What if we told you that one of pop culture's most beloved adventurers likely had deep connections to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? While fans debate everything from Indy's birthday to his favorite food, there's compelling evidence that Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. was not just familiar with the Church—but he may have been a baptized member.

The seeds of this connection are planted right in the opening of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This third film in the Indiana Jones canon opens with a flashback to Indy's childhood in 1912, where he gets into trouble as a young Boy Scout in Moab, Utah. And as noted by the blog By Common Consent, 1912 was about the same time when the Church began officially sponsoring Boy Scout troops.

Now, if we are only drawing from the movies or strict canon, this is the only connection to Mormons we have. Indiana was in the Boy Scouts, nothing more. But luckily, we have The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Beyond the Movies

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles provides plenty of evidence to support Indy as a young investigator. The show ran for two seasons from 1992 to 1993 and shows an elderly Indiana reminiscing on the wild tales of his youth. Parts of the show depicted his childhood as he traveled the globe with his father, exploring tombs in Egypt, hunting with Teddy Roosevelt in West Africa, and befriending a 14-year-old Norman Rockwell in Paris. Along the way, he also met with famous thinkers, philosophers, and theologians of all types, from Sigmund Freud to Leo Tolstoy to Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Indiana Jones’ early adventures came to a sudden and tragic halt in May 1912, when his mother, Anna Jones, died of scarlet fever. Not long after, his father, Henry Jones Sr., uprooted the family and moved to Moab, Utah, where they spent the next two years. During this time, Henry Sr. took a teaching position at nearby Four Corners University, just across the Colorado border, while young Indy attended school, got into trouble, and joined the local Boy Scouts—setting the stage for The Last Crusade.

It’s easy to picture a grieving Henry Sr., now settled in a small, predominantly Latter-day Saint community, answering the door to find the local bishop and Relief Society president standing there, casserole in hand. While none of this has been shown on screen, it’s likely that Indy, having finally put down roots, made friends in the Boy Scout troop. His well-documented curiosity and love of deep conversations, particularly with theologians, suggest he wouldn’t have hesitated to strike up a discussion with local missionaries or the bishop, grilling them with questions and connecting their teachings to his old pal Tolstoy’s ideas.

And then—whether out of sincere belief or just to annoy his father—it’s entirely plausible that, somewhere during those two years in Moab, Indiana Jones got baptized.

A Question of Canon

But you may be thinking: "Hang on, what about Indiana Jones und das Verschwundene Volk, the German-exclusive novel where Indiana goes on an adventure in a little Mormon town in Southern Utah and is transported to an alternate dimension where there are two suns and time never passes? Indy clearly acted like an outsider to Mormon culture then, implying that he probably isn't Mormon himself."

The 1991 novel does, in fact, depict Indiana Jones on an adventure with a young Mormon boy named Zacharias Kramer and a relic from the lost Anasazi tribe. It also makes it clear that Indy is not a member of the Church.

However, it’s equally clear that the book’s author, Wolfgang Hohlbein, did little to no research on Latter-day Saints. In Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Pyramid, the members of Job, Utah, are described as wearing “Mormon jackets” and holding a strict pacifist worldview. The story’s antagonist is the leader of the local congregation, the beard-growing, gold-cross-wearing Reverend Kenworthy—who is never once called a bishop, but instead a reverend and a priest.

More importantly, the Indycron, Lucasfilm’s internal continuity database, classifies the novel as C-tier canon—meaning it can be overridden by the movies and TV series. And since Lucasfilm’s acquisition by Disney, the book’s canon status has remained uncertain.

So, if there’s a strong enough case for Indy being Mormon in the films and TV shows, we can safely ignore the time he went on a wildly inaccurate “Mormon adventure” and was completely wrong about everything.

The Spiritual Archaeologist

If Indiana Jones ever did become a member of the Church, he likely went inactive during his teenage years—probably before getting involved in the Mexican Revolution, as depicted in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

But whether or not you believe Indy was baptized offscreen, it’s clear that he had some exposure to the faith—something that seemed to stay with him throughout his career. It’s hard not to see a bit of himself in the story of Joseph Smith Jr. Both were intensely curious, philosophically minded boys with a deep fascination for ancient religions and civilizations. Indiana Jones might not have purchased an Egyptian mummy, but he certainly would have been just as captivated by one as Joseph Smith was.

More significantly, Indy shares a very Latter-day Saint perspective on the relationship between the spiritual and the material. Maybe it comes from the concept of seer stones, maybe from his father’s obsessive study of the Holy Grail—but unlike many of his contemporaries, Indy has no real conflict between faith and science. He actively seeks out and uncovers religious artifacts like the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, seemingly without doubting that these physical objects also possess deep spiritual significance. Just like the gold plates or the seer stones, Indy understands that even something as simple as a wooden cup can hold extraordinary power and meaning.

It might not stop him from breaking the Word of Wisdom—but hey, nobody's perfect.