Until quite recently, the image many outsiders held of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints centered on male missionaries in white shirts and name tags, an impression reinforced by the Broadway “The Book of Mormon.” In recent years, another, unofficial face of the church has emerged in American pop culture: digitally savvy female influencers, often dressed in athleisure and presenting family and faith content online, sometimes closely aligned with church teachings and sometimes not.
The renewed visibility has been intensified by viral clips and by Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” which ABC sought to ride into prime-time by casting “Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul on “The Bachelorette.” But ABC later canceled the upcoming season, citing a newly released video from 2023 showing an altercation between Paul and her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, according to the Associated Press report.
Nancy Ross, an associate professor at Utah Tech University who studies Mormon feminism, said the shift in public attention has tested the church’s ability to maintain its own narratives. “The internet really challenged the church’s ability to maintain its own narratives about itself,” Ross said.
Church leaders have pointed to concerns that media portrayals can mislead. Ahead of the first season’s premiere in 2024, the church issued a statement without naming the show specifically. The statement said that some media portrayals of Latter-day Saint women resort to “stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that are in poor taste and have real-life consequences for people of faith.”
Camille N. Johnson, president of the church’s Relief Society organization for women, made a related point in an emailed statement, saying it was important to “seek out trusted sources of information about the church and its members in light of recent media attention.” She added, “Millions of Latter-day Saint women around the world strive to live faith-filled lives grounded in a love for God and all of His children,” according to the AP report.
Several Latter-day Saint creators and academics emphasized that the influencers driving much of the conversation are not representative of all church members. Lauren Yarro, a Latter-day Saint content creator and podcast host, said she could see why the content might present as a foreign image to some. She said, “Our culture is fascinating to an outsider, and I can understand why it would pull people in,” and added that “the Mormon timeline is intriguing to the rest of the world.” Yarro also said that “I think most people innately have a desire for a happy marriage and a happy family life,” and that many believers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints work to create that kind of family life.
Rosemary Avance, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University whose research includes religious identity and digital media, described a dynamic in which viewers can become hooked on a show’s premise while learning little about the faith itself. She said there was “so little reference” to the cast’s religion after people are drawn in by the title. Avance also said some cast members have left the church or are no longer active, and she criticized the way the series avoids direct explanations. “It was clearly a marketing strategy on behalf of the people putting these shows together. They think that’ll draw people in, and it does,” she said. She added, “It’s not like you have these women sitting down talking about their secret temple practices that they’re not supposed to speak about, or challenging the authority of the church in some way. They’re just not talking about it.”
Avance said the pattern resembles earlier years when pop culture headlines around Mormonism intensified, including during Mitt Romney’s presidential run and the debut of “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway. “People think they know a lot about it (Mormonism), and they’ve heard a lot about it because there’s prominent stories and prominent people who are well-known and those narratives are circulated, but it’s almost always second-, third-hand,” Avance said. She added that “a lot of people don’t know any Mormons and may never meet a Mormon,” and that what they know is often based on preconceptions rather than direct experience.
Other creators said they do not blame individual cast members for how the show lands with audiences, but they criticize how Hollywood packages the religion. Yarro’s comments were echoed by Shayla Egan, another Latter-day Saint content creator, who said “Mormon Wives” did not represent her own experience in Utah. Egan said: “The only thing I don’t like about what they do is sometimes they will play on things, twist things, use what is sacred to us as members of the church, and they’ll put it out and it feels like mockery to us.”
Some more devout members, Egan and others said, use their platforms to respond to and “course-correct” what they consider more salacious storylines. Mimi Bascom, who said her mission is to “show that members of the church are real people,” described making videos in response to “Mormon Wives” clips. Bascom said she views the show as a “net positive for our church” because it gives everyday members a chance to “share what we actually believe and get that more out there into the world,” according to the AP report. She said that she had planned to serve a mission but could no longer after getting married, and that making content about the church has helped her keep pursuing that calling. “We want to be missionaries and spread the good word of the Gospel,” Bascom said, “and so this is just another way we can do it.”
Representatives for Hulu did not respond to the AP’s request for comment, the report said.