The Church Is Trying to Stop Apostasy… By Targeting a Movement That Peaked 10 Years Ago
If you zoom out, LDS-related discourse online has moved in cycles, and the Church tends to respond to each one after it’s already matured or started to decline. This Dehlin lawsuit is just another example of them being behind the times by at least a decade.
Cycle 1: Blogs and forums (early 2000s)
This was the first real wave. Long-form written content, apologetics vs criticism, niche but influential. The audience was mostly Gen X and older Millennials who were actively trying to reconcile what they’d been taught with what they were discovering.
Cycle 2: Podcasts and Reddit (roughly 2010–early 2020s)
This is where things scaled. Long-form audio and aggregated discussion made complex issues accessible. John Dehlin, Jeremy Runnells, and communities on Reddit translated academic and historical material into something the average member could actually engage with.
This is also where a lot of people experienced a crisis of faith. Not because the information was new, but because it was finally understandable and widely distributed.
But that wave has already peaked.
Cycle 3: Short-form video (late 2010s to now)
The center of gravity has shifted to TikTok and Instagram. The format is different, but more importantly, the audience is different.
Younger generations didn’t grow up in the same version of Mormonism. The assumptions, the authority structures, even the baseline questions have changed. They’re not deconstructing the 80s–2000s Church in the same way, because that’s not the Church they experienced.
And they’re not consuming 2–3 hour podcasts to figure it out.
As much as those of us in the youtube, podcast, reddit spaces don't want to admit it, the conversations aren't happening here anymore with the younger generations that are going to shape the next 10-20 years of the Church's trajectory.
So what is the Church doing?
It’s going after Dehlin.
From one angle, that makes sense. If your goal is to slow members leaving or losing faith, you target the channels that helped accelerate that process.
But here’s the problem: That channel is no longer where the momentum is.
Mormon Stories and similar long-form platforms had their peak influence years ago. They shaped a generation, but they’re not the primary driver of attention anymore. The conversation has fragmented and moved into faster, more algorithm-driven spaces.
This is the pattern:
- A new medium emerges
- It reshapes how people engage LDS issues
- It reaches critical mass
- Then the Church responds
By the time the response comes, the center of influence has already shifted.
The lawsuit may still hurt Dehlin. The Church has the resources to apply sustained legal and financial pressure, and that alone can be decisive.
But strategically, it feels misaligned.
If the real goal is to address apostasy or declining belief, this isn’t targeting where that process is currently happening. It’s targeting where it was most visible 5–10 years ago.
In other words:
They’re trying to solve today’s problem using yesterday’s map.