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Is Criticizing Mitt Romney an Excommunicable Offense? No.

By Joanna Brooks

…and end.” And by late Friday, journalists Peggy Fletcher Stack at the Salt Lake Tribune and Laurie Goodstein at the New York Times also had a more complicated story to tell than that reported at The Daily Beast. According to Stack, the major precipitant for the disciplinary council was not the essay questioning Romney’s political independence from the Church but rather a Mormonthink.com article that publicly disclosed details from LDS temple cerem…

The Circle Can Remain Unbroken, If Battered And Bloody

By Daniel Schultz

…ven when he doesn’t, he forces me to do so. For that, he is “good health to me nevertheless.” I am a better man and a better citizen for having to consider his perspective, even if I do wish he’d go jump in the lake more than just occasionally. That might not make us the best society possible, but it does have the virtue of holding us together, in however unlovely and democratic a form as we might have….

Glenn’s at it Again, and Again

By Joanna Brooks

Oh, Glenn Beck. Earlier this month at a Mormon symposium in Salt Lake City, I spoke on a panel about how Mormons should respond to Glenn Beck. My take: don’t underestimate him, but try not to get so worked up about him. Beck wins every time we send more chatter, more attention, or more internet “hits” his way. He’s not making any converts, he’s running out of material (witness his July foray against 1960s black theology—1960s??!!), and the spin c…

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

By Bruce Ledewitz

…hip of church and state. Summum, founded in 1975 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, is dedicated to a form of Gnostic Christianity. According to its beliefs, the original tablets given by God to Moses did not contain the Ten Commandments, but instead consisted of what they call the “Seven Aphorisms.” Moses did not believe the Children of Israel were ready for the wisdom of these teachings, so he shared them with only a select group of people. Mo…

“Papers Please”: The Legal Battle Over Church Sex-Abuse Files

By Omar Shamout

…Clark said. “With the Mormon Church, everything that happens goes to Salt Lake.” The problem is those documents aren’t discoverable in court. The LDS Church maintains it does not keep records of child abuse. Plaintiff attorneys have been unable to convince courts that the Church’s disciplinary documents fall outside of clergy-penitent privilege. In 2004, two Washington sisters sued the Mormon Church for negligence after being molested by their st…

A Scholar Responds: Candidates, Think Twice When Invoking Religion

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ashington DC would not answer to Vatican City; we may confidently add Salt Lake City to the list. But then, quite amazingly, Romney suggested that religiosity is actually necessary to the continued health of our body politic and ethical life. But whose religion, and which ethics? Romney’s “religion” is completely nonspecific, because no one who invokes religion in politics seems to know enough, or care enough, to say specifically what kind of reli…

Are White Evangelicals as Concerned About Middle Eastern Christians as We’re Meant to Believe?

By John Stoehr

…an, the point of being born again is to avoid burning for an eternity in a Lake of Fire. What’s morality got to do with that? (The people I’m describing, by the way, are all white. I have no unique insight into African-American evangelical religion or culture.) My argument here is kind of the inverse of Martin Luther’s. The German theologian who launched the Reformation came to believe that “good works” did not bring salvation. Doing the right thi…

Why Build a Mormon Complex in Philly?

By David Krueger

…th the Republican party at a rate of 80%, but in Philadelphia Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1. The church’s stance in opposing same-sex marriage in particular will be unappealing to many of Philadelphia’s millennials. Time will tell if experiments in Mormon urbanism will spark a surge of enthusiasm among millennials, but the odds are against them. Still, just in case it doesn’t work out, the LDS church is including the residential and comme…

‘Landmark’ Speech From LDS Leader on LGBTQ Rights and Religious Freedom Was More Like a Sunnier Groundhog Day

By Aly Marino

…h regard to the Church’s relationship to LGBTQ people, and indeed the Salt Lake Tribune’s religion reporter called it “important,” while the paper clearly deems the speech’s balancing act a success. First, I will acknowledge that this speech did sound very different from Oaks’ previous speeches. He referenced Obergefell without disparaging it, speaking critically of government employees who failed to uphold the law; and, in addition to Christian s…

Mormons Declare Same-Sex Marriage Apostasy, Deny Baptism to Children of Same-Sex Couples; Colombian Court OKs Adoption Over Church Objections; Franklin Graham Praises Putin’s Anti-Gay Policies; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…resh from playing a visible role at the World Congress of Families in Salt Lake City, announced this week that children living with a same-sex couple, whether adopted or the natural child of one of the parents, cannot be blessed or baptized. Natural or adopted children living in a same-sex household will only be allowed to be baptized once they are 18, disavow the practice of same-sex cohabitation or marriage, and stop living within the household,…