‘Twilight’: The Accidental Mormon Blockbuster (And Netflix Has Them All)
Step aside Taylor Frankie Paul. Bella’s high-school romance is the OG secret life of a Mormon wife.
What if Twilight was less about vampires and more about Mormon theology in disguise? Stephenie Meyer, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, didn’t set out to write religious fiction, but her beliefs saturate every page. Edward Cullen isn’t just a sexy vampire; he’s a model of Mormon chastity, resisting premarital sex with supernatural intensity. Bella, caught in a love triangle with a vampire and a shapeshifting Native American, is literally choosing between godlike eternal life and earthy, passionate mortality. This is a dilemma straight out of LDS doctrine, which emphasizes eternal progression and celestial marriage.
The Cullen family lives by a strict “vegetarian” code, abstaining from human blood like moral warriors in a fallen world—think Mormon ideals of moral purity amid secular temptation. Bella’s transformation into a vampire after marriage isn’t just a fantasy, it’s a spiritual rebirth. In Mormonism, baptism by full immersion symbolizes death, burial, and resurrection into eternal life. Bella’s literal death and resurrection into vampirehood is a textbook metaphor for that process. And just like a Mormon boy in love with a “non-member,” Edward can’t be with Bella forever until she’s been “baptized.” Immortality and eternal (and sexual) union are off the table until she crosses over.
And let’s talk about the werewolves: Meyer’s romanticization of Native Americans ties directly into the Book of Mormon’s controversial narrative that Indigenous peoples are descendants of a cursed but chosen tribe. Jacob and his kin carry that tension—wild, powerful, noble, but ultimately not the “divine” path Bella chooses.
Strip away the glitter and the high school angst, and Twilight starts to look less like a teen fantasy and more like Mormon afterlife fanfic with abs. Whether you swoon or cringe, one thing’s clear: Edward Cullen is just a virginal missionary in fangs, and Bella is dying to be baptized.
