Foreword
Every nation needs its own founding myth.
Some get Odysseus, others Moses; some grab Jesus and patch up a set of apostles as needed.
And America… well, America got Joseph Smith with a stone in his hat and a revelation on a hillside.
But it’s America – the land of fast food, highways, and the endless chase for something new – that gave the world the most spectacular myth of the past centuries.
You won’t find dragons here, unless you count mortgage debt, but instead you get golden plates, an angel with a name like a cleaning brand, and a Prophet who looks like the guy next door.
Before you think this is just another story about some exotic weirdos from across the ocean, let me bring in Joseph Campbell and his Power of Myth. Campbell shows us that we’re all children of stories – no matter if those stories started in Jerusalem, New York, or a shack in Vermont.
He’s the one who famously said:
“Myth is a public dream, and dream is a private myth.”
Nineteenth-century America wasn’t just a land of pioneers, dreamers, and European dropouts.
It was a incubator of human faith – no instructions, no liturgy, no ready-made sanctity.
Right there, in the cornfields, in log cabins, at the crossroads of fear and hope, you could see under a microscope: people don’t just want to believe – they HAVE to.
Religious experiences happened before there was any holy text.
The need for revelation – it’s not indoctrination. It’s a reflex, like gasping for air after surfacing.
In that world, faith came before doctrine. People didn’t wait for a preacher – they turned a whisper, a dream, a shout into a revelation on their own.
America was a laboratory where you could watch the raw elements of the soul react.
Turns out, there’s a hunger for meaning first – everything else comes later.
And maybe that’s the only myth that never gets old.
The Mormons did what every community does at a crossroads:
they built their own myth – and didn’t care if it sounded like science fiction, stand-up, or Golden Plates for Dummies. In America, anyone can be a prophet – if they’re not afraid of looking ridiculous.
This isn’t a hit piece or an apology.
It’s an essay about how myth builds empires – and how even the most serious worldview can start with the question:
“Does God really have nothing better to do today than shove golden plates under a farmer’s nose?”
Why this piece?
Because sometimes you have to see myth not just as a fairy tale, but as a society’s genetic code.
The Mormons are America’s mirror – what’s funniest and deadliest serious in that country: faith unafraid of absurdity, and absurdity that ends up building a real empire.
Writing about Mormons, I’m really writing about all of us.
Because each of us – just like Campbell said – needs to go into their own woods from time to time, find a stone, live through some absurd adventure, and come back with a story no one believes until they try it themselves.
So, reader, step into this story for a moment.
I promise: it’ll be funny, serious, and maybe a little inappropriate.
Because the world stands on exactly these kinds of myths.
Will this myth survive?
Of course. Every myth that makes people laugh today,
becomes the reason for building monuments a century later.
And then… a new prophet shows up with a new stone.
And if you think your dreams are worth less than golden plates –
remember, every cult started with a guy who didn’t have the internet, but did have a story.`