Originally Posted by sotto voce

I think that's incorrect on both counts, if only because Christianity was not, like other religions, recognised and absorbed by the state machine, yet was persistent. I think that ordinary plebeians realised that Christianity gave ordinary people an ability to withstand the endemic corruption of the police state in which they lived. It presented them with a choice of opposing the state— though not for the sake of opposition— and going to a possible eternity of reward; or, acceding to the state, and going to a possible eternity of unwanted reward.

To be fair, it's not all that easy to keep up with the changes of content of the publicity, if not the policy, of Mormons. But most Europeans know that the USA is home to some crazy cults; and they know that Christianity (Protestantism) is the real deal, and Mormonism, like all those other cults, is opposed to it.