The NAACP president and the unlikely alliance with the LDS Church | Episode 188

06/30/21 • 26 min

In an unexpected and bold move, President Russell M. Nelson announced a partnership with the NAACP in 2018 — just days before The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints celebrated the 40th anniversary of the end of its centurylong priesthood and temple ban on Black members. In recent weeks, the Utah-based faith elevated this unlikely alliance with the nation’s oldest civil rights organization by unveiling nearly $10 million in scholarships and humanitarian aid. On this week’s show, NAACP President Derrick Johnson talks about how the former foes — the church once barred Black members from holding its priesthood or entering its temples —became friends, why this evolving relationship is important, and where it is headed.

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What it means for the church that more than a fifth of young members are queer | Episode 187

A recent U.S. survey found that more than a fifth of Gen Zers who self-identify as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or other. Nearly that many millennials (19%) do as well. That is almost double the 10% that researchers Jana Riess and Benjamin Knoll found in their 2016 Next Mormons Survey. On this week’s show, Knoll, an associate professor of politics at Centre College in Kentucky, and Calvin Burke, an openly gay senior majoring in English at Brigham Young University and a media manager for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, discuss these latest findings and their implications for the Utah-based faith now and into the future.

Next Episode

Puncturing the mystery of Emma Smith, who loved Joseph but loathed polygamy | Episode 189

She was church founder Joseph Smith’s first scribe. She created the first Latter-day Saint hymnal. She was the first president of the women’s Relief Society. She was, indeed, the faith’s first first lady. Yet Emma Smith, beloved wife of Joseph Smith, remains a mystery to many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jennifer Reeder, a historian for the Utah-based church, seeks to break through that mystery and the myth in her new biography, appropriately titled “First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith,” revealing Emma’s undying love for her prophet-husband and her feeling of betrayal at his practice of polygamy, exploring her painful loss of young babies and her lifelong commitment to surviving children, examining her fractious relationship with Brigham Young and the Utah church and her eventual embrace of the Reorganized Church (now called the Community of Christ). On this week’s show, Reeder talks about Emma Smith, the “elect lady” of early Mormonism.