If you follow religion news you can spend countless hours each day just trying to keep up with stories that involve Mormonism and the Mormon Church.

From among the ones we have read we’ve selected just five stories we think you might want to read.

The Mormon Church has apologised for posthumously baptizing the parents of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

But the controversy over its un-biblical practice of posthumous proxy baptisms the dead continues.

Most pastors feel strongly that Mormons are not Christians, according to a survey by LifeWay Research.

Three out of four pastors surveyed by Southern Baptist-affiliated LifeWay Research said they disagreed with the statement that Mormons are Christians.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney Saturday sought to calm the religious divisions that surfaced at the influential Values Voters Summit during his second bid to become the first member of the Church of Latter Day Saints to win the presidency.

Romney addressed the issue a day after Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress dubbed Mormonism a “cult” following his endorsement of Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the gathering and moments before Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, said that Romney’s faith was “outside the mainstream of historic Christian orthodoxy.”

Residents of a fundamentalist Mormon sect in the small British Columbia commune of Bountiful believe they are adhering to the original word of the religion’s prophet, says a former plural wife and advocate of polygamy

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormon Church, this week paid $2.1 million for 10 acres of land in Oakland Twp., Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania.

Since 1840, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been encouraged to perform baptisms in temples for their deceased relatives.

Mormonism and politics have merged in two Western campaigns this month, providing a glimpse of the renewed scrutiny Mitt Romney could face in a 2012 presidential run.

In the Nevada Senate race, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faced allegations from his Republican opponent’s pastor that he is a member of a cult. Reid is a Mormon convert.

Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle on Monday disavowed a claim by her former pastor that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a cult, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.

Angle’s former pastor, John Reed of Sonrise Church in Reno, last week called the Mormon Church a cult. But the term cult has different meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. For instance, while the Mormon Church has some cult-like elements, it generally is not considered to be a cult in the sociological sense of the term.

However, theologically the LDS Church is a cult of Christianity. That is, while it claims to be Christian in nature, its doctrines and practices violate the essential doctrines of the historic Christian faith.

In its defence the LDS Church often points out that its full name includes the words ‘Jesus Christ.’ Which is almost as clever as insisting that you can buy a $20 ‘Rolex’ in Tijuana…

The suspected gunman in the fatal shooting of a Mormon church official in Central California was mentally ill and believed the church had wronged him when he was a member in the 1980s, family members said Monday.

Kenneth James Ward, 47, would go through delusional spells when he blamed the Mormon church for his troubles, according to his younger brother, Mike Ward.

“When my brother had one of his episodes, he conjured up in his mind that he thought that the Mormons were sending him to hell. He would tell me that,” Mike Ward, 44, said in a phone interview from his home in Bakersfield.

While the LDS church did all it could to make sure Prop 8 passed, one group of Mormons worked for LGBT rights.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has spent time on and off for the last seven years building a defense of the Book of Mormon, one of the key tomes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Religion News Service reports.

The three-term senator — A former missionary and bishop and the grandson of a past president of the church — has now delved into a different debate: whether the book Mormons believe was revealed by an angel to their founder Joseph Smith in the 1820s is authentic.

Prominent fundamentalist Mormons, most of whom were excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for practicing polygamy while they were alive, have been posthumously re-baptized in LDS temples, a Salt Lake City researcher says.

“The LDS Church appears to be reinventing its polygamous history, as it ushers excommunicated Mormon fundamentalists back into the LDS fold through a postmortem back door,” Helen Radkey wrote in her report.

Thousands of issues of Brigham Young University’s student newspaper were pulled from newsstands because a front-page photo caption misidentified leaders of the Mormon church as apostates instead of apostles.

An apostate is someone who abandons a previous loyalty – such as to faith, political party or a cause.

While protesters outside the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City condemned Mormonism as non-Christian, nearly every speaker inside the giant building Sunday morning emphasized the conviction that Jesus Christ is at the center of Mormon faith, theologically, personally and intimately.

More than 20,000 members listened in the Conference Center during a morning and afternoon session, while millions more watched the proceedings via satellite in LDS chapels across the world.