Description

For generations, LDS womanhood operated within an unwritten boundary often described as “sacred silence”—a cultural expectation that temple garments, worthiness, sexuality, doubt, and gender role tensions remain private or unspoken. Today, that silence is breaking, and Utah Gen Z women are leading the shift.

This presentation introduces a new empirical, theory-driven study examining how orthodox LDS and LDS adjacent influencers—many with audiences in the millions—are reshaping how women learn, perform, and negotiate Mormon identity. On Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, influencers narrate faith, relationships, motherhood, modesty, and spiritual struggle in real time—blending orthodoxy, lifestyle branding, and selective observance in ways that complicate traditional expectations.

The project explores how exposure to these digital conversations normalizes selective adherence to institutional standards and accelerates the emergence of hybrid Mormon identities—forms of belonging in which young women retain core beliefs while renegotiating behavioral boundaries. Rather than signaling rebellion or exit, these shifts reveal a generation redefining LDS womanhood.

This study asks: What happens when the most prominent voices shaping Mormon womanhood are no longer just Church leaders, and what does the emergence of religious influencers mean for the future of faith, identity, and belonging among LDS Gen Z women?

Pam Shepherd is the Communications Director for Research at George Mason University, where she leads strategic communications, research visibility, and institutional storytelling. She is also principal of Shepherd Communications, supporting academics and senior leaders through ghostwriting, editorial development, media relations, and narrative strategy. She holds a Master’s degree in communication from The Johns Hopkins University.

Kate Davis is an intersectional scholar and oral historian. Her work crosses between the fields of Religious Studies, Digital Humanities, and Gender Studies with a focus on religions of North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University and is currently a visiting professor in Humanities and Theology at Alvernia University in Pennsylvania.