Why is Utah Not a Lutheran Mission Priority?

Mormonism in focus: disaffiliation among young Latter-day Saints, the resurgence of a self-consciously traditional Mormonism, and the institutional and theocratic structure the whole thing.

The Case in Brief

A Christian Mission to Disaffiliate Mormons?

The largest untapped mission field in America is already at the door, leaving for reasons the gospel is built to answer.

1. The field is domestic and enormous. Utah and the Inter-Mountain West hold a vast, unevangelized population reachable without visas or passports — and the LCMS staffs it as a single circuit of fewer than twenty churches.

2. They leave for the reasons Christians leave. It rarely ends at “Joseph Smith wasn’t a prophet”; it almost always becomes a rejection of created moral order — the same fight we already have with our own.

3. They exit into a vacuum. Most don’t cross the street to another church; they drift into nothing, or into the occult. The field is not only open but urgent.

4. There is real common ground. A high view of the family, good neighborliness, industriousness — genuine bridges to build on, not merely refute.

5. Offer a living God, not a rebuttal. They’ve concluded the supernatural is fake; the answer is a God who is real and a world that is genuinely enchanted, not a more rational apologetic.

The honest caveat: everyone is a good target for evangelization, but this is hard. Family is their theology, so leaving can cost them everything — and the resistance is emotional before it is logical.

Summer, Ticks, and Good Vibes

0:59

Grills

Well, Adam, we’re here in the midst of summer, and we’re going to talk about a subject we haven’t touched in a while. It’s presently a heat index of 106 here in South Vietnam. And then there’s the tick problem. A lot of listeners reach out to me about the ticks — no better, possibly worse. They’re concerned I’m never going to eat red meat again.

Koontz

We appreciate the listeners. They care about us so deeply, in a way that’s always moving to hear. It’s awesome, and we appreciate you. No joke.

Grills

The alpha-gal stuff troubles me a little. I don’t know what I’d eat; I really can’t get with that.

Koontz

I personally believe there were an inordinate number of ticks at Utah Valley University last year.

Grills

Yes, sir — it’s the only plausible explanation.

Koontz

Candace isn’t talking about this. Don’t believe the grifters; believe us. The weather’s really nice here today. I go with the 1991 forecast: sunny and 85, have a wonderful day, it’s nice outside. Beautiful — rather than painting the map in alarmed, inflamed colors of red and deeper red.

Grills

The Weather Channel has relaunched their retro website, where everything runs like a cable-access channel, and that is just good vibes.

Koontz

Good vibes. I’ve got to find that. We should just not record this episode, pull the audio from that, and let you listen to it for an hour while you drive.

Grills

Everybody needs a little sunshine in their day.

Koontz

It’s true. Put some sun on your face, guys — you’ll feel better. A little vitamin D. This does not constitute medical advice.

Grills

True. If you want medical advice, you have to go to RFK Jr. That’s what we’re telling you. It’s hard to listen to, but it is medical advice.

Back to Mormonism — and a Glossary

2:58

Grills

Speaking of medical advice — today we’re going to talk about Mormonism. You people have been chomping at the bit for us to get back to it; we’ve talked about doing it for a little while now. If you follow Mormon social media and Mormon happenings — and we know you do — you’re going to see a few entrenched camps, much like how Lutheranism has progressive, conservative, and traditional camps.

Koontz

You might even recently have put a proper name to those camps.

Grills

So too with the Mormons. We’re seeing a wave of disaffiliation, and a resurgence in so-called traditional Mormonism. These battle lines are sort of drawn. So you’re going to hear some shorthand — which I always say don’t do in Lutheranism, and here I am about to do it on a Mormon-coded podcast. You’ll hear progmo, a progressive Mormon; tradmo, a traditional Mormon; and DezNat, which stands for Deseret Nationalist and is exactly as cool as it sounds. We might put a glossary in the show notes — I’m not sure.

Koontz

I think the listeners are savvy. We have sharp folks; they understand what’s going on.

Seeing Your Own House by Looking at Someone Else’s

4:27

Grills

So in the midst of this disaffiliation and deconstruction in the LDS, we have to ask: is the LDS unique in this?

Koontz

Really, the reason to ask is that it’s usually easier to see your own problems when you first examine them in someone else. If you can’t do that, it’s always harder, because you have a personal — and often emotional — investment in whatever camps exist within your own church or party. And present reality rarely gives you a clear, comprehensive perspective on the challenges you face. Especially in an electoral cycle, as we are currently in the LCMS, it tends to bring to the fore a confused variety of ideas, emotions, and callbacks to previous events narrated in certain ways. Confusion prevails.

So we wanted to look at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the things related to it — things it seems to me we’ll see more of in future. Not to mention that Russell Nelson was sealed in the temple to two different women, just at different times: one wife at a time, but both sealed to him, so in the Mormon eternity they’re both there, theoretically.

Grills

So plural marriage is still, in that sense, being practiced.

Koontz

We’ll offer a few predictions, but it’s very helpful to see the dynamics at work in a group that sociologically resembles a church but theologically is not a Christian church — because you see many of the same dynamics you also see in Christian churches.

Grills

And they’re a little more media-savvy than we can be sometimes.

Koontz

Way more. The official organization, plus everything around it — progmo, exmo, what’s the difference?

Grills

We get it. Everybody knows.

Where to Look: Media-Savvy Mormonism

7:01

Koontz

Whatever the camp, they’re much more media-savvy. Two recommendations if you’re interested in these subjects. One is Gospel Tangents, an old favorite — Colonel Grills actually appeared on it, so you can start there. The other is the Mormon Stories podcast, which is the progmo/exmo Cathedral, so to speak.

What’s certainly interesting is that on both of them you get an actual polygamist and his wives talking about what their life is like — just, hey, let’s talk about what this is like. There’s a relative lack of vituperation and rage, even where very serious accusations are being made. One common accusation comes from a guy whose presentation I’ve enjoyed, named Miranda Bell — I think he might be some sort of Christian at this point, I’m not sure. He makes a fairly persuasive case, on the basis of an LDS researcher’s work, that Joseph Smith’s theology is largely formed by the theological environment of Dartmouth College, where his brother Hyrum was attending and tutoring Joseph at home while Joseph recovered from a life-threatening leg injury. That really undercuts the revelation claims of Mormonism — and they’re just calmly discussing it. So this material is really available to look at, whether or not you’re as deeply interested as either of us is, or at least has been.

Disaffiliation, and Why People Really Leave

8:47

Koontz

The thing usually called deconstruction in evangelicalism is usually described in LDS terms as disaffiliation: people exiting any formal affiliation with the LDS, even though they’re not necessarily leaving Utah or southern Idaho or some other Mormon-heavy area. Why are they doing this? Pretty much everybody’s kids are leaving, in some percentage. The LDS is more notable because it’s both highly organized and — within living memory — pretty much everybody in Utah was going to service every Sunday like they’re supposed to. That’s just what you do. So their secularization is happening to a highly organized, mathematically precise denomination that hasn’t come as far into the American present as a lot of us have, where we’ve been hemorrhaging numbers like this for decades. And this is where, obviously, we don’t file them under Christian.

Grills

No — certainly not traditional Christian.

Koontz

If we want to extend an olive branch and speak sociologically, fine.

Grills

Sociologically. But this is where people misunderstand a lot of my research and the Mormon media I’ve done, because I’m always accused of being some kind of Jack Mormon or an apologist, when I’m just trying to be as fair to them as I can — and the historical question is exceedingly fascinating. The big thing is this: you can say these people aren’t leaving Christianity, so what does it matter, they were always apostates. But what I see almost without exception is that they leave Mormonism for essentially the same reasons people leave Lutheranism or any other traditional Christianity. It might start with the CES Letter and the claim that Joseph Smith wasn’t a prophet — okay, fine. But it almost always turns into an argument against traditional morality, things we’d at least on the surface agree with them on. It’s the same story at the end of that tunnel.

So what I’m trying to do is find a way to talk to these people and show them a living God — a God who is real, a world that is supernatural and not the completely rationalistic place they’re going off into. Because their story, whether or not you think they were ever legitimately Christian, is still the same basic story: I was raised with a religious foundation that had these moral claims and these supernatural claims, and now it’s all fake, therefore everything is fake — so they’re not going to be interested in Christianity at all.

Koontz

Right — because they’ve jettisoned everything. That’s a great point: to recognize that it’s largely, maybe not entirely, for the same reasons people leave Christianity. That helps you understand how widespread and deep the crisis is.

Grills

They’ll say, I looked at the conflicting accounts of the First Vision, Joseph was not a prophet, Joseph made it up. Okay, fine. Now I can join a polycule.

Koontz

Exactly. Because it quickly becomes — or was always explicitly about — the LDS doesn’t ordain women to the priesthood, doesn’t accept same-sex marriage, we don’t need to have these atypically large families. It’s a rejection of nature, largely, accompanied by a rejection of the specific truth claims and revelatory authority of the LDS.

Grills

When people object and say, no, they’re leaving because they want to drink coffee, I say: okay, Lutheran, then why aren’t they coming into your church — the one largely founded on how much I can drink and smoke? They don’t show up there. So there’s something else, another piece to the puzzle.

The Utah Mission Field

13:02

Grills

We have Lutheran churches with lots of ex-Mormons in them who’ve become Christians. But nationally our church body doesn’t recognize the scale of it. Utah is a single circuit in the LCMS — that means fewer than twenty churches. We don’t recognize what a massive mission field that is: one we can directly and constantly engage without securing visas and passports for a missionary. The number of friends I have in Utah would stagger you.

Koontz

Same.

Grills

So this is all just an operation for me to get near fry sauce.

Koontz

That’s a long game.

Grills

But it shows our lack of awareness that a lot of what we’re already familiar with — the apathy, the disinterest in traditional religion of any kind that even sociologically resembles Christianity, let alone actually is Christianity — is everywhere. We have a giant mission field sitting there in the Inter-Mountain West, and we’re not staffing it commensurate with the number of unevangelized people.

Out of the LDS, Into the “Satanic Arts”

14:27

Koontz

Because what usually happens is they leave the LDS and don’t go to an LCMS church — they go nowhere.

Grills

And then some get into something that’s really strange to ponder but is in fact true: a lot of them go directly into what the Catechism calls the satanic arts. They really do. I’m not LDS — now I’m a witch. It happens. When you have open revelation, you’re going to flirt with whatever is talking to you. And I’ve never had a disrespectful conversation with these people, across the streams. Even the super right-wing ones, who are supposed to be so mean, are always just pretty cool bros. I’ve got a lot more in common with them — “we have a lot more stuff from Desert Tech than you do,” that’s the difference. A lot more. And I’m waiting: if Desert Tech wants to sponsor the show, the email’s on the website. Just so you know, Desert Tech — right here. Anyway, the point is they can be very obstinate, but they’ll also talk to you. The best example isn’t the stuff you see on Twitter — “oh, you say we’re not Christians, but the Council of Nicaea, why are you binding us to that?” Those are just shouting matches.

Koontz

So you’re saying Twitter isn’t set up — maybe not even capable of — reasoned discussion?

Grills

Perhaps I am. I know, it’s a hot take. The spiciest.

Koontz

This is a fry-sauce kind of podcast.

Grills

It has its place; I enjoy the bouts.

Koontz

We all do. But at some point there’s a longer conversation to be had, and I think most people recognize that.

Right, Progressive, Traditional: The Same Spirit

16:37

Grills

To see the divisions and how they’re happening — we see similar things in our own circles. You have the right-wing traditionalists: this is what Mormonism is supposed to be. And I’m not even talking about polygamists — just what you’d call basic Mormons, who get painted as the right wing. Then you’ve got the progressive wing. And a wing that’s into all manner of esoterica and wants to go back to “old Mormonism” — by which they mean 1812. These are, you know, Deseret-alphabet types of dudes, and they flirt with all kinds of strange things.

Koontz

We have analogs to that in virtually every Christian denomination today; you can see their Mormon versions of it, and the spirits tend to come across very similarly. But we have a large swath of people who, because of what they went through — rightly or wrongly — react very much like someone who says, I grew up LCMS and I reject it because of women’s ordination, or because of closed communion.

Grills

They disaffiliate for similar reasons, and when they disaffiliate they go off into similar things. So we’re probably seeing a very similar story, where the LDS has finally come up against modern American culture and is suffering similar casualties.

What Will the Institution Do?

18:09

Koontz

What’s been the institutional response? If you had to characterize the LDS itself, what direction is it headed — are we going back to blood atonement for Gentile parties crossing through Utah?

Grills

It’s so hard to determine. It’s like asking what happens to any Protestant denomination. Will the leftist faction die out and go away, leaving the people still going to church, who are largely conservative? Will they take over? The LDS is trickier, because it’s such an international body — it could go any way it wants. The leaders skew traditional, and yet arguably progressive in some policies. They tend to go back to the Proclamation on the Family. We’ve seen some clampdown at Brigham Young University, where things that aren’t traditionally Mormon had been allowed for a while and are now finally being tamped down. So it’s a little early to tell. But through a purely sociological lens, you’d say the really devout Mormons are the ones who’ll stick with it — so they might win the long game.

Koontz

We say that about a lot of denominations.

Open Revelation: 1978 and a Theology of Race

19:38

Koontz

The difference I’m curious about is that open revelation permits fairly drastic changes. Here’s the example that will constantly come up — and the fundamentalists who can’t quite admit they separated from the LDS over it, though the timeline makes it obvious. Americans may recall Mitt Romney talking about how thankful he was that in 1978 black men were allowed to be ordained to the priesthood.

Grills

I thought you were going to go for the first and second manifestos — but your example is probably better.

Koontz

Black men were allowed ordination as of ‘78 — and all of these Mormon fundamentalist groups form, or are heavily augmented, as of ‘78, going into ‘79 and the ‘80s. The issue is that this contravenes — as rescinding plural marriage did in an earlier time — a whole original Mormon theology of race. I know that’s not usually put as a phrase, but that’s what it is: a theology of how race reflects blessedness or cursedness, explicit in the Book of Mormon. A lot of it you actually draw not from the Book of Mormon but from Doctrine and Covenants, from folklore, from public addresses — but it is in the Book of Mormon: if you’re more pleasing to God, you’re white like the Nephites; if you’re less pleasing to God, you’re dark like the Lamanites. So blacks, obviously, also fall under that curse according to Mormon theology. As of 1978, that’s just gone. And with revelation, you don’t even have to explain why. This has happened to a wider degree in the Roman Catholic Church — nothing declared ex cathedra, but with the Pope’s acquiescence to, or overlooking of, certain positions. What has that led to today?

Grills

Same-sex marriage in all but name exists in Roman Catholicism today.

Koontz

Where these things can change, I find those denominations hard to read. In the case of the LCMS I could say, on a purely logical-theological basis, here are the different places you can go and here’s how you’d justify it — and in the case of trying to abandon the authority of the Bible, you already saw how that happened in the ‘70s; it would just happen in a similar way, with different precipitating issues today. But with something that has open revelation, or an authority powerful enough to selectively ignore whatever it wants — as with the papacy — it’s very hard to see where they go. Not because they don’t know, but because I don’t know what you’re going to do next.

Grills

And they both have a break line — the LDS and the Roman Catholic Church — “well, the Holy Spirit will prevent that.” But hypothetically, if you don’t have that break, if you’re building the plane as you fly it, what could happen?

Koontz

So a lot of it is: we don’t know. If I were a betting man, I’d say they rein things in — that’s where the wind seems to be blowing. But that’s not counting immigration and demographic change, all the things that affect any human institution politically and religiously, whether you have a voting legislature or a Quorum of the Twelve. Those things could be influenced by it.

Grills

A lot of the revelations you get from the LDS are really reiterating what they’ve already said. There hasn’t been a big new one in some time, and the argument now — largely true, I think — is that so many Mormons are abandoning their covenants that the quorum or the president must reiterate what was already said, because of the time they live in. That’s the current defense.

Authority, Drift, and Dissent in Good Standing

23:18

Koontz

It seems to me it really depends on what your authority structure is — that determines how drift occurs, drift from a long-standing belief or practice, because it’ll be justified and done in certain ways.

Grills

And in the LDS you can openly dissent in the media; that’s not an issue the way it is in the Missouri Synod. They’ll point to people excommunicated throughout history — some very prominent ones — but a lot of progressive Mormons are members in good standing. “Here are my three hours on why women should be priests. I’m a member in good standing. I’m doing proxy work for my great-great-great-whatever-grandma. I’m a home teacher.” So there’s an openness that’s unthinkable in many other denominations. At the same time, they have a structure. When the host of Gospel Tangents was interviewing the female prophetess of what I still call the RLDS — as one does — he said, “Robert’s Rules? I don’t know what that is. I’m LDS. We don’t do that.” In public gatherings they really aren’t interested in what the average person thinks or wants to say. You have a lot of testimony, a lot of space in your day-to-day life — but in the functional running of the church, unless you’re in authority, you have no authority. You follow the Word of Wisdom to one degree or another, don’t behave too degenerately — that’s about it.

There is the supposed legalism of it, and it does exist in pockets. But a lot of the critiques are things you could just as easily say about American fundamentalism or your average Baptist church: they won’t let me drink alcohol, they won’t let me dress this way. It’s not particularly Mormon to abstain from things, or to dress a certain way, or to have high views of the family. I know, hot take again.

It Was Never Just About Joseph Smith

26:43

Grills

This is what people fundamentally don’t understand: a lot of the struggles people have with the LDS are not only about Joseph Smith. It’s about creation things, too. The person who’d actually be aware that temple garments used to be required to be essentially like a onesie — and now the LDS has made that a recent change, even less constricting — the number of people leaving because “this isn’t the way it was supposed to be in Nauvoo” is not that large. The majority heard the new order on garments and said, okay, great, I like this change, summer’s hot.

Koontz

Summer’s like 95. It’s a dry heat.

Grills

Whatever scope we want to grant the dry heat.

Koontz

But it is a dry heat — sounds pretty good to me right now.

Grills

No question. When we look at these things from outside, it’s only profitable if we can see not just analogs but samenesses — this is the same as that. This guy isn’t against the LDS because of his deep awareness of the history of temple garments; if he were, what he’d become is a fundamentalist Mormon. He’d become a polygamist, he’d get into Adam-God doctrine, into a lot of things.

Koontz

Instead he just becomes a standard Redditor — a secular humanist. He exchanges his temple garments for the fedora. And at that point he’s the same person we’re raising who objects to our teaching. Because the challenge is generally that the larger society — the media he’s watching — is not affirming what his so-called church, or our church, says about the nature of man and woman, or the family.

Grills

I don’t think the average listener realizes how much time I’ve spent in Mormon primary documents; outside the historical fascination, it’s largely about this, understanding what’s happening. We look and say, of course the Mormons are doing this, of course these people would reject that — and then we look at ours and go, but our theology is so good, why are people leaving? Same spirit, same thing, in large part. One guy says, I read the CES Letter and quit being Mormon because I don’t believe Joseph Smith is a prophet — and then uses all these other things he doesn’t like, and it typically moves on to the moral arguments.

Koontz

Over here is a Lutheran who says, I read On the Jews and Their Lies and I can’t be in the church with Luther’s name on it because of his opinions — but also, you ordain women, and also I wasn’t willing to do this.

Grills

You see a lot of the same through-lines in both groups.

Everything Is Theological (Just Not How You Think)

29:47

Koontz

So everything is fundamentally theological — but not in the way you’d think, not always in the nice, creedal way. We’re not always debating the Trinity; you’re sometimes simply debating how God created them, male and female. Largely, in modern America, you’re talking about issues that somehow relate to the doctrine of creation. And it’s often cast as meanness versus niceness: to not affirm is what it means to be mean, and therefore we can’t be that way. So you see the divisions happening across denominations and across religions. You don’t have it as much with Islam, but it’s out there. You certainly see strong parallels to what’s happening to the LDS.

Grills

Some of the discourse turns into, “yeah, but they’re all CIA spooks,” and I say, you’re just jealous we don’t have that many spooks. But a lot of that isn’t trickling down to the rank and file. They’re living in the same America you are, with the same pressures and the same propaganda, and they’re not immune — just as your average member might not be immune.

Organization, Wealth, and the Stakes

31:50

Koontz

One difference I do see between the LDS and practically every other organization in the United States is its level of organization and its wealth. Nobody exceeds them as an institution — so the stakes are rather different. We’ve talked a lot about progressive Mormons sliding into being ex-Mormons. But talk about straight-down-the-line traditional LDS, and the stakes of remaining in the institution, managing it well, and course-correcting when necessary are much greater — and so is the reward. Compare that to an institution like the LCMS, or the Global Methodist Church, or the Evangelical Free Church of America, or the PCA, generally nowhere near that financial or institutional health.

Grills

Most people don’t know that America’s largest ranch is run by the LDS. The LDS is a well-oiled machine. You can have scruples about that, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is absolutely a well-oiled machine, and huge, and rich. Debate the ethics if you want; it doesn’t change what it is — or the stakes if those gears aren’t managed well, or of what they can do if those gears are turned in a different direction.

Koontz

You also can’t discount that a lot of progmos — not ex-mos — are very ingrained in the culture and the institution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thankfully, here, none of us wants to say, “I’m a son of the pioneers, therefore I must always be part of it.” But that familial and cultural connection is very strong in Mormonism.

Grills

It is their theology. In the same sense we’d say Christ is our theology, family is theirs. The whole pinnacle of the plan of salvation is eternal families — that’s the goal. When you’re in the temple and you see the endlessly reflecting mirrors showing your face and all your ancestors, that is your theology. And that’s very powerful. It can also be another reason people leave the LDS and don’t look at anything else: nothing is going to replace that, and they’ve already lost their family. So where else could they go?

A Classic Pagan Religion — and Common Ground

34:58

Koontz

It’s a very classic pagan religion in that sense: ancestry and the ancestors are the be-all and end-all, and the security of that for one’s descendants too. It exhibits that in the way the traditional religions throughout the world do. We understand that Jesus says whoever does not give up father, mother, and brother — but you also have to understand He says it because it’s a very difficult thing for people to do.

Grills

So it’s not as simple as, here’s a tract saying Sidney Rigdon actually wrote the Book of Mormon — are you ready to sign up for catechism classes? It’s not that simple. So it’s a mission field.

Koontz

And it’s the biggest one in the U.S.

Grills

I think we have more social commonality than we realize, which we can capitalize on. We do appreciate the nuclear family — we believe it terminates at a certain point, but we believe very much in it. We believe in being good neighbors, and in industriousness — at least we used to.

Deseret Nationalism

36:19

Koontz

Can you talk a little about Deseret Nationalism? I want to make sure we cover it. And because it’s so present — you can find it easily on X, which I’ll never naturally call X — how real are the things on there? How real can they become? That’s my question. You found the most interesting thing on X just before we started recording.

Grills

Yes — I thought it was a DezNat account, because he had a Brigham Young vaporwave profile picture. But he was posting all this trad-Catholic stuff. Every other post was, “here’s why the authority of the Catholic Church could be legitimate — but here’s why the Mormon Church is legitimate, and here’s what we have in common.” I’d never seen anything like it. I’m fascinated.

Koontz

Absolutely standard spook activity.

Grills

I was like, they honeypotted me.

Koontz

They did. There’s an intersection of a guy who’s in the John Whitmer Historical Association and wears fiddleback chasubles — where is that guy? And this one found you.

Grills

Yeah — he’s right here in Central Arkansas. So Deseret Nationalism now is partly a meme.

Koontz

What kind of power do these things have?

Grills

When you get the actual groups that want to break away, they seem to flame up really big and then burn out really quickly. But it’s not necessarily the polygamist compounds — that’s more a tradmo, and even then that’s a fundamentalist, by their own word. A Deseret Nationalist is a little like the Lutherans on Twitter who want to “Lutheranate” and build those Lutheran communities. Deseret Nationalism takes its name from the state of Deseret, the original idea for what became the Utah Territory — it was much bigger. They had their own alphabet, which was really awesome, and totally incomprehensible.

Koontz

Well, you don’t have the gift of interpretations.

Grills

I don’t, sorry. Anyway. These guys are very much into the trad part of Mormonism — the military side, the Danites, the historically healthy gun culture among the LDS.

Koontz

I’d like to slide right in there.

Grills

So it’s kind of dude-bro Mormonism — and I don’t mean that as a pejorative, but that’s the best way to put it.

Koontz

That’s the brand.

Grills

That’s the brand; that’s what they advertise as. Is it really a thing? There are probably legitimate pockets. You’re probably not going to have a DezNat gathering per se, but you probably have the DezNat spirit among a lot of the young men and women in certain parts of Utah, Wyoming, and Arizona. That much is safe to say. They’ll have the Deseret flags flying and everything. They’re very much Brighamites — very big on Brigham Young.

Koontz

Always Brighamites.

Grills

Well, without Brigham you don’t have Utah. And if you want to learn more, go back to Word Fitly; we’ve got you covered. Or have me come out to your church or circuit gathering — I’ll do the narrative history of Mormonism, a crowd favorite. Being largely of North Sea and English descent, we travel; always going to and fro.

A Theocratic Present, and Nationalism by Force

40:10

Koontz

It’s worth noting, though — much like the stakes we talked about with the LDS as an institution — that the analog here is obviously Christian nationalism, and the reality is much closer in Deseret’s case, because it has a theocratic history.

Grills

That’s right. They have a theocratic history.

Koontz

And it also has something like a theocratic present, particularly in Utah. You’re not going to have a Lutheran governor of Utah.

Grills

Maybe not a Lutheran governor, but you might have a non-Mormon governor in fifty years. Maybe.

Koontz

But it’s the closest — the most successful theocratic society we’ve had in American history. Everywhere else was just a city or community; they had a whole state and territory effectively under Brigham’s control.

Grills

Based on demographic trends — Mormons still have a much higher birth rate than the average American — the eastern part of the United States is going to be Amish and the western part Mormon at some point, just based on birth rates. Two destinies, so to speak. And I’d bet the DezNats are at the higher end of those birth rates, no question.

Koontz

The difference on that map, though, is that the Amish explicitly do not want to govern.

Grills

Correct.

Koontz

The Mormons are very happy to govern. They were early adopters of women’s suffrage, to make sure their clamp on government wouldn’t be broken. I respect the game — pretty sure my ancestors played it in the Republican Party of the State of New York. Any time Christian nationalism comes up, I think about this. First, define it. Second, if it’s a political ideology, what are we actually saying will occur politically because of it — or could even conceivably occur? Christian nationalism might just be a meme on Twitter, but DezNat is a lot closer to reality — even present reality, let alone ten-years-out reality. On that scale, if you go to the fundamentalist towns it’s still theocratic, maybe a stark example of it; and you have a softer example in Utah. It’s like Doug Wilson can blow stuff up in the month of November all he wants, but he’s not in control of Moscow, Idaho. Let me pull up the city council and see what’s going on there — I remember COVID in Moscow, Idaho. So, fine. And I don’t mean this as provocatively as it’s going to sound. Many such cases. You got Mormon nationalism because of trailblazing and because of literal wars and skirmishes. There wasn’t that much bloodshed between the United States government and Brigham’s government, but there were conflicts — skirmishing out in the territory to maintain control of it.

Grills

That’s quite a verb, sir. Skirmishing.

Koontz

It wasn’t done through podcasting and tracting.

Grills

They were not podcasting against the Paiutes.

Koontz

They converted people through door-knocking and publications — the podcasting of its day — but they maintained the territory through governmental and military means. And they understood they’d probably have to, as early as Nauvoo. You have the militias — the Legion, the Nauvoo Legion. One guess as to who was the head of that.

Grills

The King of the United States, as we affectionately call him.

Koontz

To say nothing of the Danites — and, for the podcast, Porter Rockwell. So that’s what it took to carve things out. This unintentionally dovetails nicely with the Searchers episode. People go out and die of famine and disease, and the ones left have to fight and scrap for what they have. In the case of Mormonism, they’re contending against Indian tribes, sometimes against settlers just passing through from Arkansas, and other times against the federal government — and that galvanizes a people. People with a shared struggle band together, and when they have a shared ethos and a shared religion, you get effectively a Mormon state. That’s how that happened.

Why a Christian Nation Fractures

46:24

Koontz

I think it’s so helpful for actually understanding what a nationalism of anything — fill in the adjective — would look like if carried out. The Mormons do not secure Deseret and Utah by voting. Voting is a technique they use later, once they’re amalgamated into the larger body politic. They secure it, as we talked about in the Searchers episode, through force. Governments are founded on force.

Grills

And to Brigham’s credit, he was a masterful planner — able to plan a city and a territory that was functional, which matters, because given the nature of LDS government he ruled with an iron fist and could make things happen.

Koontz

Regardless of the means, you can’t do that when you want to talk about Christian nationalism. An effective state is never going to happen with Presbyterians bickering, Lutherans bickering, Methodists and Anglicans bickering among themselves. That’s called the English Civil War — we already did that.

Grills

Exactly. We tried it; it was good for a few years, and then we restored the monarchy. It was a long-standing contention over the restoration.

Koontz

If you look at the colonies and say those were sort of examples of it — that’s still closer to a Christian community. What you have in the Utah Territory is more of a nationalism, which was the original design.

Grills

Right. No, that’s exactly right.

Koontz

And out of some similarity to the Mormons — in defense of my ancestors — they too, at their very best, could merely tolerate the presence of people who didn’t believe as they did. For example, in Maryland, which had open toleration under the Catholic lords of Maryland, they simply brought in too many Protestants; and during the Glorious Revolution in England, those Protestants overthrew the Catholic government and outlawed Roman Catholicism. So the idea that you’ll have a government confessionally affiliated in some specific way that also doesn’t lead to divisive confessional strife — that’s really hard to see, except where the government is willing to physically enforce the confession, which the Mormons could really only do by being distant. A lot of what we’ve been talking about is on a time delay with the LDS, because for so long in American history they were simply too far away. They couldn’t make it work in Kirtland, and they couldn’t make it work in Nauvoo — so, keep going further and further west. Brigham understood this.

Grills

If you can’t have, like, a Southern Baptist Convention where ostensibly everyone agrees on everything — and then you watch the convention and they’re disagreeing on fundamental aspects of the faith — now apply that to secular government and see what happens.

Koontz

You can point to the state churches of Europe throughout history, but that’s a very complicated situation, with its own troubles as they’ve gone through the centuries. Fascinating stuff.

What Would Theocracy Actually Look Like?

49:47

Grills

A lot of this ties into the Christian Dominionism that got big in the ‘80s and ‘90s — theonomy and the like — who openly advocated for Christian theocracy. What would that actually look like, boots on the ground? How would it function? Which isn’t to say it’s immoral to try — but who would get to call those shots, and how would the church function in it?

Koontz

The LDS has an answer, because at least in the 19th century the two kingdoms were very much integrated. There were not two of them.

Grills

There was no left and right hand — there was only a fist, and Brigham headed it.

Koontz

And I think the restoration of that — not merely demographically but politically — would lead to the very thing 19th-century Americans worried about with the incorporation of the Utah Territory: how different can a group of people be in their way of life and their manner of government? The federal government is supposed to secure to the states a republican form of government, among other things. How real is that when a church is essentially — and I think everyone in Utah understands, effectively — that the state is not finally going to do something the LDS cannot countenance?

Grills

The federal government has pushed, and the response has largely been to reiterate the Proclamation on the Family, or to try to affect things at the state or local level.

Koontz

Again, put yourself in the mindset of Utah, which has a Mormon majority. Every confessing Christian understands, at a fundamental level, that if the majority were of his religion, the government would look more like his religion. Without even talking about Christian nationalism, it would be a bizarre thing to have a 99% Lutheran state and then say, yeah, but gay marriage is fine and abortion is great, because — my two kingdoms.

Grills

Because two kingdoms. Somebody would make that argument.

Koontz

And then the podcast would be shared.

Are Mormons Good Targets for Evangelization?

52:29

Koontz

To bring the last few minutes back to the beginning of the episode: we have disaffected Mormons — or, say, for the sake of argument, Mormons in general, even tradmos. What do you want to do? Are they good targets for evangelization?

Grills

I’ve got a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is yes — because everybody is a good target for evangelization. Now the real answer: no, it’s going to be as extremely difficult as it is with everyone else anywhere in modern America, whatever the religious background — anyone who has been taught that he’s only a good person if he rejects naturally observable things about human life, family life, and sexuality. You need to reject all that, set it aside, let people do whatever they want. It’s hard to refute — not on a logical basis, but emotionally to refute — for people of whatever religious background. It’s the same whether they were raised LCMS or LDS.

Koontz

This is the fruit of a secularized society, to put it in the nicest possible terms.

Grills

I’ll put it in Mormon terms: it’s the fruit of an apostate society.

Koontz

Can one apostatize from natural law? I’d argue Romans says yes, though we never talk about it that way. We are a society-wide study in exchanging what is natural for what is unnatural. We are the Romans 1 experiment. You’ve heard of the American experiment — modern life is the Romans 1 experiment.

Grills

And wouldn’t you know it, the Bible’s correct. It just never misses.

Koontz

Truly the only author all of whose work is diamond is the Holy Ghost — even those books you don’t like.

Grills

Especially the genealogies. All diamond.

Closing

54:48

Grills

All right — I think that opens us up to more discussion on this. We hope you found it profitable. If you have questions, as always, reach out; we do read your emails and try to get to as many as we can. We’ve got a big backlog we’ll be tackling soon.

Koontz

Some of those very soon.

Grills

This has been A Brief History of Power — Colonel Grills and Dr. Koontz here. Be sure to check us out, and remember to check out Memento70.com, the first men’s-only Lutheran devotional. God love you, and God bless.

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On This Transcript

This is a reading edition, smoothed to be read in sympathy with the audio, not in competition with it. Editing was subtractive: the backchannel chains, stutters, false starts, and doubled words that belong to speech were removed, while meaning, arguments, voice, and jokes were left untouched — nothing was added, sharpened, or resolved in a direction the speakers didn’t take.

Mishearings were corrected only as far as context allowed: unmistakable proper nouns and terms were fixed outright (a few checked against outside sources), less certain repairs were flagged, and where a fix would have meant inventing a fact the original was left as-is. Sentences were touched lightly; the prose remains the hosts’.

Speaker labels are inferred. The source captions carried no speaker tags, so attribution was reconstructed from internal evidence — who is addressed by name, who is referred to in the third person, who claims the Mormon-research and the ancestral asides. Anchored turns are reliable; some of the quick back-and-forth is a best reading and may need correcting against the audio.