The Next Mormons, Jana Riess
The Next Mormons, Jana Riess
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The Next Mormons
How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church

Author: Jana Riess

Narrator: Emily Durante

Unabridged: 10 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/28/2019

Synopsis

American Millennials—the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s—have been leaving organized religion in unprecedented numbers. For a long time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an exception: nearly three-quarters of people who grew up Mormon stayed that way into adulthood. In The Next Mormons, Jana Riess demonstrates that things are starting to change.

Drawing on a large-scale national study of four generations of current and former Mormons as well as dozens of in-depth personal interviews, Riess explores the religious beliefs and behaviors of young adult Mormons, finding that while their levels of belief remain strong, their institutional loyalties are less certain than their parents' and grandparents'. For a growing number of Millennials, the tensions between the Church's conservative ideals and their generation's commitment to individualism and pluralism prove too high, causing them to leave the faith. Those who remain within the fold are attempting to carefully balance the Church's strong emphasis on the traditional family with their generation's more inclusive definition that celebrates same-sex couples and women's equality.

The Next Mormons offers a portrait of a generation navigating between traditional religion and a rapidly changing culture.

About Jana Riess

Jana Riess is a senior columnist for Religion News Service and the author or coauthor of many books, including Mormonism and American Politics, Flunking Sainthood, and The Prayer Wheel: Rediscovering Prayer with an Ancient Spiritual Practice. She has a PhD in American religious history from Columbia University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Zarin on March 08, 2019

Since this book is largely about minority groups in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I should preface how I fit: I’m male, white, and married; I live in Utah, feel confident in my beliefs, and consider myself an “active member” — which is different from many of profiled member groups......more

Goodreads review by Richelle on June 18, 2019

When I first heard Jana Riess was undertaking research about Millennial Mormons, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait for this book to be released. And lucky for me and my grad student budget, they had a copy in the Madison Public Library system. I wish there were still due date logs in the back of libra......more

Goodreads review by Terrol on August 30, 2019

A grudging three stars. The information is useful, particularly to those who lead or teach "Millennials" in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That said, there are significant problems with some of the survey questions and especially with Riess' presentation of the data. Her bias is ve......more

Goodreads review by Karen on April 17, 2019

The subtitle of this book was quite misleading - it sounds like a book about Millenials trying to activate change in the Mormon church. Actually, this book is a statistical analysis of a survey of roughly 1200 current and 500 former Mormons on a host of different topics, looking at the variance of a......more

Goodreads review by Vince on July 06, 2020

Really enjoyed it. Found most if not all of the statistics very fascinating. I really enjoyed seeing how my perceptions of the members of the church around me were accurate or inaccurate to the church membership at large. Statistics I found most interesting were that you were more likely to believe......more

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