The LDS Church recently posted a story celebrating a husband who supports his wife’s career as a pediatric neurologist. What looked like a simple social media post quickly became a very Mormon argument about motherhood, women’s careers, and whether the church has changed its teachings or just softened its public language.

In this episode of Mormon Monday, we talk about Jana Riess’s coverage of the post, the Family Proclamation, and older teachings from LDS leaders who framed motherhood and homemaking as women’s divinely assigned role. We also talk about why older women are not misremembering what they were taught, and why celebrating working mothers now requires an honest accounting of what the church used to discourage.

Sources mentioned in the episode are linked below.

Ezra Taft Benson, 1981. The Honored Place Of Women.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1981/10/the-honored-place-of-woman?lang=eng

Henry B. Eyring, 2018. Women and Gospel Learning In The Church.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/women-and-gospel-learning-in-the-home?lang=eng

Spencer W. Kimball, 1987. To The Mothers In Zion.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/womens-divine-roles-and-responsibilities/to-the-mothers-in-zion-institute?lang=eng

Jana Reiss, 2026. LDS Church’s Post About Working Moms Does Indeed Clash With Past Teachings.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/05/11/jana-riess-lds-churchs-post-about/

Two Mormon brothers killed their brothers 30 years apart. Two obituaries that don't say how they died. One pattern that made both disappear.

On June 18, 1964, Stephen Ferrin, 15, shot his 13-year-old brother David three times after David refused to obey a command. The obituary called him the victim of a Thursday shooting. In 1993, Joe DiLello spent four hours on a couch in Clearfield, Utah after reading Utah's home defense statute, then fired 14 times when his brother Michael kicked through the door. Michael's obituary in the church-owned Deseret News said he passed away November 7, 1993. Neither obituary named the killer.

Jess and Hannah trace the theological architecture underneath both cases — the Nephi narrative as founding text, priesthood worthiness as public family grading, patriarchal blessings that sanctify parental favoritism as prophecy, and exaltation theology that makes the stakes of sibling competition literally eternal — and document a pattern of fraternal violence and institutional erasure running across 100 years of Mormon community headlines.

Trigger warnings: homicide, family violence, death of a child.

In the debut episode of What Do You Know Wednesday, Jess finds out what she knows about Tim Ballard — founder of Operation Underground Railroad and subject of the 2023 film Sound of Freedom. On the table: the six civil lawsuits filed against Ballard in October 2023, the "couple's ruse" his accusers describe in detail, a Mormon psychic who channels Nephi, and a true crime thread connecting one of his plaintiffs to a Pleasant Grove fratricide case. New episodes weekly.

Hannah and Jess break down the First Presidency’s coordinated fifth Sunday lesson on the U.S. Constitution — a lesson directed to every U.S. ward on May 31st, teaching that the Constitution enabled the restoration. Dallin Oaks spent his apostolic career filing amicus briefs in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Fulton v. Philadelphia, and 303 Creative — all three about religious exemptions from LGBTQ nondiscrimination law. He is now president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Also covered:

The July 5th worldwide fast asking 17.5 million members in 170 countries to pray for American religious liberty;

The Mountain Meadows Massacre versus the Missouri persecutions;

and what a former Area Authority Seventy from Sweden says Gordon B. Hinckley told a room of leaders about where the tithing money comes from.

The papyri Joseph Smith claimed to translate survived. Egyptologists read them. They're a standard funerary text. The LDS Church published an essay about it. We read it so you don't have to do it alone.

This is Episode 2 of our Gospel Topics Essay series. We walk through the full Book of Abraham history: the 1835 Kirtland purchase, the 1912 Spalding analysis (eight independent Egyptologists, one conclusion), the papyri's rediscovery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1966, and the First Presidency's letter written before any scholarly analysis — claiming the fragments proved Joseph's claims completely.

We read the church's 2014 Gospel Topics Essay closely — the Missing Scroll theory, the Catalyst theory, the strategic redefinition of translation — and why the essay presents three possible explanations without endorsing any of them. Robert Ritner, the Roe Professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute, called it "a perhaps well-meaning, but erroneous invention." The essay remains unchanged. We also cover the Kirtland Papers, the three facsimiles, the Kinderhook Plates, and Zelph.

The evidence isn't close. The only question is what you do with it.

You paid ten percent. Every year. The church grew it to $265 billion inside a fund hidden from the federal government for twenty-two years. The SEC noticed. The fine was five million dollars.

This episode of Postmormon Postmortem is Jess working through one question: what does it actually cost to belong to the LDS Church, and where does that money go?

She covers the Ensign Peak SEC settlement and what the cease-and-desist order actually says, the temple recommend system as a financial compliance mechanism, the psychological research on costly signaling and why sacrifice increases group attachment, the unpaid labor economy of callings and missions and FamilySearch, the social architecture that makes leaving cost everything — and the $265 billion in total church assets that members built while believing they were funding God's work on earth.

The institution is cynical. The members mostly aren't. That distinction is not a small thing.

A 17-year-old Mormon girl called police in 1928, saying the maid killed the baby. When police arrived she smiled, and introduced herself as the maid.

Erna Janoschek murdered baby Thais Dianne Liliencrantz in Oakland, then became a courtroom spectacle: laughing, refusing an insanity label, and narrating the crime in her own intriguing jailhouse prose.

Hannah and Jess trace the case through Edward Janoschek’s LDS mission devotion, Marie Janoschek’s abandoned household, the Liliencrantz nanny job, early psychiatric testimony, San Quentin, mental hospitalization, and the family-system damage underneath the headlines. This might only make sense if you grew up Mormon.

LA Not So Confidential podcast, episode 151 “Vintage Case: Baby Killer Erna Janosheck”

https://www.la-not-so-confidential.com/episodes/151-vintage-case-erna-janoschek

Postmormon Postmortem — New episodes drop every Sunday at 9:00 am, just in time for sacrament meeting.

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The LDS Church holds an estimated $265 billion in assets. Its investment income now exceeds what it collects from member tithing. And it still requires 10% of your income for life to stay a full member.

This episode is the structural overview — the bird's eye view of how the LDS Church was built, how it extracts money, labor, data, and loyalty from members, and why it keeps working even when people find out things like this. From Joseph Smith's treasure-seeking origin story to the 2023 SEC fine for hiding $32 billion in shell companies, from the mission as a sunk-cost manufacturing machine to the genealogy database built by volunteers and owned by the institution — this is the machinery, piece by piece.

If someone in your life keeps asking what the big deal is, this is the episode to send them.

🎙️ Postmormon Postmortem — where we lovingly sift through the ashes of our former faith.🌐 postmormonpostmortem.com📱 @postmormonpostmortem☕ buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem🎙️ patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem

00:00 The Cost of Belonging

03:05 Understanding Mormonism: A Systematic Overview

03:57 The Origins of Mormonism: Joseph Smith's Influence

07:01 Power Structures in the LDS Church

08:51 Financial Extraction: Tithing and Its Implications

11:31 The Mission Experience: A Tool for Investment

13:21 Temple Secrecy and Its Effects

15:05 Social Isolation: The Cost of Leaving

16:57 Genealogy: A Hidden Benefit for the Church

18:41 Institutional Protection: Revelation and Adaptation

23:20 The Church's Optimization: Power and Control