Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate who is also a Mormon,

Unlike traditional Christians, Mormons also revere the Book of Mormon equally with the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. They believe that Jesus visited the Americas after he was crucified and that he will return and reign from the United States and Jerusalem.

They believe that the dead can be baptized, that God was once a man and that a human can become like a god. And, they say, God speaks through living apostles and prophets, such as Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Mormon Church.

Mormons believe the faith's founder, Joseph Smith Jr., a Palmyra farmer, was guided by an angel to a set of ancient records etched on golden plates. Those records, which include an account of Jesus Christ's appearance in the Americas after his crucifixion, are in the Book of Mormon. For many traditional Christians, such ideas are heresy.

Smith taught that the true church of Jesus Christ disappeared with the death of Christ's last apostle and that Christianity lapsed into darkness -- the "great apostasy," Mormons call it -- for almost 18 centuries. He also said that God used him to restore the "only true church" to the Earth.

In addition to believing that polygamy was sanctioned by God, they believed until 1978 that God did not allow black people to serve in their priesthood. They have rejected both doctrines, but they still allow only men to serve as priests.