by Sharon Lindbloom
3 February 2025

The Netflix series, “American Primeval,” continues to be a hot topic in the news — and elsewhere. As reported by LDS historian Barbara Jones Brown, the series is “generating popular interest,” so much so that “books about the Mountain Meadows and Bear River massacres, along with biographies of Brigham Young, ‘Wild Bill’ Hickman and Jim Bridger, are popping up on bestseller lists.” As a result, in a somewhat rare move, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released a statement that publicly criticizes the series.

On January 24 (2025) the LDS church’s official Newsroom posted an article titled, “Depictions that Deceive: When Historical Fiction Does Harm.” Here the church takes issue with the way the “recently released streaming series” portrays Brigham Young (“as a villainous, violent fanatic”), early Utah history (“graphic and sensationalized”), and the 1857 community of Latter-day Saints (the Mountain Meadows Massacre atrocities being “inaccurately…reflective of a whole faith group”). All these things, the church asserts, are “dangerously misleading.” Furthermore,

“The problem with such deceptive, graphic and sensationalized storytelling is that it not only obscures reality and hinders genuine understanding but can foster animosity, hate and even violence.”

Indeed, at least part of the blame for the Mountain Meadows Massacre can be laid upon graphic and sensationalized words that Brigham Young thundered from his pulpit. Discussing the Massacre, Barbara Jones Brown notes, “Young believed the soldiers were coming to persecute his people and he used violent rhetoric to rile up Latter-day Saints to resist them.” And another LDS historian, Matt Grow, writes, “Like other frontier preachers, Brigham’s sermons sometimes included fiery language and violent rhetoric…” 

Brigham Young’s sensationalized portrayal of the U.S. Army’s intentions once it reached Utah Territory, namely, to hang the church’s leaders and “slay all the Latterdaysaints, men, women and children,” did lead to harmful “animosity, hate, and even violence” like the LDS church’s recent statement warns against. (Quote from Brigham Young’s 8/16/1857 unpublished sermon, quoted in Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 89.)

The Mountain Meadows Massacre is an example of one kind of danger that can result from sensationalized storytelling, but there’s another type of danger that comes from depictions that deceive. 

Anyone familiar with Mormonism has heard the official story of the beginnings of the LDS church. It’s a sort of adventure story filled with visions, treasure, heroes, villains, persecutions, brute force, and amazing escapes. It is sensational storytelling. Some find the story so compelling that they conclude the LDS church must be true and hang their hope for Heaven upon it. But the story is a depiction that deceives.

For example,

• The story says that in 1820 Joseph Smith was confused about all the different Christian religions having revivals near his home. He didn’t know which church to join, so he went into the woods to pray and ask God. But in fact, according to historical records, there were no Christian revivals near Joseph’s home in 1820. The story’s timeline must be moved ahead to 1824 to find the kind of religious excitement relayed in it. But that would make the 14-year-old boy Joseph a young man of 18 years and make the rest of the story’s timeline untenable.
• The First Vision is presented as an appearance of God the Father and Jesus Christ to Joseph. Here he was told all the churches of that day were wrong, and he must not join any of them. Yet there are many conflicting facts present in other accounts of this reported vision (e.g., the date of the vision, Joseph’s age, who/how many/what sort of beings appeared to him, the primary message he received, etc. Scroll down for a helpful chart.); these conflicts are not revealed as the church tells the story.
• Joseph is presented as a hard-working, obedient “pure-minded boy,” but the story excludes the pertinent fact that he was tried in 1826 and found guilty of crimes related to his business of glass-looking (that is, hiring himself out to find buried treasure by looking through a seer stone. Later, Joseph “translated” gold plates into what became the Book of Mormon via the same seer stone method). 
• Despite Joseph claiming that Jesus Christ Himself told him not to join any church, eight years later, in 1828, he became a probationary member of the Methodist Church. But this puzzling fact is not part of the official story.
• Following the First Vision, the story goes, Joseph was mocked and persecuted by people who did not believe he’d really had a vision. But there’s no contemporary evidence that Joseph told anyone about this vision in the early days, let alone that he was persecuted because of it.

This is just a small sample of some of ways the LDS church’s storytelling differs from the historical facts. The First Vision story has been sensationalized. It is deceptive in the way it’s presented. It “obscures reality and hinders genuine understanding” regarding the origins of Mormonism. The result is “dangerously misleading” and here’s why.

The January 2025 edition of the LDS church’s Liahona magazine includes an article titled, “3 Reasons We Teach Others about the First Vision.” The author notes the futility of trying to proselytize and convince people that the LDS church is true by reasoning from the Bible. “Instead,” he writes, “I would rely on latter-day revelation. Specifically, I would teach the First Vision because it is God’s answer to the question of which church is true…” (U8). 

But only if the First Vision story itself is true, and that is the question at hand.

The LDS Church’s 15^th President said,

“Our whole strength rests on the validity of that vision. It either oc­curred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud… upon that unique and wonderful experience stands the validity of this church.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “The Marvelous Foundation of our Faith,” Ensign (Conference Edition), November 2002, 80. Ellipsis mine)

The deceptive storytelling employed by the LDS church is dangerously misleading because if the story of the First Vision is not true then the church is not true. Because Mormonism leads people away from the biblical God, the biblical Jesus, and the biblical gospel (see 2 Corinthians 11:4), the souls of those who place their eternal hope in what the LDS church promises – but cannot deliver – are in great eternal jeopardy. 

Depictions that deceive can be dangerous in different ways. Both “American Primeval” and the First Vision story as told by the LDS church have problems with their timelines. Both lack full contextualization. Both are inconsistent with the historical records regarding the stories’ characters, their words, and their actions. But in the case of “American Primeval,” it is clearly presented as historical fiction, alerting its audience to the fact that it is not to be understood as fully accurate history. In the case of the First Vision, though the LDS church knows of the discrepancies in the historical record, it presents the story as absolutely, unequivocally true in every respect. It is a dangerously misleading “depiction that deceives.” Reader, I encourage you to be mindful of the words of Jesus: “See that you are not led astray.” (Luke 21:8)

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To see Sharon’s other news articles, click here.