March of the digital Mormon door-knockers

Our take: From cabs in New York City to the playbills of the Los Angeles production of "The Book of Mormon" musical, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint has been reaching out in all directions with its "I'm a Mormon" campaign. In this piece from the U.K.'s Independent, Simon Usborne, who is not a member of the LDS Church, discusses his interaction with the digital LDS campaign.

For a moment I thought a friend of mine had become a Mormon. There in my news feed on Facebook, between posts from people I barely know and photos of babies (I'm 30), was a status update that read: "No matter how bad your past has been, you can change and move on."

How nice! But the post wasn't by or even endorsed by anyone I know: it was an advert for the Mormon Church placed in my feed (where I don't remember ever seeing advertising) as part of an online mission of such scale it would be the envy of its most prominent believer's presidential campaign.

After 200 years of pounding pavements all over the world, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which counts Republican candidate Mitt Romney among its 14 million followers, has put its faith in digital door-knocking. Its Facebook page has Jesus as its profile picture and "likes" by almost 650,000 people. A YouTube channel has scored 40 million video views, while the church's UK arm calculates that its own Facebook page "reaches" 900,000 people.

Read more about the Mormon ad campaign on The Independent .