Why This New Mormon Leader Has People Nervous
Thank God I'm Atheist
TGIA Media
4.7 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Mormon Church has made a move that's raising questions about where it's headed next. President Dallin H. Oaks has appointed Clark Gilbert as the newest apostle, a relatively young (at 55 years old!) leader known for his firm orthodoxy and culture-war posture within church education. For many within the church and without, it feels like a signal about the future direction of the institution, particularly on LGBTQ issues and internal dissent.
We also examine Alabama's proposal to make disrupting a church service a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison, Oklahoma's latest attempt to establish a publicly funded religious charter school, and a lawsuit challenging Trump's Religious Liberty Commission. Plus: a controversial plea deal involving a former prison chaplain, and a Christian university "merger" that ended with faculty fired and assets absorbed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody. |
| 0:02.0 | Hi, everybody. |
| 0:19.0 | Hi, friends. |
| 0:20.0 | Well, from beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. |
| 0:22.6 | It's thank God I'm atheist. |
| 0:24.6 | Where we a couple of atheists just try to figure out how to make sense of politics and life and everything here in these United States of America. |
| 0:35.6 | I'm Frank Feldman. |
| 0:38.5 | I'm Dan Beecher. |
| 0:40.2 | And coming up on the show today, Dan, a controversial new pick for leadership at the |
| 0:48.0 | Mormon church. |
| 0:49.3 | One Mr. Clark Gilbert. |
| 0:52.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:52.7 | A young man by Mormon apostle standards. Oh, Gilbert. Yeah. A young man by Mormon Apostle standards. |
| 0:56.7 | Oh, yeah. |
| 0:58.8 | We'll explain everything. |
| 1:00.5 | Don't, don't worry. |
| 1:02.6 | We're not going to, I mean, it's, it's just a glimpse into the most American of the religions. |
| 1:15.8 | Yeah. And, and and and their corporate structure and how they're making decisions and yeah uh what and it's fascinating I promise everybody we're gonna have a |
| 1:23.4 | good time we're gonna have a good it sounds boring It sounds boring. Horrally dry and awful. |
| 1:29.1 | Mormons are boring and stuff, but... |
| 1:31.3 | Filled with intrigue and, you know, |
| 1:33.8 | and palace succession and... |
... |
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