South Park – Joseph Smith and the Creation of Mormonism from swingitjack on Vimeo.
Go to 4:54 and then to 10:40 then to 14:40 then to 17:35 for the story of Joseph Smith, or just watch the full episode.
Pop culture doesn’t respect Mormonism according to some Mormons (although the story told in South Park video above is what Mormons actually believe). It’s worth noting the creators of South Park went on the create the hit musical The Book of Mormon.
Then how is Moronism portrayed in video games? To be honest I never thought of it until I saw a post about about it. One Mormon practitioner played through Fallout: New Vegas and was quite impressed by how the game developers dealt with Mormon lore.
Here again, Obsidian avoids the lazy cliché of religious people being hypocritically unforgiving and intolerant and has the Mormons of New Canaan forgiving the penitent Graham, embracing him as a returning prodigal.
I’m not sure if Obsidian was touching on the general theme of sin, repentance, and redemption common in most all of Christianity or if they looked more specifically at Mormon history, but this type of story played out repeatedly in the early history of the Mormon church. There were multiple times that high-ranking Church members betrayed Church leaders by swearing false affidavits (i.e. Mormons planned to overthrow the government) which resulted in repeated imprisonments and even near execution, only to later have the traitors return seeking forgiveness and finding it extended by a magnanimous prophet and people (see W. W. Phelps, Thomas B. Marsh, Oliver Cowdery).