What do you think of the "Everything in twilight is because of Mormomism" theory going around? I'm always in some random comment section that's discussing twilight(either the lore, the characters, or SMs writing) and that's the only thing anybody will ever bring up
I think she was definitely influenced by her religion and the culture she grew up in, but I don't think most of it was like, intentional.
In fact she seemed to intentionally try to avoid Mormonism in the story; Charlie is Lutheran, Bella doesn't really have any faith, Carlisle is/was 'Anglican' and Edward seems to be vaguely Christian. She chose not to make any of the characters canonically Mormon, but they sometimes feel Mormon to readers because of how she wrote them.
SM herself had this to say:
The main theme that I consider to be LDS is that of free agency. These books are all about choice to me–people’s ability to rise above (or sink below) what is expected of them. There is a little bit of Helaman’s stripling warriors with the pack, too (they fight to protect their families, who are not able to fight the way they can). There is some overt discussion of religion, particularly in New Moon, and a little in Eclipse. For me, that is more about realism rather than my specific religion. Religious or not, real people have to wonder sometime about where they came from, why they’re here, and where they’re going. Characters who didn’t ponder that a little would feel pretty shallow to me.
As an author, I consider NOTHING, ha ha ha. I just tell a story. All the symbolism and themes and archetypes are things I discover after the fact. All that stuff in the above paragraph–I didn’t think of any of those things until after the story was done. Then I would read through it and think, “Hey, the pack kind of reminds me of those Ammonite kids. Wonder if that’s where I got it from?”
So I don't think she set out to make Carlisle 'look like Joseph Smith' but can imagine that when she was trying to imagine a young leader she might have been influence by Smith. I can definitely see how her attitudes toward marriage, motherhood, Indigenous peoples and race could have been influenced by her faith and culture. Imprinting seems to be related to a common trope in early Mormom fiction (tl;dr - everyone exists as souls before we are born and sometimes pair up in that spirit realm and have to find each other on Earth and when they do it's this instant, powerful recognition), and this based on an essay by a fellow Mormon (tw: for religion talk). And the whole idea of eternal families relates to ideas about 'sealing' and the Mormon afterlife.
But I don't think she set out like, "bwahaha I'm going to write a MORMON vampire romance!!!" She's not that deep, she had a weird dream and wrote it down and then built on that going wherever her imagination took her, but that imagination was certainly influenced by her faith and lived experiences.
And plenty of conservative religious types hate the books on principle for having vampires and werewolves in them at all because that's occult and that's of Satan. Also because of the 'sexual content.'
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