No one has seen Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s musical comedy “The Book of Mormon” yet. It doesn’t start previews on Broadway until the end of February. But early chatter from the Mormon community is already divided between those eager to see the show, and a more conservative group who views the play as another instance of persecution against their faith. John Dehlin, 41, of Logan, Utah has already purchased his tickets to the Broadway musical and will be flying to New York with a group of 10 people (only one of whom isn’t Mormon) on March 25th.

The real heroes of the story are women such as Jane Elizabeth Manning James, a free black woman who was baptized into the LDS Church in the early 1840s and then traveled with a small group of black converts from Connecticut to Illinois in winter, the last 800 miles on foot. “We walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground,” James recounted in a brief autobiography several decades later. James walked to Utah with the Mormon pioneers in 1847 and remained a devoted member of the Church until her death in 1908, outliving its first five prophets. Upon her death Church leaders recognized James as a pillar of faithfulness—after having denied her access to Mormonism’s most sacred temple rituals by virtue of her race.

The Church plans to reopen the Kirtland Temple on March 25, 2024, for public tours at no charge.

Stand-up comedy that’s a stand-up act? In this 2012 comedic world of shock and smut, there are, indeed, living, breathing comedians cleaning house on the laugh track to success. You know the big-timers: Brian Regan, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, Bill Cosby. But what if we told you that dozens of LDS folks are bringing the funny to the fold and to the masses?

Manual 1; Excerpt from "Safety for the Soul," by Jeffrey R. Holland

General Conference is one of my favorite times of the year. The season is changing, and along with these beautiful changes, we get to hear from our prophets. I'm hard-pressed to think of another time during the year that I feel more reinvigorated and energized to press forward.

Eric and Chris were best friends and drinking buddies during and after high school and while Chris was a member of the Church, religion was definitely the farthest thing from their minds. When a personal crisis led Eric toward God, his lifelong friendship with Chris and their shared experiences years before showed them both that the path back to the Savior can look very different from the way you might expect.

1. Mormonism? I don’t have an opinion about it.

You may have noticed the Church’s Instagram account sharing a number of beautiful art pieces along with quotes from general conference talks over the weekend. But who were the artists featured and are any of their pieces available through Deseret Book? We wanted to know the same thing. Here’s what we found out:

Official statistics are hard to come by, but it has become clear over the past several years that Mormonism is seeing many of its 18- to 30-year-olds reduce their participation in the church or leave the faith altogether. Two recent actions confirm this trend and reveal the church’s initial responses in trying to stem the tide. First, in an effort to better track singles and help them feel connected to a local unit by providing new opportunities for callings and meeting other singles without “ward hopping,” the church has disbanded Utah student wards and reorganized them into singles wards in all-single stakes. And second, because it seems to recognize that it meets the needs of families better than it does singles, it has begun re-emphasizing the counsel for young adults to not delay marriage, to not be afraid of finding a worthy partner and starting a family right away even if this means possibly experiencing financial and other struggles not faced by those who delay marriage and children until after completing school or professional training. In this podcast, host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks, Tresa Edmunds, and Jared Anderson explore this issue of a church seemingly in danger of losing a generation of young people.