I usually don’t provide any additional commentary for these, but the Anderson et al., study below showing that Latter-day Saints didn’t receive the COVID vaccinations any more than average provides some support for my earlier conjecture that the President of the Church actually doesn’t have a lot of influence when it comes to member attitudes towards politicized topics.
Pinheiro da Silva Filho, Fernando. “Deconstructing Narratives: The New History of the Beginning of the Church in Brazil.” Journal of Mormon History 51, no. 4 (2025): 33-57.
No abstract.
Preston, Julia. “Weaving Gender: Men, Women, and the Mormon Home Manufacture Movement.” Journal of Mormon History 51, no. 4 (2025): 89-111.
No abstract.
Talbot, Bridger. “A History of Art in LDS Chapels.” Journal of Mormon History 51, no. 4 (2025): 112-152.
No abstract.
Clarkson, Corinne. “Gender Roles and Empowerment Goals: The LDS Women’s Experience in Brazil.” Journal of Mormon History 51, no. 4 (2025): 58-88.
No abstract.
Mascio, Leilani Naomi, and Ronald Smith. “A Content Analysis of Doubt: How Latter-day Saints Interact Online When One of Their Own Seeks Answers.” Midwest Social Sciences Journal 28, no. 1 (2025): 12.
This content analysis examines how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) interact with doubting members in online forums, focusing on Facebook and Reddit. In an analysis of 1,115 comments from four public posts (August 2024–January 2025), six emergent themes were found: (1) normalizing doubt, (2) thought- terminating clichés, (3) bringing back to the fold, (4) hierarchical escalation, (5) attributing doubt to Satan, and (6) emotional reasoning. Findings reveal that LDS members overwhelmingly dominate these discussions, employing doctrinal language, personal narratives, and appeals to authority to reintegrate doubters. Notably, nonmember interference was rare, suggesting moderated or self-selected engagement. The study highlights how digital platforms serve as spaces for communal care during faith crises, though their reliance on doctrinal shortcuts may inadvertently marginalize intellectual doubt. Limitations include platform-specific dynamics and the absence of offline comparisons. This research contributes to scholarship on religious doubt, digital community-building, and the interplay of emotion and authority in online Mormon discourse.
Anderson, Cory, Shuai Zhou, and Guangqing Chi. “Religious Traditions Exhibit Heterogeneous Effects on Vaccination Uptake: A US County-Level Regression Analysis Supporting Tailored Health Outreach.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2025).
This book includes:
· a brief overview of the LDS religious tradition, its foundational scriptural texts, and its prophetic teaching authorities;
· a discussion of the moral visions and primary sources for ethical reflection and moral teaching in the tradition, including scripture, ecclesiastical authority, moral communities, family, personal experience, divine inspiration, and the moral wisdom of other cultures and traditions;
· an explanation of core ethical principles that differentiate LDS ethics and moral teaching, including covenantal responsibility, gift ethics, agency, virtues of moral character, and the moral community of “Zion”;
· short, lucid chapters that address various aspects of practical and applied ethics, such as the ethics of family and marriage, the ethics of work and the prosperity gospel, healing and medical ethics, civic responsibilities including ethical government, environmental ethics and climate change, the ethics of refugee assistance, and the ethics of non-violence and warfare.
Rackley, Eric D. “‘Reading the scriptures and stuff is a big thing’: sponsors of literacy in a faith-based learning environment.” Ethnography and Education (2025): 1-21.
Scholarship focused on sponsors of literacy examines how individuals support and shape readers’ experiences with texts. Contemporary youth religious literacies research examines young people’s faith-based meaning-making practices. This study puts these two scholarly communities into conversation to explore how six Latter-day Saint youth in the United States were taught to read sacred texts in a faith-based learning environment. Inductive qualitative analysis identified how Brother Jones, the youths’ religion teacher, acted as a sponsor of religious literacy by (a) creating opportunities and conditions for youth to engage with sacred texts, (b) providing youth with an interactional scripture-reading structure, and (c) facilitating youths’ affective experiences with sacred texts. As one of the first empirical investigations of its type, this ethnography advances the potentially profitable construct of sponsors of religious literacy and can improve literacy educators’ fluency in the language of religion and religious literacy from diverse spiritual perspectives.
Comments
5 responses to “Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, October 2025”
Here are your missing abstracts:
Deconstructing Narratives: The New History of the Beginning of the Church in Brazil.
By: Pinheiro da Silva Filho, Fernando
The article focuses on the complexities and inaccuracies in the historical narratives surrounding the early presence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Brazil. It critiques the traditional accounts that have often overlooked the nuanced realities of missionary efforts, particularly the role of Elder Melvin J. Ballard and the German immigrant communities in southern Brazil. Through a critical examination of primary sources, the author aims to reconstruct a more accurate history that acknowledges previously marginalized figures and events, emphasizing the importance of deconstructing established narratives to reveal a more pluralistic understanding of the Church’s beginnings in Brazil. The article also highlights the contributions of earlier researchers, such as Mark L. Grover, in providing a reliable foundation for this critical engagement.
Weaving Gender: Men, Women, and the Mormon Home Manufacture Movement.
By: Preston, Julia
The article examines Brigham Young’s vision for economic independence in the Utah Territory, particularly through the promotion of home manufacture and textile production among Latter-day Saint women. Young, as the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the territory’s first governor, emphasized the need for local production to reduce reliance on imported goods, framing this as a religious duty. The discourse surrounding home manufacture was notably gendered, with Young and other male leaders critiquing women’s consumption habits while urging them to engage in textile production, particularly silk. Despite the push for home industry, women’s responses varied, with some embracing the call for economic self-sufficiency while others resisted or critiqued the expectations placed upon them. The article highlights the complexities of gender roles and economic independence within the context of 19th-century Mormon society.
A History of Art in LDS Chapels.
By: Talbot, Bridger
The article examines the evolving relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the use of artwork in chapels, highlighting a significant policy change that officially prohibited artwork in these sacred spaces in the late 1970s. Historically, from the mid-1800s to the 1980s, artwork in chapels varied in quantity and style, reflecting broader cultural trends and the church’s Protestant roots, which often viewed visual art with skepticism. The article details how local congregations historically commissioned and displayed art, often depicting church history, landscapes, and scriptural events, before the decline of such practices due to institutional standardization and changing aesthetic preferences. Despite the current prohibition, recent developments indicate a renewed interest in incorporating art into meetinghouses, suggesting a potential shift in the church’s approach to religious art in the future.
Gender Roles and Empowerment Goals: The LDS Women’s Experience in Brazil.
By: Clarkson, Corinne
The article focuses on the complex dynamics of female empowerment among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Brazil, particularly through the experiences of women involved in the Relief Society, the Church’s women’s organization. Despite the Church’s patriarchal structure and traditional gender roles, many women report feeling empowered through their religious participation, which provides emotional, spiritual, and material support, as well as a sense of community. The study highlights how these women navigate their roles within a society marked by machismo and gender inequality, often finding strength and identity in their faith, while also acknowledging the contradictions between their lived realities and the Church’s teachings. The findings suggest that cultural context significantly influences perceptions of empowerment within religious frameworks.
Thanks as always! (I should start asking you before I post anything from JMH).
The vaccination paper is a valiant statistical effort, but having to work with data aggregated at the county level (not that there’s a great alternative) really limits its statistical power for small groups like us. Only counties with enough Latter-day Saints to have an impact on the county-wide vaccination rate can really contribute to estimating what that impact is. This is not a study that can say “if there were an effect, we’d have found it.”
Their point estimate of the association between Latter-day Saint population and vaccination rate is +15.1%, which is larger in magnitude than the association for Catholics or Evangelicals. It’s not “significant” because the standard error is large due to our small size. If we could somehow repeat this study in a way that could give much more precise estimates, it’s very possible we’d find no association. But it’s more likely we’d find a significant association.
I’m going to have to disagree with Stephen’s conclusion on this one. I’d say this study provides some evidence, though very weak and certainly not enough to settle the question, that members actually did act on the First Presidency letter on vaccination despite it being a highly political topic.
Their brief discussion of why we might get vaccinated highlights our “body care practices”, including “dietary restrictions” and “religious dress requirements.” They are certainly correct about the Word of Wisdom, but no one wears garments because it’s good for our bodies–just the opposite for some women. It makes you wonder about their sources of information about us. What’s glaringly missing is “because the prophet said so,” despite the fact that it’s highly relevant to their conclusion that public health officials should consider “partnering with church-type traditions through their established hierarchies.” Yes, simply googling “mormons and vaccines” would have brought this to their attention.
Still, given that the prior state of the literature was to look at the effect of undifferentiated “religion” on vaccination, this paper makes a very important contribution by establishing that the effect can go in opposite directions depending on the religion in question. They just probably should have stuck with the religions that are big enough to be analyzed using their method.
Your point is why when I’m drilling down to see if there’s an LDS effect (with counties as the unit of analysis) I find it’s usually best to just subsample for counties within the Mormon Corridor, since there’s just such little variation around 0 outside of the Mormon Corridor. Nonetheless, within the MC you can often see a “Mormon effect” if you run a simple scatterplot, but again your sample size is so low that you have to be careful how many controls you throw in.
But yes, there is a possibility that we’d cross into significance with a large enough sample size since the directionality is correct, but it’s always hard to make that call if it hasn’t yet. At the very least we can say that the “Follow the Prophet” effect, if it does exist, is not super duper obviously large. So the image of all Church members clicking their heels when the President says to jump isn’t supported; but yes, you’re absolutely right there might be an effect that we can’t detect as these sample sizes.
I’d also suggest that Mormons are more likely to believe in a secret combination that uses a crisis to acquire power and wealth.
The covid vaccine rollout was anything but normal and was easily undermined to anyone who was suspicious.
The fact that the prophet supported it, slipped that narrative for many, but not all.
If he said nothing or just encouraged people to pray and act wisely, it would no doubt be much less uptake.