2020.12.16 最具美国特色的宗教 摩门教

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THE MOST AMERICAN RELIGION
Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal—only to find their country in an identity crisis. What will the third century of the faith look like?

By McKay Coppins
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 ISSUE
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Photographs by Michael Friberg

Image above: The Oquirrh Mountain Temple sits about 20 miles south of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where the Church is based.

This article was published online on December 16, 2020.

To meet with the prophet during a plague, certain protocols must be followed. It’s a gray spring morning in Salt Lake City, and downtown Temple Square is deserted, giving the place an eerie, postapocalyptic quality. The doors of the silver-domed tabernacle are locked; the towering neo-Gothic temple is dark. To enter the Church Administration Building, I meet a handler who escorts me through an underground parking garage; past a security checkpoint, where my temperature is taken; up a restricted elevator; and then, finally, into a large, mahogany-walled conference room. After a few minutes, a side door opens and a trim 95-year-old man in a suit greets me with a hygienic elbow bump.



“We always start our meetings with a word of prayer,” says Russell M. Nelson, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “So, if we may?”

The official occasion for our interview is the Mormon bicentennial: Two centuries ago, a purported opening of the heavens in upstate New York launched one of the most peculiar and enduring religious movements in American history, and Nelson designated 2020 as a year of commemoration. My notebook is full of reporterly questions to ask about the Church’s future, the painful tensions within the faith over race and LGBTQ issues, and the unprecedented series of changes Nelson has implemented in his brief time as prophet. But as we bow our heads, I realize that I’m also here for something else.

For the past two months, I’ve been cooped up in quarantine, watching the world melt down in biblical fashion. All the death and pestilence and doomscrolling on Twitter has left me unmoored—and from somewhere deep in my spiritual subconscious, a Mormon children’s song I grew up singing has resurfaced: Follow the prophet, don’t go astray … Follow the prophet, he knows the way.


As president of the Church, Nelson is considered by Mormons to be God’s messenger on Earth, a modern heir to Moses and Abraham. Sitting across from him now, some part of me expects a grand and ancient gesture in keeping with this calamitous moment—a raised staff, an end-times prophecy, a summoning of heavenly powers. Instead, he smiles and asks me about my kids.

Over the next hour, Nelson preaches a gospel of silver linings. When I ask him about the lockdowns that have forced churches to close, he muses that homes can be “sanctuaries of faith.” When I mention the physical ravages of the virus, he marvels at the human body’s miraculous “defense mechanisms.” Reciting a passage from the Book of Mormon—“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy”—he offers a reminder that feels like a call to repentance: “There can be joy in the saddest of times.”

There is something classically Mormon about this aversion to wallowing. When adversity strikes, my people tend to respond with can-do aphorisms and rolled-up sleeves; with an unrelenting helpfulness that can border on caricature. (Early in the pandemic, when Nelson ordered the Church to suspend all worship services worldwide and start donating its stockpiles of food and medical equipment, he chalked it up to a desire to be “good citizens and good neighbors.”) This onslaught of earnest optimism can be grating to some. “There’s always a Mormon around when you don’t want one,” David Foster Wallace once wrote, “trying your patience with unsolicited kindness.” But it has served the faith well.



Russell M. Nelson, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was a cardiothoracic surgeon before becoming the prophet. He is considered by Mormons to be God’s messenger on Earth. (Michael Friberg)
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By pretty much every measure, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has defied the expectations of its early observers. In the years immediately after its founding—as Mormons were being chased across the country by state-sanctioned mobs—skeptics predicted that the movement would collapse before the century was out. Instead, it became one of the fastest-growing religions in the world. The Church now averages nearly 700 converts a day; it has temples in 66 countries and financial reserves rumored to exceed $100 billion.

In the past few years, Mormons have become a subject of fascination for their surprising resistance to Trumpism. Unlike most of the religious right, they were decidedly unenthusiastic about Donald Trump. From 2008 to 2016, the Republican vote share declined among Latter-day Saints more than any other religious group in the country. And though Trump won back some of those defectors in 2020, he continued to underperform. Joe Biden did better in Utah than any Democrat since 1964, and Mormon women likely played a role in turning Arizona blue.

Scholars have offered an array of theories to explain this phenomenon: that Mormon communities are models of connectedness and trust, that the Church’s unusual structure promotes consensus-building over culture war, that the faith’s early persecution has made its adherents less receptive to nativist appeals.

Nelson attributes these qualities to the power of the Church’s teachings. “I don’t think you can separate the good things we do from the doctrine,” he tells me. “It’s not what we do; it’s why we do it.”

As a lifelong member of the faith, I can’t help but see a more complicated story. Mormons didn’t become avatars of a Norman Rockwellian ideal by accident. We taught ourselves to play the part over a centuries-long audition for full acceptance into American life. That we finally succeeded just as the country was on the brink of an identity crisis is one of the core ironies of modern Mormonism.


The story of the Latter-day Saints begins with a confused teenage boy. It was the spring of 1820, and the town of Palmyra, New York, was in the throes of the Second Great Awakening. Fevered Christian revivals were everywhere. New sects were sprouting, and preachers competed fiercely for converts. To Joseph Smith, a 14-year-old farm boy with little education, the frenzy was at once exhilarating and disorienting. As he would later write in his personal history, he became consumed with the question of which church to join—sampling worship services, consulting scripturians, and growing ever more concerned about the state of his soul.

The turning point in his spiritual search came when he was reading the Book of James: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God … and it shall be given him.” Determined to test the thesis, he walked into a grove of trees near his family’s farm and knelt down to ask for guidance. What happened next, according to Smith, would be the catalyst for a new world religion—the literal restoration of Christ’s Church to the Earth. In his own words:

I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me … When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!
I don’t remember the first time I heard this story, but I do know where I was when I committed it to memory. As a Mormon teenager in suburban Massachusetts, I woke up every morning at 5:30 to attend a “seminary” class held in the bishop’s basement. This was no mark of special devotion on my part; all the Mormon kids were expected to be there, and so all the Mormon kids were, Mormonism being a religion that prizes showing up. Most mornings, we struggled to stay awake while our teacher read from the Bible, but on Fridays, we ate cinnamon rolls and played scripture-memorization games. Our teacher would hold up cue cards with verses scrawled across them, while we repeated the words over and over until we could recite them without looking. Smith’s canonized account of “the first vision” was the longest of the passages, but it was also the most important.


The power of his story was in its implausibility. No reasonable person would accept such an outlandish claim on its face—to believe it required faith, a willingness to follow young Joseph’s example. This was how our teacher framed the story, as much object lesson as historical event. Don’t believe in this because your parents do, we were told. Go ask God for yourself.

But the part of Smith’s account that always resonated most with me was what happened after the vision. Word got around Palmyra, and the community turned on him. His claims were declared to be “of the devil.” His family was ostracized. Facing pressure to recant, Smith refused. “I had seen a vision,” he wrote later. “I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it.” In seminary, this was treated as a coda to the main event—mentioned, if at all, as an example of standing up for unpopular beliefs. But to a 21st-century teenager who was already insecure enough about his oversized head and undersized muscles without bringing a weird religion into the mix, it sounded a lot like a cautionary tale.

At school, I laughed along when the boys in the cafeteria asked how many moms I had.
My own testimony didn’t come in a blaze of revelation, but in living the faith day to day. The church was where I felt most like myself. The green hymnals we sang from on Sundays, the sacramental Wonder Bread we passed down the pews, the corny youth dances in the sweaty church gym where we’d jump around to DJ Kool before closing with a prayer—these were more than just quirks of my parents’ religion. They were emblems of an identity, one I could never fully reveal to my non-Mormon friends.


The author, about to be baptized by his father (Courtesy of McKay Coppins)
At school, I laughed along when the boys in the cafeteria asked me how many moms I had, and I nodded thoughtfully when the girl I liked speculated, after the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, that she must have been an easy mark for brainwashing because she was Mormon. When the time came to apply for college, I feigned an interest in Arizona State University just so my guidance counselor wouldn’t think I was interested only in Mormon colleges.

I aimed to cultivate a reputation that sanded off the edges of my orthodoxy—he’s Mormon, but he’s cool. I didn’t drink, but I was happy to be the designated driver. I didn’t smoke pot, but I would never narc.

All this posturing could be undignified, but I took pride in my ability to walk a certain line. Unlike my co-religionists in Utah—where kids went to seminary in the middle of the day, at Church-owned buildings next to the high schools—I was one of only a few Mormon kids in my town. If my classmates liked me, I reasoned, it was a win for Mormons everywhere. In the pantheon of minority-religion neuroses, this was not wholly original stuff. But I wouldn’t realize until later just how deeply rooted the Mormon craving for approval was.

The church that Joseph Smith set about building was almost achingly American. He held up the Constitution as a quasi-canonical work of providence. He published a new sacred text, the Book of Mormon, that centered on Jesus visiting the ancient Americas. He even taught that God had brought about the American Revolution so that his Church could be restored in a free country—thus linking Mormonism’s success to that of the American experiment. And yet, almost as soon as Smith started attracting converts, they were derided as un-American.

A charismatic figure with gleaming blue eyes and a low voice, Smith taught a profoundly optimistic theology that stood in contrast with the harsher doctrines of his day. But what made him most controversial was his commitment to establishing a “new Jerusalem” in the United States. The utopia he envisioned would be godly, ordered, and radically communitarian. As the Mormons searched for a place to build their Zion, they were met with an escalating campaign of persecution and mob violence.

In New York, Smith was arrested at the urging of local clergy. In Ohio, he was tarred and feathered. By the time the Mormons settled in Missouri, they were viewed as enemies of the state. Their economic and political power made local officials nervous, as did their abolitionist streak. (Though the Church would later adopt exclusionary policies toward Black people, many of its early members disapproved of slavery.) Residents complained that the growing Mormon community had “opened an asylum for rogues, vagabonds, and free blacks” in their backyard. Mormon leaders responded with their own incendiary rhetoric.

The tension came to a head on October 27, 1838, when the governor issued an “extermination order” demanding that all Mormons be driven out of the state or killed. A few days later, a militia descended on a Mormon settlement about 70 miles northeast of Kansas City and opened fire. Witnesses would later describe a horrific scene—women raped, bodies mutilated, children shot at close range. By the end of the massacre, 17 Mormons had been killed, and homes had been looted and burned to the ground.

The violence was justified, in part, by the portrayal of Mormons as a degenerate, nonwhite race—an idea that would spread throughout the 19th century. Medical journals defined Mormons by their “yellow, sunken, cadaverous visage” and “thick, protuberant lips.” Cartoons depicted them as “foreign reptiles” sprawled out over the U.S. Capitol. At one point, the secretary of state tried to institute a ban on Mormon immigration from Europe.

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For a time, Smith and his followers retained an almost quaint trust in America’s democratic system. Even as they were forced to flee Missouri and resettle in Nauvoo, Illinois, they were convinced that the Constitution guaranteed their freedom of religion—and that if they could simply alert the nation’s leaders to what was happening, all would be made right. In 1839, Smith led a delegation to Washington, D.C., to seek redress for the Mormons’ violent expulsion from Missouri. In a meeting with President Martin Van Buren, the prophet presented a vividly detailed list of offenses committed against his people. But the president, fearing a backlash from Missourians, dismissed his appeals. “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you,” Van Buren said, according to Smith’s account.

The experience radicalized Smith. Stung by the government’s mistreatment—and under siege by a growing anti-Mormon cohort—he took on a more theocratic bent. In Nauvoo, he served simultaneously as prophet, mayor, and lieutenant general of a well-armed Mormon militia. He introduced the ancient biblical practice of polygamy to his followers, eventually marrying at least 32 women himself. He even convened a group of men to draft a replacement for the U.S. Constitution, which they believed had failed them.

Still, the Mormons’ innate Americanness made them self-conscious theocrats—constantly establishing new councils and quorums designed to disperse power and hold one another accountable. Though the Church was hierarchical, it was infused with checks and balances. Congregations were led by a rotating cast of volunteers. Decisions were presented to congregants for ratification. “All things shall be done by common consent in the Church,” read one Mormon scripture.

In 1844, Smith launched a quixotic presidential bid to draw attention to the Mormon plight. He campaigned on abolishing prisons and selling public lands to purchase the freedom of every enslaved person in the country. America, he wrote, should be a place where a person “of whatever color, clime or tongue, could rejoice when he put his foot on the sacred soil of freedom.”


The Mormon pioneers crossed through Emigration Canyon before arriving in what would become Salt Lake City in July 1847. (Michael Friberg)
The campaign wouldn’t last long. That June, Smith was arrested for ordering the destruction of an anti-Mormon printing press. While he awaited trial, a mob attacked the jail where he was being held with his brother Hyrum and murdered them both. Among his followers, the prophet’s death gave way to infighting, defections, and yet another flight from their homes—this time into the western desert beyond America’s borders.

Yet even as the Mormons fled their country, they weren’t ready to disown it. In “The Angel of the Prairies,” a short story written by a Church leader at the time, the Latter-day Saints were not victims or enemies of the American experiment, but its purest embodiment: “When they had no longer a country or government to fight for, they retired to the plains of the West, carrying with them the pure spirit of freedom.”

Like Noah’s ark before the flood, Mormonism was, to its adherents, a vehicle for the preservation of America’s highest ideals. One day, they believed, their former countrymen would turn to them for deliverance.

It’s hard to overstate just how deeply this history is woven into modern Mormon life. As little kids, we sing songs about pioneer children who “walked and walked and walked and walked”; when we get older, we read about pioneers burying their children in shallow graves on the brutal westward trek. The stories I grew up hearing in church—about Missouri and martyrdom and Martin Van Buren—were often sanitized for devotional effect. But the scars they’ve left on the Mormon psyche are real.

At its worst, this reverence for our forebears can fuel an unhealthy persecution complex—or even be used to dismiss groups that have faced much worse oppression, much more recently. In June, a Facebook page affiliated with Brigham Young University–Idaho shared a post that compared early Mormon persecution to slavery and encouraged people of color to “RISE ABOVE” racism. (The post was deleted after student outcry.) But the stories of pioneer suffering have also instilled in many American Mormons a sensitivity to the experiences of immigrants and refugees.

According to one survey, Latter-day Saints are more than twice as likely as white evangelicals to say they welcome increased immigration to the United States. When Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslim immigration, the Church, hearing an eerie historical echo, issued a blistering condemnation. Later, when Trump signed an executive order allowing cities and states to veto refugee resettlement, Utah was the first red state in the country to request more refugees.

Muhammed Shoayb Mehtar, who served as an imam in Utah for more than a decade, told me that when new people would arrive at his mosque—many of them refugees fleeing desperate circumstances—locals would show up, offering food, furniture, and jobs. In some states, Muslims worried about harassment and hate crimes. But in Utah, Mehtar said, “folks don’t have this toxic view of Oh, they are foreigners; they want to take over. They don’t have that mentality within them.”

Like most teenage Mormons who sign up for missionary service, I wanted an adventure, stories to tell. The Church sent me to Texas.
“I think it goes back to the beginning,” says Elder M. Russell Ballard, a senior apostle in the Church. “We were really refugees.” As a direct descendant of Hyrum Smith, Ballard talks about the Church’s early history with the raw emotion of a family tragedy. “We never forget,” he told me, “that Joseph and Hyrum were gunned down in cold blood.”

Ballard told me about a trip he’d made to Greece on behalf of the Church. During a visit to a refugee camp, he witnessed a Syrian family get tossed from a dinghy into the Aegean Sea and crawl onto the beach, shivering, soaked, and hungry. As volunteers handed them towels and food, one of the children, a 9-year-old boy named Amer, tore into a package of Oreos and offered the first one to Ballard. Today, the cookie sits encased in a small cube on the apostle’s desk—a reminder, he says, to reach out to “those people running for their lives” all over the world.

When i turned 19, I put in my papers to become a missionary, and prayed to be sent abroad. I pictured myself building chapels on some far-flung island, or teaching the gospel in a mountainside hut. Like most of the teenage Mormons who sign up for missionary service, I wanted an adventure, stories to tell. The Church sent me to Texas.

I arrived in August amid a record-breaking heat wave that seemed designed to test my faith. Huffing up hills on an eight-speed bike—necktie whipping in the wind, white shirt soaked with sweat—I wondered whether the other elders muttered bad words under their breath, too. But I came to appreciate the little miseries of missionary life. The grueling schedule, the rigid curfew, the monastic abstention from movies and TV—each small sacrifice had its sanctifying effect. Religion without difficulty had always seemed pointless to me. The divine magic was in what faith demanded.

I quickly realized that my knack for playing the likable Mormon would come in handy in the Bible Belt. Likability, it turned out, was a big part of the job. With our black name tags and IBM-salesman uniforms, missionaries were walking billboards for the Church. We were trained to take rejection in stride, to cling to our good-natured wholesomeness no matter what. When a Baptist minister condemned you to hell, you smiled politely and complimented his landscaping. When somebody hurled a Big Gulp at you from a passing car, you calmly collected the cup and looked for the nearest trash can. Once, in the seedy apartment complex where I lived with another missionary, we made the mistake of leaving our laundry unattended, and returned to find it drenched in urine. Not wanting to make a scene, we shrugged and pumped more quarters into the washing machine.

We spent most of our time teaching prospective converts about the faith or offering English classes for local Spanish speakers. On slow days, we’d go door-to-door passing out pamphlets and copies of the Book of Mormon. This was not a particularly efficient method for finding future Mormons, but we looked for small victories. I skimmed an old copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, and practiced jokes that I could deploy on strangers’ doorsteps. We took consolation in these pleasant, fruitless interactions, telling ourselves that we’d improved the Mormon brand, however slightly. “Planting seeds,” we called it.

In 2007, I was serving in the heavily Latino Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch when voters approved a city ordinance designed to punish undocumented immigrants. As missionaries, we lived fairly disconnected lives—no newspapers, no social media—so I didn’t know at the time that the crackdown had become a national scandal. But I remember the snippets of hushed conversation—la migra, miedo—that I caught at the laundromat. I remember, the Sunday after the referendum passed, the women huddled, crying, in the church foyer; the chapel half-full for the Spanish service because so many members feared crossing town lines. And I remember the branch president, a young Guatemalan dad with glasses, abandoning his usual soft-spoken style to reassure his shaken congregation. “You are children of God,” he thundered. “Never, never let them make you feel like less.” So little about their experience was truly accessible to me, but I felt a flicker of solidarity in that moment that I hoped would never be stamped out.

On a sticky summer evening in Brooklyn, the Bushwick Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints threw a karaoke night. The congregation was small but eclectic, and as members took turns at the microphone, the wonderful weirdness of the Mormon community was on full display. A missionary from Hong Kong crooned a pop ballad in Cantonese. A petite goth fashion designer headbanged to Metallica. While young dads scurried around filling plastic cups with Sprite and replenishing the pretzel bowl, older members from Guyana and the Philippines sang their favorite songs.

Mormonism has a reputation for conformity—starched white shirts and white picket fences and broods of well-behaved white children. But in much of the world, Mormon congregations are characterized by the way they force together motley groups of people from different backgrounds. Unlike most American Christians, Latter-day Saints don’t get to choose whom they go to church with. They’re assigned to congregations based on geographic boundaries that are often gerrymandered to promote socioeconomic diversity. And because the Church is run almost entirely by volunteers, and every member is given a job, they have to work together closely. Patrick Mason, a historian of religion, calls this “the sociological genius of Mormonism”—in a society of echo chambers and bowling alone, he says, the Church has doubled down on an old-fashioned communitarianism.


The author during his two-year missionary service in Texas and with his wife and children at their church in Brooklyn (Courtesy of McKay Coppins)
In some ways, the Bushwick congregation, where my wife and I landed after moving to New York, was unusual. It was more diverse than a typical Mormon ward, and more bootstrapped. We met in a retrofitted space leased from a Jewish community center across the street from a public-housing complex. When our Sunday-morning services were interrupted by a subwoofered SUV parked outside, our branch president—a bearded filmmaker with a conciliatory approach to neighborhood relations—would slip outside and offer the driver a twenty to take the music down the block.

We took turns teaching Sunday school and delivering sermons. When one of us lost a job, somebody would stop by with a carload of groceries. When one of us had to change apartments, we’d all show up with cardboard boxes and doughnuts.

At work, I was surrounded by 20-something journalists with similarly curated Twitter feeds. But at church, my most meaningful relationships were with people who resided well outside my bubble—middle-aged mail carriers and Caribbean immigrants; white-haired retirees and single parents navigating the city’s morass of social services. Our little community wasn’t perfect. We argued and irritated one another, and more than once a heated Sunday-school debate ended in shouting and hurt feelings. But the dynamic was better than utopian—it was hard. Over time, we learned to live a portion of our lives together, to “mourn with those that mourn,” as the Book of Mormon teaches, “and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.”

Spencer Cox, who was elected governor of Utah in November, told me that his state has been shaped by this ethic. When the Mormon pioneers first arrived in the territory in 1847, they built their homes in village centers and established their crops on the outskirts of town so that farmers weren’t isolated from one another. “This was not a place that people were really excited to settle—it was kind of a wasteland,” Cox said. “To scratch it out here, to make it work, you really had to rely on each other.”

Though Utah is very conservative, its residents generally don’t romanticize rugged individualism or Darwinian hyper-capitalism. It has the lowest income inequality in the country, and ranks near the top for upward mobility. The relative lack of racial diversity no doubt helps skew these metrics—structural racism doesn’t take the same toll in a state that is 78 percent white. But economists say the tightly networked faith communities have provided a crucial extra layer to the social safety net.

To Mormons, this mindset has always been a matter of theology. Joseph Smith taught that salvation was achieved through community, not individual action alone. And his expansive view of the afterlife—as a kind of sprawling, joyous web of interconnected family reunions—prioritized human relationships. “I would rather go to hell with my friends,” he was said to have preached, “than to heaven alone.”

In 1863, a writer for The Atlantic named Fitz-Hugh Ludlow traveled to the Mormon settlement in Utah, and was surprised by what he found. In his 11,000-word dispatch, Ludlow presented the strange desert civilization of exiles as a study in contradictions. The Mormons were clearly theocratic, yet he found no evidence of corruption. Their open embrace of polygamy was scandalous, yet somehow appeared more practical than lascivious. Their beliefs were preposterous, but sincere.

The Mormons Ludlow encountered seemed to believe they had something to offer their former nation, now riven by the Civil War. When he talked to Brigham Young—Joseph Smith’s bearded, burly successor—the prophet predicted doom for the Union, and a flood of immigrants to Utah. After the war, Americans would be drawn to Mormons’ comity and the genius of polygamy, whose appeal would be obvious after so many men died fighting. “When your country has become a desolation,” Young told the writer, “we, the saints whom you cast out, will forget all your sins against us, and give you a home.”

From the April 1864 issue: Fitz-Hugh Ludlow among the Mormons

Ludlow played the quote for laughs—a sign of the absurd grandiosity of a people who comprised, in his estimation, “the least cultivated grades of human society, a heterogeneous peasant-horde.” He predicted that the Church would “fall to pieces at once, irreparably,” as soon as Young died. But until then, the Mormon threat was not to be taken lightly. Mormonism was, he wrote, “disloyal to the core”—just like the Confederates: “The Mormon enemies of our American Idea should be plainly understood as far more dangerous antagonists than hypocrites or idiots can ever hope to be.”

Ludlow’s story, published in the April 1864 issue, was emblematic of how the rest of the country viewed Utah. Just a few years earlier, President James Buchanan had sent U.S. forces to the territory to put down a rumored Mormon rebellion. The Republican Party, in its founding platform, placed polygamy alongside slavery as one of the “twin relics of barbarism.”

Yet Mormons still longed for full initiation into American life. By the end of the 19th century, they had embarked in earnest on a quest for assimilation, defining themselves in opposition to their damaging caricatures. If America thought they were non-Christian heretics, they would commission an 11-foot statue of Jesus and place it in Temple Square. If America thought they were disloyal, they would flood the ranks of the military and intelligence agencies. (At one point, Brigham Young University was the third-largest source of Army officers in the country.) To shake the stench of polygamy—which the Church renounced in 1890—they became models of the large nuclear family.

By the middle of the 20th century, Mormon prophets were appearing on the cover of Time and Hollywood had made a hagiographic movie about Young. Mormons were Boy Scouts and business leaders, homemakers and family men. They developed a reputation for volunteerism, priding themselves on being the first on the ground after a natural disaster. Some of these transformations were more conscious than others, says Matthew Bowman, a historian at Claremont Graduate University. “But desire for respectability,” he adds, “is very much at the heart of modern Mormonism.”

Read: When Mormons aspired to be a ‘white and delightsome’ people

The assimilation efforts had a darker side as well. Having been cast as a nefarious race, Mormon leaders became determined to reclaim their whiteness. Beginning with Young, and continuing until 1978, Black men were barred from holding the priesthood—a privilege extended to virtually every Mormon male—and Black families were unable to participate in important temple ordinances. Church leaders preached that black skin was a “curse” from God and discouraged marriage between Black and white people. Rather than opposing America’s racial hierarchy, they attempted to secure their place at the top of it, says the scholar Janan Graham-Russell: “There was almost this ultra-pure whiteness that Mormons were striving for.” The Church has been haunted by the consequences ever since.


Churches in the Salt Lake City area, which is home to roughly half a million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Michael Friberg)
In january 2012, I got a job covering Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. America was in the midst of what headline writers were calling “The Mormon Moment,” as Romney’s candidacy had occasioned a surge of interest in the country’s most enduring homegrown religion. It should have been a major milestone in the faith’s American journey. But something was amiss in the Mormon assimilation project.

Romney was a clear product of his Church. Born into the faith, he’d served as a missionary in France, graduated from BYU, and raised five strapping sons with his high-school sweetheart. When his political star first began to rise, Romney tried to deflect questions about his religion by arguing that Mormonism was “as American as motherhood and apple pie.” When he was asked, in an early interview with this magazine, “How Mormon are you?,” he responded: “My faith believes in family, believes in Jesus Christ. It believes in serving one’s neighbor and one’s community. It believes in military service. It believes in patriotism; it actually believes this nation had an inspired founding. It is in some respects a quintessentially American faith.”

Many Americans weren’t so sure. In the Republican primaries, Romney encountered skepticism from conservative evangelicals such as the megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who declared Mormonism a “cult” from the “pit of hell.” On MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell sneered that Romney’s Church had been founded by a guy who “got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it.” In Slate, Jacob Weisberg argued that no one who believed in “such a transparent and recent fraud” as Mormonism could be trusted with the presidency.

Meanwhile, Romney’s all-American persona—cultivated by generations of assimilators—proved to be a political liability. With his Mormon-dad diction (all those hecks and holy cows and goshdarnits) and his penchant for reciting “America the Beautiful” on the stump (“I love the patriotic hymns”), Romney seemed like a relic—a “latter-day Beaver Cleaver,” as one Boston Globe writer put it. To those familiar with Mormon history, the irony was notable. “It is now because Mormons occupy what used to be the center that they fall into contempt,” wrote Terryl Givens, a Latter-day Saint scholar.

As the only Mormon reporter in the Romney-campaign press corps, I was in a unique position to watch him squirm as he confronted these issues—and I often made it harder for him. I wrote about the candidate’s faith constantly, much to the consternation of his consultants, who had made a strategic decision to ignore the religion issue altogether. Often when I asked the campaign for comment on a Mormon-related story, I was told, curtly, to “ask the Church.” (The Church’s spokespeople—determined to project political neutrality—usually directed me back to the campaign.)

When I went on TV to discuss the race, I’d talk about how Romney should open up about his religious life. But as the election wore on, I began to understand his reluctance. I didn’t buy the idea that his religion should be off-limits. But I also couldn’t believe some of the things my otherwise enlightened peers were willing to say about a faith they knew so little about.

I heard reporters crack jokes about “Mormon underwear,” and I fielded snickering questions on TV about obscure teachings from early prophets. One day, the CEO of the company where I worked gathered the staff for a presentation in which he explained internet virality by comparing Judaism with Mormonism. He’d given versions of the talk before. The idea was that Jews might have the “higher quality” religion, but Mormonism was growing faster because its members—slick marketers that we were—knew how to “spread it.” To make his point, he flipped through a series of slides featuring various famous Jews before comically declaring that the most famous Mormon was Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of the Killers. Once again, I felt that familiar tug—to smile politely, to laugh agreeably. I faked a phone call so that no one would see my face turn red.

I often wondered if Romney shared my ambivalence about “The Mormon Moment”—if he ever struggled with the ways in which his candidacy shaped perceptions of his Church. When I asked him about this recently, he pushed back on the premise. “I didn’t see my role as a political candidate to proselyte, or educate, even, about my religion,” he told me. “I wanted to make it clear that I was not a spokesman for my Church.” Fair enough. But he must have also known that was hopeless.

As Romney was trying to become the first Mormon president, The Book of Mormon musical was selling out on Broadway. Co-written by South Park’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the show skewered Mormonism with gleeful profanity and depicted its adherents as simpletons. My initial reaction, after listening to the soundtrack, was exasperation that this was how affluent theatergoers were being introduced to my faith. But I also felt compelled to be a good sport—and I wasn’t alone. When Romney was asked about the show, he said he’d love to see it: “It’s a Tony-award winner, big phenomenon!” And the Church itself took out ads in the playbill that read, “You’ve seen the play. Now read the book.” (The show’s creators had apparently anticipated something like this: Stone would later recount that when friends asked if he was concerned about Mormons protesting, he said, “Trust us, they’re going to be cool.”)

Read: The ignorance of mocking Mormonism

I remember being delighted by the Church’s response. Such savvy PR! Such a good-natured gesture! See, everyone? We can take a joke! But then I met a theater critic in New York who had recently seen the musical. He marveled at how the show got away with being so ruthless toward a minority religion without any meaningful backlash. I tried to cast this as a testament to Mormon niceness. But the critic was unconvinced. “No,” he replied. “It’s because your people have absolutely no cultural cachet.”

Somehow, it wasn’t until that moment that I understood the source of all our inexhaustible niceness. It was a coping mechanism, born of a pulsing, sweaty desperation to be liked that I suddenly found humiliating.

What happens when a religious group discovers that it’s spent 200 years assimilating to an America that no longer exists? As their native country fractures and turns on itself, Mormons are being forced to grapple with questions about who they are and what they believe. And a loose but growing liberal coalition inside the Church is pushing for reform.

One major source of tension is race. Since lifting its ban on Black priesthood-holders in 1978, the Church has made fitful efforts to reckon with its history. In 2013, it formally disavowed its past racist teachings. In 2018, it announced a partnership with the NAACP, an organization that had once led a march through the streets of Salt Lake City to protest the Church’s discrimination. And in the spring of 2020, President Nelson responded to the killing of George Floyd by decrying the “blatant disregard for human life” and calling on racists to “repent.” Amos Brown, the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, told me his experience with Church leaders has left him convinced that they are making a genuine effort: “They were transparent enough and humble enough to say, ‘Hey, the Church may have a checkered past, but we want to work with you now.’ ”


Read: Choosing to stay in the Mormon Church despite its racist legacy

Still, for many Black members, the progress has been painfully slow. When Tamu Smith saw Nelson’s statement—which also included a condemnation of looting and property destruction—she felt something familiar. “I see the effort, and I can appreciate the effort, but I still thirst,” she told me. “I want more.” Smith, who grew up in California and joined the Church when she was 11, now lives in Provo, Utah, where she often hears white Mormons try to rationalize the Church’s past racism. And while she’s seen hopeful signs of progress, she believes the Church can’t truly move forward without a show of complete institutional repentance: “As part of a living Church, I believe that an apology is necessary.”

So far, the Church has ignored such calls, a fact that Smith attributes to fear. Though the Church has never claimed prophetic infallibility, Smith says that for many orthodox believers, the faith is “either true or it’s not—the Church can’t make a mistake; the Church can’t back off; the Church can’t fix something that’s problematic.” Mormon leaders are afraid that if they apologize for the racism of past prophets, she speculates, they will undermine their own authority.


Tamu Smith, who converted to Mormonism at age 11, would like to see the Church do more to reckon with its history of racism. “As a part of a living Church, I believe that an apology is necessary,” she says. (Michael Friberg)
That institutional fear is a common theme in the Church’s response to a certain kind of activism. Though Mormons are encouraged to air their doubts and even voice dissent among themselves, Church leaders have sometimes lashed out when dissenters start attracting external allies. This dynamic is perhaps best exemplified by the ongoing debate about the role of women in the faith. In 2000, the Church excommunicated the feminist scholar Margaret Toscano, who had challenged Mormon teachings on male authority and the priesthood. What drew the Church’s censure wasn’t really the substance of her critiques, but her success in attracting media attention.


Kristine Haglund, a feminist and former editor of the liberal Mormon journal Dialogue, says it doesn’t help that intrafaith debates are so often misunderstood by outsiders. For example, coverage of Mormon gender issues often focuses on the fight for female ordination. But a 2011 Pew survey found that only 8 percent of women in the Church supported the idea. “One of the reasons I think Mormon feminist activism is so tricky is that the things that are important to women’s experience in the Church are … hard to explain and impossible to turn into a slogan,” Haglund told me. As an example, she cited calls for the Relief Society, which is led by women, to operate autonomously at the local ward level, instead of reporting to a male bishop. “ ‘Ordain women’ makes sense to outsiders,” she said, “but it doesn’t resonate within Mormonism the way it does with non-Mormon feminist allies.”

In recent years, perhaps no issue has provoked more debate within the Church than its treatment of LGBTQ people. For decades, the Church was an uneasy partner in the religious right’s crusade against same-sex marriage—united in a shared orthodoxy, but also keenly aware that many in the coalition privately derided Mormons as heretics and cultists. This effort culminated in 2008, when the Church helped wage a high-profile—and successful—campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California.

The short-lived political victory was followed by an intense backlash, and in recent years the Church has taken a more conciliatory approach. It launched a website dedicated to promoting “kindness and respect” for gay Mormons and endorsed a bill in Utah that expanded housing and employment protections for LGBTQ people. The Church affirmed that homosexuality was not a choice, and one former Church official, a psychologist, publicly apologized for his promotion of conversion therapy.

Still, the Church has not changed its prohibition on same-sex relationships and gender transitions. Nathan Kitchen, the head of the Mormon LGBTQ group Affirmation, calls this “the rainbow stained-glass ceiling” in the Church. A formerly devout Mormon who came out as gay in 2013 and divorced his wife, Kitchen says that he stopped going to church not because he stopped believing, but because he felt forced to choose between his sexuality and his faith. For those of us who have seen people we care about wrestle with the same agonizing choice, Kitchen’s story hits home. But although views among rank-and-file Mormons are evolving, the Church has codified its teachings on sexuality as doctrinal. That means they won’t change until the prophet says he’s received divine permission.

On a nightstand next to his bed, Russell Nelson keeps a notebook where he records his revelations. Before he entered Church leadership, he was a cardiothoracic surgeon who helped design the first heart-lung machine. During his early years as a doctor, he would often receive late-night phone calls from the hospital beckoning him to perform emergency operations. “I don’t get those phone calls anymore,” he told me. “But very frequently, I’m awakened with directions to follow.” Lately, the notebook has been filling up quickly.

“Judgment Day is coming for me pretty soon,” Nelson said. It was a strange sort of confession, and I didn’t know how to respond.
The Mormon claim to prophetic revelation is one of the faith’s most audacious doctrines, and also its most practical. A kind of theological survival mechanism, it allows the Church to adapt and reform as necessary while giving changes the weight of providence. When Nelson ascended to the presidency of the Church, in 2018, few members expected the then-93-year-old to be a transformational leader. But his tenure has been an eventful one.

Some of Nelson’s reforms have been small, inside-baseball measures, such as shortening the length of church services and expanding the approved wardrobe for missionaries. (Coming soon to a doorstep near you: elders without neckties.) He’s also launched a campaign against the term Mormon, arguing that the nickname deemphasizes the Church’s Christianity. (I chose to use the term in this story for clarity’s sake, and also because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints presented a multisyllabic writerly dilemma that my own God-given talents left me powerless to solve.)

Other reforms have been more significant. He reversed a policy that restricted baptisms for children of same-sex couples, adjusted temple ordinances in ways that emphasize women’s authority, and appointed the first-ever Asian American and Latin American apostles to the Church’s second-highest governing body.

But while some of these changes have been celebrated as signs of progress, Nelson has not budged on key issues. When I asked him what he’d say to LGBTQ people who feel that the Church doesn’t want them, he told me, “God loves all his children, just like you and I do,” and “There’s a place for all who choose to belong to his Church.” But when I asked whether the prohibition on same-sex relationships might someday be lifted, he demurred. “As apostles of the Lord, we cannot change God’s law,” he said. “We teach his laws. He gave them many thousands of years ago, and I don’t expect he’ll change them now.”

As we spoke, I noticed that Nelson kept glancing down at an open binder on the table. It’s easy to forget that he’s almost 100 when you’re with him. He’s remarkably spry for a nonagenarian, and prone to enthusiastic tangents about the human body’s “servoregulatory mechanisms.” But he also seems to understand the risk of saying the wrong thing. So when he talks about the LGBTQ community, he slows down and reads from his notes to make sure he’s hitting every letter in the acronym.

I thought, in that moment, about the difficulty of Nelson’s job—about trying to steer a 200-year-old institution in a world that refuses to sit still. Mormons like to say that while the Church’s policies and programs may change, the core of the gospel is eternal. But identifying that core can be hard. What do you keep, and what do you jettison? Which parts are of God, and which parts came from men? What’s worth preserving in the endangered Americanism that Latter-day Saints have come to embody, and what’s best left behind? These are the questions that Nelson faces as he tries to figure out what Mormonism should mean in the 21st century. And he knows he’s running out of time to answer them.


A temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints outside Salt Lake City. The Church averages nearly 700 converts a day and has temples in 66 countries. (Michael Friberg)
As we neared the end of our conversation, the prophet closed his binder and became quiet. “Judgment Day is coming for me pretty soon,” he said. It was a strange sort of confession—both startling and obvious, at least from an actuarial standpoint—and I didn’t know how to respond. After another pause, Nelson began to contemplate what he would have to answer for in his imminent “interview” with God. “I doubt if I’ll be judged by the number of operations I did, or the number of scientific publications I had,” he told me. “I doubt if I’ll even be judged by the growth of the Church during my presidency. I don’t think it’ll be a quantitative experience. I think he’ll want to know: What about your faith? What about virtue? What about your knowledge? Were you temperate? Were you kind to people? Did you have charity, humility?”


In the end, Nelson told me, “we exist to make life better for people.” As mission statements go, a Church could do worse. But Mormonism has always harbored grander ambitions.

There is a story about Joseph Smith that has circulated among Mormons for generations. In 1843, a year before his death, he was meeting with a group of Church elders in Nauvoo when he began to prophesy. The day would come, Smith predicted, when the United States would be on the brink of collapse—its Constitution “hanging by a thread”—only to be saved by a “white horse” from God’s true Church.

Historians and Church leaders have long dismissed the story as apocryphal, and today the white-horse prophecy exists primarily as a winking in-joke among Latter-day Saints whenever a member of the Church runs for office. But the notion has lingered for a reason. It appeals to the Mormons’ faith in America—and to their conviction that they have a role to play in its preservation.

That conviction is part of why conservative Mormons were among the GOP voters most resistant to Trump’s rise in 2016. He finished dead last in Utah’s Republican primary, and consistently underperformed in Mormon-heavy districts across the Mountain West. When the Access Hollywood tape leaked, the Church-owned Deseret News called on Trump to drop out. On Election Day, he received just over half of the Mormon vote, whereas other recent Republican nominees had gotten closer to 80 percent.


Trump did better in 2020, owing partly to the lack of a conservative third-party candidate like Evan McMullin. (Full postelection data weren’t available as of this writing.) But the Trump era has left many Mormons—once the most reliable Republican voters in the country—feeling politically homeless. They’ve begun to identify as moderate in growing numbers, and the polling analyst Nate Silver has predicted that Utah could soon become a swing state. In June, a survey found that just 22 percent of BYU students and recent alumni were planning to vote for Trump.

Robert P. Jones, the head of the Public Religion Research Institute, says this Mormon ambivalence is notable when compared with white evangelicals’ loyalty to Trump. “History and culture matter a lot,” Jones told me. “Partisanship today is such a strong gravitational pull. I think what we’re seeing with Mormons is that there’s something else pulling on them too.”

When I talk with my fellow Mormons about what our faith’s third century might look like, one common fear is that the Church, desperate for allies, will end up following the religious right into endless culture war. That would indeed be grim. But just as worrisome to me—and perhaps more likely—is the prospect of a fully diluted Mormonism.

Taken too far, the Latter-day Saint longing for mainstream approval could turn the Church into just another mainline sect—drained of vitality, devoid of tension, not making any real demands of its members. It’s not hard to imagine a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that is “respectable” in the way of the Rotary Club, because it’s bland, and benign, and easy to ignore. Kathleen Flake, a Mormon historian at the University of Virginia, told me many of the Church’s concessions to modernity have been healthy and necessary. “But it’s like a game of strip poker,” she said. “How far will you go?”


The hard parts of Mormonism—huffing up hills in a white shirt and tie, forgoing coffee, paying tithes—might complicate the sales pitch. But they can also inspire acts of courage. After Romney voted to remove Trump from office—standing alone among Republican senators—he told me his life in the Church had steeled him for this lonely political moment, in which neither the right nor the left is ever happy with him for long. “One of the advantages of growing up in my faith outside of Utah is that you are different in ways that are important to you,” he said. In high school, he was the only Mormon on campus; during his stint at Stanford, he would go to bars with his friends and drink soda. Small moments like those pile up over a lifetime, he told me, so that when a true test of conscience arrives, “you’re not in a position where you don’t know how to stand for something that’s hard.”

In Mormon circles, Romney’s impeachment vote was fodder for another round of “white horse” jokes. But the reality, of course, is that America will never be “saved” by a single person, or even a single group. What holds the country together is its conviction in certain ideals—community, democracy, mutual sacrifice—that it once possessed, and now urgently needs to reclaim. If Mormonism has anything to offer that effort, it will have to come from a confident Church, one that is unafraid of owning up to its mistakes and embracing what makes it distinct.

This article appears in the January/February 2021 print edition with the headline “The Most American Religion.”

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic.








最具美国特色的宗教
摩门教徒是永远的局外人，他们花了200年的时间与某个国家的理想同化，却发现他们的国家陷入了身份危机。该信仰的第三个世纪会是什么样子？

作者：麦凯-科平斯
2021年1月/2月号
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摄影：迈克尔-弗里伯格

上面的图片。奥克尔山圣殿位于盐湖城圣殿广场以南约20英里处，是教会的总部所在地。

本文于2020年12月16日在线发表。

要在瘟疫期间与先知见面，必须遵循某些协议。这是盐湖城一个灰色的春天的早晨，市中心的圣殿广场冷冷清清，给这个地方带来一种阴森恐怖的末世色彩。银色穹顶的会幕大门紧锁；高耸的新哥特式寺庙一片漆黑。为了进入教会行政大楼，我遇到了一个管理员，他护送我穿过一个地下停车场；经过一个安全检查站，在那里测量我的体温；登上一部受限的电梯；然后，最后进入一个大的、用桃花心木做墙的会议室。几分钟后，一扇侧门打开了，一位身着西装的95岁老人用卫生的肘部迎接我。



"我们总是以祈祷的话语开始我们的会议，"耶稣基督后期圣徒教会的主席罗素-M-纳尔逊说。"那么，如果我们可以的话？"

我们采访的正式场合是摩门教两百年纪念日。两个世纪前，在纽约州北部的一次据称的开天辟地，启动了美国历史上最奇特和持久的宗教运动之一，纳尔逊指定2020年为纪念年。我的笔记本上写满了记者要问的问题，涉及教会的未来、信仰内部在种族和LGBTQ问题上的痛苦紧张关系，以及纳尔逊在担任先知的短暂时间内实施的一系列前所未有的变革。但是当我们低头时，我意识到我在这里也是为了别的事情。

在过去的两个月里，我一直被关在隔离室里，看着世界以圣经的方式融化。推特上所有的死亡、瘟疫和厄运都让我感到无助--从我精神潜意识深处的某个地方，我从小唱到大的一首摩门教儿童歌曲又出现了。跟随先知，不要误入歧途......跟随先知，他知道怎么走。


作为教会的主席，纳尔逊被摩门教徒认为是上帝在地球上的使者，是摩西和亚伯拉罕的现代继承人。现在坐在他的对面，我的某些部分期待着一个宏大而古老的姿态，以配合这个灾难性的时刻--一个举起的法杖，一个末世的预言，一个天上力量的召唤。相反，他微笑着问我孩子的情况。

在接下来的一个小时里，纳尔逊宣扬的是银色的福音。当我问他关于迫使教会关闭的封锁问题时，他认为家庭可以成为 "信仰的圣地"。当我提到病毒对身体的摧残时，他对人体神奇的 "防御机制 "表示惊叹。他背诵了《摩门经》中的一段话："亚当堕落是为了让人生存，而人生存是为了让他们有快乐"--他提供了一个提醒，感觉像是在呼唤忏悔。"在最悲伤的时候也可以有快乐"。

关于这种对沉湎的厌恶，有一些摩门教的经典之处。当逆境袭来时，我的人民倾向于用能干的格言和卷起的袖子来回应；用一种不屈不挠的帮助来回应，这可能接近于漫画。(在大流行病的早期，当纳尔逊命令教会暂停全球所有的礼拜仪式并开始捐赠其储存的食物和医疗设备时，他把它归结为成为 "好公民和好邻居 "的愿望。） 这种恳切的乐观主义的冲击可能会让一些人感到不快。"大卫-福斯特-华莱士（David Foster Wallace）曾经写道："在你不想要的时候，总有一个摩门教徒在你身边，用不请自来的善意来考验你的耐心。" 但它对信仰的作用是很好的。



耶稣基督末世圣徒教会的主席罗素-M-尼尔森在成为先知之前是一名心胸外科医生。他被摩门教徒认为是上帝在地球上的信使。(Michael Friberg)
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几乎从每一个方面来看，耶稣基督末世圣徒教会都违背了其早期观察者的期望。在其成立后的几年里，摩门教徒被国家批准的暴徒追赶到全国各地，怀疑论者预测该运动会在本世纪结束前崩溃。然而，它却成为世界上发展最快的宗教之一。现在，教会平均每天有近700名信徒；它在66个国家有寺庙，财务储备据传超过1000亿美元。

在过去的几年里，摩门教徒因其对特朗普主义的惊人抵制而成为一个令人着迷的话题。与大多数宗教右派不同，他们对唐纳德-特朗普明显不感冒。从2008年到2016年，共和党人的选票份额在后世圣徒中的下降幅度超过了该国任何其他宗教团体。尽管特朗普在2020年赢回了其中一些叛逃者，但他的表现仍然不佳。乔-拜登在犹他州的表现比1964年以来的任何民主党人都要好，摩门教徒妇女很可能在亚利桑那州的蓝变中发挥了作用。

学者们提出了一系列理论来解释这一现象：摩门教社区是联系和信任的典范，教会不寻常的结构促进了共识的建立，而不是文化战争，信仰早期的迫害使其信徒不太容易接受本土主义的呼吁。

尼尔森将这些品质归功于教会教义的力量。"他告诉我："我不认为你能把我们所做的好事与教义分开。"这不是我们做了什么；而是我们为什么要这样做。"

作为该信仰的终生成员，我不禁看到一个更复杂的故事。摩门教徒成为诺曼-洛克维利式理想的化身并非偶然。在长达几个世纪的试演中，我们教自己扮演这个角色，以争取被美国生活完全接受。当美国处于身份危机的边缘时，我们终于成功了，这是现代摩门教的核心讽刺之一。


后期圣徒的故事从一个困惑的少年开始。那是1820年的春天，纽约州的帕尔米拉镇正处于第二次大觉醒的阵痛之中。到处都是狂热的基督教复兴活动。新的教派如雨后春笋般涌现，传教士们激烈地竞争着皈依者。对于约瑟夫-斯密这个没有受过什么教育的14岁农场男孩来说，这种狂热既令人振奋又让人迷失方向。正如他后来在个人历史中写到的那样，他开始为加入哪个教会的问题所困扰--抽查礼拜仪式，咨询圣经学家，并对自己的灵魂状态越来越关注。

他的灵性探索的转折点出现在他阅读《雅各书》时。"你们中间若有人缺乏智慧，就当求问神......就必得着。" 他决心检验这一论点，于是走进他家农场附近的一片树林，跪下来请求指导。据斯密说，接下来发生的事情将成为一种新的世界宗教的催化剂--基督的教会在地球上的实际恢复。用他自己的话说。

我看到一道光柱正好在我头上，高于太阳的亮度，它逐渐下降，直到落在我身上......当光线落在我身上时，我看到两个人，他们的亮度和荣耀无法形容，站在我头上的空中。其中一位对我说话，叫我的名字，并指着另一位说："这是我的爱子。请听他。
我不记得第一次听到这个故事是什么时候，但我知道当我把它记在脑子里的时候我在哪里。作为马萨诸塞州郊区的一个摩门教青少年，我每天早上5:30起床，参加在主教的地下室举行的 "神学院 "课程。这并不是我特别虔诚的标志；所有的摩门教徒孩子都被要求去那里，所以所有的摩门教徒孩子都去了，摩门教是一个要求出现的宗教。大多数早上，我们在老师读圣经时努力保持清醒，但在星期五，我们吃肉桂卷，玩背诵经文的游戏。老师会举起写有经文的提示牌，而我们则一遍又一遍地重复这些词，直到我们可以不看就背出来。斯密对 "第一个异象 "的正式描述是这些段落中最长的，但也是最重要的。


他的故事的力量在于其不可信性。任何有理智的人都不会从表面上接受这样一个离奇的说法--相信它需要信仰，需要愿意追随小约瑟的榜样。我们的老师就是这样构思这个故事的，既是实物教学又是历史事件。我们被告知，不要因为你的父母相信这个，就相信这个。自己去问上帝吧。

但是斯密的叙述中最能引起我共鸣的部分是异象发生后的情况。消息传到了帕尔米拉，社会上的人开始反对他。他的主张被宣布为 "来自魔鬼"。他的家人被排斥在外。面对要求他改口的压力，史密斯拒绝了。他后来写道："我看到了一个异象，"他说。"我知道，我也知道上帝知道，我不能否认它。在神学院里，这被当作主要事件的尾声--即使被提及，也是作为为不受欢迎的信仰站出来的一个例子。但是对于一个21世纪的青少年来说，他已经对自己过大的头和过小的肌肉感到不安全了，而没有把一个奇怪的宗教带入其中，这听起来很像一个警世故事。

在学校，当食堂里的男生问我有多少个妈妈时，我也跟着笑了。
我自己的见证并不是在狂热的启示中出现的，而是在日复一日的信仰生活中。教堂是我觉得最像自己的地方。我们在周日唱的绿色赞美诗，我们在座位上传递的圣餐面包，在汗流浃背的教堂体育馆里举行的老套的青年舞蹈，我们在祷告结束前跟着DJ Kool跳，这些不仅仅是我父母宗教的怪癖。它们是一种身份的象征，是我永远无法向我的非摩门教朋友完全透露的。


即将接受父亲洗礼的作者（McKay Coppins提供）
在学校，当食堂里的男生问我有几个妈妈时，我也跟着笑了起来；当我喜欢的女孩在伊丽莎白-斯马特被绑架后猜测她一定很容易被洗脑，因为她是摩门教徒时，我也若有所思地点头。当申请大学的时候，我假装对亚利桑那州立大学感兴趣，这样我的辅导员就不会认为我只对摩门教的大学感兴趣。

我的目的是培养一种声誉，磨去我的正统观念的边缘，他是摩门教徒，但他很冷静。我不喝酒，但我很乐意做指定司机。我不抽大麻，但我永远不会吸毒。

所有这些姿态可能是不体面的，但我为自己能走好某条线而感到自豪。与我在犹他州的同胞不同，那里的孩子们在白天去上神学院，在高中旁边的教会大楼里，我是镇上仅有的几个摩门教徒孩子之一。我认为，如果我的同学喜欢我，那就是各地摩门教徒的胜利。在少数民族宗教神经质的万神殿里，这并不是完全原创的东西。但直到后来我才意识到，摩门教对认可的渴望是多么根深蒂固。

约瑟夫-斯密着手建立的教会几乎是令人痛心的美国教会。他把宪法作为天意的准正统作品。他出版了一部新的圣典--摩门经，其中以耶稣访问古代美洲为中心。他甚至教导说，上帝促成了美国革命，以便他的教会能够在一个自由的国家中得到恢复，从而将摩门教的成功与美国的实验联系起来。然而，几乎在斯密开始吸引信徒的同时，他们就被嘲笑为非美国人。

斯密是一个有魅力的人物，他有一双闪亮的蓝眼睛和低沉的声音，他教导的是一种深刻的乐观主义神学，与他那个时代的严酷教义形成鲜明对比。但使他最具争议性的是他对在美国建立 "新耶路撒冷 "的承诺。他所设想的乌托邦将是虔诚的、有秩序的，而且是彻底的社区主义。当摩门教徒寻找一个地方来建立他们的锡安时，他们遇到了不断升级的迫害和暴民暴力行动。

在纽约，斯密在当地教士的怂恿下被捕。在俄亥俄州，他被涂上焦油和羽毛。当摩门教徒在密苏里州定居时，他们被看作是该州的敌人。他们的经济和政治力量使当地官员感到紧张，他们的废奴主义倾向也是如此。(尽管教会后来对黑人采取了排斥性政策，但其早期成员中有许多人不赞成奴隶制。） 居民们抱怨说，不断壮大的摩门教社区在他们的后院 "为流氓、流浪汉和自由黑人开设了一个庇护所"。摩门教领导人用他们自己的煽动性言论进行回应。

紧张局势在1838年10月27日达到顶峰，当时州长发布了一项 "灭绝令"，要求将所有摩门教徒赶出该州或杀死。几天后，一支民兵来到堪萨斯城东北约70英里处的摩门教徒定居点并开火。目击者后来描述了一个可怕的场景：妇女被强奸，尸体被肢解，儿童被近距离射杀。在大屠杀结束时，有17名摩门教徒被杀，房屋被洗劫一空，烧成灰烬。

摩门教徒被描绘成一个堕落的、非白人的种族，这种想法将在整个19世纪蔓延开来，这在一定程度上证明了这种暴力是合理的。医学杂志以摩门教徒的 "黄色的、凹陷的、尸体的面容 "和 "厚厚的、突起的嘴唇 "来定义他们。漫画将他们描绘成 "外国爬行动物"，在美国国会大厦上横行。国务卿曾一度试图对来自欧洲的摩门教移民实施禁令。

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有一段时间，斯密和他的追随者对美国的民主制度保持着一种近乎古怪的信任。即使他们被迫逃离密苏里并在伊利诺伊州的纳乌重新定居，他们仍然相信宪法保障了他们的宗教自由，而且只要他们能够提醒国家领导人注意正在发生的事情，一切都会得到纠正。1839年，斯密带领一个代表团前往华盛顿特区，为摩门教徒被暴力驱逐出密苏里寻求补偿。在与马丁-范布伦总统的会谈中，先知提出了一份生动详细的清单，列出了对他的人民犯下的罪行。但总统担心密苏里人的反击，驳回了他的呼吁。"根据斯密的叙述，范布伦说："你们的事业是正义的，但我不能为你们做什么。

这次经历使史密斯变得激进。他被政府的虐待所激怒，并受到越来越多的反摩门教同伙的围攻，他开始了更多的神权倾向。在纳乌，他同时担任先知、市长和装备精良的摩门教民兵的副将。他向他的追随者介绍了《圣经》中古老的一夫多妻制习俗，最终自己至少娶了32个女人。他甚至召集了一群人起草美国宪法的替代文件，他们认为宪法让他们失望了。

然而，摩门教徒与生俱来的美国情结使他们成为自觉的神权主义者--不断建立新的理事会和议事会，以分散权力并使彼此负责。虽然教会是等级制度，但它被注入了制衡。教会由志愿者轮流领导。决策提交给会众批准。摩爾門經文說：「在教會裡，所有的事情都要經過大家的同意」。

1844年，斯密发起了一次奇特的总统竞选，以引起人们对摩门教困境的关注。他的竞选目标是废除监狱和出售公共土地，以购买国内每个被奴役者的自由。他写道，美国应该是一个 "无论什么肤色、气候或语言的人，当他踏上自由的圣土时都会感到高兴 "的地方。


1847年7月，摩门教先驱们在抵达后来的盐湖城之前，穿过了移民峡谷。(Michael Friberg)
这场运动并没有持续多久。那年六月，斯密因下令毁坏一家反摩门教的印刷厂而被捕。在他等待审判期间，一群暴徒袭击了他和他的兄弟海勒姆关押的监狱，并杀害了他们俩。在他的追随者中，先知的死亡导致了内讧、叛逃，以及又一次逃离家园--这次是逃到美国边境以外的西部沙漠。

然而，即使摩门教徒逃离了他们的国家，他们也没有准备好不承认它。在当时一位教会领袖写的短篇小说《草原的天使》中，后期圣徒不是美国实验的受害者或敌人，而是其最纯粹的体现者。"当他们不再有国家或政府可以为之奋斗时，他们带着纯粹的自由精神，退到了西部的平原上。

就像洪水前的诺亚方舟一样，摩门教对其信徒来说，是维护美国最高理想的载体。他们相信，有一天，他们以前的同胞会向他们寻求解救。

这段历史在现代摩门教生活中交织得有多深，怎么形容都不为过。小时候，我们唱着关于 "走啊走，走啊走 "的拓荒者儿童的歌曲；当我们长大后，我们读到拓荒者在残酷的西行之路上将他们的孩子埋在浅浅的坟墓里。我长大后在教堂里听到的故事--关于密苏里和殉道以及马丁-范布伦的故事--往往是为了虔诚的效果而被消毒的。但它们在摩门教徒心理上留下的伤痕是真实的。

在最糟糕的情况下，这种对我们祖先的崇敬会助长不健康的迫害情结，或者甚至被用来否定那些最近面临更严重压迫的群体。6月，一个隶属于爱达荷州杨百翰大学的Facebook页面分享了一个帖子，将早期摩门教的迫害与奴隶制相提并论，并鼓励有色人种 "超越 "种族主义。(在学生的强烈抗议下，该帖子被删除。)但先驱者的苦难故事也向许多美国摩门教徒灌输了对移民和难民经历的敏感性。

根据一项调查，后世圣徒说他们欢迎美国增加移民的可能性是白人福音派的两倍以上。当唐纳德-特朗普呼吁禁止穆斯林移民时，教会听到了一种阴森的历史回声，发出了严厉的谴责。后来，当特朗普签署行政命令，允许各城市和各州否决难民安置时，犹他州成为全国第一个要求增加难民的红州。

Muhammed Shoayb Mehtar在犹他州担任了十多年的伊玛目，他告诉我，当新人们来到他的清真寺时--其中许多是逃离绝望环境的难民--当地人会出现，提供食物、家具和工作。在一些州，穆斯林担心会有骚扰和仇恨犯罪。但在犹他州，梅赫塔尔说，"人们没有这种有毒的观点，哦，他们是外国人；他们想接管。他们内心没有这种心态。"

像大多数报名参加传教士服务的青少年摩门教徒一样，我想要一个冒险，想要讲故事。教会把我送到了德克萨斯州。
"我认为这可以追溯到最初，"教会的高级使徒巴拉德（M. Russell Ballard）长老说。"我们确实是难民。" 作为海勒姆-斯密的直系后裔，巴拉德在谈到教会的早期历史时，充满了对家庭悲剧的原始情感。"我们从未忘记，"他告诉我，"约瑟夫和海勒姆被冷血地枪杀了。"

巴拉德告诉我，他曾代表教会去希腊旅行。在访问一个难民营时，他目睹了一个叙利亚家庭从橡皮艇上被扔进爱琴海，爬到海滩上，浑身发抖，浑身湿透，饥肠辘辘。当志愿者把毛巾和食物递给他们时，其中一个名叫阿米尔的9岁男孩撕开了一包奥利奥饼干，把第一块饼干给了巴拉德。今天，这块饼干被包在使徒的办公桌上的一个小方块里，他说，这是对全世界 "那些为生活而奔波的人 "的提醒。

当我19岁时，我递交了成为传教士的文件，并祈祷被派往国外。我想象自己在某个遥远的岛屿上建造小教堂，或者在山边的小屋里传授福音。像大多数报名参加传教士服务的青少年摩门教徒一样，我想要一个冒险，想要讲故事。教会把我送到德克萨斯州。

我在八月抵达，当时正值创纪录的热浪，似乎是为了考验我的信仰。我骑着八速自行车上山，领带在风中摇摆，白衬衫被汗水浸透，我想知道其他长老是否也在口中嘀咕着坏话。但是我开始欣赏传教士生活中的小苦难。艰苦的日程安排、严格的宵禁、对电影和电视的禁欲--每一个小小的牺牲都有其神圣的作用。在我看来，没有困难的宗教总是毫无意义。神圣的魔力在于信仰所要求的东西。

我很快意识到，我扮演可爱的摩门教徒的诀窍在 "圣经地带 "会派上用场。事实证明，讨人喜欢是这项工作的重要组成部分。传教士带着黑色的名牌和IBM的推销员制服，是教会的行走广告牌。我们被训练成能坦然接受拒绝，无论如何都要坚持我们的善良和健康。当浸礼会牧师谴责你下地狱时，你礼貌地微笑，并称赞他的景观设计。当有人从路过的汽车上向你投掷大杯饮料时，你平静地收起杯子，寻找最近的垃圾桶。有一次，在我和另一位传教士居住的肮脏的公寓楼里，我们犯了一个错误，没有人看管我们的衣服，回来时发现衣服被尿液浸湿了。我们不想大惊小怪，就耸耸肩，往洗衣机里塞了更多硬币。

我们的大部分时间都花在教导未来的皈依者有关信仰的问题上，或者为当地的西班牙语使用者提供英语课程。天气不好的时候，我们会挨家挨户地分发小册子和摩门经的副本。对于寻找未来的摩门教徒来说，这并不是一个特别有效的方法，但是我们在寻找小的胜利。我翻阅了一本《如何赢得朋友和影响他人》的旧书，并练习了一些笑话，以便能在陌生人的门前使用。我们在这些愉快的、没有结果的互动中得到了安慰，告诉自己我们已经改善了摩门教的品牌，无论多么微小。我们称之为 "播撒种子"。

2007年，我在拉丁裔人口众多的达拉斯郊区法默斯布兰奇服侍，当时选民们批准了一项旨在惩罚无证移民的城市条例。作为传教士，我们的生活与世隔绝--没有报纸，没有社交媒体--所以我当时并不知道镇压行动已经成为全国性的丑闻。但我还记得我在洗衣店里听到的沙哑的谈话片断--la migra, miedo。我还记得，公投通过后的那个星期天，妇女们挤在教堂门厅里哭泣；小教堂里的西班牙语礼拜有一半是满的，因为有很多成员害怕越过城镇的界限。我还记得分会主席，一位戴眼镜的年轻危地马拉父亲，放弃了他一贯的轻声细语的风格，向他摇摇欲坠的会众进行安抚。"你们是上帝的孩子，"他大声说。"永远不要，永远不要让他们让你觉得自己是小人物。" 我对他们的经历了解甚少，但我在那一刻感受到了一丝团结的力量，我希望这种力量永远不会被消灭。

在布鲁克林一个粘稠的夏日夜晚，耶稣基督末世圣徒教会布什维克分会举办了一个卡拉OK之夜。会众不多，但不拘一格，当成员们轮流拿着麦克风时，摩门教社区奇妙的怪异性得到了充分展示。一位来自香港的传教士用粤语唱了一首流行歌曲。一位身材娇小的哥特时装设计师用头撞向金属乐队。当年轻的父亲们匆匆忙忙地往塑料杯里装雪碧和补充椒盐卷饼碗时，来自圭亚那和菲律宾的老成员则唱起了他们最喜欢的歌曲。

摩门教以循规蹈矩著称--白衬衫、白色栅栏和一群乖巧的白人孩子。但在世界大部分地区，摩门教会的特点是他们把来自不同背景的人组成的杂牌军强行聚在一起。与大多数美国基督徒不同，后期圣徒不能选择与谁一起去教堂。他们被分配到基于地理边界的教区，而这些教区往往是为了促进社会经济多样性而划分的。而且由于教会几乎完全由志愿者管理，每个成员都有工作，他们必须紧密合作。宗教史学家帕特里克-梅森(Patrick Mason)称这是 "摩门教的社会学天才"--他说，在一个充满回声室和独自打保龄球的社会中，教会加倍坚持一种老式的社区人道主义精神。


作者在德克萨斯州传教两年期间，与他的妻子和孩子们在布鲁克林的教堂（麦凯-科平斯提供）
在某些方面，我和妻子搬到纽约后落脚的布什维克教会很不寻常。它比典型的摩门教区更加多样化，而且更加自给自足。我们在一个改装过的空间里聚会，这个空间是从公共住房对面的一个犹太社区中心租赁的。当我们周日上午的聚会被停在外面的一辆低音SUV打断时，我们的分会主席--一个对邻里关系采取和解态度的大胡子电影制片人--会溜出去，给司机20美元，让他把音乐带到街区。

我们轮流教主日学和讲道。当我们中的一个人失去工作时，有人会带着一车的杂货停下来。当我们中的一个人不得不换公寓时，我们都会带着纸板箱和甜甜圈出现。

在工作中，我周围都是20多岁的记者，他们有类似的推特内容。但在教堂里，我最有意义的关系是与那些居住在我的泡沫之外的人--中年邮递员和加勒比海移民；白发的退休人员和在城市社会服务的泥沼中穿梭的单亲父母。我们的小社区并不完美。我们互相争吵，互相刺激，不止一次，主日学校的激烈辩论以大喊大叫和伤害感情告终。但是，这种动态比乌托邦式的好，它很难。随着时间的推移，我们学会了共同生活的一部分，如摩门经所教导的那样，"与那些悲伤的人一起哀悼"，"并安慰那些需要安慰的人"。

11月当选为犹他州州长的斯宾塞-考克斯告诉我，他的州是由这种道德观塑造的。1847年，摩门教的拓荒者首次到达该地区时，他们把家建在村子的中心，把农作物种在城郊，这样农民就不会彼此孤立。"考克斯说："这并不是一个人们对定居感到兴奋的地方，它是一种荒地。"在这里，为了使它发挥作用，你真的不得不相互依赖。"

虽然犹他州非常保守，但它的居民一般不会浪漫化粗犷的个人主义或达尔文式的超资本主义。它是全国收入不平等程度最低的地区，并且在向上流动方面排名接近前列。种族多样性的相对缺乏无疑有助于歪曲这些指标--结构性的种族主义在一个78%为白人的州不会造成同样的损失。但经济学家说，紧密联系的信仰社区为社会安全网提供了一个关键的额外层次。

对摩门教徒来说，这种心态一直是一个神学问题。约瑟夫-斯密教导说，救赎是通过社区而不是单独的个人行动实现的。而他对来世的广阔看法--作为一种相互联系的家庭团聚的广阔、欢乐的网络--将人际关系放在首位。"我宁愿和我的朋友们一起下地狱，"据说他曾讲道，"也不愿独自上天堂。"

1863年，《大西洋月刊》的一位名叫菲茨-休-卢德洛的作家前往犹他州的摩门教徒定居点，他的发现让他感到惊讶。在他长达11,000字的报道中，卢德洛将这个陌生的沙漠流亡文明描述为一项矛盾的研究。摩门教徒显然是神权主义者，但他没有发现腐败的证据。他们对一夫多妻制的公开拥护是可耻的，但在某种程度上似乎比荒淫无度更实际。他们的信仰是荒谬的，但却是真诚的。

路德洛遇到的摩门教徒似乎相信他们可以为他们以前的国家提供一些东西，现在他们的国家被内战搞得乌烟瘴气。当他与杨百翰--约瑟夫-斯密的大胡子、粗壮的继任者交谈时，先知预言联邦将面临灭顶之灾，大量的移民将涌向犹他州。战后，美国人将被摩门教徒的友善和一夫多妻制的天才所吸引，在这么多男人死于战争之后，其吸引力是显而易见的。"当你们的国家变成一片荒芜的时候，"杨对作者说，"我们，你们赶走的圣徒，将忘记你们对我们犯下的所有罪行，并给你们一个家。"

摘自1864年4月的期刊。摩门教徒中的菲茨-休-卢德洛

路德洛把这句话当做笑料--这表明了一个民族的荒谬的自大，在他看来，这个民族是 "人类社会中最没有修养的阶层，是一个异质的农民部落。" 他预言，杨氏一死，教会就会 "立即粉身碎骨，无可挽回"。但在那之前，摩门教的威胁是不可轻视的。他写道，摩门教 "完全不忠诚"--就像南军一样。"我们美国理念的摩门教敌人应该被清楚地理解为比伪君子或白痴更危险的对手。"

路德洛的故事发表在1864年4月的杂志上，是全国其他地区对犹他州的看法的象征。就在几年前，詹姆斯-布坎南总统曾向该地区派遣美国军队，以镇压传闻中的摩门教徒叛乱。共和党在其建党纲领中把一夫多妻制与奴隶制并列为 "野蛮主义的双重遗迹 "之一。

然而，摩门教徒仍然渴望完全融入美国生活。到19世纪末，他们认真地开始了同化的探索，在反对其破坏性的漫画中定义自己。如果美国人认为他们是非基督教的异端，他们会委托制作一个11英尺高的耶稣雕像，并将其放置在圣殿广场。如果美国人认为他们不忠诚，他们就会涌入军队和情报机构的队伍。(杨百翰大学一度是全国第三大陆军军官的来源）。为了摆脱一夫多妻制的恶臭--教会在1890年放弃了这一制度--他们成为大型核心家庭的典范。

到了20世纪中叶，摩门教的先知们出现在《时代》杂志的封面上，好莱坞也拍摄了一部关于杨的传记电影。摩门教徒是童子军和商业领袖，是家庭主妇和家庭主夫。他们形成了志愿服务的声誉，以在自然灾害发生后第一个赶到现场为荣。克莱蒙特研究生大学的历史学家马修-鲍曼（Matthew Bowman）说，这些转变中的一些比其他的更有意识，。"他补充说："但对受人尊敬的渴望，"在很大程度上是现代摩门教的核心。"

阅读。当摩门教徒渴望成为一个 "白色和令人愉快的 "民族时

同化的努力也有更黑暗的一面。摩门教领袖在被视为邪恶的种族之后，开始决心恢复他们的白人身份。从杨开始，一直到1978年，黑人男子被禁止担任圣职--几乎所有摩门教徒的男性都享有这种特权--而且黑人家庭无法参加重要的圣殿仪式。教会领袖宣扬黑皮肤是上帝的 "诅咒"，不鼓励黑人和白人之间的婚姻。学者贾南-格雷厄姆-罗素说，他们不是反对美国的种族等级制度，而是试图确保自己在其中的地位："摩门教徒几乎是在争取这种极端纯洁的白色。从那时起，教会一直被这种后果困扰着。


盐湖城地区的教堂，这里有大约50万耶稣基督后期圣徒教会的成员。
2012年1月，我找到一份报道米特-罗姆尼总统竞选的工作。当时美国正处于头条新闻作者所称的 "摩门教时刻 "中，因为罗姆尼的参选引起了人们对这个国家最持久的本土宗教的兴趣。这本应是该信仰在美国旅程中的一个重要里程碑。但是，摩门教的同化计划出了问题。

罗姆尼显然是其教会的产物。他出生于该信仰，曾在法国担任传教士，毕业于比亚迪大学，并与高中时的恋人养育了五个魁梧的儿子。当他的政治明星开始崛起时，罗姆尼试图通过辩称摩门教是 "像母亲和苹果派一样的美国人 "来转移对其宗教的质疑。当他在早期接受本杂志采访时被问到："你是怎样的摩门教徒？"他回答说。"我的信仰相信家庭，相信耶稣基督。它相信要为邻居和社区服务。它相信军事服务。它相信爱国主义；它实际上相信这个国家的建立是有灵感的。在某些方面，它是一种典型的美国信仰。"

许多美国人并不那么肯定。在共和党初选中，罗姆尼遇到了保守的福音派人士的怀疑，如大教堂牧师罗伯特-杰弗里斯，他宣布摩门教是来自 "地狱之渊 "的 "邪教"。在MSNBC上，劳伦斯-奥唐纳(Lawrence O'Donn)讥讽道，罗姆尼的教会是由一个 "与女仆发生性关系时被发现，并向妻子解释说上帝让他这样做 "的人建立的。在《Slate》杂志上，雅各布-韦斯伯格(Jacob Weisberg)认为，相信摩门教这种 "透明的、最近才出现的骗局 "的人是不可能被信任为总统的。

同时，罗姆尼的全美式人格--由几代同化者培养出来的--证明是一种政治责任。由于他的摩门教父亲的口吻（所有这些hecks、holy cows和goshdarnits）和他在讲台上背诵 "美丽的美国 "的嗜好（"我喜欢爱国的赞美诗"），罗姆尼似乎是一个遗迹--"后世的Beaver Cleaver"，正如《波士顿环球报》的一位作家所说。对那些熟悉摩门教历史的人来说，这种讽刺是显著的。"后期圣徒学者泰瑞尔-吉文斯（Tryl Givens）写道："现在正是因为摩门教徒占据了过去的中心位置，他们才陷入了蔑视。

作为罗姆尼竞选活动记者团中唯一的摩门教徒记者，我处于一个独特的位置，看着他在面对这些问题时扭扭捏捏--我常常让他更难受。我不断地写候选人的信仰，这让他的顾问们非常惊愕，他们做出了一个战略决定，即完全忽略宗教问题。当我要求竞选团队对与摩门教有关的报道发表评论时，他们常常不客气地告诉我，"去问教会"。(教会的发言人决定保持政治中立，通常会把我引向竞选团队）。

当我在电视上讨论竞选时，我会谈论罗姆尼应该如何公开他的宗教生活。但随着选举的深入，我开始理解他的不情愿。我不相信他的宗教应该是禁区的想法。但我也无法相信，我那些开明的同龄人竟然愿意对一个他们知之甚少的信仰说些什么。

我听到记者开关于 "摩门教内衣 "的玩笑，我在电视上回答关于早期先知的晦涩教义的讥讽问题。有一天，我工作的公司的首席执行官召集员工做了一个演讲，他通过比较犹太教和摩门教来解释互联网的病毒性。他以前也做过类似的演讲。他的想法是，犹太人可能有 "更高质量 "的宗教，但摩门教发展得更快，因为它的成员--我们这些聪明的营销人员--知道如何 "传播它"。为了说明他的观点，他翻阅了一系列幻灯片，介绍了各种著名的犹太人，然后滑稽地宣布，最著名的摩门教徒是布兰登-弗劳尔斯，杀手乐队的主唱。我再次感受到那种熟悉的诱惑--礼貌地微笑，同意地笑。我假装打电话，以便没有人看到我的脸变红。

我常常想，罗姆尼是否与我一样对 "摩门教时刻 "感到矛盾--他是否曾为他的候选资格如何影响人们对其教会的看法而挣扎。最近我问他这个问题时，他对这个前提进行了反驳。"他告诉我："我不认为我作为政治候选人的角色是为了传教，或教育，甚至是关于我的宗教。"我想说清楚，我不是我的教会的发言人。" 这很公平。但他一定也知道这是不可能的。

就在罗姆尼试图成为第一位摩门教总统的时候，《摩门教之书》音乐剧正在百老汇大卖。该剧由《南方公园》的创作者马特-斯通(Matt Stone)和特雷-帕克(Trey Parker)共同编剧，用欢快的脏话讽刺摩门教，并将其信徒描述为傻瓜。听完原声带后，我最初的反应是气愤，因为富裕的剧院观众就是这样被介绍给我的信仰。但我也觉得必须要做一个好的运动，而且我不是一个人。当罗姆尼被问及该剧时，他说他很想看。"这是一个托尼奖得主，大现象！" 教会本身也在剧单上刊登了广告，写道："你已经看过这部戏了。现在读读这本书"。(该剧的创作者显然已经预见到了这样的情况。斯通后来回忆说，当朋友问他是否担心摩门教徒的抗议时，他说："相信我们，他们会很冷静的。"）

阅读。嘲弄摩门教的无知

我记得我对教会的反应感到很高兴。如此精明的公关! 这样一个善意的姿态! 看到了吗，各位？我们可以接受一个笑话! 但后来我在纽约遇到一位最近看过这部音乐剧的剧评人。他惊叹于该剧如何逃脱了对一个少数民族宗教如此无情而又没有任何有意义的反击。我试图将此作为摩门教徒善良的证明。但这位评论家并不信服。"不，"他回答。"那是因为你们的人完全没有文化上的优势。"

不知何故，直到那一刻，我才明白我们所有取之不尽用之不竭的友善的来源。这是一种应对机制，源于一种脉动的、汗流浃背的、希望被人喜欢的绝望，我突然发现这很丢人。

当一个宗教团体发现它花了200年的时间去同化一个不再存在的美国，会发生什么？随着他们的祖国的分裂和自相残杀，摩门教徒正被迫努力解决关于他们是谁和他们相信什么的问题。教会内部一个松散但不断壮大的自由派联盟正在推动改革。

紧张关系的一个主要来源是种族。自从1978年解除对黑人担任牧师的禁令以来，教会一直在为反思其历史而做出不稳定的努力。2013年，它正式否认了其过去的种族主义教义。2018年，它宣布与有色人种协进会建立伙伴关系，该组织曾在盐湖城的街道上领导游行，抗议教会的歧视。而在2020年春天，纳尔逊总统对乔治-弗洛伊德被杀事件作出回应，谴责 "公然无视人类生命"，并呼吁种族主义者 "忏悔"。有色人种协进会旧金山分会主席阿莫斯-布朗告诉我，他与教会领导人的经历让他相信，他们正在做出真正的努力。"他们有足够的透明度和谦卑，说：'嘿，教会可能有一个不光彩的过去，但我们现在想与你们合作。 "


阅读。尽管摩门教有种族主义的遗产，但还是选择留在教会里。

然而，对许多黑人成员来说，进展仍然缓慢得令人痛苦。当塔姆-史密斯看到纳尔逊的声明--其中还包括对抢劫和财产破坏的谴责--她感到有些熟悉。"我看到了努力，我可以欣赏这种努力，但我仍然渴求，"她告诉我。"我想要更多。" 史密斯在加利福尼亚长大，11岁时加入教会，现在住在犹他州的普罗沃，在那里她经常听到白人摩门教徒试图将教会过去的种族主义合理化。虽然她看到了有希望的进步迹象，但她认为，如果没有完全的机构忏悔，教会就无法真正向前发展。"作为一个活的教会的一部分，我相信道歉是必要的。

到目前为止，教会对这种呼吁置之不理，史密斯将这一事实归结为恐惧。尽管教会从未声称预言是无懈可击的，但史密斯说，对许多正统的信徒来说，信仰 "要么是真的，要么是假的--教会不能犯错；教会不能退缩；教会不能修复有问题的东西。" 她推测，摩门教领导人担心，如果他们为过去先知的种族主义行为道歉，就会破坏他们自己的权威。


11岁时皈依摩门教的塔姆-史密斯希望看到教会做更多的事情来反思其种族主义的历史。"她说："作为一个活着的教会的一部分，我相信道歉是必要的。(Michael Friberg)
这种制度上的恐惧是教会对某种行动主义的反应中的一个共同主题。虽然摩门教徒被鼓励表达他们的疑虑，甚至在他们之间表达异议，但当异议者开始吸引外部盟友时，教会领导人有时会大打出手。关于妇女在信仰中的角色的持续辩论也许是这种动态的最好例证。2000年，教会将女权主义学者玛格丽特-托斯卡诺逐出教会，她对摩门教关于男性权威和圣职的教义提出质疑。引起教会指责的并不是她批评的内容，而是她成功地吸引了媒体的注意。


自由派摩门教杂志《对话》的前编辑、女权主义者克里斯汀-哈格伦（Kristine Haglund）说，宗教内部的辩论经常被外界误解，这并没有什么帮助。例如，对摩门教性别问题的报道往往集中在争取女性受戒的问题上。但2011年皮尤调查发现，教会中只有8%的女性支持这一想法。"我认为摩门教女权主义运动如此棘手的原因之一是，对妇女在教会中的经历很重要的事情......很难解释，不可能变成一个口号，"哈格伦德告诉我。作为一个例子，她列举了要求由妇女领导的救济会在当地区一级自主运作，而不是向男性主教汇报的呼吁。她说："'按立妇女'对外人来说是有意义的，""但它在摩门教内部并没有像在非摩门教女权主义盟友中那样产生共鸣。"

近年来，也许没有什么问题比教会对待男女同性恋、双性恋和变性者的态度更能引起教会内部的辩论。几十年来，教会在宗教右派对同性婚姻的讨伐中是一个不安的伙伴--在共同的正统观念中团结一致，但也敏锐地意识到，联盟中的许多人私下里把摩门教徒嘲笑为异端和邪教分子。这一努力在2008年达到了高潮，当时教会帮助开展了一场高调的、成功的运动，在加利福尼亚禁止同性婚姻。

短暂的政治胜利之后，出现了强烈的反弹，近年来，教会采取了更加温和的态度。它推出了一个网站，致力于促进对同性恋摩门教徒的 "善意和尊重"，并支持犹他州的一项法案，扩大对LGBTQ人群的住房和就业保护。教会申明，同性恋不是一种选择，一位前教会官员，一位心理学家，为他提倡的转化疗法公开道歉。

但是，教会仍然没有改变其对同性关系和性别转换的禁止。摩门教LGBTQ团体Affirmation的负责人内森-基钦（Nathan Kitchen）称这是教会的 "彩虹彩绘玻璃天花板"。基钦曾是一名虔诚的摩门教徒，在2013年出柜成为同性恋，并与妻子离婚，他说，他不再去教堂，不是因为他不再相信，而是因为他感到被迫在他的性行为和信仰之间做出选择。对于我们这些看到我们所关心的人在同样痛苦的选择中挣扎的人来说，基钦的故事很有意义。但是，尽管普通摩门教徒的观点在不断变化，但教会已经将其关于性行为的教义编入教义。这意味着除非先知说他得到了神的许可，否则他们不会改变。

在罗素-尼尔森床边的一个床头柜上，放着一个笔记本，他在上面记录了自己的启示。在进入教会领导层之前，他是一名心胸外科医生，帮助设计了第一台心肺机。在他早年当医生的时候，他经常会在深夜接到医院打来的电话，召唤他去做紧急手术。他告诉我："我不再接到这些电话了，"他说。"但是，非常频繁地，我被叫醒，有指示要遵守。" 最近，笔记本很快就被填满了。

"纳尔逊说："对我来说，审判日很快就会到来。这是一种奇怪的忏悔，我不知道该如何回应。
摩门教对预言启示的主张是该信仰最大胆的教义之一，也是最实际的教义。作为一种神学上的生存机制，它允许教会在必要时进行调整和改革，同时赋予变化以天命的重量。2018年，当纳尔逊升任教会主席时，很少有成员期望这位当时93岁的老人会成为一个变革性的领导人。但他的任期是一个多事之秋。

纳尔逊的一些改革是小型的、内部的基本措施，例如缩短教会礼拜的时间和扩大传教士的批准衣柜。(他还发起了一场反对摩门教徒一词的运动，认为这个绰号贬低了教会的基督教地位。(我选择在这个故事中使用这个词是为了清晰起见，也是因为耶稣基督末世圣徒教会带来了一个多音节的写作难题，而我自己的上帝赐予的才能让我无力解决。）

其他改革则更为重要。他扭转了限制同性夫妇子女受洗的政策，以强调妇女权力的方式调整圣殿仪式，并首次任命亚裔和拉美裔使徒进入教会的第二最高管理机构。

但是，尽管这些变化中有一些被认为是进步的迹象，但纳尔逊在关键问题上没有让步。当我问他，对于那些觉得教会不要他们的LGBTQ人群，他会说什么，他告诉我，"上帝爱他所有的孩子，就像你和我一样"，"所有选择属于他的教会的人都有一个位置"。但是，当我问到对同性关系的禁止是否有一天会被取消时，他表示反对。"作为主的使徒，我们不能改变上帝的法律，"他说。"我们教导他的法律。他在几千年前就制定了这些法律，我不指望他现在会改变它们。"

在我们说话的时候，我注意到纳尔逊一直低头看桌上一个打开的活页夹。当你和他在一起时，很容易忘记他已经快100岁了。对于一个不老的人来说，他是非常有活力的，而且容易对人体的 "伺服调节机制 "进行热情的切入。但他似乎也明白说错话的风险。因此，当他谈到LGBTQ群体时，他放慢了语速，从他的笔记中读出，以确保他击中了缩写中的每个字母。

在那一刻，我想到了纳尔逊工作的难度--在一个拒绝静坐的世界里，试图引导一个200年的机构。摩门教徒喜欢说，虽然教会的政策和计划可能会改变，但福音的核心是永恒的。但是确定这个核心可能很难。你要保留什么，抛弃什么？哪些部分是上帝的，哪些部分来自于人？在后世圣徒所体现的濒临灭绝的美国主义中，哪些值得保留，哪些最好留下？这些都是纳尔逊所面临的问题，他试图弄清楚摩门教在21世纪应该意味着什么。而且他知道他已经没有时间来回答这些问题了。


盐湖城外的耶稣基督末世圣徒教会的一座寺庙。教会平均每天有近700名皈依者，在66个国家有寺庙。(Michael Friberg)
当我们的谈话接近尾声时，先知合上了他的活页夹，变得很安静。"他说："对我来说，审判日很快就会到来。这是一种奇怪的忏悔--至少从精算的角度来看，是令人震惊和明显的--我不知道该如何回应。在又一次停顿之后，纳尔逊开始思考在他即将与上帝的 "面谈 "中他要回答什么。"他告诉我："我怀疑是否会以我做的手术数量或我发表的科学论文数量来评判我。"我甚至怀疑是否会以我担任主席期间教会的增长来评判我。我不认为这将是一个量化的经验。我想他会想知道。你的信仰如何？德行如何？你的知识如何？你是否有节制？你对人友善吗？你是否有慈善心，是否有谦卑心？"


最后，纳尔逊告诉我，"我们的存在是为了让人们生活得更好"。作为使命宣言，教会可以做得更糟糕。但摩门教一直怀有更宏大的抱负。

有一个关于约瑟夫-斯密的故事在摩门教徒中流传了好几代。1843年，在他去世的前一年，他在纳乌与一群教会长老会面时开始预言。斯密预言，这一天将会到来，美国将处于崩溃的边缘--其宪法 "悬而未决"--只有来自上帝的真正教会的 "白马 "才能拯救它。

历史学家和教会领袖长期以来一直认为这个故事是天方夜谭，今天，白马预言主要是作为后世圣徒中每当教会成员竞选时的一个眨眼玩笑。但这个概念一直存在是有原因的。它吸引了摩门教徒对美国的信仰--以及他们对自己在保护美国方面可以发挥作用的信念。

这种信念是保守的摩门教徒在2016年最抵制特朗普崛起的共和党选民中的部分原因。他在犹他州的共和党初选中排名最后，而且在整个西部山区摩门教徒密集的地区一直表现不佳。当 "访问好莱坞 "的录像带泄露后，教会拥有的《德塞里特新闻》呼吁特朗普退出。在选举日，他获得的摩门教徒选票刚刚超过一半，而最近的其他共和党提名人获得了接近80%的选票。


特朗普在2020年表现更好，部分原因是缺乏像埃文-麦克马林这样的保守的第三方候选人。(但特朗普时代让许多摩门教徒--曾经是该国最可靠的共和党选民--感到政治上无家可归。越来越多的人开始认同温和派，民调分析家内特-西尔弗(Nate Silver)预测，犹他州可能很快成为一个摇摆州。6月，一项调查发现，只有22%的比亚迪学生和最近的校友打算投票给特朗普。

公共宗教研究所的负责人罗伯特-P-琼斯说，与白人福音派对特朗普的忠诚相比，摩门教徒的这种矛盾心理值得注意。"历史和文化很重要，"琼斯告诉我。"今天的党派关系是如此强大的引力。我认为我们在摩门教徒身上看到的是，也有别的东西在拉扯他们。"

当我和我的摩门教同胞谈论我们信仰的第三个世纪可能是什么样子时，一个共同的担心是，教会由于急于寻找盟友，最终会跟随宗教右派进入无休止的文化战争。这的确是很严峻的。但同样令我担忧的是，也许更有可能的是，摩门教被完全稀释的前景。

如果走得太远，后期圣徒对主流认可的渴望可能会使教会变成另一个主流教派--缺乏活力，没有张力，对其成员没有任何真正的要求。不难想象，耶稣基督后期圣徒教会会像扶轮社那样 "受人尊敬"，因为它平淡无奇、良善，容易被人忽视。弗吉尼亚大学的摩门教历史学家凯瑟琳-弗莱克告诉我，教会对现代性的许多让步都是健康和必要的。"但这就像一场脱衣扑克游戏，"她说。"你会走多远？"


摩门教的困难部分--穿着白衬衫打着领带上山、放弃咖啡、缴纳什一税--可能会使销售工作变得复杂。但它们也能激发人们的勇气。在罗姆尼投票罢免特朗普之后--在共和党参议员中独树一帜--他告诉我，他在教会中的生活使他对这一孤独的政治时刻有了信心，在这一时刻，无论是右派还是左派都不会对他感到长久的满意。"在犹他州以外的地方，在我的信仰中成长的好处之一是，你在对你很重要的方面是不同的，"他说。在高中时，他是校园里唯一的摩门教徒；在斯坦福大学读书期间，他会和朋友去酒吧喝汽水。他告诉我，像这样的小时刻在一生中堆积起来，所以当真正的良心考验到来时，"你不会处于不知道如何支持一些困难的东西的境地。"

在摩门教圈子里，罗姆尼的弹劾投票是另一轮 "白马 "笑话的素材。但是，现实当然是，美国永远不会被一个人，甚至一个团体所 "拯救"。支撑这个国家的是它对某些理想的信念--社区、民主、相互牺牲--它曾经拥有这些理想，而现在迫切需要重新获得这些理想。如果摩门教能够为这一努力提供什么，那就必须来自一个自信的教会，一个不惧怕承认自己的错误并拥抱使其与众不同的教会。

这篇文章出现在2021年1月/2月的印刷版上，标题是 "最美国的宗教"。

麦凯-科普斯是《大西洋月刊》的一名工作人员。