With Mormons Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney among the top contenders for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, a new documentary explores their religion and how it plays out in their political careers. “A Mormon President,” premiering next month, touches on America’s first Mormon presidential candidate, Joseph Smith, his assassination and the long-running rift between Mormonism and other faiths. Adam Christing, the film’s producer, spoke with The Hill about the challenges facing a Mormon candidate, prominent Mormon leaders in today’s government and what he identifies as an “anti-Mormon prejudice in this country.” Q: With Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney running for president, what do voters need to know about the history of Mormonism?
I think they would be enlightened to know that the same problems or challenges facing those candidates, especially Romney, who does seem to embrace his religion more tightly than Huntsman … [were faced by] Joseph Smith the Prophet, [the Mormon founder who] ran for president in 1844. He was challenged by a party called the Anti-Mormon Party, and we noticed that in many states, including Illinois and Missouri, the original states where Mormonism began, some of the same controversies and concerns back then — about polygamy, Mormon teachings about a plurality of gods — are some of the concerns that people have about Mormonism today.