Latter-Day Saints
Behind the Latter-day Saint church’s vast wealth are two centuries of financial hits and misses
By Benjamin Park — April 5, 2023
(The Conversation) — Joseph Smith encouraged early Latter-day Saints to pool their resources. Two centuries later, one of the results is an investment portfolio estimated at $100 billion.
What’s going on with the wave of GOP bills about trans teens? Utah provides clues
By Kelsy Burke and Tyler Lefevor — April 4, 2023
(The Conversation) — Faith, politics and LGBTQ rights are more complicated than it can appear at first glance.
Most US Mormons are failing the Word of Wisdom, nurse says
By Jana Riess — March 29, 2023
(RNS) — Sugar and meat are killing us softly.
Study: Religious attendance dips slightly after pandemic
By Yonat Shimron — March 28, 2023
(RNS) — The study found the share of U.S. adults who generally say they attend religious services at least once a month dropped from 33% in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak, to 30% in 2022.
Report: LGBTQ Americans tend to be younger and have no religion
By Bob Smietana — March 23, 2023
(RNS) — The new report from PRRI also found that many religious Americans support LGBTQ nondiscrimination rights, even those who oppose same sex-marriage.
Americans like Jews, Catholics and mainline Protestants. Evangelicals, not so much.
By Yonat Shimron — March 15, 2023
(RNS) — A new Pew Research poll finds that only 18% of nonevangelical Americans had favorable opinions of evangelicals; 32% had somewhat unfavorable views.
All aboard the Mormon women’s history cruise
By Jana Riess — March 15, 2023
(RNS) — Sign me up for that.
State lawmakers push for priests to report abuse learned about in confessional
By Jack Jenkins — March 14, 2023
(RNS) — Catholic bishops are pushing back, arguing the statutes would infringe on the First Amendment rights of priests.
Mormons know how the Church sanctioned racial exclusion. That policy has a paper trail.
By Jana Riess — March 10, 2023
(RNS) — Paul Reeve's new book argues the decision to ban Blacks from priesthood and the temple began with Brigham Young but wasn't fully entrenched until the early 1900s under Joseph F. Smith.
Mormonism’s slow shift away from demonizing working mothers
By Jana Riess — March 1, 2023
(RNS) — The LDS church used to vilify working mothers. Then it began to quietly tolerate them. Now it has begun to celebrate their achievements.
Push to require clergy to report abuse stalls in Mormon Utah
By Sam Metz — March 1, 2023
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Behind-the-scenes conversations between legislative leaders and what Senate President Stuart Adams said was “a broad base of religious groups” helped thwart proposals.
Spencer W. Kimball diaries shine a light behind the scenes of modern Mormonism
By Jana Riess — February 17, 2023
(RNS) — This week’s release of the former LDS president’s diaries offers a peek behind the curtain of the 1978 priesthood/temple revelation and Kimball’s relations with Mormon leaders.
How much do Americans know about the faiths around them?
By Ryan Burge — February 15, 2023
(RNS) — And what helps us most to understand our neighbors’ faiths?
More Jesus, less touching: 14 changes to the Mormon temple endowment ceremony
By Jana Riess — February 10, 2023
(RNS) — Just four years after the most recent revisions, the LDS temple ceremony has undergone more changes.
‘Real Housewife’ Heather Gay pens a juicy ex-Mormon memoir
By Jana Riess — February 8, 2023
(RNS) — Mormonism worked well for ‘Real Housewife’ Heather Gay — until it didn’t. She’s not looking back.
