Wheatley in the News

Wheatley Institute's Religion Director, Paul Lambert, and Wheatley Fellow Justin Dyer highlight their research on the decline of religious affiliation, but the rise in religious belief in The Dispatch's article titled, "Sacred Staying Power."

The top 10 articles of 2025 from Institute for Family Studies featured two articles from Wheatley Institutes Director of Family Initiative Jason Carroll and Wheatley Fellow Brian Willoughby.

In her Deseret News article focused on what Congress or others could to help families flourish, Lois M. Collins cited the Unprotected from Porn report from 2025 on how age verification should be mandatory for pornography websites. In addition, the article stated from the report that, "Parents should not be left to safeguard their children from an unregulated industry of sexual media... which have been given de facto impunity to capture a spellbound audience of underage children."

Perspective: You shouldn’t need Ballerina Farm money to put family first

Although retention is not as high as it once was, for Latter-day Saints it has remained remarkably robust across every major indicator of religious life. They lead the nation in church attendance, personal and family religious practice, and active retention, including among Millennials and Gen Z.

"While most people aren’t “overtly hostile” to marriage, they’re becoming “indifferent” to it because they don’t see “its utility or its advantages”—even though family scholars across the political spectrum agree on its economic, social and individual benefits."

"They took on one of the thorniest issues of the day from the heart of the culture wars and treated each other with dignity. They didn’t attack each other; they contended with each other’s ideas and only after working hard to understand those ideas."

The 2025 American Family Survey is live. The launch event, that took place on November 14, was published online to view by C-Span.

Tyson Reeder, an Affiliated Scholar for Wheatley Institute's Constitution Initiative, was awarded the prestegious George Washington Prize for his book Serpent in Eden. The book is an exploration of foreign meddling in early American politics, analyzing both the ways in which foreign powers swayed American democracy and the ways the new republic attempted to respond. The work was praised as "a blend of wonderful storytelling and intriguing characters along with perceptive historical analysis. . . . This important contribution stands out as an incredibly timely and relevant book for how we can use the past to understand the present."