The Archives

“Once a hated, hunted Utah sect, the Mormons are now a global church worth an estimated $25 billion and claiming 11 million members,” Newsweek wrote a year before Salt Lake City, the home base of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 2002. Mormons have worked to alter their often misconstrued stereotype, “With an infusion of converts from Latin America, Asia and Africa since the 1950s, it is no longer a white-bread church.” To date, their community has risen to over 16 million worldwide, with 54,000 missionaries.