Editor's note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 4 of the book "The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith," by Matthew Bowman, published this week by Random House. Copyright © 2012 by Matthew Bowman. All rights reserved. If the Mormons saw themselves as a new Israel, the trek west was inevitably their Exodus. For generations of Mormons, including the one that walked across the prairies, what mattered more than the destination was the act of the journey. It was a collective rite of passage that thousands of Mormons endured, as they had learned to endure all suffering: the death of their prophet, their flight from Ohio and Missouri, and their march across the plains all were taken as divinely sent education, clarifying and refining, testing the bonds that the temple ordinances had created, and they saw God's hand in every bush of berries. Many Mormons were rebaptized upon reaching Utah; they had traveled not only from the United States to the Utah territory but also from the secular realm to God's promised land, reborn into a sacred world. The banks and courts still close in Utah on July 24, the day Brigham Young crossed into the Salt Lake Valley, and the Mormons there celebrate it still, though the number of those who have ancestors who walked across the plains is a fading minority. They have become an archetype.

Whether it's climbing up the infamous 15-foot warped wall or jolting up the salmon ladder, American Ninja Warrior is known for testing contenders to their physical limits.

In a new survey conducted by Gallup, 81% of Americans said they would vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon.

FamilySearch, the largest genealogy organization in the world announced the digital release of 4 million Freedmen’s Bureau historical records and the launch of a nationwide volunteer indexing effort, Elder D. Todd Christofferson

There’s a new way for you to check your ancestry — look at your thumb.

In early February 1940, Mormon FBI agent James Ellsworth left his home in Huntington Park, California, prepared for a normal day of work. Instead, he was met by a man with a message from John Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI in Washington, D.C., instructing him to take the next possible plane to New York City.

It is coincidental that the exterior wood trim of pioneer leader Brigham Young's winter home is painted in pleasing shades of green and red — colors we associate with Christmas, a time of year when the great Mormon colonizer took up residence in St. George in his later years.

Latter-day Saint Charities, the humanitarian arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the recipient of the 2020 American Red Cross Partnership Award.

“Typically we start out wanting to do well at our jobs, do well at school, do good things in the community, learn to play the piano or sing, and so on,” Muhlestein said, “As the world lauds these accomplishments, it usually doesn’t take long until we start to use worldly standards and measure success by how well we do at work or what kinds of degrees we have.”

Among the 10 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders the White House will recognize as "Champions of Change" this week is Latter-day Saint Selu Alofipo.