McKay Coppins

For his restored church.

And many of the kind of ideas in Mormon theology are also drawn from the sacred American texts, right?

Mormons actually are taught that

the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution are divinely inspired, that America is a special place that God has set apart.

And, you know, there are kind of deeper ideas in the theology, like agency, free will, that you can, without too much effort, kind of connect to foundational American ideas like pluralism and democracy.

It was around the 20th century that Latter-day Saints started to think more deliberately about how they could be kind of initiated into American life.

And certainly by the middle of the 20th century, the church was making a pretty concerted effort to be accepted as part of mainstream American society.

We'd like you to meet the Mormons.

You saw Latter-day Saints joining the military and intelligence agencies in very large numbers.

That's partly because a lot of them speak foreign languages from their mission service and because they live relatively clean lives.

That makes them attractive recruits to places like the CIA and FBI.

But you also saw a lot of the church's messaging, its advertising, trying to portray it as kind of an all-American church, right?

Mormons had big families.

They were traditionally arranged where

You know, the men worked, the women stayed at home, they had lots of kids.

They were very active in civic organizations like the Boy Scouts of America.

And, you know, I don't want to say that this was all PR.

I think a lot of it was genuinely rooted in the things that they believed were important about American civic life and family life and religious life.

But also, there was a distinct desire

to prove to America that they were kind of worthy of being considered American.