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Mitt Romney’s Best-Known Mormon Critic Tells it All. One Last Time.

By Joanna Brooks

…and tried very hard to fit in like the kids from Arizona, California, and Utah. I dyed my hair blonde. I joined the Young Republicans. I went to Cleon Skousen lectures. And I wanted to get married, go to Washington, and work in the State Department. At the very last moment, with no boyfriend to talk me out of graduation, my professors talked me into applying to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, and I got a scholarship. It shocked…

Will Justice Gorsuch Prioritize “Religious Freedom” Over Civil Rights?

By Sunnivie Brydum

…is monument did not endorse religion. “The other case was a case where the Utah Highway Patrol authorized the erection of 12-foot-tall crosses on public property, on the side of public highways, and prominent spaces to memorialize fallen troopers, as well as two crosses that were right at the headquarters of the highway patrol. And again, Judge Gorsuch thought that these crosses did not endorse religion, notwithstanding how large they were, how pr…

Top Ten Peacemakers in the Science-Religion Wars

By Paul Wallace

…-religionists. 9. Jon Huntsman, US Ambassador to China, former Governor of Utah, candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for president, for decoupling conservative politics and creationism You know it’s bad when a candidate draws attention to himself for openly trusting scientists to do science. But that’s the kind of year the GOP’s having. This year’s field of Republican presidential candidates has distinguished itself as possibly the least…

Does Christopher Hitchens Think Mormons are Sinistererer?

By Joanna Brooks

…century’s anti-Mormon hysteria, when national debate erupted over whether Utah Senator Reed Smoot should be allowed to assume a seat in Congress: (Image source here.) The cartoon depicts politician Smoot as the puppet of a raggedy but fearsome (even occultish—note the horned ears) Mormon prophet. In political cartoons from the 1880s through 1910s, Mormonism was often depicted in a similarly sinister guise, for example, as a viper or an octopus st…

Where are the Mormon “Nuns on the Bus”?

By Joanna Brooks

…iding fewer services. It hasn’t always been this way: during the New Deal, Utah Mormons benefitted tremendously from federal programs and voted repeatedly for Roosevelt, despite Church leaders’ warnings not to do so. But Mormons (especially the highly active Book-of-Mormon-belt Mormons surveyed by the Pew) now take justifiable pride in the LDS Church’s own extensive internal welfare system—complete with ranches, canneries, and storehouses nationwi…

The Free Speech Case That Dared Not Speak the Name of the Establishment Clause

By Bruce Ledewitz

On Wednesday, February 25, the Supreme Court decided Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, an easy and insignificant free speech case. Unfortunately, the Court sidestepped the profound Establishment Clause issues within the case, leaving America mired in culture war confusion about the proper relationship of church and state. Summum, founded in 1975 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, is dedicated to a form of Gnostic Christianity. According to i…

10 Commandments SCOTUS Ruling Right, Highlights Wrongs

By Jay Wexler

WASHINGTON — A public park in Utah that includes a monument to the Ten Commandments need not make room for a similar monument reflecting the beliefs of an unusual religion called Summum, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday. — Feb. 27, 2009, New York Times The decision in Summum was clearly right—the Ten Commandments monument is government speech, and therefore the government need not open up its park to any private speaker, like the Summum, who…

LDS Church Brings Religious Pressure to Zoning Fight

By Joanna Brooks

…ge is beginning to pick up on a story first reported last Friday in Provo, Utah’s Daily Herald about the LDS Church applying a form of ecclesiastical pressure to get local residents who oppose the building of a nine-story LDS Church building in their neighborhood to relent. Residents in the Pleasant View neighborhood of northeast Provo had been assured by their local LDS Church leaders that it was okay to express concern about the building of a n…

Meet the New (Straight White American Male) Mormon President

By Holly Welker

…ounselor, and made Dallin H. Oaks, 85, his first counselor. Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice known for his legalistic approach to religion, has objected to candid scholarship about the church by saying, “it’s wrong to criticize leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true,” and has defended the church’s antipathy to gay marriage by saying, “the history of the church is not to seek apologies or to give them.” Monson’s obituary in t…

Churchgoers, Stay Home—It’s The American Way

By Shelby Balik

…with old friends. Others, like Michelle Orihel, a Catholic in Cedar City, Utah, and Andrea Catlett, an ecumenical Christian in suburban Denver, have taken this opportunity to sample virtual services and sermons at distant churches. “We’re not assembling in a place,” Catlett reflected, “but we’re assembling in the heart.” The usual hassles of regular observance no longer pose obstacles. David Chang, Tracey Deutsch’s husband, now has time to bake c…