Lights. Camera. Prayer. A mini-Hollywood grows in Utah.

(Kim Raff | The New York Times) Hair and makeup is checked between scenes in one of the "Book of Mormon Videos" produced at a studio owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Provo, Utah, Sept. 3, 2019. Movies made by the church are an important part of a film and TV ecosystem in northern Utah — and there’s not an R-rating in sight. Provo • In the heavy quiet of the Utah desert, past fields of alfalfa and fruit trees, past the Goshen trailer park and a big, sprawling dairy farm, the domes of Jerusalem rise up from the patchy grass.

Set way back from the road, this maze of open-air passageways and courtyards is about the size of two football fields, an unusual vision of…