The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church by Jana Riess (review)

All organizations evolve over time and religions are no different. Using impressive feats of data collected from historically contextualized large-scale surveys and vast dyadic interviews, Jana Riess examines the generational differences and futurity of the Mormon Church in The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church. Written with flowing nonjargon prose, this mixed-method exploration into modern Mormonism centers on the erosion of the (cishetero)sexism that has molded Mormon discourse, culture, and doctrine for generations.

The foundation of the book is based on data gathered by Riess's 2016 Next Mormon Survey (NMS), an expansive online public opinion survey that garnered 1,656 respondents. To support this empirical evidence, stories collected from sixty-three oral history interviews are presented in each chapter. These personal, heartfelt stories situate the statistical findings into real human lives, such as Mikey, a California teenager who sought answers between his own morals and ecclesiastical obedience during the Church's bellicose involvement in Prop 8. The multivocal experiences of current and former Mormons with diverse backgrounds and intersectional identities are refreshing to read from such a homogenous group (i.e., 87 percent white, 95 percent heterosexual).

In chapters 4 and 5, Riess offers insights into the delicate and modern issues of gender and sexuality within the Mormon system. Her findings confirm what many of us intuitively know or have already observed: millennials tend to be more concerned with inclusion and equity than older generations. But what makes Riess's work noteworthy is her ability to transform Mormon myth into social-scientific data. For example, rumors of Mormon sexism have plagued the Church since its earliest days in the mid-1800s. The NMS found that 59 percent of millennials are bothered by the fact that women cannot hold the priesthood, or the power of God, compared to only 24 percent of boomers/silents who are concerned with this gender inequality. Although Riess mentions the unique Mormon "belief in a Heavenly Mother who works together with Heavenly Father" (97), she fails to mention the irony of this belief in connection to the Church's policy that denies women the priesthood. The Mormon concept of exaltation—or the belief in a process of apotheosis in which humans become gods and goddesses—is core to Mormonism's view on the purpose of life. Thus, righteous and faithful Mormon men and women can become omnipotent and omniscient heavenly fathers and mothers (gods and goddesses) through the powers of the priesthood. Although the Mormon Church promises women the ability to have unlimited power as a heavenly mother in the next life, the Church denies them the ability to hold the priesthood now. With genuine rumination about conflicting messages like the one above, and as more honest histories of the Church become accessible, Riess's research indicates that the Church will see a decline in millennial Mormon devoutness unless these concerns of gender are addressed. Depression and suicide already plague Mormon women, especially those who are single. Despite the fact that many Mormon women "are leading remarkably wonderful and productive lives" they still experience a disaffiliation of "loneliness and bewilderment" (80). Destigmatization of single members—regardless of gender—needs to be communicated in discourses by Church leaders so that the culture can shift to be more accepting of nonnuclear families. This may lead many good-hearted Mormons to stop asking themselves, "What's wrong with me?" (80), and start asking, "What's wrong with the culture, and how can I help change it?"

In Chapter 7, Riess explicates how issues arising from rigid gender expectations are compounded among marginalized members like transgender and non-binary Mormons. Church doctrine mandates binary gender, and a current policy threatens excommunication to anyone who completes sex reassignment surgery. Although the policy can impinge the well-being of nonbinary gender members, the Church's doctrine can also provide guidance for those stuck between the dialectic identities of transgender and Mormon...