A few years back, Jared Farmer gave an interesting lecture in Logan, Utah for the annual Arrington Mormon History Lecture series called “Music & the Unspoken Truth,” which focused on the relationship between sound, religion and place, with a particular focus on Music & the Spoken Word. Since then, he has expanded the text of the lecture into a book-length treatment of the subject entitled The Sound of Mormonism: A Media History of Latter-Day Saints, which has been released as a free PDF through the Utah State University libraries and as a physical book through the Utah State University Press. 

The Sound of Mormonism offers a provocative and interdisciplinary exploration of Latter-day Saint history through the lens of sound and media. Farmer reframes Latter-day Saint history as an auditory tradition—where revelation, authority, and community are transmitted through sound. He begins with Joseph Smith’s “First Audition” (an aural-focused perspective of the First Vision) and traces the development of vocal, musical, and broadcasting traditions in the Church, emphasizing institutions like Music and the Spoken Word and the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. The book provocatively suggests that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represents not only a religion with media but a religion of media, with prophetic authority and institutional identity tightly bound to sonic forms. Through archival insight and analytical clarity, Farmer constructs a narrative in which voice, music, and quietude become theological tools, institutional strategies, and cultural performances.

Farmer’s thesis rests on the idea that Latter-day Saint religious experience has been fundamentally auditory. Joseph Smith’s revelations—including the Book of Mormon—were originally oral performances, and the modern Church is strongly shaped by the authoritative cadence of General Conference addresses. He argues that the Latter-day Saint soundscape has long privileged the “vocal vicariousness” of male leaders—a theological and institutional practice in which divine authority is expressed through the voices of prophetic surrogates—and structured ecclesiastical reverence through soft-spoken authority, musical performance, and the suppression of charismatic noise. The book traces a transition from exuberant early expressions like glossolalia and shouted hosannas to the restrained, carefully mediated reverence of 20th-century Church broadcasts. The key case studies focus on highlights programs like Music and the Spoken Word and the acoustics of the Salt Lake Tabernacle as essential sites where this mediated religiosity is produced. This transition is placed within broader shifts in American religious sound culture and media history, offering a rich interdisciplinary perspective.

Michael Hicks’s The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography serves as a notable point of comparison. While both Hicks and Farmer examine the Choir as a central institution in Latter-day Saint culture, their approaches differ. Hicks focuses on a detailed internal history of the Choir, exploring its musical repertoire, administrative tensions, gendered politics, and evolving relationship with American popular culture. Hicks brings a musician’s and cultural critic’s ear to the Choir’s musical selections and internal debates, offering a granular view of its ideological and artistic development. Farmer, in contrast, treats the Choir as one node in a broader media ecosystem, focusing less on repertoire and more on the political and theological implications of sound as broadcast and branded.

Despite these differing emphases, Hicks and Farmer complement each other well. Hicks’s account deepens our understanding of the human and musical texture of the Choir—its triumphs, compromises, and contradictions. Farmer situates those developments in a longer arc of institutional strategy and theological messaging, where the Choir becomes a vehicle for the Church’s desire to sound American, respectable, and reverent. While there is some overlap between the two studies in those regards, the two works demonstrate how deeply interwoven sound, authority, and identity are in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

Some of my favorite learnings from The Sound of Mormonism had to do with the Tabernacle at Temple Square and its famous organ rather than with the Tabernacle Choir itself. As Farmer puts it, prior to “Music and the Spoke Word” starting regular broadcasts in 1929, “not the choir but the organ was the most famous musical feature of both Mormonism and Utah. The story of the organ is also the story of its unique architectural and acoustical container—the Tabernacle—and the building’s impact on how Mormons speak as well as sing.” I hadn’t fully understood the extent of the impact of that organ in shaping the musical traditions at Temple Square, including expanding the Choir’s size to match the organ’s expanded exterior after renovations in the early 1900s. I also loved little quirks of history worked into the discussion, such as the note that the Tabernacle was once humorously referred to as the “Church of the Holy Turtle,” due to its appearance.

The Sound of Mormonism is a notable (and freely available!) contribution to Mormon studies, religious media scholarship, and sound studies. He shows that to understand the Latter-day Saints, one must listen—not only to their words and music but to how those sounds are mediated, modulated, and mobilized across time. Farmer’s exploration of acousmatic theology, institutional branding, and the political implications of sound invites readers to reconsider familiar practices like hymn-singing and conference listening in new light. Thus, Farmer’s work reveals a layered and nuanced soundscape that continues to shape both the internal faith and external image of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.