The Mormon Land newsletter is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly highlight reel of news in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Join us on Patreon and receive the full newsletter, podcast transcripts and access to all of our religion content.
The reviews are in for ‘American Primeval’
“American Primeval” is bleak, bloody, even barbaric — and the No. 1 TV show on Netflix.
So what are others saying about the fictional series centered around 19th-century Latter-day Saint pioneers, Brigham Young, the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre?
Here is a sampling:
• “After some vivid early scenes … ‘American Primeval’ is mostly dead on the page. There’s not enough excitement in the ideas, and there’s not enough thought in the storytelling,” The New York Times writes. “What’s left is the sometimes orgiastic brutality — no different from the violence in the kind of low-rent entertainment ‘American Primeval’ wants to separate itself from — and the manifold formulas of the Western.”
• “There is really no excuse any more, if there ever was one, for inaccurate and sensationalized anti-Mormon portrayals of the Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Latter-day Saint scholar Dan Peterson argues on the Patheos website. “The actual facts are bad enough.”
(Netflix) Joe Tippett plays James Wolsey in an episode of "American Primeval" depicting the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
• “Weirdly enough, given the many, many individual moments of violence in the show,” Slate notes, “the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a fictionalized version of which sets the major events of the plot in motion and which accounts for many of the casualties historians assign to the Utah War, gets toned down in comparison to the historical record.”
• “For all its power to compel — and it is a gripping yarn — there isn’t quite the heft such a carefully attended drama should have, or even appears to think it has,” The Guardian states. “The message seems to be the same as all modern Westerns: Pioneer life was nasty, brutish and short.”
The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: What ‘American Primeval’ gets wrong and right
(Matt Kennedy | Netflix) Shea Whigham, left, plays Jim Bridger and Kim Coates portrays Brigham Young in an episode of "American Primeval."
A Mountain Meadows Massacre historian and a Shoshone leader help separate fact from fiction in “American Primeval,” and discuss the portrayals of Brigham Young, Jim Bridger, Mormon militias and Native American tribes.
Listen to the podcast.
Little hands, big difference
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Primary children participate in service projects.
Hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saint children around the world will be rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty — not molding Play-Doh or building sandcastles or mucking in mud — but rather helping others. The tiny tots have been given a tall task: Perform an annual service project.
“We hope this worldwide effort will help children realize they are an important part of [the church] and can contribute in meaningful ways,” the faith’s General Primary Presidency announced in a news release. “...We are excited to see how children … make a difference in their communities.”
Ups and downs in Utah
Utah’s predominant faith eliminated more stakes (regional clusters of congregations) than ever in the state last year. But the 17 stakes created offset the 11 that were lost.
The discontinued stakes in recent years have been “primarily concentrated in Salt Lake County, particularly in older, urban areas,” The Cumorah Foundation reports in its December newsletter. “[In addition] the number of non-Latter-day Saints has been increasing at a more rapid rate than Latter-day Saints.”
Temple news
• Apostle Ulisses Soares is scheduled to dedicate the Nairobi Temple on May 18 after an April 17-May 3 open house. This will be the church’s first temple in Kenya, home to nearly 20,000 members and about 70 congregations.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) An artistic rendering of the exterior of the Brussels Belgium Temple.
• An exterior rendering of the planned Brussels Temple has been released. The temple, a first for Belgium, will be placed in an existing building.
From The Tribune
• A play by Utah Valley University students exploring family relations when a loved one leaves the church — and featured last year in a special “Mormon Land” live podcast — recently wrapped a run at an interfaith film festival in New York.
(Courtesy) UVU student Mckenzie Blair performs a monologue as part of the play "In Good Faith," a performance based on interviews with real people impacted by faith loss in their families.
• A Latter-day Saint lawmaker, determined to help others honor the Sabbath, seeks to add a new “thou shalt not” to Utah’s books by forbidding corporations from requiring franchise owners to open on Sundays.
• Your guide to the high-stakes court hearing the church faces this week over its tithing and financial practices.
• Tribune guest columnist Eli McCann left the Latter-day Saint faith years ago, but, singing lullabies to his new baby, he discovers that Jesus still wants him for a “sunbeam.”
• The church is distributing aid and opening its buildings to victims of the devastating Los Angeles area fires. And Tribune columnist Gordon Monson explains how members are helping and being helped.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square performs during the inauguration ceremony for Gov. Spencer Cox in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025.
• The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square provided the musical backdrop at the swearing-in ceremony of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox last week. “There is no one that ties generations together better,” he said in a release, “than [The Tabernacle Choir].”
• The new cartoon curriculum introducing to kids the church’s past practice of polygamy misses the mark, says Latter-day Saint poet Carol Lynn Pearson.
