Mormons, The

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of America´s fastest-growing religions and, relative to its size, one of the richest. Church membership, now at 12 million and growing, sweeps the globe. But from the moment of its founding in 1830, the church has been controversial. Within a month it had forty converts, and almost as many enemies. In the early years, Mormons were hated, ridiculed, persecuted and feared. Yet in the past several decades the Mormon Church has transformed itself formed itself from a fringe sect into a thriving religion that embraces mainstream American values; its members include prominent and powerful politicians, university presidents, and corporate leaders. Mormons have always had a peculiar hold on the American imagination, but few know who the Mormons actually are, or who they claim to be, and their story is one of the great neglected American narratives.

In this revealing, provocative American Experience / Frontline co-production, producer Helen Whitney (Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero) digs deep into the Mormon past to understand the church today. With unprecedented access to church archives and the cooperation of church leadership, Whitney paints a more complex portrait of Mormonism than ever before, a portrait that neither vilifies the church nor extols it, and in doing so she reveals that the Mormon story is an American story and that Mormonism is perhaps the most American of religions.