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Explain It to Me · Vox

The book of Mormon influence

March 22, 2026·31 min·2 clips
Missouri's governor issued a formal extermination order demanding Mormons be removed from the state or killed, and a militia attacked a Mormon settlement.
Why are there so many Mormon influencers? The host starts with that current culture question after an ad block, then uses it to open a much older story about Mormonism and American belonging. Mom talk blew up fast, and the excerpt treats that rise as part of Mormonism moving closer to the center of American culture. That was not always the deal. To explain the turn, the host calls McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic who is also Mormon. Coppins starts at the beginning, with Joseph Smith as a young charismatic figure in upstate New York who said he had a vision from God and Jesus Christ. Then comes the angel, who, in Coppins's telling, directed Smith to uncover an ancient record hidden in a nearby hill. That record was the Book of Mormon. Coppins says the early movement ran almost immediately into state sanctioned persecution. The host's Oh, wow makes sense because the details get grim: Mormons fleeing, a governor ordering removal, and violence close behind. Coppins traces the flight from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois, with each stop sounding like another failed attempt to worship in peace. Missouri was especially brutal. He points to an extermination order from the governor, demanding that Mormons leave the state or be killed. By the end, Mormon identity feels caught between devotion to an American ideal and rejection by America itself.

As heard by us

A social-media question becomes a sharp, accessible history of Mormonism's fraught path into the American mainstream.

A question about why Mormon influencers seem so visible opens into a concise history of how Mormonism moved from persecution toward the American mainstream.

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Why you'd press play

Why Mormon influencers make sense once you see the history behind them.

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