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Richard N. Ostling is coauthor, with his wife Joan K. Ostling, of Mormon America: The Power and the Promise. He was a senior correspondent for Time magazine for many years before becoming a religion writer for the Associated Press. After Ostling's field reporting on the LDS church for Time's "Mormons Inc." cover story in 1997, Harper San Francisco approached the Ostlings about writing a comprehensive portrait of the religion.

The book has drawn praise from both believing Mormons and evangelical Christians, and criticism from church headquarters in Salt Lake City, which said the Ostlings "take a secular approach to a spiritual subject."

During a recent national book tour, Ostling—;who calls himself a "conventional Protestant"—;spoke with associate editor Douglas LeBlanc at CT's offices.

What sort of parallels have you observed between the evangelical and Mormon subcultures?

If you extract the theology from them, you have two cultures that are very similar—;devoted to family, devoted to their Scriptures, devoted to their churches, filled with anxiety about the moral direction of the American experiment, and feeling set upon by the broader culture. Mormons tend to believe they're the only ones who are getting beaten up by the academic world and by the media and Hollywood, and of course evangelicals share that; they sort of feel they're the special targets. Conservative Catholics feel that they're put upon. I'm sure Orthodox Jews have the same feeling, and we all know that Muslims do. To some extent they're all correct, because zealous, devout, high-profile religious communities do rub against the broader culture.

It seems that Mormons have done a fairly remarkable job of assimilating.

The current prophet, Gordon Hinckley, is very public relations-minded. He is the godfather of Mormon PR. Under the Hinckley administration there's been a major effort to mainstream the church. This has largely been achieved, except in doctrine. Mormonism has become as much a part of the landscape as the Southern Baptists or Jews or Muslims or any other defined religious minority group. The two key moments of this are 1904, which is the second manifesto against polygamy, and the revelation on accepting black men into the priesthood in 1978.

As the Mormon church strengthens its mainstream image, does that create new pressures for changing its theology?

Surprisingly, I think the answer is no. Because Mormonism is the least democratic of the major religious bodies in this country, it's the least likely to openly discuss and reexamine its deeply held religious beliefs. That also would be true for Catholics and conservative Protestant bodies equally. What's very unusual in Mormonism is the extent to which authority controls trivial questions.

A Mormon congregation cannot use guitars in worship in Africa. A congregation must use the women's Relief Society curriculum written in Salt Lake City, even if it's in Borneo or Botswana. The degree of centralized control is extraordinary. The Church Handbook of Instructions, which is an amazing document—;amazing because members of the church are not allowed to read it—;governs the rules and regulations. For instance, you can't have a Gentile [non-Mormon] softball team play a game on a Mormon-owned field. You cannot have paintings, except in certain places, in a ward building. No candles may be lit in the sanctuary. Organs and pianos are allowed, other musical instruments are not. The women's Relief Society cannot invite a speaker unless the male leaders of the ward give their approval. You cannot play a non-LDS video on a VCR in a ward building. And it goes on and on.

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February 7 2000, Vol. 44, No. 2