The darker side of Mormonism

Just as the Mormon Republican Mitt Romney emerges as a major contender for the US presidency, a blood-soaked new film and a high-profile trial are exposing the dark side of his religion. And suddenly, the biggest obstacle on his road to the White House is the faith he holds so dear. Rupert Cornwell reports

Published: 24 May 2007

It was 11 September, a crystal-clear morning with the first hint of autumn crispness, as though a cynical, mocking God had set the stage for what would be the worst act of religiously inspired terrorism in US history.

But we are not talking about New York or Washington, DC in 2001. The setting was the uplands of remote south-eastern Utah, exactly 150 years ago, in a corner of an American West that was still a violent work-in-progress. Within minutes, some 140 pioneers - a wagon-train of men, women and children headed for California - lay dead in a massacre that would not be surpassed until the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. continue...