Filmmaker drawn to big questions

In the three and a half years it took to research, interview, write, edit and air "The Mormons" on PBS television, filmmaker Helen Whitney encountered a cacophony of challenges, but the most vexing was how to deal with the LDS Church's truth claims.

Speaking to hundreds gathered for the opening lecture of the 2007 Sunstone Symposium Thursday night, Whitney said it was tempting to "try to crawl inside (church founder Joseph Smith's) revelation," while trying to find the right tone for examination: argumentative, inquisitive, respectful or a mixture.

Early suggestions from LDS friends that she read Fawn Brodie's book "No Man Knows My History" set the stage for Whitney's examination of Joseph Smith, who she called "one of the most complex and contradictory religious leaders of all time. If you sculpted a Hollywood movie about him, it would be rejected as implausible," she said, noting she tried once, and it was rejected by HBO.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is such a new faith, in relative terms, that "there is no place to hide" when people seek to examine its past, unlike other faiths that have had centuries of "patina" applied, she said. So she wondered whether deep scrutiny of specific LDS events would be something of a "double standard" because she couldn't parallel that examination with other faiths.

As she wrestled with the questions that Mormonism — and particularly the Book of Mormon — raises for most who know nothing of it, one Old Testament scholar reminded her that "the Exodus didn't yield any archaeological support." On balance, he told her, the strength of a religious text "is judged by the power to change lives, and by people's willingness to believe it."

In seeking out people to interview, Whitney was especially drawn to people who, like herself, ask the big questions about life, death and ultimate meaning, and not to those "who think they have all the answers." Yet she came to understand that Latter-day Saints "emphasize certainty and knowing" when it comes to their faith, as she was shocked to hear when attending LDS testimony meetings.

Yet "many Mormons confided in me that they found this certainty oppressive. They were closet doubters, yet fearful to express it" in a culture that puts a high premium on certainty.

She said several people have asked why the LDS Church was so open in dealing with her, providing top leaders for interviews and fielding calls from concerned members who had been interviewed themselves only minutes earlier. Her answer: "I'm not completely sure. I know when I sat down with (LDS Public Affairs) the church had done the research, they had seen every one of my films and made a lot of phone calls about me."