Three things for today. First, I’m taking a blog vacation until January. I might pop in for what I call a link-and-comment post on some Tuesdays (my weekly slot; see below for today’s offering) but nothing lengthy and involved. I feel like I’m running out of topics to post about. Is there anything new under the blog sun? Is there anything in the range of LDS topics I work with that I haven’t said or that needs to be re-said? Maybe it will look different in a couple of months. If you’ve been sitting on a guest post, now is the time to submit it. You, too, can have your fifteen minutes of online fame.
Second, and related, what do W&T readers think about topics for future posts you would like to see more or less of? Do I need more politics or less in posts? More LDS doctrine and history that needs to be discussed and commented on or maybe less? LDS culture and current LDS events? New LDS books? Personal experiences? Other Christian themes or denominational issues? Travel stories (I’ve got lots of those)? Tasty recipes?
Third, here’s a link and comment post. At the Atlantic: “Why I Am Resigning“. Nope, not resigning from the Church or a church. It’s an experienced federal district court judge who is resigning from the bench. In the article, he reviews all the ways that government and the legal system in America that he has worked in has changed for the worse over the last ten years or so (the Trump era). He’s had enough. He resigned so he could speak publicly about his frustrations and fears. So …
Has the Church changed for the worse over the last ten years? That can be at either the institutional level of senior leadership, General Conference, and the LDS bureaucracy, or at the local level of your ward and stake. Or, as we are open to all points of view here at W&T, has the Church changed for the better in the Trump era? Are you happier at church now than you were ten years ago? Is change for the worse/better self-generated or is it politics that has infiltrated LDS culture and practice and made it worse? Or maybe just general social trends or online harshness that has bled over into LDS culture in a negative way? Some changes: two-hour church on Sunday, no more Scouting, can’t say “Mormon” anymore, the whole Covid experience and its aftermath (most wards have retained an option for attending online, for example), the Come Follow Me curriculum. Any other changes? For better or worse?
Wheat & Tares 
The politics make church a lot trickier in Utah than things used to be. I’m often on edge with comments and had to walk away from a Relief Society convo at an activity likening Helmuth Hubener to Charlie Kirk. Almost walked out of a St George testimony meeting I was visiting that got very anti-LGBTQ until fortunately the bishop came to the pulpit and turned it around.
Would love a discussion of this and other types of relevant news! https://www.deseret.com/education/2025/11/08/stunning-find-meet-the-missing-woman-in-the-bible-rediscovered-by-a-byu-researcher/
Less politics please. More history please. Less complaining, more explaining.
The last 10 years are a mixed bag. Much of the retrenchment that bothered me most seems like it happened in the 2014-2016 time frame. (Primarily I’m thinking of the exclusion policy and the beginning of a new round of disciplining dissident voices that continues to this day.) Since that time the best thing that has happened is the substantial revisions of the temple ordinances that removed the most problematic sexist elements. There are still problems (remarkably they added some sexism where it hadn’t been before to the sealing text), but I think it was an important change for a lot of people who felt uncomfortable with the parts that are now gone. The worst thing in the last 10 years is the 2024 changes to policy for participation of trans members. I have a trans friend with whom I’ve served in priesthood leadership callings, whose writing about how that change led her to resign her membership was featured on this blog. I support her decision but I lament that it was precipated by such a completely unnecessary policy change.
I know a lot of people who feel like their local church experience in the last decade has been infected by Trump-era politics or changed for the worse by the aftermath of covid, but remarkably I don’t feel like I’ve felt that where I live. I’m still not sure why.
I can understand wanting to run away from the constant politics. I get sick of it too. But I talked to some old Germans 50 years ago who tried to explain how to keep a dictator from taking power. And recently I have had to terminate friendships because they became absolutely without human compassion by following MAGA.
I don’t think we can get away from politics because like it or not, the church has been so staunchly Republican for so many years that we just cannot pretend it is neutral. The church happily walked hand in hand with the Republican Party for some 70 years now. We Wheat and Tares readers didn’t start the fire. Us “libs” are the ones trying to put the fire out. Utah is the most solid red state there is, and that can’t be because all the nonmembers in Utah are far right. Utah went for Trump both times he was elected, and some estimated 70% of Mormons are/were Trump supporters.
Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was taught at church that our US constitution was divinely inspired. So, it is considered kinda sacred, not just by the country but by Mormons. Now we have a president openly violating that constitution and, ya’ know, that kinda tangles up politics straight into Mormonism. Our church is splitting in half over this, right along with our nation and ya’ll don’t wanna talk about it? Pox on you. We NEED to talk about how the MAGA movement is damaging our church, making it full of hatred for God’s brown and black children right along with the hateful, despicable, deplorable Trump followers. Most Mormons voted for a convicted fellow who helped incite an insurrection and you don’t think it is a Mormon issue? Trump preaches hatred and 70% of Mormons love him for it and you don’t want to talk about how unChristlike the church must be to have that happen? Talking politics at church has been happening for some 70 years. Benson. Republican talking points were being preached from the pulpit of my ward growing up, and now that us lefties are starting to stand up and say that is not Jesus’ gospel, you want to shut us up, because you are uncomfortable talking politics.
Go burry your head in the sand. You are 70 years too late to keep the church and politics separate.
As for what I do like to talk about. Hmmmm. Personally I have always been into feminist issues with the church. However, I am starting to feel “been there, done that” about the whole subject. I tried to explain “I think I have outgrown this place” on one of the feminist blogs and just about got banned for thinking I am better?.?? No, just old and tired and kinda hopeless about that topic. The 30 year old feminists are reinventing the wheel, and somehow I feel impatient with that. Go figure. And Kate Kelly being exed seemed to drive all the older feminists right out of the church.
Church History, well, I have read many good books and learned enough to have made up my mind and feel no interest in arguing with those who have not learned the history. But new historical information, yes. Like the article anitawells linked to.
I like the sociology kind of issues that Hawk has brought up recently. She isn’t the only poster, but hers have been the most recent. People and interactions. Culture. Not as cut and dried of a category as history. And it is hard to find a topic that people respond to.
I need to think more on this. I have noticed more of what I am no longer interested in than really defined what brings me here.
I’m ok with political posts. Politics clearly effects religion, and religion tends to inform our politics. But I think posts that aren’t political should do a better job of staying away from politics. Too often posts claim not to be about politics, but also the first two paragraphs introduce the topic with a political example. Once politics gets mentioned at all in a discussion, it tends to be the only thing we can discuss and we miss out on everything else.
I like most of the posts here, so I’d like to see people continue what they’re doing. But if we’re running short on ideas, I’d be curious to see more “reporting from the trenches” with people sharing what they see from their own wards and stakes (or friends and family’s wards and stakes where they have personal knowledge). I’m fascinated with the changes I’ve seen at church over my lifetime, but I’ve lived in various states, had various bishops, and have changed a lot myself. My personal experience has too many uncontrolled factors. I see trends in member’s attitudes, but maybe they’re not at all indicative of the church as a whole. I’d love to hear both good and bad things going on at a local level.
I think most of the changes in the church over the last 10 years have been good, while at the same time, some of the biggest changes have been Very Bad, and my frustration with the church is at an all-time high. My interactions with my ward are more good than bad. My interactions with SLC/COB are more bad than good. 2-hour church is good, but hardly compensates for the anti-trans policies.
I know I’m a third-rate citizen here, but for me what drew me to W&T initially were the heartfelt posts about how religion looks in their actual lives. Including people and interactions, like Anna said. Posts like the following are the ones that keep me checking back in occasionally: https://wheatandtares.org/2025/10/30/revelation-as-repentance/
“Polis” is community. Politics describes the life of the community. In part of my family we were forbidden to talk about politics or religion (which is a segment of the life of the polis. Conversation in that home was banal, at best, and ended up just being talks about the familiar past and genealogy, subjects when repeated ad infinitum cause my eyes to glaze over. And what is the significance of knowing that a person I share some DNA with (a fact that probably includes everyone living and dead) lived in East Anglia? Who the frig cares? It’s not that interesting. Without politics you get nothing. No art. No literature. No music. No dance, No history.Nada. Zip. Zero. Bupkis.
Adam F: I forwarded that comment to the guest author who is definitely working on more similar posts, so stay tuned.
Yesterday, I was re-reading a March 2025 post on BCC “The Day The Blogs Died” in which the author talks about the absolute devastation that was felt by the majority of us bloggers (except perhaps right-wingers at T&S) when the PoX came out: “Turns out, it was all a mirage. Those of us opposed did not simply disagree with the policy, we were shocked by it. . . We knew then that no matter what we had written, no matter how passionate we had argued for a faithful Mormonism on the left, we had lost and would always lose in a church that was never ours in the first place.” I think she’s onto something important. Most of us had been blogging for a long time before that, but in one instant, we realized that the church was much much worse than we had ever cynically thought, and all our efforts to improve the church from within were a foolish dream. It’s similar to how some feminists felt when Kate Kelly was exed and how she and Ordain Women were treated like crap by the church. For me, I was not at all surprised that Ordain Women was a non-starter. A church that cooked up polygamy and then defended it, even quietly, for over a hundred and fifty years obviously hates women. Let’s get real.
I was shocked that the Church hated gay people so much that they would prevent their children from being baptized unless they disavowed their parents, especially since (as I pointed out in my ward’s discussion of this), the church had created a lot of this problem by encouraging gay people to marry straights–these kids are the casualties of their idiotic “orientation conversion” marriages. I can’t think of another conservative church short of Westboro who hates gay people that much. And along with that was the utter non-response from some people I had previously respected at church who shrugged and said “Whatever the Brethren say is OK with us.” Really?? No matter what they say? No matter who is hurt? One couple said those exact words while their adult daughter who was visiting the ward with them was openly sobbing in the seat next to them, completely devastated by the betrayal.
Clearly the Church doesn’t think it’s for everyone, which makes the church much smaller than I grew up thinking it was. I’m not sure how to blog about things from inside the church when this is what it is. I feel similar to DaveW. It’s only gotten worse the more MAGA people there are in the pews. Most people don’t talk politics openly at church, but a whole lot of them use dog whistles that are pretty clear. I also can’t be a part of teaching kids to sing “Follow the Prophet” with its Fox News style final chorus. It’s idolatrous and harmful. Kids should learn right principles like kindness and charity, not blind obedience to patriarchal authority.
Which is to say, I both have and have not answered your question. Like some of the other authors, I struggle to find topics that are of interest that are in any way tied to the Church which feels mostly irrelevant to me. It’s too small for real life issues we are all dealing with in 2025.
I have a lot of thoughts here:
1. A lot of these topics have been discussed for literal centuries at this point, just even considering the LDS context. As everyone knows, even the expression “nothing new under the sun” is *millennia* old.
2. I think the main thing is that every person mostly has to “go through” the experience for themselves. We generally can’t just “take it from someone else”. But I think this means that…
3. It’s fine and expected to see churn and cycling, as some people move on from topics and other people “go through it” for the first time anew.
This makes a very interesting question for blogs. If churn and cycling is expected, then should a blog “brand” follow the writers (and commenters) wherever they are going (even if it moves into topics that weren’t originally the focus), or should the blog renew with new writers and new commenters who are starting fresh? Or something else?
I think it would be really interesting to look at the major group blogs and see if the same people publishing now are the same as what they were a few years back. I think different blogs definitely take different approaches on this question.
A few years back several Wheat & Tares bloggers discussed the challenges and merits of Middle Way Mormonism, and a lot of these similar things were still relevant there — particularly the sense that the middle way doesn’t effectively seem to be a landing place for a lot of people for a long time, but is more often passing point on the way to something else (often, out.) And I was skeptical back then, but I proposed that for someone to stay in long term, they needed to feel a sense of calling to stay, and they needed to have a sense of independent energization that wasn’t dependent on validation from others and the institution. A sense of activism alone without an independent source of fuel will lead to burn out. And having an independent streak but no sense of calling to stay means one can be anxiously engaged in good causes elsewhere.
I still feel this way, but when I think about that in light of the larger political goings on, I wonder. It’s a lot different to make the decision to stay in or exit a church than to stay in or exit a country. How does staying in a country w/o an independent fuel of energy to resist and challenge and fight work?
But that’s a topic for a different day. Pivoting just a bit back to Mormonism, quite frankly, I was disappointed by some of the comments and sentiments raised in “The Day The Blogs Died” that hawkgrrrl referred to early, because it made me realize that By Common Consent was a community of people who had no sense of independence. Rather, they were a community of people who had the luck or pluck to find wards where they could believe that they had institutional support and validation (even if it was just the local ward level), and only really big institutional actions like the the PoX shook them from that false sense of security. And so, because they didn’t actually have an independent source of energy to weather not being in the mainstream, when the mainstream appeared to cross lines that they didn’t realize, then they couldn’t deal with that.
And I get it! Lots of people disengage. Lots of people leave. I am writing as an exmormon; I am not saying I feel called to the church. I just feel disappointed because a lot of the internecine squabbles of the Bloggernacle vs Outer Blogness were precisely proxy wars about the “middle way” vs disaffection where us disaffected folks were chastised or looked down up for not being nuanced enough, not trying to make things work, not keeping the good when throwing out the bad. I dunno, to code switch to black english for a moment: “We been knew.”
Andrew S: Your comment about that internal discussion and the internecine squabbles about the middle way, in concert with the betrayal many permas felt over the PoX reminds me of how so many Democrats felt after Hillary lost, whereas many people of color were like “no effing duh this is how America is.” We been knew indeed. Progressives always seem to be Charlie Brown with that damn football. Every. Single. Time. We get got.
It’s OK to cycle through topics that have been addressed before. I enjoy revisiting. Politics are great. One of the few places I can talk politics. Of course, occasionally I get into heated arguments with libertarians, conservatives, and people who say they are independents who just happen to agree with libertarians and conservatives on about everything. But that’s OK. I get to hone my discussion and debate skills that way.
Dear Wheat & Tares: Don’t change a hair for me/ Not if you care for me/ Stay, funny valentine, stay!/ Each day is Valentine’s day…
hawkgrrrl,
I watched a youtube video podcast between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates and we are absolutely still in this state.
I know people often dislike discussing politics. If you want to preserve the peace at Thanksgiving, make sure you don’t talk politics or religion. The issue I see, though, is that politics is how you live your religion. If you separate them, you sell your religion short and bury your head when it comes to politics. The saints ended up in SLC because of politics as much or more than religion. They left Ohio, Missouri, and then Illinois because of politics, because of their religion. Even Christ was born in a manger, taught, and was crucified under the shadow of politics, either from the Jewish or Roman society. The scriptures are full of politics with wars, prophecies, warnings, and the desires and lusts of leaders or people.
I understand people are uncomfortable and don’t want to talk politics because you not only have to support or not support a political position, but you also have to have a reason for it. In this forum, I feel it’s where we have to be able to square our religious beliefs/questions in how we live it as individuals or as a people, in other words, politics.
I’m thinking about something that Anna wrote earlier in the discussion:
What intrigues me about this is that both sides are motivated by the American civic myth — American exceptionalism, the founding fathers, etc., So, the Mormon instantiation of this is really interesting because, again, both sides *are also motivated by this*.
That is to say, MAGA Mormons do not see themselves as openly violating the constitution or damaging the church. They also see their actions, their beliefs, their side about defending something that is under attack.
I have heard people describe themselves as “amoralists” because they think that morality itself as a concept is a force that can motivate people to commit atrocities. (When we have merely aesthetic differences of opinion, then if someone disagrees it doesn’t justify usage of force. But when we have moral differences of opinion….maybe?)
And I kinda feel that way about exceptionalism. I think that viewing things under the myth of exceptionalism means that the stakes are extremely high, we may want to ameliorate or idolize key players, etc., It’s tempting to say we just need to fight the exceptionalism on the right with an exceptionalist narrative from the left, but I’m not so sure about this.
I think when we are able to critique and downplay the idea of American exceptionalism, the divine inspiration of the Constitution, etc., (but also similar ideas in the church) then we realize that it, like all human things, is fragile. We can look at the flaws without shying away from them, or even compare to others without dismissing them because they aren’t exceptional like we are. Checks and balances are required because it’s Just Us. Those checks and balances can fail because it’s Just Us.
…and yet, because we are mostly in the grip of American exceptionalism, to say such things is heretical, apostate, unpatriotic, seditious.
I think about France which is on their, what, Fifth Republic? Is it perfect? No. But isn’t that the point? — nothing is perfect.
and I think a lot of this of course applies to religion.
Hawk, I love your statement that the church is too small for real life issues, and it is not just the 2025 issues. The church has always been too small for real life issues. Sums up my whole life of trying to find answers to life’s difficult questions in a religion that was too shallow to even comprehend the question. I think I first ran into how shallow and petty the church is when about 5 or 6 and realized that I could not ask the question in my head because it would give Sister Johnson apoplexy. Small child in primary and for some reason, I just knew that my question was too hard for the teacher. Church never did apply to real life.
Maybe that would be a good topic for a post. How good of a fit was Mormonism to your real lived experience? Did it answer questions in meaningful ways?
As far as topics for the future, I think “don’t change anything for me.” That would be my best answer.
I also really like that blog about repentance as revelation. It took a general Christian principle and gave it a deeper look than we were ever able to get in Sunday school. I like the deeper insights, things that we never got in our very small, very shallow religion. So, if someone wants to write up deeper looks at other general Christian concepts, I would like that.
Andrew, I said I was *taught* that, not that I believe it. You are right that both sides see themselves as being in the right, and it is based on American exceptionalism. There is so much Christian Nationalism in the Book of Mormon, and American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. And I might add racism. It was the kind of patriotism I was taught in grade school, back when we even had prayer in class. (Yup, I am that old.) Which is why our current political situation is so relevant to religion, not just Mormons. And do we Mormons really think that if Christian Nationalism takes over the US that the “Christians” will consider us any better than any other group they think of as non Christian?
Do you really think the church won’t do?say something ridiculous (that requires a blog) until the first of 2026? Can we really have a month and a half of respite?
I cannot consider the Constitution to be “divinely inspired” (whatever that even means). The only group given rights and full citizenship were white, land owning males! Black/brown people were just property, treated lower than animals, women were property as well. These policies have caused countless deaths and suffering and continue to this day.