Gordon Monson

Salt Lake Tribune sports writer and religion commentator

Gordon Monson is a local sports writer who happens to also be a member of the Mormon church. He writes for the Salt Lake Tribune and, recently, he has begun branching out into religious topics, as well. I find some of his columns quite thoughtful.

His writing style is a bit rough, and sometimes I think he could use a better editor. Nevertheless, I'm glad he's getting his thoughts and opinions out there because the LDS Church exerts a huge influence on this community and on this state, and our journalism should reflect the wealth of opinions that Utahns, LDS or not, have of the Church.

A search on the Salt Lake Tribune's website yields three dozen or so Monson-penned articles on religion spanning the past three years or so. Most of these are written from an LDS perspective. I will focus on a half dozen or so of them here just to give you an idea of who this guy is and what he has to say.

The first item we’ll look at is a movie review or, rather, TV-series review. It’s about a television series called The Chosen. Monson offers high praise for this series which, he says, portrays the Savior better than any other of the many films he has watched. I quite like this quote from the article, where he expresses satisfaction at the job actor Jonathan Roumie has done in playing this role:

“Roumie’s Redeemer is smart, benevolent, hardworking, understanding, loving, forgiving. He is exactly what you desire a Savior to be, but not on some highfalutin level, rather down in the dirt where all of us sinners live.”

The review comments on the other roles in the series, as well. I have not watched the series myself, but I've heard a lot of good things about it. And Monson's review makes me interested in seeing it for myself.

Here’s a link to the review in case you’d like to check it out for yourself:

The Chosen (review)
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Given that the culture of leadership in the LDS church is top-down hierarchical, you don't find many Church members offering public opinions on how the Church should be run or on how policies could be changed to make them better or more effective. Monson, though, is not afraid to speak his mind, and he occasionally has some very interesting ideas. I particularly like the one he expressed in his article entitled “The LDS Church could take a break from tithing, boost its image and bless the world” from October of 2024.

The general public has recently learned just how much money the LDS church has and, it turns out, there’s so much that the Church could continue to run indefinitely without collecting any more tithing from its members. Or, at least that's the way I understand it. I may not have the details exactly right but, in any case, they've got a lot of money.

So Monson has suggested that they give church members a year off from paying tithing. But his idea is not that those members would simply keep the money for themselves. Instead, they would be encouraged to donate their 10% to one or more charities of their choice.

And he also mentions that this could perhaps be repeated every seven years sort of like how Jewish law mandated that farmers let their fields lie fallow every seven years or that they plant something else in them or I don't know what exactly. And it's also related to the Sabbath day, i.e. taking a day off on the seventh day of every week.

I believe it's an idea which has merit. If you would like to read about it in his own words, here's a link to his piece on the Salt Lake Tribune website:

The LDS Church could take a break from tithing, boost its image and bless the world
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I like that Monson doesn't censor himself when talking about Church leaders. He has written a very respectful and admiring bio of Apostle Dieter Uchtdorf, but another of his columns criticizes Apostle Jeff Holland for not being able to apologize about his infamous musket speech. Links to both pieces appear below:

For Latter-day Saints, Dieter Uchtdorf is a man of God whose words soothe the soul - Apr 2024

And here’s the one on Jeff Holland:

Even an LDS apostle can and should say ‘I’m sorry’ - Sept 2024
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One of my favorite recent Gordon Monson pieces was his commentary on the offense many Christians took at the portrayal of the Last Supper at the Paris Olympics this last summer.

Over the course of three or four paragraphs, he sort of awkwardly explains that the French organizers intended the presentation to be a celebration of the Feast of Dionysus, not the Last Supper. And this makes sense if you consider that the Olympics are, after all, based on a Greek tradition.

But, even if they really had meant to portray the Last Supper, so what? Do we want to get so bent out of shape about people co-opting religious symbols that we start to resemble the nutcases who murdered cartoonists in Paris because they took offense at how these cartoonists had portrayed symbols of Islam in their magazine?

Here’s a link to that piece:

Whether Olympic display was Last Supper or Greek gods, what would Jesus say? Chill out.
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We’ll return to Monson in a future episode. Meanwhile, I wanted to mention that some local scholars of religion, even those who no longer identify as Mormon, are often irked by Monson's columns, which I find kind of odd.

For example, Scott Kenney, a prominent local scholar who helped found both Sunstone Magazine and Signature Books back in the day but who no longer identifies as Mormon, wrote a letter to the Tribute early in 2023 in which he complains about Monson’s pieces . From his letter, you get the impression that he’s speaking out on behalf of Tribune readers who are faithful members of the Church who might be offended by Monson's articles. However, when I communicated with Kenney directly, it sounded to me more like the letter was inspired more by his own personal bias against someone who hadn't attained his level of education in religious studies having the temerity to write publicly about religion.

To me, that's like a tax accountant complaining about a regular citizen who expresses ideas about how our tax laws should be structured. I firmly believe that experts are important and that we should rely on them where needed. However, that doesn't mean that laymen aren't entitled to an opinion about how the world should work. After all, taxes affect all citizens, not just those with expertise in finance.

Taking the analogy further, it's not all that different from certain Christian groups and individuals who refuse to accept that Mormons are Christians, the idea being that a “true” Christian is somehow better qualified to determine who qualifies as a Christian and who is not than one whose beliefs don’t meet his or her strict standards.

Here's a link to Kenney's letter if you'd like to read it for yourself:

Gordon Monson’s noxious rhetoric toward LDS Church doesn’t belong outside op-ed section

And thanks for joining me here on the Mormon Stories substack.
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