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Gallup: Provo-Orem, Utah most optimistic US city

While the vast majority of Americans express satisfaction about the community or area where they live, residents of some metro areas are highly optimistic about where their community is headed, whereas residents of other communities are largely discouraged. Across 190 U.S. metro areas, residents of Provo-Orem, Utah, are the most likely nationwide to say their city or area is getting better as a place to live (76%), while residents of Binghamton, N.Y., are the least likely to say this (27.8%).

Mormon artist battles post-9/11 Muslim stereotypes

Andrew Kosorok was disturbed when some Americans began to view Islam as a religion of violence after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “The overwhelming majority of Muslims view the terrorists as the overwhelming majority of Christians view Charles Manson or David Koresh,” said Kosorok, an artist and Brigham Young University adjunct professor. “We don’t recognize what they practiced as being Christian.”

Mormon in America: Meet the Jacksons, a modern Mormon love story

When Juleen Jackson met her husband, Al, he was not the man she had pictured marrying. The African-American Al Jackson was gripping a beer at a bar. "I was holding my beer and I had the beer of a buddy out on the dance floor," Al Jackson told Kate Snow in an interview airing Thursday, Aug. 23 at 10pm/9c on Rock Center's hour-long look at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 'Mormon in America.'

Latter-day Saint Life

BYU "Living Legends" Perform Before the Queen of Tonga

The exciting international performing group, Brigham Young University's "Living Legends," sang and danced before Her Majesty, the Queen of Tonga, Queen Nanasipau'u, Saturday night in the Atele Stadium of Nuku'alofa, Tonga.

‘Book of Mormon Girl’ gets audience with Jon Stewart

A national book editor once told Joanna Brooks that if she were a Presbyterian married to a Jew, her coming-of-age autobiography would find a ready audience across the nation. Interfaith marriages are big, the editor said. But a Mormon? No way. So Brooks, an award-winning scholar of religion and American culture and senior correspondent for ReligionDispatches.org, published the book herself in January.

Latter-day Saint Life

How 'Thieves and Robbers' Point to the Divine Origin of the Book of Mormon

In the Book of Mormon, we find the terms thieves and robbers. To modern Americans, the words are interchangeable (which is what we find in the King James Bible). Under ancient Near Eastern law, however, there is a significant difference between the two types of criminals and how the law should punish them. Without exception, the Book of Mormon uses the terms thieves and robbers correctly.

Rapidly growing Mormon community in Harlem looks to reach out

As Mitt Romney’s status as the Republican presidential nominee is becoming more and more certain, Mormonism—Romney’s declared faith—is facing new scrutiny. Last month, a comment in the Washington Post by a Brigham Young University professor prompted an official Mormon Church statement clarifying its position on the historical priesthood ban on African-Americans, which was lifted in 1978. “We condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church,” the statement read.

National poll: God's approval rating 52%

Americans give God a 52 percent job performance approval rating with only a 9 percent disapproval rating, according to a Public Policy Polling poll released last week. "It turns out, if God exists, voters would give God a strong 52-9 approval rating," wrote a blogger for the polling group in a post about the results. "This is hardly a surprise considering the vast majority of the country believes in an infallible deity, but some of the crosstabs are quite interesting."

Utah ready for Olympic bid when U.S. gives okay

Members of the state's Olympic Exploratory Committee announced Friday their recommendations about a future Winter Games bid will be made public as soon as their findings are turned over to Gov. Gary Herbert and Salt Lake Mayor Ralph Becker. The committee decided to go ahead with its report to the governor and the mayor in late August despite the U.S. Olympic Committee's decision earlier this month not to submit an American bid for the next Winter Games to be awarded, in 2022.

Mormon History Group Honors Darius Gray

Seven years before President Spencer W. Kimball received a revelation allowing black men to be ordained to the priesthood in the LDS Church, Darius Gray knelt in prayer with two other black male Latter-day Saints. That soon led to the founding of what would be the Genesis group, a support organization for African-American church members formed with general leaders of the church — including Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — as advisers.