Postmormon Postmortem

Mormon Baptisms for the Dead: Anne Frank, Hitler, and Holocaust Victims

Baptism for the dead is one of the most distinctive practices in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this episode, Jess and Hannah talk through LDS proxy baptism, Joseph Smith’s introduction of the practice, the use of famous historical names, Wilford Woodruff’s temple work for American founders, and the repeated controversies involving Holocaust victims, Anne Frank, Adolf Hitler, Daniel Pearl, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Simon Wiesenthal’s parents. The church often frames improper submissions as the work of individual members, but the pattern raises harder questions about consent, religious identity, institutional responsibility, and what it means to perform saving ordinances for people who never chose Mormonism.

The Same Playbook: How High-Control Religion, MLMs, and Cults Use Identical Tactics

High-control religion doesn't stay in the church. The same mechanisms run in MLMs, megachurches, political movements, and families. Here's the vocabulary to see it — wherever it shows up. The final episode of the Mormon Machinery series. Jess applies Robert Lifton's 8 features of thought reform and Stephen Hassan's BITE Model beyond Mormonism and the LDS Church — to Utah's MLM industry (doTERRA, Young Living, USANA), evangelical prosperity gospel, high-control political movements, and family systems where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provided divine sanction for patriarchal control. Includes Marlene Winell's religious trauma syndrome and diagnostic questions for identifying high-control environments from the inside. The critical thinking you built to leave? You earned it. And you still have it. Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem Ad-free listening from $2/month: patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem TikTok & Instagram: @postmormonpostmortem postmormonpostmortem.com New episodes every Sunday at 9 AM — just in time for sacrament meeting.

Mormon Women Were Told to Stay Home. Now the LDS Church Celebrates Working Moms.

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 [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 [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/

Mormon Sibling Violence Has a Pattern. We Have 100 Years of Headlines.

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.

Tim Ballard, a Mormon Psychic, and Six Civil Lawsuits

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.