American Experience (1988) s19e14 Episode Script

Tonight, a special
presentation from American
Experience and Fronline.
? Glory, glory, hallelujah
The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints is one
of the world's fastest
growing religions.
Mormons walk the corridors of
power, leaders in Congress and
even running for president.
But it was not always so.
In the 19th century, to call
someone a Mormon was akin to
calling someone a
Muslim terrorist.
The Mormon story is the epic
saga of a new American faith
fired by the startling
revelations of Joseph Smith; f
a people embroiled in decades
of religious conflict who
crossed a continent to
establish their own spiritual
kingdom; and a church that
defied society by embracing
polygamy and then
abruptly abandoned it.
From the ultimate outcast to
the embodiment of the mainstream
in two generations.
It's a breathtaking
transformation.
Tonight, Frontline and
American Experience continue
the story of this very Americn
religion to go inside the
Mormon faith as it
is lived today
Prepare to consecrate two
years of your life to serve the
Lord as a full-time missionary.
to follow the Mormons'
extraordinary commitment to
convert the world
Hi, I'm a missionary from the
Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.
And they told me the most
preposterous story about this
white boy, a dead angel and some
gold plates.
to explore the beliefs
that forge close-knit
Mormon families
The church and my family are
so intertwined, it just creates
an aura of love and makes your
home a holy place.
to investigate the
struggle between Mormon
scholars and the authority of
church leaders
It's wrong to criticize
leaders of the church, even if
the criticism is true.
and to examine the
powerful and secret rituals of
the Mormon temple.
The temple exists as a kind
of vehicle through which we
conquer mortality.
Not a single atom or particle of
our bodies will be lost, but
everything will be reconstituted
as fully as it was.
It's almost a kind of
celebration of the totality of
triumph over death.
Tonight, the revealing
conclusion of The Mormons.
American Experience is made
possible by the Alfred P. Slon
Foundation to enhance public
understanding of the
role of technology.
The Foundation also seeks to
portray the lives of the men
and women engaged in scientifc
and technological pursuit.
And the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting.
Funding for Frontline and
American Experience is made
possible by viewers like you.
Thank you.
Additional funding for
Frontline is provided by The
Park Foundation.
Committed to raising
public awareness.
Additional funding for The
Mormons is provided by:
Edward D. Smith,
Stephen J. and Kalleen Lund,
Mr. and Mrs. Blake M.
Roni, and others.
A complete list is
available from PBS.
NARRATOR: In July, 1897, 50
years after Brigham Young had
brought them to Utah, Mormon
pioneers gathered in Salt Lake
City to celebrate
their survival.
In the early days of the church,
they had been driven out of Ohio
and Missouri.
In Illinois, the Latter-day
Saints founder and prophet
Joseph Smith had been murdered
and their temple burned.
The Mormons had turned their
backs on America and made a
perilous journey across the
continent in search of their own
country, only to then engage in
a 50-year struggle with the U.S.
government over their practice
of polygamy and political
control of the Utah territory.
In the 1880s, U.S.
presidents, at their
inaugurations, used their
inaugural address to decry the
Mormon experience, to identify
it as domestic threat number one
after the Civil War.
Fast forward 100 years; the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir is
singing at presidential
inaugurations.
So they become a very
mainstream, very capital-
centered economic interest that
moves in a conservative
direction, as the embodiment of
family values, morality issues.
Where at one time they were
vilified, they were considered
disloyal in fact, they were
considered a knife at the back
of the American experience now
they are, in fact, considered in
some ways the very embodiment of
what it means to be American.
How was that brought about?
NARRATOR: By the end of the
19th century, the L.D.S. church
had made an uneasy peace with
the federal government.
The church had officially
renounced the practice of
polygamy and Utah had finally
been granted statehood.
In 1903, a man arrives in
Washington named Reed Smoot.
He's been elected to the Senate,
and he is a Mormon apostle, the
equivalent of a
very high cardinal.
In fact, it's difficult for us
to imagine what it meant for
this apostle to arrive in the
Senate and represent a state in
the national legislature.
The United States Senate
looks at Reed Smoot and says,
"We don't believe you're worthy
to be formally seated in our
august body because we have
heard ongoing reports that
plural marriage still
exists in Utah. "
So they used Reed Smoot's
confirmation hearings as a means
of dissecting the Mormon church.
It was a huge trial.
It lasted over a span of four
years.
It was as big publicly as
anything we've seen in our own
day, as Watergate, Iran contra.
It captured the public's
attention on a variety of very
dramatic issues church and
state, sex, of course, religious
power, Mormon temples, the
secrecy of these temples, all
kinds of things.
You couldn't be in America
during these years and not know
about the Smoot hearings.
NARRATOR: The opposition was
intense, but Smoot had powerful
supporters too, including
President Roosevelt.
And in 1907, the Senate finally
voted to seat the
senator from Utah.
Smoot would go on to a
distinguished career in
Washington and became a major
powerbroker in the
Republican Party.
Smoot himself became the
poster boy of Mormonism and
Mormonism's identity radically
changed as a result of this set
of hearings, in part because the
nation stated the terms by which
it would accept Mormonism and
Mormonism began to
conform to those terms.
Mormons entered into national
party politics.
They gave up the People's Party,
which was the official party of
the faith, and became themselves
active within, especially the
Republican Party, but also the
Democratic Party.
They also did a good job of
participating in the military
life of the country.
Mormons fought wars, volunteered
at extraordinarily high rates,
recalibrated their patriotism to
be loyal to the government in
Washington.
NARRATOR: The Mormons also
recalibrated their relationship
to the American economy.
They abandoned Brigham Young's
ideal of a closed communal
economy in Utah and fully
embraced the capitalism of Wall
Street.
It's a profound shift from
the pioneering days of isolated
Christian socialism to the end
of the 20th century.
And what you see is the
emergence of an extraordinarily
sophisticated financial
management organization the
L.D.S. church ownerships in
media, extraordinary land
holdings, livestock and
agricultural interests, great
stock portfolios.
( singing )
NARRATOR: The church's
financial growth was fueled
by "sacred taxation. "
To be of good standing, all
Mormons must tithe 10% of their
gross income to the church.
Today, church assets are
estimated at $25 to $30 billion
and it has become the wealthiest
church per capita in America.
The Mormon church is not only
wealthy, but it's unusually
secretive about the
extent of its wealth.
Most American religious groups
of any size give full financial
accountings to the membership.
But the facts of the Mormon
financial empire are never
revealed to the membership,
much less the wide world.
And as far as we can tell, there
have been no major
financial scandals.
The leaders handle the business,
and the members contentedly go
on trusting in the leaders.
NARRATOR: Over the last 50
years, the Mormon hierarchy
has tried to change public
perceptions of its leadership.
Since the time that Brigham
Young decided to grow a beard,
the face of Mormon literally was
bearded polygamist, bearded
polygamist, bearded polygamist.
We're clear up to the middle of
the 20th century and that
face hasn't changed.
Then, all of a sudden, with a
heartbeat, the face of Mormonism
becomes a clean-shaven, non-
polygamist white knight.
President David O. McKay
frequently wore a pure white
double-breasted suit.
This was the new face of
Mormonism and it was unlike
anything that had preceded it.
It was scripted by
central casting.
He knew the importance of image
before the era of
professional image makers.
He re-injected us into the
national scene by blessing the
request of Dwight Eisenhower to
have one of the apostles, Ezra
Taft Benson, be a member of the
Eisenhower cabinet, and his
presence in Washington gave the
church a presence there
they had no had previously.
( singing )
One of the major P.R. tools
of the church has been
the Tabernacle Choir.
When they got on radio, they
became the nation's choir.
The Tabernacle Choir has been an
extraordinary ambassador
for the church.
NARRATOR: As the choir tours
the world, it still sings the
old Mormon hymns, but there is a
new emphasis on Jesus
and biblical themes.
It is part of a long campaign to
place the Mormon faith within
the traditions of
mainstream Christianity.
In the early 1980s, the L.D.S.
church produced a new
version of the Book of Mormon
and they subtitled it, "Another
Testament of Jesus Christ. "
A few years ago, the L.D.S.
church changed its logo and made
the words "Jesus Christ" much
larger than the rest of the
words in the name of their
church to emphasize to the world
that they are a mainstream
Christian faith.
On the other hand, we've had
conventional Christian bodies
saying, "Well, you aren't fully
Christian, as we
define the term. "
So, we've had edicts from the
Vatican and from the United
Methodist Church, from the
Presbyterian Church, and the
Southern Baptists have made it
clear we don't accept Mormonism
as fully Christian either.
So, there's a tension there.
There's a religious tension
which is very hard to overcome.
NARRATOR: But as the Mormons
were trying to change their
place in American life, the
country itself was changing.
The social and political
upheavals of the 1960s put new
pressures on the church,
especially over its
stance on race.
I think the most damning
statement came from one of the
presidents of the church, the
third president of the
church, John Taylor.
Basically, he said that the
reason that blacks had been
allowed to come through the
flood the flood of Noah was
so that Satan would have
representation upon the earth;
that black folks were here to
represent Satan and to have a
balance against white folks, who
were here to represent
Jesus Christ, the Savior.
How do you damn a people more
than to say that their existence
upon the earth is to represent
Satan?
The most controversial thing
in the church was the church's
position on giving priesthood
authority to blacks and the
church's refusal to do that.
I say blacks rather than African
Americans because it applied
throughout the world.
Now, Mormon priesthood really
is a universal office
for male Mormons.
It's their equivalent of bar
mitzvah; it's something that
everybody normally
would undergo.
If you do not hold the
priesthood, you can never hold
any office of church authority.
It also would affect
your eternal state.
And so what you had really was
a very serious disability
visited upon Mormons
of African descent.
NARRATOR: The Mormons had
ambitions to be a worldwide
But their only missionaries on
the African continent were in
white South Africa,
none in black Africa.
But then in the early 1960s,
a copy of the Book of Mormon
appeared in Ghana and Nigeria.
A few people read it and
were converted instantly.
They founded their own version
of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And I read the
Book of Mormon.
I was moved by the power of the
Holy Ghost to believe that it
was a sound and a
true testimony.
I started from street to street,
from town to town, from house to
house, spreading the message.
NARRATOR: They started to
write the leaders in Salt
Lake for instructions.
Over the next frustrating 20
years, they would implore them
to send missionaries so that
they could be baptized.
And they kept
writing to Salt Lake.
They wanted the missionaries to
come and baptize this group
of people they were getting.
They wanted Salt Lake to come
and show them how to form
the church properly.
But the church couldn't send
missionaries to Ghana to baptize
them because of the ban on
the priesthood for blacks.
Later, into the 1970s, you
now have a new president,
Spencer Kimball, and you
have new forces at work.
Most of these are internal.
There was also the injunction
that had existed for decades,
"Take the gospel to
all the world. "
There wasn't an asterisk at the
end of it saying, "Oh, by the
way, you can exclude
black Africa. "
This weighed on Spencer Kimball.
All of those things, I think,
had a cumulative effect.
The first of June, 1978, Spencer
Kimball, his two counselors, the
Quorum from the Twelve Apostles,
met in the temple.
They engaged in group prayer
and it was described as a
Pentecostal experience.
One described it as though
there were the tongues of flame
that are talked about in Acts.
Another said it was like a
rushing of wind for him.
I was there.
There was something of a
Pentecostal spirit, but on the
other hand it was peaceful,
quiet, not a cataclysmic thing
in any sense.
It was just a feeling that came
over all of us and we knew that
it was the right thing at the
right time and that
we should proceed.
NARRATOR: President Kimball
announced that God had heard
their prayers and had revealed
that "all male members of the
Church may be ordained to the
priesthood without regard to
race or color. "
What happened in 1978 was
that this burden was lifted from
black Mormons.
More importantly, a huge burden
was lifted from Mormonism,
because it was rid of
theological racism.
This enabled the church, of
course, to reach out more
effectively to blacks.
? And I thank
you, Jesus Jesus
? I thank you, Jesus
It made the church fully
acceptable after American
society had undergone this
tremendous civil
rights revolution.
It really was the moment for the
modernization of the Mormon
NARRATOR: At the edge of Salt
Lake City stands a
pure white granary.
It is an enduring symbol of the
original fiery millennial
visions at the Mormon core.
Inside are 16 million pounds of
wheat, continually replenished,
to be used only in the tumult
before Christ's final return.
But it is also a reminder of how
the Mormons have enlarged their
extensive preparations for their
own welfare to reach out
to the wider world.
At one time, church welfare
was just about welfare
of church members.
It was born of survival.
It was born of the darkest days
early in the territory where
drought or pestilence would
visit the agricultural crops and
they would have the bishop's
storehouse for the poor.
And in recent years,
especially, those relief efforts
have been extended to not just
members of the church, but to
over 150 major humanitarian
crises around the world in
locations as disparate as
Kosovo, North Korea,
Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The efficiency of the Mormon
welfare apparatus is
really legendary.
It operates with all the
efficiency of the German
Wiermarch.
In Katrina of 2005, the Mormon
relief trucks were on the way
before the hurricane had
even made landfall.
To live in this region now is
to live with an overwhelming
sense of sadness.
And to come home and see that
you've lost a lot of
history, it's devastating.
How can you ever clean this up?
There's not enough dumps in
the world to hold all this.
We were hearing stories on the
radio of troops coming in,
helicopters were flying over.
We even heard the President was
flying over in a big
helicopter looking at us.
But nobody was there on the
ground with us, except for the
Mormons in their yellow T-shirts
who showed up to
help us clean up.
And they didn't just come in to
hand us a piece of food, a piece
of bread or something, and say,
"Here's something to eat, you
know, while you're working. "
They actually got down
and cleaned and worked.
Two folks and myself went
over to the Bishop's
warehouse, this huge building.
It was all cataloged and
categorized and their
warehousing procedures and
policies they just knew
where everything was.
They knew how much of
each thing they had.
They were able to get not only
saws to us but canned
goods, access to outside
communications.
They had satellite phones.
It was almost as though a
business that specialized in
emergency or community
disaster response had arrived.
Before the storm, I had had
Mormons knock on my door just
like everybody else probably and
so the object was to try and get
rid of them as fast as possible.
You know, "Just go away.
Not interested.
Don't want to hear what
you have to say. "
After the storm, it's a
little bit different now.
They're part of my family now.
Always will be.
You know, they they got into
my heart and they'll never stand
on my doorstep again without
being invited into my house.
NARRATOR: In the last hundred
years, the Mormons have traveled
a long and difficult road in
transforming themselves from
reviled outsiders into central
figures in the American
establishment.
In the United States Senate that
a century ago tried to reject
Reed Smoot, Senator Harry Reid,
a Mormon convert from Nevada,
now leads the new
Democratic majority.
Former Governor Mitt Romney of
Massachusetts is a contender for
the Republican nomination
for president.
But amidst success, there are
still signs of deep resistance.
Several recent polls show that
from one quarter to as many as
43% of voters say that they
would not vote for a Mormon for
Now what is it about
Mormonism that causes people to
ask themselves, "Do I really
want a Mormon in
the White House?"
I mean, in the American system
that's almost a question
that should be asked, right?
No religious test should be
asked for an office holder.
It's right in the American
Constitution.
And yet people are nervous that
this is kind of an authoritarian
Is Mitt Romney somehow subject
to some church leader
in Salt Lake City?
Are Mormons Christians?
Where did these Mormon
scriptures come from?
Who was this Joseph Smith?
Where did polygamy come from?
All of these things are swirling
around the Romney candidacy.
NARRATOR: If the questions
hovering around the Romney
moment suggest that Mormons
haven't quite yet arrived,
there are also continuing signs
of acceptance, like the recent
gathering of scholars at
the Library of Congress to
commemorate the bicentennial
of Joseph Smith's birth.
These conflicting signals all
reflect the inherent tensions in
the Mormon stance
in American life.
I glory in the distinctives
of 19th century Mormonism.
I worry that we may have
become too assimilated.
We are different.
We need to remember that, that
we were in tension with the
surrounding society and there
always ought to be some.
We ought to be bothered if
everybody thinks we're
just peachy keen.
Brigham Young once said that
he feared the day when Mormons
would no longer be the object of
the pointing finger of scorn.
It's one of these paradoxes that
you want to have acceptability,
you want to be mainstream enough
that people will give your
message a fair hearing, that you
can fraternize with them as
fellow Christians, but at the
same time you don't want to feel
so comfortable that there's
nothing to mark you as a people
who are distinct, who have a
special body of teachings with
special responsibilities.
And I think once the walls of
isolation fell down, then how do
you maintain that sense of a
people distinct, a people apart?
And I think that's a challenge
that the church is really
wrestling with today.
I throw out a challenge to
every young man within this
vast congregation tonight.
Prepare yourself now to be
worthy to serve the Lord
as a full-time missionary.
Prepare to concentrate two years
of your lives to
this sacred service.
? All to serve in ?
NARRATOR: The Mormons have
put the future of their church
in the hands of 19-year-olds.
Each year, more than 50,000
young Mormon missionaries march
the globe, from Utah to
Mongolia, to win converts to
their faith, as many as a
quarter million each year.
God's Army, as some Mormons call
it, has always been the engine
that has driven the
church's success.
Before the first pews were
filled, Joseph Smith announced,
"This church brethren will
fill the whole earth. "
From the very outset, Joseph
Smith was persuaded that he had
a message that was
for the whole world.
And he adopted this radical idea
that he did not have to train
people to do this; he could
simply commission them.
So, from the start he sent out
his first, his family members
and everyone who joined his
church became a missionary.
In the late 1830s, at what
might have been one of the
darkest hours of the church,
when Joseph was beset with
disloyalty and disillusion all
around him, Joseph gathers those
members of the Twelve that are
closest to him, and says, "I'm
sending you to Great Britain.
I'm putting you on a boat
and sending you across the
Atlantic," a violation of every
organizational rule, everything
you'd learn at the Harvard
Business School as to how to
keep an organization together.
And England is in the throes
of industrialization and all
these village people have been
moved into factories and are
working under the most
difficult conditions.
It's a downtrodden population
and Brigham Young said that you
didn't have to prove anything,
you just preach the gospel to
them and they would believe.
NARRATOR: During the first 25
years of the church, there were
71,000 converts in Great Britain
alone and approximately 17,000
of them emigrated to America to
the early Mormon settlements in
Kirtland, Ohio, and Nauvoo,
Illinois, and then to Utah.
The pioneers who filled the
valley and staffed the church
came from Great Britain and
Scandinavia and Germany.
My grandfather, born in
Birmingham, England.
Mormon missionaries found his
mother and her parents and
they joined the church.
And part of the missionary
lessons you know, you've
got to believe in the Book of
Mormon, you've got to believe in
Baptism and you've
got to move to Utah.
That's a pretty tough
missionary sell.
NARRATOR: At the end of the
19th century, the missionary
work had to take a back seat to
the survival of the
Church in Utah.
The Depression and World War II
further limited their efforts.
God's Army shrank to under 300
missionaries worldwide and its
ambitions would remain
modest until the 1950s.
David O. McKay brought this
church into the 20th century,
even though he got started
halfway through that century.
We were a church that still was
insular.
We brought people to Salt Lake.
He said, "Let's reverse that.
Stay where you are.
Grow where you're planted.
Make the church a vital force
throughout the world. "
The number of missionaries
multiplied several fold.
The number of convert baptisms
multiplied even more so because
he injected that new spirit
into what they were doing.
NARRATOR: Since the 1950s,
God's Army has been recruited
largely from Mormon young
people, and their two-year
missions have become
a rite of passage.
You go.
You go.
Dad went.
Grandpa went.
And Grandpa, who's a descendant
of Wilfred Woodruff, who was
taught by Joseph Smith,
went on missions, you know?
And you start earning at age
five when you are old enough to
count and earn all
the way to 19.
? I hope they
call me on a mission
? When I have grown a foot or two ?
I hope by then
I will be ready ? to teach
and preach and work
as missionaries, too ?
? I want to be a missionary
and serve and help the world ?
while I am in my youth ?
NARRATOR: The missionary
training center in Provo, Utah,
is one of 17 around the world.
It is a spiritual boot camp
where young men and women are
trained to talk, sing, and
pray in 30 languages.
So, without me telling you,
what's this next sentence here?
"I know that Joseph Smith
was a prophet of God. "
NARRATOR: During rigorous
training that can last for three
months of 16-hour days, they
learn lesson plans designed to
take the potential convert
to the goal of baptism.
I want you to see, okay
NARRATOR: Every aspect of
their behavior and
appearance is scrutinized.
What does your face look like
right there?
NARRATOR: They are taught how
to listen, to smile, to find
common ground with a stranger on
the street, how to answer the
most difficult questions, and
how to deal with hecklers.
What are you okay, what
are you thinking right there?
Are you thinking that
you're confused and bored?
That's what I think.
I think in my head I'm like,
"Hmm, smiling, yeah. "
But I need to be like
I was prepared to go on a
mission during a time when
it was, for all intents and
purposes, mandatory for young
men to go on missions.
I had to in order to exist
in my world as I knew it.
When I returned, no one would
want to marry me that I knew
unless I was a
returned missionary.
My parents would lose all
respect for me if I did
not go on a mission.
NARRATOR: At the training
center, parents and young
missionaries say good-bye.
They will not see each
other for two years.
My father said, "Well,
let's have a prayer. "
And he began to pray and then
he broke down and sobbed.
And I remember for the first
time I thought to myself,
"What on earth am I doing?
I'm abandoning my parents
for two years. "
He was obviously just
broken up about it.
I had never seen my
father cry in my life.
And to see him sobbing and
having to gain control of
himself, for just a little
moment, I thought,
"I must be nuts.
What kind of a church would
ask this kind of thing?"
There is that pain.
The church does ask sacrifices.
We don't have to cross the
plains anymore with a handcart,
but it does ask things of us
that sometimes are tough.
It's one thing to leave your
family and go into a dormitory,
to a university, or
go into the military.
But still you have an
independence.
You can choose to
do what you want.
When you become an L.D.S.
missionary, you have a companion
who is assigned to you 24 hours
a day, you never leave the side
of that companion except
to go to the bathroom.
You don't get your alone time
You're in a very small
apartment together.
You just always need to know
where the other one is
and what they're doing.
So that was very difficult with
someone you get along with.
And then you get a companion
that you don't get along with
and you're doing a lot of
praying and soul-searching
because you have companionship
inventory once a week.
Your life is
utterly controlled.
If it isn't approved to listen
to radio, you do not listen to
radio.
If it isn't approved to watch
television, you do not
watch television.
If it isn't approved to read a
newspaper, you will
not read a newspaper.
You follow the rules for
this two-year period.
There is nothing in contemporary
experience of 20-year-olds in
America and Canada to
compare with this.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
Very good, hermano.
Como esta?
NARRATOR: And on the street,
nothing resembles what they
experienced in the
training center.
Joseph asked, "Which church
should I join?"
And the Lord told him that he
should join none
of those churches.
But they had a great
work for Joseph to do.
They called him to be a prophet
just like God had
done in times before.
What's this about?
Oh, all this Jesus
Christ bull [no audio].
Do you believe in
Jesus Christ, ma'am?
Oh, actually I don't believe
in God even.
No?
Sorry.
No no, that's fine.
Well, I just wanted
to share with you.
I have to go this way.
Hi, how are you doing?
Good, how you doing?
Hey, I'm a missionary of the
Latter-day Saints and we're out
talking with people because
we're sharing a great message
about Jesus Christ during this
time of Christmas.
Oh, I'm a Catholic.
She told me to
leave her alone.
Hi!
Oh, no!
How are you doing today, sir?
Kind of busy.
Oh, aren't we all?
Where you headed?
We're actually missionaries.
What are you
guys doing there?
We're missionaries.
Don't shadow me,
don't walk next to me.
I said I'm busy.
Please.
We're just sharing
a Christmas message.
No, no, I just want to walk
here by myself.
Well, maybe next time.
All right.
Have a nice day, sir.
Hey, how's it going?
Of all that time 65, 70
hours a week, knocking doors,
talking to the people in the
street never had
one conversion.
You'd go weeks without
teaching sometimes.
It was just hard.
People didn't want to hear, but
if they found out I was an
Indian, then they
were interested.
They wanted to talk
about Indians.
They didn't want to
talk about religion.
I was 24 when I went on my
mission to Rhodesia.
I was still very much full of
the romance of my own
I actually baptized a large
number of people for my mission.
The average was I think like two
and I baptized something like
25, largely because of one
family of 12 that lived down the
street from where me and my
companion and I lived.
I had a wonderful
time teaching people.
It really made you feel that I
was part of something much
bigger than myself; that a
single individual could be
changed by my capacity to teach
these people.
The transformational quality was
undeniably powerful.
And so the very things that had
happened to me, I began to see
happen to other people.
NARRATOR: Today the L.D.S.c
hurch has grown to over 12
million members worldwide, more
than half of them living outside
the United States.
Mormon conversions, however,
have declined slightly in recent
decades, and over 50% of new
church members will fall away
from their faith.
In the developing world, the
Mormons are increasingly
challenged by the Pentecostals
and other churches whose
conversions are rising faster in
some countries.
The church has a real problem
keeping new members
in the faith.
Part of the reason for that is
that the church does a marvelous
job finding converts and
bringing them into the church
through baptism, but it spends
less time and less effort
helping new members of the
church find their way in their
new congregations.
Also, conversion to Mormonism
involves a radical
transformation of
someone's life.
If I convert to a typical
Christian sect, I don't know
that they're going to ask me for
10% of my income.
I don't know if they're going to
ask me for literally almost all
of my discretionary time.
Because it is a church that is
run solely by the membership,
congregations can only sustain
themselves when members
contribute at least
as much as they take.
So, retaining a Latter-day Saint
is a pretty serious enterprise,
more serious than retaining the
average charismatic Christian or
conservative Christian.
This is a church that
demands everything.
NARRATOR: The church also
asks a great deal from its young
missionaries and it can test
their commitment.
We had a son who was serving
on a mission in Brazil.
He had been there
for about a year.
He was serving out from the
some distance and I
couldn't reach him.
And so the branch president
wrote a note, put it on the door
and said, "Your mom
has passed away.
Call home. "
He's 5,000 miles away and I'm
crying and he's crying on the
phone, and how do you put your
arms around your son when he's
that far away?
And, I mean, it just felt so
awful to think that I was
sitting here by myself and to
think that I that I didn't
know what my family was going
through, and it was just a very
lonely moment, a
very sad moment.
It was just it was yeah,
it was terrible.
And he didn't come home from
his mission.
And I encouraged him not to come
home from his mission.
He knew he was there
for a reason.
He knew that he was doing what
his mother wanted him to do.
That was one of the most
important things to her in her
life, was that she raised her
son to serve a mission.
NARRATOR: For the young
Mormons working abroad, their
missions can be dangerous.
In those countries in turmoil or
hostile to America, missionaries
have been kidnapped,
tortured and killed.
The physical environment can
also be threatening.
I hit Argentina with the
force of a hurricane, being 19
and being absolutely convinced
that you're on the Lord's
errand, fueled with these
fantasies and aspirations.
I ended up with my companions
baptizing an entire congregation
of aboriginal people in the mud.
Living conditions were
frequently harsh.
You don't have fresh water to
bathe in, so you're bathing in
this rancid, algae-ridden,
green, slimy water.
You drink it.
You're dying of thirst.
It's like 100, 112 degrees.
Poison spitting toads getting
into the apartment.
Crocodiles running
all over the place.
I mean, I was
completely into it.
I mean, I was so completely
wound up that I mean, if my
mission president had asked me
to blow myself up like a suicide
bomber, I would have said,
"Sure, where should I go?"
NARRATOR: But the young faith
that fuels the missionary does
not always endure.
Years later, Tal Bachman says he
left the church after concluding
the revelations of Joseph Smith
were not authentic.
I left the church because I
felt that I was forced to
conclude that for whatever else
it might be, it wasn't what it
claimed to be.
That point had special relevance
for me, I think, because of my
mission experiences and the
decisions I had made
after my mission.
We risked our lives for the
church in Argentina.
I don't think that I can delude
myself into thinking or to
making it okay for my children
to put their lives on the line
for the thing if it's not what
it claims to be.
It might be the best thing ever
invented, but if it's invented,
it's not worth dying for.
NARRATOR: But for others, the
mission itself can be the
catalyst for their own
Before my mission, I tried to
do what is always suggested to
read the scriptures, to say my
prayers, to be obedient to the
commandments of the church as we
understand them and hoped in
that process I would gain the
spiritual conviction
that is promised.
And I didn't, at least not to
the degree of certainty that I
had hoped for.
So when I went on my mission I
was still somewhat tentative.
And I went to Germany.
I'd had a high school German
class and had never learned a
thing, unfortunately.
I didn't even know what
gesundheit meant when I got
there.
I didn't even like the little
German children because they
could speak German
and I couldn't.
( laughs )
So about six weeks into my
mission, my companion and I had
stirred up enough difficulty in
this Lutheran neighborhood
where we were working that the
Lutheran minister called a
special meeting to warn his
parishioners about us.
He said to his parishioners,
"Look, these young Mormons
are working here.
Be nice to them, but you
don't really need them.
You have Luther.
You have the Bible.
They have the Book of Mormon and
Joseph Smith, both of which are
obviously fraudulent, so just be
kind to them and
they'll go away. "
Then he made a strategic error.
He said or a tactical error, I
guess he said, "Is there
anyone else here tonight that
would like to say anything
about these Mormons?"
And, of course, my 6'7"
companion raised his hand and
said, "We would," and up
to the front we went.
And then he turned to me and
said, "And now my companion
would like to say how he feels. "
And I remember thinking, "Well,
dandy, I can bless the food,"
because that's the only
intelligent thing I might
have done in German.
But you know, it
was interesting.
And this is a tender moment for
me because the conviction
I'd been searching for came.
And it came in this way I
remember sort of composing
myself and trying to figure out
what I might say in German,
which is a very logical language
if you know the rules, and I
remembered in that moment about
every German word or phrase I
had ever read or heard sort of
coming together in a way that I
was able to express myself.
And I did tell those people that
I knew that Joseph Smith was a
prophet and that I knew that the
Book of Mormon was the word of
God and that I knew the church
had been restored through Joseph
Smith.
And it's interesting because, in
that moment I I came to know,
and that was the moment really
when my hope and my tender
belief turned into something
really solid, which has been the
foundation for the rest of my
So when people say,
"How was your mission?"
I say, "It was everything. "
NARRATOR: For the new
convert, it can be a
transformative
experience as well.
Despite the challenges facing
the missionaries, conversions
continue, sometimes in
the most unexpected way.
When the missionaries came
into the outskirts of Hell where
I was at, struggling with my two
little children, I had been
hooked on drugs, in
prison, on parole.
And they knocked on my door and
I thought, "It's the police. "
And I kind of snuck on up to the
door to peep, because I had just
gotten off of two years of
probation and seven years of
parole 11 days before the
missionaries came and brought
their Book of Mormon to me.
And they came in and told me the
most preposterous story I
have ever heard in my life.
They told me about this white
boy, a dead angel and
some gold plates.
And I thought, "Mmm, I
wonder what they on. "
I had gotten the name of
the church messed up.
When I first heard it, I thought
it was the L.D.S.
church, you know?
And I thought, well, L.S.D.
I got it backwards.
I thought they was talking about
L.S.D. and I thought, "Now
that's the church for me. "
And it dawned on me as I sat
there and opened that book up
and it said, "I, Nephi, being
born of goodly parents "
And it breaks my heart even to
this day because it seemed like
at that moment I realized that I
wasn't a goodly parent and that
I didn't have goodly parents to
teach me in the
language of my fathers.
Families can be
together forever
I found something inside of me
that was responding to this
message of hope, of family that
could be together forever, of
raising my children and learning
how to be a good parent.
Not drinking, not smoking, not
cussing every word, using
the Lord's name in vain.
And I tell you, to come into the
church, because I wanted that,
to me it was like a
pearl of great price.
? You brought
Because you brought me
? Yes, you brought me ?
All religious systems have to
move beyond their own founding,
and many religious systems have
found that very difficult to do.
Christianity did it.
Islam did it.
Judaism did it.
The question is, can
Mormonism do it?
The path is thrusting itself up
in front of the Mormons day
after day, almost hour after
hour, and it's difficult
to deal with.
And like much in the
past, it's very messy.
NARRATOR: As the L.D.S.
church has grown, control over
the Mormon story has become
all the more important.
That has lead to increasing
conflict with some Mormon
intellectuals who challenge the
church's official history and
the authority of its leaders.
The glory of God
is intelligence.
Light and truth
forsake the evil one.
Ye are commanded to bring up
your children in
light and truth.
Intellectuals, by their
very nature, ask questions.
They're curious.
They see some statement made
and they want to know why.
The life of the mind can be
seen to be in flat out
opposition to one's faith.
To be a Mormon intellectual
means that you're opening up
yourself to being called
into a church court.
I was excommunicated
13 years ago.
My temple marriage to my
husband is cancelled.
My sealing to my child is
dissolved.
Basically, my eternal
salvation is wiped out.
One of the contradictions I
see presently in Mormon culture
is, on the one hand, we have
this long tradition of
encouraging knowledge and
education and yet, at the same
time, there is a real anti-
intellectual strain that has
been there for quite some time.
If you're an active L.D.S.
person and you want to write
about Mormonism, there are just
certain things that you
cannot talk about.
Certainly, the temple is one of
them, even if you are trying to
do it in a faith-promoting way.
And raising any kind of feminist
question is something
you cannot do.
Questioning authority in any way
I think that this is
probably one of the biggest
taboos in Mormonism.
There is the thought that
intellectuals ask questions,
questions lead to doubts, doubts
leads to loss of testimony, loss
of testimony leads to you
falling away from the church
and there's a great fear in the
church that if you openly look
at these things that you will
doubt, and if you doubt, well,
there goes the whole purpose of
The scriptures speak of
prophets as being watchmen
on the tower with the
responsibility to warn when an
enemy approaches the
enclosure of the faithful.
I think all of the leaders of
the church are conscious of an
obligation to warn the people
when there's a danger.
I think in any day, the watchmen
on the tower are going to say
intellectualism is a danger to
the church, and it is
at extreme points.
And if people leave their faith
behind and follow strictly where
science leads them, that can
be a pretty crooked path.
NARRATOR: Ironically, the
Mormon religion itself was born
as an act of radical dissent.
Joseph Smith had directly
challenged the tenets of
mainstream Christianity.
But almost from the beginning
he, too, was challenged by
dissenters in his own church.
He was quick to excommunicate
but also quick to allow
people to return.
His successor, Brigham
Young, was tougher.
Brigham Young's
principal was simple.
You are either with us
or you're against us.
If you are part of this people,
fall into line, let's move on
and let's build up the kingdom
of God and never forget that
all we have is each other.
We undermine each other's faith,
we destroy ourselves.
We've got to stick together.
There's the highway
or there's our way.
Leave if you are not going
to adhere to the rules.
NARRATOR: In the mid-20th
century the church began to
forcefully discipline its
intellectuals who challenged the
orthodox view of Mormon history.
The historian Fawn Brodie had
emerged from a devout
Mormon family in Utah.
In 1945 she published a
biography of Joseph Smith that
was the first to question the
divine origins of Smith's
revelations and the Book of
Although she was a niece of
church leader David O. McKay, he
didn't protect her and
she was excommunicated.
In 1950, when Juanita Brooks
published the first full account
of Mormon complicity in the
Mountain Meadows Massacre, she
and her husband were shunned
by members of their church.
As official church historian,
Leonard Arrington began opening
church archives in 1972 and
promoted a new Mormon history
that was complex and objective.
But after a decade of
intellectual freedom, the church
transferred Arrington's entire
division from his control.
The Mormon church has
suffered dissent and
excommunications from
the very beginning.
But I'd say in the last
generation there seems to be
more disciplining,
more nervousness, more
excommunications.
The church seems to be drawing
in and wanting to sharpen its
message, and in some cases, this
really takes on a very
harsh and personal edge.
NARRATOR: Among current
church leaders, Apostle Boyd
Packer has emerged as the
strongest voice of
Mormon orthodoxy.
When I was at B.Y.U., Boyd K.
Packer had given this speech
and I believe it was meant only
for the insiders in the church
office building, but it got out
as a lot of things do get leaked
in Utah, especially in Salt Lake
and Provo where he basically
said one of the greatest dangers
to the church were gays,
feminists and intellectuals.
And there was a large group of
us who fit many of
those categories.
It was like a slap in the face.
It was like, "We don't want you. "
I suppose I I think I
remember saying those things.
If it's in print, I said it.
And but that is
part of the alert.
And it's very simple down some
of those paths, you have a right
to go there, and but in the
church, you don't have a right
to teach and take others there
without having some discipline
simply because down the
road there's unhappiness.
Within the church we're not
afraid of intellectuals or
of learning or of knowledge.
Where an intellectual, I think,
can get into difficulty is when
that intellectual person takes a
position and begins either to
attack the general leaders or
local leaders of the church
or begins to attack the basic
doctrine of the church
and does that publicly.
NARRATOR: One of the most
contentious issues that has
divided intellectuals and church
leaders involves scientific
investigations of the book of
Mormonism teaches that
ancient Israelites came to the
new world and created scriptures
which we have today as
the Book of Mormon.
Thus Israelites are ancestors
of native Americans.
There's a whole story, a very
elaborate story, of great
cities being built.
But non-Mormons and I'd guess
we'd say Mormon skeptics who
have studied these matters do
not see evidence they don't
see the D.N.A. that would
support the Israelite theory.
They don't see evidence of
Hebrew language in the new
They don't see the archeological
sites that would show these
grand cities that are described.
According to a lot of Mormon
archeologists, their job is to
find that this is a true story;
that all these things actually
existed in this place that it
described in the Book of Mormon,
which, in this case, would have
to be in Guatemala and the
neighboring Mexican
state of Chiapas.
And this is what they have
been after for 50 years.
They've excavated all kinds of
sites, and unfortunately,
they've never found anything
that would back it up.
But Mormonism is not the only
religion that faces this problem
of what's actually in the
ground or in the documents.
The exodus, of course, in the
Old Testament of the Bible is
the best example of this for
which there's just absolutely no
archeological
justification whatsoever.
There's never been found any
hard evidence that the
exodus took place.
NARRATOR: But when Mormon
scholars challenge their
church's official history,
they risk serious sanctions.
My book challenges some of
the core foundational claims of
the church, the historicity
of the Book of Mormon.
Is it really an ancient record
of an ancient people like
the story that Joseph told?
When I look at the Book of
Mormon, I really don't
see an ancient text.
We see a large chunk of the King
James Bible, in this book that's
reportedly to be ancient record
of a people that lived 2,500
years ago in ancient America.
We see an enormous amount of
evangelical camp meeting fervor.
The 11 main preachers in the
book of Mormon sound to me like
Methodist stump
speakers of that era.
What you find is all of the
issues that were being discussed
and debated among Joseph Smith's
family and friends
in his own day.
It's a 19th century
record is what it is.
It's not an ancient record.
NARRATOR: In 2004, two years
after he published his
book, Grant Palmer was
dis-fellowshipped by the L.D.S.
church, a punishment just
short of excommunication.
Mormonism is a movement that
celebrates its history and yet
it seems to be quite afraid of
its history, oftentimes
afraid of real historical
investigation.
What did Joseph Smith think
about the practice of magic?
To what extent did Joseph Smith
really practice money digging?
To what extent did
he forge documents?
To what extent did he engage
in illicit sexual behavior?
All of those are questions that
aren't particularly unusual in
the formation of most any
kind of religious system.
They were imperfect human beings
who engaged in
imperfect behavior.
Some Mormons have
trouble accepting that.
We want a kind of sanitized
We do take history very
seriously and I think we
take it very literally.
We don't deconstruct and feel
that what we have is the figment
of language or imagination at
all, or that there's
some middle ground.
And I know that's very
polarizing in a sense.
I think the hardest public
relations sell we have to make
is that this is the only true
NARRATOR: In a single month
in 1993, the L.D.S. Church
excommunicated six prominent
Mormon scholars whose work the
church believed had gone too far
in their investigations of
polygamy, in pressing for
priesthood for women, and in
challenging church authority.
I was one of the
first to be threatened.
I was threatened with
excommunication in
the summer of 1993.
I received a letter from
my stake president.
In this letter, I was told that
I was not allowed to speak,
discuss, publish, write about
anything to do with church
history or church doctrine or
they would hold a court on me.
Those things that they had asked
me not to speak about were women
in the priesthood and the Mormon
idea, or the Mormon concept,
of the heavenly mother.
NARRATOR: The church had
objected to a series of
scholarly articles in which
Toscano argued that Joseph Smith
had intended that women be
granted Mormon priesthood.
It was a direct contradiction of
the church's official doctrine
that only men could
hold that position.
I am Mormon on a deep level
and I do not believe that a
community can be spiritually
healthy when it silences people.
And that was my reason for not
obeying the stake president
in the first place.
I told him at the time, I said,
"I cannot be silent because for
me to be silent is to
participate in an abusive
authority and to damage the
community that I care about. "
You have to imagine when you go
into a church disciplinary court
that you go in by yourself.
You are not allowed to
bring anybody with you.
So I'm in there.
There's 16 men that I am facing.
The stake president is
presenting the case against me
and he did it in almost
courtroom-like fashion.
He had a set of notes and he had
his reasons why I should be
He also had a stack of copies of
everything that I had written,
and it was kind of
like this, a stack.
When the stake president was
talking about all I had written
about women in the priesthood
was really wrong and I tried to
come in to defend myself
doctrinally by quoting Joseph
Smith and by using
argument and reason.
In the middle of the sentence
the state president interrupted
me and he said, "We will not
allow you to lecture us.
We will not allow you to use
this kind of reasoning again.
You are only allowed to speak as
we give you permission. "
And, of course, I mean, I just
kind of stopped mid-sentence.
I couldn't go on, but you can
imagine that this was I mean,
you don't really feel like you
have much of a defense.
Then they asked me to go out and
they deliberated for about 20
minutes and then
brought me back in.
And the first thing that the
stake president said to me is,
"I want you to know that the
High Counsel is very impressed
with you. "
"However, you are
We have found you to
be an apostate. "
And everybody got up and they
all wanted to shake my hand.
They're cutting me off from
eternal salvation and telling me
that I am this apostate, which
really is considered very bad in
Mormon culture, and then I'm
this nice woman that they're
going to shake my hand.
And this that niceness
there's something there's
something vicious about niceness
that struck me in this, that the
niceness covered over the
violence of what was being
done, because, in fact,
excommunication is
a violent action.
I think it is important to
point out that the church never
makes public the transcripts of
church disciplinary proceedings.
They never make
press statements.
And, so, in every case where
an intellectual has been
excommunicated from the church,
the public is exposed only
one half of the story.
And I don't think it's ever
possible to come fair and just
conclusions when we only
have half the story.
Excommunication is a word
that does and should send a
chill down the spine of Mormons
because the entire structure of
the family, which, in our
belief, will transcend death,
becomes threatened if one of the
members of that family has
suddenly jerked out of the
fabric and told, "By the way,
this is binding here and there. "
That's why it sends a
chill down your spine.
The most painful part about
the excommunication is the way
in which, if you are part of a
large Mormon family, it really
does it really does hurt your
relationship with your family.
My younger sister passed away
a little over a year ago.
She died of cancer and one
Mormon ritual is that when a
person dies, you dress them in
their temple clothing
before you bury them.
My brother-in-law, who's a very
active Mormon, very patriarchal
if I can say that, he did not
want my sister and myself
to be part of that.
He didn't want us to
help dress her body.
I mean, and that I mean,
that cut me so deep.
I haven't gotten over it.
I don't know if I ever will.
All religious groups try
to control their message.
And once in a while you'll have
a heresy trial in this
group or that group.
Mormonism is unique in the
amount of activity that goes on
and also the extent to which the
general membership is monitored.
Apparently there are files in
Salt Lake City on anybody who
has raised embarrassing
questions or might be a
troublemaker.
What you have is a church that
seeks to control its message
down into the membership to
strengthen the church and to
make sure that it's message is
clear and consistent and that
dissent is limited to the
greatest extent possible.
NARRATOR: The West is full of
towns that arose one morning
when someone discovered gold and
disappeared almost as soon
when the vein ran out.
From when homesteaders came out
alone, totally unprepared for
what lay ahead, and then left
without a trace.
But there are very few
Mormon ghost towns.
They didn't go out as isolated
individuals to make a fortune.
Brigham Young sent them out in
groups, as tribes of families to
build communities
that would last.
While the years of persecution
set the Mormons apart, it
also drove them inward.
The family became their refuge
and their source of strength.
The Mormons' preoccupation with
the family traces all the way
back to the church's origins, to
the theological passions
of Joseph Smith.
One of Joseph Smith's most
interesting ideas is sealing.
He became deeply preoccupied
with sealing families together
husbands to wives, parents to
children, one generation to
the previous generation.
And you say, why was he so
preoccupied with sealing?
You look at the world around him
and he lived in a time when
families are being dispersed,
when they're being broken, when
children go off to the gold rush
or the West and are never heard
from or seen again.
Every time a family moves west,
they're saying a good-bye.
This is a time of constant
departure and farewell.
And to try to hold that family
together, through sealing, is in
a way a solution to the
problem of his time.
NARRATOR: Smith's concept of
families sealed together for
eternity was part of his
revelation on celestial
marriage, which also
endorsed polygamy.
Once polygamy no longer
became possible, the big
question was, is the nuclear
family still celestial in the
ways that polygamist
families had been?
And the answer very quickly
became yes, and the nuclear
family inherited both that
super-heated quality and that
supportive quality that had
gone into that investment in
It's through and in and by and
with the family that Mormons are
saved and it's how they think
primarily of their relationship,
both to the afterlife and
to the church as a whole.
Looks beautiful.
Nice.
The marriage that takes place
in the temple where men and
women are joined together, or as
we term it, sealed together, not
just for time or until death
does us part but for time and
all eternity, is to me the
high point really in religious
experience and in
religious ceremony.
You don't get married by a
justice of the peace for till
death do you part.
You get married for time and all
eternity.
I'm engaged and it's something
that I've been contemplating a
lot lately.
I love this guy.
Am I really ready to
spend eternity with him?
He is going to be, like,
attached to my hip not
until I die but forever.
And that is a really
important question.
It makes you approach
marriage in a different way.
We look at the family as a
really eternal unit and you're
making eternal commitments and
so you better have
eternal priorities.
There probably isn't a
religion today that doesn't
claim to be family centered,
and with good reason.
Most religions are committed
to the value of the family.
And still there's something
different about the place of the
family in Mormon culture.
And I think it has to do with
the way the family is understood
in Mormonism not as an entity of
social organization, but as an
organization that has its roots
in the pre-mortal world and will
persist into the eternal world.
NARRATOR: Annette and Timber
Tillemann-Dick of Denver,
Colorado have 11 children.
Like many Mormons, their life
together as a
family comes first.
Repeat the words after me and
then we're going to read it.
NARRATOR: Annette has home
schooled her children and sent
some of them on to
Ivy League schools.
Along with Timber, a busy and
successful businessman, she and
the children reserve every
Monday night, as do all active
Mormons, for family
home evening.
all the blessings which
you give us each and every day.
Help us to We have
family home evening
in our family, rain or
shine, like it or not.
We bunker down together Monday
nights and sing a few songs and
sometimes we'll have some really
profound lesson or really fun
activity, and sometimes we'll
just do family home evening
because we know we're
supposed to do it.
And either way, it's really good
for us to spend time together,
which is a rarity in today's
The church and my family are so
intertwined and I just can't
begin to imagine trying
to bifurcate those.
And when you come into a home
that has priesthood leadership
and that has people living
together focused on the same
eternal goals, it just creates a
kind of aura of love and peace.
It makes your home a holy place.
Amen.
It's the Mormon fixation on
the family as a coherent
unit that's so important.
In many other religious systems
what is important is the belief
in the individual, the belief of
the child, the belief of the
parent, the parent's belief
transferred to the child but the
child still remains independent,
an independent unit.
Within Mormonism there is an
emphasis on the collective, the
collective sense of the family,
the collective sense of moral
responsibility, the collective
sense of an enterprise.
? And since my soul ?
NARRATOR: For devout Mormons,
family life is centered in the
local congregation, or ward.
? How great thou art ?
Growing up Mormon was like
growing up in a little ghetto
village where everyone knew
you and you knew everyone.
Your entire life was woven into
the lives of everyone
else in the congregation.
Your social activities, you had
ward banquets and ward parties
and ward campouts
and ward dances.
And all of the adults were
involved in that too, because
they were driving us as kids
here and there and there.
And so you got to know everyone
and everyone knew you and
it was a great experience.
When I first moved out to
Alpine, population of about
2,000, virtually everybody in
that town was Mormon.
And we'd go down to
the welfare farm.
We'd all go down there
butcher, baker, candlestick
maker and we'd pick beans,
we'd hoe beets and laid out
canneries and people would can
the beans we were picking and
the beets we were
hoeing and so on.
A brilliantly inspired program
and you're doing it all
The sense of community
is absolutely amazing.
One of the truly distinct
features of the way Mormons
organize themselves is that they
organize themselves
geographically.
In no other faith community in
the United States is it the case
that where you live absolutely
determines where
you will worship.
One would think that it would be
a source of greater friction or
discomfort because you're thrown
in with people that you don't
willingly choose to associate
with until one remembers, oh,
but usually we call
that a family.
That's one of the explanations I
think for this uniquely cohesive
bond that characterizes
Mormon wards.
Since there's no professional
clergy, nobody gets paid and the
service that is rendered
is all voluntary.
You can find yourself working
hours that are comparable
to a second job.
NARRATOR: Mormon women work
outside the home in about the
same proportions as
other American women.
And the extensive commitment to
the church and to family can put
enormous pressures
on the mothers.
Mormon women are plagued with
this perfect woman figure.
She bakes cookies and she bakes
bread and she always looks
wonderful and she's never
overweight and she's always
smiling and yes.
Totally impossible woman.
? He is my Savior ?
In Mormonism you're told that
your very eternal salvation and
the eternal salvation of your
children is the thing that, if
you somehow make a false move-
you know, "Am I going to mess up
my kid forever because
I worked that job?"
Not just in this life and, you
know, they may take drugs or
something, but, "Will they
lose their eternal salvation?"
That is a horrible
burden that you face.
It's incredible pressure on a
woman and yes, there is a strong
use of anti-depressants in Utah,
higher levels than
exist in other states.
You cannot attribute it
exclusively to one set of social
circumstances, but there are
great expectations on a woman.
So Jesus tracked him
down and found him
NARRATOR: In the Mormon
faith, gender roles are
ordained by the church.
Mormon fathers preside over
their families and hold the
priesthood with authority to
give blessings and healings.
Mormon mothers are primarily
responsible for the
nurture of the children.
Many Mormon women find their
role fulfilling, but for
others it is limiting.
There's a dichotomy that the
church has.
It means that women and the work
that they do in the church is
always subordinate to
what the men are doing.
I see that as damaging to women
because they're put in the role
of being under the
power of the men.
It's not an equal partnership.
As a woman in the Mormon
church I feel very comfortable.
I don't feel denied any
opportunity to serve and to do
good for people in the church
and in the wards and in our
neighborhoods and so on.
In service do I feel limited?
The answer is no.
NARRATOR: In the 1970s, the
Mormon view of family life gave
rise to the church's vigorous
opposition to the Equal
Rights Amendment.
It played a critical role in
defeating the E.R.A., urging its
members to vote against it and
busing thousands of L.D.S.
women to rallies.
And the church excommunicated
one of the most outspoken Mormon
feminists, Sonia Johnson.
They're interested in
stopping me and stopping this
organization called
Mormons for E.R.A.
They want us to leave them alone
out there and let them get the
E.R.A. killed and we
can't do that, you know.
The equal rights amendment
was threatening because it
changed the role of women from a
nurturing helpmate to a man,
from a nurturing housewife
staying at home taking care of
the children to someone who
could now make those
decisions for herself.
If women now started to compete
with men for professional
positions, for becoming
breadwinners, earning more
perhaps than their spouses, this
threatened men as well as women.
The E.R.A. is not just about
women.
The E.R.A. was about families,
changing the role of men,
women, and indeed children.
NARRATOR: While the family is
the spiritual core of Mormon
life, not everyone feels
welcome at their table.
What about people who marry
and for whatever reason
don't have children?
Or the young woman who grows
old without marrying?
Or the divorced person?
I mean, we I think we can
be quite hard, in a sense,
unwittingly, but nevertheless
hard on those people in our
culture because we have cultural
expectations, cultural ideals,
and if you measure up to
them, it's a wonderful life.
If you don't, it could
be very difficult.
Being gay in that culture is
beyond hell because the family
is the center of Mormonism.
It is the sacred, potent unit,
and you don't even really want
to make a family if you choose
to follow your instincts.
That's why when I went to the
counselor I wanted to be cured
so badly.
I fasted and I prayed and I went
through this whole thing, and I
remember dating girls and then
and nothing worked.
And I just decided, "This
year, I'm going to do it. "
And that's how I ended up
marrying within two-and-a-half
months of meeting my
poor unfortunate wife.
We were determined
to make it work.
We bought this paradisical
place in Alpine in Utah.
I mean, I had everything I wanted
the stream running
through this place, great big
cottonwood trees, a little log
cabin with a big cobblestone
room attached to it, and we
built and built and built and
turned this little
place into a paradise.
And gradually these children
come on the scene and it's
heaven for them an acre and a
third for them to run wild on
and gradually, gradually , I
realized that I had paradise but
I was an arid
desert in my heart.
I'd wake up every day of my life
thinking, and this phrase would
run through my head, "And shot
himself through the head. "
It made no sense but it made
every sense, and there was
no running away from it.
I was committing a kind
of spiritual suicide.
But the moment infidelity
occurred, that was it.
The marriage was over and the
excommunication process started.
And so there I was on this
I'll never forget standing on
the grass by the stream when she
told me that she had
gone to the bishop.
That it was you know,
there was no future there.
That everything I'd wanted just
was sort of I was standing on
this stage in effect that I'd
created, that it wasn't an act,
it wasn't a play that
was built for me.
There is a single standard of
morality for all members of the
The only marriage sanctioned by
God is of a man to a woman.
So there is really no allowance
within our doctrine for a
homosexual relationship of
woman to woman or man to man.
And obviously that
creates a lot of pain.
The thing that we have to
ultimately say to someone like
that is if you're going to live
your life within the framework
of the gospel and within the
framework of our doctrine, then
you've got to choose to marry
someone of the opposite sex, and
if you can't do that honestly,
then your choice has to be
to live a celibate life.
And that is a very difficult
choice, for the parents, for the
young man, the young woman, for
whoever's making that choice.
My heart goes out to them.
There's something terribly
tragic that not only Mormonism
but most religions have such a
hard time with the odd ducks.
But the bottom line is most
of us are odd to a greater or
lesser extent and embracing the
odd duck to me is the
measure of true religion.
True religion says, "You're
weird but I love you
nonetheless. "
That's what Jesus
would have done.
And so, for me, it is a great
failure that family can only be
the family, almost by the Ozzie
and Harriet definition, and
anything outside of that
is not a family at all.
I have no bitterness toward the
church, which surprises me.
I loved it dearly and
I still love it.
I love Mormon people.
I love the notions of Mormonism,
of teaching that you
are an eternal soul.
You came from Heavenly Father
and you're here because our
family was meant for you.
Kind of makes me terribly sad at
times that I can't
be in that place.
NARRATOR: For those Mormon
families who do conform to the
church's doctrines, its core
belief that families are forever
can forge a powerful bond.
For the Tillemann-Dicks, this
faith has sustained them through
the serious health crisis of
their 23-year-old
daughter Charity.
I found out about my
condition in my final steps
to going to mission.
I went to the doctors and they
did the E.K.G. and the
nurse's eyes popped.
They popped.
I wasn't wearing my contacts and
I could still tell they popped.
And they came back and they told
me that I had this condition,
primary pulmonary hypertension.
And I remember going home and
looking it up on the Internet,
and the first thing I found
talked about a two-to-five-year
mortality rate for people that
had this condition, period.
That, you know, you lived two to
five years with this
condition and then you died.
I remember I just
started sobbing.
I was crying and crying.
NARRATOR: Fearing the day
they might never again hear the
voice of their daughter, an
emerging young opera star,
Charity's family gathered for an
emotional all-day
recording session.
? I see the stars I
hear the rolling thunder ?
I get melancholy sometimes.
I get sad.
I still have never
been on a real date.
I have never had a boyfriend.
It's hard to think that I might
never fall in love, that I might
never get married in the temple,
that I might never have
children or adopt children.
never see my little sisters and
my little brothers grow up.
I know that, whether it's in ten
years or 10,000 years, that
there's the hope, there's the
knowledge that not only will I
see God my father again but I
will see and be with my sisters
again, and with my mother
again and my father again.
? And grace will lead me home ?
In the end, we will be
together with our families.
And to know that we would be
together was such a comfort,
was such a comfort.
The knowledge that this really
is going to happen, that this
isn't just something that we've
been taught in Sunday school,
that this isn't just something
that we've been told, that this
is something real, that we will
go home and I will see my mother
and my father and I will see
Glorianna and Senneth and
Mercina and Shiloh, that I'll
see Liberty and Corbin and
Kimber and Levi and Dulcia and
Tomikah, that I will be home.
NARRATOR: Every religion has
its rites and its mysteries.
They can give life meaning.
They can soften the ache of
loneliness and the
terror of death.
In their temple, Mormons are
taught the plan of salvation and
through secret rituals, how to
subdue the powers of death.
The temple is the holiest
place on earth for Mormons.
It is sacred space.
The temple is the meeting
place between the
infinite and the finite.
The temple exists as a kind
of microcosm of that heavenly
world that we hope to inhabit.
What really is almost the
universal symbol throughout the
history of mankind, of worship,
of God, the temple is something
now that is almost lost
except to this church.
And one of really, one of the
priceless things that Joseph
Smith restored or brought back
to earth was a knowledge of what
a temple was and what
should occur in a temple.
NARRATOR: It was here in
the Mormon's first temple, in
Kirtland, Ohio, that Joseph
Smith said he had an
extraordinary vision of his
brother Alvin.
As a young man Alvin had died a
painful death before he could be
baptized in Joseph's church.
His brother Alvin dies.
Presumably that prompted his
reflections and his pondering on
the question of what is the
status of the dead who died
unbaptized or without receiving
the fullness of the gospel, and
that precipitates a vision.
NARRATOR: Smith said that in
a blaze of light he saw his
brother along with Jesus and
several Old Testament figures.
Elijah appeared to Smith and
gave the prophet the new and
strange doctrine of the
baptism for the dead.
It would offer salvation to
those in the afterlife who had
not yet heard the Mormon gospel.
This was the beginning of a
series of revelations that
would transform Mormonism.
It became both a religion of the
book and a religion
of temple rites.
In the 19th century, the Mormons
built temples in Ohio,
Illinois and Utah.
By the middle of the 20th
century, temples crossed America
from Los Angeles to New York.
Today, well over a hundred dot
the world, from Russia and
Japan to Ghana and Chile.
Outsiders are not allowed in the
temple except during the few
weeks before it is dedicated.
And Mormons who enter are not
allowed to speak of much
of what happens here.
And I remember that at that
time there were certain things,
part of the rituals in the
temple, is that you made the
sign of disemboweling yourself
and then also
slitting your throat.
And you made this in conjunction
with the promise that you made
that you would never reveal
what goes on in the temple.
You would never reveal
any temple rituals.
NARRATOR: These symbolic
oaths were dropped in 1990, but
a secrecy vow remains
for some of the rites.
It's, in a sense, secret
because we don't talk about
it outside of the temple.
We do that only because it's a
sacred thing to us and when
millions of people have
participated in it and kept it
confidential to a large extent,
it shows you, I think, the
seriousness with which that
whole experience is taken.
Before any Latter-day Saints
can enter into the temple, he or
she must have what's
called a temple recommend.
You need to show that you are
committed enough that you are
paying your tithing, that you're
living the word of wisdom, that
you're faithful to your spouse
and those kinds of things.
There are serious
consequences for failing to
qualify for a temple recommend.
Among them are the fact that you
can't hold a higher position
in church administration.
You can't work for the church
in, say, B.Y.U. or in other
church-affiliated institutions.
You cannot marry in the temple;
you cannot go to the temple to
see your own children married if
you are not worthy to have a
So, it is a process of excluding
people in order to refine
their religious devotion.
NARRATOR: Mormons say they
enter the temple and leave
ordinary life behind.
They change into white garments.
It is a place of silence
broken only by whispering.
There is no central
nave as in a cathedral.
There are no sermons or crosses.
There is no religious worship in
the usual sense.
Instead there are a series of
rooms where Mormons perform
ceremonies for the living and
the dead that they feel are
essential for salvation; rooms
where Mormons are married for
eternity; others where they are
sealed to their
children for all time.
The first time that I went to
the temple I think I was
impressed by the beauty, the
sheer beauty, of those rooms and
how they were painted and trees
and fruit and birds, how people
dressed in all white white
shoes, socks, belts, shirts,
dresses, everything all white
how ethereal that is.
It's like being in
a group of angels.
NARRATOR: In the endowment
room in a ceremony all temple
Mormons undergo, they watch a
filmed drama of the plan of
salvation and are taught secret
signs and phrases that after
death will enable them
to return to God.
When I first went to the L.D.S.
temple and received my
endowments, all I can do is
describe it as I really had a
mystical experience where the
temple ritual, which is set out
as a journey of Adam and Eve,
that there was a way in which I
connected to it on a very
deep spiritual level.
It was shocking to me because
it was so ritualistic, and I had
heard missionaries mocking
Catholics with all their incense
and ritual and all of a sudden I
was in the middle of this
experience, not only
watching it, but doing it.
And it was really shocking to
me, and but at the same time
there was a kind of there was
a sweetness to it that
grabbed me up to a point.
NARRATOR: In every temple
there is an immense baptismal
font where proxy baptisms for
the dead are conducted
day and night.
Mormons are not just baptizing
their own ancestors, but all
those who died not knowing that
they could be members
of the Mormon church.
If Jesus is the savior of
mankind and if hearing his
gospel is necessary for
salvation, what about those who
have never heard of Jesus?
And the answer is if they don't
hear it in this life they, we
believe, go to a spirit world
following this life and it is in
that realm that they are able to
hear the gospel and they can
decide whether they're going to
accept it or whether they're
going to reject it.
And if they do accept it, then
we believe that there is still a
need for certain religious
ceremonies to be
performed for them.
One of those is baptism.
I remember doing this as a
teenager myself, and we would go
in there and there's a man who
holds the priesthood who is
baptizing you, and your turn
comes up and you go down into
the font and you're baptized for
a bunch of names at a time
maybe 20 names.
And this time he had a little
computer screen where the name
of the person you were being
baptized for would appear, and
he would hold you by the hand,
raise his hand to the right and
say, "Elbert Peck, for and on
behalf of Joseph Schwenden," or
whoever, "I baptize you in the
name of the Father and the Son,
and the Holy Ghost," and he'd
immerse you in the water
and you'd come out.
I've thought a lot about the
baptism for the dead phenomenon.
It may be theologically tenuous,
but it speaks to a genuine human
need to be linked to past
generations and to, in some
sense, take one take
responsibility for one's
ancestors.
And, so, even though I don't
advocate baptism for the dead, I
don't see it as a purely
flaky kind of thing.
When I found out that Mormons
are baptizing the Jews,
Holocaust survivors, one
was, it was shocked.
Second was, how can they do it?
Third was, why do they do it?
Because it was, in a way, an
unbelievable experience for me
to find out that somebody can
baptize another person
after the person died.
I am a Jew.
I was born as a Jew.
6,000,000 my brothers and my
friends and my family were
killed because they were Jews,
so I wanted them to be Jews.
I wanted them to remain Jews and
I didn't want anybody later on
100, 200 years from now to
tell me that my parents were not
Jewish because somewhere in the
archives in the Mormon church
there is my father's name, my
mother's name is listed as a
gentile, as a Mormon person.
This was, to me, painful.
We haven't wanted as a church
to just, you know, assert our
first amendment right and say,
"Well, this is what we believe.
This is our doctrine and
the devil may care. "
That isn't our intent at all.
That is why in 1995 we entered
into an arrangement with them.
At that time we, in a sense,
took out of our records those
Holocaust survivors, or
Holocaust victims, for whom we
had performed temple work and we
have been actually very diligent
since in not sending to our
temples Jewish names unless they
were sent by Jewish members of
our church who have sent in the
names of their own relatives.
NARRATOR: Despite the
controversy, the Mormon effort
to baptize the world's dead
continues, and they have
mobilized an army of volunteers
around the world to root out the
names of people they believe
might still be saved.
There is literally a mountain
of names in one extraordinary
structure outside of Salt Lake
City, and indestructible.
I am told that even a direct hit
by an atomic bomb, something
like an asteroid collision,
would have to occur
to wipe it out.
NARRATOR: Of the seven
billion names of the dead which
have ever been recorded,
approximately two billion have
already been collected by Mormon
volunteers and stored here.
And today Mormons have baptized
well over 100 million
deceased people.
Genealogy is a core
ritual in Mormonism.
As the living Mormon, you are
the center of this
great exchange.
You are a part of creating
this vast network, this
interconnection, of people
who've lived in the
past and in the future.
And so genealogy is something
Mormons feel very connected to.
NARRATOR: The Family History
Library in Salt Lake City is one
of approximately 2,000 L.D.S.
genealogical research
libraries across the world.
Their complete records are now
online and open to non-Mormons
and Mormons alike.
The archives are clearly tapping
into an almost universal
hunger for family history.
I wasn't really
interested in genealogy.
I didn't even like my family.
I had been hurt and abused
verbally and just, you know, and
to realize that my salvation was
dependent upon their salvation
and then to do genealogy, going
and discover that my grandmother
was raised on Oakley plantation,
I had never come to grips with
the fact that my folks not too
far removed was the slaves
that we talk about.
And, so, now it's like I can go
forward four generations and go
backwards three, and when I
started in the church I didn't
even know who Betty Stevenson
was.
And it's hard to explain the
spiritual connection that I
now feel to my ancestors.
NARRATOR: Those spiritual
connections to the eternal
family are at the core
of the Mormon religion.
And that belief system was at
the center of this believer's
greatest spiritual crisis.
He and his wife risked
everything for their faith.
We had seven children and most
people would think that they
were complete or well
beyond complete.
We struggle with that.
Marla struggled with it a lot
because she had this sense
of someone missing.
There is another child there,
another spirit, waiting to
come to earth, to mortality.
There's another child there
that is part of our family.
We prayed about it.
We spent time on our knees
together asking God, is this
something that God wants to do
and is there really another
spirit child there for us?
I believe that we lived before
we came to the earth, that we
lived before this life as spirit
children of our heavenly father,
and somehow, in that pre-
existence, our family that we
have developed here, we were
connected there as well and
we're not yet complete.
And so we decided to have
another child and it wasn't an
easy decision.
My wife was 42, and just being
42 and having had seven children
already makes you a high risk
case and having gestational
diabetes adds to that, and so
there were a number of risks,
and so it wasn't a decision
that we made lightly.
And the baby was
born, a little boy.
Named him David William.
It was extremely
difficult for her.
She really had to give
everything that she had to bring
that baby into the world.
Following the delivery, she had
a blood clot, which had gone
to her heart and lungs.
And they told me there was
nothing they could do, that
there was no brain function
that she had passed away.
I was totally
unprepared for that.
I'm hurt.
I'm wounded.
Someone has just torn at my
I still miss her horribly.
If I knew that I guess if I
have to be honest, knowing what
I know now, would I do it again?
There are days when I say no, I
wouldn't I wouldn't do it
again because it came
with a terrible price.
But I believe firmly that I will
see my wife again, and that we
will be together again, that our
family will be reunited again,
and that this is not the end.
And we'll hold each other and
we'll cry and we'll laugh and it
will be very much like it
is now, except better.
I don't know how others who
stand on the brink of eternity
and face death, how they could
deal with that without an
overwhelming despairing
sense of loss.
It brings me tremendous comfort
to know that I have made
covenants and promises in the
temple with my wife
that continue on.
of vehicle through which we
conquer mortality.
We go to the temple and our
relationships with other human
beings are rendered permanent
and eternal in defiance of
There are scriptures in the Book
of Mormon, there are quotations
from Brigham Young, that
emphasize not a single atom or
particle of our bodies will be
lost, but everything will be
reconstituted as fully as it
It's almost a kind of
celebration of the totality of
triumph over death; not only
will something remain, but
everything will be
reconstituted as it was.
What is the
essence of religion?
Sigmund Freud said it was the
longing for the father.
Others have called it the desire
for the mother or
for transcendence.
I fear deeply that all these are
idealizations and I offer the
melancholy suggestion that they
would all vanish from us if we
did not know that we must die.
Religion rises inevitably from
our apprehension of our own
death to give meaning to
meaninglessness is the endless
quest of all religion.
When death becomes the center of
our consciousness, then
religion authentically begins.
Of all religions that I know,
the one that most vehemently and
persuasively defies and denies
the reality of death, is the
original Mormonism of the
prophet, seer and revelator,
NARRATOR: For more than 175
years, the Mormon story has
played out across the American
landscape and, increasingly,
on the world stage.
It is the story of a people
fired by a bold religious faith
who have struggled to find a way
to stand with America and still
preserve the power of the very
distinct beliefs that can
leave them standing apart.
Mormonism is
extraordinarily successful.
Mormons have huge numbers of
worldwide converts as well as
millions of Americans who
follow the movement.
And yet there's still an odd
limiting factor about modern
Mormonism, that somehow it's a
religion that isn't respected.
The peculiarity of Mormonism is
that on the one hand it's a
profoundly historical religion
for which evidence is sorely
lacking, and yet that has never
prevented Mormons from believing
deeply in their religion.
They believe in that history as
a matter of faith and yet at the
same time they practice a modern
faith that dedicates itself
to the reconstruction of the
individual, the reconstruction
of the family, the
reconstruction of the community,
and the reconstruction of
society.
So, in the end, Mormonism is
part of the modern religious
and political landscape.
And yet it's separate,
it's apart.
All religious systems have to
move beyond their own creation?
Can it survive the present?
Can it move into the future?
Captioned by
wgbh. org