When I don’t have a hot topic to blog about (that is, when I’m sitting here at my laptop on Tuesday morning with absolutely nothing to say), I generally do a News search for “lds church” or “mormon” and see what pops up. What caught my eye today is a guest post yesterday at Flunking Sainthood titled “What does new LDS messaging really say about women in the Church?” I don’t have anything to add about the comments about LDS messaging to women — please opine in the comments if you do — but I am intrigued by the idea that there is such a thing as LDS messaging. Is there such a thing? If senior leaders are actually trying to coordinate LDS messaging, is it effective or successful? I have my doubts. Read on.
General Conference?
If there is one venue where some sort of focused messaging might have a powerful impact, it would be General Conference, given the wide LDS audience that tunes in and follows Conference. But that doesn’t happen. First, they tell us that doesn’t happen. For years (if not so frequently lately) the storyline was that no LDS leader is assigned a topic. They are all free to write and deliver pretty much whatever they want to say, with the understanding that they are of course *inspired* to say whatever it is they actually end up saying. It’s what God or the still small voice more or less tells them to say.
Second, very little in the end product suggests there is any coherent messaging plan. By and large, any given Conference presents no particular emphasis, just a bunch of talks that cover a predictable set of basic LDS topics and admonitions. To the extent there is any plan, the plan is to say the same basic stuff over and over, with a few new stories about trips to Africa or family events with the grandkids. The bottom line is that this or that leader might have a message as presented in their talk, but there is no overarching LDS messaging being planned or suggested for General Conference. It just doesn’t happen.
LDS PR?
The Church does various ad spots from time to time, whether on TV or online. So there is some messaging inherent in writing a script, producing a spot, and securing air time or online eyeball time. I can’t say that I have noticed much of this lately. Two or three decades back, there were a series of fairly effective TV ads stressing families and highlighting the idea of spending more time with the kids. The Church has, as far as I can tell, stuck with the families theme to the extent there is still a PR message on the airwaves or screens. That’s an awfully generic message to push. It’s not like there are many anti-family churches out there. It’s hard to imagine a viewer watching an LDS family ad and responding, “Finally! A church that cares about families! I must go visit this church next Sunday!” As if they can even figure out what church is sponsoring the ad when the word “Mormon” is now proscribed in LDS discourse, including ads to the general public.
You might think that “LDS temples” is a messaging theme, but I think that is emphasized (very emphasized) only for internal messaging, to those already LDS. It’s easy for active LDS to forget, if they ever knew, how strange the term “temple” sounds to non-LDS Christians. Temples are what you go visit when you are a tourist in Japan or China. Jews in the Old and New Testament had a temple. But “Christian temple” is a complete non-starter for external messaging directed to a non-LDS audience.
There is a reliable story out there about a proposed ad campaign approved by senior LDS leadership about 25 years ago. The proposed theme was “finding the true church” or something along those lines. A marketing consulting firm was hired to review the proposed campaign and make recommendations. After their review, the report came back that almost no one responded positively to the “find the true church” pitch, so the proposed campaign was scrapped and something else pursued. I’m sure there is more to the story.
Missionary Teaching?
For a long time the initial teaching discussion or conversation LDS missionaries tried to have with a family or individual that they were teaching was: the Joseph Smith story. That’s right in line with the idea noted above in the proposed PR campaign that what every Christian is or ought to be looking for in a church is “the true church,” as opposed to the hundreds of not-so-true churches in every American town.
I’ll let more recently returned missionaries weigh in with the message current LDS missionaries are trained to present. Maybe there is no designed message and LDS missionaries just want to engage people in conversation, develop rapport, and invite them to church on Sunday.
LDS.org Home Page?
Until about a year ago, the LDS.org home page presented a variety of images and links featuring various LDS news stories and articles (Ensign, Conference talks), along with drop-down menus with links to all of the various resources available at the site. Then suddenly the landing page switched to a much cleaner set of images aimed at non-LDS visitors. Right now, the lead image shows happy Mormons at Conference, with the invitation “join us April 5-6.” A secondary row of images offer the following prompts:
- Learn about Jesus Christ.
- Find meaning in your life.
- Navigate life’s challenges.
Then there is a tableau of “Common Questions” about the Church, with drop-down paragraphs giving glowing answers to standard questions a non-LDS visitor might have. Collapsing those questions into one sentence, the message might be summarized as: Mormons are Christians who believe the Bible, also hold the Book of Mormon to be inspired Christian scripture, and worship in holy temples as well as regular chapels.
As messaging goes, the new home page seems fairly well planned and designed. You can still get to the old LDS.org home page, the one members go to when they want to find lessons, Conference talks, or Ensign/Liahona issues, it just takes a couple of extra clicks.
So what do you think of LDS messaging?
- Is there such a thing as planned and directed LDS messaging?
- If there is, what is it today in 2025? What’s the message?
- If you dropped a 3×5 card into an LDS messaging suggestion box, what would your suggested LDS message be? You can split that into external and internal messaging if you want.
- Any LDS messaging from prior decades or generations that you remember but that are now largely or entirely absent?
Wheat & Tares 
My first thought after reading is that your definition of “messaging” is too narrow and you are confusing it with “propaganda” in your idea that it is coordinated and purposeful. No, messaging is like “virtue signaling” in that those sending the message are not for sure conscious that they are doing it. And that it changes yearly rather than by prophet or by decade. Nor is it verbalized exactly, but you figure it out.
So, since you don’t hear the messaging to women anymore than I hear the messaging to the men, let’s pick on that. So, when I was growing up the messaging to women was, “You are not equal to men and it is a sin to want to be. You are subject to your husband and all priesthood holders just like men are subject to Christ. It is a sin to work outside the home so make as many babies as you possibly can.” Now, it is, “we are pretending you are equal, but really you are subject to priesthood, just like men are subject to Christ. So, shut up about it. You can work outside of the home if you have to, and we respect you more if you do, but if you want a career, that is still *bad,* but we respect you more if you have one because then we can see what you are worth.”
Now, you are not going to find all of that in conference talks because it is behavior as much as it is verbal. But it sends a message about how important women are and their role in life and the church. So, for anyone else who “doesn’t get” messaging, there is your explanation.
“LDS messaging” if that means what is written in the gospel library app or lds.org, only presents part of a full truth. The gospel topics essays are a good example- still unable to say that it wasn’t God who is responsible for the priesthood and temple ban!
Now there are “temporary doctrines”, no free agency, God’s love is Not unconditional, etc. I can’t keep track of all the changes in my lifetime of 77 years!
As for patriarchy and more women leaving religion including lds, according to pew- it seems to be sending a message, but it obviously won’t matter. Nothing of significance will change!
Throughout history, the lds church has lagged behind the culture, and now is predominantly far right imo.
On the subject of General Conference, I have been frustrated many time by the speakers ignoring topics that seem like they clearly need to be addressed. I would be fine if the First Presidency (or Q12) were to make a list of topics they want covered, divvy them up among themselves, and assign the rest to Seventies. (But not to sisters. If there are only going to be three of them, it would be very uncool to make them to speak on topics assigned by men.) Oh, and if the Q12 want one or more “follow the brethren” talks, they need to own that instead of farming them out to lackeys.
If we are talking about what is a dominant “message”, I feel like I have been clubbed to death with the “Covenants” hammer. “Covenants” is in some ways the messaging Anna is talking about, a subtle way to repackage “obedience”. Either way, Heaven continues to be the reward for some combination of compliance and Jesus’ blood to make up the difference. The Mormon version of a cosmic evacuation plan.
LDS General Conference has become absurd. A long, long time ago the conference stopped being used to make the membership aware of church business. The conference still had value because limitations in communications technology made General Conference a rare time the members could hear directly from and watch the First Presidency and Q12 and other general authorities.
Now that there is no limit or friction on the ability of church leadership to communicate directly to the membership, General Conference as a means for church leaders to deliver messages is a big whoop. What makes hearing from a church leader the first weekend of April or October any different from any other day of the year? Church leaders are talking all the time somewhere in the world, are we to suppose that they save their best message for General Conference?
So what is the purpose of General Conference in the 21st century? It seems to be to fulfill tradition, to give local leadership a weekend off and to inform membership who are the top people of the church, in case you hadn’t been paying attention.
To recap: At a modern LDS General Conference (1) No church business of any merit is presented to the membership – just me, but I don’t see anything special about temple announcements and in fact I find them to be a remarkable way of manipulating the membership (2) Members provide only superficial input on leadership assignments and disagreement is unwelcome and intentionally ignored (3) Leaders of specific organizations are not expected to give a report on the accomplishments and failures of their organization – there is zero leadership accountability (4) There is no outline or commitment made by the conference organizers to discuss specific topics. (5) There is no follow-up or conversation among church leadership on what is presented. This means talks are delivered with no opportunity to have what is said clarified or challenged. It is as if there really isn’t any priority on ensuring members are properly informed!
In summary: LDS General Conference for the membership is literally five separate but indistinguishable blocks of sacrament meeting talks and choir music. And why five? Because for some reason when the leadership decided to do away with the General Priesthood Meeting and then do away with the General Women’s Meeting, they didn’t want to give up on having a Saturday evening meeting. So General Conference still includes a Saturday evening session even though that session is just like all the others.
A limited form of coordinated messaging is done by the correlation committee. Arguably this coordination is more about what not to say than what to say. A handful of GAs have said things that ran contrary to the messaging decided upon by the correlation committee, and their spoken words ultimately edited a bit when printed in written form (or possibly even in spoken form, in the infamous case of Ronald Poelman’s talk in the 1980s).
Another form of coordinated messaging takes place in the form of the president of the church (particularly the current one) periodically offering a new slogan to the church in his address (let God prevail! think celestial!), which then gets adopted by a sizable number of speakers in subsequent conferences and local wards everywhere.
There are cases when it sounds as if it has been suggested that speakers mention a specific idea in their talks, as in April 2024 when nearly every talk mentioned “temple” and/or “covenant” at least once. That’s not a coincidence; that’s a directive. And yet, does it actually mean anything significant? I would say no. On the most important and relevant topics, there’s enough evidence that they can’t fully come to agreement that all we’re left with is a bit of lightly coordinated messaging on vague slogans whose meaning isn’t all that clear.
So, everybody’s talking about the verbal messaging from conference and that is fine and I will join that discussion, because, yes it should be limited to one form of messaging or one subject instead of all messaging from the church at once. That would be a confusing conversation.
The main two verbal messages that I am picking up from conference is “covenant path” and the importance of our prophet. Y’all know those verbal messages quite well. So, what is the message behind that verbiage? It isn’t far removed from the verbal part, but is slightly different. I would guess that it translates to “We are the only church that can get you back to God, because belief in Jesus isn’t getting you there without you doing exactly as we tell you.” In more subtle ways it also says behavior is more important than faith, and President Nelson is more important than Jesus, and obedience is more important than love. And finally, the thing that Nelson believes about God’s love is conditional.
I am also aware that Church leaders claim that they aren’t told what to speak on, and I agree with the OP that it appears that this is largely the case. However, there are a small minority of talks in GC that seem like they are coordinated/assigned to me. One recent example of this was just a year ago in the April 2024 GC, when both Dallin Oaks (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2024/04/47oaks?lang=eng) and Annette Dennis (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2024/04/14dennis?lang=eng) gave talks trying to convince endowed members to wear their garments 24/7. In the months leading up to this GC, other Church leaders had given talks about garments, so maybe Oaks and Dennis were both independently “inspired” to give garment talks, but it seems unlikely to me. If Dennis’ talk was, indeed, assigned, then I kind of feel sad for her that what may be her one and only GC talk was mandated to be on Mormon underwear. That said, she’s also the person who made the controversial claim that “There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women”, so the Church honestly may be better off with her underwear talk.
As a few others have noted, internal messaging to members has been a nonstop drumbeat of “covenants, covenants, covenant keepers, covenants, covenants, covenant path, covenants, covenants” for quite some time. Anna noted some reasons for this, but I’ll add another. I think that “covenant keeping” is Russell Nelson’s idea of how to slow the rate of members leaving the Church, reducing participation, etc. Nelson knows that people are leaving at an alarming rate, and he thinks that reminding them that they promised to do X when they were baptised at 8 years old or to give all their time and money to the Church institution when they were endowed at 18 or 19 years old is going to help stem the tide. In Nelson’s mind, all he needs to do is remind people of their covenants, and members will quickly do an about face and return to being highly motivated TBMs again. I think covenant keeping has been an important part of Nelson’s faith jorney. However, I think he is wrong to assume that covenant keeping is as inspiring to most Church members as they are to him.
It’s so interesting that the Church’s internal messaging to members is amazingly different from its messaging to outsiders. Honestly, the shift on the Church’s website to make us look more like “traditional Christians” to outsiders is a million times more appealing than the “keep your covenants” internal messaging inflicted on members. Maybe the Church should scrap all the covenant path guilt tripping directed at insiders and instead focus more on the traditional Christian ideas–you know stuff like loving others, charity, honesty, etc.–that it likes to present to outsiders. Inspiring people to act out of love would be a heck of a lot more inspiring to me that the “keep your covenants or else” browbeating we are now currently receiving. Which way of thinking really is celestial, anyway?
The best GC talk that Dallin Oaks ever gave–and it’s not even close–was in April 2023 when almost his entire talk was simply quoting Christ, mostly from the New Testament. (I was hoping to see a repeat of this from him in subsequent GCs, but alas we have been subjected to condemnations of gay marriage, multiple reminders of the importance of the Proclamation of the Family, the importance of wearing temple garments 24/7, and “temporary commandments” from him since then). Maybe the Church should just stick with the New Testament Christ messaging–without modification–for both members and outsiders alike.
Why do I, a former TBM who is now a non-believer, listen to GC every six months. It’s not for direction. It’s not for guidance. It’s because I’m intrigued by the messaging. I am very interested in what the corporation has decided to convey.
I really enjoy when new ground is broken (i.e., have the faith NOT to be healed; “temporary” commandments, etc.). Remember when Soros implied a couple of years ago that we should look at the BOM as a revelation, not a translation? And I especially enjoy cringe moments like when the auditor got up and said all is well right after the $5m SEC fine had been executed or when the sister said a cup of coffee could keep us out of the Celestial Kingdom.
You don’t have to be a believer to find all of this fascinating. I generally focus on the Q15 because that’s where the power is but when, for example, a junior GA says that a prophet’s words don’t age as well as classic cars or comic books it makes watching their talks worth the time too.
Mountainclimber479 did a great job of putting my thoughts into words. I 2nd those comments. In my ward, I almost never hear anything about Jesus or his teachings. It’s all about temples, covenants, missionary work, and following the prophet. I would love it if we focused more on the New Testament Christ messaging for members and outsiders alike.
I prefer watching Nemo evaluate General Conference than watching the actual mind numbing 10 hour event.
Nelson’s message at Gen Conf April 2024 – all the heavenly dudes who appeared to Joseph and Oliver on 04/03/1836.
He’s still telling us this even though it seems so preposterous. I pity the missionaries assigned to Brooklyn NY who have to share a message about the return of Moses to Ohio 189 years ago.
Don’t ask me to share this good news with my friends and neighbors – I would rather organize a hot dog eating contest to be held in the parking lot of my local 7-11 – attire of sweatpants recommended.
Is there such a thing as planned and directed LDS messaging?
I tend to believe there is a form of LDS messaging, but I do not think this messaging is found in General Conference. Rather, I think the messaging that most captures the LDS zeitgeist are the “Featured Voices” (e.g., op-eds) written in The Deseret News.
Here are the current 4 “Featured Voices”:
1. Naomi Schaefer Riley – Being compassionate and enforcing laws are not mutually exclusive
2. Dave McCann – Return to sender: Mawot Mag’s big play is taking him back to New Jersey
3. Jay Evensen – Too hasty? Marijuana’s health problems pile up
4. Mariya Manzhos – Are people in larger households happier? What a new report found
So #1 seems to reinforce the LDS notion of mercy not robbing justice (it also probably reinforces the idea that God’s love is not unconditional as well). #2 is a celebration of sports, which I think is the glue that holds a lot of people in the church in the Mormon corridor (it is always nice when BYU sports teams are doing well, and right now the basketball team is doing really well!). #3 reinforces the Word of Wisdom (and I have to say, as an RN this op-ed is spot-on; Marijuana’s harmful effects are far worse than most people realize, especially for mental health, psychosis, and schizophrenia). #4 is kind of pro-family and I think the subtle message here is, to borrow Anna’s words, “have more babies!”
A few weeks ago the writer Mariya Manzhos wrote another piece entitled “The case for a ‘power pause’ for mothers.” The article highlighted a book by one Neha Ruch who was an ambitious career woman who realized she could not have it all or that balancing work and raising small children just wasn’t working for her. So, she took a “Power Pause” (which is the title of her book) and temporarily left the workforce with the intent of coming back. It’s pretty obvious to me that the featured writers at the church’s news outlet are pushing more traditional gender roles, but they are going about it in a more subtle way. By highlighting accomplished outsiders who (surprise!) come to essentially the same conclusion as what is contained in an orthodox reading of The Family Proclamation, the Church can push a pro-natalist view to nudge LDS women to have more children in a less direct way than what President Benson was doing to women decades ago.
When it comes to messaging, it seems we should examine the church magazines… they are actually planned, designed and approved. General Conference talks are haphazard reflections of an individual’s desires, and may bear only passing resemblance to institutional goals.
On that note, I just looked at the April edition of the Liahona magazine. In it I found a religion that was primarily focused on Jesus, sought to establish Zion and was very (when compared with the past editions of the old Ensign magazine) multicultural and multiethnic. Only a few pictures were of white Caucasians. This edition actually gave me pause: “Is this really a reflection of the LDS church present and/or future?” This magazine was actually friendly and inviting! It would be hard for a casual observer to get any idea of a rigid hierarchy, political conservativism or theological hardlines solely from this edition. I hope this signals a trend and the trend continues.
Old Man, the Liahona magazine used to be the version of the Ensign that was distributed overseas, mostly to non English speaking groups so in the past was more of the messaging to outside, rather than strictly members. I suspect when things switched, the editing stayed with more nonmember and non English speaking, rather than changing to the same kind of internal messaging we get in general conference. Because you are correct that the Liahona seems more focused on Jesus, multicultural and loving than the Ensign ever did.
But having said that, I think the church is sensitive to the common criticism that it is too much about temple, tithing, covenants, conditional love, and worship the prophet, and obedience, while not being very much about Jesus. They even started pretending that the endowment is all about Jesus, when in fact it is more of “you need this covenant besides the atonement, because the atonement isn’t good enough.” It never mentioned the man Jesus or talked about his teachings back when I went, except as a closing to prayers kind of “in the name of” kind of thing. It had nothing at all to do with Jesus except to say you need signs and tokens in addition to Jesus.
So, they are attempting to focus more on Jesus, but to me it seems to be not filtering down to the ward level. Their messaging has been stuck on Mormon exceptionalism and how we are different than other Christians and lost the basic message of Christianity. Too much focus on how we have *more* and pounding that more, and too little emphasis on the basic Christian message and how much we have in common with other Christians.
Anna, I especially love your first comment, because I think you’re spot on. So much messaging is conveyed indirectly. In the early days of the Bloggernacle, I remember repeatedly having an argument with people who claimed that women weren’t less valued in the Church because there was no GA quote I could cite where they said “Women are less valued in the Church.” Which is of course a ridiculously narrow idea of how messages are conveyed.
Along similar lines, I wrote a blog post once where I looked at what GAs had said about abortion in General Conference. Because members are generally very anti-abortion even though on the books, the Church allows for some instances where it’s not a sin. It turns out that GAs universally talk about it as bad, and praise women who went against counsel to get one. The clear message, although not stated outright, is that righteous women will find a way to not get an abortion.
On the level of words, though, one I haven’t seen cited is that apparently there’s been some directive for GAs to call temples “houses of the Lord,” maybe to make them sound less strange as you point out, Dave, but of course succeeding only in doing the reverse. It’s hardly clunky at all to say “I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on my way to a house of the Lord” rather than “I’m a Mormon on the way to the temple.” It seems like an on-brand change for RMN. I’ve noticed even some of the more orthodox-than-thou people in my ward using “house of the Lord” too, so it’s spreading.
On the question of messaging that’s disappeared: food storage (you’d think the age of Trump trying to overthrow the government by various means would have prepper GAs salivating, but I guess once memory of the Great Depression faded, so has food storage rhetoric), journal-keeping (good), card-playing (bad).