Latter-day Saints Trivia
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119 free Latter-day Saints trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Latter-day Saints trivia questions with answers. This quiz covers the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the faith most people still call Mormon: Joseph Smith and the golden plates, Kirtland and Nauvoo, the killing at Carthage, Brigham Young and the 1847 trek, the handcart companies, the 1890 Manifesto and Utah statehood. It moves on to how the church works today: temples and open houses, tithing, the Word of Wisdom, missionaries and their name tags, the Quorum of the Twelve, the 2018 request to drop the nickname. There is a culture round too: the Tabernacle Choir, BYU and Cosmo the Cougar, FamilySearch's mountain vault, Mitt Romney's mission and the Broadway musical. It is written for anyone curious about the faith, for members testing their own knowledge, and for youth or family-night games. Difficulty runs from very easy to questions on Little Cottonwood Canyon and the Genealogical Society of Utah. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 119 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On what date did Joseph Smith formally organise the church in western New York?
April 6, 1830
Joseph Smith organised the church on April 6, 1830, in Fayette, New York, under the name Church of Christ; the fuller Latter Day Saints name was adopted later in the decade.
Q 02Joseph Smith was born on 23 December 1805 in which state?
Vermont
Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont; his family moved to the Palmyra, New York, area around 1816, where he said he had his First Vision in 1820.
Q 03Joseph Smith said that in 1823 an angel directed him to a buried book made of what?
Golden plates
Joseph Smith said the angel showed him golden plates buried in a hill near Palmyra, which he later translated as the Book of Mormon.
Q 04Which angel, now a trumpet-blowing statue atop many temples, did Joseph Smith say guarded the buried record?
Moroni
Moroni, whom Smith called the last prophet of the Book of Mormon, is the figure in Cyrus Dallin's 1892 statue on the Salt Lake Temple; a 2020 earthquake knocked the trumpet from its hand.
Q 05Whom did Joseph Smith elope with and marry in January 1827?
Emma Hale
Emma Hale married Joseph Smith on 18 January 1827 after they eloped; he had met her while boarding at her family's home in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and she remained in Illinois after his death.
Q 06In 1831 the young church moved its headquarters to which Ohio town, site of the first temple?
Kirtland
Kirtland, Ohio, became church headquarters in 1831 and the site of the first temple; the era ended after the collapse of the church-backed Kirtland Safety Society bank.
Q 07The first Latter Day Saint temple, in Ohio, was dedicated in which year?
1836
The temple was dedicated in March 1836, five years after the Saints reached Ohio; the Community of Christ owned it for over a century before selling it to the LDS Church in 2024 as part of a $192.5 million deal.
Q 08What Hebrew-derived name did Joseph Smith give the Illinois town of Commerce?
Nauvoo
By 1844 its population had swelled to about 12,000, rivalling Chicago at the time.
Q 09By 1844 the Saints' city on the Mississippi had about 12,000 people, rivalling which other Illinois city?
Chicago
The Saints' city of roughly 12,000 was comparable to Chicago, then also about 12,000 people, before mob violence drove most of them west in 1846.
Q 10Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob on 27 June 1844 in the jail of which Illinois town?
Carthage
Joseph and Hyrum Smith were held in Carthage Jail after the destruction of a dissident newspaper's press; a mob with blackened faces stormed the jail and shot both brothers.
Q 11Joseph Smith, who ran for the White House in 1844, holds what grim distinction in US political history?
First candidate for president to be assassinated
Joseph Smith was killed in June 1844 while running, making him the first candidate for president to be assassinated; his platform proposed buying slaves' freedom, annexing Texas and prison reform.
Q 12Who took over leadership of most of the church after Joseph Smith's death and led its members west?
Brigham Young
Brigham Young, the senior apostle, led the main body of Saints to Utah in 1847, became the first governor of Utah Territory in 1851 and directed the founding of some 350 settlements.
Q 13What did the church's leader reportedly say on seeing the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847?
Q 21How many spires does the Salt Lake Temple have?
Six
The Salt Lake Temple has six spires: the three on the east stand for the Melchizedek priesthood and the three on the west for the Aaronic priesthood.
Q 22Latter-day Saint temples are closed to the public after dedication; what do they hold beforehand?
An open house
Before a temple is dedicated the church holds an open house, letting the public tour the building; after dedication only members holding a temple recommend may enter.
Q 23Which ordinance for the dead did Joseph Smith first preach at an 1840 funeral in Illinois?
Baptism for the dead
Baptism for the dead, first preached by Joseph Smith at a funeral in August 1840, lets living members be baptised by proxy for deceased ancestors, driving the church's vast genealogical work.
This is the right place, drive on
The church's leader reportedly said 'This is the right place, drive on' from a wagon at the mouth of Emigration Canyon; Utah marks 24 July as Pioneer Day.
Q 14Winter Quarters, the Latter-day Saints' 1846-47 encampment before Utah, was in what is now which state?
Nebraska
Winter Quarters stood at present-day Florence, now part of Omaha, Nebraska, where the Saints camped through the 1846-47 winter before the trek to Utah; hundreds died there of disease and cold.
Q 15Between 1856 and 1860, nearly 3,000 poor European converts crossed the plains pulling what?
Handcarts
Nearly 3,000 European converts walked the trail from 1856 to 1860 pulling two-wheeled handcarts, a cheap alternative to wagons and ox teams.
Q 16What was the 1847 advance party that first reached the Salt Lake Valley called?
The Vanguard Company
The Vanguard Company of 143 men, three women and two children left Winter Quarters in April 1847 and entered the Salt Lake Valley that July, ahead of the main emigration.
Q 17Which church president issued the September 1890 declaration suspending new plural marriages?
Wilford Woodruff
Wilford Woodruff, church president from 1889, issued the declaration after Congress had disincorporated the church and seized its assets; Utah statehood followed in 1896.
Q 18Which 1857 atrocity saw Utah territorial militiamen kill 120 or more members of an Arkansas wagon train?
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
The Mountain Meadows Massacre of September 1857 saw militiamen kill about 120 members of the Baker-Fancher party in southern Utah; John D. Lee, the only man tried, was executed by firing squad in 1877.
Q 19The Salt Lake Temple took how many years to build?
40
The cornerstone was laid on 6 April 1853 and the temple was dedicated on 6 April 1893, exactly 40 years later, by the church's president.
Q 20The Salt Lake Temple's walls are built from stone quarried where?
Little Cottonwood Canyon
The temple's walls are quartz monzonite, a pale igneous stone quarried in Little Cottonwood Canyon and hauled about 20 miles to the site by ox team and later by rail.
Q 24What percentage of their income are Latter-day Saints asked to give as tithing?
Ten percent
Latter-day Saints are asked to tithe ten percent of their income; paying a full tithe is one of the requirements for a temple recommend.
Q 25The church's health code, dictated by Joseph Smith as a revelation in 1833, is known as what?
The Word of Wisdom
The Word of Wisdom, recorded as section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants, was dictated by Joseph Smith on 27 February 1833 in Ohio.
Q 26The church's health code bans 'hot drinks', which has been interpreted as forbidding which two beverages?
Coffee and tea
Church leaders have long interpreted 'hot drinks' as coffee and tea; hot chocolate is allowed, and the church said in 2012 that caffeinated soda is not prohibited.
Q 27How long do young male Latter-day Saint missionaries typically serve?
Two years
Young men serve two years and young women 18 months; missionaries and their families cover a standard monthly cost themselves.
Q 28The name tags worn by LDS missionaries give their surname with which title for men?
Elder
Male missionaries are addressed as 'Elder' plus their surname, the title of their priesthood office; women are 'Sister'.
Q 29Roughly how many volunteer missionaries did the church report in the field as of 2024?
More than 100,000
The church's 2024 statistical report counted more than 100,000 missionaries in all, combining full-time teaching missionaries with a growing corps of service missionaries.
Q 30As of 2024 the church reported a worldwide membership of over how many?
17.5 million
The church's 2024 statistical report put worldwide membership at just over 17.5 million, up from about 17.2 million a year earlier.