Reviewed by Sharon Lindbloom
For the sake of clarity, quotations from "The Mormons" will be in bold italicized type, whereas quotations from outside sources are simply italicized.
Part two of Helen Whitney's four-hour documentary on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints originally aired on 1 May 2007. While part one covered the history of the founding of Mormonism, part two brought the viewer ahead into more modern times, taking a look at how this religion on the fringe in its early days, has become accepted and respected across America.
Part two was divided into five "Acts": "The Great Accommodation," "The Mission," "Dissenters and Exiles," "The Family," and "The Temple."
In the introduction to part two, non-Mormon broadcaster Ken Verdoia said,
"Where at one time they [the Mormons] were vilified, they were considered disloyal, in fact they were considered a knife at the back of the American experience, now they are in fact considered in some ways the very embodiment of what it means to be American. How was that brought about?"
The answer was encapsulated in the title of the first act: "The Great Accommodation."
Act one of "The Mormons" discussed how the LDS Church was able to move into America's mainstream via abandonment of some of its distinctives. Beginning with the Reed Smoot senate confirmation hearings in 1903, Mormonism was on trial and displayed before the greater American population. Mormon Historian Kathleen Flake noted that by the end of the hearings in 1907,
"Smoot himself became the poster boy of Mormonism, and Mormonism's identity radically changed as a result of this set of hearings. In part because the nation stated the terms by which it would accept Mormonism, and Mormonism began to conform to those terms."
One of the "terms" for America's acceptance of Mormonism was the abandonment of polygamy, which had ostensibly happened in 1890. "The Mormons" did not include the information that the topic of polygamy was prominent in the Smoot hearings, but it was. In fact, several LDS authorities testified to the continuing practice of "polygamous cohabitation" while on the witness stand. For example, in March 1904 sixth LDS President Joseph F. Smith testified:
"The Chairman. Do you obey the law in having five wives at this time, and having them bear to you eleven children since the manifesto of 1890?
"Mr. Smith. Mr. Chairman, I have not claimed that in that case I have obeyed the law of the land." (Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality, 235)
The following April, at the General Conference of the LDS Church, President Smith presented a "Second Manifesto" to the Mormon people which called for the excommunication of any Latter-day Saints engaging in polygamy (Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History, 168).
Another area of accommodation brought out in the documentary was patriotism. As clearly presented in part one, the Mormons hated and distrusted the United States government, beginning their exodus to Utah territory in 1846 in an effort to leave America and set up their own theocracy. In part two, historian Sarah Barringer Gordon noted that in the early twentieth century Mormons became active in the military and "recalibrated their patriotism to be loyal to the government in Washington."
These things, along with the greater financial success and stability brought about by the "sacred taxation" of the almost mandatory 10% tithe, made the LDS Church more acceptable to the American people. But later in the twentieth century there still remained one huge roadblock -- one huge accommodation necessary to place Mormonism into the "mainstream." The LDS Church needed to end its ban against Blacks holding the priesthood.
"The Mormons" included a compelling clip of author Darius Gray talking about the early official LDS view of Blacks. He alluded to this 1881 statement by third LDS President John Taylor:
"And after the flood we are told that the curse that had been pronounced upon Cain [marked by black skin] was continued through Ham's wife, as he had married a wife of that seed. And why did it pass through the flood? Because it was necessary that the devil should have a representation upon the earth as well as God." (Journal of Discourses 22:304)
In the documentary, Darius Gray asked, "How do you damn people more than to say that their existence upon the earth is to represent Satan?"
As non-Mormon author Richard Ostling pointed out, according to Mormonism,
"If you do not hold the priesthood, you can never hold any office of Church authority. It also would effect your eternal state, and so what you had, really, was a very serious disability visited upon Mormons of African descent."
Indeed, before the 1978 revelation allowing Blacks to hold the LDS priesthood, the only LDS missionaries sent to Africa served in "white South Africa" and did not bring the message of the LDS Restored gospel to the Black population. Though people in Ghana were pleading with Church leaders in Salt Lake City for Mormon missionaries to be sent to their country, Black LDS convert Sam Bainson noted, "The Church couldn't send missionaries to Ghana, to baptize them, because of the ban on the priesthood for Blacks."
But in 1978, amidst great social pressure, Church leaders gathered in the Salt Lake Temple to seek direction from God. Spencer W. Kimball was the President of the LDS Church at that time. His son, Edward, was interviewed for Ms. Whitney's documentary. Edward Kimball recounted that those who had been present when the revelation lifting the ban against Blacks was received said it was as though there were "tongues of flame as are talked about in Acts. Another said it was like a rushing of wind..." But when current LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley was asked about the experience he replied,
"I was there. There was something of a Pentecostal spirit, but on the other hand, it was peaceful, quiet, not a cataclysmic thing in any sense. It was just a feeling that came over all of us and we knew that it was the right thing at the right time and that we should proceed."
With these contradictory accounts, PBS Viewers were left wondering: Was it a "pentecostal experience" or a "peaceful, quiet...feeling"?
Whatever actually happened in the Mormon Temple on 1 June 1978, Richard Ostling summed it up well:
"What happened in 1978 was that this burden was lifted from Black Mormons. More importantly, a huge burden was lifted from Mormonism because it was rid of theological racism."
Finally, the last "term" for American acceptance that the LDS Church has accommodated, according to the documentary, was one of caring for the needs of others. Pointing out that the Church Welfare System had been designed to help only Mormons, in more recent years crisis relief by the Church has been extended to assist non-members as well. This is one of the LDS Church's obvious strengths. According to LDS author Terryl Givens, the Church has responded to over 150 major crises around the world, explaining that even before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, LDS help was on its way.
Louisiana resident James Madison stated that in the aftermath of Katrina, "Nobody was there on the ground with us, except for the Mormons in their yellow tee-shirts who showed up to help us clean up."
This is one place in which "The Mormons" really dropped the ball. The documentary did nothing to challenge Madison's statement or set it in a greater context. Perhaps in Madison's neighborhood he only saw Mormon relief efforts, but in truth, the Mormons were not the only ones on the ground to help hurricane victims clean up.
The Southern Baptist Convention also had relief on the way before Katrina made landfall. World Relief coordinated thousands of volunteers from churches across America. The Red Cross coordinated hundreds of thousands of "disaster relief workers from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands [who] have responded to their neighbors in need." Within a few days after the hurricane hit,
"Samaritan's Purse staff and volunteers, supported by a tractor-trailer loaded with tools and supplies, are clearing debris and repairing roofs in low-income neighborhoods in the Mobile area, which was battered by high winds, torrential rains, and massive flooding. A second Disaster Relief Unit is helping hurricane victims in Biloxi, Mississippi, another area hit particularly hard by Katrina." ("Rebuilding After The Storm," September 4, 2005, http://www.samaritanspurse.org/MP_Article.asp?ArticleID=42)
The humanitarian efforts of the LDS Church are indeed praiseworthy, but the way its efforts were presented in "The Mormons" cam as a slap in the face to the thousands of other people and organizations that sacrificed much to come to the aid of those in need.
Act two of "The Mormons" discussed the LDS Church's missionary efforts from the Church's inception to the present. The program's narrator, David Ogden Stiers, began with this interesting comment: "The Mormons have put the future of their church in the hands of 19 year-olds." This is true today, but it has not always been so.
As noted in the documentary, early Mormonism found fertile ground in Great Britain when it sent male missionaries of all ages and circumstances of life. In the nineteenth century Mormonism gained 71,000 British converts, 17,000 of which emigrated to the United States to join the American Latter-day Saints. U.S. Senator Robert Bennett said part of the missionary message to the British was this: "Ya gotta believe in the Book of Mormon, ya gotta believe in baptism, and ya gotta move to Utah. That's a pretty tough missionary sell."
A tough sell, yes; but it probably would have been much tougher had the British converts been given the complete facts about the American Mormon doctrine of plural marriage. "The Mormons" neglected to inform viewers that while Brigham Young was preaching in Utah about the necessity of men taking multiple wives, the doctrine was being denied in England. The Fifth European edition of the Doctrine and Covenants (printed in Liverpool in 1866) continued to deny the practice by calling it a "crime."
"Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again." (Doctrine and Covenants, 1835 ed., 101:4 ; 1866 Liverpool ed., Section 109:4; also cited in Documentary History of the Church 2:247)
In this segment, LDS author Richard Bushman explained that Joseph Smith believed training was not necessary for missionaries; they only needed to be commissioned. But today's LDS Church does things a bit differently. The documentary narration pointed out that there are seventeen Missionary Training Centers around the world. "It is a spiritual book camp where young men and women are trained to talk, sing, and pray in 30 languages...They learn lesson plans designed to take the potential convert to the goal of baptism."
The documentary included some interesting footage of missionaries in training shot inside the Provo MTC as they watched themselves on video while their facial expressions and body language were critiqued. "The Mormons" also presented some clips of missionaries on the street trying to interest people in their message. Nobody cared to listen. LDS Convert and returned missionary Calvin Harper said that he had spent 60 to 70 hours on the street each week during his mission, yet he'd "never had one conversion. You'd go weeks without teaching sometimes. People didn't want to hear."
Mormon missionaries were filmed explaining Joseph Smith's First Vision to a pedestrian. The missionary said, "Joseph asked, 'Which church should I join?' The Lord told him that he should join none of those churches. But They had a great work for Joseph to do." What is interesting about this exchange, something most people viewing the documentary probably missed, is that the Mormon missionary left out a very important part of the story. The LDS Scripture Pearl of Great Price says of Smith's vision:
"I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right...and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personages who had addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt;..." (Joseph Smith--History 1:18-19)
This is the basis upon which the LDS Church was founded. Not just that Smith was to refrain from joining an existing church and begin a better one, but that all of the churches were "wrong" -- apostate -- and those professing creedal beliefs were "corrupt," holding to doctrinal ideas that God called "abominations." It's too bad that "The Mormons" did not draw attention to that fact.
The documentary briefly explored member retention in the LDS Church, revealing the shocking fact that "Mormon conversions...have declined in recent decades and over 50% of new Church members will fall away from their faith." Sociology professor Rick Phillips said conversion to the Mormon Church involves a "radical transformation of someone's life." He gave, as examples, the financial and time commitments demanded from typical LDS members. He said, "Retaining a Latter-day Saint is a pretty serious enterprise; more serious than retaining the average Charismatic Christian or conservative Christian, this is a church that demands everything."
But, as pointed out in "The Mormons," sacrifice is not the only reason people leave the faith. Former Mormon Tal Bachman (son of Randy Bachman of the band Bachman-Turner Overdrive) told his story. After serving a highly successful mission for the Church in Argentina, Bachman left the Church after concluding that the revelations of Joseph Smith were not authentic. In a moving interview, Bachman said the LDS Church,
"for whatever else it might be, it wasn't what it claimed to be...We risked our lives for the Church in Argentina… I don't think that I, that I can delude myself into thinking, or to making it ok for my children to put their lives on the line for the thing if it's not what it claims to be. It might be the best thing ever invented, but if it's invented, it's not worth dying for."
LDS convert Betty Stevenson also told her story -- one of the drugs and crime that marked her life before hearing the Mormon story "about this white boy, a dead angel, and some gold plates." Stevenson said she responded to the Mormon message of hope, specifically that "families can be together forever." For Stevenson, her hopeless life made her eager for hope, and this gift of hope has made a difference in her life. Yet, the ultimate apex of her hope is aimed at eternity: spiritual life rather than spiritual death. For the viewer, Tal Bachman's recent words must have echoed through this story: "It might be the best thing ever invented, but if it's invented, it's not worth dying for."
Act three of "The Mormons" was the most powerful segment of the second part of the documentary. Not surprisingly, it was also the segment Mormons objected to most strenuously.
The narrator began,
"As the LDS Church has grown, control over the Mormon story has become all the more important. That has led to increasing conflict with some Mormon intellectuals who challenge the Church's official history and the authority of its leaders."
"The Mormons" took a look at otherwise faithful Latter-day Saints who got into trouble with their church for publicly disagreeing with LDS leaders. Some problems stemmed from non-sanitized reporting of Mormon history (Fawn Brodie, Juanita Brooks, Leonard J. Arrington, Grant Palmer), others for publicly disagreeing with the Church's stand on doctrinal and social issues (Margaret Toscano, Sonia Johnson). Philosophy professor Jeffrey Nielsen explained,
"There is the thought that intellectuals ask questions, questions lead to doubts, doubts lead to a loss of testimony, loss of testimony leads to you falling away from the Church, and there's a great fear in the Church that if you openly look at these things, that you will doubt, and if you doubt, well, there goes the whole purpose of life."
LDS Apostle Dallin Oaks said that a church leader's job is to be a watchman on the wall, to warn church members of danger.
"I think in any day the watchmen on the tower are going to say, 'Intellectualism is a danger to the Church,' and it is at extreme points, and if people leave their faith behind and follow strictly where science leads them, that can be a pretty crooked path."
Oaks has really mischaracterized the Mormon "intellectual." While there is currently a move within the Church concerned with scientific evidence against the Book of Mormon (also brought out in the documentary), the debate has not generally been about scientific questions. The issues have mostly been centered on what the latter-day prophets have taught, and what the latter-day prophets have done. It's really about honesty in tension with "faith promoting" myths. LDS historian Marlin Jensen said the LDS Church is not afraid of intellectuals, or of learning, or of knowledge, but where people get into "difficulty" is when they begin to "attack" leaders or basic doctrine publicly.
The "difficulty" Jensen refers to is church discipline, which results in a loss of various church membership privileges, depending on the severity of the offense. The most extreme discipline is excommunication.
Excommunicated member Margaret Toscano told of her intimidating experience facing a Church Court. She was not allowed to bring anyone along with her so she faced a group of sixteen Mormon men alone. The charges against her were read (centering on her writings concerning women and the priesthood, and the concept of Heavenly Mother); she attempted to defend herself but was stopped mid-sentence. "We will not allow you to lecture us," she was told. She was not allowed to speak in her own defense. The men deliberated her case for twenty minutes at which point they informed Toscano that, while the High Council was "very impressed" with her, they were nevertheless excommunicating her; they had found her to be "an apostate." Toscano said,
"Everybody got up and they all wanted to shake my hand. They're cutting me off from eternal salvation and telling me that I'm this apostate which really is considered very bad in Mormon culture, and yet I'm this nice woman that they're going to shake my hand... The niceness covered over the violence of what was being done. Because in fact, excommunication is a violent action."
Filmmaker Helen Whitney made an effort to balance Toscano's story, or at least to give it some context. She included a statement by LDS author Terryl Givens who said it's important to remember that the public only hears one side of any disciplinary proceedings, that of the one disciplined. "And I don't think it's ever possible to come to fair and just conclusions when we only have half the story," he said.
But, as the pendulum swung the other way, Whitney provided a neutral (non-Mormon) perspective on it all which certainly didn't win any friends for Mormonism. Richard Ostling said,
"Once in a while you'll have a heresy trial in this group or that group. Mormonism is unique in the amount of activity that goes on, and also the extent to which the general membership is monitored. Apparently there are files in Salt Lake City on anybody who has raised embarrassing questions or might be a troublemaker. What you have is a church that seeks to control its message down into the membership to strengthen the Church and to make sure that its message is clear and consistent, and that dissent is limited to the greatest extent possible."
This was a very powerful segment of the documentary. While Whitney attempted balance, this segment, overall, portrayed the LDS Church in an unflattering light.
Act four focused on the elevated place of family within the LDS Church. The narration suggested that the early persecutions Mormons endured "drove them inward. The family became their refuge and their source of strength." This statement rang hollow coming on the heels of the previous segment in which Margaret Toscano spoke of the personal consequences of her excommunication. She said,
"The most painful part about the excommunication is the way in which, if you're part of a large Mormon family it really does, it really does, hurt your relationship with your family."
Toscano told of her sister's recent death. Explaining that a ritual within Mormonism is the dressing of the deceased for burial in temple clothing, Toscano recounted that her brother-in-law would not allow her to help dress her sister's body for burial. She said, "That cut me so deep, I haven't gotten over it. I don't know if I ever will." Earlier in the documentary Toscano said of herself, "I am Mormon on a deep level." She apparently has never turned her back on the LDS Church; she is only guilty of holding an opinion contrary to official Church doctrine on a couple of points. But this is enough to dissolve the high Mormon ideal of the family as a refuge and source of strength.
Act four of "The Mormons" provided background for the LDS focus on families. Richard Bushman stated that Joseph Smith was "deeply preoccupied" with the idea of "sealing" families together for eternity (an ordinance performed in Mormon temples) because it was a time in which many families were broken apart by the westward expansion in America. Holding the family together through sealing was "a solution to the problem of his time," he said. It is noteworthy that Bushman did not attribute the sealing ordinance to revelation, though the program's narrator did, tying it to Smith's revelation on celestial marriage and polygamy.
Interestingly, Sarah Barringer Gordon explained that when polygamy was later abandoned, the question arose as to whether the family would still be "celestial" in the same way polygamous families were supposed to have been. The answer, she said, was yes. The family still carried with it the qualities that had gone into polygamous families. She said, "It's through and in and by and with the family that Mormons are saved."
The documentary included interviews with two types of people: those who can, and those who cannot, conform to the Mormon family concept. Speaking of the pressures put on Mormon women, Fiona Givens commented,
"Mormon women are plagued by this perfect woman figure. She bakes cookies and, um, she bakes bread and she always looks wonderful and she's never overweight and she's always smiling and...yes. Totally impossible woman."
Ken Verdoia also commented on the pressures heaped upon Mormon women, noting that there is a higher use of anti-depressants in Utah than in other states. By this point in the program, the ideal Mormon family image was beginning to lose its glow.
Narrator David Ogden Stiers remarked, "While the family is the spiritual core of Mormon life, not everyone feels welcome at their table." The following interviews discussed the ways in which committed Mormon families fail for those who do not conform to the Mormon ideal. Marlin Jensen said,
"What about people who marry and for whatever reason don't have children? Or the young woman who grows old without marrying? Or the divorced person? I mean we, I think we can be quite hard in a sense, unwittingly, but nevertheless hard on those people in our culture because we have cultural expectations, cultural ideals, and, if you measure up to them, it's a wonderful life. If you don't, it can be very difficult."
Again, in an effort to provide balance, Helen Whitney ended the segment with the emotional story of a Latter-day Saint family dealing with the terminal health condition of their oldest child. Their faith in family and the sealing ordinance of the Mormon temple gives them strength and hope to go on.
The final act of "The Mormons" explored the pinnacle of the LDS faith: temples. Much was revealed in this segment, but much that could have been said, perhaps should have been said, was lacking in the end.
After several sound bites of Mormons expressing how holy and sacred Mormons temples are, Marlin Jensen explained. "What really is almost a universal symbol throughout the history of mankind of worship, of God, the temple is something, now, that is almost lost except to this church." One of the most priceless things restored by Joseph Smith, he said, was "the knowledge of what a temple was and what should occur in a temple."
Since the narrator noted that non-Mormons are not allowed inside operating temples and the rituals performed within them are "secret," the viewer may have wondered why this "priceless" bit of restored information is withheld from most of the world.
It would have been good if Helen Whitney had included a response to Jensen's claim that temple worship is almost lost except to Mormons. Certainly Jensen must realize that Buddhists, Hindus, Baha'is and those of other religious faiths worship in temples. His remarks, therefore, were probably directed at Christian faiths. But there is a reason within Christianity for the abandonment of Old Testament temple worship: the New Covenant in Christ made temple worship obsolete.
The extreme secrecy regarding Mormon temple rituals, required of those who participate in them, was revealed by author Judith Freeman:
"And I remember that at that time there were certain things, part of the rituals in the temple, is that you made the sign of disemboweling yourself and then also slitting your throat. And you made this in conjunction with a promise that you made that you would never reveal what goes on in the temple. You would never reveal any temple rituals."
The narrator clarified: "These symbolic oaths were dropped in 1990, but a secrecy vow remains for some of the rites." In addition to this helpful update on the change in temple oaths, an understanding of Mormon temple rituals could have been enhanced for viewers had Ms. Whitney included information explaining that many elements of Mormon temple worship mirror Freemasonry. Bill McKeever supplies this information:
"Although Doctrine and Covenants 124:41 says that the LDS temple ordinances were 'kept hid from before the foundations of the earth,' they are suspiciously close to those used in Freemasonry. Signs, grips, oaths, and tokens used in Mormonism are so similar that one can't escape the suspicion Smith 'borrowed' these Masonic practices, especially since he became a Mason on March 15, 1842." (Documentary History of the Church 4:550-551)
The PBS documentary mentioned the necessity of hopeful Mormons procuring a Temple Recommend to enable them to enter Mormon temples. Terryl Givens suggested the reason: "You need to show that you're committed enough that you're paying your tithing, that you're living the Word of Wisdom, that you're faithful to your spouse, and those kinds of things." Actually, the issue isn't commitment, but worthiness, as is brought out in the following interview with James Clayton. He began, "There are serious consequences for failing to qualify for a temple recommend" and went on to list several things not available to those who fail, such as holding high positions in Church administration or working at Church-affiliated institutions. But then he mentioned what must have come as a blow to viewers who were paying attention:
"You cannot marry in the temple, you cannot go to the temple to see your own children married if you're not worthy to have a temple recommend. So, it's a process of excluding people in order to refine their religious devotion."
Exclusion from the ceremony has led to a lot of contempt for the LDS Church by those who were not allowed to see their children’s marriage ceremony. Once again, Helen Whitney had treated her viewers to a true, unadorned look at non-conformist family within Mormonism.
"The Mormons" spent a fair amount of time exploring the LDS concept of salvation for the dead. LDS historian Marlin Jensen explained that according to Mormonism, those who don't hear about Jesus in this life will hear about Him in the next. If the spirits of these deceased people choose to accept the gospel "there are still certain religious ceremonies to be performed for them. One of those is baptism."
Something the documentary did not mention is that, in addition to baptism for the dead, Mormons are also washed, anointed, sealed, endowed and married in the temple for and on behalf of those who have died. Neglecting to impart this information left the viewers with the mistaken impression that Mormon temples are primarily for the living when, in fact, the majority of activity in Mormon temples is to benefit the dead.
The documentary touched on the ongoing dispute between the LDS Church and concerned Jews. Mormons are performing temple rituals on behalf of Jewish Holocaust victims, a service that is not appreciated within the Jewish culture. Roman Kent, a Holocaust survivor, spoke of his reaction when he first heard that Mormons were doing this:
"One word; it was 'shocked.' Second word: 'How can they do it?' Third was, 'Why do they do it?' Because it was, in a way, an unbelievable experience for me to find out that somebody can baptize another person after the person died. I am a Jew. I was born as a Jew. Six million of my brothers and my friends and my family were killed because they were Jews. So I wanted them to be Jews. I wanted them to remain Jews. And I didn't want anybody a hundred, two hundred years from now, to tell me that my parents were not Jews because somewhere in the Archives of the Mormon Church there is my father's name, my mother's name, is listed as a Gentile; as a Mormon person. This was to me, painful."
Unfortunately for the LDS Church, immediately following Kent's heartfelt expression of concern was Marlin Jensen saying, "We haven't wanted as a church to just, you know, assert our First Amendment right..." He said the Church did not want to insist on its right to do what it feels is appropriate in fulfilling its mission, so Mormon officials have tried to work with the Jews to address their concerns. Though Jensen's comments were ultimately about the Church taking the Jewish objections seriously, the opposite message seemed to come across to viewers. It was almost a David and Goliath moment.
The program then discussed the Mormon emphasis on genealogy, stating that, to date, two billion names of the dead have been recorded and are stored in Mormon vaults outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. Of those, Mormons have "baptized well over 100 million deceased people." Noting that the LDS Church has put the "complete records" online, making them available "to Mormons and non-Mormons alike," "The Mormons" has again given viewers a false impression. The genealogical records are open and available online; however, the online LDS ordinance information is only available to temple recommend holding Mormons.
"The Mormons" finished up, these two hours (and overall four hours), with a touching story depicting the depth of faith some Mormons possess. The testimony of abiding hope, in spite of the intrusion of death, that families will be together again--because of convents and promises made in the temple--was deeply moving. This sort of testimony was a recurring theme throughout part two of the documentary. For people unfamiliar with the Mormon system of salvation, these testimonies must have left them feeling warm and fuzzy. For people who understand what is required, according to Mormonism, to gain those sought-after blessings, they were heartbreaking.
Helen Whitney did not delve very deeply into doctrine in her film. If she had, viewers would have come to realize the burden with which Mormons are weighed down. LDS scripture Doctrine and Covenants 130:23 says: "And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated." In order for Mormons to attain the blessing of eternal life with their families (in the Celestial kingdom), they are required to obey Celestial law. "For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:22).
Celestial law, according to Mormon leaders, is complete and total obedience to all the commandments of God. If a Mormon does not live this life in total obedience, his hope of seeing his family again in the next life cannot -- will not -- be realized.
One of the complaints Latter-day Saints expressed regarding "The Mormons" was that there was little mention of Jesus Christ, making it seem as if Christ is not important to Mormons. In fact, He is more important than Latter-day Saints realize, for He is the way, the truth, and the life. Rather than trusting in temple covenants and promises that are dependent on the myth of man's righteousness, Mormons need to know that Jesus is the proper source for any and all eternal hope.