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.
Sanctuary is threatened
The new Trump administration has repealed previous guidelines that generally prevented law enforcement officers from entering churches and other “sensitive” areas in search of immigrants lacking permanent legal status.
So what will happen if Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raid a Latter-day Saint congregation?
“I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of wards in the U.S., and every stake, has faithful members who are undocumented,” blogger Sam Brunson writes on By Common Consent. “This new policy indicates that they could be targeted for arrest as they worship at church.”
And how would the Loyola University Chicago law professor view such a police action?
“It stomps on their constitutionally protected, foundational religious liberty,” Brunson argues. “And it stomps on the church’s religious liberty in ministering to those who wish to attend.”
He urges the church hierarchy to provide lay leaders with the “legal and pastoral tools” to safeguard their congregants and religious freedom.
The global faith has been viewed as promoting immigrant-friendly policies and its devotion to religious liberty is well known.
“The church has made very clear it wants a humane policy of immigration enforcement that prioritizes keeping families together,” McKay Coppins, an award-winning Latter-day Saint journalist who covers national politics for The Atlantic, said in a “Mormon Land” podcast soon after Trump’s November election victory. “...Mass deportations could sweep away families that are the backbone of various branches and wards throughout the country, and trigger backlash from fellow members.”
Besides, adds Brunson, “if we truly believe that church attendance and taking the sacrament [Communion] are important (and we do!), anything that forcibly discourages or impedes people from attending church and taking the sacrament potentially has salvific consequences.”
The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: An incredible journey
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Laurie Lee Hall, shown in 2017, bemoans the stricter limitations imposed on transgender Latter-day Saints.
A former bishop, stake president and temple architect, Laurie Lee Hall discusses her new memoir, “Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman,” and the stricter limitations the church has imposed on its transgender members.
Listen to the podcast.
Helping the helpers
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Save the Children is supporting child care and early learning centers damaged by the Southern California wildfires.
The church has kicked in $1.2 million to help four nonprofit groups — the American Red Cross, International Medical Corps, Project HOPE and Save the Children — respond to the Los Angeles area fires.
“Many children left home with only the clothes on their backs and will need our help for many months to come,” Lucero Chavez Ramirez, director of Save the Children’s California programs, said in a news release. “It’s critical we get children the essentials they need to be safe and healthy — and back to learning and their everyday, comforting routines.”
Is Trump overreaching?
(Doug Mills | The New York Times) President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, after his inauguration.
While noting that U.S. presidents from both parties have increasingly turned to executive orders, Mormon Women for Ethical Government criticized the wave of edicts issued by President Donald Trump on his first day back in the Oval Office.
Legal experts say one order, ending automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S., contradicts the Constitution.
“These unilateral actions threaten constitutional order, weaken our republic, and violate the premise of shared power and accountable governance,” MWEG states. “We have a moral and ethical responsibility to speak out against the abuse of executive power and to collaborate as citizens to hold our elected officials accountable to the law.”
In other news out of Washington, when apostles Gary Stevenson and Gerrit Gong attended Trump’s inauguration, they also met and prayed with House Speaker Mike Johonson, R-La., and members of Utah’s all-Republican, all-Latter-day Saint congressional delegation.
“These are men of different faiths and strong convictions,” Rep. Celeste Maloy posted on X, formerly Twitter, “who set an example of how we can build bridges of understanding in our own communities.”
From The Tribune
• In the wake of a Salt Lake Tribune special report about faculty tensions at Brigham Young University, general authority Seventy Clark Gilbert, the church’s education commissioner, vows that the school will always prioritize its religious mission. Days later, a former Honor Code Office administrator explained why he left BYU.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Clark Gilbert speaks at the J. Reuben Clark Law Society 2025 Annual Fireside.
• The church decries “American Primeval” as “dangerously misleading” and laments that Brigham Young is “egregiously mischaracterized as a villainous, violent fanatic.”
• And more on the Netflix series: A historian notes that the real Mountain Meadows Massacre was “so much more brutal.” Listen to her comments and those of a Shoshone leader in a recent “Mormon Land” podcast and read excerpts from that show.
• Touting what he calls “civic theology,” writer and scholar Jonathan Rauch says Latter-day Saint leaders have found the answer to balancing cultural war issues with religious freedom.
(Brookings Institution) Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
• Turns out that Mormonism can be all fun and games.
• The Syracuse Temple is set to be dedicated June 8 after a May 10-31 open house. The single-spired, three-story, 89,000-square-foot edifice will be the church’s 31st planned or existing temple in Utah.
• Sure, the Mormon cricket is just an insect, but that name, frankly, just bugs the heck out of a Utah lawmaker. And he wants to change it.
(Paul Fraughton | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Mormon cricket photographed near Nephi. A Utah lawmaker wants to change the common scientific name of the insect.
