Line upon Line

What are the currents in the news that touch on the ideas and values that Latter-day Saints care most about? Where are the stories that talk about us and what do we think of them?  How do you find the perspectives, insights and ideas in the media that are important to our lives?

This new column, called “Currents” will link you to those stories. We also invite our readers to contribute story links from articles you feel compelled to share with a broader audience. Send these with a link and a short excerpt to [email protected].

One

Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Still in News Cycle

Taylor Frankie Paul, the centerpiece of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives continues to make the news though it has been three weeks since her world crashed around her. She had been slotted as the star of ABC’s The Bachelorette, and then when a video went viral of her throwing barstools and physically assaulting her partner Dakota Mortensen in front of her child, in an unprecedented move, the network canceled the series just days before it was supposed to air. In addition, Secret Lives suspended filming of the next season.

This flew through social media and other media, large and small. It’s certainly the biggest “Mormon” story in the media of the last while. The stories continue following her:

Taylor Frankie Paul is distancing herself from Mormon church amid domestic abuse allegations 

On Easter Sunday, Taylor Frankie Paul, announced she was leaving the Church, The Los Angeles Times reported.

She said, “I strongly believe in Christ, God, the bible, the divine,” she continued in her post. “I believe we are loved whether we are praying in [a] church building or from a bathroom floor at home.”

She also received this bad news: Taylor Frankie Paul can have unsupervised visits with her toddler son, court rules 

Anyone aware of Secret Lives would be hard-pressed to call her leaving the church news. It seemed she left the church a long time ago and instead had turned to exploit it for the shock value of the show and enjoy the money that followed.

Media companies, like Hulu, who create reality TV, know that the audience becomes easily bored with last year’s programs. Reality TV can become stale, unless there is some new thing especially that pushes the boundaries. They found that new, edgy thing with Secret Lives and the angle was this: women who had grown up in a sexually strict, religiously conservative environment are secretly wild. Being bound by commandments, they are loose and passionate behind the curtain. They are into soft swinging, husband swapping, and petty bickering. They will betray their faith, their families, and their friends as entertainment, painting a false picture of the Church that held them back.

Viewers ate it up, all the while being led to this conclusion. If wives and mothers acted like this, it would be a demonstration of human weakness, a reflection of themselves. If “Mormon” wives and mothers acted like this, it’s a reflection on the Church. It suggests that religion, and in this case, particularly the “Mormon” faith, which most people know very little about, is actually hypocritical. Latter-day Saints may teach high standards of living, but it is a  mask for weak and shallow behavior.

Secret Lives did the Church and Latter-day Saints a disfavor that just keeps on giving.

Two

Utah #1 in Family Structure

The Institute for Family Studies has just published a report that families are fleeing blue states for red, and added this about the ranking of individual states by family structure:

“These regional trends also show up in our 2026 Family Structure Index (FSI), which is composed of three variables: the share of prime-age married adults, the share of teens living with married parents, and the total fertility rate. Combining these measures, we calculate a state Family Structure Index score and find that Utah stands out as the top state when it comes to family structure. Ranking #1 in the Family Structure Index, Utah has the highest share of prime-age adults married, the highest share of teens in married-parent homes, and the sixth highest total fertility rate in the union. With a family structure score of 103, Utah is the only state to keep its composite score above national levels from 2000.”

It may be no surprise that Idaho, with its heavy Latter-day Saint population, came in at number 2.

Three

A Disturbing Idea: An AI Jesus

The growing dominance of AI in our lives gives us much to worry about. We turn to it for medical advice, for therapy, for romance and companionship. Now companies are taking it even further and offering an AI Jesus or Buddha. Why go through the struggle of prayer to know God or receive revelation when you can just dial up a Chatbot? How would a soul wilt and become hopelessly barren if he gave up talking to God and talked to his AI Jesus instead?

From “Buddha Bot’ to $1.99 chat with AI Jesue, the faith-based tech boom is here. 

“For some evangelical Christians, faith is about having a personal relationship with Jesus. At $1.99 per minute, the tech company Just Like Me is taking that concept to a new level.

“Users of the platform can join video calls with an avatar of Jesus generated by artificial intelligence. Like other religious AI tools on the market, it offers words of prayer and encouragement in various languages. With the occasional glitch, it remembers previous conversations and speaks through not-quite-synced lips.

“’You do feel a little accountable to the AI,” CEO Chris Breed said. “They’re your friend. You’ve made an attachment.”

As religious AI tools become increasingly common, many people are reckoning with how these technologies shape their relationship to faith, authority and spiritual guidance.”

Four

Why Are Religious Runners So Fast? 

Run magazine asked an important question, “Why are Religious Runners So Fast?” and then explored the elite of the running world with a second great question, “Is something in their spiritual lives giving them a performance edge?”

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“At the highest ranks of professional running are a surprising — if not disproportionate — number of athletes thanking God at the finish line. It’s a curious phenomenon: For decades, society at large has become more secular. Less than half of Americans say religion is an important part of their daily lives. And yet, these statistics don’t seem to square with how widespread religion is in every pocket of the elite running world.

“The phrase “eternal perspective” is not one you encounter often among athletes. You would be more likely to hear it in a philosophy or theology class — which in fact, is where you might encounter Clayton Young, an Olympic marathoner and a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although Young might argue those two descriptors are in the wrong order:

“’There’s the highs of winning and the lows of losing, but at the end of the day, the title of neighbor, and, son of God, those cannot be taken from you. You will always be those,” Young told me. “And that eternal perspective is what really kind of helps stabilize the boat when the storm is raging and when the seas are calm, when it comes to this fickle sport of running. Because it is very fickle. It is a very short time of life. I’ve only probably got five more years and then I’ll have another half of my life to live.’”

Five

The Book of Mormon: Another Example of Why It Is a Book for Our Day

At the Sic et Non blog on Patheos, Daniel C. Petersen mentioned he was at last reading a book he had on his shelf for ten years by Hyrum Lewis called There is a God: How to Respond to Atheism in the Last Days. 

Dan shared this quote from the book:

“Marx’s atheistic materialism emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Darwin’s Descent of Man (not itself atheistic, but giving ammunition to the movement) was published in 1871. Nietzsche wrote his most important works on the death of God and morals in the 1880s. Freud discounted religion as a delusion in the early twentieth century, and logical positivism — which reduces all knowledge to statements about sense data –took off after World War II.

“The Book of Mormon anticipated all of the major ideas of these atheists even earlier than that. Two millennia ago, the anti-Christ Korihor (in Alma 30) argued that religion was ‘the effect of a frenzied mind’ (Alma 30:16; an anticipation of Freud) and a tool for the ruling class to ‘glut [themselves] with the labors’ of the workers (Alma 3027; an anticipation of Marx). He also said that you ‘cannot know of things which ye do not see”’ (Alma 30:15; an anticipation of logical positivism), that ‘every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature’ (Alma 30:17; an anticipation of Darwin), and that the end of God meant that ‘whatsoever a man did was no crime; (Alma 30:17; an anticipation of Nietzsche). The Book of Mormon, published in 1830 and supposedly cooked up by an ignorant farm boy, foresaw the five most important arguments against religion that would define atheism for the coming centuries.”

Then Dan added, “It’s difficult, at this point, not to think of an important insight from President Ezra Taft Benson”:

“The Book of Mormon . . . was written for our day. The Nephites never had the book; neither did the Lamanites of ancient times. It was meant for us. Mormon wrote near the end of the Nephite civilization. Under the inspiration of God, who sees all things from the beginning, he abridged centuries of records, choosing the stories, speeches, and events that would be most helpful to us.

“Each of the major writers of the Book of Mormon testified that he wrote for future generations. . . .  If they saw our day and chose those things which would be of greatest worth to us, is not that how we should study the Book of Mormon? We should constantly ask ourselves, ‘Why did the Lord inspire Mormon (or Moroni or Alma) to include that in his record? What lesson can I learn from that to help me live in this day and age?’ “(Teachings: Ezra Taft Benson, 140).