DOSSIER

In his ten years as a University of Texas at Arlington sociology professor, Anson Shupe has written books on subjects ranging from bizarre religious cults to the psychological effects of wife beating. Though Shupe is a seasoned observer of religious zealots, he never could have anticipated the disturbing phone call he received one day in July 1983 from John Hein-erman. a Salt Lake City colleague who was researching a book with Shupe. The disturbing news: three “security agents’ for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had just interrogated and photographed Heinerman and searched his apartment. The reason for the search, Shupe says, was that church leaders had learned of Heiner-man’s research into a multimillion-dollar trust set up by the Mormons.

The church cops were cordial, but Heinerman says they left his apartment with a stack of photocopied documents. Still, the Utah consultant managed to transport four orange crates stuffed with financial records to the Dallas area. Then, last March, Mormon Church officials learned what the two researchers were up to when they read The Mormon Corporate Empire, a book that stresses the church’s political and financial power more than its spiritual mission. The authors document the Mormon Church’s $8 billion-plus financial holdings in agriculture, public utilities, government stocks, and mass communications-and allege Mormon influence on the CIA, FBI, and U.S. foreign policy. The book sold its entire first edition of 6,000 copies in one week.

The 258-page tome comes at a bad time for the fastest growing major religious denomination in the United States. The Mormons were already suffering from the leadership vacuum brought on by the death last November of longtime church president Spencer W. Kimball and attacks from religious leaders worldwide who criticize the Mormons’ aggressive missionary work. And more bad press came last October when two individuals involved in the authentication of controversial letters about church founder Joseph Smith were murdered in bombings.

Despite these problems, the church is growing by leaps and bounds. In recent years the Mormons have constructed temples in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. Church officials estimate that there are roughly 95,000 Mormon Church members in Texas. In Dallas, church leaders say there are two “stakes,” or church subdivisions of up to ten congregations, and a temple that serves Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. In all, the Mormons claim nearly six million members.

“I think we’re growing here in Texas because our message is appealing,” says Ken Noteware, a high priest in the Allen Mormon Ward (congregation). “We teach family unity, respect of peers, honesty-all good old-fashioned values. We also teach chastity and we don’t drink and we don’t smoke.”

But Noteware says that local Mormons pay a price for their faith. “A lot of people still think we’re not Christians and that we practice polygamy. I’m still frequently asked, ’How many wives do you have?’”

Although much of the research for Corporate Empire was completed in the Salt Lake City area, Shupe says that for security reasons it was written in Texas. After pulling together years of documented research drawn from church publications, archives, Securities and Exchange Commission records, and inside informants in the Mormon Church, the two spent a year writing and another year editing.

Shupe and Heinerman accuse the Mormon Church of mounting a “crusade to bring about theocracy in the United States” in their book. “It still rejects religious pluralism as a desirable condition. From the standpoint of church-state relations and religious liberty in American society, the new style-corporate, polished, and public relations-conscious-is perhaps more disturbing because it is less noticeable. Yet the new LDS church is much more effective in gaining influence than were its abrasive first-generation apostles.”

However, Jerry Cahill, a spokesman for the Mormon Church, says the book’s thesis is faulty. “Therefore the entire book is faulty. It’s like writing a book about Mozart without talking about music.” As for the allegations that the Mormons aim at religious dominance, Cahill says the church’s articles of faith recognize the individual’s right to worship “according to the dictates of his own conscience.”

Cahill says the Mormon Church employs its own security force because, he says, “unfortunately, in today’s world, making checks on people who come and go are necessary sometimes to provide for the safety of the people who work in our offices. But they have no investigative powers and they don’t search homes.”

Heinerman is a devout Mormon and Shupe is a Methodist. Although Corporate Empire often portrays the Mormon leadership in an unfavorable light, the two claim they do not criticize Mormon doctrine. “The Mormons have criticized our book as an immoral enterprise,” says Shupe, who is a regular guest columnist on religion for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “We don’t regard this as an exposé It’s more an exercise in ingenuity. Most of the information we gathered came from public documents.”

Shupe has written a book on family violence due to be published this fall and says he’s also working on a book on evangelist Pat Robertson. He’ll also team with Heinerman on a sequel, this time using court records to document fraud in the Mormon Church. “I want to name it something like Wolves Among the Fold,” says Shupe.