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.
Faces of the faith
The votes are in (more than 460 of them) and thus saith Mormon Land readers: These four Latter-day Saint presidents deserve a spot on a mythical Mount Rushmore of Mormonism.
• Joseph Smith (86%). It’s no stunner that he finished first. The only surprise is that nearly 14% did not vote for the visionary founder who birthed the movement.
• Brigham Young (70%). Though he still has his detractors, this pioneering American Moses led the church for three decades and cemented its place on the religious landscape.
• Gordon B. Hinckley (58%). This gifted communicator who officially led the faith for more than a dozen years (and unofficially even longer due to the declining health of previous presidents) catapulted the global church into the modern mainstream.
• Spencer W. Kimball (48%). This Yoda-like emancipator who ended the church’s racist priesthood/temple prohibition on Black members became beloved for his energetic “do it” resolve.
Just missing the cut: David O. McKay (40%), the white-haired, cream-color-suited educator who expanded missionary efforts worldwide, and the current prophet, centenarian Russell M. Nelson (30%), the church’s oldest president and the greatest temple builder in its 195-year history.
The bottom three, each garnering fewer than 2% of the vote: George Albert Smith, Harold B. Lee and Joseph Fielding Smith.
The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: A church ‘reborn’
(The Salt Lake Tribune) Stassi D. Cramm is the first female prophet-president of Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The new history-making Community of Christ prophet-president discusses her background; the challenges her church faces; its position on a number of issues, including gun violence and climate change; the faith’s finances and its relationship with the Utah-based religion, especially after selling the historic Kirtland Temple; and her hopes for the future.
Listen to the podcast.
Celebrating South America
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Dancers perform as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of the dedication of South America for the preaching of the Latter-day Saint gospel, held in Santiago, Chile, on Saturday, June 14, 2025.
On Christmas Day in 1925, apostle Melvin Ballard ventured to Argentina to dedicate South America for the preaching of the Latter-day Saint gospel.
He predicted that the faith would sprout “just as an oak grows slowly from an acorn” and gain “thousands” of converts.
A hundred years later, apostle Gary Stevenson traveled to Chile earlier this month to celebrate that historic moment with a night of song, dance and sermons.
“We were thrilled to see the pageantry, hear the music, and see the smiles on the faces of everyone, both watching as audience members and participating as cast and musicians,” Stevenson said in a news release. “This is something that is the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel of glad tidings, a gospel that brings happiness and joy.”
Today, the church lists more than 4.4 million members in South America.
Review of new Joseph Smith bio
(Amazon) Historian John Turner's new biography of Joseph Smith.
Alex Beam’s Washington Post review of historian John Turner’s newly released “Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet” gives the biographer high marks for “clear-eyed objectivity and the nimble footwork he displays in sidestepping the rabbit holes that bedevil Mormon history.”
At the same time, the reviewer criticizes Turner’s “propensity to take Smith’s ersatz theology at face value, even at its most outrageous.”
Listen to our recent “Mormon Land” podcast with Turner about his book and read excerpts from that interview. You can also read our story about Beam’s account, titled “American Crucifixion,” of Smith’s murder.
From The Tribune
• Nine Latter-day Saint girls and two adult leaders en route to a church activity perished in a fiery bus crash in Lesotho.
• How many converts joined the church between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025? We don’t know for certain, but it had to be more than 330,877 (the 12-month record set in 1990) because apostle Quentin Cook says the latest stretch was the highest in history.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) John Taylor, third president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He battled to keep polygamy in the faith.
• The church recently published a polygamy revelation from then-President John Taylor that it insisted for years didn’t exist.
• Members of a Latter-day Saint family from Venezuela have been ordered to leave the U.S., but neighbors are rallying around them.
• Wooden tikis at a remote Utah cemetery honoring Hawaiian converts in the late 1800s and early 1900s have fallen prey to vandalism.
• Latter-day Saint composer-screenwriter Cinco Paul of “Despicable Me” fame points to the lessons he learned when his adult children left the church.