs. He is the author of The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party’s Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House, a book about the battle for the future of the Republican Party, and he has been a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. He won the Aldo Beckman Award from the White House Correspondents Association for his coverage of the Trump presidency, and the Wilbur Award for religion journalism. He lives near Washington, DC, with his wife and children. (Simonandschuster.com)  He was previously a reporter for BuzzFeed News, where he covered two presidential campaigns, and Newsweek, where he co-authored a cover story on Mitt Romney and Mormonism. (isoj.org)

About the Book Romney: A Reckoning:

(GET IT HERE.)

Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump’s GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president’s supporters went on to storm the U.S. Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection. Despite these moments of public courage, Romney has shared very little about what he’s witnessed behind the scenes over his three decades in politics—in GOP cloakrooms and caucus lunches, in his private meetings with Donald Trump and his family, in his dealings with John McCain, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema. Now, exclusively for this biography, Romney has provided a window to his most private thoughts.

Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals and private emails, this in-depth portrait by award-winning journalist McKay Coppins shows a public servant authentically wrestling with the choices he has made over his career.  In lively, revelatory detail, the book traces Romney’s early life and rise through the ranks of a fast-transforming Republican Party, and exposes how a trail of seemingly small compromises by political leaders has led to a crisis in democracy. 

Ultimately, Romney: A Reckoning is a redemptive story about a flawed politician who summoned his moral courage just as fear and divisiveness were overtaking American life. (mckayaldencoppins.com)

Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins

McKay Coppins Ep. 384

Inside the tense exchange between Romney and  Santos

Guy Mitt Smiley Romney

Deseret News article on McKay’s book

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Leah Sottile is the author of When the Moon Turns to Blood: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell and a Story of Murder, Faith and End Times. As a freelance journalist, her features, profiles, investigations and

Sottile’s National Magazine Award-nominated Bundyville podcast is paired with a textual longform journalism version at Longreads.com and was produced in collaboration with Longread and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Both the podcast and textual version of Bundyville investigate conflicts over public lands in the American West, federal jursidiction over them, the Bundy ranching family’s involvement in a 2014 armed standoff with federal officials in Nevada and the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, and the myriad cast of associated characters in the world of patriot, milita, anti-government, religious, and state-seperatist movements.

Leah got her start the music editor for the Spokane Washington alt-weekly newspaper The Inlander, where she won the 2011-2012 Mental Health Reporting award. (Leah Sottile – Wikipedia)  She has since had her investigations and essays have been featured by the Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, Outside, The Atlantic, Vice and several others. She is currently the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana School of Journalism. (reddcenter.byu.edu)

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Ammon Bundy Ep. 137 pt. 1

Ammon Bundy Ep. 137 pt. 2

Church statement on “The White Horse Prophecy”

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LDS Avow—Another Voice of Warning website

“Every week in church, I’m going, can I come out?” by Leah Sottile

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Opening Exercises

Lighter News

Heavier News

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Darin Scott is an American actor, writer, and director of English, Scottish, and German decent, born in the small town of Vernal, Utah. Most of his childhood and adolescence (12 years) was spent in Vancouver, Washington. A month before Scott’s seventeenth birthday, his father died of a heart attack. As the youngest and last of five children in the home, Scott became the man of the house.

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The school stage is where Scott’s passion for acting began but he was also very into sports. After playing college football at Brigham Young University-Idaho, Scott finished his BA at the University of Utah. His football days led to his first acting role in the Disney film “Going To The Mat,” working with Khleo Thomas as the football jock, “Yardley”. The following year, Scott booked another role in Disney’s “Halloweentown High,” where he worked with Academy Award Nominated, Debbie Reynolds, as well as Teen Choice Nominated, Lucas Grabeel. Scott read for the role of Wylie in Disney’s “Buffalo Dreams” and had the director all but convinced until he was asked his age (being 25 at the time). Though Scott is typically cast in younger roles, in this case, the director took Scott’s age a bit too literally. Scott took a few roles in independent films and then landed a lead role in Discovery Channel’s “I Shouldn’t Be Alive.”

In spite of his brewing film success, with a young family, Scott relocated to California to pursue a law degree. Shortly after moving, he booked a role in “127 Hours” where he worked with Golden Globe Winner (and Academy Award Nominated), James Franco. Although the role turned out to be smaller than anticipated, as the entire wedding scene was cut from the final edit, it did steer Scott from law school. He withdrew after one semester to attend Playhouse West Acting School in North Hollywood. While studying there, he booked roles in a number of films, including the title role of the mountain man scout Ephraim Hanks in “Ephraim’s Rescue,” where he showed his ability to carry a film. Later, Scott was also direct-cast as a younger character version of Emmy-Nominated, John Heard, in “Counting For Thunder.” Not letting his law background go to waste, Scott followed by landing a supporting role as the lead Defense Attorney in “Just Let Go,” where he worked opposite Emmy-Nominated Henry Ian Cusick and Sam Sorbo (Jenkins). Scott continued his success working opposite Teen Choice Winner, Josh Lucas, in Kevin Costner’s acclaimed, Emmy-Nominated and Golden Globe winning series, “Yellowstone”.

Scott is also the writer and director of over 30 commercials and short films, including the third all-time highest crowdfunded short film on Kickstarter in 2017, “Reign of Judges: Title of Liberty.” In late 2021, Scott made his feature directorial debut, writing, directing, and starring in “The Oath,” based on his award-winning short film, “Reign of Judges: Title of Liberty,” also starring Billy Zane, Karina Lombard, and Eugene Brave Rock. “The Oath” is set to release in theaters in 2023.

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Stephen LeSueur is a former journalist, author and historian.  His book “The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri” won the John Whitmer Historical Association award for best book in 1987.

Stephen worked for over five years as the editor of “Washington Technology,” and is a former journalist for “Deseret News,” covering national security issues and the defense industry. (SteveLesueurl.com)

Stephen ‘s latest book “Life and Death on the Mormon Frontier: The Murders of Frank LeSueur and Gus Gibbons by the Wild Bunch” is now available.

“The Wild Bunch was the largest and most notorious band of outlaws in the American West. Led by two gunmen better known by their aliases, Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) and Kid Curry (Harvey Logan), the Wild Bunch was an informal trust of thieves and rustlers that preyed upon stagecoaches, small banks, and especially railroads from the late 1880s to the first decade of the twentieth century.”(Metmuseum.org, author unknown)

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Find more about your family history at FamilySearch.org

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Gerrit Dirkmaat is an associate professor of Church History and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He has worked as a writer and historian for the church history department, working on the Joseph Smith Papers. In addition to his work for BYU and on various journals and academic boards, Gerrit hosts a church history podcast called “Standard of Truth,”

Click here to read “The Standard of Truth” quote by Joseph Smith.

Watch the video of this interview on YouTube or become a Patreon Saint to watch it on Facebook.

Click here to read the Church of Jesus Christ’s statement regarding the Joseph Smith daguerreotype.

Gerrit Dirkmaat and Michael Hubbard McKay authored “From Darkness Unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Transalation and Publication of the Book of Mormon”.

Gerrit is well versed in The Council of Fifty; minutes from these meetings are included in The Joseph Smith Papers.

Volume I of The Brigham Young Journals is now available.

Check out “A Bunch of Richards” Episode 733

Read all about the Joseph Smith Papers at JosephSmithPapers.org

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