{"id":159648,"date":"2025-11-25T23:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/159648\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T23:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:28:10","slug":"secret-lives-of-mormon-wives-star-layla-taylor-says-ex-husband-still-takes-their-kids-to-church-after-she-left-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/159648\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Layla Taylor says ex husband still takes their kids to church after she left religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives <\/a>star Layla Taylor has told The Independent that despite her decision to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, her ex-husband still takes her two sons to church. <\/p>\n

During her time on the Hulu reality series<\/a>, Taylor has discussed her decision to convert to Mormonism as a teenager. However, during the most recent season, she opened up about why she has since left the religion and how that decision has affected her daily life. <\/p>\n

While Taylor pinpointed the church\u2019s history of racism<\/a> \u2014 which includes barring Black men from obtaining the priesthood and Black men and women from temple ordinances, citing racist religious doctrines, and discouraging interracial marriage \u2014 as a reason for leaving, she told The Independent there were many aspects of the religion she no longer \u201caligns with.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI converted to the church when I was very young and very naive, and my reason for converting was just this wanting for a community and the wanting for a family dynamic that I lacked growing up, and I was not aware of a lot,\u201d she explained. \u201cI feel like when you are converting to a religion, you know the good parts, you obviously don’t know the otherwise negative parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite her separation from the religion, she said she has no regrets about where it led her.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018I<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

\u2018I feel like when you are converting to a religion, you know the good parts, you obviously don’t know the otherwise negative parts,\u2019 Taylor said about leaving the Mormon church (Getty Images)\"During<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

During her time on \u2018SLOMW\u2019 Taylor opened up about her decision to convert to Mormonism as a teenager (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt got me through a really dark time in my life where I was fighting for my life every day to stay alive, and it gave me a lot of hope and purpose, and I’m still grateful for it in that sense that I probably wouldn’t have moved to Utah, and I wouldn’t have met my ex husband, and I wouldn’t have had my kids, and there are so many things that led me to where I am today, because of the church, so I don’t regret it,\u201d Taylor said. <\/p>\n

Although Taylor may no longer be an active member of the church, she said that her two sons, shared with her ex-husband, Clayton Wessel, still attend church on Sundays. <\/p>\n

Wessel has been made aware that their sons, Oliver \u201cOllie\u201d Clay and Maxwell Dean, do not go to church when at their mother\u2019s house, and there has not been any contention when co-parenting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m just trying to teach my kids that they have agency to choose, that if they want to be a part of the Mormon religion, they can do that,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cBut I’m also going to encourage them to research other religions and try out other things and just do what feels right for them. I would never want them to feel pressured into any, you know, religion, but also not discouraging what they think.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reality star said that sometimes her boys will come home from church, wanting to tell her about what they learned from \u201cJesus,\u201d which she tries to actively listen to and engage with.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would never want to tell them that they’re wrong for feeling that way, because they are so little and they’re so impressionable,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cAnd that’s how I was at one point, and I learned with time, and I want to give them that same grace as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Season three of SLOMW<\/a> is now available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu. The reunion special will drop December 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-159648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}