Mormon

This story was originally published by Brigham Young University’s student newspaper, The Daily Universe, in December of 2021. It aired on BYU’s broadcast news channel at the same time. The original story received a Hearst Award for Multimedia Journalism in the spring of 2022. Forty years ago this April, Brenda…

In the 1990s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began a campaign of revisionist history, seeking to overhaul the image of one woman: Emma Hale Smith, first wife of founder and prophet Joseph Smith. Years ago, when I first had the idea of writing a novel about the…

Hulu’s new miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, based on the by John Krakauer’s 2003 book by the same name, has again brought the LDS (or Mormon) faith into contact with American popular culture. However, in order to full understand this series, and the responses to this series, including McKay…

A culture of perfection is killing the very people it seeks to exalt. In 2009, I took a temporary assignment in Salt Lake City and moved there from Seattle, eager to live and work for a while in the heart of Latter-day Saint culture. Although I was no longer an active member of the church, I’d grown up in an LDS family whose…

I left the Mormon church in my mid-twenties but leaving the religious community behind has been more complicated than I expected. I’m in the back row — the very last pew in my congregation, and I’m sobbing. When I walked through the church doors that morning, I wasn’t expecting to…

A flight attendant Drunk, approaches me and asks Why do you believe? She wants me to fight I ask her why she believes We part, but now, friends. Not too long ago I returned back to my hometown. I grew up in the beautiful settlement of Park City, which I‘ve…

There is a question at the forefront of the religious frontier in Western Civilization that has been plaguing spiritual leaders of all faiths. I know my own church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has spent considerable time and resources on the seemingly unsolvable puzzle of the secular…

My faith died with the hands of a priesthood holder on my head, as I received the blessing meant for some other woman. — By Libbie Grant One of my earliest memories takes place in the basement playroom of the house where I spent my early childhood in Rexburg, Idaho, one of the strongholds of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the religion into which I was born and which my ancestors…

The new Hulu show Under The Banner of Heaven, based on the book by the same name, is causing waves in the LDS and former LDS communities, and I’m here to surf. Full disclosure: I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church whose history…