From Zion to MAGA: Why So Many Utah Mormons and Ex-Mormons Embrace Trump
From Zion to MAGA: Why So Many Utah Mormons and Ex-Mormons Embrace Trump
Donell Willey
“And he (the angel) said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.
—1 Nephi 14:10, Book of Mormon
It was 1968, and George Wallace was in Utah. I couldn’t be at Temple Square to see him in person, but the speech was being broadcast live. I settled in with a snack, watching as my favorite Apostle of the LDS Church, Ezra Taft Benson, stood beside the man I hoped would be the next U.S. president. The Mormon Tabernacle was packed. The cheers were louder than they had been for Kennedy or would be for Nixon. One moment still rings in my ears: Wallace denying he’d ever said he’d run over a protestor. “What I said,” he clarified, “was if any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car, it’ll be the last car he’ll ever lay down in front of.” (Wallace) I laughed and cheered at the screen. I was sixteen. I was also all in.
That memory haunts me now—not because I was drawn to conservatism, but because I now understand the layers beneath that loyalty. When Senator Mike Lee, another Utah Mormon, compared Donald Trump to Captain Moroni—a Book of Mormon war hero who defends liberty and “our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children”—it didn’t surprise me. (Lee) I’d seen that script before.
So what explains this peculiar alignment between many Utah Mormons and the MAGA movement? While many evangelicals are drawn to Trump for theological reasons, Utah’s embrace of Trumpism runs deeper. It’s not just about religion—it’s about identity. About being chosen. About America being exceptional. About standing against “them.”
A Theology of American Exceptionalism
The Book of Mormon, considered scripture by Latter-day Saints, describes the Americas as a land “choice above all other lands” (Ether 2:12). In 2 Nephi 1:7, it warns that if the people reject God, they’ll be “swept off” the land. It’s a divine warning wrapped in nationalism. Growing up, I believed my church was the “only true and living Church,” and that I was blessed to have been born in both the right faith and the right country.
My father was a John Birch Society man. He was also my Scoutmaster. I only observed JBS meetings in a Boy Scout uniform, doing flag ceremonies, but the message stuck: America was under siege—from communists, from liberals, from secular elites. At church, I was told I had been placed in my family and community because I’d chosen righteousness in the “pre-existence,” a premortal spirit world where we’d all fought in a war between Jesus and Lucifer (Satan). Those who were valiant got good families, good bodies, good nations. Those who weren’t… didn’t. It was spiritual meritocracy, and it gave racism and classism a divine origin story.
Race, Righteousness, and Rewriting History
Until 1978, Black men were denied the priesthood in the LDS Church. (Wikipedia) Temple ordinances—central to eternal salvation—were also withheld from all Black members. A 2018 survey in Religion News Service (Riess) revealed that over 60% of U.S. Mormons said they believed the ban was God’s will—even though the Church, in December of 2013, admitted its mistake and disavowed the ban as being a cultural practice rather than doctrinal (McKeever)
Scripture supported it too. The Book of Mormon tells the story of two groups descended from a prophet’s sons—one righteous, the other rebellious. The rebellious son and his descendants, the Lamanites, were cursed with a dark skin “that they might not be enticing” to their fair-skinned relatives (2 Nephi 5:21). The white and “exceedingly fair and delightsome” Nephites were thus contrasted with the dark and “loathsome” Lamanites. I was taught that Native Americans were descended from the darker Lamanites—and that when they accepted the gospel, their skin (or that of their descendants) would lighten. Righteousness made you whiter, quite literally. And I believed it.
This blending of spiritual purity with racial purity—whether consciously or not—echoes the racial anxieties fueling much of MAGA’s base. The fear of being “replaced” or losing status is not new. It just changes form.
Isolation, Integration, and a Lost Enemy
Mormonism was once a persecuted outsider religion. Driven west after the murder of its founding prophet, the Saints sought refuge in what was then Mexican territory. There, Brigham Young led a theocratic community, declaring “This is the right place” as his pioneer wagon entered the Salt Lake Valley. For decades, Mormonism flourished in relative isolation, in an “us vs. them” bubble.
When Utah achieved statehood in 1896, that bubble began to stretch. The 20th-century Utah Mormon community included descendants of pioneers and converts from across North America and around the world due to an extensive and effective missionary network. In the early 1970s, church leaders counseled members to “build up Zion” wherever they lived rather than “gathering” in Utah (Ensign). Mormonism modernized, Americanized, globalized. But cultural memory is long, and many Mormons carried the frontier mindset into the modern era. We were still the good guys. And when the world didn’t want us—or seemed to change too fast—we were always ready for a new villain.
The Church of the Devil: Then and Now
According to 1 Nephi 14:10, there are only two churches: the Church of the Lamb of God and the Church of the Devil, described as “the great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.” Throughout Mormon history, the identity of that “great and abominable church” shifted with the times. It was often equated with all other religions—especially Catholicism. Later, it was applied to organized crime, Hollywood, and other “evil” entities. Communism was assigned the title during the Cold War, and no one championed the battle against communism in Utah more than Ezra Taft Benson. (Quinn)
As a Mormon Apostle and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower, Benson warned that communism was “a counterfeit to the gospel of Jesus Christ.” He saw socialism as Satan’s premortal plan to limit the freedom of God’s children on earth. He enlisted BYU students to spy on “liberal” professors (Quinn). Active in the John Birch Society, Benson’s rhetoric aligned closely with McCarthy-era paranoia, emphasizing infiltration and ideological purity. For many Utah Mormons, Benson was a champion in the mold of Captain Moroni—a political and spiritual warrior. Perhaps no other person did more to radicalize the Utah Republican Party prior to Donald Trump.
Why Trump “Fits”
When Donald Trump rose to power, many Latter-day Saints—especially older ones—already had the framework. A larger-than-life male figure who would protect America from “the mob,” who made no apologies for toughness, who said what he thought (however crude), and who identified clear enemies—he wasn’t an anomaly. He was familiar.
It didn’t matter that his life contradicted Mormon teachings about chastity, honesty, or humility. It didn’t matter that he’d mocked veterans, paid hush money to porn stars, or encouraged political violence. What mattered was that he fit the narrative. He wasn’t the details. He was the symbol.
And once a person or ideology becomes part of your tribal identity, it’s nearly impossible to challenge it with facts. We don’t hold on to beliefs because they’re provable. We hold on to them because they affirm who we are. Because we learned them as children. Because our friends and families believe them. Because letting go would mean letting go of part of ourselves.
Faith, Fox, and the Fight for Influence
I spoke with a non-LDSminister while living in Georgia who told me that he was forced from his pulpit after questioning Trump’s Christianity. “I only have them for an hour a week,” he said. “Fox has them for up to eight hours a day. Who are they going to believe?”
He wasn’t exaggerating. For many religious conservatives, the weekday voices of Hannity, Limbaugh, Carlson, and streaming influencers became their ministers. Their sermons. Their sensemakers. Their prophets. Dynamic, entertaining, and sure of themselves, these voices offered clarity and enemies. They offered certainty—something even the aging LDS leaders in Salt Lake City struggled to match. It’s no coincidence that some Mormons, post-COVID, never returned to church. The structure of spiritual life, for many, shifted from pews to pixels.
A Changing Future?
Still, there’s movement. Younger Mormons are less politically rigid, more open to nuance, more conscious of the harm caused by binary, black-or-white thinking. They’re more likely to question authority, resist cultural racism, and seek diverse friendships and ideas.
But the cultural scaffolding remains. Patriarchy, nationalism, moral absolutism, a reverence for prophetic certainty—these don’t vanish just because the world changes. And they make it all too easy to trade one strongman for another, one great and abominable church for another perceived enemy.
As the Church continues to evolve, the question isn’t whether Mormonism will stay politically conservative—it likely will. The question is whether it can untangle its theology from its tribalism. Whether future generations can embrace faith without fear, conviction without exclusion, and community without the need for an enemy.
Bibliography
“Black People and Temple and Priesthood Policies in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2024.
“Jesus Was Born on April 6.” Ensign, July 1973, p. 3.
http://www.ldslearning.org/ensign-july-1973-jesus-was-born-on-april-6.pdf
This General Conference talk covered many topics, including a call for people to establish Zion in their own countries and communities.
Lee, Mike. Speech at a Trump Campaign Rally. 28 Oct. 2020. Quoted in Curtis, Larry D. “Sen. Mike Lee Compares Trump to Book of Mormon Hero Captain Moroni.” KUTV News, 28 Oct. 2020.
https://kutv.com/news/local/sen-mike-lee-compares-trump-to-book-of-mormon-hero-captain-moroni
Lee is the senior senator from Utah. He and Ted Cruz became two of Trump’s most vocal supporters during Trump’s first term. Lee’s father, Rex E. Lee, was Solicitor General during the Reagan administration and also served as President of Brigham Young University..
McConkie, Bruce R. Mormon Doctrine. 1st ed., Bookcraft, 1958.
I did not provide a link for this work since I never directly cited it and I could not find it online. It was revered as almost being scripture in its day. It has undergone many revisions since this first edition.
McKeever, Bill. “The 2013 Race and Priesthood Statement.” Mormonism Research Ministry, 21 Aug. 2014.
https://mrm.org/race-and-priesthood
This entire article is fascinating. Meritocracy based on valor in the prelife is outlined in a General Conference talk. McKeever puts it into context very skillfully. It would be very difficult for Mormons from the early 20th century to believe that withholding the priesthood and temple blessings from blacks was not doctrinal.
Park, Benjamin E. “How LDS Apostle Ezra Taft Benson Nearly Became George Wallace’s Running Mate.” The Salt Lake Tribune, 3 Apr. 2024.
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/04/03/how-lds-apostle-ezra-taft-benson
Not cited in the essay by very insightful in documenting the close ties between Governor Wallace and Apostle Benson.
Quinn, D. Michael. The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power. Signature Books, 1997. Chapter 6: “Ezra Taft Benson: A Study of Inter-Quorum Conflict.”
https://www.everand.com/book/364036134/The-Mormon-Hierarchy-Extensions-of-Power
Chapter 6 is very telling. Quin has documented everything in this book. Almost one-half of the entire book are citations and documents supporting this work. Perhaps as credible as anything I’ve read on the topics included in the book.
Riess, Jana. “40 Years Later, Most Mormons Still Believe the Racist Priesthood, Temple Ban Was God’s Will.” Religion News Service, 11 June 2018.
This data can be interpreted in a variety of ways. One would be that a majority of members of the LDS Church are racists. Another would be that “things happen for a reason” and God knew before what would happen and made adjustments when needed. Yet another might be that the LDS Church just screwed up. I am sure the data reflects all of these possibilities and many more.
Rohr, Richard. “The Dualistic Mind.” Center for Action and Contemplation, 29 Jan. 2017.
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-dualistic-mind-2017-01-29
Though not cited directly Rohr’s treatment of how orthodox religion has become transactional vs. transformative is very enlightening. Dualism divides everything and everyone into good or evil camps and spawns hypocrisy or chronically “unworthy” and depressed individuals.
The Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981.
Wallace, George. Interview on His Politics and the Presidency. National Educational Television, 1968. American Archive of Public Broadcasting.
https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-13zs7jkw
I could not find the text of the Salt Lake City speech but I found what I remembered hearing cited in a number of places, including this site.