Helen Whitney in Sunstone

Helen Whitney’s 4 hour documentary The Mormons first aired on PBS a year ago, as you remember. The PBS site with all the interviews is linked over to the right. Yesterday I got the December 2007 Sunstone Magazine ($7.50, definitely worth it) at Sam Weller’s that had her on the cover, she wrote an 11 page article about her 3 ½ years on the project, her 1000+ interviews, and almost as many books. There are an additional 8 pages of reactions from various people. Here are my edited excerpts of it

A study of the Mormons is filled with the sublime and the ridiculous, with beauty and boredom… when I studied monks in 1981 I found men who were fiercely honest, flawed as we all are, and yet willing to face their weaknesses- as well as those of their brothers- honestly and compassionately… not avoiding them as many of us do…. Mormonism is not a Sunday religion… Joseph Smith is one of the most complex, contradictory, and fascinating religious leaders of all time… but TV executives fear the controversies surrounding religion… The Church has a reputation for being closed and difficult for outsiders, especially journalists, to penetrate… the walls were going to come down anyway with Mitt Romney’s candidacy… I am a questioner… I am not drawn to those who think they have the answers… I met people who possess a surreal certainty. Their faith seems unaffected by doubt. It can be maddening. It can be infuriating… this religion emphasizes certainty- “knowing.” Doubt and question undermine faith and are dangerous… this religion is shockingly literal… the ecstatic leap of faith element is at the heart of all religions… spiritual figures like Joseph Smith are men who give new meaning to the word contradictions… Joseph Smith is a leader whose coat has many colors, a frontier Bill Clinton… there is violence, lying, and theft.. an undeniable streak of criminality. That is always true in religion and in most great religious leaders… even if not addressed in the hagiography of the devout… there is richly suggestive biographical material from which to draw a psychological portrait- the relationship with his failed father, his powerful mother, the death of his brother Alvin, the horrific operation on his leg, and much more…his anguished cry “No man knows my history” is deeply modern –postmodern, in fact. He is a man who can’t put his history together and is experimenting with his many selves… Mormonism is so new there is no place to hide... I force myself to cast the net broadly: to talk to everyone, to read broadly. To accept the terror of being in the dark… they hide from Big Love, but they’d prefer Big Love to Warren Jeffs… I was stunned by the number of amateur Mormon historians. These people have day jobs as doctors, architects, and lawyers, but spend their nights researching some corner of Mormon history… The gulf between the faith-promoting folks and the “let the chips fall where they may” folks is huge… extravagant appreciation of Joseph Smith and equally extravagant condemnation of contemporary Mormonism… I needed people who had recently died, Sterling McMurrin, Eugene England, Dean May, and Wallace Stegner… Terry Givens was a truly smart, elegant, conservative thinker who was able to articulate, to acknowledge his own period of doubts, to speak to the shadow side of Mormonism, with poetry, with precision… Mountain Meadows, Polygamy, The Great Accommodation, and Dissenters were 4 of my 9 defining themes… use of the pronoun "I" is better than the pompous “we believe”, better than being on autopilot… Marlin Jensen was a stunning surprise. My experience in 25 years of filmmaking is that the higher you go up the chain of power- the more you must abandon hope of getting a fresh and non rehearsed answer.. but Marlin Jensen had fresh language. He isn’t pious, he admits the difficulties, he isn’t measuring how his words will sell… Apostle Boyd K. Packer was my biggest disappointment. I had hoped that one of the most influential voices in the Church would own what he had said and written in the past… the monochromatic, dark portrait many people have of Packer could have been addressed, but he refused, responding only briefly in terse sentences, even to softball questions, even as we spent hours together…I’m only slightly sympathetic to Mormon defensiveness… no other American religion has been so persecuted… but they are secretive in an age of total transparency, when we know transparency is the disinfectant against corruption… it is the rare devout Mormon who will own the big, bold ideas… The Beehive House tour guides never even mention Brigham’s 50 plus wives. Nor is polygamy even mentioned in the Joseph Smith exhibition at the Library of Congress that the Church helped create… criticism is the fruit of absolutism and slipperiness… Own your beliefs, don’t shave off the rough edges so that they fit the mainstream Christian mold. Step into the ring with the rest of us, take your knocks- or else the smell of evasiveness and deceit will persist… many Mormons are smug, certain… they are disproportionately overrepresented in Congress, in academia, in the CEO world, same as the Jews are, and they will continue to face the suspicions that seem to always result when that is the case… When the Mormons proclaim their virtues so loudly, and Mormons do, then the danger is being accused of hypocrisy…