Exmo Wall Street Journal Article - Ridiculous Yet Telling

Our culture still says it's ok to take a bigoted approach to Latter-day Saints I have been saying this since 2024. There is a reason that most of the ExMo influencers mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article are women. This article helps support what I have been saying. This will blow over and will be a strength.

 Raw Transcript

All right, so everybody's up in arms on
the Wall Street Journal
uh article on ex Mormons and and their
Tik Tok influence. Uh there's a few
things I want to cover here that maybe a
little different of a take on this. I
think overall this is actually very
positive. I'm glad people are out there
as apologists. This isn't as much what I
do, but I'm glad those people are out
there and that that is happening. Uh,
but I think overall this is actually
going to turn into a positive thing. Uh,
this episode here is brought to you by
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right, so this article with the Wall
Street Journal. Um, I remember back with
the Book of Mormon musical and remember
how that was treated and what we did. I
I I had a lot of people very upset
talking to me about that and just saying
how horrible this was. How can they do
this to us? And sure, I feel that. I
think it's right. But I knew it was
going to be a positive thing. It was
bringing Latter-day Saints out into
mainstream publications
and media. And that's what this does.
Now, I don't think it's great that they
write the way that they did. This is a
very, very biased uh surprisingly biased
article from the Wall Street Journal.
This isn't Vice Magazine. This isn't the
Washington Post, the New York Times.
This is the Wall Street Journal. Uh
where you would expect a little bit more
curbing on these types of things,
especially going into the things that
are sacred. There's an image, a photo in
there of of one of the female uh EXMO
influencers with temple clothing. Um
they talk about this. It's,
you know, it's ridiculous that they do
this. They feel they can do it. Uh they
don't do this with hardly any other
religion. The Catholics really are the
only place where you see this done more
probably than than with Latter-day
Saints. But they've got support, right?
They've got a massive number of
certainly in the United States and other
places in the world a large base of
members of the Catholic Church. We're a
very small minority, you know, under 2%
of of the uh of the population in the
United States as an example.
So, it's a little bit different. It's
like you you go back and you look at how
our culture has become obsessed with,
you know, starting with critical race
theory and moving up into
intersectionality where we're we're
dividing everybody up by their race and
their gender and their sexual
orientation, their na their ethnicity,
uh, etc. pride where where their their
economic level um and now and and you
find the people that are fringe, right?
Well, we're fringe. We're a minority
that is picked on all the time and we
have a very strong history of this, but
it doesn't matter. These other groups
get all of this uh uh victim privilege,
let's call it, uh on the intersectional
ladder, but not Latter-day Saints. we
get both the actual victimhood and we we
get no privilege that that goes along
with that. So we have to fight this off
which is good, right? We don't want to
be victims. We will we don't want to act
as victims. We want to remember our
history but we're not going to turn it
into being victims. That is that is very
anti-Christian
uh a very anti-Christian approach to to
life. We see this with the Lamemonites
in the Book of Mormon. This is what they
did, right? very victimized. They held
on to that and they hated those outside
of their tribe, so to speak. So, we
don't want that. But it's just so
interesting that you you you don't get
nearly nearly outside of the Catholics,
you know, you don't get nearly the the
uh crossing of sacred lines in the media
that you do with the Latter-day Saints.
for like the last group, you can just
absolutely go all out and and and
uh um you know, cut off at the knees if
you choose to do do this. And from from
having Mormon in the title to call using
a quote as a cult, right, in and it is
so obvious what they're trying to do
here. And you know, here we have just a
couple few weeks ago, we had the editor
of Daily Wire go after Latter-day Saints
in in absolutely trit uh uh attacks,
just regurgitated evangelical attacks
against the Latter-day Saints. And here
we've got the Wall Street Journal. Is it
really any surprise? Is it really any
surprise? I mean, if you go and look at
the Pew Research and other studies, you
see that the Latter-day Saints are the
least liked. we are the least liked.
Now, you have to think about what that
actually means, right? It's it's a
perception of where you are in the
popularity ladder. That's really what it
is. It's not like I I don't think that
there is a large amount of people that
go around and they just plain don't like
their latter latter- day saint
neighbors. I I I don't think that that
is the case. In fact, I think it's the
opposite. But in terms of where you
stand in that hierarchal structure of
society uh with in in perception, we are
down at the bottom in terms of Christian
in terms of denominations, Christian
denominations.
And so, but again, regardless regardless
of that victim space that we're supposed
to be in, we are attacked uh as if we're
not as as if we're somehow the hegemony,
the hegemonic lead in Christian
denominations. It's it's kind of
bizarre. But overall, one more point. I
really want to make this point because,
you know, last December,
and I had talked about this a couple of
times last year in 2023, there were some
big studies that came out on
Christianity,
uh, on the falling away of young women,
especially women overall, but young
women especially, especially ages 18 to
30. And this is I I I don't understand
why people don't I I see faithful
members of the church coming back at me.
I've had them contact me and saying,
"Why are you doing this?" going into the
comments section uh and others that are
faithful and just getting mad at me as
if I'm attacking women by bringing out
the very obvious data that throughout
Christianity including in with the
Latter-day Saints, women are leaving the
church in the United States, especially
in ages 18 to 30. So much so that now if
you look at Christianity broadly, men
and women are about equal in the amount
of bodies that are in the pews each
Sunday, right? Which is I in my
lifetime, I've never seen that. I don't
know if that's ever been the case in the
United States, but it is now because so
many women are leaving Christianity and
leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. And you can see this
in so many places. Uh uh I travel quite
a bit and and I'll go and I'll see the
same things things that I never saw
before. A young dad with his kids and
and and no spouse there, right? Or or a
single young man at church without his
wife. And that those things were very
rare, very rare, you know, 10, 15 years
ago. Not anymore. That's that's a very
common thing to see. And here you have
in the art Oh, by the way, I let me back
up on this. So, as I would bring these
up, there was all this push back from
members of the church and actually Exmos
also just saying that I was being
misogynistic and attacking women. Jared
Halverson had a very similar situation
as he was bringing up the data on on uh
Christianity and and women leaving
Christianity as if he's attacking women.
We I I I this point has to be made. If
we keep our head in the sand, we cannot
help, right? We cannot help with this
situation.
And and it's if if we cower down because
of our now typical
uh accusations of misogyny or or
patriarchy,
then we're going to lose our daughters.
We're going to lose them.
So, we need to say to ourselves, what do
we need to do in bringing up our
daughters
from the very the from when they're very
young to try and turn this tide? What
needs to be done? I don't know all that
needs to be done, but I I I'm very aware
that this is something that's happening
and we should all be very aware of it.
So, what do you get in this article with
the Wall Street Journal? Well, surprise
surprise that you have a a female
uh influencer, right, that is in in the
the top picture
um Alyssa Granfeld, right? And who is
the top XMO influencer? And in December,
I was going all over all this data and
showing everybody that women are leading
in the XMO world now. And I got all of
this push back. I was like, "Wait, go
look." But what about Mormon stories?
What about No, they're the these are not
the upand cominging accounts in social
media. They're just not. They are the up
and cominging accounts and the ones that
have now blown by everybody else are
women.
And and so you've got this movement
that's not an attack.
Just look at what is. Look at what is.
And so in if you look in this article,
you will see that the w almost all of
the influencers, the exo influencers
that they bring up are women. The
example at the beginning of the article
of the young woman who was looking at
church history and other things about
the church and how it's all patriarchal,
how they treat LGBTQ, all of those sorts
of things. And then she says that the
influencers finally had her, you know,
cross the line and and and leave the
church.
It's a woman that they give the example
of. And and this is this is what it is.
This is what is happening. And
interestingly, for the faithful side,
it's mostly men they bring up because
it's mostly men that are on the faithful
side. And and it's it's I it's odd. I I
I I'm not saying that men are more
faithful
at all. I'm just saying this is the
dynamic that we get out there in social
media with a church right now,
both independently, independent
podcasters and YouTubers like myself and
and those that are not independent.
And so it's it's it's
an interesting dynamic that the Wall
Street Journal either consciously or
subconsciously looking at everybody out
there looking at all the Tik Tok
influencers and thinking, "Okay, well
these are mostly women. The bigger
accounts are mostly women and and we
need to address that. That's an
important thing." Now, I also think that
overall going back to the Book of Mormon
musical, that was a huge home run for
the Latter-day Saints.
the way that we handled it, the way we
treated it. Um, bringing we we are so
unknown to the world and so unknown even
within the United States.
People hear about us, they may not. So
many people in the US actually don't
even know a Latter- Day Saint. They've
never met a Latter-day Saint especially
in the Northeast and in the South.
And so it's I it's it is negative. It's
a very negative article.
And there are apologists out there that
are going to do a great job of of
fighting back and talking about this.
Um, and and and they should, right? That
that should happen. And and it helps us
to offer clarity about our beliefs and
data that is out there. But I see this
as something that overall
is a real positive.
And anytime this is brought up, there
there's at first it might be a negative
to someone who sees it, but then they
may look further. I know people that
have gone and found Mormon stories on
online and ended up getting baptized
because they went down the rabbit hole
and they ended up finding in their feed,
you know, that was starting they had a
lot of ex Mormon stuff, but then they
ended up getting some faithful stuff and
and ended up getting baptized.
And I and I think that this eventually
is something like that. I All news is
good news to a certain degree
and and I think that this is a positive.
Now where the thing that really hits
home for us is the way they treat sacred
things and that's that's a shame. It
really is that the wall a shame that the
Wall Street Journal would would approach
the the most sacred things to Latter-day
Saints in in the way that they do. I
mean they really th this article was
brutal. It it was brutal and brought up
some really ridiculous things.
And uh you know, I I kind of feel like
it'd be interesting to go back and look
at the Wall Street Journal's articles
and bring up their worst articles and
things that have been said and say,
"Hey, let me wrap this around the neck
of the Wall Street Journal and being
maybe completely out of context from
something from, you know, 30 years ago,
40 years ago that we may not understand
as well."
um or or you know, we're looking back as
Monday morning quarterbacks on and
Monday morning Monday morning
historians.
So anyway, that's my take on it is
it's going to be a positive ultimately.
I I I want to see influencers out there
and apologists out there that are
offering clarity to it. But see, it
gives us a chance to offer that clarity.
It gives us a chance to offer the
clarity. And secondly,
notice where they're bringing things up
here. We we have a problem. The
messaging of the church, the outward
messaging of the church is primarily to
women.
This is kind of
this is this is very interesting. Go to
go to lds.org or or uh um the church of
Jesus Christ.org, right? and and go look
at the front page
and and tell me who that's messaging to
and look at look at the messages,
the titles and the messages. And it's
not like all of them or anything, but
look at the titles of the messages and
look at the images and tell me who we're
messaging to.
And yet, we're losing these people.
We're losing these women. Something's
got to change. And and I think that
there are other so many other moving
parts that that go along with losing the
young women, especially in the church
that that we've got to address. We need
stronger men. We need stronger men in
the church. There are a lot more of them
now that are in the pews. They're there.
There's more of a choice than there used
to be, but there are struggles with
those young men and uh and we need to
address those things. Uh so anyway, just
my two cents on the Wall Street Journal.
I'm here in Provo, Utah on a Saturday
morning. I'm going to the pro the uh um
the BYU Stanford game tonight. Very
excited about that with my two sons. Uh
if you see this before the game, look
for me. I'm over in the West stands.
Thanks for listening.