99 Fun Facts About Mormonism

Joseph Smith founded the movement during which period of American religious revival?

Second Great Awakening. Rival preachers competing for converts around his home in western New York left the teenage Smith troubled over which denomination was right.

In which US state was Joseph Smith born in 1805?

Vermont. A run of failed harvests drove his family west to Palmyra, New York, in 1816; Brigham Young was born in Vermont too.

In his First Vision at age 14, Joseph Smith said God told him to do what?

Join none of the churches. He said he had gone into the woods to pray over which sect was right and was told that all of them had strayed from the truth.

Witnesses said Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon while looking at a seer stone placed in what?

A hat. He pressed his face into it to shut out the light and spoke the words aloud to a scribe, rather than reading directly from the plates.

Latter-day Saints call the New York hill where Smith said he dug up the golden plates by what name?

Cumorah. Smith said he was turned away on his first visit and had to come back to the hill on the same September day each year for four years before he could take the plates.

What did Joseph Smith say became of the golden plates after he finished translating them?

He returned them to the angel. So nobody can examine them today, though witnesses who said they had handled them described thin metal leaves bound by three rings.

The Book of Mormon says it was written in which otherwise unknown script?

Reformed Egyptian. A follower took a copied sample of the characters to the Columbia scholar Charles Anthon, who later denied that he had ever vouched for them.

The Book of Mormon's story opens around 600 BC with which prophet leading his family out of Jerusalem?

Lehi. Told in a dream to flee before the city is destroyed, he takes his family into the wilderness and on to the Americas by ship; his son Nephi narrates the journey.

Which prosperous neighbour helped pay for Joseph Smith's 1827 move to Pennsylvania?

Martin Harris. He later borrowed the first 116 pages of the manuscript to win over his doubting wife and lost them, and that part of the book was never translated again.

Who were the Three Witnesses to the golden plates?

Cowdery, Harris and Whitmer. All three later broke with Smith and left his church, yet each was still affirming his testimony of the plates late in life.

How was the first printing of the Book of Mormon paid for in 1830?

A follower mortgaged his farm. Copies sold slowly around Palmyra at first, and he ended up selling off farmland to clear the $3,000 debt.

Which American author mocked the Book of Mormon as 'chloroform in print'?

Mark Twain. He carried a copy away from Salt Lake City on his stagecoach journey west and reviewed it in Roughing It as 'such an insipid mess of inspiration'.

In which town did the Latter-day Saints dedicate their first temple in 1836?

Kirtland. Members built the Ohio temple with their own labour, and children collected broken china and crockery to be ground into the stucco on its walls.

What did a mob do to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon on 24 March 1832?

Tarred and feathered them. The mob pulled both men from their beds at night and beat them; Rigdon, dragged by his heels over frozen ground, was raving when Smith found him the next morning.

Governor Lilburn Boggs's 1838 'extermination order' was meant to drive the Mormons out of which state?

Missouri. The order said Mormons 'must be exterminated or driven from the State', and it stayed on the books until another governor formally rescinded it in 1976.

By 1844 the Mormon river city of Nauvoo had grown to rival which other city in size?

Chicago. Smith's followers had bought swampy Mississippi bottomland around a village called Commerce only five years earlier; two years later most of them were gone.

As head of the Nauvoo Legion, Joseph Smith took the rank of lieutenant general, last held in the US Army by whom?

George Washington. Illinois let the city raise its own militia, and once its first mayor was expelled from the church Smith was mayor and commanding general at once.

Which newspaper's press did Joseph Smith and his city council order destroyed in June 1844?

Nauvoo Expositor. Its only issue, put out by former followers, accused Smith of secretly practising polygamy, and wrecking the press brought the charges that put him in jail.

In which Illinois town's jail was Joseph Smith killed by a mob in 1844?

Carthage. He was awaiting trial on a treason charge when an armed mob stormed the jail; shot as he reached an upstairs window, he fell to the ground outside.

What office was Joseph Smith campaigning for at the time of his death?

The US presidency. He ran after five likely candidates would not promise to protect his followers, on a platform that included freeing enslaved people with money from federal land sales.

Which of Joseph Smith's brothers was killed with him in 1844?

Hyrum. As assistant president he was the man many expected to lead the church next, so the same attack left it with no agreed successor.

After Joseph Smith's death in 1844, Brigham Young claimed leadership of the church as head of which body?

Quorum of the Twelve. Smith had named no clear successor, and Young persuaded most of the Saints in Nauvoo that the apostles should lead; three years later he was church president.

When Brigham Young's wagons reached the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, which country claimed the land?

Mexico. The Saints had gone looking for a home beyond the borders of the United States, but within months the treaty ending the Mexican-American War handed the region to the US.

On first seeing the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Brigham Young is said to have declared what?

This is the right place. Laid low by mountain fever, the leader of the trek reached the valley on 24 July, days behind his own advance party; the date is still a state holiday, Pioneer Day.

Which nickname likens Brigham Young to a biblical leader?

American Moses. It fits a man who led his people across a wilderness to a promised land of their own; his other nickname was the Lion of the Lord.

Brigham Young was the first governor of which territory?

Utah. Congress turned down the settlers' own proposed state and made a territory instead, and full statehood then waited until 1896, after the church had given up polygamy.

The 1857 killing of the Baker–Fancher wagon train by Mormon militia is known by what name?

Mountain Meadows Massacre. The emigrants gave up their guns to militiamen who came under a white flag, and about 120 were then killed; only one man, John D. Lee, was ever tried for it.

The Salt Lake Temple took 40 years to build; why were its foundations buried in 1858?

To hide them from the Army. With federal troops approaching, the Saints covered the site to look like a ploughed field; when it was dug out again, damaged stone had to be replaced.

Pioneer tradition says which birds saved the Saints' 1848 crops in the Salt Lake Valley by devouring swarms of crickets?

Seagulls. Farmers at first feared the flocks were a second plague, then watched them gorge on crickets, drink, bring up the husks and come back for more; the story became the miracle of the gulls.

Whose statue stands atop the Salt Lake Temple's central east spire?

The angel Moroni. The gilded copper figure with a trumpet went up in 1892, and statues of the same angel now top most of the church's temples.

Brigham Young recalled that the Word of Wisdom followed Emma Smith's trouble scrubbing what from her floor?

Tobacco spit. Men at a church school held in the Smiths' rooms smoked pipes and chewed through their lessons, and the health code Joseph Smith dictated in 1833 told them to give the habit up.

The Word of Wisdom's ban on 'hot drinks' is understood to mean which two beverages?

Tea and coffee. The 1833 text says only 'hot drinks', and for decades many members kept the rule loosely; strict abstinence became the church-wide standard only in 1921.

Which church president issued the 1890 Manifesto ending plural marriage?

Wilford Woodruff. Congress had dissolved the church as a legal body and moved to seize its property; even so, a few plural marriages went on quietly until a second manifesto in 1904.

Groups that kept practising polygamy after 1890 are known collectively as what?

Mormon fundamentalists. The mainstream church began excommunicating anyone who entered a new plural marriage in the early 1900s, so the groups that carry on the practice stand wholly outside it.

The Community of Christ, unlike the LDS Church, affirms which doctrine?

Trinitarianism. The church grew from Saints who rejected Brigham Young and polygamy and chose Joseph Smith's eldest son to lead them; it was called the Reorganized Church until 2001.

Which church president announced the 1978 revelation that opened the LDS priesthood to Black men?

Spencer W. Kimball. The bar he lifted went back to Brigham Young rather than to the church's founder: in Joseph Smith's lifetime a few Black men had been ordained.

What share of their income are Latter-day Saints expected to donate to the church?

One-tenth. The gift is called tithing, from the Old English word for a tenth, and paying it in full is one of the conditions for entering the church's temples.

As of 2025, about how many members did the LDS Church count worldwide?

18 million, by the church's own rolls. Fewer than half of them live in the United States, where the faith began, after nearly two centuries of sending missionaries abroad.

Young men serving as Latter-day Saint missionaries are addressed by which title?

Elder. It is a priesthood office a man can receive at 18, which is why teenagers carry a title that sounds like grey hair; women missionaries are addressed as Sister.

Which book joins the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants in the LDS Church's scriptures?

Pearl of Great Price. It began as a pamphlet printed in Liverpool in 1851 for British converts who wanted to know more about their new church, and was made scripture in 1880.

Why does the LDS Church encourage members to do genealogical research?

To perform temple ordinances for the dead. Living members are baptised as stand-ins for ancestors who died outside the faith, and the church teaches that the dead stay free to accept or refuse.

Joseph Smith published the Book of Abraham in 1842 from what source?

Egyptian papyri. A travelling showman sold the scrolls to church members along with four mummies in 1835; the fragments that survive have since been identified as ordinary funerary texts.

At which sporting event did the Tabernacle Choir sing in 2002?

Winter Olympics. Salt Lake City was the host, and the choir's unpaid volunteers sang at the opening ceremony and kept on performing throughout the Games.

In 2018 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir renamed itself the Tabernacle Choir at what?

Temple Square. The church's president had asked that year that 'Mormon' no longer be used as a name for the church, so its best-known choir took the name of its home instead.

The Tabernacle Choir won a Grammy for its 1959 recording of which song?

Battle Hymn of the Republic. The single, made with the Philadelphia Orchestra, crossed over to the pop charts and became the most popular recording the choir had made.

From 1856, Mormon emigrants too poor to buy ox teams crossed the plains pulling what?

Handcarts. They cost far less than wagons, and most companies got through safely, but two that set out late in 1856 were trapped by early snow in Wyoming and more than 200 people died.

Winter Quarters, where Mormon exiles camped in 1846–47 on their way west, lies in what is now which city?

Omaha. Thousands of Saints dug in there in log cabins and dugouts on Omaha tribal land, and hunger and crowding spread disease through the camp before the trek west resumed.

Brigham Young Academy, forerunner of BYU, was founded in 1875 in which city?

Provo. Its principal from 1876, the German immigrant Karl Maeser, was told that not even the alphabet or the multiplication tables should be taught without the Spirit of God.

The LDS Church owns a chain of bookstores under what name?

Deseret Book. Deseret is the Book of Mormon's word for honeybee; the pioneers proposed it as the name of their state and took the beehive as their emblem.

Which translation does the LDS Church use as its official Bible in English?

King James Version is the official text for English speakers only, and members in other countries read other translations in their own languages.

Whose own sword did Nephi use to cut off its drunken owner's head inside the walls of Jerusalem?

Laban had refused to give up the brass plates, so Nephi then put on the man's own clothes and armour to carry the records out of his treasury.

Which brass ball of curious workmanship, holding two spindles, guided Nephi's family through the wilderness?

Liahona is translated in the Book of Mormon as a compass, and the ball simply appeared on the ground outside a tent door one morning.

In the tree of life vision in 1 Nephi, what do travellers cling to through a mist of darkness?

An iron rod ran along a riverbank straight to the tree, and Nephi was later told that it stood for the word of God.

Which prophet was burned to death after rebuking wicked King Noah and his priests in the Book of Mormon?

Abinadi was scourged with burning sticks, and he died warning his killers that they would one day suffer death by fire themselves.

Which missionary won the trust of the Lamanite king Lamoni by cutting off the arms of men raiding his flocks?

Ammon had asked only to be a servant of the king, and he fought off the raiders at the waters of Sebus with a sling and a sword.

Which prophet led 2,000 stripling warriors, young men who had never fought before yet did not fear death?

Helaman found after one fierce fight that every one of his young soldiers had been wounded, yet not a single one had died.

In the Book of Abraham, what is the name of the heavenly body said to be nearest to the throne of God?

Kolob also names a well-loved Latter-day Saint hymn about hurrying there, and a region of canyons in Zion National Park.

Which biblical prophet does Nephi quote at length, filling chapters 12 to 24 of 2 Nephi?

Isaiah's words appear in 1 and 2 Nephi largely as they do in the Bible, and these chapters dwell on judgment, restoration and the Messiah.

Which subtitle did the LDS Church add to official editions of the Book of Mormon in 1982?

Another Testament of Jesus Christ has been part of the title on official editions ever since, more than 150 years after the first printing of 1830.

Which book, named for a chief judge who gave up his seat to preach, is the longest in the Book of Mormon?

Alma runs to 63 chapters and takes up almost a third of the whole Book of Mormon.

Which Book of Mormon writer went to hunt beasts in the forest and ended up praying all day and after dark?

Enos called it his wrestle before God, and the whole story fills a book that is only a single chapter long.

What did King Benjamin have built so the crowd camped around the temple could hear his farewell address?

A tower was not enough for so large a crowd, so the king had his words written down and sent out to those beyond the sound of his voice.

What name did a Nephite chief captain give the torn coat he raised on a pole as a rallying banner?

Title of Liberty was a strip of his own coat on which he wrote a call to remember God, religion, freedom, peace, wives and children.

What did the brother of Jared ask the Lord to touch so that his sealed barges would have light at sea?

Sixteen clear stones, which he had melted out of rock, shone after the Lord touched them one by one with his finger.

In 3 Nephi, the risen Christ descends to a crowd gathered around the temple in which land?

Bountiful is where the crowd heard a voice three times before they understood it and saw a man in a white robe coming down.

Jacob 5, a long allegory credited to the prophet Zenos, compares the house of Israel to which kind of tree?

Olive branches, tame and wild, are grafted back and forth across a vineyard to stand for the scattering and gathering of Israel.

A mob wrecked the press printing which 1833 collection of Joseph Smith's revelations, later the Doctrine and Covenants?

Book of Commandments was never finished, because most of its uncut, unbound sheets were destroyed along with the press.

Which set of seven theological lessons, printed in the Doctrine and Covenants from 1835, was removed in 1921?

Lectures on Faith supplied the doctrine half of the book's title, but the church said they had never been accepted as more than lessons.

What did the Zoramites call the high stand, wide enough for one person, where each recited the same prayer?

Rameumptom means the holy stand, and the worshippers who climbed it thanked God for choosing them above their neighbours.

Which grunge band covered a parody of the children's hymn sung in Primary as 'Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam'?

Nirvana played it at their 1993 MTV Unplugged session, where Kurt Cobain introduced it as a rendition of an old Christian song.

Which Primary song, with words written by Naomi W. Randall in 1957, has been translated into more than 90 languages?

I Am a Child of God was first sung at a stake Primary conference, and it entered the adult hymnbook in 1985 without its later fourth verse.

Which springtime Primary action song about blossom on a fruit tree was written by Georgia W. Bello?

Popcorn Popping carries a 1957 copyright and comes with the instruction to improvise actions as the words suggest.

Which composer wrote the Primary favourites 'A Child's Prayer' and 'I Love to See the Temple'?

Janice Kapp Perry reworked 'A Child's Prayer' from a song she wrote in despair over an injured hand, and she later made six albums with senator Orrin Hatch.

Which blind hymn writer from New York wrote the words to the Primary favourite 'Give, Said the Little Stream'?

Fanny Crosby wrote more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs, among them 'Blessed Assurance', often under pen names that hid how many were hers.

Aurelia Rogers gathered children for the very first Primary in 1878 in which pioneer town?

Farmington's first lesson warned boys not to steal fruit from orchards and girls not to hang on wagons, because Rogers thought the town's boys were growing unruly.

The Primary song 'The Wise Man and the Foolish Man' retells a parable about builders from which address by Jesus?

Sermon on the Mount closes with this parable in Matthew's Gospel, and the Children's Songbook credits the song as a Southern folk song with hand actions.

The letters CTR, worn on rings by Primary children since 1970, stand for which motto taken from a hymn?

Choose the Right is taught to children as a reminder to make good choices, and the letters sit on a shield designed by members of the Primary board.

Once a year, Primary children perform the songs they have learned for the whole congregation during which service?

Sacrament meeting is handed over to the children for this presentation, which is held in the last few months of the year.

The Children's Songbook of 1989 replaced which earlier Primary song collection, published twenty years before?

Sing with Me dated from 1969, and the book that replaced it was first published in English before spreading to other languages.

In Latter-day Saint teaching, which is the highest of the three degrees of glory, likened to the sun?

Celestial kingdom is described as the permanent home of God the Father, and Joseph Smith taught that its highest level is kept for couples sealed in marriage.

In LDS teaching about the premortal council, which gift did Lucifer propose to remove so that no soul would be lost?

Agency, the power to decide for oneself, would have vanished under his plan, and he demanded God's own power and glory as his reward.

What name do Latter-day Saints give the barrier that hides all memory of premortal life from people on earth?

The veil of forgetfulness is meant to leave people freer to make their own decisions, and it is said to be lifted again before the final judgment.

What name is given to the few who commit the unpardonable sin and so inherit no kingdom of glory at all?

Sons of perdition are believed to be a small number of people, and their fate is banishment with Satan instead of a place in any of the three glories.

What name is given to the premortal conflict that ended with Lucifer and his followers being cast out?

War in Heaven is the name for the struggle after which Lucifer became Satan, and those who sided with him were denied physical bodies of their own.

In LDS belief, which archangel led God's forces against Lucifer before being born on earth as Adam?

Michael is not the only heavenly figure given a mortal life in this teaching, which also holds that Gabriel lived on earth as Noah.

Which gift does LDS teaching say every person will receive through Christ, however obediently they lived on earth?

Resurrection comes to everyone, obedient or not, in this teaching, while the reward a person receives afterwards depends on how they lived.

Besides salvation and redemption, the Book of Mormon calls God's design for his children the great plan of what?

Happiness is the word a father uses when he explains to a wayward child why death and punishment have a place in God's justice.

Latter-day Saints teach that Christ began to take on the sins of the world in which garden, bleeding at every pore?

Gethsemane is where Latter-day Saints say the atoning sacrifice began, to be completed on the cross at Calvary.

Which Lamanite prophet stood on the city wall of Zarahemla and foretold Christ's birth five years ahead?

Samuel climbed the wall because the city would not let him in, and the arrows shot at him as he preached there all missed.

In 3 Nephi, which sign told believers in the Americas that Christ had been born across the sea?

A night as bright as day came just in time, because unbelievers had set a date to put the believers to death if the sign failed.

In Nephi's vision of the Saviour's birth, in which city does he see a virgin he calls most beautiful and fair?

Nazareth is named in the vision, which then shows the same virgin again, this time carrying a child in her arms.

Which Hollywood actor played a lonely widowed janitor in the LDS Church's 1980 TV film 'Mr. Krueger's Christmas'?

Jimmy Stewart's character daydreams his way through Christmas Eve, at one point imagining himself conducting the Tabernacle Choir.

Before a 2019 rule change, LDS missionaries could phone home only at Christmas and usually on which other day?

Mother's Day was the usual second call until the rules were relaxed to allow a weekly phone call, text or video chat with family.

Which sign in the sky, unlike any seen before, did a Book of Mormon prophet promise for Christ's birth?

A new star did appear when the time came, echoing the one that the wise men follow in Matthew's Gospel.

Since 2017 the LDS Church has set up red vending kiosks each Christmas that sell charity donations under which name?

Giving Machines pass on every cent to the charities taking part, because the church itself pays for the upkeep and the floor space.

On Christmas Day 1832, Joseph Smith recorded a prophecy that war would begin with a rebellion in which state?

South Carolina was then defying federal tariffs, and nearly thirty years later the Civil War did open there, at Fort Sumter.

The Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert is typically aired the following December on BYUtv and which other US network?

PBS viewers see the concert a year after it is staged, when a live album is typically released as well.

Which Gospel's Christmas story is read aloud by a guest narrator at the Tabernacle Choir's annual Christmas concert?

Luke supplies the reading most years, and guest artists join the choir on stage for the concert too.

Which secret band, sworn to protect one another with hidden signs and words, plagues the Nephites in the Book of Mormon?

Gadianton robbers took their name from an early leader who plotted to have a chief judge assassinated and take the seat for himself.