Jamie Loftus

And if you want this story told from the Mormon perspective, there's a lot of LDS produced movies about it on YouTube that are really well acted.

All right, save it for the pulpit. After Smith's death, a guy named Brigham Young takes over, and the Mormons leave Nauvoo in 1846, hiking pioneer-style to what is now present-day Utah, where in the next 10-odd years, they ignored the American government and practiced polygamy openly. That is, until this was going to prevent Utah getting statehood.

Polygamy would be an LDS-sanctioned practice until 1890, but it was technically discontinued at that point to avoid clashing with existing laws around bigamy passed in the 1860s and 70s. However, a lot of Mormons continued to practice polygamy quietly. In today's Mormon marriages, more traditional fundamentalist monogamy is certainly the norm.

And there's a long, complicated history with the Mormons, Utah, and indigenous people. Because unlike most accounts of a new American colony being founded, there were Native Americans in Utah when they arrived. And under Brigham Young, LDS members are encouraged to purchase Native children as slaves and raise them in their homes with the hopes of assimilating them to the Mormon faith.

It's not too dissimilar from the residential schools that separated Native families and erased their culture, often killing children all the way into the 1990s. Today, there's still a very high number of Mormons in Utah, hovering somewhere around 40% in 2023. It's where Brigham Young University is, and where some of the religion's most prominent influencers live today.

Ever heard of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City?

Well, there you go. On the other end of that, about a third of people raised in the LDS today end up leaving the religion, as opposed to the 95% retention rate of the late 1980s. So it's important to note the internet age has made a difference in how Mormonism is perceived by its own members. And if you're Mormon or ex-Mormon, you know that I am barely scratching the surface here.

It's an extremely complicated religion that's been around for nearly 200 years. Things I didn't mention include rituals, observances, restrictive religious underwear, and for the very devout, missions, which are 18 to 24-month assignments where LDS officials determine a location for a young person to go, and their job is to recruit people into the church.

As it pertains to today's episode, it's important to note that Mormonism is a fundamentalist religion that has been historically hostile to women, to queer people, and to anyone who isn't white. What is also important is that the Mormon Church has a shitload of money. A shitload. I had no idea. At present, the Mormon Church's net worth is estimated to be $265 billion dollars.

For context, Disney is valued at $161 billion. Much of this has to do with mandatory tithing, where church members are required to give 10% of their income back to the LDS. As for pop culture, Mormonism has been portrayed negatively a lot. Think HBO show Big Love and still-running Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which, of course, the LDS condemned.

It has... Wow, I wonder why they didn't like that. But the LDS has also produced its fair share of successful entertainment acts. There's no Scientology, but Mitt Romney, David Archuleta, Donny and Marie Osmond, and Gladys Knight is still a pretty impressive roster. The Aquabats are Mormon. Really think about that. and of course, a ton of currently successful influencers. More when we come back.

The prevalence of Mormon influencers has been an increasing point of speculation in the last few months, mostly in connection to two stories that have broken through to the mainstream. The first story, as I write this, a new Hulu reality show that is about to debut about Mormon wife influencers.

The central characters of this show are existing successful Mormon mommy TikTokers. And if the comments on virtually every video of these women is to be believed, they are very controversial within the Latter-day Saint community. And most would say they do not represent Mormonism. In spite of the fact that they live in Salt Lake City where the LDS is headquartered, most of them grew up Mormon.

And part of why they became so popular on TikTok was because they were referencing the tenets and values of the church.

This content got really popular under the hashtag MomTalk on TikTok in the early 2020s. And while this content promotes fundamentalist values around gender roles, due to their popularity, the MomTalkers were also becoming primary breadwinners for their family. The women of MomTalk look very modern. They're usually wearing Kardashian-adjacent athleisure.

But the reason they have a TV show, in my opinion, is not because they blew up on TikTok or even really because they're Mormon. It's because they were perceived as being bad at being Mormon. In 2022, MomTalk influencer Taylor Frankie Paul announced that she and her husband would be getting a divorce because of her violation of the terms of their soft swinging within their Mormon friend group.

And soft swinging is not sanctioned by the LDS. In no small part because that might actually be fun for women.

It's a huge source of controversy among very online Mormons, if the comment section is to be believed. And it's not hard to understand why. Add this to the fact that mom talkers were regularly breaking core tenets of the faith. They did things like drink caffeine. They didn't wear their religious garments beneath their clothes all the time.

This soft-swinging incident might cause a scandal in your average suburban community, but Paul's disclosure that there were multiple Mormon couples involved caused a stir within the community. So, presented with this public scandal and subsequent high-profile influencers' decision to remain within the church, is this bad for the Mormon PR team, or is all press good press?

They haven't been excommunicated or anything like that, but the Mormon church has issued the rare condemnation of this upcoming Hulu show. And this is rare because the LDS hasn't commented on how Mormons are portrayed in pop culture in a while. But when the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives trailer dropped, the LDS released the following statement.