(RNS) The Mormon church is lashing back at a business magazine that parodied their prophet’s mission and portrayed the church as lucratively rich but miserly with charitable donations. By Daniel Burke.

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) As Americans celebrate the nation's founding, some Mormons may outdo their neighbors this week in fireworks, fanfare and frenzy to express their outsized patriotism. Other Mormons caution against linking political perspectives on American exceptionalism to specific theology or teachings. Peggy Fletcher Stack.

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) If you suspected the newly released U.S. Religion Census overstated the Mormons' growth rate, you were right. That’s because, this time around, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed the way it reported its membership to the researchers. By Peggy Fletcher Stack.

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) The massive new Utah Bishops' Central Storehouse is the centerpiece of the Mormons' intricate network for taking care of its members and lending a hand to others in times of natural disasters. Holding a can of peaches grown on church-owned orchards, manager Richard Humpherys says, it's "the best food money can't buy." By Brooke Adams.

(RNS) While Mitt Romney was building his career at Bain Capital, he was also a Mormon bishop who had to learn how to give sermons, advise squabbling couples, organize worship services, manage budgets and address the needs of more than 1,000 Mormons in the region. By Peggy Fletcher Stack.

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) Mormon leaders  issued an unequivocal mandate to church members: Do not submit names of Jewish Holocaust victims or celebrities for proxy baptism. Doing so could cost Mormons access to their church's genealogical data or even their good standing in the faith. By Peggy Fletcher Stack.

(RNS) Until 1978, African-Americans were denied full membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has refused to say whether he thinks his church's racial policies before then were misguided. Daniel Burke explores Mormons' troubled history with race.

(RNS) Suddenly, America's abuzz about Mormonism's "gold plates and magic underwear," says Terryl Givens, a professor of religion at the University of Richmond. Mormon ways are little-known, yet many Americans are suspicious of them. Why? Cathy Lynn Grossman reports.